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Ask HN: Which parts of everyday life are more complex than people expect?

24 points by majewsky ↗ HN
I recently appeared on radio to talk about Unicode [1]. In the introduction, I said that Unicode is interesting because text encoding and rendering sounds (at least to Western people) like something that's boring and solved, but then you look at how people actually write across the globe and you go down this gigantic rabbit hole.

Afterwards, I realized that in IT, we touch on a lot of aspects of real life that a layman thinks of as boring or trivial, but which turn out to be surprisingly complex when you look at them in detail. Since my time on radio was quite fun, I'm thinking about maybe making a small podcast series on these surprising complexities.

Now, of course the first step is to actually come up with a list of such things. That's my question for you: Do you know some aspect of everyday life that is much more complex than what laypeople usually appreciate?

I'll start with the first one that came to my mind: time zones. Did you know there are actually two time zones in Germany? The first one covers nearly all of Germany, the second one is for one tiny village of 1,300 people that is one very special snowflake in a lot of ways [2].

[1] Recording is here, but it's German: https://c3d2.de/news/pentaradio24-20180724.html

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%BCsingen_am_Hochrhein

22 comments

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ggm
Analogue TV and radio rebroadcast used to depend on atomic time. The vbi timing stuff needs to be regenerated as it's rebroadcast. Sure.. you can let it slip: what if people set their clocks from the timing pips on the radio?

Likewise mains AC power frequency policing. It has quite interesting set points and limits.

majewsky
Power frequency policing is a great idea! I actually saw a talk about this a few years ago, but it didn't cross my mind yet. Thanks!
anoncoward111
Most of the annoyances in my life come from dinosaur corporations who have dumb policies and most likely won't go out of business for it.

Some examples:

1) Banks in the US put the burden of ID theft on the consumer. This is hilarious, because it is the bank who has been robbed, not me. Additionally, why does my bank mail my personal info to my former addresses for a few months? I always ask for web statements only.

2) Why does a passport cost nearly $100?

3) Why can't visas and borders be paperless and less restrictive?

4) Why can't month-to-month leases be easier to find?

majewsky
Note that I said "complex", not "complicated". I would like to tell interesting stories about how our modern life works. Cataloguing the stupidities of bureaucracy, while important, is not exactly engaging.
anoncoward111
Ok, I guess you could detail some complex social engineering work arounds.

Anyway, losing weight used to be summarized as "calories in, calories out." But through physical, laymen-led experimentation posted on youtube, we as a society have learned that hormones and electrolytes have a very heavy influence on how calories are absorbed and how water is retained.

tudelo
As for 4) probably because it's a high risk and high overhead for most complexes. How do you see that working out? FWIW I often sign short leases (6 to 12 months) and friends who have gone for internships without provided housing have used airbnb. Seems to be a fine alternative.
anoncoward111
In my area, I've tried very hard to negotiate leases of less than a year-- they just don't do it, because of our East Coast version of NIMBYism.

Airbnb can be of dodgy quality sometimes, but it has filled most of the demand as you say. There are lots of property taxes and squatter-friendly laws in my area, so I guess thats why landlords feel the need to have very restrictive terms :/

ggm
All of the utility functions: gas, water, sewerage have to deal with surge effects. They have buffering just like internet routing and switching. Time of day effects. It's more complex than you would think. A friend does salt water fish tanks for a reef, he's in a constant battle with dilute chemicals and aeration. Now scale that to a city..

Traffic flow policing is like live operations research: tweak one bit, the others Go bananas. The tail back delay usually outlives the actual blockage by hours.

Supply chain logistics in goods and services. How does a small tire shop in the city get stock to fix that one off car walk in? Milk supply..

Oh dairy: making ghee? In a factory? You have like a 4C temperature window. Colder, try pipe cleaners on twenty tonnes of rancid butter. Hotter? It burns black..

Concrete pouring depends on slump tests done onsite. Watch what they're doing with that two part mould and simultaneously pouring the entire load into a pumper. Now think about it going wrong. Or the concrete delivery itself, that's a nightmare.

cm2012
stomach biome and brain interaction (as many neurons in the stomach as in a cats brain).
hluska
Dealing with email addresses. Consider this case:

You get two signups on a website. One is for me@example.com and the other is for Me@example.com. Is this one person or two separate people? And how do you store them in a database?

Some email systems will treat me and Me as two separate users, so if you change the case there is a chance the wrong person will get the email. So, the advice is that you should never change the case. But if you don't change the case should you treat them as separate users?

bausshf
Yes you should treat them as separate users, because there is less chance of you doing something wrong.

What you need to consider at sign ups are more than just an email to distinguish.

Ex. if name, address and phone are the same, but the emails are different, chances are you have the same person and thus you can assume it is the same person.

hluska
I know all of this. The query was looking for everyday things that are more complicated than people expect.
shostack
Coffee. Anyone can make a cup of coffee. Making a good and properly prepared cup of coffee, espresso, etc. is surprisingly complex.

I wanted to make myself a simple cappuccino at home. I now have several pieces of prosumer gear, gadgets, fancy beans, and spend my free time reading up on things like coffee grind distribution methods, hacking my machine to add a PID, and other such ephemera. On the plus side, I'm saving several hundred dollars a year on my coffee habit despite all the toys, so there's that.

cwt
This goes for homebrewing (beer/wine) too. If you can make oatmeal you can make beer, but if you want to make the same beer exactly the same over and over it is very complex. The fact that Budweiser tastes the same all over the US and is made in 12(?) different locations is a testament to how good the brewers are (even if beer snobs don't like it).

As for coffee, even the foam on top of an espresso is complex.

You might enjoy this paper if you haven't already read it: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3140933/

stevekemp
And baking cakes, bread, pies, etc.
shostack
This paper contains the phrase "Air–Beverage Interface," definitely going on my reading list. Thanks for sharing!

And agreed on the consistency part. For espresso, once you figure out what you like, you begin the endless quest to make it that way consistently.

yen223
Almost everything in your home, down to your throwaway plastic bags and disposable napkins, has massive supply chains that led to their production.
thisone
The Surprisingly Awesome podcast seems to have done a bit of what you're looking for while it existed. Some episodes more successful than others, but that's a strict topic podcast, with a strict release schedule for you.

https://www.gimletmedia.com/surprisingly-awesome

You should be able to find audience reaction to the podcast and it's cancellation if you dig around a bit on reddit. Learn from their work and make yours better.

Also, 99% Invisible would be another podcast to research to ensure you are barking up a different tree

https://99percentinvisible.org/

ugochiowo
Breathing. I never think about the fact that I'm able to breathe without issues until that ability is compromised by a cold or flu. The science of breathing is deeply complicated and there are multiple processes that make it possible for you to successfully inhale and exhale as you're doing now. The human body is incredible.

https://www.unm.edu/~lkravitz/Article%20folder/Breathing.htm...

personlurking
Judging by your first suggestion, it sounds somewhat like a podcast-version of Half As Interesting, on Youtube (my pet peeve with that channel is it has several "I think I'm being funny" quips interspersed throughout). Regardless, I think there's tons of room in the media space for such an idea. Go for it!

Regarding the question in the title specifically, everything at all times is complex. Now, if we choose to see it that way, that's another question. Ex. A car gets us from point A to point B, and so we see it as such (ie, what it does for us, not what it is). But when that car breaks down, its intricate and endless complexity is revealed to us. All of a sudden, we get a glimpse of what it is and not what it does for us. Which is to say, we look at everyday life at the lowest resolution possible, in order to get on with our day. It has to be high enough resolution to hold some value and meaning, but not so high that it adds unneeded complexity to our life.

ajeet_dhaliwal
It’s tempting and perhaps lazy to say ‘everything’ but it really feels that way if you consider creating a video game about any mundane thing like putting on socks of brushing teeth. With respect to things we use I cherish it all, from the TV, to the wires charging my phone, to the plastic bags in the kitchen. Too many people treat things with disrespect or junk when they could never know how they were made and could never replicate the process themselves. A more interesting question might be what’s the most complex single product or service used in everyday life.