Count to ten when a plane goes down - <AUTHOR> http://johncbeck.tumblr.com/post/92074597917/count-to-ten-when-a-plane-goes-down <comment><USER2> Firstly, firing the intern doesn't make sense - it was a mistake waiting to happen and he just happened to do it at the wrong time.

Secondly, the punishment meted out should be:

1\. Proportional to the degree of carelessness (in this case not that much since he accidentally hit a wrong key adjacent to the right one, didn't mow down anybody while driving drunk)

2\. Inversely proportional to the likelihood of the error (in this case the likelihood was very high since the reset key was a. uncovered/single-press b. right next to single reset key).

3\. Proportional to intention (this was a completely unintentional error)

If you say, that the punishment should also be dependent on the degree of damage, I would say that the responsibility of managing the risk of such damage wasn't his but of the person responsible for implementing such a high risk design. If such a person is not around, find the person who approved such a design. Government departments are usually very good with paper trail.

<comment><USER3> I think you're wrong to ignore the consequences of the actions as an input to the punishment. A small amount of unintentional carelessness that causes huge damage could still be punished. One could argue that a certain degree of mindfulness in critical situations is a job requirement, and casually making a careless -- though unintended -- mistake demonstrates a lack of mindfulness indicating that the person is not properly qualified for the job.

I understand that we don't want a culture that fires people for making the sort of mistake anyone might make. But to be so careless on a day that is clearly an exception where something more important than standard business procedure is going on, can't you at least see why firing the intern for such a lack of mindfulness might at least make sense, even if you disagree with it?

I interned for a government organization that maintains hydroelectric dams and the software that controls them throughout the Southeastern US. A careless mistake could -- in the worst case -- cause blackouts, cost the company millions of dollars, or even cost lives (if the data-control feedback loop caused a turbine to spin up at the wrong time or to fail to shut off in an emergency). And, as is quite common in organizations with non-software- engineers running the show, the development processes were entirely haphazard. The environment was such that it would be really easy for me to push unreviewed code, or to make a stupid deployment mistake, or to be careless in a number of ways that the system didn't protect me against.

But it was OK, because they hired smart, competent people who understand the need to triple-check, if necessary, before committing. People who understood the gravity of the situation, and who didn't phone it in if they weren't feeling it that day. If I demonstrated that I wasn't one of those people, I would fully expect to be fired.

<comment><USER4> > I think you're wrong to ignore the consequences of the actions as an input > to the punishment.

This equivocates on "consequences" of actions, though. It's obvious that the consequences of hitting F7 before the incident were understood by all responsible to be low enough that any intern could be expected to make the right decision. After the incident, the consequences of hitting F7 were sharply increased such that no future intern would ever be allowed to make that decision. But then you can't make an argument that assumes "consequences" were the same at both points in time.

We make this fallacy all the time probably because we're designed by evolution to reassess the morality of an action based on consequences. It works as a social heuristic for shaming or rewarding people but it makes no rational sense that the morality of an action should retroactively change based on future consequences. You can see similar behavior in our rewarding athletes for profound genetic advantages, or punishing criminals for profound genetic deficits. The consequences somehow redeem or condemn, and they should do neither.

<comment><USER5> No, the consequences were the same before and after the incident: a total system reboot. The varying factor here was temporal: it was usually a low-risk action when the office was empty, a high-risk one when the office was full.

The negligence on the intern's part was to make decisions and act without regard for risk as if he was in the low-risk window despite the evidence he was actually in the high-risk one (all the already-active PCs).

It makes perfect sense that the punishment should reflect inappropriate regard being given for known consequences. That's what negligence is.

<comment><USER4> > No, the consequences were the same before and after

I'm talking about the perceived consequences, not the actual consequences. The fallacy here is to perceive low consequences at one point in time, perceive high consequences at a later time and then try to change history such that low consequences were never really perceived.

> The negligence on the intern's part was to make decisions and act without > regard for risk as if he was in the low-risk window despite the evidence he > was actually in the high-risk one (all the already-active PCs).

He was in a perceived low-risk window. The perceived consequence of accidental reboot was already figured in and was already perceived to be low. Else why would the F7 key be next to F6? It is certainly unfair to expect someone to perceive high-risk when everyone else perceives low-risk.

> It makes perfect sense that the punishment should reflect inappropriate > regard being given for known consequences. That's what negligence is.

The perceived consequences were low-risk, therefore the known consequences were low-risk.

<comment><USER5> > He was in a perceived low-risk window.

... _because_ he was negligent. "Oh, all the computers are already on? That only happens when Washington's waiting on something. Oh well, I'll carry on like this was any other low-risk morning"

> Else why would the F7 key be next to F6?

Same reason why "rm -rf " is the one keystroke away from disaster. Perceived risk has nothing to do with it.

<comment><USER4> > "Oh, all the computers are already on? That only happens when Washington's > waiting on something. Oh well, I'll carry on like this was any other low- > risk morning"

Because those situations were also low-risk mornings. He only saw that pattern when people left late. He had no reason to expect that people would be working early in the morning because that situation had never occurred. Further, a secretary playing a computer game in the morning suggests business as usual, no one working.

> He was in a perceived low-risk window. ... because he was negligent

No, someone else set up the computers and software with F6 and F7 command functions side by side and then evaluated the entire network as low-risk for interns under all situations. It is perfectly reasonable for an intern to take the same low-risk perspective as his superiors.

> Same reason why "rm -rf " is the one keystroke away from disaster. Perceived > risk has nothing to do with it.

Perceived risk has everything to do with it. It is inconceivable today that an intern would have unrestricted access to a company's file system and be literally a few keystrokes from disaster. The key reason for that is because perceived risk now is much closer to actual risk. In 1983, no one had a clue about the kinds of things that could go wrong. Understanding real risk is a painstaking process requiring time, trial and error.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The author states they felt it was appropriate when they were fired. In what world would it be appropriate to get fired for a single, simple, incredibly easy to make mistake? Doubly insane when there were exactly zero safeguards in place to prevent the mistake from being made.

<comment><USER5> The world where you know you that a) you have an incredibly powerful key with no safeguards at your fingertips and b) you might be in a breaking news situation and nonetheless you go for the key _right next to_ the dangerous one carelessly enough that you miss?

Think about it: Unix is equally as "insane". If you're the guy on the console who meant to clean out some crap dir and accidentally typoed "rm -rf /" and then caused an international crisis you're going to get fired too.

Then years later HN will call for Dennis Ritchie to get fired instead.

<comment><USER7> But typing "rm -rf /" is significantly harder to do accidentally than typing F7 instead of F6.

<comment><USER8> Not really, a lot of novice unix users are of the habit of removing files with -rf switch. I cringe everytime I see it.

The command "rm -rf ~/blue/" is just a single space key from being equivalent to "rm -rf /" with "rm -rf ~/blue /"

<comment><USER9> On any modern system it's actually "sudo rm -rf / \--no-preserve-root" and then entering your password while staring at the command.

"rm -rf ~/blue /" will not come close to deleting / unless you are in the habit of running every command as sudo, even ignoring the presence of --no- preserve-root

<comment><USER10> Except when: (these are terrible lessons to learn)

1\. You type it into the wrong system (D'oh)

2\. You have run `mount --bind / /somewhere/else` then `rm -rf /somewhere` a week later

:(

<comment><USER11> It boggles my mind that --one-file-system is not the default :/

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> How about when Russia returned the data recorders after years of refusing to South Korea - made a press spectacle of it - and then South Korea discovered the recorders were empty and missing the data tapes when the press was gone.

Or the US navy crew who received medals after shooting down the Iranian airline.

Once there is loss of life, it is 100% politics afterwards with little to no practicality, just look at all the mass shootings where there were zero changes afterwards. We simply do not value life, it is politics first.

<comment><USER13> > Or the US navy crew who received medals after shooting down the Iranian > airline.

You make it seem like they received the medal for having shot down the plane. In reality, those who were awarded medals, were awarded Tour of Duty medals for their time spend in a combat zone. I believe the distinction is important, particularly since that class of medals are routinely awarded to individuals during their time in the military.

<comment><USER12> If a police officer shot and killed innocent bystanders, should they get achievement awards for doing their job otherwise?

My answer would be no, you failed at your job regardless.

Same thing with military.

<comment><USER14> That's a very narrow minded position.

Gosh I hope you never screw up even once, cause you'll never live it down.

<comment><USER15> Would you say that making a mistake in software is equal to taking a human life?

<comment><USER14> Depends on the what the software does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The issue form most new stories is that even when the truth comes out, the great majority of people will never hear the actual facts. One issue is because news stations move on from caring about the story quickly. Or, the bigger issue in my opinion, is that people won't believe the new, correct facts since the old ones will have been engrained in their head. Solving both these issues would be really helpful for society, but are obviously damn hard to solve since we haven't really gotten anywhere in this space.

<comment><USER17> When there is such chaotic news story, I usually switch from news to Wikipedia. That has all the facts and continues the story even after all media lost interest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's a sign of poor management that someone has to be fired when something goes wrong, outages are learning situations for all involved, and it is widely held that the person who took the action that caused an outage is not responsible, but that all involved are responsible.

See John Allspaw's Swiss Cheese Theory : [http://www.kitchensoap.com/2012/02/10/each-necessary-but- onl...](http://www.kitchensoap.com/2012/02/10/each-necessary-but-only-jointly- sufficient/) .

[ Edit: I guess it's not Allspaw's model, but he applies it to systems engineering rather well - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model) ]

"Accidents emerge from a confluence of conditions and occurrences that are usually associated with the pursuit of success, but in this combination—each necessary but only jointly sufficient—able to trigger failure instead."

The person who pushed the button is not at fault, the manager is not at fault, the guy who designed the button is not at fault - all are jointly responsible.

Blaming the intern does, however, reflect extremely poorly on Itoh and everyone else in the chain of command. A superior who demands retribution for a simple mistake that happened to cause him or her pain is basically worthless.

But, I forget, we're talking about Ronald Reagan.

</comment><comment><USER19> I remember this time sequence very well because I was living in Taiwan when the incident happened. Yes, people who lived in east Asian time zones saw news reports that appeared to be based on knowledgeable sources that the plane might have landed safely with all passengers alive. This explanation of why the Western-aligned diplomats and military officials based in east Asia didn't have complete information when they were interviewed by the press is quite interesting, and explains puzzling memories I have from that day.

</comment><comment><USER20> >And let's hope that there is no stupid 23-year-old with his finger on an important keyboard in this information chain.

No. This is something you would read in _Design of Everyday Things_ where Don Norman would totally shame the the engineers who made that system. Software shouldn't be designed with the assumption that no one makes errors.

<comment><USER21> What I find incredible to believe is that this problem could have happened without the F7 erroneous keystroke by a human. A simple power outage could have resulted in this exact same catastrophe.

Why didn't the backups work? System wasn't "robust" enough. (Did I just use the word "robust"?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Really brave of the author to share this story. I know most people would be afraid to admit this kind of a public "mistake".

</comment><comment><USER23> Further reading for those who want to be disabused of the concept of _human errors_ :

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

</comment><comment><USER24> > _That Korean announcement and the slow response by the US President — both > caused by delayed real information — caused decades of conspiracy theories._

I appreciate that the OP was a part of the situation, but conspiracy theories were _not_ caused by this.

It was time of _very_ high tension between the US and Soviet Union. So when a plane veers off the course into not just Soviet airspace, but into an explicitly cordoned off top secret area, ignores all communication attempts, ignores the presence of fighter jets and just keeps on flying, then the situation itself is a fertile soil for conspiracy theories.

<comment><USER25> 'It was a time of very high tension' doesn't quite capture how different it was.

Through the glass of a yellow newspaper box, the _Miami News_ headline that the Soviets had shot down a plane carrying a Congressman. My first thought was "This is the war." Not 'a' but 'the'. The primary stance of the US military was squared off against the USSR and had been for more than 30 years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Wow. I got goosebumps when I read that article. I'm old enough to actually remember when KAL 007 was shot down, and while I wasn't old enough to hear about the conspiracy theories, I do remember the thing about people being safe and landing in Russia. To think that this was just a small mistake on the part of someone, which caused international ripple effect, and who later blogged about it is really something incredible.

</comment><comment><USER27> "With great power comes great responsibility."

Incidentally, "features" like this are why I don't trust systems that have some centralised control - IMHO giving any one individual (or organisation, in many cases these days) such power over others is not a good thing.

</comment><comment><USER28> Scapegoat. The ritual expulsion of the evil spirits wrapped neatly in a little parcel to appease the elders and thereby prevent them blaming each other - harmony continues in the hall of power. Meanwhile the problem was in the process, not the employee, so nothing has been fixed, and the guy who had learned the lesson is no longer there, and so the problem will recur with the next lamb to the slaughter.

</comment><comment><USER29> I disagree that it was appropriate that you were fired, but interesting story all about.

<comment><USER30> For security reasons I think that it might have been justified, considering the events that had just taken place. Still a crappy way to go out though.

<comment> brown9-2 What security reasons? Firing the author didn't change what had already happened.

<comment><USER30> People were bat shit crazy in the middle of that Cold War. If someone randomly decided to turn off machines without notice, even if they said "whoops accident, my bad", their actions would have instantly thought of as sabotage.

I'm not agreeing with the outcome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I often suspect that most of the work involved in keeping a power hierarchy going, is involved with trying to pretend that this kind of shit doesn't happen all the time.

<comment><USER32> And then conspiracy theorists latch onto this kind of shit, but believe that it must be malicious silliness...

Why didn't Reagan respond immediately? Well, he was waiting to hear from Chancellor Gorkon that the KAL flight had been successfully beamed aboard and was en route to Pluto, of course... Clearly they'd have their shit together better so it couldn't have been a 23-year old rebooting all the computers accidentally and wiping out hours of critical work -- that would just be ridiculous...

<comment><USER33> Conspiracy theorists are just 20th and 21st century prophets, really. They search for meaning in an all too often meaningless world.

It's comforting to think that people can control the direction of every choice in the world, and that someone is at the helm.

It's uncomfortable to think about the daily series of random, unconnected decisions that drive the direction of our species.

<comment><USER31> I'm not sure that it is more comforting to think that there is someone at the helm, as much as anyone who aspires to be considered to be at the helm has to keep pushing that story, so it gets repeated more often and with better special effects than the story about there not being anyone at the helm.

Actually being in control of stuff is very difficult, but convincing people that you are in control of stuff is pretty easy as we are all suckers for narrative. The main ways to disrupt a power narrative is to spread other narratives or for a situation to occur that upsets the existing narrative, so getting people to make up new ones. This explains why totalitarian governments can collapse so quickly, which wouldn't be possible if the people running them were actually in control of anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> My first thought after reading the article was that it was ridiculous to fire/scapegoat the author for hitting the wrong key, too. This has happened to me before, where a single keystroke ( in my case, a line break in a config file ) caused me to take down a production system. My punishment? Designing a more robust system that would protect itself from a badly formatted config file. To this day, ten years later, a similar error has not been repeated, despite several attempts of people to push bad config files to our production systems. If I had been instead fired, no doubt a similar, but perhaps not exact, error would have been repeated every year or so.

If I had made the same mistake twice without any attempts to fix the situation long term, then, yes, I think that would have been a fire-able offense.

If you're working with people who care primarily about their own positions and egos without regard to the team as a whole, well, be prepared to be thrown under the bus when it comes time for those people to protect themselves.

</comment><comment><USER35> Thanks for posting this. I found [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8062683](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8062683) yesterday but yours appears to be the direct link to the author's blog, which I had missed.

</comment><comment><USER36> Great story....thanks for your willingness to share.

</comment><comment><USER37> _> On this day, I highlighted her workstation and hit the F6 key to reset. But my screen went temporarily black and then seemed to be starting again. I realized that I had mistakenly hit F7 and reset all the workstations in the embassy._

Ugh.

Those with automation capabilities: keep this lesson in mind, because it will happen to you in production one day. 'dsh -a reboot' is incredibly easy to type and can have disastrous effects. Creating abstraction layers around common admin tasks can help catch simple mistakes and give prompts before dangerous behavior.

</comment><comment><USER38> I hope you fought that firing...

... incompetence like that comes from having F6 next to F7 and no checks or authorisation needed for a potentially dangerous action etc. Processes should be designed for people to make the common mistakes... its what they do.

<comment><USER38> nm. just seen the follow up. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> "My boss, a >> Japanese << computer engineer named Itoh, poked his head in the door. "

hmmm, I am pretty sure Mr. Itoh was not Japanese working in the American embassy. I am pretty sure he was American.

<comment><USER40> If he was a first gen American his culture would have been greatly shaped by Japanese culture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I thought the headline meant to count to ten when a plane goes down...while you are in it!

<comment><USER42> Me too. I still don't know how counting to 10 will help you press the right key on your keyboard though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Reset all computers in the embassy with F7? No warning prompt?

Fire the idiot who wrote that function.

<comment><USER44> In fairness, it was a different world back then. There were so few people administering computer networks that you could generally assume someone who was doing so had been thoroughly trained; and the thing about highly trained people is that they tend to view things like failsafes and safeties as pointless time-wasters.

"I know what I'm doing when I hit F7, but the damn system makes me sit there for _30 seconds_ before it does what I told it to do! Piece of junk."

The result was that software in that era tended to come with a lot more sharp edges. The age of the Recycle Bin that would save you from yourself didn't arrive until administering systems became something the general public was expected to do.

<comment><USER45> > you could generally assume someone who was doing so had been thoroughly > trained

No amount of training can prevent something like this. It's like today's browsers where the tab can be closed with ctrl+w and the whole window with ctrl+q. It doesn't matter how many times you've done it and how used are you to the position of the 'w'. One day you will close the whole window by accident.

<comment><USER46> _...the whole window with ctrl+q._

OMG I've never done that but now that I know about it I'm very afraid. If I do it tomorrow I'm blaming you.

<comment><USER47> Thankfully, Chrome has a built-in feature to prevent this from happening (on OSX at least). Just go to Chrome > Warn before Quitting and make sure there's a checkmark next to the option.

Now, if you accidentally press Cmd + Q, it should prompt a "Hold Cmd + Q to Quit" instead of actually quitting.

<comment><USER48> Or, Settings > On Startup... "Continue where you left off". This will restore your tabs after launching Chrome.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google launches the Nexus One with AT&T and Rogers support - <AUTHOR> http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2010/03/16/google-launches-the-nexus-one-with-att-and-rogers-support/ <comment><USER2> I wish they did this at first. I'm stuck on AT&T and bought the Nexus One when it came out. I couldn't handle Edge though, and got rid of it. My wife will kill me if I buy the same phone twice in a few months!

<comment><USER3> Contact Google. I bet there's a good chance they'll allow you to exchange it.

<comment><USER4> He already sent it back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So my question is, what sort of data plan does AT&T force you to buy in order to use this? AT&T's data plans are so confusing right now. There is a $30 "unlimited data and texting plan", but then there is a $50 version that is "unlimited data and texting for smartphones", etc.

It almost seems like a better deal to just get an iPod Touch with skype and google voice and carry around something like Verizon's MiFi.

<comment><USER6> Or buy a Nexus One and just don't put a simcard in it, and use a mifi for sharing a data connection... or just get a data plan from tmobile cheaper than what att and verizon charge....

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ugh...I _just_ bought my Nexus One too. Upgraded from an iPhone, so I'm still on AT&T right now. Would be nice if they could make one phone for both providers, but I'm sure that's more complex than I realize or understand.

Still, I'm moving to T-Mobile because I'm in a major city, so coverage is good, I'll have GSM for international travel, and AT&T is a roaming partner, so I can use them as a backup for free. All that and it's $30 per month cheaper. Hell yeah!

<comment><USER8> They use different bands for their 3G service, that's why they aren't in the same phone. I'm looking forward to when there is a chip that supports both so that we can get a GSM phone that supports any 3G service (or at least the common North American and European ones). Anyone have any idea when/if such a chip is coming out?

[IIRC, Rogers (Canada) and AT&T (USA) use a non-standard frequency for 3G service, but T-Mobile (USA) and WIND Mobile (Canada) use the same 'standard' frequencies that are used in Europe.]

<comment><USER7> The way it's been worded by others, it sounds like it's just a matter of tuning the radio to another frequency. Is the underlying protocol still the same between these providers since it's all just GSM?

<comment><USER8> GSM and CDMA are separate from 3G. That's why either of the GSM models of the NexusOne will work on any GSM network _and_ will work with Edge on any network. It's 3G that's different between these networks.

Also of note, is that most of these chips target a specific frequency (or frequencies). They are not software programmable radios. I imagine that the underlying protocol possibly differs between the different 3G bands (otherwise I would expect that someone would have created a chip that supports all of the common bands by now).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Two questions:

1\. If I currently have an iPhone 3GS on AT&T, will the Nexus One work with my existing data plan? I'd like to use both phones, at least at first, but I don't want two data plans.

2\. Does the Nexus One support tethering on AT&T? Presumably it would if it supports it on other networks and is simply an unlocked device, since there's no carrier involvement. Right?

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. Yes. You should be able to do so by using your iphone sim card in your Nexus One and you should be all set.

2\. Not officially... [http://www.redmondpie.com/tethering-on-google-nexus- one-9140...](http://www.redmondpie.com/tethering-on-google-nexus-one-9140329/)

<comment><USER10> Can someone confirm that I can swap the sim between my iPhone and a Nexus One? I've been doing some Android development and I need some hardware.

<comment><USER11> I have successfully swapped a SIM from an iPhone to a E72 nokia. Worked just fine.

<comment><USER10> Wow, free FedEx overnight shipping. Google must be making a nice profit.

<comment><USER12> Overnight shipping for something the size of a phone is not very expensive. And it gets cheaper when you ship 160,000 of something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Maybe I'm missing something essential, but what's the nature of "support" here? They say I can put any SIM card into the phone, so what's the deal?

I'm seriously asking, as I'm located in Europe, and wanted to use dev Nexus One with any card I'd put into it.

</comment><comment><USER14> the more i think about this model, the more it makes sense to me.

eventually google can start to leverage their phones sales and can negotiate service contract prices if more device manufacturers sign up to sell their phones thru google.

<comment><USER3> Agree. Maybe that would happen when the Nexus One is available on both Verizon and Sprint.

<comment><USER4> That will be soon, and then we should see some very exciting things. Given the way the Droid has sold I expect the Verizon edition of the N1 to do pretty well, even without much marketing from Google.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If there were an AT&T subsidy, I would upgrade from my crappy AT&T Samsung phone in an instant.

<comment><USER16> Why would you want a subsidy? Doesn't AT&T offer discounted plans sans contract?

<comment><USER2> Nope. That's only T-Mobile. If you buy the Nexus One, you're best to also pick up the next iPhone at $200 and sell it for $700, to make up for the extra 20 bucks a month you'll be paying for the next two years.</comment></comment></comment>


Joining Tailscale: Simplifying Networking, Authentication, and Authorization - <AUTHOR> https://bradfitz.com/2020/01/30/joining-tailscale <comment><USER2> > I used to tolerate and expect complexity. Working on Go the past 10 years > has changed my perspective, though.

Reminds me of the Redis manifesto that has provided helpful perspective over the years.

 _We 're against complexity. We believe designing systems is a fight against complexity._

[http://download.redis.io/redis- stable/MANIFESTO](http://download.redis.io/redis-stable/MANIFESTO)

<comment><USER3> I think it's fine for tools to be complex internally if they make things easier for people externally.

Go is generally simple to work with, but it intentionally doesn't provide syntax sugar for many things, like error handling. I suspect this is because the creators of Go also want to keep their codebase simple as well.

At first this explicitness is great, but then it turns into boilerplate, obscures the purpose of your code, and increases the code you need to maintain. But having worked a lot with Rails, I do still value the explicitness of Go. So it's a tradeoff.

<comment><USER4> _I think it 's fine for tools to be complex internally if they make things easier for people externally._

Is it though? [https://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is- better.html](https://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> For context, this is a post from bradfitz, the creator of LiveJournal, memcached, OpenID, been on the core Go team for last 10 years or so.

There was a recent thread on him leaving Google: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22161383](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22161383)

</comment><comment><USER5> So I get that things were easier before all networks needed to be treated as zero trust. But should we really return to that? Just adding another layer of network abstraction with another malted milk-ball network security configuration? (gooey and unprotected on the inside)

Part of me thinks this is like when cars were super simple to work on and you had plenty of "shadetree" mechanics. As vehicle safety systems and emissions controls increased we built safer and cleaner vehicles. They are harder to work on at first because you have to learn the concepts of more systems. Brake systems evolved to ABS controllers then further on to Traction/Stability Controllers. Understanding one system makes it easier to understand the others.

I guess I am saying improvement does make things more complex. The most basic engine is loud, pollutes but works just fine. That does not mean it better- it was fun to toy with but a tuned well engineered machine is just as much fun if you can learn to tinker with it and play.

There will always be someone who will tell you your fuel injected, closed loop, oxygen and maf sensor controlled combustion cycle is less fun than an ol' fashion v8 with a carb.

I actually enjoy the paranoid world where we are building inherent security into every layer of computing. I learn something new every day and get to make something better.

<comment><USER6> > I learn something new every day and get to make something better.

Best wishes to you. But what about the masses who want to get things done with their tools, not build tools? Who can't afford even $20K car, who aren't being served by the Googles and Amazons who only want to build datacenter-hosted systems?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting. Authentication via IP could definitely simplify a lot of things. But how do you handle authorization/delegation for 3rd party access?

<comment><USER8> Tailscale networks are private. The only way to access an IP is through a WireGuard tunnel. The only way to be in the WireGuard configuration file is to have linked your public key against your identity. Every packet has an identity attached.

<comment><USER9> > Every packet has an identity attached.

So, this part is super interesting to me, but I'm curious on how you envision that working inside applications.

For example, I have a tcp server that does

      ln, err := net.Listen("tcp", ":8080")
      conn, err := ln.Accept()

How do I get the identity for the connection? conn.RemoteAddr() will give me the ip address, but how do I know what the metadata associated with the identity is?

Same sort of idea for inbound http requests.. if I wanted to identify if a connection was from a user or an admin?

As I understand it, much of beyond corp type implementations rely on client certs or Identity Aware Proxies that include the user metadata along with the request.

<comment><USER6> Aside, why would you write 'err' instead of '_' if you aren't using the result?

<comment><USER9> Because hacker news is not a go compiler.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> That's the company of the guy blogging at apenwarr.ca (I always forget his name, although I really like his blog).

<comment><USER4> Avery Pennarun is his name.

<comment><USER11> ... Tailscale is his game.

<comment><USER4> At first I had written "His name is Avery Pennarun" but that was way too Fight Club.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This seems like identity based authn all over again, with all the problems that go with it. Confused deputy, etc.

</comment><comment><USER13> I like the idea but unfortunately there is not much documentation.

I got it up and running on my home "server" (a arm sbc) and on my iphone and ipad but none of them can contact the server on the provided ip. Probably something I am doing wrong but there is not really much on how to debug it.

<comment><USER14> (co-founder here)

Please email firstname.lastname@example.com and we'll help you out!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Enterprise networks are becoming less LANish and now our home networks are supposed to move towards a VPN based architecture? Should we not drive security in the direction e2e and application level?

<comment><USER16> My opinion is that, in its current form, tailscale essentially provides a cross-platform super-configurable discovery and key-management layer to a P2P network overlay on top of the public internet and secured by Wireguard.

It's like stunnel or ghosttunnel but for L3, and that let's you replace the gargantuan IPSec with something that's way simpler and nimbler like wireguard.

As for LAN vs BeyondCorp... tailscale _has_ BeyondCorp influences. It uses federated identity (OpenID for instance) _and_ device credentials (see: wireguard crypto-routing) to let you in on any mesh network that you have access to be . It is not something novel but super complicated to do it as _simply_ as possible. And wireguard is a key enabler for just that.

BeyondCorp is obviously much more than just SSO. You might also be interested in: [https://www.beyondcorp.com/](https://www.beyondcorp.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> For a company that wants to be open, Tailscale.com is conspicuously missing any pricing info at all.

<comment><USER11> In progress. Super early days. Most importantly, things need to be finished/polished.

<comment><USER16> Are you joining as a founder?

The team at tailscale is stellar. I love the mission statement, as well: With B Cantrill's [https://oxide.computer](https://oxide.computer) taking on the hardware and OS side of things and tailscale starting off with the network, things are really shaping up for a post-cloud future, already. I'm sure you'll find a use for perkeep to reduce _the long tail of the software development_ [0].

Good luck (not that you need it), Brad Fitz. Your work on pubsubhubbub has inspired me since I was a school going kid.

[0] I guess the name is a nod to one of the most fascinating tech papers I've ever read: [https://blog.acolyer.org/2015/01/15/the-tail-at- scale/](https://blog.acolyer.org/2015/01/15/the-tail-at-scale/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It looks like competition is heating up for ZeroTier, Gravitational, and Cloudflare Access.

</comment><comment><USER19> It's obvious that Tailscale founders are well connected and have very powerful friends, nobody can even tell what the product is yet they already popular on HN and Twitter. This Heptio-tier strategy already proved to be very profitable and successful. Probably the company will be sold to Google within 3 years at a huge number then merged and burned within a year later without nobody noticing what the hell what that was all about.</comment>


Webapp with crowdsourced aggregated ratings and photos of places in real time - <AUTHOR> https://spotter.live <comment><AUTHOR> all updates and photos are anonymous. Users can add spots that havent been added yet besides rating them. no need for an account.</comment>


The Unhealthy Truth Behind 'Wellness' and 'Clean Eating' - <AUTHOR> http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/ruby-tandoh-eat-clean-wellness <comment><USER2> TL/DR: meta article about how author had an eating disorder despite eating healthy food. Unpleasantly poorly cited and subjective. Encourages reader to cease pursuit of "wellness" knowledge and "just live".</comment>


Dear American Consumers: Please don't start eating healthfully - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2013/05/19/dear-american-consumers-please-dont-start-eating-healthfully-sincerely-the-food-industry/ <comment><USER3> I have a solution to the obesity epidemic, that would be realistic to implement. Right now the factors for what we analyse in nutrition is calories, macro nutrient content, and micronutrient content. What we really care about is satiation and satiety. These are words that no one talks about, and but get to the core of the issue. If I eat this food, how many calories will I consume before feeling full?(satiation). After eating this food, how long until I feel the need to eat again? (sateity).

Unfortunately the research and measurements of these values is thin. We need to fix that. We already know things like whole milk better provides satiation and sateity than skim milk, and children that drink whole milk actaully have less obesity than skim milk drinkers.

If we just measured and labeled foods with a sateity/satiation index (what we really care about), then people would actually have a chance to pick better foods. Right now it is damn near impossible to determine if eating eggs and bacon for breakfast is more likely to drive over eating vs cereal. It can be measured, but we just don't do it.

<comment><USER4> I don't think that works too well. There's a large factor on satiety which is how hungry, or even happy, you feel at the moment.

The most important factor for keeping calories intake low is making many small meals a day, and we won't solve that changing food, but lifestyle. The obesity epidemic is a direct result of sitting in an office 9 to 5 (or 6,7,8,...) and making two meals a day full of fat and sugar, because you're craving.

When you have a better lifestyle, you naturally gravitate towards better food, because you have time to cook (as opposed to pizza/snacks) or look for good dinner (as opposed to drive-thru), have time to go to the grocery store buy vegetables/fruits more frequently (as opposed to industrialized food which doesn't spoil), and even time to appreciate food itself making various small meals a day.

EDIT: I would like to know why the downvote. The correlation between obesity and office workers is a recurrent research topic.

<comment><USER5> > The most important factor for keeping calories intake low is making many > small meals a day

Is there any research that actually shows that?

My own personal experience with leangains (intermittent fasting; taking all my calories in an 8 hour window with lunch being my first and biggest meal) is that I find it far harder to overeat that way than with smaller meals. It's "easy" to fit in a snack between small meals, but after lunch I'm totally sick of food, and it's hard for me to even meet my macro nutrient goals (I lift weights; my protein intake is high). Often I have to force myself to take in a second meal to meet my calorie needs (edit: because I simply often don't _want_ to eat again before the end of my eating window, around 8pm, after my massive lunch at noon).

On the opposite end, I see very few people around me that eat "only" two meals. My co-workers for example, might very well only sit down for a meal twice, but they snack constantly. And their "snacks" are often substantially higher calorie than their main meals. When I _did_ try to diet with many small healthy meals, it was a nightmare - I was constantly hungry and constantly craving food.

When I do intermittent fasting, I have hunger pangs in the mornings 2-3 days, and then I stop being hungry in the mornings.

<comment><USER4> The whole point with many meals a day is not waiting to have a giant munchie to eat, because when you do so you'll look for high-fat, high-sugar food and devour an insane ammount of calories in minutes before your body triggers a sensation of satiety. Then depending on your genetics and level of activity, you will get malnourished, obese or both.

You stopping having hunger pangs in the mornings after some days is your body adapting to your schedule. As long as you don't go lunch with a blackhole in the stomach and are mindful about what you're eating, it's fine. Still, eating something in between is important to avoid wild sugar peaks and helps improving cognition performance if your job is intellectual.

<comment><USER6> _Still, eating something in between is important to avoid wild sugar peaks and helps improving cognition performance if your job is intellectual._

I am not sure if this is true. I think in people without diabetes, insulin does it's job and regulates your blood sugar pretty well during a fast and I think cognition is better when a large amount of your body's resources are not being used to digest food.

<comment><USER7> Maybe, but it seems to me the trick is not to end up developing type 2 diabetes by repeatedly spiking blood sugar to the point the pancreas gives up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interesting.

Over the years, this is the third or fourth version of this same story that I've read.

Read one on low carbs. Read one on low fat. Now this one.

The assumption here, as it was in the others, is that we now know what works and what doesn't. And that forces beyond our control conspire to keep us fat. In this version, the thesis is that some form of certification system for marketing to children can cure the obesity epidemic.

Beats me. But I'll bet twenty bucks that a decade or two from now we'll be reading the same type of article, only with different kinds of suggested cures.

I'm of the opinion that there is nothing wrong, or rather that the population is acting entirely naturally and appropriately given their adaptation to specific evolutionary conditions, which have changed drastically in the last 100 years. I doubt controlling marketing material will have a long-lasting effect, but anything is worth a shot. It is a very serious problem.

Looking at the recent past, I'd be just a bit more humble about it.

<comment><USER9> Go read the article linked to in the post:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the- extraordinary...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the- extraordinary-science-of-junk-food.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)

It doesn't take a conspiracy, or especially evil actors, or even the population acting unnaturally (WTF would that even mean?). All it takes is millions of local optimizations to get us into the state we're in now: optimize a marketing campaign for profitability, optimize a snack for deliciousness, optimize what you stock based on what sells and what takes the longest to spoil, optimize what you eat based on price and healthiness judged on limited and flawed information ("low in fat! just ignore the rest of the ingredients...").

Lots and lots of evidence out there for you on the malleability of the human appetite, from people changing the portions that they eat based on the size of the plate they have in front of them, to the absurd effectiveness of rearranging grocery stores to sell snack food, children's food, etc _on top of_ what people would already buy. We are complicated creatures, and you only need a few percentage points from each of these things to justify doing them.

And again, there is nothing evil in saying "I will make a packaged children's lunch that kids will actually love", and there's nothing wrong with a parent deciding to get that lunchable for their kid. We could try to demonize both parties there (good luck with that), _or_ we could try to change the fitness landscape and figure out ways to at least better stack the odds in favor of healthier eating.

Marketing at kids might not be the best lever, but it is one of the easiest, as it is extremely effective (again, see that article), children are already acknowledged as a protected class when it comes to some types of speech (definitely when regulated by the FCC, and narrowly-defined laws like COPA have been upheld by the supreme court, for better or worse), and there's precedent that the public will accept this (parents are already harried enough by requests for specific brands, and the cigarette ad bans in the 90s have shown that there could easily be support for this sort of thing).

<comment><USER10> >optimize a snack for deliciousness

Oh noh!, that snack is so delicious that I cannot stop eating it.

It really puzzles me that, in America, the 'vote with your wallet' place, people who _care_ to be healthier doesn't just start buying healthier foods.

After all, the USA is characterized for a strong free market no? as soon as demand for healthier food increases, companies surely would start selling this kind of food I think.

The truth is that people don't care (and not only Americans... in Mexico we have the same problems).

<comment><USER11> They care. They care very much. But, they want the fix to be easy and convenient. Therefore, what we get are foods that people _think_ are healthier, but actually aren't. Why do they think they are healthier? Because producers and advertisers convince them of such. (Think whole-wheat/grain pasta.) The reality is that the truly healthiest food options are also the least-processed. But that reality doesn't sell because it requires too much effort and "sacrifice" on the part of the consumer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > _For example, any food marketed to children must "contain at least 50% by > weight one or more of the following: fruit; vegetable; whole grain; fat-free > or low-fat milk or yogurt; fish; extra lean meat or poultry; eggs; nuts and > seeds; or beans."_

UK advice is to give children full fat milk until they are 2, and not skimmed until they are 5, and only then if they have a good diet. This is because of the fat soluble vitamins, and also because children need the energy. As part of a sensible diet full fat milk is fine.

This advice is part of the healthy drinking stuff. Children should have water or full fat milk. If you give them fruit juice dilute it at least 10 parts water to 1 part juice. Use a free-flow beaker, or a straw cup, or a regular cup, rather than a sippy cup.

All this advice from government sounds a bit preachy. But tooth removal is a significant cause for hospitalisation for UK children under 5.

([http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/apr/10/tooth- health-p...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/apr/10/tooth-health- poverty-caries))

Tooth care ([http://www.nhs.uk/chq/Pages/2366.aspx?CategoryID=62&SubC...](http://www.nhs.uk/chq/Pages/2366.aspx?CategoryID=62&SubCategoryID=63))

squash and fruit juice better than fizzy drinks? ([http://www.nhs.uk/chq/Pages/are-squash-and-pure-fruit- juice-...](http://www.nhs.uk/chq/Pages/are-squash-and-pure-fruit-juice-better- for-children-than-fizzy-drinks.aspx?CategoryID=62&SubCategoryID=63))

Cups and beakers ([http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/pregnancy-and- baby/pages/drinks...](http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/pregnancy-and- baby/pages/drinks-and-cups-children.aspx#close))

</comment><comment><USER13> > The guidelines said that foods advertised to children must provide "a > meaningful contribution to a healthful diet."

I've never received a convincing explanation of why advertising to children shouldn't be generally banned.

<comment><USER14> To pay for the development of children's entertainment. Public television is wonderful but I bet all of us look back fondly on a show that we loved as children that would not have existed without ads to pay for its production.

<comment><USER15> Following this train of thought to its logical conclusion: Without children's entertainment, kids would be forced to read free books from the library or go play outside. The horror!

Look, shared cultural nostalgia is great, and all, but I'm not sure that makes for a good reason to allow advertizing to kids.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The proposal mandating 50% of something in food marketed to kids is stupid nonsense. If anything, reason should tell you that evolution must have selected for a "resiliant" digestive system - so much that it's thriving on anything we throw at it. So why bother increasing the costs - besides for control and power?

Do you have any reason to believe the experts know better what is good for one's health? Do they have large scale studies properly done? (I mean not on rats but on humans - it's kinda tough to force them to eat only what's prescribed during a study, and you can't follow them all day long for years) Do you want so much to reduce customer choice and force your thoughts on them? This is the polar opposite to freedom, and based on a flawed methodology.

There are some evidence that a given regime or another may be beneficial for a given disease, but nothing convincing yet to the best of my knowledge when taking into account all the diseases (you don't get to hand pick the diseases you'll get).

IMHO, the proper methodology would require a large scale datamining operation along with biological tests and proper outcome monitoring. We just don't have all the technology to do that yet on say at least 10 million humans for 10 years (and that wouldn't be large scale - there are 6 billions of us, and with a longer lifespan!).

10 millions over 6 billions would be a 0.0016 ie 0.16% sample - with such a small sample on only 1/7 of the human lifespan, I wish you good luck to anyone willing to take into account genetic polymorphism, intolerance to some food (milk, gluten) etc. It will just be an exercice in "manually correcting" so many things that the end result should not be trusted.

Basically, at the moment we don't know for sure what's best, and we can't.

To quote Djikstra, I'd say such laws and rules are just the root of all evil - premature optimization!!!

EDIT: Downvotes as always. I find that downvoting for a disagreement is not fair play. You don't like my opinion? I would be delighted to be proved wrong, with facts please.

<comment><USER17> Yes, it's hard.

We can't experiment directly on humans - we can only look for correlations, which always causes trouble with determining causality. Biological questions are inherently complicated, so any hypothesis is necessarily little more than a stab in the dark, even if we had the ability to compensate for genetic variation et cetera, which we most certainly don't. Large-scale studies are expensive, time-consuming, difficult to organize, and would inevitably end up politicized from 200 different directions, and then driven into the ground in the next campaign season.

In short, any and all dietary studies are doomed to be 99% failures.

But that 1% is important. I don't think there's much question that we have a better understanding today, of what constitutes healthy food, than we did 50 years ago. We know, in particular, that foods rich in certain substances (I don't want to try to classify them all in one or two words, because I don't study this stuff and would get it wrong - I'm talking about tradition "junk foods" and sweets, like cupcakes and potato chips.), are strongly correlated with a wide variety of health issues, the incidence of which has increased over the last several decades. Furthermore, these foods are inherently attractive to children, and (perhaps more controversially?) display limited addictive properties.

Yeah, our knowledge is limited, and yeah, we'll have missteps. But I don't think this is "premature optimization" - the program's running really slowly, and everyone's complaining about it. We don't understand a lot of why it takes so long to finish, but there is something we can do that would probably make it at least 5% faster. Why not give it a shot, and then go back to profiling?

Oh, and have an upvote, for contributing to the conversation. Because that's the etiquette around here, although some seem to have forgotten.

<comment><USER16> Thanks for this interesting counter argument (and for the upvote, although the effect was quite short - I guess there are more emotional than rational voters).

It is quite valid - if we have a strong suspicion on something, it could be helpful to give a shot.

I'm just concerned we don't know how strong our suspicion is, which turns that into a bet (more on that later)

The real problem IMHO is that this bet will certainly prevent or stall proper studies for a long time afterwards.

Take for example LSD - there are many results suggesting it might be effective on depression. Yet it was banned, which means once we have the technology to conduct a real large scale study, we may not have enough data points as we would have if it had not been banned (thanks to recreational users)

I mean, it is not ethical to willfully expose human to known dangerous drugs, yet if they take it wilfully by themselves or by mistake, it's a great source of data: for example, pharmacovigilence collects accidental use of drugs by pregnant mothers to guesstimate the toxicity on the fetus or the LD50 on humans)

This is just an example, but you can see how it might scale, basically we are taking bets, and it hampers research.

Also, it is quite philosophical. Personally, I'm against coffee due to its addictive potential and it's social image, yet it would be wrong for me to say there are no positive outcomes linked to it, or that on average it might have positive health benefit. I just don't know. There are many contradictions and I remember reading an article on how there seems to be time trends in negative or positive studies result, with an oscillation. (which would suggest that our research results are biaised by our perception)

An outright ban on caffeine, like on LSD, even if it might be a) coherent with my refusal, and b) more comfortable to me since I know I wouldn't be accidentally exposed to coffee (ex: in a soda), would certainly hamper further research, which would be detrimental if there was after all a positive health benefit on average - ie it would deprive me of future data which could help me change my mind.

IMHO, with bad data, taking bet with one's health is acceptable (if at no cost for the health system). Taking bets with the other people health - aka banning or mandating, is wrong.

EDIT: I just noticed your answer. Sorry if I improperly stated my intend. The goal was not to enter into a philosophical debate, but to have counter arguments. I am interested in either proving or disproving my thoughts - <USER2> are fine. Therefore, to avoid sparking a debate, I will not reply to your comment. Your answer however was very helpful and helped me clarify my thoughts. I agree with your points. Thanks a lot, thanks also for telling me your position and your data on coffee. For my position on coffee, see <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5632696> and <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5632995> \- I'd rather not say more, or a coffee fanboy may start a debate.

<comment><USER17> Oh man, a philosophical/ethical rabbit hole! Down we go...

> I mean, it is not ethical to willfully expose human to known dangerous > drugs, yet if they take it wilfully by themselves or by mistake, it's a > great source of data: for example, pharmacovigilence collects accidental use > of drugs by pregnant mothers to guesstimate the toxicity on the fetus or the > LD50 on humans)

The issue at hand isn't the subject's consent, I assume - the issue is our act of encouraging an individual to do something that might be harmful. Otherwise, there would be nothing wrong with performing studies on heroin use, as long as the appropriate warning labels were affixed. (I'm just assuming you're not a hard-core libertarian. If you are: just have a private company enforce the ban, and all will be well ;P )

I think, though, that it's also unethical to allow /others/ to knowingly encourage an individual to do something harmful. I recognize this is pretty controversial (if I were religious, I'd be a pain in the ass), but it means that if we are reasonably certain that item X is harmful, banning or restricting advertising is a must.

I also think it's ethically preferred to, where feasible act to discourage others (without coercion) from doing things harmful to themselves. Government- and charity-run nutrition programs, PSAs, etc.

That's our ethical dilemma, I guess, or at least mine. On the one hand, long- term scientific knowledge may be more rich and valuable if nothing is done. On the other, there is a moral imperative to take actions which might limit that long-term knowledge.

I'm inclined to assert, boldly and without factual basis, that there will be "enough" people who disregard the advertisements and PSAs, that scientists won't be much bothered by the missing data. Remember it's not like LSD; we're not banning the substance, just the encouragement. People smoke plenty of cigs, even though they're not advertised (and there's abundant negative advertising).

(By the way, I'm also very against coffee, having bad personal experiences with an individual who's behavior was/is noticeably negatively affected by the stuff. I'd support normalizing drug laws by lumping hyper-junk foods, caffeine, alcohol, cigs, pot, and other mildly harmful items of varying addictiveness into one big "restricted advertising" category, and using the taxes to send out occasional PSAs.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> While I agree with most of what is in the article, I always wince when I see whole grains advertised as healthful foods.

They're not. Wheat contains gluten, a known gastrointestinal irritant, and celiac and IBD patients know that wheat is one thing you want to stay away from. It can also trigger inflammation and cause serious health problems for anyone with an inflammatory condition.

Perhaps proposing gluten-free foods is a better idea.

In addition, the guidelines for "advertising to children" are quite peculiar, and I don't know why children should be advertised to at all. What even constitutes advertising to children is not quite clear either.

<comment><USER19> Gluten free doesn't mean 100% of the gluten is removed from the food. So most people who are 'severely allergic' to gluten are really just convinced that is the case.

The last time I saw my cousin she looked and acted anorexic, meanwhile raving about her new gluten free vegan lifestyle. She looked terrible. My other cousin who suffers from narcolepsy was on the same diet raving about all her new energy while falling asleep at the table. Meanwhile I went from being the fattest person in the family to the most in shape in less than 10 months. I usually jokingly order a side of gluten these days, just to piss the gluten freers off.

Tip for American grocery shoppers: Don't hit the isles. Stay within the vegetable and fruits section, shop there, only there, then leave. That is a healthy diet. Usually there are nuts and meat in that section. Don't be looking for the gluten free potato chips and cookies, that isn't healthy.

<comment><USER20> >> Don't hit the isles. Stay within the vegetable and fruits section, shop there, only there, then leave.

I really couldn't say it any better than this. Vegetables people. Get more of them. Fresh ones. Learn to enjoy onions and mushrooms.

<comment><USER21> I couldn't help but giggle at your choices - onions are not particularly healthy as far as vegetables go (better than potatoes, not as good as nearly any other veg) and mushrooms aren't vegetables. That said, I'm all for eating more vegetables (though fresh v. frozen is not an important consideration in my mind; I eat plenty of frozen peas, carrots, artichokes, and broccoli).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This gallery was going around recently:

<http://imgur.com/a/mN8Zs>

Apparently a journalist asked one family in each of 20 different countries to gather all of the food they bought in one week and take a picture. It's a fascinating look at global diets. The UK is even more disturbing than the US.

<comment><USER23> Mexico is interesting. A table full of fresh food, and... what looks like 12 2-liter bottles of Coke.

On the USA table, there is literally nothing fresh. Every food is packaged, plus McDonalds, Burger King, 2 pizzas... Plus Diet Coke of course.

And in Germany, again looks like a lot of healthy food there but then there's like 4 bottles of wine and 30 bottles of beer. Uh, that's a weeks worth of booze is it?

And finally, with Chad. Three bags of something (rice I suppose) and a bottle of water. No fresh food, like the Americans. But compare the two pics side by side - wow.

<comment><USER22> Side note: it used to be that Mexican Coke contained cane sugar instead of HFCS. Not sure any more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This article points to the very obvious problem that it is very profitable to sell unhealthy foods in the US.

There are a number of reasons for this, but one of them is caused by the government. We subsidize the growing of industrial corn, soy, and wheat. These are the primary ingredients of junk food -- and junk food is significantly cheaper because of these subsidies.

The subsidies provided for growing fruits and vegetables are extremely low compared to the subsidies for these big '3' ingredients.

There are reason Coca Cola is made with corn syrup in the US, and real sugar in Mexico. The reason is farm subsidies, which make the cost of corn significantly cheaper, and thus make the cost of a can of Coke much less to produce.

A very simple step to fixing the obesity issue is to change the farm subsidies. The artificial government role in the market should be modified to support the growth of healthy foods, instead of supporting the growth of corn and soy.

Unfortunately, this is very unlikely to happen due to the political climate that has existed for a long time.

However, in my dream world, here's what I would do:

Gradually transition farm subsidies away from big industrial farms, to small local farms that produce a variety of crops. Over 10-15 years, all farms over a certain size would no longer be eligible for subsidies. Instead, small farms that produce and sell food to their local population would be eligible for subsidies. And they would get more for producing a diverse crop, and for certain organic practices. Ideally the cheap food would eventually be produced by tens of thousands of small farms that serve their local communities and are accountable to their local communities.

Plus, a huge network of local farms would result in a very resilient food system -- one of the primary goals of food subsidies.

<comment><USER25> The other thing is weight. A bag of chips is 3 or 4 oz. A case of them is a few pounds. A similar sized box of vegetables is 15 or 20 pounds.

The chips will last a few weeks. Vegetables will last a few days.

<comment><USER24> You're absolutely right about weight. One of the big concerns of an industrial food system is shipping. The other big concern is shelf life.

Neither of these are nearly as big of a concern if you get your food from a local farmer. The health of the consumer is not much of a concern, except in terms of marketing.

Right now, it is more expensive to buy local food from a farmers market than it is to buy industrial produced shipped from thousands of miles away. This should change, and it should change by shifting subsidies away from large industrial farms to small local farms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> No one knows what food is healthy and what food isn't.

Full stop.

The more you read about this, the more you realize it is so. Government advice and regulation about healthy eating has likely been a contributing factor to a huge explosion in chronic disease. Enough is enough, improve and expand mandatory food labeling and stay out of the rest.

Meanwhile, no one should market anything to kids, if you really think about it.

<comment><USER27> > No one knows what food is healthy and what food isn't.

I don't know about "healthy" food, but I'm pretty certain that Cap'n'Crunch Oops All Berries! (which contains 50% sugar and— _oops_ —no berries whatsoever) is the opposite of that.

Better labeling is nice, but I'd rather have a law that says that breakfast cereals should contain at least 50% of cereals.

<comment><USER26> So you want to remove my choice to buy Cap'n'crunch because you are pretty sure it isn't healthy.

<comment><USER28> Personally, I would hate to take away your choice to make yourself fat. Less competition for me in pretty much everything - jobs, friends, women, you name it.

<comment><USER29> The Government Regulation created the problem, so to solve it you want more Government Regulation?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Jesus figure out how to package soylent already. Honestly, if I could buy a vaguely appetizing drink at 7/11 and knew that it had 1/3 of my daily nutrients, I'd be pretty damn ecstatic.

<comment><USER31> Can all of you who just want to be disembodied brains please figure out a way to do so? The rest of us would like your spare organs. Thanks.

<comment><USER30> Hey I like my extreme sports just like anyone else. I just don't get why we can't have nutritious mass produced dollar meals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Ironically, I doubt the industry would lose as much money as is claimed. Instead they would mostly likely just reorganize themselves about being profitable by selling healthy foods. The only problem I see is how long it would take for them to reorganize around healthy foods.

</comment><comment><USER33> I just started the paleo diet and lost 10 lbs this last month.

Overwhelmingly I've been amazed to see that most people seem to have no regard whatsoever for their nutrition. Things go into their body but it often has 0 nutricional value.

Also - it's actually really really hard to eat well. Since so many restaurants cater to what people are familiar with, there's next to no alternative for people trying to eat nutritious food.

<comment><USER34> > Also - it's actually really really hard to eat well.

Not to mention it's expensive. I spend about $1200 a month just at Whole Foods, mostly on organic and raw foods. And that's just for myself.

<comment><USER35> You are paying for affiliation, not quality.

<comment><USER34> The thing is, I read "Super Immunity" by Joel Fuhrman and I've been obsessed with following his recommendation of eating greens, onions, mushrooms, beans, berries and seeds every day. Whole Foods is the only place around here where I can get all of these grown organically.

Pesticides scare me. Especially since I can't be bothered to wash my food before eating it. But as I understand it, if you use pesticides, then the plants don't produce their own natural chemicals that fight off pests and other symbiotic organisms. I don't remember where I read it but according to my research those chemicals are very beneficial part of the total nutriment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I have a solution for the obesity epidemic which would be difficult to implement, but might actually work:

Address the socioeconomic and political factors that create so much poverty in our country, and which also depress income in general.

We evolved to eat meat. The ethics of this I won't touch but the economics are only a sticking point if you assume we must have a poverty-stricken underclass in our country. And by poverty stricken underclass I mean anyone who can't afford a couple of lbs of free range organic meat per day.

Do the math. Because most of our pre-civilization ancestors ate like that all the time. Why can't we afford the same?

And don't say overpopulation. Back of the envelope math says the US could easily produce meat at those levels for around 600 million people. And modern societies have negative population growth in the wealthy demographics.

So isn't the problem just the ever increasing number of people who are being dragged in to poverty?

</comment><comment><USER36> I read Scientific American most of my childhood - articles about physics, biology, math and especially the Amateur Scientist column (I so wanted to make that laser but had no vacuum pump). I loved it!

Then in the 1990s something changed instead of being about new discoveries it began to cover news and to advocate for various causes, even political positions. Then they dropped the Amateur Scientist column.

Why couldn't they stick to science instead of snarky articles like this hectoring every American to eat better? Were they afraid of Omni, Popular Science or Time?

Perhaps this was a good business decision but I have no regrets about canceling my subscription.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Amateur_Scientist>

</comment><comment><USER37> Is healthfully really a word..? I would have tried to phrase it 'eating healthily' off the top of my head.

<comment><USER38> 'Healthfully' (as in healthful) or 'healthily' (as in healthy) are both fine according to the OED.

Personally I've never heard of 'healthful'. Looking around Fowler's Modern English Usage suggests preference for 'healthful' is a U.S. thing (an even there it seems people are unaware of it, judging by the comments at a U.S. dictionary site). Fowler's also notes 'healthful' is considered 'old-fashioned and literary' or 'formal' by some teaching dictionaries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> The best always end up being (IMO): \- listen to your body

\- exercise some. doesn't have to be gym. even walking 30min a day is fine.

\- eat fresh food rather than frozen or processed food (hint: it requires cooking)

\- drink water, not soda or beer

\- Keep things balanced. Ying & yang principle applies basically everywhere. Including food types, salting, sweetening, etc.

then you generally don't need to force diet upon you. you don't need medication. you don't need a "diet plan". you don't need to "hit the gym". you don't need to make extra efforts that you'll revert in 3month. you're also not going to get bulky or a skeleton. you're just going to get normal and healthy.

of course, all the above take some effort. and its true that it's harder to find fresh food or proper food in general in the US than elsewhere, actually.

<comment><USER23> Contrary to what the exercise industry tells you in ads, you actually can't lose weight with exercise. Diet is almost always required to lose weight.

Going to the gym for an hour, burning a measly 400 calories walking on a treadmill, and then celebrating that with a 800 calorie Smoothie after, is actually making people gain weight not lose.

<comment><USER40> > Contrary to what the exercise industry tells you in ads, you actually can't > lose weight with exercise. Diet is almost always required to lose weight.

You can certainly lose weight by doing exercise and keeping your caloric intake constant. It might as well be that out of all people who want to lose weight, only a small % of people have the discipline/volition to follow such a plan. But that's a far cry from "you can't lose weight with exercise".

<comment><USER21> Perhaps a better way to state it is that most people find it quite significantly easier to lose weight by reducing caloric intake by a given amount as opposed to increasing physical activity by the proportionate amount.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I don't think the food industry would be too worried about lost revenue. They will be more worried about the cost of having to create and replace whole new ranges of products to fit into these guidelines, but in the end they will deliver the same wide spectrum of foods as they do today and fit into the guidelines. Perhaps it will raise the prices of the products generally, which will help with overeating but will also make products falling outside of the guidelines more attractive. The irony is that in 10 years time our 'understanding' of what is healthy and what is not will probably have changed radically.

</comment><comment><USER42> So we're too stupid to pick out healthy food, but we're smart enough to vote in people who know what's best for us and are ethical enough to not abuse their power for self-enrichment?

Let's also ignore the fact that most of the food industry's processed low-fat crap was a direct result of the government's earlier attempts to tell us that fat was evil and shove the food pyramid down our throats.

</comment><comment><USER43> >If one company didn't, their competitors would, so we all kind of have to do it.

There is a point here lots of people, especially western countries, and most especially Americans miss. So many people think government regulation takes away freedom and unfettered capitalism gives it. People whose own interests aren't even represented by that idea. And we _all_ suffer because of this.

</comment><comment><USER44> I've been thinking for a long while, now, about how to stitch together the many threads of thought around diet, nutrition, environment, and economics:

1) eating a plant-based diet is healthier (Mark Bittman), or at the very least, eating natural things (Michael Pollan) 2) eating meat costs more, and it threatens the environment ([http://www.marketplace.org/topics/sustainability/commentary/...](http://www.marketplace.org/topics/sustainability/commentary/worried- about-climate-change-eat-less-meat)), including in China (<http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2012/11/china-meat.html>) 3) for that matter, others foods besides meat that come from animals (ex: dairy) have the same effect. Roughly 75% of the world has some degree of lactose intolerance (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactose_intolerance>) 4) nutrition is more than calorie counting -- it is about getting nutrients in the diet ([http://supplementsos.com/blog/how-to-actually-eat- healthily-...](http://supplementsos.com/blog/how-to-actually-eat- healthily-o-1-per-day/)) Lentils play an important part as a quality, cheap source of protein. 5) there are ways to make good food affordable to the people who can least afford it ([http://www.kpbs.org/news/2012/jul/28/new- mobile-food-truck-s...](http://www.kpbs.org/news/2012/jul/28/new-mobile-food- truck-serves-san-diegos-homeless-d/)) In fact, the idea (or 'business model') of making necessary things affordable to the people who can least afford it as been around for 50 years (<http://infinitevisionaries.com/>) 6) a very important factor to incentivize people to switch diets is knowing that the food will taste good. While it might involve a slight change in cultural diet, this is absolutely possible ([http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/international/the- dos...](http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/international/the-dosa-man-of- new-york)) 7) the vegetarian diet of Tamils in Tamil Nadu (India) and Tamil Eelam (Ceylon) is wide & varied, largely dairy-free, and mostly gluten free. This largely applies for the other South India states, too. The diet consists in large parts of lentils, leafy greens, vegetables, and spices. 8) in particular, the diet in Tamil Nadu/Tamil Eelam of 50 years ago should be examined, which is before the Green Revolution occurred in India. Back then, many of the healthier grains eaten in large quantities by a large swathe of people (millet, sorghum, finger millet, etc.). 9) An unintended consequence of the Green Revolution in India and China in the 1950's is that, at least in India, many of the healthier grains eaten in large quantities by a large swathe of people (millet, sorghum, finger millet, etc.) were dropped in favor of the far less nutritional white rice, which was for many just a once-in-a- while treat. In North India, the favored, newly-proliferated crop of choice was wheat. (Both rice and wheat are dreadfully water-intensive.) Brown rice doesn't exist there, but in the region, only people in Kerala and Tamil Eelam eat a red rice that is similarly nutritious. Of course, this is said to be not as nutritious as things like finger millet or "thinai" (similar to quinoa). 10) People talk about the importance of vitamin B12, and that you can only get it from animal based sources. But this diet has been around for 4,500 years, people have been just fine. ([http://www.slate.com/articles/life/food/2013/01/indus_civili...](http://www.slate.com/articles/life/food/2013/01/indus_civilization_food_how_scientists_are_figuring_out_what_curry_was_like.html)) I'm sure people have been vegetarian for at least 2,000 years of that, if I judge based on the Thirukkural (2,000 year old literature of virtuous maxims, of which 10 talk about not eating meat). There are athletes and body-builders in America who are vegetarian and vegan.

So I really think that a restaurant (or at the least, food truck) should pop up selling a variety of vegan Tamil food at a very low price. This would solve so many problems. I've been thinking of this for a long while now, but I would be just happy if someone 'steals' the idea and runs with it.

(note: I'm sure there are other ways to achieve low cost, high nutrition, vegan diets in varied, tasty ways, but this is part of my birth tradition. You can treat that as a disclaimer / proof of authenticity. For me, personally, I'm fairly lactose-intolerant, and I'm wondering now that I might be gluten intolerant. I've been trying to be more vegan/vegetarian for the past 5 months, and it's helped a lot in my finances. It hasn't negatively impacted exercising. I'm hoping to see more change once I start cooking!...)

<comment><USER45> Pollan's work has been questioned:

[http://saywhatmichaelpollan.wordpress.com/2012/07/24/in- defe...](http://saywhatmichaelpollan.wordpress.com/2012/07/24/in-defense-of- food-my-review/)

> Pollan's central thesis is that introducing science into our food system has > done more harm than good and that the best thing for all of us would be to > go back to eating a more traditional diet. It's fair to point out that > nutritional science has led to some mistakes (such as recommendations to > replace saturated fats with hydrogenated oils), but Pollan devotes too much > of his effort to dismantling his own shallow caricature of science.

It is, in short, the Naturalistic Fallacy run wild, which is quite common when the topic of nutrition comes up. In short: Something being 'natural' is orthogonal to it being 'good' or even 'good to eat'.

<http://courses.csusm.edu/fallacies/naturalistic.htm>

> Roughly 75% of the world has some degree of lactose intolerance

Which means nothing to the people who don't have it, whose ancestors evolved to retain lactose tolerance into adulthood for the simple reason that milk is good food, full of proteins, fats, sugars, and vitamins that are just as important to an adult as a child. Just because the default First World diet induces a calorie surplus at this point instead of a calorie deficit does not negate any of milk's benefits.

> nutrition is more than calorie counting -- it is about getting nutrients in > the diet

Everyone knows this. That doesn't mean most First World people need supplements, because they don't.

<http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/supplements/NU00198>

> If you're generally healthy and eat a wide variety of foods, including > fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, low-fat dairy products, lean > meats and fish, you likely don't need supplements.

<comment><USER44> These points are interrelated.

> Which means nothing to the people who don't have it

So in the case of lactose intolerance, what's interesting, in fact, is the environmental impact of the fact that the people in the Western world are largely fine with lactose. As the PBS NewsHour story about the causes and effects of China's meat consumption habits shows, Western habits are having a significant influence in the diets of the younger generation in developing countries. The effects of large-scale pollution of water resources is horrific, and competition for water resources is, after oil, the next source of conflict in the world. So yes, it will affect everyone.

> Everyone knows this. That doesn't mean most First World people need > supplements, because they don't.

Sure, First World people don't need supplements, if they have a varied diet. In North America, that's a big if. There are cultural impediments to that varied diet, even for those with the means to afford it. But for many lower- income families, and especially those living in low-income neighborhoods, they experience the "food desert" problem. And they lack the same access to quality foods as more affluent people. That is a systemic issue related to how society (via government) deals with the problem. And the economics of the prices of foods is, in some part, related to the energy requirements which is related to the 90% energy loss up each level of the food chain. There is an environmental impact there.

btw: I just threw in the names of Bittman and Pollan as representatives of the ideas of plant-based and natural diets. It's not like they invented the ideas; they're just the most recognizable cheerleaders for them at the moment.

<comment><USER46> Since you mention them together a few times, I think it is worth pointing out that the vast majority of lactose intolerant people simply lack the ability to produce an enzyme that digests lactose, while gluten related conditions mostly seem to involve some sort of immune response. Some people probably do have a genuine milk allergy, but mostly lactose intolerant people are just unable to make lactase.

The discomfort stemming from lactose intolerance comes from bacteria digesting the sugar and making gas, etc. The discomfort (and further problems) from gluten is well understood to be an immune response in some instances (Celiacs, wheat allergies), and still thought to be an immune response in most remaining cases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> yeah, don't - you will ruin the whole economy!))

</comment><comment><USER48> Was this sarcasm... Seriously.

</comment><comment><USER29> So is it that we have to eat unhealthy at the gun point? No! We are free to eat whatever we want. And if most people want to eat poison then that's what the free market economy will provide them with.

It reminds me a little bit the situation with the banks. Somehow when times were good and everybody and their uncle could get a loan everybody loved Goldman Sachs CEO. But now, when it is pay off time people just hate the banks. Just shows a hell lot about people's attitudes (me! me! me!)

The same with the food industry. It's not my fault I eat like pig day and night, it's because the commercial on TV told me to do it. Sure, and if they told you to eat shit, you would eat shit, right?

Socialism is the love of blaming somone for your own failures. Free people not only make decisions, but also take responsibility for them. People who don't, should live for some time in a country where 'Dear Leader' will decide for them how they should live their lives because there is no difference to them anyway.

I'm tired of this BS. Used to have a coworker who was eating all the time. She had a small refrigerator in her cubicle. And of course, yeah, she wants universal healthcare. So I and others will pay for her bad choices. This is just immoral.</comment>


The Systemd Project Forks the Linux Kernel - <AUTHOR> http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20150330#community

<comment><USER2> Checking the calendar: not yet first april...

<comment><USER3> Looks like a weekly magazine, so this edition would cover April 1st.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is not the real systemD repository. This is just some random guy on the internet who snagged the GitHub username "systemdaemon".

Have a look here: [https://github.com/systemdaemon](https://github.com/systemdaemon)

A profile created two weeks ago, with a single repository, 0 stars and 1 commit over its entire lifetime.

This is a transparant hoax, and I don't understand how Distrowatch (and the HN community) has not seen through it yet...

<comment><USER5> Thanks for shedding real data on the issue. I was skeptical myself. I checked out Poettering's Google+ profile and see no mention of this yet, and I was kind of surprised.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am kind of disappointed that there is some baity qualities to this article, specifically referencing how Linus chewed out a systemd developer. He did that, but I recall it not being directly related to his work on systemd and it negatively impacting the kernel. Kay Sievers is a well-known problem causer as Linus is concerned, so this is not news.

Keep in mind if you find the mailing list thread referred to, Greg Hartmann (gregkh), the release maintainer of the Linux kernel, arguably part of the inner echelons, is responsible for the kdbus branch eventually getting merged into the mainline kernel, that is the kernel driver that will internalize dbus as a main (if not only) IPC of the kernel and reducing the overheard of using dbus now (reducing 12 operations per dbus call to 3 inside the kdbus driver, IIRC from Lennart's video). Again, this is the work of Lennart Poettering pulseaudio fame, and now much more heated systemd fame. So to pretend the Linux kernel is opposed systemd work is not truthful. Some core devs have taken it on and are staking themselves on it. If this gregkh tidbit does not make that obvious I do not know what does.

Can someone who knows more comment on what the substantive changes are thus far? Is the kdbus work a prime motivator of this? I love systemd hate as much as the next guy, but I was hoping we would get more facts from the HN crowd.

(EDIT: I know I will get downvoted, but I do use systemd and I am not its biggest fan; I just used Arch and got used to it; everyone has a right to choose their tools, and init systems ain't different.)

</comment><comment><USER6> Debian forums concludes it's a joke too:

[http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=121167](http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=121167)

 _sigh_ Guess my news blackout period is gonna have to start extending from March 30 to April 2 now.

Lame.

</comment><comment><USER7> They're planning on getting rid of NetworkManager, so they can't be _completely_ evil :-)

<comment><USER8> Bah, sounds like a cure worse than the disease.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Here's a group that can take criticism nicely...

Let's feign surprise.

Of course the kernel is GPL and forking is allowed, but I have yet to see such an idiotic case of tail wagging the dog.

Maybe the guy that wanted to "prove" he's better at managing the Redis than Antirez is a strong contest

</comment><comment><USER10> April fools or the real intension faces water at last?

<comment><USER11> >[...] According to Ivan Gotyaovich, one of the developers working on systemd[...]

I'd say it's a prank but I don't think it's April 1st anywhere in the world yet.

<comment><USER8> A quick search comes up blank on that name.

<comment><USER12> Just a quick note about that name "Ivan Gotyaovich": Got ya! -ovitch.

It sounds much more like a prank than a real name.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, there's no such surname as "Готяович"; it's made up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The fork won't last long I guess...

</comment><comment><USER15> so they finally jumped the shark ;-)</comment>


Discuss with HN: Does anyone besides me look at the ratio of comments to points? - <AUTHOR>

I find that if there are more comments than points, then the article has a good chance of being controversial. When vice versa is true, then the article is either being ignored (if there are few points), or a lot of people like it. Maybe this can be made into an official metric? <comment><USER2> When there are few comments and a lot of up-votes, I assume it's a very good bit of technical knowledge or a nice tip.

When there are a lot of comments and few up-votes, as you said, it's probably a discussion of a flame-baited blog post or controversial material. But in any such article, there is usually one post with a huge percentage of the votes in the first place that sums up the article very effectively.

A lot of up-votes and a lot of comments is probably a news release.

edit: I'm against about making this an explicit, official metric. I've come to learn from experience that once an organization or site tries to implement explicitly what emerged from its community, it's almost universally panned by the community.

<comment><USER3> _I've come to learn from experience that once an organization or site tries to implement explicitly what emerged from its community, it's almost universally panned by the community._

That's because features often come from the community rather than from built- in functionality. The users still control that process. Once it's built in, it becomes law, and that sucks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I do, but HN it's the first socialmedia news site where comments remain insightful and interesting and without meme-jokes even after dozens and dozens of comments.

I, personally, usually like more the conversations and comments here than the original posts

</comment><comment><USER5> I found that I tend to enjoy topics with a lot of up-votes and low comments the most.

I would say that your assessment is correct. I am, however, against making that an official metric; things are working fine as is.</comment>


ListenBrainz: Open-Data AudioScrobbler - <AUTHOR> http://listenbrainz.org/ <comment><USER2> I am super excited - the only alternative was libre.fm, which is half-dormant for a while (as it seems to me).

And this one has "a team of former Last.fm and current MusicBrainz hackers"!</comment>


Ask HN: How to encourage curiosity in developers - <AUTHOR>

Over the years I've spotted one nefarious kind of developer over and over again in IT groups: The Incurious Developer.
The Incurious Developer is happy with what he knows and does not seek out new knowledge.
He's happy to apply whatever technology he masters to any problem that crosses his path.
She is resistant to change & will do anything to protect 'the old way'.
An Incurious developer thinks he's 'too busy solving real problems' to learn new tricks.
Now, I'm not talking about developers with a healthy dose of scepticism: doing things 'the old way' certainly has value, but at a certain point resistance to change becomes damaging.
The way I see it, is that it boils down to curiosity. Why do developers lose their  youthful(?) curiosity & what can an IT organization do about that? <comment><USER2> Repetitive coding tasks will burn the curiosity out of anyone. The only solution is to not have "IT organizations".

<comment> pipe2-dev-null Kill the patient!

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure eliminating IT or 'killing the patient' as you so eloquently phrase it, is a viable solution for many companies. What can be done to increase the metabolic activity of creativity in said patient instead of killing him?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> With the speed at which technology is advancing, there's really no excuse for this attitude. It's also a common, general personality failure. If a person has no love of knowledge by nature and the fear of competition cannot engender it, then what use is such a person?

<comment><AUTHOR> Falls in line with the my colleague's "Fire 'em" rhetoric which prompted this thread in the first place. What kinds of things can a company do to _encourage_ learning? Certificates don't count ;-)

<comment><USER5> Some people are just afraid of learning, or never discovered that it could be more than grinding away for a boring teacher. Or they are afraid of falling behind at the "real work". You could try to help these folks with enthusiasm and gently leading through the learning process. If it works, great!

Other people probably have a combination of low IQ and highly-focused attention [1]. Most of this is probably genetically determined; there is nothing to fix, although it will continue to improve into their mid-twenties. These folks are perfectly useful, and even trainable, but management _must understand their cognitive limits_. They are not so good at solving problems ill-suited to their existing mental tools, and _even worse at recognizing the possibility of other approaches_. Higher-order systems are probably especially difficult for them. Understand that they can exude confidence even when walking straight into an architecture tar pit. Do no let them drive the high level strategy, and fire 'em if they try to dominate the discussion.

[1] The converse of attention deficit "disorder".

EDIT: fear and activity for the sake of activity create focused attention. An organizational culture of compulsive activity and rapid action can cause this is anybody who buys in to it.

EDIT AGAIN: The opposite of compulsive activity is play. Make a regular game out of trying things just to see what they do.

<comment><USER4> Bravo, very insightful. Particularly the comment on play.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yes I'm sorry but large organisations often seem to slowly and inadvertently replace creativity and enthusiasm with processes and procedures.

<comment><AUTHOR> Would budgetting in time set aside for non-productive endeavours be helpful? If so, how much?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Problem solving contests. The "Regular Expression of The Week" challenge, or solving a Raymond Smullyan logic problem, or smallest program that does X challenge.

You'll have to mix it up to encourage a lot of participation, as some people are scared of regexps, others of number theory, and others of prgramming challenges.</comment>


Today's Google Doodle Celebrates Samuel Johnson's 308th Birthday - <AUTHOR> https://g.co/doodle/7pxnxx <comment><USER2> I am glad to see a complete edition is now easily available online. Still only 9% transcribed.

[http://johnsonsdictionaryonline.com](http://johnsonsdictionaryonline.com)

Only a few years ago, the only trace on free scanned sources was a misleading 'improved' (mangled) edition re-published decades after Dr. Johnson's death.

There was an academic CD-ROM version made, which I recall had aspirations to publish online, but I believe copyright profit-seeking obstructed this then.

The first edition is a massive almost 2x1ft, 22lbs, 2 volumes. And the most extraordinary part, for those unacquainted, are the illustrative quotations accompanying the definitions, which Johnson culled and compiled by his lonesome.

He quoted Macrobius in his interview for prep school as a young child, ensuring him a spot. We learn this from Boswell's Life of Johnson, one of the first sources in English of extensive transcriptions of direct speech.

I had a wonderful, now gone, Modern European History teacher in high school, Mr Kurtz, who wrote and performed a one act play on Johnson's life.</comment>