TIL about one of the solvents involved, ethyl acetate, and the fact that it is not good for you. How do I know that my local coffee shop's machine is working correctly and provides only safe levels of this solvent?

There's probably more ethyl acetate in apple juice (it occurs naturally in fruit) than there is in the equivalent quantity of coffee. Because people freak out when they hear terms like "ethyl acetate", the industry has started calling this "sugar cane decaf".

how did you get that from the article?

"One of the common solvents, ethyl acetate, comes naturally in many foods and beverages. It’s considered a safe chemical for decaffeination by the Food and Drug Administration."

speaking from a chemist's perspective, ethyl acetate is basically non-toxic. it decomposes into ethanol and acetic acid (vinegar). dcm (methylene chloride) is toxic, but should be completely removed before it ever reaches you. the nice thing about volatile organic solvents is that they're...volatile, so they are easily stripped from coffee beans.

I wouldn't expect a coffee shop to do the decaffeination there. Rather, the company that does the decaffeination is its own thing, which then ships their product to the roaster, which then ships their product to your local coffee shop.

Also, if you're buying fancy coffee, chances are it's Swiss water process, for better or worse.

Worse? You mean in comparison to the CO2 one, which I hadn't heard of before?

My understanding of the consensus is that it favors EA decaf.

It smells like nail polish remover, well nail polish remover with the acetone subtracted, and it is noticeable well below any toxicity threshold. It's also a characteristic component of some fruit / fermentation aromas

Ethyl acetate occurs in nature and breaks down into ethanol and acetic acid in the body. It has a very low toxicity in the levels encountered in coffee.

Local coffee shops won't do the decaffeination, that's usually done by the roasters before it gets to the shop.

>Every year, those employees get a percentage of their salaries in company stock.

Ok? Anybody can choose to do this if they work at a public company. But what happen if it's mandatory and the stock goes down? Now your labor was stolen at below market rate! Then we will hear "employees compensation should be resilient to market fluctuations."

I like this caricature of the spoiled entitled employee because it completely ignores the concept of shareholders having a say in governance. If stocks were only a proxy for money and nothing else the example would be spot-on.

> If stocks were only a proxy for money and nothing else the example would be spot-on

They are, in the modern startup world that HN is mostly in. That's why commenters here don't remember there are voting shares.

What are some corporate votes that you feel wider employee ownership would have improved?

Laying off 10% of the workforce because the company isn't growing fast enough and then giving the CEO a bigger bonus.

Was that actually put to a shareholder vote though?

Lindy Fiorentina fucking up HP. Boeing all over. I'd hope to see employee-owners counteract short-termism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carly_Fiorina ?

Oops. Thank you.

As I’m saying to Stavros above, I think many of these decisions don’t get put to a shareholder vote. The voting mechanism is generally extremely coarse afaik.

Right, the outcome is not guaranteed. But the possibility of a confidence vote might surface in a psycho CEO's brain from time to time.

Can you elaborate on how shareholders having a say in governance relates to worker compensation? Why shouldn't shareholders have control over governance?

They shouldn't have complete control over governence because, especially in larger businesses, the shareholders are less invested in what a business does than the stakeholders.

A classic example would be an employee forced to work in an unhealthy manner. If the cost of replacing the employee when they're worn out is less than the extra profit made by causing the employee to work in that manner it might be the right form of governance for shareholders. Even if it would not be profitable if the health costs weren't externalised.

People are lazy. You can always sell your grant as you get it, they can’t make holding stock mandatory, but a lot of people (including me) just hold the stock in a really undiversified portfolio.

> You can always sell your grant as you get it, they can’t make holding stock mandatory, [...]

They can. It's easy in private companies to limit what an employee can do with their stock, and in public companies they can insert a clause in the contract to that effect just fine. Or just have very long vesting periods.

(Of course, as a would-be employee I would take these restrictions into account when deciding where to work.)

You either own the stock or you don’t. If you paid federal income taxes on it, they have to let you sell it as you get it if you want, otherwise it isn’t real income. They can restrict when you sell it afterwards, but only in the cause of avoiding insider trading, and you can set up a plan to sell it blindly if you’d like.

It's not nearly as simple as that.

Look up eg a 'poison pill' for an example where you don't "either own or stock or you don't". (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareholder_rights_plan)

So they're too lazy to buy stock when they get paid, but not too lazy to sell stock when they get paid?

Huh? The opposite, they don’t sell the stock they are granted to buy other stock instead to diversify their portfolio.

This will tank price of shares.

Huh, why, how?

Of not traded shares that don't really have a price?

Well, there's still a bid and an ask quote on the market, even when no trading is happening?

This is not about publicly traded companies. It's about employee owned ones. Your point is still valid, but not in the way you think.

You cannot invest money you don't have?

If the company is public, one can simulate the scheme by buying their stock, I guess. Taxes may be different and phrased like that, it seems weirdly risky to buy more of the thing you’re most exposed to (if the company lays you off, the stock may be down too).

> if the company lays you off, the stock may be down too

Don't most layoffs make the stock go up?

Layoffs generally imply the company is contracting rather than expanding.

Depends on if you are cutting fat or cutting muscle.

The Iron Law of Bureaucracy implies it's usually the second one though. If the company isn't already dying then the insiders will fight against cuts until it is.

TLDR: Research says no

Some companies experience short-term improvements in price as their costs drop, but usually it has a longer-term impact on morale and productivity that takes longer to play out. Additionally, layoffs are typically performed on unhealthy companies (eg. not usually companies like Google and Meta that print cash and have huge margins), and unhealthy companies typically have other secular or structural issues beyond too-many-employees.

>Why do you want to allow the word "loser" ? I bet most uses are to bully people.

I don't understand the psychology of it either. It's like they think that appearing overly concerned about something potentially dangerous is more embarrassing than being killed by something actually dangerous. That or they have lived such safe and sheltered lives that they cannot identify real danger. I don't have any other explanation.

I would assume it's more due to them not realizing that this isn't just something that periodically happens at the park (like Old Faithful). It might seem unusual, but they don't know how unusual or dangerous it is. It might just be no more unusual than a low road near a body of water that gets a tiny bit flooded in one spot after a heavy rain -- the kind where locals who know about it just drive through because it's only an inch or two deep but visitors might be more hesitant about. In the case of this explosion, the aftermath video shows that it was indeed very unusual and dangerous.

Years ago there was a hurricane that made it up the New England coast. I remember a story of a father and daughter in Acadia National Park who had wandered out onto some exposed rocks (with about 40 other people) to watch these huge waves crash just below them. Eventually one wave was larger than the others and it knocked all 40 people onto their asses, while dragging the father and daughter (who were right on the edge) into the ocean. The father drowned.

All I could think was how colossally dumb you had to be to assume the waves just going to sit there crashing below you. It was clearly a huge storm surge. And then how horribly tragic and preventable the outcome was. Some people, man.

EDIT: Misremembered it. Three people were swept out, and it was the 7-year-old daughter who died. God damn, how awful.

https://www.bangordailynews.com/2009/08/23/news/three-swept-...

Here on the US West Coast so-called sneaker waves kill a handful of people every year, sometimes sweeping (and killing) entire families into the ocean who were strolling along a beach with unthreatening surf. I was oblivious to this until the 3rd or so incident that caught my attention, then on a hunch poked around with Google search enough to realize (after over 15 years living in the Bay Area) it's actually a regular occurrence. It happens on some stretches more than others, and its more likely in the winter, but it's not confined to "dangerous" beaches and can happen at any time. For some reason it hasn't captured the public's (or media's) attention to become a "thing"--a known hazard that people keep in mind. Every incident tends to be reported in isolation, notwithstanding any blurbs about recent incidents if they happened to occur close enough in time and locality.

It's natural to qualify and rate tragic events by degree of perceived "innocence". Families swept off quiet beaches to their doom without warning is about as innocently tragic as you can get. That said, some incidents are arguably less innocent then others, such as fishermen venturing onto narrower stretches of beach at low tide during winter, when Pacific surf is stronger and more varied. But even then usually it seems people aren't doing anything that onlookers would consider inviting tragedy, and quite often it happens on well trafficked beaches and during times of the year that people wouldn't consider risky.

Fortunately I grew up along the Gulf Coast so Pacific surf has always felt ominous to me. OTOH, I have a higher risk tolerance than many others, especially of younger generations, so maybe it's a wash for me.

I had one in Oregon with my then 8 or 9 year old step daughter. We were on rocks WELL above the wave line (like 6+ feet, dry rock leading the surf maybe 20 feet away). And (this is where I screwed up) we were about 50-100 yards out on this outcrop (so rapid scramble not possible).

Then, sneaker wave. I basically had her jump up "into my arms" so to speak, wrap arms around my neck, legs around my waist, while I situated myself as best I could, and grabbed onto rock with both hands. The water came up to my waist.

That was a genuinely terrifying experience.

It's not that. I was on a plane where a guy tried to break open the door to the outside mid flight and it takes a good 30-60 seconds for people to comprehend reality and make a decision. It's easy to judge from a screen but when an actual disaster hits, the brain does weird things

It typically takes much longer for people to process and make 'intelligent' decisions on novel information than we realize.

Again, typically the brain will skip these checks and go into fight or flight mode where you punch or run without knowing what you are doing. I'd like to think we break a lot of this response in the modern world by not being around a lot of spontaneous dangerous stuff, which leaves us gawking at times.

To be fair, you cannot really open a door of an airplane mid-flight (due to pressure difference), so passengers were in fact in much less danger than they perceived.

This is true when the aircraft is at altitude, but there have been cases of passengers opening doors in flight at low altitude, where there is little or no pressure differential:

https://news.sky.com/story/amp/passenger-arrested-after-plan...

Yeah, the door opens in before it cams over to opening out (or can be thrown out onto the wing in some cases), so it’s being held in place by about 3000 kilos of force at typical cabin pressures. Good luck trying to pull it open.

Now, near the ground before the aircraft is pressurised, it could be dangerous mostly because it could pose a risk to the aircraft structure or systems if it tears off and impacts the aircraft in flight. Other than that, a jetliner can fly perfectly well with a door open at low altitude. (Not sure about special large cargo doors though)

Having been there recently, it definitely would not have been immediately clear to me that there would be a problem. The boardwalk is next to the pools but clearly not in structural danger. The videos show the eruption being basically vertical, so if you aren't directly next to it, it isn't obvious that the ejecta will spread out a little, and that doesn't happen for a couple of seconds. So if you aren't right next to it, it initially doesn't seem unsafe.

Also, you are likely to visit this area before Old Faithful, so the most you will have seen is some steam going up. My visit was the first time I'd ever seen a geyser, so I would have had no idea what to expect, and presumably the boardwalk is in a safe location. If it were unsafe, they wouldn't have built the boardwalk there, right? (And it doesn't seem like anyone was injured, so...)

If you run in a panic when normal geyser erupts, it would be embarrassing, right? Now, what is a normal geyser eruption and what is not normal? If you never tried to research this, you do not know.

So we come to an uncertainty. This seems pretty big, and probably is not normal, isn't it? Or it is? So you are not sure, should you shake off social norms of behavior (being calm, not shouting, acting like a grown adult) and to switch to a survival behavior (running away, shouting commands "run" to others, dragging people with you by their limbs, or doing whatever you think is the adequate behavior for such a situation).

Looking at the video carefully, people in a few seconds come to a conclusion that this is dangerous and start moving away, but they didn't get away from norms of everyday behavior. These two different priorities (to act normal or go to the survival mode) are still there, and they are still fighting in minds of people for a dominance.

Their response was "gently jog while constantly checking over your shoulder", because they decided it is dangerous and you need at least jog away, but they are feel that they may be underestimating (or overestimating) the danger, and they keep themself aware of the events to be able to change their behavior accordingly to them.

The very situation prompts for rapid change from a normal mode of existence to a survival mode, and there is no clear unambiguous signal that it is the case. The geyser erupts? Didn't we come here to watch geysers? Wouldn't it be embarrassing to run from the geyser? There are a lot of questions, and System 2 is a slow one. People are educated to keep System 1 in a check and to think things through. They are educated to know some dangerous situations and they can react to them immediately, but this is something unusual, they are not trained for it, and their minds become overwhelmed by a massive visual stimulus and by all the thoughts and ideas that may be relevant, but only System 2 could decide and to prioritize them properly.

When I was watching the video I instantly saw that it is dangerous, but I was prompted about it by the article, so I was ready to see something impressive AND dangerous. Therefore I'm not sure would I be better in that situation if I was watching it in real life without any prompting.

> they have lived such safe and sheltered lives that they cannot identify real danger.

I wrote about it above, but I want to stress it out:

1. we are conditioned to think before acting,

2. most of us have no experience with geysers and we cannot access the hazard level of a geyser at the first glance, and we know that we can't, so... goto 1.

There is also the imperative to get the video. Which for once was well done.

It's not necessarily psychology, it could be an involuntary stress response called freezing behaviour. It's where you stop, become hyper alert and observant of your surroundings to make a conscious decision about how to act. It's basically the conscious alternative to fight or flight.

I'm talking about the people in the video who saw what happened, then very casually and slowly turned and strolled away.

Who? Everyone in the video is running by 6 seconds in, and it reasonably takes 2-3 seconds to be clear that this isn't just a normal geyser eruption.

Some of the runners are shambling or in a very light jog, but that looks like it's down to form or fitness rather than being blasé. I don't see anyone "strolling".

The woman in the white shirt, tan shorts only started running because the people behind her started running. She was strolling away from the explosion. Same with green shorts in the foreground. We don't actually see him run, just walking away.

These people have no sense of urgency around danger, or they cannot recognize danger.

> It's like they think that appearing overly concerned about something potentially dangerous is more embarrassing than being killed by something actually dangerous.

This is a real psychological phenomenon. Most people don't want to be the first person to yell "fire!", or to appear to take a situation more seriously than it warrants, because they might be wrong and they'd stand out as being wrong and feel embarrassed. That feeling can "stick" shockingly long after you'd think the situation was obvious.

We have not socially normalized and trained the concept that it's better for people to occasionally be understandably wrong than to delay reacting to problems. The right reaction to quick reactions that turn out to be incorrect should be "Thanks for calling attention to what might have been a problem!", not an array of signals that all convey "what a weirdo".

The first time I visited the Everglades there was a family that had been at Disney for some time and the kids would not believe the many enourmous alligators laying around were real.

On the other hand, my two year old (who had been hitting kids in preschool and getting a lot of "don't hit" messaging, turned and queried, of an alligator on the boardwalk about ten or twenty feet in front of us "No hit the Alligator?"

While my heart and heart rate spiked, I swiftly grabbed him up and agreed, "yes, no hit the alligator!"

The other side of that is "everything is very survivable on TV". Like you see constant explosions and people just getting knocked over, dusting themselves off, and keep going.

Real life, a lot less so.

It’s hard for me to say it because it’s not like Trump was actually “coherent”, he just didn’t seem like he was on death’s door.

Also, wouldn’t me saying I hate him a lot but still acknowledge he won lend more legitimacy to it? Like it’s actively working against my biases and I still acknowledge he won.

Yes. Because Trump "winning" what was potentially the worst debate in US history isn't even worth a consolation prize.

This isn't even a RvD thing. I'd take back Romney, McCain or go as far back as Bob Dole. Hell, Sarah Palin was at least a pleasant form of stupid instead of malevolent. I remember when the R's at least has some minimal sense of class, but even that's out the window. This is just an embarrassment to my country at this point.

I don’t think all (or even most) republicans are stupid, but I think that Trumpism (and demagoguery in general) is a natural consequence of the Republican party’s unwillingness to outright condemn the conspiracy nuts like Alex Jones.

They’ve flirted with that kind of thinking my entire life (with the Satanic Panic and acting like Harry Potter was out to brainwash children), but it feels like the conspiratorial stuff really picked up in around 2013; that’s at least when my grandmother stopped sending me unsolicited Fox News articles and started sending me unsolicited InfoWars articles, and when she started really going off the deep end.

I agree. Their reasons pre-2016 may have been selfish at best or fundamentally misguided at worst. But I felt the worst the potential Romney era would do is slow (but not halt) gay marriage. If you don't subscribe for the conspiracies, W Bush wasn't an awful president (outside of completely throwing education under the bus... But 8 years of Obama didn't fix too much and Biden tried but got huge resistance to some starts).

There's definitely a much more explicitly hateful undercurrent in the trumpism era. I never would have expected a Charlottesville to happen so brazenly in the 21st century. Let alone the insurrection.

And on the other hand, Kamala' complexion is part of why Im worried about the D vote. Because despite much progress there are undeniably some older D's who hold prejudiced thoughts (external or internal).It undoubtedly was a partial factor leading to Hilary's loss. I really hope I'm just overreacting though.

I agree with most of what you said except for this:

> If you don't subscribe for the conspiracies, W Bush wasn't an awful president

I think he was still pretty awful; his administration basically banned stem cell research from happening in the US, he withdrew funding for anything involving climate change research, and he shares blame with Clinton for the 2008 housing crash. [1]

He wasn't quite as stupid as Trump, he didn't try and bribe a foreign official to investigate his opponents, and he didn't try and overthrow democracy with a violent mob, so I guess if that's our bar then he's pretty ok, but I think my standards are still higher than that.

[1] I'm aware that it was Clinton who signed the subprime mortgage stuff that caused it, so he definitely deserves a large share of the blame. However, the Bush administration sat on it and were happy to take credit for the short-term benefits until 2008, meaning that they weren't thinking about the long term consequences either, so I think they deserve a share of that blame too.

Probably would've been use to mine bitcoin before it was patched

It means whatever the men with guns say it means

No I mean reading the news I had the wrong idea of the situation. It's a total lockdown not a curfew.

Should this be something that we shut down trade with Bangladesh over? If we continue to sell and buy stuff from a country that is gunning down its people over protests, doesn't that discredit any moral authority that we have? But at the same time, does it worsen the job situation and make the protests worse?

I assume that by “we” you meant the United States, so the question is: How much moral authority/integrity is there left to discredit?

You could take the rest of the developed world as well, but the question wouldn’t be very different.

Shutting down trade will make life worse for Bangladeshis (and complications for apparel companies here). Textiles and garments are huge exports for Bangladesh and those industries employ many, many people there. I'm also of the opinion that the people of a country should be considered separate from its government and military (which may not have support from its people and be corrupt)

I hate the relativistic argument "if you stop doing evil thing X then something even worse than X might happen".

Because that argument is always used to justify doing evil instead of doing good.

And the even worse thing might not even happen.

The world is dynamic.

If you stop trading with Bangladesh because they mistreat their people, maybe they'll stop mistreating their people to get the dollars flowing again.

Maybe the fact that we continue trading with a brutal regime is what allows the regime to remain in power.

Maybe evil thing X is just evil and we stop doing evil instead of rationalizing the evil away.

Well, there were sanctions for Poland after the martial law of 1981...

I'm not sure what you mean. Are you saying that a country should embargo a country doing evil regardless of considerations about moral authority. Or are you saying that moral authority isn't a thing and therefore a country shouldn't embargo another country even if they are doing evil?

I'm saying embargo or not no one can claim moral authority when doing it.

Its not about the actions it's about the justifications.

“…doesn't that discredit any moral authority that we have?”

This has the same answer as —

If we continue to sell and buy stuff from a country that HAS AND WOULD gun down its people over protests, doesn't that discredit any moral authority that we have?

See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests...]

It would be a worthy movement to lobby Congress/Parliament to sanction, via tariffs, countries whose governments suppress speech like that, but who’s going to start it, which critical mass of cheap-products-loving people in free societies are going to support it?

Or, y'know, more obviously: Saudi Arabia. The country the West loves doing business with and doesn't make a show of demonizing for public appeal.

Do you believe that the Tiananmen Square Massacre didn’t occur? If not — the parent’s question has to do with China because the parent is assuming free societies that engage in trade with China (whose governing regime has gunned down protesters) have moral authority to lose when, in fact, there is no difference between engaging in trade with regimes that would gun down its citizens who engage in protest (ie, Bangladesh) and engaging in trade with those that have and that would (ie, China).

Silly and pointless reductionism. You assign meaning to each slice, but not to the loaf, even though the same logic applies to the "illusion" of a slice? It's turtles all the way down, and the concept of society is as real and as important as any of the other layers.

It's not understandable imo. At the very least they should have tests for the loader component that shows it can handle corrupted input. Amateur hour.

Agreed. We all know about a really interesting vector for infecting the kernel now. One that is poorly tested, poorly implemented, and poorly secured.

And though I don't know, I'm guessing it's not a certainty to say they don't contain "code." It would seem to me that they would have to, otherwise novel attacks that weren't caught by one of their existing algorithms could never be detected.

I'm guessing they contain some combination of pattern/regexp type stuff, and interpreted code/scripting with trigger criteria, etc. that all gets loaded into the "engine" that actually runs the threat detection.

Halting problem is undecidable.

On the scale of "no one bothered to put error handling or validation in" to "a subtle problem exists for this given input"; you and I lack the information to make a judgement.

> you and I lack the information to make a judgement.

Think about this a little harder: what do you know about the number of customers affected? We do actually have enough information to make a judgement - bricking millions of critical systems, a very high percentage of their total Windows customer population, tells us that they don’t have progressive rollouts, don’t fail into a safe mode, and that if they do have tests those tests are catastrophically unlike anything their customers run – all they had to do was launch an EC2 instance and see if it kept running.

Not doing fuzzing on user-input supported feature, especially for AV, is damning.

I mean, the whole world was impacted. All they had to do was test this change in a lab with several pcs. Clearly this wasn't a edge case nor a subtle problem. This was clearly a lack of testing.

Leave the spin to the PR people. Their customers pay a great deal of money for 24x7 service, and this wasn’t even a code change but a definition update – a process which should be as well defined and tested as McDonald’s making a hamburger. You wouldn’t excuse getting E. coli from your lunch with “the cook just wanted to go home for the weekend”, and this is a much more expensive service.

Yeah, I re-read my comment and it sounds like I am understanding of them.

But no, saying "channel files aren't kernel code" is just hilarious, considering the channel files define how the actual kernel code is supposed to behave, so it might as well be kernel code. Especially when the bad behavior in question is triggered by bad channel files!!