Ray Dalio Is Stepping Down from Management at Bridgewater - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-01/dalio-to-step-down-as-rubinstein-leaves-in-bridgewater-shuffle <comment><USER2> They've recently hired a bunch of senior CIO type people and created a "senior fellowship program", Carsten Stendevad, the former head of the Danish pension fund ATP is the most recent hire.

Also there is no one direct person in charge anymore according to Reuters...

> Dalio is being replaced as CEO by David McCormick, president of Bridgewater > for the last eight years. McCormick will serve along side co-CEO Eileen > Murray.

So for those of you keeping score he's tried replacing himself with a hand picked successor, and then a computer program and now he's assembling a collective to replace himself and he's making sure there is no one person in charge of the firm.

If I wanted to resign but couldn't bear the thought of someone replacing me, this is almost exactly how I'd setup the firm for my retirement too:)

I guess the clock is running on his return based on this quote from a letter he just wrote......

> "As I love markets, I'm excited about this change and expect to remain a > professional investor at Bridgewater until I die or until those running > Bridgewater don't want me anymore," Dalio said.

</comment><comment><USER3> For those who aren't familiar with Ray Dalio, beyond being founder and CEO of the world's largest hedge fund, he is also known for his dramatic views on transparency in the workplace, and his knack for explaining economic principles in simple terms. These two content pieces he created give a window into his mind:

 _Management principles manifesto_ [https://www.principles.com/#Principles](https://www.principles.com/#Principles)

 _How the economy works cartoon video_ [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHe0bXAIuk0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHe0bXAIuk0)

<comment><USER4> I've heard from friends there that the directness often only flows in one direction (managers being direct and aggressive to their subordinates), but YMMV.

<comment><USER5> The directness flows both ways, however, the aggression is strictly top down. Ray Dalio, etc, yell at people all the time, and are praised for their honesty. This is not something that goes both ways.

<comment><USER6> thats a great distinction. sounds like an institutionalized version of the individual tendency to excuse poor emotional regulation with "it's just who I am, a straight shooter" b.s.

authentic (foolish) straight shooters would have no problem yelling in the upwards direction too

<comment><USER7> "People who are brutally honest generally enjoy the brutality more than the honesty." \--Richard Needham

<comment><USER6> well as long as they are honest about enjoying the brutality i guess they are being consistent!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> To me, this is the more interesting news.

"his star hire Jon Rubinstein, one of the creators of the iPod, will leave after 10 months as co-CEO."

Citadel recently got rid of Keven Turner, Microsoft's ex-COO, from the CEO position at Citadel Securities. It sounds like the experiment of hiring tech executives into asset management roles isn't producing very promising results.

<comment><USER9> Kevin Turner isn't really a tech executive; he's a professional big company manager. Prior to MSFT, he spent 20 years at Walmart.

<comment><USER10> Turner wasn't exactly beloved at Microsoft either, at least by the field sales people who reported up to him.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> They try to hire a lot of guys from our firm. I've always heard they have a very cutthroat and had an odd work environment where they urge / insist on everyone giving direct harsh criticism of their colleagues. Wondering how this may change that at all if any.

</comment><comment><USER12> The article says he'll remain as co-CIO.

As his long term stated goal is to replace most humans in the company with a " _What would Ray Dalio do?_ " AI, I'd say he's still on track to be in charge of everything (assuming that includes the CEO spot!).

<comment><USER13> CIO in the context of a hedge fund means "Chief Investment Officer" rather than "Chief Information Officer".

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> wonder what they were thinking when they hired Jon Rubinstein. Why hire someone with consumer electronics background and no financial background in the first place? I worked with Apple before and I'm very disinclined to believe that their success had much to do with their tech.

<comment><USER15> I believe it's more for the fund than for their particular investments.

See: Renaissance Capital

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The article (and especially the associated video) claim that internal technology was/is a major priority at the firm.

Does anybody know what they're building? Just typical trading algos or something else?

<comment><USER17> They said to be betting heavily on AI for day-to-day management [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/22/bridgewat...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/22/bridgewater- associates-ai-artificial-intelligence-management)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Dalio has a very impressive record, will be interesting to see if Bridgewater can maintain it

<comment><USER19> My sentiment exactly; there's something quite interesting watching 'culture' firms once the, uh, fish head gets lopped off. Either via attrition or mortality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Here's the source: [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/changes-bridgewaters- manageme...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/changes-bridgewaters-management- roles-ray-dalio)

</comment><comment><USER21> "What We Do

Bridgewater Associates is focused on understanding how the world works. By having the deepest possible understanding of the global economy and financial markets, and translating that understanding into great portfolios and strategic partnerships with institutional clients, we've built a distinct track record of success. We've done this for more than 40 years by having great people operate in a culture of radical truth and radical transparency. Today, we manage about $160 billion for approximately 350 of the largest and most sophisticated global institutional clients including public and corporate pension funds, university endowments, charitable foundations, supranational agencies, sovereign wealth funds, and central banks."

I know a cult when I see one. When there's a whole lotta money on the line and you drop a paragraph that contains the phrases "radical truth" and "radical transparency" but that paragraph doesn't start with "Bridgewater Associates is a hedgefund that...", _you are a fucking cult._

<comment><USER22> "Radical [surveillance]" [0]

[0] [https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/27/business/dealbook/bridgew...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/27/business/dealbook/bridgewater- associates-hedge-fund-culture-ray-dalio.html)

<comment><USER21> Whoever is downvoting this, _downvote with comments_.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you manage passwords in teams? - <AUTHOR>

What tools do you use to manage passwords for shared services in your team? I know of: Okta, OneLogin, Bitium, Meldium, LastPass, 1password but is one of them substantially better or worse? This thread is already pretty old: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6507679 so I'm resubmitting the question. <comment><USER2> I would "just say no".

Password sharing is the road to hell because it is too easy to lose control.

</comment><comment><USER3> You can as easily create a wiki to store passwords...

Can you give examples of a service/site where you need password sharing?</comment>


U.K. Parliament votes to continue democracy by Zoom - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/virtual-parliament-uk/2020/04/21/373ccf08-83d1-11ea-81a3-9690c9881111_story.html <comment><USER2> What could possibly go wrong?

<comment><USER3> [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk- politics-52383444](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-52383444)

One person couldn't ask a question, but on the whole it far far better than the normal PMQ mess</comment></comment>


FIrefox USIng ONions - <AUTHOR> https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Fusion <comment><USER2> What will Mozilla do about the Tor network's usability problems? Advanced users can workaround them and because they understand the benefits and engineering, accept the frustrations as a cost for a worthwhile (and free) technology. But what will non-technical users do?

Many public Internet websites filter connections from the Tor network, many other websites are very slow, yet others impose extra obstacles such as multiple rounds of captchas (even 5 or more) or degraded service (including high suspicion of payments), and of course you often will receive webpages in the wrong locale or language - which can trigger regional filters. Currently, workarounds requires resetting the circuit (few non-technical users will even understand what the circuit is), lots of patience and reloads, and often just giving up.

If that's the experience of typical Firefox users, they won't use it and they will have bad associations with Tor and Firefox.

<comment><USER3> Wouldn't more Tor 3rd party integration (soon Brave, Mozilla in the future, ...) lead to greater incentive for website operators to allow Tor? (FWIW Cloudflare captchas are mostly a thing of the past now as they've been allowing Tor users as long as they come from the Tor Browser)

<comment><USER2> > Wouldn't more Tor 3rd party integration (soon Brave, Mozilla in the future, > ...) lead to greater incentive for website operators to allow Tor?

That seems like a long game. Tor is starting with a minuscule marketshare; Fusion will only be used by users in a special mode, afaict - again, probably very few; and if Brave's marketshare is higher or lower, the difference is immaterial. There are even websites that aren't compatible with Firefox itself, or so I'm told; it will be a long time before anyone cares about Tor users.

Also, users whose personal data is harder to access are less valuable to the website; websites have an incentive to make it harder to use Tor. Finally, many associate Tor with criminality; that's not an attractive market and it's very easy for the CSO to say, 'just block it; it's not worth the time or cost'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> For some more details: [https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/meetings/2...](https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/meetings/2018Rome/Notes/FusionProject)</comment>


To Grok a Mockingbird - <AUTHOR> http://raganwald.com/2018/08/30/to-grok-a-mockingbird.html <comment><USER2> If you like this you should read "Recursion Theory and Joy" [http://www.kevinalbrecht.com/code/joy- mirror/j05cmp.html](http://www.kevinalbrecht.com/code/joy-mirror/j05cmp.html)

I've no wish to be provocative (today) but I have to mention that a comparison of the JavaScript code to the Joy code might be worth your while.

(Joy is an extraordinary language, and trivial to implement in almost every other language.)

Also, a crude joke: "Yeah, the Y combinator is great, but have you tried the _X_ combinator?"

(Seriously thou, the x combinator must be one of the most beautiful conceptual artifacts ever discovered. IMHO)

From the link above:

> Possibly one of the most satisfying introductions to combinatory logic is to > be found in the remarkable little book {Smullyan90} To Mock a Mockingbird in > which he manages to combine humour and rigour.

I second this, Smullyan is dreamy.

<comment><USER3> Do you have any good resources on implementing Joy?

<comment><USER2> Funny you should ask...

There's the zip file of stuff available from La Trobe University here: [https://www.latrobe.edu.au/humanities/research/research- proj...](https://www.latrobe.edu.au/humanities/research/research- projects/past-projects/joy-programming-language)

Direct link: [https://www.latrobe.edu.au/__data/assets/file/0007/240298/Jo...](https://www.latrobe.edu.au/__data/assets/file/0007/240298/Joy- Programming.zip)

And Kevin Albrecht's mirror of the original site: [http://www.kevinalbrecht.com/code/joy- mirror/index.html](http://www.kevinalbrecht.com/code/joy-mirror/index.html)

But allow me to mention my own implementation of Joy in Python: [http://joypy.osdn.io/](http://joypy.osdn.io/)

(FWIW the core of this code could be converted to e.g. JavaScript trivially. Also, most of the simpler library functions are already automatically generated from their stack effects. Getting versions of those in other languages would be a matter of writing a new format string.)

However...

I worked all summer on it, and had just finished type inference ([http://joypy.osdn.io/notebooks/Types.html](http://joypy.osdn.io/notebooks/Types.html)) and was in the middle of the compiler (Joy-to-Python) when a paper by David Warren went by here on HN about writing compilers in Prolog. I wrote a Joy interpreter in Prolog (three lines long) and then I wrote the type inferencer in Prolog (also three lines long) and I realized they were the same code.

[https://osdn.net/projects/joypy/scm/hg/Joypy/blobs/tip/thun/...](https://osdn.net/projects/joypy/scm/hg/Joypy/blobs/tip/thun/thun.pl)

I freakin lightbulb went off in my head and then after a day or two I realized that I also already had a compiler! (Joy-to-Prolog) See the _tiny_ "Compiler" section at the bottom of thun.pl? The relation jcmpl(Name, Expression, Rule) generates new (Prolog) rules from Joy expressions. In other words, it's a compiler. It's not finished: loops/recursion aren't reified yet. But branches work, generating two rules for each "ifte" combinator.

It turns out, _if you are writing software and NOT using Prolog, you are almost certainly working far FAR too hard._ Note that there is now a very serviceable imperative/functional interpreter embedded in Prolog (namely Joy), and that existing research describes how to make compilers (to machine code, not Prolog) so I am envisioning a new working environment that consists of Prolog and Joy with automatic compilation to correct machine code.

I have been finding things like: a paper that shows how to generate code generators from a machine description; a paper that shows that if you write your type definitions in Prolog you get a type checker and inferencer for free (which is kind of what happened with Joy.) a whole batch of research on provably-correct code generation and compiling with Prolog.

So, to wrap up, _use Prolog_. If you encounter a problem that doesn't fit Prolog well (and those are more rare than you might think) _use Joy_. If you need greater efficiency, compile. I'm pretty sure that the above formula will prove optimal (except for that one dude writing a compiler-to-GPUs in K, but he's ultra-far-future tech) if I can package it up and "sell" it.

(I can't shut up! Prolog and Joy are both ridiculously simple languages. Joy may be the most simple useful language.[1] Certainly it combines the best parts of Forth and Lisp.)

[1] Kerby shows a minimal base {cake, k} ([http://tunes.org/~iepos/joy.html#cakek](http://tunes.org/~iepos/joy.html#cakek)) which, combined with the void() function from Laws of Form ([http://joypy.osdn.io/library.html#joy.library.void](http://joypy.osdn.io/library.html#joy.library.void) [http://joypy.osdn.io/notebooks/Correcet_Programming.html#The...](http://joypy.osdn.io/notebooks/Correcet_Programming.html#The- void\(form\)-Function)), gives a Turing Complete system in three functions, I think, the only values being structures of quotes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Follow-up (under construction): "Deriving the Y Combinator and Sage Bird from the Mockingbird"

[http://raganwald.com/2018/09/03/mockingbirds-sage-birds- and-...](http://raganwald.com/2018/09/03/mockingbirds-sage-birds-and- widowbirds.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> FYI, your use of JS's `Map` class is wrong: `(new Map())['entries']` isn't undefined. The `get(k)`/`set(k, v)` methods should be used in this case.</comment>


Dependently-Typed Haskell got specified [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~sweirich/papers/systemd-submission.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> In theory Haskell has a very powerful type system, but using it's advanced features were always very complicated, cumbersome and intransparent (more like a 2nd, crippled programming language on top of another). This is an dramatic step to reduce that complexity and provide an powerful, but easy to use type system (but, as always, with great power comes great responsibility ;) ).</comment>


Executive Pay: The Bottom Line for Those at the Top - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/04/05/business/20080405_EXECCOMP_GRAPHIC.html

<comment><USER2> Lowest paid CEO? Steve Jobs at $1. Yet at +99%, Apple was outperformed by only three companies on the list.

<comment><USER3> Of course Steve Jobs also received hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stock options over the past few years. And a $46 million Gulfstream jet.

That said, Steve Jobs has done amazing things with Apple and arguably deserves every penny of his compensation.</comment></comment>


On MicroSD Problems - <AUTHOR> http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=918

<comment><USER2> This a good description of microSD sourcing based around a bad batch of Kingston cards and survey of a half dozen other cards. The author probes their embedded id information and then dissolves their cases to expose the dies revealing the source of their chips.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great article. This is exactly the sort of thing I want to see on HN, but of course it's buried on the second page, unlikely to ever be seen by many. Sad.

</comment><comment><USER4> Nice article.

Some microSD cards are (so the article says) driven by little ARM uCs. That suggests hacking opportunities: on-the-fly encryption, hidden partitions, ... -- if the firmware can be tampered with.

</comment><comment><USER5> Very very interesting. It has me doubting the provenance of a Kingston SD card I bought recently from a third party seller on amazon.co.uk; it has a silk- screened lot code in the same pass as the logo, just like the dodgy one talked about here. (Full D though.)</comment>


Paul Graham, Michael Moritz in discussion with Guy Kawasaki [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.building43.com/videos/2009/08/07/fireside-chat-money-and-passion/

<comment><USER2> It seemed that a bunch of people thought a transcript would be useful, and considering I was going to watch the video anyway, I decided to jot down some notes for anyone interested. It's not a transcript by any means, but I think you'll get the gist of the questions and answers.

The video is an hour, and I figured the notes were too long for posting here, so I threw them up on a private link on my Tumblr account: <http://bit.ly/18I4Td>

</comment><comment><USER3> For me the most insightful idea was toward the end when Michael Moritz said that it's easier for small b2b companies to get a foothold during a recession, because during better times the big companies won't even listen to them. The idea being that during a recession big companies become desperate to get better results for less money. I hadn't thought about that, but it definitely seems true, at least in my case.

</comment><comment><USER4> Sigh. I'm interested but can't possibly divert over an hour of screentime for it.

An MP3 or ipod-video download would be appreciated.

<comment><USER5> the video is on blip.tv, you can download it there.

<http://building43.blip.tv/file/2413059/>, see the "files and links" box on the bottom-right of the page.

<comment><USER4> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Paul and Michael are always worth hearing from; Guy, not so much.

<comment><USER7> Guy is merely asking the questions.

<comment><USER8> The person asking the questions helps drive the direction of the conversation. With these two guys, you would hope the they are asked _good_ questions in order to help discover key points that otherwise would not be found.

(Not saying that Guy did a bad job...still watching it.)

<comment><USER9> I think he's a good moderator.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So: for those of us familiar with pg's teachings (the shoe, thankyou, not the gourd), is there much that's worth watching the video for, or is it a rehash?

<comment><USER11> The Sequoia investor completely dominates the video, so take a look if you are interested in that perspective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Preparing a video of my comment.

</comment><comment><USER13> A transcript would be great.

<comment><USER14> probably you could use Amazon Mechanical Turk

<comment><USER13> I won't. But since they provided the interview, it'd be nice if they provided a transcript as well. A transcript which takes 2 min to read instead of watching an hour long video.

Efficiency. Look it up. Or have Mechanical Turk look it up for you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Great video, good insights from some of the veterans of the startup and venture world. For someone oceans away its great to still get the information and the advice that goes around in silicon valley.

About the video, i sometimes got the feeling that Micheal was cutting Paul of at times, at times it was annoying when paul was about to say something related to earlier stage startups and micheal would just cut it off.

When this happens its sometimes interesting to see the facial expressions of the person getting cut off but the quality of the video wasnt good enough to make out anything noticable =P that or paul did a good job of hiding it :)

</comment><comment><USER7> Best nugget from the video for me was Paul's opinion on the iPhone being the next big platform because hackers are building apps for the iPhone (vs. the Blackberry or Palm pre, which are almost non-existent among hackers).

<comment><USER16> I thought it was an interesting point also...and then I thought about it more. Michael talked about how a lot the companies they are investing in aren't based in the United States. Are iPhones as popular among hackers in other countries?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why do they not allow fast forwarding? I want to get back to the 20 minutes mark but I cannot. Not worth watching that 20 minutes over again.

<comment><USER17> If you go to the building43.com page the video is on the top and it allows you to fast forward.

<http://www.building43.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think this is the Sequoia presentation they were talking about: [http://www.docstoc.com/docs/1822343/Sequoia-Venture- Capital-...](http://www.docstoc.com/docs/1822343/Sequoia-Venture-Capital- Warning-to-CEOs)

edit: found the post also <http://hackerne.ws/item?id=328685>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here is the audio version as an Mp3: <http://blip.tv/file/get/Building43-FiresideChat738.mp3></comment>


The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two - <AUTHOR> http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Miller/

<comment><USER2> Mine is approximately half of that.

Eagerly awaiting artificial memory implants. 'l be the first in line.

</comment><comment><USER3> Mirror? Seems dead from here.

<comment><USER2> Too lazy, but you can just google "miller magic number" and it explains to you that we can remember 7 +- 2 elements at the same time and discusses a few implications, such as phone numbers having 7 digits.</comment></comment>


Deal-making and Implied Sex - <AUTHOR> http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2017/07/deal-making-and-implied-sex.html <comment><USER2> It amazes me how you can tell that a blog post is going to be full of misogyny just by the title.

If you think dates are you exchanging dinner or whatever for sex you're doing it very wrong.

Why people want to go on the record defending someone who obviously did something wrong by any standard is beyond me.</comment>


A Surfeit of Internet - We Have Met The Enemy by Daniel Akst - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2011/01/read-this-book-if-youve-got-five-new-emotions-1.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know anything more about this book, but some of the 5 "good internet emotions" listed by Halford (the reviewer) sound an awful lot like things I feel on HN:

"A satisfaction from having read through the carefully cultivated list of Web sites you visit daily, which keep you informed and awaken you to astonishing things worth knowing, and which you never would have known without the Internet."

"A feeling of amazement that there is so much good writing and design in the world, much of which happens to be available on the Internet, plus a general amazement at human inventiveness."

Has anyone read the actual book?</comment>


Chunks of Bytecode - <AUTHOR> http://www.craftinginterpreters.com/chunks-of-bytecode.html <comment><USER2> This looks familiar! :)

If you have questions/comments/thoughts/feedback on how I can improve this chapter, I'd love to hear them.</comment>


The BEAM needs an APL-y language (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@gordonguthrie/the-beam-needs-an-apl-y-language-6c5c998ba6d <comment><USER2>
      Well this is mine — the BEAM, which already has Prolog-y
      (Erlang), Algol-y (Elixir) and Lisp-y (LFE)

As a full time Elixir Dev, I actually consider Elixir to be a lisp (albeit, pretending it's not one).

Elixir code is 100% expressible as Elixir data types (see quote/unquote [0]), and it supports hygienic macros in the same way lisp does [1][2][3]. Elixir steals other stuff straight out of lisp like protocols [4], the "loop" macro (Erlang has a form of this, but not as full featured)[5].

This is on top of the stuff that Erlang already took from lisp such as linked lists and symbols [6].

[0] [https://elixir-lang.org/getting-started/meta/quote-and- unquo...](https://elixir-lang.org/getting-started/meta/quote-and-unquote.html)

[1] [https://elixir-lang.org/getting-started/meta/macros.html](https://elixir- lang.org/getting-started/meta/macros.html)

[2] [https://hexdocs.pm/elixir/Macro.html](https://hexdocs.pm/elixir/Macro.html)

[3] [https://hexdocs.pm/elixir/Code.html#eval_quoted/3](https://hexdocs.pm/elixir/Code.html#eval_quoted/3)

[4] [https://elixir-lang.org/getting-started/protocols.html](https://elixir- lang.org/getting-started/protocols.html)

[5] [https://elixir-lang.org/getting- started/comprehensions.html](https://elixir-lang.org/getting- started/comprehensions.html)

[6] [https://elixir-lang.org/getting-started/basic-types.html](https://elixir- lang.org/getting-started/basic-types.html)

<comment><USER3> it is of course entirely possible to program for years in Elixir without realizing it's a lisp; Despite having cut my teeth at the ripe age of 9 on scheme, I only realized Elixir "was a lisp" when I got into more advanced macro-writing, and noticed that macro writing is very similar to Julia (which actually has a lisp sitting in its core).

In any case, it definitely has algol syntax.

<comment><USER4> Dylan is another example of a Lisp with Algol syntax.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16799551](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16799551)

</comment><comment><USER6> I think those kinds of articles are really unfair.

Yes, Erlaing is 500 line for code -- but this includes text parsed and I/O, main loop, nice descriptive names, good test suite. The "shorter" APL version has none of this, it is just the main function.

Rewrite APL version to add I/O, text parsing and unit tests; rewrite erlang version to get rid of all the descriptive names and extra whitespace -- and then you can have a fair comparison.

<comment><USER7> How possible would it be to use APL as a DSL, or to include one file of it in a larger Erlang/Elixir project?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> For anyone else wondering, I think this is the BEAM it's referring to: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BEAM_(Erlang_virtual_machine)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BEAM_\(Erlang_virtual_machine\))</comment>


Solar Surpasses Gas and Wind as Biggest Source of New U.S. Power - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-12/solar-surpasses-gas-and-wind-as-biggest-source-of-new-u-s-power <comment><USER3> Even with a tariff on panels, the cost of a solar installation, with incentives, is still significantly cheaper than grid electricity.

With federal and state incentives, my panels work out to about 4-5 cents a kilowatt hour. Normally I'd pay about 17 cents a kilowatt hour.

(This makes running a space heater cost about as much as running a natural gas furnace.)

Furthermore, my panels are financed with a fixed-rate loan instead of tied to market price of energy. That means the cost will never go up, but instead go to zero at the end of the loan.

<comment><USER4> With free fuel and falling supply chain costs this is all well and good. Worth noting is that the value of solar electricity goes down fairly sharply as a function of market penetration because of the intermittency. Once you start adding massive chemical electricity storage costs and environmental impacts get more gnarly.

<comment><USER5> I'm curious to know why other storage methods aren't taking off more. I would have assumed that the long-term costs of something like hauling something heavy up a hill (which could easily be a manmade earthworks in flat areas) would be quite a bit lower, on account of the equipment in question having a longer life span than batteries.

<comment><USER6> The energy density of gravity storage is _terrible_. But there's still a few plans for it:

[https://www.wired.com/2016/05/forget-elons-batteries-fix- gri...](https://www.wired.com/2016/05/forget-elons-batteries-fix-grid-rock- filled-train-hill/)

> 9,600 tons of rock- and concrete-filled railcars up a 2,000-foot hill.

> $55 million

> The Nevada project has a power capacity of 50 megawatts and can produce 12.5 > megawatt-hours of energy.

Using the 4 cents/kWh figure upstream, that's ... $500 of electricity per round trip.

<comment><USER7> This makes me wonder, why don't elevators generate electricity on the way down?

<comment><USER8> Elevators are counterbalanced -- when they are going down, there is a counterweight going up. So there's less energy than you might imagine being generated.

<comment><USER7> I know, but I can imagine that they would still generate some energy in a busy building. Then again, I don't really know how much energy they consume.

<comment><USER9> Regenerative braking elevators exist: [https://www.asme.org/engineering- topics/articles/elevators/w...](https://www.asme.org/engineering- topics/articles/elevators/what-makes-an-elevator-green) has a good summary.

Having lived in a 17-story building with Thyssen-Krupp "green elevators", they're terrible! An elevator would break down and require days of maintenance every couple months, greatly increasing queueing times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The success of solar (and the end of coal) is really a story of the success of natural gas. Gas turbine capacity was so cheap to deploy that most of what's deployed in the past is enough to cover demand, in other words there are very little 'new' gas generators coming online because they're not needed. Solar capacity is much slower to deploy, hence why we will see 'new' capacity added over a long time to come. This is also a good thing, since with gas you still need to provide it was gas and expand the sources of gas and without carbon capture of gas generation it still has co2 emissions. However, gas allowed a massive short term reduction in co2 emissions and displaced coal and will for a long time fill in where solar can't, until we find a way to store energy from coal and that way might actually be synthesised gas.

<comment><USER11> Gas can also be produced from biological and even synthetic processes. There's been a great deal of research in producing CH4 from CO2 and H2O using surplus electric power from wind, solar, and off-peak nuclear. That means someday all our gas turbines could double as battery discharge machines for a giant chemical battery and the existing gas transport and storage infrastructure could store and transport renewable energy. That's pretty nice from a recovery of sunk cost perspective.

Coal and oil can pretty much only be economically obtained from fossil sources.

<comment><USER12> > Coal and oil can pretty much only be economically obtained from fossil > sources.

Given that vegetable oil can be used in a Diesel engine after being used for deep fat frying fish and chips, and given we currently over-produce food to the point that obesity is one of our largest health issues, I'm going to have to [citation needed]-you on that.

<comment><USER13> World yearly vegetable oil production is approximately 200 million metric tons [0], while crude oil is approximately 250 billion metric tons [1][2].

[0] [https://www.statista.com/statistics/263978/global- vegetable-...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/263978/global-vegetable- oil-production-since-2000-2001/)

[1] [https://www.statista.com/statistics/265203/global-oil- produc...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/265203/global-oil-production- since-in-barrels-per-day/)

[2] [http://www.opec.org/library/Annual%20Statistical%20Bulletin/...](http://www.opec.org/library/Annual%20Statistical%20Bulletin/interactive/current/FileZ/cfpage.htm)

<comment><USER14> [1] says 92.2 million barrels of oil produced per day. [2] says 7.33 barrels / metric ton.

That would put annual crude oil production at roughly

((92.2 * 10 ^ 6) / 7.33) * 365 = 4,591,132,332 (4.59 billion) metric tons.

The implied answer "crude oil production dwarfs vegetable oil production" is still valid even after correcting the crude oil numbers, of course.

<comment><USER13> Ack, I multiplied instead of divided. Thanks for the catch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> With the appearance of the "duck curve", utility providers and customers are going have to reckon with the fact that a kWh of solar electricity at the noon hour is not worth the same as a kWh of solar electricity at 5pm.

So long, dinosaur coal plants. My lungs are looking forward to solar eating the rest of your lunch.

<comment><USER12> Isn't this a 75% solved problem, because power generation and use were already out of sync due to people not working at night and a significant fraction of power generation being fixed-output such as nuclear?

<comment><USER16> No, power generation and use are definitely not out of sync today. Generation is very very tightly synchronized to usage and has to be for the grid to work at all without storage. Quite a bit of effort goes into managing generation output in real time to maintain proper voltage and frequency.

The solution is storage, but at current pricing the amount required for a full renewable grid would be obscenely expensive. Luckily battery prices have been dropping quickly for years and continue to do so.

<comment><USER17> Grid battery storage is a pretty mediocre solution to variability in supply from renewables except in a few cases (e.g. where pumped water storage is readily available). It's expensive and inefficient.

Market driven demand side flexibility is not very well tapped, doesn't require any technological leaps and there's a lot of room for improvement there. For example:

* Aluminum smelting plants that vary their usage depending on spot cost (actually already happening in Germany).

* Smart electric storage heaters that turn on when electricity is cheap.

* Smart electric vehicle chargers that take electricity spot price and current charge levels in to account when deciding when and how much to charge.

* Hell, even bitcoin miners.

<comment><USER18> When there are millions of EVs on the road charging by day at workplaces and discharging at night at consumer homes, I don't think they'll be observed as mediocre solutions.

<comment><USER19> And killing the car's battery with extra cycles and leaving the commuter with an uncharged battery in the morning.

<comment><USER20> Two things:

1\. Cars have very very large batteries. You'd be hard-pressed to use more than a third of the capacity of a high-end Tesla Model S over night (100 KWh!). Sure, maybe you're driving a Nissan Leaf and its battery is only a third of that capacity, but in a few years 100 KWh might actually be common. What if you want your car battery to be at 100% in the morning so you can go on a roadtrip? Just make sure your car is aware of it.

2\. There's going to be a marked for used batteries from old, retired electric cars. You might only need 20-40 KWh of remaining capacity to live comfortably in a fully off-the-grid solar setup.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> A dream would be to have onshore and offshore windmills where it makes sense, solar panels on most residential and commercial roofs, panels serving as roofs for car parking lots, hydro power generators where water flow needs to be regulated, and to supported such a renewable power generation - <USER2> micro grids with local battery warehouses to serve as a power buffer.

Some centralised govt provided services could be run on "excess power" such as pumping water to a overhead storage for a local community, or powering a water purification or sewage cleaning plant to run during periods of excess power.

Now, I need to wake up and go get a coffee :-)

<comment><USER22> > _solar panels on most residential and commercial roofs_

If one's aim is progressing along the Kardashev scale [1], then the single metric to optimize is the cost, including of externalities, of energy. Rooftop solar seems doesn't seem to scale as efficiently, both in measured and externalized environmental costs ( _e.g._ installer safety and carbon consumption), as utility solar.

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

<comment><USER21> Admittedly naive ask. I hear this argument that residential solar panels are not very cost-effective. A former colleague once told me that after Government subsidies, his break-even point for solar investment was 12 years. I didnt ask him at that time. I'm assuming he was referring to energy buyback from his utility provider for his math. Isn't that against their business incentive to support residential solar?

If one has a house, and covers the roof with self-purchased solar panels, and hooks them up to a large enough battery-box, wouldn't it just be "I saved the cost I would have paid as my utility provider's bill"? That way the return on investment is more manageable and is without being held at the mercy of the power companies?

<comment> gm-conspiracy Also, these calculations seem to assume electricity costs will remain constant, and not increase.

<comment><USER23> Also assumes the cost won't go down. I fear utilities will start jacking up monthly customer charges and keep rates low to avoid paying solar customers for generation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm curious if anyone has gone the Tesla Solar Roof route?

[https://www.tesla.com/solarroof](https://www.tesla.com/solarroof)

</comment><comment><USER25> Here's what I'm looking forward to: a world where energy<>pollution.

This whole period where energy production as our greatest environmental problem has promoted the wrong type of thinking. It's Energy austerity, the need to take steps back, slow or reverse progress.

Since technology, industry and energy are so closely coupled, this has almost made futuristic thinking politically incorrect, or at least unpalatable. I want to get back to a future that's futuristic, where we can build 100X bigger, desalinate sweetwater rivers, have floating stuff all around us....

Basically, I want to get back to the old curve, where we make more energy every year and that's a good thing.

<comment><USER26> Non of this thinking is even futuristic. It was futuristic in 50s.

Look at France. They solved this problems in the 70/80 with technology from the 50/60.

The problem is utter stupidity of both the population and politics.

There is absolutely no problem. Nuclear energy is utterly inexhaustible for the next 1000 years, it uses almost no resources (in terms of land, steel, water) it causes absolutely no pollution at all.

[https://www.electricitymap.org/?page=country&solar=false&rem...](https://www.electricitymap.org/?page=country&solar=false&remote=true&wind=false&countryCode=FR)

Why not copy what clearly works? Why does everybody invent something new when we invented something 70 years ago.

We would finally have the energy to do things like desalinate sweetwater and synthetic fuels.

<comment><USER27> I'm very _very_ pro nuclear, but you're sort of bullshitting here. No pollution? Most people would consider nuclear waste to be polluting, and nothing is perfect, sometimes you get a Fukushima. It also pollutes down the line when you'remining Uranium and processing fuel, and for now even with perfect safety that's unavoidable.

It's still a much better choice than anything else, and it pollutes _less_ , and modern designs can be very safe. We'd actually be safer, since we could replace older, unsafe designs with modern ones. We still need a political solution to the waste problem though, and I have no idea how that can be done.

<comment><USER26> > Most people would consider nuclear waste to be polluting

Then 'most people' don't know what pollution means. Nuclear 'waste' is a controlled output of a process that can and is controlled to not effect the environment in any way.

In terms of nuclear arguing what 'most people' believe is utterly pointless because 'most people' don't understand even the basics of nuclear physics.

> and nothing is perfect, sometimes you get a Fukushima

Nothing is perfect. But somehow people don't point to all the deaths that happen on solar installations and so on.

The fact is that nuclear is the safest form of energy.

<comment><USER28> People are somewhat irrational in nature and fear rare, but spectacular events more than the mundane. This is the number one problem with nuclear that I see it: no other power source has had anything on the scale of Chernobyl. The only thing that I think offhand could come close as far as potential deaths is a hydro dam collapse.

The reality is, we are all human, the world loves to throw unexpected surprises at us (such as the tsunami that helped cause Fukushima). So a Level 7 event is always a small probability. Even if it is much less of a probability than fossil electricity accidents and the issues from pollution overall are worse for fossil fuel, it's a hard sell because of the ways humans are wired.

It also doesn't help that the technology is mysterious to a lot of people as you mention. "Flammable material burns, makes energy" is somewhat intuitive to most people. Nuclear is not intuitive at all. Just think at how Hollywood tends to depict nuclear in the popular lore. :)

At any rate, my personal reason I think nuclear will never gain much traction in this modern world is that one of those "potential surprises" is terrorism. Nuclear plants are an acknowledged target. So at the very least, you have to add costs to safeguard the structure and really beef up the security around the plant these days. IMHO this would make any big central nuclear power solution quite a bit much less attractive.

<comment><USER29> > People are somewhat irrational in nature and fear rare, but spectacular > events more than the mundane. This is the number one problem with nuclear > that I see it: no other power source has had anything on the scale of > Chernobyl. The only thing that I think offhand could come close as far as > potential deaths is a hydro dam collapse.

You don't need to think of the potential. We have already had power generation accidents far worse then Chernobyl. The Banqiao and Shimantan Dam collapse in China killed 170,000 people, and destroyed the homes of 11 million more.

And if you want to rank energy safety by KWH generated, you can look at:

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

We've also had a pipeline explosion that killed a thousand people, we have five Chernobyls every year thanks to the poor safety record of coal mining... The list goes on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> And it's going to get even bigger.

Just yesterday they announced a 2.49kW/h deal for solar in Arizona[1]. That's cheaper than the "low" price of wind power (which is the cheapest source).

[1] [https://www.pv-magazine.com/2018/06/11/lowest-approved- solar...](https://www.pv-magazine.com/2018/06/11/lowest-approved-solar-power- contract-in-the-united-states-2-49%C2%A2-kwh/)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#Lazard_\(2017\))

<comment><USER31> Wow, that's cheap.

To give some perspective, an average cyclist can sustain about 100 watts, so generating a kilowatt hour takes ten hours. You'd then need to eat about $5 worth of food to compensate for the exercise.

So buying this electric is 200x cheaper than generating it yourself with a bicycle!

At this point I'd like to start a flame war about the CO2 impact of cycling ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> To put things in perspective. The amount of solar power produced in the US is roughly the amount estimated to be used in indoor cannabis growing. [https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/9a3bd8/growing- ma...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/9a3bd8/growing-marijuana- uses-1-percent-of-americas-total-electricity-industry-says)

</comment><comment><USER33> Is there a DIY on powering a whole house using solar panels that are independent of any company?

<comment><USER34> Sure there is, scale it yourself.

I like Misouri Wind and Solar ([https://mwands.com](https://mwands.com)). I've also looked into Wholesale Solar ([https://www.wholesalesolar.com/](https://www.wholesalesolar.com/)) which focuses on DIY installation and design.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I wonder how will these new green energy sources affect the petrodollar once electric means of transportation start becoming commonplace. Will it have a big impact?

<comment><USER36> Transportation is still 92% petroleum

[https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/?page=us_energy_home](https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/?page=us_energy_home)

It will take some times to replace all existing vehicules by EV. So it might be a bit early to ask the question.

<comment><USER37> Prices are heavily linked to demand, further if demand starts to drop significantly some producers will try to dump as much as possible before their supply becomes 'worthless'. On the other hand many suppliers are rapidly running out of oil.

IMO, it's going to get interesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> What clickbait nonsense and misleading nonsense.

Solar accounts for 1.3% of our electric production.

[https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427](https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427)

Saying that solar is the biggest source of "new" US Power is like if bill gates picked up a penny from the street and bloomberg saying picking pennies from the street is bill gates' biggest source of "new" wealth.

I understand being pro-solar, I am too. But why is HN and much of social media rife with lies and misrepresentations about solar?

Reading bloomberg and HN, you'd think solar was a significant contributor to energy and coal was dead. But that's just factually incorrect. And they been lying for years now. But most importantly, it's the scientific lies about energy production and solar that is bothersome. As if solar panels are the answer for coal.

Natural gas ( a fossil fuel ) is why coal has leveled off ( not died but leveled off ). Solar had nothing to do with it. And coal is still the biggest source of electricity around the world and the 2nd biggest source in the US.

Solar energy is going to be a minor part of the world's energy strategy unless a revolutionary breakthrough happens ( a significant breakthrough on par with cold fusion ). That's a basic fact of current state of physics.

So sick of misleading clickbait from media outlets like bloomberg.

Edit: If you want a total world view of energy sources.

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Bp_world...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Bp_world_energy_consumption_2016.gif)

<comment><USER39> I think the misunderstanding here is that you're talking about _now_ : "solar is 1.3% of our electric production", "coal is still the biggest source", etc. This, I believe, is missing the point of the article.

The importance of noting that solar is the biggest source of new power is that is signifies the economics of power generation have changed. So sure, there's still lots of coal and there's still lots of natural gas. But if you're adding new capacity we're at the point where it makes more sense to build large solar arrays.

So in a sense, this article is noting the beginning of the end for coal and natural gas. The present percent contribution of solar or coal is not so important.

<comment><USER40> "New" is relative, hence the Bill Gates picking up the penny example. Sure, it's a _true_ statement the second he picks up the penny, but it's not a _meaningful_ one. In the case of the article, we are talking about a single quarter.

<comment><USER13> "New" is certainly meaningful. It gives an indication of where the market is going, investors want this information. It definitely meaningful to GE's natural gas turbine division, which has had big losses since demand has been less than they have forecasted

"Renewables boom is a bust for gas equipment suppliers like GE" [https://www.utilitydive.com/news/renewables-boom-is-a- bust-f...](https://www.utilitydive.com/news/renewables-boom-is-a-bust-for-gas- equipment-suppliers-like-ge/524345/)

<comment><USER40> Sure, it has _a_ meaning, but it does not have the meaning implied by the title, hence clickbait, which was paidleaf's point.

<comment><USER13> The title says "new" and the article discusses new generation. Paidleaf said the title makes an implication about overall generation, how does it do that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> When I flew to Munich a month ago for the D conference, I was impressed with all the rooftop solar and stretches of panels out in fields. I didn't do a count, but it looked like a good quarter to a third of homes had panels on the roof. Lots of random windmills here and there, too.

</comment><comment><USER42> We need multifamily dwellings with the feature of no utilities bill because of local renewable energy on site. This would be awesome. The current vision of the future being sold to us seems to be single family homes with electric cars in the garage and solar cells on the roof. A horrible use of land and not really scalable to global population levels given the rise of cities.

<comment><USER34> > A horrible use of land and not really scalable to global population levels > given the rise of cities.

Think outside the bubble, though.

There's unused land everywhere I look.

Why are we dissing zero-emission cars and self-production of home energy?

<comment><USER43> > Think outside the bubble, though.

A single family homes and car mindset is the bubble, though.

The US and much of the developed world has a problem of over-consumption, and shuffling to more power, some green, does not solve it. We need green energy, but if we want to reduce emissions we need to cut usage as well.

The amount of energy needed to cart single occupancy cars, on hour long commutes through sprawling suburbs of energy guzzling single family homes is horribly inefficient, no matter how it's powered. Nearly a third of the energy consumed in the US goes to transportation.

It makes no sense for multi-ton hunks of steel, plastic and lithium using tens of kW in energy to transport a 150 lbs person to work.

Denser cities and towns organized around public transit, cycling, and walking knocks out a multitude of problems.

1\. Reduced distances between home, work, and shopping and allow for healthier, emission-free walking and cycling

2\. Increased density reduces per capita cost on infrastructure and services and makes fast, frequent transit a realistic alternative

3\. Denser multifamily development offers efficiencies in shared heating and cooling systems, a major consumer of energy

4\. Cutting back on sprawl reduces the amount of land developed and contaminated by development, and frequently preserves productive agricultural land from being permanently developed

These aren't radical ideas. We have models throughout the world of greener, denser and healthier cities, mostly built before the auto.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Note that this 13% rise (1Q 2018 over 1Q 2017) is way below the 2010–2015 trend, even discounting 2016; the article shows US photovoltaic installations growing during that time by 55% per year. Trump is clearly having a huge negative impact. For better or worse, other parts of the world are not Trump- restricted, so PV is continuing its exponential trend there.

Paidleaf raises the reasonable question in [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17292776](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17292776) as to why it matters when PV is only about 2% of US electric production (and thus about 0.6% of the total US energy maket). (The 1.3% number paidleaf gives is wrong; see [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy- environment/wp/20...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy- environment/wp/2017/06/09/the-u-s-solar-industry-is-doing-just-fine-under- trump-for-now/) for more details, for example.) The reason is that exponential-growth phenomena, like the adoption of any new technology, are tiny for a long time until suddenly they aren't. If we suppose a 30% annual growth rate and an asymptote somewhere well above current world marketed energy consumption, then three years before PV is the majority of world marketed energy consumption, it will be only 32%; three years before that, only 17%; three years before that, only 8%; three years before that, only 4%; three years before that, only 2%, like the US's current electricity market.

Of course, you could reasonably argue that an immense drop in PV's annual growth rate from 55% to 13%, or even the SEIA's projected 0% for all of 2018, indicates that we're already approaching the asymptote! And, if that's true, of course it's relatively inconsequential what happens with PV — it might eventually grow from 2% to 4% or 6% or something, but it'll never be a viable alternative to coal, and at worst it's a dangerous distraction from the necessary switchover to nuclear power.

But every indication on the fundamentals is that this isn't the case. We aren't running into limits on energy demand, on raw-materials availability, or on solar-resource availability. Photovoltaic energy remains cheaper than other sources, even in the US — that's why it's the majority of new generating capacity — and panels continue to drop in price, indicating ample raw materials and a smoothly running supply chain. The majority of even high- solar-resource land is still not shaded by solar panels.

(I'm not saying that shading the majority of high-solar-resource land with solar panels is a good thing or a bad thing. I'm saying that a scarcity of high-solar-resource land is not currently a factor that could cause solar adoption to level off.)

bcatanzaro comments that the capacity factor for the solar panels on his house is about 12% [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17293375](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17293375) and so 55% of new installed capacity is actually much less when it comes to actual generation. But utility-scale solar's capacity factor is typically closer to 25% (I guess bcatanzaro didn't choose his house's siting and roof angle optimally for solar power generation, but utilities can; or maybe he just isn't dusting them) and the other new generation is almost entirely natural gas and wind, which generally also have very low capacity factors.

Every indication is that economic development is still solar, and economic development is still happening, despite the gradual growth of what appears to be WWIII. It's just that the US is missing out.

<comment><USER45> > The reason is that exponential-growth phenomena, like the adoption of any > new technology, are tiny for a long time until suddenly they aren't.

My favorite exponential-thinking thought experiment is imagine a lake that just got an invasive plant injected into it. The plant has no predators and reproduces daily, so lets say it doubles every day. If we say the lake gets completely overrun in 30 days, what day is the lake half full?

There's a fancy formula for this, but you don't need it -- it doubles every day so it takes all the way until the 29th to be half full.

That's the key about renewables... they're not an extractive technology (where the more we extract only the more expensive stuff sticks around), they're a manufacturing technology (where the more we make, the better we get at making it and so it only becomes cheaper).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Slightly offtopic, but I do miss the blog [http://www.theoildrum.com/](http://www.theoildrum.com/) for discussing energy issues - it had the highest quality discussions of the subject I've ever found on the internet. Is there a current replacement?

</comment><comment><USER46> I hope at least some of these panels are manufactured in the USA... Otherwise, it's another sector of the economy getting outsourced and impoverishing the north american economy in the long run.

</comment><comment><USER26> If people on the left had the same obsession with nuclear that they have with solar climate change would be solved.

Honestly it seems to me like 'liberals' (lack of a better term) are closing their eyes on this. This eternal year on year constant media bombardment about the successes of solar energy and in the last couple of years batteries is totally out of proportion with any realistic view of the current energy system or any energy system that could realistically exist in the next 10 years.

What is ironic in this whole discussion is that while liberals can never stop pointing out how France is so much better in terms of health care system and child care and whatever else. The fact that France has abolished carbon in their energy production 40 years ago is somehow ignored.

A modern industrial nation abolished carbon in 1970 with technology that is essentially from the 50/60\. This success if it had been done with solar and wind would fly on every flag of every news paper and environmentalist poster.

This could easily be repeated today in any other industrialized country. Switzerland and Sweden currently work like that (just with more water).

What is really sad is that the carbon industry has discovered this in the 70s already. Carbon based energy producers have long supported anti-nuclear campaigns because they know it will be incredibly difficult for solar/wind to remove goal/gas as baseload powers and thus they are only a very, very long term thread to them. While a nuclear plant could be plopped down right next to every coal plant.

<comment><USER18> Nuclear is too expensive (billions of dollars per facility) and takes too long to build (10+ years), full stop. This doesn't even address the waste storage issue.

France is going to need to address its expensive, aging nuclear generators at some point. By then, of course, solar will be much cheaper than it is today, and there will be more HVDC transmission lines shuttling power between EU countries.

<comment><USER26> Nuclear is expensive in the US NOW because of insane amounts of regulation, constant law-suits and the fact that almost no new plants were build in the last 30 years.

Back before 3 Mile Island a nuclear plant was cheaper to produce then coal plant and had 2x the amount of live time with 10x cheaper fuel cost.

> France is going to need to address its expensive, aging nuclear generators > at some point. By then, of course, solar will be much cheaper than it is > today, and there will be more HVDC transmission lines shuttling power > between EU countries.

France has the lowest electricity prices in Europe had them for quite a long time.

Nuclear is not expensive if you are building many of them, just like everything else.

One of the major problems with nuclear is that it is extremely national and most western nations don't have a demand for scale.

<comment><USER30> _Back before 3 Mile Island_

And then the 3 Mile Island disaster happened, and people tighten up regulations. That seems reasonable, no?

<comment><USER18> And Chernobyl. And Fukishima. Yes, nuclear disasters are rare, but when they do happen it takes extraordinary resources and time to remediate. Solar panels and batteries fail more gracefully.

<comment><USER26> Even that is overestimated.

Solar panels create mountains of waste, much of it being disassembled by kids in Africa who then get sick because of it.

Solar production facility can have chemical spills that are comparable to Three Mile Island in terms of effect.

Compare a nuclear civilization against a solar one and you will see that waste management of nuclear is far smaller.

Overall less then 2000 people died from these 3 disasters and essentially all of them because Chernobyl that uses a technology that we don't use in the west.

<comment><USER47> "Solar panels create mountains of waste, much of it being disassembled by kids in Africa who then get sick because of it."

Source? Electronics associated with solar panels might be an issue but modern inverters use less and less toxic elements (and are definitely RoHS compliant).

As for solar panels themselves, 99% by weight consists of glass (75%), plastics (10%), aluminum (9%) and silicon (5%) which can all be recycled.

<comment><USER26> I don't want solar to be the enemy. I just wanted to point out that its not quite so simple and that 'nuclear waste' is a far smaller problem then people realize.

[http://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2017/6/21/are- we-h...](http://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2017/6/21/are-we-headed- for-a-solar-waste-crisis)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Continuous partial application submission for YC 2012? - <AUTHOR>

Is it okay to submit continuous partial applications/applications in phases for YC 2012? The idea is to engage with the YC team as early as possible. So when I have filled up some details, should I submit and then keep on updating/submitting? <comment><USER2> We don't re-read applications when people resubmit them, if that's what you mean, so submit when you're ready for us to read it the only time we'll read it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Got it! Thanks a lot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Do you guys read the applications before the deadline?</comment>


It now appears possible to hack a (fancy, Japanese) toilet - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/08/it-now-appears-possible-to-hack-a-fancy-japanese-toilet/278322/

<comment><USER2> Lots of discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6146306](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6146306)

Some discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6159659](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6159659)

Others:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6154204](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6154204)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6155216](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6155216)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6160562](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6160562)</comment>


Announcing Reddit notes - <AUTHOR> http://www.redditblog.com/2014/12/announcing-reddit-notes.html <comment><USER2> From the comments on the announcement thread:

 _If you 're wondering why this is all so vague and weird...here it is for you:

\- Reddit got funding and as part of that wanted to share some ownership with the community. Basically, they would like Reddit users to own part of Reddit.

\- The thing that made most sense was to create a little database that distributes these "shares" based on activity.

\- They can't call them shares, or even indicate that they represent partial ownership of the company because the FCC [sic] considers that the creation of public stock, which should be on a regulated stock market.

\- There are currently a number of bills at various places in congress that would de-regulate this a bit, but none that I know of that would make what Reddit wants to do (and should be able to do) legal.

\- So...boom...their response is to be suuuuper vague. Which I'm fine with, since they're dealing with a very large and terrifying bureaucratic institution._

[http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/2pt25f/announcing_redd...](http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/2pt25f/announcing_reddit_notes/cmzs3pm)

</comment><comment><USER3> You are lucky if you get one because there are less than there are accounts, and what you can do with it when you get one is to tip it to someone else.

I don't see this working myself, but I have faith in them to make it work.

</comment><comment><USER4> "Reddit Notes" does not immediately imply that it's a cryptocurrecy. I thought it was a Read It Later service from the name.

<comment><USER5> Well it's missing the crypto part of cryptocurrency, but I agree it's pretty obvious that they are planning for this to be some sort of site-wide currency. My guess is they saw Dogecoin and the tipping culture it created, and they now want to own that aspect of the Reddit community.

<comment><USER4> It's worth noting that the engineer in charge of the project is _very_ into cryptocurrency: [http://ryanxcharles.com/archive/hold-more-bitcoins-than- you-...](http://ryanxcharles.com/archive/hold-more-bitcoins-than-you-can- afford-to-lose/)</comment></comment></comment>


"special chars in the pw field are run by SQL and may cause errors" - <AUTHOR> http://wogcc.state.wy.us/SundryPassWord.cfm <comment><USER2> Advertising SQL injection vulnerability? Priceless.

(The grammar, style, and the use of the term "Pass Word" also are, well, _special_.)

</comment><comment><USER3> And the Pass Word "sundry" actually works!

</comment><comment><USER4> That's brilliant.</comment>


Avoiding offer negotiation pitfalls – for new grads - <AUTHOR> http://offerletter.io/blog/201411-avoiding-negotiation-pitfalls-for-new-grads.html

<comment><AUTHOR> One big thing I wanted to clear up is that I'm addressing college hires' broken mental models of compensation package and ranges, and that "narrow range" means different things to different people - the founder's definition of 'narrow range' is different than the engineer's.

Say as a founder, you offer 100k to someone. You're mentally allowing yourself to go to 115k base at most. That may be a relatively narrow range to you. But to most candidates (especially out of college) that 15k is a _massive_ bump, and can make or break an offer. If they're afraid of asking for more because they assume they can't, then they will just end up saying "No", if someone else gives them more money.

We've actually prevented a couple cases of new grads feeling they had to turn down a $100k base salary offer at a startup, simply because they felt that asking for $115k would build bad blood. In every case the founder was happy to bump the base to $115k because it wasn't a large deviation, even though it felt like it to the new grad.</comment>


Shakespeare in the Bush (1966) - <AUTHOR> http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/editors_pick/1966_08-09_pick.html <comment><USER2> Brilliant!</comment>


Amazon has already begun automating its white-collar jobs - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1304987/amazon-has-already-begun-automating-its-white-collar-jobs/ <comment><USER2> Those same algorithms and the lack of human supervision may now be coming back to haunt them. For example, obvious counterfeiting and other similar scams have become a huge problem for Amazon (from a PR level, if nothing else) and they appear to be struggling to get that under control. My wife and daughter have always been big Amazon fans but lately they've been complaining a lot about problems with their orders, so now I'm seeing more shipments coming in from Walmart and Target and such. Shipping from all sources has lately become far more problematic, too.

</comment><comment><USER3> I mean couldn't one say that a lot of sys admin jobs have been automated by VM's, further by containers and other automated deployment tools? Read somewhere SRE at Google are responsible for a ridiculous amount of computing power per person. Albeit could make the argument that those levels of scale would be impossible to achieve without those tech so maybe not really count.

<comment><USER4> > I mean couldn't one say that a lot of sys admin jobs have been automated by > VM's, further by containers and other automated deployment tools?

I think one could only say that if those jobs didn't still exist with the new name "Devops Engineer".

I would argue that abstraction layers like VMs and containers have a significant potential to create _more_ work, as they increase overall complexity/configurability.

> SRE at Google are responsible for a ridiculous amount of computing power per > person.

Although I'm confident Google still has remarkable "compute" infrastructure efficiency, even looking just at human labor, you'd need to count more than just the SREs. You'd certainly need to include all of their network, hardware, and datacenter operations folks, and a good number of their software engineers working on internal tools.

I'm pretty sure people grossly under-estimate how custom and exotic Google's environment is, to the point where it's not possible to translate to something even vaguely close in the rest of the tech world.

<comment><USER3> > I think one could only say that if those jobs didn't still exist with the > new name "Devops Engineer".

Yeah devops is the same thing but I still think in general that person regardless of title can provision more computing power than ever before. Just the in vogue name right now.

On the other point I read one time that they do a ton of custom work like adding all kinds of sensors to their servers to they can use automation to turn them off and on as needed.

But yeah I think you could argue there are whole teams dedicated to tooling and their labor hours are moved to them.

<comment><USER4> (Assuming one excludes the "natural" improvements to computing power from such things as Moore's Law..)

> that person regardless of title can provision more computing power than ever > before.

I'm not entirely convinced that this is true, at least not in the sense of "order of magnitude more" or even "multiples more". I am convinced of the truth of a statement that replaces the word "can" above with the word "do".

That's because I believe the reason for modest scale was (and still is) cost and not administrative burden, at least since as long as 15 years ago. That is, even with just the (judicious) use of RPM/YUM, Kickstart, and the early CM tools, it was much less than 10x as hard to provision 2000 servers as 200. It might not even have been 2x as hard, other than more exotic logistics and network engineering.

It's just that nobody did it, unless they _really_ needed it, because it still cost 10x [1]. I suspect that AWS changed the dynamic with EC2 because now one could have tremendous capacity with reduced cost, if one only uses that capacity part time (but the provisioning cost is still there). I don't discount the possibility that a fall in price of low-end and mid-range server products helped, but I don't have good data for that.

Whatever caused it, now more computer power _is_ being provisioned, and the variety in tools (at least for CM, which, arguably, isn't really for provisioning) to support it has followed.

> they do a ton of custom work like adding all kinds of sensors to their > servers to they can use automation to turn them off and on as needed.

I hadn't read that. I thought they pretty much only removed components from otherwise standard boards, but, at their scale, I suppose adding to out-of- band management would be OK.

Still, even something from SuperMicro has a _remarkable_ number of sensors already there. My point is that a great deal of even low-level automation is (and has been) _possible_ , but almost nobody bothers to do it, because that's a hard problem with, arguably, not enough return on investment, except at Google scale.

Instead, there's automation of newly fabricated work, like provisioning of something created by an abstraction layer (e.g. a VM).

> you could argue there are whole teams dedicated to tooling and their labor > hours are moved to them.

I argue exactly that, but I admit I have no idea if, in moving those labor hours, they managed to conserve any (or instead inflate them).

More importantly, though, it's that, because so much of that labor is "hidden" elsewhere, any other company thinking that they could emulate staffing levels by just counting SREs is in for a rude awakening.

[1] Or maybe only 8x, if your negotiation position got that much stronger at higher volumes, but that's not a foregone conclusion when you have schedule needs, too, it might be higher than 10x, too

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can't help but chuckle that Amazon is turning into an automated central planning authority through ruthless capitalism.

<comment><USER6> Isn't it gennerally accepted that companies are islands of central planning?</comment></comment>


Javascript Dubstep Generator - <AUTHOR> http://www.mazbox.com/synths/dubstep/

<comment><USER2> seriously, wtf was that noise that blared out my speakers as I opened that page. Turn that off by default. It's horrible.</comment>


The Styrofoam Cube In This Letter Serves A Bureaucratic Purpose - <AUTHOR> http://consumerist.com/2011/10/the-styrofoam-cube-in-this-letter-serves-a-bureaucratic-purpose.html <comment><USER2> AT&T told me I can either get an unlimited Text Messaging plan or no text messaging plan and pay per text message.

Comcast told me that the 6mb internet service would be $50, and that I could only get the 20mb service, the service I wanted for $50 for the first six months, 60 for the next six months, and 70 for the next 12 months after that. They called it a "bundle" because it included local TV channels, channels which I get for free. The didn't offer me the choice of no free TV channels over cable.

Apple continually charges a ridiculous amount on memory upgrades.

Half the places I shop at want me to register with them in some capacity. No REI, I don't need a special card for the 2 annual purchases I do a year. You can keep the $2 I'd get back at the end of the year if I did have the card.

Amazon sells the same kindle at two different prices, depending on whether or not you like advertisements.

Are all these things stupid? Yes. The USPS is not alone, so stop pretending it's some government bureaucracy thing. People sometimes complain that the government should act more like a business, and get upset when they actually do.

<comment><USER3> > so stop pretending it's some government bureaucracy thing

Yep, USPS is not a normal government agency. Also "The USPS has not directly received taxpayer-dollars since the early 1980s with the minor exception of subsidies for costs associated with the disabled and overseas voters."*

If people point to USPS as example of government waste they do so out of ignorance.

* <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Service>

<comment><USER4> USPS has been running a massive deficit. <http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0911/090611l1.htm> So how are they still operating if they don't get taxpayer money?

<comment><USER5> They run a deficit because the Congress passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006[1] forced them to pay for the next _75 years_ of retirement and pension benefits within _10 years_ , the first downpayment of which they start making payments on Sept. 30 this year, which is why they've been running in the red for two years now.

In 2004, they actually _made_ 4 billion in profit, in 2005, 2 billion, and in 2006 a billion. They've had to prepare to make 5.5 billion in payments each year since due to the PAEA, and will do so until 2016.

[1] [http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/five-things/the-u-s- pos...](http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/five-things/the-u-s-postal- service/11433/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Maybe there's a technical reason for this? It's possible that the handling of parcel packages is different and is helped by a minimum thickness.

<comment><USER7> More probably that the detection of parcel packages is machine-driven and based on thickness.

I don't know why everyone is up in arms about this. The Indiana people had a problem (how to get the letter mailed via the service they wanted) and solved it creatively.

This is called a "hack", not "bureaucracy". And we should applaud it. Is the rule dumb? Yeah, probably. But it's hardly alone in the world. For every styrofoam cube there are a dozen people putting letters into boxes needlessly, and _that_ is the bad thing. This is cute.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy." -- Oscar Wilde

</comment><comment><USER9> Polish equivalent of USPS has, still until 2013, a monopoly on delivering mail weighing up to 50g at some low price, 1.55 pln i think, while private delivery companies would have to charge 2.5x that. So they attach metal plaques or small notepads to letters to increase weight.

<comment><USER10> Maybe I need caffeine, but I don't follow your comment.

Who adds these items to increase weight? Why? If my item is <50g, I use the Polish monopoly mail service (PMMS?) and pay 1.55pln (40% of what I'd pay with the competition, according to your numbers.) If PMMS is adding this weight, the mind boggles - they're wasting fuel delivering light items. If customers are adding the weight, why would they want to increase their costs to mail light items?

<comment><USER9> Perhaps I could have been clearer.

> Who adds these items to increase weight?

Private delivery companies add these items.

> Why?

Because due to the existing PMMS (Poczta Polska to be exact) monopoly on mail <50g, private companies would have to charge 2.5x the PMMS rate to deliver the same piece of mail. Adding the item allows a private company to circumvent the monopoly (by increasing weight >50g) and thus being able to deliver this piece of mail at a _lower_ rate than PMMS. How this ends up being profitable is a bit of a mystery.

> If PMMS is adding this weight

They're not. They have the monopoly so they don't need to.

> they're wasting fuel delivering light items.

No arguing there...

This is what one of those metal plates looks like <http://gfx.mmka.pl/newsph/222924/44881.3.jpg>

<comment><USER10> Ah. Private carriers are increasing weight to stay above the 'legal minimum.' That makes more sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> According to my wife, delivery confirmation on a parcel is around 20c, saving money against using registered mail.

<comment><USER12> Registered mail is supposed to be held to a different standard for proof of delivery than delivery confirmation as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Except what the article doesn't mention at all:

Cost to ship up to three ounces as first-class-PARCEL with tracking is $1.75

Cost to ship 8x11, same three ounces without tracking that is machine-sortable (bendable) is 88 cents.

So you are paying for that as a parcel, it's not just bureaucracy.

They cannot put tracking on every first class item, it would destroy their profitability.

Just try getting FedEx or UPS to deliver anything these days with tracking for only $1.75

<comment><USER14> Most first class mail isn't touched by human hands until the mail carrier puts it into your mailbox. I'm guessing that you could ship a machine-sortable as a parcel with tracking if you brought it to the post office, but not when it's being mixed in with a thousand other machine-sortables in the out-going mail bag. You don't want to go through each machine-sortable letter to see if tracking is required. I suspect this is less about bureaucratic complexity and more about dealing with a corner case caused by operational efficiency.

edit: Jacob on the consumerist thread explained it better than I did. "I suspect that letters (or flats) are processed through equipment that doesn't scan the barcode for the delivery confirmation system. Only if your letter is really a package and doesn't fit through the equipment that processes letters does it go through the package system which does scan the barcodes."

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> As someone who ships items daily with the postal service, the cube is not necessary. Yes, you have to pay extra for the "package rate" to get delivery confirmation, but you don't actually have to add extra items to make it a package.

This is the fault of the shipper, not the postal service.

<comment><USER16> Large corporations generally don't feel like they can get away with ignoring rules just because they aren't enforced. What if the Post Office suddenly started rejecting "packages" that their policy said they should reject? The corporation wouldn't be able to change their process quickly, and would lose a lot of money until it was fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> nice hack.

</comment><comment><USER18> Ugh. USPS. I cannot actually remember the last time I used their service.

<comment><USER19> Likely more recently than you might think. See, for instance, the Wikipedia entry on FedEx Smartpost (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FedEx_Ground>).

edit: regarding UPS: [http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r22924632-ups-using- USPS-for...](http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r22924632-ups-using-USPS-for- last-leg)

<comment><USER18> :(. I will have to switch to UPS now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Wow. This is the reason why the USPS is going bankrupt in front of our eyes.

If they don't change ridiculous rules like this, they'll never survive.

<comment><USER21> The post office themselves claim it's a congressional mandate to pre-pay 75-years worth of employee pensions and benefits in a 10-year window. They give Congress 5.5 billion dollars every year, and it's that which is driving the crisis.

<comment><USER14> I believe the USPS snark is that they are paying pension and benefit costs for mail carriers that haven't been born yet. How unusual, congress screwed something up. The cynic in me is yelling "conspiracy!"</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: I built this simple Trello clone today and launched it before lunch - <AUTHOR> https://bt-cardboard.herokuapp.com <comment><USER2> Looks nice but it's more a kanban board rather than a Trello clone. I don't doubt you're that skilled to build something like this "before lunch", but in my experience it is highly unlikely.

A few tips:

\- Add a landing page or at least a demo of how it looks

\- Remove those paddings and go full screen

\- Remove transitions, they may look good but they're not usable in this case

\- App feels heavy, not sure because of transitions, but feels slow.

Also if by simple you mean this:

\- REST API and API documentation

\- Invites sent via e-mail

\- Full design

\- Twitter integration

\- Users and Abilities

\- Multi-teams feature and ability to switch

Then I don't know what's simple anymore.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for providing such detailed and thoughtful feedback. I actually did build this app on top of [https://bullettrain.co](https://bullettrain.co) in less than two hours. I actually recorded the entire process and I'm happy to share the video privately. (You can DM me on Twitter or email me at firstname.lastname@example.com .) I'll post it publicly once someone is able to edit out the parts where I spend 10-15 minutes debugging really simple CSS issues, etc. I provided some more context on this project's purpose here: [https://twitter.com/andrewculver/status/968215988436004864](https://twitter.com/andrewculver/status/968215988436004864)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Without even a screenshot or anything I'm unlikely to create an account on some site I've never heard of

<comment><USER4> Agree. Need to be able to see what it is and play with before I set up an account. The point to prompt to create an account is when the user is about to leave: "set up an account to save this page".

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why does this app want permission to tweet on my behalf?</comment>


Live Strong - Tour de France Chalk Bot - <AUTHOR> http://www.nike.com/nikeos/p/livestrong/en_US/chalk_messages <comment><AUTHOR> Not entirely on topic here, but what with the Tour starting on Saturday... And it is a cool machine!

<comment><USER2> Just saw the Nike Chalkbot on the Versus coverage of the 2nd stage. Quite entirely on topic :)

There are sections of the road made solid yellow with Livestrong logos and supporter messages. France and Lance may not love each other, but they certainly need each other this year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> the original and still champion:

<http://www.appliedautonomy.com/sw.html></comment>


How I turned 2k visits into 16 subscribers /s - <AUTHOR> http://makers.gumwall.com/2015/07/07/growth-turning-2000-visits-into-16-subscribers-in-30-days/

<comment><AUTHOR> This was the first 30 days of my blog, so the title is mildly sarcastic, but I'm actually pretty happy with where it's at so far.

I'm totally new to this marketing side of things, but I have to start somewhere.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you keep a journal, and why? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I do! I started one in the summer of 2013. I originally started it as a way to aggregate links & helpful information for my game development endeavors, but it eventually evolved into more of a recounting of what I did or how I was feeling on a particular day. I now have daily entries for the entire time period since I started it, and I consider my journal to be one of my most treasured possessions. Sometimes I'll get busy and not add entires for a few days at a time, but I always go back and at least put a one-liner of why I was too busy to write anything.

I've found it to be a slightly more structured & useful way to essentially interact with my own brain -- it's a place for me to vent, a place to record not-so-important but still fun-to-have memories, to keep notes & sort out plans for the future.

It's a lot of fun to be able to scroll back and say "hey, what did we do for my birthday three years ago?" :) It's also fun at times like new year's to flip back through my journal and remind everyone what they listed for a resolution last year.

</comment><comment><USER3> Funny, I just ordered a pocket notebook for the first time in years today. I'm curious to see what contingent of people on HN still use a physical notebook. I also use orgmode extensively to keep track of my intentions, media preferences, notes, and stray ideas, but it doesn't really scratch the same itch as a physical notebook.

The reason I had to order a physical notebook online is because I wanted a pocket notebook with no lines, dots, or grids on the pages, which is surprisingly hard to find. I'm attracted to the non-linear approach to notebooking, and plan to fill this one with content in a random page-order as things strike me. Sometimes I just have a cool thought or sentence, or just want to slowly fill a page with something, and it can really help your creativity solidify to have a trailing log of your weird random inspirations. Sometimes I just transcribe lines from a song or book I like, or write down something someone said. Some pages are just geometric shapes. Rarely, I'll make a simple "today this happened and this is how I felt about it" page. By the time you fill it up you have a really organic document that can help you understand what makes you unique and what you like / care about in your daily life, without the stress of writing a cohesive or linear work.

<comment><USER4> I've also used org-mode and tried to make the switch to pocket notebooks[1]. My reason was that org-mode just wasn't as accessible to me. It's not as practical to use when away from a keyboard as a physical notebook is. However, writing as much in the physical notebook as I do in org-mode would fill it too quickly. I also can't be as structured in the physical notebook as I can in org-mode.

I guess I'm still figuring stuff out. Lately, I've been mostly using the notebook for taking notes of measurements or prices at the store. Maybe in reality my reason for trying a physical notebook is that I missed using a writing utensil.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00J535NN2](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00J535NN2)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yes, but with constraints.

Journaling is an efficient way to elucidate your stray thoughts and feelings. Writing forces you to distill everything into cohesive paragraphs, which in turn forces you to put some structured thought around otherwise nebulous mental energy.

However, journaling is only helpful so long as it's supportive. If you get stuck in reinforcing thought loops or you find it just amplifies your frustrations, it's time to change your approach to journaling or find another outlet for your thoughts.

</comment><comment><USER6> I do. It's rather minimal, but I like it. I use a Rhodia Goalbook, which has numbered pages and a nice month/day view in the front. I can jot down events on specific days, or I can do more longform stuff on the regular pages. I'm pretty loose with how I journal, and I don't require myself to do it every day. I'm a fan of Merlin Mann's "The first page is profound" method to get myself in the mindset of putting whatever I want in the journal.

</comment><comment><USER7> after reading this thread sometime ago ( [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20244848](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20244848) ) i decided to start one. It's been an on and off endeavour, when i am most busy, that's when i _should_ be taking those notes, and that's exactly when i completely forget about it... :/</comment>


Why Failure is Good - <AUTHOR> http://www.kimmosblog.com/2008/12/07/on-failure/

<comment><USER2> "Dealing with failure is easy: Work hard to improve. Success is also easy to handle: You've solved the wrong problem. Work hard to improve." Alan Perlis, Epigrams in Programming (#101) <http://www.cs.yale.edu/quotes.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> liked the bit about "blame everybody, and then blame yourself (because you are the real cause)". Wouldnt a lot of world's problem be solved if people actually started blaming themselves? Ofcourse lawers may not like that option as it dries out their chances of suing someone frivolously!!</comment>