Theory P: The Philosophy of Managing Programmers (*not* a parody) - <AUTHOR> http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/irm-blog/theory-p-the-philosophy-of-managing-programmers-4993 <comment><USER2> Somehow it troubles me to see someone calling down programmers who doesn't know

"charade" from "facade" "verbosity" from -- well, maybe he means verbiage

and whose writing would get a charity C+ at a good high school.

Key observations:

"1. Perhaps more than any other profession, programmers try to impress and intimidate others with their technical jargon. Such language usually masks inadequacies elsewhere."

Read some social science texts, my friend; hell, read any literary criticism dating from about the 1920s on. Jargon has its purpose, and in computing it serves well.

"2. Be leery of programmers that are pseudo-intellectual. They are probably hiding something."

If only one knew what "pseudo-intellectual" meant. Is a programmer pseudo- intellectual if he says "Bryce, your prose--res ipsa loquitur!" Is a blogger pseudo-intellectual if he calls his ramblings "theory P", or his observations a philosophy?

<comment><USER3> He should read his own article to see how well business people like to impress and intimidate others with jargon.

A programmer is pseudo-intellectual if they believe they do not need any knowledge of mathematics and any knowledge of how to speak and write well in their native language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Key Observations:

1\. Managers exhibit an average intelligence level, no greater than any other professional with a college degree. They exhibit an average imagination.

2\. Perhaps more than any other profession, managers try to impress and intimidate others with their technical jargon. Such language usually masks inadequacies elsewhere.

3\. Managers are capable of learning new skills but must demonstrate a willingness to learn.

4\. Without basic organization and discipline, managers will become mentally lazy.

See, it's easy to make unsubstantiated, insulting generalizations.

<comment><USER5> But but but he has "managed projects far larger and more complex than you can imagine, involving multiple languages, various data base structures, artificial intelligence, and universal applicability"

Data base structures! Universal applicability!

I find it hard to believe this is not a parody...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> While the article is obviously made by a jackass, it's understandable given the following statement: "In reality there is only a handful of true programming geniuses in the field who are either independent contractors or are employed by computer hardware/software firms. There are few, if any, true programming geniuses in the average corporate shop."

I might agree with that statement.

<comment><USER4> "In reality there is only a handful of true programming geniuses in the field who _are either independent contractors or are employed by computer hardware/software firms_. There are few, if any, true programming geniuses _in the average corporate shop_."

With managers like that, I wonder why. I wonder if they're working on startups to not deal with people like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> lol?

sounds like a non-technical manager who is unable to identify the smart coders, who uses policies that have consistently chased the smartest coders away from his department, and who has chosen to blame this on the coders rather than his poor policies.

<comment><USER8> I wish I could lol, but the thought of this guy getting paid for spouting this nonsense really chafes my hide.

For every nugget of truth in this article there is a viscous slathering of insecurity projected onto what were no doubt highly abused technical teams systematically subjected to abusive middle management by a blathering idiot.

My secret desire is that deep down Tim Bryce really does realize what an utterly irredeemable fool he is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One side-effect I really hope to see from the sprouting of YC and YC-like firms is a break in this stereotypes of programmers being autistic children that need handlers.

Though, I suspect it will suffer from selection bias. Any technical founders that end up making successful companies will be known for starting a company, and less known for their coding ability. You'll end up with techie founders who appear "normal" because they're successful, and the "autistic children" will continue to be employees for managers like this guy.

<comment><USER3> You don't need YC or YC-like firms for that. You just need computing scientists and computer programmers to act like professionals and dump the stereotypes themselves.

<comment><USER4> So you're saying they deserve it? Most programmers I've worked with act like professionals, yet are still treated like children.

It's bad managers that have the stereotype, so programmers continuing to be professional doesn't fix the problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In my experience, this is all to often the truth:

"There is also the problem that programmers tend to be somewhat faddish. It is not uncommon for them to recommend a solution that is technically fashionable, not necessarily what's practical. An elegant solution to the wrong problem solves nothing. It is important for programmers to learn to justify their technical recommendations from a business perspective. Failure to do so will inevitably result in a costly decision."

<comment><USER5> It's exactly the opposite. Fads are forced on programmers by managers who know nothing more than they read about them in a vendor sponsored article in "CIO Monthly" magazine they read at the airport.

<comment><USER9> Yes, always and every time, I'm sure! ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's hard for me to pin down just what it is about this article that sticks in my caw, because a lot of his points are spot on, either with regard to me or with regard to people I've worked with in the past.

If this guy were a programmer, talking about what sort of management structure works for him, it would probably seem thought-provoking, if flawed. We've all met pseudo-intellectual types in our business, or those that are always following the latest fad, or those who have decided that they're too old to learn anything new. In fact most of us (I know I am) are guilty of these sorts of things ourselves.

But because he's an outsider we're put on the defensive, and the whole thing comes across as condescending and insulting. It's especially biting because there's an element of truth to it. We're being judged not as individuals, but as part of the biased sample of bad apples from dysfunctional organizations that this guy has dealt with.

This must be what being a victim of prejudice feels like.

EDIT: Now that I think about it, this is how I felt the first time I stumbled upon <http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/>, until I realized that a) it's a joke and b) the author is very, very white.

</comment><comment><USER11> Am I the only one here who mostly agrees with the article? Especially with the bad parts. I don't have that much experience, but it's already been over 10 years of programming, freelancing and occasional managing, and I find pretty much everything in this article familiar. From the difference between a programmer and an analyst, the average intelligence level, to the lazynes and lack of motivation which are almost a professional disease among programmers.

If I were employed in a corporation I'd actually _like_ my manager to try and make my work motivating, even though it is fundamentally about "sorting files and making raports". Ignoring the problem won't make it go away.

edit: I'm not one of the star programmers btw. I had to pass 30 to realize I'm actually not that bright, and if I want to make something I have to deal with my lazyness and work and learn.

<comment><USER12> All the management tips in that article make perfect sense:

"Be leery of programmers that are pseudo-intellectual. They are probably hiding something."

If you can't explain something clearly and concisely, you either need to improve your communication skills or really are hiding something ([http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/9sfm5/i_am_a_man_in_hi...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/9sfm5/i_am_a_man_in_his_30s_that_has_lied_and_bullsed/))

"Improve communications within the programming staff by developing a standard glossary of terms. This will also be useful to outsiders who have to interface with programmers."

This is the core idea behind Domain-Driven Design.

"Carefully scrutinize technical proposals. Make the programmers justify it from a business perspective."

ROI ROI ROI

"Adopt standards for documenting programs (e.g., graphics and/or text detailing the organization and logic of the program)."

Duh.

"Develop standard development practices emphasizing quality and program re- usability. Demanding precision in development will result in superior performance."

Duh x 2

"Implement a skills inventory to monitor the talents and proficiencies of the programming staff. This is used to determine the need for additional training, as well to select the most suitable individual for a programming assignment."

If only more managers did this!!

"Promote a program of on-going education, such as a training curriculum, the development of technical library, participation in professional associations, and technical certification programs."

How can you say the author of the article looks down on programmers? Again, most coders wish their organization had a program like this.

"Develop security measures to safeguard the company's intellectual property."

This one is agreeable on some level, however that level is CIO and not team managers.

"Recognize outstanding achievement even for the smallest of jobs."

Ok. You need to recognize people's effort and achievements.

"Manage from the bottom-up. Delegate responsibility and hold people accountable for their actions. Teach employees to supervise themselves."

Of course, the author really does think programmers are morons! How else can he recommend something like this?

<comment><USER5> I think the issue most people have with this is the stark management/worker divide, in which managers are omniscient and a worker's greatest virtue is obedience.

In a modern organization, I don't feel that my manager is superior to me (especially not in a traditional class sense). We are two professionals with broadly equivalent educations and social backgrounds with slightly different job descriptions, I do more code, he does more meetings. His job is not to _tell_ me what to do, it's to handle the planning and logistics of us jointly working towards the organization's goal, just as mine is to handle the technical and operational side.

And I don't feel subservient to the company either. We are two economic entities collaborating for mutual benefit. If either us doesn't like this arrangement anymore, we can dissolve it with no hard feelings.

In short, this dude's ideas are stuck somewhere near the beginning of his career. He's learnt _nothing_ in those 30 years. It's not experience if you aren't learning from it. It's just paper pushing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I trudged through the first dozen or so paragraphs, and finally gave up at this: "Consequently, there is little original source code being produced in today's software."

</comment><comment><USER14> This man is a buffoon.

<http://www.phmainstreet.com/mba/>

I know, let's name my company MBA so I can present myself as Tim Bryce (MBA).

<comment><USER5> Broken links on that site too (e.g. to "Bryce's Laws", none of which he can claim to have originated).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> "This must be carefully nurtured by management"

Aren't these managers wonderful people?

</comment><comment><USER16> It's a sad and disappointing article, and too many "observations" seem rather biased and couched in the claim of multiple years of experience; though I highly doubt it's very broad experience, because the views are too narrow.

I strongly suspect this article is based on two aspects:

\- one is to sell his services with a type of confirmation bias, i.e. to confirm "what every manager suspected about their programmers but could never prove", which leads to:

\- ending up "helping" the same type of companies/clients throughout his career.

</comment><comment><USER17> "It is well known that programmers generally abhor organization and discipline. Their desks are often littered with stacks of paper and other debris."

He got that much right (referring to myself).

<comment><USER18> Keep in mind that this article was written by someone who believes that employees should be forbidden to listen to music other than company-approved easy-listening muzak. Which he feels should be mandatory.

In short, this guy is trying very hard to rationalize his extremely controlling nature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I am tempted to make the blanket statement: "Don't let non-technical managers manage technical people."

That would be unfair to all the good non-technical managers out there (I believe this is harder, but still possible). How about "Don't let managers who cannot establish a rapport with technical people manage technical people"?

</comment><comment><USER20> I stopped reading when I got to the bit about programmers being glorified translators.

</comment><comment><USER21> this must be a joke (a dry one at that.)

not worth the read.

<comment><USER18> No, this guy is actually every bit as much of a bozo as the article suggests. Check out his guide to hiring a programmer:

[http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/irm-blog/hiring-the-right- progra...](http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/irm-blog/hiring-the-right- programmer-11596)

In particular, his example of good C code is illuminating:

        int. Table [10] [10]; /* 2 dimensional array */
            for (i=0; ; <10; ++i)
            for (j=0; ; <10; ++i)
                 printf("%d/n",table[i][j]);

Enough said, I think.

<comment><USER22> I also like this one about printers:

[http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/irm-blog/bryces-pet-peeve- comput...](http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/irm-blog/bryces-pet-peeve-computer- printers-11242009-35499)

where he talks about "today's consumer dot-matrix printers".</comment></comment></comment>


What I learned raising $1 million for my startup - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2011/08/22/technology/startups/raising_money/

<comment><USER2> _Budget at least $80,000 per employee for payroll, benefits, insurance, and miscellaneous costs. You'll have to budget more if you plan on hiring experienced talent._

How much salary would this $80,000 approximately be? Can someone tell from his experience please?

<comment><USER3> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2875703> already discussed the first time this ended up here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> ... and then you party like it's 1999!</comment>


Introducing Organizing – Hack Your Time - <AUTHOR> https://organizing.io

<comment><AUTHOR> We're a brand new startup from Romania, please check out or work: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSl8EULpRC4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSl8EULpRC4) .

Feedback is most welcome! especially negative feedback :)

</comment><comment><USER2> When will you go mobile ? I would like an app for my Android tablet.

<comment><AUTHOR> RORVI, our beginings are humble and currently we do not have the resources for that, but you can access it from your Android table from the browser, we tried and made the web-application mobile friendly</comment></comment>


New IBM computer chip mimics the human brain - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/innovation/08/18/ibm.brain.chip/index.html?eref=rss_topstories&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_topstories+%28RSS%3A+Top+Stories%29

<comment><USER2> Previous submissions of the same story:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2900593>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2899885>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2899850>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2899643>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2899299> <\- some discussion

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2898229> <\- lots of comments

</comment><comment><USER3> It appears that the AI is, as they say, 'baked in':

"systems built with these chips won't be programmed the same way traditional computers are today. Rather, cognitive computers are expected to learn through experiences, find correlations, create hypotheses, and remember – and learn from – the outcomes, mimicking the brains structural and synaptic plasticity."

(Quote from the original press release: <http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/35251.wss>)

This is either marketing fluff, or the most important story I've read this year.

</comment><comment><USER4> Its cute. Interesting how they're busting on modern day computers and calling them calculators. I think we have the same kind of hype that happened 30 years back with early AI. The new chips are just fancy pattern matchers. And we still don't have a clue how higher level thinking works in the brain.

Well guess what, humans and brains are calculators too, its just that we can calculate on a long term basis on non-mathematical entities.</comment>


Keeping master green at scale - <AUTHOR> https://eng.uber.com/research/keeping-master-green-at-scale/ <comment><USER2> Adrian Colyer dug into this a little further on the morning paper:

[https://blog.acolyer.org/2019/04/18/keeping-master-green- at-...](https://blog.acolyer.org/2019/04/18/keeping-master-green-at-scale/)

His analysis indicates that what uber does as part of its build pipeline is to break up the monorepo into "targets" and for each target create something like a merkle tree (which is basically what git uses to represent commits) and use that information to detect potential conflicts (for multiple commits that would change the same target).

what it sounds like to me is that they end up simulating multirepo to enable tests to run on a batch of most likely independent commits in their build system. For multirepo users this is explicit in that this comes for free :-)

which is super interesting to me as it seems to indicate that an optimizing CI/CD systems requires dealing with all the same issues whether it's mono- or multi- repo, and problems solved by your layout result in a different set of problems that need to be resolved in your build system.

<comment><USER3> > For multirepo users this is explicit in that this comes for free :-)

Only if you spend the time to build tools to detect commits in your dependencies, as well as your dependent repositories, and figure out how to update and check them out on the appropriate builds.

So, no, it doesn't come for free.

<comment><USER4> Package managers solve it quite well. Just depend on the latest version of your dependencies and tag a new version whenever they change.

<comment><USER5> This doesn't work when an underlying system changes, and upgrading is mandatory for all clients or package dependants (happens often at scale for a multitude of reasons).

<comment><USER6> That's not good stewardship. You have a better API? Great, convince us it's worth investing in soon, you can even deprecate the known-good version.

There's always a window where both will be in use, because we can't synchronously replace every running process everywhere (not that it's even a good idea without a canary). The shorter you try to make that window, the more needless pain is created and plans disrupted. While we _could_ use prod to beta test every single version of everything, that shouldn't be our priority.

<comment><USER5> That's not reality for most large companies, even though it's the right mindset for most software libraries. Ex: A new legal requirement comes in, resulting in a mandate that fields X and Y for certain queries, that are being done all over the codebase, now have to be tokenized. This is a breaking _and mandatory_ change, with no room to allow systems to stay behind, and expensive consequences.

In this case you'll have a very short transition, between all consumers updating their client code (possibly in a backwards compatible way) and the change in the implicated system being deployed, not the other way around.

<comment><USER6> If adopting the new API is mandatory, every team should be told why it's mandatory, and we'll reprioritize and get it done. Doing it to our code behind our back is passive-aggressive and likely to break stuff, because who is monitoring and reporting on a change in our system's behavior that we didn't even see?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Based on all possible outcomes of pending changes, SubmitQueue constructs, and continuously updates a speculation graph that uses a probabilistic model, powered by logistic regression. The speculation graph allows SubmitQueue to select builds that are most likely to succeed, and speculatively execute them in parallel"

This is either brilliant or just something built for a promotion packet

<comment><USER8> Sounds so much simpler outside the context of a 'research' paper:

>When an engineer attempts to land their commit, it gets enqueued on the Submit Queue. This system takes one commit at a time, rebases it against master, builds the code and runs the unit tests. If nothing breaks, it then gets merged into master. With Submit Queue in place, our master success rate jumped to 99%.

[https://eng.uber.com/ios-monorepo/](https://eng.uber.com/ios-monorepo/)

<comment><USER7> submit queue makes sense and is used by lots of people, it's the "machine learning" which is applied to choosing commits to enqueue which I found to be interesting. if the master success rate was already 99% in 2017, with just submit queue, why build the complex ML stuff?

<comment><USER9> If there are 1000 commits per day (which wouldn't be that many), that's 10 master breaks per day.

<comment><USER10> And at least in my limited experience, the impact of master being broken is pretty big, and even bigger when you have multiple teams. Either you block master - leading to a lot less than those 1000 commits making it to master on that day - or continue merging in stuff, which causes the root cause of the master branch to become fuzzy - and if your reporting is not in order, that is, if the person who broke the build isn't told they did, it'll be a lot of "Who broke master?" and people looking at each other to find out who is going to look into it. That's not scalable.

<comment><USER6> That's why master shouldn't be whatever you're about to deploy for the first time, but the known-good version that has been burned-in on prod (for an hour or a week or whatever), so if you have to abandon a release you don't have an entire team who already rebased on top of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> jl-gitlab We're building some similar tech at GitLab, though without the dependency analysis yet.

Merge Requests now combine the source and target branches before building, as an optimization: [https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/merge_request_pipelines/#combi...](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/merge_request_pipelines/#combined- ref-pipelines-premium)

Next step is to add queueing ([https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ee/issues/9186](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/issues/9186)), then we're going to optimistically (and in parallel) run the subsequent pipelines in the queue: [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ee/issues/11222](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/issues/11222). At this point it may make sense to look at dependency analysis and more intelligent ordering, though we're seeing nice improvements based on tests so far, and there's something to be said for simplicity if it works.

</comment><comment><USER11> There's a nice middle ground between this and a one-at-a-time submit queue: have a speculative batch running on the side. This gives nice speedups (approaching N times more commits, where N is the batch size) with minimal complexity.

One useful metric is the ratio between test time and the number of commits per day. If your tests run in a minute, you can test submissions one at a time and still have a thousand successful commits each day. If your tests take an hour, you can have at most 24 changes per day under a one-at-a-time scheme.

I worked on Kubernetes, where test runs can take more than an hour-- spinning up VMs to test things is expensive! The submit queue tests _both_ the top of the queue and a batch of a few (up to 5) changes that can be merged without a git merge conflict. If either one passes, the changes are merged. Batch tests aren't cancelled if the top of the queue passes, so sometimes you'll merge both the top of the queue AND the batch, since they're compatible.

Here's some recent batches: [https://prow.k8s.io/?repo=kubernetes%2Fkubernetes&type=batch](https://prow.k8s.io/?repo=kubernetes%2Fkubernetes&type=batch)

And the code to pick batches: [https://github.com/kubernetes/test- infra/blob/0d66b18ea7e8d3...](https://github.com/kubernetes/test- infra/blob/0d66b18ea7e8d3f216287ad06b11042c12bc6e48/prow/tide/tide.go#L759)

Merges to the main repo peak at about 45 per day, largely depending on the volume of changes. The important thing is that the queue size remains small: [http://velodrome.k8s.io/dashboard/db/monitoring?orgId=1&pane...](http://velodrome.k8s.io/dashboard/db/monitoring?orgId=1&panelId=10&fullscreen&from=now-7d&to=now)

<comment><USER12> The same thing was (is?) done in openstack with zuul, I believe. When you going to merge something, your branch goes on top of things already going through the CI.

<comment><USER11> We talked to the Zuul team, they use more parallelism but it's similar: [https://zuul-ci.org/docs/zuul/user/gating.html](https://zuul- ci.org/docs/zuul/user/gating.html)

Most of the complexity and suffering of a submit queue evolves from the interactions between your VCS and CI systems. Keeping things simple is great! Kubernetes' CI system is Prow, which runs the tests as pods in a Kubernetes cluster. Dogfooding like this is great, since the team you're providing CI for can also help fix bugs that arise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am still trying to wrap my head around a giant monolithic repo model instead of breaking codes into multiple repos.

At Amazon, for example, they have multi repos setup. A single repo represents one package which has major version.The Amazon's build system builds packages and pulls dependencies from the artifact repository when needed. The build system is responsible for "what" to build vs "how" to build, which is left to the package setup (e.g. maven/ant).

I am currently trying to find a similar setup. I have looked as nix, bazel, buck and pants. Nix seems to offer something close. I am still trying to figure how to vendor npm packages and which artifact store is appropriate. And also if it is possible to have the nix builder to pull artifacts from a remote store.

Any pointer from the HN community is appreciated.

Here is what I would like to achieve:

1\. Vendor all dependencies (npm packages, pip packages, etc) with ease. 2\. Be able to pull artifact from a remote store (e.g. artifactory). 3\. Be able to override package locally for my build purposes. For example, if I am working on a package A which depends on B, I should be able to build A from source and if needed to build B which A can later use for its own build. 4\. Support multiple languages (TypeScript, JavaScript, Java, C, rust, and go). 5\. Have each package own repository.

<comment><USER14> > At Amazon, for example, they have multi repos setup.

And didn't you find that this created massive headaches trying to build many disparate and inconsistent dependencies across repos? I think the benefits touted from mono-repos are exactly illustrated by the pain points working with Amazon's multi repo setup, in my opinion.

[https://danluu.com/monorepo/](https://danluu.com/monorepo/)

 _" Refactoring an API that's used across tens of active internal projects will probably a good chunk of a day."_

This was my experience.

<comment><USER15> How often have you interacted with "hot" packages that both change rapidly and are high dependency? Haven't worked at amazon but in my experience that's been low occurrence or a reason to build evolving api / not breaking the api.

I'm just curious, but in fairness both of these schemes have obvious issues that will become headaches or positive design depending on your outlook. Clearly you can engineer effectively in either scheme.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Quite a premise: "Giant monolithic source-code repositories are one of the fundamental pillars of the back end infrastructure in large and fast-paced software companies."

<comment><USER7> facebook, google, airbnb, quora, many more all use monorepo

obviously there are many others who do not use monorepo (amazon comes to mind) but it's reasonable to claim that they are actually widely used and fundamental when used

<comment><USER17> Does anybody know how these companies development environments look like? I know about Piper at Google but how do the rest manage? Does every single engineer have the entire monorepo in their machines?

<comment><USER18> At facebook, a virtual filesystem ([https://github.com/facebookexperimental/eden](https://github.com/facebookexperimental/eden)) + change monitor ([https://facebook.github.io/watchman/](https://facebook.github.io/watchman/)) = source control operations run in O(files I have modified) instead of O(size of repository) time

<comment><USER17> Very interesting, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Anyone fancy comparing this to bors?

<comment><USER20> Actually we have compared it in our paper.

Bors builds one change at a time. On the other hand, Submit Queue speculatively builds several changes at a time based on the outcomes of other pending changes in the system. Apart from that, Submit Queue uses a conflict analyzer to find independent changes in order to commit changes in parallel as well as trim the speculation graph.

We have also evaluated the performance of Single-Queue (idea of Bors) on our workloads. In fact, as described in the paper, the performance of this technique at scale was so high (~132x slower) that we omitted its results. Submit Queue on the other hand operates at 1-3x region compared to an optimal solution.

I recommend you to read the paper here for further details. [https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3303970](https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3303970)

<comment><USER19> > Bors builds one change at a time.

Bors builds multiple changes at once (it creates a merge commit of all available changes and then runs the tests on all of them), and merges if all of them are good.

Possibly you are thinking of the older bors, as opposed to modern bors-ng?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think that what works for companies like Uber/Google/Facebook is not applicable to the rest of fortune 500 or all of the rest of the companies.

disclaimer: I am one of Datree.io founders. We provide a visibility and governance solution to R&D organizations on top of GitHub.

Here are some rules and enforcement around Security and Compliance which most of our companies use for multi-repo GitHub orgs. 1\. Prevent users from adding outside collaborators to GitHub repos. 2\. Enforce branch protection on all current repos and future created ones - prevent master branch deletion and force push. 3\. Enforce pull request flow on default branch for all repos (including future created) - prevent direct commits to master without pull- request and checks. 4\. Enforce Jira ticket integration - mention ticket number in pull request name / commit message. 5\. Enforce proper Git user configuration. 6\. Detect and prevent merging of secrets.

</comment><comment><USER22> Having been at both Lyft and DoorDash where I've been an engineer responsible for unit test health, I decided to do a side project called Flaptastic ([https://www.flaptastic.com/](https://www.flaptastic.com/)), a flaky unit test resolution system.

Flaptastic will make your CI/CD pipelines reliable by identifying which tests fail due to flaps (aka flakes) and then give you a "Disable" button to instantly skip any test which is immediately effective across all feature branches, pull requests, and deploy pipelines.

An on-premise version is in the works to allow you to run it onsite for the enterprise.

<comment><USER23> I don't want to come across as negative, but just an observation and to play devil's advocate - wouldn't it be better to fix the flaky test or delete it entirely instead of build a feature to disable it during a test run in an automated fashion?

Whenever our team has a significant number of flakey tests (more than 1-2) we usually schedule a bug squash session to fix them and amortize the cost over the whole team.

<comment><USER22> What you really want to do is first disable a test you know is unhealthy to unblock everybody. Then, you fix it. After you've reintroduced it healthy, you can turn it back on.

<comment><USER24> I was talking to someone from Google who works on Bazel things, and he brought an interesting point: flaky tests are asymmetric in that they don't provide much value when they fail (since you don't know if the failure was due to flakiness), but they do provide a lot of value when they pass (because they presumable test something non-trivial.)

With this in mind, what Bazel does when a test is marked flaky is run it several times. This is a simple way of minimizing the effect of flakiness while still getting confidence from green tests.

<comment><USER25> I dislike rerunning flaky tests. It too often masks genuine failures.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> A possible complication would occur if there are tests that occasionally fail.

</comment><comment><USER27> What's exactly a monothlic ? Is it only related to codebase (monothlic vs monorepo) ? Or it's about runtime like microservices vs monothlic.

<comment><USER28> From the first sentence of the abstract:

> monolithic source-code repositories

A monorepo _is_ a monolithic repository

<comment><USER5> To answer the parent, it doesn't imply a monolith application, but deployment to multiple server roles and apps will happen using the same source repository.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> How common is this in the industry? Do multirepos run on a batch?

</comment><comment><USER30> Is this novel? Other companies have had this for ages.

<comment><USER5> No, they haven't. This is a system to queue commits, not a simple CI setup. This problem only comes up when you start having contention due to commit volume in a monorepo (think thousands commits/day). This is only the 3rd one I've heard about.

> This paper introduces a change management system called SubmitQueue that is > responsible for continuous integration of changes into the mainline at scale > while always keeping the mainline green. Based on all possible outcomes of > pending changes, SubmitQueue constructs, and continuously updates a > speculation graph that uses a probabilistic model, powered by logistic > regression. The speculation graph allows SubmitQueue to select builds that > are most likely to succeed, and speculatively execute them in parallel. Our > system also uses a scalable conflict analyzer that constructs a conflict > graph among pending changes. The conflict graph is then used to (1) trim the > speculation space to further improve the likelihood of using remaining > speculations, and (2) determine independent changes that can commit in > parallel

<comment><USER31> I don't quite understand the problem they are trying to solve. Is there so many change sets that they couldn't provision enough ci servers, hence the "speculation graph with probabilistic model"?

<comment><USER32> Sort of, though not really.

Imagine I have three changes, C1 modifies F1, C2 modifies F2, and C3 modifies F1. There's no relation between F1 and F2.

At low-ish rate of submission, you test and commit C1, then test and commit C2, then when you try and test and commit C3, you rebase, and re-test and commit. (the merge doesn't conflict so can be automatically fixed)

Now assume all three changes are submitted by 3 different engineers in the span of a minute and engineers don't want to manually rebase. The rebase/build/submit time is less than the time between changes!

So you have a tool that queues up the changes, and at each change you

1\. Rebase onto current head

2\. build with the new changes

3\. Submit

But that's still really slow. Since everything is sequential. If my change takes ~30m to test, it blocks everyone else who depends on my change.

So OK, do things in parallel: Build and test C1, C1 + C2, and C1+C2+C3. Then, as soon as C1 is finished testing, you can submit all 3. There's still 2 problems though: C2 is unreasonably delayed, and "what if C1 is broken".

So, if C2 and C1 don't conflict, you can actually just submit C2 before C1 even though the request to submit was made after. But when there really is a dependency, like C3 and C1, the question is, do I build and test {C1, C1+C3}, {C3, C3+C1}, or something else. SubmitQueue appears to try and address that question. "Given potentially conflicting changes (not at a source level but at a transitive closure level), how do I order them so that the most changes succeed the fastest, assuming some changes can fail, and I have enough processing power to run some, but not all, permutations of changes in parallel"?

<comment><USER33> awesome explanation</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What can I do to turn things around and make my 30's "good"? - <AUTHOR> I turn thirty in a couple months. At this stage in my life, when looking back on my 20s, it's been very disappointing. Sure, there are plenty of good things, but my career hasn't panned out as hoped, was convicted of a felony sex offense, have had to move pack in with parents, and so forth. What can I do at this stage in my life to improve things and make my thirties a fruitful decade where I'm employed, doing interesting things, and feeling useful.
Good things in my life, to date:
- Finished my bachelors and masters degree from a good university.
- Was employed as a statistician in the online marketing industry for four years.
Bad things in my life, to date:
- Committed a felony sex offense while I was an undergraduate at university (ended up serving three years of probation).
- Lost my job several months ago and can't find new work as a result of not being able to pass background checks.
- Moved back in with my parents.
- Never had a girlfriend.
- Degenerative neurological disorder that's slowly taking over my life (a big reason for I have been lonely and likely contributed to my improprieties).
So here I am. I want to turn things around, have a good career as a statistician, and make a descent salary. What can I do to turn things around and improve my life so that when I'm 40, I'm not looking back on my 30's and thinking that it's been disappointing.
To be honest, I'm more interested in having a good job/salary than anything else. If I never have a girlfriend, that's fine, I'm "broken goods" so I understand why I'm less appealing to women.Good things in my life, to date: <comment><USER2> (re: another comment) I knew a couple people in the french foreign legion, and I wouldn't recommend joining them unless you want to become even more fucked up.

What I would recommend instead, is save up a bit of money and move to another country (South America, Southeast Asia, even Eastern/Western Europe if you can swing it). There you will not fail background checks, and in many countries you can easily get a job teaching English (with or without a small amount of training) which will be more than enough to pay your bills. Your quality of life will be far higher than living with your parents.

Start a consultancy doing the skilled work you want while you pay your rent by teaching English. Work on your social skills, and probably the deep underlying reasons those skills are lacking (by the way, this will help building the consultant work over time). Take some psychedelics, get outside your comfort zone with people and activities, enmesh yourself in a new culture, learn a new language. This will all take time, and I'd encourage you to keep moving between cities or countries a bit until you find a situation that feels right and you don't want to leave.

You don't like who you are now, so become the new person you want to be. It will be a lot easier to do that in another country. Even if the felony would prevent you from getting a permanent visa immediately, you'll be able to indefinitely do visa runs in the vast majority of developing countries with little hassle.

<comment><USER3> I'm curious about your French Foreign Legion comment; can you elaborate?

<comment><USER2> From my not incredibly extended experience, the problem was the FFL attracts exactly the sort of people in op's situation - those with criminal records and/or nowhere else to turn. You're then basically a mercenary in a group of other very fucked up mercenaries, and from the outside it appeared a great way of reinforcing the worst aspects of one's personality.

By contrast if you simply go live in South America and teach English, you'll just be any other expat, and immersed in a normal local culture much more likely to help you become a sane, well-rounded human.

(for reference, I spent two weeks in a hostel in Marseilles with a creepy Algerian criminal in the FFL who'd been wounded/furloughed and was trying to obtain French citizenship along with a 19 year old in-denial gay Mormon who was attempting to join. The Algerian wound up making violent/rapey comments to at least three female friends)

<comment><USER4> Not to mention, isn't the FFL more selective in physical ability than the US Army Rangers? You don't just sign up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would look into trying to get your criminal past expunged. Talk to some lawyers, figure it out. My ex-roommate was able to get his wiped, although it wasn't a felony sex offense case.

Work hard to get a new job, even if it's a crappy one. This will be the key to help you turn your life around. I know it did for me. I struggled during my early late 20s too, and when I turned 30 it felt overwhelming... like what have I been doing with my life? But when I put my head down and started to work hard.

Career became my main focus in my 30s and while I am much older now, I can say without doubt, everything got better. I was able to not worry about money, date more, make more friends, indulge in personal interests, etc.

Use this time living at home to save, take any job related to your interest. Keep looking for better opportunities. Save more money. Get that job. Get that girl. Get your life turned around mentally and emotionally. Don't dwell on the past. Good luck!

<comment><USER6> > although it wasn't a felony sex offense case.

Not to mention, it's a sex offense, he doesn't say could also possibly include being on the sex offender registry.

It's ironic that we talk of "right to forget" in Europe. USA, sex offenders are named and shamed for the rest of their lives as eternal perverts.

<comment><USER7> One of the sadder scenarios IMO is something like an 18-year-old having quasi- consensual sex with a 17-year-old (I say "quasi" just because by legal definition it can't be consensual.) If convicted, the offender is branded a pedophile for life, but few people are going to consider what actually happened (and it's not documented publicly like the generic crime conviction is.)

I don't know if it's really prevalent, but I know one anecdote that appeared to be like that. Some US States are making progress here, though -- see "Romeo and Juliet laws."

<comment><USER8> One of my brother's good childhood friends was 18, his girlfriend 16. Both parents approved of the relationship. She stayed out too late one night (with her friends, not the boyfriend), and her parents called the police. Police track her down, but learn of the relationship with the 18-year-old. This was Kansas so it was then out of the parents' hands. He was was convicted of statutory rape, and still to this day (~20 years later) has to inform his neighbors whenever he moves.

(wait for it)

He is married to that same person, and they have three kids together. Registered sex offender _for life_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Dropping in here, because I can't pass a background check either (felony theft - did some stuff to a bank):

I've learned that just being like "yo I can't pass a background check in case you were wondering" only opens up arms and minds. Though, to a felony sex offense... well, it couldn't have been that bad since you did 3 years probation. I got 5.

Reach out to some bigger recruiting agencies, and make sure to prepare yourself for an explanation. From what I've experienced, they'll do the background check, and then ship you off to companies where you won't have to pass theirs.

A question I have for you is this: How has finding a place to live gone for you?

Edit: just remembered that I'm off probation in late August. Yay.

</comment><comment><USER10> The best thing you can do for yourself is to go to therapy. Cognitive behavioral therapy can make a big difference in your life. Find someone in your area and commit yourself to improve with the guidance of someone who can help you.

A lot of the issues you have could be the result of a distorted life perspective. Superficial advice like "lift weights" are not helpful. You need to change your thinking patterns to have results that last.

<comment><USER6> Lifting weights is superficial advice?

It makes every part of your life easier.

\- Releases endorphines to make you happy

\- Makes you more attractive

\- Helps you burn more fat

\- Helps your long term health

\- Gives you something to put into your routine to have a healthy habit

\- When you do it and stick to it, the downside is you have to listen to occasional ignorant comments by people who downplay the benefits of this.

\- Your sex drive increases

\- Testosterone / you become more dominant

It's not easy either - lifting weights takes a lot more effort than jogging. You're more likely to be characterized as a brute jock, as opposed to biking / jogging where it's all glib hipsters.

<comment><USER11> I'm confused as to how this is a plus on it's own

"\- Testosterone / you become more dominant"

<comment><USER12> It's not, and it's wrong. Probably some 'facts' told by training gurus or whatnot.

You can be 5 feet tall, built on a cat frame and still be dominant. Being dominant is much more about how you interact socially. And no, being the 'tough' guy doesn't help.

You can feel more confidant if you have some more muscle mass, but that's about it.

Now, about the testosterone. Exercise will make your testosterone go up for only a few minutes to an hour, which doesn't do much of a difference. (Same for sex btw; levels go up AFTER sex.) Besides, if you lack the hormone in any serious matters, you should seek a physician. Other than that, why would you want more? Because you think it's in direct proportion to your manliness?

<comment><USER13> Agreed overall, with the nitpick that I've never seen evidence that testosterone increases after sex.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Today is the first day of the rest of your life." As cheesy as this sounds, it is deeply true. You can choose every day the kind of person you want to be from now on.

I think the psychological baggage of living with your parents, not having a girlfriend and having a degenerative neurological disorder is far greater than the criminal record. There are ways to reduce the implications of the sex offense on your life, as others suggested. But the other things are what will hold you back.

Consider adopting a meditation practice and practice being nice to yourself. Calling yourself "broken goods" isn't helping matters. The way you think of yourself is the way you carry yourself and how other people see you. Seek examples of happy, accomplished people with missing limbs or serious illnesses.

I found that with a decent salary, meaningful remote job, traveling across some of the most beautiful places in the world and eating amazing food, I came to realize I deeply miss my friends, lack having a local community, and a purpose and meaning in what I was doing.

My best advice if for you to seek ways to bring value to other people's lives through what you do. It doesn't have to be selfless, it can be as simple as writing a blog and sharing your journey. It may take a little while to figure out what brings you happiness, but whatever you do, even if you get a freelance/remote job, don't stay inside and work for days without meeting people. Coworking spaces and cafes are a much better alternative in your situation.

</comment><comment><USER15> I remember turning 30. It was a sobering number for me too.

The felony: in some cases an attorney can get these reduced to a misdemeanor if you stay out of trouble several years after your probation is over. You might look into this.

The career: there probably aren't any shortcuts. Like a lot of other things, it's a numbers game. Keep sending out resumes and applications, the more the better. Try not to get discouraged (or, at least, don't let that stop you from putting out another resume and application). Do some work in the field. Do anything you can to get your foot in the door somewhere, to keep moving towards your goal. Internship maybe? Somewhere out there is someone who will give you an opportunity. You have to find them.

Keep working on and improving yourself. Get out and socialize if possible. (Meetup is good for this in a lot of areas.) Don't wallow too much in self- pity; learn to be happy with yourself and others will be happy with you too.

Your 20s is disappointing because you screwed up in a way that's going to affect you for a long time. So don't screw up; make your 30s about working towards your goals and recovering from your past decisions. Be stable and reliable and responsible -- become an adult.

</comment><comment><USER16> I was in a very similar situation. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life when I was 18, was angry about a relationship that ended (I had no skills for dealing with it at the time), so I got into drinking and drugs and made a lot of bad choices (which eventually landed me 10 years of probation).

I ended up working a string of minimum wage jobs before finally finding a factory job that was hard, but paid a little more ($13/hour). Since I really wanted to be a professional drummer and tour with a band, I figured that I needed to learn a skill that I could do on the road. I decided to start studying web development and graphic design. I worked a bunch of overtime, bought a used macbook, and started spending all my nights and weekends studying (I have a friend who calls this the Overlap Technique; google it). After a couple years, I had learned enough to get an (unpaid) internship at a small web design agency. That eventually gave me the confidence to start taking on freelance clients when the opportunities came.

The hardest part was learning to like myself again. By the time I was 20, I was overweight at 260 pounds (I'm 5'll). I started making small changes to my diet (stopped drinking soda, started eating healthier foods), and I started walking, exercising, riding my bike around town, etc. I lost 80 pounds over the course of three years, and I felt and looked really good.

I was also fortunate enough to find a group of cognitive therapists who were really smart and really kind who helped me understand the thought patterns that were making me fuck up my own life.

I had two major breakthroughs; the first was after taking shrooms (not a recommendation, mind you) I realized that I could make my life be whatever I wanted it to be. I had control over my decisions, and they would shape my life.

The second was that I had to stop giving a fuck about what the people who didn't know me had to say about the poor choices I made in the past. I understand why I made those shitty choices, and I won't be making them again. If someone wants to be a dick or refuse to work with me because of a bad choice I made in the past, they aren't someone I want in my life anyways.

I turn 30 in two months. I have a solid source of income from multiple clients who I have good relationships with (they've never asked for a background check), a nice girlfriend, and plenty of friends who know about my past and still respect me for the person I am today. They can't even comprehend the level of shithead I was back then because today I am nothing but kind, respectful, encouraging and helpful to everyone I meet.

I hope this helps.

</comment><comment><USER17> 1\. There's lots of good advice here. Don't try to do all of it simultaneously; pick one or two things and really commit to them, and then review how well you're doing in those areas once a week. You'll have weeks of no progress, everyone does, but if you keep focusing on 1-2 areas until you're happy with that result, almost anything can get improved over 3-6 months. Sometimes shorter, but ready yourself for more and pace yourself accordingly.

2\. Start trying to meet more people and make more connections Friends, acquaintances, professional colleagues. Go to where people doing the type of statistics/marketing you're doing hang out, and get to know them. In-person is better than online, but if you're not near a major metropolitan area, online would be okay too.

You could, for instance, find some discussion forum devoted to marketing/statistics, and learn, post there, follow up, etc.

It doesn't have to be purely professional related, but if there's overlap between the work you want to do and the type of people you're meeting, you'll have more job offers. There's a number of studies showing that the vast majority of hires made aren't from applying blindly by sending in resumes, but based on recommendations and personal relationships.

So -- get to know more people. It'll probably also help with your self-esteem. I'd also recommend never calling yourself "broken goods" or similar again: the world's got enough antagonism in it without you getting on your own case.

But yeah, your main goal is get employed? Start meeting people, getting to know them, and showing your competence in the areas you'd like to be employed.

</comment><comment><USER18> A few years ago I was in a situation remarkably similar to yours and I found that getting a stable long term girlfriend was extremely helpful in keeping me on a good trajectory. Ironically, the only real way to achieve this is to already be on that trajectory. One strategy is to focus on getting really good at something you're interested in. Your mastery will attract both women and employment and the process is not unenjoyable. Another attractive trait (to both mates and employers) is healthiness, so eat healthy things, take vitamin D supplements if you're far away from the equator, and get at least some exercise every day (15 minutes is fine). Building these habits can have positive effects on your mental state as well.

<comment><USER19> I'm sorry, but no. "Ironically, the only real way to achieve this" \- is to achieve this. I met my wife almost 25 years ago. We were both homeless at the time. We found each other, loved each other, and despite ridiculous odds against us, found a happy and successful life together. A big part of that was me pulling my head out of my ass and doing things for "us" instead of doing things for "me".

The trajectory I was on before I met her was juvenile, selfish, and stupid. Then all of that changed rather dramatically: I met the woman who would become my wife, and she made me want to grow up and step up. My situation changed, when my mind changed.

<comment><USER13> You got lucky. Sounds like your wife got lucky too :)

But for every one of you, I'll find ten others who expected a relationship to pull them off a bad trajectory (esp. addiction), and instead found someone who enables, and often shares and promotes, their self-destruction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Go find a job at a very young startup. Few of them do background checks. Or start freelancing.

</comment><comment><USER21> 100% either start consulting or move to a different country. I know a few guys who made mistakes when they were young and have been paying the price their entire lives.

</comment><comment><USER22> Go jogging and lift weights, you'll figure out the rest.

<comment><USER23> What is this, the brogrammer's solution to every problem in life?

<comment><USER24> Exercise releases endorphines, gives you more energy, it isn't a completely out of the question suggestion.

Disclaimer: I don't exercise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Don't worry about the girlfriend thing. That will fix itself if you fix all the other shit.

Go and get another job as a statistician - by this I do _not_ mean applying for them. Work out where you want to work (ish), find some excuse to get to know people there and just talk about coming to work for them. Is there an annual "stats in the advertising industry" conference? Go there, pay attention, talk to people about stats. Pretty quickly, if you know your shit, doors will start to open.

I got a job offer off a usenet post once.

When it does get to the point where you're physically in their building and talking about whether or not you could come to work for them, fess up. "You should know I've made some mistakes in my past and ... my legal record shows this ... I want you to know before you find out".

Voila. Do the full Trainspotting thing - washing machine, big fucking TV etc. Then meet some women and just be nice. Problem solved, I guarantee it.

</comment><comment><USER26> I wish the therapy answers were getting voted up higher. The other answers are okay as far as they go, but a therapist is like a personal coach who can help you pick a path and stick to it. They can be an _actual_ third person to go along with you "thinking about yourself in the third person" (to quote another answer).

</comment><comment><USER27> You will be OK. ~hugs~

You won't find peace with a job or a girlfriend or yourself if you are not ready. Even if you are trying things and they are not working - like exercise, therapy, volunteering, religion, hobby groups, etc. - keep trying. It will take time and you will have good and bad days, but you will find something that you connect with. You will find yourself in a good place before you know it. There are some great (free!) motivating resources online that may be helpful during dark times (health scares, medical bills, rejection, finance troubles, etc.).

For example, this TED Talk by Aimee Mullins: [http://www.ted.com/talks/aimee_mullins_prosthetic_aesthetics...](http://www.ted.com/talks/aimee_mullins_prosthetic_aesthetics?language=en)

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm a programmer, at 29 as well, and I know it's going to sound cliché, but this comes from my heart:

The single best suggestion I have for you is to surrender your life to Jesus. God did miraculous thing for me since I decided to let Jesus live in me. I was in search for meaning and found it in Him.

And you don't have to believe me; please ask some people around you who believe. Maybe in your family. They'll probably tell you how God changed their life for the better.

I know you said you're more interested in having a good job/salary and it's OK to seek that, but please also consider your after-death. Jesus said: "For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?"

God bless you. I'll pray for you my friend.

<comment><USER29> Hmm you may like to see a medical specialist concerning your physiological symptoms re: relationship(s) with imaginary things.

OP if you really want to go down the religion route, I suggest you surrender your life to the flying spaghetti monster. Only in his grace and mercy will you ever be free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Hmm, have you tried an online contracting job ([https://www.elance.com/](https://www.elance.com/))? Maybe get a passport and move to SE Asia, or Latin America, for a fresh environment?

</comment><comment><USER30> Flipping the switch starts with yourself.

When you stop seeing yourself as broken goods it'll shine through. Besides, no one knows you until they want to know you. When you project your brokenness that's how they will see you too.

</comment><comment><USER31> You have a wonderful skillset! I would definitely learn more programming and more 'data science' & analytics (datasciencemasters.org) and then think deeply about finding companies whose missions you identify with. The 30's are the best time to think about how to combine your skillset with your ability to make a big impact in the world; it will also help to think about things in this sense because it helps shift some of the focus away from 'what can the world offer me' to 'what can I offer the world'!

</comment><comment><USER32> Many large companies in Asia will use First Advantage (previously LexusNexus I believe) to do background checks so ignore the previous commenter that Asia doesnt do background checks, the same incompetent company used heavily in US and EU. However I would be surprised if startups did background checks, and even if they did if you could put your cards on the table then I doubt it will hinder you, you seem to be upfront here (and with it only probation) so I guess it wasn't anything too evil.

</comment><comment><USER33> I enjoy cycling a bucketload. I get a sense of achievement regularly, my health improves, etc. Not a magic bullet but not a high barrier to entry: find a group ride and go.

</comment><comment><USER34> Not that it's an easy solution, or even the right one for you right now, but I'll just note something:

There's (generally) no background checks required for starting or running a business.

You have listed the constraints that currently apply to your life. Think about what sort of life you can create within those constraints, or how you can get around them.

</comment><comment><USER35> Well, you wont be doing interesting things unless you do them... So what if you suck to start off, as long as it doesn't kill you, injure you or get you arrested, pay your penance and give it a shot for a while. If it doesn't work, then try something else that is interesting. At some point you will be known for doing something interesting or have interesting stories of your attempts of trying something interesting.

Part of the pursuit of an "interesting" lifestyle hopefully will get you into networking situations where you might find friends and maybe more romantic interests that share your pursuits.

Stop waiting to start somewhere, and just start.

</comment><comment><USER36> Read this book or grab the audible.

[http://www.amazon.com/Psycho-Cybernetics-New-More-Living- Lif...](http://www.amazon.com/Psycho-Cybernetics-New-More-Living- Life/dp/0671700758)

</comment><comment><USER37> Perhaps visit some sort of counselor every so often? HN might help you with career advise, but a therapist will help figure any problems you have with yourself and others. You don't have to be crazy to seek assistance.

</comment><comment><USER38> Work on meditation and social relationships. It sounds like that felony was your biggest stumbling block, which means you'll appreciate growing past it more than anyone else. How can you grow past it? By developing that part of yourself. Work on health and your neurological disorder at the same time you work on these relationships and becoming and feeling normal again. Once you achieve that normality, going beyond it will be such a joy for you :)

</comment><comment><USER39> What about contract jobs or consulting work? If you're not an employee, maybe you could skip the HR BS.

</comment><comment><USER40> You should read this Quora reply. It's a good answer, and is relevant to the background you shared.

[http://qr.ae/7Upp1h](http://qr.ae/7Upp1h)

<comment><USER40> Did whoever downvoted this bother to read the thing at the link? Or did you just dismiss, out of hand?

The commenter talks about how to be productive after a felony conviction. If that's not relevant, I don't know what is.

You guys are brutal. Seriously.

<comment><USER41> I didn't downvote it. I suspect that using an URL shortener and linking to quora is what attracted the downvote/s.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Setup a www.fiverr.com account and offer to do some niche statistical work. Ignore the whole resume/interview/background check process. Become an independent small biz owner.

</comment><comment><USER43> tony, can you email me at firstname.lastname@example.com?

Let's talk. You're not broken goods, I don't care. you're viewing yourself as a victim. Let's flip that shit around.

</comment><comment><USER44> Job/salary is only important for the things they enable. If you can move to Thailand, do remote consulting, and enjoy a Zen lifestyle, that might be worth a lot more.

</comment><comment><USER45> acquire knowledge. learn learn learn.

workout, try to stay in shape as much as you can.

</comment><comment><USER46> Greatest joy in life is being able to make others happy. Not saying it's easy, but try that venue of approach. Well worth the time you spend pondering it.

<comment><USER47> I agree with this. It is difficult to be useful and depressed.

<comment><USER48> I don't understand this claim. I've been depressed at a time when I was very much "useful" both professionally and in a relationship.

Being in demand (or needed) is sort of like having money: it doesn't have any direct correlation with mental health.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Just want to say that there is no such thing as damaged goods.

</comment><comment> anti-shill look into high end sales

</comment><comment><USER50> If your neurological condition does not disqualify you (a big if), consider joining the French Foreign Legion. A new career and a path to a non-US passport sound like just the ticket in your situation! Unfortunately, you have no hope of ever escaping your conviction in the United States; that is by design as you find yourself the target of a pernicious complex of puritanism, fear, and pandering.

Your other options are mainly going to involve under the table jobs or freelancing, probably your only meaningful option if you want to continue in your previous line of work. Why not hang out your shingle as a contractor? Since you're not working anyway, it can't hurt! If you have contacts from previous jobs, get in touch with them and offer your services -- as a services corporation, not as an employee. You might have more success as a corporation than as a human.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER51> Okay so, the first thing I would do is join this community [http://www.reddit.com/r/NoFap](http://www.reddit.com/r/NoFap). Once you do you will feel alot of social anxiety go away, since it's likely you would be "letting" go of your testosterone that way.

A friend of mine had an addiction and started with this and it worked out so well for him.

Next you need to hit the gym, and start small and try 3 days a week.

Second make some goals about things you want to get done before you reach next year.

Next do deep introspection, think about your self in the third person, and ask your self what you hate about yourself.

Go write it down and spend a everyday on one of those things and chip away at it by breaking it down into smaller tasks.

Lastly Smile people love other people who smile, it makes them more approachable.

Reddit says, 30 is the best of your life if you are not married or tied down to a relationship.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/AskMenOver30/comments/2a3zyp/is_bein...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskMenOver30/comments/2a3zyp/is_being_single_in_your_30s_as_bad_as_this_thread/)

Need support feel free to hit me up on twitter? @0xFA11DEAD

<comment><USER11> just wondering. How old are you?

<comment><USER51> 25</comment></comment></comment>


Two 5 1/4" floppy drives playing the Star Wars Imperial March - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=yHJOz_y9rZE

<comment><USER2> Very cool. But those are 3.5-inch disk drives.</comment>


Scientists believe they've made a breakthrough in coronavirus vaccine effort - <AUTHOR> https://nypost.com/2020/03/13/canadian-scientists-make-breakthrough-in-coronavirus-vaccine-effort/ <comment><USER2> I wonder what the analogy of this breakthrough would be in terms of software. Seems like a sort of replicable testing/prototyping environment for further breakthroughs in the analysis of the virus rather than treatment itself. Hopefully this covid-19 crisis will trigger a re-evaluation and optimization of drug testing and cost-effective universal healthcare.</comment>


The software industry is due for an industrial revolution, part 3 - <AUTHOR> http://www.scaletheplanet.com/post/the-industrial-revolution-part-3

<comment><AUTHOR> for the lazy, here's part 1: [http://www.scaletheplanet.com/post/the- industrial-revolution...](http://www.scaletheplanet.com/post/the-industrial- revolution-part-1) and 2: [http://www.scaletheplanet.com/post/the-industrial- revolution...](http://www.scaletheplanet.com/post/the-industrial-revolution- part-2)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Make sure to read the other parts if you haven't already, and as always, criticism welcome.</comment>


Ask HN: Has something happened to AWS SimpleDB - <AUTHOR>

Amazon has no free technical support, how they came up with this idea I don't know but it's horrible.
Anyway I don't at all see SimpleDB when I login to my account. Anyone else have this problem or know what's up.
You should provide _some_ free technical support. But whatever. <comment><USER2> And I use their free tier and have free technical support. I can access it directly from my admin using the link in the upper right corner called Support. Click there, go to the Support Center and you can open cases all you want for free. While it does not give you the priority support and may not be able to help you with every issue, it most certainly does work and is free.

<comment><AUTHOR> does not work for me, it says i require a plan

<comment><USER2> Weird. I just checked one of my client's accounts as well and it works for them as well.

What happens when you go to this page:

[https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/](https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/)

If you are logged in to your AWS account there should be a button for Select an AWS Support Plan. Choose the Basic (free). Then if you are in the AWS dashboard, in the upper right, the Support dropdown should have a link to the Support Center which allows you to open new cases.

Do you currently have any AWS services running? Maybe the free support only works if you have a service currently running. I can't see why, but that is the only reason I can think of why it may not work for you.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have the basic plan selected.

When I go here: [https://console.aws.amazon.com/support/home?region=us- east-1...](https://console.aws.amazon.com/support/home?region=us- east-1#/case/create)

and choose technical support. the textarea for the support question disappears.

It says this: At the Basic Support level, you can create account and billing support cases and service limit increase requests, but you cannot create technical support cases. For information about features and pricing of support plans that include technical support cases, one-on-one technical assistance, and additional support resources, see AWS Support.

This is rather surprising as there are many basic technical support questions that should be resolved without a 50 fee.

<comment><USER2> Oh, got you. I thought you weren't seeing anything for support. Yes, you are right technical support isn't available under the free plan. However, I have used the Account and Billing Support questions for basic technical questions. For more technical questions their forums have worked well for me in the past.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> They phased it out a while ago:

[http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/12/amazon-dynamodb-serves- tril...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/12/amazon-dynamodb-serves-trillions-of- requests-per-month-while-counterpart-simpledb-is-no-longer-a-listed-product- on-aws/)

</comment><comment><USER3> AWS SimpleDB has not been in the console for a very long time. Look at the API docs. I think you can still use it.

Edit: I'm pretty sure they are pushing people away from SimpleDB to Dynamo.</comment>


Ask HN: Anybody gotten any questions on their YC application? - <AUTHOR>

Any applicants gotten any questions on their yCombinator application yet? <comment><USER2> I wasn't aware that the YC partners asked questions. I figured it was handled in much the same way that college admissions are. i.e. They go through all the apps, determine which entrepreneurs show the most potential and then contact everyone on the 7th and no sooner.

Were you asked a question? What was it about? The idea or the founders?

<comment><USER3> I thought the same thing. Exciting to know, and I do remember reading something like "the earlier you apply, the more time we have to interact with founders". Too bad for us though, because we only learned about YCombinator shortly before the app. was due and got it in at the last minute. But last week lots of Alum were writing about their experiences and at least a few reported slapping their app together at the last minute so we remain hopeful!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> No question here. But if you submitted a special URL for your demo, you can check the IP if any coming from Palo Alto has visited your site.

</comment><comment><USER5> No we haven't, and were wondering the same question. Thanks for posting this!

</comment><comment><USER6> Nope, not here. Another YC applicant just asked me this offline today, too.

</comment><comment><USER7> Yes, we got a question. Did you have one?

<comment><USER3> That's pretty exciting! By phone or email? We haven't. I wonder if they review in order received? How early did you submit?

<comment><USER7> We submitted maybe an hour before deadline, it was within HN.

<comment><USER3> Best of luck! I took a look at your profile - great work.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-history/dawn-of-electronics/the-great-lightbulb-conspiracy <comment><USER2> Planned Obsolescence is largely a myth, besides a few blatant examples. There are a few factors that drive consumer perception of planned obsolescence

-Demand for cheaper products: Consumers tend to prefer cheaper products. This means cheaper materials and a product that doesn't last as long. Common household appliances cost much less than they did in the earlier half of the 20th century, and people act surprised when they don't last as long as an appliance from the 1950s that cost more than twice as much

-Survivor bias: Only durable products from the past survived, broken and unrepairable products were sent to the landfill. Therefore people only see the most durable products of the past and assume everything made back then was just as durable.

-Technical obsolescence: Old products become less useful as technology progresses. Why use a 100 year old still functional device when it is inefficient and technologically obsolete?

The article even mentions some of these factors with regards to the so-called planned obsolescence of light bulbs. Longer lasting bulbs are dimmer and less efficient, so it makes sense to design them in such a way to maximize light output over a certain timespan.

<comment><USER3> But at least you _could_ buy devices that would last for decades and decades.

Try finding a washing machine these days, that will last for more than 5 years or so before something breaks and renders the machine useless.

You may be able to find an industrial machine, made for hotels or laundries. But it will be very expensive and likely be huge and it will need 3-phase power. It will also likely not have a spin cycle, so you'll have to either air dry your clothes for ages or buy a separate clothes spinner (most driers need the clothes to have been spin dried first).

Whether I buy a cheap Whirlpool or an expensive Miele/AEG/Bosch or whatever, the quality and longevity is universally shit.

<comment><USER4> I'm keeping my old washer and dryer for that reason.

"They Used To Last 50 Years"

[https://medium.com/@ryanfinlay/they-used-to- last-50-years-c3...](https://medium.com/@ryanfinlay/they-used-to- last-50-years-c3383ff28a8e)

<comment><USER5> That riles me up, it's comparing ~2500usd (adjusted) appliances with ~200usd appliances while glossing over actual cost to consumer or equivalent priced _quality_.

<comment><USER4> We bought our washer and drier used/refurbished in 1991. I finally replaced the one of them [with another used one] a couple of years ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Thomas Pynchon integrated this story into Gravity's Rainbow. There are some amazing passages imagining the fortunes of Byron, a sentient bulb who is determined to escape his own mortality --- the planned obsolescence of Phoebus:

" Is Byron in for a rude awakening! There is already an organization, a human one, known as "Phoebus," the international light-bulb cartel, headquartered in Switzerland. Run pretty much by International GE, Osram, and Associated Electrical Industries of Britain, which are in turn owned 100%, 29% and 46%, respectively, by the General Electric Company in America. Pheobus fixes the prices and determines the operational lives of all the bulbs in the world, from Brazil to Japan to Holland (although Philips in Holland is the mad dog of the cartel, apt at any time to cut loose and sow disaster throughout the great Combination). Given this state of general repression, there seems noplace for a newborn Baby Bulb to start but at the bottom.

But Phoebus doesn't know yet that Byron is immortal. He starts out his career at an all-girl opium den in Charlottenburg, almost within sight of the statue of Wernher Siemens, burning up in a sconce, one among many bulbs witness the more languorous forms of Republican decadence. He gets to know all the bulbs in the place, Benito the Bulb over in the next sconce who's always planning an escape, Bernie down the hall in the toilet, who has all kinds of urolagnia jokes to tell, his mother Brenda in the kitchen who talks of hashish hush puppies, dildos rigged to pump floods of paregoric orgasm to the capillaries of the womb, prayers to Astarte and Lilith, queen of the night, reaches into the true Night of the Other, cold and naked on linoleum floors after days without sleep, the dreams and tears become a natural state… "

full excerpts here:

[http://lukedanger.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/story-of-byron- bulb...](http://lukedanger.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/story-of-byron-bulb.html)

<comment><USER7> Did people of that time have more respect (fear or faith) for corporations?

<comment><USER8> I suspect that it was more a lack of knowledge. Before the internet it would've been a lot harder for knowledge of these cartels to spread.

It was based in Switzerland, how was the average American going to find out about it? Even if they wanted to, where would they look?

<comment><USER9> Based on conversations with my grandmother who was born at the turn of the century, knowledge of how malign corporations will act when given a chance was something that was forgotten/intentionally buried.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> GuB-42 While most people forget to mention when discussing the Phoebus cartel is that with incandescent lightbulbs, lifespan and efficiency are inversely correlated.

It is actually quite simple: incandescent lightbulbs are blackbody radiators. Efficiency depends only on the temperature of the filament, the hotter the better, but lifespan decreases drastically as temperature increases.

There isn't much that can be done in an incandescent light bulb. The filament is tungsten, voltage is fixed by the grid, power is the rated power. So, the only choice is to make the filament longer/thinker or shorter/thinner. The former will be dimmer and longer lasting compared to the latter.

Requiring a set lifespan also ensures consistent brightness and color temperature (a real temperature in this case), it also requires reasonably precise manufacturing. These are generally good things.

Well obviously, a lot of it is motivated by profit, but there are also very good technical reasons behind it too.

The situation today with LED lighting is actually much worse. LEDs could last a lifetime, unlike with incandescent light bulbs, there is no reason for them to burn. However, a lot of them fail because they are under-engineered.

</comment><comment><USER10> In 2007, Google gifted their employees one of the latest in LED light bulbs, "just because". I remember LED bulbs being very rare at the time, and we ended up with two of them somehow.

1 failed within 6 months, the other is still used daily as a bedside lamp 11 years later.

<comment><USER11> I have had the same experience with LEDs. If they make it past the first few months they'll keep running for years. I assume it's a QA issue.

<comment><USER12> Probably more a power quality issue. It is amazing how inconsistent the flow of power is in most people's homes. In large because it didn't need to be consistent in the past.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Slightly OT: In winter, when you are heating the rooms anyway and so any heat produced is useful, not wasted, is an 'old' incandescent light-bulb still significantly less energy efficient then a 'modern' energy saver bulb?

<comment><USER14> Yes because you could heat the room with gas heating, which is about 3x cheaper. And if you are in an area that uses a lot of gas/coal in the electric generation, then you will significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions too.

Or you could run a heat pump, that wins about a factor of 5.

I learned this from this excellent resource: [https://www.withouthotair.com/](https://www.withouthotair.com/)

There's an argument that

<comment><USER13> So you're saying 'it depends' on the differential in methods for producing electricity versus your other heating sources, which makes sense. If I have a solar roof for the electricity, vs an oil from fracking powered heating solution, then the lightbulb's 'waste' heat would certainly be preferable.

Part of the reason for asking in the first place is because I'm quite sensitive to the light quality as produced by an incandescent bulb, preferring it vastly over even the most 'modern' 'energy saver' bulbs.

<comment><USER14> Yes. And I think there's some benefit to the planet from incandescent bulbs being a simple and cheap technology to manufacture (although I have no justification for this belief).

Anyhow, I agree about incandescent bulbs being nice. I never found a CFL I was happy with. The Philips LED bulbs are very good though: [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Philips-Bayonet-Light-Bulb- Frosted/...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Philips-Bayonet-Light-Bulb- Frosted/dp/B01KHILBIE)

They don't flicker (and I'm someone infuriated by PWM'd lights on modern cars). They achieve full brightness instantly. The colour temperature and spectral rendering index is good. They are much more reliable than some similar unbranded bulbs I've seen (about 15 such bulbs were installed in my kitchen area at work. They fail at a rate of about one per month, in a manor consistent with this [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94Pemtc3Uhw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94Pemtc3Uhw)).

They do cost £9 for two though. They'll need to run for about 500 hours to pay for themselves (vs incandescent). I reckon the first one I bought has run for about 2500 hours by now.

<comment><USER15> The older Philips LED bulbs were very high quality. Dimmable, no flicker, power factor corrected. Here's a youtube teardown. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWKAub54sLU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWKAub54sLU) Compare the internal circuitry with the youtube video you linked to. Yours were a cheaper design. No wonder the bulbs failed so quickly.

Nowadays Philips seem to be selling both a higher quality and a lower quality bulb in each wattage.

To me the purchase price isn't an issue. I have a few places where I run bulbs 15 or 20 hrs a day. So moving from 60 W to 10 W in those locations made an incredible cost savings. Where I am in the USA, a 1 W load on continuously costs $1/yr. So saving 50 W in a location that's on about 80% of the time saves me $40/yr in electricity. For just one bulb.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What's with the scary hedge at LED dominance?

"Whether or not these pricier bulbs will actually last that long is still an open question, and not one that the average consumer is likely to investigate. There are already reports of CFLs and LED lamps burning out long before their rated lifetimes were reached. "

Other than warmth, my home LEDs (all of them - Cree) have lasted 7 years and look to last about 10-15 more. They've already paid for themselves as before that I was replacing 4-5 bulbs a year and wasting 10x the wattage.

<comment><USER17> My Philips Hue LED bulbs have been very reliable.

On the other hand, some cheap no-name chinese LED lamps I got off Amazon started failing after less than a year.

There definitely are some bad, short-life LED bulbs out there -- especially on the lower end of the market.

<comment><USER18> There's a Philips LED (one of the weird looking three-lobed ones) that has been burning continuously in the entryway of my inlaws' house for over seven years. It's a 60W equivalent. I bought it for them because a) the light burns all the time (even in daylight that area is dark) and b) it's a pain in the butt to change.

I think it was about $45 when I bought it. A similar model is down to $21 for a 100W equivalent now.

I've got several other Philips bulbs of that type that have been in use for a long time, though not quite that long.

I've never had one go out.

As with you, I've had numerous cheapies go out over the same interval.

<comment><USER19> That sounds like the bulb that Philips won the L Prize with:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L_Prize#/media/File:Philips_LE...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L_Prize#/media/File:Philips_LED_bulbs.jpg)

<comment><USER18> Yep, that's the one.

It produces good-quality light, too, despite what you'd think from the yellow shell color.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I suppose this is what happened with CF bulbs? We were promised longer bulb life, but in practice I find that I have to change CF bulbs far more often than traditional fluorescent tubes. It's going to take quite some engineering to develop LEDs that burn out fast enough.

<comment><USER21> I think a lot of CFL lifetime depends on the quality of your electricity. In my last place, I had some that lasted 8 years including some high-usage lights like in the livingroom that saw at least 3 - 5 hours of daily use.

Though I always purchased name-brand bulbs, never the cheap generic brands.

I left them all behind when I moved so those are the longest lived ones I have experience with, in my new house, I have mostly LED's with a few CFL's and they're up to around 5 years old... I like the light from LED's better or I'd have more CFL's around.

Failures have been rare, but I have pretty clean power, few power outages and practically no thunderstorms in the area.

<comment><USER22> Interestingly enough, in one apartment I had a particular fixture that would burn out incandescent bulbs extremely quickly. I put in a CFL and never had to replace it again. No idea what was going on there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Past discussions: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12107932](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12107932)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8369136](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8369136)

</comment><comment><USER24> About 36 years ago, my parents bought some first generation energy saving lamps. One of them is still in use above her dinner table.

</comment><comment><USER25> Well, there's a lightbulb in Livermore, California that has been burning for more than a 100 years: [http://www.centennialbulb.org/](http://www.centennialbulb.org/)

<comment><USER26> There's a tradeoff between efficiency and life. My electric oven makes a decent light when turned on high. I bet it'd burn for a lot longer than 100 years.

<comment><USER20> Fun story, I've seen an oven element burn out. It arced through the floor of the oven, leaving a hole I could stick my finger through and almost started a house fire.

<comment><USER27> That's absolutely terrifying! Was it a very old or poorly maintained oven? Please say yes...

<comment><USER20> Both. It was in a rented apartment. My best guess is that decades of heat cycling had caused the filament to sag.

<comment><USER28> It probably wasn't sagging that killed it. Over time those elements will develop hot spots and eventually the hot spot fails spectacularly spewing sparks and plasma from the failure. It's kind of similar to a plasma cutter for a second as there's the small arc in the element which ionizes the gas and it blows it out from the element and if it hits something grounded I can totally see it punching a hole through sheet metal.

[https://youtu.be/EC_6urfu5UI?t=7m40s](https://youtu.be/EC_6urfu5UI?t=7m40s)

<comment><USER20> Interesting. I'd totally buy that explanation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Ooh fun, the Phoebas Cartel. The New Yorker also ran a piece which touched on this a little while back:

[https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-l-e-d- quanda...](https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-l-e-d-quandary-why- theres-no-such-thing-as-built-to-last)

</comment><comment><USER30> They did bring about an universal socket, though. That's quite a benefit

<comment><USER31> There are, of course, two competing commonly-used sockets:

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

<comment><USER32> I'm from the UK, and I'm all too familiar with the two-types of bulbs.

But a couple of years ago I moved to Finland, and it seems here that the Edison-screw won. I've not seen a single bayonet mount since I've moved here. (And I've moved flat a few times. When you rent a flat they are typically unfurnished, and the Finns take this to an extreme, removing all their light- bulbs along with the furniture.)

<comment><USER33> Situation in Germany is pretty similar. I've never seen a bayonet mount in my life, I think. Also our flats don't come with lightbulbs either.

Every German who has moved flats a couple of times thus owns a few barebone lamp socket assemblies which are affectionately called "Russian chandeliers" (with apologies to Russians). When moving in these are usually the first things to go up until proper lamps are installed.

EDIT: I think I've seen bayonet mounts in some antique furniture at my grand parents' house as a child. But it certainly strikes me as a bit of an anachronism, much like American farmhouse style windows (the kind you slide up) compared to tilt turn windows (which are the norm in my country).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm very amused by the fact that it took serious engineering effort to manufacture bulbs that were reliable during their lifetime but that would also burn out quickly.

<comment><USER9> Interesting thing I learned was before WWII you could buy cold cathode light fixtures and get the local neon shop to make a lamp for it. Cold cathode lamps will last 20 years.

The light bulb manufacturers got those outlawed via the national electrical code. It's illegal to have any wiring in a residence over 1000. Except for radio's televisions and microwaves. Which means cold cathode lighting is outlawed. Cold cathode is basically just neon, which is similar to fluorescent except unlike fluorescent you don't have a hot filament to burn out. Both requires higher voltage to operate and results somewhat lower efficiency, but with 100,000 hour life span.

Later in the 1970's they also made sure that fluorescent lamps efficiency standards mandated high color temperature (blue) phosphors. In low light residential use high color temp makes everything looks like ass.

<comment><USER35> You may be right but it should be considered that high voltages can cause x-rays in the right conditions. There could be a rationale behind it...

<comment><USER9> Cold cathode tops out at a few thousand volts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> There is a great movie by the same name: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=l5Hlf6nLvV4](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=l5Hlf6nLvV4). There is a part where they interview a journalist in Ghana (I think) who researches the electronic dumping in his country. It's haunting.

</comment><comment><USER37> After replacing CFLs time and time again, a wise man at the hardware store told me to buy Verilux.

Haven't needed a ladder in 5 years.

<comment><USER38> They look like they're the same price as mid-end LEDs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Not providing software updates is also a kind of planned obsolescence of computers. Luckily, we have free software operating systems which can extend the lifetime of computers. The fact that software is getting more and more inefficient isn't exactly helping either.

<comment> yoz-y I honestly do not think that any developer I know would be okay if they were told "write it in a way so it will stop working in a year". Maintaining old software is expensive and people do not want to pay. It is also way easier to just pull everybody with you to latest release (which is why there are so many subscriptions now).

edit: also, I do know a lot of developers that would not be happy to work on the maintenance of some old software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> The Phoebus Cartel controlled the life time of light bulbs. The cartel agreed that the life time of a light bulb would be 1000 hours. Famous companies such as Osram and Philips where part of the cartel.

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

One can learn from the light bulb conspiracy that planned obsolescence is real. It is profitable unless they are caught for companies to make products with a limited life thus they can sell replacement products and bad for the environment.

</comment><comment><USER41> I would be interested in an economy that incentivized repair rather than replacement. Maybe make repairs tax-free or even a tax credit.

<comment><USER42> Poor economies (think underdeveloped economies) do incentivize repair over replacement. Cases in point, cars in Cuba, Former USSR republics, etc. You will also find repairshops for electronics in many developing economies as well. Labor to repair a unit makes a repair affordable whereas buying a new unit might be prohibitive.

In developed nations, labor is too expensive to make a repair worthwhile for things people can regularly afford. It's only as things become expensive that repairing something makes economic sense (a $100 replacement screen for a phone is economically viable vs buying a new $600 phone). Conversely very few people in the US for example would think of repairing an old Microwave when buying a new one is only marginally more expensive than getting a new one.

<comment><USER43> Indeed, a good example of that is the fact that people export very old used cars from Europe to Africa, because due to the much lower cost of repair their value in Africa is higher than their value in Europe (nil), enough to make it worth the shipping!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Wait Until the truth about the medical industry comes out in 40-80 years.

<comment><USER45> Too bad this ^^ was downvoted, because the big pharma has exactly the same incentives as the rest of the big corps at generating money. And they aren't 'nicer' than car or light bulbs companies.

You know, remember the tobacco industry, when they were claiming it made your teeth cleaner, your breath fresher and and that jazz? It's not that long ago.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What can programmers do for Notre-Dame? - <AUTHOR> Many of you may have already heard that the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris suffered a fire, which destroyed its roof and spire (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notre-Dame_de_Paris_fire)<p>Risking the "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" trap, I ask: in what ways can our skills help with reconstruction? Is there open source CAD software we could contribute to? What are your suggestions? <comment><USER2> I'll give the age old answer. Work earn more money then donate it.

<comment><USER3> A colleague just sent 1000€.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't understand the need to "give" anything. It's a government owned building leased for $0 to the Catholic Church.

If neither of those ridiculously wealthy parties had the foresight to insure the building they can afford to repair it regardless.

You want to "help"? Donate (either your time or money) to a charity or organisation that actually needs it.

</comment><comment><USER5> In the world of CAD, you'd be much more useful building a company making higher quality expensive CAD software.

They can rebuild Notre-Dame, decently and efficiently, if they can avoid having too many chefs. You might want to think about what you can do to build the next Notre-Dame. How to build your own Notre-Dame.

<comment><USER6> So... distributed, collaborative CAD?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's a building. Should we not help starving kids around the globe. A billion raised in such a short time for a building. We are disgusting.</comment>