Ask HN: Do I place the fan so that it blows air inwards or outwards? - <AUTHOR> I am positive that there's a huge difference between the theoretical model and reality here.
Let's assume it's 30 celsius inside the room and <20 celsius outside.
Enjoy your Monday my thermodynamics friends! <comment><USER4> Like others have joked about, it's really about where you want the air and temperature to go.

Let's say you have three fans in a computer case, one at the back, one at the front, and one on top of the CPU. If they all blow out of the case, then you've basically created a negative air pressure zone, and you will be sucking air through the vent holes elsewhere, and through any gaps in the case. This may have effects for where the dust is taken in.

If all of them blow into the case from the outside, you've created basically a high pressure zone, and air will be taken from the room and pushed out through the same cracks and vent holes elsewhere.

A fan if it's pushing against high pressure will inherently push less air because it's pushing against air that isn't moving as well. A fan that is trying to pull air out can also become inefficient if it is working hard to suck air in to eventually push out. Therefore it's best to have matching airflow - what you push out, you should try to also pull in somewhere else in more or less an equal CFM (cubic feet / minute).

For a room, it's best to have one area that is your intake and the other side of the room be the exhaust. This way you aren't just exhausting air you just pulled in. If you just have one fan, I suggest blowing out, which will draw air in from other spaces, such as under the door, because of the negative air pressure by pushing air out.

(I've worked these problems with indoor gardens and HVAC systems, where there's a lot higher CFM fans and spaces, but the theory is basically the same)

<comment><USER5> Just to add, for computer cases, you want it to be a high pressure zone because intake fans generally have filters in front to catch the dust before it gets into the case. Negative pressure means dust gets sucked in from the cracks.

<comment><USER6> Same applies for house fans -- you want the intake fan to be slightly stronger than the exhaust fan. Else the negative pressure will draw outside air in through cracks and all the fun smells that come from those places.

(I have a combination energy recovery ventilator/HEPA filter that has has a restriction filter on its exhaust for this reason. Else it would just suck crappy air in from the basement instead of fresh air through the filter.)

If you have to choose one, choose an intake fan for this reason. Best if you can leave another window slightly ajar.

<comment><USER7> What is the make/model of your ERV?

<comment><USER6> It's a window unit: [http://www.purifresh.com/erv.html](http://www.purifresh.com/erv.html) It's the only such kind I could find when we were in the market a few years ago. (Was renting a place with mold issues.) Works well for a single room. It's wonderful to pull fresh air in during the winter.

We also have its accompanying HEPA unit: [http://www.purifresh.com/cleanroom.html](http://www.purifresh.com/cleanroom.html) They can be linked (as [http://www.purifresh.com/freshairsystem.html](http://www.purifresh.com/freshairsystem.html)) or used separately. (Apparently this is out-of-stock and being redesigned.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My 4rd grade teacher was convinced of the science of using two fans to cool off the classroom: one blowing cool air into the classroom from the hallway and one fan blowing hot air out of the classroom through a window. The kids that sat near the fan blowing in the room from the hallway were quite content, but the kids by the window were always complaining and they would secretly turn the fan in the window around so it was also blowing in. This would infuriate our teacher when he would discover it and he would claim that the reason the classroom is hot is because the fans were no longer arranged to create air movement through the classroom. But the window kids weren't buying it.

So if sweaty 4th graders are any indication, have the fans blow on you regardless of whatever air movement is supposed to be made.

<comment><USER9> If the goal is to make the room cooler, your teacher is right. If the goal is to make the students cooler, then the 4th graders are right. 4th graders sweat, and the fan will cause convective cooling of the 4th graders.

<comment><USER10> This is a concept often poorly understood in basic cooling design. Even without sweat, if your AC vent is blowing directly on you the temperature it is at needs to be vastly different than that of air being using to more actively cool the entire room.

This is often a key difference between Car and Room AC systems.

There's also a surprising gradient based on how consistent the temperature is top to bottom (and you get into trouble with this on reverse cycle AC systems)

And lastly it's easy to ignore radiant heat from both walls/ceilings as well as even large monitors.

It all plays in together.

<comment><USER11> > This is a concept often poorly understood in basic cooling design.

Really? You'd think windchill is a well-understood concept.

<comment><USER10> When it comes to basic price central ducted HVAC system installation you'd be surprised! At least in Australia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If this is because you want to feel cooler, place the fan so it blows cool air inwards _onto you_. You'll get far more benefit from having air blown on you than you will from just dropping the ambient temperature around you.

<comment><USER13> Fans -> cool human via wind-chill [1]

Air conditioning -> cool human by cooling environment

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

<comment><USER14> You can also use fans to cool the environment, trading hot inside air for cooler outside air. For example [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole- house_fan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole-house_fan)

<comment><USER15> Whole house fans are great. They cool the house, clear out the 150º air radiating from the attic, and also take a lot less energy than air- conditioners. I use both, but my air-conditioner runs a lot less since I installed the attic fan.

<comment><USER12> Same. Well, it's an evaporative air conditioning unit but 90% of the time we don't turn on the evap function (which is only really useful on days which are very dry and not too hot) but just run it as a fan in the evenings. Blows all the hot air out of the house and replaces it with cool night air in minutes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There is a far bigger problem than thermodynamics in play, namely: dust. Not just in computer cases: it also applies to places like photography darkrooms. The usual pattern of placing a single blowing-out fan in a ventilation duct is all wrong: it pulls air in from the cracks in doors and windows. The dust- proof way is to make the fan pump the air _into_ the room, but also install a HEPA filter on the air intake pipe/fan.

<comment><USER17> This isn't exactly wrong, but ignores the fact that the primary purpose of a fan in a darkroom isn't to clear dust, but extract chemical fumes. You probably want fumes pumped directly outside, not back through the gaps in the door into the general building.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Everyone seems to be assuming that you have a big fan which actually changes the air flow in the whole room in a major way. If that's the case, great, put it any way you like - it doesn't matter.

For people like me, who use a cheap fan in the summer. Put it in front of you facing towards you. You will feel cooler.

If you are still interested in CFD I can give you a hand, but this is answer we are going to get from it anyway.

<comment><USER19> I agree with you - it's similar to the principle of a space heater in the winter. You point it at yourself and heat only a small zone. In the summer, point the fan at yourself and use evaporative cooling to cool just a small zone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Assumes small room with only one window and can't open anything else: Place the fan in the lower part of the window blowing down inwards. Sucks in air in bottom half, warm air goes out above the fan.

<comment><USER21> You are answering a different question. To put it in your terms, do you think your solution is more efficient than putting fan in upper part sucking the air out, and what's your reasoning?

<comment><USER20> Well, it's more efficient to place something on the windowsill than to hang a rotating fan from the upper part of the window, that will just move around and most likely blow downwards, obstructing the airflow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> When I had an apartment with several rooms and non-working air conditioning, what I did was to open a window near the front of the apartment, in the dining room, and set up a large fan to blow out the window. Then I would open a window in my bedroom, at the opposite end of the apartment, to provide inflow. This was very effective at reducing the summer inside temperature to that of the outside at night, where the purported "heat pump" built in did essentially nothing.

The only issue was that it also sucked rain and pollen in as well.

</comment><comment><USER23> I assume you want to move the cold air in and the warm air out. How to best achieve that completely depends on the shape of your room and the holes to the outside. You should probably do some computational fluid dynamics on a model of your place to see which blowing direction works better. It probably works best if you have separate inlets and outlets for the air that are maximally far apart, like on the ceiling and in the floor.

<comment><USER24> Can you recommend any specific software? I'd finally have a reason for the 3d-scanner in my phone... (getting the model at a suitable resolution of <3cm voxel-cube size to not have to model it all from hand)

<comment><USER25> Overkill for the hobbyist, but ANSYS products like Fluent and CFX are what the professionals use. Quite pricey though.

<comment><USER24> Yeah, if I had the money for such software, I wouldn't need to ask. I'll assume you don't know any affordable substitute.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> To cool summer bedrooms, blow the air out the kitchen window, and open the bedroom window. This will draw cool night air in the bedroom window. You may be sweating at 7 PM but you might need a blanket at 1 AM. This works brilliantly. And putting the fan out the kitchen window means the bedroom is quieter.

To heat winter rooms that have an underpowered radiator, blow the fan onto the radiator. The job of heating the room is the same as cooling the radiator. This works very well but the room downstream (on the steam line) will be getting less heat. In practice, that was the neighbor's apartment. The freezing neighbors complained to the landlord who eventually tracked it down to my place. Vigorous discussions ensued.

I also discovered that a HEPA filtration unit, even sitting on the floor, helped my allergies a lot. It was not cheap, but when I find my nose running again, it means that something had turned off the filter. For years I had thought that HEPA was a scam. Not so.

</comment><comment><USER27> Are you trying to cool yourself, cool a room, or cool the whole house? Can you experiment and find out what works for you?

Cooling the entire house is an expensive proposition if you're just trying to get to sleep in one room.

</comment><comment><USER28> Fans are more efficient at pulling air out than pushing air in. So if you don't want to waste energy put all the obstacles - filters, rooms, etc - <USER2> the 'in' side and keep the exhaust as clear as possible

</comment><comment><USER29> I like to think of it like emptying a bottle - if there's only a small hole it goes glug-glug, as occasionally air forces its way into the bottle.

It's the same with air - there has to be a good way to get cold air in and hot air out with minimal turbulence from the two flows.

I think you're better off blowing cold air in (there's no such thing really as 'sucking' in physics), as attempting to blow hot air out doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be replaced with cold air from the outside, rather than warmer air elsewhere in the building.

</comment><comment><USER30> Very technically, it is better to have the fan IN the room blowing OUTSIDE through a large opening. The air accelerated by the fan accelerates more air and that air goes outside. It mixes with the outside air so even if some of it goes back to the room it will already be cooler.

If you have fan in the window blowing into the room it has less potential to multiply the air it takes, it will typically be also already IN the room itself which will greatly decrease its efficiency.

On the other hand if your goal is to cool yourself when sitting at the des it is generally better to place your fan blowing in, this means you can direct the flow of air to wherever you want. This means you can direct it at your desk to cool yourself by just the air movement alone. When you place your fan blowing outside you loose that ability. Blowing the air at you means you can cool yourself even if the air temperature outside is higher than inside!

If your goal is to move as much air through your room then you need to take into consideration the following:

\- do you have other openings in the room (like doors... huh)? \- can you have flow of air through the building -- typically there will be pressure difference between two sides of building unless the air is completely still

If you can have your door and the window open, observe the direction of air already naturally flowing. Then put your fan so that it blows with already moving air, for maximum efficiency.

</comment><comment><USER31> We have a 2 story house where the bottom story is a daylight basement. When it gets hot, it usually stays pretty cool downstairs, so we hang down there during the day. In the evening, as soon as it's cooler outside than upstairs inside, we open the back door, both downstairs and upstairs, and turn on a high powered fan blowing air up the stairs... It is really effective at cooling the house.

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm convinced that outwards is the most effective in this scenario:

Open your bedroom windows on a cool spring/summer night. On the opposite end of the house, put a fan in a window blowing outwards. This cools the entire house, giving your bedroom the freshest air. In the morning, close all the windows. This leaves the house cooled and drastically reduces your A/C usage.

Blowing inward doesn't have the same effect of pulling air through the whole house.

</comment><comment><USER15> I usually place the fan so it faces outside. I figure out which way the wind is blowing, open two windows on opposite ends of the room/house that correspond with the wind direction, and then place the fan, facing out, on the downwind end of the room/house. My thinking is that the wind will push itself into the house through the fan-less open window, but that it will then lose momentum. Then, the fan on the downwind side of the house will help pull the air back out of the house, creating circulation that doesn't have to fight against the wind.

Recently, I bought a whole-house attic fan. Now, I open a window on the upwind side of the house and turn on the attic fan, which is enough to suck a toupee off someone's head. The attic fan both circulates cooler air and also clears out the hot air built up in the attic, which helps a lot.

</comment><comment><USER33> Let's further assume that I'd rather have the room cooler than 30C. Also, regardless of which direction the fan will blow, there also needs to be another place for air to move into and out of the room. So let's also assume that the window is the only opening, but the fan doesn't fill the opening produced by raising the window. One more assumption: I can point the fan with freedom in most any direction once it's placed.

I believe I'd pull the cooler air into the room by having the air blow in. I might also point the fan up and away from the other side of the window (up because I want to disturb/displace the warm air higher in the room; away from the non-fan side because I don't want my cool air to be pushed right back out.)

I don't want to cool the warmer air, I want to replace it with cooler air.

</comment><comment><USER34> The direction doesn't matter nearly as much as blowing the fan through a large-ish opening.

You want the air from the fan to accelerate other air on the way out/in. This is the same principle as turbofan engines, in which a higher bypass ratio (bigger fan) attached to the same fuel burning jet core is more efficient.

Why? Because the relationship between velocity and volume is not linear. Takes more energy to move the same amount of air the faster you accelerate it.

So ideally you want to position the fan in a large opening far enough back that the fast moving air can get a bunch of other air moving as well. Trade the high velocity fan air for a much higher volume.

</comment><comment><USER35> Growing up, we had no air conditioning. Instead, we had 2 fans upstairs, blowing out two different windows. In this way, 3 rooms all got air sucked in the windows. (We shut the downstairs windows, since no one slept there.)

<comment><USER36> Actually the way to do it is to have the upstairs fans blowing out the windows, then the downstairs window open. This is more effective at night when the outside temperature has dropped and the house is still hot. Hot air rises, so you will get cool air pulled in. This is how whole house/attic fans work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> In your scenario, inward. You are looking to achieve the windchill effect. Maximizing this with evaporative cooling would be ideal. You'll need a fluid cooling system that seeps liquid to the surface for this..

</comment><comment><USER38> If you blow air in, you're sucking bugs in and blowing air out of your central air filters. If you blow air out the window, fewer bugs. That's enough to make me not care about the thermodynamic answer.

<comment><USER39> This assumes there are enough bugs to be a problem. Some places this isn't the case. Also more likely to have bugs at lower floors of buildings as they tend to hang around trees and plants.

<comment><USER28> I'd worry more about dust. In a big city, just leaving windows quarter-opened for a week results in everything covered with a visible layer of dust and finely-ground rubber

<comment><USER40> Assuming you're either near a big road, or your city has a major problem with air pollution. I'm near a sort-of important road in a German city and I don't observe anything of this magnitude even though my windows are fully opened quite regularly. (Air pollution is not _that_ bad in my city. Many other German cities are considering driving bans.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> So far I've managed without fans because my home has one side in the shade and one side in the sun so I just create a draft and pull all the blindes down to avoid direct sunlight.

Being a Swedish summer, maybe around july august I'll need to take the fan out of storage and then it's just to get a draft on myself. Not to move any air around. The draft between the two sides of my home does that better.

</comment><comment><USER42> Assuming you want to cool down the room and there is 1 window:

Open the window in the room and open the door to the room. Ideally open a window somewhere else in the building and make sure there is a potential airflow from that other window to the one in your room.

Place the fan in the window of the room you want to cool down and let it blow outwards. Alternatively you can place the fan in the same way in that other window you opened.

</comment><comment><USER43> Use all available upper exhaust vents.

I'm not the top floor in the corner room which is the hottest room. The entire unit is per floor is much warmer than any other level. The best non-AC cooling I've been able to achieve is to run the bathroom fans with the bathroom windows closed. It pushes out warm air near the ceiling and draws in cooler air from windows and lower parts.

</comment><comment><USER44> Too many assumptions to answer precisely. Chances are you'll feel cooler if the fan is blowing inwards because that will help your body reduce its temperature via evaporation of perspiration.

There are much more complex cooling setups that can be achieved that utilise outward-blowing fans though, but a single fan can't will cool _you_ faster if it is blowing onto you.

</comment><comment><USER45> Here is a DIY project for an air-conditioner, using a fan:

[http://www.thegoodsurvivalist.com/youll-be-incredibly- surpri...](http://www.thegoodsurvivalist.com/youll-be-incredibly-surprised-at- how-cool-this-diy-poor-mans-air-conditioner-will-keep-your-car-camper-tent-or- room-step-by-step-instructions-and-proof-that-it-works/)

<comment><USER46> The usefulness of a swarp cooler depends heavily on ambient humidity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> In my computer setups, I place three intake fans each on both the front and bottom of the case and then place two exhaust fans each on the top and back. Again (see my other post), the idea is to maintain the natural airflow. Since heat rises, I want my exhaust fans to assist with that natural flow rather than fight against it.

</comment><comment><USER47> For computer cases, take in account dust. You can use dust filters on the intake, and create positive pressure in the case. So you'd need more air blowing in, and less blowing out in order for dust not to accumulate inside (with negative pressure, dust will start actively sneaking in through holes in the case).

</comment><comment><USER48> A bit of googling and a good dose of intuition leads me to think that the output area of a fan cools faster than the input. Reason being that air is more likely to be turbulent after a foil, and turbulent air transfers heat better.

On the other hand, if the purpose is to express, say, smell, blowing the smell out is the better solution.

</comment><comment><USER49> Another design input:

If there's lots of humidity inside the room you'd probably prefer negative pressure in the room.

Reason: positive pressure can pressure moist air through walls and ceilings and when it hits the cold air on the other side of the insulation it condenses in thr construction and causes rot (or corrosion).

</comment><comment><USER50> In to room, via nice HEPA filter, for cleanliness.

Ignoring that, In to the room. Fan can not create much vacuum but can create much pressure.

Let me give you my most handy example. Imagine a queue. A push can cascade from last person to first person, but a pull can only be apply to last person.

Hence, pressurise the cabin.

</comment><comment><USER51> The datagenetics blog has a pretty deep dive into this question! [http://datagenetics.com/blog/july32015/index.html](http://datagenetics.com/blog/july32015/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER52> While we're on the subject, one thing that I never understood is why fans are directly on top of the heatsink instead of floating a centimeter above it, allowing the air to flow more easily, and also make less noise.

</comment><comment><USER53> Can I pose a similar question? I have a cieling fan in my conservatory that can blow up or down. Which way is better? It is pretty close to the cieling if that matters.

<comment><USER54> When we fitted a ceiling fan in our living room, the instructions stated that in summer, it was best to have it blowing upwards (sucking air up from floor level) because that air would be cooler, and in winter from the same principle, you could blow warmer air down onto the room occupants.

In practise it didn't work that well - the temperature difference in a couple of metres of air space (in a single average-height room) is pretty minimal. We left the fan blowing downwards to use the windchill effect in summer - <USER3> worked well enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I'm surprised nobody posted this:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjYli6itP38](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjYli6itP38)

<comment><USER56> Also the follow-up: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLX54ounENY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLX54ounENY) \-- 1 Year Airflow Experiment - The Stunning Conclusion

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Fans don't really cool, they just move air around. Thus you'd want to blow the 30 degree air toward the 20 degree air to decrease the temp inside the room.

</comment><comment><USER58> If it's placed under the ceiling - to blow outward because warmer air rises up and would be leaving the room through that opening if there were no fan.

</comment><comment><USER59> Sounds like a question for Randall Munroe.

</comment><comment><USER60> I say this with love, but... Man, I cannot _wait_ until this guy[1] tears into this thread.

"Hacker News trips over themselves to invent HVAC basics from first principles"

[1] - [http://n-gate.com/hackernews/](http://n-gate.com/hackernews/)

<comment><USER61> Fun site. I had to open in incognito as it seems to block HN traffic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Out.

</comment><comment><USER63> is there a breeze? if air is moving either in or out unaided then the answer is to assist that air flow.

</comment><comment><USER64> Fans achieve two effects: _ventilation_ (air exchange between two voids) and _circulation_ (air distribution within a void). The first will achieve the goal of replacing a fluid volume with another (hotter/colder), but may not evenly mix the fluid within the conditioned volume.

Overpressures tend to prduce airstreamss or turbulence downstream, but underpressures _don 't_ induce much flow beyond the immediate orifice. Unless convection, ducting and venting can reliably create flow patterns, blowing air _in_ to a conditioned space is a better option thansucking ot out, though if you want to control for emissions (say, filtering exhaust), you might want to combile both.

There's a classic physics experiment showing what happens when you run a water sprinkler, the kind with a spinning arm and one or more jets, backwards (sucking rather than blowing), and hhow it doesn't spin. Feynman discusses this in a story.

The fan(s) themselves contribut some additional heat to the space, but this is fairly negligible, especially relative to circulation effects.

If the heat source is external (e.g., incident sunlight), then natural airflow patterns which might draw air through a hotter chamber (say, an attic or other roof void) could have the opposit of the intended effect. It's key to check overall circulatory flow.

And if internal systems, or people, have significant evaaporative or similar cooling mechanisms, increased internal circulation will greatly improve cooling capacity.

Forced inflow may increase dust or other factors, if not filtered.

TL;DR: If you've only one option, I'd blow in rather than suck out. You might want to consider overall airflow, circulation, and heat distribution or souces (and sinks) within the void. Blowing _onto_ rather than _away from_ the primary heat source (in a cooling scenario) is likely best. If heat sources are external, exhaust from the top of the void is optimal.

Intakes should generally be low, exhausts high (for coolng).

For a large enough and complex enough (multiple chambers, zone, multiple heat sources, significant convection effects, dead zones), you would likely want a combination of intake, circulation, and exhaust fans, though I'd prioritise them in that order.

Disclaimer: I'm a space alien cat, not a fluid thermodynamics engineer.

This questtion has also appeared elsewhere:

[https://superuser.com/questions/192920/should-case-fans- blow...](https://superuser.com/questions/192920/should-case-fans-blow-air- into-or-out-of-the-case)

[https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/71620/on-a- hot-d...](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/71620/on-a-hot-day-when- its-cooler-outside-than-in-is-it-better-to-put-a-fan-in-an)

</comment><comment><USER65> Depends on your goal.

Do you want to:

1) Cool down your room?

2) Warm up the outdoors?

3) Warm your room further?

<comment><USER66> Cooling down your room and warming up the outdoors is the same thing, if it's a purely mechanical problem, because the energy to warm up the outdoors has to come from somewhere and the room is the only other entity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> I am a man don't need a fan.

</comment><comment><USER68> Most replies intelligently include open windows. Running an electric fan in a closed room with unopened or no windows may prove fatal and can lead to irreversible Fan Death. It's not a good way to go.

</comment><comment><USER69> Well it depends on the heigth to floor - call that htf, in which direction the fan will work effeciently. Basically you have a flow of cold air inwards at ground level and a flow of hot air outwards at roof level. So the best solution would be to support the hot outflow, in the mid-layer, and let thermodynamics at the windows do the work.</comment>


Monarch butterfly decline linked to spread of GM crops - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/monarch-butterfly-decline-linked-to-spread-of-gm-crops-1.2665131 <comment><USER2> To clarify the headline: the article doesn't suggest that this is a direct consequence of the GM crops themselves, but rather than the adoption of herbicide-resistant GM crops has led to much higher use of herbicides, killing non-GM plants such as milkweed that would previously have also lived in the fields and which are important to the Monarch's reproduction.

<comment><USER3> The increased use of chemicals is one of the strongest arguments against GMO, along with the power it grants to GMO suppliers.

<comment><USER4> The increased use of chemicals is the strongest argument against _the increased use of those chemicals_. If you want to regulate something, regulate that thing instead of killing off the technology that enabled it. GMOs in particular have the potential to dramatically help humanity, and it would be a huge mistake to cripple them as an alternative to banning the pesticides directly.

The internet enables the propagation of child porn. I don't think that's a compelling argument against the internet.

<comment><USER5> I think you're right, but just to play Devil's advocate: Isn't it sometimes more practically and politically feasible to kill off the technology that enables the thing rather than to regulate the thing?

<comment><USER4> I suppose sometimes it might be, but then the question is whether it was worth it. On GMOs particularly, there are a ton of malnutrition problems we could potentially solve with this technology, and sacrificing that for political expediency does not seem reasonable.

Edit: And we've only begun to scratch the surface of what GMO is capable of; even if banning it were worth it now, what future applications are we preventing? It would be like deciding the internet wasn't worth the child porn it facilitated, but _in 1996_ (certainly banning the internet then would be simpler and more expedient that trying to figure out how to monitor it for that kind of thing). So more generally: killing technology because of it can be misused destroys not just its current utility but all sorts of unimaginable future potential. So the bar for being worth it should be set very high.

<comment><USER3> I think there is a difference between "let's experiment with it" and "let's make plenty of Roundup-resistant GMOs so that we can put even more junk in the groundwater on a large scale".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > _Farmers have been increasingly planting corn and soybeans resistant to > herbicides, and then applying those herbicides liberally on their fields. > That kills off plants between the rows of crops that aren 't resistant, such > as milkweed... Because milkweed is poisonous to humans and to grazing > animals, it's considered a noxious weed in many jurisdictions and is removed > as such._

Humans want less milkweed around them. It competes with the crops we want for space and nutrients, or poisons us and our animals. But we also want more monarch butterflies, which need milkweed to reproduce.

We could encourage planting milkweed away from people. Manually this would be challenging. A scalable solution is engineering an ever-so-slightly sturdier variety of milkweed. This could be allowed to grow between rows of corn, or perhaps in arid or rocky habitats people aren't (yet) bothered with. Alternatively, we could encourage monarch butterflies to pick a less troublesome partner.

<comment><USER7> > Humans want less milkweed around them. It competes with the crops we want > for space and nutrients, or poisons us and our animals.

Not only is milkweed not poisonous, it's actually a delicious vegetable. It tastes like a cross between asparagus and broccoli.

<comment><USER8> This is profoundly untrue, at least for milkweed _sensu lato_

Most _Asclepias_ species contain cardiac glycosides and can be highly poisonous. Milkweed extracts were spread on arrow tips by some Native American groups to more quickly bring down game when hunting. Some species have also been used as rat poison. Consumption can lead to serious heart problems due to disruption of the calcium gradient across cell membranes.

<comment><USER7> Fair enough, I only meant common milkweed. But even for the edible species only certain parts are edible, and only at certain times of year anyway. (As with many/most of the plants we eat.)

<comment><USER8> Aha, but here's the problem: if you live on the east coast (or just east of the Rockies) in the USA, you probably are referring to _Asclepias syriaca_ , but "common milkweed" on the west coast could be a different species, perhaps _Asclepias californica_. If you live in Asia or South America, it would be other species.

I guess all I'm saying is be careful :) The majority of milkweeds, heck, the majority of "common milkweeds" are poisonous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I live a mile from one of CA's largest monarch groves in Pismo Beach (also grew up here) [0]. As a child, we'd go to the grove throughout the winter (that's when they migrate here). There were so many monarchs entire trees were orange and you literally had to watch every step so you didn't step on them.

Since moving back here in 2010, it's pretty sad. You have to actually look hard to find them. Looking at the historical numbers [1], it seems to be 1/10th of what it was in the 80s/90s. I always assumed there was some environmental cause–haven't heard the GM theory before.

[0] [http://www.monarchbutterfly.org](http://www.monarchbutterfly.org)

[1] [http://www.monarchbutterfly.org/historical- counts/](http://www.monarchbutterfly.org/historical-counts/)

</comment><comment><USER10> The suggestion that GM crops are causing the problem is absurd. The crop is simply a tool that we are using to allow us to kill off milkweed. Although I am against giving GMO suppliers too much power over farmers the idea that this makes GMOs dangerous or evil is just sensationalism.

</comment><comment><USER11> If you want to read good-faith reporting on GM crops, this is by far the best stuff out there: [http://grist.org/series/panic-free- gmos/](http://grist.org/series/panic-free-gmos/)

</comment><comment><USER12> Creatures that visit many plants are acutely sensitive to chemical applications. There is no reason save fearmongering to blame GMOs for a decline in a migratory, multiple-plant-visiting insect. Might as well hang it on global warming (which actually has some chance of being the true cause).</comment>


Facebook app platform developer tools down already for more than 24h - <AUTHOR> http://www.facebook.com/developers/createapp.php

<comment><AUTHOR> The bug tracker registration also doesn't work... More desperate people can be found from here [http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=20531316728&topic=...](http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=20531316728&topic=33180&post=144320)</comment>


Show HN: NuronLabs – A Worldwide Neural Layer - <AUTHOR> http://www.nuronlabs.com <comment><USER2> It's probably me, but the (great looking) web-site gave me no idea what the use-case of nuronlabs is. Naming a problem that nuronlab solves (and ideally showing how this is done) would be helpful.</comment>


PEP 594 – Removing dead batteries from the standard library - <AUTHOR> https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0594/ <comment><USER2> so good to see this getting attention. Wish they could clean up fileinput, getopt, optparse, and argparse though. there should be one clear, obvious, way to do command line args.</comment>


US Startups Are Piling on Debt - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-19/u-s-startups-are-piling-on-debt <comment><AUTHOR> '"Folks don't want to do down rounds or flat rounds," says Haim Zaltzman, a partner at law firm Latham & Watkins LLP, which has handled well over 100 such loan transactions so far this year. "Debt allows you to get around that."'

However, that doesn't really address/solve the problem as to why they need to take a down round.</comment>


The Superbook: Turn your smartphone into a laptop for $99 - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andromium/the-superbook-turn-your-smartphone-into-a-laptop-f <comment><USER2> Well not the first of its kind. Unclear how this one exactly works. Is it Micro HDMI over the USB-OTG or just a socket over usb and another SoC in the Flapbook?

EDIT: Ah displaylink, I can see it getting choppy with older phones.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wish this existed for iPhone.</comment>


Slate's Newly Unionized Writers and Editors Give OK to Strike - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-11/slate-s-newly-unionized-writers-and-editors-give-ok-to-strike <comment><USER2> Interested to see how this plays out.

I'm a Slate Plus member, mainly for the extra segment on the Slate Political Gabfest. Ironically, none of the three hosts of that show have worked at Slate in years, which is probably a large part of what makes it enjoyable.

For reasons I'd be hard-pressed to explain, I listen to a number of other Slate podcasts, even though I often find them irritating. Most (but not all) Slate writers and hosts come across less like thoughtful journalists or experts in their field, and more like college bloggers writing an angry screed about how everything in the world is terrible.

There are a few exceptions, but not many. And I do enjoy hearing from the _actual experts_ they have on the various podcasts.

Kind of looking forward to watching this group of clowns destroy their own jobs.

<comment><USER3> > _like college bloggers writing an angry screed about how everything in the > world is terrible._

In my country we seem to have this phenomenon for most of the established media, even more so with newer news outlets.

I think of this as a problem for our society, because the repercussions from the 'fourth-column' becoming this way are spilling over to the other three columns: E.g. once clearly differential political parties reshape their programs to align with what journalists want, lest for diminishing their attack surface. The result is a parliament with parties distinguishable by name only.

That creates huge vacuums in voter representation. Voters then turn to alternative news sources and political parties, which by their nature are more prone to be filled with/usurped by fringe extremists.

That in return leaves the repelled voters with increased attack surface and thus even less chance to participate in the democratic process, making them feel disenfranchised and ultimately not caring for what the "mainstream" says - even if it is good, correct and in their interest.

Edit: Regarding the strike itself, I'm not aware of the situation at Slate, but in general striking for me is an important tool of representation as well.

<comment><USER4> $10 you're talking about Germany

<comment><USER3> That's one Oktoberfest Maß for you ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Seems reasonable. Unionism hasn't historically been very successful outside of monopolistic industries but digital media seems a good place to experiment.

Worst case it'll bankrupt a company that won't really be missed. Best case we find a sustainable model for digital media. If I were a betting hominid, I'd say the former is more likely than the latter but you never know.

<comment><USER6> Oh the former is definitely more likely in the long run and I don't think anyone really minds.

In the short term I suspect they won't strike at all. NYC and DC rents are expensive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Imagine how much us tech workers could make in a union

Can we deduct union dues? That 10% isnt looking too bad on a 200k comp package

The striking sounds exhausting though

<comment><USER8> Maybe we could strike from home on slack

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm very much irritated by how opposed HN seems to be to unions existing.

Not that I'm surprised at all. The "Hacker" in "Hacker News" never included the anticapitalist and anarchist tendencies that are normally associated with "Hacker" in Europe/Germany. But what should one expect from a site run by a VC fund.

<comment><USER10> There are plenty of those anarchist and anticapitalist types around, though. Watching the two groups fight it out is part of the fun of being here.

<comment><USER9> Honestly I should really just block comment pages on HN. They never fail to disappoint me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There is no way unionized writers/editors are going to be impartial in their political media coverage, given all of their leverage hinges on laws restricting the contracting rights of their employer.

<comment><USER12> None of their leverage hinges on laws. Laws are a caching layer for rights, which are inalienable. Their leverage hinges on a capacity to organize one another and express their interests.

<comment><USER13> > rights, which are inalienable

Says who?

<comment><USER14> John Locke.

<comment><USER15> His argument for _why_ they're inalienable is completely dependent on the existence of (a particular conception of) God. I found reading the Second Treatise of Government an eye-opening experience for this reason.

If we want an argument for the inalienability of natural/human rights that works in a society with religious pluralism, I fear we'll need to look again.

<comment><USER16> This is a fundamental ethical problem. Science and logic can't demonstrate that rape and murder, just to give a couple examples, are wrong. In fact science tells us that rape and murder are hunky-dory if they increase biological fitness.

Any meaningful system of ethics is characteristically normative, which means it rests on authority; divine authority is the highest form of authority that can be thought of.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Heatmap of searches for public transport per nationality - <AUTHOR> http://www.rome2rio.com/heatmap <comment><USER2> Could someone explain the color coding to me? I don't get it. What's the difference between the various grey shades & colour shades?</comment>


How Journalists Data-Mined the Wikileaks Docs - <AUTHOR> http://curiositycounts.com/post/6455747293/jonathan-stray-of-the-associated-press-on

<comment><USER2> Reposted from Jonathan Stray's blog here: [http://jonathanstray.com/investigating-thousands-or- millions...](http://jonathanstray.com/investigating-thousands-or-millions-of- documents-by-visualizing-clusters)</comment>


Ask HN: How much time you spend on digital devices ( PC + tablet + phone)?  - <AUTHOR>

How do you keep off from getting tired ? What you do for relaxation ? <comment><USER2> I would consider my use to be pretty moderate, probably around 9-10 hours. I'll bet you also find a lot more people using these devices for work, reading and information here than you would find in a general public cross section as well though.

</comment><comment><USER3> Since this is HN, I would guess most people will respond similarly to me: A LOT. If you are looking for a number, I would say about 12 hours a day.</comment>


Ask HN: Where Is the C Community? - <AUTHOR> Are there any centralized places that they tend to aggregate or organize? I'm looking for places to learn more modern practices of C. I see a few books out there, but they seem to have mixed reviews at best. <comment><USER2> C is interesting as a language in being almost completely dependent on the system in which it is embedded. Many other languages are expected to provide facilities to the programmers which c leaves to the operating system. The result is that c is a very simple language, and very little discussion is needed regarding the particulars of the language. The communities using c that form tend instead to focus on the systems in use. You will find separate communities using c for kernel programming, embedded systems, and for higher level programs. If you are looking for a community then you should identify what you would like to do with c, and find a community specific to that.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is an excellent and informative point. Bioinformatics is the subgroup that I am interested in for C, but that already tends to be pretty niche. The next best thing are the 'tool builders', of other command line tools. I've been enjoying reading the BSD utilities source code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If I understand you correctly, there is one in UK - Association of C and C++ programmers association ([https://www.accu.org/](https://www.accu.org/))

</comment><comment><USER4> Most C developers I have met are not very active online. Talking about their work in person is also a mixed bag. Maybe they just don't like talking about it.</comment>


Ask HN: Would you use (contribute to) a Yellow Page-like API? - <AUTHOR>

Would you use an API that gives you data about businesses (location, type, revenue, employees etc...)  around a provided location? <comment><USER2> It would be great if there was an API such as this. I was looking into doing a Google Maps mash-up a few years ago for UK schools, hospitals, shops etc. But decided against it because getting all the data would have been difficult and would probably have cost me a large sum of cash. So yes, I would certainly be interested in using such an an API.

How would you expect people to contribute?

</comment><comment><USER3> Our company has already built this interface on a query response method... www.targusinfo.com

</comment><comment><USER4> Our company has already built this interface on a query response method... www.targusinfo.com</comment>


Mobile Banking App has a Problem (and I'm not sure anyone knows about it) - <AUTHOR> https://towardsdatascience.com/your-mobile-banking-app-has-a-problem-c2fe006e76c7 <comment><USER2> Excellent knowledge. Why does it seem that consumers need to be experts in every field to trust anything anymore.

I've been dealing with an insurance problem and facing this same faceless, not our mistake. This isn't a regular insurance dispute, this is where the company actually shows I have a totally different policy then my employer sold me.</comment>


Manipulating the Alpha Level Cannot Cure Significance Testing - <AUTHOR> https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00699/full <comment><USER2> We rely on science as presented by the media to inform us about everything from what we should eat to how our surroundings influence our behaviour. It is a pervasive cargo cult - no article is considered credible without vague cherry picked references. The whole pop-science/self-help book industry must be worth billions.

Yet we hear about p-hacking and replication crises and seem to adopt an attitude of sweeping inconveniences under the rug.

I don't know enough stats to fully understand the article. Can anyone explain why we should not consider the claims of a huge body of scientific work that have relied on these statistical methods for over 50 years to be invalid?

<comment><USER3> NHST was always intended to provide evidence within a corpus of replicated research. institutionalized careerism creates disincentives for science to work that way in practice.

it's actually consistent with the NHST paradigm to treat any given result with skepticism; the degree of skepticism depends on many things, some of which are statistical and some of which are domain-specific. but skepticism is not the same as assuming invalidity. imperfect experiments are still (expensive) evidence for something.

imo, what you should reject entirely are media reports (usually based on somebody's PR team) that try to tell you to do anything based on one study or the work of a single lab.</comment></comment>


Mega Millions Lottery - <AUTHOR>

Do Entrepreneurs play Lottery? If yes. Why? If no. Why? <comment><USER2> Statistically you have a higher chance of getting struck by lightning, dating a supermodel, dying in a plane crash, and even being sentenced to death row AND then being pardoned than you do of winning the Mega Million.

Lotteries are a regressive (although optional) tax that tend to attract disproportionately high numbers of people who shouldn't be wasting their money on them. I'm not talking about buying one ticket, but plenty of people drop huge portions of their paychecks on them. Furthermore many lottery winners tend to go bankrupt extremely quickly due to no concept of how to manage their spending.

That said it's a double edged sword, since many states are able to use their lottery revenues to offer scholarships or other funding to help make up for greatly reduced budgets. I'm surprised that more states haven't gone straight up Nevada and legalized everything when you consider just how many are suffering.

</comment><comment><USER3> At ~500 million. Yes. What's a few dollars for the dream of crazy money? But normally, no.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yup, it's called making iOS apps.</comment>


Top White House Economist Dismisses the Idea of a Universal Basic Income - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2016/07/07/top-white-house-economist-dismisses-the-idea-of-a-universal-basic-income/ <comment><USER2> Woo, rough in this thread. Treading carefully, I do notice that the subject of the article is short on concrete solutions to the (potential) problem, instead relying on:

""The concern is that the process of turnover, in which workers displaced by technology find new jobs as technology gives rise to new consumer demands and thus new jobs, could lead to sustained periods of time with a large fraction of people not working," he said.

Still, the solution isn't a universal basic income, Mr. Furman said. Instead, he focused on reforming the existing array of programs meant to help the unemployed and the poor."

This almost seems to bolster the opposing point: yes, there's a real threat here, but we (hand-wavy thing) have existing programs we can fix up for that. Other than the last sentence, I don't see substance, but more of a media sound bite.

<comment><USER3> Only one solution exists to the threat of automation and that is: training.

People need to be able to rapidly move from unproductive or fully automated parts of the economy to others. It's easier said than done and in the US at least would require a massive investment in and rethinking of access to vocational education. It needs to be free as a start.

<comment><USER4> Automated driving could unemploy millions of truck drivers. Give me one other industry that needs millions of workers and that retrained truck drivers could do. Or even 5. But I don't think it exists outside of creating other, large "new deal" type programs.

<comment><USER5> I don't see why we shouldn't do a new deal. Possibly a new deal for the space age. There is also a tremendous amount of work to be done in the sciences as well. Work ranging from high skill scientific experimental design to low skill pouring of agar plates.

<comment><USER4> I am all for a new deal set of programs. The roads are all falling apart from what I've seen. Plenty of infrastructure to be maintained. Space, sciences, etc would all be great. Or how about just employing people to cook healthy food for other people? As it is even restaurants have gone largely preprocessed in the search of disminished costs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Right off the bat:

>"We should not advance a policy that is premised on giving up on the possibility of workers' remaining employed," Jason Furman, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, said Thursday in remarks at New York University.

Isn't the idea that people could be employed doing anything on UBI (subject to the market demand - sans artificial restrictions)? As in, the exact opposite of what Furman claims is the premise of the UBI system?

<comment><USER7> Part of the issue is UBI poses a threat to established ways of doing things -- many businesses rely on the relative lack of social and labor mobility as a way to provide the continual supply of low-paid unskilled workers they want. The threat in UBI is that those workers would be able to take time out of the labor market and get education and training or even start their own businesses instead of settling for the "it's the only game in town" of working under the established model.

<comment><USER8> Not at all. UBI is a cynical attempt to push people into even more if casual gig jobs that are en vogue right now.

UBI lets you subsist so that you're free to drop off my groceries for beer money.

All of the other unicorn bullshit (automation will free us from want, etc) is the 2016 equivalent of the 1956 flying car or magical gourmet microwave dinner.

<comment><USER9> I'll be very interested to see the results of the YC basic income study, and whether people _actually_ choose to loaf around, drop off groceries for beer money, engage in self-study, or start businesses.

I don't know which'll happen. I'm surprised to see the degree of confidence exhibited by both sides of the debate, people who are either _sure_ it'll result in entrepreneurial utopia or _sure_ that it'll be the end of the world as everyone does nothing. My sense is that there's a good deal of projection here, where people who have successfully cashed out a startup assume everyone will build a startup, while people who wish they could do nothing but loaf around all day assume that's what everyone else will do. Personally, I just want to _know_ , and so I'm waiting on the data before judging.

<comment><USER10> We have data: aristocrats, trust-fund babies, the idle rich, even to Roman times. Most do nothing but follow courtly fashion; but some became politians, scientists etc.

A huge difference is being at the bottom rather at the top. Status is a motivator.

But AI may "solve" this[http://partiallyclips.com/comic/dome- house/](http://partiallyclips.com/comic/dome-house/)

<comment><USER9> We also have data on the other side too: wealthy Google millionaires who continue to work there, startup founders who are on their 2nd or 3rd or 4th startup, Plato and Aristotle, etc.

Well, technically, these are all anecdotes, but the plural of "anecdote" is "data" after all.

<comment><USER11> There's a significant difference between wealthy Google millionaires who continue to work there and aristocrats, trust-fund babies, the idle rich. The former are largely self-made whereas the latter posses entirely _unearned_ wealth and status. They're two entirely different categories.

<comment><USER9> The point of the study is to find out whether average Americans are more like wealthy Google millionaires or more like trust fund babies. I'm curious what the results will be - since so many people _have to_ work to survive, we don't really know what their inclinations would be otherwise.

<comment><USER10> Sorry, re-reading my comment, I didn't actually say it, but I agree that we need more data - I just meant we do have some data (with the privisos I noted).

Regarding Google-millionaire data: what percentage actually does keep working? We hear about those who do, but not of those who don't (eg Minecraft's Notch). "Newsflash: multi-millionaire relaxes" And, confounding factor: people who succeed amazingly well often keep doing whatever made them wealthy, well beyond financial satisfaction. At least, one _hears_ of those cases - I don't actually know the percentage of how often, vs. those who take it easy. [Guess this is what brbsix meant]

Anecdatum: when I made enough from something I created, I quit. Yet, turns out I was happier before... so was probably a mistake to quit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There may be valid criticisms of UBI, but this article doesn't mention any.

> Our goal should be ... to foster the skills ... to make sure people can get > into jobs, which would much more directly address the employment issues > raised by [artificial intelligence] than would UBI.

That is the traditional solution, but we should question the assumption that is it the best way of life for most people.

> "Replacing part or all of that system with a universal cash grant, which > would go to all Americans regardless of income, would mean that relatively > less of the system was targeted towards those at the bottom—increasing, not > decreasing, income inequality," Mr. Furman said.

Nonsense. You can get any level of income inequality you want by choosing suitable numbers for UBI and tax rates. Furman is an economist, so he must understand such basic math. This part appears to be pure FUD.

<comment><USER13> > ... employment issues raised by [artificial intelligence] than would UBI.

I didn't know that the economic situation we are in was caused by artificial intelligence. In fact I didn't even know that there was an artificial intelligence or that anyone has lost his job because of that.

<comment><USER14> There are artificial intelligences all over the place, and many people have lost their jobs to them. How many telephone switch operators do you know? Traffic control people? Typesetters?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sounds like he prefers a heavier handed approach that would result in much more government than a UBI. I completely disagree with him. Give people the power to choose with a basic income. That will do more for th nations wealth than training programs ever could. It will also require employing fewer people at the governmental level.

On the other hand, can you imagine the political fall out if he had been for UBI?

<comment><USER8> Read some of the public policy literature about 1960s and 1970s cash grant programs.

Spoiler: they failed spectacularly. Giving poor people a wad of cash and the power to choose often leads to poor choices that negatively impacts children.

<comment><USER15> Source?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Not a lot of substance. He is basically saying that we should invest in training the existing workforce to adapt. That can happen even with UBI.

He also says that UBI will cause wealth to be distributed equally which means less of the total tax will go to the poorer class. This is not exactly true because the idea is to give cold, hard cash instead of trickling down the wealth. So the dynamic will be different, and that is the whole idea. That just giving cash is generally better than welfare schemes.

<comment><USER17> having free (mostly subsidized) education through to tertiary level will be necessary in conjunction with UBI. If it is a workable idea at all.

<comment><USER18> Can this exist?

I know that many countries do provide free tertiary education, but in the cases I'm aware of, its a relatively small percentage of the population that gets tertiary degrees compared to the US.

<comment><USER19> In New Zealand we get interest-free student loans for up to 6 years of tertiary education with the possibility to get living costs with a weekly sum being part of this loan. Although you will be living marginally without an outside source for something like pocket money (A day a week is a pretty good compromise if you don't have savings).

Effectively, anyone that wants to get a degree can. There is no barrier outside the academic. And this loan stays interest free until we leave the country long-term. A small percentage is taken automatically out of your pay when you finally start earning. It all works pretty well for us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It seems to me some economists simply can't fathom en economic system not fueled primarily by human labor. "Employment" is treated like a good in itself instead of what it should be treated as: a means to the desired end of high quality of life.

For convenience, direct link to the paper being reported on: [https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/page/files/20...](https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/page/files/20160707_cea_ai_furman.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER21>
        "Replacing part or all of that system with a universal
        cash grant, which would go to all Americans regardless of
        income, would mean that relatively less of the system was
        targeted towards those at the bottom—increasing, not
        decreasing, income inequality," Mr. Furman said.

Does he not get that the tax structure and minimum wage would need to be changed to accommodate UBI? The welfare state needs disruption, not gradual change.

<comment><USER22> >> Does he not get that the tax structure and minimum wage would need to be changed to accommodate UBI?

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." \- Upton Sinclair

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Given this man's established ideological record, I think this article reveals more about Jason Furman's personal philosophical baises than it does about the objective costs and benefits of UBI: [http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jun/11/nation/na- furman11](http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jun/11/nation/na-furman11)

</comment><comment><USER24> Freakonomics also did a fantastic episode about universal basic income: [http://freakonomics.com/podcast/mincome/](http://freakonomics.com/podcast/mincome/).

</comment><comment><USER25> "Mr. Furman also said a universal basic income would exacerbate income inequality, already a rising concern in the U.S. "

What am I not understanding? Wealthy persons will fund this. Sure, they may get the $12,000 per year UBI, but their taxes will go up by much more than that.

</comment><comment><USER26> While I'm in favor of UBI (though preferably after smaller-scale experiments and careful study), this survey of economists about one version of UBI did give me pause:

[http://www.igmchicago.org/igm-economic-experts-panel/poll- re...](http://www.igmchicago.org/igm-economic-experts-panel/poll- results?SurveyID=SV_bPBNf8WXrT4jmtf)

<comment><USER27> Small scale experiments are useless in the case of UBI, because introduction of UBI in small scale will not trigger inflation.

So small scale experiments are gonna to show that UBI works well, without negative inflationary consequences, but full scale introduction will be a disaster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I haven't followed UBI too closely, but I don't think I've seen discussed the inflationary effects that it (in my opinion) would likely have.

What is the breakdown of winners/losers that UBI would target? From what I imagine, it's a bit like an upside-down bell curve. People who have close to 0 would be better off, big companies too, and everyone in the middle a bit worse off. Is that the intention of UBI?

<comment><USER29> Inflation is pretty much the first thing that most people think about when they look into UBI for the first time.

Here's a summary of some of the pro UBI arguments:

Most plans would be paid for by increasing taxes on the wealthy, so it doesn't actually increase the money supply;

Prices should only increase on goods that are supply constrained;

We're already giving away billions of dollars in assistance in the form of SNAP (food stamps), and increases in SNAP assistance don't seem to cause food price inflation (or at least not enough to be detectable);

We also already provide huge subsidies in the form of the Earned Income Tax Credit, which doesn't appear to have inflationary effects (again at least not enough to notice);

The examples we have of partial basic income haven't caused large scale inflation. Alaska hasn't seen an increase in inflation since they began providing a partial basic income to all residents, and Kuwait didn't see an increase in inflation when they gave every citizen $4k in 2011.

To summarize the summary, a UBI would probably cause a price increase in supply constrained goods and services, but not nearly enough to drown out the extra purchasing power provided to people with lower incomes.

How this affects the middle class depends on how high we set the cutoff where you start paying more in additional taxes than you're getting in UBI, and it depends on how income inequality and velocity of money affect the middle class. Many economists think that increasing income equality will help the economy as a whole, but that's open for debate (I personally think that it will).

<comment><USER4> I doubt it's as open for debate as some people want to claim. It's pretty sound policy. A basic income is going to have a much higher multiplier than increased government spending on defense. No need to scratch your head or needle data to see that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> How much would it cost to provide universal basic income to the US?

<comment><USER31> Short answer: several trillion dollars.

242 million adults in the US.

Just $10,000 per adult is $2.4 trillion. That of course wouldn't come close to being enough. Even if you assume tax redistribution of the money (rich people getting UBI, and then having it taxed away), for $2.4 trillion you probably would only manage to get the poorest 1/4 up to something like $15,000. Today the poorest 1/4 are receiving a net of more than twice that sum between Federal and State benefits.

Federal budget ($3.9 to $4.1 trillion or so depending on which year we're talking about) minus dozens of things that won't be replaced by UBI and won't go away (eg NASA, military, agriculture subsidies, budgets for countless agencies like HSA or FBI, transportation, justice and so on) = you might be lucky to break even or bleed just a few hundred billion on the budget if you allocate $2.4 trillion to UBI. That's assuming Social Security, all housing subsidy programs, all welfare programs, half of all social services programs, Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare etc etc are all ended.

The equation at the state level is a whole 'nother calculation, and would be a very significant factor given the states budget is another ~$1.7 trillion and represents all sorts of welfare programs and healthcare spending.

Personally I favor Warren Buffett's premise of significantly boosting the earned income tax credit, and freezing or lowering the minimum wage. The UBI is dramatically regressive, there's no reason to be giving the top 50% in the US a UBI.

<comment><USER32> This is what I was wondering. The top 50% certainly don't need UBI. If everyone got it wouldn't sellers immediately increase prices and we'd be right where we started? A loaf of bread for $50.

<comment><USER33> This is where I'm confused about the benefits of UBI.

So, say that we institute UBI, and people no longer _have_ to work. That increases the cost of labor - you can't attract a cashier for $9.30 an hour, so you have to pay $15 an hour or whatever.

This has to be passed right back to the consumer, so prices go up. Rent goes up as well - maintaining property takes labor as well. Now, the UBI is no longer sufficient to sustain a decent life, and the poor are right back to where they started.

<comment><USER29> This argument is also used against increases in the minimum wage. Now almost everything in economics is up for debate, but very few economists agree that raising the minimum wage by X dollars will result in prices rising by X dollars so that the effect is non-existent.

There are several reasons for this, the biggest is that cost of labor isn't the only input in pricing.

Basically the cost of supply constrained goods will go up, but not enough to outweigh the increased purchasing power for lower income earners.

<comment><USER34>
      very few economists agree that raising the minimum wage by X dollars will result in prices rising by X dollars so that the effect is non-existent

You are looking for obvious increase in prices, but raising prices is unpopular with consumers.

Instead, companies will move the production offshore, lay people off, make smaller packages [2], use machines, use cheaper ingredients etc. and those things create the illusion that the price is not rising. Price is the same, but the quality (of goods/services & of life in communities) is going down.

      cost of labor isn't the only input in pricing

It's the main one, since the biggest cost to most companies are employees + suppliers (that also have their own employees). Increase in the price of labor will certainly have an effect - if not directly on higher prices, then on quality.

      [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrinkflation

<comment><USER29> Of course it will affect price, I never said that it wouldn't. The argument is that it doesn't have an effect large enough to negate the extra income.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> tuna-piano I haven't seen this anywhere , but don't we already have UBI for a large number of people in the US? We call it social security, but it's just cash payments to people . That program is constantly talked about being shrunk, not expanded.

What about an expanded UBI would be different than social security? Just the fact that people are younger or not-disabled?

For the non Americans, social security provides cash payments to those over 65 and those with long term disabilities.

<comment><USER35> Social Security is funded by the money workers pay as a portion of their income over the lifetime of their employment. The elderly on Social Security paid into this system. Unfortunately many have ended up paying in less than they have received over the course of their retirement due to people living longer than the actuarial tables had accounted for. Over the course of SS 80 year history it has taken in $19.0 trillion in taxes and paid out $16.1 trillion. At the moment Social Security takes in more than it pays out, but that changes in two years when it will start running a combined deficit, it has roughly 18 years until the combined funds are depleted, *A rosey prediction as this is relying on data which includes a Labor Force Participation not dropping much more than it is now, which is tough as we're already more than a decade a head of where we should be if only Demographics were considered, and economic growth more than we've averaged since the Recession.

UBI is the exact opposite of Social Security [https://www.ssa.gov/oact/trsum/](https://www.ssa.gov/oact/trsum/)

If we assume automation results in more job-losses where does the money come to pay for it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER36>
        > The idea is to ensure everyone has a chance at a decent
        > life even as technology shifts and the labor market churns,
        > eliminating and creating millions of jobs that often
        > require vastly different skill sets.

Is that REALLY the idea? To make everybody less prone to adapt to technology changes?

</comment><comment><USER37> Mincome is not compatible with businesses and political parties that rely on an endless stream of low-skilled immigration.

</comment><comment><USER38> The only way you get the money is by sending war and shuttering the military police industrial complex. You don't need new taxes what does it cost to run thousands of bases and run multiple wars at the same time for over a decade. There's plenty of money for UBI if we reorganize society away from violence.

<comment><USER39> The U.S. defence budget is ~$700 billion / year and the U.S. population is ~320 million.

Gutting the entire defence budget would be worth just over $2000 / year per person. Not exactly enough for UBI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Seems like a nice piece of progress (if we can keep it continuing, instead of letting it die off again) that the idea is getting this much play in public to start with, compared to two years ago.

Don't be too upset that people aren't sold right now, just keep pushing the conversation forward.

</comment><comment><USER41> Is anyone really surprised? There's almost no political support for a universal basic income in the United States. Hopefully that will change someday, but it's not happening any time soon.

</comment><comment><USER42> Five trillion dollars to protect inflated equities markets? Standard procedure.

A basic income to stimulate demand and take pressure off broken labor markets? Heresy.

<comment><USER43> Nice, I like how you ignore that the government made all its money back in a few years plus interest.

<comment><USER44> ...and the economy would _not_ benefit from a BI? With increased spending, decreased public support programs, better education and community participation? Life is about more than a balance sheet.

<comment><USER45> Couldn't UBI end up in a death spiral where it does destroy the economy? If the BI is too generous people will stop working. Cost of goods and services go up. Tax base shrinks. The people vote in a larger BI to make up for it?

For as little as 15k a person, I'd strongly consider never working again.

<comment><USER44> Fewer people need to work every year. All those factory jobs? Never coming back in this civilization. Next - fast-food, bank teller. Eventually most all of them. We have 35M people in minimum-wage now; there are not and never will be enough Engineering jobs for all of them (and neither would they all want to).

We used to write fantasy stories about when robots took the yoke of work from our shoulders. Now that its happening, we resist with all our might. I wonder why?

<comment><USER45> The jobs from 150 years ago have been almost entirely replaced by now. With new jobs.

Maybe this time is different. But our current unemployment numbers aren't bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Why is UBI so popular on this site? This is a site for hackers, programmers and engineers.

Could it be the result of a decade long propaganda by VCs targeting Zuckerberg wannabes - those who want to have UBI, so they can work on the newest blockchain-enabled photo-sharing social local VR app ?

<comment><USER46> (my guess / personal opinion, I don't claim to speak for everyone)

Because so many here believe so strongly in the power of automation. Almost all software engineers are in the business of putting people out of jobs - eg. replacing a secretary with a mail and calendar app, replacing a business middleman with an online marketplace, or replacing a sysadmin with cluster management tools.

A way to resolve this cognitive dissonance of us doing a thing we think is right (automating the world) with causing a thing we think is bad (unemployment) is to turn unemployment into not a bad thing, which is the promise UBI makes.

This doesn't mean we don't honestly believe it can work. But it makes us more likely to WANT to believe it. Brains are funny things.

<comment><USER47> Increasing levels of automation certainly plays a part in the drive to explore solutions like UBI, but it's not the only consideration. On a broader level, the issues driving UBI are those related to social mobility and quality of life. Those issues would exist without the drive towards automation.

To explain what I mean, imagine you're working a low-skilled, low-paid job just to keep a roof over your head, with very few opportunities to retrain (both in terms of free time and money). In other words, you're working just to survive, and are not making the most of your time on Earth. UBI would give people in that situation an avenue to retrain, as well as making it harder for companies to keep wages low for undesirable jobs, they would have to better compensate people for giving up their time to do a job they otherwise wouldn't be interested in doing. None of these factors are directly derived from increased automation.

As for whether or not UBI will be a net benefit, the answer is not completely clear, but that's the reason small-scale experiments looking into UBI have been started.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Because income inequality is more important to this guy than providing for people's basic needs lol

<comment><USER43> I like how well you took a very complex issue and made it feel like it's this obvious black and white thing.

<comment><USER49> I like how you keep making sarcastic replies to comments in a thread you started. It's like seeing someone litter on their own lawn.

Edit: nevermind, it's not your thread. Just shitting the place up for fun, I guess.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> A basic income is a massive threat to the liberal welfare state. It would totally deflate the left's institutional agenda so expect them to fight back hard. The premise of the current welfare state is that the people, too stupid to manage their own lives, are better off under the paternal care of enlightened government bureaucracies. It's gonna be entertaining in ten years to watch Republicans support the basic income and Democrats oppose it.

The debate will be about whether people should be in control of their own lives or whether they need a paternal state to protect them from themselves.

<comment><USER3> You sound like a Sarah Palin speech. Instead of using meaningless buzzwords like "elite" maybe be specific about who exactly you are referring to.

That aside I don't know where you get the idea that the Republican party would be for a universal basic income. Their current position (under Trump at least) is to abolish the minimum wage in order to encourage everyone to work. And they have always favoured individual responsibility and opposed government handouts.

<comment><USER50> I edited my comment to remove that bit but I'll clarify who I'm talking about: the people who see their project as bringing more and more of our lives under the direction of the state, because they know better than you and me how we should live our lives. They've convinced the rank and file that this is the best way to achieve across the board prosperity. The prospect of a hundred years of progress toward this slow takeover being wiped out by a basic income is the biggest threat to their project.

Also, I'm pretty sure that Trump's and probably most Republicans' position on the minimum wage is that it's ideally set by the individual states in accordance with the realities of their economies. A $15 federal minimum wage would devastate vast swaths of America by effectively banning work. The economy in much of America simply can't sustain that.

But yes, if we adopted a UBI we should most certainly eliminate the minimum wage, since it accomplishes the same goal much more comprehensively (i.e. for everyone as opposed to just those who have a job).

<comment><USER3> You are making generalisations so broad that it is impossible to understand what you are even talking about. Rank and file means how many tens of millions of people exactly ? And since when did they all speak with one voice ?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


This is a wonderful time for the younger generation, says Bill Gates - <AUTHOR> http://www.lawsonjamesblog.com.ng/2017/03/this-is-wonderful-time-for-younger.html <comment><USER2> Boy oh boy.</comment>


Intel's first Optane SSD for regular PCs is a small but super-fast cache - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/03/intels-first-optane-ssd-for-regular-pcs-is-a-small-but-has-super-fast-cache/ <comment><USER2> Doesn't really make sense to purchase one of these for an SSD. Give the prices of SSDs, just buy another SSD and do RAID instead. This tech woulda been great years ago if it worked on crappy computers with HDDs</comment>


Can cookies really make flight prices more expensive? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@tripdelta/can-cookies-really-make-flight-prices-more-expensive-2c7214442c8 <comment><USER2> I had never heard this version of the myth before. The "myth" I have heard, is that if you do a search on say Travelocity for example and then go and search Expedia or another site, you will see lower prices. This myth, to me at least, is a little more plausible, although in my own comparison I have never seen a major difference in prices to get me to convert from one site to the other. Obviously each of these sites competes against one another for bookings and traffic, so if they know you are "shopping around", by checking if a cookie exists from another site, it is in their best interest to offer lower prices.

<comment><AUTHOR> @jeffmould What you describe is absolutely true and no myth at all. There are several reasons for that.

1\. Price differences may occur because all Online Travel Agencies (OTA) mostly provide cached data to the user as requesting live prices can be super expensive. Differences in the age of the cache cause the difference

2\. Some OTAs have so called negotiated fares with the airlines and sometimes can offer different prices

But, when we as metasearch request prices from the OTAs, we always do that from the same IP with cookies

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Summary: No. "Flight prices are most likely impacted by three factors: complexity of airfare pricing, high demand for the same flight and cached data."

</comment><comment><USER4> Gee I came here to know how in-flight cookie snacks will cause price surge...</comment>


Now Resolved: FB iOS SDK Outage Causing Disruption to 3rd Party iOS Apps - <AUTHOR> https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2020/07/13/bug-now-resolved-fb-ios-sdk-outage-causing-disruption-third-party-ios-apps/ <comment><USER2> I clicked, pleasantly surprised and expecting a post-mortem. Instead it's a corporate PR admission of guilt and non-apology. If your audience is developers who implement the SDK, a more detailed explanation is the only respectful option.

Moreover, the actionable advice to upgrade the SDK is a complete non-technical non-sequter seemingly put as a distraction:

\- They admit it was a server side change that caused the crashes. SDK version doesn't change that.

\- No breakdown of which versions were affected (or was it everything?).

\- Is a newer release safer? Were changes made that we would get by upgrading?

Did anyone by chance MITM the server payload to understand the bad code/bug?

<comment><USER3> I fully agree with you that they should have put out a post-mortem, that's what I was expecting as well, when I clicked the link. I disagree on it being a non-apology however, since the sentence below, quoted from the article, seems like an apology to me.

> This is the second similar incident this year. We want to apologize for the > inconvenience these events have had on our developers and their users.

<comment><USER4> It's not much of an apology because the final paragraphs try to push any future responsibility onto the SDK consumers by saying they should make sure they are updating as fast as FB would like them to.

It's an odd addendum to put in and appears ominous to me.

<comment><USER5> If they want to push that responsibility they should do it officially rather than as a suggestion. The company I work at has a concept called a "build horizon." The rule is that clients have to be updated within the horizon. Internal services do not have to consider internal clients older than the horizon, and may break them arbitrarily. In effect this means that even the least with it internal clients rarely let their internal releases languish more than about half the length of the horizon, because of the associated risks of missing the cutoff.

There are many similar successful concepts that cap the maintenance window that services must tolerate, while at the same time giving developers enough forewarning to understand what is expected of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> > This is the second similar incident this year. [...] While we can't > guarantee a bug-free experience, we have learned from these events and > continue to improve the stability of our SDK.

What did they learn, exactly? There wasn't a postmortem on the prior incident, and it would seem that no postmortem is planned for this incident, either.

<comment><USER6> A postmortem has been requested; whether we'll see it... who knows.

[https://github.com/facebook/facebook-ios- sdk/issues/1385#iss...](https://github.com/facebook/facebook-ios- sdk/issues/1385#issuecomment-656768967)

<comment><USER7> If there's no postmortem I think it's pretty safe to assume the mistake(s) were embarrassingly simple such as a disturbingly poor CI process for a multi billion dollar company.

There is no shame for a bad config push... it happens... but there's a huge amount of shame in having an ego so big you cannot admit it.

<comment><USER8> They invented the "move fast and break things" attitude.

That's fine for a social network, but by forcing the SDK to be directly integrated into third party apps, they're forcing their attitude onto developers that have a "move slowly and don't break things" attitude.

I'm shocked that they have this rule, that developers play along, and that there's apparently _nothing_ that can be done about this.

If there was some easy way to find out which iPhone apps that I'm using have the FaceBook SDK installed, I would mercilessly uninstall all of them.

But as a consumer, I'm completely blind to the privacy-violating malware that is being forced upon me by faceless corporations.

Yay.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Power of Web Components - <AUTHOR> https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/11/the-power-of-web-components/ <comment><USER2> This is a bit off topic, but I really wish the idea of including HTML imports ([https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/Web_Components/...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/Web_Components/HTML_Imports)) was taken seriously. There's a lot of people that just want to make a simple HTML site with templates for things like the navigation menu, without a bunch of nasty JavaScript goop that can't be search indexed easily, and the ability to include simple templates using HTML would have been an huge resource for those people and for search engines.

I think it really shows how much of a bubble the web often lives in now. We used to be able to just make a solid web site with simple HTML and a text editor. I shouldn't need to be an extremely hardcore JS programmer or use a crazy static site generator or overengineered LAMP backend to do basic things like reusing HTML and other things that could be largely accomplished with just HTML itself.

<comment><USER3> HTML Modules are the spiritual successor to HTML Imports that work with the standard JS module loading system: [https://github.com/w3c/webcomponents/issues/645](https://github.com/w3c/webcomponents/issues/645)

<comment><USER4> For those following along at home, the reason why you don't need HTML Imports once JS Templates and Modules exist is because HTML Imports are not usable without JS! So you can implement a more elegant solution yourself with a couple lines.

Let's assume you want to use 3 different HTML templates on a page (the html content doesn't matter much for this example).

Here's the example usage of HTML Templates from html5rocks.com:

      <link
        rel="import"
        href="example1.html"
        onload="handleLoad(event)"
        onerror="handleError(event)"
      />
      <link
        rel="import"
        href="example2.html"
        onload="handleLoad(event)"
        onerror="handleError(event)"
      />
      <link
        rel="import"
        href="example3.html"
        onload="handleLoad(event)"
        onerror="handleError(event)"
      />

Now let's compare the same feature with ES6 Modules and Templates using a `helper.js` file.

      export async function importHtml(url) {
        try {
          let res = await fetch(url);
          let html = await res.text();
          let template = document.createElement('template');
          template.innerHTML = html;
          let el = template.content.querySelector('.warning');
          document.body.appendChild(el.cloneNode(true));
        } catch (e) {
          console.log(`Error fetching html: ${url}`);
        }
      }

Then we can import the modules on the page in a very clean way...no HTML Imports spec here.

My point is that you don't need HTML imports and you'll have to use JS even with HTML imports so just use JS all the way :)

<comment><USER5> That seems like a lot of trouble to replicate the already built-in ability to import external JS and CSS files.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I really hope that web components take off, because I'm getting pretty tired of having to learn different ways of building components every damned year. Most components don't need blazing-fast rendering engines, the templating engine of the now, or even two-way bindings out of the box, and thus I'd like to use components that can live on their own but also be easily wrapped into whatever framework I'm using.

I'd like frameworks to be a lot closer to _scaffolds_ , or actually be _frameworks_ , as opposed to what most of them are now which is reimplementations of application units. The web components standard can help make it possible for tools to become interoperable between frameworks(okay, and _view libraries_ ), that would be wonderful.

<comment><USER7> Web components work very well in isolation, and/or within a homogenous web component framework/library.

However, it is still pretty challenging to pass data throughout web components (in a way that allows you to build a complete application). HTML attributes are not great for data transfer (string serialization for everything). JS properties are a bit opaque (not represented by markup). And everyone ends up wanting some sort of property binding system, which may be unrealistic to standardize.

I think there will always be a place for some amount of framework/library support necessary for application builders.

<comment><USER3> It's quite easy to pass properties between elements and build entire apps out of Web Components. Many have been doing it for years.

Yes, it requires not just using plain markup - but template systems or JSX+VDOM are really good at this, and there's a huge choice in libraries. SkateJS is a library that allows you to plug-in several renderers to build components. LitElement uses lit-html. Polymer, Svelte, Vue, and Angular (the last when compiled to Custom Elements) have their own...

There also _is_ a chance at standardization with the Template Instantiation proposal from Apple.

<comment><USER7> If it helps set context, I got my perspective as a developer on the Polymer team

<comment><USER3> Hi Ian, I know. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> WebComponents only solve the problem of creating independent, self-contained functional units for the web. They don't fix all the other issues modern framework stacks try to fix like state management, change detection, two-way binding, inter-component communication/data passing etc. Thats why I don't see the framework soup (Angular, React, Vue, Ember, Aurelia) going anywhere in the near future. Maybe the "component" part will converge in the frameworks towards WebComponents but all the other bits and pieces the framework stacks ship will remain.

</comment><comment><USER9> I believe Home Assistant's new fancy UI codenamed "lovelace" is based on web components: [https://www.home-assistant.io/lovelace/](https://www.home- assistant.io/lovelace/)

This should give you a sense of the power of web components.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's weird that the default behavior when appending a template is to not clone it requiring an additional clone call

>>template.content.cloneNode(true)

<comment><USER11> That's the default behaviour when appending a DocumentFragment or a Node, and has been since 1997.

The template is just a container for the DocumentFragment, the template content still behaves like any other DocumentFragment always would have, so changing behaviour would be pretty crazy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm not such a fan of how spread out everything is. I'd really like to see html, js, and css all together in one place. React is the best I've seen, but it doesn't provide a good solution for css.

<comment><USER3> Check out LitElement. It lets you define everything in one place, and because it uses Shadow DOM, CSS is handled as well.

Here's where we'll be with plain standard JavaScript once class fields and decorators land:

        import {LitElement, html, property, customElement} from '@polymer/lit-element';

        @customElement('hello-element')
        class HelloElement extends LitElement {

          @property() name = 'World';

          render() {
            return html`

Hello ${this.name}!

            `;
          }

        }

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I put together a micro-pattern for working with WebComponents that I really wish were cross browser compatible as it is. It works in Firefox and Chrome and it is partly how I wish the web would move forward.

There is no technical limitations to making encapsulated portable pieces of html, css and js, yet it seems a very uncommon practice to make libraries of small re-usable components, even if they are boutique to you or your company. I think that is partly down to how we go about specing out and producing websites, and partly down to the fact that many don't realise you can already do it.

[https://polylab.co/projects/polyblocks.html](https://polylab.co/projects/polyblocks.html)

An important part of that is well encapsulated CSS, and theming on top of that, something I have written a little bit about as well.

[https://polylab.co/articles/ccm-contexts-and-components- css....](https://polylab.co/articles/ccm-contexts-and-components-css.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> caniuse shadow components:

[https://caniuse.com/#feat=shadowdomv1](https://caniuse.com/#feat=shadowdomv1)

So not Edge (I loath testing MSEdge - always finding new bugs in it - yesterday the F12 development tools crashed even on a blank page -- needed an opaque powershell script from MS to fix it...)

</comment><comment><USER15> Amazingly, Shadow DOM does not block all outside CSS. The * properties leak in, unless you add #container { all: initial; } inside, but that doesn't work in Firefox. I wonder why authors forget this strange fact.

<comment><USER3> I don't think it's very strange. It's extremely likely that you want to inherit the default inherited properties like color and font-family. Otherwise Web Components would look out of place on the page by default.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I could be totally wrong here as I am not an expert in frontend, it seems Google has been the loner pushing web component(polymer,etc). Mozilla was lukewarm about it. Something changed or did I miss something badly?

Vuejs has its own web-component(non-standardized), so does React. If browsers can provide native web-component support that will be really nice.

<comment><USER17> I work at Google and can confirm that we are very much pushing web components and Polymer / lit-html.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Web components may give power to developers but they take it away from users. Any page made with web components is hostile to user styling. I'm surprised Mozilla would support them.

<comment><USER6> How many users apply their own style sheets? I remember this was popular among a relatively few people, and now I don't know anyone who uses things like Stylish or Greasemonkey/Tampermonkey anymore.

<comment><USER19> User applied stylesheets are fairly uncommon, but then again, so is using a screen reader. Both are essentially a kind of accessibility tech, and when it comes to accessibility questions, the chief concern isn't necessarily whether everyone uses it.

It's probably worth noting that reader-mode -- another accessibility tech -- does seem to be fairly popular.

<comment><USER20> > and when it comes to accessibility questions, the chief concern isn't > necessarily whether everyone uses it.

I wish more developers had your perspective.

My Dad uses Windows' high contrast mode. It's less that "literal dozens" use this feature and more that this feature transforms all that desktop-shaped- material into a computer for the vision impaired.

Isn't the biggest performance enhancement the transition from not-working to working? I view accessibility as the ultimate performance enhancement for a given slice of users.

<comment><USER21> Some companies care. Most don't. Unless a feature is used by double-digit percentage of users, it'll be axed. It's a sad reality of today, and no, I don't buy the arguments about saving development time, not when said by the same people who also say they want to deliver value to users (as opposed to extract value from them). Because somehow, feature cancellation always seems to touch the features that enable users to unbreak things or optimize their experience.

<comment><USER22> Delivering value to only 0.1% of users is equal to taking away value from the other 99.9% of users. You're not strictly saving development time, you're reallocating it to better utility.

Now, if those 0.1% of users have some sort of legitimate accessibility issue, we can talk about it. If they just have highly idiosyncratic preferences about their user experience, the axe it shall be.

<comment><USER19> I'm not sure 0.1% is an accurate reflection of the portion of users with some accessibility issues.

Moreover, whatever the portion of users who currently have accessibility issues is, the portion who _will_ have some is much much larger.

Finally: human accessibility _frequently_ seems to dovetail with machine accessibility. Engineering done with accessibility in mind seems to be less likely to result in silos and more likely to present an interface more amenable to automated interaction.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Seeing Circles, Sines and Signals - <AUTHOR> http://jackschaedler.github.io/circles-sines-signals/sound.html

<comment><USER2> This is really wonderful. Wish that I had had this when I was in learning these in college. I just did some work with image convolution and, after these essays, things are making more sense!</comment>