Global warming: The state of the climate in 2016 - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2016/11/global-warming?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/ed/globalwarmingthestateoftheclimatein2016 <comment><USER2> The canary in the coalmine for global warming is Arctic sea ice. It is melting at an alarming rate, and we can expect an ice-free (>1m sq km of sea ice) Arctic in the summer within a decade or two (or 3-4 years if recent trends continue!). There's a small active community who follow this. We tend to hang out here - a HN level of polite discussion goes on: [http://neven1.typepad.com/](http://neven1.typepad.com/)

<comment><USER3> well fortunately the Antarctic is gaining mass, so things happen. We are still only 12k years out an ice age and learning as we go. Natural variability is quite boring so it doesn't make headlines as much as it should.

the real reality is that the Paris agreement is a horrid piece of do nothing legislation that lets the major developing powers do what they want all the while getting the nod of acceptance from the UN because of the hundred billion dollar payout. Basically we have what is a one time voluntary agreement to pay out to certain groups so that developing countries can continue to pollute provided they plan to eventually slow it

<comment><USER4> No, there is an Antarctic ice sheet that is gaining mass. As a whole, Antarctica is losing ice mass. As is the case for global ice mass balance. Chart of satellite gravity measurements for Antarctica: [http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/Antarctica_Ice_Mass.g...](http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/Antarctica_Ice_Mass.gif)

<comment><USER5> so that chart is from 2003 - 2009 ... and that is evidence of what exactly?

6 samples of a multi century phenomenon and you are ringing an alarm bell !

the chart smacks more of searching around for a chart that shows a decline to prop up the "ice is in trouble narrative".

ice extent ( recovered from 2008/12 ) , ice age ( recovered again from 2012 ), ice thickness ( recovered ), ice refreeze date ( recovered ), polar bear population ( highest its ever been )

now its ice mass that is the panic chart of the day. but 6 samples, its just not enough

<comment><USER6> [https://sites.google.com/site/arcticseaicegraphs/longterm](https://sites.google.com/site/arcticseaicegraphs/longterm)

What is it going to take to convince you?

Let's just wait a few more decades to be sure though. It would be a waste spending resources trying to prevent the demise of life on Earth when we didn't need to.

<comment><USER7> Is there a name for this sort of chart?:

[https://sites.google.com/site/pettitclimategraphs/sea-ice- vo...](https://sites.google.com/site/pettitclimategraphs/sea-ice- volume#asivds)

<comment><USER8> Spider chart or spiderweb chart

<comment><USER7> Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Convincing Mr Trump of this fact is now an urgent and daunting challenge."

By appointing Myron Ebell to lead the transition at the EPA, Mr Trump has made it clear he's made up his mind.

Personnel is policy.

<comment><USER10> It's too bad Americans cannot vote for some of the most prominent cabinet members the way they vote for President/Vice-President. Many of these appointees will have a more direct impact on people's lives but yet they have no say in who will represent them. Democracy?

<comment><USER11> Representative Democracy yeah. The people voted in Trump who now gets to appoint those positions.

<comment><USER12> >The people voted in Trump

Well no. The people voted in Clinton, and the Electoral College upweighted some votes and downweighted others in a way that favors Trump. The EC once had a distinct purpose, but right now just seems to give Republicans a structural advantage, to the ultimate detriment of Democrats and Democrat-leaners in small or rural states.

<comment><USER13> That how our Representative Democracy works. Each system has its own way of voting and counting; that's ours.

<comment><USER12> And if it creates a _de facto_ one-party state?

<comment><USER14> I didn't hear a lot of Democrats complaining about a "de facto one-party state" when they were chirping excitedly about gaining a permanent demographic majority a few months back, so forgive me if this sudden concern over the topic does not come off as entirely sincere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This graph of global sea ice area is kind of alarming:

[https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JX41K2UK6Io/WCvyXQ6CFvI/AAAAAAAAW...](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JX41K2UK6Io/WCvyXQ6CFvI/AAAAAAAAWBs/1KITPEgbPlgvKjGPLMoXfHfqnnQ84EZXACLcB/s1600/nsidc_global_area_byyear_b- Nov-14-2016.png)

More info:

[http://arctic-news.blogspot.co.uk/](http://arctic-news.blogspot.co.uk/)

<comment><USER16> Fortunately, sea ice does not contribute much to the sea level because it displaces about the same volume it will add when melted.

<comment><USER15> Yep, but it does have other negative effects. [https://www.carbonbrief.org/five-reasons-why-the-speed-of- ar...](https://www.carbonbrief.org/five-reasons-why-the-speed-of-arctic-sea- ice-loss-matters)

<comment><USER17>
        Albedo is a measure of how well the earth's surface reflects sunlight. Snow-covered sea ice has a high albedo and reflects 85 per cent of sunlight. But the open water revealed as ice melts is darker and absorbs more – reflecting just seven per cent.

Yep, that's terrifying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't actually believe this, but it occurred to me the other day as a funny way to look at a very sad situation:

What if Trump does believe global warming is real, but recognizes that we're too late to stop its worst effects? What if he expects the world to go to hell over the next 50 years and is focused on protecting the U.S. specifically? What would he do?

He'd build a wall across the lower border of the U.S. to keep out southern populations fleeing extreme heat. But he'd keep the border with Canada open, so Americans can flee there if they need to. The oceans will protect us from the rest of the world.

He'd disentangle us from overseas treaty obligations that might draw us into wars we wouldn't otherwise want to fight. And he'd focus international relations on the few biggest countries who are most likely to secure and defend their own societies.

He'd incentivize U.S. companies to manufacture domestically: long supply chains are a risk.

He'd ramp up infrastructure spending--particularly on the coasts--to be ready to build sea walls and other mitigating structures.

He'd strengthen law enforcement to deal with internal unrest.

Like I said, I don't actually believe this...

EDIT: Another (and perhaps more likely) way to look at this is that Trump and his posse are just paranoid nuts, but by ignoring global warming, they will inadvertently bring about the global calamity that they fear.

<comment><USER19> _recognizes that we 're too late to stop its worst effects_

I see this sentiment a lot on HN these days. What's the reasoning behind it? If the temperature in my room increases, I'll go from feeling uncomfortable, to sweating profusely, to fainting, to death. Is there any scientific reason to believe that, say, a 4C increase gives us horrible outcomes, but a 8C increase will be "not much worse"?

<comment><USER20> I think the warming itself is not really the biggest problem, it's the secondary effects like rising sea levels, increased natural disasters, etc. So for example if it's too late to stop coastal cities from being flooded, twice that much sea level rise is not much worse, because all the important cities and infrastructure are already gone.

<comment><USER21> However, if it's-too-laters really hold that opinion, they will also oppose (among other things) development of affected areas, because those areas are a foregone conclusion. For example, they will oppose any new buildings (at least major urban developments) in low coastal areas such as Manhattan, (part of) San Francisco, or Miami. Such projects are a waste of resource in the same way reducing CO2 emission is, and they will make relocation much more costly when the inevitable happens.

Funnily enough, I don't hear _that_ opinion often, which makes me suspect that most people just want an excuse to keep their lifestyle unchanged.

<comment><USER20> I have actually heard that opinion, for example: [http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/09/new-york- future...](http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/09/new-york-future- flooding-climate-change.html)

However, most people I've talked to who say "there's nothing we can do" are really saying "I think I will be dead before this is a really big problem, so fuck it".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> My worry is that Trump doesn't deny it (well he does publicly), but rather privately realizes that it's already far too late. There's nothing we can do, collapse of global civilization before mid-century is probably inevitable. So what can you do, well ramp up every dirty trick you can think off … because it doesn't really matter and it makes you look good with the public (sorry to say, it does, climate change is still not popular in public discourse).

To stay within the 1.5 to 2ºC bounds, the IPCC already includes massive carbon sequestering technologies in even its most simple recommendations. This is technology that does not exist. We're betting life on Earth (and truly, it is that dire) on tech that might be impossible to build and scale. Even if we reduce our carbon emissions to 0 today the delayed effects and non-linear dynamics are so poorly understood, that it could very well be that nothing truly can be done to avoid our mass extinction. And, this too goes for carbon sequestering; even if we magically suck the last 5 decades of carbon out of the air, some stuff that is broken can't be fixed. Thresholds, catastrophes, oscillations, bifurcations, etc are real. We really have to think in non- linear systems when dealing with climate, and that is something we're very bad at. Especially when it comes to the media-voter complex. But picture this, you are driving your car down some road, and everything is fine. You're minding your own business. There's nobody else there, so what the heck, let's ramp up some of the speed. And you go faster and faster. Until bam, unexpected steep corner, your car flies off the road and you die. At that point going back a couple of miles is never going to fix you. It's too late.

<comment><USER23> Carbon sequestering is not as hard as it would seem. We have several technologies, but we can also just plant trees.

<comment><USER24> First we'd have to stop the massive deforestation that's happening right now. A lot of that is for agriculture, so we'd have to find another way to feed those people.

We might also want to stop clearcutting vast forests in the Southeastern U.S. to ship wood pellets to Europe, which burns them.

Then we'd have to save the rest of our existing forests, many of which are struggling due to various effects of climate change, including heat stress, drought, topsoil loss, disease, and forest fires. Many large forests are net carbon emitters now.

After we've done all that and finally stopped losing trees, we can think about having more trees. We'll need space for them, so that means reducing agricultural area even more. We've been emitting about ten _billion_ tons of carbon every year for quite a while, so it's going to take a lot of land.

We're also running out of fish in the ocean, so with that food source going away we're going to need more from agriculture than we get now.

"Just plant trees." Like many, perhaps even most purported climate change solutions, it sounds great until you work out the scale.

<comment><USER25> >First we'd have to stop the massive deforestation that's happening right now. A lot of that is for agriculture, so we'd have to find another way to feed those people.

You say that like we couldn't just let them starve. If their descendants are going to be wiped out by global warming anyway what's the difference?

<comment><USER24> There's that word "just" again. The countries where it's happening don't want to let their people starve; you'd have to make them. You'd have to use military force to guard vast forests all over the world from hundreds of millions of desperate people. Good luck with that.

<comment><USER25> Does nerve gas harm trees?

<comment><USER22> Why not nuke metropolitan areas while you're at it? Most of the population is in the coastal cities anyway, who cares about New York, Shanghai or Mumbai. Quick fix. Or force serialization for > 60% of the world population. I mean sure, there are "solutions" but there is ethics to consider too …

<comment><USER25> For a start, the cities you list contain many valuable people. Places doing lots of slash-and-burn farming, not so much. My original comment was a bit facetious, but if it is a civilization-ending threat (and I'm not saying it is), better to start the killing sooner when we can control who dies than collapse the whole thing and lose thousands of years of scientific and cultural progress.

<comment><USER25> By the way, we already do this! We let millions starve to death in squalor already. Why? For the sake of civilization. Or do you think it'd be smart to ship them all over here? Amazing how timid we are about weighing life against life in a controlled fashion when this is already happening every day. We can't even have a little hypothetical chat on the Internet about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > According to research published last year, spending a day in Beijing is > currently akin to smoking almost 40 cigarettes. Decoupling emissions from > economic growth thus helps both people and planet. Convincing Mr Trump of > this fact is now an urgent and daunting challenge.

How is convincing Trump here the answer? Isn't convincing China more important? How about convincing the American people? Do this and politicians will follow.

Perhaps if Trump can bring back more industry to the US, he is on his way to helping already.

<comment><USER27> China is convinced.[1] The American public is convinced, although not as much as they probably should be.[2][3][4]

The problem here is to convince world leaders to actually do something.

[1] [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-16/china- tell...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-16/china-tells-trump- that-climate-change-is-no-hoax-it-invented)

[2] [http://climatepublicopinion.stanford.edu/sample- page/opinion...](http://climatepublicopinion.stanford.edu/sample- page/opinions-in-the-states/)

[3] [https://environment.yale.edu/poe/v2014/](https://environment.yale.edu/poe/v2014/)

[4] [http://www.gallup.com/poll/190010/concern-global-warming- eig...](http://www.gallup.com/poll/190010/concern-global-warming-eight-year- high.aspx)

<comment><USER28> China is convinced? Then China should tell China to stop building coal power plants.

They burn slightly more coal than the rest of the world combined.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/26/business/energy- environmen...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/26/business/energy- environment/china-coal.html)

<comment><USER27> > China is convinced? Then China should tell China to stop building coal power > plants.

You realise you're source says they're doing exactly that?

"In guidelines released on Monday, China halted plans for new coal-fired power stations in many parts of the country, and construction of some approved plants will be postponed until at least 2018."

They've also gone all in on solar, having more installed capacity than any other nation. They're far from perfect, but they've started to acknowledge the problem at least.

<comment><USER29> Not only that, but they've taken all these steps while they're bringing hundreds of millions of people out of abject poverty doing sustenance farming and into cities. Cities where they want things like electricity and cars. Look at the history of the world, development like that is usually fueled by burning as many hydrocarbons as possible. It's very good to see a country able now to at least start to break away from that. The rapidly dropping price of solar, thanks in large part to China plays a big role in that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The conclusion of this article is not that global warming is dangerous but that local air pollution is bad for public health: "According to research published last year, spending a day in Beijing is currently akin to smoking almost 40 cigarettes. Decoupling emissions from economic growth thus helps both people and planet. Convincing Mr. Trump of this fact is now an urgent and daunting challenge."

Why should Donald Trump worry about local air pollution in Beijing? This has nothing to do with climate change. I highly doubt Donald Trump thinks thick smog is a good thing.

<comment><USER31> It's mentioned at the end of the article but it's not the main message. The reason it's mentioned is to give the argument why China will have to reduce their own emissions, no matter what other countries do. Then it concludes that Trump should understand the same that China has to understand: "Decoupling emissions from economic growth thus helps both people and planet."

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I've read interesting post couple of days ago about Global Warming on reddit:

"Hey guys this research isn't really finding out anything that wasn't already known. RCP 8.5 scenario, which they assumed in their modelling, has long been known to be effectively Armageddon. Any temperature rise past 5.5 degrees is probably irrelevant because there wont be any humans left to deal with that outcome.

However it's looking increasingly likely that we aren't on the RCP 8.5 pathway. RCP 8.5 calls for steady continued growth in emissions of around 3%+ per year, which is what we were on in the early part of this decade. The last three years emissions have been effectively flat in spite of ongoing economic growth, and the Paris pledges that will keep warming to about 2.8 degrees call for the emissions peak to be in 2040~ (RCP 4.5). Based on trends in renewables, the downturn in the coal industry, and emissions growth halting, it's increasingly hard to see how we could possibly get back on track to an RCP 8.5 scenario.

2.8 degrees will still be terrible for environment, the economy, and poorer nations of course, and we should really be aiming for the RCP 2.6 scenario, where emissions peak no later than 2020. It's possible emissions have peaked already, but we will need more than three years of data to determine that. Of course, than comes the hard part of taking offline the carbon intensive elements of the world economy (i.e Coal)"

source: [https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/5cz4a7/new_climate...](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/5cz4a7/new_climate_change_estimate_predicts_global/da0sfad/)

</comment><comment><USER33> What about the Elon Musk <-> Peter Thiel <-> Trump connection?

Trump respects Peter. He's young & rich.

Peter is an engineer. He must believe in global warming. He wants to live forever, so he'll need a good planet for that.

Musk is a firm believer in green tech.

Peter respects Musk?

The future of the planet depends on how Peter Thiel explains the role of clean tech to Trump! (I'm starting to be very happy about that $1 million Peter handed over to Trump)

<comment><USER34> _" He must believe in global warming."_

While I understand what motivates your thinking so, I don't think you can assume this. I haven't looked for anything that addresses Thiel's opinion on this btw, so I'm agnostic on the issue.

<comment><USER33> Peter has invested in clean tech before. He's a technologist. He wants to live forever (on a stable climate planet). We can assume he believes in global warming.

<comment><USER34> I could be cynical and view his clean tech investments as a capitalist assessing the market, independent of his beliefs in global warming. If enough people want clean tech for whatever reason (including false beliefs in climate change), investing in clean tech can be a smart move. That said, I did find a quote that indicates he cares about the environment.

 _Thiel told the TechCrunch Disrupt crowd that "one potential route for cleantech energies is to work with something that's slightly more environmentally friendly than current sources — natural gas. It's a cheaper form of energy that's much more ubiquitous, and has less of an environmental impact than most energy sources today, but has not been harnessed."_

[http://www.thegreenskeptic.com/2011/09/peter-thiel- cleantech...](http://www.thegreenskeptic.com/2011/09/peter-thiel-cleantech- disaster-well-not.html)

Concerns about the environment don't necessarily mean belief in global warming.

His NYT editorial "The New Atomic Age We Need" talks about other's concerns about climate change, but never his own position on climate change, just on nuclear energy.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/28/opinion/the-new-atomic- age...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/28/opinion/the-new-atomic-age-we- need.html)

An interview he did with Glenn Beck for the Blaze quotes him as calling climate science pseudoscience.

 _Thiel: I do think that having a space where you can think for yourself and where it doesn 't always get second-guessed is very important. We have a we have all these monolithic debates about science or pseudoscience. Like there's the climate change debate.

Beck: Is that science or pseudoscience?

Thiel: I think it's more pseudoscience. Whenever you can't have a debate I often think that's evidence that there's a problem. When people use the word science, it's often a tell like in poker that you're bluffing. We have social science, we have political science. We don't call it physical science or chemical science, we just call them physics and chemistry because we just know they're right and you can debate the periodic table of elements. No one will be upset if you ask questions about that. We call it climate scicence. It's a tell like in poker. It's telling you that people are exaggerating, and that they're bluffing a little bit.

But I think this monolithic culture is breaking down. People are asking questions. You know the weather has not been getting warmer for the past 15 years. The hockey stick that Al Gore predicted in the early 2000s on the climate has not happened for the last decade. I think as this monolithic culture breaks down you can have more real debates and I think that would be a good thing on net._

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoxxGhLFbw4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoxxGhLFbw4)

I just did the transcript myself, so there are very likely mistakes. I also tried to clean up the language a bit. I won't quibble if people point them out. If someone feels I've misrepresented what he said, please do correct me.

There's a lot of language there that sounds like that of climate change skeptics.

I'm not trying to be obstinate here. I've been surprised by many of the opinions shared by HN commenters that I would think are incongruent (and I'm sure some think the same of mine).

I guess I'm a "Peter Thiel Believes in Climate Change" skeptic. Happy to be shown I'm wrong.

Edit: I realize I'm equating "global warming" and "climate change". I don't think that changes what I've written, but if it does, please let me know.

<comment><USER33> Thanks for posting this. I guess I was wrong to think he believes in global warming. He has made investments into clean tech along with Vinod Khosla however & did found that personal payments thing along with Elon. So. Maybe there is a chance for discussion?

I'm hoping.

<comment><USER34> Me, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I believe that it is already too late. Here's my proposed solution. Send a robot into space. Pickup an asteroid and bring it to Lagrangian L1. Have it begin weaving a solar curtain.

<comment><USER22> doesn't fix the ocean acidification

<comment><USER35> you got me there

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Can someone point me to a URL with an arguably good prediction of how these increasing temperatures would negatively effect the ecosystem specifically? Are we talking mass extinctions? More powerful storms/more extreme weather events? And/or something else?

<comment><USER37> [http://climate.nasa.gov/effects/](http://climate.nasa.gov/effects/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> _" According to research published last year, spending a day in Beijing is currently akin to smoking almost 40 cigarettes."_

Wow

<comment><USER39> There have been a number of studies on how many deaths can be attributed to air pollution. It seems to be ~1 million deaths a year in China. Here's a typical source (a press release with good graphs, the original paper is linked in it):

[https://www.healtheffects.org/system/files/HEI-GBD-MAPS- Chin...](https://www.healtheffects.org/system/files/HEI-GBD-MAPS-China-Press- Release.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> If it is truely a big problem, it will be more strengthful to let the denying end to fully deploy their defense. The hope may the system resilient enough not on an irreversable track which has a penalty not bailable.</comment>


Windows 95 Defrag Simulator - <AUTHOR> http://hultbergs.org/defrag/ <comment><USER2> Doesn't much resemble the real defragmenter, since it just marches forward in strictly linear fashion. (And shows a heck of a lot of bad sectors)

Authentic defrag footage: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVYdSuFFmCU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVYdSuFFmCU)</comment>


Mike Bloomberg gave PR help to the billionaire family behind the opioid crisis - <AUTHOR> https://www.propublica.org/article/bloomberg-sacklers-opioid-crisis-public-relations <comment><USER2> This is worth the read. Regardless of how you feel about Bloomberg, the article reveals a lot about how elites work together to "protect" one another. My impression is that the elites who do this don't consider it "bad", any one of us would probably behave the same way and convince ourselves we had the best intention.

However, the net effect is to create a deeply skewed picture of reality.</comment>


How We Treat Pets in America - <AUTHOR> http://blog.priceonomics.com/post/44230885813/how-we-treat-pets-in-america

<comment><USER2> Soap box time!! -- I walk dogs at a local shelter. There is not a common breed that doesn't find it's way through our doors at some point during the year. Sure, you might not end up with a "certified" purebred that's going to win a dog show (do you really want one of those for your family anyway?), but with almost certainty, I can guarantee that you can find what you're looking for at a local shelter.

There is almost no reason to "buy" a dog -- the shelters are overcrowded, and the odds are good you can find what you want regarding breed/temperament if you're patient. Responsible shelters will find you the right dog if you tell them what you're looking for.

<comment><USER3> > There is almost no reason to "buy" a dog

I agree, if we're talking about puppies. There's no reason to buy a puppy. But an adult dog? I adopted an adult dog from a shelter, and I will never do so again.

I realize that the rescue community does its best with the animals, but as an owner of a shelter dog, I really wish somebody had explained to me that the dog you see in the shelter might not actually be the same dog once you take her home. In the course of a few weeks after I adopted her, my laid back, amiable companion had turned into a hyperactive, sometimes-fearful, sometimes- aggressive terror.

My point is that with an adult rescue dog, you are not getting only a dog. You are getting a dog and all of its history. For instance, my dog has a deep fear of manhole covers, tall grass, and a dozen other things. I have no idea why she's afraid, and I never will, because I wasn't there when whatever triggered that fear happened. She's also absolutely terrified of firearms. If I even touch a firearm around her (I've never discharged one around her), she runs away whimpering. I have to preemptively crate her on range days, just to get my guns to the car.

I've been working with her for 2 years, and she's slowly gotten better with some things, but even now she's still afraid of a lot of the same things. And there is absolutely no way I can trust her around children. When my fiance and I get married and want to start having kids, I don't know what will become of her.

All of this to say, I completely understand peoples' hesitancy to adopt an adult dog from a shelter. You can't be sure what you're getting, and while neither can you be sure of what you're getting (in terms of temperament) when you adopt a puppy, at least with a puppy you know that no other messed up human has done bad things to your dog.

Edit: to clarify that I haven't shot my dog...

<comment><USER4> I had a very similar experience. I got a rescue that was an adolescent (not fully grown) and just the sweetest dog ever. We did all the kinds of socializing that you're supposed to do but as he got older he became more and more aggressive towards anyone that didn't live in the house.

It got to the point where we'd have to lock him up in a room when people came over because we were genuinely afraid that he would seriously injure a visiting friend or family member. We tried all kinds of trainers but nothing at all helped and we finally decided to put him down because it felt like he was a bomb that was just waiting to go off.

It was all the more depressing because when there were no strangers around he was a total sweetheart. He loved snuggling up with his humans and playing with our other dog.

The experience was so negative that I don't think I'd ever take in a shelter dog again. I paid a good breeder for a purebred after him (my breed choice of Whippet partially inspired by the positive behaviors of my shelter dog) and I've been very happy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Somewhat ironic to find this post two links above the one about lab rats getting tortured for "science". I guess rats are uglier.

<comment><USER6> I for one find this kind of cognitive dissonance extremely upsetting and a bit perplexing. People are easily able to compartmentalize their feelings about various animals. This leads to neat little groups - food, pet, science experiment. It's very frustrating to me.

<comment><USER7> If it's purely the compartmentalization that upsets you, then you'd be happier if people were totally cool about tossing the Frisbee around with their dog Spot on Saturday, then cooking him up for Sunday dinner. Is that the case?

Anyway, people are a mix of rationality and emotions. We build up emotional attachments to the animals we keep as pets, and get uneasy thinking about using them in meals or experiments.

<comment><USER6> I'd prefer some consistency. If people think it's horrific to eat a dog, there's no reason they should be perfectly cool eating a pig.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _Very_ happy to see this on HN. I have never understood why people are willing to purchase dogs. Between the conditions of large-scale breeders and the amount of animals waiting in shelters, it's just absurd.

<comment><USER8> I know it goes against most people, but I bought a dog from a breeder. Basically just to see its parents and how it acted around its litter.

My wife and I adopted a Lab two years earlier from a humane society. When she went through puberty, she started acting "off". As in she'd be playing, stop, have no depth in her eyes, and bite you if you got near her. 40 seconds later she was fine and she didn't even know what happened. She even bit the last trainer when she had one of her "seizures." The rest of the time she did every trick and voice command perfectly. After we that, we decided we had to put her down. We spent probably $2000 on training in the year-ish we had her not including the hours calling universities and whatnot for advice.

After many hours of researching, we found out her dad "might have been" a German Shepherd used in dog fighting that had other issues. That dog was shot like a coyote because it kept on tormenting cattle. Would have been nice to know that ahead of time.

We didn't want to go through that again. So we paid the $800, drove 6 hours, saw our new dog get corrected by its father, and be genuinely rambunctious. Now when we go on vacation people argue for the rights to take care of him instead of saying no way.

It's amazing what knowing the family history can do to your stress levels.

<comment><USER9> I agree with that too. Seeing the temperament of other dogs in the family can be a good indicator of how the puppy will (can?) turn out.

I've had four Brittany spaniels, two from early puppy stage, and two from adult stage. The two that I had from a puppy were wonderful dogs for me and my family. The two that were adopted as adults had acquired a variety of odd behaviors; one of them we were able to put up with, the other one was too destructive and eventually we had to relocate to a farm with more space than we had in the suburbs.

I now have an almost 2-year-old border collie that I first saw when she was 5 weeks old. Border collies in general have some particular tendencies that I'm still working on with her, but in general her temperament is very good.

For what it's worth, I did peruse the local shelter for a while before adopting a puppy from a farm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Funny this comes out, when only last week this research was released [http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=1049...](http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=10498) "Neutering, and the age at which a dog is neutered, may affect the animal's risk for developing certain cancers and joint diseases" It is also worth checking out Nathan Winograd, who is campaigning to make ALL shelters in America no-kill. It is worth looking at the statistics and reasons why shelters kill animals in their care, as most often, it is not simply that there are not enough homes. <http://www.nathanwinograd.com/?p=10627>

</comment><comment><USER11> Sorry to be "that guy" but "dog days" has nothing to do with a summertime culling of stray dogs. It has to do with the "Dog Star", Sirius: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_days>

This is a good article, and puppy mills (and the general unnaturalness of many dog breeds) are something more people should know about.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, you're right. We updated the article with your link and clarified the original source better. Thanks for pointing that out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > These breeders can raise their dogs in idyllic conditions of sunny farms, > financed by the high premium placed on purebreds.

That sounds logical, but from my talking to various breeders it just isn't reality. They claim to barely break even or even lose money, despite charging ~$1000 per dog. Most of them seem to have other income that supplements their hobby.

Good breeders are motivated by love of the breed and not by money (which, to be fair the article pointed out).

</comment><comment><USER12> Neutering in rats slightly increases lifespan of the animal. If this could be proven in dogs/cats, etc. as a more general biological phenomenon I think it'd be a great selling point for the procedure to new pet owners.

Who doesn't want their new pet to live longer?

<http://www.ratbehavior.org/Neutering.htm>

<comment><USER10> <https://www.avma.org/News/JAVMANews/Pages/100301g.aspx>

"New research on the biology of aging in dogs suggests a link between shortened life expectancy and ovary removal."

"The study, published in the December 2009 issue of the journal Aging Cell, found that Rottweilers that were spayed after they were 6 years old were 4.6 times as likely to reach 13 years of age as were Rottweilers that were spayed at a younger age."

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I volunteer as a canine friend at the Berkeley East Bay Humane Society and it kills me to know that for every one of the dogs that they save (no kill policy), many other dogs who are just as sweet are put down.

I've been volunteering there for a year and have never had a problem with a dog. Their population is almost exclusively pitbulls and they've all been great.

I started freelancing a few months ago and my first client was <http://www.wagaroo.com> The site is built with rails and ember.js. It's very MVP right now and any feedback is appreciated.

They just got started and are only working with shelters and rescues for now. Their ultimate plan is to include responsible breeders and fight the puppy mills but they are taking their time in order gain understanding and to find the best way to make it happen.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is a great priceonomics post (your blog is amazing, second only to the old OKCupid blog!)

I feel kind of bad for wanting a purebred cat now, vs. a shelter cat, but I'll probably do it anyway (the breeder is someone I know, and probably loses $1-2k on each kitten since it's just a hobby for a rich spouse, etc.) Russian Blues seem worth it. I'm considering taking an ex show cat instead of a kitten, though.

</comment><comment><USER15> Anyone have numbers on the total number of pets in the US? Or on the number of natural deaths each year? It's hard to contextualize these numbers without understanding the overall population.

<comment><USER10> <http://www.nathanwinograd.com/?p=10627>

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've never really used their product, but the priceonomics blog is excellent. Complete, thorough, deeply researched and well written. Kudos!

</comment><comment><USER17> I thought this article was going to be about the $52 billion a year Americans spend on pets.

</comment><comment><USER18> It is worth noting that the campaign to make spaying and neutering required has also done considerable harm. Puppies are often spayed and neutered as young as 6 weeks, despite the numerous health problems associated with the practice. Even the standard 6 months causes significant increases in a number of health problems. We need to stop punishing our pets based on the notion that if we don't get them fixed early, they will breed via magic or spores or something of the sort. You can in fact prevent your dog from having sex with other dogs.

<comment><USER19> "they will breed via magic or spores or something of the sort."

You obviously don't understand the problem, the problem isn't with people who are responsible. The problem is with people dump there dogs on the side of the road, the people who breed there dogs because it sounded cool, or to make money and end up not being able to sell them/give them away and end up dumping them somewhere.

I have never heard of "significant increases in a number of health problems" in spaying/neutering at the sixth month mark, this may be different for some dogs but thats besides the point. Spaying/neutering is not bad, doing so indiscriminately(like everything) is bad. I dont know where your coming from calling it "punishing" the pets. Even with the surgery itself most dogs are up & running in 1-2 days.

I would agree that spaying/neutering is not the complete answer. We should be punishing people who hurt there pets. You should not be able to have a pet if you have been proven not responsible to have one, you should be punished for doing harm to them.

Pets arn't the problem, people are. Pet over population and other problems are simply the sad side effect of humanity.

<comment><USER20> _Pets are simply the sad side effect of humanity._

What exactly is that supposed to mean? Pets can give their owners all kinds of health benefits, emotionally, and otherwise. Humanity isn't all bad, last I checked. I do enjoy my dog.

<comment><USER19> Sorry, allow me to clarify, the pet overpopulation problem* is simply a said side effect to humanity.

<comment><USER20> Got it ;-)!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Robot Car Involved In Crash; Google Blames Human - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.forbes.com/briancaulfield/2011/08/05/robot-car-involved-in-crash-google-blames-human-error/

<comment><USER2> I drove past the accident after work, I saw the gear on top of the prius and though is that a computer car accident? I thought they only drove them in nevada.

</comment><comment><USER3> so a human driving a car, got in an accident. interesting

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The accident involved three Priuses and two Accords. How California!</comment>


How I Got Nintendo Powerfest 94 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.pricecharting.com/2012/07/how-i-got-nintendo-powerfest-94.html

<comment><USER2> Funny that the deal went down a few miles from my house.</comment>


Do you hate running out of toothpaste? (My startup pitch) - <AUTHOR> http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/439845/My-startup-pitch-Do-you-hate-running-out-of-toothpaste

<comment><USER2> _A service that would, once a month, deliver by mail ALL of your needed toiletries - toothpaste, shampoo, shaving cream, deodorant, soap, etc. These would be the products you use normally - Old Spice, Colgate, Gillette, etc. The prices would be equal to, or often less than the store prices._

Amazon Subscribe and Save already offers this service: [http://www.amazon.com/Health-Personal-Care-Subscribe- Store/b...](http://www.amazon.com/Health-Personal-Care-Subscribe- Store/b/ref=sv_hpc_7?ie=UTF8&node=1260921011)

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice catch - do you know how successful Amazon's program is?

<comment><USER2> I don't know how profitable it is for Amazon (since the items are 15% off and they ship free), but it has worked out well for my fiancee and me. For things that we would have bought at Costco (shampoo, toothpaste, lotion), we are saving a little and we don't have to make that extra trip to Costco or carry heavy items from the car.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> If I heard this startup pitch I would want to know what experience you have in retailing and especially logistics. I wouldn't care at all about your web or programming expertise.

Suppose you were doing this without computers or the web. Customers filled out a paper order form and you then fulfilled their standing orders. This is very similar to what Schwann's and diaper services do now, and what milk trucks did when I was a kid. 75% of the problems you need to solve will be in old- fashioned logistics: purchasing, warehousing, picking, packing, shipping. Almost all of the remaining work will be customer service: returns, fixing mistakes, handling late deliveries and billing issues, etc.

Now add a web site to place and track orders to the business. It is a tiny part of the work required to launch and doesn't change any of the back-end "brick and mortar" stuff.

Amazon has the infrastructure in place to do both the hard (logistics/fulfillment/customer service) parts and the easy (web site) part. If you think this is something you can crank out in a weekend with a Ruby on Rails book good luck.

</comment><comment><USER4> Something that would be a valuable addition to this idea would be a way of starting out by making purchases on demand, and then being able to easily automate them if they are regularly occurring. For example, I don't pay attention to how often I actually need toothpaste, so right now I wouldn't want your service because I don't know how much toothpaste to buy, and how often I need to buy it. But I might want it if it tracked the toothpaste usage for me, and then I could automate it if it turned out to be a very regular need.

</comment><comment><USER5> Yep, as someone mentioned, Amazon offers a lot of this.

You should also look at Diapers.com and Soap.com which was recently acquired by Amazon. [http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2010/11/06/amazon-to-buy- diap...](http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2010/11/06/amazon-to-buy-diapers-com- for-540-million/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Although I don't believe they offer automatic delivery yet, check out <http://www.alice.com>

It's basically a direct-to-consumer marketplace for manufacturers.

</comment><comment><USER3> Good example of an idea that mistakes everyday annoyances or obsessive- compulsive behavior with an actual need.</comment>


Show HN: Krucible – Kubernetes clusters for testing and development - <AUTHOR> https://www.usekrucible.com <comment><AUTHOR> Author here. At the last two companies I've worked at we really needed—and didn't have—a solution for spinning up throwaway Kubernetes clusters that we could use for testing and development. Krucible is an attempt to solve that problem.

Krucible replaces minikube/kind[0] with faster, cloud-hosted Kubernetes clusters that are easier to spin up from inside of CI/CD environments and that don't consume a large amount of local resources.

Happy to answer any questions!

[0] Or whichever other Kubernetes provider you use for testing and development</comment>


Xv6 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.regehr.org/archives/1114?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+EmbeddedInAcademia+%28Embedded+in+Academia%29 <comment><USER2> Instead of exposing students to Windows kernel code[1], it would be better to consider to read the ReactOS source code - an open source clean room re- implementation:

[http://www.reactos.org](http://www.reactos.org)

[1] signing such an NDA will prevent them from contributing to various open source projects, that would be a shame.

<comment> iso8859-1 Is the ReactOS kernel clean?

<comment><USER2> Read the comment above by coldpie about WineHQ project. The same is true for the ReactOS project.

In 2006, an overenthusiastic contributor caused troubles. The aftermath slash back the project for several months and stressed the relationship with Wine for some time. Since then, every possible effort is made to keep the code clean and disallow tainted developers. (that's why I wrote the comment above, to warn others) You can read a short summary on Wikipedia: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReactOS#Internal_audit](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReactOS#Internal_audit)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> We are using Xv6 in my OS class this semester and have had some pretty fun and interesting assignments. We started off with learning how system calls and traps work by adding our own system calls to the existing system. The next assignment was to implement a signal system with support for user signal handlers. Our current assignment is to implement a user level thread library followed by kernel level threads in a few weeks. Working with Xv6 has been a real pleasure.

<comment><USER4> I'm in your class!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The discussion from a hundred days ago has some useful information: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6971127](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6971127)

</comment><comment><USER6> Straight to the meat: [http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2012/xv6.html](http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2012/xv6.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> I really like this, when I'm done with trying to create a JIT compiler I think I'll move on to building a mini-OS in my spare time. I'm sure this combined with this [1] will be a great course unto itself.

[1] [http://samypesse.github.io/How-to-Make-a-Computer- Operating-...](http://samypesse.github.io/How-to-Make-a-Computer-Operating- System/)

<comment><USER8> I would post this too, it is nice concepts, but it seems stopped, at the most important place, process managment. It would be very nice to complete it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> As crazy as its author may be, I think ParrotOS/SparrowOS/whatever it's named now would also make for some interesting studying for those more interested in embedded systems.

<comment><USER10> All comment on the author aside, that operating system makes a number of highly unusual design decisions that make it a poor candidate for this type of study. In particular, it makes almost no use of the MMU - all memory is identity mapped (physical address = virtual address), and all code runs in ring 0. This makes it impossible to implement a number of really basic OS features, such as virtual memory.

<comment><USER9> A lot of embedded systems don't need an MMU nor VM. That's why other OSs like uClinux exist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The linux kernel is very complex and its become harder to explore and figure out what is going on. This seems to be the right size.

Is minix still kicking around? I thought that was the teaching Kernel.

For looking at linux, they put all the redhat source online via LXR. Its online, but you should install your own on your own lini install.

[http://src3.org/#RHEL6-2.6.32+220.el6/kernel/](http://src3.org/#RHEL6-2.6.32+220.el6/kernel/)

<comment><USER12> > Is minix still kicking around? I thought that was the teaching Kernel

Surely yes, since version 3.0 it got some commercial and EU funding and migrated to NetBSD userland.

Minix is enjoying the fact that it isn't 1992 any longer and there are quite a few micro-kernel OS systems to choose from.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am a MsC student & teaching assitant of Operating Systems course and we are considering using Xv6 for more realistic assignments. Right now we give assignments like make a simulator of proces scheduler, it would be much better if they make a real process scheduler under this.

</comment><comment><USER13> In my OS course (both as an undergrad and later as a teaching assistant) we used Xinu [1] which seemed to work well.

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

</comment><comment><USER14> Does xv6 run any programs like a C compiler or text editor? Shell? Curious if can compile itself. I looked around and couldn't find any info that.

</comment><comment><USER15> I wonder, when computers eventually become 1,000, or better, a 1,000,000 times faster than they are today. Will all these complex algorithms to squeeze out every last drop of performance still be desirable?

<comment><USER16> It's probably safe to say people have been wondering that for decades.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I am sure its good and all but it doesn't end in "nix"</comment>


This is why I respect Patagonia - <AUTHOR> http://www.patagonia.com/blog/2017/01/the-outdoor-industry-loves-utah-does-utah-love-the-outdoor-industry/ <comment><USER2> Original title: "The Outdoor Industry Loves Utah; Does Utah Love the Outdoor Industry?"</comment>


Ask HN: Best Centralized Backup Solution - <AUTHOR> What is best free software for managing and scheduling backup procedure of folders/databases in many clients? I want a centralized system that have fine-grained schedule and can show backup status of folders and databases in different clients. It's better to have plugins for supporting backup using different kinds of tools like PostgreSQL(pg_dump), MySQL, Redis, SSH ,... . Backups can be stored on different places like S3, Dropbox and local folders. <comment><USER2> ZFS snapshots!... I _wanted_ to use "rsync.net" for this, they use FreeBSD with ZFS snapshots in a jail, the idea is that you get your stuff onto the account however you like over SSH (i.e rsync), then the snapshots serve two purposes: snapshots through time, and read only access incase you get 0wned.

I couldn't use rsync.net though because all it's datacenters are outside of EEA, i'm currently looking into doing this myself on a simple VPS, ZFS for linux has matured quite well it seems. I'm a bit new to doing chroot jails on linux but the ZFS snapshot part is very easy if that's enough for you.

        apt install zfsutils-linux

It's pretty trivial to make a pool put it in a user directory and then make snapshots... you could easily make a script to do schedule the snapshots, or there are at least two tools already around to schedule this for you via either cron or systemd timers: zfsnap or zfs-auto-snapshot respectively.

RE databases, with some extra work you could also use ZFS on the source server and take a snapshot of the database (once you invoke the correct commands to lock it), rather than do a dump, this would be very fast because it prevents the duplication of a dump, and therefor could be done much more frequently, you however have the additional complexity of then syncing the snapshot to another servers ZFS pool, although there are tools for this I haven't bothered going this far.

<comment><USER3> > I couldn't use rsync.net though because all it's datacenters are outside of > EEA

Honestly curious, what's wrong with Switzerland? It's not technically in the EEA but it's part of EFTA and the single-market so has to meet the same requirements as an EEA country.

<comment><USER2> You are absolutely correct, this is essentially for meeting GDPR requirements and Switzerland (as far as I can tell) is under the same legal requirements in that regard despite not being in the EEA.

The problem is our customers are not end-users, they have their own policies and a significant number of them have a much more rigid interpretation of GDPR data storage rules which we've been forced to integrate into our own. This is one of the many problems of overreach due to the fear that GDPR creates IMO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> BackupPC is the best one: [https://backuppc.github.io/backuppc/](https://backuppc.github.io/backuppc/)

You get every professional features out of the box (full/inc backups, deduplication, compression...) & everything is automated.

<comment><USER5> No idea why this was downvoted. I don't have recent experience setting up something like this but 10 years ago BackupPC was the answer, and I guess it is still good.

Does anyone have a different experience?

<comment><USER6> > No idea why this was downvoted

Perl?

<comment><USER7> How can you downvote a reply?

<comment><USER8> You need a minimum karma, 500, I believe.

<comment><USER9> It's 501 for some reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think you're looking more for the "scheduling, managing pull from different clients" than the ability to backup to S3, Dropbox, local folder etc.

There are plenty of software projects to choose from for the latter. Borgbackup, Restic, Plain old NFSv3 and rsync, Tarsnap, Backblaze B2 etc.

I simply use a combination of Cron, rsync and Ansible to make backups to our central NAS, and that central NAS is mirrored to our off site NAS (with extensive snapshots and tape backups).

I had to use Netbackup for the Tape system which does everything you listed - managing and scheduling backup procedure in "clients" and does fine-grained schedule, show backup status etc. But, I HATE that thing with all my gut. It is one complicated pile of crap that I have to fight all the time to make it write to the damn tapes. Nothing like plain old simple Unix tools.

<comment><USER11> and if rsync doesn't quite work for what you need/a target you want to use, rclone is always an option as well

[https://rclone.org/](https://rclone.org/)

<comment><USER10> Yes, but, I have used rclone via Restic which encompasses more functionality I think. compression, deduplication, encryption etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Self promotion ahead: I worked on a SaaS product to backup databases on S3 called DBacked. After some time I decided to open-source most of it. It's not made to backup files, only databases. You can look at the open-source project here: [https://github.com/dbacked/agent](https://github.com/dbacked/agent) and the SaaS product here: [https://dbacked.com/](https://dbacked.com/)

<comment><USER13> Looks cool!

Though for DB's i like to have near realtime backups. Like barman ( [https://www.pgbarman.org](https://www.pgbarman.org) ) does for PostgreSQL or Ottomatic ( [https://ottomatik.io/](https://ottomatik.io/) ) for MySQL. Both work with the similar principal of taking a full backup (pgdump, mysqldump, etc.) and then to stream logs (WAL in case of pgsql and binlogs in case of MySQL). These logs allow you to roll forward your full back to a certain point in time. Since the logs are streamed realtime you have a near realtime backup with point in time recovery.

I don't know of an open source alternative for ottomatik BTW. So if anyone knows one...

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I like [https://www.urbackup.org](https://www.urbackup.org) for Windows boxes. Does incremental file and image backups. Next system for the Linux world will most likely be [https://restic.net](https://restic.net) with a rclone backend that saves to B2. Idea is to have an append-only service that is safe from ransomware deleting backups for extortion purposes.

</comment><comment><USER15> I recommend everyone to read The Tao of Backup. It's a lovely but smart writeup concerning seven most crucial aspects of backup.

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

</comment><comment><USER16> I like using syncthing to sync to file to another (sometimes multiple) location and the use restic ([https://restic.net/](https://restic.net/) :)

<comment><USER17> I tried synching but it didn't seem very reliable, I had to restart it regularly to keep things in sync. In the end I gave up and moved back to DropBox.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> For the second part of your requirement - supporting different backup providers - I'm a huge fan of rclone: [https://rclone.org](https://rclone.org)

</comment><comment><USER19> I like to rsync into a BTRFS volume, and then take a snapshot.

It's simple, fine-grained (you can use .rsyncignore files like .gitignore files) and versioned.

<comment><USER20> Why do you choose not to use Btrfs' send and receive commands? They do what rsync does, a bit more efficiently, unless I am missing something.

[http://marc.merlins.org/perso/btrfs/post_2014-03-22_Btrfs- Ti...](http://marc.merlins.org/perso/btrfs/post_2014-03-22_Btrfs-Tips_-Doing- Fast-Incremental-Backups-With-Btrfs-Send-and-Receive.html)

<comment><USER21> In addition to what has already been said, the last time i used btrfs in this manner the protocol had issues with some extended attributes which happened to manifest in issues on binaries which lets them gain additional capabilities[0] for example. Most notably this made iputils ping[1] utility unusable after branching of a previously made snapshot for further usage. This appears not to be a too common thing in other distributions but in arch the ping utility uses CAP_NET_RAWIO capability in order to avoid the need to use setuid which appears to be more common elsewhere. None the less i think that is something one would want to know the consequences of as i am sure there are quite a few more binaries with extended capabilities set in the extended attributes of its file or use them in another manner like security labels for SELinux. I just rechecked if this is still the case and found this patch[2] but i am not sure this has already landed.

[0] [https://linux.die.net/man/7/capabilities](https://linux.die.net/man/7/capabilities)

[1] [https://linux.die.net/man/8/ping](https://linux.die.net/man/8/ping)

[2] [https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/10388011/](https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/10388011/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> There's a lot of good descriptions in this book:

Backup & Recovery - Inexpensive Backup Solutions for Open Systems

[https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/backup- recovery/0596102...](https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/backup- recovery/0596102461/)

It's from 2009, but going through the comments here it seems not much has changed. It will help you choose the right tools, and with many of the open source ones, configure them.

</comment><comment><USER23> I personally use Bacula: [https://www.baculasystems.com/](https://www.baculasystems.com/)

But in truth, it's a bit complex to setup. You have 3 daemons (agent, director and storage) each with its configuration.

This configuration files must match exactly (a bit like a nagios configuration) ([http://www.bacula.org/2.4.x-manuals/en/main/Conf- Diagram.png](http://www.bacula.org/2.4.x-manuals/en/main/Conf-Diagram.png)).

Adding SSL is also a bit annoying, as there are many moving parts.

But once setup, it works quite well and bconsole is nice.

It's also quite easy to install since it's already available in most distributions.

You can set backup policies on a per job basis, do full, incremental and differential backups, you can also set a pre and post backup scripts as well as do the same for restorations. It is quite comprehensive albeit a bit complex.

At home, I use it with an old LTO-1 tape recorder/bank (IBM 3581-H17) repaired with pieces of bicycle tube (I find this kind of robots fascinating, a bit anachronistic in our age, but still relevant).

In the end, I'm not sure if I will recommend it, but it's definitely a viable option.

</comment><comment><USER24> I've been playing with Keybase for backups. It's neat because you don't need to deal with any proprietary APIs or scripts (but you do have to install Keybase). The backups are encrypted and can be accessed from another device as well either through your own account or as part of a Keybase Team. For now you get 250 gigs free storage.

</comment><comment><USER25> I started using Backblaze B2 on servers for storing database backups and so far it's been great.

Now I wonder if `b2 sync` is a good candidate for more traditional desktop backups (documents, lots of photos...). Does anyone have feedback on it?

<comment><USER26> B2 can't do simple things like move or copy,[1] so in my opinion it's really bad for those kinds of applications. For example, if you move a 5GB video file, you shouldn't have to delete+re-upload the entire thing just to change the path.

[1]: [https://github.com/Backblaze/B2_Command_Line_Tool/issues/525](https://github.com/Backblaze/B2_Command_Line_Tool/issues/525)

<comment><USER27> Using a file storage service like B2 or S3 as a file system is a bad idea anyway. You won't be able to use features such as deduplication and incremental backup.

It's better to use an external tool such as Restic or Duplicacy. So moving 5GB file is just a matter of changing a few KB index file.

<comment><USER26> Depends what you're backing up IMO.

In the case of my home video and pictures, I have terabytes of data that is largely unique+incompressible so the "dedupe" step on every backup program I've used so far takes a ridiculously long time and yields approximately zero space savings.

Incremental backup I also don't care about because `s3 sync` already only syncs what changed, and I don't care about restoring to previous versions because I want it to be an append-only store, which S3 versioning gives me.

I also need it to be simple for my family to recover data from in case I die suddenly, so I don't want them to have to decode some binary format to get at our pictures and video.

<comment><USER27> Makes sense. I wasn't think about all this use case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> rdiff-backup works like magic. I love it.

It's a command line tool that does all stuff related to backup perfectly. It's in the Debian repos.

It synces a given directory to a backup directory with an additional dir for metadata and history. It's super fast, even over the wire. It seems to achieve this by only sending the changed parts of files. I wonder if it also uses compression?

You can always change your directory back to any state you backed it up.

It has tons of nice features for checking the integrity of the backup, recovering single files from a given point of time etc.

Did I mention how much I love it?

</comment><comment><USER29> Gitlab is surprisingly good for that. I keep backup schedules in it executed as CI pipelines. Gitlab runner executes my ansible custom code in docker container using image prepared for that purpose.

<comment><USER30> Thanks for sharing the feedback with the community. We are glad to hear how GitLab helps you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> The backup hosting service ([https://www.borgbase.com/](https://www.borgbase.com/)) I'm building for BorgBackup will show you the last backup of all repositories in one place. It will also alert you on missed backups.

For backing up databases, you'd need to install small packages, like `automysqlbackup`. We already provide an Ansible role for setting up automatic backups, which could be extended to apply your schedule or add "plugins".

</comment><comment><USER32> _burp_ ([https://burp.grke.org/](https://burp.grke.org/)) comes to mind, as well. Windows and UNIX-like only, no macOS.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h "For Mac users, burp is available in Homebrew. See the quick start page for more information." \- [https://burp.grke.org/download.html](https://burp.grke.org/download.html)

Also, I can't imagine how something could be for Unix-likes and not target Mac OS, since it is literally a certified Unix.

<comment><USER33> If it is targeting UNIX then it must work on Mac. Echoing your words, UNIX has stringent requirements to be UNIX and macOS fulfilled those requirements.

MacOS IS UNIX.

As a side note for fun, Linux is not UNIX and that's intentional. Freedom is nice. ;)

<comment><USER34> > Linux is not UNIX and that's intentional

Isn't that the recursive acronym itself? :)

<comment><USER33> Exactly!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'm currently using duplicacy and it works pretty good as far as my workload goes, has someone also tried rclone and could draw a quick comparison?

</comment><comment><USER36> [https://www.reddit.com/r/backup](https://www.reddit.com/r/backup)

</comment><comment><USER37> Unison is good for syncing between 2 locations. Personally I would treat DB's and other files differently.

</comment><comment><USER38> restic with s3 back-end

</comment><comment><USER39> borgbackup.

</comment><comment><USER40> Using RDS seems like a best option.

Many startups use it, and i think backup is also easy.

<comment><USER32> He didn't say, he's using AWS. Or did you mean something different?

<comment><USER40> He can migrate to AWS.

Managing database backup manually when there is something like RDS and now RDS serverless seems like a lost cause.

<comment><USER41> Unfortunately not everyone can migrate to AWS, and not everyone would want to either.

There are plenty of reasons companies still host everything on their own servers, and can't/don't want to move their infrastructure to a cloud service.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Letters Helped Challenger Shuttle Engineer Shed 30 Years of Guilt - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/02/25/466555217/your-letters-helped-challenger-shuttle-engineer-shed-30-years-of-guilt <comment><USER2> What I concluded from the short but quite touching article:

Speak out if you see something wrong, no matter what the profession.

Speak out with a passion.

Because not doing so will end in traumatizing guilt, which Mr. Ebeling was fighting with for so long, despite doing so.

The fantastic quote by Charlie Bolden:

"We honor [the Challenger astronauts] not through bearing the burden of their loss, but by constantly reminding each other to remain vigilant," the statement read. "And to listen to those like Mr. Ebeling who have the courage to speak up so that our astronauts can safely carry out their missions."

<comment><USER3> That's a weird lesson to learn from a story about a guy who spoke out and still carried that guilt. It seems more like a lesson of "win the argument or you will be traumatized"?

<comment><USER4> There's a lot of variations on "it's better to have loved", and this is one of them. You're more likely to regret not doing something than doing it with good intent and sound reason.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a beautiful outcome. I remember reading the original story and thinking that it was incredibly sad that he's holding that guilt, after doing all that he could do to prevent the disaster he saw coming.

The statement from Bolden is particularly meaningful. Nobody can speak for the people who died on the flight, but as a contemporary colleague he can reflect on what they may have thought, as astronauts and test pilots.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm glad to see Bob finally able to find peace. Just the step of coming forward and talking about Challenger was huge; the outpouring of love and kindness from all corners of the globe is incredible.

(I've known him for about ten years -- he attends a small church in Brigham City where my father-in-law is the pastor. From what I understand, even most of his closest friends had no idea.)

</comment><comment><USER7> The radio interview was crushingly sad, listening in the car to that old guy blame himself. It was one of the saddest things I have heard in a while.

</comment><comment><USER8> The story behind the space shuttle is very interesting. Some of the early designs were really cool [http://io9.gizmodo.com/early-design-specs-show-the- space-shu...](http://io9.gizmodo.com/early-design-specs-show-the-space- shuttle-could-have-be-1528524224) The real issue in my view, is not Bob's fault (obviously) but politics.

Although this is maybe bit off topic, From [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_design_process](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_design_process) "While NASA would likely have chosen liquid boosters had it complete control over the design, the Office of Management and Budget insisted on less expensive solid boosters due to their lower projected development costs"

The real issue was that it had to be built large enough to carry military payloads or else congress would not fund it. That really forced a lot of terrible design compromises.

I would tell Bob to not feel guilty, the ones that need to feel guilty are the politicians and OMB people who boxed the engineers into a corner.

It will be interesting to see if the private sector who is taking a lot of this development over will be safer.

Just my 2 cents.

</comment><comment><USER9> Related: If you haven't read Edward Tufte's take down of the PowerPoint slides from the Challenger test data, I highly recommend checking it out: [http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch- msg?msg_id=0...](http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch- msg?msg_id=0001yB)

<comment><USER10> Tufte's analysis covers the Columbia disaster in 2003.

<comment><USER11> A quick Google search turned up this excerpt of his analysis of the Challenger disaster (beginning on page 14).

[https://blogs.stockton.edu/hist4690/files/2012/06/Edward- Tuf...](https://blogs.stockton.edu/hist4690/files/2012/06/Edward-Tufte-Visual- and-Statistical-Thinking.pdf)

<comment><USER9> Yes, this is what I meant to reference. Thanks.

<comment><USER10> Ah, ok, Tufte also released an analysis of the PowerPoint decks analyzing the Columbia tile problems.

[http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/powerpoint](http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/powerpoint)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is relevant and well worth the time: [http://www.viruscomix.com/page588.html](http://www.viruscomix.com/page588.html)

</comment><comment><USER13> Great article.

Doesn't Musk/Space-X now review any launch if _anyone_ has a concern? What does NASA now do?

<comment><USER14> NASA doesn't launch anything because there's a concern that it'll steal resources from exciting new ways of killing people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Excuse me, but as a Sr. Engineer, the Thiokol engineers should go to the grave feeling guilty.

Those graphs are an embarrassment ... they certainly collected far more data than depicted there.

And there should have been pre-launch documentation of what the acceptable minimum operating temperature. Do you really think that any of the shuttle parts were mfg. without temp and vibration data?

<comment><USER16> _Excuse me, but as a Sr. Engineer, the Thiokol engineers should go to the grave feeling guilty._

I think you're right they should feel guilty, not because they didn't argue hard enough to stop the launch, but for knowingly allowing a flawed SRB design to stay in service for so long. It was a well-known fact that the o-ring design was flawed, even before the first shuttle launched. In several launches, the joints in the SRB flared out, causing leaks, but luckily the o-ring slipped out of its groove and sealed the joint. This was not part of the design, but they change the spec to account for this unintended effect.

This is why they should feel guilty. Instead of fixing the flaw, they counted on a Rube Goldberg-like sequence of events to fix it.

<comment><USER17> Indeed, o-rings are supposed to seal on compression, not expansion, and when it turned out in the field that these joins flexed enough to require sealing under the latter they should have been revised.

But, hey, the shuttles didn't blow up prior to Challenger, and certainly nothing short of a catastrophe would have motivated NASA to pay for such an expensive undertaking, there was no "allow a flawed SRB design to stay in service", that wasn't their decision, as show in the meetings before the fateful launch. As it was, the SRBs were hacks designed to decrease development costs vs. safety or cost in operation.

<comment><USER16> You're right it was a budget decision made by NASA, but the engineers should have stressed the point long before Jan 28, 1986.

I think the term for that is normalization of variance. If my buddy has driven drunk many times and not killed anyone, then he can drive drunk tonight and not kill anyone. Except tonight he drives drunk and kill 7 people. The sin here is in letting someone amass a history of drunk driving incidents.

The issue I think wasn't raised was that all the successful launches before Challenger were outliers...the engineers knew it and instead of raising the issue early and saying the o ring implementation was effectively duct tape, they changed the spec to allow for extrusion and slipping of the o ring.

In fact, on the day of Challenger's fateful launch, Thiokol engineers were relieved, and even congratulated each other that the shuttle even made it off the launchpad. Despite the expansion in the joint, and o ring failure, aluminum oxides filled the joint, sealing it. If not for abnormally strong wind shear, this seal might have held, and the disaster might not have happened. In this alternate timeline, would Thiokol and NASA have ever addressed the issue?

<comment><USER18> > the engineers should have stressed the point long before Jan 28, 1986.

They did. They argued that the booster was unsafe at any temperature, but were overruled when NASA demanded proof that it was _un_ safe - a clear inversion of the correct burden of proof. It was the breakdown in the safety culture at NASA that led to this inversion, and not anything that anyone at Thiokol did or didn't do, that was the root cause of the accident. That made _some_ sort of catastrophic failure almost inevitable.

Having lost this battle, the engineers were left the night before the launch to argue on much narrower grounds, and with an extreme paucity of data, that the launch was unsafe at the prevailing temperature even if it wasn't at a more usual temperature. (Even today it's not clear to me how big this effect was - remember that the expansion rate of the O-ring was insufficient to deal with the opening rate of the joint at _any_ temperature.) Once again they were overruled, and the rest is history.

It's possible to argue that the engineers should have brought all the data they had to bear and attempted to relitigate the safety of the entire booster design the night before the launch. (I think Tufte's case in _Visual Explanations_ basically boils down to this.) But it's not at all clear that this would have been successful, or even permitted.

You're correct that _Challenger_ would likely have escaped but for the windshear. I'm almost certain, however, that recovery of a booster with the _entire_ O-ring burned through for the first time would have have prompted some kind of action. Whether that would have lead to a complete redesign or just launch temperature restrictions that would have only delayed rather than prevented a catastrophic failure, we'll never know.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Vatican's Latinist - <AUTHOR> http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/The-Vatican-s-Latinist-8618 <comment><USER2> Perhaps revealing my own biases: it's so unexpected to find such a radical, irreverent, warm teacher as head Latinist of the Vatican, where one might expect to find the most rigid and staid of people. The quotes about and from him are great:

> "Sacred language?" he said when asked about Latin as the "sacred language" > of the church. "In the first century every prostitute in Rome spoke it > fluently—and much better than most people in the Roman Curia."

And on his pedagogy:

> What was it that was so revolutionary in Foster's approach? Some sense of > what the experience was like can be found in his new book, the Ossa > Latinitatis. The book is divided not into chapters or lessons but > "experiences" and "encounters." The language is significant. Foster's method > was primarily to be present in the room when exposing students to real > Latin. He would settle on one particular thing he wanted students to look > for, cold-call, and then correct mistakes publicly. About this method he > said, "You don't need a hydrology course to learn to swim. You don't point > at the water and say, 'This is water, this is how water works.' you just > throw the babies in."...

> Foster's method put back together what language courses generally separate: > the experience of learning a language and the cultural value of knowing it.

I think a lot of programming and computer science education has moved in this direction, but it's notable that Foster isn't just throwing the babies in to make todo list apps -- they're reading the erudite giants of two millennia of Latin literature. What would a "Great Works" version of a programing or computer science curriculum look like?

(Comment disclaimer: I'm a classmate and friend of the author, a remarkable man in his own right; a Princeton graduate and fluent Latin speaker who lives with his family in a cabin without running water or electricity.)

<comment><USER3> I have to wonder about this teaching method of his. It sounds like one of those terribly demanding programs that is just wonderful with the best teachers and the most serious and motivated students, but falls flat with the ordinary and the reluctant.

<comment><USER4> Absolutely: the "application" process wasn't about proving your level; it was 90% about weeding out potential students who didn't want to go all in on the course, kids who thought it would be cool to have college/parents pay for a summer vacation in Rome and wanted to dip in and out of class when they felt like it. He had very little patience for "the reluctant." What were they doing in a completely voluntary, free-of-charge, no-credit, out-of-term advanced Latin course? I was so so happy to be in a class where you could count on all the students to be motivated and engaged.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I went through Reggie's summer course in Rome for the first time in 1998. Totally free of charge, you took care of your own housing and feeding, just show up for class every afternoon, no slacking. It was an awesome experience, both in terms of pedagogy - everyone expected to participate orally, class really about reading and sight-reading Latin from many centuries, very technical in a pragmatic way rather than scholarly - and in seeing just how humble and down-to-earth the head Latinist of the Vatican really was. A real blue-collar "no gods no masters" old-school Milwaukee guy whom you'd expect to find at the Communists Local 282 chapter meeting in a community center basement rather than a monastery on one of the hills of Rome. Shows just how damn good he was that he got to the position he was in all the while thumbing his nose at the formality and insane bureaucracy of the papal curia.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for sharing your experience. Were you in Rome specifically to enroll in this summer course? How much latin experience did you already have before you started?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was so piqued by this article I wanted to see a video of him and found this amazing one of Foster talking to Bill Maher.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExElEMpJN3M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExElEMpJN3M)

Really enjoyable!

<comment><USER4> Sweet! Here's a more extended local news "human interest" story about his teaching back in Milwaukee:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inQ6CWx7V2c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inQ6CWx7V2c)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Very interesting article. Thanks for posting.

</comment><comment><USER8> > _every prostitute_

In the first century, the Latin that was spoken in the streets of Rome (the Vulgar Latin) was very different from the literary Latin used in books, speeches, and other kinds of formal writing - which is what one learns from today's textbooks. (The same was true for Greek and also for languages of many, if not all, other "civilized" communities of the time; it is still true for some of the languages spoken today.)

[Edit: Sorry for the misplaced comment.]

</comment><comment><USER9> Notes from Fr. Foster's course (First and Third experience only, because the second was an immersion speaking experience I believe)

have for some time been available at this site:

[http://frcoulter.com/latin/](http://frcoulter.com/latin/)

</comment><comment><USER5> For someone who is interested in learning Latin on their own, what is a good resource?

The article specifically mentions that Fr. Foster's book is ill-suited to self learners and is more appropriate for a classroom setting.

<comment><USER10> If you are interested in the "Living Latin" as a spoken language as Foster teaches, you can't really do that on your own. But really, most people interested in Latin aren't really interested in that but really just want to read Latin. And you certainly can do that on your own. There are lots of textbooks, but probably the most popular is Wheelock's Latin which has the advantage that if you don't understand a particular exercise, you'll have no problem finding someone to explain it to you on the Net.

<comment><USER11> The Oxford Latin Course is a good standard college-level introduction. There is also Lingua Latina if you want to go full immersion.

<comment><USER5> Is Lingua Latina appropriate for self-learners?

<comment><USER12> We've used it with our home-educated high schoolers (though with tutors), and it's also used at the International Theological Institute in Vienna, where some of our kids go. Seems like a good program.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>