Google says its carbon footprint is now zero - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54141899 <comment><USER2> There's a really good explanation of different loopholes in calculating carbon emissions in the Microsoft carbon target announcement from last year[1].

Eg do you count secondary services your employees use, like food services or emissions from their commute? Do you count partner services, like shipping providers for physical product? These, along with your direct emissions, are categorized into three "scopes" of emissions. Do you include purchased offsets against emissions, and at what rate? This is what most companies (including MS, since 2012) use to be "carbon neutral". Companies are selective about which scopes they include, and they pay for the total in offsets.

The point of the blog lost is to be clear (and holier-than-thou) about MS's announced goal: to _remove_ more carbon than they produce in all three scopes each year by 2030 ("net negative"), and to remove all the carbon Microsoft has ever produced in all three scopes from the atmosphere by 2050. Actual carbon removal, not offsets.

I have not read this article so I have no idea what google is or isn't claiming here. But I learned a lot from the MS blog post so I thought I'd share.

[1] [https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2020/01/16/microsoft- will-b...](https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2020/01/16/microsoft-will-be- carbon-negative-by-2030/)

<comment><USER3> > emissions from their commute

Isn't stuff like this kind of out of their hand unless the state itself tries to fix this.

<comment><USER4> Companies can help a lot by locating their offices in places that enable less carbon intensive commuting, lobbying local government, supporting initiatives that promote density, and supporting local transit initiatives (example: [0]). When businesses speak up and say, local business needs workers to be able to commute without a car, our competitiveness will suffer without it and we will fall behind, that speaks to a large number of voters who don't respond to environmental appeals.

[0] [https://www.kxan.com/news/downtown-austin-business- leaders-s...](https://www.kxan.com/news/downtown-austin-business-leaders-say- project-connect-is-a-critical-need/)

<comment><USER5> >>supporting initiatives that promote density

This is not going to help you with "speaks to a large number of voters who don't respond to environmental appeals"

There is a MASSIVE over lab in people that do don't respond to (government regulation based) environmental appeals AND have no desire to live in densely populated cities.

Speaking as one of those people, the idea of living in an area of high population density is a non-starter for me, my current area is about 2,000 people per square mile that that is FAR FAR too dense for me. living in Seattle or LA with a Population density of 4x time is something nightmares are made of, and NYC at about 13x that is just a total night terror....

<comment><USER6> That's fine, you keep doing you. Just done stop other people from living the way they want to.

<comment><USER5> There is one group politically that wants to prevent people from living they way they want, and it is not Rural people

<comment><USER6> Not sure what "rural" has to do with this, because nearly all land in the US is rural and it's super easy to find any sort of rural life one wants, in addition to it being super cheap.

However, there is a massive undersupply of dense living in the US, because it has been legislated out of existence, not because people don't want it.

And I would point out that many "rural" towns have fantastic dense living in their core, that allow people to walk for daily errands, etc.

The real enemy of density is not rural vs. urban, because these do not tough each other at all. The people who prevent density are the suburban enclaves that, through heavy and excessive regulation, prevent people from building anything except for single family residential sprawl for miles upon miles, necessitating a car for something as simple as getting a pint of cream.

Which is the way that many people want to live, which is great for them, and they should be allowed to do that! But we need to stop letting them say to others: "I don't want to live in density, so you shouldn't have the very option of it because the mere existence threatens me."

I've been fighting for smart density in my town for quite a while, and no rural person would ever oppose this, because they are not in town! And I think they realize that the more people in town, the fewer crowding into their rural life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is like rich countries moving factories to third-world countries where industry emits more CO2. They pretend to be responsible for less and less greenhouse gases even though they consume more physical goods, with larger carbon footprint. Worst, they feel fine flying and buying SUV because their not that dirty compared to people in undeveloped countries whose carbon footprint keeps increasing.

<comment><USER8> They aren't displacing factories to third world countries. They're displacing dirty power with cleaner power. Obviously this won't be sustainable forever, but it's a good start.

<comment><USER9> But a ton of the "clean" power isn't clean. Solar needs to have standby fossil plants that keep at idle or else you get brownouts. Those high end molten salt solar plans take natural gas to startup. Most "wood chip" plants burn the same fast growing trees used by paper mills.

CO2 is a stupid thing to focus on. There are so many other forms of pollution that are so much worse. Factory cities in China that have lakes of toxic sludge waste. The massive amount of plastic particles in the ocean. Colossal e-waste from electronics only designed to last two years.

Real, meaningful changes that will stop environmental devastation require reduction of consumption. Unless Google finds a way to reduce their data center footprints, the CO2 numbers are most likely just cooked books; displacing CO2 with other environmental disaster.

We need to consume less things.

<comment><USER10> > Solar needs to have standby fossil plants that keep at idle or else you get > brownouts

That's strictly cleaner than running the region on fossil plants only

> Natural gas to startup

That's strictly cleaner than running the region on natural gas only

>CO2 is a stupid thing to focus on. There are so many other forms of pollution that are so much worse. Factory cities in China that have lakes of toxic sludge waste.

Lakes of toxic sludge are bad, but they're a localized problem. Atomspheric CO2 balance threatens to crash the global ecology for everything larger than bacteria. Of the things you've listed, the risk factor for killing everyone is CO2 --> ocean plastic --> e-waste --> toxic sludge lakes.

> We need to consume less things

That'd be cool, but unfortunately, have you met humans? We've been trying the "Consume less things" approach my entire life; it doesn't take. We need the consumption to be more efficient and less environmentally impactful.

<comment><USER11> I understand your argument, but honestly, as someone living in a heavily polluted area, I couldn't care less about the CO₂ problem. When you have the immediate concern of people dying 15 years earlier than they might have, when your throat burns 300 days in a year, and you often can't see much farther than 400 meters, I would be very happy if we could just switch everything coal powered to natural gas.

<comment><USER10> As someone who also lives in a heavily polluted area, I agree, but I can also move.

Nobody can move away from the consequences of CO2 saturation. There's no second planet to move to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm always suspicious about carbon offsets. From what I've seen buying flights for example, the price seems surprisingly low. Either being carbon neutral is not as economy-killing as some say, or the true price is much higher. Does anyone have more expertise on this?

<comment><USER13> Because so few people are interested in offsets right now, there's a huge amount of "low-hanging fruit" options for cheap things humanity can do to offset carbon emissions. For example, look at some of the projects here: [https://www.goldstandard.org/take-action/offset-your- emissio...](https://www.goldstandard.org/take-action/offset-your-emissions)

Many of them just involve getting very poor people access to clean water (so they don't have to burn hydrocarbons to boil the water) or cleaner-burning cooking gases. Prices are as low as 10-15 USD per tonne of CO2.

If we ever make a serious attempt to decarbonize the entire economy, we will run out of cheap/easy options and be forced to make harder, more expensive tradeoffs.

<comment><USER14> Not buying the access to clean water = less burning of hydrocarbon.

The poor people by definition are resource strapped and will use any means of energy available, just for different purpose.

On the cynical side: clean water -> less mortality -> more population -> more carbon use to sustain said population.

<comment><USER15> It's pretty well established that lower mortality leads to less reproduction and lower overall population. When mortar is high, proof reliability over correct with extra "cushion" children.

Wealth is a far larger source of pollution than life.

<comment><USER16> > Wealth is a far larger source of pollution than life.

It's both. Wealth drives down the birth rate (as does empowerment and higher education of women [1]), but it also drives up the rate of pollution [2]. You need "Clean Wealth" (high quality of life with low or zero CO2 emissions, pollution, etc) if you want lower birth rates (which we do, we're on track to hit 10 billion people by the end of the century) _and_ less pollution.

[1] [https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate#what-explains- the-...](https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate#what-explains-the-change- in-the-number-of-children-women-have)

[2] [https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/co2?tab=chart&xScale=li...](https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/co2?tab=chart&xScale=linear&yScale=linear&stackMode=absolute&endpointsOnly=0&year=latest&time=earliest..latest&country=China~United%20States~India~United%20Kingdom~World&region=World&Gas%20=CO%E2%82%82&Accounting%20=Production- based&Fuel%20=Total&Count%20=Per%20capita&Relative%20to%20world%20total%20=)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is quite impressive, but it is also somewhat meaningless. I suppose I'd draw an analogy to a cake shop boasting that it had achieved net-no industrial accidents over its existence - a great record, but also not really a particular stretch to achieve.

Carbon emissions aren't about servers. They are about, in order of priority:

* How do we feed people cheaply without fossil fuels (both as fertiliser & for crop transport)?

* How do we extract minerals cheaply (especially aluminium) without fossil fuels?

* How do we maintain the cheap logistics network that gets us stuff without fossil fuels?

The first two are non-negotiable, the 3rd is quite important. If those 3 problems were solved then fossil fuels would just go away quietly. Google isn't involved in any of those things; it is part of the 'these carbon emissions are incidental' category of emissions that we can reasonably get rid of.

But, again, good on them for setting clear goals and achieving them.

<comment><USER18> Yes, I agree that the title should be "Google data centers achieves zero carbon footprint", but still it is not zero effort to achieve it. I would imagine data centers to use non trivial power to run.

<comment><USER19> Wondering if that also applies to Alphabet as a whole or only Google. I find it especially interesting due to everyone screaming "but muh CO2 footprint", every time big ML projects are announced by them (e.g. AlphaGo) that use enormous resources for training.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Google blog article: [https://blog.google/outreach- initiatives/sustainability/our-...](https://blog.google/outreach- initiatives/sustainability/our-third-decade-climate-action-realizing-carbon- free-future/)

</comment><comment><USER3> This has been very commendable from Google, since they started working towards it.

Sure, there have been environmental impact from this as others have pointed out, but since they were one of the earliest movers on these things, we can expect them to run into issues which hopefully they will work towards fixing for everyone. Also, we do need to compare the impact with the impact of what it replaces to keep things in perspective.

I am glad that more companies have joined them on this, since it looks like it will be very hard to convince some governments to course correct on these issues.

</comment><comment><USER21> This story is in reaction to the Amazon TV ad campaign that just launched pledging that Amazon will be carbon-neutral by 2040 and they're "not sure how we'll get there, but we will."

Obviously two tech companies with drastically different carbon footprints, considering Google doesn't own a global multimodal logistics fleet.

<comment><USER22> > not sure how we'll get there, but we will.

This reminds me of Bezos's announcement that Amazon would be making deliveries by drone by 2018.

<comment><USER23> What I love about that announcement is that it came right during Christmas shopping season. Hey everybody, we have nothing concrete to announce, but while we have your attention, remember that Prime is a great way to buy holiday gifts for people!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Offsets are helpful, but are not the solution. At best, they're a stepping stone.

The only sustainable solution is reduction in usage. I'm not sure how feasible that is, or how to achieve it necessarily, but that's the only sustainable basis to proceed on.

<comment><USER25> >I'm not sure how feasible that is

This is actually why I 100% believe we will not be able to change any amount of global warming, and if anything will make it worse as more and more countries become industrialized.

The only way to reduce usage is to change our lifestyles. Less consumption, less travel, less of the 'modern conveniences' people in wealthy counties have become accustomed to.

Maybe I'm too cynical, but I genuinely believe humans are incapable, en masse, of that type of sacrifice - the tragedy of the commons and whatnot.

The only time something will change is when everything crashes down around us because of major disruption, famine, migration, and other life-altering events. Only then will we change, but not by choice - only because we will have exhausted all other options to keep our soft lives the same.

<comment><USER26> In our situation, optimism is a moral duty. I understand the cynical attitude, because I have it at times. But I also think we can't just say there's nothing to do. I'm afraid that would strengthen the tendency of many people to downplay what's happening, and ignore the truth. Even in the face of disaster, I want to keep valuing truth, and I want to be surrounded by people who value truth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > But the claim to have "offset" all of Google's historical carbon "debt" > needs scrutiny.

> The company tells me its offsets so far have focused mainly on capturing > natural gas where it's escaping from pig farms and landfill sites. But > arguably governments should be ensuring this happens anyway.

Go figure.

</comment><comment><USER28> This article misses the elephant in the room: The emissions created by the use of a companies product.

Google, like all large cloud providers, has lately heavily invested in collaborations with the oil industry: [https://gizmodo.com/how-google- microsoft-and-big-tech-are-au...](https://gizmodo.com/how-google-microsoft- and-big-tech-are-automating-the-1832790799)

Their whole emission calculation just ignores that factor.

</comment><comment><USER29> But at what cost? Alphabet pressures local governments to let them drain aquifers to cool their machines¹, and powers them using vast swaths of bulldozed former habitats of endangered desert tortoises and focused beams of light that literally burn alive thousands of birds:

 _Workers at a state-of-the-art solar plant in the Mojave Desert have a name for birds that fly through the plant's concentrated sun rays — "streamers," for the smoke plume that comes from birds that ignite in midair.

Federal wildlife investigators who visited the BrightSource Energy plant last year and watched as birds burned and fell, reporting an average of one "streamer" every two minutes, are urging California officials to halt the operator's application to build a still-bigger version._².

1: [https://www.postandcourier.com/news/google-s- controversial-g...](https://www.postandcourier.com/news/google-s- controversial-groundwater-withdrawal-sparks-question-of-who- owns/article_bed9179c-1baa-11e7-983e-03d6b33a01e7.html)

2: [https://www.sbsun.com/2014/08/18/emerging-solar-plants-in- mo...](https://www.sbsun.com/2014/08/18/emerging-solar-plants-in-mojave- desert-scorch-birds-in-mid-air/)

"Once built, U.S. government biologists found the plant's superheated mirrors were killing birds. In April, biologists working for the state estimated that 3,500 birds died at Ivanpah in the span of a year, many of them burned alive while flying through a part of the solar installment where air temperatures can reach 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit." — [https://www.wsj.com/articles/high- tech-solar-projects-fail-t...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/high-tech-solar- projects-fail-to-deliver-1434138485)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility#B...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility#Birds)

<comment><USER30> As opposed to the billions of animals, and millions of people, who die every year due to air pollution and radiation from coal ash?

I'll _take_ those costs.

<comment><USER31> There is a more expensive solution where neither birds nor humans have to die. How do we get to that instead?

<comment><USER32> Like what? Build a giant fence around it?

Why the hell would you even care that much about 3,500 fucking _birds_? There are FAR better uses for taxpayer money than figuring out how to save a vanishingly small number of them, when we kill them in the billions for dinner anyway.

The plant still seems to be a decent step forward, and nothing ever is going to be perfect. If we're going to go down that road, then we're completely paralyzing ourselves, because no matter your solution, some construction worker will step on a rat, and now we need to go figure out the more expensive solution where no rats have to die.

You're playing an impossible game.

<comment><USER29> Like nuclear.

Why the heck would you care about soda fizz and not about the 2.9 billion wind and solar deaths contributing to the 29% loss of the entire country's birds? (Or the endangered species being killed, or the human deaths?)

[https://townhall.com/columnists/katiekieffer/2019/09/23/29-b...](https://townhall.com/columnists/katiekieffer/2019/09/23/29-billion- bird-deaths-linked-to-solar-wind-n2553475)

<comment><USER32> I'm all for nuclear, but I'll also acknowledge that solar is a good step forward, even if it ( _gasp!_ ) kills birds.

And that 29% claim is very dishonest of you. That's how much the bird population declined _overall_ , _since 1950_ (!), and says _nothing_ about how many birds are anually killed by solar, at all. (You've updated your post since, to a statement that again basically says nothing.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'd like to know more, if they do more than just their electricity consumption.

Do they include in their carbon footprint their whole energy consumption (from heating to fuel for company cars)?

Do they include other resource consumption from wares and goods, including the production of all the servers they use?

</comment><comment><USER34> Microsoft is the winner in this PR battle: "When it comes to carbon, neutrality is not enough," said Microsoft president Brad Smith.

Fucking right.

But how are you going to reverse it? It has never been done. The technology doesn't exist, except as ideas or sometimes prototypes. It doesn't scale.

With greenhouse emissions you can't put the genie back into the bottle. It took a very green earth with no industry on it _billions_ of years to lock up the carbon that we've released over the last few centuries. If all this talk of carbon offset was worth anything, atmospheric CO2 and methane would be reducing. It's not. It's still accelerating. Putting money into carbon offset programs doesn't suck your flight's CO2 out of the atmosphere, or somehow remove the methane produced by the herd of cows that produced every steak you've ever eaten. It's not any different to paying the church to absolve you of sin. One could argue that the Catholic church did _some_ good with the money (maybe?) but the main effect of buying indulgences is that _you_ feel better about your sins. Californians still watered their lands during droughts because they felt that they somehow earned the right: "I paid for that water"

Sorry. I'm just entirely pessimistic about this. As a kid I used to think that people were so stupid back in the 1600s-1800s, for causing extinctions left and right. The unfortunate Dodo, Tasmanian Tiger, Great Auk, Passenger pigeon. The generations that inhabited earth within our living memory have done far worse. We are now seeing some of the dreaded "feedback loops" we were warned about: Methane release from melting ice, decreased summer ice coverage reducing reflected solar energy.

Mass extinctions will be the new normal. We'll start to see more of those weird "hundred of thousands of birds mysteriously dead" posts.

The only thing that made a dent in our emissions was covid-19. I'm starting to wonder if it wasn't part of some "benevolent" 12 Monkeys plot. (Kidding! That was humans being fucking _stoooooopid_ too)

</comment><comment><USER35> The "graying out comments I don't like" effect on HN is getting really bad lately.

</comment><comment><USER36> Meanwhile I'm also completely CO2 neutral with my ICE car: [0] why is this even a problem? for 1ct per liter we are CO2 neutral, Google and everybody is doing it. And yet...

[0] [https://nltimes.nl/2019/04/08/shell-charge-customers- extra-c...](https://nltimes.nl/2019/04/08/shell-charge-customers-extra- co2-neutral-refueling)

<comment><USER37> You absolutely are not. Shell is doing the cheapest possible thing; planting trees. It is NOT permanent and not sustainable. As soon as someone decides to cut down those trees, that CO2 goes right back into the air. Shell is also estimating the offset at $5/ton, which is an order of magnitude lower than expected: [https://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/pubs/pnw_gtr888.pdf](https://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/pubs/pnw_gtr888.pdf)

Planting trees simply will _not_ work. Cumulative anthropogenic GHG emissions are >410 gigatonnes of carbon with 10 gigatonnes worth of GHG released each year. There's 550 ~gigatonnes of carbon in all living creatures, with about 450 Gt in plants, most of that terrestrial. Even if we went back to pre-human levels of forestation it would not cancel out all the CO2 we have already emitted.

<comment><USER36> Thanx you, I was hoping for this reaction. Shell's tactics feel completely wrong, and so they are. How can they get away with this?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Carbon "offsets" give a nice, reassuring feeling. But what actually counts for the planet is actual, raw emissions, how much of the dirty stuff you're throwing out. "Emitting than planting some trees that will hopefully fix back the carbon in 40 years" isn't the same at all as "not emitting".

Sorry, but this is greenwashing.

</comment><comment><USER39> I don't understand how that can be possible. Is Google planting trees to remove carbon from the air ?

I mean there are hundreds of google employees who take the plane everyday and therefore emit carbon, how this carbon emission is removed ?

<comment><USER40> The former, more or less, except different.

The very short version is: They calculated the total carbon emission of the company's activity to date, then paid someone to capture that amount of carbon.

There are two subtle points: Google's past is finite, so there is a total amount of carbon that has been emitted. Planting trees etc. doesn't work (forever) against open-ended ongoing activities, but a specific amount of CO₂ is a different matter. It's possible to buy enough land, plant trees on it and keep ownership of the land.

Of course one can discuss how to calculate a company's emissions. I find it quite laudable that they even tried.

<comment><USER41> They bought carbon offsets which are more focused on preventing / reducing carbon from being generated. It's basically saying "if I stop x amount of carbon from being emitted somewhere in the world, it's as good as -ve carbon on the balance sheet".

<comment><USER39> so basically company A says it built one solar panel for company B to use.

Company A says it reduced its carbon emission and company B says it reduced also his. So we have reduced emission by a factor of 2 solar panels by using only one? seems smart!

<comment><USER41> More like Company A buys carbon credits which are invested in a company / NGO who provide replacements for (as an example) 30 year old tractors in the developing world. The polluting vehicles have been removed so therefore there is a reduction in carbon. Since Company A continues to produce carbon the net carbon is now 0.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I wish we would subside biochar in agriculture the same way we did ethanol. Or include it in carbon trading. Or both. And fertilise the open ocean deserts with iron while we're at it.

I kinda feel like it's try anything time.

</comment><comment><USER43> Google is now into pig farming to reduce CO2 emissions?

"The company tells me its offsets so far have focused mainly on capturing natural gas where it's escaping from pig farms and landfill sites."

</comment><comment><USER44> [Deleted]

<comment><USER45> Currently, they buy carbon offsets to be net-neutral. The goal is to buy carbon-neutral energy in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Just thinking out loud, but does it count if I've just bought loads of Carbon credits?

</comment><comment><USER47> Doesn't "all-time _cumulated_ carbon footprint" make a bit more sense?

</comment><comment><USER48> Do they include carbon cost of the entire supply chain of their servers?

</comment><comment><USER49> Even the employees don't produce carbon by driving non-tesla cars to work

</comment><comment><USER50> How about the carbon footprint of their users while using their services?

<comment><USER51> They don't have control over that. They can only ensure the energy required to run the services are offset.

<comment><USER52> Well if they wouldn't be constantly trying to phone home data and use more static technologies they would reduce users footprint. Although you are right they can't really prevent their users to (ab)use its services (especially if they want to preserve privacy).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> GREENWASHING.

</comment><comment><USER54> Here's a wild, crazy, dangerous idea for discussion: how about we start curtailing globalism, and encourage people to live less carbon intensive lives by building economies based around what's available nearby?

<comment><USER55> Lots of reasons?

A) We've globally lowered poverty to its lowest levels in history through trade. Pretty much every government And populace on earth would be against this policy except the absolute richest blocs (eg. The EU, elements of the USA).

B) Globalism has already been pretty curtailed by populism the past 20 years. But this includes the good parts of globalism, like coordinated carbon reductions.

C) Carbon reduction is necessarily a global coordinated solution - going local does not necessarily reduce carbon emissions, ie. oil rich nations can just locally use and trade their energy and the world isn't any better off unless there are global treaties for trade and carbon.

D) arguably curtailing globalism would condemn a whole lot of the world into poverty or mass migration due to lack of local resource, which is almost as bad a remedy as the mass migrations that will be required later this century due to carbon emissions.

<comment><USER54> > mass migrations that will be required later this century due to carbon > emissions.

...only if we choose not to do something about controlling fertility. But in the end I strongly suspect we'll all be travelling about a lot less. Which is fine with me. Globalism is all about destroying diversity and culture, which is an awful future.

<comment><USER55> I'm not so sure that's what globalism is about?

I mean, entertainment and media is a small part of the global economy dollar- wise even if it has lots of influence, local content laws as protectionism don't harm a lot. the Japanese (Among others, say China or India) have done a pretty good job of adopting other cultures and various products without losing their uniqueness.

Travel I think is a short term (2-3 year) pause.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Kinda feels like google is an end-product of the industrial revolution. So, if we take the rest of that into account...

</comment><comment><USER57> Cimate acconting is much like tax accounting. You find a loophole, then magically slush all your profits through it.

I don't want to be too harsh on Google as at the very least they project they care if not more. The sad reality is that once 'compensation' was on the books, this led to the worst ecological whitewashing imaginable.

Right now Europe is being deforested at an unprecedented rate because the timber and coal industry managed to get their extremely polluting wood burning practices declared 'carbon neutral' and 'renewable'. Then they went all in on pro-fines for Eu countries not meeting renewable deadlines, forcing them to allow strip mining of the few forests Europe has left.

In 'renewable' Excel spreadsheets all is dandy. In the real world we are looking at ecological genocide.

</comment><comment><USER58> ... by installing fart filters for pigs.

I kid you not: "The company tells me its offsets so far have focused mainly on capturing natural gas where it's escaping from pig farms and landfill sites."

<comment><USER59> I bet Google is really glad there are reckless, cheaply preventable greenhouse-gas emissions like that. And thank god no one has regulated it yet.

Otherwise you'd have to look at your OWN emissions, who wants to do that?

<comment><USER47> Smells a bit rich, doesn't it? ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> This is ridiculous propaganda. 'Carbon offsets' are rubbish unless they are literally pulling CO2 out of the air.

</comment><comment><USER61> This sure sounds good in a press release and there are certainly worse things to do. But Google's environmental impact is _massive_. They can only "offset" so much of that impact.

</comment><comment><USER62> There is no carbon-free energy just because you don't burn stuff doesn't mean no carbon is released at some point.

</comment><comment><USER63> >"We'll do things like pairing wind and solar power sources together and increasing our use of battery storage," he said.

Is Google accounting for the environmental destruction that goes into making those solar panels.

<comment><USER64> It's right in the title...CARBON footprint is 0. That said, it's becoming more and more clear that wind/solar are less damaging than coal on a non-carbon basis as well. Nothing we do has zero impact...the goal is to minimize it. The only way to have zero impact is to wipe out the human species (and even then there will be some impact!!).

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Google could reduce carbon emissions quite a bit by making Chrome's stupid "Software Reporter Tool" consume less CPU power on millions of computers. This almost undocumented program could easily be the most energy consuming software worldwide.

</comment><comment><USER66> I have mixed feelings about this. It's wonderful that Google is making progress on their emissions. But I wonder if their business model is at all compatible with a 0 carbon world. Their entire raison d'être is to convince people to buy things they don't need. They even have a very targeted flight purchasing service.

This type of behavior we've grown accustomed to—of unbridled consumerism and excess—seems like it's gotta be dialed back if we're to make any meaningful progress on greenhouse gas emissions as a planet.

<comment><USER67> I'm sad that people are down voting this, we should start to be honest about it if we want to find solutions to the problem that the world faces.

Through their ad business model, Google (and others like it, you know them) are enabling commerce at a scale never seen before. Remove the Internet and the world's economy would collapse..

Quick and dirty search - world GDP has grown 420% since 1970, before computers became mainstream.

How much of that is due to computers, the Internet and advertising, I don't know, but I suspect these are major factors.

Through their reach, these companies could have a huge impact, but they do nothing about it except use renewable energy in their data centers.. too little impact imo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> So all their employees don't eat meat, don't use thermal cars? What about the concrete of their buildings? Another flagrant example of greenwashing. It's useless to pretend one entity has a low carbon footprint because carbon is systemic.

For example google as a business is only viable if smartphones are getting produced.

Why can't anybody understand and accept the fact that oil is an awesome source of energy? It's exactly like telling people to stop drinking sodas because it will kill them.

The problem here is that sodas drinkers will give diabetes to everybody. That cannot go on.

</comment><comment><USER69> Ok this is hacker news supposedly educated logical people. Surely some of you have to be able to see this is all a huge joke that detracts from actual meaningful change? They can literally buy "carbon credits" and magically they no longer pollute?

There is no way you can "offset" dumping pollution in the air. Either you do it or you don't.

<comment><USER70> _> There is no way you can "offset" dumping pollution in the air. Either you do it or you don't._

At the extreme, how would you consider direct carbon capture ([https://www.jefftk.com/keith2018.pdf](https://www.jefftk.com/keith2018.pdf) etc) from the air?

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> This is a wealth privilege, setting an example others cannot follow unless the whole economy is changed. It does nothing to address the externalization of pollution as a norm of the free market, for which all are complicit. It's just like sending plastic to a poor country and giving them a little cash to make it their problem.

</comment><comment> 08-15 This is an outright lie.

Google's carbon footprint is still positive, but their net greenhouse gas footprint is negative now, according to some particular accounting scheme which posits that 1 ton of methane is equivalent to 34 tons of carbon dioxide.

Carbon dioxide and methane are not equal, and arguably not even equivalent, since methane's impact is short term compared to that of carbon dioxide. That's why the equivalence ratio depends on the time horizon chosen. (100 years is customary, but if Google assumed 20 years, that makes the numbers balance even more cheaply.) So if the headline said "greenhouse gas footprint", it would be technically correct, but misleading. The way it's written, it's a lie.</comment>


Scientists reverse ageing in mice, humans could be next - <AUTHOR> http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-12-20/scientists-develop-anti-ageing-process-in-mice/5168580

<comment><AUTHOR> I watched this story on the news this morning when I woke up was rather ammusing - Breaking news "Kate and William plan to visit Australia in 5 months. And by the way Scientists discover how to reverse ageing."

Glad they have their priorities straight because you know Science is just that thing those geeks do...

<comment><USER2> That's never going to change</comment></comment>


Apple I Replica Creation – Woz's Foreword (2005) - <AUTHOR> http://www.applefritter.com/replica/foreword

<comment><USER2> Awesome, I've been thinking of building an Apple I for a while, I'll definitely use this</comment>


Design inspiration? - <AUTHOR>

Hi, I was wondering, where do you go for design inspiration?<p>I usually go here: http://www.cssglance.com/ and http://www.inspirationking.com/ <comment><USER2> I picked my application's look and feel from a stack of tuna cans at the grocery store.

<http://www.woolworths.com.au/woolworths_select_tuna.asp>

They look so beautiful IRL (specially #2, #3, and #4); polished light gray can with shiny rounded corners for the container at the top and a flat bottom with sharm 90 degree angles at the bottom; centered content area with a brightly colored header, white space, and a big bright logo on the upper right hand corner. Compare this to any other Tuna packaging you have seen, which usually looks ugly and you will see why I loved it.

I am programmer, not a designer, but recently I made habit of photographing things that I find attractive and using them for inspiration.

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://www.behance.net>, hands down

</comment><comment><USER4> The library. I'm not kidding.

</comment><comment><USER5> thedesigninspiration.com is great</comment>


What constitutes a true ad hominem argument? - <AUTHOR> http://plover.net/~bonds/adhominem.html

<comment><USER2> This was the best example by far IMO:

        A: "All rodents are mammals, but a weasel isn't a rodent, so it can't be a mammal."
        B: "Well, you're a rodent and a weasel, so there goes your argument."

        B's argument here might appear on superficial inspection to be sound, but it is in fact ad hominem.
        He is using the terms "rodent" and "weasel" in different senses to those used by A. Although he
        tries to make it appear that he is countering A's argument by invalidating one of the premises,
        he is in fact trying to counter A's argument by heaping abuse on A. (This might also be an example of
        an *ad homonym* argument.)

</comment><comment><USER3> You sir, are an idiot.

</comment><comment><USER4> He also has a great article on the software developer condition: <http://plover.net/~bonds/software.html>

</comment><comment><USER5> Nice to see a good explanation (if a little painstaking) of this. "Ad hominem" is fast becoming the new Godwin ...

Having said that, I hope that people don't think this gives everyone license to abuse each other. Regardless of whether it's part of your argument, insulting or ridiculing someone rarely helps progress an argument forward.

</comment><comment><USER6> Another term that is overused is the "straw man argument" comeback. It's not Latin, but people still viciously cling to it.

Wherever there is a misunderstanding between two different sides, the defensive cry "straw man!" is heard either to compensate for a lack of ability (or motivation) to explain a point of view or to willfully ignore obvious implications of an argument.

If you look hard enough, you can find a straw man in almost every argument. Although it's important to find these misinterpretations and correct them, it usually does no good to yell "straw man!" at the other guy as part of your rebuttal.

There are some cases where a straw man argument is purposely used, usually to attack someone else's beliefs or philosophy, and therefore I think it's appropriate to bring up that term (if you're up to feeding trolls).

Next time you feel like reaching for your "straw man" defense, try to understand how and why you may have been misinterpreted, and take the opportunity to explain yourself better.

</comment><comment><USER7> This argument would be interesting if the author wasn't an idiot and had a grasp of what sarcasm is.

 _A: "All rodents are mammals, but a weasel isn't a rodent, so it can't be a mammal."_

 _B: "This does not logically follow. You evidently know nothing about logic."_

 _B's argument is still not ad hominem. Note that B directly engages A's argument: he is not attacking the person A instead of his argument. There is no indication that B thinks his subsequent attack on A strengthens his argument, or is a substitute for engaging with A's argument. Unless we have a good reason for thinking otherwise, we should assume it is just a sarcastic flourish._

What a genius!

<comment><USER7> Apparently the rater who down-modded me gets sarcasm and faux-ad hominem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> According to this guy, the only ad hominem argument is invoking ad hominem. Of course, he is using the "no true Scotsman" fallacy to prove his point saying that the other arguments aren't "true" ad hominem.

<comment><USER9> He only points out that many arguments that point out _ad hominem_ arguments are themselves _ad hominem_. He doesn't restrict _ad hominem_ to that one case, though.

And if you didn't suck at reading comprehension, I wouldn't need to point that out...

<comment><USER8> My reading comprehension is fine, it's just that about the only arguments he finds to be ad hominem are those claiming ad hominem.

Although the article could have been much shorter if he simply defined ad hominem as "You're an asshole and therefore wrong."

<comment><USER9> I was just kidding about the reading comprehension. Mostly.

Here's an example he gave of an ad hominem attack that doesn't involve calling the other person's attack ad hominem:

       A: "All rodents are mammals, but a weasel isn't a rodent, so it can't be a mammal."
       B: "Well, you've never had a good grasp of logic, so this can't be true."

and here's another (from the Nick Naylor school of rhetoric):

       A: "All rodents are mammals, but a weasel isn't a rodent, so it can't be a mammal."
       B: "I'm sorry, but I'd prefer to trust the opinion of a trained zoologist on this one."

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I get it. It's an article about ad hominem, so the joking insults come out.

The first may not actually be ad hominem. If A actually doesn't have a good grasp of logic, then there is no attack just a statement of fact. And he actually says the opposite earlier, but with the statements reversed (This can't be true, you don't have a good grasp of logic.).

And the second is argument from authority, not ad hominem.

Lastly, ad hominem doesn't always address the argument. In fact ad hominem is an abandonment of argument in favor of abuse. You start appealing to people's emotion by painting a negative image of the person.

<comment><USER10> He said: "Well, you've never had a good grasp of logic, _SO_ this can't be true."

Which is the same as saying: "This can't be true, _BECAUSE_ you've never had a good grasp of logic."

The problem with ad hominem attacks is a broken clock can be correct twice a day or more. So saying the clock is broken does not necessarily imply that it's wrong _now_ just that it has been wrong in the past and will probably be wrong in the future.

When parsing arguments look for words like _and, or, because, so, thus,_ etc as they are the foundations of arguments. You can add a lot of meaningless drivel around the core argument but as soon as someone starts tossing those words around they are probably trying to use logic. His point is the way an attack is connected to the argument determines if calling something ad hominem discredits the argument.

PS: People sometimes add an ad hominem attack as part of other more rational statements, so IMO attacking the person even alongside a rational argument is still an ad hominem attack even if it is not used to directly attack their argument. However, simply calling part of what someone says an ad hominem attack does not destroy the rest of the argument if it's not directly linked to it. It's like a defense attorney that counters the DNA evidence but ignores the video tape and the confession is going to fail.

<comment><USER8> The problem being is that not having a good grasp of logic can cause you to reach wrong conclusions. It can be a direct cause. In which case, it is a valid point to bring up as it supports your argument.

<comment><USER10> Knowing the cause is useful, but to discredit someone's argument you need to find the mistake. Think million monkey's typing for a million years randomly recreating Calculus. The source is dumb but it works.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's also important to remember that the reverse is true:

[http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to- authority...](http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to- authority.html)

<comment><USER12> Yes that is what PG always says.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Oh man I wish comments were enabled on his post...

</comment><comment><USER14> Beautiful, thorough, and precise.</comment>


Tech Layoffs for 2016 Projected to Be Deep - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/linkedin/sramana-mitra/tech-layoffs-2016-projected-deep-what-happens-260000-highly-mitra.html <comment><USER2> The article is written by an accelerator that is seeking the laid off to do business with them: [http://1m1m.sramanamitra.com](http://1m1m.sramanamitra.com)

It is a PR piece not journalism.

<comment><USER3> You're being generous calling it PR. It's pretty much just an advertisement.

To be fair, that's pretty clear upfront.

My main problem is that they don't provide any references for all these layoff numbers. That would have been nice. Of course, they didn't do that probably because the numbers are BS.

<comment><AUTHOR> The article is referencing:

[http://www.informationweek.com/strategic-cio/10-top-tech- com...](http://www.informationweek.com/strategic-cio/10-top-tech-companies- poised-for-massive-layoffs/d/d-id/1325015)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I just narrowly avoided getting booted out of IBM Watson just because a new manager 6 layers above me wants everyone to move and I can't. This was announced as co-locating, not a layoff, but it had about the same effect for many of my co-workers. I only got a temporary exception because my managers and teammates fought so hard to keep me, and I'm still looking at this same situation in a few months.

I'm personally not very worried - I got one immediate no-interview offer from a former boss and about 6 other folks who were interested in hiring me. And if I suddenly can't find any work in tech, I can always go back to laying tile. But this is going to suck for a lot of people.

Amusingly, I think I had a better feeling of job security working at startups than I do at IBM now.

<comment><USER5> Is that even legal to fire someone if they don't agree to move? If that wasn't part of some hiring agreement I would imagine you would likely have some legal recourse there. Wow that's crappy.

<comment><USER4> I'm not a lawyer, but I believe it is legal. Crappy, but legal.

There was also a strong possibility of transferring to a position in some other part of IBM, so I wouldn't be fired, just changed roles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is why I started my own company. All of my developer friends that told me I was stupid 5 years ago are now on their 5th or more job (and are scared about the next round of layoffs).

While I've had continued stability. I would rather not get pushed out of my own industry for being too old or demanding too much pay. I think I would be pretty depressed if a snot-nosed kid out of college was managing me.

As a side effect, my company can now hire all of the new cheap labor that will be poured into the marketplace after the next bust.

<comment><USER7> A colleague at a previous firm took his severance pay, and opened a coffee shop, right in the tech area. He does very well now, even worried about their jobs, everyone still seems to buy expensive coffee!

<comment><USER8> >>He does very well now

Does he really? That's _very_ surprising. In a previous life, coffee shops used to be a big part of my client-base[1]. Out of all the coffee shop owners I knew, I didn't know a single one who wasn't worried about putting food on the table. It's a very cut-throat business with lots of competition, and even if you're located in an expensive area, the margins tend to be razor-thin.

[1]I learned an important lesson from the experience: it is a horrible idea to have clients with little or no disposable income.

<comment><USER7> In London, the coffee scene in shoreditch/the city does very very well.

<comment><USER9> Doesn't the costa coffee machines with their claim to quality strongly affect that business ?

<comment><USER10> Not in the slightest

<comment><USER9> But they have something like 3000 machines in the UK . How do they not impact the coffee-to-go market at all ?

<comment><USER11> Because the coffee is not as good quality as the smaller independents.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> While at the same time they beg Congress to expand the cap on H1B's...

<comment><USER13> You need to understand, Facebook,Google and co have hard time hiring engineers in US ... the ones they have to pay fairly ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think it's important to always have "ideas" handy just in case things go awry at work.

We're likely in a shallow recession right now.

260,000 layoffs in the the industry can send ripple effects to other parts of the economy. That's a ton of high paying jobs gone. Not enough to create any major recession, but enough to be felt around the communities.

</comment><comment><USER7> Earlier rounds of job losses were often replaced with offshoring and classic wage arbitrage, but this time feels different. A lot of the companies are cutting jobs, without the expectation to replace them (at all).

I think ageism will play a part in the selection process, but not always because of the age directly, rather the older staff may have larger pay, pension and benefits costs.

<comment><USER15> All these companies are under pressure to grow their revenue. Guess what- they won't be able to do this without hiring.

While some companies are reducing their workforce others are growing, some of this is because market share is switching. Traditional business losing to the cloud for example.

There is more software work today than at any point in history. This is only going one way. Until AI will be able to develop software at least.

With respect to age while there are pockets of ageism I think most of the big players and some of the smaller don't have a problem with anyone's age. There are still a lot of companies who can't find enough people regardless of age and I don't think there's a huge salary differential between someone really good in their late 20's to 30's and someone really good who is older. So there's really no economic incentive for ageism. Yes, you can hire someone out of school for cheaper but you need to invest a lot more in them and then they disappear for a more lucrative job...

<comment><USER7> A certain firm got rid of all their expensive staff, who must just sit there all day, being expensive, probably not doing much, except for you know - having about 200 years worth of experience on the core clearing system that was a critical part of the system. A small part was offshored, but most roles cut. Sure enough, soon enough, said important system fails, offshore reduced size team without the benefit of experience on this 40year mainframe app, could not solve it. I know one of devs there who made a phenomenal day rate there fixing that mess.

Big firms are greedy and dumb. IT is a cost centre too them, every tech employee is a moocher sucking cash that could be used in yet another stock buy back to try and keep the stock price high a bit longer so the board can cash out and run.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So lets put this in perspective - Inc.com is reposting what someone named "Sramana Mitra" wrote on her Linkedin post quoting someone named Dawn Kawamoto who reported in Business Week about something she heard from "one Wall Street analyst."

Brilliant. Garbage all the way down.

<comment><USER16> My god, its worse than I thought...

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This article paints a very bleak figure. In particular it ignores that in any given year around 2.5% of the workforce will retire, and retiring a year early isn't a massive hardship if you are getting severance, so 5% cuts can be easily accommodated (although obviously that makes things more challenging for me entrants to the industry). The other thing is that these numbers appear to be international, and are therefore a tiny drop in the ocean of the international IT workforce.

</comment><comment><USER16> I hear there is gold out West near California. Pack your bags boys and girls, we're going West!

</comment><comment><USER18> We have other articles about some engineer with not much experience getting 250k. These stories seem contradictory.

<comment><USER19> I think I know which articles you are referring to, and I think the cited figure in those articles of 250k were BS. The real salary I believe was a base of 120k + estimated value of stock options (probably inflated) + benefits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder: with capital still highly available for the right opportunity, Deep learning technologies have become highly effective across varied domains and can be a relatively simple way to do many complex things, and 260K engineers are being laid of and VC's talk abut an AI boom - how all this will affect the economy ?

</comment><comment><USER20> When a company is in serious financial trouble, layoffs might be a way of saving it, but outside of emergency, does anyone think that laying off larger parts of the workforce is a good idea long term? Next thing is, we read about shortages of skilled engineers...

<comment><USER15> At the very least it means the company isn't able to grow. It also means it's a poorly managed business.

A lot of the businesses laying people off aren't even in financial trouble. Some of them have piles of cash in the bank and are profitable. They just lost what it takes to enter new markets and grow their business.

The sad thing is that the stock market will often reward this strategy because in the short term the cost goes down and the revenue decline lags. The good thing is that it's a healthy process that leads to new businesses being created that are better than the old ones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> And the rest will be replaced by people from India and China...

Also, the neat line, we at.. Will help.. Hm</comment>


Good with algorithms & horrible with technology. Please help me - <AUTHOR>

So I'm a sophomore at a ivy league school studying CS. Recently I've been doing a few interviews and most of them have been pretty impressed at my ability to find anagrams in strings quickly, or whatever. The thing is, I can't understand technology at all. I love algorithms - I write python scripts for my math homework... and run them in codecademy labs because I can't figure out the unix compiler.
How do I get over this? I want to join a small high growth startup and live the exciting startup life but I'm afraid I might fail. I'm pretty ambitious and I have no problem working really hard for long hours but I feel like even if I learn heroku or xcode or RoR or whatever it is, new technologies will keep coming out and if I am fundamentally bad with technology I will not be a great developer.
When I tell people about my problem they say, oh you're good with data structures - the hard part is over. I completely disagree. Programming in real life is much harder than any algorithm. Things crash for no reason.  And where do I even start typing?
Any advice or help? Would really appreciate it.
somebackground: have some experience in web dev but had to be walked through it step by step. here is the only thing I have ever made by myself (with a friend who helped me get started): jessicashu.com <comment><USER2> Take out the "ivy league" part and that post describes me pretty well. In school(just graduated in May) I excelled at the algorithmic and mathy side of computer science, but was horrible at the technological side. This really bit me in the ass when I got to a class like Operating Systems where I had to do a lot of C programming.

Anyway, from what I can tell there's really no substitute to doing a hell of a lot of programming. I've also had the thought of, "I know I'm smart, but I think I might be just inherently bad with technology", but now that I've been working full time for 6 months, and have stubbed my toes on more technologies than I did in all of school that thought comes less and less. There are still gaps in my technological knowledge, but by reading hackernews, digging more into Linux, and making projects from the ground up I've been steadily filling in those gaps. Go code and prosper!</comment>


Floccus: Sync Browser Bookmarks to Self-Hosted Servers - <AUTHOR> https://floccus.org/ <comment><USER2> I don't login to chrome and this would be useful to synchronize my bookmarks. But it doesn't seem to support Android...</comment>


Ask HN: Any Ways to Disable Karma? - <AUTHOR> I was wondering if there is a way to disable karma and its visual effects (greyed downvoted posts, karma count displayed).
I don't care much about it but I find it strangely addictive. I'd like to be able to discuss opinions without being influenced by arbitrary numbers, especially since it often interferes with discussions (nobody replies to heavily downvoted comments, even though it's often the ones which needs to get exposed to other point of views).
Maybe a browser plugin ? custom CSS ? <comment> jim-jim-jim I'd be interested in this as well. I hate the concept of voting on comments. I'll always upvote anything gray I see, even if it's something I disagree with.

<comment><USER2> As a platform grows there has to be a way to filter through the spam. Voting is a great way to do this

<comment><AUTHOR> If voting was used as it should, sure. Right now it feels like it's used to burry comments you don't agree with, without even explaining why; like "this guy is dumb, and I won't even take the time to explain why I think so"

I'd much rather discuss with people having a counter opinion than scroll through comments of like minded people regurgitating the same thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I posted this a while back, for hiding the 50 shades of grey: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16426569](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16426569)

I have an update version of it to also hide your karma:

[https://gist.github.com/mcapodici/fe88da1945834edb6136332f38...](https://gist.github.com/mcapodici/fe88da1945834edb6136332f380d9025)

<comment><AUTHOR> Perfect, I tweaked it a bit because safari doesn't allow per site css. Thanks !

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A web extensions plugin should be trivial to implement. ([https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add- ons/Web...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add- ons/WebExtensions/Your_first_WebExtension))</comment>


Broad threat to humanity from hazards intensified by greenhouse emissions - <AUTHOR> https://sci-hub.tw/https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0315-6 <comment><AUTHOR> Original link: [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0315-6](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0315-6)</comment>


Around Europe in four days: StartupBus Europe 2016 is back - <AUTHOR> http://startupticker.ch/en/news/july-2016/around-europe-in-four-days-startupbus-europe-2016-is-back <comment><USER2> I cant imagine coding in a bus, otherwise this sounds awesome.</comment>


fridgemag.net - responsively designed imageboard  - <AUTHOR> http://fridgemag.net

<comment><USER2> it is sort of responsive? what's that delay when the page first loads?</comment>


Video: Jack Dorsey Talks Square And I Buy Him Coffee With It - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/01/jack-dorsey-square/

<comment><USER2> Sorry, but I'm not impressed. It's a credit card reader and an iPhone app. Yeah, nice and tiny and all, but there's absolutely nothing new or revolutionary here.

The buying experience is not going to change for the better until we can do this stuff with a quick swipe (for lack of a better word, since magstrips are definitly NOT the way to do this) and a thumbprint for a signature, with cryptographically signed receipts automatically emailed to your pre-registered address, or posted to an account on a website where you can retrieve them later, or auto-import them into your accounting software.

Blip. Press. Done. THAT will be impressive.

<comment><USER3> Thumbprints on the seller's machine would be useless; they could just save the data. What we really need is the buyer authenticating and somehow notifying the middleman that they want to buy stuff.

<comment><USER2> Just about as useless as, say, a signature? You are making an incorrect assumption about signatures: They are there to verify or dispute that you authorized a purchase, if necessary, after the fact. The whole _point_ is that the vendor saves the data, because it is his proof that you were there.

Signatures are about managing by exception, because it is impractical to do anything else.

Biometric signing, properly implemented, is far more secure than a signature.

Consider:

* POS system grabs biometric data and encodes it.

* POS system transmits the biometric data to the bank, who returns a cryptographically signed timestamp.

* Biometric signature, authorization, and timestamp are then bundled together and cryptographically signed by the vendor. This becomes the receipt.

* Vendor stores the result locally as proof of sale. Customer receive the same as proof of sale.

Thus, the bank, for the first time, has actual proof of the presence of a customer. This makes the signature stronger. Also, vendor and customer both have much stronger proof of transaction to dispute / verify same.

No system is impossible to subvert. Low-level man-in-the-middle hardware/firmware hacks are always possible. But with some variant of the above, the buying process can be both swift, and much more secure than it is now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Potential market adoption aside, the technology looks pretty interesting. The little scanner in the video is plugged into the headphone port of an iPod Touch. I'm assuming that this port also accepts microphone input (like the iPhone port) and that the scanner device just transforms the magnetic strip data into sonic frequencies the software understands to be able to "read" the credit card into the app? Neat.

<comment><USER5> They're already looking for Android and BlackBerry developers. No perpritory dock connector.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> One issue I see with this is having to sign with your finger. Sliding my finger around doesn't have the same dynamics as using a pen or stylus.

</comment><comment><USER7> People will want receipts on site. For day-to-day transactions, it looks like a hassle but I could see this being great for paying back friends or whatever.

<comment><USER8> Receipts on site...not necessarily. The last few times I've been to the Apple store, I've been content to just pay for whatever I bought standing in the middle of the store, bag it and walk away with the receipt sent to my email. Paper is a hassle in some instances...more to keep up with. At least if the receipt's in my inbox (and I happen to need it), I can search for it without having to destroy my house to find it.

EDIT: Then again...I can see where wanting a receipt could be valid--to make sure you're not getting ripped off. Makes me think of the sign next to registers in most fast food joints: "Call 1-800-whatever if you didn't receive a receipt and get a free order of fries." I'd still go receiptless, though, for places I know to be absolutely legit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Very impressed. Slick hardware and UI, and some great backing behind it. Interested to see how much traction this will get.</comment>


The first English professor of mathematics - <AUTHOR> https://thonyc.wordpress.com/2018/02/07/the-first-english-professor-of-mathematics/ <comment><USER2> This project is cool: [https://www.genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/](https://www.genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/)

You can search for a mathematician, find who was their advisor, and their advisor, and so on.

<comment><USER3> Lagrange and Laplace -> Poisson -> Michel Chasles -> Jean-Gaston Darboux -> Émile Borel -> Georges Valiron -> Laurent Schwarz -> Jacques-Louis Lions -> Haïm Brezis -> Pierre-Louis Lions -> Cédric Villani

Lagrange also advised Fourier, Schwartz also advised Grothendieck, Borel also advised Lebesgue etc... Lagrange was advised by Euler, and Laplace by D'Alembert

So another path is Euler -> Lagrange -> Fourier -> Navier

another one: D'Alembert -> Laplace -> Poisson -> Dirichlet -> Lipschitz -> Felix Klein -> Lindemann -> Hilbert etc etc

<comment><USER4> It's pretty amazing - almost everyone goes back to a few greats: Gauss, Euler, Hilbert, and sometimes Newton.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does anyone know how they calculated these logarithmic tables back then? Did they use any form of mechanical calculator, abacus, counting table, lookup tables or any other form of aid?

Or did they simply write in out by hand on paper like on is usually taught in elementary school?

<comment><USER6> Depends on the author. There were plenty of subtly wrong tables back in the day.

These were often evaluated as Newton approximation, Taylor expansion or direct series if it converged fast enough.

<comment><USER6> As a minor point I forgot to mention yesterday, Napier's logarithm was a different function from modern logarithm but satisfies many log laws in a wary.

Additionally the first accurate multiplication algorithm faster than long multiplication has only been devised in XX century - Karatsuba's.

Abacus is just a mechanical tool that represents long addition and multiplication.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't think an English professor would be impressed with the grammar of this title.</comment>