Listen to the moment the guns fell silent ending World War I - <AUTHOR> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/listen-moment-guns-fell-silent-ending-world-war-i-180970772/ <comment><USER2> _So this book is a sidewalk strewn with junk, trash which I throw over my shoulders as I travel in time back to November eleventh, nineteen hundred and twenty-two.

It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind._

Vonnegut, "Breakfast of Champions"

<comment><USER3> "There was no fresh Basil and I got reprimanded for trying to put my Pringles on the end of the belt before a compatriot had finished bagging"

GoldCD, "Dinners under Corona"

<comment><USER4> Not the place for this type of comment here, sorry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Like others I found the recording profound at first. The birds at the end cheapened the experience for me because they made me question the authenticity of the sounds heard and whether this was leaning closer to an actual representation or an artistic interpretation. Perhaps somewhere in between.

Assuming that this is leaning closer to an actual representation of the sounds heard on that morning (with the dubious addition of some birds for "dramatic effect") one thing that I found particularly interesting is the noise/buzz that can be heard immediately after the guns are silenced. Could it be that this noise represents the people cheering for the end of war captured by the crude recording device of oil drums + film?

<comment><USER6> I can't imagine there was much cheering from those actually at the front. It's just too big. Cheering is for spectators.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I didn't find the audio on that page, but a link to it here: [https://codatocoda.bandcamp.com/album/iwm-ww1-armistice- inte...](https://codatocoda.bandcamp.com/album/iwm-ww1-armistice- interpretation-sound-installation)

I want to know if the birds were actually recorded at the end, or if it was added for dramatic presentation.

<comment> m-i-l My first thought was that perhaps some of these last minute explosions were like celebratory gunfire[0]. But no, it seems that people were still desperately trying to kill each other knowing full well they only had hours, minutes or even seconds left to do so: "the cease-fire would not come into effect for a further six hours - at 11am ... the final day of WWI would produce nearly 11,000 casualties, more than those killed, wounded or missing on D-Day ... Just minutes before 11am, to the north around Mons, the 25-year- old Canadian Private George Lawrence Price was on the trail of retreating German soldiers ... But Pte Price's death at 10.58 was not the last. Further south in the Argonne region of France, US soldier Henry Gunther was involved in a final charge against astonished German troops who knew the Armistice was about to occur. What could they do? He too was shot ... It was 10.59."[0] Madness.

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

[1] [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7696021.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7696021.stm)

<comment><USER8> I will post this at the risk of being downvoted because I am all but a pacifist and it is not a popular position. This is not surprising at all for two reasons.

Despite what films will depict, people fighting on the front lines in a war do not generally begrudgingly respect each other. They hate eachother in a way most people probably cannot understand. Many would not pass up the opportunity to rid the world of what they see as the most evil upon its face unto the very last minute. The grudging respect you see discussed in documentaries comes decades later. After the continual trauma and memories of dead friends have time to fade.

War beaurocracies transform people into rational psychopaths. They create an order in which a letter of the law is utmost and that letter is laid by your betters. If your betters find some purpose in ordering you to kill pointlessly, you will. We all like to think we could find the courage or clarity to disobey an unethical order. But history is much more full of compliant atrocities than righteous mutinies. Soldiers kept firing because that is the perogative that came out of the leadership black box.

<comment><USER9> The 1914 Christmas truce demonstrates otherwise as five months of fighting was insufficient to guarantee hate. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_truce](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_truce)

It's surprisingly difficult to train civilians to kill each other, but governments have discovered how. You don't do it on the front lines, you do it before they get to the battle field.

<comment><USER8> December 1914 was a very different world upon the front lines of WWI from Movember 1918. People still thought that war would looks something like the Franco-Prussian War.

> You don't do it on the front lines, you do it before they get to the battle > field.

I think you do it by exposing people to years of misery and loss. But a boatload of propaganda doesn't hurt.

<comment><USER10> "You will be home before the leaves have fallen from the trees."

-Kaiser Wilhelm II, addressing German troops leaving for the front, August, 1914.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Listen to a _recreation_ of the moment the guns fell silent ending World War I.

</comment><comment><USER12> Spoiler alert! It is fake. It is "interpretation".

</comment><comment><USER13> Birds sing seconds after ear-blasting gun shots. Really?

<comment><USER14> It's an interpretation of audio recorded to film

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> "Look mommy...there's an airplane up in the sky..."

<comment><USER16> Did you see the frightened ones?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I understand that this is an interpretation, but fascinating nonetheless. Are there other examples (or archives) of this type of historical recordings?

</comment><comment><USER18> Not only it is a recreation, but also an exposition conducted almost 2 years ago, in commemoration of the end of WWI.

</comment><comment><USER19> As long as we're discussing fictional works about WWI, two great movies are La Grande Illusion and Paths of Glory.

<comment><USER20> Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs, And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots, But limped on, blood- shod. All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time, But someone still was yelling out and stumbling And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.— Dim through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin; If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,— My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.

<comment><USER21> Which is this from? I would like to read it.

<comment><USER20> Wilfred Owen, 'Dulce et Decorum est.' That's it for that poem but he wrote more.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where can I rent a powerful linux box (8 cores, 16 GB)? - <AUTHOR>

I need a powerful machine to run some heavy compute tasks, specifically R and Python scripts that need a lot of RAM. Preferably a box that has 8 cores or more, and 16 gigs or more of memory. I need something like Linode, but with more juice. I am not interested in rewriting my programs to run on a mapreduce cluster, right now, so Amazon's offering don't cut it for me. Any suggestions? <comment><USER2> If you need the box only for a couple of months just get a softlayer.com box provisioned how you want it. I don't think they have minimum contract periods, you can probably get a box configured how you want it for one month, run as much junk as you want and prob end up costing around $350 or so.

</comment><comment><USER3> Linode's largest server plan has 20GB of ram, so you'd be good for that part of your requirements. Once you start renting virtual machines that large, there are few others on your same host machine, so you wouldn't be competing for resources either. Otherwise, EC2 might have something.

</comment><comment><USER4> <http://www.webnx.com/servers/clearance.html> 8 cores, 32gb ram, $299/month or were you looking for hourly rates?

</comment><comment><USER5> NewServers have per-hour pricing on dedicated servers.

<http://newservers.com/>

</comment><comment><USER6> Amazon EC2 -- pay only for what you use, etc

</comment><comment><USER7> <http://www.100tb.com/dedicated-hosting/> perhaps?

</comment><comment><USER8> <http://www.m5hosting.com/> has 8 core/16GB for $399/mo.</comment>


Env encryption tool which helps you prevent attacks from NPM-malicious-packages - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kunalpanchal/secure-env <comment><AUTHOR> Read this blog to know more about the use case:

[https://codeburst.io/how-secure-is-your-environment-file- in-...](https://codeburst.io/how-secure-is-your-environment-file-in-node- js-7c4d2ed0d15a)

This is a solution to this tweet

[https://twitter.com/o_cee/status/892306836199800836?s=20](https://twitter.com/o_cee/status/892306836199800836?s=20)

<comment><USER2> How does this prevent them from stealing the '.env.enc' file and the password for it?

So instead of simply stealing process.env. They have to do a search for require('secure-env') and find the secret. And then they just upload that secret and the .env.enc file.

<comment><AUTHOR> The file .env.enc can be renamed to anything more clever as per your requirement. Also the password you pass in to require('secure-env') can be obtained from printenv. You set this on your server, similar to a master password. So it's not there in your code.</comment></comment></comment>


Olia Lialina: Self-portrait - <AUTHOR> http://olia.lialina.work/ <comment><USER2> More about her: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olia_Lialina](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olia_Lialina)

</comment><comment><USER3> So, an off-center gif of her brushing her hair? Or am I missing a whole lot of context?

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://twitter.com/dcposch/status/963305169466224640](https://twitter.com/dcposch/status/963305169466224640)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I just have an "any browser" installed, how do the other pages look like?</comment>


Ask HN: Resources to learn "modern" Python? - <AUTHOR> Python was the first programming language I experimented with back in the late 90s. While most of my professional career has been in the C# / SQL Server space, I have a nostalgic urge to pick Python back up. Any suggestions on where to start? <comment><USER2> The book Fluent Python is a good book that goes beyond the introduction to python books [http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920032519.do](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920032519.do)

Here's an interview with the author in 2015 [https://talkpython.fm/episodes/show/24/fluent- python](https://talkpython.fm/episodes/show/24/fluent-python)

</comment><comment><USER3> If coming from MS world. VSCode (with python plugins), Anaconda, and beazley python book or presentation to get started(very condensed).

</comment><comment><USER4> For practice www.practity.com/343-2/</comment>


Phone That Can Search The Internet & Display Ads Patented; Everyone Sued - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/blog/wireless/articles/20110401/13154513731/phone-that-can-search-internet-display-ads-patented-everyone-sued.shtml <comment><USER2> this is hilarious and disgusting all at the same time.</comment>


Show HN: Should This Be Legal? - <AUTHOR> http://www.shouldthisbelegal.com

<comment><USER2> I think most people would say yes to about 90% of these items. If some of them were marked "privately owned", I would vote "no" on a few, like prisons. Time to see who of my facebook friends are libertarians.

</comment><comment><USER3> Facebook login? Nope.

</comment><comment><USER4> | seems to work

My favorite message when committing.

<comment><USER5> Slightly better than "Not sure why this works but it does"

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This website is equivalent to those shitty ads with obvious questions like "Do you like ice cream?". It's all there to gather clicks and pageviews. The content is absolutely stupid.

<comment><USER7> Yeah. I don't see how this managed to hit the front page.</comment></comment>


Ford to skip past level-3 autonomy because its engineers kept falling asleep - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/self-driving/ford-robocar-to-ford-engineers-wake-up <comment><USER2> And is anyone familiar with even a basic understanding of human attention psychology surprised? I think not.

Level 3 was doomed from the start.

<comment><USER3> I want to believe a level 4 vehicle is possible but it feels too much to me like the flying cars if the 1950's. Even if the technology gets 99.9% of the way there who is going to assume liability for the car packed full of kids being sent autonomously to school?

This liability could potentially extend to literally decades and is what killed small private plane manufacturers in the US. In the 1950's it was assumed that the families "third car" would be a small private plane and the biggest challenges would be how to get around once you'd flown there (hence the need for the flying car. Today a Plane like the a Cessna is outside the reach of middle class families because of liability costs. Each Cessna sold has to factor in liability costs for every plane still in the air. It's the reason that prices for decade old planes appreciate over time.

The only market that I can see a level 4 vehicle being viable (assuming its possible) is fleet vehicles for taxis and where and for how long they operate can be strictly dictated and the private vehicle market would be left with very advanced driver assist.

<comment><USER4> The General Aviation Revitalization Act was supposed to shield GA manufacturers from product liability to an extent and revive the moribund industry: Cessna basically stopped building small airplanes in 1985.

But it's really remarkable how costs have soared (average unit costs, not for the "same" airplane) and the number of general aviation planes shipped has dropped since the 1970s, see the graph here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Aviation_Revitalizatio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Aviation_Revitalization_Act)</comment></comment></comment>


When I could only connect to HN using Internet Explorer - <AUTHOR>

Firefox and Chrome have been refusing to connect to HR with "This connection is untrusted" error for me. I've tried to add exception but that doesn't help.
I had to fire-up my Windows XP VM to get access to the outdated IE 8 which allowed me to put this question.
Anybody else facing this issue/has the solution/workaround? <comment><AUTHOR> Just in case somebody else is facing this issue, following the steps in below link fixes it:

[https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/connection-untrusted- er...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/connection-untrusted-error- message#w_the-certificate-is-not-trusted-because-the-issuer-certificate-is- unknown)

</comment><comment><USER2> Yaah this was happening to me as well, I just waited and now it works again.</comment>


Pork's Dirty Secret (2006) - <AUTHOR> http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/12840743/porks_dirty_secret_the_nations_top_hog_producer_is_also_one_of_americas_worst_polluters/print <comment><USER3> Google Maps: [http://maps.google.com/maps?q=tar+heel+nc&ie=UTF8&hq...](http://maps.google.com/maps?q=tar+heel+nc&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Tar+Heel,+Bladen,+North+Carolina&gl=us&ei=0h6OS_6rKo7rlAff77iLDQ&ved=0CA4Q8gEwAA&ll=34.747369,-78.838792&spn=0.005492,0.012156&t=h&z=17)

You can see clearly pictured one of the pink lagoons mentioned in this article. If you zoom out a little, you see scores of them.

Edit: most of the fields you see surrounding them are producing crops that are dangerous to eat due to their nitrate levels (according to the article)

</comment><comment><USER4> The detailed descriptions of the process in this article make for a sort of fascinating train wreck. On the one hand, the sheer scale of the operation is impressive. On the other hand, it seems to have this strange air of shoddiness. When I think of factory farming, I tend to think of a future age of hyperefficient farming, with cows milked by machines and everything precisely regulated. But this seems more like an age of very dense farming that is held together with duct tape and rusting bailing wire, not much of a sci-fi vision. I mean, huge lagoons of pig excrement with trucks falling into them?

<comment><USER3> Absolutely. I think forcing these factory farms into more wholesome practices might accomplish a few things:

1) More research into sustainable farming techniques 2) More research into automation that makes these sustainable techniques feasible at a market cost

Unfortunately, the companies that can afford to do that research are too busy using their money to genetically modify their crops and pump their livestock full of drugs.

If the government forced these guys to cut back through sanctions, the cheapest food might not be the most unhealthy anymore. Issues of environmental and public health concerns are one area where I actually agree with stronger governmental powers vs corporations - people won't vote with the dollars because it's a) necessary to live and b) they usually live so far away from the heinous conditions that they don't even know about it - or worse, don't care.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure it's possible for factory farms to change, especially when raising animals. If you talk to someone who raises animals in a sustainable way (if you don't personally know a farmer, read Joel Salatin), they will tell you there is absolutely an upper limit to what can be produced sustainably. I purchase all of the meat my family eats from a local farmer (who only sells directly to consumers) and he said while he could easily double the number of customers, he wouldn't be able to maintain the same practices (this includes everything to what the animals eat--grass only in the case of ruminants--to where the animals actually lived--all are pastured in the style popularized by Salatin).

I could be old-fashioned and myopic, though. Maybe someone can figure out a way to have the best of both worlds.

Regarding cost, I no longer worry about the amount of money my family spends on groceries. Yes, we spend $5/pound for beef, and $2.50/pound for chicken, but this is stuff we are putting in our bodies--it's what keeps us alive. I feel that price shouldn't be the driving factor in what we eat.

<comment><USER6> You are forgetting the huge subsidies that further hide the real cost of meat from the consumer.

Raising animals is such an inefficiant way to farm food, people seldom question this. Unless you can't use the land for anything else. There simply isn't enough land to go around.

<comment><USER7> I know this is the situation in some fertile & densely populated countries, such as the Netherlands.

In other places, such as here in Austria for example, nobody is going to use the alpine pastures that cows graze on for growing anything else.

I am pretty sure it is the same in Switzerland and Bavaria, and probably other mountainous regions such as in Japan and Greece (although the grazing livestock in these places might not be cattle).

<comment><USER8> Said alpine pastures don't allow for a large quantity of cows, though.

And you Austrians really have to care for the cows in winter (prepare some sheltered and warm barns, with feed - I've been there, and was surprised at how easy we Uruguayans have it with our cows)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For everyone interested in this topic I strongly recommend "Eating Animals" by Jonathan Safran Foer:

[http://www.amazon.com/Eating-Animals-Jonathan-Safran- Foer/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Eating-Animals-Jonathan-Safran- Foer/dp/0316069906)

I became a vegetarian before reading this book, but reading it only made me more convinced that to stop eating meat and fish was one of the best decisions in my life.

<comment><USER10> Factory farming is terrible. I would recommend that anyone interested in this find some local farmers and talk to them about how the raise their animals.

I can get local grass-fed beef for $4.50/lb that is from very happy cows. Expensive as hell but pretty much an ideal food.

Federal regulations play a role in this too. Anybody other than a factory farmer is at an immense disadvantage when it comes to meeting the often arbitrary and pointless regulations.

Check out "Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal: War Stories From the Local Food Front" by Joe Salatin if you're interested.

<comment><USER8> Over here in Uruguay we have 18 million grass-fed cows (they live better than many persons!), probably as healthy as any you have ever eaten.

Yet, we have quotas on selling to the US, because they have to maintain the subsidies on farming (it doesn't make sense if growing cattle in the US is so much more expensive). And the EU is way worse than the US in its subsidies - I've seen cattle in Austria, it is VERY expensive to raise it there - <USER2> course you want to maintain some local livestock for strategic purposes if nothing else, but it is still extremely inefficient.

And I pay about U$ 1/lb for very good grass-fed beef :)

<comment><USER11> Tell me about it. I'm reading all these comments about 'expensive' beef at $5 pr lbs and simply shaking my head. Here in Sweden I have to pay double that, and that's for the lower end. If you want a really nice cut, double or triple it again.

<comment><USER12> In Australia, I regularly pay AUD30-35/kg for a decent cut of beef. I think that's about USD12/lb or more. I'd love to be able to get good stuff for $4.50/lb!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's also interesting what the company says in return: <http://www.smithfieldfoods.com/RollingStone/>

<comment><USER14> If the article is incorrect then Smithfield can and should sue Rolling Stone for libel. But they're not going to because it's true.

<comment><USER6> It's what they don't deny that still worries me. I was hoping that the family being consumed by the lagoon was a non truth. I read it as tragic comedy (shame on me)

<comment><USER15> It's weirdly like that scene out of _the Jungle_ where the guy falls in the lard pit and becomes part of the product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There is an interesting documentary related to this: Food Inc.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqQVll-MP3I>

<comment><USER17> Everyone should see this, and read some Michael Pollan. FWIW Commercial pork is absolutely tasteless and shouldn't be eaten anyway, look around your local markets for some berkshire or other heritage pork, and discover what pork really tastes like.

<comment><USER18> Everyone should vote with their wallets. I make a concerted effort to purchase pork that has been raised in a sustainable and compassionate manner. I eat at restaurants like Chipotle who care about the farmers that they do business with. Where and what you buy is the way to change things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If you want to see the continuation in Eastern Europe (Romania):

[http://www.awionline.org/www.awionline.org/pubs/Quarterly/07...](http://www.awionline.org/www.awionline.org/pubs/Quarterly/07-56-04/07_56_4p1415.htm)

[http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/06/business/global/06smithfie...](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/06/business/global/06smithfield.html?_r=1&ref=dining&pagewanted=all)

</comment><comment><USER20> I like to eat pigs and live in Italy. Salsiccia and polenta is particularly good, and I'd be happy to grill some up for any visiting hackers, served of course with plenty of good red wine.

What's this got to do with Hacker News, in any case?

<comment><USER6> I think the article is fascinating.

It shows you how big operations can go wrong, if safeguards are not put in place. The numbers here are mind numbing, this is collossal murder.

There has been a series of programmes on industrial modern farming on the bbc recently in the UK. Which focussed on the best parts of technological innovation in farming. Whereas this article exposes all that's wrong with factory farming.

As an Englishman I find it hard to comprehend the scale of things in the states. It horrifies me. The London circular felt huge to me, until I witnessed a freeway. Now it appears small and the cars look like toys.

We had the BSE outbreak in the UK, which has led to a change in consumer opinion. BSE was reportedly a result of canibalism. Recyling your outputs to inputs is a nice idea, but it's risky practice.

There's no mention of the quality of life these pigs are living. My uncle used to run a small factory pig farm in the UK and that was horrendous enough. That put me off of pork. Later working at an egg farm ensured that, I no longer ate eggs or chicken. There is something incredibly powerful about seeing things first hand. Animals deserve a better life than that, they surely deserve to see daylight.

The computer industry, has it's own issues with energy usage and pollution. The silicon valleys are known for poisoning rivers. There are parallels here. Consumeres need to be aware, to put pressure on industry. We can be ethical consumers, we can vote with our wallets. We can speak out, against injustices and barbaric practices.

Hacker news is full of talk about start ups and web entrapaneurs. Money is not the be all and end all. There is a social and environmental dimension to every business.

If the article does not shock you, or fill you with bile, then alas I feel there is something inherently wrong with you.

I do not delight in discovering injustices, whether it's Ethiopian farmers getting ripped off for the price of coffee or animals suffering. And I have a compulsion to put these injustices right, if I can. Though sometimes our impulses can blind our moral judgement.

I read a book that was published over a decade ago, that reported that every one of North America's great lakes had been overly polluted. A lot of the world's seas have been overfished, there are many dead zones, look on Google Earth.

You'd hope that with the advancement of science and the freedom of knowledge we could become a better race of people. This really saddens me. I believe the hacker spirit, is one that aims for solutions (possibly perfection), and I hope that that same spirit is well concidered and respectful.

<comment><USER20> > The silicon valleys are known for poisoning rivers.

Which rivers did "the silicon valleys" poison?

<comment><USER6> It was a metaphor, just google 'high tech pollution' or 'silicon valley pollution' or similar phrase.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Around 10 billion animals are killed each year in the United States. It's a truly astounding figure. Let's not kid ourselves that something unfathomably evil is going on.

It's great that some people get their animal products from the sustainable farm down the road. That is better. But let's also not pretend it even makes a dent.

During World War II, about 70 million people were killed over the course of the conflict (1939-1945). In just the United States alone, we will kill that number of animals in less than three days. If you were to compare the entire loss of American life in that war, it would take you about 20 minutes to achieve in our factory farm system.

If you still don't see it as evil, animal agriculture is far and away the number one source of global warming pollution ([http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?newsID=20772&CR1=w...](http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?newsID=20772&CR1=warning)).

<comment><USER10> Humans evolved eating meat. There is significant evidence that a diet high in meat and saturated fat rather than the neolithic agents sugar and grains is among the healthiest available.

Why is killing animals to produce food for people an "unfathomably evil" thing?

<comment><USER22> Humans did not "evolve eating meat." Yes, they began to eat meat relatively recently, but only during winter periods after migrating into colder climates. Even then, humans ate almost no meat when plant food was abundant, during warmer seasons.

Anatomically the case for human herbivorism, or at least heavy-plant omnivorism, is strong. Check it (I hope this formats okay):

          Meat-eaters: have claws
          Herbivores: no claws
          Humans: no claws

          Meat-eaters: have no skin pores and perspire through the tongue
          Herbivores: perspire through skin pores
          Humans: perspire through skin pores

          Meat-eaters: have sharp front teeth for tearing, with no flat molar teeth for grinding
          Herbivores: no sharp front teeth, but flat rear molars for grinding
          Humans: no sharp front teeth, but flat rear molars for grinding [we're talking about actually sharp teeth, not so-called human "canine" teeth]

          Meat-eaters: have intestinal tract that is only 3 times their body length so that rapidly decaying meat can pass through quickly
          Herbivores: have intestinal tract 10-12 times their body length.
          Humans: have intestinal tract 10-12 times their body length.

          Meat-eaters: have strong hydrochloric acid in stomach to digest meat
          Herbivores: have stomach acid that is 20 times weaker than that of a meat-eater
          Humans: have stomach acid that is 20 times weaker than that of a meat-eater

          Meat-eaters: salivary glands in mouth not needed to pre-digest grains and fruits.
          Herbivores: well-developed salivary glands which are necessary to pre-digest grains and fruits
          Humans: well-developed salivary glands, which are necessary to pre-digest, grains and fruits

          Meat-eaters: have acid saliva with no enzyme ptyalin to pre-digest grains
          Herbivores: have alkaline saliva with ptyalin to pre-digest grains
          Humans: have alkaline saliva with ptyalin to pre-digest grains

_Source: A.D. Andrews, Fit Food for Men, (Chicago: American Hygiene Society, 1970)_

<comment><USER23> So humans don't have a single trait in common with predators? Humans don't have eyes in the front of their head for good depth perception? Or did you just pick a selection of facts to support one viewpoint and ignore anything that contradicts you?

<comment><USER22> I'm obviously not saying humans don't have a single trait in common with some predators. Humans have blood, for example. Get over your indignation at being challenged and think about what you say. That'd be nice.

To answer your question, these are simply the most clear-cut traits that are present in herbivores versus omnivores and carnivores. The "front-facing eyes" is an out-of-date meme from high school textbooks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Why aren't some of these problems solved by property rights? The article shows case after case of nearby property owners having what seem to be clear cases of health problems and other property violations caused by the pigs. If there isn't a causal link that can be shown in court, then we don't _know_ this is the problem.

</comment><comment><USER25> As a vegetarian, when someone with science training asks me why I'm so, my answer is, "The 2nd law of thermodynamics." This is the 2nd law writ large.

</comment><comment><USER24> I recently saw the movie Temple Grandin, a bio of an autistic woman who works with cattle. Her website concerns humane and efficient treatment of livestock. Some fascinating articles. <http://grandin.com/>

</comment><comment><USER26> This reads like Dante's inferno.

</comment><comment><USER27> I can't seem to find a free version online, but This American Life's TV show, the episode called "Pandora's Box" is very eye opening. They go to a modern pig farm and it's as disturbing and disgusting as this article makes it sound.

I thought it was very interesting that they had to scrub down before they could enter for fear that they might introduce germs to the pigs.

</comment><comment><USER28> Mad max references aside, I wonder if anyone has seriously considered just processing the waste into something useful. If they prevented some of of the careless inorganic stuff from getting in there (batteries, wtf?) couldn't this be an excellent source of fuel & fertilizer?

</comment><comment><USER29> "The excrement of Smithfield hogs is hardly even pig shit: On a continuum of pollutants, it is probably closer to radioactive waste than to organic manure."

This made me go woooot!? Clearly an article written to raise emotions than discuss anything serious.

PETA crawling to HN, scary shit.

<comment><USER30> Have a look at the other articles linked in the comments - perhaps they will present the same information in a more balanced way for you. The subject under discussion is very serious, even if this particular write-up of it does not suit your tastes.

As an aside, did it occur to you that your post is written in the same style, of one trying to raise emotions rather than discuss something seriously?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Time to make cell-cultured meat happen, I think. Given that the technology is pretty close to possible, I think that treating sensate creatures as meat factories has lost it defensibility.

</comment><comment><USER32> Oh, "pork" the noun, not the transitive verb. Darn.</comment>


Tmux Chess - <AUTHOR> http://andreykeske.com/#/en/works/tmux-chess <comment><USER2> This was terribly disappointing to me. It's basically just showcasing that tmux can be an 8x8 grid of panes.

What needs to be done is building a project that can "move" pieces from one square to another, according to the rules of chess.

At the very least, use Unicode chess pieces[1] instead of typing "black pawn" everywhere.

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

<comment><USER3> Great idea! But I think unicode symbols are very small

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Was there anything special about the tmux config used? What keybindings were used to move between panes? Seemed like snappier movement than you'd get with the defaults, unless maybe the video was sped up.

<comment><USER3> Default configuration:

Create vertical: cmd + %

Create horizontal: cmd + "

Move: cmd + up/down/left/right

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> No matter how fancy we make our interfaces, the power tools seems to be a grid of command lines.

</comment><comment><USER6> what is the point of this?

<comment><USER7> Probably none, it's just cool. This is a hack.

<comment><USER8> is it? seems tedious

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Would probably be a lot easier in Google Sheets with cut and paste.</comment>


I Can't Believe I'm Writing This Linux Article About Loving the Xfce DE - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2019/04/17/i-cant-believe-im-writing-this-linux-article-about-loving-the-xfce-desktop-environment/ <comment><USER2> > Every time I looked at screenshots of Xfce, though — even from the official > website — I was reminded of something from the days of Windows 2000. Grey. > Archaic. Uninteresting.

Oh, the horrors of being reminded of a well designed interface with subtle 3D cues. Buttons have the audacity to look clickable!

<comment><USER3> Right, what's with the want of change for the sake of change? I can't see how "Grey. Archaic. Uninteresting." are issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ubuntu lost me when they started with Unity. Xfce works the way I would expect and generally gets out of my road.

<comment><USER5> Me too, I used 10.04(i think), the last gnome version until the repo stopped updating. Linux Mint has been my desktop of choice ever since. With their MATE and Cinnamon version looking like a DESKTOP and everything works out of the box its win/win. In 2010~ every one lost their collective mind when it comes to UI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I used gnome2 first then xfce (loved it) and finally awesomewm (best for my uses, big screen, love the auto tiling)

I was so used to awesomewm that I couldn't grasp why i3 was any better if so.

</comment><comment><USER7> XFCE4 is the best DE I've used so far.

</comment><comment><USER8> configuring tiling looks a little over complicated in the writeups.</comment>


Sony's Digital Paper Tablet finally gets a version you might use - <AUTHOR> https://www.slashgear.com/sonys-digital-paper-tablet-finally-gets-a-version-you-might-use-16527500/ <comment><USER2> An alternative is the onyx boox max 2, which runs android and has the Google play store available. I mainly use it to read technical papers in PDF format, and it works great. It comes handy also for user manuals that only come in pdf format. In short: the onyx boox matches my needs and I am very satisfied with it.</comment>


K-Sketch: The Kinetic Sketch Pad - <AUTHOR> http://www.k-sketch.org/ <comment><USER2> You need to install .NET version 1.1, not 2, 3, or 4. The other major versions of .NET are separate and are for applications that target the other version of .NET. What's nice about version 1.1 is that it can run on old computers that are older than XP service pack 2. But, it's really old (2003).

Check on the microsoft website : [http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=262...](http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=262d25e3-f589-4842-8157-034d1e7cf3a3&displaylang=en)

</comment><comment><USER3> These are the same folks who brought us DENIM. Very cool.

<comment><AUTHOR> DENIM link - <http://dub.washington.edu:2007/projects/denim/>

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> One warning if you install the app - it requires .Net v1.1

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I tried to install this on Vista, and got a warning about the dotnet 1.1 thing.

Now I'm doing a Vista general software update and it looks like .Net is up to 3.something or 4.

I have no idea if this will even run.

<comment><AUTHOR> It runs fine on Vista, but you do have to install 1.1. Played with it some last night and it is very easy to make some cool animations.

<comment><USER3> Thanks. I just got it installed, looks good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very cool, any way to get this running under Linux or OS X (other than emulation). Mono perhaps?

</comment><comment><USER5> Very innovative UI.</comment>


Whitepaper of a new decentralized distributed ledger - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/globatio/wiki/wiki/Whitepaper <comment><USER2> s/stack/stake/g</comment>


Quality has a new name - <AUTHOR> http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1121

<comment><USER2> This is not very exciting compared to previous announcements. The only goals i see listed for the 12.10 are "quality" and improved fonts and icons.

Lennart Poettering's response to the systemd vs upstart comments can be found at [https://plus.google.com/115547683951727699051/posts/X3fUhyJR...](https://plus.google.com/115547683951727699051/posts/X3fUhyJREKq)</comment>


The new Google News: AI meets human intelligence - <AUTHOR> https://www.blog.google/products/news/new-google-news-ai-meets-human-intelligence/ <comment><USER2> I like the idea of timeline along with factcheck. Given that the media is divided along partisan lines, 360 degree view of news might reduce the opinion divide among people, hopefully!</comment>


How Much is Twitter Worth? Less Than You Think - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2009/11/10/twitter-valuation/ <comment><USER2> Om Malik seems to be the king of expert sounding valuations that signify nothing. There was an article at the peak of web 2.0 that went something like

Myspace (x users for y dollars)

Youtube (x1 users for y1 dollars)

...

Therefore users are worth (z+z1+...)/(x+x1...) and we can use that as a metric to value other sites.

But ignored all the cases of sites with x<i> users worth zero dollars.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. User base in a internet facing app means something when users visit the site to interact. Twitter is such an open platform for communication (like email, sms, and hell, even the web) that monetizing it as a service seems impossible.

I would venture to guess that based on revenue Tweetie is more valuable that Twitter itself. Myspace, Youtube, Facebook, they all have pageviews.

Twitter was founded as an SMS service and won't ever be able to fully monetize the platform unless they close the API (which they won't).

<comment><USER4> Agree 100%. IMHO the biggest mistake Twitter made was allowing others to control the client people use to post tweets. The majority of people are using 3rd party clients over which Twitter have no control.

To them, twitter are just a backend message passing system. Monetizing a backend message system is orders of magnitude harder than monetizing a client which actually has eyeballs.

<comment><USER5> While I think you're right in the general case, Twitter has its retardedly strong brand which makes them a very important exception.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nope, that's still more.

<comment><USER7> By orders of magnitude.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> 70M users? Monthly actives? That seems really high. Other estimates showed ~22M in June, right as growth slowed in the US.

Also, obligatory this-debate-is-retarded comment.

<comment><USER9> Not really obligatory on HN, actually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Do they have a business model that is proven to make any money yet? No?

Then that is how much they are worth.

Failing to grasp this simple idea is why large chunks of the world economy have tried to collapse twice in the past decade or so.

Anything beyond this isn't a valuation, it's a gamble. A few gamblers do win big, but most of them lose money in the long run.

<comment><USER11> Internet companies don't necessarily require a business model. Remember YouTube? They were worth $1.65B to Google. They didn't make a single cent when they were acquired.

The virtual world is an attention economy. The most attentive eyeballs attracts the most money. There doesn't directly need to be money changing hands.

<comment><USER10> The fact that other stupidly over-valued companies over-value companies that make no money doesn't make things any better, it just builds a higher stack of cards.

At least in the case of the YouTube acquisition, Google had both a strategic goal (own the small company that's otherwise at risk of getting sued off the planet and leaving you as collateral damage) and a realistic expectation of revenue generation in the near future (via advertising, which is Google's business model and something it was already doing very successfully in other contexts).

I fail to see how anyone investing in Twitter benefits in either of those ways right now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _The company's revenue model has yet to be tested. We believe that most revenue generation options available to the company have the potential to alienate at least some of Twitter's user base. Twitter may not have adequate time to revise its models before it loses its critical mass and reputation._

Is it possible to wait too long to begin charging someone for something?

<comment><USER11> Yes. Your company will run out of money eventually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> That's still a valuation of more than half a billion dollars for a company with no revenue.

</comment><comment><USER14> I was wondering if something like corporate twitter works?

<comment><USER15> Yammer.com has been around for a while. It didn't catch on at my place of employment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Probably not.</comment>


Soon cell towers will start following you - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/broadband/soon-cell-towers-will-start-following-you/

<comment> Tuna-Fish This has the advantage that it is quite easy to implement for present networks.

Personally, I'd still save the title "THE most revolutionary networking technology I've seen in a long time" for the next-gen phased array smart antennas and MU-MIMO techniques.

<comment><USER2> Indeed. I believe you are referring to this: [http://venturebeat.com/2011/07/28/steve-perlman-unveils- dido...](http://venturebeat.com/2011/07/28/steve-perlman-unveils-dido-white- paper-explaining-impossible-wireless-data-rates/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Sounds like they're just adjusting some existing parameter in realtime which has previously been adjusted manually. This is not revolutionary, just a small optimization.

If you have (too much) time, there's a video explaining some of the cognitive radio technologies researched by Nokia Research Center <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3W43pyEgSk>

<comment><USER4> Correct - turns out that the OP is a principal at Genesis Partners, who funded the startup behind this technology:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=michaporat>

<http://www.crunchbase.com/company/intucell>

May still be valuable tech, but the title seems a bit disingenuous without the poster's disclosure.

<comment><AUTHOR> They are actually funded by Bessemer. Crunchbase is wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Intucell estimates these techniques can [...] boost overall data capacity throughout the network anywhere from 30 percent to 50 percent."

That's the equivalent of a few months normal growth in mobile data demand...

<comment><USER6> Ha! Maybe an exaggeration, but not much of one. Then again there's the problem of whenever operators create new capacity their customers just fill it.

<comment><USER5> A quick google for "compound annual growth rate mobile data" turns up numbers around 100%, so 30% would take 4 or 5 months and 50% might be 7 or so. You're right, an exaggeration to call 4-7 "a few", but certainly not much of one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have always wondered why cell carriers/manufacturers have not moved to a phased array type system yet. It has been available for WiFi deployments for quite some time. This seems like a step in the right direction.

</comment><comment><USER8> I have apparently not gained enough esteem in this community to have a down arrow, but that title is really bad. It's sensationalist and not descriptive enough to be useful.

<comment><USER9> No one can downvote stories. You can flag it, but I'm not sure if that's the correct procedure for a bad title. I think the OP can change the title, maybe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Of course, once this exists, they can start selling QoS levels. Then the towers will only aggressively adjust for those people who are paying for the privilege.

</comment><comment><USER9> I cannot understand what this technology is supposed to do. What does it mean for a cell to expand or shrink? Or follow a customer? Why not just have all cells "expand" to maximum at all times? Power-savings? Interference?

Also, as jka points out,

> the OP is a principal at Genesis Partners, who funded the startup behind > this technology...May still be valuable tech, but the title seems a bit > disingenuous without the poster's disclosure.

<comment><USER11> Read the article, it explains the concept fairly well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is also pretty bad ass:

[http://gigaom.com/broadband/wi-fi-its-the-other-cell- network...](http://gigaom.com/broadband/wi-fi-its-the-other-cell-network/)

Many wi-fi nodes (via Ruckus Wireless) backhauling over wimax.

<comment><USER13> I work at a direct competitor to that, and lets just say that I'm less than impressed by their so called seamless sign on.

It requires the user to download a special client - that is a big big threshold for the average user. Let me contrast this by having the phone automatically get the information needed as operator settings from the app- store and then automatically start to offload without bothering the user further.

Also, why use wimax? It is a tech that is slowly dying (despite the fact that it gains users - it is expected to peak userwise in a year or two).

<comment><USER12> Thanks for the info. My focus has been in a different area for the last few years (hospitals) so I was not aware wimax was dying.

I did see the part about the special client, but having not gone through the process - I am unaware how cumbersome this is, aside from obviously being more cumbersome than having to do nothing.

What is replacing it. Or, rather, what do you think is interesting and promising in mobile data?

<comment><USER13> It is cumbersome enough that many end users won't use it.

Wimax is not part of 4G/LTE, so naturally that is what will replace it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I had an idea, about 90% of the time I need internet on my smartphone, my car is between me and the cell tower, or if not it is within half a mile of me.

Cell phone companies could put "always on" cell phone repeater in my car, drinking from a large li-ion battery that is charged by the engine, so when my smartphone doesn't have enough punch to reach the cell tower, it has enough power to reach my car's repeater, which has enough power to reach the cell tower. If I could charge the company 0.001 cents every time someone else's phone routes through my repeater, the company could save billions on cell towers. Use the nation's cars as a mobile cell phone network. A Billion dollar idea right there.

<comment><USER15> While this sounds like a good idea on the surface, it won't work.

Pretty much all cellular communications nowadays uses CDMA of one flavor or another. An important property of CDMA is that any signal that I send to the tower actually causes more noise for the other users in the network. This id called being interference limited. For this reason, there is a ton of effort going into power control, so that reach user sends just enough power to reach the tower but not more. Your cell phone COULD boost it's transmit power to reach the tower, but it would ruin everyone else's connection.

<comment><USER16> So what's to stop people from hacking their cell phones to break things for everyone else?

<comment><USER17> Stiff fines. If suddenly the only signal the tower's picking up is yours, it doesn't take too long to figure out who is responsible.

<comment><USER16> Prepaid phone, bought with cash, and left in a public place?

<comment><USER17> If you keep it up it can be triangulated, I suppose. Other than that, the tower would have to shift everyone to a different frequency.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Towards practicing differential privacy - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mrtz.org/2015/03/13/practicing-differential-privacy.html

<comment><USER2> Nice tl;dr written by Nobel prize winner Al Roth: [http://marketdesigner.blogspot.com/2015/03/reflections-on- pr...](http://marketdesigner.blogspot.com/2015/03/reflections-on-practical- market-design.html)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9184479](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9184479) from two days ago for more context.</comment>


Take a few easy steps to get SmartOn surveillance - <AUTHOR> https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/teach/smarton/surveillance/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is a link, under the Google search bar, in the home page of Firefox. I find it very cool that Mozilla communicates to customers under the banner "If you are not under investigation, is it normal that your government ..."</comment>


Clarifying SourceForge.net's denial of site access for certain persons - <AUTHOR> http://sourceforge.net/blog/clarifying-sourceforgenets-denial-of-site-access-for-certain-persons-in-accordance-with-us-law/ <comment><USER2> Ouch. They're pretty big, but blocking certain countries and persons just doesn't read well with the foss philosophy.

If they can't work around the issue there'll probably be a successor soon.

<comment><USER3> "there'll probably be a successor soon"? I don't know about you, but I've been using alternative services for years. The time for successors has already passed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A project I work on, Android on Freerunner, ran into this issue with Google Code a while back. We had a user in iran who was unable to access our project because Google was blocking access from their country. It seems that the only alternative is to host your project on a site located outside the US.</comment>


Sufferings Beyond Our Expressing - <AUTHOR> https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/sufferings-beyond-our-expressing <comment><USER2> TIL: The Barbary wars marked the beginning of Americas global military campaigns. American merchant ships were captured and by North African states and then the Americans went to war.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_Wars#Effect_in_United_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_Wars#Effect_in_United_States)

Also, what pre-superpower days looked like:

The US used to pay them annual tributes to leave the ships alone.. ".. by 1797, the United States had paid out $1.25 million or a fifth of the government's annual budget then in tribute.[12] These demands for tribute had imposed a heavy financial drain and by 1799 the U.S. was in arrears of $140,000 to Algiers and some $150,000 to Tripoli".

<comment><USER3> What percentage of the revenue of American commercial shipping activity would that be? 1%? 10%? 50%? I'm curious if America felt forced to act because the tributes were literally breaking the bank, or of it was just a cost/benefit analysis(ie we pay $2M/yr but we can blow up their fleet for a one time cost of $3M), or an ethical one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> While I found this short piece to be fascinating, I had figured since it was in Lapham's it'd be a bit longer. I was surprised when I reached the final sentence and scrolled down that there wasn't a beginning to another section...I suppose I'll have to read the book to learn more :)</comment>


Ask HN: Can a registrar withdraw or withold a domain because it is premium? - <AUTHOR> This is an unusual chain of events.
I get a special offer to register one of those new top level domains for free.
I do so.  I find something that it said was available, and register it.   I am rather surprised because I would have thought someone would have already taken it.
I get an email receipt (for $0.00)
I get an email confirming the domain purchase was successful.
I try to connect the domain to a server,  hosting provider's  web site was not behaving so I contact support.
Support says that domain was not part of the special offer and is a premium domain.
Domain is switched to not active.
-----
Have registrars the right to become cyber-squatters themselves now?  Are they allowed to put individual prices onto each domain name? <comment><USER2> They had likely listed it in error, and only noticed this as their operations couldn't register it.

Or so I'd think. Something about how the price was nil says they simply mis- administrated the record as they were e.g. rotating through staff, or life trying to re-list it at a new rate.

</comment><comment><USER3> They didn't charge you, so it's non-event for you. Besides the fact to note that this registrar is not someone you want to rely on for any future business.</comment>


What issues do you see with this architecture (DevOps)? - <AUTHOR> https://imgur.com/a/a1iT1 <comment><USER2> Hard to say without knowing what is it you architect for. Can we get a bit more details?</comment>


Why home 3D printing never lived up to the hype - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2016/6/6/11693388/makerbot-home-3d-printers <comment><USER2> Ok, that is funny. Makerbot has no business being the 'voice' of the 3D printer market. Try Printrbot instead.</comment>


NASA Ames' Worden reveals DARPA-funded 'Hundred Year Starship' program - <AUTHOR> http://www.kurzweilai.net/nasa-ames-worden-reveals-darpa-funded-hundred-year-starship-program?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

<comment><USER2> Interesting quote:

 _"Larry [Page] asked me a couple weeks ago how much it would cost to send people one way to Mars and I told him $10 billion, and his response was, 'Can you get it down to 1 or 2 billion?' So now we're starting to get a little argument over the price."_

Larry is currently listed on Forbes as being worth $14b, so $1b really isn't a huge amount of his total cashpile.

<comment><USER3> But it was a one-way trip... I assume a trip there and back would be a tad bit more (2-5X).

<comment><USER4> Unlikely...

IMHO designing a system that would enable a pretty good odds of coming back would be at least an order of magnitude more expensive than a similarly reliable one way system.

Think of all the additional R&D and engineering difficulties involved in keeping a human alive long enough to get there, do something there come back and survive.

<comment><USER5> More to the point, what's the cost of a Moon base - where a return and even a rescue is feasible - AND a one-way extensive robotic exploration of Mars. It just seems an overly dramatic waste (there will be no shortage of people willing to go) to send people to die on Mars when we can get the same off- Earth habitation expertise and Mars scientific data for the same price or cheaper.

<comment><USER6> The thing with Mars is, once you're on the surface, you can manufacture fuel for the return trip in-situ. Dr Robert Zubrin covers this in his Mars Direct mission blueprint.

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

And you get oxygen to breathe _for free!_ The Mars Direct plan calls for the initial deployment of an unmanned mission to set up a fuel station on the surface - then unmanned missions to cache supplies there - and only when you have enough stuff pre-deployed for the return trip and/or a permanent presence, send humans.

The moon may be closer, but until you have a working fusion reactor, there's not much you can usefully do there in terms of resource extraction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I find it somewhat astounding how much we are still reliant on blowing stuff up whenever we want to go fast. At least this is being somewhat mitigated on land with electric cars. I'll venture that we won't see any deep improvements in space propulsion until we get a better (i.e. quantum) understanding of gravity. However this beaming power idea is interesting.

<comment><USER8> What's wrong with _blowing stuff up_?

<comment><USER9> Inefficient.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacecraft_propulsion#Power_use...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacecraft_propulsion#Power_use_and_propulsive_efficiency)

<comment><USER10> I didn't think this through all the way, but something seems fishy about that article:

 _... if the exhaust velocity can be made to vary so that at each instant it is equal and opposite to the vehicle velocity then the absolute minimum energy usage is achieved. When this is achieved, the exhaust stops in space [1] and has no kinetic energy; and the propulsive efficiency is 100%_

This argument is not Galilean invariant, which makes it seem highly dubious to me. There is no "stopping in space"; what absolute inertial frame defines what "stopped" means?

<comment><USER11> You are right, this is plain wrong.

You always want to have an exhaust velocity as high as possible. The energy you have to impart to the exhaust is 1/2 _m_ v^2, but you get m*v momentum. So small exhaust mass at very high speed will give you the same momentum, and cost you much less energy than bigger mass and less speed.

<comment><USER11> Sorry, this I'm completely wron... I mean: I was testing if you read the comments before upvoting.

The 1/2m _v^2 vs m_ v points to an exhaust speed as _low_ as possible, to get as much momentum as possible from as little energy expenditure as possible.

Now, if your exhaust comes from the outside world then that makes perfect sense. And this is why you have turboprop and turbofan engines: you slow down the exhaust of the turbine, speed up outside air, and do a favorable energy/momentum trade.

But in space you have to carry the mass you will exhaust. You don't have much choice: all the energy you get from burning fuel will be transfer to kinetic energy of your exhaust (in the reference frame of the rocket).

<comment><USER10> Yeah, you're right. A bit of algebra reveals that your delta-V per MASS of fuel (which is a frame-independent quantity) goes as the (propellant specific chemical energy)^.5.

However, it is also true that if you calculate the delta-V per unit propellant ENERGY used, it decreases with the propellant specific energy.

Since you don't really care about how much energy you carry but only about how much fuel you need to use per delta-V, it's always better to have higher exhaust energy. (As long as you are using a chemical propellant, i.e. the mass carrying the energy and the reaction mass are the same.)

The statement in the article about "propulsive efficiency" is total bogus. First: the relative kinetic energy of the rocket and the exhaust IS a frame- dependent quantity, so it's meaningless. Second, any reasonable measure of efficiency, like the delta-V per fuel energy, reveals that the "optimal" value is an exhaust velocity of zero. (Optimal in the sense that it's more energy efficient, but only because the delta-V goes to zero slower than the energy. It's still a useless optimum, because it results in no delta-V at all...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> somehow reading that, i'm more and more sure that i'll be Branson not Worden who gets us to Mars. I'm not a "free market" zealot, and it isn't about how Branson is good, it is more about how Worden is bad.

There is also Musk, whose drive to change things makes me awe in respect (while his technical decisions may be debatable, the most important thing here is that he actually DOES things). Google guys got the money, and if they still have the same drive...

</comment><comment><USER13> Pretty interesting. I'm sure a lot of people would be interested in a one way ticket to Mars if we could somehow make it livable over there.. I know I am!

<comment><USER14> It's not like a one way trip is unprecedented in human history. Many of the Europeans coming to North America did it one way to conditions that were very much more primitive than the old world.

<comment><USER15> For those Europeans, there was still the option of turning it into a round trip. Granted, it was probably an expensive and arduous option, and required a ship in port ready and willing to take you, but it was there.

Right now, a one-way trip to Mars _really is_ a one-way trip. That is, until we can put enough provisions up there to get a ship back out of that gravity well.

And keep the occupants alive long enough to get back here.

<comment><USER14> Some Europeans had the option. Many had a literal one way trip (no money / resources or the whole go-to-new-world-or-go-to-jail thing).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wonder what kind of electric propulsion they're working on....

</comment><comment><USER17> Interesting ideas. I just can't get past the fact the a Director as NASA actually said, "Anybody that watches the [Star Trek] Enterprise, you know you don't see huge plumes of fire". As if, instead of drawing from science fiction as inspiration, he uses it as a blueprint.

You know what else we don't see, Director Worden? Human Teleportation. And Klingons.

<comment><USER18> I think he was just using it as an example that would be familiar to the audience.</comment></comment>


More cops in schools won't make schools safer; it will likely inflict harm - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2018/02/22/putting-more-cops-in-schools-wont-make-schools-safer-and-it-will-likely-inflict-a-lot-of-harm/?utm_term=.516532441901 <comment><AUTHOR> I shortened the title a bit to make it fit in the allowed space.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> As usual, Radley hits all the points here in a convincing and easy-to-digest way. If you came straight to the comments, do yourself and click to the article at least to see the image that was literally printed on t-shirts for a SRO union. It's horrifically vulgar.

Radley also points out:

> ...we first need to acknowledge something before delving into this > discussion: a classroom is just about the safest place a kid can be in > America.

> The odds of a given child getting killed in a mass school shooting — or any > school shooting — are literally less than 1 in 1 million. The criminologist > James Alan Fox points out that since 1990, there have been 22 shootings at > schools in which two or more people were shot, or well less than one > incident per year. That's less than one incident per year out of 100,000 > public schools and 33,000 private schools. This means that the average > elementary, middle, or high school can expect to see a mass shooting about > once every 150,000 years.

Maybe it's just my isolation from the matter, but I think that the safety of the classroom is still fairly widely understood. Issues like bullying and over-medication seem to be more widely viewed as concerns re: classroom safety, at least among those in my parenting circles.

Nevertheless, it's refreshing to be reminded of how rare (mass- and other) shootings are.

> Cops are authorized to use force in a way that teachers and school > administrators are not. This is because cops are trained to use force. > Administrators are trained to counsel, de-escalate and discipline in other > ways. If administrators increasingly turn to on-site police officers to > discipline students, that means more kids will be handcuffed, Tased and > beaten. There have been a number of incidents over the years that made > national headlines, particularly once video cameras in cellphones became > common. Though SROs exist in every state, only 12 states require specialized > training for officers who are assigned to schools.

Crazy. Having otherwise unspecialized police officers in schools seems almost designed to make students feel less, rather than more secure. What are these other 38 states thinking?

> Black students were 16 percent of the total student enrollment in the > 2011-12 school year but 27 percent of students referred to law enforcement > and 31 percent of students involved in a school-related arrest, according to > the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights data.

> Students with disabilities represented about 12 percent of the total student > population but accounted for a quarter of those arrested and referred to law > enforcement, 75 percent of those who were physically restrained at school > and 58 percent of those placed in seclusion or involuntary confinement.

Sadly, no surprises there. It's certainly disturbing though, and a strong case for keeping cops out of schools as we work out the plaguing bigotry and institutional discrimination at work here.</comment>


Input Security concerns in Python Language - <AUTHOR> http://openprobe.blogspot.in/2012/04/input-in-python.html

<comment><USER2> That code was a strange mix of 1/2 Python and 1/2 Javascript.

The Python document points out that input() is the same as eval(raw_input()) but you have to know from something other than the library reference that 'eval()' is a potentially dangerous function.

Python 3.x's has only "input", which is the same as Python 2.x's "raw_input". See <http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3111/> .</comment>


Ask HN: What's your preferred email signup method? - <AUTHOR>

I'm getting a landing page set up for a small side project I've been working on and was wondering what the preferred method of gathering interested email subscribers is.
I know Mailchimp offers nice signup forms but I'm not aware if it would end up being easier to just roll my own.
Thanks. <comment><USER2> No, definitely use Mailchimp over rolling your own. It will save you time and what they offer for free before having to pay is fantastic.

Although I haven't used the other two suggestions, both look to offer great tools to go even further than just collecting the address.

I myself am doing the same thing right now, just looking for a good way to promote sharing of the page after someone signs up. I want to incentivize people to share with friends by some sort of affiliate program.

</comment><comment><USER3> I sometimes feel like a salesman for Unbounce (I actually don't have any business relationship with them): [http://www.unbounce.com](http://www.unbounce.com)

Very cool landing page / lead capture app they have going. AB testing baked right in.

</comment><comment><USER4> One method is to use LaunchRock, never tried it myself though. But they have some nice-looking designs: [http://launchrock.co/](http://launchrock.co/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Very cool. I'll check it out.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do you use a custom icon font library or a service like Font Awesome? - <AUTHOR> If you use a custom icon font library, how do you keep it up to date as you add new icons? <comment><USER2> Use SVG instead? I'm not sure why you'd want to use an icon font anymore.

<comment><AUTHOR> Isn't it easier? All of the required icons are in one place, it requires far lesser number of requests especially if you use a lot of icons in your application.

I understand why SVG is better if you use only a few icons or you need multiple colors etc.

<comment><USER2> Number of requests don't really matter anymore with HTTP2 which also means you only need to include the SVG images you actually use of each page. You can use SVG sprite sheets if you really want them in a single file.</comment></comment></comment>


Perfectionism - <AUTHOR> http://minetowin.com/2012/07/perfectionism/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a post I wrote on my personal blog that I thought might be of interest to folks here. A lot of people seem to be able to relate to this problem, and I'm hoping some here will have thoughts on how to tackle it.</comment>


Licensing Laws Are Shutting Young People Out of the Job Market - <AUTHOR> http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/licensing-laws-are-shutting-young-people-out-of-the-job-market/ <comment><USER2> Looking through the list of occupations licensed by NY State[1], most of jobs that have license requirements seem to be reasonable. For example, asbestos handlers, bus drivers, crane operators, hazardous materials transporters, milk testers and waste water treatment plant operators (just to choose a few at random) all have jobs that could have significant impacts on public safety, and would need to be certified to have completed safety training (which may need to be periodically updated).

Another class of jobs, such as insurance agents, insurance adjusters, real estate brokers, real estate appraisers and security guards would need to have a knowledge of the laws and regulations that govern those kinds of work (e.g., it would be a huge legal risk to hire security guards who didn't know under what circumstances they could legally detain someone, what degree of force could be legally used, etc.).

None of the occupations in that list jumped out at me as being something that the state had no business regulating.

[1] [https://labor.ny.gov/stats/lstrain.shtm](https://labor.ny.gov/stats/lstrain.shtm)</comment>


Show HN: Reading journal app I made - <AUTHOR> https://www.candlapp.com?utm_source=hn <comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys! If you like to keep track of what you read, please take a look at this service I made. I need advise on whether this concept is tenacious... And of cause for HN-ers first 6 months is free.

</comment><comment><USER2> How is this superior to goodreads?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's more like a personal thing to keep notes to yourself, but also a way of making some notes public and have a public book journal like this one [https://www.candlapp.com/ianis](https://www.candlapp.com/ianis)

<comment><USER2> Hmm... I might give this a try if the following existed.

1) I could sync over my Goodreads shelves. I don't want to have to start over or copy it all manually. 2) It was a freemium model. If I had access to like 3-4 features and the rest were paid-only, I could get behind this. I understand you have a 30 trial, but I don't read enough for 30 days to be a meaningful amount of time, and I have no investment in this product right now.</comment></comment></comment>


O'Reilly donating ebook "Open Government" as a tribute to Aaron Swartz - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/oreillymedia/open_government <comment><USER2> I'd like to see more than an Open Government. I'd like to see a web site developed where people read about issues of interest, learn about the benefits and drawbacks to upcoming policies at a centralized location, see how those policies affect budgets (federal, provincial, or municipal), and provide a simple voting mechanism to get a general sense of how agreeable people find the policy. More than that, it would be amazing if people could contribute to the discussion in a moderated fashion (with moderators selected at random, for random intervals of time, to avoid herd-mentality).

Something like this:

1\. [https://bitbucket.org/djarvis/world- politics/wiki/Interests%...](https://bitbucket.org/djarvis/world- politics/wiki/Interests%20Page)

2\. [https://bitbucket.org/djarvis/world- politics/wiki/Policy%20P...](https://bitbucket.org/djarvis/world- politics/wiki/Policy%20Page)

3\. [https://bitbucket.org/djarvis/world- politics/wiki/Debate%20P...](https://bitbucket.org/djarvis/world- politics/wiki/Debate%20Page)

4\. [https://bitbucket.org/djarvis/world- politics/wiki/Supporting...](https://bitbucket.org/djarvis/world- politics/wiki/Supporting%20Page)

For anyone curious about the project, check out:

<https://bitbucket.org/djarvis/world-politics/>

<comment><USER3> I'm torn on the issue. In my view a politician is actually a service provider doing the mundane tasks I can't be bothered to do. It would be a huge waste of time if a majority of people had to keep up to date on all political issues.

Most of the current "internet voting" systems provide a way to delegate votes, but often those are delegated indefinitely and lead to power concentrations on a few active people.

<comment><USER4> I'm not dumb and I even have the time, but I'd still give proxy to someone who I thought serious understood the issue at hand (so, say, an economist for economic issues). Unfortunately, we currently get the worst of all worlds, representative democracy where the decision makers are career politicians and rarely experts in anything. A representative technocracy would suit me.

<comment><USER3> I don't see a way around it (doesn't mean there isn't one), because how would you identify the economics expert? Seems to me it would still boil down to marketing, the "expert" who advertises himself the best would win. Obviously that advertising could not happen in terms of presenting economics knowledge, because few people would understand it. So the advertising would be in things people understand, like looks, presentation skills, charme... So basically just what already happens.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> for a split second there I read this as Papa Bear O'Reilly donating the book. During that split second my brain was almost fried trying to make sense of how he could have written a book titled "Open Government"

<comment><USER6> There are two O'Reillys, one good, another one evil.

Papabear O'Reilly does not give out free ebooks.

Tim O'Reilly gives out free ebooks and even gives out free ebooks if you own the old paper book and enter the ISBN number on his site. Also OReilly ebooks are DRM free as well.

<comment><USER7> I'm not seeing where to enter the ISBN. Could you point me in the right direction please?

EDIT: I've found where you register print books, but it claims you have to pay $5 to "upgrade" to the ebook version.

<comment><USER6> It used to be free. I guess they added the $5 fee?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> That's a nice gesture by O'Reilly. Salute.

</comment><comment><USER9> Kudos for a thoughtful gesture from O'Reilly.

It does make one wonder, has openness in Government increased under the current administration or not?

While the reality might remain elusive, my sense is, at a minimum, the _perception_ of openness, has strengthened with the public.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is such a nice gesture! However I have a (maybe small) concern: They use creative commons no derivative license. Doesn't that make forking pointless, if not a breach of terms?

</comment><comment><USER11> Is it on ResearchGate? <http://www.researchgate.net>

</comment><comment><USER12> They mean Bill not Tim.</comment>


Regional Dialects Are Alive and Well on Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110106171011.htm

<comment><USER2> This study was US only, but what if you had the resources to make it global? Where are the numbers on Twitter usage outside the US and UK?

The Philippines, for example, is the texting capital of the world and its citizens generate over 400 million SMS per day:

<http://news.cnet.com/2300-1039_3-6222961.html>

In addition, my understanding is that the Republic of the Philippines has over 160 non-mutually intelligible dialects.

</comment><comment><USER3> What does "yinz" mean? I understood the others. This one remains a mystery.

<comment><USER4> You ones. (It's the second person plural.)

<comment><USER3> So it's like y'all or you-guys?

<comment><USER5> Yup.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tor anonymous network now has zero known bugs  - <AUTHOR> http://www.heise-online.co.uk/security/Tor-anonymous-network-now-has-zero-known-bugs--/news/112401

<comment><USER2> I think the correct title should be:

 _Down to 0 issues on Coverity Scan_

<https://blog.torproject.org/blog/down-0-issues-coverity-scan>.

It's probably worth mentioning the classic fastcompany article on software development which minimizes bugs, i.e. writing software for the space shuttle.

<http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/06/writestuff.html></comment>


Will the US adopt a national sales tax? - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/26/AR2009052602909.html?hpid=topnews

<comment><USER2> They need to be looking into a consumption tax to replace the income tax, not a value added tax. Once again, they're overcomplicating an already very complicated issue.

<comment><USER3> >hey need to be looking into a consumption tax to replace the income tax

"Replace" is the key word here. From what I understand, the VAT in consideration would go along side the current income tax thereby increasing overall taxation.</comment></comment>


Bing Versus Wolfram Alpha: A Tale Of Two Search Engine Launches  - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/03/bing-versus-wolfram-alpha-a-tale-of-two-search-engine-launches/ <comment><USER2> not really the same thing considering IE was updated to use bing as a default search engine

<comment><USER3> and live.com redirects to bing.com, so any traffic live was getting is going to bing now.

<comment><USER4> ...and WA isn't a search engine. It serves a completely different purpose.

If I want a web page, I go to Bing. If I want math/science data, I go to WA.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My take on it is that MS went right after the users, including TV ads, and Wolfram, being a mathematician, appealed to the learned and scientific-types, apparently more content with the props of his peers than winning over Joe Sixpack :-)

<comment><USER6> I believe the TV ads started today (Wednesday), so would not explain the entirety of the graph.</comment></comment>


Modal Windows Are For Chumps - spicer-matthews http://cloudmanic.com/blog/51/modal-windows-are-for-chumps?utm_campaign=blog-hackernews

<comment><AUTHOR> You left the advertisement-as-a-blog-post tag in the URL.</comment>