The emotional journey of creating anything great - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/Bill_Gross/status/1000211381109469184?s=20 <comment><USER2> My strategy for dealing with the dip/valley of despair are a few simple rules that I have formalised for myself and are helping me a lot.

\- Howsoever great the project is in the beginning, it will go through a phase where it's going to suck for whatever reason. I know it. It doesn't surprise me. I take it in my stride.

\- I have absolute faith during that phase that it will get better on the other side. Absolute. And nothing is going to convince me otherwise.

\- It is not a sprint.

\- Mantain healthy relationships, mind (meditation) and body (exercise). Do not let them fall below a certain level because gaining these things back and being productive at the sometime is a struggle. From my own personal experience.

</comment><comment><USER3> Publicly creating anything is an interesting experience. I've spent my life coding, but in my spare time I've created things: magazine articles, apps, presentations, books, and so forth.

When you first start, you're usually in love with yourself. Anybody watch "A Christmas Story"? Most new creators are like little Ralph, amazed at how awesome their work is.

At some point, you move into being a professional. Then you realize that everything you create sucks. It just sucks in various ways and to various degrees. The difference between an artist and an amateur is that the artist is never satisfied with their work.

That's the internal battle. Externally, over and over again, you release some new "incredible" piece of work, tell everybody about it?

Crickets.

Nobody cares. You, if you're an average person, could find a cure to cancer today. Nobody would care. There's a whole universe set up in each genre around who's important, who to listen to, and so forth. The quality of your work and the value of your work have nothing to do with anything. All those years that Google told us that if you wanted to be heard, just publish good content. It was bullshit. Humans don't work that way. We are a social species and we consume based on social cues.

I finished a book last month, Info-Ops. [https://leanpub.com/info- ops](https://leanpub.com/info-ops) Took me six years to get through it. At the end, am I happy?

Not so much. Angry is probably a better word for it. Creating something does not immediately cause good feedback to happen. Just the opposite. Now the _real_ work begins: getting people to listen. And that's usually a long, difficult, demoralizing slog. You suck it up and move on. The only people I know who are extremely pleased with creating a major work or either the already-successful -- or the people who don't know any better.

I've heard successful startup founders describe it as going out there with your message and saying it over and over again until you're completely sick of it. Then saying it some more. When we see these successful companies, what we don't realize, as the tweet shows, they all spent time talking to the wall.

My big mistake over the years was not romanticizing the creation part. I moved to professional status fairly quickly. It was romanticizing the curve of despair part, oddly enough. I had to learn that there's no honor or special hero status for moving through this stage. Lots of failed efforts go through it as well. (In fact, the stats say it's more likely that you're on a failed effort. You still have to go through here.) You have to mature and see it as just more work, like the rest of it. The reason I use the word "anger" to describe the feeling is that it's much like taking a shovel and digging a small hole -- then realizing that the job in front of you is to dig an entire trench. There's usually some cursing involved.

You can say that's it's all fun and challenging, or you can say it's all pain and misery. But it's just the work. At the end of the day, it's just the work.

Some people say successful startups are all luck. Some say they're all hard work. The truth is that they're all on this same journey, whether it all ends up well or not. If you stick with it, you might succeed. If you give up, you never will. (Insert Zen/Existentialism discussion here)

<comment><USER4> > The quality of your work and the value of your work have nothing to do with > anything. All those years that Google told us that if you wanted to be > heard, just publish good content. It was bullshit. Humans don't work that > way. We are a social species and we consume based on social cues.

People believe what they want to believe, and I think you've already made up your mind. From my view, however, you are just going to limit your success with such beliefs, and worse, the cynicism will drain your enthusiasm and energy.

If you want to be heard, the answer is simple: _make something that 's interesting to people_. I know a ton of very talented chiptune artists who are struggling. Why? Well, would _you_ buy a chiptune album? People spend too much time in their own private universes and forget what other people are looking for. I'm not saying you shouldn't make chiptune or mathcore or whatever, but you have to be realistic about it, especially if you want to make money.

And look, I'll be honest -- not trying to be mean here, really -- but I'm not at all surprised your book isn't generating interest. My first reaction to "Info-Ops" is that it's super dry and technical, not to mention I have no idea what it means. So right off the bat I have a bad gut reaction. Did you not get any second opinions about this title? And $40 for an e-book... well, I admittedly don't know anything about pricing books, but if an e-book is too expensive then people will just pirate it, no?

<comment><USER3> Thank you for your comment. I consider it negative, but that's a good thing! I love negative feedback.

I don't want to get into a slug-fest over the work. After all, you don't even know what it is. You just know what you saw. So really all we could talk about is first impressions.

I would like, however to take issue with your thesis. _If you want to be heard, the answer is simple: make something that 's interesting to people._

It is _necessary_ to make something that's interesting to people, but it is not _sufficient_ to do so. That was my entire point. The interesting and valuable part is table stakes.

Price? I'd give it away for free. I'm not trying to sell the most books. I'm trying to help the most people. Price is an indicator of commitment. If I get a lot of people paying the money and blowing it off? I might raise the price. If people pirate it? I want it to make a difference.

There are a lot of people who want to sell two-dollar self-help books and such. Wonderful market. That's just not my game.

Finally, you have to consider that a landing page, if you're honest, isn't just to sell books. One of the most important things you can do is turn away people that might be wasting their money. I know that goes against all that is good and holy on HN, but really. I don't want people reading it that are wasting their time. That's awful.

So it's all good. Thank you for the first impressions. I haven't really already decided about much of anything aside from there's a lot of work left to do -- and that considering as much work as I've been through so far, that pisses me off somewhat. So what? I've been angry before. It sounds like a lot of work has to do with the landing page. Cool. Time to get started.

ADD: You know, there is a huge hunk of money spent every year on books that have great first impressions -- and don't make a positive difference in people's lives. Billions. So coming at this from "But your first impression sucks!" is kinda backwards, at least the way I see it. You want value, then creativity and interest, then honesty .... somewhere down the line you work on turning people on with a web page.

<comment><USER4> > I don't want to get into a slug-fest over the work.

That wasn't my intention at all. I just thought I'd share my first impression because, as a newcomer to your work, I probably see it much differently than you do.

I read through your whole post, and -- sorry, this is going to be another first impression, made over the internet, so take it with a grain of salt -- you seem to be very emotionally involved with your work. I would be, too, if I spent that much time on something. I think you would benefit from seeking advice from an unbiased third party. I don't know who that would be -- a publisher? an agent? I know nothing about the book world.

> Finally, you have to consider that a landing page, if you're honest, isn't > just to sell books. One of the most important things you can do is turn away > people that might be wasting their money. I know that goes against all that > is good and holy on HN, but really. I don't want people reading it that are > wasting their time. That's awful.

I think a good, professional publisher (or whoever) would berate you for saying this. How can you possibly know who will benefit from your work and who won't ahead of time? I also don't like deceptive advertising but I think you can make your work attractive while also being honest and true to yourself.

For the record, I share a lot of your frustrations with regards to generating publicity. I _really_ resonated with this:

> Creating something does not immediately cause good feedback to happen. Just > the opposite. Now the _real_ work begins: getting people to listen. And > that's usually a long, difficult, demoralizing slog. You suck it up and move > on.

However, I don't think that viewing this as long, difficult, or demoralizing is productive or even rational reaction to have, which is why I'm working on trying to see this differently, myself.

<comment><USER3> I believe you're reading this as much more negative and confrontative than it was meant to be. The post was about how there was an emotional journey to creating great things. My comment simply relayed a personal experience that agreed with the tweet. That's it. It's an emotional journey. Creating things of value can be deeply emotional.

More to the point, recognize the sucky parts and continue on anyway.

"I think you would benefit from seeking advice from an unbiased third party." \-- sure thing. I've ran more than 50 beta readers through the book. And I plan on seeking editing services. A trusted third-party is always a good thing. Why wouldn't it be?

"How can you possibly know who will benefit from your work and who won't ahead of time?" Well you can't, which is why you use beta readers. I know my work. I know my work helps people. And I know the people I help would also be helped from this book. That's just a starting place, mind you, but it's a pretty strong one. Then, and only then, do you start looking at tone, product-market fit and the rest of it.

I decided not to go the professional publishing route, even though I probably could have made it work. Why? Because I am purposefully doing this upside- down. That doesn't mean a professional publisher or editor wouldn't be great. Self-publishing is a ton of work. But so is ditch-digging. So is anything of this nature.

Yes, I can certainly make my work attractive while also being honest. I have work to do. Yay!

The purpose of the tweet was to tell people that there's an emotional trough you have to go through. That was also my purpose. It's normal -- and whether you need to get angry, happy, sad, or whatnot to make your way through it, it's quite an emotional ride! Don't lie to yourself about what's ahead and prepare yourself.

<comment><USER4> > I believe you're reading this as much more negative and confrontative than > it was meant to be.

Absolutely not. I found your posts really interesting, it's a perspective I hadn't considered and you articulate it well. And no confrontation was intended from my end.

> Don't lie to yourself about what's ahead and prepare yourself.

"What's ahead" is unpredictable and unknown. You should certainly be prepared, but just avoid self-fulfilling prophecies like saying "it's difficult" etc. That can also put some people off of ever creating anything in the first place.

I have to go now, but thanks for the comments!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I found that there is no valley of despair if I'm working on something that has absolutely no chance of turning a profit. Open source or pure research or hackery with a non-commercial horizon never stresses me out. If on the other hand I hope that this will make me money, despaaaaaair.

Yet, the non-financially viable journeys don't necessarily mean 'not great'.

<comment><USER6> Money does seem to have a way of draining all the pleasure from an activity. I'm getting close to retirement and I am hoping that doing some non-commercial work will bring it back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's called traversing a valley of the fitness landscape. The comfortable strategy is to just stay where you are, with everyone else mediocre, at the current local population maxima. The uncomfortable strategy is to dare execute on your visions; which often means passing through states of lower energy before reaching the great. You think you see a hill higher than the one you and everyone else is standing on right now, but you're not sure because it's far away. What posts like these rarely mention, however, is just how many ants die far out in the low-energy desert plains; we only hear about the successes.

<comment><USER8> This very much reminds me of what Kevin Kelly wrote in 1998: [http://kk.org/newrules/blog/strategies/#4386-footer](http://kk.org/newrules/blog/strategies/#4386-footer)

His advice? "Don't go alone."

<comment><USER7> Or very tactfully and with great timing follow the tailwind of other innovators, e.g. Apple.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Seth Godin wrote a book on this a decade ago, called The Dip. It's short, but a good book (and the Audible audiobook is quite good too).

[https://smile.amazon.com/Dip-Little-Book-Teaches- Stick/dp/15...](https://smile.amazon.com/Dip-Little-Book-Teaches- Stick/dp/1591841666/)

[http://sethgodin.typepad.com/the_dip/](http://sethgodin.typepad.com/the_dip/)

<comment><USER10> Within the last 10 hours that you posted this, I went out to buy the book and read it (it's pretty brief).

It's a really great read particularly if you've been in a dip and / or a cul de sac (as Godin refers to projects that dip but won't turn back up). Being able to identify the dip and its characteristics allows one to prepare for it, and to have a strategy for not just enduring it, but for making it as much of an advantage as is possible.

Thanks for posting this, SyneRyder.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Of course the first half of this graph is the same as the journey to creating something that fails :). Persistence is required either way. But it's important to consider cutting your losses at some point too.

<comment><USER12> That's why you shouldn't put too much value into advice from successful people that came back from the brink of failure. For every one that turned almost failure into success there are probably dozens who did the same thing and just failed.

<comment><USER13> Those are the best available people to ask, though. You wouldn't want to ask people who entirely failed, or never tried. People who claim they never experienced near-failures on their way to success are either lying, or attempted something unambitious, or were so lucky that their experience isn't representative.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> One hard part is putting aside the stuff you wanted to get in there, but then you remembered you only have one lifetime.

Worse yet, you keep finding more and more great details, which you wouldn't even have noticed when you started, but now have the experience to appreciate. Then spend more time wondering whether anyone else would care about them.

Either "Great artists SHIP!" eventually overrides, or else ... the quicksand wins.

(Read earlier today that Tolsoy originally published 'War and Peace' serially, then heavily rewrote -that whole thing-. Ay yay.)

</comment><comment><USER12> I always tell people that for any worthwhile project there will be phase of deep regret "why did I ever start this?". It's a little sad that a lot of management and project planning methodologies don't allow for this and want to convert work into simple linear steps.

<comment><USER15> Like despair in short sprints? Agile despair?

In all seriousness, in my experience, all things worthwhile are not started as an "official" project. They start either as a skunkworks project or something someone does on the side.</comment></comment>


RequireJS 2.0 draft - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jrburke/requirejs/wiki/Requirejs-2.0-draft

<comment><USER2> RequireJS is very expensive and it's NOT CommonJS. It claims that CommonJS is not-optimal for browser and offers you to put your source code inside of an awkward container for optimizing. It's not smart.

Let me introduce you OneJS: <http://github.com/azer/onejs>

It simply converts any CommonJS package into a single, stand-alone JavaScript file. It means, you can structure your client-side project just like a NodeJS project and you can convert your NodeJS project to a single file just like a client-side project.

Unlike Browserify, OneJS is unobtrusive [1], provides an accurate implementation of CommonJS specs [2] and the output it produces is suitable for splitting and having async dependencies.

[1] A chess website built with OneJS: <http://multiplayerchess.com/mpc.js>

[2] ExpressJS built with OneJS, with all dependencies: <https://gist.github.com/2415048>

<comment><USER3> That looks cool, will look into it. Does it support the http node core module, like browserify?

<comment><USER2> Here are the core modules it supports; <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3915403>

browserify-http can be used by OneJS as well but I don't see any point of emulating http module on client-side. I prefer using libraries supporting both platforms, such as boxcars; <http://github.com/azer/boxcars>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Good news. This will very be useful in my current projets, I like the direction taken with the "legacy config".

<comment><USER5> I agree. I've had to wrap non-amd libs far too many times.

I wonder how this will work when optimized.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> So what's the advantage of requireJS versus browserify? I like browserify because I'm used to the node syntax

<comment><USER3> If you use node, I'd stick with browserify. RequireJS is nice if you want to load scripts asynchronously, but in reality your code is usually packed to one or two files so there is no need for the asynchronous part. Plus I dislike the RequireJS syntax, but that's personal taste.

<comment><USER7> <http://requirejs.org/docs/node.html>

I appreciate browserify having the exact same syntax, but RequireJS can do serverside.

<comment><USER3> Yes but as I said I don't need async loading of scripts, since all my code is packed in usually a single file. Therefore I don't need the RequireJS syntax, and I'd rather stick with a simple require syntax.

<comment><USER8> Help me, I'm still fumbling around in the web world und miss a lot.

Why would you even look at require.js if you don't have modular code/code of your own spread over a couple of files? This is for me the one single reason to look into it in the first place. To organize my own code better.

<comment><USER3> I do keep my code in separate files. But my servers deliver them in a single file using browserify (<https://github.com/substack/node-browserify>).

It's great thing that you use RequireJS to organize your code, and you should keep doing it. We use RequireJS at work and it works pretty well. However my personal preference is browserify, but use whatever works for you.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


SQL Databases Are An Overapplied Solution (And What To Use Instead) - <AUTHOR> http://adam.blog.heroku.com/past/2009/7/8/sql_databases_are_an_overapplied_solution_and_what_to_use_instead

<comment><USER2> I'm curious why the author says this:

"The filesystem (including distributed filesystems like GFS) and SQL blobs are both wrong for this, tempting though they may appear.

"For file uploads to a web application, or serving media like video or mp3s, an asset store like S3 or CloudFiles is the right tool."

Why is GFS bad, yet S3 good? Isn't S3 just a distributed filesystem under the hood anyway?

</comment><comment><USER3> If you're serving files from SQL you're doing something wrong, that's doesn't say anything at all about SQL as such.

SQL bashing seems to be all in vogue, all this article says is if your problem is X this is the right tool. Storing anything and everything in SQL databases is obviously wrong, but then again storing everything in S3 is also wrong.

The right tool for the job, leave SQL bashing out of it unless it directly applies to your newly inherited project and you find that it has been mis- applied.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This author's previous post was discussed here two days ago at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=690656>

There seemed to be some controversy with that post, and as I am far from a database expert, but required by my work to know something about them, I am wondering if this subsequent post clarifies or further substantiates the author's points in the first post.</comment>


Whisper, letting women anonymously report sexual crimes within their workplace - <AUTHOR> https://whisprs.herokuapp.com/ <comment><USER2> Why limit it to women and sexual crimes? Isn't it a bit sexist to assume men never are victims of sexual crimes or that it isn't important enough to be reported?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi Everyone,

I know of so many different women that have had issues with predatory men leveraging there positions of power. From inside top tier corporate firms, to universities, from bosses in businesses of all sizes thinking there position of power makes them above normal human decency. Sadly, most women can't do much without sacrificing their career progression.

Having met some of these men and seen how normal they look to the outside world, I really felt cynical about this issue up until last week. The news about Harvey Weinstein's made me realize that there is something we can do about this. My approach to this issue is Whisper.

I want Whisper to be tool for women to understand what workplaces there entering into and to give a deeper understanding of this issue. Hopefully it can be used to hold people and organisations to account. From my own experiences I have seen how organisations sweep these issues under the rug for the sake of their brand.

The thing is people already talk about these issues in the aptly named "Whisper Network" . The New Yorker did a good piece on it the other day - "[https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-whisper- network...](https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-whisper-network- after-harvey-weinstein-and-shitty-media-men") . Excel documents being passed around to warn women of predators is a tool being used today - Whisper is nothing new in a sense.

The system will operate with a verification system from sexual assault clinics, and similar, which will show the numbers in organisations next to the unverified numbers of reports from anonymous contributors. While Anonymity can bring out the worst people we feel that with this system it will be clear which organisations have a culture problem.

If anyone has any ideas about how to do this I would love to hear them.

If you want to contact me further about the app, email me at firstname.lastname@example.com

Here's to trying to solve this issue - Thanks everyone!

<comment><USER3> Hope you have a decent legal fund stashed away - I have a feeling you may need it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Except Whisper is not anonymous:

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/16/-sp- revealed-w...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/16/-sp-revealed- whisper-app-tracking-users)</comment>


Pickxit – revolutionary smarter and easier online shopping - <AUTHOR> Hello folks, I'm happy to introduce Pickxit ! Pickxit is solving a big problem for us, the online shoppers: Find the right item takes long time and effort' We use smart technology, to make our life easier, when we need to purchase products, online. You are welcome to try our beta version , enjoy it and share your feedback with us : www.pickxit.com<p>Thanks, The Pickxit team <comment><USER2> you should probably display the items as you go through the wizard. allow people to save searches. work on bigger ticket items that I might want to spend some time on to get right. Also, what about reviews do I need to go to other sites to find out about reviews? Also, maybe give it more of a chat interface. So, that as I chat it refines my options.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank for your feedback,appreciated! We'll be happy to also get your feedback on our product recommendation system, but for this we need you to complete the process and get your email.</comment></comment>


Logical Clocks Are Easy (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2917756 <comment><USER2> "Time, however, totally orders all events, even those unrelated"

Really? Given how fast computers are, and the global nature of the Internet, I thought it is easily possible for them to be separated by more distance than light can travel in a relevant amount of time.

"there is no unique ordering of spacelike events--events that happen in order 1 > 2 > 3 in frame A may happen in order 2 > 1 > 3 in frame B. In fact, for any two spacelike separated events, it is possible to find a reference frame where you can reverse the order in which they happen."

[https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/75763/can- specia...](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/75763/can-special- relativity-distort-the-relative-order-in-which-events-occur)

<comment><USER3> A fair objection. Indeed, in the cited paper ( _Time, clocks, and the ordering of events in a distributed system_ ) Lamport explicitly assumes a Newtonian spacetime.

<comment><USER4> Which is fine, so long as the computers aren't moving at relativistic speeds relative to each other. Newtonian spacetime is an accurate approximation.

<comment><USER5> Even if they were, I would expect the adjustments to not be that difficult. This sort of temporal logic already accepts and encompasses many of the issues relativistic time would raise. For instance, computer science already has to handle the possibility that event X will occur but remote site Y literally _never_ hears about it, or hears about it many, many, _many_ multiples of the fundamental speed-of-light latency later, arbitrarily interleaved with any number of other events in the mean time. It would be less of a shock to computer science than it was to physics.

<comment><USER6> The relevant result from relativity is that you cannot rely on synchronized clocks to construct an unambiguous ordering of events. Latency by itself is not sufficient to cause this, as the system could still wait until the message has been fully distributed, then use the timestamps to reconstruct the timeline.

However, CS does have to deal with this issue for the simple reason that we are already unable to synchronized our clocks to the extent necessary to avoid it (or, at least, it is not worth the engineering effort to do so).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> We are from a distributed systems research group.

We called our company Logical Clocks - couldn't believe i could get the .com domain name only 2 years ago....</comment>


EQ-Radio: Emotion Recognition Using Wireless Signals - <AUTHOR> http://eqradio.csail.mit.edu/ <comment><USER2> > The key enabler underlying EQ-Radio is a new algorithm for extracting the > individual heartbeats from the wireless signal at an accuracy comparable to > on-body ECG monitors.

I'm wondering: could this technology be used to detect contraction of other muscles than the heart? Like performing a wireless EMG?

<comment><USER3> Good idea! The paper describing the breathing detection using radio is here: [https://people.csail.mit.edu/fadel/papers/vitalradio- paper.p...](https://people.csail.mit.edu/fadel/papers/vitalradio-paper.pdf)

The paper on the heartbeat and breathing detection takes into account that heartbeats have repeating envelopes (signal shapes).

Would a wireless EMG be able to detect muscle activation and the source position(s) on the body of the signals as well?... Quite interesting.

<comment><USER4> Source and direction would be killer features.

Imagine holter monitors that can sit beside your bed as you sleep (tossing and turning), instead of wearing them, or instant continuous ECG data during triage.

Many heart attacks are misdiagnosed (especially in women) and instant continuous ECG readings (possibly from multiple people at once) would be incredible!

<comment><USER2> These are cool applications indeed. I was thinking about using such a device during the day to prevent RSI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In case you were interested in the frequencies they were sweeping though:

We reproduced a state-of-the-art FMCW radio designed by past work on wireless vital sign monitoring [7]. The device generates a signal that sweeps from 5.46 GHz to 7.25 GHz every 4 milliseconds, transmitting sub-mW power. The parameters were chosen as in [7] such that the transmis- sion system is compliant with FCC regulations for consumer electronics

I wonder if you can use lower frequencies? Since we are surrounded by radio waves maybe you can use use on those cheap SDRs and look for the 50-150hz space to see if you can pick up heart rate.</comment>


The steps Italy has taken in order to become the next Startup Nation - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/MattiaCorbetta/slide-policy-startup-in-inglese-32320936?utm_content=bufferf27ea&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

<comment><USER2> Italian living abroad here.

The interesting thing is that they mention how many startup were registered but not how many of them survived their first year. Few friends of mine tried to stay in Italy and they're now struggling just to get some money home. Most of them had to go back living with their parents because none of these measures worked and are currently employed and with humongous debt with Equitalia (the italian IRS).</comment>


My Heroku values (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://brandur.org/heroku-values <comment><USER2> I don't think I've ever read about an engineering culture that I agree with more than this one. It sounds shockingly humane and practical.

From the somewhat... wistful tone in places, I gather things have taken a bit of a downward turn there. I wonder what pressures caused that? The acquisition, perhaps?

<comment><USER3> Just a note this was penned several years after the acquisition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > _But although technical management wasn't an idea that lasted, it was a very > good place to be an engineer while it did._

I suppose this may just be something that you either like or don't like, but my experience has largely been the opposite. I don't want a boss who can override my technology decisions just because they're the boss. Even if you only hire people who wouldn't, the fact that they _can_ creates something of a chilling effect.

I think software teams should have a technical lead (who the team does _not_ report to) in order to make sure the team's technical direction is cohesive and consistent. The manager (who the team reports to) should be responsible for their reports' professional development, and should be more of a "team coach" that facilitates interaction with other teams and other departments, and might do things like own (but not have final/unilateral say on) the delivery schedule and backlog.

If you have a manager who is responsible for a decent amount of technical work, the important work of _actually managing_ \-- of which there is plenty -- will suffer. I suspect this sort of leadership worked ok in the early days of Heroku because the company was small enough and the early engineers scrappy/independent enough that they didn't really need much in the way of management.

Some of my worst interactions with managers has been when they believe they should stick their nose into technical issues. Perhaps the problem there is that they're not technical _enough_ , and that if they spent enough time coding, they'd be more competent when participating in technical decisions... But then I still maintain that 1) even just holding -- without playing -- the "boss card" creates unwanted tension, and 2) they'd be put into a position to be much worse at actually managing.

</comment><comment><USER5> Has the Heroku story improved at all for stateful services? I've always seen clustering as essentially unsupported. Doing websockets with something like Phoenix/Elixir means that you have to bring in Redis for pubsub between nodes, which has all sorts of quirks and limitations.

<comment><USER6> > Doing websockets with something like Phoenix/Elixir means that you have to > bring in Redis for pubsub between nodes

I haven't even tried this myself yet, but it's been stewing in the back of my mind: you should be able to (efficiently) pass sent messages between your nodes _using server-to-server websocket connections_.

You just need

• some supervised GenServers that establish and manage long-lived connections to your peers using a websocket client library, e.g. [https://github.com/jeremyong/websocket_client](https://github.com/jeremyong/websocket_client) or [https://github.com/ninenines/gun](https://github.com/ninenines/gun)

• a "server peer RPC" Phoenix Channel, that authenticates server peers in its connect/3 using a common pre-shared key (ala Erlang's own "cookie") or somesuch

\---

Going a bit further: once you have these two components set up, you can actually extend it out to being a fully-fledged transport layer for the Erlang distribution protocol.

Look at the guide at [http://erlang.org/doc/apps/ssl/ssl_distribution.html](http://erlang.org/doc/apps/ssl/ssl_distribution.html). It mentions two reference implementations of a distribution-protocol connection handler:

• inet_tcp_dist ([https://github.com/erlang/otp/blob/master/lib/kernel/src/ine...](https://github.com/erlang/otp/blob/master/lib/kernel/src/inet_tcp_dist.erl))

• inet_tls_dist ([https://github.com/erlang/otp/blob/master/lib/ssl/src/inet_t...](https://github.com/erlang/otp/blob/master/lib/ssl/src/inet_tls_dist.erl))

Between the two, the API an `inet_websocket_dist` would need to follow is pretty clear.

With such a thing, you get cluster-presence and cookie-based auth "for free", and automatic leader election for use with `global`. But most of what you want is probably just rpc:multicall/3.

<comment><USER5> sigh...

> Any sufficiently complicated concurrent program in another language contains > an ad hoc informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation of half of > Erlang.

Except this time, it's already on BEAM...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _I might avoid some of Heroku's current technological staples (e.g. Ruby)_

What instead of Ruby?

<comment><USER8> They rewrite a lot in Go.

<comment><AUTHOR> The author, while not at Heroku anymore, primarily works with Go now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _In a similar vein, picking one true way forward from a collection of similar options helps keep engineers productive as they move between components._

I am a strong believer in this. However, i believe it's a wildly unfashionable idea in this day and age, where developer autonomy, 'best tool for the job', and polyglossia are the in things. I was interested to see it in this otherwise pretty hip and happening list.

 _The idea was that making coffee would be five to ten minute process, during which there would be time to interact with colleagues who happened to drop by the area. The system worked._

There's a similar meme in medical research institutes (at least, the ones i've worked in), which was popularised by the Laboratory for Molecular Biology:

[http://www.insight.mrc.ac.uk/2013/06/06/the-great-coffee- bre...](http://www.insight.mrc.ac.uk/2013/06/06/the-great-coffee- breakthrough/)

 _If an engineer needed a new resource for a service being deployed, prototype, or even one-off experiment, they were at liberty to provision it and keep on working, even if that resource wasn't free. Resources here might include everything from dynos to run an app, to a Postgres backend, to a few extra EC2 boxes for deployment to bare metal (relatively speaking)._

I've come across this "self service" idea as a selling point for internal platforms and PaaS, but there seems to be a small but important difference - with a platform, developers can self-service anything that is _part of the platform_ , whereas it sounds like at Heroku, it was anything - _full stop_. Although, as the author mentions, the fact that they were on AWS meant that that was ultimately still on a platform. Anyway, that difference can matter if there are things that aren't on the platform - if you're using Cloud Foundry, for instance, then you won't be able to self-service persistent disks, network configuration, or anything else at that level, which means that in practice, there is considerable drag from interacting with other teams to get that stuff provisioned. A radical commitment to self-service would be interesting to see.

 _But although technical management wasn't an idea that lasted, it was a very good place to be an engineer while it did._

One of the genius things i learned at Pivotal was that a 'team lead' and a 'manager' don't have to be the same person, and that neither of them has to be a 'boss'. Every developer needs a 'team lead' (in Pivotal cant, 'anchor') to lead the day-to-day operation of a development team, and a 'manager' to channel feedback, guide career progression, ensure happiness, etc, but they it's better if they're separate people, and it's better if they're drawn from the ranks of the developer's peers (albeit the more senior ones), rather than being some formally separate layer of the organisation. You should always have technical leadership; you should usually have technical management too, although it probably makes sense for the most senior technical-management people to have non-technical managers themselves.

<comment><USER10> I don't think the "best tool for the job" necessitates needless polyglossia. They obviously have a "best tool for the job" mentality to some extent as they have 3 official/primary languages, not 1 like some places I've worked.

How many different languages/technologies are required for it to qualify as polyglossia?

<comment><USER9> One more than however many I personally know, of course :).

I suppose the only defensible definition of the term would be more than one language, with some qualifier like "for any given context", because using C++ to serve your JavaScript app isn't polyglot. But then we just argue about how big a context is - are API servers and systems of record the same context?

A more fruitful perspective might be to look at how the decision to adopt a new language etc is made. If an individual developer can do it, it's a potentially polyglot environment, whether that potential has been realised or not. If it requires an organisation-wide process (whether CTO decree or consensus at an all-hands meeting), it's unlikely to be a polyglot environment.

This perspective is definitely a product of my own particular experiences, though, and might not be generally relevant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Correction: (2015)

<comment><AUTHOR> I swear I wrote 2015! Weird. Can a mod fix it?

<comment><USER12> Done.

<comment><USER13> You and dang work too hard around here, but its appreciated.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Who are the most inspiring people you know or are aware of? - <AUTHOR>

I am trying to put together a list of really inspiring people in all different types of fields. I recognise there are 1000s and 1000s of inspiring people out there but just wondered who inspires you? <comment><USER2> No doubt, for me this is Richard Stallman. He follows his ideas of free software for the whole live, never betrays them and with time, his philosophy [0] looks more and more modern (especially in the post-Snowden times).

[0] [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Adam Savage

He has a lot of interesting conversations on Tested [0], as well as a lot of conference talks that are posted online. The amount of stuff he makes is impressive. He is also very open about his failures and how he has learned from them.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/user/testedcom](https://www.youtube.com/user/testedcom)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sounds great! I'll check him out, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Diogenes of Sinope. A philosopher, cynic, and has legendary altercations with Alexander the Great, Plato, Socrates and other famous figures during that time. Unfortunately most of his original works were destroyed, so we only have bits of anecdotes and hearsay.

Of all the people I have read about, he lives the most congruent life and thoughtfully challenges status quo.</comment>


Class Action Lawsuit Filed Against Scribd - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10357108-93.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5

<comment><USER2> Wait a minute, they are suing Scribd for "building a technology that's broken barriers to copyright infringement on a global scale"??? By that count even Google could be sued. Seriously, this is getting to the point where every Tom, Dick and Harry comes along and sues someone. AFAIK, Scribd is quite rigorous at flushing out copyrighted stuff from their service.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yuk. I'm no fan of scribd, judging these lawyers by reputation they'll find a way to mess up their case.

Isn't it the case that class action status first has to be granted ? And if so has that already happened ?</comment>


Ask HN: How important is customer feedback? - <AUTHOR>

Bill Gates famously said: "Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning." While Henry Ford famously said: "If I asked my customers what they want, they simply would have said a faster horse." For a startup, at what point do you start considering customer feedback?  And what are the best ways to collect customer feedback? <comment><USER2> And again is believed that a happy customer will bring his friends to your business an this creates a network for your business. Generally customers feedback will be based on the service and the experience.All what a customer needs is to be satisfied with your services and products.</comment>


Organ donation in England has moved to an opt-out system - <AUTHOR> https://www.organdonation.nhs.uk/uk-laws/organ-donation-law-in-england <comment><USER3> Regardless of what you think about the decision, the communication here has been poor. As of posting, there is no information on BBC News's front page, the UK's main source of news, as to this rule change or how to opt-out. [1] Likewise, on the UK Government's website's homepage, there is no information on this or information on how to opt-out. [2]

I haven't come across a friend or family member who knows this is happening today.

Regardless of your view on this, the communication has been poor. It was publicised when Wales moved to opt-out organ donation.

[1] [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news) [2] [https://www.gov.uk/](https://www.gov.uk/)

<comment><USER4> In this case, the poor communication should result in more lives being saved.

<comment><USER5> Are you kidding me? People should have the right to make an informed choice, however they feel about it.

<comment><USER6> What possible incentive could there be to hoard your organs after death?

<comment><USER7> Several:

First, there are documented studies showing that known organ donors have a slightly lower survival rate in hospitals than non-donors do. Draw what conclusions from that you will, but some people choose not to be a donor for precisely that reason.

And second, if you have any plans or hopes for cryogenic preservation, that's not particularly compatible with organ donation.

<comment><USER8> Also, just on a human level, people don't want to be chopped up and parcelled out as used parts for other people. I don't feel that way, but I understand how people can feel that way and we should respect their wishes.

<comment> crooked-v ...in which case it's easy to opt out, for the people who do feel that way.

<comment><USER9> But they can't if they don't know it's opt-out, which is why thread OP argues that BBC should announce this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is a great decision. There's been a lot more interest in behavioural economics over the recent years and I remember reading one of Dan Ariety's books about this.

The key thing that increases the rate of organ donations dramatically (from 30% to almost unviversal between opt-in and opt-out) is that there's a very significant cost to choice. The more choices people have to make, even if they arrive at desired outcomes, hugely diminishes the chance that they do.

<comment><USER11> While I totally support the opt-out approach (or indeed, no option to opt out) I wonder if we need a new term - as it doesn't seem like a 'donation'. 'Donation' implies gift, and also an element of conscious choice, both of which mightn't apply any more.

<comment><USER12> I refuse to be a donor. If they want me then make a real donation, say some money towards funeral expenses. I would sign up in a heartbeat.

And I've been plenty more altruistic when it comes to tissue donations. About 10 years ago I came up as a match to a stranger through the Be The Match Foundation. I went through the whole process and gave that lady bone marrow. So I'm not just a grubby meanie out for a buck. Everyone else in the chain is getting paid, there's no reason the donor should be left empty handed.

<comment><USER13> > _I refuse to be a donor. If they want me then make a real donation, say some > money towards funeral expenses._

You refuse to save lives at literally no cost to yourself or anyone you know unless someone pays your family off?

> _there 's no reason the donor should be left empty handed_

The donor is dead! Hands don't get any emptier!

> _So I 'm not just a grubby meanie out for a buck._

Ok, let's see...

Cost to you? 0.

Cost to your family? 0.

Benefit to others? You could save several lives.

Will only do it for? Money.

Yup, no conflict there.

<comment><USER14> This sentiment is understandable (and apparently popular), and I suppose GP deserved either a well-reasoned personal attack or a snarky reply... but I don't think it merits a snarky personal attack.

<comment><USER13> What if I'd split it into two separate replies?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "Your family will still be approached and your faith, beliefs and culture will continue to be respected."

This seems to be a good move that could help a ton of people in need, while also giving enough wiggle room to families to deny the donation.

</comment><comment><USER16> I support "motivated opt-in": your choice, but if you don't opt-in, you're at the end of the line for any organ needs you may find yourself with.

It tends to align nicely with ethical and religious objections as well as moral intuitions, and should expand supply while signaling proper expectations to the demand side, without simply allowing the rich to buy their way to the front of the line.

<comment><USER17> Keep in mind that for many kinds of organ transplants, you will know in advance that you have a good chance of needing one, without actually needing it yet.

<comment><USER16> Sure. Although it isn't ideal, selfish late-joiners still expand the pool and should be welcome. It isn't about punishing people, it is about matching needers with havers without just selling them to the highest bidder.

<comment><USER18> Selfish late-joiners will just notify their next of kin to refuse the donation anyway. They get the queue-jump bonus of being on the register and still opt out privately.

I was on the donor register since I turned 18 but my parents or wife can just refuse if that suits them on the day (although I've asked them not to!)

<comment><USER17> That sounds like a terrible policy in it's own right. Especially the part about the parents - why should they have any say in it at all after you've turned 18.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The opt-out form [0] asks only for the name, phone number, DOB, address, email, etc. How do they ensure that someone else did not opt-out or opt-in on someone else's behalf without their permission? And how are they deduplicating people with the same name and DOB? By a fuzzy match against their address? How do these things usually work in UK?

[0]: [https://www.organdonation.nhs.uk/register-your- decision/refu...](https://www.organdonation.nhs.uk/register-your- decision/refuse-to-donate/refuse-donation-form/)?

<comment><USER20> It's just a guess for this exact case, but UK government do have some access to credit history and this usually mean name plus dob plus address. And it's can use electoral roll databases for actual citizens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Eh, I guess here comes an unpopular opinion. While the pragmatist in me is well aware of how opt-in increases donations ( although at certain point the question has to be asked whether if they coerced through law, is donation the right term for that ), I instinctively dislike government imposition here.

I do not believe ends justifies the means. And as always, eventually, while the option might be technically available, just like the TSA opt out, you will be basically shamed into compliance.

<comment><USER22> That's a weird analogy. TSA "opt out" is basically impossible. Have you ever tried it? It's not shame. The agents simply don't allow you to. Changing your organ donation status is not just possible, but easy.

In the organ donation case, who do you think would "shame you into compliance"? How would anyone else even know? I don't know the organ donation status of anyone else in the world, even my family and close friends, and even those who have died.

<comment><USER23> Yes, every time I've opted out with TSA (which I do most of the times I'm required to go through the full-body scanners in the US rather than the TSA Pre metal detector) I've been allowed to do so. It's often meant a long wait for an agent to become available, but I've never been refused.

I admit to being a white male US citizen who politely requests it using the words "I'd like to opt out" (rather than some vaguer objection) and then waits patiently, not someone who gets angry at the officers. The ground rules aren't the fault of the workers, only any individual bad behavior.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> England is not the UK.

<comment><USER25> And it's for long-term (more than one year) residents of England, not just citizens.

The headline should read something like "As of today, all residents of England are organ donors unless they opt out" or "Organ donation law in England has changed to opt-out model."

<comment><USER24> Yeah, @dang what do you think, I live in NI and when I saw this I was surprised, but nope, it's just someone conflating England and the UK.

Health is devolved to the contituent countries here.

<comment><USER26> Current title of the linked article: "Organ donation law in England has changed".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> As interesting as this is, this seems very political and therefore not really HN material, as you can tell by how quickly the comments have turned to shit

<comment><USER28> This is a government source, right? I think if it was from an inflammatory source this comment would be a little appropriate.

Regardless, everything is political, if even by its context alone, tech especially.

<comment><USER27> Source doesn't matter. It's not HN material

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> England != UK

(I don't know what the law in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland is, might be that England is just the last of UKs nations to make opt-out standard)

<comment><USER30> Opt-out is the position in Wales already.

Scotland is working on it but as far as I'm aware it hasn't completed the required legislative process yet.

NI is still opt-in.

<comment><USER31> Apparently it became law in Scotland in July 2019, and will become opt-out in Scotland in March 2021

[https://www.organdonation.nhs.uk/uk-laws/organ-donation- law-...](https://www.organdonation.nhs.uk/uk-laws/organ-donation-law-in- scotland/)

<comment><USER30> Thanks. That does say it received Royal Assent, so the legislative process has indeed finished now, the relevant preovisions just haven't come into effect yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Yay! One less piece of life-administrivia to procrastinate on.

</comment><comment><USER33> First, the lack of a public vote on this issue is troubling.

Second, it's inappropriate for a state agency to make such personal decisions on behalf of people without asking. Choice matters, and it's each individual's choice to make.

Finally, was this even necessary? Why not simply ask the family at the time of death? If there's no surviving family, THEN the state decides. Last, not first.

<comment><USER34> > First, the lack of a public vote on this issue is troubling.

Not like every law in the UK gets some kind of referendum first. There are tons of laws which have been introduced which affect me, where I did not get a vote at. That's a problem with our democratic systems, and how the ruler's of one country affect the lives of others (e.g. via threat of war, diseases/epidemics, economy, and so on and so forth).

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'm an opt-in donor, always have been. And I think this change is good, albeit poorly communicated.

Some ammunition for those who disagree - organlegging!

[http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=337](http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=337)

<comment><USER8> I'm also an opt-in donor. I would've been in favour of postponing this change by a year. It was impossible to communicate this to the public effectively in the middle of a crisis, and whilst I think people should be donors and agree with it being opt-in, I think it's pretty shifty to do it at a time where it's very likely people aren't going to be able to make an informed decision.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> "Mr Cohen? We've come for your liver" - Monty Python: The Meaning of Life

[https://youtube.com/watch?v=Sp-pU8TFsg0](https://youtube.com/watch?v=Sp- pU8TFsg0)

</comment><comment><USER37> What I don't understand is while they can make everyone organ donors by default, blood donation is still restricted for men having sex with men (with temporary restrictions to blanket ban in many countries). I have heard of blood banks refusing to take blood from gay men (including doctors) who abstained for whatever restrictions they have. If they test the blood before transfusion I don't understand the need to discriminate.

<comment><USER38> Blood for transfusion is screened principally using antibody tests. These tests can be negative for up to two months for an HIV-infected person and even longer in the case of Hep-C (retest at six months recommended to rule in/out). So, while the antibody tests used today have a very low false-negative rate, there remains a concern around people who may have contracted a blood-borne disease in the the last few months.

As a gay man, I was for some time frustrated with donor exclusion policies related to MSM. However, keep in mind - blood donation is not any benefit to the donor, but rather to the recipient. It is in the best interest of the recipient for blood banks to obtain blood with the lowest risk of infection. For this reason, blood banks exclude a wide variety of donors with elevated risks of various infectious disease (MSM, IV drug user, in the UK in a certain time period, deployed overseas by military, etc depending on the organization). The number of people not excluded by these policies is normally sufficient to meet need, so it makes perfect sense for the blood banks to stick to a policy designed "out of an excess of caution" to avoid blood with higher risk of infectious disease.

Because of improved accuracy and affordability of antibody testing, the exclusion period for MSM was reduced to 12 months (from lifetime). Because of an abnormal blood shortage related to COVID-19, FDA has temporarily reduced the exclusion for MSM and individuals with tattoos/piercings to 3 months. 3 months is actually cutting it somewhat close as far as reliable detection of antibodies, so the period will likely be increased again post-crisis to maintain a wide margin of safety.

Organs are evaluated for suitability based on guidelines that are similar to, and often stricter than, blood donation.

<comment><USER37> The 3 months or 12 months deferral in reality is useless. As I said there are many documented instances where people abstained for 3 months and the blood banks still turned them down and Gay people with coronavirus antibodies are not eligible to donate too [0]. In [0] they also make good arguments on why the ban should be lifted. And people like me who are monogamous gay relationship feel discriminated and who expects not to have sex with their spouse for 3 months?

[0] [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DLtpWaIzQ8U](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DLtpWaIzQ8U)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> This might be the world's worst "unsubscribe" button ever.

</comment><comment><USER40> No one has posted this yet? Feels kind of necessary...

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sp- pU8TFsg0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sp-pU8TFsg0)

</comment><comment><USER41> That means when you die, you drop loot.

\- not my joke, forgot where I saw it

<comment><USER42> Increased loot rate usually increases farming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> The mental gymnastics statists perform to justify the actions of their beloved state never fails to amaze.

<comment><USER44> It is indeed sad that we live in an age with barely any humanistic ideals. Everything is utilitarian, people belong to the wealthy and the ruling classes, swallow the manufactured consent and believe the propaganda that they are free.

Actual personhood is for the 1%, it would be instructive to know how many of them opt out in the UK.

Then again, the geriatric ruling class who think that they possess other people's bodies can safely do nothing: _Their_ organs are not fit to be harvested anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> in those few countries with opt-out system I'm familiar with, they still ask for family's approval regardless opt-out system and can't imagine anyone would disrespect wish of family despite the law

so in the end the difference is just in theory and law

</comment><comment><USER46> IMO this is an institutionalised form of cannibalism, and while it may help some people in need of an organ donation, setting the wrong incentive.

By that i mean relieving of the pressure to develop truly compatible artificial replacement parts, no matter if they are "grown" on some substrate, or completely mechanical, not having to take immunosupressors afterwards, and so on.

Crude & Backwards.

<comment><USER47> Fully agree. It's one of those things which will have terrible unintended consequences, even if the supposed intent is good. It sure will be a boost to the organ trade.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Since when is it Ok to exploit the uninformed?

</comment><comment><USER49> Libertarian paternalism. Where the default is set to be the most beneficial. Another example is you get a raise at work and instead of going into your pocket by default goes into your retirement. You still have the ability to change it. Nudge by Thaler and Sunstein talk about this and so does Daniel Kahneman in Thinking, Fast and Slow.

This mentality has actually helped other countries save more lives by default. While each person still retains the power to opt-out. And yes other countries have done this before the UK. US should do this too!

<comment><USER24> How are those two things in any way the same?

<comment> crooked-v They make the default behavior something that benefits most people (everyone's better off if old people have enough money to exit the job market gracefully, for example), while still making it easy to act otherwise if someone specifically wants to do so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Think about what this means, your body by default belongs to the state. You are born as state property, not an individual with bodily autonomy and rights. You have to ask for that right.

This kind of sick mentality has crossed the atlantic into america with more "liberals" demanding opt out. What's striking is that the "liberals" who scream about consent are the same ones who want to take it away from individuals. The same ones who scream "my body, my choice" are happy to take that choice from individuals and give it to the state.

So this is no longer organ donation. It's organ confiscation/theft. Of course the state media which rants about china's "organ theft" are all supportive of this.

</comment><comment><USER51> that is a good step

</comment><comment><USER52> This is kinda jacked up

<comment><USER53> Why?

<comment><USER52> What happened to my body my choice?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Do you have a better chance of surviving a big accident if you opt out?

<comment> crooked-v Broadly speaking, the first responders and emergency room workers providing emergency care neither know nor care about your organ donation preferences. Transplant work is done by separate specialists who only come into the picture after legal death.

<comment><USER54> That would be an ideal situation but someone with large amounts of money might be able to change the course of actions and big data probably could make this easier. Let say they scan their blood type, etc, then type in the condition and wait for an answer from the computer for further actions...

<comment> crooked-v That would be either a criminal conspiracy to commit murder or an illegal organ trafficking ring, and nothing about your hypothetical secret ultra-rich criminal would be affected by default opt-in or opt-out organ donor status.

<comment><USER55> I know its scary but I think the above comments are correct. I thought the removal of some organs need to be very close to TOD and the ER doctor would need to know beforehand if the patient was able to be harvested for for said organs. Is that correct, sorry if its not?

<comment> crooked-v Any organ donation only comes into play after the declaration of legal death, at which point the body gets handed off. The ER doctor only cares inasmuch as it means that a different team than usual takes over on removing the body so he can get a different living patient in to be treated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I'm an organ donor. Opted in.

If living in England, would now opt out. The de-facto approach can't be your organs belong to the NHS.

<comment><USER57> It's not uncommon in other countries. In reality, no one takes your organs without strict approval from your family, but this kind of policy makes it easier for them to get the approval as you did not need to opt in before your death.

<comment><USER58> If they have to get permission from your family anyway, then why bother with asking the donor at all? Just always ask the family and be done with it.

<comment> crooked-v The difference here is that they're now asking the family if they have objections to the organs being donated, rather than asking the family if they want to donate the organs. The latter results in fewer organs available even though in logical terms it's the same question.

<comment><USER57> I'm not expert of the legalities, but is it legal to take your organs if you did not opt in?

Can your family opt in after your death? I'd say it's a difficult question and obviously made easier by making it opt out system. Anyone objecting has to opt out so majority of people will stay default which improves organ donation rates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Is this RGPD compliant ?

</comment><comment><USER60> Why is this on the front page of a tech news aggregator? Sure, everyone has an opinion on this, but why _here_ instead of some subreddit? (and then making it to reddit front page, which is topic-agnostic)

</comment><comment><USER61> How many people will die because their organs get preserved before they actually die?

<comment><USER62> Ooh, I know the answer to this one: zero.

<comment><USER63> Meanwhile downthread we have this link where had the patient been slower to recover she would have been killed by organ harvesting. [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hospital-errors-lead-to-dead- pa...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hospital-errors-lead-to-dead-patient- opening-eyes-during-organ-harvesting/)

<comment> crooked-v That has nothing to do with opt-in or opt-out, just the incompetence of a specific hospital. It's also an article from 2013.

<comment><USER64> It is related to opt out because now you have to opt out to avoid this. Also not sure why you make it seem like 2013 is the middle ages or something.

<comment> crooked-v > now you have to opt out to avoid this

There are many more things than organ removal done to dead bodies that would still kill a mistaken-as-dead person extremely dead, just slightly later in the process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Opt-outs are the new insidious way to impose the state/collectivist views on the individual without permission. Opt outs are a problem because not everyone may be aware of the need to opt out, and it requires additional attention and effort. The default state, without requiring any additional action from an individual, _must_ respect individual consent and bodily autonomy - <USER2> means that no one has a right to your body or your property unless you've granted it explicitly. An opt-out situation is not that, and it doesn't matter even if a majority of constituents would prefer an opt-out model.

Moreover, the linked website's claim of universal religious support for organ donation is very suspicious. It relies on opinionated interpretation of religious texts and cherry picked quotes of support from random individuals that they've propped up as authoritative representatives of religions, when that is not really the case in reality. Religious ritualistic practices and interpretations of texts vary and there will be many for whom this permissive assumption of the state's right to an individual's organs will be a violation of their beliefs.

</comment><comment><USER66> More totalitarianism. People are treated like a mixture between children and cattle.

[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hospital-errors-lead-to-dead- pa...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hospital-errors-lead-to-dead-patient- opening-eyes-during-organ-harvesting/)

<comment><USER67> While this is a horrifying story, I'm having a hard time seeing the relevance here. There is nothing in the article indicating that the errors were caused by the family agreeing to organ donation.

<comment><USER63> Had the family not agreed to organ donation, they wouldn't have planned to harvest the organs in the first place.</comment></comment></comment>


Happiness Is the Only Logical Pursuit - <AUTHOR> http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2016/06/08/happiness-is-the-only-logical-pursuit/ <comment><USER2> The article doesn't really match the title.

eg "...happiness is mostly a squirt of Dopamine, Oxytocin, Serotonin, and maybe a few Endorphins."

So you might quite logically try to make the world better or some other goal rather than try to maximise the squirts. I'm a fan of happiness as a goal but it's not the only thing.

<comment><USER3> The point is that to pursue happiness (MAX squirts), at some point you will have to try to make the world better.

This article reminded me of this quote from the Dalai Lama: "I believe that the very purpose of life is to be happy. From the very core of our being, we desire contentment. In my own limited experience I have found that the more we care for the happiness of others, the greater is our own sense of well-being. Cultivating a close, warmhearted feeling for others automatically puts the mind at ease. It helps remove whatever fears or insecurities we may have and gives us the strength to cope with any obstacles we encounter"</comment></comment>


Facebook management team forcing its employees to use android phones - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcgerms.com/facebook-management-team-forcing-its-employees-to-use-android-phones/

<comment><USER2> This blog adds nothing to the discussion, it just asks questions answered in the original article on Business Insider.

Waste of time.

</comment><comment><USER3> It shows that someone cares for android users!</comment>


Rust testing or verifying: Why not both? - <AUTHOR> https://alastairreid.github.io/why-not-both/ <comment><USER2> Keep in mind that tests & test tooling serves developer ergonomics purposes beyond ensuring that the software works:

1\. Reproducibly setting up the conditions to trigger a bug.

2\. Explaining how a module expects to be used.

3\. Sketching the design of a module's interface & affordances.

4\. Nudging away from designs with poor encapsulation.

5\. Soothing the anxiety of a developer who is worried they are not making hour-by-hour progress.

6\. Reminding a developer what task they were in the middle of when their brain dumps Working Memory due to an interrupt ...or just randomly OOMKills mid-day because a baby woke them up at 3am.

<comment><USER3> A good type system will help with # 2, 3, 4, and 6 too.

In fact, types are better for #6 than tests, because they have lower overhead, so they are more likely to be complete at the interruption.

<comment><USER2> Agreed on the first 3.

I think you might have misunderstood #6, because I don't see how a type system can function as a todo list.

<comment><USER4> As I am writing my code, I try to make sure that when I need to make a change, I can make part of the change and the type checker will surface everything that needs to change in tandem (not always in a single run). The todo list is then simply the list of remaining errors, and I can usually jump right to exactly where the fix is needed.

This sometimes works out really impressively well. There was a time I was working on a project that required really low latency at low-to-moderate throughput. It was greenfield C development, fairly experimental. I made a habit of tagging functions with an argument describing which of the statically defined threads the function needed to live on, tagging data with which thread it should be accessed from, and checking agreement between them (without runtime overhead).

This couldn't be rigorously enforced by the type system - C has way too many escape hatches - but it was easy to build a little bit of infrastructure such that doing it right was significantly easier than doing it wrong, and doing it wrong was obvious.

When (as is inevitable) we discovered that we wanted to do significantly more work somewhere and so wanted to move it out of the hot path, or discovered that some new thing we wanted to do unavoidably had to now live in the hot path, &c, I could move code between functions and the compiler would tell me everywhere I was doing something that didn't belong in the new thread.

<comment><USER2> Huh.

hmmm....

You know, I think you've just revealed something about the shallowness of my experience with type systems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I implemented a tiny and simple data structure in rust, a circular buffer: [https://github.com/RedBeardLab/circular-buffer- rs](https://github.com/RedBeardLab/circular-buffer-rs)

The amount of subtle bugs and problems that proptest was able to point out to me was terrific.

Property based testing it is definitely the tool that you want to use to thoroughly test a complex library that need to maintains its invariants.

The interesting bit is that if you approach the problem with unittest, you will write mostly test that pass. If you approach the test writing as a property test, then you will write much harder test cases.

<comment><USER6> Apropos hard test cases: have a look at the floats that Python's Hypothesis property testing library generates. They are truly evil.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> More interesting, is that from his blog I ended up on Project Oak, being written in Rust

[https://github.com/project-oak/oak](https://github.com/project-oak/oak)

<comment><AUTHOR> That is the project we are trying to support with our work. Unfortunately, this means I have to solve lots of hard problems like scaling, usability, modular verification, etc.

<comment><USER7> On the other hand I guess those are nice opportunities for new papers on the domain. :)

Very interesting research area.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm pleased to see that "verification" isn't just relying on random value generators for property testing in this case. While I agree with the author that actually running code is still useful, simple specifications have the power to be much more than glorified fuzzing - and Rust is the perfect language to start pushing that in. The use of native syntax for int value ranges is especially nice.

The main question is: how does this compare to other Rust verification efforts[0]? Having to write specifications in test crates rather than next to the function definitions is probably going to be a big obstacle to multi-crate verification.

[0]: [https://github.com/viperproject/prusti- dev/](https://github.com/viperproject/prusti-dev/)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is more at the end of automatic verification tools like KLEE, SMACK, etc. Auto active tools like Prusti are super-interesting too and I suspect that we need a hybrid approach.

<comment><USER8> From what I understand of Prusti, it still aims to be automatic and the underlying Viper pipeline still relies on constraint solving for the most part - certainly the Prusti examples don't seem to do anything more complex than that.

Would you be able to outline the main differences?

<comment><AUTHOR> The difference is really about the level of annotation you provide. In testing (and the more automated verifiers) you might add assertions. In the "auto active" tools, you are adding more function contracts, invariants, maybe hints to help find a proof, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This article makes me think that we should consider tests as a monte-carlo integration over the space that verification tries to cover.

<comment><USER6> Interesting perspective. It only really works with property based testing, not with conventional fixed-example based testing.

<comment><USER9> It is definitely more natural with property based testing, but I think it works to some extent as a perspective in general.

You have a huge input space where each point represents some combination of possible inputs, you can think of representing correct behaviour as 0 and bad behaviour as 1 for each of those points. You're attempting to show by your verifying and testing as best as you can that the sum across all the inputs is 0.

For fixed example testing, you sample some points that you consider to be representative or boundaries, show that they are 0, and use that to argue that the whole space is 0. With property testing, you can let it literally do the monte-carlo thing. With verification you attempt to do the integration analytically.

<comment><USER6> All good points!

I think just as reliability engineering benefited moving from 'keep the system always up' (but fail occasionally in the real world) to 'keep the system up 99.999% of the time' (and succeed in a measurable way), fixing bugs in software might benefit from such an honest and quantitative approach.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This looks super cool!

I was under the impression that burntsushi's implementation of quickcheck [0] was the most popular property-based testing library for Rust. Was I mistaken or was there a reason the authors chose another library as inspiration?

[0] [https://github.com/BurntSushi/quickcheck](https://github.com/BurntSushi/quickcheck)

<comment><USER11> As a previous user of quickcheck and now user of proptest, I can say that proptest feels much better to use because it doesn't tie quite as directly to a single type (as a sibling comment mentions).

With quickcheck, I had to define `MyTypeWithAnOddOffset` and `MyTypeWithAnEvenOffset` (or equivalent formulation) and _composing_ things was tedious or hard.

With proptest [1], things flow much nicer.

[1]: [https://github.com/shepmaster/jetscii/blob/2b1039a9fb8d8ad9c...](https://github.com/shepmaster/jetscii/blob/2b1039a9fb8d8ad9c0dbac2c1007c4d0533261c2/src/simd.rs#L387-L409)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It would be cool if you could also use the exact same interface for coverage based fuzzing, creating a unified property testing/fuzzing/formal verification interface.</comment>


A diet high in animal protein is disastrous to our health - <AUTHOR> http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/143149/a_solution_for_diabetes%3A_a_vegan_diet?page=entire

<comment><USER2> This article is about solutions to diabetes much more than its about "dangers of high animal protein diets"...</comment>