Ask Patio11: How exactly did... - <AUTHOR>

..you get appointment reminder to the #1 spot when I search google for "appointment reminder"? <comment><USER2> I'm not Patrick but I'll still reply since you posted it here on HN and I've used similar techniques to rank my software programs.

1) Exact Match Domain bonus: When your domain is a non-hyphnenated .com, .net, and .org, Google gives it a bonus as the domain is often highly relevant to the given keyword. This is why you often see undeveloped domains sell for such high prices.

2) Targeted Anchor Text: Since his product is called "Appointment Reminder", people will use that phrase in the link.

3) Quality, relevant links: Checking out Open Site Explorer (<http://www.opensiteexplorer.org>), you can see that he has some quality and relevant links.

4) Modest search volume: According to the Google AdWords Keyword Tool (<https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal>), there are about 720 searches a month for the exact term "appointment reminder" and 6,600 searches using the phrase.</comment>


Ask HN: Are links inside the HTML without using the ID or name needed? - <AUTHOR>

Using anchors in the URL to point the reader to a specific section in an article or page is very useful but too often this are not to be found.
Wouldn't be useful to be able to use something like XPath or CSS selectors in the URL to point to the specific section in the page you need to show? <comment><USER2> I dont understand the problem, Videos and then another a tag with the id . What can't be found?</comment>


How to Build Minesweeper with JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://mitchum.blog/how-to-build-minesweeper-with-javascript/ <comment><USER4> That first image really needs to be the game itself. I had such an instinct to click it as soon as I saw it and was sad when I noticed it was just an image. Overall the article is nice, if a bit dated, but at least it's a change from a new reactive library.

<comment><USER5> It looks like they may have taken your advice. I came across this thread 9 hours after you, and the image was of a game in progress

<comment><USER4> Yeah it was like that even before! I want to actually play the game! Not just see an image :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Good call! I agree, I think that would be better. Unfortunately the WordPress theme I'm using wouldn't let me do that by default. I'll have to do some research to see if there is a good plugin for that :)

<comment><USER4> Thanks for considering it already! I don't really have any WP knowledge but maybe you could just slap it in an iframe?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was working on a multiplayer minesweeper game in elixir and react a couple years back to try and get a better understanding of otp.

[https://mines.gdf3.com](https://mines.gdf3.com) [https://github.com/slofurno/minesweepers- ex](https://github.com/slofurno/minesweepers-ex) [https://github.com/slofurno/minesweepers- front](https://github.com/slofurno/minesweepers-front)

Wound up spending most of my time focusing on performance. Large boards (say 4000x4000) naively represented by a map in elixir consumed too much memory and trying to render 16 million dom elements in react didn't fly.

Never got around to basic ui stuff like setting player name and color, but I thought the bots were pretty cool.

<comment><USER7> An MMO Minesweeper Royale.... Not a bad idea actually! This definitely inspires me to make my own!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm sure there's only a few ways to do it, but this code is really similar to the one I wrote back in December: [https://github.com/mikehodgson/minesweeper](https://github.com/mikehodgson/minesweeper)

It is playable here: [https://sweeper.games](https://sweeper.games)

No jQuery, just straight CSS/HTML/ES6

<comment><USER5> This playable version seems to be missing the feature of auto-revealing the squares, usually a ctrl-click on a square to compare against placed flags. It's actually rule 5 from the linked page

<comment><USER8> That feature is implementation specific, not a rule of the game. I've never used it, so I didn't bother implementing it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Google Chrome Labs released a very shiny typescript minesweeper on [https://proxx.app](https://proxx.app) The source code is on Github [https://github.com/GoogleChromeLabs/proxx](https://github.com/GoogleChromeLabs/proxx)

<comment><USER10> Here's a technical overview on it. Most interesting thing for me was how they made it accessible and feature phone support.

[https://web.dev/proxx-announce](https://web.dev/proxx-announce)

Disclosure: Work on same team as the PROXX people

<comment><USER9> Thank you for open sourcing this. Across Googles github accounts there are some amazing showcases that offer an invaluable source of inspiration. The web.dev site is awesome! I actually came across proxx after I forked the website. Eleventy seems to be a robust static site framework with nifty template options.

I was a bit disappointed the actual dynamic part of the website was removed a couple of months ago during migration to eleventy. The express server, url fetching of lighthouse results & the option to save this in Firebase. For me this is the most interesting part of the website. How to setup a fetching api & Cloud Firestore with identity features. It would be awesome if devsite.js would be included for the people that want to take a peak under the hood.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> excellent post.

can i make a (hopefully useful) comment about programming style - <USER2> that someone shared with me a long time ago when reading my code that i have found to be very valuable over the years?

it can be incredibly beneficial (for readability, catching logic errors, etc.) to "exit early" from "if" statements. meaning, if you find that you're nesting "ifs" more than a couple of levels deep, the code _may_ be a candidate for flattening.

so - your handleClick function could be rewritten (with stuff removed) as:

        var handleClick = function( id )
        {
            if ( gameOver ) return;
            if ( ctrlIsPressed )
            {
                // do stuff...
                return;
            }
            if ( cell.opened || cell.flagged ) return;
            if ( cell.mined )
            {
                // do stuff...
                return;
            }
            // else do stuff...
            if ( cell.neighborMineCount > 0 )
            {
                // ...
                return;
            }

            // else do final stuff...
        }

i may have missed something, but hopefully you get the point. this simple refactoring reduced the depth of the if statements from ~5 to 1. ...many of the other functions could be flattened just like this.

...and how do you know when something can be flattened?

if there is no code after the if statement and the end of the function - <USER3> swap the logic and return early.

e.g., this:

        var handleClick = function( id )
        {
            if ( !gameOver )
            {
                // ...lots of code and if statements...
            }
            // ...but no code after the block before returning from the function...
        }

...turns into this:

        var handleClick = function( id )
        {
            if ( gameOver ) return; // NOTE: logic check change...
            // ...do the stuff in the block here...
        }

...and this is also a great pattern for checking input variables (and returning or throwing an exception) at the top of the function, ensuring that the code following it has valid input parameters.

since you're sharing your coding projects on your blog (which are excellent) - hopefully you can share this tidbit about coding style with your readers and they'd find it as useful as i have.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the kind words, and thanks for sharing! That is a cool pattern. I definitely have a little too much nesting going on in that function, and it could use some refactoring.

I've always felt funny about multiple return statements though, which is probably one reason why a pattern like this doesn't usually come to my mind when considering how to refactor code. I've always liked having one exit point at the end of functions because programmers naturally expect a function to return at the very end. I think minimizing the number of return statements is generally a good thing, but perhaps I have been too strict about applying that rule.

<comment><USER12> "programmers naturally expect a function to return at the very end"

I disagree. I expect a function to return at the moment the final result is known. The decisions and logic are over. I shouldn't have to glaze over even a single extra line of code, because the work has already been done.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a fair point. I guess the main argument in favor of single return statements in modern programming languages is ease of debugging and logging. Like most things in programming, you have to consider the trade-offs. A few return statements isn't the end of the world, but after too many you might just want to make some more functions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Here is my implementation from 2014 (with jquery...). Watch out. It has lots of bugs!

[http://www.ronilan.com/bugsweeper/](http://www.ronilan.com/bugsweeper/)

<comment><USER14> Awesome job implementing a single-click clearing when clicking on, say, a 2 with 2 marked mines next to it. The original Windows version where you had to double click was too cumbersome.

[https://github.com/AlanCoding/AlanCoding.github.io/blob/mast...](https://github.com/AlanCoding/AlanCoding.github.io/blob/master/old/mine.html)

This was my version. I need to go re-host it somewhere, but you would not be much surprised by its functionality. My only unique feature was a wider variety of expressions of the smiley face button.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The game board is a well ordered grid, I can't fathom why you'd not organise it into an array. The cell object has 3 completely redundant fields. Most of the code just checks the mined parameter of cell objects, but for some reason there is also an isMined function. The code placing mines uses its own data structure to keep track of where mines have been placed, rather than the board data, and manages to be O(n^2) instead of O(n) because of that choice.

Overall it is code that takes a lot of unnecessary detours.

</comment><comment> d--b In a notebook:

[https://observablehq.com/@benjaminadk/minesweeper](https://observablehq.com/@benjaminadk/minesweeper)

</comment><comment><USER16> Well. it is good tutorial but there is a little problem.

In minesweeper mines should be generated after first open. You can't hit mine at first click it must empty or number.

<comment><USER5> Is this true? I remember plenty of times unsuccessfully guessing the first block to be a mine. Maybe I'm remembering incorrectly?

<comment><USER17> The version bundled with Windows has always had a first click check to avoid mines, but a lot of clones don't. I remember back in my AOL days in the 1990s it was very much a sign of a bad clone and an immediate uninstall, though I don't recall why I went through so many clones at the time. (I think I was looking for more challenge having got tired of even "Expert Mode"? I was a strange kid.) (The best clones not only did a first click was safe build out, but also a solvability check that the first click opened enough hints that every puzzle was theoretically solvable on given hints alone.)

The version included in Microsoft Entertainment Pack 1 prior to Minesweeper being bundled with Windows might not have had that check, my memory is fuzzy on that. I'd be surprised how many people remember it from the Entertainment packs before Windows 3.1.

The clone that I recall most Mac users had in 90s, such as was on school computers at the time, definitely did not have a first click fix up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This was a lot of work and you should be really proud.

One suggestion which could simplify things. I noticed this bit of code:

      var getNumberColor = function( number )
      {
          var color = 'black';
          if (number === 1)
          {
              color = 'blue';
          }
          if (number === 2)
          {
              color = 'green';
          }
          // etc
      }

You mention using a switch statement, but why not just use an array and look it up by the index?

<comment><USER19> And why not just return the result instead of assigning it to something you eventually return?

<comment><USER20> The argument against this is usually one return statement is preferred.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, that's why I chose to implement it that way. I generally prefer single return statements. Plus my day job enforces it as part of the coding convention, so force of habit too haha.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Uh oh. Since folks are posting their own implementations, here's mine, written as an exploratory exercise for Angular2:

[https://github.com/jonmellman/angular2-minesweeper](https://github.com/jonmellman/angular2-minesweeper)

[https://jonmellman.com/minesweeper/](https://jonmellman.com/minesweeper/)

 _Grimace_

</comment><comment><USER22> I guess this is a good time to share my implementation too. Unfortunately it's pretty much desktop only, but includes a high scores board!

[https://github.com/reed-jones/minesweeper_js](https://github.com/reed- jones/minesweeper_js)

And to play it:

[https://minesweeper.zone/](https://minesweeper.zone/)

</comment><comment><USER23> I built a copy of Minesweeper using AngularJS for fun that may be instructive.

Demo: [http://ceasarbautista.com/minesweeper/](http://ceasarbautista.com/minesweeper/)

Source: [https://github.com/Ceasar/minesweeper](https://github.com/Ceasar/minesweeper)

</comment><comment><USER24> One weekend I was bored and made a React version of minesweeper. Needless to say I had a lot of fun.

Emoji minesweeper: [https://codepen.io/nojvek/full/KjLxdx](https://codepen.io/nojvek/full/KjLxdx)

</comment><comment><USER25> MSFT, our multiplayer Twitch Plays implementation of minesweeper, playable directly with your mouse (left click to dig, middle click to flag):

MineSweeper For Twitch (MSFT) [1]

\----

[1] [https://www.twitch.tv/bzh314](https://www.twitch.tv/bzh314)

</comment><comment><USER26> cool tutorial, love all of the code examples. Some of that code is brutally unreadable with all of the nested statements and loops. I guess it works for the tutorial but ooof!

</comment><comment><USER27> My friend (Math genius) made a video tutorial about writing Minesweeper in JS in a Notepad [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuahlosQ1m0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuahlosQ1m0)

 __* It is in Czech :(

</comment><comment><USER28> Aren't people afraid of being kicked and beaten with sticks in 2019 if they build things with jQuery.

<comment><USER29> It's a shame jQuery gets demonised so much, it's still a great tool to use even in 2019. Don't use it for the wrong job (web apps) and there's nothing wrong with it. It's actually strange you can meet people who learned something like React/Angular as an intro JavaScript and don't know how to do simple things outside of a framework without a tutorial.

<comment><USER30> Modern Javascript standards have incorporated a lot of things that have started their life in jQuery. What advantages does jQuery still have?

<comment><USER31> Sure, when you need to update 1 single thing once, you can use vanilla js.

But when you need to do more than that, you'll realize jQuery is still useful (assuming you don't use a framework or whatever). Either you will use something like jQuery or you'll reinvent by writing the methods yourself.

IMO it's still relevant, despite the hype of other frameworks.

<comment><USER32> There's really nothing you need jQuery for any more except supporting old jQuery components. You can do things like Array.from(document.querySelectorAll('.foo')).map((fooEl)=>{ fooEl.classList.toggle('bar'); }) in a browser (with no Babel-style transpile step) these days.

In case you want to play with that - [https://codepen.io/onion2k/pen/NQrEKq](https://codepen.io/onion2k/pen/NQrEKq)

<comment><USER33> Although I usually agree with the 'jQuery is overused' side of the crowd, I think your example is one of the times when I see that jQuery wins in ease and readability.

The jQuery equivalent for this is $('.foo').addClass('bar');

<comment><USER34> I really dislike the way jQuery makes no distinction between mutations on _one_ or _many_ elements. I view the native APIs' differentiation of the two, requring you to be explicit (`document.querySelector('.foo').classList.add('bar')` versus `document.querySelectorAll('.foo').forEach(foo => foo.classList.add('bar'))`) to be a feature.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Thai activist jailed under lese majeste laws for sharing an article on Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/08/thai-activist-jailed-crime-sharing-article-facebook <comment><USER2> It's really horrendous what is going on in Thailand with the military dictatorship using the lese majeste laws to suppress any dissent. Many, many people are serving long prison terms for it. Even insulting the king's dog can draw a long sentence[1].

Don't expect the US to even condemn this stuff, much less take any action against the country. Thailand's military is too cooperative in helping the US do dirty business, like hosting the black site[2] at which current CIA Deputy Director Gina Haspel[3] oversaw the torture of terrorism suspects.

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/15/thai-man- faces...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/15/thai-man-faces-jail- insulting-kings-dog-sarcastic-internet-post)

[2] [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/03/cia- deputy-d...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/03/cia-deputy- director-gina-haspel-linked-torture-thailand-black-site)

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

<comment><USER3> WHat would the US be expected to do? If they try to "help," they get criticized for being imperialists, if they don't help, it's because of a CIA conspiracy.

Should the U.S. get involved more with Turkey? How about sanctioning Mexico for journalists being killed? Perhaps they should sanction Germany for arresting someone for exercising free speech (despite it being against German law.) Maybe Pakistan for tolerating revenge rapes order by local councils. There is a lot of nastiness in the world, yet for the U.S. it's damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Why doesn't Europe do something about Thailand if we are suggesting that a foreign power should "do" something?

<comment><USER2> Generally I agree. But that doesn't mean the US gov should be friendly with a military dictator, ala Trump's invitation for Thailand's military dictator Prayuth to visit[1]. Although arms sales to Thailand were initially put on hold after the coup it seems they are back on[2]. And Thailand's human rights abuses are not limited to free speech imprisonment. Human trafficking and slavery in the fishing and shrimp farming industry continues unabated while western markets continue purchasing the slave-produced products[3]. There are more than enough reasons to apply sanctions to the regime but, as I said, it's just too cooperative with US spooks to risk losing.

[1][https://www.voanews.com/a/thai-prime-minister-accepts- trump-...](https://www.voanews.com/a/thai-prime-minister-accepts-trump- invitation-visit-us/3832619.html)

[2][http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-thailand- idUSKBN19K193](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-thailand-idUSKBN19K193)

[3][https://www.theguardian.com/global- development/2017/mar/30/t...](https://www.theguardian.com/global- development/2017/mar/30/thailand-failing-to-stamp-out-murder-slavery-fishing- industry-starvation-forced-labour-trafficking)

<comment><USER4> I'd be interested to know what end products these fish go to from point 3.

<comment><USER2> Investigative journalists publish reports every year or so. You can probably find more recent ones, but here's one from three years ago[1]. Many of the big supermarket chains are the end points for the slave-produced seafood products, Walmart, Carrefour, Costco, Tesco and some others. I think last year a couple of them threatened to stop buying from Thai suppliers, not sure if they made good on it.

[1][https://www.theguardian.com/global- development/2014/jun/10/s...](https://www.theguardian.com/global- development/2014/jun/10/supermarket-prawns-thailand-produced-slave-labour)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is where the slippery slope leads us when we create vague terms like "hate"-speech which then criminalize.

The US is obviously nowhere Thailand, but just questioning the concept of and (lacking) principles around "hate"-speech is enough for some people to consider you a possible sexist, racist, troll... Or just a general "hater".

You know, someone who should be banned because they're obviously up to no good.

<comment><USER6> No. Europe has had hate-speech laws for a while—separate from libel laws which are a totally different story. What makes "hate speech" specific is its broad recognition by an overwhelming portion of the population (including historians), with facts & events to back up its consequences. It's very different from "you said something that hurts my feelings", and it's purposely narrow in its scope.

<comment><USER7> I was unable to find polls directly on 'hate speech', but [http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/11/20/40-of- millen...](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/11/20/40-of-millennials- ok-with-limiting-speech-offensive-to-minorities/) says 49% support limiting offensive speech, and 46% oppose such limits, in the EU - hardly an 'overwhelming' portion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > while thousands of users shared it, only Jutaphat was found to violate > Thailand's strict lese majeste laws against insulting, defaming, or > threatening the monarchy

What can we practically do to help with situations like this far from our normal realm of influence? Countries like NK get sanctions (rightfully), but we don't seem to do anything as a country against things like this.

<comment><USER9> If enough light can be shed on this matter for it to make the regular news and be seen by the masses, it might begin to have an impact on tourism, something Thailand would definitely notice.

<comment><USER2> It's been more than 3 years since the military staged a coup and has been ruthlessly suppressing dissent using the lese majesty laws and other laws they enacted that make it illegal to protest against the government. Tourist arrivals just keep increasing to record levels[1]. Tourists don't care, at least not enough to choose a different destination.

[1][https://tradingeconomics.com/thailand/tourist- arrivals](https://tradingeconomics.com/thailand/tourist-arrivals)

<comment><USER10> The counter argument would be neighbouring Myanmar, which is remarkably underdeveloped for tourists by comparison despite comparable tourist potential (and oil money to invest in infrastructure) because its authoritarian government has historically been boycotted, whereas Thailand's series of mostly authoritarian governments interspersed with elections and coups have usually played the international relations game just well enough to avoid becoming a pariah state.

But it's quite difficult to find a tropical paradise destination with progressive liberal democratic government

<comment><USER11> You mean a "cheap" tropical paradise with a liberal democratic government. You could always head off to Hawaii if you can afford it, or if you are in Asia, Okinawa or Taiwan.

But for those of us on a more restricted budget, Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines provide a better value. Thailand has always pulled through in being worth it for me, especially when prices crash after a coup.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A8se- majest%C3%A9](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A8se-majest%C3%A9)

Was just reading up on Lèse majasté laws and didn't realize that quite a few European countries still have them. Some are for insulting a foreign head of state, like they have in Germany and Poland, and some are still for insulting the royalty. There have actually been several recent prosecutions too.

</comment><comment><USER13> India had a similar law under the IT Act 66 A, which was struck down by the Supreme Court two years back . [http://www.thehindu.com/news/resources/sc- judgement-on-secti...](http://www.thehindu.com/news/resources/sc-judgement-on- section-66a-of-the-information-and-technology-act/article7027977.ece)

If one feels offended they can file a law suit for defamation under the various existing laws in the court.

</comment><comment><USER14> I am curious if the law is enforced more strictly now, because the son of the long time king seems to be a drug addled loser, who took the throne in late 2016.

[http://www.thedailybeast.com/prince-of-thailand-maha- vajiral...](http://www.thedailybeast.com/prince-of-thailand-maha- vajiralongkorn-the-playboy)

Could the lesser amount of respect for the new king, and the increase in enforcement, be linked?

</comment><comment><USER15> Would FB have a duty to disable the share button on posts like this?

If it's a 'bad' post and the user is in Thailand or similar place then either disable the button or pop up a warning saying 'are you sure? this means a lifetime in jail'. I could see it promoting self-censorship but also cases like this would be reduced.

</comment><comment><USER16> I guess that this is just a risk of going into a foreign country.

Unless you want to right wrongs all over the world, you go on vacation to enjoy yourself. You chose to go to the country. If you don't agree with the country's policies, vote with your feet. Don't go.

One of the pitfalls of going to a foreign country is that you don't know any of the social mores and what's acceptable and what's not. Whenever I'm travel, I always say please and thank you and am as polite as my limited language allows.

Don't try to change laws/customs in foreign countries. In Thailand, you can't step on currency or point the bottom of your feet at an image of a Buddha. That's how they do things, if you want to do that, do it in your own country.

</comment><comment><USER17> So he intentially violated the laws of country he lives in, being in the country at the moment of this act. This is not a wise decision, I would say. There will be some kind of consequences and he should be ready for them.

<comment><USER18> If a law is unjust, it's everybody's duty to violate it.

<comment><USER17> Oh, really? So I would suggust you to go to the North Korea and give democracy and civil rights talk there, publicly. No? Why not, are you ignoring your duties or just being hypocrite? Nothing personal, just a thought experiment.

Edit: please give a thought out answer, not just silent downvote :)

<comment><USER19> You will probably get replies when your own comments are sincere and thought out.

<comment><USER17> Oh, sure, you are right! And btw, I'm used to situations when my comments don't get much love, so that I understand people are not obliged to reply. But in this purticular situation it seems he/ she just left the ring after screaming "ur fool!")

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I just realized how little I know about Thailand. It seems I only hear about sex tourism, crazy drug stories, or actors dying mysteriously when it comes to Thailand.

<comment><USER21> It's a rather fab place (just come back) but it is important to understand that they take their monarchy very _very_ seriously. Walking around Bangkok and a large motorcade drives by? You do stop what you are doing and stand respectfully.

<comment><USER11> And stand before the movie starts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is why I despise censorship and control. Even against people like daily stormers and neo-nazis.

Chinese tourists gets arrested for making silly nazi salutes. Everyone celebrates it because that's german law.

This guy gets arrested for sharing silly articles. Everyone is upset he got arrested for breaking thai law.</comment>


Sorting Out Chess Endgames  - <AUTHOR> http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2010/05/20/sorting-out-chess-endgames/ <comment><USER2> (most) Chess engines without end-game database will play horrible endgame to the extend that a lowly IM can beat the strongest chess engine on the best consumer hardware. At least this was still true last time I was keeping tabs on Computer Chess scene. But with 4-5-6 pieces endgame its not only perfect but it also effects game quality in the middle-games, where most of the games are decided between human-comp games.

Nowadays, Computer Chess scene is not as exciting as it was 10 years ago (not because of Deep-blue). Now it has come to a stage that it is less about knowledge algorithm tweaking and more about, fine-tuning and narrowing down opening books to few sets where a particular engine is strong at and use extensive positional and book learning from previous games on those or similar lines of moves and win games.

Now when you (or GMs) play against a computer engine, you are not as much playing against an engine, but playing against a huge database that has been fine-tuned over 100,000s of games.

This is why no chess engine author will agree to an official tournament games against a top GM, without opening-book, EGTB, pos-learning, book-learning.

<comment><USER3> I played chess a lot when I was younger and enjoyed it a lot. Then I joined a chess club. Biggest mistake I ever made. Everybody was _cramming_ openings instead of playing the game themselves.

It really was terribly boring. My strategy for dealing with this was to open with a really bad but non-standard move.

This led to an immediate abandoning of all studied openings by the opponent and usually that led to a relatively quick win because they spent so much time on openings that they forgot how to play. Funny that.

Of course, against a really good player that will just get you slaughtered but the people that rely on knowing tons of openings to gain a favourable position in the mid game will fail miserably.

I quit because of that, the fact that in order to be competitive I'd have to cram openings too instead of being able to simply play and hone your skill against the wits of the opponent in front of you, instead of the dead corpses of all the GMs before whose games they studied.

I really don't want to play Caro-Kann all over again, I'd like to play my own games.

<comment><USER4> So here is a question for HN. What is a good boardgame which has

(1) rich tactics (2) does not need "memorizing openings" type efforts to be good at or where such strategies don't work. (3) is easy to set up and play (4) has some online community

I don't pay chess these days for much the same reasons as jacquesm. Miniature wargames are fun but a bear to setup and tear down. Most popular boardgames aren't very rich tactically, mostly dependent on luck/die rolls etc.

I guess Go would be a good choice but I can't get anyone to play with here and/or teach me some interesting tactics :-|. I know the rules but don't quite "get" it yet.

<comment><USER5> Chinese chess is fantastic. It's strategically rich, but much harder to screw yourself in the opening than with regular chess. It's also different enough to be delightful to learn for people who already enjoy chess. Two examples that really charmed me:

1\. There is a jumping piece which attacks by leaping OVER pieces and landing on whichever piece is on the far side. It's possible to defend against this piece by moving other pieces into and out of the path between it and it's target, effectively redirecting the attack.

2\. Kings cannot face each other on the board, or leave a very small 3x3 section of their territory. This complicates endgame, but makes your king more powerful in locking off the options of your opponent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "It is a bit funny to recall we paid millions of dollars for this amount of memory, when today you can buy it for tens of dollars—and then put it in your pocket."

I wonder how much research could easily be delayed a couple of years until it becomes cheaper to carry out. Was it so important to do that experiment back then?

"Hector, always logical, said he never used the machine, but he knew they ran "hot"—they were known to have cooling problems. So he kept his on all the time, and used it like a space heater."

Again, it seems as if responsible use of tax payer money was not really a concern at that place...

<comment><USER7> _I wonder how much research could easily be delayed a couple of years until it becomes cheaper to carry out. Was it so important to do that experiment back then?_

one of the goals of academic research is to take high risks (and costs) to explore possibilities for the future (looking forward 5, 10, even 20 years). if people only invested in 'affordable' research that had direct practical applications within a 1 or 2-year window, then the likelihood of 'game- changing' breakthroughs appearing would be much lower.

<comment><USER8> I have no problem with high-risk, long-range research projects as long as they are funded voluntarily and no fraud or misrepresentation is involved in getting the funding. You seem to be forgetting that the tax money is take by threat of force.

<comment><USER3> > You seem to be forgetting that the tax money is take by threat of force.

That's a fairly extremist position, there are lots of people that would voluntarily give a portion of their income up for taxes if it would lead to a better society.

I'm one of those, and I'm fairly happy to give up my 40+% in return for a relatively safe society, subsidized health care and reasonably good public roads and free education, as well as a catchnet for people that are down on their luck, even if I personally probably have a bit less expendable income because of that because I produce more that goes in to the system than I consume. But maybe next week I'll have a car accident and a half a million dollar bill will result and I will still have a house to go back to.

Now I realize that not all of that money is spent wisely, and maybe we could make things more efficient, but societies cost money to operate, and societies that are 'social' (as opposed to socialist, it seems to be a common mistake to think of them as identical) cost a bit more.

<comment><USER8> There must be _some_ level at which you would object, no? On what grounds do you object when the percentage becomes 50%, 80% or even 100%? You've already conceded the principle and a slave is still a slave regardless if he cooperates with his master. Moreover, nothing I said implies that roads, education, medical services or even charity would not be funded -- in fact you proved my point, these things would be funded _voluntarily_ precisely because many people (myself included) value them. Funding these things by force is immoral. If you think my position is extreme, try not paying your taxes for a few years and learn what the "threat of force" really means to your own freedom and right to property.

<comment><USER9> Aah, Churchill's old insult: "Madam, would you sleep with me for a million pounds?"

"Umm, well, I suppose so."

"Her's a tenner, lift your skirt."

"What do you take me for?"

"We have already settled the question of what you are, now we are haggling over the price."

Makes for a humorous story, but it's a terrible reduction ad absurdum argument. The fact that I am prepared to give up x percent of my income in exchange for a given set of benefits that have value to me says nothing about how I would feel giving up 2x or 3x percent of my income for some possibly different set of benefits.

Speaking as an Ontarian, I'd be horrified if a political offered to cut my taxes in half and give me the "freedom" to choose my own health care in the "free market."

That doesn't make me a slave, it makes me someone who pools certain funds in a coöperative manner. If you want the same argument back at you, try dismantling your army and giving every citizen the right to defend themselves from foreign aggression, buying their weaponry and training on the free market.

Choosing to voluntarily pool some portion of your income with other citizens to fund a common defense is not slavery either. It's another kind of freedom.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Launch Diary: Three months left to save our startup - <AUTHOR> http://launchdiary.postagon.com/

<comment><USER3> Good luck to the guys. I released a similar app a few months ago - <USER2> ([http://beatwave.co](http://beatwave.co)). We've just hit 1.2 million downloads so the download numbers they're after are fairy realistic I think. Just have to make sure the monetization is spot on to capitalize though!

<comment><USER4> Thanks! We're big fans of Beatwave! Great to hear that this type of app has gained a lot of downloads. We've spent hours discussing and trying out different monetization models, but you'll never know until it's been launched in the end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> 100k downloads per month to make a living. I don't know a lot about the app ecosystem but that seems like low profitability. ie. relying on something taking off with hundreds of thousands of people to only make a conservative amount of cash.

<comment><USER6> That might be. 100K just based upon our stats from previous apps, and how well we managed to monetize those.

but 100K is indeed not that much. How much would you say it costs top buy that kind of downloads?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Subscribing to the feed and looking forward to following your progress. Good luck!

<comment><USER7> Heads up on the RSS feed, the URL provided ([http://blog.launch- diary.com/7wc9au7y1](http://blog.launch-diary.com/7wc9au7y1)) is not available.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for notifying us about that, I'll fix it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> How many are on staff and what are the salaries? I'm just wondering since it's seems that you could cut some of the cost and keep up longer, if that's what it takes?

</comment><comment><USER9> Great idea! I will buy you app just for your effort...

</comment><comment><USER10> It's right on the corner, don't give in! You have time, make it count. Reach out to your target market, audience before hands.

</comment><comment><USER11> Yeah, wow.. I love that common thread to be so open about everything. Best of luck! Can not wait until release :) I will follow along for updates

</comment><comment><USER12> Love the honesty! Good luck and I hope we'll see a "How Brutal Honesty Saved My Startup" post in 3 months.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> tl;dr A struggling Norwegian startup is doing daily updates for the rest of their 100 day runway. To be profitable they need 100.000 downloads on their music app, which is soon released (now being reviewed by Apple).

</comment><comment><USER13> Love the honesty. Subscribed and looking forward to the updates!

</comment><comment><USER14> Cool App,

How much will you app? Is it iphone only?

<comment><USER6> Thanks, it's iPad-only actually. iPhone will come in an update. We had to drop the iPhone version for 1.0 as we didn't have enough time.

It will be free to download, with In App Purchases. The main purchase will be a PRO upgrade, which will include all the instruments and voice filters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wow, this is interesting. Good luck guys

<comment><USER6> Thank you both! Really appreciate it :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> What are they burning $500/day on?

<comment><USER6> We are three employees, and living in Norway is not cheap. Our salaries are way below what you'd make if you worked in a kindergarden or a grocery store for example.

Plus office rent and various software expenses.</comment></comment>


It's Time for Plastic Producers to Take Responsibility for Recycling - <AUTHOR> https://www.clf.org/blog/recycling-system-broken-plastic-producer-responsibility/ <comment><USER2> Let's be real, it was time for this decades ago. But I doubt anything will change - even now.</comment>


Synaesthesia and programming. Help science. Take my (short) survey. - <AUTHOR> https://www.survey.bris.ac.uk/sussex/progsyn/

<comment><AUTHOR> Just wanted to say that I'm more than happy to answer questions on synaesthesia if any of you are curious.</comment>


Ask HN: Whats the Biggest Lesson You've Learned With Your Startup? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> 1\. Do _not_ stick to your vision. Stick to your users's vision. Even if you disagree with it. Success with some "compromise" is far sweeter than failure without it. That doesn't mean you have to do whatever anyone wants, it just means you cannot afford to have sacred cows. If the vast majority of your users want something then it is _right_ and they should get it. No one was more arrogant than Steve Jobs, and even he allowed himself to be pushed by his users on a regular basis. You should too.

2\. Change Your Fucking Idea. You have 6 months to figure out if this is a good idea and there's a very objective test: you are growing rapidly on revenue and/or users. If that is not the case then pull the fucking plug while you have time. Do not worry about what investors will think. Do not worry about what _anyone_ will think. Better to have been the guy that changed his idea and succeeded than the guy who didn't and failed. Sticking with a failed idea is the dumbest thing you can do.

3\. Make money. Consumer startups that will make money "later" are for people who are really lucky, happy to fail, or already rich. Creating a business whose primary objective is to _earn revenue_ makes it extremely easy to know if you're succeeding or not. Either you're profitable or you are not. If you are not then you are still failing.

4\. Do simple businesses in industries you understand. Stick to what you're good at. Spent 10 years in finance? Create a damn finance product. Used to be a doctor? Do something in medicine. Solve a real problem you had or have in the field you have the most passion and experience for.

5\. Keep up development momentum. Do not let more than a day or two go by without improving the product. Don't let anything get in the way of you improving the product. Don't let old decisions block forward momentum. If you have to temporarily make the product worse in order to keep going, then just take the hit. You can't afford to stagnate on product development.

6\. If you have money then hire people that are good. When you hire good people you should be saying to yourself "Holy shit, I don't know what we would have done without <person>". Be unapologetic about having people do things you're bad at. Make people work hard. Hold yourself to a high standard and everyone else too. Better to be a hardass that succeeds than a softy that fails.

</comment><comment><USER3> \- Ship earlier, measure impact, validate, iterate. \- Delay = death.

</comment><comment><USER4> Don't work alone.</comment>


Ask HN: Have you seen a link in HN and thought: "I should submit this to HN"? - <AUTHOR> <comment><AUTHOR> Not dissimilar to having one's glasses on, and thinking: "I need to find my glasses."

</comment><comment><USER2> No</comment>


C, C++ or Rust - <AUTHOR> Looking at this thread
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10706314
from 2 years ago, I'm interested to see if people's opinions around this have changed at all.
Most of the suggestions seem to be C or C++ with a majority being C, does that still hold up in 2018?
<comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-
To follow up an early question
I'm looking for something to deep dive on and try and learn it from the ground up.
This is primarily for me to build more performance conscious applications and tools for my work, they are unlikely to be worked on by other staff in the near future but who knows in a few years time.
This will be primarily Linux and Windows focused work but will eventually want to branch into the embedded space. </comment><comment><USER2> > I'm interested to see if people's opinions around this have changed at all

I've been using Rust for a while and I can mention one thing that I changed my mind about:

With time, and as you build more things on top of previously built ones and the knowledge you will gain, Rust features were promoted from "good to have" to absolutely fundamental for building things on top of them. There is no going back to C/C++ once you get used to ADT, cargo, helpful error messages, train model release cycle (new features with full backward compatibility every six weeks) and most importantly - with what people do with having those features. C becomes more dated every day and it becomes more and more noticeable. C++ may pick some of Rust features in some future, but you will still have to work with code without them for a very long time.

> This is primarily for me to build more performance conscious applications > and tools for my work

For me Rust makes much easier to just focus on the problem I want to solve and not worry much about the tooling, build system and other unrelated details, so I find far more practical. It may be different if you need close cooperation with C/C++ ecosystem.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why don't you consider D?

</comment><comment><USER4> C is incredibly mature. C++ is very complex and hairy but is also very mature, and it's quite possible to write clear and elegant code in it if you exercise a little discipline about what features to use (and not to use).

Rust is really interesting and promising but it's newer. It has less platform support. The compilers probably aren't as good. There's not as much tooling.

Oh you wanted advice...

(1) How adventurous are you?

(2) How many platforms do you want to port this to? Do you want to port it to old, embedded, or closed platforms?

(3) How many people will you need to hire to work on it?

Ask questions like that and you'll get your answer.

I have yet to learn Rust but I'm following it closely. I'm a pretty heavy C++ programmer and it's the only language I've seen in many years that might be a contender to replace it.

<comment><USER5> > The compilers probably aren't as good.

This statement looks uninformed. The is just the one Rust compiler. (Yes, I'm aware if the other one that only works on valid Rust, so you can't use it without the first compiler.) And the one compiler uses LLVM, so it's as good as clang.

> There's not as much tooling.

Some C++ tooling like debuggers work for Rust with minor caveats about enums and trait objects.

OTOH, the tooling that exists is awesome. For example cargo compared to make.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for clarifying. I hadn't realized that. Might motivate me to learn it!</comment></comment></comment>


Made in the Future - <AUTHOR> http://madeinthefuture.co/

<comment><USER2> I'm not exactly sure why this project annoys me. It could be the overly idealistic language. Though I find idealism usefull I appreciate more when it isn't wrapped into fortune cookie language. More and more it seams that design companies like Idea and design schools like MIT's media lab are just turning into marketing firms and teach or espouse a language over content. aka, what i expect from fortune cookies, not those looking to break new ground.</comment>


MH370 Debris Storm - <AUTHOR> http://jeffwise.net/2016/03/10/mh370-debris-storm/ <comment><USER3> "Given that after nearly two years only a single piece of debris had heretofore been found, it's extraordinary that in the span of less than two weeks three pieces of possible MH370 debris have come to light."

I would think that would be expected. I would expect more than once piece would be carried by the same currents that deposited the first piece.

Additionally, now that people know where to look, they will be on the lookout. Nobody Venice Beach, California, for example, is on the lookout for plane debris, while I bet everyone on the Mozambique coast is.

</comment><comment><USER4> What's more likely:

1) Missing pieces of a plane that disapeared and probably crashed in an unknown location in the Indian Ocean suddenly turn up near each other, lacking barnacles, etc.

2) Someone is sick enough to perpetrate a fraud to get attention or for other reasons.

In the case of very unlikely events, #2 is unfortunately always a serious alternative hypothesis.

<comment><USER5> > Someone is sick enough to perpetrate a fraud to get attention or for other > reasons.

The entire interest in the 370 is purely entertainment.

Missing planes, who's occupants are dead and we can learn nothing from are much more interesting than poor African kids, who are yet to, but will die of simple stoppable issues.

If someone faked this picture it's no more sick than this original interest. (And also unlikely, it's a boring punk)

<comment><USER6> As a software developer, I really appreciate the work the airlines and authorities put in after each accident.

I've read a couple of reports. Quite apart from the issue of saving people's lives, it's good to see the work of someone who someone takes bugs _seriously_. They never seem to say "let's see if it happens again", "maybe it was a one-off, let's reboot" or "let's upgrade, maybe it's fixed in the latest version".

The report I read most recently described a chain of seven mistakes and other problems, described which ones combined and how, discussed how each of the seven could be prevented and/or made less likely, whether each of the actions was likely to be a net improvement, and finally made recommendations.

IMO, those of us who work with bugs should read one of those reports every so often, just to see/remind us how an unlimited-resources, all-dials-at-11 incident post mortem looks.

<comment><USER7> My question is why is it that this level of diligence is applied to the civil aviation industry, and not to something like cars and buses which kill way more people per distance travelled.

My guess would be it's because people like to blame somebody else. If it's a plane then there are large organisations to blame i.e. the airline and the manufacturer. While with cars almost always the blame is with the driver i.e. the people. When it's a manufacturer's fault however nobody bats an eye if they have to recall 500,000 cars to install something that would decrease the risk by 1/10th the amount if everybody uses seatbelts.

<comment><USER8> Aviation industry accident investigation practices were adopted from the railway industry. Back in the mid-to-late 19th century, train accidents killed about as many travellers per capita as road traffic accidents in the 1950s. So the industry adopted a set of principles: no-blame impartial accident enquiries managed by an independent board who would deliver a report on the causes of the accident along with recommendations for best practice to avoid it recurring. Upshot: rail passenger travel is now by far the safest form of land travel.

Bear in mind that a Boeing 777 like the one that went missing on flight MH370 costs on the order of $200M. You then have potential liability for the passengers (if the airline made culpable/criminal mistakes) of maybe $2-4M per head, for up to 400 pax on a 777 -- they're _big_ (MH370 had only 239 people on board) and you're looking at a billion dollar accident. The airlines and manufacturers thus have a huge incentive not to let this happen again.

(Compare to a car accident: 90% or thereabouts are down to human error, and the vast majority of fatal ones "only" involve a couple of deaths, capping the potential liability two orders of magnitude lower.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If these pieces were on the shore for a while, it's normal that you won't find any barnacles on them. Walk on any beach that isn't regularly cleaned, you will find all kinds of marine garbage - pieces of plastic, rope, never any barnacles.

They do look suspiciously clean - 2 years in salt water under the sun. But I have no idea how good airplane paint is in resisting to either.

</comment><comment><USER10> Wasn't part of the tail end found almost a year ago? It was such a convincing report and the odds that the part came off MH370 were very high. But then it got quiet and fell into the abyss. I don't want to dive into conspiracy theories here but something just doesn't seem right with this crash. Either there are plenty of hoaxers out there or something bigger is happening.

</comment><comment><USER11> If we do find the plane, do we expect to find any human remains there? I always wonder about this for the sunken ships.

<comment><USER12> Yes, there are human remains on sunken ships. You may simply google it. Caution: you may feel uncomfortable if you click the link. Here are some photos about the human remains on the sunken ships.

Respect people who left this beautiful world:

[https://www.google.com/search?q=sunken+ship+human+remains&tb...](https://www.google.com/search?q=sunken+ship+human+remains&tbm=isch&imgil=uZiwffBPiuxyRM%253A%253B3tVyBk0OSi-q8M%253Bhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Fwww.messynessychic.com%25252F2010%25252F10%25252F31%25252Fmexicos- haunting-underwater-sculptures-art-with-a- purpose%25252F&source=iu&pf=m&fir=uZiwffBPiuxyRM%253A%252C3tVyBk0OSi-q8M%252C_&usg=__Wvwn02Ym3_eKNMEKdOARzgo0BMo%3D&biw=1600&bih=775&ved=0ahUKEwj3q-KdprjLAhUDKCYKHVeCA30QyjcIJg&ei=-4ziVrfCHoPQmAHXhI7oBw#imgrc=uZiwffBPiuxyRM%3A)

<comment><USER13> You linked to a man-man sculpture, artwork off the coast of Mexico. Although other pictures in that search are indeed human remains.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> MH370 = MH17

</comment><comment><USER15> where could it have possibly gone....was this the result of a suicidal pilot or just accident...it's boggling that we can track anyone anywhere but not a huge plane like this

<comment><USER16> Tracking, or finding an aircraft over a large ocean area is still not possible. As this article says[1], "About 85,000 square kilometres of the 120,000 square kilometre search zone has been covered so far." But if you match that against the map of the search area, you will see that even that huge search area covers only a narrow strip of ocean.

The plane may be huge, but compared to the earth, it is very, very small.

[1] [https://theconversation.com/two-years-on-since-flight- mh370-...](https://theconversation.com/two-years-on-since-flight- mh370-disappeared-and-the-search-has-found-nothing-what-now-55698)

<comment><USER15> what makes it so difficult is it the underwater currents that carry the fragments below the sea? don't we have some xray view on our spy satellites?

<comment><USER17> Not entirely sure what you are asking, but A: No we have no xray view on spy satellites, and B: X-Rays can not go through water.

A: Is impossible - no satellite has enough energy to illuminate anything, they all use the sun for light and just take pictures.

B: Water blocks almost all forms of light, you need sonar to see anything under there.

<comment><USER18> A: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOPAZ_nuclear_reactor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOPAZ_nuclear_reactor)

<comment><USER19> "Although the test program was considered a success, no plans were pursued to fly any of the reactors."

Edit: I misunderstood the wiki article. Carry on.

<comment><USER20> That's just the TOPAZ-II model, the 2 of the earlier model flew, and 31 for the Soviet's military radar satellites.

That Russia was willing to work with us and share the TOPAZ-II is yet another sign of how much things changed after the Evil Empire fell.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is very interesting that "accidentally" all the parts have distinctive marks that can be linked to a B777 aircraft.

<comment><USER22> In aeronautics, component lifecycle tracking is dead serious business - <USER2> even some trivial parts are individually identified, much more than in any other industry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> What species of mollusc was found on the flaperon?

What is the habitat of that species?

How long does it need to be submerged for that kind of growth?

Why is Malaysia keeping this information secret? [ [http://www.wsj.com/articles/france-looks-to-broaden-its- mh37...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/france-looks-to-broaden-its-mh370-probe- through-wreckage-analysis-1438789402) ]</comment>


Sea Change – The Pacific's Perilous Turn - <AUTHOR> http://apps.seattletimes.com/reports/sea-change/2013/sep/11/pacific-ocean-perilous-turn-overview/ <comment><USER2> Like many who visit HN, I am an atheist. I am coming to believe, however, that the production of CO2 is the greatest sin, in the religious sense, that exists today. It dwarfs all other problems -- Syria, terrorism, the NSA, class and economic disparity, all of them.

Being technologists we tend to assume (hope?) that some solution will present itself before it is too late. I am growing increasingly pessimistic that such a solution will arise. The powers that be in our world are dedicated to economics, not science, and certainly not to the environment. Their altars are derivatives and overnight lending rates, of war and spying, of realpolitik and power.

Humanity, I do not think, is likely to survive this coming apocalypse without widespread civil uprisings against the current power establishment, and with it a sea change in what is viewed as unethical or sinful: unnecessary CO2 production being viewed as the great evil that is is, an existential threat to every extant political, religious, and economic group.

Instead we have the Koch brothers, Apple vs. Google flame wars, and the expenditure of almost unbelievable energies on wars and political positioning.

It's insane. I don't think humanity will survive into the 22nd century, and it will be our own damn fault for not rising up and removing those power structures that lead us to this point.

<comment><USER3> Fukushima possibly contaminating the entire Pacific, making any seafood from there not able to be eaten, is not as bad as a little more CO2?

By the way, not 1 word in the article, filled with all sorts of scary quotes, about diatoms and their role in CO2 sequestration.

<comment><USER4> > possibly

Except that's not possible, even for a Chernobyl-level release of radioactive material. You might as well suggest that Chernobyl made all food from Britain to Afghanistan inedible. We can detect material from Fukushima in the Pacific, but only because we have the technology to detect radiation in infinitesimal amounts.

<comment><USER3> You do know, that even now, there are wild boars (hunted for sport in Germany) that cannot be eaten due to too-high levels of radioactivity, right?

see [http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Latest-News- Wires/2011/0401/R...](http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Latest-News- Wires/2011/0401/Radioactive-boars-in-Germany-a-legacy-of-Chernobyl)

And I have suggested nothing of the sort about Chernobyl rendering all food inedible... the type of accident, the fact it is water-borne rather than wind- borne, and that there is nearly 10 times the amount of nuclear material at Fukushima (1600 tons) vs Chernobyl (180 tons) make for a very different situation.

(I am not even including the spent fuel rods which Reuters amongst other news sources, claims are very dangerous if not handled properly: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/13/fukushima- nuclear-p...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/13/fukushima-nuclear- plant-cleanup_n_3752046.html) )

Besides, it has been more than 2 years and no covering of Fukushima has been done, whereas in Chernobyl they erected a cover over the reactor within 6 months.

What we do know as part of the historical record, is that the operator, TEPCO, has been lying or at least, shading the truth, about the severity of the situation all along.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The most important component of a strategy to reduce CO2 emissions is a carbon tax, which is economically equivalent to a cap-and-trade system. However, people involved in tech seem to be especially prone to what I call a "problem solving" bias: discrete problems require discrete solutions, and we just have to figure out if the right solution is solar, nuclear, or the Savory Institute. The (correct) economic point of view is that there are many possible solutions, and a carbon tax properly incentivizes implementing all of them.

On the issue of China, because their _per capita_ emissions are so low, and any reasonable global cap and trade system would allocate CO2 emissions rights to countries on a per-capita basis (or at least per-capita indexed to some base year like 1960), China is not actually the bad guy, and under a fair cap and trade system they would be net sellers of CO2 credits not the other way around. However too many people are blinkered by anti-Sinitism to accept this fact.

<comment><USER6> Giving politicians the authority to levy a carbon tax is an absolutely terrible idea, and it has nothing to do with how I feel about China.

<comment><USER5> I believe that the idea that China is obstructing a global carbon tax (among supporters of such a tax) mainly comes from racism and is not supported by the facts. However, people oppose global/national carbon taxes for a number of reasons unrelated to racism. I'm not sure why you are concerned with the authority to levy a carbon tax, since (1) such a tax would almost certainly be beneficial and (2) politicians already have essentially unlimited legal authority to raise taxes of any sort.

<comment><USER6> We seem to disagree, as I'm convinced that a carbon tax would almost certainly be an unmitigated disaster.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nicely done media-rich layout for an extremely important, if thoroughly depressing subject. Personally, I had a hard time slogging through it, due to the overwhelming nature of it all. We need more great coverage like this. Great job, Seattle Times!

</comment><comment><USER8> Good thing we're shutting down nuclear reactors and spinning up coal plants.

</comment><comment><USER9> What can I, as an individual with no money nor power, do to help stop this?

I can reduce my energy use as far as possible. Apart from the online stuff I'm pretty low CO2. I can reduce, reuse, and recycle. (I need to get better at that.)

But what else can I do?

<comment><USER10> Crowd fund energy initiatives. Depending on your views on various energy sources, i.e. solar, take a look at

[https://www.sunfunder.com/](https://www.sunfunder.com/) [https://joinmosaic.com/](https://joinmosaic.com/)

Also, don't become too pessimistic. Even here, its pretty obvious that people tend to fall into two camps: doomers or deniers. Very few in between. I have spent the better part of a year struggling with depression related to the realization of the scale of environmental and sustainability issues facing civilization. I was a doomer, and some days, I still am. That said, I also see that the uptake of renewable energy is accelerating. Electric car sales were considered negligible two years ago, and now they are growing fast. Thats not to say that there aren't HUGE challenges facing us. But I also feel more hopeful that things will eventually change in time.

<comment><USER11> On top of that, opportunities to address the challenges faced can be exciting, especially in the business world. Not all doom and gloom if you look at it that way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> w0rd-driven Is the problem that we're simply creating more CO2 than can be manufactured back into O2 by plants? Would the practicality of a "CO2 vent to space" work? We vent the excess but obviously not everything considering we wouldn't want to destroy all plant life on earth (and subsequently our own in the process). The one major downside is if this wasn't tightly controlled and a "leak" happened we could foster the end of life on the planet. It looks like ocean acidification would do that already so if it'd be the lesser of two evils I'd go for the one we could control.

The more obvious choice is to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels. How's that really been going all this time? Yeah that's what I thought. Rock? Meet Hard Place.

<comment><USER12> The problem is that the carbon cycle is pretty much closed at the plant side. They create O2, but during burning, rotting or other biological activity it gets transformed into C02 again. You can see this in the data - during the northern hemisphere winter CO2 goes up, during summer it goes down. There's also a similar day-night cycle.

What happens then is that more CO2 is added, and it seems to be clear at this point that the plants are not keeping up - even losing ground due to land use change and deforestation.

Main carbon sinks are ocean uptake (the problem discussed in the article), weathering and the small amounts of organic matter that sink below the ground/sea/lakes without rotting (and which will create new coal and oil in time).

Apart from the first point, these processes happen on geologic time scales. (Also, shells of small sea animals, but again a miniscule factor. Those will be the next lime rocks.)

What you suggest is a new sink for carbon. However, it would probably cost more energy than can be gotten from fossil fuels because gravity. (Sry, too tired to run the calculations right now.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Just out of curiosity, is there anything objectively _better_ about colorful coral than the drab and dreary sea-life? The implication is that we should be upset that our sea life is about to get less pretty.

<comment><USER14> If you read the article or watched the video it answers your question.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> So, how do we build solar faster?

The energy is there, there is ~89 petawatts of incoming solar hitting the ground and we apparently use ~18 terawatts and it looks technically achievable using current technology, so the main restriction would seem to be production capacity and capital costs.

<comment><USER16> We'd have to cover too much land with solar panels. What we need are more nuclear power plants, but no one will build them anymore.

<comment><USER17> You need something like half of the Sahara to produce the global primary energy consumption from solar panels alone. [1] ( Or the next few largest deserts combined.) So this is certainly not easy, but it is on the scale of doable. On the other hand, there are reasons why no one has ever tried to finance a nuclear power plant out of his own pockets, it is basically a bet on the interest rate of the next 30 years. ( And besides, we see in Germany that nuclear power gets slaughtered in the market when there is too much renewable energy. [2])

[1] 100 TW primary energy, 100 W/m^2 for solar irradiation on earth and 20% efficiency of the solar cells. Then you need 5e6 m^2.

[2] [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-04-22/windmill-boom- curbs...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-04-22/windmill-boom-curbs- electric-power-prices.html)

<comment><USER15> _[1] 100 TW primary energy_

An article by MIT claims 14TW - [http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/energy- scale-part1-1024.h...](http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/energy-scale- part1-1024.html) \- and I've seen figures from 12TW to 20TW bandied around and I tend to use 18TW when running the numbers, but I have never seen an estimate as high as 100TW. Where's that figure from?

<comment><USER17> Ups, good catch. It is from a old blog post from myself [1]. The reasoning was 10 billion people, with first world energy needs ( 10 kW). The alternative to use this number is, that you get a safety factor of 6 to account for using solar as baseload, weather and everything else that dissipates energy.

Edit: Additionally, the power of solar panels used is for England, not the Sahara. The purpose of the posting was essentially a back of the envelope calculation with pessimistic assumptions.

[1] [http://yoshi-k.de/2008/09/die-plausibilitat-der- solarenergie...](http://yoshi-k.de/2008/09/die-plausibilitat-der- solarenergie/) ( German)

<comment><USER15> You don't need to get everyone in the world to be consuming more energy than the average European to have converted most energy to solar though. I am all for using fudge-factors to allow for rough data, but I don't see the point in starting a calculation with completely fictional data when there is data available.

<comment><USER17> Well, I like my 100% renewable future with flying cars. So I allow for some growth of energy consumption.

<comment><USER15> Flying cars? Ok, I'm sold, half the Sahara it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is the real danger from extra CO2.

<comment><USER19> You read TFA! I wish it were surprising how many here didn't, before climbing up on their soapbox.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Wow! This is a sea change for the Seattle Times, too. The Times is a newspaper. This is the first time I've seen anything approaching this quality in video form from them. Strong work.

</comment><comment><USER21> Nice pun in the title.

</comment><comment><USER22> _Like many who visit HN, I am an atheist. I am coming to believe, however, that the production of CO2 is the greatest sin, in the religious sense, that exists today_

Yes, global warming has become the religion of leftists.

<comment><USER23> This is such a ridiculous statement.

Leftists like Bill Gates, Newt Gingrich, John Hunstman, Frederick Smith, Susan Collins, Tim Pawlenty?

Cap and Trade was a free-market republican idea originally [1], but now that it's being advocated by the 'Leftists', it's become much more politicized.

A plurality of scientists agree that steps should be taken, the FUD denial is all paid for by a dozen companies who stand to profit from additional delays, yet it's somehow comparable to 'religion' to think that we should take action?

[1] - [http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Presence-of- Min...](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Presence-of-Mind-Blue- Sky-Thinking.html?c=y&story=fullstory)

<comment><USER6> Most scientists agreed that fire involved phlogiston not so very long ago.

<comment><USER24> Thank god the coal companies of the day discredited them. Oh no, it was science that discarded phlogiston? Carry on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Since regulating CO2 is such a useful political tool, it's not surprising that a new hypothesis justifying regulation has been making its way into the mainstream as the global warming movement collapses.

I doubt that the researchers involved are interested as much in the politics, but it's fair to say that they wouldn't be getting a fancy new media campaign if their results didn't support the movement. Remember Marcott et al?

<comment><USER24> "as the global warming movement collapses"

...

"Remember Marcott et al?"

Sorry most of us dont frequent bonkers climate denialism blogs. There's nothing there to the foaming at the mouth over Marcott:

[http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/04/climate-science- once-...](http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/04/climate-science-once-again- finds-itself-fighting-with-hockey-sticks/)

 _Unfortunately, almost all of the controversy was completely off-target, and a lot of it displayed a significant misunderstanding of the claims of the Marcott paper._</comment></comment>


The Pirate Bay Attacking InstaCart? - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/tpb?lang=en <comment><USER2> I wonder what their motives are?

<comment><USER3> Indeed .. what?

Did someone at Instacart do them wrong or they want to highlight potentially more awful Silicon Valley founder behavior.</comment></comment>


I will punch your business in the mouth for $2000 - <AUTHOR> http://lefthook.me/

<comment><USER2> OK, I'll critique your business, lefthook.me, for free:

1\. The "punch in the mouth" metaphor, violent images and vulgar language on your web page might appeal to "bro" types, but not so much to others. My guess is that you won't attract many female customers with this approach.

2\. "I will be your opponent" is a curious metaphor for someone who I'd be hiring to help me. Most people would be looking for an ally, not an opponent, in a consultant.

3\. I've never heard of you, so why should I believe that you know anything about my business? You say that you're the creative director of a startup, but that doesn't tell me anything unless I know that your startup is actually successful - failed startups are a dime a dozen. $2,000 (let alone $15,000) is a lot of money to spend on some guy on the web with no verifiable reputation.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is a good critique, 'ppreciate it. Let me know if you need any design related help in the future, happy to chat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You promise to left-hook our businesses before the market does. How valuable is a left-hook that doesn't come from customers?

One person doesn't know what the market wants before the market tells them. Even Steve Jobs, considered the king of knowing what the market wants without asking them, failed miserably at that game for years. VCs also constantly fail at it, even though it's their professional.

This is essentially a pre-Lean pitch. Pass.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't predict what the market wants. I will just audit a site or product to uncover UX/UI or other design/marketing issues before they end up as help tickets.</comment></comment>


Interference: Open-source distributed database with complex event processing - <AUTHOR> http://github.biz/interference-project/interference <comment></comment>


6 Brilliant Ideas for Repurposing Content to Increase Traffic - <AUTHOR> http://selfmadesuccess.com/ideas-repurposing-content-increase-traffic/ <comment><USER2> Would hate to be caught in that game</comment>


Show HN: FamousFaces, after the hype: AI for fun - <AUTHOR> https://famousfaces.nukapi.com/ <comment><USER2> Seems like a blank page to me.

(Chrome, iOS)

<comment><USER3> Unable to connect. Android, Fennec F-Droid.</comment></comment>


Genoa Bridge Collapse: The Road to Tragedy - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/09/06/world/europe/genoa-italy-bridge.html <comment><USER2> Bridges have lifespans and need constant maintenance.

One of my first tasks as an intern at the Army Corp Of Engineers was to create 6 inspection packets (copies of every part) of the cape cod canal bridge, which was being inspected.

I know the tappan-zee bridge was replaced because the old one was just too old (designed to last 50 years, it was replaced at over 60 years).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tappan_Zee_Bridge_(1955–2017)#...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tappan_Zee_Bridge_\(1955–2017\)#Replacement_bridge)

One of the reason I left the engineering profession is no one wants to pay for it so it gets "deferred". The US's bridges get a c+ according to the American Society Of Civil Engineers.

[https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/cat- item/bridges/](https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/cat-item/bridges/)

I'm also a little curious why the cables were wrapped in concrete. Steel cables are common on bridges. stability side to side? Concrete is not great in tension (steel is very good in tension). As the article indicates, it was potentially hiding some of the cable corrosion, making the situation worse.

<comment> GuB-42 Beside the (wrong) idea of protecting the cables from corrosion, the concrete, as you said, was there to improve stability.

It is pre-stressed concrete, it is working in compression against the cable tension. The idea is that as the load increases, instead of pulling directly on the cables, it just decompresses the concrete.

You can think of the cable as a spring, with the bridge suspended it. As you walk on the bridge, it bounces. To prevent the bouncing, you can put the spring under high tension into a rigid pipe, with the ends of the spring attached to the ends of the pipe. This way, as you walk on the bridge, the spring tension will stay constant, only the compression on the pipe will vary.

<comment><USER3> _It is pre-stressed concrete, it is working in compression against the cable tension._

This seems strange to me.

My understanding is that pre-stressed concrete is concrete with reinforcements inside that apply a compressive force on the concrete. As mentioned by GP, this is to mitigate the effect of tensile forces within the concrete since concrete performs poorly in tension.

Are you suggesting that the cables within the concrete are not just stays, but also the component of the pre-stressed concrete applying a compressive force? Or is the reinforcement some other component?

I would assume that if the cables themselves were applying compressive force to the concrete, then their use as stays releases some of this force since the stays are in tension. Since concrete itself performs poorly in tension, it's going to provide a negligible counter to reinforce the cables even if it is still compressed, since the compression forces are provided by the cables. It seems to me that putting pre-stressed concrete into tension via its reinforcements is defeating the purpose of having pre-stressed concrete in the first place.

Or is concrete in _some_ compression able to respond better in tension by weight than say, a thicker cable at the same weight as the given cable and concrete combined?

<comment><USER4> > I would assume that if the cables themselves were applying compressive force > to the concrete, then their use as stays releases some of this force since > the stays are in tension. Since concrete itself performs poorly in tension, > it's going to provide a negligible counter to reinforce the cables even if > it is still compressed, since the compression forces are provided by the > cables. It seems to me that putting pre-stressed concrete into tension via > its reinforcements is defeating the purpose of having pre-stressed concrete > in the first place.

Not quite. High resistance steel is used in prestress applications, which provides a considerable headroom to determine what cables are used (number of strands per cable group and number of cable groups per cable) and how to design a structure (target prestress values, dynamic/vibration properties, load variation/fatigue design, etc). Therefore, just because a designer selects a specific prestress cable that doesn't mean the cable will be designed to be stressed closed o yield or even fatigue limits. The designer can pretty much design a structure that uses prestress cables loaded at a fraction of their design limits but subjected to higher loads at construction to be able to unload the initial prestress load as compression. This strategy is often used in bridges, as is designing a bridge to e intentionally heavier so that variable loads are a fraction of the dead load to increase fatigue life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's incredible how well documented and rich of information is the article. I'm Italian and I could not find in any Italian newspapers all the information that I needed! It makes me aware of how poor is the information in my country!

<comment><USER6> JFYI (Italian) among many others, these are the more technical ones:

[https://www.ingenio-web.it/20966-il-crollo-del-ponte- morandi...](https://www.ingenio-web.it/20966-il-crollo-del-ponte-morandi-a- genova)

[https://www.ingenio-web.it/20925-il-viadotto-sul- polcevera-e...](https://www.ingenio-web.it/20925-il-viadotto-sul-polcevera- ecco-larticolo-di-riccardo-morandi-del-1967-con-tutti-i-dettagli-progettuali)

[https://www.ingenio-web.it/20939-ing-camomilla-come-e- perche...](https://www.ingenio-web.it/20939-ing-camomilla-come-e-perche- intervenimmo-sugli-stralli-della-pila-11-del-ponte-morandi-nel-1992)

<comment><USER7> True, but those are technical ones. I couldn't find any article explaining what a "strallo" is, in fact "cos'è uno strallo" (what is a straw) seems to be a common search based on Google's autocomplete.

<comment><USER6> >True, but those are technical ones. I couldn't find any article explaining what a "strallo" is, in fact "cos'è uno strallo" (what is a straw) seems to be a common search based on Google's autocomplete.

It's not a "straw", it is a "stay" in English.

Strallo is a term mutuated from boats, a sail boat has a mast (albero) that is kept vertical and strong by one or more sets of "stays" (stralli):

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stays_(nautical)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stays_\(nautical\))

[https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strallo_(vela)](https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strallo_\(vela\))

On the sail boat the function of the stay is "opposite" to that of a bridge stay, it is used to keep the mast pressed to the base and more rigid, on a bridge they are simply "suspension supports" allowing to carry the weight of the viaduct deck and transferring the vertical load to the tower or pylon (torre o antenna).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable- stayed_bridge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable-stayed_bridge)

[https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strallo_(ingegneria)](https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strallo_\(ingegneria\))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > a structural engineering professor at the Politecnico di Milano, Carmelo > Gentile, found troubling signals of corrosion or other possible damage...he > has performed his tests on some 300 bridges around the world

It would be very interesting to know what he had to say about the other 299 bridges. After all, you can find someone who will tell you you have a structural problem with the safest bridge. It's hard to tell if they are a crank, someone with a vested interest, someone seeking publicity for their new diagnostic method, or genuinely an expert who is giving you good advice. But if Professor Gentile mostly says the bridges are fine, but singled out this one as a danger - then it's really worth listening to his other recommendations.

<comment><USER9> Since he was contracted to do the inspection, I presume they found his diagnostic method credible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Slightly off topic, but they way they changed the info graphic as you scrolled was _really_ cool! This is one of the rare cases where extra JavaScript makes sense - it really improves the experience.

<comment><USER11> NYT is famous for their beautiful yet informative scrolling infographics:

[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/01/27/technology/so...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/01/27/technology/social- media-bots.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> How does this entire article get written without a single mention that much of the road infrastructure here, bridge included, had been privatized and was being managed by the Atlantia corporation. The article actually seems to put the reader on the mistaken impression that Autostrade (former name of Atlantia) is some sort of media management company.

"Autostrade, which handles media queries on behalf of the subcontractor, Spea Engineering, declined to comment."

[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/italy-bridge-collapse-genoa- atl...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/italy-bridge-collapse-genoa-atlantia- autostrade-concession-with-causes-unclear/)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantia_(company)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantia_\(company\))

The technical specifics of the bridge collapse are interesting, but the privatization of multiple road systems should have in theory let the company be cognizant of the systemic issues of the design practices of various eras, but how was this missed? The company was managing the bridge since 1999, almost twenty years now. This is as much or more of an organizational question as well as a private vs public ownership question as it is a technical one.

<comment><USER13> You read a different article than me:

> He warned the company that manages the bridge, Autostrade per l'Italia, or > Highways for Italy, but he said that it never followed up on his > recommendation to perform a fuller computer study and to outfit the bridge > with permanent sensors.

> For reasons it has not fully explained, Autostrade, which took over > management of the bridge in 1999, did not carry out the same operation on > the supports of the other two towers — including the tower that collapsed.

> Autostrade won the concession to run nearly half of Italy's highways from a > cash-strapped Italian government, starting in 1999. After that, there were > no major renovations of the Morandi bridge.

... etc ...

<comment><USER12> Why are they using the wrong name of the company? I think I missed it because I was looking for the Atlantia name. Looks like I did miss quite a few references that way!

<comment><USER13> Looks like Atlantia is a conglomerate that has a large controlling interest in Autostrade per l'Italia and similar businesses. Autostrade per l'Italia is still a business entity, so it seems appropriate to me for the article to refer to it.

[http://www.atlantia.it/en/operations/italian-motorway- operat...](http://www.atlantia.it/en/operations/italian-motorway-operations)

 _edit_ softened snarky language.

<comment><USER12> But why then treat Autostrade like a pr management entity?

"Autostrade, which handles media queries on behalf of the subcontractor, Spea Engineering, declined to comment."

I guess that's what bothers me a bit - is that there is a somewhat in depth investigation regarding the technical explanation, but a big shrug at hitting the wall on explanation of management failures, which IMHO should go all the way up thru the ownership conglomerate.

<comment><USER14> I feel like you formed a conclusion based on your incorrect knowledge of the name of the company. Now that's been corrected, and your error highlighted, you're doubling down rather than admitting you made a mistake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > by using investigators' descriptions of a central piece of evidence — video > footage captured by a security camera.

Whenever I read about these incidents, with only one camera angle, I almost want to buy a camera and point it outwards from my apartment just in case I catch something like this happening in my city.

<comment><USER16> An artist in New York took a picture out his window almost every day for 11 years with a large-format film camera. He indeed caught something notable. [https://www.amazon.com/Window-Septembers-1995-2005-Reiner- Le...](https://www.amazon.com/Window-Septembers-1995-2005-Reiner- Leist/dp/3791336797)

<comment><USER17> For anyone wondering what he caught: "The resulting bulk of around 2,200 photographs documents both the every-day life and change of Manhattan, including the historic event of the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001"

\-- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reiner_Leist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reiner_Leist)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Not a civ engineer... But the way things cascaded and experienced a domino effect seems troubling. Contrast with the '89 SF quake caused one upper deck section of the then cantilevered section of the SF-OAK bridge to collapse. It fell into the lower deck, but did not cause the lower deck to give way. This seems to indicate they had better tolerances (higher safery factor). But that may be a very naive take.

<comment><USER19> The article mentions this. Common engineering practice today is to avoid any single points of failure, but back when this was built, the profession was high on precision engineering based off modern finite element models and other ways to more exactly determine the capacity of a bridge.

It was deliberately built without redundancy, because they thought they could achieve perfection. In fact the models they used were correct -- it was the underlying assumptions about the long-term behaviour of the materials used that were wrong.

This isn't the first such collapse, and it likely won't be the last, but it's safe to say that engineers have learned from their failures. Modern standards generally maximize redundancy. Precision is used to reliably achieve a high margin of error, rather than to get away with the minimum possible.

<comment><USER18> So in some respect older bridges were overengineered to compensate for the lack of good modeling. Then good modelling came along and gave engineers overconfidence, now this is being corrected with better understading of materials science?

And thanks for pointing out that reliance on precision engineering might have led to safety factor reduction due perhaps to overconfidence...

<comment><USER20> Modern calculations are usually multiplied with several 'security factors'[0], anywhere between 1,1 and 1,5 as far as I can remember now (at least in Germany through a DIN [norm], and now Europe-wide via EN). These design factors come in at many different stages of the calculations, from materials to static load distribution (not sure if these are the correct terms in English)

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

<comment><USER6> Well, it is not like "earlier calculations" didn't take into account such safety factors, but the debate is not about existance of safety factors or their amplitude (1.3 to 1.5 has been used as far as I can remember in concrete constructions) but rather on redundancy.

To give a different example elevators/lift (those using rope cables) have usually cables that have a factor of safety 5, but they have nonetherless additionally at least one set of independent brakes.

Back to bridges and more generally reinforced/pre-stressed concrete structures, in my experience modern methods of calculation are more precise than old ones, and allow usually - given the same loads/hypothesis - to save (i.e. there is less rebar steel and cable steel) between 5% and 10% steel and/or concrete.

In practice with old methods of calculation there was a 1.05/1.10 "implied" and "hidden" additional safety factor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Given that the collapse happened during a thunder storm, and given that there are reports of a lightning strike prior to the collapse [1]: how likely is it that water accumulated inside the prestressed concrete hull was suddenly evaporated by a lightning strike, effectively blowing the cable stay up? I remember reading about this theory in some interview, but never heard anything about it since.

[1] [https://www.dw.com/en/speculation-mounts-over-genoa- bridge-c...](https://www.dw.com/en/speculation-mounts-over-genoa-bridge- collapse/a-45084494)

<comment><USER6> IMHO not more or less unlikely, simply impossible.

<comment><USER22> Lightning Strike Energy == 1,000,000,000 Joules

1 Joule heats 1g water 0.24 C

1 L water == 100g

1 cu.meter water = 1000L

Room Temp == 23 C

Thus:

(77/0.24) = 320.8 Joules raises 1g water from 23 C to 100 C (boiling).

(1E9 Joules / 320.8 Joules) lightning strike with no losses along the way heats 3,116,883g of water.

3,116,883g of water == 31,168 L of water == 31 cu.meters of water. This is a block of water 1m x 3m x 10m.

Steam volume is 1600x liquid water volume. So even if we say that 90% of the energy is lost in the transfer, that's still 3 cubic meters of water that flash-boils into steam, quite possibly causing damage to the bridge.

So: perhaps unlikely, but quite possible.

Edit: 3,116,883g of water == 3,117 L of water == 3 cu.meters of water. Damn math errors, always creeping in. Still unlikely, still possible.

<comment><USER23> 1L of water is 1000g, then you need additional 2261 joules per gram to evaporate. So 1E9j will evaporate 384 liters of water, so 0.384 cubic meters (unless I lost a degree of magnitude here or there myself :)).

<comment><USER22> [https://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/20130616.png](https://www.smbc- comics.com/comics/20130616.png)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This would have been perfect situation for some destructive testing.

During night time block all traffic. Then drive radio controlled, overloaded trucks over the bridge every six months.

If the bridge fails, you just saved human lives. If it doesn't, the cost of that project is relatively small compared to pre-emptive repairs. The likelihood of regular load destroying the bridge in the meantime could be managed to be negligible.

It's already used with pressure vessels, because hydraulic testing of them is very safe. Now you would no longer need suicidal truck drivers to do it on bridges.

<comment><USER25> You forget that there are houses below the bridge, that could have been crushed. Not exactly a place for destructive testing.

<comment><USER24> If the bridge is fine, there is no problem.

If the bridge is rotten, you have lot fewer victims.

You want to do pre-emptive repairs? OK, the bridge ought to be fine. We can then proceed with the destructive testing.

You could do the testing with something like 110% of the typical max traffic load. A rotten bridge would then collapse within 6 months of it's "natural collapse". Only things you do is to make the collapse more predictable and you save lives.

<comment><USER25> I don't think a testing method where there is a risk of a lot of innocent people dying is going to be accepted anywhere. I guess that is the dilemma with these situations.

<comment><USER24> Would not be the first time saving lives ends up being less important than avoiding responsibility. So I agree on your prediction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> And the Interior Minister says that the EU is to blame because it doesn't allow them to invest in infrastructure.

When the EU encourages investments in infrastructure.

Go figure.

<comment><USER27> The EU is clearly valuable to many of its partners as a domestic scapegoat. The problems come when people actually believe them and try to 'solve' the problems 'caused' by them and find a stack of disasters that makes being the prime minister a position competed /against/ becoming instead of /for/.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> In the last drone video at the end of the article, the sun is quite low in the sky, making the shadows of people and tractors stretch out and play against the shapes. A horrible scene, but the scale and depth and shadows are visually stunning!

</comment><comment><USER28> For the prudent, form follows function. Doing things because you can, because it's "neat" is courting folly. There is an analogy here for coding.

</comment><comment><USER21> Are there any experts here who can elaborate on whether Professor Gentile's acoustic testing of the bridge's cable stays may have had any negative effect on its stability?

I found this paper on the method: [https://www.ndt.net/article/jae/papers/20-083.pdf](https://www.ndt.net/article/jae/papers/20-083.pdf)

E: as mentioned below, the method is completely passive.

<comment><USER29> Be super careful with that line of thought: it is precisely what they will use to deflect blame from the construction, engineering, and maintenance issues. "The bridge wouldn't have failed if it weren't for that pesky diagnostic procedure that also happened to raise all sorts of problems about corrosion and structural integrity"

edit: also - not an expert but interested and somewhat informed - this is a very common structural engineering technique and should under no circumstances, ever, lead to this kind of outcome on a sound structure.

<comment><USER30> Also Italy has a (recent) history of prosecuting scientists who attempt to give their opinion (even if it isn't listened to). If I was an Italian scientist I would stay far away from predicting anything to or for the government.

[http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/02/why-italian- earthquak...](http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/02/why-italian-earthquake- scientists-were-exonerated)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> What I find unusual is - according to the infographic - _both_ southern cables broke in the initial stage. And then that was followed by the northern cables breaking in response to the load shifting.

I presume the two southern cables are independent components and support independent platforms. Why would they both break at the same time, if not for some exogenous event?

</comment><comment><USER32> It's amazing to me in this day in age that there are no actual videos of the collapse. Not even from a car camera. I've searched everywhere and it would really be a very useful piece of information to have in order to diagnose what really happened.

<comment><USER33> Per the article, the collapse was recorded by a security camera and the footage is being analyzed by the investigators, but it has not been made public yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Use stainless steel cable instead?

It cost ~4-5x times more than regular (today, not sure decades ago) but total cost of bridge build for it's majority was probably (overpriced) labor anyways.

<comment><USER35> In machinery stainless steels have universally poorer mechanical properties vs non-stainless alloys - a reduced corrosion rate is about the only benefit, and even so, it's still just "stain-less" — not "stain-free" — over the timescales of civil infrastructure, it would likely suffer damaging corrosion at some point.</comment></comment>


This Tech Bubble Is Different - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_17/b4225060960537.htm?campaign_id=rss_topStories <comment><USER2> This article explains the thing that has bothered me most about all the bubble talk - that the bubble is not in technology at all. The bubble is in marketing companies that just so happen to use websites to sell ads and consumer data.

<comment><USER3> > _"...just so happen to use websites to sell ads and consumer data."_

You mean exactly what Google and Facebook are?

I think a lot of people tend to forget that Google is the most successful advertising and marketing company in the world. Facebook (if it is not already) Is the most successful _engaging_ brand.

Facebook, as a brand, has made it's actual brand the tool and platform for attracting the product, its users.

The "selling of consumer data" is not so much that they sell out the data they have collected, but rather sell the access to the users. Ads have become interactive (Zynga) and the return to the consumer has become ethereal, ephemeral and trivial.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Dupe. Previous HN discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2449520></comment>