JavaScript Disabled: Should I Care? - <AUTHOR> http://halls-of-valhalla.org/beta/articles/javascript-disabled-should-i-care,49/

<comment><USER2> I think it's critical here to distinguish between full client-side application (e.g., gmail) and an informational web site (e.g., a news site, a blog, or code documentation). It's a bad idea to require Javascript for the latter, but it's equally silly to try to build a fully-responsive client application using no Javascript, or progressive enhancement.

In several of my recent sites, there's been a main company site requiring no Javascript, but then a portal to one or more applications or services that requires Javascript.

In these cases, Javascript is taking the place of what before might have been Java applets, Flash apps, or Silverlight applications. But it's arguably more secure, fairly standardized, and "installed" by default.

And in the cases of full browser applications, I think it's silly to argue against requiring Javascript. You simply can't build a fully responsive client-side application using just HTTP calls and static HTML, no matter how performant the server side.

And I will absolutely continue to use <noscript> tags for browser apps that run on Javascript, since it's rather rude to just show a white screen with no indication of what the problem is to users.

<comment><USER3> I mostly agree, but would add that there seems to be a tendency to try and build a "full client-side application" out of things that needn't be one, which I think is a subtly different mistake than the one you were describing - which I would describe as "building a regular website as if it were a full client-side application".

<comment><USER4> But isn't that just artificially limiting yourself for no real reason? The no- JavaScript argument seems like IE6 repeating itself - intentionally dumbing down the capabilities at hand for a select few - except in this case (vs IE 6 in the aughts) it really is significantly "the few."

It might seem technically silly for me to have tons of parallax scrolling and DOM manipulation on my blog, but who cares?

I agree that decisions like this have the capacity to disrupt business in certain cases, but I don't see it being something that important in most businesses.

Edit: I'm taking a strong view here for certain, but I wonder who, outside an audience this technically literate, actually disables JS? True, the CDN argument is a good one, but in that case I assume most of my other static assets would be blocked as well.

<comment><USER5> Sites with minimal or no JavaScript are faster than sites with lots of JavaScript. The volume of JS is often so large, especially with frameworks, that it can take a long time both to transfer and to execute. I've noticed the difference to be significant on older computers or slower Internet connections, but it's even perceptible on new systems with fast Internet connections. Studies repeatedly show that ordinary users care about the speed of websites. I think this is a very good reason to shy away from making a "full client-side application" unless the benefits from that approach are significant.

<comment><USER6> > Sites with minimal or no javascript are faster than sites with lots of > javascript.

Though experiment: Simple todo app. Would this be faster if, upon every interaction with the UI, the whole form was sent to the server to recalculate a new DOM to send back to the browser to download + re-render? It certainly seems like e.g. adding a row to a DataTable would be what most users would call "faster".

Also, consider how this app scales. Requiring that the server re-build a page for every user interaction is a lot more work for the server vs. sending a big blob of HTML + assets once (CDNJS and similar services also affect how this performs). Given how powerful even a low-end few-year-old smartphone in the US is these days, I doubt that it would be a better experience to make an app like todo rely on server-side processing.

I do agree that javascript isn't /always/ the right tool, but building a few smaller API back-end + JS app front-end things lately been pretty convincing for me that JS + AJAX + REST API is a better UX for lots of things vs submit- and-rebuild. Clicking a radio button or selecting something in a drop-down and having the page refresh as a result feels pretty lame in 2014.

EDIT: note that I was a pretty dedicated NoScript user for a few years, a few years ago. These days, Privoxy running a few AB+ lists filters out almost all of the junk that annoys me (I found the performance of AB+ to be unacceptable with dozens of tabs open at once).

<comment><USER3> _" Clicking a radio button or selecting something in a drop-down and having the page refresh as a result feels pretty lame in 2014."_

I find that's somewhat true until I'm sharing my todo list with others. Knowing that the rendered page represents a synchronous snapshot in time can be valuable, and is something that's often lost when moving to AJAX (though I certainly agree it doesn't have to be). Your point generally certainly holds - updates _should_ be faster on a well-designed app, and _ideally_ your JS will be cached.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think sacrificing functionality for 99% of users to accommodate 1% is sheer bloody mindedness.

We can design our sites using a technique called Progressive Enhancement.

Sounds to me like he just said you shouldn't do that, and then tells you to do it.

You don't create a website, and then provide an enhanced version for those with javascript enabled. Not unless you are building a website in 1995. You provide a normal version and a degraded version for those with missing parts.

The problem is Javascript is part of the browser, when you disable part of the browser. Stuff won't work... It's not up to the web developer to accommodate that. If someone has a virus on their computer, you don't build your website expecting ads to be placed on it. If someone has an extension that changes every word on the page that starts with v to cheese. You shouldn't rewrite your website to not use v words.

</comment><comment><USER8> "Why might JavaScript be unavailable even to users who have not disabled it?"

The paragraph makes only the one point of mixed-content but that is not the only possibility.

Another possibility is: javascript (or js dependency) is hosted on a CDN and the CDN is unavailable (down, blocked by company/state filters, ...).

Another could simply be that part of the js is broken for some reason and did not execute further (could be because part of the js is generated per-user in a dumb way and our user is little bobby tables, could be because of caching issues, could be a critical bug not caught in QA, ...).

Another reason is that loading assets could be extremely slow for the user and they will temporarily see the site in a broken state. I'm suffering from this myself currently - I'm out of the country on a massively throttled 3G. I'm closing a lot of sites before they finish loading their JS because I don't have all day. The type of speed I'm dealing with here exists in many parts of the world and it is unsafe (and extremely inconsiderate) to assume everyone will load all assets within seconds.

<comment><USER9> The latter is an argument against using any asset external to the page, CSS, images, anything. Unless you are looking at a network timeline in your mobile browser you don't really know what is taking so long to load.

<comment><USER3> A lot of assets don't get substantially in the way of most of the page's functionality when they are slow to load.

<comment><USER9> The whole starting point of this discussion was limited 3G bandwidth. Anything going through that pipe is necessarily holding up other stuff from loading. Potentially important other stuff.

<comment><USER3> I'll grant that this makes it _an_ argument against those things. I don't see that it's an _equally strong_ argument. In any case, you have to weigh the costs and benefits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> To be fair here's the opposite view: [http://tomdale.net/2013/09/progressive- enhancement-is-dead/](http://tomdale.net/2013/09/progressive-enhancement-is- dead/)

<comment><USER11> Really great read. One interesting point:

"What I've found, counter-intuitively, is that apps that embrace JavaScript actually end up having less JavaScript."

The example given is the Boston Globe with over a half megabyte of JavaScript for essentially textual content. I think this is a great example of why people are still using NoScript in 2014.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> GOV.UK ran some stats on who wasn't running JavaScript and why:

[https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2013/10/21/how-many-people-are- missi...](https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2013/10/21/how-many-people-are-missing-out- on-javascript-enhancement/)

</comment><comment><USER13> The article calls out <noscript> messages as a bad practice, but as someone who routinely runs without javascript enabled, I much prefer webpages to explicitly point out that the issue is on my end, not theirs (rather than, e.g., a white screen of death).

<comment><USER14> Honest Question: What circumstances force you to browse without Javascript?

It feels a little like running a car constantly in first gear. It is going to be a guaranteed sub-optimal experience.

<comment><USER15> Security, privacy, and bandwidth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> For document-based websites, I go JS-free. My blog works without JS (except for comments, because they're from disqus and I'm lazy). And for public facing document websites it's usually possible to cache everything so it'll be REALLY fast.

But if I'm making an actual application, it's a lot simpler to disregard users without JS. For example, I use angularjs, and if you take full advantage of it, you always just send the user the same index.html page and the server has a bunch of JSON API endpoints. Then you let the client-side router take over.

If you really want to support JS-free users on your application, you're probably better of making a separate limited version of your application instead of having multiple fallbacks in the same page.

</comment><comment><USER17> "Why do some users choose to disable Javascript?"

Well, you could also ask why do some developers choose to write applications that retrieve HTML but do not process Javascript?

If I recall correctly, for a while the links and elinks browsers experimented with processing Javascript but eventually if I'm not mistaken the developer decided to drop it in future versions.

Why? I do not remember but I know that he did offer an explanation.

I have always thought Javascript generally benefits web developers more than users. And this is not a quality inherent of the language, but it has to do with how this particular language is used in practice.

When I download someone else's C code, compile and run it, I generally have a rough idea of what that code is going to do.

When a "modern web browser" (=not a text-only one) runs any and all Javascript from any web resource, I generally have no clue what that code is going to do. These browsers will automatically load resources from many sources other the one hosting the page to which the user navigates. They will make numerous connections to other addresses (to retrieve "third-party resources") instead of just one to the address the user specifies. Often the Javascript code is coming from a third party. Imagine a pop-up asking for permission each time the browser wants to run Javascript code from somewhere. In the early days of browsers, if I recall correctly, you could require the browser to do this (and the same goes for accepting cookies). I never considered this practical back then and it is certainly not a solution that would be practical today.

And today, when the company that writes the "modern web browser" assures me that it will protect me from malicious Javascript, I have no clue what the "modern web browser" itself is going to do to try to accomplish that. Because I cannot easily compile the "modern web browser" myself. It is not meant to be compiled by users. There is a large amount of implied trust.

It's somewhat like downloading random Windows applications one finds on the www, installing them and running them. Do you trust that Microsoft or some anti-virus company will protect you? That is a tall order.

Whereas if you merely refrain from downloading and installing such programs, if you refrain from blindly opening attachments in email, then you avoid that risk.

By not running Javascript, the user avoids the risk of malicious Javascript, and may even avoid the need for a "modern web browser"... and thereby the high complexity (=higher risk of insecurity) that comes with it. Keeping the user safe from malicious Javascript is a tall order for any browser to fill.

All that said, if I the user can get the information I want from the www without having to run Javascript and hence a "modern web browser", then I will always choose the non-Javascript option simply because _it is often faster and more efficient_, regardless of any possible security benefits.

Thankfully, I rarely need the "modern web browser", even for webmail. It is true that Javascript is frequently an impediment that stands between the user and fast and efficient computing but in my experience it is rarely a show stopper for the user who disables it.

To answer the OP's question: No, as a developer, I do not think you should care. Javascript is a fun language and people will pay you to write in it. For the Javascript developer, life is good. Carry on.

</comment><comment><USER18> I work on a web app that is half and half when it comes to depending on JS. The site started as MVC PHP app that was all server-side but over the years JS was added to do client-side validation and other UI/UX enhancements. In part because the customers asked for them and because something would have been extremely tedious and frustrating without JS+AJAX.

As time wore on entire components were built with JS making them unusable with out it. I have some co-workers who want to move all logic back to the server side or at least provide fallbacks for non-JS users but I strongly oppose this. We have parts of our app that use google maps that would be completely unusable without JS and those parts are arguably the most important and central parts of our app.

They want to approach it as "Lets make as many parts usable without JS as we can" while my opinion is "If parts of the app absolutely require JS and are heavily used parts then why waste our time worry about people with JS disabled". Especially since a lot of the server-side only parts of the app could be greatly enhanced with JS. I should also mention that this web app is NOT public facing and is only used by our call center (which we control the browser, newest chrome) and various groups of people using our software which so far all have JS enabled.

I agree that a news website does not need to have JS-required pages for 99.999%+ of their content. If they are taking the time to enhance their site with JS then I believe they probably also have the time (and financial incentive) to make their sites work without JS. Web apps on the hand are a different story. Once you have a significant number of users it might make sense to invest the time in making a fallback or slimed down version (I'm thinking Google/Facebook/etc) but for most companies I don't think supporting a JS-disabled web is a good use of time.

<comment><USER19> > I agree that a news website does not need to have JS-required pages for > 99.999%+ of their content.

I've seen this idea a number of times in this thread, it's far from true. The majority of advertising systems require JS. Without advertising, the news site has no income. As a result the internal discussion is going to be more like 'why waste any time at all to support the ~1% of users who will never generate any revenue'.

<comment><USER18> You can still show ads with JS disabled at least some of the ads systems I have used have <noscript> tags following the JS include to show something still if JS is disabled. It's far less targeted for sure which in turn leads to less revenue from them. And I think it's fair for a free resource (This does not hold for news sites behind a paywall) to require JS so that they can make money off ads to in turn support the free viewing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> An alternate view is: If your site requires javascript (or cookies or registration) we don't use it. There are plenty of sites that work better with javascript, but are still fully or mostly functional without it. This is where you will find those of us who choose not to allow sites to run javacript in our browser. As an example, nytimes requires registration. The registration page is the extent of my interaction with their site. I turned to theguardian many years ago, and, while I value nytimes, I wouldn't be able to quantify any meaningful difference between the two.

</comment><comment><USER21> The author provides a fully general argument for supporting IE 5, Lynx, semantic HTML, lack of minification, testing with the website readers for blind people, and internationalizing immediately.

I highly recommend discussing the actual cause of whether or not stuff like this gets done: is it worth the time? Saying you can use a technique to help out a very small portion of users, therefore you should, lacks the nuance that (we observe) people need to make these choices.

</comment><comment><USER22> I've always considered disabling javascript or using something like adblock to be bad form. Ads are annoying, but they're paying for the content I'm consuming.

<comment><USER23> This is a whole new discussion in itself, but I was shocked when I disabled AdBlock for a website I frequent and like, just to see that flashbanners that make the whole websites background (ie. whitespace I use to navigate) clickable still exist.

I wouldn't use half of those websites if it wasn't for AdBlock, so it's no loss for them. I'm trying not to punish the other half for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> As always, depends what you're building. I work on a web app used by a small group of customers to do very valuable things, where requiring JS is a no- brainer. You probably shouldn't require it to show a simple news article or blog post, though.

<comment><USER24> Or if I put on my tin foil hat, I think the position of most content websites is that if you are consuming their content, but blocking javascript (and therefore their ads and trackers) then they actually want you to have a bad experience and not come back (they can't make any money off you).

<comment><USER25> ...which is why I prefer extensions like AdBlock, Privacy Badger, etc. to disabling JavaScript: they cut out ad/tracker cruft without destroying my experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Considering the number of javascript client/single web page apps out there, not having javascript is simply not an option. Because of the nature of the sites I've been building, there is no point to using if you don't enable javascript.

<comment><USER27> Perhaps someone could run a directory of these sites there is no point in using? Then we can all be happier.

<comment><USER26> Yes, all those <form post/> base games were soooo much fun.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> One consideration remains: what shows up on the screen before JS goes to work. Otherwise you should probably fade in the contents as they're loading.</comment>


At the core of snowflakes, bacteria - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-bacteria1mar01,0,1359144.story

<comment><USER2> And cue panicky article about "possible plagues from the sky" in 3..2..1..

</comment><comment><USER3> Reminds me of the sci-fi book "The Children Star" by Joan Slonczewski.

She describes a world whose only civilization is an intelligent species of bacteria. Among other feats, they control the weather.

<comment><USER2> Good book? I haven't read any decent sci-fi in awhile (last good one was re- reading John Scalzi's _Old Man's War_ series) and I've been looking to read some more of the genre.

<comment><USER3> "The brain plague" by the same author is actually much better. The writing could use some help, but the ideas, oh my!

My personal bias as a biologist sure influences my perception of the book, of course.

<comment><USER2> Great! Thanks for the recommendation. I'll put it on my "to read" list.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


All Google search results marked as malware (link to pic in case it gets fixed) - <AUTHOR> http://i44.tinypic.com/2qbub9j.png

<comment><USER2> Same here. It doesn't matter what I search for. All "sites may harm your computer."

A software release gone wrong?</comment>


Health insurance companies are useless - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-08-05/health-insurance-useless <comment><USER4> The problem with the "insurance" companies is that they're not really insurance companies anymore. As the current top comment by raintrees points out, our so called "insurance" is acting far less as insurance (coverage in the case of a major but unlikely incident), but additionally standard payment for regular healthcare services. And this creates all manner of perverse incentives that messes with the pricing and makes it more expensive for everyone.

Ironically, when I had a bout of un-/under-employment in the 2008-2009 downturn, my only option for medical care was to ration my healthcare services to those actually needed, and pay cash when I actually received service. I paid less per service individually by paying cash (doctors, imaging, and testing clinics, etc, all really like cash, it makes their life much simpler). And overall I paid less by paying only for the services I needed when I needed it, instead of paying into some high monthly payment to have a battery of services I may or may not ever need pre-selectedly available for me.

I think healthcare costs would come down for most if we could get back to something approximating that: medical insurance being actually and only medical insurance -- covering high cost emergencies to prevent such from breaking one financially -- and covering only that. Paying for day-to-day regular medical services can and should be handled differently. In all fairness, I don't know how to get there, and I don't know what the options for the latter would look like, or what they should be. But I do think it would be helpful in the near and long term to put our energies in that direction.

<comment><USER5> I think the biggest complicating factor is that everything you just said is true, but health insurance is also still sometimes insurance, as well as redistribution. So it's doing three things at once:

\- Paying for routine care for people who could otherwise afford it.

\- Paying for unexpected and unaffordable care, like chemotherapy.

\- Paying for routine care for people who can't afford it.

Note that the third category doesn't refer only to poor people. Routine childbirth costs thousands of dollars. Any reforms targeted at the first category of spending, which hurt people in the second and third categories, are politically unacceptable. Add to that another complication:

\- Unexpected/catastrophic medical expenses and routine care are closely related, especially in the long tail of expensive patients.

For example, the number of emergency room visits a patient makes (especially very expensive patients who make a lot of visits) is lower if the patient is making regular doctor's appointments and following their doctor's orders. But when regular care and monitoring come out of the patient's pocket, and emergency room visits don't, the incentives are horrible.

So these are extremely difficult political and business issues that health insurance has, which e.g. auto insurance doesn't. Most of the solutions to one of these problems, will have negative side effects for the others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Isn't the whole point of insurance the basic bet that I will need an expensive service so I will make small payments towards that possibility, against the insurer's bet that I will not need that service and will instead be able to keep those payments as a profit? If so, that arrangement has been abused by using it for health care, instead of insuring against a low probability major health incident...

It seems this would be the same as car insurance also paying for tolls, road maintenance, car maintenance, etc. instead of just covering against person/property injury from vehicle operation.

If health insurance instead is used for typical day-to-day payments for health care coverage, then the costs of that insurance will logically exceed the cost of that care because the insurance company exists to make a profit through offering that service.

Similar to paying the government to do something that would be more efficiently done privately - Maybe the same outcome (if one is fortunate) for far greater cost.

Anecdotally, I used to have a health insurance plan that had a very high deductible and fairly low monthly payments for my wife and myself. It's sole purpose was to hedge the bet that one of us might need ambulance and major medical treatment at an expensive facility (hospital) that might break us financially without that hedge in place.

The Affordable HealthCare Act in the USA ended that arrangement, we now have triple the payment size for a third of the coverage we used to have. To me, that is a clear case of my government getting involved and the results being a net loss.

Edit: Sorry, it did not end that arrangement, it made it far, far more expensive.

<comment><USER7> The point of health insurance is that nobody should worry about the costs of regular maintenance and emergency service to their meatbag. Ever. As you point out, it costs much more if there is a for-profit organization in the middle.

Single-payer tax-funded health insurance means that each person contributes based on their capacity, and nobody has to pay when they receive services. Then the tax collector has an incentive to increase effectiveness of health services by educating and encouraging the population to eat well and exercise daily.

<comment><USER8> With the ACA, insurance companies have incentives to encourage the people they cover to take as good of care of themselves as possible more than ever. I think they are currently and in the future will do a better job of that than the tax collector ever will.

Especially when it comes to preventable diseases, good health insurance companies are doing some really interesting work on effective behavioral change and early intervention. My insurance for instance pays me to walk every day.

<comment><USER9> They are incentivized to boost their 20% cut. That doesn't work if everyone is too healthy.

<comment><USER8> I'm not sure what you are referencing with the 20% cut remark, but there isn't harm to health insurance companies (actually, providing care through medicare advantage may be an issue...) if everyone is extremely healthy. Then the main costs truly would be the unpreventable diseases, most of which come unexpectedly. This is the exact market that works for risk pooling!

<comment><USER10> > I'm not sure what you are referencing with the 20% cut remark

The ACA requires insurers to spend at least 80% of premiums on direct patient care. To grow profits, they _must_ grow premiums.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As an outside observer, sure, you don't strictly speaking need them in some theoretical America, but in the America I see there's a large group of people who do not believe government can or should do this work and will work very actively to make it happen. The last bit is crucial.

Suppose that you are disappointed that Obamacare did not contain a public option. Suppose that Obamacare did contain this provision in the law, it would most likely be implemented the way the cfpb was. The cfpb is great, except how good it is depends on how good the government in place is. If there's people in government that want it to fail it will simply fail. Thus merely incorporating the public option into law is not enough to have to have a dedicated political body that wants to make it work. I don't think that's the case in America.

I guess what I'm saying is, the specificity of the law doesn't seem to be as important as peoples dedication to making things work

<comment><USER12> For better or worse, those same anti-government people do functionally support social programs from which they directly benefit. They may pay lip service to their ideological stance on the subject, but the money is green and they will happily continue to take what they are "entitled" to.

Their major opposition is to social programs they don't benefit from.

<comment><USER13> My neighbor is a good example. He is on Medicare but he is violently opposed to socialized health care and Medicare for All.

<comment><USER14> This is extremely common in middle America where I live. People using social services but opposing it for others. They believe they have earned and deserve it, and the others are abusers who haven't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's not just insurance companies that are a problem, and that's a common but annoying oversimplification. Other countries (such as Japan, Germany, and Switzerland) integrate private insurers without the massive cost overruns of the American model. It looks to me like there's a systemic feedback loop somewhere that leads to price inflation. And if private insurers aren't the root cause of that feedback loop, then getting rid of them won't solve the problem.

Example: I suffer from a rare chronic illness (respiratory papillomatosis, aka warts on my vocal cords) that requires regular laser surgery treatments to control - two to four times a year. Until recently, treatment consisted of going to the specialist's office, where he had the laser and endoscopy camera. He conducted the operation with two assistants - a laser tech and an ordinary nurse. I was in and out in an hour.

But my most recent treatment was different. This time, I had to go to their "surgical center", wear a gown, get wheeled to the room, and there were a half-dozen assistants that were mostly not doing anything. I had to wear a blood pressure cuff, which kept retriggering when I wiped away tears during the treatment (it HURTS and tears of pain happen). I complained to the doctor about this, and he didn't like it either, and said flat out he thinks they do this to charge more money.

This isn't a dangerous surgery. It's as unpleasant as it sounds, but... it's wart removal. I'm not under general anesthesia. I'm not going to stroke out. He can't kill or even seriously injure me with that laser. The old, simple office-based routine was better for patient and for doctor - and a lot less expensive, I'm sure. And that's the point there, isn't it?

So there's your feedback loop, maybe. Insurance companies can be hit on to cover even unnecessary work, so providers tack on unnecessary work, which raises premiums, which means more money is available, so...

<comment><USER16> Almost(?) every other developed country has price controls (all payer rate setting) - that's a more general reason why prices are lower.

<comment><USER15> I find it fascinating that price controls are pretty much the only difference between the US and Japanese models (well, that and price controls eliminate the concept of networks), and the Japanese model costs half what ours does for better and universal care.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Rent seeking.

Literally getting paid to have a pile of money and sometimes pay part of people's medical care while skimming fat profits.

<comment><USER18> Who will double check a doctor's orders? Voters clearly don't want the government to do it. Do people have enough money to visit a second or third doctor to get opinions regarding decisions that costs tens of thousands of dollars?

<comment><USER19> Medicare is strongly supported by the seniors who receive it - <USER2> against decades of attempted rollbacks. I don't know how one ends up thinking people are unhappy with government administered billing and payments in healthcare.

<comment><USER20> Strongly supported because they love it, or strongly supported because they have exactly zero other options?

<comment><USER21> Can't they get health insurance through the Obamacare marketplace now?

<comment><USER22> No, eligibility for marketplace plans ends when Medicare eligibility starts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This article is spot on. Unfortunately the Health Insurance industry is extremely powerful--the NRA have nothing on them. Real change in our health care system requires destroying these companies.

</comment><comment><USER24> Insurance companies actively work to not-deliver the thing they are paid to deliver.

<comment><USER20> If your profit is limited to a max percentile by law, the only way you can possibly increase profits is to increase expenditures. Insurance companies have every incentive to increase costs so they can increase premiums, their only path to increased profits.

<comment> irq-1 Salaries and shiny new buildings are expenses, and not constrained by profit caps.

<comment><USER25> The minimum loss ratio in the ACA sets a minimum for how much is paid out as claims. New buildings don't count toward meeting the requirement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Regulating the hole-digging and hole-filling industries out of existence is a politically difficult move considering how much money they're shoveling into the back-hoe business

<comment><USER27> And anyway we'd prefer to have broken windows, because otherwise what work will employ our glaziers?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Many of the arguments in this article are great arguments against rent- seeking, but many would apply to a public options. For example: consolidating the market didn't create more efficiency because it reduced competition - <USER3> somehow consolidating the market into one single payer and eliminating competition will create efficiency (even though there's no more competition). The author is concerned about private insurers trying to keep their lucrative position, but government organizations face similar incentives in trying to keep theirs.

<comment><USER29> I agree, though I think a universal, single payer system under government oversight without profit seeking drive would be better. Consolidation under the current system is identical to McDonalds and Burger King consolidating the fast food industry, they will still be driven to outperform the other to consumers and to investors/owners.

Instead, a single system under the Us government shifts negotiation of drug prices, care expenses, and more to one entity backed by the government, not just a set of insured customers, which has excessive power to negotiate. Like other nations that function this way, there is no skimming off the top for shareholders or profits and as the only other party at the table suppliers/hospitals can't play opponents against each other or take a kickback to give better pricing to the larger insurer or something.

Ideally, it consolidates and simplifies negotiating pricing or allows the government to step in and say, "No thanks, we'll pass a law or budget for that on our own unless you lower prices or cut a better deal.

Also, a government system could cut out administrative and bureaucratic paperwork like billing, coding, and more potentially removing a large % of overhead costs that exist currently, by default lowering expenses for healthcare similar to Canada.

the biggest issue I see is that about 1/6th of the US economy is built on health care/insurance/etc companies. shifting that away from corporations into private hands could cut tens of thousands of jobs (like billing and adjusters) while shifting that cash flow under the US government as well. There would be fallout as people would need social safety buffer for unemployment or retraining or education. I don't think it could happen without pairing up with reduced/free college and smart expansion of some needs based aid. That requires some sort of tax, maybe like Warren has suggested, to cover intermediate costs and friction.

The good news is it could save the average family over $5000 per year in insurance costs alone while bringing millions out of medical debt and providing a better standard of care and options for everyone. It's not libertarian to shift something under the government but if it makes economic and ethical sense to give such a monopoly to the feds (like with infrastructure, the military, and more) while improving choice for citizens (no longer tied to employer healthcare or entering debt to resolve acute or handle chronic medical issues) it could be a huge boon for choice and freedom. I'd be one of the first to start my own business if I didn't have to worry about my chronic health issues being fully covered and paid for by my employer plan.

<comment><USER28> I definitely see where you're coming from, in terms of this being a worthy goal. But I think there are a lot of challenges:

* While a government system could cut out administrative paperwork, that doesn't mean they always do. Many government agencies have a lot more paperwork than their private equivalents.

* Negotiations are tricky things. On the one hand, negotiating for a lower price is great, because it means you save money. On the other hand, it also means you are paying a lower price, and that can come with a different set of consequences. Yes, loss of jobs as you indicate, but also potentially less supply of health care. The fact that government is the negotiator doesn't mean that the effect of supply and demand gets suspended.

* I haven't read deeply in the area, but everything I have read indicates that this comes at the expense of wait times. I think, for example, I heard the stat recently that the average wait time for an orthopedist in Canada is 22 weeks.

* I get the moral argument that we should provide care, but I think the single payer raises other moral issues. If the goal is that if a doctor and patient agree on a particular treatment, it's evidently not the case that in socialist medicine that's enough for it to happen (see e.g., [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/nhs-rations-operat...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/nhs-rations-operations-hip-patients-beg-treatment-cuts-funding-a8453531.html) ).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> IDK. I'm not a fan of insurance companies. They can go away for all I care. OTOH, it seems to me that a risk to Medicare-for-all is that the hospital industry and doctor's groups will lobby and capture the very Medicare payment agency that supposed to be saving all the money. Then we're right back to spending 17% of GDP on healthcare.

<comment><USER31> Even if that scenario happens (which I would argue wouldn't happen) then American citizens would STILL be far better off. They would retain that health care coverage during periods of unemployment or while working for employers who don't offer health insurance coverage, and they would never be kicked off their insurance plan due to pre-existing conditions.

<comment><USER30> i think those conditions also hold true under the ACA plans right now (unless Trump dismantled those conditions.)

anyway, a major selling point for Medicare-for-all I'm hearing is that _overall_ it will result in a big _savings._ if that system-wide savings does not materialize, if we still have to pay the same amount we're paying now through higher taxes that amount to the same thing, then I would think Medicare-for-all didn't actually deliver on the promises.

the other thing I wonder about is: look at prescription drug prices now: the FDA has been captured by Big Pharma. drug prices are way higher than they need to be. Medicare-for-all needs some real safeguards, something really strong, to prevent that sort of price inflation. and since single payer would eliminate competition, it has to be some other mechanism.

<comment><USER31> I think it's safe to say that the savings would definitely arise if (if...) M4A is implemented in good faith. Decades of hard data from basically every other developed nation with universal health care demonstrates this. All it will take is the political willpower which is now starting to emerge on the federal level. One also needs to carefully consider what constitutes a "tax" when it comes to health care funding. Premium payments, co-pays, and deductibles all need to be factored in to an apples-to-apples comparison of individual taxpayers' contributions to any M4A system.

There's also a simple mechanism to fix drug pricing: repeal the laws passed in 2003 that ban most US federal agencies from negotiating for bulk medical product pricing, and pass new laws requiring it of all agencies. Currently, I believe that only the Department of Veterans Affairs is legally allowed to negotiate bulk drug pricing. They take full advantage of that, and enable active and retired service members to significantly cut their prescription costs. They're a perfect example of the power of bulk pricing. And again, revising the law in this way is a political-willpower problem, not an economic one.

<comment><USER30> > a political-willpower problem

right. and, though it may be simple, it's non-trivial. politics and moneyed interests will be the next battle to fight after M4A becomes law under president Warren and Democratic majorities in House and Senate.

and i will venture to guess that the very next day a strange and unexpected coalition of stakeholders will join forces to create exceptions to that new single payer system. the political alliances will probably be fascinating. we might even see a division so stark that one of the two political parties emerges as a shill for hospitals and doctors, while the other party becomes their enemy.

<comment><USER31> Quite likely. I think Americans in support of single-payer ought to look to Canada, not just as a model of how to run a fair and cost-effective single- payer system, but how to implement it against massive political opposition from incumbent groups that financially benefit from a for-profit system. Americans might not be familiar with the name Tommy Douglas, but to many in Canada he's considered a hero.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I would propose a 3 tier system:

\- You pay the first thousand or so a year out of pocket with an HSA-like vehicle to make sure people aren't overconsuming.

\- Government program pays 100% of everything over like $20k or so a year

\- Optional private insurance fills in the gap between the $1K out of pocket and the $20K where the government starts picking up the tab, and would be very affordable since their liability is capped at both ends.

They actually have something roughly similar to this in Singapore.

<comment><USER33> [https://www.pacificprime.sg/blog/public-and-private- hospital...](https://www.pacificprime.sg/blog/public-and-private-hospitals- differences/)

Read up on Singapore's model. While it works well for them, I'd be interested to see if it could work here (like hospital quality/comfort, wait times, etc. based on tiers).

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> What is the alternative for a private person? I understand that large companies can deal directly with hospitals in their region, but if you are not a large company what can you do? Even in Europe we have health insurers, some are state owned (usually the worst), some are private. European model is considered better, how is that?

<comment><USER35> The alternative is universal single payer health care, paid for by taxation.

<comment><USER34> And who is dealing with the hospital fees? You need some organization to do this, this is how it works everywhere.

<comment><USER26> You are aware this currently already happens with Medicare and Medicaid correct?

<comment><USER34> No, I live in EU, not in US. This is why I ask questions, because I don't know the answers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I can't remember it but there was a group of people in Oregon trying to start their own health insurance company. They figured out how to do it like a billion times cheaper than the big companies. Eventually they got blasted by a government agency that didn't allow them to operate at those rates because it would be untenable. Unfortunately I think the government doesn't realize it but they have been bending over backwards for the insurance companies to regulate that way.

If you take out the rent seeking apparently healthcare and health insurance may actually be cheap. We just have a ton of laws preventing us from having that. If anyone heard about this group on NPR/OPB let me know I can't seem to find them.

<comment><USER37> Not sure if this is what you're thinking of, but [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_sharing_ministry](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_sharing_ministry) is similar. They were grandfathered under Obamacare and are apparently legal in most states.

Of course the thing is the reason the costs are cheaper than insurance is also because they don't cover as much. Some insurance plans are incredibly expensive just because they have to spend multi-millions on a single person's care.

<comment><USER38> Insurance plans are incredibly expensive because not only are you paying for legitimate health-care expenses, you are also paying for:

* hospital administrators to interact with insurers * insurers employees/administration * ICD9/ICD10 coding overhead * and add 10% for the maximum legal profit health insurers are allowed to make

I have to think that removal of those four elements from health insurance costs would result in significantly lower health care cost outlay in the US.

Routine care can be cheap. We really only need coverage for catastrophic care - broken bones, herniated disc, acute injuries, etc., etc., and routine care benefits for those so impoverished as to not be able to afford it. IMO, of course.

<comment><USER39> _" Routine care can be cheap. We really only need coverage for catastrophic care - broken bones, herniated disc, acute injuries, etc., etc., and routine care benefits for those so impoverished as to not be able to afford it. IMO, of course."_

Where do chronic illnesses, hearing aids, HIV, diabetes, dialysis, mental health intevention and outpatient therapy, etc. fall under that paradigm?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> The quickest fix is to just put in next year's Medicare contract that no provider is allowed to charge any payer more than they charge Medicare. Much of what insurers do to negotiate in-network and out-network pricing with the various hospitals, pharma companies, and doctors becomes irrelevant, and they just end up varying in the reimbursement schedules. Get all of the supposed cost savings of single payer, without a single payer.

If things really do get cheaper, it gets a lot easier to figure out universal coverage. If they don't get cheaper, we learned a lot without having to implement single payer. [https://www.manhattan-institute.org/medicare-for-all- marylan...](https://www.manhattan-institute.org/medicare-for-all-maryland- hospital-healthcare-price-regulation)

</comment><comment><USER41> One thing I've been curious about is whether insurance companies are useful as negotiators with healthcare providers.

At the end of the day, they are for profit enterprises. The cynic will naturally state that they make money only by denying claims while taking people's money. But were I in charge of such an enterprise, only doing that would leave a lot of money on the table since there are still lots of claims that an insurer is still paying out and there is a strong economic incentive for insurers to bargain aggressively with healthcare providers to get access to the pool of healthcare customers they represent.

With this in mind, does anyone familiar with the industry know the impact insurers have on bringing down healthcare costs by putting the squeeze on healthcare providers?

</comment><comment><USER42> For all the slams on insurance companies - folks should check out what your local hospital or physician group charges if you don't have insurance.

I know everyone loves these medical groups - but I'm not impressed with their billing.

<comment><USER43> I tried that once, I had a procedure that insurance wouldn't cover if done at the hospital, but the hospital was the only place with the equipment to do it. I had experience with paying cash for procedures being dramatically less expensive, like half, so I called the hospital to find out the cash price.

"So you want the price you would pay if you didn't have insurance and directly paid for it?" "Yes." "But you do have insurance, so you have to contact your insurance company to find out what their contracted rate for that procedure is." We went back and forth a few times, but she absolutely refused to give me a number for how much someone without insurance would pay for that procedure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> You should probably also agree that hospital conglomerates are also useless, since normally they force the market for an area to charge more, not less for products.

</comment><comment><USER45> Entities that dispute claims can make the system more efficient. Insurance can serve a useful role.

What went wrong in the American healthcare system is collusion and price fixing.

<comment><USER34> Mergers and acquisitions are also a problem, when companies grow large they have too much power and do much wrong. You cannot have competition if you allow mammoths to rule the market.

<comment><AUTHOR> How do you butcher the mammoth? Lacking effective antitrust laws and a useful FTC there's positive feedback loop of medical providers merging and consolidating for the enhanced bargaining position vis-a-vis the merged and consolidated insurance industry.

<comment><USER34> The AT&T mammoth was butchered, it shows it can be done. In this market anything higher than 5% should be forced to split.

<comment><AUTHOR> It was, back when we had a pre-Bork standard for antitrust violations, and a more effective FTC. Not much more but more than totally ineffective. (Incidentally I like the cut of your 5% jib - 20 players may not be enough for some markets)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I tend to agree that health insurance isn't really insurance - it's more like a costly, inefficient payment intermediary that collects money from the young and/or healthy to pay for care for the old and/or sick.

Which seems like an OK idea in principle, but it isn't working very well for patients.

</comment><comment><USER47> So what happens to our economy when 100s of thousands to people are out of a work because the government shit down the insurance company they worked for? I not saying things can't be better but a instant (or even a short roll out time) would kill our economy. Why doesn't anyone mention that.

<comment><USER26> That's barely a blip in the US workforce and I think they could find other administrative jobs given enough time. Nobody objects to other jobs becoming technologically obsolete (except coal mining for some reason) so not sure what the issue is

<comment><USER12> Most of the people on the hospital side of this are medical professionals with active licenses and degrees, so finding another hospital job would not be an issue for them. I'm not sure about the insurance side, but I think it's the same situation: they employ medical professionals to review claims to dispute the care given.

The non-medical personnel should also not have any issues finding new jobs. Executives, accountants, managers, and IT people have cross-industry skillsets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I am often disappointed in US healthcare discussions for similar reasons on gun violence discussions. It can work a lot better, we have many examples of this around the world that can scale and be even cheaper/better like the Canadian system or German system.

But for some reason, we want to do it our own way with profit seeking companies who can game the system or lobby the government for their benefit, not citizens. Maybe that's BC/BS or the NRA, maybe it's libertarians or conservatives that want smaller government (that time and time again fails like in Kansas or with the federal deficit hawks and their lovely tax cut).

We have solutions in front of us. We just need to shift momentum and get there instead of spinning our wheels and debating doing anything at all.

</comment><comment><USER48> seems obvious to me

</comment><comment><USER49> This article is interesting in the fact that it highlights several real issues, but completely fails to understand the true root causes.

"they pay more for hospitals and doctors so they can just raise premiums..."

What kind of crap is that? They can raise premiums without paying more to hospitals. In fact, that would raise their "fat cat" salaries even more.

<comment><USER50> It's about percentages.

The law says they can keep a _percentage_ of the premium. If they charge you $1000 maybe they're allowed to keep $100 of that as profit. If they charge $900 they only get $90. So, provide a "better" service and charge $1500 then they get to keep $150.

The law used to let them keep whatever they could make, so you'd be right, they could buy $400 of healthcare, charge $1000 for and they've made $600 profit. But the percentage rules mean they'd be told to give you $560 back, they'd only be able to keep $40 in profit. So hence as the article says they choose to spend more so they make more money.

<comment><USER51> Amazing how good people are at finding loopholes in government regulations.

<comment><USER52> Not a loophole,it was specifically written into the ACA to ensure insurance companies spend money on benefits rather than just pocketing everything. Of course, it also has the effect of making the market hard to enter. See, e.g., Oscar

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Private Insurance pays healthcare providers higher rates than Medicare. Private Insurance rates serve as a subsidy for healthcare providers, allowing them to fund advanced services & facilities while also accepting the lower Medicare rates.

I don't understand how removing this Private Insurance, and then moving everything to Medicare rates, wouldn't instantly reduce the amount of money flowing into the healthcare sector and cause massive slowdowns in all areas, from research, to quality of facilities, to provider pay (nurses, doctors, phlebotomist, hospital janitors), to real estate, and most other sectors of the economy.

It would be great if industry rates were lowered, but many aspects of the economy are relying on rates as they exist presently.

It seems the more optimal route would be to slow the increase of rates, but this seems to be at odds with the process of untangling Private Insurance and implementing a new Medicare for All System.

So my question is, how does Medicare for All cut costs without collapsing the healthcare sector?

<comment><USER54> > So my question is, how does Medicare for All cut costs without collapsing > the healthcare sector?

Administrative and collections costs, which are a large part healthcare industry already (probably more people work in billing than in actually doing the healthcare work). Our current system is a huge mess, mainly related to all the complexity of our insurance system, and just by getting rid of that complexity huge savings can easily be had (though at the expense of a lot of administrative healthcare jobs).

There is a good reason why the USA pays far more than most countries for healthcare received.</comment></comment>


Formatting of chat in Gmail has changed, discuss - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I think it`s terrible and it`s also bad I can`t choose anymore the old style.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> looks like responding by email to a chat is no longer possible</comment>


Ask HN: Billion dollar companies sitting on security bugs since 4 months - <AUTHOR> We are a small 3-month-old security startup. We take an annual payment and discover security issues in customer properties and report them. We discovered a series of severe bugs related to authentication (oauth, account hijack, overwrite), payments(free orders, wallet hijack, partial credit card info leak), user data leaks (including unsalted password hashes, addresses, email, phone, order histories) apart from the regular XSS, injection issues etc. and reported it to the respective companies 4 months ago. Most of the companies are startups based out of India (almost all of them worth $100m+ and 8-9 of them $1b+ companies). The companies have neither fixed the bugs nor informed their users about a possible breach that might have happened before we found out.<p>Should we release the bugs in public? We are thinking of making a small dashboard which will display the companies and days left before the bugs will automatically become public. What are our options? Ideally, we would like to convert them to paying customers after they fix their current issues, but they are not even fixing them. <comment><USER2> > Ideally, we would like to convert them to paying customers after they fix > their current issues...

If your intentions to help are sincere, you must get face-time with a true decision maker at the C-Level. They may not have your expertise, so you must show them personally & privately why this is a problem. The public shaming tactic would likely backfire, and possibly be viewed as extortion.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sounds reasonable imho.</comment>


PHP 5.5.1 Release Announcement - <AUTHOR> http://www.php.net/releases/5_5_1.php

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's the changelist:

[http://www.php.net/ChangeLog-5.php#5.5.1](http://www.php.net/ChangeLog-5.php#5.5.1)

And here's a security fix regarding heap corruption in XML parsing: [https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=65236](https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=65236)</comment>


Food Banks Are Overrun - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/business/economy/coronavirus-food-banks.html <comment><USER2> Her, you outlaw the economy, lock people in their houses, and intentionally cause a food shortage by forcing farmers to destroy their crop instead of selling it to the market, and you're surprised to find that people are starving?

Of course food banks are overrun. Of course there's no food to be had.

That was the point

<comment><USER3> .</comment></comment>


Just add scaling! - <AUTHOR> http://ola-bini.blogspot.com/2008/05/just-add-scaling.html <comment><USER2> This article doesn't really seem to say anything or come to any conclusions. Am I missing something?</comment>


Cryptoassets for individuals – GOV.UK - <AUTHOR> https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/tax-on-cryptoassets/cryptoassets-for-individuals <comment><USER2> I wonder how many people will base their mining operations in the UK when the government wants to take their cut.</comment>


Amazon's Glacier secret: BDXL (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://storagemojo.com/2014/04/25/amazons-glacier-secret-bdxl/ <comment><USER2> They're almost certainly doing something like Microsoft's Pelican: [https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp- content/uploads/...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp- content/uploads/2016/09/pelican-hotstorage2016.pdf)

The first comment on TFA says as much.

Edit: This is the actual Pelican paper: [https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/research/wp-content/uploads/...](https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/research/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/osdi2014-Pelican.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Yep. This is basically what they do. Source: I was around when they were designing and building Glacier.

<comment><USER4> This is very cool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I highly doubt this. Especially given the introduction of the near line tiers.

It's probably just very widely striped, price-segmented data.

Also, see: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4416065](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4416065)

</comment><comment><USER6> I thought this was debunked at the time?

When I was running exchange systems, our biggest challenge was delivering IOPS. We had to use SAN, and wasted significant storage because we'd spend our IOPS budget at 40-60% storage capacity.

I figured at their scale they would have similar problems.

<comment><USER7> IOPS isn't important for glacier. You just upload to some buffer and the eventually move it to the slow storage.

Reading is pretty slow from glacier.

<comment><USER8> He meant that if EBS has the same issue as his Exchange servers. To explain in more detail: You have 10TB disk space with 10.000 IOPS, your users buy 4TB with 10.000 IOPS then you have 6TB of storage wasted.

If Amazon has that problem with EBS, then selling that storage capacity as Glacier and using just the idle IOPS (or leaving a small bit reserved) allows them to sell capacity that would otherwise just be useless.

<comment><USER9> Aren't IOPS incredibly expensive on Glacier? There was that guy who paid $150 for a retrieval. [https://medium.com/@karppinen/how-i-ended-up- paying-150-for-...](https://medium.com/@karppinen/how-i-ended-up- paying-150-for-a-single-60gb-download-from-amazon-glacier-6cb77b288c3e)

<comment><USER10> I'm that guy. I should update the post; Amazon "fixed" the retrieval fees in late 2016 and I would've paid less than a dollar had the current pricing scheme been in effect when I did the retrieval.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Using BDXL seems like a pretty good solution. Most of this data is archival and existing data is very unlikely to change. You can use HDD/SSD as a buffer as users upload data, and then optimize the packing to ensure you're using all available space on a disk. Possibly encrypt each user's data block on the disk. The system itself would only need to track metadata (file metadata, cartridge/disk, key). Deleting a file would be deleting the key and marking the file as inactive. Once/if a cartridge is marked as completely deleted, can just recycle it.

<comment><USER12> I feel it will go the way of Data8

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Nice investigation and also Facebook has been using 50gb blue rays [http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-uses-10000-blu- rays-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-uses-10000-blu-rays-for- backup-2014-1) and is moving to 300gb [http://www.businessinsider.com/ces-2016-facebook-uses- panaso...](http://www.businessinsider.com/ces-2016-facebook-uses-panasonic- freezeray-2016-1) .

<comment><USER14> Could you provide me some insight into why optical storage is a better solution than standard HDDs? Is it just the cost, or is cooling / form-factor a big part of it?

<comment><USER13> It is cost that provides the upside for BluRay than HDDs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why isn't anyone thinking tapes? You can get LTO 7 tapes for $0.008 per Gigabyte that allow 100-300 writes before the tape should be destroyed. Quantum and HP make monstrous tape libraries that hold 5-10 petabytes per rack. You can also cartridge-ize your library for even more dense storage on a literal warehouse rack somewhere.

Tapes also match the slow retrieval speeds as you have to read the data out onto a drive linearly.

<comment><USER16> Amazon already denied using tapes, which was mentioned in the third paragraph of the article.

<comment><USER15> There isn't a source mentioned for the denial of tapes but this article claims an Amazon insider verified that it is tapes:

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/10/18/ipexpo_2012/](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/10/18/ipexpo_2012/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Previous HN discussion about this: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7647571](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7647571)

</comment><comment><USER18> This is an extremely interesting deductive analysis. However, considering it is amazon, there always exists that persistent "other" possibility: they're purposefully taking a loss.

<comment><USER19> Or at any rate, pricing based on net present value of archived data given decreasing costs over time for storage.

I do find it rather fascinating that AWS has managed to keep the technology used by Glacier, even at a high-level (i.e. disks vs. tape vs. optical), so under wraps. My personal guess is that it's powered-down disk drives on the grounds that's the simplest long-term solution but that's purely a guess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Given the scale of Glacier, I'm surprised that Amazon is able to keep their underlying storage technology a secret.

<comment><USER21> This is one reason to assume it's unremarkable. If Amazon were buying and offloading truckloads of BDXL disks and drives, someone would eventually notice. A good explanation is, therefore, that the technology is unremarkable and boring.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Does someone know about Google nearline and coldline storage? Google claims coldline access within miliseconds.

<comment><USER23> > Google claims coldline access within miliseconds

Well, that basically tells you almost all you need to know. It's disk in JBODs. The only question is SMR vs conventional. Anyone who knows that can't tell you in public.

<comment><USER24> If that's how Google is implementing it, and the prices are similar, then isn't that some evidence that Amazon might be implementing it the same way?

<comment><USER25> Amazon's latency is measured in hours, whatever process they use involves literally cold storage, either disks that are completely switched off, or some tape-like media archive system, but the article makes a good case for why it's almost certainly not tape

<comment><USER24> It could still be normal disks, if we're feeling conspiratorial. It's easy to make faster storage slower; just add waits. Or maybe they make it take up to five hours so they can avoid peak traffic times in whatever data center your info happens to be located in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've got a USB3 BDXL writer attached at my desk and it is quite handy and not too expensive. I back up my whole data (work) partition to it every so often and occasionally take one over to a relative's house as my own home-grown "glacier" system.

<comment><USER27> Althought your setup is interesting, isn't using 2.5( * ) sata disks via an usb3 adapter way cheaper and flexible?

( * ) So you don't need a power adapter.

<comment><USER26> Perhaps, but optical is lighter, much simpler, durable, can be mailed, and fits into CD cases for travel, etc.

<comment><USER28> And optical media is also immutable (read only) when you need it to be immune to any data changes.

I find that read only point in time backups gain value over time. Especially if you need to pull a file that would have been long rotated and replaced by newer backups on read write media (eg. HDDs).

Unfortunately the market for this use case is not large and this is greatly reflected in the prices and relatively hard to source high quality optical media. For BD this would be (inorganic) HTL Panasonic media which only has a market inside Japan itself. M-Disc is the other alternative although it only has proven itself within the DVD market, as classical HTL BD media is expected to be very similar in endurance to what M-Disc has on offer in the BD range.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Ex-Glacier engineer... and no I'm not going to tell you what or how it's done. NDAs and all that jazz. These speculation threads always make for fascinating reading for people on the team.

<comment><USER30> Glacier in particular seems to attract the speculative fascination. Do people not realise the name is not in jest, it really is done with graphene-doped room-temperature ice crystals and laser interference lithography?

<comment><USER29> We used to joke among ourselves that actually it was done using vinyl records. Have you seen how many vinyl records you can fit into a single rack?

Added bonus, 9 out of 10 customers actually preferred the feel of their data when it is restored.

<comment><USER31> I liked the story that the truck-mounted Snowball came from Glacier tech. Amazon has been putting data on a truck and then driving it around Virginia. The delay in reading it back is the time it takes for the truck to arrive at a datacenter and plug in. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Are there packet written?

That seems to have been the major stumbling block with higher capacity optical media, that one can't do the drag and drop writes that one have with spinning rust and flash chips.

<comment><USER33> Bulk transfer. They'd write it to a normal disk first, then slowly copy the data in bulk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> What if they are using 2.5 inch 5TB drives like this [http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2016/11/15/13642078/s...](http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2016/11/15/13642078/seagate- backup-plus-portable-5tb-hard-drive) I use. They are nice as we can plug them into a 15 port USB stick, they auto power down when not in used. Amazon could have developed a box like what backblaze.com has done.

</comment><comment><USER35> Facebook disclosed how they are archiving photos long term, they manage a 1 to 1.4 ratio with Reed Solomon Redundancy and 8 disk of 14 can fail without loosing data. [https://code.facebook.com/posts/1433093613662262/-under- the-...](https://code.facebook.com/posts/1433093613662262/-under-the-hood- facebook-s-cold-storage-system-/)

</comment><comment><USER36> From what I recall, Writable optical disks have a much shorter life span compared to tape (~15 years vs 75 years)

Plus, if I was designing an archival system, it wouldn't be on blueray, unless there was a requirement for magnetic resistance.

<comment><USER37> You are mistaken here. Tapes, unless stored with extreme precision, usually last ~20 years safely. They tend to have a longer life, but not without a high risk of deterioration.

In my experience, written CD and DVD only lasts for <10 years, if you're lucky. However studies show you can get 30-45, even 45+ years out of them.

Most Blu-Ray expectancy exceeds this due to the different non organic dye based layering and coating.

The one mentioned above, M-Disc was something developed for DARPA and supposed to last 1000 years in theory.

See:

[http://www.mdisc.com/](http://www.mdisc.com/)

[http://loc.gov/preservation/resources/rt/NIST_LC_OpticalDisc...](http://loc.gov/preservation/resources/rt/NIST_LC_OpticalDiscLongevity.pdf)

[http://www.zdnet.com/article/torture-testing- the-1000-year-d...](http://www.zdnet.com/article/torture-testing- the-1000-year-dvd/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I wonder if Amazon is also deduplicating. It seems likely that a share of users would store large media files or software packages without encryption.

</comment><comment><USER39> I remember reading this back around when it came out. Have there been any new pieces of the puzzle identified (or announcements...) since then?

</comment><comment><USER40> Could it possibly just be compression on tradtional HDDs?

\- Cheaper storage because data is heavily compressed

\- Slow retrieval time due to slow decompression

<comment><USER41> I seriously doubt it. If I have many TB of stuff I need to have saved off site, you can bet the very first thing I'm going to do is compress the hell out of it. So they certainly wouldn't be able to count on compressing it further.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Custom engineered SSD. Powered off at rest.

See: [http://www.storagesearch.com/ssd- petabyte.html](http://www.storagesearch.com/ssd-petabyte.html)

<comment><USER43> SSD isn't quite ready for backup use cases (and certainly wasn't when Glacier was built a few years ago).

However, is 2017, so we can say for sure that the extrapolation to 2016 in the linked article from 2010 was pretty good. It is too optimistic by a factor of ~2 in density, and ~10x in cost, but is spot-on even compared to most predictions from a year or two ago.

Since any whacko can claim they made a prediction in 2010, I double checked:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20100322200343/http://www.storage...](http://web.archive.org/web/20100322200343/http://www.storagesearch.com/ssd- petabyte.html)

Thanks for sharing the link!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How can I get this working? - <AUTHOR>

Hi guys, I am developing an text-to-web advertising platform and I am stuck at a point. Short description of how it works: Any one can text a 140 character message to a short code, and have it displayed on any website that is on the network of the advertising platform. My Problem: How do I display the text ad on the websites that are on the platform? Iframes? Flash?<p>These are my reasons for creating this platform. 1. This product is made with the local market in mind (Nigeria, West Africa), I doubt if this would be a hit in the first world. 2. Due to lack of a reliable payment gateway for local users here in Nigeria, I decided to use premium sms (short code). Once an advertiser texts an ad to the shortcode, his prepaid credit is debited, his ad appears on the target website of his choice and the revenue is shared between the ad platform, the shortcode provider and the website owner. 3. Google adsense or adwords isnt too attractive here in Nigeria because of the hassles of getting paid by google another case of reoccurring online payment gateway issues. If you have ever implemented something like this, I would really like to have some tips from you. Disclosure: this has been submitted before, but I didn't really glean much for the few responses gotten. Thanks <comment><USER2> You can use JavaScript, PHP (or any other server side language), and JSON.

Each website in the network gets a unique ID and includes a script tag in their HTML with the src set to <http://www.example.com/code/?id=12345> where 12345 is the unique ID.

You have your server side script look up that ID and pull the relevant ad data from your database and return JavaScript that writes this data in a JSON object and includes functions to write it to the browser.

When the visitor goes to the site, the browser renders the page with the JavaScript customized for that site, which displays the appropriate ad. Your server side code should track the number of impressions for each add and integrate with your billing/payment system.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not sure if I correctly understand your problem, but you might want to look into JSONP.

<comment><AUTHOR> an example, how does google display text ads on 3rd party sites? do they use Iframes?, JSON? that is my main challenge now.

<comment><USER3> Why not check the adwords script? My guess would be JSONP (note the "P"). certainly the starting point is a JavaScript.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Early bird still gets the worm? - <AUTHOR> Just wondering how many hackers believe in this old adage and if they think it applies to software startups in general or at all..
My personal belief is that it's just a matter of personal preference and it has no correlation to startup success for hackers.. I happen to be more nocturnal, always have been.. Of course having grown up in New England I've heard this puritanical proverb for most of my life and I can't help but feel a little guilty for 'staying up late' and 'sleeping in'.
I can see why it would apply to certain other industries like finance/banking..
So what do you think? Does this 'wisdom' apply to software startups and hackers? <comment><USER3> The early bird may get the worm. But the second mouse gets the cheese.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't think it simply meant that you had to get up early; more that it was good to be the first to do something. That seems to apply in most types of work, including startups.

</comment><comment><USER5> The early worm gets eaten by the bird! First is great if you're first in the mind of the consumer but if you're not the first to gain traction (in the web world = users) in enough people's minds - there's no advantage to being first. It's quite possible your being first might pave the way for later arrivals to dominate the market you created.

<comment><USER6> Not exactly There is often a sustainable advantage in being the "first-mover" in the competitive marketplace. Combine that with a strong brand name, (for example: Twitter) and being the first to market can be a huge asset. After all, if you've "pave(d) the way for later arrivals," you'll at least know which paths led to dead ends. Your competitors won't. Besides, later arrivals will also be "behind" in the respect that they won't have had as much time to learn from mistakes. In the _hyper-competitive_ world of the web, it's actually pretty easy to use the first-mover advantage to the detriment of potential future competitors.

For example, a business like eBay has fees which are ludicrous, an interface that is not at all intuitive, but because it was pretty much the first established brand in online auctions, it's what most people keep using.

<comment><USER5> You hit the nail on the head > first established brand...

An "established brand" did get into the mind first... - you might possibly gain ground on them (eBay) by focusing on a unique segment (Esty) or a host of other ways. Getting established is the hard part - being first is not a guarantee you'll end up being the "established brand". Was Facebook the first social site? And while a strong brand name is great to have - easier to remember and easier to market - its still nothing compared to getting critical mass.

First mover is a huge advantage if you manage to create a new segment and then spend all your time focusing on promoting how great the segment is - <USER2> hopefully at the same time gaining critical mass.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Somewhere in the world there is a time zone where you are the early bird.

Being an early bird in your _own_ time zone is important when you have to physically stand in line for one thing or another. But now, for a software startup, most of those lines are virtual, and you can stand in an American line at 7am while sipping coffee in a cafe in Monaco at noon.

Obviously there are still many exceptions in the non-hacker world. If you want to run a bakery or a drive-time radio show you pretty much have to learn to love 3AM. And the problem for a software startup is that if you don't build your stuff right you might have to respond to emergencies at _any_ random hour of the day or night, which is a much more serious problem than having to wake up consistently early or consistently late.

</comment><comment><USER8> When I was extremely ill, I suffered horrible insomnia and often went to sleep at 7am. During that time, I was not able to be genuinely productive. A lot of what I did amounted to churn and time-filling. When I began working, I took an evening shift job because I knew that although I was healthier, I still wasn't healthy enough to cope with getting up early. I now work dayshift, and that correlates to an ability to get up earlier because of improved health.

So if there is any correlation generally (not just for me) between health and schedule, then I would say that being an early bird may be a proxy for health but real productivity is rooted in sound health and the ability it provides to think clearly and do sustained work, which isn't specifically related to the hours you keep.

<comment><USER9> Makes sense. I think most of the time your body should know what sleep schedule is best for your health better than you do. I tend to just wait until I feel ready to go to sleep, be it 10PM or 2AM, and get up when I feel well rested.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hmm... put it this way, it is productive to put in three hours of work in your business before your opposition wakes up!

<comment><USER11> Why is that more productive than putting in those hours after the opposition has already gone to bed?

<comment><USER12> Which is technically 8 hours or more before they wake up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Early morning is the most productive part of the day for me. There are no interruptions, no noise, and my brain is still well rested.

</comment><comment><USER14> There are no absolutes. Sometimes early is good. Sometimes not. Next Question?

</comment><comment><USER15> My adage is: "it's morning somewhere."

</comment><comment><USER16> There's an inverse correlation to early rising and income, so I guess no. But that probably boils down to low wage people waking up to do shift work. Also, to my observation, less well off middle class people wake up early to commute in from the boonies.

Lots of high income deal maker types do business in the evenings.</comment>


MacBook Pro: The Perfect Computer? - <AUTHOR> http://theappleblog.com/2009/08/20/macbook-pro-the-perfect-computer/ <comment><USER2> The reason I didn't buys a MBP was because it can't support my 2 Samsung 22" displays. I don't work on anything but 2 displays these days...

<comment><USER3> Are you sure about that? I've read that the Dual-Link DVI connector can be split to power two same-sized displays, e.g: [http://pc.pcconnection.com/1/1/100710-tripplite-cables- dvi-d...](http://pc.pcconnection.com/1/1/100710-tripplite-cables-dvi-dual- link-splitter-cable-dvi-d-m-2x-dvi-i-f-1ft-p564-001.html)

Not that I've tried it yet on my mac

<comment><USER4> I'm skeptical that a splitter cable would work, but DualHead2Go is reported to work. I just use a single 30" monitor, though.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: StartupJob.io – Apply anonymously with 1 paragraph, speak with engineers - <AUTHOR> http://startupjob.io/ <comment><USER2> Hm...I like the concept of connecting on the technical level early on in the process. But, what reason do I have to submit to any of the companies available? Do they even have a position for my experience level? Are they using the technologies I am familiar with? It seems like available job titles or even descriptions would go a long way here for both the companies and the candidates.

Kudos on the project though, looking forward to see how you iterate through it!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi,

Here to answer any questions.

I've been interviewing the past few months and a problem I was having was spending too much time between initial contact and speaking with a technical member on the team.

At the same time, there was a mismatch of qualified candidates who reached out according to some of interviewers I spoke with.

By creating a lower barrier application, focused on accomplishment and conversations, I hope to increase the quality of applicants while reducing the time from sent application to speaking with an engineer.

Also, at my old gig, there were nice referral bonuses. Engineers can also sign up and speak with potential candidates. Do proactive recruiting for your team and get rewarded.

I was inspired by the scrappiness of John Wheeler at OldGeekJobs. He started with a Google Form MVP and iterated based on the feedback. I've built a job board that no one visited before. I'm here to try a more iterative approach so any feedback is appreciated!</comment>


Ask HN: Why does Edge Chromium use pkg installer instead of dmg? - <AUTHOR> What does it install beside the app in `/Applications`? <comment><USER2> extracting the pkg

MicrosoftEdgeBeta-84.0.522.11.pkg Office16_all_autoupdate.pkg

where MicrosoftEdgeBeta-84.0.522.11.pkg extracts to just .app, although there are a couple of embedded .apps, used according to the names for rendering and GPU

Office16_all_autoupdate.pkg seems to be the updater, however it seems that the updater is optional and can be chosen to not install in the installer but appears to default to install.

</comment><comment><USER2> if its anything like google chrome it installs an updater application that is a royal pain to try and remove</comment>


There Are Whales Alive Today Who Were Born Before Moby Dick Was Written - <AUTHOR> http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/there-are-whales-alive-today-who-were-born-before-moby-dick-was-written-660944/ <comment><USER3> Moby dick's kin the sperm whales are incredibly interesting. One of their remarkable ability is to dive deep, fast and long.

Among all free diving warm blooded animals they go the deepest. They dive to depths 25 times deeper than their other equally famous and endangered cousin the blue whales. The blue whale is the largest known animal to have ever inhabited the earth.

To give an idea of how deep they dive, here is a picture [http://i.imgur.com/ESp2j.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/ESp2j.jpg) It needs to be magnified for perspective and for the little surprise at the bottom.

It is interesting how they manage to hold their breath for so long and yet manage to survive the bends (decompression sickness).

The whales are seriously challenging our assumptions about animal intelligence, empathy, society, culture and language. For a long time we believed that the primates were at the top. Search Ted talks and youtube for dolphin intelligence, dont miss the Attenborough ones. For lack of a better word they are just amazing.

Dolphins are for example known to build difficult to make toys (air bubble vortex rings) just to entertain themselves.

They have to discover how to make it. Sometimes they can be quite possessive, they would break the toy if someone not so knowledgeable wants to play with it. Once a dolphin figures it out how to make one, his/her peers eventually figure it out too. So it kind of spreads within a group like fashion. This behavior has been observed both in captivity and in the wild.

Dolphins in captivity try to imitate us and seem to have no trouble mapping our body parts to theirs. A story goes that a scientist observing an young dolphin from an underwater portal had blown a cloud of cigarette smoke at it. The dolphin promptly went to the mother and did the same to the scientist with milk ! It is now strongly believed that they call each other by name. They try to imitate human speech which takes enormous effort on their part because unlike for example parrots their vocal tract is not conducive for this at all. People believe this to be an indication of their strong desire to communicate with us.

And they originated from ungulates: hoofed warm blooded animals. It came as a surprise to me that that there were hoofed carnivorous animals.

<comment><USER4> ok I'll bite - what is the writing at the bottom of the picture?

<comment><USER5> It's a reference to H.P. Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Methuselah Foundation has funded one of the research groups interested in comparative studies of the genetics of longevity, helping them to obtain the resources to sequence bowhead whales. This is one of those lines of work that is next to impossible to get funding for from the normal institutional channels at the present time:

[https://www.mfoundation.org/work#bowhead- whale](https://www.mfoundation.org/work#bowhead-whale)

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

Given the declining costs of DNA sequencing, all kinds of research that used to be prohibitively expensive even a few years ago is now becoming possible. For example, we recently awarded a $10,000 research grant to Dr. Joao Pedro de Magelhaes at the University of Liverpool to sequence the genome of the bowhead whale in order to study mechanisms for longevity in this warm-blooded mammal whose lifespan is estimated at over 200 years.

Not only are bowhead whales far longer-lived than humans, but their massive size means that they are likely to possess unique tumor suppression mechanisms. "These mechanisms for the longevity and resistance to aging- related diseases of bowhead whales are unknown," says Dr. de Magelhaes, "but it is clear that in order to live so long, these animals must possess aging prevention mechanisms related to cancer, immunosenescence, neurodegenerative diseases, and cardiovascular and metabolic diseases."

The bowhead whale study will be conducted at the state-of-the-art Liverpool Centre for Genomic Research and results will be made available to the research community.

</comment><comment><USER7> The long lifespan of whales could actually shed some light on human evolution.

Whales, along with many other mammalian species (including humans) exhibit a perplexing divergence of somatic and reproductive senescence. Female whales hit menopause long before their lives are over, in some cases spending the majority of their lives in a non-reproductive state, which prima facie seems rather maladaptive.

A number of hypotheses have been proposed to explain what seems like widespread evolutionary selection for menopause, and none of them are completely satisfactory. The "grandmother hypothesis", for example, posits that experienced grandmothers assist in the care of their grandchildren, increasing their odds of survival.

Certain species of whales, including _Orcinus orca_ , the killer whale, exhibit early-life menopause, and form stable matrilineal groups, making them ideal candidates for testing the grandmother hypothesis. Interestingly, studies on killer whales observe no significant correlation between living grandmothers and grandoffspring survival rates, though there are plenty of unaddressed confounding factors.

Humans are the only species where the grandmother hypothesis is supported by data, but the dearth of corresponding data in whales suggests the dramatic disparity in our somatic-reproductive senescence might be more strongly selected for by factors we are not yet aware of.

<comment><USER8> > Humans are the only species where the grandmother hypothesis is supported by > data, but the dearth of corresponding data in whales suggests the dramatic > disparity in our somatic-reproductive senescence might be more strongly > selected for by factors we are not yet aware of.

I thought average life expectancy of per-agrecultural, pre-technological humans was less than 40 years? It doesn't really seem like the grandmother hypothosis would enter into our evolutionary history then, as there would be very few post-menopause grandmothers around...

<comment><USER9> Average life expectancy is calculated without accounting for infant mortality; when accounted for, it's considerably higher, or so I'm told.

<comment><USER10> Even if infant mortality is discarded, average life expectancy is a poor estimator of typical expectations of life. Considering the case of pre- industrial societies, there was a second big wave of mortality during what we now call adolescence. In women it was driven by child bearing, while in men by either accidents or armed conflict with other groups of men. If half of the guys that make it to their 13th birthday will get themselves killed before their 21st, an average of 40 y.o. gives a very misleading idea of what "old folks" look like.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interesting that their evidence --a stone arrowhead found in a whale-- is actually also described in Moby Dick itself:

\---

It so chanced that almost upon first cutting into [a whale, not Moby Dick] with the spade, the entire length of a corroded harpoon was found imbedded in his flesh, on the lower part of the bunch before described. But as the stumps of harpoons are frequently found in the dead bodies of captured whales, with the flesh perfectly healed around them, and no prominence of any kind to denote their place; therefore, there must needs have been some other unknown reason in the present case fully to account for the ulceration alluded to. But still more curious was the fact of a lance-head of stone being found in him, not far from the buried iron, the flesh perfectly firm about it. Who had darted that stone lance? And when? It might have been darted by some Nor' West Indian long before America was discovered.

gutenberg.org full text:

[http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2701/2701-h/2701-h.htm](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2701/2701-h/2701-h.htm)

<comment><USER12> Moby Dick is so encyclopedic and digressive that I'm not surprised that any given random fact about whales might appear in it.

<comment><USER13> Indeed, and this is my favorite random fact about whales in _Moby Dick_ : "Be it known that, waiving all argument, I take the good old fashioned ground that the _whale is a fish_ , and call upon holy Jonah to back me."

<comment><USER12> Haha ... true enough, though Ishmael is well established as an unreliable narrator.

Here's my favourite fact: the white whale Moby Dick is based on a real-life white whale named Mocha Dick

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

<comment><USER14> Did not know that. I echo your advice to people to give the book another go if they haven't finished it. It is so worth it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There are clams alive today who hatched while the Ming dynasty was extant.

There are trees alive today which sprouted _ten thousand_ years ago. Hell, Pando (albeit a clonal colony) could be 1,000,000 years old. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pando_(tree)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pando_\(tree\))

Astounding depths of time for a single organism to persist over - <USER2> ultimately dependent on a very sedate pace of life.

</comment><comment><USER16> And they _still_ haven't read past the first fifty pages because, like everyone else, they get bored and put the book down.

Seriously though, I find it remarkable that bowhead populations have come back so fast considering how long they live. The oceans must have been absolutely teeming with them back in the day, if they reproduce that fast and live that long.

<comment><USER12> It is their loss, the modern reader needs to take a cue from Ahab and not give up on Moby Dick.

Nathaniel Philbrick's "Why Read Moby-Dick?" gave me the kick I needed to tackle the book and I am grateful to him that I did (and plan to do so again).

<comment><USER16> I'm thinking that the modern whale is not a big fan of Ahab...

<comment><USER12> A discerning modern whale would know that it is a mistake to dislike a work of literature because its characters are flawed and distasteful.

Ahab could give that whale insight into the often obsessive nature of humanity, its willingness to sacrifice riches and life on the altar of revenge. Plus Moby Dick really kicks ass in several scenes.

<comment><USER16> I _think_ their objection is more that Ahab was all about killing them... Other than that, your average modern whale is generally fairly accepting of human foibles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Somewhat off topic... but I encourage everyone to watch the Blackfish documentary. These are incredible, amazing, highly intelligent animals. Different nations have their own languages. They know who we are, they know what we're doing to them, they know when we're making them do tricks for them for food for other's amusement.

</comment><comment><USER18> Aquatic mammals are fascinating. They are so clearly mammals, yet they've adapted the mammalian traits that we take for granted as land-based evolutions to living in the water. I'm reminded of the bomb sniffing dolphins right now.

</comment><comment><USER19> Not related to the content, but the construct and display of this article is less than conducive to reading it.

</comment><comment><USER20> We really should kill them to examine them for scientific purposes. Plus, whale blubber is yum!

<comment><USER20> Offended? This is precisely what the Japanese do.

<comment><USER21> It makes me very proud to be Australian when the Aussie navy puts their warships between the Japanese whaler fleet and the whales.

The implied statement is "Shoot that harpoon at us and see what happens".

So far, it's been a lot of posturing. Many hundreds of whales have been saved.

<comment><USER22> Too bad they don't feel the same way about sharks...

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

<comment><USER23> Australians already eat 16,000 tonnes of shark per year.

Culling a few more to make beaches safer for swimming is hardly an issue. This regularly happens in other parts of Australia and certainly other parts of the world.

However, suddenly it has become a cause celebre for fashionable activists the world over. _oh, those poor sharks_. They don't realise the underlying reason for the protests is to give the greens more visibility in the upcoming West Australian Senate election that has to be re-run.

Personally, I have zero issue with culling sharks near swimming beaches. There is 17,000 miles of Australian coastline after all, and 99% of it is not swimming beaches.

If people wish to protest about sharks, then protest about the killing of sharks for shark fin soup, where the rest of the body is then dumped instead of being used.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Slightly off-topic, but I can't help it: This is exactly why we picked the bowhead whale for our mascot at www.longaccess.com. :-)

<comment><USER3> I dont think you deserved the downvotes. longaccess indeed seems an important endeavor to undertake. All the best.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAW4mntPM-w](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAW4mntPM-w)

</comment><comment><USER26> And, we the humans are here to destroy everything dumping nuclear wastes into the ocean.

</comment><comment><USER27> And today is the day of vengeance !

"Planet of The Cetaceans"

<comment><USER12> [TAYLOR falls to his knees screaming]

YOU MANIACS! YOU BLEW IT UP! OH, DANG YOU! GOLDANG YOU ALL TO HECK!

[TAYLOR buries his head in his hands, point of view switches to reveal half- buried in the sand and washed by the waves is MARINE WORLD]

<comment><USER27> ironically, any two hundred year old whale will know exactly the feelings of loss and devastation on finding your species has been all but wiped out.</comment></comment></comment>