https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24907002 Looks like https vs http link.
We've merged the threads now. Thanks!
Type in the exact number of machines to proceed
61–70 of 340 posts
Re: Type in the exact number of machines to proceed
#62I have a habit of creating cli tools, which potentially do dangerous things, to default to dry-run mode. For example, instead of the typical `--dry-run` or `-n` option, my scripts instead had a cheesy `--do-it` to be non-dry-run. It is annoying as hell to my colleagues, but saved the day many times.
Re: Type in the exact number of machines to proceed
#63Yes. Github does that when you delete a repository. You have to confirm by typing in the name of the repository you are deleting.
Re: Type in the exact number of machines to proceed
#64I've typically used pdsh https://github.com/chaos/pdsh for these types of commands, and I don't think they have any such safety options. The only protection is to be wracked with fear whenever you type pdsh. Obviously this fear wanes with use, and eventually you don't think about a command for long enough before you do it and hit enter on a regrettable one.
Re: Type in the exact number of machines to proceed
#65Earlier 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.
Came here for this.
A: “Passing control”
B: “Taking control”
A: “You have control”
B: “I have control”
This is how I remember it (6174, UH-1Y).
Re: Type in the exact number of machines to proceed
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
>You can know that something is the right thing to do but not have the courage to physically harm someone to do it. In this specific case the "thing to do" is literally to harm hundreds of thousands of people. The reasoning behind this proposed interlock is that any logic which concludes that it is moral and rational to harm hundreds of thousands of people must also conclude that it is moral and rational to harm the…
> The reasoning behind this proposed interlock is that any logic which concludes that it is moral and rational to harm hundreds of thousands of people must also conclude that it is moral and rational to harm the "interlock" individual. Yes, but you can know it's the right thing to do, but not be able to physically do it. The president's ability to physically cut someone open is not relevant to whether it's a good ide…
>The president's ability to physically cut someone open is not relevant to whether it's a good idea to use nuclear weapons or not
I'm sure if the president was physically incapable of wielding a knife, she would have someone on hand to do that for her.
Re: Type in the exact number of machines to proceed
#67Notably, Discord does something like this when you @everyone in a large channel: "You're about to push a notification to 12,000 people, are you sure you want to do that...?"
Sounds like a yes/no answer is expected? If so, that is exactly what Rachel is suggesting is not enough.
She also suggests localizing the number will prevent copy paste somehow.
Re: Type in the exact number of machines to proceed
#68Raskin talks about the futility of this in his book The Humane Interface. Basically, what happens is the brain switches operating context from "I want to do something" to "resolve this interruption (confirmation box)" and you don't relate the one to the other - you're so focused on getting rid of the interruption that the original task is forgotten until after the interruption is gone. Then you switch back to the ori…
That's exactly why it's not a "confirmation box", but requires you to slow down and think for half a second. She even talked about mitigating copy-paste, which is the next obvious way people could habituate.
Also, while undo is great, it's not always technically feasible. The tools in question are basically for modifying the layer that implements undo for your end users, and are often themselves fundamentally irreversible. Undo for raw hard disks involves forensic analysis at best.
Re: Type in the exact number of machines to proceed
#69I have a habit of creating cli tools, which potentially do dangerous things, to default to dry-run mode. For example, instead of the typical `--dry-run` or `-n` option, my scripts instead had a cheesy `--do-it` to be non-dry-run. It is annoying as hell to my colleagues, but saved the day many times.
I like this format in general, since it communicates the command is severe/irreversible. Heroku implements a similar confirmation when performing destructive actions. Commands require your to pass a `--confirm ${APP NAME}` flag, so the original command itself does nothing. Of course, this doesn't prevent you including those flags in makefiles, etc. I once dropped a table in a side project by accident because I took the wrong tab autocomplete suggestion in a makefile.
Re: Type in the exact number of machines to proceed
#70This is a great idea, and I'd like to point out that having such a system in place would have prevented one of the largest Internet outages in recent memory - the Amazon S3 outage in 2017: https://aws.amazon.com/message/41926/ > At 9:37AM PST, an authorized S3 team member using an established playbook executed a command which was intended to remove a small number of servers for one of the S3 subsystems that is used b…
It's kind of funny, since various operations performed in the AWS web console use this model (e.g. type the name of the resource you're trying to delete). As an organization, they're aware of this approach and think it's useful, but (presumably) didn't use it in their own internal tooling.