Aaron Swartz was 'killed by the government,' father tells mourners - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-aaron-swartz-funeral-eulogy-father-20130115,0,648108.story

<comment><USER3> It's harsh to say, and I know that there is much reason to think that the prosecutor was over-prosecuting Aaron Swartz's case, but this kind of blame- shifting on the part of parents is not helpful to a young person who is at high risk for suicide. Civil disobedience according to Thoreau, according to Gandhi, and according to Martin Luther King, Jr. is all about being willing to do the time after intentionally breaking a law. All three of those pioneers of civil disobedience spent time locked up in conditions worse than any Swartz would possibly have faced even if convicted. No one in the United States government killed Swartz, just as no one in the United States government forced him to download the JSTOR files through a method that Larry Lessig says he would never have advised Swartz to use. Swartz tested some limits of the system, and found out he miscalculated. He caved in when it came time to stay alive to test the system another day.

<comment><USER4> > _Civil disobedience according to Thoreau, according to Gandhi, and according > to Martin Luther King, Jr. is all about being willing to do the time after > intentionally breaking a law_

The issue I am seeing here is that this take on civil disobedience is only worth it if your incarceration does one or more of the following: threatens to clog the system, infuriates the masses, draws attention to the absurdity of the system, provides an opportunity to set legal precedent, or is just in general noticed and cared about. If it does none of those things, then the only thing getting caught/locked up accomplishes is the silencing of another voice.

Of course you could also say that protesters should accept arrests even if there is nothing to be gained by it just to adhere to some sort of socratic social contract mentality, but not everyone buys into that mentality. I know I certainly do not.

If you are confident that you can secure convictions, and are confident that the system can handle the load, and are confident that the masses don't really give a shit about anything unless a celebrity is involved, then telling activists to go get arrested becomes an effective tool of suppression.

Had Swartz been convicted and served his sentence, would the HN community at large care? We were dismissive when he was alive and it looked like he was hosed, would that have really changed when the jury came back with their verdict?

<comment><USER5> > Had Swartz been convicted and served his sentence, would the HN community at > large care?

I would have. I totally misread the situation. I thought there was basically zero chance he would be punished so vindictively. And I had no idea that he was all this time in Kafka hell.

Had Aaron gone to prison it would have been a wake-up call for a lot of people, much as his suicide was — except that one could have done something about it. Actually, a trial and conviction would likely have become a cause celebre in the tech world.

And yes I know that people don't just kill themselves for one straightforward reason. It's still sickening.

<comment><USER6> How do you mean punished so vindictively? A 6 month stint in jail (reduced for good behavior) doesn't seem wildly vindictive to me. For the people saying he was facing a lifetime in jail - well yeah, if you add up all the maximum possible sentences and run them consecutively. But that hardly ever happens except in the most egregious of cases.

If he had lost at trial I doubt his sentence would have been much longer than a year or two. The indictment doesn't say 'he committed wire fraud, he must serve 20 years', it just says 'he committed wire fraud' - an offense for which the maximum penalty happens to be 20 years. The court decides what the actual sentence is after conviction.They rarely hand out the maximum and the statute does not assert any mandatory minimum (which provisions are unconstitutional now anyway, but that's beside the point).

<comment><USER7> Aaron's own lawyer said he didn't believe that Swartz would have received a custodial sentence even if he had been convicted.

What's vindictive isn't the outcome. The outcome never had a chance to happen, so it's hard to discuss it. What was bad about this situation is a prosecution that had taken such a hard line that a 6-7 year prison sentence --- a life- changing calamity --- would have seemed like a real possibility. Swartz was being required to swear before a court that he committed 13 different felonies just to get off with ~half a year's prison time.

<comment><USER6> We'll continue to disagree about this, but I think the plea deal was fair enough. Sure, being a felon is a burden - but realistically, being a hacker felon is much less of a burden than being an ex-crack dealer or something.

Plugging your machine directly into someone's wiring closet without permission and then running scripts to pull down 100x the traffic requests of everyone else on the campus combined (resulting in a multi-day shutdown that affects all the legitimate users of that campus) is pretty abusive. If I was running a business and someone did that I'd be furious, even if they were just using the bandwidth to download all of wikipedia or something equally freely accessible.

<comment><USER7> You & I don't disagree that Swartz's actions should have been subject to criminal charges. We depart at the need for time served in prison. In its context: an act clearly intended as civil disobedience (though perhaps intended anonymously) by a first time offender with no commercial purpose, minimal damage, minimal attempt to evade detection and thus obstruct investigation, no co-conspirators, and involving no critical information systems or protected information of any sort should have been acknowledged by the prosecution as one not meriting prison time. The offer should have been "take a felony conviction and we'll argue for a suspended sentence; go to court and you risk doing time in prison".

You know what I bet happened here? Aaron hatched this plot assuming that the worst thing that might happen is that JSTOR might have sued him. After all, what was he really doing? The same set of actions from his own network would have been mere copyright infringement. He wanted to make it less likely that he'd get sued, so he did it from someone else's network. That was dumb, but does it really transmute a tort into a felony?

<comment><USER8> _The same set of actions from his own network would have been mere copyright infringement. He wanted to make it less likely that he'd get sued, so he did it from someone else's network._

I'm probably misunderstanding you: How could he have done the same from his home network? The articles he was downloading were only accessible from MIT intranet, not from the public Internet, no?

<comment><USER7> He was a fellow at Harvard, with an office there, and had legitimate access to JSTOR.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I really feel for his family, but I just can't blame his death on the Government. Did they handle this poorly and overreach greatly? Yes. Did they kill him? No. He was offered a plea deal for 6 months in prison. Nobody in their right mind kills themselves over 6 months in jail or the prospect of being a felon.

Obviously being labeled a felon and 6 months in jail sucks, but it's not like he couldn't get a job because of it. Based on the front page of HN for the last several days it's clear he was a well respected and loved individual in our community. He would have been just fine.

<comment><USER10> Aaron Swartz was not a very big guy at all. Aaron Swartz would have been raped within moments of walking in a Federal Prison. Aaron Swartz prison stay would have been 6 months of non-stop prison rape.

Impending prison rape is exactly the sort of thing reasonable people commit suicide about. All the time.

<comment><USER6> Highly unlikely <http://www.nij.gov/journals/259/prison-rape.htm>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> His father is justifiably enraged at the US Govt. Ms Ortiz and Steve Heymann are certainly the primary culprits here - However MIT is equally if not more responsible for this mess that ended in a horrible and needless tragedy.

MIT has a higher duty than the Govt. It is in their charter to foster open access - and not only did they NOT stand up for Aaron, they actually made the prosecution malicious by refusing to ask for anything less than JAIL TIME [http://gothamist.com/2013/01/15/aaron_swartzs_lawyer_mit_ref...](http://gothamist.com/2013/01/15/aaron_swartzs_lawyer_mit_refused_pl.php)

So MIT as good as killed Aaron along with the Govt.. for shame!

<comment><USER12> MIT didn't kill Aaron. But their decision to be the roadblock to a plea deal because it didn't include time in prison is shameful, and there is definitely some heavy responsibility on the heads of those at MIT who rejected that deal.

<comment><USER11> Everyone involved in the case had been made aware of Aaron's depression [http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/he_ll_be_safe_in_jail_fed...](http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/he_ll_be_safe_in_jail_feds_tKixbOwLxbCX617hKRq8YK)

They knew that this (suicide) was a risk if they kept hounding the guy - <USER2> the Prosecutors and MIT both kept going at it - for the sake of political gain (prosecutors).

<comment><USER13> > yet the Prosecutors and MIT both kept going at it - for the sake of > political gain (prosecutors).

Do you have proof of this, or is it just what you believe of the situation?

<comment><USER14> Well yeah, it's also in article here on HN. They wanted him to have jail time

<comment><USER6> Articles aren't proof. Victims don't have veto authority over plea bargain negotiations in any US jurisdiction that I know of.

<comment><USER14> Veto is non necessary, pressure and willingness to pursue and unwillingness to have any plaid without jail time is what the MIT is _rightly_ accused of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> He may feel differently in time. My little brother committed suicide 5 years ago when he was like 22. His wife was cheating on him and despite having three sons, he still did it.

I know for years I hated her and blamed her fiercely. In time though, I looked at it differently. While I still don't have much love for her, I really can't place the blame for my brother's actions solely at her feet.

The thing is, it isn't natural or normal to kill yourself when your wife cheats on you, if it's ever normal, especially when you have three sons to watch out for. My brother had problems. He wasn't right in the head and I don't think he ever really was.

If it wasn't his wife, I think he just would have found another reason, because I think he wanted to go.

Aaron Swartz may have hated what the government was doing to him and he may have even stated that was the reason for his suicide, I really don't know. But that wasn't the reason, in my opinion.

If the threat of a prison sentence was reason enough to hang yourself, it would only make sense to at least see if you're convicted first.

My heart goes out to the family, I know firsthand how much it hurts when a family member commits suicide. And I really can't blame the father for reacting that way, I would've (and did) react the same way. Just thought it would be useful to offer some perspective.

</comment><comment><USER16> Going from being rich to poor (due to legal costs), facing years in prison, and becoming a convicted felon for life? For running what amounted to "wget -r <http://jstor.mit.edu/> " to download publicly funded academic papers?

I think even someone who had never suffered from depression might contemplate suicide. His father's words may be a little too strong, but they're not _entirely_ off-base either.

<comment><USER17> _His father's words may be a little too strong, but they're not entirely off- base either._

Yes, they are off base. He deserves leeway due to the untold grief he is enduring, but a statement like that is ridiculous. Thousands of people a day go to jail a day, many of them for breaking unjust laws, and very few of them kill themselves. He was killed by depression/mental illness not by the government. The charges likely exasperated his condition, but without that underlining fragile mental state, he would almost assuredly still be alive today.

<comment><USER18> a: In a drive-by shooting, the driver is often charged along with the shooter; even when the driver insists that he didn't know what was going to happen.

b: The defense attorney claimed that he made Stephen Heymann aware of the suicide risk early in the case.

If Heymann was aware of the risk and pushed ahead anyway, is he a contributor in the same sense that the driver of the car is a contributor? Why or why not?

<comment><USER19> Are you saying one should not sue, or at least weigh heavily, people's mental state prior to launching a lawsuit?

Is that current procedure, run mental evaluations before suing? Lots of people have mental breakdowns before and during trials. The trials proceed so long as people are 'mentally competent' to stand trial.

If something like this were allowed, people would pretty much abuse the system and claim mental anguish, etc. to avoid facing a trial.

<comment><USER18> Aren't you aware that we already do take into account the mental states of defendants - the mentally challenged, the insane?

<comment><USER6> Yes, and one of the ways we do so is by the defense filing a motion to argue that the defendant is unfit to stand trial for the time being. I haven't followed the motion work in the case, so I don't know if his defense team made any such claim. But it seems to be that quite a few people are trying to have it both ways - on the one hand he was too mentally fragile to be put on trial, on the other he wanted his day in court to argue for the right to download freely and so the plea bargain with the mild sentence (which would have been served in some sort of minimum security facility) was an unconscionable deal with the devil.

<comment><USER18> That is a good argument for why Heymann would not be a contributor. That is, Heymann has clean hands because the defense failed to make the court aware that Swartz was possibly unfit to stand trial. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Once again, Steve Heymann appears to be the bad guy here. Here's the wh.gov petition to have him fired, too:

[https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/fire-assistant- us-...](https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/fire-assistant-us-attorney- steve-heymann/RJKSY2nb)

<comment><USER21> I don't know that firing people is necessarily the best way to approach the problem. It might make us feel better but it won't solve the actual problem, which is the overly prosecutorial society we have.

<comment><USER20> I don't know if it's the best solution either, but the fact that the petition calling for Carmen Ortiz's sacking reached 25k signatures in three days, alone, suggests that distaste for our "overly prosecutorial society" isn't exactly "rare".

Having multiple hops in the chain of command behind Aaron's prosecution publicly called out like that can't hurt, and makes it seem less of a "backlash" and more of a "this isn't right."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I think the consensus here right now is that because people believe the laws he broke shouldn't exist in the capacity they do, he shouldn't have been punished, and that his case is a cause for reform in things that perhaps don't deserve to be reformed on this merit alone.

It may very well be that there is need for reform in these laws, but does that give Aaron the right to break them? And if so, does this lead precedence for others to behave similarly without consequence? If so, where do we draw the line in what constitutes which laws are allowed to be bypassed? How does this not lead to massive abuse?

I do not believe that no matter how wrong we think the laws are, in a democratic society, we must act in appropriate ways to cause reform. This is because edge cases like this where laws are broken that perhaps shouldn't exist, are never real reasons to change how we prosecute people. __

There is so much confusion within this whole situation:

1) Reform on the laws 2) Reform on how we prosecute people 3) Termination of prosecutors involved

Each of the above needs to be clearly defined, and a case made against each one. I don't believe this case by itself causes for reform in prosecution, or termination of prosecutors.

I only believe this case should cause reform in specific laws, and that it's said a man felt his only option to cause reform was to break the law, which ultimately ended in him taking his whole life.

 __I see similarities between this and the Anders Breveik case in equal but opposite ways, where 20 years life sentence was said by many to be absurd for his crime, and many called for reform, when in fact the Norwegian system is extremely effective, and this was just an edge case.

<comment><USER5> This idea that "the law" is a fixed and unambiguous thing that can only be objectively enforced, however lamentable a given case may be, is totally at odds with how the legal system really works. There's a good reason why we've been hearing the phrase "prosecutorial discretion" over and over again in the last few days — that is what was driving this case. Not some dispassionate sorry-but-our-hands-are-tied legal code.

p.s. Invoking Breivik in this context is really inappropriate.

<comment><USER22> If I proposed that perhaps in an age where cyber crime is not only misunderstood but increasingly high (see anon et al), that perhaps the prosecution wanted to deter Aaron who by all accounts was an activist, from committing further more serious crimes.

What would you think of the above? Is it a plausible reality to the alternative one where the prosecutors are merely evil?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Anonymous is planning a protest at the DoJ in Washington:

<https://twitter.com/youranonnews/status/291315488477282304></comment>


Mental health in startups - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@anonent/mental-health-in-startups-14726f22c5d1#.n7ftx6d5i <comment><AUTHOR> Hi,

I just wrote a piece about mental health in startups.

This is something that has been covered by a few others in the past, but I still don't think it is talked about enough.

I don't know what the answer is, but I am trying to raise awareness and getting people to talk about their struggles more and more.

If you think that this is a topic we should be talking about more please could you like and share my post around?

Also if you know of any other great resource on the topic please can you share it with me?

Thanks so much, James

<comment> a-guest I would argue many of the mental health issues you describe in your post can be found in more traditional corporate environments as well when the mindset you bring as an employee to your job is one of extreme ownership and personal investment from the standpoint of time and effort.

<comment><USER2> Not sure why you're being downvoted, but yes, of course. The same issues can be found everywhere.

It isn't just startups themselves that cause these issues, there's a predisposition. My cofounders way back when could handle the pressure just fine.

I'd recommend anyone who is experiencing mental health issues to talk to a therapist. CBT is good for panic, and psychotherapy is good for anxiety and depression (imo.)

<comment><USER3> To me it seems like a mindset issue rather than a predisposition - having gone through it.

Employment is mostly about taking on the burden of someone else's stress and handling it. When your stress becomes too much the employer hires peers and perhaps gives you some minions to make things better.

If you were never taught how to manage stress and your family hasn't ingrained stoic values into you (because they themselves were never taught them) then the body is going to become overwhelmed, give up and switch into protective mode, also known as burnout, anxiety, depression, breakdowns etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great comment - thanks for sharing. I think I agree - it's not just about the environment you work in (although I think certain environments bring it out more), it's a certain type of personality/mindset maybe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I just really like to see more of the startup related stuff on HN.

I know that talking about content and your preference of things posted to HN is discouraged but I need to mention that for me personally, it's really helped me in the past to see other people talking about this stuff.

I live in South Africa and there isn't a huge startup scene here.

Checking out HN every couple of days and seeing stuff about other people going through the startup phases played a role in getting me to the point where I believed I could do it.

I failed but even then, I knew that failure wasn't the end. I learned that here. I saw Eric Reis book recommended here and I lurked on several thread where people discussed the trials and tribulations they were going through.

I discovered fakegrimlock here and he showed me the importance of being on fire, why I must burn.

Nice post, thanks.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've never run a startup so I don't know exactly how you feel but I do feel many of these things in my corporate job day to day. There is even some creep from startup culture finding it's way into corporate life. Now megacorps are launching new product/divisions/whatever and treating them as a "startup". What that tends to mean is "we expect you to work more hours than you are now, for the same pay, even though we're already making billions of dollars a year".

<comment><AUTHOR> I knew these issues would be in the corporate world too but obviously I can't relate. These problems reach further then we'll ever know I think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ah, the panic attacks. If I don't wake up with one at least once every three weeks, I feel I'm not working hard enough. Besides, 3am is a good time to get work done.

That said, I believe pacing yourself is a big part of managing the mental health issues. Make sure you eat, sleep, exercise, and take appropriate breaks, even if you feel you _have to work_. It's a marathon, not a sprint.

<comment><AUTHOR> I hope you don't really think like that.

Your second point is completely true and much more sensible. It's about working sustainably.

<comment><USER6> I actually do think like that. It's a way of coping positively with the reality of the panic attacks. Recognizing that they're just a physical reaction to the stress of doing something that is both difficult and important is a way of not letting them govern my thinking.

What's different is depression. I don't know of a way to make myself feel positive about the bouts of depression. Then again, I've dealt with depression all my life. It seems independent of my founder life. Panic attacks, on the other hand, are very much a product of my founder life.

Treating panic attacks (which generally only occur at night, waking me up from sleep) as a natural result of the work is just a coping mechanism. It may not be the best one, or even a good one, but it works well enough for me.

<comment><USER7> In my experience, whatever reason you are working for what you're working for, what you do to get there matters, because those are the skills you are building. If you are having bi-weekly panic attacks then you're as likely to drop dead in your early 50s than enjoy the fruit of your labor. Is what you are doing more important than your life? It may be, but I would hope you're making that calculation. Living your whole life building up health debt is the same as building a system with technical debt - it WILL come calling someday.

<comment><USER6> I'm already in my early 50s (today is my 51st birthday). One of the things I've learned after a couple of years of trying to build a startup is that I _love_ working on my startup. I'd put twenty years into a career in enterprise IT, and it made me miserable. I realized that it's not the work itself I don't like - it's working for others, working on things I think are stupid and pointless and doomed.

The problem is this means for now, I'm working two jobs, and I'm heading for a rough transition to working just one and the financial implications of that. That's a lot of stress.

On the other hand, doing a job I have come to despise until I'm too old to do it anymore, instead of doing something that _matters to me_ , that makes me feel meaningful and accomplished... that's a whole different kind of stress. That's the kind that grinds you down and wears you to a nub. Once you hit a certain age, perspective really starts to set in. I look around at people in their 40s and 50s, and they're broken. They think their best years and best opportunities are all behind them. I look at mine, and they're ahead of me. That keeps me alive.

<comment><USER7> I think there'll always be groups of people like that. In my 20s there were big groups of people who's "best years" were in high school. Now approaching 30 and finding a lot of people bemoaning how good life was in their 20s when they were in college or traveling the world. For me life has gotten better and easier as I've gotten older, so far. Most of my enjoyment comes out of exploring and finding new places and getting to know people. I take any work I do seriously and try to do things that I think will matter and make a difference but I also realize I'm a small fish in a very big pond. I still have ambition and I'll always strive to be my best, but there is always the possibility of my health failing or other circumstances. I intend to be flexible with whatever life throws at me. I hope I'll be able to share your perspective when I'm your age!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think that mental health and work is something that's not talked about enough as a whole. If I don't feel safe making the journey to work in the morning then that's something that I want to be able to talk about with my manager. And if I'm not capable of doing anything more than staring at emails for a few days then it shouldn't be shameful to say that I'm suffering in ways that aren't physically obvious. It's so much easier to cope if you have a support network that includes your employer. Otherwise the shame and fear of being accused of making excuses to skive off of work can escalate very easily.

</comment><comment><USER9> Optimize yourself until exhaustion. (tired eyes)

I would also like to frame this issue as a symptom of neoliberal capitalism, where mechanisms of the global markert are internalized as one's own needs and wills: investing in a better future, without ever ending up there, being creative and flexible nonstop for economical reasons.

I think it's important to deal with one's own anxieties and stresssymptoms also by sharing the knowledge and experiences.

But above that I also wonder, what we all together are keeping up, by asking of ourself and our collueges to exploit ourself (in academia, in start-ups, in traditional corporate environments,...)

</comment><comment><USER10> Regading sleep: IMO it's vital to stop working at least 2-hours before bed. Your brain never stops and you never sleep well. Maintaining work/life boundaries and having a routine will help in keeping you sane.

</comment><comment><USER11> I mistakenly thought this would be about startups addressing mental health. We need more of those.

</comment><comment><USER12> Replace startups with research and you had me for a while. I had to ban myself from even reading academic papers (it's like my cocaine) and get a regular job.

Academia? Naa, I don't touch the stuff anymore.

</comment><comment><USER13> Not just bad feelings. Lashing out and various forms of abuse are (partly) a result of such mental health problems. (And partly intrinsic to the forms of organization.)</comment>


Image-diff – Create an image differential between two images - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/uber/image-diff <comment> f- Not sure I follow - especially if it already depends on IM, how is it different from 'convert -compose difference' or a similar operator?

[http://www.imagemagick.org/Usage/compose/#difference](http://www.imagemagick.org/Usage/compose/#difference)

<comment><USER2> It looks like it's a thin wrapper around "GraphicsMagick for node". Which itself is a javascript wrapper around GraphicsMagick / ImageMagick.

<comment><USER3> I'm _so_ glad I didn't go into web development.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is cool, and a good idea. I will try it out, but I can highly recommend the existing pdiff utility for your image regression testing.

[http://pdiff.sourceforge.net](http://pdiff.sourceforge.net)

Pdiff allows you to specify perceptual thresholds of visibility, so diffs that are not pixel perfect can still pass if they're 'good enough'. Semi-critical if you render the input images using different browsers or at different resolutions, or if your images have any sub-pixel randomness.

Lots of people (myself included) have used pdiff successfully in production. It doesn't depend on ImageMagick (a bonus in my book). And it's already available in lots of Linux distros.

<comment> liviu- >It doesn't depend on ImageMagick (a bonus in my book)

Why is it a bonus besides lowering the number of dependencies?

<comment><USER5> [https://imagetragick.com/](https://imagetragick.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> ImageMagick already ships the `compare` command [0] which does exactly this.

It also accepts a bunch of CLI flags such as -fuzz to consider colors within a certain distance as equal. That flag is very useful when dealing with JPG or similar compression that slightly alters pixels, so you can ignore these barely visible differences and focus on the 'real' differences.

0: [http://www.imagemagick.org/script/compare.php](http://www.imagemagick.org/script/compare.php)

<comment><USER7> This literally just calls ImageMagick.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interesting, I couldn't find a tool like this that would give me a useful % difference between images, so I rolled my own tiny python version using PIL: [https://github.com/nicolashahn/python-image- diff](https://github.com/nicolashahn/python-image-diff)

which gives both a diff image and the % difference.

</comment><comment><USER9> Or you can import the two images into graphics software like gimp. Invert the colours in the top image, then knock transparency for that layer down to 50%. If the images are identical, you'll just see grey. Any differences will instantly become visible.

<comment><USER10> Now automate it for 200 screenshots

<comment><USER11> If this is indeed the underlying algorithm it should not be hard to implement

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Pure JS alternative: [https://github.com/yahoo/blink- diff](https://github.com/yahoo/blink-diff)

</comment><comment><USER13> Not sure what was the intent behind creating this.

Once upon a time (several years back), I worked on one. The intent therein was two compare images produced by different versions of a product. As such, one of the major features was motion detection [0] (apart from computing deltas between the images). We made use of OpenCV [1].

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

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

</comment><comment><USER14> This sort of thing + headless browser makes for nice regression testing.

<comment><USER15> BBC News' wraith[1] is a pretty great tool for this, although it doesn't really support a more complex web app flow (e.g. logging in) very well.

[1] [https://github.com/BBC-News/wraith](https://github.com/BBC-News/wraith).

<comment><USER16> If you need workflows, there's also VisualReview [1] with some basic workflow for approval testing, and Applitools [2], a commercial tool with integration with Selenium, Appium and Protractor that can do screenshot and video comparisons. I wrote about them as part of the 'Automated testing: back to the future' tools review [3]. In the article, I also mentioned DomReactor, but that seems to be discontinued now.

[1] [https://github.com/xebia/VisualReview](https://github.com/xebia/VisualReview)

[2] [https://applitools.com/](https://applitools.com/)

[3] [https://gojko.net/2015/11/16/automated-testing- future/](https://gojko.net/2015/11/16/automated-testing-future/)

<comment><USER17> I wrote a tool that compares images using Applitools for Automattic during the React Wordpress admin rewrite a while back. The idea is you'd have a style guide with examples of all your ui components and render and compare them in various states with various test data. [https://github.com/davidjnelson/css- visual-test](https://github.com/davidjnelson/css-visual-test)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I hacked up something quickly for a one-off need to render two websites as images and diff them a few years back (warning - I'm not a developer (clearly)) - [https://github.com/sammcj/urldiff](https://github.com/sammcj/urldiff)

</comment><comment><USER19> Combine this with my webscrot and diff development vs production websites :-)

[https://github.com/adnanh/webscrot](https://github.com/adnanh/webscrot)

</comment><comment><USER20> The diff utility (for text) can detect displacement of fragments of text. Can this image-diff utility do a similar thing for images?</comment>


Copying code is not cool (Ark.com YC W12) - <AUTHOR> http://wellfrankly.com/img/ark.jpg

<comment><USER2> This is the founder of WellFrankly (formerly Politify), who went so far as to impersonate me and make fake accounts:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=patriley>

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, let's not be so quick to judge - maybe they used the same themeforest template, or hired the same designer through YC - they are both YC after all.

<comment><USER4> If you check the source code, you can see that there are some atributes with the same name. Like db-logo and a class called sick-input</comment></comment>


Windows Server will add the Linux subsystem, join the Insider program - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/05/windows-server-will-add-the-linux-subsystem-join-the-insider-program/ <comment><USER2> How long until vendors start shipping "linux" software binaries that depend on a microsoft-specific quirk in their Linux kernel ABI reimplementation, and real Linux will need to add support for MS-Linux kernel ABI variant :)

<comment><USER3> It seems unlikely, especially now that the WSL supports multiple distros. I don't see how multiple distros, which only have Windows support as secondary, could all depend on a Windows-specific quirk.

Also, I imagine that if anyone ever tried submitting a kernel patch to support a Microsoft-specific ABI, Linus would rip their heart out Temple of Doom- style.

<comment><USER4> This could happen: some application(s) will be shown to have better performance on both WSL and Linux with a given patch, but WSL will outperform Linux because of a patent-encumbered optimization.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Linux subsystem is more of a developer tool than consumer one. And server is a lot more of developer only affair. So it seems natural choice.

</comment><comment><USER6> What's positive about this: more options for developers. What's negative about this: Microsoft is trying to eat Linux. I doubt they will succeed but that's in fact what they are trying to do.

<comment><USER7> Are they? It seems that a lot of their work (WSL, VS Code, etc.) seems to be focused on building developer mindshare, which was largely taken by Apple [1] in the last 1.5 decade. After the Windows Phone and Windows 8 Metro fiascos, I think they realized that the 'launch the platform and the developers will come'-strategy does not work.

tl;dr: this seems like a direct attempt to lure developers away from Apple's platforms.

[1] To repeat a cliché: go to a developers conference and the majority of laptops will be MacBooks.

<comment><USER8> Whether they want to eat Linux or not, I don't think they can. It will always be free.

<comment><USER9> What if they bought Red Hat and SUSE. SUSE was acquired by Novell. It getting acquired again is conceivable. Red Hat is an unknown. Last one is Canonical. I think it could happen on the distro side where they get acquired, new stuff goes more proprietary, and so on.

As I run it through my head, the main way Linux would stay free are through the remaining contributors to kernel: IBM and Oracle. Mainly IBM since they contribute a ton of code, use Linux extensively, and previously put $1 billion on line to fight Microsoft and SCO. They fought them back before. Oracle's big on Linux these days. They'd probably hit them, too.

So, what protects the ecosystem of usable, free Linux is the self-interest of massive, proprietary vendors along with contributions from a few distro's. I probably wouldn't have called that happening 20 years ago.

<comment><USER10> >As I run it through my head, the main way Linux would stay free are through the remaining contributors to kernel: IBM and Oracle.

What about Google, which uses Ubuntu for its internal workstations?

<comment><USER9> I thought they ran on Macs after the big hack. Them on Ubuntu is new to me. If so, then they might fight too. I shouldve added them and Amazon anyway due to Linux-based clouds plus a history of legal battles protecting their interests. Good catch!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Can someone with Windows Server experience please explain how this might make any sense at all?

I've never uses Windows Server or any of the MS server technologies. The closest I've gotten to this was using Exchange in the context of being just another user in a corporate environment.

If you need Windows Server, why would you want any part of Linux?

And, if you need Linux server, why would you pile gigabytes (?) of MS Server code onto your server?

I can see (and I like) the utility of WSL on the desktop for development. As this evolves it will become more and more useful. But on the server? Not sure I see the point.

<comment><USER12> They are position this for use in script sharing.

You might have a nix shell script, using a bunch of traditional GNU tools which does some "stuff" \- you can now consolidate that workload onto a Windows Server.</comment></comment>


Startup Superpower: Customer Discovery Machine - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/prophecy-io/startup-superpower-customer-discovery-machine-30260d36415a <comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone! in trying to find product market fit, I've learned the great value of customer discovery. I've written it how I'd share with a friend starting her own startup. Look forward to learning from other people's experience as well!</comment>


Promote Your Blog - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymorningcoffee.com/promote-your-blog-at-dmc/

<comment><USER2> Nice post</comment>


Scientists find massive reserves of mercury in permafrost - <AUTHOR> https://news.agu.org/press-release/scientists-find-massive-reserves-of-mercury-hidden-in-permafrost/ <comment><USER5> >"The study found approximately 793 gigagrams, or more than 15 million gallons, of mercury is frozen in northern permafrost soil. That is roughly 10 times the amount of all human-caused mercury emissions over the last 30 years, based on emissions estimates from 2016.

>The study also found all frozen and unfrozen soil in northern permafrost regions contains a combined 1,656 gigagrams of mercury, making it the largest known reservoir of mercury on the planet. This pool houses nearly twice as much mercury as soils outside of the northern permafrost region, the ocean and the atmosphere combined.

Gigagram? Never heard that one before.. uh a billion (US) grams? So.. a million kilos..a thousand tonnes..a kilotonne. or 1,656 gigagrams = 1.656 million tonnes, I think. (Weird that the imperial unit is gallons, a measure of volume I thought)

This doesn't sound good. Also I'm surprised that human mercury emissions in the last 30 years were so high. Since the late 80s..sheesh.

<comment><USER6> You're recalling correctly, gallon is a measure of volume. I would assume they used density conversions just to make it into a "relatable" measure for US readers.

But there is no US-gram. The SI unit for mass is the kilogram, (for which "kilo" is shorthand), where kilo- and giga- are standard SI prefixes. Units and prefixes are designed to be mixed and matched, so gigagram is just as valid as kilogram, even if it's more rare.

Edit: thank you userbinator for the base unit correction. I've edited above to not be blatantly wrong.

<comment><USER7> _The SI unit for mass is the gram, (not "kilo" which is just shorthand for kilogram, which is just commonly used because it's relatable)_

The SI base unit for mass _is_ actually the kilogram. It is memorable and notable for being the only base unit that already has a prefix.

<comment><USER6> Oh, thank you for the correction, not sure why I forgot that.

> the only base unit that already has a prefix.

That is interesting. So is kg actually _not_ designed to work with other prefixes? Is it supposed to be megakilogram vs gigagram? Or are you just supposed to convert to something else or always use scientific notation? Or am I right about gigagram being valid, but for the wrong reasons?

<comment><USER8> No, it's supposed to be used just like others, it just has a prefix at its 'base' unit. Milligram and Megagram would indeed be technically right, but no one uses it (edit: in the case of megagram, thanks daveguy).

I suspect this is because, sort of like length, there's many different names for essentailly different orders of magnitude and you'd first go to the largest (a tonne, 1000 kg) before adding on prefixes. I suspect this many- names factor is in turn because they're such historical things that humans have measured and quantified since prehistory, because distance and mass are the first 'quantities' we begin to encounter.

So instead of 793 gigagrams, I'd say 793 thousand tonnes, or 793 kilotonnes.

<comment><USER5> No-one uses milligram?! hehe uh.. Maybe that was a typo. What do you call that amount?

Also, 'liter' is used only in the US I believe. You guys just won't play with the other children, huh. :-)

edit: ah ok sorry NamTaf. Get some sleep!

<comment><USER9> I do not have any sources, but I'm pretty sure litre (or liter) is used very extensively, across the ocidental world at least, including Australia. What country are you from?

<comment><USER5> Yes, liter or litre is used across the world. 'Liter' is used only in the US I believe.

<comment><USER10> I'm pretty sure that the only time I use 'liter' is for soda pop. I'm from the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> 793 gigagrams in how many grams of permafrost?

From the paper's estimate of the concentration in soil (43ng mercury per gram of soil) this mercury is dispersed in 18 exagrams of soil.

For scale, the concentration of mercury in permafrost is about an order of magnitude less than what is found in tuna, and about the same as what is found in haddock or mackerel. (At least according to Wikipedia: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_in_fish](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_in_fish))

<comment><USER5> Does an 'exagram' mean anything to you? Doesn't to me. Those weights are meaningless in that format, except to geologists I suppose. (Please no-one explain to me what 'exa-' means, I don't mean that!)

Anyway, it says the median is 43±30ng/g, the mean 62±35ng/g. Why wouldn't they use the mean in the main results? That's what I imagine would give the 'concentration of mercury', the average (mean) concentration.

Reading the method, it's a huge guesstimate in a dozen ways, even much further than I would have thought. Guess that's how they get 13-73ng/g. I wonder how they have any confidence in the error range.

<comment><USER5> late edit: Could downvoters please explain why? Thanks.

<comment><USER5> Wow, ok, I give up. Fuck trying to understand why people downvote on here.

<comment><USER12> Dunno about the other ones, but this one (the one you're responding to) could be because it's against the guidelines:

> _" Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any > good, and it makes boring reading."_

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

It's best to just roll with it, I think. Follow the guidelines and post as substantively as you can. The population of HN is large and diverse and you're unlikely to be able to figure out why each and every downvote (or upvote, for that matter) is handed out, and even if you could, you may not agree with why they did so or think it's fair. They can be useful as a guide and an opportunity to imagine how the comment may come across differently than you intend. But at the end of the day, it's the nature of the beast. Use what you find useful and let the rest slide.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sounds like a job for Cody of Codyslab. I see "Recovering Mercury From Permafrost" videos in our future...

<comment><USER14> Cody extracts mercury by roasting cinnabar which is a mineral rich in HgS - <USER2> maybe HgS is called cinnabar - I forget.

I'm assuming this mercury is also bounded, and not lying around in pools of Hg. Hg is less toxic than Pb, and yet the government is OK with people shooting thousands of kilograms of the stuff over swamps and waterways and food crop fields.

<comment><USER15> It's going to be biological mercury - from bioaccumulation in top predator tissue which ends up frozen and inert in the permafrost when the top predators die.

The thing that makes this _really_ nasty is that biological mercury is most commonly methylmercury - which makes free mercury look like delicious gravy. It's very readily absorbed by tissues, and doesn't leave.

God help us if it's acquired a second methyl group through tens of thousands of years of incredibly slow decomposition - dimethylmercury is pretty much the most toxic thing we know of.

<comment><USER16> I think inferring bioaccumulation is the biggest source is a bit of a stretch. Naturally occurring processes can result in organomercury compounds in soil as well.[1]

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methylmercury#Environmental_so...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methylmercury#Environmental_sources)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Well, climate scientists have been predicting it for years, but the evidence is finally in: the mercury is definitely rising.

</comment><comment><USER18> Scary stuff:

> The study reveals northern permafrost soils are the largest reservoir of > mercury on the planet, storing nearly twice as much mercury as all other > soils, the ocean and the atmosphere combined.

And the permafrost is thawing thanks to climate change.

> "There's a significant social and human health aspect to this study," > Sebestyen said. "The consequences of this mercury being released into the > environment are potentially huge because mercury has health effects on > organisms and can travel up the food chain, adversely affecting native and > other communities."

</comment><comment><USER19> How did it get there? I was disappointed that wasn't mentioned.

<comment><USER15> Dead predators (seals, cats, etc.), which fed on other predators - <USER3> fish - which accumulate mercury through eating other aquatic organisms. This is why tuna has relatively high levels of mercury, and humans moreso - <USER4> it's in you, it tends not to leave. The higher up the food chain you are, the more mercury you consume and retain.

The reason there's such an accumulation in the permafrost is that predators which die up there don't decompose, they just freeze. Sure, they might get snacked on by scavengers before they freeze, but those scavengers then get eaten by predators, resulting in the vast majority of organic tissue and therefore mercury in the arctic ending up as frozen organic matter. The permafrost comprises incredibly vast quantities of organic material, animal and plant, and not much else. Elsewhere on earth, decomposition happens, flies eat the rotting meat, the mercury gets scattered to the four winds, and goes back into the food chain.

It's also the same reason for the vast quantities of methane that are beginning to be released - huge quantities of organic matter that's been in the deep freeze, decomposing.

The arctic is going to be the biggest charnel pit the earth has ever seen.

<comment><USER20> Scary but amazing stuff, thanks for taking time to explain!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "mercury is _frozen_ in northern permafrost soil"

Is it? From a quick scan, I couldn't find any reference to mercury compounds in the paper, and pure Mercury has a freezing point of -38,83 °C.

Seems you could crush the frozen ground, and the Mercury would drop out. Also, if that's the case, how much of it would simply drop deeper into the ground when the permafrost thaws?

<comment><USER22> Even if the mercury remains a liquid, it could still pose a risk if it is currently trapped within ice but flows into waterways when released from the thawed ice.

<comment><USER23> It's almost certainly not in the form of elemental mercury (which would be a liquid), but a solid mercury compound.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Just change it to Gold. $_$

[https://www.wikihow.com/Make-Gold-from-Mercury](https://www.wikihow.com/Make- Gold-from-Mercury)

</comment><comment><USER25> Does it mean that as the global warming progresses all that mercury will mobilize and Earth will poison itself...?

</comment><comment><USER26> Study: Permafrost Stores a Globally Significant Amount of Mercury

Citation: Schuster, Paul F.; Schaefer, Kevin M.; Aiken, George R.; Antweiler, Ronald C.; Dewild, John F.; Gryziec, Joshua D.; Gusmeroli, Alessio; Hugelius, Gustaf; Jafarov, Elchin; Krabbenhoft, David P.; Liu, Lin; Herman-Mercer, Nicole; Mu, Cuicui; Roth, David A.; Schaefer, Tim; Striegl, Robert G.; Wickland, Kimberly P.; Zhang, Tingjun. Geophysical Research Letters, 45.

Link: [https://doi.org/10.1002/2017GL075571](https://doi.org/10.1002/2017GL075571)

DOI: 10.1002/2017GL075571

Abstract: Changing climate in northern regions is causing permafrost to thaw with major implications for the global mercury (Hg) cycle. We estimated Hg in permafrost regions based on in situ measurements of sediment total mercury (STHg), soil organic carbon (SOC), and the Hg to carbon ratio (RHgC) combined with maps of soil carbon. We measured a median STHg of 43 ± 30 ng Hg g soil−1 and a median RHgC of 1.6 ± 0.9 μg Hg g C−1, consistent with published results of STHg for tundra soils and 11,000 measurements from 4,926 temperate, nonpermafrost sites in North America and Eurasia. We estimate that the Northern Hemisphere permafrost regions contain 1,656 ± 962 Gg Hg, of which 793 ± 461 Gg Hg is frozen in permafrost. Permafrost soils store nearly twice as much Hg as all other soils, the ocean, and the atmosphere combined, and this Hg is vulnerable to release as permafrost thaws over the next century. Existing estimates greatly underestimate Hg in permafrost soils, indicating a need to reevaluate the role of the Arctic regions in the global Hg cycle.

<comment><USER27> It's fine to post links to the relevant paper, but could you please stop pasting bibliographic boilerplate into HN threads? I'm sure your intention is good, but the purpose of HN threads is thoughtful conversation, and this is not that.

<comment><USER26> Sure. Thoughtful conversation and adding to it is definitely part of the intention; not trying to be a bother. Happy to adjust and try to keep contributing if you could be so kind as to let me know what would be preferred instead of a citation like this.

<comment><USER28> I think the poster was irritated with the long citation list and other extraneous items.

Just share a link and a part of the abstract, or do a summary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> blubb-fish using gallons as a unit - that's ri-di-cu-lous

</comment><comment><USER29> To be honest, at this stage, it's just another thing to add to the ever growing list of things that could potentially kill us.

<comment><USER30> this one is avoidable though</comment></comment>


Reverse Engineering Marketing For Startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.startupmoon.com/reverse-engineering-marketing-where-do-other-sites-get-their-traffic/ <comment><USER2> For anyone looking at this and potentially taking it seriously, I can tell you from abundant first hand experience that Compete is garbage - not only is it frequently an order of magnitude off in its numbers, but it's very frequently directionally wrong from month to month, sometimes hilariously so.

Edit: For example - [http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/29/anti-web- analytics/](http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/29/anti-web-analytics/)

<comment><USER3> Your statement about the accuracy of Compete data is not entirely false, I have yet to see it match up closely with sites I have direct analytics data on.

But if you are only using Compete you are doing it all wrong.

Think of Compete, Alexa, Quantcast, Similarweb (A newer site with some very cool data [http://www.similarweb.com/website/ycombinator.com](http://www.similarweb.com/website/ycombinator.com)), Adbeat.com (For display intelligence), NerdyData.com (Which is really good at letting you search for tracking tags that marketers use) and the dozens of other sites and services currently available on the market etc as different color paints on a canvas.

Trying to create a photorealistic painting (accurate picture of what's working for your competitors) with just one color will yield poor results. Like the author in the post does, you need to combine and mix them for the the best outcome.

Additionally, Michelangelo can use the same paint that you and I have access to, and end up with the Sistine Chapel ceiling. While I'd be proud to just be able to end up with a ceiling that's an even shade of whatever color I chose. A skilled marketer masters and understands the nuances of these tools and use them to work magic (At least in the eyes of someone without this knowledge).

In the past, I use to jump from site to site collect data, but now when I need to research a site or market, I'll use the Follow browser extension [http://www.follow.net](http://www.follow.net) since it aggregates all the information into one place. It's not perfect because I still have to collect data from other research sites, but only when when I see it's worth digging deeper.

In my 13+ years of marketing online, I can say without a doubt that if you can figure out how your top 3-5 competitors are marketing online and how effective their marketing is, you can almost always out market them or at the very least have the data you need to be very competitive.

Disclaimer: I'm good friends with both founders of Follow.net and Adbeat.com I did quite a bit of product dev work with the Follow team early on and have done customer acquisition for both companies.

<comment><USER2> I mean, the numbers are regularly 3-10x off. With that kind of variance, maybe you can pull out some truth if you're the Compete whisperer, but to most people, it's worse than useless, because it can fool the unaware into thinking it means something. If it were at least mostly directionally accurate, that would be a different story, but as far as I can tell, it's mostly a random walk. Alexa is a bit better as far as I can tell, in that it at least conveys somewhat accurate vague trends, but it's still not very helpful. The only one that's worth a damn is Quantcast direct measurement, but then of course that's accurate, and it's opt-in. Comscore's methodology seems better than most, but I haven't compared with hard numbers.

It's especially annoying when people whose opinion of your site matters quotes Compete numbers and trends for your site to you as though they mean something.

There was a really good post that I can't find where Spolsky (I think) was writing incredulously about how Compete was telling him that Stack Overflow traffic had fallen over the past 6 months or so, when it was the opposite, to an extreme.

Seriously, worse than useless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There are some interesting tools mentioned here. But, remember that conversion to a customer is much more important than popularity. Conversion isn't something that can be looked at too well from the outside.

Your best content is always going to be on topics that exist on the customer's pathway from the discovery of a need or problem to the selection of a solution. That type of content will almost always win out over what is popular.

Example: "Differences between Contractor and Employees" -> "Salary for X position" -> "Payroll Taxes" -> "Payroll Software" -> Conversion to Customer of a Payroll Software Company

<comment><USER5> I have to agree with you. We had a blog post, that percentage-wise, was by far the most popular in terms of traffic. But it also had the worst "path to conversion rate." We hypothesized that this was due to the post being interesting in search results but not necessarily attractive to our target customer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If anyone wants a great free tool to see how websites acquire their traffic so you can reverse engineer it, check out [http://follow.net/](http://follow.net/). It shows you how any site acquires traffic through SEO, SEM, Display, and Contextual Advertising, and Social Media channels.

</comment><comment><USER7> In my experience the services that trying to estimate traffic without tracking codes on the sites are very inaccurate (Compete, Alexa, SEMRush).

</comment><comment><USER8> This kind of thinking is pure gold for technical people. How do I hire or network with people like this?

Figures she already is a founder...

<comment><USER3> Check out www.inbound.org it's a bit like HN for marketers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Really useful post. Wish I had read this 4 years ago!

</comment><comment><USER10> Great collection of best practices. Thanks.</comment>


Ultimate List of Startup Resources (Part 1) - <AUTHOR> http://fi.co/resources

<comment><AUTHOR> There is SO much content out there on how to start your company, but few resources (if any) walk you through what to do from day one all the way up to scaling and getting funding. This is the first chapter of a chronologically sorted guide on how to start a company</comment>


Computer gleans chemical insight from lab notebook failures - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/computer-gleans-chemical-insight-from-lab-notebook-failures-1.19866 <comment><USER2> /wave

Lemme know if you've got questions.</comment>


Show HN: An API with a template editor for PDF document generation and assembly - <AUTHOR> https://pdfgeneratorapi.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone! I've seen many PDF related tools on HN lately and thought to post this. I've been working on this for a couple of years now as a tool to help me with my other projects. I was working with different ERP and e-commerce solutions where users were able to create invoices, quotes, labels and other printouts, and the customer support was full of small modification requests that had to be implemented by me or their developers. Eventually things got messy and we built this tool that we have now packaged as PDF Generator API.

What sets us apart from similar services/tools is that you can embed the template editor into your application and allow your users to make the modifications instead of running them through support/developers.

I hope other developers and companies will benefit from the service. Any feedback about the landing page and documentation is appreciated!

</comment><comment><USER2> Congrats on the launch! Seems like a great service. There have been a couple of project where this would come handy.</comment>


You know you've always wanted your portrait in Lego, right? - <AUTHOR> http://sailorhg.github.io/legoizer/

<comment><USER2> Loved the idea.

Just as a quick feedback, you can show a demo link, which sums up everything nicely without the user to try first.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, actually, I've wanted a bust.</comment>


Even Faster Math Functions - <AUTHOR> https://basesandframes.wordpress.com/2020/04/04/even-faster-math-functions/ <comment><USER2> Most interesting, but I feel like the author is being unfairly harsh with Taylor series, slide 64: "Taylor series suck".

They are indeed less accurate than Chebyshev polynomials, but computing them is a breeze, and as highlighted by the subsequent 20 slides, computing those is not.

For a same accuracy, with Taylor you will need a bit higher order polynomials, or more polynomials, but you can easily compute thousands of them on startup (I did this in one of my libraries: [https://sourceforge.net/projects/jafama](https://sourceforge.net/projects/jafama)).

</comment><comment><USER3> Goddamn it this is so cool.

</comment><comment><USER4> I wonder how much performance can be gained by using posits in place of ieee.</comment>


Nuclear War or Invasion: The False Dichotomy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - <AUTHOR> https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/08/05/nuclear-war-or-invasion-false-dichotomy-hiroshima-and-nagasaki <comment><USER2> It is interesting how the farther we get from an event the more we want to change history to fit our narrative. I had the joy of speaking with Lawrence Johnston (an emeritus prof a U of Idaho at the time) who worked on the Manhattan Project and who one of the only persons to personally witness both bombings of Japan. I can assure you, if the Americans had felt there were other reasonable options, we would have done so.

<comment><USER3> I suppose we'll have to weigh your assurances against the historical record of:

> In a 1960 interview, Bard reiterated that "the Japanese were ready for peace > and had already approached the Russians" about capitulating.

> General Dwight D. Eisenhower, later said that "the Japanese were ready to > surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."

> "Japan was already defeated and dropping the bomb was completely > unnecessary," President Eisenhower wrote in 1954.

> The same morning that Nagasaki was destroyed, Prime Minister Kintaro Suzuki > addressed the Japanese cabinet, declaring that "under the present > circumstances I have concluded that our only alternative is to accept the > Potsdam Proclamation and terminate the war." Suzuki did not learn about > Nagasaki until the afternoon of August 9.

<comment><USER2> You do realize that Japan did _not_ surrender after the complete and utter destruction of Hiroshima.

The allies who surrendered to Japan in Batan and elsewhere were treated as inhuman -- "surrender" was the ultimate shame -- there was no honor is surrender. It wasn't until _after_ the bombing of Nagasaki and the news of Soviet attacks in Manchuria, the complete and destruction of numerous other Japanese cities, and potential mass starvation that surrender came. They were more fearful of being occupied by the Soviets, than surrendering to the Americans.

America has her sins, but she is not the monster the revisionists make her out to be.

<comment><USER3> > You do realize that Japan did not surrender after the complete and utter > destruction of Hiroshima.

Were you hoping I wouldn't check the dates? Hiroshima was bombed on August 6th, Nagasaki on the 9th, and Japan surrendered on the 15th. It took them 6 days after the 2nd bomb (and Soviet declaration of war) to surrender, but the 2nd bomb dropped 3 days after the 1st. Diplomacy takes time. If the US had dropped 10 nukes in 3 days, would you have said "Japan did _not_ surrender after the 9th nuke - clearly the 10th was warranted"?

And nothing you wrote disproves that the Soviet declaration of war alone would have been enough for surrender, while the whole article is full of accounts indicating unconditional surrender was at hand (let alone _conditional_ surrender). Just saying "nu-uh" won't make the article go away.

Not to mention the bombs could easily have been delayed by a week to check.

<comment><USER2> History books of are replete in their description of Japan's attitude towards surrender. They certainly would have surrendered by the end of the year, but the casualties for Japan (and China and the US) would have been horrendous.

Concerning the bombing of Hiroshima I'll quote an excerpt from [https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/japan- surrenders](https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/japan-surrenders)

          After the Hiroshima attack, a faction of Japan's supreme war  council favored acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration, but the majority resisted unconditional surrender. On August 8, Japan's desperate situation took another turn for the worse when the USSR declared war against Japan. The next day, Soviet forces attacked in Manchuria, rapidly overwhelming Japanese positions there, and a second U.S. atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese coastal city of Nagasaki.

As horrific as the bomb was, it put a decisive end to the war. Everyone, especially the Japanese, avoided a massive slaughter (and starvation) that was coming.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


New nuclear fuel source would power human race until 5000AD - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/22/oceanic_uranium_mining_tech/ <comment><USER2> "Since the Fukushima meltdown - as a result of which, not a single person is set to be measurably harmed by radiation - we know that nuclear power is safe."

It seems to me like the primary danger from radiation like that leaked from Fukushima would be an increase in cancer. I think it's a little early to be claiming that Fukushima will cause no increase harm to humans. There is already evidence that it caused harm to the surrounding environment, though butterflies are admittedly much more fragile than humans.

[http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/08/14/13274288-study...](http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/08/14/13274288-study- japan-nuclear-disaster-caused-mutated-butterflies?lite)

<comment><USER3> Hah. The Register takes the IAEA statement, which says "To date no health effects have been reported in any person as a result of radiation exposure from the nuclear accident.", and turns it into the very different statement that no one WILL be harmed. I would give that a classification of Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire.

Even though probably not very many people will get cancer that is traceable to the Fukushima disaster, it comes at a price -

[http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LdLr5QPqPgI/Tukyjp5ZdRI/AAAAAAAAOL...](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LdLr5QPqPgI/Tukyjp5ZdRI/AAAAAAAAOLo/oq69MDZiFi8/s640/Fukushimazone.png)

\- permanently abandoning several large towns.

<comment><USER4> I agree that the Register, and Lewis Page in particular, tend to roll some what fast and loose, but that is why I don't go to them for authoritative news, mostly for puns.

That said, this is inaccurate:

 _permanently abandoning several large towns._

As part of the process this risk is being evaluated, and while there are spots where some isotopes have concentrated (and will be cleaned up) the amount of radiation in all of the towns of Fukishima Prefecture is still less than the radiation the residents of Denver receive [1] [2]. So once the towns have been surveyed people will be allowed to move back. Reading the Economist the biggest challenge is that the Government would like to coalesce some towns to save money but that is causing complaints.

[1] <http://www.epa.gov/radtown/cosmic.html>

[2] <http://isis-online.org/risk/tab7>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm pro-nuclear, but I can't take this writer's hand-wavey dismissal of the risks seriously.

<comment><USER6> Honestly, I don't think it's that hand-wavey when nuclear has killed less people ever than coal does every year.

<comment><USER5> People are more frightened of things they don't understand, so effective advocacy of nuclear power requires making the effort to bridge the information gap. Also, people find concentrated acute harm more scary than dispersed chronic harm, which is why the idea of a plane crash is more disturbing than the larger number of people killed in road accidents.

<comment><USER7> i think that the biggest problem is the potential for making places on our planet unsuitable to live in forever (for all practical purposes). people look at chernobyl and see a place that will be dangerous to all life long after they're dead. they don't want that to happen again. fukushima is potentially the next such place, albeit on a lower scale.

the fact that radiation doesn't hurt doesn't help either. if our civilization ever falls, chernobyl will be a place cursed by gods.

<comment><USER8> I don't think there are any Chernobyl-like reactors in operation today. Even if the design of reactors like ones at the Fukushima plant may be considered horribly flawed (they _should_ be able to cool themselves passively, with no external power input whatsoever, after someone hits the scram button) the magnitude of the disaster is much smaller.

An article posted here a couple days back mentions the hot zones around Fukushima are 3x less radioactive than downtown Denver. This is something to think about.

Also, we must consider what other options we have for power generation. Can solar, wind and hydro generate all the power we need? How long until we can build economically viable fusion plants?

<comment><USER9> > _An article posted here a couple days back mentions the hot zones around > Fukushima are 3x less radioactive than downtown Denver. This is something to > think about._

Radiation is like cancer: one word to describe many different, related phenomenons. Denver radioactivity comes from radon, which is a relatively harmless gas as long as you allow it to disperse rapidly. OTOH pollution from nuclear accidents mainly comes from caesium which mimics calcium and get fixated on bones, thus provoking long, continuous, deep exposition to radiation.

<comment><USER8> The numbers quoted in the article were, IIRC, about cellular damage and aren't dependent of the isotope the person was exposed to. I agree some radioactive materials are much more dangerous than others and a noble gas has less chances of ending up in important molecules inside your body, but if the scale measures damage, not exposition, I assume they are equivalent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Let's reverse the logic. Instead of talking about how much radioactive material we're pulling from the ocean, how much could we put in?

Am I mistaken in saying that we could put back in every bit of radioactive material we'd use until 5000AD and only double the natural background radiation amount?

I know the math isn't exact -- it's not a symmetry -- but on a rough-order-of- magnitude basis, is that a reasonable conclusion?

<comment><USER11> > but on a rough-order-of-magnitude basis, is that a reasonable conclusion?

No. Uranium is barely radioactive. In contrast the waste from a power plant is very radioactive.

Radioactivity is directly related to half life: The longer the half life, the less radioactive, and the reverse as well.

Uranium 235 has a half life of close to a billion years, and 238 (the much more common kind) of nearly 5 billion years. So it's barely radioactive.

Once you "cook" it in a reactor you generate all sorts of isotopes with much shorter half lives (so none exist naturally in any quantity). Those isotopes are also much more radioactive. The good thing is that the very powerful ones don't last long.

The "worst" isotopes are the medium lived ones. Short enough to be radioactive, long enough to last for centuries. Of those Strontium-90 and Caesium-137 are the main ones.

Now you also know why nuclear fuel reprocessing is a great idea. The uranium left behind after a pass through a reactor has not been changed (it's not any more radioactive than it was before it started) - you can isolate it chemically and use it again (only a small amount actually burns each time). You still need to deal with the dangerous stuff, but the quantity is massively reduced. (Technically you can burn that as well in a reactor to other shorter lived isotopes, and essentially destroy any hazard, but I don't believe anyone does that.)

Just to respond to your actual idea, there are proposals to bury waste in subduction zones. You can find more about it via google <https://www.google.com/search?q=nuclear+subduction+zone>

<comment><USER4> The DoE actually did extensive research into subduction encapsulation and while expensive (you are working at depths that crush most stuff we build up here) was technically quite acceptable (their design ended up essentially drilling what amounted to bore holes 5000' below the surface and dropping in waste from the top until its half full then covering it up and moving on. The advantage was that containment was expected to be lost but the material would diffuse into the mantle. In terms of cost though is was a couple of decimal orders of magnitude higher than Yucca Mt.

Why folks wont let engineers reprocess it and use a fast breeder to incinerate it is simply fear. (well and the fast that a fast breeder can also make stuff you don't want made)

<comment><USER12> So we'd essentially need a very tightly controlled fast breeder reactor or 20 that handle the world's less pleasant nuclear byproducts? It seems that if the breeder reactor is cohabitated with the reprocessing facility, most of the danger would be nullified (I imagine that transport is the riskiest part). Or perhaps people simply don't want those things to exist in concentrated form, ever, to eliminate the risk of someone getting their hands on it.

<comment><USER13> Argonne National Laboratory tested a cohabited breeder called the Integral Fast Reactor. The reprocessing would happen on-site, using a process similar to electrolysis which never separates plutonium from the other transuranics. The material would never be in a form usable for bombs, and making it bomb- ready would be more difficult than just enriching uranium. But the fast neutrons in the reactor would easily burn up those transuranics.

What's more, they had very good passive safety. Fukushima had problems because it lost external power. Argonne shut off the power to their test reactor, and it just quietly shut down with no damage, simply due to the physics of the fuel and coolant.

They had it just shy of production ready when Clinton shut it down in 1994. But GE-Hitachi has a design derived from it, called the PRISM. The NRC has approved it for a demonstration reactor, and they're currently trying to sell it to the U.K. to destroy their plutonium stockpile.

Since the reactor can use U238, it's about a hundred times as efficient with uranium. Combining that with seawater extraction gives us fuel for a very long time: <http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/01/nuclear-options/>

A pretty good book on all this was just put online for free, here: [http://www.thesciencecouncil.com/prescription-for-the- planet...](http://www.thesciencecouncil.com/prescription-for-the-planet.html)

There's also a new book by two lead researchers from the Argonne project, called Plentiful Energy, by Till and Chang. That one goes into quite a bit more technical detail. Another good online source is here: [http://bravenewclimate.com/integral-fast-reactor-ifr- nuclear...](http://bravenewclimate.com/integral-fast-reactor-ifr-nuclear- power/)

<comment><USER14> Steve Kirsch has a rather breathless but nonetheless informative summary here: <http://skirsch.com/politics/globalwarming/ifr.htm>

Personally, I incline to the view that until we have a viable fusion option, it's worth building some IFRs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I really thought this was going to be about Thorium. Surprise - its about extracting Uranium from seawater.

<comment><USER16> I can not figure out why more effort is not put into thorium nuclear technology research. The only reason I have heard why thorium is not being considered is because it is not weaponizable. Are there any other reasons why thorium based nuclear fission is not being pursued as an energy source?

<comment><USER11> > Are there any other reasons why thorium based nuclear fission is not being > pursued as an energy source?

Mainly because we don't need it. It's got some advantages, sure, but not enough of them to make it worthwhile to spend on the money on it.

<comment><USER17> Its proponents seem to think that it would be significantly cheaper and safer [citation needed], which sounds worthwhile.

Could briefly expound upon your reasoning?

<comment><USER11> I agree - it probably would be significantly cheaper and safer.

But it will also cost a lot of money to develop, and even though it's safer, it's still nuclear, i.e. opposition to it will be unchanged. The worst is some people are demanding that they be installed with full containment domes, which wipes out any cost savings.

Anyone who wants to actually install one will probably be stymied, so no one wants to spend the money to develop something they can't use. And especially not if it costs the same as a regular reactor.

Instead people just stick with the tried and true since it minimizes risk of failure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I thought that the Hacker News community was a lot more alert to avoiding upvoting linkbait articles like this.

First of all, the entire main story point of the article is based on PRESS RELEASES, not on peer-reviewed articles published in good-quality scientific journals.

Second, even if a statement like the premise of the article were published in a peer-reviewed article in a good-quality scientific journal, you would still want to check the methodology of the study described in the article for the "Warning Signs in Experimental Design and Interpretation" that Google's director of research, LISP hacker Peter Norvig, is always warning us about.

<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>

Third, the article is about a public policy proposal, so it's not just about physics, it's about economics and the psychology of the general public as well. As Thomas Sowell has written, "The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics." What the public wants is as much energy as can be humanly desired, with total safety, and at nil cost. The efforts of politicians to reconcile these contradictory desires may very well result in a regulatory pattern that doesn't let this new technology thrive. As a matter of economics, this technology should only thrive if it genuinely provides a better cost-benefit trade-off than other proposed energy technologies, which the article hand- waves away as an issue.

Discussions on Hacker News are better if they are launched by submission of better sources. This source, on this subject, is below general community standards. We can learn more about new possibilities in energy technology from (for example) Technology Review (several HN participants regularly submit articles from that source) or The Economist (I am one of several HN participants who submit articles from that source) or the better professionally edited mainstream newspapers or general news weeklies. We don't need to rush ahead to speculate about every new press release here.

<comment><USER19> The register can be good on tech issues, however it just goes completely mental if anyone mentions the words _climate, nuclear, green_ or _wikipedia_ anywhere within the editors earshot. Or if anyone shows Lewis a picture of some guns.

After a while I have decided that the most likely explanation for their behaviour is that they are mostly just trying to troll hippies and don't necessarily actually believe a lot of what they print. Trolling the readership is fairly common in the UK press anyway, the Mail having turned it into something of an art.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This idea only makes sense if the used-fuel disposal problem is resolved, and it is not at all resolved. It would be like claiming that the coal supply is unlimited, but without addressing the problem of emissions.

<comment><USER21> The used-fuel problem is already solved. The solution is just effectively permanently blocked by NIMBY-ism.

<comment><USER22> What is the permanent solution?

<comment><USER23> There are several.

One is to dump it in the Mariana trench, let nature push it back down into the crust.

If we're foresighted, we'll bombard a crater in the moon with it. It won't go anywhere, and if we need to get it back, there it is.

<comment><USER24> Space launch is risky, not just perceived as risky, actually risky. rocketry isn't one of those 5 9's of reliability activities.

<comment><USER21> Two words: rail gun.

<comment><USER23> Cooler: space elevator

<comment><USER21> Cooler, yes; sooner, no.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The 5000AD date is admittedly just an estimate, but I am extremely sceptical of any such prediction. It just depends too much on what new uses for lots of energy we might come up with over the next thousand years. How many people will there be to use it? What standard of living will they demand? And that standard of living actually require more energy, or will other technological advances make us far more efficient with the power we generate?

The article even states that different groups estimates of how long Earth's uranium could last vary by more than a factor of 2.

<comment><USER26> I don't think it's an unfair way to express the estimate though. Sure, it might not really last until 5000 AD, but to me it simply implies 3000 "years of fuel", with a "year of fuel" being how we use fuel now. If energy consumption goes up or down it doesn't really matter - I still have a sense of how significant this energy source is.

<comment><USER27> Yes, but growth sucks. Assuming 3000 years in the article means what you think it means, consider exponential and linear growth:

If energy usage doubles every 30 years (pulled that out of my ass, it's not likely the trend but divides nice into 3000) then it will last us less than 200 years

If energy usage grows linearly increasing by the current amount every 30 years (so in 2042 we are using double, and 2072 we are using triple) it's lasts us a bit over 400 years.

<comment><USER25> And in any case, 3000 years is still finite. There will come a time, if we don't go extinct or experience the rapture, when nuclear fuel will run out, and we'll have to use renewables anyway. Fortunately, the sun puts out a rather large amount of power, and even 200 years is a pretty good amount of time for figuring out how to capture it better.

<comment><USER28> The question really is if going to something 'harder' now is worth while. We do something more expensive (and have large oppertunity cost) to avoid problem we will only really have in 200 years.

If you look at the change of technology in the last 100 years you can only assume how small this problem will be then. I mean in 200 years using solar energy will possibly be cheaper then fossil fuel, and if it is not we will be better equiped to solve the problem then.

I do not want to say that we should not keep working in direction of renewable energy but I think it is a valid question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The problem with nuclear power generation today is it's always way more expensive than promised, in often unpredictable and sometimes not-easily- quantifiable ways. Add the uninsurable nature, the constant risk of human error/decision making increasing the risk factor (eg. not decommissioning old plants), and waste problem, and it gets even less attractive. Meanwhile, renewable energy and power grid improvements continue to be underfunded, and everyone claims the only alternative is coal.

<comment><USER30> It's not inherently more expensive than promised; that's caused by a combination of first-of-a-kind construction and unpredictable political and regulatory situations. In places like South Korea, where they have a more reasonable regulatory situation and they build a bunch of each type of plant, they've had a better track record with completing nuclear plants on time and within an affordable budget.

<comment><USER31> "too cheap to meter" they promised.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> In the article linked to from this article:

A preliminary report by the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency has stated that the response to the Fukushima nuclear incident was "exemplary" and that nobody has been harmed by radiation exposure resulting from it.

That seems to contract what the Japanese government's own panel concluded:

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-18718057>

<comment><USER33> The article on safety this article links to is a year older than the article itself (though same author). It doesn't seem responsible to me to leave out a year of analysis of the effect of Fukushima, and I don't think it's been a particularly positive year. In some ways if Fukushima was a result of human error (as that report indicates), then that's positive: it's resolvable. But if we scaled nuclear power up to 10x what it currently is I would worry about more human error, and introducing nuclear power to places that have even more problems with reliability, or cultural problems with creating reliable systems. A nuclear power plant in Nigeria? I'm sure there are very reliable people who could staff and monitor the plant, and that those people could be attracted to the jobs, but I don't trust the political infrastructure of the nation to ensure that all actually happens. That no one uses shoddy concrete, or pushes problems under the table instead of resolving them and opening oneself up to blame, or manipulates risk assessment to protect their personally acquired power in the working of the plant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I think right now our biggest problem is not energy sources but energy storage.

If we had an amazing vessel for energy storage, the sourcing problem would become relatively moot - there's so much available passive renewable energy, all we need to do is collect it.

</comment><comment><USER35> I decided to look up some of the authors previous articles and he has an pretty impressive range of alien conspiracy theory and climate change related articles including:

"NASA: WE'VE FOUND Four-toed NON-HUMAN FOOTPRINTS" "Martian lakes seen where NASA Curiosity rover WON'T BE GOING" "Using Facebook causes less eco damage than farting, figures show" "Climate was HOTTER in Roman, medieval times than now: Study" "Antarctic ice shelves not melting at all, new field data show" "Amount of meat we eat will barely affect future climate change"

<http://search.theregister.co.uk/?author=Lewis%20Page>

</comment><comment><USER36> as rauljara mentions, the claim that fukishima was victimless is a bit bloated.

nothing i've seen or heard leads me to believe that nuclear waste management is a sustainable thing.

this sounds like the oceanic equivelant of fracking.

<comment><USER37> _nothing i've seen or heard leads me to believe that nuclear waste management is a sustainable thing_

Keep reading.

<http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf04.html>

Disclosure: Former US Navy radiological controls MOS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> We seem to be discussing pros and cons of nuclear. But is this assertion of reasonably extractable uranium from sea water even true? Considering the source to be theregister, what I would like to know is whether the energy available as per the paper is really as big as claimed? or is it just clever math? Keeping aside the issue of waste disposal, are the costs really that low or is the cost cleverly buried elsewhere?

<comment><USER31> this is an old non-story. the energy required to extract the low levels of uranium from huge volumes of seawater outweigh the energy that uranium can produce as fuel for a nuclear power reactor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Shouldn't we be conserving nuclear fuel for space flight and other operations where you require a very dense power source?

<comment><USER11> Why conserve it? There's tons of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> 5000AD estimate is complete bullshit. Our energy consumption doubles every ~20 years (15 to 35 by various sources).

In only 10 doublings (200 years) our energy consumption will increase 1,000 times.

After 20 doublings (400 years), it will increase 1,000,000 times.

I expect by then we will be using mostly fusion and/or the energy of the Sun (and/or some new energy source).

<comment><USER41> Don't you think we might not stay on that curve forever?

At some point growth in access to western amenities (climate control, transportation, better food) will level off, and population growth will level off.

Also in 1000 years we'll have athletes who finish races before they begin.

<comment><USER40> > _Don't you think we might not stay on that curve forever?_

Not forever, but the exponential growth is inevitable while the resources are available and are used more and more efficiently.</comment></comment></comment>


Modern LZ Compression - <AUTHOR> https://glinscott.github.io/lz/index.html <comment><USER2> I wish the words "Huffman Tree" would go away entirely. Huffman, as used in the past 40 years, actually describes a scheme commonly called "Canonical Huffman"[0] that can be constructed entirely without a tree. ryg recommends reading this paper on it [1], and I wholeheartedly agree. Other than that, great article!

[0] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonical_Huffman_code](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonical_Huffman_code) [1] [https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/bda3/442cc6b1d10e4b36b574af...](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/bda3/442cc6b1d10e4b36b574af0a34a668492230.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> The styling of this web page is like a breath of fresh air. Peaceful, even.

</comment><comment><USER4> Really great article, props to the author

</comment><comment><USER5> Great article!</comment>


Avoiding Two Degrees of Warming 'Is Now Totally Unrealistic' - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/06/oppenheimer-interview/529083/?single_page=true <comment><USER3> It is a sad state of affairs that long term approaches to profit are not more prized. US industry paired with massive government subsidy/partnership could work together effectively, as exemplified historically by the creation of the internet, modern computing and telecommunications infrastructure, and look at this dire situation we find ourselves in as an opportunity to compete on a global level to produce renewable and green energy technologies. Seems like a missed opportunity on a number of fronts.

This article brings to mind an interview I watched earlier today - <USER2> Hedges has a show, On Contact, which airs on RT - he recently interviewed Christian Parenti, author of 'Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence' (aired 6.18.2017). They addressed positive feedback loops, violence that has climate change as the impetus, migration and refugee status and more.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELqZe6Xqwzc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELqZe6Xqwzc)

</comment><comment><USER4> I wish we had more engineers in politics. The politicians and Trumps of the world don't understand how to solve problems, just how to convince you that it's not their fault or worse what's shiny enough to distract. We need solutions, not a bitch fest.

</comment><comment><USER5> So it's the US's fault that other countries are acting badly? This blame game isn't even coherent. China, India, and some of the other disproportionate polluters are to blame, not some whack job US president who decided not to subsidize some other participant economies in the short term to get a pinky promise they would do better, in the interest of the planet.

<comment><USER6> China and India have much lower per capita CO2 footprints. So they are disproportionate in a good way. (Though the still need to do better, like everyone else)

<comment><USER5> Individuals can do better, but nations in aggregate are acting to increase global warming. The CO2 footprint game is a tool for political spin, not identifying what bodies are at fault now. Is it the US because the President broke out of a non-binding treaty? or China as the actual physical top polluter? or India who is poised to compete for that position despite existing agreements to reduce emissions already in place? ([http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/analysis/india- opening...](http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/analysis/india-opening-coal- mines-will-surpass-u-s-in-coal-production/))

It's one thing to be positive and denounce symbolic political actions, but it's another to lose sight of what's going on in the world and weighing the physical effects.</comment></comment></comment>