Darklang devlog #2: What next? - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/darklang/dark-devlog-2-what-next-4pme <comment><USER2> What's the benefit of Dark being its own language, as opposed to, say, the current interface and deployment platform being used to execute a linter- enforced limited subset of Python in user code but then allowing any Python library to be used? The only reason Python is hard to learn currently is that no one explains which is the 99% that you don't actually need to know anything about, so you have beginners wasting days and weeks learning about things like frozen sets, which they'll never even see let alone need to use. And to the extent that Python is hard to read, it's because people write linters to enforce things like line length, which don't matter at all for readability, whereas no one bothers to write linters to enforce things that actually do matter for readability, like ensuring that global variables, classes, file names, etc. all have unique names.

Difficult-to-understand features of a programming language shouldn't even be 'unlocked' unless there is some sort of need demonstrated by a line profiler or whatever.

<comment><AUTHOR> The main thing is that if Dark is it's own language, that we're freed of the legacy of whatever other language we might use, and can design something that's explicitly for our use case.

As an example, Dark has "live values" which is where at any point in your program, we show you the actual value for the expression you're on. We use "traces" for this, which means the input (usually a HTTP request) as well as saved results of every expressions.

To accomplish this, we need a language where we can mark which functions are pure, where we can instrument the runtime, and where we can play the runtime back in our editor, filling in the saved trace values.

So nothing wrong with python, but it doesn't have any of those properties.

Similarly, we want your program to deploy instantly. That means that we need a technical way to deploy in 50ms (not sure that's available in python), but we also need language features that support that (such as feature flags built in, and the ability to safely make changes to programs). Otherwise, you'd find it's super easy to break your program with a typo.

This stuff is plausible in Python and many other languages, but seems super difficult.</comment></comment>


SimpleDB Full Text Search, or How to Create a Search Engine in 24 Hours - <AUTHOR> http://codingthriller.blogspot.com/2008/04/simpledb-full-text-search-or-how-to.html

<comment><USER2> Not every day you load hacker news to see a blog post you wrote 4 years ago on the front page!

<comment><USER3> If it's relevant, people will post it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> (2008)</comment>


Yiwu: the Chinese city where Christmas is made and sold - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20141218-the-hidden-home-of-christmas <comment><USER2> The manufactures in Yiwu is really the "last mile manufacture". Most things are made in other places and only ensembled in Yiwu, especially Christmas goods, as those are quite voluptuous.

The success of Yiwu is concentrating factories around China to one place, thus decreasing market efficiency.</comment>


Tired of Safari - <AUTHOR> http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2015/02/tired_of_safari.html <comment><USER2> It's obvious that Apple slowed down innovating the web since the core of their business is iOS and apps. They shouldn't have any interest in a fast innovating web that gets on par with native apps which is their main lock-in for iOS, just like Microsoft 15 years ago. They only speed up their rendering engine and JS core but don't try to help on standards improving the web experience.

BUT: I doubt this pointer event thing is a good example for their reluctance because it's really just a nice-to-have feature for the Surface and the Note series which is for my taste a too small target to justify a standard.

A good example for Apple reluctance to innovate the web is CSS Flexbox. CSS Flexbox is the best positioning standard I encountered, every vendor supports it, only Apple still prefixes it with -webkit.

Another example is their reluctance to make WKWebview fully workable, since months there is still a bug which prevents WKWebview loading local files, the bug was already fixed in an early beta of iOS 8 but then they put it again in. WKWebKit is way more performant than UIWebview and can produce butter smooth HTML5 apps with Cordova/Phonegap but this one bug makes it hard (people already build local web servers to work around this problem).

EDIT/ADDITION: A third and probably the most obvious indication that Apple doesn't want innovation in the browser space is their ban on 3rd party browsers on iOS. Benjaminjackman articulated this well in this thread below: "And yet here we are 15 years later and the iOS platform is doing just that, Apple is embracing this Microsoft strategy and extending it to a whole new level by flat out banning 3rd party browsers and so we all run the risk of having this great renaissance in browser application innovation extinguished into a second dark age."

<comment><USER3> _It 's obvious that Apple slowed down innovating the web since the core of their business is iOS and apps_

No, it's not at all obvious, and the objections you've raised do not support your view at all.

 _CSS Flexbox is the best positioning standard I encountered, every vendor supports it, only Apple still prefixes it with -webkit_

That's a really pedantic objection — prefixing CSS standards which _aren 't actually finished_ is exactly what prefixing is for. It's hardly an anti-web move to keep it prefixed, and anybody who wants to use it can already do so with minimal additional effort.

 _Another example is their reluctance to make WKWebview fully workable_

I find that argument very suspect, since Apple could easily just _not have released WKWebView in the first place_ if they wanted to prevent it's use.

<comment><USER2> > ... the objections you've raised do not support your view at all.

No reason to get emotional.

> That's a really pedantic objection —

Pedantic? Positioning elements is the most important feature of a layout system and CSS is totally broken in this regards, just try to vertical center something. Flexbox is godsend and finalized—every vendor removed the prefix. Wondering who is pedantic.

> Apple could easily just not have released WKWebView

The pressure they got for five years that they offer just the 10x slower UIWebview and give Safari the WKWebkit was the main reason and maybe they just released WKWebview to make the impression that they play along. This one bug makes WKWebview utterly useless.

However, would love to keep the tone in this discussion on a friendly level.

<comment> experimental- Vertical centering has been relatively easy since CSS 2.1 (Table model); flexbox of course offers much more than that. Flexbox may be finalized and unchangeable, if only because so many browsers already support it unprefixed (as support for such properties is almost never removed) – however, like much of the CSS3, flexible box model is not yet a W3C Recommendation, and is, in theory at least, subject to change. With proper tools, a prefix here and there is not a huge burden.

The reason why many browsers rush to unprefix CSS3 is not that it's perfect, but because of the lazy web developers who only prefix stuff for WebKit. This may or may not bite the community in the future.

<comment><USER2> > Vertical centering has been relatively easy since CSS 2.1 (Table model)

But not with divs which are more common

<comment><USER4> It's not hard, really: just use absolute centering [1]. That's actually what "margin: auto" is there for in CSS 2.1; it's a shame they were bad at evangelizing it.

[1]: [http://codepen.io/shshaw/full/gEiDt](http://codepen.io/shshaw/full/gEiDt)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Repeating what I said in previous thread: There are real problems with the Touch Events spec, and we need a replacement. One issue is that it is under specified w.r.t its compatibility with mouse events. A concrete example: Should the touchmove event trigger the mousemove event? I believe it does in IE and Firefox, while it does not in Chrome and Safari. This isn't specified anywhere, and can make it incredibly complex to implement something that works with both mouse and touch input. And it is exactly this type of thing that Pointer Events sets out to fix.

This is exactly the same story as with the <meta name="viewport"> tag. Apple did something without releasing a spec, and the others made not-fully compatible copies. That was 8 years ago. No exaggeration: Right now the only(!) thing that works consistently cross platform is setting width=device- width. It is insane, and it hurts the web.

<comment><USER6> For whatever reason, despite all the standardisation out there, DOM input always has been this massive cross-browser incompatible inconsistent proprietary clusterfuck. quirksmode.org may be known to some of you as this guy's blog, but it is best known for its DOM event compatibility tables, which somehow still matter in 2015.

If browser vendors cannot fix mouse and keyboard, why would they fix touch?

<comment><USER7> A lot of time has been sunk into trying to fix keyboard especially, but it's a horrible, horrible mess — pretty much whatever you do will break websites, given so many do if (UAx) expect_behaviour_x() else if (UAy) expect_behaviour_y() etc., so even standardising on existing behaviour doesn't work. Then there's fact that some of it is down to locales and what the current keymap is… :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Another example: they ignored IndexedDB for a couple years after every other major browser implemented it. Then they finally got around to releasing a version of Safari with IndexedDB support... and it's just hilariously broken in so many ways [http://www.raymondcamden.com/2014/09/25/IndexedDB-on- iOS-8-B...](http://www.raymondcamden.com/2014/09/25/IndexedDB-on-iOS-8-Broken- Bad)

I literally cannot fathom how such a horribly buggy release could be made in good faith. It's like nobody even tried to test it or use it before releasing it.

So, conspiracy theory time: They're doing all this to cripple web apps and force people to write native apps. This conspiracy theory also fits in nicely with how they won't let you run other web browsers on iOS, which would make the deficiencies of Safari somewhat less problematic.

<comment><USER6> It came late and it was buggy.

That rarely means malice. That usually means overstretched engineers.

<comment><USER8> It came years late and was laughably buggy. And 6 months later it's still laughably buggy.

There are plenty of pre-written tests used by the other browser vendors that would have shown them it's shit before they released it. Or they could have just tried using some websites that use IndexedDB and noticed that basically all of them broke in their browser.

That means malice, horrible incompetence, or horrible management. I doubt it's incompetence. It could be horrible management. But it's just so bad that you can't help but think about malice...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> (Mobile) Safari is well under way to become the new IE6, especially for older iOS devices that do not receive further updates. :(

<comment><USER6> "New IE6"? It gets new features.

<comment><USER10> As that comment pointed out, once Apple decides that your device is "obsolete", it stops getting updates, so there are plenty of still-used iOS devices that will never have their Webkit versions updated.

Personally, I suspect this lack of updates has less to do with _actual_ obsoleteness and more to do with ensuring that you always buy the latest device. (Note that this _isn 't a problem unique to Apple_ \-- many companies, including many Android OEMs, are even _worse_ about it. I honestly feel like it should be illegal to sell hardware and never update it, but I'm really not sure how something like that could be enforced.)

<comment> yoz-y This can be turned around and say that it is actually the progress of the web which is obsoleting the devices. Device manufacturers can not update the devices forever, although they could keep them updated a while longer.

<comment><USER11> I can run modern Chrome on Windows XP despite Microsoft dropping support for that OS. I can't do the same for iOS 7. I can't even install a third-party browser engine due to Apple's rules (only a skin over WebKit is allowed.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As a developer who spent the last few months trying to get a website with touch events to work on the surface 3, I need to get this off my chest.

Microsoft, make up your mind. Do you want a browser that websites 'just work' in or do you want to keep implementing broken standards and forcing other browsers to adopt them? Pick one and don't try to find some weird middle ground where you implement webkit touch events on ie11 mobile but not desktop even though you want us to treat them as the same browser. I'm also looking at you, pointermove events that don't ever give you x and y values other than 0. You tell us you want us to do feature detection instead of browser detection, but how am I supposed to do that when window.pointerEnabled is true for all instances of ie11 even though I don't want to register touch events when I know the user is using a mouse? Before you respond with "you should just be listening for pointer events and not worry about type", you've just asked me to make my site incompatible with every other browser on the market instead of making it slower on ie11 by registering lots of unnecessary event listeners.

Microsoft, it's over. I'm moving on, and don't try to pretend like you can change with project spartan.

<comment><USER13> A bug, and an extra event listener? That's enough to drive you mad? Sorry, that seems pretty mild. I understand getting wound up after spending too much time figuring out an issue. Maybe walk away from it for an hour, get a cup of something, vent on HN. Oh! That's what you're doing.

<comment><USER14> Here's the thing this is just one example of one issue of thousands. And at the end of the day the difference is with Mozilla and Chromium I can jump on irc and talk directly to the people working on those browsers and get their advice for the best way to work around a current issue. I can get insight into whether a fix is in progress and I can vent my frustrations. I can also rest easy knowing that in 1-3 months a fix is likely to arrive... For IE this is all none- existent. The original comment is spot on IMO about the state of Microsoft and IE. Safari, has it's issues and I wish Apple would innovate faster but at least the core of Safari is open via Webkit and similar to Mozilla and Chromium I have someone to reach out to... I have nothing from MS/IE - I don't even target that browser anymore. If a customer complains about the site not working - it means either.

a. they're on Window XP and no worth the trouble.

b. they just need to open chrome.

And yes - this is a much better web than we had with MS/IE

<comment><USER15> Have you ever raised a support case with MS properly I.e. Not via feedback/connect?

Your can speak to someone who knows their shit pretty sharpish and get a fix to you. Most of the time this is same day stuff.

As for Chrome, the open web is much better now we have NaCl, sign in nagging and dubious privacy and no support even if you're a paying customer (google apps I'm looking at you).

<comment><USER14> I think conflating privacy with quality/security is a bad idea... especially if you're trying to say MS is better a customer privacy than Google... [http://rt.com/usa/yahoo-microsoft-campaign- political-862/](http://rt.com/usa/yahoo-microsoft-campaign-political-862/) \- just saying...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> yoz-y Judging from the comment thread on the Chromium tracker issue it does not look like people over at Google are any more eager to implement this than Apple is.

</comment><comment><USER16> IIRC, pointer events require an huge amount of hit testing, and don't deal with bypassing the CPU to do smooth scrolling. Pointer events are a good solution for the future, but I understand why Google and Apple aren't pushing it, as they make phones where performance is more critical.

</comment><comment><USER17> Meanwhile Chrome and IE still don't support MathML. Now _that_ is annoying.

<comment><USER18> Is MathML actually widely used? I can't believe anyone would really want to use something else than the LaTeX stuff for typesetting formulas. There's nothing as pretty as LaTeX for that.

Recently I wrote a small tool that enables me to write LaTeX code directly in HTML and the tool then renders the LaTeX code in PDF, converts it to SVG and places an appropriate img-tag with the reference to the generated SVG. I was under the assumption that most people do it kind of that way.

Or let me ask another way: Is there a reason to prefer MathML over using SVGs created with the LaTeX rendering engine?

<comment><USER19> Some reasons to prefer MathML:

1) Working find-in-page that lets you search equations too.

2) Ability to select, copy, paste the math bits.

3) Better accessibility. LaTeX in alt text is something, but actual semantic markup would allow the UA to present things to the user the way the user wants more easily (e.g. without having to re-parse the LaTeX).

4) Ease of editing and reuse (c.f. view source).

5) Ease of styling (e.g. you can use colors to highlight parts of an equation as needed and change it dynamically; some teaching sites put this to very good use).

Note that there do exist LaTeX to MathML converters, so you can still author in LaTeX if you want and export to MathML.

<comment><USER18> Thank you for the explanation!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> And Google has now closed discussion on the issue tracker, as linked to by PPK. [https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=162757](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=162757)

It got salty but not to the extent that merited this being closed. It looks like this will remain closed and wontfix for the immediate time being.

</comment><comment><USER21> I was really on board with this article until I got to this:

> Although he is right in a literal sense, I do not think we should exaggerate > the problem. Clueless web devs will be clueless (and they're mostly blinded > by iFever anyway)

So the author is saying that most clueless devs are rabid Apple fans? This is so ridiculous to the point of doing nothing but making the author look bad.

Yes, Apple is behaving badly with regards to this spec. All large companies have behaved badly with regard to Open Web Standards at one point or another. Let's pressure Apple to get on board with the Open Standard just like we have to pressure all other companies who are on the wrong side of this battle. It's not the first time it won't be the last time.

Taking it personally is not productive.

<comment><USER22> You missed the context

> creating a second bunch of events to do essentially the same as touch events > would put undue pressure on web developers, since they would now have to > code to two standards

He's talking about the fact that the devs that have problems with this are "clueless" and will be saved by someone else that does the hard part for them (write a unified interface)

<comment><USER21> I did not miss the context. I read the article. I was not objecting to his characterization of devs being clueless. There are lots of clueless devs in the world. In my experience it's >50% of devs.

What I objected to was the absurd claim that "most" clueless devs have "iFrenzy." When obviously in reality, there's clueless Apple fans and clueless Apple haters and clueless everyone in-between.

Making such a, frankly, stupid assertion undermined the entirety of his post.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Desktop Safari sucks too.

It has good battery life on a Mac, but tends to crash frequently for me.

The thing I hate the most though is this: On the favorites bar, click a folder to drop it down, now click another folder while the first is still dropped down -- nothing! I'm not even asking to be able to drag my pointer to the next folder and have it expand, but that would be even better.

<comment><USER24> In fullscreen mode drag a tab somewhere so that a new window gets created. This new window will have some vertical offset broken and can't be fixed by anything you do (black stripe on the bottom in fullscreen mode, lots of strange behaviour)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Comments like

> _(and they're mostly blinded by iFever anyway)_

do nothing but make the author look bad and make many readers (such as myself) inclined to discount the entire piece. It's really disappointing to see something like this in an article that otherwise has a legitimate point.

</comment><comment><USER26> If only there was a better/faster mobile browser than Safari. The fact is there isn't, true, Google is not allowed to have its own version of Webkit/blink on iOS, but is Chrome Android better/as reliable as Safari?

<comment><USER27> > but is Chrome Android better/as reliable as Safari?

Absolutely, not sure what would make you think otherwise. Older versions (a year or two ago) used to have some minor inconveniences ocasionally, such as scrolling lag after using it for a while, but that was ironed out long ago. Chrome for Android is my main mobile browser and by and large the "app" I spend the most time with while on the go, and currently I have zero complains. It's fast, it's responsive and it gets the job done without getting on the way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> To me more worrying is Apple's complete silence on Service Worker: [https://jakearchibald.github.io/isserviceworkerready/](https://jakearchibald.github.io/isserviceworkerready/)

I agree with sentiment of the article, but I don't care about PointerEvents in particular. Good UI needs to have separate code paths for touch and mouse anyway, e.g. swiping with a mouse feels stupid.

For trivial stuff TouchEvents already simulate mouse events and every new technology will — these events are our common compatibility layer already.

TouchEvents are a bit of a mess, but it's fixable and it's being worked on, e.g. standardising simulated mouse events, removing click delay, adding ability to prevent scroll from any touchmove event.

TouchEvents even sometimes nicer to work with, e.g. touchend will be fired on the same element that received touchstart (there are edge cases in there, but I've never ran into them), while this is not guaranteed with pointerup, so it's easy to write bad code that causes dragged elements become "sticky".

<comment><USER7> Apple are frequently silent on things until they start to implement them. They almost never promise to implement things until they are almost done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Also, apple only allows using the UIWebView, so Chrome for iOS is just safari's engine with a better interface: [https://developer.chrome.com/multidevice/ios/overview](https://developer.chrome.com/multidevice/ios/overview) And in previous iOS releases, the UIWebView had a significantly worse performance than safari: [http://daringfireball.net/2011/03/nitro_ios_43](http://daringfireball.net/2011/03/nitro_ios_43)

Both cases are explained as security measures. But they are coincidentally degrading web applications' performance, which benefits Apple's app store revenue.

<comment><USER6> iOS added WKWebView.

<comment><USER26> WKWebview is good for a very simple in app link opener, if you want to do a full featured browser around it (Chrome iOS), the public API is nowhere near ready for that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Tired of Safari, but for different reasons. Mobile Safari is probably the biggest reason I don't want to use iPad or iPhone. No reflow of text after zoom, and I don't want to move back and forth right and left to read larger size text. Very useful when reading while walking or when website text is just too small. Reading list doesn't replace good zoom text reflow.

I have an iPhone, but I use it so rarely it's sometimes out of battery for weeks. I guess it's too "one size fits all" device to me. Some things are deceptively nice in it, it's smooth... but it doesn't respect my wishes.

Using Opera on Android instead. Perfect mobile browser for a mobile phone after enabling flow option in the settings (Text wrap).

Another app I couldn't live without is f.lux or equivalent. I wish iOS could have it without jailbreak.

</comment><comment><USER31> I understand the frustration behind Google abandoning Pointer Events, but they have good reasons for doing so. For years, one of the bars to get a new feature added to Chrome has been "Does this increase or maintain performance?" For Pointer Events, they determined the answer was "no" because of the extra hit testing it requires, and they refuse to regress performance on the web.

My primary input device has been a stylus for over a decade, so I'd love to see unified input support on the web, but with all the talk of getting to 60 FPS, I can understand why a spec that contradicts that isn't being implemented.

[https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=162757#c...](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=162757#c64)

</comment><comment><USER32> Interesting twist in this article. I've seen a lot of praise for his writing style (inverted pyramid) on HN, but that Google portion came out of nowhere. He is understandably upset that Apple is slowing down progress, but doesn't seem as upset that Google is doing the same thing.

</comment><comment><USER33> On the subject of things I'm tired about. That website uses 448 px for the main content. For me that is 448 px of 1905 px. That's not even a quarter of my screen. Why in the world would you do something like this?

<comment><USER34> A few arguments:

[http://www.humanfactors.com/newsletters/optimal_line_length....](http://www.humanfactors.com/newsletters/optimal_line_length.asp)

[http://www.ninjapost.com/blog/on-the-importance-of-narrow- co...](http://www.ninjapost.com/blog/on-the-importance-of-narrow-columns/)

[http://socialtriggers.com/perfect-content- width/](http://socialtriggers.com/perfect-content-width/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35>
      If you want to help, please star _this_ issue in the Chromium bug tracker and make some noise

* [https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=162757](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=162757)

</comment><comment><USER36> > Sponsored by IE.

Just saying.

<comment><USER37> While their browser really is subpar, Microsoft did contribute some important technologies to the web. E.g. AJAX (XMLHttpRequest) and (the precursor to) HTML5 Drag and Drop.

<comment><USER31> If AJAX was any good, we wouldn't need the Fetch API. It was only embraced because the web had literally no was to programaticly download assets before that.

<comment><USER37> "It was only embraced because the web had literally no was to programaticly download assets before that."

Exactly. The version of the DnD API implemented by Microsoft for the most part wasn't that great either (did Microsoft catch up with what other browser vendors provide these days yet?). But at least they did something and they let it be standardized without any patent claims. We had these problems and Microsoft came up with solutions. Of course you want to use XMLHttpRequest2 or WebSockets and you want to use the dataTransfer object with mime types and the FileReader API. But Microsoft at least initiated that development.

Now that almost sounds like I'm a Microsoft fan boy. I'm not. I use Linux. Couldn't stand to use Windows. But I think one should give credit where credit is due.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Startup Sharks- Who They Are and How to Spot Them - <AUTHOR> https://arcticwolf.atlassian.net/wiki/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=145564075 <comment><USER2> You might want to provide your login credentials if you want us to follow your link.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks will repost. Looks like I added the wrong link.</comment>


Ask HN: Benefits of circular images with css? - <AUTHOR> I see a lot of images styled to appear circular.  Many times you see this around a blog authors picture.  I see it on Medium etc.<p>Are there any benefits to this type of image styling? <comment><USER2> One advantage of using CSS to make an otherwise rectangular (really, square) image appear circular is that the underlying images won't become obsolete if the visual design changes to shift away from circular images.

Another is that commonly used lossy image codecs perform poorly on sharp transitions, and block-based compressors perform especially poor on rounded corners, and often, with transparency.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Update: I was really looking more from a user perspective. Does using a circular shape appeal more to users verse a square shape?

</comment><comment><USER3> The underlying image is still a rectangle, it is just being manipulated with css to make it more stylistically appealing.</comment>


Kafka Streams, the Clojure Way - <AUTHOR> https://clojure-conundrums.co.uk/posts/kafka-streams-the-clojure-way/ <comment><USER2> Related read - here is an explanation, coming from a Clojure folk, of why Kafka (Streams) might play a crucial role in your next architecture. [https://www.confluent.io/blog/toward-functional- programming-...](https://www.confluent.io/blog/toward-functional-programming- analogy-microservices/)

Has been a great influence in my jobs over the last year.</comment>


Earth may temporarily pass dangerous 1.5 C warming limit by 2024 - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2020-09-earth-temporarily-dangerous-limit-major.html <comment><USER2> I think we as humanity will just keep on denying this is happening or that something can be done about it, until in a few (?) decades we'll agree that we're f*cked and that it is all to late and we must blame the people of the past for getting us there. That way we are never personally responsible, but can always look at someone else/some other time.

<comment><USER3> I feel that on a personal level. You can stop flying, reduce your consumption, sort your trash like your life depends on it etc, only for your next door neighbour to undo all of your work.

That's just in Central Europe, where people can afford to care. Go a little further out and you'll see really discouraging scenes. There are many countries where people drive the cars that failed the emissions test in Germany, with the German decals still on them. Recycling does not exist there. You can find towns by the plumes of smoke coming from their burning trash.

With more and more people gaining access to a certain living standard, I feel like it's a lost battle. There will be more cars, more consumption. Combine that with the other economical ills of this world, and I really doubt any vanguard efforts will see a reward.

<comment><USER4> Still, your own carbon emissions are reduced significantly if you never fly or drive or eat meat.

Individually we can only be examples for people to copy.

<comment><USER5> We can also organize as individuals, become single issue voters, send demands to our politicians at the local, state, and federal level.

Maybe it takes too long, but at least it's something besides just individually doing the right thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Imagine if the entire developed world suddenly magically disappeared so that no further emissions happened from that population. Would the existing co2 in the atmostphere still be enough to cause 2 degrees of warming?

<comment><USER7> Most likely yes - there are a bunch of feedback loops in climate that continue even if the initial source of warming is removed.

The most likely scenario that would result in the "entire developed world suddenly magically disappeared" is a nuclear winter, though. Such an event would drop global temperatures by a lot more than 2 C, nullifying the problem.

<comment><USER6> that's why i said "magically disappeared" instead of "blew itself up with nuclear weapons" :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I just saw a Michael Moore-affiliated documentary (directed and hosted by some guy I've never seen before - Jeff Gibbs) . It might only be a bunch of hype. But, it drew attention to a huge source of renewable energy that I've never heard of before: biomass plants. One of the theses of this documentary is that biomass plants mainly run off of forested timber, so the use of these power plants (as a primary renewable energy resource in Germany and seemingly Michigan) is far from green/renewable.

Is this a "haters gonna hate" kind of situation or are biomass plants legitimately an evil in disguise?

<comment><USER9> A large chunk of the Danish "green/renewable" energy comes from biomass plants when the wind isn't blowing. So this is a debate we're currently having, and it's basically looking more and more like a legislative hack.

Biomass plants burn biomass instead of fossil fuels. We're currently burning a lot of wood by-products from the Estonian lumber (timber?) industry.

I'm not big on the science, and I hope someone can put it better, but the arguing, as I understand it, goes something like: "the trees have absorbed CO2, so burning them is CO2 neutral", but it's not like burning wood stuff doesn't release CO2.

<comment><USER10> I guess the main difference would be:

1\. burning fossil fuel. Pulling carbon from within the earth and putting the CO2 in the air. 2\. biomass burning. Burning Carbon that is above ground and putting in the air.

I think 1+2=bad, 2 by itself I don't think is bad basically what the Native Americans used to do to maintain forests before Europeans. However, we don't live in a world where we are just doing #2.

<comment><USER9> That's not really how it goes though. We're using it to make our numbers pretty so we meet the EU and Paris agreements, but it doesn't actually make us a renewable country, and once the goals are met, political focus will go elsewhere.

It could be worse, sure, but that's not an excuse for not doing better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The timing of the Fukushima nuclear disaster was so unfortunate.

<comment> 0-_-0 The reaction to it was even more unfortunate

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> As per UAH we're just about on par with the 1998/1999 peak. Back then it was supposed to keep going up too, but took an almost 20 year break for whatever reason.

[https://www.drroyspencer.com/wp- content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_...](https://www.drroyspencer.com/wp- content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_August_2020_v6.jpg)

<comment><USER13> First off, the trend line on that graph is clearly upwards. You can't cherry pick one outlier data point as the starting point and then say that anything below that point doesn't matter. This is clearly trolling behavior at best. Secondly, I'm not sure where you found this graph but it's clearly been chosen specifically because of the height of the 1998 outlier. A graph including the whole earth and all data available does not show the same strong peak. So this is again, prevarication at best.

<comment><USER12> > First off, the trend line on that graph is clearly upwards. You can't cherry > pick one outlier data point as the starting point and then say that anything > below that point doesn't matter.

And where did I claim that?

Both RSS and UAH show this same peak. This is a well known fact to anybody who's following satellite temperature measurements.

The graph starts in 79 because UAH didn't exist before that time.

> A graph including the whole earth and all data available does not show the > same strong peak.

You may mean giss which is a different measurement method based on ground measurement stations, not the "whole earth". It shows a less pronounced peak, yes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> At what point do we just accept the world is coming to an end and do nothing?

<comment><USER4> The world will go on.

The question is, what kind of life do you want your children/nieces and nephews to live in fifty years' time?

We're heading for a world in which rich countries will be severely tested by hundreds of millions of wannabe climate migrants, while coping with the aftermath of repeated storms* and recurrent shortages of food and other ncecessities.

(On the up side, global population is going to peak soon.)

Any action helps make things that much less bad in fifty years.

* firestorms, windstorms, rainstorms, seastorms, ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Disappointing that the piece finished with "urgent action can change trends".

No, it can't. Urgent _inaction_ can change trends, though. Stop mining coal. Stop making cement. Stop refining oil and gas. Stop eating meat.</comment>


Oklo's Jacob DeWitte on Building a Nuclear Reactor People Want - <AUTHOR> http://themacro.com/articles/2016/03/jacob-dewitte-oklo-interview/ <comment><USER2> > We're building a brand new kind of nuclear reactor that can be used in > places where power is unreliable, expensive, and dirty.

Afghanistan.

> It's something that we know people want, and we can build it now, and here's > why

Right. These 'people' are called 'Army', 'Airforce' and 'Navy':

[http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-03/mobile- nucl...](http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-03/mobile-nuclear- reactors-could-provide-power-and-jet-fuel-military-darpa-says)

<comment><USER3> Also, people who have a higher bar for "unreliable" e.g. emergency services want power even after the storm-of-the-century.

<comment><USER4> Don't forget about Waffle House. I'm sure there is a market for an under-the- sink reactor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is interesting to hear about somebody approaching nuclear with a start-up type approach. As a lay person I hear about reactor designs that can reduce nuclear waste and make a truck load more energy off it at the same time, which leaves me wondering why these things don't get made. Is it all institutional politics as this article makes out, or is there a safety/proliferation issue there as well?

If the institutional inertia has a large part to play then a startup model would be very promising.

<comment><USER6> Short answer: it's politics, NIMBY nonsense, and radiophobia.

Longer answer:

Yes, there are obviously safety and proliferation concerns with nuclear power, but a lot of these are solvable problems. Many industries solve difficult/dangerous problem all the time. Unfortunately, paranoia and misleading (or simply wrong) information about radiation made a _lot_ of people treat the very idea of nuclear power as something that is "always bad".

This, and the usual political stupidity, has kept nuclear power restricted to the same designs for decades. Imagine if the computer industry was was never able to move past the relay and vacuum tube designs made in the WW2 era; today we might have _very good_ vacuum tubes instead of the integrated circuit. Newer reactors like the Westinghouse AP1000 are a nice improvement in safety and cost, but it's still basically the same solid uranium alloy fueled, pressurized light water reactor we've always used. Newer designs are never always considered "too risky" in either money _or_ physics.

<comment><USER7> I'd be interested in hearing which "newer designs" exactly you think got postponed for stupid political reasons. As far as I know, nuclear power did evolve over the last decades as far as it could and if it's "still basically the same", then just nobody came up with something really new in the field. Basically, uranium alloy fueled, pressurized light water reactor is what you can get. Fusion? Was said to be ready in 20 years - 40 years ago, and today? Still 20 years to go...

<comment><USER8> > As far as I know, nuclear power did evolve over the last decades as far as > it could and if it's "still basically the same", then just nobody came up > with something really new in the field.

The nation that should have been the primary driver of nuclear technologies (the US) saw an explosion in the cost of development. This was not seen in other countries, which is evidence that it's because of cultural/institutional problems rather than fundamental technical ones.

[http://www.vox.com/2016/2/29/11132930/nuclear-power-costs- us...](http://www.vox.com/2016/2/29/11132930/nuclear-power-costs-us-france- korea)

> Fusion? Was said to be ready in 20 years - 40 years ago, and today? Still 20 > years to go...

This is a common misconception. In fact, the authoratative government body on energy research made it very clear 40 years ago what it would cost to develop fusion power. Fusion power never got the required funding so it never materialized -- as predicted.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8311566](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8311566)

<comment><USER9> >Nuclear construction costs in the US did spiral out of control, especially after the Three Mile Island meltdown in 1979. But this wasn't universal. Countries like ... Japan kept costs fairly stable during this period

So if we keep costs down like Japan did we can experience the same cost savings they did?

Where do I sign up?

<comment><USER10> Compared to the radiation deaths caused by coal power plants, Fukushima was a little inconsequential blip, so _even if_ we assume that it represented what you get if you follow Japanese regulations, it'd still be a plus.

<comment><USER9> Except we're easily at a point now where _both_ coal and nuclear plants can be phased out as they reach the end of their natural lives and replaced with solar + wind farms at a reasonable cost, as Germany and Denmark are currently demonstrating.

The variability problem turned out to be smaller than nuclear+coal industry led us to believe and relatively easily managed with market based solutions (e.g. ramping up/down power usage by aluminum smelters and simply building in extra capacity) rather than by building massive batteries (an idiotic idea).

<comment><USER11> Massive batteries _is_ an idiotic idea, as you said. Which is why the constant and large and instantaneous fluctuations from solar and wind are smoothed largely by natural gas. Recommend checking out the video of RFK, Jr saying a solar or wind plant is a gas plant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> People want reactor which passes safety regulations and this article does not even touches the subject.

Communist Czechoslovakia was working on something like that, civil reactor for small remote villages. They got stuck on cooling.

BTW there is atomic reactor in center of Prague ;-)

</comment><comment><USER13> The article content does not match the title. Lots of talk about how the guy grew up, what shaped his outlook, etc. I saw nothing about how he is building a "small, waste- and carbon-negative reactor."

Is it even possible to build a reactor that meets those criteria, let alone be financially viable?

<comment><USER5> I presume waste-negative means it can take existing waste as fuel, and make it less dangerous while making energy still (as current fast breeder reactors can, though not on a small scale afaik). Carbon negative presumably just means "uses less carbon per kwh over the whole lifecycle than the diesel generator it replaces" which shouldn't be too hard to achieve.

"Small" presumably makes this harder.

You're right though, some more technical details would be nice.

<comment><USER14> When nuclear was developed, it was foreseen the waste of the first generation could still be reused by a "next generation" reactor and maybe turned into non radioactive matter. Nuclear reaction and transmutation says that the most stable atomic number is around 49 so with N>100 for actual nuclear wastes there is still potential energy usable.

Then oil went cheap investments were frozen.

As everybody noticed the "most advanced" deployed IIIrd generation of nuclear reactor are not really a success (EPR).

And the 5th?/4th supposed to come generation is promising a lot, but still has not delivered a lot. We are lagging way behind schedules, notably because cheap oil has been a curse.

Oil is getting more and more costly to extract.

PV and wind turbine activity do not follow our 9am/7pm seasonal activity. Eolian is so massively subsidized in USA Texas had negative prices this summer on their grid.

So _cheap and convenient (non subsidized)_ energy seems to be our past. Not the future we will live in.

I guess some activity will slowly disappear ... And that the part of energy in Internet's price will have to be paid more fairly among users.

Cheap energy is physically soon to be dead. The watt consumed per software use will matter as soon as government will stop subsidizing the market with public money. And Artificial Intelligence may not beat human intelligence and adaptive workforce when costs are fully supported by the software makers.

Human have more value than what google and uber thinks, and their technological dystopia based on _clean_ non human work force and cheap energy is a nightmare for both the workers and the ecosystem.

IT industry is not sustainable in its actual trend to not care about efficiency. Agile is a symptom of it, and we need government to stop their politic to deregulate on one hand so that those who waste energy don't pay their bills and on the other hand subsidize the market in favor of those producing so called cheap energy (fracking, PV, eolian, batteries) that are polluting.

Sorry, but sails, men, mechanical windmill and horses are some of the trivially cheap energies that will be available in the future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's 2016 and we still don't have a ultimate disposal place for nuclear waste. No one knows how much the whole process will cost in the end. At least in Germany law says whoever produces nuclear waste has to ensure it will be stored securely. I don't see how this is possible with a startup. Startups usually take high risk in most of their decisions. Most startups fail within few years. Who will be responsible for the waste produced by a startup that goes bankrupt?

There's no other solution than to stop nuclear power now and investing all we can to care about reliably storing the waste forever (in human terms). And even if there were ways to store something reliably for 1,000,000 years, it's impossible to keep future civilizations from opening what shouldn't be. The pyramids weren't meant to be opened either. ;)

</comment><comment><USER16> I've met Jake and he gives one of the most inspiring and pragmatic pitches about the future of energy I've ever heard. What they're building sounds like magic--massive amounts of energy with incredible safety and portability. Super exciting stuff.

</comment><comment><USER17> Let's certainly not let the risks or difficulties of operating nuclear reactors or disposing of their waste get in the way of nuclear startups. Fortunately, those from the West Coast only look at the upside of these things per DeWitte. An attitude that existed during the Manhattan Project and some reactors with serious issues. I can't wait to see what comes of this.

Even the author of Learned Optimism that brought us Cognitive Therapy pointed out that pessimism made sense when we're talking risk management. The context here is nuclear materials. I have a hard time being optimistic given what past 60+ years have shown us about that.

<comment><USER18> Nuclear was the first kind of energy production without externalized costs (mostly). Solar seems pretty good, but i think the manufacturing is pretty toxic. I guess the same could be said of the concrete in nuclear reactors.

having a plan for dealing with waste and paying for that plan from the start is pretty cool. Even if the plan sucks, it's way way better than our plans for coal and oil. Which, as far as i can tell, is to just not worry about it.

 _edit_

I guess there's no _good_ plan, but it's not like the reactor operators wake up one Tuesday and wonder where their waste went. Unlike me when i drive. Carbon is much more dump it in the air and hope for the best. Nuclear waste is, as far as i know, logged, tracked, audited and generally completely accounted for.

<comment><USER17> Are these things you're comparing nuclear to guaranteed to be a problem for thousands of years? Or are they just chemicals that we might recombine or destroy in various ways? I'm pretty sure they're the latter. I'm not aware of anything that turns radioactive waste into non-radioactive waste.

Far as toxic waste, we could always build more of these maybe:

[http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/energy/plasma...](http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/energy/plasma- converter.htm)

Even that article mentions a specific type of waste as an exception that can cause fire or explosions in the equipment. Even mighty plasma has trouble with it. What hope is there for other methods? ;)

<comment><USER6> > I'm not aware of anything that turns radioactive waste into non-radioactive > waste.

You use a breeder reactor. Some of the designs for thorium breeders, for example, can be used to process existing waste from other reactors.

> guaranteed to be a problem for thousands of years?

Note that it gets safer over time as it decays, and in general the radiation danger of an isotope goes down the longer the half-life. Once you get into the particularly long lived isotopes, the radiation danger becomes very small. Also, the amount of waste is trivial; nuclear power only makes a millionth the waste as traditional power, because of the vast difference in usable energy density.

Even if you consider the waste that stays around for "thousands of years", that's a short time compared to some types of _chemical_ waste that doesn't decay. How many Superfund sites already exist?[1] There are quite a few in Silicon Valley[2].

[1] [http://toxmap- classic.nlm.nih.gov/toxmap/combo/mapControls.d...](http://toxmap- classic.nlm.nih.gov/toxmap/combo/mapControls.do)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Superfund_sites_in_Cal...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Superfund_sites_in_California)

<comment><USER17> "Even if you consider the waste that stays around for "thousands of years", that's a short time compared to some types of chemical waste that doesn't decay."

I did mention a plasma converter and the possibility of chemical options coming up down the line. Not many possibilities like that for nuclear.

<comment><USER6> > I did mention a plasma converter and the possibility of chemical options > coming up down the line.

Yes, you did. You also (correctly) suggest we aren't actually going to solve all chemical pollutant problems with plasma converters. That's an interesting tech that should be useful in some areas, but even then chemical pollution is still a _far_ bigger problem than the nuclear power industry ever will be.

> Not many possibilities like that for nuclear.

I did mention a breeder reactor and that nuclear power converts a _microscopic_ [1] amount of fuel into waster for the same energy. Not only is nuclear waste a solved problem, it's utterly ridiculous to compare such trivial amounts of waste to what other industries produce.

[1] literally micro- as in 1/1,000,000 (because we get much more energy[2] from U or Th)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#Energy_densitie...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#Energy_densities_of_common_energy_storage_materials)

<comment><USER17> So, breeders solve waste problem. Reactors are producing microscopic amounts. One person's basement worth of space should handle US's waste storage needs. So, what was the Yucca Mountain proposal for again? I seem to have got the wrong impression they needed space for tons of hot waste.

<comment><USER19> We needed Yucca Mountain because:

\- Carter put a moratorium on conventional fuel reprocessing, like France uses.

\- The Clinton administration shut down the Integral Fast Reactor project.

\- The NRC created a very difficult regulatory environment for anyone attempting to develop more advanced types of reactors, including the fast reactors and molten salt reactors that would produce far less waste and consume most of our existing waste as fuel.

<comment><USER17> There we go. I appreciate some specifics to look into on top of breeder reactors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think 200 years in the future that's no way we will still be burning dinosaurs. We really need another nuclear age, one with safety and innovation.

</comment><comment><USER21> It's an exciting project, but having chosen Oklo [1] as their name makes them extremely difficult to search for (try 'oklo reactor' for example), which is a little problematic for a startup...

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

<comment><USER11> Oklo.com. You can sign up for the mailing list there, for updates once info goes live.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Even if people want it will they be able to get it because of regulations?

<comment><USER23> I don't really want my neighbours to be able to buy an _unregulated_ nuclear reactor! They need to be sited away from built-up areas, water sources etc because the contamination from a potential failure is "forever", including areas rendered uninhabitable.

<comment><USER22> In addition to your concern (definitely a good one!), I don't think the current political climate is such that we'll see progress in nuclear energy anytime soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> how absurd.. I should start a start up for a intragalactic mission to apha centauri</comment>


Garry Shandling Died from Heart Attack Despite Health - <AUTHOR> http://m.eonline.com/news/751690/garry-shandling-died-from-a-heart-attack-despite-good-health-doctors-believe <comment><USER2> There's supposedly a test to determine if you have a high probability of a heart attack.

[http://www.cbsnews.com/news/calcium-scan-may-predict- prematu...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/calcium-scan-may-predict-premature- death-risk/)

[http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/health- topics/topics/cscan](http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/health- topics/topics/cscan)

Watch this movie: [http://widowmakerthemovie.com](http://widowmakerthemovie.com)</comment>


Ask HN: Online time exchanging - <AUTHOR>

What do you think about a site where people can exchange time of their days? I can walk your dog for one hour and you can teach me how to format a pc, do you get it? Every hour you make something for someone gives you one credit, you can use it for anything you are interested in... what do you think about a site like this? do you know something similar? <comment><USER2> The term is a "time bank". A web search for that will turn up plenty.

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

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-based_currency>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Great! Thanks! Do you know any example of one of these time banks, but online?</comment>


LivingSocial Financials: $2.9 Billion Valuation, $50M In Revenue Per Month - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/15/livingsocial-financials-exposed-2-9-billion-valuation-50-million-in-revenue-per-month/ <comment><USER2> How come news media never talk about profits when it comes to tech startups? Profits should be the key ingredient for valuation. A huge percentage of Living Social's revenue goes back to the businesses.

<comment><USER3> Because those numbers would be too disappointing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm finding it really hard to justify TechCrunch's continued practice of publishing purloined documents _when there is no public interest at stake_.

<comment><USER5> Its called Digital Douchebaggery -- and expect it to continue so long as TC can regularly position itself in the center of any tech gossip available.</comment></comment>


Warren Buffett is spending billions to make Iowa 'the Saudi Arabia of wind' - <AUTHOR> https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/warren-buffett-berkshire-hathaway-invest-billions-iowa-saudi-arabia-wind-2019-12-1028787852 <comment><USER2> Doing good for climate is a valid business strategy, not a philantropy.

Long-term investors should factor in their models that carbon heavy industries will be negatively hitted by regulations and taxes. Especially as climate change will get worse and younger generations already overwhelming support such meassures.

Leading world economists such as Jeremy Rifkin points out that carbon assests will likely be stranded and this may be the biggest bubble of our times.

<comment><USER3> That's not a strategy. It's an observation. It's an important observation!

Now what do we do about it? Discounting carbon heavy industries is one move. How much? When will those heavy costs hit?

My own preference is to start coffee farming in North America, to offset the coming end of global shipping. What year will that be, so I can have my crop ready?

<comment><USER4> There will be small market for your backyard craft coffee...but

Coffee requires a very particular environment to grow, so you are going to spend more energy adapting your local environment to produce coffee that is expended by the shipping of coffee.

What I think will happen is someone will make a completely artificial "coffee flavor" beverage, with added caffeine that the mass market prefers to coffee and doesn't require importing coffee beans.

<comment><USER5> Re: artificial coffee substitutes are you talking about something like Postum? I'm trying to imagine a palatable take on modern energy drinks adapted to be served hot but my imagination is failing me.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [https://www.nrel.gov/gis/images/100m_wind/awstwspd100onoff3-...](https://www.nrel.gov/gis/images/100m_wind/awstwspd100onoff3-1.jpg)

This is a good resource to determine what is financially viable to assess where to put wind farms. According to the chloropleth, light blue has the highest average wind speeds.

</comment><comment><USER7> As an Iowan, I'm surprised we're not already the "wind capitol of the world". You can't throw a rock without hitting a turbine, especially along I-80 and I-35.

<comment><USER8> That is cool! Out of curiosity, how intrusive is living around wine turbines? Is it a problem at all? Or are they mostly unnoticeable?

<comment><USER7> I live in the Des Moines metro and most of the turbines are in rural areas, so I can't really speak to living around them.

As for the few turbines in the urban areas, they're completely unnoticable. They're silent and just blend into the background.

The only thing I could maybe see as annoying is the red flashing lights they use to help aircraft see them at night. The flashing is at least synchronized so there isn't a constant twinkling effect.

<comment><USER9> >The only thing I could maybe see as annoying is the red flashing lights they use to help aircraft see them at night.

I'm also from Iowa. It's a really eerie effect driving through a wind farm in the pitch dark! I noticed it most recently on 80 near Newton when they put in a wind farm in the last couple years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wind must really be something if there's this much misinformation (birds, farm land usage) about it.

<comment><USER11> Don't forget the wind cancer one.

[https://www.politifact.com/truth-o- meter/statements/2019/apr...](https://www.politifact.com/truth-o- meter/statements/2019/apr/08/donald-trump/republicans-dismiss-trumps-windmill- and-cancer-cla/)

<comment><USER7> The most common health concern I hear about is claims or turbines causing headaches. It seems likely to just be misattribution, much like the fabled wifi headaches.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Texas produces 25% of its electricity from Wind and US produces about 5% of its electricity from Wind. The point is Wind is location specific - the plains and Rockies is where it is on land.

The state of Jefferson has bright offshore wind future ;)

<comment><USER13> Source for the 25%? I've heard 10% recently on a podcast, and Wiki says 15.6~15.7% for 2017-2018. Maybe that is a peak number?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's both cost-rational and environment-rational to invest heavily in clean energy (with or without the comparatively paltry tax incentives).

The long-term costs of climate change and inaction are unfortunately still mostly external costs to energy producers. We should expect that to change as we start developing competencies in evaluating the costs and frequency of weather disasters exacerbated by anthropogenic climate change. We all get to pay for floods, fires, tornados, hurricanes, landslides, blizzards, and the gosh darn heat.

Insurance firms clearly see these costs. Our military sees the costs of responding to natural disasters. Local economies see the costs of months and years spent on disaster relief; on just getting back up to speed so that they can generate profit from selling goods and services (and pay taxes to support disaster relief efforts essential to operational readiness).

The cost per kilowatt hour of wind (and solar) energy is now lower than operating existing dirty energy plants that dump soot on our crops, air, and water.

With wind, they talk about the "alligator curve". With solar, it's the "duck curve". Grid-scale energy storage is necessary for reaching 100% renewable energy as soon as possible.

Iowa's renewable energy tax incentives are logically aligned with international long-term goals:

UN Sustainable Development Goal 7: Affordable and Clean Energy [https://www.globalgoals.org/7-affordable-and-clean- energy](https://www.globalgoals.org/7-affordable-and-clean-energy)

Goal 13: Climate Action [https://www.globalgoals.org/13-climate- action](https://www.globalgoals.org/13-climate-action)

SDG Target 12.6: "Encourage companies to adopt sustainable practices and sustainability reporting" (CSR; e.g. GRI Sustainability Reporting Standards that we can score portfolios with)

[https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/sustainable- develo...](https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/sustainable-development- goals/goal-12-responsible-consumption-and-production/targets.html) :

> _Rationalize inefficient fossil-fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful > consumption by removing market distortions, in accordance with national > circumstances, including by restructuring taxation and phasing out those > harmful subsidies, where they exist, to reflect their environmental impacts, > taking fully into account the specific needs and conditions of developing > countries and minimizing the possible adverse impacts on their development > in a manner that protects the poor and the affected communities_

...

> _Thanks. How can I say "try and only run this [computational workload] in > zones with 100% PPA offsets or 100% directly sourced #CleanEnergy"? #Goal7 > #Goal11 #Goal12 #Goal13 #GlobalGoals #SDGs_

It makes good business sense to invest in clean energy to take advantage of tax incentives, minimize future costs to other business units (e.g. insurance, taxes), and earn the support of investors choosing portfolios with long term environmental (and thus economic) sustainability as a primary objective.

</comment><comment><USER15> Iowa is a terrible place to build wind farms since it still has some of the most valuable soil on the planet.

Better to build these things on land with steady wind, less agricultural value and nearer big population centers, such as Wyoming and Colorado (near the I-25 corridor from Cheyenne to Colorado Springs) or the barren hills on either side of the Bay Area.

<comment><USER16> Can't you farm crops under a wind mill farm?

<comment><USER17> The pads used for the turbines are quite large, they require an access road, power connections, and the turbines create substantial shade, reducing the productivity of the ground below.

<comment><USER18> All of that is practically a rounding error compared to the actual area used for crops. Seriously, look at any satellite image of a wind farm in Iowa. Swamped by 2 or 3 years of annual crop yield growth: [https://ourworldindata.org/exports/average-corn-yields-in- th...](https://ourworldindata.org/exports/average-corn-yields-in-the-united- states-1866-2014_v1_850x600.svg)

<comment><USER17> Did you know farmers in Iowa cut down trees around their fields to minimize shade? The graph you provided is completely irrelevant to this discussion. Corn yield growth is resultant from political decisions to fund biofuels.

<comment><USER18> Did you look at it? The growth starts around 1940. 2 tons per hectare. Today, over 10 tons per hectare.

A 5x growth in yield over 80 years is due to ethanol political mandates starting around 20 years ago?

<comment><USER15> The yield increases have mainly come from two sources: increased use of chemicals for pest control and fertilizer, and genetic engineering. Both of those are problematic, with consequences only now slowly dawning on most people, and heavy resistance by the industry to any naysaying in public places.

One day, we may recognize the problem and pass laws to limit or prohibit the use of chemicals. (I think the horse is out of the barn on genetic modification.) That will mean lower yields. Further, if California's droughts continue, the Midwest may need to start growing a greater variety of crops beyond corn and soybeans. There is no other place in the U.S. with soil as potentially productive and useful. Wasting it on wind farms when literally any other place will have less potential impact on agriculture is ridiculous.

<comment><USER18> That's not the whole story (you should know!). Organic farming has _also_ increased in yield dramatically.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Have the been any advanced in either technology or farm design to minimize bird deaths? While it's seen as somewhat of not a big deal and a necessary evil now, I imagine that may change as there's more built, there's more built making it more likely to be present in an area with endangered species, dm'd climate change affects increase the amount of engaged species.

<comment><USER20> I'm pretty sure domestic cats kill more birds than windmills.

<comment><USER21> Yes, by several orders of magnitude. Last I checked, Windmills killed 100s of thousands since their inception while domestic cats kill billions each year.

<comment><USER22> You are high by at least an order of magnitude, if not two. Most estimates I've seen put the number of bird deaths from windmills in the thousands across all time.

<comment><USER11> I think you're mixing up the stats on eagle deaths (I posted a link elsewhere in this discussion for those, and they are indeed just a couple hundred a year at most) with that of _all_ birds.

The number of birds killed by windmills is likely somewhere in the six figures annually. [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-many-birds- do-...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-many-birds-do-wind- turbines-really-kill-180948154/)

> In the end, using 58 mortality estimates that met their criteria, they came > up with an estimate. According to the current literature somewhere between > 140,000 and 328,000 birds die each year from collisions with wind turbines.

<comment><USER22> You are right, it was your link re: eagles and another I found on Google re: endangered birds, not all birds in general. My bad, so thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> _Buffett is wary of companies pursuing social and environmental goals. He told the Financial Times that executives shouldn 't funnel shareholders' money into peripheral projects and that it was difficult to assess whether businesses were truly doing good.

"It's very hard to evaluate what they're doing," the so-called Oracle of Omaha told the newspaper. "I like to eat candy. Is candy good for me or not? I don't know."_

Wow Warren, really? You don't know if candy is good for you? You don't know if de-carbonization is good for the planet? I really don't get his rationale here...candy is a known treat, it is not "good for you" in any nutritive sense. Is he implying that there is a psychological benefit to the candy, even if it's not healthy? How does that apply to renewables and companies?

Overall, I know he's hailed as brilliant at investing, but what is this candy rationale??

<comment><USER24> Because he's been around the block enough times to know that it's not so simple. There are a ton of variables, confounding factors and second order effects in play when it comes to things like forecasting climate and nutrition. There are plenty of examples where we got things terribly wrong, even when there were high levels of confidence (e.g., dietary recommendations).

In the case of candy, he probably thinks sugar isn't good in and of itself and doesn't eat it with a spoon. But it's the overall effect of candy that matters. If it reduces stress, then maybe it's not so bad or even a net good in some amounts or for some people. Warren himself made it to 89 (so far) eating quite a bit of junk food, drinking coke and is still sharp and has enough energy to be working, traveling and so on. Many examples like that, so indeed it's not so simple.

With CO2, he probably thinks there is or can be too much in the atmosphere. But again it's not the whole picture. For one thing, you need to be sure that building and operating the solution (making machines, transporting, maintaining, powering them) doesn't exceed their net benefit.

It's easy to find yourself in a situation where the cure is only marginally better or even worse than the disease. Which happens a lot with complex systems.

Warren is exceptionally skilled at getting to the ground truth. When he says he doesn't know about something that you feel is obvious or basic, then it may be worth re-evaluating your level of confidence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Sounds good. Let's just hope he doesn't mean to become the Sheikh of Iowa. In a democracy being like SA is not desirable.

Remember that SA is killing dissidents and subjugating women and minorities. It's basically an absolute monarchy.

They have also invaded neighboring Bahrain to subdue the democratic revolution there.

I'd choose my comparisons and metaphors more wisely.

Wind energy is fantastic as long as it doesn't kill birds (that depends on the way the wind turbines are built and where they stand).

It's strange how one of the richest men on the planet demands government subsidies though. Or is it just me?

<comment><USER26> If you care about not killing birds, ban outdoor cats and contribute to your local feral cat spaying charity.</comment></comment>


Why you should backup your iPhone… to iTunes - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/geek-empire-1/ec26e9cbd6db

<comment><USER2> Can't you have itunes automatically download all your purchases, then you can still have that local copy on your computer and still use icloud backup? I'm guessing that's what happened.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point, it turns out you can get iTunes to download all purchased apps, I didn't know that.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Offering Gratis Tax Help for Startups? - <AUTHOR>

I've been reading HN, since last year and I've learned a lot.  I'm a tax accountant by day (you can check kpmg and pwc as my references) and I'm working on my own project at night with what little I know.
But, I'd like to just extend an offer to everyone on HN.  I'd be willing to help (gratis) anyone that contacts me or replies to this submission with tax planning and general questions.
I'd like to give back to the community and I honestly think that talking about tax is fun because I hate paying taxes and love saving money.  But, I admit this isn't purely selfless.  I want to learn lots more about the startup industry in general, especially in technology.  So, I think it's a fair trade and I hope that this thread helps everyone.
If you have a question that you'd like to ask privately, you can reach me at email@example.com (can you tell I'm humble? Lol)
Thanks! <comment><USER2> You might like to be a bit more specific than "tax". Income tax? Sales tax? US? EU? California?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing that out. I'm actually uniquely familiar with federal 1065 partnership,1120 corporate, 1040 personal income, and all state and local taxes generally because I specialized in federal taxation at pwc and state and local tax for KPMG. I've dealt with sales tax audits, income/franchise tax, unclaimed property or the Delaware tax lol,some vat and etc.

In regards to software I've dealt with a lot of state tax situations related to software and informational repor sales. It's a growing area of tax that's really jut developing because the people making the laws predate the modern computer.</comment></comment>