Dealing with Wrist Pain - <AUTHOR> http://www.breccan.com/2012/05/dealing-with-wrist-pain.html <comment><USER3> I've found that the biggest reason for neck and wrist pain is actually the mouse.

The position that most people use the mouse, off to the right side (if you're right-handed), causes your arm and your hand to twist unnaturally, since it needs to be flat to the table. This puts pressure on the nerves running down your arm, and for me, this is what caused the most amount of pain, to the point where I was worried my career as a programmer was over.

I've discovered that keeping the mouse to the left side of my body (I'm right- handed) and keeping my hand perpendicular to the tabletop as I use the mouse has all but alleviated my back and wrist pain, going on 15 years now.

To be clear, I don't hold the mouse normally. I have both my elbows on the table and keep the mouse almost all the way to my left elbow. I sort of cradle the mouse with my right hand, with my thumb and index finger on on the left button, and most of my hand on the right side of the mouse so that my hand remains perpendicular to the table. This mimics how my hand would be if I were writing with a pen, which is a more natural position.

I've been programming mostly pain-free ever since 1997 this way. I even use a regular mouse, I just hold it differently and use a posture that ergonomic specialist would probably reject, but it has completely worked for me.

<comment><USER4> +1 to mice being evil. I'm not convinced by ergonomic mice despite having used one for the past 4-5 years. They are less painful to use but I find they just hide the problem. Using any normal mouse these days becomes painful within a couple of hours for me.

Instead I use a Trackpoint basically all the time now. I have ThinkPads at home and a MacBook Pro with one of these [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lenovo- ThinkPad-Travel-Keyboard-Trac...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lenovo-ThinkPad- Travel-Keyboard- TrackPoint/dp/B002Y3XNF0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1338364944&sr=8-1) at work. The best features are less waving my arms around and a much more convenient location for note paper to live that doesn't require stretching or sliding things around when I need to write stuff.

Sadly (due to what I assume is a patent issue) there aren't very many hardware options for static pointing stick devices and they are all either ex-IBM hardware or current Lenovo hardware.

<comment><USER5> Some reasonably recent Dell or HP laptop models also have a trackpoint (though personally I didn't like either of them as well as the Thinkpads').

<comment><USER4> Most of the imitations have movement in the stick it's self (and even a dead zone in the center sometimes) while the Thinkpads one is totally static and has only a rubber moulding to provide a little play.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I suggest building some muscle in your arms. It's amazing how much strength does to combat the physical horror of sitting at a keyboard all day. Wrist curl, reverse wrist curl, overhead press, bench press, deadlift, pull-up. All these helped me immensely.

PS: steve8918 is right about the mouse. Build some strength, and stop flicking your wrist sideways to reach the mouse. A laptop's trackpad is a huge improvement.

<comment><USER7> If you go the weight route, make sure you don't just train grip strength (wrist flexors) but also balance a bit with wrist extensor exercises or you'll just move the pain around. It can be as simple as wrapping a rubberband around your fingertips and expanding your hand a few times.

I found this balance issue important when I started working on my deadlift and my grip got a bit out of control. Also, if you have wrist problems, you might consider avoiding alternated grip deadlifts and just pulling hook grip.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I occasionally get wrist pain. I have found that a lot of changes are not necessarily the ones the ergonomics experts sell. YMMV but these work for me:

1) If I need to, I take a break and soak my hands in hot water.

2) I program in Perl and tend to find that my hands shift positions. In particular my right hand tends to shift at least one place over compared to typing prose. I find standard keyboards, not ergonomic ones, accommodate this best. But the keyboard needs to be at a low, relaxes angle (on one's lap is best) and ideally a wristpad helps.

3) Mice are the root of most wrist pain! Ditch the mouse and get a trackball. This one really is close to universal. I know a number of others who have found this to be true.

4) Pay attention to your body.... If your wrists are bothering you _stop_ and relax them before proceeding. Also pay attention to your arms and make sure they are relaxed. This should be common sense but....

5) If your wrists hurt for more than a little bit, prompt medical attention is a good thing. Chances are if you catch things quickly a wrist brace may even allow you to keep working or at least it did me when I started to develop carpal tunnel briefly. Early attention is very important.

I have tried ergonomic keyboards and found they did more harm than good. I also found that wrist pads did more good than harm at least for me. YMMV which is why I keep coming back to listen to your body.....

<comment><USER9> Agreed, switching to a trackball is the only thing that solved my wrist pain issues.

Its worth spending money on a decent one, and I'd avoid Logitech units if you have a choice. The main things to look for are ball size and extra buttons - yes, you can get two-button trackballs with no scrolling ability or third button.

I highly recommend the Kensington Slimblade, which has a massive ball and lovely twist-to-scroll mechanism. Ignore the reviews saying the software is terrible on OSX, all the problems have been fixed.

[http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kensington-K72327US-SlimBlade- Trackb...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kensington-K72327US-SlimBlade- Trackball/dp/B001MTE32Y/)

One slight oddity is the hardware "clicker". Twist-to-scroll feedback is achieved by a tiny piezo speaker inside the unit that clicks whenever you scroll. Its worth spending ten minutes with a screwdriver and soldering iron removing it if you want to keep your office mates sane.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have extremely RSI resistant hands and especially knuckles (due to a genetic quirk). I can type all day on a rectangular non-ergo keyboard with my wrists on the table, and in fact used to do data entry for 60+ hours a week doing just that, with nary an RSI worry. But using a mouse for, say, 12 hours straight or through a regular 40 hour work week would definitely cause me pain, in the shoulder, wrist, etc. Here is the solution:

Use.

A.

Trackball.

Period. Especially at work. It's vastly better ergodynamics. It has a little bit of a learning curve but it's not that bad. And for clicking and dragging windows around and whatnot, it's just fine. And it doesn't stop you from using a mouse if you need to use photoshop or play an FPS game or somesuch. I have a mouse and a trackball on my home computer. If for some reason you spend all day in photoshop then you should probably switch to using a stylus input tablet.

<comment><USER11> Totally agree. I've been using a Logitech Trackman trackball for about 10years now. During the periods when I wasn't using it I'd get wrist.forearm pain and bursitis on the wrist (I have plates there from a car accident). Stretching is still important but the trackball is a major leap forward.

If you have to use a mouse, please don't use an Apple mouse. They are generally far too small and don't provide any support. I'm still amazed that a company which does great hardware aesthetics completely fails to understand ergonomics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> As an active programmer and bass player, I used to suffer cramps and wrist pain after extended hours. After a friend suggested it I bought a metal NSD powerball to train the micro-muscles in my hands. I spend about 20 minutes a day training it and after about 3 months the pain stopped and went away - <USER2> still regularly use it in 3 minute on, one minute rest intervals.

I also use regular keyboards.

</comment><comment><USER13> Surprised that he didn't mention:

1\. stretches

Do this before any extended typing session: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSbf4mBKq-o> Doesn't have to take more than 30 seconds, just DO IT

2\. height of the keyboard

The vast majority of desks simply aren't the right height. Your hands should be comfortably pointed down and not over your wrist. Had some issues with wrist pain a couple years ago, never had any problems since.

<comment><USER14> I definitely second both of these. The nature of my work means I end up using my computer in all sorts of places. Even just one day of trying to type on a desk that's too low, too high or too far away (i.e. there isn't room to get your legs under the desk) and I get problems. My back has to be vertical, and arms have to be horizontal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Or go to a physiotherapist. Now. Just to get you on the right track before you do yourself further damage.

(I had a bout of pain that lasted about three weeks, with a longer period of discomfort that followed. If I typed at all, it was with two pencils; I paired with a guy I was training and he did all the typing for that period. I was only able to get back into it after a month of physio appointments, directed exercises and remedial massage. I know I'm just a single data point, but I don't see how at least getting a professional opinion just in case would be a bad thing.)

<comment><USER16> Not had any problems (yet) caused by computer use, but having badly fucked up my wrist twice, once playing squash and once playing cricket, I can back up the "see a professional".

They exist for a reason, they will no how long (if at all) you need to rest an injury, and they'll know how to treat it to minimise downtime.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The best-selling books on Amazon on RSI both recommend getting deep tissue massages. I've gotten a bunch, and they seem to help more than anything else I've tried, but I've still been unable to type for more than an hour without getting symptoms for the past eight months.

This has completely ruined my life, so I recommend taking wrist pain seriously. Preventative measures are probably best. Here is a nifty sit/stand keyboard tray that will significantly improve the ergonomics of your desk and also allow you to stand to work whenever you want to:

[http://www.amazon.com/Waterloo-Keyboard-Featuring-Lift-N- Loc...](http://www.amazon.com/Waterloo-Keyboard-Featuring-Lift-N-Lock- Adjustability/dp/B0041LVZZI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1338355771&sr=8-1)

<comment><USER18> Go to the doctor, tell them you have cubital tunnel syndrome, go to PT, and it improves rapidly.

That's my story, and it sucked, but it worked. Once you're at PT, if you're lucky they'll use ASTYM on you, which works wonders. Leaves you bruised as hell, but absolutely the only thing that worked for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I used to have severe RSI problems. The solution I found was first to use a trackball which reduced 80% of the pain and then start doing some exercises. I use the Logitech Marble. The powerball is an amazing gadget for exercising the wrist and if someone's a bit more adventurous you could try cliff climbing.

[http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Trackman-Marble-Four- Button-P...](http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Trackman-Marble-Four-Button- Programmable/dp/B002BCMM74/)

[http://www.amazon.com/Exercise-Fitness-Powerball-Blue- Exerci...](http://www.amazon.com/Exercise-Fitness-Powerball-Blue- Exerciser/dp/B006LVJKGM/)

</comment><comment><USER20> I've been fighting this on and off for years. I've come to the conclusion that whenever I become lazy my hands and neck and eventually my back hurts. Lazy, meaning that I don't stretch and take breaks often enough. Also more importantly exercising, it's is the biggest and best solution. I don't mean lifting weights/running, I'm talking about something like Yoga. Call it girly all you want, it does miracle work for lazy folks like us that spend way too much time in a chair.

As far as stretching goes, take a look at this: <http://www.eatonhand.com/hw/ctexercise.htm> and just google "wrist stretches for carpal tunnel" and you'll get plenty of useful results as well as video tutorials on youtube.

Keyboards, Mice... I've used pretty much all of them. I even went out and bought a ~$1k ergonomic chair, changed desks...etc.. I figured that if my career was in danger I would need to invest a significant amount of money to recover it so that I could continue to work. So I've probably spent hundreds in different mice and keyboards. Ergonomic devices and furniture are great, but they are a temporary solution. For long term results, just don't be lazy.

Do three things to help and get rid of wrist pain: 1\. Take small breaks throughout the day (or find a Rob). 2\. Exercise 3\. Stretch. In my opinion, these help the most.

One note, if you're just starting to try and remedy your pain and you can't work at all, try switching the mouse to your left hand. This helps a ton and it'll only take you a bit to get used to it.

Hope this helps someone as much as it has me.

</comment><comment><USER21> Only solution I found (after trying almost everything else) was installing AntiRSI/WorkRave. They are intensely irritating, forcing you to stop typing every three minutes. But, you get used to it, and, it saved my wrists.

</comment><comment><USER22> Nobody here has mentioned stress.

I suffered from a lot of wrist pain (RSI) for a number of years, tried everything including alternative keyboards and trackball mice. The only physical 'device' that improved things was getting a proper chair with actual armrests (which I assumed would make things worse by constricting arm movement).

When I read an article mentioning a book called 'The Mind Body Problem' (I didn't actually read the book), the penny dropped.

My mental state of agitation, of needing to 'get shit done' was translating into increased tension in my wrists. Just recognizing this has pretty much solved my RSI problems (going strong for over a year). This explains why some people can work on laptops etc. in the most contorted positions without ever having any adverse physical effects - they are not under any mental stress.

[1] [http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/Mind-Body-Problem-Rebecca- Go...](http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/Mind-Body-Problem-Rebecca-Goldstein- PhD/9780140172454)

</comment><comment><USER23> I started to get wrist pain when I was about twenty, and did some reading on it. One thing I saw recommended at the time was to make sure never to sleep with the wrist bent in (i.e. a "limp wrist" position), but always straight or bent back (as if signaling someone to stop). Over a period of a few weeks I trained myself to always sleep with my wrist bent back by adjusting it to that position whenever I was aware at night, and have slept that way since. I'm now in my mid-thirties, and have had no further trouble with wrist pain.

I certainly do other things to keep my wrists healthy, such as trying to maintain good posture while typing, sitting in a good seat, etc., so I can't attribute sleeping position with all of my continued good health. But I certainly won't go back to sleeping with my wrist bent in; it's an easy thing to maintain and it seems to help a lot.

</comment><comment><USER24> This article by Aaron Iba (author of EtherPad) talks about how he solved his wrist pain. He followed the recommendations of a book called "The Mindbody Prescription".

[http://aaroniba.net/articles/tmp/how-i-cured-my-rsi- pain.htm...](http://aaroniba.net/articles/tmp/how-i-cured-my-rsi-pain.html)

</comment><comment><USER25> I too have wrist pain some time back.

To my understanding this kind of pain will come due to stiffness in the muscles in hands,shoulders,neck.This stiffness radiates the pain to wrist.After some months of pain i visited a famous doctor (<http://www.deepaksharan.com/> (india)) he asked to take 6-7 session of Myotherapy (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myotherapy>) and also suggested few exercises , good posture which has removed the pain from my wrist and hands.

If you want i can send you scanned copy of those exercise posters.(rama.vadakattu at gmail dot com)

I feel you should also consult a professional and get rid of that pain by myotherapy ,regular exercises and good posture.

It is defintely curable (although they may be few exceptions).

</comment><comment><USER26> The first, and really critical, piece of advice is _go see a professional_

I was skeptical about this, a friend eventually all but carried me to an osteopath. It is instant and amazing relief.

BUT the most important thing about seeing a professional is that they will be able to tell you specifically what is causing your problem - wrist pain, in particular, has numerous causes and comes in many forms. An expert will be able to diagnose the cause and recommend ways to avoid it - in my case it was largely posture based, and getting a better chair has basically eradicated my problem.

</comment><comment><USER27> I solved my wrist pain by doing two things.

1) I switched from a mouse to a trackpad. On my PC I have an old Fingerworks trackpad I got off eBay, and on my Mac I have a Magic Trackpad from Apple. The trackpad allows me to completely relax my hand between my use of the pointer-- which is most of the time. When I do move the pointer, and click, I can do it with a single semi-relaxed finger. Whereas a mouse, or even a trackball, required me to hold most of my hand in tension to move or click. On the trackpad I exclusively use tap-to-click...mechanical buttons are bad for fingers and wrists because they require a lot more force.

2) I go kayaking regularly. Gripping and manipulating the paddle gives my wrist and fingers a low-impact workout through a wide range of motion. It helps keep the muscles and tendons healthy. Plus being healthy in general helps improve almost any physical ailment.

Edit to add: With the trackpads I have had to train myself to let my right hand completely relax when I'm not pointing the mouse. When I started trying to pay close attention to my right hand, I realized that I was holding it in tension most of the time even when sitting back--sort of anticipating the next mouse usage. I've had to consciously focus on completely relaxing it whenever I'm not mousing or typing.

</comment><comment><USER28> been using dvorak for > 15 years. switched because of pain from coding 12-14+ days at startups. also used a kinesis advantage for ~10 years. am now on a topre realforce, which i very much prefer over the kinesis, and have been for 6 months without the pain returning. so, half-splitting the problem, i don't think it's the keyboard.

worth mentioning: i can't imagine typing in qwerty now. it just doesn't have that buttery flow that dvorak does. i'm quantitatively 20% faster at typing now as well.

however, i've come to the conclusion that of all the changes i made at the time, buying a good chair and desk made the biggest impact, because in the process of doing so i did enough research to realize i had to correct my body position.

at the time i had an anthro fit console cart and a humanscale freedom chair. these two were the perfect combination.

there's a collection of pretty good information here: <http://www.hermanmiller.com/research/topics/ergonomics.html>

i am now using an aeron chair (not because of the herman miller guide above) with an anthro 60" adjusta unit for my computer workstation and a 48" standard unit as a return desk. the main reason i switched to an aeron is that the freedom chair wasn't good for my needs, which changed (i have a fairly high metabolism and stay very warm during the day, so the cooling the aeron offered was very welcome).

i was using the freedom chair with a fit standard cart for a while, and the pain returned. immediately purchased a desk with a height adjustable keyboard tray that would allow me to have my keyboard in such a way that my shoulders were relaxed and my elbows were neutral. pain went away immediately.

Edit: sorry for the edits, i've had a little bit of wine.

<comment><USER29> One datapoint: I used to get sore wrists if I didn't take breaks, changed to a Dvorak variant, haven't had sore wrists since then. Used notebook keyboard for years, now have a MS Natural, both fine. Used similar before Dvorak, had issues. Have Herman Miller Embody, which I adore, but it hasn't magically improved my posture - still some work to do.

<comment><USER28> how's the desk position? i found this was actually the most important thing...crucial to get those elbows so that the angle from bicep to forearm is about 105 degrees.

<comment><USER29> Main issue is that I slouch forward. I just have to remember to just sit normally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This will seem really wack... however:

I saw some youtube videos of Dr Sarno [<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_E._Sarno>] and read some testimonials on his technique.

At that point I could change the pain in my wrists into a feeling of anxiety in my chest.

I then bought the book (this step isn't nessacary) - "The Mind Body Experience), and now when I get pain I can sort of concentrate on the area it happens and it will dissapear - it also helps to think of things that might be stressing me at the time.

His theory is along the lines that the mind tries to distract you from stress by making you get pain at the site of old injuries, or RSI etc.

I'm sure that it doesn't work exactly like he says it does, however after about 10 years of RSI I can pretty much control it by just concentrating on the area in pain, whic is pretty cool.

Still, this will probably sound pretty odd.. note: I don't ascribe to any other alternative medicines and am pretty sceptical in general.

<comment><USER31> The book is actually The Mindbody Prescription.

This cured me of 3 years of horrible RSI pain. I did go to Doctors, physiotherapists, chiropractors and acupuncturists and had anti-inflammatory creams, you name it. Nothing worked for more than a couple days... and this was a last resort. I wish I would have tried it sooner, but I doubt I would have given it a shot if I wasn't desperate.

Read this for a well written account from a hacker: [http://aaroniba.net/articles/tmp/how-i-cured-my-rsi- pain.htm...](http://aaroniba.net/articles/tmp/how-i-cured-my-rsi-pain.html)

Then buy the book and read it. It'll cost you less than an MS Natural Keyboard, not to mention all the other crap (wrist braces, heating pads, etc etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> One thing that people overlook when trying to improve their work ergonomics is where they are resting their hands and elbows. You can subtly pinch the nerves in both your hands and elbows leading to restricted blood flow and eventually pain or numbness.

I had pain/numbness in my ring and pinky fingers a few years ago that was progressively getting worse. I switched to a Kinesis Advantage keyboard and left-handed mouse but only saw modest improvements. It was only after nearly a year that I realized that I had been resting my elbows on my chair all day, and that was pinching my ulnar nerve and restricting blood flow. After lowering my elbow rests, I saw an dramatic improvement within weeks. Today I have zero issues.

I never saw a professional, but may have saved myself a lot of pain and worry if I had.

</comment><comment><USER33> I had a bit of wrist pain too earlier. I stopped resting my entire hand on my wrist and it stopped hurting in a few days. I raise my hand up over the keyboard like a magician saying abracadabra or a DJ with a turntable. It's a bit weird at first and your forearm might hurt after a bit but not only has my wrist pain disappeared, my typing speed seems to have improved. The forearm pain is the good sort (like after an intense workout) from the effort of holding your hand up with no support from the table and gradually reduces as you get more used to typing this way.

And I completely agree with the other comments about the mouse causing wrist pain. I have learned more and more keyboard shortcuts to keep myself from using it too much.

</comment><comment><USER34> Here's my experience dealing with wrist pain, it echos many of the lessons learned here: [http://blog.chromarati.com/2010/04/rsi-my-problem- child-10-t...](http://blog.chromarati.com/2010/04/rsi-my-problem- child-10-tips-for.html)

</comment><comment><USER35> georgieporgie:

It appears you have been hellbanned (as of this comment: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4026814> ). You might be able to appeal it by emailing pg, or just create a new account.

<comment><USER36> And DanBC too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Get vim/emacs and learn it inside out so you do a minimum of mousing and keystrokes. Also learn to code in your head as much as possible and only sit down at the computer to dictate your design. This is surprisingly effective once you get the hang of it. I spend about 60% less time in front of the computer now and I'm way more productive. Also get something like StayFocusd for your browser and add in all your distraction sites. If you have downtime while compiling or whatever, get away from the computer and rest your eyes/hands.

<comment><USER38> Emacs with its shortcuts is actually a major wrist-killer - just see what happened to RMS...

(disclaimer: I _absolutely_ love emacs, but had to switch to vim just because of strain it puts on my wrists)

<comment><USER39> I've only been using Emacs as my exclusive editor for about 3 years, but with my Caps Lock key set as my primary Ctrl key I've never noticed any stress or pain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> My solution step 1: check seat position. Is the chair high enough, too high, same with Display, are my shoulders relaxed, are my wrists straight

My solution step 2: Apple external keyboard with low key action

My solution step 3: Logitech MX revolution: gets rid of mouse wheel action, which cause for me the most significant wrist problems - more or less solved the problem

My solution step 4: Apple magic trackpad.

Maybe don't work too long without a longer break. The company gets all the benefits while you get into the hospital, eventually.

Wrist problems did not come back since three years now.

</comment><comment><USER41> I started having some pain in my wrists and the top of my hands earlier this year.

I feel that switching my keyboard and mouse to Apple keyboard and mouse helped (especially the mouse), because of their low design, preventing my wrist from bending too much.

I also started practicing indoors climbing and this helped a lot for the flexibility and strength of my hands. I didn't feel any pain since then. You don't mention any physical activity in your blog but I'm convinced any sport involving the hands practiced regularly would help.

</comment><comment><USER42> Treating trigger points saved me. I had terrible wrist pain and then I read about trigger points. I found some in my upper arms, massaged them out over a few days, and the pain was gone. Look for spots painful under a little pressure, massage it for 20 seconds. Repeat several times for a few days. Done.

Read more at <http://saveyourself.ca/>

</comment><comment><USER43> I found the only real solution is to eliminate the need to exert mechanical force. Thus, a combination of:

1\. Dragon NaturallySpeaking, which works pretty well for text.

2\. Zero force keyboard [http://specialneedscomputers.ca/index.php?l=product_detail&#...</a> for writing code.<p>3. Replacing the mouse with a trackpad.

</comment><comment><USER44> _might_ help, but also have risk of overdoing it:

\- Dynaflex and powerweb exercises

<http://fitter1.com/Catalog/Category/35/HandWrist.aspx>

\- wrist curls:

[http://ecx.images- amazon.com/images/I/41z5INkAENL._SL500_AA3...](http://ecx.images- amazon.com/images/I/41z5INkAENL._SL500_AA300_.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER45> i tried many things, herman millers, gym, creams, massage, antiRsi tool. They all helped and i'm still using them, but everytime i fixed one thing 2-3 months later i got pain again. it travelled from backpain to neckpain, wrists, underarms and now to shoulder/arm-pits.

i'm now practicing alexander technique. i've got my 6th lesson and i start to understand how all these things that i've been doing were simply work-arounds. alexander technique shows you how to get a proper and relaxed posture. i now see how tensed up i am in many areas (keyboard, some projects more some less, eating, walking, everything).

i can recommend it. and it's cheaper then being forced to work half-day for a few months.

</comment><comment><USER46> I used to have constant problems with wrist pain until I switched to a stand up desk. I have no idea how/why the standup desk helps this, but it did for me. Anyone have any insights into why this helps?

</comment><comment><USER47> I don't have a Rob</comment>


Hash based signatures - <AUTHOR> https://www.imperialviolet.org/2013/07/18/hashsig.html <comment><USER2> The linked paper about n^O(log n) discrete logarithms is nightmare material. Even more so that it didn't seem to reach (my selection of) mainstream news.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm surprised this one didn't make more of a splash.</comment>


Asiana Airlines Boeing 777 crashes at SFO - <AUTHOR> http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/general_aviation/read.main/5809207/ <comment><USER2> ATC audio from the crash [http://wandr.me/Audio/AAR214-KSFO- Crash.mp3](http://wandr.me/Audio/AAR214-KSFO-Crash.mp3)

<comment><USER3> I know they train for it, but the coolheaded professionalism there is remarkable - tower, other planes, all of them.

<comment><USER4> That's why airlines like to get pilots with military experience. They are exposed to more crazy scenarios in training and work and generally keep a cool head better under stress.

<comment><USER5> Hmmm - but: military pilots are also known (especially in some cultures) for an over-strong respect for hierarchy, resulting in a willingness to go along with dangerous instructions. Also, at least some military pilots are trained to have a higher risk acceptance than civilian pilots.

Personally, I'd be very happy having an ex-military pilot flying me around; I think the pros definitely outweigh the cons. But do be aware that the cons exist.

<comment><USER6> Actually Korean pilots (civilian) are also known to have too strong a respect for hierarchy. I remember seeing an episode of air crash investigating where that was officially reported as a factor, so it isn't even just the military where that can be a risk.

<comment><USER7> This is the most famous incident, and the one that lead to the development of Crew Resource Management, a process to make sure decisions are taken by consensus, not by deferring to authority. The crew in question, by the way, was dutch.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A tweet from a purported passenger: [https://twitter.com/Eunner/status/353592664526028801](https://twitter.com/Eunner/status/353592664526028801)

> I just crash landed at SFO. Tail ripped off. Most everyone seems fine. I'm > ok. Surreal... (at @flySFO) [pic] — > [https://path.com/p/1lwrZb](https://path.com/p/1lwrZb)

</comment><comment><USER9> High quality close up photo from [https://path.com/p/1lwrZb](https://path.com/p/1lwrZb):

[https://pathakacdn-a.akamaihd.net/photos2/f36a5729-6db7-40db...](https://pathakacdn-a.akamaihd.net/photos2/f36a5729-6db7-40db-9c98-99aa8b68df4c/original.jpg)

<comment><USER10> I can't imagine the confusion that must have gone on when that happened, maybe it's shock or maybe people just underestimate the severity of their situation but correct me if I'm wrong... are there people in that photo actually carrying their bags off the plane? I can't quite comprehend that.

<comment><USER11> The bottlenecks in their escape were the doorway and the crew's deployment of the inflatable slide. Rushing the door in a panic would have done nobody any good.

In a situation like that, why wouldn't you grab your bag if it was readily accessible? It seems like healthy, rational behavior rather than a symptom of extreme confusion.

<comment><USER12>
      The bottlenecks in their escape were the doorway and the
      crew's deployment of the inflatable slide... why wouldn't
      you grab your bag if it was readily accessible?

Wrong. In order to be certified airworthy, you have to be able to evacuate an airliner in 90 seconds, in the dark, with some of the emergency exits blocked. Here's an A380 doing it: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TAkAcQOnQY](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TAkAcQOnQY)

Here's a 777: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TAkAcQOnQY](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TAkAcQOnQY)

If everyone stops to grab their bag, it can take ten times as long. If the plane is on fire, then people die.

<comment><USER13> You linked the same video twice. (thanks, though)

<comment><USER12> Whoops.

And of course I check back 7 hours after the edit window.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I know this is exciting news and all, but:

[http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

Hacker News Guidelines

What to Submit On-Topic:

Anything that good hackers would find interesting.

That includes more than hacking and startups.

If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Off-Topic:

Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.

Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures.

 _If they 'd cover it on TV news_, it's probably off-topic.

I'd say trying to rationalize that this story is relevant on HN by saying "startups use SFO" is a stretch. I'd hope that people taking flights out actually check with the airport first before checking HN.

<comment><USER15> From what I saw it impacted before the runway. This brings back memories of the British Airways 777 that came down early due to loss of power to both engines (Speedbird 38, Beijing to London). The cause of that was ice blocking the fuel filters which starved both engines. The thing to check here was what altitude the plane was flying at for most of the flight, and what temperature it was at that altitude along the flight path.

<comment><USER16> That icing issue has since been fixed and so is irrelevant to this crash (according to CNN).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Here are the most recent FAA Advisories: [http://www.fly.faa.gov/adv/adv_list.jsp?WhichAdvisories=ATCS...](http://www.fly.faa.gov/adv/adv_list.jsp?WhichAdvisories=ATCSCC&AdvisoryCategory=All&dates=Saturday%2C+07-06-2013&AirFlow=AirFlow&Gstop=Gstop&Gdelay=Gdelay&Route=Route&Other=Other)

And here are three relevant ones already published:

* [http://www.fly.faa.gov/adv/adv_otherdis.jsp?advn=26&adv_date...](http://www.fly.faa.gov/adv/adv_otherdis.jsp?advn=26&adv_date=07062013&facId=SFO/ZOA&title=CDM+GROUND+STOP&titleDate=07/06/13)

* [http://www.fly.faa.gov/adv/adv_otherdis.jsp?advn=27&adv_date...](http://www.fly.faa.gov/adv/adv_otherdis.jsp?advn=27&adv_date=07062013&facId=SFO/ZOA&title=SFO+DIVERSION+RECOVERY&titleDate=07/06/13)

* [http://www.fly.faa.gov/adv/adv_otherdis.jsp?advn=29&adv_date...](http://www.fly.faa.gov/adv/adv_otherdis.jsp?advn=29&adv_date=07062013&facId=SFO/ZOA&title=CDM+GROUND+STOP&titleDate=07/06/13)

</comment><comment><USER18> Someone who was on the plane says everyone seems OK: [https://path.com/p/1lwrZb](https://path.com/p/1lwrZb)

<comment><USER19> Sincerely hope so - it may be a little early to tell though, he likely didn't have visibility of the full cabin and it's hard to tell what things are like inside.

<comment><USER20> That's David Eun, a Samsung exec, so he was probably up front in biz class.

<comment><USER21> the front section of the plane is theoretically the most dangerous part of the plane; survivors in plane crashes are most likely to come from just behind the wing.

<comment><USER22> That greatly depends on the type of crash. The added risk your talking about has a lot to do with nose down collisions.

<comment><USER20> I'd factor in the fact that the people density is lower up front, probably aiding you in getting off the plane faster.

<comment><USER23> There's no need to factor in anything, those statistics come from actual outcomes of past crashes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> (latest info at bottom of comment)

ABC reports it was coming from Taipei, linked forum says Taipei. Video of aftermath. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dFtmSybpuw&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dFtmSybpuw&feature=youtu.be).

Redwood City FD responding. Unknown amount of passengers. SFO FD using foam on entire plane.

FAA has now shut down operations at SFO due to "disabled plane"

3rd alarm called, "red" alarm called.

Multiple reports that fuselage is in multiple pieces. Tail is some yards away.

FAA issues statement: "A Boeing 777 operated by Asiana Airlines crashed while landing at San Francisco International Airport." No further details.

Asiana Airlines flight OZ214, Boeing 777, registration HL7742 [http://t.co/bSgoVeggrU](http://t.co/bSgoVeggrU)

Better picture: pic.twitter.com/JqLj9OAtzv

#SFOFire Northfield IC, North Field Command, four engines and 3 ambulances inbound to aircraft, other units staging #CaFire

@rafweverbergh: Confirmed with controller at SFO: "plane is broken in multiple pieces. (...) a hard landing" SOURCE: [http://t.co/ghqoLpxfVM](http://t.co/ghqoLpxfVM) @scobleizer [[http://twitter.com/rafweverbergh/status/353590307402694658](http://twitter.com/rafweverbergh/status/353590307402694658)]

@CarrieMantha: Thank God @OntarioHazards EMS reporting all passengers of the downed plane at #SFO are accounted for. Injuries but no reports of fatalities [[http://twitter.com/CarrieMantha/status/353590343624691712](http://twitter.com/CarrieMantha/status/353590343624691712)]

@punkboyinsf: Redwood City Fire is classifying SFO plane crash as 3 alarm fire and level 8 mass casualty incident. via @lautenbach #YAL [[http://twitter.com/punkboyinsf/status/353590933515804672](http://twitter.com/punkboyinsf/status/353590933515804672)]

@Emergency_In_SF: SFO AIR CRASH (update): crews report 48 patients have been rescued so far after 777 crashes on landing. Passengers still on burning plane [[http://twitter.com/Emergency_In_SF/status/353591197144588288](http://twitter.com/Emergency_In_SF/status/353591197144588288)]

LIVE SHOT OF PLANE NOW AVAILABLE:

@brianstelter: KTVU, Fox affiliate in San Fran, has a faraway live shot of the plane here: [http://t.co/BXreHtWugm](http://t.co/BXreHtWugm) No anchored coverage yet. [[http://twitter.com/brianstelter/status/353591320733941760](http://twitter.com/brianstelter/status/353591320733941760)]

Someone got a picture of the crash as it happened:

@stefanielaine: just realized I have a picture of the actual crash. holy fucking shit. [http://t.co/5TnOX96Gsi](http://t.co/5TnOX96Gsi) [[http://twitter.com/stefanielaine/status/353591123958173696](http://twitter.com/stefanielaine/status/353591123958173696)]

@peterpham: 290 passengers on plane, 1 infant - San Francisco Fire and EMS Live Audio Feed [http://t.co/ZoMhufPNMA](http://t.co/ZoMhufPNMA) via @Broadcastify [[http://twitter.com/peterpham/status/353592842385494016](http://twitter.com/peterpham/status/353592842385494016)]

VERY UP CLOSE PICTURE FROM TWITTER: [https://path.com/p/1lwrZb](https://path.com/p/1lwrZb)

<comment><USER24> Awesome reporting! Seriously, good job.

I honestly believe that a collection of sources like this is the future of news; allow people to draw their own conclusions based on the first-hand content you can collect.

Shameless plug: OK, that's actually what I've been building for a few months. We had to break it to finish building it (sorry, or i'd just show you), but our launchrock page is at [http://grasswire.com](http://grasswire.com) if you want to have access when we launch

<comment><USER25> I'm not sure I agree. From those first pictures I saw (charred plane) I drew my own conclusion that a large number of people must have died. From the latest reports, it appears I was wrong.

Sometimes we don't know enough to make meaningful conclusions without experts weighing in. Not to mention bias- first hand accounts are rarely impartial. In this instance there aren't any "sides" to take, but I'd bet that most of the photos flowing out of Egypt right now have an opinion behind them.

<comment><USER24> That's fair, but I think I still disagree. If you are only looking at one source, sure, it can be confusing, but if you have a good collection of all of the first-hand sources really you are able to draw the same conclusion that any reporter might be able to. Right now we have basically outsourced the job of drawing conclusions from opinionated people to reporters. Given the right information I believe every person could do that.

But I recognize that's not a belief held by many people. I've just been able to watch all of the reports come in for a while and feel like that's enough, if not better.

<comment><USER26> _we have basically outsourced the job of drawing conclusions from opinionated people to reporters_

Yes, and this is economically efficient. Of course they get all sorts of things wrong at the outset - the fact that this is annoying is a reflection of how much we rely on them. But the fact is that in most cases we don't especially need to know these things immediately; I'm curious about this crash, of course, but it doesn't affect me directly and there's nothing I can do about it. It's actually better that I didn't check the news until a bit later in the day when some time had gone by and the details had firmed up - I'm a little behind the curve, but I've saved 2 hours of pointless and probably poorly-founded speculation. If it wasn't for the fact that my wife watches more TV than I do I'd probably go days at a time without checking, and just catch up Saturdays when the _Economist_ arrives.

I understand being a news junkie - because I am one. But it's an unhealthy habit that rarely yields enough advantage to justify the time involved. I'll check out your startup but really, I suspect it would just be an endless time sink for me. I already find this a big problem with text-based news.

EDIT: I meant to say internet-based news.

To answer the reply below, I guess my question is 'what benefit is there to me in following multiple reports as they break? To be good at it requires doing it on a regular basis, but the economic benefit is questionable. I think it's a great idea, and if it can build up a sufficient community then it has the potential to function as a better news bureau than existing sources. The hurdle to climb is that the number of people who will be both skilled at analyzing breaking news events and have the time to put in regularly will be fairly small, and every time there's a major event the interested local population that joins in will consist largely of -first timers, whose contributions will amount to (Shannon) noise.

I mention a local event, because I see that while we're worried about this because many HNers are in the Bay Area, over on the East Coast near Maine a train carrying oil derailed and exploded in the middle of a small town, flattening the town center and with 60-100 people missing. So a plane crash with only two fatalities doesn't seem very important from a different perspective.

<comment><USER24> What I'm saying is that if you could use the aggregate cognitive surplus of the people trying to follow the event as it breaks, you could use that to create something cohesive and reliable. Then if you're not a news junkie and don't have any interest in following a story until it has settled down, you're welcome to do so.

[edit] In response to the question above: So is your question why would somebody follow something as it breaks?

<comment><USER26> It's not so much why do we follow something as it breaks - that's normal human curiosity/pattern hunger. But my question is how many people will do it consistently enough to be neutral, rather than because they're selectively interested in (but not necessarily informed about) a small set of stories. As I understand it this has been the problem for Wikinews - it can't function as well as Wikipedia because the number of people is below a critical threshold, so it lags breaking news by up to several days.

<comment><USER24> That's an excellent question. Wikinews doesn't function as well, in my opinion, because Wikinews feels like work - the people I've talked to that use/create Wikinews say they do it out of a sense of civic responsibility; it's not enjoyable, and a lot of the time they say it feels like rewriting the New York Times (from the couple dozen I've talked to).

The solution, I think, is in making following the news as it breaks exciting/interesting enough the average person would contribute. Our solution for that was to show you all of the social media streaming from different sources streaming in real time related to the event, making it more like /r/new (Reddit) than wikinews. Watching everything stream in and sorting out the good stuff is exciting; it's easy to get a lot of neutral eyeballs on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Sheryl Sandberg was scheduled to be on this flight but switched to a United flight [1]

The now famous photo from the ground is by David Eun, a Samsung Executive [2]. Coincidentally at a time when there are talks of a Samsung / Facebook partnership [3]

[1] [https://www.facebook.com/sheryl/posts/10152997724435177](https://www.facebook.com/sheryl/posts/10152997724435177) [2] [http://www.linkedin.com/in/davideun1](http://www.linkedin.com/in/davideun1) [2] [http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn- facebook...](http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-facebook- leans-on-samsung-for-mobile-partnership-report-says-20130705,0,7256503.story)

</comment><comment><USER28> Flight path comparison today vs yesterday. [https://twitter.com/sbaker/status/353611787750494208](https://twitter.com/sbaker/status/353611787750494208)

</comment><comment><USER29> Sitting in a plane there now that was supposed to take off in 10 minutes. Hopefully there were no serious injuries. There's a big plume of smoke where the 777 is.

</comment><comment><USER30> Incidents like this make me wonder about interesting problems people are currently solving/or will have to address with commercialized space travel.

Say if this had happened at a docking port to a space station, regardless of the severity, it would have been fatal for everyone (assuming people in transit wouldn't be in some kind of suit meant to protect them from the vacuum of space/or radiation inside of a ship that is supposed to do that).

<comment><USER31> Ever since Soyuz 11 depressurized after/while detaching from Salyut 1, everyone has used rescue suits during launch/landing. These rescue suits are not good for EVA as they don't provide the same mobility as EVA suits (better mobility while not in a vacuum, little to no mobility while in a vacuum), but they provide life support for limited amounts of time.

Radiation is really something you don't worry about until everybody is safely repressurized.

Edit: Chris Hadfield talks about it: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gaFXZWhp4k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gaFXZWhp4k)

<comment><USER30> Do you think (or are) people would be required to wear these suits on commercialized flights?

As an aside, I wish I could be involved with anything dealing with space and exploration… it all just seems so fascinating and so much potential not only for economic development, but even to understand who we are in the context of what is or may be around us.

<comment><USER32> Why can't you?

<comment><USER30> I'm on a less than traditional path right now in life, and I'm not sure who I would even reach out to that would be in a position to listen and give me a chance. But I'm trying, but probably not in the most direct way… and I guess pg said it best himself: "If you want to take on a problem as big as the ones I've discussed, don't make a direct frontal attack on it"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> While we are looking at reasons why this crash happened it may be worthwhile to consider Malcolm Gladwell's suggestion in his book 'Outliers' that Korean cultural legacy, where the High Power Distance ratio between bosses (the pilot) and their underlings (such as the co-pilot) were responsible for a series of Korean Air crashes in the 1990s.

"In addition to weather and pilot fatigue, he blames those crashes on crew members whose cultural legacy made them too deferential to communicate clearly that the plane was about to crash"

[http://blogs.wsj.com/middleseat/2008/12/04/malcolm- gladwell-...](http://blogs.wsj.com/middleseat/2008/12/04/malcolm-gladwell-on- culture-cockpit-communication-and-plane-crashes/)

<comment><USER16> Asian and Middle-eastern airlines have a huge number of expat pilots.

Let's please let race and culture be speculations of last resort.

<comment><USER33> Absolutely right. I was bringing to the attention of the HN community a series of Korean airline crashes that occurred in the 1990s that can be directly attributed to this factor [1].

For the record, there are a number of countries worldwide that exhibit the same restricted cultural legacy. For example, there is also a High Power Distance ratio in a number Latin American and African countries [2]. See, for example, details of the crash of Colombian Avianca Flight 52 [3].

Whether this is a factor _in this particular incident_ is of course for the authorities to decide. Considering the provenance of this airline as being from a high power distance ratio country I felt this information might be relevant or at least of interest to others.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_incidents_and_accid...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_incidents_and_accidents#1990s)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstede's_cultural_dimensions...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstede's_cultural_dimensions_theory#Differences_between_cultures_on_the_values_dimensions)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avianca_Flight_52#Cause_and_in...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avianca_Flight_52#Cause_and_investigation)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Tweet/photo from someone who was on the plane: [https://twitter.com/Eunner/status/353592664526028801](https://twitter.com/Eunner/status/353592664526028801)

</comment><comment><USER35> Reference photo of the plane, for comparison: [http://www.airliners.net/photo/Asiana- Airlines/Boeing-777-28...](http://www.airliners.net/photo/Asiana- Airlines/Boeing-777-28E-ER/2258365/L/)

</comment><comment><USER36> Isn't it fascinating, how everyone is still exiting with their bags in hand? In all that chaos, I would probably just freak out and run. But apparently, a lot of them were picking up their bags before leaving the plane. Crazy. Glad so many got out though.

<comment><USER37> many of these people are foreigners, ie. visas, passport, cash/cards, etc... It is night and day difference between having your passport+visa available for immigration control and the alternative.

<comment><USER38> My ex once asked me what I would miss the most if my house burnt down. I immediately said it would be the documents. I would probably worry about this even after I got an American passport.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Does this really need to be on HN? Just because it's in SFO?

Everyone will already have heard about this on, I don't know, _any_ other news channel

<comment><USER40> 260 people thought yes, so it's up and staying there for a while

<comment><USER41> It never ceases to amaze me the number of people who just don't understand how a site like this works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Ugh...my wife is deathly afraid of flying. She is in Canada now and flying back to SFO next week. I hope she doesn't hear about this.

<comment><USER43> Point out that the fact that this is newsworthy underscores how rare of an occurrence it is.

<comment><USER44> My friend with flight anxiety actually got it from researching airplane safety. While they did learn about probabilities n'all, they also learned about way too many details, after which every single sound seems like the oscillating electron pump failure on Molvania flight 52317 where nobody survived the spontaneous atmosphere exit. It's not exactly rational, it's your silly brain suddenly deciding the specific probability of gruesome death went from epsilon to 99%, and anxiety going through the roof.

Solution: sleeping pills, apparently, or generally anti-anxiety and good contact with flight staff (thus ability to find "safe feeling" seats). In the specific case.

<comment><USER45> I would recommend trying private airplane lessons (on a calm day) Being in control of an airplane helps a lot, and that feeling may transfer to commercial flights.

<comment><USER46> I suspect this is what makes people feel that a car is safer: they themselves are in control, and can believe that they'd miraculously dodge any crashes through skill and luck.

I don't know if that sense of control is transferable, though; paranoid backseat drivers are still a thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> It seems like everyone may be fine, i pray that they all are! [https://path.com/p/1lwrZb](https://path.com/p/1lwrZb)

</comment><comment><USER48> If it turns out it was a mechanical failure, and not pilot error we should credit them for a successful crash landing.

<comment><USER11> Is there a pilot error that can account for the tail ripping off that plane?

<comment><USER48> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tailstrike](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tailstrike)

Eyewitness, standard caveats apply:

> "The tail was too low. Instead of coming in flat it was coming in at a > 45-degree angle, with the tail far too low,"

[http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/07/06/19323541-boeing-7...](http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/07/06/19323541-boeing-777-crashes- while-landing-at-san-francisco-airport?lite)

<comment><USER11> Thank you.

No kidding about witness reports. At least one news report has claimed that the plane flipped over, and people are just throwing the word "cartwheel" around.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Korea's other major airline, Korean Air, has the 5th worst safety record among international airlines [1]. In that case, cultural issues was the problem: [http://blogs.wsj.com/middleseat/2008/12/04/malcolm- gladwell-...](http://blogs.wsj.com/middleseat/2008/12/04/malcolm-gladwell-on- culture-cockpit-communication-and-plane-crashes/). Wonder if there's any correlation here, but obviously it's too soon to tell.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_incidents_and_accide...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_incidents_and_accidents)

</comment><comment><USER50> Audio from the air traffic control tower: [https://www.dropbox.com/s/04qqum874iz4ijr/KSFO- Tower-18%3A22...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/04qqum874iz4ijr/KSFO- Tower-18%3A22Z.mp3)

</comment><comment><USER51> The flight path into SFO goes right over my house in Palo Alto. It's funny, I was wondering why there had been no planes flying overhead today, but hadn't realized what had happened until I saw this post.

I hope everyone is OK.

</comment><comment><USER52> Instagram: [http://instagram.com/p/bb0mk0OK84/](http://instagram.com/p/bb0mk0OK84/)

</comment><comment><USER53> 2 confirmed fatalities, and 60 people still unaccounted for, according to the SF fire chief in a press conference just now.

</comment><comment><USER54> I'm hearing more air traffic overhead than usual. I bet there are going to be a lot of diversions to SJC and OAK.

[http://flightaware.com/live/airport/KSFO](http://flightaware.com/live/airport/KSFO)

</comment><comment><USER55> I would think that SFO would have a video stream of all plane landings and takeoffs. In fact, it would be dumb if ALL airports didn't have this considering how cheap it is to install.

Does anyone know anything about this?

<comment><USER56> There's no doubt they'd have footage, but they'd be stupid to release it to the media while an investigation is being undertaken.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> I was supposed to be flying into SFO this morning from Seoul, though not on that flight (would've been AA flight 26). Suffice to say I had a surprisingly large number of people asking if I was OK.

</comment><comment><USER58> KSFO Tower Stream - [http://www.liveatc.net/flisten.php?mount=ksfo_twr&icao=ksfo](http://www.liveatc.net/flisten.php?mount=ksfo_twr&icao=ksfo)

<comment><USER59> And the Fire Rescue frequency: [http://www.broadcastify.com/listen/feed/6336/web](http://www.broadcastify.com/listen/feed/6336/web)

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> It is ridiculous that a post so factually inaccurate is still the first post. A real failure of the HN comment voting mechanism.

</comment><comment><USER61> Some crazy geo based Instagram photos if you search for SFO and click near the crash site Http://Instahood.meteor.com

</comment><comment><USER62> roughly 60 unaccounted for live coverage at [http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/live](http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/live)

next news conference at 5:30 Pacific time, 8:30 EST

</comment><comment><USER63> Damn - I was just on OZ214 back in October coming back from Seoul...

</comment><comment><USER64> Is this a case for or against automatic airplane control?

<comment><USER65> Free flight was supposed to have happened already. But there are obstacles.

As for ATCs if you do not make use of a skill frequently, you atrophy. When you are suddenly thrown in the middle of an emergency, you perform badly. We can't have "mall cops" watching computers doing air traffic control.

People do not like automation that much either. Consider the fact that underground trains have drivers even though technically they are not needed.

And then there are the technical aspects...

So I do not think that this particular crash would bring much new to the table.

<comment><USER66> > Consider the fact that underground trains have drivers even though > technically they are not needed.

The London DLR[0] has been automated since it was opened in '87\. It travels on the surface too.

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docklands_Light_Railway](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docklands_Light_Railway)

<comment><USER65> Ah well done, is it possible that this is because the contract is to a private company?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Why is this HN relevant ?

<comment> k-mcgrady Relevant for several reasons. The main one probably being that it's an airport a lot of HN members probably use.

Also submission guidelines: [http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER68> It seems to me this is a disaster they'd cover on TV news (thus off-topic) and it doesn't gratify my intellectual curiosity (thus not on-topic). Little different than a jackknifed semi on the highway that a lot of HN members probably use.

Now a technical analysis of the factors leading to the crash would very much be intellectually gratifying and I look forward to seeing that posted on HN.</comment></comment></comment>


Peter Thiel's Trump donation is costing Y Combinator - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/17/13307112/peter-thiel-trump-donation-project-include-ellen-pao-sam-altman <comment><USER2> There's a ton of irony in this coming from a group that "works to improve diversity at tech companies." I am no Trump fan, but (at least) 40% of American voters seem to like the guy better than the alternative. Does Ellen Pao want to improve superficial diversity and ideological homogeneity at the same time?

<comment><USER3> > Pao rejected the idea that Thiel's donation could be dismissed as political > speech. We agree that people shouldn't be fired for their political views, > but this isn't a disagreement on tax policy, this is advocating hatred and > violence

'We agree, except for this case.'

'Freespeech: unless it isn't.'

<comment><USER4> There is a common misunderstanding about free speech. Free speech means that your are not prosecuted for what you say (or - in this case - what you support). However, free speech does not mean "free from any consequences at all". Other people are still entitled to react on your expression of opinion. So Pao's reaction is not at all in conflict with the right of free speech.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ellen Pao's corporation breaks ties with YC. That's the accurate headline for this piece.

The reason they didn't go with the accurate headline is that nobody would care, because anything Pao touches has as much of an effect on YC's bottom line as TCombinator[0] did.

People are losing friendships over this election. Does this not seem a little extreme to everyone else?

0\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3860183](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3860183)

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't think that crucifying someone because of their political beliefs is a very American thing to do. Thiel probably just wants lower taxes / better laws for business / more defense contracts for Palantir. It's a legitimate difference of opinion and it doesn't matter because it's not up to Thiel to decide. He can try and convince people but ultimately the voters will decide who the next president should be. At this point, it looks like it will mostly likely be Clinton.</comment>


Russia's Giant Dry Dock Sank with an Aircraft Carrier Inside - <AUTHOR> https://warisboring.com/russias-giant-dry-dock-sank-with-an-aircraft-carrier-inside/ <comment><USER2> They'll probably blame it on us - as per every drunken quality control mistake since the Czar was a pup.

</comment><comment><USER3> With their ONLY aircraft carrier</comment>


Ask HN: The Allure of Google - <AUTHOR> I apologize for hiding behind anon, but I'm identifiable enough that I would rather not have my views associated with my real identity right now.
I'm currently debating job offers from Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Amazon (a job of mediocre seniority). I was hoping to get people's perspective on HN as one more data point.
Prior to interviewing Google > Facebook > Amazon > LinkedIn
After interviewing LI > GOOG > FB > AMZN
LinkedIn had (by far) the friendliest and most enjoyable interview panel. The questions were tough, the discussion I had with the team was meaningful, and it really raised my opinion of LI.
Interviewing at Amazon felt like I was in a Dilbert cartoon.
I'm relatively biased against FB. I don't believe I would be happy working for a company I actively dislike (no judgement on those who do, just not my cup of tea).
That being said, I also don't use/enjoy LI's product. I believe there are massive opportunities for them to improve in meaningful ways. I doubt they will be able to overcome inertia and actually do it. But the potential exists.
I was severely disappointed with Google. I have a soft spot in my heart for that company. However, the quality of interviewers was really lacking. I have no doubt the people there are smart, but I really just didn't have a great interview experience.
There isn't an issue of compensation with any of the companies (except Amazon), and the perks/benefits are essentially the same.
I'm stuck choosing between Google and LI:
My anxiety keeps telling me:
(1) choose Google just so that I can say I worked there. (2) don't choose LI because it's a socially lesser place to work.
These are both pretty bad reasons IMO.
This is super subjective, but if anyone has an opinion to offer on "Why LinkedIn" or "Why Google" I would really appreciate it. I know it's ultimately my decision, but my head is an echo chamber at the moment. <comment><USER2> I don't know if "worked at Google" is as valuable as a resume item as it used to be. Google churns through tons of employees, and from my understanding, the biggest issue is that even their most capable hires will likely be given mundane tasks. A possible note with what you say of LinkedIn, is that you see improvement potential. If you can be part of that improvement, people will notice, moreso than just maintaining an existing success.

All four companies obviously look great as a resume item. I don't work for a well-known company personally, but the biggest thing is that I enjoy the crud out of my job, even when it's stressful and I have to put in too many hours and such. Personally, a top perk at where I work: People thank me for the work I do pretty much daily, which is kinda incredible. Worth more than salary for that, right there. Work with who you think you'd enjoy the work for. This is gonna be half your life until you leave. And I absolutely recommend against working for a company you wouldn't be proud to say you work for.

</comment><comment><USER3> What are your goals?

It seems like all of them offer a huge opportunity based on how you apply yourself.

</comment><comment><USER4> Google has its fingers in many many pies. Software, hardware, transportation, OS, media, mobile, biology, genetics, algos, etc.

LinkedIn is a rolodex.

<comment><USER2> It doesn't really matter how many industries Google is in, if you get a job there and end up debugging issues with search ads. And while Google is in many industries, they're still only profitable in one.

<comment><USER5> > And while Google is in many industries, they're still only profitable in > one.

That's not at all true; their financial statements show that an overwhelming share of their profit comes from one industry, but they make profits in others, they just make so much more in their primary industry that anything else looks like a rounding error, but then, they could make _all_ the profits in some of the industries they are in, and it would still look like a rounding error next to their advertising profits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Choose Google not just so that you can say you worked there, but because it offers almost unlimited opportunity for working on _high impact products that people including you might actually want to use_.</comment>


I've mostly given up on making Ubuntu bug reports - <AUTHOR> https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/linux/UbuntuBugReportsUseless <comment><USER2> I filed a bug about an admittedly trivial issue about 6 years ago. Suddenly this summer there was a bunch of activity on it, somebody looked into it and made an effort to fix it. But that person was apparently new and didn't really know what to do, so I tried to handhold that person a bit. Then suddenly someone (that person's supervisor?) writes a comment implicitly chastising the person for spending time on a "low importance" bug. After that, the bug report went silent again.

Oh well, maybe someone else will fix it in another 6 years..

<comment><USER3> You happen to have a link at hand? I'm curious

<comment><USER2> Hmm, lets see... Yes, I found it: [https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/thunderbird/+bug/1...](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/thunderbird/+bug/1028267)

<comment><USER4> Comparing your comment here and what exactly went down in the bug report, it looks like you interpreted things the wrong way. Your comment reads like you were dealing with Canonical employees. However, looking at their profiles we can see that they are volunteers. I would also note that Paul's comment is not "implicitly chastising", but completely ordinary incremental triaging.

These types of interpretations are actually quite common in FOSS project bug trackers. A few months ago in LibreOffice's bug tracker some hostile person demanded that I be fired from Canonical (I have never worked for any company on LibreOffice).

<comment><USER2> Fair enough, I didn't realize that these persons were volunteers and not employees. That, uh, changes things.

To be clear, I wasn't suggesting anyone at Canonical should be fired. If anything, the opposite so they would have more resources to deal with bug reports.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I made a thing that ubuntu now (recently) includes in their distro. Canonical employees have filed tickets with me about this thing. Responses to it, by me, are generally ignored for many weeks/months. They've patched the thing in weird ways without contributing anything back (upstream as it were).

This does not seem like 1) a good model for floss developers to give a shit about Canonical, 2) a good model for Canonical to support (non-corporate?) users

<comment><USER6> _They 've patched the thing in weird ways without contributing anything back (upstream as it were)._

I've had this problem with both Debian and Ubuntu. Sometimes the patches they apply are good, sometimes bad; but I wish they at least had a social norm of "contact the upstream project and offer them the patches". It's annoying when the first I hear about a patch is when a user contacts me to complain that something is broken.

<comment><USER7> For Debian - would you say that's mostly package owner dependent, or more tied to the policy of "bug-fix without api change only" in stable? Or just overall poor culture of communicating with upstream - when upstream != maintainer of Debian package?

<comment><USER6> None of the cases I've seen have been related to the policy of avoiding API changes in stable. Most of them seem to be instances of "user files a bug with Debian; package maintainer adds a patch to address user's complaint but doesn't relay the bug report or the patch upstream".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Probably an unpopular opinion, but when a project is starving financially, responding to bug reports should be the first thing to go. Hugely popular features and large subprojects that change the direction of the project are more important than the average bug fix. One of my projects has 1000 new open issues in the last year, and I'm the only paid contributer, so the chance your issue will even be responded to is about 25%. Only the highest quality bug reports are addressed. If not enough information is provided, you can pretty much guarantee it will be ignored because there are hundreds of other issues that are written better and deserve better attention.

Without knowing anything about the blogger's bug reports, I'm going to guess this is what's happening at Canonical that is causing bug reports to not be addressed.

<comment><USER9> With my commercial projects I've always had a policy of no known bugs. If I wasn't able to handle this then I'd consider it a warning that the scope of the project was too large.

<comment><USER10> I'm interested in how this works. Obviously there are bugs which can and should be fixed - but how about bugs which are really feature requests, or bugs which are extremely complex to fix and only affect 1 person? Do you mean that you close out these bugs very quickly without fixing them, or do you take superhuman efforts to implement everything?

<comment><USER11> Bugs can be triaged into deficiencies and new feature requests. Usually new feature requests are handled differently than actual bugs. For hard-to-fix bugs that don't affect many people, sometimes documenting it as a known issue along with a workaround is good enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Contrary to what the post says, I usually have the same experience filing bug reports on Debian: most of the time no one replies. However, even though I no longer really expect anyone to react, I still think it's useful to report bugs. Indeed, when I have a problem and am searching for explanations, it's often very useful to find a bug report even if the bug has not been fixed: it can help you confirm that the problem is not specific to your setup, can give you hints about what is causing it, can suggest possible workarounds, etc. So even "giving up" on Ubuntu bug reports doesn't mean it's not useful to report bugs, IMHO.

<comment><USER13> I agree. Even if ignored by the distro, I've had other users do a better job than I could tracking down the source of bug reports I've posted and either offering work arounds or what new upstream release is likely to fix it.

And I manage to help out on some others too occasionally. Even if you're just creating a record of the specific error message for other users to search for and collect their experiences of it in one place - that still has some value to the community.

I have had reasonable luck with some portion of Ubuntu bug reports though - especially from the Samba/Winbind maintainers over the years. They did have their work cut out for them :)

If an Ubuntu package is part of Universe instead of Main, it's tough going getting Canonical to care much about it though. Universe packages basically just come down from Debian, while the Main packages are created and maintained by Ubuntu.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've reported an Xorg crash almost a year ago. Nobody looked into it. This was on a work laptop and it rendered it unusable for work because X would crash several times a day. I managed to work around it by downgrading X, but I recently got a new Thunderbolt dock which doesn't work too well on 16.04 but works well on 18.04, however on 18.04 I don't have the option of installing the version of X that doesn't crash multiple times a day.

This makes me very sad because I've had to go through quite a bit of trouble to be able to use Ubuntu on my work laptop in an org where Windows is standard. This makes me understand why the IT department is unwilling to support Ubuntu.

</comment><comment><USER15> It's not just Ubuntu, and it's not just open source. I've adopted a policy of filing no more bug reports on anything, free or commercial. All it's ever resulted in is arguments from developers about why they're not going to fix the bug. It's a waste of everyone's time. (Of course I think it would be a good use of time to fix the bug – but if you're not going to do that, then arguing about it is a useless distraction; everyone would be better off if I didn't file the report in the first place.)

<comment><USER16> Not every crowd is like that. If you ever use DB Browser for SQLite (sqlitebrowser.org) and hit a bug, please report it.

We have a bunch of open bug reports already, but we do get a reasonable number of reported things fixed and it's continually ongoing.

Also, but reports often turn out to have a workaround we know of and can suggest in the meantime. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> On the other end of the spectrum I get occasional updates for a Libre Office bug I filed years ago. They were very open, welcoming, and conscientious.

<comment><USER18> Mind sharing? Curious to see. At least as a model for myself.

<comment><USER19> Not OP but I filed this Launchpad bug and the package developer responded the same day, even explaining how to recover data that had gone missing: [https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox/+bug/12602...](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox/+bug/1260229)

This may be the exception to the rule but I was really impressed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Canonical has about 500 employees, Red Hat about 12,000.

It takes a certain scale to herd all the open source cats

<comment><USER21> This doesn't excuse many of the other things they do, like (often badly) patching upstream code and not sending the patches upstream.

It's one thing when you simply don't have the resources or the manpower to respond to all the bugs. That's understandable -- you deal with the really important ones and oh well.

It's totally another thing when even the ones you deal with, you deal with poorly. Especially when, more often than not, upstreams tend to be helpful, especially with large distributions like Ubuntu. A bad patch can always be made better. No communication leaves things exactly as they were. A bad patch and no communication makes them even worse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The scope of Ubuntu's bug tracker is vast. They accept bug reports against any package. I guess users will see packages as part of one integrated whole that Ubuntu is taking responsibility for. But I do wonder if there is a better way of Canonical delegating some of these bug reports to upstream.

</comment><comment><USER18> I've rarely ever had Ubuntu bug reports be useful (and I follow up with more info when I'm asked) but can I really be annoyed? It's an open source product. I'm a software engineer. When it's important enjoy, I'll fix it. About the only useful thing is that other people also discuss it there.

Launchpad is useful as a single interface and Ubuntu-bug reports lots of info automatically so that's why I report there. Maybe I should use upstream.

<comment><USER23> Great that you can cover everything from security to networking in a multimillion LOC project. I guess this is not a average software engineer skillset.

<comment><USER7> Outside of certain areas - if you manage to reliably reproduce the bug, you're likely to able understand the bug, and it's likely you can fix it.

But sure, there _are_ areas where things can go very wrong. Prime example being the horrible Debian ssh/ssl key gen entropy bug:

[https://lists.debian.org/debian-security- announce/2008/msg00...](https://lists.debian.org/debian-security- announce/2008/msg00152.html)

(note that this was a "bug-fix" introduced after a misguided effort of looking for bad code - so a bit different from the typical "I triggered this bug in normal use").

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've never reported a bug to Ubuntu, but I've frequently have used Ubuntu bug report threads to find work arounds to problems.

<comment><USER25> Its also good to see if something is a bug and not user error

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Five years ago I submitted a fair amount of bug reports. A lot of them were merged into similar bugs and eventually fixed. The rest were dismissed as not corroborated, and honestly I found another fix, which was usually like undoing something I had customized poorly.

I haven't in some time, but that's only because I haven't been hit by many bugs that I can think of.

My 16.04 -> 18.04 upgrades suffered on three machines from a thing where I had to keep just running apt upgrade several times. I think this is related to why 18.04.1 was delayed, but whatever, it mostly seemed related to third party packages and development headers the common user probably never has.

</comment><comment><USER27> I recently tried to install Ubuntu on somewhat recent hardware and it was a complete trainwreck. I'm talking about installer broken right off the bat that required multiple grub hacks to fix. It then proceeded to install a completely broken system.

The only thing that worked (kind of) was recovery mode with command line only, and even that installed had a broken resolvconf (missing /etc/resolv.conf), so networking was working but DNS wasn't configured so couldn't resolve anything to actually do anything useful.

Numerous attention to detail/UI bugs in the installer irrespective of the problems that could have been specific to my hardware support lead me to believe quality and effort level have overall plummeted.

The experience harkened back to late 90's linux distro level of frustration. In short, it's a complete mess. Don't bother with Ubuntu, just let it die already.

</comment><comment><USER28> My response got too long; wrote a blog entry: [https://l0b0.wordpress.com/2018/09/01/if-you-cant-support- yo...](https://l0b0.wordpress.com/2018/09/01/if-you-cant-support-your-users- tell-them/)

</comment><comment><USER29> I think it can be a problem of many Debian-based distributions, which are quite often supplying very old packages. RPM-based distributions are usually providing more updated software and perform updates more often. My personal favorites are Gentoo (for fun), Arch (for VMs) and Fedora (for work). They all are have an active and striving developers' community , except Gentoo which suffers from developers shortage. But if I fill a bug in existing package in these distributions, I am sure it will not be in vain.

<comment><USER30> Sure if you ignore CentoOS and RedHat. The problem is that people that use Linux for work do not want o update the work machine daily, if there is no backup machine probably people like me will use an LTS for 3-5 years.

Since I use some older package and report a bug the upstream developers will most of the time ask to check the latest version and probably I can't have access to that package,

In case you would made the ar5gument that Arch is better and it never broke for you , even in a perfect world with no bugs you have the new features that roll out and that can break your workflow when useful things you used are removed or changed(if you use GNOME and you do not read on it's development I imagine how surprised people are when shit is removed or moved around every release)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Throwback to JWZ writing in 2003 - [https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html](https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html)

" _[..] my bug reports to open source software projects [..] I report bugs; they go unread for a year, sometimes two; and then (surprise!) that module is rewritten from scratch -- and the new maintainer can 't be bothered to check whether his new version has actually solved any of the known problems_"

</comment><comment><USER32> You've got absolutely a point. But, if you really use Ubuntu for making money, consider an Ubuntu Advantage subscription, that should let Canonical prioritize your tickets.

<comment><USER33> Oddly enough, as I'd never heard of that, I looked at it - it isn't for individuals. FYI, in case anyone else was interested.

<comment><USER30> Support for individual desktop users sounds interesting but I see big problems that makes this very expensive,

1 the hardware, this support program could work only for certified hardware and using certified drivers, no latest nvidia driver beta(I got kernel crashes because of video drivers both on Linux and Windows and the blame would be on the driver vendor)

2 Some users are stupid, if you ever did customer support you will know (in one case a person complained our application was missing a button, in the end I use TeamView to see the weird issue and guess what, the user dragged the window down so the button was offscreen, this is maybe a Window Manager but , it was on Windows or Mac I do not remember) my point is your customer support team will waste a lot of time so the support program can be expensive.

<comment><USER25> This wouldn't be an issue if support charged for the amount of time spent. If the user spends their money getting stupid non issues looked at then thats their issue.

<comment><USER30> Does this work? IS anybody using it? I feel like people would complain it took say 20 developers hours to fix some trivial bug where in fact that specific bug was not that trivial to fix.

Then the situation is complicated since you don't control the upstream and if I fix a bug in upstream software X I may have to spend more hours convincing the maintainer that the fix should be included, sometimes the meinteiner has different ideas on how it should be done,

Now imagine the bug "There is no system ray anymore, I can't see my Slack,Skype,Dropbox icons there and I want them back. You can't fix this without forking GNOME and you get a new holly war with the GNOME camp (Canonical does not care about desktop anymore anyway this was just an example)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I think generally linux distribution bug reports aren't that important to most other types of software, since you can always do so much to diagnose and work around issues yourself. And if there is a bug in software I use like kdenlive or Gimp I'll go to the developers directly obviously.

Also most users are morons, it takes a lot of time to sort through all the invalid reports.

<comment><USER25> Also a lot of the bugs will affect such a tiny percent like users with some obscure Bluetooth card trying to use some uncommon feature. Ubuntu could spend all year closing obscure bugs and almost none of their users would benefit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Thought they have a long term support version?! And if not in real term other than name, can try what Apple do - from time to time has a no feature version.

<comment><USER36> They do, that's what LTS stands for. But "support" doesn't mean they'll look at your bug reports, it means they'll continue providing repositories and security patches.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Perhaps the best thing to do is to file the bugs against Debian. That way Ubuntu among the other derivatives will eventually silently upstream the fixes.

</comment><comment><USER38> Does anyone who isn't a Ubuntu dev themselves get a good outcome from filing bugs on Launchpad?

</comment><comment><USER39> Freeware at its finest

<comment><USER25> Proprietary software just wouldn't have a bug tracker for you to use.

<comment><USER40> Microsoft seems to be using UserVoice rather well.

<comment><USER25> They won't solve every issue posted to it though. Also microsoft does things differently to Linux distros. Hardware manufacturers have to make sure their devices work with windows and software devs have to do the same. Canonical accepts bug reports on just about any hardware and the thousands of programs in the repos.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


LA Fresh Poultry: A Store Where Los Angeles Converges - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/21/style/la-fresh-poultry-immigrant-family-recipes.html <comment><USER2> I worked near LA's Chinatown and would often walk by the polleria on my search for a place to eat lunch. I never got the guts to go in to see how they processed the chickens. What I remember most was the smell. It was very strong and rank.

It's been years since but one thing it did was to remind me where our meats come from. The fact that they aren't just packages that come from a factory. They were once live animals.

<comment><USER3> What did you do down there?

And, yes, that is the typical disconnect People have with their food; and possibly an explanation for much of the problems we have with the environment/Nature. Its one of the many issues with the abject commodification of Food, rather than an integral component of Life itself.

I think having to take the life and preparing a meal with an animal you slaughtered should be a prerequisite for being able to eat meat in Society. You learn a lot about yourself and sustainable practices, and the value of something giving it's Life for your nourishment.

<comment><USER2> I worked as a web developer for a company that had its offices near there.

A few years ago people were making fun of Mark Zuckerberg for saying that he would only eat the meat he killed. I think he was right. By doing that you get a better understanding of what you are eating.

<comment><USER4> I think people made fun of him more because of the associated elitist attitude. How many people have the time, space or resources to procure a live animal? Though I admit the imagery of someone like a Manhattan broker slaughtering a pig in his 15th floor apartment is darkly comical.

At the same time, I agree with you, he is right in that we've become detached from what we eat, but that goes for all food. Even the idea that something so routine for many people today, and to almost everyone prior to the 20th century, would be an "experience" to most of us in the modern world is just odd.

<comment><USER5> I worked with a few people who lived in midwest US. They hunted a couple times a year and after listening for a while I realized it was a very impressive money saver. In a week, they were able to bag enough elk to eat plenty of meat all year, sold the waste (skin and parts) to a local processor. Apparently this is not uncommon, even for people who live in suburbs.

<comment><USER3> > I worked with a few people who lived in midwest US. They hunted a couple > times a year and after listening for a while I realized it was a very > impressive money saver. In a week, they were able to bag enough elk to eat > plenty of meat all year, sold the waste (skin and parts) to a local > processor. Apparently this is not uncommon, even for people who live in > suburbs.

I live in CO now, and its definitely more normal than not outside of Denver and Boulder area. I got my Hunter's license this year after putting it off for so long and I will be applying for a tag this year. In addition to it being economical its also very good for sustainability as the gear and the tag help promote and fund wild life protection.

An elk can definitely feed an entire family, plus if you have never had game meat (venison in this case) you have the challenge of preparing very lean meat in the kitchen, I find that cooking the meat in animal fats (tallow and lard) can change your entire perspective of how much to eat as it satiates you quickly.

Its alarming how much meat is eaten in the US, even more so when you see the ecological damage that comes from factory farming, so I highly encourage more to explore this option.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's something so wonderful about single specialty stores. I've started getting chickens from this poultry store in Chinatown. No signs in English, just a big picture of a rooster out front. They're very nice and plus I can get other birds like guinea hen or duck.

One thing we've lost with American supermarkets is the diversity and quality of meat products from a butcher. I love going to a butcher and getting whole slabs of bacon, or in house cured ham, or a nice beef shin bone for stew. And these aren't pricey hipster butchers reserved for the wealthy eating their veal. If you know what to get (pork over beef, shin bones and short ribs over steak), then you can eat well for cheap.

<comment><USER7> > If you know what to get (pork over beef, shin bones and short ribs over > steak), then you can eat well for cheap.

Especially if you have a sous vide setup, even the toughest cuts are amazing after a few days at low temperatures.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> i remember driving by LA Fresh Poultry during the peta protest (mostly because of the crazy rooster on the top of the building). it was a small number of people but a big enough protest that cars were backing up on the road, which made me wonder what it was and the purpose of the protest.

(multi-)cultural peculiarities like this makes what might be an otherwise impersonal city a little more friendly and interesting. i have bookmarked the real chicken house, mnetioned in the article, to try one of these days.

</comment><comment><USER8> I have no issue with seeing how the sausage is made. But halal and kosher meat makes me uncomfortable. It's just _needlessly_ cruel.

Maybe I'm just splitting hairs here. It's murdering an animal to eat it either way. But making an animal bleed out instead of putting a bolt through its head is just needless suffering.

Anyone else feel this way?

<comment><USER9> My understanding is animals die very quickly from halal butchery. Compared to animals twisting their ankles walking over metal grates, or people stomping on baby chicks with work boots, this seems like a weird thing to focus on

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The world is crumbling, humans need to eat less/no meat if we want to survive.</comment>


Undisclosed hole in openssh on FreeBSD and Juniper? - <AUTHOR> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.os.openbsd.tech/35722/focus=35731

<comment><USER2> Many years ago, I submitted a bug report to OpenBSD about an issue I had discovered with threads. I received a one line response from Theo. I still have the mail. He wrote:

       "Threads are for idiots."

At the time, I felt discounted and I was upset. I was younger then. Today, I realize what he meant and that he's right.

<comment><USER3> This is vintage Theo. It has the virtue of sounding correct, but, because OpenBSD ships threaded libraries, it probably lacks the virtue of being correct.

I had a similar experience (note, though: I have a history with Theo, who I know/knew personally).

When I was at Arbor Networks, we shipped appliances that monitored ISP backbones that were based on OpenBSD. An analysis process that happened to allocate a lot of memory would occasionally lose a giant chunk of memory. I was able to produce a reduction of the bug and narrow down where in the VM subsystem the bug was happening, but I wasn't able to recommend a fix. Theo's response, to what was clearly a serious bug in OpenBSD, was "I'm not going to look at UVM; it's just Chuck Cranor's thesis project".

I lobbied for a switch to FreeBSD, but the monkey.org people that ran the place were dyed-in-the-wool for OpenBSD. :)

<comment><USER4> What happened next? Did the bug get fixed? Did you do a work-around somehow? Don't leave stories unfinished like this :)

<comment><USER3> I actually don't know. Arbor could have had its dev team hunt for a fix for the bug, but that would have been silly; no way did it make sense for them to take ownership of a custom fork of the most complicated kernel subsystem. So we worked around the problem instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Please ask Kirk McKusick, he knows the story about why this is not being > disclosed to FreeBSD

Could someone please explain this?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd be curious as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What good reason could their possibly be for not disclosing a hole to FreeBSD? Especially if it effects networking infrastructure....

1\. Government gag order? I'd call this a "good reason", but it wouldn't clear my conscience.

2\. Disclosure to or interception by malicious parties? I can't imagine that the best solution would be STO.

<comment><USER7> Short Answer: Bitterness.

Long Answer: It's complicated and I do not understand the whole picture myself.

I can however outline two things that likely exasperate the situation.

a) OpenSSH is used by nearly everyone. Nearly every unix-like installation includes a copy of OpenSSH. Most companies which do business on the internet use a unix-like operating system in some way.

The OpenBSD Foundation has had trouble obtaining funding to cover operating costs in the past. Included in these operating costs is support and auditing of OpenSSH.

b) There has been a long and colored history between FreeBSD and OpenBSD. A lot of code and features developed under OpenBSD has been ported over to FreeBSD such as the OpenBSD Packet Filter (PF).

Juniper uses FreeBSD and PF in their routers and have donated in various ways to FreeBSD. For example, Juniper donated three EX3200s with full contracts to FreeBSD for use in their datacenter.

The OpenBSD Foundation on the other hand has not really seen the same support.

<comment><USER8> Sure, De Raadt/OpenBSD are bitter about the lack of funding but that does not explain anything about this mysterious hole. This email can mean anything. Does Kirk McKusick know about this hole and has he pressured De Raadt not to disclose it (for what reason could that even be?), or is it a vague reference to a fallout he had with him earlier(making this an absurdly petty reason not to disclose it)?

Just dropping that hint is ambiguous drama baiting.

<comment><USER7> Drama baiting is something Theo de Raadt is good at. :)

I have a feeling it has less to do with something sinister, and more to do with Theo's very vocal stance on the security situation in FreeBSD.

[http://www.itwire.com/business-it-news/open- source/62641-cry...](http://www.itwire.com/business-it-news/open- source/62641-crypto-freebsd-playing-catch-up-says-de-raadt)

Most likely the FreeBSD kernel or libraries are doing something in a certain way that Theo finds insecure/insufficient. (Justified or not)

<comment><USER8> FreeBSD dev response to De Raadt's very vocal stance: [http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4559455&cid=4570198...](http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4559455&cid=45701981)

It really does seem like De Raadt's just being really petty to me. But if this is an actual hole and he doesn't want to say what it is, that is worrisome. Doesn't he insinuate the rest of FreeBSD does _not_ know about the hole?

<comment><USER7> It's Theo de Raadt...

It's possible that he knows of a real exploitable problem.

It's possible that he is trying to boast about his prowess with things "security".

It's possible the "hole" is a design feature in FreeBSD that he just doesn't like. (And hence, considers to be a security problem.)

It's possible that he is bitter that FreeBSD has gotten more attention than OpenBSD.

It's possible that he said it to spur FreeBSD take more interest in security. (Justifiably or not...)

It's possible that he wanted to cause a commotion.

It's possible that more than one of the above is true. :) He is under no obligation to make a disclosure of an exploit that he finds. Does it make him a bad net-denizen? Perhaps. But it's his prerogative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Dupe.

Previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7568059](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7568059)

</comment><comment><USER10> If I parse Theo correctly, he clearly says that FreeBSD _does_ have a hole.

Its really really hard to imagine he is lying.

<comment><USER6> I'm guessing it is of modest severity, if they even feel they can _get away_ with keeping it to themselves. But its still deeply troubling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is unsettling, to be sure. If there's anything to this, I'd really love to hear a response from the actual FreeBSD folks.

But it should be noted that this guy has a relatively rocky history with *BSD, and his nearly context-free, ambiguous trash-talking of FreeBSD should be taken with a grain of salt.

</comment><comment><USER12> Dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7568059](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7568059) and still flag button fodder.

</comment><comment><USER13> Why would he say that and not reveal the vulnerability ?

</comment><comment><USER14> Theo is Sloppy Mo: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKvhVssO348](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKvhVssO348)</comment>