Discrimination starts even before grad school, study finds - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.nature.com/news/2014/04/discrimination-starts-even-before-grad-school-study-finds.html

<comment><AUTHOR> For those interested in what the text of the email was, from the study [1]:

\-----

Subject Line: Prospective Doctoral Student (On Campus Today/[Next Monday])

Dear Professor [Surname of Professor Inserted Here],

I am writing you because I am a prospective doctoral student with considerable interest in your research. My plan is to apply to doctoral programs this coming fall, and I am eager to learn as much as I can about research opportunities in the meantime.

I will be on campus today/[next Monday], and although I know it is short notice, I was wondering if you might have 10 minutes when you would be willing to meet with me to briefly talk about your work and any possible opportunities for me to get involved in your research. Any time that would be convenient for you would be fine with me, as meeting with you is my first priority during this campus visit.

Thank you in advance for your consideration.

Sincerely, [Student's Full Name Inserted Here]

[1] [http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2063742](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2063742)

<comment><USER2> This email lacks any personalisation and looks exactly like spam to me. I am wondering if the study should have been entitled "Generic emails containing minority names are classified as spam at higher frequencies."

<comment><USER3> That problem is difficult to solve for a controlled experiment; as soon as you personalize the messages then two outreaches to two professors become incomparable to each other.

<comment><USER4> I disagree. You could write personalized letters to each of thousands of professors, as long as each contained a slot for the student's name. If you then randomly assign the different student names to the letters, you still have a perfectly valid controlled experiment. No need to compare two outreaches to each other.

Being said that, the study as it is is already very solid proof of discrimination. So what that the email looks spammy? If it looks just as spammy from each and every group, and not every group is equally rejected, that's textbook discrimination.

<comment><USER3> Those personalized letters won't be comparable unless they are so generic that they're still spam. After randomizing which name goes to which letter, you're stuck with an infinite number of dimensions of variation, where one dimension is the ethnicity of the name signed at the bottom of the letter, and the other infinity represent the "quality" of the personalized letters. You won't be able to conclude anything about the influence of the name.

<comment><USER4> I still disagree. If there are only two letters, than, sure, the relative quality of them will dwarf the influence of the name.

But if there are thousands of letters, assigned randomly, the Law of Large Numbers does its magic.

No name gets assigned significantly lower or significantly higher quality letters than the average. (something like that could happen, but the odds are small enough to be ignored).

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In the main plot in the paper they plot the absolute differences in response rates as opposed to plotting relative differences. 90% vs 80% for a given department seems drastically different from 5% vs 15%, but those would get equal value bars. I also tend to have a knee-jerk negative reaction to the phrase "reverse-discrimination" as it evokes the "you can't be sexist against men!" etc. type of ideas. This sort of feeling is enhanced by the splitting of the data set into white males and non-white/non-males for significant parts of the analysis.

It's interesting that they didn't find that percentage minorities or women on faculty had significant impact on response rates (with the exception of small results for asian-asian support). That seems to suggest that any discriminatory tendency is fairly uniform across individuals, reinforcing that policy changes to reduced discrimination must be collective effort.

Otherwise this seems like a good experiment and a good paper. The email thing just seems really clean and a realistic depicter of reality. Let's see if there are any significant changes after peer review, I suppose.

</comment><comment><USER6> > Most would acknowledge that women and minorities already face more hurdles > in academia than their white, male peers. A lack of mentors, occasionally > overt discrimination and the academy's poor work-life balance, are well- > documented issues.

OK, I'm stumped. I can't figure out how poor work-life balance is more of a hurdle for women and minorities than for white males. Anyone know?

<comment><USER7> "poor work-life balance" is a greater issue for women than men due to childbirth and general fact that childcare and elder care burdens generally fall primarily on the woman in a couple.

"lack of mentors" and "occasionally over discrimination" affect both women and minorities more than white males.

<comment><USER8> I suspect elder / disabled care may be an issue for minorities too, of both sexes, if they come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> When I was a physics undergrad all 12 physics majors in my graduating class were given a "talk" by a senior white faculty member about the "realities" of the physics pyramid. Basically we were told that our Chinese competitors made much better grad students and we should basically not bother applying to grad school because we couldn't compete against the "better" Chinese.

<comment><USER10> In grade school at least one of my teachers made a comment along the lines of this. For a little backstory, my town was roughly 30% white, 25% asian, 25% black, the rest spanish or other races.

Shoot I'll go one further. When I was in 5th grade I offered to help get their huge donation of 486s ready for use (installing windows on them and the like). Most of the teachers didn't know how to use computers at the time, and they were happy with my work so they tasked me to fix/maintain all of them after class. That was pretty cool! I picked a filipino classmate to help out, and one day at honor roll ceremony the principal accidentally introduced him as the computer guy and me as the assistant -_-.

A physics teacher pulled that stunt once too at my community college. He told us the only people that would get As in his class were "real Asians. Not white guys that think they're Asian." He regularly made borderline racist and sexist comments though.

The reality is (at least in my experience) that no one race or gender is better at science subjects, engineering, or math. Most people in those subjects work their butts off to get where they are. The part I dislike is when someone stumbles, there's a lot of pressure on them to quit when there should be encouragement to try again. Sometimes things can be like pounding out a sword on an anvil, it doesn't happen instantly.

Instead it looks like there's always encouragement to kick people out and discourage people from studying a subject.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I worked at a dept with ~2.5% acceptance rate.

There were two, subtle factors in play: soft ageism and PI's hiring their clones (in thought, gender and race).

So the dept gravitated to predominantly two minorities, at least in terms of staff, faculty, visiting researchers and grad students.

</comment><comment><USER12> EDIT: With regard to what I pointed out in my original comment (below for reference), I believe the Nature article chart is in error. Reading the actual paper (p.55), the gap in "engineering and computer sciences" (while smaller than some other fields) is actually _more_ statistically significant than some of the other results. I suppose that may be because they were able to trial more professors.

I guess that means, be careful trusting charts, even from _Nature_ 's blog. The smaller gap may still count for something compared to a few worse fields, but it's not among the statistically-unclear results of the fields studied.

\--original below--

From the graph, "engineering and computer sciences" was one of the smallest measured gaps, and further didn't feature the "*" which indicated a statistically-significant result.

So in all the often-justified criticism, the fact that CS/engineering are better than many other fields-of-practice should count for something.

(Interestingly also per the chart, in 'Fine Arts' the faculty discrimination ran in favor of women/minorities, to a statistically-significant level.)

<comment><USER13> Why does it matter if one result is more or less statistically significant than another, assuming that they are both _sufficiently_ significant?!

(Note: I don't think that 5% or 1% chance of error is sufficiently statistically significant, but I'm a mathematician/programmer, and I know that most social studies researchers disagree.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Peculiar why women were bunched together with minorities. I wonder how the results would look if they were decoupled. I also wonder what their reasoning was in attributing the small effect linking different names to differing response rates to 'implicit bias' was.

<comment><USER15> The study does break it down further, and the result actually made feel ill.

[http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID2427725_code...](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID2427725_code488996.pdf?abstractid=2063742&mirid=1)

Go to Page 55+

Things aren't so bad if you're white female. If you're hispanic female, you even enjoy advantages in field of science.

But the numbers for Chinese and Indian (both genders) look absolutely atrocious. I'm seeing on average 30 percentage point difference, but as much as 60%+ in some fields.

This is just disturbing.

<comment><USER16> Have you had to deal with the number of Indian or Chinese students trying to push into a program they have no place being in?

I get it's the poverty back home that makes them desperate and nothing to do with race, but the one time my former department accepted a Chinese student from mainland China it was a disaster, he was rude, hardly spoke English, his credentials were most likely fake and made the whole thing incredibly unpleasant to everyone with how pushy he was. Needless to say he was kicked out after a year because he kept failing his classes.

This isn't racism, this is people not wanting to be scammed.

<comment><USER17> Isn't biased stereotyping exactly what racism is though? A few bad apples can spoil it for everyone else? "Hey watch the black guy, I was mugged by once...", if you find that sickening, this is quite similar to that.

<comment><USER16> Only if it's based on race. You must be American since you missed the part where I said it's the _poor_ Indians and Chinese that are desperate and most departments want nothing to do with them. That isn't racism, that is wealth discrimination. By contrast the poor Australians aren't applying to post graduate programs in mathematics, they are too busy being drunk at the footy, so they are not a group anyone had to worry about at my university. But if one of them showed up with fake credentials they would be as disruptive to the department as that Chinese student was, and would fly out just as quickly.

<comment><USER17> I doubt this Chinese student was poor if he could get convincing enough fake qualifications; he was probably middle class with city hukou and resourceful parents, but just didn't apply himself because his parents were always able to solve his problems for him (also, very likely an only child). This is actually quite common in China; the poor Chinese students are the ones that have to work their asses off because their parents can't give them any special advantages.

I have my own biases, but having lived in China for so long, they aren't based on ethnicity anymore (e.g. watch that guy in starbucks wearing farmer clothes, he might try to steal my computer).

<comment><USER16> He might have been rich by Chinese standards but he was still poor by Western ones. He seemed to be vastly more interested in finding a job outside the university so he could stay in the country than actually trying to study for the classes he was taking.

And again note, I didn't say he was lazy, as far as we could tell he was taking a dozen interviews a week for work. He was however a complete academic deadbeat and terrible investment for the university.

In short, we got scammed, someone came over on a student visa, only to try their hardest to migrate permanently without adding anything of value to the university and group he was meant to be working in.

<comment><USER17> > He might have been rich by Chinese standards but he was still poor by > Western ones.

Ugh. It is possible that his parents were richer than yours; they could be driving black Audi's, have multiple Ayi's (house keepers), and multiple apartments; you really can't tell! It is true that having their kids get a job in a western country is important even to middle class/rich Chinese; even they realize how unbalanced the employment situation is even if it often works in their favor.

> And again note, I didn't say he was lazy, as far as we could tell he was > taking a dozen interviews a week for work.

This makes sense. They can lazy academically but, instilled by the habits of their parents, realize that the key to success is networking and career climbing rather than studying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> How many American women receive selective service notification?

[https://www.sss.gov/](https://www.sss.gov/)

</comment><comment><USER19> some of the differences aren't statistically significant?

<comment><USER20> Same thing I'm wondering. Would've been trivial to add error bars to this figure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> No shit?

</comment><comment><USER18> What's the relative proportion of men in prison to women?

<comment><USER22> If there are more men then women in prison, it can only be because men commit more crime, right?

<comment><USER23> Women get laughably light prison sentences compared to men.

<comment><USER24> Here we go...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Productivity Automation Tools I Use - <AUTHOR> http://captaintime.com/automation-tools/ <comment><USER2> Have you tried Workflowy? It's the simplest thing on the Earth, but it's so flexible you can use it for anything, from grocery lists to project management.</comment>


Ad blocking - <AUTHOR> http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2015/09/ad-blocking.html <comment><USER2> > Of course, people have been blocking ads forever. By ignoring them.

Subtle thing overlooked here is that I prefer to delegate this act of ignoring to my computer, saving mental cycles, context switches, and in many other respects improving my "mind hygiene"

<comment><USER3> Exactly @vanderZwan, clearing the mind of garbage ads and click bait is likely as beneficial as meditating. I don't pay for content to be ad-free aside from Netflix and PandoraOne. Maybe that is due to the lack of a consistent platform across all websites. I would pay a subscription fee to have my top 20 visited websites ad-free.</comment></comment>


Startups Face a 'Fundamental Reset,' Says VC - <AUTHOR> https://www.theinformation.com/articles/startups-are-undergoing-a-fundamental-reset-says-vc <comment><USER2> [http://archive.is/zxK0b](http://archive.is/zxK0b)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is my third downturn. So far this one doesn't look much different than the others.

A lot of businesses that could only survive on VC money have/will collapse, and the good businesses will stay good, albeit maybe with slower growth or smaller margins.

The large companies will power through, and maybe even hire up some of the really great talent that was at now-defunct startups.

Some new businesses will spring up to address our new realities.

The lockdown will end one way or another. Maybe some things will be forever different, like after 9/11\. Maybe we'll have to wear masks in public forever. Sounds like a great opportunity for a fashion brand. Maybe we'll have to take our temperature to enter a public place forever. Sounds like an opportunity to make rapid temperature scanners that work on crowds.

In the grand scheme of things, this won't make a huge difference to the business cycle.

Some companies will die, others will be born.

<comment><USER4> Also my third downturn. The thing is, during the second downturn, I thought "We'll probably make it through this one okay, but it'll fatally weaken the system such that the next one may be the final one." We're at the next one now.

Most of the issues I identified in 2009-2011 haven't really been addressed, and if anything have gotten worse. My thesis was that by bailing out the financial system, the government couple trust in _the government_ with trust in _the banks_. The banking system was saved, but the price of this was that a large section of America gave up trust in America.

Nothing has been done to restore that. If anything, it's gotten worse, with the Snowden disclosures, increasing media polarization, the election of Donald Trump, the impeachment procedures, and handling of coronavirus. Then add rising income inequality, inflation in critical need-to-live goods (health care, housing, and food), political polarization and tribalism, increasing publicity around the misdeeds of certain sectors (tech) that were considered the few bright lights in the American economy, skyrocketing national debt (which will increasingly tempt the federal government to monetize it), and decreasing economic and physical mobility, and you have a powder keg.

My sense is that this is the start of something bigger, and that we're going to get a series of cascading failures until eventually we get a collapse of critical monetary or government infrastructure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can we also have a 'fundamental reset' of the VC industry which is overcrowded by incompetent sheep VCs?

</comment><comment><USER6> I know everyone wants to talk about all these fancy economic theories about, market capture, VC funding, exponential growth etc around startups, especially SV and tech startups.

I don't buy it, I see everything happening as the classic example of a bubble. Some people made a ton of money in tech through a combination of hard work, having a really great idea, and luck, Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. Other people saw how much money they made and the market and other piled in to try and get rich, some of them had good ideas, some of them had ideas that sounded good. This was the rising of the bubble, VCs want to get in on this, dreams of exorbitant wealth played before their eyes, they started funding tech ideas even if they didn't think they were good or there was clearly no way for the idea to actually be that profitable. But it didn't matter, this is when we started spouting things like "don't invest in a product, invest in a star team", "pivoting" began to become big, questions about actual revenue were hand waved with words like "market capture" and "penetration".

Then we hit the height of the bubble, the second stage hadn't actually really produced any wildly profitable companies but other big tech companies bought them, for their engineers or platform, or data or something, at obscene valuations and so the VCs and founders still made a killing. The dream for founders and engineers went from "have a good idea that you can build something on" to "how can I get myself bought by Google", VCs meanwhile went from "will my capital work out here" to "I need to get in fast on the first rounds and some other sucker will be willing to buy it for more on the next round of funding." This is when the idea no longer mattered, what you did, how you were going to do it, none of those things mattered anymore. Move as fast as you can the faster you move the more likely you were to hit the "next big thing", in reality you were just playing the lottery, but instead of VCs buying $5 lottery tickets they were buying $5 million dollars stake in companies. Engineers rather than paying with their hard earned cash for the scratch-n-win were suckered into paying with hours of their lives in hopes of scoring big on the "being bought out jackpot". Things seemed to peak with the WeWork fiasco, ideas that were stupidly blindingly obvious, and already being done were suddenly transformed into these hot new golden geese because they used tech jargon to cover up the fact the emperor was wearing no clothes.

We are now in the bubble popping for tech, corona probably wasn't the way anyone saw the bubble popping but now the contraction in capital, and the easy money drying up will show which companies had a solid good business model, which ones were iffy, and which ones were completely ludicrous.

This ended up being a lot longer than intended but really sometimes you don't need fancy explanations or complex financial analysis to figure out things, sometimes plain old common sense can help you better see the forest for the trees.

<comment><USER7> All great, until I got to the end. The easy money drying up? The FED has injected $3tn into the markets in two weeks. Assets are being propped up across the board.

People who are not asset holders are getting screwed here, because salaries are not going up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> In the post-covid world, you have to actually make money and have ROI to be worth invested in.

<comment><USER9> Same thing happened after the 2002 tech crash. The IPO market dried up for unprofitable company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Capital faces a 'fundamental reset', says torch-wielding mob.

<comment><USER11> Meanwhile at the US Treasury

Mnuchin shouted "Release the Kraken" and breaking all the red-tape.. the Iron Clad PRINTER, Kraken started printing Green.... BRRRRRRrrrrr….

There it was $5 Trillion .. ex nihilo!

<comment><USER3> It's important to note that most of that $5T are loans that will have to be paid back to the Treasury by the businesses that get the money.

Just like TARP, which ended up _being profitable_ for the US Treasury.

Also it should be noted it is the Fed that prints money and is independent from the Treasury.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wish I could read the article as the headline sounds interesting. Alas, paywall...</comment>


Obituaries written by music critic Alan Blyth (1929-2007) for The Guardian - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/profile/alan-blyth <comment><AUTHOR> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Blyth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Blyth)</comment>


Ask HN: Spark (Ada) for General Programming? - <AUTHOR> Has anyone used SPARK or Ada for general programming, like JSON parsing, writing a web API, etc?
The language is intriguing to me because of its safety guarantees. I believe it could compete with languages like Haskell and Rust in that area.
It's on my list to learn. But one issue is that (I think) there's a preferred (and only one?) IDE for developing in it.
See:
https://www.cse.msu.edu/~cse814/Lectures/09_spark_intro.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARK_(programming_language) <comment><USER2> I recently used Ada (not the SPARK subset) to develop an assembler/simulator (for a made-up ISA) for a computer architecture course I was taking. I used the GtkAda bindings for the GUI, which worked well: [https://github.com/docandrew/YOTROC](https://github.com/docandrew/YOTROC)

I'm using SPARK for another project, and I think it's great. I don't think there is really an easier way of writing formally-verified software right now. Depending on the pre-conditions and post-conditions you put on your code, it can offer much stronger guarantees than other general-purpose programming languages do, but _proving_ those guarantees can be tricky if you don't have much experience with it.

The nice thing about SPARK is that if you get something you can't prove (either because it's not legal SPARK or because the solver can't figure it out), you can turn off SPARK mode on a per-function or per-package basis and either come back to it later, or just prove that callers to the function abide by the specification without the function body itself being legal SPARK.

For IDEs, I prefer VSCode over AdaCore's GPS IDE; AdaCore has a VSCode LSP plugin that I use: [https://github.com/AdaCore/ada_language_server](https://github.com/AdaCore/ada_language_server). Having said that, I used the GPS IDE for the computer architecture project and it worked well.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER3> You typically wouldn't write an entire program (unless it is really critical) in SPARK. The biggest payoff from SPARK is being able to prove that exceptions can't happen, and therefore you can turn off Ada's run-time checks. For mainstream applications like you're talking about, Ada works well with the run-time checks on, and exceptions doing their thing. This usually provides enough safety - and more safety than Rust imho.

We did use SPARK to implement a UTF-8 stream decoder, for example, as well as in core parts of a JSON parser, where speed and security are particular important. With SPARK, you want to use it in the really critical parts, since formal verification is hard and expensive. You use Ada for everything else - and you end up with something that is extremely robust.

As far as IDEs, honestly I use emacs, but AdaCore has a functional language server if you want to use VS Code. They also have their own GPL ide "gnat studio"

<comment><USER4> I think there are certain core-functionalities that could benefit from being written in SPARK -- things like the core of the OS, common networking facilities/network stack (the IRONSIDES DNS is a good step in that direction).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> About a year ago on /r/Ada, there was a rather interesting discussion around using Ada for a website/webservice: [https://www.reddit.com/r/ada/comments/7p12n3/going_allin_wit...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ada/comments/7p12n3/going_allin_with_ada_a_manifesto/)</comment>


Ask HN: What is your process for coming up with business ideas? - <AUTHOR> Do you just sit down with a piece of paper and brainstorm ideas or is there another process that you use? <comment><USER2> Hard lesson learned through experience: if you're phrasing the question the way you have, you've already failed.

Viable ideas usually come out of a community that's at the forefront of some change in the world, either technical or social. Embed yourself in such a community and then build what you and your friends need, and chances are the rest of the world will eventually come around to seeing they need it too. If you're explicitly trying to brainstorm and evaluate ideas rationally, particularly if you're doing it in isolation, you will a.) bias yourself toward ideas that sound good but aren't what anyone wants b.) bias yourself toward ideas you might've heard of in the press but are already filled with competitors and c.) bias yourself toward ideas with big potential markets but that nobody actually _wants_.

</comment><comment><USER3> There's a bunch of free videos. I thought were very useful on this.

[https://microconf.com/saas-crash-course/](https://microconf.com/saas-crash- course/)

</comment><comment><USER4> 1\. Trying to solve important personal needs that might apply to a large number of other people.

2\. Trying to solve obvious problems (e.g. death, disease, etc.).

Initial "marketing" (word-of-mouth) is key. Will there be a niche to start with?

</comment><comment><USER5> The only successful ideas I've had didn't seem like particularly great business ideas and I only had a vague sense of what I was building before I started. All the "great business ideas" I've had failed miserably. Maybe just start building small projects and if there's one you can't stop thinking about, keep doing that one. Depending on your personality, passion/curiosity may trump quality of the initial idea.

</comment><comment><USER6> Think of something that sucks. If you feel that way, others likely do as well. If you can find a way to fix it, some percentage of those like you will pay for it.

The levers to pull on are 1) how many people are impacted by the problem, 2) how expensive it is to solve the problem and 3) people's propensity to pay for a solution.

Hailing a cab in SF on a major holiday sucks; enter Uber/Lyft.

Staying in hotels with your family sucked, people wanted to stay in a home; enter AirBnB.

As a sales rep, tracking deals always sucked; enter Salesforce.

Going to the grocery store sucks(a lot of times); enter Instacart

There are no shortage of things that suck, just people willing/able to solve a given problem.

</comment><comment><USER7> Usually the best ideas will present themselves to you. Either during your job or consulting.

You'll see a problem or a pattern that a new business could provide value to customers to solve.

Definitely check out the microconf videos, linked to in another reply.

The StartUpsForTheRestOfUs podcast is a great resource as well. Rob and Mike run MicroConf. Lots of great advice in their archives.

</comment><comment><USER8> Ask yourself, would you use and pay for it?</comment>


A Ramble Through Erlang IO Lists - <AUTHOR> http://prog21.dadgum.com/

<comment><USER2> Please replace the URL with the permalink (<http://prog21.dadgum.com/70.html>), as it currently points to the home page.</comment>


Finding McAfee: a case study on geoprofiling and imagery analysis - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@benjamindbrown/finding-mcafee-a-case-study-on-geoprofiling-and-imagery-analysis-6f16bbd5c219 <comment><USER2> There was a thread on Twitter by someone who figured out where that storage locker was of the guy that tried to corner the market on hand sanitizer for profiteering:

[https://twitter.com/EmilyGorcenski/status/123930677615307161...](https://twitter.com/EmilyGorcenski/status/1239306776153071618)

</comment><comment><USER3> Wasn't there a case where a guy put up a webcam at his « He Will Not Divide Us » flag, so 4chan narrowed it down by flight patterns and celestial navigation, and had someone drive around town honking his horn until they heard it. Then took the flag down and posted it on 4chan.

<comment><USER4> Yes, The Internet Historian on YouTube has made a series of videos about this: "HWNDU" (He Will Not Divide Us).

It started with a flag outside in a public place [0], followed by being moved to a flagpole in the middle of nowhere (the one you're thinking of) [1]. The flag was then moved into a museum in Liverpool [2], and finally it was moved indoors with a camera pointing at a plain white painted wall [3].

Beware: lots of memes and occasionally offensive language.

[0]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_p4h3jwJob0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_p4h3jwJob0)

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw9zyxm860Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw9zyxm860Q)

[2]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aZuj_SDqDo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aZuj_SDqDo)

[3]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_ldHq3NzC0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_ldHq3NzC0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> For another example of doing this, see this one from a couple of years back:

[https://twitter.com/BBCAfrica/status/1044186344153583616](https://twitter.com/BBCAfrica/status/1044186344153583616)

<comment><USER6> This one is actually impressive deserving to be called "case study", unlike the Medium article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you like the idea of trying to identify a location from a photo, take a look at a competition that regularly tried to do this, View From My Window: [http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/vfyw- contest/](http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/vfyw-contest/) . Some of it was truly impressive detective work.

<comment><USER8> [https://twitter.com/quiztime](https://twitter.com/quiztime) also has (probably easier) challenges like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you want to see this taken up a few levels check out the incredible work done by Bellingcat to identify times and locations where minors were sexually abused in Cambodia. Includes consideration of Mango tree growth speeds, among other things I definitely would never have thought of.

[https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2019/12/17/two-europol- stopc...](https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2019/12/17/two-europol- stopchildabuse-images-geolocated-part-ii-cambodia/) (SFW)

<comment><USER9> Also related is the recent three-part Netflix documentary Don't F __k with Cats on the Internet[https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/81031373](https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/81031373)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> So did you get that beer?

</comment><comment><USER11> This is interesting and mirrors a very old short story I read when I was a kid about some futuristic detective that never left the house, instead just solved missing persons cases by analyzing details in photographs. This was all pre- internet so the author (whom I've long since forgotten) was very prescient.

But this is John McAfee we are talking about - how soon can we lose him again?

<comment><USER12> >some futuristic detective that never left the house, instead just solved missing persons cases by analyzing details in photograph

Your futuristic detective has the same M.O. as Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock's older and reclusive brother who stayed at home or at his club where no one was allowed to speak (except in a small antechamber and then in no more than a whisper); Holmes the Younger would occasionally visit when he was stumped, or needed some bit of information he hadn't written a monograph on. If I recall correctly, the point was that while Sherlock was all about deductive reasoning (here are all my little clues, what do they add up to), Mycroft was a master of inductive reasoning (here is my thesis, if this thesis is true, here are all the details that must exist _somewhere_).

Tangentially, Mycroft was the full name of the computer that gains sentience in Heinlein's _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_; very smart, but by nature of being a multi-ton computer system, something of a recluse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's surprising how much you can tell from videos or images like this.

I often get a sense of familiarity when watching videos online. If a picture or video was shot outside, anywhere along the Wasatch front in Utah, I'm almost guaranteed to be able to pinpoint the location. It's kind of a fun game.

</comment><comment><USER14> I think there was also a time the folks on 4chan managed to locate a terrorist base, which Russia then followed up on. I don't remember the details.

</comment><comment><USER15> Some of these exact techniques, but far more in-depth, have been used to track down and locate child predators who have uploaded images to the internet.

<comment><USER16> There was also this feet fetishist on reddit that could clear up that an image was clearly a fake since he already knew the feet in particular from another photo. He even got praise from the press for his specialist knowledge that was able to close the case. Don't know the details on the story and why it was important to determine an image fake or not, but I liked the ambivalent praise he got for his skills.

<comment><USER17> I believe this was in regards to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's feet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It would have been even more interesting if they could locate the place of the photo without knowing the general area where he was.

</comment><comment><USER19> I bet that this guy is very good at geoguesser

</comment><comment><USER20> So it's "locate someone by seeing what's in the background of his pictures and tweets" but make it sound sophisticated? IMINT? Geoprofiling? Pretentious much?

<comment><USER21> It's a real, professional skill used in intelligence, among other industries. It's not as easy as the author makes it sound.

<comment><USER6> It's skill, but I would hardly call it professional. Anons on 4chan do regularly much more impressive stuff. The gas station in this case made it particularly easy, anyone with a bit of experience from stuff like geoguesser and similar quizzes can find it easily. That's why I too consider calling this a "case study" pretentious.

<comment><USER22> The 4chan instance with Shia Lebouf was an amazing read.

After months of harassment over the _He Will Not Divide Us_ art project Shia moved it to a livestreamed flagpole with nothing but the sky as the background. In under 48 hours they mapped various contrails to flight lanes, matched up star constellations at night using celestial navigation and correlated weather to pinpoint the flags location. Then they went and stole it.

Ignoring the childishness of it all, it was some impressive crowdsourced investigative work given nothing but an empty sky to work with.

<comment><USER3> I thought the last step was driving around town honking their horn until they heard it on the webcam stream.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Announcing Sendtrix: Mobile File Delivery - <AUTHOR>

We launched Sendtrix about a month ago, aiming for a soft launch. Unfortunately, we've struggled to get off the mark. Visits to our website are low, despite Google Adwords campaigns and direct email marketing. We'd welcome any suggestions on how to increase traffic/awareness, as well as ideas on how we can improve our site and product. Thanks in advance.<p>http://www.sendtrix.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Here's a clickable link:

<http://www.sendtrix.com/></comment>


Watch out for this Netflix "tech support" scam - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/03/watch-out-for-this-netflix-tech-support-scam/

<comment><USER3> Original post: [http://blog.malwarebytes.org/fraud-scam/2014/02/netflix- phis...](http://blog.malwarebytes.org/fraud-scam/2014/02/netflix-phishing- scam-leads-to-fake-microsoft-tech-support/)

</comment><comment><USER4> 1-800-947-6570 seems to be the toll-free number used for this scam - <USER2> to note down.

Also, check out the hilarious "Foreign IP Tracer" output IP addresses:

192.168.10.1 Serbia

2220.127.116.11 Russia

</comment><comment><USER5> "The scammers, usually located in India, are not native English speakers, "

Why India? It says they are Russian. It puts Indian Hackers in such bad light. And I'm Russian

<comment><USER6> You might wanna read this [http://blog.malwarebytes.org/fraud- scam/2014/02/netflix-phis...](http://blog.malwarebytes.org/fraud- scam/2014/02/netflix-phishing-scam-leads-to-fake-microsoft-tech- support/#comment-6556)

Edit:You might wanna scroll up a bit becasue the site header is blocking the comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "watch out" is kind of an overstatement though. As soon as I read "hold up your id" to confirm it's you it was immediately clear it was a scam.

Companies you do business with do not ask for your personal information - since you already gave it!

Your ISP isn't going to call you and say, "Say Mr. X to confirm your identitity give us your social security number and your credit card number + ccv code".

<comment><USER8> I seem to recall that when I called my US bank, they would ask me for the last three or four digits of my SSN to confirm I am who I am. My bank in Canada always asks me for my birthdate.

Yes, companies you do business with do ask for your personal information. While you definitely shouldn't give out your personal information to someone who calls you, it's common-place to have to give your personal information to a business that you have called.

In this case, the person received an email saying "please call this number". Legitimate businesses do this as well (I got one from my bank: [http://canspice.org/2013/06/06/cibc-credit-card-fraud- depart...](http://canspice.org/2013/06/06/cibc-credit-card-fraud-department- youre-doing-it-wrong/)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm confused. How did the guy make it to the fake landing page? Was it from an email?

<comment><USER6> From the author's comment on the original article[1]

"This link could very well have been sent as spam or through a rogue ad. That's not how I discovered it though. The phone number used in this scam matched one that I had tracked previously. It's only after (by going to the root of that domain which was not protected) that I discovered that there was also a phishing scam in there."

[1].[http://blog.malwarebytes.org/fraud-scam/2014/02/netflix- phis...](http://blog.malwarebytes.org/fraud-scam/2014/02/netflix-phishing- scam-leads-to-fake-microsoft-tech-support/#comment-6554) _You might wanna scroll up a bit becasue the site header is blocking the comment._</comment></comment>


A Man from Eritrea - <AUTHOR> https://www.madisontaskett.com/the-man-from-eritrea/ <comment><USER2> Fun fact about Eritrea: it and the United States are the only two countries in the world that require its citizens to pay income taxes while living and working abroad.

</comment><comment><USER2> Marvelous story. I would like to know more about this man from Eritrea.</comment>


Show HN: Plant 0.1.3 – File-system for humans - <AUTHOR> https://plant-fs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/api.html?0.1.3#api-reference <comment><USER2> I'm curious: Is this module meant for Python 2? It resembles a heavily trimmed down version of the pathlib module found in Python 3.4+.</comment>


The human body is already close to thermal limits in many regions - <AUTHOR> https://theconversation.com/heatwave-think-its-hot-in-europe-the-human-body-is-already-close-to-thermal-limits-elsewhere-121003 <comment><USER3> We need a carbon tax stat IMO. Economist John Cochrane had a good blog post about this recently (I actually posted to HN a few days ago but it got buried):

[https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2019/05/ip-on-carbon- tax....](https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2019/05/ip-on-carbon-tax.html)

From the end:

"Climate policy was headed to this kind of bipartisan technocratic resolution in the 1990s before it became a tool of partisan warfare. The challenge, from both sides, is to remove the political baggage that climate policy has accumulated."

He then makes that appeal to both sides:

"To my climate-skeptic friends: Given that the government is going to regulate carbon, this is the way to do it with least damage. To my green-warrior friends, if the government is actually going to reduce carbon, not just subsidize cronies and engage in worthless value-signaling gestures, a trade of carbon taxes for absurdly costly regulations and subsidies is the only way to get anywhere."

<comment><USER4> > To my climate-skeptic friends: Given that the government is going to > regulate carbon, this is the way to do it with least damage.

First, that starts off with a false premise. You don't know that the government is going to regulate carbon.

Second, ignoring the "climate change is a myth" crowd, there are those that believe that we are, at this point, past the point of helping and that we might as well just get on with it and adapt to whatever changes await. That attempts at regulation will just destroy the economy, and thus their place in it, and that ruining the economy and thus untold (b|m)illions of lives that way is not worth the unknown outcome of attempting to save the current state of climate.

This isn't even a "not my problem" situation. I've heard this from folks leaving in a coastal region that already suffers some amount of regular nuisance flooding. It's not as if rising tides will skip over them.

Failing to understand that viewpoint is going to result in two sides yelling past each other. One side thinks we must do everything in our power to preserve nature's status-quo, the other is firmly of the mind that it is an impossibility and to try would be wasted effort with much risk and unclear gain.

Your first task is convincing them of the horrors that await for them.

<comment><USER5> > there are those that believe that we are, at this point, past the point of > helping and that we might as well just get on with it and adapt to whatever > changes await

Pricing in externalities is a part of that adaptation. It literally is "getting on with it".

It's unclear to me what you mean by this.

If your farm is on fire, maybe you lose a room. OK, so you adapt. Perhaps you'll never earn enough again to rebuild it properly. You might be a bit traumatised - maybe you buy more smoke alarms, cameras, sprinklers, stuff like that.

What you don't do is set the whole thing alight, burn it to hell, and adapt to the changes having contributed to your life savings going up in smoke.

If a family member or close friend dies - you hang out with friends, you go to therapy. You certainly don't buy some weapons and decide to finish off the rest of your friends for good measure!

A climate that continuously changes by a few degrees every decade is going to be impossible to adapt to properly. We will effectively never be able to build permanent structures again.

What's the goal here? 800ppm? 1200? Literally just whack the thermostat up 10c and have every city in the world suddenly be in the wrong place?

> attempts at regulation will just destroy the economy, and thus their place > in it, and that ruining the economy and thus untold (b|m)illions of lives > that way

It's unclear to me why pricing in externalities would do this.

Shifting consumption to more efficient "happiness/usefulness per damage" stuff wouldn't ruin anything.

It's difficult for me to understand why people would think that carbon pricing pushing people towards different foods or smaller cars or cycling or whatever would "destroy the economy". I think they have a different definition of the word 'destroy'. Consuming a bit less is not destruction. Your hometown being underwater is a destroyed economy.

<comment><USER6> > A climate that continuously changes by a few degrees every decade is going > to be impossible to adapt to properly. We will effectively never be able to > build permanent structures again.

Why would we not be able to build permanent structures?

<comment><USER7> Because, eventually, the place they were built would become uninhabitable for humans.

<comment><USER6> Even the most aggressive global warming estimates are no where near making the entire earth's surface uninhabitable to humans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Something that would help the risk of power outages killing air conditioning, would be to power air conditioning directly by solar panels installed alongside.

There is a high correlation between solar generation and air-con demand, although it's not perfect, as e.g. heat can persist into the evening, so you could have a grid connection to allow the air con to continue working in the evenings, and to absorb any excess power but in the event of grid failure, the air-con power should just follow the solar generation directly. I don't know if such a system exists commercially at the moment.

Even in the event of wide scale power outages, it would not lead to wide scale deaths as most people would have air conditioning that still worked. Air conditioning failures would be a very serious issue, though, requiring evacuation to another building.

<comment><USER9> You would need a huge number of solar panels and batteries to power an air conditioning unit. Dehumidifiers are far more energy efficient (removes the hot water droplets suspended in air to cool air temp)

<comment><USER10> > Dehumidifiers are far more energy efficient (removes the hot water droplets > suspended in air to cool air temp)

Do you have some sort of citation for that?

Because a dehumidifier is pretty much an air conditioner that doesn't make the room cooler from a mechanical perspective, so the premise that there's a wide gap in efficiency, or that the unit which blows it's heat _indoors_ is the more effective one, seems unlikely to me.

<comment><USER9> I was interested in off grid and RV vehicle AC solar, this video pretty much sums up how and where we are today on that. [https://youtu.be/B0rZY5uotKI](https://youtu.be/B0rZY5uotKI)

Others recommend dehumidifiers as a compromise which uses less power, you can find this in multiple discussions in relevant forums

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If this doesn't scare you I don't know what will. We have to do something about it. By 'we' I mean you and I. As someone said - if you don't think you can change the world you will just be one of the ones who didn't.

We need fundamental cultural and policy change. The question is how to achieve it. Despite popular believe I don't think voting matters. Think about any significant societal change in the last century or so. Women suffrage, civil rights movement, anti-war movement, gay rights. None of these were initiated by the parliament. They all started as a popular rebellion and direct action.

So what are we to do.

\- Change your lifestyle. Less flying, driving, meat.

\- Divest fossil

\- Get out of the techno bubble and get your hands dirty with direct action and civil disobedience. e.g. [1]

[1] [https://rebellion.earth/](https://rebellion.earth/)

<comment><USER12> "Despite popular believe I don't think voting matters. "

In the end, voting is the only thing that matters. Individual choices by a small minority of the population are going to be completely ineffectual without government setting policy so that doing the right thing is also doing the most profitable thing.

But despite you being wrong in your core point in my opinion, you're absolutely right about the method. (change your lifestyle, divest fossil, direct action, civil disobedience)

The reason that voting is useless is because voters don't care about the environment. Climate change is #11 in the list of top priorities for voters.[1]. Fix that, and then voting might make a difference. And you do that by making it clearly visible that it's important to you, and by convincing others that it's important to them.

1: [https://news.gallup.com/poll/244367/top-issues-voters- health...](https://news.gallup.com/poll/244367/top-issues-voters-health..).

<comment><USER13> > Climate change is #11 in the list of top priorities for voters

I think you wanted to write:

Climate change is #11 in the list of top priorities for voters _in the United States_...

In many countries it is a lot higher on the list of priorities.

For example, in the UK it is on the 4th place for voters [1].

In Denmark it is the highest priority in latest polls [2] (sorry danish only)

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/21/environm...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/21/environment- of-greater-concern-than-housing-or-terrorism-uk-poll)

[2] [https://www.altinget.dk/artikel/ny-maaling-den-groenne- dagso...](https://www.altinget.dk/artikel/ny-maaling-den-groenne-dagsorden- tager-en-suveraen-foersteplads)

<comment><USER14> Climate change is a much more important issue to US voters than it has been in the past: [https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/05/07/climate-c...](https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/05/07/climate- change-election-2020-226797)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is why I think that in addition to swift action to curtail emissions, we need strong international organisations for discourse, crisis management and mutual aid. If we walk into a new age of mass migrations and instability with the currently popular mindset of nationalist separatism, I don't see how we'll be able to avoid another world war. What will happen between India and Pakistan, for example? These are both nuclear powers.

<comment><USER16> Could it be either Russia or the US have contingency plans regarding those countries ? Like... nuke them now or send them a suicidal elite special forces mission to take out the top and assume command in the name of peace keeping ?

<comment><USER17> Doesn't get more "typical US brute force approach" than that, eh? Imagine what would happen if India or Pakistan (a muslim country on top of everything else!) did that to the US. How do you think "assuming command" would go down there?

<comment><USER16> I am not from the US though and I don't live there.

The question is still valid though: are we thinking things through and what are our leader's intentions in case something like that happens and are they thinking about how to prevent it in the first place ?

Ten years ago we talked about how the India/Pakistan nuclear arsenal could end up in the hands of Al-Qaeda. What were the plans and which one was put in motion (if any) ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why aren't people more worried about these kinds of things? Is it just too abstract and removed from day-to-day life to care?

<comment><USER19> "News" is mostly _bad news._ We've been hearing since WW2 that we are on the verge of wiping ourselves out. We are still here.

If we are right this time, why worry about it? If we are wrong this time -- as we have been for the past 70 years -- why worry about it?

Related:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19843507](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19843507)

<comment><USER20> this. I've spent my entire life (over 50 years) being told by mass media that we're all about to die at any moment. You kinda get jaded by it. And sensationalist crap like this article doesn't help.

<comment><USER21> Do you have any examples?

<comment><USER22> I've been bombarded with this shit all my life.

[https://apnews.com/bd45c372caf118ec99964ea547880cd0](https://apnews.com/bd45c372caf118ec99964ea547880cd0) > June 30, 1989

Articles in a similar vain are trotted out constantly, they just change the timespan and a few details. See recent example from FT:

[https://biggerpicture.ft.com/global-risks/video/global- sea-l...](https://biggerpicture.ft.com/global-risks/video/global-sea-level- rise-what-it-means-you-and-your-business/)

<comment><USER23> As far as I can tell, the information from the 1989 AP article is correct. I believe we are well past the point where anthropomorphic climate change is stoppable. All we can do is reduce the impact.

It's clear from the article's text that the statement was _not_ that the predicted problems would occur by 2000, since "UNEP is working toward forming a scientific plan of action by the end of 1990" would give an absurdly short timeline.

It says "The most conservative scientific estimate that the Earth's temperature will rise 1 to 7 degrees in the next 30 years, said Brown."

Conveniently, that was 30 years ago. I went to [https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global- temperature/](https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/) . In 1989 the temperature anomaly was about +0.25°C. It's currently +0.82°C. A change of 0.57°C is just over 1°F. As predicted by the most conservative estimate.

I have been unable to find the report. The only people who talk about that newspaper article appear to be climate change denialists, who don't link to the actual report, and misread the article to believe that there's a prediction of a 3 foot sea rise by 2000.

The late 1980s is when the majority of scientists - and associated people like Isaac Asimov, at [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfB7Hzb7G2Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfB7Hzb7G2Q) \- were convinced of the evidence of global warming and its potential problems.

That built upon earlier work. Eg, "In 1982, Exxon's environmental affairs office circulated an internal report to Exxon's management which said that the consequences of climate change could be catastrophic, and that a significant reduction in fossil fuel consumption would be necessary to curtail future climate change. It also said that "there is concern among some scientific groups that once the effects are measurable, they might not be reversible." \- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExxonMobil_climate_change_cont...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExxonMobil_climate_change_controversy#Early_research)

<comment><USER20> so by some dextrous fiddling with measurement scales (I believe the UN measure temperature in Celsius, but as the article doesn't mention a measure, I'll grant that they might have been talking fahrenheit), it literally only just squeaks past the absolute lowest boundary of the _most conservative_ estimate.

There's no way you can claim that this is vindication of that prediction.

<comment><USER23> Point taken, and valid. However, 1) that's literally the only prediction in the paper that has a short time-frame, which is also well in-line with general consensus both _then_ and _now_ , and 2) my point was not to vindicate the prediction but to point out that it's _not_ a good example of 'shit bombardment' as Bantros stated.

Without knowing the original article context, it's really hard to know what the exact prediction is. It seems clear from looking around that most people who reference the article are global-denialists as I haven't found anyone verify that the newspaper reporter was accurate in the report.

So, I looked for the report. I believe it's "The State of the World Environment 1989 - UNEP/GC.15/7/Add.2" dated April 1989 at [https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/28295/...](https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/28295/TSE89.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y) . The prediction on p23./paragraph 68 is:

> Even then, estimates of temperature increase vary widely—from 0.7°C to > 9.6°C. Recent studies agree, however, that doubling the carbon dioxide > concentration from the pre-industrial level of 270 ppmv will probably > increase global mean temperature by 1.5°C to 4.5°C (47, 48, 49)—but most > likely by 2°C.

+0.82°C is larger than 0.7°C, so well within that predicted range - <USER2> on the low-end, but not enough to be rejected as "shit" given how the report explicitly states the uncertainty.

The 1 degree could have been 0.82°C rounded (up) to the nearest degree, or 1.476°F rounded (down) to the nearest degree.

I don't see an estimate of _when_ , but figure 5 shows an estimate of 3°C rise by 2050, of which about 0.8°C come from CFC - CFCs weren't yet banned at that time. Which means Brown's prediction in the news article likely included a CFC component that didn't happen.

<comment><USER22> The "shit bombardment" is the actual media coverage which has only gotten more and extreme over the past 30 years.

Thanks for the link to the original paper, I've never seen it myself either

<comment><USER23> The prediction was that the shit was going to hit the fan.

The shit is now starting to hit the fan.

The predictions are that there's going to be a lot more shit hitting the fan, and these predictions are constantly being checked and re-checked.

The news reports first that the shit bombardment is coming, and now it's here.

And you complain about those news reports, and not those actually shitting on the planet?

You know the metaphor "bikeshedding", yes? The idea that there can be a lot of vigorous arguments over the materials, paint color, etc. to use for a bike shed?

The flip side of that metaphor, which I'll coin "atomicpowerplanting", is that few want to dig into the details to make a good decision. Going back to the original bikeshed email:

> an atomic plant is so vast, so expensive and so complicated that people > cannot grasp it, and rather than try, they fall back on the assumption that > somebody else checked all the details before it got this far.

So, starting 40 years ago people started talking about the problems in graphite atomic piles, and made vague mentions of the Wigner effect, but the atomic power plant is important for national security and so it is built and put into operation.

This goes on for years. People point out some of the problems, and its knowledge is suppressed.

More years pass. And then the Windscale fire happens.

Perhaps the warnings are really important, but so complex that it's easy to atomicpowerplant?

<comment><USER22> Are you trying to convince me or yourself?

<comment><USER23> I'm convinced that we are bombarded by shit by news sources. We're also bombarded by non-shit.

I'm trying to point out that "shit bombardment" might be appropriate, if everything is going to shit.

Do you think there is substantial global warming caused by humans?

Do you think it's serious enough that we need to take drastic measures to reduce CO2 emissions?

Do you think the evidence was strong enough in the 1980s that they were right to be concerned about the future?

Do you think their claims - bearing in mind the range of the predictions as in the 1989 document I found - been shown to be substantially correct?

You haven't committed either which way, only to say that you've been bombarded by shit by the news. The 1989 article you pointed to, however, doesn't seem like shit. Why do you think it is?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Yesterday, a friend reminded me about the story of the Easter islands. I remember reading / hearing about it. But then forgot about it. They destroyed the whole forest on the island and with it, they destroyed them self...

I bet, they were in a similar situation, people saying that we should stop. That it changes things. And... they didn't stop until the bitter end.

I think we will be like the easter island. We won't stop.

<comment><USER25> Actually, there are some researches saying that the often cited conclusion about Easter Islands (notably in 'Collapse') might not be accurate.

See for example: [https://gizmodo.com/new-evidence-contradicts-theory-that- eas...](https://gizmodo.com/new-evidence-contradicts-theory-that-easter- island-soci-1828307589)

<comment><USER26> The account confuses me. Diamond's central argument was that the Islanders cut down all their trees, and thus no more could grow.

This article suggests they got all their stone from a single quarry, and so must have collaborated around that quarry.

....this doesn't seem to contradict the central claim of a society destroying its resource base. Am I missing something? It's also not incompatible to have collaboration around a central resource and conflict elsewhere. Though I mainly think it's a sideline to the tree story.

<comment><USER25> Maybe, this was not the best source, but there are articles disputing that the population decreases happened before the first contact with European explorers in 1722.

[http://islandheritage.org/wordpress/wp- content/uploads/2010/...](http://islandheritage.org/wordpress/wp- content/uploads/2010/06/RNJ_23_2_Mulrooney_Etal.pdf)

I don't think it does challenge the idea that the deforestation led to the collapse, but maybe it was not the only cause.

<comment><USER26> Thanks, that paper is much clearer. It seems their argument is that deforestation was not a factor in collapse, as land use didn't shift and no big decrease in toolmaking was seen before 1800, post contact.

Certainly plausible. To know beyond that point we'd need a subject matter expert and possible original investigation.

In other words it's possible Diamond's tree narrative is correct but not his war narrative. I think that doesn't undermine it so much for the purposes of discussing the possibility that we may use all of a certain resource. But it is indeed a caveat worth noting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> In case this ever became a reality could one not dig a retreat in the ground or simply start living underground? It might sound silly, but if needs are desperate..

<comment><USER28> This is already a thing; see Coober Pedy [1] in Australia, there's houses carved out of mountains, etc. This is also likely how people will be living on Mars. And houses can be built to emulate living underground, with e.g. shutters on the outside (another thing that has been around for centuries).

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is why it feels much hotter and suffocating at night than day where I live, at 10PM the temperature is 35oC with 70% humidity (thank to urban heat island effect). At least sweating cools my body down during the day, at night all it does it drenching me in sweat and I still feel hot.

I have tried to reduce my carbon footprint by consuming as little as possible, but just I myself alone is not enough. This requires a whole refactoring of how our cities should be built, how our civilization should work and I just don't see that happening any time soon.

<comment><USER11> > but just I myself alone is not enough

Sure. Start talking to your friends, family and colleagues. Join groups of like-minded people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I think a much overlooked topic is urban planning. Just thinking about Phoenix and the hundreds of homes and apartment complexes blasting ac 24/7 with little or nothing in terms of tree shade. Trees can provide and immense amount of sunlight protection and reduce the heat in a dwelling. I get that they can also fall on your roof, but still, almost nobody planting anything, especially in large apt. Complexes

</comment><comment><USER31> Terrifying, I'm starting to hope we do more with climate change so we can not only survive, but stop talking about it.

I wonder if in human history there has been such a long running dire topic to endlessly discuss without any solution in sight ?

Maybe the Cold War ?

</comment><comment><USER32> If this concerns you, you should consider joining the Citizen's Climate Lobby: [https://citizensclimatelobby.org/](https://citizensclimatelobby.org/)

</comment><comment><USER33> If people start migrating away from those regions en masse, is there a chance it will trigger a war?

<comment><USER34> There will be, I just woke up this early morning thinking about climate change, and thought people will definitely want to migrate to cooler places but some nations will object to this due to conflicting interests

In another viewpoint on climate change, do remember that the Earth rotate around the Sun in elliptical manner, it's not perfect circle - there will be surely a time when a new Ice Age will happen - we're just at a period when Earth is getting closer to the Sun on it's rotational axis

<comment><USER35> I'm not sure I understood your comment about the shape of the earth's orbit.

The earth's orbit around the sun is an ellipse. But it's an ellipse that takes one year to traverse. The closest thing that gets us in terms of an "ice age" is winter. And, in fact, "winter" is what happens when you're closer to the sun, due to a change in the angle of incidence of sunlight (in the northern hemisphere).

Are you referring to something else?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The article mentions the "wetbulb" effect and that it stops at 95F. Is this temperature relative to the surrounding humidity? Because much of the U.S. South sits above that for the summer months.

<comment><USER37> Yes.

> The wetbulb temperature includes the cooling effect of water evaporating > from the thermometer, and so is normally much lower than the normal > ("drybulb") temperature reported in weather forecasts.

With 100% humidity, the air temp and the wetbulb temp are the same. At lower humidity levels, they diverge.

<comment><USER36> Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Couldn't be more stark: we waited too long. The few that would benefit have tamped down the interest of the exceedingly many who will pay.

Name a catastrophe that can compare with this scale — even the effects of that city-killer asteroid hitting Brussels would be easier to deal with.

</comment><comment><USER39> We discovered metal that emits more energy than we know what to do with years ago. This energy produces zero carbon emissions. This metal seems to be the obvious solution to carbon emission problems, yet nobody talks about it. Why?

[https://xkcd.com/2115/](https://xkcd.com/2115/)

<comment><USER39> Timely:

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/07/29...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/07/29/why- earth-overshoot-day-and-the-ecological-footprint-are-pseudoscientific- nonsense/#11b28cb27e76)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Prediction: we'll wrap an existing Earth city in an environmentally-controlled bubble before we get a bubble to Mars.

<comment><USER41> It's time to invest in glass.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> > It is therefore hardly surprising that extreme heat drives migration. Such > mass displacement makes extreme heat a worldwide issue.

So this is the _real_ reason for the US Border Wall, right?

That would be an ironic acknowledgement that global climate change is a serious risk.

<comment><USER43> Yes almost all policy making / war efforts are created from realpolitical or resource oriented goals.

It's the old orders of power and the conglomeration of corporate entities that actually create the shooting script for various events including the creation of a border wall.

The identity politics or the thin veneer of hollywoodesque narratives above most especially foreign policy is just exactly that, fantasy, while it's the military-industrial complex that in reality drafts the plans together with PR companies.

Look for example at military historian Gwynne Dyers's talk here from 2010 both foreshadowing the refugee crisis, Syrian War and the border wall all from climate extrapolation without the identity-smokescreen.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc_4Z1oiXhY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc_4Z1oiXhY)

The whole border issue is extremely muddy though as it's not classically right-wing to protect the working classes from wage dumping by not letting millions of people in but has become a left-wing issue because class consciousness and economic policy has mostly been replaced with superficial identity based issues because they are allowed by the status quo. This is because they don't interfere with the increase in inequality and fall in real- wages happening in plane sight while pop-leftwingers are busy screaming about identity based issues (not that those aren't important).

From a resource perspective one could argue that the ever more transnationally oriented elite couldn't give two f's about protecting the sovereignty of yesterdays empires and nation states - but i think the US is still seen as a very valuable asset because a somewhat stable country with a large middle class is still important in a global system of resource extraction and exploitation - and also as a buffer around the US military which in essence is just a mercenary army created to protect US corporate assets and interests.

All in all, the border will be created no matter who is president because the plan has been laid out in military circles for decades , because climate change has never actually been tabu in the corporate intelligentsia as we also see in the Exxon papers from 50 years ago. It's all part of a plan to squeeze as much value out of the global capitalist ponzi scheme and protect US assets just up until everything turns into chaos. Exxon has known this together with most other elite wealth management entities - that is why the next step is border walls with machine guns and watchtowers, then a short balkanisation with feudal rule and mercenary armies protecting the elite before everything collapses and the private jets are pointed towards a new Antarctica or new Zealand bunkers.

If this sounds conspiratorial look no further than to Jeff Bezos statement this week that his space travel efforts are very much because he knows we are headed for total collapse of earth ecosystems. Thiel, Bezos, Musk, the Rothhcild family, Saudi Aramco or whoever are all very much aware of the coming collapse and fragmentation - this is why they all invest heavily in "let's get of earth or into the ground" tech.

<comment><USER42> True enough. And a nice analysis.

I don't have any insight into "military circles", but I do recall an action film (maybe from the 80s) that featured (among other stuff) a militarized wall and prison complex along the US-Mexico border. Some action/horror films (especially zombie ones) are loaded with ~prophetic social commentary.

Edit: And damn! Gwynne Dyer's talk looks amazing. And there's a transcript at [https://spaswell.wordpress.com/2016/11/18/dr-gwynne-dyer- geo...](https://spaswell.wordpress.com/2016/11/18/dr-gwynne-dyer-geopolitics- in-a-hotter-world-ubc-talk-transcribed-sept-2010/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> What happens if the permafrost melts?

Can we have a runaway greenhouse effect and reach a hothouse state like millions of years ago, or even worse due to the amount released all at once?

What do the models say in the worst case?

Will humanity barely survive at the poles, in that case?

<comment><USER45> Worst case is a second venus if the process truly runs away and no longer relies on biochemical greenhouse gases but purely chemical processes that work beyond 100C.

If the permafrost melts it'll release a lot of methane and CO2, in part captured and in part from material beginning to rot a few thousand years too late.

Humanity might survive at the south pole, but we'll more likely go extinct in a worst case. Unless it's a venus scenario, life itself will go on.

<comment><USER32> CO2 concentration has been _a lot_ higher in the past (e.g. before all the coal deposits formed) without turning Earth into Venus. I think we can safely say that we'll never turn into another Venus.

At the absolute worst we'll reach a moist hothouse scenario: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_greenhouse_effect#Eart...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_greenhouse_effect#Earth)

The more likely worst case is climate similar to this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Therm...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Thermal_Maximum)

<comment><USER45> Venus is the worst case, I never said this would happen at current CO2 levels but it could happen if they continue to elevate and chemical processes put out more CO2 while biochemical processes stop using up CO2 due to high heat. There is a true absolute runaway that could theoretically be achieved in an absolute worst case scenario.

<comment><USER46> We, humans, will be long gone before we reach pollution levels required to change Earth to Venus.

<comment><USER45> We, humans, can jump start a runaway process to reach these pollution levels in a worst case.

<comment><USER32> The IPCC is fairly sure we can't (see the Wikipedia link I posted)

<comment><USER45> And in the same link, some scientists disagree with the IPCC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> simple engineering problem, improve the ways humans cool/develop some water cooling system for our bodies and scale it

</comment><comment><USER48> Until the AC units stop being effective, nothing will change.

</comment><comment><USER49> Url changed from [https://phys.org/news/2019-07-heatwave-human-body-thermal- li...](https://phys.org/news/2019-07-heatwave-human-body-thermal-limits.html), which points to this.

</comment><comment><USER50> a lot of people would lose income if the climate stopped changing.

</comment><comment><USER51> Not a problem IMHO - all the shopping centers have good climate control systems /s

</comment><comment><USER52> I'm amazed how conservative HN comments are when it comes to climate action. You really love your flying and driving here. Personally, I've stopped doing both.

<comment><USER53> Yup, no one wants to consider actual radical change because it might require a lower standard of living.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> A person attempting to emit less CO2 because people somewhere are dying from heat stroke seems as sensible to me as attempting to increase ones CO2 emissions because people somewhere are freezing to death.

</comment><comment><USER55> Greenhouse effect increases temperatures mostly in cooler areas of the Earth (which is, mostly, beneficial for people, because it allows to grow more food) and does not affect temperature in already hot areas (close to the equator).

If you want to live in a colder climate -- just move North: Canada (almost empty), Northern United States (Alaska is almost empty), Northern Europe, Russia (almost empty).

I moved to Florida, because I like warmer temperatures. A lot of other people are moving to warmer South too (from colder North).

I will vote against laws that may bring temperature down.</comment>


Extending OCaml Programs with Lua - <AUTHOR> https://blog.baturin.org/extending-ocaml-programs-with-lua-soupault-got-plugin-support.html <comment> as-j I'm not capable of speaking about OCaml, but I clicked on because I use Lua professionally and where it gets embedded always strikes my interest.

This is using Lua 2.5, current version of Lua is 5.3^, and Lua is not a fast moving language. 2.5 dates from 1997, 22 years ago. So wow, an interesting use of Lua, but as a fairly capable Lua programmer I'm not sure I could code in it.

Instead of using the standard C Lua interpreter (or Luajit), this uses Lua-ML which is an alternate interpreter for Lua 2.5. So moving it forward to Lua 5.1/5.3 would seem to be a lot of work of basically writing a new Lua 5.3 interpreter.

Seems super cool, and a fun project, but...wow. :)

^) [https://www.lua.org/versions.html](https://www.lua.org/versions.html)

<comment><USER2> It's based on research work on building an extensible interpreter [1]. It should be... well, extensible. Though I'm not sure what was changed in lua between 2.5 and 5.3, maybe it's not that simple.

[1] [https://www.cs.tufts.edu/~nr/pubs/maniaws- abstract.html](https://www.cs.tufts.edu/~nr/pubs/maniaws-abstract.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I spent many years working on a project with similar goals, except in my case the statically typed language was C++11/14 and the embedded one was a scripting language called Io. Io is similar in implementation size and philosophy of simplicity to Lua, and C++14 template programming is probably similar to OCaml (as far as I know, not being well versed in OCaml).

The good part, what makes you go wow that's neat, is that once you have a projection of types and method signatures into the other language, everything to do with that Just Works. You get objects with appropriate types and can call methods on the object which return values that are also appropriately wrapped and typed which in turn have methods, etc. Provided your export is complete enough, you can navigate this whole tree or web of interconnected facilities from the static language from your dynamically typed scripts.

However despite spending years on this, I eventually gave up most of the idea, for several reasons:

First, I became discouraged that it seemed no one in either the Io language or C++ communities seemed to have any interest in the project.

Second, I hit a number of performance walls and impracticalities which led me to view the whole endeavor as a dead-end (for the purposes I wanted to use it for and the way that I built it).

If you don't export many types and methods from your host program, you find yourself often needing to tab out of your script editor to add another type or method to the exports list so you can call it. This requires recompiling the host program, removing much of the benefit of writing in a scripting language.

If you go the opposite way and try to export everything, your executable size balloons. Dead code elimination can't optimize away methods you exported script bindings for and didn't use, because it can't statically determine that you might not be using it or use it in the future. The executable size and unused exported bindings also has an adverse effect on compile times.

Managing values via proxy objects (the bridge between the script and the static language) also imposes a heap allocated memory model. This might be less of a penalty if the static host language is also garbage collected, but for C++ you lose a lot of opportunities to treat pure values more efficiently.

Conversely the wide varieties of ways C++ has to refer to instances of types: by value, by reference, by pointer, const or not, etc. posed a special problem for script binding. My quixotic goal was to fully support every C++ method signature; it would be silly if you couldn't pass a T value to something expecting T const reference. Therefore I included a type coercion graph attached to the bound types.

This required a lot of deep thought about references to temporaries and lifetimes of ephemeral values (I had to change the proxy objects to hold a cached copy of the C++ object, in most cases.) But it was string handling which really showed why the idea of automatically coercing the bound types to make method calls Just Work was a bad idea.

My core C++ code used 8-bit char strings. When porting to Windows I needed the scripts to pass these to wide char Window OS functions. I thought, OK, I'll just write a type converter for this. The problem with that is you need to specify a 3rd thing - the desired encoding - when converting strings. There simply isn't enough information just given the "from" type and the "to" type to make an intelligent decision what to do.

The relevance of all of the above to script language embedding in general is that it's often unclear how far to go with automatic conversion of types. Even if you don't foolishly try as much automatic conversion and even you don't program in a host language with as many type decorators as C++ has, you still have the fundamental question of whether to decay host primitive types into script language primitive types or keep them proxied.

The final problem is that now either all your tooling (debugger, profiler, etc.) doesn't work, because it doesn't understand your script language or at best you have to jump between higher and lower level tools. I actually wrote a gdb-wrapper which enabled debugging Io language in the C++ IDE and display Io language variables in the IDE watch window. Then gdb on my system got updated and my wrapper could no longer parse the gdb output correctly.

In light of all this, I decided that in the case when you are the one writing both the host code and the interpreted code, you're better off just writing the whole application in the host language.

And yet, I've also been burned subsequently by using host-language-implemented DSL's (as exposed to external DSL or script). So I don't exactly know what the right answer is. I dream of coming up with an intermediate approach which externalizes more of the "text" of the DSL while retaining the host-language static typing.</comment>


Ask HN: How do I make a service that lets you borrow items from others w/ trust - <AUTHOR>

I want to build a company that lets you borrow things from other people, how would you get started?<p>I could code it, of course, but I of course would need to build a bunch of people willing to lend stuff. How would you all gain the trust of future users? <comment><USER2> Take a look at <http://neighborgoods.net/></comment>