Are you a 'cultural fit' for your job? Machines can now tell - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200227-are-you-a-cultural-fit-for-your-job-machines-can-now-tell <comment><USER2> If you asked a researcher on fairness and discrimination in machine learning, "what's an application where ML could go horribly wrong", they would describe exactly this kind of example.

I don't know a thing about this company, maybe they're doing great work. But here are the alarm bells.

\- Application domain is extremely difficult even for humans who get in-person interviews with the subject. Claiming to solve a task with ML that humans cannot reliably solve is a symptom of snake-oil.

\- Compounding this, feedback is very limited and noisy. It's hard to tell if your algorithm is doing a good or bad job. So it's very hard to train the algorithm to do better.

\- Data is likely to be low-quality (because humans can't even label this task well). Much worse, data is likely to reflect human biases, conscious and unconscious both. Racist or sexist data lead to racist or sexist algorithms.

\- Algorithms in the space are highly susceptible to learn stereotypes (even from apparently-unbiased data). We can expect tons of noise in most features of an applicant, while more reliable signal would come from very generic features like what college someone attended or other factors closely tied to race or socioeconomic background.

\- Feedback loops can be a problem if the algorithm is fed data that is produced by the algorithm. I.e. the algorithm mostly recommends men (let's say) and is fed positive feedback, it will discriminate even more against women and so on.

On a more personal note, it's not clear the premise of the task makes sense. A diverse team will have a greater mix of perspectives, which may make it more effective even if its 'culture fit' score is lower.

<comment><USER3> It's not clear from your comment whether or not you're familiar with the book Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O'Neil, but you echo many of its main arguments about these types of systems. I can recommend the book if you haven't read it.

<comment><USER2> I should have cited it; great read on this stuff and was ahead of the curve!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _> Instead of confronting racial and socioeconomic biases in our hiring process, we've decided to deflect blame to a consulting firm who will in turn blame it on a mysterious 'cultural fit' algorithm_

Seriously though, article does a bang up job ignoring all of the potential problems with systems like this

<comment><USER5> > Instead of confronting racial and socioeconomic biases in our hiring > process, we've decided to deflect blame to a consulting firm who will in > turn blame it on a mysterious 'cultural fit' algorithm

Culture encompasses a range of human behavior. Much of that, though it may not be tasteful to say, is tied to workplace performance. Pressure and desire to achieve, collective/individualist tendency, ethics and morals, conformity and deference to authority; if one is willing to acknowledge that cultures exist and vary, then one cannot deny that there will be strong correlations between culture and fit for particular roles. And as it happens culture correlates with nationality, race, and socioeconomic status - because parents and communities generally pass culture on to children.

At some point in the near future neural nets trained to predict human performance will undoubtedly condition on priors like nationality, race, and socioeconomic status, even indirectly if they are not explicit data points. What then? Will we continue to bend over backwards to deny reality in favor of a false Utopia? What happens when these trends suggest different interventions for medical conditions? Different learning environments? Different reactions to authority and punishment?

Edit: I don't understand the downvotes. Why use data analysis tools if you're just going to ignore the results you don't like? How do you expect to solve problems like inequality if you aren't willing to explore their actual causes? Is there something illogical or factually incorrect in my comment?

<comment><USER6> Assuming that any individual can be judged, or their actions predicted, from generalizations based on their culture or socioeconomic status is quite literally the definition of racism. Using correlations with race and socioeconomic status as a filter by witch to deny people the chance to achieve, advanced, and change those correlations/generalizations, is the definition of systemic racism. If you act based on those kind of generalizations or correlations in a way that enforces them, you're not identifying a problem, you're creating/perpetuating it.

<comment><USER7> I agree with the sentiment you express, but I think there is some nuance of definition that should be clarified here.

Deployed on a wide scale, the filters you describe would indeed constitute systemic racism. However, on an individual basis such practices would be more correctly termed profiling rather than racism since they lack intent. (This depends entirely on your definition of racism, of course, which it turns out can be quite difficult to pin down. [1])

I realize this may seem like splitting hairs since I ultimately agree with your overall point, but often such definitional issues result in a great deal of miscommunication and misunderstanding.

[1] [https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/06/21/against- murderism](https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/06/21/against-murderism)

<comment><USER8> It also depends on your definition of intent. If you knowingly implement a system with flaws that make it systematically racist, you have intended to be racist.

<comment><USER9> Hrmn. This makes it sound like you can only implement a systematically racist system if you are overtly/intentionally trying to be racist.

I suspect in many cases, folks who implement racist systems simply do not care whether their system is racist or not. They want to optimize/automate whatever it is that they are about, and if the result is unfair, well, that's just someone else's problem.

<comment><USER8> That is why I said 'knowingly'

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There might be some self-fulfilling prophecy going on here though...

"Congratulations! Your willingness to have all the complicated things that make up who you are summed up in a numeric score indicates that you'd be a perfect fit with our culture!"

A little more seriously...

> By assessing language in this way, Srivastava and other proponents of LIWC > analysis say they can tell whether someone fits in naturally within a group > – but also whether they adapt well over time when the group's dynamics > change. This ability to be plastic, to adapt, is often what organisations > should really be looking for, says Srivastava.

This just says that we can use algorithms to reinforce the traits that already exist on a team. That's a different question to whether hiring the candidate will help the company become more inline with what they want to be. It also seems like a great way to encourage ideological, gender, and cultural homogeneity.

<comment><USER11> Not only does it pretty much by definition create a monoculture, but it also runs into what in economics is called the Lucas critique.

Trying to make policy decisions based on highly aggregated historical data without understanding foundations fails because the policy change has an effect on behaviour, summed up by the idiom 'a signal that is being exploited too long ceases to be a useful signal'.

There was already the hilarious case of people putting words like "Oxford", and "Cambridge" in their applications in white font on a white background to trick some ML system that scanned applications for these signals.

I think we need to teach people who think they can solve every problem with some ML system a lesson in economics because this stuff is getting out of hand.

<comment><USER12> >I think we need to teach people who think they can solve every problem with some ML system a lesson in economics because this stuff is getting out of hand.

AI/ML has become one of the most hyped buzzwords lately. People are trying to find any and every area possible to push some kind of ML system into the project. Smart toothbrush that uses "AI" to predict the buildup of plaques. Smart shoes that uses AI to do some niche task... and so on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> From the article:

> Take personal pronouns, for instance – do they signal team awareness by > referring to work that "we" are doing – or do they rely on "I" and "me" a > lot?

Oh great, now we have to use these weasel words to describe our work in all our emails to our company so that we won't get pegged as non team players by our benevolent evaluation quiz.

Seriously, the main problem here seems to be that management is trying to reduce the cost of evaluating people as, well, people. If you are in any sort of a people management position (I'm not), they are trying to replace you with these ridiculous algorithms, and you should oppose their use in hiring out of self-interest, if not because they actually don't work.

<comment><USER14> I think it's even worse than that.

"I did this and that."

Translation: "I assert that I myself did these things."

"We did this and that."

Translation: "Some guys that work at my company did it."

The assumption that _we_ is better than _I_ is poor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> So a glorified facebook quiz is going to tell me if I'll be a good fit?

I'd say that the likelihood that employers use this to justify racism or sexism (consciously or otherwise) is nearly 100%.

In fairness, the article does address the potentially of monoculture, but I feel like this isn't going to work out for employers in the way that they hope; in small doses and properly managed, a toxic but talented person _can_ be good for a team.

One of the most talented engineers I've worked with for the stereotypical mold of the "hyper-productive douchebag". He definitely brought the team down somewhat, but I also learned a ton of useful things from him that I probably otherwise wouldn't have, and the same can be said for the rest of the team I was on. This guy was eventually fired because of his toxicity, and while I understand why my manager did it, I can't help but feel that the team lost something that day.

These systems probably do a decent job ensuring that you don't hire jerks, but I don't know that that is always going to work out in the company's favor.

</comment><comment><USER16> You mean "machines can now give you an answer more confident than any human would dare, with additional uncertainty information you'll be unable to grasp, and with a basis in solid pseudoscience.

</comment><comment><USER17> > For instance, the successful applicant might have to get up early to start a > shift on time or deal with a higher workload when the weather is bad. How do > they feel about that and how would they go about it? [...]

> A scoring system is agreed with each client in advance, so that the > algorithm can determine how well a candidate has answered a given question. > The tool might also deduct a few points should the candidate respond very > slowly to questions, for example.

I don't think this is a sophisticated tool. And that's even without questioning the premise that cultural fit as it's generally practiced is a good thing (far from clear).

</comment><comment><USER18> This is associative generalization at its best, also known as prejudice. Not all prejudice is bad, it is bad when you apply it against persons and irreapective of success rate,if even one individual causes the prejudiced test to fail, the test becomes an instrument of injustice.

We all think prejudice in the context of race or sex,but it can be applied in just about any context.

For example: You can be prejudiced when performing facial recognition and you may have some failure rate which can be tolerable for things like authentication or the police finding a suspect. But let's say this is used to perform an airstrike/assasination of a terrorist, is any level of failure rate acceptable? It shouldn't be,not on it's own. You should have independent corroboration and subjective confirmation. The 0.01% false positive times 7billion faces means a lot of people whose potential death you are tolerating.

This is similar to why lie detector is inadmissible in court.even with dna evidence you need to independently prove either motive or plausibility of the crime being committed by the suspect.

This is far from assasinations and criminal cases but the concept of "you're unethical if you tolerate any form of systemic injustice against even one person"

To me this sort of ML matching should never be used in hiring decisions but it can be used to corroborate manager/peer evaluations/sentiment after a probationary period.

In reality this means people have to lie/fake personality quizzes and verbage/vocabulary resulting in the best fakers outperforming the flawed yet better non-fakers. Very sad how history repeats.

</comment><comment><USER19> Humans made a machine print a result based on analytical models and a specific set of inputs created by academics on paper.

We've been doing that for years. What a shock we keep doing it.

The machine isn't telling us squat except that after adding/subtracting in this way we found this value. Even if those models are vetted by academics, academia is a politically manipulated shit hole. Nothing to do with ML is anything close to objective consciousness, decoupled from human ideas.

Humans can still blow up the machine and the political system that pushes such things on them.

When we can't even tell if we're guessing right or just close enough to trigger emotional familiarity to get a reaction out of someone who thinks the machine runs on magic, well... sorry y'all but absolutely none of this means anything except as confirmation bias to keep behaving as we are.

The only model we know of capable of creating a consciousness is the universe. All that energy/matter had to flow over eons, at a scale far beyond our conscious comprehension, to end up with us.

Thinking we are engineering anything close to consciousness is a conscious trick we're buying into to justify working for big tech corp.

</comment><comment><USER20> This is not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. A consultancy is basically using survey-type screening questions to bucket candidates, and another team seems to be doing some very basic text analysis to gauge team-type thinking. I was afraid this was going to be another ML debacle to "objectively" filter out people who don't fit the exact demographic mold the company already has.

That said, approaches like this tend to just lead to more gaming on both sides. Once survey questions become popular, the "right" answers get figured out, posted in how-to guides, and the screening quickly becomes worthless. To me, this says that hiring still sucks for everyone involved.

</comment><comment><USER21> Honestly, at some point, we have to regulate this bullshit.

This concept that these private companies feel they can use whatever means they can, to selectively discriminate against people, for whatever they want, has gone too far.

These large tech companies are failing in their social contract. Their purpose is to serve the people, the citizens that makes their success possible, but instead, they feel it is their right to do whatever they want, just because they claim to be a private company.

If these tech companies don't self regulate themselves, then we need to force their hand, and vote in politicians that will force a policy change down their throats.

</comment><comment><USER22> I guess people who can adapt to different workplace cultures are SOL ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

</comment><comment><USER23> Seems like a good time to get diagnosed with a personality disorder or some mental condition which legally qualifies as a disability and start making millions from discrimination suits.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm guessing I just upload a Spotify playlist.

This is a worrying trend. The "culture" fit is a maddening moving target. Culture is grown, it evolves. If we keep "selecting" a homogeneous "culture" (if we self-select) then we shouldn't expect very create results out of the team.

</comment><comment><USER25> There's a big concern here of algorithmic discrimination. How do you stop a black box algorithm from descriminating based on gender, class, age, or sexual orientation? Even if such discrimintion is inadvertant, it's a dangerous way of screening applicants.

<comment><USER26> >How do you stop a black box algorithm from descriminating based on gender, class, age, or sexual orientation?

you DeepDream the algorithm to check whether it is dreaming about a young straight white or asian male CS major with high GPA from top university.

Anyway, it is pretty cool that the next article on the same page is "What do we look for in a 'good' robot colleague?" Peak cultural fit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Oh, you use this to determine if I am a cultural fit, eh?

Well, I am not a cultural fit then.

</comment><comment><USER28> Psycho-Pass? [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psycho- Pass](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psycho-Pass)

</comment><comment><USER13> > Take personal pronouns, for instance – do they signal team awareness by > referring to work that "we" are doing – or do they rely on "I" and "me" a > lot?

</comment><comment><USER29> Does culture relate to national and race related culture?

<comment><USER30> Culture has many definitions, and most of them do involve generalizing a people. In the context of workplace culture, I believe it's explicitly not those things, but rather Merriam Webster's definition 1b:

"the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution or organization"

[https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/culture](https://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/culture)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> F* you machines.

</comment><comment><USER14> Machines eh.

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm not 100% convinced that "cultural fit" at its core isn't just another way of saying:

"angsty college grads who haven't fully learned how to accept themselves as individuals think talking to {{other demographic|old people, microsoft engineer, perl programmer, etc...}} is gross".

Or something along those lines (feel free to fill in your favorite flavor above).

In my experience there is almost zero NEED for my co-workers to resemble anything I like or enjoy. I can't say that I would PREFER this, but if my team consisted of a bunch of racist / bigoted purple martians, as long as our work days were 100% focused on our work, and my co-workers were all capable, dedicated, and good communicators, then what's the problem?

<comment><USER32> It seems this post wasn't that well received, so let me just go ahead and mention as a follow-up that I was once an "angsty college grad" myself. There was a time I contemplated and almost convinced myself that there might be something to this "cultural fit" thing. But then I experienced the work force for an extended period only to realize my preconceived notions of what it takes to be successful in business has almost nothing to do with personal traits. In probably every way I've ever thought about / experienced it, successful businesses are built by people whose workplace behaviors are composed of UNIVERSAL traits.

So, it follows that, for someone to say you're not a "cultural fit" more or less means you don't have what it takes to truly be successful no matter who hires you.</comment></comment>


Stealing from Self-Checkouts - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/03/stealing-from-self-checkout/550940/?utm_source=atlfb&single_page=true <comment><USER2> >There is NO MORAL ISSUE with stealing from a store that forces you to use self checkout, period. THEY ARE CHARGING YOU TO WORK AT THEIR STORE."

So, here's the link to that particular reddit gem, in case you want to read it in all its glory:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Shoplifting/comments/56saoh/selfche...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Shoplifting/comments/56saoh/selfcheckout_stealing/daqte1q/)

I'm... _almost_ sympathetic to an argument that amounts to the frustrating/dark side of automated assistance, which is probably something the audience here would do well to consider. I get frustrated with tech too and sometimes want a way around it.

But I wish that discussion was still active so I could reply... WTF, man. They're offering an automated way to complete a purchase, and it's not like you got paid to interact with the checkout cashier before. But let's say you see it that way. Let's assume that cashier was costing the store $25/hr (maybe), so the 6 minutes (maybe) they worked on _your_ purchase might be worth up to $2.50. Are you scrupulously making sure you only evened the score/took the store to the tune of ten quarters?

Unless you can't for some reason, pay for your groceries, don't inflate the prices everyone else has to pay to offset the cost of "external shrinkage," and keep society in the crucial resource of trust.

<comment><USER3> To be honest, I prefer to use an automated checkout. With a cashier, I'm always stressed because I have to put the items in the bag as quickly as they scan them, to avoid delaying the queue and wasting the cashier's time. In the automated checkout however, I can take my time to organise the bag and pay when I'm ready.

<comment><USER4> It depends on the automated checkout. In the Washington, D.C. area (U.S.), Giant Foods installed automated checkouts that are the same "length" as a regular checkout. You scan your items, put them on the belt, and they go to the bagging area at the end -- you can't bag them as you scan them. Once you're done, you're rushing to bag items as someone else decides to start scanning their items and send them down the belt, mingling with your items.

At Harris Teeter, on the other hand, you scanned an item and put it in the bag. You could load the bag as you wished.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm probably not the target audience. I queue up to use a checker. I like talking to them as they squeeze my Charmian and if they get paid to swipe things past barcodes while studying before university class we're all winning. Self checkout is slower for more than two or three things and th conversation is bad. FELLOW ROBOT GOOD DAY HOW IS YOUR IBN PRODUCT CODE LASER MINE IS RED

<comment><USER6> I'm much the same way, though I think another reason behind preferring the human checkers is the fact most self checkout machines are horrible in terms of usability. Oh no, you removed an item from the bagging area! Time to shut down the whole machine until some staff member comes over and unlocks it again!

Why? Who in their right mind thought this was a good design decision? It doesn't stop theft, it doesn't stop scams, it doesn't do anything other than infuriate legitimate customers at seemingly random.

Or in another example, trying to find the item you're buying if it's not a standard product with a bar code on the bottom. If the shop has a bakery or meat counter or whatever, that usually means lots of scrolling through pages trying to find the item you bought while hoping you can remember what the name of the damn thing was on the shelf in case two items look almost identical. Or in case you can't make out certain details on a tiny icon properly.

A human cashier can usually sort this stuff out much quicker than a customer using a self service machine could.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > When Voucher Codes Pro, a company that offers coupons to internet shoppers, > surveyed 2,634 people, nearly 20 percent admitted to having stolen at the > self-checkout in the past.

I weep for humanity. But there's no way the grocery stores would tolerate that level of theft. There's obviously strong correlation between people who steal and people who respond to Voucher Codes Pro surveys.

<comment><USER8> FWIW, the local supermarket near where I live decided to get rid of their self checkout, and I heard it was due to theft (and I do not live in a neighborhood where I would have thought theft would be an extra-serious problem...).

<comment><USER9> Don't know about your specific situation, but in my past experience and positions, even if your store is in a "nice" area it isn't insulated from coordinated mobile shoplifting rings operating from the "not-so-nice" areas.

I got out when self-checkout was just becoming a thing but even in those early days, the lack of accountability was already being taken advantage of by means of all the very scams listed in the article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I guess I'm type B for boring because I pay for everything at the self checkout.

<comment><USER11> Honestly the thought never even crossed my mind

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16292254](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16292254)

</comment><comment> racer-v There's one thing that prevents me from using self-checkouts: they have an annoying synthesized voice that says things like "place your items in the bag" or "please insert cash". I'm opposed on principle to voice interfaces that can't be muted, and machines telling me what to do. So far my best experience was with a checkout that let me change the language, so at least I couldn't understand it.

<comment><USER13> _Unexpected item in the bagging area_

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Someone I know was working at a grocery story when they were introducing self- checkout. The store did an internal test and they asked employees to try to steal using self-checkout. It was incredibly easy to do. However they went with it anyway. The idea was that people were honest and overall it was still an improvement.

However one thing that's different now compared to 15 years ago is there are online communities where those who are dishonest can share tips and tricks. Someone already mentioned but this exists:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Shoplifting/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Shoplifting/)

\---

If you're here to preach morals, enjoy your very brief stay. If you're here to learn and share, please help contribute to our wonderful community ...

\---

<comment><USER15> > If you're here to preach morals, enjoy your very brief stay. If you're here > to learn and share, please help contribute to our wonderful community ...

I'm not sure, but it seems like you're implying that preaching morals cannot be a contribution to your community.

If so, I think it raises some interesting issues about community and morality.

<comment><USER14> Exactly it just seems like a strange sub doesn't it. Even has nice mascot - the cute Reddit alien with a mask on.

Are there subs for other crimes like medical malpractice, robbery? What about more serious ones say rape or contract killing. I am sure assassins would "benefit" from sharing tips and tricks of the trade.

At first I thought, oh maybe these are people who are hungry and have to feed their family so they are stealing an extra bag of rice or potatoes. But I see them bragging about electronics, media, expensive clothes. The one that caught my attention is bragging about stealing thousands a month from Whole Foods. They justify it by saying Whole Foods treats their employees badly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> A trustless society is no society at all.

</comment><comment><USER17> So, given that the article didn't cite __which __subreddit, which reddit group made those comments?

<comment><USER18> Probably /r/shoplifting or /r/stealing .

<comment><USER17> Yeah, I finally found the post by searching the body text.

Just crazy on /r/shoplifting - people bragging all the time about their "scores". They don't know that their profiles are pretty readily accessible via snoopsnoo.com , Im guessing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> You'd have to be an idiot to do that in this day and age of ubiquitous video surveillance and smart machine visual perception.

<comment><USER20> you drastically overestimate the value of catching a couple of people stealing a couple of things vs implementing the system that catches them using video surveillance and cv

<comment><USER19> Statute of limitations for larceny in Massachusetts is 6 years. Would you really want to bet that it'll still be that hard in 2024?

<comment><USER21> Right, like CVS is going to keep all their surveillance video for over six years.

<comment><USER22> That wouldn't suprise me, considering the amount of other information they legally must keep on hand for some years on-site and then years in mass storage. (former CVS employee). Some of a pharmacy's surveillance would be kept just for instances of robbery and prescription fraud. The last one isn't always known upfront. There is also the issue of employee theft.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I guess, surprisingly, I'm the good guy for actually paying for my things.

Wonder how many small businesses go under because of this kind of theft.</comment>


Ohio Stopped Kicking Workers Off Unemployment After Hacker Targeted Its Website - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/n7wwdw/ohio-has-stopped-kicking-workers-off-unemployment-after-a-hacker-targeted-its-website <comment><USER2> The script in question:

[https://github.com/alexanderankin/ohio-covid- toolkit#readme](https://github.com/alexanderankin/ohio-covid-toolkit#readme)

The paste that started it all:

[https://pastebin.com/xPg08H7C](https://pastebin.com/xPg08H7C)

Via

[https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wxqemy/this-script- sends-...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wxqemy/this-script-sends-junk- data-to-ohios-website-for-snitching-on-workers)</comment>


Free open source video service - <AUTHOR> Features: * Cross-platform (Linux, MacOSX, FreeBSD, Raspbian/Armbian, Windows) * GPU/CPU Encode/Decode/Post Processing * Stream statistics * CCTV * Relays * Timeshifts * Catchups * Playlists * Restream/Transcode from online streaming services like YouTube, Twitch * Mosaic * Many Outputs * Physical Inputs (IP Camera) * Streaming Protocols * File Formats * Presets * Vods server-side support * Channels on demand * HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) server-side support * Public API, client server communication via JSON RPC Protocol gzip compression * Deep learning video analysis (Paid, demo by request) * Supported deep learning frameworks: Tensorflow NCSDK Caffe ML Hardware: Intel Movidius Neural Compute Stick NVIDIA Jetson Subscribers control Amazon Kinesis Video Streams integration * Admin panel * Docker Image <comment><AUTHOR> [https://github.com/fastogt/fastocloud](https://github.com/fastogt/fastocloud)</comment>


Twitter sues US govt to protect Dept of Immigration employee who is anti-Trump - a-smith https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/04/06/twitter_sues_us_government_to_protect_department_of_immigration_employee_who_doesnt_like_trump/ <comment><AUTHOR> Can't wait for Trump's anti-Twitter tweets.</comment>


Whale Path – Crowdsourcing Market Research Analytics - <AUTHOR> https://whalepath.com/challenge/list

<comment><USER2> By the way, an awesome team behind this!

<comment><USER3> +1 An incredibly driven team</comment></comment>


Boost your productivity: kill some variables in your life - <AUTHOR> http://franzisk.us/2013/02/18/boost-your-productivity-kill-some-variables-in-your-life/

<comment><USER3> While I don't disagree with the general sentiment of simplification by reducing choices, a pattern that I consider productive emerged and solidified for me over the years for buying food.

When I first moved to Manhattan, I used to buy food from two deli's that were within a couple of blocks of my downtown apartment. Then I discovered FreshDirect and for almost a year ordered food online that got delivered to my apartment on the 29th floor at a time slot of my choosing. Ultimate efficiency (including, streamlined periodic re-order).

But then I discovered Whole Foods and would from then on walk to the TriBeCa store (the largest in Manhattan) every other day. The walk is about 10 minutes and is a great way to build in exercise, clear the mind, and stumble upon new things en route. I would usually buy the same stuff, with the occasional dipping into something new and interesting. The only times when I would change this pattern was some nights on my way back from violin class - then I would go to Zabar's or Whole Foods Columbus Circle; or if I crave something at 3am - then the 24 hour Duane Reade on Wall Street or the deli on John are there to satisfy me.

Now that I live in Palo Alto, I have a similar, pattern - I walk to Whole Foods (sometimes taking a detour so that the walk is a little longer) and pick up the few things I'll need for the next day or two. I never buy food for more than 3 days out. Alas, there are no decent 24 hour options anywhere but Manhattan, but I've learned to cope.

 _EDIT: grammar_

<comment><USER4> No decent 24-hour options? Safeway is open 24 hours. There's one just off Sand Hill and another on El Camino.

<comment><USER3> Ha, good to know. What about restaurants with decent food at any hour - <USER2> would be a winner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I find the biggest productivity-killer is feeling uninspired. So I actively seek out a certain amount of variation and randomness, just to have more chances at those moments of serendipity that give you a really good idea.

<comment><USER6> Reminds me of a older video Ze Frank made: [http://www.zefrank.com/zesblog/archives/2007/11/on_feeling_u...](http://www.zefrank.com/zesblog/archives/2007/11/on_feeling_unin.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> For a short list of 3 things, I don't think clothing qualifies to be on there as a priority to simplify. As long as you're not wearing a lot of clothing with special dry cleaning needs, it's not hard at all to have a little bit of variety in your closet.

I probably spend less than 20 seconds 'picking out' my attire for the day. Am I going to shave that down to 5 or 10 because I only have one kind of shirt? The downside of seeming like that guy who wears the same thing every day is worse than the extra 10 seconds spent.

<comment><USER8>
      | like that guy who wears the same thing every day

That describes Steve Jobs, and he was considered fashionable. It just depends on what you settle on.

<comment><USER7> There's a difference between how the general public, who only sees celebrities at high profile events, perceive someone and how the people you're around every day at the office or home might react.

<comment><USER9> So you're saying those working closely with Steve Jobs thought to themselves "man, that guy should pick a new polo shirt every now and then".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Except: Have some kids, realize that no amount of planning can predict a fever, a boo-boo in the playground,etc.

<comment><USER11> What's a boo boo?

<comment><USER12> It's child-speak for a small injury that children are prone to, such as a cut or scrape.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> These three examples seem to me to be coming from a person with ridiculous amounts of time at their personal disposal. Let me know how this goes once you have a kid or two.

<comment><USER14> The three examples seem to me to be coming from a person with very little spare time who is trying to maximize that amount.

What part of grocery subscriptions, scheduling what can be scheduled, and minimizing your variety of clothing takes time away from child-rearing rather than adding time to it?

<comment><USER13> My point is that you always think you have no time until you have children - then you realize you had a ton.

<comment><USER15> I just can't upvote this enough at 2.14am just after putting my kid to bed not 10 minutes ago. Only time I actually have now is between 12:00 and 4:00 am to do anything in the computer, and even then, still have to feed/pick him up when needed.

But I don't complain, love the little bugger :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> As someone who has been interesting in tweaking personal productivity for a while I found this post to be rather simplistic. I also do recurring supermarket orders with a few clicks as probably many does that here already. Not a big deal. Automatic clothing? Meh.

I was expecting to find more insight into the real variables to kill when thinking of startup productivity. To implement certain features or not? Allocate that much energy into that refactoring or not now even if its looks prettier? Cost vs time of delegation and so on. A more in deep discussion about what we do when we're actually working I think may trigger much better results in real productivity.

</comment><comment><USER17> This article is open-ended but still incomplete. Incomplete in sense that it does not define a replacement or how to benefit from saved time. It should say: Boost your productivity by replacing X with Y. If I leave farther from my workplace, replace "time spent to commute" with "exercise/recreation etc" or "an extra hour of billing" - "increase in rent".

</comment><comment><USER18> To minimize the subjective speed of time (and thus maximize the perceptual length), one must constantly vary one's routine [citation needed]. The disciple of those recommendations will feel freer, and perhaps more creative, but is sacrificing experience on their alter of efficiency.

</comment><comment><USER19> Kind-of unrelated: the recent fashion of bolding certain parts of one's blog posts really turns me off reading them. If you have to tell me which parts of the text are important, you're not writing properly!

<comment><USER20> This style has been around online for at least a decade in the wall-of-text infomercial-style hard-sell brochure sites selling digital information products, and I presume is some adaptation of previous direct mail marketing or somesuch. If you're only noticing it now it's just a sign of the times of "startup" culture going mainstream.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Great (but kinda short) overview of useful productivity techniques. I like this concept of minimalism. Does anybody know some extended articles on this? (kind of minimalism: best practices)

<comment><USER22> There really isn't such thing as "minimalism best practices". Minimalism is personal and the definition varies. I consider myself a minimalist. To me it means only owning things I need while being practical.

How many shirts or pants does someone _need_? One of each. But unless you want to do laundry very frequently that's not practical. So I own enough that I do laundry about once a week.

One of the other things I do is buy high end products. If I'm going to own something I want it to be reliable and last a long time. I want to be able to depend upon it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> In the case of clothing, limiting your choices seems just like a patch to the problem. When ever I find myself looking for an especific shirt I try to focus on the real problem: find a shirt. Same for shoping.

The more you condition the solution to a problem the harder it is to find it. Sometimes the problem is the solution I propose to the problem.

</comment><comment><USER24> It probably takes longer to have to wash/dry 'only a handful of tshirts and jeans' very often than it does to have a whole wardrobe full and take (literally) an extra few seconds deciding what to wear every day

<comment><USER25> I think the idea is that you own a dozen of the same outfit, which solves the laundry problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> "Grocery-shopping normally takes hours and is a pretty redundant activity."

Really? I offer that "hours" may be an exaggeration here. It doesn't match my experience, anyway.

</comment><comment><USER27> Where/how do you order groceries online in North America?

<comment><USER28> It's not exactly the same, but here is an example:

[http://www.harristeeter.com/shopping/express_lane/policies.a...](http://www.harristeeter.com/shopping/express_lane/policies.aspx)

You order online and then pull up to a curbside box and they bring out your order. I'm sure other area's have similar options.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> def agree to the time-scheduling point! I also use really specific time-slots for doing tasks that distract me from important stuff!</comment>


Burnout and the Brain (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/burnout-and-the-brain <comment><USER3> I'm burnt out, not from stress, but from being "forced" to do a bunch of stuff that I don't care about with a bunch of other people I don't really care about for a company I don't care about, but if I stop at any time the money stops coming into my bank account so I just have to keep pretending I care for years just to keep the game going. The actual work itself varies from stupid easy to relatively challenging, but again, I just can't bring myself to care beyond ensuring my team doesn't think I suck at my job so I can keep collecting my paycheck. All I'm doing is running out the clock every single day.

That's why I'm burnt out.

<comment><USER4> You're ahead of a lot of people in a similar situation as yours, and that's because you have identified what's the problem that is affecting you.

Now, will you b1tch about it for the rest of your life or are you going to find a solution and work to achieve it?

<comment><USER5> That's not a very nice thing to say. I am in the position where I could take your advice but for many folks there is no plausible solution. Sure, anyone could fuck off to the woods, open a fruit stand, and tell their spouse and children to suck it up and college is overrated anyway. But what if your spouse doesn't want to live behind a fruit stand in the woods? What if you have to support a family and the pay ceiling for your profession doesn't allow you to save enough money to retire early? What if you're already closing in on 50? It's easy to tell people they just need a plan, but everybody has their own unique problems and it's a bit rude to imply that it's their own fault because they didn't work hard enough. GP could have made a plan to retire at 35 and sail around the world, pinched their pennies, and saved up a million bucks, then their child got cancer or something else equally horrible. Or maybe you're right and they spent all of their discretionary income on magic the gathering cards. Point is, we don't know and it's not nice to tell random strangers on the internet to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

<comment><USER6> Everything I'm hearing sounds like a choice. Married? That's a choice. Kids? Choice. MtG cards? Choice. Fruit stand? Choice.

America is a place where you have more chpices, but also bear the consequenses thereof.

Let me take the opposite: should you be able to live behind a fruit stand in the woods and have your wife taken care of and kid put through college? Who should pay for that?

I don't think it's "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" as "make your chouces and deal with/don't whine about the consequences".

<comment><USER7> Is cancer a choice? What about other debilitating, chronic, expensive-to-treat illnesses?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For me, burn out was not a consequence of the demands of the job, but a belief that nothing I did could possibly have any impact, that nothing I said would ever be listened to, that every moment I spent in that fucking place was an absolute waste of time.

This wasn't how it started, I took a vital yet buggy and unmaintainable piece of software and got it to a point where new features could be cleanly added and new bugs were a very rare event.

And yet, every time I tried to make any significant change - <USER2> intended to further improve the maintainability of the project - I got shat on by an architect who otherwise had nothing to do with the project and a boss who never listened to any one else.

<comment><USER9> > I got shat on by an architect who otherwise had nothing to do with the > project and a boss who never listened to any one else.

Sole aim of some people is just to have power over others, force subordinates to commit their mistakes, and to replace subordinates with others who are increasingly zealot, obedient, and desperate. I have no idea how to defend myself in such situations, usually I just quit.

"Professional managers" (persons being managers and leads from the beginning of their career), and overeducated people joining the workforce late in their lives and straight from or shortly after the academia are the two profiles from whom I observed such behaviour.

<comment><USER10> in your opinion why do people joining workforce late in their career from academia behave this way?

<comment><USER11> I would imagine it's a combination of the natural power dynamics of school, and a need to be the smartest person in the room.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> One thing I'd love to know is how leaders who have faced incredibly stressful situations for sustained periods manage to push through.

Hannibal the Carthaginian general for example spent nearly 20 years fighting the Romans on their own turf in Italy. He had a string of victories and also suffered incredible losses including the loss of an eye to infection.

Despite that he led his men and was incredibly popular. After laying waste to the Italian countryside for two decades he was reluctantly recalled back to Carthage where he served as a statesman for several more years.

He was then exiled and a price put on his head and he made plans to ally himself with other leaders of the day - honestly his life goes on and on. The guy's resiliency is incredible and he isn't the only one of his age. There are numerous examples of similar people from the history of the time.

I suppose your modern day cases like Musk or Jobs are what we'd think of today. The former's challenges are well documented but the latter had just months to turnaround a sinking Apple and restructure the company before it ran out of money. He'd been through many ups and downs and again displayed a resiliency which is pretty remarkable.

I think that everyone's ability to handle stress varies. What I'd love to know is why some people can suffer incredibly and not only survive but thrive and if there is some way in which we can learn how to suffer the everyday arrows slung our way and bear our burdens better.

<comment><USER13> Because Hannibal did not have the six factors of burn-out: lack of control, insufficient reward, lack of community, absence fo fairness, conflict in values, work overload.

Arguably Hannibal:

\- is in control (he's leading),

\- he's probably rewarded through pillaging, (I feel that reward is absolutely key to continue pushing through)

\- there is probably a sense of community while they are laying waste,

\- as a leader he probably get "fair" shares of reward for himself (cf. the Iliad, opening list of treasures)

\- the work he's doing is probably aligned with his own values (unlike Xenopho who was hired as mercenary in terrible conditions), as we can see he didn't want to stop campaigning

\- work overload is probably there, as campaigning men have little sleep and work a lot (cf. Cesar)

Conclusion: Hannibal is less at risk of burn-out than men serving under Hannibal.

<comment><USER14> At risk of being nitpicky, Hannibal's reward was probably more in terms of defeating/killing Romans, as his entire life was more or less focused on hatred for Rome and a wish to destroy it.

I only bring this up because rewards can be (and in my opinion the best ones are) immaterial, the type of things that would fit into the self-actualization part of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. I think this type of reward is much more critical than material ones for being able to endure those conditions for a long time.

<comment><USER13> Absolutely, but we can also see that such needs are more likely to be met at the top of the hierarchy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > At its core, burnout emerges when the demands of a job outstrip a person's > ability to cope with the stress.

Having witnessed multiple burnouts first-hand I'd say this description is only half-way helpful. In my lay-man experience a burnout occurs when the aforementioned precedes _several days without sleep_. Lack of sleep over a prolonged stressful period must be avoided, especially from ages 30-40, otherwise damage will highly likely occur, similar to blown fuses in the brain, which takes many years to recover from (if ever, completely).

Many people that reach this stage of stress unfortunately acquire a tunnel vision that convinces them they are invincible and can do anything (except take care of themselves and their loved ones). It is one of the scourges of modern life, and a tragedy that people are not properly prepared for this in school, especially in industries that are susceptible to it, like ours.

<comment><USER16> I have no problem working twice as much as normal. What I want is to be paid twice as much (at least).

<comment><USER17> I'm surprised at the number of comments saying they don't work 60/80+ hours a week.

I thought this was just the industry norm now and was going to factor it into my salary when I start looking for a new job

Honestly, isn't it safe To assume the company is underreporting the workload and instead calculate Salary at an average of 60 hours/week?

<comment><USER18> Depends which specific part of the industry you work in, perhaps.

The company I work for has set working hours, with some flexibility in start and finish times. But it's basically 8 hours per day, 40 per week.

What surprises me most, is that companies aren't limiting work hours to 40. And that people put up with working stupid hours. 80 hours would be utterly insane. Even 60 is ridiculous. The evidence shows that people don't get more done if the hours are increased further. But people do need a life outside work, and any more than that and you have zero time to yourself or your family, and that's going to be detrimental to your health and happiness. Why isn't there more pushback against it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Another thing I would like to know is: how is stress associated with damage vs. relaxation?

Is it: 1 day stress means you need 1 day of relaxation and 40 days of stress means you need 40 days of relaxation? Or is the relationship quadratic or some square root or log?

e.g.

stress_in_days = days_of_recovery^2 or

stress_in_days = days_of_recovery or

stress_in_days = ln(days_of_recovery)

Related: I find it interesting that they write about the HPA-axis as I've learned that the HPA-axis was a biological explanation for depression. To be fair, the way burnout was described in the article, it didn't seem to be all that different from depression.

Edit: seems I was right, depression and burnout don't seem to be all that different [1]. I do think the name burnout describes more accurately what depression is than the name depression.

(I secretly hope we have a medical professional reading this)

[1] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30087493](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30087493)

<comment><USER20> In Western Europe, general practitioners are instructed to prescribe relaxation and not working starting with 3 months up to 6 or 7 months. Six months of non-activity seems to be the average recovery period prescribed after burnout.

However, every person is different. External factors such as family, lifestyle and responsibilities can aid or halt recovery. Same goes for personality and internal factors. I know of cases of burnout turned depression where the person took 2 years to start working.

There is no universal function for how long a person suffers from chronic stress and the recovery duration.

Obtaining such a function entails fully understanding and measuring all factors and dimensions involved in burnout. And that would merit a publication in Nature.

<comment><USER21> I find that the best thing to do is to reassociate labor and effort with reward by doing lots of low-risk primary reward work after a high risk, high effort push (doing refactorings, code cleanup, etc), and that resting after high burnout risk made recurrence more likely due to rewarding not laboring; I haven't burned out at my primary job as a result (can't say I haven't periodically burned out in other pursuits like dating lol) in several years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > For example, a comprehensive report on psychosocial stress in the workplace > published by the World Health Organization identified consistent evidence > that "high job demands, low control, and effort–reward imbalance are risk > factors for mental and physical health problems."

I think a key phrase in there is "effort–reward imbalance" — everything I've found in both research and personal experience seems to show that burnout-type effects are much more likely when you're not getting enough of what you want and value.

As an example, think of two sports teams that both gave their all in a championship game — the winning team is _much_ less exhausted, they're jubilant and bouncing around and celebrating. Both teams presumably expended similar levels of energy, stress, etc — but the winning team is full of celebration and joie de vivre; the losing team is licking their wounds and questioning everything.

There's still limits to the amount of physical and mental stressors we can handle, but winning helps _a lot_ with processing and recovering quickly from stress.

<comment><USER23> I'm not sure if it helps so much as allows you to perpetuate a cycle by providing occasional positive feedback.

I should have left my business years before I did, but it was the winning (contracts, technical coups) that kept me on. You end up like an addict, stumbling through the nightmarish days until the next dopamine rush (and crash) comes along.

Stress and burnout don't just have mental impacts - they can have severe physiological impacts. I didn't realise, acknowledge, or recognise this until my third hospitalisation, and years of increasing illness, made it impossible to continue writing off as "just food poisoning, again".

It's been nearly three years since I left, and while I'm physically better, and no longer spending half my life puking and delirious (it took six months for that to subside), I still have occasional anxiety attacks. My mother asked me about what I plan on doing for a career over dinner a few weeks back and I out and out fainted.

Never used to have any of this. I was the resilient one, the one who could carry the world on his shoulders - or thought he could. Broke me.

<comment><USER22> Whoa, condolences. Glad to hear you're getting better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> We live in a time when it's more difficult to switch off than ever before. I was burned out for a couple of years for sure until a major life threatening illness forced me to take stock.

I've made some important and very useful changes:

\- I've started saying "no" to others including clients, business partners, friends, family etc. Every time I do this, it is saying "yes" to myself

\- I've blocked all social media and news websites from my phone (both apps and via Safari)

\- I've gotten rid of all work emails from my phone too

\- I have an alarm clock by my bed instead of my phone which sleeps in another room

\- I start every day using the 5 minute journal method

\- I journal (almost) every day before I start my work

\- I no longer work weekends and evenings

\- I've made peace with the fact that my business isn't going to grow as quickly as I want it to.

We do have choices at the end of the day. Check out the 5 balls for life speech by Bryan Dyson, former CEO of Coca Cola; work is a rubber ball that you can drop and it will bounce back, the rest of the balls that we juggle (health, friendships, family etc) are all glass balls which may shatter if we drop them.

</comment><comment><USER25> A bit tangential but this

> Maslach received an incredible outpouring of letters and phone calls from > people who were grateful to find out that they were not alone in their > experience of burnout.

got me thinking how important it is for us, humans, to compare and match our own experiences with the societal "averages". It's usually a relief to learn you are not alone in something that's happening to you, despite that it can be truly worrisome. But at the end of the day it's all relative to the averages and norms. And norms change over time, too.

Not saying burnout and depression can become a norm, just pointing out what it means to be a "social animal". Something bad happens to you and suddenly it's not as bad because you are not unique.

</comment><comment><USER19> What I would like to know is how psychosis and the brain works. I've heard from sources who work in the field that an overdosis of chronic stress and lack of sleep can also cause a cognitive decline that ultimately leads to an irreperably psychotic state without any hope for recovery.

In such a state people are sincerely believing that, for example, aliens exist and they are the only humans and everyone else is a robot.

I've heard that people who develop stress/sleep deprived related psychosis over a period of two years are already sensitive towards developing it. The same people also should not take drugs, for example, such as weed.

My question simply is: when would it become burnout and when would it become psychosis?

(I secretly hope we have a medical professional reading this)

<comment><USER26> I've heard that people who develop stress/sleep deprived related psychosis over a period of two years are already sensitive towards developing it. The same people also should not take drugs, for example, such as weed.

Citation...?

<comment><USER19> Regarding weed [1], regarding stress/sleep deprivation. I've heard that from a mental health professional. That's what he saw in the couple of patients he had to treat.

[https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0...](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366\(19\)30086-0/fulltext)

<comment><USER26> how nice of you to finally specify a drug instead of making a blanket claim.

<comment><USER27> Please don't be a jerk on HN.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Airline pilots have a legal limit to the number of hours they can work per month. I think this is mostly to avoid the consequences of mental exhaustion (rather than emotional exhaustion) such as in the Colgan Air Disaster: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colgan_Air_Flight_3407](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colgan_Air_Flight_3407) An interesting quote in that article is: "NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman, while concurring, made it clear that she considered fatigue to be a contributing factor." I've often wondered if there should be a similar rule for software developers. We're required to maintain high levels of concentration for extended periods, day in, day out, month after month. I'm sure this leads to a kind of burnout that goes undiagnosed and which must, at some level, be detrimental to an employer. Is there value in limiting time spent on solving difficult software problems? Say, 30 hours a week for problem solving and 10 for training?

<comment><USER29> devs are treated as 'burn and churn' resources - work conditions are similar to a sweatshop because there is a huge, inexpensive pool of applicants

<comment><USER28> Yep. That's my experience too. But 'burn and churn' thrives in the absence of decent human resource management. Is it possible to link 'problem complexity' to 'concentration demands'? And from that, derive a metric that will enable better management of the human resource?

<comment><USER30> It would help if you defined what is to you "decent human resource management", as for most HR divisions I've seen this appears to mean "churn and burn".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Not to downplay any serious issues of fatigue, overworking or burnout but I personally found good air ventilation, strict rules of drinking water regularly, meditation and exercise did immense things for me. To the point where I have an excess of energy I never used to have previously at work.

</comment><comment><USER19> Final question I would like to know: how do certain high-stress work cultures think about these type of issues? I have seen that the HN community has some management/strategy consultants. I've also seen that if you work at an MBB firm, you basically are guaranteed to work 60+ hours, especially in the first 3 years.

I might give this to a couple of MBB acquaintances I know and see how they react, but I find it odd that these industries ignore this. From my (perhaps naive perspective), it simply isn't profitable to ignore this and moreover also unscientific (I had the impression that some finance-based industries were pretty pin point accurate with things).

(I secretly hope we have a 60+ hour working person reading this)

<comment><USER32> I worked 60-100 hours weeks for a year with constantly working over 40 a year prior with numerous data above 20 hours. I ended up getting cancer, light sensitivity, and my sleep schedule was difficult to get back into sync. I was also trying to get my team to work less hours because my whole team was being burned out however I wasn't getting support from my management team at the time. I ended up with a new director, a new team as most of my prior team left, a promotion, and proper time to recover from the burnout. It took a few months but I was able to work my way back from it.

I'm now approaching a different kind of malaise as with numerous management changes our work has appeared to become unimportant to our upper management and I suspect they will be handing it over to a team openly hostile to what we do and completely unequipped for the job. As much as I need healthcare to live I'm not willing to spend what are most likely my final years in a place that I don't think cares about our customers.

All this is to say that there are most definitely different kinds of burnout. One is more physical, the other is emotional. Both impact your mental facilities and ability to get work done. Both directly work on morale, which is why the solution to burnout in employees is to discover what's crushing their morale. If people are passionate and care personally about what they do because they know they are performing important work as part of a unified vision then extra work won't result in burnout. This isn't to say that you should allow your employees to be constantly overworked, just that if occasional extra work is needed, if you've done your job appropriately as a manager the impact is severely less and the cancer if negative thinking doesn't start to creep in. Once that does it's nearly impossible to rectify unless you're very good at rebuilding empowerment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Great article.

There is this excellent talk by Maslach, "Understanding Burnout" which dispels most misunderstandings: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kLPyV8lBbs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kLPyV8lBbs)

However, as with most conditions it's unlikely you will have any interest in it until being affected.

</comment><comment><USER33> The trifecta of hell:

Burnout is caused by (1)increased workload not resulting in incremental feeling of accomplishment, and also typically with (2) negativity from external sources and a (3) high workload.

<comment><USER34> Those are definitely things which can cause burnout, but I guarantee you that unsustainably high workload can absolutely cause burnout all on its own.

<comment><USER33> Yes I agree. I will edit for clarity.

<comment><USER34> Ah right, I see how you meant it. Yeah, if all three of those are hitting you at once then you're gonna have a bad time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> My formula for burnout:

* macro-environment (office, commute, noise etc.)

* diet

* away time from desk

* meeting creep

* lack of dialogue from management e.g. (HR edicts, performance management curves)

* bureacracy

* deadlines without any clear goals behind them i.e. for ticking boxes

* micro-environment (team, equipment, desk, apathetic colleagues)

* workload (give a busy man things to do)

* family, finances etc.

</comment><comment><USER36> Forgive me if I'm being callous.

There's an intersection in the Venn Diagram between burnout and mental health issues, but also some distinctions.

I've viewed burnout to be one of two options.

1 - For creatives, a lack of creative fulfillment. Everyone has some creativity but I'm specifically talking about "artists".

2 - Not being paid enough. Everything is relative. For some people "hustling" even if they're making 1% salaries is too much. I think that the perspective would be changed if one was a C-suite level or a founder of that same company. We see this in Wall Street too, and nearly ever power law job. Most people, particularly blue collar workers, work physically backbreaking hours doing physically backbreaking work. They can't afford the luxury of burnout. There's maybe a large middle class band where people can. For people beyond that, maybe even on the higher end of upper middle class, they're being compensated enough so the psychological checks and balances compute well enough that burnout doesn't manifest like how it does for others.

I'd also argue that the optics of "success/growth at all costs" are falsely blamed in SV in particular because SV has a "fail upwards" mechanism that rewards failures.

Lastly, I think that stagnation is not the same thing as burnout.

</comment><comment><USER37> Breathe in – breathe out. Breathe in – breathe out. Ever tired of breathing? You will be.

I've seen all my favorite activities turn sour. Pleasure turned into pain. Relief out of reach. Breathe in – breathe out.

The world is like this. Breathe in – breathe out. It does not go anywhere, it just breathes. Breathe in – breathe out. Until it breaks. Breathe in – breathe out. Find your peace.

</comment><comment><USER38> "the loss of motivation, growing sense of emotional depletion, and cynicism" Clearly identify with this, but is this burnout or just doing the same boring/meaningless sh!t over and over again?

</comment><comment><USER39> (2016)</comment>


NHS App - <AUTHOR> https://digital.nhs.uk/services/nhs-app <comment><USER2> This seems like a really nice and modern thing, if it all works. Much better than things like "patient.co.uk" which some GPs use and has a GoDaddy SSL certificate (of all things)

</comment><comment><USER3> I bet it's just "stay hydrated and come back in a week if symptoms persist" hard-coded in a loop.</comment>


Official Gmail Blog: Today's Gmail problems - <AUTHOR> http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/todays-gmail-problems.html <comment><USER2> Wow, HN is becoming a really shitty filter. This update says nothing more than what's on the Apps Dashboard. How about waiting for some actual news before voting _nothing_ up to #5?

<comment><USER3> It only took 24 out of the thousands of people that read here to do that. No downvote available and no reason to flag the submission.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm impressed by their App Status Dashboard (<http://www.google.com/appsstatus>), which I hadn't seen before today. It's a very helpful tool for when this kind of outage happens. I wish Twitter would follow suit.

<comment><USER5> Twitter's own status blog was just undergoing maintenance the minute I sent out a URL to one of the post on it (a few hours ago). Forget it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm currious if the subset of users affected was geographic based or just a set number of users. I'm i Canada and did not have any issues with Gmail and I didn't see any tweets, fb updates from my Canadian crew on the issue. However people in the US appeared to be telling the world about their inability to access Gmail.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's slightly comforting to be reminded that even the "big boys" sometimes have tech problems too

<comment><USER8> I believe in the law of conservation of messes...

If you mess up frequently, each mess will be small. However, if you do it once in a blue moon, each will be catastrophic! Of course there is also a size dependent scaling factor... the higher you are, the harder you fall!

;)

<comment><USER9> Twitter really exemplifies this. They failed a lot and nobody (except programmers) cared since, hey, twitter's always down. Now they don't fail often, have a huge worldwide audience, and every failure is news event.</comment></comment></comment>


Why income distribution can't be crowd-sourced - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2268872 <comment><USER2> Or: Why Slate thinks that socialism is better than the free market.</comment>


Say "Hello" to Baskt - A Marketplace for Mission-Driven Communities.  - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D37xh_nlYHU

<comment><USER2> You lost me at "Indian Pale Ale"</comment>


Ask HN: Zero-Index Tabs in Vim (NerdTREE) - <AUTHOR>

Does anyone know a way to zero-index tabs in Vim?
For example, they currently can be navigated by `1gt`, `2gt`, etc. and my brain can't handle that the first tab is tab one.
I didn't see anyone else with this issue so I figured I would throw it up here. <comment><USER2> Not without changing the source or writing a new function/remapping the command.

What does this have to do with NERDTree?</comment>


Google Code Blog: Google URL Shortener gets an API - <AUTHOR> http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2011/01/google-url-shortener-gets-api.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FDcni+%28Google+Code+Blog%29 <comment><USER2> That's nice. I've been using the following piece of sneaky ghetto code to take advantage of Google Toolbar's URL shortening API:

<http://codepaste.net/48qfb7>

But now I'll be able to shorten URL's with an official API rather than using a hack. I don't know why Google didn't make a public API from the start.

</comment><comment><USER3> Now if only _they_ would start using this. Google Maps' permalinks are absolutely _terrible_ for example...

<comment><USER4> 1\. Go to Google Maps.

2\. Click "Labs"

3\. Enable "Short URL" lab.

Problem sorted!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If I tries to shorten the url of <http://google.com> several times, goo.gl always give back different result. I just wonder will goo.gl merge theses url together sometime later?

This interesting found implies how goo.gl is designed. They prefer writing directly to avoid duplication check and random seek caused by the check. And they though most of the urls are cold so it is not essential to merge them together to keep the hot cache small.

Or they assume nobody wants to play the system in this way. :-)

<comment><USER6> They have to do different URLs each time because you get stats for each shortened URL.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> A few apps have been using the exact same API (though it wasn't officially documented until now) for some time now.

</comment><comment><USER8> Any insight to whether this would be rolled into a Google Apps for your domain offering?

We're using yourls.org currently for our short domain name and would welcome ($) the opportunity of offloading the traffic to Google's servers.

<comment><USER9> seen Google Short Links by Google Labs? [http://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/viewListing?pro...](http://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/viewListing?productListingId=5143210+6352879591152674960)

<http://bit.ly/pro/> is also worth a look

<comment><USER8> Thanks for that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does it include the QR generator?

<comment><USER11> The QR code generator's always been available from the Chart API[1]

[1] <http://code.google.com/apis/chart/docs/gallery/qr_codes.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Thanks Google, but we're already happy with bit.ly. URL shorteners were hot a year ago. Now, not so much.

<comment><USER13> I guess the mass of people requesting we offer an API for goo.gl says otherwise.</comment></comment>


Let's Create API Based iOS Hacker News Reader Together - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/bonzoq/hniosreader

<comment><USER2> Will there be anything unique about this HN client?

<comment><AUTHOR> It will feature live updates, which was impossible before the API.</comment></comment>


Show HN: A Facebook Messenger Chatbot for Discovering Food Nearby, Fast - <AUTHOR> http://www.atwherebot.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hello everyone!

Where is a chatbot to help you discover good food recommendations anywhere in the world. Looking for Pani Puri? Where can find it. Don't know what you want to eat? Where will help you decide. Feeling a little crazy? Just say "any" and Where will find something fun for you to enjoy.

Where was developed for the purpose of helping my co-founder and I find something to eat for lunch. Yes, that is correct. We were so indecisive we decided to make a chatbot to help us find food.

Where has slowly grown into what it is today, and I hope you enjoy it!</comment>


Archiving a Website for Ten Thousand Years - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/05/archiving-a-website-for-ten-thousand-years/482385/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> A question along the lines of indefinite preservation use to pop up on Slashdot pretty regularly. They were usually about preservation of photos, and the discussion would devolve into a comparison of types of acid-proof paper.

The fact of the matter is that if you're going to put a finite amount of energy into preserving something, then its going to last for a finite amount of time. If you use a stable medium like a metal plate, you have the problem of preserving the encoding in a readable state, if you use a naive easily- interpretable encoding then you'll need more of the medium. Even if you solve these problems for your timeframe, you have the more serious problem of keeping content valuable.

The only solution for this for a curator (anyone with some kind of financial, academic or sentimental incentive) to keep all the info, suitably backed up, on whatever the most cost effective consumer technology is. As this tech becomes obsolete then migrate it.

If there's no one with an incentive to keep it, i.e. it's perceived as valueless, then the info will degrade over time, but that's basically a description of entropy increasing over time, welcome to our universe.

(Score:1, Offtopic)

<comment><USER3> Anathem makes a reference to this. A clock with a complex, human-powered daily winding ritual is no way to make a clock that will run for 10,000 years - except it is, if the ritual helps create the human culture that will maintain the clock and bind it to continue doing so.

<comment><USER4> Even then, if history is anything to go by, societies don't last long enough to keep the rituals going. The longest continuous civilisation was the Roman empire that lasted about 1700 years in total. It collapsed 500 years ago with the fall of New Rome in 1453, and most of the important rituals have effectively been forgotten already.

<comment><USER5> FWIW ancient Egypt lasted almost 3,000 unbroken years as a self-governing, unified state; if you count periods of colonization and resurgence as you are with the Romans, then it was closer to 5,000 years.

Now you used the term "continuous civilization" while I write above of a continuous unitary state. In that case, China has a fair claim to close to 8 millennia and Egypt likely on the order of 10-11 (basically within a millennium of the emergence of agriculture). Note that the Copts still speak the language of the pharaohonic period!

After the Chinese, the closest long-lasting "civilization" would be I think, the migrants from the Caucuses who colonized Greece, Iran (i.e. "land of the aryans"), Europe, and India (and thence a bunch of south east Asia), leaving behind linguistic and cultural traces you can still see in Stockholm, Bombay, Bangkok, Qom, and, for that matter, Dallas. I put the scare quotes around "civilization" because it's much more diffuse than Egypt or Han China, and so I don't really consider it in the same league. But even in its attenuated form it's hard to ignore that it's now the most pervasive overlay culture of the world as a result of European colonization.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Semi-related 99 Percent Invisible episode: [http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/ten-thousand- years/](http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/ten-thousand-years/)

 _This WIPP site is going to be radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years, though this panel was only responsible for keeping this place sufficiently marked for humans for the next 10,000 years—thinking beyond that timeframe was thought to be impossible._

<comment><USER7> This place is not a place of honor.

No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here.

Nothing valued is here.

This place is a message and part of a system of messages.

Pay attention to it!

Sending this message was important to us.

We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have the suspicion that what it needs is lawyers, not technology. Firms, families and corporations spread across the globe who must maintain these files via archivists.

A person should be able to produce something now and pay an amount which is invested into the trust. As more people pay, the trust gets bigger and bigger and becomes wealthier via their own investments. It's aim is to keep this information forever.

The cost for a user to store something should take into consideration the length of time in the future that it will be held, and risk. So in the early days, it will be cheaper to store a book than it is when the global network is established in 100 years and much cheaper in 1000 years when the planetary network is achieved. Thats the business case I'm pitching anyhow!

</comment><comment> ezequiel-garzon "and a rights arrangement has been made with the Internet Archive for permanent archiving"

I wonder why this is not possible in general. Say I offer IA a hash (or several) of my soon-to-appear content, and it doesn't appear in any appropriate registry. Why can't IA then accept a "non-exclusive and irrevocable license to distribute" the content such as [1]?

The way things are now things can be deleted by the new domain owner, or in case the uploading user account is compromised.

[1] [https://arxiv.org/help/license](https://arxiv.org/help/license)

</comment><comment><USER9> Preserving something 10000 years is technically possible,but the real issue is that its extremely likely no one will be able to understand our present language 10 000 years from now. Cultural changes are the real deal breakers.

<comment><USER10> > its extremely likely no one will be able to understand our present language > 10 000 years from now

It's an academic pursuit, but the ancient greek philosophers are still readable in their original language. So are all the surviving biblical manuscripts. These are ~2000 year old text.

I find it plausible that a much, much larger corpus of text written in present-day-English will survive the next 10000 years than that which has survived the past 2000, and so chances that are present-day-English will be readable by anyone who cares enough.

<comment><USER11> > It's an academic pursuit, but the ancient greek philosophers are still > readable in their original language.

What little of them survived, and only because for 2000 years, people made a deliberate effort of keeping the language translatable and the texts around. Etruscan or even Egyptian texts of the same period, not so much (the Rosetta stone was a chance find). Even with Ancient Greek, we're limited to a very, very small fraction of the original corpus.

> I find it plausible that a much, much larger corpus of text written in > present-day-English will survive the next 10000 years than that which has > survived the past 2000

Between copyright laws trying to punish people for preserving texts, DRM attempting to make it impossible; and storage moving to very ephemeral media (paper easily survives centuries, magnetic or optical storage maybe decades), I'm not that optimistic that our data will survive the next mass disruption on the scale of the collapse of the Roman Empire.

<comment><USER12> >What little of them survived, and only because for 2000 years, people made a deliberate effort of keeping the language translatable and the texts around.

Before written texts, there was an oral tradition that has been lost almost entirely. Epic poetry was learned and recited to order in a semi-improvised way, not written down.

Long term digital storage will have the same problem. Currently we store text and pictures, because that's what we've always done. We also store music and moving images, which are a slightly newer concept.

Why should technology stop there? Next we'll have VR imagery, procedurally generated arts that are created from code - which will need hardware and an OS to run - and eventually holographic storage. There may even be direct brain interfaces - not just in the sense of experiencing the inside of someone else's head, but also in the sense that all those experiences can be mined for patterns, shaped, generated synthetically, and so on.

So text will go the way of epic poetry. It'll be an interesting throwback studied by a few academic AIs, but irrelevant for daily use, because cultural representations will become denser, more abstract, more collective, and inherently interactive.

<comment><USER10> But 2000 year old oral epic poetry isn't irrelevant for daily use, it's lost. That's an important distinction. (That said, we do have epic poems like the Odyssey and the Iliad that are far from irrelevant if not exactly in daily use)

I have no expectation that 2016-Wikipedia will play any role what so ever in 12026 daily life, what with 3D hologram beamed straight into peoples brains and flying cars and all -- but I'm almost certain it will be readily available to academics that are interested for whatever reason, and the "1780-2017 The Democracy Experiment" chapter in history books of the time will largely be accurate, because of this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There are not too many computer related things I can imagine will be around in 10,000 years, but ASCII seems like a good candidate.</comment>


Will Germany's car industry survive? – DW Documentary [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcXjVxaKzv4 <comment><USER2> The VW ID.3 seems like the first mass market attempt although they are not yet fully committed considering it is a separate "experimental" brand with a weirdo name and not even replacing the mainstream Golf and Polo.

After dieselgate they probably consider this good PR and some contrite expense measure.

</comment><comment><USER3> Until the electric car gets instant charging instead of the 2+ hours charging, I will continue filling the tank of my car in less than 5 minutes.

<comment><AUTHOR> It will happen probably. But even now it's not that bad. In 30 mins you can get 100s of km.

And also it's a different paradigm, since most people just charge it overnight at home. So except when going on a long trip, you don't have to visit a "gas station".</comment></comment>


We All Face Rejection - <AUTHOR> https://rejected.us/ <comment><USER2> Don't forget Brian Acton. Rejected by FB, went on to co-found WhatsApp; bought by FB for billions</comment>


Show HN: Linux tool to show progress for cp, rm, dd, etc. - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Xfennec/cv <comment><USER2> Slightly related: what many people don't know is that on OS X and BSDs, commands often react to SIGINFO (Ctrl-t), giving progress information. E.g. from the _cp_ man page:

         If cp receives a SIGINFO (see the status argument for stty(1)) signal,
         the current input and output file and the percentage complete will be
         written to the standard output.

<comment><USER3> Very cool. Is there a reason why Linux tools don't react to SIGINFO, other than just "not implemented"?

<comment><USER4> As far as I'm aware, Linux tools do react to various signals, just not SIGINFO because it comes from BSD and Linux just doesn't use that particular signal.

You can check dd progress by sending USR1, for example.

<comment><USER3> I just wish there was a control sequence keystroke like Ctrl+I to get programs to do that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For a verbose or simple progress `cp` equivalent I tend to use RSync. Both RedHat/CentOS/etc and Debian/Ubuntu all come with RSync as standard. The only caveat is that I find RSync to be _slightly_ slower than coreutils cp; however you do gain all the advantages of RSync if you then need to sync files across the network for example.

> rsync --progress <source> <destination>

> rsync --progress /home/me/music/*.mp3 /mnt/shared/music

<comment><USER6> I've found Midnight Commander ([https://www.midnight- commander.org/](https://www.midnight-commander.org/)) good if you just need the progress bar. In fact, you get not just one, but TWO - one for the individual file, and one for the transfer as a whole. Perhaps I'm easily pleased, but I find this useful.

(It doesn't do all the rsync fanciness, but if you don't need that and/or you've got some unwieldy subset of files to transfer - a situation the GUI- style approach makes light work of - then it comes in handy.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> So it's a centralized `pv` ?

[http://www.catonmat.net/blog/unix-utilities-pipe- viewer/](http://www.catonmat.net/blog/unix-utilities-pipe-viewer/)

<comment><USER8> Yeah .. I think I prefer pv for all my cp progressbar needs .. keeps things light and simple, and is already onboard.

<comment><USER9> pv is just cat with a progress bar, so it only handles the case where you are copying a single big file.

<comment><USER10> Indeed. You can use it to show the progress of a recursive directory copy with this trick:

tar c -C /tmp/source . | pv | tar x -C /tmp/dest

you can also pass an approximated size of your source to pv, however the tar output will be slightly bigger.

<comment><USER11> how would you estimate the size quickly? 'du' can take quite long

<comment><USER12> You can start pv without an estimated size, run du in the background, and then supply the estimate to pv once it's calculated using the '-R' (remote control) option.

A bit clumsy, but it shouldn't be hard to write a little script to do it.

<comment><USER10> Cool, didn't know about that pv had a remote control.

Anyway, if cp -R had a progress bar it would behave the same way, i.e. it would have first to recursively stat the source the same way as du does, and only then it could start reporting a completion percentage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Using /proc is pretty damn clever! I thought it would be some sort of wrapper for strace, but your solution is so much simpler.

</comment><comment><USER14> Here's a single command which should do the same. It supports cp and dd, but anything else that supports SIGINFO could be added in.

        ps -A | grep -P 'cp|dd' | sed -r 's/^\s*([0-9]+).+$/\1/' | xargs kill -s SIGINFO

<comment><USER15> This assumes the command supports SIGINFO, but that's a BSD thing. Linux commands don't support that, so this is not a replacement.

And did you really just reinvent pkill?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Off topic, hoe do I get a PS1 like those screenshots?

<comment><USER17> Looks just like vim's powerline/airline status bars. IIRC it takes a bit of font wrangling to get those chevron colors working right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> dd has progress built in, under Linux it is kill -USR1 <pid> to get a progress report, the signal varies by OS. cp has a -v option, if tahts not enough rsync has a --progress option too that gives within file progress.

<comment><USER19> `cv` is a coreutils viewer, rsync is not included in coreutils.

<comment><USER18> cv is not included in coreutils either, so I still have to install something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Very nice! I should package this.

</comment><comment><USER21> Anyone know a similar tool available to OSX or if its feasible to port or recreate this for MAC?

I'm not too familiar with what file libs or utils can be used to handle this as the author says this relies on a linux specific header file and tool.

See [https://github.com/Xfennec/cv/issues/6](https://github.com/Xfennec/cv/issues/6)

<comment><USER22> Just hit ctrl-t to get status on OS X.

<comment><USER23> ctrl+t doesn't show percent complete

<comment><USER24> Yes it does

      aeg@bigwibble ~/ % cp bigfile /Volumes/data_sd1
      load: 1.60  cmd: cp 17686 uninterruptible 0.00u 0.09s
      bigfile -> /Volumes/data_sd1/bigfile   1%

<comment><USER23> Here's me hitting it 4 times:

        [/tmp]$ cp bigfile bigfile2
        load: 1.78  cmd: gcp 93420 running 0.00u 0.04s
        load: 1.78  cmd: gcp 93420 running 0.00u 0.10s
        load: 1.80  cmd: gcp 93420 uninterruptible 0.00u 0.16s
        load: 1.80  cmd: gcp 93420 uninterruptible 0.00u 0.26s
        [/tmp]$

<comment><USER22> What is gcp? It sounds like you have some alias setup for cp and that's interfering.

Try: /bin/cp bigfile bigfile2

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I really hope this stays on the HN front page for awhile because what a great utility.

I've been using patched copies of coreutils to do the same thing, this is much better.

By the way, if you ever need to quickly spy on rsync you can try this:

           watch lsof -ad3-999 -c rsync

but there is a chance cv will work with rsync too and be more helpful

</comment><comment><USER26> In the old days I've done this using lsof -p PID and looking at where the files are in relationship to their size. If you have a long running process lsof can be a wonderful tool to figure out how it's doing.

</comment><comment><USER27> My (joke) version:

[https://chris-lamb.co.uk/posts/can-you-get-cp-to-give-a- prog...](https://chris-lamb.co.uk/posts/can-you-get-cp-to-give-a-progress-bar- like-wget)

</comment><comment><USER28> A completely unrelated question: in the terminal screenshots, what is being used for PS1? I love that display of the CWD and git repo on the command line.

<comment><USER29> It's called Powerline, and it has bindings and configs for nearly every shell, editor, and everything in between including tmux.

[http://powerline.readthedocs.org/en/latest/overview.html](http://powerline.readthedocs.org/en/latest/overview.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Wow, that's such a clever idea! I'm impressed at the simplicity.

</comment><comment><USER31> Sweet ! It's even in the AUR repositories !

</comment><comment><USER32> Very nice idea!

</comment><comment><USER33> Ehm, etc is a directory, not a program?

(Sorry, really bad joke...)</comment>


Partial Knowledge - <AUTHOR> http://theprogrammersparadox.blogspot.com/2016/12/partial-knowledge.html <comment><USER2> > _We live in an amazing time. Collectively our species knows more about the > world around us than any one individual could ever learn in their lifetime._

This must have been true for centuries, if not millennia.</comment>


Why Did the World Shut Down for Covid-19 but Not Ebola, SARS or Swine Flu? - <AUTHOR> https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-did-the-world-shut-down-for-covid-19-but-not-ebola-sars-or-swine-flu/ <comment><USER2> COVID-19 has symptomless spread and occurred during the peak of Flu/Cold season. SARS, Ebola, and Swine Flu were easy to catch with a simple thermometer and some basic contact tracing. COVID-19 required an RNA test and blanket testing of general population to find all cases. We just didn't have the infrastructure to deal with that kind of virus.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ebola specifically is hard to spread in a first world situation.

Not to say it wouldn't somewhat, but the opportunity to spread through someone who is noticeably ill or dead direct fluid contact in the first world is super low.

</comment><comment><USER4> Not to be conspiratorial about it, but the conspiracies seem to make more sense to me than the official explanations.

<comment><USER5> Is that your opinion after reading the linked article?</comment></comment>