I thought so too, and said so at a meeting at work when some colleagues were unwilling to travel to the US.
It turns out close contacts of some of my colleagues have been asked to show their Facebook accounts at the US border. There was a recent rule change about it.
Fortunately, having a discussion does not appear to be the goal of this blog post. The author is relating a story including their feelings on the matter. It’s not really about us, unless you’re working for a pump company or could possibly address the structural issues that have led to this situation.
Honestly, I found it illuminating. I don’t depend on a machine to keep me alive directly, but it made me think about how much I would resent dangling at the end of a line held by a company that would cut me off if investors thought it would make them slightly richer. One that cuts every corner they can, and doesn’t actually care about you. I imagine that resentment over years, a quarter century of things getting worse on the “caring whether you live or die” front, might lead to the feelings the author expressed.
It’s pretty clear that discussion is not desired, unless you have the cure for type 1 diabetes in hand before you send the first reply.
Retired manager, been in my share of tense meetings.
I appreciate it when someone recognizes that they're struggling with conflict and emotion, and lets me know that they know this. It's better to acknowledge the emotion and put it on the table as its own valid topic of discussion, than to tiptoe around it or try the "I'm sensing that you're dealing with some internal conflict" approach that risks embarrassing them or worsening it.
The choice is whether to acknowledge the emotion, not whether to have it.
First, let's acknowledge that when the actions of some people lead to endangering a human life, it's natural to be angry about it.
Personally, when anger is justified, I feel more comfortable with people who clearly and openly express it.
I find them more reliable, more honest, and usually better people to be around.
By my standards, I'd even consider the style very mild, considering a life is on the line.
I would also consider it normal to be on the receiving end of such language if my own work resulted in such a situation. That would cause me to pause and reflect.
The intensity of feedback is information. If everything is bland, it's harder to know how important something is or not. Logic has a limit because you don't have all the parameters from the other side.
It works the other way around. The overuse of superlatives and day-to-day outrage is equally unproductive.
> First, let's acknowledge that when the actions of some people lead to endangering a human life, it's natural to be angry about it.
The thing that's really bugging me is that this is not what happened at all!
"I'm not at home, please send the new pump to my hotel."
That's it! That solves the entire problem in 5 seconds plus the time to tell the customer service rep the hotel's address and verify it's correct. Yeah, there were some other structural problems that led to other dumb things, but none of that would have even come up if she'd done the blindingly obvious thing and had the life-saving, 24/7-required device shipped to her actual location. If anyone endangered her life, it was her, through her own actions.
She really crossed the line for me by wishing harm on the people who designed and built her insulin pump. What the hell? They've done nothing wrong. Yes, her pump was beginning to fail, but 1) it was still limping along with a workaround and she wasn't in immediate danger (and if it did fully fail, she said she was within an hour's drive of an ER at all times, which she felt was fine), and 2) she had never had a pump problem in twenty-five years, which is an amazing testament to the reliability of these devices. The people who work on these things deserve a freakin' medal, not bullshit like "the people who design, sell, and service these machines are both keeping me alive and also my mortal enemies".
It's more than alright to be outraged, that's very different than it being alright to wish harm. That shouldn't negate anything else said in the conversation, but it's also just as much of the conversation to call it out.
Not every blog is written to be discussed on Hacker News. That being said I enjoyed it and found it illuminating. It could be a regional difference, but I’m from the South East US and didn’t mind the direct communication style at all. I much prefer someone to speak their feelings rather than being nice for the sake of nicities.
I don’t think it’s appropriate to wish ill on other people. When writing I think it’s just as important to consider the impact of your words as it is to express your ideas and emotions. These sorts of words can make people feel unsafe, and in extreme situations can inspire similar feelings in other people with similar problems. Maybe someone that might take more direct action than a blogpost.
I understand different regions have different communication style, but the murder rate in the US is too high for us to joke about these sorts of things.
I disagree, but I appreciate your perspective. I think it’s fairly clear that the author is using exaggerated speech to make a point and convey their feelings. The reason I mentioned regional differences is I often find myself having this disagreement with my west coast compatriots.
> Not every blog is written to be discussed on Hacker News.
It may not be written with that intent, but if you publish something publicly on the internet, you run the risk of some people, somewhere, discussing what you wrote.
That doesn't mean you have to care what those people have to say. Frankly, she shouldn't care what we have to say.
But if you put something out there, and someone reads it, they're well within their rights to have whatever reaction they want to it.
Re: "being nice for the sake of niceties", I agree with you, but her attitude toward the people who work for the pump manufacturer (who did nothing wrong, and in aggregate built life-saving devices so reliable that it took a quarter of a century before her first problem came up) is just not ok. "Beyond the pale" is a phrase that comes to mine, and I don't think I'm being hyperbolic here.
Ironic, because my experience of living in the south is that the fake niceties are deeply ingrained in the culture. Classic fun example: “bless your heart” basically means “fuck you”.
We are kind, but not nice. I generally find the west coast is nice, but not kind. Everyone in the south knows what bless your heart means, so it’s not really a veiled insult.
It honestly might be helpful if we framed more conversations that way, when talking about the creeping dependencies on tech firms that fill our lives.
Those of us without a medical dependency are lucky that catching one of the many tech failures modes won't actually kill us - but you'll still want to throttle more than a few folks if you ever have to recover from your Google/Apple ID getting banned, or PayPal running off with all your money, etc.
The medical technology isn't the problem - the profit motive negatively affecting its continued operation (or not) is (and this is not just the technology firm, it includes the insurance company, the hospital/pharmacy operators, etc).
You can't have a reasonable customer relation with any corporation when you are a captive audience - let alone one when they could kill you at any moment, whether from negligence or plain indifference.
This plays out in less-lethal versions all over tech. Do you dare redeem that Apple Gift Card your aunt gave you for your birthday, knowing that Apple might nuke your whole digital identity from orbit[1]?
The code obviously isn't bug-free as several issues were identified. It's also not easily understood, as there are multi-thousand-line AI-generated commits.
The paint scheme reminds me of "CV Dazzle", makeup designs to obscure a face from machine recognition, at the cost of only being accepted in goth bars:
Why wouldn't Denmark agree? Danish and Greenlandic politicians have reminded the US several times that more bases can be established under the terms of this treaty.
I downvote comments like this, since they make the comment useless. No-one can vouch for or argue against the comment when it's some "part" of a continent of over 40 countries.
It turns out close contacts of some of my colleagues have been asked to show their Facebook accounts at the US border. There was a recent rule change about it.
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