Consulting sucks, but thanks for the work - <AUTHOR> http://www.16thletter.com/2008/05/22/consulting-sucks-but-thanks-for-the-work/

<comment><USER2> Consulting does NOT need to be a tradeoff when starting a software startup.

Why not?

If you pick your customers carefully enough, they can be the R & D department for your startup. They don't even realize it and they pay you for the privilege!

You are going to need tons of feedback for your software. One strategy is the well-known "release early and often". Another, just as effective, is "find out from your own customers before you develop". You will still need to release early and often, just not as early and not as often.

I estimate that more than half of the ideas for features in my software came from existing consulting customers. Things I would have never thought of, and now I know they're necessary. Without them I would have been releasing alot more often and early, and may have _never_ received the same valuable input.

OP know this and mentions it, albeit only is passing:

"3. Learn from the work"

I spend less time consulting than many entrepreneurs spend fund raising. I like to think of my customers as "angels whose money I get to keep".

<comment><USER3> I agree with everything you said. It's been working the same way for my company. To us the key has been to choose our clients carefully, and make sure that our contact on the client's side is a technical person. Having to explain why something is easy/hard/impossible to a non-technical person can be a huge time sink.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Some people make a living off being consultants and would be thankful for any job that they could get! Although your point is valid - there are pros and cons to any business model.

</comment><comment><USER5> The challenge becomes when the client/consulting work overtakes the time one can spend on the startups. Truly, if there is no outside investment, this is hard to do as a labor of love on the side. It's possible, but that much more likely to fail. Just my opinion.

You hear about these types of scenarios in the entertainment business as inspirational anecdotes. But, it's like winning the lottery. Less than 1% of 1% may make it. Doesn't mean you shouldn't try!

</comment><comment><USER6> What contribution does this post make?

<comment><USER7> Why, it tells us all sorts of important things, like that the author does consulting work, but doesn't like it, but apparently it pays money, so that's okay!

It also provides some handy bullet-point tips on successful consulting as copied from some other article. They include such gems as "Charge by the Hour" and "Network".

Oh, and it has a pretty, if somewhat unrelated, picture in the middle, which makes it look a bit like joelonsoftware and thus totally buys it some credibility, in my book.

<comment><USER8> hopefully no one here will rise to your bait.

<comment><USER7> Shrug. We can't be sarcastic about useless-looking articles any more?

<comment><USER8> because it doesn't add anything to the "conversation"...</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


AWS CLI 1.7.0 Released - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/releasenotes/CLI/7832226871308680 <comment><AUTHOR> "This release adds support for AWS CloudHSM, Amazon EC2 Container Service (ECS), Amazon Glacier, ClassicLink feature for Amazon EC2, dynamic fields for Amazon CloudSearch, and new encryption features for Amazon Relational Database Service, and also fixes several issues."

Nice to see this tool keeping up with new features, especially ECS.</comment>


Sys administration from your iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://www.tuaw.com/2007/10/14/tuaw-interview-inco-simple-sysadmin-from-your-iphone/

<comment><AUTHOR> As a Web application and not native. Interesting to see after reading this post ~ <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=69384></comment>


Tesla Autopilot Crash: Why We Should Worry About a Single Death - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/self-driving/tesla-autopilot-crash-why-we-should-worry-about-a-single-death <comment><USER2> Article argues, "autopilot could let people who are blind and disabled drive now, where they couldn't drive before. but they could never get killed in a car accident _while driving_ before, so this is ethically questionable."

Article's logic is dumber than a sack of hair.

<comment><USER3> The article is arguing for inaction in the Trolley Problem [1]. In short: You have a choice between saving five people and letting one other person die, or doing nothing and letting five people die.

Which _is_ a controversial position, but not stupid exactly. I would call it misguided, and certainly not a very utilitarian position. And given the options I personally would vote for the utilitarian answer: Save five people even if the one who dies wasn't otherwise threatened.

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

<comment><USER4> Do you similarly advocate that we should, right now, today, in real life policy, set up a program where we check people for matches to multiple people needing organs, and if one healthy person's organs can save the lives of 2+ people, murder that healthy person and take his/her organs?

<comment><USER5> No, because the risk of surgery and transplant, plus the initial health of the person needing the organ, means it's not 100% certain it will succeed. But leaving the organ in the original person will.

<comment><USER4> Obviously controllable for. Do you support the program if we kill only people that we believe are statistically likely to save more than 1 life?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One day my son will drive.

Do I want for him to face a 1/10000 chance of being killed each year by a human driver?

Or do I want for him to face a 1/20000 chance of being killed each year by an autonomous vehicle?

I'll take option two, for him and for me. I don't give a damn about philosophical questions. And I don't give a damn if it's a different dice I'm rolling.

The only reason I care much about this one death is because it risks slowing down progress. Lives are at stake here. Yours. Mine. Your family's. My family's.

The statistical/utilitarian argument for self-driving vehicles is less compelling than the personal story argument against them. So I want to make the for argument as personal and compelling as we can.

<comment><USER7> The only problem is that the statistics can vary greatly as there are so many factors to consider. Car age/model, geographic area, roads driven, etc.

<comment><USER8> How about this factor - 31% of all traffic-related deaths involve alcohol- impaired driving.

<comment><USER9> SO, a car breathalyzer that allowed only automatic driving if too high, would definitely be an improvement we could all get on board with?

<comment><USER8> wow, that was a leap. I think a lot of people would be thrilled to have the car drive when they've been drinking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> >We can't cut corners just because we want to rush a life-saving product to market.

But there's a huge difference between a self-driving car and a novel drug. These cars are using statistical learning mechanisms -- it is _impossible_ to prove that the car will always function correctly.

>Yes, it could be that autonomous cars will save many more lives than they take. But "the ends justify the means" is a dangerous approach in ethics, capable of justifying any evil as long as the math worked out.

I mean, yeah, "the ends justify the means" is a dangerous approach. This is a strawman: allowing less than perfect algorithms to transport us a little less than safely (though safer than currently) is not an instance of "the ends justify the means." It's an instance of pragmatic rationality in response to a very real and very common danger.

>If torturing innocent people or infringing on other rights can deliver some greater good, we would (or should) be deeply troubled by the choice.

The author is using an analogy between torture or general rights-violations as an argument against driverless technology! How does this seem reasonable?

There's one question I have for the author: what and who's rights are being violated by driverless technology that are not already being violated by human driving?

<comment><USER11> Computer software can also be updated, yet almost everything is broken. Rushing self-driving cars is not pragmatic, it's keeping the lack of safety culture that driving already has. Whatever lives you save in the short run is likely to be lost many times over on the margin of the standard we expect from self-driving cars. Pragmatic safety would be things like speed and distance enforcement. That's how self-driving is really going to save lives, by not making those one in hundred thousand decisions that kill people. Which you could have today if it wasn't for that watching movies with autopilot is so much cooler than being saved from yourself.

<comment><USER12> Can you elaborate on 'everything is broken'?

<comment><USER11> There's a supreme mismatch between the state of software (and infrastructure) and how we use it today. If nothing else people should be concerned about this because it makes the Internet de facto not open, since most people can't afford the resources (like security) to run many service.

You would think that sending something to a machine on the Internet would imply that it would actually reach the recipient and that no one else is listening. Not only is that not true, it was essentially never intended to be true. We work very hard to try and make it so, but will probably never reach a point were it will be equal to what it could have been if that was the intention from the beginning.

[https://medium.com/message/everything-is- broken-81e5f33a24e1](https://medium.com/message/everything-is- broken-81e5f33a24e1) [http://swiftonsecurity.tumblr.com/post/98675308034/a-story-a...](http://swiftonsecurity.tumblr.com/post/98675308034/a-story- about-jessica)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Oh god, a deontic argument for slowing down self-driving cars. Yes, we choose to let several people die every day by not spending every available dollar on healthcare. Even then, we would have to decide where the large but still limited budget would be invested. There's no pure white way to get out of consequentialism. Might as well accept it and work with it rather than shutting your ears and singing la-la-la.

Sorry for the rant, for those that care for a reasoned argument along the lines of the above, Scott says it better than I ever could -- [http://raikoth.net/consequentialism.html](http://raikoth.net/consequentialism.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> Wow. After the introduction where the author thoroughly refutes his own thesis ( _approximately half a million people would have been saved if the Tesla autopilot was universally available_ ), the 3 reasons given was astoundingly poor.

 _Reason 1: Different people will die. Example, blind people who are currently not at risk (because they don 't drive) will die in greater numbers._

And this is an argument against saving 500,000 lives every year? Really?

 _Reason 2: Humans are irrationally afraid of situations where they lose control. Example: flying in airplanes vs driving a car_

And we're in favor of 500,000 additional people dying every year, because of people's irrational fears?

 _Reason 3: The ends don 't justify the means. Example: Torture_

Even if you accept the underlying premise that the ends don't justify the means, this argument only carries weight in situations where the "means" are considered evil. Like torture. Or robbery. What exactly is "evil" about allowing consumers to voluntarily purchase and use self-driving cars, and saving thousands of lives every year in the process?

I was surprised to see Musk's candid and blunt defense of self-driving cars. It's not PR savvy, but honestly, it's exactly what we need. The reasons being marshaled by people like this author, against self-driving cars, are horrendously bad. And while we sit here twiddling our thumbs, discussing human irrationality while sipping our lattes, hundreds of thousands of people are dying. Maybe it's time we stopped splitting hairs and started doing something.

<comment><USER15> I'm not seeing where the author concedes that 500k lives a year would be saved. That number is in an Elon Musk quote, not the authors argument.

Keep in mind total US road fatalities in the US is ~32k. I'm not sure how Elon got to 500k, but even if we handed out a free Tesla to every single American, and not a single person was ever killed in a Tesla, it's off by an order of magnitude. Of course Elon is quoting global fatalities, but road fatalities in 2nd & 3rd world countries could be improved with lots of basic infrastructure & existing car technology. It's simply not comparing apples to oranges, before you even start considering the unrealistic cost of a Tesla for those markets.

tl;dr; the 500k number is bullshit and any argument based on it is asinine.

<comment><USER14> That quote was planted in the middle of a section where the author himself was talking about the vast prevalence of car fatalities caused by human error, and how automated driving can help minimize that. Given the context around the quote, the author's decision to include the quote, and the fact that the author made no attempt whatsoever to contest or dispute the quote at all, I see no reason to believe that the author doubts the quote.

Regarding the numbers behind the 500k:

\- there were 1.25 million road deaths globally in 2013

\- yes, this can be improved through seatbelts and safety standards, but it can also be improved by self-driving technology. This isn't an either-or problem. Having one doesn't preclude the other.

\- self-driving cars aren't limited to Teslas. Any car manufacturer can integrate self-driving into their cars.

\- there's no reason why self-driving technology won't penetrate the market and become mainstream, at some point in this century. This is obviously not going to happen overnight. The more we delay the initial roll out, the longer mainstream penetration will take.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> While I agree some of the early arguments are a bit weak, I liked the author's discussion of the parallels to medical research---I think it gets across why some (including myself) think its worth approaching this exciting new technology with a slightly less cavalier attitude:

 _In developing cancer drugs that could save millions of lives—just like robot cars are promised to do—we understand we can't ignore problems in clinical and human trials. We can't cut corners just because we want to rush a life-saving product to market.

"The perfect is the enemy of the good," as famously declared by Voltaire, is also a common reaction to ethical critiques of autonomous cars. But this is a straw-man argument: no one is demanding perfection, just due diligence, especially if death is on the line. Just as with cancer drugs or anything else on the market, a product doesn't have to be perfect, though that's not an excuse to not be more careful.

Look at seatbelts as an iconic safety device: even they aren't absolved of all sins, just because they save a lot of lives overall. Unlatch buttons that are too large (and can be accidentally bumped open) or too easily opened have sparked lawsuits and massive recalls. These aren't really malfunctions but only bad designs, and bad designs can kill.

The extra care needed to avoid these problems doesn't have to take a Herculean effort or stall research and development. It just means investing some time to think it through and properly set expectations. This could save lives, and every one counts. (Just ask their families.)_

<comment><USER17> > its worth approaching this exciting new technology with a slightly less > cavalier attitude

While I'm a huge fan of vehicle automation, I have plenty of concern that it not be commonly used until it is in fact safer overall (I allow that come circumstances become less safe while others become more). I'm not sure what "cavalier" attitude you refer to? Where, exactly, are people claiming there is no concern for safety? What legislation has been passed that is seeing through rose-colored glasses?

Heck, the death referenced in the headline got lots of attention, both in criticism and in praise of automation, so I can see a lot of conclusions from that but "cavalier" isn't one of them. Looks to me like all sorts of caution is being considered, proclaimed, and hammered.

So what cavalier attitude is there that this article, with it's admittedly weak arguments, is good to be fighting?

<comment><USER16> I think the idea of releasing a vehicle safety system that you apparently have little enough faith in to call a "beta," and marketing said system under the name "Autopilot" and then acting surprised when people treat it as a reliable autonomous control system are pretty cavalier. I was also referring to the attitude (evident in this thread) that since there was a warning it is completely the drivers fault. I certainly think this technology will improve safety. But we should certainly consider what role the technology itself played in accidents---whether because driver's aren't using it as intended or it has a design defect (no sensing at windscreen height).

I get the sense that a lot of people feel like since the intent is good and driver's are opting in that basically anything goes---which seems pretty cavalier to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What a tragic misnaming of a feature. I see this over and over again, people expect the "autopilot" to drive the car for them.

Naming it something like "cruise-assist" or similar would remove so much confusion and expectation.

It's a wonderful car, with great features and one terrible UX flaw in labeling a core feature.

<comment><USER19> I wouldn't say it's tragic, I'd say it's negligent misnaming. The people in charge surely were aware that some users would use it in way it shouldn't be used due to the expectations caused by its name. Some of the blame for these accidents is on them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is it really accurate to take the very limited and incomplete data of this self-driving feature and compare that to all of the world's accident rates? Think about the long tail here...

Have they even released this data for examination? I am thinking that many people have approached this feature with caution, in that its a novelty but they aren't "trusting" it or relying on it like you would a human driver to safely get you somewhere. It would be also interesting to see the types of roads and conditions where the feature is enabled. In the rain? Snow? At night? Poor visibility? Traffic conditions.

Just a single number paints an incomplete picture of the data. Why has no one mentioned this? People are sheep that are quick to declare victory after seeing a single number without questioning where or how that number came to be.

My thoughts are this: give this feature to your average Joe driving a Honda without much guidance and we'd have a lot more mechanized death.

Youtube is full of Tesla autopilot fail videos where the driver had to take quick action to avert disaster. What if we let this into the hands of a lot more irresponsible people who think they can tool down the highway watching a Harry Potter movie, blind faith and trust in a "feature". How many Tesla owners here would honestly trust the feature that much with their life at this point?

</comment><comment><USER21> I couldn't get through most of the article because the premise was so weak. Specifically, I couldn't get over the "different people will die" argument - the implication being that the status quo is somehow more fair. This ignores the fact that many collision-related fatalities are not the drivers or in any way at fault.

2014 stats[0] show that 38% of fatalities in car accidents were not drivers. It's reasonable to assume that even more people who were driving were not at fault. _Those_ deaths are arguably near-random in most cases. The argument that hundreds of thousands of random deaths are somehow more "fair" is an entirely poor argument in my opinion.

[0] [http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/general- statistics/fatalit...](http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/general- statistics/fatalityfacts/gender)

<comment><USER3> The "different people will die" argument has been debated for decades in the philosophical question called the "Trolley Problem." [1]

The short answer is that yes, it's generally agreed to make the active choice to save more people, even if it means different people die.

Air bags kill people sometimes in accidents where they likely wouldn't have died, but we put up with the risk because overall we're more likely to live through a serious accident. Air bags are fired off because a computer reading a sensor decides that they're needed. It's a very close analog situation, and yet the people making the moral argument against them have been downvoted to oblivion, and air bags are now mandatory.

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

<comment><USER22> I'm not sure if the trolley problem applies here. The trolley problem relies on one of the choices being passive. In the case of cars however, both choices require active effort. Either we actively build cars that cause X deaths every year, or we actively build cars that cause Y deaths every year. It seems pretty obvious that we should build the car that causes the fewest deaths.

Even if this is a trolley problem, if we look at the problem from the point of the regulators, then the situation could be considered the trolley problem turned on its head. Regulators can do nothing, and let Tesla develop their autopilot and save lots of lives. Or regulators can actively intervene, stop Tesla, and thousands more will die. From this point of view, the trolley is headed towards one man and you have a switch in hand to kill 5 people instead. It's hard to imagine that anyone would choose to flip the switch.

<comment><USER3> > From this point of view, the trolley is headed towards one man and you have > a switch in hand to kill 5 people instead.

Fair enough. Like your analogy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > _According to research, we generally believe that we're above-average in > intelligence, and that we're above-average in driving skills. (By definition > of "average," obviously that's impossible.)_

It actually is possible. It is a common mistake to confuse statistical average and median. For instance, 75% of the following numbers (1, 1, 1, 0) are above average. More than 90% of humans have an above average number of legs.

Sure, it is difficult for the general public to understand academic results. Still, level zero of academic reporting is to link to the original paper, instead of playing a game of Chinese whispers by linking to an article that links to an article that links to the paper.

What the paper really points to is that people assume by default that strangers are worse at driving than they are, which ironically is what is happening with autopilot instead of strangers.

</comment><comment><USER24> Admittedly I didn't finish the entire article, but the point regarding blind and disabled people being killed seems like a strawman to me? Tesla never intended people who couldn't otherwise drive to use autopilot, so I don't know what lessons we can draw from this in that regard.

</comment><comment><USER25> Tesla should not have advertised autopilot as something magic and close to autonomous car. Because it is just another advanced cruise control. Volvo, Mercedes and others have it too. Now they made it harder to everyone, to convince general public that robot cars are for good.

</comment><comment><USER26> The argument is reversed entirely if you take human desires as given, i.e. if you acknowledge that people do text on the road.

The metric to compare both alternatives then becomes, how many miles of texting while driving vs. being driven by an autopilot while texting does it take to kill one person. I don't have the numbers, but I'm pretty sure the latter is lower. Maybe autopilots encourage "bad" behavior, but convenience also spurred construction of coal power plants at the cost of shortened lives. Much like fines for neglected pollution abatement, I would favor mandatory life insurance for each mile on autopilot to internalize risks.

</comment><comment><USER27> I will never willingly get into a car that's being driven solely by a computer. full stop. That tesla driver was presumably warned to be alert and act accordingly as if he was driving... obviously he didn't and he paid a high price.

I actually would welcome the day we have autonomous "self-driving cars" so I could tell it to go to the shop for service/inspection and drive itself back, but if I'm in the car I will always be the driver.

<comment><USER28> One day we'll treat your insistence on driving your own car the way we would treat you insisting on celebratory gunfire today.

At some point computers will be safer drivers than human driven cars in every way. Are you going to insist on irrationally putting your fellow man in harms way at that point?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> The responses in this thread all seem to hold the assumption that these flotillas of self driving cars will have a low failure rate.

The Tesla crash makes it easy to imagine a 100 car freeway pile-ups caused by AI drivers discovering novel ways to crash. Driving headlong into the side of a trailer because the color looked like the sky?

The possibilities are endless, and the subsequent media attention and reactionary legislation could set back the whole project back a generation.

<comment><USER30> Are you saying there hasn't already been a 100-car freeway pileup caused by (now-standard) cruise control? Or that human-driven cars don't drive into the side of a trailer because the driver didn't see it?

<comment><USER31> >Or that human-driven cars don't drive into the side of a trailer because the driver didn't see it?

I won't claim that that never happens, but I doubt it's very common. If you were to take 1000 random car crash deaths I do not think a very large proportion of them are caused by people running head-on into a sideways tractor trailer that they had a long distance to notice and react to.

Tesla says this is the only fatality in 130 million miles of Autopilot driving, and that in the US there is a fatality every 94 million miles of driving overall. But it's known that fatalities are more common in risky driving scenarios where Autopilot is not used, so this is not an apples-to- apples comparison ([https://www.progressive.com/newsroom/article/2002/may/fivemi...](https://www.progressive.com/newsroom/article/2002/may/fivemiles/), [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1449863/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1449863/)). If the appropriate adjustment is 40% or more, then the Tesla is riskier than human driving in the "non-risky" scenarios. The fact that the accident here was an uncommon failure mode for humans, and the Tesla was at fault, should give a hint as to which direction the numbers need to be adjusted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I am bullish both on Autopilot and Tesla. That said, I don't think lying about numbers is a good thing. They weren't any death on Tesla model S until now. So, saying using Autopilot is still safer than driving 'manually' is a lie. Tesla was comparing itself to the average not so good US average car. I think it is a bit of a stretch. I will still use it though.

<comment><USER33> We also don't know yet how safe Tesla is. There's hardly any data. You can't do any kind of utility calculus with comically huge error bars.

If we assume a death is binomially distributed, 1 death in 100 million kilometers is consistent with a real rate of anywhere between 0.03 and 3.7 deaths per 100 million kilometers. That's a big bracket.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> These self-driving cars are a good start though. It makes sense - to me at least - that more self-driving cars on the road means fewer accidents. Imagine if nearly every vehicle was autonomous and wirelessly networked with other nearby vehicles. We'd see little to no accidents, assuming everything is secure and working correctly.

</comment><comment><USER35> This was going to happen eventually. My whole feeling on this situation is it will continue to put the pressure on the industry to get much much better at this. A tragedy yes, but at least that person's death can be used to help improve safety - which is a huge shift from throwing up our hands to driver error.

</comment><comment><USER36> Maybe we can worry about self driving car deaths once they surpass train related deaths. So far they're safer than multi-million dollar machines operated by highly trained professionals, directed by other highly trained professionals, and are limited to only moving two directions on a set rail.

</comment><comment><USER37> We should worry because of the blurred responsibility. Have you ever seen large company responsible for death? This is how it works, you will die and there will be nobody responsible for this.

Tesla is not safe car, it is as safe as Honda Civic, with ~40 deaths per million cars. Do the math if you don't believe me.

<comment><USER38> Which is how it should be. If I die in my car, it's almost certainly going to be my fault or the fault of another driver, _not_ the fault of the car maker. Of the ~30,000 traffic deaths/year in the US, how many are due to faulty equipment?

As far as doing the math, are we counting deaths like the guy who stole one and crashed it going 120MPH without a seat belt?</comment></comment>


A curious pair of data ops - <AUTHOR> https://www.datafix.com.au/BASHing/2020-03-18.html <comment><USER2> If you are thinking of something like this, I highly recommend switching to a more feature-full programming language -- my favorite is Jupyter notebook with Python.

Sure, the total amount of characters typed will be higher -- but you might end up doing the whole thing faster overall, as it will need less fiddling.

The notebook approach will also ensure you can inspect all the intermediate data, to make sure you parse things correctly.

And finally, if you ever need more functionality, there is always "pip3 install".</comment>


Reducing Wasted Food at Home - <AUTHOR> https://www.epa.gov/recycle/reducing-wasted-food-home <comment><USER2> In practically all developed countries, agriculture is wholly dependent on subsidies financed with taxes. The price of alimentary products in the supermarket does not reflect the true cost of production. This, coupled with countries like China subsidising exports, leads to a "race to the bottom" situation in which there's constant pressure to drive prices down.

One way to reduce waste would be to stop subsidising agriculture on a global level. This might be also be accompanied by raising the price of fuel and electricity. Before screaming bloody murder and downvoting, please consider the following:

\- roughly 50% of food in the US goes to waste [1]. Meaning you already pay double what you think you pay. \- About 40% of people in the US are obese [2]. We're eating too much. \- Modern agriculture is an environmentally destructive practice [3]. Reducing food consumption can reduce its environmental impact. \- We have all become used to abundance - in practically all domains of life: water, food, energy, travel, communication. We have become desensitised to the real value of things, we have no conception of the externalities involved in producing them, and pass our lives on an infinite binge of blind consumption.

On a personal level, each of us can make the transition to consuming food in a more reasonable and sober manner. Finally, educating people about food waste is not enough. What's needed is rather a coordinated effort to move to a new model where people consume what they physically need, rather than indulging momentary craving.

[1] [https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/07/america...](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/07/american- food-waste/491513/) [2] [https://web.archive.org/web/20190629233657/https://www.cdc.g...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190629233657/https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html) [3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_agricu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_agriculture)

<comment><USER3> Can you provide references to the subsidies you mention? I think you will find that this is a common misconception with only some truth to it. I hear often that US agriculture is subsidized, but never hear specifics. I'm genuinely curious where people get this impression.

The majority of ag subsidies are not given to farmers for growing things. Crop insurance is subsidized, but that doesn't necessarily lead to overproduction as is only really kicks in when conditions are very poor. Conservation programs (to NOT farm land) are also subsidized. This again doesn't encourage over production.

There are many things that could be improved in modern agriculture, but my view is that subsidies have little to do with our largest problems.

<comment><USER4> I'd always heard that dairy gets quite a lot of subsidies, including from advertising like the "Got milk?" ads. A quick search seems to support this. It'd be interesting to hear from someone who's dug into this a lot more.

[https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/dairy- subsidie...](https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/dairy-subsidies- government-farm-programs-surplus-cheese/)

[https://qz.com/944630/the-us-government-program-behind- the-g...](https://qz.com/944630/the-us-government-program-behind-the-got-milk- campaign-attacked-vegan-mayo-and-is-now-under-congressional-scrutiny/)

[https://www.idausa.org/government-meat-dairy- advertising/](https://www.idausa.org/government-meat-dairy-advertising/)

<comment><USER5> How is the National Diary Council paying for advertising, which is a lobbyist group made up of dairies, a subsidy?

Their subsidies are in things like the farm bill where they are protected by tariffs and our weird obsession with pasteurization. Our dairy industry does a bunch of exporting milk powder to the 3rd world.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/bethkaiserman/2018/12/30/farm-b...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/bethkaiserman/2018/12/30/farm- bill-dairy-industry-decline-2018/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Buying frozen, rather than fresh, vegetables is a good way to avoid waste. They are processed and frozen soon after picking, so nutrients are well preserved. They are kept in large frozen food warehouses which are energy efficient. There is no reduction in nutrients during transport, distribution and retailing, compared with fresh produce which spends several days deteriorating in refrigerated trucks and warehouses before it gets to the store. And, frozen vegetables can be kept a long time once they're in your freezer, especially in a chest freezer without automatic defrost.

<comment><USER7> Tinned goods are also great for a similar reason

<comment><USER6> Yes, especially for fruits that don't freeze well and for vegetables like crushed tomatoes, pickled beets, sauerkraut, etc. But one needs to watch the sodium and sugar content.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> We've managed to eliminate a ton of food waste (and cost) by simply not buying frozen or bulk foods. Paradoxically, whenever we buy food like this, it always comes in boxes that are much too large to use at once and inevitably will end up forgotten at the back of the freezer or pantry until we throw it out later.

Now we buy maybe 2 or 3 days worth of food at a time and our fridge basically just has raw ingredients and a few condiments in it. Usually a package of never frozen meat (beef or chicken mostly) and a few fresh veggies and mushrooms for side dishes (many of them keep well or even better outside of the fridge). The most prepackaged thing we eat these days is on pasta night, and that's just for the sauce out of the jar and some premade noodles. The rest of the sauce is fresh chopped veggies and it makes a delightfully chunky sauce. A favorite side dish is mashed squash in lieu of mashed potatoes.

It takes time to cook a nice meal, and if it's possible to get the time (it's not easy!) I think everybody should do it. The frozen and bulk foods never resulted in a meal half as good. One nice side effect, if we increase the portions a bit, we get a quality packed lunch from the left overs.

Our meals also have dramatically increased the volume of fresh vegetables and are definitely much more healthy than anything we used to eat. Are we trying to reduce waste? Not really, just trying to cook and eat better, but the side effect is great (and much cheaper as well!) It's also a nice change in daily routine to stop at the grocery a couple times per week.

Our fridge went from slam packed full to mostly empty and we eat far better.

<comment><USER9> It takes ~15min-60min to cook, serve and eat a meal, that is time that you can spend together. It has never been hard to find the time to do that, is this really a problem people have? (But I do live very close to a nice little store ~2 minutes, that do help.)

<comment><USER10> How many kids do you have & what kind of a job?

<comment><USER9> Does it really matter, my question was why would you not cook food yourself? I'm not offering a model that other people should copy.

From experience cooking daily for 8 people is not that much worse than for 2 people, it's just a different kind of project both have hurdles and highlights. Not going to lie, being able to take time off each day to take care of your kids really did help with time but it mostly it was to socialize and being less of a eat-work-sleep machine.

Ordinary day now is, breakfast 0600-0730, work things 0730-1630, cook and take care of kids 1630-2100, other things 2100-~0100.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I love when I tell people that I garden and they say things like "that's a nice hobby".

Growing your own food is not a hobby, you are literally participating in the economy.

It is great exercise and really helps you understand just how much labor and time goes into making food from seed to harvest to storage and consumption.

I feel like there is a growing movement of more and more people trying to relearn these skills.

As for food waste, the way I compost kitchen scraps is to dig a 1-2 foot deep by 1 foot wide hole in my yard where I dump a week's worth of scraps into. I chop it with my shovel and bury it while chopping. In 1-2 months time it will be completely taken in by the soil life.

I use a 5 gallon bucket with a lid that seals in the kitchen to collect scraps.

Each year I pick a new place to dig my holes. I keep the holes about a foot apart and I remove rocks as I go.

They next year I plant a crop in the location.

I like this method of composting because it enriches the land and the soil life does most of the work without any smell.

I'm slightly tilling, preparing, enriching, and de-rocking(?) My land over the course of months. It takes about as much time as emptying the trash.

You end up doing a lot of work, but it doesn't feel that way because you are "eating the elephant one bite at a time".

<comment><USER5> As a renter I gardened for years, but I finally bought a condo and no longer have a yard. Early attempts at establishing a community garden program have been failures. I will continue the quest. However, I think you are overselling the idea, growing your own vegetables is not "part of the economy" even while it may have economic impact. You are not selling, correct?

<comment><USER12> So if you sold it, then used that money to buy food, would it count?

<comment><USER11> Thanks, this was what I was going to say. Anything you can do for yourself that _needs_ to be done, that you would have to pay for if you didn't do it, is participating in the economy.

<comment><USER5> I noted the economic impact, but I was talking at-scale, not anecdotaly. There are many states that have over-regulated this market. It now costs $15/gal for raw milk. Most people are not able to have a garden was my point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A huge change in my food waste output took place when I stopped going to the supermarket, and instead started going to the local market once a week.

Having to plan out what I needed for the week really changed my behavior for the better.

(+ supporting local farmers + reducing plastic consumption)

<comment><USER14> > Having to plan out what I needed for the week really changed my behavior for > the better.

Trying to plan for the week and shop for it on one day is the _cause_ of most of our food waste, because we inevitably change plans (voluntarily or involuntarily).

We are actually trying to be better about going to the store more frequently and buying less in advance. We are also trying to actually use things we stockpile in the pantry, since we also have a problem with stocking canned and dry goods we forget about.

<comment><USER5> I buy mostly fresh food, so I go the store every other morning at 6am. They are still stocking shelves (a job I had in college), but there are no crowds. I live 2 blocks away from the store, so small takes are easier to carry home. The only canned stuff I buy are beans and olives.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> We waste practically zero organic waste. We have chickens which eat our waste food, which is minimal in itself. What they don't eat becomes compost n about three months time. We eat the eggs, approximately ten a day, and use the compost to grow food in our yard most of the year. All of this is on a .25 acre of land in a downtown setting.

<comment><USER16> One of the perks of owning a rabbit is that we rarely have to worry about fresh produce going bad. The rabbit eats all the scraps from our own cooking (stems, carrot tops, etc) and any surplus veggies we happened to buy. It's wonderful because our fridge is always full of veggies.

<comment><USER15> Yes, we have rabbits, turtles,and lizards that help out with eating food as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've found that the best way to reduce wasted food at home is by establishing and maintaining your food budget (groceries _and_ eating out), and gradually reducing it until you don't have any wasted food.

People (myself included) get carried away buying stuff, even groceries. Without planning you will quite easily blow past your budget and then stuff will sit in your fridge and rot.

Or another scenario: you buy a bunch of groceries and then eat fast food all week and throw most of your groceries away. Gotta use what you bought or it will go bad.

It's very easy for a family of 3 in the US to spend $2K/mo on food and throw most of the groceries away. If you drive that down to $1K/mo, you can eat pretty well, and there won't be much wastage.

<comment> lame-robot-hoax I think part of the problem is, at least in my experience, buying stuff you tell yourself that you'll eat but rarely do.

If I were to be more honest with myself in a store, I'd cut down on food waste. My problem is I see certain things, and think to myself, oh I'll eat those. But in reality, only ideally I'd eat those. What ends up happening is I get hungry and look into the fridge for something to eat, only to see that exact thing staring me right in the face before I say, damn nothing to eat.

As well, going to the store more often. Buying only a couple or three days worth of groceries makes it easy to lower food waste. When I try to buy over a weeks worth of groceries I find myself having to throw away things more often.

<comment><USER17> There's an easy solution to the problem you describe: intermittent fasting once a week. You eat your dinner, and then eat nothing at all until the next dinner. Longer intervals are also possible, but I've found that for me 24 hours works the best. You won't believe how appetizing even the most unappealing items in your fridge will look after just one day of not eating anything, especially if you're physically active.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Personally, I've reduced my food waste by eating almost primarily freeze-dried foods. They have a 30 year shelf life in most cases and just need a bit of hot water to be rehydrated, and it tastes just like fresh. The process of freeze- drying apparently keeps the nutritional value intact, as opposed to other preservation methods. It's great for planning meals for the week, and it's excellent for making delicious backpacking recipes!

It seems in any given pack of fresh blueberries/strawberries/brocolli/whatever, inevitably some part of it gets moldy or subpar eating conditions. With the freeze dried equivalent, I know I have as-good-as-fresh ingredients that won't spoil anytime soon. I don't see myself ever buying fresh berries or brocolli or chicken ever again now that I've discovered freeze dried foods. It's just too efficient and convenient to have all these good quality foods on-demand that virtually never spoil.

Edit: well actually I'd still buy fresh food... If I had my own freeze drier and freeze-dried them myself!

</comment><comment><USER19> Do these food waste statistics count what factories throw out? Recently, I met someone who works in quality control on a Kelloggs line. He told me that day they threw away 1,500 lbs of food on his line alone and that is a fairly common stat.

I'm personally very conscientious of my food usage and throw little away, but the EPA telling the consumer this is their problem is irritating.

<comment> d-sc Percentages matter more than absolute amounts. I probably throw away 10-20% of what I buy. I suspect factories and you are better than that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> > Find out how to store fruits and vegetables so they stay fresh longer inside > or outside your refrigerator.

That was my first thought when I opened the website. I kind of expected to see the answer to this on the site, not a tip this general, or maybe a reference to look it up.

<comment><USER21> Wouldn't it be wiser to stop selling packs ? Like when you go to outdoor markets where you can buy 3 carrots if that's what you only need.

And it'll stop all the plastic waste too.

But I understand it will be a supply chain nightmare

<comment><USER22> > But I understand it will be a supply chain nightmare

I'm not sure why? It's standard practice in UK supermarkets, although prepacked bags are also available.

<comment><USER23> There was an interesting BBC show the other day about plastic waste and they were pointing out that buying loose vegetables in major supermarkets was between 20-50% more expensive than buying them prepackaged.

<comment><USER24> For the consumer or the seller?

I think I easily save 20-50% when I buy the amount I can eat before it goes bad instead of having to buy a larger amount because it's prepackaged in a too-big-for-me package.

Come to think of it, I never throw out stuff like fruit which I buy "per piece" instead of prepackaged, where as carrots which usually only comes prepackaged where I shop is something I often have to throw out of because the last ones have gone bad before I got to them. This have meant I rarely eat carrots anymore and instead buy something else that isn't prepackaged.

Same thing with bread actually. But then they started selling smaller breads all over the country to combat food waste, and it really has, I don't remember throwing out bread in the last couple of years.

<comment><USER25> Have you tried eating more vegetables? It's not hard for one person to eat 2lbs of carrots in the weeks before they go bad in a fridge.

<comment><USER24> I just don't like that many carrots. Would prefer to be able to buy the couple I want.

And yes, I do eat plenty of vegetables. I follow a whole-food plant-based diet and have done so for almost 7 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> People go their entire lives without knowing what it is like to go without food for a day. They take it for granted.

Also, I believe parents generally don't teach kids to respect food. It probably starts by letting a toddler feed him/herself too early and in the process normalizing food wastage.

There is also a first world etiquette of leaving some food in the plate. I have seen people habitually do it.

<comment><USER27> > There is also a first world etiquette of leaving some food in the plate. I > have seen people habitually do it.

I think it's a status thing, to show that you are rich enough that you can just throw away food. You have probably heard or seen the horror stories about (rich) Chinese tourists and buffets when they visit overseas.

OTOH My friend majorly pissed off our (normal for China) dinner host in southern China by putting food on his plate then not eating all of it.

It's the same in Japan, and Japanese buffets literally fine people for taking food and not eating it.

<comment><USER28> "I think it's a status thing"

I'd say its a politeness/not appearing greedy thing, certainly from a food in the centre of the table point of view. Drives me mad when at the end on a dinner party you have one potato, one carrot stick, one chunk of bread.

This is from a UK point of view, I understand there are different motivations elsewhere.

<comment><USER29> Food portions and being (or acting) unable to finish all but the daintiest serving sizes definitely has a class component to it, at least in the US. I think this behavior's shifted "down" a notch or so, alongside fitness-as-a- class-marker (see also: athleisure wear) as the upper-middle and more perceptive anxious/striving middle classes have latched onto it. In tech circle's I'd guess it's very common, they consisting largely of those two class groups (using a Fussellian system of classification, here).

Of course our meal serving sizes do probably vary more than in most (saner) countries. On the low end of the dining-out spectrum, one is often served enough food for two or more meals. There's an "if I don't feel stuffed to the point of nigh-immobility, I got ripped off" attitude in that sector of the market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I rarely ever throw food away, and if I have to (once every two months or so) I consider it a shame.

Storing things the right way is important, but much more important is not buying too much. My solution is that I never use a shopping cart but my own bag. When you have to carry it you will have a much better feeling if it is too much.

This is ofc harder if you have kids.

<comment><USER31> > _harder if you have kids._

Bea Johnson's family of four produces less than a mason jar of trash per year. [https://www.youtube.com/user/ZeroWasteHome](https://www.youtube.com/user/ZeroWasteHome)

Not speaking to atoav in particular, but it's tempting to make excuses why we don't do what others do that we want to but aren't. If we look for role models instead of excuses, we motivate ourselves to reach more of our potential.

In her case, reducing the waste seems to have brought her family together more. It doesn't seem to be a burden, just a one-time shift.

<comment><USER25> Bea Johnson wastes a lot of jet fuel, which likely dwarfs everything else she does with her lifestyle.

<comment><USER31> I have other role models for not flying, though mostly I'm motivated by how much avoiding flying has improved my life, now in my fourth year. [http://www.inc.com/joshua-spodek/365-days-without- flying.htm...](http://www.inc.com/joshua-spodek/365-days-without-flying.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> There's an app (I know) called toogoodtogo that let businesses to sale things that won't be allowed to be sold next day. It's a cute step in the right direction.

ps: also, who made a kind of compost bin to at least avoid bagging organic material to go into the recycling system ?

<comment><USER33> When I was in Finland for a few months, we used Resq Club for this. I loved it. Wasn't as cheap as one might expect of leftover food that would otherwise be thrown away, but it's still worth it. I think the operate also in other northern European countries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> The American food supply chain has a luxuriously high waste rate. It's an issue that a few companies are trying to tackle, eg Imperfect Produce.

Wasted food in the home though is mostly a cultural/price issue, as well as a misalignment issue between seller and consumer. Grocery stores try and increase AOV by selling you a 3lb bundle of carrots because they believe it to be profit maximizing to do so, at the cost of deadweight loss borne by the customer if they don't eat all that they buy.

<comment><USER35> Is ugly fruit/veg a significant cause of food waste? My understanding was that ugly fruit/veg gets turned into soup or sauces.

<comment><USER36> You can do that but most home cooks don't make soups or sauces from scratch and don't know how.

<comment><USER37> Home cooks may not, but industry does.

<comment><USER36> The subject is wasted food at home.

<comment><USER37> The subject of this thread is ugly fruit and vegetables. They don't make it into the grocery store, let alone all the way to ones home (in fresh form).

<comment><USER36> Which has nothing to do with my comment to the poster.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> There's a tiny grocery store just a five minute walk away from my apartment. I treat it like an extended fridge. Whenever I need something it's just a short trip away. So there's no need to overstock food at home for me.

But I get that not everybody has that opportunity.

<comment><USER39> Stocking the fridge is not related to throwing away food. People that cook a great deal get a lot of benefit from having ingredients available.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> This message is not a new one and it isn't really working. People kind of know - nobody walks into a supermarket to specifically buy stuff just to put in the rubbish bin, do they?

I think there needs to be more radical solutions. For instance a sugar tax or a different tax band for microwave ready meals.

We have all been there, after a hard week to have gone shopping to get the healthy veg and some ready prepared meal items, e.g. microwaveable or just a pizza that can be shoved in the oven. We get back tired from the shopping trip and don't make that salad, we put the pizza in the oven. The next day we do the same. Then the working week takes over and that once prime condition veg is not looking so good. We can't bring ourselves to throwing it out so we hold on to it until it is truly rotten. Meanwhile we have some other lazy beige foods.

It is an easy trap to fall into and we have all been there. But what if that instant pizza cost as much as a restaurant pizza? Or that microwave meal cost the same as a pub meal?

You would probably go for proper food. People could reduce food waste in the days before refrigeration, to not waste a thing. Ask anyone who is old enough to have known WW2. Rationing was a way of reducing waste, but, what else has changed? The junk food. This needs to be taxed so that people don't leave the good stuff to go rotten. Junk also needs to be taxed so poor people who view vitamins as a luxury don't eat it.

</comment><comment><USER41> > Keep a running list of meals and their ingredients that your household > already enjoys. That way, you can easily choose, shop for and prepare meals.

> Make your shopping list based on how many meals you'll eat at home. Will you > eat out this week? How often?

> Plan your meals for the week before you go shopping and buy only the things > needed for those meals.

> Include quantities on your shopping list noting how many meals you'll make > with each item to avoid overbuying. For example: salad greens - enough for > two lunches.

> Look in your refrigerator and cupboards first to avoid buying food you > already have, make a list each week of what needs to be used up and plan > upcoming meals around it.

> Buy only what you need and will use. Buying in bulk only saves money if you > are able to use the food before it spoils.

Great list. We keep a wiki page on our server that contains "menus" for the week along with the shopping list. We are able to rotate those every couple of months (ie: we have a couple months worth of menus that we rotate through) and it is just grab the list, check the pantry/fridge for what we have and get what we need from the store. Super easy.

Recipes do get tired, so we do rotate those out and some new ones in, but the above is the general flow.

We eat reasonably healthy. We can maximize our spend by looking for deals. We don't have to expend too much effort planning now.

</comment><comment><USER42> I find a good way to reduce food waste is to plan your meals a week in advance, so you do 1 big shop and get everything you need for the coming week.

That way, you buy exactly what you need.

You also know _when_ you're going to need everything, so if there are any short-lived things (cut herbs, for example) that you need for a meal later in the week, you can get them just in time.

</comment><comment><USER43> Our chickens love all our food waste.

And any chicken meat waste goes to the local magpies so they won't bomb us.

</comment><comment><USER44> > Compost food scraps rather than throwing them away.

I wonder: my neighborhood has some common area that I could ask that we set aside for composting. Have anyone on HN ever setup a neighborhood compost? Any tips/suggestions?

<comment><USER33> In Germany, the municipality maintains those. Bio waste is picked up every two weeks or so. We have a large (5x5x13dm or so) container that we share with our upstairs neighbors and is mainly filled with mowed grass and kitchen waste, though I think we only fill it up once every month and a half, or maybe two months, and that's in summer when the grass grows.

In fall, there are also solutions for fallen leaves, but I don't remember what (we've lived here less than a year, I vaguely remember reading it but I've yet to see it). In the Netherlands, they put collection baskets (of like 1x1x1m) on many streets in that season.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> If you don't have a garden (ie live in an apartment etc), is there any benefit (reduced methane?) to composting food scraps before throwing the soil in the trash/landfill?

<comment><USER46> Not my area of expertise here, but I would think that doing so would help by reducing the overall volume of your waste. As food breaks down into soil, it packs tighter and reduces its overall volume. I assume that garbage trucks are limited by the volume that they can carry, not the weight, so reducing your waste volume should help reduce your overall carbon footprint by marginally reducing the number of vehicle-trips that it takes to collect your waste.

That being said, I would have to think that reducing the amount of waste that you create in the first place will have a bigger impact than reducing the volume of a given mass of waste.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I'm surprised there's been no mention in the article or comments of gardening to grow one's own food. Gardening (generically encompassing both in-the-ground vegetable gardens and alternative growing methods such as greenhouse, hydroponics, and indoor grow stations in the basement etc.) inherently limits waste, encourages you to eat exactly as much as you grow, and allows sustainable replenishment of the soil, the atmosphere, and the general ecosystem.

Of course, if you fill your yard with nothing but squash plants and harvest a ton of squash every fall, that's a bit of an extreme counter-example because you're not likely to eat that much squash, but even then you're going to give it away or sell it at the local farmer's market.

But for the average food grower/amateur homesteader, you'll gradually develop a self-adapted menu of homegrown foods which you will be very pleased to consume as soon as they are ready, free of nasty chemicals and ripeness inhibitors, and full of nutrients that have not been lost in the production, transportation, and storage phases that commercial produce must necessarily undergo.

You will eat locally grown produce that is adapted to your region, when and if it comes to maturity, and waste will not be your main concern, but rather the opposite -- if you have 12 potato plants, and they each produce 5-10 potatoes in August, you will accommodate the bounty by building a rack in the basement to store them over the winter -- literally a root cellar, which is what basements were originally for.

Plus, it's fun, and vastly educational for children. Nothing is more satisfying than having your child help build the raised beds and plant the seeds, then seeing the seedlings come up and develop into mature plants that provide bounty for the dinner table. Experiencing the full cycle also encourages them to eat their vegetables. Raising egg chickens is also highly fulfilling and rewarding.

Lawns are largely wasted in our society. When I visited Hungary a couple of decades ago, newly freed of Communism, every back yard had a garden, a chicken coop, as well as larger farm animals such as pigs and goats. Sadly, this level of self-sufficiency has probably diminished as their society has developed and moved to the Western model of centralized food production and distribution.

Growing your own food means next to zero waste, and what clippings and husks and greens remain after the harvest are recycled into the compost bin or straight into the bed. If you have chickens, a lot of this material, such as tomato skins, carrot ends, etc., are eagerly devoured. In return for your generosity, the chickens provide high quality fertilization of your yard and garden, and as a bonus they eat insects including ticks.

</comment><comment><USER48> Costco is partly responsible

<comment><USER33> That's an awfully short statement / quite a baseless comment. What does Costco even sell, are they a normal supermarket? Are other supermarkets not at fault? What does Costco do wrong compared to competitors (even if they are not alone, you seem to think them particularly responsible)?

<comment><USER49> Costco's thing is that they're bulk quantities at a lower price. They'll either have larger bottles/bags/cans, or they'll package 2+ of the regular ones together.

At my local supermarket, I can buy a single onion if I'd like. If I want a them pre-bagged, it's a 3LBs bag. At Costco, the option is a 10LB bag. 5LBs bags of mozzarella. 5LB and 10LBs bags of carrots.

It's a great place to shop, especially for large families/groups, but if you're a small household then it will lend towards over-buying, simply because you can't get a 1-2 person quantity of most things. This morning, I walked to the store and bought a single avocado. If I'd gone to Costco, I would've had to get a bag of five. (Which is surprisingly few for Costco.)

Here's a product list for Costco: [https://queenbeecoupons.com/costco-price- list/](https://queenbeecoupons.com/costco-price-list/) Compare the quantities with what I can get from my local supermarket: [https://www.heb.com/](https://www.heb.com/)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: PyScaffold – Easy project setup for Python - <AUTHOR> http://pyscaffold.readthedocs.org/

<comment><USER2> Setting up a python project with a sane layout can be challenging, thats why I like pyscaffold. It takes away the pain of writing your own setup.py and googling for all the different ways of configuring your setup. Especially the setup.py subcommands which are kind of hard to get right.

</comment><comment><USER3> Finally the batteries are included when starting a new Python project :)

Find it on github: [https://github.com/blue- yonder/pyscaffold](https://github.com/blue-yonder/pyscaffold)

</comment><comment><USER4> I used it several times, it really helps a lot!! I don't wanna miss it anymore!

</comment><comment><USER5> very helpful tool</comment>


Ask HN: What's your favorite bookmarked HN thread? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I get a lot of value out of HN, but the biggest wins monetarily have been advice regarding consulting, often across multiple threads. Two favorites which stuck with me enough to be Googleable:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1225179>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1191094>

Comments rather than threads picked because they stuck, but the contextual threads were also good.

<comment><USER3> Also interesting to read patio11's comment (via the first link) on "salon scheduling" in light of launching Appointment Reminder.

<comment><USER2> That was at my last week at the day job. As I recall, I posted from my Kindle at godawful late following hellish overtime, dinner, writing the first page of notes for AR, and checking into a hotel. I think I was still calling it Notiphone then. Notifo launched a week or so later and I scrapped the name.

I'd check the notebook but lost it in America in October.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really like this one: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2158116>

<comment><USER5> Oh that's mean. So very mean. So very deserving of an upvote, too.

<comment><USER6> Actually, if enough people submit their favorite threads here it might very well turn out to be true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> HN Brag Thread <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1200959> It provides a good introduction to what others have done.

<comment><USER8> This thread is pretty great and inspiring.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Did you win the Putnam?"

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079>

<comment><USER10> in the same thread there is - I think- a thread about Dropbox

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35103>

<comment><USER6> That's got to be the oldest comment I've upvoted on HN :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Jason L Baptiste on "How to become a millionaire in 3 years?":

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1447467>

I actually printed this out for reference, the only time I've found myself doing this.

</comment><comment><USER12> This was a good one. The conversation was from an article titled "Double Your Price (no, I'm not kidding)":

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1639712>

</comment><comment><USER6> Another item for this thread, not a HN thread specifically but more like another version of this one:

<http://remembersaurus.com/askhn.html>

It's a curated list of the best 'Ask HN' threads collected over many years, first by Gabriel Weinberg, now maintained by Michael Fairley.

<comment><USER13> Thanks! This is a really great list

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Where to look to learn UX/Design

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1768358>

<comment><USER15> Cheers for that. Hadn't seen that before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> An excellent comment by nostrademons on how to be an expert programmer:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=185153>

<comment><USER17> Thanks for pointing this one out. I was aware of many similar approaches, but having them expressed so succintly really drove home the point of how to use them and progress through them on a particular 'bug' or project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> P versus NP for dummies:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1605415>

</comment><comment><USER19> Comment thread of pg's "Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund": <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=250704>

and "Ask HN: Industries Ripe For Disruption?": <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=475736>

</comment><comment><USER20> Lots of great (consulting) advice in the "Why I bill hourly" thread.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1880096>

</comment><comment><USER21> In the threads-about-HN category, pg's comment from 1078 days ago that upvoting to indicate agreement and downvoting to indicate disagreement with comments has its place on HN.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171>

I am aware that since then pg has been thinking about ways to refine the commenting system or flagging to make sure that the right incentives occur on HN to encourage worthwhile threads and comments to those. Kudos to the OP here for asking all of us to look up good examples of worthwhile content on HN.

Now the way I "bookmark" HN threads is by sharing the submitted links, with a hat-tip to HN, with my Facebook friends. Seaching the links I've recently submitted to Facebook, I see that an HN thread about science books

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2110042>

was quite useful and well liked.

</comment><comment><USER6> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1327632>

</comment><comment><USER22> My all-time favorite News.YC comment:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=121413>

About the success of failure from fiaz

<comment><USER6> What a gem. Thank you for that. Not only for the insight in it but for the bravery Fiaz had to write that all out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> "Winning Isn't Normal"

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2009043>

</comment><comment><USER24> Instead of taking the usual 10 seconds to read each comment, it's now going to take 10 minutes (assuming you skim through the entire thread each person links to).

I'm definitely holding onto this super thread, though, as it may well become the unofficial _threads of threads_.

<comment><USER6> I've stolen your 'thread of threads' name for this page and have added an entry to the HN faq under the header 'the best stuff'.

Hopefully that will get people to keep coming back here and add more to it.

<comment><USER24> Thanks, I feel honored to have the name added to the HN FAQ. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Not sure if this has been posted already: Ask Entrepreneurs: Productivity tips for a chronic procrastinator?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=579979>

</comment><comment><USER26> "How do you come up with new project ideas?": <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1916801>

</comment><comment><USER27> A Hacker's Guide to Tea: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1934051> . I stopped drinking tea because I would sometimes like the taste and sometimes not without being able to sort out why some was good and some was not. Now I understand and can reproduce consistently good cups.

</comment><comment><USER28> Is there a way to save/bookmark HN threads under my HN profile?

I see "saved stories" under <http://news.ycombinator.com/saved>, but don't see a way to save anything there. The only other option is to comment on something and then have it available under "threads", but that sucks.

Sorry, I'm a newbie around here.

<comment><USER29> if you upvote a story, it gets saved under your profile.

<comment><USER28> Thanks, awesome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This one is a good one: "Why Dropbox Succeeded and Syncplicity Didn't" <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2153046>

</comment><comment><USER31> Now, it's this one :)

</comment><comment><USER32> I got a kick out log this one: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=393989></comment>


More realistic 3D TV: allow the eye to focus - <AUTHOR> http://kck.st/light-field-tv

<comment><AUTHOR> If you have any questions, please comment, and I will reply in real time through 1 am tonight! =)

<comment><USER2> How does this compare with the technology in the Nintendo 3DS?

<comment><AUTHOR> Eventually, our technology will be a strict superset of the of the technology included in the 3DS:

\--

See this reddit post. [http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/hmjej/how_the_3d...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/hmjej/how_the_3ds_parallax_barrier_works/)

Specifically, look at the first comment and its reply:

zz33ke: But why does it make me dizzy and nauseous?

joatmon3: The 3D effect makes it look like it's popping out at you, but the image is still actually on the screen (where your eyes have to focus), so the difference between where your brain says the image is and where your eyes are focusing causes many people to get dizzy and nauseous.

\--

As joatmon3 says, the parallax barrier technique (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax_barrier>) can provide binocular parallax, but it does not provide the depth information required for a viewer to focus their eyes on each virtual object.

Our prototype will do both.

When a character seems to do pop out at you, it will be both because of a parallax barrier providing different images to your two eyes, but also because a lens in front of that screen is adjusting the focus distance of that part of the screen. That way, when your eyes try to focus on the virtual object's virtual distance, that is the optical distance at which the screen will be sharp.</comment></comment></comment>


Is Intellectual Property Itself Unethical? - <AUTHOR> http://techdirt.com/articles/20100519/0404029486.shtml <comment><USER2> See Laughlin, Robert B. (2008). The Crime of Reason: And the Closing of the Scientific Mind. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0465005079 for an interesting discussion.

</comment><comment><USER3> good question. why should you lose the right to do something because someone has filed a piece of paper?

<comment><USER4> >why should you lose the right to do something because someone has filed a piece of paper?

Point of fact: not all intellectual property (eg. most copyright protection) requires filing. That said:

You lose the right to do something that you were unable to do before because you lacked the knowledge, as it's intellectual property, to perform the work/invention in question. You are effectively immediately in no worse a situation.

The person who has, by the "sweat of their brow", laboured to enlarge the realm of knowledge is rewarded with a limited monopoly to encourage others to progress the domain of knowledge. This then creates both an enlargement of the public domain of knowledge, after the applied limits expire, and a motivation to enlarge that pool of knowledge to all.

IMO the basic premise of intellectual property (as I expound above) is sound and arguably moral.

The current implementations that follow on and have been corrupted by decades of lobbying by high profile, heavyweight corporations are greatly lacking in the respects which afford this premise it's moral standing - namely that the creators themselves are often relatively ill-rewarded and that the public domain is not receiving it's benefit (the payment in return for the monopoly we, the public, grant).

<comment><USER3> I don't agree that one is unable to do something before somebody files a patent on something. you could have been doing the exact same for years but treating it as a trade secret. of course, in that situation, you can keep doing it in secret. And you could still figure out that solution yourself.

The collective is taking away the individual's rights to get some perceived benefit. I don't think that's a moral act.

I believe in property rights and realize you can't have any sort of economy without them. But is this property? If so, why do you only own it for a limited time?

<comment><USER4> If you were doing it before and can prove it then you can render the patent void. You can make submissions to the patent office if you want to be clear that the patent won't be granted. Hence, something you're already doing can't be stopped by patents (in theory, given a perfect system). To recapitulate the collective is not taking away a right to do something you could do before.

It is property inasmuch as it is owned, bought and sold, licensed, mortgaged as if it were property. Property is not immutably owned - bricks and mortar can be retrieved for the public good (eg compulsory purchase; at least in Europe).

The deal is that the right to the newly created/discovered intellectual property is vested by power of the people to the individual as a reward for their efforts and on the understanding that the people then later receive unencumbered access. That is why a disclosure of an invention is required for a patent to be granted and why (historically and optionally in the USA) a registered copyright requires submission of a copy: the copy disclosure are held to ensure they can be released at the end of the term.

As the pace of technology accelerates this naturally lends itself to shorter terms of monopoly. Sadly the purpose of the law has been lost and longer terms have been forced for private financial interests.

<comment><USER3> To make the case for intellectual property, I'm not sure I would point to the fact that physical property can be stolen from an individual by the group.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Social Network Frameworks - <AUTHOR>

Do you know of any Open Souce Social Network Frameworks? It seems silly to implement the same funcitonality over and over again, I'd rather concentrate and implement innovative ideas, instead of the xth messaging system, etc. If you have any sugestions, experiences and recommendations, please post them. I'd prefer to be able to host it myself, it should be open source and easily extendable in order to add original features. <comment><USER2> Hi

This is exactly why project shindig was incubated under apache.

Check out <http://incubator.apache.org/shindig/>

</comment><comment><USER3> A YC startup: <http://insoshi.com/></comment>


What a Newfound Kingdom Means for the Tree of Life (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-a-newfound-kingdom-means-for-the-tree-of-life/ <comment><USER2> Wonder if biology is going to experience the same transition from inheritance to composition that computer science went through those last two decades, and stop building trees of classes, but rather favor describing species by a composition of elementary attributes.

<comment><USER3> No, because the tree of life is based on common descent for the various populations going back to a single ancestor in the very distant past.

<comment><USER4> Makes me wonder, was it actually a literal "single ancestor" at any point, or are we be the result of several completely unrelated populations doing horizontal gene transfers (or whatever it would've been before actual genes were a thing)?

What little I know of what we know, it doesn't seem completely implausible to me for self-replicating molecules to have appeared multiple times on the young Earth. Is it possible for these hypothetical multiple starts to have been be chemically compatible?

<comment><USER5> There was a huge horizontal gene transfer event when us Eukaryotes were born from a train crash between the Bacteria and the Eubacteria. Thus you can't trace out a single "tree" of life all the way to the root.

<comment><USER4> I'm vaguely aware of that, but I was thinking about life even earlier. That is, instead of having a single universal common ancestor to all life that currently exists, would it have been possible to have a set of separate strands of life that arose from abiogenesis (or however it started) and later merged?

I like the thought, though I'm aware that that alone doesn't make it more likely to be true. I'm just wondering if we know something that rules out the possibility.

<comment><USER6> > to have a set of separate strands of life that arose from abiogenesis (or > however it started) and later merged?

Not impossible but likely ever impossible to prove.

I have read a theory that in the earliest days before impermeable cell walls formed, all dna (or whatever it was then) was being madly swapped around because horizontal transfer couldn't be stopped. No lineage then, but an amorphous glob of all life. When life got more sophisticated it then differentiated, because it could block horizontal transfer. But again, who knows.

<comment><USER7> 'Madly swapping DNA around' happens to this day at the bacterial/archaeal level.

The argument against multiple "strands" of life is simple: if abiogenesis of a single replicator is extremely improbable, abiogenesis of multiple such replicators is much less likely still. Plus, almost by definition, the first successful replicator will start replicating and eating all it can around itself, strongly altering environmental conditions and closing the doors for anything that could spontaneously arise after it.

<comment><USER6> > if abiogenesis of a single replicator is extremely improbable

If [0]

> the first successful replicator will start replicating and eating all it can > around itself

Assuming such life looked much like it does now, yes. It may, it may not.

I'm not disagreeing with you, these are valid points but we can't know and I am uneasy about speculating in such a case.

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

After invading southern Greece and receiving the submission of other key city- states, he [Philip II of Macedon] turned his attention to Sparta and asked menacingly whether he should come as friend or foe. The reply was "Neither."

Losing patience, he sent the message:

"You are advised to submit without further delay, for if I bring my army into your land, I will destroy your farms, slay your people, and raze your city"

The Spartan ephors again replied with a single word:

"If"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Biologists have long known that most microbes are "dark matter" in the sense that we don't know how to culture them independently.

There are all sorts of strange things such as huge rod bacteria that have lots of little rod bacteria living on their surface.

Many unknown organisms make themselves visible through their DNA, but without the ability to culture them independently we can't tell which are which.

<comment><USER8> They called it part of the known unknowns in the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The 'scoreboard' at [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eukaryote#Classification](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eukaryote#Classification) makes for fascinating reading.

</comment><comment><USER10> I have to mention this (linked from the OP) [https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/artful- amoeba/surprise-...](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/artful- amoeba/surprise-discovered-inside-shaggy-shimmying-protists-video/)

Not to spoil it but there's a _rotating_ organelle(?)! (Among other things.)

And these rocket-propelled harpoons:

[https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/artful-amoeba/marine- mi...](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/artful-amoeba/marine-microbes- exchange-fire-with-elaborate-subcellular-weapons-video/)

Just wow.

</comment><comment><USER11> Archaea are interesting and often overlooked because they aren't numerous relative to bacteria. The domain Archaea always struck me as more of a "junk drawer" than a genuine grouping.

<comment><USER12> > Archaea always struck me as more of a "junk drawer" than a genuine grouping.

Why do you say that? They emerged from the large scale structure of 16S rRNA trees, which is what defined them as separate from bacteria.

<comment><USER13> You're correct, the above poster is more enthusiastic than accurate. I knew Carl Woese, who discovered Archaea through this analysis, during my time at UIUC.</comment></comment></comment>


Spiders in South America cause "surprising amount of death" - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/spiders-in-south-america-cause-surprising-amount-of-death-study-says/2019/03/01/5c00b51e-3b7c-11e9-a2cd-307b06d0257b_story.html <comment><AUTHOR> Original paper published February 28, 2019: Ecological interactions between arthropods and small vertebrates in a lowland Amazon rainforest [http://amphibian-reptile- conservation.org/pdfs/Volume/Vol_13...](http://amphibian-reptile- conservation.org/pdfs/Volume/Vol_13_no_1/ARC_13_1_\[General_Section\]_65-77_e169_high_res.pdf)</comment>


Auth, Capture, and two-step payment flows - <AUTHOR> https://stripe.com/blog/auth-capture

<comment><USER2> Am I understanding correctly that if you authorize and then don't charge for 7 days, the auth expires? So that would eliminate a kick starter, 30 day model?

<comment><USER3> Many cards don't support authorizations that last for 30 days. Kickstarter doesn't actually authorize cards for exactly this reason.

<comment><USER4> Do you know how PayPal does it? They have a 30 day auth validity, and in some cases there's an option to extend the auth past the 30 days.

We use PayPal a lot for our e-commerce store, and have verified the 30 day auth with near 100% success.

<comment><USER5> PayPal stores card numbers. If an authorization expires they can just re- authorize. Those details are hidden from you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why is this on the front page? A basic feature every gateway has had since time immemorial.

<comment><USER3> Sorry if it's annoying. I think it may be because a lot of HN users also use Stripe and because it was a notable omission to date. We initially leaned against supporting it for a long time because we hoped it was an implementation detail we could abstract away. In many cases where we've made decisions like this, it's worked out well, but in this case, we decided we'd gone a little too far and that the additional control was valuable.

<comment><USER6> Thanks. I'm glad you have implemented it; I've hoped for it since you guys told me in so many words in a campfire chat I was doing it wrong because I needed deferred capture, which I remember finding quite arrogant. That said, it's great to know you take on board user feedback when iterating Stripe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have been using Stripes and Braintree's "Store/Verify then Charge Later" model in SaaS apps I build for customers in the service(Reserving services in advance) industry.

I have found that better that the original Auth/Capture flow since the final amount to be charged can be highly variable. Can anyone shed some light on when/if this auth/capture approach might make more sense in this type of use case?

<comment><USER8> You can follow a model similar to say hotels, where they auth the card for the room charge + expected incidentals, and then charge for the actual amount at the end of the stay. The amount you capture can be less than the amount you authorized.

<comment><USER9> > The amount you capture can be less than the amount you authorized.

The amount you capture can also be _more_ than the amount you authorized, but how much more depends on the bank and is not known until you try.

<comment><USER10> It actually depends on the merchant category code (MCC) of your merchant account when it is setup. Only certain category codes, such as hotels and gas stations, are allowed to capture for more than they authorize.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I had no idea that the "authorize but don't capture" and "capture" buttons in Shopify were fake when using Stripe, their default payment integration. I guess I gave someone bad advice when I recommended he only authorize orders and capture them when shipping; if Stripe didn't support authorizations only, he's been capturing every sale regardless of what Shopify said. Oops.

<comment><USER3> Don't worry, they're not fake :). They've been beta testing the functionality for a while.</comment></comment>