Malicious Subtitles Threaten Kodi, VLC and Popcorn Time Users - <AUTHOR> http://blog.checkpoint.com/2017/05/23/hacked-in-translation/ <comment><USER2> Was annoying to find the details.

Looks like PopcornTime was rendering subtitle text as HTML, inside their app (html/js-based), creating an XSS vector (looking at [https://github.com/popcorn-official/popcorn- desktop/commit/a...](https://github.com/popcorn-official/popcorn- desktop/commit/a9aa8e16610ee8cb23ba4a6452c5a69bf88d9107), [https://github.com/butterproject/butter- desktop/pull/602](https://github.com/butterproject/butter-desktop/pull/602)). Likely the javascript runtime they're using allows file access and execution of arbitrary executables, enabling the metasploit shell shown in the demo.

For VLC there are a bunch of out of bound reads and heap buffer overflows.

        f2b1f9e subtitle: Fix potential heap buffer overflow
        611398f subtitle: Fix potential heap buffer overflow
        ecd3173 subsdec: Fix potential out of bound read
        62be394 subsdec: Fix potential out of bound read
        775de71 subtitle: Fix invalid double increment.

The article implies that VLC and the others are affected by the same issue (leading to code execution), but according to available information it seems to be completely different issues.

The Kodi issue was a zip archive path traversal (i.e. no protection against zip files extracting files to parent directories).

<comment><USER3> If only VLC had been re-written in rust this would never have happened. For shame.

<comment><USER4> Feel free to rewrite VLC in Rust. No one is stopping you.

<comment><USER5> Pretty sure that was sarcasm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I did security research on VLC on Windows a year or two ago. I may be remembering incorrectly, but last I recall every module was protected by ASLR. Which means that remote code execution is not likely because there is no scripting or network comms to dynamically create a valid ROP chain.

I also didn't check for executable heaps at the time but given that all heaps are non executable (which they really shouldn't be executable in VLC) again I don't see how RCE is possible. Maybe there is some way to validate and therefore brute force addresses? I don't know. But there was no VLC POC and I'm sure they would have made one if they could have.

Use VLC it's the most secure media player I've seen.

<comment><USER7> _every module was protected by ASLR._

Address space randomization is not "protection". It's a form of security by obscurity. The odds of an exploit working are reduced, at the expense of more crashes due to exploit failure.

It helps developers ignore bugs, since they can no longer reproduce them.

<comment><USER8> >Address space randomization is not "protection". It's a form of security by obscurity.

This is somewhat akin to saying "Randomly generated passwords are not 'protection'. They are a form of security by obscurity."

If things are random enough that an attacker is significantly hampered in most cases, that's one measure of security, no?

<comment><USER9> It is going to vary quite a bit depending on the entropy of the ASLR implementation. Many have only had 8-12 bits of entropy to start with, and you sometimes don't need the full address. It is also important to note that services that crash typically restart, allowing retries (sometimes as many as you want). In this case, one might imagine trying to attack thousands of people: some of them will randomly work (and a lot of users are going to see VLC crash and will retry playing the file a number of times, increasing your probability).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Kodi 17.2 with the fix for this flaw has now been released:

[https://kodi.tv/article/kodi-v172-minor-bug-fix-and- security...](https://kodi.tv/article/kodi-v172-minor-bug-fix-and-security- release)

</comment><comment><USER11> The thing that most amazes my about Popcorn Time is how they find the subtitles. It seems to succeed even when I can't find subtitles myself.

More related to the article, you would think that subtitles are literally the easiest file format in existence to safely handle. It's incredibly well- defined in terms of textual data and times.

<comment><USER12> > literally the easiest file format in existence to safely handle.

Well, which one of them. There's nearly a hundred different subtitle formats, and each one has a whole set of variants. Just Timed Text alone (XML) can have more layouts than one could count, specially since it's meant to be able to replicate technically all previous industry formats.

<comment><USER13> > it's meant to be able to replicate technically all previous industry formats

Even the DVD subtitle format, which is just a mostly transparent image overlaid on the picture? In _XML_?

<comment><USER12> Yes, in the TTML2 spec [https://www.w3.org/TR/ttml2/#embedded-content- vocabulary-chu...](https://www.w3.org/TR/ttml2/#embedded-content-vocabulary- chunk)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> These are the VLC commits adressing the issue:

[https://github.com/videolan/vlc/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=subt...](https://github.com/videolan/vlc/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=subtitle+OR+subsdec+%22checkpoint.com%22&type=Commits)

<comment><USER15> Holy crap, that code doesn't look good. I predict we will see more exploits for this project.

Maybe we should stop random people from contributing to complex C projects?

<comment><USER16> Look at FFmpeg and all the multimedia libraries and you will be horrified.

<comment><USER15> I thought they cleaned up after the last round of exploits?

<comment><USER16> hahah :)

I wish :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Interestingly running VLC 2.2.4 on MacOS 10.12 and checking for updates returns 'VLC 2.2.4 is currently the newest version available.', obviously I downloaded 220.127.116.11 from videolan.org but still odd.

<comment><USER16> The update will be deployed today or tomorrow in the updaters.

<comment><USER18> Is that a default behavior or something you chose to do?

What if there's a bigger security fix you need to push to people asap?

<comment><USER16> It is something that we chose to do.

We usually let between 24hours and a few days before doing an upgrade, seeing the possible regressions.

From tag to release to updates can take only 4hours, if we want enough mirrors.

<comment><USER19> Well, 10 days later and 2.2.4 is still shown as the latest version when trying to upgrade... :/

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> AFAICT every plugin to Kodi has full machine access. Subtitles of course you don't expect to install malware but I wish plugins ran in a sandbox

</comment><comment><USER15> Slightly related to this: where can I find data sanitizers for common file formats (PDF, MP3 and so on)?

<comment><USER21> what counts as sanitizing? How do you know a file is malicious?

<comment><USER22> Especially with PDFs, my "sanitization" can be your "stripped away all the fonts and functionality - might as well have given me a plain .TXT", and vice versa.

<comment><USER23> "might as well have given me a plain .TXT""

Yes, please - that sounds fantastic.

<comment><USER22> I agree - but it's 1.surprisingly complicated for a general solution (positioning and such), and 2.not really a solution for the usual end user (who might appreciate a JPEG instead)

<comment><USER22> (btw there's `pdftotext`, which is pretty good in most cases)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Can anyone recommend a video player written in a memory-safe language for OSX that handles MKV files? Or is the simple truth that the problem lies in the parsers, which are shipped as a library written in C, because no sane developer wants to rewrite parsers for 25 different subtitle formats when writing a video player?

<comment><USER16> There are none. You can use VLC inside VLC sandbox, but you won't get something perfect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> What about mpv? That's my preferred video player.

<comment><USER26> While I too prefer mpv, I suspect that there are plenty of vulns in that player.

<comment><USER27> It's written in C, so I imagine that's almost guaranteed. In this case obscurity helps to protect you, however.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It would be interesting to see which subtitles are using these vulnerabilities and what they are achieving with them. We could estimate how long this has been around.

</comment><comment><USER29> This is another reason you should use a tool like a parser generator when you have to parse untrusted data, rather than writing your own parser by hand.

</comment><comment><USER30> Does anyone know if the subtitle hosting services added checks for this as well?

</comment><comment><USER31> This is interesting to me for reasons outside of anything to do with exploits or malware. A while back I had a bit of a brain fart while playing with my Hue bulbs: would there be a way to use the subtitle track for a video to encode time-controlled data that can be sent to/read by another application that sends these values to a set of Hue bulbs or similar devices for synchronized ambient lighting?

I figured that subtitles were an obvious place to start because you can download them in small files, play them back alongside a video, and they are designed to be "timed out" to synchronize with a video already.

I looked into it for a bit but never really found a way (within my abilities at least) to do anything like this from within a .srt file or similar. I'd be interested in hearing if anyone else has more info on how you might do more with that "framework" than displaying text on screen.

</comment><comment><USER27> Speaking of Popcorn Time, last I heard there were a couple of forks and doubts about the safety of each and every one.

Is there any more clarity around the situation now?

</comment><comment><USER32> Wow, that is bad. I'm always amazed by such vectors in supposedly passive formats, like fonts, images, and so on.

There is no excuse that these kind of applications are not completely sandboxed. All you need is some kind of DLL, raw data in, raw pixels out. In case of hardware accelerated codecs, raw pixels in, surface pointer in, nothing out. There is no need to be able to access the filesystem, etc.. To render subtitles on top of the video it's the same.

I wish a fraction of the energy we put into DRM would go into sandboxing instead.

<comment><USER16> Ha, the famous sandboxing remark. I wish it was that simple!

So, let me share some light on the sandboxing for multimedia (I work on VLC).

If you sandbox an application like VLC, in the current way of doing sandboxing, which we've done for macOS, WinRT/UWP, and snaps, you still need a lot of permissions.

Namely:

\- you need to be able to open files without user interactions (no file picker), in order to open playlist, MXF or MKV files;

\- you need the same if ever you have a database of files (media center oriented);

\- you need raw access to /dev/* to play DVD, CD and other optical disk (and the equivalent on Windows);

\- you need ioctl on such devices, to pass the MMC for DVD/Bluray;

\- you need raw access to /dev/v4l* for your webcams and be able to control them;

\- you need access to the GPU stack, which is running in kernel-mode, btw, to output video and get hw acceleration;

\- you need access to the audio stack, also in low-level mode;

\- you need access to the DSP acceleration (not always the GPU);

\- on linux, you have access to x11 for the 3 above features, which is almost root;

\- you need access to /etc/ (registry) for proxy informations, fonts configuration and accessibility;

\- many OpenGL client libraries need access to the /etc too;

\- you need access to the network, as input and output (think remote control);

\- you need access to the system settings to disable screensavers, and adjust brightness;

\- you need access to mounts to be able to see the insertion of DVD/Bluray/USB/SD cards and such;

\- you need to expose an IPC (think MPRIS on Linux);

\- you need to unzip, untar, decrypt, decipher and so on;

\- you need access to the fonts and the fonts configuration (see fontconfig).

and I probably forgot one or another case.

The point is, all those features have good reasons to exist and very good use cases; but the issue is that for a media player, it will request almost all permissions except GPS and address book.

And quite a few of them are very close to kernel mode.

So, what is the solution?

Probably do a multi-process media player, like Chrome is doing, with parsers and demuxers in a different process, and different ones for decoders and renderers. Knowing that you probably need to IPC several Gb/s between them.

I've been working on such a prototype, but it's a lot of work... I accept donations :)

<comment><USER33> You actually don't _NEED_ a lot of these things I'm perfectly fine with a default / embedded font. I don't have an optical drive A database can be in the local app storage. I'm fine opening a subtitle file myself. Why would I need IPC? Why would I need to unzip anything? If it's subtitle files, it can be done in-memory. Are you sure we need low-level audio?

I don't have a remote, so I'd like it to be disabled by default. I don't need any access to the network.

etc. etc. etc

<comment><USER34> Those restrictions work for you, but would make VLC borderline useless for me.

> I don't need any access to the network.

90+% of what I use it for comes from my NAS or the Internet.

> I don't have an optical drive

Most of the rest is from optical discs.

> I'm perfectly fine with a default / embedded font. [...] I'm fine opening a > subtitle file myself.

It's _fine_ but far from ideal. Both are useful quality of life features.

> Why would I need to unzip anything?

Non-essential, but being able to play video from a ZIP is a useful feature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> If Popcorn Time renders all subtitles as HTML, would an exploit work if the subtitles were embedded in video container? Seed latest hit on Pirate Bay, root a lot of boxes. Yikes.

</comment><comment><USER36> Is Media Player Classic affected?

<comment><USER37> Not according to this bug report: [https://trac.mpc- hc.org/ticket/6169](https://trac.mpc-hc.org/ticket/6169)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> here is how it looks in real time:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYT_EGty_6A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYT_EGty_6A)

</comment><comment><USER30> Does this also work for Android versions of Kodi et al?

<comment><USER39> Android does have a sandbox, so impact should be pretty limited if ever exploitable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> does this work on Linux and Mac OS? or is it limited to Windows systems?

<comment><USER41> I can't say for these vulns specifically, but in general, if software is vulnerable on one OS, it is very likely also vulnerable on other OSs. The differences aren't that big. Exploits generally have to be written for each OS separately, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> It's sad that VLC checks updates over HTTP and HTTPS

<comment><USER16> VLC updates are signed with asymetric encryption.

HTTP or HTTPS does not change that.

<comment><USER43> HTTPS would increase user privacy by not leaking application details though.

<comment><USER16> Indeed, but that's not what GP is referring to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> What does the "IPS Signatures" section mean?

</comment><comment><USER45> This is the sourced post [http://blog.checkpoint.com/2017/05/23/hacked-in- translation/](http://blog.checkpoint.com/2017/05/23/hacked-in-translation/)

The ingenuity that goes into RCE exploits never ceases to amaze (and terrify) me. Can't wait for more details to be released.

</comment><comment><USER46> Hollywood is resorting to shitty tactics

<comment><USER47> I would be impressed if this were actually "Hollywood". It's better than e.g. the RIAA lawsuits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Clearly VLC should be rewritten in Rust.

<comment><USER49> Looking at the bug fixes done in VLC, Ada or Modula-2 would be enough, although there are plenty of options actually.

Rust isn't the only alternative to write native code safer than C will ever allow.

<comment><USER50> Don't know about Modula, but have you tried Ada? The usability of it is nowhere near modern languages IMO. We learned a lot about nice code since then :-)

<comment><USER51> Modula 2 is much like C in it's close-to-the-metal performance abilities.

On the downside, if you want to call it that, is a more prominent syntax (keywords instead of curlies, upper-case keywords, etc).

On the upside it lacks any unsafe operations, except for dealloc. In addition, it has actual modules in lieu of includes, hence it's blazingly fast to compile and/or recompile. It'a a pity it didn't catch on, the language lacked a company to back and promote it. AT&T promoted C, Apple promoted Objective C, Microsoft promoted VB...

<comment><USER49> > Apple promoted Objective C

Actually Apple promoted Object Pascal, but then they decided to cater to the growing UNIX market and replaced the Mac OS SDK with C and C++ (PowerPlant) one.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Treat data as data. Taking the Subrip format as an example, everything starts out fine so long as there is good bounds checking on the purely textual data.

Then, however, some dipshit decides to extend the format by adding tags for things like bold, italics, underline etc. This is completely unnecessary for subtitles because the emphasis can be inferred from the dialogue. The unnecessary complexity increase the potential for vulnerabilities.

Then some total dickhead decides to add an HTML5 tag, for no reason whatsoever, and it all goes to hell.

This is illustrative of the problem with most software: the absence of a clear-headed benevolent dictator to say, "no; you are an idiot; we're not doing that."

<comment><USER53>
        This is completely unnecessary for subtitles because
        the emphasis can be inferred from the dialogue.

Seems useful for deaf people

<comment><USER54> It also seems like you could use it for applications like karaoke.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> These exploits will go nowhere without a catchy name ala HEARTBLEED...

I vote for SUB-DURAL HEMATOMA

</comment><comment><USER15> > The attack vector relies heavily on the poor state of security in the way > various media players process subtitle files and the large number of > subtitle formats.

Well, last years exploits against iOS, Android and Ubuntu where all related to media metadata processing. It is only natural that the same folks screw up this one too.

<comment><USER56> What same folks? iOS, Android and Ubuntu are not developed by the same people. More than that, it's not like these apps are actually developed by Apple, Google or Canonical.

Plus you're dissing some very complex projects. I think you're underestimating the complexity of the work these "same folks" are doing.</comment></comment>


In-Depth Tutorial on iOS Push Notifications with Parse in 10 Minutes - <AUTHOR> https://parse.com/tutorials/ios-push-notifications

<comment><USER2> I'm trying to understand the use-case for Parse. Am I correct that it's not intended to be used for apps that requires server-side logic ... that any app requiring server-side logic would still need another server in the mix?

<comment><USER3> I've had a quick look, and it looks like it's primarily a simple online database, with a basic push notification API.

Obvious use-cases for the DB would be apps that need to share data between phones (e.g. multiplayer games/high score tables/chat etc).

You're right that it doesn't look like it's able to run any server-side logic, and if you need that you'll need a separate server, but it does provide what seems to be an easy way for that separate server to do things like send push notifications.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> We've been using Parse for about a month in building the backend for an iOS app and we are loving it. It is very simple to use and still pretty powerful. Also, Parse is pretty good at responding to questions quickly.

<comment><USER5> About two months ago I tried their notifications API for an iPhone app that I was building. I found their tools to be less mature that urban airship. My only question to them went unanswered.

<comment><USER4> That is strange. I've emailed them a couple of times with specific questions and they have always gotten back detailed response.

They have everything we need in regards to notifications. They allow us to send notifications to everyone at once, or allow users to be able to push notifications sent when they receive a message from another user.

<comment><USER5> I am sure it all works fantastically when set up properly. For me, I was new to remote notifications, and I was struggling to get my notification certificates copasetic. The Parse debugging tools (logging) made it a challenge for me to find the root cause, which ended up being an improper setup on my part. If I remember correctly, I tried asking them for help over Twitter(?), so probably a poor choice on my part.

<comment><USER5> To the downvoter(s), I would appreciate your open feedback if you take issue with my straight critique (based on my real experiences) of the company's service.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I don't know why anyone would downvote you for you telling your experiences. In the future, I would email them, that is what I did.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mossberg Final Column: The Disappearing Computer - <AUTHOR> https://www.recode.net/2017/5/25/15689094/mossberg-final-column <comment><USER2> Mossberg did a lot of good work, but so did a lot of other columnists who didn't attain nearly the status he did.

Mossberg mostly has one guy to thank for the unique place he occupied in the tech media scene: Steve Jobs. For whatever reason, Jobs decided that Mossberg's take on Apple products really mattered, a lot. Mossberg was Jobs's stand-in for Mr. Everyman, and Jobs seemed to believe that if Mossberg couldn't connect with a product, then it needed to be re-thought.

His status as anointed deliverer of the final verdict on Apple's product line gave Mossberg a massive amount of influence in the tech world all by itself, but added to this was the fact that, as with so many other things, the rest of the tech industry slavishly followed Apple's lead -- at least, the rest of the tech industry's PR departments followed it. For a corporate PR flack, having Jobs's own personal oracle say nice things about your product was the ultimate win. It was the fat Harvard admissions envelope, by which I mean something like, "this achievement, while important, has a way outsized significance to a certain segment of the population who compete for it because they've all decided that getting this particular thing means You Won and have a higher status than all of your peers who haven't gotten it."

Interestingly enough, the passing of Jobs was followed by the passing of the positive Mossberg review as the ultimate prize in the PR world, and Mossberg's departure from the WSJ didn't help.

Am I ripping on Mossberg? Not really, more like I'm ripping corporate PR, but Mossberg certainly cultivated this situation (who wouldn't, though). I will say that it was a source of eternal frustration (and envy) among the rest of the tech punditry that Mossberg's reviews had this bizarre status with the PR departments of the companies we covered, sort of like "Harvard as the agreed upon brass ring that all yuppie parents have decided to compete for" no doubt occasions much eye-rolling at Stanford, Brown, Yale, and everywhere else. Nobody is sad to see that era pass.

As for Mossberg himself, Godspeed, dude. May your amulet never tickle.

<comment><USER3> I think you may have cause and effect flip-flopped here - Mossberg was the everyman's tech columnist long before Apple became the hot thing to cover.

<comment><USER4> I think he got it right. Mossberg was one amongst a number of everyman tech columnists for a while, but Jobs really elevated him once Apple got popular.

<comment><USER2> This is exactly right. Most major (and many regional and local) newspapers had an Everyman tech columnist. Mossberg just happened to be that guy for the WSJ.

The other thing I maybe should've mentioned, though, was that Mossberg was a very early and emphatic booster of the Jobs 2.0-era Apple products. Back when Jobs had just returned after the Next acquisition, Mossberg got on that bandwagon immediately and began talking up their products.

So in its initial stages, the Jobs/Mossberg love-fest was a bit of a symbiosis. Recall that this was in a bygone era when the powerhouse WSJ at least as big of a deal as the struggling Apple Computer company. In later years, when Apple was the giant we now know and Jobs had ascended to the pantheon of industrial greats, the relationship probably did a lot more for Mossberg than it did for Jobs.

(It's hard to recall, but there was once a time when Apple was a niche, struggling little tech company with a minuscule market share, and big newspapers were still a Big Deal. The Jobs/Mossberg relationship had its roots in that era.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This made me inexplicably sad. I wasn't a huge Mossberg fan or anything and haven't read more than a handful of his articles (nothing against the man, of course). But I think it's hard to hear about this and not be affected, even if only a tiny bit. We're some 35 or so years into the era of the personal computer and it's basically at that point where an entire generation of great names in the industry have spent a full and productive career in the service of technology and are now stepping down... and in some ways, the industry itself is retiring (as he mentions). Times are a-changing and we must change with them, adapt or die.

So long, Walt.

<comment><USER6> I teared up in the end. Completely unexpected

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _" Ubiquitous computing (or 'ubicomp') is a concept in software engineering and computer science where computing is made to appear anytime and everywhere. In contrast to desktop computing, ubiquitous computing can occur using any device, in any location, and in any format. [..] This paradigm is also described as pervasive computing. [..] Mark Weiser coined the phrase "ubiquitous computing" around 1988, during his tenure as Chief Technologist of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC)"_ [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubiquitous_computing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubiquitous_computing)

I find interesting that the concepts dreamt in the 80's are becoming common, now that technology has caught up.

<comment><USER8> Before he was at PARC, Mark Weiser was a professor at the University of Maryland. I took one of his classes and I always found him brilliant. I'm very sad that he did not live to see the arrival of the Internet of Things and the Maker movement and super-cheap computing, all of which touch on his ideas of Ubiquitous Computing. He'd have loved it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think privacy concerns could seriously diminish or alter the AI developments. I sometimes wonder if the internet doesn't need a new abstraction. i.e. The academic underpinnings of network protocols are allowing governments and corporations to overstep. Maybe in the future having an ISP provider without a 'privacy provider' will be like having a car without insurance?

Technically, I'm thinking of something like thousands of VPN connections distributing packets across randomly chosen data paths. Some trade off of bandwidth for abstracting away "which IP is doing what". (bleary-eyed thought: some sort of probability field applied to TCP/IP)

<comment><USER10> That's more or less how Tor works.

<comment><USER9> I see that, but I was hoping for lower level.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> From the article: "and robotics are in their infancy, a niche, with too few practical uses as yet."

Why does it seem like robotics is always niche and not practical yet? It seems like robotics is perennially on the cusp of being the next big thing, but never really is.

(I'd qualify that robotics are the old big thing in industrial manufacturing, though.)

<comment><USER12> Is my dishwasher in the kitchen a robot? Justify your answer (either is acceptable, I'm looking for your reasoning).

<comment><USER13> I think a robot has to have an arm. If it doesn't have an arm, it's not a robot -- it's just a machine. The whole robot could just be a single arm or the arm can just be one part. But it has to have an arm.

<comment><USER14> Haha. There is an anthropomorphic element to it.

When most people think 'robot', they think of something with human or animal- like elements. So for example a rolling delivery or security drone would be a robot, but an automated car would not.

<comment><USER13> Too human-like and it's an Android. Not creature-like enough and it's just a machine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Mossberg was a professional technology critic and pundit, one of the first of his kind. He paved the way for many others who followed his lead, and he certainly deserves credit for his pioneering efforts. I enjoy reading critical reviews of new products and software, but I'm generally not a fan of tech punditry. I believe that we need fewer pundits and prognosticators, and more hard-hitting investigative reporters along the lines of John Carreyrou.

<comment><USER16> There were others before Mossberg, and IMO they did a better job. _Infoworld_ used to be a weekly read for a lot of us in the tech community, and they had a number of experienced columnists (e.g. Dvorak, Cringely) that could have easily slid into the job that Mossberg was handed at the WSJ in the late 1980s (after nearly two decades of non-tech related coverage for the newspaper).

If you read his earliest work, you get the feeling that he sometimes had no idea what he was talking about. But he kissed up to the CEOs of the major companies, which dovetailed nicely with the editorial stance of the WSJ and the P/R needs of respective companies.

<comment><USER17> Don't forget Jerry Pournelle, if anybody holds that title it should be him.

<comment><USER16> Absolutely. Sorry I missed that name.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Carefully chosen words and full of future visions. Thank you. We will see if this will indeed go in the direction he suggests - as usually one cannot foresee what will disrupt the world next. It can be something completely new which has nothing to do with computers.

<comment><USER16> Except most of these profound visions from Mossberg are things that have been discussed in the tech community for decades.

Don Norman wrote _The Invisible Computer_ 19 years ago.

[https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/invisible- computer](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/invisible-computer)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Good column but this ongoing idea that the smartphone is the new personal computer is wrong. It's a different type of device. Smartphones are not replacing computers in terms of a device to get work done, other than email and phone calls. Doing real work for just about any job on a smartphone, even a big one like my iPhone 7 Plus, is not really viable. You still need a laptop or desktop to work in a spreadsheet, design a full page ad layout or do serious programming.

We need to let go of this idea that new technology is always a version of some other one, or replacing some other one. That's actually rare. Most of the time new inventions are just that; new.

<comment><USER20> It is the interface (small, touchscreen) that is new, along with the wireless network connectivity.

Other than that a smartphone is most definitely a personal computer though. There are many, less keyboard/mouse bound tasks that people regularly did on desktop PCs 10-15 years ago that we now do on our phones.

<comment><USER19> Is an ATM a personal computer? Is a laser printer a personal computer? Is a flight control system a personal computer?

Not every device that is made out of a computer is a personal computer. In fact, most are not.

<comment><USER7> The mobile tablet is not just a personal computer but a downright intimate one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> There are two ways to look at this.

1) It's really sad that we aren't able to get better progress than we have

2) It's great that we are still far from robots taking over as that leaves a huge option space for startups.

Personally I think many things literally are around the corner and that the corner is getting closer, faster and faster.

</comment><comment><USER22> Another one gone. John Markoff retired this year, too.

<comment><USER15> Just to clarify, John Markoff was a distinguished New York Times correspondent, based in San Francisco, who covered the Bay Area tech industry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Great column. And end of an era. Good luck to him.

</comment><comment><USER24> Great column. What a body of work! I wish I have something that touched so many lives when I finally hang up my gloves.</comment>


Ask HN: As a bizdev person, how do you get a coder onto your startup team? - <AUTHOR>

If you're a coder, chances are that you've been approached by three million people who want to get you working on their brilliant idea.<p>A few years ago, I was one of these incredibly naive "idea" people. I've since learned quite a bit on the business and marketing end, am cruising through the "Personal MBA" book list, have done extensive market research on my new idea, have mocked it up over and over again, have networked extensively, etc. I've tried learning how to code, but I'm so much more passionate about business development that I often lose interest in coding.  I want to know this: What is it going to take in order to attract a talented coder onto my team? As a coder, what does a potential business co-founder need to do in order to impress you? <comment><USER2> As a coder, there's a few things I look for:

1\. The business person needs to understand that they can't make all the shots. Because they're business doesn't mean they handle all of it, especially product 2\. Passionate about your idea, but understand that a technical point of view can greatly change the idea 3\. Don't act like an enterprise business person. Don't think about team size as a measure of success for example. 4\. Show you can bring more than ideas and opinion to the table. You need to be able to close deals, raise money, talk and persuade, have user acquisition plans that you can execute without code, have a very popular blog, twitter account, and a following of people who respect you already.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been approached a few times even down here in NZ. For me you would need to:

1\. Be a nice interesting person I would like to work with.

2\. Convince me you have something valuable to contribute while I am hacking away.

3\. Have an idea that I believe in.

Probably in that order too. #2 might sound arrogant but that's partly because it is harder for me to judge business ability than it is to judge technical ability. It will also depend on whether the idea is weighted towards technology or business risk.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER4> If all you want is a coder you just need $$$.

If you want a co-founder, you need to not refer to her as a coder.

</comment><comment><USER5> You need to find someone you _absolutely_ and _unconditionally_ trust and respect. What software developers do is sufficiently different from what you know that any other approach (besides becoming sufficiently experienced in it yourself, which will take months at minimum) is a mistake, often a fatal one for a startup.

</comment><comment><USER6> That's funny. As a coder, it seems like EVERYONE around me is a coder, and I can't for the life of me find any people interested in bizdev/marketing/etc to partner with.</comment>


How Lean Domain Search's Brandable Domain Name Generation Algorithm works - <AUTHOR> http://www.leandomainsearch.com/blog/42-an-inside-look-at-lean-domain-search-s-brandable-domain-name-generation-algorithm <comment><USER2> In my last job, we would randomly assign a password to someone when they registered for an account that needed to be changed on first login. I wanted to make them somewhat pronounceable but avoid four-letter words so the format was:

consonant vowel vowel consonant number number number number

We got a complaint email one time because someone said that he was a pre- operative transsexual and we must have known that because we teased him with the password of DUUD5921. Basically he was saying we were purposely calling him a dude.

I'm glad I wasn't responsible for responding to customer emails because I would have no idea what to say to that. I can only imagine the complaint emails this service will get from cuckoo-birds.

</comment><comment><USER3> Takes public data, simple heuristics, and some insights and produces great results. Very very clever. That was well worth the short read.

</comment><comment><USER4> Is it just me or do most of these sound like drug brands? My favorites include "paralytica", "effectiven" and "circumvenio".

<comment><USER5> I dread what circumvenio would do.

<comment><USER6> Sounds like a health-tech startup that's offering innovative dialysis products.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> LDS is top of my toolbox for finding domains along with:

<http://instantdomainsearch.com> \- for quick searches

<http://www.domainhole.com> \- for expired domains

and sometimes <http://www.wordoid.com> for coming up with random words (increasingly a waste of time)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Nice writeup.

When I saw this article in my feedreader I thought it would be a very complicated thing that Matt did, but basically it's just using one/two data sources with some great ideas.

The result speaks for itself I think: <http://www.leandomainsearch.com/brandable>

</comment><comment><USER8> One suggestion. Add an easy way to also check what the chosen domain name might mean in a series of languages. It's embarrassing to receive an email from a user telling you that your domain means something foul in their language.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is awesome. LDS has been a case study in how iterating leads to a really great product. I just hope they are earning enough commissions so they can keep creating quality domain search products.

</comment><comment><USER10> I like quarterbaq and translucen</comment>


Ask HN: Are dynamic languages more productive? - <AUTHOR>

I've been a backend Java dev for the last 12+ years but am trying to get more productive by switching to a more "modern" dynamic language.
Recently however, I gave up in frustration trying Groovy + Grails + Gradle due to the amount of time I had to spend just figuring out the expected dynamic inputs to methods for libraries and components I was using. I.e. with a dynamic constructor I actually have to understand the structure of an entire component rather than just a method signature.
I gave up because I felt whatever savings I was reaping from the nice features of the language, I was loosing flipping back and forth between IDE and documentation, figuring out how a closure should be structured to serve as an input or what properties exist on some returned object. I even switched from Eclipse to IntelliJ since I heard Grails support was better.
Same thing with Gradle vs Maven. Since Maven uses a schema for it's configuration, I can quickly Ctrl + Space to the config element I need. Not so it seems with Gradle where I again had to flip back and forth to the docs. Maybe this is just an IDE support issue?
What am I doing wrong? Seems like this should be easier given how popular these languages have become. <comment><USER2> Dynamically-typed languages became popular in the 2000's decade in the same way visual programming became popular in the 1990's. Programmers and their managers discovered they were more "productive" with them up to a certain scale, so in corporate IT they started being used, especially for web programming where technical debt is generally left to be cleaned up by others. But the trend has reversed back to statically-typed languages over the past 5 years. (Tiobe used to show the trend reversal graph on its front page every month, but removed it recently.) Probably one or two dynamic languages will remain, perhaps PHP and Python, just as VB has lingered from the visual programming fad.

Regarding Groovy specifically... It's used for very small use cases, like gluing Java apps together, writing tests for Java objects, basically stuff that won't become a standalone app. Because of Groovy's MOP, it's used for Grails - I don't know much about Grails but its popularity seems to be coupled to Rails' decline. Gradle will be going polyglot soon enough - their Gradle 2 roadmap [1] says they're shifting control of the build from the "Gradle build language" to a configuration-on-demand build model.

[1] [http://forums.gradle.org/gradle/topics/revolutionary_new_gra...](http://forums.gradle.org/gradle/topics/revolutionary_new_gradle_features_on_the_2014_roadmap)

</comment><comment><USER3> I had this problem coming from a C# background into Rails. I found myself wasting a lot of time doing the same things you're doing. Ultimately though the gains far outweighed any initial slowness. Of course this is most likely a result of Rails than plain old Ruby (dynamic language).

My takeaway is, don't get discouraged by the initial 3 months of wonkiness, it'll get better the more familiar you are with the language.

For larger codebases though, I vastly prefer strongly typed languages.

</comment><comment><USER4> For what type of programming? Building an embedded system is very different from building a database engine is very different from building a webapp or computer game.

I've found that dynamic languages are significantly more productive for prototyping and green-field development, at the cost of being significantly less productive for maintaining large existing software systems. And they are significantly more productive for uses where the main data types are strings, tables, and dictionaries (eg. webapps, CRUDScreen reports, command-line scripts) than uses where you need significant structured data (eg. business logic, hardware design).

Usually this means that you will need to use both - a static language forms the underlying substrate for the program, but a dynamic language lets you script and manipulate those components easily to quickly try out new features.

The issue you describe is a learning-curve one, not one specific to dynamic languages. Once you get familiar with Gradle you'll memorize most of the elements that you need on a regular basis. If instead of learning one particular popular software package, though, you had to learn the whole innards of a complex proprietary application, dynamic languages wouldn't save you any time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your response.

I was writing a simple web service which also makes REST calls to other REST services which may or may not respond in JSON. Seems like a sweet spot use case for Grails.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> After trying both ways, I find that types help a lot, helping me write correct code faster and modify the codebase with greater confidence. Currently I'm using Scala which I believe provides a good mix of expressiveness and type safety.

</comment><comment><USER6> You should look at Scala. It really feels like the best of both worlds: strong, statically typed without the boilerplate.

Scala is what I was looking for when I found Groovy.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm more productive with Scala than I ever was with Java, and Scala is very strongly typed. Statically typed languages aren't always less productive than dynamic languages, but the straightjacket of a language known as Java is.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Scala books ordered! I have the original book written by Oderksy but it's pretty old a this point so I ordered 2 books from the in Action series and one on the Play framework.

Let's see how this works out. The only negatives I have heard about Scala are the binary compatibility issues with dependencies and Scala versions.

I had shied away from Scala before since I didn't see any clear dependency injection support (can't live without it) but seems like that has been solved with the Spring Scala module.

<comment><USER8> > The only negatives I have heard about Scala are the binary compatibility > issues with dependencies and Scala versions.

You might have heard people complaining, but it's kind of complaining at a very high level.

Scala's compatibility story is better than most other languages, it's just that a significant part of Scala developers come from Java, where people expect that _nothing_ _ever_ changes.

Scala is not like that, it has a deprecation policy which includes actually removing stuff.

> I had shied away from Scala before since I didn't see any clear dependency > injection support (can't live without it) but seems like that has been > solved with the Spring Scala module.

Not sure I'd call that idiomatic Scala. There are a few DI libraries in Scala, but I'd say that the language reduces the need for DI a lot. You can of course use everything from legacy Java stuff like Spring, Guice, CDI to Scala libraries like SubCut, MacWire or Scaldi.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> There has been a battle in academic CS for years over this issue and there have been no conclusive results.

In practice, static languages run faster than dynamic languages and IDE tooling is better for static languages. Big advances have been made in dynamic language compilers, however, and there is big talk about better IDEs for dynamic languages although I don't buy it.

In my view a good IDE (IntelliJ, not Eclipse) is important for being productive in Java. A good IDE helps maximize the benefits of static languages. For instance, if you have an IDE you can do automated renaming and similar refactorings, something you probably will never do without the IDE or with a dynamic language.

One trouble is that people in the Open Source world often expect all GUI programs to suck compared to, say, vim. Thus there is a lot of tolerance for half-baked products like Eclipse. People don't expect IDEs to work, in fact they think they are a symptom of people having weak minds, so they keep using products that are broken. In particular, Eclipse is sick with pluginitis. It almost works if you get one of the prebuilt configurations but after a few plugins get installed it goes bad the way cheese goes bad.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have actually never had problems with Eclipse. It's still my preferred IDE for JAVA but it doesn't have the same support for Groovy and Grails as IntelliJ. I personally feel the concept of IntelliJ being the superior IDE developed years ago when maybe Eclipse was still heavily being developed. At this point, I feel both are on par for Java development but not so much for other languages.</comment></comment>


Efficiency is dangerous and slowing down makes life better - <AUTHOR> https://psyche.co/ideas/why-efficiency-is-dangerous-and-slowing-down-makes-life-better <comment><USER2> I've found "efficiency as the opposite of stability" a very powerful concept to think about - even though it's fairly simple, it seems to be almost a fundamental law.

Whether it's about the economy at large, your own household, a supply chain, what have you - as soon as you optimize for efficiency by removing friction, you take all the slack/damping out of the system and become instantly more liable to catastrophic failure if some of your basic conditions change. Efficiency gives you a speed bonus, at the cost of increased risk / less resilience to unforeseen events.

Stewart Brand's concept of "Pace Layering" comes to mind for how to deal with this at a systemic level - [https://jods.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/issue3-brand/release/2](https://jods.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/issue3-brand/release/2)

<comment><USER3> > efficiency as the opposite of stability

In statistics, there is a slight variant of this thesis that is true in a precise formal sense: the _tradeoff_ between efficiency and "robustness" (stability in a non-ideal situation).

For example, if you have a population sample, the most efficient way to estimate the population mean from your sample is the sample mean. But if some of the data are corrupted, you're better off with a robust estimator - in this case, a trimmed mean, where the extreme N% of high and low values are discarded.

The trimmed mean is less efficient in the sense that, if none of the data are corrupted, it discards information and is less accurate than the full mean. But it's more robust in the sense that it remains accurate even when a small- to-moderate % of the data are corrupted.

<comment><USER4> i stumbled on "stability' too, because it's a static quality.

rather than robustness, i prefer to use the term resilience, a dynamic quality, since efficiency is also a dynamic quality. you can trade efficiency for resilience and vice versa (as the parent poster switched to later).

edit:

i should add that i don't entirely agree with the thesis of the article, which exhorts us to slow down, thereby trading efficiency away for resilience. there are a number of ways to add resilience (and trade away efficiency), and in some cases, slowing down might be the best, but it's certainly not the only, or best, option in most cases.

for housing, an example used in the article, we could add more housing to create resilience, which requires _reducing_ friction, like increasing the throughput of permitting/inspections while generally reducing zoning/regulations.

<comment><USER5> I'm completely ignorant on this topic, so I apologize for asking what must be an extremely stupid question to you, but: what makes stability a static quality whereas resilience is a dynamic quality? Are these statistical definitions that I can look up somewhere?

<comment><USER6> Not OP, but my take is that stability is usually defined as a base-state that will continue onto perpetuity unless some outside force disrupts it. Resiliency is more closely defined as the ability to recover from disruptions back to the base-state quickly.

Since the context here is that efficiency can remove layers of redundancy therefore allowing disruptions to wreck more havoc - I believe that's what OP was getting at.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This comment thread is making me realize we don't have a good word to distinguish between efficiency as in "we only have 7 hospital beds because that's all we need on 99% of each day" and efficiency as in "we replaced steps X,Y,Z with just step X', because we found that X' could accomplish everything that XYZ could accomplish but it's faster, more accurate, and cheaper".

One makes a tradeoff by reducing overheads and buffers, and the other doesn't have any tradeoffs, it's just a better way of doing things based on novel techniques.

<comment><USER8> I don't know if those two things are as different as you suggest. Multiple steps add redundancy, if you fail one step you can get much of the value from other steps. More steps are frequently added in response to edge cases.

Could be a Chesterton's Fence scenario

Instead of bemoaning efficiency, it'd be interesting to reward/value redundancy and antifragility, at least at the system level.

I think this could mean trust busting, regulation, and general cultural shifts.

<comment><USER9> Multiple steps don't always add redundancy, sometimes they're just noise or artifacts. I had a colleague who, when opening a file, would first click on the Windows desktop, then "My Computer", then navigate to the directory, open the file, and close the Explorer window.

There was zero redundancy versus leaving the directory open so they could open the next file (or using the application's "Open File" dialog).

That is a perfect example of wasteful motion (in their case due to a poor mental model of how computers worked, as I learned through later discussions) that could be simplified significantly without loss of quality or redundancy in the system.

Contrast this with: The surgical office called me this morning and stated, "The surgery is for a ganglion cyst on your left wrist." Which I confirmed. When I go in on Tuesday for the surgery this will be repeated, and a mark will be made on the area to be cut open (though in this case it'd be _really_ hard to screw up and open the right wrist, as there is no, quite visible, cyst there). That is useful redundancy of the sort you describe. Removing any step (the initial visit a week ago, the call today, the check when I arrive, the mark on the wrist) and you increase the risk of error.

<comment><USER10> Lots of good examples in sports, where wasted movements lead to failure, particularly at the higher levels

<comment><USER9> Yep. Not even just sports games, but athletics and movement in general. Learning to avoid certain movements when running, swimming, or rowing is very important especially if the goal shifts from complete a short distance as fast as possible to complete a long distance in a reasonable time (and often the more efficient form for long distance translates into faster short distance results as well).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> One of my favorite quotes on this topic comes from Aurelius' description of his adopted father in _Meditations_.

 _[Y]ou would never say of him that he "broke out a sweat": but everything was allotted its own time and thought, as by a man of leisure - his way was unhurried, organized, vigorous, consistent in all_.

I feel like I spend a lot of time rushing from one thing to the next, constantly questioning whether I'm spending time wisely. And then I end up accomplishing less because I lack focus in one area. I've instead been trying to relax, slow down, and take tasks one at a time until completion. I'd also recommend Cal Newport's book, _Deep Work_ , on this.

<comment><USER12> > but everything was allotted its own time and thought, as by a man of leisure

As an extreme example; watching Schumacher at his peak perform during a qualifying lap or during race, in treacherous rainy conditions, while everyone was absolutely struggling, and him out front, half a lap ahead of everyone was like watching poetry in motion. You could tell he was very relaxed just by the way his hands operated the steering wheel, hitting the apex every time in a single motion, no twitching or tossing around the car.

It seemed he just had more time, as in the time had just slowed down for him compared to everyone else.

Edit: Typo; damn you Mac OS auto-correct!

<comment><USER13> Time dilation is a real thing. You're likely describing his experience accurately.

We see it in obviously exaggerated forms in film, like the Matrix, but that's based on real shit. The best baseball hitters describe seeing the pitch the same way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Same-day delivery isn't efficiency; it's made possible by inefficiency, like using more delivery people and vehicles who cover inefficient routes, and using more warehouses closer to delivery areas.

Actually we can't discuss efficiency without making it clear what parameter we are optimizing, at the cost of what (if any) other parameters.

However, usually, if we reduce the time something takes not by cleverly eliminating, rearranging or otherwise streamlining the steps, but rather by some brute force method that requires more resources (more people, more equpiment, more energy), it is hard to frame that as efficiency.

<comment><USER15> Right. Same-day delivery is _fast_ , not usually efficient.

Neither is multitasking using three different devices at the same time efficient. Again in this example the author seems to be confusing rush with efficiency. I didn't make it past those first few incoherent lines, so I don't know whether this confusion persists into the rest of the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Transcript of a Calvin&Hobbes strip:

Calvin's Dad, sitting at his desk: "It used to be that if a client wanted something done in a week, it was considered a rush job and he'd be lucky to get it."

CD: "Now, with modems, faxes, and car phones, everyone wants everything instantly! Improved technology just increases expectations."

CD: "These machines don't make life easier - they make life more harassed."

Calvin, in the background: "Six minutes to microwave this?? Who's got that kind of time?!"

CD: "If we wanted more leisure, we'd invent machines that do things _less_ efficiently."

[https://pics.me.me/it-used-to-be-that-if-a-non-with- modems-3...](https://pics.me.me/it-used-to-be-that-if-a-non-with- modems-33836445.png)

</comment><comment><USER17> I feel like a lot of conversations and articles recently speak to an inadequate understanding of risk, and planning for risk.

Risk is made up of at least 2 or 3 components: what is the probability something will happen? And, if it does happen, what is the impact and how will you mitigate that impact?

For example, you may believe that a change to a website you are deploying has a low probability of taking the website offline. If it is taken offline, it may cost £X per hour in lost revenue, but you'll leave the old version running on a standby server, so it only takes a few minutes to switch back. That's a much more thorough understanding to 1 aspect of risk than "this rollout is low risk". Once you have that understanding, it's reasonable to discuss how to reduce the probability of an outage (better testing?), as well as how to reduce the impact (staged rollout?) or to speed up the fix if it were to happen (practise?).

In COVID terms, we should be discussing the impact of decisions in the light of future pandemics. Could we invest now in reusable PPE, so that next time we don't have a global rush on the disposable stuff? Do we need to educate the public more readily about reducing disease transmission to reduce the likelihood of a pandemic in the first place? I'm not a doctor, so I have no idea on the specifics, but the likelihood of any given pandemic will always be low, so what is the impact of the decision if there is one and does that impact need to be mitigated? (even if it is less efficient to do so...)

<comment><USER18> You say risk has 2 or 3 components. The two you list, liklihood and severity, are the two I usually hear. What is the third?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Oh dear, I want to rant.

Efficiency is a dimensionless ratio of energy in to energy out. Economics, as formulated, has little to say about efficiency and lots to say about preference relations on utility functions (the texts do tend to hand-wavingly waffle about how markets attain "efficiency" through hypothetically rational actors maximizing utility functions etc., if you want a giggle check out the "fundamental theorems of welfare").

I actually read the fine article, and didn't give up after the first couple of paragraphs.

And in paragraph the third is introduced friction. I dunno, maybe it's because I actually study science, but friction is a well defined thing and the coefficient of same is another _dimensionless_ variable. It seems every time economists want to incorporate a notion from science proper they go for the dimensionless stuff because that way they don't have to go through the whole tiresome rigmarole of ... dimensional analysis. It makes me feel like Tantacrul criticising UI's (check him out on youtube, he's both funny and informative).

Anyway, efficiency is not dangerous, efficiency will actually allow the survivors of the Anthropocene Disaster make it through the coming disaster. Slowing down is not a bad notion because it means most humans can spend more time thinking (quite efficient actually) and less time haring around the planet distracting themselves from the vapidity of their vanity. However life is not better because it is slower, it's better because humans appreciate what an extraordinary (literally and figuratively) opportunity it is to be alive.

As insurance policy against disaster stop listening to economists because they observably don't have a clue (they can't make accurate and meaningful predictions), instead study science, especially physics, because these meanings are measured against reality and the resulting predictions are highly reliable (TANSTAAFL < 2TD).

/rant

</comment><comment><USER20> > We worship efficiency. Use less to get more. Same-day delivery. Multitask; > text on one device while emailing on a second, and perhaps conversing on a > third. Efficiency is seen as good. Inefficiency as wasteful.

Is this a US thing? I've lived in three different European countries and nobody thinks this way. Efficiency and productivity are things I mostly just read about on HN.

<comment><USER21> It spills over to countries(like mine) enamoured of the American way of life, but in a twisted manner.

I've worked for companies that saw overburdening people with responsibilities as "efficient". On paper it was.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The article repeats a commonly believed myth about money being invented as a replacement for barter. Adam Smith thought so, as do many economists, but they forgot to ask anthropologists. See [https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/02/barter-...](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/02/barter- society-myth/471051/)

<comment><USER23> Strongly recommend "Debt: The First 5000 Years" by David Graeber - [https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781612194196](https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781612194196) \- solid treatment of economic history from an anthropological viewpoint.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I think this article is missing something. What it talks about is efficiency of systems, which I think is different than efficiency in process.

Most of what the article talks about is making large systems more efficient for the benefit of the system at large. I agree, this makes individual components of the system more stressed and prone to catastrophic failure at any one point in the system. People within that kind of efficient system are pushed to their limits and breaking points.

However, making individual processes efficient i've found reduces stress on the individuals involved in that process and allows for that slowing down time.

The examples I can think of to back my points up

Previously I worked at a job where the actual process was incredibly inefficient. I ended up working long hours and twice as hard as I needed to. By the time I left that job, I'd increased the efficiency of the process to the point where I was working reasonable hours, had some good downtime to relax or take care of other things I'd had to neglect before.

The overall system at the place though was fairly inefficient, which was a good thing. It meant we were usually a little ahead and could account for things that went wrong.

Another recent example at my current job, we were working with a person who tried to overhaul our inefficient, yet working system. Our processes were efficient enough that we always got what we needed to do done. The person we were working with tried to over engineer an 'efficient' schedule and system for us that in the end caused far too much friction and they ended up losing money and the business relationship between the company I work for and them ended.

<comment><USER25> > _I think this article is missing something._

The first word of the essay is "we," and it goes downhill from there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> As an "Engineer" by job title, I strive for efficiency at work, and it certainly creeps into my daily personal life also. With this pandemic I have learned to realize that efficiency is not the end game for everything, and the things you do efficiently should be chosen wisely. I have seen the the toll it takes on those in my daily life more clearly, but have also seen how it can lead to a safer less risky life during these times (i.e. shopping habits). It is also clear that efficiencies built into our supply chains (i.e. food) have become a liability as of recently. I do see this as a time of great reflection on efficiency for both individuals and corporations or markets. I think this re-evaluation will lead to some of the longest lasting changes to come out of this pandemic.

</comment><comment><USER27> >Why hadn't we stockpiled key supplies and machines, built up hospital capacity, or ensured the robustness of our supply chains? The reason, of course, is that it would have been seen as inefficient and profit-robbing.

>Seen in this light, at least some inefficiency is like an insurance policy. Think about your own situation. Every year that you don't get into a car accident and your house doesn't burn down and you stay healthy, you could think to yourself that you have 'wasted' your money on various pointless insurance products, and that you'd be financially better off without all those insurance premiums to pay.

This is a faulty claim. Traditional economic efficiency would say we _should_ stockpile medical supplies if it were more efficient for the markets in the long-term, which it would have been. The issue here is that _governments_ and experts didn't work together effectively (despite experts regularly noting the possibility of a pandemic, for example, Gates et al.) and the fact that our government generally isn't Keynesian. A quote (source: IMF [https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2014/09/basics.ht...](https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2014/09/basics.htm)):

>Keynes argued that governments should solve problems in the short run rather than wait for market forces to fix things over the long run, because, as he wrote, "In the long run, we are all dead."

As it relates to Global Warming, for example, we have various options. We could solve it by being "less efficient" (extracting less from the earth — and in fact, a Keynesian approach to that would be taxation to slow growth in harmful industries) but zoomed out, if we deal with global warming, we are more efficient over the long run. Moreover, we want to be _efficient_ in our development of green technologies.

The trouble isn't so much efficiency, it's zeroing in on making particular processes efficient to the detriment of the whole across time and in the present moment.

</comment><comment><USER28> Pace is relative and I think teams will generally average out in terms of pace. Finding a pace that fits you and your style would be an essential factor in having better work efficacy. My boss works really fast, works constantly and is probably a workaholic, a pace which I can not and will not try to match, so I have to work at my own pace and this throws off how project planning goes because the PMs are used to his pace and don't give me an optimal amount of time on projects, so I will find myself rushing which of course makes me feel bad and triggers my impostor syndrome. Eventually this pace will break down and become unmanageable for me and I'll have to quit, which will hurt their production even more.

Pace and efficiency are definitely linked, but I don't necessarily know that I think faster = more efficient. And there are folks mentioning stability, also definitely linked here, but i think max efficiency would lean more into stability than pace.

Linking pace with efficiency also seems to create the idea that "faster will be the winner" which, you know, that's a whole thing, introducing competition in an arguably healthy way.

I generally tend to find that emotion will usually come before logic. Building something that could be considered efficient, but a feeling says "This could be more efficient" and then logic jumps in and does the work.

Just some stream of consciousness writing here, food for thought maybe, or extremely poor quality ideas!

</comment><comment><USER29> The fundamental problem is the inverted-U shape of payoffs to "optimizing" any one factor (or a small subset of key focus areas). Beyond a point, you're just "overfitting" to the incorrect metric and underperforming in the truer sense. Yeah, you might not have a metric for the "deeper value"... c'est la vie! Any decision making approach that tries to ignore that problem/limitation is simply stupid.

The other problem with prizing efficiency is that we often optimize for efficiency under an _incorrect model_ of the situation (model-reality- mismatch) — underweighting the likelihood of upsetting possibilities. That's essentially what the idea of "black swan"/"fat tails" is about. It's not really about statistics, unless you're using a flawed and over-simplified statistical model to ground your metric of efficiency.

IMHO the same problem underlies the approach/framework of behavioral economics. In many situations, observed human behavior might be "irrational" only because your model of reality is naively simplistic. _It shouldn't be surprising that a satisficing approach works better in reality than an optimizing approach_ ; if it does sound surprising, consider that your intuitions might be biased by an incorrect model of reality!

</comment><comment><USER30> Of course not trying cram as much in as possible makes life better. However tell that to a CEO who has built a business off an unsustainable, for a normal person who wants to have a life outside of work, efficiency mindset.

<comment><USER31> The CEO gets it from above. Investors want to hold a portfolio with a particular risk/return profile. In order to do that, the individual components of the portfolio need to be running at higher risk, higher return profiles.

(Portfolio theory is why I am in favour of social safety nets. A worker wishes a relatively safe risk/return profile will voluntarily choose a much higher risk job when they can combine it with a low-risk backstop.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Efficiency is for machines. Effectiveness and creativity are for people.

And the more machines do laundry, the more effective and creative people can choose to be. Or they can choose to watch TV.

</comment><comment><USER33> The problem is you can only slow down if everyone else does too, unless you're willing to step down in "class" which a lot of people have trouble with.

<comment><USER34> > The problem is you can only slow down if everyone else does too

That's a myth propagated by people with a stake in the pie. Nature shows us that you only need to be hyper-efficient and in a constant arms race if you're competing for the _same_ resources.

Otherwise, you can adopt an opportunistic survival strategy that trades efficiency for variety and a diversity of useable resources.

Of course, efficiency is the only option when there are companies trying to grab _all_ the resources available, as in our current business setting. But that's definitely not a healthy environment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> It something I learned recently about ecologies, and permaculture design. And then I started applying it to my personal life. Instead of heroically finishing things, to instead, work on them in a way that is more like the regenerative and resilient processes from permaculture design.

<comment><USER36> I'd love to hear you elaborate on this in more detail.

<comment><USER35> I'm still working it out myself, so this is all work in progress.

I have a teenage stepdaughter doing online schooling. I had been working remote for years now. It took a long time to work out how things work with my wife -- she is a stay-at-home mom. Work and family life intrude on each other, and even more so this year with the pandemic.

I used to burn out big time, and then, I burn out in smaller doses. In the last burnout cycle, my wife miscarried, and that spent both my wife spinning. So I am not entire sure at this point how much of this is like when I functioned at peak.

The things that I have been doing:

\- I try to have a few tasks I think I can accomplish and try to do them. But because the family life can be so disruptive, I've learned that I'm not really going to be as productive as I am at the peak, and just be ok with it.

\- I try not to be a blocker for either my teammates or for my family.

\- I have a garden. I enjoy it. I mainly do work with it in the morning and evening. Sometimes I am exhausted (especially in Phoenix summer hell season). In general, though, it recharging.

\- I practice neigong, and I finally got to the point where I can reliably cycle something (which I will not get into technical details about unless you're also a practitioner. It is a rabbit hole). But suffice it to say, it rebalances the vital energy being distributed among my physical, emotional, and mental states. Part of the burnout was exhausting everything mentally, repeatedly, until there is just nothing left.

\- When I push through something, it is for small things. Those small things might chain together. Past a certain point, it is better to go for a walk.

\- I can tell when my brain is just exhausted. It is better to take a nap. I'll warn my wife that I'm not really present during grocery shopping. She doesn't always like that (it is one of the times we go out to do something together that is not in the house). I might take MCT with some mixed nuts.

\- I don't use caffeine -- no coffee or tea. The closest I get is with roiboos, and even its 1mg caffeine can affect me. Fortunately, the caffiene content of chocolate does not affect me as much.

The part I am working out is how to live in a way that follows the permaculture ethics -- care of earth, care of people, and fair share. It is the last of these that has made me realize that the ambition of unbounded growth, whether for society, or for myself, is simply impractical. It may be strange to say it on a forum that was created for people who were or are interested in doing a Ycombinator startup and getting rich from winning the startup lottery ... but I've come to realize that it is not how I want to live or relate to the world.

I used to practice minimalism ... but now I realize that is just a stepping stone. It's investing in regenerative and resilient systems. The garden is part of my long-term effort to create a perennial food forest on my property. There is a lot of tech and "shiny" that I realize I don't really need to get.

And while I know that recently, I would keep comparing other people's cars as status / wealth symbols, it is ultimately meaningless. And fortunately, I know what I need to do to get my mind to cease doing that.

This is a very unusual way for me to approach this subject. I usually start out with a radical position: inequality and the wealth gap is _intrinsic_ to modern civilizations, and it rests upon the notion that wealth is something to be extracted from the earth, and access controlled. "Efficiency" is how you maximize profit, as if that is the only way to optimize things. Therefore, there will never be any system of economics and free market (or command economy) that will ever take the well-being of the earth and the people into account.

From this perspective, I think it is insanity. Why would anyone want to participate in a system where there will be guaranteed losers? (Because the few exceptions give the false hope that you might be the exception).

It therefore follows that, if I want to participate in a different kind of a "game", then I will have to live my life by those other principles. And so, I'm trying that with my current work. To give an receive my fair share. To reinvest capital gained from extractive wealth and convert it to regenerative wealth. To not tie my personal sense of self-worth into status or wealth symbols.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Having moved from an inefficient setting to an efficient environment, I have noticed a reduction of tolerance and threshold for getting stressed when things don't go smoothly. There is something to be said for the buffer that "inefficiency" provides.

<comment><USER25> All you have to do is look to history for the movements and societies that have put "efficiency" on a pedestal to gauge the value and practicality.

There was a major one in the 20th century. It did not go well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I think the article is drawing the wrong conclusions. In every example given, the problem isn't "too much efficiency", but failing to plan for unlikely situations.

Making something inefficient doesn't magically increase preparedness.

<comment><USER39> No, but maximizing efficiency doesn't necessarily increase preparedness either. Being prepared has costs.

<comment><USER38> Sure, preparedness has costs, but the article makes the point poorly, IMO.

Many of the arguments are non sequiturs. The last example is particularly bad. On an icy road, it doesn't matter if a car gets 100 mpg or 10 mpg - speed and traction are far more important factors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Doesn't the author miss that efficiency and deceleration (i.e. slow down) are in some respects orthogonal? It is possible to more efficiently go the same distance at the same speed, but use less resources. It is also possible to both slow down and increase efficiency which can synergistically decrease resource use.

Take the aluminum can. Beverage companies heavily innovated, reduced aluminum use, saved resources, emissions, and consumers get a win with lighter cans and less environmental pollution and carbon emission.

</comment><comment> Pick-A-Hill2019 "... what of the COVID-19 pandemic? Why hadn't we stockpiled key supplies and machines, built up hospital capacity, or ensured the robustness of our supply chains? The reason, of course, is that it would have been seen as inefficient and profit-robbing. Money spent on masks and gowns gathering dust in a warehouse could always be put to more 'productive' use in the marketplace."

 _This_ is what matters right now.

</comment><comment><USER41> the article doesn't make sense to me

when making decisions:

"we should be asking which option will give us good-enough results under the widest range of future states of the world"

doesn't that lead you right back to the struggle for the most efficient way to determine the optimal "good-enough" answer?

Also, the article talks about efficiency but efficiency of what exactly? What if you're very efficient at a maintaining a relaxed and happy lifestyle?

<comment><USER42> Suppose you're playing a videogame. Your character just leveled up. You can upgrade either Attack or HP.

* "Upgrade Attack" is more efficient. It allows you to beat the game faster. But since your HP is low, you can't afford to make mistakes (get hit).

* "Upgrade HP" is more robust. It increases your damage-buffer, which allows you to absorb more mistakes without dying. But if you make zero mistakes, you won't beat the game as quickly as if you'd upgraded Attack.

IRL the dichotomy is often "income vs wealth", "velocity vs displacement", "throughput vs latency", "strength vs endurance", etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I think this is confusing efficiency with overfitting. A lot of the problems described in the article arise due to overfitting models to the historical data. We overfited supply chain management because covid doesn't happen often, we overfited credit modeling because chain reaction of default doesn't happen often... We actually weren't efficient enough, we ignored tail events.

</comment><comment><USER44> I think life is about having good experiences! That is why traveling and visiting new places and food is great, your mind gets to experience news things. Running around in 80 mph+ well you tend too miss things is my experience. Life is usually not about maximum efficiency unless you are a 100m sprint runner. Robots and programs can run as fast as they want and automation do us favors, however us humans should not strive to do the same.

Compare Junk food, you get full quickly, nutrients in junk food is usually bad. You can instead choose to have the experience of slowly cooking a nutritious meal. Eating slowly cooked food with your family and friends is often better. Usually stress comes with running around too fast so you tend to consume not healthy food and you then after a while gain weight. I am not saying consuming junk food, or running fast is bad every now and then but doing so all the time you might miss slower better experiences...

Same goes for buying local vs buying cheap stuff which does not last long. Often buying local is better for the environment.

</comment><comment><USER45> It's an interesting definition of "efficient".

In my book, you are efficient if you did 8 hours worth of work in 4, did it right on the first try, went home early, and had enough mental capacity left for hobbies and family.

60 hour weeks are not efficient. Busywork is not efficient. So called "productivity" software is more than often not.

</comment><comment><USER46> This article has a horrible title, and some highly misleading content. It represents "efficiency" as things like "not buying insurance" in a dangerous fashion. There are VERY few serious people who think that.

"All things being equal" efficiency is always good. (e.g. if an identical task can be done for 1/2 the energy - good) "All things being equal" slowing down does not necessarily make life better. (Cleaning up after an oil spill is something we probably want fast.)

All things are not equal, and you have to make a series of tradeoffs.

How much risk are you willing to take? How much enjoyment do you get out of a task?

The author is of course correct that optimizing efficiency at the sake of all else is typically a problem. But to misrepresent efficiency (the key to our modern age) is not quite fair to the term.

</comment><comment><USER47> Systems in real life are complex. Limiting them to just one dimension on which they are efficient may leave out factors that make them work at all, or just better.

But if you really know every and all components and criteria that may be applied to them, you might improve efficience. Good luck with that.

</comment><comment><USER48> Reminds me of this piece from Seth Godin on the importance of building slack into our lives: [https://seths.blog/2019/06/investing-in- slack/](https://seths.blog/2019/06/investing-in-slack/)

(Not the chat app)

<comment><USER36> One of my RSS feeds is Seth's Blog. Nice mindfulness tips and perspective tehre.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I came across this related blog post the other day:

"in the name of taking it slow" [https://www.voyageofthezephyr.com/blog/takingitslow](https://www.voyageofthezephyr.com/blog/takingitslow)

</comment><comment><USER50> Since when multitasking is efficient?

There's a big difference between being productive and being busy.

</comment><comment><USER51> > We worship efficiency. <> _Multitask_ ; text on one device while emailing on > a second, and perhaps conversing on a third. Efficiency is seen as good. > Inefficiency as wasteful.

The premise is total bullshit. No one thinks multitasking is good.

Barry Schwartz consistently doesn't get it, but he's good at presenting "Unpopular opinion's" style articles.

People say multi-tasking is great! But it's not! Upvote if you agree.

Efficiency is why your baby doesn't get stuck in the womb killing two people.

Bot sniping on GrubHub is scary, this is an efficiency that actually worries me. But it's not within this articles scope.

</comment><comment><USER52> Insurance is the opposite of a lottery. If you think buying lottery tickets are a waste of money because you lose out in the long run, the same argument should lead you to think having insurance is a good thing.

<comment><USER53> I think you have it backwards - insurance and lottery are (sort of) equal. In the long term, you'll lose money in the lottery. You'll also lose money paying for insurance.

If you have extraordinary "good luck", you may come out ahead in the lottery. And if you have extraordinary "bad luck" you may come out ahead in insurance.

Insurance of course has a more practical value, and a much better return on investment (even if it averages negative returns)

<comment><USER54> _> You'll also lose money paying for insurance._

Only if you put zero value on the peace of mind that comes with having insurance against risks that, if they happened, would bankrupt you. But if you put zero value on that, you wouldn't buy insurance.

<comment><USER55> It's the same with the lottery. If you understand that the cash expected value is lower than the cost of the ticket, but you get some value from having "played" and the net is at least equal to the price of the ticket, it's not irrational to buy a lottery ticket.

<comment><USER54> This is true, but the kind of value being provided is different. Peace of mind is not the same thing as entertainment.

<comment><USER56> Maybe you all can agree that insurance and lottery are the same in that only a fraction of consumers come out ahead, and are opposites in terms of smart vs. stupid.

<comment><USER54> _> Maybe you all can agree that insurance and lottery are the same in that only a fraction of consumers come out ahead_

Only a fraction of the consumers come out ahead _if we only consider monetary value_. But the whole reason insurance and the lottery exist in the first place is that there are other kinds of value besides monetary value. In the case of insurance, it's peace of mind. In the case of the lottery, it's whatever entertainment value comes from being able to visualize yourself winning, even if your chances of actually doing so are tiny.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> >"Multitask; text on one device while emailing on a second, and perhaps conversing on a third."

Result - shitty content of texting, emails and shitty conversation.

I am not sure who in their right mind actually advocates that.

<comment><USER58> The problem could be twofold: 1) our tools push us towards multitasking. Notifications pop up and there's a sense of immediacy where you need to deal with it now (texting back) or it will get "lost" in the stream of new notifications, never to be dealt with. 2) people today expect everything, even communications, to be responsive, leading to a low content response immediately as opposed to a high quality one later.

For #1, modern tools like Slack favor immediate responses since it's not set up to treat conversations or requests as manipulable items. With email you can drag and drop into folders and deal with them one by one. With slack, once you've "seen" a message, there's really no way to put it somewhere to remind yourself to respond. (If there is, it's not obvious to me.)

<comment><USER59> You can at least click on the context menu of a message and select "Remind me" to set a reminder about the it. But yeah, I do agree with you. Slack messages are less "manipulable".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> The author writes,

> Arguably, a little friction to slow us down would have enabled both > institutions and individuals to make better financial decisions.

But the article fails to bring up the US's rate of interest. If interest rates were allowed to have risen, this would have been just the sort of "slowdown" that the author is looking for.

I find it remarkable that this article could be so insightful, yet lack even a single mentioning of this simple and fundamental fact. Rising interest rates are the market's implementation of precisely what the author is looking for.

</comment><comment><USER61> The author lost me at the end with the car analogy. Who drives fast on icy roads? I try to drive the right speed for conditions. I use the right amount of efficiency for the job.

</comment><comment><USER62> It's telling that ancient philosophers didn't include many of the things we value in our hyper-corporate society in their definitions of a _good life_. Leisure (N.B. _not entertainment_ ) is dead in America, and it has significant consequences. I wish it weren't the case, but I really do find that I do my best thinking when I give myself time to do nothing or go for an aimless walk. Efficiency as a virtue should be reserved for machines, not human beings.

</comment><comment><USER63> It appears the definition of efficiency here is just "fast" which is not just what efficiency is. I've worked with plenty of inefficient codebases, that were intrinsicly fragile, and difficult to work with... and cleaning them up made them more efficient and robust. Efficiency is about doing the most amount of things in the least amount of steps, not just minimizing features and making things fast at the expense of stability.

</comment><comment><USER64> > The creation of 'option markets' means that you don't have to go to the > trouble of buying a stock that you're going to be selling soon anyway. You > can just promise to buy it, and then sell it at a price and date specified > by the option contract.

Options, like their name implies, aren't a promise to do anything, they provide the right but not obligation to buy or sell at a certain price.

</comment><comment><USER65> Note that in situations where exponential growth is possible, lower latency means much faster growth, and this can easily happen faster than you have time to react to.

Exponential growth at 5% a week is a lot different than 5% a day or 5% a minute. Social media would be less dangerous if there were more automatic delays before a message you post appears to others.

</comment><comment><USER66> There was a time when GCC had to be installed by compiling from source. Doing so involved compiling the GCC source with the native compiler, and then using the resulting binary to compile the GCC source again.

I remember the install instructions advising "festina lente". The Latin phrase translates to "make haste slowly".

</comment><comment><USER67> I think we need more hobbies. Maybe some anthropology classes as well.

There is, for instance, a certain give-and-take in classical Japanese garden aesthetics. In a formal English or French garden, almost all you can see, everywhere you look, is evidence of human hands. Since no plant is in anything you could mistake for its natural state, you are practically beaten over the head by the presence of the unseen gardener. Look at what I made nature do. What piece of work is a man.

It's a dynamically unstable system.

Meanwhile the Japanese garden is a dynamically stable system. The plants are allowed to 'win' in many cases that either support the gardener's goals, or are simply not worth the effort required to win the argument. _It 's more efficient to let the system do what is in its nature than to try and stop it._. If you know how to look, you can see the gardener everywhere, over- emphasizing what would have happened without them, in such a way that you see the plant first, and the work second. It is organic, with an editor.

You might see a similar philosophy in Judo. You are steering what is there, letting the subject of your efforts do most of the heavy lifting for you. It is quite efficient, but not in the antiseptic way we sometimes imagine that efficiency should possess.

TL;DR: most of us have no idea what efficiency looks like, and we make a mockery of it while trying to pursue it.

</comment><comment><USER68> This reminds me of Frank Herbert's Bureau of Sabotage ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureau_of_Sabotage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureau_of_Sabotage)).

</comment><comment><USER69> Aren't these ideas well known in the field of economy? They also don't sound too alien for anyone marginally acquainted with psychology (e.g. by means of watching any of Mr. Schwartz's talks).

</comment><comment><USER70> The mix of font styles in the PSYCHE title strip on top really bothers me. Are there any typography experts in the house that can explain what concepts could be behind that choice?

</comment><comment><USER71> They should say "Efficiency" is dangerous. Actual efficiency is not bad at all. Say focusing on one task till is done is sometimes the most efficient way to do a task.

</comment><comment><USER72> Why not move fast and break things? I think it is a trade-off between being efficient and breaking something and being stable.

</comment><comment><USER73> This is the most important lesson on 2020. But, how do I find an employer who will agree with me?...

</comment><comment><USER74> I think we need to think about long time efficiency instead of short period ones.

</comment><comment><USER75> Efficiency would not create any big invention. It's a big problem.

</comment><comment><USER76> "Premature optimization is the root of all evil" -Knuth

</comment><comment><USER77> This article is badly mid-attributing why these systems are 'efficient' in the way they are.

The lessons in the '08 crisis were crystal clear - anyone who planned for difficult times and left a contingency lost out. Then look at 2020 - one of the first thing the US government did was bail out the financial system. Bailing out banks is almost a pavlovian response at this point.

That is why there is no robustness built in; because the capitalists have correctly identified that the they will not be allowed to go broke. Businesses are optimising based on an expected government response. What use is contingency planning when the contingency isn't allowed to eventuate? Excessively risky ventures are promoted in the good time and buffered in the bad.

</comment><comment><USER78> Reads like GPT-3. Lots of words to say nothing.

</comment><comment><USER79> Reminds me of the book Slack by Tom DeMarco

</comment><comment><USER80> Can someone explain what this means?

</comment><comment><USER81> TL;DR Author who is paid to write words, gets confused when a word has more than one meaning. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_efficiency](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_efficiency) =/= "efficiency"

</comment><comment><USER82> And what's the most efficient way to slow down?

</comment><comment><USER83> I study empathy, and have often said that efficiency is the opposite of empathy. Whatever we want to call it, the human element is overlooked when we strive for the single dimension of efficiency. Hannah Arendt famously talked about the banality of evil. During the Holocaust, the counting and categorizing of people was flattening or reducing to that important human element we all share.

</comment><comment><USER84> Say you use the tips here( [https://efficiencyiseverything.com/time/](https://efficiencyiseverything.com/time/)) to save time, particularly the first example about shoes.

You are going to have more time to do anything, relax, think, clean, whatever.

Why would spending more time putting on shoes be better?

</comment><comment><USER85> TL;DR.

</comment><comment><USER86> Striving for efficiency is bad science.

The dream takes precedence over the reality.

</comment><comment><USER87> This article suffers from a misconception of efficiency. A car that gets more miles per gallon than another is more fuel-efficient, not more efficient. A system of local optimums is an inefficient system. The author asks us to make life _more_ efficient by considering efficiency in a broader scope. Efficiency is still good.</comment>