What are some common Mac annoyances that you face day to day? - <AUTHOR>

I'm seriously giving thoughts to getting a MacBook Pro for myself, I spend most of the time doing python, php and web development related stuff. I was wondering what sort of annoyances bother a macbook user ? and has anyone faced problems with installing Ubuntu on it (not a VM) ? <comment><USER2> Running linux on a Mac laptop is a bit of a pain, mostly because of the keyboard/touchpad. The control and alt keys are in strange places (at least on my powerbook), and having only one button on the mouse is pretty irritating when you're not in OSX. I actually replaced my powerbook with a Linux laptop primarily for those two reasons; I'm always working in a terminal, so not having reasonably placed control and alt keys pretty seriously slowed down my ability to navigate on the command line and in an editor.

I'm not sure if this applies to the MacBooks, but on my Core2 Duo Mac Mini, the left audio channel frequently gets a lot of static when playing music; it seems to be a random thing on boot; either you will have static on this boot or you won't. It's a common problem of the Mini with Linux, but I have no idea if it ever happens on any other Mac.

If you're a KDE user, then OSX's finder will drive you mad. They don't have IOSlaves, but they do now have Fuse, which can allow you to browse remote file systems over ssh. If the ssh connection goes down, every finder window (including the desktop) freezes until the fuse connection times out, and it never feels quite as nice as KDE's IOSlave system, but it does make browsing of remote systems possible.

Spaces is a little flaky if you try to use it the way you use a normal multiple desktop implementation. With spaces, you can have either all windows of an application on the same virtual desktop, or you can allow them to be on multiple desktops. If you do multiple desktops, then alt-tabbing to a running application won't ever switch your current desktop. Since OSX generally only has one instance of each application running, this can make switching between windows of the same program on different desktops a bit of a pain. It's not terrible, but it isn't as smooth as it could be.

To be honest, I'm not really sure why a developer would use a MacBook at this point. When I bought mine, Linux's wifi support was a sick joke, which made it pretty pointless for a laptop. OSX is very polished and clean, but their developer tools for python, php, etc are going to be the same tools you'd be using under any other OS, I would think. Is TextMate a killer app for OSX now? What does OSX offer that's really good for web development?

<comment><USER3> I do most of my web development using the terminal and emacs, so there's nothing intrinsic to OS X that's an advantage there.

The real advantage of OS X is that the rest of the system gets the heck out of your way so that you can get work done. There's a million tiny little touches in the system that make life easier, so you spend more time doing actual development instead of wrestling with the email attachment that Aunt Edna sent you.

It's also the most popular *NIX out there, outnumbering everything else by an order of magnitude (or two). That means that virtually all recent UNIX software has been either been tested on the Mac, or written on one. That's nice.

<comment><USER4> _It's also the most popular NIX out there, outnumbering everything else by an order of magnitude (or two). That means that virtually all recent UNIX software has been either been tested on the Mac, or written on one. That's nice._

Sorry to rain on your parade but both of these statements are wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can't think of any common annoyances. I come from the Linux desktop world, so having a GUI that works right is great. It was hard to get used to the close in the top left and drag in the bottom right only at first but I don't even notice that anymore.

Under the hood it is Unix, includes Python and wxPython by default, Xcode is free and an awesome development environment so I can do as much and more than I can with a Linux box.

If you need to run Ubuntu, just do it in Parallels, otherwise your annoyance is going to be having to reboot into OSX.

<comment><USER6> Ditto, but I can't recommend Fusion enough.

Tried Parallels, and had too many problems.

<comment><USER7> VirtualBox is very polished virtualization software released under GPL. I have run this on my MPB for a year with Debian, and XP as clients. It runs great.

<http://www.virtualbox.org/>

<comment><USER8> I recommend VirtualBox as well. I haven't used Fusion but have used Parallels, and VirtualBox has become my default VM. Being free and GPL doesn't hurt at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I had tons of hardware problems.

It's just that I could be an outlier, these kinds of stories are always so freaking anecdotal and not really a help when deciding what to buy.

My screen failed and was exchanged. Then my main board failed and was exchanged. Now everything seems to be working fine. Oh, yeah. I nearly forgot, my DVD drive was unable to burn anything so it was exchanged. The exchanged drive was also unable to burn anything and was exchanged again. After those two tries it finally worked. And I already destroyed two batteries. After mere 110 cycles both were unable to hold much charge (they lasted for 30 min or less). Both were exchanged.

All this, and the MBP is not even two years old. Since I have Apple Care I didn't have to pay for labour or parts, but I had to pay for transport to and from the few places in Germany where Apple hardware is repaired and I didn't have my laptop for several weeks in the span of those last few months.

I hope that's all for now because I actually still like my MBP. I planned to buy a new one at the earliest in three years, but after all those failures I don't have much hope that my MBP is going to make it.

But: it simply cannot be the case that every or even a big percentage of Macs fail like this. With Apple having to pay for two batteries, one whole screen, a main board and two DVD drives plus all the labour they certainly didn't make any profit from my purchase.

<comment><USER7> Not an outlier.. I have had three hardware problems with my MBP:

1) Hard drive had IO errors and was replaced (2 months)

2) One of my keys stopped working. (9 months)

3) The right fan died. (10 months)

The last company I worked at had a small fleet of MPB's and hardware problems were a regular occurrence. Far more frequent than when I was at an IBM/thinkpad shop, but drastically less than when I worked with Dells.

Jeremy

<comment><USER10> Data is not the plural of anecdote.

<comment><USER11> Anecdotes are still data.

You have 2 verified MBP users with a total of 4 problematic MBPs. That's raw data right there.

Do not confuse data with statistics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The green button has inconsistent behavior by application - firefox maximizes to whole screen, safari sizes to the window, iTunes goes back and forth from mini-Player

No cut and paste between windows - But I use the command line for most things, so it's not that big of a deal

<comment><USER13> Not to keep pushing this software, but SizeUp allows for a keyboard shortcut to do full size windows (for any window) and then snap back to previous size, plus a whole mess of other great features. Its literally the app that kept me using OS X after switching from Linux. And its name your own price licensing.

<http://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/>

<comment><USER14> That looks like a great piece of software! I have been bugged by the lack of maximize for a while now. This looks like it will fit the bill nicely.

Out of curiosity, what is a typical "donation" to the developer in this style of licensing?

<comment><USER13> He asks for $2.99 min so his paypal fees are payed, etc. I gave a bit more and got a personal thank you. It does have a demo mode as well.

<comment><USER14> The posts from the people that are releasing the sales data are extremely interesting to me. Thanks!

As an aside, does anyone know of an agregator of blog posts concerning sales data for ISV's?

<comment><USER15> Some developer blogs might show graphs so you can see the trend of their sales, usually with a line showing where they finally become a viable business, but few release hard numbers. I'm happy to share more hard numbers if anyone asks, since I feel this is very valuable data for anyone considering ISV or the "name your price" model. Feel free to contact me via the site: <http://www.irradiatedsoftare.com/contact>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The custom "framework" system for Ruby and Python is a minor annoyance when you want to customize or upgrade them. Apple puts python in one place, the python community installers put it in another, and neither is where you'd install it on your own. Although installing most things and building from source are pretty much the same as with linux, if there is already an apple- installed version you might find you need to so some minor surgery (make a symlink or two) after an initial install. In most cases, using macports works just like any other package manager and, as a bonus, keeps everything segregated into its own directory tree, so many people use that when possible.

Still, these issues are minor and infrequent. Linux installs aren't always painless and will require triage from time to time, too. But compared to doing the same stuff on windows, well ...

<comment><USER17> I think this is the worst about owning a Mac. The Open Source Anarchy is very well established on the Mac platform. To many repositories and sometimes forks from repositories which aren't totally compatible with the repository it once came from and this sometimes results in configuration nightmares. Both with latex and a forked version of Vim for my part. I think Apple really should make some guidelines in this area. Or that the different repositories should sit down together and agree over some standards. Installing is one thing but 6 months later when you need to overhaul your configuration ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why would you get an MBP just to install any other OS on it?

I've owned a couple (15" MBP currently), and I think there is more durable hardware out there that can be had cheaper.

I don't really have any annoyances with OSX or the MBP hardware. That is not to say it is perfect, just that I knew what to expect going in, and that there is no all around perfect OS or hardware. I do find the overall annoyances much less than when I've had to work on plastic (Thinkpad) laptops with Windows.

<comment><USER3> More durable hardware is hard to come by. The Apple stuff is usually pretty sturdy. There's exceptions, but I generally trust Apple hardware over Dell, HP, Toshiba, Acer, etc. The Thinkpads used to be as good or better, but standards have declined somewhat since Lenovo took over the line.

For me, the real winner is AppleCare. Apple has the best support that I've encountered for consumer hardware. It's also valid anywhere in the world, which is a lifesaver if you do a lot of international traveling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> One thing I miss from Windows-- the ability to easily access any menu item from the keyboard (not just items that have a defined keyboard shortcut). Yes, it can be done, but not "out of the box" using individual keystrokes to navigate each level of the hierarchy.

<comment><USER20> The best way to quickly access a menu item is to hit CMD+?. Then just type in the name of the menu item. That, IMO, is a much faster way of accessing the menu than the ALT+foo shortcuts from Windows-land.

<comment><USER14> Great tip! I wish firefox behaved like a good OS X app. just tried it in firefox and it brings up a help tab.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> No cut and paste in Finder... you have to move your files from one window to another...

<comment><USER22> A friend of mine just got his first mac recently, and he mentioned this same complaint to me - I had no idea, because I almost never use the Finder for file management. (I assumed you could do cut & paste)

I always just use 'mv', etc. from a terminal. So this is genuine curiosity - is there something that other people do for which a Finder window and cut and paste is better/faster/less prone to mistakes, or is it just that the shell is not as familiar for them?

<comment><USER2> Sure, if you need to move a bunch of files whose names don't match any particular pattern, then using a GUI tends to be more efficient. Suppose you have a directory with a hundred documents in it, and you want to categorize them into subdirectories. With a shell, you'll probably actually need to have two terminals open, one to keep the full list of files available, and one to type commands. You'll mv file1, file3, file4, file7, etc using tab- autocomplete, but it's still going to take a bit of typing and a bit of time. With a GUI, you look at the full directory contents in the file manager, control-select each file you want to move, and then drag them into place. If there are a lot of files, and they don't have filenames that match shell patterns, then a GUI can be faster.

<comment><USER23> I agree. But in the rare case that I need to move a bunch of weirdly named files - I have no problem hitting Command+N to open another Finder window, get it to where I want to be, and drag the files to there.

I just can't imagine a hacker workflow that involves doing that even once per week, much less day.

I'm not saying I don't miss Cut/Paste on those occasions, but it comes up so rarely and I feel like I gain so much more by using OS X that I just don't care.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You really want to run OS X on the hardware, to take advantage of all the details of the various hardware nooks and crannies (power management, wireless hardware, etc.)

There's no real downside to running any Linux distro in a VM. (Again, I recommend VMware Fusion.) You can put each VM in its own full-screen space and switch around between them (and Mac OS X) with a keystroke.

Highly recommended.

(BTW, the way that Fusion works it that it essentially goes "under" OS X, when Fusion is running; it becomes a hypervisor, running OS X and the other OS(es) as virtual guests on an equal footing.

I heard a great talk at C4[1] from one of the VMware Mac engineers, who said that the Apple engineers weren't very happy to learn the details of how virtualization works (since it replaces their precious OS at the lowest level), but they didn't really have any choice, either. ;-)

<comment><USER24> Do you have a citation or two for your Fusion point? I'd be very interested to read more.

<comment><USER6> [http://blogs.vmware.com/teamfusion/2008/02/fusion-geek- spe.h...](http://blogs.vmware.com/teamfusion/2008/02/fusion-geek-spe.html)

This blog entry contains a video of the talk along with some other relevant links.

The talk is quite entertaining, reasonably deep, and highly recommended if you're interested in such things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you're an Emacs user with (3!) decades old-finger habits like me, Mac OS X is a dream come true--you can customize the Cocoa text environment to be a quite decent subset of Emacs, available in most system apps now (most importantly, Safari).

Oops, this is an anti-annoyance. ;-)

<comment><USER20> I would like to know how to do this. Do you have any links?

<comment><USER6> Sure, the best info is probably here: <http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/site/cocoa-text.html> .

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I wrote this back in early 2007, and it still applies:

Four things OS X can learn from Windows 95 [http://www.tinyapps.org/weblog/mac/200703210700_four_things_...](http://www.tinyapps.org/weblog/mac/200703210700_four_things_osx_can_learn_from_win95.html)

You would think that after all these years, Apple would have copied these simple yet essential abilities from Windows 95:

1\. In Spotlight's search result window, files should be able to be deleted, copied, moved, renamed, etc.

2\. Spotlight should offer an "In Folder" or "Location" column rather than forcing the user to press the tiny "i" symbol for each result.

3\. The Trash should have two more columns: "Date Deleted" and "Original Location".

4\. The context menu in the Trash should offer a "Restore" option to return files to their original location. This is especially useful in putting back the 20 or 30 files from 10 different locations that Adobe asked you to remove and then realized they shouldn't have.

<comment><USER10> 1 & 2 are both in Leopard. Apple ditched the weird Spotlight results window in equally weird but more functional views in Finder windows. 4 is in Snow Leopard.

<comment><USER25> _"1 & 2 are both in Leopard"_

Sorry about that - you're right about the deleting and copying in Leopard. As with the Finder in general, files cannot be cut/moved, and renaming is not available from the Context Menu or by pressing Enter (though it is available by clicking the file names).

As for #2 ("In Folder" or "Location" column in Spotlight results), can you please tell me how to display such a column?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I have two:

1) The new Macbook Pros moved all the function keys around. I can no longer control the volume with one hand, because the Fn key is too far away from F10-F12. (I want my F-keys to be F-keys, not Fn-F-keys, because I use Windows via Fusion all the time, and use F-keys in Mellel all the time as well).

2) When opening a Finder window, Finder starts to create thumbnails of all the documents it understands, and replacing the default file icons with the thumbnails. Nice feature - except that every time it creates a new thumbnail it refreshes the window. Consequently, if you are trying to rename a file, you can't do it in the window. Every time you try, the window refreshes, and you lose focus on the filename! You are forced to do a Command-I just to rename a file. There is no reason this has to happen. Why can't Finder refresh a thumbnail without stealing focus? Idiotic.

</comment><comment><USER27> The mouse speed algorithm. I'm using an iMac for three days and want to throw it out off window. I just keep missing the clicks! Or the mouse go too fast and pass the controls, or too slow and don't reach them.

But the worst thing is that when I switched to my Dell Notebook (ArchLinux), I was too used to the iMac's mouse =\

<comment><USER28> I agree. The mouse speed has to be altered. It's frankly horrible. I've been using osx now for about 5 years and I'm still not friends with the mouse pointer on my laptop. (On my iMac I don't have the same issues for some reason) I hate using the trackpad, it actually weariers my wrists.

I think I use USB overdrive on my iMac which might explain why I don't have the same problem with it. Or it might just be that I use a Razor-mouse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Finder is pretty horrible. Keyboard shortcuts are all over the place and overall I find Finder really unintuitive.

<comment><USER17> Here is a list over all keyboard shortcuts in Mac Os X : <http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1343> It's hard to memorize all this, but I put them into a learning by repetition program named Genius.App. Genius can be found here: <http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/13938>

I enter only those shortcuts that I tend to need from whatever App I use. I spend the odd 10 minutes each day repeating keystrokes. The shortcuts seem to stick in the grey matter after a while.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> The glossy screen!

</comment><comment><USER10> The Cut/Paste in Finder issue comes up a lot, because in people that use the GUI for file management the basic action becomes a deeply ingrained habit with a specific mental model.

Windows-style "pick up here, drop there": \- make selection with mouse \- cut with keboard \- navigate to destination with mouse \- paste with keyboard

Mac-style "carry from here to there": \- make selection with mouse \- drag with mouse \- navigate to destination with mouse \- drop with mouse

You can learn to use the other kind, but if you have to switch between them often you'll likely grow frustrated with one or the other. With the Finder for lacking Cut and for others lacking spring-loaded folders and Expose.

</comment><comment><USER31> Inability to resize windows from any corner except the bottom right.

<comment><USER13> This might help.

<http://www.heliumfoot.com/mercurymover/>

<comment><USER31> It might, if I was really to pay $20 for a hack that does something that should be in the OS by default. And it looks like it still won't let you just resize windows with the mouse from any corner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> You don't have a set of packages that is as broad, well integrated and easy to use as Ubuntu's or Debian's packages. MacPorts is a lot better than nothing though.

</comment><comment><USER33> OK -- I might be alone on this, but I have a 30" Dell monitor, and the single top menu bar concept simply does not scale to large monitor sizes.

<comment><USER6> Funny, I've got both 24" and 30" Apple monitors, and decided that the 30" was just too large for my field of view (plus the newer 24" LED displays are just too beautiful not to use).

But your point is well-taken.

Fitt's law helps here, though--you can ram your pointer up top and generally hit the menu bar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Terminal.app can't go full screen. I don't need a scrollbar. I don't need menu bar. I don't need any window decorations.

I really like Terminator on linux; it's a python script that wrapps Gnome Terminal and lets you split the screen horizontally and vertically. I'd love to have that on OSX but don't want to run X/Gnome/etc.

</comment><comment><USER35> The lack of good keyboard shortcuts for window manipulation. Window management in general is a pet peeve of mine.

<comment><USER13> Ha, I'm posting it again, but only because I love this software so much. Check out SizeUp <http://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/> It has replaced Mercury Mover for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> For me the email client and finder for file management. I am going to try entourage but its not outlook, its outlook light. Apple should look at the fact there are five separate mac products that emulate windows explorer, that alone should tell them that Finder is lacking for file management.

</comment><comment><USER14> I think the thing that bugs me the most is the fact that there is no way to create a new window from the dock. The only thing that the dock does is start the application if it is not running or activate the application if it is running.

<comment><USER37> If you right-click (or two-finger click) on a Dock icon it brings up a mini- menu, but I don't know if any of these include "New Window". It varies by app.

<comment><USER14> I have yet to find one that gives the option to create a new window from the context menu in the dock.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> [FN] and [CTRL] need to change places!

Why does't toggle full screen work in stock X11?

Why is it so hard to get plan9/wmii to work properly :(

Binary package managent for common tools, like subversion etc.

</comment><comment><USER39> I miss focus follows mouse.

</comment><comment><USER40> Apple has Balkanized their OS's API. Most software out there only supports the latest release. The rest only supports two releases back. In fact with 10.6's release imminent it is hard to find software that supports older than 10.4 anymore.

<comment><USER6> What's the point of running older OSes?

<comment><USER41> i'm a fan of newer hardware with older software for speed reasons.

<comment><USER37> Newer Mac OS X versions don't tend to be any slower than older versions, though. But I definitely agree with you when it comes to Windows.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> one tiny thing is that the analogue of ctrl + left or ctrl + right, with cmd, skips to the end of the line instead of to the next word, which is a smidge annoying.

<comment><USER20> Use Option+Left and Option+Right. Also, hit Fn+Left and Fn+Right to go to the beginning and end of a file, respectively.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Ability to switch Terminal tabs with Cmd+1, Cmd+2 ...

</comment><comment><USER44> iTunes doesn't come-to-front when you click its Dock icon if it has a window open already.

</comment><comment><USER45> Security warnings all over the place.

</comment><comment><USER46> Not having a MAC to begin with.</comment>


Old Spice on Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://twitter.com/oldspice <comment><USER2> He's currently answering (tons of) questions, in video form, from "the internet"... youtube comments, reddit, twitter, including other celebs (with shows)... EW, Ellen Degeneres, etc. They are pumping these out extremely quickly, and in large volume.

reddit thread: [http://www.reddit.com/r/entertainment/comments/cp190/the_old...](http://www.reddit.com/r/entertainment/comments/cp190/the_old_spice_man_responds_to_the_internet/)

It's maybe the best guerilla/viral/web2.0 marketing job I've ever seen. It helps, greatly, that this guy, and his team, are apparently comedic geniuses.

e.g: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHrXKg2Fk5k>

<comment><USER3> I'm pretty sure half of what makes these ads so awesome and popular with my friends is just how in touch Old Spice seems to be with the culture of their target audience. It's amazing to see a real corporation move like that.

"The tickets are now DIAMONDS!"

Perfect example. They hit a home run with that line, especially with their target audience.

<comment><USER4> They are created by Tim and Eric of Awesome Show fame on adult swim. They also created this commercial which is distilled genius: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5p0QtJMKt1s>

<comment><USER5> Tim and Eric did do some commercials for Old Spice, but none of these. All of the ones with Isaiah Mustafa are from Wieden+Kennedy.

Source: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wieden%2BKennedy>

<comment><USER6> Here's a link to a compilation of Tim and Eric's Old Spice commercials:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7PD4f5uTOU>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I just chatted with a friend at the agency working on this. They are writing the responses on the fly and the actor gets them in 2 takes.

<comment><USER8> That's awesome. It's amazing how well-connected the hacker news crowd is, I always thought some kind of referral system at HN would be of great value.

<comment><USER9> completely seconded

<comment> b-e-p I'd have thought an upvote could replace this comment.

<comment><USER10> Completely seconded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Good campaign, but not enough to offset Neal Stephenson's take on it:

      Oh, they used to argue over times, many corporate driver-years lost to it:
      homeowners, red-faced and sweaty with their own lies, stinking of Old Spice
      and job-related stress, standing in their glowing yellow doorways brandishing
      their Seikos and waving at the clock over the kitchen sink, I swear, can't
      you guys tell time?

:)

<comment><USER3> Everything good can and has been bad at some point in history.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Yesterday shaving made it to the front page at YC, today after-shave follows up with its own front page appearance ...

Cool coincidence !?

<comment><USER13> Tomorrow, the whole front page will be about feeling your face sting and going "Ow! Ow! Ow!" in front of your bathroom mirror.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Its great because too many companies have forgotten the value of random humor in their commercials... It signifies a company taking a risk on a marketing campaign which makes it great, and its also great because of the diversity of characters they use in their commercials.

</comment><comment><USER15> Actually, this reminds me of StrongBad answering emails.

</comment><comment><USER16> I like Old Spice's ads and marketing. Pretty much searched it out when I was at the shops but didn't really like the smell. </slight-offtopic>

<comment><USER17> I use the Original Scent body wash, and I always crack up at "If your grandfather hadn't worn this, you wouldn't be here" line.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> OMG these are genius and an idea whose time has come. Marketing to a generation of people who have been marketed to tears, breath of fresh air.

</comment><comment><USER19> It seems to me that people like the marketing without actually liking the product itself. Are there any sales numbers for Old Spice?

<comment><USER3> The point of ads is to get you thinking about and talking about a product you wouldn't have otherwise. It's nice if they improve your perception of the product, but that's not as important as just getting yourself into people's heads. e.g., "there's no such thing as bad press"

<comment><USER20> there is such a thing as return on investment though

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Are twitter, reddit, or youtube making any money off this at all?

<comment><USER22> Twitter is (in a way) because Old Spice has coordinated this with a promoted trending topic and a promoted tweet.

YouTube is (in a way) as well since Old Spice is probably paying for their channel.

Reddit, maybe, if Old Spice became a Gold Member.

<comment><USER4> You think they could at least buy a reddit ad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> What, no Bruce Campbell? Doh.

</comment><comment><USER24> I wonder when this showed up in the idea creation. It all depends on a very actively audience engaged with the regular ads (in order to respond to comments via video response). Did they see the popularity and have an idea on how to use social tools to mid-campaign or was it in the works all along? Either way, genius.

</comment><comment><USER25> One of the best things about this is they've made the videos unlisted (at least some of them - the one's I've browsed anyway) on YouTube.

Relatively pure, realtime feedback on their ads has to be pretty fantastic for the team.

<comment><USER26> if you read Reddit, they appear to be getting lots of realtime feedback on their _abs_ as well

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Am I the only one waiting for Twitter to find a way to screw this up like how Facebook did with the BK Friend Sacrifice a couple of years ago?

<comment><USER28> Well I don't know if Twitter is screwing this up or if the account's been hacked somehow, but the twitter page is currently showing raw JSON instead of a formatted page...

<http://i.imgur.com/Mmm8t.png> <http://twitter.com/OldSpice>

<comment><USER29> I saw the same thing. Add a trailing slash and you'll get the HTML page.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is awesome! I'm just scared some C level guy over 50 will find out about it and not understand it and then kill it...

</comment><comment><USER26> the Reddit threads about this are hilarious as usual, and the Old Spice man appears to be answering comments from some of the users there. for those who want to read more...

</comment><comment><USER31> This has got to be computer generated, right?

<comment><USER32> They need:

1\. An actor

2\. A shower

3\. A writer

4\. A camera and computer

I assume they'll do it for one day and people will talk about it for weeks. Pretty good return on investment.

<comment><USER33> it's done in one take without any cuts

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm reminded of the new-old adage: "you can't polish a turd".

However 'in touch' Old Spice might be with the online generation (as someone wrote elsewhere in this thread), the product still smells like what someone's grandpa would wear.

How does this relate to startups? No matter how great your marketing might be, you gotta always be able to proposition the product right. Old Spice can't pivot and iterate their product because then it would no longer be Old Spice. Let's be thankful we can pivot with internet startups to find continued market fit.

<comment><USER35> I'd be _VERY_ surprised if they're not selling a _ton_ more old spice now. My wife is planning to buy me some just because she loves the ads.

<comment><USER34> This is why I hate marketing. Wouldn't you prefer it if your wife bought the best product rather than the best marketed product?

In this instance perhaps the fragrance she preferred the smell of the best?

<comment><USER35> I can't really smell much difference between any bathroom products. Whichever she wants to buy is fine by me.

Using old spice will remind me of some of the awesome lines from the adverts, which will be a good start to the day.

As long as it smells "good/clean", that's fine I'd say...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Europe's most entrepreneurial country? It's not the one you might expect - open-source-ux https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/03/europes-most-entrepreneurial-country/ <comment><AUTHOR> The smaller and greater than signs in figure 4 are really confusing me.</comment>


Gitlab 500 error - <AUTHOR> https://gitlab.com <comment><USER2> I always found it disheartening to read their changelogs and see how every release (I've looked at) fixes some "N+1 SELECTs" problem [1].

This will be an unpopular opinion here, but I feel we've (collectively) failed. Between ORMs and the dynamic language _du jour_ , we have become so far removed from how computers work that most software development is a waste of electricity. We're using tens of servers and complex architectures for simple sites, just because we think that's the only way to scale them [2]. And our computers are slower than they ever were [3] [4].

I only gave a couple of examples, but look around, you can find them everywhere. Everything is awful.

[1] The issue tracker is now down, but you can try it when it comes back: [https://about.gitlab.com/releases/](https://about.gitlab.com/releases/).

[2] [https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/hotos15/hotos...](https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/hotos15/hotos15-paper- mcsherry.pdf)

[3] On older computers GNOME can't even keep up to update the mouse cursor.

[4] I'm honestly not sure that Windows 10 boots faster from an SSD than XP from an HDD.

<comment><USER3> This is why I have a mild dislike for ORMs. They're pretty handy, but most of the time, I prefer to hand-make SQL statements. Are they more work? Yes. But _no_ ORM will ever give me the actual flexibility and performance of raw SQL queries (unless it becomes SQL itself).

<comment><USER4> Not a bad point. Then again, once you hit your first 1200-line stored procedure, full of logical bugs including SQL injections, you'll realize SQL isn't that amazing either :)

<comment><USER5> If your stored procedure has 1200 lines, you're doing something wrong.

<comment><USER6> How about recreating a report to feed into a legacy system from an ERP installation with 5,000 tables and 12,000 stored procedures - none of which you're allowed to modify or face losing support?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I gotta say I love but am surprised by the public google doc of the outages. If I worked there I would personally advocate for not doing that, only because I feel like it would slow down resolution if I have to constantly be worrying about not putting "secret" things into the doc. Unless they have someone who's job is to take their real chat and transcribe it, in which case, that's great because that person is useful for a postmortem as well.

Speaking of postmortems, reading through the Google Doc of their outage timeline, my first postmortem question would be why is the website dependent on the database being up? Shouldn't there at least be a fallback that says "We're offline right now sorry" when the database is unavailable? Or in the name of extreme transparency, have it frame or show a link to the google doc of the outage?

My second question would be how often do we test failures of a read slave, of the master, and of pgbouncer? Do we at least have a practiced procedure for manual failover if not an automatic failover?

My third question would be what sort of alerts do we have, if any, on replication lag?

It's been a while since I've had to run a major outage, this was an interesting exercise for me!

<comment><USER8> > Speaking of postmortems, reading through the Google Doc of their outage > timeline, my first postmortem question would be why is the website dependent > on the database being up?

You can't do anything with GitLab without the database being available.

> Shouldn't there at least be a fallback that says "We're offline right now > sorry" when the database is unavailable? Or in the name of extreme > transparency, have it frame or show a link to the google doc of the outage?

We have a deploy page, but it requires us to explicitly enable it, which can be easy to forget. I do think adding a link to our Twitter status to the error pages could be useful, or maybe a widget of some kind.

> My second question would be how often do we test failures of a read slave, > of the master, and of pgbouncer?

In the past we tested certain scenarios whenever necessary. For example, when introducing new parts of the database load balancer we'd test what happens if we terminate X or Y. However, we do not yet do periodic chaos monkey style testing, which has been on our todo list for quite a while.

> Do we at least have a practiced procedure for manual failover if not an > automatic failover?

Failovers are actively worked on ([https://gitlab.com/gitlab- com/database/issues/91](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/database/issues/91), [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/database/issues/86](https://gitlab.com/gitlab- com/database/issues/86), [https://gitlab.com/gitlab- com/database/issues/40](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/database/issues/40)). Right now our failover procedure is still quite painful, and it's easy to make mistakes. We held off using this approach for our maintenance because of these reasons, and also because a failover usually results in 2-3 hours of slow loading times. Ironically we ended up with just that.

> My third question would be what sort of alerts do we have, if any, on > replication lag?

Plenty: [https://gitlab.com/gitlab- com/runbooks/blob/810824765ec45534...](https://gitlab.com/gitlab- com/runbooks/blob/810824765ec455344bdae35300a352be8c147dbb/alerts/postgresqls.yml)

In this particular instance they go to a Slack channel called "#database", and this channel has been on fire with alerts since the problem started.

<comment><USER7> Wow sweet, I didn't actually expect a response! Nice work.

> We have a deploy page, but it requires us to explicitly enable it, which can > be easy to forget. I do think adding a link to our Twitter status to the > error pages could be useful, or maybe a widget of some kind.

Or make it automatic when the database isn't available?

> In this particular instance they go to a Slack channel called "#database", > and this channel has been on fire with alerts since the problem started.

Good to know. My next question would be "were there any signs of impending doom before the event happened that could have warned us, and do we have alerts on that?"

<comment><USER8> > Or make it automatic when the database isn't available?

I agree this is probably a good idea, so I created [https://gitlab.com/gitlab- com/infrastructure/issues/4382](https://gitlab.com/gitlab- com/infrastructure/issues/4382) to keep track of things.

> were there any signs of impending doom before the event happened that could > have warned us, and do we have alerts on that?

I don't think you can detect corrupt WAL until it is actually corrupt. In those case the host won't start up, for which we already have various errors that cover that case (e.g. there's an error for when too few transactions are happening).

There also wasn't really any impending doom before we started things. Two issues that triggered this were:

1\. A lack of `set -e` 2\. Apparently when we stop a command using `gitlab- ctl`, it will time out if the process doesn't stop fast enough. I'm not sure what exit status we report in that case, but in this instance it resulted in the script continuing to run.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have growing concerns over GitLab. I appreciate the openness and forthrightness of their handling of these sorts of incidents and in regard to other issues, but there comes a point where none of that matters if the product itself is inherently unreliable. This post isn't about any one incident, including this one, but an ongoing trend that I don't get the sense is improving.

To be completely fair, I'm on the free plans and have no rightful expectation of any sort of performance level. Having said that, I have considered moving to paid tiers, and I do advise others in regard to these sorts of services (whether cloud based or on-premise). Every time I see a planned maintenance, of "under 1m", I simply realize that I shouldn't plan anything important for GitLab that day. I can't see that this would be any different with GitLab.com paid plans and I have to imagine there is something inherently difficult in managing the software if the developer of that software has issues with common maintenance; this colors my impressions of what this might be like in-house. It seems a beast, I get that there are scaling issues that are different between something like gitlab.com and GitLab on-premise, but history of these things is coloring my impression.

At some point moving fast and breaking things needs to give way to the pursuit of enough stability that users aren't overly concerned about whether or not the tools they depend on, or more importantly the data they're storing, are regularly at risk.

I don't want to buy services/products from a company that is just trustworthy and open when things go wrong. I want to buy services/products from companies that only need to prove those qualities with some rarity.

<comment><USER10> It always seems to be either their storage abstraction (Ceph?) or Postgres. I've never used Postgres but from what I see it's not really designed for enormous scale (it's a very old project). Perhaps they would be well served to see if CockroachDB gives them more stability. I've started using it at a small scale and the clustering aspect seems legit.

<comment><USER9> I work with PostgreSQL quite a lot and I don't think this is the case.

Yes, PostgreSQL is a mature project. But that has little or no bearing by itself on what degree it can scale; Linux is just about as old, yet it still drives most of the infrastructure we're talking about. In context, PostgreSQL has been under continuous development since inception and no more so than in the past decade or so with substantial community and corporate backing. To conflate project age with current robustness is to indulge in fallacious thinking (in this case "cum hoc ergo propter hoc", if I'm not mistaken). The project has advanced with the times. There are good examples of PostgreSQL running at scale, including at companies operating at scale such as Instagram, Skype (up to at least the point of the Microsoft acquisition), Pandora, as well as others. Most of these, I'd bet, are/were using PostgreSQL at scales substantially larger than that faced by GitLab.

Relational databases require good management and good design to function properly. There were people who specialized in this called Data Base Administrators (at least the management piece anyway). My feeling (perhaps unjustified) is in start-upish environments there is a tendency to minimize DBA expertise in favor of having more conventional developers that can "get the database to work"... which is a different standard than "getting the database to perform". That's mostly not my world, so I may be jumping to conclusions (I'm an enterprise systems guy on most days).

I think GitLab probably has a complex software product and lacks the correct expertise in infrastructure (including, yes, DBAs) for their SaaS offering. I'm reading tea leaves, but that would be a perfect storm which would produce exactly what we see no matter how robust any one piece of this puzzle might be.

<comment><USER10> > Yes, PostgreSQL is a mature project. But that has little or no bearing by > itself on what degree it can scale; Linux is just about as old, yet it still > drives most of the infrastructure we're talking about.

I knew someone here would misinterpret why I mentioned its age. As I said, it's not what it was designed for. Perhaps it has bolted on things in the 20+ years since it was first conceived, but it wasn't purpose-built for scale.

> To conflate project age with current robustness is to indulge in fallacious > thinking

It only makes sense to talk about "robustness" in the context something was designed to work in. I can't abuse a system and call it unrobust. Of course Postgres is robust. You're twisting what I was saying.

> There are good examples of PostgreSQL running at scale, including at > companies operating at scale such as Instagram

I'd actually be keen to learn more about how Postgres works at Instagram scale without their own customisations to make it work in that setting.

If Postgres works well in that setting why do things like this exist? [https://github.com/citusdata/citus](https://github.com/citusdata/citus)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Gitlab working document [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WmOMKq63Rap2wfQ- yy7sHyoc...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WmOMKq63Rap2wfQ- yy7sHyocFvmbJgIt1UIj2xEXEco/preview)

<comment><USER12> > Bash scripts did not have set -x so continued to run even after the stop > command had failed.

I hope that's a typo in transcription and they actually used `set -e` to fix (and maybe `set -o pipefail`), `set -x` does something entirely different.

<comment><USER8> Yes that's a typo, it should have been `set -e`

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The hosted product, whilst far more fully featured than github, is horridly unstable.

Its got to the point where I am seriously considering moving our repos (~250) to a self hosted CE version.

Looking at the outage reports, it doesn't fill me with confidence. A lack of redundancy, no systematic testing of backups, a seeming lack of QA.

Gitlab has an outage of average once every two weeks, compared to github's once every 6 _months_ (look at the status pages)

</comment><comment><USER14> Please send some love to the engineer responsible. Been on the causing end of a 500 error, even though I fixed it in 10 minutes, it's never fun!

</comment><comment><USER15> It's a little bit concerning to note that the last GitLab outage was also caused by Postgres replication issues, which eventually culminated in some pretty bad data loss and a realisation that the most recent backups they had weren't usable. Maybe they should reach out to someone from Postgres to help figure out why their replication appears to have some sort of systemic issue...

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm also seeing a 5xx Server error on instagram.

Edit: ~15 mins later Instagram seems to be back up.

Edit #2: Seems to be back to 5xx server error ~1hr now.

<comment><USER17> still seeing it

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Curious StackOverflow also has a 500, could they be related?

</comment><comment><USER19> They do database maintenance at 11am EST on a Tuesday? Seems like a terrible time to do database maintenance?

</comment><comment><USER20> They probably need stronger arguments than "Micro$oft is really bad" if they want to have an edge against Github. Professional tool solidity is way more important than the company process transparence.

</comment><comment><USER21> So now that there's no outage, this post has no significance and no way to see what was happening during the outage. Does anyone have a cached version of the page or a screenshot for some context?

</comment><comment><USER22> Yes, I confirm the same. They are both returning server 500 errors. That is quite a coincidence.

</comment><comment><USER23> Had quite some trouble pushing this afternoon. Hope it gets resolved soon.

</comment><comment><USER22> stackoverflow is up now. gitlab still down.

</comment><comment><USER24> Time for another outage tshirt?

</comment><comment><USER25> GitLab with problems?, again?.

</comment><comment><USER26> WOW back at the right moment.

</comment><comment><USER22> stackoverflow was actually returning a 503, not a 500.

</comment><comment><USER27> Should have used AWS Aurora Postgres

</comment><comment><USER22> > [https://outage.report/stackoverflow](https://outage.report/stackoverflow)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Excellent, my fork-me-on-gitlab project is viewable again.

[https://gitlab.com/seanwasere/fork-me-on- gitlab](https://gitlab.com/seanwasere/fork-me-on-gitlab)</comment>


Raytheon Cyber Warrior Challenge - <AUTHOR> http://www.felipemartins.info/2011/11/raytheon-cyber-warrior-challenge/ <comment><USER2> I'm so 1337!

The solution to the second challenge is: binarysolved

The solution to the third challenge is: roosevelt

I haven't tried the first as I didn't realize it was a challenge until now. Working on it.

The 4th, 5th, and 6th challenges look harder.</comment>


Letters of an Army doctor who helped free the Dachau concentration camp in 1945 - <AUTHOR> http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121779/liberator-never-free <comment><USER2> Many western criminal justice systems have what is sometimes called a "crime passionnel", a crime of passion. Man catches his spouse in bed with another man, goes crazy, and proceeds to kill both of them. The law gives much leeway when this happens, as it is not felt that the average person can withstand but so much without snapping.

In the military, one of the key things officers are taught is not to get emotionally caught up in what's happening. Stay cool, make decisions, think calmly for the group and leave the passion to others. Even when you make a big deal out of some emotional outburst, such as in jumping up and yelling "Charge, men!", it should be for dispassionate and good tactical/strategic reasons.

But coming into to Dachau just minutes after the SS left? Seeing 40,000 people in that state? I don't think any member of an army or otherwise rational human being would be called to justice for going just a little bit crazy. In fact, I would be extremely disturbed by those who were not extremely disturbed by what they saw.

War is a hell of a thing, and even in that hell, what these soldiers went through must have scarred them for life. (I'm not trying to de-emphasize the much worse suffering the residents had, only point out the great emotional roller-coaster they must have experienced moving between "we're winning the war" and "oh. my. god.")

</comment><comment><USER3> Both Germany and the US do not like to think about US soldiers committing war crimes or even behaving badly in WWII.

The US thinks so, because its war was all about moral high ground, ignoring its very own blatant racism at home.

Germany likes to think so, because the liberation by the US actually ended in being liberated. Millions of civilians had to flee and/or were being raped by the Red army. Prisoners of war ended in Siberian gulags for decades, while the GDR was constructed at home.

I think with time passing it becomes easier to paint a more complex and realistic picture acknowledging the situation these (often young) people were in, without justifying their actions. I would like to see glorification shifting more and more to memorization of a time and of circumstances that brought out the worst in people and must never happen again anywhere in the world.

Edit: indeed, decades

<comment><USER4> > Prisoners of war ended in Siberian gulags for centuries, while the GDR was > constructed at home.

I think you mean decades?

<comment><USER5> No, and there were literally billions of them. And also soviet leaders were eating babies. Alive.

<comment><USER3> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heimatvertriebene](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heimatvertriebene)

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

And also:

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

Spoiler: He was not nice to his own people, nor to others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What an outstanding and moving article. When I lived in Germany years ago I visited Dachau and other sites. Despite the long interval since the camps were used, the aura of the atrocities committed there was still palpable.

The doctor's letters are no doubt an immensely valuable resource concerning history of WWII and the holocaust. More importantly, it's a record of human reaction to the horrors of what he observed, and very likely provides insight into experience that transforms a person so adversely.

Nowadays we call it PTSD and of course it's still a scourge in a world filled with horrific conflict. Perhaps these letters would encourage people suffering in the way the doctor knew to get treatment, above all talk about it, hard as that is to do.

I hope the letters are donated to a proper archive for preservation and made accessible so that the lessons contained can be widely shared, and become an encouragement to healing.

<comment><USER7> Crass - The Gas Man Cometh

Auschwitz's now a tourist spot for the goggle eyed to pry, / Still in working order just for you and I.

[http://www.plyrics.com/lyrics/crass/thegasmancometh.html](http://www.plyrics.com/lyrics/crass/thegasmancometh.html)

<comment><USER8> Never thought I would see a Crass quote on Hacker News =)

<comment><USER7> Anti-capitalist ranting isn't very appropriate or welcome too often round these parts =)

I feared the worst when it went to -1, I've been shadowbanned a couple of times for single posts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A bit of a personal, emotional ramble ahead.

My grandparents raised me, and my grandfather lived through a whole variety of horrible experiences in WWII in the Pacific and China/Burma/India theaters.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guadalcanal_Campaign](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guadalcanal_Campaign) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrill%27s_Marauders](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrill%27s_Marauders)

I do not deeply understand their relationship, but I know that my grandfather was not kind to my dad, their only child. As I read the story about Mr. Wilsey, the father and husband, I was _constantly_ reminded of my grandfather, directly but more indirectly.

He was 51 years old when I was born, and I spent most of my first six years with him and my grandmother. At that time, my parents divorced and assigned full legal custody of me to my grandparents. I grew up there, leaving when I was 18, and my grandfather was 69, my grandmother 67.

My grandparents were kind to me, but my grandfather was distant. He was distant with everyone. He had only a single close friend, who died of cancer in the late 70s. He almost never spoke of what he went through in the war. He rarely spoke at all. He had a quick wit, and rarely, he would inject acerbic barbs into conversations.

He took me to some Veterans of Foreign Wars meetings in the early 80s, where I met and spoke to two other old men, whose names I can not recall. They served with him in Burma.

Several times, they took me aside and told me things about my grandfather. Things he would never speak of. How he could fire a clip from his BAR on full automatic and lethally aim individual clusters of bullets, singly stopping a Japanese assault.

They told me that he lost, killed, six different ammunition carriers. How a slug lodged in his femur and extensive fragmentation wounds had no impact on his ability to slaughter the enemy, day after day, night after night, week after week, month after month.

I learned how he had received the pile of ribbons and medals that I had caught a fleeting glimpse of in the attic.

The daily horror, fear and relative certainty of death. Of the horrors they inflicted, all too often needlessly.

The man who raised me also raised my father. But those 25 years made a big difference. I'm sure that all of the critical words and quick anger were still inside him in the 70s and 80s, but inside they stayed.

Though I never heard the word 'love' come from his mouth, I had no doubt that my grandfather would do anything for me. And he did.

Though notoriously cheap (for instance, we 'harvested' ketchup and mustard packets from Jack in the Box to refill our supply), my grandfather spent many hundreds and thousands of dollars to buy me a Color Computer and a TRS-80 Model 100 laptop in the early 80s. Though he had only a 6th grade education, he knew, in broad strokes, what the future would look like, and the things his grandson would need to learn.

I speak little of my grandmother here. She was a far more open and loving person, but she took heavy doses of Valium and related drugs the whole time I was with them, and after. She and her husband had slept in separate beds since before I was born. They had no love for each other. They were house-mates, generally tolerating each others presence, and helping each other as needed.

In many ways, my grandparents were progressive, open-minded people. But they did not support of "mixed marriage." Though it didn't drive them crazy either. "Live and let live" was their credo. Yet they were raised in casual, abstract and always present racism. I heard a lot about how the "Mexicans are taking all of our jobs", growing up in Southern California.

This isn't all that pleasant, but it is Real Life. Real Life is muddy and complex and conflicted. And people in the past carried different cultural burdens than we do today.

After their deaths, I, like so many others, venerated the Greatest Generation. During their lives, I took my grandparents for granted. But they were patient with me. They were pretty sure I would grow out of my selfishness and arrogance, even though they would not live to see it. And they were ok with that. Their love and support were iron-clad and steadfast.

The Greatest Generation is important. So are the Baby Boomers, and my own Generation Xers. And my son's Millennials. All important.

And complicated. And conflicted. We will find that every generation is generally laden with backwards cultural norms.

This article solidifies much that I already knew about the raw, life-long impact such things have on people. It helps me understand my dad a little better.

I'm not sure how to end this somewhat emotional ramble, so I'll exhort everyone to embrace the complications and conflict that make up every person, of every generation. Understand their personal and cultural history.

<comment><USER10> I think the sad truth is that we keep repeating the mistakes generation after generation -- every time a little different -- every time the same.

You may or may not find the documentary "Stray Dog"[1] interesting. It opened my eyes to how much pain is still left in the US from the Vietnam war -- and how much has been added, and is added with every war since then.

I've been opposed to pretty much every military action by Nato/UN I'm aware of -- but that does not mean I don't have great sympathy and respect for those that served in those actions. I strongly believe very few participated with anything but the best of intentions. Certainly none of the veterans I've talked to.

[1] [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3263430/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3263430/)

I'm not actually sure I would label is at a good movie as such -- I would probably have made different editing choices. I get the impression that the director may have been too close to the material. But I found it _interesting_ \-- and that is perhaps the most important aspect of any documentary.

<comment><USER11> _I 've been opposed to pretty much every military action by Nato/UN I'm aware of_

Even the Korean War?

<comment><USER10> I wasn't born at the time. But yes. Perhaps more controversially I was opposed to the handling of Balkan during the 90s.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It is a shame the New Republic were the ones to get their hands on these letters rather than someone more reputable.

There was no reason at all to divert form the interesting historical war component to some sort of shameful generalisation about the racism of the letter writer.

Especially the implication the language used, which is not appropriate today, but was commonly used at the time is relevant.

The letter writer spoke his mind, which seemed rare back then. But is brought down, after years of war and post war atrocities because they spoken openly.

They obviously cared about being prejudiced, which I cannot see being common at the time.

They New Republic cannot even bothered putting in the proper quote without comment -

> There was a lengthy screed about his black comrades-in-arms, which began > with the always troubling disclaimer, "I am NOT prejudiced—whether you > believe me or not":

</comment><comment><USER13> What I liked most about seeing this is it added a whole new dimension. As it states so much about what we see in film and writing is about how once the USA (We) got there how were all super altruistic and what-not. Coming upon a scene of 40,000 corpses and near death it's obvious the clear right answer is to help. But the amount of anger and hatred I would have had for the germans when I got there that to me helping would be to kill every SS officer I could find... This man went through hell and still spent his life as a doctor after. Amazing.

</comment><comment><USER14> Words fail me. The horror of what everyone must have experienced in those places...damned, all of them.

<comment><USER15> It is no longer horrific, but the entire Dachau site still has a strange nature to it. The original barracks that the prisoners stayed in are gone, although two reproductions are there. The buildings within the compound are still intact and have a variety of presentations and artifacts in them. There are several memorials on site. In general, there are just a bunch of tourists trudging around onsite nowadays. It is still really weird to stand their and realize you are vacationing where so many atrocities were committed.

The buildings outside of the fenced compound area were part of the Dachau site, but are still used today.

<comment><USER16> While I dare to say I'm generally not easily impressed or emotional: after being just a few minutes on the premises, you can get an idea of what those poor people had to go through. Just by being there. You don't have to read much.

I would describe it as the feeling of powerlessness that everything in that place signifies.

You immediately now you'll never get out (unless they let you, which of course didn't happen). You couldn't decide _anything_ yourself (eat, sleep, toilet,...). Might sound like a regular prison, but it's not.

Not that I have any idea what it must have been like of course.

I think it would be somehow wise/responsible if everyone would visit it once. I wouldn't call it tourism.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wonder if the rebellion of the youth in the 60's (in the US) can be seen as an echo of atrocities our soldiers lived in WWII? Did everyone come home changed, and cold... and rais a generation that reacted badly to that?

<comment><USER18> In Germany, the '68 rebellion was in part about not letting their parent and grandparent generations get away with ignoring the past.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm surprised much of the content of those letters made it past the censors, even allowing for the war in Europe being over at the time they were sent.

</comment><comment><USER10> Sad, but not surprising, to see one of the liberators being rather openly racist in his letters. There's a reason why all countries surrounding Germany were slow to denounce the Nazi party -- much of the hate they were spreading was accepted as fact. Not entirely unlike the current fear of the Middle East, and Muslims.

<comment><USER20> The idea that all human beings are "equal" in the sense that they deserve dignity and respect is a modern idea. I'm not aware of any other time in human history that there's been this sort of universalism among more than a few philosophers here and there.

Likewise the notion that war is not a good thing seems modern to me. Ancient philosophers typically extolled the virtues of war. It was really the advent of mechanized warfare, and especially the a-bomb, that made war so abnormally destructive that it became something roundly condemned.

<comment><USER10> If by modern you mean "post 1500s" I suppose you're probably right. But eg: "Heart of Darkness" came out in 1899.

[ed: Perhaps more apropos I came across this:

[http://www.theguardian.com/world/1933/mar/28/germany.secondw...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/1933/mar/28/germany.secondworldwar)

"Big fire at Reichstag" Manchester Guardian, February 1933

"The wildest rumours were circulating in Berlin last night, adds Reuter. One was to the effect that secret orders had been issued to the Nazi Storm Troopers to create a Bartholomew night on Saturday, when all political opponents of renown were to be "disposed of."

Although the police asserted the Communists are responsible, some people think that the fire might have bee started by irresponsible Nazis with the object of provoking trouble."

[http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/1933/mar/21/fromthear...](http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/1933/mar/21/fromthearchive)

"Communists to be interned in Dachau" The Guardian, Tuesday 21 March 1933

The President of the Munich police has informed the press that the first concentration camp holding 5,000 political prisoners is to be organised within the next few days near the town of Dachau in Bavaria.

Here, he said, Communists, "Marxists" and Reichsbanner leaders who endangered the security of the State would be kept in custody. It was impossible to find room for them in the State prisons, nor was it possible to release them. Experience had shown, he said, that the moment they were released, they started their agitation again.

It's hard to shake the similarity to some other terrorists who "cannot be released" \-- held without any proper trial]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Under normal circumstances I would consider the treatment of the SS soldiers described here war crimes. But the men of the SS were and are not deserving of the protections normally granted to soldiers. For the atrocities that they committed only the most brutal punishment will suffice.

My dad had a friend who as a partisan fought on the eastern front. Whenever they captured a German soldier they checked his armpit for the telltale tattoo. If he had it they would immediately run him over with a tank. I think that's the most kindly death they could expect in light of their heinous behavior.

<comment><USER22> > only the most brutal punishment will suffice

Suffice for what? Only to make you feel better. This is some real magical- thinking torture porn. Nothing special happens when you kill a person one way versus another.

<comment><USER23> Nonsense. The survivors feel differently. That's very real.

<comment><USER22> It's not "very real". If a survivor knew their captour was shot, run over by a tank, put in prison immediately or on the run for years, but eventually captured the survivor would feel about the same amount of resolution as their personality is disposed to synthesize. Nothing special happens in human consciousness if the resolution is extra gory.

<comment><USER24> That is patently incorrect. If it were, horrific methods of execution would never be imagined or used as deterrent punishments throughout history. The method of execution can have a profound psychological impact on many different people in many different ways.

Further, if there was no difference to a victim or survivor between imprisonment and execution, we wouldn't have a death penalty debate at all.

<comment><USER22> > deterrent

That's rich. Study up on human psychology. Death and other cruel punishments are not a deterrent.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Paul Manafort, Former Trump Campaign Chairman Guilty of 8 Charges in Fraud Trial - brian-armstrong https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/21/us/politics/paul-manafort-trial-verdict.html <comment><AUTHOR> I scanned the article twice and may have missed it, but what is the outcome for Paul Manafort having been found guilty?</comment>


Netflix is giving up over $2B dollars a year by not showing ads - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2017/02/07/netflix-is-giving-up-over-2-billion-dollars-a-year-not-advertis/ <comment><USER2> But its the whole selling point of netflix. No Ads right!! I used Hulu for a week and couldn't bear those ads.

<comment><USER3> That's how they get you to pay for their ad-free version. It worked on me. I can't watch regular television anymore. We have DirecTV Now (for now) and the sheer number of advertisements is about to put me off of it entirely.

I just can't stand TV ads anymore.</comment></comment>


Apply HN: the off grid tech park - <AUTHOR> Problem: Developers are often pressured into a life of working on less-than-interesting projects because the pay is steady.
Solution: Make living more affordable and reduce the pressure to generate income by developing an off grid tech park which will become a lifelong network of developers, engineers and permaculture enthusiasts.
What I've done so far: In 2015 I set up an LLC and purchased 5 acres (2.5 hours from Los Angeles) of amazing land. I have lived there for months at a time with another developer - other developers have stopped by for hackathons and summits.
What the goal is: create a place for developers, newcomers, engineers and entrepreneurs to come together and ALWAYS have a place to live and learn. A place to try all your cool projects without the fear of failure.
Business model: Tech park and incubator model. I've left this intentionally vague as this business aspect of this concept needs the most attention. I am certain there is a good way to capitalize and it will be shaped in part by early members.
Why now is the right time: there is a perfect storm for developers: a lot of us can make money remotely. An internet connection in remote areas is now affordable and fast. Solar technology prices are plummeting. The permaculture movement has given us mountains of useful literature over the last decade. Land that was almost unusable for a tech park 20 years ago is now prime.
There's also a big future in bringing technology experts and permaculture together - these two disciplines need to mingle more and I believe working off grid brings the necessity that leads to innovation.
I do realize that there's a lot of pitfalls in anything involving land ownership as well as developing communities - my commitment is to bring on legal experts which is another reason I think YC would be so helpful.
Edit* here's a dropbox with some images, all taken from the land. Also a video with some coyotes. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/vvu448eyg1887l7/AAAPu488tKIdnPfHI... <comment><USER2> Interesting! This sounds like a developer hostel, to some degree. How's the internet access from this land? Are there builds on the land? What do you need to do to get it up and running and do you have the capital for it (I assume not since you posted this though you were able to buy the land so I wasn't sure).

Maybe look to what places like the hackers dojo to see if a similar type of business model could fit for you.

I like it. I have a family so I wouldn't be able to use this but when I was back in college if I KNEW there was a place I could live and code, on the cheap and on the west coast, even if it wasn't that close to SF or LA, I would have jumped at the chance.

Target demographic is college kids I'm assuming? Also single people and / or hopeful founders?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah - I have looked into a lot of existing and defunct hacker hostels to get an idea of the landscape. The big difference here being an emphasis on a cheap location, and the emphasis on a life-long network rather than a short term living situation.

Having a family is a limiting factor in people uprooting their lives, so I think you're right in saying that a younger audience is going to be the target (I'm 30 though). And yeah - single people and hopeful founders would also be a good target. This isn't something the members necessarily need to live at or pay a lot of money into - for some it may be nothing more than a cool vacation spot for a week or two.

Thanks for the support. The idea is definitely a fun one but I'm also staying realistic with all of the challenges.

Internet access is OK now, with a perfect 4g connection. Fortunately there is a local provider for high power wifi connections thats very affordable an I plan to set it up soon. There is currently a cement, permitted building pad on the land - I bought myself a small trailer for my office, 3d printer, etc and a small bunk bed. The other devs who have been there have nice tents set up - but I have plans in progress which I will get a permit for to expand the buildings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> A great resource for real-estate development in the US is the Urban Land Institute: [http://uli.org](http://uli.org) . If you like books, its bookstore is worth spending money in.

Another resource is local government, which some may find surprising. Planning departments are tasked with bringing good development to communities [for some locally determined definition of "good"]. Talking with _senior_ staff is often a highly reliable way to determine how much resistance will come during the entitlement phase of a real-estate development project. Just understand that the "no" for a legally possible but "over my dead body" project will not be a firm one.

Looking at the project as a real-estate project in general, there seems to be a kernel that could come to fruition. The unique challenges [as opposed to the ordinary real-estate challenges] center around defining what is and isn't considered a developer and legal challenges in real-estate law regarding exclusionary sales and rentals [over 55 communities are the only exception to Federal Fair Housing statutes that quickly comes to mind and it's not so much an exception as specifically part of the law]. Though I am not a lawyer, I suspect that a community of developers will need to rely more on the sort of marketing golf communities use to attract golfers than screening.

Switching topics: How might this project meet the ruthless requirements for return on investment that venture capital demands in lieu of the return on investment more typical of real-estate development?

<comment><AUTHOR> The business model would likely involve retaining various degrees of equity in the projects that emerge. The longer we can keep the community sustainable, the more potential projects. If the model is viable, I'd think replicating it in other locations would be a way to scale up.

As far as exclusionary sales/rentals go - I'm happy you brought that up because I'm not very familiar with it. Targeted marketing instead of screening sounds like a logical choice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hey, I am currently working with a group of folks over at /r/ethereum on a project relating to a crowdfunded real estate based crypto community. ( See: [https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4dorx0/lets_buy_a...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4dorx0/lets_buy_an_island_dao_for_ethereum/) )

If you'd consider using your land for a project like this, let me know and I can invite you to the slack channel we're brainstorming in.

<comment><AUTHOR> hit me up - email@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Love your idea! Don't like your land. Water is life. I think you need a place less deserty to execute this plan...

<comment><AUTHOR> There's water at 30-40 feet. It needs to be reverse osmosis filtered but it's plentiful. That being said, desert life can be harsh and it's not for everyone. If this project gets off the ground and shows some success, I'd really love to expand to a few areas of California where the conditions are more moderate.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'd like to add a quick note:

This project is in very early stages - I was going to wait a year before even pitching it to anyone. My big concern is in people uprooting their lives to join something that's not a sure thing yet.

That being said - all are welcome to visit or work there with us - PM me to schedule a visit if you want.

<comment><USER2> > I was going to wait a year before even pitching it to anyone.

Why not start now? You may be able to raise capital and start sooner than you expect and simply turn it into a real thing. You already made the investment in buying land, why not try to use it right away? At least if you tried to start doing something with it _now_ you'll know _at least_ one year sooner that it will either work or fail.

It would suck if you waited until 2017, attempted to do this only to find out it's just going to fail.

Disclaimer: I've only pitched one thing ever so my opinion may be bullshit.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're correct. I'd say that I am already doing something by having myself and another developer living out there on limited resources - can't expect anyone else to do that until I have.

Fortunately, there's not much potential for failure here because I plan to use the land for as long as I own it - I think my hesitance is just a function of knowing that a lot needs to be done before average people could live out there without too much of a lifestyle shock - but some people can handle that shock.

<comment><USER2> > I think my hesitance is just a function of knowing that a lot needs to be > done before average people could live out there without too much of a > lifestyle shock - but some people can handle that shock.

I bet a lot of people would. Hell I know some "hipsters" who would probably love it lol. As long as you set expectations I don't see why you couldn't just start whenever you wanted.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the encouragement. I agree on the importance of setting reasonable expectations for community members, especially early on. If anyone reading this has lived in a hacker hostel I'd like to hear about expectations vs reality.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Panel's Warning on Climate Risk: Worst Is Yet to Come - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/31/science/earth/panels-warning-on-climate-risk-worst-is-yet-to-come.html <comment><USER2> In most sciences when the hypothesis fails to account for what happened one decides the theory is bunk and moves on.

In GW/CC (whatever they are calling it this week) the hypothesis is a forgone conclusion and you merely search for evidence to support it.

So since we're having a 'warming hiatus' one concludes that the worst is yet to come, because the alternative is the model has not been validated by evidence and one should not make predictions based on an unvalidated (or more correctly invalidated) model.

[http://www.nature.com/news/climate-change-the-case-of-the- mi...](http://www.nature.com/news/climate-change-the-case-of-the-missing- heat-1.14525)

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I think we've lost touch with the whole scientific method on climate change. Propose a theory. Test the theory. Revise the theory. Repeat and repeat as we gain a more accurate understanding of our world.

Climate is so complicated. Of we're going to get things wrong. The trick is revising our theories in light of recent discoveries. Unfortunately, many people have a lot of money and clout invested in The One True Theory that they don't want to admit any mistakes at all. That is closer to religion than science.

<comment><USER4> > _I think we 've lost touch with the whole scientific method on climate > change. Propose a theory. Test the theory. Revise the theory. Repeat and > repeat as we gain a more accurate understanding of our world._

I think you've never been in touch with the scientific method on climate change because your "how it should work" outline is exactly how I saw it go down in the literature.

Theory: Earth is warming ~1K/century, we have a bunch of models to project from here, most of which are bad news.

Observation: Temperature dips below predictions on enough models over enough time to be statistically significant.

Theory: Some negative feedback mechanism kicked in to reverse our forcing on the climate. We no longer have to worry about the previous trends.

Observation: Radiative flux measurements say that the difference in energy going in and going out of the planet is still positive. Whatever the negative feedback mechanism is, the energy is staying on Earth, so thermodynamics says the feedback mechanism must eventually fail.

Theory: The heat is being stored in the ocean. It's the biggest heat sink around.

Observation: If we adjust the models to use observed ocean currents instead of predicted average currents, we find that that the refined models reflect the observed heat storage.

Theory: Parts of the ocean are heating up, as seen in the models.

Observation: Yep, we went and measured them, and they're heating up. Corrected to reflect this evidence, the models still point to upward trends.

\</comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----

> _Climate is so complicated. Of we 're going to get things wrong. The trick > is revising our theories in light of recent discoveries._

Good thing that's exactly what happens. The real trick is in convincing people like you that it has happened. Clearly it's not enough to

1\. Publish cross-referenced short summaries alongside detailed methodologies (papers) in a system where people compete to prove each other wrong

2\. Provide high-level reviews to connect the dots established by #1 (the IPCC reports)

3\. Have the thousands of scientists doing #1 sign off on #2 so that you know it's not misrepresenting how their #1 results fit into the big picture

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>----

> _many people have a lot of money and clout invested in The One True Theory > that they don 't want to admit any mistakes at all._

If someone can prove an alternative there is far more money and clout in it for _them_ than if they had toed the line. There _is_ a large social penalty for false alarms, but that's because there is a political party, monied industry, and media apparatus poised to turn a false alarm into actual counterproductive action.

How can the debate be considered fair if one side is censored? Easy: "false alarm" hypotheses are only ever stated in the context of research results that prove them wrong (i.e. as null hypotheses). They still get proposed, inspected, and analyzed, just not in a way that allows political forces to trivially misrepresent them. Research that could disprove the whole GW/CC theory gets done in the context of investigating puzzling nuances of GW/CC. So far, the overall theory has endured, even though the details have evolved to account for new information.

Consider a debugging analogy. Suppose you're convinced that you have a compiler bug, but you know that you'll get laughed at if you say so out loud. The social stigma is never an issue because you can do reductions without getting laughed at. If it really is a compiler bug, you will eventually have a "smoking gun" test case to prove it. If not, no harm done. Your social status hasn't suffered because you can claim you never really believed it was a compiler bug anyway.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>----

> _That is closer to religion than science._

How many actual research papers have you read on this subject? Because if you think climate scientists aren't following the scientific process I suspect the answer is 0.

Start here:

[http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/09/what-o...](http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/09/what- ocean-heating-reveals-about-global-warming/comment-page-2/)

(notice how the discussion revolves around primary literature with links at the bottom)

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>----

One choice quote from the link above:

> And a reminder: The warming trend of the 15-year period up to 2006 was > almost twice as fast as expected (0.3°C per decade, see Fig. 4 here), and > (rightly) nobody cared. We published a paper in Science in 2007 where we > noted this large trend, and as the first explanation for it we named > "intrinsic variability within the climate system". Which it turned out to > be. - See more at: > [http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/09/what-o...](http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/09/what- > ocean-heating-reveals-about-global-warming/comment- > page-2/#sthash.PbuJik87.dpuf)

<comment><USER5> > _There is a large social penalty for false alarms_

There is absolutely no social penalty for false alarms of that sort - not so long as the alarm goes in the right direction. Remember Schneider's "we have to offer up scary scenarios" quote - coming up with alarms (that might be false) is essentially part of the _job_ of environmental activists, even ones who choose to do science for a living. If there _were_ a large social penalty for false alarms, Ehrlich wouldn't have remained credible after all his past prediction failures. (predictions such as: _" The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now."_)

The idea that our "missing heat" is hiding in the deep ocean is still a speculative hypothesis. It _could_ potentially be correct but it's hard to be sure because the data coverage wasn't there until recently. The trend one gets depends on how one does the reanalysis.

Curry discusses the question here: [http://judithcurry.com/2014/01/21/ocean- heat-content-uncerta...](http://judithcurry.com/2014/01/21/ocean-heat-content- uncertainties/)

Pointing in particular at this paper (which I've only skimmed so far): [http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/people/gjohnson/OHCA_1950_2011_fina...](http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/people/gjohnson/OHCA_1950_2011_final.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Apparently the warming is going to give us bad tempers [0] ...

"In an authoritative report due out Monday a United Nations climate panel for the first time is connecting hotter global temperatures to hotter global tempers. Top scientists are saying that climate change will complicate and worsen existing global security problems, such as civil wars, strife between nations and refugees ... retired U.S. Navy Adm. David Titley, now a Pennsylvania State University professor of meteorology, wrote in an email. "The Arab Spring and Syria are two recent examples."

They sully the real science with this kind of nonsense.

[0] [http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/warmer- temperature...](http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/warmer-temperatures- can-lead-warmer-tempers-un-report-to-say/article17729866/)

<comment><USER7> Actually, no. One of the big events leading up to Egypt's revolution was a grain shortage brought on by a heat wave and bout of fires in Russia [1].

1\. [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2010/08...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2010/08/05/AR2010080502470.html)

<comment><USER6> The webpage you cite does not support your argument that Climate Change caused the Egyptian population to rise up against their oppressive/corrupt dictatorship. It simply states that Russia had fires destroying wheat and Egypt was an importer.

Food price inflation[0] is cited by Wikipedia as one of the causes (with just a single link). There are pages and pages of other much more important reasons[1]

Food price inflation is not necessarily connected to Global Warming/Climate Change.

The 2007/2008 World Food Crisis, which caused violence in Egypt[2], significantly raised food prices (which stayed high after the rapid rise). A major cause, according to the World Bank, was biofuels [2] which raised food prices by up to 75%.

Its easy to claim that X was the spark that made Y happen. All you need to show that X had some minuscule effect and people will readily agree, ignoring the big picture.

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_Revolution_of_2011#cit...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_Revolution_of_2011#cite_note- tna-3) [1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_Revolution_of_2011#cit...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_Revolution_of_2011#cite_note- tna-3) [2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007%E2%80%932008_world_food_pr...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007%E2%80%932008_world_food_price_crisis#Egypt) [3] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007%E2%80%932008_world_food_pr...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007%E2%80%932008_world_food_price_crisis#cite_note- WorldBank_07_08-50)

<comment><USER7> Take it as you will. Whether it's fair to say "Climate Change caused Egypt's revolution," I don't know. But if you accept that Climate Change can destabilize the food supply, and that a destabilized food supply caused the revolution, then the quote claim is not really nonsensical.

And don't get me started on biofuels!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I understand and believe in the science - so why does this article trigger my suspicion I am being sold something. I know balance has gotten a bad name with because the crackpots in the global warming denier camp but this just seems so one-sided that it strains credibility.

<comment><USER9> To even use the word "denier" strains your credibility as a "scientist"

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Could someone please explain to me how the IPCC can be calling for urgent action when their models are looking increasingly busted?

[http://judithcurry.com/2014/03/04/causes-and-implications- of...](http://judithcurry.com/2014/03/04/causes-and-implications-of..).

I can see three main possibilities:

\- their models aren't busted (Judith Curry is wrong, as are those whom she cites)

\- their models are busted, and that increases the risk (i.e. risk increases as a result of forecasting being essentially impossible)

\- their models are busted, and they're doubling down on a bad bet for political reasons

</comment><comment><USER11> The other side: [http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/mar/27/un- climate-a...](http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/mar/27/un-climate- author-withdraws-damn-obvious-warmer-te/)

<comment><USER11> Wow, downvoted for simply posting a report on a dissenting opinion from a former IPCC review panel member. WTF?

<comment><AUTHOR> Downvotes seem to be as much emotionally driven as anything else. Also, there is the perpetual confusion between "I do not agree" and "This is not constructive"

<comment><USER12> I downvoted simply because it's a crappy article from a crappy "newspaper" that doesn't really add to the conversation.

I mean, look at this silliness:

"It is pretty damn obvious there are positive impacts of climate change, even though we are not always allowed to talk about them."

This quote comes _right after talking about them_ , so what's this idea that they're not allowed to? Ridiculous. It's a political editorial, and not even a good one, masquerading as a news article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This alarmism is getting really ridiculous.

Just 5 years ago, Al Gore claimed North Pole ice cap will be gone by now and instead we just had a record cold winter.

[http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/dec/16/editorial- al...](http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/dec/16/editorial-al-gore- soothsayer/)

<comment><USER2> The less the sky falls the more imminent the danger. Ask any christian, or other believer in an apocalyptic cult, the end times have never been closer.

From the wiki page on doomsday cults: "Referring to his study, Festinger and later other researchers have attempted to explain the commitment of members to their associated doomsday cult, even after the prophecies of their leader have turned out to be false. Festinger explained this phenomenon as part of a coping mechanism called dissonance reduction, a form of rationalization. Members often dedicate themselves with renewed vigor to the group's cause after a failed prophecy, and rationalize with explanations such as a belief that their actions forestalled the disaster, or a belief in the leader when the date for disaster is postponed."

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> On the contrary, what if George Carlin was right and mother nature just needed human to make plastic?

</comment><comment><USER12> Sweet Jesus the HN comments here are scary. I'd have hoped for some sort of sense here.

I really should get over my idea that comments here are any better than any other internet cesspool....

<comment><USER15> Apparently your idea of "better" means "comments that I agree with"?

<comment><USER16> There was a time when HN was less political and more interested in fact.

Can you imagine any other context where a political editorial would be accepted as fact in a discussion on science? Some people have such little shame.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wtf is their a linked item on HN to a payed news site?

</comment><comment><USER18> Fear the mind killer, used too often...

</comment><comment><USER19> Why do we believe climate scientists when they can't even predict the weather 10 days out? Yes, weather doesn't equal climate, but climate is weather in aggregate. That means we should be able to predict short-term, local weather events more accurately before we even begin to start predicting long-term, global weather phenomenons. If our short-term weather models are so pitifully inaccurate, what on earth makes us believe our climate models predicting what will happen 5, 10, 20, 50 years from now are anywhere close to being correct?

<comment><USER20> In many systems you can predict larger scale events (when the pot of water will boil) despite being unable to predict smaller scale ones (turbulent flow inside the pot).

<comment><USER19> Your pot of boiling water prediction is based on past experience, not modeling of the smaller scale system. Climate science is akin to modeling turbulent flow inside the pot to predict when the pot will boil.

<comment><USER20> All modelling is based on past experience. The usefulness of a model is the degree to which you can abstract it from that experience.

In the case of the pot of water, you can observe the energy input into the system and combine that with some very generic, simple, and reliable physical models to determine when it will boil.

I'm not claiming that climate science is that simple, of course. My point is that some systems are more easily predicted at a larger scale than a smaller one.</comment></comment></comment></comment>