How the British aristocracy preserved their power - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/sep/07/how-the-aristocracy-preserved-their-power <comment><USER2> Read the article, and unless I missed it, they didn't mention the real reason: Primogeniture, or one person keeps it all. So you have 100,000 acres from the 15th century and the oldest son gets to it all, intact. If it was split over the centuries, they'd have next to nothing. [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/to-the- ma...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/to-the-manor-born- the-female-aristocrats-battling-to-inherit-the-title-8656310.html) [https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/aug/10/new-duke- of-...](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/aug/10/new-duke-of- westminster-hugh-grosvenor-inherit-fortune)

<comment><USER3> bring back Gavelkind?

<comment><USER2> Why? I see nothing wrong with the this system, _the original owner and the state agree to it._

Probably UK is better since a huge estate can make /generate much more income /employment than a 1000 plots of 1.2 acres each.

They have power because they have money. A window washer that is the second cousin of Queen Elizabeth and with a nobility title is just a window washer, barely making ends meet. Now Queen Elizabeth's second cousin with 50,000 acres, a nobility title and two castles is a different thing :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article presents the idea that aristocracy on whole in Britain is as powerful as it ever was - which is a fallacy - the aristocracy was devastated by the death of an entire generation of its best and brightest in World War I, it was bled deeply by taxes between 1918 and 1980, it was stripped largely of its political power (reduction of hereditary peers, removal of the veto power of the House of Lords, removal of the House of Lords as a court of appeal) - those who survived (with wealth) have survived because of either the specific assets they owned - or because of good business savvy, or a combination of both.

Consider that a majority of the peerage didn't come out still owning estates - most of them fell out into the middle class and 'work for a living' \- even those with great wealth, now mostly act as businessmen rather than merely shepherds of that wealth.

<comment><USER5> Overall, this article is a tissue of misleading statistics, anecdotes, and lack of context. The largest figure mentioned is 4 billion pounds; which is about as much as you might earn by selling an odd video game about crude blocks to Microsoft. Wow, so impress, much 'preservation of power'. The House of Lords rhetoric is also odd - how do anecdotes about a largely inactive house they've been mostly expelled out of show that they "preserved their power"? Or take this one:

> The figures for Scotland are even more striking. Nearly half the land is in > the hands of 432 private individuals and companies. More than a quarter of > all Scottish estates of more than 5,000 acres are held by a list of > aristocratic families. In total they hold some 2.24m acres, largely in the > Lowlands.

'private individuals and companies' != 'aristocracy', by any means. You could say something very similar about the USA, which has not had an aristocracy in 200+ years - because _all_ countries have considerable wealth inequality. And, uh, what exactly are we supposed to take away from dicing Scottish landholdings into "estates of more than 5,000 acres"? Perhaps we are supposed to be astonished by the fact that rich people buy London real estate and "rent" it out? Or perhaps we are supposed to be impressed by

> According to the 2016 Sunday Times Rich List, 30 peers are each worth £100m > or more.

So in other words, they're collectively worth about as much as Magic Leap or Slack? Truly impressive, I see now that England is ruled as much as ever by the aristocracy, it is merely hidden better. Hang the bastards!

<comment><USER6> I think you're trying too hard.

Minecraft is a phenomenon. Why would you feel the need to talk it down as an "odd video game" just so that its price doesn't seem so high.

You apparently also think that an individual being worth the same as 1/30th of a highly successful business even though their main claim to fame was being born to the right person isn't remarkable.

<comment><USER5> If Minecraft were the only video game in history, or the most successful one, or the majority of the video game industry, then you might have a point. But it is merely one of many franchises or players along with Mario, League of Legends, Starcraft, Dota, WoW, Angry Birds etc etc. That is my point: none of these numbers are given any kind of context and OP is relying on sheer innumeracy to intimidate the reader. "4 _billion_ pounds! Wow, that's a lot!" Actually no, it's not, it's a tiny portion of an entire economy (UK national wealth is more like 9000 billion pounds). What OP needs to do is show that aristocrats control a large and relatively unchanged from historical levels of the economy, and they fail abysmally at that, to the point where you have to conclude the opposite: if the richest aristocrat they can find is that poor and these are the best statistics they can come up with, that rather disproves their case.

> You apparently also think that an individual being worth the same as 1/30th > of a highly successful business even though their main claim to fame was > being born to the right person isn't remarkable.

It isn't. The Forbes list has many non-aristocrats who inherited much or all of their money and are vastly wealthier. Consider the Waltons heirs. As I said, wealth inequality is nothing new or interesting.

<comment><USER6> Surely you choose Minecraft because it was unusual, unusual in delivering so much wealth to one person. The creator of Mario isn't as rich is he? You could point to a lot of people who have contributed amazing things to society and who aren't even millionaires, but you did exactly the opposite. You found a game dev who was very unusually a Billionaire, then you talked down the product that made him so rich as if he wasn't even special.

You also said the House of Lords is "largely inactive" which doesn't really seem connected with reality either.

Do you mind sharing why you're so keen to minimise this?

<comment><USER5> > Surely you choose Minecraft because it was unusual, unusual in delivering so > much wealth to one person.

Notch shared a lot of the money, hence my focus on the total sales price. Lots of people have gotten extremely rich on an individual level from video games, if you want to nitpick about that: Gabe Newell or Palmer Luckey. There are other Asian examples, and a number of billionaires benefit heavily from video games, like Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg. None of this affects my point: no matter how you slice it, the quoted aristocrat is not particularly wealthy.

> You also said the House of Lords is "largely inactive" which doesn't really > seem connected with reality either.

That's literally from the article.

> Do you mind sharing why you're so keen to minimise this?

Because I am incensed by lying with statistics. There is no excuse for lines like "Nearly half the land is in the hands of 432 private individuals and companies". _That is lying to the reader_ and trying to trick them. Unforgivable.

<comment><USER6> The word inactive is not in the article. The article says the hereditery peers seldom turned up, not that the house of lords stopped having a say in how the country was run. The point the author is trying to make is the opposite of yours, that they rule without bothering to even give the appearance of interest in the affairs of those they rule over.

Can you explain why you think the quote about 432 landowners is a lie and what it's trying to trick people into thinking?

Can I also note that taking a noble stand against misinformation and misleading uses of numbers seems inconsistent with the points I've already taken issue with.

<comment><USER5> If they are rarely showing up, then they are not shaping the debate or likely doing anything but voting, assuming they are not merely having minimal quorums and slacking on that as well; this inherently cedes all initiative and the public debate, and is a huge loss of power. Imagine a president who didn't bother to give speeches, travel, propose new legislation, or do much beyond veto occasional legislation. How much power would he have? Darn little. And they then lost most of that.

> Can you explain why you think the quote about 432 landowners is a lie and > what it's trying to trick people into thinking?

It is a lie because it is implying that most or all of them are aristocrats and implying 'private individuals' is a synonym for them and trying to get the reader to not notice that technically 'individuals and corporations' != aristocrats and in fact many or most of them likely are not because of the massive decimation in aristocratic wealth, while not even trying to make the case for that; it is pure begging the question, it cannot add any evidence to the claim the aristocracy still controls as large a fraction of national wealth as it ever did (at best, you could reason backwards - 'assuming they are still wealthy, then a large fraction of those 432 must be aristocrats').

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > The figures for Scotland are even more striking. Nearly half the land is in > the hands of 432 private individuals and companies. More than a quarter of > all Scottish estates of more than 5,000 acres are held by a list of > aristocratic families. In total they hold some 2.24m acres, largely in the > Lowlands.

This is balanced by their Right to Roam. For those in the US, this will sound completely insane: there is no concept of trespassing provided you act responsibly when on other's land. Access to the country is a common right, and the owners are stewards to it.

~~Arguably, the most practical way for such a law to come into existence is for the bulk of the land to be owned by a tiny minority, and for a democratic majority to create the law.~~ Strike that, didn't research. Sorry.

<comment><USER8> Edit: thankyou for amending your comment about this being a good way to achieve right to roam. It's a rare thing from anyone on the internet to admit any kind of inaccuracy.

This view ignores all the history and has it exactly backwards. A full description would require at least one book, although I'd suggest starting with [http://www.andywightman.com/poor-had-no- lawyers](http://www.andywightman.com/poor-had-no-lawyers)

A few things which must be taken into account:

\- pre-feudal common ownership

\- confiscation of land during the 1700s Jacobite rebellions. "More than a quarter of all Scottish estates of more than 5,000 acres are held by a list of aristocratic families" is not at all surprising when you consider that those families were given the land from its original owners and occupants at gunpoint by the government.

\- the Highland Clearances

In short, the right to roam pre-existed; it was only removed by extremely questionable action; and the minority who owned the land fought access to it.

(For the situation in England&Wales, start at the Kinder Scout mass trespass)

<comment><USER9> The Jacobites were themselves aristocrats and were violently rebelling against the monarchy. Also, the Highland Clearances were not acts of theft, the landowners already owned the land at that point.

edit: I should also state that the Highland Clearances were complex but get retold as: "rich people stole land from poor people" often.

<comment><USER10> _Highland Clearances were complex but get retold as: "rich people stole land from poor people" often._

This is where I think we need to treat history differently from current events, because concepts like ownership, title, rights and such are ultimately subjective outside an agreed legal context. Obviously, there is disagreement here.

I don't know much about that period, but there are countless examples of similar things.

The system of land ownership was at one point, tribal (clannish). tribes controled lands and chiefs control tribes, rights to the land negotiated custom and familial means. Chiefs became lords. Tribesmen, tenants. Titles, privelages and customs changed.

Eventually, the lords became modern peope, industrial era capitalists. Economies became monetary. Clans ceased to exist. Titles became wealth. Tenants became squatters.

I think it's hard to follow the history, while maintaining a modern sense of property.

I can certainly see how people view the scottish peasant class as having a moral claim to the property.

<comment><USER11> "Chiefs became lords."

They became feudal lords by accepting the King of Scots as their feudal overlord - this is what gave them the "ownership" of lands that had previously been held communally.

 _" The Poor Had No Lawyers - ho Owns Scotland and How They Got it"_ covers this and much more:

[https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B006WB2E9Q/ref=dp-kindle- redirec...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B006WB2E9Q/ref=dp-kindle- redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1)

Scotland has had well over a thousand years of legal shenanigans around land ownership - it is amazingly complex for such a small country.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think the short (or maybe trite) answer is _land_. The aristocratic "investment thesis" held true in the long term. The UK hasn't had land reform since the civil wars, so big landholdings didn't changed much except in Ireland.

To pick a sentence amlost at random:

 _" More than a quarter of all Scottish estates of more than 5,000 acres are held by a list of aristocratic families."_

Today the dominant economic institution is companies. You could make statements like the one above and replace one with the other. Besides that, it's largely similar. The moral mythology is completely different, but the politics and economics largely hold true.

Tryagainbro brings up primogeniture, which is important. Companies have that built in.

</comment><comment><USER12> These are sophisticated power and wealth structures that are adept at keeping and growing their wealth and power intact over tens of generations.

The more wealth you have the more potential impact you have whatever the system, and feudal power structures like the UK which were never broken unlike say China and Russia with land reform have strong historical and real world ties to power.

Beneficiaries will obviously justify or diminish its impact, and those not doing well in the current system will direct their anger and frustration here.

Land is the source of wealth and power and is finite. These are generational conflicts as societies figure out the best way to manage their assets and resources. The aristocracy is simply self interested like all of us in doing their best to retain what they have accumulated.

Capitalism has not solved or addressed inheritance, its a nod nod wink wink kind of thing, and claims of equality and the level playing field while loudly made do not hold up the slightest in the real world we live in.

<comment><USER13> In Germany nobility is not as much in the public eye as in Britain but when you read the news I am always surprised how many of them are still there with enormous wealth.

<comment><USER14> Only the ones in the west. Most of the Prussian aristocrats who owned land in what became western Poland or the German Democratic Republic were disowned and fled/were killed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Also interesting, this article about Venice, where (apparently) the wealthiest families in 1427 are still the wealthiest families

[https://qz.com/694340/the-richest-families-in-florence- in-14...](https://qz.com/694340/the-richest-families-in-florence-in-1427-are- still-the-richest-families-in-florence/)

[http://voxeu.org/article/what-s-your-surname- intergeneration...](http://voxeu.org/article/what-s-your-surname- intergenerational-mobility-over-six-centuries)

</comment><comment><USER16> They incorporated select technocratic subsets of the society into the ruling class (the embryonic "deep state"), engineered the 'personhood' of the corporation, and have errected the global framework (currently incubating until the demise of the "Last Empire") that will insure the continuity of their lording it over the rest of us.

</comment><comment><USER17> As for the 'British' Crown, if my memory serves me right the Domesday book records that William the Conq. did a 50/40/10 land split with the Church and his nobles. (To this day a significant percentage of land is not even recorded in the land registry. We might assume this is held in perpetuity without falling under inheritance laws. Everyone else is to this day a tenant on the land).

It would have been more than prodigal to lose when the system is in your hands...

Daniel 4 is interesting in this regard: "This matter is by the decree of the watchers, and the demand by the word of the holy ones: to the intent that the living may know that the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will, and setteth up over it the basest of men."

Bless them!

<comment><USER18> That land is not registered in the Land Registry doesn't necessarily mean that it's held in some kind of perpetual corporation. Compulsory registration on sale was phased in after 1925 and, IIRC, you weren't obliged to register land if it passed by inheritance or gift until very recently. That doesn't mean that inheritance taxes weren't paid. It's not uncommon to come across unregistered parcels of land in conveyancing even now; they're simply registered when it becomes necessary.

<comment><USER2> _they 're simply registered when it becomes necessary._

How can you prove it's yours? or if someone challenges it, you register it?

This is weird, especially in a country with 1000+ years legal tradition. One would assume that everything is registered, with the state owning the rest that is not assigned to private parties.

In many third world countries it's common for people to work /live on the land that "everyone" knows it's theirs--via family line--but can't prove /register it legally (whatever the law is.)

<comment><USER18> > How can you prove it's yours? or if someone challenges it, you register it?

For an unregistered plot, in theory you demonstrate ownership by providing a series of valid conveyancing deeds back to a valid original grant. If they're lost, flawed, or destroyed in a fire, things can get messy. The Land Registry's guide to handling first registration in situations where the deeds are missing is a good example: [https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/first- registratio...](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/first-registration- of-title-where-deeds-have-been-lost-or-destroyed/practice-guide-2-first- registration-of-title-if-deeds-are-lost-or-destroyed)

In practice, if you've occupied the land continuously for a long period of time then you can have possessory rights in the land even in the absence of a good chain of title.

You're right that this is all pretty unsatisfactory, which is why the Land Registry was set up in 1925 and registration made increasingly-more-compulsory since then. But as pjc50 notes, we don't have a full cadastre, so we are where we are.

Interestingly Scotland had a registration system (of conveyances rather than of land per se) much earlier. So even within the UK we're not without precedents.

<comment><USER19> " _If they 're lost, flawed, or destroyed in a fire, things can get messy._"

This was a reasonably common occurrence in the American west. In particular, I believe that's how most of the possessors of Spanish land grants in New Mexico were dispossessed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Even if the subject doesn't interest you: this is a masterfully written flame worthy of reading on that basis. Certainly much more enjoyable than the more typical polemics.

As for the article itself, I feel it sadly doesn't even make its own case particularly well, cherry picking statistics and aggregating dissimilar data (e.g. clumping aristos and private corporations together when looking at Scottish landholding)

As it happens I agree politically with the writer that aristocracy is not a good idea (though hard to eradicate in any society), not that I care much if Great Britain has problems.

</comment><comment><USER21> Chris Bryant is of course a Labour MP. Intriguingly he was also caught up in the expenses scandal. One does wonder whether his book (which is being serialised here) manages to wonder about how the occupants of "the other place" get and hold onto power.

It also manages to recycle many of the popular tropes about the aristocracy avoiding taxes, perfectly legally, while ignoring the concept of noblesse oblige which was for a long time the flip side of aristocratic privilege. We're starting to see a similar concept return in the form of billionaires being criticised if they fail to sign up to donate their money.

<comment><USER22> > _It also manages to recycle many of the popular tropes about the aristocracy > avoiding taxes, perfectly legally, while ignoring the concept of noblesse > oblige which was for a long time the flip side of aristocratic privilege._

Yeah, so noble of them...

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm surprised the aristocracy survived the financial crisis. I would have thought popular discontent would have killed their tax breaks.

</comment><comment><USER24> tl;dr: they're good businessmen and do their best to preserve the wealth they were handed over from their parents.

The article spends too long telling irrelevant stories to make its few points:

\- owning land is a great way to get rich

\- the rich evade taxes by restructuring their business

\- investing in business keeps your family's wealth intact

\- networking from elite clubs helps you find opportunities to invest in

None of these points are specific to aristocrats. We all strive towards these goals - my family started out living in a rented apartment, and their first milestone was buying their own house. They wanted their kids to go to an elite university so we could get good networking opportunities. Investing in business is just a truism - past a certain point of wealth, it's no longer worth it to sell your time for money, compared to investing.

The writer also spends some time carefully conflating the aristocracy of old with the modern aristocrats, in a weird non-sequitur parallel. People of old did something bad, therefore...what, exactly? This is bigotry and prejudice, but we hate rich people, so it's okay.

As a whole this reminds me of Varys's riddle from Game of Thrones - if you are so incensed at the aristocracy, why do you keep giving them power?

<comment><USER8> > carefully conflating the aristocracy of old with the modern aristocrats

> preserve the wealth they were handed over from their parents

There's a conflict between these. If your father got his wealth by driving out subsistence farmers at gunpoint, to what extent can you say it's nothing to do with you and that your wealth is a totally meritocratic inheritance?

Note that owning land is a great _zero sum_ way to get rich. If the Duke of Westminster owns half of London, and isn't interested in selling it, you can't invest there.

> if you are so incensed at the aristocracy, why do you keep giving them power

Please explain how the people are incensed are also "giving them power" in any meaningful sense?

<comment><USER24> > There's a conflict between these. If your father got his wealth by driving > out subsistence farmers at gunpoint, to what extent can you say it's nothing > to do with you and that your wealth is a totally meritocratic inheritance?

Because it wasn't your father, it was your...how many generations are there between us and the middle ages, again? This is a time jump in the article itself:

> Historically, the British aristocracy's defining feature was not a noble > aspiration to serve the common weal but a desperate desire for self- > advancement. They stole land under the pretence of piety in the early middle > ages, they seized it by conquest, they expropriated it from the monasteries > and they enclosed it for their private use under the pretence of efficiency.

> .....

> And when democracy finally and rudely shunted them aside, they found new > means of preserving their extravagant riches without the tedium of > pretending they sought the common interest. Far from dying away, they remain > very much alive.

Moreover, the UK has been a democracy for quite some time now, and has had ample time to address inheritance law, and land ownership law. Like the article states:

> That is no accident. British laws on land tenure, inheritance tax, corporate > governance and discretionary trusts still make it easy to hide wealth from > public view. Land is subsidised, and taxed more lightly than residential > property. Unearned income bears less of a burden than earned income.

The article claims that this is the secret to the power of the aristocracy. This power is given to them by laws, designed and voted in by MPs, who are in turn voted in by the people.

<comment><USER8> > the UK has been a democracy for quite some time now, and has had ample time > to address inheritance law, and land ownership law

This is true, and it hasn't had time to do it since first properly overruling the Lords in 1911. For some reason the newspapers owned by Lord Rothermere have agitated against it.

The Scottish government has had much less time (since May 1999) to work on the subject and has got much further with land reform.

<comment><USER6> And the tiny steps it has taken (e.g. suggesting it would be good to know who owns all the land) were denounced as being akin to Mugabe's actions in Zimbabwe by prime minister David Cameron's father-in-law who just happened to be a major land owner.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> TLDR: property ownership, including leasehold; tax avoidance, such as through trusts; and the House of Lords.

There are a lot fewer aristocracy than there were at the start of the 20th century, but those that remain are extremely wealthy.

</comment><comment><USER25> > Historically, the British aristocracy's defining feature was not a noble > aspiration to serve the common weal but a desperate desire for self- > advancement. They stole land under the pretence of piety in the early middle > ages, they seized it by conquest, they expropriated it from the monasteries > and they enclosed it for their private use under the pretence of efficiency. > They grasped wealth, corruptly carved out their niche at the pinnacle of > society and held on to it with a vice-like grip. They endlessly reinforced > their own status and enforced deference on others through ostentatiously > exorbitant expenditure on palaces, clothing and jewellery. They laid down a > strict set of rules for the rest of society, but lived by a different > standard.

That sounds like a very good description of the Bolsheviks the Guardian supported so fervently.</comment>


Peanut-allergy cure close after Australian breakthrough - <AUTHOR> http://www.smh.com.au/national/health/peanutallergy-cure-close-after-australian-breakthrough-20170816-gxxz10.html <comment><USER2> If it has a 33% failure rate, I think "cure" is overstating it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Does this lend additional weight to the hypothesis that early exposure to peanuts reduces the likelihood of a peanut allergy?</comment>


Obama is gutting Medicare - <AUTHOR> http://nypost.com/2016/06/21/obama-is-gutting-medicare/ <comment><USER2> I didn't realise the US had UK-style tabloid newspapers.</comment>


Widespread censorship in effect at Reddit - <AUTHOR> https://slimgur.com/images/2015/09/07/6eb94c074ca634287c0ea0bab6a5746f.png <comment><USER2> What I see is a bunch of deleted comments to a question which has a high chance of getting strongly xenophobic but uninformative responses that violate Reddit's comment policy.

We know that HN, Reddit, and a bunch of other sites have restrictions on what can be posted. Some people call this censorship. Others say it's part of the freedom of association - there's no reason why HN, etc. have to host all forms of expression.

Without context - which this image link does not provide - why should we care? Why should I accept that this is 'censorship' in a form I should be concerned about?</comment>


Cupping, the Rio Olympics Health Trend, Can Do More Harm Than Good - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/cupping-the-rio-olympics-health-trend-can-do-more-harm-than-good <comment><USER2> I've had this done to my feet before in Japan and China. One time it hurt and left a painful bruise for a couple days. Usually no problems or pain. Also no marks after the first couple times I had it done. Half the times I've had it done were with suction cups, not the glass and flame method that originally existed. I'm not sure it really did anything, but maybe.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've had this done in Russia, as a kid - it was pretty popular.</comment>


The White City (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://www.newgeography.com/content/001110-the-white-city

<comment><USER2> The article would be better title "the not black city", as it goes on to use the African American population as the demographic for the cities 'whiteness'.

The article goes on to use Portland as "America's ultimate White City". However, looking at demographics, it is 78.6% white (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland,_Oregon#Demographics>) compared to the average of 75.0% ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Stat...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States#Race_and_ethnicity)). This isn't nearly as striking as the 6.0% vs 12.8% African American demographic in the article.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. Some of the cities shown that had low black percentages also had higher-than-average percentages of asians or hispanics. Overall, I'd say it's a combination of wealth factors, education/intelligence factors, and behavioral/cultural factors -- not any single one thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A much simpler explanation would be - people that are wealthy enough to choose where they would like to live are predominantly not African-American.

</comment><comment><USER5> It seems they hand-picked all of their "progressive" cities, and pointed out excluding "tier one" cities. I too could pick my "progressive" cities to isolate a particular statistic.

<comment><USER6> They also managed to hand-wave "progressive city" into "diverse city". Once they did that, it would have been nice if they compared the sum of black and immigrant populations as a somewhat more reasonable measure of diversity. Even better, they could have done some income level or cost of living analysis to see how much that explains the statistics.</comment></comment>


A Chunk of Trinitite Reminds Us of the Power of the Atomic Bomb - <AUTHOR> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/chunk-trinitite-reminds-sheer-devastating-power-atomic-bomb-180972848/ <comment><USER2> The author of this article wrote one of my all time favorite books, _The Making of the Atomic Bomb_. Hr tells the story of the Manhattan Project incredibly well.

The sequel, _Dark Sun_, about the making of the hydrogen bomb, is OK but has a lot more Cold War espionage than science.

Both worth a read!

<comment><USER3> I second the recommendation for _The Making of the Atomic Bomb_. That books more or less defined the category of "narrative history" for me. So much better than any other history I had ever read at the time.

<comment><USER4> Similar story but of a failed physics project is "Project Prometheus" by George Dyson, Richard Dyson's son. It's about the project to use atomic explosions for extremely efficient propulsion. With proper implementation, such atomic bomb thrusters would have allowed for 100,000 ton payloads and a truly space faring society.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The test site, which is located north of the White Sands National Monument (New Mexico), is open twice a year (the first Saturday of April and the first Saturday of October) to the public [0]. It's also located very close to the Very Large Array (VLA), featured in quite a few movies, which is also open to the public [1].

[0] [https://www.nps.gov/whsa/learn/historyculture/trinity- site.h...](https://www.nps.gov/whsa/learn/historyculture/trinity-site.htm)

[1] [https://public.nrao.edu/visit/very-large- array/](https://public.nrao.edu/visit/very-large-array/)

<comment><USER5> Regarding the VLA - is it as "open" as it appears to be from google maps?

That is, from what I could see, you can almost just turn off the highway the drive to it, and I didn't see any kind of fencing or whatnot; there also seemed to be more than a few "back ways" into it via jeep trails and such.

I've had the idea just to drive out there one weekend, camp overnight, then explore the area for a day or two, then leave. But I don't know if that would be considered trespassing on government property or something?

It just looks like a large collection of space telescopes and mostly empty desert, with a few buildings scattered about, but not much in the way of "people things" \- which I doubt are needed except for maintenance purposes (which is probably what few buildings there are there are for).

Other than that, it just looks like a slightly-improved piece of desert landscape - kinda like what wind farms look like and such on the California/Arizona border area (which you can easily drive up to via maintenance roads).

<comment><USER6> I have not been there for a decade, but back then there were cattle fences along the road and around the telescopes and cows grazing in between. Also: be aware of the rattle snakes if you go camping there.

<comment><USER7> Also, watch out for the cops and be on your best behavior with respect to speed. When I was out there, I was amazed how many cops would follow me for miles and miles, because I had out of state plates. Other than that, it was a great time, although there's really nothing much else in the area. The drive west from there on 60 gets pretty through the mountains. Make sure to keep your gas tank rather full.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> You can order trinitite from United Nuclear. I stuck some in an HPGe and was able to learn some interesting things: [https://www.hscott.net/analyzing- trinitite-a-radioactive-pie...](https://www.hscott.net/analyzing-trinitite-a- radioactive-piece-of-nuclear-history/)

<comment><USER9> That's a very fine write-up!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> >> The 100-million-degree fireball vaporized the steel tower down to its footings...

This is often discussed, that the tower was turned from solid steel to vapor, but isn't what happened. The tower was no longer standing but was still there to be founud. Many bits were melted and surely some bits disappeared, but the bulk of the metal was still present on the ground after the blast. And this mattered. How close a metal structure could be to the blast was a vital question for project orion (A-bomb powered spacecraft).

</comment><comment><USER11> For an article about green glass, I wonder why their photo shoot decided to go with purple and pink back lighting? It makes it look sinister but doesn't show the beautiful green Trinitite can be.

<comment><USER12> Indeed! Here are some much better images: [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Trinitite&iax=images&ia=images](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Trinitite&iax=images&ia=images)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "the second and third atomic bombs after Trinity exploded over Japan and did their part to end a war that killed more than 60 million human beings. "I was one of those who said thank god for the atomic bomb," Paul told me ruefully."

This myth about the effect of the atomic bombing of Japan just refuses to die for some reason. The atomic bombing of Japan had literally zero effect on Japanese policymaking. By that point in the war, all of the major cities were rubble already, and only insignificant places in the backwoods of Western Japan like Hiroshima were being bombed for want of fresh targets. The fact that these bombs were "new" didn't mean much, and almost no one in power understood any of their implications (nor could anyone inform anyone since their communication lines were extremely primitive by that point, only covering important things like troop movements, battle readiness, materials, and foreign intelligence).

It was the mobilization of the Russians that prompted a Japanese surrender because, much like the Germans knew, it was FAR, FAR more preferable to be occupied by the Americans than by the Russians. The atomic bombs were just a sideshow, and only became important when revealed to the rest of the world.

</comment><comment><USER14> One quote that I always remember regarding the Japanese atomic bombs, is that survivors of Hiroshima ere in such agony, they begged nurses to kill them.

<comment><USER15> The survivors of the firestorms caused by the Allied firebombing campaign undoubtedly did the same and there were an order of magnitude more of them, since firebombing was used to level most of Japan's cities in the final phase of the war.

Take care not to fall for over-dramatization by people with an agenda. While the atomic bomb is a fearsome weapon, in that specific regard, its effects were not special.

EDIT: A 2015 Japan Times article expresses it well:

 _"...On March 10, 1945, U.S. B-29 bombers flew over Tokyo in the dead of night, dumping massive payloads of cluster bombs equipped with a then-recent invention: napalm. A fifth of Tokyo was left a vast smoldering expanse of charred bodies and rubble.

Today, a modest floral monument in a downtown park honors the spirits of the 105,400 confirmed dead, many interred in common graves.

It was the deadliest conventional air raid ever, worse than Nagasaki and on a par with Hiroshima. But the attack, and similar ones that followed in more than 60 other Japanese cities, have received little attention, eclipsed by the atomic bombings and Japan's postwar rush to rebuild..."_

[https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/03/10/national/deadly...](https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/03/10/national/deadly- wwii-u-s-firebombing-raids-on-japanese-cities-largely-ignored/#.XV6y5C2ZO00)

(And if you find yourself recoiling at the brutality visited upon the Japanese, bear in mind the combined death toll from the Japanese occupations across Asia are nearly triple of even that of the German Holocaust. While nobody's hands were clean in WW2, some hands were much, much dirtier than others.)

<comment><USER16> Conventional firebombing took _fleets_ of B-29 bombers, many flying fairly low (within flak and fighter range), presenting tremendous cost and risk.

The WWII city-leveling low-yield atom bombs were delivered by a single aircraft (plus a non-combat escort).

Today's nukes are launched from armoured bunkers or invulnerable submarines, fly without pilot or crew, include multiple reentry warheads, and can devastate multiple cities from a single launch vehicle.

There is no comparision.

<comment><USER17> There's no comparison between modern ICBMs and WWII weaponry, but you overstate things a bit.

B-29s operated with relative impunity over Japan. They had a cruising altitude higher than most Japanese fighters and anti-aircraft guns could reach, could operate at night (Japan had minimal night fighter capability by that point), and only ~150 were lost over Japan to enemy action. (In contrast, the US lost nearly 5,000 B-17s in the war.)

Cost-wise, B-29 design production and production cost $3B. The Manhattan Project cost about $2B.

<comment><USER16> You'd need to include the infrastructure to be able to launch B-29 _fleets_ over Tokyo, which was much of the Pacific Theatre effort. That itself was a major share of the total $288 billion (1945 dollars) US expense of the war itself, far more than the Manhatten Project itself.

Mainland US flights were unable to reach Japan, even from Hawaii or Alaska. Large-scale effort required control of a large portion of the Pacific and _both_ launch _and_ recovery capabilities.

A significant number of aircraft for the Doolittle raids (early in the war) were ditched before they could reach their designated LZs in China. The aircraft, B25B Mitchell medium bombers, could _launch_ from carriers (easier to arrange for than island occupation), but lacked either the range or raw capability to _land_ on the _Hornet_. The raids were effective as a shock and demonstration of US reach and capabilities, but had minimal direct military effect.

<comment><USER17> Winning the war required control of a large portion of the Pacific - it's not like we were doing it just to give B-29s a place to park. The atomic bomb required the same thing, as it was B-29 carried just like incendiaries.

<comment><USER16> Supporting a single aircraft, or a small flight of seven, is vastly different from the hundreds of aircraft engaged on the Tokyo firebombing raids:

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

Dresden required nearly 1,300 bombers.

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

The ultimately produced bombs were deliverable via B-29, as that aircraft was available. The carrier-launched Mitchell B25B was also available and had a payload capacity of 3,000 lb., though that is 1/3 the weight of Little Boy (the Hiroshima bomb). Whether or not a smaller package, or alternative delivery vehicle, could have been provided, I'm not sure. Though the challenge might have been surmountable.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_B-25_Mitchell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_B-25_Mitchell)

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

Casualties _per mission_ over the European theatre were tremendous. I don't recall the specific per-mission losses, but overall crew survival over a 25 mission tour was on the order of 50%. Japan's defences were less effective, but again, looking at use of atomic weapons generally, the statistics are relevant, and _during the planning_ of the Manhattan Project, use of the bomb against Germany _was_ considered.

[http://www.ww2f.com/threads/bomber-crew-survival-rates- durin...](http://www.ww2f.com/threads/bomber-crew-survival-rates-during-the- war.56599/)

There's also the possibility that smaller flights might escape detection (smaller radar target).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Costco - Food for a whole year - $799 Awesome - <AUTHOR> http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=11487214&cm_mmc=BCEmail_Sept2010Mailer-_-Banner_-1-_-Thrive <comment><USER2> Let's say you don't care about the "lasts N years" part, but you want to construct a least-cost diet which is not significantly less nutritious than a more expensive food selection. What foods would be included? To keep it simple, presume shopping to be limited to Costco/Sam's/etc.

I did some math at Costco after examining a 50 lb bag of rice. Someone earning minimum wage must work five minutes to purchase 2000 calories of rice. While I know one can not live on rice alone, has there ever been a time or place in the world's history when so little effort was required for sustenance?

<comment><USER3> Beans are nearly as cheap as rice when bought in bulk. Beans and rice are a complete protein. Potatoes are cheap too, and are a complete protein by themselves. You could throw in some fish oil and a multivitamin and still be paying around a buck a day for food.

I would much prefer that diet to living off of canned goods.

<comment><USER4> So you've accounted for protein, but you need a lot more than that. For example, without vitamin C, you'll get scurvy. Without B12, your nervous system can be permanently damaged.

I'd highly recommend a diet of more than just beans, rice, potatoes, and fish oil. You need to include some fruit and vegetables, and if you're going to be totally vegan, some sort of B12 source (fortified foods or a vitamin pill).

<comment><USER3> Sure, that's why I suggested a multi. If you want to get the vitamins naturally I'd suggest some cabbage and the occasional egg to get your C and B12. Actually, eggs and cabbage will pretty much cover all your nutritional needs but aren't the cheapest way to bulk macronutrients. Still, 50 cents worth of cabbage and eggs a day would be enough to cover your vitamin and mineral needs.

I wouldn't eat that diet, personally. I'm a paleo guy and value quality veggies and meat. I'm on a student budget and I invest most of it in food. If I were raising a family of 6 on my current wage though, I think rice/beans/eggs/cabbage/fish oil would be a pretty solid, reasonable diet on the cheap, throwing in as much extra meat and veggies as I could afford.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The company that sells this is called Shelf Reliance. They are a MLM scheme with consultants all over the USA taking advantage of the general doomsday fear in the community.

The super-positive comments on the Costco website give it away - _"i use it into my everyday cooking! the freeze dried fruits and veggies are oh my gosh...amazing!"_ \-- (hint: they are all/mostly consultants posting).

Most consultants will beat or match Costco pricing, so if you are hungry-poor, can survive on ~800 calories a day and enjoy the taste of powdered donkey, or you are the paranoid type, contact your local Shelf Reliance(tm) consultant for an in-home consultation and party today!

<http://www.shelfreliance.com/?affiliate=bl4k>

<comment><USER6> Is there seriously a "general doomsday fear" in the US? I see small hints and mentions in news items that suggest a lot of people have their backs up, but what doom exactly are they expecting?!

<comment><USER7> When I was in High School living in North Dakota, Dad always kept a week or so of food and propane for a heater / BBQ in stock all winter. It was not uncommon to have a storm that made travel bad for a couple of days at a time. We did have a couple of power failures that lasted into multiple days.

<comment><USER6> Fair point. I guess the population in the US is far more spread out than it is here in Australia (largely based around the capitals and coast).

Wouldn't people do well to just hold a larger stock of tinned food (for example)? Would dehydrated food require clean water to become edible?

Only time in my 30+ years that I've heard of any even remote survivalist/prepare-for-the-worst stuff in Australia was my parents filling the bath on NYE 1999 just in case utilities failed due to Y2k!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> HN seems to think this is a good idea... it looks like TVP, Textured Vegetable Protein is the primary source of protein in this mix.

Have you eaten TVP? It was a staple of my childhood. It is not something I would want to consume more than once a week or so. You can turn it into something that almost passes for sloppy joes? but really, I'd place it a few rungs below tofu on the ladder of foods I'd like to eat.

I mean, to be clear, I'm sure it's fine food for when TSHTF or what have you. I'm just saying; if I had to eat that stuff every day? yeah, I'd go nuts.

From the product description: "The taste and texture of TVP (Textured Vegetable Protein) is consistent with real meat, making it a great addition to vegetarian diets"

Uh, this makes me wonder if the person writing that has either never tasted meat or never tasted TVP or both? Now, the TVP sloppy joes my mom used to make weren't bad (you know, maybe once a week) but nobody is going to confuse TVP with meat. even that mechanically separated meat that was featured in another article. TVP is another thing entirely.

<comment><USER9> Why would anyone feed their children TVP? Were your parents vegetarians, or cheap (and not very creative about food)?

<comment><USER8> let's just say a little bit of both. I ate a lot of tofu and rice plus nutritional yeast, too. My parents had me and then left the commune shortly thereafter (oh shit, we have a kid! we have to move out and get real jobs now!) with no real career experience, so they were raising a kid on 'entry level' state employee wages, which isn't much. (now, state employee retirement pensions, on the other hand? pretty nice. All my younger siblings got as much college as they wanted paid for.)

as far as health goes, TVP, as far as I can tell, is pretty okay. It's one of the few (single source) vegetarian sources of complete protein.

<comment><USER10> It sounds like you were probably a child of the 70's. It wasn't exactly a decade of plenty, and even with money, good eating often meant overcooked roast or steak and potatoes, or maybe stinky fish. The only garlic available in most places was a near delicacy, two small heads in an open fronted box wrapped in cellophane.

<comment><USER8> I was born in '80. (I'm weeks from turning 30.) rdl mostly had it, I think. My parents were mostly vegetarian, and they were poor, or at least wise enough to dump every penny they could get into real-estate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm actually interested in this not for ramen profitability but for survival rations. I'm not some post-apocalyptic tinfoil hat wearing doomsday person, but I recognise that I live in an area that can (and has) had natural disasters from time to time. In those cases, food quickly becomes in short supply and sometimes transport isn't possible. I've been thinking about building a up a 'canned food reserve' but this is a much better solution because of the longer shelflife.

Note for the same reasons I'm investigating solar power, rainwater tanks and bottle propane for cooking/water heating.

<comment><USER5> satellite internet connection and dominos.com = solved.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yuck! Dominos=cardboard [http://lh6.ggpht.com/_IBXj- Mt28qU/SyXP2nBOiiI/AAAAAAAABrE/nq...](http://lh6.ggpht.com/_IBXj- Mt28qU/SyXP2nBOiiI/AAAAAAAABrE/nq9HpGKC8RI/dominos\[5\].jpg?imgmax=800)

<comment><USER12> Dominos redid their entire standard pizza recipe (new sauce, crust, etc.) and pricing structure recently.

$6 for a 2 topping large carryout is reasonable, and their web ordering and status is quite good.

Give them another shot - you might be surprised, as I was.

<comment><USER13> [http://goto11.net/youve-got-30-minutes-to-write-a-python- scr...](http://goto11.net/youve-got-30-minutes-to-write-a-python-script/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> On a practical note, seeing as most of the #10 cans contain 30-50 servings, you'd have a lot of open cans at a time if you wanted any sort of variety.

I wonder if the "6 Cans of Whole Eggs (236 servings per can)" are freeze dried or liquid.

I also think I'm overthinking this...

<comment><USER14> From the Costco comments:

"The contents of opened cans can be easily stored in glass mason jars, the ones used for canning, with a canning lid which is vacuum-sealed onto the jar with a food saver jar attachment. For jars which are in constant use, use a white plastic screw-on lid available with canning supplies."

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Beats Ramen. However, "one year supply dehydrated & freeze-dried food profitable" doesn't have the same ring to it as "ramen profitable."

</comment><comment><USER16> Yes, it beats ramen, etc, but _where do you store it?_ Having space to store all those cans would have doubled my rent back in the day. I would however, have been a popular guy in 1999.

<comment><USER17> Completely ignoring nutritional need, storage costs, water to reconstitute food, etc, Ramen is much cheaper.

At $1.39 for 6 [1] it comes out to $253.68 [2]. That makes the Ramen only diet more than 3 times cheaper than the Costco food.

[1] <http://www.walgreens.com/store/c/a/ID=prod6010665-product>

[2] 365 * (3 *(1.39 / 6)) - Rounded up the cent

<comment><USER18> Ramen can be had for as little as 7 for a dollar, on sale.

However I think that a heavily ramen diet without veggies and meat would lead to serious health problems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is pretty clearly just emergency prep food; no sane person would eat it on a routine basis, unless you had extremely limited logistics. It's cheaper to just buy normal bags of rice, etc. than to get the canned form, plus, it would be a difficult decision between suicide and homicide if stuck eating this for an extended period by choice.

It's great to see mass-market retailers get into food security like this, but buying a pack of (IMO barely edible) food like this is probably not the most efficient way to solve the problem.

Generally what people do in places which are often subject to 1-4 week natural disasters (big snowstorms, usually) is to maintain an extra stock of storage- compatible foods that you eat on a daily basis. i.e. if you eat rice, buy a 50 pound bag. If you eat meat, buy a quarter cow and put it in a separate chest freezer (which can last through a few weeks if not opened, even without electricity). If you eat a lot of veggies, go for #10 cans, or ideally, grow and can your own.

The idea is to get the benefits of bulk-purchasing what you actually eat (so, lower cost per unit all the time), plus having an emergency capacity.

Once you have a month or so of ready stores in your pantry, then maybe consider the long-term 10 year storage stuff. Reducing your daily costs by buying your daily foods in bulk gives you enough left over to start accumulating other supplies.

</comment><comment><USER18> I would be interested IF I could read the nutrition label and ingredients. Ah, here is the PDF: <http://www.costco.com/Images/Content/Misc/PDF/443250n.pdf>

The inclusion of freeze dried fruits and veggies sounds promising, but I do wonder how the TVP would taste after a while.

Also, the inclusion of "hard winter wheat" means either boiling it to make a mash, or having a hand-powered or electric grain mill present in order to bake bread.

Further, the idea that "1/4 cup" of white rice counts as a serving, is certainly an idea that is foreign to most Americans and I am sure, many Asians as well. I suppose "48 servings of white rice per can" sounds better than "each can contains 12 cups of rice".

As a reviewer points out, this year's supply provides about 1220 calories per day. If computed as 2000 calories per day, the supply drops to 223 days.

</comment><comment><USER19> Seems lucrative at first, but I would subject myself to eating canned food for a year. This kind of diet is completely deprived from nutrients. I can only imagine the state of my health after a year. For a little more than that one could shop at Trader Joe's and eat fresh, organic and locally made produce.

</comment><comment><USER20> This sounds like a better value than the food insurance companies Glenn Beck promotes. I would be interested in how many calories are in this package. I eat >3000 a day when training hard.

<comment><USER21> ...training hard for the apocalypse?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I wish I had a cabin in the middle of nowhere in Northern California to stash something like this for when the world falls apart...

</comment><comment><USER23> I'd like to see someone on here try this, ala JetBlue's Unlimited Flights for 30 days. It won't be me however...

</comment><comment><USER24> Has someone tried this stuff? I don't know if I want to spend 800 bucks on something that I can't eat.

</comment><comment><USER25> While I'm not arguing that you can get some nutrition from this there's no way it's _healthy_.

</comment><comment><USER26> They could sell it with Dharma initiative labels.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Eat for $2 a day, spend the rest on your startup!

</comment><comment><USER27> having only myself to feed i'd be concerned about the quantities of food per container. being obliged to consume the 236 servings of eggs after opening one of the 6 cans in that set would be a tall order.

i've always understood "ramen profitable" to be a figure of speech. does anyone seriously eat that filth?

i think a real hacker would be aware of their body and its various biological processes ("know thyself" in a sense), and know that putting crap like that into your "human experience system" is foolishness regardless of your budget or time constraints. i work 12-14 hour a day 6 days (minimum) a week and still cook for myself.

when my budget was tight my crock pot was my best friend. dried beans, frozen veggies, minimal cheap starches, cheap fresh fruits, onions, garlic, canned tuna/cheap lean meat, a few cans of seasoning and some olive oil were still under $100/month.

nowadays i eat like a king for $400/month and i'm eating the sort of meals i'd have to pay $20+ a plate for at a restaurant. if you're looking to cut your budget learn to cook. it's easy. it's a process-- optimize it. takes me 10 minutes. dont eat filth. crap in -> crap out.. neglect your body and live with the consequences. until we can grow replacements or figure out how to preserve them indefinitely, it's foolishness.

</comment><comment><USER28> Digg and Reddit pander to this. Don't kill HN.

<comment><USER29> _363 days ago_

<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.)

<comment><USER28> They should add a guideline making the obvious observation that the age of any given account says nothing about the length of site use by the account holder. Maybe then we could can the typical "semi-noob illusion" junk.

There was an imgur link on the front page a couple of days ago. I believe that was the first time ever. Now the Costco Cavalcade (<http://www.reddit.com/domain/costco.com> \-- these SEO clowns have learned that they can grow an account legacy by posting this Costco garbage constantly) has made its way here. Yay!

Protip -- Someone should post that TIL that Costco Sells Caskets! Instant front page!

<comment><USER29> Personally, I would have been much more amenable to an argument why this is not Hacker News versus why HN is Reddit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I vote that all future bank bailout money gets spent on Costco "Food for a Year," and then let the banks fix themselves.</comment>


Show HN: The Lua Lockbox - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/somesocks/lua-lockbox <comment><USER3> This is definitely a nice reference implementation of crypto algorithms in pure Lua, but please, please do not use it for production encryption. Anything written in an interpreted (or worse, JIT-ted) language will be almost definitely vulnerable to timing attacks. Lua already has bindings to C/C++ crypto libraries if you need to encrypt or create MACs.

</comment><comment><USER4> Interesting idea. But I question the overall security philosophy of a project that includes so many suspected to be weak, known to be weak, or provably weak algorithms, e.g., MD2, MD4, MD5, SHA-1, and DES.

If this is for serious security, DROP THOSE NOW. Sorry to scream, but the sooner we stop using them, the better.

I also wouldn't spend a lot of time on AES 256, given some of the recently described weaknesses that reduce it to by many bits of strength. Better to work on CAST5, e.g.

Better yet, work on the RNG. Make sure the RNG is cryptographically secure. Without a cryptographically secure RNG, all the key derivation algorithms are pretty much useless.

<comment><USER5> Per the README, it appears these are disabled by default:

> Several weak or broken primitives are implemented in this library, for > research or legacy reasons. These should not be used under normal > circumstances! To restrict their usage, they have been marked as insecure, > with the Lockbox.insecure() method. This will cause a failed assertion when > you attempt to import the module, unless you set Lockbox.ALLOW_INSECURE to > true before the import.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is very useful - thanks! I've got a project that I could use this in - <USER2> I'll be spending this week getting familiar with this codebase .. see you on github!

</comment><comment><USER7> That is some very clean-written Lua. Kudos!

I'm excited to pull this into nginx's lua bindings and come up with something cool (and extremely performant)

<comment><USER8> Nginx Lua bindings does have direct access to OpenSSL primitives (or LibreSSL, or BoringSSL). I have also created (LuaJIT) binding to libnettle [1] that you can find from here [2]. (libhogweed, aka rsa/dsa bindings, and documentation are still a work in progress).

[1] [http://www.lysator.liu.se/~nisse/nettle/](http://www.lysator.liu.se/~nisse/nettle/) [2] [https://github.com/bungle/lua-resty- nettle](https://github.com/bungle/lua-resty-nettle)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Carrom – HRM and Payroll for Remote Teams - <AUTHOR> https://carrom.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> Carrom is HRM and Payroll software for remote teams. If you are a US/EU company with employees around the world, who wants to pay their monthly salary, in their local currencies with best conversion rates Carrom is for you. We take care of payments via our Transferwise integration, so you can be assured all the payments are secure. Easily manage reimbursements, benefits and onboard your employees.</comment>


Tell HN: Please put some contact details on your profile. - <AUTHOR>

The email field on your profile is not visible to others. If you want people to be able to contact you, please write something in the description field, whether it's a personal address, an anonymous Gmail address or a link to your site,  blog or HackerNewsers page.
I know this comes up quite frequently, but it's frustrating not being able to contact people, and replying to a post is only realistic if it's part of an active discussion.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Some of us do check for replies even to rather old comments, too, so it's not necessarily hopeless to contact someone via a stale thread.

But your point is well taken and I already have an email in there.

</comment><comment><USER3> Done ^_~

</comment><comment><USER4> I had already placed my contact info on my 'description' area in my profile.

Although, I do agree that it is easier to contact people, over active discussions etc when they have posted contact information on their profile.</comment>


AT&T keen on Google/Verizon net hostility proposal - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/08/att-keen-on-verizongoogle-net-neutrality-proposal.ars

<comment><USER2> Google, Verizon, and AT&T interest aligning? This is alarming no doubt.</comment>


Show HN: YouTube Alternative Player – V3 – Echoes Player (no Adswith Powers) - <AUTHOR> http://echoesplayer.com <comment><USER2> I don't understand... What does it do that's better or different from youtube?

<comment><AUTHOR> Search while you play, Always have a now playlist, No ads (although this is a side effect of the implementation) Different results display

Above all, it's an open source project that is also used to experiment and study

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> i personally prefer [http://www.soundice.com](http://www.soundice.com) . This is way better than echoesplayer and also considerably better than youtube for me.

</comment><comment><USER4> Nicee

</comment><comment><USER5> holy crap, well done!</comment>


Ask HN: Best Android phone today? - <AUTHOR> Imagine price is not a problem. You want not the fastest, but the most usable, best designed, most stable, loaded with as little crap as possible, Android Phone. What would you buy? <comment><USER2> Xperia Z5.

</comment><comment><USER3> OnePlus One</comment>


Mahalo's Calacanis: Time To End The Content Farm Arms Race - <AUTHOR> http://searchengineland.com/mahalo-calacanis-time-to-end-the-content-farm-arms-race-64109 <comment><USER3> _You shouldn't put your ads next to sub-par content. We will not make content unless we have an expert. Demand Media will make content if someone will take $10_

I don't relish paying people for what are essentially search clicks that in an ideal world I would have outranked them for, but the alternative is not paying and getting no sale.

Case in point: I paid $100 for ads on eHow in January alone. (Of which something like $68 goes to Demand Media.) The content is less than compelling, but a) it is clearly, absurdly profitable for me as an advertiser and b) it is economical for DM to produce.

Example:

<http://www.ehow.com/how_13856_play-valentine-bingo.html>

This is a fairly typical eHow page. At ~300 words, it cost on the order of $6~8 to write. In _January alone_ , it generated about $1.30 in DM's cut of my $2 AdWords spend. It will do four times that or more in February. Count the other advertisers on the page and I would be _astonished_ if it pulls in less than $20 ~ $25 of revenue this year. This model empirically scales to the freaking moon.

I also checked my stats for how much I'm subsidizing Mahalo. Turns out: not that much! ($20 in four years.) The reason appears to be that, at least as it relates to educational bingo cards, DM convincingly clobbers Mahalo on execution.

<http://www.mahalo.com/christmas-bingo/> <\-- _Winces._ 30 words of content and half of them are an inducement to click on ads!

Yeah, if I were Mahalo, I wouldn't want to compete against DM using DM's model either. They're just better at farming. I am skeptical that the new model will work except as PR cover for the old model: i.e. handcrafted pillar content provides enough plausible deniability to hope Google does not mass purge all thin mahalo.com/* pages from the Internet. The economics of $1,000+ a page pillar content makes sense if (and probably only if) the pillar content preserves thousands of cheaper pages.

So much the better for Mahalo if they can simultaneously get an effective competitor of those filler pages torched.

<comment><USER4> VIDEO is our answer.

We have been moving all of our content to a higher standard:

1\. video 2\. an EXPERT in the video with credentials 3\. quality Q&A (with some paid folks answers questions... that we don't really promote)

best jason

<comment><USER5> ExpertVillage, developed the content farm video strategy, like 6 years ago... Almost exactly as you describe.

Guess who founded that: Byron Reese the brains behind Demand Media's entire content algo system. <http://www.demandmedia.com/executive-leadership/byron- reese/>

So unfortunately, this isn't some new idea Demand missed... it's one they've moved beyond.

<comment><USER6> AOL's recently leaked 'AOL Way' playbook for content-farming also targets "70%" of all created pages having video.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am stunned. Calacanis was just brazenly lying about his belief in the quality of his articles and that it was just a few isolated articles that were thin. Now he claims he couldn't sleep as well at night before due to Mahalo's mounds of crap content. And apparently he's completely unrepentant about having to lie on behalf of his company, now taking a holier than thou stance against his competitors. Unbelievable. This is borderline sociopathic.

<comment><USER8> Sociopathic? Not necessarily. He's just being pragmatic. A sociopath is somebody who lie when he is expected to tell the truth. There's no real world for somebody who does the opposite (tells the truth even if he would be expected to lie), but most people are just pragmatic - they tell the truth to their friends and co-workers, and lie if they happen to be a CEO putting out a press release.

<comment><USER7> No, CEOs are not expected to lie - that's very bad business, generally. They can selectively focus on aspects of the business that make them look good, and dodge questions they don't want to answer, but flat out lying as a CEO is wrong, and destroys your company's and your credibility.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I can't help but enjoy watching this guy operate. He's an odd combo of smart, aggressive, shameless, and transparent.

Seems to me he realized eHow is an unstoppable SEO machine and decided to positior, err, "pivot" against them.

He really belongs in politics, not tech.

<comment><USER10> Jason Calacanis and Tim Ferris are the two most polarizing dudes here on HN as far as I can tell. But love 'em or hate 'em, they do both get lots of press.

<comment><USER11> It seems likely that "get lots of press" is dependent on "polarizing."

Personally I'd vote for Calacanis having more substance then Ferris.

<comment><USER12> "The 4 hour content farm", coming soon!

<comment><USER10> Heck, that's no stretch at all, 4HWW was all about outsourcing your research and production. Saying "now apply that to web page generation" is a one sentence book.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I just don't buy it. Aaron Wall called you out a while ago and if I recall correctly you denied and denied. This sudden change of heart doesn't read like a moral turn-around, it reads like surrender. You got out-competed by Demand, AOL, Associated Content and trying to re-frame the argument as 'we're all going to suffer if you don't cut back' is bullshit. If you really were turning around Mahalo and it wasn't going to be a content farm (whatever your definition of the term), all of this wouldn't matter. So arguing that everyone has to cut back would be silly, you should let them content farm and get banned by big bad google and you can take home all the prizes! But that's not what is really happening is it?

<comment><USER4> We never made spam, we always used humans, but we made pages that were "light" in my opinion. They also lacked an EXPERT.

We solved this by hiring 55 video editors in the last six months and we now add an expert to every page.

So, if you definition of a content farm was "light" content written by non- experts then we we're a content farm.

Guilty as charged, but I confessed my sins and I'm now on the side of the righteous! Aaron Wall is now my biggest fan... he tells his clients to model their sits around my sites.

<comment><USER13> Jason, I respect you, you've accomplished a lot and I can only hope to achieve as much success.

That being said, come on. You confessed and it's out of some altruistic epiphany?

Mahalo isn't competing for mindshare, it's competing for SEO share and you got beat. If you are switching to a high quality content producer, let the quality of your content speak for itself. Compete for consumer's mindshare as a destination for quality content. You've picked some battles I still respect like fighting against angels charging to be pitched. However, you don't have the same moral high ground on this one. You have no legitimacy as a crusader against content farms. Period. Stop it.

Create some awesome content and share it with us. Sites like this THRIVE on the high quality content. Or re-work your business model and SEO and compete again for that long tail xylophone playing monkies. Either way, stop treating us like idiots and be honest with us.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think Mahalo has refocused appropriately, and I am pleasantly surprised to see that. But I think this is no longer a sustainable business model.

If you need to spend as much on content generation as I'm seeing cited here, your time to break even is quite a while on a per-article basis.

<comment><USER14> "Your time to break even is quite a while on a per-article basis" - and that's the crux of the matter entirely.

As per this WSJ article [http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/08/12/where-did- demand-medi...](http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/08/12/where-did-demand- medias-profits-go/)

if demand media is allowed to amortize out their costs over years (under the assumption every piece of "How to bathe your gerbil" will keep bringing in revenue for the next half-decade) they become strikingly profitable, especially for a company that writes words on the Internet. If not, they're hemorrhaging cash.

Given Google's recently renewed focus on providing quality search results, I'd take the under on all of these companies, mahalo included.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> All I can say is that I haven't had a mahalo page pollute my search results for months. Keep up the good work google!

<comment><USER5> Add pws=0 to your queries. You probably have stopped seeing them, but it's based on your click behavior.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm not sure this "We spent SIX MILLION DOLLARS on our how to bathe a Zebra page!" nonsense is really going to work.

The problem here is that folks want to know stuff that has very little -- but measurable -- value in terms of advertising dollars. You are not going to make Champagne pages for folks with beer budgets. Doesn't make sense.

More honestly, this is an issue of making Google look bad. It's the Deadly Sin of web content.

So gee. I don't know, maybe Google should worry about making itself look better? If that means de-listing E-how, then so be it.

Instead of focusing on the _beginning_ of this arms race, the filling in of trivial content, we should be focusing on the _end_ of the race: a net full of cool, informative, and deep articles about just about every subject imaginable. That's a noble goal -- but in my opinion you have to crawl before you can walk. Shutting these guys down isn't going to do much except stifle innovation.

All content generators -- bloggers, e-mags, content farms, micro-sites and the rest of them -- need from Google is a fair, level playing field. One rule for everybody. After that is accomplished, then I would expect people who make content would start making crappy content, Google would raise the bar, and this back-and-forth will continue for a while.

Sounds all pretty normal to me. For every page that ranks highly that ticks somebody off, somewhere out there, some kid has a hamster who is just tickled pink there is a set of instructions on how to wash it.

I think the real thing that's going on here is that lots of money is getting involved so the players are starting to posture, both to the investors, the search engines, and the competition. Wonder what they imagine their various end-games are. Love to be a fly on the wall in some of those board meetings.

<comment><USER4> Google is not fair today--that's the problem!

ehow is an 11 year old domain name and they create millions of pages. They will out rank anyone due to:

a) domain age b) flooding the index with dozens of pages around a niche topic (as opposed to one good one).

google does NOT rank for quality... it ranks for signs of quality such as domain age, inbound links, etc.

until google can tell that there 100+ spam articles on a niche topic are not as good as on lifehacker or Mahalo or /. page we're screwed.

I mean, in order to win you need to buy and old domain and flood the index. what if everyone does this?!?!

<comment><USER17> This eHow page was written by a human being and convincingly answers a (trivial) question:

<http://www.ehow.com/how_13856_play-valentine-bingo.html>

This Mahalo page was written by a sloppy computer program and is a shotgun blast of random gronk schlorped on a page in the hopes of making it appear to answer a question that nobody, even at Mahalo, really thought about:

<http://www.mahalo.com/christmas-bingo/>

If Google is bonusing up the owner of the former page to the detriment of the owner of the latter page, they're doing the Internet a favor. My only knock on them is that their response to the latter page didn't involve blowtorches.

<comment><USER18> Jason is right, your oddly skewed example isn't a counter to jason's point. Google doesn't rank based on quality, but a proxy that is gamable and is heavily gamed. I'm skeptical that they can ever effectively solve this problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think wikipedia could kill this whole circus if they started a 'casualpedia' spinoff/superset that allowed people to contribute content beyond strictly encyclopaedic articles - and still without the advertising.

In fact, maybe that's what they wanted all those donations for...

<comment><USER20> I can see it now... "A business announcement from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales: We have acquired Wookiepedia."

<comment><USER21> He does actually own Wookiepedia, but in his private capacity as a businessman (occasionally the source of some conflict-of-interest controversy): <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikia>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> And then one day someone will come along who pays his farmers $2000 per page and claim that Mahalo is polluting the web with their lousy $1000pp content.

The issue boils down to the fact that the search landscape is fundamentally a representative democracy. Google has a huge amount of power but if people become dissatisfied with the results, Google will be out the door quicker than you can say "altavista".

And here is Jason's problem: if people clicking the Google search results are satisfied with ehow, then ehow they shall get. Urging people to demand better content is a fool's errand.

</comment><comment><USER23> "Help, I was trying to salt the soup and it got oversalted! The best solution is to ask everyone else to stop salting it, too!"

<comment><USER24> Well... Yes. If the soup is shared by two billion people, and a few of them are dropping tens of thousands of tons of salt a day, I think one can be forgiven for asking them to quit. Nor do I see anything wrong with one of them realizing what they're doing, stopping, and asking other people to stop too.

<comment><USER23> Right around the time when Google has stated it's going to clamp down on it, too!

<comment><USER24> So? What's your point? I mean, Calcanis was clear that he felt that this was the best business decision. Does the fact that he's doing it to make more money make it any less a good thing?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Boy am I in trouble over this one. :-)

<comment><USER25> Honestly, Jason, this is the only time I've found myself agreeing with you. Mahalo was a low SNR, spam-driven, visually abhorrent, search-result-polluting pile of useless self-referential scraped-off-wikipedia bullshit that I wanted to burn to the ground so badly that I wrote code to excise it from search results before its inchoate content managed to scream dimly from somewhere below two folds worth of weight loss ads, "help me."

I'll give you a good slow clap.

<comment><USER4> Thanks pal.

Frankly, I think we got caught up in the races with content farms like Demand Media too much. You can't create thousands of articles a day and expect quality--it's impossible!!!

So, we move to dozens to maybe 200 pages a day... but we do it with quality and hope for the best.

The good news is we broken even last year and have a ton of money in the bank. We are going to ramp up our burn and try to make a LOT of high-quality videos.

You can see them here: <http://www.youtube.com/mahalocallofduty> <http://www.youtube.com/mahalopiano> <http://www.youtube.com/mahalodotcom> <http://www.youtube.com/mahalomath> <http://www.youtube.com/mahalocooking>

These videos are getting better and better... I'd say most are 6-9 out of 10. Every month we should add a half point to our average. That means by the summer we should only publish stuff that's an "eight or better."

We are going to build a wide, commercial version of the Kahn Academy.

<comment><USER25> _We are going to build a wide, commercial version of the Kahn Academy._

This is a terrific idea, and I wish you all the best in doing it well. You've got the drive, money, and PR skill to make it a reality. Go for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Google has basically solved the question of how to determine what is most "relevant" based on inbound and outbound links, etc. What Google (or Bing, or any other competitor) has to figure out now is how to source the best "authority" per search. This is almost the holy grail of search - find me the best, most relevant item to the arbitrary, nebulous concept I'm poorly phrasing. There are a ton of amateurish suggestions I could make, but I'm not in any position or power to suggest anything.

I do think that given what the article points out, Aol's purchase of the HuffPo seems more ill-advised. If Google is able to determine that the large majority of the content on HuffPo is rehash of another site, kiss that investment goodbye. I've always been on a mission to get as close to the source of things as I can. I'm all for relevant analysis, but summarizing an article word for word is tough to accept.

</comment><comment><USER27> I don't really think you can complain about the top search being lower quality when up until recently complete junk from Mahalo was doing the same thing. I think the demand media model will be more profitable than this one unless Mahalo is betting on a collection of quality articles to help support a collection of average articles. I am a fan of the nicer layout they have now, just don't see how an article with video for the long tail of search terms that cost hundreds to make will ever be profitable.

</comment><comment><USER28> And it comes with a soundtrack: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntgYJ9iz47c>

<comment><USER10> Well, let's be fair - "I can change" is the only reasonable response - <USER2> alternative is that Google gives them the death penalty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I suppose the first step _is_ admitting you have a problem. This could just be rhetoric, but I certainly hope it isn't.</comment>


How I wrote a Twitter timeline search app in two days - <AUTHOR> http://blog.indextank.com/223/how-i-wrote-a-twitter-timeline-search-app-in-2-days/

<comment><USER2> I just tried your app but some of my tweets don't seem to be showing up. Does it have a lag or did it just miss them? Will they show up?

<comment><AUTHOR> What you see on your timeline at the time you sign up is indexed right away. After that, the app gets all your tweets and those from who you follow. As twitter has an hourly limit for API calls, it may take some time to index your friends history.

It depends on how many friends you have and how much they tweet

<comment><USER2> Thanks, this is useful. I don't understand why Twitter itself doesn't provide this option. I can search for tweets near me, people, tweets with links, etc. but not what I missed when I wasn't online. Could you combine this with other services such as Facebook or email?

<comment><USER3> Are you saying that you can't understand why Twitter's services provide an incentive for you to be online all the time?

<comment><USER2> Good point, hadn't thought of that. I do wonder if proper search would affect people's time on Twitter. I don't find myself coming back for fear of missing out on something, but I do scroll down a lot when I visit. This must be expensive to them, as it causes lots of unnecessary db queries.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The metamorphosis of Escher - <AUTHOR> https://escher.ntr.nl/en/ <comment><USER2> One of my all time favorite or favourite(sic) artists ever. Here are some links to keep you busy/entertained

Make your own Metamorphosis: [https://escher.ntr.nl/en/mmm](https://escher.ntr.nl/en/mmm)

Create your own tessellations: [http://www.tessellations.org/](http://www.tessellations.org/)

High quality scans from Boston public library: [https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search?f%5Bcollection_na...](https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search?f%5Bcollection_name_ssim%5D%5B%5D=M.+C.+Escher+%281898-1972%29.+Prints+and+Drawings&f%5Binstitution_name_ssim%5D%5B%5D=Boston+Public+Library&per_page=100)

<comment><USER3> Why '(sic)' after favourite?

<comment><USER2> Favorite=US Favourite=UK :-)

<comment><USER4> That's not really a use case for [sic]. As per wikipedia: erroneous or archaic spelling, surprising assertion, faulty reasoning, or other matter that might otherwise be taken as an error of transcription.

<comment><USER5> One or both of these use

> archaic spelling

> other matter that might otherwise be taken as an error of transcription

fit the description though the case for _archaic spelling_ is arguable.

<comment><USER4> Both the US English and British English spellings are used extensively, nobody would think it's a spelling mistake. And calling British English archaic is quite insulting, it would be like calling US English "dumbed down".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you're ever in The Hague, the Escher museum is a must-see. Seeing Metamorphosis II displayed in the round was just fantastic.

</comment><comment><USER7> One of my favorite transformations by Escher: [http://www.josleys.com/article_show.php?id=82](http://www.josleys.com/article_show.php?id=82)

<comment><USER8> As linked in that article, here the Print Gallery has been un-transformed and animated: [http://escherdroste.math.leidenuniv.nl/](http://escherdroste.math.leidenuniv.nl/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I really wish it didn't do the forced scroll across the whole artwork on first page load. Makes me feel seasick.

</comment><comment><USER10> I can't stop thinking about E.Coli when I read the man's name.</comment>


What are best ways to find hacker+business co-founders in the Silicon Valley? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> For which business chatwindow or hireplug? What is your background? Try here on HN, attend seminar's and hackathons etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> for cezer - www.cezer.co

<comment><USER2> How is this different from google hangout?</comment></comment></comment>


Dendrocnide moroides  - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendrocnide_moroides <comment><USER2> What the hell is wrong with you, Australia? What did they do to you?</comment>


Misclassifying employees as contractors: why the risks outweigh the savings - <AUTHOR> https://launch.gust.com/blog/independent-contractor-vs-employee?utm_source=hn&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=launch <comment><USER2> Or put another way.....

If your business model depends on you claiming that your "employee's" are actually contractors then you don't have a business model.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hah, definitely true. Even without the Uber approach, though, many people just use 1099s at inappropriate times because it seems like a way to avoid paperwork.</comment></comment>


Patients Had Sickle-Cell Disease. Experimental Therapies Might Have Cured Them - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/27/health/sickle-cell-gene-therapy.html <comment><USER2> I can't shake that this sounds like an advertisement, but this seems incredibly legitimate.</comment>