Maersk installed 100-foot-tall rotating sails on one of its tankers - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/maersk-tankers-turns-to-wind-power-to-cut-soaring-fuel-costs-1535641239 <comment><USER2> Some years ago I read The Box by Marc Levinson, a history of containerized shipping. Highly recommend it. If you live in SF and have wondered about the numerous barely used piers, this book explains their history as well - and why the major container terminal ended up in Oakland instead.

One of the painful early lessons for the industry was the discovery that minimizing operational costs (particularly fuel and maintenance) trumps every other value. A pioneering containerized shipping company went bankrupt pursuing a high-speed shipping strategy that cost marginally more than low- speed competition.

Edit: Oh, there is a second edition! Updated link.

Edit: replaced unhelpful snark.

[https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0691170819/](https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0691170819/)

<comment><USER3> Ignorant question: if operational costs trump all, especially fuel (Maersk says in the article 60% of operational cost) why not pure sail power? Is there some other maintenance cost or infeasability there? Or is there another hidden variable that is not satisfied?

<comment><USER4> I've long imagined some fun possibilities for this.

I picture a small-ish shipping ship, say something moving 20 or 30 containers only, fully autonomous (100% crewless) with sails and solar only powering it. Solar electric motors handling the near-land operations and "not enough wind" conditions, sails otherwise. If you had autonomous loading and unloading, you would have zero variable/operational cost.

I am certain there are very good reasons this would never work, but I still love the idea.

<comment><USER5> The reason autonomous/crewless isn't really feasible or worth investing in is that most container ships only have a crew of about a dozen, and they are generally from low-wage countries so that their salary costs are far out- weighted by the fuel.

<comment><USER6> Maybe a little bit picky, but the average size of a crew on a, say, 9000 TEU container ship is actually closer to two dozen. 20-24 most of the time.

The number can rise further with more complex cargo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's called the Flettner rotor, it uses the Magnus Effect. Cool stuff but not exactly new tech. It gives a nice read, here's some links to wikipedia on the topic: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_effect) and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotor_ship](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotor_ship)

I'm curious of what will be the results.

<comment><USER8> They claim 7-10% reduction in fuel usage, with fuel making up 60% of their total costs.

Given that they soon expect to be spending $5 billion/year on fuel for 800 ships, fuel spend is a bit north of $6 million/year for an "average" ship. But size seems to vary widely (they note that only the 80 of their largest ships are being considered for these sails).

At an installation cost of $2 million, saving 10% of an "average" ship would return 600k per year, or a 3.5 year paypack, which seems well worth doing where possible. And they'll obviously get better than that on their 80 largest.

Not a magic bullet by any means, but certainly seems worth using.

<comment><USER9> I think that's something we lose sight of in software sometimes, where we're used to some token effort improving performance by 10x or more. In the real world, if you can make something 10% more efficient, that's a game changing, industry conquering advantage.

<comment><USER10> Too true. Like the new dodge ram etorque, using its electric motor to replace the alternator, it can launch the truck and let the combustion motor take over at highway speeds. 1-2 mpg is a large improvement for a truck. 1500 dollar option that pays for itself, and a good step towards getting battery tech into trucks.

I've seen it mentioned boats/ships using electric assist will also be another catalyst for battery tech integration, fuel costs on those large ships are always a topic.

Bolt on solutions that are affordable with quick turn around on investment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Copying the first comment from WSJ 'cause it's interesting:

> _These are known as Flettner rotors after the German engineer Anton Flettner > who invented them and made the first rotor sailing ship in 1924, with one > sailing one across the Atlantic in 1926 - and they are not turbo sails. They > have generally been in disuse as it has been deemed that the energy expended > in propulsion by Flettner rotors was higher than that for propellers - > perhaps it seems with modern materials, wind monitoring and computer > assisted controls this has been tilted to the favor of Flettner rotors. > Flettner also invented trim tabs which any large power boat operator knows > very well._

> _An interesting note, Flettner was considered so valuable to the Germans in > WW2 that Heinrich Himmler, the head of the Gestapo saw to it that Flettner > 's Jewish wife was escorted to Sweden for her safety for the duration of the > war._

<comment><USER12> >> An interesting note, Flettner was considered so valuable to the Germans in WW2 that Heinrich Himmler, the head of the Gestapo saw to it that Flettner's Jewish wife was escorted to Sweden for her safety for the duration of the war.

That's nice and all but he still helped the nazis with military research while many of his colleagues fled, Einstein included.

<comment><USER13> It's hard to understand, as that's more or less moving her so he doesn't kill her.

<comment><USER12> Great for his fam, bad for the other 8M jews (my grandparents' families included)

<comment><USER14> ... so Flettner's a bad guy? (I've ancestors who perished there too, you can't lump everyone, including those involuntarially held, as this situation seems, in the same bag)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Viking Line installed similar 80-foot rotor sail on a LNG powered Cruise Ferry on the route between Helsinki-Stockholm. It reduces power usage roughly 20 percent (900 tonnes CO2 annually). Compared to tankers ferries don't carry significant amount of weight even when they are full. They are basically full of air and 60-100 cars or trucks.

Together with using LNG, periodically cleaning the bottom of the ship, slower speed and connecting to electric grid while in harbor the CO2 emissions are down significantly.

The best way to reduce energy consumption for a ship is to reduce the speed and make thinner ships. This is the new trend in shipbuilding. New cargo ships optimized for slow speed don't have the bulbous bow because it does not increase efficiency in lower speeds.

<comment><USER16> > Viking Line installed similar 80-foot rotor sail on a LNG powered Cruise > Ferry on the route between Helsinki-Stockholm.

Turku - Stockholm, actually.

> The best way to reduce energy consumption for a ship is to reduce the speed > and make thinner ships.

Do you mean thinner as in narrower, or thinner materials to save weight? If you mean narrower, I've understood bigger ships tend to have a length/width ratio of about 6:1, as a rule of thumb compromise between seakeeping ability, fuel consumption, cargo space etc. Do you have some more information about design tradeoffs going into such narrower ships?

> New cargo ships optimized for slow speed don't have the bulbous bow because > it does not increase efficiency in lower speeds.

Oh, interesting! Any links for further reading on this topic?

<comment><USER15> Ah yes. you are correct on both counts: Turku and narrower (I had brainfarts).

reading:

[https://gcaptain.com/cma-cgms-22000-teu-ships-to-feature- bul...](https://gcaptain.com/cma-cgms-22000-teu-ships-to-feature-bulbless-bow- made-for-slow-steaming/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Another option is skysails (giant kites that drag the ship forward):

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkySails](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkySails)

Hopefully someday almost all ships have a mix of these things + maybe run on algae-based advanced biofuels or something like that.

<comment><USER18> Edit: I'm wrong, see responses bellow for correction

Original message: I seem to remember (if I'm wrong please correct me) that the Magnus effect works regardless of the direction of the wind, whereas the sky sail needs the wind to be roughly in the same direction of travel.

They could be combined but as far as I understand these spinning columns are more generic

<comment><USER19> You are, unfortunately, incorrect. The Magnus effect doesn't gain you anything other than the helpful drag of a tall cylinder when going in the same direction as the wind. Rotating it only pulls you sideways, which doesn't help.

However, it can pull you forward when the wind is coming from the side. You change the direction of rotation based on which side the wind is coming from.

Without tacking, no (edit: solely) wind power systems will help when going straight upwind.

<comment><USER20> > You are, unfortunately, incorrect.

No, you are, unfortunately, incorrect.

> Without tacking, no wind power systems will help when going straight upwind.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windmill_ship](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windmill_ship)

<comment><USER21> He was right that "The Magnus effect doesn't gain you anything other than the helpful drag of a tall cylinder when going in the same direction as the wind."

In fact, the Magnus rotors will not provide any usefull thrust is both upwind and downwind scenarios.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotor_ship#/media/File:Points_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotor_ship#/media/File:Points_of_sail_for_rotorships.svg)

<comment><USER22> > In fact, the Magnus rotors will not provide any usefull thrust is both > upwind and downwind scenarios.

If the wind is coming from behind won't it simply push the stationary cylinder, adding some thrust?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've been wondering why shipping companies haven't been doing this for years now. Whenever I brought it up with friends they would say it's probably not worth the effort, but I can't see how it wouldn't be worth it. It's essentially free energy to help move the ship around. Got to say, I feel vindicated by this story.

<comment><USER24> Essentially free energy... except the cost to install, the cost to operate, maintainable and of cause the cost when one of them breaks and causes damage.

For a lot of these "why don't they just" the answer is simply that they did the math and saw too small an upside for too big a risk.

They are trying this out to see if the overall concept works in practice or if it falls short.

<comment><USER25> Or they never did the math, assuming it wouldn't work out because of cost to operate, maintain and insure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Magnus Effect.

As sled runners are to wheels, so the wing is to the Magnus effect rotor.

Lift goes up with the square of the radius. Think about that.

I'm in the process of ramping up a toy company that builds and sells kits for Magnus Effect drones.

I plan to just keep making them bigger, first for cargo then for mass transport. It will be necessary to move people efficiently by the million in the decades to come. Already floods and wildfire have begun to increase, soon enough the waters will rise and it will be needful to move our asses.

By using a simple recursive-fractal infrastructure there's pretty much no upper limit. Cf. "Tensarity"[1] and Alexander G. Bell's cellular kites[2]. Also Bucky Fuller's Cloud Nine[3]. Self-powered[4][5].

I imagine huge aerial machines, more like gauzy flying buildings than aircraft, that carry a million or more people at a time. Cities in the sky.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensairity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensairity)

[2] [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Alexander+G.+Bell%27s+cellular+kit...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Alexander+G.+Bell%27s+cellular+kites&t=hj&atb=v110-1_b&iax=images&ia=images)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_Nine_%28tensegrity_spher...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_Nine_%28tensegrity_sphere%29)

[4] Tethered power generators, "Magenn" company, defunct? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airborne_wind_turbine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airborne_wind_turbine)

[5] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaneless_ion_wind_generator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaneless_ion_wind_generator)

</comment><comment><USER27> This should be a big deal for combatting CO2 emissions as well. I believe it was never refuted after it came out a few years ago that ~15 of these ships emit the same CO2 as all cars in the world? [https://inews.co.uk/news/long- reads/cargo-container-shipping...](https://inews.co.uk/news/long-reads/cargo- container-shipping-carbon-pollution/)

<comment><USER28> The article says "pollution" not CO2. Given that they burn bunker fuel (very dirty oil left over after things like gasoline are refined away), it's likely the article means particulate or sulfur emissions.

The CO2 emissions are easily estimated and not even close. A container ship can burn 225 tons of bunker fuel per day at normal cruising speed.[1] At a generous 300 days in transit per year (they spend time in port loading / unloading / waiting), that's 67,500 tons of fuel per year. It's a massive number, but a drop in the bucket relative to the 913 million tons of oil consumed by Americans every year, the majority of which is spent on motor vehicle fuels.[2]

Even assigning just 50% of US oil consumption to cars, you're comparing about 450 million tons consumed by American drivers versus about 1 million tons for 15 large cargo ships.

[1] [https://transportgeography.org/?page_id=5955](https://transportgeography.org/?page_id=5955) [2] [https://www.statista.com/statistics/264825/oil- consumption-i...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/264825/oil-consumption- in-the-united-states/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> [https://www.fullwsj.com/articles/maersk-tankers-turns-to- win...](https://www.fullwsj.com/articles/maersk-tankers-turns-to-wind-power- to-cut-soaring-fuel-costs-1535641239)

</comment><comment><USER30> > Fuel makes up approximately 60% of our total cost and this technology has a > significant potential to cut fuel consumption by 7% to 10% on the ships that > it will be installed."

Jesus, I'm surprised we haven't seen all sorts of crazy ideas coming out of Maersk to reduce this overhead given that it's the bulk of their cost. Wind pillar things seem kinda tame compared to the shit I'd try to pull to save that level of money... Across all vessels no less!!

</comment><comment><USER31> Wonder why ships aren't trying solar panels and electric motors and auto- pilot... they're out in clear Sun, have a large surface area, and no traffic...

<comment><USER32> Two problems with boats and solar propulsion: 1) they need 24/7 power. 2) Using a random LG 330 W panel on top of the Edith Maersk, it would take an array 1/3 of a mile by 1/2 of a mile in area to match Edith's 80,000 kW engine power output. Edith is 1/4 mile long and 3/100ths of a mile wide.

Quite a gap, and thats before you start factoring in batteries for the night, structure to support the array, storms...

<comment><USER33> > 2) Using a random LG 330 W panel on top of the Edith Maersk, it would take > an array 1/3 of a mile by 1/2 of a mile in area to match Edith's 80,000 kW > engine power output. Edith is 1/4 mile long and 3/100ths of a mile wide.

Back of the envelope math says we're short by a factor of ~108. We can get savings in a few places:

(1) We don't have to match the full engine output with solar. Many container ships use super slow shipping at a fraction of the power, [1] says 10% engine load. With batteries you can still increase throughput substantially when needed.

(2) Panels can exceed current ship dimensions, perhaps greatly (tow a long tail of solar panels on floats?). Let's just go for double width and length for now.

(3) Efficiency gains. We're at 20% in back of envelope above but I can get that for my house. Let's say Maersk ponies up for 30% cells.

Still some ground to make up but at least we're in bullshitting distance of claiming it's viable.

[1] [http://articles.maritimepropulsion.com/article/Turbocharger-...](http://articles.maritimepropulsion.com/article/Turbocharger- Retrofit-Aids-Slow-Steaming41703.aspx)

> thats before you start factoring in batteries for the night, structure to > support the array

Presumably there's some space/weight savings in not having an 80MW engine.

<comment><USER34> > Panels can exceed current ship dimensions

They really can't, though. Sure, there's plenty of space when the ship is out on the high seas, but any time the ship needs to go into port (kind of the point of a ship) or navigate tight waters such as straits or canals, then the footprint of the panels really has to not exceed the footprint of the ship.

<comment><USER35> it is not a b/w choice between 100% solar or 100% oil, hybrid solutions could work and address the gaps solar/electric cannot handle,even 10-20% emission savings could mean a lot .

Also it doesn't have to be solar directly, an electric propulsion system which can use hydrogen or high density battery/ storage which plugs into the grid eventually is good enough.

You don't need to drag the cells with the ship, they could be perhaps stationary middle of the ocean and charge the replacement batteries and you could line few such charging stations near the major shipping lines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> This led me to wonder how important height was a restriction on ships. Turns out "air draft" is reported for major ports.

Some interesting findings: The Panama Canal has an air draft of 201 ft imposed by the Bridge of the Americas; the Port of Oakland has an air draft of 220 ft imposed by the Golden Gate Bridge.

Height from waterline does not appear to be typically listed for ships, but I would guess that most cargo vessels do not have 100 ft of clearance to spare. I think this means these sails would only be fitted to vessels which generally don't care about height restrictions (e.g. ships larger than Panamax) or ships running predictable routes.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_draft](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_draft)

<comment><USER37> I believe the unloaded freeboard of a typical containership is 80-100' The bridge (navigation deck) is higher, but the "sails" would be mounted from the deck, so I expect most ships would be OK.

<comment><USER36> Right, but container ships are stacked with containers higher than the top deck. So maybe this only makes sense for tankers and bulk carriers, or any large cargo vessel that is _not_ a container ship.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Calling these sails is a stretch, and IMHO just an attempt to market them as more "green" than they really are.

They may as well be propellers. It's great to improve the fuel efficiency of these vessels, but the word sail evokes a mental image profitably inconsistent with reality.

</comment><comment><USER39> What these ships are mostly surrounded by are waterfields that go as far as you can see. Can they come up with some sort of rolled flexible solar panels that once ship goes into full sail they release their "solar tail" behind that floats on the water surface and captures sun and turns it into electricity for ships' engines?

I mean 300 meters square of solar panel should be sufficient to push the ship at its nominal speed. For free!

<comment><USER40> I think you're vastly overestimating the power output of solar cells.

Using 20% efficiency panels gives us 0.2KW/m^2/hr.

According to this Quora answer [1] a small container ship uses 15,000kW: for one 24 hour day that means it needs 360,000KWH in energy.

If we assume 10 hours a day of full sunlight then we need 180,000m^2 (equivalent to 18 hectares or 44.48 acres or 33.7 football fields) of solar panels.

This of course overly optimistic as it assumes no drag nor increase in power needed to haul these solar panels (and batteries for use overnight, etc.).

[1] [https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-it-cost-to-fuel-a- cargo-...](https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-it-cost-to-fuel-a-cargo-ship)

<comment><USER41> Nitpick, but 0.2KW/m^2/hr would be an acceleration, not a constant rate. You mean 0.2KW/m^2 - this is constant power output. W already includes a per-unit- time component. I'm nitpicky on this topic because of how many professionally- written articles I've seen make similar mistakes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> My small 12 meter long boat has a sail area of 900sqft. When sailing perpendicular to the wind it captures pretty much all of that.

The sail on that ship is 100' high, and looking at the aspect is around 15' wide, or 1500sqft. That type of sail I think only harneses half of that area, so half of 1500' or 750' best case.

I can say with complete confidence that if all the energy from two of my boats were towing one of those ships, even in a hurricane, it's going to increase fuel efficiency by approximately 0.0%

EDIT: I just did a random sample of wind speed [1] of points on the globe on international shipping routes [2] and it looks like they are generally around 10-15km/h. Thats barely enough to get my boat up to speed. There is a reason sailboats take very particular routes and don't just go from point A to B

[1] [https://earthjustice.org/sites/default/files/world-cargo- shi...](https://earthjustice.org/sites/default/files/world-cargo-shipping- lanes_957b.png)

[2] [https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/ort...](https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-157.21,10.45,671/loc=-131.119,24.791)

<comment><USER43> These use rotor sails, which are different than what you have on your boat. Unless of course you also have rotor sails?

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Noting the use of the plural, How many are installed on the ship? We see two(?) in the photo? What's the practical limit?

> has installed 100-foot-tall rotating cylinders on one of its product tankers

</comment><comment><USER45> found this video explaining it [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OSrvzNW9FE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OSrvzNW9FE)

</comment><comment><USER46> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_effect)

</comment><comment><USER47> I hear this is what Nautilus Labs is trying to solve [https://nautiluslabs.co](https://nautiluslabs.co)

</comment><comment><USER48> In a different related article I learned that Ro-Ro vessels are Roll-on Roll- off cargo vs Lo-Lo vessels which are Lift on - Lift off.

And I thought IT loved acronyms.

</comment><comment><USER49> Amazing, new, disruptive technology for shipping...

Now who has the patent on SAILS!

This kind of reminds me of constant remakes of Spiderman ;0)

</comment><comment><USER50> Was hoping to see more than 10% reduction. Seems fuel prices could easily absorb that quickly.

</comment><comment><USER51> A little embarrassed to ask but why would normal sails not work?

<comment><USER52> maintenance. the materials used for actual sails stretches eventually and is less effective. presumably these towers have very little to replace.

<comment><USER53> They have a very expensive, hard to replace, and high maintenance bearing at the base of the tower that carries the full force of the sail leveraged by a long moment arm. This bearing (along with lack of height = low wind) has been the reason that Flettner sails and wind turbines haven't been economical in the past.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> How loud are these when they are rotating?

</comment><comment><USER55> Think of the PR we could harness with this alternative energy source!!!

</comment><comment><USER56> wouldn't it help to add little shovels for friction?

</comment><comment><USER57> SAILING FOR THE WIN

</comment><comment><USER58> Would be excited to see this technology combined with the "underbelly bubbles" technology that I heard about a few years ago where they reduce drag by releasing air bubbles under the hull. Yeah it takes energy to do it but the decreased resistance is supposedly a net gain. Two 10% gains would be awesome.

<comment><USER37> Some fleets have implemented special bottom paint to reduce drag by reducing algae growth.

<comment><USER59> I wonder how long a magnetic cleaning robot could survive on the hull of such a ship.

<comment><USER60> After manned narco subs and towed sub capsules were mitigated by new police efforts drug traffickers experimented with magnetically attached parasite containers on the side of large shipping boats. But they didn't have to move.

<comment><USER58> How do they mitigate narco subs? Sonar patrols I presume?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> From TFA...

> Maersk Line spent around $3.4 billion on fuel last year for its fleet of > around 800 vessels.

Wouldn't savings from wind power be bad for the petroleum industry? And therefore by lobbyist extension bad for everyone?

<comment><USER62> That's Maersk Line, which is the container shipping division of Maersk. The rotor sails are being installed on a tanker vessel from Maersk Tankers. Deck space is a valuable commodity on a container vessel, so not as obvious where to place the rotors.

<comment><USER61> I quoted that line exactly from TFA. (the friendly article)

<comment><USER62> I am sure you did. That doesn't make it any less misleading.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The moral standards of wikileaks critics - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/01/wikileaks

<comment><USER2> How was Eliot Spitzer more a threat to Wall Street as governor than he had been as prosecutor?</comment>


Crannogs: Neolithic-Era Artificial Islands - <AUTHOR> https://www.amusingplanet.com/2019/07/crannogs-neolithic-era-artificial.html <comment><USER2> Not related to the article itself, but the "SmoothScroll for websites" script that the page loads is incredibly frustrating to interact with. Why do people feel the need to override browser scrolling behavior? They've even overridden the mousewheel, arrow keys, space bar, and End key, and even disabled the Home key completely.

</comment><comment><USER3> According to the Scottish Crannog Centre, they have found artifacts at the site that came from Turkey around 500 BC. They also believe the crannogs may have served as floating trading outposts. The hills surrounding the Crannog Centre were apparently filled with 10's of thousands of people, and there was a local industry, though I forget what it was. It's a lovely site with great recreations of ancient technology and villages, and nearby towns are quaint.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> There's a Wikipedia article here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crannog](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crannog)

</comment><comment><USER4> Doesnt seem to make much sense for defense unless you're defending against a small group of attackers since you cant fit many defending forces on the Crannog.

If it was protection from raiders or animals using those stones to build a wall would make more practical sense. Im guessing they were probably done for a religoius or spiritual purpose

<comment><USER5> There weren't large numbers of attackers back then. The article is talking about the Neolithic-Era so approx 3500 BC. I would say that it would be relatively easy to defend against 5x the amount of people if you could pick them off as they swam across the water. You literally could be throwing spears or rocks at them as they tried to swim.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Neolithic 1%ers and their elite lake front Crannogs...

<comment><USER7> You jest, but if they were trading outposts as mentioned, there may be be a grain of truth to this!</comment></comment>


Deep Learning on Title and Content Features to Tackle Clickbait - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/clickbaits-revisited-deep-learning-title-content-features-thakur <comment><USER3> The problem is, we don't have a clear definition of what clickbait is.

 _nouninformal (on the Internet) content whose main purpose is to attract attention and encourage visitors to click on a link to a particular web page._

But that's basically everything on the web.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure that quite addresses the problem here.

After all there is no clear definition of 'what dogs look like' (in the sense of a collection of logical rules), but deep learning models excel at detecting them, when provided with enough positive examples.

If it's possible for humans to agree on whether a given article is clickbait or not, we should be able to put together an adequate dataset for training a system to classify them too. From the linked article I am unable to discern how the training dataset was labelled.

In other words, the fact that 'clickbait' is a nebulous concept shouldn't preclude machine learning from being able to detect it.

<comment><USER5> Just as "dogness" is a factor, so is "clickbaityness". You're right, this is all about thresholds.

<comment><USER6> I often wonder what Wittgenstein would have made of today's models of machine learning / deep learning [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_resemblance](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_resemblance)

<comment><USER4> Me too. My reading of the Blue and Brown books led me to believe Wittgenstein's conception of meaning is inextricably tied up with the notion of "learning" and exposure to language and its use. Rather than meaning being contingent on 'hard' logico-mathematical derivations of formal semantics.

This contrast seems somewhat reminiscent of the complementary approaches of hard-coded rule based AI vs machine learning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd like a system to filter out fluff threads on reddit. It would reject easy- consumption content such as images, gifs and short vids, or anything shorter than 60 seconds; also, low quality comments (short, aggressive, memes, etc).

Reddit is a gold-mine of interesting content, but it is flooded with fluff and garbage to the point where it becomes a problem to find the good parts.

I'm wondering why they don't use more machine learning magic on the site. There are multiple machine learning papers based off the reddit comment corpus.

<comment><USER8> your best bet is to filter out meme subs

<comment><USER7> There is also a need to find interesting threads outside a known list of subs, or to filter out some parts of otherwise good subs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> You could add any title that's formulated as an imperative. "You won't believe..." "Guess which..." "You should..."

Also titles that are formulated as a simple subject - predicate - <USER2> sentence: "XY considered anti-pattern" "Trump is right" "Hitler did nothing wrong" "Drunk girl shows tits" "Homeopathy is the future of medicine"

Same works if formulated as a question: "Is Trump right?" "Has Hitler done nothing wrong?" "Is homeopathy the future of medicine?"

Bonus points for exclamation marks, pound signs and uppercase words.

<comment><USER10> Not all clickbait headlines are written like that.

For instance: "Russia hacked US power grid" doesn't have any of those, and yet it was a completely clickbait/sensationalist/borderline fake news headline from WashPost. How is AI going to deal with _those_?

[https://theintercept.com/2016/12/31/russia-hysteria- infects-...](https://theintercept.com/2016/12/31/russia-hysteria-infects- washpost-again-false-story-about-hacking-u-s-electric-grid/)

<comment><USER11> That wasn't clickbait. Arguably it was worse. "You'll never guess what happens when she starts to sing!" isn't likely to contribute to increased military tensions between nuclear powers.

To put it as a triviality: just because two things are bad doesn't mean they have to be bad in the same way.

I also wouldn't classify that story as "fake news"[0]. Those were things like "Revealed: Obama says Clinton would be terrible president", or "Revealed: Trump under investigation by European Court for Human Rights". Those were straightforward false claims, with zero actual sourcing, by people who knew they were lying. This Washington Post article was shitty reporting, using thin sources, that fit a currently popular hysteria. And it was completely inaccurate. But the authors didn't sit down and say "what can we make up." They got some sources and didn't do any due diligence, because it was too hard to pass up on such a juicy story.

I'm not wedded to the idea that these articles aren't fake news, but I'm confident it doesn't make sense to call them clickbait.

[0] Of course, this relies on the idea that fake news doesn't just mean "news that is wrong", which has been with us forever, but more about a social media driven trend within the past year or two.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Simple filter for tech articles:

$clickbait = /Deep/;

</comment><comment><USER13> Thanks for the nice, condensed article. Generating features from BeautifulSoup isn't something that I've considered before.

I'm still going through Yoshua Bengio's new book on DL, but if anyone is free to comment: what are the justifications for the general architecture? Why use LSTMs with the Glove embeddings?

<comment><USER14> Seems like everyone uses the glove embeddings for any text based DL project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> All I see is that the author uses deep learning to distinguish post published by Buzzfeed, clickhole, upworthy and stopclickbaitofficial v.s. the other pages?

<comment><USER16> yes - i am skeptical on how generalizable the final model is - given lots of features (numerical and text) are closely linked to same domain.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> code available here: [https://github.com/abhishekkrthakur/clickbaits_revisited](https://github.com/abhishekkrthakur/clickbaits_revisited)

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm not sure how he can define what clickbait is and what's not.

The NY Times isn't immune to publishing clickbait, and buzzfeed sometimes posts really solid journalism.

</comment><comment><USER18> Crowdsource is an amazing thing to do</comment>


Language alters our experience of time - <AUTHOR> https://theconversation.com/language-alters-our-experience-of-time-76761 <comment><USER2> I'm not sure what to take away from this article. Sure, knowing multiple languages may be somewhat cognitively beneficial, but is it worth the time investment? I'm not so sure.

An aside, Arrival was an entertaining movie. I'm a sucker for those kinds of "unrealistic" sci-fi films.</comment>


Open data is not a panacea - <AUTHOR> http://mathbabe.org/2012/12/29/open-data-is-not-a-panacea/ <comment><USER2> I think the premise is mostly true (people with resources can use data more easily than those without), but I'm not whether the conclusion follows. The alternative to open data is closed data. That doesn't get the unwashed masses access to data engineers, it just loses them access to data that corporations and wealthy people continue to have.

If I was to point out a problem with open data, it's that it has the potential to break our social institutions by facilitating aggressive min/maxing behavior on a large scale. It's not that Goldman Sachs is going to use the data against the general public -- they're going to do that whether the data is public or private -- but you make it public and then the middle class can use it against the poor (and then the poor are going to revolt).

For example, suppose we create a good, easily accessible map of places to live and put down all the information someone in the housing market would like to know: Home prices, tax rates, quality of the schools, etc. Now home buyers can min/max those variables when making a purchasing decision. In general that's good -- when we buy a home, having that information benefits us. We can find a place that has extremely low taxes when we don't have kids in school, and choose between the places with excellent schools to find the one with the lowest taxes when we do.

But then local governments react by trying to find a niche. They let their schools go straight to hell in order to attract childless professionals through low tax rates. Or they zone all the low cost housing out of the school district so that they can maintain good schools at a low mill rate because everyone who can afford to live there is affluent. What they most certainly don't do is provide good schools or other government services to poor people, because that has a deleterious effect on the value for money that middle class people are looking for when they're shopping for a tax jurisdiction, and when they do that they lose their tax base and thereby their ability to continue doing it.

Of course, such things happened before public data, but you make the data more widely available and you make the behavior more common.

And before the libertarians get too happy about this state of affairs, recall that the de facto default defense against aggressive competition is collusion. Which we [pretend to] ban in the private sector, but between governments they just call it centralization and "federal standards" and impose it on you from the top down the second they can break a filibuster. Which is, of course, miserable and inefficient because it destroys local control and creates a systemic failure if they get it wrong.

Which isn't to say that the data availability is net negative. The incentive it provides is for governments and corporations to be efficient, and efficiency is _usually_ (indeed almost always) beneficial. But the data lets the user of the data decide what to optimize for. So the problem comes when the thing we choose to optimize for as individuals is not the thing we would choose to optimize for as a society.

<comment><USER3> Another point (raised in the comments to the original article) is that open data, like "full disclosure" security practices, levels the playing field. In other words, investment banks, city governments, and who have you already are doing these sorts of things. Open data allows us, the general public, to _see_ them doing it. Yes, in your dystopia of Hobbesian all-against-all competition, we end up in an _Snow Crash_ -esque agglomeration of specialized communities for increasingly narrow demographic segments.

But there is an alternate future. With open data (and increasingly cheap computing and communication devices), community organizers and the poor themselves can see exactly how they're being screwed over by the government. It will no longer be a nameless, faceless _they_ that's inflicting pain and misery on them, but instead, specific actions, undertaken by specific individuals in specific offices. Corporations and governments won't be able to hide behind their usual practice of security by obscurity, since, with open data, it'll be possible for any citizen with a modicum of spare time and spare computing resources to run data analysis and come up with possibilites for why things are as screwed up as they are. We're already seeing this, with tech related laws and regulations. Open data makes it easy for any individual with an internet connection to track the progress of legislation. This was a major factor in galvanizing opposition to SOPA and PIPA. Making more data sets open and freely available will, in my estimation, benefit individuals far more than corporations or governments. Open data will do to closed-door decision making what full disclosure did to 0-day vulnerabilities.

<comment><USER2> >It will no longer be a nameless, faceless _they_ that's inflicting pain and misery on them, but instead, specific actions, undertaken by specific individuals in specific offices.

You're assuming that there are actually specific fat cats smoking cigars in back rooms planning all of this out. That pretty much never happens.

What actually happens is that different tax jurisdictions have different laws and people self-select into the jurisdiction that provides them personally with the best value in government services for their tax money. That means the affluent taxpayers go to the jurisdictions that take only a modest tax bite and use it to provide only services that the affluent consume. The jurisdictions that don't do that are then forced to cut services after their tax base is eroded by so many of the high income taxpayers leaving.

The local officials in those places are not sitting in their offices trying to think up ways to screw over poor people, they're just trying to figure out how to keep the lights on. They have to do something to attract and retain more of the taxpayers who pay as much or more in taxes as they consume in government services or they fall into the death spiral of service cuts and tax increases that induce more emigration and capital flight which erodes the tax base and requires more spending cuts and tax hikes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Similar complaints were lodged against open source software when it was emerging, especially with respect to security. I assert that open source has been better for security than ever imagined and nearly always produces solutions superior to closed alternatives.

I do think it's important to draw attention to the potential downsides, so thanks for contributing this article.

Given the upside of open data I can't imagine a scenario where closed data > open data with respect to the general public.

</comment><comment><USER5> I agree there are dangers, but I think the way to protect the poor or technologically unskilled is not to keep data sets locked away where only government officials, illegal hackers or bribe paying business people can get at it. The answer is to get it out there and ensure all interests have information parity, surely.

If you have to be a techie to get value from this data then there must be a market for easier to use data analysis tools for non-technical people, which I'm sure the market will fill. (Checkout my profile page, I'm building one right now).

</comment><comment><USER6> I think this is not a big point to dont make data available to everyone.

making data available to everyone for free is the better way.

1\. If i got the data i can make a list of strange companies and put this information out to the Internet.

2\. How says that this Information is correct? you can scan my facebook profile what you will find: that i live in Australia but i dont. Yes my Ip give it away where i live but i can use a proxy. I like this and i like that but do i Really?

3\. School/University Rankings are full of facts that are wrong and dont cover the reality.

Sry but if you only see data in the aspect to analyze it you could miss the beauty of the data. MP3 Files are just data but what makes them special? the noise we get out of the speaker.

So lets not think how we can abuse the data. Lets think about how with this data we can make a better world FOR EVERYONE !

</comment><comment><USER7> The "information war" seems like a strange way to look at the world.

I use data, and I benefit from access to data. But my use of data doesn't make someone else worse off, and others' use of data doesn't generally make me worse off.

If they have faster computers than me, that's great.

Equating research and analysis to war sounds silly, and I think it's a really unhealthy worldview.

</comment><comment><USER8> it was interesting that when we tried to pull together the best blog posts on APIs across the web this year (<http://www.3scale.net/2012/12/top-10-api-blog- posts-2012/>) the strongest theme was exactly about this - the push and pull of private data and platforms.</comment>


Hell has no fury like a Twitter-er Scorned  - <AUTHOR> http://www.markevanstech.com/2008/03/10/hell-has-no-fury-like-a-twitter-er-scorned/ <comment><USER2> This whole Lacy thing is much ado about nothing. Seriously, an interviewer did a bad interview? Where is the news?</comment>


Ask HN: My lifetime mentor died. How to move on? - <AUTHOR>

On September 4th my father and lifetime business mentor was murdered. We spoke daily, often for more than an hour, about business, psychology, economics, or simply life. Since his death, I barely know what to do with myself. Even nearly three months later, I'm still emotionally in limbo.<p>I've come to the conclusion that I must move forward. I'm sure some of you (sadly) have similar experiences - how did you put your life together again? <comment><USER4> First of all: remember that you are lucky. I know it's hard to see it that way right now, but you were given an incredible gift in the time that the two of you had together. The fact that it was cut short so abruptly and meaninglessly doesn't take away from that; if anything, it highlights it.

In terms of "how", there is no magic answer; you just try to keep learning, and keep giving to others, to the best of your ability.

You say that you used to speak for an hour each day; I'd suggest that you spend a portion of that time writing down things you remember-- lessons, anecdotes, etc. The time may come, years from now, when you'll be glad you have some tangible reminders of his advice.

Good luck to you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your advice. It's very difficult to think of anything as being lucky...

I've had learning on my mind. I've always done business and UI design, really technology in general, but I've never really learned a language. I've been pondering learning something like Python or Ruby, maybe putting my mind to building some small project in the evenings...

I'm having to run the business everyday, plus dealing with his estate, so I'm busy, at least.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> 1) Talk to a shrink. I'm not a big medication guy, so simply having an impartial, 3rd party can help. Plus, they know grief so they can help you find some strategies.

2) Channel your Father. I don't mean in some Psycho (movie) sort of way. I mean that likely without knowing it, you know what your father would have said for a long time. You could likely say "what would he have said" and have him there with you. Sometimes, writing questions and then answering them as if you were him can reveal the answer... and help.

3) Tell other people who your father was. Go out of your way to talk to people and when some advice pops into your head that your dad would have conveyed, relay that. If possible, mentor someone yourself. Passing on experience really lets folks live on. Even if the people you're passing stuff on to aren't related (like a son or daughter), mentoring people is as valuable for the mentor as the person being mentored.

<comment><USER6> I fully agree with this - I lost my mom unexpectedly in July, and it's been tough. #1 can help a lot - therapists know the right questions to ask to help you start dealing with the grief in a healthy way - everyone is different, and if someone can help you start down your own personal path, it makes the road easier to find and a lot less bumpy.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm so sorry. It's tough, for sure. :\

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My father died very suddenly about a year ago. It came as a total shock - <USER2> day he was just gone. I walked around in a daze for a few months, and I'll admit that it was nearly six months before I started to get back on my feet.

This was one of the toughest things that has ever happened to me, and it definitely changed me. So here's what has helped me to recover

I think that the biggest thing that helps is time - losing a parent is a profound experience, and not one that you can easily cope with. There is really no way to prepare for it. I still think about my father nearly every day, and it's hard to believe that he's gone. But, as time has gone on, I've definitely managed to put it into some sort of perspective. I can't say that it is a positive experience, but I've learned to value the time I do have. My father was twice my age, so maybe I've used up half my time. I had better make that time count.

Another thing that helps is taking a break. It's fine to take a little bit of time for yourself to get things together. It's interesting to see how people respond to the death of a family member - a lot of people try to fill the hole by throwing themselves into a frenzy of activities. Eventually, though, you have to face yourself and make peace if you want to recover.

Finding stability in your life is also important. When my father died, I was working on a startup. The startup was on its last legs, but his death completely threw things off balance for me. I felt like I was floating for a long time, and decided that I needed to add some stability to my life. Just too many things were uncertain at the time, and I couldn't deal with that. About six months ago, I decided to take a job with a more established startup. I feel like adding some stability to my life has definitely helped to put things back to normal. This was kind of the last thing on my mind for several years before that, but in this particular case, I think that it helped me to recover.

Finally, I think it's important to talk about it with people. I'm sure that you have friends who have lost parents - talk to them about the experience. If you have siblings, talk to them. You will find out that a lot of what's going through your head is stuff that everyone experiences. I wish that I had done more of this - I feel like I kind of shut down and didn't really want to talk about it for a while. If you need to (and maybe if you don't think you need do), seek out professional help. They are trained to help people who have been through this sort of experience.

</comment><comment><USER8> Three months is not much time at all to deal with a situation of this magnitude. Be patient with yourself, and give yourself a lot more time. In my own personal experience, it took 2 years to deal with losing somebody close to me. Even after that of course, things were never the same as before, but I eventually felt myself again, and could enjoy the memories I held. Again personally, but I found keeping a journal a great release. Good luck

</comment><comment><USER9> My condolences.

I can think of two pieces of advice, from my experience, that stand a chance of being helpful.

(1) Don't expect yourself to respond differently from how you're responding. At various moments in a single day you may be miserable, numb, and surprisingly cheerful. None of these is the wrong response, especially when the loss is so fresh. If you're still feeling perpetually distraught in two years, talk to a shrink. (Talk to a shrink now if you think it might be helpful, but don't do it because you think your response is somehow disproportionate or invalid. It isn't.)

(2) Get used to the fact that this event will place a layer of friction between you and most other people. Hopefully you have one or two people in your life who you have talked to, at length, about what you're going through. Others, even good friends, will regularly say things that feel callous and unsympathetic. Try to be patient with them.

<comment><USER10> "(2) Get used to the fact that this event will place a layer of friction...." wow, thank you for that. If I had the ability, I'd vote this up.

<comment><USER9> I'm glad it was helpful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> My father died very suddenly when I was 13 years old and it really threw me in to a tailspin. I finally decided people die and we miss them. At first its such a huge thing that it blots out the sun. It always stays that huge, but as we move away from it in time, eventually we get to where we can see the sun peeping out around the edges.

When I grew up and got married, my first husband was kidnapped and we found his murdered remains four months later. It is an unsolved mystery that is 23 years old. I cried and cried and cried and cried and cried. I stood out in my garden, dug my feet into the mud, and I cried. I cried for three weeks straight. No anti-depressants - just process. Grief is a process.

My advice is: 1) Your mind can take you to weird places around murder. Don't get too out there. People die and we miss them. Its that simple. 2) Don't talk about it all the time to everyone you know. Its pretty easy to say, "Hi, nice to meet you, my dad died," because its like a huge sunburn all over your body. But talking about it constantly keeps it at the surface of your conscious mind. It is better to wait and speak about your feelings with a trusted loved one or friend or in therapy. 3) Get a therapist - a cognitive therapist - <USER3> shop around for someone who is logical, intuitive and genuine.

I'm really sorry to hear you have lost your father. My father was the best father a person could ever have. He was brilliant, a scientist at NASA, a protege to Werner Von Braun, had an IQ higher than Albert Einstein's and was warm, loving - he was just the best. Its hard for other people to understand when you lose someone that is wonderful, because there are lots of people who lose a regular Joe, but how many of us have the experience of losing someone awesome? By this I mean that lots of people have dads that left them, didn't pay child support, or were abusive - its a different experience when you have a wonderful dad. I keep a photo of my father above my kitchen sink. Even though I lost him when I was so young, I'm grateful I had that man for a father and the love I received from him.

You get up in the morning, brush your teeth, floss, get a shower, eat your breakfast, and go about your day. Its going to be okay. Have faith things are going to be better over time.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm sorry for your loss. I found that time does heal most wounds. From experience, try not to make any big decisions right now, you'll tend to be emotive and reactional, rather than rational. Eat healthy and get lots of sleep (psychological effects of trauma cause real physical effects).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, I've discovered this... (un)fortunately, my business is beginning to grow rapidly, forcing me to make decisions I doubt I'm able to make. We shared the business, unofficially, but decisions we're mutually made... and now I'm making them all... for the first time.

It's incredibly terrifying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> When I was twelve, my father died. On my birthday. Needless to say this fucked me up; I closed up pretty much entirely and drifted through life for something like ten or fifteen years.

In some ways, I think nobody's truly dead until their last echo fades from history - when I have that moment of drawing and feeling like I'm totally channeling Jack Kirby, he lives again through me. What of your father still lives in you?

Make social contact; start to look for new anchors for who you are. You'll never find a replacement for him but you'll find someone who's just as interesting. Maybe they'll be a lover, maybe they'll be a new mentor. Maybe some of both. Put yourself in new situations.

Three months? I think you're still quite right to be grieving.

</comment><comment><USER14> it's your turn to be the mentor, find someone and do for them what your father did for you.

I'll bet that was his intention all along.

</comment><comment><USER15> mattblalock: My business mentor / great friend died a little over a year ago and its been very hard to adjust. There really isn't anything to say that will help except for it will take time to adjust and move on. In my case I was "lucky" because my associate died of cancer so I was able to say final "goodbyes", etc. In fact, he final gift to me was being able to describe the process of dying and how he felt at each stage.

BTW, it turns out there ARE atheists in foxholes.

</comment><comment><USER16> My condolences. My father plays a huge role in my life. He's got Parkinson's Disease and has had it for well over a decade now... it will eventually kill him. So I've had time to think about this. The truth is, when it comes time, I have no idea how I will deal with it. But my father, being the person he is, would want me to live my life to the best of my ability and live it without getting hung up on the little things. The reality is that we all die eventually, like it or not. To honor the memory of our loved ones we should do what they would want and I doubt they would want us to be so stricken with grief as to shut down our lives. I like what michael_dorfman had to say; you are very fortunate that you got to spend as much time as you did with your father. Cherish his memory, always.

</comment><comment><USER17> Let me add my own condolences, and reiterate that it will take longer than three months. I'm still affected by my dad's death a year ago (today) after a long and difficult illness. You've got it even tougher, given the brutal circumstances and the suddenness of the rip in your universe.

Mourning takes time, and there's not much you can do to speed up the process. I strongly suspect this folk wisdom underlies the traditional rule that a widow(er) shouldn't remarry before a year has elapsed.

</comment><comment><USER18> When my dad died I felt as though I was at sea without a compass. I came to see that fundamentally we only know what we know and that we are responsible for the ship (our lives) regardless of what we know about navigation (if anything). Usually experience shows us that we only think we know, but there is a pretty long list of things that generally work that we can learn about. The loss I feel is that the trusted navigator I used to ask when I couldn't tell where my ship was going isn't there anymore, and he can't be replaced. He used to say "do the best you can, that's as much as any of us can do". Navigating as best I can honors him and pulls me together at the low points. Letting the vessel go adrift doesn't help anyone. He's been gone a few years now. I don't know that my life will ever be "back together again". It just goes on changing, and for now, I go on with it.

</comment><comment><USER19> Sorry to hear about your loss. Like the other's have said, time will make things easier to deal with. Be alert though for signs of destructive behavior, as this can make your life even more complicated. Increases in drinking/drugging, isolating oneself, excessive risk taking, etc.

</comment><comment><USER20> I am _SO_ sorry for your loss. I cannot even begin to understand or appreciate the gravity of what you have experienced.

In my humble opinion, the best thing you can do to put life back together, and honor your father's memory... is to mentor someone else.

Pay it forward, if you will.

This will cement the lessons he taught you, in your mind, and you will learn more through experience.

I would also venture to say that you will come up with wisdom of your own, as times goes on.

As much as it hurts, this experience of losing your father, and how you respond to it, in your life... will be part of makes you who you are.

If you ever need/want to talk, don't hesitate to drop me a line.

</comment><comment><USER21> That's a terrible situation. I'm very sorry for your loss.

My father has conveyed to me some enormously valuable things over the years. When his time comes, I think a major part of dealing with it, for me, will be both preserving these things and passing them on. If you can put to paper some of the wisdom he's given to you, and then spread that to others, I'm sure you'd be doing him proud. And beyond that, I'm sure you'd be doing something beneficial for yourself and for us all. Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER22> My heart goes out to you. I can't imagine what that must feel like. As others here have said, it's perfectly understandable that you've been in shock and grief.

I think the best suggestion I could give is to be easy on yourself. It's good that you're starting to feel ready to begin moving forward, but don't rush anything. Be glad for what you can do, and don't worry about what you're not ready to do yet. Taking a long walk every day might help.

</comment><comment><USER23> Whenever I feel bad because the world around me is falling, I always repeat myself that it's just a normal reaction. Take your time, it's ok be sad, you don't have to accomodate people around you.

You were also very lucky to have build such a warm relationship with your father, something many childs are never able to do and regret later. Only time will make you feel better, and he still be here with you as you'll remember his insights all your life.

</comment><comment><USER24> Get some bereavement counselling - coming to terms in something that must seem so unjust, can't be easy.

It will be very useful to be able to process the hurt you're feeling, in the company of someone who has good experience helping people who've dealt with similar losses.

</comment><comment><USER25> Build something he would be proud of.

<comment><USER26> That is exactly what I came to this link to add. Kudos.

My only other advice: if you still need a mentor, find someone who you can get an hour or two a week from. You probably still do need advice, but it sounds like you're pretty grounded.

<comment><AUTHOR> I know its a lot to ask, but how would I go about finding a mentor? I wonder if a mentor might be more helpful than a shrink....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thank you all so much for the kind words and encouragement. I have no idea how to find a shrink... if you were looking for one, how would you go about finding a good one?

</comment><comment><USER27> No one close to me has died, but I have had other big traumas in my life and big changes. I found that going out and finding something constructive to fill my time was a good move at some point, sometimes after having a period of mourning/wrapping my brain around the issue. I also spent some time in my twenties watching tear-jerk movies (alone and late at night) and crying my eyes out. After a while of that, I stopped feeling sad all the time. It helped me release those emotions.

</comment><comment><USER28> He would have wanted you to move onward and succeed. In fact, that is the only way to do his memory justice.

</comment><comment><USER29> Sorry to hear about your loss. Obviously no one can replace your mentor. However, I am sure your mentor would have wanted to pass down the things they did to someone.

As you go through that process you will find that sooner or later anew pursuit pops in mind that is connected to your mentor.

</comment><comment><USER30> <http://fallibleideas.com/emotions>

<comment><USER22> Ugh. This kind of thing is the last thing this person needs to hear.

Emotions are real and powerful. Although they certainly affect thoughts and can be affected by thoughts, they aren't reducible to thoughts, and can't just be waved away with a flick of the mind.

<comment><USER30> I take it you think it's false. And that false statements about emotions are harmful to upset people. Would that be a fair way of putting your complaint that doesn't assume without argument that it's false?

I put it to you that some people think it is true, and that if it is true it will help. Let him judge for himself what advice he deems true, instead of you trying to tell everyone who thinks differently than you to withhold advice!</comment></comment></comment>


Cosmic Latte - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_latte <comment><USER2> This brought a little joy to my evening. What a clever, creative idea with an equally emotionally-palatable name! Love it</comment>


10 Days in Jail for Drunken Driver Who Killed Cyclist Bobby Cann - <AUTHOR> https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20170126/old-town/ryne-san-hamel-bobby-cann-cyclist-killed-10-days-drunken-driver-bicyclist-clybourn <comment><USER2> "Prosecutors in court Thursday said Cann had biked through a red light when he was hit."</comment>


John De Goes indefinitely barred from participating in Typelevel projects - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/djspiewak/39fcf30fc4480abb5096010886558792 <comment><USER2> It's been pulled so here's a wb link for the curious like myself.

[http://web.archive.org/web/20190906122433/https://gist.githu...](http://web.archive.org/web/20190906122433/https://gist.github.com/djspiewak/39fcf30fc4480abb5096010886558792)

<comment><USER3> and [https://archive.is/zdHc5](https://archive.is/zdHc5)

</comment></comment><comment> the-dude So, I have just read the post.

And I don't want to be _that_ guy, but why is this on the FP?

edit : I will rephrase : why is this interesting?

<comment><USER4> Even worse, I've skimmed the discussions that precipitated the ban. I don't even understand why the ban was applied.

It's not as if the person couldn't take "no" for an answer; the administrators seem unable to give the person a definite "no" at all. Then they applied the "nuclear option" when they got exhausted, _and made a public spectacle of the whole matter_.

What a weird way to run a project.

<comment><USER5> It is strange, and there must be some context that's left assumed and unstated. This ban document, even in conjunction with the linked examples, doesn't persuade me. If this is their best case I'm left scratching my head. (I understand that I'm not the target audience.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How was this whole thing written without using the verb "sealioning"?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning)

<comment><USER7> It is not a well known term, confirmed by your need to define it. Obscure slang should not be used in sincere formal criticism of an individual's behaviour.

Additionally, the post is attempting to minimally justify the banning while assuming good-faith. It is not trying to denounce and condemn John De Goes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Official announcement:

[https://typelevel.org/blog/2019/09/05/jdg.html](https://typelevel.org/blog/2019/09/05/jdg.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> see also from Skills Matter: [https://skillsmatter.com/go/03092019](https://skillsmatter.com/go/03092019)

<comment><USER9> This kind of statement might as well be generated by a Markov Chain.</comment></comment>


Catalonia Declares Independence as Spain Gets Power to Hit Back - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-27/spanish-senate-gives-rajoy-the-power-to-oust-catalan-government-j99z8pj1 <comment><USER2> Discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15568078](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15568078)</comment>


IBM employees editing Wikipedia without disclosure - <AUTHOR> http://wikipediocracy.com/2014/02/09/elementary-my-dear-watson/

<comment><AUTHOR> The articles mentioned in that post are probably just the tip of the iceberg!</comment>


Ask HN: Should you block web scrapers? - <AUTHOR> Let's leave the ethics debate aside and ask this question: is it realistic to invest time and money into blocking scrapers?
I see distill networks is popular, but what is their pricing? try to scrape crunchbase and see what happens. It's actually very good I tested with phantomjs, selenium + firefox and it's able to detect and successfully block the traffic.
I'm willing to invest time and money into preventing competitors from launching based on scraping my data that I worked hard for.
Is this something that I can implement? Sounds complicated in two parts
1) building fingerprints on user agent and other information. What do you include, where do you start?
2) Distinguishing malicious requests on a time series while avoiding false positives (some people compulsively click next button twice if it doesn't load immediately
What are some surefire ways that will give me high degree of confidence that scraper will fail. <comment><USER2> You should go after the low hanging fruits first. Check if the request is coming from a trusted browser (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, etc). If not, block them. I'm sure that'll cut down scrapes by a lot. And then, you can go after some behavioral stuff. You can do things like measure the milliseconds between requests. If it's too fast for a human to have clicked that link after the initial page load, then you know it's a bot.

<comment><USER3> Please don't do that. Some of us use rather obscure web browsers, and unless you keep the whitelist updated, users of newer browsers will be locked out of the website.

Besides, if your website blocks me, I'm not going to switch browser — I'll just go elsewhere.

<comment><USER2> Just curious, what obscure browsers do you use?

<comment><USER3> Some examples are Lynx, Iceweasel, Chromium, Steam's in-game browser and the Nintendo 3DS browser. Okay, none of them are _that_ obscure but they probably aren't the first things that spring to mind when you think of browsers.

Depending on your method of blocking browsers, it might automatically lump Iceweasel together with Firefox and Chromium together with Chrome. But if this is something you really want to do, you have to be very careful about these things.

<comment><AUTHOR> so it seems like the only sure-fire way of detecting bad bots is via an IP address and not relying on Browser Agent.

Is it any beneficial if there's a way to detect if a given IP address is bad or not right from the get go? Possibly by searching through millions of IP addresses that are blacklisted through a bloom filter and REST API? Do you think this would help-> a long roster of abusive IP address databases?

<comment><USER3> IP address blacklists can be effective, and certainly make a lot more sense than blocking anything that doesn't appear on a whitelist.

Depending on how you are presenting the data, you might also find it helpful to impose a rate limit (accept only a certain number of requests from a particular IP address within a given timeframe).

<comment><AUTHOR> if there was a public API that you could cross reference IP from your website that you suspect as a bot, would you use it? Would you pay for that kind of API?

Of course I would start off by ironically scraping proxies from public domain as those are often used. Not sure what else determined scrapers use to get data, but it's safe to say that 98% of scrapers are trying to pay as little money as possible and often complain when a scraper gets blocked...fuck these people seriously

<comment><USER3> I personally don't have any use for such an API, but I'm sure others do. This might be something that already exists, I'm not too sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> There is no way to completely block scrapers. The most you can do is make life difficult for those writing them. You also have to ensure you're not blocking genuine users.

Instead of investing time and money trying to prevent competitors, why not use that time and money to innovate on the service you provide so that there will be no point in setting up a competitor?

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course it's not possible to 100% block ALL scrapers, much like the debate surrounding obfusticating javascript.

The point is to increase the cost of developing a scraper to a maxima where ROI begins to rapidly deteriorate. I'm trying to identify techniques and methods which will:

\- identify real users apart from bot users

\- increase the costs for the bot</comment></comment>


China, India grapple with the consequences too many men - <AUTHOR> https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/04/22/china-india-grapple-with-the-consequences-too-many-men/ <comment><USER2> Many decades back there was scaremongering among the western nations that overpopulation in China and India will lead to hunger all over the world, which lead to a lot of programs that may have actually lead to US / Europe sponsoring these technologies to become widely available in China and India.

Ford Foundation is often cited as one of the main culprits pushing the ultrasound technology in these countries, the result of which is the current situation of skewed gender ratio.

Upward mobility of women (in search of grooms) leads to more and more frustrated men at lower levels, leads to more crime and overall desperate situation.

Sadly many recent articles follow the typical propaganda based approach and look at blaming patriarchy etc.

src: [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/01/04/what-money- can...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/01/04/what-money-can-buy- profiles-larissa-macfarquhar) [https://www.amazon.com/Unnatural-Selection- Choosing-Girls-Co...](https://www.amazon.com/Unnatural-Selection-Choosing- Girls-Consequences/dp/1610391519/abhinav-20) [http://indiafacts.org/was-ford- foundation-culpable-in-aborti...](http://indiafacts.org/was-ford-foundation- culpable-in-aborting-female-foetuses-in-india/)

<comment><USER3> At birth the human male female ratio is 1.05 men to 1.0 women. Every nation in history has dealt with this with minimal issues, saying a very slightly higher ratio is going to cause problems seems vastly overstated. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_sex_rat...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_sex_ratio)

<comment><USER4> That says the world "at birth ratio" is 1.03, and the article says Dongguan has a ratio of 1.18. I haven't crunched the numbers, but after a quick glance at the other countries, I'd be willing to believe Dongguan is within the top percentile. Doesn't seem "overstated" to me.

<comment><USER3> Two at birth numbers are listed in different columns 1.03 and 1.07.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Apparently, it could have been worse.

"Study finds millions of China's 'missing girls' actually exist":

[https://www.cnn.com/2016/12/01/asia/china-missing- girls/inde...](https://www.cnn.com/2016/12/01/asia/china-missing- girls/index.html)

<comment><USER6> There's some youtube videos (can't find them right now) from video bloggers (right term?) that live in China, and there are many Chinese women that Chinese men won't marry (apparently older women). This is despite the fact that men out-number women. There's a cultural aspect that may not be taken into account that may be exacerbating this issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's interesting that there is a similar imbalance in China and India (~35m). That implies to me that the imbalance was not caused by the one child policy, but by sonograms and abortions.

<comment><USER8> I could be wrong but the sonograms and abortions are also just a side effect. The real problem is that neither place puts much importance on gender equality. Women have even less opportunities than men over there, compared to the West. That said, things have improved and continue to improve though the pace is really slow

<comment><USER9> I was under the impression that gender equality in Chinese society is much better than the west in some respects, espescially the amount of women in STEM.

<comment><USER10> You have the correlation backwards, believe it or not.

Great writing, lots of sources, in [http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on- exagger...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated- differences/)

> Do we find that "countries that lack gender equity in school enrollment" and > "stereotypes associating science with males" have fewer women in tech?

> No. Galpin investigated the percent of women in computer classes all around > the world. Her number of 26% for the US is slightly higher than I usually > hear, probably because it's older (the percent women in computing has > actually gone down over time!). The least sexist countries I can think of – > Sweden, New Zealand, Canada, etc – all have somewhere around the same number > (30%, 20%, and 24%, respectively). The most sexist countries do extremely > well on this metric! The highest numbers on the chart are all from non- > Western, non-First-World countries that do middling-to-poor on the Gender > Development Index: Thailand with 55%, Guyana with 54%, Malaysia with 51%, > Iran with 41%, Zimbabwe with 41%, and Mexico with 39%. Needless to say, > Zimbabwe is not exactly famous for its deep commitment to gender equality.

> Why is this? It's a very common and well-replicated finding that the more > progressive and gender-equal a country, the larger gender differences in > personality of the sort Hyde found become. I agree this is a very strange > finding, but it's definitely true. See eg Journal of Personality and Social > Psychology, Sex Differences In Big Five Personality Traits Across 55 > Cultures:

>> Previous research suggested that sex differences in personality traits are larger in prosperous, healthy, and egalitarian cultures in which women have more opportunities equal with those of men. In this article, the authors report cross-cultural findings in which this unintuitive result was replicated across samples from 55 nations (n = 17,637).

> In case you're wondering, the countries with the highest gender differences > in personality are France, Netherlands, and the Czech Republic. The > countries with the lowest sex differences are Indonesia, Fiji, and the > Congo.

<comment><USER11> As far as what I heard is that in cultures where a woman can choose watch she wants to do, most will not choose tech.

Whereas, in countries where women are expected to do what society wants them to do, they are forced into tech because that is where the money is, and is how they can best help feed their families.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Just reading about this and looking at a sex ratio map, [https://www.mapsofindia.com/census2011/female-sex- ratio.html](https://www.mapsofindia.com/census2011/female-sex-ratio.html) , there is a massive difference between a diagonal line between the North and the South. North India is what is described as dominated by patriarchal religions like Islam, Christianity, Islamicized-Hinduism and Urdu-Hindi languages whereas South India and North-East India practices animist or ancestor worship Hinduism (less Islamic/Christian influence) and speak Dravidian or Austro-Asiatic languages. It is like two separate countries. The North seems to be a terrible mess with well below normal female births.

<comment><USER13> Curiously, it carries across the boarder to Pakistan [EDITED OUT: which appeared to have had fewer than 550 females per male in 2013] [1].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_inequality#/media/File:...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_inequality#/media/File:2013_Gender_gap_index_world_map,_Gender_Inequality_Distribution.svg)

EDIT: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sex_ratio#/media/File:20...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sex_ratio#/media/File:2012_Birth_Sex_Ratio_World_Map.jpg)

<comment><USER14> That's a map of a composite "gender inequality" score, which is about employment and earnings ratios, not actual sex ratios.

Here's one for sex ratios: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sex_ratio#/media/File:20...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sex_ratio#/media/File:2012_Birth_Sex_Ratio_World_Map.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > In India, there is the opposite effect: Because brides are scarce, families > are under less pressure to save for expensive dowries.

So weird. Note that it says "less" pressure, not no pressure. Women are in short supply, yet their culture still requires the bride's family to pay the groom to take her? More evidence that those macroeconomic supply and demand curves are nonsense.

<comment><USER16> Bribes help women get better husbands. Unlike USA marriages in India is about family ties and hence it is important that an uneducated unattractive women gets a good husband. She has to pay the premium of dowry to get a husband who otherwise will not marry her.

An educated engineer girl in India can easily marry a waiter without dowry but her inherent greed for wealth makes her seek someone who is even richer and she pays for that using dowry.

Dowry system is essentially greed of females and not males.

<comment><USER17> I've not experienced social dating outside of the southwest of the US, but if you don't think social, familial, educational, and income factors don't heavily weigh into marriages, here, then you're 100% wrong, and need to meet both my mother-in-law, and mother. Also, be aware that past a certain age, women here can pretty much expect full-time interest by their "aunties" in arranging dates to meet potential suitors.

<comment><USER16> I am pretty sure you are in top 5% people by education, income and thinking. But people like you and me don't really count when we are talking Indian statistics. It is that farmer in Bihar who counts more.

As income levels in India rise this will rapidly go away. But then we are at least 30 years away from that.

P.S. These are not really big problems as the op-ed intellectual yet idiots make them out to be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> >"In the future, there will be millions of men who can't marry, ...

Why? Two husbands are better than just one. More resources to support the family. Flip a coin and then alternate on the kids.

Multiple wives are allowed in other countries. Why not allow multiple husbands instead? It wouldn't work for everyone but it only has to work for some...

<comment><USER19> > Why not allow multiple husbands instead?

Read an article (lazy to search it again) which says it is already happening in some North Indian states like Punjab and Harayana where brothers "share" a wife.

<comment><USER16> True. Our building watchman spends 6 months in Mumbai while his brother 'takes care' of his wife. He then goes back and brother comes on watchman duty. Better its my brother than neighbour he says.

<comment><USER20> I was about to reply to the parent, where? It's so unreal that you have a first hand example. It came as a shock to me, I wonder what other social phenomenon I have missed.

<comment><USER16> In case you have missed this phenomenon you might have missed the following too: \- People from Harayana actually paying money to smuggle young brides from UP and Bihar. \- Bringing brides from outside has become an election promise in Harayana. \- There is an active flesh trade going on between Assam/UP/Bihar and Haryana. There is also arbitrage. For example buying brides from Assam at Rs 5000 for UP but then selling them in Haryana for Rs 10,000 \- Church is also responsible for moving young children across country. I remember meeting a young girl from Odissa working in a house in Goa. She was brought there by Church. The girl was later rescued for sexual abuse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Here is the original article from The Washington Post (this appears to be a rehost by Mercury News): [https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/world/too- many-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/world/too-many-men/)

It contains more charts and graphics, but also makes use of parallax scrolling that some may find annoying.

</comment><comment><USER22> Isn't the consequence usually unrest and war?

<comment><USER23> Wars are killing men, which isn't happening for a while like before. So men population grow fast and there is nothing to decrease it.

<comment><USER13> Wouldn't your causal mechanism be disproven by the reams of peaceful countries without such imbalances? In any case, the natural overproduction of males versus females at birth is too tiny to explain these gulfs.

<comment><USER24> As I understand it, the grandparent's argument is that earlier on in history, wars (and violence in general) would cause a reduction in the percentage of males. For example[0], in Soviet Russia following WW2, the ratio of young men/women dropped to 0.7. And that given that the China and India are more peaceful now (for various reasons), this violent force does not come into effect.

I don't understand how your response is relevant to the above argument.

[0] [https://www.ucis.pitt.edu/nceeer/2007_820-4g_Brainerd1.pdf](https://www.ucis.pitt.edu/nceeer/2007_820-4g_Brainerd1.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is also causing the average age when girls are getting married to go down and it is increasing the age difference between the bride and groom.

</comment><comment><USER26> Is there currently any country with too many women? I've heard interesting things about Paraguay, which lost like 90% of their men after some really bad wars, and how it changed their society.

<comment><USER27> Per Wikipedia, Russia has about 4 million more in the 15-64 demographic. 48m men and 52m women. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia)

This article seems to have a little more background on why. Wars and alcohol are harder on men than women. [http://www.pewresearch.org/fact- tank/2015/08/14/why-the-form...](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact- tank/2015/08/14/why-the-former-ussr-has-far-fewer-men-than-women/)

<comment><USER28> I've read quite a few Chinese articles about a trend of Chinese expats working in Siberia marrying with local Russian women. I don't know how accurate they are so I won't post them here. It was interesting read though.

<comment><USER23> I personally know some Turkish people who've been in Siberia for years and what they say is the same as yours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The 60-year-old mom who still cooks for her seven sons + her husband... Noooo! learn how to make your own bread - at least.

<comment><USER30> And now you know why that woman may have aborted female fetuses. Avoidance of the continuation of miserable life for the women of India! Better to have boys that get married, then you can sit back and boss around the daughter-in-law.

Oh whoopsie, everybody aborted the girls? Hmmmm, I wonder why.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> What's with the ungrammatical title?

It's the MercuryNews title, so not the submitters mistype.

Reminds me that USA Today had a front page heading with technology misspelled as _techonolgy_

<comment><USER32> The Mercury News was acquired by the Contra Costa Tribune, and barely has a newsroom any more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Many of those 'more men' are from villages who didn't like girls. So they are swallowing that on their own, which is kind of re-balancing. By the way, given the tech we have these days, more and more young people seem to be OK to live only with themselves. Let alone VR, if you will.

</comment><comment><USER34> I wonder what the long term impact will be on their societies. If brides are scarce, would it lead to the betterment of social conditions for women in these (traditionally) chauvinistic societies?

<comment><USER35> Unfortunately, that's unlikely. I mean it might happen in urban well-developed areas, but if history is any indicator then for most parts of the country women will likely be worse off, and you'll see things like an increase in kidnappings, forced marriages, and shared marriages with multiple men.

Bride kidnapping is already having somewhat of a resurgence in China - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bride_kidnapping#China](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bride_kidnapping#China)

<comment><USER34> > In one form of a typical qiangqin, the abductor would arrive at a woman's > house flanked by around twenty men. While the friends carried the woman > away, the "groom" would use scissors to cut off the woman's panties. The > woman, struggling to preserve her dignity, would be unable to adequately > fight off her abductors. The victim would then be taken to the groom's > house, where the marriage would be consummated.

Really bizarre stuff. You'd think in the 21st century, such primitive human practices would not occur anymore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> _> >"In the future, there will be millions of men who can't marry, and that could pose a very big risk to society,"_

May I suggest a war between the two countries? This problem will be solved. I was being semi-serious but I remember reading about war being more likely since China had so many men.

<comment><USER23> Wars were preventing overgrowing of populations before. Now technology, peaceful era causing overpopulation of homo-sapiens which is really big problem. Thus I think what you suggest makes sense. Also it will give some people reason to live, distraction, some glory.

<comment><USER37> Most people were dying from disease (esp in infancy) for most of history, not sure having another war will help there. And I can't tell what's more horrifying, suggesting that we should start some more wars to kill people or suggesting that we should bring back some plagues.

Also while I agree that it's harder to find glory in modern times, and there definitely should be a better outlet for that need, I think war has changed so significantly due to technological advances that people wouldn't find much glory lobbing bombs from a UAV piloting center.

The days of finding glory on the battlefield are probably as distant as the days of 90% of people working as farmers to produce food for themselves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Is Li Weibin's life common?

<comment><USER39> i don't think so. rare case.

<comment><USER35> It's not a rare case at all, especially among male migrant workers.

<comment><USER33> It is rather rare and illegal to 'buy' a partner, many left-over men will probably be alone for their lives.

<comment><USER35> I agree, but that is not what was asked.

adamnemecek was asking specifically about the life of Li Weibin, who didn't buy a partner.

Instead his is the live of a hard laborer, living in cramped dormitories, and forever alone, with little/no chance of breaking free from that life.

Unfortunately it's all too common among migrant workers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I wish China and India would be friends instead of frenemies. Think of the possibilities.

<comment><USER41> Not going to happen. Pakistan has been China's ally for decades. China won't break that friendship for India. India will never get into a trilateral alliance with the number of issues (terror and political) pending with Pakistan. To top it, China hasn't gotten over the fact that India gave shelter to The Dalai Lama. Then there is the Chinese ambition to take over lands, seas and oceans in and around it. China won't give up it's claim over Arunachal Pradesh, nor will it set Tibet free, nor would it destroy the CPEC that it has built through disputed territory to maintain status-quo. Too many sticking issues that cannot be resolved until and unless China let's go of it's territorial ambitions and stops backing terror sponsors in Pakistan.

<comment><USER33> Actually Modi is visiting China in recent days. China and India will continue to compete and cooperate. Tibet has been a part of China for many centuries, and the serfs over there has been given freedom by CCP. Maybe some of those old serf-owners didn't like that. In foreseeable future, both China and India will look to increase its influence and there will be more conflicts, see Maldives, but also deals to make, like phone-makers from China continue to invest in India.

<comment><USER41> Tibet was not part of China for many centuries. It was an independent country before it was Annexed by China in 1951. There has never been any freedom given by China to Tibet. Contrast it with India's liberation of Bangladesh from attrocities of Pakistan. India did not annex Bangladesh when it had all the strength and opportunity to do so.

Chinese influence in India is actually diminishing on the ground. People in India are more aware now than ever before. People here prefer to buy products either made in India or some other country and not from China. Things are changing rapidly on the ground which will take a few years for it to be visible to China. India cannot have the huge trade deficit it has with China right now. To top it, China's persistent support to Pakistan backed terrorism is going down in bad taste with Indian citizens.

Modi is not having an official summit with Xi. This is an unofficial summit over Doklam and other pressing issues. I don't see any positive outcome from this as both parties involved will not be willing to shift from their positions.

Xi wants to consolidate power. Not just within but also by annexing other territories, oceans and islands. This also includes involvement in the power tussle currently underway in Maldives. This is a big gamble because it may end up pushing those countries that weren't allies of China but still had trade to reconsider China as a decent trade partner. Look at the US tariffs imposed on China. Other countries will take the cue once they realise China isn't as powerful as it portrays. It all boils down to if China can be a responsible superpower. Currently, it has everything going for it except that one point. Future will tell if Xi's gamble of alienating trade partners who weren't allies a good move or a bad one.

<comment><USER33> > There has never been any freedom given by China to Tibet.

It seems you completely ignored my remarks. 95% of Tibetans were serfs before reintegrate to China. After 1951, they became free people have the basic human rights. As in history, Both Yuan dynasty and Qing Dynasty have Tibet.

> Look at the US tariffs imposed on China.

US and China are in trade wars. Trump is playing the 'art of deal' game(not only to China but also Japan and other countries) and he is sending treasury secretary to China to negotiate. This has nothing to do with India/China conflicts or Maldive incidents.

China is still a developing country and it didn't show off to be a superpower. The major agenda is still developing its economy and addressing poverty.

Regardless all the challenges, 21st century can hold two most populous countries in the world.

<comment><USER41> The serf argument is a Chinese justification for invasion of Tibet. This has nothing to do with "human rights". It was a simple and plain invasion of another country which violated International Laws. You cannot shove that under the carpet with any sort of justifications: even if it is a dislike for social structure. If China really cared about the people of Tibet, it would have done what India did after East Pakistan liberation. It created Bangladesh and allowed the local people to rule themselves unhindered. India did not colonize Bangladesh. In fact, this "reintegration" argument is bogey. India could have used the same "reintegration" argument to justify colonizing Bangladesh as it once belonged to Hindustan in the ancient times. It did not. There is absolutely no justification for invasion and occupation of a territory.

> China is still a developing country and it didn't show off to be a > superpower. The major agenda is still developing its economy and addressing > poverty.

Are you seriously telling me that the militarisation in disputed South China Sea is not showing off? How about building the CPEC across disputed territory? How about China trying to build roads in the Doklam region? Are all these part of it developing its economy and addressing poverty? Seems more like unwarranted expansion to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> > sex-selective technology

Nice way to say aborting female babies.

<comment><USER43> Or abandoning, also happens a lot, as I learned when someone in my family adopted a girl.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> > ...demographers say it will take decades for the ramifications of the bulge > to fade away.

heh

</comment><comment><USER16> Ford Foundation, Evangelical NGOs and World Bank Intellectual Yet Idiots are to be blamed here.

I remember in my childhood government ran this insane propaganda for vasectomy. Government claimed we all would die of hunger unless we stop producing babies. This propaganda was sponsored by people in USA who claimed population was a time bomb. Those fears were totally discredited with time.

Sadly good well off people bought the propaganda where as poor did not. Government even outright lied that vasectomies are easily reversible when in reality those procedures are more complex and not free.

That is why I caution current Indian government to simply ignore the first world problems like Global warming doomsday and instead focus on rapid growth so existing millions can afford to feed themselves and let USA and Europe play the global warming game.

Indian PM is smart and he used global warming scare to get billions from USA and Europe while doing only lip service to actual efforts. China is doing same and better.

<comment><USER45> Population is a time bomb that is presently exploding. The rate of food production will not keep pace with population, and somewhere between 200-500 million people have died of starvation since the warnings about population in 1968 that likely inspired the programs you are talking about (not all in India and not due to total carrying capacity...)

Global warming impacts the poor disproportionately compared to the rich, because the rich will be able to afford food when it becomes more scarce. This disproportionate impact on the poor is one of the reasons the Pope has called on all of us (and the Wealthy in particular) to be concerned about and act on global warming.

From a self-centered perspective, "don't divide the farm" — concentrate instead of dilute the wealth flowing to the next generation. I do not believe the poorest are net contributors to economic activity so increasing their number is not the path to national prosperity.

<comment><USER16> You are wrong and smug Sir.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Which Notebook Should I buy - <AUTHOR> Hi, Please help me for the following two cases. 1. I am a Rails developer and I am planning to my a Mac Book for my daily work. I also plan to record tutorial screen casts. I will not edit the screen casts on this machine. Which is the cheapest Mac Book should I buy? I am on a constrained budget. 2. My wife is a video editor. She wants to move from using a Windows machine running Adobe Premiere Pro to Final Cut Pro. She currently edits HD videos but will need to edit 4k videos within a year. Which Apple machine should she buy? Budget is not a constraint. We can spend USD 5000-6000 if required. <comment><USER2> You say "I am on a constrained budget" and then "Budget is not a constraint". Also you ask for "the cheapest Mac Book" and then that you can spend 5000-6000.

<comment><USER3> They want to buy two notebooks. One cheap, one unconstrained.</comment></comment>