Gadgets That Refuse to Die - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2020/03/03/undead-gadgets/ <comment><USER2> Off-Topic: Can we ban links which redirect to advertising domains? When I click this link, due to uMatrix I see that it redirects to [https://guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers?sessionId=3_...](https://guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers?sessionId=3_cc- session_4cf21ef9-2a5f-4f96-9010-faca569779de) Which doesn't sound like something I would want to visit.

<comment><USER3> Didn't happen to me (but it has before). Instead I got a huge modal popup about something, which I didn't read, so I hit `back` immediately.

archive.[is,ph,li,fo,vn,md,today] is like a condom for crappy websites like that.

[https://archive.ph/agh5m](https://archive.ph/agh5m)

<comment><USER4> archive.* has some really strange dns-based tracking built in

<comment><USER5> Elaborate? Are you talking about the whole cloudflare ecs debacle?

<comment><USER4> if you load archive.<x> it will load a cache-busting specific-to-you dns name

your.ip.address.foo.lots.of.stuff.pixel.archive.<x>/pixel.gif

that gets by most blacklists including umatrix and others

and they have a new domain name dujour so that too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Gamecube controllers.

Three console generations later, Nintendo keeps re-releasing them.

I'm not sure why they don't lean in harder and embrace the design as the standard Nintendo controller. It is the most ergonomic and intuitive game controller I've ever used. The asymmetric layout and shape of the A, B, X, and Y buttons make it impossible to forget which is which. All the controller needs for a 2020 refresh is a ZL button, a true analog for the C-Stick, and a slightly larger D-Pad.

The electronics underneath are rock solid--a favorite for modders. Nothing has really changed except the cord length and the omission of metal braces in the triggers.

<comment><USER7> >I'm not sure why they don't lean in harder and embrace the design as the standard Nintendo controller.

I hope not; I've used it and a Switch Pro Controller and I much prefer the pro controller.

<comment><USER6> The Pro Controller is a fine controller and sees a decent amount of competitive use in the Smash scene.

The octagon gate on the GC controller is advantagous for Smash and other games that benefit from precise directional inputs... It's to the point where there are Pro Controller mods to add an octagon gate. The Pro Controller analog seems to wear out faster than that of the GC controller and it's a tricky replacement to perform (on an already expensive controller).

<comment><USER7> > The Pro Controller analog seems to wear out faster than that of the GC > controller

That's just because Nintendo ruined the design of their newer analogue sticks, though.

<comment><USER8> Or the GameCube was the only console with decent analog sticks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This site slams me in the face with a popup that tries to get me to "Agree" to all kinds of trackers. I tried to "Learn More", but there is no way to disagree, so, I guess no article for me. Goodbye.

<comment><USER10> Using Ublock origin with additional filters enabled, didn't get any popups or redirects (all built in, all under privacy, easylist from adds, all from malware domains, all from annoyances, Dan Pollock's hosts file and Peter Lowe's Ad and tracking server list from multipurpose, Adblock Warning Removal List from custom)

additionally I have these custom rules to block YouTube suggestions so I can better focus, has the added advantage that the UI looks better, autoplay can be controlled from the player and playlist can be accessed in full screen mode (which is the only time I really need access to them).

        ##ytd-compact-video-renderer.ytd-watch-next-secondary-results-renderer.style-scope
        ##.ytd-watch-next-secondary-results-renderer.style-scope > paper-button.yt-next-continuation.style-scope
        www.youtube.com##ytd-compact-playlist-renderer.ytd-watch-next-secondary-results-renderer.style-scope
        ! Block the upnext video and the autoplay button
        www.youtube.com###secondary

<comment><USER11> I'm using Ublock Origin with no extras enabled and also go no pop-ups.

<comment><USER12> I'm using Ublock Origin with no extras enabled and I had the popup.

Since I'm using firefox, I just forced the Reader view by typing this in my address bar:

      about:reader?url=https://www.engadget.com/2020/03/03/undead-gadgets/

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> My Bose QC15s have lasted so long. AA batteries are easily replaced and cheap aftermarket parts on ebay keep is going. It is now my backup as having Bluetooth and better noise cancelling is worth upgrading for but they still work incredibly well on flights.

Sadly lithium batteries kill gadgets these days. I have an old gen kindle and I can't find a replacement battery for it. Seems such a waste for a device that is otherwise in excellent shape.

<comment><USER14> I always double check battery replacements before buying items for this reason. It is hard to predict what sizes will stick around, but I am also not against busting a device open and fitting a near-enough sized cell with the right output.

<comment><USER15> 18650 cells seem to be a good standard for things like torches and bike lights.

As a plus you can pick them up in e-cigarette shops, apparently vape units use them too.

<comment><USER16> I have a cheap-ish bike light with 18650 battery. After it stopped working, I tried to replace it, but I couldn't solder it so well like the factory one. The mtb rides shake a lot, so my solder joints break.

Any hints how to solder it better?

<comment><USER14> In motorsport wiring they use crimped connections instead, due to it's mechanical strength compared to solder. It withstands the vibrations and movement better. You can get really small crimps so you should be able to find some that fit. If it's soldered to the PCB I haven't got much advice sorry. One option might be to mechanically support the wires near the solder, maybe hot glue the battery or wires in place so they can't pull on the solder.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I still use an IBM Model M keyboard every day, made in 1993. I'm currently looking for a new keyboard that takes less desk space and doesn't require a PS/2 adapter, but the Model M still works fine and is a pleasure to type on.

Keyboard rant: I'm appalled that it's so hard to find a good mechanical keyboard that is not meant for gamers with those RGB lights. Part of the problem is Europe, some options either don't get here or are usually out of stock. But even looking at the total market there are just not that many mechanical keyboards with quality switches, a simple backlight light and a USB hub with a couple ports in the keyboard.

<comment><USER18> If you're a fan of the Model M then you must know about Unicomp[1]

ergodox that usually put out a split ergonomic keyboard have recently released a cut down keyboard called the Planck that might interest you[2]. But to go from a gigantic beast of a keyboard to such a wee thing might be daunting.

The /r/mechanicalkeyboards dwellers might be able to help you out as well[3] as well as the mechanicalkeyboards website[4]

FWIW I happily used a Filco Majestouch for years before switching to an 'ergonomic' keyboard (ergodox). The Microsoft Ergo Sculpt is really good for me as well, I still use it on my secondary desktop.

1\. [https://www.pckeyboard.com/](https://www.pckeyboard.com/)

2\. [https://ergodox-ez.com/pages/planck](https://ergodox-ez.com/pages/planck)

3\. [https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/](https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/)

4\. [https://mechanicalkeyboards.com/](https://mechanicalkeyboards.com/)

<comment><USER17> First of all, thank you for all the suggestions.

I actually asked in /r/MechanicalKeyboards, but they didn't help much, just pointed me to Unicomp but that's not what I'm looking for as it's basically the same size as the Model M. It looks like Unicomp will be releasing a "Spacesaver" Tenkeyless model in the upcoming weeks [1], that might be an option.

The Filco Majestouch 2 Ninja TKL [2] is one of my top candidates right now, or a Ducky One 2 TKL [3] variation. I actually tried to get both in the past weeks: the Filco couldn't get shipped because of COVID-19; and the Ducky One 2 ran out of stock (the European market problem I was mentioning before). Very frustrating.

About ergonomic keyboards I don't want to go through the pain of relearning how to type. I have been typing on the Model M for 25 years now and my muscle memory is deeply engrained, I want a layout that is as similar as possible (so 80% Tenkeyless).

The Planck seems unnecessarily small to me. I'm not moving my keyboard so the absolute smallest size is not a requirement, I just want to get rid of the numpad to have the mouse closer.

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/comments/frr2xh...](https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/comments/frr2xh/unicomp_ssk_news_new_compact_fullsized_model_m/)

[2] [https://www.keyboardco.com/keyboard/usa-filco-ninja- majestou...](https://www.keyboardco.com/keyboard/usa-filco-ninja- majestouch-2-tenkeyless-nkr-tactile-action-keyboard.asp)

[3] [https://www.duckychannel.com.tw/en/Ducky-One2-Skyline- TKL](https://www.duckychannel.com.tw/en/Ducky-One2-Skyline-TKL) or [https://www.duckychannel.com.tw/en/Ducky-One2-White-LED- TKL](https://www.duckychannel.com.tw/en/Ducky-One2-White-LED-TKL)

<comment><USER19> Instead of Ducky One 2, I would look into either Varmilo or Leopold. Similar design, better quality and in the case of Leopold its very understated, no RGB and game-ry branding.

<comment><USER17> I have heard good things about both Leopold and Varmilo, but they are even harder to come by than the options I mentioned. I have to compromise for a keyboard I can buy in the EU (but with an US layout).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Another product with a much longer time horizon is those electronic dial pads on apartment buildings and entry gates: [https://www.google.com/search?q=apartment+door+dial+pad&tbm=...](https://www.google.com/search?q=apartment+door+dial+pad&tbm=isch)

These things are running on technology from the late 90's virtually unchanged. Even the most advanced ones are low end silicon with terrible thermal designs and horrible user interfaces (scrolling through pages of residents on a bad monochrome display one line at a time). Nothing competes with them. They have no high-failure parts and can last for decades. (And some have.)

<comment><USER21> I hate those, they mount them even on brand new buildings where even elevetors have screens and touchpanel buttons.

<comment><USER22> > _elevetors have screens and touchpanel buttons._

I've not encountered systems like this. How do they handle accessibility for the blind? Are the physical buttons still present?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I couldn't read the article because of ad blocker issues, but Logitech Squeezebox is going strong in this household. You can pick up the physical devices reasonably cheaply on ebay as people replace them with functionally worse and privacy invasive modern alternatives.

<comment><USER24> Our Squeezebox is still going as well, but with most using iOS devices at home, we're not able to control it anymore because the app was discontinued. Does anyone know of a solution for iPhones?

<comment><USER25> Possibly the best solution would be an installation of the Logitech Media Server (LMS) on a raspberry pi (e.g. piCorePlayer [0]) or an already available home server. LMS can then handle all squeezeboxes (or squeezelite installations on other hardware) on the same network and allows control via a web interface.

[0]: [https://www.picoreplayer.org/](https://www.picoreplayer.org/)

<comment><USER24> Thanks, I have an unused Raspberry Pi, I will try this out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I still wear my Pebble Time Round every day. The form factor is unequaled. Less than 8mm thick is just not where other companies are going with their watches, and I'm sad about that.

<comment><USER27> I agree. Give me a slimmer Fitbit with less functionality and basic controls and I'm sold. I loved my pebble time.

I won't get back into wearables until they start slimming down.

<comment><USER28> Still wearing mine... until it falls apart.

Then, I'll unbox my backup Pebble and wear it until _that_ falls apart.

Hopefully they'll have something comparable by the time I run out of them?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I really regret not picking up a Little Printer when I had the chance. I've considered building a networked thermal printer, but its not quite the same.

My dream is to have a 2" impact printer (e.g. receipt printer) for to-do, grocery, etc, lists.

I really don't want to have a life of joy and pure bliss that relies on a thermal printer. I love the concept so much.

With the others, I've still got three Pebbles and I love them all equally. The two OG Pebbles needed a piece of paper between the vibrating part and the screen, but the 2HR has been perfect.

These concepts are all so great. Chumby is another I've always admired.

<comment><USER30> I had a Little Printer, and I believe the article is slightly over- romanticizing the device. It was slow, not only the printing itself but there would also be a considerable delay before it would start printing as everything had to go through the cloud.

The printing paper had very uncommon dimensions and was hard to find. You could buy them from Berg, but they charged a lot for the rolls. There would also be a lot of paper waste due to the "face" that needed to be printed after every job. Cute, but no practical use.

In the end, however, it did what it advertised, and it did so with remarkably few of the hiccups that were (and are still) common for the IoT devices of the time; it was a good "version 1" for an IoT device. It's unfortunate that they never got to make a second version.

After the project was shuttered I bought an Epson TM-T20II. It prints from the LAN, it prints extremely quick, and the standard paper dimensions that it uses are easy to find on Amazon. It doesn't print a cute face after every job, though, but you can buy a buzzer add-on to make it beep after every job if you want.

<comment><USER29> well, this is very reassuring! Weird that the face would print every time -- what a waste.

I had thermal printer for a while for another purpose and loved it. It was so handy to have --- but ultimately, thermal paper isn't great for the ol' environment.

Do you still use the thermal printer for lists and stuff?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Sansa Fuze mp3 players are still kicking around, with open source replacement firmware like Rockbox still under active development.

I'm kicking myself that I gave mine to a friend around 2012 when I got my first smartphone.I feel like the used price on them has actually gone _up_ in recent years, as nearly all smartphones have since removed their headphone jacks, and battery life on smartphones can't hold a candle to dedicated mp3 players.

<comment><USER32> I got a Fuze in 2008 because they supported a WiFi connection to LAUNCHcast radio (acquired by Yahoo! at the time). (LAUNCH as probably the first streaming service with a recommendation engine.) I had spent years curating my personal LAUNCHcast station, so it was amazing to have access to it via Wifi. Then Yahoo! shut down LAUNCH because of fears of high royalty rates. The streaming services actually won the lawsuit and kept the low rates, but it was too late as Yahoo! had already pulled the plug on LAUNCH.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> For me it's film cameras. Because they were not a rapidly obsoleting product, they were built for decades upon decades of use. The mechanical perfection is just a joy to use in every knob and click. My two favorites are a Canon F-1 with 85mm f1.2 Lens, and a 1953 Rolleiflex with a 75mm Schneider f3.5 lens. Neither one needs a battery. A modern camera is built with the expectation that its sensor will be obsolete in 5-10 years so nobody will pay for the build quality for a 50 year service life.

As I tell people when they ask about them, I'm not a photography enthusiast, I'm a camera enthusiast, taking pictures is just what I do to find an excuse to use these exquisite pieces of machinery.

<comment><USER8> There is just something about a decades-old mechanical device that still works. I'm not sure any company made a smoother film-winding mechanism than Nikon, especially on the Nikkormat series.

And on the other side, you have the clunky soviet cameras, which one wonders how they worked in the first place, yet they still do.

<comment><USER34> If you like old soviet tech then this channel might appeal:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvvFI9XEW1w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvvFI9XEW1w)

Lengthy reviews of soviet consumer electronics, in one of the most ASMR sounding voices I've heard (subs available)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I never heard about Chumby before but oh my it's one of the most ugly and hideous product designs I have ever seen, I don't know why but looking at it makes me uneasy... something about the way that leather is cut, combined with the colors and overall shape, even the name is strange

</comment><comment><USER36> For me its my Sony MiniDisc Player(s) and the MiniDisc format in general. Such a great medium, durable, great haptics. Works perfectly all these years later and still looks and feels like something from the future.

Still angry at Sony though for basically killing it from the beginning with all their DRM.

<comment><USER37> Do you need more empty MiniDiscs? I just found a new, in-wrapper one the other day at the bottom of a box of electronics as I was searching for N64 games :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I know it's not that old but after ~7 years on paper books I recently went back to my Kindle Paperwhite 1st generation which I bought in 2012 ... I was pretty shocked that it just booted up and I was able to start buying and reading books again. I had a software update or two but I didn't even have to sign in to my Amazon account again.

</comment><comment><USER39> I have an HP TouchPad, the tablet that ran WebOS. Almost ten years later there are still people that are making Android versions for it. The battery sucks by now and the CPU is not very powerful so it's not snappy but it's still usable for light apps.

<comment><USER31> My HP Touchpad did not survive my last move, unfortunately. Can't tell if it had something pressed on it or if it was stored at an improper temperature, but the battery swelled to the point of pressing on the display (!), so the thing no longer turns on.

If it still worked, I'm probably still be using it as a comic book reader.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Bring back Pebble. Someone please bring back Pebble. :'(

<comment><USER41> Yeah, I don't understand how there is still no simple smartwatch company without any fitness bs, with thin light >1 week always on screen. Years after Pebble did it. Does everyone but us really want and oled screen and heart rate monitor?

I'd don't understand where Casio is with cheap BT smartwatches that can just show texts/notifications.

<comment><USER42> Worked on the ecommerce and marketing teams at Pebble. I can tell you we tried to tell people about our strengths: 1 week+ battery life. Always on screen. Readable in sunlight. Water resistant up to X meters. But what gets people to buy isn't what gets people to stay.

I can tell you that by far, most people wanted the fitness angle with smartwatches. And all those features that you love about Pebble, while great, wasn't all that convincing for people after we ran out of die-hard fans like yourself.

<comment><USER43> Here's the thing. I have a Garmin that also gets more than a week of battery life, with an always on display. It also does the fitness stuff very well. There wasn't an advantage to the Pebble angle.

<comment><USER41> But I don't/want need the bulk and the price of the fitness stuff. The last, cancelled generation of pebble had a black and white screen, many apps and was something like 125 euros for the watch.

I really loved the way I could control my Pebble (time steel), with just 4 buttons, so smooth.

But, ok, out of all brands, Garmin seems nicest to me and they have a payment solution as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> AFAIK Apple Newton still lives and people still write programs for it despite it being discontinued 22 years ago.

<comment><USER45> Do you mind sharing what niche the Newton lives in?

<comment><USER46> Theres a pretty good podcast on the topic if you're interested [https://overcast.fm/+Xn2zXxLf4](https://overcast.fm/+Xn2zXxLf4)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I dislike gadgets as in "tech objects which primary function is to be perceived as cool and to make the owner feel good as owning it".

I think tools can survive more than gadgets. I have an old HP LaserJet 4l which I think was manufactured in '90s and which still works like a charm. I also have a Nikon D300 DSLR which still works. My car is 16 years old.

<comment><USER48> The gadgets listed in the article were meant to have a short shelf life. Though a few still survive, it was never intended.

On the other hand, my more generic gadgets simply never die. My projector, my Bluetooth speaker, my headphones... they all do exactly what I bought them for. There might come a time when that's not enough, but that will be decided on my own terms. It won't be because of a dead server or a useless battery life.

As you say, tools last a lot longer, because they were designed to fulfill a simple role without any bells and whistles.

This is why I don't like the trend of pairing long-lasting tools to short- lived tech. A car or a watch will last a really long time. USB-C and Android 9.0 won't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Reading this article got me wistful for my Peek [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peek_(mobile_Internet_device)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peek_\(mobile_Internet_device\)). You can do so much with email (todo lists, news, etc) and the device just felt good. It had a physical keyboard (!) and a real scroll wheel on the side.

Peek was also created by a small company but doesn't have the community support that the Chumby or Pebble has now. Maybe that's a product of being connected only to a cellular network?

<comment><USER36> Such a wonderfully simple device! I always wanted one of those. Do they still work/can they still access the internet?

<comment><USER49> Sadly, no - there's no wifi option. Peeks were (seemingly) hard-wired into a T-Mobile network that is no longer operational.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> No list of immortal gadgets will ever be complete without the Casio F91W.

<comment><USER51> That said, wristwatches are generally very very long lived. I own a Citizen marinaut which is powered through a solar cell in the face of the watch. I've been wearing it pretty much every day for 15 years now and I never had to charge or service it. Only the occasional shortening of the metal wristband.

<comment><USER50> Right, but the F91W was first released in 1989 and is still the second best selling men's watch on amazon:

[https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Mens- Watches/zgbs/fashio...](https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Mens- Watches/zgbs/fashion/6358539011)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> iPod Classics also refuse to die, I'm using a used one I got cheap on eBay. You can also mod them with open source software (escaping the clutches of iTunes), install a higher capacity battery, replace the case and install a power-sipping micro SD card - if you so wish. It helps that it's not tied to a cloud service, you can get an older version of iTunes if you really need it. More details[1]

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19712077](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19712077)

<comment><USER53> I found a couple of old iPods in the bottom of a box in my closet a month or two ago. My kids were interested so I dug around until I found one of those 30-pin cables. Plugged it into my Mac; it worked fine. I transferred a bunch of songs they wanted and the kids have been listening to them since. For one of them, Apple even had a software update available for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Gadgets don't die, their users do.

Every single computer that was ever made is still out there, and a use could be found for them, somewhere in the world. We just don't have the resources to distribute 'old' computers for which find no use, to those who would find a use - so we throw them away, usually with the excuse 'archaic/outdated, consumes too much power, etc' \- excuses that were as equally valid the day the machine came out of the box, but are only really issued when a human decision has been made.

You can still pick up a stone axe and use it to feed your family, even if its original user died tens of thousands of years ago. The same is true of every single tool ever made - its only the arbitrary decision making of humans which make an inanimate object useful or otherwise.

disclaimer: grumpy old retro computing enthusiast who really wants people to stop throwing functioning electronic gear in the landfill...

<comment><USER55> Hmmm. I have an ancient dual Intel 3GHz Xeon Nocona (~2004 I think) with 5MB of RAM :) hanging around.

It's mostly used as a stand for other things (powered off, but has good case) left on top of it.

Although it runs, each of the two CPU's uses about 100w. And the whole thing running flat out is about as slow as an older model laptop.

There's no real use for this things computing power any more, except on the very rare occasion I need to spin up some OS and don't have other available computing gear handy.

So, the whole "all tools are useful" thing is only marginally true for very old computing stuff.

<comment><USER54> Not useful for you. _And that is your right, duty and responsibility as a user, and owner of the hardware._

But there are tens of thousands of human beings within a few km's/clicks of you, I am willing to bet, who will find a use for that computer.

A lot of valuable things can be done with 100w, should a user choose to apply it.

<comment><USER55> That's 100w _per cpu_.

eg this thing burns 200w continuously when on.

A raspberry pi 3b+ is likely around the same computing power, and burns a _small fraction_ of it.

So, I really, really doubt it.

<comment><USER54> I could easily find 100 people who would find a use for your old computer. The effort is worth it.

<comment><USER55> If you're serious, feel free to email me (email@example.com) to make it happen. :)

Out of curiosity, what kind of things do you think people would use it for? Linux doesn't boot on it.

<comment><USER55> As a data point, fit2rule didn't bother to email me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Interesting list...I didn't own any of those, though I would guess most of us here can name many others.

Last weekend while I was putting the finishing touches on a Bionic Puppy install on my MSI Wind (purchased through a Linux computer company years ago), I started to realize I need to get more serious about active care for my devices or get rid of them. From the Cybiko Extremes to the N810 to the Casio pocket organizers.

For now I'm going to move to a basic stance and just start text files for each set of devices. That usually gets me moving in a more organized direction. It feels good to be taking care of (some) things from my past, and I can tell my kids all kinds of stories about how I courted my wife via Cybiko text chat in University classes, etc. :-)

</comment><comment><USER57> It's the nostalgia of ye good olde days of when those devices where perceived as good ideas or the best in town when there was a early market growing when they were around.

Their existence was tested by the competition and found to have been commercial failures but can still live on as useful toys, like the Commodore Amiga days, BeOS days and the CHIP days and so on.

They are remembered and kept alive by niche communities around 'what if' they survived with open source alternatives, aftermarket additions or more additions. Very happy to see this and good luck to them.

</comment><comment><USER58> I thought it was going to be about that Game Boy that took a direct hit in the Gulf War and still worked.

</comment><comment><USER59> > "The Chumby was introduced shortly after WiFi was introduced," Andrew > "bunnie" Huang, Chumby's founder, told Engadget. "To rewind to those times, > there were no smartphones, and if you wanted to use your computer away from > your desk, it meant dragging an ethernet cord to your bedside."

The first PowerBook with WiFi was released in 1999. The Chumby in 2006.

<comment><USER60> Yeah I remember when the chumby came out I was debating getting one but couldn't think of a use case for it (besides the ever-popular-at-the-time live twitter feed or something along those lines).

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> I still using my Sony Smartwatch 2 (2014), not even changed the wristband. The only thing is lack of software updates and support.

Sony made very good hardware. But they are not good updating their software. Just like the Sony Xperia Play, they don't even upgrade their Android version when they could.

</comment><comment><USER62> While I think it is dead now, the 3Com Audrey was another gadget that was hacker/user supported and lived on long after its official demise. A mini (mostly) functional web terminal was a pretty novel thing when it was released.

</comment><comment><USER63> My Boxee Box still works and I use it occasionally

[https://github.com/boxeehacks/boxeehack](https://github.com/boxeehacks/boxeehack)

The remote still works great too.

<comment><USER64> That brings me back! I loved boxee and was so sad when the company shutdown.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> iPods. I have several friends who have, within the last year, sourced out classic iPods for personal use - I personally find my first-gen iPod shuffle to be one of the most useful digital devices in my collection.

Next - old game consoles. My Nintendo DS and Sega Saturn consistently get the most use out of any console I've ever had, to the point where I've stopped buying new consoles. Best part - I turn it on, pop in the game, no waiting for updates. It's amazing. Not to mention top-notch games like Animal Crossing: Wild World, Scribblenauts, New Super Mario Bros, Sonic Rush, Metroid Prime: Hunters, Mario Kart DS, Panzer Dragoon, NiGHTS Into Dreams, Street Fighter II Alpha (which I am constantly playing with friends) - the list goes on and on.

I could turn on my Dreamcast if I wanted to bask in Crazy Taxi, Skies of Arcadia, Jet Grind Radio, etc...but there's enough great games for these systems alone I haven't played that it makes it completely irrelevant to buy a new system.

Because in 20 years since I bought my Dreamcast I have still yet to siphon all the value out of it I can get.

</comment><comment><USER66> After reading the title and before clicking the link I instantly thought of my Pebble Time steel that I got from Kickstarter.

</comment><comment><USER67> It really feels like in 2020 it's possible for a one or two person team to create a successful hardware company.

<comment><USER68> Been like that forever.

My first job was at an electronic hardware company started by the owner in his basement in the late 70's. I wasn't there at the time, but I heard he had about 15 people working in the basement until they finally moved to a rented storefront.

He wasn't billions of $$$ successful, but he sold the company for about a million or so in 1989. Last I heard from him, he was living on a Caribbean island.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> Does anyone know what can be done with a Chumby? I got one free from a startup that went belly up.

<comment><USER70> You could read the Hardware Hacker by Bunnie Huang and learn about its history. That might spur more ideas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The Audio-Technica ATH A500 headphones I bought in 2008 are still going strong. The adhesive for the sodt ear muff degraded but that was easy enough to fix. I thought the novel headband design would cause issues but it has lasted just fine.

<comment><USER71> my ATH50 also refuses to die. After more than 10 years of usage, they look like they've been in a war but the sound and the quality are the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> Regret throwing out my Chumby now

</comment><comment><USER61> Cowon X7. Heavy, weird UI, but very good sound and capacity (160Gb)

</comment><comment><USER73> Anyone still using a Palm III or similar with internet connection?

</comment><comment><USER74> My LaserJet 4 Plus is still going strong with no special software.

</comment><comment><USER75> Some people in the UK kept their early Tivos going for a while after Sky shut down the service. I think they found a way to supply the programme guide.

<comment><USER76> My mom loves her TiVo but basically has to spend hours on the phone every year and especially gets a new box. Years ago she paid a pretty significant amount of money for lifetime service and they try every year to force her off it and pay for a subscription.

<comment><USER75> Good on her! In the UK, Tivos are tied to a specific cable service. I don't think you can get a standalone box over here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> I recall wanting a chumby, but never got one. I have no interest in the new devices like Amazon, Google and Apple have come out with, however.

</comment><comment><USER78> There's millions of old routers running OpenWRT.

</comment><comment><USER79> My Hewlett Packard calculator from the 80s (HP28s)

</comment><comment><USER80> HP-12C, been there since 1981

</comment><comment><USER81> NASA has tapedrives on life support.

<comment><USER82> On my first ship in the Navy, we had a Windows 3.1 beige-box desktop PC (well, there were 3 of them, 2 for backups) that ran a tape drive emulator that connected to wiring in a bank of disconnected tape drives/computers (took a whole wall, these were the reel-to-reel kind) that ran some old targeting radar. The weapons that used that radar were gone, but they kept the radar running for auxiliary purposes. I'm surprised they wouldn't use something like that at NASA. We only left the drives installed due to weight distribution for the ship, but NASA could just replace a whole room of them with a Raspberry Pi, probably.

<comment><USER83> I think NASA (or space industries in general) has the same problems as Navy (or military industries in general), they don't want to change anything that works. Reliability is one of their paramount KPIs, and what has survived for more than a decade is considered tested for a decade and will have precedence for managers in this space.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> HP48

Thanks god there is Droid48

</comment><comment><USER85> Isn't it time for HN to start refusing links to domains that openly flaunt non-compliance with the GDPR?

</comment><comment><USER86> Watch

</comment><comment><USER87> This article is nonsense. The gadgets aren't refusing to die due to fan support - it's companies buying old nonsense tech and then trying to resell it. We'll be see these on late night infomercials soon.

<comment><USER88> That is literally not true.</comment></comment>


Can't Git No Satisfaction: Why We Need a New-Gen Source Control - <AUTHOR> https://www.rookout.com/cant-git-no-satisfaction-why-we-need-a-new-gen-source-control/# <comment><USER2> content marketing...

<comment><USER3> A compact collection of examples of popular, powerful bait-writing techniques:

\- attacking something very popular with the intended audience (Git), to make it personal and create a desire to read the article

\- a very misleading false dichotomy (evidently, if CI tools build what's in one Git repository rather than the intended software components it's because of simplistic CI tool assumptions or lack of proper CI configuration and maintenance, not an issue with git and to a large degree not even an issue with repository structure)

\- vague hints that their product might be somewhat related to the issue (judging from their own product description, it could be marginally useful but only as an addition to actual CI/CD system)

\- fabricated problems (e.g. "Git is an excellent match for single-process applications, but it starts to fail when it comes to multi-process applications" or "It's time for a new generation of source control that wasn't purely designed for open-source projects, C and the Linux kernel. A source control designed for delivering modern applications in a polyglot cloud-native world."), shrouded in strange language to hide that they are bullshit

\- unreasonable, exaggerated statements presented as fact (e.g. "You can easily end up with repo sizes that don't fit in your hard-drive, or clone time that ends up in the hours" or "There are certain components you will need to build and deploy hundreds of times a day")

\- derogatory language (e.g. "a mishmash of source providers and various artifactories", alluding to Maven repositories and similar proven ways to keep non-source files _out_ of source control)</comment></comment>


What It's Like to Be Declared Dead by the Government - <AUTHOR> http://priceonomics.com/what-its-like-to-be-declared-dead-by-the/ <comment><USER2> The real problem, as described in this article, is that it's all too easy for someone to enter the wrong number. There is no checksum digit on the Social Security Numbers, so if someone accidentally types a 1 instead of a 2, the wrong person is declared dead.

Given this, it's amazing that the error rate is so low. I also have to assume that given the size of the United States, and the number of computer systems that expect a certain format of SSN, that the odds of adding a checksum digit are basically zero. Which means that these errors will continue for some time, and that the only solution is basically for the Social Security Administration to double- and triple-check reported deaths.

<comment><USER3> Many countries do use checksum digits, but I just found that Denmark is an interesting case where they no longer (!) require or use checksums that were previously mandatory. The reason is supposedly an increasing number of immigrants with uncertain dates who're then registered as born on January 1, or the first day in a month. Now that's a funny case of having to abandon best practices.

<comment><USER4> Wow, that's interesting. I wonder why they didn't just assign random birth dates to them?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > _some 2.8 million per year. Considering this, their annual 12,000 erroneous > death declarations amounts to an error rate of less than 1%._

I would say this is very very high ratio.

</comment><comment><USER6> For a humorous take on this situation, may I recommend reading Catch 22.

</comment><comment><USER7> I seem to remember reading somewhere that the social security number isn't actually unique. Is that true?

<comment><USER8> From what I understand, they're _supposed_ to be unique, but there are millions of cases where one person has more than one SSN, the same SSN is accidentally or intentionally used by multiple people, etc. [http://www.computerworld.com/article/2552992/it- management/n...](http://www.computerworld.com/article/2552992/it- management/not-so-unique.html)

There are also plenty of people who just plain don't have social security numbers, like the Old Order Amish.</comment></comment>


Lisp web frameworks: which one should I use? - <AUTHOR> I'm about to start development of a 'web 2.0' site. I've learnt some lisp and now I need to get to grips with a web framework. Any recommendations? Scalability is obviously important. Cheers. <comment><USER2> I build a fairly sophisticated project last year on top of TBNL (now Hunchentoot) and some other libraries (CL-WHO and CLSQL being the main ones). I don't think this set of libraries quite counts as a framework in the Rails/Pylons tradition - it's more like web.py[0]. It's worth noting that reddit used the same tool set before they rewrote it in Python. I can recommend it without hesitation, if you're looking for tools that stay out of your way.

[0]I have a strong suspicion that web.py was influenced by TBNL.

</comment><comment><USER3> We use ucw for <http://paragent.com> (click on "DEMO" to see our app in action live). We actually use the older _dev branch of ucw, as we started over a year ago before the _ajax branch had really settled down. In fact, we've ended up removing much of the AJAX from the site for design reasons, and gone to a simpler page model with the latest site update. ucw has been pretty reliable. OTOH, we don't get hammered on the front end that much, so we may not be really stressing it. Most of our heavy-lifting is all on the back-end connections to the agents, where we have to maintain thousands of ssl connections. We have been very happy with our decision to go with Lisp.

<comment><USER4> which lisp are you using?

<comment><USER3> We are using a slightly modified version of sbcl. Because of the large number of persistent connections we have to handle, we can run into issues with FD numbers and the default serve-event implementation. We have swapped in our own epoll-based serve-event to get around this. Otherwise, sbcl has worked very well for us.

Most of the sbcl hackers hang out in #lisp on irc.freenode.net, so the level of help available around the clock is amazing. There have been a couple times when we were pulling our hair out, got into the #lisp channel, and had a solution in a matter of minutes. Highly recommended, and a very smart group of people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been using UCW with my own framework (lisp-on-lines) built on top. If you are going to be doing a lot of 'ajax', the UCW Ajax branch has already done most of the work for you.

That said, the learning curve is steep and there is no documentation beyond the examples + source code.

<comment><USER4> could you post URLs of your running applications in UCW ?

<comment><USER4> nevermind, someone else posted <http://paragent.com>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You've got many choices.

This thread on c.l.l. discusses most of them: [http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/browse_thread/...](http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/browse_thread/thread/bb5892083f9933ba/f8f8d266334b33a1)

</comment><comment><USER7> Has anyone tried out the new weblocks?

<http://www.defmacro.org/ramblings/weblocks-demo.html>

It sounds promising.

<comment><USER8> Well, I wrote Weblocks.

It's already very nice (using Lisp turned out to be really great) but some fairly commonly requested features are not yet in. Give it a try, send some questions to the support group, and see if it's right for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Another option: KPAX <http://homepage.mac.com/svc/kpax/> (download) <http://kpax.wolf359.be/kpax/dynamic/welcome> (demo apps) <http://homepage.mac.com/svc/LispMovies/index.html> (screencast)

</comment><comment><USER4> I suggest using Hunchentoot (TBNL successor) + cl-who + postmodern. It provides the classic way of web programming just like pure java servlets.

Yesterday i've wrote simple app, just for fun <http://nablaone.net/dino- demo/>. What can I say, lisp rulez :-).

REPL -> instant gratification -> flow -> happiness :-)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Cheers guys. When I googled it before, Weblocks popped up. Does anyone have any experience with this?

</comment><comment><USER10> Pylons

<ducking>

<comment><USER5> .... and they call Lisp programmers "Smug Weenies"?

That said, there are two options if the OP _really_ wanted to use Pylons in Common Lisp.

One could attempt to run Pylons under cl-python[1], which is "a fairly complete implementation of Python written in Common Lisp". Cl-python is currently Allegro-only, and likely will not run Pylons without modification.

Alternately, there is Python-on-lisp, which is a FFI to an embedded python interpreter AFAICT. While it will likely be trivial to get Pylons running this way, the interface between the languages seems very low-level, and there does not seem to be any source translation from a sexp syntax to python.

I don't think either way is a good option honestly. If the OP wanted a python framework, they probably would have asked for one, and you could hold your head high rather than ducking ;).

<comment><USER11> That wasn't a smug weenie thing. It was funny. I was going to suggest web.py just for giggles.

<comment><USER5> What makes it funny exactly? To use an analogy (a poor one, like all), if this were a medical advice board, and someone had said 'I've got aids and i'm looking for a good retroviral" and the reply was "Chemo! <ducking>"..... I don't find that funny at all... just smug cancer weenies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> if by Lisp you mean Scheme, perhaps <http://magic.xmog.com> suits you. It's lacking documentation, but it's promising at least.</comment>


Show HN: Memes on the Blockchain - <AUTHOR> https://www.memeschain.com/?ref=hn <comment><USER2> Thanks for the post @jajoosam. The plan is to introduce people to the powerful concept of tracking permanent ownership of a digital asset on the blockchain via trivial things like memes. Hope you enjoyed it.

SITE -- [https://www.memeschain.com](https://www.memeschain.com) PH -- [https://www.producthunt.com/posts/memeschain](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/memeschain)

</comment><comment><USER3> It costs money to makes memes? Why not take a % of sale instead

<comment><USER2> Well, the problem is blatant plagiarism. The extremely small cap on each meme owned, deters people from just owning every meme they see on the web. People wont mind, shelling out a small fee, to own a meme that they came up with.</comment></comment>


Is aging a disease? - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/05/20/us-ageing-disease-idUSTRE64I6HV20100520

<comment><USER2> This is a question that crops up regularly - and it does so entirely because of the regulatory structure that exists in much of the Western world, such as that imposed by the FDA. In essence the FDA only approves medicines for specific, recognized, named diseases. Therefore you cannot legally, commercially treat aging in the US, as aging is not recognized by the FDA as a disease, and there is no path towards reversing that situation.

(Though let us be clear, the idea of a named disease is a nebulous entity: "Alzheimer's" probably covers at least three distinct conditions, for example, and it's much the same for Parkinson's and many other diseases that were named early and only now are being split out into their various etiologies. Ultimately at the level biotech is moving into now, names for collections of symptoms and similar-looking damage go away in favor of treating specific mechanisms that get you there).

To show just how much of a cost the FDA imposes just by this regulatory aspect, you might look at sarcopenia: it has cost millions of dollars and years to date and will cost millions and years more to lobby the FDA (meaning put dollars into the pockets of lawyers and appointees) to recognize sarcopenia as a condition. Until that happens, there will be no serious commercial research into the numerous potential mechanisms and therapies, because you can't sell the results in the US.

Now multiply that by the thousands of potential named conditions you could carve off the bulk of mechanisms that is called aging. Look at the SENS Foundation research pages for a primer on the underpinnings:

<http://sens.org/sens-research/research-themes>

So given this ridiculous state of affairs, pretty much par for the course for big government, therapies for aging will never happen in the US for so long as the present regulatory structure exists, and for so long as there is no massive medical tourism and global research and development exchange devoted to circumventing it. That latter community is only just getting started, when considered in the grand scheme of things.

But most people are blind to all of this, and think that the FDA is actually a force for good - because they don't see the opportunity cost and the progress that didn't happen. In fact, the FDA and its equivalents overseas are the biggest obstacle to significant medical progress in this age of revolutionary advances in biotechnology.

[http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2012/04/the-fda-is-a- dest...](http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2012/04/the-fda-is-a-destructive- force.php)

For more reading on the "is aging a disease" thing, you might look at:

[http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2010/05/talking-point- is-...](http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2010/05/talking-point-is-aging-a- disease.php)

"Because aging is not viewed as a disease, the whole process of bringing drugs to market can't be applied to drugs that treat aging. This creates a disincentive to pharmaceutical companies to develop drugs to treat it," said Gems.

[http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2009/07/sage- crossroads-p...](http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2009/07/sage-crossroads- podcasts-on-the-pharmaceutical-industry-and-aging.php)

Why, despite the great range of potential applicable biotechnology, do we not see hundreds of millions of dollars invested in startups attempting to address the aging process? The answer is buried in this New York Times article on Sirtris: "Dr. Westphal and Mr. Sinclair stress that they are not working to 'cure' aging, a condition that, so far at least, is common to all humanity and that most physicians do not consider a disease. 'Curing aging is not an endpoint the federal drug agency would recognize,' Dr. Westphal says dryly. Instead, both men say, they are working to ameliorate the diseases of aging."

...

LARRY MILLER: [When] I was heading aging at Glaxo Smith Kline, the issues that I faced were that I was very interested in developing medications for frailty and weakness in muscle for when people get old because when people get weak they usually stop eating and then they fall and break a hip and end up in the hospital and die potentially, but the regulatory apparatus isn't there yet. Sarcopenia isn't recognized as an official disease by the FDA, so the pathway to get drugs approved for frailty and to get more people mobile and into society is just not there.

<comment><USER3> Sort of connected to this, but from the other end, our requirement to classify everything as a disease has pretty terrible repercussions across society.

As an example, my mum's a doctor and has worked in wards in which old people die. There's a requirement for a "cause of death" for each person to die in a hospital. Often this was given as pneumonia or similar for people who essentially died of old age. Unfortunately, someone looked at the statistics and discovering that lots of people were dying of pneumonia decided that it needed to be treated, and so now with aggressive treatments people who are at the very end of their lives are kept alive until something else comes along and kills them. The reality is, once your body has reached a certain point likelyhood of survival falls very quickly, and treating a single disease is simply a very brief and ineffective way of dealing with that.

Interestingly, although human lifespan has been increasing year on year, it's not an indication that we're actually living longer. What's happened is that things that kill you in early to mid life - heart attacks in 50 year olds, viruses and infections and injuries that 20 years ago would have been deadly - have been reduced. The outlook in terms of years of life for someone that actually manages to reach 80 or 90 has increased very little - perhaps 1 or 2 years over the last 50. (I read this somewhere but I've lost the source - I'll try and find it).

The single thing to treat, the thing that is the precursor to all other things, is ageing.

<comment><USER4>
          The single thing to treat, the thing that is the
          precursor to all other things, is ageing.

I do not agree. My grandfather died at 99 years old. He was able to work his land until 98, lived a full life and died with no regrets. We were sad of his passing, but we accepted his death and were happy that he died fast, without much struggling.

You know what's really sad? A 22 year old boy dying of an unnoticed heart disease that led to a sudden cardiac arrest. This happened to an acquaintance of mine and it was freaking sad, as this boy was robbed of a chance to live his life.

Ageing is not the problem. The problem is that we are nowhere close to treating chronic diseases like cancer or heart diseases. The problem is that we don't even know for sure the cause of obesity or diabetes, passing baseless assumptions and flawed studies around that cause more harm than good. The problem is that we have no idea how to treat allergies and based on recent trends allergic asthma will soon be considered an epidemy. The problem is that we haven't even cured the freaking common cold.

Medicine, as far as I'm concerned, is still at the stage of alchemy. Dreaming of increasing the maximum lifespan or even of immortality is a romantic notion, but I would be happy if young people had a chance of living their life, instead of dying of diseases that have been around forever.

<comment><USER5> _My grandfather died at 99 years old. He was able to work his land until 98, lived a full life and died with no regrets._

Your grandfather was much luckier than most.

 _Ageing is not the problem. The problem is that we are nowhere close to treating chronic diseases like cancer or heart diseases._

Very few 25 year olds suffer from cancer or heart disease.

<comment><USER6> Nopes, He is right.

People had healthier lives even until a while back. I agree life expectancies were less. But that is because of wars and epidemics.

People would live in binary conditions. Healthy or dead. Unlike today people are left hanging in between, without total cure, and at the same time without good quality of life after treatment.

Organ transplants in my country(India) and other fatal diseases are worse than death. In fact death is more preferable than miserable conditions where a person is half cured. Its like the body wants to die, but is just chemically alive. Its expensive too.

This is the biggest failure of current day medicine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Let's use some criteria from _Diseased thinking: dissolving questions about disease_ ([http://lesswrong.com/lw/2as/real_diseases_unasking_the_quest...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/2as/real_diseases_unasking_the_question/)).

1\. Biological? Yes

2\. Involuntary? Yes

3\. Rare? No

4\. Unpleasant? Yes

5\. Discrete? No

6\. Medicable? Yes

So aging has many aspects of what we call disease. Of course, the implied question that everyone cares about is is, "Will humanity be better off if we devote more resources to curing aging?" The answer to that brings much more baggage, and depends on your moral and religious views.

<comment><USER8> Ageing is pretty discrete - at least if you're looking at the accumulating damage, rather than the bio-machinery that creates it as a side effect. Complex mechanism -> simple damage -> complex symptoms because the simple damage is body-pervasive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Reminds me of this excellent read about how our perception of age and dying taints our ability to even consider it a problem we can work on and correct:

<http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html>

</comment><comment><USER10> The following is more tangentially related to the article then a direct comment about the interesting points it makes.

An interesting hypothesis I read about aging was that it's an anticancer mechanism necessary to become old enough to reproduce.

The cellular metabolic process creates a lot free radicals that cause damage, while the body has built in mechanisms to repair the damage at high rates of replication the chance of damage resulting in turning on an oncogene increases.

In order to combat this the body slows down its division process to prevent the likelihood of cancer but as a side effect we experiencing the symptoms of aging and inevitable death (usually by cancer if you live long enough to get it).

Not sure if any of this is accurate, but the idea is interesting and something I hadn't thought of. It also introduces problems since if at all accurate trying to prevent aging may result in higher cancer risk.

Talk of this also reminds me of a quote I like (from [http://hplusmagazine.com/2011/07/13/longevity-science- needs-...](http://hplusmagazine.com/2011/07/13/longevity-science-needs- documentation/)):

"We all express the symptoms of a fatal, inherited degenerative condition called aging - or so the joke goes. It's a dark joke, but there's truth to be found in it, as is often the case in black humor. Unfortunately, all too few people think of themselves as patients suffering aging, and fewer still would call themselves patient advocates, agitating for research leading towards therapies and cures for aging. This is a sorry state of affairs: given that our time is limited and ticking away, the tasks upon the table should always include some consideration of aging.

What can we do about it? How can we engineer a research community, funding and support to make real progress within our lifetimes? If you don't spend at least some of your time on this issue, then you're fiddling while Rome burns. Time is the most precious thing we have, and we live on the cusp of technologies that will allow us to gain more of it - but those advances in medicine won't happen soon enough unless we work at it."

</comment><comment><USER11> Thanks for submitting the interesting article, and thanks for the interesting comments already posted by various HN participants. I'll respond generally to those in this comment.

From the article: "A study published last year by Danish researchers estimated that more than half of all babies born in wealthy nations since the year 2000 will live to see their 100th birthdays."

I had the privilege of reading that study, "Ageing populations: the challenges ahead," Lancet. 2009 October 3; 374(9696): 1196–1208. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(09)61460-4

<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2810516/>

and then discussing it with one of the collaborators of a study author in a "journal club" at my alma mater university. Detailed studies of life expectancy at advanced age in a variety of countries show that various lifestyle changes and other changes result in a worldwide trend of increasing lifespan, such that "Very long lives are not the distant privilege of remote future generations—very long lives are the probable destiny of most people alive now in developed countries."

The top-ranked HN comment as I post my comment here says, "In essence the FDA only approves medicines for specific, recognized, named diseases. Therefore you cannot legally, commercially treat aging in the US, as aging is not recognized by the FDA as a disease, and there is no path towards reversing that situation." The comment has already been challenged by a knowledgeable participant here as not fully accurate,

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3968515>

and in any event is not relevant to the worldwide research effort (exemplified by the study I have linked here) into the worldwide trend of longer lifespans in the developed world, because the FDA regulates medical treatments only in the United States. (I have lived in a developed country other than the United States, and am well aware that many treatments that are not approved in the United States are prescribed by physicians in other countries and researched by researchers in other countries.) The FDA is not shortening lifespans in the United States, despite what some advocacy organizations say to the contrary.

I have had multiple ancestors who were born in the 1800s live into their nineties. And my wife's ancestors, born in a poor country then in the undeveloped world, managed to have quite long lifespans. So we are accustomed in our family to thinking about the implications of long lifespans. Oddly, heritability of longevity is actually LOWER than the heritability of most measurable human characteristics.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/31/health/31age.html?_r=1&...](http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/31/health/31age.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print)

It could be that anyone, even someone without much of a family history of long life span, might meet the prediction of the study linked above that a young person born after the year 2000 in a developed country is as likely as not to live to the age of 100.

Thus far we are making incremental progress, all over the world in a variety of human societies, increasing human lifespan and life expectancy at most ages. Meanwhile a number of forms of fundamental biological research are still just in their beginning stages. In particular, the issue of "missing heritability" in disease research

<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2831613/>

<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3059431/>

suggests that we have a long way to go to identify biological pathways in living human beings that make a difference in how long individual human beings live. The ongoing progress of science-based medicine

[http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/category/scien...](http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/category/science- and-medicine/)

is slower than desirable partly because all human researchers, in whatever regulatory environment, struggle to overcome their own cognitive biases as they attempt to determine what treatments work in reducing all-cause mortality and morbidity. And the huge role of lifestyle factors in mortality and morbidity

<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2658866/>

[http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fj...](http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1000058)

suggests that as causation of disease and early death becomes more clear, we will not necessarily find that all human beings choose to reduce their risk of early death to the same degree.

To sum up, the submitted article was quite interesting. It reports, "There is now a "groundswell" of specialists in aging, says Dillin, who are lobbying the world's biggest drug regulator, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, to consider redefining aging as a disease in its own right." If by "aging" those lobbying scientists mean "all-cause morbidity and mortality," that could be a good reality check on outcome studies of treatments for specific diseases. As it is now, people are living longer, year after year after year, and in some places they seem to be living to a healthier old age than ever before. Continuing that trend is a likely outcome of ongoing efforts both to evaluate disease treatments more scientifically and to understand better at a fundamental level how human physiology works.

</comment><comment><USER12> Story is 2 years old. [http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/id.12809,y.2011,no.4...](http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/id.12809,y.2011,no.4,content.true,page.1,css.print/issue.aspx) is slightly newer more in depth treatment by David Gems, the person quoted.

More similar via [https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=site%3Afightaging.org+...](https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=site%3Afightaging.org+%22david%20gems%22)

</comment><comment><USER13> Betteridge's Law of Headlines - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_Law_of_Headlines>

"Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word 'no'".

</comment><comment><USER14> Something I noticed the other day: Genesis 6:3 says, "My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years" ([http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+6%3A1-4&...](http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+6%3A1-4&version=NIV)).

Interestingly, if you look at the list of the verified oldest people, only one is over 120 years ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_verified_oldest_peo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_verified_oldest_people)).

<comment><USER15> The Old Testament also suggests Abraham lived to 175; Genesis says Enoch lived to over 360.

Given BCE life expectancy I think it's safe to interpret all these numbers as "poetically large" and leave it at that. :)

<comment><USER14> Hi Thomas - Yeah, and Methuselah was said to live to 969. There's some commentary on that here (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longevity_myths#Hebrew_Bible>).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There was some research headlined on HN within the last year that suggested aging was nature's response to cancer. Something like: if our cells replicated at a "young rate" for all our lives, replication mistakes would have us dying of cancer at a higher rate. So nature slows down cell replication to prevent cancer growth.

I'll try to find the link. Feel free to reply with such if you find it before I do.

</comment><comment><USER17> I think that if a cure for aging is invented tomorrow, I won't be able to benefit from it. Why? Because it will _still_ be in clinical trials by the time I die.

The simple solution is to pour money (and lots of it) into the goal of clinically reversible cryonics. At low temperatures, aging vanishes along with all other metabolic activity -- cancer, viral infection, and so forth would all be stopped in their tracks. This buys precious time that can be used to develop a cure for pretty much _any_ condition whatsoever.

Cryonics could also be cheap. The energy costs for a large scale cryonics facility are much lower than for small-scale due to the square-cube law. (Square the surface area and you get a cube of the volume, for any shape of container.) So the more the merrier.

</comment><comment><USER18> isn't it necessary for evolution? Also to keep a balanced variety of species in a self sustaining system such as earth. I suppose without aging, population control would fall squarely on parasites (such as viruses), plagues, natural disasters, and wars over domination of limited resources. Actually i suppose we could be wired differently where organisms don't feel a need to have as much offspring.. But that reinforces the evolution problem.

<comment><USER19> What evolution problem? Evolution happens regardless, but why should we be bound to the limitations of nature when we have the potential ability to rise above them?

<comment><USER18> the way i see it as a evolution problem is two fold. Evolution happens via generations of species. if a single generation is around indefinitely, it is not evolving. Secondly, the units of species with inferior genes (in evolutionary sense) are also around indefinitely with ability to continue to have offspring slowing down the process of that genome being filtered out of existence

<comment><USER19> You're making the mistake of assuming evolution is progress; that's not how it works. Evolution is adaption to the current environment, that could be progress or devolving, whatever works better. Older genes are not inferior.

Secondly, evolution works across great timescales, doubling or tripling lifetimes won't stop evolution. There is no evolution problem.

Thirdly, if people could live indefinitely, there would still not be an evolution problem, there'd be a population and resource problem, which would change the environment thus accelerating evolution by selecting those who could survive on fewer resources or those capable of obtaining resources.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Whatever you call it, it's terrible and it's fixable (like other diseases), so we should work on it.

</comment><comment><USER21> I never understood why the FDA won't approve drugs that improve an aspect of our body, but only those that treat something.

<comment><USER22> A lot of it comes down to the risk vs. benefit equation. The FDA decides to approval/deny new drug for marketing by (attempting) to balance the benefits of the therapy with the drawbacks.

This is why a drug like Tysabri (used to treat MS) can cause a potentially fatal brain infect (PML) and the FDA still gives it an "OK" to be marketed.

And it's also the reason why it's so hard to get obesity drugs approved. Huge population + small risk = a lot of patients harmed.

The FDA considers a healthy human to be the "optimal outcome". If you want to improve an aspect of human health beyond that, you'll have to show that there are zero risks associated with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Yet another title with question mark. Aging appears to be more of a feature and not a bug of organic life.

<comment><USER24> With respect to what design goal?

<comment><USER25> It makes life adaptable to a changing environment.

<comment><USER26> Humans, due to their highly evolved brains, have accumulated such a vast amount of knowledge that we can adapt our environment to suit our needs as we have been doing for the past centuries. And if our understanding of genetics deepens to the point where we can directly manipulate our biology we won't need the comparably crude trial and error methodology that is mutation and selection anymore. This would still fall under the evolutionary advantage our brains give us.

<comment><USER25> It hasn't deepend to that point yet tough. It's still trial&error genetics and medicine. Being smarter than nature is a tall order.

I'd say the long term success (Millions of years) of humankind is still not sure. Does not seem very stable at the moment, climate change and the potential destruction via nuclear bombs and so on...

<comment><USER26> 1\. Nature is not "smart", it is not a conscious entity. So neither can we outsmart it nor can it outsmart us. 2\. I strongly dislike the dichotomy between nature and humans. Our species is part of the natural world same as any other. Investigating into influencing or even controlling our evolution means we are making good use of our evolutionary advantages (i.e. the highly evolved brain).

<comment><USER23> i agree, anything we score, adds to the score of the nature; finally we are nature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Aging also kills. So we'll be living longer life and healthier life if we find a cure for aging.

</comment><comment><USER28> Am I to assume that since the title ends with a question mark that the answer is no?

</comment><comment><USER29> You can help raise awareness of this issue here: [http://questions.sciencedebate.org/forums/149344-the-top- sci...](http://questions.sciencedebate.org/forums/149344-the-top-science- questions-facing-america-2012-edi/suggestions/2693427-should-the-united- states-fund-a-war-on-aging-)

</comment><comment><USER30> It really makes me _sick_ to my stomach that so many people spend the time and resources on "figuring out" aging and how to stop it. Humanity's #1 problem is overpopulation. So let's...make everyone...live longer??

We don't need to stop or slow down aging. We need to accept the fact that everything that's alive eventually dies. "When" is arbitrary (with the exception of people under 30 dying). Prolonging the inevitable is a waste of resources, and an enormous burden on society.

All these horrible diseases we get when we get older are a product of the fact that our bodies exist for so long. Normally, we'd just die, but modern medicine keeps the body alive so the mind can rot instead. _But at least you're alive!!!_ Also, if people are retiring at 65 and living to be 120, then everyone who is _actually productive_ has to support all these bags of living organic tissue hooked up to machines for another 60 years. For what purpose?

You're born. You grow up. You have children. You retire. Then you die, and you make room for everyone else. This is one thing we don't have to sit around questioning. Nobody deserves to live forever. This whole "I have to live longer!!" ego trip is sickening.

<comment><USER31> That's an interesting view, but I'm wondering about your response to some apparent consequences of that view.

Would you say that you think society should stop using as much life-prolonging medicine as it currently does, so that people die earlier? That would help with overpopulation, and it's the corollary to your view that society shouldn't make new life-prolonging medicines. Or do you think the current medicines are fine, but we shouldn't make any more? If so, then what makes the current level of medicine so special and desirable, compared to medicine a little stronger or weaker?

Aren't you on your own "ego trip" by letting yourself keep living? After all, aren't you part of the problem of overpopulation? Shouldn't you kill yourself, and make the earth that much better? Or is your view that you living is a necessary sacrifice, because you can hopefully convince many people to have less children or kill themselves, and it will be worth it overall? Or would you say that people who have already been born should keep living, but people who have not been born yet should be prevented from living, by encouraging people to have fewer children? If so, what's so special about the people who are already living compared to the people not yet living?

<comment><USER30> You bring up some excellent and thoughtful points. I'll try to respond to most of them. I think that resources spent in the goal of prolonging life are wasted resources. For instance, if you run a country that has two years of usable oil left, do you spend all of your time and resources searching for more oil, knowing full-well that it will run out again, or do you devote your resources to finding another source of energy? I believe that spending time and resources prolonging human life is time that could be spent fixing other problems we have. Cancer comes to mind.

You're basically asking me what's the point of life. My answer would have to be two-fold (although it's probably more of a spectrum). From a biological standpoint, it's to reproduce and spread my DNA. From a personal standpoint, my goal in life is to be happy without harming others. A somewhat selfish goal, yes, but one I think I share with many other people.

Killing myself would be a drop in the bucket as far as humanity is concerned, and if stopping overpopulation were my ultimate goal, I would do a lot better by using the life I was given to change the world thusly by convincing people to have less children. I don't believe new life shouldn't be created, but rather life would a lot better for everybody if there were an equilibrium between production and consumption.

As far as medicine is concerned, I think it has already gone too far. My grandfather is/was a great example. He had an aneurysm in his late 60s. He was rushed to the hospital and "saved," but over the course of 6 years, slowly degraded into a bag of mush. He would have moments of lucidity where he knew he was completely demented and understood the gravity of the fact that he was losing his mind, but most of the time he was a vegetable. His last years were spent in confusing agony. If you asked me, he really died the day he had his aneurysm. I know of many others that have shared this same fate.

Should we throw away what medical science has done in the last 100 years? No, I don't think so. Some people are just destined to be vegetables before they die.

My point is that this world is getting smaller and smaller. We're starting to realize that our resources are limited. It is in humanity's best interest to not spend resources prolonging life, but instead use those resources for making life better for the ones who are alive.

<comment><USER32> Your thinking - IMO - is affected by your experience with your grandfather, and I can understand that. But consider that for many people, myself included, the thought of dying in the future is a burden (not THAT big, in my case, but it's there) that we carry with us for a large part of our lives. On top of that there is the thought of our parents, spouses etc dying before us. I think that sucks more than the chance of life prolonging medicine going wrong. You know, VERY few people actually want to die even when they are debilitated by old age.

I don't want to have to die, and I don't want other people to have to die either. I would be delighted to spend as long as it takes solving the overpopulation problem once the problem of dying is dealt with.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Command line only CRM's? - <AUTHOR> Are there any? Like, customer relations management. The AND of the people who use CRMs and people who mainly use command line utilities is small, but it has to exist. <comment><USER2> That honestly sounds horrible. Your average CRM probably has a relatively complex data schema. Can you imagine expressing things that a CRM does in a single command line statement? Maybe a REPL would be realistic, but when you say command line do you mean a REPL or something like "crm --create-customer $name"

</comment><comment><USER3> I wasn't able to find any with a few searches. Your best bet might be something which wraps up the Salesforce.com REST APIs within a REPL-type environment. I believe there are generic interactive tools for working with REST APIs which would be a good base to start from.

</comment><comment><USER4> I doubt you will find any. The intersection between command line users and CRM users must be extremely small. Maybe you can find one that has a GUI plus command line support.

</comment><comment><USER5> Build a command line interface using an existing CRMs API.</comment>


Bill Clinton and George W. Bush - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hUOUNZrbBg <comment><USER2> Saw this awhile ago. The name of the video is egregiously inaccurate, but the content was good so I stayed to watch the whole thing. A lot of interesting tidbits from the Explainer-in-Chief, and W. Bush is as likeable a human being as always.</comment>


Scoreoff - easily organize pickup sports & group activities - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.scoreoff.android

<comment><AUTHOR> Chris - with Scoreoff, you can connect with your existing communities - <USER2> neighbors (we are building geo-fences for apartment communities), your colleagues, people from your college, etc - without any effort on your part. The argument is you don't have to meet complete strangers.

2) You don't have to join different groups (which is what people have to do on other sites) and you don't need to friend people (you can just use the communities). So it becomes that much easier to discover games/activities

3) It's free

4) It's very easy to create an activity and discuss things with people who are joining.

If you have an Android phone, please check it out and let me know what you think.

</comment><comment><USER3> How is it different from meetup ?</comment>


A Futures Site Coming to Bet on Movie Ticket Sales - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/11/business/media/11futures.html?ref=technology <comment><USER2> _"If the distributor shorts a $100 contract and the movie grosses $50 million, the distributor will make $50, thereby limiting the company's total losses from a film."_

From what they have said, this does not sound like a viable hedging strategy for those in production. There is unlikely to be enough contracts traded. Instead, it seems more like a gambling operation with a CFTC gambling shield. I'm surprised they did this, given how much general anger there still is regarding derivatives and speculation.

<comment><USER3> The two differences between financial speculation and gambling are your odds and whether you wear a fancy tie.

The odds are the more important one. If you can make statistical methods that show the risk of loss, you can then assign a premium to that risk and put it on the market. Whether it will get enough liquidity to get past the smalltime remains to be seen.

<comment><USER4> At least in NY state, the exact odds and payouts are published. So you can certainly assign a premium to the risk involved, and you can do so exactly.

But since everyone knows the odds, the lotto market is perfectly efficient and no one can win in the long run -- this is what makes it gambling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I remember playing the old Hollywood Stock Exchange (non-cash version) back in middle school. This seems like a fun idea, but how do you rule out the heaps of insider information that exist?

</comment><comment><USER6> I am curious if the technique described in this paper (<http://www.cam.cornell.edu/~sharad/papers/searchpreds.pdf>) would give an advantage over the long run. I would imagine that if the majority of bets are placed for entertainment value based on guesses, this could be a quick way to rake in some dough.

</comment><comment><USER7> Seems like Netflix might have some insight into this market.

<comment><USER8> Definately. 12M Customers can add movies to their queue prior to it even coming out at the theater. I would wager this is substantially predictive. Netflix could either bet themselves, or as perhaps more likely, sell this information directly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This will certainly have a positive impact on the quality of films coming out of Hollywood.</comment>


Web 2.0 is vulnerable to attack (nasty AJAX/JSON exploit) - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=484BC88B-630F-4E74-94E9-8D89DD0E6606 <comment><USER2> This article's not very clear on what's going on. Here's the actual advisory: <http://www.fortifysoftware.com/servlet/downloads/public/JavaScript_Hijacking.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER3> This is far from new, but it is a problem. Ironically, the old school SOAP 1.1 way of doing things (with a header and a post) is immune from this.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't JSON and the script tag way of calling things explicitly designed to DEFEAT the same origin policy? If the entire point of your data transfer method is to make it possible for anyone to request your data, you should only send data that everyone should be able to see =P

</comment><comment><USER4> It would be fun to take bets on which of the 12 toolkits will fix the vulnerability first.</comment>


The Time I Got Recruited to Collude with the Russians - <AUTHOR> https://www.lawfareblog.com/time-i-got-recruited-collude-russians <comment><USER2> I am kinda surprised that he bailed out on the grounds that it would help the Russians. If you look on what basis journalist make decision whatever something is newsworthy (or at least claim to do, as there are quite curious exceptions) there is one thing that never enters the picture - intentions of the source. Author of this piece have quite strong feeling that continuing this work would be wrong, though at no point he gives any supporting argument why it is so.

</comment><comment><USER3> Maybe I am missing something, but to this sentence:

>In the end, I never saw the actual materials they'd been given, and to this day, I don't know whether there were genuine emails, or whether Smith and his associates were deluding themselves.

it should probably be appended "thus I have no idea if there was any connection, direct or indirect, to Russia or Russians citizens, but I thought to make a nice title citing this perfectly unsubstantiated obsession I have with them."</comment>


Carlsberg glues beer cans together as it abandons plastic rings - <AUTHOR> https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/09/07/carlsberg-glues-beer-cans-together-becoming-first-brewery-abandon/ <comment><USER2> As someone from the Netherlands, I find it surprising these plastic rings still exist. We don't have it for many years and use well-recycable cardboard.

<comment><USER3> For trays, yes, but 6-packs are shrinkwrapped in plastic: [https://i.imgur.com/VmHhQph.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/VmHhQph.jpg)

<comment><USER4> The Shrink wrapping is far less harmful for wildlife. It's a question of what forces are being applied and the lifetime of the material, not the amount of material.

<comment><USER5> Are there any serious studies that show that shrinkwrap is far less harmful than plastic rings ?

<comment><USER4> Yes. "One study by International Coastal Cleanups and used at Clemson University indicates that about 5% (10 instances in 443) of trapped wildlife was entangled in plastic six rings."

Those rings are vastly less than 5% of plastic production.

PS: Recycling streams are not really relevant for wildlife as a trash dump is also generally effective. The issue is they are often used outdoors and the plastic fails to enter the trash stream.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here in Denmark I haven't seen cans joined together using plastic rings - Carlsberg or any other. The common format for six cans to be plastic wrapped as a whole unit.

As there's a deposit on cans they're normally collected, but any packing might be left behind. These glued cans will both save on plastic waste and reduce litter.

<comment><USER7> It's being trialed in England so far. in Denmark don't they still just use the paper wrapping. Isn't that just as good?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why not just put them in cardboard boxes like with sodas?

<comment><USER9> In the UK, beer sold in larger quantities than a 4-pack or 6-pack tends to be fully boxed minus the plastic rings.

<comment><USER10> I think that is the case in the US too. And beer bottles are normally in cardboard carriers too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The little mermaid statue they show, was it actually placed next to the little mermaid? I never heard anything about a second statue, and here in Denmark, anything that involves the little mermaid is usually big news.

<comment><USER12> Another article says "Alice Eriksen, the granddaughter of the Little Mermaid's original sculptor, Edvard Eriksen, revealed the installation to the public today.

The mermaid "canstruction" will be on display to the public in the Carlsberg Visitor Centre in Copenhagen from Friday 7 September 2018." [https://ciwm- journal.co.uk/carlsberg-makes-waves-to-reduce-p...](https://ciwm- journal.co.uk/carlsberg-makes-waves-to-reduce-plastic-waste/)

<comment><USER11> That clears up my question: It wasn't exhibited next to the original mermaid, which is why there was no commotion about it in local or national news.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Maybe I am just too old, but I'm quite surprised to see no mention here of the Burns Omni-net from the Simpsons episode The Old Man and the Lisa[1] - "It sweeps the sea clean"

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

</comment><comment><USER14> Anything would be better than the hard plastic rings I'm finding on East Coast craft beer lately. I've apparently not discovered the trick to separate them. I'm always afraid I'm going to tear a fingernail when it lets go.

<comment><USER15> You're not supposed to pry them off at all. You just sort of pull and rotate the can keeping a hand on the rest. There's a bit of a trick but they're not that bad but it shouldn't involve your fingernails at all.

[https://youtu.be/1u1q4FRruEc?t=37](https://youtu.be/1u1q4FRruEc?t=37)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> do these have handles on top to help carry? it's one of the nice things for 6-packs, whether with plastic rings, plastic tops, or sold in cardboard.

that said, I think I still prefer crowlers over normal cans at this point.

<comment><USER11> I checked the first 3 google results for crowler, and they all tell me it's better than growlers and show be pictures of large cans of beer.

So, what is a crowler, and how is it different from a can of beer?

<comment><USER16> It's a large can of beer.

Most places that sell crowlers pour fresh draft in, and can on site. It typically means either very fresh beer (the Crowler I picked up yesterday was from a very fresh beer kegged a few days ago) or specialty beers that won't get distributed in a way that normal consumers can get it.

A beer correctly crowled will last for quite a while (months) if stored correctly.

edited to add: a crowled beer is filled all the way to the top, sometimes purged with co2, which is what helps reduce oxidation - compared to a growler, which usually has an air gap.

<comment><USER17> Oh wow. There is an old phrase "rush the growler" in English and I wonder if this word "crowler" is related.

EDIT: Ok yeah, I see it's "can growler".

<comment><USER18> "growler" in the UK means something _very_ different these days!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Can the cans still be recycled without having to remove the glue somehow?

<comment><USER20> Most cans are already lined with epoxy, so I don't think a little more glue will be a problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Modern plastic rings are bio-degradable thou...

<comment><USER22> That only helps if the plastic actually get recycled. Biodegradable plastics don't degrade fast enough not to be detrimental to wildlife.

> thou...

I think you mean 'though'.

<comment><USER21> Maybe. I don't believe anyone has really measured it. They've been on the market since the early 90's and I don't think anyone uses non-degradable ones anymore.

[http://www.hicone.com/index.php?id=39](http://www.hicone.com/index.php?id=39) says they can degrade as quickly as a month but they don't mention the upper bound.

(I did mean though.)

<comment><USER15> The problem is those require UV light to break down which means a) they won't break down in land fills and b) won't break down super well in water because it blocks UV light pretty well. Also it's just breaking down into smaller bits of plastic so it's not solving another issue with is the increasing amount of plastic in the ocean, those small pieces can still cause trouble for wildlife as they eat it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Has anyone used this yet? Do the cans get unstuck too easily?

<comment><USER24> tldr: nope.

The've arrived in the shops in Norway. One row of three cans are glued at both bottom and top. The two rows are glued only at the bottom. The handle keeps the rows securely together. The glue is some sort of hot glue used in liberal amounts. If anything, the boxes are harder than before to get loose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Or, you know ... use cardboard and bottles.

<comment><USER26> cans are cheaper and easier to recycle, as well as being lighter to transport

<comment><USER27> Cans are lighter, but glass bottles are far better for recycling. They can be simply washed out and reused many many times before you need to melt them down.

<comment><USER28> And taste better.

But for business its all about cost. Cheaper material, easier to control in manufacturing line, cheaper to move around.

Can it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'm skeptical that that many of them are getting into the ocean. I wonder if it would be more effective to put a UUID on them and tell the public that if one of these is found in the ocean a full investigation will be launched. Not just for reprisal, but to develop "user stories" about how this shit gets into the ocean. If they determine that you dumped it , then you get fined to pay for 10^5 lbs of trash to be removed from the sea. If there's even a little FUD of getting caught (via UUID) I think it would result in a huge reduction in littering.

<comment><USER30> The plastic in the oceans is overwhelmingly from the unsorted trash of east Asia. Europe and North America contribute very small amounts.

[https://reason.com/blog/2018/04/22/earth-day-and-the- plastic...](https://reason.com/blog/2018/04/22/earth-day-and-the-plastics- pollution-pro)

<comment><USER31> Living in Vietnam, I concur. It is literally the culture to throw stuff everywhere and not care about it. Someone else will pick it up. Except someone else doesn't and there is no way deal with that since there is so much trash.

Outside my apartment, there is a river. It used to be more of an open sewer. Eventually the government started sending a barge with two guys on it down the river multiple times a day to pick up the trash. The barge gets maybe about 5% of the trash it passes since the river is much wider than the barge. Because there is a daily tide, all the water in the river flows out to the larger Saigon river... which heads to the oceans.

I wish I could post pictures here easily... I have lots of them. It is everywhere in this country. It is sad.

<comment><USER32> When in India I was buying a drink and asked the shopkeeper if he could throw away my old can, he literally threw it out the window.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Meanwhile in the plastic rings factory...

Pointy-haired boss: "Carlsberg just cancelled the order for the 10 million plastic rings we produced, they're gonna glue the cans together instead!"

Mid-level manager: "Oh, that's bad. What should we now do with all the rings?"

Pointy-haired boss: "This sucks! Might as well dump them in the ocean!"

Mid-level manager: "Ok!"

<comment><USER34> Why are they pointy-haired..?

<comment><USER35> "The Pointy-haired Boss (often abbreviated to just PHB or "The Boss") is Dilbert's boss in the Dilbert comic strip." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointy- haired_Boss](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointy-haired_Boss)</comment></comment></comment>