The Internet of Poorly Working Things - <AUTHOR> https://mondaynote.com/the-internet-of-poorly-working-things-cda7a147af <comment><USER3> Thank you for that article! I have been feeling like that for many months, and whenever I point it out to co-workers or friends, they mention the Apple- universe as the ultimate achievement of interconnectivity. And in a one-vendor universe, the world may be okay right now. Apple did a fine job there.

However, interconnectivity between devices (and software) of different vendors seems to get worse and worse; standards seem to have become irrelevant. Time to market is the only thing that matters and long-term customer satisfaction and durability seem to be of no importance any more. They just don't care about integration with other vendors any more.

When I saw Minority Report (2002) a few years ago, I thought dragging windows and applications across devices with a gesture would be a possibility in the not-too-distant future. Now, in 2016, this not-too-hard-to-develop feature seems almost impossible to imagine. Sharing content between devices is utterly painful or even impossible: copying large files between computers in the same Wifi without going through the Internet; playing a video from your Android phone on a Samsung TV; moving application state from your laptop to your desktop PC when you leave work; playing music from your Android phone in a brand new Audi via Bluetooth ... All of these things are absolutely achievable if vendors worked together or standards were to be developed/followed. Right now, though, it just looks like technology fragmentation is getting worse every day.

<comment><USER4> I agree with most of your post, but:

> _I thought dragging windows and applications across devices with a gesture > would be a possibility in the not-too-distant future. Now, in 2016, this > not-too-hard-to-develop feature seems almost impossible to imagine._

Moving a _running process_ from one machine to another, seamlessly and instantly, is not at all easy on current architectures. Not that it's impossible (well, it might be impossible to do it instantly in all cases), but it would be a hell of a lot of work, even across a single platform, and have a lot of unpleasant snags to deal with. (What happens when important app/system settings are different on your desktop and laptop?)

<comment><USER5> You assume a specific implementation. In the movie, we only see the display moving from one screen to the other. That is a problem solved since the 80s with X-Window.

More recently, all enterprise application UI are actually web UI. So that's just moving a browser window from one screen to another, so just a refined Apple "Handover".

On a more hardcore fashion, we can move a whole VM almost seamlessly. At some point that could be the case with containers too and that may not be that far fetched to move single process after all.

<comment><USER6> > all enterprise application UI are actually web UI

Yes, and so are most consumer apps, and "moving state" to another device is simply a question of IM'ing a link. Sure, the UI in the movie looks way cooler, but _it 's a movie_.

<comment><USER7> That works for the barely double-digit percentage of apps which store all necessary state in the URL. In most cases, it's more like share a link, reauthenticate, get an unhelpful error page, use the navigation to get back to where you were, learn that the work you did first wasn't saved at all or that their eventual consistency means "same day" (e.g. iCloud), and hopefully they don't have some halfhearted attempt at locking which will prevent you from continuing. I suspect that if this feature ever arrives it'll be streaming rendered video like CarPlay/etc. because that's the only thing the device vendor can count on.

The point isn't that this is uncharted waters technically but that too many companies decided a good user experience isn't compatible with their desired profit margins. In some cases like security and bug fixes that might change due to regulation but that's far from certain and it's really hard to imagine that extending to broad interoperability.

<comment><USER6> Yes, for an app to successfully transfer state, it needs to be able to transfer state, that's a tautology.

But for webapps that want to be able to transfer state, the mechanism is the URL, and for those app, this works perfectly and unceremoniously well today.

<comment><USER7> The point I was responding to was your assertion that this was already true of most enterprise and consumer webapps:

> > all enterprise application UI are actually web UI > Yes, and so are most > consumer apps, and "moving state" to another device is simply a question of > IM'ing a link.

That's a great aspirational goal but it's simply not something which most people can assume will work – I still routinely find apps from major companies where you can't even use the back button within the same session!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> IMO there is a very annoying trend in household appliances towards worse and worse UI.

Basically, it started with light switches already decades ago, at least in Europe. In the past, you had switches that themselves indicated what state they are in, so if you cluster them on a board it's incredibly easy to find the one switched on at the moment [1].

Then, some moron came up with switches that don't show anything anymore [2].

Nowadays you're lucky if you get switches on anything at all. This [3] is how a standard stove looks like in new Swiss apartments nowadays. Good luck explaining this to your grandma. __You idiots, it has one job, getting more or less hot! __

Recently I took a residential elevator that just had an empty touch field when you came in. _No indication of what you could do whatsoever_. This immediately gave me anxiety, and I'm just 31 goddamnit. Anyways, what happened was that _once the elevator door closed_ it gave me a selection of floors to go. [4] _facepalm_

Please, for the love of what's holy, _stop improving what doesn 't need improvement_! In german we have a word for this: "Verschlimmbessern". (a combination of verschlimmern='making it worse' and bessern=improving)

[1] [https://adventurelightingblog.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/li...](https://adventurelightingblog.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/light- switch.jpg)

[2] [http://www.schulungshandbuch.de/WebRoot/Store22/Shops/627847...](http://www.schulungshandbuch.de/WebRoot/Store22/Shops/62784718/54C3/771A/FC18/5950/9A6B/C0A8/2ABB/1470/Lichtschalter.jpeg)

[3] [http://media3.siemens- home.com/Product_Shots/915x515/MCSA006...](http://media3.siemens- home.com/Product_Shots/915x515/MCSA00681395_2_EH645BB17E_def.png)

[4] [https://www.google.co.jp/search?tbm=isch&q=schindler+touch&t...](https://www.google.co.jp/search?tbm=isch&q=schindler+touch&tbs=imgo:1&gws_rd=cr&ei=xWq6V6_KAcjK0ATj9JqYBg#gws_rd=cr&imgrc=33lIUZ1H5KvvxM%3A)

<comment><USER9> Okay, so, I program, do sysadmin work, and all sorts of highly technical stuff for a living.

If it becomes a thing where only that oven can be bought, and all ovens have those insane controls?

I'll quit eating. I swear to God, I will give up eating altogether.

<comment><USER8> All I want is a gas stove with built-in electric ignition like we have in Japan. It's simple, immediately hot, easy to repair and IMO elegant.

<comment><USER10> Try induction. As a side skill you can learn to arc weld with a potato instead of a welding rod.

<comment><USER8> What I showed in the pic is induction probably, most new stoves in Switzerland are. It's ok for directness, but nothing beats gas. I don't even need the damn knob to tell me how strong it is, I can see the flame! There's beauty and fun in cooking with something as simple as fire.

<comment><USER11> Speak with any professional chef and they will tell you that gas is what you want. The direct control is impossible to beat, induction gets close but it's still not ideal - and regular electric hobs are just miserable to use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > In less than two years, the CPU inside the TV quickly becomes obsolete and > can't be upgraded while the display itself easily lasts a decade, and > software updates are persphinctery, if they happen at all.

That's odd — the word 'persphinctery' seems to appear only in Monday Note articles. Is this some sort of trap street[1] for medium-form articles?

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

<comment><USER13> That looks a bit search'n'replace run amok, although I fail to see what the first half of s/?/sphincter/g could be.

The end result is certainly unlovely though: rather colonoscopacetic, if you will.

<comment><USER14> I searched the same thing, decided it's probably a pun on "perfunctory" \+ sphincter-clench-inducing

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Any smartphone from the past few years + an internet connection lets people file their taxes, watch videos, communicate by text/audio/video with pretty much anyone in the world, read online encyclopedia, order pretty much any physical good to their door, listen to music, translate languages, read books, take high resolution videos, and so much more.

How do you even beat that? And what do you offer beyond that?

It feels like we're reaching the flat part of the logarithmic progress curve (a much more appropriate curve for progress than the hockey stick curve) when it comes to what personal computing is going to bring to the daily lives of consumers.

Of course, there are still many areas not explored by computing. Computer aided medical procedures and diagnoses, monitoring and upkeep of crops, and so many more fields will grow in the years and decades to come. And improvements to personal transportation, through i.e. self driving cars, is arguably a consumer technology.

But the whole IoT movement is just a parody of itself. The vast majority of people do not want internet connected water cups or juicers or microwave ovens; and those who do soon get frustrated by the real world logistics that come with these things (higher costs, more frequent failures, lack of interoperability, etc.). I had Philips Hue bulbs for a while, and the girlfriend I lived with at the time hated them with a passion - <USER2> understandable reasons. When it comes to turning lights on and off, you can't beat a light switch, and the same logic applies to every single item we interact with daily. For instance, the Nest we had in our apartment would randomly start on and off, or suddenly stop being visible to the app, etc.

<comment><USER16> There are certainly areas where remote connectivity is useful. Cameras is one case (although I would be skeptical of the security of most of them).

HVAC is certainly enhanced by the ability to control it remotely, first, because of the potential effort savings in being able to control it from anywhere in your house without having to seek out your control thing or remote, and second, because you can adjust the temperature remotely, which is good for those of use who don't want the house at 18 C all day long when we're not home, you can set the temperature to your desired temperature when you head home from work, which may not be a set time.

IOT toasters though? That's just taking the piss.

<comment><USER17> I could see cases where connected toasters could be useful. It'd be a marginal amount of added value, but it would be there.

The problem is that in the current context, almost any IOT device has an additional negative value attached to whatever positive value its features give, because basically every company doing it makes overcomplicated crap.

In a perfect world, you might be able to plug in an IOT toaster and have it automatically connect to your Amazon/Google/Apple/whatever hub (with a simple "I found <yourname>'s hub, is this correct?" interface). At that point the hub would track the toaster status and the household context, and then do stuff like say, via your phone or a set of discreet speakers throughout the house, "The toast was burning, so I stopped the heat" or "You left your toaster on when nobody was home, so I turned it off".

None of this would be impossible to implement today, but it would require thinking about long-term holistic benefits instead of being able to slap "IoT device" on something to try and sell more to nerds.

<comment><USER16> But how do you leave a toaster on when nobody's home? You put bread in, push the lever, and it pops up 3 minutes later.

And it's possible for a toaster to detect burning without requiring an internet connection.

<comment><USER17> > But how do you leave a toaster on when nobody's home?

Start toast, go and grab the mail, get distracted by a neighbor, forget about the toast, go over to look at their new riding lawnmower.

> And it's possible for a toaster to detect burning without requiring an > internet connection.

Nothing about the scenarios I described would _require_ an internet connection for anything but communicating outside the house (e.g. phone notifications).

<comment><USER18> I think the point of the comment you replied to was that almost every toaster automatically shuts off after an adjustable time. Unless you have drastically misadjusted your toaster settings the worst case for a toaster is burnt toast (or perhaps some smoke if you really didn't get it right).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> A lot has to do with the fact that most of these devices are novelties. Save for smart thermostats (can save money on heating bill), or simple efficiency- boosting products, life is generally easier without the added complexity of an interconnected-everything. A fridge is a fridge and its proven to work well for over 100 years. A toaster makes toast. The dishwasher washes dishes.

Once something more useful comes around companies will invest more resources but I mean who wants a smart toaster? You pop some toast in there and let it do it's thing. Simple.

We need some major breakthroughs in, for example, 3d printed gourmet meals or something.

</comment><comment><USER9> > In less than two years, the CPU inside the TV quickly becomes obsolete and > can't be upgraded while the display itself easily lasts a decade, and > software updates are persphinctery, if they happen at all.

I refuse to buy a smart TV, and when my TV finally dies, I will probably be forced to buy one, and the first thing I will do is either disable, or just refuse to setup and use, the smart part.

I will then plug a Chromecast in. That cost me $35. That actually works with the services I pay for correctly.

Even those Android TV-based smart TVs are useless, because Google does not control them and cannot force the OEM to push Android updates.... although, Android TV does let you Chromecast to it, which is probably what I would use it for.

Although, if I _wanted_ Android TV, I'd buy an Nvidia Shield TV and use that instead, since it actually has a reasonable amount of horsepower, supports H265 Main10 and Rec2020 colorspace (in the hardware, AndroidTV support of it itself is upcoming), thus, true 4k support (not merely 2160p support using 8-bit Rec709/sRGB, which a lot of so called 4k devices and TVs are; for a historical perspective, see all the TVs that can only do 720p and 1080i but not 1080p, thus are not actually HDTV/Bluray compatible at all, this is the same thing al over again).

Technology advances too quickly for a TV to ever be smart. I'd pay _more_ for a dumb TV that has two more HDMI ports instead, ripping out any smart TV SoC, and ripping out the (extremely useless) cable tuner.

Side note: the cable tuner is useless on cable, due to all cable companies moving to encrypting all channels, or moving to IPTV platforms entirely, thus always requiring a box (CableCard is a dead standard and was a mistake, similarly to how smart TV is a mistake and should be just as dead); the cable tuner is always useless on satellite; and if you're trying to do OTA, many TVs, even ones produced today, do not have sufficient sensitivity to dial into channels for many reasons (distance, obscured line of sight, reflections), and even with large enough antennas, you'll get better performance (and sometimes, the ONLY performance) out of a dedicated OTA box.

As of which OTA box, if you _need_ signal performance for extreme OTA situations, Channel Master's tuners, as a set top box, kind of suck, but often are the only ones that can coherently decode a signal.

<comment><USER20> > I refuse to buy a smart TV, and when my TV finally dies, I will probably be > forced to buy one, and the first thing I will do is either disable, or just > refuse to setup and use, the smart part.

Heh. That's what happened to me. Got a "smart" Vizio TV 4 years ago. It had a Skype + camera option. One night saw camera light come on when I wasn't using it. Quickly yanked that out. Then at some point the "apps" for Amazon stopped working for it. So that's when I disabled its networking plugged in a fire- stick and just using it as a dumb large screen for Netflix.

Actually that is an interesting niche to play in -- sell a high quality TV display but just with lots of USB and power ports in the back so people can plug in their favorite stream devices. It would be lighter and thinner as well. More power efficient.

Can even make a play on "this is secure, unlike other such devices". And of course the "you save by not paying for extra crap you don't want to use". Advertise that to a few sub-reddits which do xmbc, kodi development, cord cutters. Maybe get Costco on-board as well.

<comment><USER21> I just bought a Philips 40" 4k-computer monitor with a Chromecast. Mostly because there is a license cost to own a television in my country. This setup saves me $200-300 a year.

<comment><USER22> Can you expand on how buying a TV saves you $200 a year ?

<comment><USER10> Getting pictures on the screen via an aerial presumably incurs a tax. So don't connect aerial and use a different system and don't pay.

<comment> saiya-jin not sure about his country, but all countries i've lived in, those TV fees are practically impossible to legally dodge.

all possible things that are considered as TV receiver - any smart phone, tablet, PC including all *book, and of course all possible TVs. "reasoning" \- you can still watch stuff online.

and there might be sub-fee for just radio receiving, in case you really don't possess any video-displaying device. And again any of those devices (over internet for example) apply.

I don't pay them where I live currently (Switzerland) - the private company which has government mandate to extract fees (Billag) has questionable legality over incurring any fees (which can go up to 5000 CHF =~ 5000 USD), and they need to physically inspect your apartment before any action. Of course there is no force in universe that would make me let them in. Reason - I haven't watched any broadcast TV station (or any other) for last 5 years. Plus we pay for TV channels to internet provider quite hefty sum already (part of the package, unused). If it's not illegal, it's immoral to extract those fees.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've got a bunch of WiFi cameras that aren't able to access the internet[0], so really it's an "Intranet of Things". But they sometimes drop their connection, which is expected because it's WiFi, but a lot of the time they won't reconnect properly.

I figure that if basic infrastructure stuff, like automatically reconnecting to WiFi, doesn't even work, what chance do we have of harder things like security working properly?

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11933851](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11933851)

<comment><USER24> How much did you pay for them? I've lost all faith in consumer-level gear. I just don't think the businesses prioritise any kind of QA any more.

<comment><USER23> They're definitely consumer-grade cameras, and most of them are at the low end of that. I'd say they are in the $50-100 CAD range per camera.

That said, when they do work they work a lot better than their price would suggest.

<comment><USER24> I'd probably create a Rube Goldberg-esque setup that detected when the camera dropped off wifi and power cycled (Wifi-enabled socket, it's IOT all the way down) the camera.

<comment><USER17> There's a device for that: [http://resetplug.com](http://resetplug.com)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Worked on industrial IoT for five years from devices to backends. It's all garbage. Nothing works, everything is wrapped in marketing double speak, security is a Shit show and UX is virtually non-existent.

<comment><USER26> Do you have any thoughts on why? Lack of competition, race to the bottom on prices, incompetence, or some kind of vendor lock-in?

<comment><USER27> The consumer doesn't want it?

I don't have anything IoT in my home. Why spend hundreds/thousands to: replace my thermostat with an app, make all of my lights remote controlled, motorize my blinds, and what else is there?

It's just spending a lot of money and time for hardly any perceived advantage. Combine this with the fact the average consumer is very cash-strapped in these times.

<comment><USER17> Motorized blinds _should_ have a simple and incredibly useful killer feature for literally anyone living in a city: the blinds automatically close when you go to bed, and automatically open a little while before your alarm clock goes off.

The fact that getting something this simple this set up takes technical chops and a ton of cash is a massive failure on the part of the companies making these devices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> There are two basic problems. 1) getting the devices to find each other and communicate in some reasonably secure way, and 2) controlling them in some user-friendly manner.

1) is still a mess. Things that are hooked to line power ought to talk over the power line. There are lots of standards for that, from the old X10 (1980s, low bandwidth, poor noise immunity, no security), bidirectional X10, Echelon (1990s, low bandwidth, very good noise immunity, some security), HomePlug (2000s, high bandwidth, some security), plus some proprietary systems. X10 refuses to die, and HomePlug's bandwidth is overkill for lighting. Echelon mostly gave up on the home and went on to become the standard for subway and rail automation (signs, lighting, HVAC, doors, etc.) because of the good noise immunity. They're working on a new approach to lighting, where LED lights run on 48VDC. This is a bit radical for home automation.

If you have any of these, it's useful to have a whole-house RF filter where power enters the house or apartment to isolate your network segment from everybody else on the same pole transformer. These are cheap ($6 or so) but have to be installed by an electrician. This is a big obstacle to power line networking.

Then there are the RF-based networks. WiFi, Zigbee, etc. These have range limitations and may not work through walls. Despite all the headaches of RF networking, most of the IoT vendors are going that way because they get to dump the range problem on the user.

<comment><USER29> >If you have any of these, it's useful to have a whole-house RF filter where power enters the house or apartment to isolate your network segment from everybody else on the same pole transformer.

I considered X10 a few years back, and when this issue came up I scrapped that idea.

I think it would work better if these controllers used out of band communication, but that would require running an extra set of wires.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Vendor lock-in gets short shrift in this article. Let's not forget Philips attempting to lock out competitor's bulbs from their Hue bridges.

<comment><USER31> They tried, there was a shitstorm, and they reverted that. For now, at least.

I'm a recent and quite happy Hue owner. I decided to go for the expensive good stuff because I learned the hard way that cheap consumer electronics is always shitty and not worth the hassle - all those trivial annoyances add up to your stress level. Also, I know a bit too much about Chinese cheap LED bulbs manufacturing quality - I don't trust them that they won't burn my house down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> All that build up and it ends up basically an ad for Amazon Echo? Disappointing. Amazon Echo is of very borderline usefulness at best. On its own it does almost nothing that the digital assistant on your phone can't already do, and a lot that it can't just because your phone is so already entrenched in your life.

<comment><USER33> I can say "Alexa, dim the lights to 50%" and it happens. I can say "OK Google, dim the lights to 50%" and nothing happens. Both ecosystems have access to my lights (I can control them with various apps), but only one has put effort into first-party integrations with IOT platforms.

<comment><USER32> Ok so your specific lighting system integrates better with Echo than with OK Google. That says something about those combinations, it doesn't say much about Echo itself.

Like I said in the comment you responded to; _on its own_ the Echo is pretty borderline whether it's useful at all, and it can't do many things your phone assistant can.

My point being; just because your combination works with your Echo and not your phone assistant doesn't mean that Echo is a device most people should buy.

<comment><USER33> I don't think you understand. This isn't the case of "oh that product's better integrated with Amazon than Google". Amazon has put the resources and legwork into establishing a business and development integration with every single major connected device maker in retail stores. All of them, in a way that nobody else has. I think it's wrong to say it "doesn't say much about Echo itself". It shows a focus on becoming the center of the smart home nobody else has.

If a device works with Samsung SmartThings, Philips Hue, Belkin Wemo, Insteon, Lutron, Wink, Nest, HomeSeer, Almond, LIFX, GE Link, TCP, iHome, Leviton, Honeywell Lyric or TotalConnect, Ecobee, Haiku, Keen, Garageio, Z-wave or Zigbee (via a hub)... then it also works with Alexa, out of the box, because Amazon has relationships with all of them already.

You just say "Alexa, discover my devices" and she finds whatever you happen to own on your network on her own, instantly knows their names (that you gave them if applicable) and capabilities, and can address them through natural language.

<comment><USER32> I do get it. You're saying Echo has the best IoT integration of all the assistants. That _may_ be true. But it's also possibly irrelevant depending on what combinations of IoT devices someone wants. If everything I want has HomeLink integration, then Echo's broader integration means nothing to me.

> This is something Amazon did; "it doesn't say much about Echo itself" is > completely mistaken.

You're misunderstanding what I mean by that sentence, which I guess could be clearer. What I meant is; it doesn't say anything about _Echo 's independent functionality apart from any other devices._ Does that help clarify?

My point is that ability to integrate with other devices is great but it's only one thing that a digital assistant has to do. Echo is missing other things that assistants on phones can do not only because the phone has capabilities Echo does not hardware wise but also because our phones are so integrated into our daily lives.

Anyway this discussion has really gone off the rails. My original point was this article is clearly just an Echo ad and it's a bad one at that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> _> A look at the so-called Smart TV reinforces the observation about CE culture. In less than two years, the CPU inside the TV quickly becomes obsolete and can't be upgraded while the display itself easily lasts a decade, and software updates are persphinctery, if they happen at all._

Evocative term ("persphinctery"), what does it mean? A web search mostly references mondaynote.

<comment><USER35> The prefix "per" means through, so this made up word seems to mean "as though it came through the sphincter" a.k.a "crappy".

So "persphinctery" would be a synonym of "excretory", were it actually a word.

<comment><USER36> You got it: [https://twitter.com/gassee/status/767576827963453440](https://twitter.com/gassee/status/767576827963453440)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I just had a chuckle: the Chrome tab I have open now (for this HN story) reads "The Internet of Poo" with the rest of the sentence faded out & cropped. How fitting

<comment><USER38> Related: Internet of Sh*t is a Twitter account highlighting "your best home appliances ruined by putting the internet in them".

[https://twitter.com/internetofshit](https://twitter.com/internetofshit)

<comment><USER39> It's mentioned in the article... ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> This isn't the first time gratuitous "technologisation of stuff" has been proposed, though it seems to be proceeding rather apace.

From 1922, "Radio All the Things!": [http://i.imgur.com/TSJnicdl.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/TSJnicdl.jpg)

(Via: [http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2015/01/videophones-from- fut...](http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2015/01/videophones-from-future- past.html) and origionally: [http://wi.mobilities.ca/grant-wythoff-aerophone- telephot-hyp...](http://wi.mobilities.ca/grant-wythoff-aerophone-telephot- hypnobioscope-hugo-gernsbacks-media-theory/))

Or the original book if you'd prefer: Hugo Gernsback, _Radio for All_ (1922): [https://archive.org/details/radioforall00gerniala](https://archive.org/details/radioforall00gerniala)

I think I know what a radio phone might do. Radio clocks even exist (though a networked NTP timekeeper is more useful). I'm not sure I'd care to fly in a radio-controlled airplane. And I'm utterly perplexed at what a radio heater might be -- unless it's a microwave space heater, or an early instance of Nest.

<comment><USER41> I like how the radiofax is dumping the output straight into the trash can

<comment><USER42> My guess is that it's some sort of ticker service.

Also, in an era of omnipresent paper notes, perhaps the expectation was that most notes would be discarded, with only the important ones retained?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Working in consumer IoT on a regular basis.. here is the main problem with adoption: Every device has it's own app!

Let's say eventually I want to use Echo, or SmartThings, etc. I can buy 20 devices but half of them have their own app that requires registration before I can connect it to my Echo or SmartThings hub.

The reason people hold up Apple as a potential solution is you are seeing hints of them starting to steal registration tasks of even cloud connected devices.

So you might ask "Why" does each device have it's own app? Because all of these companies want to "own" the customer and the associated data.

The funny part to me, is I know damn well some of them don't want any part of maintaining an application and the team associated with it and the infrastructure.

If someone came up with a platform that was easy to integrate, managed an app, and just shared that data for free or a nominal fee, I believe they would win.

</comment><comment><USER44> Google cache: [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:p3ffba...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:p3ffbaWsETUJ:https://mondaynote.com/the- internet-of-poorly-working-things-cda7a147af+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

</comment><comment><USER45> Whenever you see "Internet of Things", think "Unfixable Heartbleed Everywhere Forever".

</comment><comment><USER46> It's true that progress is slow, partly because not enough people are tinkering and innovating in this space. We're trying to fix that by getting affordable starter kits into the hands of more developers.We saw a big gap in the market in terms of innovation at the edge especially using cellular technologies. Technologies like CAT-M and Narrowband should make this gap even smaller.

</comment><comment><USER47> Honestly it's not that hard to design controllers. It simply requires a fundamental understanding of finite state machines. Amateur / rushed coders think the if else statement is cheap way to program in a ruleset and often end up with rare corner cases as a result. The key is to define your states, and don't ever let it ever get outside of what is expected. But if it does, make sure you can detect it and revert. This isn't rocket science. A raspberrypi is faster than computers 5 years ago, don't mistake it's price for quality.

</comment><comment><USER48> And then the cloud service for your door lock, light bulb or security system gets shuttered.

#internetofbricks

</comment><comment><USER49> The internet of low margins and devices of dubious functionality. I'm truly scared that the next dotcom crash will come from iot not panning out for companies jumping into it without any forethought

</comment><comment><USER50> Even though I compleatly agree with everything being said in the article ,it highly understimate how hard it actually is to build a semi-complex IoT product. Our startup realized this after 2.5 years in the making of a Smart Things competitor. For example, to debug something you need to check a larger set of things (cliente, backend, hardware, embedd software, network, etc). It will all get better but as of today it really is hard to achieve.

</comment><comment><USER51> Regarding the mentioned Moore's law, do we really have 1000 times more computational power on consumer devices than we had in 1996?

<comment><USER52> A quick look at Wikipedia ("List of Intel Pentium microprocessors") shows that top-of-the-line desktop CPUs ran at 200 MHz, while a current Core i7-6700K is clocked at 4 GHz. That's already a 20-fold increase. Also consider that clock rate is not everything. The number of instructions per clock has also risen, although I don't have hard numbers at hand that easily.

Also consider storage. RAM clock speed is slowly, but steadily increasing, as are cache sizes across all levels. And the biggest gains in this area are made by transitioning from HDDs to SSDs, although I don't have numbers on this one, either.

But the elephant in the room is floating-point performance. The GPU in my desktop PC (a 2015 AMD R9 Nano) does 8 teraflops. Compare with an Nvidia RIVA 128 from 1998, which did 5 gigaflops. [1] That's more than 1000 times faster in just 17 years.

[1] [http://www.nvidia.com/object/RIVA_128_FAQ.html](http://www.nvidia.com/object/RIVA_128_FAQ.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> JLG raises some excellent points and points to some excellent critics, including the Internet of Shit twitter account.

Some elements to highlight:

 _We had this problem in consumer electric goods, starting slightly over a century ago._ Poorly-made devices could electrocute users, burn down homes (or offices or factories), would fail to work as advertised, fail to work, or otherwise disappoint. The result was that, _at the instigation of insurance companies_ , an independent testing and certification service was created, Underwriters Laboratories. UL are actually looking at entering the IoT/IoS morass: [http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Passcode/2016/0405/Can- testin...](http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Passcode/2016/0405/Can-testing- outfit-Underwriters-Laboratories-secure-the-Internet-of-Things)

 _More complex products make for more complex assessments._ One of my most useful and oldest household purchases is also one of my oldest: a cast-iron frying pan bought 30 years ago. It functions as it did when I first bought it, I've used it daily for decades, and its function was immediately evident. Contrast the tablet and keyboard on which I'm typing this, neither of which have lived up to expectations (nor the manufacturers to their warranty obligations -- Samsung and Logitec respectively). With hardware, control interfaces, communications, server dependencies, bugs, security vulnerabilities, and more, IoT devices are vastly more complex than what they replace.

 _Poor margins make for poor products._ This seems far less well understood than it ought, particularly among the HN crowd. An undercapitalised company, or one operating on a burn-rate and prayer, or some overseas firm you've never heard of, trying to crack your local market, may well choose to skimp on quality options. Vendors who care nothing other than order fulfillment and logistics (Amazon, WalMart, Best Buy) have no vested interest in product quality. Quality itself is a difficult metric to assess, particularly _lifetime_ quality.

Product / vendor lock-in is a consequence of this. Rather than make money on initial purchase, various forms of subscription-based services are offered, or interconnectivity is provided ... as an ad-on, additional-cost, feature.

 _Unintended consequences are a real bitch._ This is an area of market failure I've been exploring which seems highly underconsidered in contemporary economics. While Akerloff's "Market for Lemons" gave us a fuller awareness of _information asymmetries_ , I'm not aware of a general treatment for a simple _inability to know the salient future outcomes of current actions_. Consider Thomas Midgley, Jr.'s contributions of chlorofluorocarbons and tetraethyl lead, used in leaded gasoline. He's done more than any other engineer to put all of humanity at risk. And while lead was a known pollutant by the 1920s, the effects of CFCs on the ozone layer wasn't discovered for another 50 years. Long-lingering systemic effects are particularly pernicious.

 _" Smart" products only offer so much additional capability._ The ability of added logic or communications to a device to increase value is limited by the mode through which that object operates. Take Google's recently announced energy savings AI applications. The multi-millionfold increase in computer processing capabilities, combined with a decade's hard work at improving AI ... can deliver a ~15% energy efficiency improvement. In a Moore's Law scenario, this is about a four-month advance in processor capabilities, and given interactions of the Jevons Paradox, the end result is likely to be _increasing_ energy utilisation, not decreasing it. Similar results are seen for automotive and aircraft control systems. Net increases in efficiency from _millionfold_ processer capability improvements are, at best, a factor-of-two doubling, and often far less.

There are examples of marked improvements, with the multiple factors compounding in shipping markets a good example: containerisation, standardisation, improved dockside handling, intermodal rail and trucking, invoice and manifest controls, etc., have increased the efficiencies (and decreased the costs) of shipping markedly. Of course, the result is that _far more goods are shipped_ , and labour rates in advanced countries have fallen tremendously with falling negotiating advantage.

 _Complexity increases failure modes._ The more interconnections and mutual dependencies a thing has, the more ways it can fail. Any individual or combination of possible interactions needs be considered. Multiple systems with complex interactions compound this. The alternative is fully modularised and independent systems.

E.g., rather than a fully integrated "IoT" refrigerator, specific sensing, control, and communications modules might be provided to monitor power, temperature, contents, and communicate these.

Taking my tablet example -- apparently cases designed to specific device dimensions make the interchangeability of what ought be completely separate systems complex.

<comment><USER53> It's adding a very complex and complicated machine (a computer) which also interacts with other very complex and complicated machines all over the world to items which are usually very straightforward and "simply work". To provide an equally seamless, secure and whatnot "smart" experience you have to invest a lot on top. If the additional value of the "smart" product is that low no one pays the price that is needed, vendors operate on poor margins and there it is, the internet of shit.

On top of that you have hardware people being responsible for software which usually is equally bad as software people beginning to solder. It might kind of work in the end but….

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Technology is no longer driven (=funded) by innovation but by the ability to produce "recurring revenue". Selling software and some support around it is no longer a viable business model. It's unicorns or nothing.

Even Microsoft has seen that coming (and responded by open sourcing gradually ... from C#, ... MS Azure, ... the current Windows-10 beta that runs a Linux kernel, to PowerShell that runs on Linux). Has hell frozen over? No. But we think the only way to make money is with reselling user-data. And the VC industry reflects that. How many tech businesses that made it big today aren't built on central data harvesting of their users in exchange for _" free"_ stuff?

We've pushed all our computing to the cloud and think it's the panacea to everything. Do we really expect to apply the same business model and technology principles from virtual world to our physical devices and get away with it? Reminds me of the old phrase, "When your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail".

Problem isn't that Security is so much worse in IoT than in your typical web application stack. The problem is that it isn't any better than web-security! We have XSS and SQL injection in IoT, crypto built on shitty javascript, we have MiTM attacks, lack of authentication, ... worse, we can re-use the same exploits (shellshock, heartbleed, ...), and nearly identical attack-vectors! In the age of Shodan and MASSCAN we won't get away with that [1]. (ProTip: (from Gartner, I think): you can send payloads with MASSCAN to a gazillion connected devices by 2020 ;-))

Take a look at the issues of trust on the web! How many signing countries can we trust in our certificate chain? How confident are we that our HTTPS connection is safe (cloudflare is known to MiTM[0] half the internet, so the silly green browser padlock doesn't mean anything) Yet we expect to use the same flawed trust-model with IoT (where bugs hit us in our physical face) as we use on the web. We want to protect all this with Tor browsers, even more centralization and vendor-lock-in or even creating dystopian proposals like the ones from many EU based countries (hello Germany) that propose that the data will never leave the EU.

The vendors response?

I, and many others who stepped forward to report critical bugs to IoT companies are ignored, accused, blocked. I started IoT Security[5], on LinkedIn some years ago. LinkedIn is a joke of a platform I agree, but it also allows us to put all this shit right into the face of these crappy vendors. It's the perfect melting pot for marketeers and engineers ;-))

Privacy and Security have gotten worse over the years. not just for IoT but on the web in general. We point the finger to the "Internet of Shit", but do we expect if we constantly use the wrong tools for the job?

We're looking to the industry to solve this for us. An industry which hasn't figured out yet how to monetize their technology without selling our private data. VC's are as much part of the problem as tech companies. What could go wrong? It's like asking an addict to seek cure by discussing it with their dealer.

There is too much technical debt in terms of privacy & security that all these gadgets are either going to kill us, and as consequence will be regulated like anything else that has killed regularly in the past. If not now then as soon as the first connected car is weaponized, or the first smart-home kills someone.

Nation states and their armies have become dependent on the Internet to keep us safe. They're doing a good job reminding us that the cyber-threat is real. They're right about the threat. What we're wrong about though is believing that global data harvesting by shady intelligence services will keep us safe. But they have their own agenda[4].

The way forward? Certainly not more centralization or cloud.

PS: If you're also sick of all this shit, please do find me ;) there is lot's to talk and little time.

[0] [https://scotthelme.co.uk/tls-conundrum-and-leaving- cloudflar...](https://scotthelme.co.uk/tls-conundrum-and-leaving-cloudflare/)

[1] [https://media.defcon.org/DEF%20CON%2024/DEF%20CON%2024%20pre...](https://media.defcon.org/DEF%20CON%2024/DEF%20CON%2024%20presentations/DEFCON-24-Lucas- Lundgren-Light-Weight%20Protocol-Critical-Implications.pdf)

[2] [https://twitter.com/ValbonneConsult/status/74958341227350835...](https://twitter.com/ValbonneConsult/status/749583412273508352)

[3] [https://twitter.com/ValbonneConsult/status/74962796346176307...](https://twitter.com/ValbonneConsult/status/749627963461763073)

[4] [https://blog.valbonne- consulting.com/2016/08/06/smartcitiess...](https://blog.valbonne- consulting.com/2016/08/06/smartcitiess-cyber-security-role-and-ethical- challenges/)

<comment><USER52> > or even creating dystopian proposals like the ones from many EU based > countries (hello Germany) that propose that the data will never leave the > EU.

I could call this proposal many unpleasant things, but "dystopian"? I can definitely see why people want clearer jurisdiction over the flow of their personal data, and that intention is anything but dystopian.

<comment><USER54> how would you guarantee that packets never leave a country without balkanizing the net. It's just another proposal for more centralization and walled gardens. "E-Mail made in Germany" was all the rage in 2013 after Snowden.

[http://www.thelocal.de/20131129/german-email-providers- unite...](http://www.thelocal.de/20131129/german-email-providers-unite-german- internet-against-nsa)

It's an absolutely ludicrous idea. A wet dream conceived in the boardrooms of Telekom and 1und1 during a time when nobody had an answer to reduce blanket surveillance. It's dystopian not in a sense that it would be impossible to implement but because it would be a knee-jerk reaction that wouldn't solve the underlying issues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> waiting to see what comes out of Google IoT project like Brillo, Weave it's been kicking around a Google for a while now seems long before the 2015 I/O announcement. maybe Fuchsia has something to do with it who knows.

</comment><comment><USER56> My neato botvac seems to forget its wifi settings every couple weeks :(

</comment><comment><USER57> I just call it IOJ: Internet of Junk.

<comment><USER40> IOS: Internet of Shit. As JLG notes in the article.

Io[B]T[TSoY]: Internet of (Broken) Things (That Spy on You).

<comment><USER58> Internet of Targets.

<comment><USER40> _Beautiful!_

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Nothing about the impending IoT seems planned, standardized, and remotely designed with the consumer's best interest in mind. That being said, consumers for their part seem almost eager to throw their money away for truly dubious improvements. What isn't a bad idea from the get go is often a good idea ruined with careless implementation.

<comment><USER23> Apart from the fridge that, once upon a time could show you your Google calendar[0], I have yet to see any IoT device that actually requires a cloud service for its functionality.

Why can't things be built to just use local TCP/IP connections? Those work just fine on my local network, and they work just fine if I flip my VPN on when I'm not on my local network. Anything that actually needs some kind of server piece should have a server that can run locally.

[0] [https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/calendar/Uhfp...](https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/calendar/UhfpcwO0X0c)

<comment><USER60> > Why can't things be built to just use local TCP/IP connections? Those work > just fine on my local network...

Simplicity, possibly. Vendor lock-in, probably.

I'm in the same boat. I wanted a weather station that didn't cost several hundred units of currency but also let me query it directly instead of having to hit Weather Underground or (FSM help us) a vendor's web site with no API. Only a handful of them do this so I wound up rigging up what I wanted using a Raspberry Pi, a USB-connected weather station, some extra sensors, and several lines of PHP.

Why I'd want to subject my light bulbs or coffee pot to that is beyond me.

<comment><USER61> Data-mining.

How can the smart-fridge company sell your eating habits if your fridge only tells _you_ (and not them) how you're using it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> This post would be more accurate two years ago. Today IOT is usable with much less work and headaches. Sure there are still bugs, but it's a big improvement from a $40 brick. Also platforms like IFTTT, Alexa, and Homekit make it more practical as well.</comment>


An Astronomer Is Building Inflatable Space Telescopes That Will Dwarf James Webb - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/new-space-telescopes-could-look-like-giant-beach-balls/ <comment><USER2> The comparison to JWST isn't really fair, as they are looking at completely different parts of the EM spectrum.</comment>


Show HN: Augmented Reality App to Predict the Sun and Moon's Location - <AUTHOR> http://www.sunlocator.com <comment><USER2> Wow, this seems like an awesome app! I've seen people getting two samples of the sun locations in the spring and fall when purchasing a new apartment, but this seems like a steal compared to that! It seems super vital to get an impression of how the sun is cast when buying a new place :)

Would love to test out the pro emulation of the same use case above someday, should i be looking around! GJ and great use case for AR

<comment><AUTHOR> This is exactly why I started working on it. I wanted to know if and when the balcony of a potential new apartment will get any sunshine.

There's also a free version of the app, to try it out: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.genewarrio...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.genewarrior.sunlocator.lite)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Have no use for the app, but the mid section of the website ("A wealth of information") is well designed and pleasant to look at. Though I think I've seen this exact style used somewhere before. The page as a whole looks like a mishmash of at least 3 different styles (hero / mid-section / "lite vs pro"). Ditto for the color scheme. It's not bad as is, but it could use a bit more restraint and consistency in the design.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the compliment and observations, I will relay it to the responsible web designer.

P.S.: Give the app a try anyway. It's not only useful for photographers, I personally started working on it while looking for a new apartment because I wanted to know if and when the sun will shine on a balcony.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Some feedback:

1\. I believe that the spelling is 'ephemeris' and not 'ephimeris'

2\. Scrolling through the page repeatedly crashes the page in Safari Mobile.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right about the spelling, thanks for the heads up.

Strange, the website doesn't use any Javascript, must be a CSS problem. Or possibly the embedded youtube video.</comment></comment>


Students Build Record-Breaking Solar Electric Car - <AUTHOR> http://www.engineering.com/ElectronicsDesign/ElectronicsDesignArticles/ArticleID/8085/Students-Build-Record-Breaking-Solar-Electric-Car.aspx

<comment><USER2> Link to the previous record holder, the 1987 GM Sunraycer

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

Promotional video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hi2lXxNWEY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hi2lXxNWEY)</comment>


Ancient tsunami devastated Lake Geneva shoreline - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/ancient-tsunami-devastated-lake-geneva-shoreline-1.11670

<comment><USER2> > His model predicted that a 13-metre-high wave would have hit Lausanne 15 > minutes after the rock fall,

not much you can do about that, I'm afraid

<comment><USER3> You can run pretty far in fifteen minutes if you have to.

<comment><USER4> Yes, and depending on local terrain even just a 5-minute walk may offer a 15M rise in elevation. Or, simply being on top of a 3-4 story structure, with something sure to float, makes you far more likely to survive (even if the structure is swept away) than being on the ground/ground-floor.

<comment><USER5> Wave damage from arriving wave(s) occurs approximately along the line of the (sea or lake) shore, with focusing by any underwater landforms, but when water on or above land begins to flow back down to the shore, its free flow is moderated by surface landforms, buildings and other structures, and entrained debris, and damage tends to become localized at choke-points in the flow.

So, if possible, get out of the paths of backflow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Please stop calling it "Lake Geneva", its name is "Lake Léman".

<comment><USER7> Why? Both seem to be used, with Lake Geneva being used more commonly. Are there good reasons for preferring one over the other?

<comment><USER6> I think there are good reasons to prefer "Lake Léman".

 _The lake is split between France and French-speaking part of Switzerland. In French, the name is Léman. I do think using the local name is better, even more when this local name is acknowledged (en.wikipedia shows both Geneva and Léman).

_ To me, born and raised in Romandy, "Lake Geneva" feels like "Tokyo Country" for Japan or "California Ocean" for the Pacific.</comment></comment></comment>


Investing 300 btc in each Bitcoin startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.coindesk.com/boost-vc-invest-additional-300-btc-tribe-5-bitcoin-startups

<comment><USER2> I think this is interesting because companies from day one may look at making their processes operate entirely on bitcoin from day 0. (payroll,bills,etc...) - I wander how many of the companies will cash it out and how many will use it for day to day operations. (This is also referenced in a comment below the article)

But given this is months out, this may be a $300k bankroll for each company. (Of course could go the other way)

</comment><comment><USER3> Awesome news! Boost is an amazing resource for emerging Bitcoin companies and has helped our Palarin team develop and grow.

</comment><comment><USER4> "The accelerator boasts a portfolio that includes Mirror, snapCard and BitPagos"

why omit AuditFile and CommitChange?</comment>


Jolicloud, a cool new OS for your netbook - <AUTHOR> http://www.jolicloud.com/ <comment><USER2> <http://xpud.org/download.en.html> is also very good and only 50 MB in size.

</comment><comment><USER3> This looks very awesome; Is anyone running it?</comment>


Show HN: I'm 66 and created a negative-pressure dental clinic to combat Covid19 - <AUTHOR> Hello everyone,
My son loves Hacker News, so I am using his account. I love innovation and technology. With the restrictions due to Coronavirus from practicing in my clinic. I created a system that replaces the air in my office in 20 seconds. Those vacuums are also filled with UV-rods inside to kill any viruses.
The air is release below the office in a 2-3 foot basement, which is also filled with UV rods.
https://youtu.be/UfYt1w156QA https://youtu.be/UpO8WXOlgcQ (side-by-side)
Given how much my son enjoys Hacker News I thought you would all enjoy it. Here are more phtoos:
https://midentista.com/coronavirus-news-english
If you want more info email me firstname.lastname@example.com
I've never been into software, but I can already tell why he loves this forum/space.
Thank you. <comment><USER2> I am not sure to understand.

In this setup isn't the head of the dentist roughly between the patient's open mouth and the vacuum?

Isn't it like helping droplets coming from the mouth of the parient to flow towards the dentist's face/mouth? (of course protected by a respiratory mask, still ...)

<comment><AUTHOR> No, the head of the dentist is usually always 45-degrees from the patient. Dentists NEVER look into the mouth of a patient head on. The vacuum is head on in front of the patient, the dentist is 45-degrees off. Imagine a equi-distant triangle of patient, dentist, and vacuum.

<comment><USER2> I see, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Clicky: [https://midentista.com/coronavirus-news- english](https://midentista.com/coronavirus-news-english)

Do you have photos of the basement with the UV roads?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, it is the building's crawl space -- its is nasty with spiders and stuff. We just fitted that space with uv light rods.</comment></comment>


Cement Produces More Pollution Than All the Trucks in the World - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-23/green-cement-struggles-to-expand-market-as-pollution-focus-grows <comment><USER2> One alternative to traditional concrete is autoclaved aerated concrete[1], a 70 year old material that's more eco friendly. Some of the advantages are mentioned in this video[2]. I'm guessing higher upfront cost means it's not competitive with traditional concrete.

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

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FS3BTDBMt7I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FS3BTDBMt7I)

<comment><USER3> A core topic of the article is that there a number of less carbon-intensive means of producing concrete, but all of them are more expensive. As it is basically a commodity market, price sensitivity among buyers is intense. It's an example of where carbon trading or carbon pricing would be able to shift the market's current selection.

<comment><USER4> Papercrete[1] is an interesting material. It's a mix of (usually recycled) paper and concrete, so clearly using it wouldn't get rid of all of the pollution caused by concrete production, but it would help. It also can't be used as a concrete substitute in every situation, but it has some interesting properties like being a much better insulator than concrete, and being of very low cost.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting to see more and more climate related posts on HN. Posted this a couple of times already, but I'd encourage everyone to check this paper[0] that recently came out ("Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning").

Among one of the initiatives mentioned is a startup called Tomorrow [1] that integrates with services (Uber, Instacart, etc) to calculate your personal CO2 emissions. They need help to get more of these integrations and more CO2 models. Consider giving a hand to them or other projects like this one [2].

[0] [https://arxiv.org/abs/1906.05433](https://arxiv.org/abs/1906.05433)

[1] [https://www.tmrow.com/](https://www.tmrow.com/)

[2] [https://openclimatefix.github.io/](https://openclimatefix.github.io/)

</comment><comment> Tuna-Fish However, concrete very slowly absorbs the CO2 back from the air, becoming limestone.

I know this takes very long for thick structures, on the order of centuries. Does anyone have a good idea of just how long?

Anyway, if a cement plant starts capturing the CO2 released during production and disposing of it somewhere other than the atmosphere, it would become a CO2 sink as the cement would slowly consume CO2 as it cures.

<comment><USER6> Calcining will release CO2 from the lime _plus_ CO2 from the fuel to heat it. Only the former will be reabsorbed over time.

And if the timescales are long enough the absorbtion still wouldn't bring you to net-zero because during the time the CO2 in the atmosphere it participated in positive feedback loops.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> So nobody is going to mention that cement itself sequesters carbon dioxide?

[https://www.cement.org/for-concrete-books- learning/concrete-...](https://www.cement.org/for-concrete-books- learning/concrete-technology/concrete-design-production/concrete-as-a-carbon- sink)

[http://theconversation.com/eco-cement-the-cheapest-carbon- se...](http://theconversation.com/eco-cement-the-cheapest-carbon- sequestration-on-the-planet-10978)

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/book/9780081024447/carbon- diox...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/book/9780081024447/carbon-dioxide- sequestration-in-cementitious-construction-materials)

<comment><USER8> As best as I can tell, two of your links talk about development of cement that could sequester CO2 (just like the article we're commenting on mentions too). The problem is that it's too expensive relative to regular cement. One of your links concludes "we don't know" how much CO2 regular cement sequesters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is there an ordered list of what produces most pollution? What's at the top? Is there an easy way to answer the question "I just did environmentally bad thing X, now what can I do to offset that?"

<comment><USER10> Yes. Fossil fuels for power generation, followed by transportation and industry [1]

> Is there an easy way to answer the question "I just did environmentally bad > thing X, now what can I do to offset that?"

Little bit but to seriously make an impact you might have to look for alternative sources of powering your life. But nevertheless every single bit helps. This climate change conundrum cannot be fixed without the entire planet committing to it.

[1] [https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas- emis...](https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas- emissions#co2-emissions-by-sector)

<comment><USER11> The list you provide is missing some man made sources of CO2 and methane. It's just CO2 emissions from fuel combustion.

Meat production is almost as much as transportation, roughly 17%.

<comment><USER12> > Meat production is almost as much as transportation, roughly 17%.

That 17% includes all transportation related to meat production. If meat was replaced by plant-based foods, not all of that transportation could be eliminated.

<comment><USER13> Livestock consume far more feed grains (mostly corn) than they produce food on their own [1]. The transportation costs to feed them are greater than the transportation costs would be if we were to feed humans on plant based foods, so transportation would actually be reduced if we lowered the amount of animal products we consume.

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

<comment><USER12> That is a US-specific article. In the US, animal agriculture contributes about 2.8% of US total CO2eq emissions, whereas US transportation sector contributes 26%.

[https://skepticalscience.com/animal-agriculture-meat- global-...](https://skepticalscience.com/animal-agriculture-meat-global- warming.htm)

<comment><USER13> Not sure what your point is. I never said emissions related to animal agriculture outweigh total transportation emissions. What I said was reducing meat consumption would lower transportation emissions associated with food.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Instead of us throwing a million comments at this, I think a carbon tax would let the market sort it out.

There doesn't need to be an X vs Y debate.

</comment><comment><USER15> In our research, we see that the easy alternatives are being used almost to capacity already, making future improvement difficult. For example, there is basically no unused fly ash in Europe, and it is sometimes imported from as far away as India. Similarly, burning wastes for "free" heat is also limited by the availability of waste (residues from chemicals industry, tires, etc). This is particularly true in areas where waste incineration is the norm - plants built to service a certain volume of waste are struggling as wastes volumes decline due to diversion to recycling. Consumer waste has a rather high water content, so wastes with high energetic content help the incineration run better. This is why e.g. paper or plastic is sometimes burned instead of being recycled.

<comment><USER6> What about silicate based cements that are supposed to be carbon-negative (they were in the news a few years ago)? Those come from mined minerals and thus not limited by available waste products.

Would carbon taxes help evening cost differences?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> One good thing the US and Canada does is to not use cement for houses ! It is somewhat negated by the terrible insulation in most homes in the US (and the fact that homes tend to last less long I guess). Does anyone have any data on how much gets emitted for house construction depending on the material ?

<comment><USER17> The us doesn't use concrete for residential walls (very often) but that is actually quite good from an insulation perspective. Hollow wood framed walls have a lot better r factor than solid concrete. We do have solid concrete foundations.

Edit: hollow walls filled with fiberglass to keep the air still

<comment><USER18> With hollow walls you can just use blow-in wool or cellulose insulation to make it even better. Can't really improve concrete without gluing polystyrene to it.

Hmm, could you just mix expanded polystyrene balls in to cement to make a high-R composite that's still strong enough to be structural?

<comment><USER19> Usually concrete walls have a foam core. Solid concrete is only about R0.5/in, about half as good as wood.

Even so, insulated cavities are totally obsolete. Exterior foam is far superior.

<comment><USER18> Wow, really? Interesting, the one's I'm familiar with (used in tilt-up construction) are just solid concrete (maybe plus some rebar).

Totally with you on exterior foam though, you want the insulation outside of the thermal mass if at all possible.

<comment><USER20> Check out ICF:

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

There may be some copyright shenanigans w/ that page.

There have also been successfully constructed in-ground pools using this material, but appears to be controversial to traditional pool-builders.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_earth_block](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_earth_block)

Concrete can be replaced in part through the use of CEB/CSEB and/or rammed earth.

<comment><USER22> This is maybe okay for single family homes in arid regions, but not practical for denser forms of housing. Which we should be striving for, if we're worried about reducing pollution

<comment><USER21> CEB has been used for centuries in Britain. Arid is obviously not a factor. It's also been used for multi-story buildings. I'm not sure how dense housing reduces pollution though. Some of the least polluting housing in the world is rural, e.g. the Amish.

edit: I should have said "earthen" construction has been used in Britain. Cob rather than CEB.

<comment><USER22> It's not possible for us all to live like the Amish. Dense housing (as opposed to sprawling single family homes) is more efficient to build, heat, provide utilities, and provide services around. It seems pretty self evident to me that urban living can produce less pollution over its lifecyle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Not disputing these findings, but there are so many "X is worse than Y" reports these days I feel like reporters are playing rock/paper/scissors, each one with _different_ rocks, papers and scissors.

</comment><comment><USER24> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hempcrete](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hempcrete)

</comment><comment><USER25> Mass timber (also sometimes referred to as CLT) has the potential to replace cement for the construction of many types of buildings.

Mass timber has an extra benefit too: since trees scrub CO2 from the atmosphere, growing trees for construction ends up sequestering significant amounts of CO2.

There's a lot of work to be done around sustainable forestry practices, along with the process of actually harvesting the associated wood, but I think this is a pretty cool option.

Here's an article that provides some context on mass timber, along with some of the outstanding questions: [https://e360.yale.edu/features/as-mass-timber- takes-off-how-...](https://e360.yale.edu/features/as-mass-timber-takes-off- how-green-is-this-new-building-material)

</comment><comment><USER26> > "There are cement products with lower environmental impact, but they usually > cost more than the normal ones"

Is anywhere in the world starting to charge for the externalised costs that allow the less sustainable option to be cheaper like in this example? What are the issues with this solution?

</comment><comment><USER27> I was involve in trying to prove [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoclaved_aerated_concrete](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoclaved_aerated_concrete) a viable alternate to concrete and red brick frequently used in household development. The only part I was unable to secure was seed capital. Does anyone know of program which invest in green/climate fighting `hard` start ups? Love to get in touch with them and revive my project.

<comment><USER28> I think AAC is an increasingly common building material outside the US. I think it's being regulated out of existence in Europe because because AAC only has moderate R values it can't meet passive house rules. R value of 15 or so vs the 30 or more required by passive house. Which is insane. Passive house assumes the house is going to be heated with fuel oil or nat gas it's whole life. And it's obvious that isn't going to be case over newer houses 100-200 year working life.

Dirty secret about solar and wind is the supply isn't constrained like oil and nat gas. So designing houses around energy scarcity is 'dumb'. And building houses to use nat gas/fuel oil even dumber.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Grading everything on one thing like CO2 pollution seems far too simplistic. I don't think you can get away with that approach, somehow we need a more holistic plan. Should we stop using Cement? What happens if we take that approach, do the alternatives that fill the gap actually further the ultimate goal, what even is the ultimate goal?

<comment><USER30> Absolutely. Reducing the plume of soot belching over the North Pole, blackening our ice fields would be a good, useful and achievable start.

Or is that not Politically Correct pollution?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> It also saves more lives, and make modern civilization possible. You always have to look at both the pros and the cons.

</comment><comment> the-dude Produces more CO2.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, we're gonna need to start being a little clearer about what we mean by "pollution", or comparisons become meaningless. Is a ton of CO2 better or worse than 100g of mercury?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Telling a lie then saying 3 Hail Marys means you are forgiven for the lie, it doesn't fix the lie.

As such, planting a tree to be forgiven for going on a flight that burns carbon-laden jet fuel doesn't fix what you did.

Fossil fuels are excess carbon atoms sequestered safely deep inside the Earth. Unless you can find a way to put them back there, there's no fixing the situation. Planting a tree does capture carbon. However, when it dies and rots, all the carbon gets re-released over time back into the atmosphere. If you burn that wood, it happens much more quickly.

The only way to fix this problem is to stop using fossil fuels. There is no politically viable way for this to happen. The only way this is happening is if the planet gets depopulated of humans rapidly.

<comment><USER33> > The only way this is happening is if the planet gets depopulated of humans > rapidly.

Please don't tell me you're one of those "earth would be better of were we all dead" people. I can't stand that kind of post-modernist, nihilistic garbage. I'm not mister optimist, but still, that's way too far.

Also, that kind of rhetoric is going to end up being a justification for some one very evil doing some thing very bad.

> The only way to fix this problem is to stop using fossil fuels. There is no > politically viable way for this to happen.

Eeh, wrong. The fact that we're not there yet doesn't mean we can't get there. At some point, pulling energy out of thin air will end up cheaper than doing expensive drilling operations.

Post-modernists are the philosophical equivalent of the kid who gets mad when he loses at Monopoly, flips the board, and walks away.

<comment><USER34> If these people really believed that overpopulation was the problem, then why don't they start depopulating with themselves? __*

It sounds terrible I know, but it serves to demonstrate the hypocrisy of the stance. Like George Carlin said,

"I'm tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is that there aren't enough bicycle paths. People trying to make the world safe for Volvos. Besides, environmentalists don't give a shit about the planet. Not in the abstract they don't. You know what they're interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. They're worried that some day in the future they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn't impress me."

* note: don't actually do this if you believe this wretched, damned worldview, go seek help, I don't really want anyone to off themselves because they think it "helps the world"

<comment><USER35> Suppose we have enough people and resources to support the current population, but not enough to support 20% more at the same level of luxury ... you don't think we should bother to try and keep the population at the level where everyone can benefit?

<comment><USER36> I think we should improve our tools/planing/everything to support 20% more of us at a higher level of luxury..

<comment><USER35> And we'll do it with our infinite levels of resources and energy, yay! /s

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> High birth rate is the scourge of our time. Cement pollution is just a consequence.

</comment><comment><USER38> There's a video documentary on YouTube, complete with starting with PM Thatcher and her concerns about the coal miners union and the Mideast oil kingdoms and through the present with sun spots, etc. There is a lot from MIT prof Lindzen. The 800 year lag in the graph Gore put up is made clear. The Medieval Warm period, the Little Ice Age, and the cooling from 1940 to 1970 are also clear.

The URL is

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52Mx0_8YEtg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52Mx0_8YEtg)

Now where does this documentary go wrong?

I will mention one place: Their little cartoon has sun light hitting the surface of the earth, _reflecting_ , and then heating the atmosphere. Well, it mostly isn't just _reflection_. Instead, the sunlight gets absorbed by the surface, the surface warms, and then the surface radiates, as in a Planck _gray_ body in the infrared. CO2 absorbs, and warms, in three narrow bands out in the infrared, on band for each of bending, stretching, and twisting of the molecule. CO2 won't absorb visible light -- e.g., exhale and see if you can see the CO2 or its shadow from absorbing visible light! And, as in the cartoon, the visible light already traveled through the whole atmosphere to the ground without being absorbed so that any _reflected_ light should just continue until it hits a cloud or just escapes into outer space. So, the main point is the Planck black body effect that in effect converts the visible light CO2 won't absorb to infrared light CO2 can absorb. But, as Lindzen explains, that all has to be a tiny effect, _small potatoes_.

Just as a question, does anyone have figures on tons per year of (i) CO2 from volcanoes and (ii) human activities?

For another, does anyone have (i) the number of tons of CO2 in the atmosphere and (ii) the number of tons of CO2 released into the atmosphere by human activities in, say, a year?

For one more, if the temperature of the top, say, 1000 feet, of all the oceans warmed by 1 F, how much CO2, in tons, would be released -- warmer water absorbs less CO2?

Last, what was the average temperature of the oceans (i) just before the Little Ice Age, (ii) at the end of the Little Ice Age (say, at the end of the Maunder Minimum and the return of usual sun spot activity), (iii) in year 1900, and (iv) now?

<comment><USER39> You can find a lot of figures in the IPCC reports.

[https://www.ipcc.ch/working-group/wg1/](https://www.ipcc.ch/working- group/wg1/)

[https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/](https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> The worst thing you can do for the environment is have children, but that's not changing.

Cement, fossil fuels, deforestation, livestock etc are all symptoms of overpopulation and our inability to establish homeostasis anymore.

I don't see a solution to environmental decay into a negative feedback loop that wipes us out without some form of population control.

It isn't pretty, but we are running out of time and sitting around waiting for tech to save us isn't a viable strategy.

</comment><comment><USER41> What about all the other forms of pollution? This article focuses entirely on CO2. Do these newer cement alternatives have fewer waste products too, or more? Are those waste products recyclable?

CO2 feels like just a weird focus, compared to the toxic lakes of sludge in China near manufacturing hubs, the massive drifts of plastic in our oceans, the coal ash pools at all our coal plants, the nuclear waste still kept at all our nuclear plans, and all the other waste and pollution we product. Reducing one at the expense of another may not always end up in a good net result.

This article totally ignores all the other factors of pollution and doesn't take an fully balanced look at all the waste produced in these materials.

Ultimate to reduce harm to our environment we need to produce less entirely. That does mean fewer buildings, cell phones, new things, etc. But no one really talks about that.

<comment><USER42> It's not a weird focus, there is few more urgent topic than co2, because there is so much useful chemical reaction producing it that humans need or enjoy, and we don't see any reduction in those emissions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> In terms of greenhouse gasses, the biggest polluter is probably the ocean pumping all the water vapor into the atmosphere. Water vapor has by far the greatest greenhouse effect, accounting for about 65-85% of the greenhouse effect vs human generated CO2 that directly contributes 0.12%.

[http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/01/calcul...](http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/01/calculating- the-greenhouse-effect/)

If we really want to change things, we'll have to get rid of the ocean.

Seriously, though, I'd like to see some real numbers that if we completely eliminated human CO2 emissions, what is the actual difference that would make? What does that say about the significance of practically achievable reduction in human CO2 emissions? What amount of CO2 would we have to recapture to make a difference? What amount can we practically capture?

I am getting the impression that these numbers might paint the CO2 dilemma as completely unsolvable. Sure, maybe in some way every little bit helps, but maybe it helps like using a squirt gun to put out a volcano. It'd be nice to know just how relevant our efforts would actually be if everyone unified and did the absolute best we could do, even so far as drastic population reduction or even complete elimination of human beings. Would even such Thanos like measures do anything, or would that just be bringing a second squirt gun to the volcano?</comment>


Facebook 3.1 with Push now in app store - <AUTHOR> http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/browserRedirect?url=itms%253A%252F%252Fitunes.apple.com%252FWebObjects%252FMZStore.woa%252Fwa%252FviewSoftware%253Fid%253D284882215%2526cc%253Dus%2526mt%253D8

<comment><USER2> BUG ALERT!

The contact sync feature has an option to replace your existing photos in your contacts and is _disabled_ by default.

Unfortunately, it seems to have gone ahead and replaced many of the photos I have set for contacts. It hasn't done it for all of them but it has for many of them. I'm not sure about all the details of the bug but be aware that it's likely your pictures will be replaced whether you want them to or not.

You also may have to sync a couple times before photos are synced to all the relevant contacts. Their photo download protocol looks pretty chatty and I guess some of the requests fail and they aren't re-trying until the next sync session.

<comment><USER3> I can't figure out how to cause it to sync a second time -- it's not in the Settings.app pane and there's no in-app preferences I can find.

<comment><USER4> Go to your friends list and in the top right hand corner is a sync button - turn off the contact sync and on to sync the contacts again

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Even better than Push Notifications is the ability to downwardly sync your Facebook Friends with your Address Book, including Profile Photos. If you have it set up, that then syncs to Google too!

<comment><USER5> Huh. This is actually the first app I've used that writes to the address book instead of just reading. I didn't even know the API supported that.

Which, not to veer too far off topic, makes more glaring the continuing omission of a calendar API from the iPhone. Doesn't adding contacts from a third-party app seem like a less common use case than adding calendar events? The Facebook app could certainly take advantage of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Besides push being neat, I especially like the ability to synchronize the pictures of your contacts. I honestly never bother to get a good picture and add it manually :)</comment>


France may tax publications protected by DRM at a higher rate - <AUTHOR> http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=fr&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.rue89.com%2Fles-coulisses-de-wikipedia%2F2013%2F11%2F14%2Fun-livre-verrouille-nest-plus-un-livre-cest-lassemblee-nationale-qui-le-dit-231677 <comment><USER3> It's a little more difficult. The proposed legislation is not accepted, and will probably not be: [http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=fr&tl=en&u=http%3A%...](http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=fr&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.april.org%2Fprix- du-livre-vers-une-tva-selon-la-presence-ou-non-de-drm&act=url)

</comment><comment><USER4> This is the same in the Netherlands - VAT on ebooks is 21% ("luxury goods"), normal books are at the 6% rate (same as household goods, foods, etc). Then again, there are more strange classifications in any tax schedule - <USER2> food is taxed at 21%, rabbit food at 6% (rationale supposedly being rabbits are food too...) and fixing a moped is 21%, but a bike is 6%.

<comment><USER5> The only problem I have with an analyzed/conditional tax system is the legitimacy of the party in charge of collecting it.

Everyone can nod their heads at taxing vehicles more than bicycles, but if that additional government income goes into tax breaks for certain corporations, or bad social policies (everyone thinks there's one!).

This is why I enjoy flat taxes, so we can focus more on the policies that money provides, rather than siderail that discussion with debates on _what_ those taxes should be.

Obviously we should implement policies that become less expensive with time, but hearing that the Netherlands has a 21% tax rate on moped repair is insane. What does that money directly contribute to? The military? Tax breaks?

With flat sales taxes we can focus directly on policy. Everyone is equal in terms of the percentage of product consumers must pay in taxes, for their product.

<comment><USER6> _Everyone is equal in terms of the percentage of product consumers must pay in taxes, for their product._

That's only true in an absolute sense, but not in a relative sense. For a person making minimum wage, each dollar is worth significantly more to that person than someone making 6 figures a year. Moreover, they must ultimately spend more of their income on purchases subject to a sales tax. Thus, the person making minimum wage ends up paying a larger portion of their wealth in taxes, even though it is the person making 6 figures a year (or more) who actually derives greater value (relative and absolute) from the government services funded by those taxes.

A flat tax may be conceptually easy to understand, but it is not economically or morally equitable.

<comment><USER7> >> Everyone is equal in terms of the _percentage_ of product consumers must pay in taxes, for their product.

> For a person making minimum wage, each _dollar_ is worth significantly more > to that person than someone making 6 figures a year.

I believe you're referring to "Marginal Propensity to Consume". But MPC is evaluated with respect to dollar-amounts, not percentages like you imply. A dollar bill is tangible, but a percentage is a ratio, which is abstract. So I feel like you're comparing apples to oranges. I.e. a "flat tax" vs a "flat tax _rate_ ".

Under a flat tax rate, minimum wage earners are more sensitive to dollar changes, but also pay less total dollars. Does the former compensate for the latter? Moot. But let's not forget that a flat tax rate would simplify the tax code and more conspicuously expose loopholes.

Elegance and simplicity are often unnecessary and quixotic. But in this case, I think it's actually the progressive tax rate schemes which are unnecessary and quixotic. According to the U.S. Constitution, the purpose of a tax is to enable the U.S. Government to raise the funds necessary to continue operating, not to redistribute wealth. A flat tax rate and a progressive tax rate can accomplish this same goal, but a progressive tax rate is so needlessly arbitrary. Inevitably, a progressive tax rate graph looks more like an S-curve than a J-curve. This is due to the asymptote which arises because the domain is [0, inf) while the range is [0%, 100%].

If you're worried about the ethics of inequality, I think this is more aptly dealt with via tax returns and subsidies. I like to think of this as separating the core from the features.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Yeah, thought that was a great idea and was happy that the law was voted... and two days after, Assembly voted an article cancelling this one, pushed by the government. A big lobbyism at work and a "Europe won't like it and will condemn us" excuse. Our government has no balls.

<comment><USER9> It is not an excuse, a member can't change the type of VAT applied to products

<comment><USER8> I know that but that's not really my point. We already changed the type of VAT on this. Bit of context for better understanding (sorry for the length): Point of the law article was to say digital products with DRMs and platform locking aren't really products selling, but renting services instead, and so must be taxed as such. On the other hand, ebooks without DRMs and platform locks are technically books, even if not printed, and so must fall into the book tax class, which has a lower rate. But at the moment, at European Commission level, ebooks are all, DRM or not, considered as services and not eligible to lower tax rates. However, in 2012, France and Luxembourg kind of said "fuck off" to Europe on this point, and both put the VAT rate on ebooks (with and without DRMs) in the book category. For that those countries are under procedure from European Court and must justify enough the case if they don't want to be fined. The debate is on, and may cause a change on this at European level. Our government estimated that the law article making the distinction between DRMised and not DRMised products didn't come at the right time regarding the ongoing debate. And that's what baffles me: the "show up my balls" move had already be done, and this law article was in my opinion a good way to show that we're thinking about what we do, and are not directed by Amazon-leaded lobby on the tax rate choice, because it excluded them of it. And that could have been a good argument over the European Court: we make our choices because of their logical nature, not because of external pressure. The retractation however, shows the opposite.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Having DRM is not the cause of higher VAT, is being an electronic document what makes the VAT being the standard and not the reduced one.

And it is and European categorization, all the countries members of the EU must use that VAT

<comment><USER10> France is battling Europe's notion of what electronic books are. At the moment, contrary to Europe's advice, France taxes ebooks as books (5.5% in France) while Europes wants ebooks to be taxed as services (20% in France).

This law plays on that distinction, considering that DRMed books are licences hence should be subject to 20% VAT while non DRMed books are indeed books hence subject to low tax.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Right now in the UK, VAT is at 20% on ebooks as it is for any other standard rate item. Physical books and magazines are at 0%. Most people won't be paying this though, as sites like Amazon sell from Luxembourg where VAT on eBooks is 3% ([http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=502578)). This can mean that providing a digital product (this recently came up with the Linux Voice IndieGoGo [http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/linux- voice/](http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/linux-voice/)) doesn't knock off as much of the cost as you might expect.

<comment><USER6> The Luxembourg loophole is expected to be closed by 2015, at which point Luxembourg must increase its VAT in line with those of other EU nations (or alternatively, must alter its VAT system so that the 3% rate is only available for sales _to_ Luxembourg customers). If Luxembourg doesn't change its VAT system, the European Commission will likely carry through on last year's threat to impose fines which would wipe out the tax income Luxembourg currently generates from offering the loophole to companies like Amazon.

[http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2013/09/18/new-tax- rules-e...](http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2013/09/18/new-tax-rules-eu- will-wipe-amazons-tax-loophole/#.UokJ4-KCFEY)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Add to that the fact that Amazon is subsidizing Kindle device buyers, by asking all the other foreigners to pay an extra $2 for each e-book, making e-books much more expensive for the vast majority of Kindle ebook buyers:

[http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/2011/07/11/amazon-hold- ba...](http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/2011/07/11/amazon-hold-back-the- growth-of-e-books-around-the-world/)

</comment><comment><USER13> What happens when one buys an electronic book from outside France ( [http://bookscanner.us](http://bookscanner.us) ) ? Who pays the tax and when?

<comment><USER14> This is off-topic, but it pains me to see that they shred and recycle the books rather than donating them to schools/libraries.

<comment><USER15> That would be a copyright violation. The only way to avoid the charge is to destroy the original, so that they can claim no real copy has been made, just a transfer of format.

<comment><USER14> Ah, that makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> And those taxes will get passed on to the customer, guaranteed.

<comment><USER17> Yes, the tax is the VAT, which is designed to be only paid by customers. It's roughly analogous to a sales tax in the US</comment></comment>


0to255 - <AUTHOR> http://0to255.com/

<comment><USER2> I'm surprised that people don't seem to like this as much as I do. Yes, a designer is obviously going to use a more powerful tool, but that doesn't really say anything about how useful this is. I'm constantly writing small web apps and I have absolutely no design sense whatsoever. Having a really simple, elegant tool that lets me randomly choose a color and view a few shades lighter or darker is a huge help. It's got a nice, simple UI and does one thing very well. I'll definitely be using it.

And for those of you linking to other tools, they all either a) have a poor UI or b) do too much. That's not to say that they don't have their place, but they just don't do the same thing as this.

<comment><USER3> I agree it's a useful tool. However, I'm usually choosing a bunch of colors, and it helps if you're seeing the colors in context.

What I'd really love is a color-dropper plugin that lets me choose a random color on a webpage, and change every pixel of that color to a different one specified by me.

SASS does something close with its CSS variables, but it lacks the real-time interaction.

Sorry this is so off-topic, this seemed so close...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Okay, I'm intrigued. What can this possibly be doing that requires so many individual Flash items?

<comment><USER5> It's to enable click-to-copy (to the clipboard.)

<comment><USER6> A slightly better implementation would have been to have a JavaScript click event on every colour and then use a JavaScript to Flash function to do the copy to clipboard. Then only one Flash file would have had to be loaded.

<comment><USER7> AFAIK, it wouldn't work. Flash can only copy to the clipboard after an event like click, doubleclick, etc, within the swf.

<comment><USER8> He is saying that when you click on the color it sends a message to the flash object as to which color they are interested in and then the popup will be eligible to click on which will then copy to the clipboard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice tool, although the way the colors are displayed can distort perception. Always remember to test and pick colors in context. If you are using a white background, don't pick colors in a black app, and vice versa.

<comment><USER10> How is this a problem here? As I see it the app uses both white and black backgrounds to help avoid this problem.

<comment><USER9> Displaying them all in a column like that emphasizes the value variations. Which is the point, of course. It's just that there is a segment of the population that always acts shocked to discover that the three colors they picked look different put together, than they do alone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Eric Meyer's Color Blender has been doing this for years.

<http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/color-blend/>

<comment><USER12> Thank you. Plus:

 _If you'd like to have the Color Blender for offline use, just view source and save_

(actually, just saving the html page does it)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Too much choice I think. "0to255 is a simple tool that helps web _designers_ find variations of any color." Designers already have offline tools to explore full color spectra.

Tools that turn color theory into recommendation algorithms are much more useful. Illustrator introduced a "Color Guide" palette for this and it's great. Would be even better as a free online tool. Doesn't necessarily need to be user-contributed like Kuler.

<comment><USER14> I am sure programmers will find this tool very useful. I had to show a pie chart of different categories of data with varying weights. So I had to use the same color for representing weight of the same category. The best resource I could fine for identifying variations of same color was <http://www.december.com/html/spec/colorhslhex10.html>. Though it gives variations for same color, the variations aren't sequential between the rows. So at any point I couldn't get more than 10 cascading variations of the same color. This tool solves that problem pretty well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. As a developer often working on small side projects, it's super helpful to not have to launch photoshop to mess around with colors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wish "pick another color" put a second color to the right of the first instead of replacing it.

<comment><USER16> Hmm, that's a good idea. I'll play around with that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is well done, though I was also befuddled at first by the spinners on hover.

See also:

<http://www.colorschemegenerator.com/index-black.htm>

<http://colorschemedesigner.com/>

<http://www.degraeve.com/color-palette/> \- Generate a palette from an image

</comment><comment><USER18> I just use ColorCop and drag the slider up and down to change luminosity.

That "ribbon" design is becoming popular... <http://0to255.com/> <http://blog.metalabdesign.com/> <http://www.movenetworks.com/>

</comment><comment><USER19> This is great. With CSS gradients, borders and text shadows, you can at least start some nice interfaces without any background images.

</comment><comment><USER20> Here's a great one that converts between color modes, lets you step up or down mathematical increments by clicking, and gives you a full-window preview while you work. I use it all the time.

<http://www.drpeterjones.com/colorcalc/>

</comment><comment><USER21> I just use <http://kuler.adobe.com> It's great!

<comment> nick-dap I find <http://www.colourlovers.com> much better all around.

I've struggled with Kuler for a while. Its just too slow and cumbersome (try copy pasting to Photoshop and back). The reason is of course that its all in Flash. There is a built-in Kuler toolbox in Photoshop, but that's as slow and cumbersome as the site.

<comment><USER21> Seems nice, I'll try it out!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> hmmmm.... unfortunately, #baddad is a nice color, while #fabdad isn't IMO.

</comment><comment><USER23> I don't usually try to make pointless posts, but this is a BEAUTIFUL application, and there is almost no aspect of it that I do not love, even if I will likely never use it.

</comment><comment><USER24> That's cool but useless when using Sass <http://sass-lang.com/>

</comment><comment><USER25> Any app that needs the back button to fish around, could be improved by NOT needing the back button.

</comment><comment><USER26> my only suggestion is to be able to have my "saved colors" in the browser cookie. when i click it can add it to a fifo list :)

</comment><comment><USER27> it is not well supported in Chrome(debian)

<comment><USER16> Sorry about that. I'll be cleaning up browser compatibility in the next few days.</comment></comment>