Huge Cavity in Antarctic Glacier Signals Rapid Decay - <AUTHOR> https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/huge-cavity-in-antarctic-glacier-signals-rapid-decay <comment><USER2> West Antarctica is something that glaciologists are really worried about in the long term. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet's bed slopes downward as you go inland, especially around Amundsen Sea where Thwaites Glacier is. This reverse slope means that if the grounding line (where the ice begins to float) retreats back, it is in deeper water. This causes the ice flux to increase, making it retreat backwards into deeper water still, etc.

This is called the marine ice sheet instability. There's no mechanism known thus far that would countervail it, so it is something that should be taken seriously. Antarctica is too cold to melt much from surface warming anytime soon. Ocean warming and changing currents are a different story, though.

<comment><USER3> I'm sorry, but could you break this down more for stupid people? What exactly are glaciologists afraid will happen and why is it bad?

<comment><USER2> Ice sheets, of which the West Antartic, East Antarctic, and Greenland ice sheets are the only current examples, are basically like very large domes of ice, on the order of 1000 kilometers wide and 1-3 kilometers high. Unlike mountain glaciers, they completely cover the underlying topography.

They flow outwards under their own weight into the ocean. In Antarctica, it is cold enough that melting at the surface is negligible. This means that almost all snow that falls ultimately must flow into the ocean. At some point at the edge, the ice loses contact with the ground and floats. This is the grounding line.

For a constant ice flow velocity, the amount of ice that gets spit out into the ocean is proportional to how thick the ice is at the grounding line.

Now, suppose that the slope of the bed gets deeper as you go from the grounding line into the interior of the ice sheet. Then, if the grounding line retreats, it's in deeper water. So, the ice flux increases. The increasing ice flux means that the ice sheet thins near the edge. Since it's thinner, it can't stay grounded in as deep of water. Imagine a big chunk of ice in a puddle of water that sits at the bottom of a puddle, versus a little piece that floats.

Now, since it can't float in as deep of water, the grounding line retreats because bouyancy is pulling up on the edge. This makes it go into deeper water, ice flux increases more, etc.

This could cause a collapse of the ice sheet, resulting in a few meters of rise. The timescale that this could happen is very poorly constrained (decades? centuries? a couple millenia?). It may have already irreversibly begun, or maybe not.

<comment><USER4> I still had trouble visualizing what you're describing.

This is a typical cross-section[1]. To make it match what you're describing, I'd draw a slope from the grounding line and downward to the left, right? (Image depicts a flat bed underneath the ice, instead of a slope downward as you go inward)

[1] [http://cdn.antarcticglaciers.org/wp- content/uploads/2014/09/...](http://cdn.antarcticglaciers.org/wp- content/uploads/2014/09/Fig-2.-Grounding-line.png)

EDIT: I think this image is a better representation:

[http://cdn.antarcticglaciers.org/wp- content/uploads/2014/05/...](http://cdn.antarcticglaciers.org/wp- content/uploads/2014/05/PIG.ai_.jpg)

<comment><USER5> Flip the terrain illustration in that picture left to right and make it steeper.

The terrain that this particular glacier is a bowl that is well below sea level. The more the glacier retreats the deeper the water gets (because the terrain is deeper), the more of the glacier can be floated, the faster the glacier can melt.

Imagine a pool that slopes from 3ft to 8ft full of ice melting. The thin part melts first, lifts up, water gets a little further underneath lifting the next bit of ice and melting it faster but because the pool gets deeper as you go the more ice can be lifted up and broken off so it melts faster as it goes.

Edit: yes, your second image is spot on.

<comment><USER6> First image alludes to something. Near freezing slightly warmer water is denser. So convection is reversed.

Unless I'm mistaken.

<comment><USER2> That's right. Water is most dense at about 4 degrees, and lower in sea water (around 1 C I believe). Below that, and water molecules start forming ephemeral crystal lattices. Since, weirdly, the hexagonal structure of ice lattices takes up more room than in liquid form, this makes the water less dense. Just to be clear, it isn't actually crystallizing at these temperatures, but due to fluctuations, crystal lattices can be briefly formed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Previous modeling predicted this glacier would collapse in the next 200-1000 years, producing a 3M rise in sea level: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4655561/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4655561/)

<comment><USER8> Here's what a ~3 meter rise in the ocean would look like for the Miami-area of Florida.

[https://ss2.climatecentral.org/#8/25.738/-80.398?show=satell...](https://ss2.climatecentral.org/#8/25.738/-80.398?show=satellite&projections=0-K14_RCP85-SLR&level=10&unit=feet&pois=hide)

<comment><USER9> Yikes, not to mention the storm surge during a hurricane, which is predicted to be a much larger hurricane and much more frequent in future.

People are just not mentally prepared for this. In the late 21st century, we are going to start seeing massive refugee crises all over the world every year. We are in this "golden age" of wealth and prosperity now, even if it isn't equitably distributed, however that whole system may come crashing down if 15% or 25% of the world's vulnerable to massive ocean flooding and storms.

<comment><USER10> I feel like people aren't able to get mentally prepared while we have to deal with denialist propaganda on a daily basis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This sentence helped me to visualize what might be happening.

"Just as a grounded boat can float again when the weight of its cargo is removed, a glacier that loses ice weight can float over land where it used to stick. When this happens, the grounding line retreats inland. That exposes more of a glacier's underside to sea water, increasing the likelihood its melt rate will accelerate. "

not clear from the article though, what do they think is causing the retreat?

Is it warming of ocean water, or we do not know yet?

<comment><USER12> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumpolar_deep_water](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumpolar_deep_water) typically 1-2°C warm and salty.

[http://cdn.antarcticglaciers.org/wp- content/uploads/2014/05/...](http://cdn.antarcticglaciers.org/wp- content/uploads/2014/05/PIG.ai_.jpg)

[http://www.antarcticglaciers.org/glaciers-and-climate/ice- oc...](http://www.antarcticglaciers.org/glaciers-and-climate/ice-ocean- interactions/changes-circumpolar-deep-water/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you need some good news today, check page 34 on the new Ozone report:

[http://ozone.unep.org/sites/default/files/Assessment_Panel/S...](http://ozone.unep.org/sites/default/files/Assessment_Panel/SAP-2018-Assessment- report.pdf)

The finding that the ozone layer is behaving as predicted - probably healing - is not unexpected. It was depleting due to the gases now controlled under the Montreal protocol, the emission of which is decreasing very rapidly.

This plot however shows the contribution of these gases to global warming. As you can see there, _it is going down over time_! Of course the contribution pales in comparison to CO2, Methane and N2O, but it is still significant. And, if nobody messes up, _it will go down_.

It can be done! It's the easiest part, but it is a start.

edit: It also says that the main reason for 20th century climate changes in the southern hemisphere summer is actually the ozone hole over Antarctica. When it closes (projected to 2060) the changes will be undone. (p. 38) (pending too much influence from other greenhouse gases) I haven't seen the details, but maybe there's hope for Australia.

</comment><comment><USER14> Why no mention that this is a known area of undersea volcanoes? They are already causing considerable melting of glaciers from below.

See: [https://www.livescience.com/46194-volcanoes-melt- antarctic-g...](https://www.livescience.com/46194-volcanoes-melt-antarctic- glaciers.html)

Literally the first paragraph at that link I supplied addresses this situation at Thwaites Glacier.

</comment><comment><USER15> Did a little work on these ice penetrating radars when I was at KU.

</comment><comment><USER16> "Thanks to a new generation of satellites, we can finally see the detail"

So at least it is not clear if this compares unfavorably to situations in the past, as there is no data about it.

<comment><USER13> There is a lot of proxy data for the amount of sea water missing though. It only goes missing for so long when it is in ice form. The only question is where exactly all that ice was.

<comment><USER16> What do you mean - they measured rising sea levels, and wanted to find the missing ice it came from?

<comment><USER13> No, basically the isotope composition of the sea changes when a lot of water evaporates and doesn't come back over the rivers (because it fell as snow and just stayed on land). The heavier isotopes need a little bit more energy to evaporate, so the remaining sea water has more and more heavy isotopes left. The most commonly used tracer is oxygen 16 vs oxygen 18 [0].

The isotopes are also used by sea organisms when they grow [1]. When they die and their shells become part of the sea floor (this is optional, there are also old corals that can be used), the signal can remain for a very long time (essentially as long as the sea floor remains, a few 100,000 years).

So we know quite well how much water was missing from the ocean at these points in time. The method can also be used to deduce temperatures from back then.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CE%9418O](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CE%9418O)

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

<comment><USER16> Thanks for the explanation.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Batesian Mimicry Explanation of Business Cycles (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://falkenblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/batesian-mimicry-explanation-of.html <comment><USER2> The assumption here is that business cycle busts are caused by the inevitable collapse of companies that weren't sincere about creating a sustainable business in the first place. There are plenty of anecdotes to color in this story, but I don't believe it's the main driver of business cycles.

EDIT: Admittedly, I'm in a filter bubble of sincerity, since it's one of the main things we look for in YC founders.

<comment><USER3> The author's theory allows not just for insincere entrepreneurs but also incompetent ones. No matter how strongly an entrepreneur believes his idea to be a billion dollar business, it's very possible that it isn't, even if he's able to convince investors (and himself) that it could be based on some superficial metrics.

<comment><USER4> Right, and the the incompetence can be subtle and from many causes, such as poor management skills, just-less-than-necessary technical capability, in addition to the standard Dunning-Kruger effect, and cargo cultists who identify superficial qualities of entrepreneurships. Ironically, in an entrepreneur you want just the right amount of impostor syndrome, but the process may select for Dunning-Krugers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For those of you unfamiliar with the austrian explanation of the business cycles, here is layman's intro via an excerpt from a talk given by the always- excellent-whether-I-agree-with-him-or-not Tom Woods:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5K4Os5eXPw4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5K4Os5eXPw4)

(Personally, I think the orthodox austrians generally undervalue the mass- psychological explanations of things when they dip into rational-actor assumptions, but I still find their explanation compelling.)

<comment><USER6> Shitty stereos on the 80s. Brands 'mimicked' themselves to get extra profit since consumers signaled off of the logo, the chrome and heft not the sound.

<comment><USER5> I think that the austrians would respond (and, again, I'm not an orthodox austrian) that value is subjective and, if consumers find that chrome and logos are what make stereos valuable, then that's the way it is. Perhaps the social-marker value when less knowledgable friends visit, or the general aesthetic look of their living room, is what's important to them. After a while, if the consumers really could tell the difference in sufficient numbers to warrant large scale production, superior stereos should win out.

I dislike shoddy stuff generally and how much brand matters (it matters to me, too, why oh why!?) so I don't intrinsically _like_ that argument, but I understand the rational power of it. It implies, in as much as we should be angry with someone, we should be angry at _ignorant consumers_ , rather than evil producers for shoddy stuff. And the stunningly great news is that we can fight that problem by simply blogging about what we are passionate about.

This is one of the great benefits of the internet I did not expect: the spread of knowledge across _consumers_ has dramatically increased the quality of many things. To pick a few examples:

\- I can get a cappuccino in Sacramento, CA that would have been available in only a few cities in the world two decades ago.

\- There are more beers worth drinking being brewed within 50 miles of my house right now than there were in all of California in the 70's.

\- There has been an absolute explosion in high quality, low cost mechanical watches in the last ten years (see stowa, chris ward, and steinhart, to name a few)

EDIT: I pick these examples to show how the internet has improved even old- fashioned, extremely non-digital things through the spread of knowledge.

In any event, I'm drifting dramatically OT...

<comment><USER6> I am not blaming anyone. Stereo equipment got very popular in the 70s and in the 80s it became very cheap to produce good enough electronics, so high valued brands effectively did a hostile takeover of themselves and burned their product lines down making things that mimicked their earlier higher quality goods.

There are a relatively small number of participants in any system doing stuff that is new or truly creative, everyone else copies the leader.

First it was netbooks, then it was tablets. Markets I think are sprouted by first movers, who after fail, and truly grown by an army of mimics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In brief: animals who are not poisonous or dangerous copy the markings / signals of animals who are and thus gain protection of being vicious killers without the metabolic cost.

This article posits that all the woes of Capitalism are due to copycat entrepreneurs offering "facebook for dogs" and eventually the investment that would go to killer companies to create wealth simply vanishes

I cry rubbish here. Firstly he destroys his argument in the article himself ("""alternatively, one could remember the rule "Red on yellow, kill a fellow; red on black, friend of Jack" """). Fairly simple rules of thumb allow even not-so-smart-money to avoid Facebook for dogs.

Secondly mimicry is only a useful defence against predators of the killers. Killer snake happily kill non-poisonous snakes as well as prey.

And finally, Hy Minsky seems to have this already sewn up - Hedging, Speculating, Ponzi.

Sidenote: my all time favourite Batesian mimicry is the Cheetah cub, ([http://milgistrust.wildlifedirect.org/files/2009/01/23.12.08...](http://milgistrust.wildlifedirect.org/files/2009/01/23.12.08-cheetah- cub.jpg)) whose colouring reflects that of the adult Honey Badger. Honey Badgers are great, such vicious fighters that lions basically think "I'll leave that for another day" \- the animal kingdom's equivalent of short hairless Glaswegian pub landlords.

<comment><USER8> It's not a "woe of Capitalism", just an inherent property of an economy. In fact, it's an inherent property of all life. Economic cycles and life/death cycles in species have a lot in common. The dynamic nature of such systems make them hard to predict, but you can be sure that they will continue to occur. It's a way of resetting (or reallocating) resources that is essential.

<comment><USER7> An interesting point - thank you. I was just listening to a bbc podcast on Minsky, and while everyone agreed that previous economics failed to predict their instability, everyone now thinks Minsky is the key to preventing instability - but no one mentioned that actually death is part of life and we need not to prevent the next crisis, just not let it cause such damage. Harm reduction as public policy - whatever next

<comment><USER8> Thanks for pointing me to the Minsky podcast, giving it a listen now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I feel like this is also a suitable explanation of the impending correction that needs to happen in scientific research. We promote scientists who are adept at Batesian mimicry of the scientific power structure, and not necessarily adept at science.

</comment><comment><USER9> This theory (is it a theory?) sounds good, but as someone else here implied, those who copy aren't employing mimicry, but are actually trying to compete with those they copy. I would say that the bubbles are closer to biological arms races than biological mimicry.

The irrational exuberance is met by companies that are competing to be the most successful in exploiting that exuberance. Hence Enron's success at being one of the best performers on the market until its bust.

I'm sure this stuff has been explained before, but it doesn't seem to be part of any popular economic theory?

</comment><comment><USER8> Great read. I look forward to the day when Economic graduate programs are taught from a more biological/psychological perspective than through aggregate supply/demand and equilibria models. The real issue here is that macroeconomic systems cannot be predicted or successfully controlled, but they can surely be made more robust. The current policies in practice are potentially dangerous.

<comment><USER10> Nothing excites people like a false analogy. Looking to biology to model how economies work is like looking at stars and movements of heavenly bodies to see how stock prices change. I can find a thousand things common between them, but you know how accurate that science is.

<comment><USER8> No model is perfect. If it is a better model than the current one (which is the argument), it should be used as a replacement. Economic systems came from biological systems. As a result, they share some fundamental characteristics and the "false analogy" carries significant weight.

I suggest you read this Wikipedia article: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_economics](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_economics)

<comment><USER10> Yes. Some are much farther from perfect than the others. Economic systems came from biological systems that came from matter and physical forces. Therefore astrology?

The impetus is on the claimant to show how their models are "better". From the link above, it sounds more like a religion or cult than as a science " ecological economics is defined by its focus on nature, justice, and time" . Economics is supposed to be descriptive, not prescriptive or ideological. What financial crises/trends did these ecological economists predict to claim that their methodology is better?

<comment><USER8> What financial crises/trends do aggregate models predict? Unfortunately, current economic theory resides in a grey area of ideology because of how poorly it explains and predicts such things. Assumptions can often be made in any ideological direction.

I also don't claim that the entire Wikipedia article is useful, I just wanted to expose you to some of the ways economists are using biological system (ecology) to model an economy.

<comment><USER10> Well, austrian economists have predicted the 2008 housing/financial crisis. A good methodology can predict crises based on aggregate models. Predicting when is a different issue, although some have done that, at least with the 2008 financial crisis. [http://www.lewrockwell.com/2010/12/walter-e-block/who- predic...](http://www.lewrockwell.com/2010/12/walter-e-block/who-predicted- the-housing-bubble/) [http://archive.lewrockwell.com/block/block168.html](http://archive.lewrockwell.com/block/block168.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Steve Keen's model ([http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/manifesto/](http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/manifesto/)) seems to provide a convincing explanation to me. Basically that debt growth (and acceleration) are key to understanding the business cycle and crashes. He has an open source Kickstarter dynamic modelling tool called Minsky ([http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/minsky/](http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/minsky/)).

Alarmingly the models used by mainstream economists don't seem to cover crashes (not as in can't predict their timing but really can't model them at all generally).

<comment><USER4> I'm highly sympathetic to austrian explanations of economics, and somewhat to chartalist explanations* (but I don't generally agree with chartalist prescriptions) but I'm unconvinced that debt causes crashes. I personally believe that debt systems aggregate small, localized crashes which happen all the time into large, systemic crashes.

A good resource is Mandelbrot's (mis)behavior of markets. It explains a lot of things like how the Pareto principle appears. Reading between the lines, it is easy to see how levy-alpha-stable distributed events can aggregate into bigger levy-alpha-stable distributed events, since this distribution obeys the undefined-variance equivalent of the central limit theorem.

*The "QE for the public" is a horrible public policy choice and to me is exactly a good example of where chartalist prescriptions go off the rails. The Jubilee is a better idea, but to prevent a total collapse of the banking system, you could structure it differently, like making all debts voluntary. Basically our society has been trending towards this (with currently the exception of educational debts) and so what we are seeing is that people with good credit that don't spend their line of credit boozing through their twenties being highly valued. But because lending from individuals is becoming tapped out as their credit is wasted, a lot of debts have become shifted to the public, in the form of municipal, state, and federal debt - sometimes through public spending and sometimes by explicitly converting private debt into public debt.

<comment><USER11> I might look into the Mandelbrot book. From my perspective if you accept that GDP is the economy's production plus the change in aggregate debt it seems a small step to see how debt growth builds during the boom and stops suddenly reducing spending to form the crash. Debt in itself is not bad but in the absence of stabilisation it is likely to cause problems.

I quite like his Modern Jubilee idea a.k.a. QE for the public (although it is an alternative to TARP and the QE that took place in the midst of the 08/09 crisis not for now) I'm not sure how a traditional Jubilee would work and how it would stabilise the banks at all. The Jubilee Shares are the Keen policy I don't quite buy.

<comment><USER4> Basically it seems to me the distinction between the more contemporary, non- crazy, parts of the austrian school (i.e. not the goldbugs) and the chartalist position is how to deal with it. Austrians would suggest that debt is not fundamentally bad, but dangerous, and the market should price in the risk of debt (which it does not, because of things like bailouts and backed reserve lending), and that any attempt to stabilize the swings caused by lending activities will backfire and create moral hazard (the specific economic term).

A modern jubilee might take a form like, legally not permitting any debt to last beyond X years.

There is a particular moral hazard associated with sovereign and government debt - Unlike debt accrued by you or I, which is discharged upon our deaths, leaving the lender holding the bag (a risk that should be priced in the loan term), sovereign debt is unlimited. If you believe in the principle of "no taxation without representation" which really boils down to the idea that legitimate government should not act (i.e. spend) without the consent of governed - then is it really morally permissible for future generations to be legally bonded to the profligacy of previous generations? Where are the checks and balances? Can our grandchildren go back in time and vote against spending policies that they are responsible for paying back?

So generational debt, which is generally considered to be immoral along the lines of slavery, especially among progressives who see it as a means of keeping the poor poor, is suddenly okay when the state does it.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the state itself is also reverting to this feudal practice. [http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/social-security- treas...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/social-security-treasury- target-hundreds-of-thousands-of-taxpayers-for-parents-old- debts/2014/04/10/74ac8eae-bf4d-11e3-bcec-b71ee10e9bc3_story.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Two things:

1) It's a history book, not particularly an econ book, but "Nation of Deadbeats" covers this _well_. Each boom-bust cycle is actually quite unique, and most of them are caused by human action and not spontaneous.

2) In the 20th Century, just about all depressions, recessions and hyperinflations were monetary in nature. The ones that were not were due to failed states. A lot of this was due to the gold standard - which is nearly tautological - because since the gold standard was in play, we saw those pathologies. Douglas A. Irwin has a paper "Did France Cause the Great Depression?" that was an eye-opener for me. It actually describes a real mechanism.

</comment><comment><USER13> I liked the article. I think it captures something real. However it dismisses out of hand without discussions any number of other theories which do in fact have at least some explanatory or predictive value--exogenous shocks (i.e. gas crisis of the 1970s), credit/debt cycle, inventory cycle, interest rate cycle, fixed-investment cycle, and the 60 year Kondratiev waves which may be driven by a new technology introduction cycle. It also ignores recessions and depressions that don't fit it's thesis. See here [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_cycle](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_cycle).</comment>


Show HN: Typa – Your simple personal page - <AUTHOR> https://typa.io <comment><USER2> About.me has been around for a while, and they have a nice offering.

I'm not sure what you offer that they don't, other than some brutal simplicity.

</comment><comment><USER3> This submission should probably be investigated. It got 12 points in the first hour and went to the front page. After that it has only got 2 more points and look at the comments.

It's been on the "Show HN" front page for 21 hours now.

</comment><comment><USER4> Pretty similar to pen.io and notehub.org, no? NoteHub includes Markdown.

</comment><comment><USER5> Been looking for something like this for ages. Great stuff.

<comment><USER3> Did you REALLY pass AGES looking for a simple HTML page you can write and deploy in 2 minutes?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What's the point

<comment><USER7> Obviously to Escape the pressure to have a creative and unique site to represent yourself</comment></comment>


Announcing: TweetSentiments.com API for Sentiment Analysis - <AUTHOR> http://intridea.com/2010/11/29/sentiment-analysis-using-tweetsentimentscom-api

<comment><USER2> Speaking as someone who's been working on NLP, sentiment and semantic analysis for two years now, I've come to the conclusion that sentiment as a product is useless. There's no actionable conclusion from sentiment alone. You need to dig deeper, apply part of speech tagging, and determine the underlying intent.

We, too, use SVMs to determine sentiment (in fact, we built a web-based API to create, train and deploy your own SVMs) but if you're goal is to make money, then you need more than just "this tweet is positive/negative/neutral".

Marketing folks need to sell an actionable strategy. For example, "People are speaking positively about your product because they love the packaging" or "People are speaking negatively about BlackBerry because they can't figure out how to configure their work email accounts". Both of these give much more insight than just polarity.

<comment><USER3> You are absolutely right, and some of the things you mentioned are in our roadmap

<comment><USER2> Cool. Maybe you'd like to talk about this stuff, we might be able to work together? martin [at] repustate [dot] com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Quick suggestion about the API endpoints, versioning is _really_ important as it allows you to add/remove/update features without breaking any application using your API. You should add it before anyone starts building on top of your API.

<comment><USER5> Versioning should _really_ be done with an "Accepts" HTTP header as opposed to changing a resource's URL.

<http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1566460>

<comment><USER4> In a perfect world, I'd agree with you. The author of the article you linked to provides a good answer to this problem:

        If your audience is architecturally minded and aware of REST,
        you should version data representations in the MIME
        types your application accepts.

        If your clients view the URL as the most important facet,
        make the URL the center of your versioning efforts.
        Folks who are familiar with versioning with WS-* Web
        services tend to be more comfortable with changing the
        URL when versions change.

<comment><USER3> Both approaches should work, putting version in the url seemed to be more widely used, we will take both in to consideration, thanks for the suggestions

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Have you evaluated your model on the standard evaluation sets, and if so, how does it compare to current state of the art?

<comment><USER3> It should be on par with the current state of the art, and we are working on improving it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> How does this stack up against something like AlchemyAPI (<http://www.alchemyapi.com/>) which seem to roll in a lot more than simple sentiment analysis in a far more flexible product?

<comment><USER3> At the present, we tend to be more focused on Twitter, and our models built with tweets. Down the road, we will have a more flexible and comprehensive offering.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> interesting, congratulation for your release. I do think open-uri reads better than net/http in examples though :)

<comment><USER3> Agreed, we can worked that in the future and we are working on a gem to make things easier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice. Wonder whether Twitter Analytics will have something like this?</comment>


Married Same-Sex Couples Are Happier - <AUTHOR> http://www.livescience.com/25519-married-same-sex-couples-happier.html

<comment><USER2> Eh give it 20 years and we'll see how happy they are.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder if the opposite is true: Unmarried Straight Couples Are Not Unhappier. Sure worth a study?</comment>


Almost Nobody Played a Bad Guy in Mass Effect - <AUTHOR> https://kotaku.com/almost-nobody-played-a-bad-guy-in-mass-effect-1841876414 <comment><USER2> Yeah, because bad outcome.... and no one wants a bad outcome....</comment>


Ask YC: Friday Morning pre-release testers for my web app. - <AUTHOR>

I have a hosted CMS, and I would like feedback on the functionality and usability and design.
This is in pre-release state.
It is an in-line CMS, so your administratin looks like your frontend, and it acts like microsoft word on steroids.  It builds web sites, not groups of web pages.  Please e-mail issac.kelly at g mail dot com if you're interested in testing, or post here and I'll try to troll for e-mail addresses.  Thanks <comment><USER2> Two things:

It could be just me but I couldn't figure out how to enter an item at first. It took me a while to figure out that you had to click on the markup button before you can type.

I don't know if I hit an error or if it was MediaTemple's response time, but when I tried to submit - nothing happened.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that. This is the first time that I have used the sandbox, and it was linked to the testing version instead of the current version, so part of it was broken, you don't normally have to click the markup button to have anything show up. I'll quit making edits to this while people are playing with it, because as is (now) most everything should work.

<comment><USER2> works fine on firefox - but not for Safari or it's webkit brethren

yeah javascript/css cross browser compatibility is a pain...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Sounds like a lot of effort to test your app. Maybe a link would be best? Set up a sandbox of some kind?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> <http://issackelly.com.s30201.gridserver.com/admin>

<comment><USER4> I saw an odd picture with two children wearing their shorts on their heads. I then clicked the "X" as quickly as possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> My email's in my profile. Feel free to contact if you still need help.</comment>


Grad Student Who Shook Global Austerity Movement - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/04/grad-student-who-shook-global-austerity-movement.html

<comment><USER2> This story is a lesson on confirmation bias:

Professors that immediately decide that the student is wrong, and must be convinced otherwise.

The spreadsheet financial analysis that provided the expected results and therefore never checked for errors.

A single study that gave economists, and clearly an awful lot of politicians, the confirmation they needed to strengthen their resolve in the face of opposition.

<comment><USER3> _A single study that gave economists, and clearly an awful lot of politicians, the confirmation they needed to strengthen their resolve in the face of opposition._

Confirmation bias, at least in the politicians' cases, it just provided them with extra confidence to proceed with their agenda. Well, it may have also lent them some legitimacy.

<comment><USER4> Lent, indeed. And now they default on those loans.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So what is the alternative to lowering "consistently high public debt"? Monetize it? Default on it?

Debt in itself is not a problem if the growth rate is the same or decreasing as a proportion of the economy. At the current rate, some obligations would have to be forfeited, either to the direct creditors, or to those promised social services. Strangling the economy further with high taxes only makes the problem worse.

I think most of the damage from so-called "austerity" has been decisions taken with little warning and at the very last possible moment.

<comment><USER6> Depends what your borrowing situation is.

During the financial crisis, irrespective of our level of public debt, the bond rates were actually such, that people were basically PAYING the federal government to borrow money.

Instead, we had politicians on an austerity tear, and ranting about how we needed to reduce the national debt. We could have borrowed a big chunk of money, earned the interest off of it, and then just turned around and paid back the principle.

If Republicans actually believed in running the Government like a business (they don't, but they say it), it's almost criminal that we didn't take advantage of the opportunity.

<comment><USER7> Yes they say it, but the opposing party opposes it. The Democrats most certainly do not wish to run the government as business but as more of a piggy bank that someone else fills each night. Therefore, even if the Republicans wanted to do such a thing they likely cannot.

But, as you say, they haven't been very serious about such an idea for quite a while.

<comment><USER6> That's a pretty unsophisticated understanding of liberal and/or Democratic politics and policies.

The broader point is that _nobody_ actually wants to run the Government like a business (nor is that necessarily a good idea in aggregate). But even at the points where it makes sense for the government to behave in a business-like manner (and there are some), we do not and cannot get our shit together to do so.

<comment><USER7> Not only is it unsophisticated, it's also a huge over-generalization. Maybe I should have pointed out I was responding in kind.

Although I would say my opinion on the Democrat party is that it is not run by liberals just as the Republican party is not run by conservatives.

As for the rest, I agree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Austerity is something the government should be practicing in the good times, instead of blowing everything on profligate rubbish. That way when the downturn comes, you're not already saddled with masses of debt and a vast public system that depends upon it.

IMHO, of course, I am am not an economist. Not that they seem to agree on much either.

<comment><USER9> yep, sustainability is not just for the biosphere, it's for the econosphere too. It's great to provide big benefits to everyone, but then when things turn down, we get the mess we are in today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Impressive that his two professors took 1 whole month to finally believe him, even though the article gives the impression that the error was obvious (a bad formula).

Summary of the article: [http://tldr.io/tldrs/5171189e1a18dac804000170/meet- the-28-ye...](http://tldr.io/tldrs/5171189e1a18dac804000170/meet-the-28-year- old-grad-student-who-just-shook-the-global-austerity-movement)

<comment><USER11> It sounds like they grilled him until they got co-authorship for a paper with a with an uber high impact factor.

<comment><USER4> Is it good for your career to get high impact factor for a paper that admits that your most famous work was a fraud that destroyed the economy of several nations?

<comment><USER11> His co-authors are not those who fucked up the original study.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The grad student didn't "shake" the global austerity movement. He merely pointed out a minor error in a formula that didn't significantly affect the outcomes of the model. This isn't big news.

Besides, to attack austerity as a "bad idea" is like attacking having a budget for your own home income and expenses. Individuals and families are well- acquainted with the reality that you cannot indefinitely spend more than you bring in. It's idiotic to assume that a government can simply suspend this assumption and not have any consequences. Perhaps a government has a bigger "credit card," but in the end all debts must be paid or defaulted on--just like in the real world you and I live in. It is absolutely essential for a countries long-term economic well-being to keep expenses within the neighborhood of revenue. Yet the far-left seems to persist with the belief that money literally grows on trees, and that surely there's enough to be able to afford every desirable program. They're totally out-of-touch with reality. So they poo-poo the "austerity" movement as just raining on their parade. Just like the Greeks who had the nerve as their country was going down the drain to strike, wave signs around, and complain when the Piper comes to claim his due.

Last point. What we're calling "austerity" really isn't. It's a political fabrication which, in the case of the US (and I suspect many countries), means that the politicians have agreed amongst themselves to merely not increase the rate of spending as much as they had initially planned on. This is what they call "savings" and "cutting the deficit." I think people living in the real world would agree that such a definition is ridiculous. How can you be cutting the deficit when you're merely reducing the rate of the GROWTH in spending, not actually reducing the amount of spending. Does that make sense? So if they had planned to increase spending by 7% across the board, they call it "cutting the deficit" if they decide to only increase spending by 3%. Let's be real. Under Obama's recently released budget the US will hit 24 TRILLION in debt in the next decade. That's nearly DOUBLE what we're at today. Where are these horrible, painful cuts that are supposed to be reducing the deficit? Exactly. They're all wrapped up in some political hyperbole that allows the politicians on the right and left to spar without actually doing anything to make our nation more solvent.

</comment><comment><USER13> The solution is for authors to routinely publish the datasets behind their research.

Unlikely though, for the same reason that Herndon didn't contact Reinhart and Rogoff about the error. Academics are even more interested in getting attention than they are in getting to the truth.

Which is why this episode is more likely to discourage publication of data than encourage it.

<comment><USER14> > Academics are even more interested in getting attention than they are in > getting to the truth.

untrue and insulting

> Which is why this episode is more likely to discourage publication of data > than encourage it.

Why would you expect this? It seems more likely that data and the software used to produce results will have to be open sourced and verifiable in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> _"I checked my e-mail, and saw that I had received a reply from Carmen Reinhart," he says. "She said she didn't have time to look into my query, but that here was the data, and I should feel free to publish whatever results I found."_

Last time that'll happen for a while.

</comment><comment><USER15> Here is Andrew Gelman's comment on this issue:

[http://andrewgelman.com/2013/04/16/memo-to-reinhart-and- rogo...](http://andrewgelman.com/2013/04/16/memo-to-reinhart-and-rogoff-i- think-its-best-to-admit-your-errors-and-go-on-from-there/)

</comment><comment><USER16> I think it is about time to create an open and standardized publishing model for academic papers, which also includes the datasets and the code used for all calculations.

</comment><comment><USER17> You would be surprised how many things that exist around you are based around faulty models based on incorrect data - that's the problem with higher dimensional fields like economics and finance - it's hard to separate cause and effect and extract principal signals for an arbitrary phenomena, without getting bogged down in correlation hell.

You have been warned - the further fields get from pure mathematics and isolated systems - the faultier they must become, and the harder they are to verify (although in this case - it was trivially easy - but then again IIRC the paper wasn't published in a peer-reviewed journal).

Hence, before accepting X new fact in higher dimensional fields - do your own verification first.

Also - who on earth thought austerity was ever a good idea?

If you can afford to borrow - and consumer spending is dead - bring it back. The US should load up on as much debt as possible - I'd love to get cash at a 1-2% interest rate - it's a freaking awesome deal.

<comment><USER18> _who on earth thought austerity was ever a good idea?_

Lots of sensible people.

The point of austerity is to stop spending money you don't have on stuff which does not clearly contribute to economic improvement. Every increase in debt must be balanced with a reasonable objective expectation that it will facilitate specific & significant increase in revenue greater than the debt and servicing thereof. If you've spent your paycheck, you buy rice & beans cooked at home instead of swiping the credit card on an expensive dinner out; if your car is out of gas, you borrow just enough to buy just enough get to work (or try walking/biking if at all sensible) instead of filling it up and heading out for an impromptu road trip.

National economics is of course complex and subtle, but the point is basic principles apply: if you don't have the money, don't borrow any unless not doing so will cost you much more, and unless you have a clear plan to pay it off. The Ryan plan (and plans of other austerity backers) is "stop spending money where it won't pay off", as in stop paying people to not work when they could, stop funding obscure/pointless/offensive projects/research/art which wastes money, stop hoping that prolific spending will change for the good.

Wealth is not durable. Spending $1,000,000 to create a $50,000/year job is stupid (and yes, there's a lot of that going on).

<comment><USER19> It's actually not sensible to assume that basic principles apply to things that are complex and subtle.

For example, a basic principle for centuries was that metal is too heavy to float, therefore it was clearly too heavy to fly. Simple, basic, and completely wrong - see for example today's airplanes.

This is not to say that the opponents of austerity must have it all figured out, but rather that history has not been kind to ideas of the form "this complex system must surely follow certain common sense principles".

<comment><USER20> _a basic principle for centuries was that metal is too heavy to float, therefore it was clearly too heavy to fly_

Do you have any source for this, or are you making it up? For many centuries, the state of the art in metallurgy was not sufficient for making watercraft, much less aircraft. However this did not stop people using the available technology to make such flying things as arrows.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Curious analogy

 _As a graduate student, he'd just found serious problems in a famous economic study — the academic equivalent of a D-league basketball player dunking on LeBron James._

<comment><USER22> These are "Harvard economists", and AFAICT Harvard has one of the strongest econ departments in the academic establishment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> If you look at the winners of the Underhanded C Contest [1], the subtle and deniable "errors" that are hidden in innocuous looking pieces of code remind me a lot of the type of error that this spreadsheet sounds like it contains.

It's telling that now that their data is exposed as being incorrect, the original authors still are standing behind their conclusions.

[1] <http://underhanded.xcott.com/>

</comment><comment><USER24> What do people think about the researchers' rebuttal in the WSJ?

[http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/04/17/reinhart-rogoff- ad...](http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/04/17/reinhart-rogoff-admit-excel- mistake-rebut-other-critiques/)

I'm too much of a layperson in statistics and economics to tell, at this early in the morning without coffee, how much of this is eloquent backtracking BS:

> _So do where does this leave matters on debt and growth? Do Herndon et al. > get dramatically different results on the relatively short post war sample > they focus on? Not really. They, too, find lower growth associated with > periods when debt is over 90% (they find 0-30 debt/GDP , 4.2% growth; 30-60, > 3.1 %; 60-90, 3.2%,; over 90, 2.2%. Put differently, growth at high debt > levels is a little more than half of the growth rate at the lowest levels of > debt. They ignore the fact that these results are close to what we get in > our Table 1 of our AER paper they critique, and not far from the median > results in Figure 2 despite its coding error. And they are not very > different from what we report in our 2012 Journal of Economic Perspectives > paper with Vincent Reinhart—where the average is 2.4% for high debt versus > 3.5% for below 90%_

<comment><USER25> The -0.1% mean growth rate was the silver bullet. It was everything - the only number anyone remembered or cared about after reading the paper.

Without that, it's another data point correlating economic growth and sovereign debt - and not a very interesting one, either.

<comment><USER26> Related question: From what I understand, all the study is doing is that it's saying on an average countries with high debt / GDP have a slightly negative growth rate. But isn't that just one data point and not a justification for austerity itself?

<comment><USER27> The original study said that. The new study said that their growth, while positive, is a bit less than those with less debt.

It's an association. It does not prove that there is causation, nor the direction of the causal arrow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Hasn't Paul Krugman been saying this for quite a while? Judging by the performance of the Irish and British economies since the implementation of austerity programs, it looks to be verifiable.

</comment><comment><USER22> Best comment from the WSJ article (in which Reinhart and Rogoff admit their mistake): "The two profs are incompetent enough to now be hired by Fox "Business" network."

</comment><comment><USER29> Harvard should fire those two professors.

<comment><USER4> Harvard should keep them, and endure the reputation decrease as a result. This incident should stand as a long-term reminder that the Ivy League is does not have an infallible monopoly on genius.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> What seems at issue -- besides whether an economist's work should be accepted at face value -- is under what conditions a country should borrow or impose austerity.

Here's an analogy --

When times are good, governments frequently raise taxes, because hey, we can afford it.

When times turn bad, governments frequently raise taxes, because hey, our tax base has eroded and we need it.

It's a "heads I win, tails you lose" game.

<comment><USER4> That's not what happens. The problem is:

When times are good, governments frequently LOWER taxes, because hey, we can raise the same revenue

When times turn bad, governments frequently LOWER taxes, because hey, people can't afford it.

borrow in bad times, pay back in good times, is well established. Governments are good at borrowing in bad times, but bad at paying back in good times. Look at late-90s US, when we briefly had a balanced budget, and instead of preparing for the bust, we rushed headlong into it.</comment></comment>


Apple to developers: We're no longer suicidal - <AUTHOR> http://counternotions.com/2010/04/13/suicidal/

<comment><USER3> Perhaps nitpicky, but I took issue with this:

 _"No other vendor dominates mobile games like Apple now. With over 50,000 games in the App Store, it has 10 and 20 times what Nintendo and Sony offers respectively, and this before Apple's Game Center has even shipped."_

The Nintendo DS is the best selling gaming system of all time, mobile or not. Its not even a competition - they've sold over 2x as many DS's as Apple has sold iPhones.

Not to discredit the iPhone's success in any way, but no one has come close to toppling Nintendo off the gaming throne.

<comment><USER4> To add to this, consider the number of online flash games there are. By the same logic the author is using, the best mobile gaming platform would be a laptop/netbook.

This of course completely ignores the quality of these games and the advantages that dedicated gaming platforms like the DS and PSP have.

<comment><USER5> Exactly! Quality not quantity, please. I'm not a big gamer, but it bothers me to read nonsense like the quote above.

Some of the iphone/itouch games (or for that matter, other smartphone-based games) are garbage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This isn't a bad article, but it's not a very smart article either. The ideas are essentially the same ones people have been repeating for days, it takes a long time to express these ideas we've already heard and it employs even less logic and methodology than many writers (for example, John Gruber) in coming to its conclusions. Not trying to be excessively negative or anything — it just seems very much like a "me too." Does anybody else see an original idea here?

<comment><USER7> I thought the article was mostly useless.

It's summed up by this paragraph, "Today, Apple is more concerned about having to re-live its recent history — getting jerked around by Microsoft or held hostage by Adobe — than what it thinks would be manageable damage by a few developers that may leave its platform. Some may regard that as being arrogant. For Apple it's the price of being in charge of its own destiny. To capitulate at the height of its newly found vigor would be suicidal."

Which doesn't even attempt to address why requiring all programs be originally developed in objc,c, or c++ is a good way to prevent being held hostage by Adobe, and nor does it address the huge repercussions it could have. It's not a "few" developers that would be effected by this change if its strictly enforced. It's practically every 3d game on the market.

In short, a lot of words, not a lot of content.

<comment><USER8> _doesn't even attempt to address why requiring all programs be originally developed in objc,c, or c++ is a good way to prevent being held hostage by Adobe_

Sure it does - it provides a legal footing for denying apps based on Flash. That pretty much prevents Adobe and Microsoft from establishing a mobile platform that would

 _nor does it address the huge repercussions it could have._

There have been a lot of keys struck in anger since this was announced, and I find it to be too naïve. Apple would never enforce such a clause against something that was beneficial to them. So far, there have been no killer apps in the mobile space (sorry guys). While I enjoy the massively discounted offerings on the AppStore, the core OS and applications that Apple provides are _the only things that affect my device buying decision_.

When someone makes a killer app that cannot be released on the AppStore, then this will matter. Until then... Sorry, no one was going to buy your Scheme- based app anyway.

<comment><USER6> I'm having trouble following your logic.

How do I determine whether a useful and nonthreatening program in the App Store is beneficial to Apple? It seems like it would go without saying that every good app is a boon, but you appear to imply that there's some threshold of "killer"-ness that needs to be breached before your contribution is beneficial (and by extension you are allowed to use whatever language you want). How is this determined?

Further, since you state that an app must be "killer" to be beneficial, and that there are no killer apps in the store, does this mean that Apple derives no benefit at all from the App Store? Because that seems like a pretty absurd claim.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Could they at least acknowledge the fact that they intentionally destroyed an adobe product for no real reason? I would be much more interested in hearing why they thought Flash CS5's export to IPhone capability shouldn't go to market rather than about how apple is "the good guy". The laundry list of things apple has done well were particularly infuriating. Take any company, no matter how destitute, and they could easily have marketers spin up a list such as this. Microsoft, Adobe, and Google have done at least as many things right over the years. In either case, they really skirted the issue at hand.

It is true that adobe literally said "Screw you apple". But sticks and stones can only do so much. Just consider what Apple threw their way. And we shouldn't forget all of the open source projects that have gone down because of Apple's lazy cannon ball.

<comment><USER6> Considering how poorly Adobe has treated non-Windows platforms for the past several years, I would accept "sheer spite" as an answer to why they're screwing over Adobe. The better question is why Apple would do this to all other developers as well.

<comment><USER10> I'm more interested in how Adobe is a competitor to Apple (in a Windows-vs-Mac way). Though there are a couple of areas that Apple and Adobe products compete, I would hardly say that it's in Apple's best interests to screw over Adobe. Do you think that the Apple faithful will be especially pleased if Adobe pulled all of their products from the Mac platform? I'm betting that it would tick off a fair amount of Apple users, who could direct their anger at Apple if they feel that Apple started the whole thing.

<comment><USER6> Do you think Adobe stockholders would be particularly pleased if they pulled all of their products from the Mac platform? They would be burned at the stake. Apple isn't afraid of that happening because it isn't going to.

<comment><USER10> I'm not saying that Adobe actually _would_ pull their products from Macs, but I'm kind of surprised by the responses from the 'Mac faithful.' A good portion of Mac users rely on Adobe products for their livelihood, yet they rally behind Apple. I'm just wondering if they would actually change their tune if Photoshop was no longer available for the Mac, or would they just change careers so that they could stay on the platform.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Apple's troubles in the mid '90s were not the fault of third-party developers. Windows NT _was_ a better OS than classic Mac OS (and I was a Mac guy at the time). Macs of the day were uninspired and expensive. The recent switch to PowerPC had caused issues with a number of applications; most still worked, but it wasn't exactly fast. The phased introduction of PowerPC meant a lot of people considering new Macs waited, and some jumped ship.

Apple's recovery didn't have anything to do with playing hardball with developers. Apple recovered because it started making better products. Apple can retain its position in the smartphone market by continuing to make the best product. All they'll get from acting like a bully is ill will.

<comment><USER12> _Apple can retain its position in the smartphone market by continuing to make the best product. All they'll get from acting like a bully is ill will._

I disagree, I think blocking flash is a good strategy for Apple. They stand to gain a lot and Ill will passes.

If they are able to block the platform and kill it then people will quickly forget if they continue to grow their market share. Apple is not interested in allowing development multiple mobile operating systems easily. Apple sells a platform and they want as many exclusive applications as possible. Exclusive applications retains the value in the handset rather than elsewhere (for example the network). Apple does not the handset to be commodity hardware driving down profits. The applications and their delivery is the unique selling point: hence the advert "there's an app for everything".

The hardware can be emulated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> the only reason i'm jealous of people with iphones is they can play words with friends and turf wars, which all my friends play. apple knows if popular apps are easy to release on multiple systems at once, it will make their exclusive offerings less compelling.

</comment><comment><USER14> Like all of the articles praising Apple's actions, this one focuses solely on the conflict between Apple and Adobe, as if that's all there was to it, as if those decrying Apple's actions are doing it out of love for Adobe and not because Apple's actions and public statements on the matter are inconsistent, hypocritical and are causing huge collateral damage to various companies and individuals who have nothing to do with Adobe or Flash or Microsoft and have only been adding value to the App Store.

I found this piece on Ars Technica to be more insightful and closer to reality (i.e., outside of the Reality Distortion Field):

[http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/04/steve-jobs- weighs-...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/04/steve-jobs-weighs-on- iphone-os-dev-controversy.ars)

<comment><USER15> I agree with what was said below, it wasn't a great article, but you must not have read the entire thing. His main point is actually that Apple is providing a hell of a distribution platform for developers that is going to be very expensive to leave.

<comment><USER14> I did read it, but you're right about what his main point was. I was mainly referring to the last two paragraphs.

His main point boils down to, "Baby, look how sweet it is up in here, look at this bling bling, now shut up while I smack you about." Sure, I agree, Apple has a wonderful, beautiful setup. I don't think anyone disputes that, but I fail to see how that's supposed to make me respect their actions.

<comment><USER15> Apple doesn't have a quantity problem, they have a quality problem.

You don't have to respect anything, but not at a certain point it's like being pissed that you can't say fuck in an ad on television. These guys paid a lot of money to build an audience (of extremely high demographic value, mind you), and a platform for you to talk to it on and make money from it directly, sorry but you have to follow their rules.

<comment><USER14> 1) The quality argument has been shown to be utter hogwash. Simply untrue, utterly devoid of rational backing. Read the Ars link I posted for details.

2) All of these companies and developers have been following the rules only to just now have them changed on them for utterly shitty reasons.

3) Apple isn't enforcing their own rules. Lots of apps break the rules yet are allowed on the store. Their rules, at this point, amount to: we're gonna let you in if we like you. That's a pretty crummy rule; hope your business plan doesn't depend on it.

4) You're missing half the perspective. Apple should be grateful to the developers who have worked their asses off and bent over backwards to satisfy Apple's various restrictions to fill their store with lots of software. If Apple treats them poorly, they'll find developers choosing other platforms.

<comment><USER15> 1) The quality argument has been shown to be utter hogwash. Simply untrue, utterly devoid of rational backing. Read the Ars link I posted for details.

Totally true, one is not better than the other. But when you've got a ton of developers and you want to raise the barrier to entry (and they do) how else should they be doing it? Choosing the apps themselves?

2) All of these companies and developers have been following the rules only to just now have them changed on them for utterly shitty reasons.

Yes that's true. At the same time, that's life. You play in someone else's playground they make the rules. No one forced anyone to be an iphone developer. It's not your RIGHT to be an iphone developer in the same way it's your RIGHT to be a web developer. Remember when the facebook app developer stopped developing for the app store? That wasn't just for show.

3) Apple isn't enforcing their own rules. Lots of apps break the rules yet are allowed on the store. Their rules, at this point, amount to: we're gonna let you in if we like you. That's a pretty crummy rule; hope your business plan doesn't depend on it.

Again, I'm not saying any of this is nice for developers, but hope your business plan doesn't depend on someone else's marketplace.

4) You're missing half the perspective. Apple should be grateful to the developers who have worked their asses off and bent over backwards to satisfy Apple's various restrictions to fill their store with lots of software. If Apple treats them poorly, they'll find developers choosing other platforms.

Sorry but even without the app store the iPhone would still be the number one selling phone. No question about it. The app store is great, but Apple easily could've done it without it. And please don't forget that all of these developers were chasing what was called a "modern day gold rush" - <USER2> weren't volunteering their time for Apple. They bent over backwards more than willingly, and continue to do so.

This is software companies outsourcing their marketing to Apple and complaining when the service changes. This is what happens when you don't have control over your business. It sucks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This article says absolutely nothing about suicidal tendencies. His entire argument is that the iPhone is well-established. But plenty of people who seem to have it going for them are suicidal; just look at celebrities.

<comment><USER17> er, I think you may have missed the point slightly

<comment><USER17> [edit: or that's some sort of bizarre sarcasm you're using]</comment></comment></comment>


The best things and stuff of 2011 by Fogus - <AUTHOR> http://blog.fogus.me/2011/12/31/the-best-things-and-stuff-of-2011/ <comment><USER3> Is it just me, or does anyone else feel like an underachiever after reading that? :-/ In comparison my year feels like I spent it watching re-runs on TV in my pajamas with a bowl of Cheetos by my side.

On a serious note, that is an excellent selection of papers and books - <USER2> fogus. You have me very inspired for 2012. Now, on to get some reading done.

<comment><USER4> Always remember, no matter how hard you work it's important to take some Cheeto time occasionally.

<comment><USER3> Thanks fogus. FWIW awesome work by you, the Clojure and the ClojureScript team this year. Kudos! Looking forward to more informative posts in 2012

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Excited that fogus included core.logic <https://github.com/clojure/core.logic> as one of his favorite code reads of 2011. Most of the credit of course goes to Dan Friedman, Will Byrd, Oleg Kiselyov (+ many other miniKanreners), Rich Hickey, Clojure/core, and the Clojure community for providing the literature, implementations, tools, and enthusiasm to make it all possible. Looking forward to seeing where it all goes in 2012.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for a very exciting and productive year with your work on core.logic. Can't wait to see how it gets used in the future!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> From the paper "RRB-Trees: Efficient Immutable Vectors" I ended up reading about finger trees. This blog post is a very nice intro:

<http://apfelmus.nfshost.com/articles/monoid-fingertree.html>

</comment><comment><USER8> Being included (even if only peripherally) in this post makes me feel like an impostor:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome>

</comment><comment><USER9> Is there something similar to Org-mode for vi?

<comment><USER10> There are a couple of work-in-progress `org-mode` clones for Vim, VimOrganizer in particular. However, I do not feel comfortable recommending either VimOrganizer or its counterparts. Personally, I've realized that any `org- mode` implementation to Vim would be going against the editor's nature. I might recommend TaskWarrior if you're looking for command-line GTD application as an alternative to `org-mode`.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> A good year end wrap-up, but, it caused me to order more books from Amazon. Does Michael own Amazon stock? :-)

<comment><USER12> No, just a referral code (which is perfectly fine).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What was Datalog used for?</comment>


Dynamo vs. Cassandra: Systems Design of NoSQL Databases (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://sujithjay.com/data-systems/dynamo-cassandra/ <comment><USER2> This is the key idea behind these databases. It is a good way to design a hash table to scale seamlessly. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consistent_hashing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consistent_hashing)

</comment><comment><USER3> I suppose interest in this is rising since AWS just announced managed Cassandra.

<comment><USER4> I didn't see if there was a re:invent talk about it, but is it actuallly Cassandra under the hood? It seemed like it might just be the Cassandra API akin to Aurora being MySQL.

<comment><USER3> It happens to be Cassandra, but that did make me think about the way Amazon brands the Postgres compatible Aurora as "Aurora PostgreSQL".

That's pretty lousy of them to take advantage of the name. I imagine the uptake would be lower if it weren't in the name, and they had to settle for just saying "Postgres Compatible" in the description.

I also imagine AWS would come after me if I launched "XYZ Fargate" or similar.

<comment><USER5> There are two separate offerings. AWS offers Aurora/Postgres which is a fork of Postgres with Amazon's own code and there is regular RDS/Postgres which is basically managed Postgres.

<comment><USER3> I'm not talking about RDS.

I'm talking about "Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL". That's what they call it. See this page, for example: [https://aws.amazon.com/quickstart/architecture/aurora- postgr...](https://aws.amazon.com/quickstart/architecture/aurora-postgresql/)

As mentioned, they likely wouldn't tolerate a "Tyingq Typhoon Fargate" that was my Fargate clone.

<comment><USER5> It _is_ Postgres. It's using the same source code as a base and it's compatible with all Postgres tools.

<comment><USER3> The storage backend isn't Postgres, and I assume the repeated use of the words "compatible" and "wire protocol" is on purpose, so they can continue to change it.

<comment><USER5> Who cares about the "storage backend"? How does that affect clients?

<comment><USER6> Clients no, but if you have had a Postgres DBA optimize your database to take advantage of known Postgres storage backend behavior you may be in for unexpected performance degradation under the assumption "it's just Postgres".

That said, I dust that's pretty uncommon.

<comment><USER5> Well, you get the same problem if you have "network administrators" who took one AWS certification and call themselves "AWS Consultants".

In both cases you end up with suboptimal solutions. The lesson to learn is not that AWS shouldn't be making storage optimizations, it's that you don't depend on a bunch of old school net ops "lift and shifters" who didn't take the time to learn the environment and who think that the cloud is just an overpriced colo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yearly reminder dynamo != dymanodb

<comment><USER8> Hmm, looks like Dynamo is a storage system. Interesting, never heard about it before.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamo_(storage_system)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamo_\(storage_system\))

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> In the last write wins mechanism if two writes (V1 and V2) happen concurrently to different replicas why is V2 considered the last write in the article.

Reading the explanation and lead up, i was left with the impression that the last updates to each column (for a columnar store like Cassandra) would take effect so the final would be

{"street" : "Cubbon", "city" : "Bombay"}

</comment><comment><USER10> Is it just me having inadequate vision or the visual design of the article is challenging? Light grey text on white background, dark red and blackish colors on dark grey background.</comment>


Everything You Never Wanted to Know About CMake - <AUTHOR> https://izzys.casa/2019/02/everything-you-never-wanted-to-know-about-cmake/ <comment><USER2> Turns out I'm not alone who spent considerable time fighting with CMake configuration issues. I ended up patching it to support a basic debug server protocol, so you could step through the CMakeLists.txt files in a debugger. In case anyone's interested, here's the CMake fork with debug support [0] and there's a detailed tutorial [1].

[0] [https://github.com/sysprogs/cmake](https://github.com/sysprogs/cmake)

[1] [https://visualgdb.com/tutorials/cmake/debugger/](https://visualgdb.com/tutorials/cmake/debugger/)

<comment><USER3> Have you talked to the CLion team about this, whether to integrate it into the product or make a plugin for it (if such a thing is possible)?

Given how CMake centric CLion is, and how abusively dumb the CMake DSL is, your project sounds like a great thing to teach CLion about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> CMake is awful, and the fact that the C++ community seems to be settling around it will be a massive disadvantage in the long run. Why do you think so many WASM examples use Rust? It's because Cargo is a sane build system that makes cross-compilation easy.

Issues with CMake:

\- The DSL is not very good. It needs proper functions, for one.

\- Non-hermetic builds (also mentioned in this thread)

\- No ability to easily query the build DAG

\- Headers are not modelled properly (they should be a dictionary of paths -> paths, not a list of include directories)

\- Build folders cannot reliably be used between configurations, leading to confusion and cache misses

\- Everything is convention driven. It does not model the build graph properly.

\- Globs do not work properly (maybe that has changed recently?)

\- The cache is not portable across a network, or even between folders on the same machine

The C++ community deserves better!

Others in this thread have mentioned some modern alternatives:

\- Buck Build (Facebook, Uber, AirBnB)

\- Bazel (Google)

\- Pants (Twitter)

\- Please (Thought Machine)

It doesn't actually matter which of these succeeds. They all model the builds in such a way that you can easily transpile between them.

<comment><USER5> Cargo (and Rust tooling in general) still have an annoying design flaw in my mind -> they all pretend that system package managers don't exist.

Admittedly with rust not having an ABI you'd still have to rebuild all the packages whenever the compiler was updated, but I'd like to see rustup support toolchains installed to the system.

<comment><USER6> This is a rustup issue, not a Cargo issue. You can use a system-installed Cargo/rustc just fine.

<comment><USER7> rustup link can point to a system installed rust, so should be fine!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> CMake suffers from a lack of conventions. If you want to follow some set of conventions and have one directory for your headers and another for your sources and another for your tests etc you still end up having to write a hundred lines or more of error-proned CMake.

As ugly as things like Maven and Gradle are, if you follow all of their conventions they get out of your way.

In addition:

\- no cross-platform way to require a compiler version or way to set compiler flags

\- linkers are not abstracted from you (good luck trying to get cross-platform support for relocatable binaries; cmake really bungles up rpath etc)

\- also good luck trying to link both static and dynamic libraries and targets

\- third-party libraries aren't really a first-class thing

\- no simple way to specify "build all these things into the target directory with a conventional file layout"

80% of projects need to deal with these and not a lot else. Why is there not a list of "follow these conventions and you don't really need to write or look at cmake file"?

(To be fair: compilers, linkers, and OSes share some blame in not being more consistent but the goal of a competent build-system is to handle these things for the 80% case.)

It doesn't _really_ matter how terrible the syntax and internal implementation are if most reasonable use-cases don't need to look at it.

<comment><USER9> They recently added a convention: target-based CMake!

Now, because they are switching to what every sane build system was 5 years ago, _but over the course of 10s of 3.x versions_ , your CMake buildfiles are about to explode in complexity and frankly, stupidity. Lots of "does this target exist already because I need to support some older version alongside bleeding edge" and usually, if not, just copy that stuff over from their HEAD.

Everything they touch goes terrible. We just need to stop with like version 3.10, pretend CMake is dead and slap a DEPRECATED warning at the beginning. It's the only way out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I want to upvote this for solid info, but I want to flag it so fewer people have to know about CMake. It blows my mind that experienced software developers would develop yet another pseudo-language DSL vs creating a portable library (python, java, go, whatever) that has a sensible interface.

<comment><USER11> I'm not sure what you mean. If for whatever reason I need to set up a big C/C++ application so that it can compile on diverse systems, CMake is one of my best bets for getting that to happen. If anyone would like to suggest a better option I would gladly switch, but as it stands I think CMake is pretty useful to know about.

<comment><USER10> I'm not arguing that it doesn't do what it was designed to do. I'm arguing that it is a grotesque DSL with bizarre design choices. CMake would have been better off as a cross-platform library that didn't re-invent concepts that other programming languages have already gotten correct, and instead focused on making the build system be cross-platform.

<comment><USER12> I've mentioned the same thing before and ironically, CMake was developed in the course of building medical imaging software[0] that was using Tcl, a flexible, embeddable language, but then decided to roll their own ad hoc language in this case. They left a LOT on the table with that decision, I think.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VTK](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VTK)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The syntax of cmake is not very elegant, and error-prone. It also does not scale to large projects, configure times go up quickly. The documentation also leaves much to be desired.

That cmake is in the place it is nowadays is a reflection of the state of cross-platform build systems 10 years ago, and possibly some marketing.

Interesting alternatives worth checking out: Meson and gn (the latter can be used for building llvm)

<comment><USER14> I'd like to add Buck and his siblings Bazel & Pants to this list. Buck is used by large companies like Dropbox, Facebook and AirBnB.

Additionally I want to mention my company released also a package manager that uses buck as a packaging format: [https://github.com/LoopPerfect/buckaroo](https://github.com/LoopPerfect/buckaroo)

And so far over 320 libraries have been ported to buck and are maintained by our bots: [https://github.com/buckaroo-pm](https://github.com/buckaroo-pm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't get the hate for CMake. It has several useful advantages over plain makefiles:

* It's meant to be cross-platform, so a well structured CMake file will work in Windows.

* CMake modules allow you to include source-based libraries without a lot of drama. This is especially useful for cross-compiling or embedded use-cases.

* Out-of-source builds are supported with no additional work on my part. This is great for CI generating debug, release, and other build variants from a single cloned repository.

<comment><USER16> Comparing anything against plain Makefiles is a really low bar. Makefiles have been around since 1976. I think the hate for CMake comes from other directions entirely. The CMake scripting language is especially bad. Out-of-source builds were never really that hard in the first place. I think people hate CMake either because they were doing something slightly more unusual than CMake tolerated, or because they hated CMake's language (which is very easy to hate).

CMake has simply sucked less, overall, than the competitors of its time, for most common build tasks. That era is over, now that the new generation of build systems is here (Bazel, Buck, Pants, Please).

<comment><USER17> I wonder how Makefiles got such a bad reputation. After decades of reading how bad Makefiles are, I recently tried writing one for a moderately complex build, just for fun. I was pleasantly surprised: make is very fast, it's well- documented, and the execution model is so simple that I found it very easy to figure out how to script the things I needed to do. I'm not saying it's great, but there are a lot worse build systems around that people still actively advocate (cough msbuild).

<comment><USER16> Over the past 30 years or so, build tools for C and C++ programs have converged to what you see today.

For example, with GCC you can use the -M options, and then you can -include the result in your makefile. This was not always possible. You had to manually specify the .h files for every .c, and if you omitted one, you could get a successful build but a broken program!

Then consider the process of building a shared library, which is different on different platforms, but if you restrict yourself to GCC on Linux with GNU Binutils it's damn easy.

There are a few other, minor failings of Make. But you're right, it's very comprehensible and straightforward. I still say that it's a low bar, though, by modern standards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I feel dirty whenever I modify a CMake file but you, madam/sir, have opened the gates of hell and had me peer in. _shiver_

<comment><USER19> I'm always willing to help others pierce the veil of reality from time to time. Hope you enjoyed the post :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I used Makefile in university and that was simple enough until you needed to do something more complicated and then it started to become unwieldly fast. Back then, GNU was popular and automake/autoconf were attached to every project. If you were building on a Linux system, it worked, but being a Mac user, it always came with gotchas. It was quite a pain to use honestly and required a very deep understanding of it's .m4 design if you wanted to do anything clever.

Cmake seemed to work well, meaning, I could just open the GitHub project and generate an Xcode project file and bam, it just worked. However, agreeing with everyone here, holy hell, trying to start a new project with it, or migrate another project over to it is quite a futile experience.

It has several escape hatches in the weirdest places. Need to pass a conditional compiler flag? Good luck with that exercise. A compiler flag was added from a previous macro and there doesn't seem to be a way to keep it from doing that. I don't know, the whole system seems nice when you don't have to touch the make file, it just works, but I can only imagine the hair splitting effort it took to get that make file in a workable state.

</comment><comment><USER21> The thing I want most from a build tool is not a nice DSL or portability. What u want most is hermetic builds. There are only a few told out there that do it. CMake is not one of them.

<comment><USER22> What do you mean "hermetic" in this context, and why does CMake fail?

Also, for my purposes (using both Windows and GNU/Linux at work), portability is a tremendous benefit.

<comment><USER16> In this context, "hermetic" means that for every step in the build, all inputs and outputs are known by the build system. Hermetic builds are reproducible, and can be more easily done by a distributed build cluster. Hermetic build rules can also be run in a sandbox, so you can have assurances that your build scripts are correct.

With non-hermetic builds, it's much more difficult to verify the correctness of your build rules, which means that you might get non-reproducible builds or you might get incorrect incremental builds. With hermetic builds, it's always safe to do an incremental build, no matter what state the repository is in.

<comment><USER23> In my experience, this is usually handled with a combination of source control and containers(Docker, but more commonly just a chroot image).

<comment><USER16> I'm not sure how source control is connected. Normally, I want hermetic builds whether or not the files I am building are checked into source control yet.

<comment><USER23> Well if you want repeatability, I'm assuming that means over some long timeframe, which means you need a way to get the code as it was at some point.

You then need to build that code using a consistent set of tools and libraries, which is where the chroot comes in.

<comment><USER16> Repeatability definitely does not mean some long time frame, it's over any time frame. Short time frames have the largest impact, because it allows you to use a shared cache for build products.

One big chroot around your whole build system isn't enough, you can run into nondeterminism problems due to relative ordering of different build steps during execution. This is why it's nice that the new build systems make each individual step hermetic, because you can make a separate chroot for each individual step (Bazel executes each build step in a separate sandbox).

This allows you to cache all intermediate results, share the cache, and get the same results both for clean and incremental builds, repeatably. It's also easier to remove nondeterminism from individual build steps rather than looking at the whole build.

<comment><USER23> Cool, didn't know that. I like the idea of breaking things up into steps.

So you're saying this takes care of race conditions in the build where things may happen out of order even if you have a fixed environment?

<comment><USER16> Yes. Since the different steps are executing in different sandboxes, you can be confident that there are no race conditions between them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I use CMake because most of the dependencies I consume use CMake, and tooling for CMake is more widely available.

</comment><comment><USER24> For those who just want to get something building in cmake, just start with a template project and modify it.

[https://github.com/kstenerud/modern-cmake- templates](https://github.com/kstenerud/modern-cmake-templates)

</comment><comment><USER25> I tried to learn CMake 4-5 years ago and just gave up. Cumbersome, weird ......

</comment><comment><USER26> I have always been using makefile, not perfect, but good/solid enough for all my use cases.

Maybe just use python/etc to write a better wrapper for Makefiles? There are so many build system to choose these days.

</comment><comment><USER27> Is there a good way to debug CMake build rules (especially in the presence of add_custom_command and friends)? I've got a case which builds differently in Make vs Visual Studio---in VS, dependencies get messed up and some files don't even get built at all (and then the build fails later on because those files are missing). I can't for the life of me figure out how to debug this, it's absolutely infuriating.

<comment><USER28> I've got by with some combination of the following:

\- message(STATUS ...) or message(FATAL_ERROR ...) for printing stuff out at configure time, e.g.

        message(STATUS "libcurl found: ${HAVE_LIBCURL}")

\- cmake -E echo for printing stuff out at build time, e.g.

        add_custom_command(TARGET lorenz POST_BUILD
            COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -E echo "lorenz command line:"
            COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -E echo '$<TARGET_FILE:lorenz>' ${LORENZ_ARGS}
            VERBATIM)

\- diagnostic-level MSBuild output for dependency issues - you can configure this in Visual Studio, Tools, Options, Projects and Solutions, I think (it's around there somewhere). You might not expect much from MSBuild debug output, considering how annoying the rest of it is, but it's actually extremely comprehensive, and I've found it useful for figuring out even rather weird stuff. There's quite a lot of it, though, so get a cup of tea

A passing familiarity with the MSBuild syntax might be helpful, but I've managed to do mostly without.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> It always pisses me off when I have to build a GitHub project or something with cmake. Just use a Makefile and autoconf, dammit.

</comment><comment><USER30> Every day I bitterly regret that they decided not to use Tcl for CMake in the end.</comment>


Facebook ad boycott organizers met with Zuckerberg. It didn't go well - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/07/tech/facebook-civil-rights-meeting/index.html <comment><USER2> I wonder if FB is doing all these things in non-english markets too, like Philippines and Myanmar..</comment>


My resume harvested by oncontracting.com very suspecious operation - <AUTHOR> Doesn't look like a startup or a legit business. I sent an email to info @ oncontracting and no response.
Quick search on google shows a bunch of pdf files in a php directory...
https://www.google.com/webhp?#q=pdf+site:oncontracting.com
I seriously doubt their site is secure and can't help but think, how easy it is to harvest data but forget about the security basics. <comment><USER2> Don't you think you're overreacting just a bit?

You had your resume somewhere it could be "harvested" \-- and you're alarmed that a staffing agency found it?

Security basics?

Have you tried calling them? According to this yelp page ([http://www.yelp.com.au/biz/mountainview-tech-staffing-los- al...](http://www.yelp.com.au/biz/mountainview-tech-staffing-los-altos)), they're open right now.

<comment><AUTHOR> I just re-read the headline I posted, I over did it.

I got an answer few hours later from their Twitter account saying they'll fix it.

Security wise I noticed my pdf had a naming format first_last.pdf stored in certain directory path under php_uploads.

Thanks for looking up the contact info I finally found the founder of the site on Angel.co & LinkedIn.</comment></comment>


Asperger's Syndrome, the Nazi Regime and the Dangerous Power of Labeling People - <AUTHOR> http://time.com/5255779/asperger-syndrome-nazi-germany-history/ <comment><USER2> >"The Third Reich was a diagnosis regime, obsessed with sorting the population into categories, cataloging people by race, religion, politics, sexuality..."

It's never good to categorize people like that.

Many groups throughout history have done it for many different reasons, some less sinister than others, some with very good intentions in mind...

But ultimately it's not about the intention, it's about the mindset that accompanies putting infinitely complex individuals into neat little baskets.

It's obvious when we read about the Nazi's doing it that it's bad, but remember in the modern day when other groups try to do it - even with virtuous intentions - that it's still bad.</comment>


Simjacker – Next Generation Spying over Mobile - <AUTHOR> https://www.adaptivemobile.com/blog/simjacker-next-generation-spying-over-mobile <comment><USER2> Would be nice to have more information on:

* Which countries?

* How can I see whether my SIM still supports S@T? (The article makes it sound like it usually does.)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is the page that actually has details that _should_ have been on the home page.</comment>


The Google Cloud API - <AUTHOR> http://googleappengine.blogspot.com/2012/04/google-cloud-api-cloud-coverage.html

<comment><USER2> there had to be at least one april fool article on first page.. n guess what.. it's google's..</comment>


Liquid Wood Is Plastic of Tomorrow, Say Scientists  - <AUTHOR> http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,3938912,00.html?maca=en-tagesschau_englisch-335-rdf-mp

<comment><USER2> This is encouraging, but I couldn't find the word 'cost' anywhere in the article. Any technology that claims to replace an existing commodity like plastic needs to pass what Vinod Khosla calls the 'Chindia test': if it's not cheap enough to be commercially viable in China and India, it's not going to be successful.

<comment><USER3> True, but cost depends on scale. And economies of scale can quickly make the expensive cheap.

<comment><USER2> Cost goes down with scale only when scaling is cheap, but the article also does not mention the production technology's ability to scale cheaply.

<comment><USER4> Nor does it mention the actual energy required to make the stuff. It very well may require more fossil fuels in energy to make it than using the same oil directly in plastic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Due to the fact that this new plastic is made out of wood, I am curious to what extent it behaves as wood when burned. Will it melt, or will it go straight to combustion. In the case that it does burn, will it burn as clean as wood, or does it generate harmful gasses?

<comment><USER6> Burning wood gives off harmful gases (other than CO and CO2 and H2O).

Never confuse "natural" with healthy. Arsenic (for example) is natural. So is smallpox.

<comment><USER5> Very true. However, burning wood is certainly less polluting than burning plastic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Someone needs to figure out how to mass-produce this stuff from algae farms and sell it as "LiqWood"... :P

</comment><comment><USER8> So, when is tomorrow?

</comment><comment><USER9> Oh yay, no more oil drilling... set deforestation to 400%!!! /sarcasm

Yes we're not going to belch out more CO2 by harvesting oil. However, we don't grow enough trees to begin with and exponentially increasing the demand for lumber will be a disaster for preventing illegal logging.

I mean global warming will kill off maybe a thousand or so species, where as completely removing the Amazon rainforest will probably kill a million species.

I'm sick of all this pro-green BS that 'saves the planet' whilst killing everything on it. I mean Wind Turbines supposedly reduce carbon emissions, however they're killing thousands of birds and bats which has a drastic effect on the food chain. Bats eat thousands of mosquitoes a day, imagine what'll happen to the rates of malaria and west nile if we expand wind power and extinct all the bats. Not only that but they're killing already endangered animals like the Albatross.

The ecological effect of wind turbines could be far worse than pumping CO2 into our atmosphere ever could be. It's possible for many species to adapt to environmental change, especially birds due to their migratory instincts, however bird's can't adapt to not get hit by rotating blades.

If this turns out to be cheap or not, I think there'll be drastic damage to the world ecology - especially in 3rd world countries.

<comment><USER10> Basically /every/ large-scale industry causes environmental harm. The question is to what extent.

The issue with climate change is that this is one of the things we think may have caused mass extinctions. So your number seems to be off by a few orders of magnitude.

<comment><USER9> The rainforest houses 80% of all the worlds species, how can deforestation _not_ cause more ecological harm than global warming? I don't think my figures are off at all. over 20 million species at risk is accurate and deforestation will make easily 90% of them endangered because only a small amount thrive in different environments.

Not to mention, cutting down rainforests causes global warming to begin with so what's the point of reducing oil consumption if we're going to cause global warming by hacking down trees and thus reducing the worlds ability to remove CO2 and yes rainforests are responsible for 28% of all the worlds oxygen recycling.

Only around 20% of the worlds wood is harvested from sustainable forests, which means for this not to harm the environment sustainable forest use would have to be ramped up five-fold to meet present consumption. Not to mention the estimated demand for lumber is still increasing, meaning it would take around 6-7 times the present sustainable forests to cope with global demand by around 2020. Increasing demand through 'wood plastics' would make this even worse.

<comment><USER5> The product they are using to make this plastic is a byproduct of making paper. This does not necessarily mean more deforestation, just that paper- making will now generate other useful products.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Startup Solves 'Star Wars' Droid Puzzle - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/20/business/media/start-up-solves-star-wars-droid-puzzle.html?&moduleDetail=section-news-3&action=click&contentCollection=Media&region=Footer&module=MoreInSection&pgtype=article <comment><USER2> The solution is probably a bit like this: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballbot](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballbot)

<comment><USER3> More like this: [https://xkcd.com/413/](https://xkcd.com/413/)</comment></comment>


Hipster says goodbye - <AUTHOR> http://hipster-goodbye.herokuapp.com/

<comment><USER2> I have no idea what Hipster was.

<comment><AUTHOR> For a little perspective: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2173145>

They later pivoted into a web app where you submit images for online postcards.</comment></comment>


First impressions of Filecoin - <AUTHOR> https://gergely.imreh.net/blog/2019/02/first-impressions-of-filecoin/ <comment><USER2> Seems a little odd to devote so much of the article to evaluating the user interface when the current release is aimed at "developers, researchers, and community members who want to help _make_ Filecoin"[1]. Still, I can see the potential.

One thing I'm still not sure of is how Filecoin compares with Sia. Based on the articles I've read so far it seems very similar (except that Sia is older so its tooling/UI is obviously much more mature). Are there any fundamental differences I may be missing?

[1]: [https://filecoin.io/blog/opening-filecoin-project- repos/](https://filecoin.io/blog/opening-filecoin-project-repos/)

<comment><USER3> The main difference is the proof of work algorithm relies on proof of storage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Oof. Manual price setting for the storer/miner, manual storer selection for the user... Pretty large barriers to mainstream adoption. I'd think that in order for that to happen, both of these would be totally automatic. Still needs a lot of work.

<comment><USER2> Which seems totally expected given that the current release was explicitly stated as being "for development".

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The TL;DR: Definitely not ready for primetime.

So many crypto projects lack tooling or a real UI. This is sad and earmarks the distinction between hobby level tools and those which can be used by regular people.

<comment><USER6> Maybe it's a combination of both the bad UI and lack of real use cases. After all, if there is a real demand for decentralized storage space, then it doesn't matter the UI, people will still use it even if it's in beta. The lever just hasn't been tilted enough with a real immediate need.

<comment><USER5> I don't think so. You have to have simple UI's and basic tooling before anyone other than hardcore devs will be interested.

Everything we do with modern website tooling like Shopify was also possible in 1995, but it was too dev-heavy. (I've been in that business since that date.) The _demand_ was there but the barriers to entry were too hard to overcome.

Fix crypto's UIs and you'll see wider adoption.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nice article! Thanks for taking the time to write up such a thorough summary</comment>