Housing a prisoner in California costs more than a year at Harvard - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-prison-costs-20170604-htmlstory.html <comment><USER3> The USA has ~5% of the world's population but 22% of the world's prisoners.

Financial profiting from prisoners: Prison Labor - paid $0.93-0.16/hr California Prisons didn't want to release prisoners because they would loose cheap labor..Courts said they had to: [https://thinkprogress.org/california- tells-court-it-cant-rel...](https://thinkprogress.org/california-tells-court- it-cant-release-inmates-early-because-it-would-lose-cheap-prison- labor-c3795403bae1)

30% of California forest firefighters are prisoners .. The state argued against parole credit for these prisoners as it would draw down the labor force and lead to depletion of the firefighter force.

Someone already mentioned the profit of commissaries. Some are actually run by private companies operating inside the prison

<comment><USER4> At the risk of being boorish about the subject...

I was recently released from Las Vegas County Jail (CCDC) where all sentenced inmates, myself included, are _forced_ , by state law, to "work" in some manner in the jail.

In this case, work consisted of 11-hour shifts, 6 days a week, of ultra back- breaking kitchen work. We were not even allowed to have _water cups_ anywhere outside the break room.

They actually yelled _faster! faster!_ as we ran "the line"...I never could get over that one. All that was missing were the whips and the guards with shotguns spitting tobacco.

We processed approx. _10 thousand trays per day_ , and were constantly harassed and threatened big time by the corporate kitchen staff in charge. It wasn't enough that we were clocking 60-70 hours a week for the grand total of 1 extra tray per meal (not every meal grant you, just the ones we were working during), but you could actually get thrown in the box and _lose gain time_ (more days in jail) for eating a cookie or some trivial such thing.

If you refused to work, you were put in the box and 5 days were added to your sentence.

I did the math...2 shifts of 28 workers 365 days a year...with overtime and all that, approx $50k per week($2.6mil/year) of free basically coerced slave labor for the Aero-mark Corporation that ran the kitchen.

[edits]

<comment><USER5> That is indeed totally crazy.

I wish I had some way to verify your story, as I as a reader can't know who sits behind the keyboard on the other side.

<comment><USER4> > I wish I had some way to verify your story, as I as a reader can't know who > sits behind the keyboard on the other side.

I could never in a 1000 years make up the narrative of my life. I often cannot believe I've lived it.

Every word I write here on HN is true, although you simply have no idea how I wish it wasn't so.

<comment><USER6> I believe you.

I'm also a LV resident. The city is generally hostile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I get it - it's tempting to solve the Harvard Business School issue by sending the MBA students to prison before they wreck havoc on the economy. But I'm not sure their dads would pay the exceeding tuition.

Also, there is the whole question of whether it would be fair to the other prisoners. Pretty soon the prison economy would be infested with cigarette derivatives and yard swaps.

<comment><USER8> Back to the topic, prisons are just another haven for contract robbing. The prison contracts everything from security to mopping. Everything is 3x more expensive. Prison costs are a sink to our society.

Except taxpayers foot the bill. Theres an economic incentive to keeping crime low and right now were all being robbed blind, in this area as well (because yes there are too many to count)

The amount who are released within 5 years with little to no recovery or are going to end up in an even worse state, with even less of an ability to get a job, are more likely to continue to commit crime to make ends meet.

Before we talk about Harvard grads destroying the eocnomy, lets talk about making it less and less likely for 75% of the people imprisoned to ever be able to contribute to society once they are released.

We have a very protestant implementation of prison, they exist to punish people, not to reabilitate people or address the issues, and everyone ends up paying a higher cost with more damage in the end.

Yes people who are doing serious crimes should be put away, but we know that most of the time thats not the case, and furthemore, we know that alot of serious crimes including rape, have men released within 5 years, while a first time offender selling green could land 15 in prison.

Maybe.. [http://www.takepart.com/article/2013/11/14/some-european- pri...](http://www.takepart.com/article/2013/11/14/some-european-prisons-are- shrinking-and-closing-what-can-america-learn/)

<comment><USER9> Yes the idea of having a criminal record is silly - It's a self-fulfilling label. Once you are labeled a criminal, it only makes it harder to get a job and give up crime.

Besides, crime has become such an arbitrary thing. A corporation is allowed to quietly syphon away billions of dollars from society using clever government lobbying and tax avoidance schemes but if a member of society physically steals something from a corporation, they'll go to jail. Why don't corporations like JP Morgan and their executives get a permanent criminal record when they are found guilty of criminal activity?

Either it should be consistent for all or it should be abolished entirely.

<comment><USER10> I mostly agree that the record makes it harder to get a job and give up crime, but what about the deterrence factor? How many more would commit crimes knowing that it wouldn't have any impact on their ability to get a decent job right after serving some time?

> A corporation is allowed to quietly _syphon away billions of dollars from > society_ using clever government lobbying and tax avoidance schemes

Was it society's to begin with?

And you can't completely pin the financial crisis on the likes of JP Morgan when the feds bailed them out with our tax dollars. That was the crime.

<comment><USER11> But is there really a deterrence factor? Most people don't commit crimes, due to a personal moral code. Those who have morals that don't get in the way of crime, just use the deterrence factor to find ways of not getting caught.

Now what would really help, especially with recidivism, is to use the profit motive of prisons in a different way. First-time offenders-- the prison gets paid full price. If an offender returns to prison, the prison should get paid less, or not at all. That would encourage the private prison system to rehabilitate, and provide post-release re-integration assistance.

<comment><USER12> Alternatively, there could be a payment based directly on the outcome. Say there is a period in which the ex-con pays back 'restitution', probably based on the crime and length of sentence. During that period the ex-con owes some percentage of their paycheck. That is, this prison makes most of its money from the restitution payments.

This would encourage prisons to also take an active role in finding ex-cons jobs afterwards, advocating for the highest possible pay (since they make more money), and also encourages them to train/teach the prisoner more to make them more likely to get a job as an ex-con. I think most victim advocates would be ok with this too as there would continue to be a penalty imposed for the crime.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is a cheap, sensational headline and an article that lacks depth and analysis.

At the end of 2006, there were ~160,000 people in prison "institutions" in the state of California[1]. The design capacity of those institutions was ~79,000 people[1], so the occupation was ~204% of the design capacity.

At the end of 2016, there were ~114k people in prison institutions[2], which was ~134% of the design capacity.

Obviously, if prisons are vastly overcrowded, and over time the number of people in prison is reduced substantially, the per-prisoner cost will sharply increase. There are no financial savings on infrastructure because institutional capacity is still vastly exceeded, and the savings in other areas will not be proportional to the overall drop in prison population because the people released early tend to be less expensive to imprison, as they tend to be incarcerated for less serious crimes.

Whatever one's political allegiance, the fact that the prison system in the state of California has been running at a minimum over 130% of design capacity for the last decade is a tremendously serious issue, and it feels trivialising to make a nonsensical comparison to the cost of university tuition, and to present the fact that per-prisoner costs have risen while prisoner numbers have fallen as anything less than blindingly obvious.

A discussion of the prison crisis in California seems completely worthy of Hacker News, but it shouldn't be based on an article like this.

      [1] http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/Reports_Research/Offender_Information_Services_Branch/Monthly/TPOP1A/TPOP1Ad0612.pdf

      [2] http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/Reports_Research/Offender_Information_Services_Branch/Monthly/TPOP1A/TPOP1Ad1612.pdf

<comment><USER14> The article does lack any sort of depth. However, it sounds like you're opposed to the headline itself, which seems to be true, and you haven't refuted it, have you? The article does indeed mention the prison population has declined due to a reduction in overcrowding, but that costs are still rising. The high per-prisoner cost remains a fact, regardless of whether it was cheaper in the past or what caused that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think the Prison Industry should be judged by their recidivism rate. The Prison Guards union in Cali is very, very strong (they were behind the '3 strikes' law, ensuring a lifetime of "clients"). Their pay and benefits should be tied to the recidivism rate.

Prisons should not be training grounds for future criminals, but they are today.

Also: prisons should be shuffled periodically, mixing up the population. That'll prevent the formation of criminal gangs inside. Outside, they'll be living in a diverse, mixed environment anyways; might as well get them started on that inside.

<comment><USER16> Shuffling prisoners around breaks up the family ties they have on the outside; visitors have a harder time if they have to travel further. This increases the likelihood prisoners will offend again.

<comment><USER15> I meant, shuffle them around within the prison, so they're forced to interact more with other groups.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Think about that for a second...$75K/yr for abhorrent, yet improving conditions and you'll come to the correct conclusion that contractors are absolutely fleecing not only the p̶r̶i̶s̶o̶n̶s̶ tax payers, but the prisoners themselves.

Half a lifetime ago, I had to spend a weekend in jail while visiting a friend in California (accused of theft by a drunk lady who couldn't find her credit cards and fingered me instead of realizing that she may have left it at the bar. The best part was when I had to fly back out for a court date, they told me they were dropping the charge for an obvious lack of evidence. This decision was made on the actual court date, so I got to waste even more money on airfare and travel ). I was surprised at the entrepreneurial zeal of those who have no issue profiting from misery and suffering. In the LA area at least, many former/older celebrities are investors or owners of prison supply companies. Most notable was Bob Barker's company which sold travel-sized generic toothpaste for $7. In this case, the price is wrong, Bob.

The fingerprinting machine was the size of a ultra-deluxe 70's Xerox machine, regularly needed service, and looked like it had a sticker price around 5 figures (a feature that is just an add-on to $500 phones.) I think that 10x-20x inflation is pretty consistent across the board in the American penal system. The collect calling system is also beyond ridiculous given the near zero cost of landline telecommunications and that most cell phones can't receive collect calls. The food you're eating is the absolute worst (in terms of taste of course) nutritionally. Nearly everything is processed and is done so in the cheapest way possible. When I say as cheap as possible, I mean that the $.49 Nissin Ramen is an actual delicacy (No exaggeration. Some of the inmates would pool their resources together and "cook" the ramen in a giant plastic bag with hot water that surely must be leeching pcb's and/or phthalates from the container.) After a few months of that diet, even the most physically fit people developed a weird type of gut and loss of musculature. I didn't eat anything while there, but I observed that the only nutritional guideline that could possibly be met that of 2K+ calories/day. I know it's not Club Med, but that type of diet is a blocker for any type of rehabilitation. It was depressing to look at and had the effect of making one more docile and depressed.

So while California may spend $75K per prisoner, the value they spend is probably closer to $7K. It's kind of brilliant in a sadistic way, as if the prisons, their programs, food, and environment were designed to maximize recidivism.

Now that I think about it, I wouldn't be surprised if some elements were designed in this way

<comment><USER18> Does the US court system not refund travel cost? Over here you can get full refund of travel cost if you are summoned to court(within reason - if you travel first class you will only get price of a normal ticket back).

<comment><USER17> > Does the US court system not refund travel cost?

I'm sorry, I'm actually laughing out loud for that one. No, they do not refund any cost you incur for going to court.

Luckily, I wasn't accused of any drug crimes or they may have seized my car and kept it under then-existing asset forfeiture (legal theft) laws

<comment><USER19> if you were wrongly convicted of a crime, would the costs of your defense be somehow be re-imbursed or compensated?

<comment><USER17> There have been people wrongly convicted who can't even get out of prison once something like DNA evidence exonerates them.

<comment><USER20> I believe there's even been cases where people have been executed despite DNA evidence exonerating them.

IIRC, the judge's opinion was something like "Well, we followed all the procedures correctly, it doesn't matter if the wrong conclusion was reached"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I live in Bedstuy in Brooklyn, a predominately African American community in NYC. Before this I've lived in Albany, NY; Bushwick; and in the housing projects in Brownsville.

NY has recently taken a significant step forward in ensuring adequate access to higher education through the legislature's and Cuomo's initiative to bring tuition free higher education to all NYS residents.

I've become part of several minority communities and met many people with circumstances not so fortunate as mine. It is unbelievable to hear how such a large percentage of these young men have spent time in prison. During highschool I found it odd that in a school with a greater than 60% African American community the AP and IBO classes I was enrolled in were consistently 90% white. I skipped a lot of class back then and was always amazed by the peers who, despite by all standards being considered "the bad kids", could tear a car apart and build it all back together again.

In the projects in Brownsville I learned that my girlfriends mother had secured some sort of video shooting arrangement, she said the entire neighborhood would turn out in their Sunday's finest when the cameras were around. Everyone wanted to see what was going on.

In the projects in Brownsville I noticed an abject lack of activity spaces and an abject lack of green. Brownsville is one of the poorest communities in NYC and it consists primarily of a large number of bleak housing project buildings arrayed across several blocks. I have never heard so many sirens as I did in Brownsville. In the short month I was there my girlfriends mother literally walked into a shoot out to calm some of the younger community members down.

I've always thought to myself that I could do anything anyone else could do (well not always, took a lot of introspection in highschool). I mean, look at the person doing it. They have two arms, I have two arms. They have two legs, I have two legs. They've got a head and brain and I have exactly the same.

It would clearly be obnoxious not to believe in any other person the same way. I believe we're very fortunate to ride the subways in NYC because when you see a child hankering for a balloon you realize that child is just like any other.

I applaud this effort. I've met so many people who are smart as whips and deserve the access to the opportunities and future I had and have.

And that's why I believe the solution starts from the ground up.

</comment><comment><USER22> The article forgot to mention that the California prison guards union bankrolls most California politicians. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Correctional_Peac...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Correctional_Peace_Officers_Association)

</comment><comment><USER23> Strangely, I was just reading about the costs of prison in California because I read an article about "the grave injustice of mandatory sentencing" [1] and was curious about the associated costs to taxpayers.

I don't feel personally affected by this issue, but I get the sense we are sentencing too many people for too long for non-violent drug offenses.

Anyway, the cost of the prison system in California is about $7.9 billion according to:

[https://www.vera.org/publications/the-price-of-prisons- what-...](https://www.vera.org/publications/the-price-of-prisons-what- incarceration-costs-taxpayers)

or (given 39 million people in California) about $200 per taxpayer (no, that's not the best metric).

If the cost per prisoner is going up because we're releasing people from prisons this year, that's probably a good thing.

[1] [http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/02/politics/mandatory-minimum- sen...](http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/02/politics/mandatory-minimum-sentencing- sessions/?iid=ob_lockedrail_bottomlarge)

<comment><USER24> The day you suddenly feel affected by the issue, you won't be commenting on HN anymore. And with the questionable state of the US justice system you don't even have to commit a crime. An estimated 4% of inmates are innocent.

Also, the problem is too long sentences for pretty much all crimes.. Americans aren't very forgiving.

<comment><USER25> >An estimated 4% of inmates are innocent.

Source?

From what I remember, 4% is for death row, which has a much higher standard of guilt. Most people who are sentenced for a crime plea guilty to avoid worse charges, which is a situation where a rational innocent individual would plea, meaning that far far more are likely innocent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Does the number include the housing and living costs for the students?

edit: sorry, that was not a polemic post. But if the number for the students excludes stuff like food, rent or other living costs (e.g. medical checkups) that are "included" with prisoners, the gap might be smaller.

I just checked the numbers for Germany, on the average, a prisoner costs 3281,40 Euro per month, so about 40k Euro or 45k USD per year. So, yeah, it seems like California is getting shafted, somehow.

<comment><USER27> Now go on Google Images and search for pictures of a German prison, and compare that to the situation in California.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Another option is to put non-violent offenders in camps. The deal is if they stay in the camp and follow the rules, they can serve out their sentence there. Run away and they go to the real prisons.

<comment><USER29> If somebody is so much of a non threat to society he can be housed in a voluntary prison camp he shouldn't be in prison at all. Establish a real community service program, not one that you can pay your way out of, and sentence them to service hours. There are dozens of ways to allow a petty law breaker to contribute.

<comment><USER30> Lets say I run some scam against tax-preparation companies and get away with millions over some months but are caught red-handed. Clearly I am not dangerous to society, but at the same time I can never really work of the money. Would you still put me in the community program?

Or take the other case, I am high on drugs and crash a car with several of my kids in it. At the same time I clearly didn't mean to harm them - you wouldn't have problem with me having the kids if I wasn't on drugs. Assume further (because this is often the case) that I skip out of rehab. What would you do with me?

<comment><USER31> > Or take the other case, I am high on drugs and crash a car with several of > my kids in it. At the same time I clearly didn't mean to harm them - <USER2> > wouldn't have problem with me having the kids if I wasn't on drugs. Assume > further (because this is often the case) that I skip out of rehab. What > would you do with me?

Everything has to be done in the children's best interest. In this situation hypothetical_tomjen3 has put their children in danger.

This means any approach covers several points:

1) Firm reminder that continued use of drugs while you're supposed to be in control of the children means the state is left with little option but to remove the children from you

2) Removal of the children can be avoided if you comply with rehab

3) Provide good quality, evidence based rehab

4) Provide access to the children (with supervision if needed)

5) Remove driving licence for a year as a punishment. The driving licence can only be regained after successfully completing rehab with clean tests for some time.

This particular example you've given is a _public health_ problem, not a _criminal justice_ problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Bizarre comparison!

Prisons need to safely and securely provide accommodation for "high-risk, high-need" human beings to survive and be rehabilitated.

Universities have a wholly different set of requirements.

<comment><USER33> > (...) and be rehabilitated.

-Never having experienced the US penal system first hand, I cannot be too bombastic - but from the outside, it sure looks as if rehabilitation has taken a back seat to punishment.

If one were of a sufficiently cynical disposition, it would be tempting to assume that all involved parties (except the inmates) has more to gain from keeping people locked up than rehabilitating them.

<comment><USER34> Rehabilitation must exist but it must also take the back seat to punishment. In Europe there is this strange concept that developed that crime is a sort of disease and that prisons are kind of hospital. So there is some expectation that a criminal will be "cured" when leaving jail. And many judges got to the thinking that crime is caused by poverty and since jail will not cure poverty we should not send criminals to prison. And you end up with guys with a 10 pages long criminal record and who haven't spent a night in jail.

<comment><USER35> What is the purpose of a prison? It's meant to rid the society of unwelcome individuals.

Another way to get rid of "unwelcome individuals" is to provide rehabilitation, more opportunities, etc. This is better in the long term.

Source: I'm European.

<comment><USER34> To me the purpose of the sentence is (by order of decreasing importance):

1\. Reciprocity. The modern justice system is a social contract where the victim accepts not to seek revenge himself, which would give the powerful a complete impunity over the weaker. Instead the punishment will be applied by a greater force, historically the King or the local lord, now the justice system. If you tell a victim that we don't intend to punish the person who hurt him/her for the greater good of society, the victim will have a legitimate sentiment of injustice and may seek to take revenge directly (think of some Saudi prince committing rape in europe, it may be in the interest of the country to let him go, the economic impact of upsetting the Saudi may be much more than the grief of a victim). I think negating this aspect is extremely dangerous for a society (and I see this aspect completely negated in some European countries). But it is by no mean the only purpose (many crimes have no individual victim, like not paying your taxes).

2\. Deterrence. Ideally you want criminals not to commit crimes in the first place because of the fear of consequences. If nothing happens you create impunity and you ultimately fuel more crime. Now prison is not a miracle deterrent. Some criminals are too dumb to consider the consequences when committing a crime, or are unafraid of some jail time. Also deterrence will have no impact of terrorists on a suicide mission. But it is an important role nevertheless.

3\. Protecting society. Some criminals are deemed to do it again. In some instance the cost to society is low (consuming drug again) or high (rape or murder). In some cases the cost is too high for society to take a chance and the sentence is also a way to "take out" a criminal element and protect society. But this should be in fairly limited extreme cases. But you do not send Madoff to jail just to ensure he doesn't start a new Ponzi scheme. This is a secondary purpose of prison.

And of course rehabilitation should also happen during the execution of the sentence. We would only make the matter worse by not using the jail time to help criminals find a better way. But I do not believe this is either the primary purpose of a sentencing (hence it should take a back seat).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Remember when "university" meant "for anyone"? Why should Harvard tuition fees cost anywhere near what it costs to incarcerate someone 24/7?

<comment><USER37> Didn't it mean "for all knowledge"? When universities appeared, they were clearly not for everyone.

<comment><USER36> As in they were universally accessible, not that everyone should go to one. I.e. not just education for the rich, education for the smart.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> It would probably be good for society if those prisoners who wanted would be sent to a school instead. I can't imagine a better punishment!

</comment><comment><USER39> Love when the problem as stated contains its own solution.

<comment><USER40> I think it helps show the cost of crime and look at different solutions but I don't see how it contains the solution.

I had a car stolen by some guys once. They used my car to drive around breaking in to other cars and stealing things. The police caught them and took me to me car so that I could get it back. I also had to go through all the stuff in the back and tell the police what wasn't mine. It turns out they had been arrested in California.

California sent them to Arizona so that they could go to a trade school. All their needs were covered, they just needed to complete the program. Instead the failed out and then went on a crime spree in their new home state. I'm sure it was a very cost effective solution for CA but I'm not sure about society as a whole.

<comment><USER39> It's a numbers game really. At present the numbers show that prison makes people worse. I'll add my own anecdata and say that I've seen people come out of prison much worse than they went in.

And, if, for $75,000 per person per annum we can't work towards better outcomes, then I think we can agree something is very wrong with the current approach.

<comment><USER41> Whether or not it makes them worse, it keeps them away from everyone else where they can do serious damage.

If you want to fix what is wrong you start by not labeling people "felons" for life--change every law so that when someone gets out they get their full rights restored--voting, right to bear arms, all of it. And do away with sex offender registries and all of it. If they re-offend, put them away for good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Gonna throw some weird idea about prison, what about:

\- Smaller but individual cells. (have to think about how to keep them very clean)

\- No outside yard for crowd.

\- No plural bathroom.

Everything you do is for the benefit of society 90% and the rest for you.

\- Clean something outside, plant trees I don't know, so you get walk, sun and forest time.

\- You can read books, or some journals.

\- You can talk to old wise persons.

\- You don't have TV, video games.

\- You can work (producing parts, fixing things) again for the benefit of society.

\- You can do exercice: biking, rowing. Qi gong or Yoga too. (bonus, plug bikes to generate electricity)

\- You get simple healthy food: raw veggies, some meat, some fruits. No sauce, no dessert.

Basically a cheap mindful retreat with optional work. Lowering costs as much as possible and prisonner suffering at the same time. You can improve your mind and your body while paying your mistake by being cut from the group. Nothing more.

<comment><USER43> i like the idea but there is not much you can do to coerce folks into doing the activities you suggest. Not everyone in prison is of a good nature.

<comment><USER42> Nobody is forced to do anything actually. Only outside things will be done chained, loose enough to do the thing but otherwise no orders or anything.

My idea is that people with nothing to do, and no absurd violent crowds will start to soften and try stuff out of boredom or old desires (say before they turned into the "dark side").

You either stay silently in your cell or you do something that won't cost society and will give them something back, and you will also get something on the way (new knowledge, less boredom, health, etc).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> At more than $200 a night you can spend a whole year at a spa. What do the prisoners get for that money? The daily cost for food seems to be about $2 and they live in overcrowded cells. Sounds like a very profitable business for someone.

</comment><comment><USER45> The other way of looking at this story is that Harvard nearly costs $75,000 per year despite being tax exempt with billions of dollars of tax deductible donations/endowment.

</comment><comment><USER46> If you haven't, Netflix's has a documentary called 13TH[1] where a loop hole in the slavery abolishment act was used to mass incarcerate blacks in the USA. As indicated in other threads, USA is inhabited with just 5% of the world's population but runs 25% of all prisons.

[1] [https://www.netflix.com/in/title/80091741](https://www.netflix.com/in/title/80091741)

</comment><comment><USER47> Headline is an outright clickbait lie contradicted by the lead sentence; it doesn't cost more than the all-in annual cost of Harvard, but more than tuition.

Not that the comparison is particularly meaningful in any case, since it's not like sending convicts to Harvard instead is an available alternative.

<comment><USER48> It says it costs "2,000 above tuition, fees, room and board, and other expenses to attend Harvard." so I have no idea what you're on about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Reminds me of the article about million dollar blocks.

[http://www.npr.org/2012/10/02/162149431/million-dollar- block...](http://www.npr.org/2012/10/02/162149431/million-dollar-blocks-map- incarcerations-costs)

</comment><comment><USER50> Does this include housing, food, healthcare, etc. for Harvard figure? Looks like not, so the comparison is kinda meaningless.

Also:

       The price for each inmate has doubled since 2005, even as
       court orders related to overcrowding have reduced the
       population by about one-quarter. Salaries and benefits for
       prison guards and medical providers drove much of the increase.

I looked for the word "union" in the article and it's not there. I guess it's an unsolvable mystery why the costs raise. And even if the number of inmates declines (as it already did, according to the article) would the workforce be reduced? Doesn't look likely, unions are very powerful voting blocks.

<comment><USER51> So you looked for evidence to support your a priori beliefs, didn't find it and still made insinuations. Good on you.

<comment><USER50> Er, what? I am struggling to understand how your comment relates to what I wrote. Once more:

1\. Comparison of Harvard tuition to prisoner's costs is meaningless as done in the article

2\. The article itself mentions costs raise mainly because of labor costs

3\. The article itself mentions that drop in the inmates number did not reduce labor costs

4\. The article does not mention any of the factors influencing labor costs.

Which evidence you think I am missing?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> ~9 billion/year total? That would be enough to establish a penal colony on moon, perhaps?

</comment><comment><USER53> Wait. Im missing something, if there is one employee per every 2 inmates that means each employee earns in the range of Min Wage to 152,000. How much of this is driven by employee salary and how much by administrative and over head costs? Is this just because the cost of living in california is so high they have to pay their guards six digits and above?

</comment><comment><USER54> Fittingly, it's also a better career move to become a prison guard than attend Harvard:

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704132204576285...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704132204576285471510530398)

</comment><comment><USER55> is the need for prison simply the side effect of a population density that is too high? But that is a different topic. The issue is the cost of incarceration and how a once noble idea (eliminating bad behavior instead of eliminating the owner) has been 'corporatized'. It seems a fundamental rhythm of human activity is to express the goodness in us with a new idea. The evil in us then tries to maximize profit and efficiency resulting in a loss function that destroys initially unrecognized but important parameters of humanity.

</comment><comment><USER56> Seems like a colossal waste of limited resources and tax revenue.

Maybe every non-violent criminal should be put on house arrest with an ankle bracelet instead? Then they can work off a fine, do community service, etc?

</comment><comment><USER57> That is just California being California.

Other states are cheaper. If you really wanted to be cheap, you could outsource to a foreign country. You could fly people to the other side of the world and still save money.

</comment><comment><USER4> Do people not realize almost the entire CJS is basically a jobs program for the very people whom directly influence how the laws are made that self- perpetuate their incomes?

That usually works out well, right?

</comment><comment><USER58> This is what privatization leads to. Hand off a government function to a profit-seeking organization, well, it's gonna seek profits; the taxpayer winds up paying for the thing and also for someone else to make their profits off the thing.

Seriously has there _ever_ been a situation where privatizing an industry led to actually reduced costs, and didn't lead to reduced quality of output? Even if you accept the (IMHO dubious) premise that private industry is necessarily going to be more efficient than government-run industry, the efficiency gain has to be greater than the profit-taking for it to be a worthwhile tradeoff for the taxpayer.

<comment><USER59> This is an extremely simplistic way to look at things.

Private organizations do some things much better than public, and vice versa. More often than not it depends on the question you're asking... And there's a lot of contextualization needed in the answer.

How's your electrical infrastructure, or your water infrastructure doing? They're supplied by private industry. How's your religious institution, your school bus, your local day care? What about public-private partnerships, like public transit? Personally, I will take the mixed market universal health care systems of France and Germany, over the 100% public Canadian waiting list system... but that depends on your criteria for success.

Volumes are written about each one of these cases, how to evaluate "success", what combinations of structures work well in what social contexts, etc. Other countries have private companies involved in prisons, and get great results... But their markets are different, their contract terms are different, the avenues of influence for legislation are different, their bidding processes are different, and their cultures are different. To reduce it to "privatization always raises costs and reduces quality of output" is ridiculous.

<comment><USER58> > Private organizations do some things much better than public, and vice > versa.

That is certainly a true statement, and I'm of course by no means suggesting that privately-supplied functions such as "day care" or "religious institutions" should be government-run.

I'm reacting primarily to the current American administration's de facto stance of "small government good, big government bad," which I feel is just as simplistic as the straw-man version of my question you constructed. Privatization efforts have been proposed (or have long since been carried out -- this tendency long predates Trump) for the prison system, the education system, air traffic control, even the military itself through use of mercenary companies like whatever Blackwater's name is now. (There's certainly room for reasoned disagreement about which functions a government ought to serve compared to private industry, but surely "military and jails" belong under the government umbrella?)

In every case I'm aware of, the justification has been that it will reduce costs due to increased efficiency, yet the end results have been increased costs and reduced quality of service. Maybe Americans are just bad at privatization, but that was a genuine question: has there been a case where privatizing a function traditionally served by the government has improved it? The case under discussion here, the american prison system, certainly hasn't.

My main point was this:

> Even if you accept the premise that private industry is necessarily going to > be more efficient than government-run industry, the efficiency gain has to > be greater than the profit-taking for it to be a worthwhile tradeoff for the > taxpayer.

...which seems inarguable, yet is rarely if ever addressed by proponents of privatization.

<comment><USER58> > which functions a government ought to serve compared to private industry

(For what it's worth, and in case it helps clarify my stance here, my opinion on this is that if it's a necessarily monopolistic or universally-mandated function, it should be part of the government; if it's a function where meaningful competition is possible, let capitalism do its thing.

The goal being to provide some recourse when things go wrong: If my private daycare sucks I can just go to a different one, no problem. If my government prison system sucks I can at least theoretically vote the people responsible out of office. But when there's no opportunity for meaningful choice or competition, there's no benefit to privatization, it's just inserting a middleman who can skim some profit off the top.

This still leaves a lot of important gray area -- education and health care remain thorny issues for example -- but I hope I've demonstrated that I don't hold the simplistic "everything should be government!" stance you appear to have ascribed to me.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Government runs something inefficiently. That is a big news! Nah. It is known.

This is prison industrial complex at play fueled by insecurities of average American.

</comment><comment><USER61> just outsource this to a low cost area. i'm sure a poor state would love to make some money housing california prisoners.

<comment><USER62> But I guess California prison guards and their unions - probably not an insignificant contributor to election budgets of some politicians - would not like that? They would bring up issues like isolation of prisoners from their friends and families (further increasing their re-offending risk) and dumping of working conditions (immoral). And that if you do this, you won't be re- elected.

<comment><USER63> > probably not an insignificant contributor to election budgets of some > politicians

 _most definitely_ not insignificant.

[http://reason.com/blog/2015/06/02/are-for-profit-prisons- or-...](http://reason.com/blog/2015/06/02/are-for-profit-prisons-or-public- unions)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Without having read this, I would imagine healthcare costs among a prison population would be higher by orders of magnitude.

</comment><comment><USER65> Criminal justice in the United States borrows a lot more from the Scarlet Letter than rational policy.

</comment><comment><USER66> How much would Harvard cost if you had to keep students from escaping?

</comment><comment><USER67> Seems like it would be smarter to just give them the money and revoke it if they break the law again.

<comment><USER68> Wow, so I can rob a bank than get out and collect 75k, that is an awesome thought.

<comment><USER5> How about I rob your store Thursday and you mine Friday?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> We're going to end up like China--executing people for most serious crimes. We only spend the money on prisoners in the US because we have the luxury of doing so. If (when?) we falter, we're right back to frontier style justice. It can't be any other way--letting dangerous criminals out just creates more chaos.

And don't lecture me about all the "non-violent" drug offenders--I don't think any of them really exist. They're all shitbags who got jammed up for whatever charges the cops could get them on. For every bleeding heart story, I'll show you 10 that justly deserve to be behind bars.

</comment><comment><USER69> This seems to be a perverted trend in America. Medical bills, tuition and all fees in general bloated to the point where it doesn't make sense. Is this some sort of anthropological/economic phenomenon? Somebody should get to the bottom of this and write a book.

</comment><comment><USER70> at that cost they should send prisoners to an island and send them $50,000 of care packages.

<comment><USER24> No need for an island, just set them up with an apartment, an GPS tracker, and a Netflix account... Most of them will happily sit at home and watch Netflix :)

<comment><USER71> Just a thought, that's also tax free income (if we're assuming not counting prison jobs program.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> s-brody Why is this on HN?

<comment><USER72> Are you implying that it should not be?

<comment> s-brody Yes. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER72> I was hoping that you might explain why.

<comment> s-brody I was under the impression that this is a purely programming-related list.

<comment><USER72> I think you have been mis-informed. This site is for things of _interest_ to 'hackers' not merely for things related to them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> giving criminals rights is a politically toxic because of religious doctrine: the point of jail is not to learn, but to suffer. the idea is if you flagrantly disrespect god(aka the power structure of the society you live in), you must suffer as an example to others.

Its not an ideal system, but there's a certain sensibility to it that stabilizes society. If people saw those that go to jail, come out better persons. They might get the idea that the criminal is a leadership figure, or that they too might become better persons after experimenting with crime.

I'm a strong believer in prison reform, and treating criminals as victims of the difficult choices life offers you. It shouldn't be the accepted standard to put them in a cage and forget they exist, we need to show them the flaws of their moral system: we need to preach to them until they concede the errors of their ways and show meekness.

<comment><USER74> That does not resemble any religious doctrine I know of. The predominant one in the US, Christianity, views punishment on earth as corrective in nature, ie for rehabilitation, and also views prisons as serving the purpose of separating bad actors from society so they cannot damage others. There is no place for retribution, vengeance, etc. American culture seems to be fixated with vendetta, but it is not religious in nature at all, just as it has nothing to do with their love of sports.

<comment><USER75> You need to learn more. It is warmed-over Calvinism and this strain is widespread in the US thanks to the influence of theologians like the late RJ Rushdoony. Look into the work of Chip Berlet on Christian Dominionism and its influence on politics, as well as Colin Woodard's excellent history book _American Nations_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> That sounds totally fine in my eyes. I live outside the US and a relatively cheap lifestyle, so a lot cheaper than the average US citizen. And I say if you add the security requirements of a prison on top of my life I could easily be at $70k-$80k.

What the article probably doesn't consider is the costs of daily life. I can't imagine Harvard+eating+sleeping+takingShowers+heating+clothing really just costs $75k/year, then everybody would go to Harvard, even those who already have a PHD.</comment>


How serious is the California drought? Before and after pictures - <AUTHOR> http://imgur.com/a/IgoUq <comment><USER2> This is a really poor illustration, because it only includes Lake Oroville, which is a reservoir. Reservoirs _exist_ to be tapped like this and drained down. Even a small drought would see a significant change in the water level for a reservoir.

<comment><USER3> One reservoir or not, meant to be tapped or not, Lake Oroville is at it's lowest point _ever_. Also that dam isn't generating as much power which is causing brownouts; the drought is causing _brownouts_ :

"The dam at Lake Oroville is not generating enough power; only 510 megawatts. That's down from 820 megawatts. The power shortage is causing rolling brownouts in parts of in eastern Butte County on Kelly Ridge and Forbestown Roads.

"We are dropping a foot a day in a 24 hour period," said Frazier."

[http://www.krcrtv.com/news/local/lake-oroville-water- level-f...](http://www.krcrtv.com/news/local/lake-oroville-water-level- falling-rapidly/26854392)

<comment><USER2> To be clear, I'm not disputing the existence or seriousness of the drought. Just pointing out that this really isn't a very good visualization of its seriousness.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Maybe California should re-evaluate their relationship with agriculture.

 _" But California grows so much of our nation's food! What would we eat without them!"_ you exclaim. Well, I actually agree with you. For the sake of a stable society, it is important that our supply of food remain uninterrupted. Food is essential to the US, and California is essential to the US's food supply.

Fucking pistachios _are not_ though. Tax the ever-loving shit out of any farmer growing bullshit luxury crops like that, and quit blaming regular Californian citizens who just want to take a nice shower after a hard days work for all the missing water.

Oh, and somebody fix the "save water" propaganda to include some notion of watersheds and aquifers. I've met 3 people recently who don't understand that my [mis]use of fresh water has fuck all to do with California's water supply. I am sick of explaining that my supply of water neither flows out of nor into California.

<comment><USER5> Or people could just eat a little less beef, which takes 100,000 liters to produce just one kilogram. [1]

1: [http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/08/us-could- feed-80...](http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/08/us-could- feed-800-million-people-grain-livestock-eat)

<comment><USER6> Cattle is raised in places that are technically desert, like Montana, without requiring any water beyond natural rain fall. They eat the hardy natural grasses of the area. If the land was plowed to grow grains or any other human palatable vegetable crop, the soil would dry up and blow away, becoming desert like other over farmed areas like the Middle East.

<comment><USER5> Certainly there are sustainable farming methods, but it doesn't change the fact that industrial factory farms are a reality.

My comment was that simply eating less beef would have a huge impact on the environment. I'm not advocating that we replace cattle farms with wheat fields, nor am I advocating that people go vegetarian.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nobody doubts there's a serious drought here in California, but those "before and after" photos (2011 vs. 2014) are misleading and likely show seasonal variance.

I can find photos predating the "before" images that make Lake Oroville look like a parched wasteland: [http://www.panoramio.com/photo/17518597](http://www.panoramio.com/photo/17518597) [http://www.panoramio.com/photo/17518170](http://www.panoramio.com/photo/17518170) [http://www.panoramio.com/photo/17518629](http://www.panoramio.com/photo/17518629)

Those were uploaded in 2009 (the camera used was announced in 2006, so that's a three-year window).

Yes, there's a drought. Yes, 80 percent of the developed water supply in California is used by agriculture. But not accounting for seasonal variation in a state with a dry vs. rainy season doesn't do the argument justice.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm curious how much water the various water projects in California lose to evaporation. The All-American Canal goes through the desert and is uncovered, for example. It seems like people have talked about covering them with solar cells, but it might be valuable just to cover them with anything.

</comment><comment><USER9> A really interesting article was posted about 6 months ago that covered some of the history and drama around the state's aging water projects:

[http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/02/american...](http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/02/american- aqueduct-the-great-california-water-saga/284009/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Now, I know nothing about Earth science, but is this not at least a little bit expected given that this is a man made lake? Can I see some pictures of natural lakes in this area? Obviously the drought is bad, because this isn't common and looks very worrisome - but how much of this is just due to this lake basically being a giant swimming pool?

</comment><comment><USER11> Unfortunately, California (and the American West) have experienced droughts on the order of decades or centuries, and in the fairly recent past. So it could get so much worse:

[http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/drought/medieval.sh...](http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/drought/medieval.shtml)

</comment><comment><USER12> For a comparison to historical averages, see California Department of Water Resoruces Reservoir Conditions. Where the historical average calls for about 2/3 capacity, most reservoirs are at about 1/3, some markedly less (10%).

You'll get percent-of-average from Reservoir Water Storage (By Hydrologic Region), with historical data for selected years to 1977.

A plot for Lake Oroville showing annual patterns for current, wet, and dry years: Lake Oroville Storage Level Graph.

URLs in the Reddit comment below, apologies but moblie cut & paste stinks.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/2ebhyx/images_3_ye...](http://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/2ebhyx/images_3_years_apart_showing_the_severity_of/cjycrx5)

[http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cdecapp/resapp/resDetailOrig.action...](http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cdecapp/resapp/resDetailOrig.action?resid=ORO)

[http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi- progs/reservoirs/STORAGEW](http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi- progs/reservoirs/STORAGEW)

[http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi- progs/products/rescond.pdf](http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi- progs/products/rescond.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER13> It would be nice if they had photos from somewhere other than a single reservoir (Oroville).

</comment><comment><USER14> From 5 days ago: [http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/2eawhw/how_serious_is_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/2eawhw/how_serious_is_california_drought_check_out_these/)

</comment><comment><USER15> How about a picture of a farmer harvesting the rice he's growing with the "ultra scarce" water?

... 'Cause whatever droughts look like, that isn't it.

<comment><USER16> From what I've heard, a lot of CA rice is grown around the Sacramento-San Joaquin river delta, in areas the water table is so high farmers turn pumps off to water crops.

Also, keep in mind that while rice can use a lot of water (600 gallons or so to produce a pound of rice), it's small fry to beef, which is an order of magnitude more. Or if you want another beloved non-meat product for comparison, an equivalent weight in wine probably uses on the same order as rice (significantly more for less careful wineries, somewhat less for efficient ones).

Not that I'm against the state taking a hard look at _all_ agricultural, industrial, and residential water use. Just not sure we should be picking on rice in particular...

<comment><USER15> All good points, but remember, they're still significantly less value-dense uses of water than things we're being hounded to stop.

For example, how much is it worth to me to blow 50 gallons of water in a shower. Maybe 5 cents at least? That water is valued at .1 cents per gallon.

In contrast, a pound of beef at the ranch costs maybe a dollar. 100 cents to 5000 gallons of water makes it valued at .02 cents per gallon at most (because it has other inputs).

The rancher should still cut back _way_ before showers.

<comment><USER17> Why are you comparing the cost of the water to your house with the cost of beef at the source? You sure as hell aren't paying $1/lb for beef, and remember that the water you're using in your shower has to be transported and treated before it can be re-used; it's not evaporating off your bathroom floor.

This seems like a really odd way to make a comparison, even if we accept that the value to you of a shower and a meal are roughly the same.

<comment><USER15> A few things:

1) I was conservatively assuming that the cost of the meat is due entirely to the cost of the water. In reality, it's even less. Taking the value of meat- in-the-city would make the estimate err even further in the wrong direction by attributing, to water, value that was actually added by transportation.

2) For city dwellers, I wasn't using the actual cost paid for the water, but the (approximate, much-higher) amount they _would_ way if push came to shove, in order to estimate the relative utility destroyed by people cutting back on showers compared to farmers producing less water-intense output, and thus how misguided are the campaigns to get people to cut back what are already high- value uses of water.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Makes you wonder if this is indeed a permanent change in the earth's water distribution, rather than just a time of low flow rates. I don't think our climate models can predict it. Not because of atmosphereic, but because of geothermal. We can predict atmospheric, but geothermal is as unpredictable as earthquakes.

<comment><USER19> > if this is indeed a permanent change

It's not. It's happened many times before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is how you do a real drought - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000s_Australian_drought](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000s_Australian_drought)

Basically 10 years of below average rainfall. Melbourne's water storages got down to about 25% at one point and I seem to recall you basically can't use the last 20%.

There were terrible bushfires in 2002, 2006 and 2009 and farmers needed a fair bit of relief from the government but life went on (with water restrictions).

The worst part of the drought was the Victorian government decided to build one of the worlds biggest desal plants (will cost the state about $30b over its lifetime), which was delayed in being finished because the drought broke.

They have not used any water from it.

<comment><USER21> I just looked it up.

Cost of the plant was around $4 billion and the 30 year operating costs are apparently around $1.5 billion.

It was only finished in 2012 and so far it has not been required to be used.

Over the course of the drought the government handed out $4.5 billion in drought assistance to farmers and the economy overall had over $5 billion in losses per year. 2002-2003 alone cost $6.6 billion.

To be honest, this looks like a good insurance plan. Australia should build more of them.

<comment><USER20> A desal plant in Australia is a good idea because it is an arid continent and is prone to drought. The biggest desal plant in the world was not a good idea. It was not required at the time and probably wont be required for another 20 years, especially given how well water restrictions worked during the drought.

Over-building on infrastructure is almost as bad as not building it at all. And as someone else pointed out this particular project was beset by dodgy builders, unions drinking at the trough and grandstanding politicians who wanted to be seen doing "something". All up, massive waste of money.

<comment><USER21> Fair enough. I must say from looking into it more that there seems to be an absurdly wide range of cost estimates being quoted, as well as a lot of mixing up of prices and costs, so the figures I quoted are probably bullshit.

Edit - I am not sure I agree with you about overbuilding on infrastructure though. A good example of this is the London sewer system by Joseph Bazalgette, that was massively overbuilt to the tune of twice the maximum requirement from what was considered the highest possible population density, just in case. Which was very lucky, given the development of the towerblock 100 years later.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Bazalgette](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Bazalgette)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Meanwhile... [http://gizmodo.com/rich-people-are-trucking-their-own- water-...](http://gizmodo.com/rich-people-are-trucking-their-own-water-into- drought-r-1627178060)

</comment><comment><USER23> Meanwhile Beverly Hill and other wealthy areas have 5000 gallon water trucks coming in to private properties each day.

Where do they think that water is coming from.

</comment><comment><USER24> Southern California is a result of big government messing around with the market to disastrous consequences. If it was worthwhile for people to live in California, then the market would've built the necessary irrigation, without Army Corps of Engineers meddling.

<comment><USER21> People have lived in California since at least 17,000 BCE, according to archaeological excavation. It had about a third of the native population of what is now the USA.

<comment><USER12> Source?

The total precolumbian population of the Americas (north, south, and central) was ~40-112 million. Less than 1/6 to 1/3 that of the present US and only slightly more than California today at the low end.

See Charles C. Mann's _1491_ , pp. 104-109, among others.

<comment><USER21> _" something approaching one third of all Native Americans living within the present-day boundaries of the continental United States - which is to say, more than three hundred thousand people - are estimated to have been living within the present-day boundaries of California."_

[http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=-IXp7of_QxIC&pg=PA13&lpg=...](http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=-IXp7of_QxIC&pg=PA13&lpg=PA13&dq=third+of+native+americans+lived+in+california)

The 17,000 BCE may a bit early (that was based off stone flakes rather than direct evidence of human remains), but there are 14,000 year old human coprolites in Oregon and evidence of boat use in California 12,000 years ago.

[http://www.nature.com/news/ancient-migration-coming-to- ameri...](http://www.nature.com/news/ancient-migration-coming-to- america-1.10562)

My point was that there were quite a lot of people considering it worthwhile to live in what is now California, long before Europeans got there, let alone any army engineers.

There are now a lot more people and it is stretching the water use, but there are a lot more people in most places, not just California.

And saying that markets will build any necessary irrigation projects and that the state shouldn't build them is an interesting position to take, given the historic link between irrigation planning and central government. You could make the argument that government wouldn't even exist in the present form, if it were not for the history of managing irrigation.

<comment><USER12> Starr's quote isn't what you'd said. The precolumbian population of California was less than one tenth the present total, and equivalent to a large town, not even a city. Say, Stockton.

<comment><USER21> Are you sure?

I said:

 _It had about a third of the native population of what is now the USA._

Which to me means, take what is now the USA, find out what the native population was, and then find a third of that.

I wasn't saying that it was anything close to the population of modern California, just that California is not inhabited because of the irrigation, but that the irrigation is there because it is a place that people want to inhabit.

At the time Columbus landed London only had ~100,000 people. For the time, California was pretty busy and if Europeans had not taken over the western USA, I am pretty sure there would still be massive irrigation networks in California today.

<comment><USER12> Yes. I'm sure.

At best you were grossly ambiguous. And really, attempting to argue this point is beyond childish.

<comment><USER21> I was actually just trying to work out what you thought I had meant. I can be pretty childish, but I wasn't doing anything other than stating what I meant by that sentence. You don't have to tell me what you thought I had meant but it would be nice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Picture these pictures in reverse but at a coastline then think of the dry after as the normal before and the water as the after.

As a person who lives on a very low island, average 20m asl, climate change is going to be rough :{

<comment><USER26> I live at 7ft asl. People think I'm kidding when I say I will most likely sell my house due to rising sea-level.

<comment><USER25> It's the same here really since most people live on the coast so yeah most of the population would be a few meters above seal level.

We've lost so much land and people argue about reclaiming some of the land, some places have lost hundreds of meters in on the last decade. We don't have any rock here it's all sandstone.

We're as big as Long Island but I think we may be in trouble if we don't start rebuilding the coast and cutting carbon emissions of course.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Challenge Anyone – website which allows anonymous challenges - <AUTHOR> http://www.challengeanyone.com/

<comment><USER2> Maybe do something about the hate challenges?

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought about it, but there's always going to be someone goofing off. The question would be what constitutes hate? If I censor something today I need to censor something tomorrow. It will be deleted in 7 days anyway. Now if someone sends .001btc to one of them, then obviously I'd have a dilemma, but I don't think anybody would</comment></comment>


Show HN: After getting grilled in Ask HN an year ago, here we are with our v2 - <AUTHOR> Almost a year ago, we got hundreds of feedback here from the HN community
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15732752
After months of hard work here we are with our new version.
https://sievehq.com/
Sieve is a complete platform for running your freelance business without paying a percentage of your earnings.
We've built every tool you need to run a freelancing business faster and more efficiently — Client on-boarding, Requirement collection, NDAs, Estimations, Agreements, Invoicing and Payments.
This time, we did close to 300 signups with 12% adding their credit card after one month trial. It was ZERO last time.
THANK YOU, HN! and please take a look and let us know your feedback now? <comment><USER2> That is a beautiful landing page!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!</comment></comment>


Tell HN: I had a revelation yesterday. - <AUTHOR>

Its a cliche, but its true.  You can't fail until you've tried.
I started a project a while ago on the side, I was about 90% through until I got burned out from work (and trying to work on the side) and lost steam for both work, and my side project.  I've since regained at least most of my energy.  After I got better though I didn't pick up my side project, I had forgone a conclusion that it was a failure.  Yesterday I opened the old project back open, and it hit me.  How is it a failure if I never even released it.
So I went through the project, and made a list of things that I need to do/fix.  Than I made some estimates, and put together a timeline.  The new schedule is less aggressive, I should have breathing room for work and my home life.  So by March 25th I should be done with my MVP. <comment><USER3> Working on things alone is, well, lonely, and it is easy to let the critic inside tear you apart before you get anywhere near the finish line. Sometimes before you even reach the starting line. Probably this is some manifestation of our subconscious fears of failure, success, being embarrassed, etc.

Kudos to you for working through the low point and I wish you success and, maybe more importantly, that you persevere and finish your project. Even if it fails, you'll feel better about it, and it will give you confidence in your abilities so you can go out and do it again.

</comment><comment><USER4> Two thumbs up for you !

Waiting to see your thread here announcing the URL on - or a bit after - <USER2> 25. :-)

</comment><comment><USER5> Let us know when it's ready!</comment>


Ask HN: Has NH become too well-known to provide any signal? - <AUTHOR> I'm obviously thinking of signal vs. noise here.
This is obviously tongue-in-cheek, but I feel that there a lot of noise these days. Fight me!  :) <comment><USER2> Personally, I would prefer that the overtly political posts with little to no tech angle would stop. I feel there are plenty of other outlets for those topics.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is there a newer channel to compare to?

</comment><comment><USER4> New Hampshire?</comment>


Ask HN: What is the most brutal and thorough refutation you have ever seen? - <AUTHOR> I am trying to find examples of ideas that seemed reasonable at the time, but were then dismantled by another thinker. Ideally, this refutation would go on to change or form the consensus on this issue among experts.<p>Please no Ben Shapiro videos :P <comment><USER2> Charles Darwin vs. the creation story in Genesis?

Copernicus vs. the Ptolemaic system of astronomy?

Most recent scientific paradigm shifts, like Einstein vs. Newtonian physics, aren't really "brutal" since the previous system survives as a limiting case for moderate energies.

Wegener's refutation of the theory that the continents were fixed wasn't forceful enough. He proposed plate tectonics in 1915, but it wasn't widely accepted until the 1960s. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_tectonics#Development_of...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_tectonics#Development_of_the_theory).

<comment><USER3> Einstein.

I was reading him this morning and, although elegant and eloquent, he is "brutal". (I'm thinking of Brutalist architecture more than raw violence.)

The velocity of light in a vacuum is fixed.

The laws of physics are the same from every (inertial framework) viewpoint.

Ergo, _from just those two ideas_ , everything we thought we knew as fundamental truths about time and space was wrong and the real world is stranger than anyone ever guessed.

Yah, it's _brutal_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not exactly what you're after, but one from philosophy came to mind: Santayana's book _Winds of Doctrine_ (1913), has a chapter brutally critiquing Bertrand Russell's views in many areas, including his ethics, at the time acquired from Moore. After reading it, Russell radically changed his ethical views.

</comment><comment><USER5> Anything that criticized Marxism? Not sure that's narrow enough.

The church thought the earth was the center of the galaxy and some dude proved them wrong.

A lot of medical stuff.

I'm just shotgunning here Incase no one else gives an answer</comment>


I Was Wrong About Speed Reading: Here Are the Facts - <AUTHOR> https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2015/01/19/speed-reading-redo/ <comment><USER3> When you are learning a new language and in the beginner to intermediate chasm, reading in your native language is like speed reading compared to reading in your new language. It depends on the context of what you are reading, of course but it can be 10x - 100x slower.

However, many polyglots write in most articles about reading in a new language about one of two approaches:

1) Reading and understanding everything (to the point of dictionary lookups ad nauseam) 2) Skimming the text as fast as possible to build your pattern /phrase recognition abilities.

I wonder what applying speed reading techniques to reading a new language would do. Would it help you "skim" faster? Skimming the text of the new language as fast as possible is still pretty slow. Does anyone have experience with reading quickly/reading a lot to build their new language ability?

<comment><USER4> I am just coming off of 2 years intensive Norwegian classes, and passed the required tests at an intermediate level, reading and listening were at a high intermediate level.

Both of the methods have their strengths. 1\. Reading and understanding with dictionary: This takes a really, really long time just to read children's books and news articles. You wind up doing a lot of writing because of memory constraints, and a lot of rereading paragraphs to get the context. However, this is great for increasing vocabulary. Until you are to a certain point, however, it is probably better to learn main vocabulary words first, and then words that you will be using (interests, work, etc), and then work on the nuances.

2\. Skimming: I'd not advise doing it as fast as possible, but this is good for figuring out key words you might not know and gives a clue on context. The second read, without a dictionary, you can pay more attention to details and figure some things out as you go along. I do this often and it helps me have a better grasp on the context - which is really more important.

<comment><USER5> > This takes a really, really long time just to read children's books and news > articles.

Movies with subtitles are much better for this. An hour or two per day for a couple of months and you get like 10x further compared to reading.

<comment><USER4> If you can find them, but not everyone can.

They don't usually dub shows here - so many adult shows are in English. I think a good part of the movies produced are in English, and they stick Norwegian subtitles on the screen, which most folks ignore. I've found that they aren't exactly word for word - instead they are adjusted for style and culture at times. I'd have had some thing completely wrong on my own.

Children's shows on the state TV channels (think BBC for Norway) were the best find. Clear language without heavy dialects (some norwegians cannot understand each other's dialects well) plus subtitles if I wanted, transcripts on the website, and simple language. And always dubbed - kids don't start learning English until around 6 years old. Video games are usually in English. I spent many hours watching Spiderman cartoons.

However, I've met plenty of people that learned English solely through television shows and movies.

<comment><USER6> Yes, only children programs are dubbed here, although I disagree that people ignore them. We even subtitle programs movies in languages that more than 95% of the people don't speak, and assume that people can read the subtitles.

You don't see it as much today as previously, but sometimes you could hear on cinemas that people was laughing in response to the subtitles rather than the spoken words, even for English language movies. It can still happen with movies with an older audience, though today most younger people will have watched enough movies and series downloaded from the net (without subtitles obviously) that they are more used listen to the words, and in general more exposed to English.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have used the zapreader.com website to read longer articles before and found that I can understand everything when I keep it to about 500 wpm. Recently I started downloading the audible.com audio books for novels that I have laying around. Then I listen to the book at 2X while reading the paperback. This really does seem like a large improvement. When I listen to just the audio book my mind tends to wander as I'm usually doing other things. Reading and hearing reinforce each other.

I would be interested to try something like the spritz method with audio that stayed synchronized.

<comment><USER8> Kindle supports this for many titles. If you have both the book and the audiobook you can read and listen and the app will highlight the words and automatically progress the book.

You used to have to pay full price for both which made it too expensive for me but they seem to have started offering cheaper upgrades recently.

There's some research that shows learning is improved when the information is presented in multimedia form.

<comment><USER9> > they seem to have started offering cheaper upgrades recently.

So much cheaper, in fact, that the ebook+audio bundle often costs less than their monthly Audible subscription which lets you buy one audiobook per month for $15.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It really depends on _what_ you're reading. You can take a great many non- fiction e.g. social science books and stick to the introduction and conclusion, plus some skimming of what's in between, and still grok the general gist of what's in there. Not saying you get _full_ comprehension - <USER2> from it. But you'll get _a lot_ of it because it's massively redundant, especially if you're familiar with the underlying patterns and heuristics (which I'd argue are largely grounded in experimental social psychology).

<comment><USER11> That's exactly my experience - especially the part about massive redundancy.

Sometimes you need to slow right down, but a lot of the time you can skim and still get full comprehension.

This is very content dependent, so it's clearly inaccurate to assume that reading is reading, and one speed fits all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't know what speed reading course this man took, but the one I took in Spain forced you to answer detailed questions in order to evaluate the percentage of your comprehension.

Also, proper speed reading focuses on science and training.

About subvocalization, I couldn't care less if it disappears completely or not. The important thing is that you start training other parts of your brain to be associated with common words first as images. You certainly get a deeper understanding when you could understand words as images.

As someone who can program myself I can speed read extremely fast if I manipulate the text "on my own terms" with my own software. Something like spritz but reading more and more words at once, and using different colors for different things.

With training you can be extremely fast, in the same way with training you can do a backflip with a motorbike if you train: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFLwxGB1qFI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFLwxGB1qFI)

You have to evaluate if it is worth the effort for you to get the skills. If you need to read a lot I believe it is.

The biggest problem I have is the convenience problem of having to violate copyright restrictions like cracking epub to remove DRM or OCRing books in order to access the content for my programs.

It is a convenience thing, yes I can read much faster, but I need to spend a lot of time breaking the DRM or correcting the OCR. It only makes sense with few specific texts.

<comment><USER13> > answer detailed questions in order to evaluate the percentage of your > comprehension

Did you consider the possibility that they rigged the test? You read a difficult text at your normal slow rate, and you score 90% comprehension. Then they give you an easy text to speed read, and surprise-surprise, you score 90% on the easy test.

Or they could give you a difficult text but ask easy questions about it. There are so many ways to cheat the methodology.

I'm wondering if a speed reading course is going to do objective tests on its paying customers.

Funny story: I once saw a Rubik's Cube competition in which players were competing to see who solved it the fastest. There were 3 rounds to competition, and in each round all the players got a freshly scrambled cube (each players' cube scrambled the same way of course). In the 1st round, the fastest player took about a minute; in the 2nd round, 45 seconds, and in the 3rd round, someone solved it in 20 seconds!

It was obvious to me that the competition organizers had chosen highly disordered cubes for the 1st round and less disordered cubes for the 3rd round. They rigged the test because they want more drama for the final round.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Interesting. I have always been intrigued by the _idea_ of speed reading, but my "natural" reading speed always seemed just fast enough (around 500 wpm) that it never seemed worthwile to invest the time to get what I assumed would be a marginal increase in speed.

But if this is right, I made a good call by not spending the time trying to learn to "speed read" as I'm close to the max anyway. I don't know if I should feel happy or sad about that. It would be nice to be able to read faster, but... at least I know I'm not a complete laggard.

</comment><comment><USER15> And in the second half of his article, Scott forgets to do research again: "How to read a book" by Mortimer Adler is the classic on improving comprehension.

</comment><comment><USER16> Reading something fast is one thing, but thinking about it, concluding and understand is a whole other area, which can easily take days or weeks or at least a night to sleep over.

When the topic isn't technical documentation.

I seriously don't believe much use comes out of ingesting as many letters as possible. People don't work that way, especially when it comes to self- improvement. Your thought-patterns are able to change fast, but your emotional patterns are not. Real intellectual and emotional growth takes it's time.

</comment><comment><USER17> I believe I can read nicely formatted easy fiction at about 500 - 600 wpm.

I also believe, through experience in professional environments, that I'm at about the top of the bell curve in terms of reading speed in my native language. I don't meet many/any people to the right of me on a day to day basis. My position is not that surprising: while I didn't get to start coding at 5 like some people with early access to computers, I certainly got to start reading early: my parents effectively had a library of books, we had frequent and regular trips to the library as a child to pick up a stack of new books each week or two (it was considered a treat), and I was repeatedly being told to stop reading in polite company, turn the light off and go to sleep, etc etc etc.

This speed slows down significantly for technical articles, and I've often told people they should get used to having to read some 5 or 6 times, and shouldn't feel stupider/behind the pack if they have to do so. If they don't have to do so, it suggests they either already have experience with the material being presented, or its not that dense/new/hard/original. Most people in academia/corporate aren't reading/understanding the articles anyway, no matter what they say, which is of course our society's dirty little secret: image over doing...

Anyway...

My conclusion is that speed reading (significantly beyond this speed barring all but MAYBE in the rare case of cognitive/physical mutations) is effectively bunkum, because I've never seen it: and yet it just keeps popping up like a kind of zombie-myth that just won't die.

I've also found you quickly get into the comprehension/read-speed debate with "speed readers", to which my general response is actually very similar to programming algorithm efficiency: You can't speed up a computer, but you can change the amount of work it does. If your definition of speed reading is lowering your comprehension, to me, "lowering comprehension" is just another way of saying "not reading".

So i'll say that again as a rule of thumb: if your comprehension of a piece is dropping below the 100% you'd achieve normally, that's not called "speed reading", its called "not reading".

</comment><comment><USER18> I have recently taken up watching video at increased playback speeds from 1.1x to 2.0x. It greatly increases the variety of things I might be interested in watching. The Chrome browser with video speed controller plugin is exceptionally good at this.

The main difficulty now is I am frustrated that my DVR, Roku, and DVD player do not support this.

</comment><comment><USER19> Although I agree that hyper speeds are not really possible/practical, this article still points out that if you have an average reading speed (200-400 wpm) you should still be able to double or significantly increase your reading speed through training.

The benefits of this are clear and obvious for people who do large amounts if reading out of necessity or pleasure.

<comment><USER20> Would you take more pleasure in reading faster? Apply that to any other enjoyable activity. Have sex faster!

<comment><USER21> Why not? I'm a very fast reader, and take great pleasure in reading. If you (generic 'you', not michaelmrose you) read half as fast as I do, then take it for granted that you could double your speed and take pleasure in it.

And, as an added bonus, you get to read twice as much.

Who wouldn't want that? I'd certainly take a doubling of my current reading speed if I could. And after that, I'd accept another doubling. And another. There are so many great books, and so little time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> No, frickin' duh. If you want to skim materials, go ahead and skim. But if you need to understand something, want to enjoy reading something, or need to remember the details from something, you have to read at a "normal" speed instead of skimming.

If you find yourself immersed in a lot of material that is so vapid, uninteresting, and inconsequential that you can simply skim all of it with no negative consequences, I'd suggest that perhaps you have some life choices to re-examine.

</comment><comment> Read-Speeder Of course you aren't going to read 1,000s of wpm! Unless you're some kind of savant. BUT... if you are a slow reader, reading below 200 wpm, then you can definitely learn to read faster. And even increasing your speed to 400 wpm would be absolutely life-changing. As the author of Reading with the Right Brain, and Speed Reading Practice, I have seen many people turn their reading from drudgery to enjoyment. From a word-by-word slog, to a mental movie playing in their head.

<comment><USER23> I've always found that when I read a (fictional) book, I naturally have a mental movie playing in my head, and I cease to see words at all. I become hyper-focused and immersed in the image. If people talk to me while I'm reading (again, only fiction), I don't hear them unless they breach my focus with a louder voice or a tap on the shoulder. It's interesting to read that this can be taught.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I don't do speed reading, I vocalize. As I am Brazilian, I only read English books to practice my second language. I noticed that I improved my listening and speaking a lot, just reading. The improvement was bigger than usual when I read The Lord of the Rings, that has a rich vocabulary. I think this is because I sub-vocalize when I am reading. Speed reading also don't give me pleasure.

</comment><comment><USER25> My default reading mode is to speed through text. It's useful for skimming for answers to specific questions but in other scenarios it's a bad impulse that I intentionally check.

Whether it's dense full of ideas or just has wonderful prose -- I get so much more out of it when I really take my time.

</comment><comment><USER26> Article title is missing publication year 2015.

</comment><comment><USER27> That article needs a TL;DR summary.</comment>


The North Pole is 20°C warmer than normal as winter descends - <AUTHOR> https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2016/11/18/the-north-pole-is-an-insane-20-c-warmer-than-normal-as-winter-descends.html <comment><USER2> In the future, remember that you heard it from me first: The gulf stream is now coming to a stop.

The warm water that usually is chilled enough to sink to the bottom and be flushed back to the Mexican Gulf to be warmed up again, is now gathering around the north pole instead. It will be a number of warm years until the entire gulf stream comes to a complete stop, then it will be cooold. Winter is coming.

You should visit Iceland and the Nordics while it's still nice there in the summers.

<comment><USER3> PBS did a documentary about this in 2005:

[https://cosmolearning.org/documentaries/scientific- american-...](https://cosmolearning.org/documentaries/scientific-american- frontiers-796/5/)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Delicious is falling apart – alternatives? - <AUTHOR> I have 14.000+ links in delicious and have always liked the service but it is falling into serious disrepair (Chrome plugin has become very slow and inefficient, api is broken, tag renaming doesn't work etc.) and I feel I have to find an alternative. I am looking for a service I can migrate my existing collection to including tags and which let's me add new links/tags from Chrome in a very fast way(e.g. via shortcut, focused on tag field with autocomplete etc.). Any suggestions? <comment><USER2> Another vote for [http://pinboard.in](http://pinboard.in) I imported all my Delicious bookmarks into it a couple of years ago and haven't looked back. I also availed of a lifetime subscription for about $11 at the time —although I think the pricing model has changed now.

<comment><USER3> Looks like its $11 a year now. Seems super reasonable for something you get a lot of use out of.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I went with Pinboard. I don't have a particular need to share my links but don't mind it either. Pinboard imported my links incl tags flawlessly and from what I have seen so far it looks exactly like the lean efficient replacement I have been looking for.

</comment><comment><USER4> Pinboard maintains the same value that Delicious originally provided, without any of the successive improvements that we've come to associate with Delicious today.

</comment><comment><USER5> Hopefully the market identifies and votes for ($6/yr or something) a superior alternative to Delicious - it's not desirable to have people migrate their data sets into various other leaky buckets available here and there, because when that happens we lose the power of (I don't really know the correct term, 'affinity' maybe?) the power of collective association - in addition to me, keeping track of my own shit, what I'm _really_ interested in, is who are the other mono-maniacal souls who've bookmarked that same crazy page that details [insert the most wonderful thing you've ever found on the web, here] - ok, and now that you know who these other kindred spirits are, what _other_ great stuff have they found while you've been sleeping? Wasn't that the promise of this whole web endeavor?

The above can't happen if we're all in balkanized silos scattered across the landscape. Don't say 'API' \- not going there..

<comment><USER5> ... and it should be fast fast fast and not 'flowery' \- grow the HN interface a bit and I'd be really happy w/it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I recently discovered BookmarkOS and love it! It's an desktop environment in the browser that lets you easily keep your bookmarks organized with drag and drop, list view, and sorting. [https://bookmarkos.com](https://bookmarkos.com)

</comment><comment><USER7> Check historio.us I use the free tier and fine with it so far (I don't bookmark a lot).

<comment><USER8> historio.us is my favourite at the moment, but all that red can be annoying at times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> pinboard.in hands down. I've tried so many different services but Pinboard is the best mix of minimalism and features. (Design isn't great but you can find style overrides on userstyles.org for Stylish)

Good API too.

</comment><comment><USER10> I moved to diigo.com at the time Yahoo purchased Delicious. No problems since. Basic bookmarking service, bookmarklet available, private bookmarks, simple and functional.

</comment><comment><USER11> I thought Delicious was dead! They lost all my links the last time they went away/we're acquired. After that Delicious debacle, I've used Google Bookmarks, InstaPaper and ReadItLater. I recently bought a Pocket Pro license and I'll never use anything else. In fact, I'm working on how to merge them all into Pocket. Any references are appreciated.

</comment><comment><USER12> I moved all mine from Delicious to Evernote around the time of the Yahoo purchase and haven't regretted it once. Bookmarks (and I now generally bookmark whole pages) which are searchable along side all my other notes.

</comment><comment><USER13> Wow, they just updated the site. Looks like crap now and half of it is not working. I actually liked what the last owner did to Delicious but this is just ridiculous. I'm signing up with pinboard.in I guess.

</comment><comment><USER14> I moved all my links out of delicious back when it fell apart the first time. I went to google bookmarks, it is always up, but finding the links is like searching for a needle in haystack.

</comment><comment><USER15> As much as I admire piboard.in, the getpocket UI seems to be everywhere; I see it in iOS I see it in Mozilla developer edition. It is so smooth and so amazing I really really like it.

</comment><comment><USER16> Help me understand the difference between Pocket and these services? I've recently upgraded to Pocket Pro and am loving it...

</comment><comment><USER17> Been using Dragdis lately: [http://dragdis.com](http://dragdis.com)

</comment><comment><USER9> Pinboard.in hands down. I've tried so many services but this one wins for me. Nice API too.

</comment><comment><USER18> Try [http://snapzu.com](http://snapzu.com). It's more similar to Reddit though, but has most of the features Delicious has.

</comment><comment><USER19> I almost want to answer this as a more broad approach: X is falling apart - alternatives? And the answer is: If X is free, expect it to fall apart. Why would anyone host your content for free forever? What did you really expect? Eventually X could equal Twitter, Facebook, and even Hacker News. If you don't pay to play, you will go away. Or it will go away.

I routinely fail to understand how anyone can form a community of "links". It has no staying power in and of itself. Even Facebook and Google+ and Twitter are largely nothing more than a giant collection of links, albeit with comments. Curation is one thing. Following a group on Google+ or an account on Twitter is akin to saying, "show me more links on subject X". Fine and dandy.

But how much is that worth to you?

Of course, you could just post and host your own link-base on your own blog/website but you'd have to (likely) pay for hosting. Even GitHub will one day _have_ to charge for hosting. If 1 billion people open up accounts on Github for free GitHub Pages hosting, they will have to charge. Even probably if 10 million people did it and, assuming those pages were reasonably popular and trafficked, they couldn't sustain a zero-advertising model and a zero-free model. Can't be done.

So, why not own your own data and post them on your own site? Simple: Either the information really isn't worth $10/year for you to "share" with others (and let's face it: if you had true stats on how often anyone was actually viewing your 14,000 links, you'd never pay for it, since that number probably comes awfully close to zero), OR you are challenged with how to format/share the data en masse such that others can do more than simply visit a single link, but see and share the whole sub-collection of links you have on any given topic. XML feeds aside, there really isn't a good easy way to do that. You could have pages within pages on your site of the links (and your comments, thumbnails if necessary, and so forth) and then at the bottom of the page a handy "Capture all links to your own Favorites folder" \- maybe some kind of javascript bookmarklet. Or a file standard if one exists (outside of HTML itself).

So we join these feigned "communities" and "contribute" our time - only to have them repeatedly fail over and over. Delicious itself is a poster child for the service that not enough people want (to pay for) but has a vampire like quality that won't let it die. Delicious is the Undead of the Internet. And yet, just about as isolated as Bram Stoker's Dracula, too.

One guy (1!) runs Pinboard. Just one. As soon as he (choose one), (a) dies, (b) gets sick of it, (c) discovers a better place to live than SF and moves to Uruguay, (d) has his site hacked/destroyed, (e) gets Alzheimers, (f) or sells it to some clown/company who will stop developing it... it's all over. You'll get maybe 3 months notice if lucky and then a bunch of people will complain.

But a 1,000 voices screaming out will be "suddenly silenced" even faster than millions on Alderaan. Because on the internet, thousands of users are, in effect, no users at all. If Facebook can alter TOS at will under the protest of millions, along with Twitter, G+, and dozens of other massive sites, do you think any screaming user will cause Pinboard to stay up?

Look at it now... it almost makes Craigslist look modern. Pinboard mentions alternatives - some of which aren't even around still - so it's questionable if anyone is even actively working on Pinboard.

But even if they _were_ working on Pinboard, it's still a free service and one that stands no chance of continuing forever. I doubt it will be here five years from now. It has almost zero chance of being around ten years from now.

So, save your own bookmarks and stop posting 14,000 websites for free on the internet. Nobody cares. It's just a bunch of noise. Just like Twitter. It's all over; the asteroid of internet-doom just hasn't hit us yet, but it's shadow is... right... there.

If you want/must publish them (ego?), then do it at your cost and pony up some hosting fees.

I could say (since this is HN) that you should develop your own paid solution, but (a) that isn't innovation at all, but merely repeating something that has been done a hundred times and we, the world, need innovation, not repeats of past mud, and (b) clearly no one will ever pay you for such a service such that you'll break even, much less make $100/year.

So, can we all just move on?

<comment><USER20> > But even if they were working on Pinboard, it's still a free service

[https://pinboard.in/faq/](https://pinboard.in/faq/)

        What does it cost?

        Pinboard costs $11/year.

        Archiving accounts cost $25/year.

Happy paying user.</comment></comment>


EUV Lithography's Prospects Are Brightening - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/semiconductors/devices/euv-lithography-is-brightening-up <comment><USER2> This is a difficult one, I'm really excited about lithography and want to share my knowledge but since I'm working at one of those firms (dislcaimer here) I can share little...

So, let's stay safe and share some public knowledge:

1) The article mentions source power being a major factor and a huge improvement has been the addition of the prepulse (pancake). Here a great video showing how this concept works: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRbHDtPbHe0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRbHDtPbHe0)

2) Short, beginners level, introduction how the EUV source works (note: this movie is made before ASML tookover Cymer, so some history here): [https://www.cymer.com/euv-lithography/how-an-euv-light- sourc...](https://www.cymer.com/euv-lithography/how-an-euv-light-source-works)

3) Chris Mack's coverage of the last SPIE conferences give a nice summary of the field: [http://www.lithoguru.com/scientist/conferences.html](http://www.lithoguru.com/scientist/conferences.html) Note that Mack is an EUV-sceptic, his views on EUV are not commonly shared.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder how they intend to expose wafers to this. As far as I know there are no materials that are transparent to EUV.

Even air is opaque, so you have to work in a vacuum.

So I'm wondering how they will vaporize bits of tin and not have the tin contaminate the wafers.

<comment><USER4> There are a few EUV transparent materials for light source windows, including silicon and zirconium. See [http://www.luxel.com/wp- content/uploads/2010/04/EUVL-Paper.p...](http://www.luxel.com/wp- content/uploads/2010/04/EUVL-Paper.pdf)

There are other concerns wrt contamination though, e.g. masks degrading in the EUV radiation and emitting contaminants that end up on the wafer. This is more likely to happen at higher power levels.

These and other concerns are discussed at Chris Mack's website [http://life.lithoguru.com/](http://life.lithoguru.com/) (he is quoted in the linked article). His series of posts on the SPIE Advanced Lithography Symposium 2016 is particularly interesting and seems to be the basis of most of the more-popular press articles on EUV in the last week.

<comment><USER3> Very interesting link. I at first wondered how such a thin film would be strong enough, then realized they intend to have both sides of the window in vacuum so there is no pressure differential, and no need for strength. (Which should have been obvious since air is opaque.)</comment></comment></comment>