Ask HN: Is interviewing for "culture fit" illegal? - <AUTHOR>

I don't feel comfortable interviewing someone based on culture fit. I understand the rationale(would I want to work with this person). But how am I suppose to answer that question in a single interview?
First, the question assumes that I know how to properly define the local "culture". Judging based on culture fit is asking me whether I, personally, liked the person; but whether I like a person is independent of whether they're skilled or not.
Secondly, culture fit is a double-edged sword; qualified people are turned away because they don't fit the local "culture"(even though they are more than skilled which I've had happened a few times) or terrible people slip through because they fit the parameters local "culture".
Thirdly, there's absolutely zero discussion or literature on such an hiring important criteria within organizations. It's just assumed to be a good policy. I know this because every time I try to boast a conversation about this policy I get canned responses like, "would you want to work with this guy?" or "it's like being on a date" etc.
Rather than an extended conversation of the pros and cons of such a hiring strategy. I mean I don't like plenty of personality types, but I feel I'm at least cognizant of that fact. What if the interviewer is sexist or racist and is oblivious to that fact? Women and people of different races would be filtered out based on seemingly valid justifications(they had poor english, they weren't aggressive enough, etc).
Do construction workers get hired based on culture fit? What do you think HN? <comment><USER2> I treat cultural fit as necessary but not sufficient.

In other words, it's the first question I ask myself (and encourage my clients to ask themselves). If it's a "NO", then don't pursue that candidate. If it's a MAYBE or a YES, then move on to the next steps (having other team members meet them; skills tests etc).

I've had clients in construction, and yes - they've hired based on cultural fit. Key criteria, such as trustworthiness and willingness to communicate, don't just apply to jobs in offices.

You make a great point about how to properly define the culture of your organisation. When I help businesses define culture, it incorporates a documented vision, a small number of critical values that are also defined (not just platitudes), and a strategy paper connecting those to behaviors which can be managed (managed up and managed down). Of course, many organisations simply view their culture as a foosball table in the corner and beers on a Friday every few months.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a topic so close to home for me lately that I probably shouldn't participate. But here goes.

It's not illegal because it's almost impossible to prove or enforce. That's what I've found.

I've worked for companies that were outright blatant about culture fit. I can't say too much because of fear of lawsuits or other reprisals but they were really, really bad.

I've also experienced it myself at times. We can't rely on the laws, but instead just hope to find the right companies and reward them by doing our best.

</comment><comment><USER4> _" Is interviewing for "culture fit" illegal?"_

It's not illegal, except if you discriminate against legally protected classes of people. For example, in the U.S., it would be illegal to say that women or blacks or Muslims or people over 40 "don't fit in to our corporate culture" because sex, race, religion and age (over 40) are among the attributes covered by non-discrimination laws. However, it's perfectly legal to not hire anyone who has blue hair or who doesn't wear a suit. Not necessarily a great idea, but it doesn't violate any laws.

 _" It's just assumed to be a good policy."_

That's certainly not a universal assumption. Many people on HN have maintained that the ability to do a job well is much more important than "cultural fit" (and I'd agree with them). And many have observed that if companies hired solely for the ability to do a job, it would be much easier to find qualified candidates.

 _" it's like being on a date"_

No, working with someone is not like being on a date. I'm happy to work with lots of people who I'd never go on a date with. I really don't care what my co-workers' preferences in food, music, movies or sex are.

<comment><USER5> It's worth noting that a "disparate impact"(racially-discriminated outcome) is the standard by which these sort of things can be judged. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disparate_impact](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disparate_impact)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Definitely a hard problem. I'd say spend more than 1-3 hours of time with the person. Definitely figure out the culture, or the culture you want to create. Culture fit is not just do I like this person (you need to at the very least respect them- if you don't like or respect them, it's hard to imagine things working out).

Culture fit is supposed to turn away qualified people that otherwise would work well. If you value culture, then it's worth turning away these skilled, fine people. Valuing culture is supposed to do that. Lastly, you shouldn't hire people that are a culture fit but unskilled to grow into or do the tasks necessary. They're a bad option.

What matters to your company? When other people are not in the room guiding them, do they decide things based on what's important to the company/mission/vision? That's part of culture.

New media that might help give some guidance:

[http://startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec10/](http://startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec10/)

[http://startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec11/](http://startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec11/)

Read the readings below these videos, especially this one: [http://blog.samaltman.com/how-to-hire](http://blog.samaltman.com/how-to-hire)

Have more than one interview. Try hiring them on a short side-project and see how it goes. It's hard to hide your true self after 2 weeks or so. Ask yourself this: Would you trust them with the life of your company? Would you trust them and 10 of their friends you never met with the life of your company?

AirBnB (or some other company) has the culture interview by someone not in the same role- so an engineer never decides if a prospective engineer is a culture fit for AirBnB. This abstracts from judging fit based on their specific skils.

</comment><comment><USER7> The first thing to determine is what your culture is, and then define what it means for someone to fit or not fit that culture. It's not whether you like the person, which is a mistake that a lot of companies make. Write it down - your culture isn't something that you should be ashamed of. Is your culture really "aggressive people who speak English well"? Would you put this on your website? Once you've defined your culture, filtering against it becomes much more clear I think.

Some core cultural values that I think all companies should share are honesty, integrity and accountability. Is the person willing to admit times that they made mistakes? Do they take ownership of these mistakes? Do they allocate credit to others when talking about their accomplishments (important for everyone, doubly so for managers)? Do they complain about former companies and coworkers? Do you feel that they blame others frequently? Are they upfront about their work history and experience? Is their resume honest - if you ask them about a project they worked on, do you find out that it's not really what they wrote? These are all cultural questions, and grounds to accept or reject a candidate on lack of culture fit for. These things should be explicitly important, and should be actively interviewed for.

Other grounds could be development philosophy or work culture. These are some examples:

\- Perhaps you are in a shop that has a heavy focus on extensive unit and regression testing, and you meet an otherwise strong candidate who thinks that testing is important, but largely overrated.

\- Or perhaps you're an established team, working on an established codebase, and you find a developer who largely prefers to rewrite software over maintaining it.

\- Or perhaps you are in a team which has periods of high stress due to the nature of your business or organization, and you meet someone who doesn't work well under pressure.

\- Perhaps the role requires someone willing to stand their ground, and you meet someone who seems like a pushover. Or perhaps the team already has some strong personalities, and you don't want to add another.

\- Or you could be a company that values work-life balance, and meet someone who thrives on high pressure jobs.

\- You might be a hectic new startup, and interview someone who prefers to have a clear career path, well defined tasks and meticulous tracking of issues and work (although seriously consider such a person, as they might just organize your lives)

\- Or you have the reverse - someone who sees issue tracking as needless bureaucracy, in an organization that has a a fair amount of it.

However the danger is, unless it is defined, it becomes arbitrary. Realize that you are racist, you are sexist, you are ageist, and you are biased in a million unfair ways that you don't even know. Everyone is. And so having an arbitrary and undefined filter such as "culture fit" runs the risk of exposing those biases.

</comment><comment><USER8> Why the hell would you want to work for someone who doesn't want you there?

<comment><USER3> And that is the key thing to remember. However in some areas that means being unemployed. You can be picky right now in the Valley, or Portland / Seattle, most large cities on the east coast. But what if you live in Timbuktu North Dakota? Better take what you can get.</comment></comment>


JFK Speech to the Economic Club of NY, Dec 1962, on Comprehensive Tax Cuts - <AUTHOR> http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jfkeconomicclubaddress.html <comment><AUTHOR> (Includes both live audio and a text transcript)

"The final and best means of strengthening demand among consumers and business is to reduce the burden on private income and the deterrents to private initiative which are imposed by our present tax system -- and this administration pledged itself last summer to an across-the-board, top-to- bottom cut in personal and corporate income taxes to be enacted and become effective in 1963."

(Note, however, that tax rates were higher then than now.)</comment>


Iowa Makes a Bold Admission: We Need Fewer Roads - <AUTHOR> http://www.citylab.com/commute/2015/07/iowa-makes-a-bold-admission-we-need-fewer-roads/398021/ <comment><USER3> I'm from Iowa. There are a handful of population centers, and a sprinkling of homes and small communities between miles and miles and miles of farmland. The thing is, most people don't travel between the small communities - <USER2> driving takes people to or from town. If they're not going to town, they're going to visit neighbors or their fields, in which case gravel roads work great. Gravel roads work better than deteriorated pavement and have much lower maintenance costs.

I think "the entire system is unneeded" is a bit of a stretch, but I agree that, outside of cities, most routes don't need to be paved - you can safely travel 50 mph on a flat, straight gravel road. Of course the main arteries - Hwy 52, Hwy 20, I-80, and many others need to stay maintained. But there are so many small roads that, although quaint and a pleasure to drive, are probably unnecessary from a utilitarian/practical point of view.

<comment><USER4> When it snows, how effective is it to shovel the gravel roads?

<comment><USER5> Better, in many cases actually. The gravel mixes with the snow, and for added traction you just run a sander in your road plows (with actual sand, not that calcium chloride/salt mix they mostly use on pavement now). Fun fact about putting salt on the roads to melt snow and ice: when it gets cold enough, it starts refreezing and gets slippery than a bastard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Charles Marohn of Strong Towns ([http://www.strongtowns.org/](http://www.strongtowns.org/)), who is quoted in the article, did a great podcast interview a while back on "how the post-World War II approach to town and city planning has led to debt problems and wasteful infrastructure investments": [http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2014/05/charles_marohn.html](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2014/05/charles_marohn.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> "The [Iowa] primary highway system makes up over 9,000 miles (14,000 km), a mere 8 percent of the U.S. state of Iowa's public road system." [0]

So while laudable, it would be very nice if North Carolina followed suit with its ~79,000 miles of maintained roads (largest of any state) [1]. But I doubt that would happen, my friend at NCDOT says the culture emphasizes building new roads (or the ones that get wiped out by hurricanes out on the outer banks), and change intersections in a manner that borders on the whimsical.

We like to build roads in challenging places, it seems [2].

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

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

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Carolina_Highway_12](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Carolina_Highway_12)

<comment><USER8> North Carolina does not have the most maintained roads of any state, they have "largest _state maintained_ highway network in the United States."

This is a function of them choosing to maintain roads at the state level instead of the county level. If you look at road miles by state [0] regardless of the actual entity that maintains them, they are 16th.

[0] [http://blog.cubitplanning.com/2010/02/road-miles-by- state/](http://blog.cubitplanning.com/2010/02/road-miles-by-state/)

<comment><USER9> Their highway network is still pretty large, though.

Texas also has an all-state-maintained system (except for toll roads, which are private, but the free service roads are still state-maintained... and Texas tends to favor adding service roads wherever possible), and their road network is the _second_ -largest state-maintained highway network in the US. When you compare the physical size of the two states, NC really comes off as having an excessive amount of roads.

<comment><USER8> Texas as roughly 5x the size of NC by landmass, and has approximately 3x the number of road miles. However, NC is more densely populated than TX. If you look at it by road mile per person they are almost identical.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> At one point in time an extensive road system is a competitive advantage. At another, it makes less sense.

The same thing happened with Railroads during their heyday. I remember seeing an old railroad map with stops at all these small towns in Nebraska. Now, railroads are almost entirely commercial with very few passenger stops in small towns.

It makes sense that at some point you just don't have the need for so many roads. If more people move to urban or even suburban city centers, things like public transportation, ride sharing, Uber, and even self-driving vehicles start to make a lot of sense and cut down a lot on driving volume and the need for roads.

<comment><USER11> Well, to be fair, the history of railroads in the US is kinda crackheaded.

<comment><USER12> What do you mean by that?

<comment><USER11> See:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amtrak#Pre- Amtrak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amtrak#Pre-Amtrak)

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

Basically, an ongoing waterfall of corruption, regulation, NIMBYism, unfair (arguably) competition from other sectors, and a lot else.

It's not quite accurate to just say "Well, passenger rail is dead" as though it was some natural progression of things--especially when you look at it working in other nations.

<comment><USER13> Show me another nation /of our geographical size/ with active well used long distance passenger rail outside of a few highly dense corridors - a hint, it doesn't exist - people will nearly always choose speed. There are very few passenger rail systems with higher than 90% farebox recovery - and none in a country of our geographical size.

That said, I'm in favor of keeping amtrak for strategic reasons (a trained pool of operating talent for national emergencies).

<comment><USER14> What kind of emergencies? Ones where we suddenly have to run a lot of passenger trains?

<comment><USER13> Ones where for a variety of reasons airspace is closed - WWII would not have been possible for us without railroads - the railroads moves huge numbers of men and materiel cross country faster than aircraft could - railroads also use much less fuel to do it than nearly any method of transport. While I cant think of a tactical situation where we couldn't airlift troops inside the continental US - the skills pool is worthwhile to keep for the 500 million a year is costs the country (a drop in the proverbial bucket compared to the rest of the federal government).

<comment><USER14> WWII wasn't possible without the railroads because the interstate highways hadn't been built yet. They are now, and as a result our rail network has become useless for personnel and troop transport. Sure, we can press our amazing freight network into service for logistics, but there's no reason to prop up Amtrak to keep those skills and infrastructure around, since the freight carriers show no signs of being in danger of extinction anytime soon.

But that's freight. If there's really a situation where we need to move vast numbers of /people/ around the country, the few dozen passenger consists that Amtrak owns or leases are just not gonna do the job. It would need to be the highways (probably pressing transit and school buses into service) or nothing.

It's possible that the NE corridor services could be helpful in an emergency, but for the vast majority of the country, the idea that Amtrak could be pressed into service as anything other than a minor sideline during a major evacuation or emergency is a just a weird fantasy.

<comment><USER15> On the west coast Amtrak is more of an amusement park ride than a practical transportation option. If you want to go from San Francisco to Los Angeles the Amtrak trip planner has you on two trains and two buses before you arrive after nine hours. If you want to take a train the whole way there's only one each day and it takes 12 hours (as compared to about 6.5 driving).

It's kind of a joke. We should either get serious about a rail system or kill Amtrak altogether.

<comment><USER16> Well a high speed rail like the TGV going ~300-350km/h would cut that down to roughly 2.5 hours, admittedly that is still higher than going by air, but a lot better than 12 hours.

<comment><USER15> Flying isn't any faster than 2.5 hours once you figure in the extra time at the airport.

In any event I would be happy to take a conventional train if took less than about eight hours. I don't like flying and the drive is grueling, particularly in traffic.

The problem is AFAIK Amtrak doesn't own any track on the west coast. It's all single track, routing is optimized for freight, and passenger trains have a lower priority than freight trains.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Per capita driving may have peaked, but as long as the capita is still growing there will still be more and more cars on the road.

<comment><USER18> > but as long as the capita is still growing there will still be more and more > cars on the road.

As long as those drivers can afford the tax burden to maintain the aging infrastructure, sure.

<comment><USER19> Transportation infrastructure spending at the federal level is currently 3%.[1] You could always argue that is low due to a lack of investment, but it pales in comparison to federal entitlement spending (59%).

I'd be much more worried about the tax burden due to entitlement spending than I would about transportation infrastructure.

[1][http://www.cbpp.org/research/policy-basics-where-do-our- fede...](http://www.cbpp.org/research/policy-basics-where-do-our-federal-tax- dollars-go)

<comment><USER20> The social good supported by entitlement spending is sick people not dying and poor people not starving or being homeless.

The social "good" supported by highways is geographical separation between the middle class and the poor (which largely means the white and everyone else.)

<comment><USER21>
      > which largely means the white and everyone else.

Ah, that explains why highways only exist in the United States.

<comment><USER20> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight#Roads](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight#Roads)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> So how do you let roads "deteriorate and go away"? Wouldn't there be huge unsafe potholes in the transition?

What kind of roads would they abandon? I didn't click through to all the references, but this article doesn't give any solutions.

<comment><USER23> Huge chunks of the midwest are a paved checkerboard of roads spaced at 1 mile intervals. Many of these get 3-5 cars passing a day, if that. There is no need for a lot of these to be paved, as they serve as field access roads. The houses off these roads are farm houses, and most of the farmers I know don't mind either way if it's a gravel or paved road. Some actually prefer gravel, as in the winter, when it is icy, the gravel can provide better traction, and the county doesn't do a good job plowing.

<comment><USER24> That's a bit of an exaggeration - there are definitely roads checkerboarded at 1 mile intervals, but most are gravel in between some paved ones.

<comment><USER23> This may vary state to state. I know that in IL it seems that well over half of them are paved, or tarred gravel. The southern end of IL has less of this tho... but the amount paved is increasing. When I was a kid visiting relatives, I learned to drive on a lot of gravel roads, but heading down there for a funeral not long ago, most of the gravel I learned to drive on is paved now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The article has a map showing which states have already hit peak traffic; does anyone know of a per-municipality or per-county list?

I'm really curious about whether this has happened in San Francisco.

<comment><USER26> Yep, it's unclear how it's measured and if the metric applied correctly. For example, in Seattle traffic jams get only worse over years. Clearly it hasn't "peaked". Yet map from the article shows that it peaked in the Washington state as a whole.

<comment><USER27> Hilariously, the graph in the article is "Vehicle Miles Travelled" not "Hours spent in vehicle" which could be increasing while the other decreases.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, something like "average highway speed" would be a better metric.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I think the a lot of places should focus on expanding major roads/thoroughfares, and cities.. But look into bricks/dirt/gravel for country/side roads. would be nice if after self-driving cars, comes self- flying aerocars, cause then we won't need roads at all except in the city where air traffic would get super bogged down.

</comment><comment><USER29> Related: I need to confirm the trend held, but as of a year or two ago, US FAA RITA data showed peak aviation fuel in 2000. Total departures and passenger miles have been higher since, but due to smaller and more fully loaded aircraft.

By 2010- 2012 or so, actual fuel use was ~50% of year 2000 forecast estimates.

</comment><comment> mark-r I've always thought that total vehicle miles are capped by the availability of gas. Since fracking has expanded that supply, at least in the short term, I'd expect those mileage charts to start upticking again.

<comment><USER18> Total vehicle miles are goverened by both oil prices and demographics. You're seeing a huge shift in demographics currently in the US, which will drive down vehicle miles.

[http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2015/03/dot-vehicle- miles-...](http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2015/03/dot-vehicle-miles-driven- increased-49.html)

> However gasoline prices are just part of the story. The lack of growth in > miles driven over the last 7 years was probably also due to the lingering > effects of the great recession (lack of wage growth), the aging of the > overall population (over 55 drivers drive fewer miles) and changing driving > habits of young drivers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This may make sense in Iowa but it makes no sense in California. Gravel roads would would slow the effective max speed down to a crawl which would further exasperate traffic. If anything we need a higher driving speeds.

<comment><USER31> Higher speeds generally increase traffic rather than decrease it, as following distance increases (or, if it doesn't, traffic due to wrecks will slow you down anyway).

That being said, I live in CA and would love a model much like Germany, with unrestricted freeways in the rural areas and speed limits around 15-20 mph in towns and cities. Going down I-5 to socal? Sure, do 150. Driving in a town where there could be people walking, cyclists, vehicles stopping often, etc,? Maybe 15 makes more sense.

Of course, not giving a license to just anyone with a pulse would be a start. My grandmother (lovely woman, but 91 and clearly past her driving years) failed her written driving test a few weeks ago. What did the DMV do? They _extended_ her license another two months, for reasons that escape me. "You can continue to drive despite a demonstrated ignorance of driving law" is pretty much what we're saying there.

Also, California is big. A lot of it probably resembles Iowa more than SF in terms of road infrastructure - ever head out to the more remote parts?

<comment><USER32> The German Autobahn (equivalent to Interstate highways here) is entirely limited-access, high-speed (minimum speed limit 100 km/h; often no speed limit).

The German Bundesstrasse (equivalent to U.S. or state highways?) does have highly variable speed limits, as you describe, and I found them correspondingly maddening to drive on, due to the incessant need to accelerate or decelerate.

<comment><USER31> Indeed - in my view this correlates to one of the best places in the world to drive. Variable limits seem more logical than assuming one speed can always be the best for current conditions. Road throughput (vehicle-miles per hour) can be maximized at a lower speed when traffic is heavy, so limits are reduced. Conversely, when traffic is light the minimization of individual travel time can be prioritized, so limits can be raised.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I briefly studied in South Dakota and Iowa without a car and it was a living nightmare.

Relying on friends and "taxis", I had to go through negative temperatures to get a simple can of soda.

After that, I could never complain about BART.

<comment><USER34> Cars are pretty much a requirement in a rural area like that.

But on the plus side, cars are a lot easier to own in those areas. Parking is usually free/cheap. Traffic is very low, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> One thing I learned, whether accurate or not, from the original SimCity is road maintenance is expensive. I almost invariably ended up peaking city size as the roads entered a constant state of disrepair.

</comment><comment><USER36> A bit old, but still relevant - [http://archive.gao.gov/f0302/109884.pdf](http://archive.gao.gov/f0302/109884.pdf)

I'm no expert on the topic, but it seems to me that if heavily loaded trucks are causing a disproportionate amount of damage they should be taxed at a rate which allows for proper maintenance of those roads.

<comment><USER37> Trucks are taxed more already. The problem is legislatures using those tax revenues for other pork and then claiming to not have enough money for roads.

<comment><USER38> Semi trucks reduce the quality of the roads _much_ more than lighter vehicles do. The slightly greater tax they pay doesn't begin to make up for it.

[http://fhwicsint01.fhwa.dot.gov/policy/hcas/addendum.cfm](http://fhwicsint01.fhwa.dot.gov/policy/hcas/addendum.cfm)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Anyone know any good herbal remedies for alertness? - <AUTHOR> What do people favor as herbal remedies for helping with alertness and combat tiredness (besides sleep) lol. <comment><USER2> possibly rhodiola rosea</comment>


Android Surges While the iPhone Stalls Out - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5490299/android-surges-while-the-iphone-stalls-out

<comment><AUTHOR> I was surprised by the RIM numbers actually. I thought mobile web was dominated by iPhones.

<comment><USER2> It is. # cell phone subscribers by phone type is not mobile web users by phone type.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am confused. What are cell phone subscribers vs mobile web users? Except that it's just for one site here, I suppose?</comment></comment></comment>


The inhumane conditions of Bradley Manning's detention - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/14/manning/

<comment><USER2> This is utterly shocking. I had no idea that solitary confinement was used in cases other than to prevent physical harm to an inmate or to prevent violence.

It looks like the technique is being used the same way as a "stress position" to slowly turn Manning into a hopeless wreck willing to say anything to see the light of day again.

Regardless of what Manning did (and regardless of whether or not I find it offensive) I don't think anyone -- especially nonviolent offenders -- should be subjected to such inhumane treatment.

<comment><USER3> Do you think we should leave a mint on his (non)pillow every night? The accusations against this military person, who voluntarily violated his oath to protect the nation's secrets, are very serious, and PRIVATE, not Mister, Manning is being held to the same standards any other military person is liable to, and is quite likely to face execution by firing squad.

<comment><USER4> The oath is to protect the U.S. Constitution, not the nation's secrets (except as follows under general orders and the UCMJ).

> "I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the > Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; > that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey > the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the > officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of > Military Justice. So help me God."

Is it necessary to leak these cables to support and defend the Constitution? Probably not. But there is clear precedent that illegal orders (contradicting either the UCMJ or the Constitution) are not supposed to be obeyed.

Espionage charges are laid out in 10 USC 906a: [http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/usc_sec_10_00000906--- a000...](http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/usc_sec_10_00000906---a000-.html) and conviction has to prove "intent or reason to believe that it is to be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of a foreign nation", and the death penalty requires one of a number of aggravating circumstances that don't seem to apply.

He certainly will be locked up, undoubtedly for quite some time, but he's not going to be executed (if the law is followed).

<comment><USER5> Hasn't he in fact disobeyed the orders of his superior officers by leaking the cables (which were marked "CONFIDENTIAL")?

There are a few reasons why disobeying such an order would be acceptable, but I doubt the military will take it easy on him unless it his obvious that every bit of info he leaked was directly related to some kind of war crime being carried out by his superiors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Some people have been in solitary confinement for almost 40 years:

[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9839730...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98397302)

[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/books/review/Letters-t- PRI...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/books/review/Letters-t- PRISONERSOFA_LETTERS.html)

(nb this is not meant as a comparison - Bradley Manning's treatment is most definitely inhumane)

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm finding it harder and harder these days to be proud of being an American.

</comment><comment><USER8> I suspect being jailed without trial is only going to confirm Manning's suspicion that he was calling bullshit on some seriously lawless people.

Kid's got stones the size of Texas.

</comment><comment><USER9> I think Michael Moore said it best.

"I ask you to imagine how much different our world would be if WikiLeaks had existed 10 years ago. Take a look at this photo. That's Mr. Bush about to be handed a "secret" document on August 6th, 2001. Its heading read: "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US." And on those pages it said the FBI had discovered "patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings." Mr. Bush decided to ignore it and went fishing for the next four weeks.

But if that document had been leaked, how would you or I have reacted? What would Congress or the FAA have done? Was there not a greater chance that someone, somewhere would have done something if all of us knew about bin Laden's impending attack using hijacked planes?"

read more at [http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/why- im-p...](http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/why-im-posting- bail-money)

</comment><comment><USER10> Duplicate:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2009268>

1 comment.

<comment><USER11> RiderOfGiraffes, is this you?

<comment><USER10> See here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2008143>

I'm looking for a separation of concerns, separating my submissions as me, finding things or writing things, from my curating activities of finding duplicates and cross-referencing, wherein I try to prevent the repetition of discussion across effectively identical submissions.

I'm also using it as an opportunity to put into practice some of the things I've learned about semantic analysis, Bayesian filters, and automated web interactions.

It's an experiment. It probably won't last long.

<comment><USER11> Great; I like it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Cruel and unusual punishment. This is ridiculous and makes me feel ashamed to be an American.

<comment><USER13> And Guantanamo didn't?

<comment><USER14> It's not a contest.

<comment><USER15> I think icegreentea might be wondering why there is outrage now, when this sort of thing has been going on for really a long time.

eg. A fellow Australian (David Hicks) was held for years at Guantanamo without charge or trial. Rightly or wrongly, it feels like: no one cared then, why care now?

<comment><USER16> No one cared then? Exactly the same people cared then as now. I'm pretty sure that if you page through Glenn Greenwald's blog you will find _more than a few_ instances of outrage over the treatment of military prisoners (including Hicks specifically.)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Shortest Domain - <AUTHOR> http://ai <comment><USER2> The Wikipedia entry on the .ai TLD notes that it has an MX record, so you can send e-mails to name@ai: [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/.ai](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/.ai)

The story of Vince Cate ([http://offshore.ai/vince/](http://offshore.ai/vince/)), a CMU graduate who emigrated to the Anguilles in the 90s and (as far as I know) runs the AI registry there is also quite interesting, there's e.g. an old WIRED article from 97 about some of his business endeavors there: [https://www.wired.com/1997/07/crypto-2/](https://www.wired.com/1997/07/crypto-2/). The Anguilla News website has a more recent article on him: [https://news.ai/vince-cate-in-search-of-bees/](https://news.ai/vince-cate-in- search-of-bees/)

</comment><comment><USER3> If you are on an iPhone, type: "ai." to get to the site.

The trailing dot denotes the root of the DNS hierarchy and makes the domain "fully qualified". Otherwise it appears to fail a local integrity check if you try for just "ai"

</comment><comment><USER4> This freaks me out :) Can someone explain this magic?

<comment><USER5> There's no magic, it's just an A record

<comment><USER4> Yeah ok - thanks. Just not used to it I guess.

Why is this not used more? Bad UX? Internet Etiquette? Some Sec. reason? Just thinking out loud.

Thnx for the hint. Kinda makes sense.

Edit: after your hint. Started some investigation. It is time to get me a personal TLD so I also can have a TLD-less domain. :p

Bucketlist.push(TLD-lessDom)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Error: Name not resolved

</comment><comment><USER7> x.com</comment>


Ask HN: If you had 5 years of free time – what would you learn? - <AUTHOR>

Imagine you are a teenager, and you have 5 years of free time, you can do anything you want. What would you spend your time learning? What area of science/technology would you get into? <comment><AUTHOR> I would get into:

\- AI (Deep Learning, Computer Vision)

\- Biohacking(Genetics, and also BCIs)

\- Security, pentestig

Probably also robotics(drones).</comment>


The Golden Age of Hollywood Tax Avoidance - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-29/hollywood-stars-didn-t-pay-90-percent-tax-they-created-loopholes <comment><USER3> Left unsaid by the article is that the tax shelters the wealthy invested their money in, were less productive investments. When Reagan lowered the tax rates in exchange for eliminating the tax shelters, the wealthy then moved their investments to more economically productive endeavors.

This makes for a more productive economy overall.

I.e. the higher the tax rates, the more contortions people will engage in to avoid those taxes, and economic prosperity will correspondingly suffer.

<comment><USER4> This argument relies on that it is impossible to stop rich people from successfully evading tax.

I find it hard to believe in the age of tracking that we live in now that banks and consumer transactions that it wouldn't be hard to implement proper tax evasion tracking across borders. This is purely an issue of there being no political will to do this.

It would be even easier to just cut off the tax havens from the global economy - make it illegal for banks to conduct transactions with those banks / branches located in those havens, strand those assets from the global economy destroying the value of those bank accounts.

<comment><USER5> Imagine that we are designing an MMORPG world. We know that individual player would seek to maximize their "gains" and to advance their ranking in the game as a part of the gaming experience. Meanwhile, as the game operator, we don't want the inequality to be too extreme between the top players and the casual players so that no hopes for the newcomers to advance their ranking, which hurts their gaming experience and they would quit for other games. But is it a _wise_ idea to brute-forcibly transfer the 'wealth' of the most hardcore, talented, or just luckiest players to the others to make the game more enjoyable for the bottom players?

If we were thinking about it in a way that "you're not one of the players, but the designer of the game," and you want the game to be sustainable and reputable, I believe the answer would not just that simple.

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure that makes for a good analogy.

That is a game, I enjoy flaunting wealth over people and using my ungodly strong power I've worked hard for to stomp on people in a game.

But I don't want to live on a monopoly board, or squash people into oblivion in real life. Games are quite often about direct competition.

While there is some argument for making sure not to kill the motivation of hard workers due to equalising society too far, I don't think the US is close to that level, and the scale is far, far in the other direction.

Also, forcibly taking isn't correct, it's a progressive tax on income not a raid.

I don't think this analogy works for a meaningful conversation.

<comment><USER5> My point is not about how an individual player gets their enjoyment from the game. Some players would want to beat every other to the death, even in the real world.

My point is individual player tends to complain how the game sucks from _his_ standpoint without second-thought about the consequences to others, to the system, or even to themselves in the long run. I am more concerned about the non-leaner responses from changing the incentive structure. For instance, what would it turn out if, let's say, a gaming event where 90% of your income (EXP, game money, skill points, etc.) would be redistributed to others in the period of that event? Would anyone get excited about it? or people would say, "we gonna work on other things and wait for the freeriding," which is the most rational, economical decision for personal resource management. I would expect that every player of the game would spend more time with their family and we see drastically decreased MAU of the game as a result.

<comment><USER6> Ah yes, I misunderstood your point.

Perhaps because I tend to think of policy in terms of overall implication rather than from my own standpoint.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's probably unthinkable for a lot of people these days, but the US once had an income tax for those in the highest tax bracket of over 90%.

<comment><USER8> Given that we are on HN, it is probably safe to assume most people here work in tech, earning 2x-3x the median salary or more. Would you actually want to be taxed at 90%?

<comment><USER9> I don't mind paying 90% on a top portion of my income.

But before we start collecting more money, I'd like to see existing money used wisely.

New York City spends about 30k per homeless. And it's still not possible to walk a couple of blocks in Midtown without stumbling upon a homeless person sleeping rough.

New York subway has a budget of 8+ billion. London tube is about 2 billion.

I can keep going, but from the above I'm sure if we tax everyone at 101% the government will still manage to run a deficit...

<comment><USER8> Given that not a single person here has protested against the idea of a 90% marginal tax rate, but some have expressed concerns about the funds being spent inefficiently, why not impose a voluntary tax on ourselves and agree to donate to charity 90% of earnings over a certain amount?

Surely there are some very good charities that do work in the area you are most interested in - e.g. homelessness, educational scholarships, poverty in general?

The added bonus is that a society where people voluntarily donate 90% to charity is a much better society than the one where people get taxed. It means a lot more when something is done voluntarily, and it changes the perceptions on the side of the people receiving the help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So what. There's tax avoidance and loopholes now too.

Whatever. The premise still holds fine, we could drastically increase marginal tax rates at the top end and the world wouldn't blow up.

And to the extent we used that money to make the social contract more stable via health care and education or similar, there would almost certainly be net gains to national efficiency and income.

<comment><USER11> The actual tax burden has basically gone opposite of what you imply in your many messages. The top 10% paid 49% of taxes in 1980 and the bottom 50% paid 7% of income taxes. In 2015, the top 10% paid paid 70% of incomes taxes and the bottom 50% paid 3%. ([http://www.ntu.org/foundation/page/who-pays-income- taxes](http://www.ntu.org/foundation/page/who-pays-income-taxes)) The "top marginal rate" means very little by itself. What matters is the effective rate which takes into account the credits/deductions that are allowed, the other lower marginal tax rates, etc.

Confiscatory high tax rates just result in politically connected groups getting tax breaks, lots of money spent in less productive ways to avoid the high rates and if those can't be done you get dead weight losses from economic activity that isn't done. There is a reason countries moved away from confiscatory high rates.

<comment><USER12> Comparing what the top 10% paid vs bottom 50% is silly. The issue at hand is wealth inequality. Clearly the top earners are paying much more in tax from a clear dollar to dollar perspective. They own all the wealth.

Taxes are one of the only ways to curb wealth inequality within a capitalist system. Any other ideas? The problem is that wealthy people can afford to set up multinational tax avoidance schemes to avoid actually paying the amount they should be paying.

One solution is to just jack up the rates. If 90% marginal rate on paper only actually results in 45% being collected, then that's still better than 39% marginal rate on paper vs. 15-20% truly collected.

Taxes and public spending are obviously not perfect, there are plenty of inefficiencies throughout. Corruption must be targeted rigorously, otherwise inequality will actually increase. But there needs to be a constant effort to reduce wealth centralization.

<comment><USER11> >...Comparing what the top 10% paid vs bottom 50% is silly.

That isn't what was done. The comparison is over time. The claim is often made that the rich paid far more of a share of the taxes until Reagan lowered the rates. The data shows otherwise.

>...Clearly the top earners are paying much more in tax from a clear dollar to dollar perspective. They own all the wealth.

That is a somewhat simplistic and misleading way of describing the income tax system. Income is not the same as wealth, etc. but also the US has a more progressive tax system than just about any of the OECD countries. The top 10% in the US make about 33% of the market income and pay 45% of the income taxes:

[https://taxfoundation.org/news-obama-oecd-says-united- states...](https://taxfoundation.org/news-obama-oecd-says-united-states-has- most-progressive-tax-system/)

>...One solution is to just jack up the rates. If 90% marginal rate on paper only actually results in 45% being collected, then that's still better than 39% marginal rate on paper vs. 15-20% truly collected.

There are reasons NO countries institute such policies for long. It isn't because high rates haven't been tried, it is because it ends up hurting the country. You need only look at France's experiment with a 75% marginal rate and a wealth tax in 2012 and was dropped in 2015.

>...French economist Eric Pichet in a recent academic paper has found evidence of capital flight as a consequence of the French wealth tax, namely, that it has cut French GDP growth by 0.2% per year.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonhartley/2015/02/02/frances-7...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonhartley/2015/02/02/frances-75-supertax- failure-a-blow-to-pikettys-economics/#153b6a375df2)

>...But there needs to be a constant effort to reduce wealth centralization.

This probably isn't the only criteria that people should be concerned about. If the top 50 tech companies in the US had been started in Europe instead of the US, that would have measurably lowered the wealth inequality in the US but most people would say the US is better off being a tech leader.

<comment><USER13> > You need only look at France's experiment with a 75% marginal rate and a > wealth tax in 2012 and was dropped in 2015.

Comparing France to the US in this situation is wrong. If people making more than $10 million a year or with a wealth of more than $50 million are going to leave the United States we have ways to handle this, namely the Expatriation Tax, which France doesn't have. You need to compare France to an equal situation like the US State of New Jersey applying a higher income tax and losing their state citizens to fellow states in the collective federal territory of the United States.

<comment><USER11> >...If people making more than $10 million a year or with a wealth of more than $50 million are going to leave the United States we have ways to handle this, namely the Expatriation Tax, which France doesn't have.

I wouldn't necessarily expect many people giving up citizenship, but I would expect (as the article talks about) politically connected groups getting tax breaks. I would also expect lots of money spent in less productive ways to avoid the high rates and if people can't avoid the tax, there will be dead weight losses from economic activity that isn't done.

>...You need to compare France to an equal situation like the US State of New Jersey applying a higher income tax and losing their state citizens to fellow states in the collective federal territory of the United States.

No state has ever tried such a bad policy, but if they did, I would imagine moving would be on the mind of everyone who might be affected by wealth taxes and 75% rates.

<comment><USER13> No state but New Jersey. [https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-jerseys-tax-gift- to-florida...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-jerseys-tax-gift-to- florida-1530481356)

Why are you so biased? High rates of taxation is not bad policy. Bad policy is far more nuanced than that.

<comment><USER11> >No state but New Jersey. [https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-jerseys-tax-gift- to-florida...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-jerseys-tax-gift-to- florida..).

Most people would agree that raising the max tax rate from 8.97% to 10.75%, is not anything like raising the max tax rate from 45% to 75% - never mind that France also instituted a wealth tax.

>...Why are you so biased? High rates of taxation is not bad policy.

All I've done is give evidence that countries have learned that very high confiscatory tax rates are counterproductive. (Much as the original article about Hollywood tax avoidance discusses.) You haven't said what you mean by "high rates of taxation" or give evidence why you think they are good - <USER2> isn't clear why you are accusing anyone else of being biased.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> In case someone else goes after "[William] Holden insisted that Columbia pay him no more than $50,000 a year", there's a concise biography here: [https://www.britannica.com/biography/William- Holden](https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-Holden)

</comment><comment><USER15> Ah tax avoidance. Richer you are, the better you get at it.

<comment><USER16> The richer you are, the more you stand to gain from it, so the more worthwhile it is to do. And the more worthwhile to get expert advice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Curious. Regan got burned as an actor with the obscene rates. Never viewed him as having a personal beef before, now it makes sense.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is not a strong article. Consider:

> the top 0.01 percent in the 1950s paid not 90 percent but closer to 45 > percent of their income in taxes

I suspect 45% is a solid multiple of what rich people pay today</comment>


Populating an oncall rotation - <AUTHOR> https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2019/01/14/rotation/ <comment><USER2> I once wrote a script to create on call schedules. It ended up exactly as author said: humans aren't robots. And now it's just done by hand.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hot take - just pay pagerduty to handle the problem for you.</comment>


Ask HN: Can we get the links to be greyed out after visiting them on HN? - <AUTHOR>

Seems like most would find that this shaves a few eyeball cycles and cognitive resources. <comment><USER2> I'm not sure what you're asking - for me, on both desktop and mobile, HN Links I've visited (external stories and Ask HN type) _do_ grey out after I visit them.

And I do find that helpful - most frustrating when I switch from one to the other, so the mobile tells me I haven't read an article that I read on the desktop.

<comment><USER3> I switched to using Safari because of this feature. It even syncs the visited status between devices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You may be interested in HackerNew:

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hackernew/lgoghlnd...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hackernew/lgoghlndihpmbbgmbpjohilcphbfhddd?hl=en)

</comment><comment><USER5> maybe you're using private browsing? that's what I'm using and links also don't gray out

</comment><comment><USER6> It does grey out the visited links for me. What browser are you using?</comment>


Wozniak Says `Lot of Things Wrong' With Jobs Movie [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/video/wozniak-says-lot-of-things-wrong-with-jobs-movie-Mm1dnrz8QJuikP6iFdCJmQ.html <comment><USER2> The woman doing the interview really seems to do a poor job.

She seems to let Wozniak get about 80-90% into statements and then speedily talk over him to move onto the next point. It doesn't sound like she's actually _listening_ to his answers, just going down her checklist. At one point he explains why he liked Sorkin's approach better than Kutcher's, then she asked a later question as if he had never said that.

It's kind of sad. Woz mentioned numerous times that the problem was showing the pre-firing Jobs behaving and being treated more like he was after having matured, but the interviewer just didn't get it.

She also asked quite a few questions designed in a "X vs. Y, choose now!" style, trying to get a soundbite or setup a narrative (Woz wisely wouldn't fall for it). Between that and the interrupting, it was actually kind of hard to listen to.

Missed opportunities, I guess.

<comment><USER3> Absolutely disagree. In my opinion, she does a good job in guiding Wozniak through the interview while still being respectful. Yes, it is obvious that she wanted to have some specific questions answered, but that is nothing bad, it prevents people from rambling and makes the interview interesting. And it wasn't my impression that she interrupted mid-sentence or even just often.

How do you come to the conclusion that she doesn't get his point? Didn't she even react to that with the "is he too visionary in the movie" question line?

<comment><USER2> Woz definitely need to be guided, there were some times it was appropriate. He's clearly the kind of person who could talk about any question for 15 minutes. I've seen interviewers do a good job without sounding rushed and forced, that was what grabbed me. I hear interviews on The Daily Show, NPR, local talk shows, even entertainment shows where the host was _part_ of the interview. Where they worked with the subject. I have heard some very hostile interviews with people in politics where the host is clearly pissed at the question dodging and double talk. But they have some sort of respect for the person they're talking to, they at least sound like they are trying to talk _to_ the person. This sounded hollow, like she was just trying to get through it so she could get on to the next segment... just routine 'interview X for 5 minutes'. She knew who he was, and it's not like she was hostile.

> How do you come to the conclusion that she doesn't get his point?

Maybe she did. But it didn't seem to influence the questions she asked. I felt like they could have taped both sides of the interview separately and then just spliced it together. There were almost no follow-up questions, it sounded like she could have ended every part with "Thank you, next question." She asked him some base question and he explained the difference between Sorkin's and Kutcher's approaches. Ten minutes later she asked that very question, without even acknowledging that she already had the answer. Instead of "You touched on the difference in Sorkin's style, could you tell us more..." it was "I hear your working with Sorkin. How did that compare." It gave the impression she wasn't really paying attention to her own interview.

My impression was the whole thing was set out before it started. She had her angle, and she just kept trying to get there. To get him to trash someone, to say the movie was a travesty, to bait him with "is Apple doomed?" again, or to just finish it up and get onto the next segment. No engagement, no feeling, no heart... just hollowness and a missed opportunity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What really burns me is how the "Jobs" people treated his criticism as being motivated out of money. From Ashton Kutcher:

[http://blogs.computerworld.com/mac-os-x/22659/jobs-ashton- ku...](http://blogs.computerworld.com/mac-os-x/22659/jobs-ashton-kutcher-hits- back-woz)

> _" Woz is being paid by another company to support a different Steve Jobs > film. It's personal for him, but it's also business. We have to keep that in > mind."_

Seriously? Woz is the guy who gave his Apple stock shares to co-workers he felt were slighted in the IPO. Hello, he's the guy who wanted to give his groundbreaking engineering behind the Apple away for free.

Woz is an engineering legend...but if there were a Hall of Fame for generosity and integrity, he'd be in there too. Shame on the "Jobs" people and it's great to see the lukewarm/negative reviews roll in for their shit sandwich of a biopic.

<comment><USER5> Kutcher is being paid by another company to support his Steve Jobs film. It's personal for him, but it's also business. We have to keep that in mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> In the heady days of my youth in the early 90's I was foolishly of the opinion that Apple would one day rule the world, and that Steve Jobs would be seen as some sort of Christ figure. I kinda looked up to him in that fashion, at the time, even before he'd come back to Apple after Next.

Of course, when I actually became an adult, I realized the error of my ways, switched to Linux,and over time my admiration only grew for Woz.

I once appeared in a reenactment of a Jobs/Woz story on TV: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEuJMPBZJ7c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEuJMPBZJ7c) . It was a cheesey TV reenactment, and it really doesn't matter which one of the two Steve's I was playing, versus which one was portrayed by my child-hood friend, Travis. But during the filming, I did get to handle a Woz Blue Box, and an Apple I board. It was like touching a Rembrandt, or a Van Gogh.

At the time, I pretended to be Jobs. These days, I say I played Woz.

Woz, to put it bluntly, is the awesomest hacker/engineer, ever. He's just a freakin' god! Everything he's ever done has been 10% pure hacker ethos. The early Apple I's came with a complete explanation of how they were laid out, hardware-wise. The manual was a work of pure joy. You don't get technical writing like that, ever. Nothing was hidden. [http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Apple/Appl...](http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Apple/Apple.AppleI.1976.102646518.pdf)

If you like that, ever head of the CL 9? Woz, after leaving Apple due to surviving a freakin' plane crash, decided he wanted to fix the then common remote control. The CL9 Core remote control was a hacker's dream device. You could program it to emit whatever IR signals you wanted, and it came with a manual explaining as much. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CL_9](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CL_9)

Jobs, on the other hand, was a seriously driven guy. An entrepreneur's entrepreneur. Take that for what you will, the good and the bad. I've always taken it to mean he was good at spotting an opportunity and exploiting it.

I, for one, will always worship the engineer, first.

<comment><USER7> Rather than picking one over the other, I would say that it would have been best if Jobs had had a little more Woz in him (to appreciate the tech more), Woz had had a little more Jobs (to sell himself more), and they had continued to work together. Apple would be an even bigger player than it is today, I think.

<comment><USER8> I disagree. What made them an amazing pair is that they complimented each other perfectly. Character and skill are zero-sum: if Jobs had a little more Woz in him, he would have to be a little less Jobs. And vice versa. The result would be a more inferior Apple.

It's better to have one person who is Level 100 at skill A and another who is Level 100 at skill B, than 75/25 and 25/75.

"Well-rounded" is another term for "mediocre."

<comment><USER9> While this stance sounds nice, it doesn't actually make much sense in reality. It appeals to our cultural want for 'justice'/'fairness'/'equality', but it doesn't quite pan out once you look at the general picture of skill acquisition.

If a person learned to become exceptionally 'talented' in one area, then he/she's more likely to replicate that _same level success_ in a completely new area, than someone who hasn't gained that level of skill _anywhere_. This is because skill acquisition _itself_ is a skill. So once you've learned what it takes to master a certain skill (i.e. you learned how to learn _effectively_ ), you can then apply it with much more ease than someone who hasn't really learned how to learn as much. This causes a sort of 'snowball- effect' outcome, where ease of skill acquisition follows a logarithmic curve of sorts rather than a linear/exponential one like most people seem to view it.

The only limiting factor on skill acquisition is _choice /taste_. If a particular area doesn't interest you, then why bother expending energy learning to master it, right? Doesn't mean you're not capable of it, all it means is that you didn't have to strive for greatness in that area to make it work for you. And since Jobs met Woz pretty early on, there was really no reason for him to become a master engineer thereafter. Meanwhile, Woz probably just didn't care about business/marketing, so he _chose_ to not master it.

There are other factors that influence skill acquisition (e.g. IQ), but they don't necessarily limit it. And in order for the 'fair' view of skill acquisition to hold, there would need to be some sort of non-trainable limiting mechanism for building skills. But as of now, I'm not familiar of anything that would cause that.

The only way the "Jack of all trades; master of none" mantra holds, is if the 'Jack' never deeply learnt/'mastered' any of the subjects he's familiar with. But of course, the label "Jack of all trades" doesn't actually specify whether-or-not that's actually the case. Same for "well-rounded"; implying it indicates anything other than _breadth_ of knowledge is inaccurate.

<comment><USER10> Without references your comment is worthless.

<comment><USER9> No, worth can be drawn simply by applying the model I outlined above. References may _add more_ worth if you're looking for verification (which I don't blame), but it's also a daunting task to compile such lists. Your comment on the other hand, could've just asked me for sources and that would've been productive, but instead you chose to just dismiss the entire argument cynically with a single statement; that literally doesn't add any value for anybody. I wish downvotes would be justified more deeply than this.

However, since it is useful, here are some resources to begin learning about what intelligence and cognitive research have to say about the matter:

[http://www.amazon.com/The-Talent-Code-Greatness- Grown/dp/055...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Talent-Code-Greatness- Grown/dp/055380684X/)

[http://www.amazon.com/The-Genius-All-Us- Insights/dp/03073873...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Genius-All-Us- Insights/dp/0307387305)

[http://healthland.time.com/2012/12/26/motivation-not-iq- matt...](http://healthland.time.com/2012/12/26/motivation-not-iq-matters-most- for-learning-new-math-skills/)

[http://www.cogmed.com/impact-working-memory-training- young-p...](http://www.cogmed.com/impact-working-memory-training-young-people- social-emotional-behavioral-difficulties)

[http://www.cogmed.com/working-memory-but-not-iq-predicts- sub...](http://www.cogmed.com/working-memory-but-not-iq-predicts-subsequent- learning-in-children-with-learning-difficulties)

[http://www.cogmed.com/working-memory-training-generalize- imp...](http://www.cogmed.com/working-memory-training-generalize-improve- offtask-behavior-children-attentiondeficithyperactivity-disorder)

[http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~antonvillado/courses/09a_psyc630...](http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~antonvillado/courses/09a_psyc630001/Ackerman%20\(1987\)%20PB.pdf)

[http://reports-archive.adm.cs.cmu.edu/anon/ml2009/CMU- ML-09-...](http://reports-archive.adm.cs.cmu.edu/anon/ml2009/CMU- ML-09-102.pdf)

[http://jabba.edb.utexas.edu/it/enhancingCognitiveSkill.pdf](http://jabba.edb.utexas.edu/it/enhancingCognitiveSkill.pdf)

There are plenty more resources out there, and I'm sure there are much better ones too. But the implication of all this is that learning _is_ a skill, and that you _can_ learn how to learn better. We may not yet thoroughly understand how generalized learning takes place in the brain, but it does seem to be a function of working memory and motivation, which can be improved. Generalized learning is segmented more finely than how I described it originally, but it still functions the same way (e.g. learning to juggle may not help you learn a new language better, but learning to play a musical instrument may help you to learn the other two more easily, since it incorporates language skills through music, and motor skills through playing). Making an argument against this model would place the burden of proof on that side, because as I mentioned before, there is no known mechanism that would lead to the outcome outlined by the 'fair'/balanced model, and it would have to explain away phenomena like neuroplasticity that seem to directly oppose it.

<comment><USER10> I just don't understand how you can state bold claims like this as facts without substantiating them in any way by references or any sort of logical deduction:

 _If a person learned to become exceptionally 'talented' in one area, then he/she's more likely to replicate that same level success in a completely new area_

 _The only limiting factor on skill acquisition is choice /taste._

Doesn't genetics also have some role here? The references you just included do nothing to provide any sort of evidence for those statements. To what extents cognitive skills are transferable is still much debated and science is far from having an unanimous answer. Good overview of the issue is here:

[http://www4.ncsu.edu/~jlnietfe/EDP504_Notes_files/Are%20Cogn...](http://www4.ncsu.edu/~jlnietfe/EDP504_Notes_files/Are%20Cognitive%20Skills%20Context%20Bound.pdf)

<comment><USER9> Genetics do play a surprisingly significant role, and my second reference (book) even mentions it in the title. IQ is strongly believed to be linked to genetics, but again, as I listed in one of the sources, even IQ doesn't necessarily factor into skill acquisition, only _ease_ of skill acquisition; two distinct but important points. You can learn to learn better -- _that_ is the main point. It doesn't matter where you start off (i.e. IQ via genetics), you can still get a skill snowball-effect going relative to where you started. It seems you missed the second part of my last comment where I mentioned it was more segmented and context based (like your citation states), but that the _general trajectory_ is still the same. Learn a skill in one context, any subsequent skills in the same context become easier. The thing is that there are things that generalize to multiple contexts, and that some contexts are larger than they seem[1].

Now, it is certainly _much harder_ for some people to acquire certain skills, and it may be near impossible to _excel_ at them up to a certain level (e.g. physical athleticism). But skill _level_ is again different from the skill _itself_ , and it is the skills themselves that matter in skill acquisition. For example, if running ability is found to be genetically limited, then getting any better at it may be harder for you, but picking up a sport like football would probably still be much easier for you if you trained your running first regardless. IQ being genetically determined _can_ impact other things like motivation; i.e. if you have a low IQ things will be harder for you, making you less likely to pursue skill acquisition in the future, and conversely, a high IQ _may_ predispose you to acquiring more skills since they come so easily to you, but the point is that neither absolutely determine how many skills you can/will acquire.

I made a 'bold' statement because it's just that practical of a perspective to take[2]. And science backs it up not only in terms of all the positive effects exercising brain plasticity brings[3], but also in the fact that IQ isn't an end-all be-all metric. It is significant, and highly correlated to other important things like life expectancy[4], but IQ itself is _not_ the limit. A built-in limit to skill acquisition would have to come somewhere else down the line if there is one. I study this stuff on my free time because it interests me, I'm not an expert/scientist, so trying to discover a well-defined concrete limit to skill acquisition is beyond my domain, but stuff like epigenetics and plasticity is making it harder to believe there is one.

[1] I believe the last cite in my previous comment shows an example of this. Also, I myself have a pretty average IQ of ~114 or something, but this view has allowed me to learn a surprising number of skills before I even knew any of the science around it, so of course I'm biased and wanted to share.

[2] Well, that and the fact that most people simply don't bother to look at painfully constructed source lists anyway, making the endeavor of compiling them less worth it.

[3] One example: [http://news.stanford.edu/news/2003/september24/dementia.html](http://news.stanford.edu/news/2003/september24/dementia.html)

[4] [http://www.mrc.ac.uk/About/AnnualReview09-10/SevenAges/Elder...](http://www.mrc.ac.uk/About/AnnualReview09-10/SevenAges/Elderly/IQlinkbetween/index.htm)

<comment><USER10> The problem here is that we humans really want to believe certain things, and our emotional involvement blinds us to what we really managed to establish scientifically, e.g. people vehemently oppose any suggestions of determinism, attempts to deny free will, whatever it might mean, etc., regardless of any logical argument.

I think you are falling for this in certain places as well, for example when talking about genetic skill level limitations you jump right to physical athleticism, which is something people are somehow able to accept more easily, while there is strong evidence that intellectual abilities are open to limitations of the same kind.

IQ is an imperfect measure that is at best correlated with the "quality" of ones genetic endowment, but it doesn't mean that the genetic limitations are any less real. This is the very old and heated debate of "nature vs. nurture", and I would appreciate your comment much more if you also included views of the "opposing" side and moderated your claims to what the research really says, while I think you are making some big extrapolations. That is not to deny the possibility of "learning to learn" or to discourage learning, but you used very strong phrases.

<comment><USER9> I actually don't think our views are opposing, but I think the point I'm trying to make is just tricky because falls in a small area that doesn't oppose determinism. I actually view the mind as a total algorithm, because there are a shocking number of personality traits that _appear_ to be deterministic[1]. Thus, I don't actually believe in free will, but I find it to be a useful _model_ by which to live by (kinda like how classical mechanics helped us get to the moon despite relativity ultimately being more accurate). There are many things that can still work within a deterministic system though, they may just require the right set of inputs[2] to get the desired outputs. So I just proposed a perspective (one that leverages our apparently limitless ability for plasticity and memory) as an input, and maybe it'll trigger some people to _deterministically_ consider it for helping themselves, leading to useful outputs.

The system is much too complex to assume that just because we don't have what amounts to total 'free' will that we're hopeless to improve anything at our level of operation. If someone's determined (pun intended) to be a defeatist, then alright, but some others are just waiting for the right inputs to take them down a more useful branch of execution. Because just like a program, even though everything is neatly outlined and determined, that doesn't mean you know what every output ever will be. That's why I don't think 'hardcore' determinism to the point of discouraging choices is a useful view to take, much like how hardcore philosophical skepticism is a dead-end line of logic; neither really provide anything you can build off of, so while they may ultimately be true, they're poor models for productivity. I mean, it's possible that you're right and I'm just having a hard case of cognitive dissonance, but it seems to me like extrapolating deterministic genetic algorithms to argue against useful high-level perspectives is still making a lot of assumptions about the implications of such a system. Meanwhile, I'm just reporting observations that been found with regards to skill acquisition.

[1] The phenomenon depicted on this episode of Radiolab with regards to Transient Global Amnesia is particularly damning ([http://www.radiolab.org/2011/oct/04/](http://www.radiolab.org/2011/oct/04/) ), because it shows that when given all the same inputs, you're likely to perform the exact same actions over-and-over again. The separated twin studies on IQ also show a remarkable number of personality similarities amongst twins (besides IQ), which indicates a possible genetic component to random things like sense of humor. There's no hard evidence that any of these things _are_ genetically determined of course, but meh. Let's also not forget that epigenetics and GMOs exist, though it may be a while before that becomes useful for GATTACA-like situations, lol.

[2] Yes, genetics and other deterministic factors count as inputs. If you want to reach a branch of logic that requires AND-ing with a genetic component you don't have, then tough luck, but a simple OR with some other less deterministic input is equally possible. Of course, this is just another hypothetical model to cope with our lack of understanding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For a better film concerning the same topic, try pirates of silicon valley.

Its a bit old, but quite good.

<comment><USER2> I'm hoping Sorkin's movie is better. We'll see.

<comment><USER12> There is a very good chance it will be better, but Sorkin had to take considerable liberties to make The Social Network work as a movie. I really liked it because it captured and conveyed the spirit of things people find hard to understand. But you can't do that and be a historically accurate document. And despite Sorkin being a genius, I know several people who thought sitting through The Social Network was torture.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If we wait long enough, we will also find out that Steve Jobs invented practically everything around us - the bits, the bytes, the electricity, atoms and molecules. Hack, he was the first fish out of the water that gave raise to the man kind millions of years later.

All Hail the King Jobs.

<comment><USER14> > Hack

1) I like this typo.

2) I can't imagine how you made it. Dvorak keyboard?

<comment><USER15> A is in the same position, Dvorak or qwerty.

<comment><USER16> Tha a is raelly closa to tha e on tha dvorek kayboerd, end it mekas for e mora common misteka. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I love Woz's honesty. I actually think the issues he brings up would have made for a better film - because they illuminate all the ways Jobs failed early in his career... and ultimately learned from his failures to realize the success of his later iYears. Real conflict and real resolution. But that's a different film, it sounds like. (The one I wish they'd made).

</comment><comment><USER18> For comparison here's what he had to say about "Pirates of Silicon Valley" [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lx9JsSTklI](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lx9JsSTklI)

</comment><comment><USER19> Every time I see a Woz interview I'm struck by what a genuinely good guy he seems to be.

<comment><USER20> I love that he can talk so comfortably about the strengths and weaknesses of himself and others.

A lot of people are uncomfortable talking plainly about their own importance or about other people's failings. And then you get the odd megalomaniac who's the opposite. It's refreshing to see someone who's comfortable talking about people honestly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> People had similar things to say about The Social Network. It was wrong about history, but it was also a good movie on its own. We will see if "Jobs", as a movie, can stand on its own.

<comment><USER22> But a movie isn't just a movie. Every movie has a narrative that makes a point, and that makes it valuable.

If what we are hoping to learn from 'Jobs' or The Social Network is "How did this guy do it? What personal qualities can I emulate, what situations can I apply the same approach in", then it is only valuable if it is accurate.

After all, if the narrative is something the writer more or less made up (i.e. he's missed out the bit where Jobs goes into the wilderness and comes back another person), then what the movie teaches us is coming from the writers head. The writer didn't build a leading company, so I am not really interested in what he thinks about how to do it.

<comment><USER23> That's not the writer's intention though - that's what you want the intention to be. And that's not really fair. The point is probably an entertaining biopic aimed at mass-market success, not a how-to on building a successful company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Link needs a [video] warning or something.

<comment><USER25> Yeah this is a good idea. Just like the [pdf] indicator. I generally don't watch video pieces and get mildly annoyed when there's no other clue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> A wasted opportunity to properly interview a great man. There are a few people that you interview with reverence: Woz is one of them.

<comment><USER27> Personally, I think 'reverence' makes interviews worse, not better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> What is wrong with the interviewer? Towards the end she kept pushing Woz to say that Apple is in decline. Even after Woz repeatedly said that he didn't believe so.

Is this the view of the general public? That Apple is doomed if they don't release iWatch or whatever that's bigger than the iPhone/iPad?

<comment><USER29> Not the general public, but I listen to Bloomberg financial radio a lot, and know-nothing finance types definitely believe that Apple needs another product - any product - immediately.

On the other side, different analysts say both the watch market and the TV market are too small to matter, so Apple is also doomed if they do. That the MP3 player, smartphone and tablet markets were also "too small" before Apple released their products hasn't entered their mind.

<comment><USER30> how is the watch market "too small"? Everybody owns a watch. Also if you go out, you'll always see plenty of watch stores, and watch advertisements.

<comment><USER31> Firstly, I see fewer people with watches these days, as a watch is basically a fashion statement these days.

Secondly, the portion of that market that buy "techie" phones as opposed to what's effectively a variation of a bracelet is vanishingly small, so the size of the overall watch market is irrelevant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady Was this movie meant to be a documentary? I was under the impression it was supposed to be more like The Social Network. Some facts but mainly just entertainment.

The Social Network may not be factually accurate but I enjoyed it and watched it again. I'm guessing this will be similar.

<comment><USER13> If it was mainly for entertainment, they should have called it Blow Jobs, you know. It would have been true to their intent (entertainment), and more accurate to the content of the movie.

<comment> k-mcgrady If you want the facts read Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs.

>> "It would have been true to their intent (entertainment)"

OF COURSE their intent is entertainment! It's a movie!

<comment><USER32> Or not as it seems. Walter Isaacson was heavily criticized as being way too light and inaccurate (disclaimer: didn't read). 'Infinite loop' seems a better entry point.

<comment><USER33> Yeah, the Isaacson book is almost unreadable. Obviously rushed to coincide as closely as possible with his death, and just not a good book by any standard. The lack of even cursory editing is telling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Please don't link directly to auto-playing video pages. At least not until browser vendors get their acts together and indicate which tabs are generating sound. (No, I'm not interested in a long list of excuses as to why that's hard to do.)

<comment><USER35> The solution I employ is Click2Plugin, native to Chrome and an extension to Firefox (and Safari?). I have it enabled on everything but Youtube.

<comment><USER36> If it worked in Chrome, that is.

<comment><USER37> There is an option for click-to-play in Chrome privacy settings, no need for a separate plugin, it's already baked in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> The movie kind of confirms the fact that steve jobs actually lived for 150 years.

[http://fakevalley.com/steve-jobs-actually-lived- for-150-year...](http://fakevalley.com/steve-jobs-actually-lived- for-150-years/)

</comment><comment><USER39> Anyone else think that all this negative press is on purpose? I mean, really. They've taken one of the most iconic men of this nascent century and apparently slapped together a movie about him.

It's not like there is not considerable source material to work with (even without Isaacson's book if you're concerned about the "other" movie).

It just feels like someone has asked the press to deliberately drum up negative opinions specifically in regards to the true validity of the movie (not, you know, overall quality) and it will likely drive people out in droves.

</comment><comment><USER40> She lets him talk more than most interviewers I've seen. Which is great because I could listen to a guy like Woz talk all day.

</comment><comment><USER41> I know this is going to sound petty, but I just think Ashton Kutcher was a bad choice. He is too dumb to play Jobs. I would go for someone with more intellect, perhaps Daniel Day-Lewis, somebody edgey, Peter Fonda, Duston Hoffman, I dunno, it is not that I do not like Kutcher, it just seems like he is too dumb to play Jobs. Is it just me?

<comment><USER42> Kutcher is actually a smart guy he just got typecasted as an idiot character for most of his career

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I feel sorry for woz. The interviewer seems she had no clue what she was talking about.

</comment><comment><USER44> I still really want to see it. I've just watched all the Steve Jobs documentaries on Netflix and I love Pirates of Silicon Valley.

Can't find details of when or if it's coming to the UK...

</comment><comment><USER45> Not really surprised by the inaccuracies. Memories fade over time and are often replaced my an amalgamation of memory fragments and what makes sense.

</comment><comment><USER46> Damn. Wozniak should be a movie critic. I'd watch.

</comment><comment><USER47> is anyone surprised?

<comment><USER48> Some would argue that one of the biggest things wrong is that this movie exists at all, and there's not one for people who had a _much_ bigger influence on the world:

 _On the one hand, I can imagine where the computing world would be without the work that Jobs did and the people he inspired: probably a bit less shiny, a bit more beige, a bit more square. Deep inside, though, our devices would still work the same way and do the same things. On the other hand, I literally can 't imagine where the computing world would be without the work that Ritchie did and the people he inspired. By the mid 80s, Ritchie's influence had taken over, and even back then very little remained of the pre-Ritchie world._

Taken from [https://plus.google.com/112218872649456413744/posts/dfydM2Cn...](https://plus.google.com/112218872649456413744/posts/dfydM2Cnepe)

<comment><USER49> That's just geek one-upsmanship, it's not commentary. Geek A says that he really admires Geek Icon A. Geek B denigrates Geek A by telling him that Geek Icon A didn't really do anything, that he was just standing on the shoulders of the slightly more obscure but infinitely more talented Geek Icon B. This makes Geek B sound smart and informed, or at least it it makes Geek B feel smart and informed and better the Geek A.

Geek C comes along and tells Geek B that he's clueless, because Geek Icon B was just a poseur who spent his career harvesting the intellectual fields that had been plowed and sown by the even more obscure Geek Icon C. And so on, ad infinitum.

I halfway expect someone else to stumble on that thread and inform the author that he's an idiot because he doesn't realize that Dennis Ritchie is no more than a pimple on John McCarthy's back (not my opinion, just the sort of binary thinking and argumentation that I've observed in these types of threads).

It's also an example of geek self-importance: the idea that the only thing that matters is writing code. It reduces the value of anyone involved in the creation of a piece of hardware or software who wasn't writing code or soldering stuff to nil. People say this stuff to feel better about themselves at the expense of other people that they feel get too much credit. There's some truth to it, of course, but it's rarely expressed as a gray area. It usually comes in the form of, "hey, you know that guy who everyone thinks did everything? Really, he did NOTHING! Nothing at all. This other guy that most people never heard of did EVERYTHING." Which is just as intellectually dishonest as the idea that the first guy did everything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> There should be an update in a few weeks that fixes all the problems with the film.

</comment><comment><USER51> Can we stop this Wozniak worshiping every time there is a link to something this guy said?

<comment><USER51> -2? Wozniak worshippers, you can do better in punishing an heretic!

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I have the understanding that this movie was made in Hollywood, and therefore, Steve Wozniak complaining about the accuracy of the movie is irrelevant. Steve's main point is that the movie doesn't accurately portray Jobs in the early days and that he evolved into the character Ashton Kutcher plays. It's Hollywood, and its different perspectives. I think usually movies are 'based on a true story' not exactly a true story.

Woz has his own fame, so I don't see this as a jealous rant, but I do see it as a guy waving his arms screaming to the public "HEY HEY, I AM STILL HERE! PAY ATTENTION TO ME!"

EDIT \---- Yeah down vote me, my bet is you didn't watch the whole video.

<comment><USER53> "but I do see it as a guy waving his arms screaming to the public "HEY HEY, I AM STILL HERE! PAY ATTENTION TO ME!""

I bet ya dollars to doughnuts that Woz did not contact the media first. His phone probably didnt stop for days with media ringing him up trying to goad something out of him.</comment></comment>


Update on Azure Storage Service Interruption - <AUTHOR> http://azure.microsoft.com/blog/2014/11/19/update-on-azure-storage-service-interruption

<comment><USER2>
        404 - Article Not Found
        The article you were looking for was not found, but maybe try looking again!

You can get the text from the RSS feed [1].

\---

Yesterday evening Pacific Standard Time, Azure storage services experienced a service interruption across the United States, Europe and parts of Asia, which impacted multiple cloud services in these regions. I want to first sincerely apologize for the disruption this has caused. We know our customers put their trust in us and we take that very seriously. I want to provide some background on the issue that has occurred.

As part of a performance update to Azure Storage, an issue was discovered that resulted in reduced capacity across services utilizing Azure Storage, including Virtual Machines, Visual Studio Online, Websites, Search and other Microsoft services. Prior to applying the performance update, it had been tested over several weeks in a subset of our customer-facing storage service for Azure Tables. We typically call this "flighting," as we work to identify issues before we broadly deploy any updates. The flighting test demonstrated a notable performance improvement and we proceeded to deploy the update across the storage service. During the rollout we discovered an issue that resulted in storage blob front ends going into an infinite loop, which had gone undetected during flighting. The net result was an inability for the front ends to take on further traffic, which in turn caused other services built on top to experience issues.

Once we detected this issue, the change was rolled back promptly, but a restart of the storage front ends was required in order to fully undo the update. Once the mitigation steps were deployed, most of our customers started seeing the availability improvement across the affected regions. While services are generally back online, a limited subset of customers are still experiencing intermittent issues, and our engineering and support teams are actively engaged to help customers through this time.

When we have an incident like this, our main focus is rapid time to recovery for our customers, but we also work to closely examine what went wrong and ensure it never happens again. We will continually work to improve our customers' experiences on our platform. We will update this blog with a RCA (root cause analysis) to ensure customers understand how we have addressed the issue and the improvements we will make going forward.

\---

[1] [http://sxp.microsoft.com/feeds/3.0/devblogs](http://sxp.microsoft.com/feeds/3.0/devblogs)

</comment><comment><USER3> Uhm.

> The configuration change for the Blob Front-Ends exposed a

> bug in the Blob Front-Ends, which had been previously

> performing as expected for the Table Front-Ends.

> This bug resulted in the Blob Front-Ends to go into an

> infinite loop not allowing it to take traffic.

An infinite loop that has not been discovered during the partial role out. That is clearly weird. Also, doesn't put too much trust in their current monitoring scheme.

</comment><comment><USER4> This video [http://channel9.msdn.com/events/Build/2014/3-615;](http://channel9.msdn.com/events/Build/2014/3-615;) start at 39 minutes. Mark Russinovich explains their update rollout procedure (or at least part of it).

Willing to bet the rollout infrastructure depended on storage and so their ability to control or stop the rollout was broken once the storage failures began.

</comment><comment><USER5> Almost everyone has fully recovered at this point. If you are still seeing problems with your Virtual Machine after the incident earlier this week, we want to help you!! Please send mail to firstname.lastname@example.com and email me directly at email@example.com.

Please send with high importance so it pops in our inbox and we will dig in.

</comment><comment><USER4> I hope to read more in the post-mortem RCA but I am curious what their flighting missed, is flighting so limited that is does not see the cross region scale or something? I also had the feeling from watching Mark Russinovich discuss previous failures that their patch rollouts were much more controlled.

<comment><USER5> Keith, you can find more details in the RCA that is published here: [http://azure.microsoft.com/blog/2014/11/19/update-on- azure-s...](http://azure.microsoft.com/blog/2014/11/19/update-on-azure- storage-service-interruption/). It is updated with more details on the flighting and issues we encountered.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> So they rolled out a performance update (not a critical security fix) to all their datacenters at once?

This sounds incredibly amateur for a provider the size of Azure.

<comment><USER5> Hey nnx, this is Corey from the Azure engineering team. We have a standard protocol in the team of applying production changes in incremental batches. Due to an operational error, this update was made across most regions in a short period of time. I really apologize for the disruption.

<comment><USER7> So, you had a bug in your code. That happens to everyone and I think we all understand. However, there are a number of other issues here which seem systemic and much more troubling. First, that your "flighting" did not catch the problem. Why was that? If the bug caused an infinite loop on all the live storage systems, that seems like it should have been fairly obvious on the customer systems you tested on. Second, that the patch was rolled out to all servers at the same time. You have admitted this was a mistake, but honestly it looks like amateur hour. If you are running business critical distributed cloud infrastructure, you just don't ever do this. Third, that there was extended fallout from rolling the patch back. If there are still customers experiencing downtime from this problem a full day later, that speaks to some serious flaws in the ops architecture and process. If you guys want to compete with AWS and similar platforms, it seems like you have a long way to go still. This set of mistakes should haunt you for a long time, because it's going to come up whenever someone is trying to convince their boss/colleague/team that Azure is a solid solution.

<comment><USER5> Thanks. We are continuing to investigate this and driving needed improvements in our process and technology to avoid similar issues in the future.

<comment><USER8> The last two times there was a big issue the same thing happened with the status dashboard (it became inaccessible). I remember the same issue when the certs expired 1,5 years ago. I really like Microsoft and was convinced "you" would somehow isolate the dashboard and host it separately, but it turns out I was wrong. Do you happen to know the reasons for hosting the status dashboard inside of Azure? It seems so counter-intuitive to me. Or is it actually hosted externally but died due to the load when the issue started to appear?

The OP mentions that Microsoft representatives gave info via public forums. When the issue appeared I looked in different places trying to find info, but only I found was a statement saying that We are aware of issues. I looked at Azure twitter/blog, ScottGu twitter/blog, Hanselmans, MSDN forums. I also tried this forum and reddit. Do you know where I should have gone to receive details?

<comment><USER5> Thanks. The communications and the service health dashboard are two areas that we are creating improvement plans from the learning of this event. For the dashboard, we do expect it to continue to run even through outages like this one, but we did encounter an issue with our fallback mechanism that we need to understand more deeply.

For general communications, we did most of our early communication on the event using twitter, announcing the incident and giving updates. We need to build a more formal multi-pronged approach to communicating, including faster responses in the MSDN forums and here in HN to make sure we are reaching as many of our customers and partners as possible. Thanks again for the feedback!!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> How about not rolling out a patch to all data centers at once?

<comment><USER5> Hi, this is Corey Sanders, an engineer on the Azure compute team. Yes, our normal policy for updates is to roll them in incremental batches. In this case, due to an operational error, we did not apply the changes as per normal policy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> 404 - Article Not Found</comment>