Amazon's holiday success and UPS' holiday fail - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2013/12/26/amazons-holiday-success-and-ups-holiday-fail-highlight-the-internet-economys-problems/ <comment><USER2> Author is really reaching here. UPS is not the stodgy, antiquated fossil it's being portrayed as. UPS has been quick to embrace tech and is really not that far removed from Amazon.

This is the company that automatically distributes packages and generates optimal routes for its trucks. It's the company that can automatically account for changes in its transport graph and reroute. It's the company that does fuel consumption analysis and incorporates it into its truck routing algo.

Author really doesn't give UPS enough credit. It may have failed some deliveries yesterday, but crowing about how it's a stodgy beast and should embrace logistical technology like Amazon is preaching to the choir.

<comment><USER3> No amount of data will allow perfect predictions. And the physical world doesn't scale like AWS.

UPS oversubscribed their transport network, that's all. At some point, they should've stopped accepting packages for Dec 24th delivery, just like Amazon halted accepting new Prime members to maintain service for existing members.

<comment><USER4> The virtual world doesn't always scale for that matter either. Try getting a new, in demand, instance type days or even weeks after release, you'll be waiting in line for access to that virtual instance just as you would for a new iPhone on release day.

<comment><USER3> Sort of. You're banging the hell out of my JSON API with gets? I'll just write it out into S3 and serve from various S3 endpoints around the globe (or even Cloudfront/Cloudflare, depending on how stale the data is permitted to get). I need instances? I can get them from AWS, Rackspace, Digital Ocean, etc.

There is only so much road, aircraft, and people willing to work Christmas Eve/Day out there. The physical world is inherently inelastic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow, WTF.

UPS missed a few packages in an insanely demanding crunch time, and you feel the need to pen an accusatory piece illustrating them as a complete failure?

I ordered all of my Christmas shopping the Saturday evening before Christmas, I got all but one thing, and I am, in fact, quite content with Amazon + UPS's performance.

</comment><comment><USER6> I much more sympathize with UPS workers who got Christmas day off than some shmuck who ordered his package late. Better plan next year.

There is a saying I like 'failure to plan on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine'.

[Edited the saying, as I remembered it clearer)

</comment><comment><USER7> > "There are some obvious reasons for this, such as UPS' decision to let its > workers take Christmas day off."

Good for them. I respect that a lot more than them being able to deliver every single package on Christmas Eve.

</comment><comment><USER8> My monitor was supposed to be delivered on the 24th. It will not arrive until the 27th. Huge let down by UPS, because I had to spend the holidays with my family instead of staring at 144hz of beauty! </sarcasm>

I would imagine a spike in the amount of Amazon Prime memberships increased this week due to console purchases. My first experience with Amazon Prime's Instant Video automatically got me to shell out my credit card information for movies on my child's Wii U. I have now completely cut the cord on my cable broadcasting. $40/yr Amazon, $95.88/yr Netflix, $95.88/yr Hulu Plus, totaling $231.76 vs my yearly cable television bill of $900/yr (with an extra unmentioned $120 in random fees/taxes).

<comment><USER9> > _" My monitor was supposed to be delivered on the 24th. It will not arrive > until the 27th. Huge let down by UPS, because I had to spend the holidays > with my family instead of staring at 144hz of beauty! </sarcasm>"_

Try instead: _" My gift to my niece was suppose to be delivered by the 24th. It will not arrive until the 27th, but her family flies back home on the evening of the 26th. Now I have to wait for it to be delivered, reship it myself at personal expense, and cannot watch her open it."_

Believe it or not, reliable package delivery during Christmas _actually is_ a big deal to consumers...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Do many people really place orders to be delivered on christmas eve and imagine they aren't running a risk the item won't arrive on time?

I mean, I've placed orders for next day delivery on christmas eve, but I'm a realist. I know the postal system is busy at this time of year, and that my item may be late or damaged.

<comment><USER11> These are the same people that were going to the mall on the 24th (pre-Amazon) and complaining that everything was out of stock.

We are nowhere near instantaneous transportation, so there will always be logistical delays. Planning your holiday purchasing around those delays is smart, assuming that 2-day shipping is always guaranteed and waiting until the last moment is playing with fire.

<comment><USER12> I like the discounts and free shipping as web merchants try to boost their numbers for the year. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Just use common sense. Everybody with half of brain should know that delivery of stuff takes time. I really disliked the author's attitude for "reality check". One almost could get impression that people in tech have no idea what is around them.

</comment><comment><USER14> Anyone know how "thousands of packages" cited in the original article turned into "millions of customers" in the gigaom piece?

</comment><comment><USER15> I am amazed that people expect UPS to be able to scale like AWS. Nobody, nobody can create a supply chain network that expands 100x for two weeks in a year, w/out feeling a pinch. They should've set expectations and used the Uber trick of having "Holiday Rates." This way, people would've ordered ahead. Sad that media would write all sorts of crap, just to get eyeballs to the blog.

</comment><comment><USER16> _SUMMARY: The holiday's were great for Amazon and lousy for UPS._

The holiday's what?

</comment><comment><USER17> Amazon / UPS didn't fail to deliver; OP failed to order in reasonable time. Even though some of my (Prime) next-day deliveries took a couple of days to arrive, they kept me informed, and everything arrived in plenty of time. Kudos to both parties.

</comment><comment><USER18> I ordered something from Williams Sonoma, who was promising that orders up through Friday would be delivered by Christmas with standard shipping. What was really ballsy was that it turned out they used UPS Ground, and just hoped that using a regionally close warehouse would mean it would be delivered in time. And it worked out, they shipped on Friday and it was delivered on Tuesday. I guess the money they save on UPS Ground makes up for the occasional packages that miss Christmas.

<comment><USER19> Almost all ground shipping services are now "day-definite delivery" the same way Air services are. UPS ground, FedEx ground, and USPS Priority Express offer money back guarantees now, although large shippers may have different contracts of course. Several times I've used the $4 next day shipping via Amazon prime only to have it come UPS ground from a near by distribution center.

<comment><USER18> Wow, from looking around with that search term, UPS has actually had it for residential ground since 2002. I guess I'm out of touch.

So, for the package in question, from where they shipped it, UPS Ground does guarantee 2-day shipping. At half the price of UPS 2nd Day Air. So... pretty smart.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Did Amazon let its warehouse employees take off Christmas day?

</comment><comment><USER21> My biggest gripe to date about UPS: For years, they would deliver stuff to the doorstep & sign it themselves as stupid stuff like "Dr. Door."

Well one delivery this backfires when the driver takes the package to a house up the street and signs it as delivered. We check the tracking page, it says delivered. Give it a day or two, package still hasn't shown up. Alert UPS and the vendor. Eventually, the purchase was reimbursed. Maybe 2 weeks after that, the neighbor wanders down with the missing package. (This is a guy that isn't friendly towards my family because we do fireworks on the fourth of July, he holds a grudge for the rest of the year as a result.)

Anyway, ever since UPS made the error & delivered to the wrong address, they will no longer leave packages on our doorstep. We must be physically present to sign for the package - we cannot sign the slip and have them leave it the next day. Must be physically present. UPS comes at about 3pm. You can see how convenient this is.

You can sit in the house and watch as the UPS man runs up to each house on the street, drops a package, rings the bell, and runs off. But at our house, they always have to stop and wait. The delivery people must hate it as much as we do, since they have to fill out the paper slip if we're not around to answer the door at a time when most people are at work (luckily, one of us works from home now, but I can only imagine how bad the 3pm deliveries would be if that weren't the case.)

Long story short, my address is flagged (only by UPS) and someone must be physically present to receive the package. Which is a huge pain. Especially when vendors don't give you an explicit choice in the matter as much as they used to.

</comment><comment><USER22> Last week UPS delivered my Amazon package to someone else down the road, I had no idea why my package was marked delivered when it never got here.

When I called to complain, the driver went back to the place and brought me the box with everything opened, packaging removed and discarded and seriously tried to deliver it to me. I had to argue to refuse it.

I've had bad UPS service before but that topped everything.

</comment><comment><USER23> The article didn't mention the weather, which in DFW, totally fucked the transportation system for almost a week in December. The delivery depots in the area were backlogged and overwhelmed. I can imagine there may have been other locales with similar weather created circumstances.

</comment><comment><USER24> They definitely had some capacity issues near the end. On Christmas Eve I saw a UPS driver in a U-Haul truck in my neighborhood then later saw a U-Haul truck pulled up back to back with a UPS truck and they were handing off packages in a strip mall parking lot. Personally, though, I was rather impressed by the shipping carriers this year (UPS included). No late packages and I even got some delivered early. The volume has to have skyrocketed in the last 5 years so there is obviously going to be growing pains but shipping just gets better and better every year for me so I'm a happy customer.

<comment><USER25> > _They definitely had some capacity issues near the end. On Christmas Eve I > saw a UPS driver in a U-Haul truck in my neighborhood then later saw a > U-Haul truck pulled up back to back with a UPS truck and they were handing > off packages in a strip mall parking lot._

UPS always hires seasonal workers for the December rush. And since the workers are seasonal, the delivery vehicles also have to be seasonal. They can't afford to buy trucks that are parked for 11 out of 12 months. Lucky for them, fewer people move houses during the holiday season, so they can borrow U-Haul's spare capacity.

Even UPS's regular trucks have a driver and a helper during December. For the other 11 months of the year, the trucks only have one employee in them.

You may also have noticed the postal service doing multiple deliveries on the same day. It's easier to overlay the abnormal package volume on top of the regular mail delivery, rather than to split the mail routes.

The holiday rush has _always_ been crazy like this. Nothing new in the Internet era except for additional volume.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> They got the bulk of their packages out AND let their works take christmas day off? How many Amazon warehouse workers who were scheduled got Christmas off?

</comment><comment><USER27> I USPS 2-day Priority'd a gift on Dec. 17 that hasn't had tracking updated since the 18th. It's most certainly not been delivered.

Pretty sure _all_ the physical mail carriers were clobbered this year and we're just at the tip of the iceberg of understanding why they were disorganized/unprepared/whatever.

</comment><comment><USER28> I have a feeling Amazon is going to develop their own shipping solution. I bet a fairly large percentage of boxes that UPS ships are from Amazon. UPS could be turning into a bottleneck for them...

<comment><USER29> They are doing precisely this.

<comment><USER28> Awesome! Are there any articles about this?

<comment><USER30> I'd imagine that having Amazon Fresh trucks driving around a neighborhood with a local fulfillment center could easily turn into their own solution. Combine this with Amazon Locker and 20 years from now Amazon drone and good bye UPS.

<comment><USER31> Amazon Lockers have been a boon for me living in apartments with hours that don't match up to my schedule for their 'helpful' package signing service. I recently noticed I can return packages through the lockers as well. If they can saturate with enough lockers I'm not sure I'd ever actually need the "final mile" of an actual delivery service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> UPS just handed my package off to USPS who put a note in my box saying that I could come to a Post Office, wait in a long line, then pick-up my package myself. WTF is this?

<comment><USER33> Ah the joys of "SmartPost". SmartPost is popular for residential deliveries in a large part because it doesn't have the residential surcharge which other options do. SmartPost shipments also generally don't have guaranteed delivery dates so they may be more likely to experience delays during peak load time (e.g. this month).

<comment><USER25> > _Ah the joys of "SmartPost"._

SurePost, since he said it originated at UPS.

SmartPost is the competing service from FedEx.

Notice that both of them have the word "Post" in it. Thus, not surprising that they hand off the last mile to the postal service.

<comment><USER33> Ah good catch, however the logic remains the same (they both avoid residential delivery surcharges for the respective carrier).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Visiting the Google House: Google Prague shows what you (still) can not buy - <AUTHOR> http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=cs&tl=en&u=http://tech.ihned.cz/google/c1-62177390-google-house-superbyt-chromebook-chromecast-glass&sandbox=0&usg=ALkJrhhocKYqQCpxJIvZK_xPbIZc8rsccA

<comment><AUTHOR> It's unfortunately a machine translation, because I haven't found any English- speaking media talking about this yet. If I find any better link about the same event, I will link it.

\---

As a Czech resident, it is discouraging to see Google show that you can build a futuristic home using Google products, but Google will not be bothered to make such products available to Central/Eastern Europeans -- and it's likely the same for any other country that's outside Western Europe and North America.

<comment><USER2> It's not just google. Try ordering something from Amazon when you're in Romania or a 100 other examples.

For some of these I can see a distant justification in increased risk of fraud (but they should then work harder on mitigating that fraud), for others I can see no justification at all.

<comment><USER3> Yea never even bothered ordering things online in Romania the internet is probably the best in Europe but very few western companies offer anything there.

Luckily you can always order stuff and have it delivered to a western address then have it hand shipped trough connection to Eastern Europe for a fee.

Or just move to west Europe. Still miss the speed though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've taken to completely ignoring news about Google hardware products, since outside the US they are about as relevant as news about in-n-out burger.

This, plus Google's retarded approach to geo-location, language and it's arrogance towards non-American ideas (and laws!) concerning privacy makes Google a surprisingly non-internationally oriented company.

Companies like Apple and Microsoft are fully international, Amazon is making a serious effort to get there, but Google barely seems to make an effort.</comment>


Costco's brilliant, contrarian and successful business model highlights - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@KarthRajan/costcos-way-of-doing-business-is-all-wrong-but-when-you-discover-the-reasons-of-costco-s-778060801c3c <comment><USER2> Why I have not been buying their stock over the last 15-ish years, I'll never know. My buying habits have certainly (fractionally) contributed to their success.</comment>


SSO Wall of Shame: vendors that treat SSO as luxury feature, not core security - <AUTHOR> https://sso.tax/ <comment><USER2> nonsense.

author is complaining that the business model of others doesn't align with his need to have the tiniest possible budget and spend the bare minimum on security. boo hoo hoo. if you need sso, suck up the cost and yes, you'll have to pass it on to your customers. if you don't like the pricing model of the saas vendor you're using, how about try to build the service in-house. suddenly you'll realize how cheap even the enterprise offering is.

<comment><USER3> The author is not complaining on behalf of his own company, my dude. The author is pointing out a problem that affects everybody _else_ who should be using SSO instead of risking their businesses with shared passwords, YOLO provisioning, and manual offboarding. And those people _do not_ have a budget or a security team. But they probably have Google Apps.

SSO is, in 2018, just being decent about security. It is hard enough to operate securely; it is shitty behavior to make it inordinately harder for nontechnical people to do the right thing. (SCIM, however? That's something that directly benefits enterprises who have to operate in bulk.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> While supporting SSO authentication is relatively trivial via SAML2, which is supported by virtually every identity provider solution in the market, configuring this is likely a frequent point of support contact and configuration problems.

Something that is typically much less trivial is user provisioning from an identity provider. Most companies availing of SSO will require an automated user provisioning process also be in place. While the SCIM standard is pretty good, and support for it is getting better, implementations of it in identity providers are quite varied and often incomplete, not to mention poorly documented. Companies often also need to provision data that is not stored in the identity provider, so you can imagine the challenge in providing alternative solutions to make that work.

As others have already pointed out, it's far more likely however that vendors see the requirement for SSO as a signal that a company is larger and falls more in the "enterprise" tier of pricing, allowing them to instantly provide something of value at a higher pricing point. SSO is treated much the same as things like premium support and SLAs - you charge extra because the customers who want it can afford to pay for it.

</comment><comment><USER5> On the one hand, if you have an IT department to care about such things, you probably have the extra money to upgrade. Woe is you.

At the same time, most large-ish companies (around 100+ employees I'd guess) will also have a person whose job is to negotiate pricing with all their vendors, and the discounts can be substantial.

Maybe SaaS products should just be more transparent and say "Want to have more than 50 users? Pay us double."

</comment><comment><USER6> There is higher support surface area, each customer's IdP is a point of integration...

Enterprise SSO is a great lever for price discrimination.

</comment><comment><USER7> Supporting SSO is generally non trivial as each customer's SSO setup differs and requires different configuration options. I don't see issues with charging for SSO support if the application already has a secure method of authorization and the customer would like to tie authentication into their own system.

<comment><USER3> _> Supporting SSO is generally non trivial as each customer's SSO setup differs and requires different configuration options._

It's SAML2 and it's 2018. Not one of the ~20 services I've integrated with our provider has received so much as an email from us about the setup process on our end.

This is a solved problem.</comment></comment>


Intel buys AI chipmaker Habana for $2B - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/16/intel-buys-ai-chipmaker-habana-for-2-billion/ <comment><USER2> The article is light on details about those AI chips.</comment>


Show HN: Cliptext, a tool for sharing pre-selected text as images on Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://www.cliptext.co

<comment><USER2> >Why not share it as an image?

I can think of many reasons. Lack of semantics, no screenreading capabilities for the visually impaired, lowered quality, extreme waste of bandwidth and storage. I hate this trend, even if it offers _some_ convenience to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. Good points raised. I guess the lack of these capabilities is an "expensive" tradeoff for the slight convenience.

Judging by the comments on this blog post ([https://medium.com/five-hundred- words/hacking-the-tweet-stre...](https://medium.com/five-hundred- words/hacking-the-tweet-stream-52ed63a0731)), there is obviously no consensus as to whether this trend is good or bad. Some hate it, some find it convenient.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Please no. Pictures of text are such a bad idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes indeed. There are quite a number of people who absolutely think this is a bad idea and for good reason too... However, one may argue that it can be rather convenient.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I know on networks such as Weibo, text as images is one method to get around automated censorship filters. Granted such images will likely be deleted by human filters, but not before being able to reach a wider audience.

[https://projects.propublica.org/weibo/?s=Long- Text](https://projects.propublica.org/weibo/?s=Long-Text)

</comment><comment><USER5> Really seems weird. Is your fork not cutting your food well enough? Here, try this fork-sharpening tool.

Also if you can see the text, presumably you can screenshot it just as easily as you can copy-paste it to this service? And aren't there extensions and scripts that will even auto-upload screencaps and so on?

<comment><AUTHOR> I admit it is weird. However, the primary purpose of the tool is to eliminate all that copy-paste and also avoid taking a full screenshot that contains irrelevant aspects as well as going to through the hassle of uploading the screenshot yourself. Whether or not it achieves this purpose is a whole other story. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hi davidadamojr, I recently developed a similar web app (no mobile :( ) called squawkr ([http://squawkr.me](http://squawkr.me)) and I'd love to chat with you sometime!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi hammeiam, squakwr looks pretty cool. I'll be happy to chat sometime. Twitter: @davidadamojr

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> You can do this with hookupJS for free - and then share the images on Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and more.

Oh, and, wow. Underwhelming options. Our code is open source, free to use, no login, host on your own box & more.

Also, I fail to see a Terms of Service, only Privacy Policy, on your site. Odd. Makes me uncomfortable, honestly.

It's always a mystery to me how some stuff gets attention (like this) and other things get ignored; maybe because this, "Innovation," seems 100% aimed at making Twitter _less_ accessible to visually impaired?

PS: we store the images we build as layers, so, we keep the text and can include it for later analysis, along with the background color used, font & more. In addition to tracking stats for you on the content you make, to see how well it performs on Facebook.

Sigh; would be cool if you'd add that to your roadmap. Or perhaps just relaunch with our code?

<comment><AUTHOR> HookupJS sounds awesome. Having underwhelming options was completely intentional. The aim was to do ONE THING, and do it as fast and in as few steps as possible. The equally underwhelming source is actually available at [http://github.com/davidadamojr/cliptext](http://github.com/davidadamojr/cliptext)

<comment><USER7> One thing, super fast - bingo. Just wanted to say that, in terms of "end game," it fails to excite me after having worked in accessibility roles at companies large - and small. Eg, when you find out your employer got sued and lost for accessibility it feels like you failed the evolutionary test of compassion; sure, they passed the corporate, "Cost / Benefit," litmus test, but, was the work they did, "Good?"

Thank you for the compliment - I passed your link to my engineering partner, because, I'm the clueless business monkey. ;)</comment></comment></comment>


Crispr Advent Calendar (2019) - <AUTHOR> https://progressive-agrarwende.org/crispr-advent-calendar-blog/ <comment><USER2> This is great science communication effort. I wonder if there is any logic to the date/month assigned to specific information snippet.</comment>


Objective-CL: Objective-C like syntax for Common Lisp - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/browse_frm/thread/0245342429c61800/f7966bf3df9f716c?pli=1#f7966bf3df9f716c

<comment><USER2> While I think it's interesting that you _can_ do this, it doesn't mean you _should_. Yikes.

</comment><comment><USER3> The name is confusing. I thought this would have been an Objective-C version of OpenCL.

</comment><comment><USER4> More power to the guy for doing something interesting, but I can't help but think this would be weird, painful & impractical to use. Still, why not?

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought this was interesting mainly to show the power of Common Lisp reader- macros. It's awesome to be able to do this, and someone has to do it, because we can. But it doesn't mean it should be used for real.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> argh. please don't do this. not because lisp is sacronsanct, but because a better thought-out (consistent, transparent, inter-operable with macros) approach already exists - <http://www.dwheeler.com/readable>

really, there's a long history here. people have worked out the details. it just needs implementing...

</comment><comment><USER6> The posts are mostly from Dec 2010 with one follow-up in Apr 2011. I wonder if there was any follow-up?</comment>


Why I stopped using Spring - <AUTHOR> http://johannesbrodwall.com/2013/12/09/why-i-stopped-using-spring/ <comment><USER2> This post is too abstract and neither offers a good explanation of a problem nor suggests an alternative solution.

The task of dependency injection appears right after the decomposition of a problem: you cannot avoid it, so you either do it manually by constructing and wiring all necessary objects (self-managed singleton anti-pattern is quite common here, let his fathers burn in hell) or using a DI container. Unless you want to invent your own bicycle with poker and curvy girls (which may make sense in very specific cases, but not in general), you will use Spring, Guice or CDI.

How to choose the right solution? It always depends on requirements, not on generic concepts from theory of OOD. In small project you can follow KISS principle by sacrificing decoupling and wiring objects manually. In bigger one you always need to look at the other libraries and environment you are going to use. If it's a JEE container (a modern one, compatible with latest specs), your choice can be CDI. If you are going to work with GWT, it's Guice (it's the best for programmatic configuration, but lacks some features). In all other cases Spring 4 is the best option.

What's wrong with the talk about reuse vs decoupling? The author addresses the problem of sustainability of a system to changes by rejecting the core concept of OOD - the reuse - and avoiding the use of DI, just to avoid some hypothetic bug in implementation module. However, our industry developed a lot of tools and best practices to address such problems when writing reusable code: unit tests, SOLID (SRP is my favorite one), incremental compilers and smart IDEs. Avoiding reuse is like not using electricity if you afraid of fire.

<comment><USER3> This was an excellent post, it was abstract but at least he kept it short.

I had an argument about DI with a friend months ago and it boiled down in his use (Guice) that it was only for testing components.

I think of DI as a big meta-constructor in the sky, it gives dynamic scope to a lexically scoped language. And the problem with it as we currently use it, is that it hides intent behind a config file so we can't read what the code is actually doing, only doing abstractly.

What if the tooling ghosted those abstract classes and put the concrete classes in their place with reading and navigating? It could effectively "statically link" in the IDE those dependencies.

<comment><USER2> In good design the intent is clearly defined in interface on which you depend. If the code has side effects, if it does something not specified by interface, if it has more than one role, this code needs to be fixed and it is not a problem with DI. It's a problem with your design.

As I already said, you always need to wire your objects. You do it, possibly, without realizing it, but you still do it. If you reject the idea of DI just because the code is bad and DI is "Not Invented Here", you will not do the wiring better. Writting custom DI is hard, and it's very likely that you will end with unmaintainable nightmare that needs to be rewritten completely. For 15 years I've seen this nightmare too much and never seen the successful projects with custom DI.

<comment><USER3> So is DI a result of incomplete language design? Should the concept of DI be baked in?

<comment><USER2> For enterprise software, for large projects, probably, yes. Together with more advanced reflection (I imagine MOF/EMF as a native part of Java) to allow meta-programming and smarter code generation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This post is awesome and correctly describes that frameworks try to teach you certain methodologies by enforcing them. Once you understand the principles, you're often better of ditching the framework.

This is especially true with DI, which is a design principle and not a framework, countrary to popular belief.

I would also like to add that specific technologies such as xml are not inherently declarative. If some api or config is declarative it only means that it is well designed and that it's easy to express your intentions when using it. If you want counter-examples, look at imperative ant or declarative jmock.

<comment><USER5> XSLT's a better example of XML not being declarative, as it's a turing- complete pure functional programing language. There's also some toy languages actually intended to be full programming languages that happen to use XML as their syntax.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I use spring in large scale Java projects but I rarely take advantage of the @Autowired feature because I find it very confusing as I define my pojos in XML configuration files. if I have autowired fields all over the place I have to look at source code AND XML files to understand what the heck is going on and from where a given field is autowired.

I suspect this introduces extra complexity. I have not yet had the chance to try Guice ([https://code.google.com/p/google- guice/](https://code.google.com/p/google-guice/)) so I wonder if it solves many of Spring's problems (one of the top issues is verbosity of configuration files).

<comment><USER7> From Spring 3 (3.1 I think it was) you don't need to do configuration with XML. Current version (Spring 4) even supports configuring Spring Security with no XML at all. You can configure everything in Java and use profiles (@Profile) when you have multiple configuration scenarios. [http://spring.io/blog/2011/02/14/spring-3-1-m1-introducing-p...](http://spring.io/blog/2011/02/14/spring-3-1-m1-introducing- profile/)

Also, don't forget that you can use @Resource (jsr250), not only @Autowired.

The author also says:

> So reuse and decoupling are opposing forces. I find myself siding with > decoupling.

The developer has to make a balance between reuse and decoupling. In my opinion everything doesn't have to be 100% reused or decoupled.

<comment><USER8> But why would you want to mix your config and code? When does it make sense to lock these values at compile time, but also use an abstraction layer which suggests these values are configured at runtime?

<comment><USER2> There's no sense at all in putting configuration of DI separately from the code. Normally, 99% of DI configs are not environment-specific (if this is not the case, "Houston, we have a problem"). In most cases you ship your software not like IKEA, but like Boeing - already assembled and ready for use. The customer (possibly, internal one) has to fill the fridge with meals for passengers and tanks with fuel, not to assemble the engines or avionics.

<comment><USER8> Wiring objects together and configuring applications are tangentially related. Both can be done in Spring config, both can be done without Spring config, both can be done at compile or runtime.

Dependency glue (wiring) in runtime config helps keep objects decoupled, makes test writing easier, and eliminates any dependency on a specific IOC framework. Whether or not the wiring config comes boxed with the code or not is a completely different concern.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I agree with Johannes. I have never observed sufficient benefit from DI frameworks to justify the greatly reduced readability it results in.

</comment><comment><USER10> Go for Guice if you just want DI. You won't regret it. But always remember, all "auto" stuff might mislead you. For example, you need somebody to start things for you, so in Spring, the Servlet container will invoke the Spring Servlet, which will take things up from there. That's the catch, it's not magic, right? So with Guice, you need to figure out who will so that "auto" for you. Btw, if you're just building a small library, Guice is definitely the DI choice. HTH.

<comment><USER7> There is also Dagger (developed by Square) [http://square.github.io/dagger/](http://square.github.io/dagger/)

Pretty similar to Guice, but faster.

<comment><USER11> Ha, Bob doing another DI framework? Is it any good?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _If the savings from the reuse are high, this is a trade-off worth making. If the savings are low – it is not._

Cost-benefit uber alles! All of these things -- features, functions, frameworks, objects, patterns -- _must pay rent!_

</comment><comment><USER13> I heartily agree. Spring often brings a higher cost in incidental complexity than it removes from the inherent complexity.

</comment><comment><USER14> One thing that drove me nuts about programming with Spring (.NET, in my case) was that it was so hard to follow the flow. So much flipping back and forth between the config and the code. Also, the error messages for misconfigured applications were frequently inscrutable. This was addressed to some extent with a build phase that verifies the type names in Spring configs. Lastly, more than once we were bit by defaults, where an object that should have been a singleton wasn't, or the reverse. Lots of power to shoot your foot off.

</comment><comment><USER15> I found Scala lazy initialization to be great alternative to Spring IoC. Also constructor arguments are part of class definition and it makes constructor injection very easy.

</comment><comment><USER16> Welcome to the club:) But you should be careful being too open about it. I didn't last 15 min in my last interview, when I told them that I didn't use database in my latest project, since all data (the whole 200 rows) did fit in one json file. Haven't passed the "Technology Stack" qualification.

And indeed, code without frameworks is so much smaller, cleaner and pleasant to work with!

</comment><comment><USER17> Is there any good, recent ( but past the beta stage), fast, non bloated java framework anyone here could recommend ?

I've done a medium sized spring project last year, and found the language quite good, but the framework itself and the general ecosystem really too cumbersome.

<comment><USER18> As most of my daily tasks are being done in J2EE environment, I have goosebumps each time I hear "java" & "framework" used in one sentence. And that's not excitement, that's fear.

The only framework which I can recommend, is Dropwizard ([http://dropwizard.codahale.com/](http://dropwizard.codahale.com/)), which tries not to be a framework, just a glue between some really nice libraries and tools.

<comment><USER17> Really helpful comment, thanks. I probably overestimated the importance of a "framework" in the java world, where everything is standardized, and every standard is implemented through standalone libraries (which is probably another reason spring became so famous when i come to think of it, with its original glue-like approach).

I'll start with "raw" java next time i'll want to try playing with rest services.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm not sure I understand the point about reuse and decoupling being opposing forces.

A simplistic example that comes to mind is a calculator module with a well- defined interface (interface in the Java sense of the term). Maybe there are a few different implementations of the interface available in the codebase.

Both implementations are reusable in the sense that I can plug one implementation in many places wherever the interface is supported. When I need something else, I plug in a different implementation. The module that has a dependency on the calculator module should be none the wiser since all it does is call out to a certain interface.

Am I missing something here? Maybe I didn't understand the OP's point well enough.

<comment><USER20> What you're talking about is decoupling interface from implementation. This is good (well, it's good if there is a genuine need for more than one implementation, otherwise it's just decoupling for the sake of decoupling which is a form of waste. Remember YAGNI)

My understanding of reuse is when the same peace of code is used in different areas of the project. This could be different classes, different packages, different modules, etc. Now the more the code is reused, the more tight coupling between the two pieces of code i.e. change to the interface of the reused code 'could' mean change(s) to each and every place the reused code is being called.

Secondly, if you put reuse high up in the design requirement, what you sometimes end up with are very generic interfaces/classes that can be reused in lots of places as opposed to very specific interfaces/classes or unnecessary inheritence trees required to change the base class behaviour in those places where the required behaviour is 'slightly different'.

Lastly, not so long ago, DI containers did not support package private visibility. This means all injection (constructor, setter, etc.) required public visibility. This lead to a lot of developers also 'reusing' code even in places where they shouldn't just because they could i.e. it's right there!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Using DI is like using goto. It gives you more power but at the same time it makes it impossible to reason about the code.</comment>


Poems for Coders - <AUTHOR> Inspired by:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02912-x
I suddenly wanted to start this mailing list. I'm not trying to make money, but you can submit poems here:
https://forms.gle/ibxhFUjhNRvwyrB99
And can submit yourself to the mailing list (note: a poetry submitter is not added to the list), here:
https://forms.gle/aoE77nnhihnFHkwW7
There will be (pending submissions) a weekly digest of the best poems submitted (judged solely by me).
The mailing list is not going to contain anything else except poems for coders by coders (or their spouses/ loved ones). If selected, and you want it, I'll include a 140 character bio. Your emails on the mailing list are never going to be used for any other purpose.
BTW - can anyone suggest a good mailing list solution? Spreadsheet of emails, how to send to each for free? <comment><USER2> Mailing list providers Mailchimp and Substack are two that I've heard good things about. You can also send a high volume of emails relatively cheap on AWS SES.

This list looks pretty cool I've subbed.

<comment><AUTHOR> cool, I think you're my first sub. It might just be you for now.

at least I won't be spamming you!</comment></comment>


Close Listening: How Sound Reveals the Invisible - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/07/30/425395825/close-listening-how-sound-reveals-the-invisible

<comment><USER2> Stethoscopes did not improving listening. It has been easier to hear by placing your ear directly on the body. Stethoscopes were only invented because of modesty. (Edit: and because of convenience for the doctor).

Of course new listening devices using microphones can improve on the human ear. But a rubber tube cannot.

</comment><comment><USER3> loved this comment

      > There is a button for error reporting. You just need to scroll down to see it.
      Oh and the scroll bar is hidden</comment>


@linux_log : follow the linux kernel commit log - <AUTHOR> http://twitter.com/linux_log

<comment><USER2> Can't this be done on cia.vc (continuously reloading the website and via IRC)?

Have to modify Zawinski's Law to "Every program attempts to expand until it can tweet it's useless status".

</comment><comment><USER3> "But will it run linux" has been replaced with "but will it tweet?"

</comment><comment><USER4> Amazingly useless.</comment>


Python or Ruby: 6 Months on Hacker News - <AUTHOR> http://peak5390.wordpress.com/2012/12/14/python-or-ruby-6-months-on-hacker-news/

<comment> B-Con I agree that Python is a good language to learn and to teach as an introduction.

But HN isn't quite the most reflective of the _job market_. It's reasonably diverse, but how much interest does, say, .NET generate on here? Not much, but .NET seems to be becoming impossible to avoid in the Windows programming market.

HN also likes languages like Lisp. Do the jobs for Lisp even compare with jobs available for Ruby?

I think HN stats will give you a decent idea of powerful and/or hacker- friendly and/or elegant languages (those seem to be the favorites around here, from my perspective), which are probably good languages to use as an introduction, but not necessarily strongly correlated with market value.

Again, not that I disagree with the conclusion.

</comment><comment><USER2> It would be interesting to see a Python/Javascript comparison. I have a hunch that the explosion of new tools-- js frameworks, node, mongodb, etc.-- is going to lead to thousands of coders writing millions of small apps. Big potential market for those students to come into.

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks! I wonder if there is a way to piece out trends better - for instance, are influencers using Ruby?

That said, hard to go wrong teaching intro to CS in Python. It's flexible enough to show most of what you want to teach.</comment>


GitLab 7.14 released - <AUTHOR> https://about.gitlab.com/2015/08/22/gitlab-7-14-released/

<comment><USER2> GitLab seems to be on fire in terms of product development. I'm truly inspired by the "transparent by default" business policies and commitment to openness.

Since I'm interested in highly concurrent web services I thought it was interesting they are underway porting their http server from Ruby's Unicorn to Golang. It would be nice to see a separate post on this process and any performance comparisons.

Checking out the source code[1] I noticed how nice and full featured the GitLab UI. As a daily GitHub user I was pleasantly surprised by how comfortable I was navigating around.

[1] [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-git-http- server](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-git-http-server)

<comment><USER3> > It would be nice to see a separate post on this process and any performance > comparisons.

We (I) see gitlab-git-http-server more as a functional improvement than as a performance improvement. It is a better match for slow Git HTTP requests ('git push', 'git pull') than Unicorn+Rails.

Having said that, I am also curious about what this change means for performance and other areas. It already helped us find a performance issue in the Rails app.

[https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/issues/2341](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/2341)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Long time GitLab user here. I'm not sure how I feel about the possibility of GitLab shipping with a persistent chat application. On one hand, much of GitLab is about collaboration, and there are many interesting integration points between the two products. On the other, I prefer the ecosystem of choice per product. I assume that RocketChat could be disabled, or perhaps there would be the option of getting RocketChat and non-RocketChat omnibus installers. Enabling RocketChat on the same server for a large number of users would have hardware implications, and then you're going to through MongoDB in there two (which RocketChat uses). It just feels like too much going on in one system.

<comment><USER5> I believe Mattermost is disabled by default and supports the option of running on a separate server, so that will hopefully be how RocketChat is integrated as well!

<comment><USER6> Indeed, RocketChat will be disabled by default as well. It will have a different url (FQDN) so you can run it on a separate server if you want to. We will only ship Rocket Chat if it uses PostgreSQL instead of MongoDB as noted in release announcement.

<comment><USER4> Thank you for the clarification.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It seems like gitlab changes syntax highlighters a lot.

I keep hoping for the really nice syntax highlighting features, like doing diff highlighting and the actual filetype highlighting at the same time. Or highlighting SQL inside a string as SQL.

</comment><comment><USER8> Header (title) for the blog post gets cut short on iphone safari in portrait mode :-/ .... "Gitlab 7.14 released with improved syntax."

<comment><USER6> Thanks for reporting, I made an issue for this [https://gitlab.com/gitlab- com/www-gitlab-com/issues/401](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab- com/issues/401) If anyone feels like fixing it than merge requests are very welcome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Seems like ubuntu 15.04 has problems with the omnibus installer. Does anyone have a pointer for me that works?

<comment><USER10> Ubuntu 15.04 is not among the supported platforms. GitLab omnibus supports only LTS releases, but if you want you can check for a workaround here [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/omnibus- gitlab/issues/491](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/omnibus-gitlab/issues/491)</comment></comment>


Things that other languages should take from Lisp - <AUTHOR> http://repinvariant.blogspot.com/2008/01/thoughts-on-lisp-things-that-other.html <comment><USER2> \- Bignums

\- Optional type declarations

\- Proper (unbounded) tail-recursion

\- Methods with multiple-dispatch

\- Speed

\- Syntactic simplicity (i.e. few ideosyncractic syntactic rules)

What a weird set of choices.

Whenever I switch from lisp to something else, the first thing I miss is how easy it is to express the problem solution as a program and as a data structure at the same time. I immediately miss defmacro but I don't find myself wondering where my multiple-dispatch went.

<comment><USER3> "express the problem solution as a program and as a data structure at the same time."

exactly . "At the same time" is key. Norvig's "Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming" has some good examples of this technique.</comment></comment>


Next after Godaddy, is it time to boycott other giants for supporting SOPA? - <AUTHOR>

We made a difference with the anti-SOPA campaign for Godaddy ... but we still have a long line of other giants that supports SOPA, such as: Apple, TimeWarner, Sony, Adobe.<p>Are we going to now stop the anti-SOPA and be satisfied with just the result of Godaddy stepping down .... ? or do we move on to the next? <comment><USER2> That would be the right thing to do, but GoDaddy was low-hanging fruit. It was just too easy to hate on them (albeit deservedly so) and to take action. I applaud those who did so (I'm one of them) but in fact it was not a tremendous sacrifice.

I don't, however, ever expect to see Cory Doctorow calling for a boycott of Disney, or John Gruber starting an Apple boycott. I think these companies would have to start executing people in the street before their fans would speak up.

I'm still surprised at the love Sony products still get from geeks who should know better, given Sony's abhorrent behavior. This tells me that getting a boycott of tech or media companies that still make things geeks think are cool will be an uphill battle.</comment>


On dependencies in the API - <AUTHOR> http://googletesting.blogspot.com/2008/08/by-miko-hevery-so-you-join-new-project.html

<comment><USER2> I have thought at times that allowing the definition of constructors in interfaces would go a long way towards solving this problem. It's much easier to manage dependencies with cleaner patterns when you don't have to define some ugly Configure(MyConfiguration) method and throw exceptions if it hasn't been called before you do anything else.

In their example an interface doesn't really help since CreditCard is probably a value object, which don't generally provide implementation variations, however you see the problem in the Database and OfflineQueue types, whose lack of an interface is going to add complexity to the test (CreditCardProcessor takes an OfflineQueue but imagine OfflineQueue requires implementors to configure a queue address at runtime, taking IQueue instead would allow you to pass in a mocked IQueue).

</comment><comment><USER3> Takeaway: Representing dependencies explicitly in code will avoid you lots of trouble. One way to achieve that with an object of type X that requires an object of type Y is to require an y in the constructor for x's.

<comment><USER4> Maybe I'm being slow, but I didn't get how they were explicitly declaring it except in the test, and I don't see how one test in a whole suite would help a newbie discover this problem.

Are they actually implying the constructor should throw an exception moaning about lack of X dependency?

<comment><USER3> You can't call the constructor without passing the reference to the object the new object depends on... Thus you can't inadvertantly initialize the objects in the wrong order.

<comment><USER4> Makes sense, thanks!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


New material eliminates need for motors or actuators in future robots - <AUTHOR> http://www.kurzweilai.net/new-material-eliminates-need-for-motors-or-actuators-in-future-robots-other-devices <comment><USER2> This popular article oversells it by about 3 orders of magnitude.

Roughly, the effect is that moisture causes a nickel hydroxide material to expand. You can drive the moisture out with light or heat and it contracts. In a humid environment, you can cycle it. The fastest cycle time they show graphs for is 0.1 Hz (a cycle every 10 seconds.) They use a thin film of about 1 micrometer -- presumably a thicker film would take a lot longer to change the moisture level.

They don't try to measure the efficiency, but usually anything that involves temperature change is pretty inefficient.

</comment><comment><USER3> Isn't this how nitinol wire works?</comment>


Ask HN: Good Antiviruses for Development Environment? - <AUTHOR> In our company we are required to run anti-virus software on all computers, including developers' laptops. We didn't decide yet which exactly anti-virus software we will use though.
We are quite cautious about the choice of the software because:
- we know that anti-virus software may be quite intrusive on a development machine (slow, blocks legitimate files, etc.),
- once we pay for it, we don't want to go back and chose another one until the next licence renewal, so we'd like to make the good choice at once.
Can you recommend an anti-virus software that you currently use in a development environment and have good experience with?
Some context:
- we are looking for something really simple, like a file scanner for starters; all other features are considered as a bonus
- we have Mac, Linux and Windows machines
- we mostly develop in JVM and Python ecosystems
- our workflows are heavy on the file system, but our data is simple (should not contain any malware normally) <comment><USER2> "Windows Defender" targets pervasive malware -- in practice there is not a big gap between that and other anti-virus programs. It is bundled with the OS and can be configured to not interfere with file access in directories you build software in.

The commercial anti-virus firms release linux binaries that can be used to scan email attachments and other shared files. Anti-virus at your email server keeps many attacks out of your network to begin with, so make sure you have that.

</comment><comment><USER3> ClamAV has been gaining popularity on Linux.</comment>


It's easy to become obese in America. These 7 charts explain why - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/2016/8/31/12368246/obesity-america-2018-charts <comment><USER2> As a non-US person, I used to think "you all just have to stop eating so much" towards those overweight in the US.

But after living in the US you start to understand that it really is not easy.

In other countries, bread is bread, restaurant food is one serving and the snacks your peers bring in are home-made sweets, or cheese and crackers, etc.

In the US, bread is sugary and dense in calories, restaurant food is in two salty-oily servings, and the snacks your peers bring in are donuts and cupcakes.

When I first moved to the US and lived as I normally would, I gained weight quickly. It sucked having to involve yourself mentally in something you normally don't have to think about.

<comment><USER3> Also everyone drives, even to fetch milk from nearest convenience store. It's too easy not to have any exercise all day

<comment><USER4> There's plenty of metropolitan cities where no one has to drive, but there's plenty of rural areas where it's pretty much a necessity, and plenty of suburban areas where you can easily bike everywhere (or even walk if you have the time or drive if you don't). The greatest thing about the US is the choices you get to make for yourself - no matter which lifestyle you choose to live, you can find somewhere to fit that lifestyle in the US.

<comment><USER5> ...as long as you're rich.

If you take a typical median-income family, plot out a reasonable household budget and daily schedule, and then try to match it with every place in the US, most of the results will show that the family must own at least one car and spend an hour a day driving it. It's the only way to afford being there at all. The desirable areas are priced out of their reach, because there just aren't enough of them.

I'd love for all my daily transit to be on elevators and electric trains. But I also want my public school district to have enough money to pay its teachers without taxing me, specifically, into oblivion. For reasons I cannot comprehend, my employer wants to locate its workplace in the middle of a bunch of office buildings, where they enjoy lower facilities costs and a lower tax rate, while still benefiting from an educated workforce. So I pretty much have to drive a while between home and work.

If I lived close to work, I couldn't afford the place. If I worked close to home, the jobs nearby wouldn't pay enough to cover housing.

<comment><USER4> Since we're dealing purely in anecdata, I live 4 miles from a job that covers my housing, and I'm _far_ from rich. I could choose to put myself in a different situation, but I chose my current situation and am quite happy.

<comment><USER5> > _Since we 're dealing purely in anecdata..._

The median household income is roughly $60k. 86% of workers commute using a privately-owned automobile (ACS data), with about 3/4 commuting by driving solo. The mean commute time is about 26 minutes.

This situation might be exacerbated by the fact that the median tenure at a job is hovering just above 4 years, and home mortgages are 30 years. So if you buy a house and want to pay off the loan on schedule, you now have to make sure it is close to 7.5 different jobs in your industry. ...Per person working in your household. Married? Site your home near 15 jobs, some of which might not even exist yet. This doesn't even account for what happens when your company decides to build on a new campus for all of its workers.

By the home affordability rule of thumb that you can afford 2x to 2.5x your annual income on your mortgage loan, the median household can afford a house at $120k to $150k. Find a pile of those within biking distance of 15 different jobs in one or two careers that pay $30k to $60k per year.

You won't, outside a handful of large cities, and the majority of the US doesn't live there, as shown by the commuting data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > In 1800, the average person consumed approximately 22.4 grams of sugar each > day (10.2 kg per year). In 1900, the average person consumed approximately > 112 grams of sugar each day (40.8 kg per year). In 2009, 50 per cent of > Americans consumed approximately 227 grams of sugar each day - equating to > 81.6 kg per year.

The seminal event for increasing per-capita sugar intake was the introduction of Coca Cola/soda.

[http://www.divineeatingout.com/food-1/sugar-consumption- now-...](http://www.divineeatingout.com/food-1/sugar-consumption-now- vs-100-years-ago)

If you aren't familiar with the tragedy of sugar on traditional Native Americans, introduction of processed American foods has created an epidemic on reservation.

"Type II Diabetes, the Modern Epidemic of American Indians"

[https://anthropology.ua.edu/bindon/ant570/Papers/King/king.h...](https://anthropology.ua.edu/bindon/ant570/Papers/King/king.htm)

Christopher McDougall's book "Natural Born Heroes" is about the heroes of Crete during WW2 who were able to fight off the Germans by putting up extraordinary resistance by doing, among other things, hiking for miles and miles over treacherous territory for 20 hours straight. It makes an argument that a paleo-based diet is the _reason_ why they were able to do it. With this diet, they were able to run and evade for long distances without fatigue. Meats and other proteins provide a sustainable, longer-lasting source of energy in contrast to the spike of sugar.

[https://www.amazon.com/Natural-Born-Heroes-Mastering- Enduran...](https://www.amazon.com/Natural-Born-Heroes-Mastering- Endurance/dp/0307742229)

<comment><USER7> I dunno man... the reason why I could hike 20 hours straight today is because I run 6 days a week and now have the fitness level to do it. It's not because I ate bacon instead of toast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why doesn't the article talk about corn and meat subsidies. While meat by itself doesn't fuel obesity as much as carbs, most people typically pair with high fat and high carb foods.

The decision usually is between a cheap meat based meal and a non-meat based meal, and since meat is as cheap or cheaper than vegetables, it gets picked. Also, broccoli has more protein per calorie than beef.

<comment><USER9> > Also, broccoli has more protein per calorie than beef.

It looks like this might be a myth. I'd never heard this claim before so decided to do some googling. However, I am surprised to learn that broccoli has a substantial amount of protein, regardless of whether or not it's "more than beef".

<comment> saiya-jin This is old vegetable-vs-animal proteins issue. Non-animal proteins don't contain all aminoacids for the human body to be able to absorb it. Only meat & diary products naturally do.

What you can do, and vegetarians/vegans have been doing, is to pair it with another plant product that is also non-complete, but has a different composition of these amino acids. Mixed together, they end up providing some sort of complete protein (meaning you have to know what to mix with what, in what ratio). Or just mix it with some animal protein.

That's why broccoli is dense with protein, but most if not all just goes through your body, depending what you consume it with.

This is my fitness-guy understanding, please correct me if it's incorrect.

<comment><USER10> This may help improve your understanding.

[https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/01.cir.00000189...](https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/01.cir.0000018905.97677.1f)

<comment><USER7> to save people a click...

"the results show that any single one or combination of these plant foods provides amino acid intakes in excess of the recommended requirements."

"A vegetarian diet based on any single one or combination of these unprocessed starches (eg, rice, corn, potatoes, beans), with the addition of vegetables and fruits, supplies all the protein, amino acids, essential fats, minerals, and vitamins (with the exception of vitamin B12) necessary for excellent health"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think there is another factor too- there are a lot more double income households than there have been in the past, which leaves less time for cooking, so people just eat out. People are also under a lot of stress due to lack of job security, more part time or gig work, weekend and evening work, etc, which leads to stress eating. Communities are fragmenting as people have to move every couple years to find new work, or as they substitute online relationships for real ones (who has the time?), which again leads to stress eating. No doubt everything in the article is a factor too, but we are undergoing wider cultural changes that you have to take into effect.

By the way, when I talk about "double income households" I'm not saying that women shouldn't be equal in the workforce, I'm saying that maybe men and women should both be working somewhat shorter hours so that they have time for their home lives.

<comment><USER12> I hope that as time goes on more people are realizing the diseconomies that having a dual-income household creates. Chronic stress, outsourcing the maintenance of the household (cars, going out to eat, etc), higher tax brackets, childcare, a lot of it adds up faster than you think. Ambition for more fuels the dual income dream. Misplaced ambition is a killer.

Another reason to save a large fraction of your income- to pay off the house quickly and get back down to a single income household, or have both people go part time. Very liberating.

The big thing working against it though, is that land and luxuries are positional goods, and people will continue to work hard in order to outbid eachother in order to have more of these positional goods. This is why I'm afraid the dual-income trend will not reverse.

<comment><USER13> Most people learn to give up on chasing luxuries sooner or later.

The one modern problem is "land". It's not even just that. Land is actually very plentiful, the problem is the small amount of land available in desired places. And it's again not what it looks like, because desirability is not some intrinsic characteristic of the land anymore, instead the land is desirable because for some reason all the employment opportunities are there.

I really don't understand how employment got to be so much geographically restricted. But it is about this that people are fighting at current positional markets.

<comment><USER14> Because, buildings. And social structure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> >A variety of healthier foods — especially fruits and vegetables — also need to be made more affordable and readily available to Americans.

I was looking for this uninformed and incorrect statement.

"Junk Food" and Fast food tends to be between 100-300 Calories Per Dollar. Fresh Fruit and Vegetables are in this same range.

This doesnt include that homecooked meals are 200-300% cheaper than junk food. A meal with Chicken Rice and Veggies are closer to 600-700 calories per dollar and have protein and nutrients.

There is obviously a time aspect, but that isnt what is discussed in the quote.

My expertise is food, source- [http://efficiencyiseverything.com/food/](http://efficiencyiseverything.com/food/)

<comment><USER16> > "Junk Food" and Fast food tends to be between 100-300 Calories Per Dollar. > Fresh Fruit and Vegetables are in this same range.

Is that median or average? Because from my understanding, that may be true at a large supermarket in a wealthy suburb, but at a small corner market in a poor neighborhood, which is often the only market a poor person has access to, the veggies are far more expensive per calorie than junco food, if they even have the fresh fruits and veggies, which they often don't.

<comment><USER15> Junk food ranges from 100 Calories per dollar to 300 calories per dollar.

There arent junk foods that score above 400 calories per dollar. They dont exist from 5 years of searching(and if they do, let me know, I would like to study it).

Those corner stores will have Apples, Oranges, and Bananas. There is a reason, they are cheap and similar cost to these junk foods.

> small corner market in a poor neighborhood, which is often the only market a > poor person has access to, the veggies are far more expensive per calorie > than junco food

This seems like an impossibility. Junk food requires a multiple stage manufacturing process, while vegetables only need to be shipped and sometimes refrigerated.

The big thing is to look at the price you pay. Paying 1 dollar for a bag of carrots is cheaper than a 15 dollar tray of mixed veggies.

As previously mentioned, if you have ideas for low cost foods, let me know, we study this for Efficiency Is Everything.

<comment><USER17> > There arent junk foods that score above 400 calories per dollar. They dont > exist from 5 years of searching

Top Ramen chicken flavor is 190 calories per package, 48 packs look to be available at around $10 (the lowest I can find right now is actually $8.78, but $10 is a nice round figure.) So that's $10/9120 calories or 912 calories per dollar.

Slim Jim Smoked Snack Sticks I can find for $20 for 120. They are 160 calories each. That works out to $20/19200cal or 960cal/$.

That all took about 5 minutes of searching. Your five years of searching don't appear to have been spent very efficiently.

> Junk food requires a multiple stage manufacturing process, while vegetables > only need to be shipped and sometimes refrigerated.

Shipping and refrigeration and allowances for damage and spoilage and paying for shelf space (raw veggies are bulky per calorie, which affects in-store or, for direct to consumer delivery, in a warehouse, inventory cost as well as shipping) are, altogether, _huge_ costs; mitigating them is one of the big drivers for industrial food production.

<comment><USER15> Ramen can be found closer to 2,200 calories per dollar. At what point are we moving from Junk food to Soup?

I havent looked at Slim Jims in bulk, but usually dried meat is quite expensive. What store do you buy slim jims at? (I expect the protein per dollar to be less than chicken but on-par with yogurts/dollar fast food. 10-20g/$)

Also, none of those have calcium

[https://efficiencyiseverything.com/food-nutrition-per- dollar...](https://efficiencyiseverything.com/food-nutrition-per-dollar/)

I'm not sure what you are trying to point out since you mentioned soup. That you can drink flour cheaper than you can cook a well rounded meal? Flour isnt going to get you fiber.

Did you read the original source? Ramen and various junk food are all over that page.

<comment><USER17> > Ramen can be found closer to 2,200 calories per dollar. At what point are we > moving from Junk food to Soup?

They are overlapping categories.

> Also, none of those have calcium

Well, yeah, they are junk food. Micronutrient (or even macro) completeness isn't really an expected feature. Your claim was that no junk food existed over 400cal/$. This is false. That junk food is, well, junk is not the claim I was addressing, nor one that seems to be in any kind of dispute.

<comment><USER15> Alrighty mister, you win ;)

Now where are you getting these slim jims?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> >Let's start with cost: As you can see in the chart, when it comes to how many calories you get per dollar, sugar, vegetable oils, and refined grains deliver a higher bang for the buck than fruits and vegetables

Somebody shopping with purpose can get cheap healthy food easily, but the chart they give did give me some thought.

If you use look at chart they give, fruits and vegetables are actually slightly lower on the $/100g axis, but have a much lower calorie density. This underlines one thing I've thought about: we are kind of too busy to spend all day eating low energy-density foods. The modern lifestlye has a decent amount of pressure to minimize the amount of time spent eating so we can get back to work.

</comment><comment><USER18> Americans are fat because 1. Poor diet and eating too much 2. lack of exercise driven by car-dependence and sprawled out unwalkable car-centric cities. Commuting in a car 1 hour per day and sitting in an office for 8 hours doesn't exactly foster a healthy lifestyle unless one goes out of their way to be active (eg. gym), sacrificing their already sparse free time. This is part of the reason obesity is much lower in cities like NYC where people walk/bike to get around.

</comment><comment><USER19> The CDC graph really confuses me. 40% of US men are overweight, 35% are obese, 5% are extremely obese. If I add that up, 80% of American men are overweight. Maybe it is because I live in Los Angeles, and it is really hard to believe that 80% of American men are overweight.

Really, 4 out of 5? I get that other parts of the country are different, but I also think BMI is a really crude tool that paints some healthy people as weighing more than they should for their height. But it can be muscle, it can be body type, etc.

<comment><USER15> Yep, I'm technically overweight even when I have a 6pack. 185 lbs at 6ft.

Ive been lifting for 6 years, and my lowest weight I get is 183lbs, after this I begin to starve and overeat due to how skinny I am.

I dont know the solution, but my doctor looked at me and knew I was healthy even though I was technically overweight.

<comment><USER20> That sounds like a problem with the definition of overweight, which probably uses BMI. BMI doesn't seem to scale well to athletic builds.

<comment><USER19> But that is my point: that is how people get to statistics like 80% of American men are overweight. Like the poster above, I am 6'. So I am kind of tall and broad shouldered, due to genetics. If I weigh 185 I am overweight, although I think at that weight I look reasonably trim. Working out eventually makes me weigh more, because muscle weighs more. I have seen papers where people say 'Overweight' people (as defined by BMI) actually have longer life spans than normal BMI people. Keep in mind, some people get to normal BMI via chemotherapy. It is only at Obese and very Obeses that you see negative effects.

For the biggest group of American men, this article is implying that they are unhealthy, when the facts are that they are actually healthy.

I'm not saying this isn't among the most important health issues in the US. I just think you need a more reasonable standard or a lot of people will just throw up their hands.

<comment><USER21> I know that BMI is imperfect, but it seems like a reasonable enough proxy measure when you're looking at whole-population trends for the USA. I don't think a more reasonable measure is really needed for this purpose.

The BMI of athletes, or the limited options of people who live in food deserts, really seem like missing-the-forest-for-the-trees tangents in these sorts of discussions. According to the "rise of obesity in America" chart in the article, overweight-or-more among American women went from about 40% in 1960 to about 80% in 2014, with the highest percentage increase in the "extremely obese" subgroup. It's interesting to speculate about what drives it. But I don't think we can explain the trend with "they got shredded" or "they moved to food deserts" when we're talking about _40% of all American women_.

Maybe my intuition is wrong -- maybe there _are_ enough people with high muscle mass that it's skewing entire charts like the Vox article shows. If you have citations to that effect, I'll read them with gratitude.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It certainly doesn't help that more people type for a living, look at moving pixels on a screen for fun, sit in a car for an hour a day.

The US diet seems natural to me. I think it's the result of 100 years of evolution in food design and the fact that your body wants fat-adding easy to acquire calories. Fritos didn't grow on trees.

A more interesting question is to compare why countries at an equal level of wealth and technical development aren't the same. Ethnicity? Culture? Legal climate?

</comment><comment><USER23> It's also about taste.

Fruits and vegetables in the US taste terrible.

How do you want a kid to chose this sad dry dirt stick they call carrots when they got a deliciously engineered Maillard molecules stacked burger next to it ?

Every time I go to the US, I have to spend crazy money at Whole food to get something only near the quality of what I get to regular supermarkets in France. And in my country, I try to avoid regular supermarkets because there is no joy in eating their fresh good.

Of course you will eat a kit kat if you have to pay 3 times the price to get something healthy, and 5 times to get something satisfying.

Plus remember, this tops the effort that is already required in choosing what to buy and cook it.

It's an impossible game to win for many American.

And it's a vicious circle.

Being fed with crap lead to less energy, more disease, and worse mood, and so you have even less chance to catch on life opportunities. And less chance to ever eat healthy again.

<comment><USER10> Bland fruits and veggies are a result of agribusiness efforts to optimize for shelf life and visual appeal. One strategy to address this is to expand the types of fruits and veggies in your diet. Explore a local ethnic grocery to try a variety of flavors, aromas and textures. The complaint may change to sensory overload.

<comment><USER23> > Explore a local ethnic grocery to try a variety of flavors, aromas and > textures.

That won't scale.

I have a fine strategy for eating proper food: not leaving in the US.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Just search "food capitalism", eg [https://www.popmatters.com/foodies-guide- to-capitalism-inter...](https://www.popmatters.com/foodies-guide-to- capitalism-interview-2518372029.html) or [https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/11/a-public-option- for-f...](https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/11/a-public-option-for-food)

"Food is actually the perfect example of a system in which the presence of a profit motive is having incredibly destructive human consequences. That's because it introduces a terrible incentive: to sell people the products they'll get addicted to rather than the products that are good for them. Americans live on junk food; they have terrible diets, with too much sodium, too many calories, too much sugar, and too few fruits and vegetables. "

<comment><USER25> I cant ever foresee a situation where I think the government is in the best position to decide what farmers grow, what livestock is produced and what I should put on my plate. just no.

<comment><USER24> Why is the opposite of capitalism always government?

Feral free-market capitalism clearly isn't delivering what we want when it comes to food, but the alternative isn't communism. It's better incentives and/or punishments for the market. That certainly is where government (which, incidentally, represents the people, or should do), has a place.

<comment><USER25> My thought on this is that how else would you compel change in the market? I don't think any other entity could do so. Of course I am no expert in this so I am willing to listen and consider what the alternatives are.

Also just want to clarify that I do not think that our state of agribusiness is perfect and not in need of some systemic change. There are tons of perverse incentives out there that have created some of the problems we face. However, I feel like a lot of that was caused by government intervention. I don't see this as a left vs right issue either, as both sides are guilty here.

<comment><USER24> Of course, but they don't need to plan what crops are grown, or what's on your plate.

There could be a sugar tax for example.

Or even better a 'health tax' pegged to a 'health index' of some kind, quite possibly with both government and private involvement.

Lots of possibilities

But one thing seems clear, that capitalism is ultimately only interested in profit. It should be tailored to align better with society's needs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > Healthier foods can cost more

This is an outrageous lie; although they added the word "can" which is either quickly overseen or makes the statement useless.

But arrogant ignorant misleading propaganda is typical for the harmful mainstream media where writers are paid for words and stories and not for content and truth.

Unhealthy food and mainstream media are similar in a way.

Vegan products are the cheapest products.

Vegetables and fruits are cheap if one buys seasonal products.

Vegan high carb (e.g. bread, rice,...) and high fat (e.g. oil) products offer always cheap calories. Besides, getting enough calories in the US is not the problem according to the article.

Animal products are by far the most expensive and most harmful products. Note: They are also subsidized.

<comment><USER27> Accusing Vox of a hidden agenda and bad faith really isn't called for. And I don't see how the fact that healthier food, under some circumstances, can cost more, is a controversial statement. The chart for point 4 even supports your point, since meat is the highest cost per 100 g.

But I think your comment is misplaced because the points of the article have almost nothing to do with vegan/meat choices. Taking meat out of the American diet would not significantly change the facts presented in the article. This is especially true for point 3, where we consume way, way too much (vegan) soda and (vegan) sugary beverages.

<comment><USER26> I do not think that the author of the article has a hidden agenda but mentioning that healthy food can cost more is either misleading or useless.

Quote (of a lie): "Instead, there is a range of economic and social factors that make eating enough fruits and vegetables really hard."

Of course it "can" cost more if you insist on buying only the most expensive vegan food available.

Try to become obese on a cheap healthy whole food plant based diet and rice and potatoes and bread without much added sugar (= normal bread in Europe).

The article offers no useful information to the reader and shifts all responsibility to the evil industry and claims that healthy food is too expensive and socially unacceptable and thus out of reach and not a solution.

Can you find one benefit of the article that made you smarter or a better person ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> " Researchers have pointed out that if Americans actually followed the US dietary guidelines and started to eat the volume and variety of produce health officials recommend, we wouldn't have nearly enough to meet consumer demand."

Compare any American super market's fruit and veggie section to one in Canada, or EU, and this is obviously true. Even Whole Foods' is pathetically small[1].

Seeing how little space there is for F&V, if you imagine doubling the space, the production problem is quite apparent.

[1]In Canada, the nearest supermarket to my folks' uses half it's floor space on vegetables and fruits. Grown in California, of course.

<comment><USER29> If the demand for these products existed, the market would easily provide them. But why would excess supply be created if no one wants it?

<comment><USER30> Agriculture is, like, the least free market.

<comment><USER29> Ignoring your hyperbole, I agree the existence of many distorting subsidies surely affects prices, but the price of all food is low across the board (compared to other industrialized countries). If people wanted to buy the healthy options at the price paid for them in Europe, they would be available.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Seven graphs that could be boiled down to two factors - more food, more sugar - shoved in your face, and if you dare get fat it's your fault!

<comment><USER32> Well, obviously it's your fault if you get fat. Any Hackernews oughta know by now that they should be eating a strict paleo diet, with ingredients sourced from farmers they know personally and cooked at home with the copious free time they have after commuting an hour each way between SV and the exurbs to work their cushy job building JS webshit for a YC-backed startup.

<comment><USER26> > should be eating a strict paleo diet

This seems to be a typical US american thing as well and why it is easy to become obese and unhealthy in the USA.

Tales of evil sugar and tales of good healthy high fat high protein diets with much animal products.

Worldwide scientific experts warn against much sugar and much fat and much animal products (high fat, high protein).

<comment><USER33> Exactly. American diet is excessive is people try to fix that by switching another excessive diet. Eat less, eat better foods. It's that simole. You don't need a fancy diet with a name.

<comment><USER26> I agree although the healthiest diet has a name: vegan or better whole food plant based diet.

[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGJq0eQZoFSwgcqgxIE9MHw/vid...](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGJq0eQZoFSwgcqgxIE9MHw/videos)

[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJRjK20fHylJyf- HiBtqI2w/vid...](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJRjK20fHylJyf- HiBtqI2w/videos)

<comment><USER33> There are a ton of healthy diets. You can pick pretty much any diet that is not the American standard diet and you will be fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Because it's easy is not an excuse. When you say that you become a victim and you lose any agency you might have had over this.

But to each his own.

<comment><USER35> What is it exactly that you're refusing to excuse people from?</comment></comment>


How to run a meeting (1976) - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/1976/03/how-to-run-a-meeting <comment><USER2> My take: 0) invite the right people 1) send all relevant reading material 2 days before meeting 2) have an agenda for the meeting - in the invitation 3) agree who runs the meeting 4) follow the agenda, keep a log of issues that hijack the discussion but leave it at that and keep on with the subject 5) document decisions 6) send email with decisions/actions

Not that complex. I run meetings quite often, and they always work fine. Now workshops are a different think...

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I think "send all the relevant reading materials before hand" is great, and I'd add "and make sure everyone reads them" which is a cultural thing.

Another great one is to differentiate between items which are 'for decision' and those that are 'for discussion' \- it sets expectations. If something is 'for decision' then the max-4-sides reading materials should cover all aspects (pros/cons) and it should be possible to make a decision from the materials.

If something is 'for discussion' then the meeting is going to contribute to the reading materials so there will be missing parts, or perhaps controversies that need to be hammered out in the meeting.

<comment><USER4> How does one "make sure everyone reads" the material? Issuing a pop quiz is popular amongst only school teachers.

<comment><USER3> Yes, that's what I meant by this this is a "cultural thing". In some organisations turning up to a meeting and not having done the pre-work would be unacceptable, in others it's not. It's something that the whole group has to buy into.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There are sections of this that overlap with how I treat meetings, but overall it seems like a bunch of verbal fluff that's the opposite of what a meeting should be. Exceedingly clear, short, and purposeful.

I learned a more pragmatic, even meeting-hostile approach to meetings: [http://hackaday.com/2016/10/06/life-on-contract-how-to- have-...](http://hackaday.com/2016/10/06/life-on-contract-how-to-have-a- meeting/)

<comment><USER6> The hackaday article is close, but not complete.

      1. The Problem, communicated in advance, understood by all parties
      2. The Exit Condition
      3. Time Boxed
      4. The Actionable tasks, when they will be done, who they are communicated to

When the exit condition is satisfied, the meeting is over. If the time allotted to the box goes over, the meeting is over. Once the exit condition is satisfied, tasks are allotted with clear timelines and points of contact. The meeting is run by _someone_, that person gets consensus when the exit criteria is met and is often the point of contact for the follow up tasks. The person running the meeting does research and communicates that research to the attendees. Any attendee not familiar with the research before the meeting starts is asked to leave. If it is determined that something is unknown and needs more research, those tasks are handed out and the meeting is reconvened at a later date. The meeting date is scheduled immediately.

<comment><USER7> "Time Boxed" needs to mean boxed on _both ends_. If a meeting is scheduled to start at 2:00, it starts at 2:00. Not 2:05, not when the last person wanders in, and not when the organizer figures out how to run the projector. The implied task there is that any setup should be done prior to the start time.

Nothing is more frustrating than company cultures which allow the "meetings never start on time, so I'll show up late" / "not everyone is here on time so I'll wait a few more minutes" death spiral. It's like a game of chicken to see who thinks their time is more valuable than everyone else's.

<comment><USER8> This is a much more difficult problem at large companies where meeting rooms can be a scarce resource, and other meetings that run long can negatively impact yours.

Having a plan for the meeting and having everybody trying to keep the meeting short helps a lot. I think if you're in a place where you need to write ground rules for meeting there's a larger cultural problem that needs to be addressed.

<comment><USER9> I couldn't agree more. At my company, we have a few thousand employees spread across 2 main locations in the same city and 25 smaller offices. BUT we only have 12 full sized conference rooms and 4 that only seat 5. So we end up scheduling meetings more around conference room availability than person availability, and then we have people having to walk/bike/cab/uber a mile (or more) from another location to get to this meeting on time.

Scheduling meetings around employees (especially management), vendors and conference rooms is one of the biggest challenges we face for meeting times.

<comment><USER10> Try Sococo - virtual conference rooms. I swear, its better than everybody sitting in a physical room. You can see, hear, share docs, chat, form subgroups and regroup fluidly.

Caveat: I own stock (used to work there)

<comment><USER9> We have this through various other tools, but it will never kill off the need for face to face communications. Drawing on the white board, throwing markers at each other, two people presenting ideas at the same time.

This is especially difficult during technical integration meetings, where you are tossing around ideas left and right.

<comment><USER10> Sococo does all but the 'throwing markers' part.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> How meetings are run:

1) Wait 5 to 10 minutes for everyone to join

2) Spend additional 5 minutes getting your computer hooked into the projector and shared with remote participants

3) Read through your powerpoint

4) Ask for feedback. Receive comments about your choice of font for the powerpoint.

5) Thank everyone for the meeting and head to the next one.

<comment><USER12> > Receive comments about your choice of font for the powerpoint.

That would be 2.5, they will be unsolicited, and yes, your font really _is_ too small.

2.6 is where you spend another five minutes faffing about with the font size until everyone is happy.

(which is why I rarely use slides and even more rarely put any text in them)

(but if you're demoing anything on a computer screen, the same applies)

<comment><USER13> You also forgot to label your axes and you have to discuss the points that were decided on last time, but not everyone agreed with!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is helpful for me. I serve on a local board and this very much describes the type of discourse that occurs there. For reference, we run the meetings according to Bourinot's rules of order: [https://www.amazon.com/Bourinots- Rules-Order-Assemblies-Shar...](https://www.amazon.com/Bourinots-Rules-Order- Assemblies-Shareholders- ebook/dp/B004JN1CGK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1481744194&sr=8-1&keywords=bourinot%27s+rules+of+order)

By the same token, this is not terrible useful for me in terms of work meetings which are extremely informal in comparison. They are also intended to achieve a different goal.

I'd say that both types of meetings are appropriate for their goals, but I've also been surprised at just how effective the more formal meetings have been in achieving progress and consensus.

</comment><comment><USER15> I avoid meetings like the plague. Even when I was running a company with 80 people I would ask if I was necessary or my input was necessary. If not I wouldn't accept.

Meetings are like teamwork trips. They are the illusion of progress.

There are situations where they are necessary but nothing beat ongoing discussions around actual work.

<comment><USER16> Did you read the full article? Meetings are where a group comes together and adds to its knowledge as a group. Nowadays we have things like IRC, which lets us do a lot remotely, but there's nothing like sitting in a room with other people to examine an issue.

 _Poorly-run_ meetings give the illusion of progress, but I posit that well- run meetings are actually a good thing. They shouldn't be gab-fests; they should be intentional, with reasons for existing and with some sort of output (e.g. 'the design for the new subsystem' or 'the team will understand and be prepared to address the causes for our failure to ship').

<comment><USER15> Yes i did and i dont agree with that description of meetings in reality. Nothing beats working side by side, but meetings is not working side by side its mostly talking about things which could be communicated in a mail.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Just a couple of days ago I was thinking about this topic exactly.

Considering that I spend upwards of 2 hours per day in meetings it is amazing how little time I have dedicated into thinking about how to make meetings more efficient. I don't think I'm the only one to make this mistake. Just because you have 5 people sitting in a room talking does not mean we are going anywhere or we are making any decisions.

Does anybody have a book recommendation where I can read more about how to maximize productivity of meetings?

</comment><comment><USER18> Wow, what an obnoxious page header. It takes up a quarter of the screen on my laptop!

<comment><USER19> And, it makes it yet another web site where page-down fails to go one page down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> There was an old book on the topic. Roberts Rules of Order

<comment><USER21> It'd be hilarious if one of my co-workers tried to break out the ole Roberts Rules at a typical meeting.... Meetings are bad enough.

<comment><USER16> That's the thing — the rules of order are intended to make meetings function smoothly, even when the attendees _hate_ one another.

And the rules themselves anticipate that not every meeting needs to use every rule. The basic ideas are good ones (e.g. record minutes of the meeting or the chairman should run the meeting but not take sides).

<comment><USER22> Maybe he should you need a chair who will to take a stand and enforce the rules.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> A related classic take on how to run meetings: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46BFYo4drLc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46BFYo4drLc)

</comment><comment><USER24> -9) Keep everyone productive and focused... scarcity = prioritization

-8) Eliminate boat anchors wasting time of previous with non-value-add bullshit.

</comment><comment><USER21> Off topic, but I'm so glad that writing has gotten more concise over the last 40 years.

</comment><comment><USER25> interesting that this is from 1976 and still applies to 2016, but does it apply to startup companies?

here are my takes on meetings in general, some correlated to the article's sentiments:

1\. avoid meetings when possible, avoid them like the plague. as a meeting organizer, you need to be very clear about your objective/goal for the meeting, so don't be too liberal with other people's time, but this also means when being asked to attend a meeting, cancelling or rejecting the ones you deem to be useless. learn to just say "no". as an engineer i feel this sometimes lowers your favorability in the eyes of managers or peers, but this sets the right culture and tone, if you're in a company where you attend a lot of useless meetings, i feel for you.

2\. avoid meetings when possible

3\. avoid meetings when possible

4\. for decision making meetings, limit the number, preferably <= 3, the more people you add, the more opinions you have to filter which sets things back. lots of my key decisions are done in private with one person. ever go into that meeting with 11 people in the room, all ready to say something for the sake of saying something? run, run as fast as you can!

5\. always list actions triggered from the meeting and follow up on them adamantly with owners assigned before leaving the room. the meetings where there's a lot of talk, but then everyone leaves without clear ownership are a waste of time.

6\. for developers, it's important to recognize that they maybe in "the zone", so if i must have a meeting with developers, i try to organize this during the beginning or end of the day, meetings during the middle of day tend to break them out of the zone, then they have to context switch back to that deep problem that they were thinking about which would be a huge productivity fail on everyone's part.

7\. keep things concise, we're not here to small talk about families or the warriors, do that at the water cooler. some people use this as an ice breaker to relax the mood, but that is just potentially a cover up for some big shit storm about to happen.

8\. for the meetings where you're trying to pass down information, keep it concise again, ok to reiterate key messaging, believe the shit that you're saying, have conviction.

9\. keep track of time, i hate all the assholes that overrun meeting times, i tend to attend these meetings less and less, if they can't prove that they can hold effective meetings then you lose my time.

10\. know thy audience, what messaging do you want to give, what messaging do you hope they digest, and tailor it, don't talk about stuff that 80% of the people don't care about, you're wasting people's time.

11\. the good ol' status meeting, everyone and their mother attends to get a feel for what others are working on, but has absolutely no pertinence to what i need to get done or have done. really keep things high level, this is not your chance to voice your opinion, or give people the illusion that you're busy. just talk about the high level points, if you have stuff to resolve, don't do it in the meeting, do it offline, ahead of the meeting.

12\. prepare well for meetings, i used to think that i could just waltz in and improvise, no, you need to prepare well, if you have a 1h meeting with 5 people, that's 6h of company time being spent, almost a full person day spent. you better be ready and you better get to the point.

13\. be on time, every minute wasted is amplified by the number of people waiting. i usually issue punishment for the ones that come in late, sometimes just the latest, sometimes everyone who's late, buy coffee, do pushups, whatever it is.

14\. i have a no phone and laptop policy in my meetings, sure you could be one of those new fangled flower power children that like to take notes on ipad/surface, or evernote on your laptop, but don't do that. you should, however, bring in a paper notebook. i know you have photographic memory, but bring that notebook, means you're well prepared and expecting something out of the meeting. i had a friend that brought his laptop to play nba live to his harvard law school class. i also had this senior director during a 3 on 1 interview doodle penises on his laptop while the candidate was talking. there's potential for a lot of mistrust in these circumstances. i think for the meeting owner to project onto a screen is obviously fine, but there's nothing concealed. assholes that answer phone calls or email during my meetings, unless you're sre/devops, should be banned from meetings. the goal should be to get out of the meeting as quickly as possible, everyone focused, if you cannot focus then things will drag on.

15\. avoid meetings if possible...

</comment><comment><USER26> 'an all-electronic, multichannel, microwave, fiber-optic video display dream console in his living room' ..phroar!</comment>