Show HN: PyHN - Hacker news client for command line - <AUTHOR> https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pyhn/0.3.6 <comment><USER2> Its a pretty nifty concept. Wish there was a way to browse comments without leaving the terminal though.

<comment><USER3> Your wish is granted: [https://github.com/ryanss/vim- hackernews](https://github.com/ryanss/vim-hackernews)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice work and I've installed it. One problem I found is the current subject titles _focus_ blacked out. I fixed this in $HOME/.pyhn/config by changing:

        FROM: 35 focus = black||underline
        TO:   35 focus = light blue||underline

I'm using standard Bash with black background/white text. Once again great work.

</comment><comment><USER5> Cool. But I do like comments.

I guess there's another project for me, once I finish writing a somewhat complex, networked application in Scheme, and building a Bryan Cantrill Bingo Sheet generator (which would be trivial, if I could ever get around to it).

Hey, no matter how silly the idea, I have to keep in practice somehow.

</comment><comment><USER6> Great idea, but the delivery leaves much to be desired: I am not going to run "pip install" and _bypass the software management subsystem_ of my operating system, thereby _compromising the integrity of my system_. No OS package, no install.

<comment><USER7> Genuinely curious - how does installing a Python library through pip 'compromise the integrity of [your] system'?

<comment><USER8> The distribution packages are often carefully tuned to match compatible versions, with pip, you might add something that the packaging system doesn't account for. I disliked pip ever since but the virtualenv idea sounds good.

<comment><USER9> pip install --user and you have a local installation leaving everything untouched. As you have a local npm/cabal/gem package store.

<comment><USER6> So now it is expected of me to learn some programming language's private packaging system, just to use an application?

Nope, that won't fly.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Surveillance Is Not The Answer To Terrorism - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/05/after-tragedy-boston-more-government-surveillance-not-answer

<comment><USER2> This article is spot on, going in to a police state seems the easy solution, but it just the agenda the terrorist want to push. They want a reaction and they are getting it. No amount of monitoring, intervention and security is going to stop a determined and smart terrorist, of creating great damage. As an example just see how even in high security prissons, people still manages to scape, get drugs and kill other inmates or security officers.

Security measures are always going to be reactive, threfore arriving always late to the last terror atack. It is way better to have a healthy social network that is able to recognice strange behaviours, than a overexcited population, police and intelligence services with exabites of useless data, that will make them expend their energies on false positives.

Also once you have the system there, better make good use of it, and when no real menace is found around, some will have to be created. The system will pull from the data new "crimes" against the society. It happens with all tools, after all we are humans.

</comment><comment><USER3> Damned if you do, damned if you don't.</comment>


New ASP.NET Dynamic Data Support (Scaffolding) - <AUTHOR> http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/12/14/new-asp-net-dynamic-data-support.aspx <comment><USER2> I am looking forward to the release of 3.5. Its gonna make my life even easier. Anyone else looking forward to this release...</comment>


National Sword - <AUTHOR> https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/national-sword/ <comment><USER2> As many comments here point out - you are seen as a heretic for going against the 'recycling gods' in many parts of the world. That is certainly true in parts of American industry as well.

U.S. kids have been conditioned since the 90's to believe everything is recyclable, and you commit a public disservice if you throw things away. Slowly people are realizing that 'single stream' recycling just results in a lot of contaminants and ends up being thrown away anyways.

Up until 6 months ago, one of my party tricks was to explain to people that glass is not commonly recycled, but actually ground up and used as 'daily cover' on a landfill (2-3" of material to help keep down odors, start the decomposition process, and provide long term stability to the pile of trash). The reactions ranged from "ha, I figured..." to jaw dropping denials.

People are finally starting to realize that, hey... Maybe a bunch of 'recycled' (read: shattered) beer bottles of mixed colors (green, brown, clear) present much as much of an OSHA workplace hazard as they do an 'environmental benefit'.

<comment><USER3> I'm one of those recycling-zealots of some sort, or was. I believed in it but never naively, always actually thinking about consumption and waste. And the first day my town announced single-stream recycling, I was immediately skeptical. In every way it, it seemed like an absolutely awful idea.

There was all this focus on pure weight of recycling, as though consuming _more_ stuff to then recycle more of it was a good thing.

And _I_ bothered keeping all my stuff cleaning, pulling plastic windows out of spaghetti boxes to put in the trash, so the box was just paper. It's trivially easy to do this stuff. Separating the stuff after it gets dumped in a truck in one big mix?? ABSURD

I feel like single-stream as a whole concept was a complete destruction of actual recycling efforts and progress up to that point.

<comment><USER4> _Separating the stuff after it gets dumped in a truck in one big mix?? ABSURD._

Nope. Routine.[1] There are shakers, screens, magnets, blowers, crushers, and optical sorters. It's not that complicated. Mixed recycling goes in, and aluminum, ferrous metal, glass cullet sorted by color, paper, and trash come out. Separation is working fine. The problem is that the markets for waste paper, glass cullet, and plastic are weak, even when fully sorted.

Waste paper, especially. Paper mills in North America have been closing for years.

Plastic bottle recycling is coming along well. CarbonLite has a huge plant near LA, and plants in Denver and Pennsylvania. Recycled plastic bottles go in, and plastic pellets ready for injection molding into new bottles come out. This is the area where things are getting better.

Glass cullet is in trouble. Fewer manufacturers are using glass containers and there's a cullet glut.

All this is at best marginally profitable and tends to need subsidies. Aluminum is the only real moneymaker.

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

[2] [https://www.kcet.org/shows/socal-connected/carbonlite- inside...](https://www.kcet.org/shows/socal-connected/carbonlite-inside-the- worlds-largest-plastic-bottle-recycling-plant-0)

<comment><USER3> I'm not actually claiming that all mixing is bad, but the general "just dump it all into one bin" style of appeal to consumers' convenience is the problem. Along with the mixing, we saw widespread advocacy that people just recycle thoughtlessly.

Encouraging such carelessness gives a false impression about the whole system, encourages ignorance…

It's one thing for single-stream to be feasible in terms of a mix of clean paper, plastic containers, and metal. It's another thing to discourage consumer thoughtfulness and end up with all manner of plastics, strange mixes of rules in different municipalities, and tons of problematic contamination — all of which could have been avoided if we didn't aim to make recycling a mindless activity.

Obviously the real problem is the externalizing of the whole waste cost from the manufacturers. If we could make all manufacturers pay for all the recycling and environmental costs, they'd change their products to be more recyclable and less wasteful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >>> Consumers can make a difference by buying less, or buying products that can more easily be reused or recycled, but that's only part of the equation. Countries, states and cities need to press producers to design more sustainable products and packaging, and develop more recycling infrastructure.

What? No mention of corporations, of the many corporate interests that this material serves. I don't want plastic wrapping on everything. So long as the product gets where it needs to be nor does the manufacture really care. It is the middle men, the retail stores, that insist on the extra packaging. Lots of packaging is there for purely commercial interests such as to prevent easy theft or as space for advertising.

I recently ordered some flashlights from china. They were made of aluminum and came in simple cardboard boxes. Nearly all of the order was recyclable. No inky labels, no bubble wrap, no silly nylon lanyards, no plastic beyond a tiny piece of tape to hold the box closed. Nothing was in those boxes except for the exact product I ordered. That's the progress we need.

<comment><USER6> When I was young, there were still "true" generic items in grocery stores. Not store brands, but white packaging with a simple food label.

Unsurprisingly, they weren't very popular. Customers have brand preferences, rational or not, and the word "generic" has strongly negative connotations.

(Speaking for myself, I can say that real Pop Tarts taste much better than the store brand alternatives I've tried, which were edible but rather unpleasant.)

For physical retail I don't think packaging is going to go anywhere, and I suspect manufacturers would rather package everything the same, whether it's going to physical stores or being sold online.

<comment><USER7> > When I was young, there were still "true" generic items in grocery stores. > Not store brands, but white packaging with a simple food label.

I remember seeing this style of packaging in the '90s, but as far as I saw it was really more like stealth branding because it was all from the same company (Valu Time). This company allegedly operated like a store brand supplier behind the scenes despite the store's name not appearing on the packaging.

<comment><USER8> Most store brand suppliers a.k.a. private label co-packers (Cott,Ralcorp,etc.) also have their own (lesser-known) brands that they distribute to ultra-price- sensitive retail channels that don't want to incur the overhead of developing their own brand packaging or don't have the resources. These are called white- label products, though most of the time they don't actually have white-labels. This terminology actually carries over into the software world, as well, where companies will brand their generic software for your business to resell.

Source: Former subscriber to the trade magazine PLBuyer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Lately I've become frustrated with the focus on recycling as a profit center. In particular, only recycling material that can be turned around into a product that consumers will buy.

One of the things that I believe plastic waste would be good for would be large (say 3'(1m) x 3'(1m) x 6'(2m)) bricks, designed with three holes in them and a tongue and groove design such that they could be stacked on to recycled metal rods that had been pounded into the ground to form barriers. Not a bullet proof as concrete but certainly functional for things such as levy re- inforcement, keep out zones, and wind shelters.

<comment><USER10> Might be a non-problem compared to benefits, but I wonder if such bricks shouldn't be coated with something, to prevent weathering (wind, grit, UV) turning them into microplastics emitters?

<comment><USER9> Yes, coating them is recommended. The 'design' of the brick that I did for this has 4" wide 2" deep grooves horizontally (one) and vertically (2) on the outer surface.

The thought was that lumber could be screwed into the brick and then off the shelf siding or drywall could be attached to the lumber. The grooves also provide channels for in wall services (power, water, communications).

Some specialty ones for window casements and door casements.

The original concept was to set up a processing center in the California high desert near a rail line and provide employment and shelter for anyone who was willing to work at the plant to process the recyclables into stable building materials. Sort of a community that is both saving the world and providing homes, work, and community for those less fortunate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Or maybe put more things in the trash? It seems like recycling being good is such an article of faith now that we lost track of why properly-run landfills are bad.

Edit: to be clear, I'm asking this because I'm actually curious about the answer. A quick Google search doesn't find anything particularly convincing.

<comment><USER12> I can't speak to other materials but aluminum recycling is incredibly less energy intensive than refining from ore. It takes an incredible amount of energy to convert aluminum oxide into aluminum and not much to melt aluminum once it's in that state.

<comment><USER11> Sure, yes, clean glass and aluminum are often easy cases. I don't think there is that much trouble with compost either?

The problem seems to be with many of the other things that are allegedly recyclable. Just because someone somewhere can recycle it doesn't mean your local recycling facility can do anything with it.

<comment><USER13> Another insanity is that companies that produce certain waste are required to offer to recycle it. That's fair in most circumstances, in others, not so much.

I live in Hawaii, and I usually buy local eggs. They come in a polystyrene container, and polystyrene is something that shouldn't end up in landfills. So the company graciously offers to recycle the container for me, the only thing I have to do is mail it to Washington State. From Hawaii.

(Thankfully, Hawaii incinerates most trash, so that goes straight in the trash!)

<comment><USER14> Out of curiosity, why _do_ your eggs come in polystyrene containers? Most of world uses cardboard.

<comment><USER13> The polystyrene containers are clearly in the minority of the brands that I can buy here, it's just that the ones I prefer come in it. If you buy eggs that come in cardboard at my local Safeway they're usually mainland eggs.

It would be interesting to know if the environmental impact of the plastic containers for the local eggs offset the environmental impact of transporting mainland eggs to Hawaii.

Hawaii has a high percentage of oil-powered electricity, and it burns all trash, so me throwing the plastic container in the trash should offset some oil, which drastically reduces the impact of the plastic container per se. So the polystyrene containers might be the better option.

Figuring out the actual best environmental option is really really hard. And the exercise above is just for god damn egg cartons.

Then again, there's plenty of low-hanging fruit to solve before my choice of eggs start to count. If you live in a place that has landfills, that should be the number one priority to fix. Landfills are terrible, burn the trash instead, it allows you to recover a lot of energy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Interesting story, I did not know about that documentary. A nice companion piece with lots of good info is this article here [0]. There needs to be more public education on recycling, as there are many local differences and frequently people think something is recyclable when it will actually end up in a landfill.

[0] [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/29/climate/recycling- landfil...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/29/climate/recycling-landfills- plastic-papers.html)

</comment><comment><USER16> Eventually, every product will need to be designed as easily and efficiently recyclable.

Humanity modern history was essentially focused around growth. Now for any long-term survivability, I guess we better start using our immense capabilities to ensure some sustainability to our societies.

Just look at the billion years of evolution and natural selection we stand on: everything works in cycles. Earth only gets sunlight in and heat out, entropy rules, that's all we have. Now, you can't build a new car out of pure sunlight, nor can you dispose of the old one as infrared light into space. Yet life flourished on our space rock. All past and present species who did well relied on cycles. Those who ate everything and shat all over the place? Died quickly. The current world economy is an unfinished work: produce > use > dispose, a perfectly linear system. Recycling closes the loop. I get we happen to prefer making, buying and using new things, inputs, over dealing with garbage. I recall instagram was once filled with food plates, not so much with whatever happens on the toilet 8 hours later.

As much as we love to play elaborate games on who does/gets what/how much/how long, there's still no way to cheat the laws of physics to keep playing forever.

If not now or not here, the universe doesn't care very much, see you on the next episode on that other planet to see how long an intelligent life can survive with limited ressources ;)

<comment><USER17> "every product will need to be designed as easily and efficiently recyclable"

Yes, this is it. With some planning, regulation and 'sustainable' thinking around product design, it seems possible to me this could work.

We currently put 0 effort into how packaging 'deconstructs' into something recyclable. Some work there could yield tremendous difference. Maybe even totally painless on the part of the consumer, i.e. 'it just works'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The best first step is definitely to minimize waste, by not ordering multiple small online shipments, individually wrapped foods, too much groceries that then go bad, etc and instead trying to buy more refill packs, bring your own bags to shop, etc etc. The next best form of "recycling" is in-home reuse, and if you do enough of it it's perfectly justifiable to just throw it into trash (aka recycling) after you're done.

Re-use grocery store produce bags to portion food in the freezer or as lunch/sandwich bags (like zip loc bags), and later as kitchen trash containment to limit odors and fluid leakage in your trash. I also use them as trash bags in smaller bins around the house (bathrooms, bedroom, etc) instead of buying various sizes of trash bags.

Use the backs of letter-sized mail and physical spam as scratch paper and for note-taking before discarding/recycling.

Rip the flaps off cardboard boxes and use the boxes to sort items in your closets and pantries (and the flaps can be used as dividers too). I even use smaller delivery boxes to sort items in the fridge because it's easier to clean (by throwing out) than wiping fridge spills.

I feel like most of these sorts of things are no-brainers, but the typical western consumerist household freely generates tons of trash and just buys even more things to fulfill these roles generating even more trash that it boggles my mind.

</comment><comment><USER19> Someone should build a recycling plant that ingests any possible waste, heats it hot enough to break apart all molecular bonds so there aren't any nasty complex byproducts, then uses temperature-controlled cooling to separately condense individual elements or simple standard molecules.

My guess is that it's not against the laws of physics [1]. But it would be pretty far beyond any current technology to do it economically, or at the scale to handle a significant fraction of the waste output of a large country. And also pretty energy inefficient.

If you have a grasp of the engineering issues (I sure don't), feel free to chime in on the (in)feasibility of this idea.

[1] I'm no astrophysicist, but this is basically what happens to "recycle" planets or asteroids, if a star swallows them and then goes supernova.

</comment><comment><USER20> When I was growing up, the mantra was "reduce, reuse, recycle". The order was important. It was one of those government promoted national sayings in Australia, along with 'slip slop slap'.

Unfortunately my current impression is that there is a strange blindness to these first two: reducing waste in the first place seems ignored if the item is recycable. And if you couldn't avoid packaging, choosing to use that item again makes no difference - just recycle it!

It is like 'recycle' has some ultimate environmental positive power on people's attitude. If something is recycled, or recyclable, we don't need to worry about anything else. Quite concerning.

</comment><comment><USER21> We should learn to live in harmony with Nature. Among other things, biomimetic technology should be preferred.

However, Molten Salt Oxidation can handle pretty much anything non-metallic, including plastic (which is reduced to "synthesis gas"), and it's exothermic (you're basically burning stuff in a liquid salt bath).

They use it to deal with chemical weapons and stuff. We have all the technology we need, we just have to be smarter about how we meet our needs.

</comment><comment><USER22> It's possible to purchase goods in such a way that there is no disposable plastic involved on the consumer end. The problem is the processing, packing, transportation and distribution. We need a revolution in these fields that prioritizes reusable materials and methods. After industry changes how we receive the goods, we can work on getting people into the habit of reusing materials rather than disposing of them.

<comment><USER23> Australia recently banned single use plastic shopping bags. Next we should consider all plastic packaging.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Why aren't films like the one mentioned in the article "plastic china" free to watch? They seem like a great educational piece to use but I tried searching and I had to purchase it — I understand the creators need to make money off this to survive but I think government should subsidize these films so they are free for the public to view

<comment><USER25> How much extra in taxes do you wish to pay for this? And what happens when the government chooses a subject you don't wish to support?

<comment><USER24> 1\. 1$ a year. 2\. I accept that I lost a dollar</comment></comment></comment>


Wozniak Chastises His Apple / Biggest blunder was not sharing its OS - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/ON-TECHNOLOGY-Wozniak-Chastises-His-Apple-3024337.php <comment><USER2> The description of Woz as a "legendary recluse" seemed bizarre, then I noticed that this article is from 1995.</comment>


Show HN: connmap – X11 widget that shows location of network peers on world map - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jafarlihi/connmap <comment><USER2> Nice job and interesting. Where did you get the IP to country mapping from?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I got the database from: [https://lite.ip2location.com/](https://lite.ip2location.com/)</comment></comment>


Show HN: ParrotHunt – ThreeJS WebGL Game with Node.js Back End - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Lallassu/ParrotHunt

<comment><USER2> Great work! It's looking really good.

</comment><comment><USER3> There goes my day! Nice work

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great work - thanks!

</comment><comment><USER5> This is awesome :)</comment>


Hedge fund manager sues Apple for having too much cash - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/07/us-apple-greenlight-idUSBRE9160MI20130207 <comment><USER2> This kind of stuff deeply annoys me. Yes, I understand Apple's fiduciary responsibility and I understand that technically, Einhorn may have a point.

But it annoys me that this is what companies deal with when they go public. Everyone thinks they're a manager now because they own some shares.

Are you not happy with the amount of money Apple is making? Are you not happy with their level of innovation? Their products? Then divest yourself of their shares.

We hire management teams to run companies. Let them do their job. I know, I know, again - technically as a shareholder you have a right to have a voice and yadda yadda yadda but lawsuits like this are exactly what public CEOs talk about when they say that they dread running public companies and can't take a long-term view because shareholders only care about quarter-by-quarter performance.

Annoying.

<comment><USER3> I find it annoying when companies who don't have a need to invest all profits into themselves and have little chance of being acquired don't pay dividends. Otherwise what's the point of owning a stock? To resell it at a higher price? That's fine I guess but you're offering no value or investment opportunity to long-term investors. Profiting in this case ultimately requires a fool willing to overpay.

Edit: or if there's no fool, the company could buy back shares, but at that point you should seriously consider just paying a dividend.

<comment><USER4> If you don't agree with the financial management of a company, then don't invest in it.

Dividends are only one way to get value out of cash reserves in a company. I'd argue that if the company knows what the hell it's doing, handing away the fuel that helps it to execute on its strategy (cash) is the worst thing to do.

<comment><USER5> It's implicit that they think Apple does not know how to reinvest that cash _in a way that will provide a return that is commensurate with the risk of Apple stock._ I don't think that is a stretch, given how much they have. If my cash is sitting in a bank account at Apple my investment is exposed to Apple's risk, I'm going to be upset about it.

If they can't invest it in a way that covers their cost of capital, it is their duty to pay it out, not to sit on it.

<comment><USER4> I just don't get it. If you think that Apple exposes you to too much risk then don't invest in them.

 _it is their duty to pay it out_

How so? Did they commit to giving out dividends as a part of your purchase of their stock? Are they siphoning the cash out of the company to avoid giving shareholders value?

Sitting on cash has been an Apple strategy for a very long time, even before Jobs came back. How have they deceived shareholders by continuing with it?

<comment><USER5> Not investing the money at a risk-adjusted profitable return is the same thing as taking money from shareholders. Think about it this way. If there was one owner in the company, and the CEO just couldn't figure out a way to invest the company's cash at a profitable rate (again, risk-adjusted), what would the owner do? He'd take it out of the company and invest it elsewhere or just buy something - because he owns the company and it's his money.

When you have multiple shareholders, the concept is the same, it's just harder to hold management's feet to the fire.

This is different than "sitting on cash" as a strategic decision. It is wise to do so - there might be investment opportunities or hard times down the road. But we are talking about _excess_ cash - cash beyond the level that is reasonable to sit on for strategic purposes. To sit on excess cash (which is admittedly a judgement call) is to hold your shareholders' money hostage in an unprofitable manner. Given how much cash Apple has, I don't think it's unreasonable for shareholders to grumble a bit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sounds crazy, but here's where I think he got the idea:

"while Apple for now uses Braeburn primarily in its capacity to find legal tax loophole all around the world and avoid paying taxes, there is no denying that with a cash balance that in a two years may be well over $200 billion, applying even a modest amount of leverage would make AAPL the best capitalized bank, mutual fund or asset manager in the world."

"...it is not an investment advisor: it merely manages an ungodly amount of cash for AAPL's millions of shareholders. There is also no SEC filing 13-F filing on Braeburn's holdings. As such, not confied by the limitations of being a "long-only", it is in its full right to hold any assets it feels like, up to and including CDS on housing, puts on Samsung, or Constant Maturity Swaps that pay if the 10 Year collapses. It just doesn't have to report any of them.

Nobody knows: and that's the beauty of Braeburn. It is the world's largest hedge fund that is not really a hedge fund, nobody has heard of, and nobody knows just what assets it holds. Which is precisely what Apple wants."

[http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-09-30/presenting- worlds-b...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-09-30/presenting-worlds- biggest-hedge-fund-you-have-never-heard)

<comment><USER7> I submitted that and it was instakilled by the submissions system--is there a filter on submissions or something like this?

<comment><USER8> It wasn't on this blacklist <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=499044> but then, that list is a few years old...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This headline is wrong and very misleading. Even the source article headline breaks out the two items - "Greenlight's Einhorn sues Apple, seeks bigger payout"

They're related, but the actual point of the law suit is at the bottom of the article:

 _Greenlight said it is opposed to the proposal, No. 2 on Apple's proxy, which the firm said would remove the company's ability to issue preferred stock from its charter._

He isn't suing to force Apple to release cash. He's suing so that Apple doesn't change the rules that would make it harder to get preferred shares out to shareholders.

It's more correct to say that he's suing so that one avenue for divesting cash doesn't get removed from the table.

<comment><AUTHOR> The intended effect of the lawsuit is to oppose proposal 2 on the proxy, but the cause is that they have too much cash.

<comment><USER4> The headline strongly implies that if the law suit is won then Apple will be forced to hand out cash to shareholders.

That's simply not the case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One interesting quote from the article. Apple shares are currently worth $458.70. Apple has cash reserves which are equivalent to $145/share.

I realised Apple had a lot of cache, but that really does seem to be getting to ridiculous proportions, effectively 1/3 of the value of the shares is a pile of cash which it seems Apple continues to sit on, doing nothing useful with, or having no good plans for (of course, who knows what is going on behind closed doors).

<comment><USER10> All I have to say is - fuck Wall St. Apple's cash generates power and leverage that's simply not quantiyable in quarterly statements. Apple has already instituted dividends as well as a one-time payout to their investors. And having around $100B means that if they lay down $20B for some super strategic shift, it doesn't require debt to be serviced.

Wall Street wants all companies beholden to the quarterly cycle - and if that company has to kill it's future to make the quarter, then so be it - all the better for those who make money on both sides of the trade.

That's bad for the company and bad for customers.... all so the hedge fund manager can make an extra bonus by killing jobs and US competitiveness.

<comment><USER11> That's why wall street doesn't like it. Apples has the benfit of being public without relying on wall street for its financial future. I guess hedgefonds and banks are less than happy with having little to no influendce on the most valuable company in the world. So every now and then someone tries to sue his way in. Business as usual I guess...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> One of the obligations Apple voluntarily accepted when it chose to go public, and which it continues to voluntarily accept as long as it remains public, is the fiduciary obligation to its shareholders.

Retaining cash without returning it to the shareholders is a violation of its fiduciary obligations to its shareholders. The fact that it _could_ use the cash to fund R&D, etc., is irrelevant since Apple is clearly _not_ doing so.

That being said, that is not why the hedge fund manager is suing Apple. He's suing to prevent Apple from eliminating preferred shares, which provide enhanced dividend and liquidation preferences.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I wonder if Apple is looking into acquiring a big player or two. With $137b in cash, they can buy both Facebook and Twitter at current valuations and still have $50b left over.

<comment><USER13> Or how about the hedge fund that is suing them?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> So by suing Apple he's hoping they divest themselves of some cash by paying lawyers to go to court?

I suppose I can see the point of view of Apple has a lot of money not doing a lot, why not pay it back to investors, but I thought that was what the share dividend program was for? I may be missing something, financial and stock market knowledge isn't my cup of tea.

<comment><USER15> Not quite. Public companies have a fiduciary responsibility to earn their shareholders money. This Hedge Fund manager is claiming that Apple's large cash reserves are contrary to their fiduciary responsibility, and they need to only keep enough reserves so that normal business can continue, the rest being returned to investors.

<comment><USER14> Ah that makes much sense. Although, how does someone define what reserves a company should keep for business to continue? Especially in the tech world where they might need to drop a billion dollars on an acquiring another company.

<comment><USER9> True, but Apple now has enough money to buy Facebook, and Twitter, and still have $50bn left over. I'm not sure how much is "enough reserves", but it seems reasonable to me to expect Apple to justify it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> From how I see it they're suing Apple for not reducing investors risk: if they have a lot of money now why don't give away some of it a make investors feel less afraid of future losses, specially when there's the sensation that the Apple's iPhone business may have already peaked.

</comment><comment><USER17> I always wondered what Apple had to gain by being a public company with so much money on hand.

Don't you usually issue shares when you lack the capital to fund projects/research etc?

<comment><USER18> Apple issued its shares a long time ago, when it needed capital to fund projects/research etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is a great move by Einhorn and turns up the pressure on Apple to return cash to shareholders. I don't have a preference about the preferred shares, I'd prefer they get rid of it just from a corporate governance standpoint and to keep the capital structure simpler. They should significantly increase the buybacks and raise the dividends, and they should issue debt in the US to avoid paying taxes on overseas cash (and work on lobbying for a holiday) to pay for it.

Apple has more cash than they need, and Tim Cook admitted this when their cash balance was under $100 billion when he announced the dividend and buyback.

</comment><comment><USER20> Debate the magic of Steve Jobs if you want, but I don't think anyone can deny that one of Apple's strengths is in avoiding conventional wisdom and finding a more profitable path.

Imagine if people sued Apple to try and make them license their OS to others![1]

This is the worst kind of back seat driving.

[1] I do think that Apple licensing iOS to companies like HTC, Samsung, etc. with a strict quality control program would make good business sense, but despite being long Apple, I realize it's not my place and there are probably many factors that I'm not aware of. The problem of not being able to meet demand, and needing to compete at the lower end of the price spectrum would be solved by my proposal, _but_ Apple likely has other plans to solve this problem. At the end of the day, it's up to the Management Team and the Board to address these issues, not minority shareholders!</comment>


Successfully poisoned the latest BIND with fully randomized ports - <AUTHOR> http://tservice.net.ru/~s0mbre/blog/devel/networking/dns/2008_08_08.html <comment><USER2> There's another post for the New York Times story on it:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=271709>

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=168525></comment>


Ask HN: Are web layouts inherently right-handed? - <AUTHOR>

I've been trying to figure this out for sometime. Most websites(Gmail, FB, Twitter, Bing, ....) put their logos to the top left and the menu actions to the top right(Login, Logout, Profiles, Write a new tweet). Does this have anything to do with assuming a disproportionately right-handed population? While handedness is abstracted out through hardware, is there still a perception bias between left and right handed people for web layouts? <comment><USER2> I would guess this is not a handedness issue, so much as a cultural issue - most websites I view are designed by people who live in a culture whose predominant script runs left-to-right, top-to-bottom, and so the websites tend to put the most important thing (the logo) at the top-left; secondary broad- scope things across the top, and so on down the page.

Here's the front page of Al Jazeera's site (the first right-to-left language website I could think of):

<http://www.aljazeera.net/>

Notice that the logo is at the top right, what I assume are the main navigation categories stretch leftward, and sidebar-esque things run down the length of the left-hand edge of the page.

There may be a subtle link between handedness and website layout, in that it's easier for right-handed people to write left-to-right (you don't have to worry about your hand on the paper smudging the fresh ink), but I'd say writing direction is more useful.

I'd be interested to know if cultures with a predominantly vertical writing direction have their idiomatic website layouts, but the only two I can think of (China and Japan) have been so thoroughly exposed to Western text-layout (especially in technological contexts) that I suspect they use the same idioms as Western sites. Indeed, <http://www.baidu.com/> has an almost identical layout to Google.

<comment><USER3> "what I assume are the main navigation categories stretch leftward"

That's about right. Another slightly better example is this site: <http://www.stc.com.sa/cws/portal/en/?favouritLang=en>

If you click the text in Arabic at the top right, it shifts to the Arabic view, and all the text and navigation bars move to a position that's more appropriate for right to left reading.

<comment><USER4> >That's about right. Another slightly better example is this site: <http://www.stc.com.sa/cws/portal/en/?favouritLang=en>

>If you click the text in Arabic at the top right, it shifts to the Arabic view, and all the text and navigation bars move to a position that's more appropriate for right to left reading.

The Aljazeera site does that (in reverse) for the English language version. They change the colour scheme too to orange (blues complement, don't know if that is significant). The English version looks more image intensive to me as well - perhaps their English language users have more bandwidth (or lower literacy? or ...).

<comment><USER3> > " The Aljazeera site does that (in reverse) for the English language > version. They change the colour scheme too to orange (blues complement, > don't know if that is significant). "

The color schemes on the site match those of the TV channels, so that's where the blue/orange color change came about from.

> " perhaps their English language users have more bandwidth "

That's about right, bandwidth is still hard to get at good rates in the Middle East...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have always assumed it was related to how the typical person's eye scanned a page. Is this even affected by handedness or just for example the fact that we write left to right in the English language? (the web was after all first written in English)

Regardless it is now just a convention that people are used to, like the QWERTY keyboard, changing might theoretically result in better performance but the disruption to expectations would mst likely cancel that out and result in a net loss of performance overall.

</comment><comment><USER6> I assume it is because those websites are orginally developed for left to right languages like English. Also, I'm not sure it makes much difference which hand is controlling your mouse in those examples.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Interesting. So, for right-to-left scripts <textarea> and other text inputs would have to be mirrored from the current trend. Wonder if the Arabic version of Wordpress or similar software does this...</comment>


Show HN: Snapcard Wallet for Bitcoin, with instant buying/selling - <AUTHOR> https://www.snapcard.io/wallet/hacker-news

<comment><USER2> You're already on the deep web as a possible place for fraud. The whole instant thing is a pretty bad idea IMO.

</comment><comment><USER3> Super slick design, and the bitcoin buying process is ridiculously simple

<comment><USER4> thanks, yanni here from snapcard (i'm one of the founders). let me know if you have any more comments. we tried really hard to make instant buying using your US bank account an actual thing :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Slick design. Also interesting that there is alt-coin support.

<comment><USER4> Such thanks! Much wow :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Readability > Prettiness

The colours on that page are hard on the eyes.

<comment><USER4> ah, thanks so much for the feedback. we're actually fixing up the front page right now!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Best user experience with a BTC company in a while.

<comment><USER4> thanks! if you have an iOS device, check out our bitcoin wallet here: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/snapcard-bitcoin- wallet/id92...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/snapcard-bitcoin- wallet/id927725510?mt=8)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nice design, great tool!

<comment><USER4> thanks! let us know if you have any problems using the platform - we're working really hard to make it better :D</comment></comment>


"Ghost in the Shell - Remake" - <AUTHOR> https://theshell.xyz <comment><USER2> SSH automatically presents a public key to the server when trying to authenticate. If the server doesn't know that key, then SSH tries the next one. You can enumerate all of someone's keys this way (like [https://blog.filippo.io/ssh-whoami-filippo-io/](https://blog.filippo.io/ssh- whoami-filippo-io/) SSH server does)

If you want to disable this sort of behaviour you can disable SSH from sending keys automatically, and then tell SSH which identity files need to be sent to each host.

In your .ssh/config, something like:

        # Ignore SSH keys unless specified in Host subsection
        IdentitiesOnly yes

        # Send your public key to github only
        Host github.com
            IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10004678](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10004678)

<comment><USER3> Serious question, what's the real harm in this since it's just public keys? Just allowing a server to discover all the other servers you may have been talking to?

<comment><USER4> In most cases, no real harm. However, it does give away some information about you which can be used to fingerprint you. This data is also, I'm 99% sure, transmitted in plaintext, so a passive adversary can gather this information as well. For most uses I wouldn't worry about it. But, if you're an attacker, say forcing your way onto an SSH server with a weak password, it can be a valuable source of information for identifying you.

<comment><USER5> > This data is also, I'm 99% sure, transmitted in plaintext

I was curious about this, so I did some research.

First, if you run `ssh -v`, you can see that there's a key exchange (eg, Diffie-Hellman), _then_ a cipher and MAC are negotiated, and _only_ once you get to the user authentication portion do your public keys get sent to the server.

So, only Alice and Bob can see the public keys: not Mallory.

Further reading: SSH transport layer, [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4253](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4253)

<comment><USER4> Ah yes, you're right! I remembered there is some stuff transmitted in plaintext at the beginning, but it's just the normal SSL cipher-suite negotiation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wish Serial Experiments Lain got as much recognition and discussion around it as GitS. SE:L seems to have more to do with being an actual hacker.

<comment><USER7> I loved SE:L. But like many hacking-oriented shows (I'm looking at you, Mr.Robot) it felt a need to go out into weird philosphical "what is reality?" and psycological strangeness.

I would love to see something that stays with the stuff I actually like about them. Philosophy and psychological exploration can be fine but I would absolutely love to see a show like one of those that stays closer to the ground.

GitS is primarily cyberpunk as I see it rather than focused on hacking. Hacking is just an element. Lain is focused on philosophy, psychology and spiritual weirdness and uses technology for aesthetics and as a tool to explore the bigger themes.

I'd love something like a heist-movie that stays close to the keyboard, like the most techie and coherent parts of Mr. Robot.

<comment><USER8> I've been hoping for a while that we'd get this kind of movie. And I do think we're getting closer to it. There are a few recent movies that provide hints about how a film could successfully capture a hacking experience:

\- The research scenes in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. \- The texting scenes in Personal Shopper and House of Cards.

Does anyone have any other recommendations of close-to-the-keyboard style portrayals of communication, research, and hacking?

<comment><USER7> Is this The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo as in the american version? I haven't watched that, worthwhile? Being from Sweden I did read the books and see the swedish films :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can't wait for the sql: Ghost in the REPL

<comment><USER7> Or GitS: Stand-Alone Container?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Got me thinking about the ASCII Star Wars via telnet.

Tried the classic telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl but noticed that it doesn't allow me to connect. Anyone know if it's still available somewhere?

<comment><USER11> `telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl 23` works just fine for me

<comment><USER12> Not for me. Maybe they have a connection limit which HN users are surpassing?

<comment><USER13> It works, it also greeted me with a "you use ipv6, you rock" message.

<comment><USER14> Doesn't work for me (outside Europe). Didn't work from US server too. Did work from UK VPS.

So maybe only works within Europe, or has some other IP/location restriction.

<comment><USER15> Works for me in Canada, but only using IPv6.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm not sure what I expected.

<comment><USER17> I can't wait for the Bash version of Ninja Scroll.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The intro text is very impressive.

The actual "movie", not so much

</comment><comment><USER19> In my opinion it's much better than the live-action movie.

</comment><comment><USER20> That's a shame. Seeing the link on HN I was expecting something epic like Star Asciimation Wars, not some silly Reddit level prank :/

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that, I was hoping someone on HN could explain more technically how this actually works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is it down?

      $ ssh email@example.com
      ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host

</comment><comment><USER22> Can someone tell me what it is please? I'm not connecting to some random server because it sounds suspicious.

<comment><USER23> Spoilers: [http://imgur.com/a/bRaCL](http://imgur.com/a/bRaCL)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> It was much better than <i>Cats</i>. I want to see it again and again.

</comment><comment><USER25> Any chance of OP doing a technical write-up for this? This looks super cool

<comment><AUTHOR> Sadly I'm not the creator of this, only the messenger. I was hoping someone on HN would be able to explain how this actually works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The special effects are impressive!

</comment><comment><USER27> Ghostly performance

</comment><comment><USER28> Access denied

</comment><comment><USER29> Literally

</comment><comment><USER30> Better then original

</comment><comment><USER31> For #%&$'s sake mods, why did you have to completely ruin it by editorialising the title?

The title is "GHOST IN THE SHELL | remake", please leave it as such.

edit: Thank you!

<comment><USER31> ^ The title did spoil the contents for a while, it has been fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> AWESOME!!! HAHAH

</comment><comment><USER33> nice remake!

</comment><comment><USER34> Obligatory xkcd [https://xkcd.com/686/](https://xkcd.com/686/)

</comment><comment><USER35> Nice ^^

</comment><comment><USER36> Spooky!

</comment><comment><USER37> Yes sire, very droll.

</comment><comment><USER38> Loved the sountrack. Cant wait for the sequel</comment>


Celebration of John McCarthy's Accomplishments - <AUTHOR> http://cs.stanford.edu/jmc

<comment><AUTHOR> Free event at Stanford this Sunday, with the number of super-famous speakers verging on the absurd. A subset:

       Nils Nilsson: A* search
       Marvin Minsky: A ton of AI/etc. things
       Barbara Liskov: Liskov substitution principle
       Don Knuth: algorithms...
       Vladimir Lifschitz: misc. logical AI
       Ed Feigenbaum: expert systems
       John Chowning: FM synthesis
       Whit Diffie: public-key cryptography</comment>


CIA Agent Warns Against Chinese Trojan Horse Microchip - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailyartisan.com/news/and-now-the-manchurian-microchip/ <comment><USER2> This article was heavy on FUD and speculation, and light on facts (expected that). The trojan (if it exists) would either have to work with the O/S, in which case it would either work in *nix or Windows, but not both; or it would talk directly to the hardware bypassing the O/S, so encrypting your data stored on your hard drive should protect it. Keyloggers are a different story though and I see where a keylogger could send data by talking directly to the hardware and bypassing the O/S. I wonder if you might get more protection from that by not using your motherboard's Ethernet interface at all and install a separate network card instead? Then the trojan would need to have its own TCP/IP stack and drivers for the NIC, and that's less likely (I hope).

</comment><comment><USER3> The subject matter of the article is sound, however the execution leaves me skeptical that this isn't just hobbled together FUD for the sake of traffic/audience. The last two paragraphs sealed the deal for me.

I just hope our geeks are working just as hard as their geeks.

<comment><USER4> There's a simple solution to things like this. If you have data you'd consider top-secret, why the fuck is it on an internet-available PC. I mean if I need it stored on a PC, I'd store it on a non-networked PC and it's safe from all virus, Trojans and whatever else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I see a lot of skepticism in the original article's comments about whether this is possible or not.

Yes, it'd be hard to hide a whole TCP/IP stack in hardware (though perhaps it could be in ROM if we're talking about CPUs), but how hard would it be to hide a simple UDP-based key logger?

Look at the hundreds of thousands of pwned machines that are part of spam botnets. Clearly, machines can be co-opted.

And we have plenty of evidence that China is involved in a (asymmetric) full- out cyberwar with us.</comment>


Show HN: Crypton.sh – Secure SMS Messages in the Cloud - <AUTHOR> I've been making Crypton.sh as my side project for the past couple of months and it's now ready for public consumption.
Crypton.sh is a secure and encrypted SMS messaging solution in the cloud, no longer can you worry about your SIM card being stolen by malicious hackers, or having a second account on Whatsapp, Telegram, Signal, Google and others.
It supports crypto payments and credit cards and you pay month to month for a number ($7). You can also send and receive messages.
Visit it here: https://crypton.sh/
Please leave a comment on what you think. It's also live on Product Hunt, I would highly appriciate upvotes there: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/crypton-sh
Thank you all! <comment><USER2> Is the idea to use this just for 2FA using SMS? Or would it as your daily messaging number? (If your supposed to use it daily, is there an Android or iPhone app?)</comment>


Best real-time communication softphone on the Linux desktop? - <AUTHOR> http://danielpocock.com/best-rtc-voip-softphone-linux-desktop

<comment><USER2> May I suggest mumble [0] ?

Server installation is deceptively easy, client installation is a bit more difficult because you must configure your audio installation. Nothing difficult for someone curious enough.

After that, all your audio communications will be a breeze. It's fast, it's low on resources, you don't even need to think about it (it doesn't hog your DSL line and when your DSL line _is_ full, you can still have some reasonable conversation), it's using Opus now so the quality is excellent, the client is available on Windows and Linux at least (I have regular conversation using these 2 OSes, no problem to report) and there are prototypes for Android, it's secure (to the extent that you must trust the server), it's multiparty, and it's Libre.

Only nitpick: it's its own standard.

[0] [http://mumble.sourceforge.net/](http://mumble.sourceforge.net/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I love Jitsi. Since the latest version even the remote desktop sharing on my ubuntu systems is working.

Small tip: Use IPv6. If either party can not get a native connection google for a free tunnel provider. Start jitsi with -6 as parameter and it will prioritise v6 connections. This fixed all kinds of 'nat-nat-nat' setups that some friends are forced into. (Make sure the implications of having a public address are understood.)

Another wonderful thing about jitsi is the availability for multiple platforms and crypto support for otr or zrtp.

<comment><USER4> What if the ISP doesn't support IPv6? Does it fall back on IPv4?</comment></comment>


Our Elegant Minds: Crowdfunding Community for Schizophrenics, Schizoaffectives - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/our-elegant-minds

<comment><AUTHOR> I myself have Bipolar Type Schizoaffective Disorder. This isn't my project - <USER2> friend tipped me off to it just now; one of her close relatives also has Schizoaffective Disorder.</comment>


London girl could be first to have "air pollution" listed as cause of death - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ella-kissi-debrah-could-become-first-death-attributed-to-air-pollution-in-united-kingdom/ <comment><USER2> I'm very familiar with this part of London. I haven't quite lived on the road in question but I know people who have. It's not clear the exact location but I imagine it to be near a busy junction with lots of vehicles idling.

Ultimately in a system where people bid for housing this sort of thing is bound to happen. It's notably cheaper to live on a main road, near a pollution hotspot, etc; there's also commonly social housing in those sorts of locations, which makes moving less about marginal income and more about navigating a bureaucracy (if you're paying below market rent you may need double or triple the amount to move to a nearby privately rented place).

In my view we should heavily tax diesel cars out of existence, at least in busy cities. The alternatives are to either demolish large amounts of housing (the South Circular Road and A2 in London are lined with residential; so too are most major roads in the capital), to basically delete the road network, or to accept these deaths as a way of life.

<comment><USER3> I live in Brighton (55 miles south of London) and regularly come up by train. But as soon as it's more than me - my wife and daughter joining me to see an exhibition for example - it often costs more to travel by train than it does to drive (in my polluting diesel car I bought quite a while ago when people still thought they were good), including fuel, central London parking and the congestion charge, presuming we don't know three months in advance that we want to do that (when we'd be able to buy cheap super-advance off-peak tickets). The ULEZ will change that calculation a bit. But the thing I hate the very most is the reduction of government subsidies for public transport when the effective subsidies for cars - including things like NHS treatment for this poor girl - is astronomical. I would _love_ my diesel car to be taxed out of existence. But unless there's some kind of provision for public transport (both cost and capacity) to balance that out, it's going to be a real shitshow.

<comment><USER2> Would it not work to drive to the edge of the Oyster zone and get the train in? Somewhere around East Croydon or one of the tram stops, say? I agree that you wouldn't do it at the moment because it'd be more hassle, but if the cost went up it'd make sense right? (I'm not that familiar with the drive from Brighton but it feels like there must be a station somewhere you can use; there are tons of stations in SE London that have unrestricted parking 10 mins walk away).

I agree that National Rail pricing is absurd. We should fix that. There's this silly two-tier thing going on whereby getting a journey within the Oyster zone is trivial and getting one outside (i.e. most of the bloody country) is this escapade of finding advance tickets, finding the cheapest time, etc.

Ultimately though, things are going to get more expensive. A poster below commented something along the lines of "so only the rich should drive in London" \- and that's what's going to end up happening, unless you ban driving entirely, which would be the nuclear option.

Not all problems, particularly those to do with pollution, have an easy "everyone wins" answer. It might just be the case that things we previously considered normal and standard just won't be possible if we want to preserve health and the climate.

<comment><USER3> As I've said below, I should have been clearer that I do take the train rather than drive. My point was more about the calculations that don't make sense, and until those change in tandem with more investment in public transport (and yes, sort out those stupidly confusing fare structures on National Rail) we'll be treading water (literally, in London). I wouldn't really care if only rich people drove in London, if they paid enough to make a difference to public transport for everyone else. Even if they didn't the much cleaner air might be worth it.

There are stations like the ones you're suggesting. Forest Hill has free on- street parking less than five minutes from the station, but that would increase journey time significantly with the switch to another mode of transport with family in tow, and make a day trip much less feasible.

Fair point about some things not being possible though. Better to reduce the number of people travelling if it means a much cleaner, healthier London. I've even considered trying to commute to London from Brighton via bike during the summer, staying a night with a friend and riding back the next afternoon... That would be much nicer if I didn't feel like I was inhaling exhaust fumes for half the journey.

<comment><USER2> Ha. So I'm not the only one that knows about Forest Hill, then.

(Feels like it'd be a bloody pain to drive to from Brighton!)

The last part of your comment is what really hits home for me.

People driving private cars around damage other modes of transport. Cycling becomes less pleasant (near passes, inhaling shit, etc); buses are caught in congestion; everything becomes less dense; etc.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, if pollution can kill that girl just because she lives near that junction, I just keep thinking what it must be like in my lungs if I'm pedalling hard and sucking in great gulps of the stuff.

(Sydenham is OK as a backup - a bit further south of the station on the side roads. Not as convenient as Forest Hill though!)

Edit: I seem to remember a study about health of cyclists (although don't have the citation so take with a pinch of salt) and it was universally better except in cities. Either crashes, pollution, or both, meant that cycling didn't make a difference to cyclists' health overall.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> For anybody who thinks this type of thing is "just asthma," it may help to remember that there's strong and growing evidence that air pollution has all kinds of health effects on everybody.

For example: "Our findings add to the growing body of evidence that air pollution may play a role in autism, as well as in other neurodevelopmental disorders." [1]

1 - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_pollution#Health_effects](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_pollution#Health_effects)

<comment> village-idiot NOx is really nasty stuff. It won't kill you straight up like CO or CO2 can, but it can mess up a lot of various systems to the point where your lifespan is limited.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> A quick googling gave this historical graph of London's air pollution index: [https://ourworldindata.org/london-air- pollution](https://ourworldindata.org/london-air-pollution)

The peak is at 623¹ in 1891. After another minipeak at 409 in 1935, it went down fast to 26 in 1994 and is now 16.

That's not to say this isn't a problem today. But it was _much_ worse in the past, and this girl is _far_ from the first to die from it.

¹ suspended particulate matter (SPM), measured in micrograms per cubic metres

<comment><USER6> Yep, but the headline says _listed_ as a cause of death. I don't know anyone who doesn't know about the London Fog from the industrial revolution.

<comment><USER5> I think today people mostly know it from watching The Crown :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Categorization of cause of death is an interesting issue, there are a lot of cases like this where there are multiple contributory factors, and how you decide which to list is not clear. For instance, people don't really die of dementia, they die of medical problems secondary to dementia, malnutrition, lack of exercise, and so on. Lung-related deaths amongst miners are related to exposure to pollution, but also to genetic predispositions which massively increase risk. If you drink enough alcohol to raise your risk of liver failure a hundred times, and die of liver failure, that's a fairly clear causal link, but what about if you drink a smaller amount, and only increase your risk five-fold, but still die of liver failure? Or if you drink a small amount, raise your risk 20%, but still die of liver failure?

There is no hard line between someone who has rolled the dice on bad odds and come off badly, and someone who has rolled the dice on moderate or good odds but still come out badly.

For this girl, there likely would have been genetic factors or simply bad luck which compounded air pollution, but it's difficult to say that air pollution didn't contribute significantly as one of the causes of her death. And that is important to know, to be able to reduce deaths and ongoing poor health in the future.

As electronic medical records become more prevalent, this is going to become more important. For instance, you could look back through patients with a cause of death like this, and pick out the frequency and timing of hospitalization as linked with local episodes of air pollution, that could then be used to inform advice to patients currently suffering from the same symptoms in the same pattern. You could essentially join together medical care, epidemiology and public health in a symbiosis which could be hugely beneficial.

</comment><comment><USER8> This tells perhaps more about the politics of naming causes of death than actual historical causes of death, considering the history of air pollution and smogs in London.

<comment><USER9> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_London](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_London)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Maybe now the U.K. will do something about truck, bus and automobile particulates.

<comment><USER11> Has the UK begun adopting electric buses? They seem to be getting tested or rolled out gradually everywhere these days.

<comment><USER12> London had the largest trolley bus network in the world until about 1960 when about 2000 electric buses were replaced with diesels.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> In the US, this is a racial injustice issue.* I can't help but wonder if it is in the UK as well.

* [https://ggwash.org/view/71256/why-are-city-planners-so-afrai...](https://ggwash.org/view/71256/why-are-city-planners-so-afraid-to-talk-about-race)

<comment><USER2> If we exclude Central London and talk about Zone 2 outwards, anecdotally I'd say it is purely based on knowing the makeup of certain neighbourhoods.

Removed from that though, you only need to make a few assumptions to come to the conclusion it would be anyway.

If we assume, say, that people would prefer to live on a side street over a main road, and then away from a junction rather than on a junction, from that it stems that it's going to be cheaper to own/rent a place in the most polluted areas.

There are differences in income and wealth by race.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_London](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_London)

</comment><comment><USER14> If this is related to local air pollution then what is the biggest producer of that pollution? I mean are there any coal plants or blast furnaces near her home? Was there a construction site pouring concrete or demolishing a building and creating toxic dust? Is the traffic especially bad? It is far simpler to move pollution away from locations than it is to reduce them in the first place. Therefore knowing what the source of the pollution is far more important than the pollution itself. If this death really was caused by global air pollution then good luck, nobody can help you when China and India are ramping up their pollution, certain industries might never stop emitting CO2 and capturing CO2 in the air will never be economical without a huge carbon tax.

<comment><USER15> There's _very_ little coal in the UK now. There are fewer than 10 coal power stations left, and the nearest is over 100 miles from London.

The specific London problem is traffic, and maybe added to by the current fashion for log stoves. You get the constant thick taste of the fumes about 10 miles outside the centre, and it's there permanently.

Just about _everywhere_ inside the north and south circular, which is more like 4 or 5 miles outside the centre, is badly polluted, but the south circular exceptionally so - it's almost constantly gridlocked and wasn't built for the volume of traffic it has. South Circular makes it sound like a major road or city motorway - it's used as one, and was probably intended to one day be rebuilt as one. Except it's just a regular one lane each way street for most of it, with lights and junctions, and lined with houses and shops.

So dirt and grit if you leave windows open, or washing out, black gunk in the nostrils and the constant taste.

Locals get used to it to some extent. It strikes us every single time we visit the relatives down there.

<comment> village-idiot I find the idea that log stoves are part of the problem interesting. Here in America wood burning stoves have pretty strict emissions requirements, to the point where a portion of wood burning stoves sold today actually have a catalytic converters in them to ensure complete combustion of any particulate!

Does the U.K. not have similar rules, or are all of these just grandfathered in?

<comment><USER15> I knew it was a bit of an issue, so I looked it up[1]. Turns out it's far worse than vehicles, and far worse than I thought:

 _"...the burning of solid fuels (such as house coal and wood) in our homes is the largest contributor of harmful particulate-matter (PM) emissions."_

 _" This makes up 38% of our national PM emissions while, in comparison, industrial combustion is 16% and road transport 12%."_

Wood stoves appear to have side-stepped much of our clean air legislation which is woefully out of date anyway. Coal fires have become fairly rare over the same period, so that's mostly down to wood stoves. Haven't heard of any requirements for catalytic converters, which seems a sensible idea.

In my lifetime we've gone from almost nowhere selling wood except wood yards, to everywhere does - mainly in the last 10 years - garages, corner shops, supermarkets. In neat little single use plastic bags. This government has lost 3 court cases on air pollution, and their current targets kick out real action well into the long grass: 2030.

It's ridiculous.

[1] [https://www.which.co.uk/reviews/wood-burning- stoves/article/...](https://www.which.co.uk/reviews/wood-burning- stoves/article/wood-burning-stoves-what-you-need-to-know/stoves-and-pollution)

<comment> village-idiot Can you find any references to the actual particulate emissions that'll be allowed after 2030? I'm curious if wood burning stoves are inherently problematic, or if the EPA really is that much more strict than the U.K. equivalent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I am just thinking about fireworks during New Year's celebration. We pollute all major cities all over the world for 2 days just like that and then complain about pollution. Insane!

Edit: I see many people here like fireworks. But if we as humanity can't handle this crazy stupid pollution source, we also cannot do anything else. Forget handling diesel car pollution or improving public transport.

<comment> Al-Khwarizmi Not to defend the fireworks, but between pollution one night a year and pollution 24 hours a day, 356 days a year from the diesel cars going through my street and neighboring streets all the time... I know what I should be most worried about, and it's not the fireworks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> What about people who committed suicide by running a car in the garage? What about smoking?

Sensationalism is the biggest threat to people accepting climate change in a wholesome way. Take a stand. End Sensationalism.

<comment><USER18> Air pollution is, unfortunately, an issue with broader scope than just climate change, and the particular effects of the pollution that slowly killed this girl aren't related to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The cause of death is respiratory failure, not "air pollution". I'm getting real tired of even big names like CBS getting in on this clickbait game.

<comment><USER20> That's like saying someone who bleeds out after being shot died of "circulatory failure". Words have meanings and you don't get to redefine things to make yourself feel better. The court ruled that the girl wouldn't be dead if not for years of illegal air pollution. It's a fact.

<comment><USER21> No, it's not like at all.

For death by firearm discharge, the coroner would indicate W34, X74, X94, X95, Y35, or Y36 (depending on the reported circumstances: suicide, homocide, legal action, or war). [1] This cause of death is readily determined by the autopsy and reported immediate circumstances.

Changing the cause of death to air pollution rather than asthma (J45) requires lengthy investigation into years of the deceased's lifetime. It would be infeasible to use that as an actual classification.

\---

An _actually_ comparable (and practically relevant) situation is changing cause of death from lung cancer (C34) to smoking. "Smoking" is not a cause of death recognized by the CDC, WHO, or any other health organization; it's a underlying factor. This is why you'll see statistics on _smoking-related_ deaths.

[1] [http://apps.who.int/classifications/apps/icd/icd10online2005...](http://apps.who.int/classifications/apps/icd/icd10online2005/fr- icd.htm?gx85.htm+)

<comment><USER20> Right, because everyone knows that smoking is a totally objective, non- manipulated conversation about the simple facts of a straightforward situation.

In both cases, powerful parties have a huge incentive to use semantics to excuse the blame that should rightfully be placed at their feet.

Which is why it's outrageous to use the phrase "respiratory failure" to imply that this is clickbait and not a real issue.

<comment><USER21> > smoking is a totally objective, non-manipulated conversation

Is this irony?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> If everyone is responsible than no one is.

</comment><comment><USER21> I don't know how this normally works.

But isn't "air pollution" an overly ambiguous cause of death?

Could be lung cancer, injury, asphyxiation, etc.

It seems a bit like listing "sugar" as the cause of death.

<comment> Funes- Well, if it is confirmed that it had a decisive role in this unfortunate event, I guess it would be fair to say that air pollution is one of the primary causes of the development of the subsequent ailments she went through, which ultimately lead her to her death. If removing air pollution from the equation would have saved her life, I think it's reasonable to say that it was, if not _the_ sole cause of her death, _one_ of the causes.

<comment><USER23> Asthma was her cause of death. It may be due to a genetic disorder, a disease, or some other cause. But air pollution was not definitively shown to be the cause of her death. This is a political move committed by Stephen Holgate, the former chair of the U.K. government's advisory committee on air pollution. The article pretty much spells that out.

<comment><USER24> Sounds like politicians are trying to cover their asses after an entirely preventable (under their own legislation) death</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Asynchronous Programming with Async and Await (C# and Visual Basic)  - <AUTHOR> http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh191443(v=VS.110).aspx

<comment><USER2> This is what sparked my interest in F# originally, and I love it. For the first time ever I'm willing to write async code regularly in C#. I can't wait for something like this to make its way to python (for twisted) or JavaScript (for node).

<comment><USER3> It looks like this functionality has been ported to node, have a look: [https://github.com/koush/node/wiki/%22async%22-support-in- no...](https://github.com/koush/node/wiki/%22async%22-support-in-node.js)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > In C#, the modifier can be applied to a method, a lambda expression, or an > anonymous method. In all other contexts, the term is interpreted as an > identifier.

Wow so you can have your cake and eat it! await is an accepted "keyword" but it's not actually a keyword as far as parser is concerned. Cool! I wish other compilers were this conscious of backwards compatibility.

<comment><USER5> C# has been pretty scrupulous about using contextual keywords instead of reserved keywords when they add new language features. That's why, e.g., they went with "yield return foo" instead of the more traditional "yield foo." They also let you define "var," which normally denotes type inference, as a normal type, and "var" will refer to the defined type in contexts where it is accessible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Been using this in a new Win8 app I'm working on - I have to say, the await keyword and the Task<T> object make the code much cleaner

<comment><USER7> From what I've heard, you can't use Task<T> for WinRT components that expose async methods. Instead you have to use IAsyncOperation as the return type. This limitation seems kind of annoying IMHO.

Reference: Miguel de Icaza's blog post <http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2011/Sep-15.html>

<comment><USER6> So after toying with it for a couple of hours, here's what I've seen:

I think if the method is named ' _Async' (_ such as GetReplyAsync() *) , you can call it asynchronously with the new await in C#, and using Task<T> as the return type. Only methods that are lableled async implement the new 'await'.

Some of the old .NET methods had 2 API's - synchronous & asyncrhonous. Some of the synchronous implementations, as pointed out in your link, have been deprecated.

A few of the async methods I have seen (which do not have Async in the title), only accept the old IAsync/callback and do not work with await. Presumably, they do not implement the new C#5 style of async yet. Hopefully, they will at some point, because I'm a big fan of how clean & readable async C# can be now.

Again I haven't explored C#5.0 thoroughly, these are just my first impressions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why in the world would someone include the words Visual Basic in the title of a submission to Hacker News? And how in the world does that article get to the front page?

<comment><USER9> Why c# is OK but VB is not? They both have the same feature set with different syntax. VB, as the language, is more powerful at the moment than Java, for example. Got genetics, lambda, linq for years and now async/await. Java OK, VB not? Come on :)

<comment><USER7> Genetics, cool!! Accounting for genetic drift must be a bitch though.

<comment><USER9> Yep, generics, my bad.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Impossible Foods raises $200M in fresh funding - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-impossible-foods-funding/impossible-foods-raises-200-million-in-fresh-funding-idUSKCN2592WV <comment><USER2> I've been using their meat in things like pastas and tacos and it's slightly tastier. The thing that hit me is that we consume so much meat in a heavily processed way that it seems silly a creature should have to suffer and die to make it. I'm all for aged steaks and prosciutto in moderation, but a large portion of the meat is consumed in nugget or other forms that don't really respect the sacrifice of the animal or pollution created.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. I've switched to eating mostly vegan because most meat I used to eat was sort of just filler. If I go out somewhere and they specialize in something meat related and I know it's going to be amazing, then I'll get it.

Eating lots of heavily processed chicken, cow and pigs just isn't worth the many costs to environment, animal wellbeing, and potentially personal nutrition.

I recommend everyone to consciously lower their meat intake. It doesn't need to be forever or for every meal.

<comment><USER4> Where do you get enough protein to maintain muscle integrity ?

<comment><USER5> I'm not a vegan but beans and rice go a long way.

<comment><USER6> Beans also have tons of fiber. You can easily get 20 grams of mostly soluble fiber from a bowl of beans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Great! While I do think plant-based diets are at their most delicious and healthy when they don't try to imitate animal products, I think it's a reality that many people (who want to avoid/minimise animal products) don't want to change the type of food they eat, just the components.

I've really been enjoying the Burger King impossible burger - they've much better texture, flavour and juicyness compared to Burger King's beef patties (not a particularly high bar, mind you!). They're definitely at their best prepared with a slice of cheese, though. Perhaps Impossible will tackle that soon...

Edited: to note that I was referring to people who didn't want to eat meat, not the general public

<comment><USER8> Dayia cheese is in my opinion, superior than cheese in applications such as burgers. However, looking at the ingredients it looks unhealthier gram by gram vs cheese. But if it spares the suffering of one animal I'm all for it.

<comment><USER9> I've never heard of it before, but having just had a look, it seems like an imitation of the worst kinds of 'cheese'.

I don't doubt it can beat squares of plasticy crap and bags of shredded rubber, but do you think it's superior to actual cheese, that isn't artificially coloured or machined into a weird shape and texture?

<comment><USER8> Better than gourmet cheese? No. But in certain foods where cheese is not the main ingredient, such as burgers, sandwiches, and pizzas, yes, it can be superior.

<comment><USER9> I didn't say 'gourmet' though, I just wouldn't personally put one of those rubber squares or anything out of a bag even on a burger, because I think its horrid. I would use real cheese cut from a block that hasn't been coloured some rancid colour, even if cheap decidedly non-gourmet cheese.

This stuff looks like it's modelled off the horrid stuff, rather than imitating anything that I would want to eat, so I just wondered what you were comparing it to in saying it's superior.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm not a vegetarian, but also think that killing an animal when there's another option should be avoided -- and when I grill the IB's, they taste just like meat and even pass the 12 yo test. (The key is on the grill - fried up, not as good.) I'd love to see the time when we all eat meat only as a special occasion (<= once every few weeks) and giving thanks and respect to the animal. And the environmental benefits are huge. (Beyond is pretty good too, but not quite as beef-like, esp. if not well-done.) Now if they make a _bacon_ that's just as convincing, I will definitely be celebrating!

<comment><USER11> There is a startup called Mission barns that aims to make lab grown bacon. I'm not sure how close they are to market but I believe they've done a batch trial.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Somebody brought these burgers to a cookout, and I gotta say, they went faster than the real meat did!

I tried cooking them at home on the stove and it was a disaster, but they were awesome off of the grill.

They definitely need some good sauces to really make the burger, but they texture and taste were both really good.

I really hope they can drive the cost way, way down. If these were side by side on the shelf and priced $2 less than the "real thing", they'd take over a good chunk of the whole market in a very short time.

</comment><comment><USER13> I imagine meat alternatives will really take off once they are cheaper than meat. There seems to be a lot of potential for cost savings if you don't need to raise a large animal to create the product. So far I haven't seen much of a cost advantage to meatless products, but perhaps with more funding this would be achievable. While I don't thing Impossible tastes better or even as good as the real thing, it isn't too far off. Having a price advantage would tip the scale for many people, especially in the fast food space.

<comment><USER14> Impossible should lobby for a carbon tax, which would skyrocket the price of meat, making their option more affordable.

<comment><USER15> Impossible meat production doesn't use carbon?

<comment><USER16> Far less than beef: [https://impossiblefoods.com/mission/lca- update-2019/](https://impossiblefoods.com/mission/lca-update-2019/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Recommended short story _Food of the Gods_ -Arthur C. Clarke

[https://books.google.com.au/books?id=hbAqAAAAQBAJ&lpg=PT75&o...](https://books.google.com.au/books?id=hbAqAAAAQBAJ&lpg=PT75&ots=Fyo9gNkRJC&pg=PT75#v=onepage&q&f=false)

</comment><comment><USER15> Highly recommended reading is Sacred Cow book. It's the most well researched, fact based, science based book thus far that is pro meat.

[https://www.sacredcow.info/](https://www.sacredcow.info/)

Impossible ingredients are pretty bad and aren't that good for the environment either. Soy production is extremely destructive.

Here's the list: Water, Soy Protein Concentrate, Coconut Oil, Sunflower Oil, Natural Flavors, 2% Or Less Of: Potato Protein, Methylcellulose, Yeast Extract, Cultured Dextrose, Food Starch Modified, Soy Leghemoglobin, Salt, Mixed Tocopherols (Antioxidant), Soy Protein Isolate, Vitamins and Minerals (Zinc Gluconate, Thiamine Hydrochloride (Vitamin B1), Niacin, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride (Vitamin B6), Riboflavin (Vitamin B2), Vitamin B12).

<comment><USER18> Do you have a good source on why soy production is harmful? I think the idea is that it's not AS harmful. Regardless of the land damage that soy production takes it's not as bad as the land needed for animals & the food to feed those animals.

Side benefit: also factory farms can totally be a source of another fucked up disease. They pump those animals with antibiotics and put them in bad environments a lot of the time.

<comment><USER16> The vast majority of soy production is for animal feed. By diverting that directly to feeding people, you eliminate an entire trophic level.

Edit: Failed to mention that a lot of deforestation is done to facilitate the growth of soy. Take for example the Amazon.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, and we shouldn't feed animals soy. I'm for that 100%. So we should fight for that. If everyone stops eating meat and starts eating soy we won't be growing much less of it. We just transfer the problem from one place to another.

<comment><USER19> Not if you remove the inefficient conversion in the middle. The whole argument is, cattle is inefficient conversion of plant based sources into meat.[1] If instead, we just eat the plant based sources, we would need to grow less of them. Also, we don't really need to restrict ourselves to soy, there are other plant based foods to eat. There are cultures which are dominated by vegetarian food, so we don't even have a lack of recipes to cook.

[1] can be biased: [https://impossiblefoods.com/mission/lca- update-2019/](https://impossiblefoods.com/mission/lca-update-2019/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I feel like this level of funding and therefore expected future worth is only possible if laws were passed to limit proper meat cultivation..

I have never so far felt the urge to pay more for non-beef, beef.

<comment> edouard-harris The interesting thing about the alternative meat industry isn't where the meat puck is, but where it's going (if you'll pardon the pun).

Making soybeans taste like a supermarket hamburger almost certainly uses a very similar organizational skillset as making soybeans taste like, say, a Kobe beef burger - or some other meat option that's currently default- expensive. So the thesis is likely that their intellectual capital is now mature enough that they can iterate their way up the price / quality spectrum to win meaningful market segments.

My guess is Impossible's valuation is probably justified, even if the investor story is a _disjunction_ of "scale will eventually bring prices to parity or better with most real meat options" and "R&D will eventually produce flavor / texture profiles that transcend those of most real meat options". People eat a heck of a lot of meat, in a heck of a lot of varieties. And of course, the folks who invested will have gotten a look at the non-public numbers too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Are there any variants of plant based products which could compare to extremely high protein/calorie ratio foods, foods like egg white and chicken breast.

The ones I have eaten/seen till now seem quite bad if you look at the overall composition. Sure, they have decent amount of protein from the legume they come from but the overall composition is not good. There are certain variants of Tofu with low fat/carb count but I don't know of any other besides supplements.

<comment><USER21> Gluten-based food? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat_gluten_(food)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat_gluten_\(food\))

Edit: judging from this food nutrition label, the protein/calorie ratio is quite extreme...[0]

[0]: [https://images-na.ssl-images- amazon.com/images/I/61D08CfuRzL...](https://images-na.ssl-images- amazon.com/images/I/61D08CfuRzL._SL1200_.jpg)

<comment><USER19> Thanks, I just searched for that. Those are some extreme numbers[1] and there seem to be a lot of dishes in East Asia that are making use of it, not sure if the use is just as an additive.

I wonder why it doesn't come up a lot in protein rich food discussion. I will try to read up more about it.

[1] [https://ndb.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food- details/168147/n...](https://ndb.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food- details/168147/nutrients)

<comment><USER22> Just for some additional search terms, seitan is a form of prepared Vital Wheat Gluten.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm surprised their valuation didn't go up very much. $3.61B -> $4.03B.

<comment><USER24> A hedge fund was involved, maybe this is a preparation for an IPO? Get some institutional public investors on board?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs- gocza6t8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs-gocza6t8)

</comment><comment><USER26> Why not just eat the soy beans directly? This stuff is just glorified processed food.

<comment><USER27> Probably because a hamburger is tasty?

It's an open secret things like "Impossible Meat" and others are really not healthy for you - certainly not a healthier alternative than just eating beef. They are higher in calories, and contain a lot more oils.

Instead, it's for people who wish not to eat meat for whatever reasons (personal choice, religion, etc)... and now they can have a tasty alternative at the next Backyard BBQ.

<comment><USER28> Cost. As soon as this is materially cheaper than meat it will become the 'filler' used on so many burgers, taco places etc. and they'll do it without telling customers. Then so many people who would otherwise 'not like this stuff' have to internalize the fact 'they are already eating it widespread'. And even more directly, 40% of consumers are _extremely_ price sensitive (think dollar store) and will buy the cheapest thing making 'real meat' a luxury.

I'm not against meat but I do view 'vegetarian strategic path to meat elimination' as entirely economic.

People care more about their money than anything that's how it will happen in my view.

That said - if it tasted 'really good' I don't mind at all now and again personally and I feel probably most people feel that way as well. If I had burgers once every two weeks and 1/3 of them were 'good vegan' I would fall into just considering it 'another choice in the menu' type of thing, which I believe a lot of folks will go for.

<comment><USER27> > As soon as this is materially cheaper than meat it will become the 'filler' > used on so many burgers, taco places etc. and they'll do it without telling > customers.

This already exists. Tofu is commonly used in fast food as a meat "filler", and very few people notice as it is. Tacos at Jack in the Box "May Contain Soy Products", and more.

Making "Impossible Meat" is always going to be more expensive than Tofu fillers, simply because it's processed to a much higher degree and requires a lot of ingredients.</comment></comment></comment></comment>