WebRender is in beta - <AUTHOR> https://mozillagfx.wordpress.com/2018/10/26/webrender-newsletter-27/ <comment><USER2> For anyone (like me) not familar with WebRender, here's a great writeup: [https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/10/the-whole-web-at- maximum-f...](https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/10/the-whole-web-at-maximum-fps- how-webrender-gets-rid-of-jank/)

Also a great read for anyone interested in long-form technical articles that try to serve a wide range of reader types.

<comment><USER3> I'd be curious how the power usage compares between this GPU rendering and the old CPU painting / compositing rendering. I'd expect it to save power but could also see it going the other way, particularly for webpages with minimal changes from frame to frame.

<comment><USER4> At present power usage tends to be worse with WebRender, but I'm working on that with OS compositing (planeshift), and Glenn is working on that with picture caching. I expect it to be an overall energy consumption improvement over the old graphics system once this work is complete, due to reduced overdraw and better use of OS composition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've just made very basic integration with node. It's rather PoC, but it works.

It can currently show a window and render moving rect from vue.js template. There's still a lot of work to be done, webrender does too little to be just drop in replacement for electron but it might be worth watching if you're interested in anything like that (lightweight cross-platform opengl-rendered gui apps developed in react/vue/angular/...)

[https://github.com/cztomsik/node-webrender](https://github.com/cztomsik/node- webrender)

<comment><USER6> This is a nice experiment ! There are a few people starting to hack around with WebRender. There are already Limn, Azul, Stylish, etc...it would be nice if we joined forces in developing one good UI framework powered by WebRender.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for those links, azul is very interesting!

This is my first rust project, so I'm not sure if I would be any help

I also think it's better to have as much GUI part as possible in typescript, try-and-refine cycle is shorter and imagine how it could be with live/hot- reload

What I'm trying to do is something like electron but lighter, faster and memory-savvy. I think it could use azul, so thanks a lot :-)

<comment><USER6> I agree, I think Typescript is a very good pick for UI developpement, it's easy to use yet you still have types that help with maintainability. I would definitely be using something like this to develop apps :). However there are people who prefer other languages so it'd be nice if we could have a WebRender UI framework on which we could write bindings for any language, similarly to QT and GTK that have bindings for several languages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Most up to date presentation on WebRender I could find:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXzLC6ArlgE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXzLC6ArlgE)

Slides:

[https://github.com/MadRust/talks/blob/master/slides/meetup3_...](https://github.com/MadRust/talks/blob/master/slides/meetup3_mrobinson.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER8> > Kats is standing up WebRender in Firefox for Android

I'm guessing "standing" should be "setting"? Anyway, doesn't seem to work just yet for nightly. I enabled in about:config, but get "unavailable by runtime: WebRender not ready for use on non-e10s Android". Also, "WEBRENDER_QUALIFIED: blocked by env: Has battery"

I filtered by e10s and electrolysis in about:config but couldn't find anything

<comment><USER9> Standing up here means getting into a working but unfinished state. It's a slightly uncommon turn of phrase, but it's legit English.

<comment><USER10> To me it's very common in the tech community. Maybe a transfer from the embedded/sysadmin/DBA side of things, from what I've seen its usage move over time.

<comment><USER11> You aren't used to hearing about "standing up" new servers?

<comment><USER10> I must have written my text poorly, that's what I intended to convey; that in my experience the term's popularity started in the embedded/sysadmin/dba communities and then spread to the wider tech communities. Sorry! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Enabled in FF Nightly 65.0a1 (2018-10-26) (64-bit) and it felt a little sluggish especially with regards to scrolling. I understand it's in beta but I guess I was expecting things to "feel" faster. Tried resizing larger sites/pages and things felt snappy but scrolling felt jumpy and off.

That said, can't wait for this to come out of beta!

<comment><USER13> I've experienced the exact same thing on latest thunderbird betas and nightlies.

Its a shame that GPU support by Mozilla products is in such abysmal state. Meanwhile Google has working hardware accelerated video decoding AND decent GPU support in Chrome.

<comment><USER14> Firefox has had hardware video decoding and GPU support for like 15 years? This is just a new graphics stack.

<comment><USER15> It doesn't on Linux (see [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1210726](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1210726) and [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=594876](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=594876)).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wondering if Pathfinder made it to this release? Perhaps pcwalton could chime in?

<comment><USER4> It's in the codebase as an optional code path for fonts but not enabled. The graphics team prefers to do a staged rollout where we roll out WebRender first before enabling Pathfinder. I agree with the caution.

<comment><USER16> Happy to hear it's in the codebase. It's an exciting project!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Firefox has become crazy fast lately. Which is great! But on systems like a Surface tablet it seems to chew through battery much faster than Edge.

It seems to be pages that are actively modifying themselves. If they just sit there being static the power use isn't a problem.

</comment><comment><USER18> Out of curiosity, is WebRender written in Rust?

<comment><USER19> Yeah: [https://github.com/servo/webrender](https://github.com/servo/webrender)

<comment><USER7> [https://github.com/servo/webrender/tree/master/webrender/src](https://github.com/servo/webrender/tree/master/webrender/src)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> For pages like Facebook and Reddit, the performance is great. But Chrome is almost double the framerate for svg animations (I measured on a Macbook).

<comment><USER4> WebRender doesn't accelerate SVG yet. That will be the second stage of the Pathfinder work. Stay tuned :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> So soon even more things won't work right due to buggy GPU drivers on linux?

</comment><comment><USER22> Does it work on macOS atm?

<comment><USER23> Yes, I'm using it in Firefox 65.0a1 on a 15" 2017 MBP running High Sierra.

After setting gfx.webrender.all to true and restarting, check about:support and you should see "Compositing: WebRender"

Of course you may still hit bugs.

<comment><USER24> These days I don't see many bugs. I hit a crash this week, but it was fixed within a day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is GPU rendering going to open up new security holes? If not, then how do we know it won't?

<comment><USER4> Can you be more specific as to which "security holes" you're thinking of? You're kind of asking to prove a negative.

<comment><USER25> Not at all. I'm asking what the current approach and what the current thinking is about this topic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Great work on this!

</comment><comment><USER27> "Bobby fixed a crash" \- A crash relating to _what_? This changelog is awful, who approved this?

<comment><USER28> This isn't a changelog, this is a newsletter for folks wanting to keep up with development.</comment></comment>


The Opium Wars Still Shape China's View of the West - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/news/christmas-specials/21732706-britain-and-china-see-each-other-through-narcotic-haze-opium-wars-still-shape <comment><USER2> The most significant to me is that all the death destruction and suffering was all to further enrich some 5ish rich dudes.

It is significant because this aspect of the west has not changed at all. Just look how our historians are happy to attribute such acts to countries(!???) Until we start attributing invasions to the people who wanted them, those who organized them and those who profited from them this wont change.

Its at best inaccurate to state Britain wanted the war, Britain organized it and Britain profited. At worst it is the very formula to keep at it.

<comment><USER3> I wonder how many rich dudes are at the top of the opiate pyramid in the US at the moment, profiting from the current crisis.

It's not an attitude I've come across before—attributing these actions to individuals rather than nations. It's certainly an interesting one.

<comment><USER4> [http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a12775932/sackler- famil...](http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a12775932/sackler-family- oxycontin/)

This family is at the top of the opiate pyramid.

<comment><USER5> It's amazing how these greedy people destroyed millions of lives and they get to live the life of luxury. Sell weed and you are a felon. Peddle addictive opiates to the masses and destroy countless families, you get to be a billionaire.

<comment><USER6> Drugs have been weaponised in the West. Both 'legal' and 'illegal' forms.

Drugs are one of the principle means of social control used by the power elite to keep society malleable and repressed - truly. Both illegal - and legal - drugs have their covert uses in this regard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am surprised that the article makes no mention of the many Chinese action movies made that are set in the time period of the Opium Wars and that make explicit reference to it.

Given that the film is made in China and received state support, it is not an accident.

By the way the story of Baghdadi Jew, David Sassoon and his rise in prominence as a result of profiting from the Opium War is quite interesting in itself.

<comment><USER8> I love foreign films. Any reasonably high brow recommendations?

<comment><USER9> "High brow" is generally not what you'll get in Hong Kong cinema. The director Wong Kar Wai comes to mind, but I'm not sure if any of his movies are set in the Opium War or hand-off eras.

For those eras, Once Upon a Time in China is pretty iconic to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't understand the motivation of the article. Does the author try to justify the Opium War? Or to remind 1+ billion Chinese that the intepretation of history always subject to rulers' agenda, which is clearly stated in Chinese textbook? To show off his not-so-sharp observation to his readers? Or, to warn USA not to abandon the free trade principle?

<comment><USER11> What about giving the readers a better understanding of how China sees the West? These things can be complicated, and pointing out some of the forming events can be very helpful.

<comment><USER12> Some Chinese people are still cranky about the Opium Wars, some Irish folks still talk about the 800 year occupation, some Native Americans are still miffed about the whole killing and taking stuff thing.

It may be news to some millennials in the tech industry, but the past isn't prologue. It isn't even past.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, I'm pretty sure a lot of IRA funding came out of Boston. Turns out there were children and grandchildren of potato famine refugees who were still pretty pissed - who'd have thunk it.

<comment><USER14> I recall seeing an article regarding an interview with a US Civil War veteran in the 1950's [1] which made me think, the Irish Famine was only some 150 years ago. It would have been likely that as recent as say, the 1930's you may have still had living survivors - and by extension, their stories of what they saw may yet be in living memory - it definitely would have still been in the 1970's.

[1] - [http://attic.areavoices.com/2011/03/01/listen- to-a-1954-inte...](http://attic.areavoices.com/2011/03/01/listen- to-a-1954-interview-with-the-last-surviving-union-civil-war-vet/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> But every country teaching their version of history. Opium Wars is truly what change the Old China, force it open door which has long been closed.

The so-called Freedom was just bullshit, it only profits, that drive the war.

And I think the western world just never really understand the Chinese people's way of thinking, nor do they care.And that's how this article comes out.

</comment><comment><USER16> This reminds me of the articles saying that germans like to use cash because of the inflation 100y ago. It's just not true and likely being written by someone who has never asked a single german/chinese.

<comment><USER17> I'm German and hyperinflation is a very real fear of mine. Not even my parents actually experienced that and I've not lived in the country on a decade, but I've heard many stories about it growing up. Transgenerational trauma is a very real thing.

<comment><USER18> I understand the fear (and it's often cited as a reason) but how does cash help with that? If it comes to a hyperinflation it will be worthless – this is exactly what happened last time.

<comment><USER19> But before that there will be people trying to get cash out of the atm. And those who have cash already have a slight advantage, when there is no more cash at the atm because the bank went bankrupt.

But apart from that, it is more a psychological thing, I guess. Cash you can hold in your hands, feels more safe than just some plastic card. So it is more about feeling, than real security I think.

But there is also the privacy issue. Paying with cash is anonymous. This is still a big thing and maybe the more important factor why cash is more important in germany ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Flowers in the Blood is an excellent read for anyone interested in this bit of history. [https://www.amazon.ca/Flowers-Blood-Story-Jeff- Goldberg/dp/1...](https://www.amazon.ca/Flowers-Blood-Story-Jeff- Goldberg/dp/1626365407/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1517671999&sr=8-10&keywords=flowers+blood)

</comment><comment><USER21> > _Julia Lovell, a British historian, makes a similar point. In her book "The > Opium War: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China", she says the move into > opium by British traders was not, as claimed by many Chinese historians, a > deliberate conspiracy to make narcotic slaves of the Chinese. "It was a > greedy, pragmatic response to a decline in sales of other British imports," > she writes._

Is there a name for this fallacy? It seems to come up a lot. I.e., when someone takes an action that has enormous and predictable negative effects for someone else and a comparatively tiny positive effect for themselves, they then argue along the lines that "I was motivated by my gain, not by your loss (even though I knew it would result from my action), so you have no right to complain!"

In this case, it can be _both_ a "deliberate conspiracy" and a "pragmatic response". They deliberately conspired to hurt the Chinese for profit, judging their suffering to be a less important consideration than their own profits.

<comment><USER22> I call it nationalist denial. Or deliberate ignorance.

This type of nonsense is embedded in English accounts of the British Empire. Variants of the "white man's burden" and the sacred principles of the market can be spun in all sorts of interesting ways.

The most galling example of this that I'm familiar with is the Irish famine. Millions died of starvation in the midst of a record bumper crop for export. The British justification for deliberate inaction was and for many still is a mixture of denial, high minded debate about the role of government, and a deep concern for keeping Irish wretches out of a cycle of dependency.

<comment><USER23> It bothers me that almost every nation in the world has a "big shame" but probably the only people that faces, admits and owns their "big shame" are the Germans.

Belgium still keeps statues of King Leopold, Spain keeps statues of Cortez and Pisarro, Portugal of Vasco da Gama, the US is only now arguing about the statues for Confederate soldiers; Italy, Poland and France never did a real "mea culpa" on how they actually helped and collaborated with the Nazis, Brazil and most of Latin America keep ignoring the ongoing extermination of their natives, most Japanese try to avoid knowing what their country did in Manchuria during WWII, Turkey keeps denying the Armenian genocide,...

<comment><USER24> Us dutchies are decent on admitting our faults. I think we are pretty clear about our mistakes in Indonesia, the biggest issue is probably the triangle trade in slaves. This is not something we stand behind as far as I know, though we still harken back to the times of the VOC as good because it was a 'golden age'.

<comment><USER25> > Us dutchies are decent on admitting our faults. I think we are pretty clear > about our mistakes in Indonesia

I respectfully disagree. I've always thought of Dutchies as open-minded but I remember reading a plaque at the Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam) that left my jaw on the floor by being overly euphemistic. It was an exhibit of about 2-dozen weapons symbolically surrendered by Indonesian leaders; the text was worded as if it was a voluntary gift of their own volution. I thought a little self- honesty would go a long way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> " _Then, in revenge for the torture and killing of a group of British negotiators by the Chinese,..._ "

Wait, what?

The Chinese weren't entirely the victims?

(Just seems a little out of place, given the rest of the article.)

<comment><USER26> Yes -- I'm not sure people quite appreciate just how serious a matter killing a negotiator is: [https://srconstantin.wordpress.com/2017/04/10/dont-shoot- the...](https://srconstantin.wordpress.com/2017/04/10/dont-shoot-the- messenger/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Yet its the same problem today that prompted the Opium Wars as back then: The West buys more from China than China buys from The West.

Hopefully that colours the decisions made to rebalance the trade system.

<comment> dis-sys > The West buys more from China than China buys from The West

because there are long list of high tech & military stuff that China is simply not allowed to buy. it is so bad to the extent that Chinese are not allowed to buy Intel Phi processors which many of your local computer shops allow you to make orders.

Surely Chinese are interesting in buying America's advanced jet fighters, missiles, submarines, aircraft carriers, satellites etc. On the non-military side, how about super computers, space techs, laser, semiconductor techs, optical fiber, high end composite materials. EU has very similar laws & policies, nothing really different from the US.

<comment><USER28> > Surely Chinese are interesting in buying America's advanced jet fighters

China's interested in buying precisely one round of each thing. And thereafter replacing it with their own. That's not a criticism, it's a fact of life in dealing with China. They have zero interest in being dependent on any outside nation more than absolutely necessary.

The things you list, wouldn't even remotely dent the trade deficits China rings up. You're talking about $5 to $6 trillion per decade with the US and EU combined.

Intel processors et al. are not going to fix that. There's absolutely nothing that can plug a $600 billion per year hole with China (US+EU), realistically. Energy exports (in the case of the US) is the only thing that could dent it. The solution is to move more manufacturing away from China and rebalance that large concentrated deficit with other nations in a distributed manner, and to make more things domestically. That will happen naturally as China's wages & costs continue to rise.

<comment><USER12> True story: In the late '50s and '60s, the Parker pen company had a manufacturing operation in China, making the Parker "51", a rather singular design. At some point, it was abandoned by Parker and closed down.

Sometime later, a Chinese company named Hero took over the plant and machinery and started making their own pens, including knock-offs of the "51" such as the Hero 616 and 100, and leading to a fair sized industry of Chinese fountain pens, many of which are very cheap to purchase apparently due to export subsidies by the Chinese government.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> In 2018's city of London, I can see small sliver laugh gas bottles frequently on the street, almost every day in my commuting - as Economist suggested, "by then, smoking the drug had come to be viewed not so much as a bad habit encouraged by the British."

Selectively telling the truth and always weirdly emphasis on Chinese government makes me feel sick after reading. I guess that's the reason I stopped its subscription long time ago.

</comment><comment><USER30> China had accumulated a lot of the world silver reserves by selling tons silk and porcelain but buying basically nothing. Selling Opium to China "solved" this problem.

Today the have the idea of exporting everything to the world and buy nothing besides a few raw materials, creating a giant trade deficit. Let's see how it ends.

<comment><USER31> They already bypassed much of this generation's "drug of choice" by making foreign social media difficult.

<comment><USER32> China has its own highly addictive social media.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I think a more accurate headline would be "China's perception of the Opium Wars shape its view of the West." Why were the Opium Wars fought? One narrative says the Qing were trying to protect their population from the harms of addiction. But it is also true that the Qing were concerned about the outflow of silver, which was being used by Chinese merchants to buy opium, but which had also become the base currency of the Chinese economy in the mid-19th century. China was accumulating silver because it was selling more than it bought (sound familiar?), and opium was one commodity that found demand on the mainland.

</comment><comment><USER34> Well, that is the same as The World War 2 still shape x's view of the X.

</comment><comment><USER35> It is not true. It's just that politicians need official reasons to do what they do. And it's a great thing to use historical reasons because nobody can really counter them. Not a single Chinese person I know thinks about Westerners as sources of the Opium Wars and therefore as enemies. The opinions move between "West is so rich, let's be more like them" and "We are nearly back to our old glory, now also learn some of our culture!"

<comment><USER36> >> Westerners as sources of the Opium Wars and therefore as enemies

The article is not wrong. Opium war, in the official narrative of recent Chinese history, is phrased as "the start of a hundred years of humiliation of China". It is heavily focused event in middle school history class. It definitely still shapes China in a lot of way, like the strictest drug prohibition may be in the whole world.

In every day communication, it might not be significant, but it does have a greater effect on a subconscious level, serving as foundation for regular Chinese folk to perceive the relationship with West in general, which is centered with invasion, humiliation, lose of sovereignty and the shame of inferiority.

<comment><USER37> Not sure you're disagreeing with the grandparent. A belief can be deeply held and a result of manipulation at the same time.

Russia has similar grievances against the West that are promoted on TV, and people care strongly about them as a result. In the early 90s, when the injuries were fresh, the TV deemphasized them and fewer people cared.

I've come to believe that when a government makes its citizens care about foreign policy, that's usually a distraction from domestic problems. In Russia's case it's corruption. Not sure about China.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> and rightfully so. under the guise of chinese-communism, the opium wars serves as canonical example of the evils of western capitalism.

</comment><comment><USER39> The British empire invaded 9 out of 10 countries.

</comment><comment><USER40> History shapes culture who knew? America is still fighting the Civil War.

But the Chinese don't blame the West for the decline of China and the fall of the empire. They blame the old corrupt elite. When Deng Xiaoping went abroad in the 80s he did his damnedest to appear cultured and in control.

<comment><USER41> > They blame the old corrupt elite.

Hmm, I hope that's true. But there's also the "century of humiliation" thing going on, which, to my mind, is an attempt to divert blame away from China itself (basically Mao -- the greatest enemy China ever had) toward outsiders. I don't know to what degree people are buying it.

<comment><USER42> You have to understand that Chinese culture is very inward-looking. All the invasions, unless they end up ruling China like Mongolians and Manchurians, are merely considered external forces not too different from natural disasters.

Also, Chinese people don't see China as a single continuous entity like outsiders do, so most of the blame shifting doesn't have to go toward outside sources.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's really sad how little we are taught about the opium wars. It is easily the most important war in the last 500 years. The wealth that was taken from china as a result of the opium wars provided capital to britain and the US to fund our industrial revolution. It altered the course of history.

One of the largest banks in the world ( HSBC ) was created in hong kong to launder opium money from china. FDR's grandfather was Warren Delano, one of the largest opium dealers in china. The opium money is what funded our institution building in the 1800s. The universities, museums, hospitals, etc were built with money from our opium dealers in china.

[http://www.wbur.org/commonhealth/2017/07/31/opium-boston- his...](http://www.wbur.org/commonhealth/2017/07/31/opium-boston-history)

It is odd how much time we spend on ww1 and ww2 when neither war altered the balance of power. The opium wars ended the "faux parity" that existed between china and the west and it catapulted the anglosphere to the top.

We live in an anglo world ( formerly british led but now US led ) because of the opium wars.

</comment><comment><USER43> Communism will win

<comment><USER44> Communism, like libertarian capitalism, simplifies the human condition too much to win in a pure form. Both have important lessons, neither is sufficient.

At least, neither is sufficient for now; I can image fully automated luxury space communism working, once AI is good enough.

<comment><USER45> A post scarcity society is likely to be inerently more libertarian than communist, true post scarcity does not need a centrally managed economy.

Communism doesn't simplify the human condition as much as it replaces it, the scary part of communism isn't the economy but the eradication of the self in favor of a group identity.

<comment><USER46> Communism is not a centrally managed economy. It is an anarchistic form of society with no state. You might be confusing it with socialism which is what most states that are colloquially referred to as "Communist" really are. Socialism is supposed to be a short term form of government for transitioning to a communist society, but no real-world socialist state has made any significant progress at transitioning to communism.

<comment><USER45> Communism is certainly is a centrally manged state owned economic system.

Under communism there is no individual ownership and the state owns all of the means of production.

<comment><USER46> That is absolutely incorrect. Communism has no private property, but also has no state. You are thinking of socialism. That said, there are no large scale examples of real-world communist societies, so it is for the most part purely hypothetical, unlike socialism which has many real-world examples.

You may be confused because of all of the states where the main political party is called the Communist party, but those states do not self-identify as communist. They self-identify as socialist states that are in the process of transitioning to communism.

<comment><USER45> I'm not confused because communism does not exists in a vacuum a communist society will be a state.

The "abolishment" of the state under communism does not do so in practice but rather in principle when everyone belongs to the state there is no state but it's an empty and meaningless starlet.

Communism also outside of some fringe Marxism and anarcho communism is not anarchist at all but rather very centralized.

<comment><USER46> Communism is by definition stateless, so any society where a state exists is not communism. You might say that this is impossible, and that would quite possibly be right, which is why there is no real-world example of a communist society.

I think the only way that it could possibly work is with post-scarcity or at least much less scarcity that currently exists.

<comment><USER45> How do you call a group of people with an shared identity and sovereignty?

No real-world example is a coupout and a no true scottsman all in one.

The stateless part is not what you think it means it just means that the state is not a separate entity to the individual mostly because individualism does not exist the only thing that exists is the group. When everyone is equal then there are no senators or presidents or mayors but everything is still centralized so some governing body forms or it's total anarchy.

But that doesn't matter as long as not everyone is commmunist you would have a communist and a none communist state unless due to the authoritarian nature of communism the non communist group is annihilated.

If anything the core principals of communism are much more abhorrent than any implementation of it we had so far.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> China history is a warning sign against centralism and the ability of humanity to get stuck in loops, economic and culturally - where it from a ruling partys point of view doesn't make sense to do anything to escape the loop.

Impressive is that china at least kept- enforced by the layout of the country, a centralized state. At least it did not decay as much as the middle east or africa - after reaching peak people.

<comment><USER35> This is so western propaganda boilerplate. What is the warning sign? China lifted more people out of poverty than all other countries combined. Actually the whole world is recognizing how centralism seems stronger than western federalism, and many western populations complain about their governments moving their power into a more and more centralized system.

Have you for instance seen how Philipines and Turkey have moved away from a pro-western position?

<comment><USER28> > What is the warning sign?

In the span of about 12 years, China became the world's most indebted nation. They have to accumulate about $4 trillion in debt annually to add $600 to $700 billion in GDP expansion, of which 1/3 to 2/5 goes just to paying for new debt interest costs. That debt scenario keeps getting worse each year. Local government defaults are a common discussion now, it's assumed they're going to suffer vast bankruptcies all over the nation. In just the next five years, they'll increase their already shocking pile of debt by another ~75% or so, adding between $20 and $30 trillion in new debt.

> the whole world is recognizing how centralism seems stronger than western > federalism

That's incorrect. The whole world, including China, has attempted to partially emulate the developed nations of the West. China has gradually abandoned Communism and shifted to a market based economy, as one example. Their former system failed entirely, their shift to market based systems is an obvious admission of that. That process continues. All the developed Western nations have far superior standards of living at the median than China. The top Western examples are four to five times higher than China, and that's before accounting for the near total dearth of human rights in China. That gap is even greater when it comes to the poor. In China ~250 million people are still living on $3 per day or less.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> If you disagree, I'd love to hear what you know about it! Did Mao not come out of Yale? Did he not have help from non-Chinese during his reign of terror? What part do you think I got wrong? The conclusion?

Do you think "China" just shot up out of nowhere over the past 70 years because they had cheap labor? No. Their power could not have been created without the help of western nations. The most prolific mass murderer in the world, Mao Zedong, came out of Yale. Once he came to power, he had all sorts of help from non-Chinese.

The plot here is fairly simple and you can see it happening every day. China is the model for a new world government that will be implemented after the USA is wiped off the map. "Made in China" is the type of curse that the elite globalists who run things like to give people. They've been telling people what's going to happen for a long time and once it does happen, the people will get exactly what they paid for.

<comment><USER49> "Came out of Yale" means one year running a magazine for the Yale associated school in China? As for the Western support, I can't begin to guess what you mean. My complete shot in the dark is some Western capitalists tried to make money in China, as they already have a history of being fine with the death of Chinese people to make money.

<comment><USER48> Western governments leak military technology to China all the time. Clinton was accused of giving them nuclear secrets. Israel has definitely given them technology.

Regarding Maos time at Yale, you can read more about that here - [http://www.mygen.com/users/ufo/Mao_was_a_Yale_Man.html](http://www.mygen.com/users/ufo/Mao_was_a_Yale_Man.html)

<comment><USER49> Your claim was they helped Mao during Mao's reign of terror. Clinton being born in 46 and Israel being founded in 47 does make that impossible for me to have guessed.

That source for Mao seems to be nearly exclusively drawing from seemingly unrelated dead third party sources. One of them is the Church of the Subgenius, a parody religion. And the only real link I can find them stating is that they were both in one of the most populous cities of China.

<comment><USER48> I didn't say that Clinton helped Mao. I said he helped China by selling them nuclear secrets. Subgenius was also founded and membered by some extremely intelligent folks so, so invoking them as just a parody religion doesn't do a whole lot for me.

There is actually a mountain of evidence if you care to look. Without even looking at specific peoples actions or associations _I know_ what is going on because of history and because of how obvious it is. There's always a group trying to rule the world. Heck Britain almost did it with fucking medieval technology!

China was definitely not built up solely from within. There are powerful non- Chinese globalists and banksters with strangleholds over many industries at work here. I mean, do you think Chinese farmers are putting this technological tyrannical monster of a government together? The Chinese people aren't doing this to themselves. They are loving it right now though because it's like 1950's USA there and people are getting relatively rich.

ADDENDUM: Anyway, these are not fun ideas to have rattling around in your head. I suggest not looking into it at all because there is absolutely nothing that you could possibly do about it if there's any truth here. The big take away that I got from my investigation is basically this: Live like there is no tomorrow and make sure you're doing what you want to be doing every day. Enjoy as much as possible! Let go of whatever bullshit that you can, because life is short.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Startuper's life – Damn True moments from startuper's life - <AUTHOR> http://startuperlife.xyz/2?ref=hn <comment><USER2> On my screen, every time I click the button the different text width changes the button's position, making lazy repeat, procrastinatory clicking hard work.

<comment><AUTHOR> yep, will fix it later

<comment><USER3> [http://startuperlife.xyz/8](http://startuperlife.xyz/8)

But seriously, this is a breaking UX bug. I stopped clicking cause of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice :) Laughed at [http://startuperlife.xyz/38](http://startuperlife.xyz/38)

<comment><USER5> you need to also be able to laugh at people who try to pull that off in real life. Have had a few of those in my time, as probably most people have. Initially I tried to be 'professional', but have learned to be more blunt as those happen. To be sure, it's happened less over the last few years, but I don't know how much of that is there's an actual shift in peoples' expectations, and how much I'm just not networking as much :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It'd be nice if you modified the url without modifying browser history.

</comment><comment><USER7> Nice one mate, you might need to randomise it as every time it does start from the 1st quote.

</comment><comment><USER8> I liked [http://startuperlife.xyz/26](http://startuperlife.xyz/26)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I made this site just for fun and vue.js learning purpose. Hope you like it =)

BTW: vue.js is amazing!

<comment><USER9> Cool, one suggestion is to make the button stay in the same place even when the text takes up two rows. That way I don't have to move my mouse between the jarringly accurate quotes of me :D

<comment><USER10> Was going to suggest this and potentially make it possible to get another quote via arrow keys

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In English, you have to double the consonant to indicate that the vowel is short. It should be "startupper." If you don't, "startuper" rhymes with "super," and the meaning is lost.

<comment><USER12> As exemplified in [http://startuperlife.xyz/36](http://startuperlife.xyz/36) and [http://startuperlife.xyz/48](http://startuperlife.xyz/48)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Not a huge gripe but the title text changes on every button click too and it is not synced with the featured quote. I'm not sure if that's intentional or a bug. But otherwise, pretty work!

<comment><AUTHOR> yep, this is a bug thanks

<comment><USER14> Just FYI, my company's firewall blocks it with the label 'malicious'. Don't know if its the .xyz extension or something in the content

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> For full effect, someone should give this project a $3.5M seed round.

<comment><AUTHOR> well, it would be awesome. Then I could hire sales/marketing team and rent big office :)

<comment><USER15> Initial coin offering, my friend.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> My eyes hurt because of the changing colors!

</comment><comment><USER17> Not to be that guy but: This loads as a blank page on Windows Phone 8.1, just FYI :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I did just for fun so, obviously, I didn't check it on Windows Phone or even IE :) But thanks for reporting, maybe I'll take a look at that once

<comment><USER17> Makes sense. I would think, even without testing, most people would expect vue etc to render their content on various browsers, rather than render nothing. I myself am sometimes surprised/confused when code that runs elsewhere fails on WP. Might not affect this fun project, but worth knowing down the line. Often it related to promises, if you are using them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> interesting to see there's only 140 damn true moments (at the time of writing, anyway).

that's like, almost two and a half hours</comment>


An update on GnuPG - <AUTHOR> https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/735840/11066f48be7a5f92/ <comment><USER2> I agree with the statement in the article that the current Web-of-Trust model is broken. I think that is one thing that the folks at keybase (keybase.io) understand, and I like their model. I like it enough, in fact, to actually use it, something that I cannot say about GPG despite having tried it on numerous occasions over the years.

GPG is proposing going to a TOFU model (trust on first use, much like ssh works). I'll be curious to watch if that takes off, it seems like a step in the right direction.

I think 'trust' as a concept is difficult to codify into a protocol. What alternatives are there that would be better than what keybase.io does, or what GPG is proposing?

<comment><USER3> Last time I tried to use keybase it required me to paste my private key into a browser before using any of the advanced features like chat. This seems unnecessary and doesn't make any sense from a security perspective. Has the situation changed? I won't use their service until this is fixed.

<comment><USER4> If I recall correctly, you can choose to let keybase store your password- protected private key for the purposes of decrypting messages through the website, but that's not required, and the advanced features (e.g. chat) don't work without a local install. Everything that can be delegated to the app (GUI or command line) generally is. The keybase team seems to take this quite seriously, and they've had documentation on how to use the platform without giving their servers any information since at least when I joined in early 2014.

Give it a shot, it's quite painless as far as crypto products go. You can always choose not to use it if you decide it's storing too much information. Happy to provide an invite if you (or anyone else) needs one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Support for 4096-bit RSA keys has been in GnuPG for some time, but Koch > contends that real security will require 16Kb keys [...]

Could someone corroborate or cite sources? I thought 2048-bit is still considered secure, and 4096-bit slightly overkill.

<comment><USER6> yes, is there any reliable place to look for the current "best" practices for keys generation? (as in, good enough for the foreseeable future)

<comment><USER7> [https://www.keylength.com/](https://www.keylength.com/) presents the recommendations from various best-practice documents for many key types and cryptographic operations.

<comment><USER5> If I'm using the comparison tool correctly, then it shows that 2048-bit keys would be fine up to 2020 ~ 2030, and 4096-bit keys beyond ~2022. This is in line with my understanding.

FWIW, ssh-keygen(1) generates 2048-bit RSA keys by default[0]. Generally if I had to appeal to authority over security matters, I refer to the OpenBSD / OpenSSH guys.

[0] [https://man.openbsd.org/ssh-keygen#b](https://man.openbsd.org/ssh- keygen#b)

<comment><USER8> SSH Keys are for login authentication. If tomorrow we crack RSA-2047, you can replace them before we get to 2048 bits.

GPG Keys are for secrecy. If the adversary gets a ciphertext, he can hold it until 2030 and decrypt then. Very different model!

<comment><USER9> I am not convinced they are very different models.

My argument: An attacker can save the encrypted SSH traffic going over an insecure channel, then hold the traffic until 2030 and decrypt then.

Do you find a flaw in my argument?

<comment><USER10> Yes. It is, forgive me for being blunt, nearly completely wrong.

For starters, there's two different kinds of keys in use: symmetric and asymmetric. The ratio of "bits" to "strength" is completely different for the two categories.

Asymmetric keys are typically only used to handle identity, then bootstrap a selection of symmetric keys (which are faster to use, generally); and then the symmetric keys used are typically based on Diffie Hellman key exchange, which is a whole 'nother ball of wax.

Which bits you have to hold onto, and what you get when you compromise them, is not a flat field. Compromising the asymmetric keys used for identity at the beginning of communication means you can forge that identity in the future; but it doesn't necessarily mean you get to compromise other communications made with yet other keys which were merely agreed upon under the situational aegis of those asymmetric keys at a previous date.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > _Historically, using HSMs has meant smartcards, but Koch noted that even > though these implement an open standard they do it with proprietary code, > leaving us no current choice but to evaluate the vendors for > trustworthiness, and then choose a product. Though this is what Koch himself > does now, he 'd like more freedom, and is working to bring to market the > Gnuk token._

As far as I've understood, the NitroKey[0] is fully open and commercially available. Why not it?

[0]: [https://www.nitrokey.com/](https://www.nitrokey.com/)

</comment><comment><USER12> Just updated to the newest version, which seems to change quite dramatically how gpg-agent works. I can no longer figure out how to limit a gpg-agent to the current shell (the old version relied on environment variables which were easy to keep local). It bothers me that now, if I do anything with gpg, any other program on the computer can just decrypt information at will. Any solutions for this?

</comment><comment><USER13> In a world where we measure webpage size in megabytes, why do people consider key size to be so important? I can see TLS caring due to latency, but gpg? I could attach a McEliece quantum 8MB key to every email I ever send, so your "large" RSA keys aren't a big deal.

Edit: oh, smart cards...

<comment><USER14> Protocols.

You really don't want to sign every TLS packet with a 8MB signature or in this case, send 8MB key material over TLS before properly opening the session.

Even if you are the 1% with gigabit connections, that is going to induce some decent latency into the system.

It's simply wasteful.

<comment><USER15> Heh. The way web bloat is going, I can totally see a framework "optimizing" this by showing the user a spinner over HTTP while an ajax request does the first tls handshake, then redirects the user to the https version of the site.

<comment><USER16> That defeats the purpose of https - the code/response that dictates the redirect can be intercepted and redirect the user to a malicious site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Does it still use a ridiculously low number of iterations of a KDF that is neither time- nor memory-hard for deriving symmetric keys from passphrases?

<comment><USER18> No, I believe it uses a calibration routine to pick the number of iterations nowadays:

[https://git.gnupg.org/cgi- bin/gitweb.cgi?p=gnupg.git;a=blob;...](https://git.gnupg.org/cgi- bin/gitweb.cgi?p=gnupg.git;a=blob;f=agent/protect.c;h=9b262a97886c3ca515eb2f446ad6c445df5f6211;hb=refs/heads/master#l161)

So it depends on the hardware it is run on, and has a lower limit as well.

<comment><USER17> But still not an appropriate PBKDF for 2017 - and the lower limit is only 65k iterations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > RSA, he said, is not likely to stay secure for much longer without really > large keys

Anyone got any more info or a source on this?

<comment><USER11> I wasn't at the talk, but I imagine this is may be related to beliefs around quantum computing gradually moving from 'if' to 'when', in the last few years.

<comment><USER20> The problem is that when QC come, ECC will not be in any better position than RSA...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Awesome news. Also, instead of ssh private keys, I use monkeysphere which stores them in gpg instead. With git and ssh scripts, it's easy to make it automatically ask for your psssphrase on first use.

<comment><USER22> I use gpg-agent's ssh support and a yubikey to store my SSH private key. It's a pretty nice experience, being able to switch between computers having my SSH key always with me.

<comment><USER23> I'm using it like that as well, It's a really nice experience once you convince all the applications using ssh to use the gpg-agent's socket.

Have you enabled any other yubikey features while having all you gpg + ssh keys on it? Like for using U2F? I'm a bit scared I'll wipe my key ('-_-).

<comment><AUTHOR> I asked a similar question the other day: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15431299](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15431299)

Basically, it all works fine (I've verified it myself). I've been using a Yubikey for both SSH and challenge/response for quite a while now. A few days ago I started messing with U2F as well. The first that happens is gpg-agent "gets confused" after U2F auth and you have to remove/insert your key and/or re-enter your GPG PIN on next use (cf. linked thread).

Next up for me is figuring out how to disable U2F on my Nano's and use separate U2F-only keys for that (without any conflicts or issues, hopefully).

N.B.: I don't use the OTP functionality at all, currently. I'll probably try out the PIV stuff soon as well and I expect no conflicts or issues with the existing stuff (GPG, C/R, etc.) I have setup.

<comment><AUTHOR> > _The first that happens ..._

      s/first/worst/</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What have you made that you use daily? - <AUTHOR> Daily isn't to be taken too literally, but things that you find yourself reaching for or otherwise have become part of your lifestyle. <comment><USER2> A collection of bash/linux scripts that use sshd on termux on my Android phone to wirelessly copy photos to ~/Pictures on my laptop, automatically make small versions of the photos for emailing etc and placing those in their own directory.

At the end, it pulls its own plug. After unmounting the phone, it sends "pkill sshd" over ssh, to terminate the phone's sshd server.

I use sshfs so that copying from phone to laptop is from mounted directory to local directory. Connection is like so:

      # Mount the phone's DCIM ancestor directory locally over ssh.
      # mg4: is an ssh host in ~/.ssh/config
      sshfs mg4:/storage/emulated/0/ ~/mnt/mg4

<comment><USER3> Do you copy them back to your phone and delete the originals to save space on the phone? It would make sense to scale them to the screen size of the phone and no larger.

<comment><USER2> For the time being, since I still have lots of room on my phone, I:

\- Copy them to the laptop.

\- On the laptop, make downscaled copies in another directory.

\- On the phone, I move them to another location still on the phone. This makes the copy operation above faster, since I use "cp -n" (no-clobber) out of laziness; "Copy all the things! Unless!" This gets slow if there are thousands of pics.

The phone and the laptop sort of back each other up.

I'll be smarter about this as my phone starts to fill up. That's the nice thing about making your own tools, you can change them according to your own specific, weird use cases.</comment></comment></comment>


Sorry, Amazon, but Microsoft Is the World's #1 Cloud Vendor - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobevans1/2017/06/01/sorry-amazon-but-microsoft-is-the-worlds-1-cloud-vendor-heres-why-cloud-wars/#cc1cc7379287 <comment><USER2> I had to verify the numbers stated in this article from different sources, and while I think the fair comparison is between Microsoft's "Intelligent Cloud unit" (which excludes Office 365) & AWS, the conclusion on financials in the article is surprisingly true, if only by accident.

Much to my surprise, Azure/MS seems to be making a lot more money, raking in $6.8B in Q1 2017 [1], vs AWS' $3.66B [2]!!

[1]: [http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-q3-fy2017-earnings-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-q3-fy2017-earnings-2017-4)

[2] [https://venturebeat.com/2017/04/27/aws-grabs-3-66-billion- in...](https://venturebeat.com/2017/04/27/aws-grabs-3-66-billion-in-revenue- in-q1-42-more-than-last-year/)

<comment><USER3> The 6.8 in the article is for "Windows Server businesses", wouldn't it be way larger than just cloud sevices ? Even without office, there still would the windows server products in it.

<comment><USER4> So that'll include Windows Server licences in AWS, and GCE too wouldn't it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> tl;dr: This is a Microsoft puff piece written by a PR firm. The ranking is based on abstract things like "completeness of offerings" and "future vision". There's a token revenue comparison as well in an attempt to give some substance which compares all of Microsoft's "cloud" (that is to say inclusive of things like Office 365) against Amazon's IaaS.

<comment><USER6> This has become annoyingly common and incredibly difficult to discern from honest articles these days. Google in particular seems to prefer them over actual blog posts of their own these days, and has major outlets like The Verge and WIRED heavily publishing for them.

I feel like its already well-known people are supposed to disclose when they are paid for an article, but there are non-monetary perks like exclusive interviews/access which aren't clearly disclosed as conflicts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Mostly a short fluff article; however, I have noticed that Azure does have a few powerful features that AWS and GCP lack, most notably InfiniBand (fast interconnects), which I have needed on more than one occasion for HPC tasks. In fact, 4x16 core instances on Azure are currently faster at performing molecular dynamics simulations than 1x"64 core" instance on GCP. But the cost is extremely high, and I still haven't found a good cloud platform for short, high intensity HPC tasks.

That said, Azure probably has the worst UI—slow, buggy, and their CLI doesn't work with Anaconda installed on OS X. I had to hack Anaconda out of my path temporarily while using Microsoft's 'az' tool. Also, their new resource manager system is confusing. In terms of sheer compute capability though, Azure is hard to beat.

<comment><USER8> > I still haven't found a good cloud platform for short, high intensity HPC > tasks.

I would suggest contacting the nearby university with research groups using HPC such as theoretical chemistry, bioinformatics or computational economics. I would guess you could get a special deal for less than what you'd pay for an AWS instance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't think Amazon needs to be #1 in everything they do to achieve the kind of worldwide market domination Bezos wants.

They are top five in many multi-billion dollar industries like eCommerce, streaming video, eBooks, rockets, cloud services, and a bunch of other stuff I'm sure I'm missing.

</comment><comment><USER10> The bulk of Microsoft's customer base is the global "Fortune 1000". They have a cloud structure designed for those customers, and those customers are comfortable working with MS. They are also large consumers of computing so this makes sense (though TBT the article seems more like a market "research" puff piece).

However most startups aren't in that ecosystem; when you start with an empty buffer you don't have the same path dependencies that big businesses do. So the Azure/AWS/Gcs calculus is different, not always in MS's favor. Even Netflix, started by a former MS board director, is on AWS not Azure.

</comment><comment><USER11> ".. Nadella has spurred Microsoft to go all-in and end-to-end on the cloud across its enormous range of products and services that span everything from IoT sensors to mobile devices to hundreds of millions of PCs to [b]mission- critical servers[/b] and all the way in to the data center itself."

Which servers?

<comment><USER12> At least those - [https://nickcraver.com/blog/2016/02/17/stack-overflow-the- ar...](https://nickcraver.com/blog/2016/02/17/stack-overflow-the- architecture-2016-edition/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> They rated Google #6, lol. Clearly the author has little real experience about this subject.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I found out recently that good chunk of this progress (esp. in their SaaS space) is being fueled by open source projects, for example Power BI uses D3 3.5 and angular 1.5.

I hope they open source at least a part of their stack, for example the Azure Service Fabric.

<comment><USER14> Funny that you mention that: they announced the Azure Service Fabric .NET SDK recently went open source and there seems to be some intent to open source more, including possibly an open source version of the runtime:

[https://github.com/Azure/service-fabric](https://github.com/Azure/service- fabric)

<comment><AUTHOR> The sdk is nothing much. Open sourcing ASF is still undecided.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> He couldn't even bother to remove the spell checker line?

</comment><comment><USER16> Microsoft is really getting desperate. Saw similar propaganda recently with Chromebooks. Guess going back to their old MO.</comment>


BlitzMax, Cross-Platform OO BASIC, Is Free and Open Source - <AUTHOR> http://www.blitzbasic.com/Products/_index_.php <comment><USER2> Blitz3D is Free and Open Source too.

And Monkey-X is mostly Open Source. Soon to be fully Open Source after MX2 is out ([http://www.monkey-x.com/Community/topics.php?forum=230](http://www.monkey-x.com/Community/topics.php?forum=230))

[http://monkey-x.com](http://monkey-x.com)

</comment><comment><USER3> Oh hey, this is the first language I ever used, when I was 12!

Don't think I'll ever go back to this though. Never could figure out the 3D stuff back then, but had fun drawing lines, text, occasional bitmaps and playing sound samples.

<comment><USER4> My very first was C64 BASIC, then QBASIC for DOS, which was a really good programming environment for a kid—Dijkstra's warnings about mental mutilation notwithstanding, it was really simple, it came with some games that you could modify, and it had a built-in help manual thing. And plus awesome features like the PLAY function that took a string of notes, which I'm pretty sure helped me even get interested in music, at age 6 or whatever. Me and my brother made all kinds of weird pixel patterns and stuff. One time mom brought home a projector from work, in like 1997, and we made disco lighting by making a full-screen button in Visual Basic that changed colors.

<comment><USER5> > Dijkstra's warnings about mental mutilation notwithstanding

I really dislike that quote: "It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration". I'm not sure how serious he was being but I cannot see how a potentially good programmer would refuse to learn new concepts like they would need to do when first moving to OO, functional, procedural etc. languages. BASIC is obviously less relevant now but it was nice in that it was easy and quick to get started in whereas more complex languages might scared complete beginners away.

<comment><USER6> I'd place an argument that BASIC still is in many ways one of the best languages for human machine empowerment. I've spent the last 20 years of my life programming, (C, C++, PHP, Java, Go) and I have never felt the overwhelming "I can write anything I want if I try hard enough" I did as a kid writing QBasic on a 286. I wrote literally hundreds of games as a kid with graphics and sound, none of which were over a couple thousand lines of code. The thought of doing any of that in the languages I listed above sounds very complicated at best. I didn't get so lost in the details. We need to take a step back and rethink __why __we program. For me it is the sheer joy of creation.

<comment><USER7> I grew up on BASIC as well (TRS-80, Apple II, Atari 800, C64) but I think I'm remembering through rose colored glasses.

A few years ago I tried to write something in "real" BASIC again. GOSUB has no stack and no arguments!? WHAT??? I had forgotten how basic BASIC was.

Go to any high school computer club and all the kids are probably using Unity3D and C# and the stuff they are able to create in a day or 2 blows my mind.

Or watch some kids hack on JavaScript. Access to way more APIs then I ever had back in 8bit BASIC and instant sharing.

<comment><AUTHOR> >Or watch some kids hack on JavaScript. Access to way more APIs then I ever had back in 8bit BASIC and instant sharing.

Can they press F1 and get instant access to the relevant documentation for those APIs? People who write IDEs for BASIC have always put more care and passion in them - press one button for documentation, press one button to compile and deploy, no messing with XML configuration files, copying boilerplate code, or "manifests".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I hate to ask, but is BlitzMax similar to DarkBasic? Which it seems is in the processing of OpenSourcing their programming engine at the moment as well.

\- [https://www.thegamecreators.com/product/dark-basic-pro- open-...](https://www.thegamecreators.com/product/dark-basic-pro-open-source)

<comment><AUTHOR> The two have often been compared, but BlitzMax is lighter on resources, plus i think DarkBasic has a camera system for 2D rendering while BlitzMax doesn't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Neat, I was looking for a "modern" BASIC to make some little games, just to see how it was made before. I've always been interested in BASIC, I don't get why some people hate it...

<comment><USER10> Might have to do with projects based around BASIC being developed by inexperienced developers and most people dread maintaining poorly designed code, probably one of the reasons, there's others I'm sure. Also if you come from a different background to BASIC you get the wrong impression about the language.

<comment><USER9> Yeah and there is a lot of C# people that despise VB, its not helping either

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So how are BlitzBasic, BlitzMax, DarkBasic and MonkeyX related?

Just trying to figure out the differences.

<comment><USER12> Can't comment on DarkBasic or Monkey, but:

BlitzBasic and BlitzMax are about the same language. What BlitzMax provided over BlitzBasic was a direct integration with DirectX and OpenGL, which allowed you to make 2D games with hardware supported rendering.

Your average BlitzBasic "Hello World" would usually take up 50% of the CPU.

<comment><AUTHOR> >Your average BlitzBasic "Hello World" would usually take up 50% of the CPU

On the Amiga?

<comment><USER12> No, on a Core-2 :)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's weird. BlitzBASIC games run well on a 1.2 GHz single core Celeron with 512MB RAM. You must have been doing Hello World wrong :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Re: DarkBASIC, its creators, The Game Creators, are now selling yet another BASIC dialect for cross-platform game development:

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

</comment><comment><USER14> I love the "free as in beer" license:

BlitzPlus is released under the zlib/libpng license.

The zlib/libpng License

Copyright (c) 2013 Blitz Research Ltd

This software is provided 'as-is', without any express or implied warranty. In no event will the authors be held liable for any damages arising from the use of this software.

Permission is granted to anyone to use this software for any purpose, including commercial applications, and to alter it and redistribute it freely, subject to the following restrictions:

1\. The origin of this software must not be misrepresented; you must not claim that you wrote the original software. If you use this software in a product, an acknowledgment in the product documentation would be appreciated but is not required.

2\. Altered source versions must be plainly marked as such, and must not be misrepresented as being the original software.

3\. This notice may not be removed or altered from any source distribution.

</comment><comment><USER15> I used to use DarkBasic from seeing it first time in PC Gamer magazine around 99 or 00, so this is great news.

<comment><USER8> I tried DarkBasic years ago as well, I was into Bryce, C4D, taking a bunch of A/V classes, and learning to program at the time. I was in major overload. I ended up buying a few a of their tools, the pro version, etc (which were mostly made in DarkBasic as well, aka eat you own dog food). But I haven't touched it in years...

But since seeing this post I looked at the DarkBasic website and it appears they are also OpenSourcing their Pro version as well.

[https://www.thegamecreators.com/product/dark-basic-pro- open-...](https://www.thegamecreators.com/product/dark-basic-pro-open-source)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I spent most of my early programming years with BlitzMax. The language itself probably has no future on it's own, but combined with the DX/OpenGL integration and overall straightforwardness, I'd heavily recommend it for interested children.

If you have one or know of one, consider this.

</comment><comment><USER16> Nice! I remember using it some years ago. I'll check it out again.

</comment><comment><USER17> You have to register an account and use a discount code to download it for free. It looks like it has been migrated to open source and used to be commercial at one time. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitz_BASIC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitz_BASIC)

Here is a Wikibooks entry on it: [https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/BlitzMax](https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/BlitzMax)

</comment><comment><USER18> Is the primary use-case of this software for creating games?

<comment><AUTHOR> Most people make games, but you can do a lot more with it. there are functions for lots of things.</comment></comment>


Challenges with distributed systems - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/builders-library/challenges-with-distributed-systems/ <comment><USER2> Interesting read.

Relatedly, FoundationDB has a distributed testing framework called "Simulation", which can simulate distributed failures on a single machine (thread!). Quoting from [https://pierrezemb.fr/posts/notes-about- foundationdb/](https://pierrezemb.fr/posts/notes-about-foundationdb/) :

> We wanted FoundationDB to survive failures of machines, networks, disks, > clocks, racks, data centers, file systems, etc., so we created a simulation > framework closely tied to Flow. By replacing physical interfaces with shims, > replacing the main epoll-based run loop with a time-based simulation, and > running multiple logical processes as concurrent Flow Actors, Simulation is > able to conduct a deterministic simulation of an entire FoundationDB cluster > within a single-thread! Even better, we are able to execute this simulation > in a deterministic way, enabling us to reproduce problems and add > instrumentation ex post facto. This incredible capability enabled us to > build FoundationDB exclusively in simulation for the first 18 months and > ensure exceptional fault tolerance long before it sent its first real > network packet. For a database with as strong a contract as the > FoundationDB, testing is crucial, and over the years we have run the > equivalent of a trillion CPU-hours of simulated stress testing.

<comment><USER3> >simulation of an entire FoundationDB cluster within a single-thread!

Reminds me of an InfoQ post about simulating robot swarms in a single thread: [https://www.infoq.com/articles/java-robot- swarms/](https://www.infoq.com/articles/java-robot-swarms/) (links to Java libraries for that in the comments)

Being able to run everything in a single thread allows to:

1) Do a lot of tests quickly (with virtual time flowing as fast as possible), or arbitrarily slowly if you prefer slow-motion in some contexts.

2) Have determinism. Great for debugging: can reproduce bugs at will, even with full logs on (one trick is to enable them just some time before the bug occurs, when the bug is far from start time).

3) More easily figure out whether a bug is in domain code or a threading issue.

4) Use single-threaded execution as a bench of domain code, and see how much multi-threading/distribution can make them faster or do make them slower.

One constraint is that it rules out some programming styles, since the code must never use waiting constructs, like futures (if the single thread starts to wait, it will wait forever since nothing happens outside of it).

<comment><USER4> _> One constraint is that it rules out some programming styles, since the code must never use waiting constructs_

The constraint here is for testing/simulation to be able to supply their own implementation of waiting constructs, not that waiting constructs cannot be used, of course they can.

<comment><USER3> I meant rules out for the domain code that you want to be able to run in a single thread, which should be by far most of the code (unless you ensure that whatever your code wants to wait for, has then necessarily already happened, but that seems brittle to me).

Inside of the technical layers you use to run it in multiple threads, there are of course wait/notify mechanisms (or similar).

Maybe you thought about wait implementations that would not wait but that would "help", and go on with other computations while the condition is not yet met? If not then I would like you to expand on what you mean, ideally with a few lines of code as a sample to make it clear.

<comment><USER4> I mean wait implementation doesn't have to actually wait, it just has to register an event handler and store some context to continue with. In the simplest case if we assume there is nothing else to process the condition will be met right in the next iteration and will call back that event handler and continue from that point all without any waiting.

<comment><USER3> Ok, I was talking about actually waiting (like in "while(!condition)yield();") with more code to execute at the _same_ (*) virtual time after the wait, not taking care of having some code executed _later_, which is indeed a proper approach in our case, and what "waiting" could mean in some informal specification.

(*) When doing deterministic virtual time scheduling, computations are scheduled to take place at given times, and are processed exactly at the time they are supposed to be. The time can only change once everything that had to be computed at current time has been computed (if in "as fast as possible" mode, the scheduler then just jumps the clock to the next time something is scheduled to happen) (if you want to read more about that, see "time advance request" and "time advance grant" in the HLA norm).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> > It's almost impossible for a human to figure out how to handle UNKNOWN > correctly. What does UNKNOWN really mean? Should the code retry? If so, how > many times? How long should it wait between retries? It gets even worse when > code has side-effects. Inside of a budgeting application running on a single > machine, withdrawing money from an account is easy, as shown in the > following example.

> Figuring out how to handle the UNKNOWN error type is one reason why, in > distributed engineering, things are not always as they seem.

How are such UNKNOWN errors handled in practice? The article doesn't talk much about it.

<comment><USER5> In my experience designing systems like these: There are no hard and fast rules and you handle them in a way that's been decided on a case-by-case basis for each system. Some messages may need to keep retrying with an exponential back off indefinitely. Others may need to retry only once and then send an email to someone because two failures in five minutes is a critical failure. You also have to design things so that if one failure occurs, maybe it stops the entire process, or maybe other messages can go through still and you just log the failure.

It all comes down to the rules of your business and how critical these systems are. Maybe unknown means "failure" or maybe unknown means "someone should get an alert about this and check it out".

I think it's hard because there is no highly visible "crash" that occurs like in a non-distributed system when an unexpected exception occurs and the entire program shuts down. Failures often happen silently and it's difficult to tell where or why something failed. So you have to design each system with that in mind and figure out how each piece needs to deal with uncertainty.

<comment><USER6> For what it's worth, in my experience it's very effective to add this information to the error context: is it a permanent failure (eg validation) or a retryable error. If it is retryable, also add to the error context _when_ it should be retried.

This will allow you to handle these errors appropriately without having to handle these things on a case by case basis.

<comment><USER7> > it's very effective to add this information to the error context: is it a > permanent failure (eg validation) or a retryable error

The discussion was specifically about UNKNOWN errors, i.e. you sent a message but never got a reply back. You don't know whether it was a validation failure or temporary hiccup. For all you know, it's possible the message was received and processed correctly but the response never made it back.

How to handle these unknowns is always going to be case by case. Some combination of retry and give up works for most cases, but there is no silver bullet and usually you have to think hard about the consequences of 1) retrying 2) giving up thinking the request failed even though it actually (silently) succeeded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is there an article (in this "Amazon Builder Library" or elsewhere) that offers practical advices about handling such problems ? Or is there nothing else but "do it on a case by case basis ?"

</comment><comment><USER9> I wonder what if we decide that 'fate sharing' is OK, i.e the client request flow (not the entire process) fails when a network step fails. How long can a system stay operational after it started before the whole thing grinds to a halt? Seconds? Hours? Days? Would there be a huge ding or small ding on the SLIs?

</comment><comment><USER10> Designing your software to work interchangeably with unix domain and regular sockets can also make initial testing much easier. Then you have a no hassle way to simulate lots of ip/port pairs via file names, without port clashes and creating virtual nw interfaces.

</comment><comment><USER11> I wonder if there are any advantages to using formal methods over thread-local simulation in this case.

Eighteen months is a long time of development, and there are at least some benefits to catching bugs in the design phase before pursung implementation.

</comment><comment><USER12> Did anyone else find their "eight failure modes of the apocalypse" incredibly arbitrary given the important sounding name?

</comment><comment><USER13> meh

</comment><comment><USER14> Hmm, how I handle UNKNOWN in our distributed system (10M+ monthly users running on $0 cost infrastructure, [https://github.com/amark/gun](https://github.com/amark/gun) ) is to say that originator is responsible for retries until satisfactorily ACKed.

This means all other nodes in the network (routers, relays, security, storage, etc.) can safely error or not recurse or not retry, without any loss in redundancy guarantees.

Either the operation did succeed silently, and it is OK for originator to try again (idempotency keeps this safe), or things never finished processing, and it is OK to try again despite being out of order (CRDTs keep this safe).

<comment><USER15> This article brought to mind another article which I personally found a bit more profound: [https://bravenewgeek.com/you-cannot-have-exactly-once- delive...](https://bravenewgeek.com/you-cannot-have-exactly-once-delivery/)</comment></comment>


Europe Approves Tough New Data Protection Rules - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/16/technology/eu-data-privacy.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> How do you enforce these laws, how do they define things like misuse, and what constitutes 'personal information'?

For the right to be forgotten, how can I know for certain if the data was removed? Is there a regulatory agency that audits companies?

For the under 16 parental consent, what happens if the child lies about their age? How can a software company enforce this? How can we hold them responsible if everyone on their service lies about their age? Even if the child doesn't lie about their age, how can the software company reliably get consent from the parents?

It would just be easier to make a law that "no personal information can be stored on the internet".

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm sad to see how children are being deprived from basic rights to freely exchange information. It's not the age, that makes you dumb enough to share something you shouldn't for your own good.

This, and enforcing religion on kids by their parents are two things why we, the Internet, should start a campaign for children's rights.</comment>


Visualize code coverage as you write your code - <AUTHOR> https://justin.abrah.ms/js/real-time-code-coverage-analysis.html

<comment><USER2> > If you follow TDD, you ensure the line of code is covered by writing the > test first, ensuring it fails, then writing the line that makes it pass.

This isn't quite true. There are two ways to lose line coverage. The first is if new code duplicates a case that was previous caught elsewhere. For example, suppose current code handles n>=0, with a special where n=0 returns 0, and the new code handles n<=0 by returning 0.

It's not always clear when new code shadows the old code path, leaving it with under 100% coverage.

The other way is through refactoring. My usual example is to replace string search implementation using the naive O(n*m) algorithm with the KMP algorithm, keeping the API unchanged. The KMP machinery is more complicated, and it's unlikely that the tests used to drive the naive implementation will be enough to validate the refactor.

Following the "fear-driven development" methodology means adding more test until you're confident the refactor was valid. But this is "test last", and not part of TDD.

I'm much more an FDD practitioner than I am a TDD one. :) And the idea of live code coverage sounds great to me.</comment>


Emerging Languages Camp - <AUTHOR> http://emerginglangs.com <comment><USER2> ahh, looks like it's fully booked now. I was really thinking of going to this. Oh well.

<comment><USER3> I feel your pain. I'm going to try to crash it :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice Tower of Babel logo. Will OOC be represented?</comment>


Alphabet announces second quarter 2020 results - <AUTHOR> https://abc.xyz/investor/static/pdf/2020Q2_alphabet_earnings_release.pdf <comment><USER2> Revenue flat; EPS down 29%

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks like Alphabets the only one of the large firms with disappointing results</comment>


ShellCheck: Lint for Shell Scripts - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/koalaman/shellcheck <comment><AUTHOR> A Shell syntax (well sometimes beyond that) checking utility with variety of supported formats viz. plugins for Sublime, Atom.

Installation in Debian, Windows or through Docker.</comment>


Ask HN: How safe is it to order food or any other item online during Covid - <AUTHOR> Basically, if the delivery person is following the precautions, how much are the chances of surface to surface transmission <comment><USER2> Put on some gloves, dump the food onto a paper plate, and microwave it, then dispose of everything it came in.

<comment><USER3> What is the best setting for Chocolate Mint Ice Cream?

<comment><USER2> The wipe down the outside if you want to setting

I actually don't like my ice cream entirely rock solid. It's nice if the outside melts a bit.</comment></comment></comment>


Opioid use could account for 20% of decline in men's labor force participation - <AUTHOR> https://www.brookings.edu/bpea-articles/where-have-all-the-workers-gone-an-inquiry-into-the-decline-of-the-u-s-labor-force-participation-rate/ <comment><USER3> Related [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15192829](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15192829) (256 comments)

<comment><USER4> Yes, and "Opioid Use Could Explain 20% of the Drop in American Men from Labor Force" would be a much more accurate title for this item.

> The increase in opioid prescriptions from 1999 to 2015 could account for > about 20 percent of the observed decline in men's labor force participation > (LFP) during that same period.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> An important point of clarity: according to the article, 2/3rds of those men taking opiods (and not in the labor force) are taking _prescription_ pain medicine.

That seems consistent, since severe pain generally prevents or limits work.

<comment><USER6> Presumably you meant with a prescription? Prescription medication is a term for drugs that can/would be prescribed, regardless how they were obtained.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Just finished a thought provoking book on my flight this afternoon titled Man's Search for Meaning which may shed light on potential underlying causes of this crisis. Interesting that decades ago psychologists observed broad differences in the psychological "health" of men living in the US versus Europe for example that potentially left them more susceptible to physiologically degenerative ailments like depression, suicide and drug addiction. I think that one of the defining challenges of our life time will be to figure out a way to broadly replace in society the sense of purpose and meaning one derives from religion and spirituality in an increasingly secularized world.

<comment><USER8> I have wondered if one of the benefits of being a European is having a rich heritage. Coming from a very new country that really has a limited cultural identity it can be hard to grasp onto anything patriotic that feels legitimate. Couple that with less importance on family values and an increasingly isolated and individualist society it's also hard to come across anything feeling much like a community.

Not being able to anchor your contributions to anything meaningful past "a business" it can be easy to feel like it doesn't really matter that much.

To poke at the digital world, most of what we create on our computers is ephemeral, transient and bound for quick obsolescence. With no roots in the real world, with no past to be a part of and no community to belong to, our efforts existing briefly at best, perhaps it is no wonder everything is underscored by a lonely existential dread.

<comment><USER9> Huh, you think patriotism is more legitimate in Europe? Subjectively speaking, I have to say I think it's the opposite, because patriotism and nationalism almost destroyed Europe in the first half of the 20th century, and that still shows in how people think here, IMO.

<comment><USER8> Revisiting this comment, it's really not to do with patriotism at all and more about individual existentialism. I seem to have connected to a story arc I didn't realise existed by using the word patriotism.

I feel like having more history lends a bit more material to feel a connection to the past, and like you are part of a continuum, which can lend legitimacy to your current existence. You aren't just a fleshy blob meandering through a brief existence, you are part of a long and storied past of fleshy blobs and your existence is a chance to contribute to that story.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This title is not in line with HN guidelines: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait."

I would like to ask the OP to refrain from posting provocative titles which don't comply with the guidelines. I get that the issue is serious but all that title did was alarm me and waste my time.

<comment><USER4> Yes! And it's based on a misreading of the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> How much is this due to people really needing these prescriptions, and then aren't informed or helped quit, and how much is this due to plain overprescription?

It should be pretty easy to compare with any comparable country to see what the difference in opioid prescription is.

<comment><USER12> The US prescribes far more opioids than any other country.

[http://www.painpolicy.wisc.edu/opioid-consumption- data](http://www.painpolicy.wisc.edu/opioid-consumption-data)

Here we see the comparison with the AMRO zone (the Americas) which shows the US and Canada prescribe a lot more opioids than any other country in the Americas.

And here we compare AMRO to EURO: [http://imgur.com/a/bb4wD](http://imgur.com/a/bb4wD)

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/03/15/ameri...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/03/15/americans- use-far-more-opioids-than-anyone-else-in-the-world/?utm_term=.b5705cca9112)

> And what it finds about the United States is jaw-dropping: Even when the > list is restricted to the top 25 heaviest consuming countries, the United > States outpaces them all in opioid use.

> For example, Americans are prescribed about six times as many opioids per > capita as are citizens of Portugal and France, even though those countries > offer far easier access to health care. The largest disparity noted in the > U.N. report concerns hydrocodone: Americans consume more than 99 percent of > the world's supply of this opioid.

<comment><USER11> Interesting. What is driving this? Obviously the finger has been pointed towards medical companies bribing doctors to prescribe their meds, but that doesn't explain the use opioids in particular (other than if you are very cynical and believe that pharmaceutical companies want addicted customers - which might be partly true but hopefully not the whole truth).

The question becomes - what are doctors elsewhere doing?

\- Prescribing physiotherapy for e.g back pains, rather than meds?

Or

\- prescribing other kinds of pain medication?

Or something else?

There is also a question of how many of these people had non-prescription addictions and simply switched to prescription drugs because it's convenient and doctors can be persuaded to prescribe.

Here in Europe I know many people (most?) who have been prescribed pain medication at some point, but no one who has had potent opioids outside of hospital. Typical pain med prescriptions are for higher-than-usual doses of non prescription drugs like paracetamol/ibuprofen and only in rare cases weaker synthetic opioids like tramadol.

Hydrocodone and similar opioids are typically only used for terminal cancer patients and are banned from general prescription. Methadone is used for treatment of heroin addiction though.

<comment><USER12> Some time ago the VA noticed a lot of people had long term untreated pain. They ran a campaign "pain: the 5th vital sign". That campaign asked doctors to ask patients if they were in pain, and asked doctors to treat pain. It also said opioids are weakly addictive when used to treat pain.

It turns out that opioids, when used to treat long term pain, are more addictive than they thought. And also if you ask people about pain you end up treating a heck of a lot more people.

People in long term pain do need treatment, but that should normally be opioids as a last resort, and carefully controlled in a pain management clinic.

Here's the VA document: [https://www.va.gov/PAINMANAGEMENT/docs/Pain_As_the_5th_Vital...](https://www.va.gov/PAINMANAGEMENT/docs/Pain_As_the_5th_Vital_Sign_Toolkit.pdf)

Here's a rebuttal which started the reduction in prescriibing opioids for long term pain: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1924634/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1924634/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > _Prime age men who are out of the labor force, however, report less > happiness and more sadness during their days than do unemployed men, > although they evaluate their lives in general more highly than unemployed > men. Prime age and older women who are out of the labor force report > emotional well-being and life evaluations in general that are about on par > with employed women the same age_

Tens of millions of men are suffering in a way that women aren't. It seems when something affects the sexes differently society treats it as gender issue and seeks to help women specifically.

There appear to be specific gender issues here hurting men more. I'd hypothesize unequal expectations. Is this an issue to look at from a gendered perspective?

</comment><comment><USER14> The Opium Wars brought China to its knees, from which it is only now recovering. I'm surprised that the leaders of the US aren't more worried about this.

<comment><USER15> Only now? Can you elaborate?

<comment><USER16> Probably he meant that China went from being a top #1 economy in the world by a huge margin when the opioid epidemic began there, and it has just recently became #1 again, so far by a small margin. That sounds about right. They lost ca. 200 years.

Of course explaining that by opioids alone would be balancing between a huge oversimplification and a plain lie, but at least opioids have been the biggest single factor.

<comment><USER17> Just because they fell in the rankings doesn't mean they actually lost anything.

E.g. Another way for a country to lose the #1 economy spot is for it to simply stay the same while other nations (e.g. Europe in this case) make huge advances.

Being fair, a few other things happened in there too. I don't think that during the communists' Cultural Revolution the country was primarily being held back by opiod abuse.

<comment><USER16> In a way it was. Majority of population were just off the drugs, and most kids who became 'red guards' \- they were born in China's darkest days - <USER2> prenatal drug problem so they were kinda mentally impaired which caused most or all that shit.

If such a relatively innocent thing as inhaling lead vapours from suddenly omnipresent cars in 1960s and 1970s could cause a 1980s-1990s crime wave in the U.S., it is easy to see what putting whole nation on opioids could do with the next generation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think the thing that annoys me about modern medical trends such as the enormous rise in obesity, Alzheimer's, autism and chronic pain and ensuing opiod abuse is the shoulder shrugging by the medical establishment as to the cause. Any meaningful change for the worse in medical statistics over time seems to be uninteresting to most of the medical community and is almost always ascribed to "better reporting" or moral failings of the patient.

</comment><comment><USER19> This title is whack. Here's the quote from the article:

 _"...In earlier research presented at the Boston Fed in 2016, Krueger found that nearly half of prime age men who are not in the labor force take pain medication on a daily basis, and that two-thirds of those men—or about 2 million—take prescription pain medication on a daily basis..."_

I take a baby aspirin every morning, so I would qualify as somebody taking pain medication daily.

I believe the opiod problem in the U.S. is an extremely serious thing, therefore we need to be very careful about what kinds of information we stick in our heads regarding it.

There's a ton of correlation here, things like "Over the last 15 years, LFP fell more in counties where more opioids were prescribed"

Well, okay. If more people are being injured and are in pain, they would get medication, right? And therefore there would be less people in the workforce. Because people are on pain meds doesn't mean that's keeping them from work. It might mean that things that keep you from work significantly involve pain.

I have no intention of trashing the article. It's worth reading. I would simply advise caution in jumping to conclusions.

My opinion is that mankind is finally creating the perfect world (relatively speaking compared to all of history): plenty of food and shelter. The internet and gaming means you'll never be bored. Throw in a little pharmacological assistance for any pain, boredom, ennui, depression, or loneliness you're feeling, and what more could you want?

But that's rampant speculation, which I readily admit. I worry about articles that encourage reader speculation without explicitly calling it out.

<comment><USER20> I found that earlier research article: [https://www.bostonfed.org/-/media/Documents/economic/conf/gr...](https://www.bostonfed.org/-/media/Documents/economic/conf/great- recovery-2016/Alan-B-Krueger.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Why do we continue to demonize those that use prescription pain meds? In doing so, we force them out of mainstream society, hurting our economy and communities in the process.

<comment><USER22> It's a mater of scale. This number of magnitude can only mean 2 things:

\- a lot of those people do not need to take those products. Then we have an substance abuse problem.

\- a lot of those people DO need to take them. Then we have a public health problem.

In both cases, ouch.

<comment><USER23> Substance abuse isn't inherently immoral or ungodlike or whatever. In some cases it can cause harm. Causing harm is a problem at individual and societal levels. Public policy should aim to reduce harm, but our drug policies almost all aim to inflict multiple forms of devastating harm to scare or crush addicts into sobriety. Worse, it doesn't even solve the faux "problem" of substance abuse.

<comment><USER22> You confuse "abuse" and "consumption". "abuse" assumes there is harm.

<comment><USER23> Abuse is any use that is unacceptable to those making the determination. With illegal and prescription drugs, that's usually any recreational use at all.

Substitute "recreational use" for "abuse" if it makes you feel better about the semantics. Then we can dissect the finer points of "recreational". An LEO told me his use of wine wasn't recreational because he only used it socially, not for the effects, whereas recreational drug users are always using it for the effects.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


It Wasn't the Cows After All - <AUTHOR> https://agreenerworld.org/a-greener-world/it-wasnt-the-cows-after-all/ <comment><USER2> Nah, it's still the cows. No citation of a livestock emissions figure is made by the author. They took an excellent study which didn't mention cows at all and repackaged it as clickbait for this company's blog...

29 gigagrams of methane per year from fertilizer plants, says the study. (The 28 gigagrams figure in the article is misquoted, Ctrl+F for "29 (±18) Gigagram per year" here [https://www.elementascience.org/article/10.1525/elementa.358...](https://www.elementascience.org/article/10.1525/elementa.358/) )

6.2 teragrams of methane per year from livestock emissions, says this other study [https://extension.psu.edu/livestock-methane-emissions-in- the...](https://extension.psu.edu/livestock-methane-emissions-in-the-united- states)

Last I checked 6.2 teragrams is a lot more than 29 gigagrams.

On another note... I highly recommend looking at the original paper. Awesome visual of emissions data captured by Cornell University sensors onboard a Google Street View vehicle! Image here: [https://www.elementascience.org/article/10.1525/elementa.358...](https://www.elementascience.org/article/10.1525/elementa.358/elementa-7-358-g2.png)

It's unfortunate that so much methane is released by fertilizer plants through incomplete chemical reactions, improper combustion, and leaks. 100x more than was previously estimated, in fact.

Also a bit curious - how did Cornell researchers get their sensors onboard a Google Street View car? Did Cornell approach Google for this study or vice versa?

<comment><USER3> > _It 's unfortunate that so much methane is released by fertilizer plants > through incomplete chemical reactions, improper combustion, and leaks. 100x > more than was previously estimated, in fact._

It's not unfortunate. It's not luck. It's design.

And since it's technology, not fortune, it can be redesigned and reworked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Roger Gordon ([http://www.greennh3.com/](http://www.greennh3.com/)) has a design for a small-scale ammonia production system that individual farmers could drive from their own wind turbines. It produces no methane. He has not found investors yet.

Driving these big polluters out of business would be a great service to the world, and could be profitable besides. They don't just leak methane, they also release huge amounts of CO2. They have no reason to leak methane; it even costs them money. They are just sloppy.

</comment><comment><USER5> > Once cattle—raised on grass without synthetic fertilizer—are accurately > assessed

Except this does not cover the vast majority of cattle consumed. And it doesn't cover the effect of forested land being cleared for cattle production.

</comment><comment><USER6> Gigagram? 10 thousand ton?

<comment><USER4> One thousand tons.

So, 29,000 tons, equivalent to a million tons of CO2. Plus the actual CO2, even more than that.</comment></comment>


Android diehard spends 60 days in WebOS land - <AUTHOR> http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/60-days-in-webos-land-an-android-users-perspective-20110722/

<comment><USER2> This seems to be so consistent with people who have tried WebOS, aside from the hardware (and possibly subsequent lack of consumer adoption as a result) all the reviews seem to think it is a highly capable and competitive OS.

I wonder what held back Palm from making competitive hardware when they were so clearly on the right track with the OS?</comment>


Google Is Evil - <AUTHOR> https://fakenous.net/?p=742 <comment><USER2> > Thoughtful people are beginning to understand that American universities > have become secular cathedrals whose main goal, as Jonathan Haidt explains, > is to promote social justice rather than truth.

RWNJ. Move along.

</comment><comment><USER3> The author just want's google's power. Then surely it will good.</comment>