The risks and benefits of sun exposure (2016) - def- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5129901/ <comment> def- > The principal identified non-genetic risk factor is ultraviolet radiation > (UVR) exposure, and the relationship between melanoma and UVR is 2-sided: > non-burning sun exposure is associated with a reduced risk of melanoma, > while sunburns are associated with a doubling of the risk of melanoma. It > has long been observed that outdoor workers have a lower incidence of > melanoma than indoor workers.

> The prevalence of vitamin D insufficiency (defined as 25(OH)D less than 30 > ng/mL) was found to be 69.5% for the United States and 86.4% for Europe. The > authors further estimate that 9.4% of all deaths in Europe and 12.8% in the > United States could be attributable to vitamin D insufficiency.

> Lindqvist et al. 2016 found that women with active sun exposure habits were > mainly at lower risk of cardiovascular disease mortality and other non- > cancer mortality, and noted that avoidance of sun exposure is a risk factor > for death of a similar magnitude as smoking. "Our finding that avoidance of > sun exposure was a risk factor for all-cause death of the same magnitude as > smoking is novel."</comment>


Big Oil Companies Should Adopt a Self-Liquidation Strategy - <AUTHOR> https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/marginal-pricing-end-of-western-oil-producers-by-anatole-kaletsky-2015-12 <comment><USER3> The article ignores some realities. 1) The major OPEC producers need to recover far more than their lifting costs. Their oil revenues subsidize the rest of the economy and is their bulwark of social stability. Some estimate that Saudi Arabia needs $90/bbl. 2) Technological adaptation to the low price regime is happening as we speak. The years of $100/bbl oil developed expensive innovations, and now we are seeing _those_ prices reduced to their marginal costs. 3) Almost no other country can use these new technologies as profitably as the US and Canada can. The US and Canada have a private mineral ownership regime, as well as a production and refinement infrastructure no other country will be able to match soon.

The US has a LOT of small- and intermediate-sized oil companies competing actively right now, on all these dimensions, to lower their costs so they can continue to operate profitably even in the current price environment. Most are succeeding.

<comment><USER4> The break even price is estimated at current pumping rate vs gross profit; but Saudi Arabia can relatively easily increase their pumping rate. The cash cost for the Saudis per barrel is sub $5. So they can up their production rate to handle the difference; they are incentivised to do so if they truly believe that their reserves will become a stranded asset.

In contrast after running and royalties cash costs in the US are up towards $30/bbl and Canadian oil sands towards $40/bbl. But, the size of wells using these technologies are smaller. And, those wells cost more to discover, and tap. This means US / Canadian oil is more affected by marginal cost, both in terms of price flexibility and liquidity (both cash and oil).

And the biggest threat, in the medium term, to oil prices is some of the range of alternative energy sources. Solar costs are coming down quite rapidly. Wind is coming down but more slowly (a chunk of this is in real rather than nominal terms; depending on currency). And nuclear in time will probably come down if increasing investment leads to predicted efficiency gains.

Oil isn't going to disappear overnight, but it does have a bordering on existential threat in the medium term. The only largely protected part of this market I can see here is large scale transportation, i.e. sea and air transport.

<comment><USER5> Oil, even at current prices, is significantly more expensive than natural gas and coal for generating electricity. Apart from remote communities oil isn't really used to generate electricity. Oil is valuable because of gasoline. Solar/Wind/Nuclear are competing in a completely different market.

The real threat to the medium/long term value of oil is a good battery.

<comment><USER6> It's a problem to consider these separate. All energy and certainly all carbon fuels are fungible to a degree. Oil is easier to transport and bottle. Gas is more location and infrastructure dependant.

If Gas prices rise or oil prices drop, we'll use oil for electricity generation too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It feels like the author hasn't read The Innovator's Dilemma.

In it, the author talks about a number of "stable" industries that had existing product lines with the R&D, customers, and sales processes to back them up. They were so invested in those structures that as innovations in their industry came along, they missed the innovations. It wasn't because those innovations were bad - many were great - but they didn't fulfill their existing customers' requirements. And so instead of trying to develop new markets (hard!), they ignored the innovations.

As a result, new entrants - without the cash cows to worry about - <USER2> those innovations in new areas, building new markets. As those new products caught up with the requirements of the older products, those old customers switched to the new products.

I think the next great innovations in energy aren't going to come from the oil companies.

It's nothing nefarious, just the simple realization that most of their customers can't use [choose: solar, wind, nuclear, etc] for a variety of reasons. As those other energy sources change, improve, and simplify, those customers may be able to change but we should be looking for the new entrants building the new markets first.

<comment><USER8> It seemed like he understood that to me. This quote basically covers it:

> Yet, as one BP director replied when I asked why his company continued to > risk deep-water drilling, instead of investing in alternative energy: "We > are a drilling business, and that is our expertise. Why should we spend our > time and money competing in new technology with General Electric or > Toshiba?"

I think that's why the primary argument is that they should cease R&D entirely and just distribute profits to shareholders until they run out.

<comment><USER9> The argument being made is really Levitt's marketing myopia argument which at least used to appear in pretty much every Marketing 101 course. [1] The argument is that you should define yourself as a transportation company rather than a railroad (or an energy company instead of an oil company).

The problem with this argument is that it doesn't always apply very well. Yes, Kodak had distribution channels for photographs. But very little about the company gave it any particular advantage for digital photography from a technology perspective.

Somewhat ironically, Fujifilm--notwithstanding some recent success in relatively niche camera products--has largely weathered the post-film era by applying its technology to medical products and the like.

[1] [http://academy.clevelandclinic.org/Portals/40/LHC%20Myopia.p...](http://academy.clevelandclinic.org/Portals/40/LHC%20Myopia.pdf)

<comment><USER10> _Yes, Kodak had distribution channels for photographs. But very little about the company gave it any particular advantage for digital photography from a technology perspective._

Yet they completely owned the pro digital camera space in the early 90s. Their problem was that they chose not to build on this lead since they didn't want to cannibalize their more profitable film business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The author should have done some basic fact checking.

From the article:

> "more sophisticated than nineteenth-century "nodding donkeys.""

That type of fields are getting rare. EOR [1] techniques are being applied everywhere. Although, AFAIK, some countries, such as Venezuela are somewhat backwards in their application of EOR. They wanted to nationalize oil fields and not invest in them, and look what happened.

> new technologies such as hydraulic fracturing ("fracking")

Fracking [2] is now 40 years old "new" technology. The only reason it became popular in last 10 years was high oil prices.

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

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

<comment><USER12> Well let's be clear.

1\. What he said was true about nodding donkeys. OPEC countries are starting to use EOR, but most of their fields do not require it. Some countries like Saudi Arablia do have heavy oil and they are starting to invest in these areas, but that does not invalidate the authors point - that the U.S./Canada can help with that shift.

2\. re: fracking being new. almost all reporting calls fracking "new", but they really are referring to the new form of fracking where it's done horizontally through shale. It's a minor misconception that can be forgiven considering the intent is really "new fracking technology".

Edit: here's a good video showing horizontal fracking -> [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O0kmskvJFt0](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O0kmskvJFt0)

<comment><USER11> 1\. 19th century well implies at most a few hundred feet depths. There just aren't spots left on earth where such a well would still yield meaningful amounts of oil.

2\. Principal driver behind those horizontal wells is money. Those wells cost 2-3x more to complete. Horizontal tech has advanced, but in the end that advancement has been dollar driven. Expensive oil made it economical.

<comment><USER12> The distinction being made is in the technology required for OPEC wells. Conventional oil fields (most OPEC Wells) require the same tech that 19th century wells did. Just because you go a little deeper doesn't change the tech.

I agree oil price played a major role in developing horizontal tech, but it's become more about the cost being driven down and is why the U.S. is still doing it at $35 a barrel (which is, on a relative basis, the same as 10+ years ago). Either way I don't think your point #2 works against anything I've mentioned.

<comment><USER11> > is still doing it at $35 a barrel

They'd still be doing it at _any_ loss figure above operational costs to maintain cash flow. The cost to drill the well is already sunk. So it makes sense to operate the well at heavy loss. Some money is better than no money.

> Either way I don't think your point #2 works against anything I've > mentioned.

My point was the economic reasons were why horizontal drilling became feasible. It could have been done in the eighties if oil prices were high enough back then.

<comment><USER12> The cost to drill a well is not sunk when they haven't drilled the well yet.

Well some companies are in fact drilling wells at a loss, but only because they have to pay bills while they pray for oil prices return and potentially survive this supposed rough patch. However, that says more about their debt situation than it does the cost of horizontal drilling.

Bottom line is that some companies are in fact making a profit drilling horizontal shale wells @ $35 barrel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't know anything about oil, but it seems unrealistic to claim to be able to predict markets. Liquidating all your reserves at current price is unlikely to be seen as a wise move. (And wouldn't selling more oil than the US uses annually impact prices somehow?)

If you magically had knowledge of the range of prices over 10+ years you could do all sorts of money making things.

Edit: Looked into this a bit. Futures on oil 2 years out are already over $50. So "the market" is far less certain then the author. I'd also imagine quite a bit of damage to oil producers if the price stays low. After they shut down, why wouldn't the price rise?

<comment><USER14> > I don't know anything about oil, but it seems unrealistic to claim to be > able to predict markets.

The author's position is less about predicting markets than it is about "if you're operating a horse & buggy business in 1885, you're best off winding it up". The debate here seems to be about whether 'today' is 1885 or 1855 or 1825, so to speak.

<comment><USER15> Eh, I would argue that it's different from buggy whips, because there is a (somewhat) limited supply of oil.

The idea being that if it turns out you are off by a few years (or a few hundred years) in the buggy whip vs. car situation, and buggy whips are a thing for a while longer, well, it's not that hard to ramp up buggy whip production. I mean, you've got some training effort, sure, but there are more buggy whips to be made.

The idea is that oil is different, simply because there's only so much of it. If it turns out you planned wrong and have to come up with a few more year's worth of oil, and you are out? yeah, you have a serious problem.

As an aside, the hole in my argument is what was shown by oil shale. There is a _lot_ more oil available at $100 a barrel than there is available at $20 a barrel. but the point is that at some point, we'll actually run out of the stuff, and even before then, we won't be able to make more oil the same way we had made more oil in the past; to get more oil, periodically, you need to come up with new ways of getting oil, usually at great expense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The article is calling for a "sell low" strategy [0]. The author is mistaking low oil prices as from lack of demand. This is part of the story, but a small part. The major factor is high supply, mainly from Saudi Arabia [1]. The motive is not entirely clear. Most think its a fight for market share, with Saudi hoping Russia, Venezuela, US fracking, Canadian oil sands, or other middle east players blinking before the Saudi's.

They are probably right, that other players have high expenses, less cash on hand, and will have to fold first. Certainly US shale is hurting, and practically no new oil sand projects are starting in Canada. In fact, this probably signals a good time to _buy_ new assets, for companies prepare for this.

What I think Saudi/ OPEC is missing from the equation is that market share is not something that can be won long-term. US shale may have to cut back this year, but I think the time scale to turn production back on is about one year once prices return. Oil sands are a longer-term investment, but this also means that low prices don't cut production - the expensive investment has already been made.

Another major thing the article is missing from the equation is the demand side. Decrease in demand at the moment has come from efficiency investments that were economically driven by high oil prices. People bought smaller cars, took fewer road trips, and invested in home insulation. With oil prices lower, many of these things become less economical. Demand will increase, prices will go up.

[0] - [http://www.nasdaq.com/markets/crude-oil- brent.aspx?timeframe...](http://www.nasdaq.com/markets/crude-oil- brent.aspx?timeframe=10y) [1] - [http://uk.businessinsider.com/saudi-arabia- has-no-plans-to-c...](http://uk.businessinsider.com/saudi-arabia-has-no-plans- to-cut-oil-production-2015-11)

</comment><comment><USER17> Aren't OPEC essentially trying to starve out the competition (shale, fracking, solar, wind, etc.)? They are basically flooding the market with cheap oil and thereby making all the alternatives economically unattractive?

Western oil interests are probably right to spend on discovery then, since they'd believe OPEC can't pump forever and non-OPEC sources will be profitable in the future and will take years to develop. This is probably where the author and oil executives differ in their belief, that there will be a market for oil in the future.

However the author doesn't present any evidence to suggest non-oil sources will be sufficiently more profitable, less expensive and widely available in the future. Further, there is no evidence presented that a non-binding climate change agreements will destroy the oil market.

<comment><USER18> > since they'd believe OPEC can't pump forever

In 50 years, OPEC will still have oil even at current consumption. But consumption is shrinking as energy production is already shifting to renewables and cars will have converted to electro/hydrogen by then.

<comment><USER19> Cars won't convert in large numbers if oil-based fuel is a cheaper option.

<comment><USER20> Doesn't it take something like $5 of electricity to "fill up" a Tesla (250 miles or so?) That would be like buying gas at $0.50 a gallon. The other side of the coin is the high cost of the battery pack (something like $30K), but that should come down drastically once the Gigafactory is online.

<comment><USER21> Everyone prefers to pay more over time vs make a larger capital investment.

<comment><USER22> No. That's why we have credit markets because some people like the opposite. These can then be converted to rentals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> There is a potential flaw I spot in this piece. The author likens the self- liquidation strategy to what the big tobacco companies did. The problem I see with this is that tobacco is a luxury item. For many, oil is an every day necessity.

This leads into the liquidation issue. If companies such as BP were to liquidate, what would happen? The author mentions that non-oil countries should focus on providing resources and knowledge on oil extraction, but would that be enough to prevent price gouging? If there are no competitors selling oil, I could see the prices skyrocketing once the competition has liquidated all of their reserves. Would our knowledge, tools and "know how" be enough to prevent a monopoly on oil? Our only fallback would be to charge more on the services the author suggested we offer instead of oil.

<comment><USER24> If I were to stereotype smokers I wouldn't call the a group of luxury item buyers. I know tobacco isn't a necessity but the anacedata point from me would be that poverty and tobacco use are closely correlated.

<comment><USER25> Luxury traditionally means "optional" in this context. People can generally live and work without tobacco. Industrialized countries currently require oil, although this is changing.

<comment><USER26> Industrialized countries will require oil for a long time yet but it does seem that it is in the process of losing its special status as a lynchpin commodity and turning into "just another commodity" like aluminum or iron ore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> OK, here's the question: Who will buy all those supposedly worthless assets and provide that "tsunami of cash" to the shareholders of oil companies?

A fire sale of assets of questionable value is only going to prove their worthlessness and they will have to be marked down very quickly on the balance sheets of oil companies.

The result will not be a tsunami of cash but a tsunami of bankruptcies.

<comment><USER28> From TFA:

> If a consortium of private-equity investors raised the $118 billion needed > to buy BP at its current share price, it could immediately start to > liquidate 10.5 billion barrels of proven reserves worth over $360 billion, > even at today's "depressed" price of $36 a barrel.

Their oil reserves alone are worth nearly 3 times the market value of the company. The other assets you talk of could even have a negative value of $100b and the equation still works.

<comment><USER27> It just doesn't add up. If their reserves are actually worth that much to a private equity investor, why are they supposed to be so worthless to BP (and Shell and Exxon ...) that it should liquidate itself?

These assets are either profitable or not. If they are profitable, why sell them? If they are not profitable, why buy them? It can't be both. Not for an entire industry that is.

<comment><USER29> Yahoo has been trading well below its book value for a while. If you believe that the company is about to destroy a lot of money by spending it on unprofitable R&D then it makes sense to value it at less than its current assets. (Obviously current management will spend on R&D because they believe it will ultimately produce more value than it costs, but maybe the market disagrees).

<comment><USER27> I have no problem with the "investing too much in exploration" part of his argument. But avoiding overinvestment is not what unleashes the tsunami of cash he's talking about. It's asset sales that should bring on that tsunami of cash.

What is the break even of oil companies' proven reserves after not overspending on investment? That is the all important question. If that break even is below future long term oil prices, as he seems to suggest, then these assets are worth exactly $0.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> We will still need oil for things like polymers (e.g. plastics), drugs, and thousands of other applications.

<comment><USER11> Oil is generally not used to make plastics.

That said, nearly everything else is, at least indirectly.

[http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=34&t=6](http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=34&t=6)

<comment><USER31> Distinguishing NGL from petroleum is fairly disengenuous, and it's one of several games that's played with NGL reporting in US fossil fuels reporting. They're treated as oil where convenient to do so, as _not_ oil otherwise (much of the touted increase in US domestic "oil" extraction in recent years has been NGL, where it's treated as "oil", but here for plastics, EIA treat them as "not oil").

No, NGL isn't the fraction of crude oil that's synthesised into motor fuels such as gasoline, kersone (jet fuel), or diesel. But it _does_ come from petroleum extraction, and if you're not extracting petroleum from the ground, you're not getting NGL -- dry up one source, and you're drying up the other.

That leaves natural gas, and I'd have to do some conversion to sort out what fraction of plastics production is represented by the billion cubic feet or so of gas EIA mentions. And yes, other carbon feedstocks, including ag waste or captured / segragated carbon could conceivably feed plastics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> One of the stark realities of climate change is that as the effects get worse, there will be increasing oil and fossil fuel divestment. Makes no sense at all to me to be investing mid/long term in a source of energy that everyone ultimately wants to see removed. Short term, until we create a credible alternative, oil is still a good investment to work with.

</comment><comment><USER33> The present price regime isn't remotely sustainable. Pretty much full stop. Never reason from a price change.

Once you dismantle industrial capacity on a large enough scale, it's never coming back. See also the circumstances surrounding the last oil boom/bust in the 1980s.

This headended in the SNL crisis.

</comment><comment><USER34> > _Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England, has warned that the stranded- > asset problem could threaten global financial stability if the "carbon > budgets" implied by global and regional climate deals render worthless > fossil-fuel reserves that oil companies' balance sheets currently value at > trillions of dollars. This environmental pressure is now interacting with > technological progress, reducing prices for solar energy to near-parity with > fossil fuels._

I'm very interested to see some medium term outlooks (10-30 year) from the oil industry recently. Anyone have any? The stranded assets problem is already starting to wreak havoc on utilities[1]. If we can only burn about half or less of what currently exist in reserves[2], why isn't there more chatter about it on the medium or long term?

[1]: [http://www.thestreet.com/story/14661/1/electric-utilities- st...](http://www.thestreet.com/story/14661/1/electric-utilities-stranded- assets-in-a-competitive-world.html)

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

</comment><comment><USER35> Whoever wrote this seems to be predicting the present while having no awareness of how the petroleum industry works. Yes, they've outlined what most majors are doing to different degrees in different areas. However, you're stupid not to keep your ability to operate when oil prices come back up. (Caveat: I'm an exploration geologist at a "western major", so I do have a somewhat slanted view.)

First off, let's get something out of the way. The current price environment is every bit as artificially low as $120/bbl oil was artificially high. Saudi Arabia is deliberately producing at very high rates to keep their market share and drive companies that can't operate at $40/bbl out of business. They want to be able to maintain their control over global oil markets in the future, and they're in a geologically unique position of having huge reserves that can be produced at high rates and are economic at very low oil prices. Therefore, they've flexed their muscles with the knowledge that unconventionals can't keep up.

Most majors are operating on the assumption that oil will be back in the ~$60/bbl range within two years.

This is reasonable for several reasons.

1) Unconventional oil production _will_ decrease significantly over the next year. Unconventional wells have very rapid decline rates.

2) It's not clear that Iran's production coming onto the global markets can offset the decline in unconventional production. Iran has huge reserves in what should be a relatively cheap operating environment, they they also have aging infrastructure.

3) Saudi Arabia is likely to drop production once US unconventional-focused companies are no longer a threat.

Next, yes, they've outlined a strategy that all of the majors are following, albeit to less of an extreme. To be precise:

> For Western oil companies, the rational strategy will be to stop oil > exploration and seek profits by providing equipment, geological knowhow, and > new technologies such as hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") to oil-producing > countries. But their ultimate goal should be to sell their existing oil > reserves as quickly as possible and distribute the resulting tsunami of cash > to their shareholders until all of their low-cost oilfields run dry.

The first half is exactly what every major, non-national upstream oil company does. We provide the know-how to 1) find, 2) develop infrastructure to produce, and 3) efficiently recover hydrocarbons to countries who don't have a national oil company with the know-how or capital to do it on their own.

Next, most of the equipment and services portion of that isn't provided, developed, or controlled by oil companies. It's done by service companies (e.g. Halliburton, Schlumberger, etc). The in-house knowledge oil companies have is mostly around geology and managing huge infrastructure projects. (I'm biased towards exploration and I'm dramatically oversimplifying there.)

Finally, yes, most companies are selling a lot of assets right now. However, you only sell what you don't think you can operate economically in the current price environment. You're typically selling it to someone who can operate it more efficiently or who has a different idea of the potential for enhancing reserves. At any rate, finding a buyer for the stuff you'd want to sell most is difficult, and a lot of the rest is currently profitable.

"Wasting money by seeking new reserves" is just a silly statement. If we don't keep exploring, we'll wind up in the same boat we were back in the early 00's. It takes decades to go from exploration to first production. You cut back on major capital expenditures for exploration, but you don't stop entirely.

<comment><USER36> I think this is pretty much what he said in his previous article on pricing going lower.

[https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/oil-prices- ceil...](https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/oil-prices-ceiling-and- floor-by-anatole-kaletsky-2015-01)

Basically saying future pricing will stable at ~$50, anything higher will create opportunity for US Shale Oil companies, anything lower they will not be able to sustain their own economies.

( I actually said something similar / if not the same and got downvoted >< )

Which got me to think, why aren't countries buying lots of cheap oil now and store them somewhere if they know prices will bounce back to $50+ in two years time? Or do setting up the infrastructure cost more then then $15 oil savings.

<comment><USER37> Maybe because most countries are running deficits - they would have to take out additional loans. I guess it's the same reason poor people buy crappy shoes instead of investing into quality long-term footwear - too many current problems to think of long-term solutions far in the future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I'd be interested in seeing a breakdown of the lifespan of oil using transport. A car might have a 15 year lifespan so we can't see a massive change in petroleum use until that time.

However boats, trains and planes have at least double that lifespan.

Because of capital investments, surely an alternative to oil is still 20 years away?

<comment><USER19> Trains are feasible to run on electricity, since they run on fixed tracks and you can have overhead cables or 3rd rail configurations. There is no realistic chance that ships and planes will not use petroleum fuel for the foreseeable future.

<comment><USER13> That's pretty much political though. Nuclear powered cargo ships have already worked, and Russia says they're putting theirs back into service in a bit.

Although if foreseeable future means obvious stuff, then yes, the huge number of non-nuclear ships means it'll take a long time even if everyone liked the idea tomorrow.

<comment><USER39> Nuclear powered civilian ships are not going to be generally viable in our lifetimes due to real safety and security concerns that go beyond mere politics. Operating a nuclear reactor requires more, and more highly trained, crew members. Plus you need constant armed security on par with what land- based nuclear power plants have. Those additional costs outweigh any possible savings on fuel. Russia operates only a few of them on limited service in areas where security isn't a major concern, and they don't really try to make a profit.

The long-term future of merchant shipping will probably be larger, more efficient ships running on liquid fuels (biofuels or direct chemical synthesis), plus automated auxiliary sails.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> As a human being that needs inexpensive, reliable energy to live a good life, I hope they don't do this!

</comment><comment><USER41> Up until the fracking boom, oil companies were adopting that strategy, they weren't replacing reserves through exploration as fast as they were depleting them, and they were using cash to buy back stock, and other companies that had reserves that could be acquired cheaper than drilling for them.

[http://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/Oil-...](http://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/Oil- companies-face-difficulties-replacing-reserves-6562231.php)

I think the big change in the market is fracking, some lifestyle change toward less driving and energy intensity, not so much alternatives yet. But it could happen.

</comment><comment><USER42> This author seems to be confused as to the realities on the ground, and engages in over-simplified analyses of the actions of various parties. If he really believed what he was saying, he would be shorting oil stocks and futures; but this piece really seems to be more like a Thomas Friedman prognostication (, which is to say a simplistic faux-intellectual self- indulgent scribbling).[1]

He seems to be reading what can only be described as 'the worst microeconomics textbook known to man' if he believes the quote below. All economists I have ever heard of believe that people (countries, and companies) should diversify their portfolios and hedge against risks, and that even if that were not true, politicians are largely mercantilists.[2]

> _" Of course, the real world is never as simple as an economics textbook. > Geopolitical tensions, transport costs, and infrastructure bottlenecks mean > that oil-consuming countries are willing to pay a premium for energy > security, including the accumulation of strategic supplies on their own > territory."_

Then he proceeds to read the minds of oil company executives, which is interesting, because I'm betting they know a lot of things this author does not, and they are no fools. In addition, an oil executive would have to be deaf, dumb, blind, and ignorant to believe in constantly rising oil prices after the last 10 years, and most of them seem quite intelligent and aware of reality.

> _" That is precisely the strategy of self-liquidation that tobacco companies > used, to the benefit of their shareholders. If oil managements refuse to put > themselves out of business in the same way, activist shareholders or > corporate raiders could do it for them. If a consortium of private-equity > investors raised the $118 billion needed to buy BP at its current share > price, it could immediately start to liquidate 10.5 billion barrels of > proven reserves worth over $360 billion, even at today's "depressed" price > of $36 a barrel. There are two reasons why this has not happened – yet. Oil > company managements still believe, with quasi-religious fervor, in > perpetually rising demand and prices. So they prefer to waste money seeking > new reserves instead of maximizing shareholders' cash payouts. And they > contemptuously dismiss the only other plausible strategy: an investment > shift from oil exploration to new energy technologies that will eventually > replace fossil fuels."_

TLDR; This article is just click-bait, and we should all disregard it. This man is no Andy Grove.[3]

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

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedge_(finance)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedge_\(finance\))

[3] [http://watercoolernewsletter.com/the-revolving-door-test- how...](http://watercoolernewsletter.com/the-revolving-door-test-how-intel- overcame-fear-by-gaining-an-outsiders-perspective/)

</comment><comment><USER43> From a financial standpoint, this is poor advice. Reserves and equipment represent real options, giving big-oil the right,but not the obligation, to extract in the future. Even if these costs cannot be recouped at the current market price, this has value because of oil's volatility (just like stock options with exercise prices above current prices). The fall in oil price (and expected future prices) reduces the quantity of profitable real options, but plausibly not to zero.

</comment><comment><USER44> Question for those who might know: Is analysis that the oil price depression will result in a significant economic recession just FUD, or is it grounded in truth?

<comment><USER45> With proper monetary policy, there is no reason to expect it would cause a recession in America. The reason people in the business press are concerned about it is because deflation is associated with recessions. But usually recessions are caused by demand-driven deflation (people demanding less goods, which leads to the prices of goods decreasing), while this is a supply-side deflation (suppliers providing more goods, which leads to prices decreasing). As you can imagine, when people demand less, fewer goods are created, which is a recession, but if people are given more for the same price, MORE goods are created, which is not a recession.

Scenarios where a fall in the price of oil triggers a recession are possible. For example, with bad monetary policy from the Fed you can always get a recession if they do the wrong thing, and drastic changes in oil prices could make that more likely by leading us into a more volatile environment, where past trends could be broken. More likely is that it could lead to deflation in the Eurozone, and since the European Central Bank isn't very good at monetary policy, it could lead to a further Eurozone recession because of sticky wages. If that recession were bad enough it could cause failure of the economies of one or more European countries and trigger global recession.

It's also possible that one or more oil-exporting nations could default on their sovereign debt (Russia, Venezuela), which could cause a panic-driven global recession.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> """In a normal competitive market, prices will be set by the cost of producing an extra barrel from the cheapest oilfields with spare capacity."""

This seems wrong as the marginal price is determined by the utility of an extra barrel of oil for the consumer not by production cost. Sounds like a fall back to the labor theory of value (aka classical economics and/or Marxism) to me.

</comment><comment><USER47> I find it very difficult to take a shareholder seriously when his advice is for a company is to give up, sell all their assets, and give them to... _ahem_... shareholders.

Sure, there are reasons to do so, but they better be unassailable... like bootlegging equipment in 1933, or horse and buggies in 1908.

</comment><comment><USER48> > strategy of self-liquidation that tobacco companies used

Does anyone have a source for that?

</comment><comment><USER49> Doesn't seem so crazy. If your industry isn't viable any more: liquidate rather than hang around. We all know what Alphabet (Google) would do if it owned some company that was in decline.

<comment><USER17> That the business is in decline is the bone of contention here. The author doesn't present evidence that the market for oil is in decline. He suggests as much referring to projections of long term low oil prices but ignores realities. Low prices can be fixed on the supply side as well as demand.

I don't believe there is compelling evidence to suggest clean energy is making substantive inroads against oil. Short term analysis seems to suggest oil consumption will increase[1]. Past actuals suggest renewable energy as a percent of total energy had declined over the last 50 years[2].

At the moment OPEC are essentially overproducing and are telegraphing that they will cut supply in the future[3] as they expect prices to rise. This is a vote of confidence for higher prices and economic growth in the future which is hardly a reason to start selling off reserves now.

[1] [http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/steo/report/global_oil.cfm](http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/steo/report/global_oil.cfm) [2] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_the_Unit...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_the_United_States) [3] [http://www.wsj.com/articles/opec-report-suggests-oil- price-r...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/opec-report-suggests-oil-price- rebound-supply-cut-1450864802)</comment></comment>


Facebook Signs Deals with Media Companies, Celebrities for Facebook Live - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-signs-deals-with-media-companies-celebrities-for-facebook-live-1466533472 <comment><USER2> Facebook Live's API is a mess. The docs have rotted links. Webhooks don't work unless your app has explicit permission for the API, which you need to go through app review to get. How do you submit an app for review that you haven't been able to test for lack of permissions? No one at FB seems to know what's going on with the Live API.</comment>


A list of software that turns your database into a REST/GraphQL API - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dbohdan/automatic-api <comment><USER2> I'm looking for a graphql interface that can serve subscriptions. Is anyone familiar of a combination of data store and graphql server that can fill this need, or is working towards it?

<comment><USER3> I am [1] [2]. Infrastructure for subscriptions is 90% there (RabbitMQ + webstomp plugin)

1\. [https://subzero.cloud/](https://subzero.cloud/)

2\. [https://github.com/subzerocloud/subzero-starter- kit](https://github.com/subzerocloud/subzero-starter-kit)

(edit formatting)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting that finally we have a data driven stack with GraphQL. My biggest problem with REST and other similar protocols is that these try to hide data from you.

<comment><USER5> REST is about hypermedia

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

but people mostly use it to do crud

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm surprised not to see htsql on that list.

[http://htsql.org/](http://htsql.org/)

<comment><USER7> Last update is 2013. Is it still active ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Restsql is another one:

[http://restsql.org/](http://restsql.org/)

</comment><comment><USER3> is the list only for FOSS?</comment>


The first two statements of your BASH script should be - <AUTHOR> https://ashishb.net/all/the-first-two-statements-of-your-bash-script-should-be/ <comment><USER2>
      #!/bin/sh
      # don't need bash for this

<comment><USER3>
      /bin/dash: 2: set: Illegal option -o pipefail

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Space between "#!" and the path lets the text breathe :-)

        #! /usr/bin/env bash
        set -euo pipefail

</comment><comment><USER3> A couple years ago I switched to doing "set -eu" in all my shell scripts and have been quite happy with it. While developing the script I'll also often add "set -xv" for debugging.</comment>


Ask HN: Which self-hosted tool for team-based communication with topics/threads - <AUTHOR> Hey! Looking into establishing a new communication tool for our company.
While Slack and Mattermost are great for chats in small teams, it's hard to keep up with things, when you're a larger team or been out of house for some days or several ideas are discussed in parallel and so on. People just feel overwhelmed or have the feeling of not knowing everything they should.
So I found twist.com which integrates "topics" and thread-like display of those topics and I think this is an interesting addition to what Slack/Mattermost do.
As this tool would hold internal information, it needs to be self-hosted. On the other hand, it also should be similar to twist in terms of topics and threads, so Mattermost does not really fulfill what we need.
I already thought about setting up a phpBB or something like that, but maybe anyone of you got a good idea what I should look at.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> This is going to be a very unpopular opinion, but if you want threading / topics, self hosted, searchable, then consider looking into NNTP (what usenet runs on). It is the oldest threaded messaging system. It scales really well. Most importantly, it is not a chat system. In other words, distractionless! The downside is, the number of daemons that support TLS are few. For a while, AD supported NNTP and used AD authentication. I think they may have recently dropped support for it.

phpBB is great. You can delegate control of boards to different teams and there are addons for just about everything.

Slack and other chat systems are very distracting and have become highly complex vendor lock-in to API integrations that essentially relay command & control between companies. Being a 3rd party, there are legal limitations about what data may flow through those systems and I predict that will be a major source of contention in the future.

<comment><AUTHOR> NNTP seems to be a bit low-tech these days with dwindling support by new clients. But I might be wrong on that, will have a second look.

You totally got my point: E-Mail is distracting and people feel stressed by the amount of mail they receive, while on the other hand they feel not informed enough about various topics. And you also give sensitive data into external hands and hope it will not get leaked or breached.

I think self-hosted "board software" (in whatever shape it comes) might reduce distraction, you can read and write when you want and people from other departments can keep up with current developments and also chime in if they have something to contribute.

And with something like phpBB you also have full and easy control of the data. I think that's an important point, especially for companies.

Might be worth the discussion and a try with a small team.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Check out [https://zulipchat.com](https://zulipchat.com) \- it's a cool mix between instant messaging and a forum.

<comment><AUTHOR> This looks great, thanks for the hint!

</comment></comment><comment> jon-wood I'm worried this is going to come off as snarky, but when someone says "tool to keep track of topics, with threading" the first thing that comes to mind is email. If you use something like Google Groups then you get searchable archives of everything, and there's no shortage of clients whatever the platform.

<comment><AUTHOR> I want to get away from email. While everybody is used to it, information tends to get lost in the 14th partial quote of an email which went to only three of five people and two more which are not responsible for the project... You get the hang of it.

And Google Groups would not fulfill the need for a self-hosted solution, so it's a bit out of focus. But I get your point and would like to thank you for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Try Riot.im, been using it in self hosted mode for about an year now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks good. Seems to have a concept for rooms (= teams) but not for topics, or am I wrong on this?

<comment><USER5> yup, we don't have threads yet (despite planning it for 2016, e2e encryption and working decentralisation got in the way).

<comment><AUTHOR> Important things first, I'm cool with that. Any idea when threads might be integrated?

Will take at least a quarter or half year before we get to actively work on this, but I wouldn't want to switch systems once it's up and running so people can accept one new system...

<comment><USER5> probably second half of this year, but there is a lot of stuff on the todo list

<comment><AUTHOR> Any timeline I can check? :-D

<comment><USER5> the bug to subscribe to and upvote is [https://github.com/vector-im/riot- web/issues/2349](https://github.com/vector-im/riot-web/issues/2349)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Correlation behind adblock growth surge and AdSense revenue doldrums - <AUTHOR> http://blog.pagefair.com/2014/adsense-smoking-gun/ <comment><USER2> I predicted a showdown between users and advertisers back around 2010, and every year since, I've been surprised it hasn't happened yet.

Malicious advertising is probably the biggest driver of AdBlock Plus growth. Anecdotally, we just had another customer get hit by a remote computer service scam because she searched for something like "canon ink technical support", and an ad was listed at the top with an 800 number that she called without realizing that it wasn't Canon at all.

Google does its best to differentiate its ads from its search results as little as possible. A lot of less savvy computer users never even notice the little "Ad" tag; I had to point it out to her. In Yahoo's case, it's even worse -- the difference between the pile of ads at the top of their page and their search results is so subtle it even took me a moment to figure it out.

And then there's saturation. Advertising is _everywhere_ now. Magazines spend as much print area on advertising as content; television is down to, what, 10 minutes of ads for every 20 minutes of content, or worse; radio, if you're silly enough to still listen to that, is hilariously bad; news sites and publications are experimenting with "sponsored content" \-- ads that more and more closely resemble regular articles -- billboards, bulk mailing, text messages, robocalls, and email spam all add to the load.

On the whole, the ad industry ends up feeling skeezy, pushy, and overwhelming.

So AdBlock Plus gives users a way to remove all of that from one part of their daily life. I don't think we've ever had a negative response from a user when showing them AdBlock Plus for the first time; the usual response when reloading yahoo.com or msn.com with AB+ is, "oh, wow, that's really nice."

I keep expecting to hear that the bottom's fallen out of online advertising.

<comment><USER3> This this this. There are some huge players in the online advertising world who are supposed pillars of innovation and sustainability, but they have really failed at keeping sketchy, scammy, or downright malicious advertisers away. Inaction here will kill their industry.

Google ads look like results and link to sites with malicious software downloads. iOS apps are full of "you have one unread message!" misinformation banners. These are the 'reputable' players, of course grandma also plays bridge online while little Johnny searches for boobs on the family laptop. What do their ads link to?

In this world the solution is just block freaking everything.

<comment><USER2> > _Inaction here will kill their industry._

That's the part I'm less certain about. I would've expected it to happen already; they're hurting themselves, but so far not fatally.

<comment><USER4> We need to get web browsers to ship with Adblock from the start. You'd be insane to set up an email server without some form of spam filtering, why not do the same with browsers?

Yes, it would collapse the current web business model. I fully support this.

<comment><USER5> As much as I loathe ads myself, I don't think it's a good idea to default to blocking ads, not the least because the definition of an ad is a little hard to capture completely without either false negatives or positives. Different people also have different ideas on what they consider acceptable ads, so it could be a form of unwanted censorship to some.

Default to showing all the content, but let people make their own choice on what to filter out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Google needs to start cleaning up their ad inventory NOW or they're going to lose the whole business to adblocking. If you'd like to see how toxic Google ads are simply do a google search for 'skype' on a fresh Windows machine without Adblock enabled.

Now look at the ads-what are they for? Virus laden websites/fake installers. This is for a major keyword-why is Google allowing their ad pool to be poisoned by such bad/misleading ads?

In the past people's computers would get trashed from popups and malicious web pages, but today most of the junk filled computers I see have the same story 'I was looking for xxx on Google and I clicked the first link and then a bunch of stuff started popping up...'

When Google, the biggest 'best' ad provider in the industry, is polluting computers like this, why shouldn't people run Adblock?

<comment><USER7> They also need to stop toying around with amateur designs at the expense of the whole AdSense programme:

[http://adsense.blogspot.se/2014/05/a-new-look-for-text- ads-o...](http://adsense.blogspot.se/2014/05/a-new-look-for-text-ads-on- google.html)

I've seen the past works of the designers on the AdSense team and I'm not impressed. Plus it's quite naive to think that one design will fit all websites. Why can't AdSense, like other ad and affiliate networks, just open up an API so publishers themselves can be in charge of how their ads look and behave?

<comment><USER8> Why do you say amateur designs? Google knows what converts, I would wager that their designs are the antithesis of amateur. You may not find them pretty, but those are different things. AdSense does let you specify all sorts of things about the look of the text ads though (font, colors, etc). They also have a tool for you to automate A/B testing of different combinations.

<comment><USER7> For instance, here's the guy responsible for their latest text ads: [http://adnanvirk.com/](http://adnanvirk.com/) \-- now I'm not saying he's bad. He's good. But is he good enough for Google?

> AdSense does let you specify all sorts of things about the look of the text > ads though (font, colors, etc).

I'm afraid that's not enough. We need to control margins, paddings, line spacings, as well as media queries. We need to be able to remove the arrows, lines, buttons etc. that don't belong there. Ie. "perfection is achieved, not when there's nothing left to add, but when there's nothing left to take away".

Google has great designers, I'm sure we can all agree on that. Unfortunately, none of them are part of the AdSense team.

For text ads done right, see the ones in Gmail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In your graph captioned "Observed Desktop Adblocking Rate vs Predicted Rate", where does the curve for predicted rate come from? It's not explained in the text.

You do not show how much of the decline in ad revenue is caused by adoption of adblock, or even whether the amount of decline attributable to adblock is significant or measurable. You merely point out that revenue has declined and that adblock adoption has increased.

EDIT to add: You show no data on adblock adoption that covers the same time span as your graph of revenue. Your proxy for adbock use covering this timeframe, Google searches, shows a distinctly dissimilar pattern from the revenue graph for the same period. You claim a "correlation" but don't calculate one. You fail to demonstrate anything about causation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair points. We need to provide the source data and a full explanation. We're going to publish a detailed report in August with everything in it.

To answer one of your questions, the predicted desktop rate is based on an assumption that adblock adoption is driven by word of mouth (we have a basis for this assumption), and a compound growth rate is fitted to raw adblock rate data.

It's hard to combine the google trends data into the same model, because it's just a picture of search volume, not total adblock installations. I think it would be a fair to assume that the growth rate of new installations would match the growth rate of search volume, which means that the growth rate of 65% we're seeing this year is higher than it would have been in previous years.

Finally, I want to acknowledge that nothing can grow exponentially forever! At some point everyone who will use adblock will already have it installed. I'm pretty sure some countries are pretty close to adblock saturation already (Germany, Poland, Sweden and Finland).

<comment><USER10> Sounds reasonable, I look forward to seeing the full details in August to get the full picture, but those assumptions seem fair.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Facebook is part of the story. Facebook has put $10 Billion/year of ad inventory on the market, primarily in the last few years. Facebook ads compete in the same space as Adsense.

</comment><comment><USER12> Doesn't Adblock Plus permit google ads by default hence the need for Adblock Edge [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock- edge/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-edge/)

<comment><USER6> Yes-which is a shame. I think that Google has violated the acceptable ad policy and should be removed. Here's an article from when the change was made to Adblock Plus [http://gizmodo.com/google-supposedly-paid-off-adblock- plus-t...](http://gizmodo.com/google-supposedly-paid-off-adblock-plus-to-not- block-go-682029020)

<comment><USER13> Sorry to be that guy, but your use of the hyphon "-" makes it hard to read your post. A hyphon with no spaces around it joins the two or more words into a single concept. A man-child is a single entity. In your usage here and above, all you need is a space on either side. A "yes-which" first parsed as a typo of "yes-witch", which I supposed would be a witch who agrees a lot. On the other hand, "Yes - which..." Now it is easily parsable as a transition. :)

<comment><USER14> The hyphen-with-spaces is a poor substitute for an em dash (— -- if HN supported HTML entities).

Where emdashes are non-operational, I prefer a pair of hyphens surrounded by spaces -- which at least looks _more_ like an em dash.

Your comment is meta, but not inappropriate or abrasive. Civil commentary regarding common misusage has value, and I hope your comment will emerge from the grey.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Adblock and do-not-track request should be promoted as much as possible.

<comment><AUTHOR> We think (@pagefair) it's clear that adblock is being promoted just fine by word of mouth. It's the ad industry that's got to change somehow. We're trying to be part of that. What's shocking to us is how the ad industry mostly doesn't even recognise how fast adblock is growing. To them, it just looks like more people have switched off their PCs, because they just can't see that segment of the audience anymore. Therefore, they're having a really hard time figuring out that this is even happening to them.

<comment><USER4> I'm interested to see how the web business model changes in the next decade. I think it's likely that web advertising is a dead end. There's been a number of articles about how Facebook advertising is a waste of money, ad impressions are down in general, and like this article describes, Adblock is really taking off. I think, and desperately hope, that we're going to see more voluntary subscription type services like Patreon, where the content itself is released for free.

I personally loathe advertising. When watching YouTube videos on my phone, where I can't use Adblock, I actively mute and set the phone aside during ads that can't be skipped, or that I choose to let play to support the content creator. Then I come back 30 seconds later to view the content I wanted.

I recently switched to using Firefox on mobile because it's the only mobile browser I'm aware of with an Adblock plugin. I put up with mobile advertising for several years--I understand that's how web content creators get paid in 2014, even if I think it's a crummy business model. But advertisers crossed the line when my phone started talking about construction contractors at me out loud. Instantly switched to Firefox, installed Adblock, and didn't look back. Advertisers have no one to blame but themselves for the rise of Adblock.

Sorry, advertisers, but your ilk are simply too scummy to put up with. You abuse otherwise valuable technology, you waste my time and bandwidth, you manipulate feelings and entire cultures, and you convince people to buy crap that is useless and often actively harmful. I'm done with advertisers and I hope Adblock hastens their demise. Content creators will figure out a different business model without your horseshit.

This post became progressively more angry the more I thought about advertisers :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I used to block ads before we noticed that 30% of our website revenue was lost to adblocking. We realised that people weren't intentionally blocking ads on our site, but probably due to some bad advertising that pushed them over the edge somewhere else on the internet. There was nothing we could do, so started a new business (PageFair).

In your post, you are correctly angry at advertisers. But adblocking doesn't punish advertisers, it punishes websites, starting with your favorite ones. Right now, the advertisers just go somewhere else for their traffic. Even if it did somehow punish advertisers, would it discriminate between the relevant & polite ones (e.g., job ads on stackoverflow) and the spammy ones (magic weight loss pills on dictionary.com)?

Agree that the publishers and web users need something better. That's our goal at PageFair.

<comment><USER4> Good luck to you, but it never works. As you say, there's no way to discriminate between relevant & polite ads and spammy ads except for human intervention. I'm not involved in the business (clearly), but I think the overheads are sufficiently small in the advertising business that that's just not viable.

That's why I don't think advertising is a viable business model for web content in the long term. Spammers are going to spam, users are going to install adblocking software to get rid of the spam, and whatever's left will either get caught up in adblock or be too cost ineffective for businesses to bother with.

<comment><USER4> Replying to myself to ask Sean a direct question. Your ads appear to be really crap quality. "Free Mp4 Player" with a link to Ask.com is really your idea of better advertising?

See also: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8021255](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8021255)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> How solid are those numbers? 25% sounds like a lot to me for your 'average user' kind of people, who make up the vast bulk of people on the internet. The curve also looks a bit optimistic.

<comment><USER17> My guess is that they have a script that observes ad placements and counts "non-impressions". Counting impressions at the site level is not the same as counting them at the ad server level. There are generally multiple ad servers daisy-chained into the ad tag, creating a lot of latency. It is very typical to lose 10% or more ad inventory simply because the ad can't load in time. If pagefair can't account for that, then the number is highly inflated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> [http://blog.pagefair.com/wp- content/uploads/2014/07/chart_1....](http://blog.pagefair.com/wp- content/uploads/2014/07/chart_1.png)

I like that this chart "predicts" that more than 100% of users will have block ads in about 2017.

<comment><USER19> It's crazy isn't it. Google aren't exactly going to to take this lying down. Advertising has evolved for centuries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've been an AdSense publisher for over a decade. Since AdSense primarily pays you by the click (there are some CPM based ads, but it's a fairly small number), users who have AdBlock don't usually end up costing you much because they're very unlikely to have clicked on the ads in the first place. Mobile is a big deal though. A huge deal. You can bring up the reports quite easily, the eCPMs for mobile is way less than for desktop while mobile traffic is ballooning month over month.

Interestingly, all this new mobile traffic means less users have AdBlock (but the traffic is still worth less so it averages out against the publisher's favor).

</comment><comment><USER20> The article seems to imply that by cleaning up scammy/spammy advertising, that users will dispense with Adblock.

I disagree: I think it is more a case of uneducated users not knowing that Adblock was out there. Now that the cat is out of the bag, no amount of cleanup is going to make them decide that they want to view an ad-infested web, no matter what the quality of the ads. They will simply leave adblockers on. Moreover, network effects are present, so the knowledge of adblock will continue to propagate.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is another reason why most of the services will shift to apps. Its much harder to stop apps from tracking you or shoving ads in your face.

</comment><comment><USER22> Every day I hear about sites being broken for people with AdBlock. Yesterday a friend couldn't complete his buy at a online ticket agency due to AdBlock. The problem is that you never know if the site is broken or if it's due to AdBlock and most of the times you don't even realize it (especially true for people who are not power users).

<comment><USER5> _especially true for people who are not power users_

This is particularly sad because those people are also the ones who are the most easily misled into getting bitten by ad-originated malware and thus the ones who will derive the most benefit from AdBlock. Power users who know and use AdBlock would be also far less likely to fall for such deception.

There's one decision that is clear when using the Internet: either you can learn enough to be able to take control of your browsing experience, or you can remain complacent and _be_ controlled by the entities who will manipulate you to their satisfaction. I've chosen the former and wish more people would too.

Personally I find that just having JS off by default cuts out a huge amount of the crap on most pages (including ads) and don't need more than that + a HOSTS file to kill off the rest, but this is unfortunately a setup that is probably unusable for the (current) "average user".

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm not so fussed about ads I can ignore, but (along with analytics and stuff like social media buttons) - they all add latency to web browsing with extra DNS lookups and HTTP requests.

It's especially bad on mobile.

So no matter how nice, useful or relevant the advertising is, unless it's hosted on the site I'm visiting, it will probably be blocked.

<comment><USER24> on mobile, my service provider (free.fr) offers ad block on ISP level. Very nice feature, my only concern is that it is an opt-out choice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> How do I Adblock this pagefair thing?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's easy. If you ever see one of our ads, you can permanently opt out using the close button. We're working hard not to show the kinds of ads that most adblock users would want to block. We currently have < 1% opt outs.

<comment><USER26> Are your ads image-only, or can they be Flash, iframes, or include scripts?

<comment><AUTHOR> Only text and/or static images with strict limited on how they are displayed so that they are not annoying or intrusive. No scripts, so no viruses, and no third party trackers or creepy stuff like that either.

<comment><USER15> Will those ads know that I bought/browsed for something several month ago and still try to sell me similar products that I no longer need?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I've always had a hard time getting Google Display Network to operate cost efficiently.

</comment><comment><USER28> Ironically enough, this link was blocked by Privoxy.

</comment><comment><USER29> Nothing's opening for me :(

</comment><comment><USER30> This is based on adsense partner network earnings, which is a small section of the total online advertising market. I don't think you can reach conclusions about online advertising in general (which is all affected by adblocking) from this.

Adblock may be playing a role, but I don't think that's what this data shows.

Several reasons:

_ 1 the centralization of the web. Adsense was built for the long tail web. Today's web is much more centralized with more impressions going to fewer, bigger sites. Google themselves play a few roles here. They run some of the big sites sucking up the traffic. Their search results are increasingly directing people to the big sites.

Fewer blogs more circles and tweets.

The data cited is from Google's quarterly results. Taken as a whole the data seems to support this theory.

      Q1-2014 'Sites Revenues' : $10.47 billion, a 21% increase over Q1-2013
      Q1-2014 'Partner Revenues' : $3.40  billion, a 4% increase over Q1-2013

      Q1-2013 'Sites Revenues' : $8.64 billion, a 18% increase over Q1-2012
      Q1-2013 'Partner Revenues' : $3.26 billion billion, a 12% increase over Q1-2012
     4% increase in Network Revenues.

Overall, the growth in ad revenue actually accelerated from 19% to 22%. The growth just shifted from the partner network to Google's own network. Both are similarly affected by adblocking. There isn't an overall slowdown.

\- 2. The market adsense ads are a part of is competitive, much more so than search.

For search ads, Google's reach, platform quality and ad quality is best by far. There is no competition. For content network ads, Google's inventory (the sites displaying adsense ads) and the platform is nothing special.

Competition is growing. Social media (including Google's own sites) advertising is the biggest new source of competition. In-app ads are anther. Those 'you might also like' content recommendation ads you might find on news sites on are another source are another growing segment 9and an important way of picking up that one weird trick for flatter bellies).

Facebook is the real elephant in _this_ room. Facebook ads work. The platform is improving and marketers are learning how to use it. They have an enormous inventory. They have user data enabling really powerful (or scary, depending on your perspective) targeting. Since so many Facebook users check in multiple times per day, campaigns can target (and report on) daily impressions and such.

Facebook ads work in ways other ads don't. A lot of ad dollars are flowing into Facebook, some would have gone to adsense.

_ 3 "content network" ads on adsense are in the more direct competition for ad dollars with the offline world than most online ads. This is a volatile market segment. Blue chip advertisers can cut 7-8 figure budgets to zero in a bad year (like 2011). On a smaller scale, it's still a volatile market

I'm not saying that adblocking doesn't matter. I'm sure it does. But these are two noisy datasets you are looking at. You need to correlate different things to make this point. Maybe earning per 1m pageviews for some site.

</comment><comment><USER31> Yes, it's much better to blame the users and those pesky hackers than admit that online advertising is largely a waste of money.

[http://www.businessweek.com/debateroom/archives/2008/08/inte...](http://www.businessweek.com/debateroom/archives/2008/08/internet_ads_irritating_and_ineffective.html)

<comment><USER27> You realize that online marketing for direct acquisition is insanely easy to track, right? Branding is another story, of course.</comment></comment>


Almost entire population of Ecuador has data leaked - <AUTHOR> https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/17/americas/ecuador-data-leak-intl-hnk-scli/index.html <comment><USER2> Does this sort of thing ever impact anyone high profile? It feels like leaks will continue to happen until it affects someone with enough money and influence to bring it to public attention.</comment>


GirlInYourShirt: $75 Buys Your Startup Marketing For A Day  - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/13/girlinyourshirt-75-buys-your-startup-marketing-for-a-day/ <comment><USER2> Based on the ship-to info, she is in Jackson, OH. Population 6184.

$75 is pretty cheap, but the in-person exposure is worth $0, so what she is really selling is her ability to promote you online.

It's a novel idea, but really not terribly innovative, although I give her credit for making herself a business in a town that probably doesn't have a ton of employment opportunities for her. The hardest thing for her to overcome will be the fact that people tend to tune out paid shills like this.

She would be better off building up an online persona and name and then more gradually easing into this. OR, make the site "gangofgirlsinyourshirt.com". Sign up franchisees at top colleges across the US, and for $1000/day 50 hot girls promote your brand for the day.

<comment><USER3> here's how leora did it - she's in nyc which is a larger population than 6,184. <http://www.centernetworks.com/leora-zellman-booth-babe>

her butt went for $30, arm $10

<comment><USER2> She is charging $30/ _hr_ , and is also going to tech tradeshows. That too is an interesting angle, although not very unique. I have been to many tradeshows, and have seen a lot of hot-to-semi-hot girls walking around clad in various T-shirts.

If your target market is mid-20's guys, I think this angle could have some merit. If your target market is the "average" consumer or corporation, I'm not sure how much marketshare you are really going to get from a pair of tits or an ass logo.

I think the real angle for these girls is to do a "Social Media Starter Kit". This T-Shirt girl would be better off not just "mentioning" the product and flickr and twitter, but setting up accounts for these companies and "seeding" the social media sites, then handing the keys over with a bit of training to the organizations. Basically teach the companies that want to leverage social media but don't know where to start how to jump in.

That would likely be a week-long effort, and she could probably charge $3000/wk, based on what I've seen from the current crop of wanna-be SEO hacks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm saving my $75 for HotGirlInYourShirt.

<comment><USER5> [Insert joke about how I'm saving _my_ $75 for HotGirlNotWearingAnyShirt]

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The startups that take advantage of this are clearly going to be the cream of the crop.

</comment><comment><USER7> The video has no personality, and since that's all that she's really selling, she may have a tough time.

<comment><USER5> Let's be honest, she's selling more than her "personality".

<comment><USER8> She'll have to work on selling her "personality" once she hits 30..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like her business model.

</comment><comment><USER10> Um, I think I can put on a shirt that reads 'the perceptron' and save myself $75.

</comment><comment><USER11> Definitely innovative. Within days we're going to see immediate knockoffs. Similar thing with milliondollarhomepage.

<comment><USER12> > Definitely innovative.

Yeah. Bonus points for innovation -- Hopefully that will get rewarded before said knockoffs come along.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Has anyone seen that she's at it again with <http://inYourShirt.TV>? Seems like they killed the thread on here that was promoting it: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=425555>

I sure hope they resurrect that soon as she's doing a great job.

</comment><comment><USER14> Ingenious way to get free clothes.

</comment><comment><USER15> How long until someone mails in a shirt made from a transparent shower curtain?

Ah, the internets...

</comment><comment><USER16> The attention economy is a beautiful thing. Literally.

</comment><comment><USER17> iJustine: pay attention

</comment><comment><USER18> I rate this an F. And an extra F- for Arrington.

</comment><comment><USER19> Clever. :-)

</comment><comment><USER20> Jeremy Schoemaker called, he wants his schtick back.</comment>


S is for small. iPhone 5s blasted in reviews for small display. - <AUTHOR> http://virtualpants.com/post/61584726921/s-is-for-small

<comment><AUTHOR> Does Apple realize the risk of keeping a 4" display on its flagship product for another year? People are jumping ship, and fast, to larger screen devices.</comment>


Why Submitting Web Content for Copyright Protection is Critical (and how to do it) - <AUTHOR> http://www.seomoz.org/blog/why-you-should-go-through-the-trouble-of-registering-your-copyright-when-everyone-tells-you-that-you#jtc41728 <comment><USER2> This is the single most articulate and concise, yet comprehensive abstract explaining the need and reasons for copyrighting one's work, that i have come across.

You need not be a Fortune 500 corporation to justify protecting your work. On the contrary, anyone writing anything original is well served to read this article and go about the business of staking claim to your work!.

</comment><comment><USER3> Everybody needs to read this article.</comment>


Ask HN:What is wrong with html5? - <AUTHOR>

drag-n-drop,DRM,DB,attributes without value... <comment><USER2> Attributes with out values are great, how is 'disabled="disabled"' better than just 'disabled'?

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't see anything wrong in drag'n'drop and attributes without values... but IndexedDB and DRM are indeed stuff I see as "there is something badly wrong"

<comment><USER4> What's wrong with IndexedDB?

<comment><USER3> You can't even do result-set limiting with IDB (see e.g. [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19714782/indexeddb-how- to...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19714782/indexeddb-how-to-sort- using-composite-indexes/19720246?iemail=1&noredirect=19)).

As soon as you want to do more processing on your data than just looking it up from the storage, you have to do it in client-side code. That just plain sucks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have not looked into DRM deeply but what's wrong with everything else you have listed in your opinion?

</comment><comment><USER5> 1-to-1 relationship between the window object and the document object. It's not something wrong HTML5 per se, but HTML in general. We should instead be permitted many documents to one window object, and have a scene-graph based windowing system for managing the documents.

<comment><USER5> To the person who downvoted this, care to explain why? I would expect Alan Kay to agree with this.

The 1-to-1 relationship is the reason we have "div hell".</comment></comment>


Elm 1+2: can't download X - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/ckolderup/status/789002880246177792 <comment><USER2> "This is true for the very first expression. That's because it is downloading packages and building everything. After that, it has all that information, so it's faster." \- [https://github.com/elm-lang/elm- repl/issues/128#issuecomment...](https://github.com/elm-lang/elm- repl/issues/128#issuecomment-251759225)

<comment><USER3> It still seems to need to at least _check_ for the latest version after that first install, I have a ~4 second wait before evaluation of the first expression on every single launch of the REPL while it hits up their package server.

And if you have no internet connection or the package server is down, the REPL will not evaluate any expressions at all, it just shows an HTTP error message on every input (after a timeout).

The only option for offline usage seems to be running the REPL inside a configured elm project directory which has had the core packages downloaded/installed: [https://github.com/elm-lang/elm- repl/issues/54](https://github.com/elm-lang/elm-repl/issues/54)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder how a programmer from the 80s would react if they were given a time machine and this was their first experience with modern programming.

<comment><USER5> You can download your programming environment through a ubiquitous computer network instead of mail ordering a set of floppies? That's amazing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> For those wondering what's Elm:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12718224](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12718224) (4 days ago) - Elm in Production for France TV

[http://elm-lang.org](http://elm-lang.org) \- "A delightful language for reliable webapps. Generate JavaScript with great performance and no runtime exceptions."

</comment><comment><USER7> Is this bad since it can't execute a simple command without a library? Or is it good since the error message was so descriptive?

If the consensus is "bad": I imagine at some point elm made the decision to make things highly modular (something which people usually like) and lazy (another thing people generally like), so why are those things a problem in this case?

 _Update_ : Mostly what I'm observing here is that the tweet basically implies that the author(s) of elm should be ashamed of themselves for designing (free) software that is so obviously wrong. Publicly shaming projects like this is dumb. I'm not convinced it's ever accomplished anything other than kicking off big flame wars. He should open or contribute to an issue ticket for the elm project. Otherwise, he should just stop using the software if he doesn't like it.

<comment><USER3> I think it's possible to view the tweet as general bemusement rather than an attack, though I obviously don't know exactly what is intended. The next tweet is "I'm sure there's a perfectly rational explanation for why this happens, but it's logged in an issue on Github, which I cannot read".

I mean, it is a bit amusing to get an HTTP error as a result of asking a local interpreter to perform addition.

I'd say it's not unusual for modern languages, particularly those integrating package managers, to lazyily download libraries and/or check for updates on the first run of a REPL. But it is a bit odd or unexpected that elm's REPL requires a network connection for every launch and doesn't fall back to a cached copy of the core library packages from a previous run when the connection fails.

<comment><USER7> Hmm. If it is indeed the case that elm doesn't cache library downloads, that does seem a bit strange. I can't say that it is though since I don't use it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Fitting. Elm's website and docs won't load without JS as well.

<comment><USER9> Probably because it's written in Elm ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Can anyone explain what might need a HTTP request here?

<comment><USER11> Most likely lazy-loading libraries

<comment><USER12> Libraries for adding numbers, apparently?

<comment><USER13> \+ is specified in the core library, so yeah.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


U.S. Army Techniques Publication 3-39.33: Civil Disturbances - <AUTHOR> https://publicintelligence.net/usarmy-civil-disturbances/ <comment><USER2> tldr; The mission is to avoid aggravating the local population any more than necessary, and they may be angry for good and valid reasons. Hurting/shooting people tends to anger people and turn the military presence there untenable(costly in material and lives).

okay, I mixed in a some background from other publications in the tldr, but whatever.

of course : " One of the serious problems in planning the fight against American doctrine, is that the Americans do not read their manuals, nor do they feel any obligation to follow their doctrine... " \- From a Soviet Junior Lt's Notebook

<comment><USER3> one take away from the videos of the police in Ferguson recently, they point their guns in the protester's directions more often than not, as in they are dialing up the antagonism. Real soldiers would never do that, you only point at whom your going to shoot.

Wanna be soldiers become cops because its easier than making it through boot camp

<comment><USER4> Agreed. I'm also taken aback by the recordings of unprovoked hostility from the cops. To reporters, mind you. If this is how they are acting towards the media, how badly are they treating the minorities in their communities who have little to no power to fight back?

Keep in mind: the standard for justifying the use of lethal force for a cop is whether the officer had reasonable belief that he/she was protecting himself or others from serious injury at that moment. The scope is narrow - it does not take into account if the cop provoked the fight in the first place.

<comment><USER5> They're fearful, the cops. Not excusing it but this is not only the community lashing out at their lack of power, but the authority lashing out at the same. I don't want to psychoanalyze this but I think the whole thing is part of a bigger picture where authority in America is trying to maintain control of a public that is, according to almost any poll you find, is seriously disillusioned with their leadership. And they react with the _deft touch_ of your typical large institution.

<comment><USER4> I think they are fearful and it must be stressful to have to do an admittedly dangerous job under immense public scrutiny, media attention, and the disillusionment of their communities they're supposed to serve.

But Ferguson's disillusionment is not an abstract dislike of authority, it can be concretely traced back to its history. When we talk of disillusionment we need to talk about years of police abuse and mistreatment of citizens: racial profiling, trivial arrests and police brutality. And they continue to justify the community's scepticism by withholding information (the officer's name), clumsy attempts to manipulate the narrative (the unrelated story of the robbery) and attempting to shut down the media.

Not all cops are bad, but it whatever institutional policies exist to hold cops accountable is non-existent; they haven't earned the community's trust.

<comment><USER6> This is another reason to standardize police forces. Allowing counties to determine whether their units have to be monitored by dash cams/personal cams is a mistake. We need a more unified police.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ignoring the content, I was mildly taken aback to find two spelling errors in the first couple of pages.

Aren't these policy manuals written by supposedly smart people? And as government documents handed out to thousands of people, don't they get professional editing?

It's a small thing, but it leads me to think "broken windows." If correct language is one of the details that's considered undeserving of professional attention, then what else is?

<comment><USER8> > Aren't these policy manuals written by supposedly smart people?

No. Not smart in the sense you'd have it. They are smart in the sense that they found stable jobs in government where they can write policies like this at a desk and get a stable income, good healthcare and lots of vacation days. They are smart in navigating a govt type of bureaucracy (which involves lot of ass kissing, towing the official party line, not sticking out, doing the minimum to get by).

<comment><USER9> What experience do you base this statement upon? I serve in the military and can tell you that the writers of military doctrine are typically senior (O-4 and above) officers with post-graduate degrees. These are people who have devoted many years of their lives to military professional education. Like any manual, the possibility for a typographical mistake exists. There is an official channel for readers to submit errors that they find. In this case, you can submit your errors to the Maneuver Support Center of Excellence at Fort Leonard Wood via DA Form 2028, which can be mailed or emailed:

       Send comments and
       recommendations on DA Form 2028 (Recommended Changes to > > Publications and Blank Forms) to
       Commander, MSCoE, ATTN: ATZT-CDC, 14000 MSCoE Loop, Suite > 270, Fort Leonard Wood, MO 65473-
       8929; e-mail the DA Form 2028 to
       <firstname.lastname@example.com>; or    submit
       an electronic DA Form 2028.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> >Often in the media, protesters can gain sympathy for their cause by prompting authorities to take physical action against them.

"blame the victim" right from the start (2nd paragraph). I guess that sets the tone for the army people who are normally pretty isolated from social issues and don't have very well informed opinion of their own.

>The level of violence is determined by the willingness of demonstrators to display and voice their opinions in support of their cause and the actions and reactions of the control force on scene.

"the willingness of demonstrators to display and voice their opinions in support of their cause" as a major leading factor determining level of violence - blame the witness again, these hippies/african-americans/whoever brought it upon themselves. If you think about it - a willingness to display and voice your opinions is a major existential threat to the established order and, given such level of the threat, violent response by the established order would be a reasonable (from the order's POV) thing.

Major point here seems to be as usually is to take all responsibility issues on the part of enforcers/army out of picture and just make them follow the orders with full surety that they going the right thing. Typical brainwash.

<comment><USER11> Nice, you totally cut and pasted out of context:

>>Often in the media, protesters can gain sympathy for their cause by prompting authorities to take physical action against them.

>"blame the victim" right from the start (2nd paragraph). I guess that sets the tone for the army people who are normally pretty isolated from social issues and don't have very well informed opinion of their own.

Sentence immediately before this in the same paragraph "During unified action, U.S. forces should never violate basic civil or human rights. Most protesters are law-abiding citizens who intend to keep their protests nonviolent, but some protest planners insist that the event involve violence."

>>The level of violence is determined by the willingness of demonstrators to display and voice their opinions in support of their cause and the actions and reactions of the control force on scene.

Again, the sentence before this one: "Violence can be the result of demonstrators beginning to conduct unlawful or criminal acts and authorities (who are responsible for the safety and welfare of all) enforcing the laws of the municipality, state, or nation."

You're biases are clear.

<comment><USER12> I agree it was a biased statement, but the key issue is that if you roll out soldiers to address a civil disturbance, you need to figure out what they are going to do.

If they are there to prevent escalation, they need to take the abuse hurled at them and suck it up.

Saying "We come in peace and respect you, stand by while we crack your skull open with a truncheon" doesn't exempt your conduct. If standard operating procedure calls for escalation from skull-cracking to rifle fire into a crowd to machine gunning of the crowd, we have a problem.

<comment><USER13> "if you roll out soldiers to address a civil disturbance, you need to figure out what they are going to do."

One of the interesting things I learned participating in a number of protests in recent years surrounded by veterans is that they were shocked at the local PD's willingness to violate basic human rights in ways that they'd never have been allowed in the Army / Marines / etc..

One of the concerns I discussed with a friend this weekend regarding the current / recent situation in Ferguson is that police with military equipment are doing things that are simply not acceptable for soldiers at war, such as outright pointing their weapons into a crowd in order to get people's attention, as well as the unchecked use of teargas which I also saw in Oakland.

I don't look forward to encountering any group of soldiers in a demonstration, nor do I doubt the Army has policies that are frightening, but one of the most frightening things about the militarization of police is that police are civilians who do not answer to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, nor do they require proper training on how to interact with the public as military. Many of them are vets, but not all of them had such duties while in the service.

This is why you often hear the perception that these police are 'dressed up to play soldier' because as horrifying as it is that a city would send soldiers in to repress its' citizens, it's an order of magnitude worse because they aren't trained to have any restraint and the protest they are policing is _directly_ against them and their presence in the area.

<comment><USER14> John Oliver touched on this in his recent segment.

The Army, is given training in Escalation Of Force. The police, who are being given all these toys because terrorists and drugs, do not have that training.

This is why you hear about the police shooting and killing unarmed civilians, deploying teargas in residential areas, and walking around pointing their weapons at people instead of the ground.

Frankly they shouldn't have that gear at all, but if you're going to give it to them at least train them properly with it first.

<comment><USER13> "Frankly they shouldn't have that gear at all, but if you're going to give it to them at least train them properly with it first."

Absolutely 1000% what I was trying to get across.

I don't want to see the national guard in my neighborhood, but I would rather see them than the Alameda County Sheriffs or CHP armed with the national guard's equipment.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Facebook uses a hidden feature to share your information with advertisers - <AUTHOR> https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-facebook-uses-a-hidden-feature-to-share-your-information-with-advertisers <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18082017](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18082017)</comment>


Living on a Self-Sufficient Sailboat for 10 Years [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lk83N2u1ZmY <comment><USER2> Great video of a couple living on a mostly self sufficient pretty large sail boat. You really get a sense out of what their life is like and they also talk about a lot of interesting technical details. I'm tempted to see how much one of those costs. Dangerously appealing in this terrible time.</comment>


Seven Archetypal Software Projects - <AUTHOR> http://blog.roninapp.com/2008/10/21/the-seven-archetypal-software-projects/

<comment><USER2> That was kind of enjoyable. Not terribly deep, but enjoyable.</comment>


Show HN: LCUI.css – A UI component framework for building LCUI application - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/lc-ui/lcui.css <comment><USER2> LCUI is "A small C library for building user interfaces with C, XML and CSS." [http://lcui.org/](http://lcui.org/)

This is a CSS library for LCUI

</comment><comment><USER3> The author has a pretty good sense of humor. On the testimonials page ([http://lcui.org](http://lcui.org)):

 _" LCUI solves many complex issues, it reduces the application UI development and maintenance costs, I only need to write a code for the UI will be able to make my application in a number of platforms to show a consistent UI effect." \-- Liu Chao, Creator of LC's Finder_

<comment><USER4> All of the screenshots are from the demo app, too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why does a CSS library need Make, Node AND Python to build?

<comment><USER6> This is not for web. Check out: [http://lcui.org/](http://lcui.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Given that this is C, how is memory management handled?

</comment><comment><USER8> oh no, bootstrap.

<comment><USER9> [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

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


Dao Programming Language - <AUTHOR> http://daoscript.org/ <comment><USER2> Author here, I will be happy to answer some questions.

<comment><USER3> This reminds me Stanza ([http://lbstanza.org/](http://lbstanza.org/)). Do you know it and what differences would you point out ?

<comment><USER2> I didn't know it. But according the introduction in its website, the differences are very easy to spot on: the syntax is obviously different; Stanza compiles directly to native code, but Dao doesn't; Dao supports class and inheritance, but Stanza not; concurrency support is also different. The main similarity seems to be both having optional typing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I mostly submitted this here because Dao looks kinda interesting but I've never heard anything about it anywhere and thus was reluctant to invest time in it.

I know that the language has been around for years, though.

Has anyone here every used it?

<comment><USER4> Haven't used it either (Google suggests nobody but the author is actually using it seriously), but from a quick look it's basically a virtual machine in C, so probably competitive with Lua / Squirrel / the other dozen lightweight embedded scripting languages.

It's probably easiest to just use V8 for any new projects, it's the fastest / most maintained and the scripting API isn't really that much more complicated. Plus basically everyone knows JS these days. [https://github.com/v8/v8/wiki/Getting%20Started%20with%20Emb...](https://github.com/v8/v8/wiki/Getting%20Started%20with%20Embedding)

Although Dao does have good concurrency/async features; V8 isn't really POSIX thread safe.

Random links which have Dao in them: [http://lambda-the- ultimate.org/node/2085](http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/2085) [https://github.com/r-lyeh/scriptorium](https://github.com/r-lyeh/scriptorium) [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2526300/list-of-lua- deri...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2526300/list-of-lua-derived-vms- and-languages) [http://lua- users.org/lists/lua-l/2009-03/msg00137.html](http://lua- users.org/lists/lua-l/2009-03/msg00137.html) [https://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/05/29/0225227/dao-a...](https://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/05/29/0225227/dao- a-new-programming-language-supporting-advanced-features-with-small-runtime) [http://www.devtopics.com/dao-obscure-programming-language- of...](http://www.devtopics.com/dao-obscure-programming-language-of-the- month/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It took me a while to realize this is not the DAO from Ethereum, which incidentally, is such a (negatively) loaded name.

Maybe you should consider changing the name, at very list just so you don't get dismissed when reading the title alone in any post, newsletter, w/e.

<comment><USER6> Note: the Chinese word "dao" predates Ethereum by a very long time. I'd be more worried that it would be difficult to find since the word is so common.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> How do I enable the LLVM jit? It doesn't seem to be included in the build system

<comment><USER2> You will need to clone [https://github.com/daokoder/DaoJIT](https://github.com/daokoder/DaoJIT), and place it under dao/modules. Then edit dao/modules/makefile.dao to add:

      if( DaoMake::IsDir( "DaoJIT" ) ) modules.AddDirectory( "JIT", "DaoJIT" );

then it will be included in the building. After building, you can add "-j" option in the command line to turn on jit.

However, this module has not been tested for some time. It could be broken. It depends on older versions of LLVM, which is unfortunately not available on my laptop, so I cannot verify it now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This has nothing to do with decentralized autonomous organizations of the blockchain world. From the page:

 _Dao is a lightweight and optionally typed programming language with many advanced features. It includes features that can make concurrent programming very simple. It provides well designed programming interfaces for easy embedding and extending._

<comment><USER9> Yeah, took me a minute to figure that out, too. I thought this was another EVM language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This seems really interesting, but it looks kind of dead.

That's a shame, I'd love to get into it.

EDIT: Ignore me

<comment><AUTHOR> Where did you get that idea?

[https://github.com/daokoder/dao/](https://github.com/daokoder/dao/) Last commit was 3 days ago

Project seems relatively active in general: [https://github.com/daokoder/dao/graphs/commit- activity](https://github.com/daokoder/dao/graphs/commit-activity)</comment></comment>