Chrome team planning to block all access from browser to localhost wss - <AUTHOR> https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=378566 <comment><USER2> I filed this bug (along with [http://crbug.com/458362](http://crbug.com/458362)), and there's a bit of context that may be missed. First, this is to protect weak devices and services on private networks or localhost, that really can't be safely exposed to attacks pivoting from the web. It will block only sub-resource loads and navigation from the web to private networks. Navigating directly (via bookmarks or omnibox) or in the other direction (from private to web) is still fine. Essentially, this is applying similar rules to what's already in place for file URLs.

We also appreciate the concerns for legacy apps, local servers, etc. That's why we plan on supporting blocking UI overrides, opt-in by the page on localhost/private (maybe via CORS headers), and permanent exceptions via the command-line and enterprise policy. So, there might need to be some small tweaks, but all the use cases I've seen described in this thread should still work in a portable manner after these changes are made.

Also, to my knowledge no one is actively working on these changes yet. Hence why the details in the bugs are still a bit nebulous. Although that is likely to change pretty soon.

<comment><USER3> > That's why we plan on supporting blocking UI overrides

By that do you mean, an in-browser prompt to allow the connection?

<comment><USER2> Pretty much. It would probably be an interstitial on navigation (similar to how certificate errors are handled) and a page action for subresources (similar to the shield page action for mixed content).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> They're not blocking all access, just sub-resources from Internet pages (you can still develop/use local servers). And they're adding a command line switch and enterprise policy to allow localhost.

Also this is preferred way to communicate with localhost:

[https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/messaging](https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/messaging) [https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/nativeMessaging](https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/nativeMessaging)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sub-resources includes websocket connections. The link you point to is not a standard and will not work cross-browser. You will also need to package your app using Chrome's format AFAIK. Basically, it's not really an option at this point in time.

<comment><USER4> I agree with you and someone has mentioned this on the issue, as well as a proposed exception to this policy: [https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=378566#c...](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=378566#c32)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a good thing. I recently found an exploit in a widely-distributed bit of software that listened on localhost but had minimal protection against malicious inputs. Anyone who could trigger your browser to make a crafted request to locahost (which is very easy) could make this bit of software download and execute any remote executable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes it is, but if you read closer, you will see that they are also planning to block access to secure websocket servers with public dns resolving to 127.0.0.1 and valid ssl certificates setup precisely for the purpose of being accessed by the public web. This is completely unnecessary.

<comment><USER6> But then malware can exploit every user of Dropbox, for example, it doesn't even need their own certificate. And even the users wo don't have Dropbox are vulnerable throgh Dropbox's DNS entry.

<comment><AUTHOR> There are already plenty of public DNS records which resolve to 127.0.0.1. They're offered as services. For example, 37Signals have a domain resolving to localhost.

Malware on a user's computer already has access to everything the user has.

Malware on a website would be blocked by the mutual authentication and origin checking that Dropbox do after establishing the WSS connection.

Malware in the form of a local daemon on a public computer where someone logs into Dropbox will not be able to authenticate with the web app.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I absolutely agree that an exception for legitimate use cases is necessary. (And that a proprietery Chrome API - which in addition is only available to approved extensions - is not an option) However, I don't see what security benefits TLS or DNS records would bring in this case and why they should be requirements for the exception.

If your goal is to protect local daemons from malicious web sites, then I don't see why the usual CORS restrictions aren't enough. Maybe they aren't (You could tighten them a bit, e.g. not allowing "Allow: *" responses, treating all requests as CORS non-simple or even only allowing WebSocket connections if you must), but forcing TLS or a DNS entry doesn't seem to increase the security: If I were an attacker, there is nothing that keeps me from trying wss://localhost or wss://www.dropboxlocalhost.com in addition to plain localhost. So what security benefit would that bring?

If you want to protect a legitimate web page from malicious daemons, those measures won't help you either: I can simply download your legitimate daemon, extract the TLS private key and generate a valid certificate for www.dropboxlocalhost.com myself - or I just install a custom root CA certificate and use my own private key. But I don't think defending against the latter scenario is very useful anyway: Either the "malicious" daemon has been purposefully installed by the user, in which case blocking it would be against user interests, or it is part of a malware. In that case, the malware will have dozens of other ways to compromise your web page and you will generally have bigger things to worry about.

So, why can't we simply use CORS to protect connections to localhost like we do for everything else?

<comment><AUTHOR> The reason that web apps such as Dropbox currently go to all the effort of a public DNS record (www.dropboxlocalhost.com) resolving to 127.0.0.1 plus an SSL certificate for that domain, plus mutual authentication after the websocket is established, is because it's currently the only pragmatic way to setup a non-"mixed content" connection to a localhost websocket server. It doesn't increase security as you point out. It's just that it's the only way to do it.

Any other connection would be blocked by browsers (e.g. a connection from https web app to a non-tls ws localhost server). The bug ticket referred to would seek to block this last remaining way of connecting, forcing localhost daemons to connect to the web app via server proxy.

<comment><USER7> Okay, that makes sense. But then the real problem is that solving what should be a trivial technical problem today requires an extremely wasteful workaround. If I understood jschuh correctly in [1] and [2], then they plan to make this workaround unnecessary by treating connections to localhost as secure even when over plain http/ws.

As I understood, connecting to a daemon, both over ws _and_ wss will still be possible, as long as the - to be defined - opt-in headers are sent by the daemon. In fact, the associated change to mixed-content would even allow using plain ws://localhost on secure sites, which - as you told - isn't possible today.

Apparently vulnerable services exist and this is a security hole that needs to be closed. So legitimate users of local connections need to update their implementations anyway. If that's the case, I'd prefer a solution which just requires me to add a new response header and not need me to manage a new DNS entry and TLS cert for no real benefit.

I agree though that this change has possible sweeping implications and should be done as part of the usual HTML5 process and not unilaterally be chrome. Also, the opt-in protocol must be specified before this change comes into effect.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9211034](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9211034) [2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9210985](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9210985)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This includes blocking access by web apps such as Dropbox to their local daemon, which currently rely on a public DNS record resolving to 127.0.0.1 and a secure localhost websocket server (using a certificate for the public DNS record's FQDN) to make the connection (with additional mutual authentication after the websocket handshake).

After this change, there will be no way for a web app to communicate directly with a locally installed daemon.

<comment><USER8> > After this change, there will be no way for a web app to communicate > directly with a locally installed daemon.

Well, you could just not use Chrome.

<comment><USER9> That's the same argument as "You could just not use IE4," and the same situation: "let's just break the web, we know best what's best for you." Ironic that it's Chrome this time, the browser that started out as the champion of NOT breaking the web.

<comment><USER10> > Ironic that it's Chrome this time, the browser that started out as the > champion of NOT breaking the web.

I don't think that was ever the message. Chrome has always been "the fastest browser" rather than anything else, and it has lead to (much-needed IMO) substantial performance improvements from the other camps.

<comment><USER9> I think you're retroactively spinning it, to fit what Chrome has become _today_. Let me just find the comics v1 rolled out with.

 _Ahem_ : "There are a lot of limitations to the kinds of applications that you can build today with web browsers. And the subset of things you can do is different for each browser. If _one_ browser has a cool feature, that doesn't help -- it has to exist across _all_ browsers in order for developers to use it." (Emphasis original)

But yeah, Google _says_ they're not evil, so that _makes_ anything they do non-evil...riiiiight. I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore.

<comment><USER10> I'm not trying to be retroactive - I genuinely don't remember any comics - just the videos with the lasers and whatnot to show how fast it was.

<comment><USER9> Well, it's still out there. The main selling points were:

\- it's safe

\- it's fast

\- it's stable

\- doesn't break the web

All of that in contrast with IE of that time, which failed all four of the above. Currently it's trying to stay somewhat safe, and ditched the other three in the process.

[https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/](https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I can see to not allow connections to be made to any host in the local network. That's fine. But blocking access to the loopback interface is IMHO going a bit too far as this was until now a very portable and secure way for websites to talk to locally installed helper applications.

Dropbox does this, Github for Mac does this (and incidentally, my own home- grown solution for reading barcode scanners does this too).

I really don't want to have to end up in a world where we have to write browser-specific solutions (the method recommended in the issue is chrome- specific) for these kind of things.

<comment><USER12> Unfortunately, 'localhost' is not multiuser safe. So a better (cross browser!) alternative would be OK.

<comment><USER13> Multiuser on localhost can be safe like any other website; you just need authentication.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Not just to localhost, but to most of the IANA reserved space, including 192.168.0.0/16 and 10.0.0.0/8:

[http://code.metager.de/source/xref/chromium/net/base/net_uti...](http://code.metager.de/source/xref/chromium/net/base/net_util.cc#462)

<comment><USER15> How the hell do you access your router's admin page then?

<comment><USER16> Seems like it only limits OTHER sites/pages from being able to access localhost or 192.168.x.x I think you'll still be able to access those pages directly yourself

<comment><USER15> thanks, misunderstood

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> FWIW, the title is beyond sensationalist, and outright wrong. The title on the link is "Block sub-resource loads from the web to private networks and localhost".

</comment><comment><USER17> You want _your_ browser to connect to _your_ local resources?

BITCH PLEASE! Whats next? Maybe you want non gimped SD card access for you android apps? HAHA.

We have ze Cloud specifically so you are forced to use us as the middle man, and we can see all of your data. How else are we going to make any money off of you?

PS: Oh, and its about security in journa^^ of your data!

<comment><USER18> The only people this would inhibit do not know what a daemon is in the first place. I have no interest in da clowd.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Does this mean I cannot develop on localtest.me (that resolves to 127.0.0.1)?

<comment><USER20> From the description, it only means that external pages won't be able to access resources on localhost, but you could still develop on localhost as usual.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Well we can still enable it if we need it

"In conjunction with the change, we will need a command line switch and enterprise policy to revert to the older behavior for testing and legacy applications."

<comment><AUTHOR> If you rely on connecting your web app with a locally installed daemon (properly secured using wss and additional mutual authentication) then that's not really an option either, as you can't expect your users to know how to use command line switches. Cutting off access to wss is a big deal.

<comment><USER22> Command line switches are a bitch on OS X.

Is an about:config switch not being considered? If so I'd imagine the thinking might be "too easy to social engineer round this".</comment></comment></comment>


Square Market - <AUTHOR> http://squareup.com/market

<comment><USER2> What would happen to Stripe if Square cloned their API and beat their pricing? Now that they're online this seems like a distinct probability.

<comment><USER3> I think if they go down that path, at some point Square becomes PayPal and is crushed under the weight of trying to do too much.

Square has maintained a fairly narrow focus in terms of clients: small-scale retail outlets. With Square Market they don't seem to be targeting Joe's Mail- Order Bait Shop.... they're giving their existing storefronts a way to sell their stuff online.

I think both Square and Stripe are examples of what great things can come when you take on a fairly narrow slice of the payments market. And PayPal is becoming the cautionary tale of what happens when you try to be everything to all people.

I suspect Stripe will be fine.

<comment><USER4> Seeing that Square recently launched a p2p payment system, I disagree with you that Square plans to stay within their narrow slice of the market. I think it would look much more like PayPal (a "Pay with Square" button) than Stripe, but who knows.

I'm sure Stripe, Braintree, Venmo, PayPal and the others are paying very close attention to Square.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> IIRC, Square already does around 10% of PayPal's transaction volume, which is impressive. Of course, Square is mostly offline and PayPal is mostly online-- and here we see the beginnings of the inevitable conflict. At last, they begin the fight to enter PayPal's core market, using their offline clout in POS to enter online payments using existing brick and mortar stores for fulfillment. Google, just buy Square already.

<comment><USER6> Would Google buy Square? I doubt Google really wants to get into the offline payment market. If Google really want to fight Paypal as alternative online payment platform, it would be better for Google to buy Stripe.

<comment><USER5> Stripe is nothing--just a faster horse. PayPal and Square (and Google and Apple) ultimately aim to replace the credit card itself. That's the prize. Square is attacking from the B&M merchant POS side and consumer to consumer email payments, Apple from iTunes and mobile, Google from mobile and web properties, and PayPal from online merchants and consumer (though, in all honesty, I see so little innovation coming from PayPal I sometimes wonder if they see what's coming). I suspect the key is to win the consumer by bootstrapping with physical merchants, so I give the odds to Square, and to a lesser extent Google and Apple.

Apple and Amazon are other potential suitors for Square, but the company is kicking so much ass I doubt they'll sell. For all HN likes to spin acquisitions as victories, 95% of the time they are the final denouement of a defeated startup. When a startup is doing well, ambition takes over and selling is usually out of the question.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is beautiful but part of me wonders if this is like the prototype/MVP sites we see with really great photography of good looking people. How do you keep the presentation quality high at scale? How do you keep visitors from drowning in a sea of "me too" items like Etsy?

<comment><USER8> Definitely a challenge for them but Airbnb seem to have done fairly well here.

<comment><USER9> Yes, by hiring a legion of professional photographers and offering their services for free. That's a hard model to sustain/emulate

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Oh my god. I was just commenting in a Stripe thread about how insane it was that Square wasn't online and that they would capture tons of revenue if they would just stop being boneheaded and expose their API.

This isn't exactly that, but in a lot of respects, it's better. Way better.

Yikes. I need to rethink how I am selling online.

</comment><comment><USER11> Oooh. I have to check what the charge is on my current online shop solution, but it would be GREAT to have my online sales in the exact same database as my convention sales.

</comment><comment><USER12> One of the next possible steps for Square is definitely to enter the online food ordering space. They have the perfect way to do so, iPhone/iPad app & they take care of payment processing / disbursement. The amount of work they would need to put in is negligible now that they have this ;)

</comment><comment><USER13> This works at every Starbucks in the US. It's going to be big, if my estimation of the iPhone owners / Starbucks afficionados intersection is remotely correct (and providing Starbucks advertises it in their physical locations).

</comment><comment><USER14> This is a brilliant move by Square. This seems like the reverse-Milo.com problem.

I'm very happy that more and more of these payment companies are embracing marketplaces!

I, for one, want to see more marketplaces.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is an interesting move for Square, at least to me. When I think about the future of square I saw them pushing out against more established POS systems (with more deals like the Starbucks one).

This is a slightly different route, the main competitors seem to be etsy.

While in reality they're trying to landgrab as much payment related market as possible, and the two approaches are slightly related, in my mind I'm interested to see what they become known for.

</comment><comment><USER16> Site looks good. I just bought one of these [https://squareup.com/market/dodocase-2/sage-canvas- leather-w...](https://squareup.com/market/dodocase-2/sage-canvas-leather- wallet-sleeve-for-samsung-galaxy-s-nexus-htc-one). Everything was seamless except I couldn't figure out how to sign up for an account without having a square reader shipped to me.

</comment><comment><USER17> The design, typography, layout and mobile-friendliness are indeed brilliant. The simple white background and lack of navigation clutter really put the focus on the items being sold. Check out this photographer's store: [https://squareup.com/market/mel-ashar- photography](https://squareup.com/market/mel-ashar-photography). Great job Square!

</comment><comment><USER18> As well-executed as this marketplace is, I believe it's more of a prototype than a major new initiative.

Square-powered online payments is the endgame here. Today, on the Square marketplace. Tomorrow, on your own site, and in other marketplaces.

The competition is not other marketplaces and e-commerce software tools, but Stripe, PayPal, and even Visa/Mastercard.

</comment><comment><USER19> It seems like the pitch to consumers here is that you can shop at small and local businesses with your phone. Every business owner I've ever spoken to prefers cash for in-person payments if possible, because credit card processors take around 3% of each transaction. I imagine the total fees for paying with an app are even higher.

<comment><USER20> From the Square website: "Pay just 2.75% per swipe for all major credit cards or a flat monthly $275. No other fees—so you know exactly what you pay."

<comment><USER21> But there's a $21000/mo maximum for the $275/mo, after which it is 2.75% for additional swipes. Purchases >$400 also are charged at 2.75% for all volumes.

So, it's as low as 1.3% if you do exactly $21000/mo in sales. At $10k, it's break-even. Below $10k, it's worse than 2.75%. Between $10k and $21k it gets better, and gets worse past $21k. (Since they include Amex, this would be great for someone doing $21k/mo in Amex charges, though...I think only Costco pays less for their Amex charges.)

Compared to running your own account (which is probably about 1.5% all-in for big ticket sales), which clearly makes more sense at some volume ($50k-100k/mo vs. Stripe, probably)

<comment><USER19> I read that as 2.75% below $10K, but I think hitting $10K in Square sales per month is difficult if we (generously?) assume that's 10% of your customers, so effectively it's like any other ~3% CC for a majority of small and local businesses. It's good to hear it's not generally worse though, I guess they thought about that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I can not express the elation I have for Square _finally_ allowing online transactions. Great complement to Coinbase on my next project!

I had one like a year ago and now they have a flat $275 per month fee that applies to swiped and online. Definitely awesome!

EDIT: grammar

</comment><comment><USER23> Does anyone know if Square Market's shipping options have calculated shipping according to weight AND box dimensions? The calendars I ship are $5 to Chicago but $9 to California. Distance, weight, and dimensions are really important. I can't do flat shipping charges. I refuse to over charge all my customers to prevent losing money on shipping nor undercharging and eating into my profit by $4 per order.

Nearly all the marketplaces I've tried out (except for ebay) have terrible shipping options. It's 2013, everyone from USPS to FedEx to UPS have shipping apis that do down-to-the-penny shipping rate calculations, yet none (edit: not many of them) of the marketplaces and e-commerce stores take advantage of them. Apparently they think we business owners are just shipping 5 oz t-shirts.

Edit: MUST have weight + destination + box dimensions shipping calculations. (wordpress e-commerce plugin is the only one I could find that does)

<comment><USER18> You'd be way smarter to raise your price and offer free shipping. Especially when what you sell is unique - it's not like shoppers will find it elsewhere cheaper.

Online shoppers love free shipping, and shipping charges are a huge cause of cart abandonment.

<comment><USER24> So true...

I wrote a guest post about this on Hypebot: [http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2012/07/free-shipping-sex- bee...](http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2012/07/free-shipping-sex-beer.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Everything about this is beautiful. The idea, the UI, the timing, etc.

Furthermore, if you click around, it seems to be a higher end market. Is this intentional or do you think these were the only businesses interested in selling online?

<comment><USER26> That's almost certainly intensional. Square is obsessive about making a high- end impression whenever possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Took me awhile to figure out this is U.S. only currently. I was confused for ten minutes trying to figure out where the "Add to Cart" option is, until I VPN'd in.

</comment><comment><USER28> I can see a price, but no buy-now button without a login. And I see no reason to ever login. This seems to contravene a lot about what we have learned about ecommerce.

<comment><USER3> There is a "Check out as guest" option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is just brilliant.

</comment><comment><USER30> This is HUGE</comment>


Yes, You Can Write a Game in Just 10 Lines of Basic - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/tools-toys/yes-you-can-write-an-awesome-game-in-just-10-lines-of-basic <comment><USER2> It's surprisingly difficult to find links to the winners. With DDG's help I found the 2019 entries collected here. [https://www.dropbox.com/sh/zj7u96etduyq6bv/AADtnnxtBq0XQNYtH...](https://www.dropbox.com/sh/zj7u96etduyq6bv/AADtnnxtBq0XQNYtH0hUug0Da?dl=0)</comment>


Xkcd - Boyfriend - Statistically Significant Other - <AUTHOR> http://xkcd.com/539/ <comment><USER2> Protip: don't blow the punchline in the title.</comment>


To Slow Global Warming, We Need Nuclear Power (Op-Ed) - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/21/opinion/to-slow-global-warming-we-need-nuclear-power.html <comment><USER2> My undergrad is in Physics and I took engineering classes in Rickover Hall. I was stationed on a nuclear ship. Even after deploying for the Fukushima disaster, I am a fan of nuclear power. But I have a hard time justifying new investment in an era where solar is competitively priced. The downside of solar is approximately 0 compared to the downside of a reactor accident.

I'll even allow for the high, high likelihood that more people will die installing roof-top solar than will ever die in the lifetime of all nuclear reactors combined. The political capital lost in a reactor accident isn't worth it. The lost of faith in technology, the loss of trust in science. The mass hysteria just isn't worth it.

<comment><USER3> Don't even bother talking about political capital. Nuclear is a worse option because it is overpriced, period. It's not just the downsides that are subsidized by the government, the actual running cost is hidden behind reams of bureaucracy, hidden program budgets, optimistic amortizations, and underestimated decommissioning costs. And even then the reactors still manage to go massively over budget with the initial construction.

People like to feel superior to others by citing fear as the reason nuclear is being avoided, but the real reason anyone should oppose it is straight up costs, without even any disasters factored in. Any other choice with the current and next-3-decades technology is just pissing money away, when it could be spent continuing renewables' rapid decline in cost.

<comment><USER4> First, there can be little doubt that a substantial fraction of the high cost of nuclear is down to almost the entire west being scared stiff of the stuff for thirty years. If we gave actual scientists and engineers a real mandate to come up with a pragmatic, realistic (ie accepting a small amount of risk as acceptable, perhaps something on the scale of a single Fukushima every 30 years, just like we accept a small amount of risk everywhere else - driving, living in hurricane country, even flying isn't perfectly safe) regulatory regime, costs would surely come back down.

Second, funny how costs suddenly matter when it's about nuclear. Barely a month goes by without some new unimaginable mind numbing (wholly impractical) 'solution' to climate change that we're being implored to consider, because it's about saving the planet for our children. Nuclear is a perfectly practical, _much_ cheaper (if still very expensive), 80% solution to climate change that we can actually start implementing today, but somehow it's not on the table. Somehow it doesn't seem all that plausible that cost is really the issue.

In short, climate change is the biggest issue facing the world (except nuclear and fracking). I'm very excited that the NYT is being practical here.

<comment><USER5> It is interesting how you say that nuclear might be cheaper and at the same time accept an incident like fukushima every 30 years like you pay 1000 peanuts and that it alright again. Maybe you will allow a nuclear plant in your backyard but most people already have a problem with wind power. This has nothing to do with fear about the technology itself but about the decrease in property value in vicinity of the plant. So, may be your intention is good but not realistic as the Hinkley Point C plant for 30+ billion pound in england shows.

So if I have two solutions that are equally expensive but one leaves me with radioactive waste, why would you chose that one? And while I agree that we need some back up plan to stabilize the net load, that also wont be nuclear power as those plants are not fast in start up managment either.

<comment><USER6> Any such decrease in property value is precisely because of the irrational fear of nuclear power.

> So, may be your intention is good but not realistic as the Hinkley Point C > plant for 30+ billion pound in england shows.

Government should not fund or provide any guarantees to such projects; we should tax carbon and let people decide what to do (in which case, we wouldn't even need to argue which is cheaper and we can just let power companies figure it out).

> So if I have two solutions that are equally expensive but one leaves me with > radioactive waste, why would you chose that one?

Isn't solar more expensive when you factor in the cost of batteries (which would be required if solar scales up; i.e. a diseconomy of scale)? Please correct me if I'm wrong.

<comment><USER7> It's completely rational to reduce property values when there is a risk you will be forced to move and lose all your possessions. If the risk is say 0.3% over the next hundred years paying every homeowner ~20,000$ within 40 miles when the plant is built to offset that risk is completely rational, but would make nuclear Even less viable.

<comment><USER8> >there is a risk you will be forced to move and lose all your possessions.

Can you give me a street address for somewhere that this isn't a possibility?

My house is heated by natural gas - it could literally explode while I'm at work today.

<comment><USER7> Risk X exists has nothing to do with risk Y. Nuclear powerplants increase risks so the local population should be compensated.

<comment><USER9> Hard to assess that risk. No modern plant has had catastrophic failure like that. Essentially there's no data to extrapolate from.

<comment><USER10> TEPCO had a modern plan to fix the issue before it happened. They decided not to act. Nuclear power takes the decision out of your hands, and puts it in the hands of organizations like that. I prefer something like solar which keeps power in my own control, local, decentralized, not decided by some huge behemoth that is driven by money and actuarial charts.

<comment><USER9> Yet the topic is, will future nuclear plants be needed to slow global warming? Future plants (indeed all current plants) will include safety plans and devices. Such plants have not had catastrophic events.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The initial estimates for the cost to repair the damage caused by Fukushima were as far as I remember, around 50 billion dollars. According to a recent news article [1], the costs are now estimated at 250 billion dollars. They just keep on increasing. And then there is also the human/environmental damage to consider.

I have been excited about nuclear since my school days, but at this point the downside if something goes wrong is imo just not financially worth it. I would much rather pay 2x for a safer solar plant with similar output than invest something this high-risk. It's like selling uncovered options, with no way to set a stop-loss or to recover if anything goes wrong.

I think it is likely that at some point the global community will also realize that the cost considering the risks is just not worth it and begin to move away from nuclear fission. Especially if any another incident like Fukushima happens in the next decade or so; that could have big implications on nuclear policy.

[1]:[http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-17/fukushima- nuclear-c...](http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-17/fukushima-nuclear- clean-up,-compensation-costs-nearly-double/8127268?pfmredir=sm)

<comment><USER12> The advantages of advancing technology and building smaller safer reactors would go a long way to avoiding such disasters. Because things can go wrong is not a reason to stop research into making them better and safer. The real way to keep ahead of this is not to extend the life span of existing reactors but to build aggressively in order to take older ones offline as newer smaller safer reactors are ready.

And keep doing that.

<comment><USER13> Iterating aggressively is great when the consequences aren't as dire as nuclear mistakes.

The last thing I'd want is more plants built aggressively when stupid mistakes happen at the non-aggressive rate, such as installing the reactor backwards.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Onofre_Nuclear_Generating_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Onofre_Nuclear_Generating_Station#Safety_issues)

<comment> shawn-furyan +1

Design is not actualization.

So the salient question becomes:

How robust are modern reactor designs to manufacturing/construction/installation/etc. errors?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> You need a combination of solar, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, and yes nuclear. What some forget is base load power. One of the main reasons natural gas is used as an alternative for coal despite still producing carbon emissions is because it also can be used as a base load electric grid fuel. Nuclear can provide clean base load power.

I understand many are concerned, especially after the terrible tragedy at Fukushima; however there are ways we can prevent that tragedy from ever reoccurring. By transitioning to nuclear technologies utilizing fuel cycles that consume nuclear waste or use fuels capable of reducing risk of meltdown accidents, we can get closer to both clean energy and safety. We don't primarily need nuclear but it should be considered in the mix at least for baseload considerations.

</comment><comment><USER15> When will the mainstream consider it acceptable to talk about reducing consumption (without confusing it with lowering the standard of living) and reducing the population (without confusing it with eugenics)?

We waste incredible amounts and a lower population means more goods for everyone.

I'm not saying they solve everything. I'm just asking when we can talk about these issues that are a lot easier to implement than splitting atoms.

<comment><USER16> We've been splitting atoms for 70 years. France has run its electric grid on 80% nuclear power. What's our track record on reducing consumption and population?

Not saying we shouldn't do them all, but I don't think nuclear is the most difficult of these three.

<comment><USER17> France was able to run at 80% fission because they were selling excess production at low domestic demand times to adjacent territories. If you want to use nuclear for more than base load, you run into similar storage/transmission issues to solar/wind.

Either way, we need a larger and more capable grid, so that production and demand can be balanced over larger areas.

<comment><USER16> Modern nuclear plants are able to load follow [1]. The main reason we use them for base load is that nuclear's cost is mainly fixed, so it makes economic sense to run them at full capacity and follow demand with fossil, which has lower fixed costs and higher variable costs.

Molten salt reactors would be quite good at load following, because the reaction rate slows down so much as the fuel temperature increases. If you draw less power, you apply less cooling, so the fuel heats and the power output goes down. For example, the IMSR, likely the first MSR to be commercialized, is naturally a load-following reactor [2].

This doesn't mean it wouldn't make economic sense to, say, run nuclear for baseload, add solar for extra daytime demand, and use storage to smooth out the remaining demand mismatch. But that's a matter of economic optimization, not a technical limitation of nuclear.

[1] [http://ansnuclearcafe.org/2013/02/14/responding-to-system- de...](http://ansnuclearcafe.org/2013/02/14/responding-to-system- demand/#sthash.VRgqQpEI.dpbs)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMSR#Control](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMSR#Control)

<comment><USER17> IMSR looks like promising technology, but it's not yet proven. I'm hopeful Terrestrial Energy succeeds in commercializing it and competing with existing energy sources (without subsidies). Even if they do, it will not be a one size fits all solution, though.

In contrast, we know with near certitude that investment in basic infrastructure, such as a capable and robust power grid, will promote a plurality of solutions and pay for itself over time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> We will probably have no better production-ready, scalable, (minimally) carbon-free option for energy production to combat climate change in our lifetimes.

If you don't believe me and you haven't seen a real scientist explain the scale of the energy problem in a cogent way, you should watch Nathan Lewis:

2005: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUKqx2uk- Gs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUKqx2uk-Gs)

2014: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16IQhTiN6OI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16IQhTiN6OI)

If he cannot sell you, no one will ... and he's a solar guy.

<comment><USER19> I'm not that old. I believe that I'll see a fusion reactor connected to the grid.

<comment><USER18> Maybe one day. My bet is that, at best, a commercially built one won't be switched on before 2065. ITER [1] is and will continue to be behind schedule and over budget, pushing back any follow on plans for DEMO [2], let alone the subsequent commercialization of that technology. Of course, there's always hope for a breakthrough.

[1]

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

[2]

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Had to look up the writers of this op-ed: they're Lamar Alexander (R-TN)[0] and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)[1].

Not sure if they're in the pocket of the nuclear industry or not, but given the (correct) points by others that nuclear is more expensive than other renewables, it wouldn't surprise me if there is an ulterior motive to this op- ed than stopping climate change.

Specifically, I'd have to disagree with this statement:

> For one thing, we should extend existing reactor licenses from 60 to 80 > years, in cases where the Nuclear Regulatory Commission says it is safe to > do so.

In almost no cases should reactors that are 60 years old have their operating licenses extended. These are almost all Generation II reactor designs [2] which have the same safety faults as Fukushima. For example, the Generation III design includes facilities designed to contain a melted core [3]. While these obviously haven't been tested with a real core melt-down, these kind of improvements could have made Fukushima arguably less of an environmental disaster.

I really wish the US would look into LFTR again, as they did in the 70's and China is doing now [4]. LFTR have some distinct safety advantages to the PWR/BWR designs favoured by the industry. Unfortunately, all the big money is behind PWR/BWR and no one wants to take the risk and invest in developing LFTR reactors for civilian use in the USA.

Costs less to modify the flawed but time tested PWR/BWR designs than to risk investing in designing an LFTR reactor that no utility would every pay money for due to the lack of a proven track record.

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

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

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

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

[4] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reacto...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactor)

</comment><comment> Altay- Per-capita energy usage is already falling across the developed world. And that's just with current trends. We could easily tax electricity far higher in most countries, mandate higher efficiency (the US still uses giant furnaces and hot water heaters) and tax carbon.

Why do people on Hacker News seem so drawn to Nuclear? Its insanely expensive, it takes forever for a plant to come online, and worst of all for an industry that likes to remain 'boring' \-- it draws too much public attention.

Why fight all that? WHY?

<comment><USER21> Because when a super volcano eruption blocks out the sun for 6 months we could still have a stable baseline.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> For those of you suggesting solar as a better solution read this article [1] about the toxic waste (silicon tetrachloride) produced in solar panel manufacturing. Add to that the storage problems [2] [3] and impact of land use of massive solar installations [4] and it's no longer a home run even if the price is coming down.

[1] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2008/03...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2008/03/08/AR2008030802595.html)

[2] [http://www.npr.org/2015/08/04/427734398/when-relying-on- the-...](http://www.npr.org/2015/08/04/427734398/when-relying-on-the-sun- energy-storage-remains-out-of-reach)

[3] [http://www.businessinsider.com/renewable-energy-storage- prob...](http://www.businessinsider.com/renewable-energy-storage- problem-2013-11)

[4] [https://carnegiescience.edu/news/solar- energy%E2%80%99s-land...](https://carnegiescience.edu/news/solar- energy%E2%80%99s-land-use-impact)

</comment><comment><USER23> Nuclear power also leaves behind waste that is hazardous for between 10.000 and 1.000.000 years ( [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste) ), i.e. has t be stored safely for that amount of time. Most countries using nuclear power haven't even found a site to store waste permanently (e. g. Germany), let alone figured out how to tell future generations to stay away.

<comment><USER24> This sounds crass(?) to ask, but if we already have some, does more make it much worse?

At this point we HAVE some nuclear waste already. Safely storing nuclear waste is an extremely difficult problem, and one we have yet to fully solve.

But if I have X tons to store for 10k+ years, what's the marginal cost of increasing X by a factor of two, or ten, or a hundred? (And what sort of increase in X would we be looking at?)

If someone told me to figure out how to affordably and safely store five megatons of nuclear waste (rough number from a quick Google search), I'd spend a lot of time with lots of experts figuring something out. If partway through you came back and said "oops, make that ten megatons", I might say "oh snap, our current site/plan doesn't scale", but I feel like it's more likely that I'd say "well, the bulk of the solution scales just fine". (Maybe the site wouldn't scale and the political NIMBY part would have to be redone, though, which is not a small problem.)

But I don't know! The fact that we haven't figured out the problem means maybe we should put some effort into that, but we if we're going to scale up nuclear, we should probably do it _soon_. Probably twenty years ago or so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Just to remind the nuclear fans here: cost of Chernobyl: estimated around 201b euros, cost of lives: between 4000 and several hundred thousands indirectly, the area is a radioactive wasteland for centuries to come, the reactor still needs additional protection. The effects are still measurable all over Europe, resettlement of thousands of people.

That is ONE reactor gone wrong.

Why anyone would build another one when solar is down to .21 per watts is beyond me.

<comment><USER26> > That is ONE reactor gone wrong.

That is ONE reactor that was of a design many years out of date at the time of the failure, a failure where the people at the controls turned off the safety controls, then turned off the back up safety controls, then intentionally put the reactor in an unsafe state.

France gets 76% of its power from nuclear energy and has never gone above 4 on the INES scale, with an average clean up cost of 24.7 million USD[1].

There needs to be a Godwin's law for the Chernobyl. There are so many caveats and "yes buts" and weird political contexts to everything about that accident that it really isn't helpful when talking about nuclear reactors (unless you're talking about how politics and human intervention can screw up the best laid plans of mice and men).

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

<comment><USER27> > That is ONE reactor that was of a design many years out of date at the time > of the failure, a failure where the people at the controls turned off the > safety controls, then turned off the back up safety controls, then > intentionally put the reactor in an unsafe state.

Yes, reality exists. The existence of reality and all the flaws that come with it is another argument of many against nuclear fission.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I was in kindergarten about 13 miles away when the Three Mile Island (TMI) accidentally occurred. I recall people being panicked about it and my neighbors jamming up the roads trying to get away. There was great controversy when they wanted to restart the undamaged reactor. Most of the controversy surrounding whether the operator could be trusted to run the plant safely as the accident was largely the result of poor management and inadequately qualified operators at the controls.

Despite having lived through all that I still support nuclear power. I think a standardized design approach like they have in France is the right way to go as it can lower costs and improve safety. I think standardization can also improve trust by reducing the likelihood that human factors could cause an accident.

</comment><comment><USER29> One of the best retorts to the anti-nuclear position comes from Richard Rhodes, author of "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" on an episode of "Book TV" on C-Span in response to a caller asking/warning about nuclear waste.[0] In this 3 minute clip he lays out a very compelling argument for nuclear power.

Here's the article in Foreign Affairs he references in the clip (registration (free) required).[1]

[0][https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4639510/richard-rhodes- nuclea...](https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4639510/richard-rhodes-nuclear- power)

[1] [https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2000-01-01/need- nucl...](https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2000-01-01/need-nuclear- power)

</comment><comment><USER30> Third generation reactor designs like the AP1000 and EPR were, prior to actual construction, promoted as increasing safety _and_ reducing construction costs/time via standardization and simpler passive safety features, compared to older Generation II/II+ reactors that currently make up most of the world's operating reactors. Now that they're actually under construction these reactor designs too are terribly over-budget and over-schedule, just like the 1980s reactor projects that burned US utilities bad enough to scare them away for a generation.

AFAICT "late and over budget" _usually_ happens with megaprojects of all kinds, and unfortunately commercial power reactors are only available in "mega" sizes. The AP1000 and EPR especially were designed larger than median Gen II units, for economies of scale, but seem to be reaping anti-economies of scale. Small modular reactors with a faster learning curve and more units to learn across might finally tame schedule and cost problems... but it's hard to find investors optimistic and deep-pocketed enough to spend a decade iterating on the concept with real hardware. Most "nuclear startups" are stuck at nothing but simulations and PowerPoint.

Shouldn't government be making these sorts of high-risk, high-reward, long term investments? They should, but unfortunately political opposition to nuclear power is much more concentrated, if not more broad, than support.

<comment><USER31> The UK government just made a big commitment to a new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point C, largely funded by a high guaranteed cost per unit of electricity.

I'm doubtful it will ever go live though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Not all nuclear energy is the same. I encourage people to check out Thorium.

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

[http://energyfromthorium.com/](http://energyfromthorium.com/)

<comment><USER33> Thorium still has some major technical issues such as corrosion from molten salts though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> It's kind of unfortunate that the label "nuclear power" seems to inevitably bundle both nuclear _fission_ and nuclear _fusion_ into the same public policy debate. Their respective safety profiles couldn't be further apart.

While the economic risks for a failed nuclear fusion strategy can be argued, given even a modest chance for eventually producing large amounts of clean and safe energy output 24/7, should we not be pursuing fusion more aggressively?

<comment><USER35> Last year I met a doctor that work at the experimental ITER fusion plant. He was pretty optimistic about the technology but totally desperate about budget.

It's an international initiative and US are actually one of the country that pay the least compared to its Income per capita...

By today funding it's clear that real solutions won't be ready until 2050, hence fission is still required in the mix until then. I don't get how people can blinding defend that renewable alone is the answer, because once you do the math it just don't work.

<comment><USER36> From a few weeks ago on HN, I watched this video[1] that made me much more optimistic about fusion. The bottom line is that the ITAR direction is misguided since superconducting technology has come so far in recent years.

The video is worth the watch.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkpqA8yG9T4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkpqA8yG9T4)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> If you just extrapolate the exponential improvements we've seen with solar and batteries for another decade or two they'll be way cheaper than fission plants. And it'll take a good decade for them to come on line.

The outlook for fusion is surprisingly positive. I never thought I'd see it in my lifetime but there have been a bunch of breakthroughs recently. See the "Breakthrough in Nuclear Fusion?" talk from Dennis Whyte, head of Nuclear at MIT. The main bit 00:26-00:30 - they just have to build a reactor the size of the JET reactor (existing near Oxford) but with the new REBCO tape (also existing and available) and you could have a funtioning power generator [https://youtu.be/KkpqA8yG9T4?t=26m6s](https://youtu.be/KkpqA8yG9T4?t=26m6s)

They should crack ahead and build one of those.

</comment><comment><USER38> The thing I worry about nuclear power is that, with the latest events in 2015 and 2016, once again we saw that, we are still pretty bad at preventing terrorist attacks and I cannot think about how a terrorist attack to a nuclear plant end up? I am even surprised that no big attack has been made to such a dangerous facility.

<comment><USER39> I think you might be overestimating the risk here.

A nuclear power plant is essentially a massive concrete bunker. It's designed to contain a nuclear reaction, so I suspect you'd need a phenomenal amount of explosives to cause any damage, and if you have those, there are likely much more effective ways to use them for terrorism.

If instead you attack the facility to attempt to gain control and cause a meltdown, you'd need to gain access to all the various safety overrides, and then hold that position for as long as it takes the reactor to meltdown. And that's assuming there are no absolute fail-safes that can't be disabled.

And all this is assuming that the failure mode of the reactor is even bad enough to cause significant damage, which is less the case with newer reactors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Is it technically possible to have a global power grid, where solar generated on the sunny side of the earth can be used on the dark side, eliminating the need for energy storage?

<comment><USER41> Massive infrastructure costs, the need for political coordination, and transmission losses [1] make this scenario unlikely.

[1] [http://insideenergy.org/2015/11/06/lost-in-transmission- how-...](http://insideenergy.org/2015/11/06/lost-in-transmission-how-much- electricity-disappears-between-a-power-plant-and-your-plug/)

<comment><USER42> Transmission losses aren't the restriction that many people imply. Modern HVDC lines have less than half the losses as compared to a similar-length AC line.

There's a cable under construction from Scotland to England that will have a 2,200MW capacity, will run over 400km, and will have losses under 3%.[1]

Brazil finished a 7,700MW line that runs _2,400km_ from a series of hydroelectric dams to major population centers with something like 8% losses. Sure, 8% of 7,700MW is a ton of energy lost, but 8% for moving power from the equivalent distance of Denver to NYC is pretty damn good.

It's not out of the realm of possibilities to build a HVDC line from England to the US within the next decade or two. If you figure 6,000km and 1.5% losses per 1,000km, you might be able to keep the total loss below 10%. Run an 800KV line (or a pair of 800KV lines) and you could probably install a 15+ GW of transmission capacity.

[1] - [http://www.eaem.co.uk/news/world-beating-%E2%82%AC11bn- under...](http://www.eaem.co.uk/news/world-beating-%E2%82%AC11bn-under-sea- cable-connect-england-and-scotland)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I used to think that global warming was a slam dunk.

But then I looked at the data... the carbon makeup of the atmosphere hasn't changed much at all, and we have already reached peak oil. If the carbon sinks (oceans etc.) can hold 2x the current amount they absorbed without much trouble then we are in the clear.

Perhaps CFCs and Ozone Depleting Substances present a danger but we have largely reduced their use since the 90s.

So I am not sure anymore than people will mess up the ATMOSPHERE globally. Locally - yes. And that doesn't let people off the hook when it comes to overfishing, logging forests, destroying ecosystems such as rainforests, wild bees and monarch butterflies, introducing new predators into oceans, non- biodegradable plastic, turning the world into farms etc etc.

Having said that, where is the data showing humans having a huge effect on the atmosphere composition??

<comment><USER44> Were these the graphs you were looking at?

global temperature anomaly since 1880 -- [http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/](http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/) carbon dioxide for last 400k years -- [http://climate.nasa.gov/vital- signs/carbon-dioxide/](http://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/carbon-dioxide/)

One person I met seemed to think that CO2 would be balanced by algae blooms in the oceans, but he wasn't a climate scientist. Nonetheless, if the ice caps melt enough before CO2 is compensated for, they'll release tons of methane which is an order of magnitude more potent than CO2.

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

Here's NASA's site on the evidence for global warming: [http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/](http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/)

Here's a site that discusses the evidence that humans are at fault: [http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/sci...](http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/science/human- contribution-to-gw-faq.html)

<comment><USER43> See my reply to a sister comment for the data I am speaking of.

I agree that currently we have some _correlation_ of global warming and CO2 increase, but this doesn't prove causation esp considering the 70s experienced global cooling.

[https://skepticalscience.com/empirical-evidence-for- co2-enha...](https://skepticalscience.com/empirical-evidence-for-co2-enhanced- greenhouse-effect.htm)

AND the main point is that there is a limit on how much more Co2 can be released: roughly the same amount that already has, if we reached peak fossil fuels. To put things in perspective, that's going from 0.03% to max 0.06% concentration. CO2's effect as a greenhouse gas should be measured as a function of its concentration relative to the TOTAL atmosphere. Maybe it rises exponentially, but maybe not. Like putting layers of paint on a window. We'd need hard numbers.

Meanwhile... no matter what you do, carbon credits or not, eventually ALL the fossil fuels WILL be burned up so it's only a matter of time. Better to learn to build artificial carbon sinks and methane sinks to capture the CO2 back underground. It's called forests and algae. Want to save the world? Plant forests!

[http://www.americanforests.org/magazine/article/north- americ...](http://www.americanforests.org/magazine/article/north-american- forests-in-the-age-of-man/)

On the other hand we CAN reduce the amount of methane by reducing the amount of cows we raise for hamburgers etc.

<comment><USER45> I presume you're trolling, but I still think it worth pointing out that no science proves causation. The scientific method, for example, only rejects null hypotheses--that is, alternative explanations. Scientists and society writ large come to tentative, qualified conclusions about causation by assessing, among other things,

      1) consistency with observed phenomena, especially
         consistent, multi-dimensional correlations
      2) predictive strength, including accurate and
         precise predictions (direct or indirect) coming to pass
         that demonstrate the explanatory power of a theory
      3) lack of alternative, more persuasive theories

None are necessary and none are always sufficient to cause us to tentatively adopt a theory of causation. But the stronger the evidence the better. Note that all three are, strictly speaking, categories of correlation; all are circumstantial. Therefore all science is fundamentally based on correlation. There's always the possibility of some kind of hidden structure or alternative explanation; you cannot rule out all such possibilities, only a subset. You select a working theory, if at all, from among the remaining, proposed explanations by heuristic and probabilistic methodologies.

If you reject climate change because it doesn't prove causation, then you're literally rejecting all of science. There is no scientific theory nor any kind of empirical "fact" that you cannot cast doubt upon in such a manner.

I won't even touch your other points.

<comment><USER46> The point about a scientific theory is that you test it and if its predictions do not agree with the observed facts - it's wrong. No ifs or buts. Back to the drawing board. At least that should be the approach. [https://youtu.be/EYPapE-3FRw](https://youtu.be/EYPapE-3FRw).

What do we see in climatology?

"The IPCC have produced 102 climate models to predict our future climate. The world's meteorological organizations use weather models to forecast and predict weather and have been for many years. They have proved to be very accurate over 4 days and reasonably accurate over a week. The IPCC's climate models are notoriously inaccurate. We've had these models now for some 30 years and we now have 30 years of data to compare them against. They are not even close to accurate."

Facts trumped by theory? Looks like it these days!

[https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/12/21/homogenization-of- tem...](https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/12/21/homogenization-of-temperature- data-by-the-bureau-of-meteorology/)

<comment><USER43> As ever, activists take over institutions by pushing an ideology or agenda. And then when people try to inquire about the holes and bring up facts, they start personal attacks and bullying, while providing very little in on-point substantive answers.

"Troll", "Racist", "Creationist", "Climate change denier".

So much easier than just engaging with the substance and proving people wrong with facts, answering questions, admitting when we don't know and being intellectually honest.

Reasonable people are open to being proven wrong. But throwing an epithet while providing inadequate answers does the opposite. "Oh, I'm a troll? Ok I changed my mind I am convinced! Thanks!" _That 's not how it works._ You're covering up your own lack of knowledge with emotion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> There's interest in small and medium nuclear reactors, including interest from Trump's transition team. The IAEA has a brochure on the 40 or so competing designs.[1] A few are under construction. None seem to be operating yet.

Russia is building more nuclear powered icebreakers. Those are close to completion. One with a new reactor design was launched in 2016 but is not yet operating.

2017 may be a good year for nuclear power. A few plants are scheduled to come on line.

[1] [https://www.iaea.org/NuclearPower/Downloadable/SMR/files/IAE...](https://www.iaea.org/NuclearPower/Downloadable/SMR/files/IAEA_SMR_Booklet_2014.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER48> One advantage of nuclear power relative to other renewable sources is that it that unlike wind/solar, it can provide consistent energy 24/7\. Our energy storage solutions are simply not good enough to provide sufficient power in downtimes.

If your concern is safety, then nuclear power seems to be the best choice: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents)

</comment><comment><USER49> Assuming nuclear can slow it, we needed it 20 years ago, not now.

<comment><USER50> Yes, yes, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best is today. Is nuclear any different? I am unaware of anything about nuclear energy that would have worked 20 years ago but is a bad idea to do today.

<comment><USER51> unlike 20 years ago, we're producing cheap solar panels faster than we can install them

<comment><USER52> We're not building grid-scale storage at that rate yet though

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> pl-94 Unfortunately, we still need nuclear power: 1) Wind and solar are intermittent. Even if you produce more than what you consume, you still have to deal with the huge consumption peak of the evening. This is huge. No solution for now about it. 2) Energy storage is not scalable. It is available for smart homes, but there is just not enough lithium-ion on Earth to deal with the evening peak. Flywheels have too small performances. 3) Germany consumes more coals now that it has stopped its nuclear plants. 4) With respect to coal and gas, nuclear power is better: less dependance to Middle East, no CO2, very good EROEI, and actually, it is responsable for much less deaths than other energy sources.

The real issues about nuclear powers are: 1) It provides less jobs than renewable energies (mainly when people will produce their own energy). 2) It will cost more than solar panels. But not yet.'

So. The solution is to continue the current nuclear plants for 20 years, not to invest in new ones; and expecting in the meantime that storage is becoming scalable.

</comment><comment><USER53> Before new nuclar reactors are built, the long term storage problem needs to be solved. It's just unacceptable for future generations and makes cost estimates impossible. For all we know, it will never be a solved problem and the world will grow more unstable making highly radioactive nuclear waste something that has to be heavily guarded, making it even more expensive.

</comment><comment><USER54> Im pretty sure, reading the comments below, i will find lots of engineering solutions to make nuclear power saver. And those solutions will be good.

But how to make nuclear power saver, when the economy takes a downturn and middle management at the plant closes both eyes to cheap, not on spec repairs and not-so-excellent replacement solutions for the problems. How do you ensure a constant high-maintenance machine against the corroding forces of the market? State maintenance funds? But this would be unfair to any energetic non-carbon replacement energy source. On the other hand, the rise of solar could lead to a series of Chernobyl by economic neglect. And that is why i am against nuclear- they are able to hold there economic surroundings hostage.

</comment><comment><USER10> I favor solar instead because it's not so subject to control by a centralized power (corporations and governments).

Given the right conditions, any property owner can just add solar to their property, generally at an affordable cost and with incremental rollout if needed, and they have full control over at least that slice of their energy use.

</comment><comment><USER55> I'm not a nuclear engineer so I hesitate to shit up the thread with my armchair opinion, but I'm a big fan of small, low maintenance reactor designs like the Toshiba 4S. I feel like that's the way it ought to go: Away from large stationary reactor installations that require a huge amount of skilled labor on site for construction and maintenance, and toward modular banks of reactors that can be taken offline and refurbished off-site.

With a smaller, one size fits all design, one might expect to find economies of scale that don't currently exist. In much the same way, SpaceX seeks to make Falcon launches routine and push down costs of their incredibly complex machine through rapid iteration and refinement -- although reactor failures in the field must not be of the "energetic" variety of course.

Are there limitations of physics that will keep nuclear power stuck in the mainframe era, or might we see a commodity revolution?

</comment><comment><USER56> Dr. Leslie Dewan has developed a Nuclear Reactor that can run on the Nuclear Waste we currently have all around the world. Learn More: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UXXwWOImm8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UXXwWOImm8)

<comment><USER57> Isn't the problem with these the extremely corrosive salt liquid that needs to be contained and there isn't any reasonable solutions to do that at this time?

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Isn't nuclear still really expensive? I read that Entergy was shutting down some nuclear plants they recently acquired because they had not-good track records and it cost more to produce energy than what they could sell it for [0].

In networking terms, nuclear energy always felt like Infinband or ATM to me. In theory, superior in many ways but in reality a pain in the ass that never really quite worked well. What the world needs is Ethernet and nothing more. I'm not sure what the energy equivalent of Ethernet is, but I know it aint nuclear.

[0] [http://www.nbcchicago.com/investigations/Nuclear-Plant-on- La...](http://www.nbcchicago.com/investigations/Nuclear-Plant-on-Lake- Michigan-Plans-to-Permanently-Shut-Down-405526615.html)

<comment><USER59> The expense comes from unwise regulation and lack of development i.e. pork.

It works perfectly fine in france which is 80% powered by nuclear.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France#/media...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France#/media/File:Electricity_in_France.svg)

<comment><USER58> "We? No, we are not French. We're American, because you're in America, okay? Greatest country on the planet." (movie quote before anyone gets too upset)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Nuclear is only part of the solution. It doesn't scale up or down very quickly. Solar, wind, and energy capture mechanisms are still very much part of the solution. If we're efficient enough in the last three, we don't need the first.

</comment><comment><USER61> For nuclear power to be feasible, we need different kinds of designs than the historically common ones.

1\. Passive safety features are a must, period -- especially in a world full of hackers and terrorists (or at least terrorist wannabes). Obviously, they don't protect against all human error, accidental or deliberate as the case may be. But they sure could lower the risks.

2\. We also need truly standardized manufacturing. It seems that the buzzword there is "SMR" \-- Small Modular Reactor. This is for multiple reasons. Cost and general safety are the most obvious. Further, site-specific safety analyses would actually have a chance of being correct.

</comment><comment><USER62> And to even reverse global warming I suggest a full blown nuclear war. All the CO2 producing industry will be destroyed and the nuclear winter afterwards should be cold enough even for hardcore global warming alarmists.

</comment><comment><USER63> Always been curious about this - wont nuclear plants increase thermal input of earth ? True for fossil fuels too which were never burnt in such vast quantity

These energy sources are outside of solar energy so how much more can they warm up the earth ?

<comment><USER64> All energy produced in any type of power plant eventually becomes heat. Fossil fuels have the additional property of making Earth retain more of it.

Solar could also increase the temperature if it traps energy that would otherwise be immediately reflected back to space. I'm not sure if the difference is significant, though, compared to the effect of greenhouse gases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Nuclear was the correct answer 15 years ago. It is no longer 15 years ago.

<comment><USER22> > It is no longer 15 years ago.

It never is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> What (if any) progress is being made on producing nuclear power via groups of much smaller reactors, instead of larger reactors that are more failure prone?

What are the latest trends in the nuclear power industry?

</comment><comment><USER67> If managed correctly, it's far far cleaner than coal and oil.

</comment><comment><USER68> You only need nuclear power to get grasp upon unlimited solar energy from the orbital plants. Russia is building nuclear powered large spaceship engine right now.

<comment><USER69> Space is one of the big ones for me, we need nuclear for space exploration, I'm fine with solar for earth as long as we keep nuclear science up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> To slow global warming, we needed more nuclear power in the 70s, and continuing investments in it along the way, rather than slowly decommissioning the plants we did have.

I'm not really a utilitarian, but people freaking out over three relatively minor incidents with nuclear plants is a terrible justification for avoiding nuke power and accepting coal, with all of the side effects that mining, transporting, and burning that stuff entails.

</comment><comment><USER71> The article is one big fallacy. It is absolutely correct that today nuclear is the main source of carbon-free power generation. But that does not say much about what the best technology for _new_ installations is. If built to good safety standards, nuclear is not cheap. Solar and wind should be much cheaper, and of course completely safe alternatives. Unfortunately, the article does not discuss any of these alternatives.

</comment><comment><USER72> Sad to see again another propaganda nuclear article at HN. I remember the top article after the Fukushima disaster at HN was an astroturfing blog post on why Fukushima is no big deal (with a lot of misinformation).

Here we are again ...

Even if we take out the major catastrophy scenarios there's still the waste problem to deal with (and no it's not solved with the newest tech).

And of course, I will get downvotes for that ;)

</comment><comment><USER73> [http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/equality.pdf](http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/equality.pdf) -

Beware of the person who gives advice, telling you that a certain action on your part is "good for you" while it is also good for him, while the harm to you doesn't directly affect him.

</comment><comment><USER74> the future is Molten salt reactors - not because of this article, because it is the only abundant fuel for the two of the largest energy consumers for the next two decades: India and China.

India+China have the world's largest thorium resources. China is also investing more than a billion dollars in molten salt reactor research (led by the son of Jiang Zemin) [1]

Peter Thiel, who is pretty much the think tank for the new government, has a personal investment in Transatomic Power that is doing very interesting work here. I see no reason that this project will not receive a shot in the arm after January.

TLDR : India + China + Peter Thiel = Molten Salt Reactors

[1] [http://fortune.com/2015/02/02/doe-china-molten-salt- nuclear-...](http://fortune.com/2015/02/02/doe-china-molten-salt-nuclear- reactor/)

</comment><comment><USER75> Again, these articles lack a specific plan. I would have thought that there would have been enough time to come up with numbers: how many reactors, over which period of time, costs, hiw to finance it, how to build-up the industry, what is the actual contribution in CO2 reduction, who would build them, ...

</comment><comment><USER76> Its quite fun to imagine, how ultimately the urge to share your life with other ( all trillion $ semiconductor industry for what, sharing your cat pic ? ), has propagated whole era of advance semi conductor technology, which in turn have been primary cause of reduction in solar power price.

</comment><comment><USER77> "Carbon emissions from the electricity sector increased 24 percent after the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in California closed." Because existing coal generating stations can be scaled up quickly. With planing one could have also build a solar generator before.

</comment><comment><USER78> Here's a Ted Talk that says the same thing:

[https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_shellenberger_how_fear_of_...](https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_shellenberger_how_fear_of_nuclear_power_is_hurting_the_environment)

</comment><comment><USER79> For the uninitiated, I found this a good introduction

[http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/](http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/)

(It seems to have a pro nuclear bias, the author claims neutrality)

</comment><comment><USER80> Solar don't have the power density needed by US. Do a simple calculation of current energy levels plus 1% YOY, turns out that you would need to cover the world with panels in just a few decades. There are proved new technology on nuclear (like molten salt and front advancing reactors) that is orders of magnitude safer. The light water reactor design from the 50-60th used in this aging plants was funded by Navy and was appropriate for its use but is not the best solution for grid power generation. Applying this already tested and safe solutions (search for ORNL molten salt) will buy the time until fusion is here, new high temperature superconductors (REBCO in special) have completely changed the game here, and a small high field tokamaks should generate net gain in less than 20 years.

<comment><USER37> Nah. Less area than that [http://landartgenerator.org/blagi/wp- content/uploads/2009/08...](http://landartgenerator.org/blagi/wp- content/uploads/2009/08/AreaRequired1000.jpg)

<comment><USER80> This is a gigantic amount of area just for 2030! The compound grow don't stop there. Compare this view of the US from a satellite at a much closer zoom, if you can't see all the concrete even in Boston-NYC-Washington area. But from a world view you would need that square of solar energy. [https://goo.gl/maps/wWpFW7nRZSq](https://goo.gl/maps/wWpFW7nRZSq)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> Why aren't these designs more widespread? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_fast_reactor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_fast_reactor)

</comment><comment><USER82> I'd recommend anyone interested in this question to watch "Into Eternity" (available on YouTube), a documentary about the facility Finland is building to house all of their country's nuclear waste.

</comment><comment><USER83> One thing that needs to be stressed is that realistically there is a rather limited amount of Uranium than can be extracted from the earth for nuclear power. That if we could magically convert to 100% nuclear power - it wouldn't last that long.

from wikipedia

"Still, the world's present measured resources of uranium, economically recoverable at the arbitrary price ceiling of 130 USD/kg, are enough to last for between 70 and 100 years"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power#Conventional_fue...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power#Conventional_fuel_resources)

reactors have a life of around 60 years I think. So maybe you could double the amount of nuclear power? But it's not like the world can magically go to 100% nuclear indefinitely.

<comment><USER84> That "arbitrary price ceiling" is exceedingly arbitrary. You get a lot more than $130 worth of electricity from fissioning a kilogram of uranium even with present technology. In current U.S. power reactor designs (no breeding) you can get about a million kwH of heat from one kg of uranium. If you figure 30% efficiency and 12 cents per kWH, that's about $40,000 worth of electricity.

It should be clear that even with present technology uranium is economic to recover at prices dramatically higher than $130/kg.

If breeder reactors are used the recoverable energy from a kg of uranium goes up by a factor of 100 or so, making that kg of uranium worth about $4 million in terms of electricity.

With that technology it would be economically feasible to recover uranium from sea water, and there's enough of it in the ocean to last for billions of years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> There are alternatives to massive expensive reactors from companies like Nuscale, might be a good option to round out energy production in areas where other clean energy sources aren't available.

</comment><comment><USER86> What do the folks here think of investing in uranium mining stock cameco?

<comment><USER87> With environmentalists pushing for nuclear station closures, power stations going out of service due to exceeding their lifetime and MOX fuel available, cheap solar, offshore wind, I'd rather not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER88> There's many ways to slow global warming. Is replacing power production with nuclear really humanity's best first to-go in slowing global warming? I would have thought not.

</comment><comment><USER72> hmmm ... seems more a last try of some lobbyists to push nuclear. Solar power is now the cheapest form of energy in almost 60 countries :) [http://www.sciencealert.com/solar-power-is-now-the- cheapest-...](http://www.sciencealert.com/solar-power-is-now-the-cheapest- energy-in-the-world)

</comment><comment><USER89> "I support nuclear power as a proven means of created large wildlife preserves."

So needed these days.

I think that's gonna be my next T-Shirt.

</comment><comment><USER90> If each state is willing to deal w their own waste, go for it, but stop shipping it to other states!

</comment><comment><USER91> Do I need nuclear power if it's cheaper? Yes! Would I like to stay near a nuclear plant? Hell no.

</comment><comment><USER92> What happened to pebble bed reactors?

<comment><USER93> Head over to www.x-energy.com to see plans for our Xe-100 high temperature gas cooled pebble bed reactor!

@xenergynuclear on twitter

</comment></comment><comment><USER94> Modesty and determination to tackle change seems more needed than economic expansion.

</comment><comment><USER95> The article was written by politicians

</comment><comment><USER96> Duh.

This is one of the reasons I think Greenpeace is doing counterproductive work over the last few decades, at least in the energy space.

</comment><comment><USER97> my natural cynicism prompts me to note that nuclear war would also slow Global Warming.

</comment><comment><USER98> I haven't met anyone intelligent who suggests we should go Solar.

Silicon tetrachloride pollution is the worst.

</comment><comment><USER99> The article appears to be written in a biased manner and lacks Rational and logic , till now no body has ever been able to come up with a solution on how to deal with nuclear waste in a safe way or how to deal with a accident in a nuclear plant

<comment><USER100> Your comment inadvertently shows why we should be supporting fusion energy research (the problems you speak of are problems with fission).

</comment></comment><comment><USER101> Please, HN: read more about fukushima.

This could be the end of it all. All of human history could go out in the blink of an eye.

<comment><USER59> Fukushima was badly built, badly protected, and badly operated.

First few decades airplanes were deadly. Now not so much. All tech can be tamed if you put in the effort.

<comment><USER101> But what if someone doesn't. A chain is as strong as its weakest link.

<comment><USER59> yes. Modern large airplanes are more complex than reactors and have more uncertainty, and have more places on the chain they can go wrong. But they don't, at least not in the US in last 15 years. Why?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER102> "I am not so much pro-nuclear as I am pro-arithmetic." \-- Stuart Brand.

The dogma that we can power industrial civilization on "sunny days when the wind is blowing" energy is arithmetic denialism.

I will believe that you care about CO2/climate change if, and only if, you do not oppose replacing carbon-based energy with the source that passes the arithmetic test.

</comment><comment><USER103> True or false: a nuclear reactor can create a nuclear explosion? (the answer may surprise you!)

<comment><USER104> I would expect a significant percentage of people know that nuclear explosion is not a risk of nuclear power.

<comment><USER50> I would be surprised, to be honest, if more than half the american population knew that a nuclear power plant literally cannot blow up like an atomic bomb. However, I can't find any information to support either of our gut feelings. All of the polling information is of the form "how much do you like nuclear" or "what is the best non-fossil fuel power source". I'd love to see answers to "why do you think nuclear energy is a bad idea" or something.

<comment><USER105> While it isn't proper poll, Veritasium's interviews[1] with the general public support the supposition that most people lack basic information about anything nuclear.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQmnztyXwVA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQmnztyXwVA)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: wiz - makes command-line tools easier to use - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/donpark/wiz

<comment><USER2> I like the way you've implemented this but what practical advantages does it have over adding the line

alias zack=ack -i --ignore-dir node_modules --nojs

to your .bashrc (or .zshrc or whatever) file?

<comment><AUTHOR> To be frank, only minor advantages in current form which are:

1) folder specific options 2) easier to read format 3) comments on options

That said, I'm just getting started with 'wiz' and am planning to add many more features and commands.

Thanks for asking though. I wasn't expecting much response when submitting to HN at this time range. :-)

<comment><USER2> Cool. It does seem like a good base to build upon. Good luck.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Use landing pages to test your product - <AUTHOR> http://quicklytest.it/index.html

<comment><USER2> Hey. Congrats on shipping.. that's more than I have been capable of this year.

Lots of constructive things I want to point out. Don't think I'm bashing on the idea... (But you did post it as a Show HN so like most hackers I tried and find out how things work).

\- I successfully created an account without paying. (Contact me through my email if you want details. You can find it in my profile).

\- You write all of your clients details to disk. I can view them all here. <http://learnmoreabout.it/> I can also overwrite other peoples tests. (Not sure if you are aware of this). (Could also be used as a very easy denial of service vector killing available inodes)

\- Being able to access stuff like this is wrong. <http://learnmoreabout.it/usr/share/base-passwd/group.master>

\- You have an active RAM disk which is readable through HTTP. I've been able to download and mount and read from it.

\- You've got an SQL injectable page. (Took a while to find one, but it's there)

\- You are doing validation that should be done on the server, via the client. (ie. Checking that the name doesn't contain invalid character.). So this ends up with people writing to directories they shouldn't. See the file directory 'thisShouldNotBeHere' within your web accessible /usr directory? <http://learnmoreabout.it/usr/share/mysql-common/>

I've uncovered _way_ more information than I ever should have been able to (it was almost as fun as the Strip CTF). If you want any advice, I'm always infront of an email client... (and PHP is my main language)

You are definitely at a very early MVP stage, but already I'm reminded of this blog post from last week: [http://blog.ryankearney.com/2012/10/never-give- your-informat...](http://blog.ryankearney.com/2012/10/never-give-your- information-to-10-minute-old-startups/)

And, in case anyone says I should have followed responsible disclosure, I prescribe to the same ideals as Silhouette in this comment. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4619657>

<comment><USER3> I think I may have spotted an XSS vulnerability also, but I wasn't sure.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd be grateful if you could drop me a quick email to discuss? firstname.lastname@example.com. Thanks again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's dishonest to tell visitors the queue is due to high demand (what message do they see if demand is low?) and fail to disclose that the service _does not exist_ and may not even be feasible at the offered price point. This kind of chaff cast into the marketplace makes it harder for customers and legitimate service providers to find each other. Market research is fine (with consent) but it's not a license to deceive the public about what you're doing.

<comment><USER5> I'm curious as to what others think of this.

I've been using the same technique to test a market and have been struggling to figure out how shady this is. One on hand, it does feel like we're deceiving people, on the other hand, what we're doing is _actually benficial_ to consumers. If they signed up, that means they want what it is that you're trying to build and they're letting you know it.

<comment><USER6> Why not just state the product isn't ready yet, but you'll contact them as soon as it is?

<comment><USER7> You'll lose people that are mildly interested and clicked "buy" out of impulse.

<comment><USER8> I've heard it put before as the difference between telling a friend / stranger about a business idea and saying "would you buy it" which will often result in a non-committal "yeah" to, "great I have a load of them in the car, £5 each, how many would you like?"

Only the second is a real test of if the idea is valuable and viable. This way you end with with a 'hot' mailing list. You also can't worry about losing these early potential clients, if your client pool is really that small then this is not the way to test. There is a great section on this in the book 4 Hour Work Week.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For easy landing pages you own, I wrote a thing:

<https://github.com/skorokithakis/landing-page>

It has email list subscription functionality, just drop two templates in, and you're done. It uses AppEngine, so it's pretty much free to host, and easily extensible.

<comment><USER10> That's pretty cool, will definitely give that a try

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Looks cool, but if you ask me a monthly subscription model isn't optimal for this kind of thing because the churn[1] rate will be so high.

Why do I expect a high churn rate? Well, there are two options. Either the splash pages created with quicklytest.it get some traffic or they don't. If they don't get traffic the user will get demotivated and stop. Cancel subscription. And if the user does drum up attention for his idea? Then he's going to replace the quicklytest.it page with his own thing. Again, cancel subscription.

I like the idea, but it will be very tough to make money from it.

[1] Percentage of subscriptions canceled each month

<comment><USER12> I think thats a good point. Simply put: for this product to be beneficial to its users they shouldn't have to use it for a long time. The goal is to find out quickly whether or not people want to buy your test product. It's not something you want to pay for long term. Unless maybe it's an agency or someone that launches multiple products regularly. But I think the people that fit into this category are pretty limited.

It might not hurt to look into a higher one-time price point or I suppose you could base expected revenue with the assumption that most people may cancel after a month or 2.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi JD, Bryan,

I have thought this too, however the barrier of a higher price point was too much to stop people making that initial purchase.

I have done exactly what you have suggested and predicted revenue from a 2 month turnover.

This is no means meant to be 'startup' in the massive growth sense.

I like to build products that are useful for people. If I can earn some beer money out of it at the end of them month then great.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Nice. But I was a bit disappointed that when I clicked on the "get started now" link it didn't take me to a "coming soon, enter your email address to be first in the queue" form...

<comment><AUTHOR> Disappointed that it didn't do that?

<comment><USER13> Yes, it would be beautifully ironic...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I seem to remember a service just like this on HackerNews about 6 months ago. I search hnsearch.com but couldn't find it, that said there seems to be a ton of advice on increasing landing page conversion (page 2, 3, etc..)

[http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=lan...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=landing&start=0)

<comment><USER15> Launchrock?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Somewhat off topic but out of curiosity, for what genuine technical reasons would one show "There is a queue" message on the signup page? One would be very large no. of signups immediately following the launch. Anything else?

I don't subscribe to the idea of landing pages for non existent products but I feel that if lot of new products start showing such a message when there aren't many technical reasons to do so, no one is going to believe about the queue thing anyway. OTOH, people might start using it as a filter instead!

<comment><AUTHOR> I personally did it for quicklytest.it as I wanted to great each of my new signups and ask them for feedback straight away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Interesting. So it's a cheaper and lighter weight version of Unbounce. It definitely could be of use for super early stage startups.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi eskim,

It's not just startups that I'm targeting, but individuals who might have a couple of cool ideas that want to make that first step and see if they're as cool as what they thought.

<comment><USER17> So is your value add that you are actively steering traffic to the test sites (Google Consumer Surveys, Amazon Mechanical Turk, etc.) or simply creating basic landing pages and relying on the customer to generate his/her own traffic?

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently the customer drive their own traffic (via the guides on the website). Mechanical turk is something I've thought about, but it's not really an accurate representation of a wide market, so I'm not sure the results would have much value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> (1) How can simplistic "landing pages" validate a product idea?

(2) And if you actually do have a good idea, ins't using this more like "quicklyspill.it"?

Given what chrisacky observed, this is not even close to an "MVP" since it's not even close to being viable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Bill,

thank you for the feedback.

1) I believe that a landingpage can validate and 'idea' as you can use it to gage interest, via the visitor clicking through for information, time spent on the page, number of times the visitor returns etc.

2) I think it's fairly well documented that ideas on their own don't mean anything, they have little if no value. It's the execution that counts and if quicklytest.it is the first step in execution then great! It gets you out of the door.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Interesting concept. I use <http://www.unbounce.com> . Landing page platform with a/b test features and integration with lots of third party systems - mailchimp, kiss metrics, aweber, lots of templates etc

</comment><comment><USER20> or just hijack graphics from dribbble.com and use them on a private smore.com page and send it to customers. takes 15 minutes and is free.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Additionally - I've added a chat box to the website (olark) if anyone wants to catch up.</comment>


Attention Spans and Response Times: How Fast is Fast Enough? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.kera.io/post/35784533520/attention-spans-and-response-times-how-fast-is-fast

<comment><USER2> great post!</comment>