Request for Startups: Water - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ycombinator.com/request-for-startups-water/ <comment><USER3> Whatever happened to Kamen's "Slingshot" water purifier? [1] It was a little vapor compression distillation unit powered by a Stirling cycle engine. There was a tabletop-sized model, and a shipping-container sized model. There were announcements of field tests. Heavy PR around 2012, then silence.

There were a few demo installations, but it never appeared as a volume product. There's a similar technology from Simon Frasier University.[2] They're looking for someone to commercialize it.

A YC startup might start by deploying that technology in East Porterville, CA, where the wells have gone dry.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slingshot_(water_vapor_distill...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slingshot_\(water_vapor_distillation_system\)) [2] [https://www.biv.com/article/2016/5/water-machines-creator- th...](https://www.biv.com/article/2016/5/water-machines-creator-thirsty- market/)

<comment><USER4> Kamen ultimately learned that distribution of water purification machines was the most difficult problem.

<comment><USER5> Are you referring to the distance between the water that is being purified and the people who waht to use it?

<comment><USER4> AFAIK the system is installed near a water source (wells, rivers).

The distance refers to the supply chain and logistics involved shipping Slingshot to the villages, installing, and maintaining.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't share a strong sense of optimism that we'll 'beat climate change'. We need to fundamentally change how humans live on this planet and interact with our ecosystems to move past issues like this. Projects like these will certainly help a lot of people in the near-term, but I fear they distract us from addressing the real problems. Sadly, the real problems don't have much of a financial incentive to be solved.

<comment><USER7> >>We need to fundamentally change how humans live on this planet

If anyone wonders why some resist accepting climate change as a fact, the above statement gets to a big piece of the underlying puzzle. I _strongly_ suspect that if climate change was merely a scientific topic, there would be little-to-no resistance to accepting it as fact.

But it's not just a scientific question, it's (been made into) a question of how humans fundamentally live on the planet. And so of course a subset of society is going to resist societal change. It's not that people are particularly stupid, it's that they don't like the fundamental changes to how they live that they believe will follow.

Of course, we all know all of this, but for some reason we like to pretend we don't.

In my personal opinion, if you truly care about stopping climate change, you should be spending our effort developing solutions that do NOT require fundamental changes in how humans live on this planet. That path is much more likely to be successful in the political realm and thus more likely to actually save the planet.

<comment><USER8> I think Tesla and Solar City are excellent examples of this. They're not "stop driving, turn off your house lights, etc", they're "keep doing what you do, only now greener _"

_ Of course, issues with the greenlieness of electric cars, etc etc - <USER2> remember when solar panels were a net negative? AFAIK, that sure as hell didn't last.

<comment><USER9> It's strange to me that Toyota has a hydrogen fuel car in production and for sale today, but it gets almost no attention in discussions like this one. Why is that? Are the CO2 effects of liquid hydrogen extraction a barrier? Or maybe the need to establish a network of hydrogen fuel delivery?

<comment><USER8> Knowing nothing, my bets would be:

1) There is nothing sexy about the car. Tesla cars aren't _just_ electric cars - they're also fantastic cars. Tesla makes a great (amazing?) car _that is electric_ , rather than a an electric that may be a great car.

2) Yep, fueling infrastructure. You can charge your electric cars at home, at the office; the supercharger and battery swap stations; that Tesla (AFAIK?) charges your car for free... Where do you need to go to get hydrogen fuel?

There's also an analysis - maybe in the Wait, But Why? on Tesla - as to how you can't sell alternative vehicle stock from normal dealerships; it just doesn't make enough sense to the dealer, but ATM I don't remember the reasoning. Also AFAIK, Mr Musk has a good write-up on why hydrogen fuel isn't The Thing.

But mostly #1, IMO.

<comment><USER10> My local government is doing deals to build a hydrogen electrolyser facility and car fuelling stations in my city, which is... interesting.

[http://www.environment.act.gov.au/energy/growth-in-the- clean...](http://www.environment.act.gov.au/energy/growth-in-the-clean- economy/hydrogen-power-coming-to-canberra)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I actually have an uncle (on my wife's side) who is working on technology that can purify water via Ozone generation. (their website: [http://www.ep- pure.com/](http://www.ep-pure.com/), and an article about what they're doing: [http://www.news- gazette.com/news/business/2014-03-23/company...](http://www.news- gazette.com/news/business/2014-03-23/companys-microplasma-technology- generating-interest.html)) They can actually produce a small box (about the size of a lunchbox) that generates enough ozone to purify a well for at least one family that costs less than $100 and powers itself via solar panel. (it might have been around $50 or less, but I don't remember the specifics) Along with the obvious benefit of being cheap, the "cartridge" that actually generates the ozone is recyclable, tiny, and easily replaceable by anybody. This is important because the current standard way of generating ozone is through complex industrial machinery that is difficult to service, requiring large, expensive parts. (they have a comparison of a current piece of the machinery that generates the ozone vs their cartridges in the office I visited)

Note that while I'm related by marriage to one of the founders, I have no monetary stake in the company, so please don't take this as just a shill. I got to visit their (tiny) office where they're building the devices that generate the ozone, and it was just legitimately exciting to see what they were doing.

I may not be a founder of the company or anything, but I got a pretty good explanation and tour. So if anyone has any questions, I'd be happy to answer them.

<comment><USER12> Isn't ozone toxiq?

<comment><USER11> Yes, it is. However, because of that it works as an incredible sanitizer. I was just talking with my uncle and he was saying it can turn the nasty water in third world countries clear and purified within a minute.

Normally toxicity like that would be a problem, but ozone is actually a highly unstable molecule. The reason it's toxic is because it is literally ripping other molecules apart to get components it wants to become completely safe oxygen. This property allows it to sanitize the water, and then leave the water completely drinkable and safe shortly after due to it completely transforming into something safe.

<comment><USER13> "to clean the water, we poison the water!"

All jokes aside, this actually sounds really cool.

<comment><USER14> This isn't unusual though. You know they add Chlorine to many municipal water supplies? Chlorine gas was used as a chemical weapon in WW1.

<comment><USER15> I think I'd trust ozone over chlorine tho

<comment><USER16> Indeed. Plenty of people drink ozonated water as part of natural health remedies, and you don't hear any reports of serious problems.

Breathing it is a different matter; it can do terrible damage to people's lungs.

But ingesting it in water doesn't seem to be a problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Agriculture takes up the majority of the use of water consumption. (Nearly 70% of all water use - [http://www.worldometers.info/water/](http://www.worldometers.info/water/)). Of that consumption, in terms of irrigation, nearly 50% of the water is lost to evaporation ([https://water.usgs.gov/edu/wuir.html](https://water.usgs.gov/edu/wuir.html)).

There have been solutions to this problem with urban farming practices with a combination of hydroponics and vermiponics for a number of years which can grow quite a bit of usable produce in a smaller land area using significantly less water.

Also, it could be useful to continue to break down these statistics by crop and water use. For instance, almond farms appear to take up nearly 10% of California's water use ([http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/0...](http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/05/_10_percent_of_california_s_water_goes_to_almond_farming.html)).

Doing so would lend credence to which crop would be most effective for first improving upon. This report appears to suggest that alfalfa is one of the neediest crops grown in California in terms of water consumption. There are obvious other crops as well, in terms of land area (Corn being one of them) but nevertheless it's worth noting. [https://www.arb.ca.gov/fuels/lcfs/workgroups/lcfssustain/han...](https://www.arb.ca.gov/fuels/lcfs/workgroups/lcfssustain/hanson.pdf)

Now, you might be asking, what is alfalfa for? Alfalfa is grown as a feed for animals, mainly dairy cows. Dairy cows eat roughly 70% of the alfalfa produced in the US. It's important to note that some alfalfa farmers tend to disagree that solutions like drip irrigation will work effectively enough - as it sometimes depends on the soil type and exposure to critters chewing up the pipes. ([http://www.kpbs.org/news/2015/jul/03/how-one-california- alfa...](http://www.kpbs.org/news/2015/jul/03/how-one-california-alfalfa- farmer-cut-his-water-us/))

<comment><USER18> Adjusting our meat consumption has a huge effect on agricultural water usage as well.

<comment><USER17> It also might be useful, as noted [https://www.arb.ca.gov/fuels/lcfs/workgroups/lcfssustain/han...](https://www.arb.ca.gov/fuels/lcfs/workgroups/lcfssustain/hanson.pdf) to simply not grow certain low cash crops like alfalfa, wheat or grain in California given the amount water use required in more drought stricken areas.

In addition to this, we can also think about overall energy efficiency of consuming a product itself. For instance, potatoes yield more energy and protein than most crops grown.

Given the situation, if we want food we will have to pay the price in terms of water and land for producing the product used to produce that food.

<comment><USER19> What makes these farms grow alfafa? Is it more profitable for them to grow it instead of a less water-intensive crop?

<comment><USER20> Essentially, water is subsidized by the Californian water pricing rules in order to provide low-cost feed that boosts milk production in cows (this is why alfalfa in particular probably won't be pushed out). Californian dairy is a surprisingly powerful lobbying group with enough of a budget to also have a general public ad campaign to protect their interests.

The price subsidy encourages overconsumption, which causes the shortage.

Most places raise prices to fund desalination plants (if they have access to large bodies of water near the population centers, like California does), but that's why they don't. And given they won't do the obviously ideal strategy that works for everyone else in the world, it's been hard to get money from the struggling general budget to build the facilities. Why should every other department struggling for a budget to meet basic needs lose their chance because they won't adopt a simple price structure change?

Instead, non-renewable reserves are being depleted, as mentioned in the article.

The problem here isn't really technical in nature, though.

<comment><USER21> I don't think the current model of agricultural production in California is sustainable; for something that takes up 70-80% of the state's water, it only amounts to 2-2.5% of the GDP.

If the problem for California is one of policy, what endeavors can technology take on to help?

<comment><USER20> Develop tech to make alternate feed cheaper without dropping milk production or quality compared to alfalfa.

Improve water distribution in soil (I think there is a way to optimize this, varying by soil type and many other factors, that would minimize runoff). Or, get easier systems to recycle runoff. Ideally something with no/few moving or manufactured parts.

Reduce the cost of desalination plants and create a more realtime water market. Having one single water market would be a fundamentally technical task (albeit a complex one), but would level out prices, removing the incentive to make the policy mistakes.

<comment><USER18> Farmers are sunlight harvesters. Figuring out how to turn sunlight + carbon dioxide (renewables) into profitable products for sale can be achieved through good management in addition to appropriate technology.

Soil's water holding capacity can be increased through techniques like green mature and cover cropping. The permaculture approach to water is to slow it, spread it, and sink it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm working on this problem right now. I believe the path to cheap water is through a massive fleet of solar stills floating in the South Pacific that passively collect evaporated water. Currently I'm working through my assumptions about biodegrading materials + construction, average loss (actuary) of such vessels in the region, logistics of collection/distribution over wide oceanic conditions, and how to build such a fleet incrementally without a massive amount of starting cash.

The big reason I saw this as an opportunity is the huge investments Saudi Arabia and the surrounding region are investing in their own water supply, and the knowledge that California's water politics will push them in the same direction. While traditional desalinization will help, the costs in material and electricity are prohibitive for small players.

<comment><USER23> Isn't transporting all the water likely to cost more than distilling it on site?

<comment><USER22> To be honest I'm not sure. Transportation is one of the largest unknowns in this idea. On top of that, there's also the unknown of _offloading_ the water at a given destination.

My hope is to work out a solution that takes less energy than traditional desalinization for the same amount of water, even with the transportation energy requirements.

<comment><USER24> Couldn't you just put all the water onto converted oil tankers and bring it right to cities like San Diego or LA?

<comment><USER25> Freshwater consumption absolutely dwarfs oil consumption. People also ask "if you can build long distance oil pipelines, can't you build long distance water pipelines?" It's not impossible, but it's not particularly affordable either because the value of water per liter is so much lower.

<comment><USER26> You don't need a pipeline for water most of the time. You can use open canals, which are much cheaper to build.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Making clean water extremely abundant and cheap is also part of the problem. When it's cheap and abundant, instead of valuing it, we tend to waste and pollute it. In many places, we're not paying the true cost of clean water. In other places, some bioregions just can't support as many people as it does today without expensive technology and its unintended consequences. It's not technology that needs to change; it's our worldview about our relationship with water.

<comment><USER27> Exactly. Best way to deal with drought is to privatize the water supply and raise the price of water. Higher water prices leads to low value agricultural production moving elsewhere, minimizing water consumption.

<comment><USER28> Could water cost be increased without the privatisation? I'm apprehensive about corporates taking the pricing to another extreme [0]

[0] [http://yournewswire.com/nestle-ceo-water-is-not-a-human- righ...](http://yournewswire.com/nestle-ceo-water-is-not-a-human-right-should- be-privatized/)

<comment><USER27> The state could raise the price, but the issues with water, particularly in the developing world, require substantial amounts of investment in distribution, cleaning, etc. Likely will require additional investment from private sector.

Also, a political entity like the state is unlikely to arrive at an efficient price. Likely to still be underpriced due to political pressure.

There's a really good book by Fedrik Segerfeldt called "Water for Sale". I highly recommend checking it out. It goes over some possible public-private partnerships that could help expand water access and minimize excessive water usage.

[https://smile.amazon.com/Water-Sale-Business-Market- Resolve/...](https://smile.amazon.com/Water-Sale-Business-Market- Resolve/dp/1930865767/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483489613&sr=8-1&keywords=water+for+sale)

It gets a bit preachy at points, but its a quick read and goes over how to price water, investments that need to be made, etc

<comment><USER19> Does this plan theorize that in places like sub-Saharan Africa (and other places where similar nonprofits are active [1]), the people living on the land will pay true market prices for water out of their meager, subsistence agriculture-based incomes, instead of sending a family member to the well?

[1] [https://thewaterproject.org/water- scarcity/](https://thewaterproject.org/water-scarcity/)

<comment><USER27> I can speak for Uganda at least, since several of my contract farmers lead fairly low income lives. Can't really speak for the rest of sub-saharan Africa.

One of the biggest costs a peasant family currently has is the time it takes for the woman of the family to get to the well and back with water (in Uganda, it is always women doing this). She usually spends several hours each day doing so. Obviously, this situation is improved greatly if they're near the Nile or another river, but for those who are further afield they spend hours of potentially productive time fetching water.

An increase in the price of water could incentivize development of closer wells, better delivery methods, etc. by profit seeking companies, minimizing the time she spends going back and forth between the well and her house. She can spend that time working and generating income instead.

This will not improve household wealth in all cases, but I'm betting that something like this would help improve several of these families lots in life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Great timing :-) We've got a lot of experience with water I n the Netherlands (that little country that was partially build out of the ocean and that's several meters below sea level. Y-combinator should become a member of Water Alliance: "The Water Alliance focuses on innovative and sustainable water technology that can be used worldwide". Startups around water technology, a university and global businesses like Philips and more. See: [http://wateralliance.nl/en/about-us/](http://wateralliance.nl/en/about-us/)

</comment><comment><USER30> If you want a picture of what life could be like if we don't get ahead of the problem, read The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi.

[http://windupstories.com/books/water- knife/](http://windupstories.com/books/water-knife/)

<comment><USER31> In similar vein, an interesting indie sci-fi movie from Mexico dealing with the topic:

Sleep Dealer [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0804529/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0804529/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> For what it's worth, I remember seeing a shower system, a few years ago, out of Scandinavia that recycles water (5 liters used instead of the normal 150 liters). IIRC, it's the one in the video [1].

On a personal note, it really is amazing how little water one needs to shower with when using a bucket, as I once had to do while in Brazil.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYoeHFJAyhU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYoeHFJAyhU) [3m50s]

Edit: It seems they're hiring, too. [https://orbital-systems.com/en-eu/about- us/](https://orbital-systems.com/en-eu/about-us/)

</comment><comment><USER33> Too bad you have to be in the bay area. My son and I have been working on a system that captures, stores, filters water and the whole thing is powered by solar. Already did a small working prototype and are now working on a bigger one. Can't be in the bay area though and we really need access to land/yard space which we have where we are at.

<comment><USER27> I'm guessing this is for personal use and not agricultural or industrial? How does the cost per gallon compare with desalination and wastewater recycling?

<comment><USER33> Hoping to eventually target agricultural but we are not near that stage. The current prototype we are working on is being developed more for personal home use and communal type gardens. We have 2 local communal gardens in town that we will be testing it out on after our backyard prototype is complete. Initially the captured/stored water will primarily be used for watering and cleaning. We would eventually like the water to be drinkable too but that's a ways off.

It is more than just a capture/store system though. It taps into multiple sensors to determine how much water to use for given situations in order to not waste the water it does capture.

Honestly, I don't know how the cost would compare with desalination and wastewater recycling. Isn't desalination really expensive?

<comment><USER27> Desalination is pretty pricey at ~$2000 per acre foot, but desalination and wastewater recycling are your likely competition. Assuming of course that you're only going to sell this in drought-stricken areas. If you're aiming for wetter areas, you're competing with rain water, and its tough to beat free.

Could you give a walkthrough of how this works? I'm trying to get a better grasp on your prototype

<comment><USER33> "going to sell this in drought-stricken areas"

Yes. I am in California so see the affect of the drought.

Do you mind if I send you an email to the address in your handle?

<comment><USER21> If you really want to see the affect of the drought, visit the Hispanic and or local farmers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Wondering if anyone is commercializing graphene based water filters anytime soon:

[http://phys.org/news/2016-03-revolutionary-graphene- filter-c...](http://phys.org/news/2016-03-revolutionary-graphene-filter- crisis.html)

There is also nano-cellulose

[http://phys.org/news/2016-02-nano-cellulose-filters- highly-e...](http://phys.org/news/2016-02-nano-cellulose-filters-highly- effective.html)

</comment><comment><USER35> Why isn't there more support for nuclear-powered desalination?

[http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/non- power-n...](http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/non-power- nuclear-applications/industry/nuclear-desalination.aspx)

<comment><USER36> I've always thought it really cool how we can collapse the water problem into the energy problem. (And, to be clear, I agree with your solution to the energy problem.)

<comment><USER37> Every problem is at its core an energy problem.

<comment><USER38> This is the one fact that keeps me relatively optimistic about the future of civilization.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Ok, I'll bite. I'm the dumbing guy in the room, so I need some help understanding.

Given that water is 71% of the earth's surface[1], it seems like this is mostly a transportation problem.

We don't need to create water, unless that would make transport easer.

We don't need to filter water, unless that is easer to do then transporting it.

In the case of drought, the problem seems to be the transport of water, and near zero cost irrigation provided normally by rain.

Optimal water transportation seems to be the core problem to solve. With cost effective localized irrigation replacement for rain a subset related problem. (Perhaps if drought is more spacial than temporal, the irrigation solution could be temporary and mobil so as to move to areas of drought as needed).

So what ways can we think of to transport water? Or if that's not the core problem, then what is the right problem to solve?

[1]:[https://water.usgs.gov/edu/earthhowmuch.html](https://water.usgs.gov/edu/earthhowmuch.html)

<comment><USER40> The 71% statistic is from all water sources. The difficulty is easily accessible freshwater sources, so cheap desalination seems to be critical.

"Freshwater makes up a very small fraction of all water on the planet. While nearly 70 percent of the world is covered by water, only 2.5 percent of it is fresh. The rest is saline and ocean-based. Even then, just 1 percent of our freshwater is easily accessible, with much of it trapped in glaciers and snowfields. In essence, only 0.007 percent of the planet's water is available to fuel and feed its 6.8 billion people."

[http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/freshw...](http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/freshwater/freshwater- crisis/)

<comment><USER41> It's not that simple, you can't give people water without a sewage and water waste management just look at what happened in Africa.

We had charities digging wells and what it did is make it worse for many many people.

They had running water and with it came toilets with no treatment.

Fecal mater and water don't mix in nature it decomposes in drainage ditches it becomes a hotspot for bacteria and parasites.

A lot of the feel good water projects in Africa didn't pan out that well for the local population, they often bring deseases and contaminate the local water supply, brake down and actually reduce the water security.

If we want to give people access to readily available water we have to give them a full solution including what to do with the waste water and how to safely treat and recycle it.

<comment><USER42> Interesting, I've seen criticism of well projects in Africa but more about having them run dry/break with no funds for maintenance. Do you have any sources I could read for disease/problems caused by working wells?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> >> "We're now reviewing applications on a rolling basis, so you can apply here now."

What percentage of YC investments are funded on a rolling basis?

<comment><USER44> What changed?

On what basis where applications reviewed before?

What do you mean here by rolling basis?

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Water is a very California problem at the second... Not every part of the USA is in drought, but CA sure has. Nearly all of CAs water goes to agriculture. It's a shame there's so much snobbery and false information around GMOs... Having crops that could be grown with less water would be a huge benefit to the world. Amazes me that people will take the scientific highroad to global warming, but a witchcraft based approach with GMOs. That's where I'd put my focus

<comment><USER46> The problem most people have with GMOs is not that they have been genetically modified per se, it's the pesticides and herbicides which are then flooded on those GMO crops. In fact, everyone I know who eats organic is not doing so to avoid the GMO component, but they are doing so to avoid the biocides.

And by the way, those biocides get into water supplies too.

<comment><USER47> Isn't the point of GMO to reduce reliance on pesticides?

<comment><USER48> Assuming you mean herbicides as well as pesticides the answer is sometimes yes, sometimes no. The classic example of a GMO crop is "Roundup Ready" corn, developed by Monsanto. It makes the plant resistant to glyphosate, so the crop can be sprayed, killing weeds &etc. without killing the corn.

<comment><USER47> I guess as a lay person, I meant both. Makes sense, so does that effectively reduce the volume of pesticides/herbicides, or does it just allow you to lay it on with less precision?

<comment><USER49> I had to look it up to check what I was about to say: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_crops#Gly...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_crops#Glyphosate)

In the case of roundup ready crops, it sounds like it's both more effective as an herbicide and less toxic. The Wikipedia page didn't say whether that was toxicity towards humans. So in that sense roundup ready crops seem to be net better for the consumer anyway.

Jury seems to be still out on whether roundup is actually harmful, leaning on the no side at least according to the Wikipedia article on Glyphosate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> How about moving around some ice bergs to areas in need of fresh water?

Dassault was working on "Project Ice Dream" \- [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PL5blnAH9xw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PL5blnAH9xw) \- which centered on tugboats to move ice bergs around... sails would probably work too.

This also doubles as large-scale cargo transportation between continents, for cargo that can tolerate a 6 month journey. An awful lot of cargo can fit on an ice berg with a surface area of many hundreds of square kilometers.....

more: [http://gnusha.org/logs/html/2016-11-22.log.html#t20:04-166](http://gnusha.org/logs/html/2016-11-22.log.html#t20:04-166)

<comment><USER51> _" How about moving around some ice bergs to areas in need of fresh water?"_

Not easy. This was a problem my high school math tutor, a glaciologist discussed with me one evening doing some applied math. cf [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12341964](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12341964)

<comment><USER50> Tugboats aren't the only option--- you could use on-shore rope wrangling and pulling, you could use sails, you could use focused orbital mirrors to melt ice on one side as a propulsive force... and so on.

<comment><USER51> This idea of pushing, pulling icebergs was investigated by ppl much smarter than me (Glaciology/Maths dept. Uni Melb) to see if it was at least feasible. The idea has some merit, the physics (moments of inertia) get in the way. Make for an interesting experiment to prove how.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> What is being done to use the brine produced by desalination?

Whenever I look into this, it seems that all the brine questions revolve around how to dispose of it in a safe manner, or how to re-introduce it gradually to the sea.

Why can't we turn brine into table salt, or use it in some industrial process?

<comment><USER53> Sea water is about 3.5% salt by weight [1]. The city of Los Angeles uses about 14 billion gallons of water in a month [2]. This works out to something like 2 million tons of salt being produced just by LA in a single month. So we can turn it into table salt... but it's something like six tons of table salt per year per person.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seawater](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seawater) [2]: [http://projects.scpr.org/applications/monthly-water- use/los-...](http://projects.scpr.org/applications/monthly-water-use/los- angeles-department-of-water-and-power/)

<comment><USER54> Where does all the waste water go? If 10 billion goes down the sewer and back to the ocean, you can "re-salt" that water on the way out..

<comment><USER55> Even better, you can build an osmosis power station and create a lot of electricity. The energy in the salinity difference between the water of a river and the water of the ocean is enormous.

(It basically works like this: You have two containers with water of different salinities, connected with a membrane that only lets the water pass, but not the salt. The water will move through the membrane to balance the salinity - osmosis - and one container will have a rising water level, which can be used to generate electricity with turbines.)

<comment><USER56> Wouldn't it be better to simply recycle the non-salty water instead?

<comment><USER55> Depends. You only need a difference in salinity, not non-salty water. If the brine is much more saline than the ocean, there's your energy potential. On the other hand, this kind of power plant also goes well at the mouth of a river. You don't need clean water at all.

I don't know about California, is all the fresh water fully recycled until the rivers are dry? That would be hard to imagine.

<comment><USER21> I don't think the rivers would run dry if we recycled waste water, as a majority of it is just dumped into the ocean.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I don't know if this is useful, but if you're looking to acquire more background knowledge from someone with 'expertise' on water scarcity, perhaps you might consider contacting the Singaporean government?

Water scarcity became a major policy issue for them around the time they were kicked out of the Malaysian Federation in the 60s, probably because their main water supply is located in Malaysia... They currently have the capacity to satisfy 30% of their water demand using 'reclaimed water' (i.e. recycled) and 10% using desalinated. Although I don't think they actually need to fully utilise these capacities as 50-75 per cent of their water needs are met by man-made rainfall catchments [0].

I realise how strange it is to say 'just go have a chat with the Singaporean government', but I suspect they'd be happy share their expertise. My sketchy understanding is that Singapore has found that 'reclaimed' (i.e. recycled) water is far more cost-effective (and cleaner) compared to desalinated water.

And despite being a semi-benevolent autocracy, the Singaporean government has had to work pretty hard to convince their population that there's nothing wrong with drinking recycled water (i.e. water that previously had poop in it). Learning how they overcame this issue could be valuable...

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in_Singapore#Water_sources_and_integrated_management)

</comment><comment><USER58> Surprised no one's mentioned Nebia: [https://nebia.com](https://nebia.com)

Super cool startup working on minimising water usage through increasing the surface area/volume ratio of water droplets while taking a shower.

<comment><USER59> Nebia is already funded by Y Combinator (S15).

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Love seeing YC increasingly focus on helping solve the world's biggest problems.

</comment><comment><USER61> Here's an idea:

Build out massive solar and wind power capacity and create electricity for the grid. Use specially designed desalination plants which operate well at low utilization and significant swings in production to smooth out the peaks in the solar / wind production curves. Excess power is converted into clean water. Water seems like a reasonably good place to "store" the value of the energy you just created. Furthermore, what is the value of having a somewhat more predictable power supply from solar and wind resources?

</comment><comment><USER46> It seems the lowest hanging fruit is rather simple; protect existing clean water supplies.

Not sure how exciting of a startup idea it is to buy up and preserve large tracks of land containing water and aquifers, though.

</comment><comment><USER62> This letter to the editor from the January 3, 2017 New York Times argues for public funding of water systems:

 _Failures of the Private Water Industry_

[http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/03/opinion/failures-of-the- pr...](http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/03/opinion/failures-of-the-private- water-industry.html)

I wonder if there's any public funding of water system _research_?

</comment><comment><USER63> > We're optimistic we will beat climate change.

"Beat" climate change ? I think you people totally misunderstand the problem then.

The reason it's happening in the first place is very simple and we all know it: mindless, senseless, useless consumption of everything.

Armies of methodically brainwashed "consumers" unleashed upon the limited world around them - under the war drums of advertising and marketing.

Water tech will help, but it will not fix climate change...

You can't "beat" climate change without addressing the elephant in the room.

Now that's a truly "hard" problem.

<comment><USER64> You make it sound like consumption is only a bad thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Maybe reach out to these folks? [https://openawg.github.io/](https://openawg.github.io/)

<comment><USER66> This is awesome. Thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> What is the current state-of-the-art for portable, personal water purification methods and devices, like the sort you could use to treat a bottle's worth of water?

Devices like the LifeStraw [1], the LifeSaver bottle [2], the WaterIsLife straw [3], and the SteriPEN [4], are nice, but they're pricey. Any ways of reducing the cost?

[1] [http://lifestraw.com/](http://lifestraw.com/) [2] [http://www.iconlifesaver.eu/](http://www.iconlifesaver.eu/) [3] [http://waterislife.com/clean-water/the-straw](http://waterislife.com/clean- water/the-straw) [4] [https://www.steripen.com/](https://www.steripen.com/)

</comment><comment><USER67> Aren't companies like Hampton Creek, Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods indirectly working on this? I'd love to see other types of innovation but it seems to me that the lowest hanging fruit is to decrease the demand for animal based foods.

</comment><comment><USER68> If the climate becomes unreliable you need large scale underground water storage of rain to compensate this.

Basically you need cheap, replaceable solar-pumps (that one is allready doable).

And you need cheap, near surface volumes dug out and sealed. Actually all you need for that is - a water pump and a glorified fridge. You drill a initial hole- and now you pump water in and freeze it. Water expands, you thaw it and repeat. Basically a giant intentional pothole.

Now, anyone here into tunnel engineering? How to cheaply seal the resulting artificial cavern?

</comment><comment><USER69> Whatever the solutions, I'd like to see distributed, decentralized and individual water generation/purification systems, specially using solar.

</comment><comment><USER70> we are doing a bunch of tech around better water usage on farms. [http://www.mywildeye.com/wildeye/](http://www.mywildeye.com/wildeye/) We have done a bunch of work in New Zealand and Australia and now moving into California and the rest of the US.

One of the big things is not just to optimize water, but optimize the whole problem which water is one part of.

</comment><comment><USER71> I'm excited about this quite a bit, but does YC have any experts on water & science/engineering in general? "lower-cost desalination plants, novel purification technologies" are technical science & engineering problems often closely tied to academia & research. Fortunately though there are some great resources in the Bay Area in these fields.

</comment><comment><USER72> I've thought a lot about this and the key is not just technology, but the ability to quickly automate the markets for the sale of water. In many cases, water is plentiful, it's just very hard to get it somewhere. Infrastructure combined with a way to automate water rights exchanges is a really important part of this equation.

</comment><comment><USER73> Michael Burry of The Big Short fame is investing in water. Pretty interesting article about investing in water.

[http://vintagevalueinvesting.com/how-to-invest-in-water- like...](http://vintagevalueinvesting.com/how-to-invest-in-water-like-michael- burry-from-the-big-short/)

</comment><comment><USER74> Is YC spreading this announcement anywhere else? Seems like Engineers Without Borders might be a good audience (which is mostly civil/environmental/mechanical engineers IME).

</comment><comment><USER75> Isn't the obvious solution here cheap/clean electricity = cheap/clean purified water? Seems higher leverage to focus on the energy part of the equation.

</comment><comment><USER76> If politicians were working for the common good and not just for the big transnational companies we will not have this problem. What about fixing that?

</comment><comment><USER77> From the linked article:

> We're now reviewing applications on a rolling basis, so you can apply here > now.

However the "Apply page" is highly misleading:

> please submit your application online by 8 pm PT on October 4

So are water applications on a rolling basis or all of them?

<comment><USER78> It also reads as if you will be moving to the Bay Area now - did they already make choices or was there a typo? The article is from today, but the rest of the details make me think otherwise. It's pretty confusing..

Another thing to think about - why move to the Bay Area? Water is not a software problem; water is an infrastructure, political, energy intensive (we're talking drinking water, right?), and most importantly cost prohibitive problem.

What does moving to the Bay Area get you in this arrangement - besides access to YC people?

<comment><USER56> If you are doing scientific R&D, the bay area has access to analytical facilities at Stanford, Berkeley and a few DOE labs. It's not the worst place in this regard. I'm sure you could manage in plenty of other places also, say Boston, for example.

Source: I work at a startup in the bay area doing materials science research.

<comment><USER78> That's true, but I'm not sure you would have access to those institutions through YC unless you or your team have prior contacts at one of them.

What's the startup?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> Finally! Congrats!

</comment><comment><USER80> I thought the whole point of YCombinator was to find startups run by people who are willing to listen to the market, "pivoting" to what might be a different problem in a different market.

</comment><comment><USER81> > We're optimistic we will beat climate change. But, at the same time, we need > to prepare for things to get worse.

No, we need to act urgently to stop climate change; saying only "We're optimistic" sends the message that it's not a critical problem that needs urgent attention.</comment>


EU puts hold on Sun / Oracle deal - <AUTHOR> http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/09/1271&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en <comment><AUTHOR> More info here: <http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20090903122146904></comment>


The debit card fee driving US banks crazy - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/money/us-money-blog/2015/jan/27/us-credit-debit-card-fees-21-cents-durbin-amendment <comment><USER2> This applies to debit cards when used online, too.

Say you charge 1000 customers using a Visa/MC debit card an average of $50 per month each. Use a flat rate processor like Stripe/PayPal (2.9% + $0.30 per transaction) and you'll pay $1750 a month in fees. The interchange rate would only be $235 a month in fees. My merchant account provider charges 0.04% + $0.10 over interchange as their markup, so that volume would cost $355 a month. I have a few other fees to pay with that account, but they don't come close to that 5X difference.

For my SaaS businesses, regulated debit is 26% of the card mix. Flat rate processors are making a killing on their debit markup.

</comment><comment><USER3> The flipside of this is most _processors_ have not updated their fee schedule to pass on these savings to smaller merchants.

Square still charges 2.75% on debit cards. Stripe, 2.9% + $0.30. They are making a _killing_ on debit cards.

If and when the processor market catches up with interchange regulations there may be a material impact on these companies' revenue models. (Square is already trying to diversify beyond basic processing.)

<comment><USER4> Yup.

[http://ink.hackeress.com/2014/12/crowdfunding-is-too- expensi...](http://ink.hackeress.com/2014/12/crowdfunding-is-too-expensive- payments.html)

Treating everything by default like it's a credit card transaction is _the_ glitch in the matrix... these companies are not "like" a cartel... they are a cartel.

The screenshot in the article is from my friend's campaign to raise money for her dog that got hit by a car in AK.. We surveyed everybody, and they all donated with cash from their bank accounts (debit). Nobody put their donation on a credit card. Nobody does that.

Somebody should do one of these graphics for The Oatmeal's Exploding Kitten kickstarter campaign... Stripe has already made over $250K on this project alone (more profitable than 95 percent of Kickstarter campaigns).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I honestly had no idea US banks took the piss quite so much, but I did have a vague idea that many still use cheques over there, EMV/chip-and-pin was barely known and you often get charges levied on debit cards.

That really isn't the case in the UK, certainly, and I don't think it's normal practice most other places - or am I wrong?

Is this actually _normal_ over there? Would it be practical to bank with a bank based in another country?

I know everyone's going to roll their eyes, but how does this financially compare to transfers via Bitcoin?

<comment><USER6> I've used both the UK and US.

Electronic payments in the US are painful and slow. They often don't work at all on weekends, and certainly don't have the 2-3 hour speed of the "Faster Payments" system in the UK (which is often borderline instant).

Banks actually intentionally make it a real pain in the butt to send money to another bank, and stupidly easy to send money between accounts linked at the same bank. Last time we needed to set that up it took almost an hour, because of how they confusingly set up the UI and naming. Then the payment took a full 7 day week to arrive in the other party's account.

Plus in the US you have to have $1500 in a savings account (almost 0% interest "savings") and pay in your pay cheque and jump through a million other hoops just to get a free current (checking) account. So you'd assume the fees would be lower and customer service better? NOPE. Fees are higher than the UK, and CS is worse.

Everyone keeps saying "join USAA!" but unfortunately they closed the loophole that allowed non-military to sign up for a checking account right before I could. So no dice. Traditional banks are just horrible in the US, just awful, it cannot be overstated.

<comment><USER7> You're incorrect about the cost of accounts. I can have $2 in my checking or savings account, and there are no fees. I've never had a bank account that cost me money to keep. I also don't have to jump through any hoops, I merely walked into the bank and signed up for an account. Zero cost, zero hassle.

I'm also not sure what electronic payments you're referring to (transfers to others?). I deposit money and it shows up instantly. I buy something from Amazon.com via a Visa card attached to my checking account and it shows up instantly on my account.

<comment><USER8> >I'm also not sure what electronic payments you're referring to (transfers to others?)

I transfer money to and from my bank accounts using ACH transfers. It typically takes a few days for those to clear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Summary:

-Card payment processing for major banks took a regulatory profit hit around 2010. Per transaction fees dropped from $0.44 to $0.21.

-The lost profit from transaction fees has simply shifted to more checking account fees for consumers from things like ATMs and minimum balance/direct deposit requirements to maintain a 'free' account.

</comment><comment><USER10> Banking in America, summed up in one sentence: "In other words, the more you need free checking, the less you are likely to get it."

<comment><USER11> That's banking in America in general. In my experience, the moment I needed to avoid having to pay fees (when I didn't have that much money on my bank account) I would get slammed with fees left, right and center. Most of the time I could get rid of the fee by talking to someone at the bank (Wells Fargo), but most people wouldn't do that unless they really needed it.

Now that I have a decent income and a healthy account, I haven't been charge a fee in years.

Basically, if you are poor you get screwed as much as possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> > the estimated $1.4bn worth of card transactions that Americans make annually

This article seems to be off by a factor of 1000 on this number. $1.4 billion in debit card transaction for the U.S. doesn't pass the sanity check ($10 in annual debit transactions per U.S. household??). Source below confirms the number should be 1-2 trillion, not billion.

[http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-2013-credit-and-debit- ca...](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-2013-credit-and-debit-card- purchases-increased-8-over-2012-2014-02-18)

<comment><USER13> The Guardian is from UK, perhaps they are not using the American billion but the one that means 1E12

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> 'estimated $1.4bn worth of card transactions that Americans make annually.'

That's it?

<comment><USER15> Looks like that was supposed to be 1.4 trillion: [http://www.statista.com/topics/1598/debit- cards/](http://www.statista.com/topics/1598/debit-cards/) (from a comment on the article)

<comment><USER16> It was actually both: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Can anyone explain why the hell they need so much per transaction?

<comment><USER18> "Because they can" is the best explanation.

These fees do fund all the CC infrastructure (terminals, technology, cards, servers, chargebacks, fraud compensations) and the benefits that card issuers give to cardholders, but there's still a lot of space for profit. There's a strong lock-in as most merchants really, really want to accept cards instead of leaving the system, and little competition (the interchange is unified for all banks), so it's almost like a cartel where the prices go down only when/if forced by regulation.

<comment><USER19> These are for debit, not credit transactions, so I don't think charge backs or fraud apply.

<comment><USER18> Yes, credit cards "cost more" on fraud issues and that's why they get different, higher interchange fees.

But in general it depends on the place - US has a strong legal difference between fraud on debit and credit cards, but there still is some fraud protection even for debit cards and in (for example) EU the consumer rights for debit cards also includes chargebacks for unauthorised transactions and compensation of losses with stolen/fraudulent credentials above a certain level (100 EUR if I recall correctly); and banks still require a lot of monitoring infrastructure and security people to reduce debit card fraud simply because customer satisfaction requires that the fraudsters don't run rampart.

<comment><USER19> Banks in the US don't really care about credit card fraud "that much" since the onus is on the merchant. Since debit cards require a PIN, the only fraud that even comes up is cloning and PIN scraping via fake ATMs (chips might help here, but they have these problems even in Europe, so I'm not certain).

<comment><USER20> Know more about EU set up but the reality is that there is a lot of infrastructure costs and some fraud as well (~4.04bsp @$101 average). So costs for ~$2000 in fees can be up to ~$400. Signature cards are not secure whereas EMV cards hit a 0.42bsp fraud rate ($148 average).

Of course still room for profit but the above numbers show why merchants are interested in EU fees and security.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't understand this market. In Germany all bank interactions are basically free, you pay nothing (or little) for a bank account, everyone gets one (by law), credit cards are free and if you're lucky you also get about 1% of interest on your money. Why do american banks have to charge that much?

<comment><USER22> They charge this to merchants, not to the users.

<comment><USER23> Read the article again

<comment><USER22> It says retailers, not consumers

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Sign up for a rewards checking account and get some money back off the interchange fees: [https://www.depositaccounts.com/checking/reward-checking- acc...](https://www.depositaccounts.com/checking/reward-checking- accounts.html)

</comment><comment><USER22> You can sign up for a direct bank and have a free checking/savings account with higher interest and no fees. They even pay ATM fees up to a certain amount a month.

I still don't know why people have accounts at the big banks.

</comment><comment><USER23> My first reaction was... The what fee?! Is this the Onion? Who charges debit card fees?!

</comment><comment><USER25> Reads like an advertisement for Bitcoin....

</comment><comment><USER26> Not sure where credit unions figure into all this. They haven't been evil to me, even without hearing about what the big banks do. I'm not getting charged any "account maintenance" fees anywhere.</comment>


Everywhere I've Been in the last 3 years - GPS points - <AUTHOR> https://geoloqi.com/blog/2012/03/data-portraits-powered-by-3-5-years-of-data-and-2-5-million-gps-points/ <comment><USER2> @aaronpk we're currently looking at geoloqi but would you mind clarifying the benefits of using your service over iOS CLLocationManager calls? Specifically, have you analyzed the relative power consumption & accuracy of various CLLocationManager settings?

For example, we found the best power consumption when the desiredAccuracy value is set to kCLLocationAccuracyThreeKilometers, and we trigger the startMonitoringSignificantLocationChanges method before entering into the background. Surprisingly, the accuracy was much better than 3km but varied depending on device & OS. Similarly, the power consumption was affected by the background network access schemes & buffering we used, of course.

Anyway, we stopped our studies after sampling just a few devices (3GS, 4) and one or two OS releases (iOS 4.2 and 5.0). Don't mean to pry your secret sauce, but what type of calibration are you offering?

Thanks!

<comment><USER3> Sounds like you've been doing a good amount of experimenting as well! If you use the default startMonitoringSignificantLocationChanges method you'll get updates sporadically depending on things like what other apps are using location services, so it looks pretty crazy in the wild. It will also skip over many geofences if they are smaller than a kilometer or so. Our SDK manages this intelligently and can trigger the smaller geofences more reliably without the phone being in super-accurate mode the entire time. If you send your contact info through our site we'd be happy to talk about this further! <https://developers.geoloqi.com/enterprise>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you're interested in this, check out my lightning talk I gave at SXSW: <http://goo.gl/5wE3O>

In the browser using WebGL, I animate through GPS trails of multiple cabs in the SF area, 1.1M points

</comment><comment><USER5> I have always enjoyed tracking my movements when I travel and when I exercise. Here is the map I published a few years ago of my running habits: <http://www.cederman.com/2009/03/i-love-data-part-3/>

And when I drove through Belgium: <http://farm1.staticflickr.com/37/86326741_a59159c807.jpg>

</comment><comment><USER6> This is fantastic! I've been ephemerally plotting my GPS tracks for a few years (though I'm only up to about 1.6M points), but the thought of publishing my tracks on the open internet has always seemed just a little too creepy, even by internet standards.

Beautiful maps, though.

</comment><comment><USER7> I was really wondering what kept you motivated throughout the project before you demonstrated your early fascination with data.

Did you find yourself trying new paths simply to get a better picture or is this movement all natural?

<comment><USER3> Good question. The movement is all natural. I tried as much as possible to avoid changing my behavior because I was recording my location. I wanted to get an objective picture of where I had been.

One exception was at Stanford during WhereCamp, I walked around a park and spelled "Where"! [http://www.flickr.com/photos/aaronpk/6983337983/in/pool-1772...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/aaronpk/6983337983/in/pool-1772913@N24/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I did something like this with my Google Latitude history: <http://imgur.com/a/gfzIH>

but this visualization is far nicer!

<comment><USER9> Ooohhh - I wanna play:

<http://minus.com/mbpulUhij3#1f>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Now I'd like to see you join in data about the locations you spent time in to characterize your personal geography. Have you done this?

</comment><comment><USER11> This app needs far greater publicity. I am gonna give it a good try. I would love to see more Android updates. Thanks.</comment>


Ask HN:  What are some good color blind palettes to use? - <AUTHOR>

How many color blind palettes does one need to handle the most common forms of color blindness?
And what are some good color blind palettes to use?
What would you suggest as a color blind alternative for this color sequence:  blue, cyan, green, yellow, orange, red? <comment><USER2> > What would you suggest as a color blind alternative for this color sequence?

Not relying on colors at all. The rule of thumb is that there shouldn't be any information expressed using only colors. You can use color for emphasis.

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://www.visibone.com/colorblind/></comment>


More than a thousand scientists have built the most detailed picture of cancer - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/health-51391151 <comment><USER3> How can a software developer contribute to cancer reasearch/treatment? Is there any hard problems? or manual work that could be automated?

<comment><USER4> Work for Universities (for P.I.s housed at universities) for less than you are worth on the open market. (And still be resented by profs making less)

Soylent data (it is made of people), is hard because it has all these lawyers attached to it. Figure out a trivial/foolproof way for EHRs to be satisfactorily anonymous for the legal departments to allow sharing but still be useful. (I won't be holding my breath)

A concrete thing without any "hard" bits There is an open source tool named Protege that is ... err... the best tool of its class ... fix it or make a replacement

[][https://protege.stanford.edu/](https://protege.stanford.edu/)

<comment><USER5> I worked for 5+ years for a PI at a prestigious institution.

Overall my experience there was great. It was a lot of fun too. I got to design and implement fairly large projects early on as a junior engineer. I could use any tech that I wanted. I had maybe two dozen users at best, but I interacted with them weekly if not daily.

That said, I was barely making 50k. Now I'm a senior engineer at a FAANG and though I am more financially stable, I am not having as much fun. I routinely push code to millions of users now, but I don't see any of them.

I suppose the FAANG is a different kind of fun, but sometimes I just miss being the guy who's coding this awesome tool that's going to further scientific research, and your post reminded me of that.

Maybe when I retire I'll go back to help some PIs with their software issues. I know they need the help.

<comment><USER6> To put you on the spot. It would be great if "maybe when I retire ..." was an actual plan you had. It sounds like you have the opportunity and ability to personally make a difference, I sincerely hope you do. :)

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the vote of confidence. I think it's early to make concrete plans though. I have a few other ideas to try out before I turn to academic research.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> TFA [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-1969-6](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-1969-6)

or

DOI [https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-1969-6](https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-1969-6)

</comment><comment><USER7> > Scientists also developed a way of "carbon dating" mutations. They showed > that more than a fifth of them occurred years or even decades before a > cancer is found.

> He added: "Unlocking these patterns means it should now be possible to > develop new diagnostic tests, that pick up signs of cancer much earlier."

The journalist probably pressed this last point, because it can't possibly be true in a practical sense. Even if you can detect these changes early on in cells, we can't possibly test every cell in the body for mutations on e.g. a yearly basis, right?

<comment><USER8> Correct. And even if you could, you would find everybody has some of these potentially dangerous mutations somewhere.

The problem only comes if get the right combination in a single cell and then the cells starts to multiply.

At that stage you might then be able to pick up evidence from circulating tumor DNA ( [https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer/testing/circulatingtumordna](https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer/testing/circulatingtumordna) ) from a blood test.

<comment><USER9> We'll hold on now. If we assume that mutations tend to cluster around cells exposed to particular carcinogens, and assume there is some number N>≈5 mutations required, in theory we could look for cases where many cells present with x% of the necessary mutations. And it becomes much easier to detect because you presumably have many cells which mutate stochastically together.

<comment><USER8> You are describing a cervical smear test - target cells more likely to be mutated - assume that if you find problem cells in your test ( after you have destroyed during the test ) that there are similar ones still left in the body ( not because they were mutated together - but because they are related - <USER2> cell inherited a mutation from another ).

So sure. That's done already and having a test which detects 'precancerous' based on genetics _might_ be useful. One of the problems at the moment is the treatment is often almost as bad as the cure - so you might only be able to step up frequency of the tests.

The problem with this approach is only certain bits of the body are easily accessible in this way - that's why people like the ctDNA tests - but they have their own challenges.

Another non-destructive way would be imaging - either thermal ( cancer cells are more active and so hotter than normal ), or using some sort of labelling markers - however can't see a way to target arbitrary early genetic mutations with this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I know that this is going to sound "flavor of the day," but seeing as how genetics is essentially a large data set of variables and we aren't certain about which of then are indicative of cancer, doesn't this seem to be very strongly correlated with the problem that most ML/deep learning tries to solve?

<comment><USER11> ML is fairly common in genomics, but for identifying predictive variables for cancer status, it's difficult. The training set is a matrix where rows are people (where some have cancer and some don't) and columns are genomic features (mutation, methylation, etc). You can easily have hundreds of thousands of features but getting even a thousand cancer patients enrolled in a study and sequenced is expensive and slow.

So, even though there are many "AI in biotech" companies out there, for predicting cancer status, most eventually end up hand crafting a small number of features based on extensive knowledge of cancer biology. The ML model tends to be simple and far less important than the features.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Now if we can get thousands of software devs to get together across orgs, and develop a detailed picture of all possible software bugs then imagine...oh wait we already do that...and we still have a zillion bugs on bug trackers the world over.

How come?

As Gandhi said we "attach an exaggerated importance to prolonging mans earthly existence"

The software industry has realized keeping old code alive (specifically by fixing ancient bugs in outdated systems) creates more problems than it solves. Sooner or later we will realize the same thing about Cancer.

</comment><comment><USER13> Haven't heard that before...

<comment><USER14> " _Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something._"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Nice work, very comprehensive, 'A' for effort, good for citing in reviews. The results are well known from other studies (eg sequencing cancer precursor lesions) and theoretical predictions over 40 years old.

They try to elevate the significance by saying the results could be useful in early detection, but the companies doing early detection through circulating tumour DNA have already moved on from looking at mutations to methylation and other epigenetic changes.</comment>


Get creatively unstuck with Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies on a web app I built - <AUTHOR> http://buildcontext.com/oblique-strategies/

<comment><USER2> Is the deck copyright-free?</comment>


Clever Volvo Advertising in W3School Code? - <AUTHOR> http://www.w3schools.com/js/js_datatypes.asp

<comment><AUTHOR> Clever was refering to volvo ;-)

</comment><comment><USER2> there's nothing clever about w3schools.</comment>


China's Meituan-Dianping Raises $3.3B - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-meituan-dianping-raises-3-3-billion-in-biggest-startup-round-ever-1453211614 <comment><USER2> A total collapse of this bubble seems inevitable at this point.

<comment><USER3> What bubble though? Meituan or Chinese tech in general?

Meituan had a multi-billion dollar valuation before this burst of funding, and just went through a merger with it's major competitor, they've got their market locked down. Baidu is trying to get it's offering in the space to become competitive, and it's throwing 3.3B at the problem.

Using American companies, think of Instagram and Snapchat merging, getting a billion thrown at them, and Facebook pledging a billion at getting their offering in the space off the ground. That'd be just another day in the valley, wouldn't it?

I mean if you're referring to the greater Chinese tech industry, then yes, there's probably bound to be some kind of contraction at some point in the future. With investors being scared of real estate and the stock market in China, a lot of money is getting thrown at startups that don't really deserve it, along with the sheer amount of hype that there's in the industry. It ain't dot-com bad, but it's certainly not good. But the companies that are making the headlines? They're edging around 90% market control, and up to 90% market penetration in Tier 1 cities. When things contract, they'll be the ones left standing.</comment></comment>


Google Sites released - <AUTHOR> http://sites.google.com/

<comment><USER2> Doesn't this also compete with Backpack? I would think 37signals would be much more worried than Microsoft, just because they are smaller.

Of course, I haven't used either service, so I might be talking out of my ass.

<comment><USER3> When seeing "team sites", I immediately knew this is intended to compete with SharePoint. If not immediately, then surely at some point in the future.

Sure, it used to be JotSpot. But the MS attack seems still obvious.

SharePoint is growing massively in recent months, but its a fairly monstrous thing. Think "corporate IT". They want "customizability", even though in the end its going to cost them more than the initial licenses.

Anyway, Google is now supposed to be a Big Software Corporation, so it needs to compete with other Big Software Corporations in every area. (Though I always thought they were a Big Advertising Company.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> microsoft sharepoint cloud-platform and a backpack compeitator</comment>


Twitter Acquires 'Values of n', Adds Rael Dornfest To The Team  - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/24/twitter-acquires-values-of-n-adds-rael-dornfest-to-the-team/ <comment><USER2> Call me a bluff old traditionalist, but I really fail to understand new economy 2.0. Companies that have no revenue buying other companies that have no revenue and rejecting purchasing attempts from other companies who have no revenue who would pay for them in shares the value of which scarcely exceeds the value of the paper they are printed on.

Is there some ultimate strategy that the twitters, facebooks and youtubes of this world have that I'm too narrow minded to see but will make these companies bigger than Jesus, or is this the same business model as new economy v1?

<comment><USER3> _the same business model as new economy v1?_

The same, but now with AJAX and Rails.

<comment><USER4> DHH is to blame for the economic collapse, not the housing markets.

<comment><USER5> Heh, even though he stresses charging money for your product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've actually thought that Twitter could make quite the business model out of using their search acquisition and some other things to work with brands to track trends. The recent piece on O'Reilly blog post ([http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2008/11/why-jerry-seinfeld- prob...](http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2008/11/why-jerry-seinfeld-probably- co.html)) about tracking the emotional connection to the MS Seinfeld ad is exactly what I'm thinking.

Add to that some permission marketing stuff and they could be onto a goldmine...

</comment><comment><USER7> to be so good that another company buys your company for you, now that's good!

<comment><USER8> He's been doing great stuff for a while. I've been a big fan since I first installed Blosxom as my first Perl script on my first webserver with CGI scripting what seems like ages ago. It seems like he would be a great fit with the whole Twitter culture. I'm excited to see what comes out of this.</comment></comment>


Show HN: JavaScript broughlike tutorial - <AUTHOR> https://nluqo.github.io/broughlike-tutorial/ <comment><USER2> Beautiful. +1 for canvas approach.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sadly cant get across the splash screen for the demo on mobile. But tutorial is amazing!

<comment><AUTHOR> I did not think to make the demo mobile friendly. Perhaps it won't be that hard.

Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks really fun and clear. Nice job!</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone use AWS Workspaces as a dev env? - <AUTHOR> Wondering if I should switch from my mac to an AWS Workspace so that I can code from anywhere. If I switch to Linux it would be easier to provision other dev environments too?<p>Wow. The Linux one is "Free tier eligible" <comment><USER2> Why don't you use Git and multiple work stations ?</comment>


IBM Lands $740M Deal to Supply Data Security to Australia - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-05/ibm-lands-740-million-deal-to-supply-data-security-to-australia <comment><USER2> This is shady as hell. IBM fucks up the Census project, and are now given the next one to mess up?

I guess somebody in the government got a good paid Vacation to fuck over their tax money.</comment>


Trump picks computer scientist to lead National Science Foundation - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03924-3 <comment><USER2> From his wikipedia entry: _On June 13, 2014, [Sethuraman Panchanathan] was nominated by President Barack Obama as a member of the National Science Board of National Science Foundation._</comment>


Microservices has been misunderstood in how they scale - <AUTHOR> https://specify.io/concepts/microservices <comment><USER2> > "The service can be rewritten and redeployed in 2 weeks." , Jon Eaves

I disagree with this statement. At that complexity level (be rewrittable and redeployable within 2 weeks), there will be an absolutely enormous set of microservices for any non-trivial application. Maintaining such a large set becomes a monumental challenge for local development in any company with more than a handful of teams.

Furthermore, I'm not convinced that all problems can be decomposed down into rewrittable-in-2-weeks chunks in a truly clean way.

<comment><USER3> Yeah... I'm wary of microservices sprawl...

Also, infra like email service, payments etc can probably fit into a 2 week rewrite.. but core domain is usually more complicated (since it's less well understood)

I've generally had more success with few, chunky services... The few times I've worked with teams that had a large number of small services, it never ended well (in one case, a 40 member Dev team - groups of 8... Ended up with each team maintaining about 3- 5 services)..

To me, micro services is more about scaling teams... Other than that, They seem to cause more tech problems than they solve.

Otoh, what do I know... There was some Uber talk where they had thousands of services...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is pretty badly written not sure how it reached the front page.

</comment><comment><USER5> Why is this voted so high?</comment>


Why Is Marketing Such a Tough Pill for Startups to Swallow? - <AUTHOR> http://www.markevans.ca/2015/05/12/why-is-marketing-such-a-tough-pill-for-startups-to-swallow/ <comment><USER2> Was this generated by a machine automatically to help increase your SEO marketing?

"Having worked at a startup that kept adding more features, I can tell you this approach doesn't work. It's like adding more flavors to a sundae based on the belief that variety is the spice of life. The truth is that consumers will bite (pun, intended) on a plain vanilla sundae with chocolate sauce if they know that it exists and there is The truth is that consumers will bite (pun, intended) on a plain vanilla sundae with chocolate sauce if they know that it exists and there is good buzz around how good it tastes."</comment>


ControlPoint- is a new level of interaction with interfaces - <AUTHOR> http://controlpoint.tilda.ws/en <comment><AUTHOR> We are a young development team from Russia. We are currently working on a control point project. We have already presented it at some important events in our country and now we want to receive feedback from you, dear friends!Our contacts in the telegram: 1)@EvgenD7- Manager, developer 2)@Gleb_STL- Industrial design 3)@Kopylov_Vadik - Hardware design 4)@shehtmoney - Developer</comment>


Flagged/shadow banned on GitHub for praising s/w? - <AUTHOR> they emailed me back 10 days after my first request for info:<p>"Your account was flagged following reports that you are posting unproductive comments in other users' repositories, specifically for unsolicited advertising."<p>i praise the s/w of a great but unknown repository (2 'Stars', 1 'Fork, 1 'Contributor') ask if they could help me, and that's "unsolicited advertising"???<p>(links in comment) <comment><AUTHOR> indiv. files in item on archive.org:

[https://archive.org/details/github_account_flagged](https://archive.org/details/github_account_flagged)

'offending' comment (redacted) screenshot:

[https://ia601503.us.archive.org/12/items/github_account_flag...](https://ia601503.us.archive.org/12/items/github_account_flagged/github_comment.PNG)

screenshot of altCensored GitHub account when logged in:

[https://ia601503.us.archive.org/12/items/github_account_flag...](https://ia601503.us.archive.org/12/items/github_account_flagged/github_loggedin.PNG)

(contrast with normal): [https://github.com/altcensored](https://github.com/altcensored)

screenshot of small contrib to TubeUp:

[https://ia801503.us.archive.org/12/items/github_account_flag...](https://ia801503.us.archive.org/12/items/github_account_flagged/github_tubeup_comment.PNG)

gmail thread (redacted)

[https://ia801503.us.archive.org/12/items/github_account_flag...](https://ia801503.us.archive.org/12/items/github_account_flagged/github_gmail.pdf)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> just received an email from GitHub, the account has been restored.

[https://github.com/altcensored](https://github.com/altcensored)

GitHub has been a reference for free speech and transparency:

[https://www.eff.org/wp/who-has-your- back-2019#github](https://www.eff.org/wp/who-has-your-back-2019#github) [https://www.eff.org/wp/who-has-your- back-2019#github](https://www.eff.org/wp/who-has-your-back-2019#github)

</comment><comment><USER2> Why don't you share you GitHub handle so we can see the evidence?

</comment><comment><USER3> This would be less likely to happen if you capitalized.</comment>


Couple Can Sue Laptop-Tracking Company for Spying on Sex Chats - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/08/absolute-sued-for-spying/

<comment><USER2> This is not Hacker News material.</comment>


Mistakes Made as a Solo, Non-Technical SaaS Founder – Part I - <AUTHOR> http://scottkrager.com/mistakes-i-made-as-a-solo-non-technical-saas-founder

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here. I wanted to share some of the early mistakes I made as a solo non-technical founder building a software company. I started learning to code after these early mistakes and it's been incredibly helpful. I can't thank HN enough for encouraging me to learn.

<comment><USER2> These were not just mistakes, but clearly fundamental failures as a businessman. It's literally amazing that you were able to find any success in your endeavors. Your saving grace was that you basically called yourself out for being a tool because nothing else describes how you present yourself. I honestly feel for "Blake" and am utterly surprised that Joel stuck around. This is an excellent example that business professors and CS professors could use to demonstrate the complexity of trying to actually develop something and why simply having a good idea is not enough.

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally agree. I look at how I used to think and communicate, and "tool" is spot on. Software is so incredibly hard, it took me years, and many mistakes along the way, to learn this. And I'm still learning.

<comment><USER2> With a reply like that, I can give you some kudos. Recognizing mistakes is difficult, but recognizing there are things you don't even know that you know and striving to learn them is courageous! Good on you for working to improve yourself and your business! World could use more like ya!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Review of Taleb's The Black Swan, by David Aldous - <AUTHOR> http://stat-www.berkeley.edu/users/aldous/157/Books/taleb.html

<comment><USER2> I particularly enjoyed Mr. Falkenstein's review of Mr. Taleb's Black Swan.

<http://www.efalken.com/papers/Taleb2.html>

It's a long but illuminating read:

\----

Martin Gardner wrote a popular column for Scientific American, and in the process received a lot of mail from 'cranks' telling him about perpetual motion machines and the like. So he wrote a book called Fads and Fallacies. In the book he describes "cranks" as having five invariable characteristics:

1\. They have a profound intellectual superiority complex.

2\. They regard other researchers as idiotic, and always operate outside the peer review.

3\. They believe there is a campaign against their ideas, a campaign compared with the persecution of Galileo or Pasteur.

4\. They attack only the biggest theories and scientific figures.

5\. They coin neologisms.

</comment><comment><USER3> Aldous's review and Falkenstein's review (cited here in the comments) are both worth a read as are Taleb's books. There is plenty of hubris to share amongst the three. Taleb's observations are accessible, provocative and cautionary and worth pondering.</comment>


An Ambitious Plan for Putting Kickstarter Out of Business - <AUTHOR> http://www.mrteacup.org/post/an-ambitious-plan-for-putting-kickstarter-out-of-business.html

<comment><USER2> Kickstarter is nothing more than a web hosting company? Pardon?

I recently raised more than $38k from Kickstarter. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that I wouldn't have been able to raise nearly that amount by throwing up a website and going it alone.

Here are some stats (for this project: [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jackadam/dark-sky- hyperl...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jackadam/dark-sky-hyperlocal- weather-prediction-and-visuali))

1) 32.26% of our funds came from visitors who found our page through the Kickstarter newsletter.

2) In total, 56% of funds came from visitors finding us via other Kickstarter pages (their home page, category sections, etc).

3) 44% were referred to from external sources.

But here's the thing: the external links were primarily due to the publicity we got from Kickstarter's promotional efforts. We got mentioned on Wired, Fast Company, the New York Times, and CNN.com -- not because we reached out to them, but because of the large number of people talking about us after finding us on the Kickstarter site itself.

In the end, Kickstarter enabled us to raise tens of thousands of dollars and in return took a measly 5%.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's called a marketplace. They bring people with "stuff" together with people with "money". That's the business concept, not production, not advertising, not selling webspace for 4 pages as this article suggests.

Is it a scam? no, not directly. The scam "sellers" on kickstarter take 6-months to a year to be found out, at which point, few people care if they get their product or not, and since their is always the implicit understanding that some of the kickstarter projects will not deliver, few complain.

Hence, yeah, kickstarters customer base is ripe for a good scamming and you'll likely never be called on it. Free money.

</comment><comment><USER4> a) Trusted space for collecting backed pledges. Try doing that with PayPal and see how quickly you get shut down.

b) Well branded name with first-mover advantage which brings higher CTR on social campaigns.

c) Centralization of PR - contacts with traditional media which increase chance of mainstream coverage.

d) Volume of curated content makes it interesting to third-party developers, increasing 'virality' (see Twitter's media-in-post for any posted KickStarter link.

...

I could go on. It's pretty easy to build the same strawman argument against many businesses by focusing on a weakly analogous service and conveniently ignoring the laundry list of benefits. The whole 'socially interesting causes shouldn't be for-profit' argument is completely unsupported and drowned in pseudo-intellectual non-sequitur, which incidentally appears to be the raison d'être for this blog.

Name me another form of fundraising for arbitrary projects which doesn't require giving up significant equity at such an early stage. If you want a real target for a poorly-balanced funding arrangement maybe take aim at Dragon's Den. People who KickStart their projects are fully aware of what they're giving up for their seed capital - 5% of cash and no equity. Sounds pretty damn good to me.

<comment><USER5> A) is a thin wrapper around Amazon Payments.

B) gives KS an advantage in the market. But as the article mentions, it doesn't justify gouging your customers just because you can.

D) Is "curating" content really worth 5%? Would you pay e.g. HN 5% for 6 weeks for linking to your site?

<comment><USER4> I hardly see it as gouging customers when they are happily, voluntarily entering into the agreement with full awareness of the terms and alternatives.

All of these poor souls were perfectly capable of setting up 'bobsdiyproject.org' and attempting to get popular support. Individuals trying to do this would have fixed up-front costs for developing all the 'little' stuff that KS does, zero access to an existing base of people interesting in paying, and no access to mainstream media to promote their idea.

The curation aspect is a large part of what creates value in KickStarter. The notion of 'SelfStarter' proposed in the blog completely misses the benefits to the community provided by centralised screening. If any and all projects were approved it would be chock full of scammers and opportunists with poor ideas - the SNR would be so low as to drive interest away.

Would I pay 5% of all cash raised specifically from HN members donating through a 6-week link to my project with no money upfront? Yes, absolutely. Zero-risk, $0 down traffic which only pays out if you hit your own projected goals?

Is Etsy a scam? Is eBay a scam? I'd say KickStarter has more favourable terms than these (still valuable) sites as they require money upfront regardless of the success of your listing.

<comment><USER5> _I hardly see it as gouging customers when they are happily, voluntarily entering into the agreement with full awareness of the terms and alternatives._

This seems like the exact same defense the banks were using when they were foreclosing on homeowners. Of course such behavior is "allowed" by a free market. The question is: is this behavior morally defensible?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Kickstarter is awesome. It helped bring light to this newly born industry in a way never been done before, and it's been responsible for scores of people being able to raise money to build really incredible things.

But then you have the people on the other side - those that might have raised 10, 20, 50, or even 80% that didn't meet their mark, and did all of that work for nothing. At the end of the day, the only thing they have left is a dead dream, and a burned out list of supporters.

I imagine it would be incredibly heartbreaking to walk away with nothing after a failed campaign.

On the money side, yes it's expensive, but that's not what I didn't like about it. My beef with Kickstarter is that I don't want to fill out an application and wait weeks before getting approved. I also don't want to send all of the SEO benefit to them.

Yes, I agree they should curate their marketplace, but it does filter out a lot of worthy projects.

I wanted to be able to raise money for a variety of projects, each in my own way and in my own time. I worked with my co-founder to build IgnitionDeck (<http://ignitiondeck.com>) to be able to do that.

It's actually doing pretty well, which I don't think would have happened without Kickstarter's popularity. In many ways, I view them as the MySpace of crowdfunding. It will certainly be interesting to see how they adapt and evolve as people get burned out from crowdfunding...or will they?

</comment><comment><USER5> If you thought the first part was just wrong or ignorant, you really should keep reading all the way to the bottom.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's sort of hard to take seriously an article that lists the "benefits" of Kickstarter without including "the ability to solicit and collect pledges".

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't want to feed the troll, someone that calls kickstarter a web host company could not even discern between hosting web pages and videos.

It's only six orders of magnitude...

I won't lose more time with this, hats off for what the kickstarter guys had done. One of the good things in a free society is being able to choose who you want to help and who you don't.

</comment><comment><USER9> One has to wonder that, services and technologies comparison aside, perhaps there's something appealing about the Kickstarter brand/community. Contributing to a random website out in the wild vs. contributing in an environment where there's a critical mass are _very_ different. Whether or not the value is extracted from being a part of Kickstarter depends on many more variables than the article choses to mention. Perhaps a viable alternative would be a similar product but with a more de-centralized approach (ie. a mechanism placed on individual sites but with a recognizably safe community & brand).

</comment><comment><USER10> That was the most beautifully typeset rant I've ever read

<comment><USER11> I hadn't noticed the typeset :D....

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Does anyone know if Kick starter subtracts credit card fees from their 5%, or is that an additional fee?

<comment><USER13> Kickstarter takes 5%. Amazon takes another 3-5% for payment processing.

[http://www.kickstarter.com/help/faq/creating%20a%20project#F...](http://www.kickstarter.com/help/faq/creating%20a%20project#Fees)</comment></comment>


Pope pulls speech on Hong Kong freedom, raising questions over Beijing pressure - abc-xyz https://hk.appledaily.com/us/20200707/3JPO2PWP2UXTHBOUYIKKMLKKUU/ <comment><AUTHOR> The discrimination the catholic church in China suffers is hardly talked about. The intimidation by the Chinese state on the church is incredible and many members have been killed or incarcerated for maintaining the independence of the church from the Chinese state.

On human terms it makes no sense to continue church operations in china just like some companies pulling out of china, but the church has not run on those terms.

For centuries the church and her members in China struggled to maintain their identity in the face of discrimination, and there has been progress even though small. I don't think it makes sense to let go of a winning strategy albeit a slow one given the conditions.

<comment><USER2> The state sanctioned church "Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association" has only in 2018 acknowledged that the Vatican can veto the appointment of their bishops.

I guess he did not want to upset them after this major concession.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This falls into the area of ethics under extortion.

e.g. consider the act of paying a bribe.

Scenario 1: You pay the bribe and make 10x the amount due to faster govt. processing.

Scenario 2: You pay the bribe to save someones life who will die otherwise.

Paying the bribe in Scenario 1 is immoral and paying in Scenario 2 is moral.

Dealing with China is more akin to Scenario 2.

The Catholic church is the oldest institution in the world, it knows it can wait.

<comment><USER4> Given how wealthy and powerful the Catholic church is, and how much the people who run the church would like it to stay that way, I suspect it's not _just_ Scenario 2.

<comment><USER3> The Catholic church doesn't globally pool their wealth.

" In 2010, the Vatican had an income of $326 million and ran a $13 million budget surplus, but in 2011 the Vatican ran a $19 million deficit. And while some of that money obviously went to maintaining church buildings and art, much of it also went to charitable causes.

Recent re-evaluations of Vatican assets show that the Vatican has approximately $1 billion in total assets. For comparison, Harvard University's endowment is over $30 billion. So, relatively speaking, the Catholic Church is not really wealthy, and no one blames museums for maintaining their art work and structures. "

<comment><USER4> The Vatican owns more than 71,659,919 hectares of land around the world, mostly in prime areas of cities. A single hectare in London is worth 7 or 8 million dollars alone. Then there's the massive amounts of gold, buildings, art, etc on top. I can believe the Vatican itself, as in the tiny city state in Italy, is worth $1bn, but the Catholic Church owns _hundreds of billions_ of dollars worth of assets. If they evaluated it all at just $1bn then they lied.

<comment><USER3> The Vatican does not own more than 71 million hectares of land... You might be confusing the Vatican with the Catholic Church.

<comment><USER4> _You might be confusing the Vatican with the Catholic Church._

It's a semantic difference that has no real meaning. Every Catholic church organisation answers to the Vatican. Treating them separately is like treating Apple, Apple UK, and Apple Ireland separately because no, really, they _are_ different legal entities honest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The Vatican and the Chinese government have had an uneasy relationship for a very long time (dare I say forever) and the Vatican has been working hard to reach an agreement about the appointment of bishops and other aspects in 2018.

Perhaps they just felt that making such public comments would achieve nothing apart from undoing that work.

The Catholic Church has been around for almost 2,000 years. I'm sure they know how to play a long game.

<comment><USER6> The Church knows how to draft behind power. Hong Kong's is receding, Beijing's is burgeoning. No doubt onto whose teat the Church will hungrily latch.

<comment><USER7> >The Church knows how to draft behind power. Hong Kong's is receding, Beijing's is burgeoning. No doubt onto whose teat the Church will hungrily latch.

If that were the case, the Vatican should have been among the first to switch recognition from the Republic of China (Taiwan) to the PRC, but instead, it is the only remaining European state that still maintains full diplomatic relations with Taiwan.[1]

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_relations_of_Taiwan#Eu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_relations_of_Taiwan#Europe_\(1_state\))

<comment><USER6> Wow, I was completely wrong. Thanks for the info

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why would China specifically care what the pope has to say? I understand the pope is the one not expressing anything but why would China even pressure him in the first place. I thought China was already prohibiting religion from taking place. So what leverage does China have on the pope?

<comment><USER9> Catholicism exists and is heavily regulated in China. The CCP (unsurprisingly) appoints the bisbops.

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

<comment><USER10> _" the Chinese government established the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association,[2] which rejects the authority of the Holy See"_

What about Jesus? lol

<comment><USER11> Every Lutheran christian rejects their authority too.

<comment><USER10> That's why I find this even funnier.

What is left of the catholic church if you reject the pope?

Protestants

<comment><USER12> > What is left of the catholic church if you reject the pope?

> Protestants

I think you mean "Eastern Orthodox", as they both were rejecting the primacy (at least, in the terms Catholics define it) of the Pope long before Protestants existed _and_ remain closer to the Roman Catholics on most points _other_ than the primacy of the Pope than Protestants, who reject a lot more about Catholicism than the role of the Pope.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Disappointing.

</comment><comment><USER11> Never bet on the church to defend your rights should be a long acquired wisdom by now.

<comment><USER14> That's reductive of complex traditions.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asylum_(antiquity)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asylum_\(antiquity\))

<comment><USER11> I meant the church, not christianity. The roman catholic church killed christians all over Europe if they didn't accept the official doctrine. What is typical for the church is its behavior to suck up to anyone with influence or power.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Like all other multinationals, thirsty enough for access to the Chinese market it's willing to look the other way

Edit: ya know, this is probably an excellent idea for the church. Every extra Chinese Catholic is someone who will likely ultimately accept the Pope's authority over the CCP's, regardless of if there are CCP friendly bishops. Get a big enough beachhead amongst poor Chinese, and bide their time, and they're probably on to something.

<comment><USER16> Ironically, exposing the limits of what was claimed to be omnipotence.

<comment><USER17> Who's claiming omnipotence? Key Christian figures have been murdered since day 0.

<comment><USER18> >Christian figures have been murdered since day 0

Nah probably more the year 16-26 AD. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> To quote the Manic Street Preachers:

"And if you tolerate this, then your children will be next"

And in a more serious note, from "First they came.." [1]. It is about the cowardice of German intellectuals and certain clergy (including, by his own admission, Niemöller himself) following the Nazis' rise to power and subsequent incremental purging of their chosen targets, group after group.:

First they came for the Communists - And I did not speak out - Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists - And I did not speak out - Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists - And I did not speak out - Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews - And I did not speak out - Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me - And there was no one left - To speak out for me

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

<comment><USER20> Please keep tedious ideological clichés and boilerplate off HN.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I predict some troubles with his next reincarnation.

</comment><comment><USER22> The more pressing issue is that everyone more powerful than the Pope has so far found themselves impotent in the face of the Chinese threat. Trump, Merkel, Modi, Putin etc all too weak to act.

<comment><USER23> Trump is un-necessarily provocative towards China, or is weak on China? Which is it?

<comment><USER12> You can be both unnecessarily provocative and weak in the same domain. Provocation and effective use of strength aren't the same thing; just as you can "speak softly and carry a big stick", so can you do the opposite.

<comment><USER23> Maybe, but that depends if you think trade action against China, and drawing attention to the increasing oppression of the citizens of Hong Kong, is ineffectual. Do you have any proposals?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I guess freedom truly has a price. Good to know... The world needs people like Muhammad Ali who were willing to risk financial gain for justice. The current world is full of celebrity hypocrites, e.g. Lebron James, Kaepernick, Steve Kerr, Merkel, Trump, and now even the Pope...

</comment><comment><USER25> Such a transparent scam. It's like Disney removing black actor in the Chinese Star Wars poster, while lecturing the US audience on racial justice: [https://www.cnn.com/2015/12/08/asia/star-wars-china- racist-p...](https://www.cnn.com/2015/12/08/asia/star-wars-china-racist- poster/index.html), or LeBron James carrying water for the Chinese when discussing Hong Kong.</comment>