FailForward @FailForward@social.cleverlibre.org

# Choose Boring Technology

A blog post from 2015 which made some rounds back then around HackerNews and keeps regularly resurfacing. I guess this is either obvious, or at leat familiar stuff to anybody long enough in the business to keep a couple of project corpses in the attic together with the corresponding deep scars on one's engineering soul.

https://mcfunley.com/choose-boring-technology
and
http://boringtechnology.club/

_"Boring is good. Pick where you chase shiny uplands carefully."_

I internalised this over the years deeply. And I think it paid off well so far. Engaging in a deep/hi-tech endeavour, one needs to focus their energy on that one difficult thing you want/need to do and keep the rest preferrably out of the way. _Boring is difficult enough_, no need to make one's life harder than it is.

And of course the uncertainty:

> The nice thing about boringness (so constrained) is that the capabilities of these things are well understood. But more importantly, their failure modes are well understood.

The metaphor of a very limited number of innovation tokens is very useful.

> 1. Let’s say every company gets about three innovation tokens. You can spend these however you want, but the supply is fixed for a long while.
> 2. Adding technology to your company comes with a cost.
> 3. Choose New Technology, Sometimes.

#engineering

@Demosthenes I read about it in regular newspaper, but never stumbled upon a paper confirming it (not that I looked for it). I just want to keep a reference in this scrapbook of mine.

> study indicates that corticosteroids are regarded as one of treatments in the general clinical practice of COVID-19. However, corticosteroid use may be accompanied by increased use of antibiotics, longer hospitalization, and prolonged viral shedding.

# AAAS Science: Three-quarters attack rate of SARS-CoV-2 in the Brazilian Amazon during a largely unmitigated epidemic

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/371/6526/288

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) incidence peaked in Manaus, Brazil, in May 2020 with a devastating toll on the city's inhabitants, leaving its health services shattered and cemeteries overwhelmed. Buss et al. collected data from blood donors from Manaus and São Paulo, noted when transmission began to fall, and estimated the final attack rates in October 2020 (see the Perspective by Sridhar and Gurdasani). Heterogeneities in immune protection, population structure, poverty, modes of public transport, and uneven adoption of nonpharmaceutical interventions mean that despite a high attack rate, **herd immunity may not have been achieved.** This unfortunate city has become a sentinel for how natural population immunity could influence future transmission. **Events in Manaus reveal what tragedy and harm to society can unfold if this virus is left to run its course.**

@freemo Many psychologists and psychotherapists do you use it. For very good reasons.

@freemo Thanks a lot for all the references, some titles look very relevant to what I am interested in. I will try to get out some of those to educate myself, this is useful.

Just a couple of remarks to clarify what I meant:

> Me: changing legal and political framework around its debt
> You: What would a countries internal laws or political framework have to do with the agreement they have with other countries regarding their debt.

E.g., Italy is a part of Eurozone. Either Italy, or other EU countries can conceivably modify treaties in a way which would influence how external actors perceive its ability to service its debt. For instance, hypothetically, by delegating some part (control?) of their internal economic policy making to the EU-level. Or similar. Of course e.g., Bolivia has fewer options in this respect.

@freemo Thanks for your response.

> This seems like an antagonstic or atleast negative choice of words, am I misreading this?

I did not mean it anyhow negatively. Apologies. Maybe it's just a bit late already...

@swiley Since 20 years I live in mutt and PGP/GPG combo. With that experience I concluded that encrypted e-mail is a PITA. And not so much because of the key exchange hassle, but because searching my mailboxes does not work any more with encrypted stuff in them 😐. Funny enough, that turned out to be more important for me than encryption. So I ended up with plaintext e-mail, and I encrypt only passwords/credentials. And recently I do that via encrypted IM channels (Matrix), so GPG is good only for signing e-mails - I find that actually useful.

The point: think twice before you encrypt a significant part of your mailbox...

@freemo Thanks for the lecture, I do understand these technicalities. Here I am interested in "applied macroeconomics" - if such a thing even exists.

Finances (and thus debt) of individuals lives in a fixed context (from their perspective). A country of certain size and standing is, however, well capable to change, or at least significantly influence the context: e.g, by printing money by mechanisms like QE, changing legal and political framework around its debt, use its trade or military gross tonnage to effectively blackmail its creditors, etc. Individuals have none of that.

At the core of any loan is in the end _trust_. To my understanding, a default happens when creditors no longer *believe* you can service your obligations. But that "feels" too weak. I would hope there's more human knowledge on this topic.

That is why I am interested in serious literature on the topic, rather than contrived technical arguments (I have myself a full bag of those). Do you perhaps have any pointers?

# How much can a government borrow?

Few days ago, I read a write-up titled [No one knows how much the government can borrow](https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/no-one-knows-how-much-the-government)

The authors basically argues the following:
1. _How much can the government (US presumably) safely borrow?_ is an important question.
2. It seems that _no one knows the answer to this question_ as there seems to be an acute lack of research/literature on the topic. The author says there's quite some literature on historical cases of country defaults, as well as how countries ot out of hyperinflation, but little on what _actually triggers a default/hyperinflation_.
3. The author finds a paper which finally sheds some light on the topic and the main finding is that _hyperinflation episodes tend to be preceded by several years — maybe 2 to 12 years — in which inflation is high but not yet “hyper”._
4. One of the very interesting takeways was that Japan [In 2019, Japan's debt reached 223% of GDP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_of_Japan) and as of 2020 might as well be above [250% GDP](https://worlddebtclocks.com/japan), yet it somehow does not yield a state's default on its obligations.

Now I am not an economist (moreover, I am rather suspicious of that discipline in general), but this topic interests me. The other day, I had a conversation with a friend who is very worried about the public debt to GDP ration of Italy and how it can negatively affect EU, Eurozone and specifically northern-EU countries (because they will pay for the lazy Italian pensions, right?). So the question arises: **How much debt/GDP can Italy afford? Where is a breaking point? And what options different stakeholders in the game will have once a default of Italy is triggered?**

Since in the news everybody has an opinion on this, I asked around the Intertubes and among my smart friends, naively thinking that this must be a well researched topic in that high profile discipline. After all, maybe I am suspicious of economists, but I do treat most of their work with high respect. Well, my inquiries yielded nothing useful.

So here I am asking for pointers to useful literature on the topic. **_What do we know about how much a country like Italy can borrow before it ends up in trouble?_**

@freemo First, let me say that this is my last response in this conversation. I see little point in continuing it, I said most of what I felt was useful, apparently it does not make sense to you and I do not care enough to change that - to me that pipeline decision is like Uzbekistan deciding to change their default timezone. I was just seeking some little sparring on Sunday evening, which I got. Thanks for that.

> Again since the axiom is still incorrect everything that follows it is likewise incorrect.

Well, now, when we together derived falsity, obviously I am banished into the void hell of inconsistency among all the other low beings (99% of humankind?) and shall never ever crawl back again to the daylight where the pure logic resides. What a lovely way to tell the conversation partner they are an idiot. 🙂

To question others is a great start. But it is just that. To teach ourselves (outside of technical fields, so politics etc.), it is vital to listen and deeply understand why other human beings think what they do, while assuming all along that they are at least as smart as we are (in this case Biden's administration, not me).

@tursiops

@freemo

> This statement makes no sense to me.

Let me explain it then :-) :

I do not know whether the purpose of the pipeline was to 1) strictly shift the current truck transport into a pipe (and thus reduce CO2 emissions), or 2) to do 1 and on top of that also increase the amount of oil coming into the country.

If the former, then the CO2 emissions will not be realised and the situation stays as it was 2 weeks ago. We can call that a missed opportunity, but it does not change anything (in terms of emissions).

If the latter, then not constructing the pipeline will in principle *not lead* to increased oil supply, i.e., *will not* increase CO2 emissions to a level higher than it was 2 weeks ago.

What I am saying is that (again, strictly technically speaking!) not building the pipeline is not going to have a negative environmental effect in comparison to today's situation.

> Since your axioms are invalid all the other points made hereafter are likewise invalid.

Conversations with you are a bliss :-). Of course you are always right. Fortunately, I have a deep and very intimate understanding of a technical mind manhandling politics with cold logic :-).

@tursiops

@freemo I am not following this closely, so maybe I am wrong, but my understanding is that this is about a pipeline which is not operational yet (in planning, or in construction?). If I am right, then technically speaking, stopping the pipeline project _is not_ going to put more trucks on roads, because nothing needs to be replaced. The volumes of oil which now will not be transported were not transported anyway. So there your argument fails a bit.

So (theoretically speaking) the effect of this decision can have twofold effect: 1) curb the supply side (or better said: keep it constant); and 2) incentivise seeking an alternative replacement for whatever purpose there was - e.g., if this single step would increase prices of oil (which I highly doubt), it could incentivise people to move to electric cars. But all that is theory. In reality it's clear what is going on: 1) the administration wants to have environmentally friendly image, 2) there is an opportunity to boost that, 3) the opposition to this project is significant. In the end there is little risk taking this political decision.

@tursiops

# Gordon Lightfoot/The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

> Does anyone know where the love of God goes
> When the waves turn the minutes to hours?
> -- [Gordon Lightfoot/The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vST6hVRj2A)/[Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Edmund_Fitzgerald)

#music

# Roxette /7Twenty7

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lxTKIWILOc

Somewhat underappreciated high energy oldie from 90's.Coding soundtrack.

#music

# Song for a Winter's Night

1. [Gordon LIghtfoot's great original](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRIlTvYp0ok)
2. [Sarah McLachlan's beautiful cover](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbgfXp5M02M)

Yes. Good for a winter's night.

# Versions of Jolene

1. [Dolly Parton's original](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0eeSoU35wM)
2. [Miley Cyrus - The Backyard Sessions cover ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOwblaKmyVw)
3. [The BossHoss ft. The Common Linnets - Jolene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdsHb7mnD-Q)

All good in its own right. I keep getting back to this song and its many covers over years.

#music

In contrast to
> May you live in interesting times
> -- [Chinese curse (allegedly)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_you_live_in_interesting_times)

> Boring is good.
> -- me