Warning - cell phones and WIFI - not so safe - <AUTHOR> http://www.gq.com/cars-gear/gear-and-gadgets/201002/warning-cell-phone-radiation?currentPage=1

<comment><USER2> Not too sure about this one. A 30-year study in Scandinavia showed no correlation:

[http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/mobiles/no-tumour-link- to...](http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/mobiles/no-tumour-link-to-mobile- phones-says-study-20091204-kaqs.html)

"Deltour's team analysed annual incidence rates of two types of brain tumour -- glioma and meningioma -- among adults aged 20 to 79 from Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden from 1974 to 2003. These countries all have good cancer registries that keep a tally of known cancer cases.

...

"It is possible, Deltour's team wrote, that it takes longer than 10 years for tumours caused by mobile phones to turn up, that the tumours are too rare in this group to show a useful trend, or that there are trends but in subgroups too small to be measured in the study.

"It is just as possible that mobile phones do not cause brain tumours, they added.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The article explains the physical mechanism - or at least the area in which it applies:

At the vanguard of a new field of study that came to be known as bioelectromagnetics, he found what appeared to be grave nonthermal effects from microwave frequencies—the part of the spectrum that belongs not just to radar signals and microwave ovens but also, in the past fifteen years, to cell phones. (The only honest way to think of our cell phones is that they are tiny, low-power microwave ovens, without walls, that we hold against the sides of our heads.) Frey tested microwave radiation on frogs and other lab animals, targeting the eyes, the heart, and the brain, and in each case he found troubling results. In one study, he triggered heart arrhythmias. Then, using the right modulations of the frequency, he even stopped frog hearts with microwaves—stopped the hearts dead.

also how modulated microwaves assit in breaching the blood - brain barrier

In a study published in 1975 in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Frey reported that microwaves pulsed at certain modulations could induce "leakage" in the barrier between the circulatory system and the brain. Breaching the blood-brain barrier is a serious matter: It means the brain's environment, which needs to be extremely stable for nerve cells to function properly, can be perturbed in all kinds of dangerous ways. Frey's method was rather simple: He injected a fluorescent dye into the circulatory system of white rats, then swept the microwave frequencies across their bodies. In a matter of minutes, the dye had leached into the confines of the rats' brains.

</comment><comment><USER3> I know that people get tired of me ruining good "think of the children" debates with this question but here goes anyway:

What if the worst is true? What if one in every 100,000 people who uses a cellphone extensively during a lifetime is killed horribly by it?

Would you stop using yours? If so, why do you still ride in cars? I once saw an activist against the EM fields from power lines smoke 5 cigarettes while pontificating about the illnesses the lines in his yard might cause.

It all comes down to statistics and rationality. It seems humanity has chosen a technological path of growth instead of being content with 40 year lives of subsistence farming. We're gonna need those radio whatsits to get off this rock and preserve the species. Hopefully if there is something to weak EM / cancer thing, we'll evolve immunity to it before we get into space and get into the real radiation. (Or perhaps, advance to the "oops, you've got a DNA error, let me fix that for you" stage.)

Edit: Just to be clear, I'm not advocating head in the sand denialism of any possible ill effects, I'm just advocating rational, proportional responses to the possible danger verses the more common, knee-jerk "it might cause _cancer_ ban them _all_!" responses.

</comment><comment><USER4> There is vastly more radiation from sunlight than from using a cellphone. But in any case, I find that since I started wearing a tinfoil hat I'm much less affected by cellphone radiation.

<comment><USER5> Yes but we evolved to live with the sun's radiation.

<comment><USER6> So how do you explain skin cancer?

<comment><USER5> There are multiple environmental cancers that we can acquire, in addition to the numerous other ways that life can get you if things get out of balance. The point is that our adaptive systems to overexposure to sun, such as sunburn and peeling, are well developed. Our adaptive system to avoiding radiation exposure to the ear and brain, not so much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Worse - they found that the radiation CAN cause DNA damage.

The potential complications don't end there. In the mid-1990s, a biophysicist at the University of Washington named Henry Lai began to make profound discoveries about the effects of such frequencies not only on the blood-brain barrier but also on the actual structure of rat DNA. Lai found that modulated EM radiation could cause breaks in DNA strands—breaks that could then lead to genetic damage and mutations that would be passed on for generations. What surprised Lai was that the damage was accomplished in a single two-hour exposure.

In essence - even though the energy is not sufficient to ionize it is impacting the function of cells.

(this is why I posted the article)

<comment><USER7> It is interesting the approach taken in US vs Europe. Europe is taking more of precautionary approach, they are at least doing more research, they seem more skeptical. In US worrying about cellphone radiation is considered "conspiratorial" for some reason. Are these flak groups sponsored by large wireless telecom carriers?

I observed the same thing in regard to food and additives. FDA seems to need strong irrefutable proof of toxicity before they would ban an additive, Europeans seem to take more of a precautionary approach -- if the additive is thought to be harmful, they will be banned. Is it just me or have others noticed the same?

<comment><USER8> * In US worrying about cellphone radiation is considered "conspiratorial" for some reason.*

Indeed, as demonstrated by the majority of responses to this article. Surprising, at least to me.

<comment><USER9> It shouldn't be surprising if you understand a bit of basic logic. No one can prove a negative, yet this is exactly what the so-called "precautionary principle" demands of us.

I can't prove that cell phone radiation is always harmless to all respects of human health under all conditions, and you can't prove that there's not an invisible teapot in orbit around Neptune. Instead, the burden of proof must lie with the party making the positive assertion.

It would be very obvious by now if handheld radio transceivers caused cancer. The physics say it won't happen, and so does the epidemiology. Case closed for now, worry about something else.

<comment><USER7> What is lacking is long term studies. That is essentially what the doctor in the article notices.

The same is true for food additives. How many companies do you think conduct 20 year long studies on chemicals that mimic hormones? Pumping rabbits and mice with massive dosages might not be the same as a long term exposure to very small doses.

<comment><USER9> We're all "long term studies." Where's the brain-cancer epidemic? People who smoke are more likely to get lung cancer, an otherwise rare disease. So if _everybody_ started smoking, we'd see a large spike in lung-cancer cases. However, we have _not_ seen a large spike in brain-cancer cases across all populations who started using cell phones en masse in the 1990s.

So exactly what problem is being addressed here, besides poor high-school physics education?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'll take my chances.

[http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/01/100106-cell-...](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/01/100106-cell- phones-alzheimers-disease-mice.html)

</comment><comment><USER11> The problem with these stories regarding health risks from tech is that we WANT them to not be true. I read it and say "bah" but in the back of my head it really does worry me.

The problem is elimination of cell phones & wifi would be such an inconvenience in our lifestyles... I mean I rely on both so extensively that even simply cutting back on cell phone use be a huge problem. Heck I work in a building with no less than 17 different wifi networks.

Even if the research is inconvenient on an individual or institutional level I just hope there is more done and more public interest so that at least engineers will focus a little more on developing lifestyle tech that is safer. I mean don't we have enough risks from various environmental pollution already? Wouldn't it make sense to put pressure on changing the things that can be changed? Even if its paranoid would it kill people to care about it a bit more?

</rant>

</comment><comment><USER12> Microwave radiation is too low energy to cause DNA mutation, so it can't be a direct cause of cancer. Besides, wouldn't we see ear cancer more than brain cancer ?

</comment><comment><USER13> These guys are up there with anti-vaccination crowd.

</comment><comment><USER14> I don't know about the rest of you, but I take all my health advice from fashion magazines. I shall discard my cellphone immediately.

</comment><comment><USER15> I Wardrive extensively. If this is true (and I don't think it is) then I'm too fucked to care.

</comment><comment><USER16> Some say no. Some say yes. One found out the reason. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahinda_Pathegama#Work>

Anyway I can't find his research paper.

</comment><comment><USER17> Non-ionizing radiation does nonetheless affect molecular bonds. It adds energy to them, placing them in more energetic states of vibration, mechanical energy. This is turn influences the chemical reactions they undergo. It could be a catalyst for adverse chemical reactions that lead to pathologies.

(Perhaps in combination with other "man-made" agents; does it perhaps help the odd chlorinated, fluourinate, bromated, or other carcinogen "get a grip" on a a strand of DNA?)

Specific effects depend upon the bonds and the RF frequencies. And affects accumulate in a statistically described fashion; it may take years to for a member of a population to accumulate a significant probability of experiencing an adverse affect.

I haven't had a chemistry class in years (aka I'm no expert). But what I did learn was enough that I don't rule out the possibility of effects induced by non-ionizing radiation. "Non-ionizing" <> no effect whatsoever.

</comment><comment><USER9> Demonstrate a physical mechanism for this, and there's at least one, probably two Nobel Prizes in your future.

As for me and my house, we will follow E = hv.

<comment><USER7> You might find this interesting:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_radiation_and_h...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_radiation_and_health)

Basically, there are some studies that indicate that prolonged exposure to EM radiation has carcinogenic effects. Which is what the article is about. It is not understood, but I can see why many feel worried. People tend not to like being guinea pigs.

It seems, they be the ones demonstrating beyond any doubt that EM radiation is perfectly safe? Which is why more studies are need, especially long term.

<comment><USER9> None of those experiments have proven reproducible.

Standing under a light bulb exposes you to EM radiation that's orders of magnitude more energetic than anything you will get from any type of radio transmitter.</comment></comment></comment>


We're Too Cheap to Fly Faster - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/we-live-in-the-future/7885a299bca2 <comment><USER3> It's not just a case of being too cheap, but also it having negligable effect.

If I have to be at Heathrow 90 min before departure, and it takes me 45 min to drive there, or 90 min on public transport, then at the other end it takes 30 mins for my bag to get on the belt, clear port control, and another 30-60 min to get to the city. I have a good 4 hours of fixed time involved with my flight. If the flight is just 8 hours, making it 7 hours isn't really going to change things, I've still lost the most of the day.

So I'd sooner be able to sleep comfortably (ie space!) or be able to do some work (11 vaio Pro, 22 hours battery).

Then we have the issue that even going supersonic, we can't just upsticks and do it. We have to get out to see. Climbing to FL390 takes a lot of time, descending from it does as well, otherwise people generally find it rather un- appealing. Add in busy hub airport traffic and we've got at least 2 hours that we can't really speed up.

So our 12 hour total journy (4 hours travelling too / waiting at airports, 6 hours of cruise, 2 hours of holding an NDB) speeding up that 6 hours, doesn't have much effect. Hell go nuts, make it take 2 hours, go for mach 3. It is still going to take me, door to door, 8 hours. 8 vs 12 for the cost of that just isn't going to be worth it. Because ultimately I'll have my own work schedule, I'm not rich enough to have a private jet, and the stuff I fly you wouldn't want to be in for more than 4 hours anyway (well the fuel would run out too). So that means I want a regular, frequent service. I don't care that superfastjet leaves everyday at 1pm. I need to be around till 5pm. Obviously the geek in me would take the fast one, but I couldn't do that everytime.

 __TLDR __It isn 't just about being cheaper. It is recognising the deminishing impact speed is having on being the deciding factor. We look at door to door time, not cruise performance. We want a frequent schedule, not one speedbird a day.

<comment><USER4> Exactly the reason why the (much slower) train often makes more sense. Sure, the train from Amsterdam to Berlin is six hours. But you only have to be at the station to catch it before it leaves, and it both leaves and arrives right in the center.

We tried this returning from a conference there last fall, and the hotel-door- to-home-door advantage of flying was less than 30 minutes. And on train there was more space, better food, and a bar. Not to mention that there was power and nobody told me to shut down my laptop at any point :-)

<comment><USER5> This works better in Europe than it does in America. As most trips here on train or car take multiple days. Where as you can fly anywhere in the country in one day. Once you cross into multi-day territory, the train is often too impractical to be used. Which is a real shame, as I really enjoy travelling by train.

<comment><USER6> The US is large but our trains really do suck and up until the 2010 elections we were on track to build a regional fast speed train system that would connect Chicago, Milwaukee, Kansas City, and then east to DC and NYC. Tea Party governors and other GOP obstructionism killed it, especially in Ohio, Wisconsin and Florida.

NYC to LA shouldnt be our metric for everything. A lot of travel is regional. Why do I need to get up at 5am in Chicago to get on a 10am flight that lasts 2 hours to DC? Or the 30 minutes to milwaukee? Or the 1.5 hr flight to Kansas City? With all the hassle of TSA, airport madness, restrictions, and the horrible crampedness of flying? Chicago > DC is about the same distance as Madrid to Paris. Sure, the train will take longer, but it sure beats flying.

<comment><USER7> > our trains really do suck

You mean passenger trains. For the most part, the US rail network was constructed for and is primarily used for cargo transportation, where it excels.

The perpetual comparison of the US (cargo) train network to the other passenger train networks (Europe, Japan, China) is a tedius and misguided apples to oranges comparison.

Most of these comparisons blatently ignore the fact that population density is radically different between the US and these other systems, which is an important criteria in understanding the time/economic tradeoffs.

I like train travel a lot and living in the New York to Boston corridor I've always had easy access to commuter trains, the New York and Boston subway systems, and Amtrak for longer regional travel. Regardless, I don't think passenger rail makes much economic sense outside high-density areas and even then only survives with dubious tax subsidies.

<comment><USER8> The entire interstate highway system is extremely heavily subsidized (along with gasoline). I'd be interested to see how it would compare with passenger trains without the subsidies, but I suspect it's not as lopsided as we think when it comes to a marginal passenger.

<comment><USER7> I understand what you are saying about the highway system being subsidized, but I'm not sure I understand your reference to gasoline.

Private energy companies explore, extract, refine, and sell gasoline, with all sorts of taxes (as opposed to subisidies) along the way. What subsidies are you refering to for gasoline?

<comment><USER8> The government creates foreign policy around the maintenance of oil supplies, which has a very large cost, and is largely a gift to the oil companies. This is reflected in income taxes rather than in the cost of gasoline. There are also large tax breaks given to oil companies. Domestic fossil fuels like coal and natural gas don't get quite the same treatment, since we have plenty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Let's run some numbers.

It looks like the average round trip the last year it flew on the New York to London route on the Concorde was $12,000 and lasted 3.5 hours. You could fly that route on a regular plane for around $1,000 in a trip that takes 7.5 hours.

So the implied value of your time if you took the Concorde was around $2,750 / hr. If you net that up to a standard work year (2000 hours) it's $5.5 million. 1 in 1000 households in the US declare income of more than $2 million a year.

It's not that we are too cheap, it's that we aren't rich enough.

<comment><USER10> It is similar to the numbers calculated by Ivan Illich regarding car usage in the 1970's. If you take into account the car price, gasoline, insurance, repairs, etc, and the time spent to earn that amount of money, the average speed of a car for a worker was around a few miles per hour, so not better that simply walking or bycycling. It is an unorthodox but quite interesting perspective on the counter productivity of complex industrial societies. The better your pay is, the higher is your "average speed". The Concord is only the most extreme example of this trend.

<comment><USER11> Thank you for introducing me to:

[http://ranprieur.com/readings/illichcars.html](http://ranprieur.com/readings/illichcars.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My POV is that if you want to improve door-to-door speed, focus on the airport experience (more time-efficient security, check-in, more predictability to let people "cut it closer", faster baggage handling and outbound logistics [rental car, etc]).

I flew my family on a our current vacation on a multi-leg trip in a 175 mph airplane, and beat the 560 mph airlines door to door on every leg, because my ground logistics time is almost non-existent. (Rental car or family pickup waiting plane-side, no security checks, no waiting for bags, and no sense "getting there early" because it's obviously not taking off without me.)

Suburb of Boston to suburb of Pittsburgh: 3h30m. From there to suburb of Cincy: 1h45m. There to Lexington, KY: 52m. There to Livingston, TN: 1h. Only on the BOS to PIT leg do the airlines have any hope of competing.

Speeding up the airline experience doesn't have much to do with speeding up the airliners themselves, IMO.

<comment><USER13> Being able to "cut it closer" is not just a function of predictability, but also of frequency and of the consequences for missing your intended departure. If I miss the local city bus, it's not a big deal, because I can get another one ten or fifteen minutes later for the same price, so I usually only get to the stop about 90 seconds before I need to be there. During rush hour, I get to the caltrain about 3-5 minutes early, and in the evenings, when the trains only run once an hour, I aim for 5-10 minutes. But if I miss a plane, the next flight might not be for 6 hours, and it could cost me an extra several hundred dollars. So even if the airport experience is made more time-efficient, the nature of the airline timetable will still result in people waiting in airports.

<comment><USER14> And this is, of course, another symptom of people valuing money more than time when it comes to air travel. Why are flights usually infrequent? Because airlines fly large airplanes less frequently rather than small airplanes more frequently, because it's cheaper. Why does it cost a lot of money to change your flight? Because airlines run their aircraft at close to 100% capacity, because it's cheaper.

Cut the average airliner size in half, increase the flight frequency by four, and average 50% full, and you'll have no problem missing a flight and getting on a later one. You'll also pay 3-4x as much for the ticket, of course.

<comment><USER15> Can major hub airports handle 4x the traffic of smaller planes vs large planes (I honestly don't know)? In the NYC area, in particular, air traffic congestion is a huge problem so "adding more flights" is not a practical option (unless those flights can be stacked more densely).

There have been many solutions proposed to this problem (usually expanding smaller, "nearby" airports) but it seems to me a better option would be to expand and improve regional passenger rail to reduce demand for short and medium-leg flights thus freeing capacity for longer distance flights.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The Concorde was an engineering marvel, but it was more than just increasingly cheap transatlantic fares that did it in. Noise regulations prevented it from flying over the Continental US. Maintenance became increasingly expensive as the fleet aged. (The technical problems with its air intakes and tires caused safety issues, too.)

It's easy to say it's an entirely economic issue, but it isn't. The 2000 crash of Air France Flight 4590 shattered passenger confidence, the post-bubble recession meant fewer people had the disposable income to buy tickets, and the post-9/11 slump in air travel further reduced ticket sales.

The article really only convincingly explains why we don't have a replacement Concorde, not why the Concorde went out of service. Jet fuel is expensive. Today, airlines and aircraft manufacturers spend trillions of dollars to improve fuel efficiency to keep up with rising fuel prices.

It's not that we're too cheap, it's that the the industry was more interested in advances in conventional jet efficiency so that airlines could reap the benefit across a much, much larger fleet.

There's always a desire to wrap up complex and multifaceted decisions in a neat little package. I don't think it's possible to point to a single issue (economic or otherwise) that made supersonic transport unviable.

</comment><comment><USER17> Skips over the whole sonic boom issue, which basically prevents supersonic flight over the USA, and probably Europe. Anything that limits a plane's routes is not good.

<comment><USER18> The article actually talks quite a bit about the additional challenges introduced when approaching Mach 1. Agreed, though, that additional _regulations_ regarding those speeds weren't discussed.

<comment><USER19> It only really discussed the challenges from the plane's perspective, not the people on the ground when the plane broke the barrier.

The regulations are in place because sonic booms can be not only a nuisance to those on the ground, but destructive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The comparison to the computer age made me think about this in a different light - travel is now less valuable because of the on-set of great telecommunications tools than it was even 50 years ago.

Today, huge deals can be negotiated largely over the phone/skype/webex/etc, making in person meetings less frequent. Therefore, if I can accomplish more by not traveling and communicating via Internet or phone, when I do travel, actual time spent flying is not as important, because I already made every effort to minimize travel in the first place, leaving only meetings that are truly worth it.

<comment><USER21> my thoughts exactly

we're already traveling at the speed of light

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5768938](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5768938)

</comment><comment><USER23> Nice article content, but why is pinchzoom disabled for mobile devices? What value could that possibly add?

<comment><USER24> Why is that even a feature of browsers? On my desktop I can zoom whenever, wherever I want. Why should it be any different on mobile...

Edit: In mobile safari I have a bunch of bookmarklets (javascript bookmarks) for enabling zoom, and to zoom the way desktop browsers do (increase text size and reflow text).

<comment><USER25> It's for websites that want to mimic apps.

<comment><USER26> Mimic apps that break on screen resolutions other than the tested ones?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> If I recall correctly (I worked in the travel industry once), the price for a one-way from Paris to NYC was about 12K. An astonishing price, and you'd have to be a really well-paid executive to justify the price difference between a regular flight!

<comment><USER28> _" [Y]ou'd have to be a really well-paid executive to justify the price difference between a regular flight!"_

Nonesense! You could be a really well paid actor or a really well paid musician or maybe a politician on a junket or even an escort...

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> If they were to ask what improvements I (as a customer) want now, I'd tell them: \- speed up the security checks, being advised to show up 2 hours before boarding is ridiculous \- work on making the system more flexible so I don't have 2-3 hour delays.

Improving or reducing time for those two things would greatly improve my flying experience. Much more than cutting off 20% of my flight time. They shouldn't increase cost any more per ticket either.

</comment><comment><USER30> Here the article forgets to mention airlines as an intermediary. Boeing and Airbus do not manufacture planes for us, they do it for the airlines. Airlines know that to make the most profit they need bigger and more fuel efficient planes over faster ones. And that's why we have them today.

Also, slightly unrelated: [http://www.ted.com/talks/rory_sutherland_perspective_is_ever...](http://www.ted.com/talks/rory_sutherland_perspective_is_everything.html). One of his points is interesting: if they had spent the billions of pounds on making the [eurostar] journey more enjoyable (by giving out free petrus served by models) than cutting travel time by a moderate amount, we'd all be asking for longer journey times! ... which _is_ what the article is saying: we don't want faster travel, we want more affordable and arguably more comfortable travelling.

<comment><USER31> This is true, but misses the point that if another airline could enter the market with a desirable product, or an existing airline could add a fast service. The airline market is a highly competitive one, as all the vendors are distributing largely undifferentiated products The airlines and manufacturers regularly collaborate in the design of new aircraft.

<comment><USER30> You are correct, and a pattern has emerged: there are the airlines that differentiates themselves on service that is tied to their country of origin (Singapore Airlines vs Emirates, both fly A380, but definitely different feel to them), and then there are no-frills airlines.

The collaboration you speak of are mostly to do with cabin sizes, how many seats, which variants to make to satisfy the majority of customers -- these can all be changed when the main parts of the plane stay the same: e.g. fuselage, engine, etc. Rarely do an airline get Airbus/Boeing to change main parts of the planes: one exception is EasyJet when they bought an insane number (200?) of A320s from Airbus: Airbus made a fuselage specially designed for EasyJet that had more seats and they had to move their doors.

<comment><USER31> If you look at almost any modern airliner's development cycle, you will see that a significant period of time was spent simply developing the specifications in collaboration with the airlines. I am not familiar with any commercial jet that has been developed without commitments from airlines to buy it.

Even the DC-3 was developed in response to a request from TWA for something similar to the Boeing 247.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I was just flying for the first time in a decade last week and I saw an oversize tail on another plane while we were taxi-ing around the runway. The proportions struck me as non-obvious. That got me wondering if/how much we've begun to see data-mining/machine-learning algos and computational aero/fluid dynamics influence aircraft design.

E.g., genetic algorithms that vary the tail/wing/nose/etc. size/position and runs virtual designs through a simulator to see if various combinations perform better than others.

My next thought was, "how would you design the fitness function?". I.e., what are the right objective measures you can use to determine that one design is 'better' than another? I.e., How do you determine the optimal balance of speed vs. fuel efficiency vs. comfort/stability/safety vs. production/materials cost etc.?

</comment><comment><USER33> Air travel is one of the least efficient and most polluting forms of travel. Going slower and burning less fuel is great, even if it isn't as fast as technically possible.

<comment><USER34> False.

A 65% full 737 produces 184 grams of CO2 per passenger mile. An 80% full 747 produces 162 gCO2/ per passenger mile. [1]

A car produces between 390 and 600 grams of CO2 per mile. [2]

So if your car is efficient, and you're carrying more then two people, you can barely beat the efficiency of 40+ year old aircraft.

[1] [http://www.carbonindependent.org/sources_aviation.htm](http://www.carbonindependent.org/sources_aviation.htm) [2] [http://www.carbonindependent.org/sources_car.htm](http://www.carbonindependent.org/sources_car.htm)

<comment><USER35> I just want to point out that those car CO2 figures don't go to very high fuel efficiency rates. I have a prius c (high on the efficiency scale, I know) and I just calculated about 290 grams of CO2 per mile (about 50mpg). Still not amazing, but a good bit better than 390g CO2/mile. That's just for one passenger as well.

<comment><USER34> Good point. Of course, modern 787s and A380s are also far more fuel efficient then then '60s and 70s era aircraft. According to Wikipedia, the 787 is 20% more efficient then a 767

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Let's see, flying on the Concorde cuts the transatlantic flight time in half, but you still have to deal with getting yourself and your luggage on and off the plane. So, the time savings isn't that great. The plane isn't as comfortable as first class on a bigger, slower jet. Supersonic or not, it takes a day to fly transatlantic. People that can afford Concorde flights can afford chartered flights, or have their own jet.

</comment><comment><USER37> Well, when you consider that round trip tickets from the NY area to Chicago were going for $280 and now they are $360, the difference can make anyone think twice, especially if you are doing this 3 or more times a year and for 2 ppl. The cost per person + car rental + gas + hotel costs add up to much more than the math for driving (even with hotel, car, and gas costs), such that driving, although slower, becomes a money saving option. I would think that most people travel within the country they live in, and mostly for vacation, so paying more money to get to the destination faster, is not a good option vs saving the $ and getting there a little later. Then business people don't care to be at a location earlier for longer, they just want to go do what they have to do and call it a day of work, even if they only actually worked 1 hr and traveled the rest.

Unless emergencies or extreme situations, I do not see much incentive for people to want to pay more to be at a close location faster. This is somewhat of a bummer for ppl who would like to travel at high speeds, but think about it, it is definitely expensive.

</comment><comment><USER38> The one route where supersonic probably makes sense is trans-pacific. Still no sonic boom, and would turn travel from "a complete day wasted both directions" to something better. Especially for something like NYC-HKG, if you could solve the sonic boom issue (although most of it is over Canada or oceans; not sure about the inland China part)

</comment><comment><USER39> We're not nearly cheap enough: The plane ticket price doesn't capture the cost of flying, the majority of which comes from the greenhouse gas emissions. Further working in the wrong direction is the tax freeness of jet fuel and the 2-3x amplified effect of co2 when injected directly to the upper atmosphere.

</comment><comment><USER28> Also, there's a huge difference between trading off high-value time for middling-value-time, versus actually spending the time. If I'm using my time on the plane to read or catch up on sleep or prepare for my presentation, it is less important to me that my flight be over quickly.

<comment><USER40> I would pay more and tolerate _slower_ flying times if the trade off was a less hellish flying experience. The TSA sucks. Flight attendants suck and the seats suck. Airport public transportation is usually lousy.

In fact I often tolerate substantially longer travel times to ride on Amtrak rather than deal with the nightmare that is modern air travel.

<comment><USER28> Agreed, for most of my trips, especially if I could reliably get work done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Odd: this one was making the rounds a couple of weeks ago as [https://medium.com/lift-and-drag/7885a299bca2](https://medium.com/lift-and- drag/7885a299bca2).

<comment><USER42> It looks like medium.com uses a label/tag system, so an article can be discovered by looking at the "lift and drag" label or the "roaming the earth" label, for example:

[https://medium.com/roaming-the- earth/7885a299bca2](https://medium.com/roaming-the-earth/7885a299bca2)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Problem with Concorde was not price but reliability. They were dangerous to pilot and felt a few times, imagine that uncontrolled thing falling on some poor village? money is not the issue, usually, otherwise military would still fly a "Black bird", right? Technological challenges, like temperature of jets and ability to stay in control if something goes wrong is more important. If your Boing looses an engine, you will still land it. Try that with Concord.

</comment><comment><USER44> Moving around the world is something that has always been ridiculously expensive, and the price comparators hardly help, they just add noise.

So yeah, it is about price, and if that problem is ever solved THEN people will discuss speed and other bonuses.

It's like piss poor managers pushing agile when their developers don't even have a computer. Priorities matter.

</comment><comment><USER45> The fuel used to fly does not only cost money to buy but also costs environment to burn. I am quite happy if people are cheap when it comes to the environment. It is more likely that they are watching their wallets instead but in this rare case that seems to be win-win.

</comment><comment><USER46> I wonder if something like this could be used for round-the-world passenger transportation.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylon_(spacecraft)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylon_\(spacecraft\))

</comment><comment><USER47> I recently enrolled in ClearMe. So... for about $15 per month, I get to skip the security line at SFO. For a couple of bucks, I reduced my SFO portion of the trip time by about 20 mins. Much more economical.

</comment><comment><USER48> Virgin America's entire fleet has Wifi (though it's not eh fastest) and AC outlets. (Other carriers only have wifi on select flights.)

What's my rush again?

</comment><comment><USER49> While faster flights would be nice, he is right in that price is more of a priority than speed. Besides, an even bigger concern would be safety.

</comment><comment><USER50> It is in the interests of airlines to have longer flights to maximise in flight spending. Customers never had a say in this. Most people probably spend more time in customs than on the plane anyway. A 20% decrease of air time isn't that big of a deal to most.

<comment><USER18> I'm not sure I buy this. I think it's in the airlines' interests to minimize costs (fuel) by flying as efficiently as possible (maybe slower - <USER2> air-time). I would be surprised if in-flight spending increased meaningfully over a flight that is ~15% longer.

<comment><USER51> Yeah, I strongly doubt that in-flight spending on concessions and duty-free catalogs pays for the jet fuel expended over any appreciable time period during the flight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Very cool - you can see Mach diamonds in the picture of the X1.

</comment><comment><USER53> No, the airline charge too much for the service. If the service was economically worth it for it value it provided there would be a market for it.

</comment><comment><USER54> One word: Hyperloop.

</comment><comment><USER55> Sorry buddy, Superman can go much faster than mach five.

</comment><comment><USER40> I'm also too cheap for bullet trains. Lots of people cheer-lead for high speed rail in America, but all I want is normal trains that run quite frequently.

<comment><USER56> Depending on what your routes and usage, higher speed is better than more frequent service.

For example, let's say your options are a 2 hour train that runs hourly, and an hour long ride that departs every other hour.

* Fast train: best case, 1 hour. Worst case, 2:59. Average case - about 2 hours. * Slow train: best case, 2 hours. Worst case: 2:59. Average case - about 2.5 hours.

Of course this is one example - but there are definitely cases where increased speed is strictly better than increased frequency. (Unless being on the train is better than whatever you could be doing waiting for the train)

<comment><USER57> The reality though is that high speed trains aren't nearly as fast as you'd think from the claims of 250-300 km/h top speeds. Particularly in Germany, 130kph average speed on a route is very good. Replacing a 100kph train with a 130kph train doesn't make an enormous difference. In order to get double the usual speed, you need to have totally dedicated tracks, end-to-end, and they haven't done that in most places. Having trains run more often makes a huge difference in convenience and also allows you to not worry too much about missing your train.

<comment><USER58> They have done that on a lot of routes in France.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> _For almost 30 years there was a really fast way to fly, but we didn't buy enough Concorde tickets to keep it going (I didn't buy a single one)._

Over 30 years, we've gone from IBM PC to rMBP: about a hundred times the pixels, a thousand times faster processor speed, a million times more memory, a billion times more storage - all for 1/3rd the price. The physics involved could accommodate such an improvement. If we had likewise focused on travel speed instead of cost, methinks we would not have achieved NYC-to-London travel in 25 seconds.

<comment><USER60> Yeah, so... NY to London is 25 seconds is about 500,000 mph (~Mach 650) _average_.

Perspective: Mach 32 gets you to escape velocity, and the nuclear manhole- cover (which may have been the fastest manmade object ever) is estimated as somewhere north of Mach 200 or so. That's right: not even an atomic bomb can get you the kind of speed you're asking for. :P

Hmm. Assume an even acceleration profile, with your first 12.5s accelerating and the second 12.5s decelerating, 1 million MPH peak. That's ~1800 times the force of gravity. Forget physics; the _biology_ involved can't accomodate such an improvement. :P In fact, you could probably put a floor on the travel time from anywhere to anywhere by assuming passengers aren't really interested in experiencing much more than 1G accelerations.

<comment><USER59> That's my point: physics+biology just aren't conducive to anything close to a comparable increase in travel speed short of teleportation (read "Flash Crowds" as an interesting tangent). As others note, the best tolerable improvement in travel time is lost amid the fixed overhead of embarking/disembarking times getting people to and on the vehicle.

 _passengers aren 't really interested in experiencing much more than 1G accelerations_

Assuming continuous 1G acceleration (halfway there, reverse thrust thereafter), NYC-to-London would peak at 1200km/h with travel time of 34 minutes. Ignoring overhead, that's about 1/15th the time for subsonic travel now; an impressive improvement for sure, yet still paltry when comparing computing improvements.

Flipping the original argument and blathering on, consider if computing improvements over 30 years led to just a 72MHz processor as commercial top-of- the line: indeed in general we'd favor cost over speed. Likewise, the cost of a one-way London-NYC flight has plummeted from a quarter of one's annual salary to just a couple days' pay, a drop around two orders of magnitude; availability is also an issue, with comparable flights happening thousands of times daily at relatively amazing convenience, vs limited to a couple hundred per year.</comment></comment></comment>


$310 Xiaomi Phone: 1.5GHz dual-core,1G RAM,4GB ROM,480x854 4',MIUI+Android2.3.5 - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/16/xiaomi-m1-with-miui-os-a-310-phone-with-1-5ghz-dual-core-soc-a/ <comment><USER2> So this is already more powerful in all aspects over the first generation netbooks.

At the end of this decade will cellphones be as powerful as today's average integrated desktop computer?

Can you imagine a server rack of cellphone sized computers (the drives will all be external SSD by then of course).

<comment><USER3> A single-core Atom will still beat these in single threaded performance. Multi-threaded performance is a different story, but I would still not expect an outright win for these Snapdragons. However, Adreno 220 is clearly superior to the GMA 950 crap bundled with most Atoms.

<comment><USER2> I wouldn't be too sure of that. And these were BEFORE a 1.5ghz ARM chip.

[http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_pEfSMUbljUA/S9yFTQn2xoI/AAAAAAAAAD...](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_pEfSMUbljUA/S9yFTQn2xoI/AAAAAAAAAD8/P2r0WkVYhZI/s1600/Benchmark_ipad_iphone_atom_arm_cortex_apple_a4_nvidia.JPG)

[http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_pEfSMUbljUA/TIJceUBPyCI/AAAAAAAAAE...](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_pEfSMUbljUA/TIJceUBPyCI/AAAAAAAAAEU/hvvbfuIRaxA/s1600/Cortex_vs_ARM11_vs_Atom_Coremark_Benchmarks.JPG)

<comment><USER3> Coremark isn't a good benchmark. I have been benchmarking Snapdragons and Atoms myself on a variety of integer and floating point codes. I will publish them sometime soon but Atom-based netbooks came ahead of the Snapdragon based systems I had access to. I suspect this is partially because you have more memory bandwidth available in netbooks compared to mobile devices.

edit: Also, I do expect results to change quite a bit when the Krait architecture comes into play for Qualcomm.

<comment><USER2> Ah interesting - I look forward to your benchmarks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's not a 310$ phone unless I can actually buy it.

<comment><USER5> I googled for 10 minutes to work out how to pre order this phone, a website, something, anything. It's all just stuff about the MIUI ROM or news about this phone.

<comment><USER6> "will be available for pre-order on August 29th for October delivery"

Maybe the websites will come up by then.

<comment><USER5> Ah, googling for just the company name returns a more relevant result. But not in a language I can understand :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> When they say "4gb ROM", do they literally mean 4gb of crapware burnt in? (Which might help explain the low cost) Or is it perhaps supposed to say flash.

<comment><USER8> ROM = Read Only Memory, so yes they do mean "flash" as you understand it.

<comment><USER7> So flash as I understand it, generally refers to memory that can be written many times, whereas ROM specifically refers to memory that is "written" once (often before leaving the factory) and that's it. I'm slightly perplexed by your reply. :)

Didn't realize until after posting that Android needs a writeable FS, so the article was clearly wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wish I could get myself together to put some trust in telecom equipment from PRC-based companies, but I just can't. The phone seems like an awesome piece of hardware.

<comment><USER10> Wasn't there some thing about Lenovo laptops having crazy spy chips in them, or was that just silly CIA psyops propaganda?

<comment><USER11> The CIA hardly need exert itself to create crazy, unfounded rumors on the internet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Looks like Chinese copy of what Apple did in 2006, despite the technical specs.

<comment><USER13> Imitation is the highest form of flattery, and the specifications seem to be almost the best around.

At that price-point, some thing like the battery life might not be very good, especially with such a high-clocked processor, but it seems to be a quite reasonable design from the pictures, not counting the buttons, I prefer hardware buttons.

I don't own an Android phone right now, but I am definitely considering buying a Xiaomi Phone, and if you can actually import it at that price, well, then it is competing with phones like the Wildfire S. Which may make it quite a nice high-end phone popular with geeks and developers, befriending those groups is always important.

<comment><USER14> Cheap phones might have low-end displays too. The quality of a display is hard to quantify as numbers (unlike the CPU, memory, etc) so it's easy to leave that out from your marketing material.

<comment><USER13> They claim to have a huge 1930mAh battery ([http://www.gadgetsbing.com/2011/08/first-chinese-phone- with-...](http://www.gadgetsbing.com/2011/08/first-chinese-phone-with-1-5ghz- dual-core-soc-xiaomi-phone-pre-order-on-august-29th/)) and that the display is a Sharp 480 x 854 LCD, but there might be many models.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Start up for Retail industry - <AUTHOR>

Guys just check out http://boosttech.in
we are starting up with a solution for retail industry. Don't forget to check the video. and please do comment. <comment><USER2> You need to redo the voice-over on your video, it's horrible.</comment>


Ask HN: Why not to use passwordless login? - <AUTHOR> Is there a reason why new services are not using passwordless login? (Type your email -- receive the code -- fill in the code) <comment><USER2> Why would I want to go through the hassle of requesting a new non-password to be sent to my email, wait to receive my non-password, and then log in using that non-password every single time I want to log in? I will happily let my web-browser remember my password, or store it in a password manager if it needs to be secured.

<comment><USER3> Square Cash is the most prominent example I know of for an email-based passwordless login system, and I personally really like it.

> then log in using that non-password every single time I want to log in?

The key piece of UX in these systems is you don't make the user do this _every time_ , but rather only when logging in on new devices, and after a reasonable expiration date, say 30 days.

For the average HN user, this might not be much of an improvement in terms of security or UX compared to a regular password system when used with a good password manager. The average internet user is and always will be much less sophisticated, however, and is someone who can manage to regularly forget even their really crappy passwords (if they use more than 1 password to begin with).

For the average user, I think this system improves both UX and security by a large degree because for UX, it removes the need to remember more than 1 password (the password to your email serves as your master password), and for security, it verifies identity using the _ability to access_ an email and a device (browser) rather than the mere _knowledge_ of an email and a password.

<comment><USER2> This simply sounds like a forced password reset scheme which I don't see the benefit of. Standard passwords can accomplish exactly the same thing with the added advantage of allowing instant log-in if you remember your password.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Plenty, both in terms of security and UX:

1.) It's less secure (unless the email is encrypted, which in most cases it is not).

2.) If you use GMail with several accounts and POP3 you'll have to wait until GMail sees fit to fetch the email.

3.) Password managers provide both a superior UX and superior security. So, by all means at least provide a password-based login as an alternative (which admittedly defeats the purpose for the operator to have a less complex authentication system to worry about).

<comment><USER5> > It's less secure (unless the email is encrypted, which in most cases it is > not)

I disagree. With opportunistic encryption, if the recipient' server supports STARTTLS, then the communication between the sender' server and the recipient' server is encrypted using TLS. Nowadays, all major email service providers support STARTTLS.

> If you use GMail with several accounts and POP3 you'll have to wait until > GMail sees fit to fetch the email.

Just use the GMail to avoid the delay with fetching third party accounts.

> Password managers provide both a superior UX and superior security. So, by > all means at least provide a password-based login as an alternative (which > admittedly defeats the purpose for the operator to have a less complex > authentication system to worry about).

I mostly agree, but:

1/ Alas, most users don't use a password manager. They keep reusing the same passwords on multiple websites, which is a serious security risk.

2/ If the user uses an email server that doesn't support STARTTLS, then theoretically an attacker could request a password reset and "catch" the unencrypted email.

My conclusion: Passwordless login is an interesting solution. But there are other issues to consider, discussed in other comments (email delivery latency/greylisting, ergonomy, need to remember which email address you used, etc.).

<comment><USER6> > I disagree. With opportunistic encryption, if the recipient' server supports > STARTTLS, then the communication between the sender' server and the > recipient' server is encrypted using TLS. Nowadays, all major email service > providers support STARTLES.

With regular passwords via a browser, you can _ensure_ the channel is encrypted via HTTPS.

Opportunistic encryption is exactly that: it uses encryption _if_ it can, but will fallback to unencrypted if not.

How is "sometimes encrypted, if its available" not less secure than "always encrypted, unavailable if encryption doesn't work"?

> Just use the GMail to avoid the delay with fetching third party accounts.

So, you're simultaneously suggesting that everyone use 'email links for login' _and_ suggesting everyone use a single email provider? Sure, that doesn't sound terrible at all.

> most users don't use a password manager

What's your basis for this? _Every_ browser in use today has a password manager built in. People promoting these bullshit "not a password" alternatives always claim "average people" don't use password managers, but never present any evidence of that.

> If the user uses an email server that doesn't support STARTTLS, then > theoretically an attacker could request a password reset and "catch" the > unencrypted email.

Firstly - the main security concern with emailed 'login' links isn't the transport at all - it's storage/accessibility via the mailbox. Breach the mailbox, and you've breached the third party sites. The part people always ignore when suggesting emailed links as an alternative, is that if an attacker breaches your mailbox, they could conceivably use that to access your third party service that uses login links, and the victim would never know, because there is no password being reset, no killing of previous sessions.

> My conclusion: Passwordless login is an interesting solution. But there are > other issues to consider, discussed in other comments (email delivery > latency/greylisting, ergonomy, need to remember which email address you > used, etc.).

My conclusion: password-less login is a thing that exists via public key cryptography: see ssh, TLS client certificates. Emailing links to people is nothing more than a fucking stupid idea, and frankly it's ridiculous that your "other issues to consider" makes literally zero mention of any security concerns.

<comment><USER5> > With regular passwords via a browser, you can ensure the channel is > encrypted via HTTPS.

I agree. But there is still the issue of forgotten passwords and the infamous password reset emails. How do secure them in the face of "opportunistic encryption with STARTTLS"?

> So, you're simultaneously suggesting that everyone use 'email links for > login' and suggesting everyone use a single email provider?

As I said in another comment, I was specifically answering to a sentence starting with "If you use GMail with several accounts and POP3". My point being, if you are already using GMail, then just use your GMail address to avoid the delay in fetching other POP3 accounts.

But it's true that password login has the strong advantage over passwordless login to let you login instantly if you (or your password manager) remember your password.

> > most users don't use a password manager > What's your basis for this? > Every browser in use today has a password manager built in. People promoting > these bullshit "not a password" alternatives always claim "average people" > don't use password managers, but never present any evidence of that.

My basis for this is that, year after year, I keep reading publications showing that most users reuse the same password on multiple websites. Just search for "password reuse statistics" and you'll find a lot of evidence: [https://www.google.com/search?q=password+reuse+statistics](https://www.google.com/search?q=password+reuse+statistics). "Average people" probably use the password manager built-in in their web browser, but it doesn't necessarily solve the main issue which is password reuse. Since you're asking for evidence, what evidence do you have to support your own claims?

> Firstly - the main security concern with emailed 'login' links isn't the > transport at all - it's storage/accessibility via the mailbox.

I agree. My mistake to emphasize attacks on the transport when the biggest worry is the storage.

> The part people always ignore when suggesting emailed links as an > alternative, is that if an attacker breaches your mailbox, they could > conceivably use that to access your third party service that uses login > links, and the victim would never know, because there is no password being > reset, no killing of previous sessions.

This problem is not ignored. We can for example watch IP addresses used to connect, and notify the user connecting on the "usual" IP that we have detected another connection on a new/unseen IP. I'm not saying this is easy, but this is probably solvable.

Moreover, I notice that most non-technical users around me, when they are unable to connect because their password is refused, tend to think this is an error on their side, and just reset the password, without thinking they could have been hacked, which weakens your argument.

> My conclusion: password-less login is a thing that exists via public key > cryptography: see ssh, TLS client certificates. Emailing links to people is > nothing more than a fucking stupid idea, and frankly it's ridiculous that > your "other issues to consider" makes literally zero mention of any security > concerns.

A civilized discussion would be easier if you could avoid the words "fucking" and "ridiculous". You're claiming that passwordless login ignores important security concerns. I think that the human factor (forgotten passwords, password reuse, etc.) is big in the list of security concerns, and passwordless login can be an — imperfect — answer. That said, I agree that using public key cryptography in the vein of ssh would be a lot better than password and passwordless login combined.

<comment><USER6> > I agree. But there is still the issue of forgotten passwords and the > infamous password reset emails. How do secure them in the face of > "opportunistic encryption with STARTTLS"?

Realistically, you can't without some secondary auth for password resets (i.e. secret questions, a phone call, or things like 'send a message signed with your public key' (which the service operator obviously needs to know beforehand) - all of which are either easy to game, or not particularly user friendly for the non-technical - but even without those options, the password reset scenario still has one advantage over the 'login link' system: at the very least the user will know the breach occurred, because they will a) lose their current sessions and b) not be able to create new ones (due to the password having changed).

> My point being, if you are already using Gmail, then just use your GMail > address

There are plenty of reasons not to use the 'primary' email address of a system which also offers pop3 download into webmail, and your response just highlights how short sighted this "solution" is.

> "Average people" probably use the password manager built-in in their web > browser, but it doesn't necessarily solve the main issue which is password > reuse.

So if we agree that most people probably do use the built in password manager, wouldn't a _better_ solution be, for the password manager, which _knows_ all your passwords anyway, to take action, and suggest better passwords? "Hey, we just noticed you logged in with a password that you've used on at least 389 other sites. That's not very secure, if you'd like to change your password for this site, <Browser> can suggest a strong password, remember it for you and sync it to your other devices too".

> Since you're asking for evidence, what evidence do you have to support your > own claims?

You just admitted that average people probably use the password manager built- in. It's pretty well observed now that non-technical people (and even technical, in some situations) will blindly click "OK" or "Accept" or "Yes" to whatever buttons appear on screen when they're trying to achieve something. I don't have any evidence I can link to, just 14 years of anecdotal stories about how people clicked "yes" to "do you really want to delete this now?" and then call helpdesk because it deleted something, etc.

> This problem is not ignored.

It's never mentioned as part of the actual proposal, it's _always_ a "well you could do X and then Y and then Z" and pushes responsibility to the USER to determine if someone else is using their account.

> We can for example watch IP addresses used to connect, and notify the user > connecting on the "usual" IP that we have detected another connection on a > new/unseen IP.

a) most people barely know what an IP address is, much less what theirs is. Even with GeoIP info, you _still_ have the risk of people being attached by someone actually in, or spoofing, a close proximity. GeoIP info for my current IP has recently changed to my current city, but recently showed me as being in a city 70km away, with a population of 10M people.

> I'm not saying this is easy, but this is probably solvable.

So is a cure for Cancer but I'm not going holding my breath for that either.

> Moreover, I notice that most non-technical users around me, when they are > unable to connect because their password is refused

A decent auth system would _notice_ two successive password resets in a short span of time, and send a notice with the second one that a password reset was _just_ performed <X> minutes/hours/days prior, with information to contact the service provider if the earlier reset was _not_ initiated by the account holder.

> A civilised discussion would be easier if you could avoid the words > "fucking" and "ridiculous".

Maybe I should have changed the use of certain words, so let me be more clear:

The _idea_ is ridiculous:

        ridiculous |rɪˈdɪkjʊləs|
        adjective
        deserving or inviting derision or mockery; absurd

Discussing an authentication method and _not_ discussing the security concerns is fucking stupid:

        fucking |ˈfʌkɪŋ|
        adjective [ attrib. ] & adverb [ as submodifier ] vulgar slang
        used for emphasis or to express anger, annoyance, contempt, or surprise

        stupid |ˈstjuːpɪd|
        adjective (stupider, stupidest)
        lacking intelligence or common sense

> You're claiming that passwordless login ignores important security concerns. > I think that the human factor (forgotten passwords, password reuse, etc.) is > big in the list of security concerns

Sure, this and every other concept for emailed links for auth addresses that same single factor: people re-use, and forget passwords. I'm claiming that every "passwordless" solution based on email login links I've seen, conveniently ignores any problem their "new" idea introduces, some of which I've highlighted above.

Some like Homakov go a step further: when I suggested that his version of this concept is insecure because mailboxes aren't secure, his response was literally "Yeah but I'm not trying to solve the whole problem". Right. Well I've got a great cure for an ingrown toe-nail: I'll cut off your leg. You won't be able to walk, but I'm not trying to solve the _whole_ problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As a consumer of services, it's not more convenient for me than clicking the Lastpass (or your password manager of choice) icon and filling in the login form.

Plus, I imagine some people may have multiple email accounts, and would have to hunt through them to figure out which one they used to sign up with.

(Similar to my problem with StackOverflow; I can _never_ remember which identity provider I used to sign up with them, and end up just clicking on all of them in order until one lets me in. For all I know, I might have multiple accounts.)

<comment><USER8> Not saying your are wrong in your preference, but you can similarly use a password manager to save the email address used for a password-less login. So perhaps not a good argument against passwordless logins in general, though I am sure there are many good reasons against it.

So far, the few arguments against here are individual, convenience-based reasons. Those are certainly valid reasons, because if you inconvenience a potential user, they may never become an actual user.

Not everyone has a password manager, and many people use the same username, email and password across many services. The larger danger can be that if one service is hacked, it may provide a hacker access to many services, including email. A provider of a service with a passwordless login would never have to worry about being the root cause of such a breach. And, as long as the users' email was not hacked, would not be susceptible to malicious activity through another hacked service.

One question for the OP: What kind of service are we talking about? If the information is sensitive, then perhaps it is not a good idea. If it would be safe to keep a user logged-in after a session ends, then maybe a good consideration. By limiting the number of login requests, then you reduce the inconvenience.

<comment><USER7> > _you can similarly use a password manager to save the email address used for > a password-less login_

Sure, but it still adds an extra step; my current manager doesn't have a "log into the email address you used to register with this site" button.

But you're right, there are advantages to email-based login.

<comment><USER8> You're right about that extra step, which may be crippling enough to keep users away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> That's just the "forgot password" system, minus the convenient option of entering a password instead of waiting... and waiting... and waiting... and checking your spam folder... and waiting some more... for the email with the auth code to arrive. Not actually an advantage, in my eyes.

</comment><comment><USER10> While passwords are still my preferred method, I was trying to think about ways to incorporate a passwordless system.

I like the method that Slack has.. while they offer the old method of logging in with a password, their other method is to send your email a link and then once that link is clicked, they set a cookie indefinitely.

The other way is once a user registers for an account, they get an email to login, but before they can login, they have to enter in their phone number, so then from then on out, every time they enter in their email, they will get sent a text message and simply have to enter in a code.

It is still not technically passwordless, but it certainly is a unique method to have people login.

No matter how far we come though, the username and password seem to still be our best method of knowing WHO YOU ARE and verifying the account belongs to you.

</comment><comment><USER11> I think OAuth logins are a nice compromise. "Login with Google / Facebook / ..." with one click works well!

Unfortunately, some sites use it to just get your email address, and _still_ require you to make a password for them, which defeats the purpose and decreases user trust in the benefits of going through the flow.

<comment><USER12> This can be pretty annoying for users and developers though. If the user forgets what account they last used and selects a different one next time then it ends up creating an entirely new account unassociated with the first. If I ever do social integration, I require a plain old email based login first and then allow them to connect their social accounts to it.

<comment><USER3> One way around this (from the developer's side) is to federate together different identities for a user using something like dex [1], and segregating your login and signup paths, so attempts to login will never create a separate account.

[1] [https://github.com/coreos/dex](https://github.com/coreos/dex)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > Type your email -- receive the code -- fill in the code

Many services actually do support this. It's under "Forgot Password..." link when signing in ;-)

<comment><USER8> Exactly. I choose to forget my password in many cases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Email deliverabilty is not necessarily 100%. Also there can be latencies here and there that can lead to user frustration (for example greylist strategies).

One alternative for password-less is to use Google Authenticator code as the password (i.e. send the QR code once by email and from then on use the Google Authenticator code), but I'm not sure if the the low entropy (1/1000000th chance of guessing the right password) would be enough for brute force attacks.

</comment><comment><USER15> Consider the three most common authentication factors:

* Something you know

* Something you have

* Something you are

A conventional password-based login implements "something you know" (i.e. your password). A password-less login implements "something you have" (e.g. email access). That doesn't make it more secure, it's just substituting one authentication factor for another. One could argue that it's more convenient but that's subjective since people that use password lockers might actually find it less convenient.

An argument against password-less logins might be that they should be implementing multi-factor authentication in the first place. Password-less login is by nature not at least two-factor authentication. Even if you have two-factor authentication enabled for your email, it will still just be "something you have" because someone that gains access to your PC or phone will probably have access to your email as well. The easiest second factor to add into the mix is "something you know" (e.g. a password) and now you're back to conventional two-factor authentication practices.

</comment><comment><USER16> It is a cultural problem. I think the "younger" users don't use e-mail as much as they do other forms of "Internet" e.g. Facebook for authentication. Otherwise, I'm loathe to give out my e-mail address because of spamming and data-collection.

</comment><comment><USER17> Greylisting[0] would still be a problem. Signup is exactly the situation where this would be both most likely and most inconvenient.

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

</comment><comment><USER18> I would think, because that's a nightmare versus both social login and my browser remembering both username and password..?

That's way too many steps, and takes too long since many times email takes a while to get fetched—specially on mobile.

</comment><comment><USER5> The main issue with passwords is that non-technical users tend to reuse the same password, which is a serious security risk. This is, in my opinion, the best reason to use a passwordless login. A better solution would be, when the user create his/her account or reset his/her password, to generate a random password, instead of letting the user choose a password. I'm curious about this approach. As anyone tried something similar?

</comment><comment><USER19> I don't like those "login with Google / Facebook / etc", nor that "Type your email -- receive the code -- fill in the code". OpenID would be better I think. You can design it to use something other than a password for authentication if you want to; it mean the authentication system can be independent from whatever you log in to.

</comment><comment><USER6> why _would_ they? It's less secure, and less usable.

</comment><comment><USER20> I liked the way The Magazine worked: they sent you a link which set a cookie.

</comment><comment><USER21> It's exchanging one authentication factor (something you know) with another (something you have), while negatively impacting UX (by adding email UX issues) and not adding meaningful security.

</comment><comment><USER22> I think passwordless is better. webtask.io does this and it's awesome.</comment>


Vischeck: Test how your site looks to someone that is color blind - <AUTHOR> http://www.vischeck.com/vischeck/vischeckURL.php

<comment><USER2> I've got a green colour impairment.

I'm not colour blind. I'm not even green blind. And I'm definitely not red/green blind.

If you're thinking about colour impairments, please keep this in mind: just because some people have a colour impairment that doesn't mean they are all colour blind (most of them aren't). They can see just what you can see, but some parts of the spectrum may appear paler and thus the nuances may be hard to tell apart. They'll probably have little problem telling two colours apart when they touch, but can't reliably recognise them as distinct when they're not.

It's okay to use colour in your design. It's even okay to use colours that are often problematic for people with colour impairments. It's not okay to RELY on them, tho. Especially if you rely on telling roughly similar colours apart (say, bluish purple and blue, or even dark red and dark green).

If you have to use colour as a signal, use another one as a failsafe -- use different patterns, borders or underlines in addition to different-coloured fills, outlines and texts.

The idea is not to sacrifice, but to enhance -- this is true for every form of accessibility, actually.

If you can't use strongly contrasting colours (i.e. different hue and value at high saturation) due to design constraints, simply make sure colour is not the only contrast you provide -- if all else fails just use markup to ensure the unstyled page still retains a contrast.

Oh, and don't forget to set your background and text colours in pairs. Even if you want to keep the default for one of them (white background, black text). This is not for accessibility alone, this is also for people like me who use a dark desktop theme and curse every time they see a form with black text on a (desktop default) dark background or a white background with (desktop default) bright green text on it. Like this very form I'm writing in -- good thing the web developer toolbar comes with a "ignore page colours" option.

<comment><USER3> I _am_ red/green color-blind, and I can basically agree with this:

 _If you have to use colour as a signal, use another one as a failsafe -- use different patterns, borders or underlines in addition to different-coloured fills, outlines and texts._

But I really want to filter it down to this:

When designing your site, use BOTH colors AND symbols/icons to get meaning across to your users.

It will be much more intuitive for the average user and will be good enough for me and most people with some sort of color-blindness.

I can't expect designers to go out of their way to figure out what colors I can/can't see and which melt in to each other, but I can make the argument above that will help ALL of their users, and me as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> These little "here's how it would look" tools work well enough for sanity- checking images on a computer monitor, but don't necessarily tell you much about what someone will actually see. Color blindness makes a lot more sense if you have a decent grasp on how human color vision _actually_ works.

Quick summary: Most people have four different types of light receptors. One type responds to all colors, the other three have overlapping response curves covering parts of the visible spectrum. Perception of hue and saturation derives from the _differences_ between how strongly the three color receptors react--even "pure" colors will usually trigger at least two color receptors. Because of this, for any given triple of receptor response strengths, there are many combinations of light that will cause it; the RGB color system exploits this, using three colors in varying proportions to create a large range of perceived colors.

Colorblindness is a catchall term for defects in one or more type of light receptor. Which type, and the nature of the defect, can cause widely divergent effects.

Some people have anomalous response from one type; i.e., a nonstandard response curve. In practice, this means that their color vision essentially works like anyone else's, but the set of light combinations that cause a given response differ, so two colors that look identical to you may look different to them! For instance, if the medium-wavelength receptor's curve is shifted downward to further overlap the long-wavelength receptor's curve, reddish colors will seem more green and bluish colors will seem less green. Compared to a normal spectrum, this makes the cyan range shorter and the yellow range larger, making it harder for the individual to distinguish between mixtures of red and green.

Other people lack one color receptor type _entirely_ , and thus have only two- axis color perception instead of the normal three. Losing the long or short receptors makes extreme reds or blues effectively invisible, while losing the medium-wavelength receptors leaves the individual with a full range of sensitivity, but able to perceive only a single gradient between colors. Note also that this collapses hue and saturation into a single axis; for instance, to someone with only the long and short receptors, there are both purples and greens that will look like white light.

A very few people have only one type of color receptor, or none at all, and thus perceive only overall brightness, with no color at all.

<comment><USER5> Did you look at the site then?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It seems that colour blind people can't see css background images either.

<comment><USER3> Kudos to icodemyownshit for creating something like this (unless he/she just submitted it, then kudos to whoever built it).

I can see how much easier it would be to just modify css hex colors than process whole images. The difference in the difficulty of implementation between the two are very significant. Thanks for a nice version 1.0. (We will be waiting for the next iteration which handles images, as well :) )

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Now this makes sense : <http://www.tshirthell.com/funny-shirts/fuck-the- colorblind/>

<comment><USER8> Ha. I can't read it. But if I boost the contrast on my display the message becomes visible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I picked the first one, then looked at the upload. At first I was like "Hey, this is exactly the same!" Then I realized that it was a good indication that I'm probably a bit colorblind. At least now I know why I can't be trusted to chose a color palette.

<comment><USER10> Not sure how trustworthy the color balance is on this website, but the Ishihara test is the standard one: <http://www.toledo- bend.com/colorblind/Ishihara.asp>

<comment><USER11> Ishihara tests on your monitor are not going to be accurate. Get them on paper, the colours will be far better.

<comment><USER10> I would've assumed that too, but I'm red-green color blind and they're working right for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I use Color Oracle for this sort of testing: <http://colororacle.cartography.ch/>

</comment><comment><USER13> Failed on the url I picked to test (www.utexas.edu). My initial reaction is this would make a great FF plugin. As a site, there are a lot of limitations -- I'm not going to want to give it the URL of a secured site I'm logged into, for example.

Interesting idea, though, so I wish them success.

</comment><comment><USER14> Being completely colorblind, I'm a little bummed they didn't have an option to look at sites from that point of view. Almost every site I visit has some little thing that's hard to read.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you have any recommendations for web developers/designers?

<comment><USER15> <http://michelf.com/projects/sim-daltonism/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm proud to say my site passes all tests with flying colors!! Under the first test, I think the colors actually look better. Thanks for the quick check tool!!

</comment><comment><USER17> wow... being colorblind myself and looking at the examples... now i feel really screwed up. see: <http://www.vischeck.com/examples/>

<comment><USER18> do they all look the same?

<comment><USER10> Yeah, all those pictures of hats look about the same to me.

<comment><USER8> I can see differences in the hats but cannot see the "3" in the Ishihara plates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This has inspired me to launch my own service. Here is how your site looks to someone that is just plain blind:

<http://imgur.com/ToRW6.jpg>

<comment><USER10> Actually, why don't you google "screen reader simulation"

<comment><USER19> I know what a screen reader simulation is - perhaps you should google "joke."</comment></comment></comment>


Exploiting Linux kernel heap off-by-one - <AUTHOR> https://cyseclabs.com/blog/cve-2016-6187-heap-off-by-one-exploit <comment><USER2> When you see something like this:

        /* args points to a PAGE_SIZE buffer, AppArmor requires that
         * the buffer must be null terminated or have size <= PAGE_SIZE -1
         * so that AppArmor can null terminate them
         */

you just have to expect exploits.

This is a problem that comes up repeatedly in the Linux kernel. When some kernel call accepts or returns variable-length data, the details are handled locally, not in some general-purpose functions for moving variable-sized data in and out of the kernel safely. That's likely to lead to some checks not being made.

<comment><USER3> Nitpick: it's an internal kernel function being called by another kernel function, not a user-kernel interface.

What you seem to want is a general-purpose string implementation for shuffling data around. With a safe append() preferably.

<comment><USER2> Yes. That's why we have collections in most languages now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ubuntu vulnerability list: [https://people.canonical.com/~ubuntu- security/cve/2016/CVE-2...](https://people.canonical.com/~ubuntu- security/cve/2016/CVE-2016-6187.html)

(TL;DR: Ubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak) is listed as "needs triage", no other releases are affected (14.04/16.04/etc))

<comment><USER5> Actually, Ubuntu 16.10 is listed as not-affected (4.8.0-11.12).

The "needs triage" you're seeing for Ubuntu 16.10 is for the "linux-goldfish" and "linux-flo" kernel packages for specific android devices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've always wondered - what are the most (in)famous buffer overflow exploits? Heartbleed is one of the most popular ones I guess.

<comment><USER7> The Morris worm is literally the grand-daddy when it comes to buffer- overflows:

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

After that you could see something like SQL Slammer as having a significant impact:

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

But from a technical perspective most of them are much of a muchness - I'm more interested in the first time "things" were written up, such as "Smashing The Stack For Fun And Profit":

[http://insecure.org/stf/smashstack.html](http://insecure.org/stf/smashstack.html)

Or the first time that Format string attacks were documented - a whole class of vulnerabilities sprang up overnight (my memory is that wu-ftp was the original target there).

[http://www.drdobbs.com/when-format-strings- attack/184405774](http://www.drdobbs.com/when-format-strings-attack/184405774)

<comment><USER8> > The Morris worm is literally the grand-daddy when it comes to buffer- > overflows.

In 1988!</comment></comment></comment>


Yes, Google Uses Its Power to Quash Ideas It Doesn't Like–It Happened to Me - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/yes-google-uses-its-power-to-quash-ideas-it-doesn-t-li-1798646437?rev=1504134979112 <comment><USER2> Posted 2 hours earlier, 270+ points:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15145176](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15145176)</comment>


Linkalot: A web-based inbox for your links - <AUTHOR> https://gitlab.com/dmpop/linkalot <comment><USER2> I think many of us wish for and have considered developing an open source, local archive of the websites we visit. We want full text search, full page screenshots, good privacy (dont archive sensitive sites). We might wish for p2p encrypted syncing between devices.

Since we wish for this, I presume its been attempted many times.

My questions is my humble hacker news readers? Can any one provide a run down of the existing open source solutions and their features/pros/cons or simply which they prefer?

<comment><USER3> What I really want is a script that

(1) Takes a URL and optional comment as input

(2) Saves the webpage it points to into a git repo (a simple curl should suffice for most websites)

(3) Inserts that URL, title of the page pointed-to by the URL and the optional comment into an org-mode file that lives in the root of the repo

The org-mode file is a highly-searchable and context-preserving database (I can add tags, create hierarchies, add links to and from other relevant (org- mode or not) files) in the most portable format ever: plain text.

I really don't need a web interface. Actually, if I later decide that I need one, I can build one easily on top of this basic system.

I really want to be able to use this across multiple devices: mainly my two computers, and an Android phone. Using git gives me a reliable protocol for syncing between multiple devices. I want it to be a smooth experience on my phone, which would probably require some sort of git-aware app. Something similar to the Android client for the pass password manager would be ideal.

I hear that git repos can be GPG-encrypted. Ideally, I'm able to serve all this off of a repo hosted on a VPS. I don't want to rely on Dropbox (I'm trying to transition away from it) for syncing.

<comment><USER4> >(2) Saves the webpage it points into a git repo (a simple curl should suffice for most websites)

FWIW I've done something similar and lots of sites that use a lot of JS (and pretty much every single page webpage like twitter and FB) will not re-render correctly just because you have the files. It actually takes a lot of work to clone a webpage, the best solution I've found so far is to print a PDF from a headless chrome (but this has its own problems, like now you have to deal with a PDF).

Even generating the PDF is a lot harder than it seems, at least if you've never done it before, because there are a lot of gotchas (for example, did you know that most websites provide a second stylesheet to be used while printing that makes it look _barely_ messed up, but still clearly broken? I didn't either)

<comment><USER5> If the PDF format is not mandatory for you, you might be interested in SingleFile [1] (I'm the author) which you can run from the command line. It will interpret scripts and faithfully save a snapshot of a page in a single HTML file.

[1] [https://github.com/gildas- lormeau/SingleFile/tree/master/cli](https://github.com/gildas- lormeau/SingleFile/tree/master/cli)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is this an alternative to wallabag with less features? Archiving links is fine , but what's of most interest is archiving the content isn't it? So this is an online bookmark manager? Sorry it's not clear for me I only know ot saves links in plaintext files, you can add them with a bookmark and you can password protect them.

</comment><comment><USER7> "Screenshot": water.css ([https://kognise.github.io/water.css/](https://kognise.github.io/water.css/)) + the following HTML snippet, per link:

$url

These HTML snippets are what's saved, one per line, in the mentioned plain text file ("links.txt"). The webpage is a dump of this file plus HTML/CSS boilerplate.

</comment><comment><USER8> Yay for GitLab. Boo for no screenshot.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Update from the author (who's happy this has provoked interest :-) —

There is now even a Firefox add-on that works with Linkalot: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/send-tab- url/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/send-tab-url/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Shameless plug: you can create and share bookmarklets through [https://bookmarkify.it/](https://bookmarkify.it/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Basically, bookmarks?

I dream of a browser that would merge bookmarks + history into one, with full- text search.

<comment><USER11> [https://getmemex.com/](https://getmemex.com/) might be what you're looking for. I've tried to use it, but it somehow managed to destroy its database 3 or 4 times. After that I gave up and uninstalled the extension again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Happy to see not another SASS Webapp but a simple and sustainable tool.

Would be great if there was a demo linked (even if the functionality seems really straight forward).

Does it support organizing the links in categories?

<comment><AUTHOR> Here is the author's demo version: [https://tokyoma.de/linkalot/](https://tokyoma.de/linkalot/)

He is a colleague of mine on the documentation team at SUSE.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I made this link collection tool: [http://tentacle.rupy.se](http://tentacle.rupy.se)

It's a bit over-engineered on the db side but it works well.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'd prefer a Go or C-based bookmark manager, that let's you store bookmarks in a markup or YAML-based document(s). Either one for each bookmark, or one for many. That way they can be synced using Google Drive or any cloud sync solution. Then add a web interface on top of that and browser extensions for additional features. There really is no "good" bookmarking solution at this point when comparing tools like pass/gopass for Linux for passwords.</comment>


Design your focus - Read better, work better, sleep better, X better. - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/architecting-a-life/bb389ac21c5

<comment><USER2> It's faster for me to hit cmd+t/f/enter to bring up Facebook (people still use the bookmarks bar?) But I respect the principle of designing my life.

For me it's about having on/off time. There's nothing wrong with scanning Facebook/twitter/HackerNews, but I find myself mindlessly going there, especially in times of frustration or when I'm stuck on something. Basically it weakens my ability to really focus on hard problems. For me the best solution is something like the stayfocusd chrome plugin. It simply makes you aware when you're on one if those sites.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hide bookmarks? Don't use them. Am I just a weirdo for treating the location bar as the sole navigation UI element?

<comment><USER4> I only use bookmarks to save websites/webapps that I may need later but will forget on my own. Otherwise, the location bar is way more efficient.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> That's a little extreme and useless to put only one app on the IPhone dock. I could see this becoming extremely frustrating in an emergency situation where you need to call someone quickly. Why not just practice self control instead.

</comment><comment><USER6> I suspect this is too specific to the author. If I find out a way to sleep better, it doesn't mean everybody in the world will follow the same. Nevertheless, good idea.

</comment><comment><USER7> "Great idea" \- Continues procrastinating.

<comment><AUTHOR> www.JFDIN.com

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Oh, www.JFDIN.com</comment>


The Science of Libertarian Morality - <AUTHOR> http://reason.com/archives/2010/11/02/the-science-of-libertarian

<comment><USER2> Ever notice how nearly all articles about economic theory immediately gather the "ivory tower intellectual who has no concept of the real world - everything they study is in their own thought bubble" criticism?

That same criticism applies to libertarianism - they're interesting ideas, but not implementable as stated. The number of countries that have implemented even half of what they propose is a null set.

Not to say it wouldn't work, but you'd think at least someone would try it out somewhere and we'd have one datapoint...

<comment><USER3> Most economic regulations we have today exist because a government was trying to patch over a market failure. The US has Medicare, for example, because Americans were appalled that senior citizens were dying because they couldn't afford health care. Similarly, workplace safety regulations exist because Americans were appalled that employees were getting mangled and killed by the thousands in dangerous work environments; and so on.

We can argue over whether a particular regulation was the best approach (maybe a smart incentives-based approach would work better than a prohibition, for example); and we can argue over whether a given regulation still makes sense in changing economic circumstances.

However, it requires a special kind of dogmatic myopia to insist against all evidence to the contrary that markets are self-correcting, that positive and negative externalities either don't exist or don't matter, and that the best way to deal with disasters (like a restaurant poisoning thousands of customers with e. coli infection due to unsanitary food handling) is to let the market sort it out.

<comment><USER4> How is allocating limited healthcare resources to the young rather than the old a market failure? Did supply not meet demand?

There are real examples of market failure, e.g. the current failure of housing markets to clear (I.e. prices not reachingg equilibrium). Could you explain how your examples are market failure?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Also of interest is Jonathan Haidt's TED Talk on the different moral foundations of liberals and conservatives:

[http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.ht...](http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> Okay I hate to do this, but we have had too many political pieces, so I have to flag it.</comment>