Commit Logs From Last Night - <AUTHOR> http://www.commitlogsfromlastnight.com/ <comment><USER2> I think there's a reason most humor websites have some sort of curation process.

<comment><USER3> Yep. The idea is potentially fun, though. They could surely make use of a curation process. Something like bash.org, maybe ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So it just watches github's live feed for commit messages that contain a curse word.

<comment><USER5> Specifically, [https://github.com/astanway/Commit-Logs-From-Last- Night/blob...](https://github.com/astanway/Commit-Logs-From-Last- Night/blob/master/scrape.py#L98)

<comment><AUTHOR> I wished he removed some of those words though and I really want to believe that people don't use racist commit messages.

<comment><USER6> Interesting that he _almost_ starts out with George Carlins "seven dirty words" <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Dirty_Words> \- but then continues with additional words that're unlikely to be indicative of anything particularly humorous or interesting.

This is _almost_ funny. But anybody who thinks you can make up jokes using SQL or regex probably isn't the sort of person you'd pay to see at a comedy club.

Unless, perhaps, they're a particularly talented computational linguist with a huge corpus of comedy material loaded up in a big real-time analysis cluster. Hmmmm, there's some ideas here: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_humor> \- maybe this would be more amusing if the commit comments were passed into the "That's what she said" double entendre algorithm?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Well I'm glad to see that also other people have this sorts of messages in their commit history

<comment><USER8> Interesting to me too. While I'm not above putting the occasional gripe into a commit message, I don't think I've ever used profanity. I prefer commit log messages to be useful later, to myself if not others. So I try to avoid useless messages like "Fixing stuff" (with or without expletives).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm baffled by this admiration of commit messages that do nothing to explain the code committed.

</comment><comment><USER10> Some of the stuff in there is pretty spectacular, like this qt-brainfuck: [https://github.com/sea- kg/seakgChrysocyonParser/compare/0988...](https://github.com/sea- kg/seakgChrysocyonParser/compare/09883845df...4a86cb584e)

</comment><comment><USER11> Hmm, another triumph for the "Github will get you hired" crowd. And so soon after the "Github will get you kicked off Coursera" debacle.

Actually this is a good use case for DVCS - at least you have a second chance to clean up your commit messages when pushing from a private repo. It does have to be private though. I would be interested to see if BitBucket gets a boost in users this month...

</comment><comment><USER12> So fuck and shit are the most common words used as I can see. Not what I expected.

<comment><USER13> I imagine this is just going through a stream of commits and only picking out the ones containing fuck and shit.

<comment><USER14> and hell

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Before bashing, please notice the subheading: "because real hackers pivot two hours before their demo". This was Abe's pivot right before the deadline at the PennApps Hackathon.

</comment><comment><USER16> Obviously this is on open source stuff, but I'd don't think it'd reflect positively with a prospective client or employer.

</comment><comment><USER14> Not many swearing ladies.</comment>


Can science literacy help individuals identify misinformation in everyday life? - <AUTHOR> https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/sce.21581 <comment><AUTHOR> Link to the PDF: [https://sci- hub.tw/https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/1...](https://sci- hub.tw/https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/sce.21581?fbclid=IwAR3PNv3tG12DZ00KrwirkIO2-r03n0NKVP3l3O6dKpoVU- fciuuCd43x94Y)</comment>


What's your favorite free web conferencing tool? - <AUTHOR>

What's your favorite free web conferencing tool? <comment><USER2> As sad as it sounds we're currently using Skype's screen sharing (single person) and voice conferencing with Google Draw at the moment. Will try connectnow.acrobat.com as it looks decent.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> oops - the title really should be "Ask HN: What's your favorite free web conferencing tool?" I thought HN would add the "Ask HN" part for me, and now it's too late to edit the title. Anyway, thanks for the replies so far.

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://bigbluebutton.org/>

</comment><comment><USER4> <http://tinychat.com>

</comment><comment><USER5> connectnow.acrobat.com with skype voice conferencing

It's free for 5 or less participants

<comment><USER6> Agreed. They do a good job hiding their free option, but once you find it it works quite well across macs and PCs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> iChat + AIM accounts enables up to 4-way video

audio only: www.freeconferencecall.com</comment>


I'm giving rrrewind.com to a hacker who wants to take care of it. - <AUTHOR>

Some years ago I started rrrewind, a time machine of popular social content. It had good reviews when it launched.
At this point I don't have enough time to pour on it and I prefer to pass it to a fellow that loves the concept and who wants to take it further.
It was a personal project and no a for profit venture. It's up to you to decide how to go next. I just ask to be associated as the founder of it.
Stack: php. No DB, just a bunch of xml/json files. Data: It contains 2 years of daily feeds from the most popular social sites and some unpublished.
Thanks <comment><AUTHOR> Hi. Thanks for the interest. It's not for the first taker, I'll be checking your profiles and projects and it will be for the person I consider most "matchable" with the project.

Thanks a lot for the comments & emails I'm getting. It's still time, I'll take a decision next week.

</comment><comment><USER2> This is very interesting to me and my work on tracking health issues and pop culture on social media. I'll email you to see if someone else hasn't already gotten to it first!

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd love to take it over and work on it if you don't have interest in it anymore. You can email me: email@example.com

thanks!

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd love to take it over, shall I shoot you an email?

<comment><AUTHOR> No need to email me if you have links in your HN profile that give a good look of your previous work.

<comment><USER4> Feel free to check and email if you have an interest in taking more.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are you building with Rust? for fun or profit - <AUTHOR> I really enjoy dabbling with rust and I am curious what kind of applications its getting used in. <comment><USER2> I am using Rust building a privacy focused in-app file system ZboxFS([https://github.com/zboxfs/zbox](https://github.com/zboxfs/zbox)). The fun part is not only joyfulness Rust bring to me, but also learned a lot about cryptography, file system, transaction control and many more interesting areas.

</comment><comment><USER3> At [https://www.3dhubs.com](https://www.3dhubs.com) we're using Rust to build the geometry processing side of our platform, which is the most computationally intensive custom part. Previously it was in C++ and we're a lot happier after migrating to Rust two years ago.

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://www.offst.org](https://www.offst.org) : A decentralized credit card.

Still missing a reasonable GUI though. What I really liked about Rust in this project is the peace of mind it gives about safety, the performance, async features and the powerful procedural macros.

<comment><USER5> * is the peace of mind it gives about safety, * How is that different than a garbage collected language?

<comment><USER6> Not different, if "safety" is your only criteria. GC languages provide memory safety at a cost (performance). C, C++ and Rust are preferred in settings where you don't want the GC to capriciously affect performance (e.g. HFT). However, out of the 3, Rust is the only one that is provably "memory safe" at compile time because it provides constructs (ownership, borrowing) that force you to write safe code. If your Rust code can compile it's more than likely safe. You can write equally performant code in C / C++ but both languages have a lot of foot guns.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Some weeks ago I was building an encrypted note taking CLI program [https://github.com/Merkoba/Effer](https://github.com/Merkoba/Effer)

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm working on a command line application which generates and executes randomized patch request against a rest API after looking at a JSON schema provided as input.

I have almost finished the harder parts of it, but I have not been able to work on the final part (the binary with command line flags and recording the patch responses) for a couple of months.

[https://github.com/abhijat/vaccine](https://github.com/abhijat/vaccine)

</comment><comment><USER9> For fun: a simple port knocker (some software that opens a port for ssh'ing if you hit to with the correct connection sequence).

Simple, but enought to discover tokio.rs examoles on their website were not up to date.</comment>


Reddit/Hacker News clone using the MEAN stack - <AUTHOR> https://thinkster.io/angulartutorial/mean-stack-tutorial/

<comment><USER2> it would be nice to see an isomorphic approach to this</comment>


Elastic PyPI: your own Python Package Index on AWS Lambda - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/khornberg/elasticpypi <comment><USER2> This is a really cute use for Lambda, and a great working example of the kinds of limitations one could expect to bump into.

I was recently asked to evaluate Lambda for use in hosting a bunch of existing web sites, and just from README.md, I'm glad I backed the hell away from that pandora's box before opening it.

<comment><USER3> Binary uploads are a new APIG feature[1] awaiting Serverless support[2].

Surprised WWW-Authenticate headers aren't passed through. May be possible with custom authorizers[3], though it's extra complexity.

\---

[1] [https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/binary-support-for- api-...](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/binary-support-for-api- integrations-with-amazon-api-gateway/)

[2] [https://github.com/serverless/serverless/issues/2797](https://github.com/serverless/serverless/issues/2797)

[3] [http://docs.aws.amazon.com/apigateway/latest/developerguide/...](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/apigateway/latest/developerguide/use- custom-authorizer.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a perfect use for Lambda (i.e., low-traffic, once-off tasks that don't require a full server), or at least this would be a good fit if not for immaturity issues like missing WWW-Authenticate.

But Lambda _at scale_ is very expensive. A 100 request/second would cost more than $1,500/month, when even a single nano server could easily service that kind of load all by itself.

Back of napkin analysis: [https://twitter.com/JamiesonBecker/status/802185522139582464](https://twitter.com/JamiesonBecker/status/802185522139582464)

Lambda is great for tech demos, small or rare loads, triggered tasks, etc. Not so great as part of your core app pipeline.

<comment><USER5> Is it? I thought S3 would be a better fit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hosting a PyPI index on S3 is simpler, but I admire the effort here!

</comment><comment><USER7> This is cool, but it makes me sad that it has to run on Python 2, as Lambda does not natively support Python 3.

(And no, I'm not counting tricks like calling into the underlying OS' Python 3)</comment>


3 Flat-Screen Makers Plead Guilty to Trying to Keep Prices High - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/technology/13panel.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&oref=slogin <comment><USER2> Now if only this could happen for the US cell phone SMS charges. Theres absolutely no reason why it costs 20 cents _each way_ to send 140 7-byte characters.

<comment><USER3> If we could all agree to use a messaging app that bypasses the traditional SMS app, we could do this ourselves!

<comment><USER4> I know, if only there was some sort of network where 'instant' messages could be sent for free without relying on the phone network. We could call it "instant messaging" and people could have 'buddy lists' that allow them to easily converse with their friends. I think I'll start one and call it "I Seek You"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> How much lower will this take prices? 10%? 20%? 30%?

<comment><USER5> This is price fixing that occurred in the past, from something like 2001-2006 I believe. So, prices currently should reflect the adjustment down from the "artificial" costs from that time period.

<comment><USER6> I always thought back then that I would get one once the price came down, now the prices are quite low but I have no desire to get one because they're so prevalent that I no longer need one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm going to argue FOR keeping prices at least somewhat high. Look at what Dell did to themselves and the PC market, they marginalized themselves out of a profitable business by becoming so efficient and competing on price alone. Walmart another good example, low prices good for them, but not good for the markets/manufacturers and ultimately the consumers (jobs go overseas, pay goes down domestically)

</comment><comment><USER7> So where is all this money they are being forced to cough up going? I just bought a new monitor a couple of months ago and it was a big deal for me because I don't have too much spending money. I doubt any of this money will go to any actual victims.

<comment><USER8> Take part in the class action lawsuit if you're eligible. Quick Google search turns up: <http://www.lieffcabraser.com/antitrust/lcd-antitrust.htm>

<comment><USER9> It sounds like the members of the class are the companies which bought directly from the manufacturers. For instance, Dell buys LCD displays from Samsung to rebadge. So if Samsung were a guilty party Dell would get some of this settlement but I would not, even though as Dell's customer I bear the final cost of the price fixing :/

<comment><USER10> You only bought it when you decided it was an acceptable price to pay for what you were getting - what claim do you have that you were treated unfairly?

<comment><USER11> The "treated unfairly" part comes from the fact that a cartel formed to make sure that if you wanted a product with a lcd in it you _had_ to pay an inflated price to a cartel member.

Innovation should have (and would have naturally) driven prices down had a few big boys not gotten together and used their collective might to prevent that competition.

It sucks that prices were too high but it sucks even more when actions like these halt innovation, usually using downright rotten legal means to prevent smaller competitors from entering the market to challenge the cartel's position.

The class action suit, even when it does not benefit end consumers much, works together with antitrust law to prevent industries from balkanizing into huge cartels, jacking up prices, controlling supplies to engineer shortages, and then forcefully ceasing all innovation.

<comment><USER10> You didn't _have_ to pay. I want a supercar, but I don't _have_ to pay the price for one.

And I wonder about "an inflated price". All prices are "inflated" because all companies make profit. That's what companies do...

Yes, I would like prices to come down and products to get better, and it is annoying (and perhaps illegal) when companies force that not to happen.

But really, if they kept prices high, and people still bought their product ... why _should_ we legally twist companies arms to force their prices down?

Especially when there are other LCD manufacturers in the world who (presumably) couldn't introduce significant competition?

OK, in a caring society we have government intervention in food and water supplies, heating subsidies and medicine. But government forced cheaper consumer electronics? What?

<comment><USER11> _You didn't have to pay. I want a supercar, but I don't have to pay the price for one._

No, you missed it. They want to make you buy a supercar if you want any kind of car at all. They'll use their lawyers, their influence and their money to keep anyone else from building you a Honda. Want a car? Get a Ferrari. Can't afford one? Walk.

If you don't watch it they might even get a lobbyist to pay some congressmen to pass a "walk tax".</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The future of email - <AUTHOR>

The last company I started was an email startup -- Peek, we made a mobile email gadget that won all kinds of awards from Time and Wired and everyone (www.peek.ly). The company became a software platform and was just acquired by our top customer.
So now I'm thinking about new stuff and noticing there is tons of innovation in email.
What do folks think? Agree/disagree with the following statements that everyone keeps repeating?
- Email overload/inboxes are broken
- Gmail is the winner. All other webmail is fail
- A better interface to email than Gmail is out there
- The best mail app for mobile is... Apple's Mail? Sparrow? Gmail for iOS?
- Tasks are crowding inboxes
- Commercial/deal mail needs to be in its own place (e.g., AOL's AltoMail and Microsoft's Hotmail experiment in 2011)
Some background posts about these topics with examples
http://a.sarva.co/2012/12/how-email-is-like-craigslist/
http://a.sarva.co/2012/12/reading-paul-graham-on-the-re-invention-of-email/ <comment><USER2> Yup, I certainly remember those Peek devices from back in the day! I've also been working on a little something in the email space and so I've kept my eyes peeled at the influx of "email reinvented" apps in the past months.

I don't have strong opinions on all of your statements; it really depends on the person. My core belief, however, is that email is broken on the front-end. Sure it'd be nice if we threw out all the legacy of email protocol, but that won't happen without some titanic effort, so for now we'll fix everything we can on the user side of things.

In addition to the email apps that have popped up on HN, I trawled through Dribbble at one time to see who all is working on what. A lot of it are pretty interface elements on the same old concept, but a few are real, active projects with potential:

<http://dribbble.com/ndrw/buckets/92665-Designer-Mail-Apps>

Also, AOL Alto is doing lots of things right:

<http://designtox.tumblr.com/tagged/aol>

<comment><AUTHOR> What's your interest in email by the way? You seem to have some sophisticated views (or at least background) on the topic!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think email is overwhelming for most high-communication people, but also that most people are kind of stuck with it, and there's a lot of friction in switching between platforms. Gmail is certainly the default platform at the moment, but not because better ones don't exist.

Trying to build a better email seems tough. Unified inbox is kind of interesting. Gmail as a platform is very interesting -- I've been using apps like StreakCRM and find them very compelling vs. standalone apps.

Lighter weight and social messaging (facebook, sms, whatsapp, snapchat, etc) seem to be making an impact on messaging, particularly for younger folks, and i bet cannibalize email, both in terms of volume and time spent.

</comment><comment><USER4> Email is broken because people implement it poorly. I don't mean developers, but users: e.g. "Important: Everyone must read" as subject line from the president of the R/C Boat Enthusiasts Club of Milwaukee or cc2cya syndrome in an office.

Gmail isn't the winner. It's as dumb as box of rocks, then again so is every other email solution.

SMS is the best mobile app. Or at least it hints at what the best would be. Most emails aren't worth filing. Most subject lines are bad. SMS deals with both of these issues by ignoring them.

The solution to email is in AI [I'm waving may hands in a magic gesture]. The email problem is that we have to do something with each one...except what goes directly to "Junk" and the success of that approach hints at what an ideal email client would do.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think it's fair to blame the users. Our software products are smarter than them. Surely we can win.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm probably a special case, but I am not a fan of gmail, it just doesn't work for me. Too many false spam positives, not enough tuning available to work around brokenness. I run my own email, it works great, less experienced dataloss and much less data leakage as well. I find email on mobile tedious, it doesn't work for me and especially on touchscreens. Fix that problem and you might have something.

</comment><comment><USER6> Yes, there seems to be more and more about email these days, but it seems like everyone is just putting a different interface on something that is not working as they want. I created a little mock-up of what I want out of email - just my 2 cents.

<http://squarerfish.tumblr.com/>

<comment><USER7> Sounds similar: I would like to see things other than emails live within my email inbox.

You click on a "subject line" in your gmail table view, and it opens up a to- do list, or a wiki, or a spreadsheet, or a regular old email.

Not an email "notification" that links me to a spreadsheet, but the actual spreadsheet itself.

I originally thought this was what Google Wave intended to be. You could send a regular email OR a "wave" and both would appear in your gmail inbox. It unfortunately ended up being more of a second inbox, with gmail notifications.</comment></comment>


Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years by Peter Norvig - <AUTHOR> http://norvig.com/21-days.html <comment><USER2> Seems to be down, here's Google's cache

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:SHt7f6B...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:SHt7f6BhFjIJ:norvig.com/21-days.html+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=tr&client=ubuntu)

</comment><comment><USER3> Needs a [1998] in the title: [https://web.archive.org/web/19980206223800/http://www.norvig...](https://web.archive.org/web/19980206223800/http://www.norvig.com/21-days.html)</comment>


In Defense of Theranos - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/21/in-defense-of-theranos/ <comment><USER2> _Theranos supported a misleading story around their tech. True, but startups by definition should evangelize a future vision._

What did I just read? That a medical services company should purposefully lie about their treatment or diagnosis to obtain higher valuations?

This isn't a tech startup, it's a medical services company. The bar is, and has to be, much higher.

"Fake it 'till you make it" does not, and should not, work in healthcare, and that's the Theranos story.

</comment><comment><USER3> _" Theranos' biggest "mistake" was running two businesses at once."_

No, it was being shit at what it was supposedly meant to be good at. People don't go back to Uber because it offers a good vision, they go back because its easer/cheaper/more convenient.

Charging money for blood tests that are hilariously inaccurate, and then allowing them to be used as the basis for life changing decisions is precisely _why_ these industries are regulated.

This is so that "moron in a hurry" or "the man on the clapham omnibus" doesn't get killed because he(or she, or their health professional after some extra profit) chose the wrong service to do blood tests.

Basically what is being advocated is the pursuit of money at the expense of human life.

On a purely capitalistic level, Theranos didn't work. It's weak and therefore should be mercilessly exploited till it dies.

</comment><comment><USER4> _> , but the reality is that the strongest criticisms of Theranos have more to do with business structure than their blood tests._

No. The strongest criticism has been characterizing Ms Holmes as a fraud and Theranos as a sham business that took 400 million of investor money for vaporware. I don't know if they deserve such harsh characterization but those are the accusations that have been leveled at it.

 _> I'd rather have Theranos and those like her out in the world solving these problems._

On the contrary, if Ms Holmes turns out to be more showman than scientist, it may prevent other investors from investing in future _legitimate_ biotech companies. If Theranos goes down in flames, we hope that it doesn't unfairly taint other fledgling business with real products that need capital to bring them to market.

 _> They also reduce the price of testing dramatically and present the results in a prettier, easier to read format.[...] If all Theranos ever did was make that industry more convenient, faster, and prettier using standard tools, isn't that impressive enough on its own?_

The author is mixing up the _romanticized idea_ of a desirable end state with the _actual execution_ by Theranos. All media outlets are totally on board with the _idea_. (Who doesn't want cheap and accurate blood tests?) The WSJ and others criticize the _execution_.

There are serious questions about ethics at Theranos. Both ethics in science and ethics in business. The author does not address that at all. Time will tell if this criticism is unwarranted and Ms. Holmes will ultimately prove her doubters to be wrong.

</comment><comment><USER5> I want to post an insightful response to this, but all I can seem to muster is "what a load of horseshit".

<comment> semi-extrinsic It's amusing how the article compares Theranos to Moderna (who are working on a new class of RNA therapies), and then states that "focus" is the main difference. Nevermind the fact that Moderna is trying to solve a real problem (make new cures for rare diseases), while Theranos is trying (and failing) to build a product that only solves the problem of the founder's bloodtest phobia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> >running a commercial blood testing lab, similar to Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp, and a ground-breaking R&D company at the same time.

So, they had blood-testing labs but what was so ground-breaking about their tech? Especially if according to WSJ report none of it was actually working as intended?

</comment><comment><USER7> >Uber does to the taxi industry what Theranos does to diagnostics—it makes it more convenient and less expensive while providing a much nicer user experience.

I think it's a very fitting comparison.

Uber is also a company that's notorious for ignoring the laws that concern them.

<comment><USER8> The difference is that Uber provides a service that actually works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> How did they get so far in the press? I mean they had some of the biggest names in journalism salivating all over them.

How did it get so out of hand?

</comment><comment><USER10> Is this satire?

</comment><comment><USER11> I misread "Theranos" as "Therac" in the headline, which would have been even more outrageous.</comment>


Learn ES6 and ES7 in 7 Days - <AUTHOR> https://getgood.at/js/es7-in-7-days <comment><USER2> IMO, continuing to use the ES6, ES7, ES8 naming is probably going to end up confusing more people. I thought renaming ES6 to ES2015 was a bad idea, since it was already widely used. It would've been better to make the change after ES6. However, going forward, wouldn't it be better to follow along with the ES{YYYY} convention?

For anyone interested in learning about all these newer JavaScript features, I'd highly suggest checking out the JavaScript books by Dr. Axel Rauschmayer [0]. All the books can be read freely, although I'd strongly encourage you to buy em if you find em useful. Before reading Exploring ES6, I thought I knew everything about ES2015, but skimming through it I found tons of things I hadn't been aware of. His books are the gold-standard JavaScript reference.

[0] [http://exploringjs.com](http://exploringjs.com)

<comment><USER3> Thank you!

I'd seen these posted before and remember thinking how good they looked and then promptly forgot enough I've not been able to find them again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cool website.

Some thoughts / constructive criticism: Why would I be incentivized to get the full ES7 book when there are already quality materials out there for me for free (i.e. ponyfoo's articles are amazing).

In contrast, I was very attracted to the article on building a list - it's pretty unique and shines a light on interesting CS & JS concepts.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! You are definitely right that there is a ton of material on this subject already out there. I intentionally chose a tiny subject I know a lot about that has mass appeal, so I could test the waters a bit. I have written more niche content on Crystal and also a few CS fundamentals focused articles. More niche content is planned as well as more mass appeal content until I get a feel for what the right focuses are.

My theory is that building an audience for a site like this is a mix of niche content and mass appeal content. I honestly have no idea what that mix is yet and what type of content to focus on, still figuring that out. Your feedback is massively appreciated! It will without a doubt influence the direction I take the site in!

As far as the value of this book over other resources, I would say the main separating factor is my writing style. If you like non-serious writing that leans much more towards helping you grok concepts than technical correctness then you will enjoy it. There is no stuff like "A monad is just a monoid in the category of endofunctors" to be found within my writing. Also there are lots of references :)

Thanks again for the feedback!

<comment><USER5> Looks nice! Spotted a couple of grammar errors on the front page, though:

Day three: * Learn why ES6 modules are static and why its awesome

Day five: * Learn how to generators can be used to manage promises

<comment><AUTHOR> Oops. Thanks for noticing and reporting! Will push fixes soonish!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> On day 8 you will learn how to use asynchronous code to escape a try/catch block.

On day 9 you will learn how to leak memory with closures.

On day 10 you will learn how to do unsafe numeric operations with IEEE 754 floating point precision numbers.

On day 11 you will learn that the pseudorandom generator in JS is VM specific and may not be secure.

On day 12 you will learn to leak memory by binding functions.

On day 13 you will learn to add timeouts to asynchronous operations so they don't last forever.

On day 14 you will learn what the floating point epsilon is and how number comparisons are unreliable.

<comment><AUTHOR> wow you must be fun at parties! (that is mostly just a pun on your username not meant to convey lots of snark)

anyways lol some of that is too real

jokes aside I think web development has come a long way and JS gets a bit of a bad rep. Full stack JS is insanely productive as a stack when you consider what you can build with it. It might be buggy and make you say "wat?" a lot but in exchange you can build insanely complex apps in timeframes that used to be the stuff of dreams. Granted many times what we build has no need to be so insanely complex, but when we really need it JS is there to make complicated things just magically easy to build.

<comment><USER6> I think all technologies have sharp edges somewhere, and the way to stay afloat in this business is staying alert.

Testing assumptions help, be it through quick REPL experimentation or a unit test.

JavaScript has some bad fame around unintuitive behavior but you can find these styles of issues in most languages. A random example: Scala. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiJycy6dFSQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiJycy6dFSQ)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Looks nice - and the font! ;)

On a more serious note, I know ruby, but I really want to learn JS - is this a good place to start? Or, is there a better place to start, and then come back here?

<comment><USER2> As I commented on the parent [0], I'd suggest checking out the JavaScript books by Dr. Axel Rauschmayer! In addition to learning about the language, he also published Setting up ES6, which covers how you'd go about setting up your environment in order to target node and browsers that support ES5.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14105020](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14105020)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Maybe they should "get good" at learning how to format their website for mobile. Fail!</comment>


Great Hackers - <AUTHOR> http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Why is HN letting me submit this link?

Has it never been posted here before? I really doubt that!</comment>


Could we reboot a modern civilization without fossil fuels? - <AUTHOR> http://aeon.co/magazine/technology/could-we-reboot-civilisation-without-fossil-fuels/ <comment><USER2> Necessity is the mother of invention. The Chinese had very high grade porcelain for many of their household needs. As a consequence, they never bothered to invent glass for these needs. Europe and the Middle East did, and also discovered the telescope and microscope along the way. Porcelain is arguably better for mugs and bowls and can be made much thinner than glass can. However, that happy little accident of history gave the western barbarians a slight edge in one realm of civilization.

So, could we rebuild our civilization without fossil fuels? Maybe. Likely no, it would be different and very strange to our eyes. Heck, it might even be 'better', as they then would not be dealing with our particular type of climate change. Though, they may have their own problems to deal with.

The grass is always greener...

<comment><USER3> How would you be able to make glass without fossil fuels?

We've already deforested the planet... you don't get to burn biomass.

A modern, technological civilization gets one bite at the apple, no more (unless they can manage to make it to another planet, where they have all the starting blocks to work with). You don't even get to salvage much from the previous civilization, since all but the crudest products go stale pretty quickly.

<comment><USER4> We have not "deforested the planet". What are you running on about?

You can make glass without fossil fuels. If you have energy you can make fossil fuels from air. The key part to replacing fossil fuels is having the energy. Hopefully cheap and in great supply.

<comment><USER3> > We have not "deforested the planet". What are you running on about?

Take a look at the before and after pictures. Forest covered half of North America. It's all gone. Prior to that, covered most of Europe, the British Isles.

We've deforested it. It takes something on the order a million years for that to recover, supposing it does.

> If you have energy you can make fossil fuels from air.

We're talking about a scenario where they won't have the energy to do that. It's a bootstrapping problem. Everyone commenting here is saying "but that's ok, we'll have all we need to make this fancy stuff"...

When the problem itself is posed as "what if we no longer have all we need to make fancy stuff".

<comment><USER4> >Take a look at the before and after pictures. Forest covered half of North America. It's all gone.

Pictures of North America? What pictures? North America is more heavily forested than it was 100 years ago.

>We're talking about a scenario where they won't have the energy to do that. It's a bootstrapping problem.

We can do it with nuclear power. Maybe even renewables, depending on what happens with battery technology.

>When the problem itself is posed as "what if we no longer have all we need to make fancy stuff"

That will never happen. There are options. It's just a question of what makes the most sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Actually, I think a related but better question is, what would technology look like without the assumption of a stable base-load of electricity on the grid? What if your power availability simply went up and down depending on the wind, or cloud cover, or the tides.

There's a kind of poetry I think, a kind of awareness, that your devices may spin up and down with the seasons instead of marching incessantly and unstoppably onward.

<comment><USER6> I like your idea. I've actually thought it wouldn't be that bad for people to not use electricity hungry appliances at night? Fans to bring in cool air from outside, really no need to cook or wash clothes at night. Just a small battery for TV's and a few lights?

(Heating in the winter might be tougher of course. But a house heated to 80F during the day might be 50F in the morning, so might be tolerable?) Or Find ways to store the heat during day and slowly release it at night. Tanks of water in the attic?)

<comment><USER7> > But a house heated to 80F during the day might be 50F in the morning

In my experience, a house heated to 80F can be 30F within a matter of a couple of hours, depending on the number of windows, temperature outside, and insulation levels.

I certainly don't think that's a solution to winter problems in cold-weather climates.

As for storing the heat, I'm not really sure what you mean. Surely it would be inefficient to generate extra heat during the day and store it, as opposed to just creating some in the evening?

<comment><USER8> It's cheap to add a fairly large heat sink in the middle of your house during construction. Brick or stone walls vs plaster or just a large tank of water.

Add in some passive solar and you can keep a house in the continual US warm without active heat sources fairly easily. The major issue is it stops looking like a traditional house and costs more up front, but it's not a major issue.

PS: ~6 hours * 1kw/m^2. Take a 30' x 30' roof and that's ~600 kwh per day or an average of 24kw of heating. Though you do need to keep the now off the roof in the winter, but a steep enough rough does that fairly easily.

<comment><USER9> You've got a fairly large heat sink right under every house. The trick is to "wire" into it during the build. Stick a geothermal heat transfer unit and run water pipes under the ground where the earth maintains a constant year round temperature. Use this to control the climate along with decent insulation and you'll dramatically reduce your climate control costs.

Ideally, if you can build your entire house below the frost line, you're laughing - but this isn't always feasible.

<comment><USER8> That can be a good option when you need both winter heating and summer cooling, but ground source heating tends to be surprisingly expensive. Not to mention many houses sit on bed rock.

My understanding is if you live near a stream or pond it's a great way to make heat pumps far more efficient, but otherwise just having a large rock slab in the middle of your house combined with solar heating is far cheaper for heating, but not that useful for cooling if your area does not cool off at night.

<comment><USER9> If you live near a river/stream, depending on the depth, flow and head (gradient drop) you can also use that for power generation. If it's not that deep, it'll only be useful for this in months where it's not frozen solid, but if it's deeper, then you'll still have flow under the ice to drive your turbine. In the winter however, wind tends to be more prevalent, so you can use a wind turbine to generate more power.

Of course, all this is reliant on knowledge of the local geography and climate before you purchase and get set up. If you're limited to where you are right now, you're kind of stuck with what you can put on your property right now. Which could be as limited as running on-grid but growing your own food.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> boils down to this quote: _In a world without readily mined coal, would there ever be the opportunity to test profligate prototypes of steam engines, even if they could mature and become more efficient over time? How feasible is it that a society could attain a sufficient understanding of thermodynamics, metallurgy and mechanics to make the precisely interacting components of an internal combustion engine, without first cutting its teeth on much simpler external combustion engines – the separate boiler and cylinder-piston of steam engines?_

Although there are other potential energy sources, without easily mined coal lying around, no-ones ever going to have the resources to do enough trial-and- error engineering to get anywhere.

tldr: Easily mined coal is vital, just like day 1 minecraft.

<comment><USER11> There is a _lot_ of coal left:

"America has plenty of coal. Its mines produced 1.2 billion tons in 2006, nearly all of it destined for electricity generation.31 That was a record year, but it barely scratched the surface of U.S. recoverable coal reserves, which are estimated at about 270 billion tons."

[http://www.nap.edu/reports/energy/supply.html](http://www.nap.edu/reports/energy/supply.html)

<comment><USER12> Right, but the point is, all the easy coal was mined first. To get those enormous stockpiles, you need advanced tools.

The article thus asks: if we lost those tools, and the knowledge/infra to make them, would we have enough readily available energy to practice and re- discover them, given that you need those tools to get to the remaining energy?

<comment><USER13> There is (at present) still plenty of easily mined coal in the Powder River Basin in Wyoming. Think of a few feet of overburden, then a hundred feet of coal. That could easily be mined by human muscle power.

<comment><USER14> It's also worth remembering that proven reserves are thought of in the context of current and projected global population and consumption. The thought experiment begins with a "post-global calamity/collapse" situation, in which the total population is much, much smaller.

So even what we currently think of as "small" or "negligible" deposits might be more than enough for productive use within the now-smaller population.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There was a throwaway line about this in one of Larry Niven's Ringworld novels. The Ringworld was an artificial structure, so had no fossil fuel deposits. The protagonist muses that it must be hard for the inhabitants to bootstrap civilization, because they have to go from alcohol-based biomass fuels straight to nuclear fusion.

<comment><USER16> It's also a theme in his The Mote in God's Eye.

<comment><USER17> And Philip José Farmer's Riverworld series.

<comment><USER18> But Farmers book solved it in an 'act of god' like manner by using lightning and something akin to a high voltage supercapacitor used to catch the lightning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Open source ecology's "Global Village Construction Set" has open source blue prints for various machines. The idea being that poor nations, people who dont want DRM on their tractor and post apocalyptic societies can rebuild faster. They do presume a decent amount of parts though, its not straight from caves, it presumes people will be able to access parts or scrounge them from rubble.

[http://opensourceecology.org/gvcs/](http://opensourceecology.org/gvcs/)

<comment><USER20> Those still require fuel, no?

<comment><USER21> Their tractor page include this line: We are interested in a Piston Engine Construction Set – modular, in-line scalable engine that can be adapted to spark ignition, compression ignition, or steam power.

That kind of means petro, diesel, and coal. That's not a hard fuel requirement though.

<comment><USER22> As long as it includes ethanol, then it's sorta renewable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "It took a lot of fossil fuels to forge our industrial world. Now they're almost gone." \- it's wrong from the start. We have hundreds of years of fossil fuels available with current technology. With future technology, it could be even longer.

<comment><USER24> > _" With future technology, it could be even longer."_

This sort of misses the point that under this thought experiment there is no future technology, and that to get at the vast reserves we have left would _require_ that technology. We won't be deep sea drilling or fracking if we get rebooted. Nor will we be digging holes in the prairies and having crude gush to the surface.

<comment><USER25> We simply burn the forests... given the absence of the majority of humanity there is plenty of forest to burn.

<comment><USER9> and you can burn 1 cord per acre per year without depleting the forest at all... the trick is to keep consumption to no more than that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The article presents a very interesting thought experiment, but I think the answer is flatly no, with explanation for this belief being the context of the article.

Based on the narrative, I think the premise and definition of "modern civilization" was basically how our society is configured today, regions, space between cities, social architecture, travel, available goods and resources, etc. Under that thought, the answer is as I said before, flatly no.

Without fossil fuels, the world could not take shape in the way it has due to the sheer density of energy for its weight. We currently have nothing else like that, and all of our advancements into new generations of energy rely on products manufactured with fossil fuels, cheap fossil fuels at that.

Even today, we do not have such a resource readily available and as safe as fossil fuels.

That being said, "a modern civilization" could come into existence without fossil fuels. I do not doubt the ingenuity of humans whether I am in the same period of time with them or not.

My belief on this is based on how our society would be structured when you cannot travel so far away from the epicenter of a city because of the cost of fuel.

This type of thought experiment is fun.

<comment><USER25> We have things far more energy dense, like RTGs and conventional nuclear power plants.

<comment><USER26> Yes, but the only way we can manipulate those energy sources is predicated by the existence of cheap malleable fossil fuels

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Wouldn't fission be an easier and more useful (reliable) energy technology than solar?

No nuclear energy technologies get a mention in the article which seems like a strange omission.

<comment><USER28> If all conventional power was replaced with the current technology used in most nuclear power plants we would be out of fissionable material within a year. I'm not sure how long it would last if we use breeder reactors though...

<comment><USER29> I think you mean fissile instead of fissionable [1]. Current reactor technologies consume a very small fraction of fissionable material. Reactors discharge nearly as much fissionable material as they take in. And the lifetime of uranium resource is highly dependent on the price you are willing to pay. Seawater contains enough uranium to supply all reactors in the world at current consumption rates for ~60,000 years [2] estimated to only be about 8x the current spot price [3]. Using fast reactor technology that has already been developed and researched heavily could also stretch the resource by another factor of 100X or more.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fissile_material#Fissile_vs_fi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fissile_material#Fissile_vs_fissionable)

[2] [http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will- glob...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-global- uranium-deposits-last/)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_uranium#Seawater](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_uranium#Seawater)

<comment><USER28> I'm only accounting for conventional methods of extracting uranium. Extracting uranium from sea water is still highly experimental.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The article misses geothermal energy, which doesn't exactly require an existing industrialized society to use while providing abundant thermal energy. Places like Iceland, Yellowstone, Hawaii, etc. could easily become Humanity v2's centers of industrial reconstruction.

</comment><comment><USER31> Anyone ever read "A World Made by Hand" by Kunstler? He looked at this kind of thing back during the peak oil scare in 2008. It's not a happy book.

</comment><comment><USER32> What about aluminium? It's pretty much the reverse--hard to mine, easy to work. So that's a big bonus pre-fossil fuel society didn't have, the aluminium is already mined and out there.

Now on the other hand, I find it puzzling how so many people in this thread (and also part of the assumptions in the article) seem to forget all the things we could do perfectly well without fossil fuels.

Glass? Brick? Mortar? Is it maybe because in America you don't see as many obviously before-fossil-fuel buildings that contain all these materials?

I don't see many people mentioning specific years, neither could could I find a clear number on several WP pages, but considering most of the graphs about production/consumption, we didn't start using fossil fuels until about 1800-1850 (with coal), with significant numbers not even beginning to appear until after 1850.

Any idea what sort of technologies we already had _before_ that? It's not too bad :) Yet, the Industrial Revolution was already on its way since 1760.

We had microscopes, architecture, surgery, books, printing presses ...

And just because most things today are made out of plastic doesn't mean they have to be. A lot of those things exist only because plastic is so ridiculously cheap it's not even cost-effective to _develop_ an alternative. Remember old things being built to last? That's how you make up for the ridiculous cheapness of plastic. It almost sounds cheesy and old-timey to repeat, but if you do the mental math it adds up: a styrofoam cup is maybe 1000x as cheap, so it made economical sense to consume and throw away. I already easily use a coffee mug on average 1000s of times (daily coffee times a bunch of years) before it breaks, and that's without even trying. Some of the plastic things, like shopping bags, don't even really last if you try (shopping bag, used four times before it rips somewhere?) that's the sort of thing we'll stop making as soon as the margins stop being insane and use the resources spent on something 1000x more durable instead of 1000x as cheap. Remember that oil and/or plastic won't just 100% disappear, suddenly. It's a really weird luxury state we live in at the moment, but plastic is still pretty awesome as a material even if it's quite expensive and not as plentiful (just look at glass or fine pottery), in particular as durable alternatives become economical again.

</comment><comment><USER33> These ideas are based partly on faulty reasoning, I made a post on exactly that topic a few days back, here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9357326](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9357326)

In short, it's unlikely that a civilizational reboot would be bereft of fossil fuels to spur its early stages of development and growth (they most important stages, by far) because such stages require very little fossil fuels compared to an industry in full swing and many small, lower quality, less profitable (though still easily exploited) reserves will have been passed over by modern industry. It's unlikely that even in a severe future resource crunch that every coal mine will be stripped bare and every oil well pumped dry. We won't resort to digging out a pittance worth of coal out of some abandoned mine that is now in the middle of a suburb, we'll do as we're doing now, adapting new technologies to push the boundaries of new, substantive reserves. Such as open pit strip mining of coal using drag lines, fracking, tar sands, deep ocean drilling, etc.

But those small reserves, those reserves that are economically disadvantageous and inconvenient for us to exploit today, they would probably be adequate for bootstrapping industry again, likely sufficiently to enable them to develop more sustainable approaches. Or simply other ways of doing things. It would take hundreds of years of intensive use for humanity to exploit all of the easily extractable coal in the world, I put the odds of that happening as very low (if humanity can survive a few hundred more years then they have a pretty good chance of surviving indefinitely, in my opinion). And with coal you can do anything else, make plastics, make hydrocarbons, what-have-you.

Mind, I'm not advocating this, I'm simply pointing out the flaw in the logic here. Personally I'd rather we switched over to mostly nuclear power sooner rather than later.

</comment><comment><USER34> Is this a candidate for the great filter?

The word 'filter' doesn't appear in the article, or on this page (at time of typing), but the whole argument really seems to lend itself to the possibility that a complicating requirement of a civilisation advanced enough to talk to (or visit) us, requires at least one long iteration of presumably CO2-rich, plant-abundant, age - followed by a sufficiently long period to turn that into what we think of as fossil fuels. And _then_ have intelligent life pop up that can work out how to discover, obtain, and utilise that resource.

<comment><USER35> Actually, yes.

I am going to play fanboy here and recommend Star's Reach: A Novel of the Deindustrial Future. [http://www.amazon.com/Stars-Reach-Novel-Deindustrial- Future/...](http://www.amazon.com/Stars-Reach-Novel-Deindustrial- Future/dp/098437647X/)

I don't want to spoil it for future readers, but the basic premise is: the solution to the Fermi paradox is that intelligent life is fairly common in the galaxy, but instead of nuking themselves off, most species that achieve complex technology wreak their native planet's environment and trigger a civilization collapse.

Later on, some species are able to bounce back and rebuild a somewhat advanced civilization, but the mix of taboos against 'rapid growth' and lack of highly concentrated energy sources make those civilizations much more conservative, and the common memes of Scifi (e.g. the "technology indistinguishable from magic" thing) are never realized.

Think a sort of cross over between Dune and the Hunger Games.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> There's a paradox here, the problem and the solution, is literally wholesale asset destruction. We'd have to abandon a lot of infrastructure. A good portion would even need to be recycled, not for reclamation, but to prevent ecological disaster ensuing from its just rotting in place.

And that's sorta why we get entertained with cataclysmic scifi themes, because it gives a "no choice" instigator for that asset destruction. But doing this by choice and quickly? Difficult.

</comment><comment><USER18> For the number of people left there will be plenty of fuel even if it isn't fossil fuel. Rebooting modern civilization would be a breeze for the few that would make it to the other side and the energy available would put an upper limit on the number of people we could sustain.

Main occupation for the foreseeable future: undertaker.

</comment><comment><USER37> Can we reboot a modern civilization with less consumption, less work but for all, and more free time?

<comment><USER35> Probably not, or at least not us.

If technology was going to give us a paradise of universal coverage of basic needs and free time self enrichment for all, that would have happened on the late 19th or early 20th centuries. Instead, we got 2 world wars and a big economic depression in between.

The problem is we are social primates, and the alpha ape cannot afford to let all the beta apes to live in peace singing kumbaya; otherwise, he would not have remained an alpha for much longer. So, even if technology/machines were providing more and more of our needs, bigger and improved ways to enforce artificial scarcity over the low status levels of society were put in practice.

And where straightforward coercion failed, artificial needs and wants rose to the task, creating a prison of the mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Well, for one thing and a major enabler for the green revolution is nitrate fertilizers - which is a petroleum product. Without it, our population would be limited to a much lower number.

Also, without the food security that these fertilizers give us, much progress would not happen.

</comment><comment><USER39> I've seen three or so pieces like this in the last month, they all seem to have been inspired by a (much more depressing) short narrative piece Adbusters did a couple of months ago.

</comment><comment><USER40> The fundamental premise that we're running out of fossil fuels is erroneous.

Engage dorm-room palaver....

</comment><comment><USER41> Yeast is the mother of civilization. It gave us bread, beer, and wine.

Everything after that is details. :)

<comment><USER35> I like how you think, but I don't think that's the same question as was posed by the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Biomass. Coal. Cellulose. Lots of alternative paths could be followed if necessary.

</comment><comment><USER43> What about (recoverable) nuclear power plants?

<comment><USER44> Nuclear fuels need to be regularly swapped out for reprocessing as the fissionable material is used up. To get nuclear plants online, you'd have to have a good neutron source to kickstart a breeding process.

<comment><USER45> All you need is enough smoke detectors...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Yes, America would be fine. But China/India where the vast vast majority of pollution originates would collapse.

</comment><comment><USER47> does nuclear power count? it kind of solves the energy crisis if you are willing to ignore the hippies and the accidents

<comment><USER48> Actually nuclear plants could be placed in remote islands so electricity would be brought using underwater cables. But then - I think people would never harness nuclear power since it was created as an alternative to coal and oil. Without them no one would even think of using such a thing.

<comment><USER47> i think nuclear power was realised as a result of the revolution in physics at the turn of the century... nothing to do with looking for alternatives.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Quoting an interesting comment that was flagged for some reason:

 _saltedshiv 1 hour ago [flagged]The article presents a very interesting thought experiment, but I think the answer is flatly no, with explanation for this belief being the context of the article.Based on the narrative, I think the premise and definition of "modern civilization" was basically how our society is configured today, regions, space between cities, social architecture, travel, available goods and resources, etc. Under that thought, the answer is as I said before, flatly no.Without fossil fuels, the world could not take shape in the way it has due to the sheer density of energy for its weight. We currently have nothing else like that, and all of our advancements into new generations of energy rely on products manufactured with fossil fuels, cheap fossil fuels at that.Even today, we do not have such a resource readily available and as safe as fossil fuels.That being said, "a modern civilization" could come into existence without fossil fuels. I do not doubt the ingenuity of humans whether I am in the same period of time with them or not.My belief on this is based on how our society would be structured when you cannot travel so far away from the epicenter of a city because of the cost of fuel.This type of thought experiment is fun._

Copy/paste on Android lost the original paragraphs. The original: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9368235](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9368235)

</comment><comment><USER50> Industrial civilization is definitely a one shot deal. All the surface metal deposits are gone. You need massive industrial infrastructure to access the remaining ores. You couldn't even progress to the iron or bronze age after a reboot.

<comment><USER51> >All the surface metal deposits are gone.

Well, they're not so much gone as converted into various structures all over the globe. I see no reason why later civilizations couldn't mine the remains of former cities.

<comment><USER52> Pretty much this - mining would be done on old landfill sites and cities, at least for metals. Fossil fuels are a different type of problem - we're not going to get all that carbon back. Conversely maybe a reboot civilization would develop differently - forests to solar thermal to PV and batteries. It would be slower, but certainly possible.

<comment><USER10> How are you going to do any metalwork with your scavenged metal? Heat it up with a big mirror? Its very very hard without high energy density fuel. The article suggests charcoal (did you read the article?) but thats problematic too.

<comment><USER52> Just because it would be a slower development path doesn't mean it's impossible. It would be slower, but any given civilization would have only a few viable options for development - so yes, I think you'd find a civilization which values glass and mirrors and polishing technology to get the heat necessary for metal working.

<comment><USER53> I don't think a civilization built on a shit load of aluminium scrap is going to develop very slowly. Don't forget aluminium is a wonder metal that's only been around for like a hundred years.

All really important metals can be melted at temperatures that can easily be reached with a well built furnace and natural fuel like wood.

<comment><USER9> Plus, we already know what we did to get to where we are now. We can adapt that knowledge to get back to where we are now. It's going forward we're going to be stumbling in the dark, but we're doing that now anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Steampunk would finally become real

<comment><USER55> There are some Amish communities that take advantage of pneumatic power. Pressurize a bunch of air, and you have a ready supply of energy to drive turbines that can do the work that on-grid houses do with electrical appliances. The only downside is that you do the pressurization by going out back and turning a big crank for awhile.

It's not precisely steampunk in the sense that you don't have too many sentient barrels running around, but it's impressive.

<comment><USER56> At least in the Ohio Amish communities (in businesses), I believe they actually use diesel-driven air compressors out back.

They're not averse to fossil fuels, because you have to pay for them as you go. Getting on grid means you're going into debt for a month at a time. That's at least a big part of their aversion to electric.

<comment><USER57> Is it really just that? Plenty of poorer communities already have prepaid electricity (put coins in the meter). Surely someone would be willing to sell them some at a small markup.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> The fundamental premise that we're running out of fossil fuels is false.

Let the palaver begin...

</comment><comment><USER58> _sigh_

Can't we stop burning stuff to make things go?

<comment><USER59> What do you propose instead?

There are only a few fundamental sources of energy (which is a non-negotiable component of "making things go"):

\- Nuclear decay (geothermal, RTG)

\- Nuclear fusion/fission (nuclear power, solar power)

\- Redox reactions (fossil fuel, food digestion)

\- Planetary momentum (geothermal, tidal)

<comment><USER60> I wouldn't call solar power "nuclear-based", unless you want to call most other energy sources (including fossil fuels, wind, tides, ...) "nuclear- based" too (since the primary energy source is the sun, which generates energy via nuclear reactions, of course, but is besides the point)</comment></comment></comment>


A public cloud taking a stand against government intrusion - <AUTHOR> http://www.cloudsigma.com/en/blog/2013/06/27/55-your-data-and-privacy-with-cloudsigma

<comment><USER2> _Again, we are not the police and not a court of law. Authorities can and do require access to customer data from time to time in a way justified by local law; we comply with the law in those cases._

Really?! And what are you suggesting your principled stance is going to be when they shove a law in your face that violates and contradicts another law or an edict or the US Constitution you grew up believing was sacrosanct?

The problem is that they make any law they want to make, then keep it secret. Then they enforce the law they just made, forcing you into a position where you either have to give them the middle finger or subject your business to the possibility of being shut down - legally. Should you decide you want to challenge the enforcement of a law you believe is illegal, on behalf of one of your customers, you can't tell the press, you can't have an open proceeding in view of public scrutiny, and you can't inform your customer of the challenge. When the ruling eventually comes down (from a court who's sworn to as much secrecy as the agency you were fighting), you aren't even allowed to share _that_ with anyone either.

I applaud what you probably believe is a line in the sand. But we can't even get to the real debate of privacy until we are allowed to challenge the very instruments that lay claim to authority over us... in public. It's that simple.

<comment><USER3> That's exactly why the users can no longer trust the service or the government to do right by them. Client-side encryption is the only way to be sure your rights aren't being trampled.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Excellent points. One other thing I'd like to see is a commitment to notify customers to the extent permitted by any court orders and to fight for additional notification rights (as Twitter has done).

 _We have set-up our corporate structure so that each cloud location is managed by a local company and therefore subject only to that jurisdiction (our holding company is Swiss and unlike US holding companies it has no concept of extra-territorial jurisdiction, if that were to change, we 'd change holding company, it is that simple)._

IANAL, but this seems a very significant point. However, I wonder if the US claims jurisdiction on the parent company if there's a US-based subsidiary?

<comment><USER5> The Patriot act has provisions that can potentially be applied to subsidiaries of US companies abroad but not vice versa. If you think about it it would mean shareholders of companies could be pursued globally under US law just for owning shares in a US company. It's all around a bad situation right now with conflicting sets of rules and that's without a doubt.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for te clarification!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Of course, the majority of these feature are shared by most or all of the very "biggest competitor" cloud providers they are comparing themselves with, and in many cases more effectively than this tiny company possibly can. So that's a bit misleading, to claim these as competitive advantages.

The corporate structure point is interesting, but I'm skeptical about its legal efficacy.

The part that's most interesting to me is the part of #1 where they say "sole root/administrative access" and "we have no file system level access". Is this actually technically possible, given that it's not just storage (obligatory props to Tarsnap!), but actual computing? I mean, I know that there are encryption schemes that allow you to do certain particular kinds of transformation on the encrypted data without unencrypting it... but isn't it impossible to do what they say, run a generalized IaaS/PaaS, without being able to see your data?

In summary, is there a single competitive advantage here this is all of

        * actually a competitive difference, and
        * is actually possible, and
        * actually has any effect

    ?

<comment><USER7> If the "biggest competitor"'s head quarter is in the US then yes, they have a competitive advantage. If you're using Amazon or Microsoft then they can be compelled to have over your EU data. [http://www.zdnet.com/blog/igeneration/microsoft-admits- patri...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/igeneration/microsoft-admits-patriot-act- can-access-eu-based-cloud-data/11225)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The blog post claims that they only accept https on a page that is not served over https: [https://www.evernote.com/shard/s120/sh/e57bad7c-811d-4632-ad...](https://www.evernote.com/shard/s120/sh/e57bad7c-811d-4632-adaf-1bc2eb492cd5/2d5ac67eef5c1c3f8380ad9bd40de74c)

</comment><comment><USER9> [http://prism-break.org/](http://prism-break.org/)

</comment><comment><USER10> ...and the NSA has tapped into every strand of fiber in the world making this sales pitch meaningless. They already have access. They only request access to allow what they already know to be admissible in the courts.

<comment><USER11> If CloudSigma is using SSL with forward secrecy, tapping the fiber would be pretty useless.

Unless you're suggesting the NSA has compromised CloudSigma's internal network, which is possible.

<comment><USER5> we do use forward secrecy for all our client facing services and of course accept https only. we are also looking at upgrading from 128bit to either 256bit or even 512bit to offer a further 'extended runway' against future direct decryption :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Great!</comment>