Yield Curve Is More Inverted Than at This Point in Run-Up to Financial Crisis - <AUTHOR> https://thesoundingline.com/us-treasury-yield-curve-is-more-inverted-than-at-this-point-in-the-run-up-to-the-financial-crisis/ <comment><USER2> Simple explanation of what this means. Here are current yields on Treasury Bonds (expressed as an annualized rate)[0]:

1 Mo - 2.47

2 Mo - 2.47

3 Mo - 2.46

6 Mo - 2.49

1 Yr - 2.41

2 Yr - 2.26

3 Yr - 2.19

5 Yr - 2.21

7 Yr - 2.32

10 Yr - 2.43

20 Yr - 2.68

30 Yr - 2.87

In normal times, rates are higher for longer terms. This makes sense: the longer I tie up my money, the higher interest rate I'm going to want. However, right now, the rates are mostly inverted. For example, I'd get a higher rate on a bond with a lockup period of 6 months than I would on a bond with a lockup period of 10 years.

Typically, this sort of thing precedes a recession. Bond market investors think that a recession is coming, so they are willing to pay for longer term bonds on the assumption that rates on these will go down in the future when the federal reserve lowers rates (to stimulate the economy) and when people flee the stock market generally in order to avoid risk.

[0] Source [https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart- center/i...](https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart- center/interest-rates/pages/textview.aspx?data=yield)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for this.

Question: is there any rational reason an investor would invest in a 10-year bond when they could get a better interest rate on a six month bond?

It seems like an inversion would result in near-zero long-term bond purchases.

<comment><USER4> With a 10-year bond, the investor receives that interest rate over the whole 10 years. With a 6-month bond, the investor receives that interest rate only over these 6 months, and then has to find another bond to buy. If all available bonds then have a lower interest rate, the investor would have received more for the 10-year bond.

(What might be confusing at first is that interest rates are usually "annualized", that is, presented as if they were for a single whole year. You won't actually receive 2.49% of what you paid for the 6-month bond; you'll receive something like 1.24%, and you have to invest again for another 6 months to reach that 2.49%. If that investment is no longer available, you might not be able to do that.)

<comment><USER5> One can invest it again in a 6 month bond with the yield curve inverted further. The decrease in rates would happen over a longer term than 6 months. And also if the rates have decreased the prices would have increased for the bond that is held.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This should be expected. Given rising FED rates over the last year+, as well as QT (quantitative Tightening, which undoes the QE in place for nearly a decade), these actions are - and this is key - _reducing the money supply_.

It is the reduction of money supply that causes deflation (and therefore lower rates). Technically, a yield curve inversion is an expectation of lower rates in the future, not necessarily lower growth.

This is actually extremely important, but widely misunderstood: You can have growth with deflation (and likewise, recession with inflation).

To make that point clear, _a yield curve inversion is an expectation of interest rates, not necessarily an expectation of lower growth._

I expect this will cause all sorts of arguments, but the math is clear. I'll quote the Mises Institute [0] on this:

 _For instance, if the money supply increases by 5% and the quantity of goods increases by 10%, prices will fall by 5%._

[0] - [https://mises.org/wire/central-banks-shouldnt-fight- deflatio...](https://mises.org/wire/central-banks-shouldnt-fight-deflation)

<comment><USER6> I left off one clarification: it _tends_ to be a good predictor of recessions, but is not perfect. See the inversions for the last half of the 1960's at the St. Louis Fed [0] as a counter-example.

[0] - [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=nn5r](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=nn5r)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm not convinced this is a recession signal, as much as it's a reflection of the new normal for worldwide central banks.

Put the 10 year in context: in Japan and Germany and other stable countries yields are negative. So you have to pay to lend those countries money, because the central banks are pushing yields negative.

But in the US you can actually get a modest (but real) return on the ten year, so it's quite popular. This popularity has pushed the price lower and flattened the curve.

And while recession may not be in the cards for the US in the next few years, the next ten years is a whole different story - so given the newfound dovishness of the Fed given European and Chinese weakness, it makes sense to lock in some yield in those ten year bonds now.

<comment><USER8> While I'm not saying you're wrong (and I'm not pretending to know enough to fully understand all the forces at play here), the article ends with the following statement that I find interesting, in light of your comment:

> _Every time the yield curve inverts there is a theory about why it doesn't > matter. The stock market rallies that often follow inversions further allay > fears that it really is different. In the end, it almost always ends up not > being different._

<comment><USER7> "almost always"

Keep in mind this signal was only discovered in 1989. So we have a forward- looking success rate of three out of three recessions predicted within a year or two.

3/3 is great, of course, but it wasn't delivered on stone tablets from Mount Sinai. The strange thing about predictive economic indicators is they often stop being predictive once popularized.

Why? For example, in 2000 and 2006/7 the Fed raised interest rates aggressively even after the inversion. However, we know that the current Fed is looking at the curve, and has become much more dovish since the inversion. So it's entirely possible that it's predictive ability will be diminished precisely because policy makers are paying attention to it.

<comment><USER9> In the current circumstance, one argument is that the Fed overreacted in raising short-term rates, making those rates artificially high. I suppose there is some support for this without looking too deeply into it as the Fed now is unwinding QE. Unwinding QE still is "tightening" monetary policy. My guess is that the Fed believes that by lowering its portfolio's duration is a more effective way to raise longer-term yields to prevent the yield curve from becoming more inverted. I'm not a monetary expert, but I suppose you could say this time is different due to QE/QT, or you could stick with how the market typically reacts after the yield curve inverts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The headline implies a claim that I don't see any support for: that degree of yield curve inversion is related to likelihood of recession. While that seems plausible, I've never seen analysis that being more inverted is a stronger predictor than simply being inverted at all.

</comment><comment><USER11> Traders think yields will drop. Yields drop because liquidity increases. Liquidity increases because more people want to lend than borrow. A recession lowers the demand for debt, so the price drops and the yields rise. To fight the recession, the fed creates dollars and buys debt with them. The lower supply of and increased demand for debt raises the price, which drops the yield. But this would only happen if the fed was unable to control the recession. Economic expansion also raises the demand for debt. Or it could be the effect of international debt arbitrage. Or balance of trade.

Truly I have no idea what traders are thinking. And they could all be wrong.

All I know is that this is way more complicated than pattern recognition.

</comment><comment><USER12> What can the average founder, employee, and person do in the face of this news?

I understand that it's scary, but what can we do to turn that fear into an actionable checklist?

<comment><USER13> For example, paying down debt would be a good idea. [sound of numerous economists jumping up and down saying this would turn prediction of recession into self-fulfilling prophecy] Also, holding off on any major new purchases like houses or new cars. [sound of foresaid economists moaning and putting their heads in their hands in despair]

<comment><USER14> > For example, paying down debt would be a good idea.

Opposite from a financial standpoint: if interests rates lower in the future you will be able to refinance.

From a job-vulnerability perspective it always lowers your risk though: better not to be very leveraged if your income can fluctuate.

<comment><USER15> You'll only be able to refinance if a bank is willing. If a recession is the driver of a fed rate reduction, that seems less plausible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This could also be a bet that the economy is still yet to improve, as in times of good economy the coupon rate has historically dramatically increased. To extrapolate, if the investor expects the economy to peak in 5 years, he would be incentivized to allocate capital into short-term investments such as equities and short term bonds as to defer longer-term investing until those bond yields reach their peak.

<comment><USER17> If investors were putting more capital into short term bonds, wouldn't the yield of short term bonds drop, not rise?

<comment><USER16> Yes, so in this case investors are instead placing more of their capital in liquid assets, like public equities. With investors optimistic about the economy, keeping in mind that coupon rates rise during good economies, we would expect higher yield rates in the short term with optimistic investors having both the expectation that equities will outperform those bonds (so capital is allocated away from bonds) and secondly that interest rates will rise as the economy improves. This is exactly what we see when we look at the 1-mo to 1-yr bonds.

Coincidentally, the Fed just announced that interest rates aren't expected to rise this year, so we should see a decrease in the yields of the 1-mo to 1-yr bonds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It should also be noted that there is a delay between and inversion and a recession, with an average of about a year:

* [https://seekingalpha.com/article/4250934-yield-curve-inversi...](https://seekingalpha.com/article/4250934-yield-curve-inversion-panic-make-plan-bear-market)

This means it will probably occur in the middle of next year's US presidential election. :)

<comment><USER19> > next year's US presidential election. :)

Any chance the US can extend its terms? An election seems to last an entire year and be one of the most toxic events possible online.

<comment><USER18> > Any chance the US can extend its terms?

Sure. Just amend the US Constitution. No biggie. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> How often does it invert? Had it ever happened without a financial crisis to go with it?

<comment><USER21> Here's the last nearly 40 years worth of that curve, with recessions marked for convenience: [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/T10Y3M](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/T10Y3M) (use the range selector below the graph to see everything)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> More practically, at least for those _thinking_ of buying a home on a standard 30-yr fixed mortgage, since it seems like the consensus among investors is that interest rates for long-term debt will fall it makes little sense to buy anytime soon if you can wait...

Or does it make sense to go with an adjustable rate mortgage instead?

<comment><USER23> Buy if you need/want to buy. Refinancing a mortgage after a rate decline is fairly easy and you're likely to get a better purchase price in a (locally) high rate environment and carry that lower purchase price into your refinance. The diff in purchase price likely more than covers your refinance costs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I was worried for this over the past few days (thanks, YC! ;) ), and reading the thread below see others are as well, but the main solid data I could find against the yield curve predictor (which the original article doesn't mention) is that it doesn't hold up in other countries:

[https://www.marketwatch.com/story/an-inverted-yield-curve- is...](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/an-inverted-yield-curve-is-a- recession-indicator-but-only-in-the-us-2018-05-07)

So, if you're a start-up in the U.S. and are worried about the yield curve, just move to Germany, where even though the yield curve is also now inverted there, the historic evidence shows no to weak prediction of a German recession due to an inverted German yield curve!

#possibleSpuriousCorrelationFromDataMining

</comment><comment><USER25> Has the yield curve ever gotten really inverted without a subsequent "bend over" recession following? ... IOW... is there a counter example where we can say well "maybe this time is a lot like this time?" ... otherwise sounds like the typical banker control clock in action. Good job monopoly man again! (I posses no knowledge of a better economic system)

<comment><USER6> Yes. 1965.

And then it bounced back and forth for the next 4-5 years before we finally had a recession in 1970.

[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=nn5r](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=nn5r)

<comment><USER18> > > [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=nn5r](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=nn5r)

Note: this graph is for 10Y1Y, while the indicator generally talked about is 10Y3M.

<comment><USER6> Good point. I know that 10-2's are popular as well.

I used this one because it had the longest history.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Choosing Between React's Context API and Redux - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@faizmohammed178/choosing-between-redux-and-reacts-context-api-272ca20224b2 <comment><USER2> Nice work! Thanks for the mention in one of your code blocks. :)</comment>


Hybrid Memory Cube Technology - <AUTHOR> http://hybridmemorycube.org/technology.html <comment><USER2> Does anyone know how real/near-term this is?

IBM and Micron are on the sponsor list but not Intel. I've been hearing about 3D memory for a while but haven't seen anything that feels like it is near market.

<comment><AUTHOR> The end of the article submitted here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6034346](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6034346)

says the end of 2014 could be when this technology starts shipping & possibly makes SSDs moot.

<comment><USER3> HMC is DRAM, but more expensive because it's faster. It's not competing with SSDs. (I'm talking about actual HMC, not HMC hype.)</comment></comment></comment>


Complexity theory and limits of machine learning - <AUTHOR> https://dataskeptic.com/blog/episodes/2017/the-complexity-of-learning-neural-networks <comment><AUTHOR> Thought this was pretty fascinating. Apparently we can apply lower bound limits to very general classes of machine learning approaches.</comment>


"Our existing application uses Ruby 1.8 and Rails 2.3" - <AUTHOR> https://content.pivotal.io/blog/pg-search-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-postgresql-full-text-search <comment><USER2> (2011)</comment>


Unofficial guide to dotfiles on GitHub - <AUTHOR> https://dotfiles.github.io/ <comment><USER2> If anyone is interested in setting up multiple platform dotfiles or more complicated setup, GNU stow [1] is just pure genius. It's a very simple approach which works very well for me. It's described in this blog post: [http://brandon.invergo.net/news/2012-05-26-using-gnu-stow- to...](http://brandon.invergo.net/news/2012-05-26-using-gnu-stow-to-manage- your-dotfiles.html)

[1]: [https://www.gnu.org/software/stow/](https://www.gnu.org/software/stow/)

<comment><USER3> Yes. I don't understand why everyone keeps reinventing this tiny, full- featured symlink manager.

It can also unstow and restow, ignore patterns, etc. Highly recommended.

<comment><USER4> [https://xkcd.com/927/](https://xkcd.com/927/)

<comment><USER5> reinventing the wheel != creating a universal standard

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> They buried the lede[1]:

> Once you have pushed a commit to GitHub, you should consider any data it > contains to be compromised.

I've never understood why people want to dump their config files on a public server. The "reasons" given are unconvincing:

* "Backup, restore, and sync" \-- I don't keep the rest of my backups out in the open.

* "Learn" \-- Maybe, but I prefer learning from stuff people have taken the time to deliberately share.

* "Share" \-- I'd rather explicitly choose what I share.

[1] [https://help.github.com/articles/remove-sensitive- data/](https://help.github.com/articles/remove-sensitive-data/)

<comment><USER7> In principle your dotfiles shouldn't contain any sensitive data. It's not burying the lede, it's just that you read the article and decided that some important warning was so important that it was the purpose of the whole piece.

The reasons they offer might not be the most convincing, but they're something, which is better than nothing. Suppose you have a bunch of configuration that you're sure contains no sensitive information and you've decided to sync it between machines somehow. Why not use github, assuming you're already a github user.

<comment><USER6> I agree with you in principle, but in practice putting your config on GitHub is asking to be pwned. If you put your personal config on a public server, the odds are good that you'll eventually leak some information you shouldn't have. If you're lucky, Amazon's bot will find the API key and disable it, and you'll waste a bit of time getting a new one. If you're less lucky, you'll pay for someone's bitcoin miner. If you're unlucky, someone will quietly pwn you bit by bit, it will take you months or years to discover it, and you may never figure how how they did it.

When "scp" and "rsync" exist, and git is a _distributed_ version control system, it's hard to justify unnecessarily exposing data on the web.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm a fan of Thoughtbot's rcm[1], a dotfile manager. I just `git clone` my dotfiles down to a new machine, install rcm and run `rcup -d ~/.dotfiles` to symlink them into $HOME.

Used this to get a new laptop up and running immediately; the only step beyond that was a quick `brew list` to install packages that those dotfiles might lean on.

[1]: [https://robots.thoughtbot.com/rcm-for-rc-files-in- dotfiles-r...](https://robots.thoughtbot.com/rcm-for-rc-files-in-dotfiles- repos)

<comment><USER9> One thing that I love about rcm is how well it handles the case of host- specific dotfiles. Between my laptop, school servers, personal servers, etc., I access a lot of servers running different software that need to be configured differently. However, there are a lot of things, like aliases for example, that work regardless of the platform.

Rcm lets you specify which files should always be linked, and which should only be linked on a specific host, which means I factor out my dotfiles into "modules" and load exactly the right ones.

[1]: [https://github.com/jez/dotfiles/tree/master/util](https://github.com/jez/dotfiles/tree/master/util) [2]: [https://github.com/jez/dotfiles/blob/master/zshrc](https://github.com/jez/dotfiles/blob/master/zshrc)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I highlighted this in a Show HN a few weeks back but I figured I'd link it here:

"dit" is a dotfile tool that isn't concerned with being fancy. It uses git hooks so all that's required of you to update your dotfiles is "git commit." It's written in Ruby, and is entirely open source.

I created it as a much easier, much simpler alternative to rcm or homesick. It doesn't have nearly the same amount of features (it's around 200 lines of Ruby), and it is only concerned with syncing dotfiles to the home directory.

I'd love to get feedback on the program, my programming, etc.

[https://github.com/vulpino/dit](https://github.com/vulpino/dit)

<comment> js-coder Looks really nice! I'll probably switch to this. I'm always annoyed that homesick doesn't automatically sync my local dotfiles repo with the home directory and I have to push to GitHub and then pull with homesick.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have my own home-rolled "solution" to managing dotfiles, I'm a little uncomfortable checking them into Github though, as there's a slight risk some security credentials or something could leak without me realising.

Unless you have private repos I guess.

My solution is to use Dropbox to store all my configuration files, then use symlinks to the default locations.

<comment><USER12> If you don't already use it, you should check out GNU Stow as a tool to manage those symlinks. You just make a directory (or directories) which mirrors your home folder, but with only the files you want to store in dropbox, and Stow will generate symlinks in the appropriate places.

[https://www.gnu.org/software/stow/](https://www.gnu.org/software/stow/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> After some years of git and hg, nowadays I use RCS to version control my dotfiles. I have a little bunch of them and their history is unrelated to each other, and I do not have to bother with symlinks or other fragile stuff. There's an RCS directory in my $HOME, every time I update a dotfile, I make a tarball of that directory and the checkouts of the files and encrypt the tarball, and put in dropbox. I have written a little command in emacs to help me do that, and emacs vc makes it easy to deal with check-ins and locking. It's just easier and more natural to me. For bigger repos, I resort to git too (though I'm inclined to try darcs some time soon).

I used to have my configuration files on Github, but I decided to remove them, first dotfiles, then recently my emacs config, as I have the idea that they are too personal, and I have to spend some certain effort to keep them publishable, e.g. use files for private data, like api keys, emails, Gnus settings, feed lists. Now I'll be able to check these in too, freely.

</comment><comment><USER14> Earlier this year I was looking for a good way to sensibly manage my dotfiles across multiple machines (with different setups). The closest project I could find that supported something like this was [https://github.com/EvanPurkhiser/dots](https://github.com/EvanPurkhiser/dots) which had a fairly robust way of extending/overriding configs, but I ended up getting a bit hung up (either with deploying or auto-updating, I forget which). Is there anything else out there that deals well w/ multiple machines/types (and across OS X and Linux ideally?)

<comment><USER15> You might want to take a look at my solution:

[http://dnr.im/tech/articles/dotstuff/](http://dnr.im/tech/articles/dotstuff/)

It lets you mix platform-specific bits in the middle of a file, do basic macro substitution, and some other things.

(Now that I'm using a mac occasionally, I use more of the multi-platform features than I claim in that post.)

<comment><USER14> Thanks, I'll give it a look next time I get the itch. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> A different approach that i use:

Since i often work on systems i don't directly own or have an own account on, i use

eval "$(wget -O - [https://myhost/.bashrc)"](https://myhost/.bashrc\)")

to inject my bashrc into the current bash session to get my prompt, aliases and shortcuts ready without making changes to the fs. The functions defined in .bashrc help with managing pubkeys and loading other dotfiles.

</comment><comment><USER17> The Zsh dotfiles are all giant frameworks... Allow me to shamelessly plug my zshrc. It's small, fast, single file and documented in the README - it's both a great standalone dotfile, or an excellent starting point for anyone interested in doing their own.

[https://github.com/jleclanche/dotfiles](https://github.com/jleclanche/dotfiles)

</comment><comment><USER4> After running into a few bugs do to the use of symlinks I decided to write my own that was really just a wrapper around Git. After installing [gitsick][1] you could add one of your existing repos,

gitsick clone <name> <url>

The files will be deployed directly to your $HOME, without symlinks, and from then on `gitsick <name>` is just a wrapper around Git such that the $GIT_DIR is stored in one place and your $WORK_TREE is $HOME.

[1]: [https://github.com/nnutter/gitsick](https://github.com/nnutter/gitsick)

<comment><USER18> Do you know about vcsh (also linked in the post)? It seems similar to what you describe...

<comment><USER4> I'll have to look at that more. My initial scan of it is that is very similar except that it manually implemented each Git subcommand whereas mine does not need to because it just wraps and delegates to `git` (even tab completion).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I found that I don't really care about the commit history for my dotfiles so instead of using git to synchronize them, I use Unison, which is a bidirectional file synchronizer. Its like rsync but it has a graphical interface and its bidirectional so when I am synchronizing files I have the option to skip some files or to sync them in the opposite direction.

[http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/](http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/)

</comment><comment><USER19> I've had my dotfiles on GitHub for some time. I'm planning to have a go at automating setting up my laptop. This post was posted on hn some time ago [http://spin.atomicobject.com/2015/09/21/ansible- configuratio...](http://spin.atomicobject.com/2015/09/21/ansible- configuration-management-laptop/)

Anyone got any suggested reading on this topic? More than just dotfiles but actually automating installing software etc.

</comment><comment><USER20> I built wsup [1] so that I could keep my dotfiles in multiple independent git repos -- some public on github for sharing (e.g. my emacs config [2]), and some private. It works similarly to stow, but is written in bash.

[1] [https://github.com/dcreemer/wsup](https://github.com/dcreemer/wsup)

[2] [https://github.com/dcreemer/dotemacs](https://github.com/dcreemer/dotemacs)

</comment><comment><USER21> I've been using a dotfile manager called denv that my friend has been working on. It's still a little rough around the edges but allows me to switch between a golang env and a python env quickly by swapping out the dotfiles.

[https://github.com/buckhx/denv](https://github.com/buckhx/denv)

</comment><comment><USER22> Could someone pretty please explain what dotfiles are and their uses? Google says they're just hidden files :S

<comment><USER23> They're configuration files for different *nix programs. For example .vimrc for vim. Or .bashrc for bash. In those dotfiles you can customize how things look or add custom commands etc.

This post is about how you can automated some of that so you can easily replicate the environment you're used to everywhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> myrepos and vcsh

<comment><USER25> +1 for vcsh.

I've got four separate repos: one for VIM, one for bash, one for SSH keys, and a miscellaneous one (.inputrc and friends).

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is a good idea but a bad choice of font. I can barely read the text even when I enlarge it.</comment>


Video game about a cat exploring Kowloon Walled City - <AUTHOR> http://hk-devblog.com/2015/10/24/its-alive-2/ <comment><USER2> This is so cool! A cat-based MMPORG would be awesome, if you designed the game mechanics to mirror real cat sociology (scent marking etc).

I have often felt we needed more video games with animal or otherwise non- human protagonists. Perhaps "goat simulator" was the start of something.

Aside: how come there's never been a Star Wars video game where you play as R2D2 and hack stuff?</comment>


Did the US Plan a Nuclear First Strike Against Russia in the Early 1960s? - <AUTHOR> http://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-did-the-us-plan-a-nuclear-first-strike-against-russia-in-the-early-1960s/ <comment><USER2> I sure hope we did. "Plan" in the context of national militaries has a very different meaning from making a "plan" with your buddies. Any national military planners wouldn't be doing their job if they didn't have a plan for attacking any country they could conceivably reach. It's their job to have plans available and ready for the political leaders, and it's those leaders' jobs to decide which plans to actually execute and when.

Consider: If you're, say, the Secretary of Defense, at any meeting, the President might tell you "Country X just went nuts! We have to deal with this now! What can we do?". You don't wanna tell the President "Umm, I dunno, let us look into it". You wanna be able to say something more like "We could go with a nuclear strike, using units A, B, and C. Expected casualties in country X are Y military and Z civilian, and we estimate a possible retaliatory nuclear strike against at least 10 US cities, with casualty estimates as described. Or we could launch a conventional strike with Carrier Group D, attacking these government and infrastructure targets, optionally following up with a land invasion with these units or special forces attacks, with enemy and friendly casualty estimates."

Clearly, we want to have plans for every possible way of attacking every country we would be capable of attacking, all continuously updated to reflect our forces and their readiness, as well as estimated enemy forces and their readiness. We also want to be able to talk intelligently about possible force level changes. If the President wants to, say, dissolve one or more Army divisions, raise another one, buy or sell aircraft, retire nukes or build more, etc, we want to be able to describe how that would affect our ability to attack and defend against attacks from various countries.

<comment><USER3> The point of the story is that it wasn't an academic war plan.

This was a serious proposal, probably made by a sociopath like Gen. LeMay, to execute a specific attack in 1963, before Soviet capability caught up.

Per LeMay:

> Native annalists may look sadly back from the future on that period when we > had the atomic bomb and the Russians didn't. Or when the Russians had > aquired (through connivance and treachery of Westerns with warped minds) the > atomic bomb - and yet still didn't have any stockpile of the weapons. That > was the era when we might have destroyed Russia completely and not even > skinned our elbows doing it.

<comment><USER4> Failing to use the foreseeably short period of being the sole nuclear power to prevent any other nuclear powers from rising is probably the biggest blunder in the history of the world. Permanent world peace was at hand and we totally blew it.

<comment><USER5> Downvote the parent and this if you must, but consider that at several points during the cold war, the scales _almost_ tipped. How bad is the result of a few 1940is bombs on Moscow (absolutely horrific) versus a world-scale nuclear catastrophe? Heck the Soviet union was super evil, what if it hadn't taken 70 years to die, but only 30? Heck the soviet-afghan war killed between 800000 and 1500000 civilian Afghans.

High numbers for the casualties in Nagasaki are 150000, ie ten times fewer.

Sometimes your choices in life are not white and black, but black and black. This is one of the times, Marcoperaza may advocate a viewpoint you strongly disagree with, but that has never been an acceptable reason for downvoting on HN.

<comment><USER2> I would even agree that the Soviet Union was super evil, but I don't think it's worth the casualties of a major nuclear exchange to try to end it 40 years sooner. And there's no way to be sure that a major nuclear attack would actually end the Soviet regime. Wouldn't the surviving Russians now think that America is not just a worrying rival, but a catastrophically dangerous enemy? Why wouldn't they unite behind the strongest regime they can make to defend themselves and strike back? AFAIK, quite a few Russians are still sympathetic to Stalin even today based on the idea that nobody else could have industrialized Russia fast enough and led with enough determination to resist the Nazi invasion. They lost millions of casualties and had huge swaths of territory occupied and destroyed and still went on to win the war. Do you really think they're just gonna give up after a few nukes?

Also, try making a list of the biggest mass murders in history. Hitler and Stalin would be on the list. Also Mao Tse-Tsung. Possibly a few leaders of Communist regimes in SE Asia, depending on whether you look at the proportion of population killed instead of raw deaths. Do you want to see America at the top of that list? Based on a vague theory that the world would be better off somehow?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Military plans such as these are rarely intended to be acted upon. They're plans from a strategic perspective. A question is posed: What if we executed a first strike? Related questions come up: When should we do it, what would be the retaliation, what would be the economic impact, etc. These get put together into a report, and it's set aside.

Military plans are not statements of intent on their own.

<comment><USER7> Not to mention the nice side effect of having a much better idea of how the other side might proceed if they wanted to do a first strike (which is a rather strong "if", but America back in the day surely felt different about that).

But what gives the Unz interpretation a bit of weight is the element of "if you ever want to first strike, it's now or never" that was clearly present. This can easily turn a purely theoretical game-plan into a purely theoretical game-plan with a zealous PR department.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> At the very least, Nixon at one point decided a good tactic would be for the Soviets to believe he was unstable and was willing to embrace the idea of conflict, so as to scare them off of aggression.

His quote was "I want them to think I am nuts".

During this period of his presidency, Nixon was known to become so drunk that Kissinger effectively took over many of his duties in private

To reinforce the idea that he was "nuts", Nixon ordered at least one bomber- wing approach of Soviet airspace. I don't recall if the planes actually carried nuclear weapons, but IIRC, it was Nixon's intent that they should.

Not sure if this qualifies as a "plan", but it was rehearsed.

A neighbor who was once was stationed in a Titan ICBM silo also recounted a story that seemed extremely scary: during the Arab/Israeli war there was apparently a report by US intelligence of a Russian missile launch, and in his silo he claims they had their hands on the keys ready to turn (weapon was armed, fueled, they were literally waiting for the launch order)...although they were later informed to stand down when the missile was confirmed as a test. I asked him if he would have turned the key, and he said absolutely.

<comment><USER9> Wasnt the Titan II always fueled and armed? The Titan I had to be fueled but the Titan II that lines up with that war could be launched in less than a minute.

<comment><USER10> "it's fueled and armed" is not mutually-exclusive with "it's always fueled and armed".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> >the motivation [for building fallout shelters] had never made much sense to me, since in most cases the supplies would only have been sufficient to last a few weeks or so, while the deadly radioactive fallout from numerous Soviet thermonuclear strikes on our urban centers would have been long-lasting.

Uh, fallout _is_ only deadly for a few weeks or so even after thousands of nuclear weapons are used on a country.

The radioactive elements produced in a nuclear explosion are very different from those produced in a nuclear power plant: the latter _can_ stay deadly for years.

The reason fallout shelters were so popular during the Cold War is that they're a cost effective way of avoiding a major cause of death during a nuclear war.

<comment><USER12> A few of the fallout products have a long half life and can cause harmful effects. Do you consider those to be not deadly? Could they exist in sufficient quantities to be an issue?

Also a ground bursting weapon could interact with other elements present at ground zero so it seems more complex than just "wait a few weeks and it's safe".

<comment><USER11> Ground bursts do produce a lot more fallout than air bursts, but that's been taken into account. The worst fallout would probably be downwind of the ICBM silos both because of the number and the size of the weapons used and the fact that they'd be ground bursts. Downwind of the ICBM silos, one might have to stay in a fallout shelter for 4 weeks or even a little longer.

Fallout can be even higher IIRC within a few miles of the explosion, but implicit in the concept of the fallout shelter (as opposed to the much more expensive blast shelter) is the assumption that the shelter will be outside of the range in which the explosion is immediately deadly to humans (through blast, through heat / infrared radiation and through "prompt" radiation).

Note that even before the START treaties, the Soviets only ever had enough weapons to cause immediate death to humans over approximately 5% of the area of the United States. Consequently, many suburban and rural American could and _can_ realistically expect to survive the immediate effects of the explosions with fallout being the main danger in the weeks immediately after the attack. After a few weeks, starvation starts to become the main danger although note that as of a 1985 survey, the US had enough food stored (mainly on farms, mostly wheat, corn, grain sorghums, and soybeans) to keep 200 million Americans from starving for 6 years.

This information comes from Cresson Kearny's Nuclear War Survival Skills, revised 1986 or 1987, which is available for free in PDF form on the internet. Kearny was employed by the American civil-defense establishment.

<comment><USER13> > _This information comes from Cresson Kearny 's Nuclear War Survival Skills, > revised 1986 or 1987, which is available for free in PDF form on the > internet. Kearny was employed by the American civil-defense establishment._

I'm not sure how much faith to put into that despite the source you just cited. From what I heard, a _lot_ of the nuclear war survival measures (like city evacuation plans) were just methods to calm the population down. I.e. they weren't really meant to work at all, but as long as people believed they will, they carried on with their lives.

<comment><USER14> There is a ton of misinformation out there, and it tends to greatly overestimate the dangers of nuclear weapons.

For example, it's a common assumption that global thermonuclear war would wipe out humanity, or even all life on Earth. That's not even close to true. Billions would die and civilization would be wrecked, but the human race would continue.

For an example specific to civil defense, the old "duck and cover" routine is widely ridiculed. Which is bizarre, because it's great advice which would have saved many lives in the event of nuclear war. But people don't understand how this stuff works, and just think that nuclear war is a moment where all die, O the embarrassment.

With sufficient warning, evacuating cities would have saved many lives. Such warning wouldn't have been available for ICBM strikes, but in the 50s and 60s the threat was bombers, which would have provided hours of warning.

<comment><USER12> Of course a full on nuclear war could cause hurricane force winds and fire storms. Does anyone really know how far that could spread? There is a lot of vegetation in close proximity to targets, and in places little to stop a fire spreading for hundreds of miles through crops and forest.

Also, you would have to deal with the fallout from the nuclear power plants that have just been mixed into those hurrican force winds.

Humanity may survive but the effects could be felt far beyond the blast radius of the bombs.

<comment><USER14> Of course, but there would still be many survivors (especially in the 50s and 60s) and good civil defense measures would have greatly increased that number.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm pretty sure we (the United States) have plans in place for an invasion of Canada. That doesn't mean Canada should be worried. It means our planners want to cover every scenario they can think of so that should the need arise, we have put some thought into how to handle that situation.

<comment><USER8> Just a heads-up, the US is 0-2 for invading Canada...there were failed incursions during both the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812.

In the bizarro-event of an invasion, Canada could just go scorched-Earth and dump nuclear waste into the Great Lakes and obliterate the habitability of the northeast. Or just create a Chernobyl-like disaster at a nuclear plant to coincide with weather patterns blowing southward. If the US retaliated with nuclear weapons, it would just blanket itself with more fallout.

Protip: a nuclear neighbor is not a good invasion target.

<comment><USER16> I doubt that Canada would dump nuclear waste or go into a scorched-Earth, this isn't North Korea.

Any normal country would surrender in order to prevent further casualties and likely a complete destruction of its civilian infrastructure. The most dangerous thing one can do is force the enemy to a position in which they cannot surrender, one of the main reasons the US did not want to invade Japan is that it knew that an invasion regardless of how devastating it was would make surrender impossible, for this same reason it did not nuke Tokyo, this is also why you do not usually go after the government during a war you need some one to be able to surrender or negotiate a truce.

P.S. Dumping nuclear waste is effectively worse than getting nuked, Canada is probably better off with getting every major city nuked than dumping nuclear waste anywhere. Nuclear weapons, especially modern ones are not as "dirty" as people think, yes there will be some lasting effects due to fallout and radiation but it's not that bad, most of the isotopes created by a nuclear bomb are pretty unstable and decay fairly quickly which is bad because it releases a lot more secondary radiation but it's not as bad as dumping nuclear waste which will not decay for millenniums to come.

<comment><USER17> I'm pretty sure the reason governments don't go after each other in wars is similar to why guns aren't used to win games of chess.

<comment><USER18> This is seriously one of the best comments I've ever seen anywhere. Well done, sir or ma'am.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I always imagined we had, interesting to find some details. We planned, and still do to some extent, for every eventuality.

<comment><USER20> The DoD writes up plans to attack 50+ countries every year. This is a useful exercise in part because doing so well take a long time and show where capability might be lacking. But, it's also simply a good way to train for the current war instead of falling into the trap of preparing to fight the last one.

PS: It's also not clear how serious this stuff is. The DoD does a lot of stuff simply because it's budget and manpower is insane. And nothing says people are not simply taking the plan written in 1983 changing the name of the aircraft and dating it 2016.

<comment><USER21> > train for the current war instead of falling into the trap of preparing to > fight the last one < This is likely true, but they haven't done all that > well in the last few they started. The completely flat-footed occupations > have been more than a little humbling I'd have thought.

<comment><USER22> The US occupations have been pretty successful from a military prospective. I'm not sure you could do a much better job in the 21st century (without resorting to insane brutality).

It was the geopolitical result that was disasterous. Blame that on the administrations that ordered the occupations, especially, the state department and intelligence agencies.

The occupation of Iraq was a stupid move, but the military could have sustained it indefinitely.

<comment><USER21> The ability to sustain losses is very different to what the GP was discussing - learning from the past to deal with the present. Of course the US can sustain losses easily - that has been a hallmark of the industrialised world. However the US did not pay attention to the experiences of others with experiences when occupying Afghanistan or Iraq. This did not appear to be an easy learning experience with IEDs, suicide bombing and insurgency being a departure from what the US expected to face. At least that's what it looked like from afar.

<comment><USER14> Our political leaders sold Iraq on the basis that it would be cheap and easy and that we would be welcomed as liberators. Fighting an insurgency requires abandoning those assumptions, which was politically nearly impossible. The problems we faced there weren't with planning, they were with ignoring planning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> A military that does not plan to eliminate everyone else in the "room", no mater who they are, is remiss in it's duties. It doesn't take much for a former "friend" to turn into a countries worst nightmare.

</comment><comment><USER24> There were knuckleheads on both sides who thought they could get away with a first strike. During the Russian-Georgian war, the Bush administration actually toyed with the idea of striking Russia. Bush was given the option, but he declined.

Edit: The option was not nuclear, though.

<comment><USER14> In the early 1960s, the US _could_ get away with a first strike. The inevitable Soviet retaliation would hurt, but it wouldn't wreck the country. The disparity between American nuclear forces able to strike the USSR and Soviet nuclear forces able to strike the US was completely ridiculous. MAD didn't really become a thing until the late 60s or early 70s. Europe would have been utterly devastated, but the US would have come out of it mostly intact.

There was a fairly lengthy period (a decade or so) where the USSR was threatened with complete annihilation and the only thing holding it back was the fear of losing European allies, and the general unwillingness of American leadership to kill tens or hundreds of millions of civilians. And we wonder why they were so paranoid about us....

<comment><USER8> Exactly. A good read is the book "Two Minutes To Midnight" about the Cuban missile crisis...it discusses the disparity between the capabilities Khrushchev claimed and what US intelligence knew to be true.

<comment><USER24> You have to take "what US intelligence knew to be true" with a grain of salt.

Just recently, Obama dismissed Russia as a 3rd-rate military power. You have to believe that was based on intelligence briefings. That tune changed quickly when Russia started flexing muscle in Syria.

<comment><USER25> Is there something about Russia's muscle flexing in Syria that doesn't indicate its conventional forces are third rate?

If so, I haven't heard of it. The Syrian war is a minor skirmish. If significant strategic interests were actually at risk, the great powers would just invade and ignore the resulting loss of life. Instead, we standby and generally still ignore the loss of life.

<comment><USER26> Well for a start, before Syria no one knew the Russians had cruise missiles.

<comment><USER27> Errm, I did, I knew they had cruise missiles in the 1980's they were talked about on UK radio, I remember a particularly rabid friend talking about the threat of a communist take over in Ireland (dear jesus that guy was crazy) and how "The Russians" would station cruise missiles there!

<comment><USER26> I think it was the range of the missiles that were the surprise in Syria. 3000km I believe. It was quite big news in the UK at the time.

[http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/10/09/world/middleeast/russia...](http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/10/09/world/middleeast/russias- kalibr-cruise-missiles-a-new-weapon-in-syria- conflict.html?referer=https://duckduckgo.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Is it even surprising ? USA is the only country in the world to have used nuclear weapons. You have already used it in first strike mode which did not even have nukes. Why is it surprising that it would not happen again ?

<comment><USER29> I don't think that is necessarily a valid conclusion to draw.

If anything the first use of nuclear weapons was a corner case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> It is not a secret that Von Neumann's work on Game Theory at RAND corporation in the 50's was precisely commissioned by the US government to answer the first strike question.

Here is a quote from Wikipedia: "In 1950, the first mathematical discussion of the prisoner's dilemma appeared, and an experiment was undertaken by notable mathematicians Merrill M. Flood and Melvin Dresher, as part of the RAND Corporation's investigations into game theory. RAND pursued the studies because of possible applications to global nuclear strategy."

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

And another on RAND corp: "Its most visible contribution may be the doctrine of nuclear deterrence by mutually assured destruction (MAD), developed under the guidance of then-Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and based upon their work with game theory."

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

A great fun and entertaining book on the subject: [https://www.amazon.com/Prisoners-Dilemma-William- Poundstone/...](https://www.amazon.com/Prisoners-Dilemma-William- Poundstone/dp/038541580X)

</comment><comment><USER31> The military has plans for everything, because plans take time to prepare, and they don't want to be winging it should a need suddenly arise.

</comment><comment><USER32> It would be almost criminal if the DOD didn't prepare a plan for that contingency. It is their job to be prepared for every possibility.

</comment><comment><USER33> The US military has _definitely_ planned 'first strike' ops, as well as every other conceivable option they could possibly face.

It's called 'preparation'. It's their job to prepare for any circumstances that they can possibly foresee.

Example: every bridge in Europe is 'pre-prepared' for demolition. Normally, a combat engineering team has to scout the bridge, plan, then figure out how to disable it. In the event of ww3 - the plans are already done. A combat engineer need only draw the plan for the database and execute one of the options.

It goes much further than that.

<comment><USER34> > Example: every bridge in Europe is 'pre-prepared' for demolition (..) the > plans are already done. A combat engineer need only draw the plan for the > database and execute one of the options.

You would think. But in reality, these one-off type preparations probably have a actual low chance of going as planned or being executed in a timely manner. The only exceptions being contingencies that are actively, regularly simulated by computer or otherwise. I don't think it'd be surprising to find that, bureaucracy & budgets working the way they do, no one there is simulating demolitions like that (at least not since the 50s or 60s).

<comment><USER33> I don't think you understood the comment.

A bridge reconnaissance does not change once it's done unless the bridge changes materially.

The hard part of a bridge recon plain is taking measurements of the abutments, the deck, types of materials etc..

The attack plan is easy once you have that.

Also - there is nothing to simulate based on computers in this case.

The only variable that changes is demolition technology and the availability of air support to do demolitions which forgoes the requirement to have Engineers do it.

<comment><USER33> FYI - I'm an ex Combat Engineer :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> "I quickly read the article and was stunned." ... "Could such a momentous historical discovery have been so totally ignored by our mainstream journalists and historians that I'd never heard of it during the previous twenty years?"

Ugh, come on, enough, Internet, enough with the over-sensationalization of everything. Is the author really that naive? Of course we planned a nuclear first strike against Russia. And China. And likely the entire Eastern Bloc. It would have been irresponsible for our war planners to do otherwise, as it's one of many contingencies that may ultimately arise.

The United States is _not_ a "no first use" country. So it absolutely, 100% stands to reason we would have planned out first strikes against many countries.

<comment><USER22> A first strike against Russia and China is probably a part of Obama's nuclear playbook even today.

I'm curious what a US first strike would look like. Would we assume any strike would devolve into nuclear terror bombing? If so, maybe we'd hit their cities in a first strike. But there is a possibility that a first strike purely against Russian nuclear weapons wouldn't cause the Russians to bomb US cities. In that scenarios Russia might retaliate against US military targets but not civilian targets. I wonder where we came down on that.

<comment><USER36> A few years ago there was an online story about the US plans for Moscow - which apparently even Dick Cheney was shocked by, because the idea was to destroy it with _hundreds_ of warheads.

I seem to remember 600 or so.

Obviously no one has any idea what that would do because it's never been tested. But I'd guess it would remove absolutely all trace of the city and leave only a glassy layer of bedrock, which might take a few centuries to cool.

US and Russian cities have significant missile defence systems, so I guess the rationale is to make sure that at least some warheads get through.

If that's the plan for the biggest capital cities on both sides, details become academic.

<comment><USER37> "During his first week on the job, Butler asked the Joint Strategic Target Planning Staff to give him a copy of the SIOP. General Colin Powell and Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney had made clear that the United States needed to change its targeting policy, now that the Cold War was over. As part of that administrative process, Butler decided to look at every single target in the SIOP, and for weeks he carefully scrutinized the thousands of desired ground zeros. He found bridges and railways and roads in the middle of nowhere targeted with multiple warheads, to assure their destruction. Hundreds of nuclear warheads would hit Moscow—dozens of them aimed at a single radar installation outside the city."

From _Command & Control_ by Eric Schlosser</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Undocumented 8086 Opcodes, Part I - <AUTHOR> http://www.os2museum.com/wp/undocumented-8086-opcodes-part-i/ <comment><USER2> If you're interested in this, check out the Visual 6502 project that shows where these codes come from, but on the 6502.

Unfortunately they don't have good enough die shots for the 8086 yet.

[http://visual6502.org](http://visual6502.org)

</comment><comment><USER3> Could anyone explain why POP CS is so "obviously useless"? The author says it is "as obvious as it is useless", and never explains further.

As far as I can understand, CS is the top byte of the 16-bit instruction pointer, so sure you wouldn't want to go around changing just that byte. But I feel like I'm missing something because that doesn't seem too crazy out of this world useless to get such a special mention.

<comment><USER4> Execution occurs with two registers, Code Segment and Instruction Pointer. Normally, you use other operation codes (JMP, CALL, etc) because they will take into account modifying IP or CS:IP, as appropriate. It would be a really odd situation where you would change the CS, not update IP, and have the proper alignment where it can execute the next instruction. Normally, all of that is computed by the compiler/linker and executed with proper operation codes.

The 8086 is a weird beast where the memory access is two 16 bit values mapped to 20 bits (ie. 1 megabyte into overlapping 64k blocks offset by 16 bytes each time). It was easier to write code staying inside a single segment, so chunks of code were often written staying inside one. Nothing particularly useful comes to mind just updating CS; but, my assembly days were a long time ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hm, seems to just be part 1 so far...

Edit: This seems to be an earlier, less detailed post on the same subject, but which does mention one or two things this post doesn't: [http://www.os2museum.com/wp/undocumented-8086-opcodes/](http://www.os2museum.com/wp/undocumented-8086-opcodes/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Can someone tell me why almost every time I visit this site I get 403-blocked?

Very occasionally it works, but only very occasionally.

This is the first time I've loaded the site from a HN story (most visits were from searches); maybe it's overload, it might not be.

<comment><USER7> Blocked for me too.. I'm coming from Australia on my home static IP. Weird.

<comment><USER6> I'm in Australia too, incidentally. Interesting.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: CoWatch.video – Watch Video Files with Friends Using WebRTC - <AUTHOR> https://cowatch.video/?r=hn <comment><AUTHOR> Made this to watch videos with friend when abroad. Works surprisingly well!

<comment><USER2> Looks pretty cool, I was surprised to see the microphone feature and ability to hide the chat.

Couple of questions:

\- what video formats does it support?

\- Is it open source? Couldn't find it in your Github

\- Is it possible to add subtitles? Would love that and can PR

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice. Open source?</comment>


Scrolljacking and Accessibility: Are we Breaking the Web? - <AUTHOR> http://www.sitepoint.com/scrolljacking-accessibility/

<comment><USER2> I really hate sites that do this. Only once or twice have I found it ok.

And to vent, I dislike sites that have different layers and the images underneath changes [0].

[0] Not a prime example as I actually found this one ok (maybe because it is smooth), but this style: [http://www.coolcodebro.net/](http://www.coolcodebro.net/)</comment>


Gmail, Contacts, Assistant and Messages apps no longer support sending money - <AUTHOR> https://support.google.com/pay/answer/9868649?hl=en <comment><USER2> Is Google Pay new in the rest of the world? It has been very successful in India as a UPI-based payment method.

India has gotten aggressively cashless (at least in cities) and Google Pay definitely rode that wave here.

<comment><USER3> Both Google Pay and Apple Pay showed up a little to late in many countries. Local alternatives already dominated, so neither have really been able to gain traction.

Seeming someone try to use Apple Pay in Denmark is a bit of a novelty. It works and is reasonably well supported by payment terminals, but why bother when you already have MobilePay, which have even wider support and more features?

I have yet to encounter someone who uses Google Pay.

<comment><USER4> I personally prefer to use contactless cards or Google Pay instead of MobilePay.

The major reason behind this is mainly due to how MobilePay integration was done with the card terminals over here in Finland: you need bluetooth (or in some cases, a camera to read a QR-code) to start the payment transaction. I believe this is primarily due to Apple restricting the use of NFC to Apple Pay (and other first-party apps).

Another big reason is that my bank has native support for adding cards to Google Pay through their own app.

I do still use MobilePay very often over my bank's own transfer app (Siirto). MobilePay was one of the first ones to the market (if you exclude the app/card scheme Elisa had a few years ago, currently owned by Aktia) and is still faster than asking for someone's IBAN.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Genuinely surprised to hear that any of those apps ever supported payments in the first place. Not that this excuses sunsetting a feature that people depended on (It's The Google Way!), but...

<comment><USER6> How do people depend on sending money with Gmail when you can send it in the browser or app? What is the problem?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I clicked the "Learn how to send money to friends" link and the first step is to "Open the Google Pay app"

You lost me right there Google. I already have your Gmail app to send money and now you are taking functionality away from it and making me download another of your apps.

<comment><USER8> So you find it more convenient to switch to a totally different money sending service than to just download a separate app?

<comment><USER9> By downloading another app you also get the advantage of not using Google and not having your data mined for advertising/the service randomly cancelled on a whim.

<comment><USER10> Instead, you are simply giving it to another company when Google probably already has a lot of information. Even if they start out not taking any more information than they need to (which, being a money app, probably is a decent amount of information), I don't trust any company to stay this way.

Other companies shut down and sell off to larger places too, so you aren't exactly off the hook there. Slews of apps have done this. You are simply aware of some of googles' stoppages, in no small part because you might have used a couple or because they get publicity for longer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I loved the idea that you could attach money to an email just like you could attach a file. The Gmail interface was perfect, but unfortunately as usual Google messed up the implementation.

<comment><USER6> When you send money using Google Pay you still select an email address or phone number to send it to, and they get an email if that is what you select letting you know and you get one saying you sent money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Didn't know you could in the first place.

<comment><USER13> Next to the attachment button was a little money icon. You could click it and bundle money with an email. It was pretty nifty.

<comment><USER14> I guess this was US-only? I'm in Australia and never noticed that button (but Gmail is not my main email any more so maybe I just missed it)

<comment><USER9> I'm on Ireland and I've never seen it either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but what's wrong with using a bank to send money? Not in US, so I don't even know if that's another one of those things you can't do like having to still use cheques

<comment><USER16> > Not in US, so I don't even know if that's another one of those things you > can't do like having to still use cheques

Yup. We can't just send money to each other via the bank, unless your bank happens to participate in the Zelle network, and you want to send less than $5,000 or so (it depends on the bank and your standing with said bank).

It's another super backwards part of US banking.

<comment><USER17> That sounds ridiculous.

The most annoying part here in Poland is to get charged by your bank by not making enough transactions or not reaching the _required_ specified amount of money or making ATM withdraw below the set threshold. If you managed to do so, you avoided paying monthly fees; that's the only things debit accounts owners should bother themselves about. We can send money between different banks w/o issues and operations are booked IIRC twice in a day; these are instant if it's between same bank accounts, or you can pay an extra if you want money being delivered instantly and recipient belongs to a different bank. We can also send money on registered phone number via apps and the recipient can pick it up via ATM (kind of check that is slowly being adapted around; it replaced previously shortly running system as it was prone to scams); each bank participates in local cash-less payments system called Blik. Of course Apple and Google systems works as well but Blik is more popular anyway.

Most of the time operations are being processed instantly online but there are rare situations where these are being queued offline up until terminal (speaking about stores) gets online.

Btw, are you still required to confirm operations via handwritten signature?

<comment><USER18> Yep, besides the stupid name, the BLIK system is surprisingly nifty and practical.

<comment><USER19> They are expanding internationally - if you can read Polish: [https://www.forbes.pl/biznes/blik-w-zjednoczonych- emiratach-...](https://www.forbes.pl/biznes/blik-w-zjednoczonych-emiratach- arabskich-psp-sprzedalo-polska-technologie-za-granice/jmdxd6r)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Clamping down on international funding of terrorism, and election integrity.

</comment><comment><USER21> Damn

Sending money thru gmail was the best way to send money.

</comment><comment><USER22> Calculated monopolistic move.

<comment><USER23> Wouldn't the monopolist move be to move more features into apps everyone uses?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I have switched to Outlook.com for my main private business email and protonmail for emailing friends.

Will back out of Google slowly over the next 5 years. The countdown has started.

<comment><USER25> Google pulls in more functionality into core services. Hn crowd: monopoly! Google pulls out rarely used features. Hn crowd: am I supposed use different app now?!?

Not defending google here - there have been some highly questionable product decisions over the years, but this is just silly.

Also how is outlook any better? Another public megacorp with even deeper government ties. As someone who grew up in the 90s i still remember Microsoft as more successful and meaner oracle.

<comment><USER26> > Also how is outlook any better?

Google: our business is ads, and you're the product. Put more of your data into Gmail so that we can show you more ads and do a million other things that benefit us.

Microsoft: our business is software and services and hardware and a bunch of other stuff you can pay us money for. E-mail service is the product, and you're the customer.

<comment><USER27> Then why are there ads in my Windows 10 OS? Why the aggressive data sponging behavior?

Microsoft is a lot better than Google, but I still feel like I am their product when I use their OS.

<comment><USER28> It's much more insidious at the operating system level. It's easier to change email providers than your entire operating system. I'm shocked there isn't a louder outcry over Microsoft's intrusions this way into Windows.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I assume this is related to the other Google post today[1], wherein the moderators are accused of gaslighting their customers instead of responding appropriately.

Not sure of the context here, so I'll let better informed voices prevail, I guess.

1\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23969442](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23969442)

<comment><USER30> Somewhat OT, but in what world does "This has been a running problem with Google Drive and there is no workaround for now. What we can do is to send feedback to the team so all of these can be heard." qualify as "gaslighting"?

This term, at least until recently, meant dismissing abnormal behavior by making the questioner doubt their own sanity. I have a hard time getting that even from the least charitable interpretation of the above.

<comment><USER31> Gaslighting is just a vogue term. Nobody who uses it nowadays knows or cares what it actually means.

<comment><USER32> Uh, I know what it means. Millions of others do, too.

<comment><USER31> No way to prove it, but I'd actually be pretty surprised if you're right about _millions_ of people knowing what it actually means.

<comment><USER32> Stop gaslighting all of us. ;) There are over 250 million adults in the US. So you think that less than 1% of the US population comprehends what "gaslighting" is?

I doubt you'd wager much money on that.

<comment><USER31> The way I see it used in practice is wrong like 100% of the time.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The $242 Million Software Error - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/riskfactor/computing/it/the-242-million-software-error

<comment><USER2> Whereas, if the 'risk model' had failed for any other reason, there'd have been no consequences. What's to say their model was correct even on paper? Funnily, nobody would have said anything if the mistake had made money. So, caveat emptor!

</comment><comment><USER3> This site is inaccessible on mobile browsers (or at least iPhone)

It "helpfully" redirects to the IEEE Spectrum mobile homepage. If you are making a mobile version of a site, _please_ don't redirect blindly. I followed a link, I expect to go there.

EDIT: thankfully, the article was recent and a link to the mobile story shows up on the page we get redirected to.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, hate it when the websites do that. It's even more fun when you're on a desktop and they 'detect' you're on mobile anyway!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> According to their SEC filing, the source of the error was that they were using both percentages and decimals in the software, and someone thought that a decimal was a percentage. It's surprising how little your risk model does for you when you multiply it by 0.01.

</comment><comment><USER6> I wonder if it was a formula in an Excel spreadsheet.

</comment><comment><USER7> "... an independent consultant with expertise in quantitative investment techniques who will review disclosures and enhance the role of compliance personnel."

I assume this is press-release-based and so pretty thin on actual information, but if someone told me they had a $242 million software error and the plan for the future was to "review disclosures" I would not be reassured.

</comment><comment><USER4> $242M? Meh. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_5_Flight_501>

<comment><USER8> That wasn't a software error in the same sense, it was more of a design error.

<comment><USER4> A very good point. Let's settle for a software engineering error :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Guess they shouldn't have written those unit tests.

</comment><comment><USER10> There are no software errors, only programmer errors. The computer did exactly what it was told to do.

[Generated by HNCommentGenerator Vers. 2.04 2011-02-11 17:01:44 GMT]

<comment><USER11> My failing hard drive would like to have a word with you.

<comment><USER12> A failing harddrive is a hardware problem.

<comment><USER11> Software is a property of hardware. I can yell at my computer all day and it won't do a thing. Sometimes, there is a software error. Sometimes, there is a programmer error. The computer doesn't "know" or "care" the difference.

<comment><USER12> Software and hardware have significantly different risk mitigation strategies. No matter how much high quality code you write, you can't keep a harddrive from failing. And when a harddrive fails, you don't immediately blame it on software (of course, software can drive hardware beyond its limits and cause a failure of the hardware, but that is software abusing the hardware or not knowing the limits of the hardware, and thus a software problem).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> While software risks should ideally not be included in part of those risks, investing has some inherent level of risk.

Once society finally grasps that, we'll hopefully be better off. Not condoning what these guys did by any means, but caveat emptor for sure.

<comment><USER14> I can't wait until the finance industry is subject to risk. I mean, yeah, you can lose your job... but you'll always retire on piles and piles of money as a finance exec.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Speaking of software errors, that link redirects me to the mobile site home (not the article page), so I guess I won't read this story.

<comment><USER16> Copy the url, search for it on google, under the article click "options," then "mobile formatted."</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should/How to join CIA? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> If you enjoy helping support totalitarian dictatorships and friendly puppet governments, then sure, join the CIA. If you want to help make sure drugs get distributed in the US while millions of people rot in jail for non violent drug crimes, then sure, join the CIA. If you want to help put people in jail using "parallel construction", then yeah, sure, join the CIA.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you're okay operating in an organization that can't help but play a Molochian game of necessary evils, then you should consider it.

Otherwise, you're probably going to get burned out by the constant braying of naive idealists that believe foreign policy exists in a vacuum that conscience moves rather than context.

</comment><comment><USER4> How? Submit your resume. [1] Make some calls.

Should? That probably depends on your personality and skill sets. It's nothing like the movies. If a movie motivated you, that would be the wrong reason.

On a side note, many people in the tech industry indirectly work for them. Many are not even aware. There is more money on the civilian side of things anyway. If you are already in the tech industry, look at the businesses funded by In-Q-Tel. [2] That list is not all inclusive. There are thousands of companies missing from the list.

[1] - [https://www.cia.gov/careers/application- process](https://www.cia.gov/careers/application-process)

[2] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q- Tel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel)

</comment><comment><USER5> Those are two wildly different questions:</comment>


Apple's OS X Mountain Lion: The Macs that will be left behind - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-apple-macs-that-wont-get-os-x-mountain-lion-20120216,0,356802.story Apple hasn't yet released its official list of Macs that won't get support for Mountain Lion and company officials weren't available for comment on the matter on Friday morning. But in releasing its developer preview of the new operating system Thursday, an intrepid programmer did some digging and shared with the Apple-centric blog TUAW a list of machines that, as ArsTechnica puts it, are getting "voted off the Mountain Lion island." <comment><USER2> > This, sadly, is an inherent side effect of progress as Apple moves ahead and > continues what it started in Mac OS X Lion, in bringing OS X closer to iOS.

This is a lot of what is wrong with the press about Apple.

1\. It has nothing to do with moving to iOS. Same for many changes that annoy people on Lion. My pet peeve are the monochrome sidebar icons in Finder, iTunes, etc., which offer less clues for the eyes - say what you want, but they have nothing to do with iOS. The only parallel on iOS is 'Settings' and it uses colorful icons. Blaming it on an unavoidable convergence with iOS is a lazy way to avoid any debate.

2\. Unless there is anything wrong with the actual hardware, this is not 'for progress' but just planned obscolescence as usual. Apple has zero financial incentive to support old devices. I don't blame them for that, it seems like they are legitimally trying to make money off software, but right now they're a hardware company.

The companies that actually strive for software market penetration/hardware conservation like Microsoft or Google (with Android or Chromebooks) have the incentive to run on everything at the latest version, but it doesn't work out either. I wish gov'ts would enforce a longer warranty on devices and even their vendor support for security fixes. Throwing away perfectly fine machines hurts...

</comment><comment><USER3> This is called "planned obsolescence". It is almost certainly NOT because the computers "can't handle it". It is Apple's _business model_. Complaining about this is about as useful as complaining about the walled-garden approach to the App store. They release a new OS every year, and simultaneously phase out support for older Macs. There are positives (people aren't running thirteen- year-old computers, so developers can make reasonable assumptions about the power of the machine) and negatives (ridiculously wasteful), but it's their BUSINESS MODEL.

With that in mind, if you're going to argue that it's bad practice, please do so from a business standpoint, not from a technical standpoint. No one disagrees that your '07 Mac can handle 10.8 just fine.

<comment><USER4> I think this has more to do with Apple's "we want everyone to have a perfect experience" philosophy than it does with trying to force people to upgrade to squeeze more money out of them. Most people who just _have_ to be on the latest Mac OS will also be using a pretty new Mac if they can afford it.

<comment><USER5> Except they fucked up the experience for those of us who wanted a desktop OS without stupid distractions and not a phone on our desktop. This is so bad that I have not updated any of my 6 macs to Lion and refuse to buy any more Apple hardware. I'll continue with Snow Leopard for as long as it is viable and leverage my hardware investment, but come time for upgrade Apple won't even be considered.

It's really sad to see what happened to a once nice and open ecosystem. I honestly can't recommend a Mac to any of my friends or family any more. Apple is on a draconian quest to kill general purpose computing and lock everyone in. It's time to fight the evil before it's to late. Unfortunately Apple already has so much power over hardware manufacturers that Microsoft could only dream of in its heyday.

<comment><USER6> What in the world are you talking about? What stupid distractions have been added in Lion? What have they locked down?

<comment><USER2> Turning pages in iCal, the hassle of changing groups in Address Book, Exposé being killed where Mission Control adds much more visual clutter (I don't need my wallpaper to shrink or to see other spaces), apps auto-restoring old documents, the 'app opens' animation, the list of recent documents in the Dock icon menu which I don't even want to think about while I'm focusing.

And then some stuff is distracting by being less obvious. For example, when the "default calendar" system in iCal is suddenly more complicated than the system it has replaced. (unless you only have one calendar)

Not all of these personally bother me, but "what in the world" seems a bit harsh when some of them are the most common complaints about Lion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was wondering about this the other day. It seemed like there would be no real grounds to drop anything that can run fully 64bit, has a decent amount of RAM and a remotely decent GPU.

I have a Mid-2009 17" MBP myself, allegedly clear this time. If/when that eventually stops getting updates, there's no way I'm buying a new system if it is otherwise still working fine. Not being on the very latest OS isn't the end of the world.

</comment><comment><USER8> I have a MacBook Pro that was one of the last models to not have a i5 or i7 CPU. My MBP runs the Mountain Lion developer preview fine with one exception: screen and audio sharing to an Apple iTV doesn't work. I understand this: the i5 and i7 have some sweet new instructions that make video compression faster - so no complaints from me.

</comment><comment><USER9> I really do not understand why any of the Mac Pros would lack the horsepower to run Mountain Lion. The GPU in mine is pretty weak, but it would be cheap to upgrade the GPU.

Here's hoping the installer either a) checks actual machine specs rather than machine "version number") (not likely), or b) can be cajoled (annoying).

<comment><USER10> It's not a lack of horsepower. It's an infuriating artificial restriction against running 64-bit Darwin kernels on 32-bit EFI. There's no technical reason why a 64-bit kernel can't be launched by a 32-bit EFI, but for some reason Apple has decided that 64-bit kernels will only boot from 64-bit EFI, and Mountain Lion will ship with a 64-bit kernel.

See <http://netkas.org/?p=830> for more.

edit: Oh, and as to your whitelist/blacklist point - yes, Mac OS X checks what systems it can be installed on by Board IDs stored in "InstallableMachines.plist," not by enumerating the hardware.

<comment><USER11> I can't remember where I heard this, so don't quote me, but I've heard it partially has to do with graphics kexts in some or all of those machines being 32-bit and a reluctance from Apple and the manufacturers (Intel, AMD, Nvidia) to update them. That said, I'm not sure how that would rule out the Mac Pro, then, because the chips I heard cited were the old Intel chips (950, x3100) and AMD chips (X1600).

Again, don't quote me!

edit: this assumes Apple is moving to 100% 64-bit.

<comment><USER10> This makes sense for non-Mac Pro machines, although so far it doesn't seem to be the case as Mountain Lion will actually run on those machines if they're added to SupportedHardware.plist [0].

However, in the case of the Mac Pro it's hard to see the restriction as anything other than arbitrary and frustrating.

0: [http://osxdaily.com/2012/02/18/install-os-x-mountain-lion- de...](http://osxdaily.com/2012/02/18/install-os-x-mountain-lion-developer- preview-on-old-unsupported-macs/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> People need to remember that this is a preview release targeted primarily at developers. It may well drop support for all the machines in question when it ships in the summer, but it wouldn't be at all surprising if some future preview release supports more older hardware.</comment>


Ask HN: What are you reading or learning during the isolation period? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I'm thinking about diving into Eloquent Javascript[1] today. I recently graduated with a CS degree, but I don't know at least one programming language moderately well. Figured I'd dust off some programming cobwebs through JS and then go from there!

[1] [https://eloquentjavascript.net/](https://eloquentjavascript.net/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm learning how to draw, sketch and doodle. Something I always wanted to do.

On top of that I have three books I was always too intimidated to start reading:

* Deng Xiaopong and the transformation of China - Ezra Vogel

* Leonardo Da Vinci - Walter Isacson</comment>


Pilot test of storing carbon dioxide in rocks - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/06/injected-into-icelandic-rocks-carbon-dioxide-stays-there/ <comment><USER2> Humans put out 40 billion tons of CO2 every year. Offsetting all of this would require 1 trillion gallons of water which sounds like a lot but is only 1 cubic mile of water. It doesn't say how fresh the water needs to be but if salt water is possible to use, then these injection systems could be setup all over the world in places where access to ocean water and basalt bedrock is plentiful. That energy company says they plan to setup facilities to inject 10000 tons of CO2 every year. It would still take 4 million more of these facilities to offset all carbon emissions.

<comment> semi-extrinsic At this point, the CCS tech is all there; cost is the main problem. Currently we're at or above $100/tonne of CO2 captured, transported and stored, with capture being the main cost driver.

To make this economically feasible, it requires a carbon tax equivalent to a price increase on gasoline of around $1/gallon (IIRC). Which would be unpopular, to say the least.

<comment><USER3> Gas prices vary a lot more than that between countries today (largely due to differences in existing taxes).

[http://www.globalpetrolprices.com/gasoline_prices/Europe/](http://www.globalpetrolprices.com/gasoline_prices/Europe/)

That's stated in dollars per liter (an unusual unit). In dollars per gallon, Germany would be $5.79/gallon today and the U.K. would be $6.13/gallon.

<comment><USER4> Here in Italy it varies a lot even within the country. Yesterday I drove ~600km from the south to Rome and prices varied between €1.45 and €1.75 per litre.

<comment><USER5> In Norway prices can vary by 10-15% on the same gas station withing hours. In many places the cheapest gasoline is on Sunday evening with significantly higher price coming on Monday.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Neat! Storing carbon stably is huge. We have much easier ways to get to 10,000 year storage (turning fast-growing biomass like miscanthus or other giant grasses into charcoal and throwing it in an old mine), but i haven't heard of other super-long-term storage options.

<comment><USER7> Link(s)?

And why is 10,000 year storage not good enough for us to already be doing it?

<comment><USER6> Apparently I mentally added an order of magnitude - best link I could find says 1,000 year storage

[http://www.carbolea.ul.ie/files/Biochar%20Swift%20Hayes%20Ch...](http://www.carbolea.ul.ie/files/Biochar%20Swift%20Hayes%20Chemrawn.pdf)

and

biochar.org

<comment><USER7> But even 1,000 years is a long time.

I'm really curious what economists, or business-people, think about biochar. Not only is it apparently inexpensive but it also improves plant yields! That seems too suspiciously like a $100 bill lying on the sidewalk. Why has no one picked it up yet?

The following paper doesn't explicitly state that this is the case, but it certainly seems like biochar is not as _relatively_ effective a fertilizer, or fuel source, as alternatives and that therefore it's relative advantage when compared to its alternatives or substitutes lies in its ability to sequester carbon:

\- [http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40095-014-0106-4](http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40095-014-0106-4)

So I guess it's really a $0 bill until the price of carbon rises (for whatever reason).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I know geo-engineering schemes are well-intentioned, but I'm worried that once productionized, country-specific motivations are going to move from "status quo" to "arms race"

Yeah we all know global warming will cause chaos etc, but some countries will be net winners, and some net losers. Canada and Russia have a lot to gain from global warming, with sea routes and more farmland. African nations, Bangladesh, India have huge amounts to lose.

Once we have sequestration technology working, would anyone put it past the Indian / Egyptian / etc governments to set a goal CO2 PPM below the "historic" status quo to lower temperatures for the benefit of their people?

Would anyone put it past Russia to be upset about this and intentionally release methane to counteract the cooling effect?

I think it would be very hard to prevent weaponization of this tech; "keep everything how it is" is easy to say but I don't think will actually happen.

<comment><USER9> >Canada and Russia have a lot to gain from global warming, with sea routes and more farmland.

Is this really true? I'm Canadian. I think we have less to lose, but I'm not sure we'll gain.

Currently we have a boreal forest wildfire larger than Delaware that's still burning out of control and already destroyed much of Fort McMurray. From what I've read, the Boreal forest is at risk of fire and ecosystem death, and not much is suited to replace it in the near term due to soil quality.

We'll also lose cities due to sea level rise.

<comment><USER10> "More farmland" to me reads "highly sensitive to drought".

Warmer does not mean better if it brings with it less rain.

<comment><USER11> Look at all the water available in Canada, you can even see it on the map: [https://email@example.com,-73.1500427,7z](https://email@example.com,-73.1500427,7z)

Not all of Canada is like that, of course, but in parts they get a lot of rain

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> 98% of a trees mass comes from "carbon capture".

<comment><USER6> True! But it also returns to the atmosphere when it burns or decays. Turn it into charcoal [1] and you have about 1,000 years of stability. Turn it into a mineral and you have indefinite stability.

[1] [http://www.carbolea.ul.ie/files/Biochar%20Swift%20Hayes%20Ch...](http://www.carbolea.ul.ie/files/Biochar%20Swift%20Hayes%20Chemrawn.pdf)

<comment><USER13> > it also returns to the atmosphere when it burns

Don't burn it?

> or decays

In a healthy forest, a decaying tree is replaced by new growth, and part of the carbon is captured into soils (including high-carbon peaty soils, which is what's under the forests currently being burned for palm in south-east asia), so a growing forest is a large carbon sink and a stable grown forest is at best carbon-neutral, possibly a small sink depending on its composition.

> Turn it into a mineral and you have indefinite stability.

The lithospheric carbon cycle is still a cycle[0]. Lithospheric carbon gets released by volcanoes and by acidified oceanic water.

[0] [http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/CarbonCycle/page2....](http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/CarbonCycle/page2.php)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> semi-extrinsic The flipside of this is that mineral precipitation (though not necessarily carbonate) is also a problem for CO2 injection into aquifers, which are more readily available and for which we have better understanding, better technology and better infrastructure.

(No disrespect for the CarbFix people implied, they do great work.)

</comment><comment><USER14> This seems like a great result, and its pretty easy to parallelize if you have a lot of basalt available.

It will be interesting to see if we succeed at encasing CO2 before we get another "oxygenization event".

</comment><comment><USER15> Great! Now all that needs to be done is establish that anthropogenic CO2 represents a significant risk. That has not been proven.

<comment><USER16> I'm going to have to flag this comment and have it deleted, because I disagree with it. Or something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Can we start panicking now?

We need to get to 350 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere and we're above 400, with no easy solutions on the horizon.

<comment><USER18> There's certainly something good that there isn't an "easy" solution. If it were trivial to reduce CO2 from 400 ppm to 350 ppm, it would be easy to get to 0 parts per million, which would extinguish all plant life on the planet and also kill us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> What if we just planted more trees?

<comment><USER6> Trees are great short-term carbon storage. When they burn or rot, they re- release most of their carbon back into the atmosphere though.

<comment><USER20> On the other hand burning trees are one of the better ways to produce heating and power because (using fast growing trees) it's a fairly closed cycle of CO2 release and capture. Modern wood burning stoves are incredibly efficient, the one my Dad has approaches 90% if you use it correctly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I would really like if americans could stop using deprecated units like gallons and miles. Especially when starting a paragraph using regular tons. It would really make the whole thing more meaningful.

<comment><USER22> Agreed, but since this is an American website your complaint is unlikely to change any minds.

When I lived in other countries, I adapted to metric and learned enough of the native languages to get by. Maybe it's not too much to ask that we let Americans use their own units on their own websites. I don't whine about people speaking French on Skyrock.

<comment><USER23> Oh I'm so sorry, I feel like I'm intruding. How did I end up here? They should have used an IP blocker..

<comment><USER24> Nobody cares if you participate. It's just pointless to complain that US styles are used in a US article posted on a US website.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's hilarious how certain people keep talking about "clean coal" like it's plausible and scientists don't even have this basic requirement worked out yet.

<comment><USER26> "Clean coal" doesn't usually mean "no CO2". It means "no mercury" or "no particulates".

<comment><USER27> That is absolutely not the implication of clean-coal marketing in the US.</comment></comment></comment>