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While this is a huge issue, a solution (well, a partial mitigation) I've seen and used is the "Pointing and Calling" technique. The basic idea is that you incor

While this is a huge issue, a solution (well, a partial mitigation) I've seen and used is the "Pointing and Calling" technique. The basic idea is that you incorporate more actions beyond reading and typing or pressing a button—generally by having people point at something and say aloud what it is they're doing and what they expect to happen. It's used rather extensively in safety-critical public transportation in Japan [1] and to a lesser extent in New York (along with many other countries) [2]. This can easily extend to software without overcomplicating by just setting the expectation that engineers, Q&A, etc. do this even when alone. [1] https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/pointing-and-calling-japan-trains https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/pointing-and-calling-j... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointing_and_calling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointing_and_calling

emerged 4y ago
“I’m removing that semicolon!” (Pointing)
- b112 4y ago
  Parent meant this sort of pointing. https://t.co/TjfX5K54H7 https://t.co/TjfX5K54H7
samhw 4y ago
Hell, GitHub does that to an extent, with the "type the name of this repository to delete it" prompts. Typing the name of the repository isn't exactly perfect, but it's an interesting direction.
- Blackcatmaxy 4y ago
  There was a thread recently about a repo that accidentally went private and lost all of its stars because of confusion with GH teams vs GH profile readme repo naming. I think this type of prompt is very useful for explicitly preventing the rare worst case scenarios but the problem is making any type of prompt "routine" so that our brains fail to process it.
  - skrtskrt 4y ago
    I always copy-paste into that box as well, they should probably make at least an attempt at disabling pasting into it
  - lostlogin 4y ago
    This is it I think. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31033758 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31033758
  - swid 4y ago
    The suggestion in that post about how to fix it is good, and mirrors one I read in the Rachael by the Bay blog - type the number of machines to continue: https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/10/26/num/ https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/10/26/num/ The take away by both is there is actually something to do which can wake people up when the stakes are high, and they might not be doing what they expect.
    - oauea 4y ago
      And most importantly, don't let yourself get into the habit of copy pasting the value
      - underwater 4y ago
        I wonder if your could print some non visible characters in there to taint the copied value in some detectable way.
        weaksauce 4y ago
        yeah, that would possibly stop the copy and paste problem. to make it robust they would need to use a string of a few non-visible characters but that would fail if the browser's clipboard system doesn't copy them over for some kind of privacy initiative. might be another way it fails that I can't think of right now.
        dkersten 4y ago
- dustymcp 4y ago
  Azure has the same when deleting a database just a verify this is the correct one by typing the db name
akavel 4y ago
I heard of this technique, but unfortunately I don't see how it can be easily applied in software engineering/devops. Also, I now realized that aviation checklists seem to tend to be done similarly with gestures - at least from what I saw on YouTube, not sure if that's representative or only used during education (?)
- samus 4y ago
  Spelling out loudly the command you are about to execute and explaining the reasoning behind it can help a lot too.
  - akavel 4y ago
    Ok, but am I to do it on every single command I do on my terminal? Or on which ones specifically? If the problem we're trying to solve is that I can sometimes overlook the "dangerous commands" among "safe ones", by definition of overlooking it won't work if I tell myself to "spell out the command only in case of the dangerous ones", no? I'm honestly trying to think of the way how I could approach this for myself, just I don't see a clear solution yet that wouldn't require me to spell out everything I type in my terminal window.

emerged 4y ago

“I’m removing that semicolon!” (Pointing)

b112 4y ago
Parent meant this sort of pointing. https://t.co/TjfX5K54H7 https://t.co/TjfX5K54H7

samhw 4y ago

Hell, GitHub does that to an extent, with the "type the name of this repository to delete it" prompts. Typing the name of the repository isn't exactly perfect, but it's an interesting direction.

Blackcatmaxy 4y ago
There was a thread recently about a repo that accidentally went private and lost all of its stars because of confusion with GH teams vs GH profile readme repo naming. I think this type of prompt is very useful for explicitly preventing the rare worst case scenarios but the problem is making any type of prompt "routine" so that our brains fail to process it.
- skrtskrt 4y ago
  I always copy-paste into that box as well, they should probably make at least an attempt at disabling pasting into it
- lostlogin 4y ago
  This is it I think. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31033758 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31033758
- swid 4y ago
  The suggestion in that post about how to fix it is good, and mirrors one I read in the Rachael by the Bay blog - type the number of machines to continue: https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/10/26/num/ https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/10/26/num/ The take away by both is there is actually something to do which can wake people up when the stakes are high, and they might not be doing what they expect.
  - oauea 4y ago
    And most importantly, don't let yourself get into the habit of copy pasting the value
    - underwater 4y ago
      I wonder if your could print some non visible characters in there to taint the copied value in some detectable way.
      - weaksauce 4y ago
        yeah, that would possibly stop the copy and paste problem. to make it robust they would need to use a string of a few non-visible characters but that would fail if the browser's clipboard system doesn't copy them over for some kind of privacy initiative. might be another way it fails that I can't think of right now.
      - dkersten 4y ago
dustymcp 4y ago
Azure has the same when deleting a database just a verify this is the correct one by typing the db name

akavel 4y ago

I heard of this technique, but unfortunately I don't see how it can be easily applied in software engineering/devops. Also, I now realized that aviation checklists seem to tend to be done similarly with gestures - at least from what I saw on YouTube, not sure if that's representative or only used during education (?)

samus 4y ago
Spelling out loudly the command you are about to execute and explaining the reasoning behind it can help a lot too.
- akavel 4y ago
  Ok, but am I to do it on every single command I do on my terminal? Or on which ones specifically? If the problem we're trying to solve is that I can sometimes overlook the "dangerous commands" among "safe ones", by definition of overlooking it won't work if I tell myself to "spell out the command only in case of the dangerous ones", no? I'm honestly trying to think of the way how I could approach this for myself, just I don't see a clear solution yet that wouldn't require me to spell out everything I type in my terminal window.