The Twitter Underground Economy: A Blooming Business - <AUTHOR> http://www.barracudalabs.com/wordpress/?p=2989 <comment><USER2> There's a real advantage to buying Twitter followers that isn't highlighted in the article.

One of the fastest and easiest ways to grow your follower base is to follow people and hope that they follow you back. But you can only follow 2k people with a new account before Twitter's anti-(follow)spam algoritms kick in and prevent you from following more.

However if you have more than 2k followers, then you are allowed to follow more than 2k accounts. Twitter actually allows you to follow 10% more people than you have following you... so if you have 10k accounts following you, you can go ahead and follow 11k account. That means you can followspam 11k accounts instead of just 2k.

So by buying fake followers, you greatly increase your ability to follow-spam on Twitter. And this technique yields (mostly) real followers. So in short: if it's part of a followspam campaign, buying fake followers is an efficient way to grow your followership much more rapidly.

All that said, I'm not a fan of this technique for many reasons. For starters, it's so unfair to watch other people buy followers and aggressively followspam while you play by the rules. But so many people do it, so the pressure on everyone to achieve these sorts of results is immense. It's vaguely reminiscent of baseball in the 90s: everyone else is breaking home run records, so it's easy to be tempted to try steroids. Also, as a casual user of the site: it's not fun to be followed by so many new accounts that magically have 10k fake followers and are aggressively followspamming to build up real followers.

I hope that Twitter cracks down on this unfair practice, and better polices their system against abuse. In the meantime, just wanted to point out that this abuse is more than just a hack to buy social proof... it's a marketing loophole for Twitter spammers as well.

</comment><comment><USER3> This fits in with something I came across last year. A client had been sold on promoting their site using social media by someone at a web agency they trusted. I took a look through their followers after having some suspicions about the advice of the expert about something else. As far as I could tell, three-quarters of the followers of this company were fake. They only had about 400-500 followers, so nothing like the numbers mentioned in the article, but a pretty useful amount at the time.

I wasn't sure if the client company were aware most of their followers didn't really exist. I was trying to work out how we'd broach it with them when we were dumped off our bit of the project. I couldn't work out what all the fake followers were for, I presumed at the time it was just to make it look like the social media guy was doing his job well and it was all going well, when in reality he was just buying followers in. The idea he was trying to bring in more natural followers by having a big follower count at least means he could have been acting more ethically than I thought.

Given updates in Google over the last couple of years to make social signals more and more important, it could be a lot of people buying likes, fake followers and retweets are just trying to influence the rankings of the company/page mentioned in Google's search results by showing a lot of social activity about that company.

If this is the case, the abuse will continue and probably get much worse until either Twitter cracks down on it or Google dial back on how strongly it takes signals from Twitter. Unfortunately, given how much blog spamming there still is, even after everyone started using 'nofollow' on comment links, it may not make much difference to the level of abuse. Lots of people spend time trying to manipulate Google in ways much of the SEO industry believe don't work any more.

Given this, it'll be up to Twitter to stop the abuse, and as it makes their service look busy and popular, they potentially aren't going to be interested in being too aggressive on blocking fake accounts, unless they're being very obviously abusive. Personally, I still get plenty of accounts following me which have just started, then spewed spam links to people for days, and Twitter hasn't worked on a way to automatically shut them down (although it seems to happen pretty quickly after I use the Block facility to report them.) So I can't see that they're going to get around to shutting down harder to notice fake accounts very quickly either. Not until it becomes a large enough problem that the mainstream press starts complaining about it.

</comment><comment><USER4> I noticed the trend of buying followers a while ago and a couple of weeks ago I built <http://twitteraudit.com> which simply looks at 5000 followers and uses a few simple metrics to guess whether a user is real or fake.

TwitterAudit gives a single score of the percentage of any user's followers that are real. Most people are above 40%, but some are below 10%, suggesting that they probably bought a lot of them.

Check it out! Any feedback would be great.

<comment><USER5> Ah, sweet site. I had started building something similar myself a few weeks back (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4315669>) I'm using yours now to check a few accounts I know of that buy followers.

It would be nice if I could pay to run a few audits at once.

Edit: so I played around with it for a bit, a problem it seems to have is it doesn't cope with Twitter "lurkers", people that don't tweet much, follow lots of people and have a few followers. You shouldn't count those that follow ~200 people but don't tweet much as "fake". You should assume that every user with under 1-200 followings is legitimate, because it's not cost effective for the follower sellers to do it with accounts with so few follows. or at the very least have their "score" very low.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the feedback. The site is actually quite lenient with the follower type you mention.. but maybe it's not lenient enough! I'll look into it.

<comment><USER5> Here's a few people that it reports that have high amounts of "fake" followers, which I know don't purchase followers:

<http://twitteraudit.com/notch> <http://twitteraudit.com/marc_irl> <http://twitteraudit.com/redstonewire>

Their followers are a lot of Twitter "lurkers".

<comment><USER6> I did mine. 25k followers: <http://www.twitteraudit.com/joshu> \- I definitely don't buy followers, because who cares?

There are a LOT of follow robots out there. Fake followers that follow lots of people, hoping to get followed back. If you don't, they unfollow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can anyone explain what the benefit is of having hundreds of useless followers? Is there some reputation system on Twitter I'm missing?

<comment><AUTHOR> All else being equal, people are more likely to follow people who already have lots of followers: there must be something good about their tweets that makes all those people choose to keep following them.

The number of followers is the only visible indicator of the "goodness" of an account. It's similar to karma on Hacker News, except that it's impossible to miss because it's prominently displayed. This is probably intentional on the part of Twitter, to grow their network.

<http://buildingreputation.com/writings/2010/02/on_karma.html>

<comment><USER8> Is the quality of the tweets on a particular account not also a visible indicator of the 'goodness' of that account?

<comment><USER9> Which one is easier to make a short-attention span decision on:

1) This person has made 1000 tweets, let me read them all in order to gauge my opinion of them.

2) OH LOOK, 5,000 FOLLOWERS! Must follow popular person!

<comment><USER8> Of course you are right but the suggestion was that the latter was the only visible indicator which is obviously not the case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "You want a toe? I can get you a toe, believe me. There are ways, Dude. You don't wanna know about it, believe me."

This has been going on basically since Twitter was created, it's such an easy platform to game at every single level, from account creation to posting to gaining new followers. Look at all the users out there with ~500 follower differences between who they're following and who is following them...it's all automated.

<comment><USER11> Two things, first account creation is fairly difficult to game. Theres ways to do it, but it requires either quite a bit of manual interaction or some above average technical skills at this point, correct?

Second, those users are the easiest to detect. A previous report the team put out identified high friend/follow ratios as a tip off, but any decent bot is going to work the follow-> hope for follow back -> unfollow if not churn to build up their numbers, look more legitimate, etc.

Disclaimer: the post was written by a member of my team, and I've done some work on our social network monitoring previously and continue to.

<comment><USER10> as someone who has successfully built undetectable bots for a large number of sites, including twitter, I can assure you, it's not that difficult to game (so long as you have the right skillset, which I agree with what I think you're saying here in saying that not many have those skills).

Even if only a handful of people have those skills, they can still do quite a bit in terms of spitting out massive amounts of real looking accounts.

If a user can do it in a browser, it can be automated.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, I think we're on the same page.

After doing PoC for that sort of thing the number of easily detectable bots are a bit annoying that they don't put in the relatively trivial amount of effort to make them appear as a real user, but I guess if they're able to get some money in your pocket with that level of effort, more power to them.

<comment><USER10> ha yeah, I definitely agree. It's amazing how the threshold for quality is with spammers/hackers/script kiddies...a little goes a long way with that kind of stuff

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Interesting tidbit there about Mitt Romney's account. Nice investigative journalism.

<comment><USER13> I found that the part about Romney, which I do not know about and do not necessarily want to know about, gave me the feeling that the article was written with a political agenda. Then much of my interest vanished.

<comment><USER14> He says in the article that there's no authentication for buying followers and mentions the possibility of Mitt Romney's new "followers" being paid for by his opponents.

<comment><USER15> This has actually potential. Faking the opponent's social media followers/likes and "informing" the media about it could become a new tool in the dirty campaigning tactics arsenal

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There are plenty of people selling twitter followers on <http://fiverr.com>

</comment><comment><USER17> Plenty money to be made around with it. Just take a look at this search. <http://www.freelancer.com/search/twitter/> Someone with tight insfrastructure of bots, automatic fake user sets, fb pages taken over during the non-existing admin fiasco can do these tasks with few clicks.

That being said, business is not booming as it used to back in, say, 2009. And not nearly as booming as with Facebook likes.

Disclaimer: I am not engaged in such practices, but have dealt with it.

</comment><comment><USER18> This isn't unique to Twitter, in fact if you go to fiverr.com you'll find many people selling Instagram followers as well. The people that sell these followers have programmed bots to go around liking and following a bunch of people in effect advertising their service.

</comment><comment><USER19> It doesn't look like it's very hard to detect these fake users. Is Twitter actively cracking down on these or do they not care much?

<comment><USER20> They seem to be identifying and banning active bots. I don't think they worry about fake accounts that just sit around and follow others without generating a lot of tweets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Another reason why I think App.net has potential.

<comment><USER22> How is app.net going to prevent his?

<comment><USER23> A paywall will do it. Thats where most of the users currently in see the value. They will probably change their current goals and become a svbtle equivalent in 140 chars. Elitist networks are in and one can easily see why. _Yes, shameless speculation here._</comment></comment></comment>


The Rise and Fall of Swivel.com - <AUTHOR> http://eagereyes.org/criticism/the-rise-and-fall-of-swivel

<comment><USER2> _Kosara: So what went wrong?

Mulloy: It all points back to this: the CEO was incompetent, or not as on the ball as he could have been. I couldn't have said this easily a year and a half ago, but now with more time between me and what happened, I think it was just a number of mistakes._

This kind of humility and introspection is rare and inspiring. I had never heard of Brian Mulloy but I'll be watching to see what he does next.

</comment><comment><USER3> Similar story from Stuart Roseman of Verifiable - [http://stuartroseman.com/post/619953720/out-with-the-old- bus...](http://stuartroseman.com/post/619953720/out-with-the-old-business-in- with-the-new)

</comment><comment><USER4> Incredibly honest interview. $2 million in seed funding, three to four million dollars in expenses, and _single digit subscribers_. It sounds from the interview, though, that one of the major problems was they came from an enterprise background, where they were very successful, and then were told to make a consumer product, and ended up trying to split the non-existent middle.

Fantastic read.

</comment><comment><USER5> Wow. The name couldn't have helped.. <http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=swivel></comment>


Ask HN: This is my first open-source project. Feedback? - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/michaelochurch/ScalaGraph

<comment><USER2> In addition to tests, it's probably time to flesh this out by adding functions that operate on graphs.

It's also relevant to look at this:

[http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/archive/astar/0.2.1/doc/...](http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/archive/astar/0.2.1/doc/html/Data- Graph-AStar.html)

Notice how A* is implemented without any explicit graph object: everything is functions.

This is a model worth thinking about. There are an infinite number of graph libraries for Java. If your value-add is a query language on top of graphs, why not skip the graph representation and let someone else maintain that so you can focus on the query language?

</comment><comment><USER3> Relative scala newbie here. This looks pretty nice, thanks!

I think I'm not alone in learning to use new languages and libraries primarily by inhaling example code. Why not provide a couple relatively trivial programs, and then a couple non-trivial ones to demonstrate some particularly powerful / elegant aspect of your approach? It's good advertising too.

Also, github lets you use README.md with markdown formatting, to make the readme more legible / fancy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you.

I wrote a card game (Ambition) back in 2003 and I'm considering OSing the rules to that, in Scala. That might be a better read for intro Scala because the space (in a card game) is more closed. This is more abstract, with the NodeT's and EdgeT's.

Odersky's Scala book, by the way, is really good.

<comment><USER4> Which book? Could you edit in a link? Thanks!

<comment><USER5> This would be it: <http://www.artima.com/shop/programming_in_scala>

<comment><USER6> this is complete text of 1st edition, written for scala 2.7. Probably about 1/4 of the text is unchanged between editions, maybe less, but will give you good feel for writing style, depth of coverage.

<http://www.artima.com/pins1ed/>

The 2nd edition is an excellent learning and language survey resource. Also, the books' index is superb.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Plain text is ok for the README file, but markdown is more readable, specially if you are going to include code examples.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, in terms of gaining users I think that learning a little bit of basic markdown formatting is very worthwhile. It only takes a few minutes to learn the important stuff (headings, bullets, code formatting, hyperlinks), and the knowledge will continue to pay off on future open source projects. (I am a recent convert from plaintext readme files, and am happy with the decision.)

Visually, having a decent README sets the project apart, and makes it look more "put together." Anecdotally, I can say that when I'm looking for a library to solve a particular problem, I'm probably going to stick around and read more about the repo that has beautiful markdown documentation, all else being equal. Maybe I'm just vain, though... :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm not sure if this was intended by design or not, but why did you decide to put everything into one .scala file? I know Scala allows you to define multiple objects/classes in a file but it is pretty long and it would be pretty difficult to find what I'm looking for if I were to edit anything.

Otherwise, cool project. I too am also interested in graphs and Scala, so I'll be watching your project. Have you looked at flockDB from Twitter?

<comment><AUTHOR> The one-file thing is because I'm new to the Scala build environment (although I have 2 years of Clojure and 2 years Ocaml + Haskell) environment. I was just delaying on that SBT/Maven question for as long as possible.

I generally split files around 500 lines, but for FP languages that may be a bit big.

Haven't looked at FlockDB. Twitter does a lot of cool stuff-- and they use Scala. I may consider applying if I decide to move out to CA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you are making a graph library, you should probably include some screenshots. :)

Make a screenshots/ folder and link to them from your README.

<comment><USER11> He's making a graph library, not a chart library...

<comment><USER12> To clarify, this library is for storing the data structures called "graphs," which are a bunch of points with links between them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't know Scala but good on you for contributing something that looks pretty useful :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Right now, it's very basic. I'm undecided whether I want to write a disk layer or just use a graph DB.

Mostly, I want to see if static typing is right, architecturally, for a general-purpose graph library. Is writing [NodeT, EdgeT] on each graph type going to drive me insane?

I also decided that after 5 years being a "company man" and putting 60 hours per week into corporations that not exist one day, that I should get over my FOE (fear of embarrassment) and contribute to open-source.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I dislike projects that are named literally. It causes unnecessary linguistic gymnastics to distinguish between the project, the thing it's trying to achieve and the next project.

</comment><comment><USER15> Better solution: <https://code.google.com/p/signal-collect/>

</comment><comment><USER16> You should comment your code

<comment><AUTHOR> Specific thoughts on what deserves more commenting?

I tend to prefer explicit type annotations and unit tests (later) over comments except when I feel like there's something non-intuitive that's not at all obvious from the code. Comments are also critical for future-safety against "fixes" that "look right" but will actually break the code.

I tend to have a "60-second rule". If it took 60 seconds for me to figure this out, then I should comment. For example, I commented the need for a curried function signature in Utils.mergeMaps because it wasn't at all obvious, and I kept getting type errors till I got it right.

Personally, I think the worst thing about what I have right now is that it really deserves to be split into more than one file, but I'm delaying the build system question (I dislike Maven, SBT seems neat has a bad reputation) for a little white.

<comment><USER2> I would ignore advice on commenting. Things should be clear, not commented. Docstrings are nice if you are going to generate some documentation for end users; googling for "string isempty java" is easier than opening up java/lang/String.java and searching for "empty" in your text editor. (But both techniques have their advantages and disadvantages.)

Tests are a great way to show what your library can do. I recommend adding those before you worry about documentation. (How do you know your code, as posted, works?)

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with you on testing.

One thing I have to decide on this project is whether I'm going to follow the convention (which I don't like) of putting "test/" in a separate directory from "main/". I dislike it because I think unit tests should be included inline if short and relevant to the purpose of the function.

Generally, my testing practice is to REPL-test and then include the tests in code for posterity. It makes the testing process more playful to start in REPL testing. I know it's the opposite of TDD but it works for me.

<comment><USER17> Michael, could you explain why you are using Scala over Clojure? I know you've got experience with both, but Clojure has always seemed more appealing to me.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


No-Tech Posture Strap Raises $500k on Kickstarter - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1123408990/betterback-perfect-posture-effortlessly

<comment><USER2> I've been using a competitor but it's ugly and awkward. Excited for this one.

<comment><USER3> Which one were you using?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Tried a sameple and it works -- amazingly simple solution to a really annoying problem

</comment><comment><USER5> Yessss. This is the EXACT type of thing I've been looking for for long flights/bus rides/etc

</comment><comment><USER6> S __* U* and take my money! I couldn 't adapt to standing desks, I think that will be my choice!

</comment><comment><USER7> Wow, 500k for a strap.

</comment><comment><USER8> Yes! Yes! Yes!!!!</comment>


Show HN: Pexels pivoting from free stock photos to cat photos - <AUTHOR> https://www.pexels.com/cats/ <comment><USER2> April Fools?

Very cute cat photos, however. ;)</comment>


What causes your karma to be negative? - <AUTHOR>

I suddenly noticed today that my karma was negative. Not sure what causes that? <comment><USER2> One of your comments was moderated down: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35836></comment>


Ask HN: Best reads of 2018? - <AUTHOR> Did you read any thought provoking or insightful books, papers, or articles in 2018? What were they? What field were they in? What did you find interesting about them? <comment><USER2> Bad Blood, the Theranos story. Classic SV drama/nightmare - quick and easy read but also entertaining and another good cautionary tale.

</comment><comment><USER3> Previous discussions:

Favorite Non-Fiction Books of 2018 - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18743465](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18743465)

Favorite Fiction Books of 2018 - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18746559](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18746559)

</comment><comment><USER4> Someone tried to collect information about which books were most suggested on HN: [https://towardsdatascience.com/hacker-news-book- suggestions-...](https://towardsdatascience.com/hacker-news-book- suggestions-64b88099947)

Hope this help.</comment>


The Great App.net Mistake - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2013/08/the-great-app-net-mistake/?mbid=social10983564 <comment><USER2> Mat Honan deserves credit for one of the clearest, most concise descriptions of what App.net is (or intends to be):

> Imagine this. You sign up for Vine, and build up a robust friend network and > library of videos. But then you try out Instagram's new video sharing, and > decide you like its editing features a lot better.

> Normally, this would mean starting over, with no friends and no files. But > let's say that both of them were just applications that ran on top of > App.net. Instead of starting over, when you fired up Instagram for the first > time, your friends and videos would be there waiting for you. That's > App.net. Or at least that's what it wants to be.

Up until I read those two paragraphs, I couldn't shake the notion that it was really a Twitter clone that didn't want to be pigeonholed. Now I get it.

<comment><USER3> Huh? I'm actually more confused.

Doesn't Facebook-connect (and FB apps in general) effectively give you the ability to buy/rent their network effect already? Thus eliminating the "no friends and no files" notion?

<comment><USER4> Yes, but neither Twitter and Facebook are in the "social provider" business - they're in the ad business. This is why they've had so much friction with their 3rd-party developer ecosystem. Dalton wants App.net to be a social utility - providing ownership of social data to the user for a price. There are no ads, so there's no motivation to screw over developers.

That's the idea, at least.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From the beginning I've quietly predicted that if App.net is ever going to succeed, they will eventually end up going with a more traditional business model where they charge developers for the capacity their applications use (in my mind, they would end up resembling Firebase).

Dalton will write up some charismatic blog post about why this is the right move, and how it was really part of the plan all along. Some people will eat it up; others will call bullshit; and the world will keep turning.

<comment><USER6> Then 4 years later, he'll write a blog post on why selling the company to Twitter/Google/Facebook will be the best move. And how burnt out he is, and how he's leaving to pursue "other dreams". And people will congratulate him.

<comment><USER7> Why does this sound so familiar?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'll give App.net one thing:

They get more press on HN than any other irrelevant company in the world.

<comment><USER9> They have funding. Journalists like free lunches.

<comment><USER10> I think it's more that they have lower odds of success (at their current mission) than most startups, but if they're successful, a bigger impact. And fundamentally it's meta, so more interesting than any given startup -- there's more of a philosophical argument behind it than just a better designed chat client or whatever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In other words, normal people that use Twitter or Instagram still have no clue what App.net is and the early adopters of App.net will eventually get tired of it.

<comment><USER12> Early adopters aren't tired yet because App.net's continually releasing interesting updates to the platform. And there's even a great example of 3rd party developers working together on their system to extend and support one 3rd party developer's chat system (patter). So each developer's project help retainer interest as well.

So as long as App.net keeps releasing new APIs and developers stay interested in the platform. I don't think early adopters will get tired.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I get that App.net is supposed about owning your own data, and sure there's a brief mention of PRISM at the top. But why I would want to write an app for it in the era of PRISM? How can I trust this notion of a "private cloud?"

What I'm looking for now is more decentralization and encryption than a walled garden.

</comment><comment><USER14> I read the whole article and never discovered the mistake. Did I miss something? It sounds like app.net is doing fine.

<comment><USER15> _" Alpha was the first product out of the gate, launched in reaction to something Twitter did. Subsequently, much development was in building Twitter- like things. So its little wonder that people associate App.net with, well, Twitter. And once people form an idea of what a product is, it becomes very hard to change that idea. "_

<comment><USER6> They wanted to build an open, paid version of the Twitter API/ecosystem. But the value of the Twitter API lay in the access to their 100 million+ users, and all the valuable social data generated by those 100 million+ users. No amount of "open infrastructure", no matter how clever can ever replace that. It's like buying 1000 data centers in every country, and building an entire system that can handle a billion concurrent users, and saying "Yeah, we can take on Facebook with this", then realize the hard part was getting users, not scaling the infrastructure.

<comment><USER9> It's not open. It's closed, proprietary and the boys over at Andressen- Horowitz are going to want a return on their investment.

<comment><USER12> They've embraced open standards: [http://blog.app.net/2013/08/07/response-to- brennan-novak-par...](http://blog.app.net/2013/08/07/response-to-brennan- novak-part-ii/)

And they have started releasing client source code: [https://github.com/appdotnet/](https://github.com/appdotnet/)

a16z is already getting a return, since App.net has been profitable for a while. It's all gravy since they've made it free to sign up. The user base is about 10 times bigger than last year. It's true we don't know how many new users are paying but since that fixed costs are covered, it doesn't really matter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The "mistake" is at the end...

'There are no breakout apps. There is no WhatsApp or DrawSomething. App.net remains a plaything for developers...'

...it certainly took them long enough to get to it.

</comment><comment><USER17> While I appreciate Dalton's insight into incentivizing good behavior by treating a social network as infrastructure rather than an advertising/media business, I can't help but feel he's simply asking people to trust App.net because this time it's really different. What would prevent App.net from pulling a Twitter? Or from PRISM'ing our data? App.net seems like an incrementalist approach to a problem that requires more of a revolution. I wish there was something else with even half the traction of App.net if only it provided a distributed social network with no central point of failure and a solid API to build from.

</comment><comment><USER18> If people don't want their social network to be at the whims of a company, why not go all the way and adopt the Tent protocol? [http://tent.io](http://tent.io)

I mean, I can see why from a developer's point of view. Those $30k a month are enticing. But why would users care?

<comment><USER19> Devil's advocate: Maybe that $30K can pay for good UX which users definitely care about.

<comment><USER12> Funny you should mention that. I feel that crowd-sourcing user interface development by given an open access to an API will lead to new experiments with UI/UX.

I believe when Twitter was more open, we saw an explosion of clients and UI/UX. A couple of these innovations we hadn't easily seen before.

One of the hopes is that the App.net platform continues this experiment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Say what you want about it, but to class it as a mistake is wrong in my opinion. Back when Twitter was getting a lot of bad press from developers, the founder saw a market niche and successfully got backing from lots of people in that niche ... Enough devs were willing to stump up $50 to get something like the Twitter API without limits (or the client side ads).

</comment><comment><USER21> I wonder if a part of these site or services is how the name works in the language. I can "tweet" something I can "google" something, but "app" something?

Not saying its crucial or 100% important, but I do think the name and it's ability to work well in English has a lot to d owith success.

Maybe?

<comment><USER22> The name is not a problem. You can "tweet" and "google" something because tweeting and googling use products. App.net is not a product, it is a platform. Similarly, you can't "facebook" something, you can only "post on Facebook", but that's okay because Facebook is a platform.</comment></comment>


African solar power could be answer to Europe's energy woes  - <AUTHOR> http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-14013-Energy-Technologies-Examiner~y2009m6d21-African-solar-power--could-be-answer-to-Europes-energy-woes

<comment><USER2> Desertec seems to be planning a water-based system: "...added benefit of the concentrated solar power, or CSP process is the desalination of water...". Doesn't that mean it will be a daytime-only system? Wouldn't using seawater rapidly corrode the system itself?

Years ago, solar in Northern Africa for sale to Europe was pitched as a way to apply the technologies used in Solar Two (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Solar_Project#Solar_Two>). That system used molten salt in order to provide 24-hour power generation. It looks like <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Tres_Power_Tower> is being built in Spain.

<http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13725855> has some interesting discussion of thermal solar as a technology.</comment>


JTAGing Mobile Phones - <AUTHOR> https://sysforensics.org/2016/08/jtaging-mobile-phones/ <comment><USER2> Too bad most of tools targeting mobile phones come only as shady, Windows- only, closed-source, DRM-laden (requires unnecessarily expensive adapter) solutions.

That's capitalism for you - every vendor wants their piece of the cake by keeping their reverse-engineering efforts secret. Nothing else is preventing an open-source and open-hardware ecosystem from thriving by reusing existing tools (eg. OpenOCD and any FT2232-based adapter clone).

<comment><USER3> Indeed. I wish someone would reverse engineer some of them.

Also some of the JTAG tools allow disabling the network lock and IMEI changing, which could be interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Somewhat offtopic, but this article reminded me of the old times when every mobile phone came with a serial port and you could just talk to them direcly. The Nokia and Siemens devices always supported it by default and it was easy to access everything from address book, to call lists, to ringtones and the "provider logo".

Unfortunately, it was also used by the police to make a copy of everything you had on it...

<comment><USER5> At least with a front-door you know it's there, I guess!

<comment><USER4> Most people were not aware of it at that time.

It's comforting to know that devices like the Nokia 3310 had the serial port, called "F-Bus" or "M-Bus", located _below_ the battery. It made it impossible to connect a cable without entering the PIN again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If it wasn't so expensive to get started with this, I'd be all over it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. This is the first list I've seen of _everything_ used. $1400 is a big initial investment, though people who already solder may not need to spend that much.

<comment><USER7> Additionally, I think you could do the job with much cheaper tools. For one thing, I definitely don't need a dissection scope to solder JTAG pins, nor do I need a hot-air reflow gun. I don't know enough about the particular JTAG bits and bobs he is using, but I've had success using the $5 JTAG programmers from Aliexpress. You need to know the pinout to use them though, which seems like one of the huge benefits of the options he listed. The solder fume extractor is pretty uneccessary as well.

I think if you went with the bare minimum required to tinker with JTAG on phones, you'd probably be looking at $100 (inexpensive soldering iron, cheapo JTAG, salvaged wall wart for power, kester solder/flux) to $250 (upgrade to temperature controlled iron, cheap bench supply)

<comment><USER8> Gonna disagree on the fume hood. Especially if you're working with older electronics that likely have leaded solder.

You don't have to buy one, but you should build one with a fan and a filter as suggested, anything so you don't inhale the fumes.

<comment><USER7> From what I understand, there is little to no lead in soldering fumes. The fumes are almost entirely from the flux. If you are working in a well ventilated space you should be able to protect yourself by setting up a small fan to blow the smoke away.

I think a filter is overkill for someone who is just starting out. They should at least figure out if they enjoy the hobby before they spend $60 on a filter. That being said, even if they don't contain lead, the fumes from soldering are not good for your health. If you do continue soldering, some form of fume extraction is in order.

There is a pretty good discussion on stack exchange about this topic: [http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/1904/are- sold...](http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/1904/are-solder-fumes- bad-for-me)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The image of the test point pads covered with soldermask is quite interesting.

If they are modifying the PCB to put soldermask over the pads for production, why not just remove the pads? Are they still in the design for field recovery or work?

Does anyone know? Curious to learn some tricks.

[0] [https://res.cloudinary.com/sysforensics/image/upload/c_scale...](https://res.cloudinary.com/sysforensics/image/upload/c_scale,w_400/v1458082960/clean_taps_pkiiig.png)

</comment><comment><USER10> Remember when you were motivated to take a screwdriver, pliers, hammer, blowtorch and strong magnet to your decommissioned spinning platter HDD cases, before tossing your old desktop PC components in the trash?

Yeah, same goes for smartphones now, too.

</comment><comment><USER11> A great tool for exploring JTAG and other protocols is the bus pirate: [http://dangerousprototypes.com/docs/Bus_Pirate](http://dangerousprototypes.com/docs/Bus_Pirate)

It isn't great for what the article mentions (lack of pre-existing tools for common mobile phone tasks) but it is cheap and versatile.

<comment><USER12> I can't recommend the Bus Pirate enough! An old coworker introduced me to these things and they are _so_ helpful!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It seems to me that most flagships would now be incompatible with this sort of hacking due to full disk encryption?

<comment><USER14> Depends what your target is. If you somehow managed to connect JTAG while the phone was on and unlocked you could dump the phone's RAM completely, potentially with the encryption keys as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Good Article!</comment>


App.Net Stats - <AUTHOR> http://appnetstats.com/ <comment><USER2> You should not refresh the "top post" list if nothing has changed (not nice to "watch" it blink every 3 seconds)

</comment><comment><USER3> wish all the names were links back to that person's app.net

side note: feels awkward to say app dot net like that, but things changes</comment>


Finding a tech co-founder is like trying to get married - <AUTHOR> http://wannabevc.wordpress.com/2013/09/26/finding-a-tech-co-founder-is-like-trying-to-get-married/ <comment><USER2> As compared with being a prospective tech co-founder, which is more like hanging out in a Vietnamese pool hall in a short dress. There's money to be made, but you know the chances of being mistreated are pretty high.

<comment><USER3> I think there is a difference though between a tech guy who wants to implement an idea a business guy has, and a tech guy who HAS an idea already and wants a business guy to help sell it.

The latter is hard to find too, so it's not like tech guys have it any easier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Your simile is right, but I think the problem is always in part these things:

1) Programming isn't impossible to learn. An outsourced MVP might be a sign that the non-tech founder is not fully committed (my grandpa owned a small factory, but stressed the importance of knowing how to work all the equipment even if he stayed in the office).

2) Technical people (of which I am one) frequently underestimate technical challenges. I'm a good developer but at times have have massively missed deadlines, released buggy/untested shite, and mis-predicted technologies (e.g. I once thought Flex would take over the world).

So if we have worked for years in a field and made these mistakes, we have a hard time trusting a non-technical person the even _guess_ at the challenges/tradeoffs up ahead. And to tell when it's time to right the ship or pivot from an idea they are attached to.

 __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __

So to flip it, you need to market yourself more than your project. I think the best non-technical cofounder is somebody who is a some-time developer. As a manager at Vanderlay Industries once said:

"If you think I'm looking for a guy to sit at a desk pushing around papers, forget about it. I got enough headaches trying to manufacture the stuff."

</comment><comment><USER5> The other end of this would be that splitting up from a co-founder (especially on less than great terms) is pretty much the same thing as getting a divorce, in terms of stress, hassle and potential emotional toll...

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup - that's what I've been saying - and potentially more expensive!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Of course, coming from the other side of the coin - trying to find a proper business guy that you match well with is just as challenging. Unless you work well and it just feels right, well, it will just be a marriage that won't last.

<comment><AUTHOR> True - trying to find a good match is difficult, but if we're honest, the tech guys are in much higher demand than your "biz guy" (excuse the generalisations - of course tech guy can be biz guy).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It is surprising you are having a tough time finding a tech co-founder; of all the bullshit MBA types, you have traction, a site that seems fairly developed, and a decent idea. In theory, I for one, after a cold intro, would be interested in what you have to say, as opposed to my typical "I am too busy to build your idea for you" default. Honestly, I think your biggest problem is Java, it's just not going to hit a large enough cross section of 20/30 year olds, that want to take a risk, that are into tech.

<comment><AUTHOR> well tbh I don't have any trouble getting people initially interested. As you say, I do have some filters that should separate me from the "MBA chaff" It's getting the few people that I have felt I could work with to actually decide I am the one for them.

hold on... "of all the bullshit MBA types" \- that means you are calling me one of the bullshit MBA types! :( Perhaps you meant "compared to the usual bullshit MBA types"? ;)

The Java point is interesting, and something I have discussed lots with various people - including people who have contacted me today after posting this blogpost. Half the people think I should stick to Java - it's a fine tool for the job, half the people think I will need to switch language. No doubt being in Java reduces my pool of potential co-founders.

<comment><USER8> There is no reason whatsoever to switch from Java. Ignore this noise.

<comment><USER7> Of course there is, if he can't find someone to work on it for equity, but can convince someone to write it in PHP for equity.

<comment><USER8> Everyone knows Java. It's the first programming language taught to every freshman Computer Science undergrad, everywhere in the world. Even most die hard Rubyists know how to write Java. They may hate it, but they know it. Who in the world teaches PHP?

<comment><USER9> > Everyone knows Java.

Untrue.

> It's the first programming language taught to every freshman Computer > Science undergrad, everywhere in the world.

Except where Python is used. Or something else.

> Even most die hard Rubyists know how to write Java.

Well, a lot of the move to Ruby (particularly Rails) was a reaction to perceived issues with Java, so, yeah, Java skill is probably overrepresented in the Ruby (particularly Rails) community.

> Who in the world teaches PHP?

Judging from a quick googling, plenty of places teach PHP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The website referenced in the post, FounderDating, is unusable, unfortunately. They got in trouble recently for using dark patterns to spam the linkedin contacts of potential users' references, and when called out on it the CEO tried to debate the use of the word "spam" when referring to their behavior:

[http://ilikestuffblog.com/2013/04/26/do-you-want-to-spam- you...](http://ilikestuffblog.com/2013/04/26/do-you-want-to-spam-your- linkedin-contacts-and-be-humiliated-try-founderdating/)

That you have to get approved and give references is also the biggest "f* you" to potential users. Why would any sensible person waste their references' time and goodwill with this nonsense?

Hopefully someone will make a worthwhile "founder dating" service that just lets users find others who want to work on something and gives them a way to make contact. Don't make users jump through hoops, and don't abuse users.

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah - did you read the blog post (mine) I linked to?: [http://wannabevc.wordpress.com/2013/04/28/founderdating- nice...](http://wannabevc.wordpress.com/2013/04/28/founderdating-nice-concept- dodgy-viral-mechanism/)

Not good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> as the business guy in a tech startup, i feel your pain. everything you've said, i've gone through myself on a smaller scale. the difference between us is that i, fortunately or unfortunately, was blessed/cursed with a mildly successful startup exit which gave me a substantial amount of money to build my next startup. why unfortunately? i squandered almost all the money by trying to make too bold of a leap from my unsophisticated first startup to what i aspired to be a very technologically-driven and innovative startup. i too used a contractor, except it wasn't just one dude but i hired an indian software firm to build my product with a team. this was a terrible decision because the machine i wanted to build was too ambitious, and far too complex for the indians to understand.

anyway, i started seeking tech co-founders after the failure of that outsourcing attempt. it was too hard - the few talented people in my school (i was still in college at the time) who i befriended were either more interested in gainful employment with competitive salaries after graduation, or they wanted to do their own startups and not ride on mine. i believe i have successfully sold my vision to a few of them, and a few of them have informed me that when i described my ideas, it has changed the way they look at the industry i'm tackling (advertising). some has expressed interest, but without external funding and significant traction, they usually fizzle off after a short period.

so anyway, right now i'm at a stage where since i can't find a tech cofounder, i've decided to BECOME one myself. that's right - i'm returning to school for a computer science degree. i start school in january next year, and hopefully over the next 3-4 years i will build my skills up to a level where i'm either a successful founder, or i'm one of those engineers you mentioned in your article who are deluged with attractive offers.

good luck to you and your startup though, as a fellow entrepreneur i sincerely wish you the best. it's a hard road to tread.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's cool that you're going back to school to learn CS. Can I ask how old you are? It's something I've thought about, but I'm 33, and at some point you have to accept your skill set and focus on your strengths. If I was 23, I would probably try to learn programming.

That sort of talk usually prompts a bunch of people to say - hey - you can teach yourself to be quite decent in just 6 months! Possibly true - but that requires a lot of spare time that I don't have. Also, there's no way I would have been able to build Satago with 6months of experience.

In fact I briefly tried and started blogging about it: [http://newbiehacker.wordpress.com/](http://newbiehacker.wordpress.com/)

<comment><USER11> i'm 27 this year, and i too consider myself very old to return to school. unfortunately, i'm also a foreigner (to US) and the only viable way i can continue pursuing a startup in the US, where i want to be, is to return as a student. so i guess there are a few different reasons i choose to return to school, including getting a visa as well as pursuing technical knowledge.

if i was allowed to return on a different visa, i would not choose to go back to sch for CS and would instead learn these stuff on my own. unfortunately, i was denied such a visa and thus... here we are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> While it's hard to find a tech co-founder, it's twice as hard to find a tech co-founder willing to work on an existing codebase. Techies love to create new things from scratch.

<comment><USER10> If there's existing code then it typically means one of two things: 1) it was outsourced and, therefore, terrible and painful to work with or 2) there was a developer who was either pushed off or decided to part ways with the project at a very early stage, which isn't a good sign considering how self-described "business" people often view and treat developers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> "You need to have someone in the team that can fix a crashed server at 3am, or burn the midnight oil to hit a new feature deadline."

Looks like this guy needs to write down the list of qualities his co-founder will need to have and which one he is prepared to discuss; I mean if he is in his late 20s, early 30s, it is likely he would choose someone around his age and that's probably around the time someone is starting to be concerned about settling down.

</comment><comment><USER13> I have been looking for years. I have been applying to Ycombinator by myself. I live in El Paso Texas, which apparently, is the equivalent of the moon when it comes to finding like minded tech driven partners. This is a really frustrating topic for me. I hope to move to San Francisco soon so I can be around other developers.

</comment><comment><USER14> personally as a Dev and entrepreneur with about 50 ideas for startups I would like a confounding team to simply bounce ideas off and share the load... my top idea is a CRM for rental property that - collect rent, schedule maintenance, list rentals, handled roommate splits, background checks, financials, and more... but would be nice to have another back end coder to help(laravel), and a designer for front end, a business developer.. monetization would be 6-7$ per month per unit. Building something great can be hard when you are a one person shop.

</comment><comment><USER15> Dear Europe,

Stop trying to turn middle-manger types into tech startup CEOs.

<comment><AUTHOR> What does that even mean??

<comment><USER15> It wasn't directed towards you in particular, I promise. It's just that since I moved to Europe, I've noticed an incredible difference in how many middle- manager types get funding from the accelerators here vs the US. In fact, here they strongly encourage former middle-managers to become founders. In US accelerators, often the whole founding team in engineers.

In response to your article, maybe you might consider showing more of a love and understanding for technology? Perhaps even acknowledging that traditional business knowledge may be a hindrance to a startup, instead of a clear benefit? [1]

[1] [http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2012/01/the-management-team-while- bu...](http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2012/01/the-management-team-while-building- product.html)

<comment><USER16> Don't insult people and then deny that you've insulted them and attempt to back it up with a blog post that isn't an authority for what you just said.

OP worked at Rocket Internet for 2 years. Say what you like about them, there is nothing 'traditional' or 'middle-manager' about a role like that. OP also has a PhD in genetics and an MBA, a not-too-dissimilar set of qualifications to US founders. You don't have to be a software engineer to have useful startup skills...

<comment><USER15> I am insulting Europe's tech business culture, yes, if that's what it takes for us to begin to discuss this topic. Coming from me, that's saying a lot, because I usually never find culture similarities that span the whole of Europe. Please don't take this as a personal insult towards anyone.

The obsession with PHDs and higher level education.. great, another Euro- obsession.

Look, I'm not saying that he can't be a great startup founder. I'm just offering a different perspective for how to present one's self to potential tech cofounders. Emphasizing "business skills" and higher level education is definitely not the best way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Easy to do by accident while drunk in Vegas?

<comment><AUTHOR> I hadn't actually thought about trying to get a developer drunk.... Underhand tactic, but it could work. Unfortunately I'd probably end up married to Britney Spears!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Do you really _need_ a co-founder? I think co-founders are over-rated.

> You need to have someone in the team that can fix a crashed server at 3am, > or burn the midnight oil to hit a new feature deadline.

Almost every contractor I've worked with on elance has been willing to work whatever hours were required. For $5 an hour. Why give up precious equity for something you could hire out for a few dollars an hour?

> To date I have been using a contractor to build Satago, and whilst he is > very good (one of the best developers I've worked with to be honest, but > sadly based very far away from me in Russia) the fear is that without the > large chunk of equity that a co-founder would be working towards, he could > just down tools, and then Satago would grind to a halt.

If I were you I would find a few other good developers to work with. Elance has them in abundance and they'll be more than happy to work for you at $5-$10/hr. (I prefer fixed-budget projects, personally.)

Here's how I get projects done: I take a few INDEPENDENT features from the product roadmap, set clear expectations with the developers, hand off the code, iterate, finalize, then pay my main developer to integrate their code into the main code-base. In my case I'm the lead developer so I do the code integration, in your case maybe it would be your contractor from Russia.

If the developers I've hired write good code and deliver as promised I keep them. If they don't I move on to someone else. In one year I've gone through 6 developers and kept 2 of them. 2 competent, hard working, reliable developers.

When I said "set clear expectations", some expectations I've found useful to establish with a contractor are: clearly define the project specifications (you need to be able to tell them exactly what needs to be done), clearly define the project deadlines (first iteration due in 2 weeks), clearly define the budget ($300 for features X, Y, and Z), and clearly define the communication requirements (respond to emails within 24 hours, provide constant work status updates). It's also a good idea to let them know that you're looking for developers with whom you can establish a long-term relationship and that this small project they're about to work on is a test. If they meet your expectations you will keep working with them, if they don't you won't be repeating business.

I also make sure to tell them that the code needs to be thoroughly documented. It helps the other developers who have to work with their code and it could help you get an idea of what's going on under the hood.

In summary, I think technical co-founders are over-rated. I see no reason to give up equity for something that can be easily contracted out. Ok, finding good contractors isn't "easy". It takes a lot of time -- it's taken me 9 months to find 2 solid ones. But the ones I've found can reliably get the job done, on time, within budget, guaranteed. I own 100% of my company.

<comment><AUTHOR> well tbh, it depends how you determine "need". The need has really been driven by the VCs - they all insist on it.

I don't think that is just because of the code-ownership. Doing this stuff is tough and I really need to delegate to someone - and at this stage I can't afford to hire someone on good money, so I'd rather find someone who is apssionate about the idea and with whom I could work well.

In fact the technical development has gone very well - I am working with a great contractor.

<comment><USER8> > The need has really been driven by the VCs

Do you really _need_ VC money? I mean _really_ need it. Most projects I've come across can be bootstrapped.

> they all insist on it

Did you counter them with "I have 3 contractors at my disposal on-call, round- the-clock"?

> I can't afford to hire someone on good money

£30k is a lot of money. Nearly $50,000 USD. How much do you have left? How much are you paying your Russian developer? (too much, I'd bet). $50,000 is 5 developers salaries, full-time, from India, for a year.

> I'd rather find someone who is passionate about the idea and with whom I > could work well.

If that's the direction you want to take it, I wish you all the best of luck. I personally would go a different route.

> I am working with a great contractor.

It's entirely plausible that a business run by 1 technical contractor will fall apart (life happens... I've had contractors break contract several times due to personal issues that arose). It is, however, much less likely that a business run by 5, competent, well managed developers will fall apart.

Just sharing what's worked for me. Best of luck whichever direction you go.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for comments.

No I don't really need VC money. I need more money, but I'm pretty sure I can crowd-source it again via Seedrs.

£30k is a lot but not that much... I had to pay for non-tech stuff too. My Russian dev is very good value compared to hiring in Europe. I'd really rather have one top-notch guy than 5 ok guys. The quality of dev so far has been 1st class.

<comment><USER8> > I'd really rather have one top-notch guy than 5 ok guys

1\. Your one top-notch guy who getting in a car crash would put your business on hold for months until you could find a replacement. My 5 "ok" guys are fault tolerant, providing constant development regardless of what life throws at them.

2\. My 2 developers aren't just "ok", they're rock stars. 1st class all the way. I pay them $5/hr. Don't underestimate India or the Philippines because they're low cost. Don't overestimate the difficulty of programming. It may seem hard to you but to someone who knows how to program it's incredibly simple. To a fluent developer, writing code is like writing an essay.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How tall can a Lego tower get? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20578627 <comment><USER2> I already knew legos were strong without this research.

For instance, I know for a fact from legos left on the floor by kids that one lego can hold my entire weight (240 pounds) when I step on it in the middle of the night walking to the bathroom with no signs of damage to said lego.

Further, I know that one lego can by itself topple a fully grown man.

</comment><comment><USER3> >The average maximum force the bricks can stand is 4,240N. That's equivalent to a mass of 432kg (950lbs). If you divide that by the mass of a single brick, which is 1.152g, then you get the grand total of bricks a single piece of Lego could support: 375,000.

>So, 375,000 bricks towering 3.5km (2.17 miles) high is what it would take to break a Lego brick.

>"That's taller than the highest mountain in Spain. It's significantly higher than Mount Olympus [tallest mountain in Greece], and it's the typical height at which people ski in the Alps," Ian Johnston says (though many skiers also ski at lower altitudes).

>"So if the Greek gods wanted to build a new temple on Mount Olympus, and Mount Olympus wasn't available, they could just - but no more - do it with Lego bricks. As long as they don't jump up and down too much."

Well, in theory you can go as high as you want, by tapering the tower towards the top. The 3.5 km limit is only valid for straight, constant cross-section structures.

Which mountains certainly are not.

<comment><USER4> Actually, I don't think this is true. Your tower has to taper exponentially, which means there's characteristic length scale L (probably in the dozens of kilometers) such that cross-section has to double every time you move that far down the town. The width of the tower that is 1 cm at its peak exceeds the Earth's diameter (12,700km) at its base after only 60 doublings, which happens at a height of 6,000km if L=100km. (Obviously, things get more complicated as the height becomes comparable to the distance from the Earth, but the order of magnitude should be right.)

Also, this only works if, for any given slice, the weight of the legos above is evenly distributed over the legos below. Without stronger materials to transfer this weight, the legos in the center of the bottom of the tower will fail before those on the side of the bottom.

<comment><USER5> I think it only has to get wider quadratically, not exponentially. And the weight doesn;t have to be exactly evenly distributed at the bottom, all that's necessary is that some of tghe weight of the upper cneter bricks is suppoorted by the lower outer bricks.

<comment><USER4> > I think it only has to get wider quadratically, not exponentially.

No. The total mass above a distance H from the top of the tower is

M(H) = \rho \int_0^H a(h) dh

where a(H) is the cross-sectional area of the tower a distance H from the top, and \rho is the density of the tower material. This total mass must obey

M(H) = a(H) * r / g

where r is the force per unit area that the material can support and g is the acceleration of gravity. Setting the right-hand sides of the two equations together and differentiating by H gives

r/(g \rho) (d/dH)a(h) = a(h)

which means

a(h) = exp(h (g \rho/r))

> And the weight doesn;t have to be exactly evenly distributed at the bottom, > all that's necessary is that some of tghe weight of the upper cneter bricks > is suppoorted by the lower outer bricks.

The distribution problem gets worse and worse as the taper continues, because more and more of the new area is further away form the center.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > The average maximum force the bricks can stand is 4,240N. That's equivalent > to a mass of 432kg (950lbs). If you divide that by the mass of a single > brick, which is 1.152g, then you get the grand total of bricks a single > piece of Lego could support: 375,000.

But the weight it can support will be determined by the weakest link not by the average. If the lowest brick is of below average quality the tower will fall sooner. So if you plan on building a 3.5 km tower I'd advise you to consider the variation of the brick quality. Bonus points for taking into account that each additional brick has to support less weight.

<comment><USER7> It did slightly annoy me that they say "they were impressed at the consistency of Lego manufacture" and then go on to tell us the average. What's the variance?!

<comment><USER8> About a year (?) ago, someone did do a study of Lego manufacturing variance. They throw away a _lot_ of bricks to keep the variance very small. Granted it focused more on fit than compressive strength, but should help you get nearer the answer.

<comment><USER9> I hope the plastic can get recycled to make more bricks.

<comment><USER10> It's ABS, the same plastic that some 3-D printers use, so they should be able to just chip it up and feed it right back into the hopper for the molds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> >That's taller than the highest mountain in Spain.

Not quite, unless by "Spain" one means "continental Spain." Spain's tallest is Pico del Teide on the Tenerife, measuring 3718 m from the sea level.

</comment><comment><USER12> I see two issues not addressed by the other comments:

1) I would start with a 2x2 plate not a 2x2 brick. They are heavier per height, but I think they will also be much stronger because the weight is not supported by the sidewalls alone.

2) They didn't account for compression of the bottom bricks in their height calculation. If anyone is going to take them seriously they need to publish the strain at the yield point. Then we get to use some calculus to figure out the actual height!

</comment><comment><USER13> As noted building high tower is not feasible in practice. Pyramid though would be much more feasible. It is only 1/3 weight of equivalent tower (polyhedron that is cube) so can be theoretically 3 times higher while simultaneously way more stable. Though if high, curvature of earth has to be considered as well since the lengh of base edge is equal to height.

<comment><USER8> Brick count could be problematic though. How many 2x2 bricks would you need to build your 3x3.5km high pyramid?

<comment><USER14> Would hollow pyramids work?

Since LEGO™ pieces are pretty uniform and there are known pieces, it seems that the engineering math would be easy enough. Once someone has done the work of transcribing the 1x1, 2x1, 2x2, etc pieces and plates into a LEGO™ Calculator.

I am sure these already exist in a minimal form to help pack a cup with LEGO pieces when you buy them from a LEGO™ store.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Good points here. Only many other limitations apply when building an actual tower, so you would probably need a lot of engineering to design a tower even remotely close to that height that can be built before it collapses. If that kind of thing was so easy the carbon nano-tubes fiber cable for the space elevator would be a reality and we would be sending packages to the ISS at almost no cost. But if you take a look at the ideas for the project, you'll find the amazing problems they are trying to solve just to be able to say: Ok, we can do it. Let's build it! [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator)

</comment><comment><USER16> A few commenters here suggested building the base out of flat plates for strength. But as I understood it, the maximum load was determined by the properties of the plastic. The plastic became fluid, rather than the structure of the pieces failing.

From TFA:

>>The material is just flowing out of the way now and it's not able to take any more. We're getting a plastic failure. It means the brick keeps on deforming, without the load increasing.

So, help out the not-a-real-engineer here. Doesn't that mean that changing the shape of the pieces wouldn't help? ie, even if the base were a solid sheet of Lego plastic it would just flow out of the way at that load?

<comment><USER17> The picture of the squished piece looks like there it was a combination of buckling failure of the sides (a geometric instability) and a material failure along the sides (ripping, to allow the buckling failure of the sides). It doesn't look like a fluidlike or flow failure to me.

FWIW, Plastic deformation here is in contrast to elastic, it's not the material. Elastic deformation is linear, Hooke's law deformation: f=kx. Plastic deformation is when elastic breaks down, and you can have additional deformation at the same (or lower) load. Generally, there's an elastic region, then a plastic region, and then total failure.

The numbers suggest that legos are actually pretty similar to unreinforced masonry, the strength looks like about 4000 PSI in compression and nearly no tensile strength. That's about equivalent to bog standard concrete or concrete blocks (CMU). The main difference is that Legos are much less dense. It would be interesting to see something similar to Gothic architecture done in Legos though there would have to be some tweaking to deal with flying buttresses due to the density.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Here's an alternative to the pyramid shape that everyone else is suggesting:

Just use different types of blocks.

The strongest Lego block is probably one of those thin (1/3-height) 1x1 plates. They are also the heaviest per unit volume. Build the base of the tower using these plates. As you move up the tower, gradually replace them with 1x2 plates, full-height 1x1 blocks, 1x2 blocks, 2x2 blocks, and finally, 2x4 blocks at the top.

Strong, heavy blocks go at the bottom. Weak, light blocks go at the top. This strategy will probably let you increase the height of your tower by at least twice, if not more.

<comment><USER19> Depends on the increase in crushing weight, if it isn't greater than the increase in weight per lego unit height (~9mm) then you don't get a larger tower in the end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Master Builders [http://aboutus.lego.com/en-us/lego-group/programs-and- visits...](http://aboutus.lego.com/en-us/lego-group/programs-and-visits/lego- certified-professionals)

</comment><comment><USER21> I like how the experimental result of 375k bricks with a 2x2 brick is somewhat close (within an order of magnitude) to the 220k bricks someone calculated from FEA simulation in the linked Reddit thread ( [http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/iy0ew/how_many_le...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/iy0ew/how_many_legos_stacked_one_on_top_of_the_other/) )

</comment><comment><USER22> Did anyone else pedantically think that this phrase

> The average maximum force the bricks can stand is 4,240N. That's equivalent > to a mass of 432kg (950lbs).

Should have instead read...

>The average maximum force the bricks can stand is 4,240N (950lbs). That's equivalent to a mass of 432kg.

?

<comment><USER23> It seems it's become acceptable to use pounds for mass, equal to 0.45359237 kilograms. I've even seen it used as such in scientific contexts. Sometimes it's clarified by saying pound-mass as opposed to pound-force.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_(mass)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_\(mass\))

<comment><USER22> Totally, hence pedantic. But it does still seem to flow better the other way, if you discount the fact that most people tend to think of pounds in terms of mass. (Which of course is relevant and shouldn't be discounted.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> If your tower gets exponentially thin towards the top, you can keep going forever as the pressure resting on the each level is independent of the height of the level. At least when the gravity field is approximately constant.

</comment><comment><USER25> Science: fucking up childhood dreams since forever.</comment>


Animals killed since opening this page - <AUTHOR> https://justone.earth/food/ <comment><USER2> Just wish it was illegal to show smiling chickens on chicken packs. It desensitize people from treating meat as previously living beings.

Ideally each animal product comes with the imagery like one you get now on cigarette packs (but of an animal in a cage/slaughterhouse) + appropriate cost increases for welfare.

Recent law introduction of putting 1, 2, 3 stars on animal product packages to signify how well animal was treated is great start but we can do so much better as species coexisting in this planet with every other animal.

In my eyes it all starts with education and awareness of alternative plant based diet but government enforced help would be great too.

<comment><USER3> Makes sense to me. At a minimum people should know how reality looks.

<comment><USER4> Strikes me as a great way to harden opposition.

Meat eaters are going to want the nasty images taken off of packaging, and the cheaper option is to lobby to remove them, not pay substantially more for an idyllic, pasture-raised, humane future.

Congratulations, you now have a pro-factory-farming lobbying group with actual grassroots support.

Might also have more people on your side; might not. Worth considering the adversary in any move of this nature.

<comment><USER5> I don't think this is true. I think many people who eat meat do it because they enjoy it and in most cultures, eating meat is the default thing to do; most don't actually approve of factory farming conditions. If the pictures actually depicted animals in the conditions they were raised (humanely raised meat could depict something more humane than something factory-farmed on the packaging), many people would try to eat more humanely raised meats.

There will of course be people who don't care, and people who revel in the pictures, and people that lobby to have them removed, but overall I think those groups would be in the minority. Many people would slowly (and unconsciously) improve their consumption habits, in the same way that people didn't really notice that the tides turned on issues like gay marriage and marijuana consumption.

Part of the knee-jerk antagonism by people who eat meat to posts like this one is that most vocal vegetarians/animal activists are absolutists: eg there is no desirable path forward for most Animal Liberationists where a greater percentage of animals are raised humanely but people keep eating meat. As is often the case, everyone could benefit from agreeing to a compromise where we improve animal farming conditions but don't vilify people who choose to continue eating meat.

Another element here is that eating meat is integral to many cuisines and is extremely culturally important to most people - stating that your goal is to remove it wholesale feels like a direct attack. Claiming that people who enjoy eating meat are your adversaries seems like exactly the wrong thing to do. It's as unhelpful as saying that everyone who owns a car is contributing to climate change is therefore the enemy of environmentalism.

<comment><USER4> Consider that taxing factory meat and putting the proceeds into a subsidy of humane meats would accomplish the policy goal without the tedious social shaming.

The problem that faces is that it looks and feels more like an animal-lib play than an animal-welfare one. As you point out, the animal liberationist faction will not stop pushing until there's no meat at the market, and raising and slaughtering your own is as illegal as slavery.

Since I don't want that, I'm obliged to oppose anything that gives them power and influence. A lot of people would implicitly come to the same conclusion.

<comment><USER3> That's a very convenient but not very ethical conclusion. You are basically saying "I believe some people will try to go further than I like,I conclude it's best to do nothing". I can't agree with that but it's a common political trick to mark things you don't like as too extreme and therefore nothing should be done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So, here's what I wonder about this. I think most people who think about it can agree that a lot of factory farming conditions are terrible. Cramped quarters, lack of outdoor time, space, exercise, poor food, etc. So working toward eliminating those problems seems incontrovertibly good to me.

However, let's say hypothetically we're only talking about farms run with a focus on animal welfare. (And not just giving animals 10 square feet of 'pasture' so they can say they're free range, but really.) So the issues of poor living conditions are removed, and we're just talking about killing animals for meat. If people stopped eating meat altogether, most farm animals simply wouldn't be born in the first place. Farmers aren't going to raise animals if they can't eventually earn money from them, obviously, and most of these animals wouldn't exist in large numbers in the wild. So what I'm wondering is, for a farm animal is it not possible that a decent life followed by being slaughtered for food might be superior to no life at all?

Obviously if we think in terms of humans, that would be horrific; we consider killing humans unnecessarily an absolute moral wrong. If someone decided they would have a child, but only if they could murder them after some period of time, that's obviously monstrous. I'm just not sure that that analogy applies to farm animals who certainly are living creatures who feel pain, but don't have the same understanding of the world and their place in it that humans do. To me that's the rational reason why the the idea of killing humans could be considered differently from killing other animals. That said, I expect the real reason we instinctively feel that killing humans is wrong is more an evolutionary drive to protect our own species.

I do grant that it's uncomfortable to think about when the analogy to humans is drawn. For some I'm sure it's uncomfortable even without consciously making that connection. I can absolutely understand why someone would therefore conclude it's morally wrong to use animals for food. I'm just not sure I agree.

<comment><USER7> > I can absolutely understand why someone would therefore conclude it's > morally wrong to use animals for food. I'm just not sure I agree.

Why not? Your comment makes it clear that industrial animal agriculture is wrong (not to mention ecologically disastrous), but then your last sentence makes a 180 out of nowhere. It feels extreme at first, but I'd like to assure you that reducing your consumption of these industries is possible (and sometimes even easy!).

<comment><USER6> As I said, I'm certain many of the current industrial farming practices are wrong. I'm speaking solely about the morality of killing animals for food, and questioning whether or not that alone is unethical, even if they are raised in good conditions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Maybe I'm being a techno optimist but I really am rooting for Beyond Meat and all the plant based alternatives here. I've tried to go vegan a few times for both the ethical and environmental reasons but have never maintained and end up a 'reduceatarian.' I just think realistically the best chance for animal welfare is that plant based meats become cheaper, tastier, and healthier and just replace the majority of them, leaving only a high end segment of meat that was well treated; and then it doesn't seem morally wrong to eat since you're helping enable a net "good" life for an animal with your consumption rather than the horrible conditions most animals are raised in today.

<comment><USER9> While Beyond and Impossible meats are great alternatives, I don't think artificial meat will truly take off until "lab grown" actual meat becomes mass-produceable and sustainable.

I know it's far off, but I really look forward to that world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Some context for the scale of this:

"[F]armed poultry today makes up 70% of all birds on the planet, with just 30% being wild. The picture is even more stark for mammals – 60% of all mammals on Earth are livestock, mostly cattle and pigs, 36% are human and just 4% are wild animals."

[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/21/human- ra...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/21/human-race- just-001-of-all-life-but-has-destroyed-over-80-of-wild-mammals-study)

<comment><USER11> Reminds me of:

[https://xkcd.com/1338/](https://xkcd.com/1338/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Animal equality" is not a great brand. Sure, maybe you can get most people to agree that they should be treated more humanely. Equal is not the right word.

If it came down to me or a chicken - I sincerely hope society would prioritize me.

</comment><comment><USER13> Uncomfortable thoughts: Let's say first world countries in the West get on board with not eating meat anymore. How do you exactly go about telling impoverished countries/peoples to stop eating meat? Would we ban meat and force them to eat some substitutes? But food is an important part of culture and we would be erasing their culture if we did that wouldn't we? Should we give some cultural groups the right to eat meat since they're less privileged? Of course I'm only speaking hypothetically, assuming that the goal is to reach 0 animals killed for human consumption.

<comment><USER14> Most of impoverished countries already eat mostly veg. We wouldn't need to ban them

<comment><USER4> "Mostly" is a useless metric when they're eating as much meat as they can afford, and that just happens to be not much.

The only exception I'm aware of is India and since that's religious it seems difficult to scale. Islam has animal slaughter as one of its few obligate rituals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The page is a neat and useful visual exercise until the chickens section which just completely breaks all my browsers.

<comment><USER16> Interestingly, no problem at all with an iPhone SE, a phone packed with 5-year-old technology.

<comment><USER17> Number of pixels rendered per second is much fewer on SE I suppose.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Worth pointing out: The future is now. Just this week I bought Beyond Burgers from my grocery store (first time) and made them for my partner and me and they were really good.

<comment><USER9> I bought Beyond ground meat for the first time because the grocery was out of all actual meats. (this was the first day of the CA stay at home order)

It's now the main "meat" we use for tacos. I'm not a big fan of it for burgers, though.

Impossible burgers, on the other hand, are great. It's a shame they only sell to restaurants.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Would be interesting to have the opposite, animals bred since opening this page

<comment><USER20> Or plants killed since opening this page.

<comment><USER21> Or thoughts dying in an empty brain. That would be something.

<comment><USER22> I"m assuming you're being sarcastic, but I would love a similar style page showing how many trees are burned and how many fish are harvested vs. how many fish are repopulated.

Thinking about memes as living organisms (infomorphic beings?) would be an interesting way to frame cultural decay.

<comment><USER20> I wasn't. Plants are clearly important to our well being, more so than animals.

<comment><USER21> You are being equidistant. You can't compare the suffering of a pig or a cow with the suffering of a lettuce.

Considering we have to eat, we should try to minimize the suffering.

<comment><USER20> I'm not, and I can. Just because you choose not to, doesn't mean that I can't. Life is life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> A lot of humans to feed

<comment><USER24> It's pretty well-established that we (in the West) consume far more protein than we need. We don't need to go vegan but do need to reduce meat consumption.

<comment><USER25> On the contrary, most people would be healthier if they ate more high quality protein from a diverse range of plant and animal sources. The US RDA is enough to avoid nutritional deficiency but insufficient for optimal health and athletic performance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Disclaimer: this is not my website. I'm not pro or anti vegan or vegetarianism (therefore clearly don't understand how loaded of a conversation this can become).

I posted this because I thought it was interesting. Didn't realize this conversation would devolve. I'll try to post more consciously in the future.

</comment><comment><USER26> I am not sure if veganism and vegetarianism as preached by some religions can be practiced everywhere on the earth. Places which are very cold during the winters cannot grow trees and vegetables, and the people there need to depend on meat from the animals for their survival. What are your thoughts on that.

<comment><USER27> Veganism is defined as

"Veganism is a way of living which seeks to exclude, as far as is possible and practicable, all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose."

So the keyword here is 'practicable'.

People living in places where there are no alternatives and where people need to eat meat to survive then that would be OK.

People living in the western world don't need meat & dairy to survive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> These types of pages and articles always draw out a bunch of weirdly sociopathic comments saying things like "mm, delicious" or "now I'm hungry", etc. Why is that?

It's possible to materially enjoy the taste of meat while simultaneously being horrified by the scope of man's destruction and industrialized cruelty. It's entirely another thing to revel in your own ignorance and disinterest of the issue. Really revolting.

<comment><USER4> The normal reaction to being shamed is defiance.

We don't even have to think what we're doing isn't bad. It's enough if we think it's not as bad as it's being made out to be.

Also, just about everyone in the English-speaking world is sick of PETA's sanctimonious shenanigans. It's a bad look which rubs off on any group whose tactics rhyme with PETA's.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> For philosophical issues surrounding this topic, I recommend Michael Huemer's _Dialogues on Ethical Vegetarianism_ : [https://www.amazon.com/Dialogues- Ethical-Vegetarianism-Micha...](https://www.amazon.com/Dialogues-Ethical- Vegetarianism-Michael-Huemer/dp/1138328294)

</comment><comment><USER30> Why are human skulls shown next to the cows and chickens? When cows or chickens are killed they leave behind cow skulls and chicken skulls not human skulls.

<comment><USER31> Probably because cow and chicken skulls are less immediately recognizable. Also there are likely not emojis for "chicken skull" or "cow skull", and it seems that's what this displays.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Is there any upside to industrialized livestock farming? E.g. the enormous number of animals that get to live?

<comment><USER27> Do you think quality of life matters? Or is mere existence enough?

If so, do you think factory farmed animals have a good of quality life?

<comment><USER4> My conclusion from this argument is that it should lead one to eat: sustainable wild-caught fish, pasture-raised eggs, game meats, beef, sheep, and goat.

Avoid chicken (other domestic fowl are generally ok) and pigs, which can be (and are) tortured their whole lives for profit. There is considerable room for improvement in how veal is raised as part of milk and meat production, but calves which avoid that process and end up as meat get: two good years, a couple not-great months, and one really terrifying and shitty day.

<comment><USER27> Would this be scalable? Could we replace factory farming with your suggestion?

Is our ecological footprint important as well when making food choices?

If so, why not listen to the science and try to reduce meat & dairy as much as we can.

"A vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth, not just greenhouse gases, but global acidification, eutrophication, land use and water use," said Joseph Poore, at the University of Oxford, UK, who led the research. "It is far bigger than cutting down on your flights or buying an electric car," he said, as these only cut greenhouse gas emissions."

From: [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding- meat-and-dairy-is-single-biggest-way-to-reduce-your-impact-on-earth)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> What level of animal genocide would be acceptable to my vegan peers?

<comment><USER21> I think you are framing the problem incorrectly. I think that is this only about sheding some light to this problem, and beeing the intelligent humans that we are, take action. We are consuming much more meat than we need, as soon as you notice that, you can act and reduce some of you meat intake by replacing it with some good source of plant protein. When was the last time you had chickpeas, for example? Or any good source of legume protein?

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> > Save the animals

50Bn chickens each taking 1 square foot of space in an endless battery farm makes an area about the size of Delaware. Per year.

Save them, and then what?

<comment><USER31> The rough lifespan for a factory farmed chicken, from hatching to slaughter, is under 2 months. There's no plausible scenario where the entirety of America and everyone we export chicken to stops eating chicken in the span of 2 months. As demand drops, factory farms will stop hatching and raising chickens they don't expect to be able to sell. Even if it slowed within the span of a year, there would only be about 1/6 that 50Bn unless there were 10 months of absurd over production. More likely it will be a shift over many years or decades.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'm aware of the realities of factory farming, but I'm also very aware that I like eating chicken.

</comment><comment><USER36> Where are the entries for deer and fish? Mmmm delicious.

<comment><USER24> I know these kinds of comments are meant to shut down conversations about meat-eating. Even if you find something delicious, it's possible to reduce consumption to have a positive impact on both the animals and the climate. After all, many of us love sugar (or alcohol or salt or fried snacks) but we control our intake.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Why don't they count the bacteria killed to make cheese?

<comment><USER37> They're not cute. People don't connect with them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Not too much different from animals that die in nature. Birds: 15 per second is about right.

<comment><USER24> Well ducks at >90/second and chickens at >1500/sec doesn't quite compare with 15/second. How do you figure 15/second is about right anyway?

<comment><USER37> An estimate of 1/2 to 1B birds dying per annum. But that was only due to human interaction (freeways etc).

Yeah but chickens - that given number corresponds to 50B per year. But there are more than 65B (though less than 20B at any one time exist).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Now do: Animals which would have been killed if all forests were cut down to supply the agricultural needs of 7 billion vegetarians.

The sort of one dimensional thought process presented here is somewhat dangerous.

<comment><USER39> Animals are lossy at converting plant calories into meat calories (varies for different kinds of livestock obviously). I don't think it's an obvious conclusion that more agricultural land would be required.

<comment><USER38> Most agriculture is only feasible in fertile lands. A majority of modern agriculture happens in river valleys once occupied by rainforests.

In comparison, animal rearing is feasible in pretty desolate places as long as you can transport feed and water.

Just claiming it's a lossy energy conversion is pretty irrelevant. Not all the 'calories' here are created equal.

<comment><USER40> Where do you think the feed comes from?

<comment><USER38> Did you get the impression that I am speaking for abolishing agriculture?

To answer your question, almost anything will do as feed. Byproducts of agriculture, grasslands, processed/filtered organic waste. Animals will thrive on rotten meat too -- famously leading to the mad cow disease.

<comment><USER40> Funny that you cite diseased animals as evidence of thriving.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> A lot of these compassionate posts about protecting previously-unknown or unconscious things/creatures/human groups etc, is that they systematically have no mentioning of what they want to achieve, and the roadmap towards that.

Sure, if you want to raise awareness, but for what purpose?

To provoke meat-eating people's conscience? Or make them angry?

Edit: Comments did a great job of explaining the objectives, and rationale. Thanks!

<comment><USER42> They want to achieve a decrease in pollution, animal cruelty, heart disease, etc.

When I look at this I see 1.5 billion pigs producing insane amounts of by product that directly affects our climate and our watershed. Not to mention the impact on human health.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Yes, humans eat animals. "Top of the food chain" means something. It means lunch. Delicious lunch.

Oh man, now I want a chicken sandwich with bacon on it.

<comment><USER44> maybe with a little bit of parmesan cheese in it also, yummmm

</comment></comment><comment> gjsman-1000 One problem: This website doesn't adjust for time. For example, the turkeys killed per minute is much higher in Thanksgiving than outside of Thanksgiving (like right now).

<comment><USER45> I'm sure they just take they daily average throughout a year, and don't account for cyclical events. So they are probably over-counting on a daily basis and under-counting on holidays.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> This page doesn't count animals killed by other (non-human) animals. Mother nature is also cruel. I don't think that humans are the biggest animal killers. A single humpback whale likely kills millions of krill every day. One could even argue that eating whale meat is ethical because it saves millions of lives.

Also it should be noted that most of these farm animals would never have been alive if humans did not breed them in the first place so we shouldn't see death as necessarily a bad thing. We give them life and then we take it away. Every creature dies eventually - So do we.

I think the focus of animal protection movements should be based more on the ethical treatment of animals. It's important to make sure that all animals have the opportunity of a decent life before they are slaughtered; especially have room to move around in an open area with access to natural light.

<comment><USER47> > This page doesn't count animals killed by other (non-human) animals.

Because it's a silly vegan propaganda page by wealthy privileged virtue signaling crowd without any grasp on reality.

Countless quadrillions of animals are killed every year in nature. Countless billions of animals are killed every year to clear land and protect vegetation from insects, worms, rodents, etc. Countless billions of animals are killed to build homes that these privileged people live in.

Not to mention the countless billions of animals killed by pet cats and countless billions of animals killed to feed our pets ( cats, dogs, snakes, etc ).

<comment><USER48> Factory farming big in nature?</comment></comment></comment>


Is Lenovo Advertising Thinkpad Tablet as 4:3? - <AUTHOR> http://shop.lenovo.com/us/products/tablets/thinkpad/ How I wish it was 4:3.  Seems Lenovo does too.  The pictures on the site are, to my eye, not 16:10.  Why do you frustrate me so, Lenovo? <comment><AUTHOR> How I wish it was 4:3. Looks like Lenovo does too. To my eye, those images are not 16:9. Oh, Lenovo, why do you frustrate me so?

<comment><USER2> 1280x800

16:10 (8:5)</comment></comment>


The Update Framework (TUF) - <AUTHOR> http://theupdateframework.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Came to my attention since Dockers new project notary leverages it: [https://github.com/docker/notary](https://github.com/docker/notary)

<comment><AUTHOR> The HN thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9759902](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9759902)</comment></comment>