Type in the exact number of machines to proceed • Hacker News Board

Re: Type in the exact number of machines to proceed

#21

Post by blantonl » Tue, Oct 27, 2020, 2:59 PM UTC

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #13

csmattryder wrote: post #8

I've seen this called "pointing and calling" [1], Japan's train drivers use the technique to force themselves to perform actions and take notice of the current environment. I personally took it to heart, it's a good system for forcing a cache miss in the brain - make sure you're on "database production" or "database localhost" etc. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointing_and_calling

Worth mentioning that, assuming the single study on the matter can be believed, the pointing and calling method is extremely effective in reducing the incidence of silly mistakes (that is, mistakes made in simple routine tasks, by competent individuals). Unfortunately, it strikes many as looking rather silly, so it hasn't been widely adopted.

Watch and listen to pilots as they complete checklists. They point and callout each item, switch setting, etc.

Re: Type in the exact number of machines to proceed

#22

Post by Cthulhu_ » Tue, Oct 27, 2020, 3:00 PM UTC

I for one can't fathom any organization managing a million devices / servers / VMs / whatnot. I'm having enough trouble with one, and my biggest employers had maybe a few dozen at best, and they already had a dedicated ops team that worked mainly with infrastructure-as-code.

Re: Type in the exact number of machines to proceed

#23

Post by sidpatil » Tue, Oct 27, 2020, 3:04 PM UTC

Hmm, it's conceptually like a combination of a CAPTCHA and a launch code.

Re: Type in the exact number of machines to proceed

#24

Post by mulmen » Tue, Oct 27, 2020, 3:13 PM UTC

xamuel wrote: post #3

I wish it were possible for similar prompts to appear before all sorts of policy-makers and bureaucrats. "It appears you are about to institute a policy which will require 400 million patients to sign an additional waiver every time they visit a clinic, this will waste a total of 354,921 human hours within the next year alone. Please type 354,921 to proceed."

How do you know it was a waste? Maybe that was time well spent.

Re: Type in the exact number of machines to proceed

#25

Post by jaclaz » Tue, Oct 27, 2020, 3:14 PM UTC

Side question.

How many/which companies have more than one million Linux machines?

Re: Type in the exact number of machines to proceed

#26

Post by mulmen » Tue, Oct 27, 2020, 3:14 PM UTC

jackhack wrote: post #5

xamuel wrote: post #3

I wish it were possible for similar prompts to appear before all sorts of policy-makers and bureaucrats. "It appears you are about to institute a policy which will require 400 million patients to sign an additional waiver every time they visit a clinic, this will waste a total of 354,921 human hours within the next year alone. Please type 354,921 to proceed."

closely related: the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 https://digital.gov/resources/paperwork-reduction-act-44-u-s... it requires the office of management and business to calculate the impact of records-keeping requirements impact on time and privacy, among other things. I do not believe it has resulted in a reduced recordskeeping burden. For the most part I simply see an estimate of how long it will take to complete…

Hard to say, knowing the cost of a new process could have informed a new design or requirements. We don’t know what the other path held. But I believe in general having more information allows us to make better decisions so this is a good act.

Re: Type in the exact number of machines to proceed

#27

Post by vsnf » Tue, Oct 27, 2020, 3:18 PM UTC

I do this with a git pre-push hook to the main branch of my repositories. It displays a prompt in red and forces me to type in the name of the branch.

The result of one too many mindlessly accidental pushes.

Re: Type in the exact number of machines to proceed

#28

Post by JoeAltmaier » Tue, Oct 27, 2020, 3:23 PM UTC

ccakes wrote: post #9

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #7

Makes it harder to nest that command inside a script - you have to parse out the number and paste it back? Or do I misunderstand - should it still prompt the user in the middle of the process when that step arrives? That would be problematical if it were included in a web page or whatever.

The very point of this is to make it difficult to do what you’re describing. If the tool could potentially touch a large number of machine, even if you’re super sure you got it right you should still prompt the user

Or write a script that carefully calculates the number of machines and gets it right. I guess you wouldn't use this prompting script then?

Re: Type in the exact number of machines to proceed

#29

Post by staunch » Tue, Oct 27, 2020, 3:28 PM UTC

blantonl wrote: post #21

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worth mentioning that, assuming the single study on the matter can be believed, the pointing and calling method is extremely effective in reducing the incidence of silly mistakes (that is, mistakes made in simple routine tasks, by competent individuals). Unfortunately, it strikes many as looking rather silly, so it hasn't been widely adopted.

Watch and listen to pilots as they complete checklists. They point and callout each item, switch setting, etc.

And pilots will even callout that their action had the desired effect:

"Flaps up selected"

"Flaps are indicating up"

There's a lot to learn from the way airplanes are engineered and operated.

Re: Type in the exact number of machines to proceed

#30

Post by willvarfar » Tue, Oct 27, 2020, 3:28 PM UTC

I am so adding this to a query api I have, where its all too easy to leave off constraints and end up asking for massive data sets by mistake.

Thinking I can probably enhance it by forcing the user to type in the number as text rather than numeric, so they can't cut-n-paste. Kind of force them to type in "I am sure I want all data ever" or something.