Sweden's low positive test rate 'vindicates coronavirus strategy' - <AUTHOR> https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/swedens-low-positive-test-rate-vindicates-coronavirus-strategy-5nw0k2vd7 <comment><USER2> "Up to now Sweden has recorded 5,838 coronavirus deaths, giving it the fifth- highest per capita death rate in Europe, [...]"

Yes they have the fift worst mortality per capita in Europe excluding microstates (Andorra, San Marino).

It is the 11th worst mortality in the world, again excluding the same two microstates.

Not sure how one can "vindicate" a strategy that lead to that, unless you imagine scenarios where the rest of the countries have huge moralities due to second wave, and Sweden somehow ends up on the other side of the table, with 11th best in the world.

They tried, props for the courage, but they fucked up.

<comment><USER3> Well, they are better off so far than France, Italy, the U.K., Spain, and Belgium, which is most of western Europe. So in other words, as good or better than most of western Europe.

Now, why western Europe, as a whole, has the worst mortality rates in the world, is a valid question, but it has nothing specifically to do with Sweden.

<comment><USER4> France has 5X the population density of Sweden though, so maybe France did much better considering that. Sweden has lots of barren arctic area though so it may not be a fair measure. You'd want to know how many people the average person interacts with pre COVID or something.

<comment><USER5> One of the most populated reigons of sweden (skåne) has one of the lowest per capita infection rate. Globally (on a country level) there does not seem to be a strong correlation between density and infection. I think it will take years to get to the bottom of what works and what doesn't and why.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure what explains Skane being so low, but the highest per capita case county was also the county with the first case. So random seed case event timings seem to have been more important there: "On 31 January, the first Swedish case was confirmed in a woman in Jönköping who had travelled to Sweden from Wuhan, China, on 24 January directly from Wuhan. "

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Well, other than having ten times as many deaths as the other Nordic countries: [https://www.statista.com/topics/6123/coronavirus- covid-19-in...](https://www.statista.com/topics/6123/coronavirus-covid-19-in- the-nordics/)

I feel like lives lost is perhaps the better metric of success.

<comment><USER7> No. Most of Sweden's deaths were due to poor management at the beginning. They shoved the elderly into old folks homes with Covid positive patients.

<comment><USER8> They didn't. Although they didn't protect the elderly in the beginning, which is official.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Isn't it a bit early to say that? As I understand it, there is still so much we don't understand about SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19. I am not sure whether the other strategies were better either, I think it would be a little premature to vindicate any strategy.

I am merely speculating here, maybe due to the situation, Swedes had generally been more careful than their neighbours (i.e. Denmark, Norway and Finland), because their situation remained worse and worsened for longer, and they might be seeing a downturn in cases a few months later than neighbouring countries. Again, just speculating, but I also feel vindicating their strategy at this stage is doing exactly the same.

<comment><USER10> I think THIS may be the true secret to Swedish strategy, much like NYC -- it got so bad it really changed the conversation and people are still shell shocked and caution remains high to maintain social distancing, defer gathering in groups etc.

If they aren't really getting together much indoors, masks won't be necessary for now (may need to be outside once winter comes and UV drops precipitously).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Basically, the article is saying that they've achieved herd immunity. Is that correct? As soon as a month ago I believe the consensus was that they were far away from it, with the total percentage that have antibodies somewhere around 15%.

They also have significantly more deaths per capita than all but 3 EU countries (Italy, Spain and Belgium.) That said, I definitely don't think a country's deaths per capita necessarily indicate doing something totally wrong. Belgium, for example, has the 2nd worst number of deaths per capita - literally ten times more than many other EU countries - but they weren't materially different than their neighbors in their strategy, and indeed seemed to lock down harder...

<comment><USER9> Belgium is also reporting any potential death linked to COVID-19 as that. Effectively, almost all excess death in Belgium is reported as COVID-19, leading to a far higher death per capita reporting from Belgium. Other countries usually require a proof that it was COVID-19 before reporting it as such.

<comment><USER11> Right, but there's other evidence that even with that, their situation was particularly bad. If you go by the excess-death numbers, Belgium is still the 2nd worst in the world. Why them, and not their neighbors?

<comment><USER12> Bad luck.

A small country or state has an higher chance of being an outlier. 11M people live in Belgium, and a lot of +/\- 10M inhabitant regions in larger countries have an higher death rate (Paris, NYC, Lombardy, Madrid ...).

If you live in a large country, some highly impacted regions will be offset by less affected regions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is The Times in the UK reporting here, wholly owned by News Corp (aka Fox News' parent). They're trying to paint the failures of Sweden (5th highest per-capita death rate in Europe) as a success the same way they do in the US.

</comment><comment><USER14> 3x more people died than in places that did the consensus strategy. And they haven't stopped having more cases either. 4000 more people died than in the other strategy. It will take a long time before that difference disappears, if it ever does, and it's not like those extra years of life are something you can ignore. What exactly has been vindicated?

<comment><USER15> _it 's not like those extra years of life are something you can ignore_

Quarantining entire populations also has costs you can't ignore.

 _What exactly has been vindicated?_

If the doomsayers were right, Sweden's lack of restrictions should have produced by far the highest death rates in Europe and probably the world. Instead they did better than many countries on all possible metrics: deaths, economic impact, and behavior restrictions.

 _4000 more people died than in the other strategy._

Even if true, that doesn't make it obviously the wrong call. On average, people who die from COVID would otherwise have lived around 12 years longer, so that's 48,000 life-years lost. On the other hand, putting 10 million people under lockdown for three months is 2.5 million life-years. If a lockdown decreases the average quality of life by even 2%, then that's a higher cost.

<comment><USER14> The idea that Sweden had no lockdown measures at all and other places had draconian lockdowns where the whole population was closed down for three months is a strawman. They are also near the bottom on all those indicators you mentioned. Doing better than the US or Brasil is a very low bar for this. And what we're discussing here isn't that their strategy is "obviously wrong" it's that it's very definitely not "vindicated".

<comment><USER16> The vindication - to my mind - is that if broad government enforced lockdowns were truly effective then Sweden should be an extreme outlier for their general region, which is Western Europe. They're not. They're about middle of the pack there, and as others point out there's chance involved to a large degree. Belgium introduced lockdowns but is much worse off than their bordering neighbors and Western Europe. Sweden has a large immigrant population which for various reasons have resulted in a lot of worse outbreaks like say Nothern Italy which had lots of immigrants from China and Wuhan. So essentially lockdowns don't seem much more effective than chance in many measurements.

<comment><USER14> Sweden is not middle of the pack. They are in line with the worst death rates in Europe when their comparable neighbors have the best rates. And they achieved that while still doing quite a few lockdown measures, just less.

In numbers of cases we've already gone from high to low and back to high again in direct correlation to the lockdown measures that were taken. We've done that in multiple places and at different times. I don't see any way to argue that lockdowns are not more effective than chance. Not even Sweden argues that, they just think they can manage the extra cases and achieve herd immunity soon.

<comment><USER16> According to this Statista data, they're roughly in the middle for Western Europe, not precisely but they certainly aren't ahead of the pack: [https://www.statista.com/statistics/1111779/coronavirus- deat...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1111779/coronavirus-death-rate- europe-by-country/)

Just because your bordering countries do better, is a possible indicator there methods worked better but there's a lot more confounding variables that would need to be isolated, as I mention in another comment. For example perhaps the Nordic countries have similar age distributions (or not). They do have what seems to about 1/3 more immigrants than the other nordics per capita ([https://www.ssb.no/en/befolkning/artikler-og- publikasjoner/_...](https://www.ssb.no/en/befolkning/artikler-og- publikasjoner/_attachment/204333?_ts=1497ab86428)). Immigrants aren't bad, just this particular virus hits elderly people more severely so having more elderly living in stratified homes means more elderly exposed.

Certainly stricter and government enforced lockdowns slow down progression rate of the disease for a while, but other factors also appear to have a larger cumulative effect. Timing, population composition, age distribution. It's more akin to anti-depressants, as in clinical studies of many potential anti-depressants show they have similar rates of effect as placebos. The degree of the covid deaths per capita has as much to do with societal, geographical, and even luck in many countries.

I grant that well executed lockdowns have better success, especially in as in New Zealand, but they're more of an anomaly I'd say. Now presuming, France, Belgium, Spain, Italy weren't completely incompetent in their governmental lockdowns then other factors appear to be as big a factor as those policies. France from the Statista data only has a per capita mortality rate that 25% larger, which isn't a large effect given the uncertainty of the data, and especially for epidemics which generally follow exponential curves (e.g. a tiny initial difference in starting conditions can lead to large differences very quickly). Take this (older graph) and it'd difficult to statistically say which countries have lockdowns or not. Again just including nearest neighbors isn't sufficient since other neighboring countries like Germany, Belgium, and Netherlands have pretty big variations between them as large as Sweden to Norway. So do say the US and Canada.

I don't believe the absolute number of COVID-19 cases matters as much given a virus where 5-80% of cases are mild or asymptotic ([https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/covid-19-what-proportion- are-a...](https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/covid-19-what-proportion-are- asymptomatic/)). Many serological studies point to 10x the number of cases, which if so, all the cases numbers are off by an order of magnitude ([https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/04/antibody-surveys- sug...](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/04/antibody-surveys-suggesting- vast-undercount-coronavirus-infections-may-be-unreliable)). A bit callous perhaps, but the more cases of sars-cov-2 overall with the same number of fatalities means the less deadly it is overall. Also, the countries that had/have stricter lockdowns will likely continue having larger waves of deaths until their overall numbers look more like Sweden (your point of achieving herd immunity sooner).

<comment><USER14> > According to this Statista data, they're roughly in the middle for Western > Europe

I stopped right here. You linked data that shows them 5th of a list of 31 countries, with values that are 5x larger than 2/3 of the list. You linked that to argue they are "roughly in the middle". At that point facts don't matter and there's no point in having a discussion.

<comment><USER16> > I stopped right here. You linked data that shows them 5th of a list of 31 > countries, with values that are 5x larger than 2/3 of the list. You linked > that to argue they are "roughly in the middle". At that point facts don't > matter and there's no point in having a discussion.

The facts do matter, though your comment doesn't give my point fair consideration that I'd expect of a genuine discussion. I provided a link to raw data for all of Europe which requires a bit of interpretation since Statista doesn't have a convenient link for Western European. Croatia is not part of Western Europe by most metrics, so saying they're 5x smaller isn't a valid criticism.

For sake of completeness, I took data from the first Statista link and a common list of Western European countries: Luxembourg, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Germany, Portugal, Switzerland, Ireland, Netherlands, France, Sweden, Italy, UK, Spain, Belgium. These lists vary of course, and if you were critiquing my argument that would be the best point, and I would concede that. For those countries I took the Statista at the time of this post (plus extra data for Swizterland of 23.57). Using the Excel quartile on these countries the quartiles are: 1st: 4.95-14.51, 2nd: 14.51-36.03, 3rd: 36.03-57.85, 4th: 57.85-86.4. Sweden at 56.89 falls into the 3rd quartile, though just barely. When speaking, I consider 2nd and 3rd quartiles to be "middle of the pack" as a general statement (rather than the median or average). As in if one were talking of say, student grades, or variations in parts productions I'd give them a "B" and say they're middle of the pack. Almost in the "A" group, but not quite. You could say it's close enough that it doesn't matter, but by the numbers and using quartiles the math would put it there. Personally I'm happy my eye ball estimation as it'd getting very close to where I'd say Sweden is in the top of the pack. A valid criticism would be that Belgium appears to be an outlier and likely counts their numbers differently (w/o Belgium Sweden is pushed into the bottom of the 4th quartile)), but I have not method to control for that nor the time to do so unfortunately.

To my overall point, despite being downvoted, I still consider Sweden's policy not a resulting in complete outlier to be a "win". It's close, but yes, that's my conclusion. If a vaccine had similar ratios of effectives vs no vaccine it'd likely not be considered an effective vaccine or deterrent. Unfortunately I've yet to see good thorough counter-arguments in this or in scientific arguments. Also, other arguments often don't consider what how policies in health care are or aren't generally considered effective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Compared to their peers in northern Europe that fared far better, the data does not suggest vindication. They have 5x the number of cases per capita compared to countries with similar social/economic/geographic conditions.

<comment><USER18> Yeah. Norway/Denmark/Finland all did better than us. :(

This is all on the current swedish social democratic government.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Yeah, the current positive test rate is relatively low because much we already had 6k deaths (approximately 5x the death rate of our neighbours Norway, Denmark and Finland per capita, iirc) and loads of infected people at risk for chronical diseases. So yes - there is some level of herd immunity already (although mostly in Stockholm/Uppsala/Linköping/Göteborg).

We also do a lot less less tests than our neighbouring countries. Denmark in particular is really good at getting testing done, which is also a reason why they are seeing a spike in their results the past few weeks.

</comment><comment><USER19> When crushing the numbers and speaking with relatives in Sweden and Switzerland, it is striking to see that most of the dead counts are in house structures for elderly.

When going deeper, there are 2 parameters that seem to correlate with the dead rates:

1) Sweden is lacking medical employees, therefore the medical education of the staff in these structures is very low. Also the geographical death distribution in the country is a big debate because some reasons could be "hot potato" topic

2) "replacebility" of the elderly: in luxury private structures, the death rate is very low because they protect the one paying the bill (so all the procedures are very strict). In public structures, the gov is paying the bill, and as soon as someone dies, it frees a bed for the next "customer".

My father in law was in a public structure in Sweden and died this year. For several years we saw horrible things: medical staff/procedures does not care about deadly "common" viruses.

</comment><comment><USER20> Can you people please stop with this unhealthy attention.

You need to understand that Swedish culture is really unhealthy right now and I ask all of you - I plead to you - as a Swede, to please stop giving Swedish policy attention so we can, on our own, solve our problems and get back to some kind of normalcy and humbleness.

What has happened the past 30+ years and has become really problematic the past 10 years is that Sweden has this extremely unhealthy culture of believing in Swedish exceptionalism while at the same time craving attention from other nations, and promoting this belief socially. While the Swedish Corona strategy is not explicitly designed to be contrarian at the world stage (and therefor get a lot of attention), the way Swedish mono-culture works is that the people who implement policy (as well as many citizens) chauvinistically and subconsciously believe that Sweden is somehow superior to other nations and at the same time believe that Sweden (as an exceptional country) has something to teach inferior countries (i.e all other countries).

So where we are right now is that we have this unhealthy feedback loop where Sweden initially did it's own thing, and as it turned out to be different that has been a signal to policy makers that Sweden is right. Because Sweden is exceptional, so if the policy is different from inferior countries (i.e all other countries), it must be right.

I wish, probably more than anything else, that other countries would just stop giving Swedish policy makers this attention because then maybe, hopefully, our politicians can start to do what's right for our citizens instead of what gets attention and talking points at the world stage.

This is far broader than Corona: Sweden gets way too much attention overall, because Swedish politicians and government communication employees have nailed "marketing" more than anything else. They crave this attention and they manufacture policy to get attention, at the expense of the people who live in the country. Often under the guise of marketing Sweden as a "moral super power", superior to other nations.

So please, if you are for example a left leaning American, please don't use Sweden as a political piece. Don't give our politicians this attention. There are many other countries that deserve attention but they deserve attention because they do The Right Thing. Like Denmark. Not like Sweden that fucks things up but enjoy the attention it gets when doing so, citizens be damned.

</comment><comment><USER21> I found this [1] twitter thread interesting regarding herd immunity.

[1]: [https://twitter.com/yinonw/status/1295152579941249024](https://twitter.com/yinonw/status/1295152579941249024)

</comment><comment><USER22> I am happy this worked out for them. Sweden is a great country, I wish them well.

</comment><comment><USER23> [https://archive.is/axCvG](https://archive.is/axCvG) for those who can't read the whole article

</comment><comment><USER8> There is an important point to make here. Sweden doesn't have any laws where the government can order a shutdown. So even if they wanted to do a lockdown they couldn't. Doctors can order individuals to be quarantined but not the country as a whole.

<comment><USER24> Are the laws actually clear in many countries? Or is this a matter of the political culture?

In the US, at least, the government's behavior has only a loose asociation with "the law"

<comment><USER8> I can't speak for all countries, but in this situation the Swedish government have purposely few laws where they can act, in general, against groups of citizens. Which is a problem with gang related crimes etc. In the case of a pandemic, the profession that handles it are doctors and their government body. But they only have the power for individuals and areas. Though even then the base idea of an individual right is heavier than the right to contain people. As such example, if an individual escapes from prison, the individual is not committing any crime. This is based on the idea of individuals freedom which is the base for all Swedish law.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Sweden left its old and vulnerable people unprotected and thousands of them died. Now the virus is less deadly because there are fewer people left who are vulnerable to it.

At the start of the pandemic Anders Tegnel, the architect of Sweden's response to the virus, did not believe that asymptomatic carriers existed [1], so Sweden's Public Health Agency instructed health workers in care homes to only stay at home if they had symptoms and to not wear any PPE at work [2]. So they carried the virus into the care homes and a hecatomb of old people ensued.

Obviously, now that the most vulnerable are gone, the virus kills many fewer patients. Swedes don't even need to have immunity to the virus, as such. They just need to be young and healthy enough to survive it if they get it. Not so much heard immunity, as herd culling.

For comparison, let's take Greece, where I'm from and which is a country with a similar population to that of Sweden (about 10 million each). Greece imposed a draconian lockdown in early March, as soon as the severity of the pandemic became obvious (we are right next to Italy, after all). The result was about ~2500 infections and ~140 dead by 1st July when the lockdown was lifted [3]. Remember, that's in a country with a similar population as Sweden (but with a much more touchy-feely, huggy-kissy, family-dinner Mediterrannean culture than Sweden). Now we've opened our borders and we're doing business (= tourism) as usual. Infections have also risen, but deaths are still very low, in the single or low double digits daily, so that about 300 people have died _since the start of the pandemic_. It's all pretty manageable and our health system is not overwhelmed.

We had a total lockdown, lost very few people, but we're back in action and deaths are low despite rising infections. And without letting our old and vulnerable die in their thousands. We lost 300, Sweden lost 6,000. If Sweden's approach was vindicated- Greece's approach was vindicated tenfold.

____________

[1] [https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01098-x](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01098-x)

 _There is a possibility that asymptomatics might be contagious, and some recent studies indicate that. But the amount of spread is probably fairly small compared to people who show symptoms._

[2] [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/19/anger-in- swede...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/19/anger-in-sweden-as- elderly-pay-price-for-coronavirus-strategy)

 _The agency's advice to those managing and working at nursing homes, like its policy towards coronavirus in general, has been based on its judgment that the "spread from those without symptoms is responsible for a very limited share" of those who get infected._

 _Its advice to the care workers and nurses looking after older people such as Bondesson's 69-year-old mother is that they should not wear protective masks or use other protective equipment unless they are dealing with a resident in the home they have reason to suspect is infected._

 _Otherwise the central protective measure in place is that staff should stay home if they detect any symptoms in themselves._

[3] [https://epidemic-stats.com/coronavirus/greece](https://epidemic- stats.com/coronavirus/greece)</comment>


6 Venture Capital Blogs Everyone Should Read - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/joemaddalone/2012/03/16/6-venture-capital-blogs-you-should-read/ <comment><USER2> I really like the list of VC blogs here: [http://larrycheng.com/2011/01/19/venture-capital-vc-blog- dir...](http://larrycheng.com/2011/01/19/venture-capital-vc-blog- directory-2011-edition/)

They are ranked by the number of page views which is a decent proxy for quality.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there some way to recommend books in HN? - <AUTHOR> I am reading "Between the world and me" from Ta-Neshi Coates and I thought that I would like to recommend it to HN community and would love to see a discussion about it.<p>I feel this community is perfect to recommend and discuss books (technical and non technical) and all of us could take advantage of it so I was wondering if there is or (could be created) a specific tag with this purpose. <comment><USER2> Already done [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12365693](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12365693)</comment>


Ask HN: How to evangelize your startup idea amidst overwhelming negativity - <AUTHOR>

I read a lot on HN that talking to lots of people about your startup idea is great for a lot of reasons (making connections, learning from folks who understand the market better, finding people with similar interests etc.). I agree with this. However, what do you do when a vast majority of the people you talk to offer nothing but negative comments?
Some background: * I do not believe my startup idea is terrible, but just for argument sake I would like to hear your thoughts with the assumption that the idea isn't terrible.
* I dont talk to just anyone, I mostly speak to community organizers (meetups etc), mentors at incubators/accelerators, and a few high net worth folks.
* I find maybe 70% of the time the subject doesn't fully understand the pitch before dishing out the negativity - I accept some fault here, grooming the pitch is a constant learning experience but maybe I expected that if you don't understand something you ask more questions as opposed to making negative comments.
* For those who care, examples of negative comments: "you're too late to market", "company xyz already does this", "nobody is going to pay for this", the list goes on.
* I am a software developer based out of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada (if you don't know where that is, Shopify is our golden child)
* I have had lots of prior failed attempts, most of which never made it to market. I have never sold any. (This is the main reason why I try to talk to lots of people so I learn more)
To be clear none of the negative stuff deters me, and there is always something to learn, but I sometimes wonder: why bother pushing hard to talk to folks in search of insight when it seems like a largely discouraging experience? And what is the alternative if any?
I look forward to hearing your responses HN Community! <comment><USER2> I'm guessing that you take a lot of things as negative that you probably shouldn't. You might not be getting _praise_ and excitement, but don't mistake that for negativity.

"Company XYZ already does this" isn't negative. It confirms that there's at least some market for the product. Don't let this dissuade you, and don't assume that your potential customers know about Company XYZ—just get working!

"Nobody is going to pay for this" is meaningless from someone who just learned about your product, who isn't in the demographic for it. I think it's ridiculous that people would be willing to spend thousands of dollars for a watch that spends 95% of its life WITHOUT the time on it's face. That doesn't mean it's going to fail—it just means that I'm not the market/demographic—yet.

Just keep doing what you're doing, if you have the stomach for it. If it takes 100 failures to get one success, focus on that success being only 100 failures away.

Really though, once you have a success, it'll starts to make more sense—I promise.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot for the comment! Gotta do a better job of interpreting peoples responses and not necessarily immediately assume them to be negative. I also find some comments that are actually negative usually have something positive I can take away from it, so working on that "skill" as well :)</comment></comment>


Open Graph is cool, but not ready for primetime - <AUTHOR> http://pandawhale.com/convo/2312/open-graph-is-cool-but-not-ready-for-primetime

<comment><USER2> Hopefully Open Graph will get a lot more mature. Right now it has a lot of bugs and there's not a lot of documented examples of best practices.</comment>


SpaceX aims to provide consumers broadband through Starlink by next year - <AUTHOR> https://thenextweb.com/security/2019/10/23/spacex-aims-to-provide-consumers-broadband-through-starlink-by-next-year/ <comment><USER2> I am looking forward to seeing network performance numbers. Throughput, latency, jitter, loss, uptime. I would love to be in a beta program.</comment>


The battle between Tesla and your neighborhood car dealership - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/the-battle-between-tesla-and-your-neighborhood-car-dealership/2016/09/09/55fb1878-6864-11e6-99bf-f0cf3a6449a6_story.html <comment><USER2> I am so opposed to walking into a dealership and buying anything that my last three vehicles were bought from private sellers on Craigslist. After the most recent crapped out, I gave up even on that and now use transit full time. The entire ecosystem around buying, owning, maintaining, and disposing of privately-owned automobiles is just...well, bad to me. And I'm tired of dealing with it so I won't. Instead, I give car2Go, ReachNow, and ZipCar around a hundred dollars per month, an insurance company under $20/month for a non-owner liability policy, and my employer gives me a transit pass as a benefit (though my household does have fare expenses for my spouse and kid).

(Offer does not apply to cities without a viable mass transit system. Your experience may vary. See a doctor for transit trips lasting more than four hours. Ticket vending machines on the upper level. Do not cross or stand in the roadway.)

<comment><USER3> Where did you find this policy for $20?

I've been looking for one of these, but everywhere I could find was much more expensive than this.

<comment><USER2> A specialty mutual carrier but you could try Vern Fonk. I hear that they are inexpensive and issue those policies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Legislatures want to open up markets for electric vehicles but are wary of > undercutting dealers, which are local economic and political engines.

Which, if you think about it, means that the local community is overpaying for their cars, and this money funds the dealers. We're generally ok with middlemen taking a cut _if they add value_ , but I don't know anyone who thinks car salesmen add any value whatsoever, they're just an annoying hindrance between you and the car you already researched and wanted.

If everyone was super happy about car dealers, allowing some manufacturers to skip the dealerships wouldn't be an issue, because people would still use the dealers for the value they add.

But people aren't, which is why only the dealers themselves, and the politicians they've bought are fighting to keep them around. Everyone else just wants them gone.

<comment><USER5> Well the problem, of course, is that they would test drive the cars in the dealership and then buy online.

<comment><USER6> They can still test drive at one dealership and buy at another.

<comment><USER7> But the difference is that all dealerships have artificially inflated prices, so if you live in a state with no direct to consumer sales you have no choice but to overpay which means there's no incentive to test drive at one dealership and buy at another, you're getting fucked either way. If direct sale is allowed the cars will be cheaper when bought from the manufacturer which is what creates the incentive to test drive at one place and buy at another.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Personally I will not miss the car dealer trying to pull every stunt on the planet to get me committed (having you wait around "We're trying the find a car for you", the "I want to help you, but I need to convince my boss", mingling the trade-in with the new price, etc, etc).

I have yet to see a single car purchase where the dealer added any value whatsoever instead of just being a nuisance in the way to buying a car.

Of course they are afraid. They should be. Deep down they know they're not needed.

<comment><USER9> > _Personally I will not miss the car dealer trying to pull every stunt on the > planet to get me committed_

I think this is a relic of the past. My last two car purchases have been straight forward: I walked in and told them what I was willing to pay for the car. One dealer couldn't do it, another could. In fact, this dealer showed me their little spreadsheet of costs associated with the car and said, "This is what we'll make on this car at this price. If I go any lower than this it is no longer worth it for us to sell to you." I make the purchase and pick the car up the next day. The car dealer business is pretty competitive, at least where I live.

There is so much information available to consumers that there's no longer any reason for the process to be very complicated or opaque. Sure, you might not want to "negotiate", but then you're welcome to go pay retail ("sticker price") like you would anywhere else, including Tesla. If you do that you'll be out of there in a heartbeat at that price (and the dealer will love you).

I don't car what happens to car dealerships, honestly. I just don't find them to be such a problem.

<comment><USER10> I think the idea there was supposed to be that if no "negotiation" occurred for most sales (either dealerships reformed or they were replaced with direct manufacturer sales) and everyone paid "sticker price", then manufacturers would start to compete more on price, thus reducing the overall price and margins of vehicles in the long run.

Also, how come you didn't drive out if the dealer with your new vehicle that same day?

<comment><USER11> Exactly. There is little incentive for them to compete on price when they can instead play games with it due to information asymmetry and sales tactics.

<comment><USER8> A friend of mine does this when he needs a new car:

He goes to 3 dealerships in this vicinity, tells them exactly what car he wants to buy with the exact extras, asks them for their best price, and let's each know he's going to two other dealerships. Then he leaves his phone number and walks out.

Has worked the few times he did it so far.

<comment><USER12> The thing is, dealerships have incentive to keep dealerships in general in business, and they likely all know each other, so they probably won't undercut each other by a large margin. Since they all know the actual cost of the thing you're wanting to buy, dealership A gives you a price maybe a few hundred below dealership B even though it's a few thousand above what their actual cost is.

Consider how much prime real estate dealerships sit on, how many employees they have, and how many units they sell per day which must pay for the aforementioned items with their mark-up, and still turn a profit at the end of the day. Now consider how much less expensive every car would be if they didn't have those additional costs, and consider if the benefits a dealer adds are worth those costs. IMO factory-direct sales can't come soon enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Goodwill", my ass.

Remember "Confessions of a Car Salesman"?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8824544](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8824544)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3779735](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3779735)

(Article is gone, but word doc here: [http://comp.uark.edu/~lmeade/Communication/persuasion_files/...](http://comp.uark.edu/~lmeade/Communication/persuasion_files/Confessions%20of%20a%20Car%20Salesman.doc) )

Some update for 2009: [http://www.naltblackchurch.com/finance/pdf/ConfessionsOfACar...](http://www.naltblackchurch.com/finance/pdf/ConfessionsOfACarSalesman.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER14> It seems to be a recurring theme that policies meant to protect special economic interests from things like prices and competition might seem good in the short-term, but over time are bad for everyone. Except government seems to follow a law of bureaucratic entropy: policies, exceptions and departments are a lot easier to expand than take-back.

</comment><comment><USER15> "...persuading an increasing number of states to allow it..."

I would love to see this covered as, "...persuading an increasing number of states to not prohibit it..."

</comment><comment><USER16> It's almost funny how the car dealers realize they provide no value to customers.

<comment><USER17> My thought is having a dealer network is getting less useful for car makers. Historically dealers provided an interface between the car manufacturer and the end user in an era when.

1\. Cars were a lot crappier than currently. 2\. Shipping replacement parts was slow and expensive. 3\. Communication was expensive, long distance calling, or slow, post. 4\. Mass marketing was not fined tuned as now.

Dealers thus provided a service. They stocked parts performed quality warranty work. Sold and marketed the manufacturers cars.

Gasoline powered cars tend now to be very reliable, especially if you stick with manufactures that specialize in low cost of ownership cars. _cough_ Toyota _cough_. The advent of electric cars will likely push reliability even further.

The other thing that's happened with cars as well is price transparency. Dealer could make work for themselves by specializing in getting better prices for the manufacturers cars then they could if they had a unified price list.

<comment><USER18> Could Tesla get an alliance with the manufacturers to bypass the cardealer scheme as a whole? I get manufacturers would rather see Tesla have problems, but wouldn't everone win with removing the middleman?

Or could Tesla, in their showroom, if they can't sell directly, let people preorder then redirect them to the cheapest local car dealer, in a sort of auction to the lowest margin, so cardealers are only seen as a commoditized cost?

<comment><USER19> These are state laws that regulate the dealership franchises, and prevent Tesla from selling in certain US states.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Screw car dealers, screw them. I'll also be happy when those eye sore dealer lots wither up. Nothing more hideous than gobs of cars packed together in sprawling lots with cars on ramps, gimmicky billboards, and massive light pollution at night.

</comment><comment><USER21> I cannot wait until the day I do not have to step into a car dealer and deal with the slimiest of the slime and feel of taken advantage of.

I was for Chris Christie until he gave in to the lobbying of the car dealers and stopped Tesla from selling directly to the customer. The front end aggrandizing is great, but when you have the choice to help the consumer and you whiff, say good bye to support from me.

</comment><comment><USER22> The idea of walking into a dealer and driving off with a new pre-built vehicle from a lot where someone else chose all the equipment, color and trim, is dead. It's more or less gone in Europe since a long time ago, and the cost of having stocks of cars of older models being sold out is just too big. In Europe brand dealerships are showrooms for the latest models, little more. Obviously these showroom dealers get a cut of the profits (you buy it from them, not from the manufacturer directly, but it's built to order), but they make most of their money from aftermarket service and used car trading in the same brand. You test drive, make the hundreds of choices, and get the car in 1-3 months. If you want a car directly, get one of the used ones.

There is a lot of inertia in the US but it will be the same there.

I don't understand why dealers are upset with someone selling something directly to the customer? Apart from lobbying and inertia, are there any _legitimate_ reasons for protecting these businesses from change?

</comment><comment><USER23> Heh, I live near Troy, Ohio, so I see that Arbogast dealership all the time. I don't have anything against them personally, but I'd love to see a Tesla showroom pop up here in town. (Mostly for looks, though. I've never bought a brand new car myself and don't expect that to change any time soon.)

</comment><comment><USER24> So if legislators with their car dealer friends ban Tesla from selling directly to consumers, could Tesla do something like "We'll pay for your flight out to nearest place you can buy a car and drive it home. You'll get free nice hotel stays on the way home?" I can see that for someone buying a Model S or Model X. The sale was not made in that state so it should be fine.

What would the states do then? I am guessing force buyers to pay a steep registration tax, but they'd just have to word in a very strange way. Can't people then just register the car quickly out of state and then re-register it locally so it looks like "a move" legally and not a sale? It seems for any trick these states can come up with, the other, Tesla friendly, states can come with an alternate trick to counter it...

<comment><USER25> > Can't people then just register the car quickly out of state and then re- > register it locally so it looks like "a move" legally and not a sale?

Paying twice the taxes on a new car is not a cheap thing.

The states cannot prevent you from importing a car, but they can make it a huge pain in the butt. Multiple days of having to take off work, getting the run around and misinformation from bureaucrats, spending hundreds of dollars on fees and inspections to get to what is free if bought in-state. They can be very nasty about it.

(don't ask me how I know. This is based on personal experience)

How unpleasant it gets depends heavily on the state and how much of a vendetta key politicians will be willing to go on when they have a corporation thumbing their nose at their laws.

It's not just registration. Most people buy new cars on credit. Which means they don't have the title. You'll have to provide a out of state title, which you don't actually own, to the state. You'll need insurance that is accepted by the state and your creditor. You'll have to make sure that the insurance agency can communicate this correctly to the state and provide them the right information, or it may be multiple trips to government buildings until it gets sorted out.

And it's not like the state you are buying from is going to be all that happy about losing out of probably will amount to several hundred dollars in sales taxes.

Each of these things is just another thing to go wrong. Another day waiting in lines and getting bad information from people who would rather spit in your face then talk to you.

All of this stuff is very doable, of course. Probably take just a week or two of screwing around at the most, etc. And I am sure that Telsa would help streamline the process as much as possible, but they would still lose customers because of it. Getting dragged through the mud for what really is just a luxury car is nobody's idea of a good time.

<comment><USER26> I purchased a Toyota Tundra truck in Utah in 2007, and then drove it back to Arizona where I lived. The truck was new to the market and not available yet in AZ. The dealer had no problem whatsoever with titling the truck, financing it, and paying the taxes on it to Arizona and not Utah. It was very painless. The dealer told me that they do it all the time, and it was totally normal .

So my personal experience - easy, no problem. Only paid taxes to AZ, not UT. No lines, no DMV, no problem with registration, nothing. I just flew in, got the truck, drove home.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > But it is not yet clear that the disruption of the auto industry will lead > to the shuttering of dealerships the way digital sales of music and books > led to the death of record stores and bookstors.

This is a completely unfair comparison. Book and music stores were everything dealers were not. They had marked and easy to understand prices. They were knowledgable and interested in spreading knowledge about their product. And they were very low pressure. They just couldn't compete on price.

Dealerships can go burn in a fire as far as I'm concerned. They hustle you with information asymmetry and use high pressure sales tactics. And they provide _no_ value for information or knowledge. They exist solely to skim as much money as possible from a sales transaction that they provide no value to.

</comment><comment><USER27> Has anybody peeked into dealership metrics to find any biases in prices in different racial, income, gender, introvertedness, or any other demographics? It seems like haggling could be a gaping hole in how fair a car sale is to different people.

</comment><comment><USER28> Isn't there a federal law about states not being allowed to interfere in interstate commerce?

What could they possibly do to ban internet sales?

<comment><USER29> I don't think any state's tried to do that. What they're trying to ban are Tesla-owned showrooms and repair centers. And that's even though Tesla actually sells over the Internet - if you buy in a showroom, it's because you borrowed their iMac to order from the website.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Not any discussion of how service or recalls are handled?

Schedule an appointment at the genius bar for your vehicle?</comment>


Show HN: A CLI task runner defined by a markdown file - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jakedeichert/mask <comment><AUTHOR> Hey! So this tool is something that I've wanted to build for a while now and it was a good opportunity to improve my Rust skills. It's inspired by a few other tools such as just [1] and maid [2]. The readme's faq section has some more background on why I wanted to build this.

To summarize mask, it's a cli tool that looks for a maskfile.md in the current directory and parses it for commands. A maskfile.md is both a human-readable document and a simple command definition format. Tasks can be defined in sh, bash, zsh, fish, js, python, php, and ruby.

Though it's not at v1.0 yet, I've been using it daily in personal projects and also as a global system utility for handy commands and automation tasks.

Happy to answer any questions!

[1]: [https://github.com/casey/just](https://github.com/casey/just)

[2]: [https://github.com/egoist/maid](https://github.com/egoist/maid)</comment>


Ask HN: They said I should Not learn HTML and CSS. Why? - <AUTHOR> I recently gave a seminar to marketing students at a local college. When asked how many knew any HTML and CSS. Only 1 person raised his hand.
After the talk was over, a student came to me and tells me that "They said I should not learn HTML and CSS"
The next day I asked a local FB group to guess how many students raised their hand when asked if they knew any HTML or CSS.
What started as a mission statement to change. Became a heated conversion why you should NOT learn HTML and CSS.
Why? <comment><USER2> What was their reason of not wanting to learn HTLM and CSS?</comment>


Why Your Complaint About Twitter Is Wrong - <AUTHOR> http://dashes.com/anil/2012/07/why-your-complaint-about-twitter-is-wrong.html

<comment><USER2> This article really falls apart at the end. Why conflate the diversity of third-party Twitter apps with gender diversity?</comment>


TorBroker - The Silk Road of Stock Brokers - <AUTHOR> http://www.thebitcointrader.com/2013/04/torbroker-silk-road-of-stock-brokers.html <comment><USER2> How can you electronically transfer shares without a paper trail?</comment>


Bitcasa Drive Being Discontinued on May 20, 2016 - <AUTHOR> https://support.bitcasa.com/hc/en-us/articles/218389848-Bitcasa-Drive-Being-Discontinued-on-May-20-2016 <comment><AUTHOR> And here's the emotionless email:

"This message is to inform you that the Bitcasa Drive service will no longer be supported. You will need to take action to avoid losing your files.

All data must be downloaded by 11:59pm PST on May 20, 2016, after which time all accounts and stored data on Bitcasa Drive will be permanently deleted.

To learn why this is happening, please click here.

Thank you for being a Bitcasa user. We have appreciated all of your support."</comment>


University Research Should Be Free to All - <AUTHOR> https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2020/07/31/universities-should-commit-opening-their-research-everyone-opinion <comment><USER2> It's a side note, but I think open research (in combination with a bit more readable language) would contribute a bit to suppressing conspiracy theories and general scientific knowledge.

Right now, proofs and research are locked away behind paywalls and inaccessible to the usual reader - an open policy would allow far more linking and quoting and therefore get the average person used to looking things up in papers.

</comment><comment><USER3> Go one step further and say all non-private knowledge should be free.</comment>


Twitter Direct Message Caching and Firefox - <AUTHOR> https://hacks.mozilla.org/2020/04/twitter-direct-message-caching-and-firefox/ <comment><USER2> So basically Twitter wasn't setting its Cache-Control directive correctly? Why is this behavior different from Safari and Chrome?

It looks like "no-store" is in this IETF RFC: [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7234#section-5.2.2](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7234#section-5.2.2)

EDIT - Ah, I see, it's in the original post:

> Testing from Twitter showed that the request was not being cached in other > browsers. This is because some other browsers disable heuristic caching if > an unrelated HTTP header, Content-Disposition, is present. Content- > Disposition is a feature that allows sites to identify content for download > and to suggest a name for the file to save that content to.

> In comparison, Firefox legitimately treats Content-Disposition as unrelated > and so does not disable heuristic caching when it is present.

It looks like Twitter only tested this in Safari and Chrome and called it a day. Their wording implies that it's Firefox's fault, which is misleading.

<comment><USER3> I have fuming anger over the whole world deciding Google will set the standard for browsers. I wonder if EFF and similar orgs are doing anything legally, perhaps EU can armtwist again?

<comment><USER4> [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7234#section-4.2.2](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7234#section-4.2.2)

       Since origin servers do not always provide explicit expiration times,
       a cache MAY assign a heuristic expiration time when an explicit time
       is not specified, employing algorithms that use other header field
       values (such as the Last-Modified time) to estimate a plausible
       expiration time.  This specification does not provide specific
       algorithms, but does impose worst-case constraints on their results.

The standard does _not_ say what heuristics should be used, so Firefox's heuristics is no more "legitimate" than Chorme/Safari's heuristics of expiring immediately when Content-Dispostion is present.

"Firefox legitimately treats..." is highly misleading, making it sound like Firefox is more standard-compliant, but it's not; it's just different.

<comment><USER5> Please don't use code blocks for quotes. It makes it very hard to read text on mobile, narrow viewports or via screen readers.

<comment><USER4> RFCs are published as plain text with line breaks, which I literally copied without even changing the indentation, so barking up the wrong tree here.

<comment><USER5> I'm not. If copied without formatting as code blocks, the text would be a lot more readable and wouldn't require horizontal scrolling on narrow viewports.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The thing that boggles my mind is that the only affected users are:

(a) - Firefox users &&

(b) - who downloaded their messaging history on a buried menu option in the account page &&

(c) - in the last 7 days prior to disclosure &&

(d) - who did this on a computer where someone else has access

The number of affected people is presumably very small, and the only metric that twitter can't know here is (d). How on earth does it make sense to alert every Firefox user with a scary wall of text? Don't they have logs to cross- reference (a), (b) and (c) and e-mail these users?

I'd believe that if there's only one API endpoint that would be crucial to log to protect against major leaks, it would be this one to download all your history at once...

<comment><USER7> re (b) Twitter says "took actions like downloading your Twitter data archive or sending or receiving media via Direct Message,", so it isn't just downloading the archive, and to me "actions like" suggests there might be more than the ones named here explicitly. And they might not be able to tell who did it for all these things.

I also didn't see any notice, but I don't know if I missed it, my adblocker ate it, or if they actually did only inform users that did one of the at-risk things and I happened to not do so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Lovely how Twitter's blog post does nothing to explain is not Firefox fault.

<comment><USER9> You don't say.

Pasting an URL into a tweet entry form in their web client has been resulting in "Something went wrong" in 50% of cases for several months now. Attaching a GIF to a tweet randomly fails with no explanation given, again - for months.

I don't know what Twitter's development priorities are, but they sure as hell don't include proper web client testing.

<comment><USER10> Never got any of those. Perhaps you're using slow/unreliable network and hitting timeouts? Or some privacy tools interfering? Using Firefox web Twitter.

One thing I did use to repro though was text field behaving erratically on Firefox Mobile or when using installed PWA from home screen. Had to give up and use Chrome directly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Mozilla Hacks continues to be the best webdev blog

</comment><comment><USER12> Why would Twitter send a Content-Disposition header with their API responses?

        content-disposition: attachment; filename=json.json

<comment><USER13> I believe this is for additional XSS protection - if a user clicks a suspicious API link, the worst that happens is the browser downloads a json.json file instead of rendering a potentially malicious payload.

<comment><USER14> How would rendering the file perform a malicious action?

<comment><USER15> If the content-type header failed to get sent, or if a browser (lookin' at you, IE) chooses to ignore it in favor of what it thinks it probably should have been, then the result can get rendered as HTML. If you have some json that has angle-brackets in it (which, being JSON, would obviously not be HTML- escaped) and the result is rendered as HTML, this can result in your browser executing attacker-defined javascript in Twitter's origin.

Sending it as a "file download" has no effect on what happens when the endpoint is called via AJAX, but in the event that a browser navigates to it directly, ensures that even the dumbest of browsers do not render it as HTML.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> A small amount of discussion on the previous post from the Twitter Privacy team: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22762467](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22762467)

</comment><comment><USER17> No mention of Clear-Site-Data?

[https://w3c.github.io/webappsec-clear-site-data/#example- sig...](https://w3c.github.io/webappsec-clear-site-data/#example-signout)

</comment><comment><USER18> I think a similar issue exists with Twitter and Safari. (Maybe related to web worker or page caching) Sometimes I need to restart Safari, otherwise Twitter fails to load. When I type twitter.com, the site occasionally hangs in that browser. Just putting this to see if some others are effected.

</comment><comment><USER19> Expect to see more of these as fewer and fewer people use Firefox and web developers simply don't try their websites on this browser. And as more websites stop working correctly on Firefox, they will lose more market share. Some kind of spiral, you know?

I was thinking that a rendering bug (which is what one expects from a browser compatibility bug) is not that bad, but when we are talking privacy and security, now that's a problem.

</comment><comment><USER20> Clearly a bug on Twitter's side but the behavior to disable caching when content-disposition is used seems sensible.

<comment><USER11> Why? It's not in the spec, how am I, the developer, supposed to know that the browser is being non-compliant?

<comment><USER7> It's in the spec that the browser is allowed to pick a duration if you don't tell it one, so you know that you don't know how long it is cached if you do not set a header.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22775479](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22775479)</comment></comment></comment>


You can now send files up to 10GB through Gmail with one click - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/get/googletips/card/you-can-send-that-family-video-over-email-without-worrying-about-how-big-it-is/detail/

<comment><USER2> _You can send files up to 10GB (that 's a 600-page presentation, or a 10-minute power ballad)_

A 600 page presentation or 10 minutes of audio should be closer to 10MB than 10GB. Even 10 minutes of HD Video should be no more than 100MB.</comment>


Repowering California for all purposes with wind, water, and sunlight [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/CaliforniaWWS.pdf

<comment><USER2> This paper proposes converting California's power generation over to wind and solar, with electric vehicles and electrically generated hydrogen vehicles replacing all others. All use of fossil fuels and nuclear power is to be phased out. Notably, it suggests that hydroelectric power should be used to balance loads. i.e. It proposes that California's power grid be stabilized with only hydroelectric power as an on-demand source of generation.

Firstly, in 2013 California imported 32.7% of it's electricity. California has little control over how this is generated. Of the power used by California, 40.8% is from Natural Gas, 8.1% is hydroelectric, 6.0% is Nuclear, 4.3% is from wind power, 4.2% is geothermal, 2.1% is from biomass, and 1.4% is solar[1].

Natural Gas and Nuclear power are both excellent on-demand sources of power, and currently meet 46.8% of California's electricity requirements. If these power sources are to be phased out, they must be replaced with energy sources that are on-demand. Wind and solar do not fit this description. Hydro does, but quintupling California's hydroelectric capacity will have a huge impact on the environment. This paper greatly underestimates how much on-demand power generation capacity a power grid needs in order to be stable.

Side note: California currently derives little of it's electricity from wind or solar power. Electric vehicle batteries carry a high environmental cost to produce, so it is imperative that the energy they are charged with be of renewable origin for any net environmental benefits to be reaped. Given that 40.8% of California's electricity currently comes from natural gas, it's clear that anyone plugging their EV's into California's grid is doing the environment no favors.

[1][http://energyalmanac.ca.gov/electricity/electricity_gen_1983...](http://energyalmanac.ca.gov/electricity/electricity_gen_1983-2013.xls)

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure why you'd discuss this without mentioning the section of the linked article which addresses exactly this issue (maintaining a stable grid with 100% renewables, and current levels of hydroelectric power):

> Here, we do not model the reliability of an optimized future California grid > but discuss a recent optimization study in which 100% WWS in the California > grid was modeled for two years. Hart and Jacobson[30] used a stochastic > optimization model of system operation combined with a deterministic > renewable portfolio planning module to simulate the impact of a 100% WWS > penetration for California every hour of 2005 and 2006. They assumed near- > current hydroelectric and geothermal but increased geographically-dispersed > time-dependent wind, solar PV, and CSP with 3-h storage. They constrained > the system to a loss of load of no more than 1 day in 10 years and used both > meteorological and load forecasts to reduce reserve requirements. They found > that, under these conditions, 99.8% of delivered electricity could be > produced carbon-free with WWS during 2005/2006

> The result of Hart and Jacobson[30] suggests that, for California, a large > part of the intermittency problem of wind and solar can be addressed not > only by combining the two, but also by using hydroelectric and CSP with 3-h > storage to fill in gaps. The remaining differences between supply and demand > can likely be addressed with the inclusion of demand-response management; > energy efficiency measures, CSP with storage longer than 3 h, additional > pumped hydroelectric storage, distributed or large-scale battery storage, > compressed-air storage, flywheels, seasonal heat storage in soil, out-of- > state WWS resources, the addition of flexible loads such as electric > vehicles, vehicle-to-grid methods, and oversizing the number of WWS > generators to simplify matching power demand with supply while using excess > electricity for district heat or hydrogen production.

If you want to refute this, you need to start with Hart and Jacobsen, and work from there.

<comment><USER4> Perhaps I am misreading, but are they including in their estimates on changed behaviour in the population resulting in the energy efficiency savings?

<comment><USER3> I don't think so, I think they are only looking at balancing the supply side (making calculations using the demand patterns from 2005/06), demand- management is then another possibility that goes on top of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm seeing a lot of misinformation on this thread, and I think it would be useful to point hacker news at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), which is a cited source in this paper. They are an engineering-based, independent, non-profit research company. And their headquarters is in the "heart" of Silicon Valley next to Xerox...

[http://www.epri.com/](http://www.epri.com/)

Full disclosure: I am not an EPRI employee, but I've read a lot of their papers and presentations. Their research is original and unbaised. Their engineering is pragmatic and chocked full of raw 100% reality. I wish some of the websites people are citing here were talking to places like EPRI first, but instead write sensationalist headlines that hide details and misinform, making sane, coordinated discussion difficult.

I suggest hacker news check them out and maybe send some emails to get better information about this proposal and learn more how the grid truly functions politically, economically, and technically.

<comment><USER6> EPRIs Board of Directors appears to be dominated by executives from large power monopolies: [http://www.epri.com/About-Us/Pages/Board-of- Directors.aspx](http://www.epri.com/About-Us/Pages/Board-of-Directors.aspx)

Yes, there are other members, but PG&E does not join groups which accelerate the rollout of renewables (especially distributed renewables); it focuses on slowing them. So your "independent" and "unbiased" assertions are quite misleading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> David MacKay's "Without Hot Air" is an excellent investigation of what needs to be done to power the UK. [http://www.withouthotair.com/](http://www.withouthotair.com/)

</comment><comment><USER8> The California state plan proposal has been getting discussed recently: "How to power California with wind, water and sun (Jacobson and Delucchi)" ([http://www.reddit.com/r/RenewableTech/comments/2btow7/how_to...](http://www.reddit.com/r/RenewableTech/comments/2btow7/how_to_power_california_with_wind_water_and_sun/)).

J&D's proposal for a US national wind, water, and sun energy system: ([http://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/sad11...](http://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/sad1109Jaco5p.indd.pdf)) is one of the more complete such prosals around. See more links on their website:

[http://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/susen...](http://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/susenergy2030.html)

Recently they've been providing proposals for each of the 50 states:

[http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/WWS-5...](http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/WWS-50-USState- plans.html).

David McKay's _Without the Hot Air_ ([http://www.withouthotair.com/](http://www.withouthotair.com/)) is one of the few comparable efforts I'm aware of, though RMI/Amory Lovins _Reinventing Fire_ ([http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9781603585385-0](http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9781603585385-0)) probably belongs in the mix.

Also being discussed on reddit: [http://www.reddit.com/r/RenewableTech/comments/2d8ptl/a_road...](http://www.reddit.com/r/RenewableTech/comments/2d8ptl/a_roadmap_for_repowering_california_for_all/)

(Disclaimer: I'm a moderator of that sub).

</comment><comment><USER5> I'd like to take a moment to point out another really great "renewable" technology that is a clever arbitrage hack using power prices: Compressed Air Energy Storage. ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAES](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAES))

To me, this is "Grid 2.0" technology. You are moving energy from times where you have cheap excess and placing it on the grid in times of expensive need. If we are going to move to a grid with a lot of renewables, technologies like CAES and pumped hydro ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped- storage_hydroelectricit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped- storage_hydroelectricity)) are two necessary ingredients.

The primary difference between CAES and pumped hydro is that CAES is cost effective for both medium (50+MW) and large (500+MW) installations, while pumped hydro is cost effective only at large scale (500MW+) installations.

<comment><USER8> CAES works, but has some challenges, most notably the Ideal Gas law: PV = nRT

That means that as you increase (or decrease) pressure, you increase (or decrease) heat.

This affects CAES two ways.

On storing high-pressure gas (usually air), you're creating significant heat of compression. In thin-walled structures (e.g., compressed air tanks), this is generally wasted to the environment. In subterranean storage, often in largely spent (but not fully exhausted) natural gas reservoirs (proven high- pressure gas capacity), you risk explosions within the storage reservoir as hot gas enters.

On energy recovery, you've got the reverse problem: the expanding air cools rapidly. In most CAES systems, apparently, the solution is to create a combined-form recovery, in which both expanding gas _and_ natural gas combustion (to raise the gas temperature) are used, so recovery isn't fully from the compressed air storage itself.

That said: it is among the more promising options, others being pumped hydro (including sea-based pumped hydro), thermal storage, and seawater-based Fischer-Tropsch fuel synthesis (low round-trip efficiency, but excellent scalability and very long-term storage).

See:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/28nqoz/electric...](http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/28nqoz/electrical_fuel_synthesis_from_seawater_older/)

[http://www.reddit.com/r/RenewableTech/comments/29t6t7/seawat...](http://www.reddit.com/r/RenewableTech/comments/29t6t7/seawater_pumped_hydro_storage/)

(Disclaimer: I'm mod of those subs).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> You still need a base power plant and few others for controlling the amount of energy in the system. Using only renewable is kind o hard. If we can figure out a way to store energy the way we can access it very quickly with arbitrary output, we could move on to renewables exclusively.

<comment><USER10> No we need to be able to shed unwanted power. Generation using renewable sources can be over provisioned, and still be economically feasible. Power usage fluctuations are thé key issue to manage. As wind is a very good base load provider.

Don't look at capacity factor that is very misleading.

<comment><USER5> > As wind is a very good base load provider.

What? Please show us where the wind blows 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, every year.

Not being a nay-sayer, but your comment is very misleading.

"Good base load provider" means high availability - reliable enough so the lights don't go out. When's the last time you remember a power outage in the US that did not make the news? Yeah, that kind of availability. Outages are rare enough that they make the news when they do happen. Right now, wind cannot provide this kind of "base load" guarantee unless we overbuild a huge amount of capacity and implement a very sophisticated real-time system to manage all the inputs/outputs, and even then you'll be lucky to generate stable baseline load. China's trying right now and having a very difficult time both delivering stable power, and making money doing it[1].

[1] [http://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/1171987/analysis--- c...](http://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/1171987/analysis---chinese-wind- curtailments-double-2012)

<comment><USER10> What is base load? Its the minimum load required in a network or is it those plants for whom it is uneconomical to go below a certain output.

For the first no power plant is truly base load as all plants must shutdown sometimes. So you need to look at a system. So taking into account that in a large area like California it always blows some where, can wind generate the minimal base load at any time. For wind the law of large numbers eventually means that given a per wind turbine capacity factor of 36% a pure wind net achieves 36% capacity factor. If the 36% is the day peak load, then at 18% you are at night low load, considering that wind can be base load.

On the second base load is pump it when you got it e.g. because it costs to much to ramp down (coal, nuclear) or because you got the power anyway (wind, day/noon solar) then yes wind is base load.

Single wind turbines are not base load power plants, but when you have thousands of them over a large area they start to guarantee with high accuracy a minimal load with very good prediction properties.

Of course this ignores economic efficiency, but that depends very much on oil prizes.

e.g. The us uses 18 million barrels of oil a day. That means the yearly oil consumption of the US is very roughly equivalent to the volume of oil required to flood Rhode island state one foot deep. Which on the face of it does not seem economically efficient but at the moment it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> no need to think about wind, water, and sunlight, first break great suckers —intel and ms.</comment>


Always leave the office on time - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/really-always-leave-office-time-andrew-mcgregor <comment><USER2> True! Family and friends are in general better resources for the long term than work colleagues. Of course you can turn work colleagues into friends, too.

But, as they say, very few folks ever wished they had spent more time at the office when on their deathbed.</comment>


Download the free Messages Beta - iMessage Beta - <AUTHOR> http://www.apple.com/macosx/mountain-lion/messages-beta/ <comment><USER2> [http://appldnld.apple.com/MessagesBeta/041-4274.20120216.z5k...](http://appldnld.apple.com/MessagesBeta/041-4274.20120216.z5km/MessagesBeta.dmg)

Direct link for those having issues downloading...

</comment><comment><USER3> Is it just me or recently Apple is mr me too? I mean, this is a lot like WhatsApp, except it's cross platform, which i see a big no go for me really. The new OS from Apple also has a ton of apps that were created using the successful models they found in appstore, if they like them so much why don't they buy them.

<comment><USER4> Whatsapp chat interface design actually copied from Apple's SMS app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This replaces iChat when you install it.

For me it's nearly he same, the buddies window is exactly the same. Although they changed up how messages display.

You used to be able to not have windows grouped together (i.e. you could drag/drop different conversations out into their own window). You can no longer do that. You can move them to their own window, but if the buddy responds again it goes to both the 'main' window and the new window. Kind of weird.

I haven't really liked tabbed chatting, but I guess this may be time to deal with it.

</comment><comment><USER6> I wish the addressing mechanism of iMessage was more clear. If I send someone an iMessage from my Mac, does it show up as from my email address of my Apple account? Is the phone number of my iPhone automatically registered as an iMessage-eligible recipient when I set up my Apple account on my iPhone (currently doesn't appear to be).

<comment><USER7> What Apple has done is merge all addressed/phone numbers of an AppleID into one. If you send a message with Messages on you phone, your side of the conversation will appear in the thread on your phone/iPad/etc. They are one now.

So, people can iMessage you at any of the identifiers attached to you AppleID and it will be sent to all locations.

<comment><USER8> Is this correct? I have sent and received iMessages on my phone but they do not appear on my iPad or my Mac. I wish it worked as you described, but it doesn't seem to be.

<comment><USER9> agreed. this was the first thing I tested after upgrading to iMessage on OSX this morning

<comment><AUTHOR> working for me on my iPad, iPhone and Mac. Notifications are dismissed on all other devices once it's being read on either one of the devices

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> i am now just wondering how long it will take to reverse engineer the protocol so we can get this working on more than just a Mac (Windows would be handy, but think about getting this to talk to your Web Service!)

</comment><comment><USER11> Does it work on Mac OS X Leopard on PowerPC?

<comment><USER12> Looks like it requires 10.7.3

EDIT: probably shouldn't have fed a troll EDIT2: No troll here

<comment><USER11> _lol_ It might sound like a troll question, but honestly, my primary Mac still is a PowerMac G5 2x1.8GHz bought in 2004 ...

But no worries, I'm going to replace it the coming Summer with an iMac 27"

<comment><USER12> My mistake!

It definitely requires 10.7.3

Sorry about that.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Would allowing multiple querystrings in URLs allow more scalable APIs? - <AUTHOR> Imagine if could GET `https://bar.mywebsite.foo/gadgets?name=foo&age>=100/gizmo/components?type=types.gizmo.component.square`.
I know it's ugly and not legal URI syntax, but this could cut N GETS into one, where, as one possibility, the server could compile the path into the separate requests (if necessary). Then again, I guess this transformation could happen client-side.
It seems like repeated filtering is always involved in getting some desired resource; it would be great to get this with one request. Perhaps that newcomer GraphQL addresses this by design.
Often I wonder if the best HTTP API would involve the remote execution of some non-turing-complete query-language guaranteed to terminate. Just select, filter, basic "joins", etc. <comment><USER2> I think you are describing OData.

[https://www.odata.org/documentation/odata-version-2-0/uri- co...](https://www.odata.org/documentation/odata-version-2-0/uri-conventions/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like you can't just keep going and appending more to the path; the metadata document seems to dictate how parameters are applied to resources in the preceding path.

<comment><USER2> Never used OData. It just popped into my head when I saw the question.

<comment><AUTHOR> I had just heard of it. Looks like what I was getting at. Wish APIs were just exposed through some query language. Don't see apparent harm if it's read-only and permission-restricted.</comment></comment></comment></comment>