Ask HN: Is on-call outside of work hours is a form of exploitation of labor? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Only if you are not appropriately paid or otherwise reimbursed for that work.

I worked for two different systems integrators and in both cases on-call work was part of the contract. However, in both cases I got pro-rata time off. So I ended up working about 45-50 hours / week. For some clients I would start at 4am and finish by noon. Had the afternoon off to go to the beach, etc.

We also had an on-call mobile that was passed on at the end of each week. That way, emergency work was distributed across all of the team.

<comment><USER3> > Only if you are not appropriately paid or otherwise reimbursed for that > work.

Yup. If you are on call and are expected to be available to work without much predictability or notice then that "option" on your time should be compensated, regardless of whether you are called in to work, in addition to pay for the time when you are actually called in. If being on call is a standard part of the role then maybe this is priced into the base rate / salary.

If you have a job where you have fewer blocks of time outside of work where you can do whatever you like (eg going camping for days without phone contact) then all things being equal that job should compensate you more for placing more constraints on your time than some other job where you aren't on call.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> At first thought I'd say "no" because it's often written directly in the contract. IANAL so I can't tell you if the FTE contracts as they're written now are enforcable/invalid/afoul of labor laws, but that would probably vary by state and by country anway.

IMO it's just that us (tech workers/software engineers/whatever) are so dumb that when companies started putting these kinds of clauses, we didn't act for raises or unionize, we just took it as part of the job, and that became the status quo.

Do the 70K-200K salaries (which is the vast majority of where I see most software developers) that software developers make have round-the-clock (on certain days) maintenance priced in? I don't think so. I think companies are just running away with that additional value because there's no way for a single worker to effectively push back. If you decide to not work outside of working hours (which is absolutely reasonable), all the other lemmings on your team/in your company would probably resent you for increasing their workload (rather than realizing maybe it shouldn't be theirs at all, or that they should be getting paid more to do it), and tbh you probalby wouldn't have gotten hired in the first place.

<comment><USER2> I would take exception to being called "dumb". If you can make sense of API documentation, then reading a contract is not too much of a challenge.

Unfortunately, there are some people who are so keen to be a programmer that they will jump in without taking due care. As for bosses, you can push back. If you work with lemmings, then it might be time to find a job where your co- workers are not lemmings and the bosses are not PHBs.

<comment><USER4> Well you maybe shouldn't -- I was referring to developers being collectively too dumb to unionize (which is basically the logical conclusion, asking for a raise that reflects the amount of extra work you'd be putting in would likely make the offer untenable and the company would move on). I worded it badly -- reading the contract isn't the hard part, avoiding a pattern of encroaching explolitation was the dumb move, considering most people consider tech to be filled with people who might be more intelligent than average.

You can't push back once you've accepted a contract that includes that language, the only place to push back is before accepting it. I'm of the opinion that just about _everyone_ is a lemming in one shape or form -- I no longer work for a small/midsize/large corporation with these sorts of rules, but I found that while I did, not many people gave it much thought, but a very small minority gave it A LOT of thought. It's anecdotal, but the minority I've witnessed that actually cares to think about this is too small.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I certainly don't feel exploited for doing on-call rotations.

It's always mentioned up front at interviews so I don't feel ambushed and most the time all it amounts to is I carry my laptop with me. Maybe I'm lucky but of the over 2k hours on call I had logged at my last job I got paged for something that took more than 5 minutes to resolve. It's just part of the job IMO.

We work on systems that don't close down at the end of the day. I've had jobs in the past that were also open 24/7\. We weren't on call but should someone have called in sick for a shift we were expected to answer our phone and come in to work to cover a shift. That was a union job and it's pay and benefits were no where near what I have now (they weren't bad either). They were never going to reimburse me to go to a conference or have my lunch catered everyday like I can get now.

So no, I don't feel exploited. We are white collar workers with pretty cushy jobs (at least most engineers I know, YMMV). It just so happens that occasionally we may have to save the day when the code WE wrote does something it's not supposed to. For all the upsides working in this industry has, this downside is pretty insignificant IMO.

But hey, don't wanna get paged? Write better code :-p

<comment><USER4> Devils advocate:

Are you sure you're not just used to being exploited? You are, in absolute terms, expending more effort to support these systems "that don't close down", and the question is whether that increase in revenue (indirectly attributable to value you're providing) is being reflected in your pay.

While I agree people in tech have it very good compared to the general populace, having a job that is nicer than most isn't a good excuse for not thinking critically about whether you're being asked for more value than you're being properly compensated for. I have no idea how to quantify the 8 hour work day in terms of output, but it should be fairly unassailable that more hours = more work (should) = more pay.

How about thinking about it this way -- has pay risen (in real terms) significantly since the start of on-call rotations? What happened to the spot for operations people in other disciplines, who normally night shifts and make sure things are running well when the other half of the company is asleep? I think the obvious answer to this question is that you are that ops person now, and you're certainly not getting paid double.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Having worked for a few places with on-call clauses in contracts, I'm inclined to say yes.

There are companies that handle on-call work really well. They'll pay a person over their usual hour rate for nights on-call, and they will reimburse them with time spent, so that if you are forced awake in the morning, you get that time off from normal hours. Good companies also allow employees to opt-out, because typically a call from the on-call phone is waking up more than one person in a family - it's this reason why I no longer choose to do on-call work.

In my experience, there are a lot of companies that abuse on-call work, especially in agencies. In the last five years, I've seen:

* Contracts where a person is only paid for being on-call if something goes wrong

* Verbal contracts where people have been asked to go on-call for below minimum wage - £10 a call, regardless of time spent.

* Tracking set up against alerts and how long it has taken the developer to react to said alert, with employees being punished for not being online within minutes.

* Developers being lumped with unsociable rotas - one dev I used to work with was a bit of a doormat, and he signed up to Friday, Saturday, and Sunday on-call. He eventually did every day on call because every developers dropped out.

* On-call work paid for with gift vouchers (i.e. if you're buzzed and you fix the issue, I'll give you a £20 Tesco gift voucher).

* Delayed alarms set up to wake up managers if a developer hasn't reported a fix within a given time. It sounds okay, because a lot of the time the manager can help, but it was used as a way to punish developers for not fixing things quick enough.

* Developers punished for being tired/ill, after working all night on call supporting a project, and then being told to come in to work for a day of meetings.

These have happened at companies I've worked at, and at companies my friends have worked at. These aren't small companies either. Some of these are at large companies/agencies, many of which you may have heard of.

As a concept, it's a critical business need that needs to be addressed, but without considered protection I'm inclined to see it as an opportunity to poke for red flags, rather than a sign of business being done right.

</comment><comment><USER7> When I was on-call I didn't get any kind of bonus, but any significant amount of time spent working outside of work hours my boss let me take out of normal work time.</comment>


Astronaut Paul Weitz has died - <AUTHOR> http://www.collectspace.com/news/news-102317a-obituary-paul-weitz-astronaut.html <comment><USER2> Died at 85. Not a bad run sir, not bad at all.

<comment><USER3> I stopped thinking like that as I approached 50.

While we probably won't make big improvements in aging, once we address a few major diseases, and devise better ways to monitor the body, it'll be a lot more common for people to live to 100.

Hopefully, Blue Zone research will give us some insight.

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

<comment><AUTHOR> > it'll be a lot more common for people to live to 100.

Would you really _want_ to though? I'm relatively young, but after about 70 I don't think I'd really want to live anymore.

This is mainly due to genetics, as the body and brain start to give around that time (in my family).

I'm sure it's different for other's, but for many just the fact that their bones are brittle enough to prevent basic things would be too much of a constraint to handle.

<comment><USER4> Agree. I know two people who are in their 90s and it's no life to live.

<comment><USER3> I guess I was assuming that it's possible to have a good life in my 90's. Your sample size of the 2 people seems a bit anecdotal. Know anyone famous in their 90's?

Jimmy Carter

Henry Kissinger

Dick Van Dyke

Stan Lee

Chuck Yeager - broke the sound barrier

Anyway, that's your choice. I suppose if we do learn how to treat aging to delay some of the symptoms, you can always change your mind.

<comment><USER4> It's more than just the two for reference. It's either dead or dying at that age for most people. In addition, my 94 year old neighbour is housebound and has leukaemia and just wishes someone would kill him. My grandmother is 93 and she can't even recognise any members of her own family any more and just wants to go to sleep forever. That's more the state of things.

The above are minor and major celebrities. They have a higher standard of care.

If we can increase quality of life significantly, I'm all for it but until then, shoot me when I get to 80.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Break my crypto miner - <AUTHOR> https://krillcoin.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Friend made a krillcoin miner in beta, want to do a stress test!</comment>


Wow very terminal doge - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/thiderman/doge <comment><USER2>
       very humor

               enough
       wow still doge
           homepage again

         stop now
      done shibe

</comment><comment><USER3> This predates the doge_js twitter account, the doge npm package, and dogescript. It's also pretty neat with the terminal art! Nicely done.

</comment><comment><USER4> As stupid as it sounds, I actually have a use for this script: When I clearly want to mark that I start installing something or logging and need a "marker" that stands out.

Very likely there is a better way to do this, but doge stands out.. and if someone would be looking over my shoulder at least it would make them laugh or ask about it.

</comment><comment><USER5> What did you use for the terminal (shibe) art?

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://github.com/rossy2401/img2xterm](https://github.com/rossy2401/img2xterm)

It's pretty easy to use. The problem is usually to create good input for it. I spent roughly an hour in GIMP just tweaking the original doge.png and trying to get good dithering for the colors.

<comment><USER5> This is worth a few good giggles from my friends so good job! Just a few questions after peeking through the source: how long did it take you? Why is it so much more complicated than it seems on first impression? What was the hardest part?

<comment><AUTHOR> The initial code work was probably not even an hour from initial idea to actually having random colored strings and a test shibe. Then I spent some time tweaking the image to be better, as already mentioned.

I never felt it looked complicated. The code is not even 300 lines, and at least I feel that the abstraction is all right. I wrote the code to be flexible, and because of that, adding piping to stdout was really simple. What parts of the code do you find complicated?

The hardest part was getting the Python packaging right, haha. It was difficult to get the doge.txt file distributed in the package in a path that would work both when installed to site-packages and that would work whilst developing. I have since started doing more Python packaging for my other projects (I'm on a contribution streak, so I do a lot right now) and it's gotten a lot easier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> wow</comment>


An integrated environment for developing Python in VS2010 - <AUTHOR> http://pytools.codeplex.com/

<comment><USER2> Excellent! I've been working in VS2010 a lot lately and love python...didn't realize there were so many great tools.</comment>


The Rise and Fall of the Open Source Mobile (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://relay70.metatron.ai/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-open-source-mobile/ <comment><USER3> Three days ago, a Jolla C replaced an iPhone 5S as my main phone. To be fair, me using iOS was just a kind of an experiment. Before that, I was using a CM build without Google Apps using FDroid as unique app repository.

I must say that, while still needs some polishing, Sailfish OS (which is not 100% free, but is quite there, and provides a complete Linux experience), does the job. My Pebble works, my BT car kit works, and I have all apps I need. In fact, my biggest complain is about the hardware, being underpowered and with an atrocious camera. An official port from Jolla to some mid level device would make me _very_ happy.

In some countries, like mine, the FOSS mobile OS killer has a name: WhatsApp. Without official support for FFOS or Ubuntu Touch, and being very aggressive against third party apps (banning their users), most people can't even think of them as an option for daily usage.

Jolla goes around this bundling a commercial Android Dalvik emulator. Not the best solution, but one quite pragmatic.

<comment><USER4> What do you notice about the 'complete Linux experience'? I cannot find too much on the Sailfish OS homepage; going to Mer shows it's a minimal Linux with QT on top. For me a complete Linux experience would be xterm and sudo apt-get install build-essential. Is their anything like that? I would buy a phone/tablet device that runs Ubuntu (or Debian) smoothly (all hardware supported) in a heartbeat but seems nothing is there yet so I currently have to go for the Pyra which has all that and a keyboard and replaceable batteries.

Also; the Mer wiki mentions an Android compatibility layer and you manage an Android emulator; would either or both not solve the Whatsapp issue?

<comment><USER5> > For me a complete Linux experience would be xterm and sudo apt-get install > build-essential. Is their anything like that?

Pretty much yes. With developer mode on you gain access to a terminal with bash and other expected utils. There is a mobile terminal application with custom keyboard which is more or less usable, you can also ssh into the phone without any problem. As for the package manager there is pkcon (probably some alternatives are also available), you can install build utils without any problem.

I've been using Jolla for some time before moving to iOS. It was a very cool experience. I really liked having a phone that I could hack and mess around with. The gesture based UI was nice, it was amazingly comfortable after getting used to it. The main drawback was the lack of apps and the reliability of the phone. The Android apps work poorly, they are sluggish and plenty of apps are not going to work due to lack of Google Play Services. Also with Android apps you get the old flawed Android permission model. The phone crashes from time to time, sometimes in the least suitable moment (stability varies between updates).

<comment><USER6> I found Jolla comparatively very stable and the Android support was good enough for my purposes, given that it makes little sense to buy a Jolla phone for the sole purpose of running Android apps. People judge Jolla harshly for things they will forgive Android for. "has unfortunately stopped" is disturbingly common in the Android world, coming from Jolla, even before we get into the horrible quality of the vast majority of apps on the Google Play Store. Clearly if your #1 priority is apps from Google Play Store, you should buy an Android phone. But if you want anything different, or if you want an actual Linux phone.... my only objection with Jolla is that they seem starved for resources to regularly release hardware and to target markets like North America at all. So no matter how great a job they do, almost nobody sees their work.

<comment><USER5> Just to clarify: I was not speaking about application stability, I spoke about the whole OS. I've never seen native Jolla apps crash, the Android apps also seem to be rather stable when they work. However the whole phone can die - <USER2> screen goes balck and the status LED starts to blink red - in the middle of usage or just when it seats in the pocket. The phone will restart in a half of a minute or so, but it's a rather infuriatingly when it does so when you try to answer a call.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The N900 is an interesting piece of hardware, perhaps a phone based on an Allwinner chipset with a fully separate baseband processor would be the way to go for an N900 replacement?

I guess the major impediments I see are getting an LTE baseband at a decent price point, and providing Signal Private Messenger and other apps that you can get on iOS & Android, as we have seen, developers won't go for a 3rd development target (Windows Phone).

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://neo900.org/](https://neo900.org/)

<comment><USER8> That might be the first hardware crowdfunding I ever buy into. I've got a seething rage at just about every aspect of current phones and a huge nostalgia for Nokia's early smartphones.

Physical keyboard? Yay. Messages in natural language are one thing, ssh'ing into a machine or writing code is an entirely different topic.

Open systems thrive with exactly the kind of software I use almost exclusively. I can live without any mobile games - srsly, get a handheld or build one yourself[1] - and I don't use many other services I couldn't find alternatives for.

<comment><AUTHOR> Related project:

[https://pyra-handheld.com/](https://pyra-handheld.com/)

<comment><USER9> Mandatory warning: PowerVR.

<comment><AUTHOR> ImgTec are still trying to hire someone to work on open source powervr drivers:

[https://careers.imgtec.com/cw/en/job/495752/linux- graphics-d...](https://careers.imgtec.com/cw/en/job/495752/linux-graphics- driver-software-engineer)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I want a _unix_ phone.

I want a dialer command that can be used with pipes and stdio.

I want to consume "signal strength" with AT+CSQ from a command that I can pipe into things.

I want to see nearby towers in a 'top' like interface that shows me what the local carrier environment looks like. I want to enable and disable airplane mode with a _command_.

It would _seem_ like you could do this with android, but I don't think you can ...

<comment><AUTHOR> Android phones run Linux and most have busybox/toybox installed, which gives you a form of Unix.

The rest of what you want needs a bit of coding but should be possible to do, just need to interface with the RIL.

<comment><USER10> Let me clarify ...

I want to control the phone with unix. I want to perform telephony functions with the command line.

I want to place calls with a command line. I want to redirect stdio into an SMS. I want to query provider/signal/encryption/service with sysctls.

And so on ...

I don't think many unix cellular telephony tools exist, do they ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Closest thing I can think of is the Emacs interface to the freesmartphone.org (FSO) DBus APIs:

[https://github.com/paulfertser/fso- el/wiki](https://github.com/paulfertser/fso-el/wiki)

You can always manually send DBus messages to the FSO/oFono daemons, here is an example for oFono:

[https://together.jolla.com/question/17992/sending-an-sms- via...](https://together.jolla.com/question/17992/sending-an-sms-via-the- command-line/)

I expect similar things are possible with Android RILs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> My OpenMoko is still (free)running fine. It pre-dates the N900, and Nokia's previous "internet tablets" were WiFi-only, so weren't really 'phones.

When Android came out I installed it, but wasn't a fan. Been with Qtopia ever since.

I've since been given an N900, but it doesn't boot. Looking forward to the Neo900 (I'm scared to install a GTA04 board myself :P ).

</comment><comment><USER12> Sadly... The compromise is AOSP or copperhead OS, CM equivalents. With daydream tightly controlled by Google/Play perhaps genuine FOSS lovers need to live in 2D world.

<comment><USER13> The only compromise I see with open source Android is the proprietary firmware blobs. With the exception of [http://www.replicant.us/](http://www.replicant.us/), this is true for most open source mobile operating systems. Cyanogenmod adds in closed source analytics but those parts can be removed with [https://github.com/nvllsvm/freecyngn](https://github.com/nvllsvm/freecyngn)

While I cannot attest to daydream, I have happily been building a custom version of Android from source for years without Google Apps or other closed source applications. Everything I need is either part of Android, on Fdroid.org or Github.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "At the end of the story Nokia entrusted the project "to the community", which was equivalent to abandoning it. [...] I am happy with a bleeding edge, open source, but much more limited ZTE Open phone running the Firefox OS."

History repeating. I loved Firefox OS, now Windows Mobile and I think Microsoft is not far away from releasing it "to the community". I don't want to live in a world without choice.

</comment><comment><USER15> Obviously this publisher hasn't heard of the Ubuntu Phone.

<comment><USER16> > the increasingly popular Ubuntu distro (released in 2004 and since 2013 > branching out to mobile phones itself)</comment></comment>


The First Woman to Translate the 'Odyssey' into English - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/02/magazine/the-first-woman-to-translate-the-odyssey-into-english.html <comment><USER2> My first reaction was "Harumph" being a fan of Robert Fagles' translation. I sit corrected. I'll be buying a copy of Emily Wilson's too:

      Tell me about a complicated man.
      Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost
      when he had wrecked the holy town of Troy,
      and where he went, and who he met, the pain
      he suffered in the storms at sea, and how
      he worked to save his life and bring his men
      back home. He failed to keep them safe; poor fools,
      they ate the Sun God's cattle, and the god
      kept them from home. Now goddess, child of Zeus,
      tell the old story for our modern times.
      Find the beginning.

<comment><USER3> "Complicated" is an interesting translation for πολύτροπον rather than the more literal "much-traveled." But then again, The Odyssey isn't some children's adventure story. It's a story about the brutal, strange, post-war Ancient Mediterranean and people lost, or without purpose, who have to constantly adapt to the challenges of that world while still staying true to their identity. It's all, well...complicated.

<comment><USER4> She addresses that word directly in the article:

 _"One of the things I struggled with," Wilson continued, sounding more exhilarated than frustrated as she began to unpack "polytropos," the first description we get of Odysseus, "is of course this whole question of whether he is passive — the 'much turning' or 'much turned' — right? This was —"

"Treat me," I interrupted, "as if I don't know Greek," as, in fact, I do not.

"The prefix poly," Wilson said, laughing, "means 'many' or 'multiple.' Tropos means 'turn.' 'Many' or 'multiple' could suggest that he's much turned, as if he is the one who has been put in the situation of having been to Troy, and back, and all around, gods and goddesses and monsters turning him off the straight course that, ideally, he'd like to be on. Or, it could be that he's this untrustworthy kind of guy who is always going to get out of any situation by turning it to his advantage. It could be that he's the turner."_

EDIT: And later in the article:

 _"If I was really going to be radical," Wilson told me, returning to the very first line of the poem, "I would've said, polytropos means 'straying,' and andra" — "man," the poem's first word — "means 'husband,' because in fact andra does also mean 'husband,' and I could've said, 'Tell me about a straying husband.' And that's a viable translation. That's one of the things it says. But it would give an entirely different perspective and an entirely different setup for the poem. The fact that it's possible to translate the same lines a hundred different times and all of them are defensible in entirely different ways? That tells you something." But, Wilson added, with the firmness of someone making hard choices she believes in: "I want to be super responsible about my relationship to the Greek text. I want to be saying, after multiple different revisions: This is the best I can get toward the truth."_

<comment><USER5> The original may have intentionally chosen words to carry all those meanings simultaneously.

<comment><USER6> Well, yes: I think that's the point (or at least, the debate). How do you translate such a multifaceted word when there is nothing with the same collection of meanings and implications in the target language? It's a brilliantly ideal word for its purpose in the original Greek, and impossible to capture in (say) English without footnotes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I had a class on _The Odyssey_ (and other epics) last year, and for some reason it floored me.

A lot of things in this world are merely a knockoff of the original and authentic thing. And for someone hugely into stories, _The Odyssey_ felt like this hugely authentic and original thing. Maybe it's me being pretentious, but it's all there: adventure & homecoming, cunning & humility, love & ignorance. Also, the themes are just melded into the core of the story in a way I haven't seen before. And the writing itself strikes an amazing balance between texture and structure.

The Odyssey is on the far side of the bell curve, it's unlike anything I've ever read. And I've only read one translation of it. Definitely going to be checking this one out.

<comment><USER8> Which translation did you read?

The Chapman translation ( [http://www.bartleby.com/111/chapman14.html](http://www.bartleby.com/111/chapman14.html) ) is famous enough to have inspired Keats to write about it: [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44481/on-first- lookin...](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44481/on-first-looking-into- chapmans-homer)

<comment><USER7> Fagles

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I always liked Samuel Butler's idea in _The Authoress of the Odyssey_ that the Odyssey was written by a woman. I'm looking forward to Wilson's translation.

[https://www.kenyonreview.org/2013/09/authoress- odyssey/](https://www.kenyonreview.org/2013/09/authoress-odyssey/)

My favorite _Iliad_ is Lattimore. I've tried others (Fagles, Green, Lombardo) and always come back to Lattimore. I remember when I first read it, my prof said we didn't have to read the Catalog of the Ships. I actually love that section now. It's like the opening credits.

My favorite _Odyssey_ is Fitzgerald. Fagles is good too.

Now if you want a deeply bad translation, a fraud really, Mitchell is the worst. He leaves out chapters. Edward Luttwak ripped it apart.

[https://www.lrb.co.uk/v34/n04/edward-luttwak/homer- inc](https://www.lrb.co.uk/v34/n04/edward-luttwak/homer-inc)

<comment><USER10> Lattimore's Illiad is incredible, it leaves some of those confusing words and phrases in (famously, the numerous characters who speak "winged words") and it reminds you this is the product of a civilization that isn't yours, who had very different values yet remain very human.

<comment><USER11> Interesting, "geflügelte Worte"(winged words) is a quite common expression in German (meaning, and I have to repeat myself here, "a commonly used expression of literary or historical origin"), but I never realized it originally came from the Illiad.

[https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geflügeltes_Wort](https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geflügeltes_Wort)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I figure there'll be a few for whom this is a pleasant surprise, so: if humor, wonderful old-timey music, and a healthy dash of the Odyssey sounds like an interesting combination, "O Brother Where Art Thou" is a great film.

</comment><comment><USER13> > _I struggled with this because there are those classicists. I partly just > want to shake them and make them see that all translations are > interpretations._

What is a translation, that's the heart of the matter. Many people argue that translation is simply impossible, because the meaning of a text depends on its connexions to a whole cultural world, and if you take that text out of its cultural background and put it in another one, then it simply doesn't work anymore. It's like a transplant, but more complicated; if you do a heart transplant, at least all hearts are similar and connect to arteries in the same way; a translation is like trying to transplant an organ across species.

For instance, it seems most readers of classic Russian literature are of this opinion -- no other language renders Russian novels appropriately. (I don't read Russian so I wouldn't know.)

And yet, transplants do work. To pursue the transplant metaphor, they work when the organ performs the same function in the new organism as it did in the original one. So I don't think the translator's work is simply to "interpret" the source, if that word means "to understand deeply and then reproduce with one's own personality and artistic biais".

The task of the translator is to produce a text for a new audience, that produces an effect to that audience, as close as possible as the original text on the original audience.

There's this retired English teacher who translated the first book of the Harry Potter series in ancient Greek; it's different of course, since there are no native ancient Greek speakers left, and so his "audience" is unclear; but the description of the challenges he faced makes for a great and fun read:

[http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~loxias/harry_potter.htm](http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~loxias/harry_potter.htm)

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm a fan of Lombardo's:

      Speak, Memory –
                                   Of the cunning hero

      The wanderer, blown off course time and again
      After he plundered Troy's sacred heights.

      Speak
      Of all the cities he saw, the minds he grasped,
      The suffering deep in his heart at sea
      As he struggled to survive and bring his men home
      But could not save them, hard as he tried –
      The fools – destroyed by their own recklessness
      When they ate the oxen of Hyperion the Sun,
      And that god snuffed out their day of return.
                                  Of these things,
       Speak, Immortal One,
      And tell the tale once more in our time.

His Iliad is excellent too.

<comment><USER15> Seconded on Lombardo. I picked it up 17 years ago after seeing him on CSPAN discussing his translation with a panel including Christopher Hitchens. Thankfully still available:

[https://www.c-span.org/video/?160063-1/discussion-homers- ody...](https://www.c-span.org/video/?160063-1/discussion-homers-odyssey)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This was so refreshing to read as someone who loves the classics and studied Latin in high school. I very much agree with Emily Wilson that translation is an active interpretation of the text, not some mechanical and uncreative process. Look forward to reading her new version; the excerpts in the article are striking.

</comment><comment><USER17> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_translations_of_Homer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_translations_of_Homer)

A list of over 73 translations of the Odyssey into English.

</comment><comment><USER18> Alternative .onion link for those using the Tor Browser Bundle

[https://www.nytimes3xbfgragh.onion/2017/11/02/magazine/the-f...](https://www.nytimes3xbfgragh.onion/2017/11/02/magazine/the- first-woman-to-translate-the-odyssey-into-english.html)

</comment><comment><USER19> Surprised the article made no mention of the EV Rieu translation published by Penguin Books. I would have thought that was one of the, if not 'the', most well known one.

</comment><comment><USER20> I recently read Fagles' translations of the big three (Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid), and the Odyssey is by far the most fun of all of them. They're all masterpieces but it's the one I most enjoyed reading.

<comment><USER9> Well, the first (Odysseyian) half of the _Aeneid_ is a LOT of fun. In fact, the second (Iliadic) half after Dido dies is often skipped. To me, it's kind of like _Romeo and Juliet_ ; after Mercutio dies it's just a bunch of teen age yammering. Well, Aeneas just isn't that interesting (he's stoic!) and Dido is (or was). And then Turnus is no Hector.

Fact is Vergil died without completing it. He wasn't happy with it and wanted it burned. Augustus, who had heard chapters read and who was its sponsor, countermanded that order. He had it edited but it wasn't Vergil's hand. It's OK to be a little disappointed with the result.

BTW, Stanford iTunesU has a quite good 5 lecture podcast on the _Aeneid_ by Susanna Braund. She knows everything.

<comment><USER20> I liked the Aeneid a lot and wouldn't write off the second half. But they can't all be my favorite.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is a really interesting story and quite timely with some videogame fans complaining about choices made in translating Japanese videogames to English.

</comment><comment><USER22> I find it difficult to believe that is true

<comment><USER23> Likewise. 2000 years ago in Roman Britain I am certain many people did it and some of them would have been women.

<comment><USER20> Besides the fact that nobody spoke English at the time, you think a lot of women literate in both Greek and Latin were running around Roman Britain?

<comment><USER23> Actually, yes. Learn some history.

<comment><USER20> I find it hard to find any support for your claim that ancient Roman women would have generally been literate in Greek. Why don't you enlighten me if it's so obvious? Am I being lectured to "learn some history" by a guy claiming a translation into English might have happened before any Angles arrived in Britain?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


All I Want for Christmas Is a New Mac Pro - <AUTHOR> http://barefeats.com/mac_pro_turbo.html <comment><USER2> Maybe Apple will listen if we get Mariah Carey to do a song about it...

Joking aside, the leaked internal message board post from Tim Cook the other day didn't read to me like a new Mac Pro was on the way. It seems like he considers the iMac to be the only desktop Mac you need. And don't get me wrong, the 5K iMac is a great computer, but there are people for whom it isn't enough, and it's increasingly looking like they're going to have to suck it up. Apple is pruning their product line of everything that isn't a big seller, and I think that means the Mac Pro is next to go.

<comment><USER3> That's possible but it's also likely that he didn't mention the Mac Pro or Mac Mini because those haven't been updated lately so it would just come off as out of touch to talk it up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > All I Want for Christmas Is a New Mac Pro

I'm wishing, instead, for a new and worthy competitor to the Mac Pro, from a different brand.

Competition is good. Without it, Apple will only continue its focus on mainstream users, neglecting niche groups, such as professional designers and programmers. And it will continue its vertical integration of the electronics industry for mainstream use, which is dangerous because it means computing for other purposes becomes more expensive.

</comment><comment><USER5> Lately, I've been thinking about how important or relevant industrial design is to something like the Mac Pro. Had Apple continued to use a tower form factor with yearly revisions, would we even be having this conversation? Faster CPUs, GPUs, storage, and the latest macOS. What more does the Pro need? My thesis is radical industrial design is non critical for a professional product as the Mac Pro.

<comment><USER6> What the Mac Pro needs is commitment. Whatever shape they want to do is irrelevant if they keep it up to date and with good support.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> >Choice between AMD and NVIDIA GPUs.

I doubt this will ever happen. I think Apple uses AMD because AMD is willing to accept lower margins than Nvidia and is more likely to move heaven and earth to meet Apple's needs. Also I doubt Apple would want CUDA to be any more entrenched, restricting Apple's options to move back to AMD in the future.

</comment><comment><USER7> > I hope the NeXT Mac Pro will have a factory option for both AMD and NVIDIA > GPUs. Dual NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 GPUs would be nice

Pretty sure the next Mac Pros are going to use AMD Vega GPUs, as they're about to be released. The recently announced AMD Instict version will hit 12.5TFLOPS, faster than the 1080.

</comment><comment><USER8> Christmas 2032 maybe? Maybe distant new management will resurrect the Mac platform after realizing every creator and developer actually used those silly "computers" to create all the fluff consumed on iPhone and iPad.</comment>


Donald Trump used a Gmail address to secure the POTUS Twitter handle - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/26/14400198/donald-trump-twitter-potus-gmail-security <comment><USER2> Articles like this are why i stopped reading anything from Vox media. They're rabid in their quest to be anti-Trump.

Trump didn't do anything. The National Archives takes care of the Twitter feed stuff.

[http://www.popsugar.com/news/What-Happens-POTUS-Twitter- Acco...](http://www.popsugar.com/news/What-Happens-POTUS-Twitter- Account-42913360)

<comment><USER3> I'm not a big Vox fan, but the article you linked doesn't explain why they were using a Gmail account. The Nat. Archive handled the archiving of the Obama Admin's tweets. They are not in charge of the Trump admin's securing the account once it was handed over.</comment></comment>


ToRead Sends Article Text Straight to Your Inbox - <AUTHOR> http://lifehacker.com/5564988/toread-sends-article-text-straight-to-your-inbox <comment><USER2> They really need to process articles with something like Readability.

<comment><USER3> Speaking of Readability, and with apologies for the off-topic self-promotion, I made a multi-column stylesheet which some may find appealing: <http://anoved.net/tag/readability/></comment></comment>


New PlayStation Network ToS Include a No Suing Sony Clause - <AUTHOR> http://kotaku.com/5840517/new-playstation-network-terms-of-service-include-a-no-suing-sony-clause <comment><USER2> IANAL but wouldn't these Terms of Service be unenforceable? It doesn't seem like Sony is offering anything extra in consideration, rather just limiting your rights. If they change their ToS to limit your rights, wouldn't they have to offer some consideration for this type of contract to be enforceable?

<comment><USER3> IANAL, but arbitration clauses are standard in contracts[1] at least in the United States. Arbitration is generally seen as preferred because suing people is actually very expensive.

In Sony's favor, Sony excluded small claims. So for pretty much everyone this arbitration clause is meaningless. The limit for small claims is in the thousands of dollars (depending on state) [2]. The circumstances where Sony would be liable for more than a few thousand to a single consumer would have to be pretty extraordinary.

Also in Sony's favor, Sony did not choose to use the arbitration clause to set an onerous jurisdiction. Sony could have said all arbitration needed to take place in a specific city in the middle of nowhere. Sony didn't even pick the location of its headquarters; you can pick any jurisdiction. Most arbitration clauses I've seen set a jurisdiction that favors the contract writer, so I'd say this puts Sony in a decent light for not doing the same.

If you really wanted to find fault with Sony's particular arbitration clause, it would be that it is binding. Neither side can appeal the decision of the arbitration panel to a higher court. But keep in mind this cuts both ways, and it really isn't unusual. It is even endorsed in the United States.

I should also note that arbitration clauses can be voided if the panel can be proven to be biased. So this isn't necessarily a license for Sony to circumvent the law, at least against a well funded opponent. And anyone with the balls to sue Sony for any serious amount of money would be a well funded opponent.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbitration_clause>

[2] [http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/small-claims-suits- ho...](http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/small-claims-suits-how- much-30031.html)

<comment><USER4> Are damages of more than a few thousand that uncommon as a consequence of identity theft? I suspect not, and if any damages result from a security breach of their service, I believe identity theft is the most likely cause.

<comment><USER3> According to this article from 2006[1] the average out of pocket loss (to the consumer) from identity theft was around $400 and is often nothing.

While the fraud committed from identity theft is generally in the several thousands of dollars, this is almost entirely absorbed by businesses. In the United States the consumer liability for credit card theft is federally capped at $50 [2]. Most credit card companies just go ahead and make it $0 to sound good in advertisements. As a side note, it is criminally foolish to ever use a debit card in place of a credit card because the liability limits are higher and more strict to enforce [3].

So yes, even for most victims of identity theft, small claims would more than cover their potential damages. Not to mention the legal fees to prepare the case would dwarf all but the most disastrous losses. Most people would be far better to take Sony to small claims court for the $150 filing fee and get the maximum $4000 or whatever and be done with it.

[1] <http://www.bbbonline.org/idtheft/safetyquiz.asp>

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_card_fraud#Cardholder_li...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_card_fraud#Cardholder_liability)

[3] <http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/credit/cre04.shtm>

<comment><USER4> Out of pocket loss does not equate to total damages. Time lost and effort spent trying to clean it all up is significant.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Plastic pollution: 'Hidden' chemicals build up in seabirds - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-51285103 <comment><USER2> The chem Engineer in me hates the general word "Chemical".

It's not descriptive, any (macro) matter is classified as chemical.

I find the words used to describe plastics is equally poor.

Is it nylon? Is it a polyurethane? Is it ABS? Is it all large chain chemicals? Or just low density? I could go on.

<comment><USER3> The plastics are polyethylene. You can find the study here: [https://www.cell.com/current- biology/pdf/S0960-9822(19)31670...](https://www.cell.com/current- biology/pdf/S0960-9822\(19\)31670-7.pdf)

"The five chemical additives were chosen from those detected in a screening analysis of plastics found in the stomach of seabirds (n = 194) [13]: a flame retardant, deca-BDE, which is composed of several PBDE congeners, dominated by 2,20,3,30,4,40,5,50,6,60-decabromodiphenylether (BDE209); three benzotriazole ultraviolet (UV) stabilizers, specifically 2-(2-hydroxy-3-tert- butyl-5-methylphenyl)-5-chlorobenzotriazole (UV-326), 2-(3,5-di-tert- amyl-2-hydroxyphenyl) benzotriazole (UV-328), and 2-(3,5-di-tert- butyl-2-hydroxyphenyl)-5-chlorobenzotriazole (UV-327); and one benzophenone UV stabilizer, 2-hydroxy-4-octyloxybenzophenone (BP-12). Industrially, deca-BDE is mixed with polyolefins at a concentration of 5% to 8% by weight [14], and benzotriazole and benzophenone UV stabilizers are mixed at 0.05% to 2% by weight [15]."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > The effects of toxic chemicals absorbed by the body are less clear.

<comment><USER5> There are, however, lots of externalities associated with alternatives to single-use plastic which we do know are harmful.

There is an excellent 2018 study [1] which enumerates these. A memorable finding is that an organic cotton shopping bag must be reused 20,000 times before it breaks even with a single-use plastic bag.

(This is not to say that a plastic bag would be likely to end up in the sea or eaten by a bird, but it has somehow become common belief that that is the case).

[1]: [https://www2.mst.dk/Udgiv/publications/2018/02/978-87-93614-...](https://www2.mst.dk/Udgiv/publications/2018/02/978-87-93614-73-4.pdf)

<comment><USER6> Please read your actual article. The cotton bag must be reused 52 times to break even in terms of climate change and the 20,000 number is "all indicators", of which it states that " The highest number is due to the use of water resource, but also to freshwater and terrestrial eutrophication." [page 18]. There's some serious flaws with not counting water as a renewable resource. As for eutrophication, the author also doesn't consider the carrying capacity of the environment to recycle phosphorous and other other agriculture byproducts.

<comment><USER7> > There's some serious flaws with not counting water as a renewable resource.

I've often found myself pointing this out to people when talking about water being _used_ , though it does depend a lot on where the water comes from, and / or being diverted away from.

<comment><USER8> It's relevant inasmuch as the transport and purification of water can have a substantial energy cost (and things like _groundwater_ are being depleted faster than used - some of California is sinking, and the Ogalalla (while huge and still mostly there) would take 6,000 years to replenish if depleted

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Linux kernel bug delivers corrupt TCP/IP data - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/vijay-pandurangan/linux-kernel-bug-delivers-corrupt-tcp-ip-data-to-mesos-kubernetes-docker-containers-4986f88f7a19#.ay7af76xj <comment><USER2> If you rely on the TCP checksum to protect your data you are delusional anyways. The TCP checksum is a simple additive checksum that is very weak and cannot detect wide classes of data corruptions. It is is well known that it won't catch many problems, with classical papers describing this. All it can do is to catch very obvious "big" mistakes.

That is why link layers always have other stronger CRCs too.

This is actually one of the better reasons to always use TLS. Yhe MAC authentication it uses is much stronger.

<comment><USER3> Does TLS support transparent retransmits of corrupted packets?

<comment><USER4> I don't think so. Probably it'll just reset connection.

<comment><USER3> I guess that's arguably better than accepting corrupted data, but still a step backwards from the abstraction TCP is intended to provide in regards to checksums ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Google Container Engine VMs should be protected from this by the virtual NIC advertised to them. In particular, it advertises support for TCP checksum verification offload which all modern Linux guests negotiate (including the kernel used in GKE). If this feature is negotiated the host-side network (either in hardware or software) verifies the TCP checksum on the packet on behalf of the guest and marks it as having been validated prior to delivering it to the guest.

Older Linux kernels have an additional (I believe distinct) veth related bug that requires we do some extra work for externally verified packets (and jumbograms): in particular we must set up the packet we are delivering assuming that it might be routed beyond the guest _and_ that the guest will not remove/reapply the virtio-net header as an intermediate step (this is a pretty leaky abstraction of the Linux virtio-net driver, but one we're aware of and have worked to accommodate).

Of course, none of the above changes the somewhat fragile nature of TCP checksums, generally.

(note: I wrote the virtio-net NIC we advertise in GCE/GKE, although very little of the underlying dataplane, but I double checked with the GKE team in terms of underlying kernel versions that we typically run).

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the details! This is basically what Vijay and I were guessing by the fact that the MTU is something less than 1500 on Google Compute Engine.

The demonstration that Vijay added to the post was done on Google Container Engine, using Kubernetes. The packets were _sent corrupted_ using netem. We tested a few configurations and were unable to get corrupt packets to be delivered to a Google Container Engine instance, so I agree with your assessment. Most importantly: it appears that the Container Engine TCP load balancer drops corrupt packets from the public Internet.

However: If someone is using some weird routing or VPN configuration, it _might_ be possible (but this seems unlikely). Notably: I seem to recall that if you send corrupt packets to a Compute Engine instance, they are received corrupted (through the Compute Engine NAT). So if you used your own custom routing to get packets to a Google Container Engine application, this might apply. But again, you would have to really _try_ to have this happen :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sounds similar to bug #3 in this article: [https://www.pagerduty.com/blog/the- discovery-of-apache-zooke...](https://www.pagerduty.com/blog/the-discovery-of- apache-zookeepers-poison-packet/)

<comment><USER8> Looks like a similar issue with a different cause (in this case the kernel seems to be assuming that IPSec packet contents were already checksummed by the outer IPSec packet and thus correct).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a great write up.

Also, for those saying that TLS is a panacea: encrypting and/or HMAC'ing all TCP data in and out of a box is operationally ridiculous unless you're in some sort of ultra high security environment.

<comment><USER10> Sorry, what's ridiculous about it? It's a very achievable thing. On modern CPUs with instruction support, AES encryption can be done faster than DRAM bandwidth. There are definitely latency costs in connection setup that will penalize "transaction-like" protocols I guess. It's not 100% free, but relative to the other performance issues you're looking at it's surely way way way down the list of priorities.

<comment><USER9> Please note my use of the word 'operationally'.

<comment><USER10> How does that change things? What's "operationally" ridiculous about it?

<comment><USER9> The overhead involved in piling on encryption management in an environment that doesn't specifically warrant it is a waste of resources.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> From the link I didn't understand why hardware didn't do check-sum checking. Or in fact it does and only if one using a) veth and b) nic without hardware check-summing is affected?

<comment><USER12> Oops I probably should have been clearer.

Hardware verification IS performed. For various reasons, the nic never itself drips packets that are corrupt, packets are instead marked by HW as either verified or unverified. When a packet is marked as unverified, the kernel should verify and potentially reject the packet before delivery to the application. The bug in the veth driver causes the kernel to treat packets marked unverified as "verified"

<comment><USER13> If this problem affects all veth drivers, why does Docker's NAT IPv4 is safe?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is there a tl;dr? Who would be affected? Sounds scary.

<comment><USER15> It does mention toggling off the veth device "checksum offloading" as a valid workaround.

<comment><USER6> I've been trying to get Docker to include this workaround when it creates containers to ensure people don't run into it, but this has not gotten any attention: [https://github.com/docker/docker/issues/18776](https://github.com/docker/docker/issues/18776)

Mesos has a workaround like this in it now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Here is another Linux TCP horror story: An application I'm working on was experiencing slow database query performance under "load" [1]. Restarting the database temporarily "fixed" the issue, only to reappear again after a short time.

Luckily I was able to recreate the problem in a test environment (our secondary backup cluster) allowing me to study it. What I found was that I could reliably send the database cluster in a "bad state" by sending a burst of > ~200 concurrent requests to it. After this, I observed a bi-modal response time distribution with some requests completing quickly as expected (<10ms) and some taking much longer (consistently ~6s for one particular request). My initial instinct was to blame the database, but some SYN Cookie flood warnings in the kernel logs caused me to consider the network as well.

So I started using tcpdump and Wireshark to go deeper and found the following: The burst of traffic from the application also caused a burst of traffic between the database cluster nodes which were performing some sort of result merging. To make things worse, the inter-node requests of the database cluster were using http, which meant a lot of connections were created in the process. Some of these connections were interpreted as a SYN flood by the Linux kernel, causing it to SYN-ACK them with SYN cookies. Additionally, these connections would get stuck with very small TCP windows (as low as 53 bytes), and also suffer from really high ACK latencies (200ms), so a 1600 byte inter-node http request wound up taking 6s! Disabling SYN cookies "fixed" the issue (and so did increasing somaxconn, but that's effectively the same), but despite my best effort, I was unable to understand why SYN cookies should impact the TCP window.

To make this even more mysterious, this problem only occurred in one of our data centers, and we narrowed it down to the router being the only difference. Replacing the router also "fixed" the issue.

I wish my team had the resources and expertise to debug problems like this down to the kernel, but I was too far out of my depth trying to understand the gnarly code the makes up the Linux TCP Syn Cookie and Congestion Control implementation ... : (.

Anyway, I'm posting this in the vague hope that somebody may have seen something similar before, or becomes inspired to go on kernel bug hunt :).

Additionally this experience gave me a new appreciation for TCP/IP and how amazing it is that is usually "just works" for me as an application developer. This is not to say that we can't improve upon it, but I think there is a lot to learn from the philosophy and approach that went into designing TCP/IP.

[1] By "load" I mean bursts of hundreds of concurrent http requests created due the application performing JOIN requests on behalf of the NoSQL database which doesn't provide this feature. My journey of replacing this database with one that's more suited for the task at hand is being written as we speak :). [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SYN_cookies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SYN_cookies)

<comment><USER16> I believe SYN cookies affect the TCP window because the kernel can't actually guarantee it has enough RAM to allocate a reasonably sized buffer when it sends the SYN-ACK, as by design it doesn't allocate any memory until after the ACK is returned from the other side.

<comment><USER17> One potential explanation depending on your kernel version - traditional SYN cookies cannot encode TCP extensions, including window scaling, which will (nearly) always result in slower transfers. Newer kernels (The Googles aren't giving me a kernel version, unfortunately) use the TCP timestamp option in addition to the sequence to encode a limited number of TCP options, including WS.

More info: [http://www.inesc- id.pt/pt/indicadores/Ficheiros/165.pdf](http://www.inesc- id.pt/pt/indicadores/Ficheiros/165.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Very interesting, does it affect libvirt / lxc? I wonder what is the frequency of this problem.

<comment><USER6> It might. I don't know enough about them. Anything that routes packets without NAT to a veth device is affected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Shouldn't this affect anything that uses veths, not just containers? Such as Openstack.

<comment><USER6> Yes, with some caveats: Lots of configurations that use veths use NAT to share the IP address of the host. For example, this is Docker's default configuration. In this case, the host kernel checks the TCP checksum no matter what, so this issue doesn't apply.

This problem only happens when the packets are _routed_ from the host to the container. This happens in Kubernetes, which assigns each container its own IP address, Docker's IPv6 configuration (same), and Mesos, which using Linux Traffic Control rules to share a range of ports with each container.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (still 14 months to go) with the latest Hardware Enablement Stack (12.04.5) runs on the 3.13 kernel. I hope that Canonical will backport the fix to 3.13 and not only to 3.14 as hinted by the article.

<comment><USER12> I think it's in the 3.13 queue already: [http://kernel.ubuntu.com/git/ubuntu/linux.git/commit/?h=linu...](http://kernel.ubuntu.com/git/ubuntu/linux.git/commit/?h=linux-3.13.y-queue&id=ebd355e41f090a3d3a6fb24e1e5921464710b2c2)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I like the "goto drop" statement.

<comment><USER22> Glad you shared that with us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Does this affect Docker overlay networks?

</comment><comment><USER24> use romana.io instead of veth</comment>


AOL Close to Buying TechCrunch - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2010/09/27/aol-close-to-buying-techcrunch/ <comment><USER2> _"I moved my primary residence from Silicon Valley to Seattle"

Hmm, that's very specific wording there. In my world, filled with tax advisors and lawyers, this translates to "I'm trying to avoid paying California state income tax on capital gains I will accrue in the near future."_

\-- master's prediction <http://news.ycombinator.net/item?id=1314487>

<comment><USER3> Is this guy phishing? Why the link to hn.NET? Is that a sanctioned mirror? Why would I need to login again?

Likely an honest mistake, but what is news.ycombinator.net anyway?

<comment><USER2> Hah! Weird. No idea how I got a .net link. Fortunately ycombiantor.net is owned by Paul Graham and news.ycombinator.net points to the same IP as news.ycombinator.com

You would need to login again because your cookie was set for .com not .net.

<comment><USER3> Cheers, thanks for following up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Congrats to MA & crew if it's true. Regardless of whether people care for his style of writing or what TechCrunch has become (I don't mind most of it), it warms me up to see people who bust their asses get rewarded handsomely (assuming the payoff will be good.)

I just hope AOL won't kill it by injecting content from random Seed.com writers, similar to the way Demand Media turned eHow and LiveStrong into content beds. Sure the quality of TC isn't as great as it was in it's early days but it could a whole lot worse.

<comment><USER5> IMO, the quality of MG Siegler's writing is barely a step up from content farms.

<comment><USER6> Aaron --

MG is one of the few TC writers who editorializes pretty liberally in his posts. I appreciate that as it makes it more interesting and it doesn't bother me as I happen to agree with most of what he says. To editorialize successfully requires you to have a strong grasp of the industry, the market forces and what direction it's moving in -- all of which I think he does quite well, along the likes of MA or Om Malik.

You may not like his writing but it's a far cry from a content farm. He's a writer. He's paid to write. That's what he does.

I have no idea why you have so many upvotes, and I guess I'm really surprised so many people agree with you.

<comment><USER5> David - I feel he has a weak grasp on many fundamentals of modern technology[1]. His grammar and spelling are the subject of widespread mockery[2].

I must respectfully disagree with your conclusion that he has a strong grasp of the industry, market forces, or direction. I have a good deal of respect for both Arrington and Malik, and I cannot say I have one iota of the same for Siegler.

He is a writer, and he is paid to write. But the same can be said for the people producing articles for Demand Media. MG's prolific rate of content production doesn't inform its level of quality.

[1] A trivial example is this article: [http://techcrunch.com/2009/11/17/twitter-just-ui-puked-on- my...](http://techcrunch.com/2009/11/17/twitter-just-ui-puked-on-my-timeline/) where MG fails to differentiate between Twitter's CSS files failing to load and new features. I could find more if you'd like, but this is one of the more egregious from recent memory.

[2] [http://plankhead.com/blog/1146/mg-siegler-destroys-the- engli...](http://plankhead.com/blog/1146/mg-siegler-destroys-the-english- language-–-episode-2)

<comment><USER6> In regards to the poor grammar -- I've no doubt they prioritize posting speed in exchange for a more liberal writing style policy.

In regards to his grasp of tech -- I see nothing offensive about your example. He says it's probably a bug, and it was. I think his ability to grasp the implications of tech is pretty solid.

Apparently we disagree, and perhaps I even hold the contrarian viewpoint in this community. At least you can cite your criticisms which is more than I expected. :-)

<comment><USER7> His ability to grasp tech is missing the instinct that sees those numbers (re: the Twitter UI "bug") and _immediately_ thinks "Oh, duh, ordered-list tag is showing numbers when it shouldn't be. CSS file error. Happens a lot when I use Facebook and static files don't get loaded properly. Not worth writing about."

Not saying that means he shouldn't write, but as a webdev it's easy to see what's wrong with that article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As much as like to see deals happen in the Valley, I'm saddened by this news. Not that I find the content of TC that compelling anymore, but I doubt that this will do anything to improve the quality of content.

You can hate all day long on MA, but there is no denying that he has done a lot for the startup community.

I think this signals MA's eventual departure from TC and that, to me, signals the end of TC's dominance in startup news.

</comment><comment><USER9> Q: How do you know you're in a bubble?

A: When AOL wants to buy your blog.

</comment><comment><USER10> Who keeps giving AOL money???

<comment><USER11> The AOL you knew before November 24th, 2009 is dead.

Don't make the mistake of underestimating the new AOL. It's a profitable media empire that is growing rapidly and knows what it wants. It made $500mm in revenue last quarter.

Here's AOL's 10-Q filing last quarter: [http://ir.aol.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=147895&p=irol- SECText&...](http://ir.aol.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=147895&p=irol- SECText&TEXT=aHR0cDovL2lyLmludC53ZXN0bGF3YnVzaW5lc3MuY29tL2RvY3VtZW50L3YxLzAwMDExOTMxMjUtMTAtMTc2MDk1L3htbA%3d%3d)

It's hard to parse because last quarter ended the first three month stretch AOL has had as an independent company from Time Warner. It contains a ton of information about the IPO and spinoff leading up to November 2009, but if you read carefully, you'll see that AOL made $557mm in revenue last quarter, had $495mm in normal expenses, and made a net profit before tax of $62mm. Sort of. These numbers are dubious because there was a $1.4 billion charge for "unusual expenses," including a write-off from the IPO for disintegration costs and a total write-down for Bebo.com.

The real balance sheet in the 10-Q from last quarter is further obfuscated by a $182mm stock purchase of AOL by Digital Sky Technology, the Russian investment firm that bought a chunk of Facebook a while ago. A few hundred pages are devoted to that and some calculations are skewed.

Together, the things above make it look like AOL as a business is unprofitable, but I don't think that's true.

We won't know how much the company really makes until its next 10-Q filing, but I am inclined to believe the backwards projections suggesting that AOL made profits during the four quarters prior to its IPO of $34.7mm, $1.4mm, $74mm, and $90.7mm.

<comment><USER12> Interesting. Got any details?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> More interesting tidbits on this:

\- "A source close to the negotiations tells us AOL has tried to buy TechCrunch twice in the blog's five year history"

\- AOL didn't execute purchase price @ $30m in 2009 because TechCrunch didn't fully own it's conference biz, that it's since seperate from Calacanis.

VIA -

[http://www.businessinsider.com/aol-tried-to-buy- techcrunch-t...](http://www.businessinsider.com/aol-tried-to-buy-techcrunch- twice-before-2010-9)

<comment><USER14> $30M seems like a steal. (Though I'm sure it's gone up since then.)

<comment><USER15> Ye I would expect at least $60M+ esp for a few reasons:

a) Arrington has proven that the site can still grow even with him stepping back

b) The conference business is now theirs alone and that the value in Techcrunch 50 was Techcrunch, not Calacanis

c) They can convert their readers to conference attendees, party attendees, sponsors or almost anything else - a very large, loyal and well-off reader base.

A few ad and layout tweaks could see their ad revenue rise 30%+. I also don't know why they aren't allowing readers to fire up blogs and take the advertising. I also don't know why they aren't rolling up smaller blogs (like insidefacebook, some of the social gaming blogs etc.) using their stock+cash. With a year of solid work they could double ad revenue and then sell.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Arrington deserves a lucrative cash-out. He's put so much hard work into TC, and grown it into such a media force.

I'd hope AOL would keep it as a separate unit. But if not, and AOL changes it, it could be an opportunity to, uh, Disrupt Techcrunch as the market leader.

</comment><comment><USER17> Arrington's timing on breaking angelgate was impeccable - likely sweetened, or at least helped seal the deal at the 11th hour.

</comment><comment><USER18> Going out on a very frail limb here, but it seems to me that MA wants to build a (small, but "his") empire, not just make money. In that context it makes no sense for him to sell TechCrunch. That said, stranger things have happened...

<comment><USER4> Every business is for sale at the right price :)

<comment><USER18> Dubious. I imagine you could give Steve Jobs $100 trillion and he still wouldn't sell Apple. What would he do with his life? Buy Apple back?

<comment><USER5> Why does a price have to be monetary in nature? I'm sure that, were it entirely up to Steve, there is something that would make him sell Apple.

<comment><USER19> sure, if you gave him second life he might consider it.

<comment><USER20> Puts that new liver in context.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I get why AOL - the cash, their focus on content, etc.

But the right fit?

Some of the stuff Arrington writes would probably be struck by a sales / publicly traded editing bay yah?

Beyond that I would love to see a list of TechCrunch's most visited articles over the past year.

It might just be the HN bubble but I feel like 2/3 of the non-fluff stuff comes from arrington's deep connections.

And it doesn't just seem like Arrington playing "founder" rolling out the big news, it seems like genuinely developing from his passion for the tech space.

After his extended vacation a few years ago, and the thoughts he expressed on loving / hating / being exhausted w/TechCrunch I can't imagine he's going to stick around.

Examples of other blogs built on a founders passion that made it through an aquistion (EG discluding Weblogs topical gossip rags)?

<comment><USER21> Another issue is embargo breaking which TC does frequently. A lot of companies have the policy that if a news outlet breaks an embargo, than that outlet _and_ it's parent & sister companies are banned from future embargoed releases. So I'd imagine AOL would have to put a stop to that.

<comment><USER22> That's very far from the truth. If TC was frequently accepting and then breaking embargos, then very quickly their sources of embargos would dry up.

TC very clearly announced to everyone that they no longer were going to accept unsolicited embargos. Their motive was that many of their competitors were breaking embargos by a few hours and then claiming it was accidental. The competitors that were breaking the embargo weren't being reprimanded by the PR firms, etc. at all. There was a clear advantage to breaking the embargo (more traffic, better ranking on news aggregators, etc.) and those who played fairly, like TC, were essentially being punished for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> According to Valleywag, MA turned down a $20 million offer in 2008:

[http://valleywag.gawker.com/5024888/aol-wants-to-buy- techcru...](http://valleywag.gawker.com/5024888/aol-wants-to-buy-techcrunch- at-a-70-percent-discount-to-arringtons-nine+figure-price-tag)

</comment><comment><USER23> I guess this is the one story on which Arrington doesn't mind getting scooped.

</comment><comment><USER24> Poor Yahoo! Always shows up late to the party.

</comment><comment><USER25> Dark, dark day for the Valley :(

</comment><comment><USER26> Best sentence in there: "Perhaps that's when the announcement is likely to be made." :) Om must be pretty pleased to be able to post this news about a competitor.

</comment><comment><USER27> Great News for MA, bad news for TC readers. I hope Mike's ego prevents them from making TC go lame.

No doubt he will have a non-compete if he totally cashes out. :(

</comment><comment><USER28> I know this is different, but I still think of Reddit and Condé Nast while reading this.

<comment><USER29> That sure is an odd fellowship, isn't it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Hasn't AOL basically destroyed anything they bought?

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

Or at least let dust grow and cover them.

</comment><comment><USER31> Confirmed: <http://twitter.com/Sequoia_Capital/status/25800338477>

</comment><comment><USER32> If not AOL, who would be the most likely (i.e. biggest cash out) for TC?

</comment><comment><USER33> My guess: $50 Million

What do you say?

<comment><USER34> I would suspect much higher than that. TC was rumoured to be making over $10m a year even 4 years ago before their conferences and Crunch Gear etc. It's a solid blog network and still growing in influence and mediums (TCTV, Disrupt etc).

Given how much stick MA gave entrepreneurs for not swinging for the fences in the angelgate panel this morning I would guess over $100m.

<comment><USER34> Looks like maybe I was wrong

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> what value would AOL get from the aquisition??

</comment><comment><USER36> Will they just integrate it with Engadget or how will that work out? Keep both separate but competing? Like the way Kellogg's has their divisions competing against each other like Rice Crispies vs. Mini-Wheats?

<comment><USER37> They're profoundly different blogs, don't think they're candidates for a merge at all.

<comment><USER36> Crunchgear is basically the same as Engadget. And yes I agree they differ, but they have a fair amount of overlap.

<comment><USER38> I agree with both of you. To borrow your analogy, they're like Rice Crispies and Mini-Wheats. Depending on your point of view, they're the same (wheat products consumed for breakfast with milk) or different (a frosted cereal in big chunks, versus a puffed rice kernel that snaps and crackles).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Twitter can solve harassment right now with verified accounts - <AUTHOR> http://calacanis.com/2015/02/06/twitter-can-solve-harassment-right-now-with-verified-accounts/

<comment><USER2> "You're basically firing off a cyber sleuthing mission: get us the IP addresses and we can subpoena the ISP to find out who is bullying you."

Bullying is illegal now? and what constitutes bullying? I would consider the behavior of many open source project leaders "bullying", but I'm not going to call the police. I'm going to just stop contributing to the project.

The ex-Mozilla CEO got bullied online until he was forced to quit. Would Twitter consider the CEO the bully because of his views on gay marriage or the people that tweeted non-stop until he quit? "bullying" seems to be the new way to censor opposing opinions.

I'm fine with stopping more abuse, but forcing verified accounts makes it even more difficult for people to express opinions that are against the norm. It may even bring more bullying outside of twitter if you are forced to use your real name.

"Now, verified twitter doesn't only solve for trolling. It would also be a money-printing machine"

So why do I want another company to have even more of my personal information?

</comment><comment><USER3> Maybe right now comes the time to discuss what we really want twitter to be: \- either a dumb pipe for social update \- or something more like facebook or google+

And I still think that trolling also include gawker abusing the Coca cola advertising bot ( along with the threats that prominent users gets )

</comment><comment><USER4> Twitter has been used to overthrow governments. I'll pass on the verified account meaning Twitter knows where I live bit. Facebook likely doesn't know my street address.</comment>


How can I block Google's spammy servers? - <AUTHOR>

For several months I occasionally get spam and use sites to parse the email to find that the server is owned by Google.
If you use either of these sites, you will see the  IP of the latest spammer to hit me is owned by Google:
IP to check: 22.214.171.124 (gleaned from sites like SpamCop for one, I've used two to verify the parsing for the above address)
http://www.tcpiputils.com/browse/ip-address http://multirbl.valli.org/lookup/220.127.116.11.html <comment><AUTHOR> Am I the only one getting spammed from IPs in the 209.* range owned by Google? If I CIDR block them then I run the risk of blocking legitimate Gmail users I'd imagine, right?

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's more proof, 3.5% of the server's traffic is SPAM according to this site:

[http://www.reputationauthority.org/lookup.php?ip=209.85.192....](http://www.reputationauthority.org/lookup.php?ip=220.127.116.11)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Can you recommend a good Node.js ORM? - <AUTHOR> I've used Sequelize (https://github.com/sequelize/sequelize) and Bookshelf (https://github.com/bookshelf/bookshelf) but not that wild about either. Are there any other JS/Node ORMs that anyone has used and would recommend? <comment><USER2> i like knex

[https://www.npmjs.com/package/knex](https://www.npmjs.com/package/knex)</comment>


President Trump Propose Border Wall Covered in Solar Panels – Generating 4.7GW - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/06/a-solar-powered-border-wall/529425/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> This is great. A wall is stupid, but if we end up doing a huge solar project, that's great. I think any immigrant who effectively circumvents it should be allowed to apply for citizenship.

</comment><comment><USER3> I could see this being the target of constant vandalism.</comment>


Ask HN: Why move to Silicon Valley versus going to London? - <AUTHOR>

I, along with my co-founder, are currently debating whether to move to Silicon Valley (neither one of us has roots there) or go to Britain (one of is British).
I think that startups based in Silicon Valley are statistically going to have a higher chance of a) success and b) funding. But I just don't have raw data or stats to back that up.
Any one care to share something tangible? <comment><USER2> The home of Apple, Ebay, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Zynga, LinkedIn, DropBox, AirBnB, PayPal, Yammer, Eventbrite, Yelp, Palantir, Square, Salesforce, Etrade, NetFlix, Electronic Arts, Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins, Y Combinator, etc.

That's not to say that you can't be successful in London but you have to really understand the difference and execute accordingly.</comment>


LA Startup Incubators/Accelerators/Mentorship Programs Compared - <AUTHOR> http://ryanborn.net/startup-incubators-in-la/ LA Startup Incubators/Accelerators/Mentorship Programs as Compared to NCAA Football Conferences <comment><USER2> It's great to see more incubators in Los Angeles. Not all of them will be successful but it is refreshing to see people focus on the startup ecosystem in Los Angeles.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. I've always felt an entrepreneurial spirit in the city. Might just be all of the screenwriters in the local coffee houses though.

Any drink mixers taking place in Santa Monica?</comment></comment>


Ruby Refinements landed in trunk - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wyeworks.com/2012/8/3/ruby-refinements-landed-in-trunk

<comment><USER2> A much needed change. With Requirements, libraries that you include in your projects can sandbox their monkeypatches to only affect their classes.

Likewise, if the purpose of a library is to monkeypatch a standard class, you can selectively include that monkeypatch only where needed in order to isolate any potential side effects.

</comment><comment><USER3> Encouraging bad behaviour by making it safer to behave badly.

<comment><USER4> If it is safe, it is no longer bad behavior.

<comment><USER5> No, that just means it's safe.

<comment><USER6> It was bad behaviour because it was unsafe. Now it is safe.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple sold out kids' privacy yesterday under the guise of "screen time" apps - <AUTHOR> https://www.androidpolice.com/2019/06/04/apple-sold-out-kids-privacy-yesterday-under-the-guise-of-screen-time-apps/ <comment><USER3> I don't know - I feel this article is overselling how much privacy is compromised.

Specifically, the _worst_ case is that parents can know everything their kids do (I think this is extreme, but seems plausibly possible given the available APIs?). I'm not 100% sold on parents needing this, but we quickly go down the rabbit hole of "raise your kids to know how not to be bullied, harassed, or kidnapped" vs "monitor what your kids do and protect them from bad decisions" (I've tried to be as neutral as possible here, but I know my bias is to the former and that colors my language)

I think it's important to distinguish the "selling out privacy" when providing that information to parents, vs the privacy abuse that comes from providing usage information to arbitrary third parties (google, facebook, ad servers, etc)

<comment><USER4> I agree, they are on completely separate planes of severity. Sharing information in the context of a real-life relationship, especially with someone who wields emotional, physical, or financial power over the subject, is _far_ worse than sharing it with some impersonal corporate optimization algorithm. The main reason to be concerned about corporate surveillance datasets is that they _could_ , _someday_ leak or be weaponized into the subject's personal relationships. Surveillance explicitly for this purpose is beyond the pale.

Like most people I know, I had great parents who would have used this responsibly or not at all. Others were not so lucky. Whether it was homophobia, abuse, or simply overbearing parenting styles, some opacity in the parent-child relationship was critical to their sanity and survival as young adults. Particularly in college, where parents still have "power of the purse" (so could force their kids to accept MDM) but tend to back off out of logistical necessity (until now?).

<comment><USER3> I do forget just how much support college/uni students get from their parents in the US.

But even in the US I suspect pure financial support is not the norm - <USER2> insurance extending to "children" who live elsewhere is obviously super important in the US

<comment><USER4> Sticker price is for rich kids. Normal people require need-based financial aid to afford 4-year degrees. The federal government computes an "expected family contribution" based on your parent's finances, and your scholarships and loans are sized accordingly. An 18-year-old from a middle-class background would have an EFC far greater than she could pay out of pocket, and to borrow it she'd need her parents to cosign. Actually, without their cooperation she couldn't even get the EFC, since they need to open their books and sign the FAFSA. She'd be staring down sticker price on her own.

Not even emancipation can break the link. She'd have to provide a documented history of child abuse, serve in the military, get married, or wait until age 25. More likely, reduce her ambitions to a community college associate's degree she can afford at sticker price on her own part-time wages.

The fact that our government provides a number called "expected family contribution" is good evidence that, at least officially, contributing to children's educations _is_ the norm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was always under the impression that messages and browsing history are off- limits even with MDM profiles.

Does anyone know how they got access to them? And is Apple really adding an API to access messages? This has been an unmitigated catastrophe on Android.

<comment><USER6> I'd imagine there must be some kind of access to messages and browser history for managed devices otherwise e.g. banks wouldn't be able to issue iPhones to employees since (AIUI) they need to be able to capture that to prevent fraud, etc.

<comment><USER7> Browser history can be achieved through routing everything through a VPN. Messages can be disabled and replaced with a compliant messenger.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hopefully these parental surveillance tools will help to raise a generation that understands not to discuss anything of consequence near an electronic device.

<comment><AUTHOR> Isn't that a ( "the" ? ) major problem with surveillance, though ? People will change their behaviour when they know they're being observed.

This becoming the new normal is not good.

<comment><USER4> I'm grudgingly accepting that cheap surveillance opportunities will always be taken. A population that learns opsec from the cradle seems more likely to flourish in this environment than one in denial or haplessly assuming benign intent.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: If you could ask Tony Hoare one question, what would it be? - <AUTHOR>

For those of you that may not be aware, Tony Hoare is the person that has invented quicksort and null, among many other things, most of which are outlined in his Wikipedia page  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Hoare<p>I may get the chance to meet him soon and I was wondering what HNers would ask him if given the chance. If possible, I'll try to relay your questions to him and get back with the answers. <comment><USER2> _Sir_ Tony Hoare.

Anyway, he's goes to a lot of conferences so it's not uncommon to see him. I wouldn't act like a big fanboy, trying to ask him clever questions about null or anything like that.</comment>


How I stay calm, by people with very stressful jobs - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/mar/01/how-stay-calm-by-people-stressful-jobs <comment><USER2> TL;DR:

Football manager: Be careful about your information diet. Stop bringing everything home. And... alcohol? =\

Headteacher: Policy of being calm and non-confrontational. (But how?) Runs, which is therapeutic. Spends 5 minutes reflecting every day.

Concilator (?): Represent the best side of both sides of the conflict. Seek common ground. If there's anger in the room, it's not me: "people are angry because they're not in control. I'm in control." Also, gardening.

Diver: 1 month work, 2 months off. Watches Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad. Swims and surfs on his time off.

TV Guest Booker: Be organized, treat it like a game. Always another show tomorrow, don't get too precious about it.

A&E consultant: Yikes, his life is the toughest. Have people around you who can share the burden. Focus on what you love, rather than the burden. Changed hospital to something that's a 12 minute walk away, allowing him to play with his son more. Cites it as hugely beneficial.

<comment><USER3> What popped out for me was different:

\- A cool trick by the headteacher is to be available: to be at the school gate at the start and end of every day.

\- Wisdom by the conciliator: _stress is created when people aren 't in control._

\- Diver: reads; and _being tired helps restore calm_.

\- TV guest booker: _people have their own demons, which have a habit of appearing when they 're faced with going on live TV_. And then... _experience teaches you that taking a philosophical approach is best._

\- If you were to read only one story, don't miss the A&E consultant's: _I 'm having conversations with people that they will probably never have with any other human being, and that's a great privilege._

There's also a striking parallel in something he said: _the stress in A &E is about me not having control. So I think it's important to have a hobby where you do have complete control_. If programming is a hobby where you do have complete control, what does it say about the people it attracts?

<comment><USER4> > stress is created when people aren't in control.

I think the "Serenity Prayer" is spot on, even though it reads like a 3-part joke with a punchline (paraphrased):

      Don't try to change what you can't change
      Try to change what you can change
      Learn which is which

Because if you get them mixed up, it's either frustrating or immobilizing. Of course, you often _can 't_ know til you try, the very process of learning. Learning isn't intrinsically stressful... it's when you _insist_ that things should be how you expect them to be that has that peculiarly frustrating quality. It's closing your eyes to reality - delusional.

Suggestion: if you find yourself saying things like " _Why_ isn't this working!?", "What's _wrong_ with this thing!?", take the rhetorical question literally... because there _is_ something you don't know. Focus on finding out what it is (i.e. seeing reality), and that peculiar stress will disappear.

<comment><USER5> The version of it I've always heard is:

        God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
        The courage to change the things I can,
        And the wisdom to always know the difference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Saturation diver: risk of death

A&E doctor: risk of someone else's death

TV booker: risk of a guest not showing up

Doesn't really compare, does it?

<comment><USER7> It does compare. People have a MIN and a MAX level of stress, and unfortunately they usually calibrate these to the most stressful situation _they usually encounter_ : the TV booker will feel the same level of stress when a guest is not showing up that the diver feels when he knows something went wrong and he's probably going to die.

The key is realizing that unfortunately this is your natural tendency, to set you MAX to the most stressful situation you _usually_ encounter and to _work against this natural tendency:_ just image _how much worse things could actually be_ , think that you or your loved one or your children could die or be severely mutilated and incapacitated for life _today_ in a _mundane car accident_ that will not even reach the news. Go even further next: meditate a bit on how big the world is and how many horrible things are in that could _really hurt you and the ones you love_ , and then go even further, think about how big and dangerous the universe is and how small and powerless you are and how many cosmical catastrophes could negate our civilization's entire existence. This will make you feel _worse_ , but it will help you calibrate your MAX to a more appropriate level and help you a enjoy a stress-free life.

Next time you feel stressed to death, try googling some accidents stats, some deaths from cancers stats and maybe some violent crime stats (if you're in the USA). Then meditate a bit on the scale of things: ( this might help: [http://htwins.net/scale2/](http://htwins.net/scale2/) ), and trust me, _it will really do you good!_

...unfortunately the article misses this advice entirely.

<comment><USER8> This is really interesting. It helps me understand how I process my own stress. I know I'm actually stressed when my mind shuts down and is unable to process information and make good decisions (i.e. I start panicking). I've experienced this in many different scenarios, from the time I was volunteering in high school for a big school performance event, the first time I was working a cash register and tried to return the correct change to a person, first big tech foul-up that majorly impacted a client, and various crisis- level incidents managing tech at the 2010 Olympics.

As I've gone through life and experienced more and more difficult things, I've realized that stress very relative. But when I was experiencing those things _at the time for the first time_ , they were very stressful. When I look back at my high school self trying to find an extra chair for a ticket holder at that performance event, I find it absurd that I panicked so much. Same for when I was trying to calculate the correct amount of change in my head for a retail customer. Ludicrous. But I can't deny the stress I felt back then.

But as my experiences with stress became bigger, I realized something that changed the way I thought about things. I was still alive, things were still happening. So what if the Mexican consulate lost all of their visa records and applications because I did some shoddy sysadmin work? Well, yeah, a very big number of people were impacted. But I lived through it. I was shellacked, but I lived through it. Olympic crisis incidents? I experienced several during both training scenarios and the real thing. I was shellacked, but I lived through it. And current startup stuff? Well, nothing huge yet, but perhaps that's only because I haven't reached a level of success where I am exposed to that type of risk yet.

The point is that every time I experienced something bigger and survived, I realized that actually life goes on, and because I can survive, I am quite capable of handling whatever life throws at me. With that perspective, basically I have learned to _have_ perspective. Realize that whatever I may be experiencing right now, no matter how difficult and stressful it may be, there will be a tomorrow. Even if I am reduced to absolutely nothing and lose _everything_ , I still would be alive and would be able to start again.

And that perspective suddenly makes it easy to deal with all the crappy stressful stuff that may come by. At the end of the day, they're all just small things that don't kill me. I hope that if I ever experience something truly terrible, like a fight with terminal cancer, I can keep the same perspective. Whatever, I am still alive, and I can go on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A short 7 minute documentary that shows saturation diving:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcSduoKj6KU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcSduoKj6KU)

<comment><USER10> It looks a lot like being an astronaut, except instead of PhDs from MIT running the show, you have Bob from South Philly whose favorite food is a cheeseburger with donuts for a bun.

<comment><USER11> I wouldn't be surprised if Bob has an easier time making the right call without second-guessing himself when things go sideways.

In the case of activities like saturation diving (or in my case, firefighting), experience matters a hell of a lot more than all the PhDs in the world. After hundreds of dives (be it in smoke or water) you've seen just about everything that can go wrong, and you're in a much better position to break the chain of events leading up to a disaster.

<comment><USER12> Do you think astronauts (or people making decisions on the ground) have a tendency to make the wrong call when things go sideways? They train exhaustively for just about any possible emergency, and if they can't train the panic out of you, you do not go to space.

You can argue about the hubris involved in the Columbia or Challenger disasters, but in the heat of the moment, I would trust the person who has trained their entire life and was selected from a pool of thousands for their supreme skills, talent, and temperament. These are not nervous nelly academics we're talking about here.

<comment><USER13> This is exactly what Col. Chris Hadfield, former commander of the ISS and general type-A++ person, describes in his book "An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth: What Going to Space Taught Me About Ingenuity, Determination, and Being Prepared for Anything".

It's _insane_ how prepared they are. In fact, it was hard for me to learn many lessons from the book, because the astronaut experience is so different from every day life. I just don't get to try things 1000 different ways and debrief with fellow geniuses every time. Real life seems to involve quite a bit of muddling through with barely adequate experience.

A good read if you want a glimpse into the mind of the ultra-high-achiever, crazy work ethic, moustachioed Canadian hero.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I would _not_ be drinking to de-stress, as per the football manager.

<comment><USER15> Yes but this is the UK where having a pint at lunch doesn't mean your a full fledged alcoholic.

I remember a course at be where the course leader also did the "dealing with staff with serious problems course" he commented it was the ones with a couple of vodka bottle hidden at work when you know they had a real problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> When I began reading about the football coach Chris Wilder who is almost dead- last in his league and totally calm about it... I immediately thought of Bob Knight.

Best known as the head coach of the Indiana Hoosiers basketball team from 1971-2000. He retired as the winningest NCAA Division I mens coach of all time. The NCAA Div I mens basketball league is arguably one of the most difficult to maneuver and most diverse sports leagues in the entire world. He was certainly not known for being "calm" [0].

All I'm saying is that "being calm has it's place".

Perhaps Chris Wilder could be wildly successful on the football pitch if he left his calm demeanor at the door?

[0] [http://youtu.be/7Qxu5cvW-ds?t=1m20s](http://youtu.be/7Qxu5cvW-ds?t=1m20s)

</comment><comment><USER17> > I have been known to find the answer in the bottom of a pint pot.

Spoken like a true Englishman.

</comment><comment><USER18> The diver is the only one with any claim to honest stress, among these particular examples.

Catastrophic decompression is not to be trifled with.

</comment><comment><USER19> This is a very moot article. I would like to see how a CEO who wakes at 4am, goes to bed at 11pm copes with the stress of life.

<comment><USER12> By deteriorating physically, mentally, and socially.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I own some fast food restaurants and, for a short time, managed them directly, hands-on. During rushes, especially when shorthanded, you feel you are being crushed by disappointed customers filing in the door, and there's nothing you can do to make things better at that moment. When I realized that, I also found my answer. I can't make things better so I will only concentrate on what is in front of me and do the best I can; and the rush will end soon.

Everything I do, I do with personal pride, so when things go bad, it hits home. I also realized that most things aren't running as bad as you think they are cause you know how things are supposed to work but your customer only sees the result of your efforts.

When doing rote things under pressure, it helps to hum random notes.</comment>