Children exploitation via YouTube - <AUTHOR> http://thespinoff.co.nz/society/21-11-2016/hello-my-name-is-ally-how-children-are-being-exploited-by-youtube-predators/ <comment><USER2> I guess when your fetish is so weird it's not even really sexual, you can trick kids into doing something that is pornographic only to a very small number of people. Like, it is really disturbing that some creep is able to ask a kid about if she's ever stepped on any bugs and that he's getting off on that. On the other hand, I'm not really that concerned about it. I do agree that you absolutely should not be contacting a minor for sexual gratification, even if they and 99% of the population don't understand how it can be for sexual gratification. But so long as they're not stalking the kid, sending messages back and forth asking for details where they live, or really doing much of anything, there are probably far more dangerous sexual predators on the internet to be worrying about.

<comment><USER3> You can worry about these people and worry about the more dangerous sexual predators, too--doesn't have to be one or the other.

One good reason to worry about these ones: they're already comfortable publicly using children for sexual gratification, who knows what else they're asking the children to do in private. The article notes that some of the comments left on the videos solicit one-to-one contact information, for example.

<comment><USER4> > _You can worry about these people and worry about the more dangerous sexual > predators, too--doesn 't have to be one or the other._

Everything is "one or the other" \-- opportunity cost.

Besides, even if you could worry about these people too, you probably shouldn't. That's kind of the message from the parent comment, and I agree. Where does it stop?

<comment><USER3> Hmm, yes, at some point, opportunity cost is a thing. I think there's a risk that that line of thinking can be very reductio ad absurdum where only the most gruesome of offences deserve investigative resources and all others are dismissed out of hand.

OK, I'll take a new tack and try to quantify it better. People who are grooming hundreds of children for sexual exploitation (in the open, no less) merit real concern. That the children don't know it's happening now is not, in my opinion, the standard we should use to decide how bad it is.

Rather, we can ask: what will happen if no intervention is done? The evidence suggests that they are being exploited; the network of children being exploited is growing; their exploitation leaves breadcrumbs for others to follow and potentially expand upon; and in the future, it is likely that some of the hundreds of children involved in this will realize that they were used as a sexual plaything.

Where does it stop? I dunno--I'll agree that this it's hard to find the right balance. As long as the bad guys are self-curating playlists with hundreds of victim videos whose comments include easily searched terms, I think the effort/reward here is likely pretty good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This seems like a really hard problem to tackle. The article kind of nails the problem in that none of what the children are doing on the videos actually violates any rules nor would it be classified as sexual in any way. There's no nudity, they aren't doing anything sexual, they aren't even truly saying anything sexual.

In a way this is the flip side of the "it isn't porn, it's art" argument. Not all nudity is porn, and not all porn involves nudity or sex. Trying to figure out where to draw the line is very much non-trivial, and is made even more so by the fact that exactly where that line falls varies quite wildly from person to person. As someone with no attraction to either of the fetishes (or is it three fetishes, are we counting pedophilia as one of them in this case?) mentioned in the article or as the focus of the videos I'd be hard pressed to classify any of the videos they're talking about as pornographic or erotic, but apparently there's a subset of the population that that isn't true of. Aside from banning __any __interaction between adults and someone under age I 'm not sure it's going to be possible to prevent something like this from happening.

There's also the question of if we __should __be trying to prevent something like this. I know everyone 's gut reaction is "BUT THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!" and "OMG! PEDOPHILES!!!", but honestly if the children aren't being creeped out or feeling intimidated and threatened, aren't being stalked, and aren't doing anything sexual, how much effort should we be wasting worrying about some weirdo getting turned on by someone talking about stepping on bugs or whatever?

Edit: I'd also like to point out the best way to help prevent something like this is for the parents to be monitoring what their children are doing online. It wouldn't stop all of it, after all as pointed out the contents of most if not all these videos seems rather harmless (which is kind of the point I guess) so many parents might not have issue with it, but they should still be aware of what's going on in case it doesn't stop with something relatively harmless like this. E.G. the guy mentioned in the article asking the kids to Skype with him.

</comment><comment><USER6> The issue that the article seems to take with this phenomenon isn't that there's any harm being done (although some of the stuff with lego seems questionable), but rather that someone somewhere is having 'bad thoughts' about the minors involved.

This is getting into a very thoughtcrime-y area.

<comment><USER7> The issue is that children are actively solicited by these adults to make these "harmless" videos specifically for indulging their sexual fetishes.

<comment><USER6> But if the children were 'innocently' being actively solicited to make identical videos by other children, it wouldn't be an issue. It would just be children interacting socially.

Don't get me wrong, it's creepy as heck and I can totally understand the visceral discomfort, but the issue people are having with it is the prurient interest of the viewers, not the effect on the children.

<comment><USER8> This might sound weird, but I think the primary "victim" here might be parents, not the children.

Here's an (admittedly imperfect) analogy: There are a lot of reasons to oppose constant government surveillance, even if you're not a criminal. But one of those reasons is just the simple fact that, as human beings, we are psychologically stressed out by the fact that someone might be watching us at any moment. Even if I'll probably live my entire life without feeling any tangible effects of the surveillance, believing that it's out would be a legitimate harm to my quality of life.

Parents are entitled to be legitimately troubled by the fact that pedophiles are thinking of _their_ children in their sexual fantasies. That's not "imagined" harm; it's real. After all, psychology is what it is, and it's not changing any time soon.

Of course, enforcing any rules/laws against such behavior will be tricky, but probably not impossible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As it's true for all media in general, never leave your kids alone with youtube, especially if only clicking on recommendations, even with toy videos. Things get really weird, really fast after some iterations.

Every small, in itself harmless, subculture apparently draws in some outright creepy to exploitive people after a given time.

<comment><USER5> There's also the fact that youtube comments are an absolute cesspool. I don't even bother reading them anymore because it's almost exclusively trolls and the scum of the internet that dominate there for some reason. Whatever the most deplorable, offensive, ignorant, or disgusting thing you can think of, someone has probably said it in the comments to a youtube video, most likely to a video of someones grandmother knitting a sweater or something equally inoffensive.

<comment><USER9> One could even extrapolate from this, that for emotional health it's good thing to postpone teaching that skills to as late as possible, or until Adobe VoCo ruins it for all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> When will DeepMind be good enough to detect YouTube perverts?

<comment><USER11> When it can, detecting thoughtcrime might not be far off ...

AI could soon filter some of this stuff or screen it to alert humans, which will obviously be a good thing.

But I think it's up to us to adapt to new technological environments. Parents shouldn't be allowing their young children to post videos of themselves on youtube for a variety of reasons. And kids should be warned not to do things strangers on the internet ask them to do, just as we warn them about strangers on the street.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What the fuck is wrong with people.

<comment><USER8> Downvoted for ...language, I guess?

I dunno, when faced with a somewhat troubling and frankly just bizarre concept like described in the OP's article, I think a recaction of "WTF" isn't exactly off-base...

<comment><USER12> More than likely because your comment, while a reasonable reaction, isn't really a comment that facilitates discussion, which is not preferred and seen as white noise. Most people are fine with profanity in reasonable amounts but it should have more content. Reactions alone tend to not give a lot of room for discussion on the topic so much as the reaction itself, inquiring and understanding the commenter's position instead of the article.

<comment><USER8> Sure, I was even a little worried that it would be perceived that way immediately after I posted it. (Although my concerns weren't articulated to myself as well as your point.)

But at the time that I left my comment, this thread had very few votes and only 2 comments. It looked like it was just about to fall off the bottom of the front page.

I figured a simple "dude, wtf" comment for the (very) few of us who were participating in this thread at the time would be interpreted as: "If you don't know what to make of this, but you know you don't like it, I'm with you."

As it turns out, at least some of downvoting was due to some people's serious misunderstanding of the original article. See for example, aaron695's misguided comment below about "gay sex".

Anyway, sorry for the meta-meta discussion.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: I'm releasing Genius free to play on Itch.io - <AUTHOR> https://victorqribeiro.itch.io/genius <comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone, I'm working on some games that I'll soon publish for sell, in the meanwhile I've been publishing the games I made for fun, free of charge. Hope you like it.</comment>


Deploying Rails Applications book by Ezra is finished and available - <AUTHOR> http://brainspl.at/articles/2008/02/21/at-long-last-my-deploying-rails-applications-book-is-done <comment><USER2> Amusing that this finally comes out... now that Ezra has developed Merb. Not that I am complaining... It's nice to have a book from someone that obviously knows what they are talking about.

</comment><comment><USER3> Really disappointed that he chose to focus on deploying on nginx instead of Apache which most people are probably going to be using

<comment><USER4> Actually the book covers both apache and nginx equally so you should be straight. Although I must recommend that if you have a choice then you go with Nginx. Nginx is much more scalable and ues much fewer resources then apache does. The _only_ reason to use apache with a Rails deployment is if you have other legacy sites to support that run on apache. If you are just deploying a Rails/Merb app then Nginx is far superior in every way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Ezra, what are your thoughts on Litespeed? I never hear anyone talking about it, but I've found it extremely easy to deploy Rails apps on it (though I've never done so with a high traffic site). Do you cover Litespeed in the book, at least as a comparison to others?

<comment><USER4> I like lightspeed but the free version is crippled and only usable for smallish sites. The real version costs a lot of money but is pretty nice. But it not being open source makes me personally cringe ;)

Lightspeed is nice for smaller sites because the processes can go away when there is no traffic. But I'm not a fan of it much and it's not covered in the book.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the heads up. Looking forward to grabbing the book. :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Thoughts on Dynamo's "flawed architecture" - <AUTHOR> http://dizzyd.com/blog/post/172

<comment><USER2> Well, there's a real point: there are some contradictions in the original paper. But you can implement it the way you want, because those are only the principles –– and there are lots of different implementations already released, not clones!</comment>


Interpretable Machine Learning Through Teaching - <AUTHOR> https://blog.openai.com/interpretable-machine-learning-through-teaching/ <comment><USER2> When I teach others, I usually rely on a lot of metaphors/analogies.

For example if I had to describe gradient descent to someone, I wouldn't start with a definition from calculus. I would instead describe it as climbing down a hill.

But that assumes prior knowledge of what a hill is (it has gradients) and what climbing is (you wanna go to the lowest point) and what the physics is like (go towards steepest direction with some momentum). This isn't something that I expect a blank-slate AI to be able to produce.

In short, explaining things intuitively to another human requires knowing about common human experiences and mode of thought. It's the "transfer learning" for humans. This seems like the realm of AGI and not something I expect to see solved well anytime soon. I hope I am wrong!

(Note: even in this example I assumed you understand the experience of trying to explain gradient descent in order to explain my point)

<comment><USER3> There's an idea that passes in and out of vogue[0] that metaphor is the foundation of semantics in general. It's not been popular lately, but I get the feeling it will come back the more we bump up against the hard limits of tabula rasa-style learning.

I happen to be rather fond of it myself, and agree completely with you here. You can have all sorts of fun building models based around 'metaphoric delta', the bridge that must be crossed between the set of metaphors I understand, and the set you understand. And of course, when they are misinterpreted, or understood differently, or leak, as all abstractions do. You get people talking with the same words but not understanding eachother.

\---

[0] most lately, Lakoff. See _The Metaphors We Live By_

<comment><USER4> >It's not been popular lately, but I get the feeling it will come back the more we bump up against the hard limits of tabula rasa-style learning.

Most of Neural Networks ideas exist since the 60s/70s, right now we're just converging to a point where tabula-rasa style learning of smaller neural networks has become feasible with our computing power. It's not that we've made such huge strides in theory, it's more that we can now engineer systems that actually do something useful with NNs.

For generalized AI and metaphor based learning, we'll need much much more powerful computers that can stitch together multiple prelearned NNs and modify tweak them just slightly on new data and construct connected multi-domain NNs. This will have the complexity resembling some higher animal brains. Metaphors is kind of another name for using a similar pre built NN as a start for another Neural Network and connecting these in a supernetwork.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Moving the knowledge from one machine to another via learning rather than trying to copy in some form or another seems like a good approach. You don't limit the architecture of the learning or teaching implementations. It even works if the learner is a human, which is a bit different architecture :)

I also like the idea of having teaching output parsable by humans. Then you could ask your teacher AI, teach me (show me) what you know.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is great stuff. I actually think the obvious application here is foreign language instruction. Particulary chinese character recognition for english speaking elementary students. Most teachers at that level will probably not have mastery of the language themselves. In addition, the "teacher agent" may be able to find patterns that would dramatically boost recall.

Additional meta-learning research from openai posted recently on arxiv:

Evolved Policy Gradients

[https://arxiv.org/pdf/1802.04821.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1802.04821.pdf)

As well as the Ray distributed AI system:

[http://bair.berkeley.edu/blog/2018/01/09/ray/](http://bair.berkeley.edu/blog/2018/01/09/ray/)</comment>


IE11 Release Preview for Windows 7: 30% Faster than Other Browsers - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2013/09/18/ie11-release-preview-for-windows-7-30-faster-than-other-browsers-and-even-more-support-for-web-standards.aspx <comment><USER2> I'm sure this will gather lots of downvotes, but it really does sound a lot like this to me:

        IE is faster than the rest.
        -- Microsoft

If you're about to publish such numbers, at least have an external party publish it, paid or otherwise. 30% faster loading would be astounding, especially on connections with high ping times and more than 1 percent of packet loss (3 percent is really noticeable and yet common in lots of places, especially public ones). But of course they didn't mean _30 overall improvement_ , just the Javascript got 30 percent faster if you use certain things, right? Let's click that link.

...

> IE11 Release Preview is 9% faster than IE10

Alright so there goes the "30% faster than other browsers". Unless you don't count IE10 as a browser. Also IE10 is way slower in all sorts of benchmarks compared to other browsers.

To take just one recent benchmark: [http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/chrome-27-firefox-21-ope...](http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/chrome-27-firefox-21-opera- next,3534-12.html)

Here IE10 is 257% slower than the fastest browser 379pts vs 974pts). If IE11 is 9% faster, then how is it "30% faster than other browsers"? A 9% improvement is still 248% slower than Firefox, at least in Tom's Hardware's benchmark. Or is "other browsers" not "all other browsers?" Perhaps that is their reasoning: "we meant only Opera, Maxthon and $other_unknown_browser as 'other browsers'."

<comment><USER3> _Alright so there goes the "30% faster than other browsers". Unless you don't count IE10 as a browser._

I'm going to nit-pick, just because you did. The issue isn't counting IE10 as a browser, it's counting it as an "other" browser. Which arguably it is not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> When you don't support standards or commonly accepted conventions of modern browsers, and build a browser optimized for one operating system you SHOULD end up with a faster browser.

However, given the aforementioned limitation why would you want to use such a browser?

\-----

for ie10 see

[http://html5test.com/compare/browser/ie10.html](http://html5test.com/compare/browser/ie10.html)

ie10 scores 320 vs firefox 22's 410

i'm downloading the ie11 preview to compare firsthand now

"You'll need to restart your PC before you can use your new browser" \-- thanks IE

ie11 scores 350 on html5test (compared to firefox 22's 410 and ie 10's 320)

<comment><USER5> Have you developed for IE10 or 11? They are far more standards compliant than any other version. In fact IE11 surpasses Firefox in some areas (full support for Flexbox for example)

<comment><USER6> "... they are far more standards complaint than any other version ..."

"standards complaint" \- Nice, I think that nails it.

Lately Microsoft complains all the time that they are fully standards compliant, but when it comes down to it, I always end up having to special case IE so it never really feels that way.

<comment><USER7> They are NSA standards compliant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's great all these companies are competing to make their JS engines faster and faster with each new release. Its creating exciting possibilities for the web!

I do wish there was a bit more aggressive a push to get older users to update their browsers as well though.

<comment><USER9> Yes, IE6/7/8 really need to go. I don't know why they can't force update everyone similar to Chrome.

<comment><USER10> Because a number of users (IIRC, South Koreans especially) rely on the incompatibility of IE6 to view a number of their websites. (Something about certain ActiveX controls being government mandated)

Force upgrading people from these older versions will break a significant fraction of the web, at least for some users. It might even be a legal issue in South Korea.

<comment><USER11> ActiveX still works in IE11 though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I never trust code that Microsoft writes to make up statistics about how awesome their technology is.

How well does it handle real world examples rather than some contrite example of theirs?

<comment><USER13> It would have been worst for them to pay a lab for the test. Now that it is out, we shall see and test. MS threw the first punch with the claims

FF user and very happy here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I tried to install it on Windows 8 on my desktop (not 8.1) and was informed that it is only for Windows 7 SP1. I could help but roll my eyes.

<comment><USER15> Yes, they want to force you to install Windows 8.1. I'd also prefer to have just the IE 11, at least until Windows 8.1 SP1 thank you Microsoft.

They are really strange: if I had Windows 7 I'd be able to install IE 11, but since I have Windows 8, I'll have to wait until October 18 and then I'll have to install the whole Windows 8.1.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The main problem with IE has never been its speed. I hope it dies a long agonizing death for all the hours I have wasted when developing two versions of each page - one for all the other browsers and one for IE. Its market share finally reached a point where I don't care about it... Good riddance!

</comment><comment><USER17> It's disappointing that so many tech videos (in my experience) pay such little attention to the audio (bitrate and/or volume). My volume had to be at 100% to hear this comfortably.

Another example are published webcasts wherein the presenter is using their telephone (on speakerphone!) to give the presentation. That is just ridiculous.

If you do presentations don't use a system that doesn't allow you to use a microphone (and don't forget to buy and use the microphone).

</comment><comment><USER18> The only reason I have not been able to switch to IE is browser extensions. Does IE have that yet?

I said the same thing about Chrome when it first came out. I happily use it now.

<comment><USER11> IE had ActiveX support for ages. There are other types of addons too, they're not exactly new. e.g. [http://www.iegallery.com/Addons](http://www.iegallery.com/Addons)

<comment><USER19> But no one develops for them, at least not in the same way they develop for chrome or FF.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The new development tools look really nice, I must say. The dev tools in previous releases have been shocking.

<comment><USER21> Tell me about it, even in 10 I find the dev tools extremely lacking and slow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> What's up with "Reimagining the Net" \- I don't want a browser to mess up with my image of the .net :) - do I?

</comment><comment><USER19> Well the sad thing is the pirate test barely runs in IE10 and actually renders things wrong.

</comment><comment><USER23> Haha, IE11 won't install on Windows 8. It requires Win7 only it says...

</comment><comment><USER24> I was hoping for 31%. Are you certain it's not 29?

<comment><USER4> they have only 1 significant figure of accuracy

<comment><USER2> Let's just hope it's not an order of magnitude wrong, then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Has to be tightly bound to hardware acceleration, no?

</comment><comment><USER26> So what about Server 2012 R1?</comment>


Open for profile feedback – Mentoring – Sharing past jon-hunting experience - <AUTHOR> https://utsavpshah.github.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> In this uncertain times, I want to try & help out people who are either laid off or looking for job. I am no expert in any of these but I can try by giving back some of my time to help in anyway I can. I'm posting a link below to my calendar with 15 minutes slot.

Please feel free to reach out to me: 1\. If you want to know about my past experiences with job-hunting (interview prep, strategy or resources) 2\. Resume/profile feedback & proofreading 3\. To chat or share anything that's on your mind. 4\. Anything else that I didn't cover above & you feel I can help with.

You can book the slot using [https://calendly.com/utsav-p- shah/15mins](https://calendly.com/utsav-p-shah/15mins) or you can book a slot via the Github Pages website. [https://utsavpshah.github.io/](https://utsavpshah.github.io/)</comment>


A fight against Amazon becomes a state matter in Quebec - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-25/a-fight-against-amazon-becomes-a-state-matter-in-quebec <comment><USER2> This seems kind of doomed to fail. Amazon is appealing because it provides a good customer experience: good prices, fast shipping, wide variety of products, responsive customer service, etc. More local businesses fail to compete because they mostly offer the same things with worse prices and experience.

It's one thing to appeal to people's sense of civic responsibility for the environment, another thing entirely for commerce. Most people just wanna get their stuff easily and at a low price.

Now, there _are_ some weaknesses Amazon has, like having to sift through a lot of cheap crap or copycat items while searching/browsing, as well as fake reviews. Maybe a website that offered most of Amazon's strengths while tackling its real flaws could be successful, but this doesn't look like that. It just looks like a half-hearted feel good measure to make it look like they're doing something.

<comment><USER3> >>> it provides a good customer experience: good prices

Amazon had not offered better prices than the main brick-and-mortar shops for a long long time. Try comparing the items you see in shops with the same on Amazon and be Amazed.

The best are small household items. Sellers buy from Ikea and resell on Amazon. Sometimes customers find out and they post reviews you can imagine, "OMG this is the £4 cutlery pack from Ikea. Go to Ikea don't buy here."

<comment><USER4> They do the same on eBay, too. I've had to warn friends that finding the cheapest seller for a given item on eBay may still be substantially more expensive than buying the same item directly from Ikea.

(Sometimes it does make sense to buy from the eBay or Amazon marketplace reseller, if it's a small item where their markup + shipping is less than Ikea's per-order delivery charge.)

<comment> m-p-3 Agreed. Just because you can get it from Amazon doesn't mean it's the cheapest way to get it because even though the provide _free_ shipping, the price is substantially higher to compensate that.

Buying at a brick and mortar store reduce that need for individualized shipping, and the economies of scale of buying and delivering a large amount of product from the manufacturers by the retailer which is physically close to the customers help reducing costs.

<comment><USER5> What are you guys buying on Amazon? Seriously I genuinely try to find stuff I want at a lower price than Amazon but it's so rare. It's almost always cheaper _before_ you count the free shipping.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Damn it! I live in Quebec, this province makes everything extremely complicated and then wonders why most companies don't want to deal with them and most people leave.

Went to buy insurance, couldn't because ToS lists countries couldn't do business with includes, Sadi, Iran, Iraq and Quebec.

Most Canadian's know to live in this province only if you can maximize the gains from it. Buying a first time house, starting a family, and or immigrating to Canada.

<comment><USER7> I live in quebec.

My kids go to a nice school. I live in a nice neighborhood. I get the nice metro to work. Or I cycle on the nice cycle network.

I got my covid test, and result. I saw a really good doctor the same day. The same doctor rang me back 2 days later to check up on me at home.

My kids would normally be in and out of a fantastic, modern library, or at the pool, or playing soccer in the great parks. Sadly the lockdown has temporarily stopped that, but it will be back.

If I go outside I'm not avoiding the homeless in huge numbers. Rent and housing are not absurdly expensive, allowing affordability for families.

Yes Quebec has areas to improve, but it's a great place.

If being a great place for companies made for a good society then the UK and USA wouldn't be on their knees.

<comment><USER8> I totally have the opposite experience in Québec. Everywhere and anything in Québec feels red taped and low of customer service. Maybe I have to speak French. Speaking in English and being non white gets a degraded service in Québec.

<comment><USER7> "good service" is a bad sign for society. Americans have "good service" because low income workers are one insane customer away from their lives tipping over the edge.

Americans also complain about service in Europe, where workers are also not treating each customer interaction as a make or break situation.

<comment><USER8> Good service as in when I went to a restaurant, the waiter said "You have to tip me $10 when you are done eating".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The main issue with this approach is that it fails to address my biggest grip with local online shopping: delivery speed.

Amazon offers 48h delivery for most products even with COVID. On the other hand, I ordered stuff from a shop based in Montreal and it took 5 days to arrive. Even though it was physically much closer to me.

We can argue on the "necessity" of 2-day shipping, but it is still a massive differentiator.

<comment><USER10> Honestly, so far the quickest delivery I've experienced was from local businesses. Some local stores switched too what is almost pizza delivery. I ordered gear at lunchtime and got it delivered in the afternoon. But it really depends on the supplier. 48h delivery has been hit and miss too recently.

Now what the article doesn't say is that a lot of the businesses on "Le Panier Bleu" do not even have an online catalog and you need to call them. In these cases, it's pretty much the yellow pages with a different color.

<comment><USER11> Out of curiosity, what kind of shop was that local store that gave you a same day delivery and had a good inventory system?

Asking because I noticed that here (Seattle), a couple of specialized niche stores do that, and it works really well, but i feel like there might be some reason for why only those kinds of stores do that.

The one that comes to mind is Patchwerks (analog synthesizer store; disclaimer: I have zero affiliation with that store aside from being a happy customer). Their own online inventory system is a pleasure to work with, and they stock all kinds of rare items that are accurately reflected in their online system. Ordered around noon, picked up a couple hours later, it was a true pleasure to work with. What their website displays is in stock has always been in stock. Not even once the state of the inventory on their website didn't match the reality. And yet, not any other more general store I've seen could even match it, whether it is a local or a larger scale store.

For example, Guitar Center's online inventory system is a straight up joke. What the website says is in stock at my local store is not in stock 99% of the time. And it cuts the other way around too. Which renders the whole website useless, as i have to call to find out what they actually have, so they can spend 10 mins of my life on hold while they are searching for an item. Then rinse and repeat if I want to check on another item or if i want to check another Guitar Center that is a bit further away in a nearby town.

<comment><USER10> It was a cooking gear store. They do not have much on the web but the person answering the phone knows the stock amazingly well. I suspect she may have a good inventory system under her eyes.

I've been shopping for plants recently and there is a world of difference between two different nurseries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The amount of Quebec bashing on this thread (and hacker news in general) ironically highlights the reason why Quebec has been so protective and defensive of its culture; get bashed and put down enough and obviously you'll turn a little bitter towards your bullies.

<comment><USER13> And also turn into a bully themselves. Quebec isn't very nice to its First Nation minorities (who often have their own non-French languages), nor are they very nice to their native English speakers in the Eastern Townships.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Quebec corruption in almost all organized labour adds a layer of cost to all Quebeckers. Then the high taxes and enourmously overpaid civil serpents adds another. Where does the $$ come from to cover this? There are two major revenue sourcesL; One is the Canadian federal revenue sharing with Quebec, called Equalization ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equalization_payments_in_Canad...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equalization_payments_in_Canada)). All Canadians subsidize Quebec - mainly Ontario and the oil riches on Manitoba and others with oil (used to be oil rich at any case). The other main source of Quebec revenue is the rape of Labrador Water power revenues(part of Newfoundland). This was a huge win for Quebec, as it gets the power at $3 per MWh, compared to what Quebec sells it for $40-45 per MWh. Once this run out in 2041 = death of this huge cash cow for the most part, as Labrador will finish a large EHV DC line to the USA under the sea by then, one hopes. (it is planned and as you can see, can finance itself easily) So Quebec will find itself in real trouble by then.

<comment><USER15> Quebec has profited 28 billion dollars from Churchill falls between 1971 and 2016. They built the dam for 1 billion dollars, taking on all the risk.

Quebec has great talent in electrical engineering and building hydro electric power plants. Quebec companies bring their expertise and develop hydro power plants across Canada and around the world for customers who don't know how to do it themselves, sometimes in exchange for part ownership of the project.

The power transmission had to go through quebec, any other option was uneconomic as they are now finding out with the muskrat falls.

$45/MWH for renewable dispatchable power is cheap. $3/MWH is pratically free but Quebec also has financing costs for the project on top of that to pay. Plus the risk.

I don't think Newfoundland got taken advantage of here, this is a deal that works out well for both sides. Nobody makes a deal they don't like - if they had a better option they would have done that.

<comment><USER14> if they liked it, they will sign a new and similar one. I think not, UHV DC after 2041

<comment><USER15> It is not the same situation in 2041 as it was in 1969, so of course they will not sign the same deal. They liked it at the time because it was their best option. Now: 1\. the plant is built and paid for! there are no constructions costs and no construction risk. 2\. energy is more expensive now, particularly renewable dispatchable generation

They clearly have a different hand to play now than they did in 1969.

Quebec owns 33% of the plant so they will be happy if NFL sells the power to the states at higher than the marginal cost of generation in QC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Setting aside the Quebec bashing comments in this thread. Here is a TLDR of what I said when it came out:

1\. There is less information on that website than Google Maps, it is pretty much useless right now. I am convinced the investigators of the project are sincere, but they are disconnected from reality (Alexandre Taillefer is a failure as a business man, but he has friends in high places)

2\. They spend 300k$ on this project which is made by an non-profit. This is nowhere near enough to pretend you want to compete with Amazon. This is due to incompetence of bureaucrats in the government who have no clue how to build a software project.

3\. What they could have done is a partnership with Shopify since they already built all the functionalities (search, payment, shipping, etc.) and create a real platform that looks and feel like 2020 not 1995.... But its the Not Invented Here syndrome that stroke again.

4\. What people want is speed of delivery and low cost of shipping. I am simplify not waiting a week for my package to arrive via a shitty service like UPS where I need to be home to receive it. I am also proposing the government subsidies the shipping cost for small retailers to make it more appealing to buy from them.

5\. Another idea I had would be to create a competing product to Amazon prime which would combine a subscription to tou.tv, free shipping on this Amazon- like website and an audio streaming service for Quebec music, I am 100% sure it would be a hit.

In summary, we have to stop the "magical" thinking that if we create a broken website in bootstrap that feels like its 1995 all over again we are going to save local businesses and make people shop in local stores. We have to build something that is modern and appeal to customers. But considering the people they have on board, I doubt it will ever happen...

</comment><comment><USER17> I'd love to see an Amazon lookalike with solely local results. I.e., local stores list their inventories, accept payment, and do delivery. Does anything like _that_ exist?

Marketing and integration would be hurdles: You'd have to convince businesses to integrate, and you'd have to become a household name to consumers. You'd have to write integrations for the menagerie of systems small businesses use, or else become key enough for them to switch.

Local makers could use it, too. I'd expect that'd become more important as things like 3D printing and working from home continue to grow.

<comment><USER18> Lightspeed (POS) is well positioned to offer this. They have all inventories, prices, skus, supplier prices (cost) and the scale to logistically implement this via the store management software they already have all merchants running.

You could order via their single portal, have it fulfilled from the nearest store, and then dispatch delivery and track it all in one place. Would be a one-click enable for most merchants. Many of them are not large enough to run a full online store, and there isn't enough consumer trust to buy from every mom and pop website our there (nor should there be).

Seems like a nice migration path for brick and mortar - like Uber eats but less predatory.

<comment><USER8> Marketing speak. Do you work there ?

<comment><USER18> No but they're one of the biggest I know in this space and I know a few people that have worked there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't understand that kind of thing: the government is presumably elected by the people. Why would the people want the government to fight a business that they could voluntarily avoid, without any government intervention whatsoever?

I mean the government represents what the people want. The people apparently want to buy at local businesses, rather than at Amazon. Why don't they simply do it?

Or if they actually DO want to shop at Amazon, why would they want the government to prevent them from doing it?

<comment><USER20> > Why would the people want the government to fight a business that they could > voluntarily avoid, without any government intervention whatsoever?

In my case, I am willing to pay more to the local shop if everybody is doing it. If Im the only one, the benefit is lost but I personally pay the cost.

You can see it as a community agreement. When I travel with friends we agree to pay each one a lunch, it is way faster than to pay individually. But, I agree to do it because all of us agree. If Im the only one, the it is problematic.

<comment><USER21> _You can see it as a community agreement. When I travel with friends we agree to pay each one a lunch, it is way faster than to pay individually. But, I agree to do it because all of us agree. If Im the only one, the it is problematic._

Except that you and your friends agreed to do this voluntarily. I want to shop at Amazon and I don't want to pay for a government alternative that's a sop to obstreperous and uncompetitive local retailers. I'm buying your lunch twice.

<comment><USER20> > I want to shop at Amazon and I don't want to pay for a government > alternative

And I want abortion to not be restricted, and that other person wants to discriminate by age, and that other one wants to throw the trash to the street or I want let my factory dump dangerous chemicals into a river.

Democracy is NOT perfect. But, it is a great solution. Even if sometimes you need to follow a law that you do not fully agree with. And, if it does not work you are free to express your side of the story, go to the justice system if the laws are unconstitutional, and also vote differently next time. That's a very good system.

<comment><USER21> No - democracy and social responsibility aren't perfect and I'm fine with that. But don't dress up coercion and force as "community agreement" and compare it to a bunch of friends who've agreed to voluntarily pay for each other's lunches.

I haven't agreed to anything and you're forcing me to pay for this. You've got my money. But you don't get to delude yourself that you have my willing cooperation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I do 90% of my shopping online usually. Right now, amazon (and Union coffee) are the only working online retailers in the UK as far as I can tell. Every other online store is shut except for takeaways.

Thank god for Amazon. If I relied to local stores I'd be sat here with no electricity in half the house.

</comment><comment><USER23> One thing I did wish Amazon did was to have more localized options. Be able to restrict search to products or sellers from a particular area would be nice. Same for comments and reviews.

<comment><USER24> Amazon comments and reviews are country-specific, so living in a small country would probably have much of the effect you're looking for.

Tangentially, app store reviews are also country specific. Annoying when I'm looking for a relatively niche app that may have 50 reviews with a handful containing good information in the US app store, but the Canadian app store has 3 reviews, none of which are useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's a bit ironic, the first picture in the article describe a "street of small businesses", but while it's technically correct, the shop in center is no anonymous mom and dad shop, Schwartz is a famous landmark in Montréal [1].

Maybe that's a good way to fight against Amazon? Having a reputable business with a steady quality over time.

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwartz%27s](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwartz%27s)

</comment><comment><USER26> I'd trust an institution that's gone through a federal investigation or two way more than an equivalent institution run by Billy Bob who lives in town and is on nobody's radar because his operation is too small to affect things at scale.

</comment><comment><USER8> I would never buy anything from this sort of site especially if done by the Québec government. They should try to fix their Senior Home Covid-19 situation due to lack of healthcare workers because of their absurd healthcare system rules unlike rest of Canada. The premier of Quebec CAQ govt. is populist and wants to throw some raw meat to his voter base. The next one will be immigrant bashing.

<comment><USER27> These two issues are orthogonal. But thank you for taking the time to do your usual Québec bashing which you always seem to love doing when you get the chance.

<comment><USER8> I am a part of a group (immigrant) which Québec CAQ politicians likes to bash/scapegoat when they get the chance. So let me bash them here when I get the chance. Thank you for noticing and sorry if you got butt hurt being a Quebecois.

Québec must learn to walk before they run. Have you seen their Panier Bleu site ? I might as well use yellow pages instead of that.

<comment><USER27> Yes of course being of the HN crowd I'm not impressed by the website. You know, all quebeckers share the passion of complaining about our government ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It's good to see that finally people are doing something about the utter dominance that Amazon has managed to achieve.

While I do get the benefits of online delivery to customers (especially in the current pandemic situation or for people too old or impaired to walk/drive), the situation is much more dire for their communities across the world:

1) Many towns rely on some sort of commercial tax on local companies to fund their operations. Amazon however only pays taxes where they employ people (i.e. some random small-ish villages near highways), but not where they sell stuff - this means that as more sales shift from physical retail to online, the funding of the town goes down.

2) With delivery of food taking over, small stores that enable local people to buy e.g. groceries without needing a car get unprofitable which means they go six feet under and people are forced to drive to the next town having a Walmart or other kind of large supermarket.

3) The more stores close, the less attractive the mall or the area becomes. "Storefront blight" makes an area less attractive to potential and existing residents, invites vandals (smashed glasses, graffiti, ...) which in the worst case creates a negative self-reinforcing spiral to the bottom. Additionally, the jobs that are lost there may (!) be replaced on a national level by additional hirings in Amazon warehouses or delivery companies, but again, as delivery centers tend to be centralized, this creates another loss for the communities. Depending on the country, this job loss may hit communities further when the community is responsible for unemployment or other social benefits (e.g. housing) and not the state/federal government.

4) The tax loss also hits the countries: Amazon (and other mega corporations such as IKEA) can and do exploit complex tax loopholes to avoid as much corporate tax as they can.

<comment><USER29> Now compare the cost of what you mentioned in monetary terms to the cost savings for consumers (which is essentially everyone) - which is larger?

<comment><USER30> Would you prefer local business employed and pay more for everything, or pay less for everything and have unemployed unhappy people around?

<comment><USER31> The former. That's why I still hire our local horse-drawn-buggy service. Car purchasers have destroyed their industry and eliminated jobs.

<comment><USER30> I hope you at least purchase Chinese garlic, to not overload local dudes too much.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Is the Second Farm Crisis Upon Us? - <AUTHOR> https://civileats.com/2018/09/10/is-the-second-farm-crisis-upon-us/ <comment><USER2> "We're heading to a place where we don't have farmers; we just have food production."

This.

I don't know what the solution to this is. I have a small farm, and raise meat sheep. But it's very much a hobby. The problem is, though, that almost all of the other farmers in my area, the ones I meet at the feed store or the livestock auction, they're also hobby farmers. There is exactly one "real" farmer (meaning that it's his full time job) in my area. He raises specialty row crops and runs an agricultural co-op, the kind where you pay a certain amount a month and get a box of fresh vegetables every week. But hobby farmers can't feed the country. We can't even feed ourselves, if it comes to that.

The problem is that these vegetables, which don't have to be shipped any distance and don't have the overhead of a grocery store, are still more expensive than the equivalent groceries in the local Safeway. The economies of scale in agriculture have become so strong that there's no way to compete on price any other way. And people understandably don't want to double their grocery bills just to buy local.

I grew up on a 300 acre cattle farm. Fifty years ago a family could make a living on a 300 acre, well situated east coast farm. Not any more. You'd have trouble just paying for gas, groceries, and medical care. Forget paying down a mortgage or god forbid buying new farm equipment. The only way to even stay on the farm, is to either walk into a situation where everything - land, house, barn, equipment, everything - is already paid for. Or to get a full time job in town and farm on the weekends. That's what my dad did. And it's what my sister and brother-in-law do now.

We have a situation where we've harnessed economies of scale so much that we have only a small handful of corporations producing our food. They mainly want to grow exactly the same small number of crops, to keep supply chains simple. We've wrung all of the redundancy, both financial and biodiversity, out of the system.

So what happens if someone figures out how to weaponize that against us? What happens if Chinese investors own half the farm land and we go to war with China? Or what happens if we encounter this generation's version of potato blight on corn or wheat? This is not just a human tragedy. It's a huge national security issue, and it looks like nobody is paying attention.

<comment><USER3> What do you make of stories like this[1] talking about grossing six figures on a quarter acre? I know it's gross, but it still paints a much rosier picture than your claim that even 300 acres can't be farmed to a halfway decent lifestyle.

There are plenty of very positive stories about significant profits on less than five acres, even less than one acre. I'd like to hear your take on it.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbHwAfHQA9M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbHwAfHQA9M)

<comment><USER2> I've heard about these $100,000 on a quarter acre claims, but I just can't see how they could possibly be true. Even pot farmers don't make that much, do they?

The guy across the road from me, the "real" farmer, has 90 acres. He seems to do ok. He runs old tractors, and he lives in a simple one story brick house, so he isn't living large. His land was placed in the local agricultural preservation program, which means it can't legally be developed, and hence cost him a lot less than what would otherwise have been the going price in this area.

He makes money by raising hyper-local, organic specialty row crops on a subscription basis to extremely wealthy households in the Washington DC suburbs. That's a sustainable business plan, but only for a very small number of farmers. It's only possible because he was able to buy a farm at an extreme discount in a rapidly gentrifying area that is now one of the wealthiest counties in America and is getting wealthier by the year. If he was in Iowa that whole business plan falls apart.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I see the multi-generational family farm being doomed as anything more than a niche boutique to make premium-priced organic produce in the next few decades.

The reason for this is automation, though it isn't really touched on by this article. At some point in the near future robots will not only be able to construct greenhouses for growing crops with hydroponics but they'll also be able to do most of the work too.

Look at these examples of hydroponic (vs soil) yields [1]. Hydroponic yields are in typically in the order of 3-10+ tims that of soil. In greenhouses you can control temperature, grow year-round and not have your crop wiped out by inclement weather (barring hurricanes/tornadoes, which may destroy your greenhouses but this is less of an issue than a frost or snowstorm destroying your crop).

When human labour is only minimally required to construct a greenhouse or man it you'll see (IMHO) the biggest change to human food production since the advent of agriculture.

It's also why I'm not particularly worried about the ability of the planet to feed itself. If food were produced this way, Earth could easily support a population of 50-100 billion.

The article mentions that two bad years can lose the farm. The only way to counter such risks is scale. That's why mega-farms are becoming and will become the norm.

Of course along the way I fully expect massive increases in government subsidies because of the political power of farmers (in the US and EU) but you just can't turn back time.

[1] [http://uponics.com/hydroponics-yield/](http://uponics.com/hydroponics- yield/)

<comment><USER5> For hydroponics, I've heard of lettuce being commercially grown, but nothing else - it's more expensive than just farming a large section of land.

And for automation, yes it is a threat, but often times more expensive than just paying cheap labor, which it seems the world won't be running out of in the short term

<comment><USER6> > _it 's more expensive than just farming a large section of land._

Does that take into account all the externalities that are currently still ignored in standard farming? I mean, one could argue that they'll continue to get ignored indefinitely sure, but I wonder if we're starting to reach a tipping point there again and while cletus didn't mention it I think that's one of the most compelling arguments towards hydroponics. Pure physical barriers could mean the elimination of pesticide and herbicide requirements for example, and both of those hide and enormous amount of expense upstream and downstream. Nutrients (fertilizer) can be applied vastly more effectively and efficiently, and possibly at least as importantly excess can be recovered or processed before any emission which can entirely eliminate runoff issues and entry into the environment.

Even thinking politically, the general public often enjoys the views and imagine romanticism of farming, but the general public can also quite easily notice and hate algal blooms, outbreaks shutting down beaches, nutrient baths causing explosions of invasives like zebra mussels, etc., and just general reductions in recreational water quality even beyond any other effects. Those also represent big, powerful industries as well. And there is the land itself, hydroponics means arable land is unnecessary for basic food production, and there are other compelling uses for said land.

Also land-wise and politically, one argument that frequently gets brought up is "food security" and governments reasonably worried about having enough basic food available in an emergency. But at least for rich countries, if anything LED hydroponics could offer a _better_ story there (at a price), since the facilities can even be put underground/underwater or in other non- arable, dense and defensible positions. They can be protected from new forms of diseases and pests far more effectively. Small developed countries that currently must import might be able to achieve that politically attractive (whatever the practical merits) "food independence" that is current infeasible for them.

I mean, I don't think there will be any super rapid changes here, and I do think many places will continue to have some agriculture as a boutique offering, but hydroponics long term looks pretty compelling in a lot of major ways.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I worked with farmers for over twenty years. It is a relentless game of ever increasing efficiency. But what I observed were marked differences in ability to market the crops they grew.

One guy I was good friends with would always sell enough of his crop ahead to pay all his bills if the price was above his cost of production. Sometimes he'd sell two or three years ahead when prices were good. He said in a ten year period he had lots of neighbors who made more money than he did some years only to lose it during the bad years. He said that gambling with borrowed money didn't make any sense, only with your profits.

Knew two guys who let their wives do all the farms marketing. They went to school for it and would network online with other farm marketers. They felt that they were too emotional about it and that it helped their wives feel like true partners.

</comment><comment><USER8> The article only mentions land value once, and in my opinion this is a huge oversight. There's articles going back to 2010[0] that speculate that a land bubble had been going for a few years, and when that's coupled with quantitative easing it means that people had to borrow increasing amounts of money to buy an equivalent amount of land. Combine that with decreasing crop prices and additional debt load that was taken on as a result of buying/fixing equipment, and you have a perfect storm.

[0] [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1350485080229797...](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13504850802297970?journalCode=rael20)

<comment><USER9> A lot of these farmers presumably owned their land prior to QE? Maybe it's the ones who bought land after who are going to the wall.

In the UK, economists say QE has been a success to the point where some say we have learned how to print money without creating Weimar-style inflation. However it looks like the inflation has simply transferred to assets, particularly property including farmland. And we don't yet know what the impact is. Again in the UK, we might say in the future, increasing property prices resulted in a reduced birth rate, and an increased need for inward migration to plug the gap. Just speculation, but we don't yet know how this experiment plays out - and with your interesting insight, we might ask whether the end of mid-scale farming was the impact. Given the importance of this group, for many reasons, on American culture and identity, what will be the victim of QE?

<comment><USER10> In the US, the subprime mortgage lending crisis was caused by good borrowers over leveraging the cheap mortgage rates they could get and buying extra homes to flip. When the money dried up and there was no one to flip to, they went under en mass. If farmers have been over leveraging on farm land, then something similar to a crash makes sense especially if yields are down or prices fall because of surplus.

<comment><USER11> Farm land borrowing is through completely different organizations from home loans. Farm Credit Association, for instance. And the backer is FmHA, the farmer lending equivalent of FNMA.

Farm lending is not nearly so highly leveraged as home lending. FmHA equity requirements are much larger than on home loans.

Farm land prices are driven by commodity prices. When corn and soybeans were high, Iowa cash rents went up, and land prices followed. Commodity prices have come down, cash rents have come down, and land prices are following.

There is _some_ speculation on price appreciation -- just about any Iowa farmer will tell you about "the piece of ground he wish he had bought", but didn't have the stomach to bid higher on at the auction. Most farmers are buying land with the idea that it is a multi-generational investment, and when good ground near/adjacent to your current farm comes up, you tend to dig deeper into your pocket and hope your children will see the value appreciation -- because that piece may not come on the market again in your lifetime. So there is a certain psychological component priced in to the bid, but mostly it has to pencil out.

If you think land prices are completely unhinged, then here is an anecdote: I own some ground in Winnebago county Iowa. When land in Winnebago county was selling for $11K/Ac there was land 5 miles north on the Minnesota side of the state line selling for about $10K/Ac. Same soil type. Same weather. Same local market elevators to sell crops to. Same local market seed/chemical coops to buy your input. Why the difference in price? Minnesota real estate taxes are higher (I won't go into the politics of that.) The taxes are a per-acre annual production cost, and get priced into the land value.

Commodity prices are coming down, that is causing the income squeeze. Leveraged farmers are going to feel a squeeze, certainly. But the amount of leverage is nothing like what was happening to home owners during the housing crisis. Farm land owners simply can not borrow at those kind of loan-to-value ratios.

(Source: Owner and/or partner in several pieces of farm land in Iowa and Minnesota, some inherited, some purchased.)

Oh.. about corn prices... back when there were enough ethynol plant building permits on file to eventually make Iowa a net _importer_ of corn... yeah, that was a corn price bubble. Those days are gone. (Let's not diverge into the silliness of ethynol, we all know it defies physics.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The article illustrates the crisis, producing an example of how farmers fail to make ends meet:

>A gallon of milk costs a farmer approximately $1.90 to produce, but in the last year, farmers have been receiving as little as $1.35 per gallon.

But they don't explain the underlying economic forces. The only possible reason (I think) that a farmer can't charge more than $1.35 for a gallon of milk is that _some other farmer_ is able to produce a gallon of milk for less than $1.35.

So, clearly, some farmers are quite successful, and their success (or maybe just their efficiency) is part of the reason that other farmers are having a hard time? But the article doesn't talk about that much.

Slightly off topic: I pay my local supermarket $3 for a gallon of milk and now I'm curious about the breakdown of what that markup is spent on.

<comment><USER5> > the only possible reason that a farmer can't charge more than $1.35 for a > gallon of milk is that some other farmer is able to produce a gallon of milk > for less than $1.35

Not necessarily - if you have demand for 300 units of milk and there are enough producers to match, then when demand halves, the producers are still producing 300 units of milk and paying for the costs to produce that amount of milk. To offset those costs as much as possible, they'll willingly momentarily sell under marginal cost - the production costs have already been spent anyways

<comment><USER13> Oh boy. If you and GP think there's a purely unregulated Laissez-faire market for dairy products in the U.S., you've got some fun reading to catchup on.

A sibling comment lower down the page provides some links: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17996881](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17996881)

<comment><USER7> What can change things dramatically at least in the upper Midwest is if the US is able to convince Canada to eliminate or greatly lower the tariff on milk and cheese.

In our area of Michigan a huge new cheese plant is going in and the only justification I can see for that large an investment is they already know the dairy tariff is ending.

[https://www.lansingstatejournal.com/story/news/2018/08/09/55...](https://www.lansingstatejournal.com/story/news/2018/08/09/555-m-milk- processing-factory-coming-st-johns-glanbia/850914002/)

St. Johns is a small farm town North of Lansing which is Michigan's state capital.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I read and read quickly, so perhaps I missed it. But all the examples seem to be farmers of commodities.

If you're producing something that's consistently being over-produced, what do they expect to happen?

Don't get me wrong. Obviously, the food supply is important. It's also difficult (i.e., weather). None the less, running full force into producing a commodity can't be the best option they have. Is it?

<comment><USER15> As a grain farmer in Canada, I see this year as being one of the better years for commodity prices.

Wheat was back to levels we haven't seen in a long time. Corn has held a little above average. Soybeans have taken a big hit in the last couple of months, but there were some good marketing opportunities earlier in the year. Unless harvest is a complete failure, there doesn't seem to be much to worry about. A welcome change from the last few years when the price was lower.

Not being in the US, I don't necessarily see the effects of the trade war like the US farmer is seeing, so I am unable to comment about that. But as far as the regular market price goes, which the article also raised concern about, I really don't see the issue. The grain farmers should be positioned fairly well right now.

<comment><USER14> Yes. But if you're going to do whatever one else is doing, that's not a plan to prosper. It's suicidal.

For example, I didn't see a single mention of "...so we're going to go organic..."

Again. Don't get me wrong. Food supply is important. One article does not a trend make. That said, sharing a bad idea with 100 or 1000 other people (farmers) still makes it a bad idea.

I realize change isn't something most farmers seek, none the less, they are not immune to the definition of insanity.

<comment><USER16> So you're saying, "Grow something unusual."? Something like... water chestnuts? Or mint?

Convert your wheat crop to mint?

Commodities are commodities because there is such a huge demand for them. Niche products are not some super easy to get rich with scheme.

If you want to succeed in the mint market, you'd better do you homework, execute perfectly, and get lucky. Just like in the commodities market.

<comment><USER14> > "Commodities are commodities because there is such a huge demand for them."

True. However, that doesn't mean, per the article, they are profitable. And if they are unprofitable, doesn't that mean supply is greater than demand?

Growing an unprofitable commodity and then saying "I'm not making money" doesn't make sense. Even if there oversight (e.g., Uncle Sam) and you trust that oversight (which we know is inconsistent) I would think it makes sense, if you want to be legitimately profitable, you'd try to mitigate the risks.

Farmers are being paid to grow food that gets destroyed. The masses are eating so much cheap food they're becoming ill more often and/or dying younger. The status quo doesn't feel sustainable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > He can offer help to many farmers, but what was once a robust network of > state-funded farmer advocates has shrunk dramatically

Do we have a robust network of state-funded plumber advocates or cashier advocates? If farming is unprofitable for many, then the expected market response is people exiting the market, which itself will make it more profitable for those who remain.

Farming is largely a commodity game. That we need fewer farmers over time due to technological advances is entirely expected and even good! A society where a large percentage of people still had to be farmers to have enough food to eat would be a poorer one.

</comment><comment><USER18> "A gallon of milk costs a farmer approximately $1.90 to produce, but in the last year, farmers have been receiving as little as $1.35 per gallon."

If it cost more to make it than they are getting, why are milk prices not higher?

<comment><USER10> A gallon in the stores costs $4-5

<comment><USER19> Even in San Francisco a gallon of milk at Trader Joe's is under $3/gallon.

<comment><USER20> There's some interesting mechanics in the milk subsidies. The original subsidy was based on the distance from Eau Claire, Wisconsin ( [http://icetronauts.tripod.com/milk.htm](http://icetronauts.tripod.com/milk.htm) ).

> Under the system established in the 1930s, the farther a state was from Eau > Claire, the higher were the federal price subsidies paid to its dairy > farmers on milk sold for bottling.

> For example, the maximum subsidy, or differential, paid to Wisconsin dairy > farmers is $1.20 per 100 pounds of milk, while farmers in southern Florida > are paid $4.18 per 100 pounds.

California is even further away.

The particulars of it are at [https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/GAOREPORTS- RCED-95-97BR/html/G...](https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/GAOREPORTS- RCED-95-97BR/html/GAOREPORTS-RCED-95-97BR.htm)

It is _still_ based in part on Eau Claire. [https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2013/06/08/what-does- bo...](https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2013/06/08/what-does-boston-have- with-milk-prices-wisconsin-turns-out-lot/AUfXl8MXtCffhdw3PD79bJ/story.html)

Between water policy, oversupply during the Eau Claire Base Point and existing subsidies... California is a very odd place to produce milk and the cheap milk is a legacy of those policies.

And the last spring and hot summer in Eau Claire ( [http://www.aos.wisc.edu/%7Esco/clim- history/stations/eau/eau...](http://www.aos.wisc.edu/%7Esco/clim- history/stations/eau/eau-gddu-2018.gif) & [https://madison.com/wsj/business/usda-wisconsin-milk- product...](https://madison.com/wsj/business/usda-wisconsin-milk-production- slows/article_51ca73f4-b466-5f2d-ab1b-8b08874643c0.html) ) will impact the price of milk there, along with the tariff spat with Canada... which in turn changes the amount of the subsidy across the country.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This process of farm consolidation is inevitable. Agriculture benefits from economies of scale, even 2000 years ago the Roman latifundia fed an empire efficiently.

<comment><USER22> Did they? What's up with all the famine then? The empire relied on an obscene amount of grain shipments from North Africa and Egypt (plus sicily to begin with).

Roman food distribution was anything but efficient or fair

<comment><USER23> There is an argument that all famine is political, and has been for several centuries. It seems crazy on the surface, but it's hard to find counterexamples.

<comment><USER19> All of the worst famines are political, because the combination of political and natural factors push the death tolls beyond what nature itself is capable of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Other than smaller farms suffering, what would be the dangers of farm consolidation? I was looking for a section in the article that talks about it, but couldn't really find any.

<comment><USER10> In the last US census less than 1% reported were farmers. Huge change in demographics in 100 years. A lot of that has been made possible by large agribusinesses. The small guys day's have over for a while.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Are farmers not able to use financial instruments to hedge their costs? Simply borrowing money with no hedge seems VERY scary to me. I guess that's just the game?

<comment><USER26> I'm not aware of these instruments. What are some examples of hedges to farm borrowing so I can look them up?

<comment> village-idiot Most farmers and their direct consumers will buy/sell a portion of their harvest in advance in the form of commodity grain futures. This protects the farmer from dropping prices and their consumer from rising prices. It's one of the reasons why prices don't shift around a ton from winter to summer anymore.

You can also hedge risk against changes in production cost by using instruments that track the difference between raw grains and their immediate products (e.g. Soybean Crush). But that's not really a game the farmer might play.

These systems have their limits, and are really there to protect all parties against sudden shifts caused by external events like drought and international trade. When the trend is long and smooth in one direction there's very little the farmer can do to fix their situation via purely financial means. No baker is going to pre-purchase their wheat at old prices when the market price has been slowly declining for a decade.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Large scale agriculture will add up, until someday it doesn't. This fable told by Jeremy Grantham explains it quite well.

<i>My favourite story is about the contract between the farmer and the devil. The devil says, "sign this contract and I'll triple your farm's profits". But there are 25 footnotes, as there always is with the devil. Footnote 22 says that 1% of your soil will be eroded each year, which is actually horrifyingly close to the real average over the past 50 years. The farmer signs and makes a fortune on a 40-year contract. And his son then signs up for the next 40-year contract and makes a fortune. And his son then signs up for the third and final contract. He still does very well, and in the final 20 years the family has accumulated enormous wealth, but the soil has gone. It's the same story for all his neighbouring farms and everyone is out of business. My sick joke is that at least he will die a rich farmer when all the starving hordes arrive from the city.</i>

[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/apr/16/jer...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/apr/16/jeremy- grantham-food-oil-capitalism)

</comment><comment><USER28> Not quite; the greatest crisis humanity has ever faced is upon us. Trickles down into farming, and everything else. We are just getting started.

<comment><USER29> This sort non-evidence-based apocalypse talking, fear mongering isn't my favorite part of HN. I wish you could base your claims to some links, or books.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> these aren't "farmers" these are big agricultural 4000 acres mega-farms. they took out huge loans and make ridiculous purchases ($400k tractors) and relied on pie in the sky subsidizes, some are to actually not to farm. if you have an oxygen machine and your power company threatens to turn it off, you can get a doctor's note to prevent this. They specifically go through this with you during collection and refer you to the program, which is a federal grant and state program. I helped my neighbor do this who is on an oxygen machine. She even got solar installed "just in case the rid went down"</comment>


Survival of the Wrongest - <AUTHOR> http://www.cjr.org/cover_story/survival_of_the_wrongest.php?page=all&print=true

<comment><USER2> I can't speak for the rest of the article, but this guy's take on low carb diets is a bit...odd:

>Unfortunately, it's an approach [Low carb diets] that leaves the vast majority of frontline obesity experts gritting their teeth, because while the strategy sometimes appears to hold up in studies, in the real world such dieters are rarely able to keep the weight off—to say nothing of the potential health risks of eating too much fat.

So he's saying that studies do support low carb diets having high efficacy rates (for weight loss), but "in the real world" this doesn't pan out. What is this unbiased, statistically significant source of data on "the real world" that he's relying on? He's ruled out studies, and it's obviously not anecdotes because that would be even worse. That basically just leaves intuition. He then goes on to cite the risks of a high protein diet (while linking it as high fat only) by linking to a WebMD article which appears to be written by an unnamed author who has poorly collated the research on the issue and left out major advances of our understanding of issues like cholesterol levels.

<comment><USER3> I think he means that they work under controlled conditions, but it's hard to replicate them in the real world environment. Can't go to most restaurants, can't make a lot of dishes, can't do social gatherings, definitely need to cook yourself everything you eat, and so on.

<comment><USER2> That applies to any diet though, if the advice is good, but people don't follow it, it's not the fault of the diet. The point is he is singling out low carb diets as if it's the diet itself that is at fault, not just the common problem of people not following through on a diet regimen.

<comment><USER4> It doesn't apply to any diet. For example, a simple caloric restriction diet might simply require that you leave half of everything you're served on your plate and never have seconds. This would allow you to eat anything in any social context, just not as much. A low carb diet would require you to forego the cake and ice cream entirely at your own child's birthday, etc.

<comment><USER5> Having a bite of cake is still low carb.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's all well and noble to say "health journalism is flawed, everything is breathlessly reported as a breakthrough", but when you put Tara Parker-Pope and Gary Taubes in the same category, you're committing more of the same mistakes. There's nothing noble at all in shooting down _all_ of health journalism.

He goes on to say:

"Worse still, health journalists are taking advantage of the wrongness problem. Presented with a range of conflicting findings for almost any interesting question, reporters are free to pick those that back up their preferred thesis."

It appears that this author's preferred thesis is that when presented with conflicting evidence, one should throw one's hands up in despair and do whatever you want ("apply common sense liberally"), instead of some kind of analysis of the evidence to find which side of the conflict is more reliable.

</comment><comment><USER7> The previous submission of the canonical URL

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5019442>

received no discussion, but I think that's too bad, and I would love to see discussion of this interesting article begin here.

</comment><comment><USER8> The problem with personal health news is that is is never news. A single study that contradicts conventional wisdom or purports a new finding is not meant to be digested by the general public.

Ideally such a study would be published in a medical journal, and other researchers would then perform studies to corroborate or disprove the original; After a sufficient amount of evidence is gather a systematic review would be published, and the results of that would be distributed to doctors and health advice reporters, who would present the information to the general public in a clear, unified and easy-to-understand manner.

In a perfect world.

The reporting of every study only leads the general public to believe that nothing is certain (because dissenting views are published) and not take any of the advice seriously. It is almost as bad as politics.

<comment><USER9> _Ideally such a study would be published in a medical journal, and other researchers would then perform studies to corroborate or disprove the original; After a sufficient amount of evidence is gather a systematic review would be published, and the results of that would be distributed to doctors and health advice reporters, who would present the information to the general public in a clear, unified and easy-to-understand manner._

Ideally everyone would be rational, and honest, and have aligned interests, and trust eachother enough to all outsource their critical thinking to experts. Except... that sounds quite boring and I rather like being a somewhat-independent individual instead of a single-purpose cell in a larger collective organism/society.

 _The reporting of every study only leads the general public to believe that nothing is certain (because dissenting views are published) and not take any of the advice seriously._

Since things are in fact not certain, I would think this is a good thing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think this is an important article for the HN crowd. Educated STEM people usually have a strong devotion to science, but science very often fails at revealing the truth (dangerously, in a misleading manner). The article points out the problem isn't malice or incompetence, it's bad expectations.

To me, a critical analysis of research is often more valuable than the research itself.

<comment><USER11> > To me, a critical analysis of research is often more valuable than the > research itself.

Critical analysis of research _is_ science. I'm perpetually frustrated with articles like this that seem to portray science as a failure by citing faulty studies, ignoring the fact that everything is working as it should.

<comment><USER11> It bothers me to no end when people discuss "science" as if it were just one of many options available. Science is the pursuit of truth and the pursuit of truth is science. There are no alternatives.

<comment><USER12> Science is a means of pursuing the truth. People who read tea leaves also believe they're pursuing the truth, but nobody would say that's science.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Ben Goldacre's recent book "Bad Pharma" is all about how easy it is for pharmaceutical research to go astray (and/or be led astray). I would recommend it for anyone interested in the details of this thorny subject.

</comment><comment><USER14> If a p-value of .05 means a study's results are significant, then 20% of studies will arrive at an incorrect conclusion through chance! If counterintuitive conclusions make interesting articles, but negative results are somewhat boring even to professional scientists, is it any real surprise that the end result is a steady stream of dubious advice?

This argument was shamelessly paraphrased from XKCD [1].

[1] <http://xkcd.com/882/></comment>


10 Technology Predictions From The Startup Whisperer - <AUTHOR> http://www.startupwhisperer.com/2008/12/10-technology-predictions-from-the-startup-whisperer.html

<comment><USER2> What does the author mean by, "People are only an hour away from registering online for a new business."?

</comment><comment><USER3> Already posted from different source at <http://news.ycombinator.com/x?fnid=AgrVIF203F>

Still not interesting.</comment>


Why the Rich Love Burning Man - <AUTHOR> https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/08/burning-man-one-percent-silicon-valley-tech <comment><USER2>
        CLOUDATLAS 32 minutes ago [dead] [-]

        great

@dang Are you able to shed light on why this account is hell-banned? I don't see anything that looks that bad in the public activity.

<comment><USER3> Better to email firstname.lastname@example.com

Otherwise the whole discussion thread will turn to be about hell-banning and not the article.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the advice mtmail! Much appreciated.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Avoid copyright infringement – make your own beats for your videos - <AUTHOR> https://strikefreemusic.com/?ref=hn <comment><USER2> This is a super cool idea. But the beats are kind of glitchy and bad? Maybe it's a genre that I'm not familiar with...

<comment><USER3> There's a bug for sure that queues up multiple sources.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like your idea. At first, I did not see there was an editor on the bottom of the page. It would be clearer with a scroll indicator.</comment>


Don't Make Me Code, a New Podcast about Developer Experience (DX) Design - <AUTHOR> http://blog.heavybit.com/blog/dont-make-me-code-1 <comment><USER2> _Don 't Make Me Code_

There's a lot packed into that saying.</comment>


The Communal Mind - <AUTHOR> https://www.lrb.co.uk/v41/n04/patricia-lockwood/the-communal-mind <comment><USER2> Patricia Lockwood is a national treasure. Check out Rape Joke as one powerful example. But it's strange to see her on hn

Headline really needs punctuation.

<comment><USER3> Indeed. Just read this, Rape Joke, Lost in Trumplandia, and just reserved at the library her memoir Priestdaddy (her father is a married Catholic priest), and her poetry collecion Motherland, fatherland, homelandsexuals. Powerful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've not really been a fan of sci-fi or fantasy, but this was an amazing reading. It straddled the line between what we see online today and that outlandish but seemingly very possible malfunctioning future.

Specially timely in light of the open.ai work shown yesterday on advanced language models [1]

[1] [https://blog.openai.com/better-language- models/#content](https://blog.openai.com/better-language-models/#content)

<comment><USER5> I wouldn't categorise this is SF; I would call it "beat" or "gonzo". Possibly Joycean, except it's not fictional enough. It's not speculative, it's observational; it really is a record of the lived experience of being Extremely Online. A travelogue of a place that's in your phone.

(I can identity most of the memes referenced, which probably means I spend too much time on Twitter myself)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> That's quite a piece of writing. Unusual to see the Twitter style fused perfectly into the LRB high literary style. Very post-Gibsonian.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for capturing it well. Do you write anywhere yourself? Prose or meta or science or whatever. Thanks. (Asking in sincerity :))

<comment><USER5> I write here, in this comment box.

That's a joke, but also entirely serious - I've not had a blog for years, but I have 40k karma here and probably 10-100 times as many words; and one day I'm going to extract the best stuff and make a Thing of it.

I absolutely do not have the discipline to produce thousand-word essays for the LRB.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It takes a special sort of brilliance to really capture a particular kind of _interiority_ in prose. To really get at what it is like to be a particular sort of person. This accomplishes that feat for the modern internet addict and hivemind member to a degree I wouldn't have expected possible.

Great piece (heh).

</comment><comment><USER8> I felt like I was reading the Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, and realized that that reality is the current reality. Reading this was a journey.</comment>


Is Sweden in trouble? - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/01/17/sweden-tells-public-prepare-war-fears-russia-rise/ <comment><USER2> Actual title: "Sweden sends leaflets to 5m homes on how to prepare for war with Russia"</comment>


Algorithms from Bishop's ML book implemented in Python - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ctgk/PRML <comment><USER2> As a small note, no one I know calls this book "PRML". I've always heard it referred to as "Bishop" (using the usual custom of referring to an textbook author's best known work by their last name).

<comment><USER3> Ok, we've put the Bishop in the title above.

Submitted title was "PRML Algorithms Implemented in Python".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The title is a bit obtuse. PRML = Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning. It is a book by Christopher M. Bishop.</comment>


Quicksilver: It Ain't Over Yet - <AUTHOR> http://www.cultofmac.com/quicksilver-it-aint-over-yet/85550 <comment><USER2> I was a Quicksilver junkie for a bit, but these days Spotlight covers the majority of what I need and works on any Mac.

Also notable - Quicksilver and Alfred still appear terrible at explaining WHY you would want to use them.</comment>


Show HN: In 48hrs - Turntable.fm for YouTube Music (Feedback?) - <AUTHOR> http://vyemusic.com/vj/

<comment><AUTHOR> Come jam with me in this turntable.fm-like place I built in a sprint over a 48 hour period. Feedback greatly appreciated and welcome.

Disclaimer: I've never used turntable.fm and I'm based in AUS but from what I've read this loosely translates--and it's a heap of fun ^^

</comment><comment><USER2> Nice! Couple of suggestions, expand the search box (can't see a lot of the names and end up selecting bunk vids) and populate the chat box with the video metadata so you can see what's been played. Good work, though.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been proactively working on this problem for years actually. This is like my 4th or 5th attempt: <https://github.com/kristopolous/ytmix></comment>


Ask HN: OS X (local) Time Tracker - <AUTHOR> i'm looking for a good time tracker app for OSX, but with the caveats that it runs locally on my machine and doesn't require creating an account. Harvest (https://www.getharvest.com/) is pretty reasonable in terms of functionality, but requires an account and an internet connection, which both seem totally unnecessary.  any ideas?<p>thanks u <comment><USER2> I keep a text file open in my text editor and set up a macro to expand `tt` to the current time, so I end up with entries like:

      02:52 AM - 03:24 AM Plan

      03:25 AM - 03:37 AM ProjectX

      04:16 AM - 05:17 AM ProjectX P

At the start of a day, I rename the file to the day's date, eg. 20170605.md and archive it. I can write scripts to figure out things like how much time I have spent on a project over the month, years, etc. Also things like how much time was productive (the trailing P).

</comment><comment><USER3> Ultimate Time Tracker is pretty good: [https://github.com/larose/utt](https://github.com/larose/utt)

I like the way you add a task _after_ you've finished working on it. It then works out how long you spent on it based on the time you finished the previous task / start of your day.

</comment><comment><USER4> Billings 3 has a time tracking feature, but I don't believe it's supported anymore and they don't sell new licences.

A million years ago I used this [https://github.com/rburgst/time-tracker- mac](https://github.com/rburgst/time-tracker-mac). But it hasn't really been updated in long time [https://code.google.com/archive/p/time-tracker- mac/downloads](https://code.google.com/archive/p/time-tracker-mac/downloads).

I haven't tried this one, but Tyme looks promising [http://tyme- app.com/mac-2/](http://tyme-app.com/mac-2/). It seems it's a standalone app and has a 15 day trial, so you can test it out for a while. It's also only $18, so it's quite affordable.

</comment><comment><USER5> Eon could be what you're looking for. Similar to the Harvest Mac menu bar app, except it also works offline (and doesn't have the history/calendar features that Harvest does). You can use it without an account, or you can integrate it with several online time tracking / invoicing services (including Harvest).

Used to be made by Fuel Collective, but it's apparently now developed by Charlie Monroe Software:

[http://software.charliemonroe.net/eon.php](http://software.charliemonroe.net/eon.php)

</comment><comment><USER6> Try ours maybe: [https://qotoqot.com/qbserve/](https://qotoqot.com/qbserve/)

It works completely offline and tracks project time automatically.

<comment><USER7> +1 for Qbserve. Works very well and produces lots of useful data for your perusal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Couldn't you just use Excel or Open Office?

<comment><AUTHOR> Do they have a time tracker feature? I'm looking for something where I click "run timer" and "stop timer" and it keeps track of everything for me, as opposed to writing down the hours manually.

<comment><USER9> This looks like it might fit the bill.[1] Just record the start and stop times.

Quick disclaimer though.. I have never used this for time tracking purposes.

[1] [http://www.pryor.com/blog/a-great-way-to-create-an-excel- mic...](http://www.pryor.com/blog/a-great-way-to-create-an-excel-micro-timer/)</comment></comment></comment>


Open letter to the Linux World - <AUTHOR> https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/8/12/459

<comment><USER3> "I had heard about systemd a few years back, when upstart and some other init replacements I can't remember were showing up on the scene. And while it seemed mildly interesting, I was not in favor of using it, nor any of them for that matter. init was working just fine for me. init was simple and robust. While configuration had it's distro-specific differences, it was often these differences that made one pick the distro to use in the first place, and to stay with that distro. The tools essentially _were_ the distro. I just dist- upgraded to Jessie, and voila - PID 1 was suddenly systemd. What a clusterfuck. In a 'One Linux' world, what would distros actually be? Deprecated. No longer relevant. Archaic shells of their once proud individualism. Basically, they're now just a logo and a default desktop background image."

Really? That's what you think the whole difference between the distros is, the fucking _init_ system?

You're using Debian, but you don't think the Social Contract and DFSG are any part of what Debian uses to set itself apart? You're just completely ignoring that, I can only presume on purpose? You don't think that portage and USE flags distinguishes Gentoo from the other distros in any way? Or that Slackware's deliberately ascetic package managment is at all important? Or that it's unique directory layout and symlink farm is what makes GoboLinux awesome? The defining characteristic of all the these distros is what _init_ system they use?

"Debian has made a grave and cowardly mistake here, and they need a course correction immediately. Incorporating systemd was not an intelligent choice, and certainly not one very well considered."

Obviously, you aren't aware of the debian-devel thread on the matter. "Not [a choice] very well considered" my arse.

"Gnome. The Linux Foundation. freedesktop.org, and others. These are all groups with agendas. These are not those who believe in freedom."

And Debian too? All of these groups don't believe in freedom? They're just one huge cabal, none of whom believe in freedom, wanting to control you for... what end, exactly? Because it's _beyond_ the realm of possibility in your mind that they might have all independently come to the same conclusion, for the simple technical that systemd _might_ actually be better than sysv-init?

Are you fucking kidding me?

For someone who started an open letter asking a question about the nature of intelligence, it certainly seems to this reader that the author is a long way from finding any answers at all in their quest...

<comment><USER4> > Really? That's what you think the whole difference between the distros is, > the fucking init system?

Systemd isn't (just) an init system. According to Poettering himself, in a recent talk[1], noted how systemd has already taken over:

"init system, journal logging, login management, device management, temporary and volatile file management, binary format registration, backlight save/restore, rfkill save/restore, bootchart, readahead, encrypted storage setup, EFI/GPT partition discovery, virtual machine/container registration, minimal container management, hostname management, locale management, time management, random seed management, sysctl variable management, and console managment."

His roadmap for the next features to annex includes:

        - DNS/DNSSEC, mDNS responder
        - IPC (kernel code! (kdbus, etc))
        - <USER2>
        - More container integration, w/ new OS image format
        - mandating layout of /usr /etc and /var
        - "Verifiable OS images"
          "All the way to the firmware"
          "Boot Loading"
          (good luck using custom kernels once
           PoetteringOS starts requiring UEFI SecureBoot)
        - (etc)

Do _you_ call that "the fucking _init_ system"? There isn't much left after that, and if past and current behavior is any judge, Poettering will probably expand that list over time.

> Or that it's unique directory layout and symlink farm

That's exactly the kind of thing that the systemd crowd is trying to prevent. See the part above where the current goal is to mandate the filesystem layout. Remember, it was Poettering himself that said that the goal of systemd was to "...get rid of many of the more pointless differences of the various distributions..."

> Obviously, you aren't aware of the debian-devel thread on the matter.

Obviously, the author has read that threat (as have I). It was quite the experience, and is one of the most revealing threads I've seen regarding the abusive, manipulative, our-way-or-nothing methods used by the systemd camp. Debian has indeed made a dangerous choice, which was further discussed in the replies to this LKML post.

> And Debian too? All of these groups don't believe in freedom? They're just > one huge cabal...

No such claim was made. Debian has put itself in a situation where the freedom currently enjoyed will not be possible in the future. Systemd is forcing incompatibilities with the traditional Linux/Unix ways - on purpose - and they already have limited manpower. Siding with systemd will require either more manpower than they have, or dropping the "old ways".

> ...the author is a long way from finding any answers...

Ahh, attacking the author. This type of tactic is pretty common from the systemd shills, as a method of shutting down the discussion. Instead of using this kind of rhetoric, I suggest actually reading up on the history of the current init situation.

Unless you actually _want_ Linux to become a windows-style monoculture, incompatible with most traditional unix software - because removing "old" features and backwards compatibility is the _stated goal_ of the larger "CoreOS"/systemd project.

[1] [http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTczNDk](http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTczNDk)</comment></comment>