Nearly Half of Americans Are Lonely - <AUTHOR> https://www.advisory.com/research/care-transformation-center/care-transformation-center-blog/2018/07/loneliness-epidemic <comment><USER2> Honestly, I've never had problems talking to random strangers. Some of my best friends were random strangers at first.

IMO, the problem has nothing to do with the internet. Instead, the problem has more to do with poorly controlling marketing and homelessness. Political correctness also takes a toll.

When I lived in the Bay Area, most of the time I was randomly approached, "on the street," it was from a homeless person. Thus, I was less likely to be friendly to someone when I was in areas with high amounts of homeless people. If the Bay Area took care of the homeless situation better, there would be less people approaching me, and then it would be easier to interact with strangers.

But then, what about being in stores, malls, ect? I then need to put up defenses against aggressive marketing. That also makes it hard to be friendly. If we considered unsolicited marketing as insulting, we wouldn't need to keep our defenses up in places of commerce.

Even political correctness takes a toll. If I start talking with someone who has a different opinion than me, or is a difference race than me, faux pas get blown out of proportion. No one wants to make friends with someone who's going to scream at them for being a bigot because they lean a little right, or be labeled a libtard because they lean a little left.

<comment><USER3> > But then, what about being in stores, malls, ect? I then need to put up > defenses against aggressive marketing.

There's aggressive marketing in the street too. Most often when someone approaches me on the street, they're trying to get money out of me. Either they're panhandlers, or they're selling me something, or seeking donations of some sort - which are all really the same thing.

The only exception is if they want to influence me in some way, i.e. they want my vote.

So ultimately, strangers approaching us in public areas are looking _to get something out of us_. They're not looking for a reciprocal social relationship. They're looking to get _something_ : money, votes, support for their cause.

I do agree that it's a big part of the reason why Americans don't make social connections in public areas. I'm not sure about the solution though. The biggest problem in most places I lived was the panhandlers, and that's a big problem that causes a lot of issues in general, and doesn't seem to have a good solution.

<comment><USER4> > So ultimately, strangers approaching us in public areas are looking to get > something out of us

This matches my experience as well (I suspect it might not in less urban areas, though). It's quite frustrating.

I also resent the fact that the people who are accosting me like this usually have the expectation that I _owe_ them my attention. I'm pretty good at brushing them off/ignoring them, and I've seen quite a few get genuinely offended that I'm evading their pitch. Which is offensive to me in turn: they're trying to take advantage of my natural inclination to be social/respond to another human, and _they 're_ mad because _I_ didn't fall for it? It's a parasitic situation. Sadly, I also agree with you that there's not really any way to fix it. The well is just poisoned...

<comment><USER3> > This matches my experience as well (I suspect it might not in less urban > areas, though).

Indeed, I lived in less urban areas, and people are more open to socialize there.

As for the rest, I agree and encountered the same as well. What they are doing is parasitic, but they are naturally offended if you ignore them. For marketers especially, consider that every time someone ignores them, it means they failed at their job. It's a bad situation for them, and for us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For a long time I've been wanting a "Tinder For Platonic Adults" app. I'm not looking for romance or sex, but I want to find nearby matches with similar interests; do you drink, play board games, are you married, how many kids and what age?

There are likely tens of matches for me within a 5 minute drive, I just _don 't know how to find them_.

I'm a friendly guy and would love to have that friend that feels comfortable stopping by unannounced or that I can share my latest batch of cheesecake with. I'd love to have regular friendly gatherings nearly every weekend. Literally the only thing stopping me is the first step of connecting. Once I'm there I can easily deal with step 2: "dating" the field to find a decent practical match with mutual interest in the relationship.

<comment><USER6> > There are likely tens of matches for me within a 5 minute drive, I just > don't know how to find them.

I have found meetup.com to be exactly this. Not everybody at a meetup will click personally, but they're much more likely to share interests. One meetup group has completely changed my life, and I have met people I consider some of the best people I have ever encountered anywhere. And they all live right near me.

<comment><USER7> I think a lot of this is economics, culture and the city-scape of the US. In other places (my home country included) there's no meetup.com, but there's just more community and family. Having lived in the US I've noticed the following:

1\. Colleges get expensive and matter a lot, so people leave home for college if they want to achieve. Time to make new friends.

2\. After college, a lot of people go where the job is-- this might be far from your family and since you went to college with a lot of people from a lot of different places, probably far from them too. Goodbye friends.

3\. It's not unlikely your job brings you to a city, and US cities are notorious for having the tall downtown where most city life exists and the quiet, expansive suburbs. You're young so you move downtown. Time to make new friends.

4\. Downtown will be expensive, apartments will be for rent not sale, so you'll be moving about constantly. You never form meaningful connections with neighbors.

This point is interesting in that is, I feel, why people seem more glued to their phones today, interact with people around them less, and overall annoy each-other more. Their real friends are not necessarily the people around them: they live on your phone. You don't make an effort to meet people around you cause you might never see them again. Not even your neighbors: your lease is for just one year.

5\. You eventually settle down and move to the suburbs. Time to make new friends. Everyone wants the lawn, but this also means houses are far between. How many people can your really interact with? Moreover, American suburbs are just that: houses. No one walks on the streets of suburbs, so meeting, bumping into and interacting with neighbors takes effort. All the time you spend shopping, working, having fun-- it's probably going to be around strangers downtown, not your neighbors.

6\. You have kids, and your kids leave for college. They're not going to move back home, or to your neighborhood. They're going to go down the same path-- you better remind them to call.

7\. You get very old, and then get put in a elderly home. Again, instability, and you probably have to find and make new friends.

A lot about this progression seems relatively normal but are unusual where I'm from.

<comment><USER8> I think a lot of it is denial and wanting not to admit it to yourself, or to put up the appearance everything is ok. We can get pretty good at even lying to ourselves.

<comment><USER7> I agree 100%

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think a huge factor is the growing theme of social interaction being unacceptable. Back in the day you could walk up to and make friends with almost anyone, it wasn't weird to interact with strangers, thus making new acquaintances.

Modern society stigmatizes that kind of interaction, don't talk to people you don't know if you don't want to be ostracized. You could want to befriend someone in a crowd, but come up with no good ways to go about the situation. See someone wearing a cool jacket and you decide you want to be their friend > Go up and introduce yourself > See almost every single person in the immediate area turn and spectate the interaction, instantly judging you as out of the ordinary. Really stretching the topic, even getting contact information is more difficult these days. 20 years ago you could meet someone, and they'd have no issue giving out their home telephone number. You'd ring them up and you could schedule to see a movie. Nowadays you are considered suspicious if you ask for someones phone number. I know people today that will absolutely not give out their phone number to anyone other than immediate family.If you are their friend and want to contact them, you have to do it over a social app like IG.

That and it can be hard to find people you fit in with well due to the rise of the internet and people staying inside. If you are a hermit and enjoy other hermits, you won't find them by going outside. Which means you are then stuck with trying to meet people online, and introducing yourself online is even harder than it is in person and met with the same hostility. I'm talking about guy > guy and girl > girl here. It's a whole different level of hell trying to befriend someone of the opposite sex these days. Most people assume you either want something sexual or unusual, not just friendship.

<comment><USER10> I do think people tend to engage with strangers a lot less often than they had "back then," but I cannot agree modern society stigmatizes that kind of interaction at all. You can see people interacting with strangers on college campuses, at music events, and at grocery stores all the time.

<comment><USER11> Modern society doesn't overtly stigmatize social interaction, it encourages social isolation at a structural level. Car dependent suburban sprawl is designed to minimize the number of necessary interactions you need to have with strangers to get through your day. As a society we've gone to great lengths to avoid other people. The miracle of modern civilization is that you no longer need to be a part of a community and cultivate a series of interdependent relationships to get through life.

<comment><USER12> Car dependent suburban sprawl maximizes the time that members of the same family spend together, at the expense of interaction with strangers. Both have their place in different phases of life. Many parents gladly give up interactions with strangers on public transit in exchange for the extra hours with their children that fast personal transport enables.

It's a terrible place to live alone when young and single, but that's not what it's for.

<comment><USER11> Cars don't save any time. Mass transit, cycling and walking in a city optimized for those modes is just as fast. It's also safer, cheaper, better for mental and physical health, better for the environment, upward economic mobility, and aesthetically nicer. The personal automobile is for signalling status and avoiding poor/black people, which is worth more than all those other things.

<comment><USER12> No amount of bike lane makes you pedal 60mph. That assertion is clearly absurd. Of course there are tradeoffs other than time, but people aren't evil for valuing it.

To replicate the 25 minute commute times that are completely normal across America's car-centric sprawl into a dense and transit-centric area, one has to live in the most central and premium real estate. Great if you can afford it. Most can't.

<comment><USER11> When everyone is going 60 mph, going 60 mph gets you nowhere fast. Going that fast takes up a lot of space. To go that fast in cities we had to rip out the places to go to make room for the means of getting to those places at 60 mph, and for room to store your giant protective metal shell when you're not using it.

We stopped building the sorts of places where you can still get somewhere going at a reasonable speed around the end of WW2, and made it illegal, so it's now very expensive to live in a sensible neighbourhood, there aren't many left. It's a simple supply and demand problem, though not so simple once you attempt to unpack the reasons as to why we have this simple supply and demand problem.

There's a banality to true evil. It's a quirk of human social psychology that when everyone is doing the wrong thing, it stops being the wrong thing. This why rape=bad, and destroying the planet=pretty alright if you ask me.

<comment><USER12> San Francisco's many single-family-home neighborhoods have all you really need to accomodate car storage: garages instead of living space on the ground floor. Houses still come right up the sidewalk and squeeze wall-to-wall against each other.

Typical American suburbia takes density _way_ lower than that. People here seem to value that separation for reasons above and beyond their parking needs. For example, not hearing the neighbors' footsteps through the ceilings or their TVs and family disputes through the walls. Giving each child their own bedroom. Having room for play and gatherings in the backyard. This suggests that, even without cars, we'd still insist on a pretty low densities. (Since it is homeowners in the center who control land use in the center, the frustrations of outer-ring commuters under such an arrangement don't make a difference).

I'm fortunate that I can afford to live in a high-rise district and commute in reasonable time by train and elevator. But even with so many places a short walk from home, it's a big metro area - there are many _more_ I want to go which are not so close. Without a car, I felt isolated and trapped. It's great to have neighborhood businesses, but you get tired of the monotony after a while.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've never had a relationship and I think over 30 it's really hard to find one (especially if you never had one so don't have the "how to experience"). Everyone is either already married, or already divorced with kids, or just out of your league. The married part also has another effect: you won't get invited to a lot of events where people socialize, say a kids birthday party where the parents also come together.

Also I think it's a personal thing but I don't even try to make contact with anyone because of the whole climate of our society. Obviously it's divided and that's really bad on its own but I think about things like mansplaining. Basically you are reminded everywhere how bad it is and I agree on that but as an anxious person it makes even more less willing to make contact because I always have that thought of what if you are a doing something wrong, you will be accused of something etc.

Yeah reading back my comment doesnt really make any sense but... I feel that some people, some of us just meant to be forever alone for good or bad

<comment><USER14> I've never had a relationship until 25. I had all the bad luck when it comes to genetics and upbringing.

At the time of 25, I just learned to drive and had my first beater 15-year-old car. I made lots of great friends when giving rides to Wal-mart to friends who are fellow international graduate students on that shitty car. I just made up bullshit reasons for me to go to Wal-mart every weekend and asked them if they want to tag along. Many were too shy to bother others, and would totally appreciate someone who would offer them a ride. I sort of became the go-to person when people needed a ride (friendship came with a cost, who would have guessed right?). One day, I was asked to give a student a ride from the airport two hours away because she couldn't ask anyone else to help. We became good friends after the ride I gave her and we developed a great relationship two years after.

There is a lot of stuff like that you can do to help others and maybe help yourself. You can volunteer in a place if you don't know where to begin. When you find yourself to be useful and kind to others, oh strangely, people will see that too.

>less willing to make contact because I always have that thought of what if you are a doing something wrong, you will be accused of something etc.

While some people are a pain in the ass, you will find most to be friendly and understanding when you're genuine. Don't be afraid of stories you read online of judgments and lawsuits. I found myself in a strange situation when I just had nothing to lose and I did many things against the advice to protect myself from being vulnerable and potentially receiving the short end of the stick. I have turned my life around doing just that. While I did indeed occasionally receive the short end of the stick, I have gained so many great friends and stories that totally made it worth it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Incredible how the subtext here is "loneliness requires healthcare" rather than, say, "loneliness requires coordinated social change". Almost as if the goal is "how can we frame loneliness as an illness and reap some sweet insurance money."

<comment><USER16> I kind of agree with you, but what does positive "coordinated social change" look like? I can only think of negative ones, like those that occurred with radical political changes, or else explicit/thinly-veiled marketing campaigns for consumer goods..

<comment><USER17> Redesigning neighborhoods to be walkable not driveable. Rezoning so that more businesses can open near residential areas, so people can walk or bike to work, walk to get groceries, etc. More people around leads to more serendipitous interactions, maybe improved safety.

I guess that's not really coordinated social change, but I think tweaks to the context in which we live can have huge, positive social impacts.

<comment><USER18> There's a nice virtue to this, also. Build walkable and bike-able places and you're building public spaces to be _shared_. If you only embrace a car-driven model of development, "public" spaces are to be _competed for_ (e.g. you stole my parking spot, you cut me off, you're in front of me driving too slowly, etc.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Many reasons for this, and many good ones have already been noted, but I haven't seen anyone mention time yet. Americans work a lot. If you don't make friends at work, or you don't maintain friendships from high school or college, you're working on limited time and energy - as are the people you hope to befriend (though you don't know who they are yet). If you have a family, it's even harder.

I don't have kids, and while I don't have a ton of friends, I'm lucky to have some good, close friends, who I don't (imo) have enough time for and don't get to see enough.

<comment><USER20> One think that can lead to loneliness is material abundance namely the abundance of houses. Here in Portugal we have 40% more houses than families. For instance the building that I live has 8 apartments and it was build 60 years ago. I have some neighbors that live here since the beginning. They told me there was a time it had 50 residents. Now there are only ten residents. We are so surrounded by abundance that we are more and more apart from each other. But we cannot stop building houses because that would mean less jobs and the end of economic growth.

<comment><USER21> I think the solution for your country may be the inverse of the one I recommended for America in a different post in this thread.

The construction workers should become destruction workers driven by supply side regulations aimed at keeping the price of housing 'stable' by encouraging the retirement of the lesser quality housing and the conversion of those areas to more socially productive uses. (Maybe parks, nature, or buildings more suitable to society's needs.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm 21 years old, I grew up online. I started on myspace and chat via gmail, eventually moving to Facebook.

Fast forward through an early highschool graduation, and taking most college classes online: I have no idea how on Earth I am to socialize with people in the real world.

I quit and deactivated Facebook in January, and since I have felt so truly alone. Each day I ride an uber to my dev job, work mostly by myself, then ride back to my apartment. I speak with my coworkers, but all business, and rarely speak with the drivers because it feels so awkward and strange.

To me, it feels like it's going to get worse. I am personally upset that my abilities to connect with other people my age feels so stunted because of the Web. And now, kids in this school district use smartphones in 6th grade.

A lot of this is likely bias, my mental health is really suffering, and I've bounced in and out of therapy for awhile. So take it with a grain of salt.

<comment><USER23> > rarely speak with the drivers because it feels so awkward and strange

If you decide to not do something just because it feels strange, you will limit your growth in many ways.

Everything you haven't done very often feels strange.

Step out of your so-called comfort zone, make that a habit.

<comment><USER22> Entirely fair criticism and I am aware that the isolation I am in is self imposed, at least to a degree! Thank you.

I am reasonably good at pushing myself at other things, like my career or learning new things. I just need to take that step with my social anxiety as well.

<comment><USER24> Is there a form of exercise you enjoy? Even walking is fine. Put on a podcast and go for a stroll (longer the better). Then afterwards, use the momentum and sense of accomplishment to push yourself to try something "strange" or out of your comfort zone. I think with Uber/Lyft drivers, I agree that the conversation in the car is very fleeting, so it's important to invest and try to build new relationships that will be more long-lasting (e.g. like a sports club, board games group, book groups, etc).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Theory: human relationships can be hard, very hard, and any technology that confuses one into thinking he can enjoy his time without the 'burden' of human interactions is pushing this issue deeper.

<comment><USER26> I think of this theory like how lead poisoning works, where the lead can pass through the blood–brain barrier and substitute in (poorly) for calcium, causing all sorts of toxicity effects. Or how drinking sea water can fool your throat for a second into thinking you've taken care of your thirst.

Online social interactions are plentiful and easy and often don't as quickly or sharply trigger social anxiety. But they are a toxic replacement if you don't get any real interaction with your fellow humans.

<comment><USER27> The other day I raised my hand to high five a stranger in a dance event and she didn't notice and passed the other way. I remarked how I haven't felt something like that in awhile. Imagine if you had to watch everyone left swipe you in tinder or reject your resume personally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> There was a related discussion here a few months ago about the difficulty of making friends after a certain age (40?). Here's my take on it, from someone who immigrated to the US late in his 20s. My point of view is very biased towards the region I live in, which is much more educated and wealthy than most of the US.

Let's start with how kids grow up here since I think it affects their social life later in life. American parents are protective. Most kids, even in middle school, have very structured schedule where time with friends is usually not a priority like academics. Playdates are usually organized by the parents and they are usually short and not spontaneous. Kids who don't live in walkable urban areas with good public transit usually depend on their parents to drive them around to friends. I heard that in rural and poor areas it's even worse. People never go to each other house, instead they only meet at the Church.

Now let's talk about American adults. Americans seem to love communities. They are pretty involved in their communities which is great. However, they usually stay away from forming deep relationships and exposing themselves. Sometimes it feels like they don't want to be a burden on somebody else. Not sure exactly how to explain it. My impression is that many Americans have friends but usually not very close friends (at least based on my definition of close). Maybe the size of the country and the fact the people move often is also a factor.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm curious if this is a direct result of the internet and smartphones. The two make us feel more connected, more global, but I think it makes us more isolated. I miss talking to my friends on the phone, and hanging out in the 90s. Everything, especially how humans interact, is so digital today.

<comment><USER30> > The two make us feel more connected, more global, but I think it makes us > more isolated.

My wife and I had this discussion the other day. Messaging or posting on FB or whatever is very flat. There's no depth to it at all. It doesn't replace hearing a loved one's voice or looking into their eyes or hugging them or even having a meal with them. When you go and you visit them and you see them, you realize how much you're missing and, yeah, it feels very isolating to realize that. Social media is a facade.

<comment><USER31> Maybe so, but when I'm done with work, I hang out with my bros and play games on Discord (before that it was Ventrilo/Mumble/TeamSpeak). It may not be face to face interaction, but we're super social and it's great for us. We're always meeting new people and having new voice interactions, which at least for me, is as good (or better) than hanging out IRL. It's still nice to meet up sometimes, but definitely not needed to avoid loneliness.

It's not like I touch my friends much when we're meeting up IRL anyway, and voice is more comfortable to me than being on video (or being visible irl), as I don't have to think about how I carry myself.

Tons of gamers do this and I don't think many of them are in the "lonely" camp. I'm not sure why voice channels haven't seen wider adoption outside of gaming.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> "Decades of research substantiate the devastating effects of social isolation. Loneliness is equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day and increases the risk of death by 26-45%, which is on par with risk factors such as high blood pressure, obesity, and lack of exercise."

<comment><USER32> It would be interesting to know if men are more lonely than women as everything I've seen has shown that it's easier for women to join social circles and find dates whereas most men struggle with this. As a result, I wonder if this connects to the much high suicide rate for men.

<comment><USER33> Women attempt suicide at a rate 40 to 60% higher than men. Men on the other hand die at a greater rate because of the greater use of lethal means like guns etc. It still may be that loneliness is a greater factor in male depression but gender differences in suicide rates are misleading indicators.

<comment><USER34> I've always wondered just how reliable the suicide stat is because once someone commits suicide, they are no longer able to attempt it.

It's kinda like how one has to be careful measuring people interviewing for jobs, since someone who interviews poorly will spend many interviews before being hired but someone who interviews well will only do a few (on average). So measuring the average ability of the candidate in interviews will be worse than the average ability of people who have been interviewed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I was listening to a podcast recently where this topic came up with regards to the social pastime of jury duty. A man was being interviewed who lived during a time before smartphones, and he retold that he really enjoyed going to jury duty because it was a chance for him to get to meet people in his city from all different backgrounds. There was a lot of waiting around, so people always talked to each other out of boredom.

Now, whenever you go to jury duty and there's a waiting period of some sort, everyone is of course on their smartphones. The reason for this isn't just for the fact that there might be more interesting things happening on the web than in the quiet courtroom, but instead it's because the smartphone generation can "hang out" with people exactly like them 24/7\. To me it seems like a cold optimization of your social graph aided by technology. It does some wonders for loneliness (it's amazing that I can hang out with my friends anywhere in the world at any time and they all have the same interests as me), but it's also causing a lot of deep societal problems. Echo chambers, de-emphasis on local affairs, an ever-widening gap of political viewpoints, and a horrible "grass is always greener" psychological effect.

</comment><comment><USER36> While loneliness is a real and important problem, there's good reason to be skeptical about it being an "epidemic". The Cigna study is incredibly flawed:

[http://andrewgelman.com/2018/05/09/43-loneliest-number- youll...](http://andrewgelman.com/2018/05/09/43-loneliest-number-youll-ever/)

Journalists (like David Brooks in the New York Times) are getting it very wrong as well:

[http://andrewgelman.com/2018/05/16/no-no-epidemic- loneliness...](http://andrewgelman.com/2018/05/16/no-no-epidemic-loneliness- dog-bites-man-david-brooks-runs-another-column-based-fake-stats/)

</comment><comment><USER37> A bit late now, but part of me wonders whether the advances in communication technology have made it too easy to keep in contact with people we already know, and whether that's caused part of this issue.

Think about it. In the olden days, if you went to college or moved to a new, somewhat distant town or country, that was it for your current social life. You lost contact with your existing friends, and you had to find new friends at the new location in order to not be lonely again.

That lack of communication forced you to meet new people on a regular basis, and likely made college/university a good place for it for so many young people. After all, you couldn't talk to your hometown friends as easily now, and your family was cut off too. You had to meet new people.

Smartphones and social media sites and other such things make it so you can easily keep up with the people you already know, and spend all your free time talking to those you're already in contact with. The need for finding new crowds has basically died.

</comment><comment><USER38> I know there could be a lot of causes for this but one thing I've noticed, which is specific to my location, is that too much cultural homogeneity can lead to loneliness.

I remember clearly a time in my life when I was very lonely and having a lot of trouble meeting people. Eventually, I crafted a theory that most of the people in my environment secretly did not want to meet anyone. This was either because they already had busy lives or they just didn't need to know yet another person who was just like them.

Shortly thereafter, I went back to university and encountered a lot of exchange students who were perhaps legitimately in need of friends and perhaps also coming from cultures which tended to be much less closed off to casual friendliness. This fixed the loneliness problem for me very quickly. Of course, it must also be acknowledged that the environment in university tends to facilitate social activity.

</comment><comment><USER39> Has anyone else noticed that clicking on this link causes them to be logged in as "Pam" on the site? That doesn't seem great...

<comment><USER40> Might be a dark pattern. To nudge you to create an account to make the world right again.

<comment><USER41> That's what I was supposed to do? I just legally changed my name to Pam.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> In NYC, where I live, I would never strike up a conversation with a random stranger. The first thought that crosses my mind is, "oh they're probably on their way to work", or "they seem busy on their phone", etc.

Our smartphones, tablets, headphones definitely make us less approachable. But our attitudes towards work is also to blame. There is this culture of being busy in NYC all the time, it's almost as if people take pride in it. This probably shows in our body language too.

I feel especially alone on crowded trains. Everybody is staring at their phones or trying really hard to not make eye contact. No wonder a lot of out- of-towners feel NYC is an intimidating place and the people are rude.

<comment><USER43> I lived in NYC for ten years, bars are where you can talk to random strangers. I had hundreds of conversations and met many people that way.

<comment><USER44> I used to live next to a bar. A few times a week, I'd take my laptop down there, grab a beer, maybe order dinner, and code. Over a year or so of doing that, I think maybe two or three people attempted to strike up conversations. Now, that might be a side effect of working on a laptop, or it might be the famously insular Seattle culture, but it still feels like a very low rate of spontaneous personal connection.

Going by old movies at least, it seems like pre-information-age, you'd expect to see far more social interaction in a setting like that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> We've designed ourselves into isolation. We leave our house in a metal box, arrive at work, then return to our metal box. The most prominent feature of newer houses from the street is the garage, not the door or porch. We live in a subdivision where the nearest store is a five minute drive, so nobody ever uses the sidewalks that are mandated to be there. We move across the country for work, so we aren't close to family. There's no real neutral place where people have to interact together for some reason, so you don't have the accidental meetings that is required to meet people and community.

</comment><comment><USER46> > 46% of Americans report sometimes or always feeling alone

I would choose this answer but wouldn't say I'm lonely. 46% is no surprise. What percentage responded usually/always lonely?

What is significant are the othet equivalent health risks.

</comment><comment><USER47> Not too long ago I listened to a really great podcast, The Lonely American Man [[https://www.npr.org/2018/03/19/594719471/guys-we-have-a- prob...](https://www.npr.org/2018/03/19/594719471/guys-we-have-a-problem-how- american-masculinity-creates-lonely-men)] that I thought really hit the nail on the head for a lot of men I know. Based on societal norms we men tend to lose our ability to make friends as we grow beyond our teens and turn to our female partners to arrange social activity for us.

</comment><comment><USER48> I'm surprised to learn that more than half of Americans rarely or never feel alone.

<comment><USER49> Agreed; it is a ridiculous and alarmist leap for this piece to go from 46 percent "sometimes feel alone" to 46 percent are _lonely_.

One can be alone by choice and actually like it. "Lonely" connotates depression resulting from being alone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> A vast radical social experiment, replacing all human values with that of competitive & monomaniacal accumulation of material wealth, turns out to be a poor fit for actual humans. Well gosh.

</comment><comment><USER51> The country being so politically polarized isn't helping. It's to the point where most only want to socialize with people in the same "tribe". For better or worse.

<comment><USER52> It's not great, and I think it shows our society is fracturing and collapsing, but I don't want to socialize much with any Trump voters either. I have enough problems; I don't need someone spouting insane conspiracy theories to me about how 9/11 was "an inside job", Sandy Hook never happened, etc.

<comment><USER53> > I don't need someone spouting insane conspiracy theories to me

Perhaps, but it may also help that person realize there are normal people in real life who don't share those ideas, despite being told that anyone they disagree with is a horrible person.

<comment><USER52> This is just like spending a bunch of time with religious zealots trying to convince them their religion is wrong. You're wasting your time, and you're just going to create more conflict. I have one Trump supporter in my social circle and when conversations veer that way with her it's never productive so I completely avoid it.

The bottom line is you _cannot_ use logic to convince people their religious beliefs are wrong. Most rational people already know this about religions and religious people, the problem is they don't realize that right-wing politics (or any extremist politics for that matter) is also a religion.

Now before you try to argue that this only applies to the extremists, the problem in this country is that the entire right wing in this country _is_ extremist. The only non-extremist position in this country is the mainstream Democratic party, which is basically center-right. The Republicans have gone full-on hard-right, so there's just no reasoning with anyone that buys into that stuff.

<comment><USER54> > The bottom line is you cannot use logic to convince people their religious > beliefs are wrong.

You _can_ , but only if they are peripheral rather than fundamental beliefs, and your chain of logic starts with their fundamental beliefs. Well, at least as much as you can use logic to convince anyone of anything.

The problem (well, _a_ problem) is that you can't easily discern, from the outside, a peripheral belief that depends on fundamental beliefs from a fundamental belief which is rationalized in terms of other fundamental beliefs (though circularity of support between beliefs is a pretty good sign that all are fundamental and the support is mere rationalization.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > Few providers have focused on the loneliest population: 18- to 22-year-olds. > While typically a low-risk population, young adults experience rates of > loneliness and social isolation far higher than any other age group > according to Cigna's recent survey.

How is that the case?

18-to-22 seems like the easiest stage of adult life to make and keep friends.

These are the youngest adults. They go out regularly, meet each other in public venues like clubs and bars, they're often actively dating, especially now with the ubiquity of apps like Tinder.

Add to that the fact that they generally either just graduated highschool, or are attending college. College is probably the easiest place to make friends: you spend your entire life there with people your age who are intellectually compatible with you.

I don't know how they did that survey, but in my experience 18-22 year olds tend to have the most friends and active social lives of all adult ages.

Now, compare that to professionals who often have to relocate for work, and find themselves in a new location where they know _nobody_. There aren't really many social facilities to help these people make new friends.

So I really don't know how they arrived at the conclusion that 18-22s are the loneliest ages. The older people I know, especially in their 30s and 40s, are more prone to social isolation in every respect.

<comment><USER55> You probably don't know them, but single/divorced retirees are probably the loneliest folks. With no workplace to provide daily social exchange, unless they belong to a church, meeting others in a social setting becomes a huge challenge for seniors today. It's little wonder that the long venerated "joys of being retired" are undergoing a major rethink these days.

<comment><USER3> Oh, yeah, I absolutely agree. Generally, as I become familiar with older populations, the general rule seems has been that the older people get, the harder it is for them to break out of the shell of loneliness.

When I left college and started meeting young professionals, they seemed far more lonely than college students. Then when I started meeting older people in their 30s, they seemed lonelier still. Now the loneliest people I know are singles in their 40s.

The only exception seems to be that often people in their 30s get married, and then they typically seem less lonely, at least while the marriage is working.

For singles, though, there seems to be simple linear correlation between age and loneliness. So I'm sure when I get to know people in their 50s and 60s, they'll be even lonelier than the 40 year old singles I know now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Do people still wonder why drug abuse is pandemic in America? Compound loneliness with poverty ... Are people still wondering? Why the birth rates are low and mortality so high? Seriously are people still wondering? Why we are such a divided society, full of hate and fear of one another. People can't be that fucking dumb in America. Maybe they are because they're still wondering. Why we fight wars we can't win? Why we fight so hard to prevent our neighbors from getting healthcare or education or help of any kind. No seriously, are people still wondering why our kids shoot themselves in schools and then when they don't do that shoot themselves up with heroin or worse? Are you telling me people are so fucking dumb here that they're still wondering about such things? Yeah, it appears the obvious escapes most people's common sense. Only the truly stupid wonder about such things. It's not just loneliness, it's lack of any kind of connection that drives people to do insane things. Yet people still wonder why that kid shot up his school. Are people here really that stupid? Yes they are.

</comment><comment><USER57> Internet is the culprit - as humans we have replaced interacting in physical world with a digital world and thus the physical world is becoming more and more of a barren place when it comes to social interaction. In modern society, unless it is a dedicated club of some sorts or at a party or if it is pre- arranged, social interactions just don't happen.

</comment><comment><USER58> Agriculture was a mistake.

<comment><USER59> We should never have crawled out of the ocean!

<comment><USER60> In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Are Americans outliers in loneliness? I know Pinker mentions this in Enlightenment Now, but I feel like it's glossed over a bit since it doesn't really align with his thesis.

I'm very interested in the reasons for this, though. Loss of community structures without replacements? (Wider spread families for work, not going to church...)

</comment><comment><USER62> Those who have had to move locations probably run into this the most. Usually friends formed in school and college are from a time you were young and naive and tend to have the deepest shared bonds.

And if you have to leave this behind getting the same level of social connection can be tough. Also some people are extremely friendly by nature, they love being around people and can engage easily, others are more reserved. Work colleagues are usually in a weird space, not strangers but not really friends.

Maybe human beings work best in known and close knit communities not urban alienated environments, clearly a lot of our happiness derives from social contexts, and we need that level of connectivity, interaction and support. Sometimes you want to be alone, but the rest of the time you want to be with people who love and care for you. Without it life becomes a bit empty and alienation becomes 'normal'.

</comment><comment><USER63> Loneliness, in my experience, can be a symptom rather than a problem in and of itself.

I define my past loneliness as: Negative feelings, fed by:

\- feeling bad in the first instance

\- feeling powerless to improve my state

\- feeling that others could improve my state, if only they would show sufficient interest in me

Gaining power to work on why I was feeling bad in the first instance (through health and lifestyle interventions) has had several effects over the years:

\- it has improved my state so that I mostly feel good

\- it has taught me many valuable things to share with others

The social aspect of my life has radically changed:

\- I feel less dependent on others to feel good

\- I have many things to share with others and enjoy sharing it

\- My attitude and knowledge attracts others

\- I am mentally/emotionally stable enough to withstand the ambiguities and stresses that relationships tend to give rise to

I don't claim to have solved loneliness, but I have solved _my_ loneliness and I hope some will be helped by this insight.

<comment><USER64> How did you achieve it? What were the conditions to change your mental status,opinions?

<comment><USER63> The conditions were an inescapable sense that something had been going wrong with my life for a long time, and then getting very lucky: an acquaintance of mine is a genius and sort of transitioned several years ago into being a health guru, focused on addressing subclinical health conditions precisely like the kind that had been bugging me. I had a lot of faith in him, worked hard at it, and 8 years or so later am enjoying the benefits. Life is still challenging, but it's great deal better.

The genius is Paul Jaminet. Check out his work if you think you might benefit. I've also benefited from paying attention to the blogs of Chris Kresser, Mark Sisson, and Scott Alexander (his health-related posts of course). Google Scholar and Sci-Hub get huge credit too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Long term effects of stranger danger writ large.

</comment><comment><USER66> Being alone is a state, feeling lonely is a symptom that could be triggered by it, but not necessarily. Important distinction here. Warren Buffett spent most of his waking hours reading by himself. He's pushing 90. If you watch his HBO documentary notice how he is very big on shutting his office door and reading for the majority of his workday. If you are not peace when you are alone, there is something else going on that needs attention, listen to it, understand what might trigger that symptom and root cause it. Being with someone else might be a stopgap to your symptom but not a cure.

</comment><comment><USER67> I don't want to put to fine a point on this...but...good?

Loneliness eventually becomes a motivator to find ways to stop being lonely. Usually that means improving yourself and coming to terms with some of your own faults so that you can stop being lonely. Sometimes it means being nicer to people. Sometimes it means making yourself get up the courage to go talk to that girl over there. Sometimes it means trying to get in better shape.

There are a lot of side effects from it, but you have to decide you are going to fix it and sometimes that means being lonely enough for it to no longer be tolerable.

</comment><comment><USER68> I see an article about this issue pop up every month or so. But what's actually being done about it? Seems like the solutions are not catching up with the possible hurdles that get introduced.

<comment><USER69> Alcoholics Anonymous helps with this for alcoholics. Generally friendships have to be built on some shared interest or experience, so I think it would be hard to create a solution for the general population.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> What is the opposite of lonely though? Popular? Not to get all high school angsty, but I bet popular people, of the Instagram famous people variety, are much more popular than they would have been in previous eras given their expanded reach. Perhaps this is the dark side of Internet fame: Increasing real world obscurity for everyone else.

In previous eras, simple proximity counted for something. Now, it doesn't matter and is even a negative with all the drama around workplace dating for example.

<comment><USER19> Companionship or fellowship would be the primary opposites. Popular people don't necessarily have these, and they can still be lonely.

I was very popular in high school, and I have far, far fewer friends today, but I'm less lonely because of the level of my friendships - to use my self as an example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> My startup is trying to solve this problem for older adults. Seniors often feel disconnected and isolated as their social structures change. Ayuda is an service for finding senior-friendly events. We bring artists, educators, musicians and more to an audience they may not have considered before. Events are curated to be social and accessible for older people, not your typical concert in a loud bar.

Check us out on www.ayudacare.com if you are interested in what we're about.

</comment><comment><USER72> I think the increased efficiency brought by technology produced an ever faster pace in work, social life, and just about everything else. It takes time to talk and connect with another person which is getting harder to come by. Most of the time, you're getting swept away doing work, looking at a post that just showed up, reading the latest tweet by the president, etc.

</comment><comment><USER73> I suspect this is a growth trend largely resultant from intentional self- induced social isolation. This problem is similar, in the brain, to addiction in that the inflicted are incapable of perceiving the problem while the implications are immediately clear to them.

</comment><comment><USER74> noted this elsewhere - but toplevel - if you are ever in downtown Seattle, feel a bit lonely (work trip?) and want to get lunch or coffee with Someone From The Internet, I am usually up for such a thing on a work day. email in profile, etc.

</comment><comment><USER75> The title:

> Nearly Half of Americans Are Lonely

Vs the actual result of the study:

> 46% of Americans report sometimes or always feeling alone

I would have thought everyone feels lonely _sometimes_ and I'm more suprised it is not higher. The title is clickbate.

</comment><comment><USER76> I've noticed that most people have headphones on when they are out and about. It's a lot harder to strike up casual conversations with people that have headphones on.

</comment><comment><USER77> Schizos Are Never Alone

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

</comment><comment><USER78> I find the smoking refence in the opening paragraph ironic. I'm what i would call a social smoker. I can smoke and (thus far) not get addicted. But I hardly smoke. It's mainly a "oh...you're going for a smoke...mind if I join you...and bum one..." type of "habit."

It's away to have a brief moment of QT with someone. Taking it a step further, I wonder how much __good__ bacteria used to be exchanged between smokers, that also doesn't happen anymore.

</comment><comment><USER79> My guess is that America in 2018 is more selfish and cliquey than any other time in memorable history. That simple really

</comment><comment><USER80> We are an incredibly divided country—whether by religion, culture, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, language, etc etc. it's a constant issue of us vs them. Unfortunately, Trump takes complete advantage of this to divide the country daily which only exacerbates the situation. I truly think this lack of 'community life' is killing Americans and the cause of a lot of other issues like health problems and suicide.

<comment><USER81> It's a vicious circle. This lack of community life also makes us more divided. That in turn helps destroy community life...

<comment><USER80> Completely agree. How do we fix this? I notice in other countries there is a much more collectivist mentality, whereas Americans are rooted in a mentality of rugged individualism. It's hard to get Americans to actually care about each other. For example, the Pacific North West is hostile to California, Virginia looks down on North Carolina who looks down on South Carolina... there's a lot of divisions across as wide range of demographics in America. It seems to be getting worse. Maybe the pendulum will begin to swing the other way? A really sad symptom is how many people go on social media but essentially broadcast to no one and get no feedback. It seems incredibly lonely to realize how many people online are sort of engaging in form of prayer of sorts (speaking to no one, hoping for a reply) and casting their emotions into a black hole of the Internet.

I think for all it's merits, we've gotta get people offline and engaging with each other in the real world. We've gotta get people out of their thought bubbles too, but I have no idea how to accomplish that. Bringing back the Fairness Doctrine would probably help.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> I miss Italy from that point of view. It's tough to make friends here in the US.

</comment><comment><USER83> At least its good to know that you are not alone.

</comment><comment><USER84> 18 to 22 is the worst? Wow. That was unexpected!

</comment><comment><USER85> Another sad downside to people fetishizing work...and the wealth that apparently results.

Right now people are just alone and grumbling, but give it another ten years and you will see this morph into alcoholism and/or drug abuse. Only a very few will be happy in a society where every interaction is a dick-measuring contest or chance to argue.

It's not too late to move to a hick town, find a spouse, pop out some kids and go to church/temple/mosque (no one gives a shit if you actually believe, it's about being around your neighbors). You will probably end up doing just as well financially as tech workers in SF who are doomed to be lifelong renters. You will definitely be happier.

<comment><USER86> I don't really get how moving to a more rural locale would make people less lonely. Looks like suicides among young people are way higher there [https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/...](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2195006) and people there are about equally likely to report being "connected" to their communities. [https://qz.com/1286591/urban-and-rural-america-people- living...](https://qz.com/1286591/urban-and-rural-america-people-living-in- cities-are-not-any-more-lonely-and-depressed-than-everyone-else/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER87> these are fucking insane psychos

they should be hunted down and killed

these worthless fucks will piss and shit on anything

<comment><USER88> We've banned this account. Commenting like this will eventually get your main account banned as well, so please don't.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER89> I know what half I am in.</comment>


Unhate by United Colors of Benetton, the controversy - <AUTHOR> http://www.pixelonomics.com/unhate-united-colors-benetton/

<comment><USER2> That's Hu Jintao, not Hugo Chavez.</comment>


Asgard AMI: Try Asgard with no admin hassle - <AUTHOR> http://imperialwicket.com/netflix-asgard-ubuntu-1204-lts-ami-release-11101

<comment><AUTHOR> I wanted to try Asgard and couldn't believe no one had put anything like this together yet. I found a couple AMIs, but quick searches didn't yield any real data on them.

Hope this helps a few people, let me know if you spot bugs.</comment>


The Book Of Ruby - free in-depth Ruby eBook - <AUTHOR> http://www.sapphiresteel.com/The-Book-Of-Ruby-free-in-depth <comment><USER2> So far, only the first two chapters and introduction are available.</comment>


Woz Buys $2 Bills in Sheets from the Treasury - <AUTHOR> http://hackaday.com/2012/08/03/woz-prints-and-spend-his-own-2-bills/

<comment><USER2> To be clear - he doesn't actually print these. He buys sheets of pre-printed bills and re-packages them into books instead of cutting them into individual bills.

A neat trick, but completely legal US cash money

(The US $2 bill is unusual, but legal)

<comment><USER3> Why does he mentioned owning his own dye-sub printer then? He's clearly printing some part of it, no?

Edit: thanks for the replies, didn't catch that.

<comment><USER4> He "has them printed" and also has a dye-sub printer. He never says he has them printed using his dye-sub printer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This article is very misleading, he doesn't print the money himself, that's all kinds of illegal. He buys the sheets (linked in comments) and has a printer (the occupation, not the device) perforate them and gum them into tear off pads. I know several people who have done this in the past (myself included) though none quite as notorious as Woz.

I've made tear-off pads of $1 bills before, if you get a strap of new bills from the bank they come in sequential order and the pads will turn some heads but the bills are completely legit.

Uncut currency sheets don't have sequential serial numbers because of the way the print runs work; for uncut sheets the serial numbers are usually spaced by 20,000 or 32,000.

As a general habit I spend $2 bills a lot personally (they make excellent tips because people are so tickled to see them... They're not overly rare, go to the bank and ask and most times you can get them).

I've been to a couple of trade shows in the past where your "pay" for sitting through a particularly boring sales presentation was an uncut sheet of bills and a large pair or scissors and the tiny thrill of cutting off your own $1 bill.

Trivia for you all: uncut sheets have special serial number ranges, so you can identify that they came from uncut sheets (for modern bills the serial numbers are 96000000 and higher). This prevents people from buying an uncut sheet, cutting the bills in a strange manner, and then selling them at a premium as rare misprinted bills (not that it stops anyone, look on eBay for misprinted currency and see how many of the bills have high serial numbers... Dead giveaway of a fraudster).

I love it when my dual geeky hobbies of technology and currency collecting collide. :-)

</comment><comment><USER6> This headline is very misleading.

<comment><USER6> I can't edit anymore, but I would like to point out that the headline has since been changed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> You can buy un-cut US currency here: <http://www.moneyfactorystore.gov/uncutcurrency.aspx>

The $2 is currently out of stock :-(

</comment><comment><USER7> A friend of mine in college would buy 100 $2 bills from the bank (for $2), then paint the edge with adhesive, turning them into a tear-off notepad of $2 bills. At the time, turnpike tolls were $2, so it was very convenient -- this was before fastrak or ez-pass or other transponder based toll systems.

</comment><comment><USER8> Well, Woz has a very interesting sense of "humor", that's for sure.</comment>


Eliminating Delays from systemd-journald, Part 1 - <AUTHOR> https://coreos.com/blog/eliminating-journald-delays-part-1.html <comment><USER2> > In more extreme scenarios, if journald is blocked long enough for its > watchdog timer to expire, it will be killed with SIGABRT, dump core, and > abruptly close all connected sockets losing whatever log data was in-flight. > In some cases this can even cause services to crash due to the unexpected > hangup of their stdout and/or stderr.

Ouch.

> we were seeing a delay between .1-.5 seconds twice every 5 seconds

Double ouch. Half a second can be an eternity when wringing all the performance you can out of a system, and with so many cloud providers using network attached storage, that half second could balloon so quickly.

200kb is not an unusual size for unix socket buffers, and it wouldn't be too hard to bypass 200k in log writes in half a second on a busy system.

As an org who will be moving onto systemd with the release of the next Ubuntu LTS version, I appreciate what CoreOS is doing here. Great article, great finds.

As a side note, this is something to look out for on AWS instances where the default for /var/log is on an EBS mount (which can see delays due to network latency). It would make sense to mount /var/log to the ephemeral drive to avoid or minimize such unpleasantness. Of course, that limits the ability to use /var/log to troubleshoot kernel panics.

<comment><USER3> Durability and performance is a classic tradeoff, and systemd-journald is hardly the only application affected by this. If you need more performance while maintaining durability, buy faster storage technology.

That said, if journald could use multiple I/O threads, it might be able to take advantage of concurrency in the underlying storage if available (e.g. RAID). MySQL's InnoDB is a good example of such an implementation.

At any rate, in a modern production system, you generally want logs to be copied to an indexed archive located elsewhere in the network. On-host logs should be considered ephemeral, and mainly used as a buffer against slow consumers.

<comment><USER2> I think the bigger problem is more related to how outside services are being negativiely impacted (up to and including crashing) by delays in writing to disk, and have no choice in the performance/safety trade off.

<comment><USER3> Any program that uses the syslog(3) library function will also have this problem, as it also blocks (internally it writes to the /dev/log socket file). If the consumer can't keep up, whether it be rsyslogd or syslog-ng or whatever is listening to the socket, the producer can block as well.

So this is not a new problem. If you really want your producer to drop logs in the event of backpressure, you can directly use the syslog protocol over UDP, but it has tradeoffs too.

<comment><USER2> That depends on the syslogd implementation, and will not cause programs to crash due to disconnected stderr/stdout buffers.

Perhaps more importantly, you can swap out the syslogd if you don't like its implementation. This is harder to do (if even possible) with journald.

<comment><USER3> Have you seen any syslog server implementations that are significantly more performant than journald?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great discussion, but one issue I've run into journald, compared to a traditional logging mechanism, is the size of the journal itself.

journald's archives are generally a factor of at least 200x of syslog for the same amount of information stored.

That is, on two identical servers, I've run rsyslog with the traditional logrotate mechanism and journald side-by-side to see how they compared.

I'm pleased with the extra querying mechanism provided by journald, which is absolutely great for debugging, however while I can store the logs one server virtually forever with just bz2 compression, I've unexpectedly run out of space in my var partition with journald after just a couple of months. The extra bandwidth is also a factor in the performance of journald, which is equally ignored.

In fact, this has forced me to reconsider the storage logging policy. It's much more effective to use rsyslog to send encrypted logs through the network (faster, less latency and less bandwidth) compared to what it would be with journald. I still keep the journal on individual machines for easier querying, but with a very limited retention.

If I have to chose between a log I can query easily, and a log file that can have 200x the density, I'll easily pick the second.

I've also found that the resilience of the journald archives are much lower. A corrupted text log file (due to a crash) has nothing to recover and can be easily read to inspect issues in any worst-case scenario. journald archives however are often corrupted in crashes and moved away after the reboot. For remote logging it might not be an issue, but for embedded systems and/or desktop machines it _is_ an issue. Ensuring logs can be read even when corrupted is easily much more important than introducing the signing mechanism in the archives (which, on the other hand, is totally a non-issue as sensitive hosts should do remote logging).

<comment><USER5> I can't help but think... if they just used traditional log files there would be no delays, corruption.

<comment><USER6> I don't think this is entirely true: Even if you're appending lines to a text- file, if you do it from multiple concurrent threads, you're going to potentially corrupt individual lines.

And if you want to make absolutely sure that the log line you've just written is actually safely on disk, then you still have to fsync().

I would argue that journald's mmap-with-periodic-fsync() approach is actually better for latency.

If you want to make sure that your system performance isn't affected by stalled logging i/o, then you should ship the logs off-machine using a non- blocking protocol. Of course then you lose guarantees that your log-entries have actually been stored (which might or might not be a problem for you).

<comment><USER3> > Even if you're appending lines to a text-file, if you do it from multiple > concurrent threads, you're going to potentially corrupt individual lines.

Not true; the write(2) syscall is atomic. You just have put the the entire line in the buffer you pass to it.

<comment><USER7> Not true AFAICT. (On Linux at least)

Here are a couple of snippets from the man page:

> If a write() requests that more bytes be written than there is room for (for > example, the file size limit of the process or the physical end of a > medium), only as many bytes as there is room for shall be written.

(Admittely disk full is pretty much an edge case.)

> If write() is interrupted by a signal after it successfully writes some > data, it shall return the number of bytes written.

<comment><USER8> I think a slightly better way to describe this is

 _" write() is atomic, but may not write the number of bytes asked to write."_

A possible workaround is to use a start of line marker and provide a way to detect broken lines.

For example, if one starts every line with a 0x02 and ends it in a 0x03 (Start of Text/End of Text ASCII characters) and removes any such character from the text being logged, partly written log entries can be detected and ignored when reading the log. If one does that, one can just retry writing the entire line until write() indicates it wrote the entire buffer passed in.

<comment><USER9> I disagree. It is far better to use a String like approach and use a structure that includes the length of the next written object.

I believe that a simple sacrifice of a little more storage would also make that easier to split out. Pre-pad the message up to pad size zeros and then a pseudo-random number of additional pad objects (1 to n). Next you would store either the offset of the start or end, as well as the length of the payload (start would probably be easier to verify). With that structure it should be difficult to craft a payload message that looked like a valid message for the log.

<comment><USER8> I don't quite understand what approach you are advocating, but for me _" it should be difficult to craft a payload message that looked like a valid message for the log."_ is not good enough for a system service.

<comment><USER9> This is a back of the napkin grade design; refine it and/or develop a proof for your specific use case.

Can you see any way it would be obviously incorrect? I could not when I wrote it, but I did not take the much greater effort of /proving/ it was a correct design. (which much like crypto algorithms, should also be done on an implementation by implementation basis)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is one of those incredibly clearly written technical articles by someone who really knows their stuff that brings together a few things I understood vaguely into a coherent understanding. Lines like:

> There's a per-kernel sync(), per-filesystem syncfs(), per-file fsync() and > fdatasync(), per-mmap msync(), and per-file-range sync_file_range().

Incidentally, the CoreOS has one of the best home pages that I've ever encountered. "These are our main products, and for each of them here's an information icon that you can click that will actually inform you what they do and what they're for".

I would like to hire whoever wrote those descriptions too - clear concise explanation of what things do and why you'd want them.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is a fantastic analysis and writeup of the problem.

Is there a practical reason that system-journald doesn't do O_DIRECT and non- blocking (using io_submit family of syscalls) writes/fsync? If minimizing blocking is such an important issue then given the state of disk IO in Linux that your only solution.

As long as you pre-allocated the space and are not required to do metadata updates you will get mostly non-blocking operations. Since this is done for logging which I'm presuming is not going to be read right back there's no downside of using O_DIRECT, in fact not polluting the page cache might be a net benefit.

Btw, is there anyway to get in touch with the author to talk about the issue? Can't find his contact details.

</comment><comment><USER12> Duplicates [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11268059](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11268059)

<comment><USER13> Jesus. From the first bug mentioned in your comment in that thread:

Reporter: "libsystemd-journal or systemd-journald loses some systemd's parts of message context when few messages logged in a moment"

Poettering: "This is a race. ... To fix this we need [two new things.] ... These items are listed on the plumbers wishlist, because we need [those things mentioned previously] from the kernel folks."

<comment><USER14> _Software Development Jesus descends from the clouds, wearing a virtual reality headset and a t-shirt with the words "freedesktop.org". Something about him reminds you of Bill Gates, but you are not sure what, the headset with its peculiar red laser pointer attached to the side covers too much of his face. He opens his right palm towards your computer, which surprisingly seems to be running Fedora Linux now, and through the magic of Zeroconf networking and D-Bus, the following text appears on your screen:_

Happy to explain this to you, simoncion!

After receiving a log message from a client process, the journal tries to get _trusted_ metadata, like the application name, about that process. If the application exits too soon after logging its message, some of that metadata, e.g. /proc/<pid>/cmdline, might not be available anymore. The message itself is always logged, though.

Syslog, of course, also logs application names, but that information cannot be trusted, because it is reported by the clients themselves. So even if not all expected metadata is logged, you lose nothing compared to syslog.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have to say that the style of that code bugs me ... Not using { } on your control structures is just asking for nasty non-intuitive bugs ...</comment>


Apple's New Thing (iPod) - Oct. 2001 - <AUTHOR> http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=500

<comment><USER2> "I have a cd walkman and a burner already, and besides that now that I don't have a dotcom job anymore I need that $400 to pay car payments and rent."

This forum post practically dates itself.

<comment><USER3> I cut and this quote just to paste it here. Beat me too it by many hours!

It does more than date the post. Its the most perfect example I've found of how Apple sneaks up on markets and changes things. Is there anyone left who might think that a cd walkman and a burner are somehow equivalent to an iPod? Nobody called him out though. In 2001, it seemed reasonable.

I can't help but compare this to the "why do I want an iPad? I've already got a laptop and a smartphone" crowd. I was underwhelmed by the iPad as well. I found myself saying "all this hype for _this_!?" I probably won't be buying one.

Its going to change the way humans use computers forever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The iPod was not revolutionary, iTunes was. Everything posted about the first iPod was spot on. The iPod didn't become a revolution until a) iTunes was released for the Windows environment and b) it had a USB dock. Before those two events, the iPod was a marginal product.

<comment><USER5> i agree those were the inflection points, but the iPod was completely revolutionary from an interface perspective. The click wheel, the large screen, the easy to navigate UI; these were things which hadn't made it to a portable media player device before. Or if they had, they were never marketed the way Apple was able to market the iPod from day one.

<comment><USER6> The click wheel didn't exist in 2001. And the screen was not particularly large, either (the Neo Jukebox, for instance, if I remember correctly, had a similar sized screen). The iPod Mini introduced the Click Wheel, and debuted on the iPod proper on the 4g (both in 2004). And the connectors were horrible early on: all firewire. Windows was supported through MusicMatch (eww) on the 2g and 3g, and it was after the 3g release that iTunes came to windows.

And it was when iTunes came to Windows that the iPod took off in sales (ironically, reversing a LONG trend by Jobs to keep Apple products on the Apple platform). In 2002 and 2003 they sold less than a million units. The first quarter they had iTunes on windows, they moved over 2 million units-- more than double what they'd sold the previous holiday quarter.

People look at the iPod as this huge instant hit. It wasn't even 'till Q4 2004 that Apple sold more than 1m units in a quarter. And sales in 2005 came in a large part from selling through Wal-Mart, too.

<comment><USER7> The first iPod had the wheel, but it physically rotated. It did have the piezo clicker too though.

<comment><USER6> The physically rotating wheel was surrounded by another wheel of buttons. the Click Wheel didn't appear until the mini. 1st gen: mechanical wheel with a surrounding wheel of buttons. 2nd gen: touch wheel surrounded by buttons. 3rd gen: all touch with a row of buttons under the screen.

<http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1353> identifies the iPod (Click Wheel) as their 2004 model.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My favorite comment on there:

"I still can't believe this! All this hype for something so ridiculous! Who cares about an MP3 player? I want something new! I want them to think differently! Why oh why would they do this?! It's so wrong! It's so stupid!"

Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

</comment><comment><USER9> "...or are you really aiming to become a glorified consumer gimmicks firm?"

priceless

<comment><USER10> I love how that guy was so incensed that they'd devoted so much to iPods instead of making better servers. Just imagine a world with no iPods, but beefier Xserves... Oh, and Apple going out of business before 2005.

<comment><USER11> Wasn't that Sun?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Damn, digging for iPod articles from 2001 is fun! (For those who want to join the fun, October 23 is the exact date.)

"Apple's Musical Rendition: A Jukebox Fed by the Mac", New York Times (David Pogue, no less): [http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/25/technology/state-of-the- ar...](http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/25/technology/state-of-the-art-apple-s- musical-rendition-a-jukebox-fed-by-the-mac.html?scp=3&sq=ipod&st=nyt)

"Apple doesn't change the world (yet)", Der Spiegel (sorry, German): <http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/tech/0,1518,164056,00.html>

"Apple enters the hi-fi market", heise (sorry, German): [http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Apple-entert-den- HiFi...](http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Apple-entert-den-HiFi-Markt- Update-47282.html)

What a strange world in 2001, though: no Gizmodo, no Engadget :)

<comment><USER13> Here's another throwback: [http://web.archive.org/web/20011024015856/www.apple.com/ipod...](http://web.archive.org/web/20011024015856/www.apple.com/ipod/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think this is the best comment there.

"I really wanted to like it. Really. But do the math: 20GB hard drive: $199 from APS tech. MP3 player: $50 from Best Buy. You save $150 plus get an extra 15 Gig of storage! "

</comment><comment><USER15> Sweet:

"All that hype for an MP3 player? Break-thru digital device? The Reality Distiortion Field™ is starting to warp Steve's mind if he thinks for one second that this thing is gonna take off."

</comment><comment><USER16> No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.

<comment><USER17> link: [http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23/1816257...](http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23/1816257&tid=107)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Slashdot panned the iPod back in 2001, too - [http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23/1816257...](http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23/1816257&tid=107)

"No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame. "

</comment><comment><USER19> Yeah, there were ipod haters, iphone haters, hater haters...

<comment><USER20> Guess I was a hater hater. Bought the first iPod as soon as it came out. The white headphones got me a lot of weird looks walking the halls at my high school. It was a fantastic, well-made device.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The comments, of course, are priceless. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER22> And I still don't understand what anybody would need an iPod for (MP3 Player I mean). Unless you are a commuter with > 45 min time per direction. I like music, but I have decided that it's silly to shut out the world while being outside.

Have iPods really changed the world, or have they just sold well?

<comment><USER23> The point of having an iPod with that much storage isn't so you can listen to more than one CD on your commute, it's so you can leave for your commute and THEN choose which 20-40 minutes of music to listen to.

When I had a discman and I wanted to listen to music, guess what I had to choose from? One burned CD if I was lucky, and _Mutter_ by Rammstein if I was slightly less lucky. When I have an iPod or iPhone and I want to listen to music, I can choose any song I own.

<comment><USER22> Ah I see the 45 minutes was misleading. I didn't mean it because otherwise you could just use a mobile CD player (are these still being made?). Just in general I wouldn't see a point in having a MP3 player, unless I went the same extremely boring route every day for long stretches of time (and not by bicycle).

I suppose the majority of people are commuters, so maybe commuting alone is sufficient to explains the high market penetration of iPods.

<comment><USER24> Everybody uses them in the gym as well. Working out is actually pretty boring.

<comment><USER22> That's why I prefer running (beautiful scenery) and Yoga (beautiful women) :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I wonder what the guy who asserts that "awsome" technology won't exist for 6000 years now thinks of the iPad.

</comment><comment><USER26> I needed this bit of nostalgia humor. Thanks for the link.

</comment><comment><USER27> It's sad that things have changed so little in 10 years.

<comment><USER28> I know. When will Apple stop releasing products for which there is no possible market?

I mean I know I'm an Apple fanboy and all but I think they could have learned from their failures

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'm tired of the comparison to the iPod or the iPhone. The iPhone had tons of innovations on day 1. The iPod had some innovations to begin with (your music library in your pocket), but other key ones -like the click wheel and the iTunes store- came later. The iPad doesn't really have anything innovative in it today.

Yes Apple may add more innovations later, and it may succeed even without them (coz of iPhone users moving up, Apple's brand & marketing, etc.) but the 'Apple will succeed because the iPod+iPhone did' argument is getting old.

I absolutely believe in a simpler less-general-purpose device for casual home computing, and a lightweight tablet seems like one of the top contenders for the form factor, but the iPad itself is a pretty weak product.

<comment><USER30> Do you not note the irony of reading the posts on the link and then writing this?</comment></comment>


fpx: easy USB‑C power for all your devices - <AUTHOR> https://fpx.oxplot.com/ <comment><USER2> Clever way to make it configurable, and a good way to differentiate it from the cheap aliexpress versions! And nice to see the development from your earlier versions.

</comment><comment><USER3> > The board has a sensor which reads your desired configuration from the light > pulses generated on this page and stores them on the onboard NVM

now _that_ is fricken cool... albeit open to sabotage, but still wow

<comment><USER4> I'm trying to think of what other products/projects I'm aware of using optical coupling for configuration - the Bloomberg B-Unit used/uses a similar screen- flash strategy for authentication, and some first-person drone cameras can leverage adding/removing the lenscap to navigate the menus, but this configuration mechanism isn't as popular as I'd expect it to be given how clever and straightforward it is. This is a really cool project!

<comment><USER5> The later Psion (or Cannon?) PDAs used monitor-flashing as a way to send serial data to the PDA from PC -- this was used for quickly filling in address books and so-on.

When I used it then I thought 'Wow, this is neat -- but probably dangerous for epileptics.' . Much tidier than dealing with an RS232 interface or the like -- just use a photodiode.

edit: it was the Sharp Zaurus series that used the optical data transfer -- I think. it's been years and I used to be too into PDAs

edit 2 : Royal also had a PDA series with optical transfer; but i'm not sure whether or not Royal made their own hardware products.

edit 3 : I found the Royal organizer : 'Point your FL95 PC Organizer at your desktop PC monitor. Watch as flashing bars of light send information to the FL95 PC Organizer.'

They call it 'Timex Datalink' [0]

[https://www.amazon.com/FL95-Organizer-RoyalGlo-Nitevue- displ...](https://www.amazon.com/FL95-Organizer-RoyalGlo-Nitevue- display/dp/B006KHIRGQ)

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Datalink#Optical_sensor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Datalink#Optical_sensor)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Datalink](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Datalink)

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm using in my current projects PD boards from Ebay, so I could be interested. Ebay boards are programmable using a single button on the board itself and are less expensive. This one is very cool but IMHO has two weak points: 1\. "The board has a sensor which reads your desired configuration from the light pulses generated on this page and stores them on the onboard NVM". What if the company go out of market ? How can a customer reprogram his boards without website? 2\. Is that secure ? What if a malicious actor reverse the website logic going around reprogramming the boards to provide max voltage ? It should have a safe button but, at that point, could be convenient to use directly that button to change configuration.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm very interested to know what board you're using at the moment. I did consider using a button, however given the small size I wanted the board to be, it was not possible to have anything mechanical on it.

1\. The protocol is actually fairly simple and open. Everything including the website is open source. In fact the site is a single page HTML which can be saved and opened offline.

2\. The point about sabotaging which others have mentioned, is a valid point and I have thought about using a sort of a password to restrict who can configure it. I haven't found a user-friendly solution to this yet. As this board is meant to be embedded inside of an enclosure, I am relying on physical obstruction of the sensor as a form of security.

<comment><USER7> I'm using ZY12PDN USB-C PD boards ( [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIHj3qMRqqE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIHj3qMRqqE) ) About point 2, IMHO, better a jumper to disable programming mode than having to obstruct the sensor.

<comment><AUTHOR> Jumper is a good idea as it's something that can fit on the fpx board.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Darn, I wish this was available a few months ago. I just went through the effort of assmbling my own PD Buddy sinks because they are currently out of production.

</comment><comment><USER9> Really cool and useful project!

To protect it a bit more against an easy sabotage you could add some symmetric key logic in the light emitter and receptor (certainly it already crossed your mind)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion. I've just added a tip on the site about putting the board inside an opaque enclosure. That's what I had in mind as far as security goes. I have thought about giving each individual board a unique ID which will be verified when configuring the board.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's still too expensive to just put into things, but still it's a great evolution of the buddy sink!

When will we get easy to use modules like this for power _output_?

<comment><AUTHOR> > When will we get easy to use modules like this for power output?

What do you have in mind? Are you thinking of a USB-C to USB-C voltage converter?

<comment><USER10> I was originally looking for something allowing me to make a power supply for my USB-C only laptop to build a (large and cheap) power bank from some 18650 cells I had lying around.

I understand that communication with the voltage converter would likely be so complicated they should be integrated with each other, then integrating all the other battery management stuff wouldn't be so far either.

Admittedly it has been a few years ago, but the last time I looked nothing like this was available.</comment></comment></comment>