Fed announces details of new interbank service to support instant payments - <AUTHOR> https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pressreleases/other20200806a.htm <comment><USER2> Settlement between banks in the United States is _astoundingly_ complicated, for (fascinating, terrifying) historical reasons. FedNow is a huge step towards fixing holes that private companies have been papering over for over two decades.

Blatant self promotion: for anybody interested in learning more about the Automated Clearing House system (which FedNow will eventually supplement) and interbank settlement in general, I wrote a summary of much of it here: [https://blog.yossarian.net/2019/12/25/A-shallow-dive-into- th...](https://blog.yossarian.net/2019/12/25/A-shallow-dive-into-the-American- banking-system)

<comment><USER3> My first job out of university was working for a debt collection firm that made its own ACH engine in Perl. I remember all the 99999s and headers and stuff. I didn't work very much on the engine though (thankfully).

I was pretty shocked at just how far behind the American banking system was when I lived overseas for a bit. I wrote about it here:

[https://battlepenguin.com/tech/the-american-banking- system-i...](https://battlepenguin.com/tech/the-american-banking-system-is- still-in-the-1990s/)

<comment><USER4> Your blog article is startlingly incorrect pretty early on. Individuals can and do use ACH between each other all the time. It is literally how paper checks work in the US. And I've been able to use a routing number and account number to send money to someone else online via ACH for decades...

<comment><USER5> In the UK if I want to send someone money to anyone in the UK I open the mobile app and input their sort and account number, type in the amount of money and hit send. Done.

Similarly in the NL if I want to send someone money to anyone in the EuroZone I open my bank app type in their IBAN type in the amount of money and hit send. Done.

Back in 2017 when I lived in the US this just wasn't possible. If I wanted to send money to someone I had to use Paypal, TransferWise (or similar), Venmo, etc. Some banks had direct access to ACH but far from all, then if they do support it it takes two days to arrive. Some banks allowed easy instant payments between accounts within the same bank. Much of my family purposefully keep an account with a small west coast credit union to facilitate moving money amongst ourselves.

Maybe things have gotten massively better in the US in the last 3+ years, but it was light years behind the UK and NL. In terms of speed, ease of use, and adoption.

<comment><USER6> Those transactions always make me nervous - is there a reason they don't have a step of showing the account name when you input the number? Like, I type 31-45-76 0452768934 and it says "Mr & Mrs Y O Mama" or "Notafraud & Co. Ltd." or whatever, as a confirmation?

<comment><USER5> We have this for IBAN payments within the NL, I can't speak for the rest of the EuroZone.

<comment><USER7> The name check isn't universally supported, so it is better to say that it is strictly optional.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If anyone from the FED is reading this I have this advice: don't use ISO20022! (I've been working on the brazilian instant payments project, known as PIX). It's an overly-complicated-try-to-solve-everything standard that promises interoperability but only delivers pain and misery. Since each country has its own standards for person and account identification, in dealing with these local realities, the ISO20022 adds quite a lot of complexity. But all this cost does not result in interoperability. In fact, each payment scheme end up with a localized version of the standard, incompatible with others. What could have been a clean API, ends up a mess.

<comment><USER9> I'm also working with Brazilian instant payments schema, aka PIX. We've simply created a mapping layer to convert all ISO messaging to json.

Internally all our logic runs on json. It works because at the end of the day, payments only need a few fields to work: Source, Destination, Amount.

<comment><USER10> Quite scary to run financial transactions using an untyped format.

<comment><USER11> Everything is JSON these days, unfortunately.

<comment><USER12> You can apply schemas and force integers although. You also have typed serialization formats such as protobuf.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I moved to India at the start of the year and there's the Universal Payment Interface (UPI) here that essentially allows a Venmo like interface to transfer $ instantaneously from any bank account to another - by simply using the recipient's phone number or a QR code. There are multiple apps that interface with UPI, and the barrier to entry isn't high - allowing for good competition on the UX.

Literally every person I've met here or wanted to transact with in some way accepts payments via UPI... heck I was forced (or rather "strongly recommended") to pay a bribe to a cop that they were able to accept via UPI.

I felt like I stepped into the future. Transferring money to a friend w/ a different bank in the US is such a hassle if they don't have Venmo (and more than half in my circle don't), and I've had horrendous experiences with Zelle (terrible UX, confusing and often incorrect sending limits that I have to call my bank to resolve).

In India I mostly use Google Pay as my interface to UPI and wow, it's a magical user experience.

Can't wait for there to be more competition in payments UX in the US once this service is set up.

<comment><USER14> > I felt like I stepped into the future.

It's more like stepping out of the past. It's not that India is particularly ahead, it's that the US is particularly behind.

The EU for example has essentially instant SEPA transfers now and has done for a while.

<comment><USER15> It's counter-intuitive, but if you think about it, less develop countries are in a better position to deploy fully integrated systems.

E.g.: Portugal has a great, free, cross-bank, ATM system since the beginning [1] because Portuguese banks were late to the party in regards to deploying such machines. They could learn from other countries and create a more resilient system, which has since been expanded to be able to pay various services, from utilities, fines, tolls, phones, withdrawals without cards (with phone), etc. Countries that developed earlier have to suffer with a lot of baggage and the Banking industry is not known for it's desire to innovate its tech.

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

<comment><USER16> How's MBpay? I loved using Multibanco when living in Portugal but I never got around to using MBpay, which I think is the equivalent to what's being discussed for the US, essentially.

<comment><USER17> Getting worse by the moment due to EU requirements for EU-wide standardization

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> One thing I don't see mention regarding the existing US ACH (or whatever interbank) system is that there is absolutely no verification or security in this system. Just like verification of paper check signature and a whole lot of other financial items - most banks allow anything until questioned. The easiest and cost effective way is to let it happen and reimburse for failures.

1\. I have linked a non-joint account in my name at bank A to another (non- joint) account of my wife at bank B (accidentally) without any verification of any kind. I call BS on anyone claiming they magically checked the home address link or know we are married.

2\. I have walked in to my bank and did a wire transfer of a large amount without any kind of verification. They didn't check my ID. I am not kidding. I did enter my ATM card and PIN. Then why do they have a $500 or $1000 limit at ATM. If someone did get my ATM card and PIN, they just had to appear confident and walk in to the branch. This is one of the largest banks in the US.

3\. Because my wife doesn't like to deal with customer service of various financial items (credit-cards, 401k etc). I regularly call and just say I am her (clearly feminine name) and the conversation carries on as if nothing is surprising/suspicious.

4\. On the other extreme, IRS's "MyIRS" site let us authenticate yourself (first time setup) using a security question that allows one to type _any_ financial account number. CC, Bank, 401k, whatever. I mean how tf did they get all that data on me? legally? Why does IRS need my CC number?

IMHO, the only thing keeping us secure is that nobody from outside US has really tried to mess around with US banks.

<comment><USER19> > They didn't check my ID. I am not kidding. I did enter my ATM card and PIN.

If this is the bank I think it is, once you inserted your card and entered your (valid) PIN, the teller was shown the color scan of your ID card that you presented when you opened the account. The teller then uses this to compare to you without you handing over a (possibly-faked) ID card.

That is why this bank will periodically ask you to provide a new copy of your ID.

<comment><USER18> That is a fair point. It just felt too simple for a large transaction. I guess I should be happy at how easy it was.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> What I really want this payment system to do is eliminate the direct debit system from checking accounts and return some real security to banking. Secure, irrevocable payments, only initiated by me, from my account to others.

No more system that allows mistake debits or others to accidentally/maliciously deduct from my checking account, such that _I_ have to be watching for errors and ask for them to be fixed. Or wondering if someone's payment to me might be reversed. Or having my (or your) parents fall victim to an advance fee scam with bounced checks 2 weeks after deposit. Ridiculous.

It's well past time for this. Or at least now give me the choice to have those loopholes eliminated from my checking account.

<comment><USER21> There will be banks that offer products for handling pulls differently, it's a product decision, various features around this are available for the big boys, just haven't trickled down to the masses. But this decade they will. Has nothing to do with Fed Now.

Irrevocability- for consumer payments there will always be revocability. Humans doing stuff make mistakes, and need to be able to "take it back." At the ledger level, all transactions are irrevocable. You apply other transactions on top to implement recovability.

<comment><USER22> _Irrevocability- for consumer payments there will always be revocability._

And yet, if you go into a store and buy something with cash, you have never been able to just arbitrarily reverse that payment and keep the goods several months later, and the sky has not fallen.

 _Humans doing stuff make mistakes, and need to be able to "take it back."_

And what about the humans who didn't make a mistake, but simply chose to abuse the system at the expense of whoever they transferred the money to? Certainty and security are important for those on both sides of a transaction. If you have a dispute, that's what legal systems are there for. The quasi-judicial role that financial services play in resolving disputes, often with little regulatory oversight and absolutely no requirement to be neutral or objective, is long overdue for retirement.

<comment><USER23> Scale is relevant. It's why people don't typically make down payments on houses with sacks of nickles.

And why people don't wire funds to buy a bag of snackums.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Nearly all first world countries enjoy instant payments at the point of sale and person to person. It boggles my mind that it has taken this long and a pandemic to even set the gears in motion, all while battling ridiculous levels of cheque and credit card fraud.

<comment><USER25> As a general rule, the US is terrible at a lot of first-world things for a good reason: because it was the first (or close).

We have crappy old subways, airports, bridges, skyscrapers, and so on... because we built them early, versions 1.0. And they stuck around.

Other countries had the luxuries of building their versions decades later, when the technology was 2.0 and 3.0 and so on.

So the US is stuck with both old and crappier versions of a lot of stuff, but where it still doesn't make financial sense to rip them out and replace them with the newest.

Our financial system suffers from a lot of similar flaws. E.g. by the time other countries knew enough to base their credit cards on chips+PIN, the US was still stuck with a legacy installed base of stripes+signatures. Money transfers is just one more example.

<comment><USER26> Banking in general and international banking, predate the US

London, Glasgow, Budapest and Paris all have metro systems that predate the New York Subway

There are multiple bridges that are still in use that predate European colonization of North America

While the oldest airport is in the US, (College Park), Hamburg, Bucharest, Bremen, Rome, Amsterdam, Paris, Sydney all follow very shortly after

AFAICT Skyscrapers is really the only example you give where the US canonically built the v1.0

I think that there are probably other reasons, my suspicion is primarily rent seeking

<comment><USER27> I have always been under the impression it is because the US wasn't bombed to bits during WWII and didn't basically get to re-think infrastructure.

<comment><USER28> Based on things like the Chicago Fire and the SF Quake, it seems (at least anecdotally) clear that massive destruction has a positive effect on infrastructure down the road.

<comment><USER26> The Great Fire of London (CE 1666) did this for London too

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Will this be anything like SEPA and the easy, cheap, fast, ubiquitous interbank transfers allowed in Europe?

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

<comment><USER30> Just the B2B part of SEPA.

<comment><USER31> Kind of typical. Wouldn't want the government to provide any useful service directly to it's citizens without some corporate middleman. Still a very good step though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> > _The rapid expenditure of COVID emergency relief payments highlighted the > critical importance of having a resilient instant payments infrastructure > with nationwide reach, especially for households and small businesses with > cash flow constraints, "_

The main issue with releasing cash as I understand it wasn't that it wasn't arriving fast enough; rather it was verifying the recipient was eligible and was who they say they were.

The only way to solve that as I see it is with a national ID which I am more against the more I hear about the abuses that both democrats and republicans do with what little power they have to identify political enemies.

Obviously ACH could be faster but when it comes to getting gov money back I just don't see how the 2 extra days was the issue.

<comment><USER33> Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Real ID act[1] is a national ID in every way but the name.

[1]: [https://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/real-id-act- text.pdf](https://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/real-id-act-text.pdf)

<comment><USER34> _Correct me if I 'm wrong, but the Real ID act[1] is a national ID in every way but the name._

If it was a national ID, it would be mandatory. Real ID is optional.

<comment><USER35> Not if you want to travel by air.

<comment><USER36> That's an abusive attempt at a workaround by the Fed to make it mandatory.

Thankfully, it appears my state will continue to offer the same IDs it always has in addition to the "enhanced" ones. I suppose I'll have to start using my passport for domestic flights in 2021.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> In 2024, USA will reach the current present in Europe ;)

Since 2017, the SEPA Instant Credit Transfer protocol is enabled in Europe. Which is basically what FedNow will be.

Multiple apps and banks have built on top of it solutions for consumers and businesses.

I interviewed Bizum, the success story of Spain related to instant payments. Here, "bizum" is a verb. 100% of banks supoort it. Everyone, kids and adults, use it to pay for beers, food or presents [https://www.javierescribano.me/bizum/](https://www.javierescribano.me/bizum/)

<comment><USER38> _" Since 2017, the SEPA Instant Credit Transfer protocol is enabled in Europe. Which is basically what FedNow will be."_

The UK has had instant interbank payments (FASTER) since May 2008 ;)

[https://www.fasterpayments.org.uk/our- achievements](https://www.fasterpayments.org.uk/our-achievements)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> We have this in the UK. It's called Faster Payments. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster_Payments_Service](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster_Payments_Service)

Never had a problem with it. I use a few banks that are technically good, and I can send a payment from one to the other & get a push notification a couple of seconds after sending cash from one account to another. It's great!

<comment><USER40> Yeah, we have a similar system called the "New Payments Platform" in Australia. You can use the traditional account/branch identifier numbers, or register a phone number or company number to an account. So people can generally just instantly transfer you money without even asking for details if they have your phone number.

<comment><USER41> Under the hood, it is currently significantly more expensive than BECS however.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> This is quite a shame on the US part to be so much behind the times:

Kenya has had a Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system for years supported by the central bank which works in near-realtime during working hours, and an even better one was recently introduced by a conglomeration of the local banks which works in real-time 24/7 called Pesalink: [https://www.ipsl.co.ke/pesalink](https://www.ipsl.co.ke/pesalink) ..

<comment><USER11> Agreed. What's an even bigger shame is that places like the US and UK don't have proper centralized and verified citizen databases and national identification documents linked to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Planet Money did a piece on ACH seven years ago. It's a batch system written in COBOL in the 1970s:

[https://www.npr.org/transcripts/229224964](https://www.npr.org/transcripts/229224964)

And that's why the Feds want to replace it, not refactor it.

<comment><USER44> Your Visa transactions are running through older TPF 360 assembler. Old isn't an excuse for bad.

<comment><USER43> It's not bad. It is simply a product of its time: according to planet money in that 2013 piece, ACH batch processing runs only once per day and only during bank hours (no weekends, etc).

Presumably, increasing that frequency would break something in the system or it would already have been done.

In the '70s, no one predicted 24/7 banking or even ATMs let alone internet payments. I remember my father using an ATM for the first time in 1981, I think. Perhaps it was 1980. But we had to drive 7 miles to get to it.

Stocks were still traded in fractions, not decimals!

<comment><USER45> Things have improved somewhat since then, with the introduction of Same Day ACH, which provides two additional ACH processing periods each business day.

[https://www.nacha.org/rules/same-day-ach-moving-payments- fas...](https://www.nacha.org/rules/same-day-ach-moving-payments-faster- phase-3)

It's more expensive than regular ACH transactions. The above page seems to indicate the sending bank has to pay the receiving bank 5.2 cents per same day transaction on top of regular ACH fees (that appear to be 0.0185 cents per transaction sent or received for 2020).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Nearly _two decades_ ago, in 2002, I remember being appalled at how slow money transfer worked. If I deposited my paycheck at my bank, it could take two or three days before that money was available (and my bank compounded the sin by including the amount in the "total" for my account but not all of that money "in" my account was actually "available"). In late '02 I was so irritated by this[0] that I actually started cashing my paychecks at the issuing bank (which was across the street from the building where I worked) and walking the money to my own bank two blocks away and depositing it. Cash deposits were, I believe by federal law, immediately available.

Even then, there was no excuse why physically walking cash from one place to another, with in-person interactions at both ends, should have been faster than a direct electronic transfer, but it was, by a factor of something like 150. Improved electronic infrastructure has been a _LONG_ time coming.

[0]The final straw was the time I deposited a check at the bank, then wrote a check on that money, put it in an envelope and mailed it, and the check _still_ bounced. It still kind of boggles my mind that the system was that slow, although I kind of assume there was a certain amount of bank-being-gougy in there too.

<comment><USER47> I remember when I was younger hearing about "check kiting" which appeared to be the exact opposite of your bounced check ... somehow you could turn the slow money transfer around and build up a huge balance by playing with the delays.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> > _The target launch date for the service remains 2023 or 2024, with a more > specific time frame to be announced after additional work is completed._

4 years away, at least...

<comment><USER24> Just to be pedantic, 2023 is less than 2½ years away, so not "4 years at least".

<comment><USER49> In my experience with government, 2.5 years easily becomes "4 years at least". Maybe that's what the person meant?

<comment><USER50> The FED is not government. And if it's slow it's because of the big impact it would have if they messed up, and because it's already hard for them to hold a positive reputation without messing up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> This has little to no chance of coming into service. It's absolutely a direct threat to Visa & 100+ others. They will make sure that this is killed in Congress + legislation will likely be written prohibiting the Fed from creating something like this ever again.

[1] [https://www.propublica.org/article/congress-is-about-to- ban-...](https://www.propublica.org/article/congress-is-about-to-ban-the- government-from-offering-free-online-tax-filing-thank-turbotax)

PS I knew I'd get these downvotes. The comment stands. Uncomfortable things should be said.

<comment><USER52> Visa and Mastercard are doing just fine in the UK, it would be highly inconvenient to have to bank transfer to every merchant you interact with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Canadian here. This sounds like Interac eTransfer, which is available to any person sending/receiving money where the endpoints are Canadian banking institutions (all of them, I guess?).

We've had this since 2003.

<comment><USER54> This has been such an ongoing issue in the US that a massive industry has sprung up to fill the void for "instant transfers". Paypal, Venmo, Apple/Google Pay, Square Cash, etc are all because the US financial transfer system is hopelessly outdated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Is this going to be like FPS that we've had in the UK and works wonderfully? (It is so fast, that if I pay e.g my Monzo from my Starling, the received notification from my Monzo happens before the sent notification from my Starling. It's absolutely amazing and totally free for the consumer).

</comment><comment><USER55> > The target launch date for the service remains 2023 or 2024

Does anyone in fin tech know why it takes so long?

My understanding is this achieves the same goal as wire transfer, which already exists today, but is for whatever reason super expensive. Why is wire transfer so expensive?

<comment><USER56> Just as a hunch, but maybe "move fast and break things" doesn't really resonate with the people who are concerned about where billions of dollars are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> With this tech the Fed will now be able to buy junk bonds with monopoly money at light speed.

</comment><comment><USER58> How come the US -- the biggest economy in the world, and home of the most sophisticated banking sector on the planet -- is still not equipped with such a system? Are banks resisting it and if yes, why would they?

<comment><USER59> > _is still not equipped with such a system?_

Inertia, at least partially.

It's why chip-and-pin is still not a thing in many places: Old School credit card POS devices were distributed to a lot of places over the years, and those only had the magnetic strip readers. Replacing is time consuming and no one wants to go through the expense and effort of changing it in all the places that they're in (e.g., gas pumps).

Sometimes it's handy to be a late/delayed adopter of technology and to skip a generation or two.

<comment><USER60> This is often said to be the reason, but that alone does not explain it IMO.

Chip-cards replaced old cards here in 2006. During those 14 years every reader has already been updated several times, including gas pumps.

So it seems somehow the US has a much lower rate of updating readers - I'd really like to know why that is... Maybe the merchant services market is somehow radically different?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> When I moved a couple of years ago I started banking with Fidelity which has 17-digit account numbers. Using those for ACH with ConEd resulted in them failing to bill me at the end of the month. I thought it was a typo and put the ACH numbers in again, only to fail and get disconnected and flagged at the end of next month plus some late fees.

The whole problem was that the account number was too long. No error messages anywhere. Fidelity also has a 13-digit account number version that I've been using ever since.

What a mess.

</comment><comment><USER62> There was a technology that I started seeing about 10-15 years ago (I believe Paypal used it at some point) where bank payments happened "instantaneously" because they were backed by a credit card on file. The bank settlement still took the same amount of time under the hood, but because the credit card acted as a backstop, there was an appearance of an instant payment. I was always surprised at how few merchants adopted this. Hopefully, FedNow will make it totally obsolete.

</comment><comment><USER63> I thought (and maybe just my personal conspiracy feeling) that banks lagged on transactions mainly to hold on to the cash longer and get interest. Secondary thought was just poor old technology debt.

Something akin to hearing that payroll at a large company was a batch job dumping a ton of text files to a share or something and the bank slurped them up for direct deposit.

<comment><USER30> Partially this is due to self interest - holding the cash longer and getting interest - but most of it is actually due to self protection. Small banks have less cushion to recover from fraud, have less people to process payments quickly, and generally lack technological sophistication. NACHA represents all of the various institutions, from JPM down to the First Bank of Your Hometown, so it has limited flexibility in adopting new things that increase cost/requirements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> What does this change from my perspective? No more waiting 2-3 business days for all my transfers between banks or 3rd parties?

</comment><comment><USER65> Does anything actually exist yet, is this just a notice of intent?

<comment><USER66> >>> The target launch date for the service remains 2023 or 2024, with a more specific time frame to be announced after additional work is completed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> One of the many things that surprised me in the US was seemingly complicated means of transferring cash between bank accounts. This process has been trivial in Nigeria (and some other countries) for a long time now with the NIBSS settlement system. I look forward to hearing about the progress of this project and the possible impact to existing payment services such as Venmo, Cashapp, Paypal...

</comment><comment><USER68> India is having similar concept (UPI) in place from 3 years. About 40% transactions have moved to this new payment processing.

</comment><comment><USER69> Welcome to 2005, you're gonna like it! /s

To be fair, this has been the norm here for decades and it baffles most of us that some shady companies like venmo are used so much in the USA. The same with 'numbered accounts' or no-factor authentication where people can steal your money by knowing a single number.

</comment><comment><USER70> instant payments were just introduced in Germany, it is weird if you get the money the same day someone wire transfered it to your account. Wire transfers are very common in Germany, checks are almost gone. But these instant transfers are really new. Before those transfers were cleared once a day, I think.

<comment><USER71> Same-day wire transwers were already common in Germany in the last few years with the old system (the settlement is done every few hours), except for a few slow banks.

SEPA Instant is literally settled in a few seconds. I tried this out a while ago: Started the money transfer from one bank account to another, logged in into my second bank account immediately after and the money was already there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> Can the US also implement IBAN please?

</comment><comment><USER73> For those in the crypto world, one real-world use case I hear sometimes is faster inter-bank settlement, in essence providing a tech solution to a (semi?) regulatory problem. Does the Fed's actions meaningfully impact your value proposition?

</comment><comment><USER74> The Fed wants transfers to go through them.

I hope not. What incompetent assholes.

Hopefully the banks start taking making public consumer/business/bank facing standard apis seriously cause this is a shit show disaster. This is not a role the fed should be taking.

</comment><comment><USER75> Assuming all banks adopt this standard in that specified timeframe, the existing P2P solutions (Apple Cash, Venmo, PayPal, Zelle, CashApp) will ultimately become useless.

I wonder how these companies will pivot once banks begin to adopt this interbank service.

</comment><comment><USER76> That's pretty much the norm in every developed country and many developing countries.

</comment><comment><USER77> Is this kinda like SCT Inst for the Eurozone?

[https://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/what-we-do/sepa- insta...](https://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/what-we-do/sepa-instant- credit-transfer)

</comment><comment><USER78> Here's a thought: come up with an online payment platform with ZERO txn fees. You only pay 1% when you cash out. It can be done and it will be done.

</comment><comment><USER79> What are the chances this is not going to be a debacle, take 10 years, and late with disappointing dated features?

</comment><comment><USER80> I suppose they already have a complete log of all your transactions, so may as well make it function better.

</comment><comment><USER81> * hodling intensifies *

They cant honestly beat the motivated masses that hold collectively billions in crypto currency.

</comment><comment><USER82> The European Union has the SEPA payments which support most big banks, it works just great

</comment><comment><USER83> Are wires about to get cheaper?

<comment><USER84> This likely replaces (most) domestic wires, checks, ACH transfers, and other legacy funds transfer mechanisms.

[https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pressreleases/file...](https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pressreleases/files/other20200806a1.pdf)

<comment><USER43> We will still need banks' mobile apps to support this kind of transfer (FedNow).

Considering that I've never been able to do wire transfers by mobile app with two major US banks (but Zelle transfer by mobile app? Of course!), I'm not confident this will replace Zelle, Venmo, etc for some time.

Sure, in 10 years or so... but don't hold your breath.

<comment><USER85> At least they're finally working on it.

<comment><USER84> Indeed, having the infra in place is half the battle. Requiring banks provide access to the infra through their customer facing endpoints is just a bit of regulation away at that point.

It'll take a while, but it's nice to know a decent end state is on the roadmap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER86> What year is this??

</comment><comment><USER87> Wow so they'll be able to print and deliver within seconds.

</comment><comment><USER88> > 24x7x365

24x7x52?

</comment><comment><USER89> Based on reading through the PDF, I would summarize FedNow as a service which provides the low-level infrastructure to support near real-time money transfers between domestic US bank accounts. The system is implemented as a _credit-only_ system - meaning payment transactions must always be initialized by the sender.

The protocol is a full handshake between the banks which provides the ability for the receiving entity to confirm the account number of the destination account in real-time and provide confirmation to the sender that the transfer is accepted. This is notably different from ACH where errors can come hours or even days after the fact.

Account identifiers appear to be standard bank account and routing numbers as they exist today -- I say this only because I couldn't find anything in the PDF saying otherwise. There is a section on using "Alias-based Payments" and on how directory services might be integrated or even centralized, but the current approach would rely on 3rd party directory services to facility "alias-based payments" (think Venmo).

IMO a major security shortcoming of FedNow is that it reuses the existing account numbers. As a credit-only system, if a new (unique) account identifier was used then that number could be shared freely, printed on invoices or web pages, and handed out without any loss of safety, and used without the need for a directory service. Aliasing could be built on top this new unique number in 3rd party directories, but it would no longer be a _security_ method, rather purely a usability one.

The service will use ISO 20022 messaging standard ([https://www.iso20022.org/](https://www.iso20022.org/)) and will define both payment and non-payment message types which include the ability to attach meta-data such as invoice and receipt information, as well as to transmit a 'Request for Payment' to make up for the lack of debit transactions which would normally be used for recurring payments.

In the 'Request for Payment' use-case, the account holder would be presented with a user interface provided by their banking institution, e.g. in their bank's mobile app) which would list pending requests for payment and provide the ability to approve payments.

From what I can tell, there's nothing necessarily stopping a bank from providing a UI which could allow pre-approving _future_ payment requests, e.g. by matching the date / amount / account number of the Payee, but if the 'Request for Payment' doesn't include the necessary meta-data it becomes increasingly difficult to not require the Payor to manually approve recurring requests.

For the use-case of bill payments, I can only hope that the messaging format could be standardized to the point where something like the following could be possible;

1) Checking out at a retail store. The register computes the total amount due.

2) Select FedNow in our Apple Pay / Android Pay settings as the payment method and wave your device in front of the payment terminal. Here's where you would want NFC to be able to transfer a _one-time-use_ secure identifier for where the payment request should be sent.

3) Phone presents a confirmation screen with the name of the store, total amount, and an Approve button. The one-time identifier sent in Step 2 could carry an implicit approval up to a certain amount (e.g. $250)

4) Full itemized receipt from the transaction is attached and automatically saved in the wallet.

5) Total amount charged is reduced by 1% as a bonus for not using a credit card.

The key component of the system is a service which hides the long-standing / re-usable account identifiers from the POS system, and replaces it with a one- time use only identifier. At first glance it seems like such a system could conceivably be hacked on top of FedNow by a type of directory service that also acted as a proxy for the Payment Request messages.

</comment><comment><USER90> PayPal be like o.O

</comment><comment><USER91> Boomer technology

</comment><comment><USER92> ctrl-f "blockchain"

0 results, here or on the actual website

you disappoint me, HN

</comment><comment><USER93> The government will do everything to make the financial system work for banks and nothing to make it work for people.

<comment><USER94> "The rapid expenditure of COVID emergency relief payments highlighted the critical importance of having a resilient instant payments infrastructure with nationwide reach, especially for households and small businesses with cash flow constraints," said Federal Reserve Board Governor Lael Brainard."

It sure sounds like this particular thing is good for "the people". It'll take away some business from industries that prey on the poor, like check-cashing.

<comment><USER93> There are some minor benefits from faster payments, but I assure you that people with lots of money to move are the ones welcoming this and asking for it.

<comment><USER94> You're vastly underestimating the benefits to regular people. You haven't lived in a country with instant, universal electronic payments.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Driver wanders into incoming traffic during Bird Box challenge - <AUTHOR> https://www.autoblog.com/2019/01/11/bird-box-blindfold-challenge-crash/ <comment><USER2> Hmm.."don't drive while blindfolded..'

I imagine this will not be the last stupid thing this person does.

<comment><USER3> "Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other, and scarce in that."

-Ben Franklin</comment></comment>


Have Generics Killed Java? - <AUTHOR> http://www.artima.com/forums/flat.jsp?forum=106&thread=299081

<comment><USER2> Er...[if you have the misfortune of being paid to work in Java] they remove a pile of type-casting cruft and make code more useful to large and/or transient teams.

The author conveniently glosses over the type-casting from pre-generics Java and instead compares to Ruby. Duh...of course Ruby is a cleaner read. But compare learning a new API:

      // pretty evil
      List<Thing> getTheThings();

      // really evil
      List getTheThings();

Or iteration:

      // pretty evil
      for (Thing t: getTheThings()) {...}

      // kill me now
      for (Iterator it = getTheThings().iterator(); it.hasNext()) {
        Thing t = (Thing) it.next();
        ...
      }

</comment><comment><USER3> They provide more type safety and not syntactic sugar. One cannot have complete type safety at runtime using type casts; if he thinks he can, he needs to take a simple programming course again.

If the OP wanted readability, he could use iterators. It's amazingly clear:

      private void printCollection(Collection c) {
        Iterator<String> i = c.iterator();
        while(i.hasNext()) {
          System.out.println("Item: "+i.next());
        }
      }

</comment><comment><USER4> There's just no real alternative to generics in Java. It's either that, casting (terminally insecure) or a more modern type system, which would be a huuuge change for the language (and in which case, you might as well use Scala).

If you want to complain about things that make code harder to understand, I wonder why the author doesn't rant about annotations.</comment>


Android 2.0, Release 1 - <AUTHOR> http://developer.android.com/sdk/android-2.0.html Highlights - http://developer.android.com/sdk/android-2.0-highlights.html <comment><USER2> Does anyone know if 2.0 will be rolled out to T-Mobile G1 users in the USA? I have heard different opinions about whether the G1 hardware would/could run Android 2.0.

<comment><USER3> You hit on a really good point. Will newer versions of Android be backward compatible to older hardware, or will they keep up the pace with the latest and greatest?

<comment><USER2> I heard the G1 had too little storage to hold newer builds, but that was before Donut, and Donut works great on my phone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hurray for Bluetooth API and multitouch support.

<comment><USER3> I didn't believe it until I saw it here...

"MotionEvent can now report simultaneous-touch information for devices that support it. Up to three pointers can be tracked simultaneously."

Talk about good news. Maybe Google is taking off the kid gloves now after Google Voice got rejected?

<comment><USER5> I believe they still don't include pinch zoom for the same old reasons though.

Definitely great news, however.

<comment><USER6> Agreed. Even without pinch gestures, multitouch is vital for two-handed games on phones that lack button input.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Performance of ES6 features relative to ES5 - <AUTHOR> https://kpdecker.github.io/six-speed/?utm_source=ESnextNews.com&utm_medium=Weekly%20Newsletter&utm_campaign=Week%2010 <comment><USER2> The results given by this benchmark are bothering me because they do not fit with what I've seen in production. For example, the `for-of-array` is transpiled by babel to something that has 2 nested try/catch blocks, and unfortunately, V8 has a nasty deoptimisation when dealing with these, even if no exception is ever thrown.

This deopt led to a several orders of magnitude slowdown compare to a simple `for` loop in Google Chrome, forcing use to abandon the `for of` construction.

I suspect that the benchmark shown on this page does not expose this kind of behavior because it doesn't iterate enough for the JIT to kick in. If it's the case, it means that these values reflects only the behavior of the cold, interpreted code, and not the hot one. (which is quite sad for a performance benchmark, because the performance matter only for the former …)

<comment><USER3> Chrome doesn't have an interpreter, it has baseline and optimizing compiler. Also, I think try/catch preventing optimization was fixed.

Still your point could stand, or additionally there could be many optimizations that interfere with such simple micro benchmarks, turning all or parts of them into no-ops. If this is happening in ES5 and not ES6, the results could be drastic. I suspect this is what's happening with some of the larger differences in native ES6.

<comment><USER4> > Also, I think try/catch preventing optimization was fixed.

Do you have a source for this? Try/catch deopts still bubble up in my Chrome profiling, so it seems like they're still a problem.

<comment><USER5> Yes, my understanding is the problem is essentially undefined behavior as exceptions can be caught at any point in the call stack which makes it basically impossible to optimize.

<comment><USER6> It's not impossible at all. try/catch in the non-throwing case is fast in both Firefox (SpiderMonkey) and IE (Chakra); I'm not sure what the state of things is in Safari (JavaScriptCore). In the throwing case you obviously have to do some work, but as long as that case is rare it's not a problem. Contrast with the V8 situation (which they are fixing), where simply having a try/catch in your function at all will deoptimize the function, even if an exception is never actually thrown.

Oh, and one optimization strategy for try catch is even pretty simple to describe in general terms: you need a cheap way to check whether an exception is thrown, and then after every operation that can throw (e.g. a call into the vm to a function that is allowed to throw) you check whether it did. If not, you just move along. If it did, you jump to an out of line path that does cleanup and callstack unwinding. The devil, as usual, is in the details.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> white-flame The thing about JIT languages is that there's no such thing as overall speed of a particular operation; you can only sample current speed on current implementations.

New features pursue correctness, then as their place in the JITs mature interesting new approaches will change their speed characteristics later. Things like contrasting the speed of various ways of iterating an array are all semantically equivalent, and as the JIT learns the various semantics they should all theoretically approach similar speeds, even if the newer ones are slower now.

<comment><USER7> > The thing about JIT languages is that there's no such thing as overall speed > of a particular operation; you can only sample current speed on current > implementations.

How in the world is that specific to JIT? Have you never heard of a Sufficiently Smart Compiler?

<comment><USER8> The main difference is that you the developer can test with a known compiler and know what the performance characteristics are before you release your code: when Microsoft releases VisualStudio 2018, your existing application doesn't change until you rebuild it. In contrast, for code running in a web browser or something like the JVM, your existing code may run faster or slower without you even knowing about the new version.

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure this is true anymore even in this case - with multicore processors, cache dependency, and pervasive virtualization, the speed of your program can be significantly affected by what else is running on the box. Remember that the x86 itself has a JIT on the chip, converting x86 machine code to whatever microcode the processor uses. When I was at Google, they provided special dedicated machines for benchmarking, with custom run-times that disabled a lot of the containerization/virtualization features, and there was _still_ a lot of noise in benchmark times.

<comment><USER8> That's certainly true and I hope I didn't give the impression that I thought this was a binary situation. It's just that code which runs in a JITed environment, particularly one like the browser JavaScript runtimes which aren't even versioned, has an even wider exposure to skew. Everything running on a multiprocess/user operating system is exposed to resource contention but e.g. your JavaScript code also has to worry about things like Chrome disabling optimizations anywhere you use try/catch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> More than just these, even innocuous features such as `let` and `const` over `var` cause a substantial performance decrease in V8 (but not SpiderMonkey).

I do a lot of one-off demos, that I mostly write in ES6 these days. I don't have a demonstration of pure `let` vs `var`, but if you change Babel to JavaScript in this one (and click run), you'll see a fairly substantial performance decrease in Chrome for this demo (Firefox stays the same though): [https://jsfiddle.net/oa1sckzu/](https://jsfiddle.net/oa1sckzu/) . I have others, and the results are largely the same for them, but I'll spare you.

<comment><USER11> There is a recent v8-users mailing list thread on this exact topic. Here's one possible explanation on perf differences between `let` and `var`: [https://groups.google.com/d/msg/v8-users/hsUrt4I2D98/ELsfO1e...](https://groups.google.com/d/msg/v8-users/hsUrt4I2D98/ELsfO1e6AQAJ)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> These measures are JS performance are important for VM implementors, for people writing node.js applications to be used at large scale and people doing computationally-complex work in the browser (eg creating physics engines).

It's worth noting that for most of us, most of the time, this kind of JS performance is less important than user-perceptible optimizations, like batching DOM reads and writes and decreasing asset size

</comment><comment><USER13> I assumed the "es6" row header refers to the engine's native implementation of the feature. In which case it should grey out "destructuring" under Node 4.2.6. But they don't, it's listed as "10x slower". What am I missing?

</comment><comment> david-given I would like to see Babel ES6-to-ES5 converted performance here too, because that's how most real-world ES6 code is going to be run --- there are too many non-ES6-compatible browsers out there.

<comment><USER14> That's exactly the information the "babel" rows provide? Each row is a given "ES6 implementation" and how it performs compared to the baseline "ES5 native" implementation of a feature.

So the first row of each section is the babel-compiled (to ES5) ES6, the second is traceur-compiled, third is typescript-compiled and last is native ES6 runtime. If you look at the test files, most of them only have an es5 and an es6 versions.

<comment> david-given Oh, FFS. I managed to spend some time looking at the table without actually seeing what the entire point of it was.

Tea, you have failed me!

Sorry about that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's kind of awesome how good TypeScript looks in all this. Testament to the compiler talent MS has on staff.

</comment><comment><USER16> This makes me think of Python 2 vs 3 benchmarks for some reason, although I'm sure I'm not remembering very well.

I assume there's plenty of scope for ES6 to improve and (hopefully?) surpass ES5 in performance in many, if not all, areas?

What would be causing the large slowdowns in ES6 here? Is this a case of having features that make JS nicer to code in, but giving up some performance? Or is this more down to immature compilers not yet optimising ES6 as substantially?

</comment><comment><USER17> Why is "identical" in green and "faster" in a slightly darker green? Is es6 a library or is it the browser's implementation of ES6?

<comment><USER18> ES6 is the native implementation in the browser or JS-engine you are using, indeed.

Green is probably chosen because the same performance is nice to have with this (subjectively) better syntax. The darker shade is probably chosen because more performance is nice, as it pushes you to the newer (subjectively better) syntax.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> For-of is slow (in Babel) because from my understanding it gets transpiled to use Regenerator. That was a bit of a nasty discovery for me.

<comment><USER20> You can use loose mode or the loose option in that case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Why is arrow-declare is so much slower on Firefox (16x to 325x slower) compared to everything else (identical to 2.4x slower)?

</comment><comment><USER22> There is also [https://github.com/bevry/esnext- benchmarks](https://github.com/bevry/esnext-benchmarks)

</comment><comment><USER23> I'd like to see Closure Compiler thrown into the mix. It not only translates ES6 to ES5, but applies optimizations.

</comment><comment><USER24> Note, when it says "1.6x faster" what is really means is "1.6 as fast" or "60% faster", or really "operates at 1.6x the speed of the baseline", not "1.6x increase in speed".

For example, when looking at the data for Chrome 48's "arrow" tests [1], the _baseline_ number is 57,858,016 and the _traceur_ number is 91,556,806, which is 158.2% of the _baseline_ , but is reported as "1.6x faster".

I know this seems like semantics, but "1.0x faster" sounds a lot like "twice as fast". (In this case, "1.0x faster" is reported as "identical" [2]).

[1] [https://github.com/kpdecker/six- speed/blob/master/data.json#...](https://github.com/kpdecker/six- speed/blob/master/data.json#L1933)

[2] [https://github.com/kpdecker/six- speed/blob/master/tasks%2Fre...](https://github.com/kpdecker/six- speed/blob/master/tasks%2Freport.js#L171)

<comment><USER25> This is the convention when talking about speedup in software. 1x speedup means identical time.

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

<comment><USER24> If the phrase was "1.6x speedup" then I would agree and not have commented. But the phrase is "1.6x faster", which is a bit ambiguous.

That there is disagreement among the commentariat both ways is indicative of ambiguity. (Though, I am assuming no trolling here.)

While not exactly analogous, try replacing it with a percentage and re- evaluate: What does "60% faster" mean and what does "160% faster" mean?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The "commentariat" charge is legitimate, which is why there is a field known as "mathematics" which is unambiguous. 1.6x by anybody's non-commentariat definition is 60% faster, as anybody who has ever even scratched the surface of any mathematical, engineering, scientific, statistical or indeed, computer science discipline knows (though this is perhaps unknown to the Creative Suite crowd). This comment is completely bogus, with apologies if you don't understand. But you really should know what you don't know before posting such garbage.

<comment><USER27> Please don't post uncivil comments to Hacker News.

We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11204967](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11204967) and marked it off-topic.</comment></comment>


When oil is no longer in demand - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21710634-glimpse-post-oil-era-when-oil-no-longer-demand <comment><USER3> I live in Utah and I can tell you exactly what happens when oil is no longer in demand. They offer numerous tax breaks per well to encourage exploration and increase production. I believe the term is "corporate welfare". One of the tax breaks has a stated goal of providing tax relief when oil prices are low. [https://oilgas.ogm.utah.gov/pub/Publications/Lists/tax_incen...](https://oilgas.ogm.utah.gov/pub/Publications/Lists/tax_incentives_IOGCC.pdf)

This is the same government attempting to roll back solar tax credits because they insist that the solar industry needs to stand on it's own 2 feet and compete in the "free" market.

<comment><USER4> 'Tax breaks' are offered to all sorts of industries.

Almost all entertainment in Canada for example, is done nearly tax free. Pharma, energy, small business etc. etc..

<comment><USER5> It's particularly perverse, however, to give tax breaks for an industry that has immense negative externalities.

<comment><USER4> Oil companies don't emit a whole lot of CO2.

You emit the CO2 when you use your car (almost 50% of CO2 emissions are from autos).

And a bunch of other industries are responsible for most of the rest of CO2 emissions.

<comment><USER6> I think you're missing the negative externalities inherent in oil extraction, like groundwater pollution, earthquakes, above ground pipelines, etc.

Not to mention it's a little like saying Pablo Escobar doesn't OD on drugs or steal your TV very often, it's the crackheads that do that...

<comment><USER4> " like groundwater pollution, earthquakes, above ground pipelines, etc"

Groundwater pollution and earthquakes are rare, and the latter are minor and have negligible impact. It's no more problematic than most other extraction industries.

'Above ground pipelines' are completely benign entities with almost zero environmental impact. Leaks are rare enough, and most of them are very minor and easy to clean up. Oil is an organic product, found commonly in nature, and small amounts of Oil spilled have no real impact. Unlike the big tanker spills, which can be devastating.

The highway you drive your car on has considerably more environmental footprint than any 'above ground pipeline'.

<comment><USER4> I wouldn't want a coffee shop 'in my backyard' and I have nothing against coffee shops.

But if I had to chose between an Oil Pipeline and a 'highway' \- I (and I think most people) would chose the Oil Pipeline any day of the week.

You do realize they are quite common? And that natural gas pipelines - <USER2> carry the same carbon-based materials run everywhere in urban areas - and that there's a good chance there is a gas pipeline, literally, in your backyard right now?

If you are living in an urban area, my guess is there is an 80% chance there's a carbon-based pipeline within 500m from where you are.

<comment><USER7> The Energy Information Agency has a nice map of them:

[http://www.eia.gov/state/maps.cfm](http://www.eia.gov/state/maps.cfm)

(turn off some layers to make it easier to look at)

I guess that's transportation pipelines and not distribution pipelines though.

<comment><USER4> That's a cool map. Pipelines are everywhere :). And yes, those don't include distribution which are nearly ubiquitous in many places.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Total World Consumption (2017 projection) : 96.92 million barrels per day (up from 92.58 million barrels in 2014)

EIA outlook: [http://www.eia.gov/outlooks/ieo/world.cfm](http://www.eia.gov/outlooks/ieo/world.cfm)

Oil will be in demand for a long time. The demand might peak but headlines like this seem to indicate oil isn't needed anymore.

Most people do not realize that 6-7 million barrels of oil per day must be found year over year to replenish the depletion of old oil wells. This requirement will drive exploration and investment.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, it's crazy that people think oil is going away. We're 7 billion people on our way to 9 billion, with another billion in the next 15 years. That fossil free future that we dream about isn't getting any closer. Those big solar plants, etc that we read about are a rounding error.

<comment><USER10> You're right. The price going down has, I think, more to do with the effect of fracking in the US. It's getting to the point that the US could be an exporter if it changed its laws.

The effect of petro-states will be much the same, though.

<comment><USER11> We are an oil exporter. We did change the laws. [http://money.cnn.com/2016/06/06/investing/us-oil-exports- inc...](http://money.cnn.com/2016/06/06/investing/us-oil-exports-increase/)

<comment><USER10> I missed that. Thanks for the correction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A web developer from Aberdeen here.

The transition from wealthy to poor in Aberdeen has been instantaneous. Everyone I know in the city has been affected—my fiancee was made redundant, my Dad (after 25 years at BP) and my best mate's dad (after 25 years at Shell) too.

I studied CS at Robert Gordon University, which is cutting academic staff. I also worked at a design and dev shop, but that went bust in December last year.

It's actually a really bleak time, but this outcome was avoidable.

Although my friends and family all live in Aberdeen, I feel like I can't sustain myself there. I currently live in Wellington, NZ, which is beautiful, vibrant and diverse.

<comment><USER13> Have you noticed any pick-up from the offshore wind industry? There's certainly some overlap between oil and wind industries, and Scotland is doing quite a lot of offshore wind development nowadays.

<comment><USER12> Nah, unfortunately not.

Scotland in general is very well placed for renewable energy, with both great geography and skilled labour. I feel like the businesses based in Aberdeen haven't realised that opportunity though.

The local industry has been a one-trick pony with no ambition to diversify. The end result is what we're currently seeing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I was wondering about this lately as I live in Houston in an area greatly dependent upon oil and gas. What happens when so many vehicles are charged by solar panels on rooftops (Tesla Energy)? What about oil and gas? Well, it turns out that tons of things are made from oil and gas and once we stop burning it to make vehicles go down the street, we can start using it for other things.

I'm unable to find the origin of the "burning Picassos for heat" quote, but it is catchy.

"An oil executive once observed that burning oil for energy is like burning Picassos for heat. Oil is extraordinarily valuable as the basis for so many products we use every day that the thought of simply burning it ought to be unthinkable. So versatile are oil molecules that they can be transformed into substances that serve as clothing, medicines, building materials, carpet, skin care products, sporting goods, agricultural chemicals, perfumes, and myriad other products."

[http://www.resilience.org/stories/2012-11-04/burning- picasso...](http://www.resilience.org/stories/2012-11-04/burning-picassos-for- heat-why-we-need-to-electrify-transportation)

I can foresee things like plastic wood being used to build all sorts of things.

<comment><USER15> As pointed out in another comment, the use of oil for plastics, streets, etc is less than 5% of overall oil consumption in the US. You could get that kind of output with a tiny domestic industry. With modern refineries, you can get a good control over the output mix and only produce what is needed.I think Houston would be hugely affected by a decline in the oil industry. Even if they can create jobs in the production of renewables, the job profile is often different from working at wells and the huge shipping sector would be largely non-existant.

So even if we increase plastic consumption by 2x (don't really see where that should come from), it's still a potential decline in oil consumption of 90%. Enough to basically destroy several industries (refining, drilling, well maintenance, pipelines, shipping).

Another interesting question is regarding gas stations. You'll still need some stations on interstates to re-charge for long distance trips. But you could basically get rid of all of them in cities. They would continue to exist as convenience stores, but probably with half the number of employees. This would be another huge sector that often employess untrained people, many of whom will likely not be qualified enough to work in battery factories.

Link to EIA report: [http://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=oil_use](http://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=oil_use)

<comment><USER14> Fair enough, a "potential decline in oil consumption of 90%". I get that. I accept that. It is a potential though; based upon existing technology. The oil and gas industry will be impacted (perhaps severely), but will it be a 90% impact? I doubt it. Few people have ever been able to predict the future. (Xerox failed, IBM failed, Yahoo failed, etc. - AT&T did a good job with "You Will" \- Think it was a research firm that did it for AT&T.) Don't fall into the trap of thinking one knows how it will all play out. Odds are it will not play out like one thinks it will. The same technological advances that are removing industries are creating other industries. I just think the oil can be used for much more interesting things. 3D printing is really in its infancy right now. [https://all3dp.com/biggest-3d-printers- world/](https://all3dp.com/biggest-3d-printers-world/) Imagine being able to print out whatever you want, including buildings and having them perfect. (not some nailed together wood done in a rush that has tons of joints where problems may arise) Raw material (oil) will be needed to do that. (unless of course there is other material to use, but it will have to be refined and oil & gas companies know all about that)

Now the employment of people is the other thing. Technology should make things cheaper and better. (cheaper either in initial price and/or the cost of maintenance) Fewer people will need to work and/or work fewer hours because things are cheaper and better. There was a time before there were two-income households. We could cut back to that without a huge disruption. An equilibrium will likely develop. If there is no income, there will be no consumers. Basic income may also be needed.

On a more funny note, those convenience stores had better well have some damn good restrooms like they have at Buc-ee's. Otherwise, why stop? The car is doing the driving. You're free to eat whatever you brought or simply sleep through the trip.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Interesting that the Economist is looking at a future where oil demand is lower, but that realization hasn't hit the public yet, at least not in the US. I have been thinking about the Standing Rock protests in North Dakota, and they are objecting to the environmental risk of pipelines. But in the big picture, oil is getting more expensive to extract, more dangerous to ship, and contributes to global warming then used. Given electric cars, some fueled from solar power, there could really be a time soon in the US when the whole gasoline industry is reduced to almost nothing.

I think the concept is in the back of many poeple's mind, but the status quo is dominant and electric-everything on the road seems futuristic still. But as more and more people try electric cars and install solar panels, more people will see it and accept it as the new normal, and then things could change quickly, within 5 years perhaps.

And yes, this comment is intended to speed up that change.

<comment><USER17> > But in the big picture, oil is getting more expensive to extract, more > dangerous to ship, and contributes to global warming then used.

These assertions don't match the reality of what's happening.

The cost to extract oil has plummeted, and that's reshaping the world order. It's destroyed Russia's entire financial plan.

In the US it's become far safer to ship. US domestic production has increased to the point of effective independence, and the US no longer depends on the Strait of Hormuz for its energy supply. Oil's vastly easier to move than natural gas. Current natural gas production exists as a byproduct of shale oil production.

It's also becoming far cleaner to extract. The progress shale has made in just a few years is astounding. The extraction methods used today are orders of magnitude cleaner than the ones used just a few years ago.

Known domestic supplies are also increasing exponentially, which means the industry is highly unlikely to be "reduced to almost nothing" any time soon. The cheapest form of energy always wins, and even incentives and penalties can only somewhat mitigate that.

Sure, we'll have self-driving electric cards on the roads soon enough, but most of that energy isn't going to come from nuclear power, solar, or wind sources.

This landscape is changing quickly, and a lot of assumptions people hold–assumptions that are based on many decades of reality–aren't true.

Here's a lecture that's relatively current (though 9 months is nearly stale given how quickly shale tech is progressing), and does a decent job of outlining the situation:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyfVTBI4dgA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyfVTBI4dgA)

<comment><USER18> I just finished a (realtime systems programming) job at an oil services company. I wouldn't expect a lot of progress in shale tech, especially at present natural gas and oil prices.

The oil industry in general has a very skewed vision of what "technology" means. It tends to mean PLC programming, and PLCs are a really weird, small market. It tends to mean systems integration of a rather crude order.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The recent market conditions are more a consequence of changes in supply than in demand.

I heard someone refer to something called the "Economist effect", where an article in the Economist about a particular trend signals its end.

Sure enough: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-30/opec- said...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-30/opec-said-to- agree-oil-production-cuts-as-saudis-soften-on-iran)

e: word order

<comment><USER20> _the "Economist effect"_

It's real. Someone on HN mentioned them as a contra-indicator during a previous discussion. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12516078](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12516078)

My supporting argument to him was that The Economist argued in 1999 that $10 oil was too expensive and that it could be headed to $5. So of course oil rose to $140 over the next decade! [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12517258](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12517258)

<comment><USER15> You can replace that with any newspaper reports. The oil price follows in part a pork cycle, so a period of falling prices will likely lead to a sharp reverse at some point (and vice versa). Once you have enough data supporting the lower price regime, oil will likely spike again.

The interesting question is if it's gonna be different this time. Many argue that with shale production supply will be much more elastic, but it could also just be a false lead.

Pork cycle: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pork_cycle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pork_cycle)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Resource extraction companies (oil, mining, etc..) usually are required to post security for reclamation. However, large companies are permitted to not post cash or bond, but on their word (credit). Which works while commodity prices are high. But when prices crash, so do the companies and society (the tax payer) is left holding the bag for cleanup.

</comment><comment><USER22> The title exaggerates. Charts elsewhere in the same report project demand going from the current ~4.2bn tonnes to anywhere between 3.2 to 4.7bn by 2040, meaning demand may actually _increase_ over the next 25 years.

[http://www.economist.com/news/special- report/21710628-worlds...](http://www.economist.com/news/special- report/21710628-worlds-use-oil-approaching-tipping-point-writes-henry-tricks- dont-expect)

</comment><comment><USER23> A few counterpoints:

* In the market oil is a very popular short. So much so that despite Iran coming back onstream, oil has since risen 20 points.

* Aramco's IPO will force it to open kimono on its reserves. Is there a negative surprise waiting there?

* Nobody is going to put electric cars into the southern hemisphere anytime soon, because the distances are too long and infrastructure too sparse. As Africa develops, oil demand there will increase, especially with increasing chinese involvement. Ditto Latam. Ditto central Asia, Middle east.

* We are seeing inflation picking up around the world, and oil is the classic inflation trade.

Finally, anecdotally, the economist has a long history of being a counter- indicator due to its susceptibility to consensus thinking.

</comment><comment><USER24> I wonder what will happen to the price of jet fuel once electric cars are wide spread. Petroleum production will go down as demand for gasoline will go down while jet fuel demand will probably remain similar. So will that lead to a rise in jet fuel price?

<comment><USER25> Probably temporarily. It'll likely cross a point where more synthetic production methods reach economic viability.

The field requires such a great energy density that I suspect only a remarkable breakthrough in energy density for weight would allow a fully electric solution. Hydrogen is also likely out as the storage cells would be under unimaginable stresses.

In the long term it might actually incentivize the creation of moderate/high speed rail lines in the US.

<comment><USER26> Unless someone figures out how to bulldoze the Rocky mountain range, high speed rail as a replacement for coast to coast air travel is a non starter.

<comment> rm_-rf_slash The real transit corridors are Boston-Atlanta and New York-Chicago, as well as Seattle-San Diego on the west coast. Coast to coast would be nice but even just those would be an enormous boost to our transport infrastructure and potentially a huge emissions cut (depending on where the power comes from).

<comment><USER27> The high speed part of the California high speed rail is mostly to relieve congestion at the coastal airports. Idea being that passengers flying between the Bay Area and LA/San Diego will instead take the train. Hardest part of that is it'll require a number of tunnels, one 14 miles long, through the mountains into the LA Basin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> If oil is no longer in demand it will trigger the biggest mass migration from the middle east to the west the world has ever seen. These countries import 90% of their food, food which they pay for with oil income.

<comment><USER29> Yeah, because we need more "refugees". As if the ones we already got haven't caused enough damage.

<comment><USER30> Europe will get refugees regardless of its need for them, in the same way that we got climate change without needing it.

What we're debating is not the "if", it's what to do with them. The most endorsed answer thus far seems to be letting them drown in the Mediterranean Sea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I think the best thing of oil no longer being in demand is the US and the UK could end their relationships with Saudi Arabia, and hold them accountable for the vile regime they run there.

</comment><comment><USER32> As long as we have ground wars, we'll have demand for oil (i.e. gasoline). As an energy source, stored gasoline is far more modular and transportable than anything requiring the electric grid. Consequently, it is easier to defend and remains the ideal energy solution for supply lines in battle.

As long as we have air wars, we'll also have demand for oil. The logistics of moving an airforce around the world require floating airfields doubling as standalone fueling stations. How efficient would solar need to be for an aircraft carrier + all of its planes to run on solar?

As long as we have wars fought on the open seas... you get the idea. Oil, as a power source, moves quite easily and this cannot be ignored, strategically.

Militaries and governments know this. As long as we have physical borders that need to be defended, we'll have a demand for oil.

<comment><USER33> George Friedman describes a ~2030/2040 military that uses batteries in power armor that are recharged by solar power satellites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Hubbert's Peak

"World oil production will start to fall sometime during this decade, never to rise again. In 1956, M. King Hubbert predicted that U.S. oil production would peak in the early 1970's. Although Hubbert was widely criticized by some oil experts and economists, in 1971 Hubbert's prediction came true. The 100 year period when most of the world's oil is being discovered became known as "Hubbert's Peak". The peak stands in contrast to the hundreds of millions of years the oil deposits took to form. Hubbert's methods predict a peak in world oil production less than five years away."

[http://www.princeton.edu/hubbert/the- peak.html](http://www.princeton.edu/hubbert/the-peak.html)

<comment><USER35> > Hubbert's methods predict a peak in world oil production less than five > years away.

According to the wayback machine [1], that page was first written in 2001.

[1] [https://web.archive.org/web/20011121173642/http://www.prince...](https://web.archive.org/web/20011121173642/http://www.princeton.edu/hubbert/the- peak.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> This discussion should really come to the forefront of the energy conversation in the US with the Trump presidency. His commitment to ramping up oil production and reversing all of the initiatives to increase investment in alternative, sustainable energy resources will hurt the US' progress towards relying less on fossil fuels which are not sustainable. His motivations are obviously to prioritize the big oil companies making money.

</comment><comment><USER37> As the developing world develops, demand for petroleum based products (plastics, and even some paper products) will certainly rise, even if power plants and transportation moves away from fossil fuels.

Demand will never go to zero even if our energy needs our met renewably. I wonder what the ratios will be though.

<comment><USER38> Usage in plastics is a tiny highly substitutable use compared to fuels.

A realignment where it becomes a buyer's market for oil will be a massive change to the status quo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Why does pumping CO2 under water not sound as stable as having carbon locked in a petrochemical under the ground?

</comment><comment><USER40> water

</comment><comment><USER41> >As the world enters what could be the twilight of the oil age

This is the point when I stopped taking the article seriously.</comment>


Ask HN: How much $ required to become investor in respected super-angel fund? - <AUTHOR>

Assume the following:
I would obviously want to stay informed, but I would require little to no control over what investments the fund makes.
I would want to ensure that as an inexperienced investor, I would not be taken as a rube and relieved of my money.  Assuming that my money would be invested at the same priority with other money in the fund, that doesn't seem like it would be a problem.  Please correct me if that is an incorrect assumption.
Do not be concerned about the risk of losing the entire amount.  Assume that I have access to X dollars, and I am willing to lose up to Y% of that.  If the required amount exceeds that percentage, I would not invest.
The definition of "well-respected" is vague, but to me, it means that the people running the fund are considered trustworthy/honorable (to prevent getting fleeced), and have a record of profitability. <comment><USER2> Some funds are invitation only, but good luck.</comment>


Frontier prepares for bankruptcy, regrets failure to install enough fiber - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/04/frontier-prepares-for-bankruptcy-regrets-failure-to-install-enough-fiber/ <comment><USER2> > significant under-investment in fiber deployment

Interesting, we are about to move into our new place and was originally going to go with Spectrum for internet. They don't offer fiber in our area so I just switched to Frontier and a technician will be coming out in a couple days to setup a fiber line. The only issue is that Frontier has been charging their fiber customers a $10/month rental fee even when the customer is using their own router:

[https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2019/07/front...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2019/07/frontier-customer-bought-his-own-router-but-has-to- pay-10-rental-fee-anyway/)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is going to be bad for all the norcal areas - where frontier is literally their only option.

<comment><USER4> Bankruptcy (Chapter 11, which Frontier is seeking) does not mean ceasing operations. It's only a restructuring of their debts, with an aim to return to profitability.</comment></comment>


Squeeze the banana to log into this office Wi-Fi - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/01/22/wireless_banana_portal/ <comment><USER2> The Commodore-like font used on the display is a nice touch :)</comment>


Tesla and the environmental impact of lithium-ion batteries - <AUTHOR> https://digital.hbs.edu/platform-rctom/submission/tesla-and-the-environmental-impact-of-lithium-ion-batteries/ <comment><AUTHOR> I guess this submission wasn't worth a discussion at the moment (despite being upvoted fairly quickly).

I submitted this because I always think of the impact of lithium ion batteries when contemplating to purchase an electric vehicle and this is one of the articles that shows up on searching the topic.

Would appreciate any info on the same.

<comment><USER2> You might want to add a "(2017)" to the title.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, it did strike me that I maybe should do so, while it was still editable. However, I chose not to because it's only a little over 2 years old, which isn't too far back.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to design an entirely client-side generated website - <AUTHOR>

Hello!
I would like to know if it is possible to build a website in a way that it depends only in the javascript running on the client-side, considering the needs specified below.
I want to have a server only to serve files, and then the content of the website itself would all be obtained and generated by the client browser, no server-side programming at all. I want to use amazon s3 for hosting the files.
Then, I would need to have a "public" database which could be read by anyone without any login, so I could retrieve all my data from there securely through javascript. I do not want a server listening for AJAX requests or anything like that, as I would still need to do some specific server-side programming there. Is there any possibility of using online available databases in a public way, easily and securely retrievable through a client-side javascript request? Something like amazon RDS or MongoHQ would be great, but I do not know if it is possible.
I do not know much advanced stuff regarding these topics, I am sorry if this is too obvious or if I did not make much sense.
Thanks in advance. <comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the replies so far!

I will give it a try today later. If I find any nice solutions I will give feedback.

When I thought of doing this I thought: "Why haven't I seen this before?", as it seems so feasible, but I never really read many discussions regarding this topic. Anyways, I do not dive in web programming too much, there may exist some solutions already.

I see that much of the programming that is done on the server-side could be done in the client-side with no collateral effects at all, if some cares were correctly taken!

Going even further, is there a way to securely manipulate remote databases through javascript? Maybe have a pair of asymmetric keys on the client- side/server-side (this server-side would be of the third party that offers the service, not mine) so I can authenticate the user at the server side. The client would then have to send this key with the operation he wants to perform in the database. If he has access, the operation is performed. Otherwise, it isn't.

Again, I do not know much about these topics. Maybe it is already done and I don't know. If you guys know of something like what I am saying, please let me know. It seems that it should not be very difficult to achieve these things in practice.

</comment><comment><USER2> I think you should be able to do it.

You can access S3 using this: <http://code.google.com/p/js3db/>

MongoHQ has a REST API, so calling it from Javascript should be easy. This document might help you: [http://blog.mongohq.com/blog/2012/02/20/connecting- to-mongoh...](http://blog.mongohq.com/blog/2012/02/20/connecting-to-mongohq)

<comment><USER3> Mind blown. MongoHQ is what I have been looking for but never knew that was what they actually did. Thank you!!!

 _thinks of all sorts of 100% client side websites to make_

<comment><USER2> Actually this question made me think of the possibilities. There are frameworks out there that support MVC, which would make a robust client-side app running only in the browser.

I will be experimenting with this later today.

<comment><AUTHOR> My mind was blown when I started thinking on the possibilities of entirely client-side running websites.

If the correct services exist, there are so many things that could be done better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I do something similar with whitewatermap.com. The problem with what you are trying (which I have run into too) is that the javascript can only access either AJAX calls on your own server (which I know you don't want to do) or access items via a url. S3 allows you to make things accessible at known URL's but it costs a lot per PUT request (relatively) so it makes databases difficult. If you find a cloud/hosted database that makes all entities accessible via URL I would be very interested too.

Edit: aespinoza pointed me to mongohq.com which does exactly what I wanted. I'm so happy.

</comment><comment><USER4> Maybe this will help: <https://github.com/srhyne/jQuery-Parse></comment>


MPs Call for Laws to Prevent Online Interference During Elections - <AUTHOR> https://digit.fyi/mps-call-for-laws-to-prevent-online-interference-during-elections/ <comment><USER2> This train left the building eons ago in internet time.</comment>


The most important scientific problems have yet to be solved (1897) - <AUTHOR> https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-most-important-scientific-problems-have-yet-to-be-solved/ <comment><USER2> Ramón Y Cajal was a contrarian when this was written, but he had great timing. In the late 19th century, it was fairly popular to believe that all the laws of physics had already been established—remaining progress would come from improvements in experimental methods. There's a famous "physics is over" quote misattributed to Lord Kelvin (actually said by Michelson, the guy who measured the speed of light).

A few years after this was written, Planck proposed energy quanta. And in 1905, Einstein published his four Annus Mirabilis papers, introducing the photoelectric effect (applying quantum), special relativity, and the mass- energy relationship.

<comment><USER3> As typical with contrarians, Ramón y Cajal said some things that held up well and others that didn't. In the same book "Advice for a Young Investigator" that this excerpt is from he also gave his view of theorists: "Basically a theorist is a lazy person masquerading as a diligent one because it is easier to fashion a theory than to discover a phenomenon"!

<comment><USER4> How is that wrong? Clearly anyone who says that is being somewhat facetious / comedic.

<comment><USER5> > Basically a theorist is a lazy person masquerading as a diligent one

Tell that to Einstein.

<comment><USER6> Didn't we recently confirm gravitational waves by checking out a couple interacting black holes, originally theorized by Einstein 100 years ago? I think even Einstein would agree that it was much harder to discover it than to theorize it.

<comment><USER7> There have also been serious doubts over that discovery:

[https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24032022-600-exclusiv...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24032022-600-exclusive- grave-doubts-over-ligos-discovery-of-gravitational-waves/amp/)

<comment><USER8> So their method for finding the signal was to calculate the signal, then subtract it from the data and see if the residual noise looks like noise...how is that good science? It seems like it would be too easy to make your data fit the theory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I do wonder if every generation picks slightly higher hanging fruits in science will there come a time when a single human lifetime won't be enough to digest even the most specialised domain of science in order to build upon it

<comment><USER10> Right now, science has an emphasis on causal discovery. Showing that X is a mechanism by which Y happens. That includes finding the different X's for a Y and finding evidence for the relationship between a given X and Y. Once you know _how_ a thing works, that doesn't necessarily make it easy to work with it. For example in quantum mechanics, a common phrase is "shut up and calculate" because the mental models are all messy.

But as we all know (especially those of us who have refactored many systems), every once in a while you find a new way of looking at a thing that makes it all much simpler. A geometric way to look at an algebraic thing, or vice versa. Or a unifying structure to combine disparate pieces. Or just a "wow that was dumb" undoing of unnecessary complexity. It makes further progress easier.

I could imagine that, as the boundaries of science get more complex, there will be more scientists working on making the rest of it less complex. Meanwhile, maybe we get smarter and live longer. The calculations involved with many areas of modern science have already outpaced what we can do by hand, but we invented computers, so I can take the mean of a zillion numbers without much effort and spend my time elsewhere.

And in med school, apparently they say "half of what we teach you will be false, but we don't know which half." As science progresses, you don't just add, you prune too.

<comment><USER11> > Meanwhile, maybe we get smarter and live longer. The calculations involved > with many areas of modern science have already outpaced what we can do by > hand, but we invented computers, so I can take the mean of a zillion numbers > without much effort and spend my time elsewhere.

With software being as slow as it is despite massive speedups, and even _despite_ despite massive speedups, we really are still not good enough at using our computers to their fullest capacity which still means getting insights into complexity before crunching the numbers.

<comment><USER12> Computation is not slow.

Operating systems might be slow. Applications might be slow. SaaS might be slow.

But computation is not slow, and if you care about speed, you do computation in a context where the aforementioned issues are not issues.

<comment><USER11> Negate the operating environments that calculations are made in and the operating environments are not an issue, alright.

There definitely is a lot of bloat in the software world, but even large bioninformatics organizations have their own data-pipeline management teams to keep these issues in spec.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Well written. One thing that I keep thinking is that even if you know the law, there's still a lot of applications where its use is unobvious.

For instance, you might be satisfied you know how a pendulum works. Now put another pendulum on it.

Or you think you understand gravity, because you got taught the inverse square law. And you then get Kepler's laws. But then with three bodies, things get really hairy.

Or you understand statics and materials. But how do we shove that into finite elements? Not an obvious thing, and required some real investigation.

There's also completely new ways of seeing things. Who would come up with information theory? Doesn't seem like something that would obviously be found, despite not really requiring any physical experiment.

And then there's things like algorithm research that turn out to be really big once there's a bit of computational power on the horizon. (Probably people think about the algo before they can try it on a machine.)

</comment><comment><USER14> Impressive how timeless this is.

I would say the great problem of science right now is integrating all of the knowledge there is.

It's time scientists stopped publishing dumb weakly connected PDFs, and start switching to a GitHub like pull request model.

We could build a single strongly typed peer-reviewed repo of all of the world's scientific information, complete with definitions, experiment protocols and data, and make it universally downloadable and usable by all.

<comment><USER15> Ah yes, the old everything-is-broken-and-software-engineering-has-all-the- answers trope.

<comment><USER16> Who claimed software engineering has all the answers? OP is proposing a tool that could be used to help integrate scientific knowledge better than the disintegrated system of PDF's that exists, what's wrong with that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> (1897)

An excerpt from _Advice for a Young Investigator_. [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/437689.Advice_for_a_Youn...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/437689.Advice_for_a_Young_Investigator)

</comment><comment><USER18> One of the great Spanish thinkers, criminally underrated in Anglo countries.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santiago_Ram%C3%B3n_y_Cajal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santiago_Ram%C3%B3n_y_Cajal)

<comment><USER19> I'd rather say he's criminally underrated in Spain.

It is definitely easier to hear casually about Ramon y Cajal in "anglo countries" than in Spain. For example, I have spent my childhood in the spanish state, and I first heard about Ramon y Cajal during the first conference that I attended, in Switzerland, from a lovely presentation by an English professor.

One of the dramatically few spanish first-rate scientists, and he's not a household name. Very, very sad state of affairs.

<comment><USER20> I do not know what you are talking about. We study Ramón y Cajal in school, the most important grants in Spain are named after him, there is a Ramon y Cajal square or street in every city... Even the most ignorant Spaniard knows him and will tell you that he is our most respected scientist from all time.

Science, in general, is criminally underrated in Spain, but Ramón y Cajal is literally the household name.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Well I definitely didn't expect to see this at the end:

 _Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852 – 1934)_

But I believe he's probably still right in 2020.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just a quick note to the moderators: thanks for adding (1897) to the title and clearing up the confusion that i caused! i assumed Ramon y Cajal was more of a household name.

</comment><comment><USER22> > It is nevertheless true that if we arrived on the scene too late for certain > problems, we were also born too early to help solve others.

I think this could be used to describe almost any point in history though. The greatest discoveries in science have always required massive breakthroughs in thinking, that typically defy conventional intuition. Perhaps there are some rare moments in time following a major discovery where the fruitful areas of inquiry seem obvious. But "I don't even know where to start looking for the next major scientific discovery" or "this hypothesis might be wrong and we could potentially spend the rest of time investigating it" seems to be the default state of trying to make major breakthroughs in science.

</comment><comment><USER23> What a contrast with Albert A. Michelson, speaking in 1894:

> _most of the grand underlying principles have been firmly established and > that further advances are to be sought chiefly in the rigorous application > of these principles to all the phenomena which come under our notice. It is > here that the science of measurement shows its importance — where > quantitative work is more to be desired than qualitative work. An eminent > physicist remarked that the future truths of physical science are to be > looked for in the sixth place of decimals_.

</comment><comment><USER24> Most of reality is inexplicable according to modern science. So, there are probably vast quantities of discoveries to still be made.

</comment><comment> tom-thistime The author of this essay died in 1934.

<comment><USER25> Right. _" Who, a few short years ago, would have suspected that light and heat still held scientific secrets in reserve? Nevertheless, we now have argon in the atmosphere, the x-rays of Roentgen, and the radium of the Curies, all of which illustrate the inadequacy of our former methods, and the prematurity of our former syntheses."_ That had to be from the early 20th century.

The problems today are either in areas where complexity is the limiting factor, like biology, or beyond current experimental reach, like string theory and dark matter. The complexity problem can probably be overcome with computer assistance. Experimental reach is harder.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Very inspiring rhetoric. Should encourage any curious soul that seeks to expand the knowledge base.

</comment><comment><USER27> May be it's yet to be discovered

</comment><comment><USER28> Agreed. Thanks, dude.

</comment><comment><USER29> Well, if they were solved, then they would not be regarded as problems...

</comment><comment><USER30> This is a great rebuttal to about 90% of HN comments.

</comment><comment><USER31> Ramón and Cajal, two great thinkers.

<comment><USER32> If this was a joke, it's a pretty good one

<comment><USER31> It's probably one of the most widely known jokes in Spain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Why come up with new ideas and solve hard problems when you can just be the User for X and become a unicorn based no nothing but smoke, mirrors and clever accounting like WeWork?

<comment><USER34> " _Eschew flamebait. Don 't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents._"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER33> strange how this is selectively enforced around here. :x

<comment><USER34> It always feels that the mods are against you. The other side feels the same way.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22always%20feels%22&sort=byDate&type=comment)

It's true that moderation isn't consistent, but that's not because it's selective in the way you imply. Rather, it's because we can't come close to reading everything, and can't moderate what we don't see. If you notice a post that breaks the site guidelines and hasn't been moderated, the likeliest explanation is that we haven't seen it yet.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20likeliest&sort=byDate&type=comment)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> ORT (Only Read Title) but uh...

WTF is gravity? Why is gravitational mass and intertial mass identical (in all known situations)?

Do we orbit the Sun or the image of the Sun? In other words, what's the _speed_ of gravity?

 _Can we control gravity?_

\- - - -

What is subjectivity?

Why is "it" always _now?_

"You" and "now" are synonyms, why?

\- - - -

WTF is up w/ the structure and dynamics of the Solar System? ( 97.77° axial tilt!? Go home Uranus you're drunk!)

\- - - -

QM and Relativity, chocolate and peanut butter?

Or the Universe is messing with us and actually _is_ describable by multiple _irreconcilable_ models?

<comment><USER36> > WTF is gravity?

That's metaphysics, not science.

> Do we orbit the Sun or the image of the Sun? In other words, what's the > speed of gravity?

The image. Speed of gravity is the same as the speed of light.</comment></comment>


US Navy funds a massively online multiplayer game - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/1752574/the-us-navys-massively-multiplayer-pirate-hunting-game

<comment><AUTHOR> Press release from Office of Naval Research, looks like it will run for 3 weeks: [http://www.onr.navy.mil/en/Media-Center/Press- Releases/2011/...](http://www.onr.navy.mil/en/Media-Center/Press- Releases/2011/MMOWGLI-Online-Wargame.aspx)</comment>