Sony saved thousands of passwords in a folder named 'Password' - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/sony/11274727/Sony-saved-thousands-of-passwords-in-a-folder-named-Password.html <comment><USER2> I normally don't have much sympathy for companies which get egg-on-face because of their own incompetence, but I am very sympathetic to the employees and past employees who just had their SSN and other vitals leaked onto the internet.

As an aside SSNs really need a massive overhaul. In theory they're meant to only be used for government stuff, but their use is now so broad (finance, insurance, medical, et al) that their leakage is all too common and the potential cost of a leak too damaging.

With a little bit of investment the SSA could continue to generate SSNs (for historical reasons and government department usage) and generate a new SSID which is just a longer unique number which companies are legally prohibited from storing, however when they receive it they forward it to the SSA via an API and it returns a static unique customer number (UCN) which they can then in fact store.

This has the following advantages:

\- The SSA can update your SSID a lot. Every few years, every new card, or when requested. Unlike SSNs which cannot be changed.

\- Updating your SSID won't break existing accounts or similar, as companies won't store the old one anyway (only the resulting UCN). Unlike SSNs which break stuff if changed.

\- Leaked UCNs are not as useful because you cannot enter them into a web-site or put them on a financial form directly (it would be a different length/format to SSIDs or SSNs on purpose). Unlike SSNs which can be directly reused.

\- The system doesn't depend on complex cryptography. It is just a simple perhaps JSON request over HTTPS.

You could deploy this system over ten years at minimal cost. The system is relatively simply, and behind the scenes it can tie UCNs to SSNs in the SSA's database system. A single customer would have three things (in this system): Current SSID, static SSN, static UCN.

<comment><USER3> _> I am very sympathetic to the employees and past employees who just had their SSN and other vitals leaked onto the internet._

What makes it even worse is that the SSA makes it virtually impossible obtain a new SSN. Even showing them that you were a victim in a high profile leak like this, for example, isn't enough. You have to prove actual misuse, such as someone taking a credit card out or being arrested in your name, before they will issue a new one. In almost all cases, police reports are required.

Given that a new SSN is essentially impossible, if I were a victim in this, I would immediately freeze my credit file at all 3 major credit bureaus. In most states this can be done for $0-$10 per bureau. This can cause hassles for instant credit approvals etc, but they provide mechanisms to unfreeze the file temporarily when necessary.

<comment><USER4> Why wait until you're a victim? It's much easier to prevent significant damage to your credit history than it is to repair it. The hassle with credit approvals is pretty minimal; people generally know ahead of time when they'll need a credit check, and it only takes ~15 minutes to put a temporary lift in place. Identity theft is often an expensive, massive headache that can take years to fully recover from.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I know someone working at Sony Pictures. She said that Sony Pictures is literally paralyzed. They can't pay their employees and have reverted to completely manual processes. They can't accept orders from customers or pay their vendors as well. The hackers have completely destroyed their infrastructure. There is no real disaster recovery and there are backups of various systems at various levels of conoleteness but presumably those backups are infected as well.

They need to completely rebuild their ERP system from scratch and that will take months.

It's a complete nightmare and if this doesn't change the perceptions of CEOs on cybersecurity, they need to be fired because it complete puts their entire company at risk of they don't put a significant expense to ensure that their company is secure.

</comment><comment><USER6> This isn't strictly true. The thousands stored in a folder called "Passwords" was actually a curated dump of passwords from various parts of the server that the hackers put together and into its own dump -- looking at the data, it doesn't appear the passwords were saved there originally.

That's not to let Sony off the hook, however. Plenty of passwords were stored alongside the password protected documents [1] and some of the passwords used were insanely bad (s0ny123) [2].

[1]: [http://mashable.com/2014/12/03/sony-hack-4-security- lessons/](http://mashable.com/2014/12/03/sony-hack-4-security-lessons/) [2]: [http://mashable.com/2014/12/02/sony-hack- passwords/](http://mashable.com/2014/12/02/sony-hack-passwords/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Its the company social media accounts. Managing those is always going to be a trick, but it's actually not that big of a deal that they're lost - a tedious job for a marketing intern to reset them all and a risk of Sony making some embarrassing tweets or fb posts. Nothing compared to losing customer data or credit card numbers or crypto keys or something.

Title is a bit sensationalized, really. I mean "leaked passwords" sounds severe, but corporate social media accounts aren't exactly what the reader expects.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I don't really see why you wouldn't write down the passwords of social media accounts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What's the alternative? We all know (don't we?) that security through obscurity is no security at all. Giving the folder a different name would only affect usability, not security. The problem is not the folder name but the fact that the data itself (including paths) was unencrypted, and that perimeter security was lacking. Poking fun at the folder name seems to be missing the point.

<comment><USER10> Obscurity is part of security. I have personally found that by using non- default ports for services that attempts to break in have gone down to zero. For example if you leave port 5900 open I guarantee your going to have bots trying to break in day and night. Someone would have to be specifically targeting my network to even find the ports I use(a port scan takes a good amount of time) and the services behind those ports. Of course that's not the only security in place, there are many layers but obscurity plays an important part.

<comment><USER11> A port scan of the entire internet takes around 3 minutes if you have enough bandwidth [1]

[1] [http://blog.erratasec.com/2013/09/masscan-entire-internet- in...](http://blog.erratasec.com/2013/09/masscan-entire-internet- in-3-minutes.html)

<comment><USER10> If it doesn't DoS my firewall, a port scan like that will be easily detected and blocked. A stealthy port scan takes a good amount of time.

<comment><USER11> Not if you interleave the hosts, rather than the ports on each host, as you would.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I also have a folder called "passwords" (actually "pw") with thousands of passwords.

The difference is that they are all encrypted with gpg (via my little pw utility [1]).

[1] [http://svario.it/pw](http://svario.it/pw)

</comment><comment><USER13> Sony's IT deficit notwithstanding, somebody somewhere had to have pointed out 1Password or Lastpass.....

On another note, is anybody surprised? Take out Sony and insert Company X, I'm sure this is a common practice in many companies.

</comment><comment><USER14> What could go wrong?</comment>


Flex Gym Share - <AUTHOR> https://www.flexgymshare.com <comment><USER2> Seems like gyms would crack down hard on this. I would imagine the utilization of an average gym membership for most box gyms is under 50% on a full day basis. Gyms also build their capacity on these assumptions, so other than being a sourcing tool (like Classpass) I don't see how this will work.

<comment><AUTHOR> I remember a planet money episode about gym utilization:

[https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/12/17/371463435/epis...](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/12/17/371463435/episode-590-the- planet-money-workout)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Ahah, i like the idea. However many gym cards have a photo ID, or a photo is displayed on a screen when we tag in.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you know of any good mail hosts with an API? - <AUTHOR>

I'm in the market to find alternatives to GMail and the Google Apps for Business product suite. I'd love to go with Fastmail, but they don't offer an API.
Are there any other up and coming players in the email market that offer an API?
Thanks! <comment><USER2> First that comes to mind is Zoho. They have pretty similar offering to Google Apps for Business.</comment>


Max Crashes Strengthen Resolve of Boeing to Automate Flight - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/max-crashes-strengthen-resolve-of-boeing-to-automate-flight-11577816304 <comment><USER2> My knee jerk reaction to this is "more automation after an automation failure? Huh?". But whenever I think someone is being that stupid, it's always worth a second look, and it turns out the reality is more complex.

This article[1] linked off of the OP goes into detail about their crashes. It describes a design philosophy that pushes robustness fully onto the pilot, expecting him to flawlessly stitch together independent automated systems and unreasonably rapidly interpret and react to their error modes. In the case described in the article, separate automated systems had contrasting views of the world, and shouted their contradictory errors at the pilots, relying on them to be able to instantly reconcile these models and figure out what the root problem was. (In this case, a specific sensor failure made a single system think the plane was pointed up, and this system made the isolated decision to push the nose downwards while warning that the nose was too high. Naturally, other systems simultaneously complained about the nosedive).

One solution, of course, is to remove automated systems from planes. But assuming they provide any value (I don't think this is in dispute?): another, more reasonable strategy is to commit more fully to an automated system design that is intentionally fault-tolerant, robust to system and sensor errors, and has a more complete view of the plane's world. Instead of requiring the overall state of the meta-system to be lossily communicated to humans in a time-critical emergency, the newer designs are intended to use all the information available to the plane's systems to reconcile subcompoments' contradictory view of the world. Note that this doesn't preclude human control at all: if anything, it makes pilot control _safer_, since the system can provide a coherent view to the pilot in a way that's currently impossible.

I don't know enough about large aircraft operation to fully comment on the wisdom of this approach, but it's substantially more complex than "auto system failed, why would they expand use".

[1] [https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-four-second-catastrophe- how...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-four-second-catastrophe-how-boeing- doomed-the-737-max-11565966629)

<comment><USER3> I think there's a different way to explore this idea. I don't think automation had anything to do with the crashes. The problem was that the pilots weren't trained to know what tools the planes were equiped with and how to use them. Those crashes are like when I accidentally open a file with vim. There's nothing wrong with me, there's nothing wrong with vim but how the hell am I meant to know to hit esc :q? The lesson is orthogonal to automation. The lesson is that the pilots need to know what each system does and how to operate it. If the resolve of Boeing is to push forward with automation without taking the role of the pilot seriously, then this is doomed to failure, because automated systems will fail, and pilots will have to step in. It'll be rare, but that's what pilots are there for. Indeed, the more you automate things, the more liability you're inviting on yourself, which should be worrying for Boeing.

<comment><USER4> > Those crashes are like when I accidentally open a file with vim. There's > nothing wrong with me, there's nothing wrong with vim

I disagree, strongly. The root cause of the issue isn't pilot training.

The root fault is a design issue.

Without the existence of MCAS, these crashes would not have occurred.

Why? Because they would never have been built.

Why? Because the 737 MAX 8 design would not have received approval to be incorporated into the 737 type certificate.

Why? Because the MAX 8, without MCAS, has different handling characteristics during certain phases of flight than the original 737.

Why does it handle differently? Because it has larger and more powerful engines, located differently on the wing, and these changes cause the aircraft to want to pull up more when climbing.

I don't know that the MCAS's programmed behaviors have a good analogy, I can't think of one right now.

<comment><USER5> Those crashes are like: You tell your machine to open the file with Emacs, but this new distro has unbeknownst to you (and you find out later, undocumented) symlinked the emacs command to a version of vim with a emacs-like overlay, because of some issue they had. The file crashes vim, but in a crazy memory overflow before he dies manages to take out the system, causing spurious disk writes which corrupts your boot drive.

\- The MCAS system. Got bad information and did a very bad thing. It was the entire time operating as it was designed. The fact that the astronauts were not given the information on how to turn HAL off in the event he goes berserk isn't really their fault.

Just to be clear - The MCAS system was actively trying to fly the plane into the ground. It thought it was trying to save the plane from a stall. It was wrong. The pilots attempted to override the system. They could not. They attempted to outfly the system. They could not. They could have killed the system. Boeing did not teach them how.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For the life of me, I have absolutely no idea how you can look at what has happened with the Max and believe that more entrenched automation is the answer.

<comment><USER7> The argument goes something like this:

It's the disconnect between pilots mental models of what's going on and what's actually going on that caused the Max's and several other related crashes on different aircraft. As such software designed based on how the system actually works may actually be both simpler and safer than increasingly abstracted fly by wire systems trying to safely intuit what the pilots want.

An example from 10 years ago: [https://www.fastcompany.com/1669720/how-lousy- cockpit-design...](https://www.fastcompany.com/1669720/how-lousy-cockpit- design-crashed-an-airbus-killing-228-people)

<comment><USER5> While true. That disconnect is not related to the automation system consistently doing the wrong thing. The 'thing the pilots didn't know' enough about was how to turn off the automation. Which was what saved the Lion Air flight the day before was that a jump seat pilot knew how to disable the automation. Increasing the automation in this scenario, does the opposite of what they hope.

<comment><USER8> The pilots did know to turn off the automation, and they did exactly that. The problem was that they didn't decrease thrust, and then they turned the automation back on in an attempt to regain control because they couldn't move the control surfaces because they were going too fast.

<comment><USER5> The turn off the MCAS system button on the 737 Max the pilots were using, does _not_ in fact turn off the MCAS system. It is a "Pause the MCAS system button" Even worse, After a few moments, the MCAS system reactivates and then adds even more down trim. So pressing the button, not only does not turn off the system, actually triggers the plane to make the situation worse by adding more down trim.

When the FAA certified the 737 Max the MCAS Software was able to move the horizontal tail a max of 0.6 degrees. (out of a total of 5 degrees) The software flying on those planes was in fact able to move the horizontal tail 4.17 times that amount: 2.5 degrees. They never told anyone this changed. The system went from being able to control 12% of the tail range to 50% of its range.

Those pilots were pulling up on the nose of the aircraft with their feet pressed against the controls. Directing the aircraft with clear intent and skill. The 737's automation had unbeknownst to them and with their knowledge of the aircraft - un-overridable, tilted the horizontal tail into a position that would, under any operating condition direct the nose of the craft into the ground.

<comment><USER8> They pulled the breakers for MCAS. That was the correct action. The problem was that then they turned them back on because they flew the plane into a situation where they could not trim it anymore by hand. When they turned the breakers for MCAS back on, it flew the plane into the ground.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Seems like a passive-aggressive PR scheme to still try to indirectly lay blame on the dead pilots. Despicable.

<comment><USER10> FYI: The Indonesian accident investigation report found the pilots, airline mechanics, and Boeing roughly equally at fault for the Lionair crash.

But it's reasonable to hold Boeing to a higher standard of excellence as an experienced aircraft mfg.

I'd like to learn more about the 31 pages of missing maintenance logs. That's a very big deal.

[https://www.npr.org/2019/10/25/773291951/pilots-ground- crew-...](https://www.npr.org/2019/10/25/773291951/pilots-ground-crew-share- blame-for-lion-air-737-max-crash-indonesian-report-says)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Our automated system crashed several planes, when the pilots were not able to disable it before it could erroneously trim the vehicle into terrain.

"Clearly, we need to remove the human pilots and double down on the automation."

[This is where the people using shallow analysis go nuts. But wait.]

Because the flawed system was only installed for the purpose of avoiding the expense of retraining human pilots to a new model of aircraft! In a fully- integrated automated piloting system, there is no separate trim-compensating subsystem. The trim parameters are plugged directly into the aircraft model, and the automatic pilot has access to all the sensors in the craft to make its trim decisions, instead of just the angle-of-attack sensor.

Instead of re-certifying hundreds of pilots, you just validate one new aircraft data model.

<comment><USER5> And with the design that both Boeing and the FAA certified to fly, that system would simply fly the vehicle into terrain. In this case it is exactly the automation that is at fault, not a pilot misunderstanding or mistraining. The automation system was designed to prevent a pilot from doing something she might have been familiar with doing while flying the old design on the new design. It was designed to keep the pilot from putting the plane in a bad state for flying. That entire system made an error that cost 347 people their lives.

What is painful, is that the pilots recognized that the system was in error, and attempted to correct it, but were unaware that it had the capability to override them. They were unaware because the designers intentionally hid the mechanism. That is made the mechanism hard to see, understand, and needing special knowledge to disable. The designers had not considered all failure modes, but acted as if their implementation was failure-proof and never to be tampered with.

The question in this case is how can one verify something like an automated aircraft system? And more importantly, if there is a technique or practice to assure the system is valid, is the company trying to build it mature enough in its engineering practices to follow it properly?

<comment><USER11> Every aircraft-building company is mature enough in its engineering practices. Not every company is ethical enough in its management practices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't think it's a mistake that the headline is intended to make Boeing sound uncaring and wrong-headed. The headline is intended to provoke discussion. However, if you pick almost any problem in any industry, the solution invariably is less human / more automated. It's not hard to see how we got here - I can imagine when Boeing asks pilots what they need the answer is something like reduce distractions so we can fly. How do you do that? More automation. Take almost any operational role - everyone is asking to reduce distractions and highlight things that need focus. I'm not arguing to absolve Boeing from fielding the Max. But I can also see a logical argument here.

</comment><comment><USER13> There are tons of math majors produced every year. Would be a viable business model to offer factory-style program-correctness-proving-as-a-service. Current proof services are mostly niche static analysis for stuff like Ethereum contracts and occasionally a wannabe legal-tech company. I think aerospace could use more proofs. You can't use Ada for everything, eventually you will have to code in C/C++.

<comment><USER14> Algorithmic correctness won't necessarily help you if the root problem is bad sensor data.

<comment><USER15> Everyone knows what bad sensor data is until they have to write software to identify it.

<comment><USER14> That said, the way Boeing designed the MCAS is inexcusable. They actually had two sensors available, plus a full suite of other instruments and pilot inputs to cross reference and their solution is to only pay attention to a single sensor.

It was engineered like it was version 0.1 beta. When you realize that the -MAX crashes were very close to single fault accidents it's even more crazy. Normally to crash an airplane you need to thread the needle through multiple failure states thanks to redundancy and safe design. Simple single issue crashes are almost unheard of in the modern era thanks to decades of safety engineering. Aggressive cost engineering is returning us to the perilous air travel of the 40s and 50s.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Does anyone else miss the days when a single person could grok the design of a plane? Or a piece of software, or a car, or whatever?

Now every new car needs to have adaptive cruise control and anti-lock brakes and stability control and Apple CarPlay and over-the-air updates and who knows what else, so there are a ton of things that are hopefully well-behaved black boxes that people hopefully understand mostly correctly, but who knows what could go wrong in a rogue OTA update or something.

I'm not all that familiar with the aerospace industry, but this feels the same. Of course all of these components will be tested, but if no one understands the whole package, who knows what fearsome edge case awaits when Flight Safety Program 32 gets in a fight with Flap Threshold Control Program 3 or whatever.

<comment><USER17> I think in those days they needed to have an Engineer in addition to the pilots to fly it and the cars were very unsafe and unreliable.

<comment><USER16> That's a great point. Air travel has gotten measurably safer and people survive car accidents at much greater rates.

I guess there's just something more "understandable" about a plane crashing due to an engine failure rather than software fighting the pilot. Or it's more understandable when someone died in a car crash because they couldn't control a skid rather than Autopilot driving into a concrete barrier it avoided previously because something inscrutable in the programming changed.

Perhaps we're heading towards a world with on average better, but less well- understood, outcomes.

<comment><USER17> I agree but we can still reason with the current systems in use. MCAS crashing planes is not that different from metal fatigue IMO. In both cases, we can look back and say "Okay, that's how it happened and we screwed up because we made a design mistake" which is very different from Autopilot driving into concrete barriers because that's a very high-level mistake.

We wouldn't have a problem with the software not recognising barriers or mistake road lines correctly as long as this software doesn't claim to be able to handle high-level decisions and fail on something extremely obvious to humans leading to great damages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Their automated systems caused two crashes and their solution is to automate more systems?

Have they literally gone insane?

<comment><USER2> This article[1] linked off of the OP goes into detail about their crashes. It describes a design philosophy that pushes robustness fully onto the pilot, expecting him to flawlessly stitch together independent automated systems and unreasonably rapidly interpret and react to their error modes. In the case described in the article, separate automated systems had contrasting views of the world, and shouted their contradictory errors at the pilots, relying on them to be able to instantly reconcile these models and figure out what the root problem was. (In this case, a specific sensor failure made a single system think the plane was pointed up, and this system made the isolated decision to push the nose downwards while warning that the nose was too high. Naturally, other systems simultaneously complained about the nosedive).

One solution, of course, is to remove automated systems from planes. But assuming they provide any value (I don't think this is in dispute?): another, more reasonable strategy is to commit more fully to an automated system design that is intentionally fault-tolerant, robust to system and sensor errors, and has a more complete view of the plane's world. Instead of requiring the overall state of the meta-system to be lossily communicated to humans in a time-critical emergency, the newer designs are intended to use all the information available to the plane's systems to reconcile subcompoments' contradictory view of the world. Note that this doesn't preclude human control at all: if anything, it makes pilot control _safer_, since the system can provide a coherent view to the pilot in a way that's currently impossible.

I don't know enough about large aircraft operation to fully comment on the wisdom of this approach, but it's substantially more complex than "auto system failed, why would they expand use".

[1] [https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-four-second-catastrophe- how...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-four-second-catastrophe-how-boeing- doomed-the-737-max-11565966629)

<comment><USER19> The auto system failed because they a) were band-aiding a flawed mechanical design b) under-designed the compensating software (only provided a single AOA sensor by default) to obscure the fact the plane was significantly different to avoid training costs. These are management problems, not technical problems. More automation would be subject to the same issues.

<comment><USER2> Crap I meant to make the above comment as a top level comment, not a response.. Somehow it came through twice.

Anyway, in response to your comment: perhaps I'm conflating these, but a commitment to robustness seems like it's included in the newer philosophy? It just extends that notion beyond the sensor-level to the system level.

Sure, you can frame an inadequate emphasis on robustness as a "management problem" instead of a technical one, but that seems equally applicable to the "management solution" being put forth, no?

<comment><USER19> I would say that framing a business problem in engineering terms will lead to an unclear understanding of the problem. The executives were attempting to thread the needle of a potentially business killing competition with Airbus and were willing to make compromises to safety to save their skins. No engineering methodology can save you from motivated reasoning and systems level problems like that because management will force exceptions to whatever process is in place.

The only thing that would be an appropriate counterweight is if the engineering staff refuses to put a defective design into production. A robust engineering process can make violations and exceptions clear, but if the staff still does what management says, it won't help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> To be fair, I don't think more automation is a bad idea here. The bad idea is Boeing continuing to design and manufacture aircraft.

</comment><comment><USER21> Way to introduce a false dichtonomy into the public conversation to save the company from scrutinity. More or less automation is irrelevant to the conversation and even with all goodwill, was never the motivating factor for Boeing designing the MAX system as it did. Don't be blended by this PR spin!

</comment><comment><USER22> Fully automated flight is the far future. The question is how near future is it?

I think Boeing and Airbus have such long delays between project initiation and delivery that planning now to deliver a fully automated flight system in 10 years is likely in the realm of reasonable?

</comment><comment><USER23> I think more or better automation makes sense. However, in this case, they are just trying a new tactic to deflect blame.

The fundamental problem was that they had new requirements and instead of allowing the engineers to create a new design, management wanted to save money so insisted the engineers shoehorn the new requirements into the old design with hacks resulting in a plane that was fundamentally unstable and ending with hundreds of people dying.

The solution to that problem is to have several executives from Boeing and the FAA in prison. Then break Boeing down and rebuild it as an engineering organization.

After that, yes, continue increasing the automation.

</comment><comment><USER24> Somebody please take away Boeing's shovel already.

</comment><comment><USER25> My initial thought was it's crazy to reach for more automation in the wake of automation-involved fatalities, but if I step back and think about it, they're not wrong. There's no way that piloting aircraft is going to become a more manual process. More automation is a given in the future. And since so much of the dangers of automation seem to be in the gray zone where it's an opaque mix between human and computer, it makes sense to cut humans out of the loop as soon as possible.

<comment><USER26> I would've agreed with this stance _before_ the Boeing disaster. Granted there are many things that could be (could have been) done to address the fragility of the 737 Max's automatic system, but the point is _they weren 't_. And I don't know who in the world is going to trust Boeing to take over _more_ parts of the piloting process, because they'll probably be executed just as badly.</comment></comment>


Memoization explained using a python implementation of fibonacci - <AUTHOR> http://geeklogs.posterous.com/what-is-memoization

<comment><USER2> The main reason people need to keep explaining memoization is that they insist on using the unnecessarily obfuscating academic term "memoization", instead of the more commonly understood term "caching".

<comment><USER3> There is a subtle difference though. With general caching you have to worry about stale data. Since memoization applies to pure functions where a given input always results in the same output, "cache invalidation" isn't much of an issue.

<comment><USER2> FTA:

"Memoization is a computer science concept to optimize programs by avoiding computations that have already been done and to reuse it. This is achieved by storing the computaions in a lookup table and retrieving them if a need for it arrives in a future computation step."

From Wikipedia:

"In computer engineering, a cache (/ˈkæʃ/ kash[1]) is a component that transparently stores data so that future requests for that data can be served faster. The data that is stored within a cache might be _values that have been computed earlier_ or duplicates of original values that are stored elsewhere. If requested data is contained in the cache (cache hit), this request can be served by simply reading the cache, which is comparatively faster." (Emphasis mine.)

<comment><USER3> You're right that memoization is a subset of caching but it still warrants special attention because every pure function gets to have a .Memoize() "method" for free. This isn't true for caching in general.

<comment><USER2> And a red car is a subset of all cars, but we don't make up a special term for it. Many caching techniques have implementation details that distinguish them from one another, but we nonetheless refer to them by the same term. Caching from a database is different from caching in a CPU, but the basic mechanism and purpose is the same so we use the same term for clarity. I've never seen an article on memoization that couldn't be made more clear by substituting 'caching' wherever it used 'memoization'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This isn't right:

        fib_val = fib_mem(n-1) + fib_val(n-2)

The second term on the rhs should be fib_mem(n-2) or perhaps even fib_list[n-2].

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Fixed it.

</comment></comment><comment> alexis-d Note that we can use the @functools.lru_cache(None) to easily benefit from memoization.

</comment><comment><USER5> The code in this post seem a bit unpythonic and "improvable" for me:

\- "if len(list) > n" should probably be "if n in list".

\- The function has a side effect (changing the list), this is to be avoided when avoidable

\- Memoization is not part of the logic, thus is better done with a decorator (which would solve above side effect issue)

</comment><comment><USER6> I like to use dicts for memoization...This runs about 8% faster on my machine than OP's solution:

        memo5 = {0:0,1:1}
        def fib_mem5(n):
            try:
                return memo5[n]
            except KeyError:
                memo5[n] = fib_mem5(n-1)+fib_mem5(n-2)
            return memo5[n]

Note: the above version runs faster than the cleaner:

      memo6 = {0:0,1:1}
      def fib_mem6(n):
          if n in memo6:
              return memo6[n]
          memo6[n] = fib_mem6(n-1)+fib_mem6(n-2)
          return memo6[n]

<comment><USER7> How much faster? As you stated, the second version is much cleaner; I'd prefer to use it if it isn't that much of a performance hit.

Edit: hm, in my casual testing, the 'cleaner' version takes about 10% longer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Fibonacci really doesn't need memoization since you can implement it efficiently by keeping just the last two values on the stack. Dynamic programming (like the knapsack problem) is a better example.

</comment><comment><USER9> Is there a way to fix the recursion depth problem with this solution?

To me, the memoized version is more clear and should be just as efficient as the iterative version. However, this version of fib_mem dies before fib_mem(1000)!

Apparently, you can increase the recursion depth limit using the sys module. Is that the right thing to do? And, if you do it, are there guidelines for doing so without causing memory problems?

<comment><USER10> Yes, use sys.setrecursionlimit(n) to change the max recursion depth. Max supported stack depth of course varies by platform.

In many cases, a better solution is to implement tail recursion, which can be done quite easily. See <http://paulbutler.org/archives/tail-recursion-in- python/> .

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> You can also memoize recursive functions transparently with a memoizing fixed- point (Y) combinator:

[http://matt.might.net/articles/implementation-of- recursive-f...](http://matt.might.net/articles/implementation-of-recursive- fixed-point-y-combinator-in-javascript-for-memoization/)

The example is also Fibonacci.

</comment><comment><USER12> I like this article on memoization - <http://www.agillo.net/getting-groovy- with-fibonacci/>

The diagrams make it easy to understand. It is in groovy though.</comment>


John Yudkin: the man who tried to warn us about sugar - <AUTHOR> http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/diet-and-fitness/john-yudkin-the-man-who-tried-to-warn-us-about-sugar-20140212-32h03.html <comment><USER2> Mentioned in the article, here is the direct link to Professor Lustig's talk "Sugar: The Bitter Truth". I can personally attest to its high quality: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM)

<comment><USER3> You might be interested in Alan Aragons take on it too: [http://www.alanaragonblog.com/2010/01/29/the-bitter-truth- ab...](http://www.alanaragonblog.com/2010/01/29/the-bitter-truth-about- fructose-alarmism/)

<comment><USER4> This is a brilliant article and everyone should really listen to people like Alan Aragon (and Lyle Mcdonald too fwiw). They know and communicate the science very well and aren't about to resort to the sensationalist rhetoric that's so prevalent in nutrition. Thanks for posting!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm currently reading "The Low-Carb Fraud", by Dr. T. Colin Campbell, who was one of the original authors of the China Study.

[http://www.amazon.com/The-Low-Carb-Fraud-Colin- Campbell/dp/1...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Low-Carb-Fraud-Colin- Campbell/dp/1940363098)

Campbell has multiple degrees in biochemistry and nutrition, and from what I can tell, seems to be pretty well respected in his field.

On the other hand, Gary Taube, who wrote Good Calories, Bad Calories, and who people here seem to hold up as some kind of nutritional guru - basically is a science writer, with no formal education in nutrition at all.

Campbell basically spends the first few chapters debunking many of Gary Taubes's conclusions, and then talking about the current low-carb fads.

Definitely a good read, and approachable.

<comment><USER6> Despite not being done the book yet, could you give us an idea what the general premise is, and how it somehow disproves what to me at least is the overwhelming real world effectiveness of a low carb diet for losing weight?

<comment><USER7> The author participated in [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_Study](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_Study) which compared rural Chinese diet and health outcomes to typical western ones.

He's been vegan for >20 years, and he studies and advocates a vegan diet, because he claims that eating animal products is unhealthy / causes disease. He is the darling of vegans, among whom he has a large following.

Among books written from that perspective, my understanding from reading various reviews is that this is one of the best argued and supported ones, with lots of solid citations of scientific literature. Because the perspective is controversial (e.g. it's different than the norm, it threatens "conventional wisdom" and food businesses) the book has also drawn some flak from other scientists who disagree with the book's conclusions.

<comment><USER8> While I'm not going to get into good or bad about vegan/meat eaters, you do know that the China Study has been heavily criticised for selective data picking right? Thus, just because he was part of it doesn't mean he is a reliable source.

I've included the link below as a starting point for the criticism of the China Study. There is a good bit of scientific literature on it as well (am at work, don't have the links handy)

[http://rawfoodsos.com/2010/07/07/the-china-study-fact-or- fal...](http://rawfoodsos.com/2010/07/07/the-china-study-fact-or-fallac/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Lustig could no doubt write some great posts here about growth hacking and selling your product, but if there's one thing he's proven about nutrition, it's that he's no one to be taken seriously when talking about it. One taste of what Joe Public doesn't see in his unintended hyperbole is here: [http://sweetenerstudies.com/sites/default/files/resources/fi...](http://sweetenerstudies.com/sites/default/files/resources/files/Scientific- Review-of-Lustigs-Fat-Chance.pdf)

Blaming sugar for everything is no better than what the fat-bashing crowd do. It leads to self-parodying solutions like the "keto-adapted" lifestyle. We don't eat rice or bananas because refined sugar is to blame for all the ills of the world. Those crazy Japanese are probably just lying about their lack of heart disease anyway (when we remember the place exists at all).

As long as people only understand nutrition in terms of reductionist extremes, "alternative" diets are going to continue being a bad joke that achieves little more than inflating the ego and bank balance of people like Lustig.

<comment><USER6> > As long as people only understand nutrition in terms of reductionist > extremes, "alternative" diets are going to continue being a bad joke that > __achieves little more than inflating the ego and bank balance of people > like Lustig __.

That is demonstrably false both in the laboratory but more importantly in massive amounts of anecdotal experience by regular folks. Go read some fitness and diet forums, you think all those people who tried various different diets are _imagining_ they're losing 20, 40, 100+ pounds on low carb diets?

<comment><USER10> Plenty of people lost weight on low fat diets too when those were the hot shit a decade or two ago.

The problem with fad diets is that most of those people gain their weight back after the initial enthusiasm fades.

Without long-term (decades) follow up, it's impossible to distinguish the effect of a particular diet from the impact of simply being on a diet of any kind--which typically induces much closer attentiveness to calories and nutrition, at least in the beginning.

Also, Internet forums are hardly a random sampling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The underlying premise that there's something strange about the correlation between the rise of sugar and the rise of health issues is stark. Obviously, we can't say that correlation = causation. But such data points should be taken seriously for more investigation, much like for example, global warming (which is a debate that I still don't completely understand either).

This is the key quote for me:

 _Yudkin 's detractors had one trump card: his evidence often relied on observations, rather than on explanations, of rising obesity, heart disease and diabetes rates. "He could tell you these things were happening but not why, or at least not in a scientifically acceptable way," says David Gillespie, author of the bestselling Sweet Poison. "Three or four of the hormones that would explain his theories had not been discovered."_

Let's apply that towards global warming. This reminds me of Al Gore's little movie where he talks about his old prof gathering climate data. The temperature kept going up, and he could not figure out why. Lots of data, no explanation. What should have been the proper response? Dismissal because there's no explanation or further study?

I worry that there are other things where the timeline required to truly observe and understand things is not possible, and that risks are completely accepted because no current viable explanation can be made as to why the thing is actually dangerous. The biggest one for me is wireless communications. Can cell phones and other wireless devices cause cancer? Generally, we say no. But we don't have enough data to truly say no, and we probably won't have that data until kids born after 2000 become geriatrics, as they'll be the first generation to truly grow up from birth in an age with ubiquitous cell phones. And besides that, it's not like anyone's been able to provide any widely acceptable explanation on the matter anyway. So we'll just trundle along blindly because our current data says there's no risk. I'm mostly sad because what other choice do we really have? You can't turn back the clock on technological progress even if you wanted to.

<comment><USER12> Gonna have to call you up on the cell phones I'm afraid. It has been pretty conclusively proven that there is no link between cell phone radiation and cancer [1]. Unless you call a study of 420,000 people over 20 years insignificant...

And as for a mechanical explanation why cell phone radiation doesn't cause cancer: It's because the radiation type used is non-ionising! As for thermal effects, it's orders of magnitude less than standing in direct sunlight. It's basic physics. (Well perhaps not the ionising radiation part, Einstein got a Nobel for the photoelectric effect...)

This myth has been debunked as pure fear-mongering time and time again. The only slight recommendations that are issued are for longer term studies - simply because cell phones haven't really been in heavy usage for more than 20 years. Pure fear of the unknown, despite study after study showing no effect.

[1] [http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/98/23/1707.abstract](http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/98/23/1707.abstract)

<comment><USER11> I know about the studies, and the explanations are nice, I didn't have those before. I get that we have no current significant reason to fear anything, which is why I'm not exactly panicking and vowing to stop using cell phones. But this doesn't enable me to completely discard my fear either. You're only corroborating my point.

 _The only slight recommendations that are issued are for longer term studies - simply because cell phones haven 't really been in heavy usage for more than 20 years. Pure fear of the unknown, despite study after study showing no effect._

I would call 420,000 people over 20 years insignificant because there are other cancers where even longer timelines are required for symptoms to show. For example, abestos and mesothelioma.

[http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancercauses/othercarcinogens/i...](http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancercauses/othercarcinogens/intheworkplace/asbestos)

 _Mesothelioma

Mesothelioma is a rare form of cancer that most often affects the thin membranes lining organs in the chest (pleura) and abdomen (peritoneum). Mesothelioma is closely linked with asbestos; most cases of mesothelioma result from direct exposure to asbestos at work. This cancer is also linked to all forms of asbestos, although amphibole asbestos appears to be more potent (causes cancer at lower levels of exposure) than chrysotile..

Studies have found an increased risk of mesothelioma among workers who are exposed to asbestos. There is also an increased risk of mesothelioma among family members of workers and people living in the neighborhoods surrounding asbestos factories and mines. Although the risk of developing mesothelioma increases with the amount of asbestos exposure, there is no clear safe level of asbestos exposure in terms of mesothelioma risk.

Mesotheliomas typically take a long time to develop. The time between first exposure to asbestos and diagnosis of mesothelioma is usually 30 years or more. Unfortunately, the risk of mesothelioma does not drop with time after exposure to asbestos. The risk appears to be lifelong.

Unlike lung cancer, mesothelioma risk is not increased among smokers._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I know that Business Insider is practically detested in these parts, but the piece linked here neatly summarizes - with line charts - the misguided dietary trends in the U.S., that have led to the high prevalence of chronic conditions like obesity and diabetes and the general state of poor health and thereby, soaring medical costs.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/whats-wrong-with-the- modern-d...](http://www.businessinsider.com/whats-wrong-with-the-modern-diet- charts-2014-2)

<comment><USER14> And yet we still keep thinking the government has the answers to health care. The FDA promoted most of these trends.

<comment><USER15> And yet others have such faith in the market behind such regulatory capture.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Interesting to see this, having just finished one of Gary Taubes' books and reading another. Especially "Good Calories, Bad Calories" is an extremely well-researched work talking exactly about the issues discussed in this article, presenting countless researches and scientific facts related to it.

</comment><comment><USER17> As they say: "The dose makes the poison". Stating that sugar is toxic, as Lustig and others do, (see his talk on YouTube or [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sugar-t.htm...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sugar-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)) to me does not make much sense in fighting against the super high levels of consumption: When you argue a position that's too far removed from most people's accepted positions, they tend to tune you out. Note that high- fructose corn syrup (water+glucose+fructose) is included in this generalized definition of "sugar", which, of course nobody would add to their coffee or tea (that would be sucrose or table sugar), but is now used ubiquitously in the food industry ([http://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/edible- innovatio...](http://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/edible- innovations/sugar2.htm)). A better option would be to single HFCS out and fight against its use.

While reading this the following question came to mind: If Yudkin's results were so groundbreaking and well backed up, why was he kind of shut off from the academic community. Stating that the "sugar lobby" ended his career sounds a bit too far fetched.

<comment><USER18> _Note that high-fructose corn syrup (water+glucose+fructose) is included in this generalized definition of "sugar"_

I cannot imagine a narrower definition of "sugar" than glucose+fructose. It's exactly what you add to your coffee and tea, just in the form of sucrose crystals.

There is no functional difference between HFCS and table sugar. If the regulators/activists force the food industry to replace HFCS with some other sugar, all they'll achieve is a minor increase in prices.

<comment><USER17> I think when you say that there "is no functional difference between HFCS and table sugar" you mean that sucrose is broken down to 50% glucose and 50% fructose during digestion, which is correct (although HFCS is not 50-50 but close).

The move to HFCS was for price reasons, so it won't be a "minor increase in prices", this may actually be more acceptable way to curb sugar use than taxing it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This must be what it feels like when people started accepting that smoking or drunk driving is bad for you. I mean I didn't even think to consider that sugar is essentially a drug...

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm just guessing, but it occurs to me that prior to the 20th century the average European probably consumed more ethanol than refined sugar.

</comment><comment><USER21> More info.

Anti-sugar: [http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/3821440.htm](http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/3821440.htm)

Anti-anti-sugar: [http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s3888657.htm](http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s3888657.htm)

The whole thing strikes me as quite sensationalist, and I suspect that digging into the research would affirm the cholesterol <-> heart disease link. For now, I'll trust the scientific consensus over these crackpot types.

<comment><USER22> Week old accounts with no prior comments shouldn't be allowed to use hot button words like "crackpot". They should probably include IP addresses in their comments as well.

<comment><USER21> I had to start somewhere, didn't I?

Yours truly, a new HN user.

IP address: 22.214.171.124

<comment><USER23> Greetings to Balgowlah, Australia! What's the weather like? Here in the UK, it is raining incessantly, and Worcester up the road is flooding due the Severn bursting its banks.

<comment><USER21> Very dry here, some rain would be nice if you could arrange that ;)

<comment><USER23> Got a siphon? You are underneath the Earth and we're on top of it so I suppose it'll naturally drain through the pipe anyway!

Sunny as well I expect? I am looking at the grey clouds and horrendous weather out of the window here.

Wish I could visit!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Another anti-sugar bestseller from the same era was William Dufty's 'Sugar Blues' [1975]:

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

</comment><comment><USER25> It's not as simple as "sugar is poison". Some form of "sugar" is in virtually everything we eat. It is unavoidable. Just stick to the rule of "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants" and quit screaming about sugar.

<comment><USER26> Interestingly enough, the very source of that quote goes on to make a bright- line distinction between _food_ and _food products_ , which, not coincidentally, are chief on the "sugar is poison" crowd's "avoid" list.

<comment><USER25> I don't agree with most of what Michael Pollan suggests. To me there is no distinction between food and food products. I just think the quote is a good general guideline.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm getting sick of this ignorant sugar alarmism. Sugar is not the culprit behind all the diseases listed in the article. Obesity is [5] [6]. Unless of course you're talking about cavities. Then not brushing your teeth is the culprit. The reason sugar gets such a bad rep is that high-sugar foods tend to be less-filling and lead to overeating [1]. Stay at a healthy weight by controlling caloric consumption [2].

The article mentions such scientific evidence as "nearly two-thirds of the studies cited there to repudiate Lustig's views were funded by Coca-Cola." Seriously?

Normally I wouldn't care - sugar alarmism = more candy for me - except that, as the article notes, "Lustig ... calls for sugar to be treated as a toxin, like alcohol and tobacco, and for sugar-laden foods to be taxed, labelled with health warnings and banned for anyone under 18." That's just bullshit extremism. Doughnuts, one of my favorite foods, can be part of a healthy diet just like anything else. In fact, sugar is fantastic for stimulating muscle growth [3], and can help with diet adherence during a caloric deficit [4].

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulin_index](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulin_index) \- this page lists satiety indexes for common foods. Notice all the lowest scores are bakery goods and sugary snacks.

[2] [http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/early/2009/10/14/ajcn.2009...](http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/early/2009/10/14/ajcn.2009.28595)

[3] [http://jcs.biologists.org/content/122/20/3589.full](http://jcs.biologists.org/content/122/20/3589.full)

[4] [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11126336?ordinalpos=47&it...](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11126336?ordinalpos=47&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum)

[5] [http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/health- topics/topics/obe/ris...](http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/health- topics/topics/obe/risks.html)

[6] [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19801534](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19801534)

Edit: People are taking my words out of context. This is my reply to another comment below that elucidates my meaning: "I advocate moderation and balance. Consume reasonable calorie and macronutrient (protein, fat, carbohydrate) quantities. Eat what allows you to do that. For me, those carbs come from doughnuts and candy but also from brown rice and pasta. Just like my meats include both lean meats (chicken breast) and fatty, delicious meats (bacon). Combine this with exercise and all you'll avoid all the scary things the article talks about."

<comment><USER27> _Doughnuts, one of my favorite foods, can be part of a healthy diet_

Can they?

<comment><USER28> There's not a dietitian on this planet that when asked to define a "healthy diet" would include donuts. This guy is living in denial if he honestly think this.

<comment><USER29> You're assuming the healthy diet concept is entirely prescriptive, in that there's a List of Healthy Things to Eat which thou must not deviate from. That's not how dietitians approach it. It mostly revolves around ensuring your macro and micro nutrient intake keeps to certain levels determined largely by your activity level.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Parents really need to stop giving this poison to their children. All birthday parties & events geared towards kids has this poison as the main attraction. And don't get me started on breakfast cereals....

<comment><USER31> Whats needed is the reduction of added sugars on everyday food..mostly processed food. I dont think we should go to the extent of not having cakes or ice cream on special occasions, that is not the problem.

<comment><USER32> Agreed. Sugar is being added to almost everything... even _chicken broth_ , to take one example that surprised me.

<comment><USER33> Yeah, one of the things that people don't realize is that sugar's hygroscopic nature is a great way to make things shelf stable. This is one of the reasons why so many processed foods end up having a lot more sugar than would typically be in the home-made variant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Here's a very interesting, _recent_ research paper that seems to corroborate AND defy the "sugar is evil" statement:

 _Dietary composition and its associations with insulin sensitivity and insulin secretion in youth. - While long-term excess of energy intake has been shown to lead to overweight and obesity, dietary macronutrient composition is not independently correlated with insulin sensitivity (IS) and insulin secretion (ISct). HOWEVER, For every 1 % increase in daily protein intake (%), Area-Under-Curve(AUC) Insulin /Glucose t= 30 min decreased by 1·1 % (P= 0·033). _

FYI - increase of AUC is correlated with glycemic response to foods. [2]

[1] [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24047611](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24047611) [2] [http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/13/2/172.abstract](http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/13/2/172.abstract)

</comment><comment><USER35> a former molecular bio major,

Be careful folks.. the sugar they are referring to is corn syrup which was used as fat taste replacement..sucrose

fructose in small doses is still fine..although do not use it a diet plan as its a hunger enhancer as it blocks a body released chemical that tells are body to stop eating.

<comment><USER36> >blocks a body released chemical that tells are body to stop eating

Got any more info on this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I am not a nutritionist or a biochemist, but as a guy with an old BS Chem and a general knowledge, it does not surprise me to hear (again) that we are not all bomb calorimeters. We have long known that our metabolic pathways are neither uniform nor universal. There is no surprise there. When you eat fat, carbohydrate, or cellulose, different things happen.

Thus, I think the extreme "calories is calories" argument is anti-scientific.

Given the real complexity, I personally favor a varied and omnivorous diet, avoiding things both unnatural in their manufacture but also unnatural in their availability. A diet high in sugar is not natural. It would be very surprising if evolution and the evolution of our accompanying microbiome prepared us for it.

</comment><comment><USER38> Currently reading Salt, Sugar, Fat by Michael Moss, check it out if this interests you.

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15797397-salt-sugar- fat](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15797397-salt-sugar-fat)

</comment><comment><USER39> I don't know if this man's views on sugar are accurate, but things like:

>''Reviews of the body of scientific evidence by expert committees have concluded that consuming sugar as part of a balanced diet does not induce lifestyle diseases such as diabetes and heart disease,'' he says.If you look up Robert Lustig on Wikipedia, nearly two-thirds of the studies cited there to repudiate Lustig's views were funded by Coca-Cola.

really disturb me. I think there is something wrong with are intellectual culture when we give completely undeserved credulity to studies with obvious biases.

</comment><comment><USER40> Calories in v calories out is absolute in terms of weight loss/gain, but that's just a quantitative measure, not a qualitative one. For instance, the famed "Twinkies at a Caloric Deficit" diet will cause you to lose weight, but not in any sort of good way, and will do all sorts of terrible things to your health, not the least of which is deprivation of important micro and macro nutrients.

Sugar isn't inherently "bad", but the way most people consume it is. High sugar foods, in essence, have very poor bang for your caloric buck.

</comment><comment><USER41> I'm sure everyone would leave this earth much happier if they spent more time enjoying the life they have rather than arguing with others about nutrition. I guess that applies to everything...

</comment><comment><USER42> XYLITOL :) We use it for coffee, baking, cocktails, Sushi rice and more.

Xylitol has less intensive impact on the insulin system and does not cause a glycaemic peak as strong as you experience it with sugar.

Xylitol is also proven to directly prevent Caries.

There are numerous studies on Xylitol and its benefits - Google is your friend.

How is it possible that in a thread on sugar even after 146 comments nobody mentions Xylitol?

BTW ... Xylitol is for me not a sugar-subtitute because it tastes better than sugar.

In case you live in Germany or EU and you need a realiably source - www.xucker.de. No I am not affiliated with them.

<comment><USER43> Erythritol and glycerol are also decent sugar-alcohol sweeteners.

Other types of sugar alcohols are not suitable as sugar replacements.

Methanol and ethylene glycol are poisonous. Mannitol, sorbitol, isomalt, maltitol, and lactitol will all give you horrible gas and diarrhea. To a certain extent, xylitol and glycerol will also have a laxative effect, but as erythritol is absorbed by the gut, it is the only sugar alcohol that can be consumed in excess without dire colonic consequences.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> On a recent BBC Horizon, two identical twins went for a month on two separate diets. One of the twins ate a high carb low fat diet, the other did the reverse.

By the end of the experiment the one with the worse metabolical and biological outcomes was the twin on the high fat low carb diet. In fact the doctors told him to stop as he was becoming pre-diabetic.

link to bbc programme: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03t8r4h](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03t8r4h)

<comment><USER45> Sounds like it was bad, for those two. Hard to draw any further conclusions from that.

<comment><USER44> It was definitely bad for both of them, however the twin on the high fat low carb diet fared much worse even though he was consuming less calories than the carb binging twin.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Sometimes it seams that people are interested in these technical and highly specific debates on how to eat right to avoid responsibility. They want to "know" that eating right is so difficult and badly understood that it can't be done without a special diet. When they then select a diet and it works, they attribute it to the diet and not the utmost care that they followed the diet with.

</comment><comment><USER47> In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women.

</comment><comment><USER48> Sixto Rodriguez singing "Sugar Man" in Background of this site.

</comment><comment><USER49> Had I not cut down on my sugar intake, I would be bloating and down with diabetes by now. Gosh! I did it without John Yudkin's book, I am going to read it.

</comment><comment><USER50> Poll: Obesity is caused by?

<comment><USER43> A subatomic particle: the adipon. These are sometimes produced in bogon-bogon collisions, and are the primary reason why people overeat when stressed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> They can prise my sugar... from my cold, dead hands.</comment>


Publishing News: "Hating Amazon is not a strategy" - <AUTHOR> http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/12/amazon-consumer-reports-kindle-fire.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+oreilly/radar/atom+(O%27Reilly+Radar)&utm_content=Google+Reader <comment><USER2> Indeed. Just like hating Napster was not a strategy for the music industry.</comment>


Free Books: Concord Free Press Creates New Nonprofit Publishing Model  - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/30/free-books-concord-free-press_n_1386488.html

<comment><AUTHOR> _"... We try to distribute our books as slowly and carefully as possible. We're too small to fail." The press is run by volunteers -- the editorial team, writers and designers aren't paid for their efforts, and all have other day jobs, according to Fitch... The press also places great emphasis on book design, which explains its unique typographic choices and quality, textured covers, made affordable thanks to a unique partnership with Kodak digital printing. Once a manuscript is edited and a cover is designed, the next step is to print 3,000 copies and distribute many of them to over 50 independent bookstores across the country. These costs are covered by the company's status as a nonprofit. ... ...All participating authors retain the rights to their work and have the ability to re-release their novels through traditional publishing houses."_

One way to get real books back into circulation.</comment>


A curated list of amazingly awesome PHP libraries, resources and shiny things - aps-sids https://github.com/ziadoz/awesome-php

<comment><AUTHOR> This is great, is there a curated list of curated lists anywhere? (of developer stuff)

<comment> aps-sids I couldn't find anything of that sort. I'll try to make one though :)</comment></comment>


Guidelines for using email - <AUTHOR> http://www.washington.edu/computing/email/pinedoc/pguidelines.html

<comment><USER2> These are good to keep in handy. In particular, this one: "The integrity of an email message cannot be guaranteed. If a received message seems out of character for the sender, double-check before taking it seriously."

I've come across too many people & organizations who blindly swear by the integrity of an email: "But look, _it says right here_ it was sent by XYZ!"

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting to consider how many of these could be solved or at least ameliorated via existing technological measures and which ones couldn't.

Encryption and signing would take care of the interception and authenticity/tampering issue, but there isn't anything that will ever stop the intended recipient of a message from forwarding it indiscriminately.

Overall a good policy and good advice from UW; it's ironic that people who understand how email works tend to trust it less than those who don't. (There's something of a lesson there: if experts in a technology or system are more confident in it than the public, you can probably use it with caution; if experts think the public over-trusts it, run away.)

</comment><comment><USER4> _Email takes up computer space, so delete messages you no longer need._

I disagree. I keep almost all of my email. For me, the cost of storing all email is small compared to usefulness of finding an old email when you need it.</comment>


Ask HN: Coding outdoors - <AUTHOR> Hi
Being outdoors in the sun makes you high. It gives you energy and vitamin D, relieves headaches and is just generally great (within limits, of course - no skin cancer, please). Most of us here use the computer to make a living and some of us work from home or have flexible work place and hours - could we be doing this outside  and improve our health and productivity?
I'm not posting to argue whether it's actually better or not to code outdoors, I only want to ask: How can this be achieved technically?
Personally I only need to be able to ssh to my server and have at least 20 lines of vim to work with.
I saw this last year: http://www.raspberrypi.org/kindleberry-pi-the-second/
This set-up is very cool but kind of unwieldy and maybe unnecessarily complex?
How can this be done in an easier way? <comment><USER2> Currently I live at rented room on roof top of a residential building. Temperature of my city(Bangalore) is around 22 degree centigrade([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangalore#Climate](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangalore#Climate)), mostly cloudy. I have setup a table with four chair outside on the roof. I find it pleasant to work outside mostly during morning and evening. In day time if its cloudy and little wind, I feel better working outside.

I use macbook and sublime to do my work, light reflection sometimes blurs the text, but it is mostly tricky, I try different position and get it working. It's little difficult to work outside during sunny days.

At times I love the reflection of sky on my screen [http://imgur.com/a/ZhOv2](http://imgur.com/a/ZhOv2)

<comment><USER3> That's a nice setup! Really like the rocks, even if they are just holding down the table cloth.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, its very precious too :-) hand picked from west coast of India.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I do like printing code out and editing it from the hammock. You can't do it all day, and it doesn't seem very fast, but it sure is nice to plan all the edits on paper (4 color pens = colordiff!) and then type it up, test it, commit it. My hammock is about 30 paces from my laser printer, so if I wanted to go much further than that I'd need a portable printer.

<comment><USER5> Rich Hickey, is that you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I sometimes work in the garden. On cloudy days my Thinkpad display works just fine. If it's really sunny I use a Fujitsu Stylistic tablet pc I bought used on ebay, along with an external keyboard. The Stylistic tablets have (at least used to have) models with transflective displays (the ones with frontlights instead of backlights). Those are awesome in daylight, but look dull indoors. The resolution normally is not that great, but for ssh it should be just fine. Still kind of unwieldy, though :/

Hah, I just remembered that my alternative would have been a netbook modded with a Pixel Qi display from Maker Shed. Maker Shed does not seem to have them anymore, but perhaps you can find one of the prebuilt devices with pixel qi displays: [http://www.pixelqi.com/devices](http://www.pixelqi.com/devices)

edit: I cannot recommend working in nature enough! I'm usually both super productive and in great mood while working outdoors.

<comment><AUTHOR> This seems extremely interesting but I can not find any pixel qi android or possibly linux compatible product for sale anywhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Phone tethering makes it really easy; I'm having a lot of fun spending my afternoons coding in the park. Otherwise, if you're away from any connectivity and you're working on something local, I highly recommend the Stack Exchange data dump[1] along with Samuel Lai's excellent Stackdump[2]. I worked without internet for 2 weeks using this setup (+ offline documentation) with great success. (Warning: Stackdump copies the SE XML data into a local database, which currently takes 7 hours on my Haswell i7 and requires extra disk space. Prepare ahead of time!)

[1]: [https://archive.org/details/stackexchange](https://archive.org/details/stackexchange)

[2]: [http://stackapps.com/questions/3610/stackdump-an-offline- bro...](http://stackapps.com/questions/3610/stackdump-an-offline-browser-for- stackexchange-sites)

</comment><comment><USER8> I've tried this a couple of times. IMO screen technology in sunlight is the limiting factor - no-one's made a laptop screen good enough to make this work without you straining your eyes. Shame, because I write this from my office and I can see that it's a gloriously sunny day outside!

<comment><USER9> I've worked from the beach for months. Granted, this was in the UK, and there wasn't much sun to worry about :)

But the best solution I could come up with was a screen cover. It attached itself to the monitor, and created a foldable 'camera obscura' for the screen. Works great to avoid reflections, and to minimize brightness needed.

<comment><USER8> Ha, I'm also in the UK. That was one of the solutions I came up with - in fact I built the first one out of cardboard. I just would feel like a bit of a tit sat on the beach with a cardboard laptop hood but I guess if I spent a bit more time making something sleek looking...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you're working on your own projects or freelance, all you need is a bit of shade. Depending where you are then using mosquito coils, once the sun goes down, is a good idea.

I was in Ubud, Bali earlier last for a few months and worked in my garden under an awning. ( photo here: [http://goo.gl/p1HdNG](http://goo.gl/p1HdNG) ). The garden had a power socket. Nicest working location I've had! On the downside wifi could be a bit spotty and there were occasional power outages.

</comment><comment><USER11> Maybe a tablet/laptop with a Pixel Qi-screen?

"The advantage of Pixel Qi displays over conventional LCDs is mainly that they can be set to operate under transflective mode and reflective mode, improving eye-comfort, power usage, and visibility under bright ambient light." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel_Qi](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel_Qi)

[http://www.pixelqi.com/devices](http://www.pixelqi.com/devices)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The most viable seem to be getting a tablet with a pixel qi display. This way the battery life will be good, it's in a good package and you won't need to rely on your own modding skills.

However, the first Adam tablet is out of production. It also got obliterating reviews. The only two devices I find is the Adam II which is only available for shipping in India and the SOL 7" android-g.

Adam II: [http://www.amazon.in/Notion-Ink-Adam-Tablet- White/dp/B00HYVR...](http://www.amazon.in/Notion-Ink-Adam-Tablet- White/dp/B00HYVRX58) Android-g: [http://www.solcomputer.com/sunlight-readable- tablet/7-androi...](http://www.solcomputer.com/sunlight-readable- tablet/7-android-tablet.html)

The Adam II got good reviews by the Indian users but I haven't seen any western review of it.

I would so back a kickstarter campaign for something like this.

</comment><comment><USER12> At least in Thailand, most beach bars have both wifi and power outlets these days. Even on small islands, they have surprisingly good satellite Internet.

Even on a Macbook Air, the screen is bright enough for me to code during the day (in the shade). As a bonus, you have an unlimited supply of alpha testers for whatever you create!

<comment><USER13> Airs still have TN panels, just get the cheapest 13" Pro and enter a different world of display quality (source: I own both of them).

<comment><USER14> Can you spare a moment to educate me about the panels (what, how different, which machines)? (I've got a 2011 15in MBP - last of the models one could maintain oneself, so am keeping it alive as long as poss)

<comment><USER13> You should be fine, MBPs have had IPS panels for a long time IIRC. It's mainly about viewing angles, colour reproduction, and brightness.

[https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=tn+vs+ips](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=tn+vs+ips)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I am currently travelling around Asia and often work outdoors. I think it's already quite easy to do, though I am not sure whether you mean working 'outside' or in 'the outdoors'. Mark that up to English being far from my native language.

Requirements for me: \- shade: the sun is too harsh to be exposed to it for any considerable period of time and causes plenty of screen glare. \- decent hardware: I'm using a standard laptop. XPS 13 in my case. Too small kills productivity but YMMV. \- internet connection: easily found in hotels and restaurants. data card if further away or with bad signals. local if no connection is available. \- reasonably quiet: I don't like headphones, but if the environment is too noisy it makes longer stretches hard/impossible.

</comment><comment><USER16> If my garden was big enough, I'd get a shed. Or a gazebo, but I'd still call it a shed.

[http://www.shedworking.co.uk/2010/07/neil-gaiman- shedworker....](http://www.shedworking.co.uk/2010/07/neil-gaiman- shedworker.html)

<comment><USER17> I tried this for a short while until a local cat pissed on my netplug! I actually found it quite hard to get comfortable. That's the biggest barrier to being portable in my eyes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The kindleberry pi has all the elements I think are essential:

\- low power \- out door readable \- light weight

The problem is that it isn't in one, handy package.

Laptops are limited by displays, it sounds like transflective-LCD is ideal. Panasonic Toughbooks have them, so could be a good bet.

I'd like to build an enclosure for a Pi and a PixelQi setup (they made the screens for OLPC). [https://www.adafruit.com/products/1303](https://www.adafruit.com/products/1303)

I assume there just isn't a market large enough to force these into existence?

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess that's how the corporates argue. Maybe if it was crowdsourced...

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> A couple of years back I bought a MacBook Pro with the antiglare display for this very reason. It was great to be able to work in the garden, in theory, but then you realise MBPs have/had awful battery life, especially in the sun, and when they get hot they're literally painful to work on. Oops.

Would love a simple, cheap, tiny Linux netbook with high quality keyboard & trackpad. Resigned myself to the fact that I'll always need a Mac for design (Sketch etc), but I oculd happily hack on code in Arch.

<comment><USER20> >Would love a simple, cheap, tiny Linux netbook with high quality keyboard & trackpad.

I've had good success with the Acer Aspire One netbooks and Linux. And other than the power jack (which I've had to replace), I've been very happy with the quality.

And if you run a distro like Crunchbang, it boots up very rapidly. Even Linux Mint with Mate or Cinnamon runs well on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Laptop with reasonably bright screen and good battery life gets you pretty far. Currenly I'm sitting in the shade outside my workplace with Lenovo X230. Its 26 degrees celsius in the shade, which is cooler than the 30 inside my office (3rd floor, no air conditioning, even ventilation is shut off for repairs).

The screen is an issue though, I'd much rather have the Lenovo W530 I had in my previous job. It was really nice when working without external displays and had very nice battery life to boot.

</comment><comment><USER22> Although I don't work outside, I try and go for a walk outside most days at lunch time. It gets the legs moving and the detachment helps me think.

</comment><comment><USER23> Most people here have mentioned how a reflective or transflective display helps a lot. These used to be much more plentiful, they were standard on PDAs for example. Kind of rare and expensive now.

One thing that no one has touched on. It is much easier to work if you use an inverted color scheme for your terminals. Black text on a white background works better when front-lighting LCD technology.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm sitting in my garden doing work on a MBP right now. Only 'downside' is I have to sit in the shade. Glare/flare makes it unworkable otherwise. Otoh, sitting in the sun for prolonged periods doesn't sound too good either. I'm perfectly happy with strolling around in the sun while mulling over some problems, then returning back to my laptop.

</comment><comment><USER25> This started into a realm I had some knowledge and ended into a realm with zero knowledge from my part.

I can't help with cracking the reader. Keep in mind, while it has a benefit of not reflecting sun light with a glare, it still is not 100% immune to it.

You can always try making some shade where you work. Bring some headphones and music, as some environments can be distracting and noisy.

</comment><comment> benji-york I enjoy working outside on a covered porch (for shade). I have neck and wrist issues though, so the standard laptop-in-lap setup doesn't work for me so I build a laptop stand: [http://benjiyork.com/pictures/outdoor- office.jpg](http://benjiyork.com/pictures/outdoor-office.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER26> I find it very hard to work with just a laptop. At minimum I need it connected to a monitor, a keyboard and a mouse - which means I obviously need a desk at minimum as well.

As long as that setup can be carried outdoors feasibly, I would not mind working outdoors if that was an option - weather permitting of course.

</comment><comment><USER17> You might be able to flip this a little. I can spend lots of time sitting in front of the screen and achieving pretty much nothing. Whereas sometimes a good walk and logical run through of the problem is all that's needed, in fact it's pretty vital for positive head space.

</comment><comment><USER27> Is the screen in google glass big enough or bright enough to work on? Ideally, it would be nice not to have to lug around the laptop and burn your thighs. Just have a bluetooth keyboard/mouse connected to a head mounted screen system.

<comment><USER28> Doesn't that negate the upsides of being outside?

<comment><USER27> I am not advocating something that covers your entire field of view. But a smaller screen that you can focus on in your field of vision while still being able to see around you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I would think a tablet along with a wireless keyboard would be the best option if you are looking for something small. A tablet with a data-connection even better. The biggest problem would be a good enough screen to use in the sunlight.

<comment><USER30> Display is definitely challenging since better, bigger displays do improve productivity.

It would really depend on what sort of programming one's trying to do. Perhaps sitting in a serene and quiet outdoor environment would help you formulate an algorithm and maybe quickly prototype it or something along these lines which has more to do with creativity than with writing complex code.

But yes, there's a reason why the new Apple campus will have almost all offices which will have outdoor view :)

<comment><USER31> I recall the Microsoft campus was designed on similar lines - small rooms with an outside view. I certainly like being able to open the window, have a nice view, and smell sweet fresh air.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> You need to find a screen what works in a sunny environment. Even if you sit in a shade the ambient lighting is too much for most laptops. Glossy screens are horrible, matte ones slightly more readable but not nearly enough for my eyes.

</comment><comment><USER33> When I code outside it's on my Air, on my local copy of some project/repo. Get a good bag so you can take your kit anywhere. I love my Freitag for this purpose.

</comment><comment><USER34> If your connection isn't extremely stable, Mosh is a very good solution: [http://mosh.mit.edu/](http://mosh.mit.edu/)

</comment><comment><USER35> From my personal experience, I just want to suggest you to avoid swimming pools areas and kids with water guns. Anyway, no working outdoors for me anymore.

</comment><comment><USER36> If someone made a display, or some sort of filter for my macbook so I could see the screen properly outside, I'd be out there all the time!

</comment><comment><USER37> The Pi / kindle solution looks fun, but I agree - I wish there was a simple external screen solution perhaps

</comment><comment><USER38> Try it and see - experiment with different setups, equipment, locales and work out what suits you best

</comment><comment><USER39> I've had a lot of success with my MBP and a cellular modem.</comment>


How Big Business Is Hedging Against the Apocalypse - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/11/magazine/climate-change-exxon-renewable-energy.html <comment> 1e-9 The title is misleading as the article doesn't really describe hedging. It gives examples of various individuals and groups who are placing increasing value on technologies and resources related to global warming. Their investments naturally reflect their assessments, which is actually a good thing. If global warming is happening, then price adjustments are needed to encourage conservation, the search for alternatives, and the advancement of needed technologies. This is a beneficial market mechanism where people are incentivized to drive prices up or down based on their best prediction of the future. The government's role should be to provide regulation, penalties, and incentives to prevent conflicts between profit and the public's welfare. As the article points out, the current government role in this area is haphazard and largely unproductive. This situation will surely persist until there is better political agreement on what is happening with our climate.

<comment><USER2> Global warming itself is an externality, it's not priced by the market. If you buy into solar for example, you profit from the energy it produces (which is disjoint from global warming) and/or from the price put on global warming by a government. The developments are absolutely dependent on the ongoing doomsday hype (the world ends in 12 years you guys!), not global warming itself.

The only thing that I can see the market re-pricing in regards to global warming is land, i.e. you could buy some land in Siberia now because it will be livable in the future. However, that future is so far away it doesn't make sense to buy in this lifetime. Furthermore you could be shorting any business that depends on a stable climate.

<comment> 1e-9 There is an enormous number of portfolios that can be constructed to be highly profitable if global warming becomes more widely accepted. There is no need for an actual apocalypse to occur. There just needs to be an increasing awareness that continuing on our current emissions path will lead to disaster if allowed to continue. Those who accept this hypothesis, and invest accordingly, will be helping to avoid an apocalypse. They are the ones who will help drive down the value of things that contribute to global warming, while driving up the value of things needed to combat it. If we are lucky, this process will play out quickly enough that we can avoid irreversible destruction of our environment. Governments could dramatically accelerate the needed changes through appropriate incentives/penalties to make long-term improvements/harms more profitable/unprofitable in the near-term.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The US government is aware.

[https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Newsroom/Reports%20and%2...](https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Newsroom/Reports%20and%20Pubs/Implications_for_US_National_Security_of_Anticipated_Climate_Change.pdf)

Scientists employed by the US government leaked drafts of a climate change report out of fear of White House interference.

[https://www.vox.com/2018/11/26/18112505/national-climate- ass...](https://www.vox.com/2018/11/26/18112505/national-climate- assessment-2018-trump)

</comment><comment><USER4> I wrote a similar piece a few years ago:

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-03-07/investors...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-03-07/investors- seek-ways-to-profit-from-global-warming)

There is no hedge against the apocalypse. But some people will create enormous shareholder value during the runup.

</comment><comment><USER5> > We are, he says, in the midst of a historic period of mispricing. Because > the global economy depends on hydrocarbons, practically every asset in the > world relates in some way to oil and gas. Grantham believes hydrocarbons > will be priced, or regulated, into submission. In light of that belief, not > only oil companies' stock but practically everything else on the market > looks falsely inflated.

Good. Let their money burn.

<comment><USER6> Coal should be the starting point.

>Let their money burn.

Unfortunately, it will not be just "their money" if the economy has a hard time weaning itself off oil and gas. It will be everybody's money, and lifestyle.

<comment><USER7> Great, let our money burn. Will be worse for those with money to lose!

<comment><USER8> If only it were. Periods of economic upheaval fall much harder on the poor.

<comment><USER7> Bring it on, mate. Fucked is fucked, after a point all relativities are pretty meaningless. It would be worth it to see Teslas being reposessed and vacancies in SF high rises.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So if your portfolio depends on the apocalypse, don't you now have an incentive in expediting it?

<comment><USER10> Only if you look forward to living through it, or your offspring suffering more/sooner.

<comment><USER11> Except the elite won't suffer.

<comment><USER12> In times of upheaval, musical chairs will be played. As a group, the elite stand little to gain from that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you're interested in this area, Oasis Loss Modelling Framework is an open- source effort by the insurance industry to try and understand the risks associated with climate change and other catastrophes: [https://oasislmf.org/our-modelling-platform](https://oasislmf.org/our- modelling-platform)

<comment><USER14> Or Air Worldwide, or RMS, KatRisk, CoreLogic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> There is increasing recognition by institutional investors that climate change risk is a factor which must be measured and managed. While there are opportunistic trades to be had, the sheer volume of pension fund money slowly shifting to de-risk will have significant impact on industry.

</comment><comment><USER15> How do I short Miami and New Orleans on a scale of 30 years?

<comment><USER16> You make a very big assumption - that people don't care about Miami, a city with global name recognition and so on...

I also assume you are not on Instagram, where Miami is huge - it's the 6th global instagrammed city, second US one (London, NY, Paris, Dubai, Istanbul, Miami, LA) - [https://www.statista.com/statistics/655550/most- hashtagged-c...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/655550/most-hashtagged- cities-on-instagram/)

Instead of shorting it you might want to long "defending it".

<comment><USER17> It's going to be pretty hard to defend it. It's built on porous limestone. So water's going to bubble up everywhere - not like defending NYC

<comment><USER18> I think he means invest in seawall manufacturing companies, as opposed to some bizarre financial instrument that allows you to profit from the demise of an entire city.

<comment><USER19> As parent mentioned Miami can't be protected with sea walls because the geology allows water to seep up and will drown the first floor of buildings with any sea level rise

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "Chaos is a ladder." ?

</comment><comment><USER21> >Last April, Texas consumed about 25.7 million megawatts of power.

The state of journalism today. Even the august NYT can't afford fact checkers or editors any more.

</comment><comment><USER22> I see this dichotomy which is really sad to me where many people with really good intentions who deeply care about the world just look at things like this as an opportunity to take pot shots from the sidelines about how evil industry and the capitalists are while thinking they are above it. They fail to understand that they are playing the game of capitalism whether they agree with it or not.

All the while the amoral(note I'm not saying immoral) players in finance and industry(ie smart money) continue to clean house. And at the end of the day it's really not their priority to look out for the environment (nor is it even desirable to have environmental protection and regulations handled by industry).

And so 150 years from now when we're in the Mad max future the compassionate people will get to look back and say "i told you capitalism would destroy the world" while failing to see that it was their responsibility to play the game to make it better.

</comment><comment><USER23> Capitalism destroys the environment by design. I mean the profit-and-loss equation literally works out to "sacrifice everything". Check out the coast of the Dominican Republic : [https://gfycat.com/mistyacrobaticbonobo-r- sciences](https://gfycat.com/mistyacrobaticbonobo-r-sciences)

<comment><USER24> The reason you often see images like this in third world countries, but not in first world countries, is that third world countries dump a lot of their trash in waterways/the ocean compared to first world countries. Maybe you already know this, but I think a lot of people see images like this as evidence of the first world fucking over the third world when it's really a local problem.

<comment><USER25> And, 1st world countries dump their trash in 3rd world countries. Also, they ignore that there 1st world status is fueled by unsustainable development over last couple of centuries.

<comment><USER26> What third world company do we dump our trash in? AFAIK we sell it to them.

<comment><USER27> Recently these countries have blocked the import of the trash because it absolutely destroys these countries. The "recycling" companies buy in mountains of trash, pick out a few bits that are profitable and dump the rest somewhere. Currently only a tiny part of recyclables actually gets recycled or downcycled because the rest is cheaper to pull fresh resources out of the ground.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> "we are seeing more opportunities than would have been there normally."

Disaster capitalism at its finest. So the future in fact does look bright for profiting off the collapse where there will be another huge transfer of wealth to those with lots of capital laying around... from those who actually own productive assets and manage them.

<comment><USER29> Or the world will wake up and trial those people ?

<comment><USER30> can't wait for it to happen. Tzar Russia and the French Revolution all over. except it won't be pitch and forks but high-tec weapons vs masses

<comment><USER31> Since the current world order is a result of those events, I'm not that sure a power shift from an elite to another would solve anything else than just raw hatred towards the privileged few of the day. I'm more inclined to think that a more gradual and evolutionary approach to wellbeing and social justice can be more effective.

<comment><USER32> Yeah, it was truly a power shift from landed aristocrats to bankers, merchants, and lawyers. Poor people more-or-less stayed poor. And think of it, the entire French Revolution juxtaposed with the Atlantic slave trade and colonialism.

I think you're right. Progress is a marathon, every minute, every day. And it's slow.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>