Restoring natural forests is the best way to remove atmospheric carbon - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01026-8 <comment><USER2> When I was a kid, being an environmentalist was all about saving the rain forest. A century ago, it was all about the conservation of natural spaces. Today, it is all about carbon. To me, the carbon argument is shame-oriented while preserving (and cultivating) forests is value-oriented. This study calls into question the rhetoric of carbon -- if "restoring nature" is both necessary and more compelling for the general public. Carbon is abstract and removed. Natural forests have inherent, relatable value.

<comment><USER3> Exactly! Not to mention that reversing desertification and deforestation need to be done anyway. The Amazon rainforest is producing 20% of the world's oxygen. Why not focus on that, Bolsonaro? But how can we get the world to change its focus?

This is the biggest contributor to CO2 pollution:

[https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global- warmin...](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global- warming/deforestation/)

<comment><USER4> Hm, I'd heard the Amazon consumes at least as much O2 as it produces; it's basically in equilibrium. Unfortunately I don't remember the source but it was something like Planet Earth.

I found a lot of sources quoting your 20% number, but it seems like that's not net produced O2 but rather gross.

I'd be interested if anyone can find a source that says either way about the net O2/CO2 of the Amazon.

<comment><USER5> With absolutely no expertise in the subject, I would expect any sufficiently large land area to have no net oxygen production. It's not like oxygen levels fluctuate wildly, and it seems unlikely to have such a uniform O2 level on Earth if it's coming from just a few big producers.

<comment><USER6> Basic chemistry: the only ecosystems that can continually produce net O2 are those that permanently stash unoxidated C away (aka new fuel). This was the norm A Very Long Time Ago when plants were briefly ahead in the chemical arms race against everything that lives off decaying plant matter (and thus caused an imbalance which created the chemical energy we now use as fossil fuels). But in more recent history (e.g. anything dinosaur or younger) it only happens in very rare conditions. Peat-producing bog marshes are the rare exception now.

<comment><USER3> What about the other way, producing CO2?

<comment><USER6> When the ecosystem is somehow tapping into an ancient stockpile of high energy C compounds to oxidate, sure, it will release more CO2 than it consumes. An example of such an ecosystem would be humans doing agriculture boosted with the Haber-Bosch process, which oxidates fossil fuel to capture plant nutrients from the air (even our crops are not entirely solar powered).

Chemistry is incredibly simple when you are only interested in the general inputs and outputs of a black box system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Every time an article on this topic comes up, I read the same responses in the comments, here or on Reddit.

Yes, it's cheaper not to emit than it is to reclaim, but how does this comment contribute to the solution? Even if everybody stopped emitting CO2 today, we still need to remove many Gigatons of CO2 from the atmosphere to save the planet. Planting trees is cheap and is PART of the solution.

Similarly, every time an article about direct air capture (DAC) comes up, somebody complains that we should be planting trees instead. This is ALSO a very unhelpful comment, because in truth we need to be doing both DAC and planting trees. Even if we reforested all the depleted forests of the world, there would still be gigatons of CO2 to remove.

The answer to every proposed solution to climate change is not whether "this or that", it is "this AND that". We need to be doing everything: reforest, DAC, wind, solar, nuclear, synthetic meats, etc. The whole kit.

<comment><USER8> Actually, it's possible to remove _all_ the extra CO2 just by planting trees (not to detract from all the other things we should be doing).

Furthermore, it's affordable: $15/average US resident/year. I wrote a blog post about it recently:

[https://automicrofarm.com/blog/2019/03/solving-climate- chang...](https://automicrofarm.com/blog/2019/03/solving-climate-change-with- trees.html)

<comment><USER9> So, to offset his carbon emissions, American must plant 150 trees a year, ensure that they grow for at least 10 years, and then ensure that the CO2 captured by them doesn't get rereleased. This means that we need space for at least 3 trillion trees, which is three times the space available, based on the figure in your link. Ensuring that the CO2 doesn't get rereleased means that all that lumber needs to be buried or sunk, since this is way more lumber than the humanity actually uses productively. Additionally, this would mean doing heavy industrial management of all this immense forest area to cut and bury all these hundreds of billions of trees a year. This would require digging huge pits, transporting lots of heavy material to them, at extra emissions. And that's for American emission only, which are only a fraction of global emissions. And of course we ignore the question why would you want to bury all this wood while keeping digging out all the fossils, when you could be using the same wood to generate energy instead.

So no, while this might work to pacify the conscience of an individual, it makes absolutely no sense to do it at scale.

<comment><USER8> Actually, if the trees are burned or otherwise re-release their carbon, the subsequent re-planting will take care of re-re-capturing that carbon. If any of the trees die or are cut down, a new one can be planted in its place. If it still living and thriving, it should be naturally left alone.

Also, for ten years, 327 million Americans each planting 1.5k trees comes out to half a trillion trees. The link in my blog says there is room for 1.2 trillion trees to be planted, so the math works out.

<comment><USER10> When the trees die, won't the carbon be re-introduced to the atmosphere over time via microbial decomposition of the wood? That is, once the microbes that eat the trees die, they'll be eaten by something that is eventually eaten by something on the surface, thus releasing the carbon sequestered by the tree.

<comment><USER11> How about we turn them into houses or furniture. Timber used in construction can last for a very long time, all the while keeping it's carbon locked up.

Even when it finally decomposes through rot or consumption a lot of the carbon is kept out of the atmosphere, ending up in the food chain fed by the organisms that consume it.

Plant a tree now, in 200 years it may be part of your great great great grandchildren.

<comment><USER9> _Even when it finally decomposes through rot or consumption a lot of the carbon is kept out of the atmosphere, ending up in the food chain fed by the organisms that consume it._

No, not a lot. In fact, it's practically nothing, compared to the mass of trees. Think about it: are you using the mass of 150 adult trees annually for buildings? Are you sequestering much of it in your body? Not even close. Today America consumes less than a half of a single adult tree per capita per year.

The carbon is only sequestered when the trees are alive or when they are buried or sunk. If you don't bury and only have space for a decade of tree planting, you are at best going to delay the climate change by a decade, which is not nothing, but won't change much. And, of course, we ignore things like albedo changes due to more forestation which could offset a big part of gain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> How does this square with the recent story about Canadian forests being carbon positive rather than negative?

[https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/canada-forests- carbon...](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/canada-forests-carbon-sink- or-source-1.5011490)

<comment><USER13> You'd know if you had read the article you just posted.

""That's because trees don't just absorb carbon when they grow, they emit it when they die and decompose, or burn.

When you add up both the absorption and emission, Canada's forests haven't been a net carbon sink since 2001. Due largely to forest fires and insect infestations, the trees have actually added to our country's greenhouse gas emissions for each of the past 15 years on record.""

Also, something not mentioned in the article (but added by a botanist friend), conifers in general apparently produce much more volatile oils, so are more susceptible to flames/ignition/burning.

<comment><USER14> It's conifer's terpenes that cause the haze* in the great smoky mountains.

[https://www.livescience.com/46958-trees-ozone-pollution- map....](https://www.livescience.com/46958-trees-ozone-pollution-map.html)

(*not the same as smog, you need NOx emissions as well for that to form)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What about the Sahara? Is that too time / labor / cost intensive to adapt?

An aggressive reclamation project of desert could both work towards progress in carbon recapture and add valuable natural resources to poor countries.

<comment><USER16> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall)

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

Have you heard of the great green wall or the Sahara forest project?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> _Nature_ is wrong.

Accelerated weathering is our first best hope of lowering CO2 in the atmosphere.

Weathering is the conversion of carbonates and CO2 to form bicarbonates.

Grinding and aerosolizing limestone and other similar minerals hasn't been tried very much.

Unlike with anything plant-based, once CO2 goes through this reaction, it stays.

In a few billion years, it'll cause the extinction of life on Earth, but that's a problem we can take our time to figure out.

<comment><USER18> I had never heard of this so I googled around a bit. Thanks for bringing it up. It looks like an interesting area of active research. Apparently one of the promising minerals for sequestration is olivine, which, by some galactic irony, is largely sourced in the oil-producing nation of Norway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This sounds like the best kind of geoengineering, using safe appropriate technology.

[http://www.geoengineering.ox.ac.uk/www.geoengineering.ox.ac....](http://www.geoengineering.ox.ac.uk/www.geoengineering.ox.ac.uk/what- is-geoengineering/what-is-geoengineering/indexd41d.html)

If you really want to add high-tech, then use drones

[https://www.fastcompany.com/40450262/these-tree-planting- dro...](https://www.fastcompany.com/40450262/these-tree-planting-drones-are- about-to-fire-a-million-seeds-to-re-grow-a-forest)

</comment><comment><USER20> Let's not forget the oceanic ecosystems they also remove co2, all 3 should be mentioned all the time.

<comment><USER21> Build buildings out of wood -> Plant more trees -> build more buildings out of wood -> plant more trees, etc. This can sequester a lot of carbon over time, especially if said wood buildings are in places trees can't easily grow.

<comment><USER22> Cutting down trees can cause a release of stored carbon dioxide.

Structures composed of wood do not remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

When old trees are cu down they should be replaced with new ones

<comment><USER21> > Structures composed of wood do not remove carbon dioxide from the > atmosphere.

Why not? Just some napkin math here but:

Say you have three 10K kg trees. Wood is ~50% carbon, so that means they collectively contain around 15K kg of carbon. Cut them down and turn them into framing lumber and build a house. You now have a house frame with roughly 15K kg of carbon.

Now plant 3 trees where the old ones were. Once grown you have now collectively sequestered 30K kg of carbon - half of it is in the trees themselves, half in the house.

Keep doing that. After a decade you now you have 1000 houses that have each sequestered 15K kg of carbon from the atmosphere, or 15M kg of carbon.

<comment><USER23> > > Structures composed of wood do not remove carbon dioxide from the > atmosphere. Why not?

> Why not?

On average, does wood in structures release carbon through decay, fire, etc., faster or slower than if the wood was left in a living tree? Intuitively, I don't see any reason to expect effective sequestration.

Your analysis seems to suppose that if wood was not used to make a structure, the trees would instantly release their carbon and not be replaced, rather than continuing to grow.

<comment><USER21> > On average, does wood in structures release carbon through decay, fire, > etc., faster or slower than if the wood was left in a living tree?

Trees don't grow at the same rate forever. They sprout up quickly and rapidly sequester carbon until they reach maturity, at which point there are diminishing returns in terms of carbon sequestration.

Treated wood is much more resistant to decay and fire than untreated wood.

> Your analysis seems to suppose that if wood was not used to make a > structure, the trees would instantly release their carbon and not be > replaced, rather than continuing to grow.

No, I'm saying that a mature tree sequesters carbon much more slowly than growing trees. Think about it. It's the same for animals. Babies grow like crazy and gain mass at an amazing rate. Adults... don't. I've been 150 lbs for the past 10 years. My son, however, was 6 lbs 2 years ago, 20 lbs last year, and 40 lbs this year. That means his body is locking away 20 lbs worth of matter per year.

Take a mature tree, turn it in to a building. Grow another mature tree in its spot and you've now sequestered effectively twice as much as having never turned the tree into a building. That's what I'm suggesting.

<comment><USER23> > Take a mature tree, turn it in to a building. Grow another mature tree in > its spot and you've now sequestered effectively twice as much as having > never turned the tree into a building.

It takes several (in many cases 5+) decades for a tree to mature (in the sense of growth levelling off.) The average proportion of original wood building remaining after 50 years is, well, less than 100%.

Probably significantly, more than if the old tree died and fell, so you could have some net gain, but it's not going to be 100%. (And its going to be even less if you are clearing land for the building.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Why _natural_ forests? Would it not be more effective to focus on the plants/trees that consume the most atmospheric carbon?

There are certainly ecological arguments for natural forests v. artificial carbon-sequestration-optimized forests, but if maximum carbon sequestration is the goal, then the rational answer is to focus on those plants which sequester relatively large amounts of carbon instead of waiting for maybe a natural forest of not-necessarily-optimal plants to maybe grow on its own.

Also, last I checked, algae is still Earth's primary oxygen producer (and therefore implicitly the primary atmospheric carbon scrubber).

<comment><USER25> The primary consideration is avoiding a monoculture.

If you sit down and study which types of plants sequester the most carbon, and plant a forest comprised entirely of that species, you run into a few problems:

First, parasites tend to be much worse. Whichever parasite prefers that particular type of plant will have an enormous food supply and a subsequent population explosion, with dire consequences for the entire forest. As the plants die, they will release the carbon they've stored.

Second, different plants prioritize pulling different resources out of the ground. There isn't a simple recipe of ax carbon dioxide, bx water, cx nitrogen, dx phosphorus etc = x kg carbon sequestered. Some species need more nitrogen, some need more phosphorus, some need more water etc. Different areas of the soil will have different concentrations of each resource the plants need. By having a diverse population, you will better utilize the soil's diverse resources.

[https://phys.org/news/2018-10-species-rich-forests-carbon- mo...](https://phys.org/news/2018-10-species-rich-forests-carbon- monocultures.html) DOI: 10.1126/science.aat6405

In the study, the monocultures they studied included monocultures of bamboo and eucalyptus, which are extremely productive monocultures. These plots were still less productive than diverse forests.

You're correct about algae scrubbing carbon faster than forests, however algae to do not _sequester_ appreciable amounts of carbon. It's released back into the environment nearly as quickly as it is removed. Trees, on the other hand, sequester lots of carbon in their trunks and root systems, so they are an important consideration with regards to anthropogenic climate change.

<comment><USER24> I mean, I said plant _s_ and tree _s_ , plural. By all means we should be picking multiple genera and species and cultivars thereof to provide some diversity.

Re: soil diversity, by all means pick plants/trees that are suited to that soil, as long as they are especially effective at trapping carbon.

Fair point about algae.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > The regular harvesting and clearing of plantations releases stored CO2 back > into the atmosphere every 10–20 years. By contrast, natural forests continue > to sequester carbon for many decades4.

I'm not sure I understand... To me, the only question is, how much CO2 we store per km2 (which might be a higher number for a natural forest). The plantation being cut down _and then regrown_ has 0 net impact, just like trees dying and new trees growing in a forest. The plantation being cut down and not regrown has the same negative (+CO2) impact as the forest eventually being burned/cut down.

<comment><USER27> Well, what if you cut it down, use it as a long term building material, and then regrow it?

Seems a lot like that would turn atmospheric carbon into a building material.

<comment><USER28> My understanding is that a lot of the carbon is still released as the sap is dried out and so on.

<comment><USER29> Got any source on that? Carbon generally isn't released without burning or so I thought. Though, this article seems to suggest that composted wood releases it's carbon which is at odds with what I thought I knew.

<comment><USER30> Biological process are generally a slow controlled burn. Compost burns the carbon for the energy that creates, releasing CO2.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The problem is- that in poor countries, forrest are chopped down faster then you can rebuilt them. So what you need is a mixture of reforrestation- the natural forrest in diffiult to reach regions. And "crop" forrest - aka bamboo in those regions that will get pillaged.

</comment><comment><USER21> I think part of this, at least, it eating meat much more sparingly. From what I understand huge swaths of the Amazon are slashed and burned to make room for cattle which do the opposite of sequestering carbon by converting any it finds into methane (and meat).

So basically we need to eat less meat to give plants more room. And we will need lots of room since we need to not only sequester the carbon of the trees we've previously destroyed (assuming they were burned and not converted into buildings), but all the millions (billions?) (trillions?) of pounds of hydrocarbons we've pumped out of the ground.

To sequester that much carbon we need trillions of pounds more life on earth than we currently have which means we need to let the oceans fill up with carbon-based mass (algae, fish, etc), let the rain forests and other carbon- high forests grow to their geographic boundaries.

I don't think it's the silver bullet, but it's definitely a great start and technologically easier than turning CO2 into graphene or diamonds or whatever.

<comment><USER32> _I think part of this, at least, it eating meat much more sparingly._

Eating less meat gets mentioned whenever a climate change debate appears here. Perhaps my own position as a meat eater makes react somewhat critically to this (when I was a vegetarian, I had trouble with my digestion that eating meat seemed to solve).

With that caveat, I should say that even if producing less meat was a good solution to climate change, individual abstention seems unlikely to be a path that's going to get us very far towards this change. One can see various social movements against a variety of products which don't by themselves prevent the production of these products. Whichever actions one might describe in a "ten things one can do to save the planet" list, those actions will done by a limited number of people, determined by sociological factors. Moreover, reduce the demand for X environmentally product from group Y and you decrease the price, stimulating demand from group Z.

More concretely, I have friends are homeless and nearly homeless. Eating less meat might be healthier and less environmentally destructive but these people aren't going to make that choice because their choices and values revolve around what lets them survive. And broadly, if producers of a product can't sell to one group, they can find another group.

My claim is that any shift in agricultural CO2 production is going to require regulation, whatever choices some consumers might make just won't change things and to various extents, acting as if these choices are a program does more harm than good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Anybody here buying forest just to leave it to grow? It's not so expensive to buy a few dozen hectares, something I've been wanting to do for a while

<comment><USER34> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_easement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_easement) are relevant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> The momentum and concern over climate change in the last decade has caused many humans to lose sight of the fact that preservation of remaining natural habitat is the immediate and absolutely critical concern. Too many people nowadays equate conservation with more abstract schemes to control climate over longer time-scales and impersonal spatial scales. If we lose good quality remaining natural habitat we will have lost all of what is most important to conserve.

</comment><comment><USER36> Before we worry about removing atmospheric carbon, the easiest and simplest thing we can do is to emit less of it.

It's cheaper to not emit 1T of CO2, then to pull 1T of CO2 out of the air.

<comment><USER37> Why not both?

<comment><USER36> Because emitting less is an order of magnitude cheaper then sequestration, and there's only so much economic/political capital that we can marshal for this problem.

Optimize the critical path. When your patient is bleeding from a severed arm, don't waste time with slapping a bandaid on their little toe.

<comment><USER38> This would be good advice if there were a unitary "we" who had already agreed to pursue the least-cost route to climate stabilization. But Californians can't force Wyomingites to cut their emissions, the EU can't force Americans to cut their emissions, and so on. Human emissions are going to continue beyond the point where feedback loops can be damped simply by cutting back on combustion. When the warning is "only 12 more years" to finish a decarbonization process that should have started 30 years ago, you know that the problem won't be solved optimally.

It's tragic that everyone is going to pay more because humans couldn't coordinate soon enough to just do the smart thing, but that's how it is. The IPCC is discussing negative emissions strategies not because they're cheaper than cutting emissions but because humans are not implementing deep emissions cuts fast enough.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Y chromosome is disappearing – so what will happen to men? - <AUTHOR> http://theconversation.com/the-y-chromosome-is-disappearing-so-what-will-happen-to-men-90125 <comment><USER2> So 'Y: The Last Man' is not so far fetched except in the comic the death of all Y-chromosome organisms was instantaneous.</comment>


An ode to running a database on bare metal - <AUTHOR> http://agiletesting.blogspot.com/2012/01/ode-to-running-database-on-bare-metal.html

<comment><USER2> It's funny how the meaning of "bare metal" changes over time. To me it means taking the OS out of the loop (either the application being the OS, or at least circumventing the normal OS facilities). So I was fully expecting this to be about databases with their own filesystems and/or buffer caches.

<comment><USER3> Or, for that matter, a custom OS whose only task is to run an (in-kernel, perhaps?) database server.</comment></comment>


"Do Not Track" HTTP header supported by IE, Opera, FF, Safari but not Chrome - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_not_track_header <comment><USER2> I still haven't heard a cogent explanation of what this is supposed to do.

"Do Not Track" sounds nice, but seems no easier to scope than the initial problem of excessive information collection. I think it's safe to say that I want companies to 'track' me in order to keep me logged in for a session. Likewise, I hope that my bank keeps logs of visitors, so that it can respond to abuse / hacking attempts. Is this aimed only at behavioral advertising, or is it meant to have a broader scope?

It seems like the technical execution is almost misguided without having the policy discussion first and figuring out what it is we disagree with. Without that, I don't feel like this is going to draw a strong enough line to separate people abusing tracking from the legitimate uses.

<comment><USER3> Do not track me for advertisement, statistics, etc. is the intent.

<comment><USER4> _statistics_

WTF? So analytics packages will somehow have to exclude these browsers from all reports? Some reports? Can you count impressions from these users?

<comment><USER3> How that's "wtf"? If I don't want companies to make statistics using what _I do_ that sounds perfectly legitimate to me.

Now then again DNT is an intent, the vendor does whatever he likes, and can support DNT for other features and still have statistics. There's no list of things you can do or not do. There's no agreement either. It's just the user indicating that they don't want to be tracked in any way.

<comment><USER5> It's a wtf because you can't draw any good lines on statistics. Web server admins have legitimate reasons to track (i.e. log) all requests to some extent against their web sites. We have good tools to help analyse a lot of this.

Consider a real world equivalent. Suppose you walk into a bookstore and buy a book with cash. The store might not be able to track you individually but they can track how many people visited, how many books they sold, etc. You can't say that's not legitimate.

So I could see an argument that the line that should be drawn is one that involved tracking cookies, but that is quite a narrow exclusion regarding statistics of individual users. You can still get pretty good stuff from the access log and there's no case to be made that DNT means Do Not Log.

<comment><USER3> Statistics != "logging"

Then again anyone is free to track/not track, stat/not stat (so far at least) and only "not track" subset of their data (as long as they don't lie)

Then again there's a few privacy-aware websites who do logging and some stats but on pseudonymized IPs which is also a pretty decent compromise.

<comment><USER5> But what about mining statistics from logs?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The "Do Not Track" HTTP header is useless, equivalent to a "Do not Steal from Me" T-shirt. It is also harmful because it gives users a false feeling of protection and security. The question should not be why Chrome didn't implement it, but why Opera and Firefox did.

<comment><USER7> It will make all the difference in a court case when you have specifically denied consent and someone has continued to do something.

If you want to get pedantic about it just being text, all law is just text, books upon books, but its the enforcement that counts. This opens the door for enforcement of other laws.

<comment><USER8> You're not denying consent, you're sending some non-standard bytes to their server which will be lost as soon as the request is processed. Without legislation, do not track is just an honor system.

<comment><USER9> You're mixing levels of analysis here. You might as well say, "He didn't vote; he just used some sort of chemical-containing stick to make marks on a thin slice of a tree." Your point about legislation being needed would be stronger without that.

<comment><USER8> My point isn't about levels of abstraction, it's about standardized communication protocols. Making marks on a thin slice of a tree conveys a vote exactly because that's what the government decided the way to make a vote would be. If I write my vote in hieroglyphic etchings on an old shoe and post it to the first lady, I can't expect my vote to be counted.

<comment><USER9> Effective communication is about what people agree on. Government recognition is one avenue for that, but it often follows the populace rather than leading it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I can hear it now "Of course not, why would an ad company sabotage itself?".

Wikipedia says Chrome is set to support the header by the end of this year (2012).

Wikipedia's source: [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020396080457723...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203960804577239774264364692.html)

<comment><USER11> Even if what you said is true, it's definitely interesting that the browser that is on the forefront of implementation of almost every new web feature is about a year behind on only this one while all the other major browsers have already implemented it.

<comment><USER12> It might have to do with the fact that most Web technologies do something useful while this just sends an extra header that pretty much every site they visit will ignore. I wouldn't prioritize it either at this point in time. This is a movement that needs support from site maintainers, not browser implementors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As far as I can tell, this official extension for Chrome has been available since January of last year and supports the header: [http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.ca/2011/01/keep-your- opt-...](http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.ca/2011/01/keep-your-opt- outs.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> Since no one's mentioned Ghostery yet, I highly recommend it as a way to opt- out of all sorts of stupid tracking mechanisms on the Web.

<http://www.ghostery.com/>

</comment><comment><USER15> This is misleading. The important actors in the "who supports Do Not Track" is not browsers but websites. "Browser support" just means "we'll tell the website that you'd rather not be tracked". If every browser sent this header, and every website ignored it, it would be a complete failure.

So what, if any, websites support the "Do Not Track" header?

<comment><USER16> Twitter, for one: [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/05/18/twitter_signs_do_not...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/05/18/twitter_signs_do_not_track/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> On the other hand Google provides browser extensions that lets you opt-out from advertising cookies and Google Analytics tracking. These are not vastly popular though, each at around 100k installs for the Chrome version.

<https://www.google.com/ads/preferences/html/opt-out.html>

<https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout>

</comment><comment><USER18> Opting out of a privacy violation that should not take place to begin with is insane.

Also, way too little way too late.

Ten years ago this might have been seen as constructive contribution towards industry self-regulation. Now it's just a sick joke that won't do anything to change the fact that tracking without explicit permission will be illegal in many parts of the world.

</comment><comment><USER19> Will be also supported by Epiphany (default GNOME browser): [http://git.gnome.org/browse/epiphany/commit/?id=f7a3fca8a8e0...](http://git.gnome.org/browse/epiphany/commit/?id=f7a3fca8a8e03a5362d14e55613ac6d4103978fb)

</comment><comment><USER20> Given that Google is perhaps the only company whose main business is online ads and ads relevance is crucial, it is natural that they cannot give up the opportunity of tracking profile of ads viewers as easily as other companies.

</comment><comment><USER21> DNT does not work based on trust and if somebody is going to track you they are going to track you regardless of if you send them a HTTP header asking not to, or not

(the tl;dr of the spec is that it adds this HTTP header to all requests:

        DNT: 1

it can be set to 1 or 0).

There is also a large risk here of creating a false sense of security amongst less knowledgable users. We should be teaching users cookie control, plugin and request blocking as part of using the web, not an 'install once, forget forever' solution that doesn't work.

DNT is also adding _more_ entropy to HTTP requests, making you easier to identify or profile. You get less privacy. Think about how much an advertiser would love to know that you are privacy conscious, that puts you in a certain socio-economic group.

I am a huge privacy nut and advocate but DNT will not work. The only way to fix this is better third party blocking and controls in browsers.

I have been meaning to flesh out a blog post against DNT for a while, since I keep getting emails asking to comment on media stories about it being adopted.

<comment> mike-cardwell "We should be teaching users cookie control, plugin and request blocking as part of using the web, not an 'install once, forget forever' solution that doesn't work."

Doomed to failure. Users shouldn't need to know this stuff, and the vast majority never will. Even if it is taught and tested at school. There are plenty of things we _could_ do to improve privacy, but much of it will cause the major browser vendors to make less money, so is unlikely to happen.

1.) Tie all cookies to the domain in the address bar. No more third party cookie tracking.

2.) Tie all cache entries to the domain in the address bar. Gets rid of numerous tracking tricks at the cost of increasing bandwidth usage a little.

3.) Get rid of HTTP referrers. Completely. It's none of your business which site I was on before yours.

These three things alone would make a _huge_ difference. It's the low hanging fruit that we need to get before we tackle the more difficult problems.

I think there's too much money involved though. The above improvements would definitely hit Microsofts and Googles bottom lines. But hey, there's no problem with insanely rich advertisers controlling the major browsers right. No conflict of interests there.

EDIT: I agree with all of your other points regarding DNT. Just not the user education one.

EDIT2: Another one:

4.) Make all cookies, session cookies. I configured my browser to delete all cookies on exit ages ago, and the web still works fine. I might have to type in my username each time I go to login to sites instead of having it auto- filled, but that's a good trade off. Besides, browser plugins like LastPass solve that problem better.

<comment><USER21> I wrote a Chrome extension to do what you describe, it breaks almost the entire web. I am experimenting with a generic rule set with a view of forking Chrome with a better default privacy and security policy.

I totally agree that users shouldn't need to know the details, but there are some things, like third-party cookies, that needs to be explained and simplified. A bit like not clicking on an exe email attachment.

I think the equivalent could be that users white-list websites, or 'install' them, if they trust them, which allows those sites to execute third-party cookies. Everything else would be 'incognito' by default.

But I am not entirely sure what would work, hence my experimentation at the moment. I know that the answer definitely isn't DNT.

<comment><USER22> How does it break the web and what has the most breaking impact in your experience?

<comment> mike-cardwell I can't imagine a way that #1, #2 or #4 would be able to "break the web". Worse case scenario is they add a tiny amount of overhead. #3 might cause a tiny minority of websites to stop working, but they'd get fixed quickly if #3 was implemented.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The Do Not Track movement and its whole premise is useless. I've blogged about why this is so a while ago: [http://blog.idleworx.com/2012/02/do-not-track- movement-is-us...](http://blog.idleworx.com/2012/02/do-not-track-movement-is- useless.html)

</comment><comment><USER24> This will only be useful if governments enforce it. The US has included it for consideration in the US Privacy Bill of Rights[1] and the EU may enforce it as well[2]. But until there is some form of punishment for not complying with DNT it is essentially window dressing.

[1][http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/privacy- final....](http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/privacy-final.pdf)

[2][http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data- protection/article-29/docum...](http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data- protection/article-29/documentation/other- document/files/2012/20120301_reply_to_iab_easa_en.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER25> Why would Chrome not support a meaningless header sent by the client?

You are asking Schneier to implement security by obscurity with emphasis on the obscurity part. Hell, you are asking the same people that sent a "This is not a P3P policy" P3P policy.

Now I don't know if they think, as do I, that all of this is just meaningless extra traffic on the wire, or that they are evil and don't want to commit to privacy guarantees. No way to tell.

<comment><USER26> Anyone sent in a RFC for using code 666 for "Server is evil and does not support Do Not Track headers".

<comment><USER27> The IETF does have a network-layer solution to that.

<http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3514.txt>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Hmm... Somebody could presumably bake it into chromium

</comment><comment><USER29> but will be incorporated by the end of 2012

</comment><comment><USER30> The real question isn't whether Google's browser supports this, it's whether Google's servers support this. It may be that Google isn't adding it to the browser until it can commit to it on the server.

<comment><USER31> Allowing people to opt out of tracking would _decrease_ the load on Google's servers.

<comment><USER32> Well, sure, and if everybody installed effective ad blocking software so they never saw a google ad, that would decrease the load on google's servers too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> the thing is why should it be supported if the website is tracking you any way?

its just a request to not track me but i don't can see if its really not tracking me.

</comment><comment><USER34> Jesus' words (or Lincoln's, if you wish) apply here:

"If a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand."

</comment><comment><USER35> If you disable Cookies and Javascript you will stop probably 90% or more of tracking. How much tracking is done without using Cookies and without Javascript? KISSMetrics? What else?

<comment><USER36> Without JS and Cookies the web is too crippled. It's not an option for most people. DNT tries to fix this on a more legal level than technical.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> If that's not evil then I don't know what is.</comment>


I procrastinate because I care - <AUTHOR> http://ryanwaggoner.com/2010/09/i-procrastinate-because-i-care/ <comment><USER2> That last point is big, you dont have to fix everything. Its ok to make small steps as long as they are in the right direction.

From <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000339.html>

Fire and Motion, for small companies like mine, means two things. You have to have time on your side, and you have to move forward every day. Sooner or later you will win. All I managed to do yesterday is improve the color scheme in FogBUGZ just a little bit. That's OK. It's getting better all the time. Every day our software is better and better and we have more and more customers and that's all that matters. Until we're a company the size of Oracle, we don't have to think about grand strategies. We just have to come in every morning and somehow, launch the editor.

<comment><AUTHOR> _We just have to come in every morning and somehow, launch the editor._

I really like this. So much of success seems to be just showing up, day after day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I finally made my peace with procrastination when I stopped fighting against it. Now my secret to productivity is to load several projects onto my agenda so that I end up getting work done as a way of avoiding getting other work done:

[http://quandyfactory.com/blog/1/productivity_and_procrastina...](http://quandyfactory.com/blog/1/productivity_and_procrastination)

<comment><AUTHOR> You mean structured procrastination?

<http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/>

Maybe I'm just idealistic and I'll eventually get to the point where I adopt this strategy but I'm fighting it for now :)

EDIT: Sorry, I posted this before checking your post and seeing that you linked to it.

<comment><USER3> Reading that essay was a revelation. It provided a name and an explicit description of what I was already doing - albeit in an ad hoc, guilt-ridden manner.

It wasn't until I decided to accept my temperament and make it work for me that I became comfortable with how I get things done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a common, but interesting angle on procrastination. eliminating distractions, time boxing and counting are all valuable elements not only to overcoming procrastination but also to improving the underlying element, motivation.

In the middle of the article above, the author mentions what I think is the root cause of both procrastination and in turn, motivation in general:

"Cultivate strong habits and build a routine"

I think that habits are the foundation of success. If you develop good habits and work to enforce and refine those habits to meet your goals, you will succeed.

This (simplistic) theory is echoed by almost every self-help resource available. Some say associate yourself with those who have good habits, while others think that progressing through a number of repeatable steps is the secret to success. Personally, I think that it's different for everyone, but everyone that I know who truly "gets stuff done" simply has developed good habits professionally, personally and recreationally.

<comment><AUTHOR> I can't even begin to tell you how right you are. Habits are inevitable; everyone has them and is controlled by them to a certain degree. I see habit as a steady, silent, inexorable force that pulls you through life. Realizing this and pouring almost all my energy into shaping my habits has completely changed my life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I procrastinate because I read too many blogs posts about getting things done and procrastination avoidance. I procrastinate because I'm procrastinating my way to perfection.

<comment><USER6> Even worse is the fact that most of these blog posts just seem to be rehashes of previous blog posts about getting stuff done. Avoid distractions, declutter, pomodoro technique... I don't know how many of these posts I've seen on HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think procrastination is not _the_ problem. It is an effect rather than a cause. I procrastinate waiting until I feel I can focus on the problem. Removing distractions won't help much. When I feel I can focus, nothing can distract me.

Probably what should be tackled is how to maintain focus, and regain focus quickly.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think the crux lies in the habits you cultivate. If you know how make a habit out of something (if you have the habit of deliberately creating good habits) all the other pieces should fall into place.

As the saying goes: thoughts become actions, actions become habits and the habits define your character.

</comment><comment><USER9> Larry Wall once said that language designers have huge egos, perhaps hackers do too. Perhaps it's the guts and ego that shouts out "I don't care" cause I have bigger things to think about or for that matter hack about. Hacking is always the numero uno priority hence procrastination in my humble opinion will always be a feature amongst hackers and not a bug :)

Nonetheless I do vouch for the Pomodoro technique, specially the one written by Staffan. When cries of things to do can no longer be ignored, it's time to wind up that clock!

<comment><USER10> We can have all the morals we can afford. Well-paid comfortable hackers can afford a lot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> One resource that I've gotten some good mileage out of recently is "The Procrastinator's Digest". It's a comprehensive but concise look at what the current research says and how you can apply it. I re-read it when I find myself slipping into my procrastination habit, especially the "I'll feel more like doing this later, tomorrow, after a nap, etc." rut I tend to get most stuck in.

<http://www.procrastinatorsdigest.com/>

</comment><comment><USER10> Sometimes the job is so deep and so wide and so tall, there seems to be no way to do it, no way at all. 25 minutes on an egg timer isn't going to cut it.

I need to be in the right mental condition to make headway then. No, just getting started doesn't help. If I'm not sharp, I'm just staring at that editor screen, fooling with the formatting.

Then a bike ride, a run, a nap is more productive. I'm SO glad I work for myself, and I can do that.

</comment><comment><USER12> The third paragraph (which is referenced in the title) makes an excellent point. I wish he had expanded on this more.

The fact is that modern western culture strongly values timeliness over quality. Thus, we are often penalized for "taking the time to do it right". (For all you Myers-Briggs fans: Our culture strongly favors the J preference, which can be rough on those who are more inclined toward the P side.)

That does not mean that we all need to start valuing timeliness more. But it _does_ mean that it is a good idea to remember that we will usually be evaluated, rewarded, etc., based on a value system that attaches great importance to timeliness.

</comment><comment><USER13> For bigger, important tasks give your friends or family some money and tell them not to give it back unless you finish the task in time. The key is to make the amount of money significant enough to warrant not procrastinating.

</comment><comment><USER14> It's funny how every article about productivity and anti-procrastination is effectively costing productivity and makes people stay away from what they thought they should be doing just a little bit longer.

If the number of people that changes their minds after reading this multiplied by the time they would procrastinate otherwise is larger than the total amount of time people spent on reading these articles it is a net win.

Of course I had to go read the article...

@ryan: typo in the second paragraph, 'live' instead of 'life'.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed; thanks.

I know what you mean, and "productivity porn" can definitely be a problem. I used to read 43 folders and other sites like that, but I mostly avoid it now. I might listen to podcasts on productivity when I have time that I can't otherwise use very well (like running, for example), but I try not to spend a couple hours a day reading how to be more productive :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Assume there are things you do not procrastinate on (because you enjoy them when doing them, and in advance when looking forward to them).

Also take from your post that you enjoy this work when you get going on it, but you don't enjoy it in advance, looking forward to it.

So what's the difference? If you aren't _predicting_ enjoyment for something that you _will actually enjoy_ at the time it happens, then your prediction circuits are badly calibrated.

If you aren't predicting enjoyment, and you are avoiding doing something (procrastinating), you are probably predicting something bad happening as a result of doing or not doing it, which you force yourself past fighting every time.

What am I talking about when I say 'predicting'? Feelings. How you feel about it. Do some role playing imagination for:

\- If I don't start this now, how do I feel? \- If I never get this done, how do I feel? \- If I do work on it now, how do I feel? \- If I do finish this, how do I feel?

(that is, deliberately imagine yourself in each of the situations as if it was really happening, and pay attention to what your brain feeds back to you as you do so by way of noticing how the imagination-model makes you feel).

Compare between something that you don't procrastinate on, and something that you do. I'm guessing for something you easily do it will go "if I don't do it, no big deal, if I do, pride and happiness", and for something you procrastinate on it will be "if I don't do it, oh no I feel ashamed, and if I do, just another trudging turn of the grindstone".

Can I justify this from your post? Maybe:

 _The things I really care about are things that I want to be perfect, so I put off doing them. Pretty soon, I've turned a small, simple task into a huge project and the burden of accomplishing it is just too large, so I put it off. Do I really care about this redesign? Yeah, I care way too much about it._

Ask yourself what it is that you care about, specifically. It's not really the redesign itself, is it? The "burden". People don't describe things they enjoy doing and look forward to as a burden, they describe onerous miserable/unpleasant but obligatory tasks as burdens.

You beat yourself up with Fort Knox lockdowns, mental discipline and framing it as something you will have to "fight forever" and then write a blog post about how to change yourself so you stop procrastinating by keeping yourself the same and changing the world around you - as if that actually could work. As if having an egg timer near you is the change that stops you procrastinating. As if changing your watch is the fix for bubblesort being too slow.

NB, I'm procrastinating by writing this instead of working, but don't dismiss this because of my failings, only dismiss it if it's not useful.</comment>


How can you reduce your emails by 50% a day?  - <AUTHOR> http://blog.taskforceapp.com/

<comment><USER2> I want to know how I can increase my volume of _interesting_ emails by 50% per day.

<comment><USER3> I feel the same way. I like talking with people about cool things, I'd say 80% of the cool stuff I'm introduced to originally comes from someone I'm in touch with. Hacker News included.

So I tell you what, hugh - why don't you write me an interesting email and I'll write back? What are your key goals you're working on? Or recommend me a book, or ask for a book recommendation on a particular topic. I'll write back. All details in my profile.

Hell, anyone can write me if you're a decent person. You - _yes you_ \- what are you working on that's important to you right now?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If sometimes thought about the e-mail problem.

I'd like to make an app that let's you do the following:

1) You sign up for an account.

2) You feed the app your e-mail address, username, passowrd, hostname. Multiple e-mail addresses if you have them.

3) The app would then regularly check up on your e-mail and combine all your aggregated e-mails like notifications etc into a single e-mail, which you could check out any time you like.

4) The app could filter some spam (if you have a host that doesn't have spam filtering)

5) The app could do smart stuff with your e-mails like pulling all the contacts that send you e-mail and creating a centralized contacts list automatically (maybe even attempting to parse signatures)

6) It would also be nice if you could use the app as your webmail, if your host doesn't already support webmail (they are out there)

And you could probably think of more features. It could be really helpful for people stuck with horrible e-mail hosts.

<comment><USER5> Haven't you just described Gmail?

<comment><USER4> Maybe I did. Good point.

Can you use gmail with other mail hosts? That is, without google apps?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like the simplicity of using an alt email account that sends you daily digests. OtherInbox is an example, though I do not endorse that service in particular.

<comment><USER7> I just have gmail tags like 'facebookspam' that skip inbox and I can peruse at my leisure. Usually just to mass mark as read.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This actually looks pretty cool and useful, but it's in beta, way to douse my excitement with a cold bucket of waiting

</comment><comment><USER9> By responding to fewer of them, more slowly, that's how.

</comment><comment><USER10> Here's how you should deal with emails after a long vacation. Ctrl-A and Delete.

If it's important enough, it will be re-sent.

Edit: I see lot of downvotes. But I wasn't joking. What's more important in life? Doing busy work with your inbox? If an email sitting in your inbox for more than a week and have no impact on your life even you haven't dealt with it, it probably really has no impact on your life.

<comment><USER3> Nah, that's not necessary. I had 700 emails in my inbox three months ago, and I got them down to 0 after about a month. I set milestones:

-Inbox to 600 -Inbox to 500 -Inbox to 400 -Inbox to 300 -Inbox to 200 -Inbox to 100 -Inbox to 70 -Inbox to 50 -Inbox to 30 -Inbox to 15 -Inbox to 10 -Inbox to 5 -Inbox empty

I figured it'd get harder to clear down as it got closer to the bottom. In the beginning it was easy - search and archive newsletters, alerts, digests, and spam. Archive all emails from someone after I got off the phone with them and covered everything, but let the old request sit in the box. Archive all emails from ex-girlfriend. Etc.

Interestingly, I had a lot of little milestones at the end, but it turns out it wasn't as hard as I thought: There were about 10 emails that I used a reminder for "general to do" that I added to a notepad file to-do list, and archived them. Then there was about 5 decisions where there was no particularly good decision and I didn't like my choices, so I just sacked up and picked one option or the other and did it. Like, one of them was canceling something that had an early cancel fee, and I'd been waffling on it, and I just said screw it and picked one way or the other. I don't even remember the details, which means I should have probably just picked the first time I looked at it.

Anyways, email inbox can be overwhelming if it's big. Tackle it in chunks, almost make a game out of it. It's nice to keep crossing off things on the list... 700... 600... 500... 400... was quite a good feeling. It's nice to be organized, too.

<comment><USER10> That sounds like a lot of work. Dealing with inbox becomes a fulltime job.

<comment><USER3> It wasn't so bad. It took a couple big pushes of effort, but the rewards were great. Going through the inbox instead of just deleting or archiving everything made me find a good 20-30 things I really should have dealt with, and I did. Beyond that, I just handled my inbox when I was tired and wasn't able to do anything more meaningful - it cut my Hacker News time down a little bit for one month, and now I've got a clean inbox that never gets to two pages long. That's really quite valuable for me.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The A-Z of Programming Languages: Erlang - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php?q=article/307418/-z_programming_languages_erlang <comment><AUTHOR> One of the weird things about Erlang is that, rather than being something like Ruby or Python (or Scala), that was created, and then started to see industry adoption, Erlang first was adopted by a large company, put in production, then released, and only later began to see wider adoption. The good side of this was that Erlang had a lot of resources available that most fledgling languages didn't have. The bad side is that they can't change it:

> Removing stuff turns out to be painfully difficult. It's really easy to add > features to a language, but almost impossibly difficult to remove things. In > the early days we would happily add things to the language and remove them > if they were a bad idea. Now removing things is almost impossible.

> The main problem here is testing, we have systems with literally millions of > lines of code and testing them takes a long time, so we can only make > backwards compatible changes.

> Some things we added to the language were with hindsight not so brilliant. > I'd happily remove macros, include files, and the way we handle records. I'd > also add mechanism to allow the language itself to evolve.

</comment><comment><USER2> _Instead of having external revision control systems like Git or Subversion I'd like to see revision control and re-factoring built into the language itself with fine-grain mechanism for introspection and version control._

Crazy idea :-)

<comment><USER3> Well it does seem like an odd idea, though when one considers the motivating app, telephony, where the goal is code that runs forever, it's not so far- fetched. I could imagine using such features to back off minor changes to running code on the fly. Another domain would be air traffic control systems.</comment></comment>


Show HN: BoxPx – Photo Albums for DropBox - <AUTHOR> http://boxpx.com

<comment><USER2> Thsi is a pretty cool tool for photos, ill bookmark it for later.

<comment><USER3> It's not ok to game HN like this.

We ban sockpuppets, and voting rings lose voting privileges.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is a good open-source discussion system similar to Reddit? - <AUTHOR> Our company is using slack for most discussions, but the UX is not really well suited to it imho. Is there any open source system except reddit itself that is lightweight and easy to deploy? <comment><USER2> In my personal experience, the closest thing is discourse. It's FOSS, familiarish to people who have used stackoverflow, and easy to self host. I don't know that it's _particularly_ similar to reddit though.

[https://www.discourse.org/](https://www.discourse.org/)</comment>


Show HN: Non-technical founder MVP = Hustlebee - <AUTHOR> http://www.hustlebee.com

<comment><AUTHOR> The site was inspired by iwannaworkatinstagram.com. I want to build a recruiting tool that makes it easier for people to get hired by companies that they're really passionate about working for. Check the blog at <http://www.hustlebee.posterous.com> for more on my journey and where I'd like to go with this.

</comment><comment><USER2> To be brutally honest, your product makes no sense to me and I have reservations about the problem it is solving actually being a problem.

It's defining hook, that people using it must accept any job offer, is outlandish. On further inspection I can use Hustlebee to submit applications to multiple companies. Doesn't that make the promise of more dedicated employee leads empty? Why doesn't it at least check the email address to allow only one submission?

If you decide to go back to the drawing board you need to re-examine your views of the job market. There are many more potential employees than there are employers, that is why people apply for multiple jobs at the same time. It really isn't that big of a deal to a company when they extend and offer and it is turned down. Essentially, you are solving the wrong side of the problem here.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd love to hear more about the trials and tribulations of mvp'ing your product as a non-technical founder... and it would be cool to see some background as just how non-technical you are :)

One small suggestion: You have a required field that's only has one checkbox option. This is weird to me from a UX point of view. It's also a weird question. I think what you're trying to do is find out if the user is serious about their application or not...

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah definitely the next blog post will be about how I launched the page/what I'm using in terms of tech. I am probably as non-technical as they get...I've been reading HN for a while now but have done no db programming before and my skills are limited to front-end stuff (read the blog post at <http://www.hustlebee.posterous.com> if you want to know more about my background).

Re: the required field, the goal of the site is to have people commit to take the position upfront. This is what makes it valuable because it allows companies to cut down on time spent trying to gauge how committed their applicants are.

Thanks for the feedback!

<comment><USER4> No sane person is going to agree to take a position without seeing the terms first. Working for hustlebee might be my dream job but if I were offered $0.50/hr then you could probably imagine what my response would be. No check box on a recruiters sign up page is going to change that. More importantly it's almost certainly not binding and so the applicants have no reason to not check the box. If I were launching this site I'd be more worried about how this would hurt the number of people that take you seriously. Going back to the first point, if I'm not going to agree to accept a job without seeing the terms I'm also not going to work with a recruiter that requires me to accept any potential offer.

<comment><USER5> > No sane person is going to agree to take a position without seeing the terms > first

Quite. I list a few obvious reasons why a candidate wont want to take a job in a thread above - but this is not to mention the Service Agreement / Employment Contract which could be pages and pages of detailed legalese and, particularily with startups, could have lots of contentious stuff with stock options and so on.

Having your USP as "the candidate promises to accept your job offer" is unreasonable, unrealistic, impractical and most likely unlawful.

<comment><USER4> Agreed.

There's a lot of room for disruption in recruiting as many agencies/recruiters have poor/unethical practices. Unfortunately this misses the mark for me as an employer and would scare me away if I were looking for work as an unreasonable requirement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> " _If I'm offered a position with the company I agree to accept it._ "

i'll... pass.

<comment><USER5> even if the salary offered is 10 bucks a day...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Have you talked with anyone of the companies on your site about whether the problem your site solves is in fact a problem for them?

If not, and you are still committed to finding product-market fit, perhaps their feedback would be helpful as you refocus on a different problem.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think you may have accidentally left Working Software off the list. Easy mistake to make.

</comment><comment><USER9> So what happens if this takes off and you get 10 / 100 / 1000 seekers for a job at X?

Is it on Hustlebee to pre-qualify? Are you now a technical recruiter taking some % of the annual salary for the first 6/12 months?

Why is hustlebee better than applying directly?

You only place designers/engineers? Even if the company has other openings?

Can you have a page that shows all the opening from that drop-down of companies in one place?

<comment><AUTHOR> 1) I'll be sending applications to companies and they can choose whether or not to interview candidates.

2) I haven't figured out specifics but I'll probably charge companies that successfully make hires through us something similar to what they'd pay via employee referrals.

3) Hustlebee is better than applying directly because companies will treat you as a more serious candidate (just like if you were to create a website dedicated to why you want to work for a company). This streamlines the process for people that REALLY want to work for a company and cuts down on the number of applicants that companies need to vet and the number of companies that people need to apply to.

4) I decided to start with designers/engineers because those appear to be the positions in highest demand right now. I may expand to other positions later but haven't yet decided exactly how I'll go about doing that.

5) I'll try to do this.

<comment><USER5> 3) Why? All I've got to do is fill out your very simple form. Hardly the same as building a dedicated site targeting a particular company, and no harder than just applying directly. If anything it's easier: no CV, no covering letter etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Because if you apply to a company through us, are accepted, and don't go through with it we won't allow you to apply to other companies through us. This makes it so that companies can actually trust the service to get committed candidates as opposed to just candidates who, if they applied via a similar service that was listed directly on the site, had no recourse if they didn't go through with the position.

<comment><USER5> That's completely absurd. There could be a 1,000 very legitimate reasons why even a serious or committed candidate will not want to accept an offer: the pay's not right, the role isn't quite right, there's not enough responsibility (or too much) he doesn't think there's sufficient opportunity for career progression, he doesn't like his prospective boss or team, they want you to work in a different location, or travel a lot, or travel too little etc etc etc etc.

A job interview is not a one-way street. It's about discovery and due diligence. It's perfectly acceptable for either side to pull put if they feel that for whatever reason the other side isn't a good fit. And neither side can be sure of a fit until they enter discussions.

You'll just end up shooting yourself in the foot and ditching great candidates: bad for you, and bad for your clients.

<comment><AUTHOR> The idea is that some people can figure out most of this before applying and, for those people, hustlebee will simplify the process significantly. I don't expect that everyone will apply to jobs via us but I hope that we can provide a channel for those candidates who are extremely committed to a position to get an employer's attention without having to do the recruiting dance.

<comment><USER5> But that's my point. Your form doesn't do any filtering at all. Anyone can submit/apply. Any submissions you get you're going to have no idea as to how reputable/qualified/credible that candidate is. So how are you going to know who to put forward to these firms?

You're most likely going to end up having to trawl through millions of applications with no data/info on which to judge them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Great idea. I definitely see potential in what you're doing. Why did you only include YC companies?

<comment><AUTHOR> I wanted to start with startups because they have the most difficulty finding candidates and have the least resources in terms of recruiters/HR/etc to help. YC has a great list of awesome startups so I figured they would be a good jumping off point. I may expand later but I'm not sure how/when that will happen.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Budgeting and Expense app? - <AUTHOR> Looking for an app that I thought was simple but seems to not be:
- Can input things I spend money on quickly and easily eg. Buy a chocolate bar, click a button, enter the amount and maybe choose a category then done.
- Set monthly budgets for categories
- Tells me how I am doing based on what I enter
I know YNAB exists but seems insanely expensive for what I want.
Nice to haves:
- on Android but also a web interface - privacy features like being open source and having everything encrypted similar to Standard Note.
Any suggestions? <comment><USER2> Mint is ok, but I feel like there is a gap in the market for budgeting apps. I still have a spreadsheet of general categories like "groceries", "restaurants", "discretionary", and "cell phones/internet" that I prefer to group things into. The way Mint tries to categorize my transactions makes it frustrating to use. They're trying to push users into using their categories instead of letting me create categories and assign my transactions to them.

<comment><USER3> Mint allows you to create categories and you can assign certain transactions to them, and then click the "always apply this to this category" radio button.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As far as I know there isn't one. I still use YNAB4 because I don't want to "upgrade". I've been thinking about building my own budgeting system because the only real alternative seems to be excel sheets.

<comment><USER5> I'm actually in the same boat. I've been paranoid of using ynab online because of giving a company all of my financial data. I don't know if it is unfounded, but I do have to admit using ynab on the desktop is kind of inconvenient.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I believe Spendee meets your criteria. What I like about it most is that you can add expenses via Android home screen widget very easily.

</comment><comment><USER7> YNAB does what you want and only costs $6.99 a month. IMHO it's worth every penny.

<comment><USER8> YNAB4 did it for about $50 IIRC, over 10 years that's 6% of the price.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I paid $60 for YNAB4 back in 2015. I've already paid only a fraction of the price, and use it constantly. Subscription services don't seem like they cost a lot, but cost a ton.

<comment><USER9> It's quite hard to find finance software that isn't subscription based now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have been looking for such an app but have never come across one until now.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm curious has anyone used Airtable for this?</comment>


Lunula, a Lisp to C# compiler - <AUTHOR> http://anthonyf.wordpress.com/2009/12/31/introducing-lunula/

<comment><USER2> Hm, besides the project being dead, what is the advantage of an incomplete Lisp to C# compiler over Clojure on the CLR?

<comment><USER3> Maybe someone would want to use Lisp to generate some C# code into an existing project? .NET is great for polyglot programming, but you can't really mix languages inside a single project.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Update here:

[http://anthonyf.wordpress.com/2010/02/01/a-month-of-work- on-...](http://anthonyf.wordpress.com/2010/02/01/a-month-of-work-on-lunula/)

</comment><comment><USER4> His last post claims now, as of 1st feb, it has REPL, and direct dll loading, a bit interesting to me...

<comment><USER2> _February 1, 2010_

Sure you are thinking of the right 1st feb?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> tl;dr

Lunula is a Scheme to C# compiler.</comment>


PIE: Add CSS3 border-radius and multiple backgrounds to IE 6-8 - <AUTHOR> http://css3pie.com/

<comment><USER2> <http://css3pie.com/demos/tabs/#>

the tabs don't seem to work in any browser. i only tried ie8 for the styles, and while they are impressive they definitely lack polish. for instance, when enabled a border-bottom is added to each tab that shouldn't be there.

this is a tough problem and css pie could potentially be useful but i think it needs

a) polish b) a bit more customizability

before it's production ready. good start though.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the feedback! This demo isn't intended to be functional (clicking the tabs won't do anything, that requires JavaScript code which is out of scope for this demo), it's just there to show an example of how you could style things using CSS3.

I can verify there is a bug in IE8 where there is an extra gray line at the bottom of the active tab. I will attempt to fix that ASAP. It works properly in IE6 and IE7.

Thanks again.

<comment><USER4> In IE6, here, there's a big gap (~1em) between the tabs and the content.

I'm on a public computer though, with an old IE6 version (6.0.2900.2180, XP SP2) infected by the Babylon toolbar.

<comment><USER3> Hmm, interesting, I wasn't seeing that a minute ago. My bad. I'll try to fix both bugs tonight. Thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is great! I knew my laziness would pay off and someone would eventually fix the problem without having to image-ify all the CSS rounded corners in my new app :) Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER6> A question though...why? If people don't care to update IE, do you think they care about rounded boxes, shadows and gradients?

IE9 is supposed to support all this, I think. Let the people that don't want to update live in their "square" world...it doesn't seem like they care anyway.

<comment><USER3> Believe me, I have a lot of sympathy for this viewpoint. We don't want people continuing to use IE, so it seems logical that we should make their experience "lesser", using CSS3 for browsers that support it and falling back to flat square boxes in IE, and that will force them to change browsers, right?

Unfortunately, my experience over the years has brought me to the conslusion that this assumption is incorrect. If an IE user comes to your site and it doesn't look pretty, they're less likely to switch browsers than they are to just go to your competitor's pretty site instead. It sucks, but that's the reality, and that's why almost nobody gives IE a totally degraded experience.

Instead, web developers use all sorts of tricks of the trade (sliding doors, complex overlapping sprites, empty divs positioned to corners, etc.) to "fake" the features that CSS3 gives us natively, solely because they are forced to support IE. That's what PIE was created to change. It's not about giving IE users a better experience (most sites already do a pretty good job of that already), it's about making the web developer's life easier so they can deliver that same experience with less code and fewer images.

<comment><USER6> Awesome points. But keep in mind though that the IE team has really stepped up lately with IE9. IE will no longer be this cancer to web devs anymore. Let's stop wasting the time to make old IE "look pretty" and help people move forward and update (as best they can). Again, good points though.

<comment><USER7> IE8 isn't 'old' IE, it's 'current' IE. It will definitely be good if in the future IE supports CSS3 properly, but if you're making or supporting something today, you need to make it work on the browsers people are actually using today.

And for most markets, that's IE, and frequently not even IE8.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a (my) similar project: <http://fetchak.com/ie-css3/>

A 2.0 rewrite is almost ready, will support different border-radius sizes per corner and any color of box-shadow.

The gradient thing is nice. Beat me to it. :)

</comment><comment><USER9> I tried running this on my XP64 machine with IE8, and the CPU went up to 100% for a couple seconds upon loading the page. It lagged more when changing the settings and became unresponsive. Does this happen for anyone else?</comment>


PyCon 2011 Call for Papers is open - <AUTHOR> http://us.pycon.org/2011/speaker/proposals/

<comment><AUTHOR> The reason I posted this to HN is that I, and the other PyCon organizers strongly encourage startups (especially ones involved in OSS) to submit talks.

The talks must be relevant to the Python community in general, but we strongly encourage companies to join in. Additionally, if you've got some revenue, and your company is looking for great exposure, I recommend being a sponsor, even at a lower level!</comment>


Interactive graphic: Every active satellite orbiting earth - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/296941/interactive-graphic-every-active-satellite-orbiting-earth/ <comment><USER2> See also: [http://stuffin.space/](http://stuffin.space/)

<comment><USER3> That's just gorgeous.

It shows velocity with a unit of "km" rather than "km/s" which was confusing, but still very cool.

This is what I expected from the original article. Thanks.

<comment><USER4> Very cool! Didn't work for me on Chrome 53.0 on OS X, for some reason. All I could see was the earth, no dots at all. Hovering around with the pointer would show me some blue orbits.

<comment><USER5> Same here, Chrome 53.0.2785.116 on OSx 10.10.2 shows just the Earth, and when I hover on a dot it shows the trajectory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Knowing that the way an object orbits the planet is essentially infinitely falling toward it, but missing, I thought this was incredible:

"At an altitude of 35,786 km, satellites orbit at the same speed the earth turns, once every 24 hours, hanging usefully and lucratively over a single location to transmit and receive information."

I knew the earth spins fast, but putting those two facts together was really cool. Sitting here, I'm thinking how did I miss this before.

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

</comment><comment><USER7> NASA J-Track 3D: [https://science.nasa.gov/realtime/jtrack/3d/JTrack3D.html](https://science.nasa.gov/realtime/jtrack/3d/JTrack3D.html)

<comment><USER8> I came to suggest J-Track, and it's nice to see the page still active after over a decade, but I think stuffin.space is an excellent update.

It looks like this page doesn't even work for me. And even if it did, the Java plugin was old. Looks like NASA never updated it as promised in 2012.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you didn't notice, try the easter egg: "To see the relative speed of orbits (and possibly melt your browser), press Q and then the space bar. "

</comment><comment><USER10> This is probably the most gorgeous article I've seen from Quartz yet. I am deeply amazed.

</comment><comment><USER11> Easter egg mode: press Q once you've started the animation.

</comment><comment><USER12> Kessler collapse when</comment>


How Sacha Greif and Nathan Barry sold $39k worth of eBooks - <AUTHOR> http://sachagreif.com/how-nathan-barry-and-i-sold-39k-worth-of-ebooks/ <comment> barry-cotter Very interesting. I can't speak to the podcast but I highly recommend the transcript.

My takeaways:

(1) If you are an expert in something and are disciplined enough to set up a consistent routine for writing you can probably write an ebook. (2) At least for designers you probably don't need to sell in any format but pdf. (3) If you want to maximise your reach or the growth in your personal brand it may be best to sell something at impulse buy levels. (4) To maximise the cash you earn directly, in sales, you should offer different packages at different price points. (5) Both of these authors spent significant time and money (works out very similarly) on layout, look and feel, different formats.

Personal commentary

Ebooks do not need to be that long, at least technical ones. Sometimes books can be dense or have content that is valuable not because it's hard to understand but because rediscovering it yourself takes valuable time. I don't think either author put in more than 200 hours work; I don't believe either put in more than 150.

You should offer at least three packages if you're price segmenting. This has two purposes, the middle package looks totally reasonable compared to the premium one but if you only have more or less impulse buy and middle people will go impulse. The bigger reason is that most of your money will come from people buying the complete package for whom real actionable advice saves them their time and money, or people with corporate credit cards for whom the difference between $50 and $150 is non-existent.

I doubt if having more than five packages helps because that's about the limit of gradations people can hold in their heads intuitively rather than as abstractions. The reasoning for three packages is given above, anchoring. Probably a good idea to a/b test it.

<comment><USER2> Regarding the eBook size, that's the approach I'm taking with a serie I'm working on at the moment.

I set myself a limit of 50 pages per volume, the eBook is highly focused on one subject and does it well (hopefully). I found two main advantages with this approach :

\- The first one is that I have a short attention span and it allows me to write a page here and there, as the focus is on one subject it's much easier to just drop a draft, come back later, format it and add it to the overall. I do that very often, mainly in my morning commute in the tube.

\- The second one is that it doesn't require me to invest 6 months (or even more) of my time on a huge overtake (I started like that, but after 6months of work and being barely half way, I changed the approach and split the work in smaller pieces), the first ebook took me a bit more than a month to write and format, as I had quite a few things to figure out, now I'm two weeks in the second ebook, and I'm almost done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hey everyone, I'm happy to answer any questions about writing, marketing, and selling technical ebooks. I'm sure Sacha would be happy to answer questions as well.

The books being discussed are here:

<http://nathanbarry.com/app-design-handbook>

<http://sachagreif.com/ebook>

<comment><USER4> Thanks Nathan, can you point us to a few of the apps you've worked on as a starting point. Thanks

<comment><USER3> Here are the two big ones that I did for myself. I have a bunch more for clients:

<http://thinklegend.com/commit> <http://onevoiceapp.com>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very smart, to drive even more sales of both books with a podcast "series" starring both authors. Which one of you came up with that genius idea? Will you cover the podcast in the podcast?

<comment><AUTHOR> I can't tell if you're being serious or sarcastic… I guess you have a point both ways: it's true this is a way to promote both our eBooks. But we are also sharing valuable information and addressing real questions that people have asked us.

If you didn't find any value in the podcast then I guess only the self- promotion angle would remain, and I can see how that would be annoying.

<comment><USER6> I just read this on the train and you absolutely ticked the valuable information and real questions boxes for me!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Happy to answer questions as well!

<comment><USER7> Hey, excuse me if this is covered in the podcast, but I can't watch it right away and so I thought I'd take the opportunity while you're sticking around here to ask the question:

Did either of you follow the route of doing an intro/TOC/first chapter before you did the entire book then start marketing it to test out the response and do some lead gen?

If not, do you have any thoughts on that approach? (including potentially doing pre-sales of the book before you've actually gone ahead and written it?)

I'm working on a couple of eBook concepts right now and these are some concepts I've been thinking about, would be very interested in your point(s) of view.

Congrats on the publishing success!

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't do that myself but I think it's a very valid strategy. The only problem I can see is that it might hurt your momentum: sometimes you just need to go ahead and write without having to wait for feedback or A/B test results for every chapter.

Same with presales, it's a great strategy as long as you don't spend so much time promoting the pre-sale that you forget to write the book!

It might sound like I'm exaggerating but there is so much you can do to market eBooks that the book itself can sometimes become almost an afterthought…

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I was very surprised to see that you weren't publishing on iBooks or Kindle, but truly self publishing through your websites. How the heck do you get yourself out there to the point that you're raking in 10k a month? (Besides HN.) And do you think that'll drop off once your main readership has bought the book?

<comment><AUTHOR> Speaking for myself (Sacha), I raked in 10k a month _the first month_. That initial boost came mainly from HN. Sales dropped off dramatically since, and now it's probably more around $1-200/month, if that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nathan, you should probably think of removing part of the description from your Gumroad page, as just about anyone can easily grab the zip file without paying for it.

view-source:<https://gumroad.com/l/AppDesignComplete>

<comment><USER3> Nice. That's awesome. Had no idea Gumroad displayed the receipt in plain HTML. Oops! Foxed now, thanks for pointing it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> 1\. Do you guys focus mainly on iDevices? What's your take on the UI of Android?

2\. Have you had any exposure to copyright infringement? If so, was it for the positive or negative?

Thank you both for showing up here.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. As a designer I don't have a specific focus, I work on web apps as much as iOS apps. Haven't worked on an Android app yet, though.

2\. I haven't had anybody pirate by book as fas as I know. Maybe it's because of the low price point? That being said I wouldn't really care even if it did happen. I do not believe it would take away from sales much, probably just expose my book to people who would never have bought it anyway.

So in a way, piracy is a form of market segmentation that enables you to reach even the cheapest customers!</comment></comment>


A tool to help you savescum by backing up saves when they are modified - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/afk/savescum_helper <comment><USER2> This saves _what_!!??</comment>


New Yorker: Malcolm Gladwell on collaborative innovation - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/12/080512fa_fact_gladwell/?currentPage=all Gladwell discuses the notion of multiplicity - people coming up with the same ideas at the same time, e.g. Bell's and Gray's telephones - and a group's attempt to simulate the inventive process:
Intellectual Ventures (IV; http://www.intellectualventures.com/) collects great minds in the same place to come up with solutions to big problems.
Have a look. <comment><USER2> I believe this was already posted. Entitled "Malcolm Gladwell: Who says big ideas are rare?" Note to pg: the only difference between the two links is a "/"

<comment><USER3> Here it is <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=181392></comment></comment>