6 ms·

I think your interpretation is more telling of your own worldview than the parent. It had never occurred to me that such a failure mode could happen, and I thou

by vageli 6y ago

I think your interpretation is more telling of your own worldview than the parent. It had never occurred to me that such a failure mode could happen, and I thought it was a good story to share. It seems like something that may have been caught had a crematorium management system been in place.

aea12 6y ago
My own worldview that people are universally people and we all deserve dignity in death? Yeah, I know, what a tragic way of looking at things. I drink myself to death over it. Even accepting your criticism, the same exact thing is communicable without (a) the unnecessary detail about the decedent’s weight and (b) specific recollections of the event in question. Tradespeople communicate like that among each other because of how grim the work is. I know because I was one before I got thrown in with this lot, who apparently think I’m weird for not being on board with an aborted cremation being communicated in detail because it’s ostensibly a JIRA user story in waiting, if I’ve understood your almost equally distasteful worldview correctly. I’m looking forward to your startup addressing this issue, since you seem to be so keen on the purity of the engineering discussion beyond irrelevant brain filling on an article about operating systems in the bloody datacenter.
- vageli 6y ago
  Goodness, it seems your speech becomes more inflammatory with every edit. I'm sorry if I offended you—I think talking about the disasters are important in engineering—it's part of the process. In the same vein that FAA regulations are "written in blood". The deceased's weight could have been (and sounds like it was) a compounding factor in this event. It seems a process improvement could have prevented this, but we should avoid the entire conversation because it involved death? edit: To address the content of another edit you made: yes, part of what makes HackerNews the incredible place it is is from people sharing anecdotes and semi-related stories. I really don't care to continue this conversation, your hostility is unwarranted.
  - aea12 6y ago
    The only thing that offends me in this conversation is what this profession, and forum, do to people. You very poignantly included. Keep trying to turn this around on me and my sensibilities or sense of offense, and I’ll keep right on ignoring it. I’m very comfortable on the absolutely right side of this, and just about as annoyed as OP was that you’re interacting with me at all and that I have to share a planet with people who think like you. When an FAA policymaker gets on HN and tells us what the deceased passengers on the airplane smelled like, you’ll have an argument. There’s a difference between dancing among the foul and treating it clinically, and hitting me with the latter in a thread doing the former is incredibly disingenuous.
  - dang 6y ago
    Can you please review the site guidelines and note this one? "Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead." (a.k.a. please don't feed the trolls). https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- kbenson 6y ago
  I think perhaps you need to consider that how you interpret something may not be how it was intended, nor what it was meant to convey, and often the best way to respond to something that seems to deeply offend you is to first confirm that you understand what the other party was actually communicating. For example, what you seem to interpret as people finding humor in the indignity of a botched portion of someone's funeral, others might interpret as a cautionary tale about what can happen if people are not careful about how crematoriums are run, and the pain it can cause to loved ones and the indignity it can cause to the deceased when the people shirk the maintenance required by the tools they use to do their job in these industries. In that respect, it's no different than a story where a cemetary did not maintain their backhoe, and the family showed up for a burial and the grave was not dug because the machine broke. Given how the post was spawned from a someone noting a Crematorium Management System (and the lack of an open source option), I would hazard that a cautionary tale about what might happen if you aren't managing your Crematorium well is how it should have been interpreted.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - aea12 6y ago
    Yeah, the guy arguing for, and being rather amusingly/disappointingly flagged off the site for (you all sure showed me, with my uncomfortable feelings), being human needs a condescending explanation on how to communicate with humans from first principles. That’s just about the right approach. Are you really that desperate for engineering requirements that you’re going after me for bucking the narrative? Perhaps I’d have found more purchase if we discussed the sexual habits and purchasing tendencies of those individuals blinded and killed by the Therac. One had blue eyes and liked Wagner. That’s at least three features for the model, right? At a meta level, if our conversation doesn’t make clear the very problem I’m trying to communicate to you in regard to engineering’s relationship with humanity, I’d implore you to resist the urge to shoot the person who seems wrong and maybe look at whether you’re on the right path. My only mistake is saying it here, because this is basically its nexus...
    - 6y ago

by vageli 6y ago

aea12 6y ago

My own worldview that people are universally people and we all deserve dignity in death? Yeah, I know, what a tragic way of looking at things. I drink myself to death over it. Even accepting your criticism, the same exact thing is communicable without (a) the unnecessary detail about the decedent’s weight and (b) specific recollections of the event in question. Tradespeople communicate like that among each other because of how grim the work is. I know because I was one before I got thrown in with this lot, who apparently think I’m weird for not being on board with an aborted cremation being communicated in detail because it’s ostensibly a JIRA user story in waiting, if I’ve understood your almost equally distasteful worldview correctly. I’m looking forward to your startup addressing this issue, since you seem to be so keen on the purity of the engineering discussion beyond irrelevant brain filling on an article about operating systems in the bloody datacenter.

vageli 6y ago
Goodness, it seems your speech becomes more inflammatory with every edit. I'm sorry if I offended you—I think talking about the disasters are important in engineering—it's part of the process. In the same vein that FAA regulations are "written in blood". The deceased's weight could have been (and sounds like it was) a compounding factor in this event. It seems a process improvement could have prevented this, but we should avoid the entire conversation because it involved death? edit: To address the content of another edit you made: yes, part of what makes HackerNews the incredible place it is is from people sharing anecdotes and semi-related stories. I really don't care to continue this conversation, your hostility is unwarranted.
- aea12 6y ago
  The only thing that offends me in this conversation is what this profession, and forum, do to people. You very poignantly included. Keep trying to turn this around on me and my sensibilities or sense of offense, and I’ll keep right on ignoring it. I’m very comfortable on the absolutely right side of this, and just about as annoyed as OP was that you’re interacting with me at all and that I have to share a planet with people who think like you. When an FAA policymaker gets on HN and tells us what the deceased passengers on the airplane smelled like, you’ll have an argument. There’s a difference between dancing among the foul and treating it clinically, and hitting me with the latter in a thread doing the former is incredibly disingenuous.
- dang 6y ago
  Can you please review the site guidelines and note this one? "Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead." (a.k.a. please don't feed the trolls). https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
kbenson 6y ago
I think perhaps you need to consider that how you interpret something may not be how it was intended, nor what it was meant to convey, and often the best way to respond to something that seems to deeply offend you is to first confirm that you understand what the other party was actually communicating. For example, what you seem to interpret as people finding humor in the indignity of a botched portion of someone's funeral, others might interpret as a cautionary tale about what can happen if people are not careful about how crematoriums are run, and the pain it can cause to loved ones and the indignity it can cause to the deceased when the people shirk the maintenance required by the tools they use to do their job in these industries. In that respect, it's no different than a story where a cemetary did not maintain their backhoe, and the family showed up for a burial and the grave was not dug because the machine broke. Given how the post was spawned from a someone noting a Crematorium Management System (and the lack of an open source option), I would hazard that a cautionary tale about what might happen if you aren't managing your Crematorium well is how it should have been interpreted.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- aea12 6y ago
  Yeah, the guy arguing for, and being rather amusingly/disappointingly flagged off the site for (you all sure showed me, with my uncomfortable feelings), being human needs a condescending explanation on how to communicate with humans from first principles. That’s just about the right approach. Are you really that desperate for engineering requirements that you’re going after me for bucking the narrative? Perhaps I’d have found more purchase if we discussed the sexual habits and purchasing tendencies of those individuals blinded and killed by the Therac. One had blue eyes and liked Wagner. That’s at least three features for the model, right? At a meta level, if our conversation doesn’t make clear the very problem I’m trying to communicate to you in regard to engineering’s relationship with humanity, I’d implore you to resist the urge to shoot the person who seems wrong and maybe look at whether you’re on the right path. My only mistake is saying it here, because this is basically its nexus...
  - 6y ago