Americans' perceptions of police drop significantly in one week - <AUTHOR> https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/06/06/americans-views-police-drop-significantly-amid-protests-survey/3159072001/ <comment><USER2> When a 75 year old man is trying to return a police helmet to them, and they push him down causing him to bleed from his head and ears, and they fire two officers who did it, and the rest resign from the riot group in purpose in support of the two who pushed him, what else could you possibly expect?

[https://twitter.com/WBFO/status/1268712530358292484?s=20](https://twitter.com/WBFO/status/1268712530358292484?s=20)

<comment><USER3> And before resigning, they all walk by the guy bleeding on the ground purposefully not looking.

Hard to watch that and not be horrified.

I guess this guy has been a constant gadfly at protests for some time. I don't know if that had anything to do with it or not but shocking.

<comment><USER4> > _they all walk by the guy bleeding on the ground purposefully not looking._

There's another video, slightly longer, which shows that the police stop after a few more seconds and attend to him. I think they were a bit shocked by severe consequences of the shove and uncertain for a moment (even though it was a predictable result of the heavy-handed approach that the police have been taking that somewhere something like this would happen).

What is absolutely _not_ forgivable, though, is lying that he "tripped and fell" on the police report. And it's even more outrageous that dozens of officers are coming together to defend that egregious lie!

<comment><USER5> That is incorrect; the police continued to walk past and a member of the National Guard ended up attending to him: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFeewU0HhNE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFeewU0HhNE)

<comment><USER6> I'm trying to understand where the riot was? They pan to the left and there's like 30 people max in the park across the street. This seems totally unjustified given the circumstances. Somehow they managed to easily apprehend the second man in the video without shoving him to the ground. Just disgusting either way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Public perception of the police degrading is a first good sign.

What is important are the next steps: the police needs accountability, police misbehaviour must be investigated independently. Not by the police, not by the prosecutor they work with every other week. The police must be made to understand they are being watched, very closely, by technical, legal and human means. Only then will they think twice before stepping out of line. And each misstep needs to have proportionate consequences that take into account the misuse of power as well as the crime itself, so punishment must be harsher than for mere mortals, not the usual slap on the wrist.

Changes in training or authorized uses of force are useless smoke and mirrors without proper accountability.

Quis enim custodiet ipsos custodies?

<comment><USER8> This is obvious and I really hope things will change. But I wonder if they will change meaningfully not just superficially

<comment><USER7> It may seem obvious, but I think this needs to be repeated over and over again. Otherwise nothing will come from this mess, just warm words and symbolic measures

<comment><USER8> Yeah, random riots whenever they are prepared the least. Im so angry at how cops can legally hit, punch, injure, shoot and how they use their power and do so indiscriminately on whoever they are angry at the moment and face no repercussions. And when repercussions are possible they hide their badges...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A lot of people are talking about changing the laws so that officers aren't protected by qualified immunity or unions, but as far as I understand, one of the main problems is prosecutors.

Prosecutors require police to bring them people to prosecute. If a prosecutor starts going after cops, they've now pissed off a group of people they rely on the get their job done, so most prosecutors won't prosecute cops.

I imagine this could be fixed by states having a special prosecutor specifically for those that are now considered protected by qualified immunity, which is more than just police. Also we should get rid of qualified immunity, which is an insult to the constitution.

<comment><USER10> > A lot of people are talking about changing the laws so that officers aren't > protected by qualified immunity or unions, but as far as I understand, one > of the main problems is prosecutors.

It's all connected. The police unions push back _hard_ against reforms in the prosecutors' office that might subject them to more scrutiny.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/06/us/police-unions- minneapo...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/06/us/police-unions-minneapolis- kroll.html)

> In St. Louis, when Kim Gardner was elected the top prosecutor four years > ago, she set out to rein in the city's high rate of police violence. But > after she proposed a unit within the prosecutor's office that would > independently investigate misconduct, she ran into the powerful local police > union.

> The union pressured lawmakers to set aside the proposal, which many > supported but then never brought to a vote. Around the same time, a lawyer > for the union waged a legal fight to limit the ability of the prosecutor's > office to investigate police misconduct. The following year, a leader of the > union said Ms. Gardner should be removed "by force or by choice."

<comment><USER7> I think police unions is the one instance where union busting or just plainly making unions illegal would be justified.

<comment><USER11> I don't think making police unions illegal is the solution, unions play an important role in preventing the employer from taking advantage of employees. What we need to do is limit the scope of unions. Unions making sure their members have decent pay, benefits, safe working conditions, etc - GREAT! Unions protecting corrupt, abusive, dangerous members from facing punishment - BAD! This is true for any profession.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Ancedote: my father-in-law is a prison guard in Minneapolis. HIS opinion of police has plummeted in the last week.

<comment><USER13> Powerful stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you're in a position of appointed authority, then surely special rules must apply.

How about starting with 3x the sentence of a normal citizen for breaking the same rules?

<comment><USER15> I'm not sure that increasing the punishment would help. They need to actually be punished for breaking the rules. Not sometimes, but every time they break those rules.

<comment><USER16> I advocate we make a specific law that witnessing a felony action by a fellow police officer and not reporting it become a chargeable offense on its own. We also make it illegal to not make the officer investigations private after some threshold, like 5 diff cases. I get that there are false accusations but they have too much power and we need to go the other way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> My 10 year old son keeps saying, "I thought the police were our friends?" Frankly he is traumatized by the actions of the police he is seeing on the news. Yesterday we were driving to the pharmacy to get some medicine and he suddenly started crying and freaking out. It turned out that he saw a police car and was convinced we were going to be pulled over and killed.

Thankfully my state has just passed a law making it illegal for police to enter elementary or secondary school grounds except in the case of an emergency. At least he will probably be safe from the police at school.

<comment><USER18> I feel as if I should explain something to my child but have been kind of shielding them. I'm seriously conflicted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm black, got my license to drive the year Rodney King got assaulted by cops that got exonerated by an all white jury. Glad some of my fellow Americans woke up to my reality.

<comment><USER8> We knew about your reality but were as powerless as you were. Look who became president in 2016 because we had the nerve to vote a black president. And I really do wonder what they're up to next. After Bush I thought it cannot go lower but it did. I really want to be positive but am still shocked by whats been happening

<comment><USER20> You'd be shocked if you looked into how little (read: nothing) Obama did about police overreach and lack of oversight. Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump... when it comes to police brutality they're all the same.

This isn't a partisan issue, the color of your tie does not wash your hands of blame here.

The Dem party's marketing dept should all get raises, though. For some reason you seem to believe that having a black president who did absolutely nothing for black people was better for black people than Trump. When it comes to policy or enforcement changes, this could not be further from the truth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It is a difficult watch, but the past days brought up a lot of videos that probably would not be more than a blip on a regular day. It is possible that what we are seeing is a straw that broke the camel's back.

As I may have disclosed before, I have some cops in my family and I do think they have too much power compared to Europe.

edit: corrected the idiom

</comment><comment><USER22> [EDIT: For context, this was detached from post_break's comment: "When a 75 year old man is trying to return a police helmet to them, and they push him down causing him to bleed from his head and ears, and they fire two officers who did it, and the rest resign from the riot group in purpose in support of the two who pushed him, what else could you possibly expect?"]

You can only have one absolute moral principle; everything else must ultimately be contingent on not violating that core principle.

I am usually bringing this up on HN in the context of free speech, because I think free speech is a poor choice to make your absolute moral principle.

In this context, there's another example of a poor choice for an absolute principle.

Brotherhood, fraternity, loyalty to your group is frequently a good thing. Many things only work with trust.

But this is what it looks like when brotherhood -- loyalty to your fellow police officers, in this case -- is your absolute moral principle. Upholding the law and protecting the innocent come second to protecting your own.

<comment><USER23> This is a very good point.

To me, the cops quitting in solidarity is a far worse problem than the cops pushing the old man.

We need to grasp that in a national eruption of 1000's of interactions, some of them will be bad. There will be emotions, stupidity, even racism and true bad acting. I fully expect that even in a highly professional and well-trained police force ... that stupid ____will happen.

BUT - the cops quitting ... this is 1) not a decision made 'in the moment of passion in the blink of an eye' and 2) as you say, it arguably contradicts the very nature of their oath.

My cousin, a Marine, said to me that a common creed is 'Unit, Corps, God, Country'. I don't know if that's official, colloquial, or even widely true ... but ... I found it really deeply wrong to put 'unit and corps' above 'god and country'. But I never got the chance to discuss it with him.

<comment><USER21> I feel obligated to point out that, based on what I read thus far, they did not quit the force; just that particular unit ( supposedly over union not covering legal fees -- but no idea how true that is ).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I think a lot about how so many police officers are Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. How much has this experience altered departments perception of what it means to police? Or influenced to baddest actors to behave like they do?

<comment><USER25> I don't think so if anything veterans of those conflicts probably have way more restraint because half the crap police have been shown doing wouldn't be allowed by the military. If soldiers shot and abused people as routinely and willnilly as police do it would be a major scandal.

If you go read through US military documents about the use of force and rules of engagement you will find things like it requires _presidential approval_ to use riot control agents like pepper spray and tear gas. You aren't allowed to use non-lethal weapons like rubber bullets and bean bag guns without special training because they are dangerous if use improperly. It's against the law of war to target noncombatants (police have been specifically targeting journalists in a number of high profile incidents)

[0] [https://www.trngcmd.marines.mil/Portals/207/Docs/TBS/B130936...](https://www.trngcmd.marines.mil/Portals/207/Docs/TBS/B130936%20Law%20of%20War%20and%20Rules%20Of%20Engagement.pdf)

edit: I agree with the sister comment that the faulty police mentality largely comes from really bad training that instills the mind set that there is danger behind every corner.

<comment><USER7> Afaik the pepper spray and tear gas approval requirement stem from the fact that those are classified as chemical weapons in international treaties. Shows that the police treat their own population worse than the military does enemies and the rest of the world...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> So after all of that, still 61% of white americans stands by the side of the police? As a normal european citizens, americans what is your problem? Something like that here would have been considered unacceptable by everyone, beside some stupid neo fascist parties that fortunately are a small minority: not only killing a person for nothing, but then using violence against peaceful protesters.

<comment><USER27> The issue runs deeper. America is really divided amongst the political lines. People either identify as Democrats or Republican. The Racial injustice and protests are seen as Democratic and mostly happening in coastal states that vote blue most of the time.

The inner states (which are mostly white) vote the opposite.

This really doesn't surprise me. America like its political polarization is also quite divided racially.

Our president further propagates this with Xenophobia.

We're quite backwards compared to Europe like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This situation reminds me of an interesting series on the first UK police force, how basically it grew out of robber gangs and went back and forth between a force for good and a force for consolidating power at the cost of ordinary citizens. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvMQY_y4qx8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvMQY_y4qx8)

</comment><comment><USER29> It has been terrifying and astounding to see the police response to protests against brutality with... more brutality.

<comment><USER30> Versus what though? Outnumbered 25:1, rampant looting and mayhem all around, and seeing your mates hit with bottles of water filled with quikcrete, it doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

Just because something makes you feel bad for society doesn't mean the actions at an individual basis are purely malicious or unreasonable.

<comment><USER31> In both absolute terms and by averages, the protestors have demonstrated better individual restraint than law enforcement.

Which is quite an indictment considering the protestors can be joined by, as you noted, and random opportunist or provocateur.

<comment><USER32> Is there actual data about this that can be viewed somewhere?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> So the keyword here is 'perception' \- which is ultimately a game of populism, which dry realists may loathe a little bit.

There are some very good arguments for 'critical masses of sentiment' necessary to effectuate actual change, at the same time, populism is a war for 'hearts and minds' and the first casualty in every war is of course the Truth.

Personally, I'm far more interested in _real_ nature of every day policing, which is a complex and nuanced subject, not likely suitable for the narrative- driven vignettes proposed to use every night on cable news.

I believe that 'narrative and populist driven change' is usually not the best way forward. We've seen this very poignantly with the rise of the 'doctors and bureaucrats' to the fore of public display during the Covid epidemic. It's been mostly heartwarming to hear from the dry, mundane, secular, academic mandarins managing our pandemic responses behind the scenes.

Dr. Bonnie Henry managing British Columbia's COVID response as a fairly good example; we're now getting _actually charts and data_ to explain and validate the inherently complex nature of COVID, and the impetus for the resulting action.

On TV, the narrative-drivers and those trying to make big statements completely drown out a much-need opportunity for dispassionate discussion about this issue. I feel that people are being highly misled one way or another to the point that when real facts and hard evidence don't align with a narrative, they become anthemic to the presentation, and anyone proposing to discuss them becomes a heathen to the cause. A lot of people are spending a lot of time, decades even, in bubbles of 'very incomplete information'.

America has made _huge_ strides in all sorts of areas, and in most ways 'it's better than it's ever been'. I wouldn't for a second give Trump (or any incumbent president) credit for this but as avg. Black income, wage-gap, and unemployment-gaps become historically low even during _his_ tenure, this is saying a lot. If you look at the broad measures of ostensible progress, they don't really jump at points of social contention, really, it looks _mostly_ good over broad units of time. Progress is mostly a steady grind, made by a lot of thoughtful people.

Particularly disturbing is the entrance of major brands, deciding to participate in the situation - though sometimes it's hard to see how earnest intention may be exploited ... it definitely is. Master marketers don't sell you products really on the basis of function, rather an aspiration - and if that aspiration has moved off the court onto the streets, you can be sure that someone hustling you shoes because of a deeply held political or social conviction ... it's a huge red flag.

It takes a real kind of mindfulness to 'see something bad in a video or tweet' as a data point, instead of an emblem. A quick gander through Pew polling, actual police stats, victimization reports, and decent research paints a totally different picture than one would form from reading headlines or drowning in Tweets.

<comment><USER33> What you are saying does not go against what people are complaining about. No one is out in the streets complaining that the economy sucks or that their education opportunities are too limited (although every single metric says that blacks are very unfairly disadvantaged here across all walks of life) - they're saying that black people in America are still not treated as equals in one-on-one interactions and in particular when the police are involved. A black kid playing in the street shouldn't be shot because the cop thought he was a gangbanger. Finding a counterfeit twenty on someone that probably had no clue it was counterfeit in the first place should not result in their execution. And the chances that a cop would ignore a dozen people screaming at them to stop literally killing someone just are not the same when the individual in question is black instead of white.

The fact is, while all the other metrics may have improved, the police force in lots of major cities are still White Boys Clubs, police unions are bastions of corruption, racism is the norm, and incidents are constantly swept under the rug.

<comment><USER23> You've helped demonstrate my point: 'populism and press-driven narratives lead to false views of reality'.

Your statement: " lots of major cities are still White Boys Clubs, police unions are bastions of corruption, racism is the norm," \- is false, and almost bigoted.

The vast majority of PD's in America, the Police themselves generally reflect the racial reality of the communities they manage.

Chicago PD is about 50% White, 25% Black, and 25% Latino. [1] Black and Latino police are _overrepresented_ those forces. This is not uncommon.

Why don't you have a look at the actual data - all the PD ethnic composition is right there for you to see.

It's false to suggest that these PDs are 'a bunch of White Boy Clubs' \- when they _literally_ are not, but not only that, just the opposite, fairly multicultural and excellent examples of 'functional diverse workforces'.

Ironically, the police are _considerably better than hight tech_ at demonstrating how representation and getting along matters.

The fact that Police forces generally well reflect the ethnicity of the people they manage is probably something most people wouldn't necessarily know, and it's 'real-world information' that adds nuance to the situation. Unfortunately, since this reality doesn't fit the narrative, it doesn't get talked about.

Even this incident in Minnesota: we have 'assailants' who are _diverse_ : two white cops, an Asian cop, and a cop 'of Colour' (possibly Black?) - does that fit the 'Team Racist Redneck' narrative? No.

It's ridiculous to suggest 'racism is the norm' on teams that are overwhelmingly diverse, wherein partners, managers, chefs, officials are of every stripe and creed. Also, it's kind of insulting.

So how could it be that people have this view of PD's when the data shows that this would be highly unlikely? Why is this kind of information not made part of the discussion on various media outlets? There's a lot more where this came from.

Populism leads to misinformation, poor analysis, and crude thinking. The situation is far more nuanced. We need dispassion and reason.

[1] [https://www.governing.com/gov-data/safety-justice/police- dep...](https://www.governing.com/gov-data/safety-justice/police-department- officer-demographics-minority-representation.html)

<comment><USER33> > Chicago PD is about 50% White, 25% Black, and 25% Latino. [1] Black and > Latino police are overrepresented those forces. This is not uncommon.

Chicago is 32% non-Hispanic white, 32% black, and 28% hispanic. So, no, white cops outnumbering black cops 2:1 is not black cops being overrepresented. (This is as of the latest census.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Why is this even on HN? Leave this stuff to google news. The great part of HN is that it's an amazing space for tech news, rather than political, sociological, or world news.

Deviations like this just bring down the original purpose and integrity of going to HN.

<comment><USER35> So don't click on it? I respect your opinion, it's a common one on this site, but I don't see how it's any different than a post about a technology you're not interested in.

<comment><USER34> See my second comment as per the guidelines of HN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

The argument is the type of content, not the content itself. This content falls into mainstream events which would be against HN guidelines.

*edits for grammatical errors

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> graph is like unemployment. Several deviations drop from mean. Expert's models say they are rare, but they are always wrong. Now the anger is toward those experts whose models always break because they don't handle the extremes, while they are drinking coffee in their ivory towers.

<comment><USER37> Rapid shifts in public opinion in response to high profile events aren't at all rare, and I don't think any experts were claiming they were...

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I won't deny that there are corruption and accountability problems among US police forces, but I also can't help but feel like many people, especially now, don't appreciate the fact that American police deal with people who are violent, disrespectful, and frequently mentally ill on a sometimes daily basis.

These are humans too and they're watching society (and especially media) totally dehumanize them. To some degree their anger is arguably justified.

I feel like it's impossible to get an accurate feel for how many people are protesting and what proportion of the population supports the protests. But I have a feeling it's a minority, maybe 10-30% of the population, in which case you cannot let a fraction of your population hold your entire city hostage, especially when opportunists are simultaneously looting and burning, though that seems to have calmed down recently.

Point being, if the protestors won't listen when asked to leave, and if they are disrupting the lives and livelihoods of 70-90% of the population, I don't see any option other than gradual escalation, which typically precedes gas and rubber bullets.

The police in a city in Canada went on strike in the late 1960s[1]. Things didn't go well. And we've already seen that American demographics are willing to burn and loot even with police present...so I don't mean to defend police but I really don't see anything good coming from police standing down or refusing to use force.

1.[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray- Hill_riot](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray-Hill_riot)

Edit: Downvotes are intended for discouraging low effort or otherwise poor comments, not to shame people for disagreeing. Whether you like it or not at least half the country supports police, they play an important role in society, and that makes this a discussion worth having.

<comment><USER37> > don't appreciate the fact that American police deal with people who are > violent, disrespectful, and frequently mentally ill on a sometimes daily > basis.

Lots of people have difficult stressful jobs dealing with people who don't have much respect for them. That's not an excuse for criminality, though. Take medical professionals. In the public mind, there are few things more horrifying and reprehensible than the doctor or nurse who deliberately kills or neglects their patients. There's pretty much universal agreement that this is not okay, and that it is in fact a morally worse crime than normal murder or neglect, as it is done by someone in a position of trust. It should be the same for police.

<comment><USER32> In defense of the OP the interaction between doctor and patient is not at all like the interaction between police officer and criminal.

There has to be a way forward when it comes to police reform, but it is a valid question to ask whether or not policing itself takes a particular toll.

<comment><USER39> I've wondered over the last week whether a strategy to fighting the perverse psychological changes that seem to settle in the minds of many police officers would be term limits? An "up or out" mentality like in the armed forces[1]?

It seems like many of the worst offenders have been mostly stagnant at their posts for many years - surely getting in fresh faces that have had a chance for more modern training would help break some of this mentality of "corps over country".

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> In Total War: Rome II, you can commission the training of "spy" agents with multiple abilities that can be exercised against opposing faction cities.

One of these abilities is "incite unrest". Across several turns, this can enable a war of attrition ( a turn represents a year or a season I cannot remember). Death by 1000 cuts is a way to reduce the morale and economic output of a city in order to eventually conquer it.

Here is an excerpt from a forum dialogue about the game:

"Incite Unreast give "X" public order penality, depending on your agent skills and traits. Army gives "X" public order boost depending on army size and general traits and skills.

So yes.

The best tactic would put as many agents as you can get into far positions, champions can decrease public order as a passive, spy like you already know they pay for it, armies can raid, which decrease their upkeep and steal some of their income for youself."

[https://steamcommunity.com/app/214950/discussions/0/61956934...](https://steamcommunity.com/app/214950/discussions/0/619569341074772436/)

<comment><USER41> Real life isn't a video game.

<comment><USER40> Here's an excerpt from an article:

"It is an open secret," he said, "that secret services of imperialist powers and foreign anti-Soviet centers actively join extremist nationalistic actions. Later on, they start playing the part of open instigators of hostile actions aimed at kindling hostility among nations. One should not underestimate the danger of this method of subversive activity."

[https://www.latimes.com/archives/la- xpm-1988-04-14-mn-1958-s...](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la- xpm-1988-04-14-mn-1958-story.html)

(a red flag here is that the word "secret" is repeated rapidly in succession. Timeless "click" bait before Jobs ever visited Xerox).

We must first consider credibility of a dot com site. LA times does not represent vast majority. But this is from 1988. Fear mongering conspiracies can get tongues flapping. This is also before digital proliferation of media injection into cultures (click).

Behind "video games" are 20-50 year old minds digesting their environment and historical records made available to them by their coordinated government(s). My "real life" has not been affected by rioting and widespread respitory pandemic (destroyed storefronts are not selling things I want, economic furlough gifts me spare time and empty streets to hone new skills and more quickly traverse new domains). I am interested in the Phoenix that rises from this reset (dust is still in the air and must settle).

From the wikipedia article for Principle of Charity:

"The first to state this hermeneutic principle was Rabbi Meir ... 'A person does not say things without reason'."

The video game designers are steadily sculpting their audience's perception of "real life" via their own art form.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Imagine isolated anectdata determining people's opinions of police! One of the first rules of understanding the world is to not let emotionally charged anecdotes, isolated events and individual mistakes determine how you judge groups, trends and collectives.

What's happened in the last week is that targeted propaganda has flooded people with a few isolated examples of bad things happening and letting people's emotional response mechanisms do the rest.

Did you know that tens of thousands of people die from medical malpractice and medical errors each year? There are many thousands fewer people suffering from police brutality, yet somehow the police have an infinitely worse reputation than doctors and surgeons yet your chances of being killed by a surgeon is far higher than being killed by a cop.

The police do one of the hardest jobs in the country, dealing with the worst elements of society every single day. It's shocking to me that there isn't far more "brutality" every year than there is, and I commend the police for keeping us safe while having to deal with people that hate them and want them dead every day.

The judgement callously meted out on police on HN and elsewhere is completely unjustified.

<comment><USER43> Your analogy kind of works against you:

Doctors have their own personal liability insurance, if they make too many mistakes they literally cannot afford to continue working in medicine (or have to move to a lower risk sub-field that have lower base premiums).

If police held their own individual liability insurance, and it too could become uneconomical for them to continue to practice law enforcement, I'd consider that a huge improvement over the status quo.

If you want law enforcement to be comparable to medicine, then oversight is going to raise tenfold.

<comment><USER42> Police act in a hostile environment which can't be compared to the environment in which surgeons and doctors operate. Where their lives are not at risk. Mistakes are more understandable and more likely in hostile environments, which makes it a wonder that there are not more instances of police making serious errors given all the interactions police have with hostile and combative people.</comment></comment></comment>


Why curl defaults to stdout - <AUTHOR> http://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2014/11/17/why-curl-defaults-to-stdout/

<comment><USER2> I actually _want_ printing to stdout more often than I want printing to file, it is more often what I need. I guess different people have different use cases.

I will admit that rather than learn the right command to have curl print to file -- when I _do_ want to write to file, I do use wget (and appreciate it's default progress bar; there's probably some way to make curl do that too, but I've never learned it either).

When I want writing to stdout, I reach for curl, which is most of the time. (Also for pretty much any bash script use, I use curl; even if I want write to a file in a bash script, I just use `>` or lookup the curl arg).

It does seem odd that I use two different tools, with mostly entirely different and incompatible option flags -- rather than just learning the flags to make curl write to a file and/or to make wget write to stdout. I can't entirely explain it, but I know I'm not alone in using both, and choosing from the toolbox based on some of their default behaviors even though with the right args they can probably both do all the same things. Heck, in the OP the curl author says they use wget too -- now I'm curious if it's for something that the author knows curl doesn't do, or just something the author knows wget will do more easily!

To me, they're like different tools focused on different use cases, and I usually have a feel for which is the right one for the job. Although it's kind of subtle, and some of my 'feel' may be just habit or superstition! But as an example, recently I needed to download a page and all it's referenced assets (kind of like browsers will do with a GUI; something I only very rarely have needed to do), and I thought "I bet wget has a way to do this easily", and looked at the man page and it did, and I have no idea if curl can do that too but I reached for wget and was not disappointed.

<comment><USER3> I think the biggest nuisance with this strategy is that neither tool is included by default on the machines I'm usually working with— wget is missing from my Mac, and curl is missing from my Ubuntu servers.

Both can be quickly rectified, but it's still a pretty big pain.

<comment><USER4> The obvious solution is to submit a patch to curl, such that when it's called as "wget", it emulates wget's command-line options, and vice versa.

Witten only partially in jest. I've submitted patches to both projects and both are relatively straight-forward code bases to dive in to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think his argument is valid, and thinking about curl as an analog to cat makes a lot of sense. Pipes are a powerful feature and it's good to support them so nicely.

However, just as curl (in standard usage) is an analog to cat, I feel that wget (in standard usage) is an analog to cp, and whilst I certainly can copy files by doing 'cat a > b', semantically cp makes more sense.

Most of the time if I'm using curl or wget, I want to cp, not cat. I always get confused by curl and not being able to remember the command to just cp the file locally, so I tend to default to wget because it's easier to remember,

<comment><USER6> I find that weird. Why are you wanting to copy stuff from http all of the time? I only ever rarely do that because I want to examine something like an API response further for an extended period of time. Usually I just want to see the response once, or view the headers.

<comment><USER7> > _I find that weird. Why are you wanting to copy stuff from http all of the > time?_

This kind of question (and the other question you make above) remind me of the people that answer Stack Overflow questions with their opinions of "best practices" and "what you should be doing instead" instead of answering what the poster asks. E.g:

Q. "How do I store JSON in mysql?"

A. "Why do you ask? What do you want to achieve with this? You'll be better served with a NoSQL database".

etc, etc.

<comment><USER8> That is called the XY problem[0]. It is a fairly common practice especially in technical IRC channels. Honestly, it can be very frustrating but a lot of times it is useful and actually helps both the person asking the (wrong) question and the group of people trying to provide a proper answer. Some (maybe most?) people do take it too far and even _refuse_ giving you a straightforward answer just to be pedantic and annoying. Those types of people have made this much of a bigger problem than it actually is, however thinking about the XY problem before you ask a question is always a good idea, regardless.

[0] - [http://mywiki.wooledge.org/XyProblem](http://mywiki.wooledge.org/XyProblem)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think he may be missing what people mean by "it's easier without an argument". It's not just "only one option" \- what I see in reality quite often is: "curl [http://..."](http://..."), screen is filled with garbage, ctrl-c, ctrl-c, ctrl-c, damn I'm on a remote host and ssh needs to catch up, ctrl-c, "cur...", actually terminal is broken and I'm writing garbage now, "reset", "wget [http://..."](http://...").

I'm not saying he should change it. But if he thinks it's about typing less... he doesn't seem to realise how his users behave.

<comment><USER10> That's the reason I use wget and only when necessary I switch to curl. It's not that I wouldn't forget about that nasty behaviour (eventhough I sometimes do forget) but it usually goes like this:

        $ curl -o news.ycombinator.com
        curl: no URL specified!
        curl: try 'curl --help' or 'curl --manual' for more information
        $ curl -O news.ycombinator.com
        curl: Remote file name has no length!
        curl: try 'curl --help' or 'curl --manual' for more information
        $ curl -O foo news.ycombinator.com
        curl: Remote file name has no length!
        curl: try 'curl --help' or 'curl --manual' for more information

        <title>301 Moved Permanently</title>

301 Moved Permanently

nginx

        $ wget news.ycombinator.com
        --2014-11-17 14:27:18--  http://news.ycombinator.com/
        Resolving news.ycombinator.com (news.ycombinator.com)... 220.127.116.11, 126.96.36.199
        Connecting to news.ycombinator.com (news.ycombinator.com)|188.8.131.52|:80... connected.
        HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 301 Moved Permanently
        Location: https://news.ycombinator.com/ [following]
        --2014-11-17 14:27:19--  https://news.ycombinator.com/
        Connecting to news.ycombinator.com (news.ycombinator.com)|220.127.116.11|:443... connected.
        HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
        Length: unspecified [text/html]
        Saving to: 'index.html'

        [ <=>                                                                                ] 22,353      --.-K/s   in 0.07s

        2014-11-17 14:27:19 (331 KB/s) - 'index.html' saved [22353]

With wget, I can just through any URL to it and it'll probably do the right thing with the least amount of surprises. "Grab a file" is my usecase 99.99% of the time, "Print a file" is the rest 0.01%.

<comment><USER6> I asked this of someone else, just out of curiosity, why do you find yourself downloading content from http that often? What are you doing with these files?

<comment><USER11> On my laptop, to view something while offline. On a server, to install something that is not in a package manager.

<comment><USER12> On that note, sites that don't easily offer copyable links for download annoys me to no end.

Most of the time downloading anything, I need it on another machine, and normally the easiest way is copy/pasting an URL from my local web browser to a remote terminal, and fetch it using wget. In which case an auto redirect to a mirror selector that again auto downloads the item, all handled by javascript, is pretty frustrating.

<comment><USER13> I noticed this with mega.co.nz and I hate it, they do all the downloading with javascript then start an actual browser download (which is just copying from localstorage to your download directory) which finishes in an instant but I have to remain on the page now.

<comment><USER14> I don't think it would be possible to use curl for mega because it has to locally decrypt the stream first. I do remember using a (now deprecated) python library that wrapped the mega api [0] a while ago, so that might interest you if you want to do everything from the command line.

[0] [https://github.com/richardasaurus/mega.py](https://github.com/richardasaurus/mega.py)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Do one thing and do it well.

IMHO cURL is the best tool for interacting with HTTP and wget is the best tool for downloading files.

<comment><USER16> Pretty much. i keep seeing curl being used as the "back end" of web browsers, fueling the likes of webkit.

Wget on the other hand end up within shell scripts and similar (i have before me a distro where the package manager is made of shell scripts, core utils and wget).

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This "-O" seemed dubious to me so I took a look. Turns out... yep, it's not as simple as that.

"curl -O foo" is not the same as "wget foo". wget will rename the incoming file to as to not overwrite something. curl will trash whatever might be there, and it's going to use the name supplied by the server. It might overwrite anything in your current working directory.

Try it and see.

<comment><USER18> According to the manpage, the filename depends only on the supplied URL:

      Write output to a local file named like the remote file we get. (Only the file part of the remote file is used, the path is cut off.)
      The remote file name to use for saving is extracted from the given URL, nothing else.

wget is a hugely useful tool for making local copies of websites and similar things -- the no-clobber rule is useful there, and the built-in crawling and resource fetching is fantastic. OTOH, for most things, I actually like curl's 'dumb' behaviour; it seems to match up better with the rest of the UNIX ecosystem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think of curl as a somewhat more intelligent version of netcat that doesn't require me to do the protocol communication manually, so outputting to stdout makes great sense.

</comment><comment><USER20> It would be really nice if curl took the content-type and results from isatty(STDOUT_FILENO) into consideration when deciding whether to spew to stdout.

<comment><USER21> Yes, I can't imagine there are actual scripts dumping binary data to the terminal, and it would help everybody whose terminal would otherwise experience what viraptor nicely describes:

""curl [http://..."](http://..."), screen is filled with garbage, ctrl-c, ctrl-c, ctrl-c, damn I'm on a remote host and ssh needs to catch up, ctrl-c, "cur...", actually terminal is broken and I'm writing garbage now, "reset", "wget [http://..."."](http://...".")

I admit it happened to me more than once.

<comment><USER22> For debugging home made servers it's quiet nice (if you don't want to wireshark):

        curl -silent http://i.imgur.com/0nCbgbi.jpg |hexdump -C |less

Now you could automate this for testing, etc.

There are use cases for terminal output and changing this behavior now would probably wreck many 3rd party scripts. And if you really just want a simple download manager you probably should use wget anyways.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> HTTPie is a command line HTTP client, a user-friendly cURL replacement. [http://httpie.org](http://httpie.org)

<comment><USER24> I find it very useful for debugging (and it's in the Ubuntu repos, and can be installed via homebrew on OSX).

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Chrome dev tools have a super useful "Copy as cURL" right-click menu option in the network panel. Makes it very easy to debug HTTP!

<comment><USER26> Same with Firefox dev tools. I use it all the time.

<comment><USER27> There's also an awesome Firefox extension called "cliget" that will give you curl and wget (and some windows only thing I've never heard of) command lines—It adds a "Copy curl for link" context menu item for every link.

It's quite nice because it will put all your cookies on the command line so you can trivially download files protected by a login page directly to remote servers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> We all have some user-bias and in this case it is geared towards seeing Curl as some shell command to download files through HTTP/S.

Luckily, Curl is much more than that and it is a great and powerful tool for people that work with HTTP. The fact that it writes to stdout makes things easier for people like me that are no gurus :) as it just works as I would expect.

When working with customers with dozens of different sites I like to be able to run a tiny script that leverages Curl to get me the HTTP status code from all the sites quickly. If you're migrating some networking bits this is really useful for a first quick check that everything is in place after the migration.

Also, working with HEAD instead of GET (-I) makes everything cleaner for troubleshooting purposes :)

My default set of flags is -LIkv (follow redirects, only headers, accept invalid cert, verbose output). I also use a lot -H to inject headers.

</comment><comment><USER29> 99% of the time I'm using curl/wget is to download a compressed file. So, for me, `curl | tar` is shorter than `wget -O - | tar`, and much better than `wget` -> download -> decompress -> delete the file.

<comment><USER30> I don't trust tarballs to decompress cleanly and not explode into umpteen smaller files which I have to hunt in my download folder.

<comment><USER31> So don't run it from your downloads folder, run it from the place you actually want it extracted to. You're only locked into a downloads folder if you're using a web browser, which in this case you aren't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Having known both tools for a long time now, I never realized there was a rivalry between them - I just figured they're each used differently. cURL is everywhere, so it's a good default. I use it when I want to see all of the output of a request - headers, response raw, etc. It's my de facto API testing tool. And before I even read the article, I assumed the answer was "Everything is a pipe". It sucks to have to memorize the flags, but it's worthwhile when you're actually debugging the web.

</comment><comment><USER33> > people who argue that wget is easier to use because you can type it with > your left hand only on a qwerty keyboard

Haha I would never realize that

<comment><USER34> I've worked with multiple people who chose passwords based on whether they could be typed with only one hand. I guess there's a perverse sort of sense in it, if you're really that lazy.

<comment><USER33> Makes sense but... I actually think the exact opposite.

For me the perfect password is one that you type the consecutive characters alternating between left and right hand.

Words that you type with just one hand you do a little 'twist' with the hand that, IMO, is a little slower and uncomfortable to do. As soon your finger reach a key the other hand is already moving to the next and this goes back and forth.

But I guess I'm making a point more about comfort than laziness.

<comment><USER34> I see what you're saying. I think the one-handed-password people mainly did it so that they could do something else with the other hand, like hold a cup of coffee, flick through the newspaper, that sort of thing. Seems like madness to me but there you go.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> The "c" in "curl" stands for "cat". Any unix user knows what cat(1) does. Why the confusion?

<comment><USER36> I think the confusion is probably that people didn't realize that "c" stood for "cat" in "cURL".

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I am surprised there is no mention of the BSD fetch(1) [http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=fetch%281%29](http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=fetch%281%29) , which probably pre-dates both curl and wget.

</comment><comment><USER38> I was recently playing with libcurl (easiest way I know to interact with a rest api in c), and libcurl's default callback for writing data does this too.It takes a file handle, and if no handle is supplied, it defaults to stdout. It's actually really nice as a default... you can use different handles for the headers vs the data, or use a different callback altogether.

I really, really like libcurl's api (or at least the easy api, I didn't play around with the heavy duty multi api for simultaneous stuff). It's very clean and simple.

</comment><comment><USER39> I use curl over wget in most cases, just because I learned it first I guess. I use it enough that I rarely make the mistake of not redirecting when I want the output in a file.

The one case where I will reach for wget first is making a static copy of a website. I need to do this sometimes for archival purposes, and though I always need to look up the specific wget options to do this properly, this use case seems to be one where wget is stronger than curl (especially converting links so they work properly in the downloaded copy).

</comment><comment><USER40> "cat url", huh, that makes sense.

Why not just alias it ("make a File from URL" -> furl?) if people want to use it with -O flag set as default?

</comment><comment><USER41> I find it pretty cool how authors of text-mode UNIX programs are still around. In fact the GNU culture has kind of grown up around that. And yet, to me text- mode stuff is just a part of a much larger distribution, not something to be distributed to so many systems. Oh, how times have changed.

</comment><comment><USER42> I am in the opposite camp, where I always try to pipe wget to file. Then I end up with two files. Argh.

</comment><comment><USER43> > if you type the full commands by hand you'll use about three keys less to > write "wget" instead of "curl -O"

Unless you forgot what the option was since you don't use it multiple times a day.

</comment><comment><USER44> OK, the screen filled with garbage happens the first time you use curl, then you read the README or --help, which you should have done before, you learn -o and… it never happens again.

No big deal.

</comment><comment><USER45> curl could parse mime type and decide where to push the stream, POC:

        #!/usr/bin/env sh

        case $(curl -sLI $1 | grep -i content-type) in
            *text*) echo "curl $1"
                    ;;
            *) echo "curl $1 > $(basename $1)"
               ;;
        esac

[https://gist.github.com/agumonkey/b85cef0874822c470cc6](https://gist.github.com/agumonkey/b85cef0874822c470cc6)

Costs of one round trip though.

</comment><comment><USER46> tl;dr Because the author says so.</comment>


How to launch, startup playbook and cost calculator - <AUTHOR> https://www.howmuchtolaunchastartup.com/ <comment><USER2> I'm not sure what this site is trying to be. The playbook just contains generic steps of a lean / startup process. The calculator seems to be a deal funnel for a consultancy which again is loose and amorphous.

Who's the audience here?

</comment><comment><USER3> There's a lot of guides for starting VC funded & B2C things. I haven't been able to find a "guide" for setting up a software consultancy. I know a group of programmers who would sign up if I started one and I think I'm good enough at explaining difficulties/alternatives to someone who isn't technologically inclined.

It looks like there's a lot of need for people who can write quality software by contract in a timely manor it's just very difficult to find clients and start a real business. How do you make that first leap?

</comment><comment><USER4> I find the progressiveness of the web app confusing - isn't there a page where I can see what exactly you're doing? Also I would expect a cost calculator that I can just use (and that is smarter than the 1k other calculators) instead of filling out a contact form.

In any case, the best of luck to you.

</comment><comment><USER5> Their 4 week paid service to launch your startup idea sounds to me like, "If your idea is trivial enough that a couple guys can code it in a week... then we are those guys!"

</comment><comment><USER6> good luck swindling the dreamy eyed 20 somethings... what a joke!

<comment><USER7> "Most recently I launched 10 Startups in 24 Hours." – And that should make me feel better as a customer? I'd prefer someone who customises advice and plans...

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is an ad for their paid services or something? I went through a bunch of button presses that seemed to lead to a page promoting me to buy something?

</comment><comment><USER9> Nice idea but such a calculator really depends on the type of business and the amounts from this one seem really low. Depending on your business and the number of people that actively can do tasks involved ofcourse.

<comment><AUTHOR> hey.

Yeah obviously its all situational. This calculator is there to give someone an idea of what it may cost to launch. You can of course go to places like crew.co and check out there calculator for their services.

We are focused on speed and getting MVPs out the door to validate.

Its not for everyone of course and we're cool with that.

just wanted to share our process of doing things and if we can be helpful to people then happy to!

<comment><USER9> Understood, just wanted to state that it seems low. I launched some companies in the UK and the amount you quoted was from a tenth to a thousandth if the actual cost depending on the company. But the lowest (ramen startup) cost for those services was 10x higher than your quote. So maybe you are really nicely priced or you get in clients this way and up sell? Which is a viable sales strategy by the way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed.

We think that lots of companies charge extortionate prices to 'help' founders where they don't have the money and resources to do so at the early stages.

Moving quickly and focusing on the Minimum Viable Product is our speciality and this ensures people don't waste time or money building something for no- one.

We do have services that can help after the launch stages of course :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It would be cool with a startup service, where you just need to have an idea, and take strategic decisions, while all the work is done by other people.

</comment><comment><USER11> More concrete examples would be helpful: actual user acquisition channels that could work and how to use them. Everything else is relatively easy: User acquisition is the hardest part.

</comment><comment><USER12> Why to write something that exist for years and is for many ppl a holy bible for starting a startup? Has not even gone out of date and nobody wrote anything better. :)

[https://gettingreal.37signals.com/toc.php](https://gettingreal.37signals.com/toc.php)

For years I watch how many medium articles, websites or self-appointed internet gurus write about the same thing over and over again... with very weak effect.

It's nothing personal, yet I don't like that chat look that force me to click and click to read something.

BTW. U make super advanced website for "Your estimated cost for this project is £1800"?

<comment><USER13> I agree that the website is overkill for what is trying to be communicated but...

> Why write something that exists?

B/c it's good to have more than 1 opinion. If someone has successfully started a startup or 2, I would want to hear their story. Looks like the writers have some experience. I'm not big into relying on 1 bible.

<comment><USER12> Yet it's almost the same thing. With minor difference that they focus on interviews and long-term strategy than making MVP from day one. Also if you search through medium articles u will find hundreds of startup bibles based on Getting Real. ;)

For me Getting Real is saying one thing "Don't think to much... Just fuckin' do it!". :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Awesome! Good luck Ben!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm going to have to call out Ben Tossel for vote brigading. Here's a link : [https://twitter.com/bentossell/status/920574217841774592](https://twitter.com/bentossell/status/920574217841774592)

This is not product hunt to say "Hey we launched on PH" which is code for "come upvote my post".

I can only speculate on what goes in private, but you get the point.

This practice of vote brigading is very very common for people who have any meaningful following or are close to "influencers". I know a shit ton of people who do either open vote brigading or do so privately. It's also very easy to avoid the voting ring detector since launches are rare. It's fucking disgusting to say the least.

The only consolation for me is that such people _will not_ succeed long term or at least very few will succeed. To the community : please keep your eyes open, a lot of content does not get to the front page organically, when you see such posts call them out.

I hope the comments on this post make sense with this context.</comment>


Workplaces need more walls, not fewer (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/12/30/google-got-it-wrong-the-open-office-trend-is-destroying-the-workplace <comment><USER2> Even a little attention to acoustics could make the open or quasi-open office much better for workers. At the moment, you're expected to deal with this yourself by putting on headphones and overwriting the noise with music.

The "modern" open-plan office in which I work is particularly bad at acoustics. The dining area has a _dome_ , which looks nice but sounds like an echoing railway station. I avoid it because I can't make out conversations in that kind of environment. Said dining area is isolated from the rest of the office by a partial wall that does not go all the way up.

All walls and ceiling surfaces are smooth and flat to maximise acoustic reflection. When we first moved in, the glass-fronted meeting rooms were echoing little boxes that were also impossible to hold conversations in, so we had to fit fabric acoustic suppressing wall hangings.

Offices could do well to learn from the "modern bar vs. traditional pub" layout approach. The bar is open and loud; conversation requires either out- louding people or leaning into someone's ear. The traditional pub "snug" has wooden half-partitions into booths, lots of fabric on the seating, maybe a few wing chairs, and a twisty internal layout. The ambient volume is much quieter.

An office laid out like a snug would still technically be "open" but would stop noise travelling across the office. Even just an acoustic suppressant ceiling would make a big difference.

<comment><USER3> You are also at the mercy of where you are seated, not just wrt acoustics, but also how loud the people nearby are.

<comment><USER2> Yes, but most adults tune themselves somewhat to the ambient level. So having a loud incoherent "murmur" from the rest of the office also makes your neighbours louder.

<comment><USER4> The sale guys seem to compete to be the loudest, not revert to the mean.

<comment><USER5> There are similarly competitive people in engineering disciplines, even. I think many of us know that person that when trying to argue why their problem solution is the best problem solution tend to try to be the loudest person in the room. (Some of us work to reform in college; others might be that way their entire lives.)

<comment><USER2> Back at university I went to dinner with one of those people who liked to talk loudly over other people, and another person who was normally soft-spoken but had been an officer in the Navy and therefore professionally trained in loudness.

The ensuing loudness war almost got us thrown out of the restaurant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As a remote worker that despises open offices, I don't believe that nodding in agreement with opinion pieces such as those by Lindsey Kaufman is helpful to the discussion about it.

The 2 common cited reasons of _" saves real estate costs"_ and _" employee distrust"_ have become thought-stopping memes that prevents the analysis of executives who _prefer_ working in open offices and became successful with it. I previously posted an example of Mark Zuckerberg's thinking:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13374848](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13374848)

Look at those old photos and then listen to him speak about his new 2015 open desk in the video. Contemplate whether he built the new open office to spy on everyone or... was it to recreate and extend the "open office" kitchen table at Harvard that let the team quickly iterate on software and get to $100 billion IPO?

Would Lindsey's complaints sway him? She says:

 _> A 2013 study found that many workers in open offices are frustrated by distractions that lead to poorer work performance. Nearly half of the surveyed workers in open offices said the lack of sound privacy was a significant problem for them and more than 30 percent complained about the lack of visual privacy._

Why would Mark Z care about these surveys? Of those respondents that were dissatisfied, what did _those workers who require private offices_ build that was great? He built a multi-billion dollar company with a cramped elbow-to- elbow open office.

Opinion pieces about this topic are not convincing. Concrete business performance _superior to everyone else_ based on private offices would be convincing.

<comment><USER7> > _Look at those old photos and then listen to him speak about his new 2015 > open desk in the video. Contemplate whether he built the new open office to > spy on everyone or... was it to recreate and extend the "open office" > kitchen table at Harvard that let the team quickly iterate on software and > get to $100 billion IPO?_

People have gotten to multi billion IPOs without open spaces.

It's just a random historical accident on Facebook's story, and it that sense it would be like considering PHP essential to Facebook's IPO, as if if they used Python or Ruby or anything similar, they wouldln't have made it.

> _Why would Mark Z care about these surveys? Of those respondents that were > dissatisfied, what did those workers who require private offices build that > was great? He built a multi-billion dollar company with a cramped elbow-to- > elbow open office._

People have built "multi-billion dollar companies" with all other kind of traits, including private offices (Microsoft, Apple) but also sexism, treating employees badly, death marches, poisonous work culture, etc.

It doesn't mean that companies should imitate all these to get to the "multi- billion dollar" part, any more than they should imitate open offices.

<comment><USER6> _> It doesn't mean that companies should imitate all these to get to the "multi-billion dollar" part, any more than they should imitate open offices._

I'm not claiming open offices are superior nor am I recommending that people copy Facebook's practices.

Instead, I'm asking people to suspend the common Dilbert-PointyHairedBoss disadvantages about open offices and instead, _really try to get inside the head of people like Mark Zuckerberg._

To exercise the notion of entertaining thoughts we don't agree with, let's write out a very uncomfortable sentence that might be uttered by Mark Z: _" I don't want to build private offices because that would be a competitive disadvantage and handicap Facebook's ability to innovate."_

Did that sentence make your eyeballs hurt? Good. If the programming community can't honestly engage with people executives who feel the truth of the above statement in their heart, the discussion on the topic will go nowhere. Showing news articles such as the one by Lindsey won't convince them.

 _> There are countless researches on the importance of focus and the impact of distractions._

Yes, of course uninterrupted focus and shielding from distractions is important. However, that factor will take a back seat if collaboration outweighs it. Unless that research shows that a _group_ of programmers in private offices _outperform_ programmers in open offices, it means nothing to people like Zuckerberg.

If you watch the Mark Zuckerberg video, it is clear he _prioritizes collaboration_ over disruptions. He's not stupid and knows that there will be inevitable distractions. He's optimized for collaboration because it matches his experience for success.

The way to counteract that thinking is to create a company with private offices that crushes Facebook (or one of Facebook's business units.) You need some type of _business evidence_ that frightens him into building private offices.

<comment><USER7> > _To exercise the notion of entertaining thoughts we don 't agree with, let's > write out a very uncomfortable sentence that might be uttered by Mark Z: "I > don't want to build private offices because that would be a competitive > disadvantage and handicap Facebook's ability to innovate."

Did that sentence make your eyeballs hurt? Good. If the programming community can't honestly engage with people executives who feel the truth of the above statement in their heart, the discussion on the topic will go nowhere. Showing news articles such as the one by Lindsey won't convince them._

An executive, including Mark, can be an arsehole and hold any kind of BS opinion (e.g. "I can't hire women and/or pay them the same, because they are not as good as men").

If they can't see why something is bad for their employees, fuck them. It's not like they run the only game in town.

And "it's good for the bottom line" is not an excuse. All kinds of shit can be good for the bottom line, including illegal practices (e.g. blackmailing foreign employees that you'll have them deported).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams" makes a _very_ compelling argument on why open-plan workspaces give terrible results for knowledge workers.

If you work as a team leader, manager, or senior programmer, it's absolutely a must-read. I can't recommend it more highly than that.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peopleware:_Productive_Project...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peopleware:_Productive_Projects_and_Teams)

[https://blog.codinghorror.com/peopleware- revisited/](https://blog.codinghorror.com/peopleware-revisited/)

[http://new.joelonsoftware.com/navLinks/fog0000000262.html](http://new.joelonsoftware.com/navLinks/fog0000000262.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> I think the open office trend might be accelerating remote working opportunities, which has to be a good thing.

I don't mind going to an open office occasionally if 90% of my week is working from my own office with walls, a chair setup for me and some IT equipment that's actually had some investment.

<comment> jon-wood +1 to that. I work remotely, with a visit to the office once every two weeks, mostly spent in meetings and catching up with what the rest of the company are doing. For that sort of thing an open office is fine, just don't expect me to get any quality code written while I'm there.

<comment><USER10> This rings so true, i had to check i hadn't written this last night. Whilst onsite on that once a fortnight visit, i can't do anything that involves real concentration. I detest open offices, but working from home has just made it worse.

<comment><USER11> Have been doing DevOps from home for almost three years now; its spoiled me. I'd never work in a traditional office setting again, open office or otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > As an excessive water drinker, I feared my co-workers were tallying my > frequent bathroom trips. At day's end, I bid adieu to the 12 pairs of eyes I > felt judging my 5:04 p.m. departure time.

That's your problem then! If people is judging you for going to the bathroom or browsing Hacker News instead of your results, then what the company/employees value is the problem.

People can browse internet at work, and if at the end of the year they are high performers I will give them an above average salary increase. If they are extra hours at the office, never look at Facebook but they don't perform well I will have a talk with them to see what's happening as that's not good.

<comment><USER13> For me, one thing is the _feeling_ of being constantly watched (even when you're not) that's detrimental to both health (stress) and productivity. So even if I'm less likely to browse HN when in an open office (compiling!) my productivity is much lower compared to a private office. Of course this is also due to audio and visual disturbances.

Interestingly one of the pros often mentioned for open office space is that it enables collaboration, I've never seen that work out in practice very well, though. At least I'm much less prone to start a discussion with someone in an open office because it will disturb everyone else who are not interested in the topic. More often than not other people will hush you and so on.

So in the end an open office is detrimental to my health, happiness, productivity _and_ (surprise) collaboration but hey I'm saving the company some thousand $$ each year, or _am_ I?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I still think this is a dividing topic.

I personally enjoy working in an open office. I think I would have a hard time working from home or in a singular office... I need people around me, I like being able to get up and communicate with colleagues. Yes, it can get annoying, but the pros outweigh the cons for me.

This isn't the trend in tech, I have a lot of developer colleagues that would prefer to stay at home, or at the very least isolate the tech department from the rest of the company.

A while ago my company moved developers into their own office. It didn't last for a long time (for a number of reasons), I saw no benefits in it and was very happy when the decision to move us back in was made.

<comment><USER15> Maybe - and I know, this is going to sound crazy - maybe companies could provide a little variety and let their developers choose the working environment works best for them?

<comment><USER16> It should be obvious that a company should cater to individual needs, but they rarely do. E.g. open offices are extremely tiring for most introverts, there should be quiet zones/rooms where these people could go to focus/recharge. Ideally they should be offered private space.

There should be strict rules on what is accepted behavior and volumes (of talking) in an open office. Distracting behavior should be reported immediately and corrected.

<comment><USER2> People misunderstand diversity as a set of checkboxes, when "cater to individual needs" is the real core of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I was thinking about this the other day, and I sat down and designed an office space for a company built around paired programming.

The design is focused around four-office bullpens like so: Two programmers share a 225 sqft office. Offices open into common spaces for collaboration and reception. Some sort of gatekeeper sit at a desk in the reception area, playing interference for anyone trying to interrupt programmers at work, either in their office or in a collaborative session.

The offices themselves could have windows, and each bullpen would take up 1100 sqft or so. Here's a rough design of a bullpen:

+</comment><comment></comment><comment>---+</comment><comment>----+</comment><comment></comment><comment>---+

        office     collab       office

+</comment><comment></comment><comment>---+</comment><comment>----+</comment><comment></comment><comment>---+

        office    reception     office

+</comment><comment></comment><comment>---+</comment><comment>----+</comment><comment></comment><comment>---+

                   entrance

So, in a 2500 sqft space, you could provide a controlled work environment for 16 programmers.

<comment><USER18> I'd rather work in something like this (each char is about 4 ft high by 2 ft wide):

      ######@@@@####@@@@@@  # = 8'x12' office
      ######@@@@####@@@@@@  @ = 8'x12' office
      @@@@  @@@@####  ####  % = 30"x6' tables (4)
      @@@@   %""""%   ####  = = wall
      @@@@   %%%%%%   ####  * = gatekeeper's desk
      ####            @@@@  $ = 8'x14' kitchenette
      ####   </comment></comment><comment>   @@@@  & = 8'x14' equipment
      ####            @@@@  ^ = entry/egress
      &&&&&&&  **  $$$$$$$  " = projection screen
      &&&&&&&****  $$$$$$$
                 ^^

That's 40'x40', but it also gives you space for the local printer, the fridge, sink, and microwave oven, and some local servers. The central area is about 16'x24', which is reasonable for 8 people, and cramped for 10. The accessible path is compliant with ADA guidelines, I think.

I don't like shared offices.

Outside of the basic 40'x40' pod, it would make sense for the kitchenettes to share a wet wall with bathrooms, and try to get at least one exterior window to the offices closest to the entry, like this: (each char is 10 ft high by 5 ft wide)

      ########   ########  # = 40'x40' office pod
      ########   ########  M = men's restroom (2+1)
      ########   ########  W = women's restroom (3)
      ########MMM########  . = corridor
      ...................
      ########WWW########
      ########   ########
      ########   ########
      ########   ########

</comment><comment><USER19> I am working for almost 6 years and all of my workplaces were (are) open office. But I believe there is a big difference as privacy at open office and private office.

There are open offices with privacy (covers around your table) and just 10s of people sitting next to each other on a row with tiny tables.

Problem with no privacy is, people tends to talk next to each other compared to open office with privacy (people use messengers more often then). This creates a lot of noise in the office which causes needing of headphones. And of course there is always some person that shouts from first to last row about some joke.

If you are not giving constant smoking breaks your only breaks at work time is visiting some non-work website (facebook or news site etc.) and when you visit one of these sites, your colleagues just start eyeing up your monitor, or you get eye contact with your boss (Murphy's law). Thanks to big screens nowadays, someone can see your screen 3 rows behind you whenever you switch to not work related website.

Having private office for everyone won't be possible on space wise and I believe author and other people just needs open office with covers around. Sitting at row of tables like at internet cafe is bad impact on your performance for sure (and also privacy wise).

Last but not least, I should say that, because of productivity reasons (usage of personal phones, social sites etc.) is a big bs. for having open offices. As long as you do your duty on time with good quality, you should be allowed to use your personal phone or facebook or whatever. Blocking usage of these items or websites doesn't assure of better productivity.

<comment><USER7> > _Having private office for everyone won 't be possible on space wise and I > believe author and other people just needs open office with covers around._

We've regressed to worse than cubicles because it is not "possible space wise"?

Considering the average salary of a programmer, it sounds totally possible space wise.

Besides, how about they drop the ping pong room, the Nerf shooting range and the like first?

<comment><USER19> I never experienced cubicle environment (at least not like the ones at US offices), private space means like 4 tables placed like a square (one desk on each corner) and seperated with covers on desk. It's not ideal to work in cubicles which is slightly bigger than coffins.

Ping pong room, Nerf shooting ranges are all "fancy" rooms they use to give the modern, fun working environment message (or lie). If they need extra space, I am sure most companies would demolish even bathrooms but don't touch those "fun rooms". And I agree that it's bs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The biggest mistake of any open office is putting tech people in the same room as sales, or in my case: tech people in the same room as support (phones). Way to go management.

<comment><USER20> I thought the same, but it could be worse. My team sits alongside one of the organization's helpdesks, and they're a hell of a lot less noisy than the open-plan web dev agency guys in the next suite over.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's like languages in computer science, there's no "one fits all" in terms of office space organization. Some prefer open-office setups, some prefer being quiet in a private space. I actually like a mix of both. Or event of four types of workplaces: from home (no commute, no money spent on food, my vinyl record player), from an open-space (open connection with people you know), from a coffeeshop (connection with people you don't know) or from a private meeting room (private connection with people you know). We need a mix of all of those, and managers need to trust people: they know best where to work to be the most productive.

</comment><comment><USER22> Part of the reason why this is controversial, I think, comes down to the majority of the type of work that people are doing on a day-to-day basis.

If you get to work, have a ten-minute standup, then go and try to hammer out code the vast majority of the rest of the day, then you need a default-private environment. Visual and auditory privacy, in a closed office, with multiple large monitors, correlates with success here.

But if you spend most of your time bouncing ideas off each other, then the fluidity of verbal communication is much more efficient, for most people and use cases, than putting everything in writing first. With such constant change, keeping everyone in the loop is going to be at a higher priority than pure development speed.

The balance is probably what kind of organization you have. Do you have a small start-up where the entire company can fit into one room? An open space (well, relative to its size) probably makes sense. Do you have a large organization where somebody writes spec and passes it to a programmer for implementation? Private offices for programmers are probably best. Do you have small feature teams where management gives feature requests to the team as a whole? Give the team its own private room, segregating them from other teams.

</comment><comment><USER23> FWIW, one of the main reasons I started Fogbeam Labs is because I want to build the company I always wanted to work at. So... if and when the day comes that we are successful enough to start hiring employees, and have a traditional office, one thing I absolutely intend to commit to is a "everyone gets a private office, with a door" policy.

Now, that said... I'm starting to question the need for traditional offices in general, as technology improves our ability to work remotely. I don't know if I'd want to go for a 100% "work from home or wherever you want" policy or not, but it's not something I would unilaterally rule-out right now either.

Sadly we're probably still a ways off from reaching the point where any of this will come into play. But we'll keep grinding, exactly because the world needs more companies that treat employees as people not fucking "resources". (Don't even get me started on how pissed off I get when I hear somebody refer to a person as a "resource").

</comment><comment><USER24> The biggest mistake I see in implementations of open office plans is work areas that are too small. The open office works best when it feels spacious and customizable, not cramped and fixed. Desks and whiteboards on wheels, choice of standing/sitting, and room for teams to self organize is fun and productive. The shoulder-to-shoulder seating at rows of fixed workstations common in off-the-shelf open plans is what's oppressive. In short, if a company is moving to an open floor plan to save on real estate, then they're doing it wrong.

</comment><comment><USER25> I've given up on my dev dept. I'm sitting in the finance dept.

</comment><comment><USER26> To say that one size fits all is, at best, silly. A given (company) culture is the aggregation of: people hired, the environment they work in, how they are treated, etc. One person's "I'd never work there" is another's "I'd kill to work that."

p.s. That said, perhaps the Washington Post is correct. The workplace should be either robots, or pseudo-enslaved humans. But Jeff isn't going to appreciate an article with that slant.

</comment><comment><USER26> So it's official, 2017 is the year of wall building :)

</comment><comment><USER27> Most of the open office complains and articles are anecdotal. From what I know Google is fanatical about data gathering for efficiency they probably have the data to support open work spaces otherwise they wouldn't be doing it.

<comment><USER28> > Most of the open office complains and articles are anecdotal.

Anecdotal? There's a great New Yorker article[1] that references a number of studies. This blog post[2] links to a couple others and addresses costs/alternatives. A "study of over 40,000 survey responses collected over a decade has found that the benefits for workers are quickly outweighed by the disadvantages"[3]. Here's a Washington Post piece[4] on office furniture designers realizing (citing multiple studies) "open-plan spaces are actually lousy for workers." A TIME article[5] highlighted decades of research that associated open layouts with "greater employee stress, poorer co-worker relations and reduced satisfaction with the physical environment."

[1] [http://www.newyorker.com/currency-tag/the-open-office- trap](http://www.newyorker.com/currency-tag/the-open-office-trap)

[2] [http://nathanmarz.com/blog/the-inexplicable-rise-of-open- flo...](http://nathanmarz.com/blog/the-inexplicable-rise-of-open-floor-plans- in-tech-companies.html)

[3] [http://theconversation.com/open-plan-offices-attract- highest...](http://theconversation.com/open-plan-offices-attract-highest- levels-of-worker-dissatisfaction-study-18246)

[4] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on- leadership/wp/2015/04...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on- leadership/wp/2015/04/22/office-designers-find-open-plan-spaces-are-actually- lousy-for-workers/)

[5] [http://ideas.time.com/2012/08/15/why-the-open-office-is-a- ho...](http://ideas.time.com/2012/08/15/why-the-open-office-is-a-hotbed-of- stress/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> It's hardly possible to say that one is better than the other. Companies may opt to have both of these office types and transact the employees within according to their preferences on this matter.

</comment><comment><USER30> It seems difficult to evaluate these articles. Employees want private offices, so they'll tend to view and upvote articles praising private offices. Besides biasing the likelihood of the article to occupy your attention, it could be an incentive for lower-quality news to publish them.

I remember reading in Trump's Art of the Deal book that showing up on-site to regularly inspect the ongoing construction helped get the building done faster and under-budget. That doesn't mean the contractors liked having the client show up on-site every day, even if it worked.

Ask yourself: If the science pointed towards sitting next to the loud sales guy, would you be as likely to upvote an article saying so? This is on the front page because people want it, not because they care about productivity.

Same thing applies to remote working: Most people can't work remotely, even if they say they want to.

<comment><USER31> > Employees want private offices

Employees want a little privacy and most of the want a quiet are. It's not the same as a want of private offices.

> If the science pointed towards sitting next to the loud sales guy

"If". Show me the data ;)

> Most people can't work remotely, even if they say they want to.

That depends on the equipment you need to use. If it's a phone, a laptop, and an internet connection, you can, end of story.

If you need specialized equipment it gets problematic indeed.

EDIT: typo.

<comment><USER30> > That depends on the equipment you need to use. If it's a phone, a laptop, > and an internet connection, you can, and of story.

Have you tried to hire anyone to do remote work, even freelance work? Most people fail miserably if you don't give them structure(and being on-site is a type of structure).

You can work around it by selecting for the small percentage of people who can work independently, but most people aren't in that small percentage. So success by being vigilant in selection would reinforce that it doesn't work on average.

If this site was "Manager News" and everybody here was a manager, I'd be more likely to believe discussion praising allowing remote workers. As it is, I'm skeptical that people aren't believing what they want to hear.

Personally, I find it quite plausible that the loud sales guy is hurting everyone's productivity. But lots of things are plausible, and it seems undisciplined to believe all the resulting discussion.

<comment><USER32> > Have you tried to hire anyone to do remote work, even freelance work? Most > people fail miserably if you don't give them structure(and being on-site is > a type of structure).

Have you tried to hire anyone at all? Recruitment is hard. Period.

Failure to track production/results is completely unrelated to where your employee works, as well as failure to produce is only related to the employee. If he/she does not know where he/she best produces, the recruitment is bad to begin with.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


PROTIP: How to Run Programs as a Domain User from a Non-domain Computer - <AUTHOR> http://codebetter.com/blogs/james.kovacs/archive/2009/10/11/tip-how-to-run-programs-as-a-domain-user-from-a-non-domain-computer.aspx?CommentPosted=true#commentmessage <comment><USER2> "Pro-Tip"? Seriously?</comment>


BGP filter failure brings Aussie Internet down - <AUTHOR> http://lists.ausnog.net/pipermail/ausnog/2012-February/012202.html <comment><USER2> Since BGP related topics are super rare here... If any of you are programmers interested in writing code that impacts the global routing table, we're hiring at OpenDNS.

We are AS36692 and anycast thousands of IPs, route a few dozen prefixes and have about 200+ neighbors across 14 datacenters. You would be hard pressed to find a network this large run by such a small team.

<comment><USER3> Uhh... Did Monster cancel your guys' account for overuse or something?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For the non network admins amongst us: [http://lists.ausnog.net/pipermail/ausnog/2012-February/01222...](http://lists.ausnog.net/pipermail/ausnog/2012-February/012225.html)

<comment><USER5> that was fascinating. i thought i understood the internet but i followed through with discovering what the terminology meant and feel a few times more clever right now. also, overwhelmed with putting the pieces together in my mind about where decentralisation breaks down.

<comment><USER2> The lack of security and authenticity in BGP is really one of the great weak points of the Internet. Problems are resolved quickly, but problems and mistakes are easy to make which is the first order problem.

There is work being done to better secure the BGP and prefix delegation / announcement infrastructure now: [http://www.nanog.org/meetings/nanog49/abstracts.php?pt=MTU3N...](http://www.nanog.org/meetings/nanog49/abstracts.php?pt=MTU3NSZuYW5vZzQ5&nm=nanog49)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think this is the related thread on whirlpool (aussie broadband forums/news) <http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1871831>

</comment><comment><USER7> Dodo! Dodo, internet that dies. Local internet was being routed via the US. I was visiting Australia as it happened. My connection had to route to the USA get to the ISP's own DNS servers!

</comment><comment><USER8> It's not the entire Australian internet that is down, just one of the major providers; it will also affect a lot of secondary providers that use Telstra for their upstream links.

</comment><comment><USER9> Telstra's outage visualized: <http://www.bgpmon.net/telstra-feb23-2012.png>

National Australia Bank was completely down for 53 minutes as well. [https://twitter.com/#!/bgpmon/status/172608854855647233/phot...](https://twitter.com/#!/bgpmon/status/172608854855647233/photo/1)

</comment><comment><USER7> Here is a list of everyone who was affected <http://bgp.he.net/AS1221#_peers>

<comment><USER10> Meh..

Everyone in Australia peers with Telstra. "Affected" in this case in meaningless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> go figure, Dodo was involved.

</comment><comment><USER12> Ah, that explains that particular mystery.

</comment><comment><USER13> Dodo?

</comment><comment><USER14> telestra is a total disaster of an telco. not a surprise.

<comment><USER15> Maybe so, but in this case it looks like Dodo was the one that hosed them.

Since the internet is designed to be as decentralised as possible, it relies on a certain level of trust when it comes to BGP advertisements. In this case Dodo advertised an incorrect routing table upstream to Telstra which then propagated it out as per the protocol.

<comment><USER16> I am no expert, but it appears that Telstra had the ability to block the kind of erroneous BGP broadcast that Dodo made.</comment></comment></comment>


To Combat Physician Burnout and Improve Care, Fix the Electronic Health Record - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/2018/03/to-combat-physician-burnout-and-improve-care-fix-the-electronic-health-record <comment><AUTHOR> Every doctor I've ever met has complained about EHRs. To the point where I have to wonder if EHRs are intrinsically bad, or if something about the way they're developed, bought, and deployed is bad.

Doctors already have many struggles in their profession: [https://jakeseliger.com/2012/10/20/why-you-should-become- a-n...](https://jakeseliger.com/2012/10/20/why-you-should-become-a-nurse-or- physicians-assistant-instead-of-a-doctor-the-underrated-perils-of-medical- school).</comment>