Almost Everything in "Dr. Strangelove" Was True (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/almost-everything-in-dr-strangelove-was-true <comment><USER2> Dr. Strangelove is the origin of what I consider the most brilliantly absurd one-liner in cinematic history.

'Gentlemen, you can't fight in here - this is the war room!'

<comment><USER3> My work would insist on calling the incident response or monitoring room a "war room". And I would quote this every time it was mentioned. It gets old, but I literally can not stop myself from repeating the quote when i hear the phrase "war room".

<comment><USER2> We had a major incident go down during our Christmas party, of the "We've got $50M of payload slamming into a wellhead at 1,400m, please advise" variety.

Our service hotline was overwhelmed, and promptly proceeded to provide the rather irate (for very valid reasons!) customer the personal cell numbers of half the engineering departement.

Thus, as we were in a bar in advanced stages of inebriation, all of our cell phones started ringing. Oops.

The bartender was brilliant, realizing that something very out of the ordinary had just happened, came over, got the basics from a panicking engineer, threw the other guests out of the pool /pinball lounge at the back, put on coffee (lots!), found some paper and pens and left us to sort it out as best as we could.

The disbelief at the customer end as they heard Motörhead in the background while we were on the phone with them? Priceless.

We eventually had a couple of laptops taxied in and set up a sort of proper war room, still with Motörhead blaring in from the bar.

Good times. We even got the system offshore going again before the wellhead called it quits.

<comment><USER4> I've also had a customer service desk rep give my personal cell number to a customer. Fun times. Chalk it up to "cultural differences": the CSD rep simply could not understand why I might be incensed that a _debt collection agency_ who believes I am singularly responsible for some hiccup in their collection software now has a direct line to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Command and Control by Eric Schlosser[0] was a fascinating (and chilling) read about many of the incidents people have mentioned in the comments here. It focuses closely on the 374-7 Damascus Incident, but covers many many other "Broken Arrow"[1] incidents that have occurred.

It's not a short read, but it's eye-opening from the engineering perspective that nuclear arsenals are wildly complicated beasts with on-going maintenance, like any machine.

EDIT: It's also available as a documentary on Netflix[2] Not as in-depth, but it covers the Damascus incident pretty well.

[0] [https://www.amazon.com/dp/0143125788](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0143125788)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_nuclear...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_nuclear_incident_terminology#Broken_Arrow)

[2] [https://www.netflix.com/title/80107656](https://www.netflix.com/title/80107656)

<comment><USER6> Eric is the author of the linked article

<comment><USER5> Heh, so he is! Totally missed that. The writing style (and subject matter) brought him back to mind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The original "Fail Safe" is a great movie btw, if you've never seen it. As mentioned in the article, that and "Dr Strangelove" were based on the same book, with "Fail Safe" being the more sober interpretation. Amazing cast, and Lumet ("Dog Day Afternoon", "Network", "Twelve Angry Men") is a legendary director.

<comment><USER8> Fail Safe is was based on a book called 'Fail Safe' while Dr Strangelove was based on one called 'Red Alert'. It's an easy mistake to make as they have incredibly similar plots which really hurt Fail Safe (which I agree is a great movie)

<comment><USER7> Ah, thanks for that — I've held that mistaken view for over a decade now. So in essence it was more of "A Bugs Life" / "Antz" situation.

<comment><USER9> Except Dreamworks did Antz specifically because they found out Pixar was going to do A Bugs Life, and they were taking every opportunity they had to stick it to Disney.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Previous Discussions:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13051974](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13051974)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8576707](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8576707)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7109345](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7109345)

</comment><comment><USER11> There's so many great scenes about this topic in "Yes Prime Minister". I think this one is the most valuable: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKbDKsNsjac](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKbDKsNsjac)

I've understood the futility of MAD, but this scene helped me really grok it in such a short, practical way.

<comment><USER12> What the video describes is massive retaliation doctrine. Mutually assured destruction is not the same as massive retaliation doctrine. Massive retaliation was abandoned soon after the the Cuban crisis. Kennedy saw how impossible it was in practice and demanded more options.

At the time this episode of Yes Prime minister was written NATO had completely different strategy called flexible response.

<comment><USER11> Makes sense. I guess what I confuse or don't understand well is how there's anything but MAD. The moment you push any button for any amount of nuclear usage, aren't you basically triggering MAD?

The only possible responses are conventional ones, right?

<comment><USER12> Flexible response means that the response is proportional to the threat just like in normal war. Nuclear bomb is just a big bomb after all.

First comes conventional response. If that fails to stop Soviet advance, tactical nukes are used. If tactical nukes fail, war escalates but no counter value targets are hit (no cities doctrine). Only after all these steps are exhausted and enemy escalates, nuclear war expands to total nuclear war.

Nuclear sharing is political side of this. If Soviets attack West Germany, US president hands keys to nuclear gravity bombs to German Chancellor and German pilots who have been trained to deliver those bomb are delivering them. If Germany uses nukes, Soviet union would retaliate against German nuclear attack, not the US based attack. Alternative Germany may choose to surrender and not to use the weapons. In that case NATO withdraws from Germany.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Everyone is giving book recommendations but nobody has mentioned _The Doomsday Machine Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner_ by Daniel Ellsberg?

</comment><comment><USER14> > "We don't care if things go properly," a launch officer told RAND. "We just > don't want to get in trouble."

Who would you rather have in control of the nukes: people who don't care, or people who care a whole, whole, _WHOLE LOT_?

<comment><USER15> People who care _that_ much are also more prone to emotional reaction lacking thorough evaluation of a situation that impacted them personally. So, I'm actually really not sure. At least the ones who don't want to get in trouble are motivated by the fact that they are beholden to others in some fashion.

</comment></comment><comment> W-Stool If you like "Dr Strangelove" and "Fail Safe" I highly recommend "The Bedford Incident".

</comment><comment><USER16> As was everything in Eyes Wide Shut.

<comment><USER17> It is one of my favorite movies, so I'm curious about others' take on it. In what sense do you find it true/accurate?

<comment><USER18> Lots of rich assholes get together on private estates to do demented sexual shit. Not included in the movie: occasionally one of them oversteps some bound that we subjects don't even know exists, and then is fake-suicided while in federal custody. (Great idea for the sequel!)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There's a book, Command and Control, which tells the story of USA's nuclear arsenal safety and security over the years. Lots of scary stuff, including how it was discovered that it's been possible to break into Titan centre and launch stuff with a credit card-shaped object and small team of unarmed man.

<comment><USER6> This article was written by the author of Command and Control.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The movie really is a great illustration of the gap between "policy" and implementation, especially in a time of crisis, and how ultimately it still boils down to human decisions.

There are some lessons to apply to tech's "on-call", 5-9s culture...

</comment><comment><USER21> Anyone interested in a quite good, serious film with similar themes to and released around the same time as _Dr. Strangelove_ , should check out _Seven Days in May_.

</comment><comment><USER22> And what's even more scary is what's true beyond the movie. Like dropping nuclear bombs on Goldsboro, NC.

<comment><USER23> Bombs were not purposefully DROPPED on Goldsboro. The B-52 transporting those broke up in mid-air and as a result lost the cargo of the couple of megaton- range bombs. Thank you for purposefully misaligning the actual event with your words of intent attack on the city.

<comment><USER24> No one said purposefully, and they _were_ dropped.

It's the sort of incident Dr. Strangelove predicted might accidentally cause a nuclear war.

<comment><USER25> Pretty sure you have to purposely arm them before there's any chance it would go off for just such a scenario.

Otherwise every time you transport one it could end in disaster.

<comment><USER24> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961_Goldsboro_B-52_crash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961_Goldsboro_B-52_crash)

> Information newly declassified in 2013 showed that one of the bombs came > very close to detonating.

> In 2013, Revelle recalled the moment the second bomb's switch was found: > "Until my death I will never forget hearing my sergeant say, 'Lieutenant, we > found the arm/safe switch.' And I said, 'Great.' He said, 'Not great. It's > on arm.'"

If I'm reading the article right, the _other_ bomb also had _the other three_ arming steps happen and was stopped only by the arm/safe switch, so between the two bombs, _each_ of the four safety steps failed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Generals and other Pentagon reptiles lie about the dangers of their massive death spending programs. Film at 11.

</comment><comment><USER26> "You're going to have to answer to the Coca-Cola Corporation"

</comment><comment><USER27> I consider the storyline that one of the generals has in regard to: water supply contamination, as a main plot.

</comment><comment><USER28> Alternately, we have a much less credible scenario in Broken Arrow.

</comment><comment><USER29> (2014)

</comment><comment> java-man Wasn't there an event recently when a U.S. bomber took off with six nuclear tipped missiles which at the time were thought to be inert?

And then landed with only five?

<comment><USER30> This sounds like the 2007 incident[0], but the Wikipedia article doesn't say anything about one going missing. That sounds like the sort of thing that would get added as part of the regular mutation in story transmission, and would likely be pretty well-documented if it were true.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_United_States_Air_Force_n...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_United_States_Air_Force_nuclear_weapons_incident)

<comment> java-man or it could be actively suppressed:

[0] [http://911blogger.com/news/2007-09-09/nuke-flight-major- issu...](http://911blogger.com/news/2007-09-09/nuke-flight-major-issue- closely-connected-911)

<comment><USER24> By the lizard people, naturally.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Need help to find a HN post - <AUTHOR> Some months ago i saw a post that was about a guy telling how he fixed an audio issue between his notebook and headphone with both code and handmade electronic circuits. Tried all kinds of keywords on HN search but couldnt find it. I think the site had a dark background theme, and thats all i can remember. If someone saw that thread too and could send the link I would be very grateful, as the approach to fix the problem was very creative. Thanks in advance <comment><USER2> [http://www.naughtycomputer.uk/do_i_really_need_to_get_out_th...](http://www.naughtycomputer.uk/do_i_really_need_to_get_out_the_soldering_iron_again.html)

was it this one?

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed it was! Thanks mate, you made my day

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Did you upvote it? If so you can find it in your user profile under upvoted submissions.

<comment><AUTHOR> sadly i didnt

<comment><USER4> you can also mark it as favorite for future.</comment></comment></comment>


z/OMG - <AUTHOR> http://qntm.org/?zomg

<comment><USER2> The same author wrote a really great piece on gay marriage from a database engineering perspective: <http://qntm.org/?gay>

<comment><USER3> He's also active on everything2.com, a Slashdot sister site from way back, as sam512. If you poke around on his site that's linked here, you'll also find some excellent science fiction and various other entertaining bits of writing, including that set of essays on how to destroy the Earth that I'm sure you've read at some point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The author paints too grim a picture of mainframes. Isn't legacy code supposed to be that way? As far as I know, not many new code projects are being done on mainframes. But whatever is there, has to be maintained/upgraded. Mainframes are __NOT __as difficult to use as the author says. They power most of the big life/general insurance companies, and they do interface well with front-ends [with XSLs in middle to convert from/to string streams]. I have worked for two years on mainframes, and loved the simple editor. Like with any command-line type editor, it has its quirks, but once you learn it, it is very fast. Also, z/OS has some version control systems (Endevour), and really good debuggers.

<comment><USER5> Absolutely.

After all, you can happily run DB2 on Z/OS, and access everything via stored procs from smaller machines. his gives you external access to data without going through green screens.

<comment><USER6> Some people still refuse to invest in DB2 though, and so you're stuck with VSAM/Flatfiles for your data. It's a horrible time sink.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This account right here makes me want to be a mainframe programmer for a living.

Writing software for microcomputers that sells is for chumps. Mainframes are where it's at, if for no other reason than the fact that "relabel[ing] one line of [a] procedure between one software version and the next _will break somebody else's program_."

</comment><comment><USER8> I get the impression that moving away from COBOL, "Big Iron", and such dinosaurs has, after the initial wrench, made companies more productive. All of which makes me wonder what part the army of salesmen that go with these things play in their continued existence. (And the executive-ego-stroke of having an impressive room dominated by a bond-villianesque monolith.)

<comment><USER6> In my experience, the reasons are mostly just because it's been the standard for so long at said shop.

Most people using mainframes don't make money off of their IT department, their programmers are expensive and don't produce profits. Investing in a large change from "what works and has a fixed cost" to something new and possibly troublesome or more expensive (initial cost) just isn't a priority for them.

Not to mention the retraining you'd have to do. A lot of these programmers are either old and unwilling to learn, or just uninterested in rocking the boat. So is it worth it to have to fire people or get subpar code, or just stick with what's working that keeps you generating a profit and keeps your current programmers job security?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like this guy's witty banter, and his substitution of acronyms. But I particularly like this:

        ICBM System z is the Stonehenge of computing platforms.

You go to the wiki page and look at the picture of the system and think "I can actually imagine a circle of these systems being set up and seeming very very much like stonehenge".

<comment><USER10> Looks like an over-sized gaming console to me -- like if someone created 10 times larger PS3 for a videogame store display.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> A couple of years ago I spent just over a year working as a mainframe developer on a System/360 set of mainframes and the author's description of mainframe development seems accurate.

I grew very fond of JCL, EBCDIC and the text editor despite, or perhaps due to, their idiosyncrasies. Not that I would ever go back ;)

</comment><comment><USER12> Reminds me of working on HP's MPE OS (I believe I was using an HP 3000) in COBOL to keep a couponing system up and running. I won't say it was a terrible experience, but I certainly wasn't a fan of MPE or COBOL by the time I left.

</comment><comment><USER13> The thing that struck me about his awestruck description of the awfulness of System Z and its editor was "hey, that sounds a lot like vi".

I heart my graphical IDE.

<comment><USER14> Take a week to learn modal editing and you'll never go back.

<comment><USER7> I am a counterexample to your claim; hence, it is false.

I'm very fluent in vi(m), but I still end up going back to Emacs (well, MicroEmacs) every time for anything beyond doing hacks to configuration files. Why? I like having a heavily extensible development environment.

I also write Scheme, but that's another thing altogether.

<comment><USER15> It is a minor sadness that Bram didn't choose a lisp as the vim macro language.

But I still love vim...although Ive forgotten more bindings than other editors have features.

<comment><USER7> I'm not actually all that certain I want Lisp as my extension language. Lisp is very, very nice, and while I may have a preference for it, someone else might not. FWIW, MicroEmacs uses an in-house extension language that, while really repulsive to look at at times, gets the job done.

That said, I also have a preference for Lua when it comes to more maintream languages, and to boot, there's a project called LuaJIT that performs just-in- time compilation of Lua to native code.

There's also MetaLua, which adds the feature of macros to the language.

Better still, there's lua-Coat, which is a port of a subset of Moose from Perl (which is, in turn, a port of CLOS and other things to Perl) to Lua.

Consider also just using Python or Io or any number of other languages.

I guess my point is that it really doesn't depend on the language. If the environment isn't going to be extensible within reason, I probably won't use it.

(Did you know that vim lacks the functionality to emulate Emacs' `create- frame`? That's a huge turn-off for me personally.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Nice clean blog pages. I don't care as much for the home page, but the individual article pages are easy on the eyes.

</comment><comment><USER17> What are these things used for? Why can't they ever go away? I don't really believe it...

<comment><USER5> They're used by people running massive systems that want all of their data to be accessible at incredibly high speeds.

We're talking about systems designed for throughput. For processing huge amounts of data in overnight batch processes. For five nines uptime. And for still being compatible with the code you wrote 30 years ago that still manages millions of customers.

<comment><USER18> How fast would one of those monsters be compared to, say, a modern day Mac Pro?

<comment><USER19> The actual CPUs are pretty impressive, and operate at 3-4.5GHz range. The system will have up to ~80 of these, so it would effectively blow away a Mac Pro. Let's be honest though, at the prices IBM fetches for these (millions for the top end), you could build a VERY healthy Hadoop cluster.

The reason why these are kept around is that the custom software that runs on them often implements very complex business rules that are otherwise undocumented (the code is the documentation). If you're talking about a financial institution, the mainframe IS the business.

As far as reliability, these things are rock-solid and proven, but mainstream distributed systems design has pretty recently surpassed the mainframe model IMHO. It's relatively simple (compared to just a few years ago) to implement clustered data processing using MapReduce, replicate the data across multiple datacenters, and not care about individual node failure.

<comment><USER18> 80 processors? Big potential for writing concurrent apps. Do mainframe developers exploit that?

<comment><USER6> When you consider that not only do these systems run a lot of batch processing daily, they also have user interfaces through things like CICS, which users are allowed to login and initiate jobs. Most of the time it has it's own form of concurrency in which it will lock certain datasets for processing and release them when it's done. Of course, it's still possible to get deadlocks and other issues because of this.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Home Depot Canada Website Listing Drills Priced "Lowest First" - <AUTHOR> https://www.homedepot.ca/en/home/categories/tools/power-tools/drills.html?searchterm=drills#!p=0&q=*%3Aprice-asc%3AcategoryPathHierarchy%3A3%2Fhd-classes%2Fl1-tools%2Fl2-power-tools%2Fcategory-drills <comment><AUTHOR> This just seems crazy to me... and I thought only HNers might care about this sort of thing.

This is a massive company in Canada, with 180 stores and almost 30,000 employees... who just updated their website, and still cannot get simple "rank by price" database queries in check.

It boggles the mind, and makes their website experience extremely frustrating.

Just venting and curious if anyone out there has any experience as to how something like this could happen.

It's been like this for years, and I have even written them once informing them of the problem, yet it persists.

</comment><comment><USER2> Ha! I must admit it took me a moment to figure out what you were posting about. Agreed, this is inexcusable from a CMS perspective! How can you mess up something so simple?!?</comment>


I was struck by lightning yesterday—and boy am I sore - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/05/i-was-struck-by-lightning-yesterday-and-boy-am-i-sore/ <comment><USER5> If someone knows this guy, please tell him to consult a physician. Sounds like he may be experiencing rhabdomyolysis. When massive muscle contractions occur involuntarily, the fibers tend to break down and those proteins spill into the blood. This spillage may not peak for 12-36 hours. This can clog the kidneys and lead to acute kidney failure, which can then lead to acute heart failure, all told potentially 48 hours out. HN user arn is a nephrologist, he could comment more intelligently.

If anything, he should make sure he's on somebody's radar.

Edit, source: I'm a physician.

<comment><USER6> isn't there also a condition where electicical voltage-lysed cells spill out their contents and trigger cascading apoptosis, leading to death, but only after a few days? I don't know if there's a prophylaxis for this, but if there is, it might seem prudent.

<comment><USER5> Rhabdo is probably what you're thinking of. As a minor point, traumatic cell death is generally considered necrotic, not apoptotic. Apoptosis is _programmed_ cell death.

<comment><USER6> Yeah I was under the impression that the initial trauma released specific factors into the blood that trigger apoptosis away from the trauma site... But I guess rhabdo is what I was thinking of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been nearly struck several times. I love lightning, and apparently it loves me right back. And wants to touch me.

What I have learned is this:

1\. You will almost never get warning before lightning strikes. Only once did I get the hair-on-end. Every other time, no warning whatsoever before discharge. However, as is obvious, highly active cloud-to-cloud lightning indicates an extremely active cell, with extreme danger.

2\. Lightning can reach a /long/ way to get you. The closest call I ever had, the storm was 15 miles away. I was standing outside watching it and it struck 2 feet away from me. It wasn't a stringer either - it was a full discharge and sent me flying (more through my own surprise than physical force).

3\. If you can hear thunder, you can get struck quite easily.

4\. A few drops of rain increase the chances of being struck by several orders of magnitude. The atmosphere is far more conductive and therefor danger skyrockets.

5\. Lightning will strike the most out-of-way/odd places. I've watched it blitz trees in a deep valley over and over again without hitting the peaks once. There is no predicting what is likely to get struck.

6\. In an instable environment, any cloud that is rising rapidly is extremely suspect. I once was watching a storm that was cranking away about 10 miles off. A small cumulus tower went up next to me, but didn't look like much. 30 seconds later it discharged only about 1/4 mile away.

7\. Some wikipedia entries and other sources state lightning is uncommon over water and the open ocean. This is completely untrue - there is a lot of it. If you are boating and see a squall, be prepared to book it out of there as a boat is a highly dangerous place to be during a storm.

8\. A fantastic shot of the close-range effects of lightning is 00:01:15 into this video: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7K3m2zHEhs>

What you'll notice about that shot is the effect it has and how very clear it is, along with how quiet it is at close range. The sparks off the metal roof, the movement of the actual channel, even the rate at which it discharges is apparent. Probably one of the best shots so far (though I welcome others!)

Stay safe.

<comment><USER8> As someone who also has first hand experience with a severe lightning strike (that left one dead and 11 hospitalized) and on a separate occasion saw a lot of people with hair sticking straight up (we ran to our cars before lightning struck that time), I second this. Don't assume you're safe because you're not near a high point. Lightning strikes wherever. And never, ever, ever stand under a tree. They make great conductors, but your body (a sack of salt water) is an even better conductor, so the lightning jumps to you. Last, lightning strikes are one of the cases where CPR can be effective. The body is still well-oxygenatd, but the heart may stop from the shock, so keeping blood circulating can save a life.

One other thing to be aware of, one the injuries that lightning causes is blindness (temporary but possibly lasting a couple of days). Several of those closest to the strike were blinded - it was described to me as a sunburn of the retina, where vision is not restored until the burns heals. That may not be medically accurate, but describes the experience they went through.

<comment><USER9> >Don't assume you're safe because you're not near a high point

Yet again human intuition proves counter-intuitive. It's easier for us to visualize that being at a high point is more dangerous than a lower place. If there were a method to use FFT and convert land from a height map to the resistance/conductivity domain, I'm sure there will be very very surprising results.

<comment><USER10> It has nothing to do with intuition, just with over-simplification. It _is_ true that high points tend to attract lightning and that this can make you safe. The effect just isn't as strong as most people think.

Basically, the "leader" that establishes the path through which the main discharge will happen moves randomly downwards, but will be strongly attracted towards grounded objects that it comes close enough to - and "close enough" is only about 50 meters. So if there is a high point within a sphere of 50m radius centered 50m above your head, you're indeed almost completely safe (or at least you won't be hit directly - what hit Marlin was apparently a part of the charge that was moving through his house.

<comment><USER11> I grew up in an area that frequently had thunderstorms. I witnessed many strikes in my yard, including my house while I was in it, and investigated many in my neighborhood. Much of what the OP said was bullshit. If it were true, the lightning rods that attracted and diverted many strikes wouldn't need to be place high.

The strikes always hit taller object like houses and trees and I never ever saw a strike or evidence of one in the middle of a field.

<comment><USER7> Please don't generalize your experience across the entirety of all possible occurences.

1\. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqzjk1kp5Ug> \- Notice in the shot how the lightning hits a small, low-in-the-water boat.

2\. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keVm06H26ik> \- In Boulder, with the mountains right next door, lightning strikes twice in the city proper, around 1,000 feet lower in elevation.

3\. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKw9kpD0rNc> \- Lightning strikes the water, less than a hundred feet away, instead of the palm trees the photographer is at.

My point was that assuming lightning will strike the highest point is patently false; it doesn't meant that a valley isn't any safer than a mountain - <USER2> don't assume that being in a valley protects you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> First, as others have said, if you get hit by lightning or have any sort of severe electrical shock, so see a doctor and be checked out. The reasoning here is that any of the current that passes through you will create internal burns, resulting any number of issues.

The second thing is that often these voltages travel on the surface of a conductor (called the skin effect) rather than through the middle so if you don't have a hole in your skin with a burn mark around it (that is what you are looking for in step one above) you might dodge serious damage.

A friend of mine in high school was hit by lightning why riding his motorcycle off road around Las Vegas (back when it was easier to do that :-) and was fine except for two pretty bad burns, one where his belt buckle was (apparently it got red hot) and on his feet where the metal in his riding boots was similarly heated up.

<comment><USER13> Yes, please, Jason if you're here, for the love of God please go see a doctor --

Step-dad is a firefighter; so many times they get to the scenes of accidents, and everything looks fine on the outside, patient feels completely fine so refuses ride to the hospital, but then 2-3 hours (sometimes even up to a day later) they end up far worse off and sometimes even dead from internal injuries that EMTs are not qualified to assess.

<comment><USER14> Ambulance rides are crazy expensive and insurance companies like to question if you actually needed one. If you don't need the EMT, just take Lyft to the ER.

<comment><USER15> It's such a surreal concept to me that having to be picked up by emergency services will cost you money. I feel so incredibly lucky to live in a country where healthcare is free.

<comment><USER16> I'd rather see the _direct_ or _marginal_ costs of the ambulance or paramedics billed to the user (so, if they expend saline, or bandages, or whatever, you pay for it), and the hourly wage and vehicle costs for the trip itself. That would price a routine EMT-B ambulance trip around $100 -- still enough that people who didn't need it would take a taxi or drive themselves to a doctor for a non-incapacitating problem, but cheap enough that it could be paid out of pocket.

The costs of keeping ambulances ready, training, etc. could be socialized somehow. I benefit by having 5-10 minute EMS response times even if I never use it for 70 years, so paying for that out of taxes or some other universal subscription fee to users makes sense, rather than putting all the costs on those unlucky enough to need it.

<comment><USER17> If you're prepared to socialise some of it, why not go the whole hog. Is there anyone who thinks that ambulances should e user pays? It simplifies things too, as a fair portion of accidents have a blameless victim, so the cost makes them a victim twice.

<comment><USER16> The problem is when it's totally socialized (like medicare), you end up with people abusing the service. If an ambulance ride costs you _less than a taxi or even bus_ , and you're an asshole, you use an ambulance (in some places, provided by paramedics, so the direct costs _are_ high -- in some places they also send a fire truck, so you end up with like 20 highly-trained guys and $500k of equipment) to go to a routine checkup. 3-5 times a week.

You could probably waive charging direct costs if you had some other way of deterring abuse, but they essentially always have to respond to 911 calls, so the only way I could think of doing so would be to arrest someone who misuses the service. A policy of informally losing the bill for legitimate calls might work, or doing the standard drug dealer "first one's free" strategy. But I don't think $100-500 for an ambulance would break most people, particularly with insurance; a charity could also cover the bills for some people.

<comment><USER18> No you don't, because there's no obligation for the ambulance officers to pick you up and take you. A taxi is in the business of taking anyone they can anywhere they can. An ambulance is not. The only time they'll _offer_ you a ride is if they judge that you may need of it, so already qualified ambulance officers have deemed you a possible candidate requiring their services. Moreover, they've only got one destination - the hospital - and it's not as if many people want to go there willingly. It's not as if you can call up an ambulance to pick you up and take you down to the pub for the night. If the ambulance officers are qualified to recognise medical emergencies (they are - that's their job) then they're qualified to determine who requires ambulance transportation and can filter patients accordingly.

The problem with 'a charity covering the bill' is that you then need people to donate out of goodwill. That doesn't often happen.

There's already fines and punishment for abusing emergency support systems (e.g.: calling 000/911/your country's equivalent). Even if you abuse that, and even if you mislead the call centre operator to dispatch an ambulance to your house, they're not going to ferry you to your desired location unless your vitals show reason to consider it a possible requirement.

Ambulance services are free here, insofar as you pay for a small tax on every rates bill (said rates cover ambulance and waste management services) _edit: Apparently not since 2003 - it's now simply just covered by the State_. There's no out-of-pocket expense. I can guarantee you that we don't have ambulances running people not requiring their services around 24/7.

<comment><USER19> I can confirm this, works just fine in Germany and ambulances are free (i.e. covered by mandatory health insurance). And even if it would be abused - <USER3> I really can't imagine - I'd much prefer 100 idiots free riding to the hospital to one person dying because he can't afford the trip.

<comment><USER20> I was always told that here (Austria) if you call the ambulance but are not in actual danger you have to pay for it, and that it's very expensive. But you can call an emergency physician if you're not sure if somethings wrong which is free in any case afaik. They will examine you and make a determination if you need to go the hospital. My mother once called them because she was concentrating so hard on her heartbeat while trying to sleep that she started to panic because she thought it wasn't beating normally. The emergency physician examined her and deemed everything normal, made her calm down, and then just left. I was told if she had called the ambulance it would have cost a lot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> For all of you wondering about the doctor thing, here's his answer from the comments on that page:

 _Jason Marlin Technical Director reply 29 minutes ago Story Author report spam ignore user

>Onerunjunior wrote:

>I don't understand how you can justify not going to the doctor for testing after you've been hit by lightning. If not for yourself, go get checked out for your wife and kid. It's incredibly stupid not to.

No I agree and do plan on going - was going to try and get in today. I probably should have just cruised with the guys yesterday but they were so nonchalant about the whole thing I was like "welp, guess only losers see the doc when struck by zeus"._

Edit: from another comment

 _I should be better about these things, but have had some fairly unimpressive attempts at diagnosis for various issues over the past few years. I feel a bit like if you don't have blood squirting out of your eyes, it's assumed that you're either a) trying to score meds or b) seeking attention (why not both?). HOWEVER, I have scheduled an appointment for tomorrow morning. I'll update the post if I die :)_

</comment><comment><USER22> Men are often discouraged by society from seeking first aid or admitting any sort of ailment or weakness.

Plus Emergency Rooms are known for very long wait times, especially if you are otherwise looking in good health. (triage favors the folks bleeding out).

If you are presented a bill, it's not just an ER charge but a charge from the ER, from the doctor, the anesthetist, and seemingly everyone staffing the ER seems to have their own bill and billing agency.

That's above and beyond the high cost of ER care.

<comment><USER23> I don't know if the pressure to "man up" extends to lightning strikes. I think you get a pass on that one.

<comment><USER24> Except here is a quote from the author

> No I agree and do plan on going - was going to try and get in today. I > probably should have just cruised with the guys yesterday but they were so > nonchalant about the whole thing I was like "welp, guess only losers see the > doc when struck by zeus".

<comment><USER25> I think he misread the situation. If you're an EMT it is clearly in your best interest to remain calm and project an air of calmness to others because you're going to be in situations where the shit is hitting the fan and keeping your cool is the difference between someone living and dying.

An EMT calmly telling you that you really should go to the ER with them is likely not being "nonchalant", just level-headed. I'm sure this guy is sick of hearing it by now but he made an unwise decision, even if it turns out he's fine after all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Only in America would somebody think twice about seeing doctor after being struck by lightning.

<comment><USER27> There's a whole lot of hyperbole here. There are lots of places that this holds true.

<comment><USER28> Yes, but we should be completely ashamed that our medical system is so poor in every way. I mean, who are we comparing to, Zimbabwe?

I personally am in favor of copying the (excellent and very effective) veterinary model for our human medical care, not continuing to copy the model that was used for governing the Soviet Union.

<comment><USER29> Right, like when the patient gets really sick, or care uncomfortably expensive, he/she gets the Magic Needle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> From his comments defending not visiting ER given a recent unrelated health issue: _The hospital billed $11,000 for a cat scan; the insurance paid 6k.'_

Seriously, if you need a an elective scan and it's going to cost you more than a couple of grand after insurance: take a vacation, fly first class, stay in a 5 star hotel, get seen privately in a first class facility, have a relaxing rejuvenating break, and come home with change. Cost of a full-body CT scan in Europe?: < $1000.[1]

[1] [http://www.privatehealth.co.uk/private-healthcare- services/d...](http://www.privatehealth.co.uk/private-healthcare- services/diagnostic-imaging/ct-scans/ct-scan-prices/) Other parts of Europe (and no doubt elsewhere outside the US) will be much cheaper still.

<comment><USER17> Cost of full body CT scan may be greater than that - it would likely put you in Hiroshima-survivor radiation dose range.

Edit: did some reading. The risk is surprisingly low. For a 45 year old a single whole body scan has a mortality risk of 0.08%, and if the same person had one annually thereafter till 75, its a 1.9% lifetime risk. David, Brennee and Ellison in Radiology, 2004.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> _"The EMTs took my vitals and urged me to go to the hospital for testing. I declined"_

At the risk of derailing the thread - is this because going to A&E in the US is expensive?

I wonder how his hearing is.

<comment><USER32> just FYI, most Americans, even many familiar with Britishisms, don't know what "A&E" is (or rather they think it's a cable channel).

(For those following along at home: A&E is "Accident and emergency [department]", or what Americans call the ER.)

<comment><USER31> Ah, sorry about that. Most people in Britain would be delighted and honoured to be invited to see ER...

<comment><USER33> And again, for the Americans (and others), in Britain ER is Elizabeth _regina_. I.e., the Queen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> The odds of getting hit by a lightning is actually surprisingly high (1 in 3000 in an average lifetime). He should really go see a doctor though, since there's a 70% chance that he may be affected with serious long-term conditions.

[source : [http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/06/0623_040623_...](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/06/0623_040623_lightningfacts.html) ]

<comment><USER35> I know that I've been on an xkcd spree lately, but for some reason the HN frontpage is filled with circumstances that match.

<http://xkcd.com/795/>

<comment><USER36> I'm surprised no one's written a bot yet that auto-picks the most appropriate xkcd for an HN post and posts a 'relevant xkcd' comment :)

<comment><USER35> You've just given me a new scripting project to undertake over the weekend. :)

<comment><USER36> Good luck! I imagine there'll be some interesting challenges. I don't know how useful the alt-text will be since I guess it's sort of a cheeky second-comic, so coming up with clever ways to index relevant ideas/terms will be interesting.

You'd probly get some impressive looking results by just taking the echo- chamber approach of looking for HN links to comics and index what the discussion was about.

Hell, just hard-coding comments for horse battery staple and bobby tables would probably pass 30% of the unit tests :)

<comment><USER37> There's <http://www.explainxkcd.com/>, and some of the comics have a <div id="transcript"> _transcript here_ </div>.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Uh, it would be wise to see and doctor immediately! The electrical shock may have damaged your internal organs, even if there are no apparent external burns.

<comment><USER39> I was going to say that too - those Lichtenburg scar pictures that are linked don't look good. While they might seem 'cool' aren't those just 3rd degree burn scars? You have to wonder about the 3rd degree burns on the inside that you can't see.

<comment><USER40> The scar pictures aren't his: _"nor did I end up with a badass Lichtenburg scar"_

<comment><USER39> I know that he didn't receive any scarring externally. My point was that anything that can do things like that externally could have resulted in very bad things internally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Interesting that he had just moved to North Carolina. Strangely enough, NC is _very_ high up (#4) on the list of "most dangerous states for lighting accidents"[1].

I'm not not sure exactly what it is about NC that makes us so prone to lightning related accidents, but we sure do have a lot of them. I'd always speculated that it was something to do with geography / climate... just the right sort of semi-tropical climate to have lots of severe late-afternoon summertime thunderstorms or something. But when you look at the top 10 list, they seem to be fairly spread out. South, Southeast, Midwest, Southwest and Northeast all represented. The only conspicuous absence, to me, is the Pacific Northwest.

Edit: Did some more exploring... this graphic[2] makes it more apparent that there may be a geographic / climatic correlation. Southern states, Eastern states and Southwestern states seem to be particularly prone to lighting strikes and damage, with the Midwest, West and Pacific Northwest seemingly safer.

But, when you weight by population, the pattern seems much more muddled and nonsensical. Hmm...

[1]: [http://weather.about.com/od/thunderstormsandlightning/tp/lig...](http://weather.about.com/od/thunderstormsandlightning/tp/lightningstates.htm)

[2]: <http://www.lightningsafety.com/nlsi_lls/fatalities_us.html>

<comment><USER7> North Carolina is on the eastern ass-end of a common circulation pattern of cold fronts. They get a lot of the big squall-line fronts with heavy/torrential downpours in storm cells, while the mountains act as an extra lifting mechanism.

With that combo, you get much more lightning overall. This may account for the high death rate.

The Pacific Northwest has much fewer thunderstorms where population is concentrated. Go east of the cascades and there are far more storms, but far fewer people.

<comment><USER29> Not really. I've lived in Spokane for the past ten years and we almost never get thunderstorms here. I can remember one big one a couple of years ago where I thought we were going to get a tornado (something else that never happens here), but no such luck. That was the only storm excitement in forever. In general it's a fairly hot/dry place in the summer, and I don't think we get that magic combo of heat and humidity needed to cook up a good storm.

<comment><USER7> Wow, really?

I lived there for 3 years and we got a ton of storms. I'm quite surprised - eastern washington used to get them relatively often during the summer.

Well, eastern Oregon on the eastern slope of the cascades gets quite a few as well, and I got there often enough to experience them :)

<comment><USER29> Really. It hardly rains at all in the summer here. Just sun and heat, sun and heat. Everyone has to water their lawns or they all die. I grew up in New England where we had proper storms in the summer, and I WISH we had them here, if only to get a little wx excitement once in a while. Stats: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spokane,_Washington#Climate>

<comment><USER7> Huh. Color me confused.

I lived there 1998-2001 while attending Gonzaga. We had a ton of storms in the spring and summer those years. Must have been a string of odd years.

I live in San Diego now - I haven't seen a good blitz of a storm in sooooo long ~_~

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Well, that's quite amazing it chased him inside the house, and that he survived considering the ridiculously high punch these things pack. I've experienced what it can do.

Here in Brazil lighting is common during summer. I had one strike a metal pole in a cement slab atop my house once. It heated the pole so hot it vaporized (nowhere to be found), and the slab exploded in hundreds of pieces. All that debris showering the roof sounded like hail - only after I stepped outside I found out it wasn't. The ground was covered in debris, still hot. I still have one of the pieces somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER43> Lightning toasted my house in 2007, just arrived home 30 mins after it happened, glad I wasn't in the house given the magnitude of the destruction...TV exploded scrapnel everywhere, ceilings down upstairs and down....but worst of all, dealing with our insurance company for damages...

Can't believe this guy is not the only family member to have been hit, insane!

<comment><USER44> > scrapnel

The usual word is 'shrapnel', but this actually makes more sense in a portmanteau word sort of way: It's scraps that were hurled around as shrapnel. Scrapnel.

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

<comment><USER23> And to be extra pedantic, the TV tube would have imploded.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> No one has mentioned the use of a lightning rod on the roof to provide an alternate path. Does anyone know how effective these are in practice?

<comment><USER46> My understanding of lightning rods is that they help more in that they help dissipate charges from the surrounding air, preventing a strike, rather than actually taking the strike, in most cases. Though, in such case lightning struck the building, it's much more likely it would go through the lightning protection system if properly installed.

<comment><USER47> _My understanding of lightning rods is that they help more in that they help dissipate charges from the surrounding air, preventing a strike, rather than actually taking the strike, in most cases._

Your understanding is incorrect. See, for example [http://www.srh.noaa.gov/jetstream/lightning/lightning_faq.ht...](http://www.srh.noaa.gov/jetstream/lightning/lightning_faq.htm), for evidence that lightning rods increase the odds of being struck by lightning and decrease the damage if you are.

<comment><USER45> From your link:

 _Lightning rods will not prevent your building from being struck. They actually INCREASE it by making your house TALLER. The purpose of the lightning rod is to direct the current from the lightning to the ground along a preferred path instead of to the house. However, this works only if the rod is connected to the ground with heavy gauge wire._

It's a bit more complex than that. From my quick browse on the Internet, it seems there's a slight increase in odds caused by the increase in height. But if the rod can actively and effectively dissipate the electric field then that should mitigate the increase in odds (and then some) caused by the added height. Finally, if well constructed, a lightning rod will reduce the amount of damage caused.

<comment><USER47> Care to share links? If not then I still consider the national weather service to be more definitive. Particularly since what it says agrees perfectly with the physics courses that I took 20+ years ago, which indicated that the taller and pointier a metal object is, the better a target it becomes for static electricity discharges of all kinds - including lightning.

<comment><USER45> _They actually INCREASE it by making your house TALLER._

 _the taller and pointier a metal object is, the better a target it becomes for static electricity discharges of all kinds..._

I'm not disputing any of the above. But how much more likely or "better a target" does the rod make it? I couldn't find any quantitative measure of the increase in odds. Do you have any? If the odds of a strike are increased by just 1%, that statement by the NWS is still correct. Would you discount the use of a lightning rod because it ever so slightly increases the odds of a strike, when you know it also offers the additional benefits of dissipation and a safe path to ground?

<comment><USER47> I do not discount the value of lightning rods. Exactly because having a safe path to the ground is a real benefit.

But I am discounting the reality of "dissipation" as an advantage. In fact the opposite should be true. To the extent that you create a cloud of negative charge, you should attract lightning, not avoid it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> From one top comment:

 _Buildings with rods didn't get struck; buildings without, did. And the conflict was finally settled, once and for all, when a church somewhere in Spain was struck by lightning, setting off explosives that were stored underneath, leveling the town and killing most of the people in it._

I couldn't find references to this. Does anyone know any?

<comment><USER49> I also tried to search for one and also couldn't find one. However, my searching brought me to this rather interesting article:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_artificial_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_artificial_non- nuclear_explosions)

<comment><USER48> I saw this link and didn't bother to check it, but I think you hit the jackpot:

 _Palace of the Grand Master Explosion, in Rhodes_

 _On 4 April 1856, the Ottomans had storaged a large amount of gunpowder in the palace and the adjacent church, which were also full of people. In that time, it was considered that the ringing of bells could prevent the formation of storms. Unfortunately, a lightning hit the gunpowder, triggering a huge blast that killed 4,000 people._

Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I wonder if teflon coated shoes would be effective, if rubber are not?

Might have a problem with grip though...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_resistivity_and_con...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_resistivity_and_conductivity#Resistivity_of_various_materials)

<comment><USER50>
        I wonder if teflon coated shoes would be effective, if rubber are not?

No. You have to consider the distance through air. Electricity will still take the path of least resistance which, even if you're wearing rubber or teflon shoes, is still just a couple of centimeters out of the shoe and to the ground. As the article points out: the lightning just traveled a kilometer to get to you, so why would it care about a few centimeters or inches or _meters_ of insulating material when it would just hop through the air around it and to the ground.---

\--- I suppose that you could argue that a really large teflon pad would increase the aggregate resistance (through your nice, self-contained ocean and then over the large teflon pad) to such an extent that the lightning would pass by you and ground directly, but those would be giant shoes and the little gap between them would probably defeat the whole purpose of wearing giant teflon snow-shoes.

<comment><USER51> It doesn't seem inconceivable that wearing shoes takes you out of the path of least resistance as compared to some other path, say, the metal-framed shelving you are standing next to. I don't think wearing shoes is any kind of practical way to avoid getting hit by lightning but the 'kilometers of air' argument seems sort of wrongheaded. You don't need to become a more resistant path to ground than a kilometer of air - you just have to be more so than other paths. How long the discharge traveled to form that path doesn't really matter.

<comment><USER52> Unfortunately, simply reaching the ground may not be sufficient. The ground is not necessarily a good enough conductor to dissipate the full charge quickly. The rest of the charge flows near the ground looking for more ground.

Most lightning strike survivors are probably surviving "near misses", albeit sometimes ones where substantial electricity flowed through their body. A direct hit is probably going to be lethal nearly 100% of time -- there is a lot of energy in a lightning strike.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> We had a wood burner installed - they put up the chimney and were going to earth it the next day. Bad idea. Lightning fried a Mac SE30, made its enormous colour (!!) 19 inch screen only show orange and ruined the phones.

</comment><comment><USER53> > I mean, my grandmother was struck by lightning twice—how bad can it be?

...uhm ...can anyone here compute the probability of 2 people in one family being struck by lighting in this timerange/pattern.

<comment><USER54> After reading through this thread, you'd think it was commonplace. My guess is that people have bastardized the concept of "being struck by lightning," in that they weren't struck, just close to a strike.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> The image at the top of the article is Derek Rigg's album art for Iron Maiden's 1985 Live After Death live album. It is one of my favorite album arts. It is the desktop wallpaper on most of my computers. It's so intricate, I could stare at it all day and notice new things hidden in the image. You can see the rest of his work for Iron Maiden here: <http://derek.server311.com/>

</comment><comment><USER56> This page has a lot of information about lightning: [http://sciencebasedlife.wordpress.com/2011/04/28/the- science...](http://sciencebasedlife.wordpress.com/2011/04/28/the-science-and- myths-behind-lightning-strikes/)

</comment><comment><USER57> Boy, that takes me back to the two times I was struck. 15 the first time, my legs didn't work for about 15 minutes. Second time I only know about because witnesses told me (it's a black space in my memory).

</comment><comment><USER58> I don't understand why he didn't go to the hospital. You might feel fine but your heart might have got a little disturbed - and that can be enough to cause serious complications.

</comment><comment><USER59> I think the most surprising thing about this was that I learned people still use IRC.

<comment><USER60> About 600k users every day, and that's only the public networks. More statistics: <http://irc.netsplit.de/networks/summary.php>

For developers working in teams, there is no better way to communicate as a group. Text chat has a scroll back, you can opt to participate in the conversation or just lurk, check it on your own time but are never interrupted in your focus by it (unless you set it up that way).

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> There's a great comment on lightning and religion: [http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/05/i-was-struck-by- light...](http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/05/i-was-struck-by-lightning- yesterday-and-boy-am-i-sore/?comments=1&post=24552037#comment-24552037)

</comment><comment><USER62> He aint got no superpowers ?

</comment><comment><USER63> Wow, glad he's okay!

</comment><comment><USER64> Scumbag wizard.

</comment><comment><USER65> Guys, I am often caught in the rain(in Bangalore it's raining these days - <USER4> I've, seeing B'lore traffic, decided to rely on public transport) as I have to walk a lot, from drop points - and I keep walking, reaching home sometimes partially soaked and sometimes fully. So, should I just stop it? I mean I feel good getting soaked in the rain from time to time.

And when do I know, if there's a way, that 'okay, no fooling around in rains today - looks like it's bad today'? Or I should just avoid altogether?

Also, as the OP has mentioned he was in a room so I am sure it was well insulated, so that means standing in the shop sheds is just gonna save me from the rain and not the lighting, right? What about standing beneath dense and big trees?

And I wear a leather shoe or sports shoe - both with plastic/fiber/rubber soles(I'm not sure) - so they are gonna help? Umbrella?

Cars, with all those metals around must be most unsafe then?

<comment><USER66> You're safe in a car because the lightning will travel around the surface of the vehicle and then go to ground.This occurs because the vehicle acts like a Faraday cage.

[http://science.howstuffworks.com/nature/natural- disasters/li...](http://science.howstuffworks.com/nature/natural- disasters/lightning8.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Sounds like crazyness to me</comment>


Meetup Reminder: Boston Meetup Tonight (7:00PM) - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I posted in dhouston's post, but again, I hope to see reports/notes on this event, so please post when available!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> We're sitting in the front with a cluster of 5 tables... Excited to see everyone!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thread here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=17969>

</comment><comment><USER3> see you all there!</comment>


CircleCI gets 1.5m to build out Continuous Integration service - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2013/02/25/circleci-gets-1-5m-to-build-out-continuous-integration-service/

<comment><USER2> Does anyone know where I can learn more about CI in general? A good article/book?

CircleCI looks great.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd advise against trying to learn "about" CI. There are articles and even books about CI, and they over complicate it I feel. The way I would think about is simple: each time you push code, tests run. That's all there is to it :)

And thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Congrats Paul and team! Couldn't have asked for a better board of investors IMO.</comment>


How to improve your app ratings - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/u/0/103583939320326217147/posts/MPrQGKAeNnc

<comment><USER2> I wonder how adding 'Beta' to an app's title influences user ratings.

Has anyone A/B tested this?

<comment><USER3> How do you propose it be a/b'ed in the marketplace? "Foo Free" and "Foo Beta" next to each other in a app list? I'm pretty sure you can't just change the title of a single app whenever you want like you can with page content.</comment></comment>


Google Assistant's latest feature: "Tell me something good" - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/21/google-assistants-latest-feature-delivers-just-the-good-news/ <comment><USER2> Let me tell you a story of one of the largest news portals in Brazil, ig.com.br.

At the time, it was run by a very clever guy who came from the advertising world. He came up with an idea, the "Good News Day". It was to be tied to some ad campaign I don't quite remember now, but it was a day when the news portal could only publish good news.

The editorial staff protested, of course. It's their job to offer news as factually correct and unbiased as humanly possible and they were very unhappy with the idea. In the end, however they relented.

It was about 4AM when a mayoral candidate from a city near São Paulo, was murdered, seemingly for political reasons. Under protests, they held the release.

By 10 AM a plane hit the World Trade Center.

At that point they just published everything and completely ignored the directive. Nothing similar was ever issued again.

To this day, the people who were there regard such initiatives as extremely dangerous.

<comment><USER3> So people in Brazil won't know about 9/11(maybe the biggest news event in recent history), for a day. how is it dangerous ?

And i say that as an Israeli, we don't lack drama in our news.I don't listen to the news, and i don't feel i'm risking myself.

<comment><USER4> > So people in Brazil won't know about 9/11(maybe the biggest news event in > recent history), for a day. how is it dangerous ?

Well, how many people in Brazil had relatives in NYC? Proportionally speaking not many, I'm sure. But some. And their news provider would have overwhelmingly let them down that day. If you move the same principle to an NYC news provider it would be a catastrophic service failure.

<comment><USER5> This was a single online news provider, among dozens of popular news outlets.

<comment><USER4> Yes, but I'm talking about this as a general principle (as is the person I replied to I assume, given that he said "people in Brazil won't know about 9/11", not "people in Brazil will need to find an alternative news source to find out about 9/11".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This headline was somewhat misleading for me. I interpreted it as some kind of potentially undesirable filter on an existing feature, but it's just an additional command.

The feature is essentially "Hey Google, tell me something good" and Assistant reads out a positive news story. I asked twice and it told me a story about Parkinson's research and how Utah reduced chronic homelessness. It seems like a feature of questionable usefulness but neat nonetheless.

<comment><USER7> We changed the headline to make it less misleading, as the site guidelines ask: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> ITT: People who only read headlines.

"To activate the feature, Assistant users in the U.S. can say, "Hey Google, tell me something good" to kick off the daily briefing of happy stories."

This is NOT a filter Google puts on your news intake. It IS a gimmick that people can activate like asking it to tell you a joke.

<comment><USER9> Exactly. The primary difference (to me personally) being that I'll probably activate this at least once a day. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Please read the article folks. The headline is misleading and and why I usually don't bother with Techcrunch articles.

</comment><comment><USER11> Today my wife and I woke up to, "A Colorado man has been convicted of killing his wife and children."

I would LOVE a feature to disable these types of headlines, this certainly IS NOT it.

<comment><USER12> I had a kid a couple months ago, and now pretty much all of my Google News recommended stories are about kids near me being murdered.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What about a feature to read just the headlines of articles, since that seems to be what most people do.

</comment><comment><USER14> The downside to just good news:

[https://qz.com/307214/heres-what-happened-when-a-news- site-o...](https://qz.com/307214/heres-what-happened-when-a-news-site-only- reported-good-news-for-a-day/)

<comment><USER15> Good news don't typically require instant reaction and thus are not urgent. Our brains are wired to prefer urgent over important.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is absolutely terrible idea. Studies should be conducted regarding curation of content. As we learned recently, what you read briefly online can change the entire world.

<comment><USER17> That's not what this article is saying. It's not curating anything...

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Tell Me Something Good isn't supported in this region" I mean, it's not like I want national positive news, just give me some happy news.

</comment><comment><USER19> I want a feature that delivers Iowahawk-level snark before telling me the news headline.

</comment><comment><USER20> I dont think google makes good editorial decisions.

<comment><USER6> From the article:

> The stories are selected and summarized by the nonpartisan nonprofit > Solutions Journalism Network, an organization that helps train journalists > to better cover how people are responding to problems and how those actions > can have positive results.

Google is not choosing the stories.

<comment><USER20> How can that organization be nonpartisan when one of the founder is: "Courtney E. Martin is an American feminist, author, speaker, and social and political activist" [1] Like I said I have zero faith in Google presenting me not biased, self-interested news.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courtney_E._Martin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courtney_E._Martin)

<comment><USER21> "Non-partisan" is just a obfuscatory way of saying "has politics I agree with".

This is not targeted at any particular side; I see all sides use the term this way.

<comment><USER20> Absolutely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> awesome! one more command to memorize :)

</comment><comment><USER23> Wow. Now they're proud of putting people into information bubbles. This company is showing more and more how disconnected they are from reality and why people are starting not to trust them anymore.

<comment><USER9> It's not clear to me how this new option is putting people in an "information bubble" any more than a person deciding to buy a copy of "Chicken Soup For the Soul" instead of "Mindhunter." Can you clarify?

<comment><USER23> Google is deciding that they can know what good news is. Facebook/Google have never tried to put people in information bubbles they just create the systems that enable people to do it to themselves. Everything is avoidable online, but we keep making it harder and harder for people to remain unbiased and share common truths.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I find it very unsettling that search engines seem to be filtering information based on its knowledge of the user. I understand the article describes a different feature that does basically some kind of mood analysis that does not require the knowledge of the user and, at least currently, must be explicitly invoked by the user.

I have noticed that at some point search engines like Google or Youtube started only showing me results that match my political views. It was actually quite difficult to find any opposing view points.

Now, I think this leads to radicalization as people are further "strengthened" in their opinions seeing that "the Internet agrees" with them.

<comment><USER24> There's no real political agenda at work here. They are just showing you suggestions for things they think you will watch, so they can serve more ads.

<comment><USER15> It may not be political agenda but it has consequences. If left only sees left opinions and right only sees right opinions, how people are to agree on anything if they are never exposed to arguments from other side?

As bad as people are at being unbiased, this is only making things worse, on gigantic scale.

<comment><USER25> YouTube is really quite happy to serve me "right opinions".

They involve guys like the one who's a subject of this video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahuj1B0ow4U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahuj1B0ow4U)

That dude, literally that dude, showed up in my recommendations pretty regularly until I explicitly blocked him. Now I get fellow chuds like Sargon of Akkad and the like; I have to "nope" at least one fascist or at the minimum white-supremacist channel out of my recommendations a week.

<comment><USER25> (And to the--edit: before looking at his comments, I said "well-meaning" here, I retract that--hellbanned poster who replied to me: I am not being facetious, I am being _descriptive_. Homeboys thinking Nazis had some good points are very comfortably called _fascist_ , thanksforplaying.)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


HP launches new digital photo frame - onreact-com http://mashable.com/2009/09/16/dreamscreen-hp/

<comment><AUTHOR> _"It doesn't seem capable of full web browsing, but it gets the job done."_

...and what job would that be? I'm not sure how a photo frame that runs Facebook is a threat to any tablet computer.

<comment> onreact-com Good point, but I guess it's more of an entertainment device. Something like a social media client + Web radio: I guess they'll add a real browser soon in order to sell more than a few of them.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, I think it's more a case of an incredibly misleading article title (ie, linkbait).

...does it even have a battery?

<comment><USER2> Nope.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> And Rio beat Apple to the punch with an MP3 player! Steve Jobs must feel pretty silly about that.

<comment><USER4> Yeah; Apple's still reeling from the iPod getting hammered by the Nomad. And don't even get me started on the clusterfuck that was the iPhone versus Windows Mobile; that was just painful. Who sees those around anywhere?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like it, but I don't think it's really a competitor to an Apple tablet. It looks to me more like an advanced digital photo frame.

I don't see any options for adding new software, and I don't see any evidence that it is touch enabled at all.

So, I don't want one, but I think my mom might like it.

</comment><comment><USER6> Information on HP's site: [http://h71036.www7.hp.com/hho/us/en/pclc/articles/series- dre...](http://h71036.www7.hp.com/hho/us/en/pclc/articles/series-dreamscreen- what-can-you-do.html?jumpid=ex_r602_go/dreamscreen)

That mentions "simple touch controls embedded in the display", so it's not clear it's a full touch screen.

The prescence of a remote suggests it's not intended to be a fully fledged tablet computer but, as others have said, something more like a souped-up digital photo frame.

<comment><USER7> "that disappear when not in use"

It just means the buttons are displayed on the screen and aren't physical.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't understand what's the big deal with these tablets. IBM/Lenovo had a Thinkpad tablet PC for years, it's called the ThinkPad X Series Tablet [http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/web/LenovoPo...](http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/web/LenovoPortal/en_US/catalog.workflow:category.details?current- catalog-id=12F0696583E04D86B9B79B0FEC01C087&current-category- id=329576204C9E42289967E79E0E7C9A2D) [I hope that the link works]

<comment> onreact-com I guess the price is crucial.

<comment><USER8> Do you mean they should be as cheap as netbooks are?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> o god, watching the video demonstration will dissuade you from wanting to buy it. It's definitely _not_ sleek, it looks like its at least an inch thick and controlled by a remote.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm not sure Apple has ever been _first_ at _anything_. Apple's strategy seems to be to try to be the best for a large chunk of potential users and charge a premium for it.

As for the DreamScreen itself: it's bulky, it can't browse the web and it doesn't seem to be able to run arbitrary applications for whatever underlying OS it uses. HP may get a few gadget lovers to buy these, but not after the Crunchpad or anything in this price range from Apple shows up.

</comment><comment><USER11> If the software is anything like what they provide with printers and digital cameras, it's probably not in the same league as an (eventual or possible) Apple product.

</comment><comment><USER12> From the video, that would appear to be a digital picture frame, not a "tablet".

</comment><comment><USER13> The repeated "your device might be different" is interesting. Perhaps it's not finished yet? Maybe they could stop the UI looking so clunky.

</comment><comment><USER14> Hahahahahahahaha

</comment><comment> onreact-com The original headline, the one I submitted this post with, is: "DreamScreen: HP Beats Apple to the Punch With Sleek Tablet"

While it's certainly not perfect it's still much better than the completely false "HP launches new digital photo frame".

Crippling headlines after the submission doesn't make sense.</comment>