Ask HN: Anyone here using their iPad to program on? - <AUTHOR> I recently bought the new iPad Pro and Magic Keyboard not because I had high hopes that I would be able to program on it but mostly got it for hand written note taking. However, I'm curious if anyone here has managed to actually use their iPad to program on? The only way I see that working is to use a terminal emulator app and ssh into a machine. I was thinking about getting a mac mini or something similar to use as a server so I'm also curious if anyone here has managed to that as well? Thanks. <comment><USER2> Interesting you posted this as I have an older 2016 iPad Pro that I have loved using for Notability notes over the past few years.

I just bought a second hand Apple keyboard for it to make more use of it. I don't expect to be able to fully program with it but with the likes of Blink I can have a fully functional terminal on a remote dev server and do what I need there.

I find that the form factor of the iPad allows me to "think differently" as strange as that sounds. I can move from my laptop/desk and sit down somewhere else and do certain tasks more easily on the iPad, particularly when it comes to thinking/sketching solutions or writing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Your comment makes me want to write this symbolic generative grammar lang I've been thinking called "Roam" where you hand write code in pseudo natural langs compiled from lower level dialects with a root lang bootstrapped using Rust, so you could either enter natural accented commands or render code to a target natural lang. Mathematically it's possible, but I'm not sure programmers or end users would appreciate it unless their was a global kak like text entry system for keyboard input. Personally, I find writing by hand helps me "think differently" (I've coded on paper napkins) and the end result is usually much better because writing pseudo-code is much easier than having the distraction of writing correct syntax--a fact I always forget about but my professors in college always required.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Not recently, but yes. I used Working Copy + Textastic to write and edit code and markdown files using a CI to build/test/deploy. I haven't tried using a terminal emulator to SSH into a remote machine, but I am replacing my iPad Air (2013) and plan to get the keyboard when I do, so it's definitely something I plan to do soon.

I found that, once the CI system was configured, it worked really well. My bluetooth keyboard gave up the ghost so I stopped working that way a while ago, and have been postponing getting a replacement because I wanted the new iPad Pro first.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh snap, that's right! I could use L7 networking to do automated CI using HashiCorp's stuff even though I know Ansible better. Thanks for the hint.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not coding but launched a challenge myself to create a side-project out of iPad only [https://www.indiehackers.com/post/challenge-building-and- mak...](https://www.indiehackers.com/post/challenge-building-and-making-some- profit-using-ipad-only-f757e6d164)

At the moment, writing a newsletter and Tweeting some contents with insights from pre-internet companies using GSuite + substack

</comment><comment><USER5> I do, I use code-server ([https://github.com/cdr/code- server](https://github.com/cdr/code-server)) to run a remote instance of VS Code on a $5 DigitalOcean droplet, that I then expose with a pretty domain.

Works great on the iPad, especially as a full-screen PWA. Paired with Blink mosh shell, which was recommended to me here on HN, and you're set.

</comment><comment><USER6> I do. Mosh into a free tier gcp server for small things. Spin up bigger instances in either gcp or aws for bigger.

Have been experimenting with tailscale with the idea I might transition to an "on prem" code server. Especially for something like remote vs code.

What would really be ideal is a dock I could use both with my iPad Pro & my work Mac so I could easily use my monitor/mouse/keyboard

</comment><comment><USER7> You can code online (say on Sagemaker) with a keyboard. It's handy if you move around a lot or if you need to do some coding while traveling. I find the 2 monitor adjustable desk setup to be most conducive though.

</comment><comment><USER8> I've done it on and off. Some of my favourite apps: Codea, Play.js, Working Copy.</comment>


MySpace admits losing 12 years' worth of music uploads - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-47610936 <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19417640](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19417640)

</comment><comment><USER3> I could've sworn this came out years ago. Odd it's suddenly something everyone seems to be talking about.</comment>


New nano-material could boost solar panel efficiency as high as 80% - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/168811-new-nano-material-could-boost-solar-panel-efficiency-as-high-as-80

<comment><USER2> i have saw too many new tech this year and last year none of them has a product

this made me angry</comment>


Ask HN: What is to Emacs as Neovim is to vim? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> There are several attempts -- some more, some less successful -- to refactor, improve, and extend Emacs as a platform and editor. (One of the more interesting ones, in my opinion, is GuileEmacs, which is an attempt to use Guile Scheme as a replacement for Emacs Lisp.) Here is a good list of things you might be looking for:

[http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsImplementations](http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsImplementations)

</comment><comment><USER3> You mean, vaporware, or some other interpretation?

<comment><USER4> You have a funny definition of vaporware. There's active work happening in public in the neovim repository, and a summary of the work to date here: [http://neovim.org/news/2014/june/](http://neovim.org/news/2014/june/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> XEmacs perhaps? I remember it being purported as "The Next Generation of Emacs" years ago.</comment>


Ask HN: Did LinkedIn Just Rollout New UI to All? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Looks the same to me. Screenshot?

Edit: oh god [http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/19/3783286/katy-perry- inspir...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/19/3783286/katy-perry-inspired- linkedin-redesign)

</comment><comment><USER3> I got it here, so I would assume so, or there's some A/B testing going on! :)</comment>


Facebook Database Write Failed Error, May 27 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://www.simplerna.com/2012/05/facebook-database-write-failed-error.html

<comment><USER2> As much as I dislike Facebook in general, kudos to their engineers. If your service handling hundreds of millions of people is usually so robust that someone seeing an error condition dialog is blogspam-worthy news, you're doing a wonderful job.</comment>


Manager Handbook – a collection of the best management lessons - <AUTHOR> http://managerhandbook.teambit.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey folks!

A couple of years back I started sending a weekly newsletter all about how to build great teams and be a better leader. Teambit Digest has been going for more than 100 editions, so I wanted to share some of the best articles we've read so far.

Penned by researchers, founders and executives and handily gathered into seven categories, they'll help you with clear tactical advice on how to be a better leader.

Hope you enjoy!</comment>


Then people wonder why Apple is suing companies for copying them - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/photos/lg-p220-ultraportable-hands-on/#4181199

<comment><USER2> Not that there's anything wrong with copying, in this context.

<comment><USER3> I am much more sympathetic when companies sue due to this sort of infringement.

There are a million different ways to colour and style a rectangular cuboid. Some people like to say "it's just another laptop(phone whatever)", but you never see anyone copy Sony's or Lenovo's or BlackBerry's styles do you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The only similarity I see is black keys on a silver chassis; the shape of the chassis itself looks nothing like a macbook.

</comment><comment><USER5> Jeez, even after copying Apple's case they __had __to put the ugly stickers on it.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's a laptop.

</comment><comment><USER7> It looks so similar, I was expecting it to be a cheap Chinese knockoff, instead of a product from a "reputable" company like LG.

<comment><USER8> Hey, you found instead a cheap chinese knockoff made by LG!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Did I pass through a portal into another reality where Apple has a "patent" for black keyboards onto a silver notebook? Let's take a break and remember that Uncle Steve used to quote Picasso: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU></comment>


Why Entrepreneurs & VCs Should Focus on Basecamp, Not the Summit - <AUTHOR> http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2011/02/07/entrepreneurs-investors-focus-on-basecamp-not-the-summit/

<comment><USER2> Im a little confused. Does basecamp mean a business that is valuable but doesnt generate any revenue? Eg: Twitter.

Or does it mean a company which does well in a niche of a particular industry but is not the dominating player yet. Eg: 37Signals for CRM?

<comment><USER3> Basecamp in my mind (I wrote the article) is establishing a product that gains adoption and reaches a set of realistic milestones that can be achieved within 2 years rather than focusing on the summit (how big this can ultimately become). I'm going to update the article to make this clear. Thank you for prompting.

<comment><USER2> Great set of articles by the way. I appreciate you telling us how it really is in the VC world. Those small nuggets of information, thats really important but pretty hard to come by, coming from an authoritative source like yourself really helps framing our approach to starting a startup. Eg: whats the norm for a liquidation preference, the reality of dealing with a board, etc.

Also, I came to your talk at Columbia Univ in NYC. It was very informative (and pretty funny too).

Thanks.

<comment><USER3> thanks. if you have specific questions about how VC works make sure to ping me. I'll cover on This Week in VC.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Larry Page Wants to Return Google to Its Startup Roots - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/03/mf_larrypage/

<comment><USER2> The article reminded me of a quote I have framed on my desk.

"the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do." Steve Jobs.

I think Larry is only getting started and it'll be amazing to see what his second act will be.</comment>


Android 10 is rolling out to Pixels starting today - <AUTHOR> https://www.androidpolice.com/2019/09/03/android-10-is-rolling-out-to-pixels-starting-today/ <comment><USER2> Android 10 discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20868164](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20868164)</comment>


What Really Happened with Vista: An Insider's Retrospective - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@benbob/what-really-happened-with-vista-an-insiders-retrospective-f713ee77c239 <comment><USER2> I used Vista for many years and was fine with it. The real problem was bad publicity. Tastemakers decided that it sucked and so went public opinion.

The real disaster was windows 8's user interface change. That really deserved to be panned. Microsoft was so cocky as to think that forcing a new interphase on users was a good thing. It was stupid.

I'd like an insider's view on that.

<comment><USER3> Did you use Vista pre SP1? That was a terrible OS to use. Also Microsoft approved Vista for pre-install on devices with specs that could barely use it. Finally the approve/cancel security elevation implementation (which was finally fixed) was a cluster.

Many reasons why it was received poorly and deserved its reputation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Excellent article. Quotable on top of quotable for us DevOps folks.</comment>


Cigarette butts are the single greatest source of ocean trash - <AUTHOR> https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/plastic-straw-ban-cigarette-butts-are-single-greatest-source-ocean-n903661?icid=related <comment><USER2> The Ocean Conservancy report has been cited by quite a few articles now, and it pains me every time I see it. As ever, the conclusions drawn are quite misleading.

1) The source of the data is cleanup on beaches, not ocean trash. If anything it's more likely to be representative of items discarded on beaches or waterways.

2) Cigarette butts are greatest purely in number of individual pieces, not in terms of weight or volume.

The following paper reports fishing nets to be the largest contributor to ocean plastic (by volume). Cigarette butts aren't even worthy of a mention in their report (see Supplementary Table 4 which lists the top 5 items per item size group).

[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22939-w](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22939-w)

<comment><USER3> Then it was also 10 Asian rivers that account for most plastic: [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stemming-the- plas...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stemming-the-plastic- tide-10-rivers-contribute-most-of-the-plastic-in-the-oceans/)

I guess I understand it is a hard problem to calculate, but it is an area where I wish the approach was more reasoned and less governed by fad and hype. Sure clean and prevent straws and cigarette butts if that's really a problem, but divvy our resources in proportion to where data says the issues are...

<comment><USER4> I'm probably what you'd call an environmentalist, but the movement is wrought with people who are more concerned with getting high off of self-flagellating moral outrage than fixing problems. Legislative solutions to large polluters and trash generators don't feel like penance in the same way that individual sacrifices do, so a huge chunk of people who are nominally concerned with environmental issues misallocate their complaints, wrt the actual severity of polluters.

I'm not sure this is solvable, humans being what they are, and I don't think it's unique to environmental issues.

<comment><USER5> We probably need (but don't want) algorithmic control of our actions.

<comment><USER6> What else is a constitution?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Only tangentially related, but I am continually astonished by the absence of any sort of social norms surrounding cigarette butt disposal. I have (otherwise environmentally conscious!) friends who smoke, and I've personally witnessed them flick their cigarettes into gutters and on streets.

As a serious question, without judgment: are there any smokers on HN who can explain the phenomenon?

<comment><USER8> > are there any smokers on HN who can explain the phenomenon?

Smokers aren't exactly known for their good judgement, manners and consideration for others in the first place, are they?

<comment><USER9> Smoking is addiction that is demonstrably bad for your health and has no benefits.

I grew up in an environment where smoking was encouraged and I can understand a person that conforms to their buddies. I have personally never tasted it but when I was teen virtually everybody smoked and it took a lot of willpower to withstand the pressure.

I think these days, in western world, except for schools, low income neighborhoods and low income jobs to be smoking means you have not enough willpower to end it. I would say most middle class people and office workers do not encourage smoking or will actively discourage it and smoking is mostly treated as a disease.

<comment><USER10> there are tons of benefits which is why people do it

<comment><USER11> Such as?

<comment><USER12> A social network with other smokers in proximity. Regular breaks from work that they don't forget to make. Regular time outside of a sealed office space..

There are definite short term advantages to smokers. There (_)used to be similar short term advantages for those who drank during work hours when it was socially acceptable.

(_ Used to might be wrong.. Startups with designated drinking times that seem to be mandatory are annoying but not irrational given their short term interests.)

<comment><USER11> Thanks for the thoughtful comment. I'm lucky that at my current job none of us smoke and still regularly take quick walks outside of the office. I guess it helps that every room has a door that goes directly outside.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Quote from article:

A leading tobacco industry academic, a California lawmaker and a worldwide surfing organization are among those arguing cigarette filters should be banned. The nascent campaign hopes to be bolstered by linking activists focused on human health with those focused on the environment.

"It's pretty clear there is no health benefit from filters. They are just a marketing tool. And they make it easier for people to smoke"

I used to smoke rolled cigarettes with mild tobacco without filters (thankfully quit) but I thought they were just as mild as filtered cigarettes. Smokers anyway self-modulate how much they inhale.

<comment><USER14> I smoked both when I was younger and dumber. Unfiltered cigarettes turn your fingers, lips and teeth brown.

<comment><USER15> Filtered cigarettes do too, just slower. Look at people who've been smoking for a decade or two: their nails are yellow, their teeth are yellow, the hand holding the cigarette also has visible damage.

<comment><USER16> I think this is more specific to the tobacco and not the premise of whether it or isn't filtered. People who chew tobacco have similar yellowing of their fingers they use to pinch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I have heard that throwing a cigarette butt in a water makes 1 cubic meter of water toxic. Can't provide a source though - someone told me that when sailing together.

Toxicity of cigarette butts, and their chemical components, to marine and freshwater fish[1]

[1] - [https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/20/Suppl_1/i25](https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/20/Suppl_1/i25)

</comment><comment><USER18> Why do people even smoke cigarettes when there are vapes for those who just want to inhale and exhale a cloud getting nicotine and cigars for those who want to enjoy real tobacco? Cigarettes are disgusting, toxic, expensive (as compared to a supply of liquid) and inconvenient (as you can't just inhale at any time you want). Why non-biodegradable cig filters are still not outlawed is another mystery.

<comment><USER19> Cigarettes taste like burning paper, and at their best smell just OK, but most smokers aren't walking around with cigarillos, despite the better ones tasting and smelling very nice.

It's about nicotine delivery, and even the new hit with the kids, Juul, seems not as nice as a cigarette to me as a very infrequent nicotine user. Maybe box mods are different, I've only every tried the types of vapes you can get at tobacco shops and gas stations and such.

As a side note, I'm surprised snuff isn't more popular. It gives a noticeable but not overwhelming stimulation, discretely, doesn't have the cultural connotations or need to spit of chew, and seemed a little milder too. I guess putting stuff up your nose has it's own connotations. I also don't even know where you can buy it. Certainly not a gas station.

<comment><USER20> Snuff taken the way I know it, under the upper lip, gives a slower hit but a _much stronger_ hit than cigarettes.

What I wonder is about the new "vape-like" pens which heats (real) tobacco but doesn't burn it. If that is similar enough to cigarettes to win cigarette smokers over. I would think so, but I'm not a real smoker (only tried a few times) so can't offer my own anecdata.

<comment><USER18> > What I wonder is about the new "vape-like" pens which heats (real) tobacco > but doesn't burn it.

I see many people around using it nowadays but I'm sure I wouldn't prefer this over a good vape and I've also heard it's dangerous as it may also be heating the filter together with the tobacco so you actually inhale extra toxines.

BTW about vapes - although I believe these are generally healthier than any kind of cigarettes (and so do many doctors unofficially) I've heard many liquids (usually flavoured like vanilla, maple, coconut or caramel) contain diacetyl, pentanedione and/or acetoin so you can "popcorn lung" syndrome (which is much more dangerous than what ordinary cigs do) quickly [1]

[1] [http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press- releases/e-cigarette-...](http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press- releases/e-cigarette-flavoring-chemicals-linked-to-respiratory-disease/)

<comment><USER20> The one I saw (ploom?) was intended for loose tobacco.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> But last week it was fishing gear.

Although, it's bullshit that so many smokers think it's perfectly OK to throw their butts just about anywhere.

<comment><USER21> In the UK it can be met with a £80 fine but I've never heard of anyone (other than the sensationalist news articles in the likes of The Sun) ever getting hit with it. I guess it's not worth the red tape for police to hand out fines.

<comment><USER22> > I guess it's not worth the red tape for police to hand out fines.

It's not normally police who issue the penalty notice, but local council staff. This means there's a lot of variation across the country. Some councils outsource this to companies who are a bit too vigorous in giving penalty notices. The aim is to prevent litter, not to raise revenue, so they're supposed to give you a chance to pick up your litter to avoid the fine but some don't do that.

[https://www.gov.uk/guidance/fixed-penalty-notices-issuing- an...](https://www.gov.uk/guidance/fixed-penalty-notices-issuing-and- enforcement-by-councils)

The advice about when to, and when not to, issue FPNs covers the point about giving people the opportunity to pick up litter: [https://www.gov.uk/guidance/enforcement-officers-issuing- fix...](https://www.gov.uk/guidance/enforcement-officers-issuing-fixed- penalty-notices)

<comment><USER23> _> so they're supposed to give you a chance to pick up your litter to avoid the fine but some don't do that._

That seems like an ineffective mechanism. Just litter and pick it up in the very rare cases where you get called out.

If I were council dictator for a day, I would make the fines stiff and immediate but require that 100%^1 of the revenues are refunded to all residents at the end of each year.

That way there's still a stiff disincentive to littering, but no significant incentive for abusive/dishonest enforcement.

[^1]: (perhaps sans some low and more importantly _fixed_ amount to cover enforcement costs)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I wonder what a world where molecular level tagging of products combined with penalties for illegal disposal would look like?

I've also been seeing JUUL butts / fake USB drives piling up all over NYC.

They really ought to have a desposit or recycling program for those.

</comment><comment><USER25> Honk + Thumbs Down at any driver you see tossing one out the window. Public shaming (not anger like a middle finger) can be very effective.

That said, this is probably 90% China as we saw with the ocean plastics source data. Not sure if this approach would work there.

</comment><comment><USER26> Maybe there's an opportunity for cigarette manufacturers to capitalize on compostable filters? Can it be done?

<comment><USER27> Roll your own from pure tobacco without a filter, saves your health, wallet and the environment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> There is a company, TerraCycle, that has a cigarette recycling program:

[https://www.terracycle.com/en-US/collection- programs?utf8=%E...](https://www.terracycle.com/en-US/collection- programs?utf8=%E2%9C%93&query=cigarette&location=)

Fun fact, this same company had a tv show: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/tv- season/human-resources-season...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/tv-season/human- resources-season-1/id891111356)

More info: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TerraCycle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TerraCycle)

</comment><comment><USER29> This reads as a good news somehow, because it sounds like a solvable problem.

<comment><USER30> I quit years ago, so not sure but, don't vaporizers are much more convenient and less harming (avoiding tar)? Guess price is worse or I don't understand why they haven't wiped out cigarrettes.

<comment><USER31> Less harmful yes, more convenient no. You can grab a pack of cigarettes at any gas station but vaping requires a little more planning in most cases. You have to find and go to a specialty shop (vape shop) or order online. This probably doesn't sound like a huge deal but if you've been smoking for a decade + and are used to a refill being as simple as dropping into any corner store you don't develop the habit of planning ahead.

Also while there was a brief moment in time where switching to vaping gave you the ability to go back inside, that was pretty much wiped out within 2 or so years of the devices gaining popularity as people treat vapers just as shitty as they treat smokers, perhaps even more so.

As to price, it can go either way depending on how you do it. If you are picking up eJuice by the bottle you can actually save quite a bit of money compared to traditional cigarettes. If you are using a pod system like JUUL you either break even or lose money in comparison. I kind of switch back and forth because while the juice option is cheaper its also messier and more inconvenient, where something like a JUUL is a lot closer to the experience of a regular cigarette. Tiny stick in your pocket with disposable pods vs giant eVapeDick that needs you to stop and disassemble it to fill it or change out the atomizer and blows giant unnecessary clouds.

Source: 25 year smoker, switched to vaping in 2010.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> How is it 2019 and tobacco is not illegal?

<comment><USER33> Literally grandfathered in :/

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I have something of a rule re friends - if I see them doing something I would simply never, ever do (for ethical reasons) then whether it's a small thing or a big one; I end the friendship. I know a much bigger ethical lapse will be coming. When I've bent this rule, as I did for one fellow I liked a lot who tossed his butts wherever, I found out a couple of years later that I'd have been much better off dropping him out of my life the first time he tossed a butt.

</comment><comment><USER35> By mass or quantity?

<comment><USER9> By who pays the person, it seems like a promotional article. The article is a joke. Just because it floats on beaches doesn't mean the entire ocean is polluted the same way. Also we already know what is floating in the oceans, there are numerous studies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Yea. Ocean pollution is a problem. But using amount / volume collected is (for me) a misleading metric.

Plaatics (floating everywhere)? Micro-plastics? Chemicals (that can't be collected)? All come to mind.

At the risk of sounding like a cynic / conspiracy theorist, this particular take on the issue feels as if it came out of the covert comms dept of Big Oil.

</comment><comment><USER37> Would it be possible to embed an rf (or otherwise) ID into every single piece of non organic matter?

Some kind of code that gets assigned to you when you buy the items. And if those items are found in nature, then you are fined.

Possible?

</comment><comment><USER37> Another way to deal with this problem is to simply get rid of filters. Let people that smoke die from cancer earlier & maybe fewer people will smoke. Maybe offer a re-usable filter?

<comment><USER38> Now I'm imagining those long cigarette holders from the classic movies making a comeback. Funny image.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Won't be surprised if plastic quickly surpasses cigarette butts. Literally everything is plastic, meanwhile the shift is away towards electronics like JUUL.

<comment><USER40> I naively thought vapes would at least leave cleaner streets than cigarettes. Lately I've been seeing plastic juul cartridges littering the sidewalks in nyc. There's no winning.

<comment><USER41> There's no fixing shitty people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Why don't countries regulate the butts to ensure they are more readily biodegradable?

</comment><comment><USER43> Is the plan now to add a layer of juul pods?

</comment><comment><USER44> I wonder, will the same people who demanded that plastic straws go away now attack smokers with similar zeal?

<comment><USER45> Probably not, because the large majority of homeless people are smokers, and they've got enough troubles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> 1)

The most effective portable ashtray I saw, was when it was handed out on a festival: they were the classic analog camera film canisters, they close really airtight.

To adress the dumping of cigeratte _filters_ not buds, why not simply put ever larger return deposits (like many nations have on certain glass bottles etc) on the filters? If your pack of cigarettes cost say $20, but $30 dollars extra for the filters, then smokers _will_ keep their filters and turn them in when they buy their new pack. OK, a lot of people behave irrationally when drinking while smoking, but some of the present smokers will still be cheap enough to collect all the filters that people leave in the local ashtray instead of in their portable ones... The difference is between $50 or $20 for the next pack of cigarettes. Use the same per filter price for loose filters for the people who roll cigarettes.

2)

I am addicted to smoking, and smoke cigarettes without filter. As far as I understand both paper and tobacco biodegrade. On the street I throw the butts (not filters!) in the gutters, preferentially through the grid straight into the sewer.

I have had many discussions with other smokers, and there is a guaranteed subject that returns: whenever the taxes and hence prices of tobacco products rise a fraction of the previous cost. Just like the smokers are addicted to the cigarettes, the tobacco companies _and the government_ are "addicted to the smokers" or rather: exploit the smokers.

Over ten years that I smoke the price has more than tripled perhaps quadrupled (Belgium, Europe). The justification behind increasing the prices is always to encourage people to stop smoking. The discussion I have with these other smokers whenever the price has risen always ends with the same conclusion: they don't want us to stop smoking, they just want to extract more money by using small increments, and letting us get accustomed to the new price. We always reach the conclusion it would be better to not let the price rise for a couple of years and then _double_ the price of tobacco products. A lot of people would stop simply because they don't economically agree to the new price, and many who want to stop but have a hard time because their friends are still smoking would have an easier time because it would _synchronize_ our efforts to stop smoking. Obviously that will lead to a substantial loss of income to both tobacco industry and government, who are sponsoring various cancer treatments (both tobacco related and unrelated cancers) with the income from tobacco products. The "beautiful" aspect is that in contrast to non- addictive products the lobbyists for tobacco companies don't even need to bribe government, since government has been co-opted through taxation.

If we really wish to clear up the cigarette filters, stop smoking, and lower future health care costs we should look at the "half-life" of cigarettes/euro, and keep the price constant but double it every such half-life. That would really give all smokers a memento mori to reconsider our habits, ... but similarily it would also force tobacco industry _and government_ to kick off the lucrative income from smokers!

As a smoker (but otherwise a very stubborn person) I can tell you we don't have the spine to quit, certainly not on the basis of a 5% increasee in price! Whack us with a price doubling! Then nearly all my friends who smoke, and unknown people I may meet at performances, events, bars would stop in synchrony.

3)

Wasn't the mass introduction of filters at least partially a marketing ploy minimize the health concerns as they started to rise in public perception? How effective are filters really? Are those smokers who were intimidated into buying more expensive and "healthier" cigarettes by both industry and family (indirectly still industry) really the cause of the current widespread pollution of these filters? Or were it the marketers, similar to all the pollution of plastic water bottles? A marketing ploy in the quest for money, with the side effect of polluting nature?</comment>


Saavn Song Map - www.saavn.com/#/songmap - <AUTHOR>

Check out what we built at Saavn as a fun side project. It shows the locations of the users that are playing songs on Saavn site and apps in near real time. FYI, Saavn is an awesome platform for streaming South Asian music. <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable <http://www.saavn.com/#/songmap></comment>


Is it possible to get into YC as a sole founder? - <AUTHOR>

How can I increase my chance as a sole founder? And most importantly why is this bias against sole founders? <comment><USER2> _> Is it possible to get into YC as a sole founder?_

Yes, in the sense that they've accepted single founders before.

 _> How can I increase my chance as a sole founder?_

Find a co-founder ;)

 _> Why is there this bias against sole founders?_

Because they have the data to back up the assertion that multiple founders makes a startup more likely to succeed.

<comment><AUTHOR> I know:)

I prefer to be sole founder as I had bad experiences from previous gigs.

Is there any other attribute (like strong IP and customer demand) that can compensate for not having a co-founder? What else?

<comment><USER3> What do you mean by "compensate"? Having a co-founder will always boost your chances vs. being a single founder, no matter what.

But obviously single founders do get into YC because they're strong in other areas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> We are in the same boat. I am 30+ techie & marketing person. Most of my school friends are happily married and are busy with their jobs in large corporations. I am kindof a misfit when it comes to living a "normal" life of 9-5 job. I have tried 4 times to start new company...and failed all 4 times. Left the job last year and started another company. It was moderately successful (Ramen profitable). But I know its limits..it will not be more than Ramen successful. Now I am trying to start another company. But I know that I can not pull this project off by myself. I need a team. And its so darn hard to build a team. Went to meetups, startup weekends, hackathons etc etc. No luck. I even tried elance and odesk. They are not very useful for startups anyway. How do people find partners to build a company?</comment>


fascinating hand-held origami hang glider (watch the first video) - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencetoymaker.org/hangGlider/index.htm

<comment><USER2> The other end of the same game... An (unpowered) "toy" glider with just a hill and the wind to provide the energy, does 445mph! Thats over half the speed of sound, with no motor...

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pt1MBKXfV7s>

Details in a thread in here: <http://www.rcgroups.com/dynamic-soaring-126/>

<comment><USER3> I wonder how many g:s it's pulling when it is in the fastest part of that loop in the video..

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is how teaching should be done. From this exercise alone you can teach students math, science, art and physical exercise. Not just as an intellectual discipline but in a way that they can relate to and experiment with.

For anyone interesting in a different approach to teaching I can recommend Seymore Paperts book "Mindstorms" where he talks about using computers to teach math to kids. It's written in the eighties and quite fascinating.

</comment><comment><USER5> Minor nit: "Origami" usually refers to paper models made through folding, without cutting or gluing. Since these models involve cutting and taping (and almost no folding), they might be better described as "kirigami", "papercraft", or simply "paper".

</comment><comment><USER6> What an amazing teacher. Its difficult enough keeping students engaged and interested, but to do it while simultaneously following scientific principles (hypothesis, repetitive experimentation, proof) is a feat. This is the way to teach science.

</comment><comment><USER7> I was just watching my son in the bath, learning how to squeeze the rubber ducky to make bubbles and fountains. I can't wait till he's old enough to do things like this with.

</comment><comment><USER8> Is it wrong that before I even build one of these I'm more interested in making a robot that follows the glider around?

</comment><comment><USER3> Have anyone tried this with fishing line connected to the glider and the laptop and had it flying "forever" besides the laptop (diverting the fan outflow with a piece of paper)? Is it even possible?

</comment><comment><USER9> amazing</comment>


Facebook Messages: The Worst Thing That Ever Happened - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcworld.com/article/210758/facebook_messages_the_worst_thing_that_ever_happened.html

<comment><USER2> Facebook also censors your private messages if you link to a torrent, even a linux iso.

[http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/11/facebook-link- blockin...](http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/11/facebook-link-blocking/)

<comment><USER3> Amazing that they get away with this...

<comment> brown9-2 What do you mean? Who is to stop Facebook from deciding what messages you can and can't send on their system?

<comment><USER4> The sentiment is that users shouldn't stand for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I realized not long ago that the reactions to the facebook announcement that I am reading are so appealing to me because the world that Mr Zuckerberg and company want to build is a world I don't want to live in. And yet, it is the world that the next generation of kids seems to want to live in. I can't decide whether I should be horrified or just recognize their right to build that world.

<comment><USER6> I don't think the _next generation of kids_ is aware of the implications, and issues, of Zuckerberg's plan. To them (or might I even say _us_ ), Facebook is a _communications platform._ It helps us talk to our friends, share interesting content, and enrich our lives. However, most importantly: the issues of no privacy haven't yet manifested themselves. When our job applications get turned down after they look at how outrageous our _publicly viewable_ photos are on our profiles, then we'll start to understand.

<comment><USER7> Don't want pictures of yourself doing crazy shit? Don't do crazy shit. Want to live a life not worried about what some idiot employer is going to think about your lifestyle? Then do just that. Stop blaming Facebook for your lifestyle choices and your inability to live with them.

<comment><USER8> There's a world of difference between some friends seeing a kegstand picture, or your boss seeing it. In real life, segmenting your groups of connections is a natural and fairly easy thing to do. When your college buddies and your coworkers are both "facebook friends" the line is blurred in a way that does not represent real life. It's not obvious to everyone how much information they expose via their Facebook account.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As much as I'm afraid of Facebook turning the internet into a walled garden, this post is pure FUD.

The OP complains that "You Can't Delete Messages." Hm, that sounds a lot like email. Everyone knows when you hit "send" on your email client you better mean what you wrote.

They then complain about how "Non-Facebook Friends Can E-mail You" and their main point seems to be that it's being used as a way to "bully more people into joining." That's an emotionally charged interpretation of a company trying to increase conversion rates. I have a feeling if Facebook were a YC startup they wouldn't be referred to as "bullies" for requiring user accounts.

In the "There Are No Subject Lines" section, the OP's main complaint seems to be that without subject lines, email search will become unusable. I don't understand why this would make much of a difference, but I don't think Facebook ever intended to compete with Gmail or Yahoo head on as a robust, productive email client. It's aimed at high school kids who couldn't be bothered with all the bells and whistles of Gmail and are used to viewing their lives in one constant stream, whether it be Facebook's news stream, Twitter, or text messaging. Another lame complaint.

The last section is about automatic friendships, which I have misgivings about myself, but I'm one of the rare individuals who thinks Facebook needs to be _more_ open in the way that Twitter is, not more private and restrictive.

As a web developer and startup guy, I am just as worried about Facebook taking over the internet and ushering in a new age of walled-gardenism. On the same HN front page I saw this article on, there was another sensationalist headline, "Berners-Lee: Facebook 'threatens' web future", and both that and the headline of this article immediately appeal to my developers instincts.

However, I know FUD when I see it, and I'd rather admit and accept Facebook's continued dominance than delude myself by buying into poorly written articles that pander to us geeks.

<comment><USER9> Agreed. This article is trash. Move on, nothing to see here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm pretty sure that Hitler and the Black Plague are higher on the lists of "terrible events" than anything Facebook has ever done or has interest in doing.

I mean, really? There are people dying all over the world from civil war and hunger as we speak, and yet the fact that you can't take back Facebook messages pains everyone greatly that nothing can top it? We live in a giant echo chamber. Some perspective, please.

</comment><comment><USER11> Every time I read a facebook story here or elsewhere, I get the overwhelming desire to delete my account. The only problem is that there may be people I want to interact with that I don't have other contact information for. The sad thing is that I don't remember.

I might just do it anyway…they can't be that important, right?

<comment><USER12> That was exactly my thought process when I ended up deleting my account. There were people who I wouldn't be able to contact, but then again, I never talked to them anyway even when Facebook made it convenient.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The article does a piss-poor job of separating paraphrases and editorial content.

</comment><comment><USER14> I would have thought the worst thing that ever happened would have involved death in some way.

</comment><comment><USER15> 'if Facebook ever wants someone's e-mail address (under the pretense of "sharing photos" or "sending a message"), it's so the site can bully more people into joining. Don't fall for it.'

I am not on facebook now but I was registered there with my email. Sometime back I got a facebook invitation from a new friend and the invitation mail had links to facebook profiles of three others friends. The only way to trace these relationships was my email. I wondered how did they do that. Checking my email against contact lists of all the facebook users?

<comment><USER16> Those friends of yours imported their email address books into Facebook. Your email was in there, but you were not a user, and your friends did not invite you, until that last one did. When he decided to invite you, it was able to tell you about your three other friends.</comment></comment>


Math.Round opens the browser print dialog - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dotnet/try/issues/290 <comment><USER2>
        var ASM_CONSTS = [(function(){
            var err = new Error;
            print('Stacktrace: \n');
            print(err.stack)
        } // ...

The issue is that print call. They expect it to call their own print function. But that's not in scope so it falls back on window.print (I.e. the function defined in the global object).

<comment><USER3> Code coverage auditing, Test error handling.

<comment><USER4> Use of a language with sane scoping rules…

<comment><USER5> I'd categorize this not as scoping but the polluted global namespace in the browser environment and JavaScript's behavior of ignoring extra arguments.

<comment><USER4> It's not a global `print` function that's called but `window.print`, right? `print` is sugar for `this.print` and `this` is the window object if it's not explicitly bound to something else. So I'd definitely say it's a very JS- specific scoping issue.

<comment><USER5> > It's not a global `print` function that's called but `window.print`, right? > `print` is sugar for `this.print` and `this` is the window object if it's > not explicitly bound to something else.

This is a common point of confusion because in a browser the global object is traditionally the same as window (or "self" or "frames") so there wasn't a difference for many years until ES5 introduced strict mode, which left the default as undefined instead of silently using the global object, and things further fractured with Node (where it's "global") and Web Workers (where only "self" works). (In browsers this is also complicated by the Window/WindowProxy distinction — see [https://blog.whatwg.org/windowproxy-window-and- location](https://blog.whatwg.org/windowproxy-window-and-location) and especially [https://mathiasbynens.be/notes/globalthis#terminology](https://mathiasbynens.be/notes/globalthis#terminology))

A couple years back, "globalThis" was added to make it easier to write portable code across different environments without having to check various names: [https://github.com/tc39/proposal- global](https://github.com/tc39/proposal-global)

I don't think is not a particularly JavaScript-specific issue because any language which inherits scope can have the problem of a symbol not matching what you expected, which is why the ones which don't have compile-time checking tend to use linters which will report use of things which haven't been explicitly declared (not mention shadowing built-in names). If you want to blame JavaScript, the feature which would have made this more obvious would have been not ignoring extra arguments – print("foo") triggering an error at that point in the source would make it more obvious.

<comment><USER4> Wow, that's pretty horrible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > "But exactly which _concrete_ bugs would a programming language and > environment with a strong type system prevent?" asked the young student > Master Typikos.

" _These_ kind of errors." Master Typikos said - and she told the student the story about the time when a bug in a runtime caused Math.Round to do IO although it's type was `Integer -> Float32 -> Float32`.

The student did not believe this story. Later he was enlightened.

EDIT: refined type

<comment><USER7> How would strong typing really prevent this? This is a side effect caused by a scoping issue, calling window.print instead of the local print function.

<comment><USER8> He means Haskell-grade types (float->float is not a function touching the IO monad). It wouldn't help in any mainstream language with actual types (like C++).

<comment><USER7> Right, that makes sense, I always thought that had more to do with the pure functional nature of Haskell than the type system, but I've never written any Haskell.

<comment><USER6> From a certain point of view that is the same thing. A _pure_ function can only enforced using a powerful type system. Otherwise one could argue, your types are "lying".

EDIT: 's/strong/powerful'

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So it's caused by a reference to `print` not being what they expected.

The create-react-app project maintains a great list of "confusing browser globals" for exactly this situation! [https://github.com/facebook/create- react-app/tree/master/pac...](https://github.com/facebook/create-react- app/tree/master/packages/confusing-browser-globals)

You can use it along with ESLint to detect situations where a variable reference is technically valid (it will refer to the window property) but is probably not what you're intending.

Some of them are really easy to trip over, like `error`, `name`, and `open`. All global properties on the window!

<comment><USER10> Name got me the other day. I was writing typescript and not even targeting the browser but I guess I had browser globals in the .d.ts

I had a string like "Hello ${name}" and it would compile but crash at runtime.

Wasted a whole day, learned a lot about why even with great tools the JS ecosystem still has some fundamental crap at the bottom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> So basically a library tries to print something in the console and instead of using `console.log(...)` they use `print (...)` as if it is Python. That instead invokes `window.print` used to actually send something to the printer.

<comment><USER12> This happens because of scope chaining in JavaScript. If you call a function it will look for it in the current context. If it's not there it will try to find it in the parent. If it's not there it will keep checking the parent objects until it finds it, or throw an exception. Since window is the top level context and includes a print function, it gets called and shows the printer dialog.

<comment><USER13> Not the parent objects – the containing scopes. (Which is how scope works in most languages.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wish the world could decide on a standard console method. I, far too often, catch myself typing console. in Java. It's even worse if I've done some C# recently.

</comment><comment><USER15> I agree with [https://github.com/dotnet/try/issues/290#issuecomment-503768...](https://github.com/dotnet/try/issues/290#issuecomment-503768091) \- this seems pretty likely to be "you are using `print(...)` but don't have a custom one in scope, so it's calling the window's func"

It happens in Firefox too, fwiw. Probably just a mono.js flaw.

</comment><comment><USER16> In the process of trying to reproduce this bug in some rather silly environments, I've instead discovered that try.dot.net is completely broken on multiple browsers:

\- On Firefox for Android, it's impossible to type in a program, since when typing something as simple as "using System;" it'll garble the text like crazy

\- On Android browsers in general, the Monaco editor on that page is too "smart" for its own good and presents a worthless context menu when I press and hold (i.e. to select all text or paste it in). Microsoft: could y'all _not_?

\- On both the (presumably-Chromium-based) default browser on my Android phone and Firefox 52.9.0 ESR on a reasonably "recent" OpenIndiana, the Blazor runtime fails to run anything at all when I click "Run", complaining in the JS console (at least on OpenIndiana; didn't check on my phone, but the symptoms are the same) that "No .NET call dispatcher has been set".

\- On a reasonably-recent nightly version of Haiku, loading try.dot.net at all causes WebPositive to outright crash within seconds.

<comment><USER17> But why exactly are so many people determined to try to reproduce this particular bug in every permutation of device/os/browser known to man?

<comment><USER5> They're joining a "LOL JavaScript" but refusing to use the easy tools available to understand what's actually happening, so there's lots of shooting in the dark – not unlike the thread here about strong type systems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why does `print(...)` in Firefox acts like `console.log`?

<comment><USER19> It only acts like console.log in the browser console, not in a script. Interesting.

<comment><USER20> The Chrome console defines a few console-only convenience functions too: [https://github.com/GoogleChrome/devtools- docs/blob/master/do...](https://github.com/GoogleChrome/devtools- docs/blob/master/docs/commandline-api.md)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Curious if there are any browsers and circumstances where instead of the dialog window.print() would immediately print something.

</comment><comment><USER22> And here I thought the story was about the endless stream of "me too" comments in the bug report. Hard to find much signal in there.

</comment><comment><USER23>
      C:\>copy WEB LPT1

</comment><comment><USER24> What is the expected behavior from calling print()?

<comment><USER25> The JavaScript function "window.print()" is expected to open a print dialog for the current document. Since "window" is also the global object for the main/UI thread in a browser, "print()" resolves to "window.print()", if no function has been defined otherwise. This is, BTW, also a potential issue in Emscripten, which uses a similar logging mechanism by a custom "print()" function. (I guess, this is also, where it came from in the WASM implementation. A few years ago, I actually replaced all references to "print" by a more safe name for a customized Emscripten runtime, in order to prevent similar from happening in any edge cases. I suggest to treat "print" and similar global function names just as if they were reserved words in your projects to avoid "expectable unexpecteds" like this. For similar reasons, using a variable "self" to store a reference to the current this-object isn't a great idea, since "self" is already the canonical reference to the global object…)

Edit: To be more specific, "window" is only the global object for the scripting context in a browser window (anything inside "script" tags). Meaning, you would have to use the full form, "window.print()", when calling the print function from outside this context, like inside an event handler attribute of an HTML tag. (E.g., '<button onclick="window.print()">Print page<button>'. Here, a simple "print()" wouldn't work.)</comment></comment>


Electric cars grab almost half of sales in Norway - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-autos-electric-norway/electric-cars-grab-almost-half-of-sales-in-oil-producing-norway-idUSKCN1TW2WO <comment><USER2> As a Norwegian who just replaced a diesel car with an electric car, there are a few factors which is making EVs very attractive here:

\- EVs are VAT (25%) exempt, and in addition avoid the extra duty due to no CO2 or NOX emissions. As an example a VW Golf 1.0 115HP TSI[1] gasoline version is about 37.5k USD from dealer. Without VAT or emission duties[2], that Golf would be about 23k USD, where 8.4k USD is the emission duties.

\- Many people have a relatively short commute, so limited range EVs like Nissan Leaf or e-Golf do just fine.

\- A lot of our roads, especially in cities, have road toll. EVs have for many years been exempt. Recently this changed, but EVs still only pays 50% of regular cars.

[1]: [https://www.volkswagen.no/content/dam/vw- ngw/vw_pkw/importer...](https://www.volkswagen.no/content/dam/vw- ngw/vw_pkw/importers/no/bilmodeller/brosjyrer-og-priser/golf/Volkswagen-Golf- tekniske-data.pdf) [2]: [https://www.skatteetaten.no/person/avgifter/bil/importere/re...](https://www.skatteetaten.no/person/avgifter/bil/importere/regn- ut/)

<comment><USER3> > \- Many people have a relatively short commute, so limited range EVs like > Nissan Leaf or e-Golf do just fine.

Doesn't this negate a lot of the benefits of de-ICEing vehicles?

Why doesn't the government use gas tax increases as a tool instead of up-front discounts?

Getting the 100km/day driver to change from ICE to electric would have 10x the impact as the 10km/day driver.

<comment><USER4> > Why doesn't the government use gas tax increases as a tool instead of up- > front discounts?

Given the huge corpus of _two_ datapoints (Norway and France), it seems that:

\- if you offer discounts on EVs, people who own gas-powered cars will progressively replace them with EVs ;

\- if you increases gas taxes, people who own gas-powered cars will spend their saturday afternoons demanding your head on a spike, and stop voting for you until you roll-back on the gas tax increases. (At which point, they will mostly keep not voting for you, but that's an unrelated debate.)

I suspect not every government has the benefit of _choosing_ between both options - Norway might be an outlier here.

(And most government will probably choose the "wise" third path of doing nothing.)

My underlying theory (that must have been tested by Cialdinni, Khaneman or Ophra) is that rebates feel _good_ , and taxes feel _bad_. But I don't have a double-blind placebo-controlled experiment to cite.

<comment><USER5> > \- if you increases gas taxes, people who own gas-powered cars will spend > their saturday afternoons demanding your head on a spike

This is exactly why gas taxes are bad.

> is that rebates feel good, and taxes feel bad

You can also like some California air quality districts are doing buy back low income peoples junkers and provide them down payment assistance for hybrid and electric cars. There is a lot less political blow back from those sorts of programs.

<comment><USER4> But, again, you have to be in a position where you can afford such policies. I'm perfectly ready to hear that Norway and California can afford it, and France can not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's really gas producing Norway: 3rd largest nat gas exporter. They're ~13th in oil exports.

...And 2nd in worldwide median income, which is half the real reason here. The other half is that Norway has very favorable tax treatment for electric cars vs not (which is at least mentioned in this article thankfully).

But being the 13th largest oil exporter seems like a very dim relation that's not really relevant, except as a cute thing. It's like saying "Wood houses popular in Granite-producing New Hampshire." "Ad blockers popular among ad producing community." etc

[note this was commentary on submission title chosen, which previously was the same as the article: "Electric cars grab almost half of sales in oil-producing Norway"]

<comment><USER7> There's a little more than cuteness here. If a country has a large economic interest in producing fossil fuels, there are often political forces driving consumption of fossil fuels, and undermining any and all attempt to even discuss the consequences of fossil fuels.

Looking at the US, the oil industry has long used its muscle to drive (heh) the use of automobiles and internal combustion engines, and to suppress initiatives to slow, halt, or reverse climate change.

And that's the interesting thing here: How is it that Norway's economy is so dependent upon its fossil fuels, but this doesn't appear to blind it to the consequences of fossil fuel use?

<comment><USER8> Apparently when Norway found oil, they were blessed with a government that was both honest and farsighted, noted the effect of the resource curse in other countries, called in a consultant from the Middle East who had seen it firsthand, and set up a system that carefully firewalled the oil money to mitigate its corrupting influence. I'm not clear on exactly how the firewall works, but people who understand it better than I do, have credited it with Norway still being a great place to live today.

<comment><USER9> You can't tell if it worked until the resource runs out.

It's always a great place to live while the resources are being extracted.

Tell me, how large is the oil industry relative to other industries?

Or to put it in other words, if all oil extraction stops tomorrow what would happen to the economy?

<comment><USER8> > It's always a great place to live while the resources are being extracted.

Intuitively you would expect that. The thing that's so difficult for us to wrap our heads around about the resource curse is that _intuition is completely wrong here_ ; a sufficiently valuable natural resource can ruin a country _even while it is being extracted_.

The short version of the reason why is that it breaks the alignment of interest between the rulers and the people. Manufacturing industry needs a healthy and capable workforce, but as this excellent video puts it, a gold mine can run with dying slaves and still produce great treasure:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In UK I find electric cars are significantly more expensive and out of reach of the average car buyer, even with government subsidies. is this the case elsewhere? why are they so expensive? EDIT: I have a hybrid, but the equivalent electric is double the price

<comment><USER11> There was a study recently that came to the conclusion that EVs are already cheaper to own in the UK:

[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/12/electric...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/12/electric- cars-already-cheaper-own-run-study)

Is your context significantly different from that of the study? Or do you think there are unreasonable assumptions in there?

<comment><USER12> Thanks for pointing this out, I hadn't seen that and think the data is really compelling as all comparisons were for the same model VW Golf with ev, hybrid, petrol and diesel versions. The one cost element not in the article (likely b/c of the time frame) was repair and maintenance costs - which I'd also suspect the EV cars to fare better with.

<comment><USER5> Was rolling that over. I suspect repair and maintenance cost savings probably don't kick in very much until after the warranted period expires. So higher sales price means higher initial operating costs. Compare a couple hundred a month car payments with $30-40/month savings on fuel.

So someone buying an EV today isn't going to save any real money for the first 5-6 years. Who ever buys the car on the used market will likely do well though.

<comment><USER13> > I suspect repair and maintenance cost savings probably don't kick in very > much until after the warranted period expires.

Warranty doesn't cover maintenance, like oil change, which EVs don't need. Other examples: engine air filter, timing belts, head gaskets, cylinder heads, spark plugs. Maybe you were thinking of car dealership maintenance packages that are purchased with a new car and cover (some of) that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Norway has a system of big one time fees for new vehicles based on weight, emissions and so on. An ICE car can easily have an added fee of more than 100% the base price of the car. Add some sales tax to that and an ICE car that isn't ultra luxurious in the US but is big and heavy will be _very expensive_. How about an F-150 for $120k? Similar for an X5 40i. The equation is basically that you can get two Model3 for the price of an F-150

</comment><comment> rv-de Meanwhile in Germany:

»BMW executive and board member Klaus Fröhlich told reporters this week that the shift to cars powered by electricity is "overhyped," and said that there is "no" consumer demand for them.«

[https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/28/19154233/bmw-electric- veh...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/28/19154233/bmw-electric-vehicles-ev- event-executive-overhyped)

* face-palm * _

<comment><USER15> I would give him the benefit of a doubt to have access to advanced, internal statistics. I believe him.

<comment><USER16> Amazing that this comment is downvoted, truly amazing.

<comment><USER17> Would you please read the site guidelines and follow them?

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Tesla sold 3,760 vehicles in Norway in June, for a 24.5% share of all cars during the month, and was also the top-selling brand for the first six months!!

<comment><USER19> 3,800 cars constitutes 1/4 of the entire country's monthly car sales?

Norway is a lot smaller than I realized (I'd guess the majority of US states have more car sales per month than that).

<comment><USER20> Norway population seems to be just 5 million over an area slightly bigger than Germany which has 82 million people, so it's very sparsely populated.

<comment><USER21> Sparsely populated on average. Most people live on the southern coast.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Cars are ridiculously expensive in Norway, and lower taxes on electeics mean that Teslas can compete with that

<comment><USER3> So the question is: how is the lost tax revenue being made up?

<comment><USER2> Partially by postponing or cancelling planned projects. For toll roads by pushing back the planned shutdown of the toll collection.

This has been become a bit of an issue for politicians, as the trend towards EV has been much stronger than anticipated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Meanwhile in Poland…

A new law is being prepared (just got through the senate and went to the president for final approval) that introduces subsides for EVs, and… wait for it…

Natural-gas powered vehicles.

Yup. LNG. And the subsidy for those is supposed to be TWICE as much as for electrics.

This sounds mind-bogglingly insane, but starts making a little sense once you realize that Poland has almost no natural gas production, and buys it, mostly from Russia.

There is no facepalm emoji big enough to finish this with.

For Polish readers, see [http://moto.pl/MotoPL/7,170318,24943189,doplaty-do- samochodo...](http://moto.pl/MotoPL/7,170318,24943189,doplaty-do-samochodow- elektrycznych-coraz-blizej-senat-przyjal.html) for details.

<comment><USER24> According to the article, they give up to $20K for an LNG car. That's quite a subsidy, if it's not a Google Translator screw-up. I was going to say that electrics shouldn't be subsidized at all (because that'd just be subsidizing the rich), but the amount of subsidy changes my position: with a $20K subsidy something like Nissan Leaf becomes quite affordable.

<comment><USER23> Yes, that's about right. $20k for LNG, and about $9.5k for electrics. Insane priorities, if you ask me, given our current climate crisis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is becoming a perennial.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19566051](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19566051)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18806930](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18806930)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16001298](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16001298)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11874552](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11874552)

</comment><comment><USER25> It is more than half now, and it combined the hybrid cars that often don't charge from the wall. The total percent of "electric cars" is still around 5% overall.

<comment><USER26> Can you link a source for that?

<comment><USER2> [https://www.ssb.no/en/transport-og- reiseliv/statistikker/bil...](https://www.ssb.no/en/transport-og- reiseliv/statistikker/bilreg)

About 7% of cars at the start of 2019.

<comment><USER25> I also have the raw data on type of cars, registration date, car owner etc from Hedemark/Norway if someone could find use of it.

We used it to develop an AI/ML model in PyTorch to detect ev-cars from hourly meter reader data. The paper: [https://www.sintef.no/en/publications/publication/?pubid=CRI...](https://www.sintef.no/en/publications/publication/?pubid=CRIStin+1697556)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> In Germany, hybrids are usually lumped together with fully electric cars. Even with that trick, only a few percent of the cars on the road are electric.

<comment><USER28> what's the sentiment about vw id3 ?

<comment><USER29> I'd say "nervous" captures it best. Or maybe the quip about the US, originally, "doing the right thing after having exhausted all other options".

Combustion engines, and Diesel especially, also require a lot more manpower to assemble. Spiegel, the largest and well-respected magazine, just quoted relative figures of 10 (Diesel):4 (Gasoline): 1 (Electric). So even if German manufacturers happen to survive the transition with market share intact, a lot of jobs are on the line.

And that's a big "if". Not only is there a lot of know-how that will become rather worthless. Consumers may well consider electric vehicles a new category, making brand value not transferrable.

The silver lining may be that the importance of cars for German industry, while big, is often overstated, especially outside Germany. The true strength of the country is in thousands of engineering SMEs you and I have never heard of, excelling in specialty B2B products. Stuff like pumps and industrial tooling and whatnot.

<comment><USER30> > Consumers may well consider electric vehicles a new category, making brand > value not transferrable.

I guess this is the reasoning behind Kia's very strong investment in electric cars. They never managed to break the image of European cars having the best engines [1], and look at electric as an opportunity to break the stronghold. The risk for the European auto industry is real, and present in the market.

[1] European diesel and gasoline engines are indeed an engineering marvel, so the technological moat is real, but eroding due to a technology phase-out. Interesting times ahead.

<comment><USER31> Kia (and Hyundai their ouroboros relative; apparently they each own minor stakes in each other and which is the parent company depends on which financial winds you prefer) is presumably also feeling a lot of pressure from the home Asian markets. Nissan believed almost ten years ago that EVs were the only path forward and has R&D invested to that point (the Leaf, their Renault portfolio). Toyota also accidentally built themselves a fiefdom with the Prius despite their leadership _still_ thinking Hydrogen might still upset EVs (which looks increasingly unlikely for cars; maybe for other diesel uses), but with the luck that a good Hydrogen drive chain is a good EV drive chain with a different "battery".

Plus, all the Chinese EV-only brands trying to disrupt the car industry entirely (BYD, Nio, etc).

With BMW and VW both talking about plans to have their entire catalogs electrified as soon as 2023, German manufacturers may finally be feeling the existential crisis at hand and are trying to compete.

(It's American manufacturers that are probably the most at risk right now. GM and Ford aren't yet feeling enough pressure from Asian imports nor Tesla. The irony of "dieselgate" helping the US EPA force the hands of European manufacturers more firmly towards EV fleets, but not appearing to make a similar strategic impact on American manufacturers fleets is probably going to be fog thick in the next few years.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I am curious how well the batteries do in the cold temperatures. Though maybe it's only people in the south driving one ?

<comment><USER2> Depends on what you mean by cold. Well below freezing they're not very happy and have significantly reduced range and power delivery until they heat up.

This issue can be solved by pre-heating the batteries prior to driving.

With a Tesla you can trigger the heating from the Tesla app on your phone. With the BMW i3 you can plan a departure time, and if it's plugged in it will make sure the car is charged and batteries are heated if needed (Tesla has no such plugged-in restriction). Other cars may have similar systems.

Winters in Norway are usually quite cold, below -15C is common in the capital which also has the majority of the EVs. So this is something to keep in mind, but is usually not an issue once you get used to it.

<comment><USER32> Thanks for your insights.

Winters here can get down to around -25C and I'm curious what the real world performance is in such a case.

Even though I'll need to look out for a new car in the next 18 months, I fear it's a bit too early for a Tesla in these conditions.

<comment><USER2> My 2018 model BMW i3 reported about half the normal range when we drove it during -20C without pre-heating it this winter. When pre-heated the range reduction is primarily due to the occupants using electricity to heat up the cabin.

But, as mentioned that doesn't mean half the range is gone, after a while the batteries heat up and you get more available range. But it can take about an hour or more, depending on driving, so you're looking at a fairly substantial hit regardless.

Another point is that the car won't supercharge if the batteries are too cold. If you regularly see -15C or below, you might want to consider a car which allows you to remote start the heating and run the battery heater from the batteries themselves, like Tesla does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Once all cars are electric is global warming no longer an issue? What is the main benefit of electric?

<comment><USER34> Air quality.

Even if there was no efficiency gain, electric cars move pollution out of city streets and into less densely populated areas.

If electricity is produced using less polluting methods like hydroelectric plants, then there's net benefit.

<comment><USER33> Such a massive push just for moving the pollution somewhere else.

<comment><USER35> Moving? Power plants have air filters.

I don't see how thousands of small scale filters that may or may not be maintained (ie. in some countries people cut DPF out) are better than one big efficient properly maintained industrial filter.

Also decoupling power generation from consumption allows for making overall car energy usage greener over time. Not possible with ICE. [1] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-15/electric-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-15/electric- cars-seen-getting-cleaner-even-where-grids-rely-on-coal)

<comment><USER33> [https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/electric- cars-...](https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/electric-cars- co2-emissions-global-warming/)

This article says that electric cars actually produce more CO2 emissions. Hard to know what the truth is when sources are conflicting.

A conservative and logical estimate is that Electric Cars emit more CO2 gas overall because it requires an extra conversion step.

Gasoline automobiles: Source --> Kinetic Energy

Electric automobiles: Source ---> Battery Power --> Kinetic Energy

Of course the real answer could be far more complicated since even gasoline distribution causes energy usage itself. The controversy and hardness to find a definitive answer makes it reasonable for me estimate that electric cars don't really do any obvious net change in energy efficiency OR green house gas reduction At All.

It doesn't match the hype.

<comment><USER35> Stop spreading FUD. There is no controversy data on CO2 per km of electric with different energy mixes. Data of CO2 equivalent is fully available. (ie. [http://www.neb- one.gc.ca/nrg/ntgrtd/mrkt/snpsht/2018/09-01-1...](http://www.neb- one.gc.ca/nrg/ntgrtd/mrkt/snpsht/2018/09-01-1hwrnrgprjctsfnncd- eng.html?=undefined&wbdisable=true))

Yes, with _current_ energy mix electric cars in some places might be emitting slightly more CO2.

Just for US data report quotes electric fleet averages on 54MPG - average MPG of new ICE is 25MPG.

> A conservative and logical estimate is that Electric Cars emit more CO2 gas > overall because it requires an extra conversion step.

Logical is to compare ICE vs electric drivetrain efficiency and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnot_cycle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnot_cycle).

Even with dirtiest energy generation electric cars are not worse than normal cars of similar size.

<comment><USER33> I'm spreading Fear? No I'm not. Doubt? Yes. I invite people to eliminate the doubt, but don't accuse me of something I did not do.

Also the conclusion of my response is that electric cars don't make any reasonable change to energy efficiency or green house gas emissions, which your response fails to contradict.

<comment><USER35> > Also the conclusion of my response is that electric cars don't make any > reasonable change to energy efficiency or green house gas emissions, which > your response fails to contradict.

Is this not reasonable?

US data report quotes electric fleet averages on 54MPG - average MPG of new ICE is 25MPG.

<comment><USER33> I ignored that because evs don't operate on mpg. It makes zero sense if coal was the original source or if nuclear energy was the source. Miles per gallon of uranium fissioned? What? Also your sources report is Canadian yet you quote US data. You sourced incorrectly. Unreasonable? Yes.

I'm not a biased person if you clarify the implications of your "us data" and it's sources I can completely reverse my opinion in an inhumanly unbiased way.

<comment><USER36> A gallon of fuel contains a fixed amount of usable energy. Motion from point A to point B uses a minimal amount of energy. MPG equivalent is a perfectly reasonable way to measure the efficiency of electric vehicles, and optimal if you plan to compare them to ICE vehicles. MPG is only a proxy for distance per unit energy anyway.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Want help figuring out jump jets work in MechWarrior 2 - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
I used as a QA Engineer for Transmeta, a startup that made low power CPUs for laptops.  One of the ways I loved to test our chips was by playing MechWarrior 2.  Basically I tried to break the chips using a video game where you run around in a mech (a giant robot with guns) shooting other mechs.
Game play video: https://youtu.be/L0mSdnxM7fc
In the game, some mechs could jump using jump jets.  One day I noticed that the jump jets recharged much more slowly on Transmeta chips than they did on our Intel reference chips.  The recharge rate on a Transmeta chip was something like 10 or 20% the rate it should have been.
Jump jets being used:  https://youtu.be/v1O4WTwjWZ4?t=9m54s
To my knowledge, no one ever figured out why.  I'm wondering if someone here happens to have worked on, or can legally share the source code for, MechWarrior 2.  I'm curious how the jump jet recharging worked, and whether that might offer some clue as to why the recharging happened so slowly on Transmeta chips! <comment><USER2> >transmeta

Wow - now there is a name I haven't heard in a REALLY long time.

I was at Intel when transmeta was still in stealth... and interestingly worked in their CPU benchmark DRG lab where we tested SIMDs on procs and Intel was focused on the Celeron being a <$1,000 that was performant to the gamer crowd... We were worried about transmeta at that time.

We were testing the games that were released on celeron machines against an AMD machine to prove out (subjectively) that a gamer would see performance as better on the Intel platform than AMD such that they woud buy Intel...

Intel actually paid game companies to code to the SIMD instructions in their games specifically to make them faster, and then paid the companies marketing money to promote the games...

Sadly, Transmeta was still too vapor for us to test against...

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha! I never would have considered the possibility that MechWarrior 2 wasn't slow on Transmeta, and that it was simply fast on Intel! That is interesting. I guess there are all sorts of optimizations one such as Intel could make when sitting on billions of dollars.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> An anonymous beta test participant reported that Valve encountered a similar problem before the release of Counter-Strike: Source. Players with a Transmeta CPU could see the bullets flying. The cause had to do with the internal CPU timer.

<comment><USER4> I'm imagining some sort of Matrix like stuff you could only do with a Transmeta CPU.</comment></comment>


You Can Explain eBay's $50B Turnaround With Just This One Crazy Story - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/explaining-ebays-turnaround-2014-2?op=1

<comment><USER2> Is it just me? Wouldn't most people prefer that the premise posed in the title be elucidated in one or two paragraphs? Why is that article channeling Tolstoy? It could be longer than War and Peace.

I just skimmed it. AFAICT some guy redesigned the Ebay front page as a skunkworks project.</comment>