US unprepared for an electrical grid collapse, but it costs only $300M - <AUTHOR> https://www.themoneyillusion.com/sunday-morning-quarterbacking/ <comment><USER2> This article has an unexpected resonance for me after several weeks of pandemic lockdown. Just three months ago I would have laughed it off. Now I am increasingly pissed off.

In the US, but I see reflection of this in Europe as well, has allowed irresponsible puerile imbeciles to be elected. These people play games with wealth and power, with no regard to the lives and well-being of the society that pays for it. I did not mention any party, that perennial misdirection to their collective heist. Also don't fall for the other smoke screen of small vs. big government. I demand at least a competent government.

For politicians truth is whatever you make people believe it to be.

Meanwhile engineers and scientists struggle daily to find the hard facts of the world to painstakingly build or discover something that improves lives. We should be disgusted and revolted at who is leading us right now. We should drive these fools out office and strip them of any respect.

If we don't, there will be no one competent left in position to rebuild from this, or the next, catastrophe that "nobody" could have expected. Or maybe there will be some states or localities that can get their act together, and the rest will be a wasteland of warring cultural and racial tribes.

<comment><USER3> Quite tired and ill right now so I'm unfortunately not going to be able to write this out even slightly well... but for some reason, I want to post the thought anyway so I will. (Note: I'm a U.S. citizen)

In short: As an engineering student with quite severe chronic illness that also got fucked over by abusive parents/a broken home I couldn't escape even with scholarships... I simply can't come to the moral conclusion that the majority of the population of the U.S. deserves the work of engineers and scientists at this point. Now - obviously, you could say "well, they didn't ask for the engineers/scientists help" \- but they definitely want the ability to receive some sort of medical care, and if they _stop_ having a new phone to buy every year on the dot... some vocal portion of the populace will be quite unhappy.

Getting into how I actually feel about politics would be pretty irrelevant/pointless. However - I do think the U.S. is at the point where the average HN goer would agree the current government is a shitshow. Making that statement - I obviously agree with it. _However_ , I've reached a point where I truly believe I'd rather have another four years of this administration, in a sincere hope that things keep going downhill and get exponentially worse, just so some drastic form of change and restructuring will have to happen - either that, or just the U.S. becoming a completely failed nation and engineers/scientists just jump ship to a more competent country.

Not trying to troll in the slightest in posting this. Am I crazy, or does anybody else feel the same way?

<comment><USER4> I've had the same thought and it sickens me that we've come to this point.

As someone who has made the transition from teenager to young adult during the Trump era, I feel like I've lost a game I never even had the chance to play. We have clearly gone so far off course but very few seem interested in steering us back to reality (between the impeachment "trial", the primaries, and our handling of COVID-19).

After four years of the disaster that is the Trump administration, any establishment Democrats like Biden elected to office will be praised _no matter what_ they do, simply by virtue of _not_ being Trump. But that's not real progress. They'll continue to neglect wealth inequality / infrastructure / privacy / technology issues.

And Trump isn't the problem, he's just a convenient distraction from the fact that big money controls both parties. It's just that establishment Democrats more or less want to maintain the status quo, while conservatives are using Trump to brazenly roll back regulations.

Four years from now, we'll have even more damning evidence about the true long-term economic/social/environmental damage done during his term (as if it weren't clear enough). If he's not in office long enough, this will all be blamed on the next president, adding more fuel to the fire for a likely 2024 run.

Or worse: Someone more cunning but just as evil comes along, charming voters while more adeptly covering up their true intentions.

Our only hope this that enough voters get _really pissed off_ enough to vote in every local, state, and federal election consistently enough for the next couple decades so that we can start to heal.

Biden's not going to inspire that. Bernie, maybe, had the chance to. Trump will do it. And if we can't survive another four years of Trump, we don't deserve to.

<comment><USER5> > Bernie, maybe, had the chance to.

Bernie didn't even inspire people to vote for him in the primary; how was he going to inspire people if he got nominated?

<comment><USER6> Bernie had the main-stream media + the entire DNC apparatus against him. That's a ton of power and influence.

I'm not saying he would've 'won'; it's quite possible he positioned himself as too much 'non-establishment', or perhaps too little. but saying he didn't inspire people to vote for him in the primary is not evident, IMO.

<comment><USER5> > saying he didn't inspire people to vote for him in the primary is not > evident, IMO.

The fact he didn't win is evidence of that, surely?

<comment><USER6> It's evidence, but it's not evident. Those are not the same thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How much should we worry about this?

[http://www.lloyds.com/~/media/lloyds/reports/emerging%20risk...](http://www.lloyds.com/~/media/lloyds/reports/emerging%20risk%20reports/solar%20storm%20risk%20to%20the%20north%20american%20electric%20grid.pdf) was prepared by Lloyds of London after the 2012 detection of a large solar flare by a satellite in interplanetary space. (That one missed the Earth.)

Their estimate was $600 billion - $2 trillion dollars of damage from an event that happens roughly once ever 150 years on average. Therefore the amortized cost of this risk _per year_ is $4 - $13 billion.

If a substantial fraction of the risk can be mitigated over the next decade for $300 million, it would be cheap at 10x the price. In fact Berkshire Hathaway probably has enough exposure to this risk that it makes financial sense for them to not debate over who pays and to just create the stockpile to reduce potential future insurance claims.

<comment><USER8> Sadly it might cost Berkshire even less to just reinsure against the risk.

<comment><USER9> I'm suddenly tempted to write a not-quite-serious novel about a time period up to and including a post-apocalyptic dystopia that occurred simply because almost all emergency measures in the world were replaced by insurance policies.

In the end people subsist on irradiated rats and mutant vegetables but they're doing great because each of them are owed millions of pounds by Lloyd's of London which may or may not exist anymore.

<comment><USER10> Something about this reminds me of Snow Crash.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > In testimony before a Congressional Committee, it has been asserted that a > prolonged collapse of this nation's electrical grid—through starvation, > disease, and societal collapse—could result in the death of up to 90% of the > American population.

This could happen at any time due to a solar flare. The coronavirus has made it pretty clear that America is completely unprepared for any sort of major deviation from "normal".

<comment><USER12> That 90% number seems really hard to believe. Additionally, from the referenced article:

> There is no published model disclosing how these numbers were arrived at, > nor are we able to validate a primary source for this claim. Testimony given > by the Chairman of the Congressional EMP Commission, while expressing > similar concerns, gave no estimate of the deaths that would accrue from a > prolonged nationwide grid collapse.

I'm highly suspicious that that number is exaggerated in order to inspire action on what still seems like a worthwhile issue.

<comment><USER13> > _That 90% number seems really hard to believe_

As context, I spent three years driving right around Africa, and before that two years driving from Alaska to Argentina. I've seen my fair share of collapsing infrastructure (Congo... Mali... Sudan, etc.) and what happens in just a few days without electricity.

In less developed countries the impacts are actually much less than they will be in our developed countries, because the people there are used to things failing, and their lives go on regardless. i.e. many people have beasts of burden to carry loads and farm, they have bicycles or walk to get around and they grow their own food.

For us, it won't be so easy.

\- Very quickly all the perishables in the stores go bad, and food shortages become very real very fast.

\- ATMs don't work - therefore no cash for anyone.

\- Gas and diesel are very hard to get out of underground tanks without electricity (yes, you can hand pump it or use a generator... but how many of those are sitting around ready to go?)

\- Communications go down - no cell phones, no internet, no radio, no TV. It's extremely hard to get accurate information in that scenario.

\- Soon everyone is just focused on survival, so many other basics fall by the wayside. Garbage collection. Sewage, drinking water, medical supplies and much more all stop working.

\- In places with low population density and where people have some "homesteading" skills this might not be so bad - they can just shoot a cow once every few weeks or whatever. In downtown LA, NYC and Chicago, it's extremely bad.

In just a few weeks you have mass hysteria, and things go downhill fast. Just look at the scenes in the big box stores when COVID-19 hit of people getting violent and stockpiling toilet paper. Now imagine how desperate everyone would be if the power was out, and in all likelihood will be out for months.

<comment><USER14> You the guy with the YouTube channel?

<comment><USER13> yep.

<comment><USER6> link?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > _I'd like to ask you guys whether we are prepared for other black swans. > Let's start with a collapse of the electrical system due to solar flares or > electromagnetic pulse attacks._

A Black Swan is a "high-profile, hard-to-predict, and rare event that is beyond the realm of normal expectations". But we know that the Carrington Event happened in 1859, and that it's only a matter of time before a big solar flare will affect Earth in the same way. So this is not a Black Swan.

But yes, we should prepare for foreseeable rare events.

<comment><USER16> Events like the Carrington & Covid seem to fit: high profile, hard to predict and rare. IMO, both qualify as Black swan.

At some point, you have to pick a threshold on the probabilities involved... These events are likely independent & identically distributed (i.e. hard to predict for any year), and I'd call sub-1% annual chance pretty rare.

But I'm receptive to a different threshold... But you can't just say "Black swan only counts for previously-inconceivable events".

Edit: I'm assuming covid-19 is structurally different than Sars, mers, Ebola, & H1N1 purely based on the global effect it has had to date. If you found those others as pandemics (not according to WHO though), then you can remove it as Black swan.

<comment><USER17> Not to be all Word of God, but Nassim Taleb does not consider COVID19 a black swan at all.

[https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-pandemic- is...](https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-pandemic-isnt-a-black- swan-but-a-portent-of-a-more-fragile-global-system)

It's not a black swan because everyone with half a brain could say that there would eventually be a global pandemic respiratory disease. H1N1 was technically one, it just happened to be mild. We thought there was going to be one in 1976 and raced to vaccinate everyone against it. These things happen, like earthquakes. Nobody knows when, but if the San Andreas went tomorrow it wouldn't be a black swan.

<comment><USER18> Are any black swans going to be black swans in hindsight?

Did anyone anticipate it enough to put their money where their mouth was? A fortune, and a major service to humanity, could have been made by a private individuals stockpiling PPE in vast quantities.

You say anyone with half a brain anticipated it. I didn't. Did you buy 500k N95 masks and put them in a warehouse?

Knowing someone will happen is easy. I know for sure that a large meatorite will hit the earth and cause mass deaths and crop failure, but I have no idea in how many 100s, 1000s or millions of year it will happen. If it happens tomorrow it would be a black Swan *

* an example only, we would get plenty of advanced warning.

<comment><USER19> > Did anyone anticipate it enough to put their money where their mouth was? A > fortune, and a major service to humanity, could have been made by a private > individuals stockpiling PPE in vast quantities.

The response to this pandemic has actually worried me quite a lot on this front, because it seems likely now that anyone who stockpiled PPE at pre- pandemic prices and tries to resell during the pandemic at a price high enough to justify their initial investment will be accused of price gouging and possibly have their stockpile seized.

Which has the effect that nobody has an incentive to build a reserve of things that will be useful in a future crisis, even if that crisis is foreseeable.

So yeah, it's easy enough to say "I think there's at least a 5% chance per year of an event which results in at least 10 million people who will want to buy a portable generator" (which is 10x the amount normally sold in a year). I genuinely do think that's a true statement, and it would imply that the number of generators currently being produced would need to be at least 50% higher to meet demand averaged across all times rather than typical times, which is a pretty big difference in a pretty big market. Normally when you think you know something the market doesn't, you can bet against the market by investing in whatever the market is undervaluing, and if you're right you make money. In this case, I'm not sure how you would go about doing that. Investing in companies making generators doesn't increase production. Buying generators and leaving them in a warehouse risks your stockpile being seized in the case where you were right about the risk. I'm honestly not sure how I would go about putting my money where my mouth is here.

<comment><USER17> Even without the prospect of seizure, it's not free to maintain a stockpile, or maintain a short. So you're also making a bet that it will happen sooner rather than later- if it takes 100 years, your equipment will be rusted or obsolete and you'll probably be dead by then. And you'll have paid every year to maintain it, money you could have put into a slightly less risky and more liquid investment that would have long since paid out.

All the day-to-day costs and risks can just totally swamp the potential upside, even before the regulatory risk of seizure or being forced to sell your stockpile at pre-crisis prices. Price-gouging laws are already on the books, so it's not like it would be that much of a surprise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Maybe someone who knows a bunch about this stuff can enlighten me. I was kind of under the impression that a large solar flare would damage _all sorts_ of electronic equipment, by inducing currents wires all over the place.

\- If we had extra transformers on hand, how would you protect them from also being damaged?

\- If a solar flare is powerful enough to damage these transformers, would it also have damaged a large proportion of devices that use power? I.e. even if you could get the electric grid working, would there be working systems of any complexity to use the power?

<comment><USER21> Transformers are usually housed in metal boxes. Any wires inside metal sheeting of whatever geometry would be protected because any current induced would be induced in the metal container which dissipates the power of the pulse. To learn more read about Faraday cages.

<comment><USER22> Transformers are safe unless they are connected to cross country wires, which act as giant antennas, collecting energy from an EMP or a solar flare.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Did this guy even talk to a power grid engineer before posting his opinion? Offline spares of long lead time equipment are _always_ kept by utilities. The risk to the power grid is institutional knowledge, if something happens to the small group of greybeards who run each regional utility, they could bring in new qualified engineers but it would take time to understand the system (which would cause an outage that either wouldn't happen in the first place or would be short to become protracted). The other major risk is if they are kept from doing their jobs due to budget or political issues (see: PG&E)

<comment><USER24> The main issue is that ultra high voltage transformers are large, expensive, have long lead times (12-36 months!), and are built almost entirely in China.

You're correct though, that the entire energy industry skews old and is at risk of losing a lot of knowledge as talent retires.

The real risk is squirrels and trees though. Flora and fauna do not play well with transmission equipment.

<comment><USER25> > long lead times (12-36 months!)

I was skeptical, but this seems right (at least circa 2012). Here's a source:

[https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/Large%20Power%20Tran...](https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/Large%20Power%20Transformer%20Study%20-%20June%202012_0.pdf)

(summarized in the Concluding Remarks section)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I don't think it's true that the US is unprepared. Most major grids have documented procedure to do a blackstart.

Which would be painful as hell but hardly 90% of population dies level painful. Author seems to be assuming more widespread damage I guess. In which case a handful of HV transformers aren't like to be the biggest headache. I'd imagine there is a hell of a lot more sensitive equipment out there than HV transformers. Internet, stock market, comms etc.

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

<comment><USER27> This article is underestimating also how creative can people can become under stressful situations.

For example, converting car engines as power generators, fixing these High voltage transformers, etc.

People adapt, they will build power generators based on whatever they find, industries will shift to make photovoltaic panels and electric production will become local, etc.

Yes it's 90% of people dying if there is no electricity and everybody stays home waiting to die.

1 billion people in the world live without electricity.

The solar flares are a minor risk compared to the main actual risk (war or sabotage), if there is a war, no matter how many High voltage transformers you have in stock, they are going to be destroyed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I feel like 2008 was an era of irresponsibility. Home buyers took out risky loans, banks sold these loans without accepting responsibility for how risky they where, investors purchased these loans without taking the responsibility to even see what kind of Loans where even in these mortgage backed securities. Ratings agencies abdicated this responsibility too. Goldman lied to AIG, and AIG didn't do the research to understand the credit default swaps they where selling. Central banks didn't accept responsibility for anything, saying "it was impossible to see the crisis coming".

It doesn't appear that we have left this paradigm at all. The only group that has improved is the consumers, households have significantly cut back leverage since the 2008 crisis. But companies have not. Companies don't feel they have any responsibilities to prepare for these long tail situations, and governments don't seem capable of doing it. leaving it to central banks to throw trillions at the problem after the fact.

<comment><USER29> I would argue that the 10 years after 08' have also lacked responsibility.

I think the secondary effects of the covid shutdown are going to highlight some very poor decisions. Mainly rallying the economy, rather than making it more robust. I'm interested in seeing what happens with housing specifically.

<comment><USER28> thats basically my point, Companies still aren't taking responsibility for anything and are running the companies to keep the share price up so the Exec team can collect on their options in 4 years and move on. Similarly the government seems completely incompetent, and willfully blind to the risks being taken.

<comment><USER29> Maybe so, but they are being enabled.

Two things come to mind: \- stock buybacks can be eliminated with legislation \- Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac are still under government conservatorship

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I think it's in our interest to have some kind of political Readiness Act that assesses events like this (Pandemic being in the list, along with this). Spending a few billion on it is pennies compared 2 trillion that we thus far have spent, not including the widespread economic cost.

Might be worth jamming into the Green New deal.

</comment><comment><USER31> The book "One Second After" deals with an EMP attack on the US. I don't understand why we are not better prepared.

<comment><USER32> because it costs money and decreases profits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I wonder how many other rare disasters there are that cost only 300M to prepare for.

If it's just a couple, then sure, fund this one.

But if there are thousand of possible rare disasters - how can you possibly fund them all?

<comment><USER34> Now that we've got "global pandemic" marked off our bingo card, I'd put this at the top of the most likely "unforeseen" worldwide disasters. Some kind of supervolcano eruption is the other candidate.

Of course, not all disasters are global and every country or region will have its own rare disasters to prepare for.

<comment><USER22> Add asteroid strike at with the energy level of a nuclear warhead to that list. Fortunately, it is 71% likely to come down in the ocean.

<comment><USER34> It would have to be a lot bigger than "a nuclear warhead" to cause a global catastrophe rather than a local one, and it has to be more unfortunately aimed than just coming down over land. It would be pretty bad if the Chelyabinsk meteor had hit Tokyo or Mexico City, but as it happened it troubled glaziers more than doctors.

<comment><USER22> The problem with a sudden nuclear scale explosion is that it could trigger a nuclear exchange.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> How likely is simultaneous failure of 9 out of 30 of them? Totally unlikely if you ask me. And some redundancy is built into the system, so it's not like failure of 3 will cause loss of power in 1/3 of the U.S. - most likely none at all (or maybe only scheduled blackouts in peak times in some of the places).

In Cyprus, we had such an event in 2011, when 2000 tons of explosives Russian tried to smuggle into Syria, were intercepted by a U.S. Navy and redirected to be offloaded here (because the ship carrying them was formally registered here and flew a Cyprus flag - really being owned by the KGB), and these explosives went off in the summer heat, wrecking a power station that produced 70% of the electricity here.

We only had about 2 hours of blackout per day and a recommendation to limit a/c use, for about a month.

Power transmission is super resilient and relay protection is a whole science of it's own. Especially in the U.S. when there are many virtually independent, privately owned and loosely interconnected transmission systems, which puts it at a relative advantage.

<comment><USER36> > how likely is simultaneous failure of 9 out of 30 of them? Totally unlikely > if you ask me.

It's quite possible because their failure probabilities aren't independent. A geomagnetic storm could take most of them out at once. Like respiratory pandemics, this is an event that happens every ~century.

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

<comment><USER35> But it will be known well in advance and can be mitigated by simply shutting the grid down for a few hours. Only places which will experience difficulties are those having a large fraction of nuclear power since a reactor can't be quickly restarted once shut down, so power will restore only in some days.

<comment><USER36> Do you have a cite? My impression was that we do not have sufficient preparations in place to do this.

(E.g., we may have satellites that can be taken as weak indicators, but they are not designed for this, and there is no clear decision authority starting from possibly ambiguous satellite data to prophylactically shutting down power for 300M people against their will. Hopefully, recent events have made clear that "leaders will get their act together and act decisively during an emergency" cannot be the default assumption.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> If it were as easy as spending $300M, every utility company in the country would be falling over themselves to do it. Utility companies make their money by rate basing their capital expenditures. The rate you pay for electricity is set by the state, to guarantee a certain ROI for the utility on approved infrastructure. Utilities literally spend money to make money.

I couldn't agree more that our electric grid needs more investment. I won't pretend to know better than the PUCs and the utilities about how that should be spent or what should be passed on to the ratepayer. The only thing I do know is that my company (Kevala) has mapped tens of thousands of substations, transmission lines, and HV transformers, so it seems we would have a lot more to back up than those 30. Good time for non-wires alternatives?

</comment><comment><USER38> It's a very complex topic. But clearly any country heavily invested in and reliant on technology _must_ include a significant fraction of tech/science literate leaders ... an actual requirement for (half of?) any state's Congress-critters.

To whatever extent 'terrorism' is a real threat (and not just an excuse to maintain the military budget), many other dangers like pandemics and an EMP event and climate change were outlined _decades_ ago. F-35s and aircraft carriers and hundreds of military bases won't cut it against them. Nor will faith.

</comment><comment><USER39> The movement to run the government as a business is at the heart of a lot of these problems.

Governments have a different risk model than a for profit business.

For profit businessEs can't in any way financially justify to it's stock holders the spending of money to protect against something that might never happen.

I ran DR & BC for a very large global firm, I reported to the Board, and I can tell you these people thought I was insane, even to protect against things like fires.

"When was the last time you heard of a large office building having a major fire with more than a couple of casualties?" This was actually said to me when I was proposing to improve the company's fire protection system. I got out voted and they " saved" the money. They still haven't had a fire, so as far as they are concerned I was stupid.

Electric companies are necessary so they know if something does go horribly wrong they get bailed out.

</comment><comment><USER40> I'll just drop this book recommendation here, which I found to be an interesting read during this pandemic: Blackout: Tomorrow Will Be Too Late (2012) Marc Elsberg

</comment><comment><USER41> Solar storm of 1859

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859)

</comment><comment><USER42> Is anyone working on solving this problem?

</comment><comment><USER43> Safrr Arkstorm or Tsunami are also pretty cheap to take care of. But that's life.

</comment><comment><USER44> Being "prepared for black swans" is a bad idea. Of course, you want your system as a whole to be as antifragile as possible, but one should never _prepare_ for black swans, but rather buy insurance (so to speak): hedge, diversify, minimize impact. For example, we can imagine a world where some other pandemic is being spread. One that, instead of attacking the lungs, attacks the kidneys. All of a sudden we'd need dialysis machines -- not ventilators. See how preparing for some _specific_ black swan is misguided (as we can be hit by any other, equally unlikely, black swan event)?

> In testimony before a Congressional Committee, it has been asserted that a > prolonged collapse of this nation's electrical grid—through starvation, > disease, and societal collapse—could result in the death of up to 90% of the > American population.

Okay, this sounds like an interesting assertion. Can we back this up? Is this just alarmism? Where's the data?

> Yes, $300 million dollars for a stockpile of 30 HV transformers is far too > expensive to prevent 90% of the public dying and the rest reduced to > cannibalism.

I see. So now we're assuming some off-the-charts assertion, which is dubious at best[1], is absolutely true. The cannibalism is thrown in for extra flair. Gotta' get them clicks somehow.

> Update: I forget to mention that I'm far more worried about accidental > nuclear war, bioterrorism and AI run amok than I am about solar flares.

Anyone that's seriously worried about "AI run amok" (whatever that means) doesn't understand the first thing about AI.

[1] [https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a25883/nor...](https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a25883/north- korea-cant-kill-ninety-percent-of-americans/)

<comment><USER45> Investing a nominal amount in strategic backup equipment that you might never need _is_ hedging.

An event that has a low probability of occurring but that (if it occurs) will be highly catastrophic is exactly the scenario that calls for hedging. Most critical systems have already diversified by building in redundancies (generators) and an insurance check wouldn't be very useful for keeping the rest of us alive.

<comment><USER44> > an insurance check wouldn't be very useful for keeping the rest of us alive

True. I meant "insurance" in the general sense (clarified my post). Insurance can be any number of things, as you mention, including hedging and diversification.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> While I don't disagree that transformers... let alone key transformer.. are critical. By disabling 9 transformers you cannot take down "THE GRID". You could certainly cause havoc and perhaps take down sections of a grid, perhaps a large one such as new york city. But these would be localized. While ensuring that critical components are local and available is important much of this is being done in the energy sector. It's not to say there simply are no replacements. However, the energy sector, including transmission, is made up of over 6000 separate organizations. Most of which are not federally controlled or controlled by the local government. Put simply they are for- profit companies. They are critical infrastructure and regulated by the gov, but not a part of.

Put short, this is a serious matter, but not in the way it is presented here. It would be a herculean effort to take out 1 let alone the suggested 9. Especially in a coordinated fashion. EVEN IF it was achieved.. This would only cause localized issues. Not takedown. "THE GRID"

This is a much larger discussion but a few things to consider:

1\. There is no singular "grid". It just does not work that way. There are thousands of generation and transmission companies throughout the US. They all maintain there own "grids". There is connectivity to provide ways to connect grids to sell/buy/shed power. But these connections are controlled and can be simply… disconnected. 2\. Without going on a major diatribe on the many different attack vectors and inherent vulnerabilities in the energy sector…. Suffice to say.. The easiest and most sure way to take out a transformer is physical. They would need to be destroyed or disabled. Digital/remote interference would require an immense effort and campaign… we are not talking breaching the 9 locations… we're talking hacking millions upon millions of connected devices and coordinating load to take out a transformer or the grid as whole…. The coordination and effort necessary for either are staggering. 3\. There are in fact spares and inventory… just not in the hands of the feds.

<comment><USER47> _There is no singular "grid". It just does not work that way_

This did not prevent "Northeast blackout of 2003" when bunch of states in the US and province of Ontario in Canada went without power for 3 days. I remember it quite clearly. Was not big fun. Luckily my friends and I with families went camping on the lake so did not really suffer other than some little disaster in a fridge ;)

<comment><USER30> From wiki

 _The blackout 's proximate cause was a software bug in the alarm system at the control room of FirstEnergy, an Akron, Ohio–based company, which rendered operators unaware of the need to redistribute load after overloaded transmission lines drooped into foliage. What should have been a manageable local blackout cascaded into the collapse of the entire Northeast region._

How fragile we are.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why are all these Google articles getting flagged - <AUTHOR> 7/8 flagged articles that made it onto the HN homepage today reference google's diversity memo see today from http://hckrnews.com/. Nearly the same deal from yesterday. Who's flagging these?

      9
     Google is replacing Uber, but not the way I predicted (blogs.harvard.edu)

      15
     I'm a woman in computer science. Let me ladysplain the Google memo to you (www.vox.com)

      16
     [Discussion] Sundar Pichai Should Resign as Google's C.E.O (www.nytimes.com)

      14
     Sundar Pichai Should Resign as Google's C.E.O (www.nytimes.com)

      29
     Sundar Pichai Should Resign as CEO (www.nytimes.com)

      14
     Google CEO cancels town hall due to leaks (money.cnn.com)
      13
    I'm Kevin and I'm the guy who bought 259684 BTC for under $3000 yesterday (bitcointalk.org)

      11
     Google cancels meeting about anti-diversity memo over safety concerns (mashable.com) <comment><USER2> Nearly each day there are multiple articles that receive significant discussion: [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=google%20points%3E100&sort=byD...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=google%20points%3E100&sort=byDate&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=pastWeek&type=story).

Users often flag the ones that don't bring significant new information, because not only are they repetitive themselves but the discussions tend towards incivility in the information vacuum. It's harder to keep one's cool in the presence of such tedious repetition.

</comment><comment><USER3> A lot of people here really don't want to discuss political thingns (no matter how topical they may be). Between that and feeling like it's just discussing the same thing over and over (even if the new article adds quite a bit more) you see the discussions start to vanish.

It happened a lot around Gamer Gate.

<comment><USER4> /newcomments and /active show that these articles are getting lots of discussion from some people. Some others are flagging them - probably because they are fed up with the issue. I believe it should be discussed and because there is new stuff (like the video interviews) but now even when I go over the comments, I'm not really hearing anything new being discussed.

<comment><USER3> That's certainly part of he problem as well. People tend to vulkanize pretty quickly so the discussion doesn't change much unless something REALLY big happens (obviously depending on their definition).

By being flagged more people don't see it so even thought there is discussion there isn't as much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sexism in our industry is a serious issue. What does it say about is if we can't or won't discuss it? What if it were about racism? Would we deny it's an issue?

Silencing only benefits the stronger side. Is that who we want to be as a community?

<comment><USER3> Agreed. That was what frustrated me about the Gamer Gate discussion here. And Ellen Pao. And this. And probably some I'm forgetting.

It may be uncomfortable but it's important.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't know but personally I feel it's been overblown and discussed to death. And I don't need to see every single tech blogger's take on the matter.

<comment><USER3> See I disagree. But your viewpoint (which seems to be the majority here) is why I believe it has been flagged so much.

And I will say there have been some stories I've seen flagged on this topic that did not offer _anything_ new and weren't worth discussing.

I understand it covering the site in the stories, but I'm not a fan of the near blackout we've come to.

<comment><USER6> Maybe there are other places on the internet that you can discuss it.

<comment><USER3> Discussion about sexism in tech businesses shouldn't happen on a board aimed at people starting/running/working in tech businesses?

Seems dead on topical to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Just because you you are not intrested in discussing the topic in my mind does not justify flaging it. It is pretty obvious that many people are still intrested in discussing it.

<comment><USER3> I agree, but it became quite obvious during Gamer Gate that's how people decided to handle the lack of a downvote button.

<comment><USER6> Oh, I thought that's what the hide button was for.

<comment><USER3> I litterally never noticed that.

If you hide it YOU don't see if. If you flag it NO ONE might see it.

The flagging stuff on these kind of topics always seems like censorship to me by those who feel attacked. (Irony not purposeful).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Oppa – "Instagram with money" - <AUTHOR> https://www.oppameet.com <comment><AUTHOR> Oppa is a social Tip Jar - "Instagram with money" with 45,000 Facebook verified users. Instead of likes, brands and followers share real money Tips with you (10-cents on posts and $1 to $99 to chat). Over $750,000 shared last month.

We wanted to find a way for you to chat with any person globally, for any reason, and get a reply back. We currently have a 50% chat reply rate (or free friend request option), 46 communities, and 600K photo, video, and content posts created by our engaged Oppa community. 70% of our users are young women 18-24 using 8X daily, and most of the tipping done is between women (as a "super-like").

Would love some input! email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER2> Thank you ending the "like" era.</comment>


The 7 Rules for Writing Software That Won't Die When You Do - <AUTHOR> https://goel.io/7-software-writing-rules/

<comment><USER2> One important point that is missed in this article, is for your software to still run when you die, it has to be written in a programming language that will still "exist" then.

Is your current C compiler still able to compile K&R C code from the 70s? Then what makes you think the standard C of 2040 will be able to compile C99 code?

Is your current python 3.3 able to python 2.7 code? Then what makes you think that python 42.2 will be able to run your python code?

Is your current perl, err, does that still even exist?

On the other hand, if you choose a programming language that is standardized, and whose standard is not updated every two years, say, ANSI Common Lisp, that is able to run LISP programs from the sixties in 2015, that you can extend and make evolve with user code in libraries and your applications, without having to wait for standard comitees to decide whether it should be added, perhaps in an incompatible way, then, since this language can run 50 years old programs, perhaps you could bet it will be able to run your programs in 50 years.

At least, that's my bet.

[http://www.informatimago.com/develop/lisp/com/informatimago/...](http://www.informatimago.com/develop/lisp/com/informatimago/small- cl-pgms/wang.html)

[http://cliki.net/Getting+Started](http://cliki.net/Getting+Started)

Edit: Cobol and Fortran are disqualified, for they get new standards; I had to edit a couple of small cobol programs I wrote in the 80s quite a bit to make them work on OpenCobol on Linux last year... Only LISP is good!

<comment><USER3> The ANSI C standards are backwards compatible. K&R C is not one of them. If you write in C89/C90 it will last as long as any LISP program.

<comment><USER2> The track record is not encouraging. Perhaps some pair of standard keep backward compatibility, but I've already read reports of programs that don't compile anymore with gcc 5.0.

<comment><USER3> Is the conflict you read about a bug in the compiler or a bug in the standard? A bug in the standard is much worse, whereas implementation bugs can be fixed. Maybe you read about undefined behavior? Implementations are free to change how they handle it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


La4j (Linear Algebra for Java) 0.3.0 is out - <AUTHOR> http://la4j.org/

<comment><USER2> I've been extremely interested in graph theory, and have seen a technique for finding the shortest path between two nodes by using a square matrix... This library looks interesting!</comment>


Power consumption test. Safari 10+ watts, Chrome 50+ watts - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/925dk/status/524225487749799938

<comment><USER2> What about HTML5 video tests between the two browsers? As youtube being the one of the largest (if not _the_) video providers, it'd be interesting to see that comparison as a benchmark.

<comment><USER3> Just made a short (about 3 minutes each) youtube test on a MB Air 2014 (HTML5, full HD, fullscreen).

Result: There was a 3 Watts (roughly) difference favoring safari.

<comment><USER2> Awesome! Thank you for that!

That benchmark is more interesting to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> On my MacBook Pro (2.66GHz i7, early 2010), just starting Chrome causes the graphics to switch from the integrated Intel HD Graphics to the NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M, which incurs a substantial battery life penalty.

(I discovered this quite by accident when investigating why my display would flicker when starting/quitting Chrome if I was also using f.lux.)

<comment><USER5> How did you figure this out? What tools did you use?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just goes to show how unoptimized video playback on Adobe Flash Player apparently is after all those years.

</comment><comment><USER7> The brightness appears to be higher on the right. dr.dk uses a Flash Player with variable bitrates on Chrome instead of HTML5. Other things like a low battery can skew the results.

<comment><USER8> The screen definitely looks brighter, but the camera is also pointed further to the right (notice what keys are within the frame). IPS definitely helps with viewing angles but as you can see by [0] you still lose brightness as you move to the side.

Since it is a single tweet, we cannot really take it as seriously as we could if they explained their methodology and showed that it was repeatable.

[0] "Conventional IPS" slide: [http://www.j-display.com/english/technology/jdilcd/pictureq....](http://www.j-display.com/english/technology/jdilcd/pictureq.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Isn't this really just a Flash vs. H.264 power drain test?

And don't most Mac portables ship with h.264 hardware acceleration?</comment>


The One Instruction Wonder - <AUTHOR> http://www.drdobbs.com/embedded-systems/the-one-instruction-wonder/221800122

<comment><USER2> Cute, but I don't see how it's really "one instruction". It's just encoding the instructions into the "addresses"; like reversing orthogonal addressing, but coming around to the same endpoint. Each address now represents an opcode, so it's not really any more flexible than a "normal" processor architecture.

I find it hard to imagine a human, much less a compiler, could write code for this in any other way that by treating it as a regular register machine, but taking two or three instructions (copy inputs, then copy output) for every one - or else implementing their program in VHDL.

Am I missing something?</comment>


Ask HN: Lyrics website startup? - <AUTHOR>

Over on reddit this weekend there were a few threads about how awful lyrics websites are, and talked about a bunch of their problems.
Naturally, being in this community for so long I see something like this as an opportunity. I started a thread over asking what people would like to see in a new Lyrics site (on reddit). That received minimal attention but I got a bit of feedback:
-No annoying adds (playing sound, irrelevant, covering the text)
-Easy searching that works
-Simple design
-Categorization
-Stop messing with my browser behaviour (selecting, right-clicks)
Now, I have some half-way decent ideas about how to set up the thing, such as letting it be a community run site similar to how sites such as stack-overflow are moderated. I also have some long-goals, such as attempting to get lyrics data direct from labels and link directly to their preferred supplier for that music (however, I don't think this is revolutionary).
The biggest thing in my mind would be a lyrics site that doesn't take hours to load, get out the bloat of junk, and let it be a community run thing with tagging and moderation.
I'm the sort of person who thinks things too far into the future and too broadly on the horizon, so my main concern with this is that I've made my target so large I don't have a project that I can complete in short order with minimal complications.
My key theory is that people will use my site because it will be an open community, and not bloated with junk. I'm planning on something like google ads onto the page as the primary form of monetization.
Have I gone too far, or missed something critical that I should stop and look at, or should I put fist to the keyboard and bang this thing out over the next few weekends? <comment><USER2> Based on PG's comments [1][2], I wouldn't touch lyrics.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1760835>

[2] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1761437>

<comment><AUTHOR> This has been in the back of my mind since I first thought it up. Everyone hates how labels are being run, but what if I avoid the ones that are total jerks? For example, KMFDM (a really DIY attitude band) runs their own label, and their personal lyrics website is fairly behind-the-curve in terms of technology.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Provide an API to get the lyrics, so music players can use the site (you can embed the google ads at the end of the lyrics, or find another way to get something out of it).

Most people I know, myself included, use music players that can query various lyrics sites and display the text within the player itself.

I'd ignore any new lyrics website if I couldn't make it work with my music player of choice. The easier it is, the better.

<comment><AUTHOR> Now that's a cool idea.

Note: my music player of choice lately is soundcloud.com and youtube videos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is more marketing related, but I'd find a type of music that has rabid fans and little in way of lyrics online. I'd find their preferred forum and frequent it, and try to build a community tool that they can use to make lyrics for their music make sense. You're going to experience some genre drift and as this occurs more and more people will hopefully use your service.

<comment><AUTHOR> This may be myself directly. I listen to a lot of bands that aren't popular in north america but have a solid following internationally with very little lyrics support (some of them have good lyrics support, but aren't proliferated across lyrics websites with accuracy).

What do you think of trying to create micro-communities? I'm concerned doing something like that may end up making the website too large to deal with.

<comment><USER4> Micro-communities are dangerous. Basically what happens is a separation of small differences. So what should be one community with say 20 - 30 bands all in the same genre becomes 20 or 30 communities all on individual brands.

What are you goals for the project anyway? Is it to learn, make money, find a wife?

<comment><AUTHOR> A bit of learning, mostly from the experience in a task like this. Plus something else to put "out there" attached to myself.

The money would be nice, but my goals for that are secondary.

<comment><USER4> Okay, awesome. I think its an awesome project for learning. You'll get community development, coding, marketing, databases, ad words experience.

I would be surprised if you make much money off of it.

pg warns against the music business, and I think he's right on a lot of things. But I think you should throw it out there and see if you get any traction.

Honestly, I have my doubts of this being a real pain point. It's like, wouldn't it be awesome if lyrics sites were better, but I'm going to go to the one that has 100% of the songs I search for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> lyrics require a license. you can get that license from one of two places, but it becomes a cost/benefit type of thing. (or you can do it illegally and just wait to get sued)

if you don't make enough $ on ads, you won't be able to afford the licenses. people aren't going to pay for a lyrics service.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting. I've just uncovered this.

<http://www.mredkj.com/other/lyrics-interview.html>

It seems if I'm to make any website for this, I will need to do a lot of negotiation with licences, or use things that are out-of-copyright.

<comment><USER5> no, there are two (iirc) sites that you can license lyrics from now legally.</comment></comment></comment>


Rockmelt Stats In the Months Before They Were Acquired by Yahoo - <AUTHOR> http://mattermark.com/rockmelt-stats-in-the-months-before-they-were-acquired-by-yahoo/

<comment><USER2> This is pretty useless for month over month change since it only goes back one or two months in a several year story. If mattermark had stats from 2009 onward on this company, it would be really really interesting now.

</comment><comment><USER3> Agree with rdl about the amount of history, although that's just a matter of time before you have more history on startups that are getting acquired, which is going to be really cool.

For Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn it's probably more interesting to see likes and tweets (or some other sort of interaction score, like Klout) instead of just pure followers. Since followers are going to be pretty slowly climbing all the time. (Although maybe in larger time intervals followers would be more interesting.)

Annotations of events for the companies on the graphs (Google Finance style) would also be sweet, so they are easier to parse for outsiders.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, everyday we collect more data.

About a month ago we added Facebook talking about data, and will start to light that up in the product. Twitter mentions is on our radar too.

We love the way Google trends shows breaking news annotations, and have already explored that a bit. You just can't see it in the static screen shots, since it's a hover behavior.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to go back to school? - <AUTHOR>

I graduated in 2010 and I'm currently working in a sort of junior developer position.  I have a math background but I've found that an engineering master's is required for many of the jobs I'm interested in.  For those who have done it or have some knowledge about it, what's the best way to go back to school, financially?  As a non-degree seeking student initially (as I'd be taking undergrad prereqs) I know I won't qualify for certain financial aid.  Any advice from those who've bootstrapped through something similar is much appreciated.  I imagine this question could be helpful to many in the future as well.  Thanks for your input. <comment><USER2> If you're not getting credit for the undergrad stuff, could you go through some of the OCW stuff instead?

<http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm>

<comment><USER3> He's getting credit. Some masters programs (like Engineering) require certain undergrad prerequisite classes before he can do the actual masters. OCW won't work because he needs these classes on his transcript.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right.</comment></comment></comment>


A day in the life of a CEO - <AUTHOR> http://ryancarson.com/post/25923386691/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-ceo <comment><USER3> > _@ryancarson can you blog about how you spend your day running your biz? > What biz activities do you focus on now that the product is up?_

The person on Twitter _clearly_ asks about the _business_. The author then proceeds to write 18 points about his day, only five of which are actually about the business, including some gems like, _"Crank through todos"_.

Does this guy think he's a celebrity or something? Why am I interested in his personal life whatsoever? He's the "CEO" of a small company most people have never heard of.

Someone in the comments asks him why he calls his phone an iPhone, rather than just a phone, to which he replies that he wants us to know the all the details and specifics. Oh, so you go into detail about how eating right away boosts your metabolism, but 3 hours of the day is "meetings"? Thanks for being specific.

<comment><USER4> _Does this guy think he's a celebrity or something?_

Does that matter? If you find the content valuable, does it matter whether or not he thinks he's a celebrity? Conversely, if you don't find it valuable, does it matter whether or not he thinks he's a celebrity? Maybe it would be better to focus on the message and not the personality behind it?

 _He's the "CEO" of a small company most people have never heard of._

I'm not sure why you put CEO in quotes there... are you saying he isn't actually CEO of a company? And what difference does it make whether or not most people have heard of the company? Most people haven't heard of most of the companies founded by people who post on HN... and it sounds like Ryan has already done more than most of the wantrepreneur types who hang around these kinds of forums. What try to put him down for what he's accomplished?

<comment><USER5> _What try to put him down for what he's accomplished?_

He isn't being put down for what he has accomplished. He's being put down for writing a shallow self-serving blog post that is completely devoid of intellectual content, and then submitting it to HN. I hope enough others here flag this as well.

<comment><USER4> When somebody writes about him as a "CEO", with an implication that he's somehow less than a "real" CEO, then yes, that is putting him (and his company) down. It's ridiculous, IMO. This guy is out there, in the trenches, building a real company, and tries to share his experience, and he's getting slammed for it. This isn't what I've come to expect from HN. :-(

<comment><USER6> > _and tries to share his experience_

I think the point is: he might be trying but he is doing a horrible job at sharing that experience because the only thing he gives us is "he is a big picture thinker", he "cranks through to dos" and that Paul is important. There is hardly any "meat" or really interesting, helpful stuff in there - that's what the slamming is about. Is this really so difficult to see or differentiate?

<comment><USER4> _Is this really so difficult to see or differentiate?_

Not at all. I never said it was wrong to provide feedback or constructive criticism. But the tone of the earlier post - that kicked off this thread - just seemed (to me) a bit overly antagonistic and demeaning, as opposed to constructive.

As far as I know, the social norm here at HN is not to "slam" somebody when constructive criticism would suffice instead. I mean, this is something of a community of (largely) like-minded peers in many ways. And I, for one, would like to think that that we're sort of "on the same team" here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Am I the only one that feels Ryan's blog is mostly hacker news link bait, every article is pretty fluffy stuff that gets a lot of upvotes. I'm not sure how much actual value you get from knowing his schedule

<comment><USER8> Feel the same way, and can't help but wonder why these articles keep getting upvoted.

Side note - reminds me of my first FOWA, where Ryan hogged a majority of the QA time from each presenter to ask questions about his own business. I admire his business success, but to me, he comes off as self-centered.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hey Ryan,

I'm just curious how you handle spending quality time with your employees. I've worked at companies where the CEO is never around, and when you do meet with him, it's in meetings that feel rushed and they are always looking at their watch for the next meeting. Frankly, it's disrespectful and it _does_ negatively impact the morale of the team.

I'm in the CEO role right now, and I'm realizing a lot of meetings that we schedule are frankly worthless. We'd be better off canceling them and spending time working on stuff with the team.

As a side note, I enjoyed watching some of the making of the Boeing 777 (<http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3551731641323350192>). Then-CEO Alan Mulally is often in meetings with the employees and not trying to control every thing. It's pretty refreshing.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree - it's really important to be fully present and not rush. As you said, if you're rushing the meeting then it's probably not important

<comment><USER9> Well, what I meant was that if you _are_ rushing meetings with your own employees, something is wrong on your end.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Thanks for this. The BBC Radio Four programme "The Bottom Line" recently had some discussion with business people about one of their days.

Here's the link to the Podcast, which should be available in different regions.

(<http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01jxtfb#synopsis>)

They also mention some research (that he read via the London School of Economics) about days in the life of Italian business people (but quite large businesses, 8,000 employees) - I haven't found that report yet.

The Bottom Line should be interesting to many people on HN - it's a less formal discussion guided by Evan Davis with business people.

<comment><AUTHOR> I love The Bottom Line. One of my favorite podcasts. Thanks for sharing the link.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thank you to everyone who took time to stick up for me here. I can take it though, don't worry. I appreciate it nevertheless.

I wrote the post because I'm interested in the details behind everyone's daily life. It's where talk meets action. I don't think I'm a celebrity. I merely wanted to be transparent about my routine so that other CEOs could see how their life compares.

I submit my articles to HN, but it's the community that puts them on the front page. Take them or leave them. It's just my blog :)

<comment><USER11> "I don't think I'm a celebrity."

Not a celebrity yet.

Julia Allison was roundly made fun of a few years ago for her ability to garner press on some blogs and people felt she was totally overexposed. (So was Bethenny Frankel for that matter). Both of them now have TV shows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> >5:05 AM - Make a point of appreciating all that is good about my life, instead of immediately rushing into my day. I often take a deep breath and sit out on our deck for a few minutes.

Is this meant to be satire or something? This was seriously put into his schedule as a 5 minute task?

<comment><USER13> I'm not sure I'm understanding what you're saying, but how much time you put into a particular scheduling item does not necessarily correspond with its importance/urgency.

When it's just you and your thoughts, 5 minutes can be a long time. I don't think it would be a good idea to stretch this activity out longer for the sole reason of showing how important it is.

<comment><USER12> No, it's the fact that it's literally on the schedule as a task.

Imagine telling a designer:

"From the hours of 12:00pm to 3:00pm, be creative."

Life doesn't work like that, and if you're scheduling your life down to individual minutes, then I can't imagine how you're also managing to be creative.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> CEO's say how busy they are, but it seems like most execution is handled by people below the CEO. So I'm left wondering what are specific tasks that are the right level to keep the CEO so busy?

The author had a great chance to address this... but all we're told is "meetings" and "todo list."

<comment><USER15> There's a blog post from Fred Wilson that I've found to be most insightful:

<http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/08/what-a-ceo-does.html>

The main point is this:

"A CEO does only three things. Sets the overall vision and strategy of the company and communicates it to all stakeholders. Recruits, hires, and retains the very best talent for the company. Makes sure there is always enough cash in the bank."

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I really appreciate hearing about the very paced/zen schedule you seem to keep. I'm a firm believer that productivity is an easily exhaustible resource and you can't simply extract more of it per week with additional desk hours. You can have all the money and time in the world, but true freedom is the ability to bask in every small moment of the day, revel in the experience and reflect on life as it happens. Don't wait for the big payoff.

</comment><comment><USER17> He can go to bed at 10 pm and wake up at 5 am? I go to bed at 10 and wake up still extremely tired at 7 am...

<comment><USER18> that may be because you actually oversleep. unless you're very young (<20yo), 7h of sleep is likely all you need, and anything less than 6h or more than 8h will leave you tired and lacking energy.

<comment><USER17> I could be oversleeping but I cannot really fix that. I don't use drugs to sleep or wake, and I don't wake via an alarm most days (alarm is for 7, I wake up at 6:40~55).

I could set an alarm for 5 am but I predict that I would be even more tired compared to my 10 to 7 schedule.

<comment><USER19> Try it for a week and see. What do you have to lose?

Alternatively, have some children and your sleep will not be the same for a long long time.

Ryan Carson says he has a 1 year old child, so I doubt he's sleeping through the night. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The gem I found from his post is this: [https://www.philrichardsperformance.co.uk/index.php/goodness...](https://www.philrichardsperformance.co.uk/index.php/goodness- greens.html)

I have never tried supplements, always thought they were a bit extreme and only for hardcore athletes and fitness buffs. As I get older, I realize the importance of metabolism (who cares about it when you're a teen and it's sky high), knowing eating breakfast really kicks up your metabolism and how fibre and greens play in your health.

Now I'm actually very tempted to try this supplement out - seems really healthy even though it comes packaged in a plastic jar and powder form.

<comment><USER21> > knowing eating breakfast really kicks up your metabolism

I'm not sure this is experimentally verified. There is also the "skip the breakfast" camp that advocates remaining in the catabolic state a little longer to keep burning the fat.

Also, why not throw the exact same greens into a blender. Surely that powder in the tub cannot be any better than fresh vegetables.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I love reading things like this and it sounds like you live a very balanced life. Honestly, this sounds like a pretty ideal schedule.

Any advice for someone that still has a day job? I don't have kids but do try to spend a good amount of time with my SO.

<comment><USER23> I'm not a CEO, but I keep a similar schedule (replace his meetings and schedule reviews with development), and it works well for me. I'm up early, work for ~90 minutes, then get the kids up and ready for the day. Same thing in the evening--unless something is truly on fire, I leave the office between 4:30 and 5:00 every day (or close the computer if I'm working from home), spend time with my family 'til 8:00 or 9:00, then work again for an hour or two (if necessary--I don't do this every night).

Obviously, this doesn't work for everyone who works for someone else. I'm fortunate to have a job with a great deal of flexibility. If I'm in the office, I'm rarely there longer than 7-8 hours a day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The important thing to note is:

 _"When Treehouse was <25 people, I actually did a lot of execution. I'd write newsletters, sketch wireframes, answer support emails, start marketing campaigns, etc._

 _Now that we're about to hit 50 full-time employees, I spend all my time 'steering the ship'._

I suspect some of the vitriol here is due to the relatively large audience of entrepreneurs in startups less than half his size. To be more relevant, I'd love to see his schedule when he was a 3-5 person company.

<comment><USER25> I'm more interested in people who remain operational as founders or CEOs in larger (>25) person companies. I've never seen good come from being entirely about todos, delegation, etc. in large companies -- all the great people I know remain hands-on even past the point where it's necessary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Very detailed: except for what sort of things the "todos" actually are - <USER2> that's a significant portion of the time.

<comment><USER27> [http://ryancarson.com/post/25580650719/7-dos-and-donts- for-f...](http://ryancarson.com/post/25580650719/7-dos-and-donts-for-founders) some more info in there for you mate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I don't know many people who wake up at 5am. Is that necessary to get the job done or just your preferred wake up time?

<comment><USER29> > I don't know many people who wake up at 5am

Maybe because you know intelligent people.

[http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific- fundament...](http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific- fundamentalist/201005/why-night-owls-are-more-intelligent-morning-larks)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> That sounds terrible. If this is being a CEO, I don't want any part of it, especially the dull evenings.

<comment><USER31> If you're calling 'spending three hours with your family' a dull evening, then I guess you might be technically correct -- but keep in mind your priorities are different than most people's.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> A well structured, balanced life with the focus on family. It possibly leads to some degree of happiness and stability, but this seems so boring for being a CEO. Where's the action! Most the time seems wasted on minor daily routines that could be squeezed into 1 hour.

</comment><comment><USER33> Close to 9 hrs of work/day and with 4 day work weeks this seems to be a well balanced life! One can argue that quality of work is way better than quantity but this looks primarily for a later stage startup founder...

</comment><comment><USER34> Question for Ryan: I know you said you work 4 days a week at Treehouse. How well do you respect that? Do you do any kind of work during the weekend or just errands, relaxing and family time?

<comment><AUTHOR> I respect it a ton. I rarely work over the weekends. I check email occasionally, but not often.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> According to this, he puts in 28 hours per week, which doesn't account for time in the restroom, sidebar chats, walking between appointments, personal life issues that pop up etc.

Sounds like a dream job.

</comment><comment><USER36> I turn up at 9-10am and then churn out code for 7-10 hours.

This is why I don't have a blog.</comment>


Beyond two-factor: How to use U2F to improve app security - <AUTHOR> https://techbeacon.com/beyond-two-factor-how-use-u2f-improve-app-security <comment><USER2> One other vulnerability arises from how all companies currently implement U2F right now: by setting SMS/app authenticators as mandatory "back-up". So your U2F security will only be as good as that of the SMS/app authentication anyway (until companies stop making this mandatory, at least, and instead require 2 U2F devices to act as back-up for each other - or just allow the user to use one without any backup).</comment>


HotSpot compiler: Stack allocation prototype for C2 - <AUTHOR> https://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/hotspot-compiler-dev/2020-June/038779.html <comment><USER2> I'm anticipating a lot of confusion and people talking past each other in this thread.

C2 already does escape analysis, and scalar-replacement-of-aggregates to turn objects that don't escape a compilation unit into dataflow edges, which if possible is far better than the stack-allocation in this article because you'd rather not write out to the stack if you don't have to, and you'd like unused parts of the object to disappear. Graal then adds partial-escape-analysis to float reification of an object to the last-safe-moment.

What _this_ does on top of that is then to cover the corner case where an object would be safe for SRA, except something requires the object to have the same layout as on the heap. I think a concrete example of this is some intrinsics and merges where an object needs to be heap-allocated on just one branch, so that code following the merge can have a full object in both cases and not care that one has been allocated on the stack.

The key to avoiding confusion - 'allocating on the stack' in this case means literally allocating the full reified object in stack memory, whereas in C2 at the moment when people say 'stack allocation' informally they mean SRA.

C2 already removes reference type allocations when they don't escape a compilation unit, which is something I think C# doesn't yet do at all for some reason I don't really understand.

<comment><USER3> It appears that the .NET Core CLR does perform some rudimentary escape analysis: [https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/pull/6653](https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/pull/6653)

<comment><USER2> Right - and that supports the stack-allocation, not SRA, which is what I think C# doesn't have - possibly because they prefer explicit value types over trying to do it automatically through SRA.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder what Oracle will think about this. Isn't this one of the "big" optimizations you only get with Graal EE $$$ right now? Its going to be ironic if external contributors keep C2 as on par with Graal EE.

<comment><USER2> No I don't believe this is in Graal EE. I think you may be mistaking it with partial escape analysis, which can float reification of an object on the heap to the branch where it is needed and let it stay virtualised on other branches. This post is about actually allocating the reified object on the stack. I don't believe Graal does that in any configuration.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Those are the first results of the renewed interest from Microsoft to contributing to the JVM cf [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21837508](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21837508)

I wonder what others lovely optimizations/improvements they will bring :} Especially which optimizations from the C# world will they transpose to the JVM world. According to the benchmarckgame C# is the fastest on earth JITed language

<comment><USER5> The benchmarkgame result are comparing apples to oranges. I stopped after seeing them tests Java regexes tot c# regexes which uses the native pcre library. In my professional experience, the .net jit is nearly always slower than the jvm one.

<comment><USER6> With .NET 5 the fastest non-PCRE C# regexredux implementation there completes in five seconds on my machine, as opposed to 8 seconds for the Java implementation. Still quite a bit away from C, but I'd say respectable for a purely managed implementation.

It helps that the team has done a lot of optimizations for regex and other parts of the standard lib in the past few months.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't understand the "and C#" part. C# has had stack allocation support (for primitives, structs and fixed size arrays) since the very first release.

<comment><USER8> You'll find the detail in [https://github.com/microsoft/openjdk- proposals/blob/master/s...](https://github.com/microsoft/openjdk- proposals/blob/master/stack_allocation/Stack_Allocation_JEP.md)

This is about stack allocation of objects where safe (i.e. when you can prove they don't escape the local scope) for Hotspot, something that already exists in J9 (IBM's JVM) I think.

There is equivalent work for .net core here: [https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/blob/master/docs/design/co...](https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/blob/master/docs/design/coreclr/jit/object- stack-allocation.md)

(So the title is somewhat accurate, but you have to do some digging)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Cheney on the MTA and its various implementations (like Chicken Scheme [0]) have been allocating objects on the stack for ages. Would like to know how this compares.

[0] [https://www.more-magic.net/posts/internals-gc.html](https://www.more- magic.net/posts/internals-gc.html)

<comment><USER2> This is a bit different. My understanding (but I'm not an expert) is that Chicken uses the stack effectively as the thread allocation buffer, which is clever because it's already thread-local using an existing register, and it's already in cache. They then evacuate from the stack to the old generation (or a separate young generation? I'm not sure). This isn't what is being done in the work referenced in this article, as objects are known in this case to be long-term safe to allocate on the stack - it's not using it as an allocation buffer.

But my understanding of Chicken is limited - maybe you were asking rhetorically and you knew more?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't understand. we've always been able to allocate value types on the stack in C#.

<comment><USER11> What I understand is that this is stack allocating reference types, when the compiler can infer that it is safe to do so. Which I think is an optimization .net Core desktop doesn't yet do.

Also worth noting, I believe .net Core doesn't necessarily stack allocate value types either, seems a lot of conditions can make it unsafe as well, like a closed over value type that could escape the local scope, so value types arn't always stack allocated either. Only done when it is safe to do so.

<comment><USER12> > like a closed over value type that could escape the local scope

You mean, captured in closure?

<comment><USER6> I guess that's what they meant. However, that's a bit misleading, since the runtime doesn't care about that that's a value type captured in a closure, as it's a class field in IL already. And those are always allocated like their containing type.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Please fix the heading, C# has had stack allocation since version 1.0 (value allocation to be more precise).

The linked content is only about Java.

<comment><USER14> Stack allocation and value allocation are different. In C#, value types can be allocated on the stack, but reference types are always allocated on the heap. The OP describes an approach where reference types are stored on the stack.

<comment><USER15> But doesn't the 'stackalloc' keyword in C# allow you to express to intentionally allocate value types on the stack?

<comment><USER16> I'd say ref structs are more explicitly stack allocated since they're not allowed to be boxed. Stackalloc is used to allocate arrays on the stack (or rather a block of memory).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Women feel like they need to 'act like men' to succeed in IT - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/it-managementstrategy/175725/women-it-need-act-men-succeed

<comment><USER2> When in Rome act the the Romes do or you're unlikely to get very far. The culture won't get more female friendly until there are more women in the industry, but there probably won't be more women in the industry until the culture gets more female friendly. The solution is as usual, early adopters and lots of time.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wonder how men working as primary school teachers feel they need to "act like women"? Those that haven't been driven out of the profession of course. Funny how it's only "inequality" when it goes one way.</comment>


Yet ANOTHER WAY of Getting Root on High Sierra - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/xiam/status/935878591082049536 <comment><USER2> Security Update 2017-001 fixes this as well: [https://support.apple.com/en- us/HT208315](https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208315)</comment>


Has LinkedIn Lost its Edge? - <AUTHOR> http://josephdickinson.com/blog/has-linkedin-lost-its-edge/2013/01/

<comment><USER2> It had an edge?

The main benefit of LinkedIn seemed to be to send me LinkedIn invitations.

They then entered parasite territory with their endorsements "feature".</comment>


More than 10 percent of $3.7B raised in ICOs has been stolen - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ico-ernst-young/more-than-10-percent-of-3-7-billion-raised-in-icos-has-been-stolen-ernst-young-idUSKBN1FB1MZ?utm_campaign=trueAnthem:+Trending+Content&utm_content=5a65f0ba04d30141f040eb38&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter <comment><USER2> Since it's on a block chain, and there is therefore a specific coin that can be traced back to the fraudulent transaction. Can the transactions then be rolled back?

Edit: Assuming the underlying ICO transaction happened in Bitcoin or similar. If the funds were wired in say, USD, it would not be able to be rolled back after 3 days or so.

<comment><USER3> > Can the transactions then be rolled back?

No -- well, kinda. This is unintentionally hilarious because, of course, Ethereum has done just that once before. By creating a new network that picked up from just before the "fradulent" activity.

The part that might be confusing to some folks is that in order to operate a truly trustless and decentralized cryptocoin ecosystem, we have no way of distinguishing between "fraudulent transactions" and legitimate ones. They're all legitimate otherwise they'd have been rejected by the network.

<comment><USER4> So there IS a way - if it was rejected by the network, it was fraudulent.

<comment><USER3> Necessary but not sufficient....

I can't quite tell whether you're trying to underscore a point about cryptocoins' benefits or if you're misunderstanding the conversation.

Just in case it's the latter -- I was probably a bit too fast n loose with the quotes around "fraudulent" so I will explain in more detail.

From the article:

> Phishing was the most widely used hacking technique for ICOs, with hackers > stealing up to $1.5 million in ICO proceeds per month, according to the > report.

This is a kind of "fraud" which cryptocoins are not designed to thwart. If you steal someone's keys and take their money, it can't be returned to them unless the thief decides to return it. This is very much like cash.

The problem comes from decentralization. In the Real World, we usually defer to authorities when it comes to crime and restitution. The authorities come to a determination and publish their decree. This is very much centralized. Cryptocoins are decentralized and are simple automata. There's no authority that we can appeal to in order to reverse a transaction that was executed in bad faith. Part of the problem is that there's no way for the automaton to trust this authority without destabilizing the entire system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The word 'stolen' doesn't have its usual meaning in the ICO world. Isn't all or most money made on ICOs, effectively stolen? Everyone knows that ICOs are a scam.

<comment><USER6> Not really. There are plenty of ICOs with legit projects. Have they gotten too much capital? Probably. But that doesn't make it a scam necessarily.

<comment><USER7> Plenty of pyramid schemes lay on the back of some sort of product, knives or energy drinks or what have you. The existence of a product doesn't mean it isn't a scam

<comment><USER4> I mean, I hate MLMs as much as the next guy, and would never participate, but they are slightly different than a pure pyramid scheme.

<comment><USER8> No, they are not pyramid schemes per se - they are more of an inverse funnel.

<comment><USER9> I would have called it a shady trapezoid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If I understand the article correctly, it is saying that the proceeds of the ICO were stolen.

The impression I got from the headline was that "More than 10 percent of the $3.7B raised in ICOs came from stolen funds".

</comment><comment><USER11> The only surprise here is that it's so little. I wonder how much higher that number will go.

</comment><comment><USER12> Does that include the 513,774.16 ETH (currently about $500M) lost due to the Parity Wallet bug?

<comment><USER13> Why would it? What does the parity wallet have to do with ico's?

<comment><USER12> Parity Wallet was used by several large ICOs [https://www.coindesk.com/ico- funds-among-millions-frozen-par...](https://www.coindesk.com/ico-funds-among- millions-frozen-parity-wallets/)

<comment><USER13> And? The parity wallet was not hacked, just is unable to be withdrawn from.

<comment><USER12> The headline is a bit clickbaity, the article itself says "lost or stolen". I think it's unlikely that ETH will be able to be withdrawn without a hard fork, so "lost" is accurate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> To paraphrase the old saying ([https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/19/gambling- women/#mor...](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/19/gambling- women/#more-332)):

"10% was stolen. The rest was spent foolishly."

</comment><comment><USER15> The other 90% apparently will be stolen at some point in the future.

</comment><comment><USER16> 10% is awful. ICOs desperately need sensible oversight and regulation.

<comment><USER17> Credit card companies steal 3-4% on every transaction and consumers don't even blink.

<comment><USER18> If that is your definition of "steal", then bitcoin easily steals more (for small transactions)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> So block it- isn't that the point of having One True Ledger?

<comment><USER20> Once the coins are converted to USD, JPY, EUR, etc, it's gone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> All the libertarians are now learning the downside to a fully unregulated market.

On the flip side, basically this means that if you're willing to accept a 10% risk of total loss, ICOs are not a bad investment -- knowing that going in.

<comment><USER22> You can have third party risk management solutions in this environment. Why such solutions haven't emerged is a mystery to me.

One solution I've been kicking around is something like an escrow + shareholder voting. It would play out as follows:

1\. Devs come up with an idea, decide they want to ICO to fund it.

2\. Devs come up with game plan including set of milestones with timelines.

3\. Devs reach out to escrow who arranges an ICO. ICO occurs, all ether besides a starting amount is held by the third party.

4\. When devs hit first milestone, they show work to holders of ICO coin who then vote on whether the milestone has been achieved. Devs have to report any coins they previously mined or held so that they can't vote for themselves and agree to not purchase any further coins in a contract with the escrow. They also have to identify their relationships with any early coin buyers for the same reason. If they get approval from their shareholders, the next batch of money is released so that the work for the next milestone can be complete. If not, no money is released or the coins are voided and all monies are returned to the investors.

The third party company would take a management fee, purchase insurance to protect against theft of the assets, and be a registered US corporation so legal action could be taken if they committed fraud.

An added benefit is that if you are early to market you could help SEC shape ICO policy (assuming it's not too late) potentially becoming a mandated gold standard.

<comment><USER23> Vitalik Buterin[1] last week brainstormed a proposed development, fundraising and stewardship structure combining elements of a DAO[2] and ICO called a DAICO[3]. People are still debating and considering whether this is a true improvement. The structure outlined in the parent comment is similar to the DAICO model proposed by Vitalik.

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

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_autonomous_organ...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_autonomous_organization)

[3] [https://ethresear.ch/t/explanation-of- daicos/465](https://ethresear.ch/t/explanation-of-daicos/465)

<comment><USER24> The difference seems to be that rather than using third-party escrow, his idea uses code running on the Ethereum network to allow investors to vote on the release of funds (because we know that complex smart contract code of this kind worked _perfectly_ in the past and certainly didn't have bugs so severe the entire Ethereum protocol was forked to undo them).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> We've never seen a new internet technology this big before, and no organization is powerful enough to put the ICO genie back in the bottle.

What we need is a framework for users so that they can make informed decisions about what to invest in. And we need laws that make it completely legal.

Wall Street is the 1%'s point of control over the 99% and it's going down hard. Their power seemed strong in the old world but is absolutely meaningless in the face of a large scale citizen uprising.

Trying to fight this new technology will do nothing but accelerate the process, as it did on a smaller scale with P2P file sharing.</comment>


What it's like to write speeches for a rude, rambling and disgraced politician - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/book-party/wp/2015/07/08/what-its-like-to-write-speeches-for-a-rude-rambling-and-disgraced-politician/

<comment><USER2> A lot of what's mentioned in the article is delivered as particularly shady, which some of it definitely is, however i would chalk up the remainder as necessary political strategy. When news outlets jump on any blunder (sometimes even something as simple as a stutter [1]), it really forces politicians overanalyze and stress about stupid things (such as the 3 points thing).

[1] [http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2012/dec/06/ed-balls- won...](http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2012/dec/06/ed-balls-wont- apologise-stammer)</comment>


The Dark Secret at the Heart of AI – MIT Technology Review - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/604087/the-dark-secret-at-the-heart-of-ai/ <comment><USER2> 10th time posted this week.</comment>


Google Ventures' humans.txt file - <AUTHOR> http://www.googleventures.com/humans.txt <comment><USER2> I like the idea of sites implementing humans.txt to go with robots.txt. Doesn't need to be linked anywhere, but it's a place for crediting the people behind the site (or company, or product .. or anything).

robots.txt is for reading by robots so has to be structured

humans.txt is for reading by humans so can be anything a human wants to put in there.</comment>


The great forgetting - <AUTHOR> http://aeon.co/magazine/being-human/where-do-childrens-earliest-memories-go/

<comment><USER2> After living about 24 years in a rather protected countryside setting I decided to spend one year in China. This shocked me to some degree because it completely changed my view on most things in this world. But it also made me forget nearly everything from my years before I went to China. It's strange to say this, but a grownup doesn't often come into situations where he needs to recall specifics of his childhood. Therefore until now I never had a big problem with that, although it makes me still uncomfortable years later.

<comment><USER3> I'm having trouble conceptualizing the idea of being unable to remember anything before the age of 24. Can you expand on that?

For example, I can recall my time in high school and college -- both generally and specific events -- rather well (I think). When you think back to those times in your life, whether you were in school or doing something else, do you just draw a blank?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> so from what i understand, speaking with simple terms (simply because i don't know well topic :)) - any living being, including human, starts with "blank brain" where a lot of interconnections exists and/or created easily. And since memories are really "state" of this very complex system, most of things/events remember-able simply blends and blurres during first few years of life.

For me this means two things - there is no way child will recall events from first couple years of his life. So there is no need to try to show new places, make him excited with particular event/thing. But in the same time, events happening in these early years affects brain (and whole body) development as a whole, so it is very important to make baby feel connected, safe, curious, etc.

Or even simpler - first couple years define "North/South/West/East" directions and then later brain develops within few "degrees" of this initial path.

<comment><USER5> Sorta. Children don't form any memory of their early years because knowledge only makes sense in context of other knowledge. Synapses have to have something meaningful to connect to. Children don't have knowledge, so it's difficult to form new memories in their minds because there's nothing in their minds to connect the new memories to.

As children, our first memories are vitally important because they are quite literally building the foundation for every memory that will come thereafter.

<comment><USER6> Children don't form memories of their early years? How do children in their early years recognize their parents?

<comment><USER7> I believe the parent is referring to episodic memory [1]. Of course we are forming "memories" as we are making sense of the world since day 1 (and this includes learning about our bodies).

The concept we usually refer to when speaking about "memories" is that of episodic memories which have a lot of context associated with them. These types of "memories" are formed and retained reliably mostly after children reach school age [2].

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Episodic_memory](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Episodic_memory) [2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_development#Episodic_Mem...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_development#Episodic_Memory)

<comment><USER6> OK, early memories are commonly not retained, but parent specifically claimed they're not formed, which is ludicrous. Ask a speaking child what happened last week and they'll tell you. Show a non-speaking infant something with a result they should be able to predict, and they'll be surprised if that result doesn't happen.

Memories from your 30s are also commonly not retained, but I don't hear anyone saying 35-year-olds can't form memories.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Heh, reminded me of Ishmael. Great book.

</comment><comment><USER9> great essay!</comment>