Screw Hashbangs: Building the Ultimate Infinite Scroll  - <AUTHOR> http://tumbledry.org/2011/05/12/screw_hashbangs_building <comment><USER3> After 2 years of reading Hacker News, I'm happy to finally have been able to contribute something to the discussion here.

To those who hate infinite scroll: I totally understand. I just wanted to try my hand at making a better version.

There's been some concern about my use of window.onpopstate to "un-add" the nodes infinite scroll added instead of just leaving the entire page for the referring page. I hadn't thought about the potential to essentially trap people on the page as they use the back button to navigate through the history stack their scrolling added. I really didn't mean to screw things up for people! I might want to remove that "feature".

<comment><USER4> Really nicely done, works wonderfully. Pity updating the address bar doesn't work in many browsers yet. One request: Could you try experimenting with deleting old pages when you scroll really far? Infinite scrolling takes a pretty heavy toll on my netbook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Losing the hashbang and instead using history.pushState() to update the URL won't solve the problems that infinite scroll introduced.

Also, the idea of using a page range (e.g. /pages/1-3/) will only preserve which "pages" were loaded when you pass on the URL. It does not state which "page" you actually want to link to. This solves a problem that no one had - <USER2> don't care how many pages you had loaded in your browser when you pass me a link.

Here's a slightly different approach to infinite scroll that, imho, works reasonably well: (NSFW) <http://www.pr0gramm.com/>

<comment><USER4> I think you have different problems with infinite scrolling to the one the author has solved. For the end user, almost all infinite scrolling implementations break the back button completely, and those that don't have horrid usability issues - this is the first one I've seen that _just works_.

The page you linked to doesn't avoid this issue entirely - when you click back your browser will initially load just the first page and use Javascript to load the content you were looking at last.

I'd never considered the issue of passing on a link, but there is no reason the author's implementation couldn't also add a # to the URL to indicate that in addition to their current method, solving both problems. So for example, if you scrolled to page 3, and then back up to 2, and wanted to share that state with me the url would be /pages/1-3/#page2 or similar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This post motivated me to figure out how to hack pushState support into NewTwitter:

        twttr.secrets.html5Routing = true;
        twttr.router._changeUrlAndCallAction = function(p) {
            return twttr.Router.prototype._changeUrlAndCallAction.call(this, p.replace("#!/", ""));
        }
        twttr.router._changeUrlAndCallAction(window.location.hash);

Turns out they already have pushState() support... but it uses fragment URLs. This code just enables it, and wraps one of the functions to strip the "#!/".

<https://gist.github.com/996381>

</comment><comment><USER7> This guy is not in computer science and knows more than me about this stuff.

I quit.

<comment><USER8> None of this is really "computer science" though, right?

<comment><USER9> So what is it?

<comment><USER10> Software engineering, which is a largely unrelated discipline.

<comment><USER11> Jeesh,

It could be nice to have a non-snark explanation to avoid confusion.

The infinite page method given is programming technique. It is neither computer science nor software engineering in the way that a technique for holding a hammer is neither part of architecture nor mechanical engineering.

"[Software Engineering] is a 'systematic approach to the analysis, design, assessment, implementation, test, maintenance and reengineering of software, that is, the application of engineering to software.'" <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering>

Software engineering is a part of applied computer science. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_science>

<comment><USER12> I think you read too much into the response. It didn't seem snarky to me. Sure, your explanation gave very helpful details, but I don't think the GP was being obnoxious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm curious as to why large content websites (gawkmedia) are moving towards hashbangs, as they completely destroy any ability to share a link to an article, which one would think is a fairly big traffic driver for these sites. Maybe gawkmedia's implementation is just broken, but it's a trend I've seen in several places now, with nothing good coming from it.

<comment><USER14> _they completely destroy any ability to share a link to an article_

In what way do they do this? If implemented correctly, the URL fragment will uniquely identify the piece of content just the same as if the information were placed to the left of the hash.

Perhaps you don't trust that it _will_ be implemented correctly, but I think we crossed that bridge long ago with the invention of script-generated server- side content. Servlets, perl scripts, php scripts, etc. have been breaking links to content for quite a while now.

Would you also say that cgi-bin scripts "completely destroy any ability to share a link"?

<comment><USER13> They seem to have fixed it now, but for months on end any link to an article with a hashbang in the URL would instead bring you to the frontpage of any gawkmedia site. The way they fixed it? Ditch the hashbang.

Incompetence anywhere will break things, but when the only clear case in favour of hashbangs (that I've heard of) is infinite scrolling, it's time to look at better ways of doing it. You would hope that Google would have _finally_ figured out by now that they should be making urls prettier, not googlier.

<comment><USER14> Oops, I think I misread you. I thought you were talking about how hashbangs break the sharability of links, but you were really speaking about how Gawkmedia broke it. I'm not terribly familiar with their site.

 _...when the only clear case in favour of hashbangs (that I've heard of) is infinite scrolling_

That's the first time I've heard them associated with infinite scrolling, but perhaps I've missed something.

The hash-bang idea is just about making ajax-y navigation URLs crawlable by spiders.

It's just an extension of the standard hash (without the bang) where the "url fragment" (everything after the hash) is used in AJAX applications to preserve the user's ability to bookmark and use the back & forth button on their browser.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This breaks the back-button for me, despite the author claiming otherwise.

Steps to replicate: 1\. Visit article 2\. Click on logo to go to the home page 3\. Scroll down until more content gets loaded 4\. Click back button

Expected behaviour: Get moved back to the article page Encountered behaviour: Still at front page, scrolled to the middle.

Using Safari 5.0.5, OS X 10.6.7

<comment><USER16> This seems like intended behavior. You back button is not broken. Clicking back brings you back to the previous page... that page just happens to seem to be part of the current page.

For you, it would seem best to remove the previous page content when adding the new content. That way pressing "back" will be super fast, page loading will be fast, and the web will still be happy.

<comment><USER15> Well then that's bad intended behaviour. The back button should reverse the loading of a new page after clicking a link. It should not interfere with scrolling at all.

<comment><USER3> Your comments echo many others. I've since changed the behavior to respect traditional back button usage. Hope this helps!

<comment><USER15> Great job!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I hate infinite scroll. It delutes the hints of m scrollbar height to know how much info is given.

<comment><USER18> I agree. It makes web browsing a Sisyphean task, and I always feel on-edge when I'm reading such a page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Pretty sure his regex is off, or at least sensitive to breaking from someone monkeying with the url. Something like /pages/01-/ will match and possibly end up triggering "fetch a page range" logic on null data.

Instead he probably wants:

/pages?/([0-9]+)(?:-([0-9]*))?/?/$

The ?: part is to ignore the capture on that -, which is only really being used to group the dash and the numbers together and make the whole group optional. The other nice part is now you have either one piece of match data (the first number) or two (first and second number) so it's both "more correct" and more programmer-friendly.

Would love to know if there's a better way to ignore capture on a group that's only there to make something conditional.

</comment><comment><USER20> Is there a viable alternative to hashbangs for indexing content of a heavy one-page AJAX-application (not just sexy AJAXy website)? We have rather complex AJAX app for web charts with embedded comments and hashbangs help visitors jump from SERP directly to comments shown in charts, created dynamically by Javascript. I'm pretty sure that between hashbangless urls and ease of use visitors choose latter.

</comment><comment><USER21> _We've spent years trying to clean up our URLs and make them semantic by managing mod_rewrite, readable slugs, and date formatting. Now, we take a step backward, forcing the average internet user to learn another obscure set of symbols that make URLs harder for them to parse._

I suppose this was all discussed to death around the rollout of NewTwitter, but it bears repeating.

</comment><comment><USER22> The correct title for this article should be: "Screw IE: Building the Ultimate Infinite Scroll for Webkit/Moz".

I would love to drop hashbangs and use pushState. I really would. However, IE is 50% of my site's audience, and maintaining two fairly disparate codebases to support pushState doesn't make a whole lot of sense, priority-wise.

</comment><comment><USER23> Very neat. I implemented a similar structure for my blog (described here: <http://boston.conman.org/about/technical.html>) but never thought of connecting it to an infinite scroll.

</comment><comment><USER24> for someone studying for another major: he writes _really_ well about front- end dev

<comment><USER25> I don't understand why anybody should be surprised about this.

True story, degrees are a meaningless measure for skill or ability in a specific field.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I notice that this infinite scroll technique uses some sort of Javascript technique to update the contents of the address bar without redirecting the user to another page.

Isn't that a massive, cataclysmic security risk?

<comment> X-Istence It's using pushState which is part of the HTML 5 spec ...

<comment><USER26> I was thinking of the possibility of phishing by starting with a fake site and altering the URL to that of, e.g., a bank. But anyway, it seems not to be an issue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> That's just great. Alex has managed to find a way to use window.onpostate to hijack the back button.

</comment><comment><USER28> article doesn't explain well what is the issue here with infinite srolls ? i get it that poor search engines will have difficult time crawling website with infinite scroll, but why do we care ? why will user care?</comment>


Tabs, Used Right - <AUTHOR> http://www.useit.com/alertbox/tabs.html

<comment><USER2> I'm a bit skeptical of this. If you need horizontal space, how do you structure your navigation? A horizontal list of elements such as the ones news.yc use's could be considered tabs, no? How else _could_ that navigation even be structured? I'm stumped.

New rule, if you're going to tell people they can't use something, or aren't using it correctly, at least offer thoughts as to the correct way.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not entirely convinced about the "view" thing... Amazon might be big enough to "create their own weather"... Add in LinkedIn and the pile of other sites that use tabs as primary nav, I don't see this as a major sin...

</comment><comment><USER4> "Tabs should be reserved for letting users change the view while staying in the same place."

The word "view" says it all. I don't know how many times I've violated #1. No more.

<comment><USER5> #1 is a design problem.

Getting the right navigation element and having it look good is sometimes tricky. For the upcoming new look of ourdoings.com, I hired a rock-star designer and asked, among other things, if she could figure out how to replace the incorrectly-used tabs in my current design.

She was able to deliver on everything else I asked for, but she couldn't find an alternative that looked as good as tabs. The new design will still have them.</comment></comment>


Ten Grand is Buried Here - Microsoft Australia - <AUTHOR> http://www.microsoft.com/australia/ie8/competition/

<comment><USER2> Considering that we as web developers have collectively wasted millions of dollars in man-hours dealing with IE's awfulness, $10,000 isn't quite enough.

<comment><USER2> Oh yeah, and the fact that they used images to render virtually all the text on the page shows that they _still_ don't get it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Humorously they are clever enough to detect my browser and take a pot shot at Safari, but not clever enough to detect my OS and realize I can't download IE 8.

</comment><comment><USER4> Finally, the return of web pages that only render correctly in IE! I've been missing that terribly since all web designers started using Firefox a couple years ago.

</comment><comment><USER5> "boring Safari", "old Firefox" and "Windows Internet Explorer 6". I'm not quite sure if they got that right…

<comment><USER6> Add "tarnished Chrome"... which is just so wrong that I can't imagine that someone wrote it with a straight face.

<comment><USER7> At least it got recognised... Opera is just "that browser". I don't know if that's more insulting or not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Congratulations! You have found $10 Grand buried _right here_!

Now just click here to pay $4.95 through PayPal to cover mailing charges, and we'll send you the cheque.

Isn't this marketing scheme open to wild scamming?? If nobody knows what the "You've won!" screen will look like, then it opens the door to scammers. You'll just " _know_ " when you've won. "When you find it, it'll be obvious that the $10,000 is yours."

<comment><USER9> Wow, yeah, they just invented a whole new class of phishing scams.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder if the person who accidentally lands on this page will dismiss the notification as just another 'you are the millionth user' scam... Wasn't there an XKCD comic about that?

<comment><USER9> <http://xkcd.com/570/>

<comment><USER7> that's the one

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So... Aren't trolls going to watch for clues on that Twitter feed and then setup fake sites that match the clues that say "You won!" and phish or confuse the poor users?

Or, just as likely, give ads for Firefox, Opera, Chrome, or Safari?

<comment><USER11> Yep :-)

<http://tengrandburiedhere.com/winner.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The problem with an established player using such methods is it makes them seem desperate. Makes me wonder why the product can't stand on its own.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm posting this here because I'd love to see HN's reaction to this competition. (Not because I want any of you to download IE8!)

I think it's an outrageous way of trying to pull in users. Can't attract legitimate IE8 downloaders? Bribe them instead!

<comment><USER13> Firefox: Can attract FF downloaders. Ask your obnoxious supportors to obnoxiously push it down everyone's throat. (I am tying this from FF on ubuntu, I love FF.)

This is a legitimate strategy. Just because it is MS, this doesnot become evil.

<comment><USER10> Or, of course, Google Adsense paying site owners $1 per Firefox download. That was going on quite a long time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "But you'll never find it using old firefox. (So get rid of it, or get lost.)" This is the first time microsoft tells _me_ to get lost. A really weird tone for the otherwise very professional sounding Microsoft.

<comment><USER15> The whole ad has that tone, but maybe I'm used to wishy-washy American ads. I guess Australia is, after all, the birthplace of HTFU.

<comment><USER16> As an Aussie I really appreciate your usage of HTFU there!

Anyone not aware of the meaning: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unkIVvjZc9Y> (Possibly NSFW, swearing)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> No one needed to pay me to use Chrome...

</comment><comment><USER18> This is an awesome thing. I can't see tech-savvy people switching to IE and keeping it unless they prefer it. All of the less-tech-savvy people out there that catch wind of this will _upgrade to IE8_ Goodbye IE6!!!

I hope this does catch on :)

<comment><USER19> this is actually a really good thing for browser competition in general.

most people don't care about the browser they are using, and if microsoft wants to make people more conscious about browsers, more power to them. it will result in people being more careful with their browser selection, essentially developing a taste in a preferred browser.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Ahahahahaha.

Stay classy, Microsoft. Stay classy.

</comment><comment><USER21> (modifies user agent string and begins hunt)

</comment><comment><USER22> I think may be you can get away without actually downloading IE8. Use whatever browser you are using and view the source of the page.

How are they going to find out the browser the you use if you change the User- Agent-String?

Anyone up for the challenge without actually using IE8?

It would be really funny if someone using firefox/chrome won the prize.

<comment><USER23> This is going to be a popular idea but I don't think it will work if MS has their act together. You can profile a browser based on things like plugins. Maybe there is a plugin that only works in IE8 and is used for nothing but real browser identificaation. (I think this is what <http://www.the41st.com/default.asp> does)

<comment><USER22> I think as far as we are controlling the client, we can make it look like any browser. As far as I know (my knowledge is very limited in this area, please correct me if wrong) there is no way to be 100% sure that the user is using a particular browser.

<comment><USER23> You are correct that the end user controls what is ultimately sent to MS (or whomever is probing). However, if they are doing something like plugin enumeration or using a java applet to go a little deeper, you then have to know what the request looks like and what info they are expecting. You then have to intercept that request and send back the expected data It's possible, but a little harder and more time consuming than flipping the user agent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Can't people with Australian domains just mess with people and serve up IE8 detected pages that tell users that they are big winners?

How can Microsoft actually inform the users that they have won? Will they deliver malware through ie8's security holes that hack into the users PayPal account and deposit the money?

</comment><comment><USER25> Is Microsoft trying out the same exact tactics that make spam emails successful? At least it's not MS Nigeria.

Let's start a counter of the number of moms that forward this campaign to their hacker kids.

</comment><comment><USER15> It's a funny contest, but not much to get worked up over. Unless the contest grabs the attention of CNN, we're talking about a contest in a relatively small market, and at a bargain for Microsoft.

While it would be nice if every IE user switched to Chrome, better folks download IE8 than plod along with IE6.

Still, I wonder why IE8 is "the only browser capable of cracking all the clues"...

<comment><AUTHOR> > Unless the contest grabs the attention of CNN, we're talking about a contest > in a relatively small market

I disagree - it's stuff like this that goes viral. There'll be the people like me who think it's a farce, and then there'll be those who want to try it out, all talking about it.

I'd be willing to bet that it'll be a trending topic on twitter within a couple of days.

<comment><USER16> Personally I'd even be willing to help it go viral by forwarding the link to my non-techie friends. At least that way we'll be helping erode the IE6 user- base...

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point.

Are they Australian though? I can't seem to find an equivalent contest in the UK or US.

Edit: scratch that, just saw your comment above saying you're Aussie. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Does anyone have a cache of that page? The link appears dead and it sounds really interesting based on the comments :o)

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't have a cache of the entire page, but I do have one of the image with the contest wording on:

<http://www.jemjabella.co.uk/junk/copy-firefox.png>

(The original is still available at [http://www.microsoft.com/australia/ie8/competition/images/co...](http://www.microsoft.com/australia/ie8/competition/images/copy- firefox.png) too)

<comment><USER27> Here's a grab of the site [http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeresig/3635860872/in/set-72157...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeresig/3635860872/in/set-72157619870137650/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Screenshot of page: <http://imgur.com/OvQNp.png> Referenced twitter feed: <http://twitter.com/tengrand_ie8> edit: thing sees to work again

</comment><comment><USER28> ...and there the page was gone (although I did get to view the comedy page). The possibility of getting $10k (american or austrailian?) to tempt people to use the newest deficient browser from microsoft.

</comment><comment><USER29> This sounds like a challenge for 4chan crowd. I'm sure they will be ecstatic if an FF user wins the contest :)

</comment><comment><USER30> Someone please get that AU$10,000 and donate it to open source browser projects.

</comment><comment><USER31> You can break their code if you use an empty user agent string. Very robust.

</comment><comment><USER32> Firefox 3.5RC1 is old? I think not!</comment>


How to destroy Bitcoins? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@alcio/how-to-destroy-bitcoins-255bb6f2142e <comment><USER2> I actually had to address this in the altcoin world (back when that was a thing) because the C-CEX exchange would take money for "destroying" coins, but the method they used for destroying coins was just taking a video of them sending a wallet to the private key owned by a different wallet and then deleting the wallet. (which they could've easily kept a backup of). There were even some altcoin devs that paid me to hardfork their coin to ensure that coins sent to the address the exchange used could no longer be spent on the network.

Anyway, it's not the "good" OP_RETURN method, but to send your coins from any altcoin to a provably impossible address I made a utility and print out of addresses for sending to "an address owned by the public key hash of 0" [http://earlz.net/view/2014/10/22/0340/provably-spendable- alt...](http://earlz.net/view/2014/10/22/0340/provably-spendable-altcoin-burn- addresses)

<comment><USER3> > _because the C-CEX exchange would take money for "destroying" coins_

Who would use such a service?

<comment><USER2> Heh, I guess I forgot how weird things look from the outside.. but no one knew how to properly destroy coins, or that there was even a proper way. Despite there being all these altcoin "Developers", 95% of them only actually knew how to copy-paste-search-replace to create a new altcoin.. The focus in altcoins was always the marketing side: pretty graphics, good branding, and a viral community that expands until it implodes on itself.

So yea, people used it because they didn't know better.. And because of how backwards the altcoin community is, most of the time it's the inexperienced people asking other inexperienced people for help.. so bad habits spread very quickly and pervasively

<comment><USER3> What were common reasons to want to destroy coins? I can't think of very many scenarios, and then you'd probably need something more reliable.

<comment><USER2> The most common need was that many altcoins would start off with a large premine, and then they would offer an IPO/ICO/CFC (depending on the time, the term for this would change to be whatever was least likely to get the SEC's attention) where they basically put all the coins on an exchange or with an escrow and make it so that people can buy the coins in exchange for bitcoin. If they don't sell out of the altcoin's supply, then the developers are left with a number of coins. These coins are typically destroyed so that the only supply is owned by people who bought into it.

<comment><USER4> That problem isn't destroying coins though, it is verifying that coins have been destroyed. A person can destroy them easily, verifying that someone else is destroying them is hard.

The whole situation you described is completely ridiculous though, because instead of 'destroying' coins the developers could have distributed their own coins to all other addresses proportionately based on balance.

The whole thing is an obvious scam from top to bottom, but I'm not surprised any more that some people would take the bait.

<comment><USER5> if you give out free coins you are decreasing the value of your coin. if you destroy them, you are theoretically increasing the value.

since the popularity and value of these things are very correlated, it makes way more sense to destroy. Who is going to spend real currency on a coin that is losing value day 1 because everyone has coins to sell?

<comment><USER6> If you give out coins exactly proportional to balance the value per coin has changed, but hasn't changed the distribution. It's like multiplying all balances by 100, it's just a unit change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> You can destroy Bitcoins by sending them to 1LuMWxkwCNB6gsCvN1WfShvGxbBVroXBoZ

;-)

<comment><USER8> Thanks for providing this useful service!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Did I just miss where they explained why this is a thing that people want to do?

<comment><USER10> Imagine a situation where you want to have an insurance for a rare event. Say the Toronto Maple Leafs winning the Stanley Cup. You can set up a situation where N parties can be the judge of whether or not that event has happened. If there is a disagreement you can formulate a complex transaction where it only takes N / 2 people to spoil the whole thing by sending all of the money to an unspendable address.

So the seller if the insurance tries to not pay on the extremely unlikely event, then even _they_ don't get the money. Nobody does. But if they do agree to pay out the insurance, then they get to keep a portion of the money that was in the wallet. It's a way of ensuring honesty if even a small number of people are honest.

<comment><USER11> So, escrow? This is possible without destroying the currency.

<comment><USER12> With escrow you accept counterparty risk in the form of the agent holding the escrow, with a scheme that destroys coins there is at least some incentive for everyone to play nice.

<comment><USER13> Maybe donate them to charity instead?

<comment><USER14> What are you, a communist?

<comment><USER15> Destroying the coins is equal to giving every other coin holder a proportional increase..

<comment><USER16> Only to an economist

<comment><USER17> The coins are pure digital bits of information so either method of destroying the 'coin' or dividing the 'coin' among the entire economy is the same. Nothing more than numbers on a ledger system.

If the 'coins' were made of metal, paper, food, etc, than the "only to an economist" thought experiment would apply, as "only an economist" would think of value existing in confined economic constraints.

<comment><USER16> I own two bitcoins. If I destroy them, your bitcoins will not instantly appreciate because my bitcoins were not actively marketed. You only affect price if you decrease supply but my bitcoins are not part of the supply since I don't have them for sale and I'm not buying anything with them.

<comment><USER17>
      If I destroy them, your bitcoins will not instantly
      appreciate because my bitcoins were not actively marketed.

\- Not instantly no, but if you were to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you possessed 10 million BTC, and somehow also were able to prove that you destroyed those 10 million coins, the reaction from the economy would assume the current coins in circulation have just become more valuable purely due to the perception of "scarcity". I would personally contest that perception as BTC is sparsely more than a record keeping system, and the value of a BTC should not matter if there were 40 million coins in the network, or 10 coins that could be divided infinitely.

A major premise of the 'Bitcoin economy' involves the stipulation that the 'BTC economy' is hard limited to "21,000,000" coins and dividable only down to .00000001

These rules are part of what has attracted people to apply real world value to an otherwise simple piece of accounting software. If someone proved they destroyed 20 million bitcoins somehow, or if there were a hard fork consensus among all major miners to nullify the last 10 million coins from being minable, thus limiting the BTC network to 11,000,000 full coins (1,100,000,000,000,000.0 total accountable units), than the perception of value relative to Euros or Dollars would, in what I would compare to the perceived value of limited edition toys like Beanie Babies, Magic the Gathering Cards, or Happy Meal toys. Only instead of a mass produced toy, it is a digital point system where people have used computer hardware to 'mine' BTC points.

If the Genesis coins started moving, one might assume the price of BTC to fluctuate as a result of peoples perception on the 'supply' of this digital currency.

If another cryptocoin is created with a design that agreeably surpasses that of the BTC protocol, than one might assume a migration of users from BTC to the presumably better protocol.

<comment><USER15> > If the Genesis coins started moving, one might assume the price of BTC to > fluctuate as a result of peoples perception on the 'supply' of this digital > currency.

Though, the Genesis coins moving might also increase the price. Satoshi moving their coins would be a very monumental event---it's hard to predict how people would interpret in aggregate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why not just divvy them up proportionally among all addresses with positive balances? It's functionally identical, since (to everybody besides you) it's just a change in price level and bitcoin prices aren't sticky like dollar prices are.

Only issue I can see is divisibility: this would inevitably result in some addresses deserving <1 satoshi, leading to discrepancies when rounding.

<comment><USER19> This is effectively what happens, because the remaining bitcoins become more scarce and (in theory at least) more valuable as a result.

<comment><USER20> Is it really? In practice there's not much difference between money that's never used and money that's destroyed. As long as it's out of circulation, it doesn't affect the economy. Apart from big, public actions of destroying BTC that many parties know about, I'm not sure there's any real value growth from the BTC burning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Can you destroy bitcoins "after the fact" in this way though? Not claiming the block reward seems more like never mining them in the first case than "destroying" extant bitcoins.

(The distinction is relevant because I can imagine wanting to visibly destroy bitcoins that were e.g. proceeds of crime)

<comment><USER22> Given cooperation by a miner, you can probably do it in principle (though I have not checked), because of transaction fees.

The recipe is this: Create a transaction with a transaction fee corresponding to the amount of BTC you want to destroy, and reveal this transaction only to the cooperating miner. The miner agrees to include the transaction without claiming the included fee.

Admittedly it's a bit pointless given that a better approach exists (OP_RETURN, as mentioned in the article).

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> >In 2013, an easy way to add data to any Bitcoin transaction was introduced. By making standard a previously invalid script instruction, OP_RETURN, a Bitcoin user could add up to 40 bytes of data to his transactions.

It was already plenty easy to convert data to a multisig transaction. OP_RETURN doesn't add to the UTXO, while multisig transactions do, so OP_RETURN is less harmful.

This wasn't introduced to make it saving data to the blockchain easier, it was introduced to decrease the harm caused by spammers. It is more like a needle exchange.

</comment><comment><USER24> Could a computer one day be powerful enough to reverse generate the private key for those "irretrievable" bitcoins?

Granted we are living in a very different technological age by then.

<comment><USER25> If that was feasible, the entire bitcoin network would be destroyed(because you could now spend other peoples money by figuring out their private key based on their public wallet address)

<comment><USER26> If it approached feasible gradually and visibly enough, and secure alternatives for verifiable digital signatures existed, the network wouldn't necessarily be destroyed. We could see a gradual migration to addresses of the new form, while lost coins would eventually become retrievable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Is there a reason you can't just delete the wallet that holds the coins and make sure you don't have any backups?

It seems that just removing them from circulation by any means would have the same result as "destroying" them.

<comment><USER28> The distinction between "destroyed" and "lost" is significant, to the extent that if coins have been destroyed people know that the coins will never resurface; it's impossible to distinguish between coins which are lost and coins which have simply been unspent (e.g., the Satoshi hoard).

<comment><USER29> This is why Bitcoin needs to start expiring unspent outputs that are more than 5 years old.

<comment><USER30> Like how you can't use paper money that was printed before 2010? That makes sense.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


YouTube Perma-Bans 100+ Google Accounts for Posting Emojis in Livestream Chat - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/LivestreamFail/comments/dtv9g2/google_issues_account_permabans_for_many_of/ <comment></comment>


Higher-paid, faster-growing tech jobs are concentrating in 8 US hubs - <AUTHOR> http://www.hiringlab.org/2017/07/25/next-silicon-valley/ <comment><USER2> I get that you work with what you have (in this case, a corpus of job postings), but a ranking that places Baltimore in the top three tech hubs fails the sniff test. CBRE has a better list here (email registration wall): [https://www.cbre.com/research-and-reports/Scoring-Tech- Talen...](https://www.cbre.com/research-and-reports/Scoring-Tech-Talent-2017)

I'm biased in that it places Atlanta unusually high, but overall it is a better, less surprising ranking:

      Bay Area
      Seattle
      New York
      Washington DC
      Atlanta
      Toronto
      Raleigh
      Austin
      Boston

<comment><USER3> Atlanta is amazing. It has an extremely low cost of living, yet there are tech companies here paying SF wages.

Anecdotally, my rent is $1300/mo for a 900 sqft loft directly on Atlanta's Beltline [1], and my total comp is (edit: decided to remove this since I might get doxed. I'll be happy to talk with anyone seriously considering Atlanta via email).

It's also been really interesting to see Georgia rocket to the #2 location in the US for filmmaking (a personal hobby of mine). The folks I know in the industry say we're poised to overtake LA eventually.

I mention this because Atlanta has a great mix of culture from a variety of different backgrounds. The music and arts scenes are particularly strong.

[1] [https://beltline.org](https://beltline.org)

<comment><USER4> I really want to like Atlanta, but the whole city makes my skin crawl.

Whenever we go there, usually to take in an MLB game, I just want to turn around and leave immediately. There doesn't seem to be any rational reason for it. When the spouse drives out of town to go stalk Walking Dead filming locations, the overwhelming sense of dread eases up, and I just get bored looking at bits of rural Georgia that were lucky enough to appear on television for one scene.

Maybe I'm allergic to peachtree streets.

In contrast, NYC, Chicago, Boston, Phoenix, Nashville, San Diego, Denver, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, and most other US cities I have visited just don't have an aura to them that I can pick up. Baltimore felt like I just walked in on someone who had been crying and was trying to hide it. Washington, DC, felt like someone was following me the whole time, like being hunted. Cincinnati felt great just being around it; it made me want to consider moving there.

Atlanta is just the opposite of that, every time I go. Just being there stresses me out for no readily apparent reason.

On paper, it seems like it should be great. Georgia Tech is close, and the local economy is great. All kinds of television shows and movies have that juicy Georgia peach at the end of the credits now, instead of Vancouver. The weather is decent for 10 months out of the year. Lots of local agriculture. Lots of roads leading out of town, and a hub airport for a relatively decent airline. Diverse, cosmopolitan culture, as long as you stay in the city limits and away from the suburbs. About the only thing it lacks entirely is a seaport. I just can't stand actually _being there_.

<comment><USER5> Lived in Atlanta. Glad to get out. I don't think I've disliked any city as much as I did Atlanta, and I have no idea why.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Breaking out SF from "Silicon Valley" seems like an outdated approach to segment the data. I would say for the past decade, "Silicon Valley" includes SF, Peninsula through San Jose for all intents and purposes. I see people, who live in SF, commute down to Peninsula and vice versa. The job market in the Bay Area is all pretty fluid.

<comment><USER7> I find it interesting to see the difference. I moved from San Jose to work in the city 8 years ago and to me, anecdotally, it's always felt like that was a trend, startups were coming to SF and so was the talent and that "silicon valley" was the tech hub 10-15 years ago. So seeing real data that's showing what's actually happening is very interesting to me. I'd like to see more break downs of south bay vs SF/Oakland tech jobs and startup growth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Reasons for Seattle: 1) take a long shower 2) wash your car 3) water your lawn 4) cheap electrical rates 5) enjoy the outdoors 6) awesome IPA's 7) pot is legal 8) great culture 9) moderate weather as global warming progresses

downside - traffic is horrible.

That is my take as a long time Seattlite.

<comment><USER9> Also: no income tax. If it's introduced, people will leave in massive droves, because as nice as those things are, 6 months of rain every year is not everyone's cup of tea

<comment><USER10> [http://www.npr.org/2017/07/17/537645901/legal-challenges- exp...](http://www.npr.org/2017/07/17/537645901/legal-challenges-expected-as- seattle-approves-income-tax-on-high-earners)

Seattle is very progressive, and highly in favor of income tax.

<comment><USER9> Nah. Seattle is really faux progressive, thankfully. Two of the world's richest people peacefully coexist with a massive (and growing) population of homeless people, and all those Hillary-votin' rich yuppies will run away the moment they're forced to put their money where their mouth is. 2.25% tax in Seattle itself is already being contested. And state income tax is not really possible as it requires two thirds majority.

<comment><USER11> State income tax will also be met with the largest employers here expanding to other municipalities and states that play by their favorable rules. I worked at one of the tech giants in management consulting and they have had contingency plans to ship stuff to Austin the minute taxation became more of a burden on income.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> They looked at tech job listings as a percentage of ALL job listings in cities with a population over 1 million. How does that show a "tech hub"?

I would bet NYC has more total tech jobs (as well as open listings) than a lot of the "tech hubs" on the list.

<comment><USER13> I was just wondering why NYC was not on that list. Baltimore is very close to DC, is it really two different regions?

<comment><USER14> Not really. They are close. There are places you can live that are a reasonable commute to both. Also, I know people that make the commute in both directions. MARC train helps.

Source: I live and work in Baltimore.

<comment><USER15> And really it's hard to determine what differentiates the data between DC and Baltimore for a lot of tech jobs. The ranking calls it Baltimore-Columbia- Towson, so that probably means Fort Meade and a lot of other tech jobs that might be more 'in-between'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't understand why Indeed breaks up San Jose / Sunnyvale / Santa Clara and San Francisco / Oakland / Hayward, and also fails to include Palo Alto, Mountain View, Menlo Park, Cupertino, etc. It completely distorts the proportion of fast growing jobs that are in these 8 tech hubs.

<comment><USER17> The reason is that they broke it down by MSA: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Metropolitan_Statistic...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Metropolitan_Statistical_Areas). Palo Alto and nearby cities are in the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara MSA.

<comment><USER16> Ah, thank you.

When they go on to infer that fast growing jobs come out of the hubs, their adherence to that standard distorts the numbers downwards. Reader beware.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Disappointed Los Angeles didn't make the list but not surprising. LA has all the right things like colleges (UCLA USC Caltech and others) and same CA employment laws as Silicon Valley. It has big companies like Snapchat but just can't seem to cross that threshold into major tech hub. Maybe Hollywood is just too dominant here, similar to how NYC isn't on the list because finance dominates there.

<comment><USER19> When I lived in Los Angeles, a significant amount of tech jobs I applied / interviewed for where in the industry. It's possible they are over-looking all the major studios (Sony, NBC, etc), along with the very large support for gaming and movies. Data pipeline, meta data management, and streaming are just a few things that are popular out there.

I think the difference is that many companies in LA are smaller and independent, but I caution that anyone who thinks that Hollywood is more than a small fraction of Los Angeles work hasn't explored much of the city. E-commerce and random website dev is also a much larger market than any town I've seen.

Another problem is the shear size of the city and the accompanying suburbs. You have tech in Pasadena, Burbank, Santa Monica, Torrence, etc, and no sane person would make these cross-town drives every day. I don't think that many people who live in LA even realize how large the place is, and possibly wouldn't realize that many "cities" aren't cities at all, but a part of LA.

In my observation, there is more tech work in LA than Austin, but I digress.

<comment><USER20> Video games traditionally (Electronic Arts, Westwood Studios -> Blizzard). You have Symantec and now Google and Snapchat. The Adsense guys were in LA as well. Doubleclick was in Pasadena. Match.com, Tinder, Grindr, and a few others around. So there is a mixture of things. Santa Barbara has some tech as well. I think UCLA needs to foster more of a tech transfer mentality. Stanford profs go and develop tech companies. UCLA ones do not to the same extent (or if they do they leave UCLA). I could be wrong about that but that's how I see it. I think Stanford has a better deal on student housing as well vs UCLA, but I could be wrong. UCLA has 44k students vs Stanford at 16k. Travis Kalanick came out of UCLA and has a story about raising a term sheet back in the day for a previous company that was written like a movie term sheet (aka really bad). So that may have something to do with it as well. But I think it is changing. The Bay area is bursting at the seams so you will see the market evolve.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Whatever happened to telecommuting eventually making it relatively unimportant where you live? Will this happen in the forseeable future, or will the best tech jobs continue in this trend of centralizing around major hubs?

<comment><USER22> Telecommuting/remote/WFH opportunities are as rare as ever. Companies are shying away from it as they begin blaming it for productivity issues that are the fault of completely different problems, e.g. bad management and culture. I don't foresee remote/WFH taking off any time soon.

<comment><USER23> Nah, they're hiring remote workers like crazy. They're just working _very_ remotely: India.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is not US only phenomenon. Agglomeration externalities create large productivity differences and it seems that they are constantly being underestimated.

Cities have higher productivity than other areas and larger cities have much higher productivity than smaller cities (in the developing world). Cities are like brains where bigger city thinks qualitatively better.

Housing constraints in larger cities put limits to the aggregate growth. Recent paper: "Housing Constraints and Spatial Misallocation, Hsieh and Moretti." [http://eml.berkeley.edu//~moretti/growth.pdf](http://eml.berkeley.edu//~moretti/growth.pdf)

>We quantify the amount of spatial misallocation of labor across US cities and its aggregate costs. Misallocation arises because high productivity cities like New York and the San Francisco Bay Area have adopted stringent restrictions to new housing supply, effectively limiting the number of workers who have access to such high productivity. Using a spatial equilibrium model and data from 220 metropolitan areas we find that these constraints lowered aggregate US growth by more than 50% from 1964 to 2009.

<comment><USER25> Cities are cool to think about for that reason. They're formed because it's more efficient logistically for all these economic actors to come together. However, they're unpleasant (in some ways, but not others) to live in because of side effects of the same processes: concentrated noise, pollution, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> DC and Baltimore is the land of govt contracting where designers and developers can command hourly rates of 60 to 100 an hour based on skill-set. There's tons of demand too and the cost of living is fairly inexpensive.

I just left my high paying govt contract job as I tried working things out with a co-worker who suddenly became a real S#$t to work with .. tried one on one with him & then with management. Overall nothing changed after months so I left and will be starting a better paying job in 2 weeks. There's too much demand to sit and take crap from anyone.

</comment><comment><USER27> Can anyone speak to.the job market in the DC metro? I've been thinking a lot about moving back to the east coast and DC seems like a decent trade off between cost of living and interesting jobs (compared to my home NYC).

What kind of jobs are in DC, what's the salary range like?

<comment><USER28> The majority of jobs in DC metro are government contracting as you would imagine. That is not to say there are not interesting opportunities available. A few startups and many small contracting shops filling niche spots for the Gov.

IMO the cost of living in not good in DC metro. Very high home prices, only below SF, Boston, NYC. Lower salaries than SF/NYC across the board. Upper middle class in DC requires 200k income, many families here with two 100k earning parents.

<comment><USER29> It should be noted that most people don't live in DC proper - most commute in from the suburbs. My friends in the area all bought houses in places like Fairfax, Springfield, and between Baltimore and DC. House prices are not cheap, but I've heard $600k for a nice house quoted to me.

DC proper is just ridiculous. Thankfully you can find more reasonable places just across the river with a short commute time.

<comment><USER30> And the price difference is similar for apartments. I'm paying $1000 for a ~1000 sqft apartment on the cheap side of the bridge. I have a coworker paying $2500 for a smaller place in DC. The difference in commute time is 5 minutes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Boston doesn't seem to be doing very well in the long-term. I moved here to take advantage of both the presence of tech jobs, and to live in an accepting, progressive blue state. If I want to stay in the area, what field should I be transitioning into?

I know the Boston area has a lot of medical/health companies around, and it might be worth it to start looking at those kinds of companies as a long-term solution. Are they still a good choice for MA tech jobs?

<comment><USER31> The Boston area has quite a bit of tech jobs and pays pretty well, with the main issues being that everything is falling apart and people are crazy.

<comment><USER22> Sounds like SNAFU to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Baltimore and Raleigh are tech hubs, and New York is not?

In 2000 when the dot-com's went bust, things were not so bad for IT in New York because the other industries were still going along - media, advertising, fashion, and of course, finance. San Francisco has all its eggs in one basket.

Plus New York has Stack Overflow, Spotify, Computer Associates, IBM, Seamless, Rockstar Games, Kickstarter and companies like that as well.

<comment><USER33> The problem with this article is its focus on the _fraction_ of a city's total jobs that are high tech, not the _number_ of high tech jobs.

Raleigh's total market is small compared to NYC's, of course (~2 million in 2013). Even then I can't believe a high fraction of work in the Research Triangle area is tech related. Aside from the 3 universities, it just doesn't have many significant tech employers these days. It's been decades since anyone mentioned tech business in RTP in the same breath as other hubs in the vicinity like DC, Charlotte, Atlanta, or Houston.

<comment><USER34> Red Hat, IBM, Fidelity Investments, Cisco, NetApp, SAS, Citrix/Sharefile, Quintiles.

They all employ thousands or close to it in RTP/Raleigh. These are just the ones I thought of off the top of my head, I am sure there are others.

IBM alone employs 10,000 people in RTP.

<comment><USER35> > I am sure there are others

There is a large government contractor presence in the triangle (DC is what, a 30 minute flight?). Epic's main office, Nvidia and Kitware have offices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> There are some highly technical (and specifically information-techical) jobs in finance that don't seem to be included here. This may also be the case for other areas, as well.

<comment><USER37> As someone in finance this is quite interesting to me, do you have any examples? Job titles or sample postings?

<comment><USER36> For one thing, titles beginning with 'quant' seem to be missing, though perhaps I did not dig deep enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Move to Round Rock folks! You can get a 4000 sq.ft. home, a half acre yard and a pool for less than a San Francisco studio. You pay $4000 a month to rent a 1 bedroom? You can rent a whole house here for half of that. Pay is the same if you just ask. Too many jobs and not enough local people to fill them.

<comment><USER39> I'm looking at that area. Currently in Seattle. Can you give me some advantage of round Rock, cedar Park or Austin? My current employers office is near The Domain in North Austin. It looks like I can get a decent house in Austin, but cedar Park and round Rock also look nice.

<comment><USER40> South Austinite so I'm a bit biased, but here's my take. Cedar Park and RR are quite a ways out of the city and traffic in Austin heading north/south is atrocious and getting worse, fast. You can live up there cheaply but if you're coming for the Austin city experience, you may be disappointed. If you do end up that far north, I would recommend looking into Pflugerville, as well, which is a very nice area.

The Domain/Arboretum is between those suburbs and the city and it's a booming area these days with a lot going on. My advice would be to look near there or south of there for your housing. This gives you good commute flexibility for jobs in the burbs and the city, and makes getting into the city much more pleasant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> A cost-of-living adjusted list would be more interesting . . .

</comment><comment><USER42> _Rounding out the big eight, tech jobs in Washington, DC, Baltimore and Raleigh are more traditional and offer lower salaries, making these metros less like Silicon Valley than their fellow tech hubs._

Exactly. Here in DC it's mostly data center and infrastructure services growth that we're seeing.

</comment><comment><USER43> I've seen two surveys in the past week, one where Detroit ranked second in IT job growth and this one by Forbes that ranked Detroit 9th.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/joelkotkin/2017/03/16/technolog...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/joelkotkin/2017/03/16/technology- jobs-2017-san-francisco-charlotte-detroit/#19e1005038f6)

Detroit didn't rank here because the cities population is below a million. But with the suburbs Detroit metro is 5 million and I believe that doesn't include Ann Arbor which just ranked as a top startup hub. So this particular survey is a little misleading.

<comment><USER44> Not sure what the method was, but Raleigh and Durham are both individually smaller than Detroit, and the metro area is less than half the size of the Detroit metro.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Yep those are all the cities my tech oriented friends either live in or dream of living in.

<comment><USER46> Denver is conspicuously absent, although the city itself isn't over a million.

<comment><USER45> Yeah I tend to see Boulder instead of Denver. That may have to do with the percentages of tech jobs. Denver is still a big Energy city.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Without looking, I'm going to guess (in no particular order):

\- Cambridge/Boston

\- DC metro area

\- Austin

\- Bay area

\- Seattle

\- NYC

\- Philadelphia

\- LA or San Diego

EDIT:

Hm, got most right. I forgot about the Triangle entirely, but I'm surprised Baltimore outpaced Philly.

<comment><USER48> I'm a little surprised Chicago is not on the list. The Chicago tech scene is not huge, but it is growing, and it is definitely much more dynamic than Philly or LA or San Diego. It is the third largest metro in the country with a large hinterland, so cost of living is still fairly affordable. Tales of crime are overblown by the media -- they are mostly outside the city, and normalized to population, is not significantly higher than other large metros.

There are also two elite schools here: Northwestern and U of Chicago, with many other middle tier schools that can supply tech talent like UIC, DePaul, etc. Being the mecca of the midwest, it also draws talent from many excellent midwestern schools like UIUC, Purdue, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Argonne National Lab is also based out here. The major economy is finance for now, but transportation is also huge (Chicago is a major transport hub).

Google, Microsoft, Amazon etc. all have presence here, and startups like Uptake and Spothero are based here. Groupon has kind of imploded though.

I don't think these folks are really looking in the right places.

<comment><USER49> I've always been confused as to why Chicago _isn 't_ more of a tech hub. Great city, great people, cheap housing, good transportation (by US standards), good schools, etc.

Are the Google, Microsoft, and Amazon offices engineering offices? I know that the Microsoft one is not.

<comment><USER50> When I looked, Chicago had:

\- Cost center IT departments for the healthcare and insurance sectors out in the exurbs (presumably low respect and high risk of outsourcing).

\- Quant trading for the commodities market downtown (and really nothing else, unless finance is your cup of tea).

I'd _love_ to work for a SV-style technology company in Chicago.

<comment><USER48> I don't think there is an SV-style company outside of SV because the SV ecosystem is not really replicable.

That said, Chicago has quite a few non-finance tech companies: \- Vividseats \- Grubhub \- Spothero \- Sproutsocial \- Uptake \- Orbitz \- HERE technologies \- Trunk Club

There are a myriad of smaller startup companies you've never heard of, as well as traditional corporate types like IBM, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> It would have nice to see them compare salaries and cost of living in these hubs.

</comment><comment><USER52> So, basically in America's biggest cities. Thanks.</comment>


Have You Hugged a Concrete Pillar Today? - <AUTHOR> http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Making-the-Modern-World <comment><USER2> > " _China used as much concrete in just three years as United States in one > century "_

He wants you to think he's comparing the last 100 years. In reality he's comparing two different time periods because U.S. acceleration ruins the wow factor.

> " _Chinese now consume more Guccis and Bulgaris and Louis Vuittons than the > rest of the world combined._ "

He wants you to think Chinese consumers have a lot of buying power. They don't. They just happen to like those specific brands. Even Japan spends more than the U.S. on those _specific_ brands, with half the population.

<comment><USER3> > _He wants you to think he 's comparing the last 100 years. In reality he's > comparing two different time periods because U.S. acceleration ruins the wow > factor._

That's an amazingly pedantic and petulant response to what appeared like a perfectly valid comparison. The US economy became the world's largest one some time in the 1920's, which means at least 70 of the 100 years in the 20th century was when the US was the world's largest economy and growing. What's wrong in comparing that to just 3 years of China's growth, a country which is still a smaller economy than the US mind you? That's still wow factor enough for a lot of people, especially non-Americans I guess.

> _He wants you to think Chinese consumers have a lot of buying power. They > don 't. They just happen to like those specific brands._

I'm surprised you think China isn't a major luxury market. Across product categories from handbags to watches to cars, China is absolutely the #1 focus market for most brands. In fact measured by nationality, the Chinese are the world's largest luxury consumers and also the fastest growing. [1]

[1] [http://www.economist.com/news/business/21579015-life- getting...](http://www.economist.com/news/business/21579015-life-getting- harder-purveyors-luxury-china-growth-prospects-are-still)

<comment><USER4> It's not pedantic or petulant. The infographic is misleading, though not dramatically so.

It looks suspicious to compare the US until the year 2000 and China only starting in 2011. There's a gap of a decade. If you assume that US use is likely increasing (a decent assumption), then the statistic could be misleading.

It turns out that the US has used about a gigaton in just the last decade. That's a bit more than twice as fast as its average during the 20th century.

During the past 3 years, China used cement about 29 times faster than the US. If you aren't careful, you might think the infographic suggests that number is 48x.

[http://www.statista.com/statistics/273367/consumption-of- cem...](http://www.statista.com/statistics/273367/consumption-of-cement-in- the-us/)

China has a lot of people and a lot of catching up to do. Even the misleading number isn't that surprising to me. It turns out concrete lasts a while, and US usage has been spread over a century. In the long run, the integral matters more than today's derivative.

<comment><USER5> Gates' point is that concrete usage is accelerating, not that China was funkier than the US. It's hardly 'suspicious', given that context.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _The car I drive to work is made of around 2,600 pounds of steel, 800 pounds of plastic, and 400 pounds of light metal alloys. The trip from my house to the office is roughly four miles long, all surface streets, which means I travel over some 15,000 tons of concrete each morning._

Bill should get a bike.

<comment><USER7> The 4 mile trip in the article would be about 12 minutes by bicycle (once you get fit). It would be less than an hour simply walking briskly.

It's difficult to understand why people drive such tiny distances. I ride close to 20 miles each way to work and it's still much faster than driving and slightly faster than the train. I also get less sweaty than people using the trains due to sensible clothing. It also means I don't need to use the gym and can eat what I want (I burn about 3500 kcal/day)

<comment><USER5> An hour's walk each way = 2 hours out of your day commuting. For a workaholic billionaire with a prediliction for charity, that's quite a waste of time.

Similarly with riding, it's not just the ride. A car is easy if you've got a parking spot at both ends. Hop in, hop out. Commuting by biking (usually) requires you to change clothing, which really should be included in your commute time.

And some people just enjoy driving, like some people enjoy walking or riding. I haven't met the person who likes being crammed into a sweaty train-crowd yet, though :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> From the article:

> China used more cement in the last three years than the U.S. used in the > entire 20th century.

It seemed strange to exclude years from the 21st century.

From 2011 to 2013, China consumed roughly 28 times that of the U.S.

From 2002 to 2013, China consumed roughly 15 times that of the U.S.

____

[http://www.ficem.org/boletines/ct-2013/presentaciones2013/1-...](http://www.ficem.org/boletines/ct-2013/presentaciones2013/1-EXPERTOS/2_THOMAS- ARMSTRONG/ICR-FICEM-Presentation-Handout-30Aug13.pdf)

<comment><USER9> Why is it strange? "The 20th century" is a complete and relatable concept for many people, easy to comprehend as a unit.

<comment><USER8> It usually makes sense to vary a single dimension when comparing metrics; not two.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Funny title, I created an award-winning photo of a concrete pillar saying 'hug me' a good 6-7 years ago. Here's the image! [http://imgur.com/4VJwXRg](http://imgur.com/4VJwXRg)

<comment><USER11> That's what i expected; i thought it was world concrete hugging day or something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Smil introduces a surprising and counterintuitive idea he calls relative > dematerialization. As innovation lets us make a given product more > efficiently, with fewer materials or energy, prices go down and consumption > goes up.

This is called Jevons Paradox; or at least it used to be. Economists have a good handle on this idea now so we don't call it a paradox anymore.

<comment><USER13> It has a Wikipedia page :)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox)

Edit: it was pointed out earlier further downthread

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7894415](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7894415)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > After reviewing the trends, Smil introduces a surprising and > counterintuitive idea he calls relative dematerialization. As innovation > lets us make a given product more efficiently, with fewer materials or > energy, prices go down and consumption goes up.

Looks like Gates isn't very familiar with the ideas of Buckminster Fuller then. Bucky identified _ephemeralization_ as a key technological trend over 70 years ago. [1]

[1] R. Buckminster Fuller, _Nine Chains to the Moon_ , Anchor Books [1938] 1971 pp. 252–59.

<comment><USER15> The English economist William Stanley Jevons made the same observation in 1865.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox)

<comment><USER14> Thank you for the link. However, at least in the wikipedia article, it seems to be more a discussion of fuel use (the original observation was about coal) rather than material use. Fuels are used up; materials used to build things can be recycled. From my recollection of Buckminster's discussion of ephemeralization, he restricted it to only material use. And Gates' discussion in the article is again only about material use.

I think it's quite conceivable that a world with a stable population could rely almost entirely on recycling of at least some materials. In Brazil, they already recycle 98% of aluminium can production.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The construction/real estate bubble in China is not long for this world. China might have used a lot of a commodity/product, but we should be careful in believing that is an equivalent 1:1 economic comparison.

</comment><comment><USER17> Previous discussion (with cleaner url too): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7887266](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7887266)

<comment><USER18> Oddly, that one set off the voting ring detector. It was a false positive. (Edit: or at least I believe it was. Hard to know for sure.)

We cleaned the url.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm shocked that Bill Gates drinks 3-4 Diet Cokes a day. Probably harder for me to understand than seeing educated people smoke (since, at least with smoking, there's a chemical dependency at play)

<comment><USER20> Why, because aspartame is a \ _gasp\_ _chemical_? Yes, please disregard the numerous studies that all find aspartame to be completely safe for human consumption. Gates probably drinks Diet Coke for the same reason that many educated people do: they're actually able to read and understand primary sources. Aspartame conspiracy theorists are just as woefully uninformed as anti-vaxxers.

<comment><USER21> Studies that say something is safe are irrelevant, we only care about the studies that say something is not safe and their follow ups.

<comment><USER22> That leads to confirmation bias, which is a bad thing. You want both positive and negative results.

<comment><USER21> I can totally see it now!

After the study shows us that something is safe the dead people hop out of the grave.

Imagine their surprice!

 _Oh, I thought I died but then the new research came in._

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> 1901~2000? Does this comparison make sense?

<comment><USER24> Totally. The Interstate Highway Act alone was just one of the huge projects using tons and tons and tons of concrete in the US - part of why the figure's so mindboggling, really.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Funny that gatesnotes.com is using Apple's 'Share' icon and not the Windows version…</comment>


Mobile Internet Explorer's New User Agent - <AUTHOR> http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2014/08/mobile-internet-explorers-new-user-agent.html

<comment><USER2> This article doesn't add anything that the original MS blog didn't already cover.

</comment><comment><USER3> tl;dr: Nobody should be using browser detection anymore. That's why feature detection libraries such as Modernizr exist.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, except I can't check for bugs presence with Modernizr. SVG implementation is broken in Firefox, how am I supposed to detect it in wonderful world of HTML5 and user agents containing name of every browser in existence?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Huh, interesting. I just checked on my phone. I have a recently-updated Lumia 520, but one bought from a telco instead of directly from Nokia.

My useragent starts the same as the one in the screenshot, but in the end, it has "like Gecko" instead of "like iPhone OS 7_0_3 ...", and, as if it was important, I have my telco name in the useragent (!) - the result is, gmail renders for me like in the latter screenshot.

Seems it's the last time I bought a phone from a telco company.

<comment><USER6> Are you sure you're running Windows Phone 8.1 _Update 1_ (that was released yesterday)? My 930 is still running 8.1 without update 1 and it still ends with "like Gecko." My friend's 920 with update 1, on the other hand, is now using the same user agent as in the blog post.

For a reference (settings → about), the version on the second line is the one with the new UA:

        Windows Phone 8.1 (OS version 8.10.12397.895)
        Windows Phone 8.1 Update (OS version 8.10.14147.180)

<comment><USER5> Ah I misunderstood. I've just had WP 8.1 installed like a week ago (vendor version hence the delay probably), I'd have to wait next couple of weeeks for the update. Thanks for the info.

<comment><USER7> Windows Phone 8.1 Update is final yet. It is in developer preview. You can get the preview right now by registering as a developer and downloading the Windows Phone for Developers preview app. See [https://dev.windows.com/en- us/develop/phone-updates](https://dev.windows.com/en-us/develop/phone-updates)

Warning: you may void your warranty.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Space - <AUTHOR> https://blog.space.storage/posts/Introducing-Space <comment><USER2> Really curious about this. I've been following the stories posted here on Deno and IPFS, but I don't want to spend the time setting everything up. If this is really a next-next-finish type of installation, I'd be very much up for it.</comment>


Noobindex beta launches/redesign - <AUTHOR> http://www.noobindex.com/blog.php

<comment><USER2> I suppose this is for gamers. You might want to make that more clear. Is there anything unusual that you plan to add that might make it more appealing? Maybe photo galleries and contests for game screenshots.

What programming language did you use?

Oh, and you might want to take Pownce off the profile editor.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for checking it out.

It's PHP.

I agree, it does need something to make it more appealing.

I always planned for it to be used as like a Basecamp for MMO guilds and even casual gamers too, but I decided to withhold management features until after it picks up a little.

I do need to implement a better photo gallery type thing that would let people upload more pics.

I am short on ideas on what to do though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Dump the ads until you get traffic. They're the first thing you see.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good idea, thanks

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is just a fun project. There are a ton of things I want to do with it still, but tell me what you think if you give it a look.</comment>


Don't Be the Office Mom – Things Every Young, Female Engineer Must Know - <AUTHOR> http://involutedesigns.com/2012/06/18/dont-be-the-office-mom-5-things-every-young-female-engineer-must-know/

<comment><USER2> Cookies and birthday cakes are always welcome. Just don't be the only one bringing them in.

It is however, okay to be the person who organizes everybody else to make sure that people get cards and stuff on their birthdays or other big life events.

If organizing the card and gifts when a cow orker's girlfriend had a baby makes me the office dad, then go clean your room, it's a pig sty.</comment>


Neo Geo Programming Guide (1991) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.hardmvs.com/manuals/NeoGeoProgrammersGuide.pdf <comment><USER2> Neo Geo is an interesting system. The graphics system in particular is very elegant for old-school hardware. Like Atari 2600 and Amiga, sprites can be extremely tall at essentially no extra cost; it's the width that really eats up the budget (which on Neo, IIRC, are timeslices on a state machine that renders the sprites into a linebuffer, rather than physical FIFOs). Unlike Atari 2600 and Amiga, the hardware has the concept of "chaining" sprites so that a huge meta-sprite's position can be controlled by a single attribute block. There's no background hardware; the way you build backgrounds is by creating huge sprites. The hardware also has a simple mechanism for automatic animation so that various kinds of environmental animation can be done without the CPU having to update all of the pattern numbers.

There is a textmode-like foreground layer (the "fix" layer, probably called that because it can't scroll) for UI elements like score, credits, life meters, etc..

Trivia: Neo Geo was not primarily designed by SNK, but rather by Alpha Denshi (ADK), presumably acting as a contractor. It bears some similarities to earlier boards for ADK and SNK games (see the MAME drivers "alpha68k" and "snk68").

<comment><USER3> I laughed a little when I read about the "free" animations, because I immediately thought of the backgrounds in some stages of Blazing Star which were effectively short looping videos. An effect also used fairly extensively by NG:Dev.Team.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is great to see, since this year's Revision party saw the release of two NeoGeo demos at the same time, with there being almost none before that:

[http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=67110](http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=67110) [http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=67100](http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=67100)

</comment><comment><USER5> That is a great material and has some wisdom too like:

"As a general rule, the most important thing to remember is to give a good play value without resorting to shock tactics. Comedy in good taste is a very good method to add gaming value to any game. If the whole family can laugh together at a game with a sense of humor, it provided a more enjoyable experience without being offensive. " page. 106 (guidelines).

I was too poor for having Neo Geo at home but I played it on arcades.

<comment><USER6> Same here. Never could afford one.

I recall playing a side-scrolling arcade RPG put out by Neo-Geo sometime in the late '80s/early '90s. From what I remember there was leveling and different classes of characters ( fighter, mage, etc ). It was something like Golden Axe, but a lot more detailed. Tried to find it later but never had any luck.

<comment><USER7> Possibly Crossed Swords: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H485or8VOC8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H485or8VOC8)

Or Sengoku: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZqBgAQak64](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZqBgAQak64)

Or also possibly Dungeons and Dragons: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8alVk4Zi5A0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8alVk4Zi5A0)

D&D was by Capcom on the CPS2, a competitor to the Neo Geo.

<comment><USER2> Another Capcom game that fits the general description is The King of Dragons (1991, CPS1 hardware).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I can remember wanting one of these so badly when I was a kid, but check out the specs!

12Mhz CPU 64K RAM 64K VRAM

Now this thing has 83x the clock rate and ~8,000x the memory for $9: [http://getchip.com/pages/chip](http://getchip.com/pages/chip)

I can remember reading articles about how fast and cheap computers would get, but man.

<comment><USER9> Memory was the big issue of the Neo Geo, if I remember correctly. The system itself was expensive enough, but what really broke the bank was the price of each individual game. And that was mainly because they used cartridges with many times the amount of ROM compared to what Nintendo or Sega used. That meant that a single game cost more than their competitor's console.

And by the time the Neo Geo CD came out where this was suddenly not an issue anymore, it was too late alredy...

<comment><USER7> The Neo Geo CD had 7 megs of RAM, and the Neo Geo cart games just kept on getting bigger. The last CD games released would often load midway through levels or several times per fight for fighting games. Then from there many Neo Geo games never got a CD release because it just wasn't feasible.

As for the price of Neo Geo games, just for some fun here is one that sold last week for over $5000: [http://www.ebay.com/itm/Blazing-Star-Neo-Geo-AES- JP-import-1...](http://www.ebay.com/itm/Blazing-Star-Neo-Geo-AES-JP- import-100-Genuine-SNK-Game-MINT- Condition-/162010824124?_trksid=p2047675.l2557&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&nma=true&si=qk905YdVr1Z8fO1UbF%252FDFvCXqZE%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc)

Many Neo Geo games are now in four figure territory.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A few years ago someone on the Mame forums released the full 68k source to Art of Fighting. Apparently the Neo Geo source code was hidden in a PC-Engine conversion of the game. Since then members of the community have re-assembled the game & it's proven to work.

</comment><comment><USER11> I must admit, I am surprised at how good the English is in this document so far. Granted, I've only skimmed it, but I half expected to find a bit of Engrish left and right.

Color me pleasantly surprised!

<comment><USER7> This was most likely translated by SNK USA. Although the Neo Geo never gained any US developers.</comment></comment>


Xiaomi web browser sends your browsing history to Alibaba even in Incognito mode - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/cybergibbons/status/1256166921696919553 <comment><USER2> Alibaba as in Alibaba Cloud. That's not quite a correct headline.

That being said, after working for Alibaba, their vm and containerization security is about as secure as swiss cheese.

</comment><comment><USER3> Discussion in [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23035266](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23035266)

</comment><comment><USER4> Even HN is not free from this China smearing campaign. Smh.</comment>


Ask HN: Firefox throwing SEC_ERROR_OCSP_INVALID_SIGNING_CERT errors - <AUTHOR> Having an issue on some of our sites and finding several other reports from the last 24 hours.  Putting this out there to see if others are seeing it as well.<p>https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1179883 <comment><USER2> This means that your browser could not verify the site's SSL certificate with the issuer's OCSP server. It could be that the cert has been revoked, or the OCSP server is broken, or even that the CA changed the location of the OCSP server (Firefox permenantly caches the server's IP address to prevent certain types of attacks, so this is a pretty bad thing for the CA to do, but it does happen.)</comment>


Show HN: Search Ninja, Power Search on the iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://searchninjaapp.com

<comment><AUTHOR> This is my first iPhone app. It aims to speed up and make searching easier and faster using different search engines on the iPhone and iPod touch.

Looking for feedback! Thanks

</comment><comment><USER2> Tried out the app as a beta tester. Looks really good.

</comment><comment><USER3> so any bugs yet.??</comment>


Editing Babies? We Need to Learn a Lot More First - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/27/opinion/genetically-edited-babies-china.html <comment><USER3> _> We should not proceed down this road until we know far more about the consequences of what we are doing._

In the present climate of pessimism it's worth reminding ourselves that we _never_ know all the consequences of what we're doing. The 'Precautionary Principle' kills people too; it merely does so in a less obvious way.

Personally I think we should be going hell for leather in identifying and eliminating genetic diseases that arise from known mutations. And we should of course expect new problems to arise down the road from these treatments.

<comment><USER4> This is a particularly bad example to make that case over, as it is hard to discern any scientific or medical justification for it, while the known risks are considerable. Frankly, it looks to me like a posterity-grabbing stunt - <USER2> attempt by the researcher to write himself into the history books.

<comment><USER5> First, the event reported on is almost certainly a scam (HIV resistance ? Seriously ?). But let's assume it's valid.

But I don't agree at all with the sentiment. Most/all current gene editing is about fixing known issues, and in nearly all cases (at the moment) it seems like the edited gene, even if it goes disastrously wrong, would still be superior to the "natural" gene. E.g. MVD, MS, ...

Should we also outlaw (and enforce) that people with known genetic defects produce babies the "natural" way ? How about people where we don't know what exactly is wrong, but clearly something is wrong (e.g. very small, bone disease, large family incidence of leukemia, ...). There's some justification for that as making those babies produces a LOT of terrible suffering, but aside from the moral problems it seems very impractical to do this as well.

A LOT of "suboptimal" humans are produced, a LOT of humans are born with a body that just ... won't work in certain ways or will die in painful ways in a decade or less. Mostly in cases where the odds of a better outcome than the parents had is zero (meaning the terrible outcome was testable beforehand or even predictable).

So I would argue there is plenty of reason to give people access altered babies. Perhaps there are indeed some bridges not to be crossed, but I would argue that we should probably still cross them a few times to see first.

That will suck badly for a few babies, but not doing it has sucked for ~0.5% of humanity for all of history (that's about the incidence of genetic defects that kill on average before adulthood, all taken together).

That means this year alone half a million babies will be born with genes so defective they will never grow up (but the vast majority of them will gain enough intelligence to make the inevitable suffering really bad before they die)

That's not counting serious defects, like Down syndrome, that won't kill but have incredibly bad consequences nevertheless. Nor is it counting people born with disabilities that will survive (e.g. blind, deaf, paralyzed (ouch), deformed, ...)

I feel like that makes it reasonable to say that we should do nothing until we have something like 10000 edited babies born. Hopefully at that point we will know what works, actually have some data, and know what doesn't work and perhaps cut that half a million figure in half or better.

That won't change the number of people who are screwed by their genes meaningfully. In fact, it ought to make it possible to lower that number by a LOT.

This is one of those cases where "doing nothing" is not the morally neutral option. Doing nothing is accepting the status quo as good enough. The status quo is that worldwide, something like 20 million children are on death row due to bad genes. 5 US states worth of children. Most of them are children with no real outward sign of any problem, who will just die, relatively suddenly (meaning from "going to school and playing" to dead takes months, no more).

<comment><USER6> This seems like a reasonable justification but there still the ethical thorn of "the child did not ask/consented to this". If science ethics can get beyond that border, then the new standard might be to seek out rare genetic defects throughout the world and attempt treatments in parallel.

<comment><USER7> I didn't consent to my current loadout of genes. How would a bundle of genes consent to be some other bundle of genes? What does that even mean?

<comment><USER6> that you didnt have a choice anyway. but theoretically these babies did. of course this is all in ideas territory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> First one to get the (nuclear|genetic|quantum decryptor| ...) superweapon wins. That's been always true. Any government who's currently protesting and proclaiming they never will partake in it are either (1) idiots or (2) lying.

<comment><USER9> Really apart from nukes which had a brief preproliferation period when have superweapons been worth it? Most of the time they have been holes to put money in and get ego out from the Paris railway gun to the megatanks of Nazi Germany.

<comment><USER10> Likewise, the large benefit being a perceived halo of invincibility. A 'superweapon' further provides political positioning to maneuver before, during, after some confrontation.

My point here is to say worth valued in effects viewed as secondary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Derek Lowe has a nice summary of the situation and why it's sloppy science.[1]

 _Multiple microinjections were needed to try to ensure that the majority of cells in the embryo were indeed affected, He said, and even so neither of the twin girls appears to be a clean job of it. One of them is mosaic for the desired 32-amino acid CCR5 deletion, and the other, if I'm reading this right, is heterozygous for a five amino acid deletion. Wonderful, a complete hack job._

[1][http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2018/11/28/aft...](http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2018/11/28/after- such-knowledge)

<comment><USER6> from reddit's biologists i got this:

> he actually doesn't report a mosaic at the CCR5delta32 locus - just a mosaic > off-target effect in a non-coding region that disappears when sequencing > tissues from the baby

and heterozygous knockouts are still knockouts so i m not sure why they are so quick to discredit the work

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder to what extent the existence and use of CRISPR to edit a baby will serve to normalize the relatively less radical practice of IVF embryo selection[1] on a wider range of criteria than we currently accept. That would also open the door to some enhancements. Many traits that parents might care about are deeply polygenetic and not amenable to the sort of editing we can currently perform but could still be selected for in this manner.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preimplantation_genetic_diagno...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preimplantation_genetic_diagnosis)

<comment><USER13> There are ethical concerns in some areas. However I have no ethical concern about knocking out the Downs Syndrome gene (though how you would do this is a different question). Likewise blind or deaf genes can go. As can high cholesterol genes.

<comment><USER12> Downs Syndrome is caused by an extra copy of a chromosome, not a specific gene variant or mutation. It's something you could avoid by embryo selection but not by conventional gene editing techniques.

<comment><USER13> Right, thus the comment that I don't know how you would edit out Downs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Here's a transcript of Jiankui He's talk in Hong Kong on his human embryo editing project: [http://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/human-genome-editing- summi...](http://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/human-genome-editing- summit/2018-hong-kong/jiankui-he-human-genome-editing/)

</comment><comment><USER6> For anyone interested , the slides from his presentation are online

[https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1T1zLTtHS2z_cgl29...](https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1T1zLTtHS2z_cgl29fN_7qJg7fLA4qlrd)

And livestream:

[https://livestream.com/NASEM/events/8464254/videos/184103056](https://livestream.com/NASEM/events/8464254/videos/184103056)

1:17:00

</comment><comment><USER15> Meanwhile China is actually _doing_ it and soaking up the investor money, interested researchers, and gaining the lead.

<comment><USER16> That's false. The city of Boston by itself leads China in CRISPR tech and innovation.

<comment><USER17> Have you noticed just how many genetic technology in US is actually made in China? Boston companies may have high profile, but all the dirty work is done in China by research outsourcing labs staffed with interns.

<comment><USER18> I don't think this is true. i work with a people who are CRISPR experts, what's happening in cambridge (not boston) is legit and local.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Kinda unrelated but I was amazed at the speed with which the webpage loaded. In the age of bloated websites, being able to start reading the content within a second of clicking was refreshing. Kudos to the NYT developers!

</comment><comment><USER20> I don't understand the inconsistent morality. I bet the author wants abortions to be legal. If the edited baby turns out to be damaged just abort it, then try again, no big deal.

</comment><comment><USER17> Human genetic engineering is a great thing! All research to advance it and bring it into practical use should be encouraged.

</comment><comment><USER21> China and India have much different problems compared to most other countries. There in lies the opportunity too.

</comment><comment><USER22> Since we are in the fallout stage now, it is important to note that this news is poorly received within China, with most organizations against it or denying ties with it.

I wrote a summary of reactions in China on my blog if anyone is interested (no paywall, no ads): [https://paraditedc.com/2018/11/26/doubts-within-china-on- gen...](https://paraditedc.com/2018/11/26/doubts-within-china-on-gene-edited- babies-story/)

</comment><comment><USER23> The Chinese realize what others refuse to, it's a race and whoever wins sets the rules. And what would they gain by waiting and losing the first-mover advantage?

The article talks about risks, they are certainly not that concerned about risks, not as long as they get the upper hand in biotech and genome manipulation.

<comment><USER24> > Dr. He's university has disavowed knowledge or support of the research and > said an inquiry is underway.

Sounds more like an individual rogue action than coordinated effort backed by vision of "the Chinese".

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> How often did Chinese researchers claim to have done something incredible, without proper proof and lack of data, and it turned out to be a total scam? This really feels like another one of these, we'll see what happens, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

<comment><USER26> But the difference here is that, to the best of my knowledge, there's nothing particularly difficult about CRISPR in humans. It's routine in other mammals and had previously been done on human embryos. The thing holding everyone back was ethical concerns and the possibilities of off-target effects, side-effects of the mutation, etc. So I'd err on the side of assuming they did do it.

<comment><USER6> Also George Church says it's "probably accurate"

[https://www.statnews.com/2018/11/26/claim-of-crispred- baby-g...](https://www.statnews.com/2018/11/26/claim-of-crispred-baby-girls- stuns-genome-editing- summit/?utm_content=buffer8fbbd&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=twitter_organic)

<comment><USER27> It's worth noting that none of the moderators or questioners at the talk expressed any skepticism that He had done it. They all took for granted He had.

<comment><USER6> do you know why? my guess is they had previous contact/correspondence throughout the pregnancy

Edit: there are slides of his presentation: [https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1T1zLTtHS2z_cgl29...](https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1T1zLTtHS2z_cgl29fN_7qJg7fLA4qlrd)

<comment><USER27> It's really not that implausible a thing to do, you know. People have been editing human embryos with CRISPR since at least 2014. And He has past experience, it seems, and had networked a fair amount and seemed to know what he was doing. George Church also has said that he's seen some of the data and it looks right to him. Combine that with all the data on the slides, and while you can debate the ethics or how useful it would be or how well it actually worked, it seems increasingly plausible that he did _something_ like what he claimed, and he's not simply faking it all.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


IPhone OS4 Users: Opt out of Apple's iAds - <AUTHOR> http://lifehacker.com/5569717/opt-out-of-targeted-iphone-iads-but-not-location-tracking

<comment><USER2> It's not an actual opt-out from iAds, but from "targeted" iAds.</comment>