Plunging costs make solar, wind and battery storage cheaper than coal - <AUTHOR> http://reneweconomy.com.au/plunging-costs-make-solar-wind-and-battery-storage-cheaper-than-coal-83151/ <comment><USER2> Notable: "And these prices do not represent just a few one-off, left field offers. All told, there were more than 100 bids combining wind and solar, or both, with battery storage, and 20 gigawatts of such capacity.

The "median" means that half the bids were cheaper than the median price cited above."

I realize most readers of HN know what a median is, but the fact that this was not just the lowest bid in each group was worth highlighting.

<comment><USER3> This appears to have come before the recent 30% Solar panel import tariff. Can anybody else confirm that the bids that include solar would not be possible today?

<comment><USER4> These bids are for projects that go into service by 2023.

It's _extremely_ unlikely that this tariff will last even two years. Similarly enacted section 201 tariffs get squashed the next time the WTO considers them. If, by some implausible and disastrous series of events we are taken into a trade war and the current tariffs stand, they decrease by 5% each year, to 10%.

So its safe to say that they will have as little impact on the bids 5 years from now as they do on increasing US manufacturing.

<comment><USER5> Also worth noting that even a 30% tariff on panels just makes them cost about what they did in 2015. It does nothing to the other significant costs of solar tech - inverters, supporting structures, land, installation labor.

At worst it will delay solar adoption by a couple of years.

<comment><USER6> I am no economist, but the tariff could end up accelerating the decrease in prices as the foreign producers have a steeper gradient to overcome. If they are indeed dumping at below cost, they could also respond by lowering prices by the tariff amount.

If the tariff is applied to foreign assembled units, they could onshore the final assembly. Or start bundling non-tariffed systems so they are still cheaper in the end.

I could envision a cargo container with the panels and strandbeest-accordian support structure, plant on end in the ground and it would automatically unfurl (high school bleachers but with an alternating Z pattern) as the container moves along. Even with a lower pack density, deployment in hours would save the overall system cost.

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

<comment><USER4> The proposed tariff allows for only 2.5GW of cell imports that are assembled into full modules in the US. Manufacturers are already lining up to see who is going to be allowed to get into that small quota.

Given that it's going to take a bare minimum of 18 months and probably several years to build a new cell manufacturing facility, and the length of life of such a facility, somebody looking at building new capacity would get a year or two of tariff protection, and then have to survive another few decades without it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Within the last ten years we've had solar and wind getting below retail rate of grid electricity, then getting below wholesale rate, now below wholesale rate including storage. There aren't too many 'yes, but...' issues which are left to prevent these technologies actually taking over on a pure cost basis. That is, even if you assumed climate change is a hoax, which is incorrect, the alternative technologies are still better.

I suppose one issue is the length of storage, in the article the ranges they mention are 4-10 hours, I would have thought wind would be variable enough to require longer term storage to guarantee power output, not so certain about solar in Colorado? Presumably the percentage of storage needed would vary a lot depending on the local microclimate. That presumably will be a wrinkle holding up adoption.

<comment><USER8> Yes, but...this is the case just for the first-order cost basis. The supply of raw battery materials (e.g. Cobalt) is limited in price and quantity. If we don't invent new battery technologies, we don't have sufficient accessible supply of raw resources.

I also wonder how mid term artificial manipulations to the market of these components (i.e. China subsidizing solar cells, America adding tariffs) will keep us on a general decline in solar power costs.

<comment><USER7> I'm dubious about the resource point, because prospecting and mining are demand-driven. These kind of resource crunches are happening all the time with new technologies. Supply will follow demand, that may even lower prices with new discoveries or technologies. Even if the price has to go up massively to open up new sources, how many orders of magnitude increase would be required to make a dent in the overall cost of a battery for Cobalt? And then, even if there is a serious hard limit there are plenty of alternatives. You can use multiple other materials as an in-place replacement for Cobalt in Lithium batteries, and there are lots of other fundamentally different battery and storage technologies which work using different materials and principles, which have other resource requirements. The peak Lithium or peak Cobalt idea seems quite similar to peak oil, which was sort of right (in the sense of conventional oil) but in a way which turned out not to be especially relevant.

<comment><USER9> No problem with being skeptical and typically supply will follow demand, however there are a couple of important things to note when it comes to Cobalt.

Most cobalt is produced as a result of other extraction activities, it is rarely the primary resource. Normally it's in found/produced in conjunction with Copper and Nickel mines. This has a number of repercussions which would take too long to detail here, however to get more Nickel on stream would require either increasing capacity at existing operations, which may or may not be a non-trivial task or a combination of exploring/designing/procuring/operating a new Cobalt asset which is never non- trivial. The result is, there will always be a significant lag between market demand and output capacity creating sudden spikes in price, a surge in investment activity and then eventual stabilization of price once assets start producing.

Most of the worlds known reserves (identified resource which may or may not be economical to extract) for Cobalt come from the the Democratic Republic of Congo, which for the purposes of this discussion can be said to have reserves an estimated order of magnitude over anyone else. In response to growing demand the DRC have raised taxes on Cobalt as recent as a few weeks ago. A number of operations have been sold to Chinese companies in recent years, shoring up their supply chains. It almost goes without saying that a number of these operations have terrible human/labor rights issues and track records.

We've all managed to come to terms with our cognitive dissonance of driving cars and drinking out of plastic bottles when it comes to Oil, but how will everyone feel about funding the DRC in the name of progress?

<comment><USER10> > but how will everyone feel about funding the DRC in the name of progress?

 _By 2015, DRC supplied 60% of the world production of 32,000 tons at prices of $20,000 to $26,000 per ton_ [1]

That's about $750,000,000.

So the question is: how do you feel about it now?

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt#Production](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt#Production)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> We live in a strange time where our access to clean power is limited not by technology or product cost but by politics, dedicated lobbying dollars and the entrenched old guard in federal but more importantly state and local level government.

I'm still waiting on my clean coal...

<comment><USER12> How does politics prevent electricity companies from building solar plants.

While I agree politics could help enable it more through subsidies. However we are capitalisticish where utilities won't build a coal plant if solar is truly significantly cheaper.

<comment><USER13> >How does politics prevent electricity companies from building solar plants.

By whacking massive tariffs on imported solar panels.

They pretend it's done for the benefit of American solar manufacturers. It's not. It's done for the benefit of coal and gas. If they just wanted to help American solar manufacturers they'd give them subsidies to offset what they (erroneously) considered "unfair" competition from China.

<comment><USER3> A subsidy is a government cost and likely needs more approvals than A tariff which is a source of income for the government. One was accomplished with executive order while the other would likely have to go through congress.

<comment><USER13> They did it before with solyndra.

That was before solar became an existential threat to coal and gas.

Obama had some fairly close ties with oil/gas despite him trying to tout his green credentials.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Maybe I'm missing it, but I don't see an indication of how much storage they are talking about here. The problem with renewables is still intermittence, and geographic dependence. Solar does no good at night, and there are days the wind doesn't blow. The costs of storage for that bulk application still don't seem to make sense, and I don't see it addressed here. The Tesla battery replaced power on the order of seconds, which is still a success, but not enough.

In general, solar has been great for reducing peak demand, since it has highest output during the middle of the day when electricity demand is also greatest. Not clear how much farther it can go, though. Wind may be able to replace some, but wind isn't strong everywhere.

<comment><USER15> Taking a single family home off grid using slightly over sized solar and batteries is already cost competitive in most areas.

The real question is if economies of scale and the ability to shift demand across geographic areas offsets the cost of an electric grid + administrative overhead. Based on the constantly increasing rate of Solar deployments I can only assume this actually works out just fine.

<comment><USER16> > Taking a single family home off grid using slightly over sized solar and > batteries is already cost competitive in most areas.

What areas? I've checked a few and it wasn't remotely close.

It starts being doable if you are willing to do things like load shed during the night - but I'm not. The goal would be for a zero impact on my lifestyle storage system (e.g. multiple days of storage for A/C use during cloudy/stormy weather, no 'no laundry days', etc.) and that simply isn't realistic yet.

I find this important since when I do go off-grid, I think it's immoral for me to expect the poorer folks who can't afford such equipment to subsidize my free battery by keeping an "emergency" backup connection like pretty much all "off grid" folks I personally know. Yes, it gets real cheap when you don't have to size for an expected worst-case - but that's not very interesting to me.

That said - some of the DIY hacker style projects _are_ getting rather close. It's very tempting to start looking for a couple old Tesla battery packs and the like these days and go it alone. If that's the case, I expect within 5-10 years it will actually be doable commercially off the shelf.

<comment><USER15> First a backup generator is a lot cheaper than a backup grid connection for the next 20 years. Now, some would look at that as an extra cost, but IMO most homes should have an undersized backup in case the grid goes down anyway.

Next installation costs quotes are often insane, but basic equipment costs are not even close to that. A ~10KW system for ~1,600 kWh/month as a reasonable off grid system that's well above most homes normal usage levels and depending on battery power that should be well under 20,000$ before government incentives.

Now, you can start running the numbers on payback periods and whatnot, but it's close enough you need to consider your local rates not just dismiss it out of hand. Sure, you could use fewer panels but panels are only ~1/3 of the system price so no need to scrimp on them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=solar%20never&sort=byPopularit...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=solar%20never&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment):

"solar will never solve baseline load."

"solar will never be able to replace traditional coal and gas-fired plants"

"such as wind or solar, can never exceed a certain percentage of the grid's production capacity"

"they are never going to be viable but for a small portion of our energy needs"

"entirely on solar? never."

"Solar will never be cheaper than coal"

And that's just the first page of results. There are 49 more... It's quite depressing that it's the tech community that has been badmouthing renewables for years, and the politicians were the one that made it happen.

</comment><comment><USER18> Is there anything to the notion that the Trump administration putting a 30% tariff on imported solar panels is an attempt to bolster the coal or other fossil fuel industry?

<comment><USER19> There are U.S. solar panel manufacturers who were suffering due to the flooding of the market by Chinese imported panels. Is it possible for the man to do anything that won't be seen as evil? If solar is important to you, you should be happy to foster domestic capability, just as we foster domestic food production with farm and dairy subsidies. If you are a big-government type person, as most Trump critics are, this sort of federal level economic shaping should be something you can get behind.

<comment><USER20> If the goal is to reduce market flooding by subsidized Chinese panels, why not just apply tariffs to Chinese imports (like the EU does). Trump's tariffs apply to all imports.

        If you are a big-government type person, as most
        Trump critics are, this sort of federal level
        economic shaping should be something you can get
        behind.

This is a fallacy. Here's a similar one to point it out: "If you are a person who likes rainy weather, the hole in your roof should be something you can get behind."

Specifically, just because someone supports the notion of a large federal government to tackle large problems, does not mean they should support the idea of a large federal government for any arbitrary reason.

<comment><USER19> That's true in theory, but rarely in practice. I'm surprised to meet a real life big-gov proponent that is against government interference in the free market. You are truly a black swan.

<comment><USER20> I never said I was a big-government proponent, I just pointed out that your attack against them was fallacious.

And you're repeating the same logical fallacy (false equivalence [0]).

To elaborate a bit, an average big-government proponent might support taxing cigarettes.

I doubt you'd find a big-government supporter who would support banning all goods that werent produced by companies with an even number of letters in their name.

Both of those examples are of government intervention in the market, but one is clearly absurd. Not all government intervention is equivalent.

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

<comment><USER19>
       > I never said I was a big-government proponent, I just
       > pointed out that your attack against them was fallacious.

You didn't? Hmmm, well, somebody did. Either you edited or I confused you with them. Fine, you're not big gov, that's good. You and I are on the same team.

Your strawman refutations are not convincing. I would rather you managed to pull up examples that a government might actually in good faith propose, to attempt to fix a perceived economic shortcoming, but that would still be opposed by our hypothetical (not you apparently) big-gov proponent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> There's two problems:

(1) The bids include tax incentives. Without those it's much closer:

The cost of wind without storage was $18/MWh, while the cost of solar without storage was $29/MWh – both prices benefit from federal tax incentives, and would likely be around $US25/MWh and $US40/MWh without them.

(2) Solar and Wind are not 100% consistent producers. There are days where the wind doesn't blow, it's cloudy, or it's winter time. You have to have excess capacity in the grid for these events. So you can't just look at the price per mWh. You have to include this excess capacity in the cost of your wind/solar system

<comment><USER22> (1) I don't know how it's in the US, but in France the price for wind turbine projects must include underground electric cable setup and retirement of old turbines after x years.

I don't think it's included for any other kind of energy source.

(2) You are thinking the old way, the way fossil fuel formatted your thinking. There is always wind __somewhere__. There is always sun __somewhere__. We currently have very centralized way of harvesting energy. If we want to transition to alternative energy sources, it must come with changing the shape of the grid to accommodate a more decentralized system. Also partnership between countries would help a lot.

<comment><USER21> It would be great if we had a continent wide grid that could efficiently transfer energy from one region to another, but we don't. Building one would be enormously expensive and we'd lose a lot of power in transit.

<comment><USER23> Wouldn't it be great if such a thing existed?

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

<comment><USER21> There's nowhere near enough capacity to transmit enough solar power from say Florida to power the Northeast. Besides, then you still run into problem 2. Florida has to have enough excess capacity to support the NE. And enough excess to make up for summer vs winter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I would love to get solar panels but it feels like the price is artificially high. Panel costs keep going down but I've never seen a set of solar panels for less than $20k, regardless of panel cost. I think the solar companies keep increasing other costs to keep it at the same level, which means there isn't enough competition yet.

<comment><USER25> Decreases in panel costs result in only modest decreases in residential solar costs, because the panels aren't the bulk of the cost of install. There's all the labor of installing them, the other equipment like inverters and electric panel upgrades, the engineering time to evaluate the site and design an optimized system size and placement, and then just the general overhead that comes with the business (sales, marketing, admin, billing, etc.). The panels themselves might only be 30% of that.

<comment><USER26> Looks like even less than 30% - the chart in this article shows panels are only around 10% of total cost for residential, meaning further panel price declines now have very little effect:

[https://www.pv-magazine.com/2017/06/12/u-s-utility-scale- sol...](https://www.pv-magazine.com/2017/06/12/u-s-utility-scale-solar-falls- below-us1-per-watt-w-charts/)

As you imply, for utility scale the other costs are much lower, so falling panel costs still have a significant impact on total price.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I could have missed it, but does this take into account subsidies provided by the Chinese government?

<comment><USER28> Although the site is Australian, the cost info is from Colorado, the US already has anti-dumping levies on Chinese solar which will be reflect in bids so yes it does take solar subsidies into account. It doesn't however account for government subsidies of coal.

<comment><USER27> I thought the US just added anti-dumping levies. If so, the price wouldn't reflect that change yet.

As to the coal, fair point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I always wonder - do the bid prices really reflect the future? I mean it is entirely possible for these prices to not hold long term and many of these projects shutting down/ending in huge losses.

Anyone in the solar energy industry have some insights on the pricing?

</comment><comment><USER30> (disclaimer: I work in a Climate and Energy R&D group)

I just want to jump in here because these numbers are all strange.

The author mixes units all over the place (e.g. MW vs MWh). The article confuses nameplate capacity and marginal cost. And there is no mention of capacity factor or dispatchability.

Very simply, the current state of the world:

\- Renewable energy is getting more popular, and has zero marginal cost. That means they always sell to the grid, regardless of cost, and drive high variability in daily demand.

\- Coal and nuclear have higher capital costs, and thus require 90%+ utilization to stay competative with natural gas. However, demand is low for a quarter the day now, so they are out. There is no saving coal, no matter how much political rhetorical goes into it, the economics do not work out.

\- Renewables by themseles are not dispatchable. Do not confuse them with natural gas/coal/hydro/nuclear.

\- Renewables+storage would be dispatchable (especially if you add HVDC to lower variability), and this gets us into the actual numbers from the article...

 __ __Lets do some math __ __

Batteries currently cost about $150 /kWh. That will continue to come down, but let's say we want to build a plant in the next 5 years, so maybe $100/kWh if we are really lucky.

For a 200MW _dispatchable_ solar/wind plant, we'd have:

\- ~25% capacity factor would be very optimistic (they aren't building in an ideal location in CO).

\- That means 800MW of nameplate capacity to get an average of 200MW output.

\- $1/W nameplate for solar these days => 800MW _nameplate_ plant at $800M for _just the solar_.

\- $100/kWh for batteries. Even if we only needed 24h of storage (though realistically you need more like 3 days), that means 200MW _24h_ $150/kWh => $480M

=> Total plant cost is $1.28B, for 200MW of output, or $6400/kW.

Let's say we have

For 30 years, with a 5% rate of return on capital (3% over inflation), and a 1% O&M/y cost (this is really low, just to give it a fighting change, 3-6% is typical), that ends up as....

5.5 cents/kWh.

Which is way above natural gas (4 cents/kWh), so they'd never take it without federal subsidies.

Any bid below that isn't likely to be fully dispatchable, which makes it even less competative with natural gas, even if it is cheaper.

It's hard to compete with a low-capital cost power plant that has nearly free energy flowing out of a hole in the ground.

<comment><USER31> I'd be very surprised if these bids came with more than 4 hours of storage. That's enough to prevent a California-style "duck curve" and to serve the early evening peak demand. It's also enough storage to severely dent the economics of new fossil peaker plants -- perhaps even those of already-built peakers.

These solar + storage proposals are not 1:1 complete replacements for traditional dispatchable power. But with 4 hours of storage a solar plant _can_ run for hours after sunset, serving the highest-demand period of the day (which is also the most lucrative period in deregulated electricity markets). Just a few hours of storage significantly increases the upper limit to solar generation's share on a grid without excessive curtailment.

EDIT: you probably know this. I'm just using your comment as a jumping-off point to elaborate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> EDIT AGAIN: No, this is the same as the article I thought it was. They didn't actually specify the cost vs duration of the storage. There's a figure which shows duration for another project, but pricing info is not shown, so it's not very useful.

But I did manage to find this linked to in the story, which does specify duration in parts: [https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/record-low- sola...](https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/record-low-solar-plus- storage-price-in-xcel-solicitation)

This is a continuing pet peeve of mine: "solar plus storage" but very hard to actually parse out how much storage they're talking about.

<comment><USER33> In the article (in an image) - states 4 to 10 hours: [http://reneweconomy.com.au/wp- content/uploads/2018/01/Screen...](http://reneweconomy.com.au/wp- content/uploads/2018/01/Screen-Shot-2018-01-29-at-12.44.01-PM.png)

<comment><USER34> If that is true (costs include just 4-10 hours) then the cost comparisons are absurdly misleading.

The reality is that the grid needs to work when there is no sun or wind for days or even weeks.

<comment><USER32> Even that would be impressive. But it's just not clear that that is what the data says. 4 hours of storage, if the storage is expected to cycle twice per day (once in the morning, when sunlight is still dim but demand has picked up, using fossil/nuclear/geothermal/wind energy generated at night when demand is super low, and once in the evening as sun sets but demand still high, using solar energy generated during the day), then that is a factor of 2 better for costs than if storage is expected to only cycle once a day or worse.

But we can't tell because the article doesn't mention any of these details. This factor of two (or more) is the difference between status quo and a revolution, but the article remains unclear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I know next to nothing to Power Generation Bid, but I am always puzzled that these articles always mention cost estimation coming from the bidder. Are we sure the lowest bidder can actually deliver at that cost point down the line ?

<comment><USER36> those "estimates" likely get written as hard promises into contracts in the form of long-term power purchase agreements.

The bidding, assuming it is competitive, drives down the current price in favor of the utilities. The long-term agreements provide stability in favor of the suppliers in case market prices plunging even further than estimated.

<comment><USER35> I have not followed all EPR nuclear reactor project, but it seems some project have a hard time to deliver. So is there somewhere an example of catastrophic failure ? or on the contrary, wind/solar project tend to be completed on time, with the expected cost for the provider ? Naively I would think that latter kind of project are much lower risks.

<comment><USER31> Wind and solar projects have the lowest overrun risks of all utility-scale electricity projects:

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S036054421...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544214008925)

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221462961...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214629614000942)

A 500 megawatt solar project is, approximately, 100 5-megawatt solar projects tiled together and sharing a transmission line. There are large parts of the project that can be built in parallel without scheduling dependencies. There are multiple vendors available for each equipment component (racking, tracking, inverters, modules) and there's a lot of mix-and-match flexibility. You don't have to buy Panasonic inverters and monitoring software just because you went with Panasonic modules. Large projects usually start generating power before their official commission date, because you can energize completed subsections as soon as they're connected to transmission.

Nuclear projects are pretty much the complete opposite. There are tightly coupled dependencies. A delay in one component (like a coolant pump) means that the entire project timeline slips. You can't play mix-and-match with reactor components -- no Westinghouse core plus Mitsubishi containment system. Unlike a large solar farm, a large reactor can't start generating partial power when the project is only 50% (or even 85%) complete, so financing weighs more heavily on the project economics.

Reactors that are up and running are great, and I deplore their premature retirement. But building new reactors is a slow process where the payoff comes only at the end.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Can someone provide a bit more details about this. Is this only if you have a massive solar farm (which I assume is cheaper due to land value + large quantities) or does it also include solar for residential (which I assume is more expensive due to installation, limited area, etc)?

When looking at a satellite image of LA, I wonder how much power we could generate by having panels installed on the flat/near-flat rooftops of apartment buildings, at least in the sunnier parts of the city.

</comment><comment><USER38> Arguably, the US has Trump as president due to coal interests. But I doubt that the next administration will go as far as Obama did in trying to shut down the coal industry - too politically risky to lose PA again. This political-economic dynamic does imply that there will be a tipping point were coal-fired power plants shut down en masse. I wish that day would come sooner rather than later since our air quality sucks.

<comment><USER39> Intriguing! Maybe Dems should work to bring renewable energy projects to PA, so that in 10 years they can swing the workforce away from coal.

<comment><USER40> I always wondered why this didn't happen in every area with coal. I get many of these areas are not the best for solar or wind but if you provide a way for these people to transition to something different you're far more likely to win their support versus the narrative that ran rampant in the election where no one cared about the coal miners.

<comment><USER41> People have been trying to transition coal miners via education programs and funding for a while now.

The sad truth is that coal miners want to continue being coal miners because they have wrapped up a lot of their identity into the job.

<comment><USER42> Well we're going to continue to need coal in possibly decreasing amounts for the next couple of decades. No way are we decommissioning all coal-fired generating any time soon. That should be enough time for natural attrition to handle the current mine workers. The effort should be in getting young people interested/trained in something else before they follow their fathers into the mines.

<comment><USER38> As long as folks like Trump keep selling them on the dream of "coal forever", they're not going to listen to common sense. Politicians see them only as votes and not as constituents to be cared for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Completely side topic question - are there any studies on how much surface of the planet would need to be covered with solar to make a measurable impact on absorbing and/or reflecting enough sunlight to affect some cooling?

<comment><USER44> > Completely side topic question - are there any studies on how much surface > of the planet would need to be covered with solar to make a measurable > impact on absorbing and/or reflecting enough sunlight to affect some > cooling?

I don't think solar will have any impact here. The whole point is to absorb the light (and energy), not to reflect it. That's one of the reasons solar panels appear black, not white: they're absorbing light.

If the alternative is coal, solar energy will warm the planet _less_ , but it's not going to actively cool the planet the way you're describing.

<comment><USER43> Naively thought that by absorbing heat energy and transforming it into electric current, there was some cooling effect when compared to heating the surface of the planet.

<comment><USER31> There is localized cooling in the cell. Some photon energy that would have been thermalized immediately in a dark-colored simple absorber is carried away as electricity instead. But that electricity is, ultimately, used and thermalized somewhere else on Earth, so it doesn't have a cooling effect on the planet as a whole.

Additionally, the albedo of solar modules is lower than e.g. empty desert, so the net effect of installing a large solar array on such land is to slightly increase localized temperature. Accounting for increased albedo is why the IPCC's global warming assessment of utility-scale solar puts its warming impact a bit above that of rooftop solar. Rooftops are already lower in albedo, so adding solar modules doesn't darken them as much. Both rooftop and large desert-based solar have much lower warming potential than any form of fossil combustion, of course.

<comment><USER43> Thank you for the excellent explanation!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Anyone know why the project bids are in units of energy? From my experience with home solar projects are priced in units of power.

(EDIT: From further in the article, these look like operating costs, not e.g. initial build-out costs that one would be quoted for a home installation. Makes sense, though I wonder now if they include amortized build-out costs.)

And then, why the mixing of MWh and kW·mo? They're similar orders of magnitude, why add in a layer of confusion with the constant factor difference? (For reference: multiply $/kW·mo by 1.39 to obtain $/MWh.)

<comment><USER46> From the source document [https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4340162/Xcel- Soli...](https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4340162/Xcel-Solicitation- Report.pdf)

"Pricing is provided in $/kW-mo terms for those generation types that can be viewed as dispatchable and likely to provide high levels of generation capacity credit. Pricing is provided in $/MWh terms for those generation types or resources that are non-dispatchable or that include a storage component with a non-dispatchable base generation resource."

They're paying for whatever wind and solar can provide but require fossil fuel plants to produce what actually need.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Hah. These shortsighted "renewable energy" fanatics will sure be sorry when the sun burns out, and we have to fire up all those old mothballed coal power plants that they have heaped such scorn on.

</comment><comment><USER48> Old news

</comment><comment><USER49> Solar with batteries $40 (that only last 10 hours max then blackouts).

Gas turbines $4.80.

> renewables are cheaper

Storage prices have fallen by about 7% per annum over a long period, with some fits and starts. This is no Moore's law.

This article is very slanted, expected from a player in the process.

</comment><comment><USER50> As the price of renewable energy sources drops it's gonna be harder for states to dismiss the high cost of corruption and incompetence in the energy procurement process by telling consumers "your electricity is so expensive because we buy organic, sustainably farmed, non-gmo, carbon neutral electrons"</comment>


Arch Linux vs. Slackware - <AUTHOR> http://beej.us/blog/data/arch-vs-slackware/

<comment><USER3> Let us do a comparison based on the amount of Bob:

Arch Linux: 0 Slackware: 1

Clearly, we have a winner.

<comment><AUTHOR> amount of Bob? What does it mean?

<comment><USER4> Here's the reference: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_SubGenius#cite_re...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_SubGenius#cite_ref- Volkerding_7-0)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :) Very interesting. This makes me want to try Slackware.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Something not mentioned here is arch's AUR helpers - like yaourt - <USER2> automate installing unsupported packages. That means that if you're a more casual user, you can install any one of those 18000 packages with a single command.

<comment><USER6> This is true. I've always just used yaourt myself, but recently on a new install, I manually installed the yaourt package and realised that manually installing AUR packages is actually really really easy!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> an OS comparison from 2009? a Linux distro comparison without even mentioning Debian? "similar aspect - KDE"?

</comment><comment><USER8> Did I miss something?...</comment>


Ask HN: New generation social SDK's for 2014 projects? - <AUTHOR>

Social is still strong and instead of being a side-line project, its a solid part of our life.
Any recommendation for current-gen SDK which can do following: - Work on top of FB, G+, Twitter, LinkedIn, Phone Contacts - Helps to find friends of friends using the service - RW access when permissions are given - Has server side & mobile client SDK's
Thanks! <comment><AUTHOR> RoarEngine used to do it in 2011 - but seems like dead now.

What do you use for your apps?

What would have ZimRide used to find friend of friends across social networks?</comment>


Nuclear Isn't Needed for the Green New Deal - <AUTHOR> https://www.jacksonville.com/opinion/20190510/guest-column-nuclear-power-isnt-needed-for-green-new-deal <comment><USER2> I love that the article mentions one of my biggest gripes with nuclear power, that it does not lend itself to scaling down to the level of the individual household.

The inescapable implication is that nuclear is inherently a centralized, big government or big industry solution... in stark contrast to household-scale solutions like solar and wind, which tend to promote the preservation of individual freedom and self determination, since control can stay with the individual owners.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great point! When I attended the NRC hearing over the proposed new nuclear plant for Turkey Point (FL), a local mayor produced evidence that Florida Power & Light could put solar panels and Tesla batteries on _every home in their market area_ for less than the cost of building another nuclear plant.

The future of green energy lies in decentralizing its production.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What about the thorium reactors and the enegry levels needed for large scale industry?

What pollution is created when a hurricane or tornado destroys a solar farm? (Think of all the nasty materials on the inside which leech into the ground water).

All solutions have drawbacks, that's why we call them tradeoffs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Metals can be filtered out of water. But nothing can remove nuclear subatomic particles from the Earth. Once something is radioactive, it continues to emit particles which fly off into the environment and contaminate their surroundings. Heavy metals don't do this.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Generating relevant traffic for a landing page - <AUTHOR>

I am new to the HN community.
I am entrepreneur developing a jamming platform to connect music players through jamming. As part of this process I have setup a landing page with an explainer video and a call to action to submit an email address to get notified when the app is ready.
I have started to collect signups but not as many as I hoped. I still think that the idea is valid and that the main issue is with a) tapping the right audience and b) run a marketing campaign to drive users to the page. Before I do these two things I will not be certain that the idea isnt validated yet.
My questions are: 1) Do most people run a PAID marketing campaign when trying to collect signups through a landing page?
2) what are good sources to publish the landing page other than the obvious FB groups and music forums? Any particular subreddits?
Thanks <comment><USER2> Google growth hack, you'll get useful tips. Organic search is the new thing. And lastly, fake your growth, like reddit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks i'll check google hack growth for tips. I cant however fake my growth like reddit since my website is so far only a landing page with a call to action. What i need first is to draw more traffic to the site Thanks!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is learning to code really that important for future generations?  - <AUTHOR>

This got me thinking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKIu9yen5nc
Well, when I think about it, we learn Maths until high school no matter what, but a lot of those math complex concepts have no usage in our daily life, people tend to be bad in maths because of that, because they don't see an objective. From that prospective, learning to code is good, because it requires the application of those math concepts, to output simple things we can't easily do.
But I feel, that is not all there is to it. Thus the apparent question. <comment><USER2> What we learn at school doesn't need to be directly applicable to what we eventually do in our careers. There only needs to be a _metaphorical_ connection. In essence, we learn how to do things that are necessary through learning metaphors.

For example, we don't learn about history in order to know what happened in the past. We learn about history so we can understand how actions have consequences, how to build rational conclusions from evidence, how humanity has (and hasn't) changed over time, and so on. History is a really good metaphor for scientific rigour and process. We don't tend to tell kids that because learning about how some ancient civilisation killed another is less "boring" than formal logic.

When it comes to learning to code, being taught how to write an application so you might be the next Mark Zuckerberg is ridiculous. The next Mark Zuckerberg is going to learn coding regardless of what they're taught in a classroom. But, that said, would learning the fundamentals of logic, rigour, abstraction, and the application of some bits of maths* be useful for everyone to know? Definitely. I strongly believe we'd have better nurses, plumbers, fighter pilots, street cleaners, and so on in the future if children learn how to make Tetris when they're in school now.

* There's so little actual maths in coding these days this is actually a really tenuous thing to say. I've been a developer for 15 years; for about 14 of those years I've been wrangling strings with all the maths neatly abstracted away for me. Thank goodness.

</comment><comment><USER3> I find frequently that knowing what a computer can do, and knowing how to do it has lead to lots of interesting projects. I know I can automate things I find boring and I know I can write embedded code to make cool electronics. I think many people aren't even aware of what programming can offer them, and so when they have a problem that very simple scripting could solve, they don't recognise it.

Almost every office worker could have at one point or another benefited from simple task automation. They just don't know it!

</comment><comment><USER4> Learning to code will enable future office dwellers to create macros to automate things in word and excel. I didn't watch the video, so don't know how deep of a skill they are pushing, but some basic knowledge of doing if/else/while and functions is a good skill.

IMO, more people will benefit from basic programming skills, than for biology, physics and chemistry that is taught at schools. I wouldn't suggest to take those subjects out, but incorporating programming would be useful.

</comment><comment><USER5> More than anything, learning to code taught me how to break a daunting problem down into manageable components. While most children learning how to make a text adventure game in Python on a Raspberry Pi today won't be software engineers tomorrow, I do believe that the learning process will have taught them invaluable problem solving skills that they'll end up using every single day, regardless of their chosen career path.

</comment><comment><USER6> Yes, absolutely. (I did a short speech about this very thing at the <http://www.meetup.com/Find-A-tech-Job-In-London/> \- went down well. If you are in London go to the next one !)

In my view Programming today == Literacy in 1451 (Gutenberg's printing press). I call it code-literacy - and it has many facets - not only maths but the expression of less precise ideas. People who are literate are exposed to books, chapters, story arcs, narrative and argument.

Code-literate people are exposed to variables, data storage and recursive functions. all of whcih help you design and build your business with those capabilities.

In short, a company staffed by illiterate people and run by illiterate people operates in a very different way to one staffed by literate. The same works for code-literacy - companies who are code-illiterate will find themselves at a serious competitive disadvantage. This happened in Europe for the 150 years to 1600, and more slowly to late 19C.

I would argue that code-literacy is a force multiplier -if your relative competitive positions are even vaguely comparable, if you are code-literate and the opposition is not, you will crush them.</comment>


Maps reveal extent of CA drought - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/science/la-me-g-california-drought-map-htmlstory.html

<comment><USER2> My wife(Australian) and me(Canadian) are in California at the moment. She is constantly commenting on the fact that despite all the drought warnings and conserve water posters everywhere we constantly see people watering their grass and fields to the point of forming large puddles of water. Like everywhere we have been there has been constant watering of plants. As someone that has lived through drought it has been really confusing to her.

It really seems like no one there believes their is a drought or at least it isn't changing anyones personal actions.

<comment><USER3> I had the same view when I was in the Bay Area recently - the hotel sink was square and flat so needed lots of water in it to shave, and the toilets seem to have at least a gallon in before you flush it

<comment><USER4> The toilets in SF are so incredibly wasteful. I didn't see any dual flush ones anywhere, and the full flush probably 10x as much water as the toilets in Australia.

<comment><USER5> American toilets are old-fashioned like that. It's not an SF thing.

<comment><USER6> "American Standard"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been to Lake Shasta, and the drought is apparent and appalling. The shoreline has receded a few hundred feet.

This report [1] shows that in 2010, Palm Springs was using 736 gallons of water per residential customer per day.

It almost makes me sick.

Sources: [1] [http://www.water.ca.gov/urbanwatermanagement/docs/Report%20t...](http://www.water.ca.gov/urbanwatermanagement/docs/Report%20to%20Leg%20on2010%20UWMPs-6-25-2012.pdf)

<comment><USER8> Why would 736 gallons of water use per day almost make you sick? Presumably the water board continues to charge very little money for water, and so people use it accordingly. Increase the cost of water, people stop using it as much. Increase it enough, and people will decide they no longer need emerald green lawns, and, hell, maybe they will have make big sacrifices and put a nozzle on their hose when watering their car.

I've never understood why the California water boards don't just using pricing as a mechanism to moderate people's water use.

<comment><USER9> Water in SoCal _is_ very expensive. The problem is that by the time you make it expensive enough for the country club set to need to conserve, the rest of us can't afford to flush the toilet. There are solutions, but billionaires with green lawns while low-income workers are loosing service just doesn't work.

<comment><USER10> Couldn't they simply charge a normal rate for the first 50 or so gallons, and then a "drought rate" for anything beyond that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I read the comments. Don't read the comments.

<comment><USER11> Wow, the comments are epic. How did people ever get so confused? I'm surprised nobody has mentioned extraterrestrial visits as a possible cause for the drought yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> There are plans to build a desalination plant in the Bay Area [1]. This and other plants in CA could help water supply in populated areas.

The water districts in CA have two problems: 1\. They are not connected well so water cannot easily be transfered from one district to another. 2\. The reservoirs cannot sustain an extended drought.

[1] [https://portal.ebmud.com/our-water/water-supply/long-term- pl...](https://portal.ebmud.com/our-water/water-supply/long-term-planning/bay- area-regional-desalination-project)

<comment><USER13> 80 percent of California's water usage is agricultural. Agricultural water allocations are based on a "use it or lose it" system.

That's the water districts' biggest problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Slightly off topic, but I was hoping these were satellite images and not just shaded maps. Also showing 180 individual images seems like an awful way to present the data, maybe an animation or have a time slider?

Regardless, it's an interesting dataset, and I honestly didn't know that the drought was so severe, having only heard it mentioned in passing.

<comment><USER15> [http://www.latimes.com/la-me-g-california-drought-map-gif- ht...](http://www.latimes.com/la-me-g-california-drought-map-gif- htmlstory.html)

<comment><USER14> Thank You! This definitely helped me visualize it. It's interesting that it seemed to "move" locations over time. At the beginning the hardest hit area was the north eastern part and towards the end it was (is I suppose) the Southern part of the state. Does anyone know a particular reason for this? I'd think that the driest parts would be mostly consistent, but my knowledge in this area is non-existent.

Edit: Looking at the article again I see this link is at the bottom of the text, not sure how I missed it the first time around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "The desert grows, and woe to him who conceals the desert within him."

Nietzsche

</comment><comment><USER17> I remember a "conserve water!" flyer that was set on the tabletops in the UCSC dining hall. It helpfully pointed out that, since California was experiencing a drought that year, we shouldn't be using so much water.

It _also_ gave the actual rainfall statistics for the current and past year (approximated but basically accurate in my memory): that year, we'd received 20% of the average annual rainfall. The year before, 210%.

This basically convinced me that emoting about california droughts is just something people do because it makes them feel good.

<comment><USER18> I'm clearly not as smart as you. How do those numbers imply that the droughts don't need worrying about?

<comment><USER17> That sort of thing is the whole point of a reservoir. It doesn't make any sense to complain that we desperately need to conserve water because we've actually been getting more than we expected. A rainfall cycle longer than one year doesn't make calendar years that happen to swing low into emergencies.

<comment><USER19> It is if your average water consumption is based on an above-average rainfall, just like winters are disasters if you do not collect extra wood in autumn.

But you are right; the US/California government should continuously call for water conservation.

<comment><USER20> We are getting regular fliers in the mail saying to conserve water. The call is being made. But consumers are often bad listeners when told not to consume.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Nissan unveils world's first mass-market electric car, the Leaf - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/aug/02/nissan-unveils-electric-car-leaf <comment><USER2> I'll bet all these hybrid and electric cars would be adopted by more people if they stopped assigning them fruity little names like "Leaf."

You think any man wants to ride around in the Leaf?

<comment><USER3> Is this some kind of mis-channeling of PG's last essay?

Did you see the photo of the car? It's not targeted at the Hummer crowd. It's also being sold in Europe. I'm not saying it's a great name, but I can see the association between leaf and concern for the environment. And it's a small car. The name to me seems to go along with its design and purpose.

I would also say names may not matter as much as we think they do, or at least that it is fluid and malleable over time. I.e., Nissan or Toyota probably didn't sound all that cool in the 70s or 80s either.

<comment><USER4> _I.e., Nissan or Toyota probably didn't sound all that cool in the 70s or 80s either._

Speaking of names (and new Nissan models), I just watched the Top Gear coverage of the GT-R. It performed on par with some of the fastest supercars in the world (and faster than most of them), and also caused Jeremy Clarkson's back to give out while he was driving it. Richard Hammond joked about how of all the cars Clarkson has driven, he was crippled by a Datsun. I thought it interesting that he chose to use "Datsun" as the derogatory brand for the joke, rather than Nissan. I wonder if that name change and subsequent brand recognition loss was a net positive or a net loss, since it meant they could disassociate from the low end, low performance, and very small, autos of the Datsun years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been half-heartedly shopping around for a car. I've been living for 2.5 years without one since selling my Nissan 350Z when moving to the valley from Austin. One of the reasons the shopping is half-hearted is that I think I kinda want an all-electric vehicle, and there aren't really any realistic electric vehicles available (my primary purpose would be for driving from Mountain View to San Francisco and back every week or so). The other reason is that I think that what I really want is another Z car.

What I'm saying is that I've loved my Nissans in the past, and if this comes to the States at a reasonable price point, it could very well be my next car.

<comment><USER5> I'm in the same situation. I don't want a gas guzzler so I'm waiting around for the electrics. I might get an electric motorcycle first though since new car models tend to have problems in their first year so I imagine the first year of a completely different kind of car is going to be rife with headaches.

Basically it's the same as my phone situation. I don't want an iPhone because of Apple's management of it. I prefer owning what I've paid for and having another company tell me what I can and can't do with my own property doesn't sit well with me. I'm waiting for a viable substitute to be available, something like the HTC Hero.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> For me, the most important sentence was near the end:

"The Leaf car battery can be charged to 80% capacity in about 20 minutes, compared with almost three and a half hours needed for the G-Wiz."

Seems totally reasonable for an intra-city commuting vehicle. I can't see why something like this (even with a 100mi range) wouldn't be popular in NYC, LA, or Boston.

<comment><USER7> EVs can only charge that fast with a special high-power line or a dump pack.

You can get at most 1440W from a 120V 15A outlet (80% max allowable according to NEC) or 5760W from 240V 30A. No matter what magical battery technology you have, you can't charge faster if you don't have a bigger input. You can get range/hour of charging by dividing the power by the wh/mi; the Nissan is probably 100-200wh/mi, so 7-14mi/hr from 120 or 28-56mi/hr from 240V

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The title is a bit misleading. Nissan just hopes it will be the first. Mitsubishi is planning to have their iMiev out at about that time or sooner as well. Actually, just about every car company is saying they'll have an electric out by 2011 these days.

</comment><comment><USER9> Wow, the Leaf has a strong 'face' with a smirk:

[http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2009/08/nissan...](http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2009/08/nissan- leaf_hi_003.jpg)

It's almost like one of the Pixar 'Cars' or the characters in the Chevron commercials from a ways back.

<comment><USER10> When I was a real little kid, maybe 8 or 10 or so, my mother took me shopping for a new car and I distinctly recall bursting into tears at the sight of the first one she liked because I thought it looked mean. I've always wanted to hear the inside scoop on whether cars intentionally anthropomorphise so well or if that was just one of those happy accidents.

<comment><USER11> It's a pretty safe bet that designers take it into consideration, and intentionally play it up in some situations.

<comment><USER12> The BMWs, I feel, are a good example of that with a pretty feline look (to me at least), or gaze maybe.

<comment><USER13> I mostly get that feeling from the headlights and front.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've always wondered if it wouldn't be easier to use the grid to power cars instead of thousands of tank trucks on a daily basis to fill our gas stations which at the same time consume more gasoline.

From the practical point of view, we should use the oil to generate electricity, not to run our cars. Until we find a way to replace oil with nuclear, fision or whatever, then the grid remains intact we only change the source. And cars remain electric without any change.

See? blame BigOil for stomping his boot on the head of progress...

<comment><USER7> Filling your gas tank is equivalent to ~0.5megawatts; your house is 50kilowatts (usually a 240V 200A service), so we can't use electric cars in the same way we use gasoline cars. They're only useful for trips around town, which is what, 90% of miles driven?

<comment><USER15> "gas tank is equivalent to ~0.5megawatts", just to be more clear, could you say how many hours of driving are you assuming the gas fill will last, since your measurement is in terms of power?

<comment><USER8> I think he's saying that gas gets into a tank at the electricity equivelent rate of about half a megawatt.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


This hacker might seem shady, but throwing him in jail is bad for everyone - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/09/23/this-hacker-might-seem-shady-but-throwing-him-in-jail-is-bad-for-everyone/ <comment><USER2> If you visit and internet cafe and someone's forgotten to log out of their bank account and you fiddle with it, that's probably a crime. Since in nearly all cases they probably didn't intend to do such a thing. We can surmise this by observing the banking website had a password to protect the account holder. This is evident by virtue of the "log out" link that's clearly visible and that the website is served over HTTPS and the normal convention that banking information is private.

Now imagine that you come upon a computer and that you click on one of the favorites. It's a banking website. No password, no HTTPS, no access controls at all. Who is responsible for the security breach? You or the bank?

I would argue that if there are no technological access controls in place, there is no such thing as "unauthorized access" You can't be unauthorized if there is no authorization. The default on the internet is "can access"

They're prosecuting him for the digital equivalent of walking down a street and taking pictures of houses which don't display numbers on their mailbox.

<comment><USER3> > I would argue that if there are no technological access controls in place, > there is no such thing as "unauthorized access" You can't be unauthorized if > there is no authorization. The default on the internet is "can access"

Or is it like walking into someone's private home because they left the door open? Or merely unlocked?

The law likes to operate on analogies, because analogous situations are ones for which we have precedent, and precedent makes the law predictable. The sad thing is, precedent goes back to the pre-computer era, too, and isn't necessarily overturned just because new technology with new social expectations is involved. Maybe in a couple generations.

<comment><USER4> I don't think it is like walking into a private home because the door is unlocked... this is more like someone walking into a store, looking around, and then getting in trouble for looking at a specific display shelf that was in the back corner. The shelf wasn't labeled as off limits, you just were wondering around where you were supposed to and happen to see it. The store can't get mad and say "well yeah, but we put it in the back corner where most people don't go... and we put sensitive stuff back there! How dare you look at it!"

Well it was right in the same store you invited me in to! There was no sign or lock or anything saying not to look at the shelf.

This was a PUBLIC website... you are supposed to be able to visit it. If you make a request to a server without providing authentication and it returns data, that is not your fault. That is what you are SUPPOSED to do to servers. If it asks for authentication and tells you you are unauthorized, but you brute force the password or find an exploit, then THAT is a crime. There was not authentication in this case.

<comment><USER5> >This was a PUBLIC website... you are supposed to be able to visit it. If you make a request to a server without providing authentication and it returns data, that is not your fault. That is what you are SUPPOSED to do to servers. If it asks for authentication and tells you you are unauthorized, but you brute force the password or find an exploit, then THAT is a crime. There was not authentication in this case.

Unfortunately none of these excuses are valid. He knew he was accessing something he shouldn't have been. If he did it once or twice and stopped that is one thing, intent is a major part of the law, and he intended to exploit something he knew he should not have been. That is why he is being found guilty.

<comment><USER2> If I find a $50 bill on a sidewalk I can INTEND to steal it as much as I want. But no matter how badly I WANT to steal it I cannot because at that point it's not a thing that can be stolen. There is no way to trace it back to it's former owner and as such, the first person to find it is legitimately the new owner.

Weev might have said that he "stole" the information or that he "intented" to perform an unauthorized access but ultimately that doesn't matter. There was no access control to prevent the internet's default of "everything is visible" so that's precisely what happened. It's not a hack no matter how badly he or the government want it to be. Intent matters not one iota.

<comment><USER5> Of course intent matters. If I run over someone with my car and kill them and it was deemed just a terrible but unfortunate accident, that is 100% different than if I drove over them because I _intended_ to run them down and kill them.

The same applies to this case. He intended to access something he knew he shouldn't have had access to. Thus why he is guilty.

<comment><USER6> Yes, but in your example (where someone is killed) there is rather obviously an underlying act that may or may not be criminal depending on the intent. There are infinitely many acts that cannot be considered crimes regardless of how malicious the intent behind them may be.

Furthermore, just because someone feels that they have done something wrong does not make what they have done a crime. The law also must consider that action to have been illegal.

Hopefully, the appeals court will determine that accessing a public unrestricted URL cannot be considered illegal, regardless of the mindset of the person who might choose to access it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reading this article [http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/12/4693710/the-end-of- kindnes...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/12/4693710/the-end-of-kindness- weev-and-the-cult-of-the-angry-young-man) makes me feel not too terrible that he's being thrown in jail.

<comment><USER8> Weev's a right shithead, you're absolutely right.

I still bailed him out of jail for the time leading up to and during his trial. Why? Because UNPOPULAR SPEECH SHOULD NEVER BE CRIMINAL, no matter how revolting. Indeed, it is the unpopular and revolting stuff that needs the most defending:

"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all." —H.L. Mencken

<comment><USER9> By "unpopular speech", do you mean the AT&T bit, or the harassment bit? If the latter, I disagree. A free and fair society can certainly draw a line between "unpopular speech" and "criminal harassment."

If I were to threaten to murder you, you wouldn't expect the police to say "Eh, nothing we can do, he's got a right to free speech. Call us back after he shoots you, you'll have a case then."

<comment><USER10> _If I were to threaten to murder you, you wouldn 't expect the police to say "Eh, nothing we can do, he's got a right to free speech. Call us back after he shoots you, you'll have a case then."_

This is the problem with thought experiments regarding crime: they always make the facts 100% certain, when in real life, the facts are never 100% certain. If we were to rephrase your thought experiment, it would be:

"Some guy said some other guy was going to kill him. Let's throw that some other guy in prison for a while, just in case."

Not quite as clear-cut as you think, is it?

<comment><USER9> _" Not quite as clear-cut as you think, is it?"_

Weev did literally threaten to murder Kathy Sierra, and he then bragged about doing so on multiple public websites. So, yes, it is quite clear-cut.

(And, please, at least think for a minute before you try to rebut by saying that he didn't _mean_ it, so it shouldn't count.)

<comment><USER10> Were you at the keyboard when he was typing this message?

<comment><USER9> Why, you're right. I don't know for sure that the NSA didn't fake dozens of threatening emails from Weev, and several forum posts, and then used mind- control satellites to keep him from posting that it wasn't him or telling any of his meatspace friends that it wasn't him, and then used mind-control satellites again to make him brag in person to that reporter. Oooh, or maybe they used mind-control satellites on the _reporter_ to make him slander Weev's good name, and MCS once more to keep all the people in the article from revealing the truth!

Give it up, man. The guy whose image you're trying to clean prefers it nice and dirty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's worth reading the criminal complaint and indictment ([https://www.eff.org/cases/us-v-auernheimer](https://www.eff.org/cases/us-v- auernheimer)) to get some background. In particular: the discussions of using the email addresses for a phishing scheme, using them for spam, shorting AT&T stock and profiting off the data release, setting up WiFi routers so they can blame it on a third party, discussing how this was a federal crime, and how to spin themselves as a legitimate security organization. These things make it really hard to view weev as a genuine security researcher who was prosecuted for no good reason.

<comment><USER12> It's not worth reading that, because it's taken completely out of context. As badly as it's taken out of context, you're actually taking it even more out of context in your comment here. Weev actually said that shorting stock would be illegal, and said something to the effect of "if you do it, I don't want to know about it" and discouraged many other "suggestions" from people who didn't appear to have any real part in it, but were cheerleading.

In any case, that is very typical IRC conversation for a large portion of that subculture. They joked about doing these things, but they didn't actually take steps to do them. He considers himself a satirist, so it's not much different than some comedians talking nonsense over beers and having it show up in an indictment.

One of the chatters observing said they should post the list to full- disclosure. Weev replied saying "no, don't do that, its potentially criminal." He then talked about how he gets to spin it in the media and he's won. That says pretty clearly that he was only out to make a scene, which is what he has always done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Everyone throws out analogies about walking into unlocked houses and such. Those are fairly poor analogies, so let me offer one which I think is far better at conveying what really happens.

Imagine you walked into a public library and struck up a conversation with the librarian:

            You: Can you tell me general information about this library?
      Librarian: Certainly, this library was built in 1990, has a million
                 books on its shelves, and...
            You: What are the hours?
      Librarian: Monday to Saturday, 10AM to 8PM. Sunday, 10AM to 5PM.
            You: Frothy bacon generates utilitarian synapses!
      Librarian: I'm sorry, that's not really a proper question I can help
                 you with.
            You: Can I borrow book identified by ISBN 4961357406830?
      Librarian: Sure, here you go.
            You: Can I borrow book identified by ISBN 6498794651315?
      Librarian: Sure, here you go.
            You: Can I borrow book identified by ISBN 9840546790354?
      Librarian: Sure, here you go.
            You: Can I borrow book identified by ISBN 3168706780943?
      Librarian: Sure, here you go.
            You: Can I borrow book identified by ISBN 7893781056145?
      Librarian: Sure, here you go.
            You: Can I borrow book identified by ISBN 2764894617987?
      Librarian: Sure, here you go.
            You: Can I borrow book identified by ISBN 9764660911970?
      Librarian: Sure, here you go.
            You: Can I borrow book identified by ISBN 6666666666666?
      Librarian: Sorry, that book doesn't exist.
            You: Can I borrow book identified by ISBN 8669177714641?
      Librarian: Sorry, you've been requesting too many books lately.
            You: Can you let me into the Staff lounge?
      Librarian: Sorry, you'll need to show me your staff credentials when
                 asking.
            You: Can you provide me with a list of all employees and their
                 salaries?
      Librarian: Sorry, you are not allowed to have that information.
            You: Can I use the general conference room on the third floor?
      Librarian: Actually, that was moved. It's now on the second floor.

As you can no doubt see, these translate directly into HTTP requests:

      GET /
      200 OK - This library was built in 1990, has a million books...
      GET /hours
      200 OK - Monday to Saturday, 10AM to 8PM. Sunday, 10AM to 5PM.
      POST /frothy-bacon-generates-utilitarian-synapses
      400 BAD REQUEST
      GET /books/4961357406830
      200 OK - [contents]
      GET /books/6498794651315
      200 OK - [contents]
      GET /books/9840546790354
      200 OK - [contents]
      GET /books/3168706780943
      200 OK - [contents]
      GET /books/7893781056145
      200 OK - [contents]
      GET /books/2764894617987
      200 OK - [contents]
      GET /books/9764660911970
      200 OK - [contents]
      GET /books/6666666666666
      404 NOT FOUND
      GET /books/8669177714641
      429 TOO MANY REQUESTS
      GET /admin
      401 UNAUTHORIZED
      GET /employees/salaries
      403 FORBIDDEN
      GET /floor/3/conference
      301 MOVED; Location: /floor/2/conference

In both cases, we have a gatekeeper (librarian / web server) which is capable of responding to requests, can authorize various requests, can require credentials for sensitive requests, can limit the rate at which requests come in, can deny requests altogether, and can identify when requests for certain things have moved to new locations.

The librarian is smart enough to not hand out things like access to the staff lounge, a list of employees and their salaries, or even things like an arbitrary library member's borrowing history. The web server has been configured to not hand out things like admin access or other things which are deemed sensitive, but the owners of the web server have taken the position "Well, nobody's going to be guessing ISBN numbers, so we'll let anybody on the internet request the contents of those books."

When is the onus on the web server owner to configure their security properly? When is a "200 OK" response actually not okay? This is the "mind reader" aspect the article mentions.

<comment><USER14> Really, you are going to give people crap for bad analogies, and then try to compare the actions of a conscious human being to an automated computer system?

<comment><USER2> An automated computer system can only do what it's told. It perfectly carries out the instructions it is given. A human being can really screw everything up using their judgement and coming to the wrong conclusion.

The problem here is that AT&T employed a human being to design an automated system who didn't know enough about the automated system to ensure that it was correct. And then this automated system did exactly what it was told to do and made AT&T look bad.

But the fact that the code running on the webserver didn't reflect the intent of some AT&T exec or their company policy isn't the fault of those accessing the webserver. It's AT&T's fault for doing a really terrible job of QA/QC on their own systems prior to a really big launch.

<comment><USER14> The bad analogy can be extended to mechanical devices, such as a lock. The lock is also an automated system, and it is a system that will also perfectly do what it is told with even higher fidelity than a computer due to its relative simplicity.

I with my lockpick tell pin 1 to move up so many millimeters, I tell pin 2 to move up so many millimeters, and so on, and suddenly the lock opens. Suddenly I'm in, and it should be legal because the lock wasn't designed as well as it could have been and because all I did was follow a legal protocol with the lock.

Bad analogies like this are so common here when discussing technology issues, and it is a never ending irritating game of come up with the least-worst (but still bad) analogy. People here also often confuse their understanding of technology with legal/ethical sagacity, which is laughable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Here is my analogy:

1\. You just finished your workout and went to a locker room at your gym (he went to a public website)

2\. You opened up your own locker and took your stuff from it (checked his account)

3\. You found out that very few people are using locks in the gym locker room (figured the account id in url )

4\. You know that it is not your belongings in other people lockers, but they are not locked just because people are just lazy or don't want to spend money on the lock (he knew that those accounts do not belong to him, and were accidentally not locked by by at&t)

5\. You decided if those lockers are not locked - that means that clothes inside of those lockers are public property and you can easily borrow them (tried to browser to other urls and get private account info)

6\. You go ahead and try opening every single locker in a room and put all the belongings you find in opened lockers on ebay to make profit and sell it, BEFORE letting know the owners or the gym that those belongings are not locked. (sold private data to somebody)

I think thats not legal behavior, as long as you understand that the property you are taking is not yours - you are making a crime by taking it (stealing)

<comment><USER16> How about replacing step three with "You notice that all the lockers have glass tops" and following that with a story about taking photographs?

<comment><USER17> Why would we want an analogy that more accurately reflects the reality of the situation? We're trying to justify this, not let him out on appeal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I know this is not a position people over here like to support, but..

      But this technique, known as "scraping," is surprisingly common among
      technologically sophisticated users and has a number of legitimate
      applications.

      To get a list of sex offenders, Poulsen wrote an automated program to search the
      Department of Justice Web site for each zip code
      in the United States and then save the name and
      address of each registered sex offender in that
      zip code to a file.

Really? Really? That's a 'legitimate application'? Nevermind that the pure existence of that registry is a slap in the face for people with my understanding of Freedom and Liberty (in caps), scraping _that list_ is why we want to protect scraping? I haven't felt that disconnected to content on this site for a long time.

      Yet most people would agree that Poulsen's actions
      were a legitimate journalistic project. So we might
      want to be careful about subjecting this kind of
      technique to criminal penalties.

Most people?? In what world?

I'm sorry for the detour, but the whole article is trying to defend weev while linking to atrocious actions of that guy in the past and coming up with the most despicable (Thanks Hollywood, learned a new term) reason for scraping _ever_. Disgusting.

</comment><comment><USER9> So does anyone know why exactly they weren't able to get Weev on criminal harassment? I wouldn't expect the gummint to fail to bring the charge unless they thought there was no hope of victory, but it seems like such a gimme.

<comment><USER19> I'm not sure there is any relevant law. At the federal level it appears to require "obscenity" which is very hard to prove for anything short of child pornography.

<comment><USER9> IIRC, he photoshopped pictures of Kathy Sierra's kids into porn and posted them online, and emailed her graphic threats to rape her with a chainsaw, . It doesn't seem like you'd have a hard time convincing a jury of "obscenity".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It is annoying when people throw analogies around describe it to a highly technical audience. When is hacker news going to discuss the fact that User- Agent in the http header is not a security feature? When is the discussion that sequential id is equivalent to no security?

No analogy in the world is going to change the fact that User-Agent checking and sequential id:s are not security features. And if courts are allowed to make them security features it is bad news for everyones security.

</comment><comment><USER21> /u/biot's analogy is apt. But I don't understand why it isn't a defence that the HTTP protocol starts with a _REQUEST_ . The server is the one who actually serves up the information.

If I _request_ something from you ("hey, can I borrow your car?"), and you give it to me, then what's the problem here?

</comment><comment><USER22> Kudos to the WP for ongoing coverage of this case. There are important issues being litigated here that could affect everyone, and I'd argue they are worth discussing without regard to this particular defendant and the sheer stupidity of his actions.

However, I find WP's use of Poulson's activities as an example of "legitimate" automated HTML retrieval ("scraping") to be an odd one. It seems an awkward a comparison to convey what should be a simple point, in my opinion.

How about something much more common? Googlebot. Imagine if we forbade Google from using automation and from scraping content and placing it in the Google cache. No more web search.

Alas, because of the ad hoc nature of the Web (i.e., there is no unifiying organizational scheme for locating content across all websites as there would be in, say, locating content in a library of books), you cannot access Web content until you first discover it. In order to discover content, you generally have to search. In order to create an index and cache of content to search, someone has to scan/crawl/scrape websites. The later three are activities that are routinely automated. As such, they will violate many website Terms of Service and may get you banned simply for being "automated".

In fact, to use Google as an example (not picking on them per se, it's just that they are a well-known example), crawling Google will "get you banned" from using Google, temporarily.

The irony of this has always intrigued me: Google may crawl your servers, but under Google's policies, you may not crawl Google's servers.

If I create an index of your website, at your expense (by aggressively running automated queries against your http server, as Google does, for example), am I obligated to share it with you?

In any event, attempts to criminalize automation should raise red flags with anyone who is even slightly tech savvy.

<comment><USER23> >> The irony of this has always intrigued me: Google may crawl your servers, but under Google's policies, you may not crawl Google's servers.

It looks like some of their site can be crawled and some not, that's how robots.txt has worked for a long time:

[http://www.google.com/robots.txt](http://www.google.com/robots.txt)

<comment><USER22> And search results (the data they have obtained via crawling others' sites) is not among the data that can be crawled.

What are you suggesting?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I love the use of analogy to describe the situation to those who may not understand exactly what Weev did. But can we decide law simply on analogy? Which analogy is a more accurate tale of what Weev did? What I like about this article is it explains what Weev did and how incredibly common his techniques were, without too much analogy. Analogies may be much more effective, but a direct explanation feels a lot more genuine.

<comment><USER25> How about mines?: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6435769](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6435769)

You are welcome to critique, not harass⸮:

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> government always prefers "shoot the messenger" to actual security. There should be literally be nothing illegal about what he did in that case. he didn't "hack" anything except HIS computer to pretend to be an iPad. And that would be the point of identifying it as a security concern. After all, if he had figured it out, surely the Russians and Chinese figured it out between when he did it and they prosecuted him... it doesn't make the hole go away!!!

What he did is like sticking a GM car key into a Toyota. Generally that doesn't work, it shouldn't work... but what if it does anyway? shouldn't the company that makes the cars fix that?

</comment><comment><USER27> The information was public. He did nothing wrong.

It is similar to accidentally posting all those email addresses on a bulletin board on the street and hoping no one reads them.

</comment><comment><USER28> he is a hacker? He must be doing computer sorcery - off with his head.</comment>


Samsung Galaxy S2 gets Ice Cream update - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17352795 <comment><AUTHOR> I'm so sorry, but this was just too absurd:)

 _... letting owners unlock a phone with their face_</comment>


A framework for evaluating data scientist competency - <AUTHOR> https://firstname.lastname@example.com/a-framework-for-evaluating-data-scientist-competency-89b5f275a6bf <comment><USER2> Something HTML with local state like "Programmer Competency Matrix" would be great.

[http://sijinjoseph.com/programmer-competency- matrix/](http://sijinjoseph.com/programmer-competency-matrix/)

[https://competency-checklist.appspot.com/](https://competency- checklist.appspot.com/)

[https://github.com/hltbra/programmer-competency- checklist](https://github.com/hltbra/programmer-competency-checklist)</comment>


Customize Gmail's Buttons: Replace Icons With Text - <AUTHOR> http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2012/03/customize-gmails-buttons-replace-icons.html <comment><USER2> Icons are mnemonics, not signposts. Once you know what a button does, an icon can be a great way to quickly recognize it again.

On their own, though, they're terrible. They invite confusion, even after a user has learned what they mean.

An icon in conjunction with text is a wonderful way to help users find things quickly. If I have to choose to design and interface with only an icon or only text, though, I'll go with text.

<comment><USER3> Theses icons, however, weren't as visually distinctive as others. I always had to pause for a moment to figure out which one was the spam button. I've changed back to text.

<comment><USER4> They should have colored the spam button red. I fumble a lot with these new buttons. I don't understand why the designers are against color in the new interface. It's like watching a bad CGI movie or a video game with no details where every surface looks bland gray or dark...

<comment><USER5> Just like Visual Studio 11. Who exactly is asking for all these monochromatic icons? Are there AB tests done that favour them?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This feels like an admission of failure. A good UI wouldn't need an option like this.

<comment><USER7> Seems just to be a simple customizable feature. Do you think that the different whitespace options in Gmail are also an "admission of failure"? To me, they just provide different options to suit different people's visual preferences.

<comment> lzh-ng The whitespace options are especially grating to me. Gmail offers 3 options, all of which are poorly spaced. Configurability isn't a replacement for good design.

<comment><USER8> I'm still on the "classic" theme, and throw a bitchfit over feedback every time they try to force me into the new themes. Some of my accounts have been switched over to the new themes with no "classic" option, while others still have it available.

I'll use classic until they fix the new crap, or allow me to continue using classic indefinitely.

<comment><USER9> I just threw in the towel and switched to mutt. I'd been meaning to try it out for a while anyway, and this was exactly the opportunity I needed to motivate me.

(For anyone who's curious to try it out- I couldn't be happier, and mutt + offlineimap + mairix has ended up being the perfect combination for me... far better than Gmail web was at its best).

<comment><USER10> Yeah, I use Thunderbird as my gmail client (or k9 on Android)

Because not having a three pane layout is just frustrating.

<comment><USER11> Are you aware of the "Preview Pane" labs option in the Google Mail settings?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why not have both?

This seems much nicer looking: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dheionainndbbpoacp...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dheionainndbbpoacpnopgmnihkcmnkl)

</comment><comment><USER13> finally! Those icons are indistinct and basically meaningless.

</comment><comment><USER14> Google, is becoming more and more like Microsoft. If they can't decide, they're essentially dumping that decision on the user in the guise of a choice.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hrm, I prefer the new look (with icons), but it seems that most people I have read do not. Not sure if I am a minority or just a silent majority.

</comment><comment><USER15> Why not allow icons and text (a la nearly ever Mac toolbar I've used)? That would seem, to me, the easiest way to "skim" a toolbar.

Icons can be smaller (like the document editor toolbar), but it doesn't seem like Gmail's really pushing the size limit.

</comment><comment><USER16> All they need is to bring back the clickable Google logo for getting back to the Inbox.

</comment><comment><USER17> Now all they need to do is make the settings page match the rest of the site. Notably putting the Save button at the top of the page after making everyone get used to not having to scroll around to find the Send button.

</comment><comment><USER18> s/Google Wage/Google Wave/

<comment><USER19> It was wrong in the source email, was wondering if someone was going to catch this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Let's not talk about Google Apps users and this setting, shall we? :)

Off-topic: fun to see that someone else got emails about Wave being sunsetted from the "Google Wage" sender.

<comment><USER20> Well, it seems I spoke too soon! When they first announced this on the official blog it wasn't available to me (an Apps user), but now it is.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Does a third-party cookie influence my search results? - <AUTHOR> We are all aware of cookies being responsible for providing more relevant and more accurate search results.
I was wondering if (for example) I am using Google as a search engine but do not allow any Cookies from Google my search results could be manipulated by other (third-party) cookies?
Links to more Information would be helpful! <comment><USER2> Your browser won't let websites know that another party's cookie exists, let alone let that site read it. So Google's servers would have to be communicating behind the scenes with the other site's servers to even know that you had the cookie.</comment>


Speaker Break In: Fact or Fiction? (2005) - <AUTHOR> http://www.audioholics.com/education/loudspeaker-basics/speaker-break-in-fact-or-fiction <comment><USER2> There's an entire sub-industry devoted to this sort of nonsense. Besides, everyone knows you have to break in your cables, too (sigh). I present the Cable Cooker:

[http://www.positive- feedback.com/Issue47/cablecooker.htm](http://www.positive- feedback.com/Issue47/cablecooker.htm)

Which begs the question: is there a break-in process for the Cable Cooker itself? Is there a _Cable Cooker cooker_?

[https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/anyone-own-an- audiodh...](https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/anyone-own-an-audiodharma- cable-cooker)

 _How long do you leave cables on the cable cooker? Are there significant time differences for PCs, SCs, ICs, silver, copper, etc.? Does the unit come with detailed instructions and guidelines?_

\- _Takes the guessing out of "is this cable burned in yet?" I would describe the effect as perhaps taking the rough edge off of new cables and bringing a little life back into old cables that have been unused for awhile._

\- _What they said, read the web site and experiment. Benefits are lower noise floor and u can hear more deeply into the sound stage. May be worth repeating every 6 months for 4-6 hours_

<comment><USER3> Don't worry. You do not need a cable cooker cooker, because every cooker (in the latest generations, natch) is cryogenically treated before ever leaving the manufacturer. If you have an old cable cooker you may want to bury it deep underground in the Saskatchewan for two consecutive winters. Repeat this as often as necessary.

<comment><USER4> Bummer, I was hoping to get an early jump on the cable cooker cooker cooker market. /s

On a more serious note, I wonder if this product was inspired by profit potential or a high degree of stupidity. I could imagine a conversation between 'car guys' going something like, "fast cars need to be warmed up, so the same should apply to our sweet sound system, right?"

The reality is, if you 'cook a cable' all it's going to do is increase the internal resistance. Requiring more current to produce the same sound output. Which requires more amplification at the source. Which increases the line noise overall.

The, "lower noise floor and u can hear more deeply into the sound stage" was probably due to a combination of increased amplification and dampening of the mid-to-high frequency range.

<comment><USER2> People in digital audio forums debate what's a better sounding backup medium: CD-R or hard drive or Dropbox. They swear they can hear a difference. Yet the sha-1 hashes match.

And these are not dumb people; it just shows you what happens when you get a bunch of enthusiasts in a forum. By the time somebody steps in to say "huh?!" it's unstoppable.

<comment><USER4> I genuinely lol'd at your comment. That's amazing and slightly horrifying at the same time.

I wonder how many audio enthusiasts have actually had the privilege to hear music being made in a studio on proper studio monitors.

It kind of amazes me that, in the digital music age, the best quality streaming services have to offer is 320KBPS lossy compressed copies of CD quality audio.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Then there are people who think it takes so long for their DAC to reach the sweet spot after being powered on that they transport it to shootout on UPS so the unit only needs an hour to acclimate to its new environment. [http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f6-dac-digital-analog- conv...](http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f6-dac-digital-analog- conversion/schiit-yggdrasil-best-digital-analogue-converter- available-24351/index12.html#post489748)

</comment><comment><USER6> very convoluted writing, but I think the tl;dr is: initial burn-in is real, subsequent runs have no lasting effect

<comment><USER2> The article states "the enclosure has the dominant influence" and it's far greater than any measurable impact of the speakers. The worst-case change is an inaudible .09 dB difference.</comment></comment>


Screw Your Stupid Typedefs - <AUTHOR> http://almostvalid.blogspot.com/2013/11/screw-your-stupid-typedefs.html

<comment><USER2> SCREW. TYPEDEFS.

I hate it. Have you ever used WINAPI directly? For god's sake, everything is typedef'ed. Horrible to work with.

</comment><comment><USER3> worth checking out this discussion: [http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1rvuh0/the_way_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1rvuh0/the_way_youre_using_typedefs_sucks/)</comment>


Telepresence Robot Crosses Atlantic *Six* Times Trying to Get Home - <AUTHOR> https://www.fedex.com/apps/fedextrack/?tracknumbers=806020716375

<comment><AUTHOR> The package is a QB robot from Anybots. It's on it's way home from London to San Jose (we thought) for an upgrade. Over the last 14 days, FedEx has literally flown it across the Atlantic 6 times.

The sender inadvertently reversed the Sender and Receiver on the waybill, and was advised to 'just put arrows between the two, it happens all the time'. It got as far as San Jose distribution, who apparently missed the arrows and shipped it right back to London. Since then, and in spite of literally dozens of phone calls, this guy has been racking up frequent flyer miles.

QB in action: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mz4FshiMu3U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mz4FshiMu3U)

<comment><USER2> So, in San Jose they're dumb enough not to understand the problem, and in London they're dumb enough not to correct it (they understand it, since they resend the package).</comment></comment>


4Sync - 15GB Free, Syncing Cloud Storage - now out of bega - <AUTHOR> https://www.4sync.com/ <comment><USER2> What differentiates this from Dropbox and Box.net, etc., aside from the amount of space available? What makes this a superior solution rather than just yet another undifferentiated solution?

</comment><comment><USER3> I tried their Windows client this morning and it is trafficking in some kind of toolbar malware.

So the answer to the comment about what differentiates it from Drobpox.com? Dropbox and reputable companies _never_ bundle browser toolbars.

Deleted.

</comment><comment><USER4> Nice, but what is "bega"?

<comment><USER5> Building Egalitarian to Grant Access, it's a post beta process to update a program to allow access on a variety of OS. 4sync works on Mac, Windows and Linux, with downloads for each. It's a term that came out of the BSD community, originally referring to being able to build something on several different UNIX variants, and possibly Solaris, but now generally means the above.

Nah, just kidding. it's probably a typo, but the poster's grammar isn't really relevant to the site they posted, is it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Chihuahua.</comment>