Python goto implemented with system trace function (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/georgexsh/ede5163a294ced53c3e2369ccaa392cc <comment><USER2> This uses sys._getframe()[0], a private function which appears to be officially supported by CPython but is not guaranteed to exist in other interpreters. Needless to say, you probably shouldn't use this in any serious capacity, even if you're using CPython.

That said... I wonder what it would take to add support for labels. Jumping back to a previous location would be trivial; just create a sister function to associate the line with some unique string. But is there any way to register a label for a line that hasn't been executed?

I know CPython normally precompiles modules instead of literally interpreting them line-by-line, but I've never seen any code that interfaces with the precompiler itself. Does CPython support anything like preprocessor commands that might make it possible to support future labels?

You could easily wrap the interpreter with a custom preprocessor, but that's boring.

[0] [https://docs.python.org/3/library/sys.html#sys._getframe](https://docs.python.org/3/library/sys.html#sys._getframe)

<comment><USER3> Python being python, can't you swap out the import machinery and change which compile function is called, alternatively call your own preprocessor before compiling?

<comment><USER4> Yup. You can basically write your own language with different syntax and get python to treat it like any other python code. Hy is a language which works this way: [https://github.com/hylang/hy](https://github.com/hylang/hy) (see this part of their documentation for how the user can use this: [https://docs.hylang.org/en/master/language/interop.html#usin...](https://docs.hylang.org/en/master/language/interop.html#using- hy-from-python))

I think goto has been implemented in a few different ways in python. Here's another example which abuses existing syntax and edits the bytecode of the function after its compiled: [https://pypi.org/project/goto- statement/](https://pypi.org/project/goto-statement/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I had to click Report Abuse on this Gist.

</comment><comment><USER6> Now do the COME FROM function from INTERCAL.

<comment><USER7> [http://entrian.com/goto/](http://entrian.com/goto/)

        from goto import comefrom

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I tried to read through this at least 4 times today, and my brain keeps going between "Woah thats neat!" and "WTF JUST DONT DO THAT!"

</comment><comment><USER9> goto to a line number is not the very nice... adding a new line will mess up all the previous gotos

<comment><USER10> You're getting downvotes from the people who don't know that you are 100% right: goto is usually with _labels_ , not line number, for exactly the reason you point out.

This Gist is still super cool, though.

<comment><USER6> Further back, BASIC lets you go to a line number .. but the line numbers are explicit and not required to be consecutive. In fact you'd routinely leave holes in the numbering in order to insert an extra line without breaking it. Better systems offered a "renumber" function. Others .. didn't.

<comment><USER10> >BASIC lets you go to a line number

QBasic let you use either a line number _or_ a label, I believe they only kept line numbers after labels were introduced for backwards compatibility.

I know I'm veering way off topic but for as much disdain as BASICs receive, I really do feel like coding up a simple game was much easier for teenage-me in QBasic than it was in Python with pygame, for whatever reason.

<comment><USER6> I think a lot of people have reported having that experience, and I think it's been deeply under-investigated by programming language researchers.

<comment><USER11> My first programming experience was QBASIC. Even if it's not a good programming pattern, I think GOTO is a great way to let a novice programmer "discover" the idea of loops and functions for themselves. Although it's error prone, it's still very intuitive for someone with no programming background.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I consider this harmful.

</comment><comment><USER13> So cute. What are some use-cases for these reflective features?

<comment><USER14> I once implemented the "command pattern" in order to have undo in my app. Basically you have to ensure that you only modify your model from command objects, and never directly from UI callbacks. To ensure this, I created a decorator that walked the stack, and asserted that the call originated in a subclass of `Command`. Then I wrapped all setters on the model with this decorator. This was really helpful during development for weeding out cases where Undo didn't work correctly. In the release, you could disable the check so there would be no performance penalty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's fairly easy to implement goto using exceptions. At least it will be all pythonic (I don't think it will become less ugly). So I don't know why this implementation has to be considered at all.

How to do this: create your ExceptionGoTo class which will be handled on high level function and add callback as exception parameter, in catch you can call it.

I'm not saying that it will be exactly goto to certain line, but logically it will behave as you suppose to use goto.

</comment><comment><USER16> Github has a "Report abuse" button. I really need to press it :-)</comment>


Parsing PDFs at Scale with Node.js, PDF.js, and Lunr.js - <AUTHOR> http://garysieling.com/blog/parsing-pdfs-at-scale-with-node-js-pdf-js-and-lunr-js

<comment> spicer-matthews Great write up. Just what I was after. Thanks for the share.</comment>


Surface Pro 3 Review - <AUTHOR> http://www.anandtech.com/show/8077/microsoft-surface-pro-3-review <comment><USER2> I agree with Anandtech the Pro 3 is almost there, but not quite. The Surface Pro 1 sold me on the idea of an everything device. It had its limitations, but it worked as a laptop, desktop, and a tablet. Each scenario had its limits and the most limited one was the laptop perspective. As a tablet it worked great with movies, browsing the web, light gaming, etc. As a desktop it was powerful enough to run the adobe suite on an external monitor. But as a laptop the kickstand and keyboard were not ideal.

The Surface Pro 3 removes some tablet usability and improves on the laptop experience. I am not sure if this is ideal. I recently upgraded from the Pro 1 to the Pro 3. I am having a hard time using the 12" screen as a tablet in bed and on the couch. Using the device with pen in hand is harder due to the larger screen real estate. Even using the Metro side of things is more cumbersome due to the larger screen. Tiles and settings on touch interface are too far apart now.

After a few days, I have concluded that the Pro 1 was a better "tablet" with the ability to be a desktop and laptop. The Pro 3 is more of a laptop/tablet hybrid with a focus on laptop-ability. Even with all the new enhancements, I think I will return the device and purchase a Pro 2 instead.

Edit: I used the Pro 1 as my main machine for almost a year. The pen was useful in photoshop/illustrator. I also used it for gaming; Fifa 2013, Civ 5, and some indie games.

<comment><USER3> The article makes it sound like there's no place at all to attach the pen on the Pro 3, is that true? I'm a heavy pen user w/ my Pro 1, that would be a dealbreaker for me.

<comment><USER2> True. It comes with an attachable pen holder, but it is held on by glue. I do miss the pen's ability to attach to the Surface. The eraser nub is now a button on the pen. The top of the pen activates OneNote. The pen does feel more durable and better in hand. I would check it out in person.

<comment><USER4> I kept losing the pen on my Surface Pro because I needed power more than the pen. Very annoying.

<comment><USER5> Now that it doesn't attach there, I think you'll develop new habits to avoid losing it in the future. Happened to me too because the pen was tiny, black and ... less useful.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I bought an aftermarket pen and promptly list it, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'll post what I said in the comments of the article.

Well, this is the device basket in which I'm throwing all of my eggs. My mobile devices are currently a 2006 Dell 17" laptop running Windows 7 and an HP Touchpad running CM10.1. I've been waiting to upgrade until the right "hybrid" device came along, and this is the one I'm banking on, albeit the i7/512 model.

My usage is a little atypical. My work requires me to occasionally spend time on construction sites creating sketches and recording measurements. I am hoping this device will allow me to skip the full size (24" x 36" or larger) architectural prints and the paper sketch pad and simply carry everything on the SP3. After I finish on site, I am often going back to a hotel room for the night, or spending the next few hours in an airport/airplane. I make heavy use of AutoCAD, and being able to make tweaks in the field, or even the hotel, should be amazingly helpful. I don't expect to be at full productivity, but then again, even on a typical laptop, running AutoCAD on one small screen will never be as productive as running on 2 or 3 large desktop displays.

In theory, the SP3 should be perfect for me. I do worry about the batter life though. I suspect that I might need to pick up an external battery pack for those times I'm on site without access to a wall outlet. Time will tell, I guess. I also think about general durability. I am generally not on fully active construction sites with lots of dirt and dust, but I will be in environments that are not office-like. So we'll see if there is some sort of rugged case or screen protection available for those scenarios.

All in all, I am really looking forward to getting my SP3 in August. I just wish they would release it already since I could really use it mid-July. But I've waited this long, so what's another couple of weeks.

Thanks for the nice review. This is the one I've been waiting for, and it didn't disappoint.

</comment><comment><USER7> Just got mine yesterday (typing on it for this post). There are some problems on it I wasn't expecting.

\- Drawing apps like Fresh Paint don't work sometimes when on split screen. By doesn't work, I mean it won't recognize the pen on start up. I would have to full screen the app, use the pen, then I can use the pen on split screen.

\- Apps aren't adjusted to split screens correctly. The resizing of the apps gets rid of functions like creating a new page that can only be seen when app is in full screen.

\- Chrome Windows 8 mode sucks. That thing resized to a quarter of the screen, blacked out the other 3/4ths and it took me 30 minutes to figure out how to undo it because the menu button on Chrome was blacked out. Figured out that they were still there, just not visable.

\- Chrome sometimes disables my trackpad click recongniztion? I can activate links and tabs via the touch screen, but not by clicking the trackpad. All was good after restarting Chrome.

\- Tablet does not recognize that I took off the keyboard sometimes. This causes orientation lock. I would have to reattached and detach keyboard.

\- Trackpad kinda stuttering with movements. Sometimes jumps around so not very precise. This happens more when using on my lap for some reason..

\- Changing screen orientation is sorta laggy, definitely more than a 1 second change. I have the 8gb/256gb version.

\- I'm pretty sure Flux crashes this tablet. Froze it twice in 30 minutes after install. Perfectly fine now after uninstall.

I'm actually getting used to Windows Metro...strange. This is the first Windows machine I bought myself after 4 years. I was a Windows user for most of my life until college.

EDIT: Pen holder could have been designed better. Everyone at the store trying it out was confused it wasn't there. It's basically a stick on piece that comes with the keyboard, but none of the floor models have them at the Microsoft store. It's also uncomfortable placing the pen in there. I know it has to be tight so it doesn't fall out, but it's a struggle every time. Probably takes a good 3 seconds to fully place it in. If you don't think that's a long time wait until you're leaving a meeting and everyone is waiting on you. Bad user experience on the pen holder.

\- Too heavy to hold for tablet use. Wasn't really expecting it, but have heard reviews about it, and this is the lightest pro version too. Good thing the kick stand can rest on my knees (actually pretty good for posture with knees bent because you're neck won't be pointed down the entire time).

<comment><USER8> Genuinely wondering, why Chrome? IE11 has a really awesome touch UX, in the metro version, IMO. Did you try it and dismiss it, or not even consider it given IE's track record?

<comment><USER7> Ecosystem traps people if I want to be cynical. I do everything on Chrome from personal to work, all my favorites/bookmarks are synced through all my hardware.

Even if there was a sync option for IE to Chrome accounts this is just extra effort. You put too many steps in front of me I'm just not gonna do it (yes, I'm lazy, but UX should consider the lazy).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was jhust on an airplane trip and watced with some amusement my aisle-mate fumbling with a new surface pro.

When first using it on his lap, the screen kept flopping around as the kickstand slid off his legs--he eventually used the back of the seat in front of him to prop it up a bit.

Then when the tray came down, he clearly could not get a comfortable typing angle.

At some point, he dispensed with the keyboad and used it as a tablet with the kickstand on the tray, and that looked like a pretty good set up.

I asked him if he liked it near the end of the flight, and alas he said he plans to dispense with tablets all together and go back to laptops.

<comment><USER10> I was using a laptop on a plane one time and the person in front of me put their seat back without even turning around to see what was going on. It cracked the screen hinge, but luckily everything still worked.

So now I'll never bring anything but a tablet on the plane.

<comment><USER11> You just have to be careful you don't wedge your screen up into where the tray table folds up into.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> We also reviewed the Surface Pro 3 in our labs, looking at things like screen performance and battery life among other things. You can find all of the graphs under "Science & Testing"

[http://tablets.reviewed.com/content/microsoft-surface- pro-3-...](http://tablets.reviewed.com/content/microsoft-surface-pro-3-tablet- review)

</comment><comment><USER13> The Surface Pro 3 seems an awesome device for students. Being able to read PDF textbooks, hand-write notes while using diagram/drawing tools, browse the internet, follow along with (and write on/annotate) lecture slides, word processing with a physical keyboard, writing on PDF practice exams, etc, all in a single device is extremely convenient.

<comment><USER14> I have been using the SP1 as a student for over a year now and love it. I print all PDF hand-outs to OneNote and annotate them with notes from class. Everything is indexed so I can search across 5 quarters worth of notes in an instant and access them from any device.

I'm in business school (don't hate :) ) so most of our content is in the form of HBS case studies and diagramming and drawing graphs/charts is pretty common.

I see a lot of people using Notability on iPads. If I could get a Wacom or NTrig active stylus on an iPad, that would be sweet, but alas, not possible.

<comment><USER5> If you haven't seen it in person, you'll love the new 3:2 aspect ratio. I want all my laptop/tablet devices in that ratio in future. So productive :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Just a note: I too have noticed that my trackpad (on my HP envy laptop) will sometimes lose 2-finger scrolling or any multitouch support, usually it's just in chrome but sometimes it'll be for eveything. I have a touchscreen as well so it's not as big a deal but often the only way I've found to fix the problem is to restart the machine.

I'm assuming its a driver problem possibly with symantic. I'm dreading calling HP support about it because the first 4 or five layers seem to be ignorant knowledge-base-only-readers. (They really are only about as effective as google. They'll recognize a keyword and use that as the basis for their response. No matter how insignificant that one word is.)

<comment><USER16> This happened on my Zenbook prime as well. You need to restart the synaptics driver, which was very annoying.

I got rid of it and just went with a Macbook Air. It's just better in so many ways.

<comment><USER15> right except that my laptop costed ~$700 and had a dedicated graphics card and touchscreen while the macbook has nothing at that price point.

<comment><USER17> Well, you still get what you pay for. Is there a PC laptop with a decent trackpad experience at any price point?

<comment><USER18> Does a macbook has touchscreen at any price-point ? At least with the windows machine if you have trouble with trackpad, touchscreen will come to rescue. Its insane how people get hung up one thing and talk as if that is central. When Apple released Retina branded hi-res, its all about resolution, now that Macbooks are not hi-res than their competition somehow its not that important anymore.

Dude, its just a tool - use it if you can. Your reality or competence of usage of a tool is always subjective, so lets all chill and pick the marbles we like respectively.

<comment><USER17> > Does a macbook has touchscreen at any price-point ?

Why do I care? I barely use the touchscreen on my 16k RMB X1, and I numb my pointer finger on its precise yet painful trackpoint because _the trackpad is useless_. Without the trackpoint, I would have to give up, since the touch screen really doesn't work for programming.

> Dude, its just a tool - use it if you can.

A tool that doesn't work, and I'm pissed off about it. This is not a pissing contest, but about having a tool that doesn't suck.

> Your reality or competence of usage of a tool is always subjective, so lets > all chill and pick the marbles we like respectively.

I use PCs because of my work. But whenever I use my wife's macbook, I'm absolutely floored by the trackpad...that actually works...why should designers get better equipment than programmers?

People that settle for crappy tools make me unhappy.

<comment><USER18> Your argument has merit, but my point is you are overblowing the importance of trackpad. I would rather have the trackpad that is as capable as MBA on SP3, but I am willing to compromise there given other aspects of SP3 as well as, at least in my case as a programmer I used touch to compensate for some shortcomings of trackpad.

No this absolutely is not a pissing contest.

<comment><USER17> The track pad is very important to me, a working one is very useful, and who wants to carry around a mouse (and find a table to use one) or suffer from guerilla arm using touch all the time. If it is important to you, you can only get a MacBook.

<comment><USER18> [http://laptops.reviewed.com/content/asus-zenbook-ux301la- dh7...](http://laptops.reviewed.com/content/asus-zenbook-ux301la-dh71t-laptop- review)

Asus Zenbook UX 301 has the best touchpad (according to the site). So, I guess if you are objectively looking for a touchpad - you do have option.

<comment><USER17> Can't wait to try it out, hopefully they have one at Zhongguancun already somewhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Has anyone load-tested that hinge at 150° extension? I'm concerned the weight of my hand while drawing might destroy the kickstand, or at least the hinges.

</comment><comment><USER20> How good is the speech recognition Windows 8? I've become a fan of Siri on the iPhone, pretty good. I get the feeling that were pretty close to very accurate speech recognition. Between Microsoft, Google, and Apple I think we're going to get over the line really soon. This post was done entirely with Siri. The missing words or her fault. :-)

<comment><USER21> just use siri then [http://myechoapp.com/](http://myechoapp.com/)

<comment><USER20> I'd like a slightly improved Siri, and almost no one wants to screw around with one device to dictate to another device. I simply want to say "Siri|Google|Cortana..." then start dictating.

With iPhone sitting on my coffee table: "Siri, display on Apple TV... open Evernote.. New Note ... "

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'd love to get one of these, but I simply cannot fathom investing in hardware on which Linux will not run. I suppose it would work in a VM, but .. really .. what a pity that its so locked down and unworkable to change ones OS in this day and age. Register this one protest non-buy, fwiw ..

<comment><USER10> Apparently it's really easy to install Ubuntu [1] on a Surface Pro 3.

"...you'll find that most things work out of the box. WiFi works, but only 2.4GHz networks can be detected. The touchpad on the Type Cover works, but the keyboard does not. You'll need to activate the virtual keyboard in the accessibility setting to get much of anything done, and Ubuntu's virtual keyboard is lacking in desirable features. There are some third party alternatives you can install, but the initial experience here will likely have you scrambling for a USB keyboard.

The pen works as a pointer and as a left-click when you press down, but because Bluetooth does not work out of the box you lose the buttons on the pen."

[1] [http://www.geek.com/microsoft/linux-users-rejoice-heres- ubun...](http://www.geek.com/microsoft/linux-users-rejoice-heres-ubuntu-on- the-surface-pro-3-1594864/)

<comment><USER23> That's a big improvement, then. The original Surface Pro was awful, with serious problems [1] in the mwifiex driver. I also found its wireless support was unstable when bluetooth was also in use, even in Windows 8, which was the final deal breaker for me.

I would recommend waiting on adopting any Surface devices until there is general acclaim that they got the hardware right, beyond a reviewer who just used it for a few days then rushed to press.

[1] [https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=69661](https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=69661)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> OK mine decided to shut down itself for the second time ever since I had it. Full battery charging, No BSOD, not even useless crash report after boot. I'm done, eBay there it goes, bye.

</comment><comment><USER25> The review was sounding good until it mentions the high speed camera for measuring pen performance... And do not include videos, not which models were tested in the table selling the 3 as faster.

Was it the i5? i7?

</comment><comment><USER26> To resolve the lack of edge gestures when the screen bezel is covered, they should configure the TrackPad to also work with edge gestures.

<comment><USER27> It does - at least sliding from the left or right. I'm not sure if there are others I don't use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Microsoft, stop bombarding us with your ads, you've already missed the train even after your 3rd try.

<comment><USER29> I have been a linux user for the past 10 years. Didn't event want to bother with Windows for all that time.

This machine is the only thing that will get me to use windows again (if i dont end up installing linux on it)

As far as hardware i believe this is superb machine. They might have lost the train, but if they keep it up the version 4 will be much much better.

They just need to continue improving the software

<comment><USER28> The real problem is innovation. Don't forget Apple iPad and Android-pads are also evolving too. Until that's changed, Sadly, MS will always be playing me- too.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How should I go about learning Emacs? - <AUTHOR>

I've been a VIM user for a decent period of time. I'm not super advanced with motions, end up working in non-VIM environments most of the time, (with VIM bindings, such as with IntelliJ) and vimscript is almost completely unknown to me. And yes, I do know about EVIL mode.
But Emacs is something I've looked at over the years, something looks interesting but every time I try to use it I bounce off of it pretty hard. The best I've been able to do is a custom theme with EVIL mode on top of some configuration pack that someone has put together. It was usable, but every so often I would accidentally bump some arcane key combination and nothing would work anymore, or I'd have to put some limited knowledge of Emacs commands together with VIM commands to do something, etc. It just ended up being a pain that I didn't really know how to use, and I would go back to the comfort of VIM, or Sublime Text, IntelliJ, whatever.
So that's why I'm asking here: what's the best way for someone who's never really done anything with Emacs (and only limited things with LISPs) to get started, and hopefully not bounce off of it. (though I'll probably still install EVIL mode, because VIM text motions are a thing of beauty) <comment><USER2> There is a link on the frontpage about learning emacs right now: [http://sachachua.com/blog/2013/05/how-to-learn-emacs-a- hand-...](http://sachachua.com/blog/2013/05/how-to-learn-emacs-a-hand-drawn- one-pager-for-beginners/)

</comment><comment><USER3> A good reason to learn Emacs is to program Common Lisp or Clojure. Editing Lisp it really shines; otherwise I'd say the risk of procrastination while learning Emacs is huge.</comment>


Security researcher may be the intruder behind apples developer center shutdown - <AUTHOR> http://appadvice.com/appnn/2013/07/security-researcher-may-be-the-intruder-behind-apples-developer-center-shutdown

<comment><USER2> There is a big possibility.</comment>


Please Review: A side project to help friends plan events together - <AUTHOR>

I've been working in my spare time (nights/weekends) to build a web app for event planning between friends.  Basically, it's for those times you want to get together, but aren't sure when, where, or even who will be there.
I'd love to get feedback--what works, what doesn't, and how I can make the overall experience more intuitive and fun.
Please try it out!
http://synnk.com <comment><USER2> Clicky - <http://synnk.com>

Seems like another take on event planning and your example really explains it well. Not sure if the design (especially the colors) really works well with the type of service though... grey/black/dark red kind of seems anti-social to me.

On a side discussion, I wonder how hard it is to get traction with apps like this? How often would someone use this and remember to use it next time (assuming they found it somehow the first time).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link.

As for the question about traction, I guess I'll find out? There certainly have been a number of attempts to knock off Evite, so I'm guessing it's not that easy. This isn't quite the same idea, but it's obviously close.

I personally find it's nice to be able to create an event by just sending an email. I have email@example.com in my contact list, so maybe that will provide some stickiness.</comment></comment>


NASA TV feed of 10:31 pm PDT Curiosity landing - <AUTHOR> http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/ustream.html?curiosity <comment><USER3> I was at JPL when this mission was first being planned. I actually sat in on a meeting where the sky crane was first being discussed. I remember thinking to myself at the time that there was no way that it would ever work. I'm very happy to say that I was wrong. Congrats to everyone on the MSL team!

</comment><comment><USER4> Take a moment to consider what you're actually seeing here: a truly historic event.

This mission is so expensive, and has involved the figurative blood and tears of so many extremely talented people, that it will probably always be remembered in the history of space travel, whether or not the landing itself will be successful.

(It could be argued that the value of having so many millions of people watch or follow this (whether now or later), and have the associated mind-expanding thoughts and possible subsequent ideas or decisions, is itself worth the price of this mission.)

</comment><comment><USER5> I noticed on the NASA TV schedule that the "Public/Education Channels" have commentary, and that the "Media Channel" has a "Clean Feed with Mission Audio Only".

The link given is for the public stream (<http://www.ustream.tv/nasahdtv>); the media stream is here (<http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasa-media-channel>) and should be HD as well.

<comment><USER6> The clean feed is awesome: it is quite funny how banal some of the talk between the engineers really is: people reading out trace logs, complaining about IT problems, asking each other how to open console windows they accidentally closed, asking people to email them estimates, state machine changes...

<comment><USER5> You don't get the cheering, though...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Curiosity is the rover for the Mars Science Laboratory, launched 11/26/2011.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Science_Laboratory>

Purpose of the MSL is:

* Determine whether Mars could ever have supported life

* Study the climate of Mars

* Study the geology of Mars

* Plan for a human mission to Mars

<comment><USER8> One major thesis of MSL/Curiosity is that sample return missions are hard. Taking a jaunt over to Mars, collecting samples from various locations, then shipping them all back to Earth is not something we can accomplish right now - so Curiosity has been designed as the next best thing.

Take a look at the instruments section of that Wikipedia article. Curiosity is crammed with every sensor and analysis tool they could possibly fit.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Science_Laboratory#Instrum...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Science_Laboratory#Instruments)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> There were about 240,000 concurrent users on the web feed at touchdown. But not a single TV news channel was covering the event live that I could find.

<comment><USER9> ustream was showing an even higher number of 11.4m viewers

<comment><USER10> That is total views on the NASA ustream channel

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The BadAstronomy folks have started a google hangout covering this event:

        http://www.youtube.com/user/universetoday?v=wrJT1d1BKhw

Some interesting discussion going on there now; highly recommended.

</comment><comment><USER11> what's up with all the "what does it mean for the nation"? It's a huge step for the humanity, not only the US. And the actual rover is filled with instruments from all over the world. From wiki:

> ChemCam ... developed by the Los Alamos National Laboratory and French CESR

> Alpha-particle X-ray spectrometer ... APXS was developed by Canadian Space > agency.

> Sample analysis at Mars ... was developed by Goddard Space flight center, > the Laboratoire Inter-Universitaire des Systèmes Atmosphériques (LISA) > (jointly operated by France's CNRS and some Parisian universities) and > Honeybee Robotics, along with many additional external partners.

> Radiation assessment detector ... was developed by Southwest Research > Institute (SwRI) and the extraterrestrial physics group at Christian- > Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Germany

> Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons ... provided by the Russian Federal Space Agency

> Rover environmental monitoring station ... provided by the Spanish Ministry > of Education and Science

<comment><USER12> The US paid for the vast majority and are responsible for getting this to Mars. The crazy landing, and $2.5 billion at risk on a project with a 30% historic success rate, wase not shared. US total annual space spending is about $60 billion a year. The entire rest of the world combined is only about $22. The entire EU is under $6 billion.

This is an American achievement. If you aren't from the US, you should try to encourage your government to step up. If everyone committed at US levels by GDP, annual global space spending would be about $240 billion instead of $82 billion. Biomedical research is the same way.

<comment><USER13> NASA's budget is about 18B, not all of which is space related. Where does your other 42B come from?

<comment><USER12> The total 2010 US Space budget was $64.6B. The entire rest of the world combined spent only $22.5B. NASA's 2010 budget was $18.7B, 83% of the spending for the rest of the world. The Air Force Space Command is the remainder, they run many projects, including GPS.

<comment><USER13> Thanks for the info, but shouldn't we be comparing civilian space budgets? Obviously dual use projects like GPS should be included but most of that 40B+ is purely military in nature.

<comment><USER12> It would be almost impossible to get a reliable estimate for other countries, most do not have separate civilian and military space programs like the US. For example, the ESA is building Galileo, a positioning system similar to GPS, primarily for strategic military needs. The Russians and the Chinese, who make up almost the entire remainder of global space spending after the EU, spend quite a bit on military space, but there is not reliable data. In fact, there is basically no data on Chinese spending at all, it's an industry estimate of their spending based on outside observations. In addition, there is some crossover each way. Hubble, in particular, received substantial benefit from military research into spy satellites, not to mention the recent gift of two space telescopes to NASA from NRO. At best it's unclear how to decouple the spending in the US, and nearly impossible internationally. I believe going with the totals is fair, as the approximate civilian to military ratio would be pretty close internationally, given the obvious military implications of space, like ICBM's and spying, the interchangeable nature of the fundamental research in each field (e.g. ICBM guidance systems research can be applied to landing on Mars, spy satellites are space telescopes if you turn them around), and the countries involved.

<comment><USER13> I see a company called Euroconsult publishes estimates of governmental space expenditures. Unfortunately it costs over 4000 euro! But a summery is available here:

[http://www.geospatialworld.net/index.php?option=com_content&...](http://www.geospatialworld.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=24389%3Aglobal- space-programme-budget-reaches-usd-70bn-euroconsult&catid=72%3Abusiness- market-survey-research&Itemid=1)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "We are safe on Mars."

Humanity rocks sometimes.

<comment><USER15> It seems like every single person at JPL is teary eyed, this is awesome.

Edit: The crowd at Planetary Society started chanting "USA! USA!" and Bill Nye the Science Guy quickly made them change it to "JPL! Planet Earth!" freaking awesome.

Edit #2: Every. Single. One. of NASA's websites is offline and overloaded. I know it's a DDoS due to everyone trying to look at the images, but this is really a good example of 'Hey, maybe the company that just landed a fucking spaceship on Mars needs more funding.'

<comment><USER14> They're already getting pictures. I wasn't born for the moon landing, but this seems almost as cool. Must have been something like this.

<comment><USER3> The images are a lot clearer this time around :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This video is an animation (created by the JPL) of what is going to be happening over the coming few hours: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4boyXQuUIw>

</comment><comment><USER17> 3 hours ago they were at 300k total views, ever. Now, it's about to hit 1M total views.

This is a great chance for NasaTV to advocate for more funding. /just saying

<comment><USER18> Now, one hour later, they're at 11M views with 120K live viewers. This is good TV.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Wow! They made it... Great stuff happening and what a technological challenge! Edit: even more impressive that they are already receiving some pictures

</comment><comment><USER20> I don't think it's an overstatement to say that this is one greatest expressions humanity is capable off. Simply amazing.

</comment><comment><USER21> Is there anything left to be done by NASA HQ? For example, are they still controlling the trajectory of the probe to Mars or is that mostly done by probe's onboard computers?

I'm genuinely curious about what kind of things the HQ is doing right now. I've been watching the live stream and there's not much activity besides milling around screens and resizing windows on the huge screen.

<comment><USER22> From a Reuters piece...

"Mission control contemplated sending Curiosity one last "parameter update" on Sunday, hours before atmospheric entry, giving the vessel an exact fix on its position in space. But NASA engineers said they would likely forego that transmission because the vessel has varied so little from its ideal course.

Otherwise, controllers will have little to do but anxiously track Curiosity's progress as it flies into Mars' upper atmosphere..."

"We're all along for the ride," Seltzner said."

[http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/08/06/us-usa-mars- idINBRE...](http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/08/06/us-usa-mars- idINBRE8721A920120806)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> If they pull this off I will be thoroughly impressed.

I keep googling to try to find where they tested the landing system altogether as a unit and there doesn't appear to be such an event, only individual components.

Can you imagine designing and testing the individual parts of a car, then assembling it and never testing the car as a whole unit and just hoping based on theory it works?

<comment><AUTHOR> They tested it as much as they could. You can't simulate Martian gravity and the full Martian atmosphere on Earth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> To see the images from Mars:

<http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/raw>

Edit: it appears that the page has moved to <http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/>, discussion at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4343891>

<comment><USER25> Well that's disappointing, CloudFront:

        ERROR

        The request could not be satisfied.

        Generated Mon, 06 Aug 2012 05:59:11 GMT by cloudfront (CloudFront)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> That's the second time in recent memory that I got chills watching a room full of really smart people erupt into applause. Congrats to everyone involved.

</comment><comment><USER27> Is there any way to watch in VLC? I don't have Flash Player.

<comment><USER28> <http://nasa-f.akamaihd.net/public_h264_700@54826> should work in any H.264 + HTTP capable video player.

<comment><USER29> Definitely much nicer than the solution I found. How did you find that so easily?

<comment><USER28> I have Flash handy, so I just utilized the Resources tab in Chrome's Web Inspector to see the video resource Flash was actually streaming.

This approach works for a large percentage of CDN-based streaming video, which rarely has any unique authentication (as sharing any kind of per-user state with the CDN edges would be quite difficult).

<comment><USER29> Interesting, I tried doing the same thing and couldn't since it was getting it over rtmp from another cdn, which was how i found mine. Apparently NASA has more CDNs for video than others that i've run into.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> If this is successful, do you guys think we'll see a man on mars in the next 20-40 years?

<comment><USER31> Elon Musk will be there waiting to greet the astronauts if it takes NASA 40 years.

<comment><USER32> Usain Bolt of the space race.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> One of us watching this right now is going to set foot on Mars. Probably more than one.

</comment><comment><USER34> For people that missed the event on the livestream, how can we rewatch this?

</comment><comment><USER35> The free NASA TV channel on Roku is carrying this as well.

</comment><comment><USER36> I am so happy to have been watching this historic event! I cannot believe that there were no network affiliates carrying the EDL live from JPL. I watched it happily on Ustream, but I'm upset about it. I tried to check NBC up to 18 minutes prior, and they weren't even showing an olympic event. They showed some taped interview with a British rowing medalist from 20 years ago. If the whole thing is on tape delay anyway, what is their excuse? What if I'm not someone who has a computer connected to their television and only had a TV? Every American should have been able to see this live. This is the greatest feat of engineering in history!!!

</comment><comment><USER37> Screenshot of landing picture:

[https://dl.dropbox.com/u/76008/Screenshot%20from%202012-08-0...](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/76008/Screenshot%20from%202012-08-05%2022%3A38%3A06.png)

</comment><comment><USER38> A word that is overused but truly applicable to this landing / 7min of terror.

Awesome

</comment><comment><USER39> Got my peanuts. Good luck, Curiosity.

</comment><comment><USER40> For those who missed it, here's a VOD: <http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/24512027>

Landing starts at about 19:00 minutes.

</comment><comment><USER41> Curiosity just landed: <https://twitter.com/NASA/status/232348523050450945>

</comment><comment><USER32> This is amazing. I can just imagine the anxiety and excitement of waiting for Odyssey to fly around for another pass and transmit more data back home.

</comment><comment><USER42> Earth wins another round of expensive hardware lobbing! Here's a humorous reminder at how difficult it is to reach other planets, especially Mars - <USER2> bad it hasn't been updated in a while.

<http://www.bio.aps.anl.gov/~dgore/fun/PSL/>

</comment><comment><USER43> One thing they mentioned is that one advantage to the sky hook is that it will be a soft landing - no dust will go everywhere and land on delicate instruments.

Isn't this easily solvable with some sort of skin it can just dispose of once the dust has settled?

<comment><USER44> They do have covers on the lenses that will be removed, but I don't think it would be practical to put removable covers everywhere. What would happen if the 'skin' didn't come off?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Look at this video: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij33yhdGn_g>

it's about the landing of the spirit rover. You can see the same people that were in the room today talking about it!

</comment><comment><USER45> <http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/>

</comment><comment><USER46> If you look at the images, it seems like they use linux as their OS? Can anyone else confirm?

<comment><USER47> A little late and I don't work there but I know I've seen at least Sun gear/monitors at JPL and Houston.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Well, congratulations are in order I guess. Touchdown confirmed. :)

<comment><USER49> Images arriving now.. Would like to be part of the next trip ;o)

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Why can't they ever take just one horizon photo of the scenery in front of the rover instead of the typical, "looking at the ground" photos that are common with these rovers? That would have been a far better shot to show live.

<comment><USER51> They did. Front and back.

<comment><USER50> Oh, do you have a link to those photos? I must have missed them. Thanks!

<comment><USER51> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4343891>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Just landed..."lets see where Curiosity takes us"

</comment><comment><USER53> I recognize one of those guys from college! w00t

</comment><comment><USER37> Congrats on successfully landing!</comment>


Microsoft's security chief suggests 'Net tax to clean infected computers - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/software/98522/microsofts-charney-suggests-net-tax-clean-computers

<comment><USER2> As long as I get a tax credit for each OS X and Linux PC I use, great...

I kid, of course. It never ceases to amaze me how otherwise competent people become so monumentally stupid when it comes to net issues.

How about a real solution: Your bill from your ISP is just more if you insist on connecting a windows computer to their network. That covers the ISP's cost, gives them what they need to fix problems, and provides huge incentive to Microsoft to clean up their act. No laws, no taxes, just a little free market action.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great, if they can figure out a way to make the tax apply only to Microsoft and people who've made a killing there.

If it means that Windows prices have to go up, excellent. Microsoft has skimped on stuff like getting security right, so we've all been subsidizing their business model by incurring the cost of dealing with the problems their infected machines cause.</comment>


Ask HN: Who'se running a nonprofit here? - <AUTHOR> Are there any nonprofit projects you're working on? What are you struggling with the most? <comment><USER2> I'm not running a nonprofit, but I do grant writing for nonprofit and public agencies (along with a few research / technical businesses) and contribute to a blog about grant writing: [http://www.seliger.com/blog](http://www.seliger.com/blog)

Most nonprofits are actually struggling with the same thing businesses are: How do they use resources effectively? How can they take in more cash than they spend? How can they decide what services to offer? Nonprofits are more like businesses than most people think: [http://seliger.com/2012/09/02/why- nonprofits-are-more-like-b...](http://seliger.com/2012/09/02/why-nonprofits- are-more-like-businesses-than-you-realize/)

One key difference in many respects is that businesses have customers or clients while nonprofits' principle customers or clients are actually funders, rather than service recipients, and that can create some odd incentives and behavior.

</comment><comment><USER3> Since I retired I lead a non profit [0] that aims at inventing medical tools like continuous glucose monitoring. We did not made any breakthrough, it is just engineering on paper with little PoC as there is little money. The inventions were published without IP claim, there are one or two downloads each week, but nobody contacted us.

This year we registered on HackaDay[1] for a early heart failure (HF) detector. Most aging adult suffers from HF, sometimes as early as when they are in their forties.

Our design is good, the gold standard here is the Physionet 2016 competition, Physionet 2016 competitors mostly used machine learning on file wide features such as the heart rate and its variability. We choose to find features in heart sounds, there are up to four sounds per beat. The code is on Github. The project on HaD will be declared finished in September or October.

We will have huge problems when we will reach the point of trying to obtain a regulator agreement (EC/FDA). It needs to make travels, provide samples, make clinical studies, rise awareness. Lot of problems that we are not equipped to manage.

If we succeed at this there are other R&D projects in the pipeline, to keep us busy.

[0] [https://padiracinnovation.org/](https://padiracinnovation.org/)

[1] [https://hackaday.io/project/19685-early-and-low-cost- detecti...](https://hackaday.io/project/19685-early-and-low-cost-detection-of- heart-failure)

[2] [https://github.com/Hjertesvikt](https://github.com/Hjertesvikt)

<comment><USER4> Cool. Looks like there will be a lot coming through the pipeline in this space, given the open nature of the machine learning community.

There was another Kaggle competition on lung cancer that recently finished up, and the winner shared their code.

Is your plan to take things like this and put them through the required red tape?

What are you doing to raise funds?

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the kind message. There are excellent teams doing Kaggle competitions. I tried last fall to make some students aware of Kaggle but they were not interested.

We did not try to raise funds, it was difficult when there was nothing concrete to show. But now we can show a simple app that can classify a heart sound as normal or not. For example in [0] there is a ultra simple app (one button!) that classified my heart sounds as not normal, in less than one second.

I am thinking about making a kickstarter in December or next January to rise awareness about the detector and to raise some money.

[0] [https://padiracinnovationdotorg.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/...](https://padiracinnovationdotorg.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/jp_heart_sounds.png)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hey,

I run Security First ([https://www.secfirst.org](https://www.secfirst.org)). We are talking the issue of how to help make security learning and management easier for people at risk - NGOs, journalists, aid workers etc.

We've built a mobile app called Umbrella that puts best practice digital and physical security advice in the one place.

We also train and consult on various security issues for other organisations.

We are always looking for more help - technical, UI/UX, copywriting, dev (and funding of course).

</comment><comment><USER6> Throw-away for various reasons, and probably not a non-profit in the traditional sense, but the nonprofit I run is a medical marijuana shop.

Struggling with the most is the industry in general. From banking, to landlords, to police, vendors, paying employees, and everything in between. It's a really interesting business full of awesome problems to tackle and there's never a dull moment, but it's definitely a challenge.

</comment><comment><USER7> [https://www.globalgiving.org/](https://www.globalgiving.org/)

I'm CPO/CTO/CMO at GlobalGiving. I know there are other members of CTOs for Good lurking here ([https://www.ctosforgood.org/](https://www.ctosforgood.org/)), but I'll let them call themselves out.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's tied into our business, but we've been using [http://Impossible.org](http://Impossible.org) as a way to partner with charities + non-profits to give our businesses a "for purpose" angle and give back (while trying to find quality organizations that are already really, really good at what they do).

</comment><comment><USER9> We're not running nonprofit but we provide our users an opportunity to support nonprofits of their choice and we in turn make a donation from a portion of the the purchase price to the selected charity organization at [https://www.memobed.com](https://www.memobed.com)

</comment><comment><USER10> [https://pEp.foundation](https://pEp.foundation) Supporting Freedom of Speech, Privacy, Freedom of Information.

Tough fight. Politically complex.

</comment><comment><USER11> leif.org

EDIT: capital formation much murkier than in startup world, regulations, etc</comment>


Creators Should Move to Their Own Domains and Set Up Direct Monetization - <AUTHOR> https://danielmiessler.com/blog/why-infosec-creators-should-move-to-direct-support-monetization/ <comment><USER2> content creators are busy creating content and that's their specialty--not IT support. As long as there are content creators there will be demand for platforms to support them; whether it takes the shape of fully managed / self managed SaaS, a self-hosted open source solution, or even a custom solution-- isn't what content creators are spending their energy on.

not sure what the issue is. it's a great time to be a content creator. I guess haters are going to hate.

<comment><USER3> I was just going to say something similar: having registered domains, set up hosts, set up email accounts, and so forth, it's a giant pain in the ass, and it's easy to get stuck or do things wrong at various steps—which is why Substack exists, and Wordpress, and many others.

I agree with the writer in theory, but, in practice, having done what he's advocating, it's a huge challenge the first time one does it.

<comment><USER4> It's actually really easy these days. Most platforms (but not Substack) do offer custom domains and if you go through Google Domains they'll forward your mail through a very easy to setup UI.

I'd say the domain is the brand you want to retain and then you don't self- host anything. Set up your domain to 302 to your substack and you've got one thing.

<comment><USER5> I wouldn't touch google domains with a ten foot pole due to the high probably of them being killed.

<comment><USER4> It's just a domain. Shifting it over is a well-understood process. I think you're missing out by doing this because the product is fantastic, but you have your own evaluation of what's valuable I'm sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The elephant in the room is exposure. Medium mixes and matches articles to automatically expose the most interesting stories to the most interested readers. If you set up your own domain, you are on your own.

<comment><USER5> People are clearly able to set up Patreon etc without using medium.

Medium seems hellbent on profiting from free work by creators.

<comment><USER6> Again — it's not about monetary compensation, it is about exposure and visibility.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> you could also use something like [https://coil.com](https://coil.com) to monetize your content and get paid in realtime based on views

</comment><comment><USER8> The problem with many of these marketplaces is that they charge VAT to buyers, even if the creator is below the threshold for VAT registration.

</comment><comment><USER9> Interesting take, but I'd use librapay/fosspay or the Open Collective over the platforms that he recommends.</comment>


Show HN: TalkSparks – a modern place to discuss anything that interests you - <AUTHOR> http://www.talksparks.com

<comment><AUTHOR> I created TalkSparks because I was fed up with having to go to a bunch of different forums everyday in order to follow different things that I'm interested in.

The concept is very simple: it's where you can discuss anything you're interested in with other people who are interested in the same things. If you're interested in something, you just follow that category and the news feed aggregates all discussions in that topic (very similar to how Facebook shows you updates about the people you are friends with, only here it's about topics that actually interest you). I've set it up with over 40M different categories so pretty much any topic already exists, which solves the problem of having tons of users creating "groups" or categories about the same thing. If you're interested in Breaking Bad, there is one place to discuss Breaking Bad, not 20 Breaking Bad categories that each have 3 followers and nobody knows which one to post in.

The site is still very young, in closed beta, but I would appreciate feedback from the HN community so here's a beta code you guys can use to sign up.

Just go to [http://www.talksparks.com](http://www.talksparks.com) and sign up with the beta code hackernews100

Please share your feedback.

Much appreciated,

Guy

</comment><comment><USER2> I click the join the waiting list and I get an error

[http://i.imgur.com/3Jzbniw.png](http://i.imgur.com/3Jzbniw.png)

Browser is FireFox26 (minor changes for how things are cached, and a few crypto-suites disabled), a few addons adblock plus, https everywhere. Windows 7 x64

<comment><AUTHOR> Shit, checking

<comment><AUTHOR> I uploaded a fix for that. Thanks.

In any case just use the beta code, no need for the waiting list you, you're in already :)</comment></comment></comment>


Is It Time for VMware to Open Source the ESX Hypervisor? - <AUTHOR> https://blog.architecting.it/2016/02/02/is-it-time-for-vmware-to-open-source-the-esx-hypervisor/ <comment><USER2> No. Releasing the source code to the hypervisor would likely reveal that VMware has been violating the GPL.</comment>


If you can't buy your investor a beer, don't take their money - <AUTHOR> http://sachin.posterous.com/know-your-investors

<comment><USER2> I'm a 12 year veteran of early stage startups. One thing I found interesting about the whole experience was that on the technical side, smarts-based meritocracy was valued above all else, or at least that was the line we told ourselves. However, when it came to raising money, the most archaic, beers in the back-room, who-knows-who-knows-who boys-club approach was the norm. The things I saw would have made a 1920s Harvard admissions officer, or a 1950s hiring manager at an investment bank blush.

That said, the most successful startup I worked at raised money in an almost mechanical manner, with little or no beer drinking, or even much contact with the investors. YMMV.

<comment><USER3> _"That said, the most successful startup I worked at raised money in an almost mechanical manner, with little or no beer drinking, or even much contact with the investors. YMMV."_

That would make an excellent how-to blog post or other elaboration. :)

<comment><USER2> It wasn't that interesting. It was sort of like the normal route of obtaining funds, there was just no long, drawn out bromantic courtship. We just asked for the money, they said ok, and we signed stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "If you need money, you are too late."

really means

"If you appear to need money, you are too late."

and restated the way one of my investors once put it

"If you have the stench of death about you it's impossible to raise."

If you don't need money, don't raise.

<comment><USER5> It's not just what you suggest, that it makes it harder to get money. The other impact is that you don't have time optimize for best person, you have to optimize for getting cash fast. Also, it is much easier to get to know a person when you aren't asking for money. We had a similar approach as Posterous and are really happy we took the time to get to know VCs before raising money.

<comment><USER4> Right - I think that's actually the most valuable lesson in your post. Start making friends a year or more before you raise.

There may be a small caveat - it's worth debating this because I'm not sure I'm right but I'll throw it out anyway: Some investors like a fresh face with a fresh idea. If you become a groupie and hang out at every single event for a year before you raise, you may be less attractive to investors than a fresh face with the same traction and idea. Not sure if this is true but just a thought.

<comment><USER5> I partially agree with your caveat. In our case we went to almost zero events, all of our meetings were face-to-face with a single firm. After that we stayed in touch and gave updates on our progress. This also let them get comfortable with our ability to work together and execute on a product. We were also able to show more and more traction over time.

Investors _will_ get tired of you if you are raising money for a long time. Once you decide you are raising, get all your meetings done as quick as possible, hopefully in only a couple of weeks.

It may not need to be a year. We started these discussions in June and started raising in September. They key is just before you _need_ money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's Ironic how people who are really among the best and brightest in the industry, can have such different observations:

Sachin Agarwal (Posterous)

"A couple months before you're going to raise, schedule a coffee meeting with all the VCs. No pitching, no deck. We did this and it was a great way to meet VC partners in a more casual setting. If they like you, they will even help you with your pitch."

Ben Horowitz:(Andreesen Horowitz) ([http://bhorowitz.com/2010/04/13/four- things-some-vcs-do-that...](http://bhorowitz.com/2010/04/13/four-things-some- vcs-do-that-i-dont-like/))

"However, many VCs who want to have coffee with me are none of the above. Worse yet, they have no agenda and no purpose. They just want to "compare notes."

When I was CEO, I didn't take meetings with no agenda and no purpose. I'm not sure why I should take them as a VC. Of course, when I was CEO, people knew better than to request a meeting with me with no agenda and no purpose. I think that these VCs have mammas that didn't raise them right."

<comment><USER7> I think the internet has this culture going of generalizing (making rules) even with little experience.

It really takes a couple of tries, experience and insight to decouple correlation with causation.

Sachin is still too early in the game, I would go with Ben.

<comment><USER8> > _I think the internet has this culture going of generalizing (making rules) > even with little experience._

Well said, and probably the biggest issue with HN submission quality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Beware of associates". I cannot stress this enough.

DO NOT EVER WASTE YOUR TIME MEETING WITH ASSOCIATES IF THERE ARE NO PARTNERS PRESENT. They have no freaking clue. By associates I mostly mean MBA's with no startup founding experience.

Infact there are VC partners in India who are more like associates in the US, with absolutely zero founding experience. Stay as far away from them as possible. Do not cold call them and dont take their calls - they are not worth the time and dont know shit.

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't drink alcoholic beverages. Guess I can never be a VC.

<comment><USER10> In contrast I feel like I have been building my tolerance up for the past decade just waiting for my moment to perform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "If you ask me about barriers to entry, you don't understand the internet."

Asking about barriers to entry does not mean the potential investors don't understand internet. This comment says to me the author does not understand business or investing.

<comment><USER12> I disagree. He's right. What investors should be asking is, "what is it about your idea, people and product" that is unique and difficult to replicate, whilst being crucial for your success. Typical barriers typically come via patents and strategic alliances. Who has those?

<comment><USER13> There are several other sources of barriers. Network effects is one; goodwill/brand is another; execution/operational excellence, etc.

Think about Ebay, Paypal, Facebook, Amazon. The vast majority of what they do is pretty far from rocket science. (By that, I mean a startup could create a technically credible competitor for their core business.) However, those companies have erected enormous barriers to entry in the form of network effects, brand/trust [of buyers], network effects, and brand/breadth/operational excellence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Sage advice. More generally "work with people you like."

Life's too short to work with jerks. Making a point to surround yourself with quality people will enrich your life. I sometimes forget this and almost always regret it.

</comment><comment><USER15> Out of curiosity, what are the downsides to talking to associates?

<comment><USER16> Probably because they have no decision making power at all. My only experience with associates is on the phone--they often get tasked with cold calling businesses like mine in order to collect data for later analysis. For that reason, I think of them as little more than interns.

<comment><USER5> You also want the strongest introduction to a partner that you can get, and I think other entrepreneurs and investors can make stronger introductions than most associates.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This 'cultural' matching process is _the_ most important element of having anyone join your business - investors, board members, staff, even clients if your business involves ongoing interaction with them.

I like to think of the 'have a beer with' as having the 'family photo fit' - if you can't picture this person fitting into a photo of your business family, then you don't want to work with them. _Especially_ if they are bringing money you need, because personal differences will painfully divide the business.

</comment><comment><USER18> "There are plenty of posts online about valuations, term sheets, and how to negotiate. I'm not going to get into that stuff here. This post is about the personal side of finding investors."

Really? From my point of view, I constantly find articles about personal fit, finding the people who have the same goals, etc. I'd love an article about valuation, term sheets and how to negotiate.

Can anybody tell me where to start?

<comment><USER19> There is a lot of awesome information at <http://venturehacks.com>

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Can someone explain what he meant by this. "If you ask me about barriers to entry, you don't understand the internet."

Is he saying that you should not worry about your competition?

<comment><AUTHOR> On the internet, there are few barriers to entry. It's incredibly cheap and easy to build most startups these days. That's not where the value is. The value is that you think you can do it bigger and better than anyone else.

Except for maybe Google search, I can't think of a product that I couldn't build tomorrow if i wanted to enter that space.

<comment><USER2> The fact that there are fewer barriers to entry also make startups where there are barriers to entry more valuable. Some of the big successes this time around are e-commerce operations which require a lot of capital for the parts of the business associated with moving physical inventory.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> What about the teetotaler investors?

<comment><USER22> I would assume that, in this situation, "drink beer with" really means "engage in mostly-informal social interaction with". Most places that sell beer will also sell a variety of non-alcoholic beverages.

<comment><USER21> Sure. I was just poking fun at the, shall we say, "alcohol-normative" society we live in :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > Before starting your pitch, make everyone in the room introduce themselves.

What's the proper way of asking for this?

<comment><USER24> "Let's go around the room introducing ourselves first. Ok? I'll go first. I'm..."

<comment><USER25> The host or whoever organized the meeting does the introduction. Most non- Americans will probably be reluctant to introduce themselves with much enthusiasm and might underplay their achievements, specially Asians.

If there is no designated Toastmaster, the most neutral party should step forward and do the formalities. Try not to drop dollar figures that someone might have or manage, instead, stress their successful exits and other accomplishments.

This is strictly from my experience in the Mideast and China, btw.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Thanks for the advice. In your section about getting to know vc's you mention a few methods. What method have you found to be most successful? Do you believe coming out of ycombinator gave you an instant "in" with VC's?

</comment><comment><USER27> What if your investor is a recovering alcoholic?

</comment><comment> bsnss-mn-cdr IMHO it depends on the type of business, the type of investor but most importantly of all who is being invested in.

</comment><comment><USER28> I read: If you can buy your investor a beer, don't take their money.

</comment><comment><USER29> This seems biased against teetotal investors.</comment>


Show HN: AdObservatory – Website for Overviews of Facebook Political Ad Spending - <AUTHOR> https://adobservatory.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> I'm a researcher at the Online Political Transparency Project at NYU. As part of our work, we extract all political ads from Facebook's Ad Library API and run them through an analysis pipeline every day as part of our work screening ads for misinformation or scams. As a result, we were also sitting on lots of information about regular (non-deceitful) political advertisers and races. We thought it would be a shame to leave all that data that is probably really interesting to the general public locked up on our servers, so we also built this site for looking at overviews of political ad spending on Facebook. You can look at spend by senate, house, or gubenatorial race. You can look up specific ad sponsor and see an overview of their political ad spend. Also, you can see overviews of spending in particular states, including top spenders in that state and spend by ad topic and ad purpose.</comment>


Thinking open source: How startups destroy a culture of fear - <AUTHOR> http://opensource.com/business/11/5/thinking-open-source-how-startups-destroy-culture-fear

<comment><USER2> "These young startup entrepreneurs will soon graduate to executive positions at large U.S. corporations"

They will? Where does this idea come from that large companies are the big leagues, and that if you're good enough you'll eventually "graduate" to there?

In my experience it's the complete opposite; small companies are much more discriminating about who they hire.

<comment><USER3> Larry Page?

<comment><USER2> Considering how much they've open-sourced, I don't think Google is the kind of big company he's talking about.

Do you think that the people who run Github are hoping one day they'll be hired as executives at Oracle?

<comment><USER4> I don't think that's what he's saying.

It's not about "making the big leagues" or getting hired by Oracle. It's about growing your startup into a big company that embraces this culture.

Look at Facebook. It is officially a very big company now, and it is doing amazing things for the community like Cassandra and HipHop for PHP.

<comment><USER2> "These young startup entrepreneurs will soon graduate to executive positions at large U.S. corporations, and will bring their trusted like-minded soldiers with them to radically evolve the culture of the business. In less than ten years we will witness open source software coming out of Goldman Sachs or Bloomberg."

I agree that if companies that release open source software now grow bigger then they will still release source, but from that quote it's clear to me that that's not what he's talking about.

The people running Facebook are releasing a lot of cool stuff, but I don't see them lining up to move to Goldman Sachs to release stuff there instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Good to see open source going mainstream but what comments "their ceo" is taking about? I only see single comment, unless I am looking at wrong thread[1]?

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2347076>

</comment><comment><USER6> "Software engineers of corporate America are wired in a way that promotes fear. It hurts creativity and growth." I'm horrified to say that I just can't get past that bit of hyperbole.</comment>


Google Maps adds "My Maps" - you can save a map with a bunch of placemarks, lines and shapes - <AUTHOR> http://maps.google.com <comment><AUTHOR> Looks like you can share them: [http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl;=en&om;=1&z;=15&msid;=110242485016184900177.00000111ced0521a41949&msa;=0](http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&om=1&z=15&msid=110242485016184900177.00000111ced0521a41949&msa=0)

And there are kml feeds for everything

I wonder how flagr feels about this.</comment>


Kill your blog: Why side projects are the future of marketing - <AUTHOR> http://blog.crew.co/side-projects-better-than-blogging/ <comment><USER2> We launched our product ([https://missiveapp.com](https://missiveapp.com)) in closed beta last Autumn, and I can assess from our experiments that the only thing we did that gather a lot of attention was our "A Brief History of Email Apps" ([http://email-apps-timeline.missiveapp.com/](http://email-apps- timeline.missiveapp.com/)), a timeline of all the email clients released since the '90, a side project.

All our blog posts failed to gather eyeballs. We tried on our blog ([https://missiveapp.com/blog](https://missiveapp.com/blog)) and on Medium ([https://medium.com/@plehoux](https://medium.com/@plehoux)).

We are probably not good at writing compelling and viral content. It's hard. It's a unique and rare talent. You need to write about subjects that matter to people, subjects of our time.

To me, 37 signals ([https://m.signalvnoise.com](https://m.signalvnoise.com)) are the master of this game.

I don't think blog post are dead; it's just harder to get noticed. But isn't it the same for everything else.

I enjoyed the blog post and did, in fact, learned about the crew product. :)

</comment><comment><USER3> marketing's incessant notion that lying to people is like a science of making money just makes me sad. make a good product, be honest about it, change plans if noone cares, what's so bad about that?

<comment><USER4> The 'if you build it, they will come' mentality is awfully naive...marketing doesn't have to be about lying, good marketing will get your product in front of people who want to use it, who may never have stumbled upon it otherwise.

<comment><USER5> >good marketing will get your product in front of people who want to use it, who may never have stumbled upon it otherwise.

The problem is there's only so much work that can be done in that area, and way more marketing agencies than quality work. The excess labor bleeds into mercenary work where advertising companies shill for whoever pays them, regardless of merit or ethics.

Marketing helps products that would succeed anyway based on merit succeed faster and harder, and also helps unseat incumbents who have inertia but a bad product. It also allows products that should by every right sink like a lead balloon lurch haphazardly above the waterline, leaving behind a wake of cheated customers.

Oh, if only we could trust people in marketing to refuse help to the latter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > _Articles that provided practical utility—actionable advice and tips—were > shared far more than those that were merely interesting or even surprising._

Reading this gave me a bit of a chuckle, because this is exactly how bad advice spreads too. Like bonsai kitten. At the end of the article, all I could think about was how the post was basically talking about "diversification" without ever using the term outright, even though it's a more suitable concept to employ than "side projects" IMO.

</comment><comment><USER7> And thats still a blog post.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, quite funny that I learned of this company thru blog post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > You need marketing that isn't perceived as marketing.

<comment><USER10> I.e. you need to lie to people harder.

<comment><USER11> [https://cdnjs.com/](https://cdnjs.com/)

How is this lying to people?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Side projects are always a good thing. Whatever your idea is, with time permitting, get it out there. Regardless of how silly it may be seen from others, it gets exposure, and gets you experience. Every side project I work on, builds on some core technology I learned from the last project. I've got a million ideas, and when I'm done with one, I move onto the next. Keep your mind busy!

</comment><comment><USER13> I agree that side projects are the future of marketing, and many companies are already doing this. A while ago I made a list of companies that have created inspiring side projects for marketing purposes: [https://www.stayintech.com/info/sideprojects](https://www.stayintech.com/info/sideprojects)

</comment><comment><USER14> I suspect this has some truth to it. I think we are seeing huge backlash against "ads" as in dumb content constantly pushed out.

In this searchable world, ads don't need to be pushed continuously because if the ad suits me, I will find it.

As such less effort needs to go into the "ad delivery network" and more into the quality and specificity of the ad itself

Which used to be a blog post, but now seems to be a useful online tool or project.

The ads get more expensive and more targeted, the distribution channel slims down to search.

This comment seems at home on the Brendan Eich thread next door too.

</comment><comment><USER5> Heh, marketing has gone so far around the curve of wasting peoples time they're approaching actually doing useful things for society from the other side.

</comment><comment><USER15> The key is to provide value to the reader or consumer.

Blog posts can be valuable (by educating or entertaining, for example), but writing valuable blog posts is a lot of effort.

Side projects can be valuable, but creating valuable side projects is effort.

So I guess it depends on what you're good at. A side project is usually something you're passionate about, so it's a good starting point. But if you like writing, blogging is still the way to go.

</comment><comment><USER16> After reading this, seems like this should titled "how to veil your advertising in blog posts..." Not to sound overly cynical but this seems to be again about pushing the new products created through content advertising.

That said, I did click on one and while howmuchtomakeanapp seemed cool, the site was so slow that i closed it after two questions.

</comment><comment><USER17> Well, I guess this is a counterpoint to both: I've now read this blog, and I've used unsplash for free photos, but I have no idea what crew is or does.

</comment><comment><USER18> Hey dang, can we please kill the first part of the title?</comment>


Many more trees could be planted without encroaching on crop land or urban areas - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/04/planting-billions-trees-best-tackle-climate-crisis-scientists-canopy-emissions <comment><USER2> It can actually be better than this still. Cattle can be part of a solution to helping restore arid land where the soil has been destroyed by intensive farming and erosion. Healthy soil stores enormous amounts of biomass (aka carbon). Intensive farming has destroyed enormous amounts of land world-wide and turned it into desert, releasing lots of CO2 into the atmosphere.

This is a reversible process and catlle is part of the solution: [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/jul/22/cows- cli...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/jul/22/cows-climate- change)

So, using large herds of cattle to refertilize bits of land that are currently not usable for agriculture would capture enormous amounts of carbon in the soil, restore the water retention capability of arid land, put a stop to large scale erosion of remaining soil, and restore it to productive land that may be used for growing food. Alternatively, once restored, you can sit back and watch the land reforest itself or use planned grazing to keep it as grassland. There's no actual need to manually plant trees; though it does probably speed up the process.

Finally, using cattle to fix land produces lots of nice organic/free range meat in a sustainable way as a side effects. And yes, cow farts have a green house effect but it is offset by the captured CO2 in the restored soil. Healthy soil has lots of biomass.

<comment><USER3> Is this actually validated?

Living in an area heavily deforested for cattle grazing, the cattle grazed land does not look like a healthy land. The cattle keep all plant life cut right back. Hot sun can easily access the soil drying it out, then when heavy rains come, the top soil all runs off the land.

Land that is left without cattle fares better, land that is actively reforested and trees helped to get established looks infinitely more healthy.

<comment><USER4> I'm on my phone in the country side with slow internet so I cant look up a link, but if I remember correctly, you should search "Alan Savory TED Talk" on youtube for an introduction to the use of livestock to reclaim land. Essentially, the issue with most livestock grazing is that it does not mimic natural grazing, which is a seasonal, high volume, high density event where the herd moves on and allows the grazed area time to recover.

<comment><USER5> > Alan Savory TED Talk

I'm no expert, but I would approach this with extreme caution. There are a lot of replies that he is "misleading", "wrong", "dead wrong" etc.

<comment><USER2> There are also quite a few projects where this has been shown to get results in the real world. Enough that it's probably worth trying to replicate the results. Worst case it fails and you hopefully learn something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Related: A Toyota engineer grows forests: [https://fellowsblog.ted.com/how-to- grow-a-forest-really-real...](https://fellowsblog.ted.com/how-to-grow-a- forest-really-really-fast-d27df202ba09)

<comment><USER7> The cool thing is that you can order your own dense, self-sustaining forest from [https://www.afforestt.com](https://www.afforestt.com) — and it doesn't have to be big (100 square meters), and it doesn't take a hundred years, either.

<comment><USER8> 100 square meters is very, very big unless you are almost unthinkably wealthy. Or at least it is in my neck of the woods.

<comment><USER9> 100 m2 is only a square about 33 feet on a side. Big if you live in a high rise in a city but you don't need to be unthinkably wealthy in any area that has woods. The plot of land that my house sits on is 800 m2 and I am most certainly not wealthy, let alone unthinkably so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The key phrase of the article:

"Without freeing up the billions of hectares we use to produce meat and milk, this ambition is not realisable,"

This is the polar opposite of what is happening at the moment. In particular: [https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/02/americas/amazon-brazil- bo...](https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/02/americas/amazon-brazil-bolsonaro- deforestation-scli-intl/index.html)

<comment><USER11> Why do you cut of the second part of this sentence?

"Restoring trees at [low] density is not mutually exclusive with grazing. In fact many studies suggest sheep and cattle do better if there are a few trees in the field."

<comment><USER10> Because it is not that relevant, for two reasons:

1\. Most land used to produce meat and milk is actually not by grazing.

2\. I was tunnel-visioned on the part I added. The article calls for reforesting 1.7G hectares, at average 50% density, for a total of 850M. Amazon is being deforested at about 500k-1M hectares per year[1] and the political climate suggests making it worse rather than better. According to a quick googling, over half of Amazons trees are over 300 years old and the deforestation is done with fire, effectively instantly undoing 300 years of sequestration. So, within 3-6 years of business as usual just the Amazon deforestation balances out a year of this theoretically possible global effort.

Please prove me wrong, I don't want this to be true :(

Edit: TFA calls for 1.7G (not T) hectares with 1.2T trees.

[1]:[https://news.mongabay.com/2019/05/new-report-examines- driver...](https://news.mongabay.com/2019/05/new-report-examines-drivers-of- rising-amazon-deforestation-on-country-by-country-basis/)

<comment><USER10> Separate news touching on this: [https://phys.org/news/2019-07-moist-tropical- forests-boost-c...](https://phys.org/news/2019-07-moist-tropical-forests- boost-climate.html)

Note that opportunity claimed here is smaller than the loss from the other source. In my sparsely informed understanding, it seems slowing down deforestation should be our priority #1.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> You can plant trees at $USD0.10 per tree at trees.org

<comment><USER13> That's really interesting.

According to this [1], a 10 years old `Calliandra calothyrsus` such as the ones they (trees.org) plant captures about 170 kg / 380 lbs of CO2.

According to the World Bank [2], the average European citizen produces 6 tons of CO2 while the average American produces about 16 tons.

That would mean that they can offset the yearly CO2 emissions of an European or American person by planting 35 ($3.5) or 95 ($9.5) trees, respectively. Quite impressive if true.

\--

[1] [http://www.unm.edu/~jbrink/365/Documents/Calculating_tree_ca...](http://www.unm.edu/~jbrink/365/Documents/Calculating_tree_carbon.pdf)

[2] [https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?location...](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?locations=US- EU)

<comment><USER14> That's true but only half the picture: every time one of these trees dies it is cut down it needs to be buried or otherwise prevented from releasing the CO2 back into the atmosphere. The tree you mentioned is described on Wikipedia as follows: "...This tree grows to about 6 m and has pinnate compound leaves and flowers with a boss of prominent reddish-purple stamens. It is not very drought-tolerant and the above-ground parts are short-lived but the roots regularly resprout..." So that's a significant amount of stuff to bury/dispose of. (The project at trees.org seems very interesting regardless, though.)

<comment><USER15> Trees don't completely return to atmospheric co2; leaf litter, fallen branches and trunks are an important part of lifecycles for many fungi, bacteria and insects. I goodly amount of said material becomes new topsoil, rather than simply being respirated back out into the air.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wonder if anyone is researching genetically modified trees that specialize in carbon sequestration. Sort of like Golden Rice but for climate change.

<comment><USER17> I wonder that too. Also, how much concrete construction could be replaced with engineered wood construction so that less concrete was manufactured (thus reducing a primary source of CO2 output) and more CO2 could be sequestered in buildings? i.e. can we genetically engineer a tree that grows fast and is well suited for construction uses?

<comment><USER18> There may be no need to genetically engineer trees for construction at this point, at least not in north america. Some kind of beetle (or was it a fungus?) has killed off a mind boggling number of trees which can be used as engineered wood in construction. As CLT and maybe Brettstapel.

<comment><USER19> > Some kind of beetle (or was it a fungus?) has killed off a mind boggling > number of trees

which may be a side-effect of fighting forest fires and the campaign against logging. higher tree density == easier for fungus to spread. this is why I don't automatically believe anything from the "enlightened" progressive camp. back in the 80's, it was "Stop the Big Bad Loggers! Save the Forest!". Now, had they responsibly _thinned_ the forest, used the timber for logging, that CO2 would be sequestered in homes and the fungus wouldn't have spread through the forest.

<comment><USER20> The huge tree die offs in the US have been from invasive species. A big recent one is the Emerald Ash Borer.

Lack of evolved resistance and predators are the key factors.

<comment><USER19> how does firefighting play into that? there was no firefighting before the 20th century. now everytime there's smoke it's squashed immediately. that cannot be natural.

<comment><USER18> Is it, though? There have been fires in the arctic for weeks (month?) which haven't been put out. I'm sure firefighters try to put out forest fires asap when they're near human settlements but the world is a big place, and there presumably aren't enough firemen to put out every forest fire.

Before the 20th century, there were likely fewer campers setting trash on fire in the middle of a super dry forest. Or maybe not, come to think of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Interesting – we need more of such studies.

Check out Drawdown [0] for other interventions with quantified costs/benefits.

Economists widely agree that carbon pricing is the most effective way to fix climate change [1], and fee-and-dividend implementations are the most viable politically (there's a bill before Congress now [2]).

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

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/08/business/economic- science...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/08/business/economic-science- nobel-prize.html)

[2] [https://citizensclimatelobby.org/energy-innovation-and- carbo...](https://citizensclimatelobby.org/energy-innovation-and-carbon- dividend-act/)

<comment><USER22> I believe carbon pricing has two aspects - one is to charge carbon emitters, the other aspect is to use that money to do something that reduces existing CO2 levels. Just charging emitters does not completely solve the problem, so research into the best ways to spend the funds generated by carbon pricing is critical.

<comment><USER23> I always thought that carbon/green certificates taxes go towards environment/renewable energy, but I'm probably too naive...

How to minimize the Tragedy of the commons effect? Where countries don't want to impact their economic growth because other countries won't impose such taxes, therefore some production will move there.

<comment><USER22> >How to minimize the Tragedy of the commons effect? Where countries don't want to impact their economic growth because other countries won't impose such taxes, therefore some production will move there.

This was the point of the Paris Agreement.

<comment><USER24> The Paris agreement did nothing about this. It is completely non binding. The actual emissions reduction plans (INDCs) were drafted by each country and not negotiated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> From the article:

"Crowther emphasised that _it remains vital to reverse the current trends of rising greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning and forest destruction, and bring them down to zero._ He said this is needed to stop the climate crisis becoming even worse and because the forest restoration envisaged would take 50-100 years to have its full effect of removing 200bn tonnes of carbon"

200bn tonnes? Apparently humanity releases at the moment almost 40bn CO2 tonnes per year (1). All that trees then replace only 5 years.

1) [https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aaf303](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aaf303)

"CO2 emissions grew by 1.6% in 2017 to 36.2 Gt (billion tonnes), and are expected to grow a further 2.7% in 2018 (range: 1.8%–3.7%) to a record 37.1 ± 2 Gt CO2 (Le Quéré et al 2018b)."

<comment> Flip-per My interpretation:

Only 42 % of the emitted CO2 stays in the atmosphere[1], the rest is soaked up by land and ocean. The article only relates to the CO2 in the atmosphere.

[1] [https://www.co2.earth/global-co2-emissions](https://www.co2.earth/global- co2-emissions)

<comment><USER25> That factor changes "5 years" to 12. Which is still less than that because our emissions still increase.

I don't suggest that trees aren't important, just that they are definitely still just a tiny part against what we put in the atmosphere at the moment if we contiue to do so (and we do too little to change that).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Where can one donate to an organization that plants trees?

<comment><USER27> There are tree planting orgs like [https://trees.org/](https://trees.org/)

There are also very effective tree saving charities like "cool earth"

[https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/report/cool- earth/](https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/report/cool-earth/)

<comment><USER8> [https://trees.org](https://trees.org) was mentioned elsewhere as well, but when I tried to donate they really asked for a prohibitive amount of personal information. Then they had a "privacy policy" that I had to agree with, which was also chunky. I prefer donating to an organisation that recognises that there is no need for a huge amount of my personal data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> Flip-per > The analysis found there are 1.7bn hectares of treeless land on which 1.2tn > native tree saplings would naturally grow.

> Crowther's team calculated that there are currently about 3tn trees in the > world, which is about half the number that existed before

I really hope this study is solid, but how can 1.2tn re-planted trees make up for a loss of 3tn logged ones? And moreover cover the CO2 of all that burned coal and oil?

<comment><USER28> Because it's not suggesting to return to pre-human numbers, but to plant without encroaching on current agricultural and urban land.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> It's about time this was noticed.

Consider that coal comes from dead trees - growing trees will be a big part of the solution.

<comment><USER30> Trees that had their leaves stripped by acid rain, flowed into stagnant seas and the nutrients caused ocean-wide algal blooms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Given the right approach, this is also probably the only way to tackle climate change that is self-sustaining. Because trees _reproduce_. And they constantly search for ways to adapt to their environment in order to survive and reproduce.

Human technology can't do that yet.

<comment><USER32> And hopefully not soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> A glimmer of hope? Waiting for the other shoe to drop in terms of "it will cost too much", "politically it's not possible", or some such...

<comment><USER34> I think part of the appeal of this plan, aside from its theorized effectiveness, is that it doesn't require any political buy-in. People can plant trees all on their own.

That said, a trillion is a quantity larger than any human has the ability to intuitively grasp. It really depends if by "planting trees" they mean "scattering seeds by aircraft" or if they mean "hand-planting saplings".

<comment><USER35> "scattering seeds by aircraft"

FWIW, There are startups doing this idea like BioCarbon Engineering [https://www.biocarbonengineering.com/services](https://www.biocarbonengineering.com/services) (found via video by one of it's investors Tom Chi [https://vimeo.com/294975140](https://vimeo.com/294975140) (at 11 minute mark) )

The concept of seed drops / seedballs seemingly goes back to the 'zero budget farming' ideas of Masanobu Fukuoka (an older video that goes into seedball making - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4-bwW8PWI0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4-bwW8PWI0) )

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Finding ways to get trees to grow in inhospitable areas, like the tundra, deserts, and at high altitude, can also help.

<comment><USER36> As far as deserts go, here is Geoff Lawton using permaculture to grow fruit and other trees in Wadi Rum, Jordan, a desert that gets just 17mm of rain per year (less than an inch). They use only permaculture and greywater to achieve this feat.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycLbO02lb7w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycLbO02lb7w)

If fruit can be grown there, it can be grown almost anywhere on Earth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37>
            "We still have a net loss of about 10bn trees a year," Crowther said.

This is a horrible number... I wonder what the true loss is, without the component of planted trees?

<comment> Flip-per "The Planet Now Has More Trees Than It Did 35 Years Ago" (Nature publication):

[https://psmag.com/environment/the-planet-now-has-more- trees-...](https://psmag.com/environment/the-planet-now-has-more-trees-than- it-did-35-years-ago)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> What do scientists say about alleged negatives about planting trees, like reduced reflectivity and slower disperal of fumes in cities? Do any of them still stand?

</comment><comment><USER39> That means a global / multinational movement against governments cutting trees (eg for lucrative construction deals) is needed.

<comment><USER40> Cutting for wood doesn't hurt since the carbon is still trapped in the wood. In fact it helps since they regrow new trees that sequester carbon faster in their early years than mature trees.

<comment><USER41> That is the superficial thinking but unfortunately it is not true. First when they cut trees, they do not haul in the branches and the leaves. There is no money in that. The branches and the leaves are all cut out and left in place with just the main trunk being hauled to the sawmill. The branches and the leaves then dry out and rot releasing their carbon. This means that big part of the trees mass (probably at least 50%) does not get its carbon sequestered. (For a similar reason freshly logged forests are a much bigger fire danger than forests that have not been logged at all).

Secondly unfortunately, in general loggers mostly do not regrow the areas they cut down. Although they do talk about regrowing whenever they are talking to the media, in reality the areas regrown are far less than the areas cut down and thus the earth is losing a lot of tree cover every year.

<comment><USER42> Dunno what kind of tree it is, but I do see tree plantations where each was clearly planted at the same time in a grid, and in a race to the sky, the trees don't bother with outward branches much, just the ever rising canopy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> So would deciduous trees better than evergreens for this given that they shed tons of leaves every year?

</comment><comment> your-nanny I wonder about growing trees in regions losing permafrost from GW

<comment><USER40> Perhaps there's a natural negative feedback where a higher CO2 concentration leads to more tree growth which reduces the CO2 concentration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> What, is it the 1980s again? Save the Rainforest and Plant a Tree? Why did that plank of the environmental movement get dropped? Did it?

In any case, it is back just in time for the latest season of Stranger Things. Ooh!</comment>


Britney Spears' music used by British navy to scare off Somali pirates - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/oct/29/britney-spears-navy-scare-somali-pirates <comment><USER2> I don't know which is weirder, that the British Navy is using the Minmay Defense. Or that Britney Spears is Minmay.</comment>