Are Black Holes Actually Dark Energy Stars? - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/are-black-holes-actually-dark-energy-stars <comment><USER2> I've seen a couple of articles about this guy recently and they both struck me as weirdly credulous given the apparently complete lack of evidence supporting his theory and the fact that approximately no other scientists seem to find it credible.

<comment> joe-collins At least at the pop-science level, his ideas connect a lot of dots. He'd neatly resolve the weirdness and mystery of black holes, their jets, their information paradox, and dark energy. It feels good.

Whether or not any of it makes a lick of sense once you start actually crunching numbers is another question. The lack of interest from other scientists leaves me skeptical (even if I'm silently enamored of the neatness myself).

<comment><USER3> Yep. I've been hearing mentions of this guy's theories from pop science publications for years even though, as the article says, "The idea has found no support in the astrophysical community—over the last decade, Chapline's papers on this topic have garnered only single-digit citations."

The pop science press is depressingly bad.

<comment><USER4> "Dark Energy Star" is pure marketing speak, and the pop science press loves sexy terms like that, whereas to serious physicists a hyphy phrase like that is going to throw all sorts of red flags, the same way an engineer would be appalled by someone boasting about Chaos Engineering. It's usually referred to as the Cosmological Constant instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We have people like string theorists thinking about higher dimensions in space.

It occurred to me the other day when the dark matter article hit the front page that our equation for gravity works with three dimensions but those dimensions are uniform. I can turn an object with very little effort (literally without doing work) and it's the same size from our perspective.

How would it work if matter has more dimensions that aren't proportional, or if space is curved in higher dimensions and the differences are in the noise floor here on earth and in orbit?

<comment><USER6> > I can turn an object with very little effort (literally without doing work) > and it's the same size from our perspective.

I can't reproduce your experiment... I tried turning a piece of paper. At first it looked, say, about as large as a cantaloupe, but when I turned it got smaller and smaller until it practically disappeared, and it becomes very tiny... basically nothing more than a thin line in space. At certain angles I can barely see it at all. What is going on?

<comment><USER7> The distance between any two ink dots remained constant as you rotated the paper, which is what you would expect when the metric is x^2+y^2+z^2. If the "dimensions were not uniform," then the same transformation may alter the distances. Perhaps the parent is on their way to discovering relativity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This seems to try and make a parallel between neutron stars and his proposal of a "dark energy star". This uber-dense matter would stop matter from collapsing enough to form an event horizon.

But there is a serious problem with this. If you measure the density of a black hole by using it's even horizon you'll find that the mass and event horizon do not scale together. For instance, calculated in this way, a galactic mass black hole has a density of only 200kg/m³.

<comment><USER9> It actually is true thought, that some supermassive blackholes have a density thats pretty close to that of water, and their event horizons are very very gentle.

<comment><USER10> I think this is only the case if you consider the mass density to be uniform within the event horizon, which isn't true.

<comment><USER8> Right, but I don't know how else to interpret what he's claiming. Singularity or no singularity, if there's an event horizon, there's a black hole.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "The fabric of space-time" — I hear this a lot, but what does it mean? Does it mean that space and time are a "fabric"? What is such a fabric made of? The idea that space and time are actual objects, instead of intellectual constructs, has always struck me as wrong. (I'm not a physicist.)

<comment><USER4> It's usually referred to as a fabric because in general relativity, spacetime is dynamic, as if it were on a fabric that could stretch and contract in response to the density of matter occupying it. This is where the rubber-sheet analogy comes from.

As for what it is made of, that is one of the great open questions in theoretical physics right now, but also possibly where the analogy breaks down. Because of Lorentz Invariance (light travels at the same speed in all reference frames), it is hard to suppose that there is such a thing as "atoms of spacetime" from which it is made. However, because our world is cosmological and the big bang does actually pick out a preferred reference frame, Lorentz Invarience has to be approximate in some way.

Because of cosmology and the breakdown of reductionism at plank scales, it seems that the notion of spacetime itself is approximate and needs to be replaced with something else. Some people are trying to derive spacetime from purely quantum mechanical notions, while other people are trying to find dual systems where spacetime and quantum mechanics emerge hand-in-hand. The two approaches I'm familiar involve either holography or purely geometric and combinatorial ideas where the principles of general relativity and quantum mechanics are outputs rather than assumptions.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WECVq2YBduY&t=0s&index=9&lis...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WECVq2YBduY&t=0s&index=9&list=PLOchmQOEwXhEIAnI- pyHQlrCnEhmxGnQD)

<comment><USER12> Thanks for linking to the video, it was the most informative handling of the subject I have seen.

After watching, I have a question, please forgive if it is ridiculous or displays some fundamental problem with my layman's understanding of the subject.

If time becomes space-like, and space becomes time-like, can we think of black holes as "time stars"? Would every black hole within our observable universe contain information from all light cones within the observable universe? In other words, would different black holes contain different information?

Does my question make sense?

<comment><USER13> I'm afraid I don't have the time to watch the entire video but, being a physicist, I can still try to answer your questions. Currently, however, your question

> If time becomes space-like, and space becomes time-like, can we think of > black holes as "time stars"?

doesn't make much sense to me. Time does not become spacelike nor does space become timelike. In General Relativity, time and space are not individually defined in an observer-independent fashion in the first place. The terms we use instead are "timelike directions" and "spacelike directions" as well as timelike / spacelike hypersurfaces because they are defined in such a way that all observers will agree on whether a direction / hypersurface is timelike / spacelike. So now that we've replaced the terms "time" and "space" with "timelike" and "spacelike", I hope you'll see that your question is not exactly well-defined.

But maybe I'm misunderstanding you, so please feel free to elaborate on your questions. (Or to point me to an explanation from the video in case you're referring to one.)

As for your second question:

> Would every black hole within our observable universe contain information > from all light cones within the observable universe? In other words, would > different black holes contain different information?

I'm afraid I can't follow this question, either. Would you mind rephrasing it? My initial impression is that you might have a wrong idea of what a lightclone is.

<comment><USER12> I just realized I was replying to the wrong parent comment! So sorry. I was talking about a PBS Space Time episode on YouTube I saw in (or came across via) a different comment.

[https://youtu.be/KePNhUJ2reI](https://youtu.be/KePNhUJ2reI)

<comment><USER13> No worries, I hadn't watched the video yet, anyway. :) So feel free to rephrase your questions if you like!

<comment><USER12> My questions were based in the video I linked above, which it sounds like may be incorrect in the way it presents the topic?

<comment><USER13> Judging from the few minutes I watched, it is at least not very precise, yes.

What they mean when saying that "time and space switch roles inside a black hole" is that in standard Schwarzschild coordinates, the direction given by the time coordinate becomes spacelike at the event horizon and, likewise, the radial coordinate becomes timelike. This statement is specific to Schwarzschild coordinates, though, or, more generally, any coordinate system that is singular/ill-defined at the event horizon. There are coordinate systems, however, that don't exhibit this pathological behavior at the horizon and, there, no switching occurs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I find the idea of a photo of a black hole more interesting than this dark energy star. It didn't seem to be mentioned in the article: when will this "Event Horizon Telescope" have enough data to show us an event horizon?

<comment><USER13> From their blog[1]:

> As the EHT team begins to analyze the 2017 data on Sgr A* and M 87 over the > coming months, preliminary images will begin to emerge, and the searches for > the signatures of orbiting material around the black holes will be > conducted. It is the most exciting time of the project.

[1] [https://eventhorizontelescope.org/blog/eht-status-update- may...](https://eventhorizontelescope.org/blog/eht-status-update-may-1-2018)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The thing is, dark energy is only dark because it doesn't interact electromagnetically, whereas black holes are dark because the light gets trapped. So these are very different concepts.

I think it's fair to say black holes are a kind of "star", but the concept of dark energy and dark matter are something else.

<comment><USER16> > dark energy is only dark because it doesn't interact electromagnetically

That's certainly the case for dark _matter_. After decades of work we still don't know what it is, which has given the word "dark" the additional meaning of 'unknown'.

When it comes to dark _energy_ , I think it mostly implies this second meaning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The big giant glaring hole in his theory is that the total mass of all the black holes in the Universe is _WAY_ less than the amount of dark energy. It's like claiming that the Pacific Ocean was filled in by the Sacramento River. That's why scientists aren't taking it seriously.

</comment><comment><USER5> I managed to confuse myself into a Zeno's paradox situation with how black holes grow.

This is really exotic space. Time dialation immediately outside of the event horizon would make any matter fall so slow that it would take millions of years of time for an observer to see that material cross the horizon.

<comment><USER18> Outside observers never see the material cross the horizon, ever. That's why it's called a horizon, you'll never reach it (from the pov of an outside observer).

Growth-wise, you have to keep in mind that the black hole doesn't grow when matter crosses the horizon, but when the matter gets close enough to the horizon that mass of black hole + mass of new matter creates a blackhole of a larger radius that encompasses that matter.

<comment><USER19> Would this be one way that information would not be destroyed, at least from the reference frame of the outside observer?

<comment><USER20> Question if you don't mind. This "information being destroyed" thing. What do they mean by information? Isn't information a human construct? How is the universe supposed to know what information is?

<comment><USER21> A fun way to imagine it is with Maxwell's Demon.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_demon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_demon)

That is an example of one way in which information can be exchanged for work.

<comment><USER22> This is me being dense, but I don't see the connection to parent's question. Is it that the demon uses information (the speed of the particles?) to perform work (decrease entropy)? But also not really, bc that would violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics? I understood parent's question to be what the heck does "information" mean in this context to begin with. My question too, because I'm pretty sure I've got the wrong answer myself.

<comment><USER18> Information as actual physical property (as opposed to a human construct) is basically the only way we found to solve Maxwell's demon seemingly reducing entropy.

Specifically, the entropy within the box gets converted into information inside the demon's "head", which eventually gets radiated away as entropy outside the box. This way, the box's entropy falls, but the entropy of universe as a whole is raised (or at least maintained).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> If the EHT analysis of Sagittarius A* supported this theory, that would surely it would have already leaked? It seems like it would be simply too incredible not to start circulating amongst researchers and then get out into the wider world.

</comment><comment><USER24> A article about "alternative" black holes without the word LIGO in it? Yeah, I'm gonna have to stop you right there and ask you to sell that snek oil somewhere else.

</comment><comment><USER25> Found an interesting technical summary/critique of these ideas [https://motls.blogspot.com/2005/03/chapline-black-holes- dont...](https://motls.blogspot.com/2005/03/chapline-black-holes-dont- exist.html)

<comment><USER26> Pretty savage...

<comment><USER27> This guy doesn't have all the screws properly tightened. Just saying...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> How likely is this to be the case over Black Holes?

<comment><USER29> No one knows for sure. However it's good to have alternative models to look into if the observational data you eventually get (in this case from the EHT) doesn't match precisely with the mainstream model.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> What is dark energy?

<comment><USER31> When you sum up all the red shifts of a large piles of galaxies they are receding from us at speeds faster than can easily be explained using the Hubble model. One theory for this is a repulsive energy of a form we have not yet observed, dubbed "dark energy", which is purported to be causing accelerating expansion of the universe since the Big Bang. More here:

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> On another note a theory which seems to fit particularly well is called Janus. The concept lies in the existence of a twin universe (ours being matter based the twin being antimatter based) merged together where the black holes are basically where the antimatter is concentrated and thus repulses all the matter hence this seemingly void. This is a succint summary but I hope it makes sense to the more knowledgeable readers of HN.

<comment><USER24> That makes no sense, black holes are like super much the opposite of a void. Further, repulsion is precisely the opposite of gravity.

<comment><USER32> Actually, as far as I get it, black holes just don't exist: it's a journalist term coined for a mathematical concept. In short a black hole is how we call the possible existence of a place in the universe where there is no time nor energy, but it's no more than a mathematical possibility in the end as these are common variables in astrophysics.

<comment><USER16> Black holes exist, in the sense that we have observed several phenomena that can be easily explained by the presence of a black hole, but which couldn't be explained otherwise. For example the orbits of stars around Sagittarius A* ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagittarius_A*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagittarius_A*) ) and the X-ray emmission of Cygnus X-1 ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cygnus_X-1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cygnus_X-1) ).

> In short a black hole is how we call the possible existence of a place in > the universe where there is no time nor energy

I don't know where you got this idea, but black holes don't have "no time" and they contain _lots_ of energy (often several stars' worth).

Keep in mind that time is relative, so when talking about extreme situations like black holes it's important to keep track of what we're talking _relative to_. In particular, if an astronaut left a space ship, approached a black hole, passed beyond the event horizon and carried on going, that astronaut wouldn't really notice: if they looked forwards into the black hole they'd just see normal looking space, if they looked backwards they'd see their ship just as if they'd not entered the black hole. Relative to the astronaut, space and time appear completely normal; hence it doesn't make sense to talk about black holes having "no time".

Things would look different relative to the ship: the image of the astronaut they see would redshift as it approached the event horizon, and would also slow down until it came to a stop when at the horizon.

Note that this ignores tidal forces, which can be large around small black holes (the astronaut would certainly notice if their body were torn apart!). For large black holes like Sagittarius A* the tidal forces at the event horizon should be small enough to ignore.

<comment><USER32> Thanks for the clarification, perhaps I was misleading, the point being that black holes have been deduced by mathematical interpretation, not observation of a phenomenon and today as per your own example we're still trying to find proof of their existence.

On the other hand, based on my understanding of the Janus model as I said in my first comment, the location of the seemingly void places are actually explained by the concentration of antimatter, which repulses matter through gravity. A possibly wrong summary of what I'm visibly struggling to communicate: This model explains how on the same way matter concentration attracts matter and rejects anti-matter, antimatter concentration attract antimatter and rejects matter.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Paket – A dependency manager for .NET projects - <AUTHOR> http://fsprojects.github.io/Paket/ <comment><USER2> 404 error.</comment>


Gender Differences in Executive Compensation and Job Mobility (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://repository.cmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1569&context=tepper <comment><AUTHOR> Abstract:

 _Fewer women than men become executive managers. They earn less, hold more junior positions, and attrit faster. We compiled a large panel data set on executives and formed a career hierarchy to analyze promotion and compensation rates. Given executive rank and background, women are paid more than men, experience less income uncertainty, and are promoted as quickly. Amongst survivors, being female increases the chance of becoming CEO. Hence the gender pay gap and job rank differences are primarily attributable to female executives attriting at higher rates than males in an occupation where survival is rewarded with promotion and higher compensation._

<comment><USER2> (Admission - I've only read the abstract)

I wonder if there is any/what the correlation is between the attrition rate of these females and pregnancy - is becoming pregnant a significant blocker to their survivorship rate?

<comment><USER3> From the conclusion:

 _It is most implausible to suggest that giving birth and caring for young children is the predominant reason why female executive managers, who average 50 years old in our sample, quit. Other unobserved factors leading managers to attrit could include more un-pleasantness, indignities, and tougher unrewarding assignments at work, examples of factors that reduce the attraction of work without necessarily affecting productivity or human capital acquisition. Perhaps women are subject to this form of gender discrimination. Another hypothesis is that women acquire more nonmarket human capital than men throughout their lives, and hence find retirement a relatively attractive option._

<comment><USER4> Why shouldn't women quit at age 50 because of children? If they sacrificed family time for their career before, they might realize that suddenly there is not a lot of time left with their children before they will leave the house. Maybe at 50 they have secured enough money as well to be comfortable working less. Older men seem to be taking time off for family, too.

It's a shame that they have to discredit their paper by ending it with pure speculation ("could include...").

<comment><USER3> At 50 years old, most people's children would be having children of their own, let alone be out of the house. Retiring to spend more time with your adult children wouldn't make much sense when those children are likely just ramping up their own careers.

<comment><USER5> My mother semi-retired in her fifties to care for her grandchildren (providing free childcare so that my sister could continue her career). Perhaps this is a factor.

<comment><USER3> Definitely a possibility, especially since two incomes are becoming so necessary.

<comment><USER6> Not necessary, just desirable because people like buying things.

Considering it 'necessary' is actually part of what makes this a problem. If people knew how to want instead of need, they might next learn how to delay gratifying those wants. Instead, desire becomes confused with necessity and suddenly you can't live without an HDTV right now.

<comment><USER3> The median income per household member in the US was $23,535 in 2004[1]. Unfortunately I can't find a more recent census value for that. In the case of a household with two partners and at least one child, such as we're discussing here, I would think that more than ~$24,000 would be necessary.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hey, if you haven't seen it before, this article by Scott Adams (the Dilbert guy) is a great summary of gender bias in the workplace:

[http://blog.dilbert.com/post/114055529676/my-verdict-on- gend...](http://blog.dilbert.com/post/114055529676/my-verdict-on-gender-bias- in-the-workplace)

If you're going to read it, don't just skim it; read it from end to end.

<comment><USER8> Isn't that the same Scott Adams who said that if he didn't get hugs on the regular he'd start killing people.

<comment><USER7> Doesn't make the content of the article any less valid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Actual title: "Gender Differences in Executive Compensation and Job Mobility"

<comment><USER10> Yes. We changed it back to that from "Gender gaps in promotion and pay due to female attrition". To cherry-pick one detail to highlight from the article is a form (actually the leading form) of editorializing, which is against HN's title rule.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Ah, gender analysis by authors who are all men. Very refreshing.

<comment><USER12> How does their gender matter? Are you implying that men are less capable than women?

<comment><USER13> Classic ad-hominem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So if a woman can "survive" the business environment, she's more likely to become a CEO. To me that says: if she can survive through the bias/discrimination, she's probably much more qualified than her male counterparts.

That women are driven away by bias/discrimination is the true failing of our workplaces.

<comment><USER15> Your logic involves quite a few jumps to conclusions that aren't remotely proven by the contents of the paper.

<comment><AUTHOR> _It is most implausible to suggest that giving birth and caring for young children is the predominant reason why female executive managers, who average 50 years old in our sample, quit. Other unobserved factors leading managers to attrit could include more un-pleasantness, indignities, and tougher unrewarding assignments at work, examples of factors that reduce the attraction of work without necessarily affecting productivity or human capital acquisition._

Although this does not support the "more qualified" argument, the study was specifically tailored to control for attrition from pregnancy, and the authors conclude that they are not entirely sure why older female executives quit at a higher rate than comparable male executives. It's not unreasonable to assume that it could be due to "discrimination" in the form of indignities and unfair assignment of tough/menial work, as the authors suggest.</comment></comment></comment>


Multiuser WebGL/Three.js particle system painting - <AUTHOR> http://wire.2x.io

<comment><USER2> Upon opening, TTP (Time To Phallus) was about 6 seconds.

<comment><USER3> Yeah.

This is really impressive and something with this mechanic would make a great kids game _if_ there was any conceivable way that you could avoid little johnny being scared for life via the "TTP" effect…

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> WOW. Very responsive and frame rate never dipped below 40fps. Although, my fans have just activated on the 2011 MBP Quad core i7!

</comment><comment><USER5> Three.js is awesome, I just wish it had better documentation.

I threw this together in a couple hours:

<http://www.davesgalaxy.com/site_media/test.html></comment>


Constants polyfill for ecma5 - <AUTHOR> http://insulatejs.com <comment><AUTHOR> Insulatejs Library to create constants, immutable objects, members and methods in javascript (constants polyfill for ecma5).

Constants are now a port of javascript ecma6, but the more ubiquitous ecma5, has lacked this essential for any language feature. This is my humble attempt to improve this situation.</comment>


Ask HN: Alternative HN themes? - <AUTHOR>

What custom HN themes do you guys use? I've tried out a bunch, but couldn't really stick with any of them.<p>I'm looking for a dark theme, preferably. <comment><USER2> There is many stylish themes here > [https://userstyles.org/styles/browse?search_terms=hacker+new...](https://userstyles.org/styles/browse?search_terms=hacker+news)

I've done this one; [https://userstyles.org/styles/103436/hacker-news- ycombinator](https://userstyles.org/styles/103436/hacker-news-ycombinator)

</comment><comment><USER3> I have made a dark theme for HN ([https://github.com/dparpyani/HackerNews- DarkTheme](https://github.com/dparpyani/HackerNews-DarkTheme)) -- it uses the Greasemonkey/Tampermonkey plugin.

</comment><comment><USER4> I haven't found an ideal one. I sticked with solarized, though

[https://userstyles.org/styles/92693/dark-hacker-news- solariz...](https://userstyles.org/styles/92693/dark-hacker-news-solarized)</comment>


REST is UnAmerican - <AUTHOR> http://www.from9till2.com/PermaLink.aspx?guid=65d8d39e-bef1-4793-96c1-fa36827f98f1

<comment><USER2> Good, but I kinda lost it when he switched to Marx.

<comment><USER3> Hardly anyone knows anything about Karl Marx nowadays...</comment></comment>


Tired Of Inequality? One Economist Says It'll Only Get Worse - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/2013/09/12/221425582/tired-of-inequality-one-economist-says-itll-only-get-worse <comment><USER3> So "There will be a certain fragility to this existence." but "They may have lives that are quite happy and rewarding" \- how? If you are constantly one minor incident away from doom, you are not happy, you are stressed. Welcome to the precariate.

"I think for a lot of people, upward mobility will be much easier." This does not follow. In a more unequal society, upwards mobility falters as the wealthy form an exclusive layer of society. The best you can hope for in this scenario is to be useful enough that you will be kept compensated. But without the right connections, you will not be permitted to tryly rise. And this theoretical upwards mobility will be dangled in front of you to prevent you from feeling solidarity with everyone who isn't so "useful".

Sound familiar?

<comment><USER4> Precariate - I like that. We need such a word.

Upward mobility might be easier though, even as poverty and precarity increases. Elites would have to shutdown Internet wealth generation somehow to prevent upward mobility.

Right now it's never been easier to start a business and generate income for yourself. We're seeing easier upward mobility for those equipped to take advantage of this, even as others see their opportunities shrink.

<comment><USER5> I think Zarkonnen was trying to say that as the inequality increases then it becomes more and more difficult to rise above a certain threshold. As the inequality increases then that threshold becomes more difficult due to standard economic situations and due to interference from the elite that likely would eventually want to control access.

Today it may be easy to raise your economic standing, but that doesn't mean that will continue into tomorrow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> _Economist Tyler Cowen has some advice for what to do about America 's income inequality: Get used to it. ..._

In the interview, the economist basically says "give up" because that's the way things are going. The economist attributes (mostly) this to computers.

 _" Computers will play a larger role and people who can work with computers can make a lot."_

But those who aren't in the "top 15%" will be okay, since:

 _"... But I think people who are not rich can be extremely happy. And I think the chances to be happy in this new world, with many more opportunities to be creative, to be online, to educate yourself — there'll be a lot more chances to be happy. It's not to say everyone will take them or be equipped to take them, but there will be a lot of new paths to opportunity."_

I do not subscribe to this wishful thinking...

<comment><USER6> _I do not subscribe to this wishful thinking..._

This isn't wishful thinking. It's simply recognition of the fact that feeling materially superior to others is only one of many routes to happiness.

If income doubles for the poor and quadruples for the rich (Cowen's postulated mechanism of increasing inequality), the poor have many new sources of happiness. For example, currently only 38% of the poor have a Playstation or XBox [1]. If the income of the poor doubles, probably every poor person could gain some happiness from video games.

[1] [https://explore.data.gov/Energy-and-Utilities/Residential- En...](https://explore.data.gov/Energy-and-Utilities/Residential-Energy- Consumption-Survey-RECS-Files-A/eypy-jxs2)

<comment><USER7> Empirically, however, societies with higher income inequality have lower happiness (and this is fairly robust to confounding factors and different kinds of society, and even shows up internally when comparing different time periods of the same society, e.g. when you look at different U.S. decades). Perhaps in principle it's possible to have a happy and highly unequal society (in sci-fi this is commonly imagined as involving happiness drugs or VR), but we haven't seen one yet.

<comment><USER6> _Empirically, however, societies with higher income inequality have lower happiness..._

Could you link to some data on this? Ideally something other than "The Spirit Level", which basically just observes that many negative traits are correlated and then puts inequality on the x-axis.

<comment><USER7> A fairly arbitrary sampling of studies (there are many on more specific subjects, if you're interested in researching more specific aspects of the question):

* A general literature survey as of 1995, of the evidence on whether increasing the incomes of everyone (with no change in relative incomes) improves overall happiness: [http://ibe.eller.arizona.edu/docs/2010/Martinsson/easterlin9...](http://ibe.eller.arizona.edu/docs/2010/Martinsson/easterlin95.pdf)

* Income inequality and happiness 1972-2008 in the U.S. and causal hypotheses: [http://inside.bard.edu/~luka/documents/Oishi-Kesebir-Diener-...](http://inside.bard.edu/~luka/documents/Oishi-Kesebir-Diener-InequalityandHappiness-PsychScience.pdf)

* Relationship between regional inequality, happiness, and confounding factors in Japan: [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953610...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953610000791)

* Empirical alignment of utilitarian happiness-maximization and other desiderata often seen as opposed: [http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/22129/JHS_11_2010_605.pdf](http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/22129/JHS_11_2010_605.pdf)

<comment><USER6> These are more of the same - vague correlations without any causal analysis.

The ones based on happiness surveys are even worse, since there is no way to know whether a score of 7 happiness points (on a scale of 1 to 10, or whatever the scale of the survey is) for someone in Denmark in 1976 is comparable to a score of 7 happiness points for someone in Japan in 1996.

<comment><USER7> Incorrect— they have causal analysis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So the future of America looks like San Francisco?

A 0.1% - Capitalists: LP clients of VC firms, very successful founders and VCs

A 10% - Service professionals: rank-and-file VCs, engineers, managers, lawyers, accountants, consultants

A 90% - Unskilled service workers: baristas and waiters at trendy SF hotspots

<comment><USER9> That's not capitalism, that's feudalism: A 0.1% - Aristocrats, Barons, Kings, etc. A 10% - service professionals: shoemakers, weapon makers, creditors (bankers), accountants and whoever else the 0.1% might need to run their empires A 90% - Peasants - born in debt, will die in debt. Wage slaves - <USER2> enough money to perform the work and nothing else.

That's called neo-feudalism. At the top are private creditors of nations - central bankers. The rest owes feud to them from the moment they are born (i.e. the US newborn already has to pay off few hundred thousand in debt through their live-time)

Please don't call it capitalism.

And one more thing -- what really destroyed neo-feudal society was the French Revolution. We need Robespierre's and Danton's guillotining banksters and their whore neo-feudal political class.

That's the only way to revert back to capitalism and liberalism.

<comment><USER10> Or we could just build a colony of smart people on the moon. Or Mars. Or my favorite, a floating city in the climate stable upper atmosphere of Venus. A lot easier to generate renewable power there.

I think that is what is really missing in the world, a frontier to go to when your oppressors get out of hand.

<comment><USER11> Unless it becomes like Elysium? :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Maybe this wouldn't be such a problem if those with the money wouldn't use it to pay Congress to help them make even more money to the detriment of others. I think that's really what bothers most Americans, and not necessarily the fact they can make more money _on their own_.

<comment><USER13> Who is worse, the one begging for the money, or the one supplying it? You're portraying Congress as some kind of passive conduit when in fact they're quite active in their own schemes.

<comment><USER14> I don't see him portraying Congress as anything like that at all. Those people use their money like that because Congress allows it. Congress allows it because voters aren't organized enough to vote them all out. Voters aren't organized for that because the media keep playing the tribal Reps vs Dems game. And I guess the media keep playing that game because there's profit in it for them. It's a vicious cycle that needs to be broken.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> DanI-S One way to deal with income inequality is to shrug your shoulders and pretend it's okay - _" let them drink latte"_ \- which is what this guy is recommending.

Another way is to claw back some of the financial regulation that once protected America's middle class from the full force of market instability. Take a look at this chart comparing income inequality and bank failures over the previous century:

[http://www.tobinproject.org/sites/tobinproject.org/files/ass...](http://www.tobinproject.org/sites/tobinproject.org/files/assets/BankFailures_ChartwithComments_Moss.pdf)

There's not some magic force of technology driving growing inequality. In fact, even in this writer's argument, technological aptitude provides one of the only routes out of the lower classes. Inequality is growing because of financial deregulation since the 1980s.

</comment><comment><USER15> You can't have the Brooklyn Bohemian life without Brooklyn city planning. The modern suburban sprawl demands two-car households, and two-car households demand full-time middle-class employment.

<comment><USER16> Unless this Bohemian class anticipates living with roommates through old age, living in Brooklyn is considerably more expensive than living in suburbia.[1] Perhaps the economist meant Detroit.

[1] The Council for Community and Economic Research: [http://finance.yahoo.com/news/10-most-expensive-places-to- li...](http://finance.yahoo.com/news/10-most-expensive-places-to-live-in-the- u-s--163648923.html)

<comment><USER17> These issues are the outcomes and culmination of corrupt and pernicious actions taken a long time ago in the USA. If you look at Europe and other places around the world, there are sufficient models to emulate to solve these problems; but the corrupt master class has no interest in solving the "problems" that serve their interests and they have no interest in letting us, as a people, realize that we are not exceptional and therefore could learn by looking outside of our own culture and borders.

What America doesn't realize, even the supposed most intelligent and informed, is that we are no different than any other people living under a controlling regime, we just have more resources to burn that allow the margins for error to be humongous compared to other places. The controlled media, corrupt politics, the rationalized abuse of laws you are destroyed for not abiding by, the propaganda, the war mongering, the racist subjugation of certain groups. It's all there, we just don't see it, as a people, because as with the same form of national socialism that destroyed Germany in the early 20th century, the American version of national socialism has brain-washed people into doing, thinking, and saying things to and about others that they would never want happen to themselves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Where's the guy who links to the Guaranteed Basic Income when you need him?

</comment><comment><USER18> In the future, there won't be enough work for everybody to do.

Technology won't just produce cars. Technology won't just produce our food and our clothing. Technology will do everything. Technology will make the allocation of resources very, very efficient, including the allocation of wealth. Technology will take electrical energy and convert it into wealth. In the middle-distant future, the wealth that technology produces will be enough for a whole society of humans to subsist on without doing much work. However, in the beginning this wealth will be concentrated with the people who write the software, make the robots, and otherwise are technologically proficient.

The inescapable conclusion that I'm coming to is that this technology has the possibility of transforming society economically. It has the capacity to lift everyone out of poverty. But we need to adjust our fiscal policy so that the wealth doesn't become so concentrated with so few people. In the future we will be able to afford a safety net for everyone, where everyone is guaranteed a minimum quality of life, without much effort.

We need to go about setting up a Rawlsian framework where inequality is accepted, just as long as the least well off person is still reasonably well off. We can do this by paying for people's health care, paying for their food, paying for their housing. Self-interest and capitalism will still be the paradigm, but it won't be so brutal.

If we do it right.

<comment><USER19> If you go back in time to 1913, and told someone about all the machines we have in 2013, he would say "surely there are no jobs for even 5% of your society". Even not counting that in 2013 bigger percentage of women work than in 1913.

But then, how could he predict that there will be these billion-dollar industries that do things not even invented in 1913. Huge majority of what people do in 2013 just didn't needed to be done in 1913.

I don't doubt people will invent something to waste our time on ever greater scale.

<comment><USER18> I'm not sure I agree. The technological revolution hadn't happened yet in 1913. We saw an increase in new types of jobs over the course of the 20th century because any innovation that occurred still required a significant amount of human labor. I believe we will see a slow acceptance that we are not going to see a high level of full time, high paying, high skill jobs. After the recession, employment has slowly creeped up again but you can see that the types of jobs that people are working now are different than they were in the early 2000s. More jobs might have been created, but they are of a lower quality in terms of hours, pay, benefits, and the amount of skill they require.

We are at a point with technology where any conceivable manual task that we do will almost certainly be automated away at some point, and many tasks requiring high degrees of skill - including intelligence tasks - will also be automated away. It will be increasingly hard for us to find pockets of value in areas that we can offer the marketplace that it hasn't already seen. I do believe the decline won't be rapid - our expectation for full employment will slowly but steadily fade away - but over the course of decades I think we will come to the idea that we are all entitled to a minimum quality of life, regardless of our ability to hold a job, and that we will have to be guaranteed such in order to maintain a stable society.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> On the topic, there was a thought provoking article in the NY Times recently entitled "Can the Government Actually Do Anything About Inequality." The answer is unclear:

[http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/10/can-the- gove...](http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/10/can-the-government- actually-do-anything-about-inequality/?src=me&ref=general&_r=0)

<comment><USER21> Of course they can.

Possessing things is as fragile as a human life.

It would take a tectonic shift in how policy is crafted and implemented but if the US government decided to turn on a dime tomorrow and redistribute wealth who could stop them?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> >The low paying jobs today are in the service industry - largely retail and fast food chains. These jobs are dead end without paying anyone enough to live on.

Friend of mine went to work at McDonalds during high school. By 22 he was a manager and making over 80k a year. It may be dead end, but that is more than enough to live on.

<comment><USER21> $80K as a manager at McDonalds? Wow. I really thought it would be around $45K, $55K tops.

<comment><USER22> It may actually have been closer to 100k. They have a pretty good bonus structure. I don't remember for certain though and know it was over 80.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's worth remembering that while inequality in first world countries has been going up and will continue to do so, global inequality has been going down. China is growing especially fast, but India and Africa and pretty much the whole third world has been growing quickly this last decade.

</comment><comment><USER24> In other words, much of the U.S. is going to start looking more like a 3rd world country like the Philippines, though probably a richer version (less grinding poverty.)

You don't travel much.Your possessions are likely your smart phone, maybe a family computer and clothes. Because there isn't as much money to go around, families tend to stick together more rather than every generation scattering at age 18. This trend expands into the community. So, perhaps you are closer to your neighbors and certainly to your family.

I wonder how much longer the car culture is going to last. It seems that you have to be rich to justify buying a car these days. Maybe we will be driving scooters like people in Asia instead of cars?

<comment><USER5> I would hope that would finally trigger the acceptance of working from home, or even satellite offices, instead of large groups of people converging in the same set of buildings on a daily basis in a specific area of the city for little benefit.

It would probably even save the city itself large amounts of moneys not having to maintain such an inefficient infrastructure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> IMO, there is some kind of correlation between efficiency in the economy and the inequality in the society. I believe that it is part of the government job to reduce the inequality... but the devil is on the details on how to do it.

<comment><USER26> Wouldn't inequality make efficiency _worse_? On an individual level, it would seem that poverty makes your life less efficient -- you end up treating your own time as less valuable, and so you do less productive things, such washing out your paper towels to reuse them, using more energy and water in the process than was used to manufacture them in the first place. When if you had more income, you could, hypothetically, do more productive things? Or would you just around watching Netflix more?

<comment><USER6> Poverty != inequality, provided poverty refers to a fixed material standard of living (which is how you seem to be using it, since you are referring to specific material goods).

To illustrate the point, consider India and the US. India has little inequality but lots of poverty (if we take the 5'th percentile of the US as the poverty line, then 95% of India is poor). The US has lots of inequality but little poverty.

[http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/the-haves- and-t...](http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/the-haves-and-the-have- nots/?_r=0)

<comment><USER27> Does that graph take into account PPP at all? It doesn't sound like it from the description in the article.

<comment><USER6> From the article: "...the chart adjusts for the cost of living in different countries, so we are looking at consistent living standards worldwide."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Why are we taking economists seriously again?

</comment><comment><USER29> No, I'm tired of moaning about income inequality. If every person in the US had their income doubled we would have even greater income inequality than we do now, but everyone would be better off. Everyone benefits from technological advances. The poor can buy better goods for a cheaper price and the rich can maximize their profits.

<comment><USER10> But this is exactly the problem that perpetuates growing economic inequality. You have 99% of people that are interested in things, and 1% that are interested in profits. We are all playing the capitalist game from birth, and to opt out is to isolate oneself from the market. But very few people acknowledge they are in a gambit with those seeking profits over who gets better value in a transaction, so they end up siphoning their wealth into means of production owners pockets but that money will never come back because the wealthy only need a very limited subset of goods and services, and after that they will invest that revenue to make more money by robbing others of their productive gains.

<comment><USER29> And when the wealthy make more money does it sit in big Scrooge McDuck style money bins, or is it reinvested into the markets or spent? If you don't want to "siphon wealth into the means of production owners pockets" then get your own means of production. Start a company and spread the stock out to your employees as evenly as you see fit. It is easier now than it ever has been to start and grow a company.

<comment><USER10> They don't evenly reintroduce their money into the market across the board (a consumer does much better at that) and they are not reintroducing money for the purposes of goods exchange but they are exchanging money now for money future. And they actively try to avoid risk (such as bank bailouts, golden parachutes, guaranteed dividends, etc) so you either make a little or a lot, and rarely lose your shirt.

That means inevitably you have more money than you started with, just siphoning more and more off of the populace. Even if you keep cycling the money back in and people get to use it in a theoretically good way, you still concentrate ownership of resources, businesses, and workers as your reinvestments give you ownership of all these things that make you more money to own more things in perpetuity.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The "Sandwich Approach" Undermines Your Feedback (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/2013/04/the-sandwich-approach-undermin/

<comment><USER2> This is even less honest for a simple reason: the manager keeps asking, "will this work for you?"

It's fake in the same way that the sandwich is. They're being reprimanded, and that's the fact of it.

I think the sandwich is much more honest as long as you're being honest when you execute it.

You could even merge the two and say:

"Here's what we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about what's been going well lately, talk about an issue I've seen recently, and then close out with a plan to improve things. How does that sound?"</comment>


[Your Product], Better for Whom? - <AUTHOR> https://www.blossom.io/blog/2013/06/04/better-for-whom.html

<comment><USER2> This is one of the best questions I ever got asked regarding product positioning.</comment>


A Prolog Introduction for Hackers - <AUTHOR> http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/2/25/124713/784

<comment><USER2> Every one of you owes it to yourself to read The Art of Prolog. If you liked On Lisp, SICP, or Paradigms of AI Programming you will love it and it will change how you view programming. And, as Alan Kay said, point of view is worth 80 IQ points.

<comment><USER3> Absolutely. While some of the other introductions to Prolog cover the language quite well (_Programming in Prolog_ by Clocksin & Mellish is good), _The Art of Prolog_ unapologetically dives headfirst into the deep ideas in logic programming, then comes back to the surface and shows how standard Prolog captures them. Its focus on the big ideas ties it less to Prolog, and it sits very comfortably next to books such as SICP and CTM.

It's out of print and a bit expensive ($80-130ish), but the first edition goes for much cheaper. Prolog standardized between the two editions, and the second edition has 100+ pages of new material (including projects), but the former (closer to $6) will give you a pretty good taste.

<comment><USER4> _The Art of Prolog_ is available new from amazon.co.uk :

[http://www.amazon.co.uk/Art-PROLOG-Advanced-Programming- Tech...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Art-PROLOG-Advanced-Programming- Techniques/dp/0262691639/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251378359&sr=8-1)

<comment><USER3> Well, new copies are available from Amazon in the US, etc. as well, it's just a bit pricey because it was last printed in 1994. (There's not a newer UK edition.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Learn Prolog Now (<http://learnprolognow.org/>) is covers the basics better, IMHO, as does _Programming in Prolog_ by Clocksin & Mellish.

<comment><USER3> ("is covers"? Oops. Missed the edit window.)

As an aside: There is a really good section on Prolog in Chapter 7 (Logic Programming) in CTM. Peter Van Roy is quite familiar with Prolog (including several published articles about efficient implementation), and he includes a good summary of its strengths and weaknesses. The chapter on amb/backtracking in SICP doesn't really do Prolog justice, IMHO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow this brings back memories. I studied this language in europe back when I was a kid (must have been around 20 years ago). Very interesting and it definitely changes the way one thinks about programming. Too bad the purpose it was written for (the so called expert systems) never really became popular.

<comment><USER6> > Too bad the purpose it was written for (the so called expert systems) never > really became popular

My impression is that expert systems became _too_ popular (for a while, they were an overworked subject in CS academia and industrial hype literature alike) and died from an excess of broken promises.

<comment><USER7> Expert systems are everywhere, actually; it's just that nobody hypes them much any more.

<comment><USER8> For a current successful commercial expert system see for example <http://www.zenprise.com> \-- Zenprise is a rule-based expert system that monitors Microsoft Exchange and Blackberry server deployments, and Active-Sync (Windows Mobile, iPhone, etc.) and Blackberry phones. It automatically monitors system configuration and real-time telemetry to find where problems are in a corporation's message system and help administrators avoid those 3 a.m. phone calls from irate CEOs who aren't getting their emails while working/traveling in Asia.

There are several thousand rules actively monitored and rule violations trigger alerts with resolution plans ... IT personnel can go through the resolution to further troubleshoot and fix their problems. It also identifies the underlying cause for a particular problem (root-cause analysis) ... when one link goes down there are many symptoms. The system's set up to identify the most likely common cause for all those systems. Pretty nice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A pretty minimal introduction to the language; it doesn't much discuss why one would prefer programming in Prolog to writing the same things in Erlang or Scheme. But within its scope it's pretty fair.

<comment><USER5> Well, prolog is especially good at a certain task. And that is storing and dealing with logically organized language like data. Back in the time, people used to refer to this as storing and dealing with knowledge instead of data.

The main idea of prolog is to kind of mimic the way the human mind stores knowledge. So eventually one would be able to store the knowledge obtained by an extpert, such as a botanist, engineer, car mechanic, attorney, etc. and be able to recall it or use it to solve problems in simple language like queries.

That is a pretty ambitious goal and, to the best of my knowledge, I don't think it has ever really worked. Nevertheless, it is a very cool language and its ultimate goal may work now that computing power is so high.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Holy %*&% -- I didn't know kuro5hin was still around...

Seems like semantic web stuff today is Prolog on the network. I still need to learn it at some point.</comment>


Paris climate deal: US and China announce ratification - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-37265541 <comment><USER2> We'll see how this turns out, since it seems this agreement

1\. allows each country to set its own reduction goals

2\. has no consequences if a country fails to meet its goals

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Agreement#Nationally_det...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Agreement#Nationally_determined_contributions_and_their_limits)

<comment><USER3> Yes, agreeing to do something is very easy compared to actually doing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It is interesting how everyone can pass the blame for emissions. In Australia there is an argument from some that even though we are the highest polluter by capita our net emissions are low enough that it doesn't really matter what we do.

A country like India or China could then turn that around a say if other countries that have a very high standard of life won't do anything then why should we.

<comment><USER5> I will still make that argument, why should a poor guy living in isolated tribal land in India find his dream of basic electricity a bit farther, while people in Europe can take the moral high ground and still pollute nearly an order of magnitude than an Indian.

Also the pollution in the last two-three centuries has been primarily First World led. Tell me how can Im as an Indian, tell the guy that he will have to wait some more time till we can get him to a basic living standard because cheaper options to get you there are off the table.

Per capita human emissions should be equal within reasonable bounds of geographical needs?

<comment><USER6> There's what's fair, and there's saving the planet.

<comment><USER7> Dont say "saving the planet". The planet will be here for a long (long) time. No matter how hot or cold it ll be.

<comment><USER8> Fine, saving civilization. Saving the environment. In the case of India, saving their kids... What's 2 more Celsius going to mean for droughts and heatwaves in India? Worst-case scenario we're talking about hundreds of millions f refugees fleeing countries that are no longer suitable for human habitation.

<comment><USER9> I'd say humans are much more resilient than you think, and Indians probably even more so, because they are used to hard life.

Or, to say it another way, many parts of India or other countries at this latitude have never been "suitable for human habitation" compared to e.g. France and her tempered climate. But humans adapted to this place, and will adapt to 2 degrees more if needs be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The senate hasn't ratified it, which is required by the constitution.

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

<comment><USER11> If we're lucky a bunch of climate deniers will be voted out of the Senate this election and the balance tips.

<comment><USER12> What is denial?

Believing that it's work 1-5 trillion dollars by 2050 to reduce 2100 temperatures by 0.05C?

Believing that climate models which fail to match past or current trends are accurate enough to restructure the global economy? (Compare modeled and measured temperature trends of early 20th and early 21st centuries)

Both sides are guilty of talking past each other, ignoring ("denying") evidence that doesnt agree with their previous opinions, and overstating the strength of the evidence they see.

(I tend to fit in the "lukewarm" camp - my reading of the evidence and scientific research is that the earth has warmed, continues to warm, is affected by human activities, but that the warming and the human impact are routinely overstated or ignored by the warring advocates. Much less so by the actual scientists doing the research)

<comment><USER13> What evidence would convince you it is a large problem? Massive dieoff of coral reefs worldwide? A cruise ship from Alaska to New York?

<comment><USER12> What evidence would broaden your perspective?

Coral reef recovery in the heat damaged areas since 1998 "massive die off"? Similar arctic melt and temperatures in early 20th century? Significantly warmer Greenland temperatures in the last 1000 years?

There is a lot of evidence on both sides that activists actively ignore or rationalize.

<comment><USER11> Coral reefs: "the current global coral bleaching event is the longest ever recorded" [http://coralreefwatch.noaa.gov/satellite/analyses_guidance/g...](http://coralreefwatch.noaa.gov/satellite/analyses_guidance/global_coral_bleaching_2014-17_status.php)

Arctic melt: "there is no precedent as far back as 1850 for the 21st century's minimum ice extent of sea ice on the pan-Arctic scale" [http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1931-0846.2016....](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1931-0846.2016.12195.x/abstract)

Greenland: I haven't seen temperature numbers specifically for Greenland but it probably has to do with the medieval warm period, and we're warmer then that now. [http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/medieval.html](http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/medieval.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is great news. China is and needs to be a major player in all climate change negotiations.

<comment><USER14> What was their position prior to this? What changed to make this happen? Really curious.

<comment><USER15> Environmental stewardship is actually something that economists refer to as a luxury good --- it's something you'll start purchasing the more disposable money you have. Which makes sense, if I have to choose between starvation and air pollution, I'll take air pollution. Now my belly is full, but I can't breath? Now maybe I'll think about spending some money on cleaner air. That's why I find the West's scolding of developing economies for environmental degradation to be hypocritical. If we really care, then we'll give those countries the money to preserve their environment.

<comment><USER16> The west doesn't really do more than hand wrong China on the environment, and why should they? China is basically destroying their country so they can make cheap junk for the west! I mean, where else can they process rare earth elements so cheaply? Why China continues to do this at this point is a mystery, but the west isn't complaining much. Perhaps the CCP is afraid of moving to a consumer driven economy, people whose lifestyles are raised too much begin demanding political rights....

Honestly, if China wants to avoid complete environmental collapse, they'll have to drastically change their ways soon. You can say the west did it and survived, but the west didn't have 1.4 billion people doing it with the level of toxicity of a modern economy. The brink China is at now (and India is approaching) is unprecedented.

<comment><USER17> It's funny because we produce more pollution per capita in the US (even if China produces more overall).

<comment><USER18> Because the level of life of US citizens is much higher on average. The wealthier you are the more you consume and therefore pollute.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Not long ago I saw a documentary about a Chinese entrepreneur that started a "clean coal" company, by doing a SpaceX, redesigning plants from scratch, he claimed to be near pollution free (implying other plants pollute only because of naive careless design, not physics). I wonder if the claims are proven and if it influenced China decision.

<comment> T-A I guess he was talking about soot and other aerosols. That's huge for air quality, but climate change is primarily driven by the fundamental law of coal burning: C + O_2 -> CO_2. If he managed to reduce the emission of sulfate aerosols (a likely target, since those are the primary cause of smog and acid rain) he is actually making the warming problem worse:

[http://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2008/06/common- climate...](http://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2008/06/common-climate- misconceptions-why-reducing-sulfate-aerosol-emissions-complicates-efforts-to- moderate-climate-change/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This should make #1 on HN. Oh, sure, there are many doubts as to how and when this will actually be implemented, but still, it's a great step forward. We are finally starting to do something about the fact, that our grandchildren will not have a planet to live on, and even our children might be affected.

<comment> semi-extrinsic Not to dismiss the seriousness of climate change, but "our grandchildren won't have a planet to live on" is a completely unfounded assertion with no roots in reality. Humans are vastly good at adapting.

<comment><USER21> We are currently over using the earth's resources by a factor of 1.5. If everyone on earth lived like people in the US do, we'd already need five planets [1]. I wish I could share your optimism, but it seems like nothing much is done to change this. The Paris agreement is at least a step in the right direction. Let's hope more will follow.

[1] [http://m.phys.org/news/2009-11-mankind-earth-resources- alarm...](http://m.phys.org/news/2009-11-mankind-earth-resources- alarming.html)

<comment> semi-extrinsic Well, we may or may not be overusing the planet's resources; people have been saying that since Malthus in 1798, when the world population was less than 1 billion. The fact remains that global food production _per capita_ has been consistently growing since 1960, at a rate of about 0.5% per year.

However, this is entirely unrelated to climate change caused by CO2 emissions, which is what the Paris agreement covers.

Unfortunately, the article you cite attempts to conflate the two, and freely admits that most of their "ecological footprint" is down to CO2 emissions. This is quite literally comparing apples and oranges, and dressing it up in fancy language to make it pass peer review.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It hasn't been ratified in the US. The lame duck Obama administration may have agreed to it, but it still needs to pass the senate _by a two thirds vote_ before it becomes a treaty and binding on the US in any way. I doubt that they will even bother submitting it.

</comment><comment><USER23> Can any climate scientists comment on the 2C degree number and what it entails?

<comment><USER24> There's a paper from 2014 that frames global warming in terms of global cumulative CO2 emissions. By that metric we can fix a global cumulative CO2 emission budget that has a decent chance of limiting warming to +2C. As of 2014 we had used 2/3rds of that budget, with the remaining 1/3 of the budget projected to be used up in 30 years if global emissions continued at the 2014 level.

I find it unrealistic that temperature increase will be limited to +2C, that would require serious efforts and a change in focus and behaviour that to date has not been observed.

In terms of the impact, there was a conference in 2009 focusing on +4C scenarios that might be worth a look at. [2]

(i am not a climate scientist, but there are plenty of articles written by climate scientists)

[1] - [https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/bitstream/handle/10871/2...](https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/bitstream/handle/10871/20695/Persistent%20growth%20of%20CO2%20emissions%20and%20implications%20for%20reaching%20climate%20targets.pdf?sequence=1)

[2] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4_Degrees_and_Beyond_Internati...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4_Degrees_and_Beyond_International_Climate_Conference#cite_note- MOX-4)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It seems bbc can't get math right - increase of 2 degrees Celsium doesn't equal increase of 36 degrees Fahrenheit

<comment><USER26> 35.6 degree Fahrenheit then.

<comment><USER25> Wrong. Anyway bbc fixed it by removing any complex Celsium to Fahrenheit conversions :)

<comment><USER27> Celsius, not Celsium.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Meanwhile fslr, spwr, jks, csiq all sit near 52 week & longer lows.

The stock market thinks that solar power won't happen -- or at least the next year will be rough for solar due to a drop-off in demand.

</comment><comment><USER7> All these agreements are worthless. The question is, will there be a technology that prevents earth from heating up from burning fossil fuels.

<comment> semi-extrinsic We have the technology for large scale carbon capture, that's no problem. The problem is that carbon capture is pure cost, no gain (measurable on a company balance sheet).

To solve this, we need a global carbon tax, probably close to $100/ton. For reference, US emissions per capita is ~17 tons.

<comment><USER29> > To solve this, we need a global carbon tax, probably close to $100/ton. For > reference, US emissions per capita is ~17 tons.

This seems... remarkably affordable. For the US, this is less than TARP. We really need to get our act together.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> No deal an American president makes is binding until approved by the Senate. Wake me up when that happens.

<comment><USER31> If you'd actually read about this, you would see that the agreement is binding as it was made within the framework of an existing treaty. However, it may not be binding on the next administration unless ratified by the Senate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Meanwhile Donald Trump promises he'll get the USA out of this agreement when he gets to be dictator... [0] [http://www.bbc.com/news/election- us-2016-36401174](http://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-36401174)</comment>


ICloud: Sharing done wrong - <AUTHOR> http://shapeof.com/archives/2012/10/icloud:_sharing_done_wrong.html

<comment><USER2> I think Apple are under the impression people see documents as somehow living inside the applications that created them. They may not be entirely wrong; I know my parents have never really understood where their documents "are", except that they can get to them by doing File->Open in Word, or whatever. I would not be terribly surprised if these folks also don't understand that files _have_ formats and therefore other apps can handle them.

It does make iCloud insufficient for my purposes. But I don't think it will stop iCloud from being a useful tool for many less technical people.</comment>


Why Alan Turing Wanted AI Agents to Make Mistakes - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/tech-history/dawn-of-electronics/untold-history-of-ai-why-alan-turing-wanted-ai-to-make-mistakes <comment><USER2> I think what Turing is getting at here is actually less a commentary on what AI should do, than a shortcoming in the test. When you're looking for genuine intelligence you should be looking for intelligence. However, if your only sign of intelligence is human intelligence, suddenly getting a basic sum wrong is counter-intuitively a sign of intelligence.

In the end getting the sum wrong is an emergent property of human intelligence, we're good at things but we're not deterministically perfect like computers are. It's not better for a computer to start to share the shortcomings of humans, but it is more likely to pass the 'AI' test. Indicating a shortcoming in the test.

<comment><USER3> That is, to pass for a human, the AI should imitate humans. This includes imitating their mistakes. AI's genuine mistakes would likely be different enough to help humans tell an AI from a human.

That is, the best strategy for an AI to pass the test is to be perfect, and perfectly imitate a perfect amount of human mistakes.

This definitely _requires an ability to lie_ , to knowingly tell untrue things.

This ability is also required by much simpler circumstances: when directly asked, an AI should be able to lie and say "No, I'm a human", else it will fail the test instantly.

This likely means that a robot following the Asimov's three laws would never pass a direct Turing test.

<comment><USER4> > This likely means that a robot following the Asimov's three laws would never > pass a direct Turing test.

Not necessarily true. An AI could pretend that it doesn't follow Asimov's laws while in fact following them. For example, the AI could pretend that, to execute the given order (second law), it first needs to understand the author psychology. At that point the AI can change the author's mind by using persuasive tactics. If the AI successfully changed author's mind, it successfully didn't follow the initial order by simply cancelling it with consent of the author

The first and third laws are also applicable to humans, and cannot be used to detect the AI

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think there is a tendency to confuse human-like with intelligent mainly because humans are the only human level intelligences we encounter. This leads us to associate human-like behavior with intelligence.

For example take a look at the Terminator movies. As this xkcd illustrates ([https://xkcd.com/652/](https://xkcd.com/652/)), a real killer robot would probably look more like an autonomous flying drone than a humanoid.

One of the big reason we want AI is so we do not want mistakes. We do not want human foibles in our AI. There is no one trying to make self-driving cars that lose focus by texting or getting drunk just so it would seem more human. No one is trying to make AI medical systems that give incorrect diagnoses because they have been running for 30 hours.

As for me, I want AI to get around the limitations of being human, not to pretend to be human by having human like errors.

<comment><USER6> (Note: Disregarding the possible negative outcomes of general AI on humanity for the sake of this comment)

While I completely agree with you that we don't want machines to make these human-like mistakes, wouldn't you agree that it would be ideal for a machine, when it makes mistakes, to do so in a human-like manner, rather than not?

One thing that appears to separate humans from AI is that, even as an AI may increasingly become better on average than humans at problems, games, etc., an AI seems to always occasionally make some absolutely terrible decision that we can hardly even understand the rationale behind. This is a huge flaw. In the rare instance an AI makes a mistake, it's completely out of its mind (at least to our knowledge) and off-base. When a human makes a mistake, it's one that's closer to the mark.

Is this not a valid reason to make AI more human-like in its mistakes, assuming it will have mistakes of _some_ kind?

<comment><USER7> > an AI seems to always occasionally make some absolutely terrible decision > that we can hardly even understand the rationale behind. This is a huge > flaw. In the rare instance an AI makes a mistake, it's completely out of its > mind (at least to our knowledge) and off-base.

Some of the game-playing bots have made moves which seem like garbage in the moment, only for a novel strategy to unfold in later moves. Is it possible to achieve the novelty without the true garbage?

So I guess it depends on the work being automated. AI cars should not have novel strategies, "just" follow the rules, while a strategic battle AI working _with_ a human might be better with out-of-the-box thinking (and transparency of reasoning for the human to check).

</comment></comment></comment><comment> alok-g If the AI agent were quick and precise to answer everything, wouldn't that by itself allow a judge to tell a computer apart from humans?

I believe that faithfully passing the Turing test requires the machines to copy human behaviors feature by feature, bug by bug. Likewise for the machines to demonstrate a good human language understanding.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm guessing perfect "AI" will simulate every possibility with the current input sources and to find the best solution. Perhaps similar as our life by the universe being a deterministic system and having slightly small edits compared to other universes functioning with keeping track of one another. What we call "mistakes or failures" are just a summation of events to witness a certain outcome. All the outcomes of all the other universes with maybe our own, hold one sacred outcome. Maybe you're experiencing it now or not.</comment>


Russia Carried Out 'Stunning' Hack of Encrypted FBI Communications: Report - <AUTHOR> https://www.thedailybeast.com/russia-carried-out-stunning-hack-of-encrypted-fbi-communications-report <comment> blaser-waffle Article is just a 1 paragraph blurb that links to a Yahoo News Article, located here:

[https://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-russia-carried-out-a- stunni...](https://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-russia-carried-out-a-stunning- breach-of-fbi-communications-system-escalating-the-spy-game-on-us- soil-090024212.html)

Sounds like it was deep and far reaching, and happened under Obama -- which makes sense how they can then push a likely-compromised-asset like Trump to the fore.

</comment><comment><USER2> That depth of hack... the potential is large that it was also an inside job, e.g., another Robert Hanssen.</comment>


Apple responds to diversity criticism: "We had a Canadian" onstage - <AUTHOR> https://mic.com/articles/153854/apple-responds-to-diversity-criticism-we-had-a-canadian-onstage-at-i-phone-7-event <comment><USER2> Why is everyone so concerned with diversity? Does it really matter if a company is 68% male and 56% white? Who really cares. Apple make tons of money, what they are supposed to do. These SJWs who care more about having so many blacks, so many women... it's all a farce. To suggest that a company MUST comply is bogus. Let all of this work out organically.

I've been in IT across 3 decades. That's a lot of years. I'm still in IT when almost all of my friends and acquaintances have moved on. In all of my IT years, I have worked with very few blacks, very few women. It's mostly a guy's world in IT. There are tons of whites, asians (oriental and sub-continent). This has happened somewhat organically worldwide (let's not even mention H1B visas). The notion that a company or even a field like IT should be artificially packed with a certain percentage of this and that is ridiculous. Blacks and women are, overall, not terribly interested in IT careers. If this were not so, the numbers would be different. Let's not pretend it's something it isn't. Let's also not pretend that everyone is cut out for an IT career. I've seen so many people believe they can step into IT, get wealthy and make an easy go of it. This happens to almost no one. Very few get wealthy. Most leave IT after a few years. It's all I've known since the early 80s and I cannot see myself doing anything else.

The political correctness that demands companies hire this and that needs to stop. Apple has a right to hire who they will -- SJWs be damned.</comment>


React, Automatic Redux Providers, and Replicators - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@timbur/react-automatic-redux-providers-and-replicators-c4e35a39f1 <comment><AUTHOR> There seem to be a lot of similar questions about how to reduce redux's boilerplate and build something real-world with it. I think I found a pretty good solution (among other things) which I wrote about within this article.

TL;DR: You can create redux providers that automatically match themselves to your components based on their propTypes. All you really need is a components directory, a providers directory, and an optional but recommended themes directory. Everything is easily interchangeable, understandable, maintainable, extendable, and reusable. There's a lot more included with all that like hot reloading both client and server, server rendering, etc., etc., etc. I built an app from scratch based on the included boilerplate yesterday and it took about 10 minutes as opposed to the 1 hour it would usually take!

</comment><comment><USER2> Very interesting write-up. Definitely cuts down on the boilerplate.

Would be good to explain what `react-redux-provide` does under the hood. It might help convince redux users that the package is doing some of the work for them.

Also what would the code look like without the @provide decorator? [Stick to ES6, it's already crazy enough, no need to jump to ES7 stuff]

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe most of what it's doing under the hood is explained in the article. Sorry if it isn't 100% clear.

Short version:

\- A provider has its own store (or it can share a store with other providers if you need it to).

\- When you have a `propType` matching a provider's `actions`, those actions are automatically mapped to the store's dispatcher; so when you call `this.props.someAction`, it's essentially calling `provider.store.dispatch(provider.actions.someAction())`.

\- And when you have a `propType` matching a provider's `reducers`, that component will always have the latest state of that reducer.

Without the `@provide` decorator, you would just `export default provide(SomeComponent)`. I've opted to use the ES7 decorator because it's cleaner, more concise, and immediately apparent.

<comment><USER2> It was already pretty clear, but your point-form explanation makes it even more clear. Somehow, I imagined there was more "magic" going on behind the scenes, but it's actually just matching this.props with actions and reducers.

This is a really neat idea, though I can imagine there might be some problems name conflicts for larger applications... still, it totally looks like something I will play with in the comping weeks. Thx for the writup and the above concise explanation.</comment></comment></comment>


PolicyKit: Users with UID greater than INT_MAX can execute any systemctl command - <AUTHOR> https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/polkit/polkit/issues/74 <comment><USER3> Particularly worth noting because systemd uses polkit, so certain unprivileged users can do systemctl commands that only admins should be able to do.

See also [https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/11026](https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/11026)

But this isn't a systemd bug, this is a bug in software systemd relies on.

</comment><comment><USER4> Typical exploit with unsigned/signed conversions.

[https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/polkit/polkit/issues/74](https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/polkit/polkit/issues/74)

</comment><comment><USER5> You'd have to be a privileged user to create such high uid user.

And it's very unlikely to happen by accident, right? So can't get too excited about this.

Bit of trivia - one some older Unixes (HP-UX) the uid -1 was special - <USER2> always unprivileged 'nobody' and was equal to 65535.

<comment><USER6> Was the special treatment of -1 intended by the developers, or did somebody mix up signed -1 with unsigned 65535?

<comment><USER7> In POSIX, many functions return -1 to indicate errors. So I guess the value (uid_t) -1 was reserved to avoid confusion. Also some functions (chown()) allow specifying (uid_t) -1 or (gid_) -1 to mark an omitted argument.

See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_identifier#Special_values](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_identifier#Special_values)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It should be noted that with a UID larger than INT_MAX a lot of things will start to break, ext4 for example only supports 32bit UIDs, so you won't be able to chown any files as this UID (atleast my own experimentation seems to find this. NFSv4 allows it if you enable squashing/mapping of user ids).

Lots of other tools will likely break in similar and unpredictable ways if your UID becomes that high. Likely those ways are also a lot of fun.

Since you'd need to be a privileged user to begin with, this is on the same alarm level as "running sed with sudo allows you to edit /etc/sudoers and gain full sudo privilege".

<comment><USER9> _ext4 for example only supports 32bit UIDs_

Unsigned or signed? That seems to be the critical difference here.

<comment><USER10> I'm no C programmer but these looks like hints:

[https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/fs/ext4/ext4.h...](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/fs/ext4/ext4.h#L689)

[https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/fs/ext4/ext4.h...](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/fs/ext4/ext4.h#L1105)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why don't we have hardware overflow traps? Most numbers should never overflow. We would need just 1 additional bit for arithmetic instructions to indicate that overflows are fine in some cases.

<comment><USER12> This is not an overflow problem. PolicyKit is deciding to exclude negative numbers from the allowable range of user IDs, causing pkttyagent to abend with an assertion failure, _and then the authorization mechanism fails open_.

The proposed patch from the systemd developers, somewhat worryingly, apparently does not address the failing open. It simply stops PolicyKit from excluding negative numbers as UIDs, and thus the assertion from failing. The worry is that some _other_ assertion might trigger in the agent, or be introduced, that causes it to fail open in some other way. _It should fail closed._

* [https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/polkit/polkit/merge_requests/...](https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/polkit/polkit/merge_requests/14)

We have been down this road before with assertions.

* [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12655048](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12655048)

<comment><USER13> Yah, the title is technically not accurate since 2*(INT_MAX -1) overflows, is not negative and cannot run arbitrary systemctl commands (I have not tested though). The title would have been clear if it had read:

> unprivileged users with negative UID can successfully execute any systemctl > command

<comment><USER13> I was wrong. You can create UID greater than int_max. The problem happens in a policy kit assertion. pjmlp linked the policy kit issue #74 (thanks).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Has anyone found a clean way to remove polkit once installed without breaking systemd? On Redhat at least, you have to kickstart the machine without anything that pulls it in. It can't be "disabled" without breaking things and udev will trigger it regardless of the unit file state.

<comment><USER14> Nobody on serverfault could find a way either. Most of my stuff is Alpine Linux (non-systemd) so not a big issue. At work, we have a lot of CentOS and I just advise folks to keep their kickstart minimal to avoid pulling in polkit.

<comment><USER12> You will have the problem whether or not your system has systemd. It exists in PolicyKit on FreeBSD, for example.

        # setuidgid sint32maxp1 id
        uid=2147483648(sint32maxp1) gid=2147483648 groups=2147483648
        # setuidgid sint32maxp1 pkexec id

        (process:99600): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: value "-2147483648" of type 'gint' is invalid or out of range for property 'uid' of type 'gint'
        uid=0(root) gid=0(wheel) groups=0(wheel),5(operator)
        #

<comment><USER14> True, but on systems without systemd, I have never seen PolicyKit get installed without explicitly requesting it. On systems with systemd, there are many packages that cause it to get pulled in. Mostly desktop packages, but there are some used on both server and desktop that pollute servers with desktop behavior now, due to the integration in systemd.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why's a Big Red Tanker Drifting Near Boston? - <AUTHOR> https://gcaptain.com/whys-a-big-red-tanker-drifting-near-boston/ <comment><USER2> >But as pipeline projects in New England face legal delays and public opposition

They're talking about the northern pass, a proposed 200 mile pipeline from Canada, through the White mountain national forest in to New England.

I know the region has energy and cost issues, but there has to be a better way than to put protected national land at risk.

We also recently had a "catastrophic failure", that caused a dozen explosions in homes, killed one, and caused 40 house fires.

It didn't rally a lot of support for natural gas expansion.

<comment><USER3> > there has to be a better way than to put protected national land at risk.

Please explain where the high risk is ... explosions in the middle of nowhere aren't going to hurt much, and if their are leaks, the gas will simply vent into the atmosphere rather than cause the kind of damage that oil spills do.

Seems like firing up coal plants in heavily populated regions (the current alternative) is worse. In terms of heat and power generation in cloudy regions, natural gas is vastly superior to everything except nuclear for cleanliness and co2/gigawatt-hour... and if cost is considered, it beats out nuclear too.

<comment><USER4> Natural gas leaks kill trees. It's a big problem around Boston. E.g.: [https://arlington.wickedlocal.com/news/20180726/guest- column...](https://arlington.wickedlocal.com/news/20180726/guest-column-gas- leaks-causing-tree-deaths-in-center) and [https://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2015/11/27/gas- leak...](https://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2015/11/27/gas-leaks-a- hidden-culprit-for-dead-trees/)

<comment><USER5> This is not a problem for a gas transmission pipeline. Gas leaks are a problem for low-pressure (a few psi) distribution pipes. There is simply too much pipe to find and repair every leak, and low pressure means low leak flow rate.

A gas transmission pipeline is hundreds of times higher pressure, they will shut down a pipeline as soon as a leak is detected.

<comment><USER6> They should fix the leaking broken pipes under cities before adding new ones. I realize they're different things but there are _plenty_ of reasons not to trust energy companies to maintain infrastructure adequately.

<comment><USER7> Any public company has an incentive to cut costs, so I'd imagine that a federal company would have higher standards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I remember when they opened that offshore LNG port – they built it when energy prices were through the roof, and everyone expected LNG imports to remain profitable.

They built the port miles offshore because MA was banning harbor-side offloading of LNG due to concerns of accidents or attacks on LNG tankers. But by the time they completed it, hydraulic fracking had become so successful that LNG prices collapsed and no one wanted to import it anymore.

[https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2013/01/23/offshore- gas...](https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2013/01/23/offshore-gas- terminals-mass-bust-far/Qu8dyZzF6yBNAsDNaTT1ZJ/story.html)

<comment><USER9> The same thing happened with the Cheniere Energy in Louisiana but due to the location they were able to turn it into an export facility.

<comment><USER10> Lucky. It's not cheap/easy to convert from LNG import to LNG export.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Here's the non-blogspam original source: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-22/two- month...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-22/two-month-window- for-priciest-u-s-gas-keeps-this-tanker-adrift)

</comment><comment><USER12> "On Feb. 1, when Exemplar and Express were simultaneously berthed at the terminal, they sent enough fuel to run all of New England's gas-fired generators for the day, according to Oliver Simpson, vice president of Excelerate's commercial operations"

This statement says nothing of what proportion of the tanker capacities was consumed in that day. Anyone know?

It says nothing more than they fulfilled a single day of gas-fired generators needs, which by itself doesn't sound worthwhile.

<comment><USER13> Ship capacity: [https://excelerateenergy.com/fleet/](https://excelerateenergy.com/fleet/)

The U.S. Energy Information Administration reported Tuesday that demand for natural gas in New England registered at 4.34 billion cubic feet per day and that the regional pipeline was operating at 77.1 percent capacity. The agency said that during a brief cold snap in January, "increased heating demand strained the natural gas system as natural gas consumption in the region, on January 21, 2019, reached their highest level this winter."

[https://www.bizjournals.com/boston/news/2019/02/19/natural-g...](https://www.bizjournals.com/boston/news/2019/02/19/natural- gas-hookups-off-limits-in-more-mass-towns.html)

<comment><USER10> Ships capacities are 138k-150k m^3.

Multiply by 35 to get cubic feet, and we get about 5m cubic feet per ship, or 1% of a day's demand if my math is correct.

<comment><USER14> Haven't checked the math but are you accounting for Liquid->Gas expansion?

<comment><USER14> If the figures for Boston's consumption are for gaseous methane and LNG expands 600x then you would have ~6 days supply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Related: See this 13 minute video about how Qatar became really rich: [https://youtu.be/yFpHUzNomlc](https://youtu.be/yFpHUzNomlc)

 _(Summary: Its by developing technology for storing and exporting liquefied natural gas)_

</comment><comment><USER16> "The Northeast also can't receive gas from other U.S. states by ship because of a 1920 law that prohibits foreign-flagged vessels from moving between American ports."

wat?

<comment><USER17> The Jones Act prohibits using a foreign vessel to ship things from one US port to another. You can import or export on a foreign vessel, but you can't use a (say) Panama-flagged ship to move stuff from New York to Boston.

Ships are subject to their country's rule and regulations; if a down-on-their- luck country wants to look the other way on environmental hazards or lax operating procedures on a ship, that ship can be run for cheaper than an American ship.

If we didn't have the Jones Act, we'd be hard-pressed to justify having any sort of merchant marine shipping at all -- foreign-flagged ships could undercut even moving stuff up and down the coasts or waterways.

Still, it does come up often, especially during emergencies. For example, when Puerto Rico had trouble getting goods shipped in after Hurricane Maria because there weren't enough US cargo vessels on hand to move cargo from Florida to Puerto Rico. The president at the time was criticized for not rapidly suspending the Jones Act to allow foreign ships to move critical goods.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/28/us/jones-act- waived.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/28/us/jones-act-waived.html)

[https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2017/10/25/what- ever...](https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2017/10/25/what-everyone-got- wrong-about-the-jones-act-hurricane-relief-and-puerto-rico/)

<comment><USER18> Is it not possible for us to regulate the behavior of foreign-flagged ships as a condition for allowing them to dock at US ports? This would seem to have better implications than banning them entirely.

<comment><USER19> Indeed it is. See for example Paris MOU:

[https://www.parismou.org/](https://www.parismou.org/)

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is doing the same thing the Tesla Battery is doing in South Australia.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is mildly unrelated, but living in New England and being stuck with shitty heating bills in January and February always makes me wonder what things would be like if we had enough common sense to move to regions of the country where heating isn't so vital. There's plenty of space out there.

Sure excessive heat is an issue, but if my heat goes off when it's 2°F I would likely die within a day or two. Not in practice of course (thanks society!) just in theory. I can withstand 102° heat just fine if water is available and I'm a little careful.

<comment><USER22> I remember a fair amount of older houses in New England had oil heating and the cost was crazy high.

<comment><USER23> There are still many that have heating oil. I live in NH and have heating oil. I also had heating oil while living in central PA.

<comment><USER24> Virginia here, I just converted my house from oil to gas a few months ago.

Fun fact: heating oil is just diesel fuel. I ran out of oil a while before the gas installation and didn't want to pay for the minimum 150 gallon delivery the local companies required, so I made it through by visiting the local gas station with some gas cans a few times.

<comment><USER25> Heating oil is diesel fuel not legal for on highway vehicle use. It's fine to buy diesel fuel taxed for vehicles and burn it in your heater though, but you'll (eventually) get in a lot of trouble for doing it the other way.

<comment><USER24> Oddly, getting it from the gas station was slightly cheaper per gallon. I assume the cost of delivering to my house exceeded the tax for vehicle fuel.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>