How to Apply to Y Combinator - <AUTHOR> http://ycombinator.com/howtoapply.html

<comment><USER2> > _Whereas if we can see obstacles to your idea that you don't seem to have > considered, that's a bad sign._

If I listed the top 10 _actual_ obstacles for a given project I'd bet half of them would seem totally unintuitive. I'm skeptical of anyone (even other hackers) trying to judge the specific technical or business obstacles of something they don't know much about.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, and in fact we look for that. We love it when people tell us things that are non-obvious. That's a sign they really understand the problem.

<comment><USER3> The funny thing is that given the space allocated to cover all those scenarios, the applicant ends up in a situation very similar to game theory (a post yesterday on HN pops to mind).

You, as the applicant, have to figure out what PG will consider non-obvious so you cover those, but keeping in mind that if there is anything obvious that PG would have thought you should cover, then you should cover those as well, but don't cover stuff that PG considers truly obvious and not worth covering...

Just like game theory implies, winning at this game pretty much means that both you and PG are on the same wavelength (from a though-process point of view).

Which sounds kind of obvious( __), once I reach that conclusion.

( __) extra credit will be given to people who cover the question of whether this post was useful from a game-theory standpoint. Was this post obvious in a useful way, or just plain obvious, or...?

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually there is a standard for non-obviousness: what's not obvious to your competitors. We have a question specifically about that.

        What do you understand about your business
        that other companies in it just don't get?

The amusing thing is, this question turned out to be an instance of itself. Many of the YC clones who copied our application form cut this one, because its purpose wasn't obvious.

<comment><USER4> I had thought that question was _clearly_ about competitive advantage through new and unique perspectives, as part of evaluating the business/technical idea. As such I'd expect the clones to include it. I'm twice mistaken.

I now see it's also about noticing non-obvious things, as a way to evaluate the founders; and that this better fits YC's philosophy of funding people not products.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> PG, please tell us about the time you most successfully hacked some (non- computer) system to your advantage.

<comment><USER6> <http://ycombinator.com>?

<comment><USER7> I think that would count as a computer system.

<comment><USER8> It's not the website. It's hacking the startup eco-system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> If anyone has any questions I didn't answer, please ask them on this thread. I still consider this essay a draft; if anything important comes up here, I'll incorporate it in the next version.

<comment><USER9> It seems to me that to have people make videos and then discard a lot of them without ever looking at them (which the text suggests is the case) would be a lot of wasted effort ?

<comment><USER10> The amount of effort that gets "wasted" per unwatched video is probably relatively small. Per the video instructions (<http://ycombinator.com/video.html>), producing the video really shouldn't take much time at all (my guess is less than five minutes for a group that a) already has well defined goals and b) has a macbook, where there's almost no overhead to record a video). Additionally, the very act of making the video is likely beneficial to the groups, by forcing them to solidify their ideas enough to be comfortable talking about them and by having them practice giving an elevator pitch about their idea.

<comment><USER11> I see you are subscribing to philosophy of no planning required and only one take. I once spent about 3 hours to do a 1 minute pitch.

<comment><USER10> I agree that it take lots of time to make a "professional" looking pitch, but based on the instructions, it looks like pg wants as much spontaneity as is practical.

<comment><USER12> Try recording yourself doing a one minute pitch. You'll be amazed at how short (to explain what you're doing) and how long (to not blow it) a one minute pitch can be. Now try coordinating 2-3 people doing that.

We're doing a little 1-2 minute video explaining our stuff at the moment and staying rather lo-fi and plan at least 10 hours of work on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> All of the things discussed in this essay are problems I see with product design as well.

Lots of people ask me for advice, and the first thing I always tell them is to change the first sentence a user sees on the homepage from "Abstract technologies to help people live better." to "We make a database with a Wiki UI."

This sort of thing fascinates me because the people I talk with who are clear and concise in the beginning are the same people who tend to succeed in the end. It is an amazingly good litmus test for finding good entrepreneurs.

</comment><comment><USER14> I remember reading about a study which showed that, at least for certain companies, judging from first-decade performance, hiring based on interviews was less intelligent than hiring based purely on GPA [1]. The reasoning was that judgment during interviews is suceptible to various human biases to which GPA's are not.

At least part of PG's reasoning seems susceptible to similar biases: for example, whether or not he recognizes a username might have a lot to do with how memorable the username is. I wonder if sorting users by a subset of their upvotes - say, those received from news.YC alumni - would make more sense in "highlighting" intelligent applicants.

1\. Would appreciate if anyone who recognizes this links it for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> We have lots of biases, but I don't think we're much influenced by how memorable usernames are. It's the comments that make a username memorable, not the name.

<comment><USER14> _I don't think we're much influenced by how memorable usernames are_

Well, by definition, biases aren't intuitively obvious. But I'd love to hear explicit introspection about this in the essay: what are your biases, and how do you eliminate their affecting your decisions?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a question we think about a lot, because bias basically equals things we judge wrong. I like energetic founders, for example, but one wouldn't call that a "bias," because energetic founders are good. So what you're really asking is what makes us pick wrong, which is something we're constantly thinking about.

When I pick wrong, it's often because the founders seem really nice. That's probably my biggest weakness. The other YC partners have it too. It's much harder to get funded by YC if you're an asshole. But who knows, maybe this is actually an advantage. It means the atmos within YC is really good. Everyone tends to trust one another. So maybe it's a win overall, even if it decreases returns in individual cases.

It's a complicated problem.

<comment><USER15> The more eyes you have on it, the more varied the views, the weaker the bias becomes but also the more watered down the perspective. You have a solid "review board" size at 4-5. You guys & gal will minimize cognitive biases. I'm only commenting because I spent a few hours recently reading and writing about the topic, it's all new to me though (blog links are in HN).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Great info. Thanks a lot for this, pg. You've pretty much told us exactly what you are and are not looking for in the application.

<comment><USER17> It will be great info for everyone who decides to read it and _pay attention_. I bet you that over 80% of the applications will still be garbage.

Of course, I see this as a good thing for everyone who applies who has some clue as to what they're doing.

<comment><USER9> Are you privy to the applications ? 80% would seem to be a fairly high number.

I think that there is a nice benefit from applying to YC for many small start- up companies, which is that for the first time (on that level of funding I'm assuming it's the first time) you have to get precise about stuff. So even if you do not get selected you're still going to be a big step further.

<comment><USER17> I'm not privy to anything, as the only thing I have to do with YC is posting here.

However, I acted as a technical adviser to some investors during the first dotcom boom in the 90s. Even in the face of specific requests, there were a shocking number of people who started their responses clearly intending to go into detail, and ending up with a heavy dose of hand-waving.

Having since moved on, I still do hiring and see similar problems with people being unable to read and comprehend simple instructions. There is a shocking amount of _bad_ out there; it just gets worse when people are looking for money.

As an aside, I was being generous with the 80% guess. Anywhere else I would have figured the garbage submissions to have crossed the 90% barrier.

<comment><USER18> A friend of mine was a sound, power, and lighting technician for some pretty prestigious concert venues. According to him, the "green m&m clauses" of certain bands' touring agreements were a test specifically to see if someone from each venue had actually read the band's technical specification requirements. If you got to the concert location and the green m&ms were not ready, it was time to panic and start finding out where the power was going to cut out when you turned on all the kit...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It would be great to see previous successful applications, if they don't mind. (Unsuccessful ones would be interesting too but that might be weird for them.)

<comment><USER20> Hopefully I won't feel stupid posting this, but I wished someone had done the same thing when I applied. (pg -- if you'd rather I not share this, feel free to delete)

Original Dropbox YC app: <http://files.getdropbox.com/u/2/app.html>

Had to remove some names and one sensitive thing but otherwise unedited

<comment><USER21> You seem to be already doing well at the time of the application, why were you applying to YCombinator? Was it the money, the networking, or something else?

<comment><USER15> This is exactly what I want to know. Must be the networking to sharp folks and help building the business from concept to concrete.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I read this, and I like your thinking about the types of people you are looking for.

But I have to say: You're asking for clarity, want applicants to avoid unnecessary or confusing language, etc. Why not practice what you preach? Why not include some of the "read between the lines" bits in your essay ("If this wasn't already clear, we're not looking for the sort of obedient, middle-of- the-road people that big companies tend to hire. We're looking for people who like to beat the system") and copy and paste them directly into the application form? It will make your life easier, and it will make it easier for YC applicants who are struggling with the process. Judging by the fact that you had to write this essay, people obviously _don't_ know what you want.

</comment><comment><USER23> How many repeat applications do you see? I am interested in applying and, likely, re-applying while I work on the idea.

Is this common? Does it clutter the application process to see previously rejected applications again and again?

<comment><AUTHOR> Quite a lot, and we sometimes fund them.

It's only a problem to see an application again if it doesn't change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Would YC consider accepting founders who can't work full time on their idea? We have been working part time on our product for the last few months and will launch later this year. We don't expect to clear immigration hurdles till sometime in 2010. Does it make sense to apply?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. There ought to be at least one person who will work on it full time in the fairly near future. You sound close enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It seems to me that there is some very useful advice here for someone trying to write a resume, even if that wasn't the intended purpose of the posting.

</comment><comment><USER26> Thanks pg! I was worried that entering too many secondary ideas would almost appear as a drawback. As if the team wasn't truly dedicated to the idea they were submitting the application for. Its nice to know the team itself is more important.

Also, I'd love to know what percentage of teams have business people, rather than 100% hackers

<comment><AUTHOR> Off the top of my head, I'd say 10-20% of groups have someone who's a pure business person, in the sense of not being able to program. More commonly there's one programmer who's more outgoing than the rest, and he or she does sales initially.

<comment><USER27> It's interesting that YCombinator, which values hackers so highly, included one pure business person (Jessica) among its four partners. Could you explain the reasoning behind that decision? What expertise did Jessica bring that Paul, Robert, and Trevor lack? More generally, when should founders consider bringing on a non-hacker as a co-founder?

<comment><AUTHOR> Jessica came from an investment bank. She deals with all the legal documents, gets startups incorporated, and so on. She also organizes all the events; we have a lot of those.

At least, that's what we _thought_ we were getting. She also turns out to be an extremely good judge of character, better than any of us. One of her nicknames is "the social radar."

<comment><USER15> Some folks don't know how lucky they are at meeting the right people at the right time, but you don't sound like one of them Paul. It's hard finding folks to cover all the needs of an early business. I've written about coupling social media with relevant ads for months, so far I've only discovered one business type interested. I gave up and started coding it myself (very limited web programming, desktop c++ for a little under 14 years).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> How about someone who needs guidance more than money. Like, someone who is currently employed and wants to do something on the side till it makes sense to go solo and maybe would need funding at that point. Would YC be interested/willing to consider this model and engage with such founder(s) to help review ideas, business models etc.?

<comment><AUTHOR> What would have to change for it to make sense to go solo?

<comment><USER29> Since the OP hasn't replied yet, I'll chime in with an example: Suppose his is the sole income supporting a family of 5, and he needs financial resources to feed, clothe, house, educate, and entertain 5x as many people as the typical YC founder. What would have to change would be the availability of said resources.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> "The first thing I notice when I look at an application is the username it was submitted under. If it's one I recognize for making thoughtful comments on Hacker News, I give the application extra attention."

I was actually surprised by this. In retrospect, it makes perfect sense, but I would never have even thought of this.

</comment><comment><USER31> Would you consider a competitor to an already YC-backed startup?

<comment><AUTHOR> Probably. We're going to have to face this eventually. Plus any sufficiently rich market probably has room for several permutations.

<comment><USER32> Like photos?

<comment><USER29> Or words, or anything else that can be used in a variety of ways. See real- user discussion here: [http://friendfeed.com/seemsartless/d4728c4a/saturday- june-27...](http://friendfeed.com/seemsartless/d4728c4a/saturday-june-27-2009)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> One thing that's confused me about the "Please tell us about the time you most successfully hacked some (non-computer) system to your advantage." question is the parenthesis. My guess is that they're included because you'll accept either a computer, or non-computer related example.

If it's confused me, chances are it may confuse others as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> The reason for "(non-computer)" is that we wanted to distinguish between hacking in the sense of programming, and hacking in the sense of beating the system.

<comment><USER34> "Beating the system" makes me think of rebellion. Is this really what you looking for in applicants? Does non-conformism really matter that much?

<comment><USER35> I think what pg means by this question is: "how resourceful are you in getting want you want/need?" I believe Entrepreneurs need to be creative and relentless in finding exactly what they need to succeed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Isn't this also an admission that the application process is a bit broken?

I think a lot of people would be open to submitting their application to others first, to help flesh out the weakpoints. On the menu bar, can we have "new", "threads", ..., and "YC applications"?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, of course. All application processes are. But we're working hard to improve it. We tweak the process in some way almost every cycle.

The idea of having everyone look at one another's application sounds like a minefield, though. Plus I don't want to clutter up HN with YC stuff. Only a minority of the users of this site are even interested in startups.

<comment><USER36> I realized after I wrote that about twenty reasons why it's a bad idea. But I think some sort of Q&A could be invaluable, especially given the brevity the answers have to conform to and that knowing the right words is something that comes after a lot of baking with the idea. Without it, preference goes to ideas that can be conveyed clearly and simply at the expense of more complex ones.

Would it be possible for the applicant to chose those HN users and YC alumni who have requested to view it? (With full comment threads and voting.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> On the other hand, maybe you don't want to help people submit better applications, because you can still only select a few of them. As the overall quality increases, it becomes more difficult to select between poor and high quality work. At least in the case of my intro bio students, essay 1 is always terrible and therefore easy to grade. I give them lots of tips, etc., for essay 2. The essays all improve, but I still have to assign the same mean grade so all their grades are the same. Basically it just makes my life harder.

<comment><USER38> I think you analogy with grading papers is flawed. Sure, it's easier to grade bad things than good things, because you don't have to look too deeply, but YC does not have to assign mean grades. They are reading in order to find useful information. If all applications become more concise and useful, that is a net gain, even if it makes the choice of who to interview less obvious.

<comment><USER37> It's not the analogy that's flawed at all. You admit that this might make that choice of who to interview less obvious, which is exactly my point.

However, if the goal of teaching is to teach students, then obviously one should try to improve their writing! Similarly, as you point out, if the goal of YC is to find useful information, then of course they should provide this additional help.

tl;dr:

Of course, most intelligent people I know would have found everything in this link perfectly obvious. In this case, you'll fail to separate people with good projects and reading comprehension from people with good projects AND good business sense.

It reminds me of applicants to our dorm (residents reviewed applications and rated them, which decided admission). It was easy to get into the dorm if you had any idea what the dorm was about. But some people just "didn't get it" and they were easy to pick out and rate poorly. (Bad application: I want to live here because I'm an architect and the architecture building) (Good application: I want to live here because I like getting naked in a kiddie pool in the middle of winter.)

<comment><USER39> OT: was this that crazy dorm at Cornell?

<comment><USER37> Yes :). Ah, college. I miss it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Re: describing your product matter-of-factly instead of grandiosely.

At a Startup School, Greg McAdoo of Sequoia described how they wanted each company to have a one-sentence masterplan and described how they made Cisco change their self-description from "We make boxen that do X,Y,Z" to "Cisco Systems networks networks".

If you're applying to be the next Google and most importantly if you guys look for the next Google, I think that sort of implies that the founders have some grand vision for the future of the company and that's the thing they'd want to put forward -- and that you'd want to see put forward so that you're confident they can be the next Google.

I guess what I'm asking is, would it have been better for 1976 Apple to apply saying "We sell a neat microcomputer kit for $666" or "We want usher in a technological revolution by making computers so darn pretty and easy to use that everyone will buy one"?

The former is more accurate, but it's the latter that really represents what the company is about and what its potential is.

</comment><comment><USER41> I like how PG coralled applicants. They shouldn't puff up their idea as they are the actual investment, but they shouldn't directly puff up themselves because that they should assume the investors will do it. All that is left to do is make an objective, consise description of their idea, its flaws, and their actions.

Simple thoughts.

</comment><comment><USER42> As someone who interviews developer candidates, this is not just good advice for applying to YC, but to tech jobs in general. Putting bullshit on your resume in _any_ form is the same thing as putting _shit_ on your resume. As with all useful communication, you're limited. Cut to the essence.

</comment><comment><USER15> Maybe because I'm a little older I'm confused on this one Paul. Why so much competition for 20k? Why are young founders racing to give away up to 10% of their business for such a small amount of capital? I can see the value of the YC network and that's worth a lot to me right now. But rent and fast food money for 3 months seems a little low of a reward on "winning" applications. Is the success rate of YC founders low? (success measured as sustainable/viable business in 5 years or a liquidity event)

<comment><USER15> I found a good answer on this nest of a comment page: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=715530>

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> _Please tell us about the time you most successfully hacked some (non- computer) system to your advantage._

What if it was potentially criminal? Would you still want to know:)?

</comment><comment><USER44> You get what you measure. The application selects for the ability to communicate in pithy statements. Fortunately, this is likely to be somewhat correlated with intelligence. Unfortunately, there are no obviously better methodologies.

</comment><comment><USER45> I never know what to write about unfair advantages or "why can only you guys do this"

</comment><comment><USER46> Suggestion: Add a word counter to the application to help people keep it under 120. (Or tell me how to use it if it is there already. :-) )

</comment><comment><USER47> So let me get this straight--if you make it through the gauntlet of rather arbitrary, hype-driven judgements, you get a whopping $10k and you have to move to the Bay, which has among the highest real estate and cost of living in the country?

How is this not a complete waste of time since it's so exploitive of developers? Oh, that's right, being part of the startup-hype bubble machine entitles you to a magic wand that allows you to step beyond economic reality. Wave the wand, voila! _we're so awesome, we're the next Google, we might as well print our own money!_

If you're a good developer, you'd probably do better soliciting micro-loans through paypal and Prosper. I suspect any developer who has another option takes it. I myself have several modest software ideas I've been kicking around for two years that might have a small chance for making a good startup. But being paid a subsistence wage, even as an alpha-stage startup, is worse than just keeping the ol'day job and pushing the prototypes as a hobby. Y-Combinator seems to be more for high school and college kids along the lines of Google's annual summer of code.

<comment><USER48> YC for us was much more about the connections than the money. It makes getting in the door a lot of places much easier, VCs/Angels are big on referrals and YC is kind of an insta-referral to anyone you want to talk to.

The value of YC also depends largely on what kind of company you want to start. If you're looking to start a small shop making $500k-$2M (max) a year in revenue with 2-3 people than YC probably isn't for you because that type of business is not venture fundable and thus the venture connections that YC can get you aren't really worth much. However, if you're looking at something that has the potential to be VC backed scale ($10M/yr+ at some point in the future) then the introductions and connections are necessary and the value of YC is clear.

Also, I would add that I think the YC alumni network has become one of the most valuable parts of YC. There are enough alums now that basically someone has had experience with what you are going through and can offer good advice, imho that is the hardest thing about YC to duplicate.

<comment><USER49> No offense, but I am curious about the number of YC startups who are currently doing (or done in the past) "$500k-$2M (max) a year in revenue with 2-3 people"?

<comment><USER48> I only know one, which is exactly my point. You won't find many of them because that isn't the type of company YC was designed to fund. You will find more than a few companies that have raised multiple rounds of VC and are in growth mode (Justin.tv, Xobni, Scribd, Songkick, Dropbox, Loopt, etc) because those companies better match the type of company that YC naturally fits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> So if the applicant is completely open about their idea and tells you everything, projected data, perhaps past or present data also, fully lay out the idea, how it would work, marketing, everything basically, what is there stopping you from simply executing this idea yourself?</comment>


Adobe Flash Player users hit by a zero-day flaw for the third time in two weeks - <AUTHOR> http://www.technewsworld.com/story/Is-It-Time-to-Trash-Flash-81678.html

<comment><USER2> Please, someone kill this agonizing technology once and for all. It is part of that web that we all hate.</comment>


GitHub SSH Key for $50 (broad phishing attack?) - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/noahlt/status/1231331891132817408 <comment><USER2> Scammers trying to get your Handshake airdrop, I heard it's worth about $2k, but likely has changed since then</comment>


No, driverless cars aren't far safer than human drivers - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/no-driverless-cars-arent-far-safer-than-human-drivers/2018/03/20/5dc77f42-2ba9-11e8-8ad6-fbc50284fce8_story.html <comment><USER2> Another useless article written by just-another columnist giving their opinion, failing to see the bigger picture, and riding the wave of bashing self-driving cars to get eyeballs to their article in hope to generate Ad revenue.</comment>


Show HN: NuScenes – largest open-source multi-sensor self-driving dataset - <AUTHOR> https://www.nuscenes.org/#yc <comment><USER2> It claims to have 1000 scenes of 20 seconds each....unless I'm reading that wrong, their entire dataset is less than 6 hrs of driving. A human couldn't learn in that time, much less a neural net.</comment>


Philosophy of Ghost in the Shell - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_Ghost_in_the_Shell <comment><AUTHOR> Of particular interest is the Stand Alone Complex:

"Stand Alone Complex eventually came to represent a phenomenon where unrelated, yet very similar actions of individuals create a seemingly concerted effort.... It is presented as an emergent phenomenon catalyzed by parallelization of the human psyche through the cyberbrain networks.[2] A key point is that due to the electronic communications network that is increasingly permeating society, more and more people are being exposed to the same information and stimuli, making the overall psyche and responses of large groups of people increasingly similar; the result is an exponential increase in the potential for copycat behavior that forms a Stand Alone Complex. There is no original Laughing Man, no leader. Everyone is acting on their own, yet a coherent whole emerges. There are people who employed the copycat behavior before others, but what started the coherent whole is uncertain."

</comment><comment><USER2> This is awesome.</comment>


Gmail Autopilot - <AUTHOR> http://mail.google.com/mail/help/autopilot/index.html

<comment><USER2> I'm amazed at how much effort Google is putting into their little prank.

<comment><USER3> I personally preferred Virgle from last year ( <http://www.google.com/virgle/index.html> ).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> pretty meh except for "I just returned from Bali and won the lottery"</comment>


Ask HN: What do you want to create after you close your first big exit? - <AUTHOR> I'm thinking: side-projects, software to improve other's lives, or anything where you aren't necessarily aiming for maximum profit. <comment><USER2> Build the Starfleet/Jedi Academy. A mathematics, physics, and code oriented monastery designed around whole-person principles. Martial arts, agriculture, and engineering as co-requisite studies. Labor to serve as tuition.

Meant for students serious about their education but turned off by the unbalanced approach of academia and the anti-artistic grind that modern capitalism can too often become.

Come, take your shoes off, spend a year or spend twenty: work on body, mind, and soul. Find what you love and love it.

<comment><USER3> Please make this.

<comment><USER4> Also ... no application essay pls. If demand > supply, just admit it is a lottery and let it be so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The Open Patent Foundation, a 501(c) Non-Profit with 2 specific Goals.

1\. A Community Driven approach towards creating 'Open Patent Licenses' similar to existing Open Source Software Licenses (likely a multitude of different licenses that one could use depending on their goal). These Licenses could be used for existing or future Patents, by both Individuals and Legal Entities. The Key here is that the Community votes to choose the Rights, Capabilities, and Limitations of each Open License.

2\. A Community Driven approach towards assisting with the actual Patenting of Submitted Technology (or assisting with the Cost / Filing) as provided by, and voted on by the Tech Community. Patents would be granted to the Submitter of the Innovation (they get credit), and then assigned an Open Patent License (everyone can use the Technology freely). Key here being that the Community votes to choose what they want to see Patented.

This is my vision to stop Patent Trolling independently of the Legal System (which works too slow). Crowdsource the Innovations and Patent them with an Open License, thus opening the technology to everyone in the future. We can't stop the Trolling of Existing Patents, but if we draw a line in the sand today, we can stop the Trolling of Future Patents by Patenting the Innovations first and opening them to the Community for Free Use.

While this is a noble cause (IMO anyway), I am still at the point of my life where I need to work 8+ hours a day to pay the Bills, and thus I'm not at the point of starting this Non-Profit (though I do own the Domains, and I have created a Website, as well as considered an Indiegogo Campaign)

</comment><comment><USER6> If I have a successful exit, I'll start travelling and will try to meet as many startup people as I can all over the world to find out people who are passionate about creating something different. This will help in two ways:

1\. I'll get to meet awesome people in even the smallest cities which I'm sure will inspire me to do even better this time.

2\. In the process I might discover concepts that I can work on be it non- profit or for-profit.

</comment><comment><USER7> A personal flying craft! A 1 or 2-person hovercraft/helicopter with AI detecting and avoiding proximity to surface and other objects for a smooth and safe flying experience (a self-piloting safe airborne people-carrier is the goal).

</comment><comment><USER8> At first I would do something what is not related to software development. I would try out something completely new. Maybe creating a new food brand for a niche market.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'd "create" a big fat check to help the less fortunate.

</comment><comment><USER10> Probably, politics. Hack the system.

</comment><comment><USER11> A town</comment>


French Internet piracy law defeated in parliament - <AUTHOR> http://in.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idINIndia-38973620090409

<comment><USER2> I'm French and I really don't think this law will ever pass. Not how it's currently written.

In France, we have something called the "conseil constitutionnel" which checks that every law voted by the parliament is in accordance with our constitution. This law violates a _lot_ of basic rights. For example, the "presomption d'innoncence" guaranties that people can't be arrested without proofs, and that they don't have to prove that they're not guilty; the government has to prove that they are.

</comment><comment><USER3> "It's a balanced bill for a legal and civilised Internet," said Culture Minister Christine Albanel.

That's another way of saying: kill the Internet.

</comment><comment><USER4> The law will be reexaminated as soon as the government can afford it, and , given the domination they have amongst the parliament, the law will probably be voted this time.

This is still a nice thing. It's letting some time to the people who are against this law to organize themselves and inform people about the obvious constitutional violations of this law.

<comment><USER5> It's more likely than not that it'll sneak in somehow. But it's less likely than it would be in America. Americans lack the ability to form strong emotional responses to abstractions; we'll only riot in the street over actual video footage of somebody being beaten or shot by police. In France, they'll riot when a law that allows things they don't like is passed, not just when someone identifiable as Authority publically does something they don't like.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the compliment, but [citation needed]...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Le jour de gloire est arrivé !</comment>


Apple Notebooks - battery care for longer life - <AUTHOR> http://www.apple.com/batteries/notebooks.html?aosid=p204&siteid=1503186&program_id=2554&cid=OAS-EMEA-AFF&tduid=2f50cdcce0369c49846c9d0306ee531e

<comment><USER2> Batteries typically don't die, they are murdered.</comment>


How to Encourage Women in Linux - <AUTHOR> http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Encourage-Women-Linux-HOWTO/index.html <comment><USER2> Date: 2002</comment>


The True Intent of SOPA - <AUTHOR> http://theagilepanda.com/2011/11/21/the-true-intent-of-sopa/

<comment><USER2> Personally, I think the true intent of SOPA is to prevent a Jasmine Revolution happening in the US (or Europe), and to prevent sites like WikiLeaks from spreading.

The US saw that Twitter and Facebook were key driving forces behind the events in Egypt, Tunisia, Iran, Syria, Libya, etc. Today they have not much control over these sites (other than politely requesting Twitter to delay a system upgrade[1] because Iranians were using it to coordinate their activities). Thanks to SOPA, they'll have a sledgehammer in their arsenal to knock these sites around.

Similarly, they could just talk to Amazon to not host Wikileaks[2]; but if Amazon had refused to comply, they couldn't have done much (OK, other than maybe quickly imposing a federal sales tax). Now, thanks to SOPA, they can completely shutdown AWS should the next Wikileaks crop up.

[1] [http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/06/16/us-iran- election-t...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/06/16/us-iran-election- twitter-usa-idUSWBT01137420090616)

[2] [http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/01/wikileaks- websit...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/01/wikileaks-website- cables-servers-amazon)

<comment><USER3> That didn't work so well for Amazon, since they got the sales tax anyway. So they ended up with both a bad reputation and a sales tax. I wish they would've at least refused to take down Wikileaks. When in doubt, do the right thing.

<comment><USER4> if you know how Amazon works internally you wouldn't be surprised of their action. They're just another business with no concern about 'doing the right thing' unfortunately.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That's one take.

Another perspective that's occurred to me: this is a battle (in part) between the old world of software distribution (sold, in physical units, proprietary), vs. the new (SAAS, and to a small extent, free software distributed over the Net).

In the case of SAAS vs. desktop/locally installed software, it's hardly surprising that Google and Microsoft end up on opposite ends of this debate. What helps one most certainly hurts the other. And to that extent, other players in this game are probably pawns to an extent.

That said: SOPA is bad, bad, bad legislation and I'm very strongly opposed.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm not directly affected by SOPA as I don't live in the US, but it certainly is a concern of mine that if it were to pass, it can be used to motivate such actions in other countries despite the recent negative statements on SOPA from the EU Parliament. It's a "but look, even they are doing it"-thing.

In other words, here is yet another person hoping it doesn't pass, no matter what the true intention is.

EDIT: I do realize, however, that sites used by me which are hosted in the US can be brought down and affect me directly.

<comment><USER7>
         "but look, even they are doing it"-thing.

I'm pretty sure the US is copying China in this regard. Governments look up to other governments with economic power.

Until a huge public outcry will happen, governments are going to do everything they can to control the Internet in every way possible. To make matters worse, these changes are implemented gradually and the negative effects such legislation will have on the public will start being obvious 5 to 10 years from now, when the inertia will be too great for anything to be done about it. I mean, even the Patriot Act is still active, so what chances does something like SOPA has to be retracted if passed? Especially since it is portrayed like those damn pirates are stealing your jobs.

See the old _boiling frog anecdote_.

I'm gradually losing faith in humanity - these days it's as if for every step forward, there are 2 steps backwards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> My gut has been that it is backed (and would be exploited) by corporations, specifically big media. Combine this with poor IP laws and you've got a scenario in which corporate censorship can thrive.

</comment><comment><USER9> OK so I finally read Wikipedia's take on the bill (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act>).

At this point that no matter what happens we're screwed. I see why the people in industry want to back SOPA. As a copyright holder of something that costs a lot of money to make of course you want to make sure someone's not getting it for free.

I feel that laws like this could be way too broad and definitely hurt companies that rely on general Internet content like the people making noise against it (Google, Facebook, and Twitter for example). I couldn't imagine the chilling effect this would have for those companies to come up with ways to remove the offending content. This would eat into their profits and make their products less useful.

On the other hand I don't know what the solution to this problem is. Should the companies just accept that a certain amount of piracy is going to happen? Should they charge less for content and make it more accessible? That may be a feel-good thing to say but to create the high production values for your favorite movie today costs money.

As to why I think we're screwed I imagine that if (when?) this bill doesn't pass then the companies will enact even more draconian options to curb piracy or copyright infringement.

</comment><comment><USER10> Woah, sopa is a future Wikileaks killer. Woah suddenly everything clicked in my mind. Mpaa, riaa, internet copying and "saving the children" are just pieces in a great chess game where Congress keeps itself the most powerful entity on the planet... With a website off switch to be used on any website worldwide that successfully challenges its authority. All bills giving any central authority power over the worldwide internet must be stopped. Internet > all governments... Combined. Internet should be free like a conversation in your home is free.</comment>


Half of UK's electricity to be renewable by 2025 - <AUTHOR> https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-half-uks-electricity-to-be-renewable-by-2025 <comment><USER2> How much will remain nuclear by 2025 (despite nuclear not being renewable)? Estimates suggest 20% to 30%, but the article also suggests that new nuclear plants are not necessarily going to be built as previously slated. Even still, 50% renewable plus ~25% nuclear is a pretty good clean mix.

<comment><USER3> In the battle against climate change, nuclear = clean. I care about climate change an order of magnitude more than I do about nuclear waste disposal. Given this headline, as far as I'm concerned the ideal amount of nuclear in 2025 is 50%.

<comment><USER4> Totally agree. We're also making significant progress on the waste that needs to be disposed. Gen-5 reactors that could be brought online in the 2030s, with sustained investment, could be closed cycle enough that waste may only need to be stored for a few hundred years. That's short enough that we don't need anything particularly special to store it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Unfortunately, the government definition of 'renewable' in this case includes 'biomass' which in the case of Drax means chopping down American forests and burning them, dumping the carbon into the atmosphere. Which of course leaves a bunch of carbon in the atmosphere, as it takes a hundred years for replacement trees to soak up the released carbon [1].

Makes no sense from a climate change perspective IMHO - I can't see why the government accepts it, except as a way of cooking the books to hit their own renewables targets.

[1] [https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aaa512/...](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aaa512/meta)

<comment><USER6> Better than burning gas or oil, though

<comment><USER7> Is it? If so, can you elaborate?

<comment><USER8> Not the OP, but one could make the argument that if forests are replanted (and they are in the US) that young trees may sequester carbon faster than old trees. Here is an interesting article: [https://icp.giss.nasa.gov/research/ppa/2001/anwar/](https://icp.giss.nasa.gov/research/ppa/2001/anwar/)

From a carbon perspective, it may even be desirable to periodically harvest trees (not just better than oil/gas), but I think a lot more research needs to be done.

<comment><USER7> Thank you for this explanation. Seems weird that someone thought to downvote me for asking a simple question, because at face value, CO_2 is released from either source and one might intuitively think that chopping down a source of CO_2 sequestration is counter productive, but you addressed that concern adequately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The estimates show the percentage increase from renewables slowing and tailing off to around 45-50%. Is there any justification for assuming the trend won't continue at a rate similar to current in the near future?

I don't expect that it would reach 100%, particularly as there are motivations to preserve the nuclear industry beyond power generation, but 50% seems a low estimate.

<comment><USER10> Storage.

Even at 2am on a still night the UK uses a gargantuan amount of power and we haven't solved the "How do we manage that with renewables?" problem.

<comment><USER11> In some areas like Texas wind blows strongest at night. And generally wind and solar compensate each other's seasonal deficiencies. The biggest problems are the 3 weeks in a year in which the sun does not shine and wind does not blow at the same time.

<comment><USER12> I read an article by Ramez Naam that suggested this would be solved by a nationwide grid rather than separate grids, since weather and usage fluctuations will average out

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Well that's great but it's not really enough and it's 50 years too late. Also UK accounts for 1% of global production. Sorry to be negative but we need to face up to the fact that we are in deep shit.

<comment><USER14> "The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is today."

The only thing worse than the "not really enough" emissions reduction plans, is idle comments about how terrible they are without offering any better, more effective solution.

Reducing the UK by 50% is better than not. If every country didn't reduce because they "only" make up X% of global emissions, no progress would be made, period. The solution is to target 0 CO2 emissions, and work our way there one productive step at a time.

<comment><USER15> There isn't a better, more effective solution. Maybe 25 years ago, but it's almost certainly too late now. [0] Even if we cut emissions to 0 tomorrow using magic, the ice caps would continue melting from the CO2 we've already released.

That said, it's still worth it to keep emphasizing the fact that things are going to continue getting worse for the environment. Otherwise, people will be shocked, angry and outraged and societal upheaval and violence are likely to result. Already, you see people are upset about the wildfires in California, or the influx of migrants from the global south.

It would be doubly sad (though perhaps some would call it poetic justice) if we lost our civilization as a consequence of destroying our ecosystem.

[0] [https://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=8433](https://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=8433)

<comment><USER16> > There isn't a better, more effective solution. Maybe 25 years ago, but it's > almost certainly too late now. [0] Even if we cut emissions to 0 tomorrow > using magic, the ice caps would continue melting from the CO2 we've already > released.

Please propose an alternative solution that does not involve time travel.

Yes, Climate Change is going to have a negative impact on the world regardless of what we do today. But if we don't do _anything_ , that impact will be _even worse_!

<comment><USER17> CO2 capture in the vein of www.climeworks.com might be the solution, but it would need the political will to tax the humankind. There is no way we will ever find a commercial use for the captured CO2.

In the meantime, those of us with the means to do so can buy cheap arable land (of the low yield potential, remote and so on) and plant a native forest there. If you're in the EU, the cost of doing so might be way less than you imagine, thanks to the Union heavily subsidizing forestation. My first order approximation is that fully offsetting the estimated emissions of my family would delay getting that damned flat downpayment by two or three years. Which I'm seriously considering.

<comment><USER18> CO2 capture will unfortunately never be practical. Assuming we can get the cost down to $100/ton (which is very optimistic!), the cost of capturing all CO2 emitted by fossil fuels per year would roughly equal 20% of the total US GDP. Limiting emissions will always be orders of magnitudes more efficient.

<comment><USER17> Indeed. But to really stop the bleeding, we do have to go negative emissions. It's not like the answer to "we'll reach the point of no return by 2030" should be "ok, let's settle for 2035 instead".</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why the iPhone 5 on Verizon and Sprint Won't Juggle Calls and Data - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/13/iphone-5-calls-data/

<comment><USER2> What does this mean in practice? Can you receive calls while downloading data (e.g. browsing Facebook)?

<comment><USER3> I think if you're getting data on wifi, then you can receive calls still. If you're on the cell network, I'm guessing you stop getting data and the phone switches over to receiving the call but not sure</comment></comment>


With $100M in Funding, Carbon3D Will Make 3D Manufacturing a Reality - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/08/20/with-100m-in-funding-carbon3d-will-make-3d-manufacturing-a-reality/

<comment><USER3> "This is the first 3D printing tech that really has the potential to break out of the prototyping realm that 3D printing has been relegated to until now"

Nope. 3D printing has been there for quite a while already: it is being used quite massively in the aerospace industry, and not for prototyping...

<comment><USER4> examples / links?

<comment><USER5> [http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-07/12/3d-printed- pl...](http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-07/12/3d-printed-plane- by-2050) "Airbus plans to have 3D printed components in the cabins of its A380s by the end of 2012. Its Eurofighter Typhoon military jet already has some internal 3D printed components."

Of course, those might be comparatively boring parts, like radio covers and plastic ducting. You won't be able to 3D print a working jet fighter in your garage for at least 5 years, maybe more :)

<comment><USER6> Those are also low-value, low-volume parts. 3D printing works for minor components when you are only building a couple of hundred planes a year, but the 3D parts themselves have almost no value whatsoever compared to the final product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wow, that's a lot of funding for just another resin 3d printer. We have had printers like Form1 in the low-cost segment.

I'm surprised about the funding amount, as the market is currently very very stagnating.

<comment><USER8> Their method of manufacturing is different than others. It makes the process faster, allows for greater detail, eliminated the issue of having layers which weakens the structure, and it allows for much more complex designs without the need for temporary structures.

I think their funding is well placed and will indeed give the 3d printing industry a shake up on the consumer market.

<comment><USER9> Different from other resin printers? It doesn't seem different than them, at least from this material.

<comment><USER10> Quantitative improvement, not qualitative. They don't need to separate the resin from the base plate after every layer, which means vastly improved speed and precision and much less complexity. It's the difference between a car that can go 5 miles per hour and a car that can go 50 miles per hour - <USER2> quantitative improvement, but now you have a reason to use it every day.

<comment><USER9> Of course, in manufacturing they're competing against injection molding, which can go a metaphorical 100,000 miles per hour.

<comment><USER10> But has its _significant_ limitations, notably that it takes a colossal machine and days to weeks to design, optimize, and machine a mold. Injection molding works great if you want to get to Pluto, but it'll cost you two years, a partnership with NASA, and a thousand tons of LH2 and LOX, and that cost remains constant even you just want to hit the supermarket. Current 3d printers can get you to the grocery store pretty well, but you're out of luck for anything bigger.

Carbon3d offers a new middle ground - fast enough and good enough for small production runs, but without the titanic constant-time overhead demanded by injection molding. This isn't going to be used for parts that you need ten million of. It'll be used for parts that you need a few hundred of.

<comment><USER11> Seems like there is a huge opportunity for 3d printing injection molds. It's probably more a tool chain question than an actual 3d printing question. But, by reducing the cost gap from mid-scale 3d printing to full scale production seems like a large potential net win. AKA, if the costs are similar at 10k and drop after that.

<comment><USER12> Injection molds need to be ridiculously precise, as in 1/1000 of an inch of can render it useless. Also, I have doubts that the layered result of 3-D printing can hold up to the extreme abuse these things get put through after tens or even hundreds of thousands of cycles. We are talking about foot thick plates of steel bending and warping from fatigue damage after a while. Even if you could 3-D print the bulk of it, the job of polishing and detail work would still need to be done manually.

Edit: after Reading the comment below, I admit I may be somewhat biased from working with more complex and detailed parts with very right tolerances, so there may be some applications where it is feasible. All the molds I've seen/worked with were made the old fashioned way.

<comment><USER11> _tens or even hundreds of thousands of cycles_

If it's reasonably cheap to print, then only lasting say 2,000 cycles would not prevent a useful mid-scale production runs. Also, the high end of 3d printing is a lot tougher and has tighter tolerances than you might think.

[http://www.gizmag.com/ge-fires-up-all-3d-printed-jet- einge/3...](http://www.gizmag.com/ge-fires-up-all-3d-printed-jet-einge/37448/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There is a TED talk by one of the founders with a little bit more detail on what makes their printer different.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihR9SX7dgRo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihR9SX7dgRo)

<comment><USER14> Thanks for sharing that. I've seen various demos (speed-accelerated videos) of this before, and this was the first time I've seen it in realtime, happening on the stage. It really... does look real.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Very hype heavy article. No mention of Form Labs who is already on the market with a similar product.

</comment><comment><USER16> Basically, it's another SLA printer, but they use an improved chemistry to speed up the process.

Autodesk, which now builds a 3D SLA printer for about $5000, has been experimenting with chemistries in that area.[1] They give more info about the materials used and the results.

[1] [http://www.instructables.com/id/Continuous-Top-Down-DLP- Expe...](http://www.instructables.com/id/Continuous-Top-Down-DLP-Experiments/)

</comment><comment><USER17> This could be really good for optimized lattice structures:

[http://www.altair.com/newsdetail.aspx?news_id=11109&news_cou...](http://www.altair.com/newsdetail.aspx?news_id=11109&news_country=en- US)

</comment><comment><USER18> > Instead of using steel to build certain high-strength components of an > airplane, for instance, Carbon3D would be able to 3D print a lightweight > alternative by shaping plastic into a form previously impossible to > manufacture.

This is what I'm most curious about. More specifically, I wonder if Carbon3D's device could be used for something similar to what Julia Greer is working on at Caltech (the nanotruss materials).

</comment><comment><USER19> Its crazy as just a few months ago the thesis convergance for much of Silicon Valley was that investing in 3D printing was very much 2014...Sure this one has faster builds but given that they aren't first movers and have substantial competition, it's surprising to see so much capitol being pumped in. Perhaps stratesys or one of the other big guys will want in so the investment makes sense?

</comment><comment><USER20> The previous HN discussion has some nice links to published articles on the tech, and good discussion about the advantages of their approach over traditional layer-based stereolithography (including e.g. Form Labs).

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9215890](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9215890)

</comment><comment><USER21> I like this 1.5 minute video on the technology: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3TgmvV2ElQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3TgmvV2ElQ)

Whether the economics ultimately work or not, it's an incredibly compelling demo.

</comment><comment><USER22> There is an Australian company making something similar. [http://www.gizmo3dprinters.com.au/](http://www.gizmo3dprinters.com.au/) They expect to launch their kickstarter project by end of year.

</comment><comment><USER23> Anyone have more info on the different materials the article mentions? on the carbon3d.com website they have a couple short clips about elastic or durable, but that is about it.

</comment><comment><USER24> Isn't a problem with these resin printers that the resin is quite toxic as well as the fumes? Also I think there needs to be some post chemical processing.

<comment><USER25> Yes (to be fair, it is getting better as better formulations are developed). Additionally, resin is expensive and the parts degrade and become brittle and fragile over time. Their innovation is very cool, but it won't be displacing FDM any time soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Is there any way for this technology to do multi-material or multi-color prints ? how ?

<comment><USER27> I have no idea if it's possible, but I could imagine maybe a multi-frequency light source where each frequency interacts with a unique color molecule in the resin to mix colors individually?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Drawing/Drafting learning resources for devs? - <AUTHOR> I'm looking for suggestions of books, online courses, etc to improve my non-written, visual communications skills for software.
I'm looking for help in two areas -- first, my handwriting is terrible and, even though I'm specifically not asking about writing here, my poor handwriting also affects my attempts to sketch and diagram. How does one go about fixing bad technique here?
Second, I'm looking for guides on _types_ of visual communication around software. I'm familiar with UML, and I do my fair share of sketching high level architectural components, but just as there are different kinds of maps for different purposes (road maps, topo maps, etc), I'm realizing my toolbox for visual representations of software systems is lacking.
In a nutshell, I'm feeling I'm not as effective in visually representing software systems as I could be - both when I myself am the audience and am just trying to understand a system, and when I'm proposing or explaining systems to others. <comment><USER2> For visual communication, I would suggest you giving Sketchnotes [1] a try. Definitely for formal communication of your software design, you will have to opt for those dull and dry diagrams, which I would add to an appendix.

As for handwriting, I think just practice everyday, write as much as you can. There are many workbooks that you can buy to do so, but nothing beats practice everyday. Before you start, it will be good to revisit your decision: cursive vs non cursive. And if you keep analog notebooks for your notes, to-dos etc, that will help you consistently practice.

Good luck!

[1] [http://rohdesign.com](http://rohdesign.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thx!</comment></comment>


Kubernetes Best Practices - <AUTHOR> https://email@example.com/kubernetes-best-practices-9b1435a4cb53 <comment><USER2> This seems to be a straight copy-and-paste of one of my talks. With zero credit to me :(

[https://speakerdeck.com/thesandlord/kubernetes-best- practice...](https://speakerdeck.com/thesandlord/kubernetes-best-practices)

WTF...

(BTW I'm creating a full deep dive series to go into each of these bullet points in much more detail)

<comment><USER3> And not only is it a copy-paste, it also manages to introduce errors, and still get thousands of views.

Well, had I known this post actually was based on your talk, I could have avoided all the effort (see my comments below in this thread)

<comment><USER2> I really appreciated your deep dive comments, they were good! People who see it will actually learn some best practices.

<comment><USER3> Thanks! I'm also looking forward to your writeup of the talk. Do you know where you're going post it, so I could find it once it's finished? (Maybe even a platform with notifications, so I can subscribe?)

<comment><USER2> Not sure right now, but I'd say follow me on Twitter and Medium and I'll definetly let you know! (both in my HN profile)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thank you for these 30 bullet points with no description or further detail other than 'do this'. Some are pretty common-sense, others not, and for these merely saying it's "best practice" with no extra detail, links or accompanying reasoning is not enough.

<comment><USER3> Not OP, but I've been running a kubernetes cluster for a few months myself, so I'll try to give context.

> Don't trust arbitrary base images.

Kinda obvious, the equivalent of "don't trust any random binary from the web", as it can contain malware at worst.

> Use small base image.

Generally, you should look at using Alpine as base image, to reduce storage size, and memory consumption of the overlay filesystem that docker uses. But be aware, Alpine uses musl and busybox instead of GNU libc and utils, so some software might not work there. Generally, this is also common sense. See more at [https://alpinelinux.org/about/](https://alpinelinux.org/about/) and [https://hub.docker.com/_/alpine/](https://hub.docker.com/_/alpine/) – but be aware, often the projects you want to depend on already have an alpine image (e.g., openjdk, nodejs or postgres images are all available in an alpine version, reducing their size from 500M+ to around 10-20M)

> Use the builder pattern.

With containers, many people include all build dependencies in the final container. Docker has a new syntax to avoid this, by declaring first a builder container, with its dependencies, then building, and then declaring the final container, and COPY'ing the build artifacts from the build container. This, too, keeps container size a lot smaller.

You can find more here: [https://docs.docker.com/engine/userguide/eng- image/multistag...](https://docs.docker.com/engine/userguide/eng- image/multistage-build/)

> Use non-root user inside container.

This is basically common sense with regards to docker as runtime, and is bad security practice (especially when combined with problematic filesystem mounts). Also is recommended by the Docker team: [https://docs.docker.com/develop/dev-best- practices/](https://docs.docker.com/develop/dev-best-practices/)

> Make the file system read only.

I'm not sure what OP is referring to here, but if it refers to the container filesystem, that is because writing to AuFS or OverlayFS is significantly slower (and more memory intensive) than writing to a PersistentVolumeClaim or EmptyDir volume in Kubernetes, so you should always mount an EmptyDir volume for all log folders, temporary data, etc, and a PersistentVolumeClaim for all persistent data.

Also is recommended by the Docker team: [https://docs.docker.com/develop/dev- best-practices/](https://docs.docker.com/develop/dev-best-practices/)

> One process per container, Don't restart on failure, crash cleanly instead, > Log to stdout & stdderr

This is related to the logging system (which mostly looks at stdout and stderr), which is a result of the fact that Kubernetes itself was mostly designed to work with a single process per container. Yes, you can spawn multiple processes, from a single shell, and print their combined stdout, but then you also need to ensure that if one crashes, everything restarts properly.

If you use a single process per container, logging to stdout/stderr, then scaling is a lot simpler, and restarts are handled automatically (and this is required for staged rollout).

> Add dumb-init to prevent zombie processes.

If you need multiple processes, and one that isn't PID1 crashes, you'll end up with zombie processes. A single process per container obviously avoids this, but if you have to use multiple, at least add an init system to reap dead child processes, potentially restart crashed dependent processes, etc.

Normally, docker supports the --init parameter to do this, but the version recommended for use with Kubernetes does not support this yet (EDIT: apparently, since 1.7.0, Kubernetes actually does automatically do this for you), so you could add e.g. [https://github.com/Yelp/dumb- init](https://github.com/Yelp/dumb-init) or [https://github.com/krallin/tini](https://github.com/krallin/tini) (both officially recommended by the Docker team)

<comment><USER3> Continuing further:

> Use the "record" option for easier rollbacks.

As explained in the documentation here [https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/workloads/controllers/de...](https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/workloads/controllers/deployment/#checking- rollout-history-of-a-deployment) this option records the changes you apply with each version, allowing you to roll back to any previous version, and see the changes.

> Use plenty of descriptive labels.

Not just descriptive, but you should also label by version, service, etc. You can use labels also in selectors for loadbalancers and ingresses, and you can also query the CLI by label. This not only makes it easier to find things, but also can be very useful, for example when rolling out a new version – label each with version=..., and then just change the label selector of the LoadBalancer.

How to use selectors, and labels, is explained here [https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/overview/working-with- ob...](https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/overview/working-with- objects/labels/) (I know that this explanation is very limited, but I don't know of a better documentation of this feature)

> Use sidecar containers for proxies , watchers etc. Don't use sidecar for > bootstrapping. Use init container instead.

For bootstrapping, Kubernetes will first execute init containers in order, then start the main container. This ensures that they operate deterministically. If you try to do this with sidecars, you might end up with containers running when they aren't necessary anymore, but also need to build your own deterministic bootstrapping, and handle errors in one of them yourself.

Also see [https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/configure-pod- container/con...](https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/configure-pod- container/configure-pod-initialization/) and [https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/workloads/pods/init- cont...](https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/workloads/pods/init-containers/)

> Don't Use latest or no tag.

This is basically common sense, as for any dependency – the way projects update significantly differs, some might never do breaking changes, others might break their entire API in every minor release, and as result, your service might end up down. This is the reason why a decade ago every sysadmin used Debian Stable (no breaking changes ever). On the other hand, if you specify fixed versions, make sure to check for bugfixes manually (e.g., I recently saw a container from a major project that was built with an outdated release of the JVM because they had never updated that version tag).

> Readness & liveness probes are your friends.

Readiness and liveness probes are especially useful for load balancing again – they determine if a service is ready to serve, and automatically remove them out of the pool used by the service, so that requests are only routed to services that are up. You don't have to use HTTP probes either – for example, several helm charts for clustered databases use their CLI client as probe.

More about the probes here [https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/configure-pod- container/con...](https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/configure-pod- container/configure-liveness-readiness-probes/) and how they affect the pod lifecycle here [https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/workloads/pods/pod- lifec...](https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/workloads/pods/pod- lifecycle/#container-probes)

        ________________________

And most of the rest seems pretty obvious.

Generally, for people interested in the topic, /r/kubernetes, [https://kubernetes.slack.com/](https://kubernetes.slack.com/) and #coreos on Freenode might be a much better place for a discussion than this HN post of an article with bullet points, no explanation, and countless typographic errors.

<comment><USER4> Thank you both!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well this was really disappointing. I imagine the number of the things in here or really useful but without more details on WHY you should or shouldn't do some of these things… I'm not sure why I should follow.

This is essentially a simple bulleted list.

</comment><comment><USER6> This would be interesting (and useful) if any of the assertions came with explanations.

</comment><comment><USER7> anybody have some more detailed advice along these lines?

<comment><USER8> Kuschku has good descriptions above</comment></comment>


Asserting Your Social Status With Your Facebook Status  - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2009/08/facebook_status.html <comment><USER2> I'm sorry but this sort of thing is so unbelievably, blatantly obvious when it happens that if you genuinely believe that somebody is "casually" saying these things, you're a social buffoon.

One of my friends is notorious for this. She is currently traveling around in Europe...every so often there will be something like

"laying on the beech in the south of france today! France Je t'aime!"

This sort of thing does not come across as even remotely casual, because it _isn't_ casual. Why did she feel the need to tell everyone that she was in "the south of france"? Why not just "on the beech"?

Because that sort of thing is abnormal for her. It isn't something that she normally does. She's bragging, and everybody knows it.

Now, I don't mean to pick on my friend (who may actually be fictional), but I just want the people that do this sort of thing to know that it is very, very transparent. You're making yourself look like a fool, and informing the world that the very things you are trying to purport as normal for you are, in fact, novel. That is why you're mentioning them.

<comment><USER3> I would think that posts regarding atypical activity would be the most interesting of posts. If a friend spends 90% of her time chained to a desk in a boring job, then I'd be much more intrigued to read about her trip to another country than to read about yet another day at the office.

<comment><USER2> You're right...posts about this _are_ more interesting. The annoying bit is her trying to play it off like this is a normal activity...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> <http://tweetingtoohard.com/top>

</comment><comment><USER5> The commentary, of course, is much more worth reading than the status updates themselves. Interesting to see how old-fashioned conversational techniques make the transition to social microblogging.

</comment><comment><USER6> I see this going in stages much like blogging itself, where you are trying to prove to yourself something really initially, then at some point you realize that, but you keep going with it. Eventually you gather too many friends to make sense of what is relevant, and you lose complete context of what you should or shouldn't put in there, and then you repeat all of this, or sometimes you just wind up either trolling or spamming with your status. Just my 2 cents!</comment>


Thorium nuclear reactor trial begins in Norway - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/160131-thorium-nuclear-reactor-trial-begins-could-provide-cleaner-safer-almost-waste-free-energy <comment> Tuna-Fish > While the safety of nuclear power plants is hotly contested, no one is > arguing the nastiness of plutonium.

Except everyone who knows anything about it. Plutonium is a hot topic because it's what you need to build a nuke, but the public perception that it is a significant as nuclear waste is simply completely misguided.

Because it's half-life is so long, it's only mildly radioactive. It's an alpha emitter, so plutonium not in your body is not a risk to you. It oxidizes easily, and it's oxides are heavy and non-soluble, so when it is released to the environment, it just tends to fall down and stay there. There is negligible biological uptake through eating, and while there is some uptake through breathing, plutonium does not tend to stay airborne.

Various people have denounced environmental plutonium as something capable of killing billions. The toxicity of plutonium in humans is not known, simply because not enough people have died of it. There is no-one in the world who has died of plutonium exposure who did not have it injected into his body (and that's a long and horrible story), and there were a lot of people who worked coated in plutonium dust for a long time. Of the people who were injected with plutonium, most died of other causes. Suffice to say, plutonium is sufficiently non-radioactive that it's _chemical toxicity_ is considered significant in it's lethality. Or, in other words, it's fine to consider toxicity of environmental plutonium as you would consider lead or other heavy metals.

To put it short, plutonium being toxic is simply not a concern as far as nuclear waste is concerned. _If all the plutonium produced by civilian nuclear power was pulverized and spread in populated areas, it would not make nuclear reactors as dangerous to people as wind power._ (Somewhat ironically, because of the thorium that is released into the environment while separating the REE for the magnets.) Taking all the plutonium produced in a plant and dumping it in one spot doesn't make that spot as dangerous as the ground near a typical fuel station that was in use for the period leaded gas was used.

Nuclear waste is really bad, but that's because of _short-lived_ isotopes, which decay more often, and thus are more radioactive, and _light_ radioactive materials, which are often soluble in water, have high biological uptake, and can stay in the atmosphere.

Plutonium needs to be tracked really closely, but that is not because it's toxic, it's because it can be used to make a bomb.

The more you know.

<comment><USER2> The other thing about plutonium people fail to recognize is that practical uranium civilian power reactors are pretty lousy at producing plutonium. The proliferation risk is non-zero, but processing spent fuel is a pretty nasty business and the amount of plutonium there is so small as to be a big expense for the small yield.

The problem with plutonium is a properly designed _military_ reactor can take the precious U235 you might build only one half a bomb with, and generate enough plutonium to create 2 or 3 implosion devices.

That is a big reason the neighbors to Iran and NK are not panicking. NK might have a bomb or two. Iran might eventually build a bomb or two. In both cases, their expertise is limited to uranium (so far), so the number of bombs they are likely to ever own within my lifetime is very few -- their stockpiles of uranium too modest to create a larger weapons stockpile. To actually _use_ a bomb is so reckless that you need a couple dozen bombs in your back pocket to deter the overwhelming payback. Both NK and Iran are a million miles away from getting there; they need both much more uranium and plutonium expertise to even start an attempt.

If they believed their safety were at stake, South Korea or Japan would build 50 bombs -- they are skilled at the requisite technologies. Likewise Saudi Arabia would write a check $100 billion and acquire a nuclear stockpile of their own -- their defense expenditures are so astronomically high that a modest cut to their conventional forces over a decade would foot the bill.

<comment><USER3> North Korea seemly can use both Plutonium and Uranium (or something else entirely even).

South Korea kinda does not care, because they know North Korea wants the entire Korea, not half-korea and half burned slab of ground.

North Korea in the past had enough non-nuclear firepower to flatten South Korea many times over, seemly they STILL have that firepower AND nukes, yet South Korea knows they won't use it...

Japan on the other hand, IS kinda paranoic, in the last elections a new party was formed, with a militaristic and nationalistic tone (including visiting WWII shrines and reacalling WWII as the good times), and they got expressive votes, also the current prime minister proposed heavily remilitarize Japan (to irritation of China, and both Koreas), including scratch the current constitution, and use a new one that follow confucionism (instead of illuminism).

<comment><USER4> >North Korea in the past had enough non-nuclear firepower to flatten South Korea many times over, seemly they STILL have that firepower AND nukes, yet South Korea knows they won't use it...

No. They have nukes because they have no chance whatsoever against the South. The North Korean army is bigger, but its equipment is antiquated, and it has no gas or live ammunition for training. The "soldiers" spend most of their time farming or working in factories. They don't have enough food to fight a war.

The South Korean military budget is 20x that of the North.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm super-interested in thorium reactor research, but this author seems to lack even a cursory understanding of the issues at play. This reactor differs from what lots of thorium advocates are aiming for because it's a solid- fueled, high-pressure, water-cooled reactor, instead of the proposed LFTR designs, which involve a reaction taking place in a liquid at very high temperature, but at atmospheric pressure, and thus have a different set of tradeoffs as far as efficiency, safety, proliferation resistance, etc.

This article discusses none of that, and instead suggests that this reactor is sub-optimal because it's not a cold fusion reactor -- what? Thorium atoms are big and somewhat-unstable, which is what you want for fission. For fusion, you want little atoms you can ram together to make slightly-bigger little atoms. They're totally separate.

<comment><USER6> You're right, the author clearly doesn't know what he's talking about. But the story is still interesting nonetheless. :-)

Its great to hear news that Thorium is finally on the path to adoption.

<comment><USER7> Unfortunately the type of reactor they are building is not as safe as a LFTR, nor does the fuel in this type of reactor last as long; the LFTR reactor is a type of fast breeder reactor. It will still need to be fed pellets continually. The only two material difference between this kind of reactor and a normal boiling water reactor is that it is capable of "burning" a small amount of uranium and/or plutonium a year (either from spent fuel or new sources), and the spent fuel is far less radioactive after a full burn (a full burn is not always the case). It still has most of the other safety issues of a boiling water reactor.

<comment><USER8> Just a nitpick, the LFTR isn't a fast reactor, though it is a breeder. Thermal reactors breed thorium to U233 just fine. Some people have proposed fast molten salt reactors but those designs aren't as far along.

<comment><USER9> Furthermore, isn't Th no better than U-238 for fast-reactors (and we have huge quantities of U-238)?

Also, isn't the neutron economy of LFTR just slightly above unity? IIRC chemical removal of fission byproducts was needed for a feasible Th reactor that generates excess U-233. At least that was my recollection that one of the potential advantages of the FLiBe design was for such very simple chemical reprocessing.

<comment><USER8> True, they have similar advantages, very efficient fuel utilization and little waste.

Some of the engineers involved in molten salt reactors say "come for the thorium, stay for the reactor." Liquid fuels offer several benefits. Removing fission products continuously helps you achieve high burnup. There's no fuel fabrication cost. And if the electricity cuts off, a frozen plug melts and all the fuel dumps into a passive cooling tank, with little worry about decay heat since you've been removing those fission products.

The neutron economy is arguably an advantage from a proliferation perspective, since you can't remove much fissile without the reactor shutting down.

Still, a good fast reactor like the IFR has its own charms. The metal fuel is easy to fabricate on-site, and they tested electricity cutoff and it quietly shut down just fine, due to the physics of the fuel and coolant. And the mixed plutonium isotopes produced by the reactor are very difficult to refine into weapons-grade.

One advantage of the molten salt reactor is that there's nothing in the reactor that can drive any kind of chemical explosion, like the hydrogen that blew at Fukushima. The IFR uses molten sodium, which is pretty reactive with air and water. That might not be too terrible to deal with but it does drive up the cost.

Another advantage of the IFR though is that we've got a production-ready design ready to go.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Considering Norway is already a net exporter of both oil and hydroelectric power, if they add cutting-edge nuclear to the portfolio, they will really be all-around energy kingpins!

Incidentally, this is the project site, which the article irritatingly doesn't bother to link: [http://www.thorenergy.no/en.aspx](http://www.thorenergy.no/en.aspx)

<comment><USER11> Norway has a disproportional chunk of the world's known Thorium reserves as well. It seems Slartibartfast rigged the energy lottery in their favor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> _(And yes, just in case you were wondering, the element thorium really is named after Thor, the Norse god of thunder. And yes, Norse mythology originated from Norway, where Thor Energy is based. Coincidence, I think not!)_

The first sample of Thorium was found in Norway:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium#History)

 _Morten Thrane Esmark found a black mineral on Løvøya island, Norway and gave a sample to his father Jens Esmark, a noted mineralogist. The elder Esmark was not able to identify it and sent a sample to Swedish chemist Jöns Jakob Berzelius for examination in 1828. Berzelius determined that it contained a new element, which he named thorium after Thor, the Norse god of thunder.[17] He published his findings in 1829.[50][51][52]_

The fact that Thor Energy is Norwegian might just be due to the country being at the same time very wealthy and environment-minded. The Norwegian reserves of thorium are far smaller than those of other countries.

<comment><USER13> > The fact that Thor Energy is Norwegian might just be due to the country > being at the same time very wealthy and environment-minded. The Norwegian > reserves of thorium are far smaller than those of other countries.

Norway is also only nr. 22 when it comes to proven oil reserves :) (dunno about previous figures)

From the (few, probably inaccurate) estimates, Norway seems to have a sizeable enough amount of thorium for a country of its size and population.

<comment><USER14> What if you divide oil reserves per capita, or per area?

<comment><USER13> That was exactly my point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "but not in the sense that most people think of when they hear the word thorium [...] they haven't created a cold fusion thorium reactor"

What is this supposed to mean? Who ever talked about cold fusion thorium reactor? Was the author thinking about toroidal fields in Tokamak (which is very hot fusion)??

<comment><USER16> Keep in mind, this article was written by the same author as "Cold Fusion reactor independently verified"[1]. He seems somewhat obsessed with the idea.

[1] [http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/156393-cold-fusion- reacto...](http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/156393-cold-fusion-reactor- independently-verified-has-10000-times-the-energy-density-of-gas)

<comment><USER15> So maybe he should know that thorium has nothing to do with fusion :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Well, Germany got burned by Thorium reactors back in the 80s: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THTR-300](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THTR-300)

Let's see if this performs any better.

<comment><USER18> The THTR-300 ran into trouble because of operational difficulties with its unconventional pebble-bed design. In contrast, this is a very conventional reactor design. The difference is that the fuel is initially made of about 90% ThO2 and 10% PuO2.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is interesting and encouraging stuff. I'm a big believer in fission power as our best option for a clean source of huge amounts of electricity (which we'll only need more of as electric cars start to become popular).

My main reason for commenting is to congratulate Thor Energy on coming up with a trebly relevant name.

<comment><USER20> There was an enegry debate here a couple of months ago and it was suggested that the future of enegry is everyone will have a solar panels and a battery which is charged by the sun.

Once you think about distributed power, the need to generate mass amounts in one place seems to be less important, though having access to cleaner and safer ways of doing so are still good things as no doubtsome of us will still rely on the grid sometimes.

<comment><USER21> Give us decent batteries and all will be well. My parents just scrapped their solar set up. Summer days in the Bay of Plenty, New Zealand, provides enough sun to have the charging switch off at about 9am, batteries full. Big Mac Pro, lots of IT gear, coffee machine, vacuum cleaner etc all used normally. No problem. But come winter the batteries would be perilously low, risking damage. Days and days of torrential rain prevented any meaningful charging. The ability to store more power economically would be so very handy. The panels would provide vastly more power than was used during a year, but were uneconomic due to not being able to feed it back to the grid (!!?!) and not being able to store enough. I'd say that decent power storage was a bigger problem than the generation.

<comment><USER22> is it possible to somehow convert the power gathered during summer and spread it out for use during winter (when there is less sun), by say, electrolysing water to produce hydrogen and then use that as a chemical store of fuel?

<comment><USER23> if you could feed it to the grid, hydro and coal and natural plants could be throttled down or some units shut down. I don't know about nz energy mix but I assume they have lots of hydro power. This is the natural straight forward way if doing it, not installing heavy batteries at homes. You can simulate adding different power sources to the grid with commercial software.

I'm sick and tired of this "but it's intermittent" canard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> "[Thorium reactor] could provide cleaner, safer, almost-waste-free energy" Always when somebody claims this, it almost never works that way.

<comment><USER25> More like the claim will be true but ignored, atleast when it comes to cleaner and safer.

<comment><USER26> At least pebble bed reactors (like the already mentioned THTR-300) are not really safe. Get a bit of water into the primary cooling cycle, while the reactor is running at capacity and you won't have that power plant for long (happened at the AVR.. luckily it was running at lower temperature at the time so they only had to run the reactor quite a lot reduced capacity for a year to get the water out).

As for molten salt reactors.. still lots of problems to be solved related to the combination of molten salt and high temperature (I recall there being an US based molten salt reactor that got it's cooling cycle contaminated somehow.. but can't seem to find it right now)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Here are some slides containing more details about the Norwegian thorium initiative and Thor Energy: [http://www.statkraft.no/Images/Thorium%20power%20abundant%20...](http://www.statkraft.no/Images/Thorium%20power%20abundant%20climate_tcm10-1682.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER28> How long can we continue to believe our energy needs can rise at the level we've become accustomed too?

This is scary: [http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/galactic- scale-e...](http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/galactic-scale- energy/)

<comment><USER29> No one with even a rudimentary understanding of exponential growth believes energy consumption can grow exponentially forever. But the problem is self- fixing; one day, the supply of energy will stop growing as fast as demand. The day will come, the day will pass, and the world will adjust.

<comment><USER30> In particular, prices will rise gradually over time, which will encourage investment in cost-lowering research and development, as well as into energy generation.

The market is what helps the world adjust. Unless a dramatic event causes a significant change in prices in a short time, things will carry on just like they always have.

<comment><USER28> Also, this idea that we don't have to worry about stuff because the market with help us adjust is idealistic wishful thinking at best.

<comment><USER29> What are you proposing is the problem? That we will foolishly bull forwards, and accidentally violate the laws of physics and consume more energy than there is?

<comment><USER22> the fear is that we would consume too much now, and not leave enough behind to facilitate the research/development needed to find/create better sources of energy.

E.g., you used up the fuel in the car too fast, and can't reach the next gas station.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This may be the beginning of new era. Thorium is easy to get for developed nations in the 3rd world.

<comment><USER32> India has been working on a Thorium reactor for some time already: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototype_Fast_Breeder_Reactor#...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototype_Fast_Breeder_Reactor#cite_note-4)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> The "not prone to nuclear weapons proliferation" bit is critical, and unfortunately wrong. As [http://phys.org/news/2012-12-thorium-proliferation- nuclear-w...](http://phys.org/news/2012-12-thorium-proliferation-nuclear- wonder-fuel.html) points out, thorium produces protactinium-233 which can be chemically separated out. In around a month that turns into uranium-233 at sufficient purity to make nuclear bombs.

This process is much easier to do in secret than the centrifuges that are required to separate isotopes of uranium. Thus thorium is worse for proliferation, not better.

<comment><USER8> Yes, but you have to separate the protactinium shortly after it's created, or you end up with enough U232 to make a bomb impractical. And in a solid-fuel reactor, what are you going to do, shut down the reactor every day so you can melt the fuel rods, pull out the protactinium, and refabricate them?

A liquid-fueled reactor could be another matter, and we'd want to keep an eye on them in non-nuclear states. But another factor is the breeding ratio, which is barely over one for thermal thorium. If someone were to pull out much fissile, the reactor would shut down, and they'd have to go begging for more fissile to start it up again.

Another advantage for liquid fuel is very high burnup, so pretty much all you're taking out of the reactor is fission products, not leftover fissile that could theoretically be reprocessed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Interesting contrast to the German reaction to Fukushima.

</comment><comment><USER35> _At a test site in Norway, Thor Energy has successfully created a thorium nuclear reactor — but not in the sense that most people think of when they hear the word thorium. The Norwegians haven't solved the energy crisis and global warming in one fell swoop — they haven't created a cold fusion thorium reactor._

Who the hell thinks "cold fusion" when they hear thorium?

</comment><comment><USER36> The key thing here is that these pellets are designed to work with existing reactors. If you want to start using thorium it is a very hard sell (given the popularity of nuclear power atm) to build new reactors/plants, but changing the fuel in existing plants to something that can be said to be 'cleaner' or 'safer' might be doable.

</comment><comment><USER37> _The rod in the middle of the picture contains thorium-MOX pellets, and is being inserted into the reactor (which is underground)._

So these guys are standing right next to a fuel rod radioactive enough to start a nuclear chain reaction? [0] Can anybody elaborate on how dangerous this is?

[0] only if close to lots of other fuel rods, I guess...

<comment><USER38> Unused nuclear fuel has very low radioactivity. It is the fission products, which are the problem regarding radioactivity. Were it a used fuel bundle, they wouldn't be standing there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Wait a minute...plutonium is a waste product? I thought the supply of plutonium (that is not used in weapons) was running so low there would not be enough to fuel deep space missions.

<comment><USER18> The isotope of plutonium that's used in radiothermal generators for space missions, Pu-238, is something you produce specially. Usually you get Np-237 from spent reactor fuel, and then bombard it with neutrons in a reactor designed for producing useful isotopes.

<comment><USER22> where do these neutrons come from?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I hope such technology comees to India soon!

<comment><USER8> You may know this but India's been working on it, since it has substantial thorium reserves and not much uranium.

<comment><USER32> Here's the link: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototype_Fast_Breeder_Reactor#...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototype_Fast_Breeder_Reactor#cite_note-4)

<comment><USER40> Yes I know that India is working hard in making thorium reactors. Also, many of the nuclear plants in India use some percentage of thorium like 4 thorium with 12 uranium to make a bundle. I hope thorium reactors soon. It will be very useful.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


BlackBerry acquires mobile security company Good Technology for $425M - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2015/09/04/blackberry-acquires-mobile-security-company-good-technology-for-425m-despite-their-thorny-past/

<comment><USER2> I remember these guys going hell-for-leather at each other in public fairly recently. Surprise acquisition for that reason, but makese sound business sense I think. BlackBerry's going all-in on the enterprise. Apart from this Android phone thingey it's launching.</comment>