Why Jobs is no Edison - <AUTHOR> http://www.american.com/archive/2011/september/why-jobs-is-no-edison/article_print

<comment><USER2> This is a response to another article that made the comparison. Given that neither Apple nor Jobs have suggested Jobs is an Edison, and given that I haven't heard anyone calling Jobs an Edison outside of the article this author cites, I'd call this "Feeding a troll."

Sure, _one_ person called Jobs an Edison, but it doesn't feel particularly worthy of a reply, much less of a spot on the HN front page.

</comment><comment><USER3> _Apple II would have been impossible without innovations by Xerox's PARC_

Minor quibble; the author is probably talking about the Mac -- not the Apple II, which predates the PARC visit by at least two years.

<comment><USER4> Even more minor quibble: the parent comment is probably talking about the Lisa which predated the Mac by more than two years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Both men led organizations that took the "raw materials" of their generation and created end-to-end solutions that very quickly dominated the market.

In Edison's time the interesting innovations were happening at the first-order level. Now most of the interesting innovations are happening higher up the technological food chain.

</comment><comment><USER6> That's not what the "Entrepenurial Walk of Fame" sitting in front of the Kendall Square Marriott says.

<http://boston.tumblr.com/post/10274370791>

</comment><comment><USER7> As far as I know Jobs hasn't publicly electrocuted animals in an attempt to scare consumers away from competing products. Yep. Clearly no Edison.

</comment><comment><USER8> Steve Jobs became big by being right most of the time. Edison became big by being a bully with questionable business practices. DC vs AC anyone?

If there is one person you could compare Jobs to, this would be Henri Ford, who's vision also combined existing technologies into something new, brilliant, making something simpler, more useful and more accessible for the large public.

</comment><comment><USER9> My mother in law (in 80s) says: "iPhone and iPads will not get us out of the recession". That sums things up.

</comment><comment><USER10> More like, Why Jobs is no Tesla, Edison took credit for the work of others.

<comment><USER11> But Jobs took credit for the work of others(Wozniak) too.

<comment><USER8> No he did not. He always talked about "we at apple", and always gave credit to the engineering and designer teams.

The story of Wozniak and Jobs is widely known, Jobs described Wozniak on more than one occasion as a brilliant engineer and that without him, Apple would not have existed.

<comment><USER10> To clarify, I was agreeing that Tesla was beyond them all. :)

The area where Jobs has done what no one else has -- made technology into art we love to buy, use and enjoy, and opened the world up to connecting, sharing and creating, is in the same spirit of what Tesla brought into the world with his innovations with electricity.

I think we can agree that Electricity is a little more fundamental to day-to- day raising the quality of more people's lives in this world than a phone, computer, or ipad. It might be less and less each day, but I still think electricity can transform everyone's life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The difference though is people love their iPods and macs but rarely think about electricity and the lightbulb.

</comment><comment><USER13> Edison is no Tesla !!!

I believe he has no idea about War of Currents and who won it.

</comment><comment><USER14> That's right, Steve's no Edison. Steve's better than Edison.</comment>


Why I Switched from Terraform to Pulumi - <AUTHOR> https://hashnode.com/post/why-i-switched-from-terraform-to-pulumi-python-ck3d8cico00sjo8s1i2j2c94m <comment><USER2> Thanks for the interesting piece. I found more information in a related article that be helpful to others: [https://dev.to/kylegalbraith/how-pulumi- compares-to-terrafor...](https://dev.to/kylegalbraith/how-pulumi-compares-to- terraform-for-infrastructure-as-code-434j)</comment>


TTAGG: Using Social Data to Beat the Market - <AUTHOR> https://www.ttagg.com/?id=122

<comment><USER2> The trouble with services like this is that in order to "beat the market", i.e. be above average, you have to have information before other market participants. As soon as information becomes public, you can no longer make "more than average" returns with it, because everyone would be trading off it.

This usually means that if the information is any good for profitable trading, it will be quietly used to make a profit and won't be shared with general public.

<comment><USER3> Or maybe the information is out there, in plain sight, and no one has yet figured out how to correctly use it. I'm not saying this company has deciphered social media for investing, but it's theoretically possible that mining social media could reveal certain patterns that would be of use in financial markets -- the more sophisticated private equity firms are already using such methods.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very interesting concept!!!</comment>


Ask HN: As a Front-End Dev., what should I show on my portfolio? - <AUTHOR> I'm a Front-End Developer with 2 years of experience and I guess it's time to build up my personal portfolio website but I'm not sure about what to show there. I can't just show pictures of websites and apps I've made, that makes no difference between the designer and me. And also pictures don't really reference the job I've done.
I can't also just post links of the stuff I've done because many of them changed the design or f--ed up the front-end after my work or the apps are no longer active. So I don't have much works that are live right now.
Should I just write down which languages/frameworks/tools I use and how good am I at them? That would be good for the people who understands the development process, but "regular" people that I can get freelance jobs from will not understand anything from "I'm pretty good with HTML5 and improving myself on AngularJS".
I'm totally mindblown right now and open for your suggestions. Also I'd like to see other Front-End Developers' websites, please. <comment><USER2> Try this:

A dual column layout : on the left a screenshot of each of your best work and on the right a written explanation of why what you did benefitted the client. Turn each one into a three or four paragraph case study of why hiring you helps the project manager, Dev Lead or business owner.

A write up should cover the business need (40% of people who started filling in the quotation form did not complete. I rewrote it in AngularJS reducing the number of screens, improving response time and auto-filling some sections, and the completion rate rose to 78%. This gave an increase in leads of 30 per month)

Or

After their original contractor failed to complete, XXX hired me with two weeks to delivery to finish the site in time for the restaurant opening. After a full and frank day of discussion and designs we had agreed a reduced feature set which I delivered in time.

If at any point you can work in something like "this site is written in AngularJS which enables professional looking functional work like this to be created in less than 15 minutes - see this wistia video for a screencast where I show you" you get extra points.

Basically sell the benefit to the other person, not show how much you know about JavaScript. The person wining the cheques does not even know what a curly brace is for and so assumes you are an expert already.

Ps - put a big professional photo of yourself I the site, smiling. That seems to be a thing now on freelancer sites

</comment><comment><USER3> I think the portfolio site itself should show off your skills. As a front-end dev, it isn't enough to just have clean, semantic HTML and clean css and js. You are getting ready to build a site where you can and should experiment with various technologies that you have interest in, but haven't had the opportunity to use them in a project yet.

Have a section dedicated to "current front-end experiments" where you just build cool stuff and show it off. Take things you are particularly proud of, try to abstract them to their core idea, and throw it on github.

I am going to agree with another user that you need to show proficiency with a front end framework, either Angular, Backbone, or Ember.

Also, a blog attached to your site where you discuss working on your experiments is nice too.

What do you currently send prospective employers when you apply for jobs as far as code? Throw that up there too.

I've been applying for jobs recently and don't have a portfolio site. I've been getting interviews just from my resume,one project that I built start to finish that I still manage, and a few small angular apps that are super simple. So if you would rather build a functional purpose built site, that is OK too.

I am not saying that devs shouldn't have portfolios, but I feel that they are more necessary for a designer, because that is one of the only ways they CAN show their work.

</comment><comment><USER4> I do not know your specific audience which would see this site, are they customers directly, or would you be using this to show work to get hired at a company?

These have slightly different focuses. A customer centric site I would think would focus on things you can do which would help the customer. For example, I setup a Wordpress Install, which automatically does X, and the theme matched, etc. These people are unlikely to do a in depth technical review of what exactly your code looks like.

A company on the other hand, will tend to pay more attention to it. They could run your HTML through a validator, look through your CSS, and evaluate your JS coding style at minimum. They could also run the site through Pagespeed, or webpage test. They could check not only if all the above is done properly, but that you are leveraging caching, concatenation, and minification. They are much more likely to ask you very specific questions on the above.

In general however, I find that just listing your technical skills is 'OK', but writing a brief statement of the skill, and what it allowed you to do, is likely to get you better results.

</comment><comment><USER5> Your point about your work being taken offline or altered after hand-over is important here. Make a habit of including in your contracts that you are permitted to keep a copy of the work for demonstration purposes (where possible) and use that for demonstration.

Don't aim to show all of your work. Instead, select your best pieces which demonstrate the depth of your skill for each of the key areas you wish to demonstrate you can do. Select pieces based on the complexity of the project, or the way you approached it. I would recommend including a picture of the site/product as a companion to a succinct description of the technologies and frameworks you used. Include the benefits of the solution you implemented.

</comment><comment><USER6> You could show some relatively small (such as 600x250) images of parts of live sites that you have worked on, with those images showing some parts that you feel more responsible for having done, without having done the whole site. Those images would also link to the sites themselves. They would have a small caption saying what you actually did for that website.

</comment><comment><USER7> make it pretty

you don't have to have soft-ware-ified things to show your design skills. you design and then code-ify. the physical portfolio can look kickass in a binder with some glossy prints. you don't need to list tons of sites so people check all your pixels or css lines, but so people get an idea of your creativity and passion

if you can present someone with a pretty tome of cool web-esque ideas they'll probably see you're legit.

just think of this as another project =)

my friend's buddy applied to this advertising firm's designer team lead position and his resume was the only one that was completely pink (pink paper). he got the job so.

it's the little stuff

</comment><comment><USER8> A gallery of apps developed using Front-End technologies (Qt, XAML, Xamarin, Cocoa, Android GUI API etc.). Demonstrate the ability to choose the right tool when GUI quality is not important (HTML) or is important (native).

<comment><USER9> It's pretty obvious they're talking about front end web development.

<comment><USER8> Are you sure though? "...show pictures of websites and _apps_ I've made..."

<comment><USER9> Ah true, didn't catch that. Saw angular & HTML5

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Demos of front-end AngularJS modules.</comment>


Ask HN: What was the most important technical invention of humanity? - <AUTHOR>

I'm having a hard time thinking about this, as I struggle to define importance. <comment><USER3> Fire. That's something of a cliché answer, so here's my reasoning:

First of all, you probably don't interact with a bare fire on a daily basis. Most of the functions that fire used to serve have been replaced by electricity based solutions.

The heat of fire is a cheap and easy (compared to waiting for a lightning bolt to hit) way to cook food. Cooking of course opens a lot of possibilities in the realm of what's edible. How often do you eat raw meat?

Fire can be used to heat spaces, allowing people to live where it's cold.

Fire let's you light up dark spaces, it's a primitive sort of night vision.

Fire wards off predators, making it safer to sleep at night. (There was a time when large animals dangerous to humans weren't nearly extinct.)

Fire is a decent tool for clearing land.

Fire is used as part of a key step in tons of early manufacturing processes, including smoking foods, brewing alcohol, etc. (Both of those are methods of preserving foods that are cheaper than using salt. Which you can get by boiling sea water, to add another use.)

But really, that's just the tip of the iceberg. In addition to all of those things, Fire was (to my knowledge) the only way to generate enough heat to smelt ore, a process that should require no explanation as to its importance.

</comment><comment><USER4> The axe: Chop trees, skin branches, kill food, skin food, kill enemies, break open shells, etc., etc., etc.

If you were marooned on a desert island, it would be one of the first things you'd make (a spear likely being the other).

Props also to the aqueduct, storage tank, settling tank, and water pipes. Those are pretty important.

Props to all of the above used for waste removal.

And vaccines. Vaccines are pretty cool.

Not the wheel: We had to pretty much have flattened paths (flattened by walking) or flat areas (which we eventually moved into) before wheels became useful. (There was a great article in Discover years ago about why there were no wheeled insects (if wheels are so great, why don't bugs have 'em?) - <USER2> enough flat even surfaces.)

Not fire, because we didn't invent it, we mastered it. So we'd have to nominate the match or the crucible or the firebrick or something.

<comment><USER5> Bugs may not have wheels, but some of them form poop into a ball to roll it around. And they can navigate by the stars.

[http://phys.org/news/2013-01-dung-beetles- stars.html](http://phys.org/news/2013-01-dung-beetles-stars.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Fire, second close is the wheel.

Fire gives the humans the ability to extract more energy from a given weight of food which frees time and resourses for everything else.

</comment><comment><USER7> There is an invention without which no other invention can spread beyond its inventor. An invention which makes possible inventions beyond the ability of one person to create. An invention which permits a person to do something with their life other than kill for food, skin for clothes, and hide in natural shelters. An invention so important and fundamental, our physical brains and the thoughts of our consciousness are continually shaped by it. An invention so powerful, it defines the scope of what we can accomplish as a species. An invention impossible to leave behind or survive on most of the planet without, as defenseless physically as we are. An invention so complex and manifold, we continually reinvent it, and almost cannot teach more than the barest rudiments to any other species. Have you got it yet?

<comment><USER8> language?

<comment><USER7> Communication in any form, but I was thinking of language in particular, yes. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is story-telling an invention? Because arguably other animals have languages and tools, but humans use story-telling to explain complicated things. Whether it's travel directions, technical instructions, or a spiritual message, it all gets across by some form of story-telling. And that's what makes it stick.

</comment><comment><USER9> You may be interested in this excellent course (be warned, it's pretty controversial). To me it is more of a "documentary series" than a college course. [https://www.coursera.org/course/humankind](https://www.coursera.org/course/humankind)

</comment><comment><USER10> Depends of the definition of "technical" as well. If taken to mean anything that humans create, including replicating natural processes, then as other posters have said fire is the obvious choice. Now if you restrict technical to purely man-made devices it does get a bit more difficult.

</comment><comment><USER11> Probably language, the ultimate force multiplier. Followed by the wheel.

</comment><comment><USER12> Anything that was invented in Scotland, e.g. telephone, television, ultrasound, MRI scanners, radar, cast steel, refrigerators, etc.

</comment><comment><USER13> Penicillin

</comment><comment><USER14> My vote is for the needle: humans were much more restricted about where they could live without being able to sew clothes

</comment><comment><USER15> in my opinion, the internet. most, if not all of humanity's knowledge at the tip of my fingers. it's with me 24/7 and almost everywhere.

</comment><comment><USER16> The Flux Capacitor

</comment><comment><USER17> beer

</comment><comment><USER18> soap</comment>


EFF Asks SCOTUS to Stop Broad Interpretations of Computer Fraud and Abuse Act - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/01/eff-asks-supreme-court-put-stop-dangerously-broad-interpretations-computer-fraud <comment><USER2> "If violating terms of use is a crime, then private companies across the country get to decide who goes to prison for what, instead of lawmakers."

When these same "private companies" are allowed to commission their own police forces, it can get a lot uglier pretty darn quick, given the close relationship that most police departments have with local prosecutors.

Just recall what MIT police did to Aaron Swartz after he "overused" his library privileges by downloading too many papers from JSTOR, most of which were already in the public domain anyway.</comment>


Brain entropy and human intelligence: A resting-state fMRI study - <AUTHOR> https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0191582 <comment><AUTHOR> TL;DR - "intelligence estimated from Shipley vocabulary scores showed significant effects in which greater brain entropy predicted higher vocabulary scores".</comment>


Announcing Rust 1.24.1 - <AUTHOR> https://blog.rust-lang.org/2018/03/01/Rust-1.24.1.html <comment><USER2> In case anyone else was wondering how longjmp() over the Rust code isn't a problem regardless:

"There are only Copy types on the rust stack frame being jumped over."

[https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/48251](https://github.com/rust- lang/rust/issues/48251)

<comment><USER3> neat!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Cargo couldn't fetch the index from crates.io if you were using an older > Windows without having applied security fixes.

Why are developers (since this is an issue that shows up with cargo) running Windows 7 without security patches installed? Especially since the issue only shows up on Windows 7 installs that haven't received security patches since June 2016.

> libgit2 created a fix, using the WinHTTP API to request TLS 1.2. On master, > we've updated to fix this, but for 1.24.1 stable, we're issuing a warning, > suggesting that they upgrade their Windows version.

That's really a neat and responsible way of handling this.

<comment><USER5> Although developers should know and do better, I think a big part of why they aren't doing it is because Microsoft has made it so hard to update Windows 7 since a year or two ago, all in the name of forcing people to switch to Windows 10.

You now have to visit and _manually_ download the updates from Microsoft's Update Catalog website. Oh, and that website only works on Internet Explorer.

<comment><USER6> No idea what you mean. Windows 7 receives updates from Microsoft through Windows Update just fine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Rust gives me a headache. I want to like it, but it just seems so... overengineered

[https://doc.rust- lang.org/std/str/struct.SplitWhitespace.htm...](https://doc.rust- lang.org/std/str/struct.SplitWhitespace.html)

Why would you create a special data type to represent a string split by Whitespace? Lunacy

<comment><USER8> Because unlike most other programming languages, Rust is well-engineered and seeks to both provide the most general abstractions possible and to make the code generated by them as efficient as possible.

In particular, for this task, this requires to:

1\. Return references to subranges of the original string, rather than copying them, so that no copy happens if you only need to examine the component instead of storing it

2\. Not use reference counting to do so, but rather statically checked references with lifetimes, to avoid unnecessary instructions to update the reference count and lack of a static finalization point

3\. Provide a way to get components one by one, so that if you only need e.g. the first two, time is not wasted to split the whole string

4\. Provide that through a generic Iterator trait, so that it may be passed to generic methods (like one that collects the result into a vector)

5\. Dispatch that generic trait statically rather than using an indirect call as that would destroy performance

6\. Make the state manipulated by such an interface into a first-class object, and allow to put them in a data structure (like an array) while still doing static dispatch, so that you can, for instance, split multiple strings into components and interleave them without ever making an indirect call.

The combination of these essential requirements results in the creation of the SplitWhitespace<'a> data type, which represents the state of a parser splitting a string into 'a-lifetime references to whitespace-separated its components one by one, implementing the Iterator trait, and usable in a data structure.

<comment><USER9> The better half of those points are directly and indirectly caused by insistence on manual memory management. Yes, it was a major design point of Rust, but it doesn't make it better engineered than "most other languages". It's just the corner it painted itself to.

<comment><USER10> Firstly, manual memory management is what happens when a C programmer must manually place malloc/free calls within her program. Rust doesn't require any of that; the compiler determines the right times to allocate and free memory, while requiring the programmer to follow certain design rules in exchange for the convenience.

Second, you're making it sound as if the position Rust (and those who program in it) is somehow undesirable. This state of things is the consequence of an explicit design goal, which was to accomplish automatic memory management without runtime cost.

<comment><USER9> Interesting; I certainly wouldn't consider C++ constructor/destructor like semantics and manual tracking of object ownership in the code as automatic memory management. But regardless, the point stands.

And yes it's a consequence of a design goal, I said as much. The outcome however isn't beautiful enough to feel smug about the rest of programming languages.

<comment><USER11> Rust doesn't have C++ constructor/destructor semantics. It doesn't require manual tracking of object ownership. You just have to say when you're passing ownership and when you aren't, and the compiler takes care of the rest.

It's automatic memory management without runtime accounting or a garbage collector, which means Rust doesn't need a runtime at all.

<comment><USER9> > It doesn't require manual tracking of object ownership. You just have to say > when you're passing ownership and when you aren't […]

Call it whatever you want, but there are languages where you don't have to "pass ownership" manually for every frigging thing.

<comment><USER12> And you won't see them being used for systems programming because of their overhead. So without Rust, we'll be stuck with stupid, avoidable security vulnerabilities at the base of all our software, forever. On top of that, Rust's ownership system also prevents data races and none of those other languages are capable of that.

<comment><USER13> I'd say Java, a GC'ed language, is used for systems programming quite often.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is an interesting demonstration how fiddly and UB-happy FFI boundaries can be... Fortunately the UB → abort change will land in the future, it will be for the better.

</comment><comment><USER15> One command to update the language...wow...ok Iong for the day I can do that in C++.

</comment><comment><USER16> Very good</comment>


Army looks for alternatives to GPS as enemies threaten to jam signals - <AUTHOR> https://spacenews.com/army-looks-for-alternatives-to-gps-as-enemies-threaten-to-jam-signals/ <comment><USER2> I imagine if accelerometers were sensitive enough they could be used in place of GPS, once a device was calibrated with position and orientation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I always wondered if you could ever get accurate enough measurements from cameras and position of stars at night or sun during the day with an accurate clock.</comment></comment>


Heist selling an app a second - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/27/the-heist-sales/ Heist going to take down angry birds? <comment><USER2> Hmmm, day 3 and I'm at 58 downloads.

<http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/facemouth/id428103766?mt=8></comment>


Software for Programming Microbes - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/printer_friendly_article.aspx?id=27025

<comment><AUTHOR> For those interested, the linked _Nature_ article has more details.

[http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/natu...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature09565.html)</comment>


Library providing an easy to build UI for Core Data - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/p/coredatalibrary/

<comment><AUTHOR> The speed of creating functionality in Rails makes the move to iPhone development feel like a real slap in the face. Anything that will speed things up for me is very welcome.</comment>


Show HN: DoodleCam - <AUTHOR> http://doodlec.am

<comment><USER2> The video is too professional and very dry. Show the app being used with some really clever use cases, people having a good time passing their creations around. Sell the emotional side of it, not the utility.

One suggestion, your examples photos should have people in them. I am much more inclined to share a photo of a creature about to chomp off my girlfriends head than of saucers flying over Chicago. People mostly use their camera phones to take group photos and portraits, so I think it will help creatively dictate what images you will offer.

</comment><comment> dc-tech-fan Works on the new Evo 4G LTE.

I wish it had drawing ability, but your art skills are way better than anything I could do.

Was this inspired by Windoodles? <http://windoodles.tumblr.com/>

</comment><comment><USER3> So it's photoshop for Android pics, except you don't have any control over what the final product looks like?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, kind of. We're going to build in control soon but didn't get that in time for the beta. There will be doodle packs that are from featured artists, and users will be able to cycle through different doodles and even place them where they see fit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> crashes on my HTC Desire HD after taking the photo.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the report. I'll fix this right away and put out an update tonight!</comment></comment>


The Most Surprising Things About America, According To An Indian Student - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/the-weirdest-things-about-america-2013-8#ixzz2dhTZ2g1O <comment><USER2> It's still silly season, then. Am I right in thinking they basically topped and tailed a bloke's blog post?

</comment><comment><USER3> Wrong, most women are whores.

<comment><USER4> No, dumbass. Most women are exactly as slutty as most heterosexual men. Source: basic mathematics.

<comment><USER5> There's twice as many mothers in human history as fathers. Source: DNA studies.</comment></comment></comment>


Soviet Russia Bugged an American Embassy's Typewriters - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-history/silicon-revolution/the-crazy-story-of-how-soviet-russia-bugged-an-american-embassys-typewriters <comment><USER2> Impressive to come up with a low power solution</comment>


Neat Algorithms - Flocking - <AUTHOR> http://harry.me/2011/02/17/neat-algorithms---flocking <comment><USER2> Also submitted four days ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2246089>

although it gains very few upvotes, and no comments. More evidence that getting noticed is largely chance, or gaming.

<comment><USER3> What's funny is that I bookmarked it then, checked it out today, tweeted it a few hours ago, and I know Matt. I could be wrong but I think this might have gone full circle! :)

But yeah, as ever, not enough people monitor /new (or there's not enough incentive to do so).

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry guys, but that's probably what's happened. I did do a quick site: Google search for the page title but it didn't bring back any results. Apologies for the double post.

<comment><USER3> I think the point here is.. it was a good link first time around and it kinda failed in the system so this resubmission turned out for the best! ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> And here's a parallel version written in Clojure that scales across your cores, [https://github.com/swannodette/flocking/blob/master/src/floc...](https://github.com/swannodette/flocking/blob/master/src/flocking/flocking3.clj)

<comment><USER5> You sure are pretty prolific in the Clojure community. I look at my Clojure code and then I look at yours and I wish mine was as elegant as yours.

<comment><USER4> To be honest I continued to work on my Clojure flocking code _long_ after it was working.

I actually took this code as challenge to learn how to put together idiomatic, fast Clojure code that read better than the original Java on which it is based.

Of course, nearly a year later since I wrote this version, I can see ways to make it even faster (nearly on par with Java and faster when parallel), cleaner and more elegant.

<comment><USER5> Do have any tips for someone looking to do better?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you haven't seen the boids pseudocode page by Conrad Parker it's definitely worth checking out: <http://www.vergenet.net/~conrad/boids/pseudocode.html>

Here's an implementation I wrote last month for fun: <http://breefield.com/lab/flock>. It doesn't have much bias in terms of direction (there's no wind, or patterns to follow), so there's generally one large swarm. Click-drag to create repellers, boids follow mouse. The white center of each boid shrinks at it's velocity increases, and the inverse happens to it's red direction line. Purple specks indicate perceived center of nearby flock. The rest is just aesthetic.

It's always super interesting to see other implementations in action, so please share more in your comments, if you have them. I'd certainly love to see them.

<comment><USER7> This is super cool! I really like the visuals in your implementation, way better looking than my blocky vectors. You also get pretty great performance by using raw canvas api calls which by the looks of your code wasn't too unwieldy. You also didn't implement any wrap around which stirs things up when the flock hits the edges, which goes a long way to demonstrate the actual behaviour as they reflect off the side. Nicely done!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I used flocking in a game project in college (getting ad-hoc starship fleets to get into ad-hoc formations) with another condition: When the basic requirements are met, each ship should also try to align with a master "fleet admiral" ship, and the group of boids under consideration was limited to only ships specifically defined as part of the fleet.

It kind of worked, there were issues with stragglers and making it look organic that I couldn't fix in time. If ships got too far outside the formation sometimes they would only try aligning with the leader instead of catching up first. Also, when they did get in formation, they were eerily good at matching the leader's alignment: all ships would turn in unison and kind of ruin the organic feel of the pure flocking algorithm.

<comment><USER9> Sounds like something you could have fixed with another, slightly randomized factor: "attention-span". Long boughts of straight flying would result in an increasingly large but seemingly random delay.

Cool sounding use case though!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> See also: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swarm_behaviour>

At a research company I worked at we used swarming concepts for controlling swarms of sensors, robots, and UAVs. We also used ant colony optimization techniques mixed with genetic algorithms to do predictive intelligence. Really powerful stuff.

</comment><comment><USER11> Here's an implementation I wrote some years ago that includes obstacle avoidance. Clicking adds obstacles, spacebar adds boids, reloading gets new colors. This ended up looking somewhat like sperm avoiding eggs...

<http://humortree.org/projects/flock03/>

(Java applet warning!)

The source code is here:

[https://github.com/mccutchen/humortree.org/tree/master/proje...](https://github.com/mccutchen/humortree.org/tree/master/projects/flock03)

</comment><comment><USER12> Very well explained. There needs to be more of this (algorithms and applied math explained in a manner somewhat accessible and nourishing to non- mathematicians through code and visualization) on the web, and I'd love to be pointed to similar resources.

</comment><comment><USER13> Turning on the legend and the magnification of an individual boid (by clicking "Decorate") is very helpful. When you mouse over the magnified boid, you see the vectors immediately adjust, providing a very handy visual description of what is happening in real time.

<comment><USER14> You can also cut a boid out of the flock by moving the mouse cursor to one side or the other, sort of interesting to see what happens to a lone boid...

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I used to use boids as an interview question for candidates who whizzed through my first few code challenges -- was interesting to discuss various collision detection options with an eye on performance.

Such a simple algorithm w/ such a cool result.

</comment><comment><USER16> You may also like <http://www.red3d.com/cwr/steer/>

</comment><comment><USER17> This is fantastic! Not just the algorithm, but the explanation, the fact that there's source code readily available, and the canvas demo. Please, do more!

</comment><comment><USER18> I've wanted to write some exploratory algorithms for flocking for a long time now. This is just the motivation I need to start working on a silly side project.

Thank you, everyone in the comments who submitted source code or demos. You never know when something you upload will really brighten someone's day (even if it's written in java).

</comment><comment><USER19> Cool. There's also a book called "Swarm Intelligence" by Kennedy/Eberhart that describes swarm behaviors very well (my favorite book).

For anyone interested, here is the Craig Reynolds page that describes the flocking behavior <http://www.red3d.com/cwr/boids/>

</comment><comment><USER20> It'd be great if someone added "[processor-heavy]" on to the title of posts like this.

</comment><comment><USER21> I could watch this for hours.

</comment><comment><USER22> glad to see you've herd of this, and are flocking to it. if you're not too flighty it's worth a peep, but you may have to duck some bugs in the code. furthermore i think flocking should be part of everyone's schooling, and there's nothing fishy about that.

</comment><comment><USER23> discrete navier stokes?

<comment><USER18> It definitely has a very similar feel, watching the movement over time.</comment></comment>


Scott Aaronson explains his $200k bet (8 Signs A Claimed P≠NP Proof Is Wrong) - <AUTHOR> http://scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=458

<comment><USER2> This is actually a really great explanation and, perhaps more importantly, a really great example of how science and other academic pursuits really work. Personally, I study computational biochemistry and a lot of work appears on the arXiv long before the official publications. So, I try to keep up with the arXiv, but as this is all non-peer-reviewed I have a similar checklist that I use before spending more time going into the details of the paper.

That's not to say that this paper should have been disregarded out of hand. There's a difference between a crackpot and a honest good attempt that deserves further scrutiny. Still, with the number of papers that get published these days, having a list like this is a valuable tool.

</comment><comment><USER3> Point 8 seems a bit unfair - the proof author's comments to me seemed to be 'confirmations of receipt' have started arriving (not confirmations of validation) and 'as you know this problem has philosophical ramifications' (not 'I have forever changed the philosophical landscape'). Otherwise seems like a neat article, maybe I should memorize the other points, could come in handy at dinner parties (cause I, like a lot of other people over the last week, don't know wtf any of this mathematical stuff really means).

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure if the entire checklist was meant to apply to this specific instance. Mainly since that point also didn't seem right to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Author has posted a new synopsis (which answers the first objection raised by Scott and perhaps more) and claims to put out a version addressing the issues raised in 3-4 days. <http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Vinay_Deolalikar/>

<comment><USER6> I'd be happy for him to take his time, and release an update in 3-4 months.

<comment><USER5> Yes this is probably getting too much hectic for him. Handling PR is not something he is expected to be good at.

<comment><USER7> Indeed. He just needs to say, "dear world. the paper you have been reading was unfinished and was leaked without my permission. please disregard it until i release a version that is sane. kthx, bye."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One good thing this whole paper and debate has done is motivated to get my honours thesis done, mine obviously is nowhere near as profound but it is great to watch people on the edge of advancement in the field attempt to give us new understanding.

</comment><comment><USER9> _But reading the overview felt like reading Joseph Conrad's _Heart of Darkness_: I'd reread the same paragraph over and over, because the words would evaporate before they could stick to my brain._

shudder

<comment><USER7> I think you mean, "The horror! The horror!"

<comment><USER9> Well played, jrockway. Well played.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The nerds with only a cursory interest in the problem are awed.

<comment><USER10> The nerds lack all sense of humor.

<comment><USER11> Eh, it wasn't really funny.

<comment><USER10> Nor was it meant to be 'really' funny. It was just an observation, one that I think is fairly accurate. I'd never seen an article on the HN frontpage with so many upvotes (for so long) and zero comments.

By lack of humor, I meant an inability to take one's self less seriously.

<comment><USER12> Well, at least we can take _you_ less seriously.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Introducing .app, a more secure home for apps on the web - <AUTHOR> https://developers.googleblog.com/2018/05/introducing-app-more-secure-home-for.html <comment><USER2> From [https://security.googleblog.com/2017/09/broadening-hsts- to-s...](https://security.googleblog.com/2017/09/broadening-hsts-to-secure- more-of-web.html) :

> The HSTS preload list is built in to all major browsers (Chrome, Firefox, > Safari, Internet Explorer/Edge, and Opera). It consists of a list of > hostnames for which browsers automatically enforce HTTPS-secured > connections.

Obviously, that HSTS preload list contains the domain ".app". That's the key feature of this new TLD.

Once you close your browser (and change to any other protocol like SMTP or FTP), there is no difference between .app and any other TLD.

</comment><comment><USER3> Discussion here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16967865](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16967865)

</comment><comment><USER4> The best TLD for a commercial business is .COM, the best TLD for a non-profit is .ORG, and for other kinds of web apps, .NET will suffice.

These three TLDs are half the price of this .app gTLD. In fact all gTLDs are stupidly over-priced.

Furthermore, a .com can satisfy 100% of the needs of your organization. a .app will only ever satisfy a tiny niche of your needs. So instead of an organization needing 1 .com for $10/yr, they suddenly need half a dozen gTLDs for all their various services, at a cost of $20-$50/yr each.

If this is starting to sound like a giant racket, then you're paying attention.

<comment><USER5> I mostly agree with all that. The only downside of .com is that it's massively crowded.</comment></comment>


Glacier detachments: A new hazard in a warming world? - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2020-04-glacier-detachments-hazard-world.html <comment><AUTHOR> > "We were aware of glacier detachments that had happened in Tibet, Russia, > and Argentina, but started out thinking we were investigating a regular > landslide ... Then we noticed that the entire glacier was missing."</comment>


Rupert Murdoch to Block Google = Smart = Twitter has changed it all. - <AUTHOR> http://blogmaverick.com/2009/11/09/rupert-murdoch-to-block-google-smart-twitter-has-changed-it-all/ <comment><USER2> I think this guy misses Rupert's point entirely. Rupert doesn't want the random people that are coming from search engines, or twitter to use his sites. He wants the people that click on his news sites everyday to pay a subscription.

And yes the writer highly over values the importance of twitter. Twitter is good for trends, but to lead users to specific links or sites, like a search engine does based on popularity or relevancy.. is not the same. When a event occurs unless you're one of the first new sites to break it, you'll get thousands of news sites links with the same content.

<comment><USER3> No, both of you miss the point. Rupert wants an audience. That is why he bought myspace. He talks about loyalty, but no so much that people are loyal to the newspaper, but he wants someone to stay on his properties the same way that when you buy a newspaper, you'd pour through every page. By simply making content premium, cognitively the reader is going to value the content more, thus making the reader stay longer. You see this with biz opp ebooks etc. Most information is freely available elsewhere, but the ones that get read are the ones people actually paid something for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ok, as clueless as he is, not even Mark Cuban can believe Twitter and Facebook live updates are going to supplant search engines. They serve completely different purposes. Traffic from each source is almost completely independent of the other. The traffic you lose from Google News _might_ be made up by Twitter, but it is never going to make up for the loss of Google organic search results.

It is also ironic how each news outlet is so enthusiastic about their competitors blocking Google. They know they would just get their competitor's traffic for free.

This jumping on the Rupert Murdoch saber-rattling bandwagon is getting old really quick. I will believe the viability of their alternative business models when I see one of these media moguls actually block Google in their robots.txt file.

<comment><USER5> >Ok, as clueless as he is, not even Mark Cuban can believe Twitter and Facebook live updates are going to supplant search engines.

He wasn't suggesting that! Just that Twitter is already a better source than Google for real-time news...not a very new or controversial statement.

<comment><USER6> His point basically is that, compared to Twitter, Google is unimportant for News Corp, traffic-wise. Which I personally find hard to believe.

<comment><USER7> Plus, why does twitterpose no threat to News Corp? it still sends readers directly to the article without losing time on the homepage. So, in what really is it different from Google?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hmm. Call me when Twitter is sending most sites more traffic than Google. Heck, call me when it sends 10% as much.

<comment><USER9> hmm indeed! :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Eh. People who read sites like his aren't searching for news, they're searching for their current views to be reenforced. Google news isn't good for that anyway (though Twitter can be). Might as well cut off the accidental readership.

</comment><comment><USER11>
      TWITTER POSSES NO THREAT

If you have to rant, don't SHOUT. And if you have to SHOUT, spell it right.

</comment><comment><USER12> The point that both Cuban and Murdoch are missing I think is the shelf life of news content isn't limited to only breaking news. For example I check a particular news site everyday but maybe 30 or 40% of the content interests me right now. I may be interested in the other 60-70% later but how am I going to find it without Google? I'm obviously not going to individually search a bunch of sites. That's why search engines exist in the first place -- no one wants to do that.

</comment><comment><USER13> One thing that struck me about twitter is that the mainstream media pushed it (e.g. Oprah). That never happened with Google.

I got the sense that the mainstream media felt that they could work with Twitter, and so of course they promoted it like crazy. This article suggests one reason why that might be: it's not a competitor to media, but more like the word of mouth that mainstream media is accustomed to handling.

Whereas Google solved a problem (of endless masses of information of unknown relevance) that had never existed before. It solved a geek problem, not a mainstream problem.

</comment><comment><USER14> I've heard it a million times and for hopefully the last time: FB/Twitter will not replace Google. As much as the social networking fundies would love to see that happen.

This is a huge blunder on Murdoch's part - as if Fox was reporting news in the first place. Good riddens.

</comment><comment><USER15> Right, because you couldn't have users _both_ post news stories on Twitter _and_ have the pages be indexed by Google. That's simply not possible.

<comment><USER5> The point is that he doesn't make money from Google's indexing of his content. Did you even read the article?

<comment><USER15> I rather did read the article. If you can get traffic from Twitter, why would you cut off getting traffic from Google?

"he doesn't make money from Google's indexing of his content"

How does he make money from Twitter users posting his content? The only way he makes money from Twitter is traffic, and Google also drives traffic. Therefore how does it make sense to cut off a source of traffic?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What will Murdoch do when Twitter hijacks the links?

<comment><USER17> Twitter references bring pageviews, while Google News brings .. nothing?

I doubt (have no proof though, would be interested in numbers) that a considerable percentage of visits to a news site is from search engines. One data point: I don't remember when I last googled my way into a news article.

<comment><USER18> You probably haven't intentionally done it, but let's say you're looking for information on the arrest of Bernard Madoff or the Lehman bankruptcy:

[http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1C1GGLS_enUS345US...](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1C1GGLS_enUS345US345&q=madoff+arrest&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g-p1g3g-m6)

[http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1C1GGLS_enUS345US...](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1C1GGLS_enUS345US345&q=lehman+bankruptcy&aq=0&oq=lehman+bankr&aqi=g10)

While it's true that I probably wouldn't search for "xyz Wall Street Journal article" I might be searching for xyz topic and happen upon a result in the WSJ

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> hmm... delist my content from Google and instead rely on a company with no business model and that crashes frequently...

hmm....

</comment><comment><USER19> This makes me feel so tired. Why not just wait and see how it plays out in the long run.

<comment><USER20> What makes me feel tired is reading words in ALL CAPS LOCK; this isn't the year 1999, or 2004. Heck, it's not even 2008...

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> real time news is just a preference. The market segment for that preference and for people who know how to get real time news from the various tools is still very small.There are still millions of other people who prefer the old way that google caters to.

News corp getting rid of google and using facebook and twitter instead to drive traffic is dumb.They will block out millions of internet users in the process.

The only thing I agree with about marks blog is that twitter and facebook are not threats because they do not compete with newscorp news properties in the destination site space.

</comment><comment><USER22> "The concept of "If the news is important, it will find me" works better by the day. If it matters to me, chances are very good its in one of the twitter feeds I follow."

As with most people who use the Internet primarily to reinforce their own worldview, Mark Cuban must have the intellectual curiosity of a card-carrying dittohead. He and Murdoch deserve each other.

<comment><USER22> Note, before downvoting further, that those aren't my words: I was quoting Cuban. :-P</comment></comment>


Paperclip Maximizer - <AUTHOR> http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer

<comment><USER2> I do fear the paperclip maximizer.

And did they have to make it solar powered? When will people learn?!?</comment>


Stratechery: Uber Questions - <AUTHOR> https://stratechery.com/2019/uber-questions/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is, of course, quite standard, but it does feel particularly pressing given that Uber measures its annual losses in the billions. Unfortunately, it is here that Uber's S-1 is particularly lacking. We don't know:

\- How much it costs Uber to acquire drivers

\- How much it costs Uber to acquire riders

\- How much it costs Uber Eats to acquire restaurants

\- How much it costs Uber Eats to acquire customers

\- What is Uber's retention rate for drivers

\- What is Uber's retention rate for riders

\- What is Uber Eats' retention rate for restaurants

\- What is Uber Eats' retention rate for customers

\- Any sort of cohort analysis of any of the above categories

\- Ride-sharing revenue and profitability by geography

\- Uber Eats revenue and profitability by geography

\- Ride-sharing's take rate overall and in developed versus emerging markets

\- Uber Eats' take rate overall and in developed versus emerging markets

\- Ride-sharing revenue and profitability by time-in-market

\- Uber Eats revenue and profitability by time-in-market

\- An understanding of driver incentives and how they affect top-line revenue, or how "excess driver incentives" have changed over time

\- How costs are allocated, particularly when it comes to rider marketing and incentives

\- A breakdown of Uber's many offerings (Black versus UberX versus UberPool etc.)</comment>


Show HN: AirTube – Android app that plays any song you name instantly - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=co.airtube

<comment><AUTHOR> Demo video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wn36PKFFG_E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wn36PKFFG_E)</comment>


India's Menstruation Man - <AUTHOR> http://interactive.aljazeera.com/aje/shorts/india-menstruation-man/index.html <comment><AUTHOR> I feel as though the process he went through was how all good startups are born. Found a problem, iterated, talked to (or tried at least) to talk to his stakeholders and then found a scalable solution.</comment>


Minimum Viable Product Subreddit (r/mvp) - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/mvp/ <comment><AUTHOR> Not my sub, but I thought it was a fun idea.</comment>


Non-Errors: they tell you it's wrong but actually it's standard English - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/nonerrors.html

<comment><USER2> _Non-Errors: they tell you it's wrong but actually it's standard English_

"They" in the sentence above doesn't have a clear antecedent. Is my correction yet another example of a hyper-correction?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope, just an example of me trying to get the title to fit in 80 chars... Sorry.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Hiring managers want apples, but recruiters are giving them oranges - <AUTHOR>

I run a startup that's trying to make hiring managers and recruiters collaborate better to making hiring more efficient. But it's proving to be harder than we initially thought.
Hiring managers generally say that recruiters have, at best, a low/ moderate understanding of the jobs they're recruiting for.
While most recruiters think that they have a very high understanding of the jobs they recruit for.
Do you also find this disparity in perception from your experiences?
With the common objective being to get an A player on the engineering/ product/ design team, what are some ways they can be more collaborative and innovative in their approach to find the apples they need? <comment><USER3> In my experience recruiters try to provide what the market, via hiring managers, wants, but the hiring manager, collectively, is a fickle entity.

"Ninja," "Rockstar," "A-player." You can't expect to interest those people in middling jobs from mediocre employers.

Fix hiring expectations and you will have gone a long way toward solving the hiring "problem."

</comment><comment><USER4> Some initial thoughts:

A good recruiter (is that an oxymoron?) will not have much expertise in the field they are recruiting for. Their experience is in their field. However, a good recruiter should have an excellent relationship with the company they represent. Build on that.

Recruiters are akin to realtors. They make their money by putting potential buyers and sellers together and "working their magic" until there is an agreement. They work in qantity, not quality. If you really want to have an impact, fix that.

My experience between recruiters and hiring managers has been that hiring managers don't have a strong ability to convey to the recruiter what's _really_ important and instead toss information at the recruiter that - <USER2> technically accurate - isn't beneficial long-term. For example, they may list things like...

\- B.S. or 2-year equiv experience

\- Be an expert in Python and Django

\- Understand how to build REST APIs

\- Willing to move to the Bay area

\- Excellent communication skills

None of these things actually help the recruiter much. A recruiter will see this and have 4 keys to filter off of in a resume search (BS, Python, Django, REST). And if a prospective candidate is capable of spelling correctly in an email that will be an indication of "excellent communication skills". None of these things will be talked about after the first 10 minutes in an on-site interview. So the recruiter ends up being nothing more than a human-version of a LinkedIn search + initial email.

I like to think that hiring managers are smart, good people who would be much happier with a great Ruby programmer who's never even seen Python, but can identify problems, be pro-active in fixing them, is capable of learning new things and isn't afraid to dive into large, in-place systems, debug, etc. over the candidates that a recruiter would bring them for the above requirements list. But they don't know what list to give the recruiter. Fix this.

Hope this helps.

</comment><comment><USER5> I am trying an open approach to the problem: [http://siscia.github.io/open- hire/](http://siscia.github.io/open-hire/)

Test candidate via open source; as engineer I would love that, as hiring manager I would get a lot of nice information about the candidate, information that I won't get with an code challenge or a white board.

If you are interested just send me an email

My address is all over the linked page :)

</comment><comment><USER6> This is a huge problem indeed! The product I'm building is trying to solve this problem as well, by giving more tools for the recruiters to identify potentially great candidates.</comment>


How these communist-era Apple II clones helped shape central Europe's IT sector - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/article/how-these-communist-era-apple-ii-clones-helped-shape-central-europes-it-sector/ <comment><USER2> Ahh, a trip down memory lane. That's how my passion for programming started, on an HC computer. Those were the days when you could boot up right into BASIC.</comment>


Obama expected to issue cybersecurity executive order - <AUTHOR> http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013/02/11/obama-cybersecurity-executive-order/1911159/

<comment><USER2> Have any of you actually _read_ the executive order? If not, did you perhaps notice who the sources were for the stories being written about it today?

There was a cybersecurity order on the table last year (it wasn't enacted). HN got up in arms about it. Some of us read it. Guess what? It concerned itself almost entirely with the operational security of the federal government itself (which operates the world's largest IT departments). The places where it stepped past instructing DOE how to secure their networks were to create educational programs to get more people doing information security. It contained _no provisions at all_ that would have given the government access to private entities networks.

I haven't read this executive order, but if I was going to place a bet about it, it would be that everyone hyperventilating about "king complexes" on HN is being played.

<comment><USER3> Are you talking about this? [http://www.lawfareblog.com/wp- content/uploads/2012/11/White-...](http://www.lawfareblog.com/wp- content/uploads/2012/11/White-House-Draft-Executive-Order-Publicly- Circulating-Copy-11-1-12.pdf)

<comment><USER2> The "new" EO is virtually identical to that one, yes.

(I think I got "educational programs", which IIRC was from Rockefeller's draft bill, confused with "outside consultation" from this order.)

I did a clause-by-clause comparison (you're welcome! all part of the service I provide) and while there are minor deltas (like which sentence of a clause the Attorney General appears in, or whether deadlines are 90 days or 120 days) it's the same thing:

* Coordinate better in managing FedGov systems

* Figure out a way to relay threat info from FedGov to private sector

* Inventory the US for computer systems that if disabled could kill people

* Reach out to owners of those systems to help them not be owned up over old dialup modems everyone forgot about

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The fundamental problem with this in my opinion starts with the executive order. As the article states: the executive's job is to enforce laws, not make them. EO's have stepped well beyond that in the last 20 years, with the executive branch becoming more sovereign in nature, which scares the hell out of me.

We do need a cyber security bill, but it should be passed by Congress, whose job it is to iron out all the competing needs, instead of passed by fiat by a wanna-be king[1] who "knows what's best for the country".

1\. EO's aren't the exclusive domain of Obama by any stretch. Every president since HW Bush has used them in increasing number and, IMO, in increasing defiance to the separation of powers. Another 20 years and Congress will be nothing but a complete farce, much like other dictatorial "republics".

<comment><USER5> The principle underlying executive orders is that they don't make laws, but guide enforcement discretion that the President already has.

I'm curious to see what executive orders you think overstep the line from guiding enforcement discretion to outright lawmaking.

<comment><USER6> <http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_9066>

<comment><USER7> Couldn't have said it better myself. This is exactly why legislation is a process that requires oversight and accountability. I'll never understand why people are willing to write the president a blank check.

<comment><USER2> Yet another illustration of the unintended consequences of authorizations by Congress for war (obviously, in this case, an unavoidable war, but still).

The order to authorize internment camps was the result of two forces:

* Intense and direct recommendations from FDR's entire war staff and intelligence apparatus, which believed that there was an unacceptably high probability that Japanese and German populations would engage in sabotage during the war

* ENORMOUS public pressure, particularly in California, to eject Japanese citizens

The Japanese internment debacle is a blemish and a tragedy, no doubt, but it's not an illustration of an executive power grab. The whole country shares the blame for it.

The lesson I take from it is the same as the lesson I take from drone strikes blowing up wedding parties: Congress should be extraordinarily careful and guarded in its authorizations for using military force of any sort.

<comment><USER6> If this is not an illustration of an executive power grab, what power authorizes the executive branch to round up a group of people?

Even so, legal or not, there is no valid reason to legitimize the internment of Japanese-American citizens.

<comment><USER2> It's an illustration of a _majoritarian government power grab_. I certainly do not object to condemnations of Japanese internment camps! They were one of the biggest mistakes our country ever made. I object to the root cause analysis you've performed on it, and because this is a thread that is almost entirely about that root cause analysis (and not Japanese internment), I think that's a germane criticism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I find it worrisome when government declares it is time to protect the internet. The internet has flourished just fine without intervention.

<comment><USER5> The internet was born out of government intervention.

<comment><USER9> He said "flourished". The state of being implemented by some basic government- funded research is almost completely disconnected from the time when commercial interests took the idea and ran with it -- causing it to "flourish".

<comment><USER5> The internet wasn't implemented by some basic government funded research. It was designed and built under a DARPA project and designed and implemented by key pieces of the military industrial complex (BBN, etc). It was run by the DOD and "flourished" long before it was commercialized.

<comment><USER10> The Internet isn't ARPANET any more than Ethernet is ALOHA.

The technology that made the Internet possible was almost exclusively private sector technology. The desire, effort and vision to put together large networks was already in place by the time the government made their move.

The government helped, no question about it, but all the pieces were already there to make it happen. The private sector was driving that direction and would have built out very large networks regardless of the government.

<comment><USER11> The record contradicts what you are saying here; what you've written is almost a perfect inversion of historical fact. All the commercial networks being developed or deployed when the Internet was being invented were circuit switched, centralized networks. They really didn't have anything to do with the Internet at all. The design philosophy behind the Internet [1, Section 3] was drastically different than all commercial efforts at the time. The design was so different and so unique compared to existing work that the inventors won a Turing Award for it.

As an aside, all of the above is typically covered in the first week or two of a networking course (I like Brighten Godfrey's [2]).

[1] <http://ccr.sigcomm.org/archive/1995/jan95/ccr-9501-clark.pdf>

[2] <http://courses.engr.illinois.edu/cs538/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The order should be all critical computers like power-grid control should not be able to connect to the internet in any way or have usb ports or DVD drives.

I have this fear that somewhere an ICBM is on an internet router because some general wants to monitor it. Sounds insane right? Well why are power stations on the internet?

<comment><USER2> An executive order that forbad private companies from connecting to the Internet would be far more of an executive overreach than anything proposed for cybersecurity by the executive, the Democrats in the Senate, or the Republicans in the House.

<comment><USER13> Then those private companies shouldn't be in charge of critical infrastructure.

<comment><USER2> So we should federalize electric companies?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> the govt's efforts on cyber security are almost as much of a joke as their response to protecting private businesses. unless you're google or a major bank, getting some sort of response from the fbi/ic3. Have tried playing by the rules when a client is attacked and submitting the information to them, but never any response. Most of the time i brush these attacks off as my own failure to keep things locked down but on the more serious attacks i've submitted server logs, documentation tracking the person back to their home address, facebook page, mother's phone number, everything they could possible need to arrest and prosecute. nothing but crickets.

glad they're starting to make some effort, but from software loopholes to literally exposed (outside & unprotected) hardware/transmission equipment, doubtful they'll never get their shoes on the right feet.

</comment><comment><USER15> Seems pretty sensible to me, though some folks seem to be linking it with the revival of CISPA.

<comment><USER13> The problem is the bi-directional information sharing between private companies and the multiple levels of government -- it should be one-way (private companies -> government).

There is a very large potential for abuse and we will have no recourse.

<comment><USER3> I don't want information sharing that way either. We have (sadly, increasingly circumvented or weakened) laws banning that for a reason.

<comment><USER13> I will not deny that it's unpleasant but it is a necessity, which is why subpoenas and warrants exist.

Unfortunately, law enforcement organizations are harrumphing and ruffling feathers so they're getting what they want -- ability to bypass the requirement for subpoenas and court-ordered warrants.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The internet has been a wild new frontier. Unfortunately All frontiers eventually become littered with the selfish ambitions of man.</comment>


75% of Local web design companies ignore disabled people  - <AUTHOR> http://design4web.wordpress.com/2008/01/30/75-of-local-web-design-companies-ignore-disabled-people/ <comment><USER2> Yeah sad truth is people don't realize that there are in fact disabled people out there who use the internet also.

Fortunately, I write my pages with those things in mind. Hopefully others will take someday start taking a more proactive role in separating model/content from layout/view.

<comment><USER3> Having worked in local shops, the phrase "We just don't have time" is a very popular excuse. Reusable / easily maintainable code = fewer billable hours - it's the clients that aren't savvy enough or are too budget conscious to make it a priority.</comment></comment>


Fundraiser for anti-SOPA Lobbying initiative -is it viable? - <AUTHOR>

Fight them smart, not just hard, right? After reading  http://boingboing.net/2011/12/17/wtf-is-happening-with-sopa-now.html I agree that not playing the Washington game would be good for principles but bad for the imminent SOPA fight. Lobbyist work for whomever pays them, not just Hollywood. What does the HN community think of an online crowdsourcing project to raise capital for a anti-SOPA Lobbying innitiative? Is it too late for that? What online tools can be used(Sparked.com, JustGiving.com, KickStarter.com, )? <comment><AUTHOR> Is there any anti-SOPA Lobbying currently going on by any interest groups out there??

</comment><comment><USER2> Hollywood can, and will, throw more money at the problem. I doubt you can beat them on their own game.

That said, I will contribute to the fund-raise. Better trying than not.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, matching their funding is hopeful at best, but just attempting to do it can bring a great deal of awareness on the issue.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Lobbyists are expensive I know, maybe some services trades can be arranged as form of payment if we get some talented internet people on board.</comment>


How I made my own Amazon Dash button - <AUTHOR> http://www.stavros.io/posts/emergency-food-button/?print <comment><USER2> Wonder when Amazon will just make this easier for everyone. They already have if it just moves out of beta: [https://aws.amazon.com/iot/button/](https://aws.amazon.com/iot/button/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Here's another person who had a very cool implementation with the actual Amazon Dash button. They messed with it (software only) to track baby data!

You could use the same method to track many other things if you got creative.

[https://medium.com/@edwardbenson/how-i-hacked- amazon-s-5-wif...](https://medium.com/@edwardbenson/how-i-hacked- amazon-s-5-wifi-button-to-track-baby-data-794214b0bdd8)

<comment><USER4> That's another cool solution, but it's more hackish (since you're doing it at the network level). Too bad the Dash button isn't more hackable, it's a very nice device.

<comment><USER5> The lithium battery in it is super expensive too, I would be surprised if it cost less than $5 to make.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Cool project, and in case you've never heard of Amazon Dash (as I hadn't)...

Amazon Dash is a button that when pressed will place an order on Amazon via Wi-Fi, controllable by the Amazon App:

[https://www.amazon.com/b/?node=10667898011](https://www.amazon.com/b/?node=10667898011)

<comment><USER7> Technically, Dash is a different product from Dash Button. The Dash is a barcode scanner/voice device for Amazon's grocery business (Amazon Fresh). You say a product's name or scan its barcode and it adds it to your cart on Amazon Fresh.

[https://fresh.amazon.com/dash/](https://fresh.amazon.com/dash/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Someone made a programmable button and it looks extremely nice but its very pricy: [https://flic.io/](https://flic.io/) Tempted to order some and have a play.

<comment><USER4> My problems with the flic is that it's pricy, I don't know how open it is, and I don't know whether it requires a bluetooth connection with a nearby phone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interestingly, the Dash uses wi-fi controlled by the setup app to be configured with an Android phone, but because the app can't control the wi-fi on an iPhone it uses ultrasonic signals: [https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201746340)

 _You may need to increase your iPhone volume, since Dash Button uses ultrasonic tones to sync with your iPhone during setup._

<comment><USER10> That's how the Furby Boom is able to interact with the iPad app ... only problem is, I can still hear the damn noises despite being 35!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Shameless plug: I wrote a quick and dirty node.js library to re-purpose the amazon branded ones to do anything you want.

[https://github.com/hortinstein/node-dash- button](https://github.com/hortinstein/node-dash-button)</comment>


Ask HN: Best way to backup my clients' websites? - <AUTHOR>

I run a small web design studio, and even if my clients have some backup systems in place, there were couple of big disaster and lost data.
What is a safe and reasonable cheap way to store those (DB, FTP) backups?
Is AWS a way to go?
What about services like http://www.backupmachine.com/ and https://www.codeguard.com/ ?
My dream is to find some open-source system which I can install on AWS and run as my self-hosted codeguard.com solution.
Any suggestions? <comment><USER2> Elkarbackup.org it's a good rsnapshot backup system and it's open source. You can try the kvm image.</comment>


Simulated infant program in highschools doubled teen pregnancy rate (2016) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://opvoeding-wetenschap.nl/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Brinkman-2016-Lancet-efficacy-of-infant-simulator-programmes-to-prevent-teenage-pregnancy-copy.pdf <comment><USER2> "Parent or guardian consent forms had a tea bag stapled to the top of the form to enhance uptake."

I couldn't help but smile.</comment>


30-year-old with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome will never eat again - <AUTHOR> https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-7726787/Woman-Ehlers-Danlos-syndrome-reveals-never-eat-water-makes-sick.html <comment><USER2> My wife has EDS. She isn't on a feeding tube; and we hope she won't ever be on one. Gastroparesis isn't even the worst part of it. As TFA points out, there are a lot of collective symptoms that EDS causes.</comment>


Don't Take My DataCamp Course, There Must be Consequences for Sexual Assault - <AUTHOR> https://noamross.github.io/datacamp-sexual-assault/ <comment><USER2> "danced inappropriately and made uninvited physical contact with another employee" seems a bit vague. What actually happened?

<comment><USER3> That is the description made by DataCamp in their post trying to bury the issue as well as possible. Meanwhile, the other side tries to keep the description general out of respect for the victim, presumably seeking to not spark a discussion over the details of their clothing and demeanour.

Apparently the exact details are serious enough that they could gather a 100 signatures on a letter about it and DataCamp itself felt they could not simply remain silent.

<comment><USER4> It would be better to have more explicit details. The post says we should get this guys fired. Then what does he do? Find another job. The post from DC doesn't say the executive's name. If new employers call DC to ask what happened, they won't tell them because they could be sued for slander. The trend has been to fire people who get into trouble like this. But should a company pass judgement on someone like that. How much evidence should it require to destroy a person's livelyhood.

If there is evidence DC should hand it over to the police, suspend the executive. Then fire them when the charges stick. Corporations shouldn't be dealing in justice.

If there is evidence I'm more than happy to boycott a co, but if we're asking the public to pass judgement, they should have the evidence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This belongs in the courts where the act, evidence, defense and outcome can be heard by all.

We're supposed to form/not-form a mob based a description so broad that could very well encompass the behaviors of Joe Biden to Bill Clinton and everything in between.

This trial by sketchy-facts is not fair to the accused or the victim or to anybody that's pressured to make a decision about this.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's really a bold move by Noam, considering that his contract with Datacamp doesn't let him pull out the course. Sending out this message after he's put so much effort in creating a course that could provide him lifetime royalty for every course that's taken.

<comment><USER7> > I retain IP and the right to post it elsewhere, but grant DC a perpetual, > non-exclusive license to the course material in return for royalties.

He is still free to monetize it how he sees fit. DC could choose not to post the material, but that seems to be his endgoal.

[https://twitter.com/noamross/status/1117050638955892742](https://twitter.com/noamross/status/1117050638955892742)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> my feeling is that there isn't enough detail in the original datacamp note or this article to support the case that someone should be fired. it's barbaric to crucify someone based on sentiment and presumption when no one is aware of the specifics.

</comment><comment><USER9> The "consequences" could be training, workshops, counseling and possibly a disciplinary. My wife consults to organizations on managing workplace sexual harassment. There do need to be consequences but also to understand how damaging this behaviour is</comment>


Risk the kitsch: The life of a concert pianist - <AUTHOR> https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/risk-the-kitsch/ <comment><USER2> > _You see, it all goes back to when I was in Paris. General Stroganoff wrote > it out for me himself"._

Pedantic note: the Stroganovs were merchants, and the last male heir in the noble line died in 1923. So the timelines here don't quite line up.

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

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting description about the life of a pianist - actually any soloist, be it violin, cello, flute - you name it. Talented or not you have to spend 8 hours a day practising - every day. Which for a student makes it impossible to self fund your education if you have to attend other courses during college as well. Don't even consider a social life.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, one of the joys of learning guitar seriously outside of the day job as a techie is I have a legitimate and valid excuse for not having much of a social circle outside of work at the moment. Takes a ton of work and effort but the end result is hopefully being the life of the concert/open mic night when finally good enough to perform live. I also volunteer at a dog shelter consistently since I need socialization as much as the dogs, heh.</comment></comment>


Ballmer claims GNU/Linux users don't want to pay - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zc30UVB3oMs

<comment><USER2> It's funny that Silverlight is now dead. Also, when Ballmer says something - do the opposite. Should be a good rule of thumb by now.</comment>


Sinatra-asset-pipeline brings Sprockets to Sinatra - <AUTHOR> http://thechangelog.com/sinatra-asset-pipeline-sprockets-for-sinatra/

<comment><USER2> Sweet, that saves me 3 or 4 lines on my Gemfile, and a bunch of configs. =)</comment>


Australia's Darling River is running dry - <AUTHOR> https://widerimage.reuters.com/story/thirst-turns-to-anger-as-australias-mighty-river-runs-dry <comment><USER2> Australia has a serious problem with water, and it would have a serious problem even without climate change. The water in the Darling, and in any river, can be extracted free of charge if your land includes the river. This produces permanent drought conditions in a country that exports oranges.

Australia has limited water resources and laws that treat it as unlimited. It will be incredibly hard to square that circle. Imagine being told your entire business is toast because Sydney has no drinking water and you'll have some idea of how toxic it's going to be _before_ it get politicised.

<comment><USER3> It could be simply solved by selling water usage rights or incentivizing saving water wherever the river runs. This was done with success in some parts of the US.

<comment><USER4> Cities require relatively little water for the economic output they produce, compared to farmers.

If you require farmers to pay full price for the water they consume, they will never be able to afford it.

<comment><USER2> Indeed, some forms of farming e.g. cotton in Australia are literally unsustainable when exposed to market forces.

Doesn't mean capitalism is wrong in this case, though.

<comment><USER5> > Doesn't mean capitalism is wrong in this case, though.

Edit:

Wes it does, _in this case_. This is not some software startup. The water, which ostensibly belongs to all, is the input to this wealth.

Plus, that's a stupid use of water that should not be rewarded.

Original below \</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----

of course it does. It's "captialism" and we must bow down before it and not question any of the inputs to the money being made.

<comment> core-questions If market forces would make something which is already unsustainable untenable without subsidization, it is the subsidization that is the problem because it enables the unsustainable behaviour.

In other words: let the cotton farmers get stuck with paying for the water, and the business will simply dry up, and the water will be used for economically sound purposes.

<comment><USER5> Sure. But since the word "subsidization" is in play, are we now talking about socialism? :-)

<comment><USER2> This is the fun thing. If person X thinks the fair price for something is $1, person Y thinks it's $10, and the government has to set the price, both of them can yell "Socialism" at the other and never actually address anything.

<comment><USER5> I'm specifically referring to the Government giving money or forgiving taxes to business in order to help them. That is not "Capitalism".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's some background information: The Darling River at Menindee (the town mentioned in the article) dried up 48 times between 1885 and 1960.

<comment><USER7> Are you driving towards the conclusion that we don't need to be concerned about management of water resources because this happens naturally?

That sounds close to the argument that we shouldn't do anything about climate change since the Earth naturally warms and cools.

<comment><USER6> > Are you driving towards the conclusion that we don't need to be concerned > about management of water resources because this happens naturally?

Not at all. My point is that if this is taken as an example of climate change it does a terrible disservice to real climate science, because this is something that has been happening on a regular basis for as long as we have records.

<comment><USER8> As pointed out by others the article talks about water use not climate change:

"At Menindee, 830 km west of Sydney, despair has turned to anger as residents blame the government for exacerbating the drought by drawing down river water in 2017 for irrigation and other uses downstream."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If only it was somehow possible to charge more for water, so that people would use less.

<comment><USER10> So you're saying subject a fundamental basic need for human life and existence to capitalism? That's an absolutely terrifying proposition.

<comment><USER11> Do you think it's a problem that food is priced?

<comment><USER12> If I disagree with the price of a potato, I can buy rice. Food is price elastic in so far as I have options in what food to buy for what purpose. That said, indeed in my country and a number of others there are certain food stuffs which may not be legally taxed via VAT as they are considered necessary for daily survival.

Water is completely price inelastic economically. There is no alternative to it and it is essential to the persistence of life. Should it be priced? If it requires labour or other external factors that bear cost, sure. Should its price be tweaked as an economic lever? Even if that worked (it wouldn't for something inelastic like water anyway) I would still say no.

Using water's price as a disincentive can only possibly work in non-essential use cases, which doesn't seem to be the case in this Australian example.

<comment><USER9> Demand for _drinking_ water is inelastic. That's a tiny fraction of a fraction of usage. The majority of fresh water is used for farming, as coolants, solvents, reagents in industrial processes. These uses certainly do have alternatives, whether switching to alternative crops, developing more efficient manufacturing methods, building desalination plants. If that happened there would be _more_ water available for essential use cases like drinking.

<comment><USER12> Absolutely, this is the ideal. All the examples you mentioned are what I would class in my previous comment as non-essential use cases (as in there are alternatives).

Certain alternatives such as desalination and water reclamation in industrial processes don't change the elasticity of water economically; it's still required. They just increase the amount available in the pool (excuse the pun) and even then these too bear cost for implementation and maintenance and would not be provided free (which makes sense).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Australia has plentiful uranium reserves, relatively dry climate, a well- educated population, and huge amounts of empty space. Seems tailor made for nuclear powered desalinization.

<comment><USER14> context: I lived in Australia for a few years in South Australia. There was talk of building one, maybe two desalinization plants near Adelaide.

I think the consensus across the board is "yup, it does, and it would help massively" though it always came down to money and how it was going to get funded.

Side tangent: I cannot for the life of me understand the argument for "well, yeah, climate change is bad, but let's think how much this might cost to fix...". When it comes to existential threats to our mere existence, how is cost a factor? Talk about the definition of short sighted! And more, it's super short sighted on the money aspect too. We make changes to what is acceptable, how we do things, and yeah, it might cost a ton to begin, but we all know from history that amazing amounts of money are to be made in those revolutions too. This is not a zero sum game.

<comment><USER15> Being honest, there is a certain amount of privilege baked into this mindset. Not everyone is a software engineer with RSUs and a six-figure income. For many individuals and many communities, every dollar matters and increasing taxes to square off against a massive, but global and impersonal, existential threat is simply not something that everyone can get behind.

<comment><USER14> Really? You think this is about individual mindset? It's about governments and governments around the world. And about the future of our race and planet. Money should not stop us from tackling existential threats to everything we know and hold dear.

<comment><USER16> As much as I agree with your statement, the parent is arguing that climate change is a diffuse threat that's not immediately visible. Just like underfunding pensions will lead to possible issues later but we get money to spend now, or eating the seed corn instead of planting it.

It's not sustainable, but our political and economical systems are structured in such a way that we sacrifice long term sustainability for short term gains, such as getting reelected for a four year term or making the quarterly goals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Drought is weighing on economic growth, and the dire conditions have > prompted Australia, a major wheat exporter, to import the grain for the > first time in 12 years.

</comment><comment><USER18> This article is a perfect example of why the climate change issue is so polarized - it's just so full of propaganda and lies that the important truth it talks about is glossed over with mistrust.

"Reduced to a string of stagnant mustard-coloured pools, fouled in places with pesticide runoff and stinking with the rotting carcasses of cattle and fish, the Darling River is running dry."

This river runs dry regularly and has even before the industrial revolution. Guess what happens when rivers run dry? You get stagnant mustard colored pools. The sentence is trying to pull on emotional heart strings with nonsense. You know what else you find naturally in dried up rivers? Dead fish and animals. You know what you find in every body of water around the world today? Pesticides from farm runoff. Does it matter? Sometimes.

In short, just untrustworthy nonsense. I personally am concerned about my impact on the environment, but I consistently vote against collective action because articles like this make me really afraid of how crazy people are and what nonsense they'll believe.

<comment><USER19> Even if what you say is true, one sensationalized article does not mean that the entire climate change issue is hyperbole. The fact is that climate change _is_ a real problem with potentially catastrophic outcome for the human specie: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipping_points_in_the_climate_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipping_points_in_the_climate_system)

When the stakes are so high, where we are literally risking the future of the human race, I'd definitely lean towards the side of action and change _even if they sensationalize some facts sometimes in order to motivate change in others_.

<comment><USER20> I don't think GP is saying that climate change itself is hyperbole.

The problem is that reporting on _both sides_ is garbage laden with misunderstandings and outright lies. This fuels the anti-climate movement, especially when it's coming from the 'pro' side like in this case.

I've been ringing bells about catastrophic climate change since the early 00s after being involved in a relevant research project, I'm the polar opposite of a denier, but the way that even 'pro climate change' media covers the topic is harmful to actually conveying it to the public because the media wants to put hyperbole on everything.

When the media over-stimulates the public by exaggerating every little thing to a BIG DEAL, the public becomes non-responsive to actual BIG DEAL issues.

This actively hinders action to manage catastrophic climate change. This is the same as the CIA handbook tactic to redirect activist movements to ineffective causes so that they're too activism-fatigued to act on an effective cause when one is presented.

<comment><USER21> Do climate change scientists pay hundreds of millions of dollars to climate change PR firms to spread known untruths about climate change?

Is there a network of climate change science think tanks dedicated to framing the climate change debate in a way that benefits the climate change community?

Do climate scientists run social media "consultancies" to make a pro-climate change case on the major social platforms and smaller forums?

If any of the above happen - questionable, but let's pretend - they're at tiny outlier scale compared to the _organised_ lies, smears, denial and general FUD put out by the denialist corporates.

You say you've been warning about catastrophic climate change since the early 00s. What in your opinion would be the best way to counter climate denial PR?

Because _clearly_ simply informing the public of the facts isn't going to do anything against the noise being made by the denialist side.

<comment><USER20> > What in your opinion would be the best way to counter climate denial PR?

With education. And with a factual description of the problem and the available solutions. With outright rejection of denialism. With rejection of feelgood non-activism like plastic straw bans and tree-planting measures. Don't get me wrong, those things are good and a step in the right direction, but they're far too little far too late compared to what must be done, and so they're inactivism that wastes public energy on measures that don't move the needle in addressing the problem.

This doesn't even fly with 'enlightened' crowds like HN out of the box because they'll tend to kneejerk about things like nuclear power + electrochemical CO2 sequestration despite it being the only realistic option to dig ourselves out of the hole we're in. Worth noting that the mainstream crowds in China/Russia are a lot more pragmatic about this than AU/UK/US.

I'm pretty sure this comment is going to be downvoted just for mentioning it, but I'll drop it anyway to genuinely answer your question. A lot of the folk I know in the field have basically given up hope to avert this and become gloom and doom in the last 5 years, including people you would've seen on TV at the Paris Accords. They are probably right. It's pretty depressing info to handle. I'm sorry I don't have a better answer, but people much smarter than me don't seem to have one either.

tl;dr: Like Bill Gates puts it, misdirected climate activists are actually a bigger problem than climate deniers at this point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Meanwhile we're still voting in governments that don't believe in climate change and which fight tooth and nail to destroy any chance of addressing the problem. No worries giving endless buckets of taxpayer money to climate- denying farmers and coal plants, though.

<comment><USER23> The IPCC gave models to scientists that are necessarily missing part of the picture (namely, all energy from the sun that is not part of a specific EMR spectrum)[1], and then said "we have a consensus" when the scientists came back with an inevitable conclusion. This resulted in the inevitable false attribution of human activity being the cause of [strike: global warming] climate change.

To fully appreciate the gravity of the IPCC's misadventures in "climate science", here is a seemingly hyperbolic, but actually quite accurate analogy of the situation:

A group of 100 people have been consuming candy, water, and Raid®. Among those 100 people, 20 have died within a 1 month period. A committee is formed to solve this crisis. The committee tasks a group of scientists with determining the cause of death, and they are told, "Here is a group of 100 people, 20 of whom have died, all of which have been consuming candy and water." A consensus is formed among the scientists; obviously the candy is causing the deaths, since water is known to be safe.

When some of the scientists discovered that the subjects had been consuming Raid®, they reached out to the committee to ask why the Raid® consumption had not been in the data, and the committee decided that, since the first ingredient in Raid® was water, and since water was known not to be a health risk, it was of little significance in the study.

Now, imagine knowing all of the above, and then trying to be patient while listening to everyone you know become a "candy science" expert over the ensuing decade, and seeing your favorite news show, movie actor, musician, etc. calling for a candy tax, and constantly berating you as a "candy denier" when you question the consensus... then, those same people begin calling for candy-related fines, fees, and taxes that will affect your livelihood, and then facing the irony of those same people berating you as ignorant swill living in a fly-over state that's simply "voting based on ideology"; imagine that.

1\. [https://progearthplanetsci.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186...](https://progearthplanetsci.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40645-014-0024-3)

<comment><USER4> Please provide reproduced, peer-reviewed sources for these extraordinary claims.

While you're at it, please explain, with reproduced, peer-reviewed sources why you think the greenhouse effect, which directly ties CO2 to warming doesn't exist.

<comment><USER23> 1\. I added a link to the gp - I'll also provide you with these as food for thought:

[https://www.bbc.com/news/science- environment-39054778](https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39054778)

[https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education- network/2013/oc...](https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education- network/2013/oct/04/open-access-journals-fake-paper)

2\. Please provide _any_ evidence that I made claims that the greehouse effect doesn't exist.

<comment><USER24> So, no evidence of your claims, gotcha.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Can this, by any chance, be averted by planting eco diverse forests??

<comment><USER7> The article touches on the cause. Planting trees won't help if you use the available water for other things.

<comment><USER25> That's true, but once the ecosystem is established, we don't drain water, trees cause rain right?

<comment><USER26> The natural state of the ecosystem is a desert. We could try to plant trees to help control the moisture in the soil and evaporation, but it would be an artificial ecosystem, propped up by human intervention.

<comment><USER27> This is a natural state, but also the most degraded state of the ecosystem.

If there was a river, there was either forests or coastal rains. Would not be uncommon to find that the landscape was more humid in just two or three generations ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> [https://youtu.be/gNbSazIqVYA?t=290](https://youtu.be/gNbSazIqVYA?t=290)</comment>