How climate change is melting, drying and flooding Earth – in pictures - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02793-0 <comment><USER2> The thing that really bugs when when discussing climate change is that it's one of the clearest examples of confirmation bias I've ever experienced as an adult. Forget geological time, if _anything_ out of the ordinary weather- related occurs then it's because of XYZ climate change reason.

The same people telling me the world will spiral out of control in just 12 years are also saying that we shouldn't build any nuclear power plants, or that the root cause of climate change is "institutional racism"[1]. It is really starting to look more like a religion to me than a science, and I don't say that lightly.

1\. [https://i-d.vice.com/en_us/article/xwneej/racism-climate- cha...](https://i-d.vice.com/en_us/article/xwneej/racism-climate-change- crisis-jamie-margolin-zero-hour)

<comment><USER3> I don't actually think that the all people saying the climate will spiral out of control in 12 years are saying what you are attributing to them.

Nuclear is not a panacea, but we should build more because this is a global emergency. There is a racist component to the reaction to climate change because of who is being most immediately impacted (equatorial countries and the poor), but intent doesn't matter, because only action matters.

The science is bland and harsh, and doesn't care about how people consume it. You can put CO2 in an aquarium, seal it, and easily measure the greenhouse effect from CO2 yourself. You can even work out the basics of the relationship of CO2 concentration to degree of warming. This is happening right now - it's not predictions, it is our reality. It will happen to you regardless of how you feel about the discussion on either side of the issue.

<comment> Iwan-Zotow > who is being most immediately impacted (equatorial countries

huh?!?

temperature raise is a lot more pronounced at poles, not at equator

<comment><USER4> In the tropics you'll find a lot of food unsecurity. Hawaii is a good example of this, importing 80% of its food. Now, climate change brings about more than just temperature rise, we're talking about more powerful storms causing more inundation along coastlines. Hawaii is vulnerable in this way because all of the shipping infrastructure which supports 2 million people is at the coastline and could easily be knocked out by a category 5 hurricane. The flooding from such a storm can also salinate farmlands, slosh salt water, chemicals or pathogens into the aquifer. It is clear how shit goes south very quickly from there.

Closer to the equator you'll find Kiribati, where salination of farmlands and aquifers has already happened. Luckily the rest of the world is still online and willing to keep their country on life support, but the prospects for kiribati to independently support itself in the long term are non-existent.

Carbon dioxide also raises ocean acidity which kills off corals and crashes fisheries, leaving coastal communities without reliable protein sources.

I hope you can see how an indifference to climate change on the part of predominately white countries to can be construed as racist. When someone says that, he or she is talking about all the non-white people who are currently suffering due to changes in their climates.

<comment><USER5> > In the tropics you'll find a lot of food unsecurity. Hawaii is a good > example of this, importing 80% of its food.

This is hilariously misled. Food must be imported into Hawaii because it's an island with very little arable land, not because it's "in the tropics." Equatorial nations have by far the greatest access to food when compared to any other place on the earth. That's why biodiversity is the greatest near the equator -- there are more resources.

> I hope you can see how an indifference to climate change on the part of > predominately white countries to can be construed as racist. When someone > says that, he or she is talking about all the non-white people who are > currently suffering due to changes in their climates.

Yes, but they are not disproportionately affected due to some conspiracy, but rather just because money protects you from consequences. If you're poor, you can't move, and you can't buy water. That affects you less if you have a stable income and marketable skills (which are easier to access in the west).

<comment><USER4> Hawaii has enough arable land to support the number of people living here. It's their distribution that's problematic. Everything is in the wrong place to make efficient use of the land.

I live out here in the pacific, I travel all over Oahu every day. People lived here for over a thousand years without foreign goods. The food scarcity is manufactured to suck money back to the mainland U.S.

<comment><USER5> > The food scarcity is manufactured to suck money back to the mainland U.S.

Hah--oh wait, you're actually serious?

<comment><USER4> If you'd rather attribute the situation to incompetence then we can say that the food scarcity exists because the local government supports the tourism industry over agriculture, alotting more land and water resources and collapsing what was once a sustainable food system... accidentally.

When you use words like "hilarious" and "hah" I feel annoyed, because I need a little more respect and acknowledgement for the work I am doing in horticulture, food security out here in the pacific. I have a hard time listening to what you are trying to say when you are typing laughter at me. Do you want to try and share your thoughts without implying that you think my world is a joke?

<comment><USER6> I'm sorry, but how long ago was the food system of Hawaii sustainable? And how did the society of Hawaii look back then? How many Hawaiians were there at the time, how many should leave the islands to go back to that state, and how many of those who should remain would actually be in favour of this solution?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can we start discussing geo-engineering strategies more seriously? Andrew Yang's mention of space mirrors was derisively put-down, but can someone lay out why it isn't a good idea?

If SpaceX and others continue to make getting things into orbit much cheaper, what's the argument against putting highly reflective barriers in the Lagrange point, which is a point constantly between the Earth and the Sun. If we deflected even 1% of sunlight, wouldn't that be enough to lower temperatures back down towards 0 C, as opposed to +1.1 C where we are now?

And why not focus the sunlight-blocking onto the poles, which we need to maintain our climate and which are experiencing even more rapid change?

Is the argument against these strategies that relying on geoengineering will take focus away from transitioning our energy system? I just think we have no hope of transitioning our energy system in time, emissions are STILL rising year over year...we have to think about how to cool the planet while we decarbonize our energy.

<comment><USER8> Space mirrors are almost impossible to build right now.

Shadowing 1% of the earth would require 10 million tons of mylar foil, which would be 100,000 launches with SpaceX's yet to complete Starship at a payload capacity of 100t (as it was announced, seems to be down a lot for the prototypes) to low earth orbit. That's not doable yet - and it is just the problem of launching the mass, nothing else.

<comment><USER9> well spitballing.. does it have to be in space? and what if we split the mirror into many smaller ones?

what if we launched a bunch of mirrored balloons?

<comment><USER10> That would probably also have the effect of reflecting some of the energy leaving Earth back down onto it, essentially increasing the greenhouse effect.

Also, assuming you need to reflect 2% of the incoming light, and using 8ft diameter balloons, you would need approximately 2,744,628,480,000 balloons.

<comment><USER11> Why think so small? Do something like this

{1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_Nine_(tensegrity_sphere)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_Nine_\(tensegrity_sphere\))

combine that with the ideas of

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High- altitude_platform_station](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High- altitude_platform_station)

and _PROFIT!_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There are some wonderfully artful images in this post but it is woefully short of evidence of anything. The 2010 image of the east Kenyan person in water by Andrew McConnell/Panos looks staged to me. There are endless articles with 'could' and 'may' in them which are making people very anxious. I'm all for good stewardship of the planet but am old enough to recall when we were all doomed to soon freeze to death last century [https://youtu.be/mOC7ePWCHGk](https://youtu.be/mOC7ePWCHGk)

<comment><USER3> How many times we we all have to see the Times cover and this History Channel pop science piece. 99% of climatologist agree on the science and the effects of warming are plainly visible to the layman.

<comment><USER13> >99% of climatologist agree on the science

This is not a compelling argument for a skeptic.

>99% of all numerologists agree on the science

You need to highlight the backing by the rest of the scientific community to give confidence that it's a real science.

<comment><USER14> When 99% of the experts in the field agree, and that's not a compelling argument to a layman with no expertise, "skeptic" is not a word I'd use to describe that layman.

<comment><USER13> Did you take more than two seconds to think that through? If that was a compelling argument, everyone would believe in numerology because everyone that calls themselves a numerologist agrees that numerology is real.

Same for psychics, priests, and on and on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Climate change is the only thing in my lifetime to fully horrify me. I imagine those before us feeling similar horror in the face of world war. Still. They acted. I find myself going on like normal. Why am I not fighting with everything I got, if, for nothing else, for the future of my children? There seem to be some psychological dissonance. Is the challenge just too big, the enemy just to diffuse, for us to bother?

<comment><USER2> I'll take present day living over any single point in the past. Antibiotics weren't even produced until the 1940s, and before that time a scraped knee could literally kill you.

In the cold war people built concrete bunkers in their basement for fear of a nuclear Armageddon.

In Rome, if you couldn't pay your taxes you were forced to sell your children into slavery.

And here we are, where past presidents are buying ocean-front property so clearly the elites aren't truly as concerned about it as they publicly state.

<comment><USER16> "In the cold war people built concrete bunkers in their basement for fear of a nuclear Armageddon."

It's not like this threat went away. People just stopped paying attention to it.

<comment><USER17> Agreed, it just doesn't seem imminent anymore. Mutually assured destruction seems to keep the whole thing in check.

<comment><USER16> It will until it doesn't. What troubles me is that it's hard to tell whether the risk is 1% per year or 0.000001% per year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > _The sudden thawing of Arctic permafrost is of great concern to scientists, > who say that the methane and carbon dioxide gas that the process releases is > accelerating global warming._

This type of language really bothers me. That methane and other feedbacks are accelerating global warming are proven facts.

<comment><USER19> > This type of language really bothers me.

Why? It seems like the statement agrees with yours: "The sudden thawing of Arctic permafrost is of great concern to scientists, who say that the methane and carbon dioxide gas that the process releases is accelerating global warming."

<comment><USER20> GP doesn't want the statement to read: "scientists believe X", he wants it to read: "X is a fact that is not up for debate" reply

<comment><USER18> Yes, that's what I would expect from Nature. Maybe not from the NY Times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I wish people took this seriously. This is a slow moving disaster and that elicits a non-response from most of us. Once the temperatures rise beyond 2C, there are many consequences - 1\. Food yields and nutrition drops significantly. 2\. Entire species go extinct (we already see that happening). We cannot survive independently. An entire ecosystem is needed for us to lead a healthy and happy life. E.g. insecticides are causing die-offs of butterflies, bees etc.. 3\. Once wild weather becomes the norm - fires, food shortages, hurricanes etc.. massive rioting will follow. Insurance will be expensive or non-existent (they already don't cover Act of God) and that means financial insecurity for most of us.

The other overlooked fact is that the greenhouse gases stay in the atmosphere for a long long time. So, once the climate changes it won't be a 1-day/1-week or a 1-year event. We talk a lot of geo-engineering etc.. but why not make small sacrifices now (eat less meat, buy local and used stuff, no single use plastic, less air-travel etc..) and save the beautiful planet that we already have. Yes, it will cause some economic dislocations but we will be fine. Companies will adapt or healthy and environment friendly alternatives will come up.

Take this seriously folks. We don't have another planet to go to and our children are counting on us.

<comment><USER22> > small sacrifices

My impression ist that people are talking about sacrifices for the sake of sacrafices and not to solve the problem. If the global warming (and related problems) would be (magically) solved tomorrow, they would be disappointed because no sacrifices were needed any more.

Are sacrifices even enough to solve global warming?

And sacrifices have a marketing problem. It's hard to sell them to billions of people.

<comment><USER21> I am not talking about sacrifices for its own sake. What I am saying is to do things that reduce greenhouse emissions. The problem needs to be tackled in top-down (government policies) and bottoms-up (where consumers make behavioral changes).

Europe seems to be more in tune with top-down. In the US, bottoms-up seems to be the only option. Once people change their purchasing decisions - e.g. stop buying anything that comes in individual plastic packing etc, companies will be forced to make changes. Another example - stop giving non-sensical loot bags in b'day parties or stop taking or giving gifts altogether.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's ridiculous we're still not rallying around nuclear power (in addition to renewables).

 _" Nuclear is ideal for dealing with climate change, because it is the only carbon-free, scalable energy source that's available 24 hours a day. The problems with today's reactors, such as the risk of accidents, can be solved through innovation.

TerraPower, the company I started 10 years ago, uses an approach called a traveling wave reactor that is safe, prevents proliferation, and produces very little waste. We had hoped to build a pilot project in China, but recent policy changes here in the U.S. have made that unlikely. We may be able to build it in the United States if the funding and regulatory changes that I mentioned earlier happen."_ -Bill Gates, Dec 2018 [1]

And even before that it's already the safest form of energy. [2] Fear has shot us in the foot and continues preventing us from making substantial progress.

1) [https://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/Year-in- Review-2...](https://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/Year-in-Review-2018)

2) [https://ourworldindata.org/what-is-the-safest-form-of- energy](https://ourworldindata.org/what-is-the-safest-form-of-energy)

<comment><USER10> Is it really safer than solar?

"The problems with today's reactors, such as the risk of accidents, can be solved through innovation." \- this is an example of wishful thinking. We don't know how we would solve the problems, we are just assuming someone will figure out a way. That assumption is probably influenced by survivorship bias. There's a bunch of technologies where the problems weren't solved, but we don't hear about them much.

The mean time to build a reactor is about 7.5 years[1], so if you wanted to transition all remaining fossil-fueled electricity generation in 12 years, currently with 120,000 TWh of fossil fuel consumption[2], assuming 1GW of generation per nuclear power plant, you would need to start building approximately 14 thousand (edit: originally read millions, corrected as pointed out in comments) nuclear power plants today.

[1] [http://euanmearns.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-a- nucle...](http://euanmearns.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-nuclear- power-plant/) [2] [https://ourworldindata.org/fossil- fuels](https://ourworldindata.org/fossil-fuels)

<comment><USER24> Er, TWh isn't a measure of power. It's a measure of energy. Presumably that 120,000 TWh is consumption per year?

Then we get

120000 TWH/year * (1 / 24 / 365) hours/year ~= 13.7 TW

So you would need 13700 reactors, not 14 million.

Edit: maybe you were just off by a factor of 1000 in your calculation?

<comment><USER10> Yes, you are right, I was off by a factor of 1000, must have typed '000' one too many times. Sorry.

Also, yes, the TWh was a per year amount.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Here's an open-source chart of carbon dioxide levels globally: [https://carbon.datahub.io](https://carbon.datahub.io)

Data is pulled from MLO on Mauna Loa in Hawaii, the gold standard for data going back to 1958.

<comment><USER26> That is terrifying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I help run AirMiners, the world's largest community of scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs working to pull carbon dixoide from the atmosphere. Check it out here: [http://airminers.org](http://airminers.org)

</comment><comment><USER27> Is this all caused by us humans? I'm totally against pollution caused by us, but for global warming, who is the major source contributing to it, could it be beyond us, e.g. the solar system cycles etc. We had ice age/geenhouse eras in the past without human's existence at all?

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

List of Icehouse and Greenhouse Periods

      A greenhouse period ran from 4.6 to 2.4 billion years ago.
      Huronian Glaciation – an icehouse period that ran from 2.4 billion years ago to 2.1 billion years ago
      A greenhouse period ran from 2.1 billion to 720 million years ago.
      Cryogenian – an icehouse period that ran from 720 to 635 million years ago, at times the entire Earth was frozen over
      A greenhouse period ran from 635 million years ago to 450 million years ago.
      Andean-Saharan glaciation – an icehouse period that ran from 450 to 420 million years ago
      A greenhouse period ran from 420 million years ago to 360 million years ago.
      Late Paleozoic Ice Age – an icehouse period that ran from 360 to 260 million years ago
      A greenhouse period ran from 260 million years ago to 33.9 million years ago
      Late Cenozoic Ice Age – the current icehouse period which began 33.9 million years ago

<comment><USER28> Yes, it is all caused by us. The cycles you speak of would currently put is into a cooling phase. Check out this article: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribution_of_recent_climate_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribution_of_recent_climate_change)

<comment><USER27> if that's true, maybe we should just heating up the earth while it's going to be frozen, so we're actually doing our future generations a favor?

<comment><USER28> We're overdoing it a bit. We should have stopped about ten to twenty years ago. Already today it's warmer than it has ever been while humans were around.

<comment><USER27> if we did not do it, could the earth be having a much cold climate then? I really want to have a balanced view on this climate topic, but either side is too extreme about supporting their one-sided points, just like the news medias.

science should be totally based on facts, but what I saw is that, some studies are sponsored by big industries, some are supported by political parties, some individual opinions are threatened, how chaotic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Some facts: [https://fee.org/articles/5-surprising-scientific-facts- about...](https://fee.org/articles/5-surprising-scientific-facts-about-earth- s-climate/)

</comment><comment><USER30> Every time I read a new climate change article or headline, I think about how much of a squandered opportunity the MIT Media Lab represents. It has a budget of $80MM, access to some of the best minds on the planet, and not beholden to the perverse incentives that afflict politicians and corporate executives. Are we supposed to believe it's impossible to generate useful and commercializable IP while simultaneously tackling climate change?

If anyone wants to brainstorm... what would it take for universities to announce cross-campus climate change initiatives dedicated to rethinking basic social systems? The California-China Climate Change Institute is the only one that I know of (1).

(1) [https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Jerry-Brown- to-...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Jerry-Brown-to-head- California-China-institute-to-14454114.php#photo-16392889)

</comment><comment><USER31> Climate change is a symptom, the underlying problem is our divorce from Nature.

There are other symptoms: plastic is _everywhere_ ; insects and birds are vanishing; etc.

We treat the world as source and sink when it is really cyclical.

 _Applied ecology_ ("Permaculture", regenerative agriculture, "food forests", etc.) shows that we can supply _most_ of our needs locally and within our Solar energy budget: food, waste processing, medicine, fuel, building materials, etc. And it's _fun_ and _easy_.

</comment><comment><USER32> Climate change is a process. To be clear, I believe it is happening and that human lifestyle decisions contribute to it.

That said, snapshots of floods and droughts - which happen all the time regardless - are a distraction. At an extreme, they give ammo to the deniers as they can look at such and article and say, "Floods? Droughts? No news here. Mother Nature at work."

</comment><comment><USER28> At the time of writing, this story has 186 points and is 2 hours old. It doesn't appear on the front page of HN anymore whereas plenty of older stories with fewer votes do. This pattern can be observed with all submissions related to climate change. Can someone explain this to me?

</comment><comment><USER33> The fact that these photos are so beautiful makes me uncomfortable. Without context, these are simply beautiful pictures of nature. With context, it's terrifying.

</comment><comment><USER34> How humans are melting, drying, and flooding Earth.

</comment><comment><USER35> I have talked to many people on this. I don't think you can teach the ignorant people facts.

I wonder if you taught them philosophy, if all would fall into place.

<comment><USER36> (Note: I edited out a big chunk of text that contained personal details that I am not sure I want to have set in stone online. I think the comment still makes sense, but in case it doesn't, please just ask to clarify how statement B logically follows from statement A, or in case A seems to be missing altogether, just how come I think B is true.)

My world view changed dramatically over the past, say, five years, with all the news that has been coming at us, friends that talk about it, and a tiny bit of research (actually that's just opening Wikipedia whenever someone on reddit says something that sounds off). Climate change wasn't a big topic for me before that, partially because my parents hardly talked about it, school barely mentioned it, and I didn't have to make many choices of my own. Now I do and now it's also a bunch in the news, and now I also bring it up with friends and talk about it to colleagues. It just takes time to spread through society.

I don't agree that there is a certain group of "ignorant people" that can never be taught versus <insert name for the opposing group>, especially when you put it in a way that makes it sound like the group of ignorant people on this planet that can never be taught is very large.

> I wonder if you taught them philosophy

What does that have to do with anything? I don't know exactly what philosophy _is_ , but I'm pretty sure I don't need it to understand that the climate is going to shit from our carbon-based waste gases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Why is it so hard to find actual satellite images of the norther polar ice cap?

<comment><USER16> Probably because satellites in LEO are too low to get such a broad view, and the camera-equipped satellites that are higher up are all over the equator.

<comment><USER38> I found several. The most recent: [https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/content/noaa- shares-first-new-vi...](https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/content/noaa-shares-first- new-view-north-pole-earth-day)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I know I will be downvoted for stating a fact but I agree with you.

The gist of the so called environmentalists is (factually, these really are their proposals when you look at their numbers): ok USA and EU, you have to urgently stop your emissions, even if that means total economic breakdown. China and specially India, it's ok you can continue your emissions, and increase then by even more than the all 1st world will cut theirs (even if they cut it to 0), that's just fine since your are entitled to it because you didn't do it in the past.

End result: a planet with even more emissions than today and a destroyed economy in the western world.

But somehow, this will save the planet according to people pushing this catastrophic scenario.

Sorry no, these people aren't pushing major climate action to save the planet, they are doing it because they think it's hip to push this idea that the Western way of life should be destroyed to give way to their political ideology.

<comment><USER40> The more I hear environmentalists talk, the more skeptical I get to be about climate change. The fact that they've been predicting doom and gloom since I was a kid in the 80's makes me kind of doubt their predictive ability, but I figure that if they're right and we don't do anything, that would really suck, so I tune in just long enough to listen to what they say. After a few hours of "I'll hate you forever and never forgive you if you don't do what I say", eventually they get around to actually saying what they want me to do: and it's always the same. Vote liberal. Even if I bought into the climate change alarmism, I'd still doubt their sincerity when they tell me the only thing I can do is elect liberal politicians: the Democrats had a super majority in the U.S. government for years and used it to do exactly nothing about climate change. I see no confirmation in their actions that they really believe what they're saying.

<comment><USER41> If you think that the government under Obama didn't do anything for improving quality of air and water in the US, you are just trying not to see the facts. And if you haven't noticed, there is a whole oil lobby that has been pushing money into the GOP machine trying to discredit climate change for decades. US is (for the better) a federal structure, and nothing happens by fiat forever.

Could the democrats have done better? Definitely. Are they better than the republicans in responding better to these issues? You have to be obtuse on purpose to believe otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Since when was nature.com a political organization?

<comment><USER43> Climate change is not political

<comment><USER44> If only you could convince the deniers of that. Speaking from a US perspective, they seem to think that the "libs" just want to hobble our economy because they hate "success" and "strength" and don't actually believe there is an existential crisis at hand.

<comment><USER45> The US has lowered it's CO2 emissions 10% since 2000. Thanks to the "right" and fracking. 16% in the EU.

If you eliminated US/EU production of CO2, atmospheric CO2 levels would still rise. The slight warming that would take place as China and India modernize their life will still happen.

<comment><USER28> If you eliminate US/EU production of CO2, atmospheric CO2 levels would rise 24% slower. If you added in a carbon tax that it levied on imports from countries that don't implement an equivalent system you can bet that China would lower its emissions too. If you're very fancy you can also offer to install alternative energy in foreign countries at cost price.

<comment><USER45> >If you eliminate US/EU production of CO2, atmospheric CO2 levels would rise 24% slower.

Thank you for confirming my point.

>If you added in a carbon tax that it levied on imports from countries that don't implement an equivalent system you can bet that China would lower its emissions too. If you're very fancy you can also offer to install alternative energy in foreign countries at cost price.

So the pitch here is... Let's risk war with a Nuclear power with a tariff stick and for a carrot offer a way to a worse standard of living then US/EU. This sounds real viable.

<comment><USER28> The alternative is risking war with a nuclear power for food and land that can be used for agriculture.

<comment><USER45> If anything, increased CO2 and temperatures is going _expand_ the amount of available land for agriculture. CO2, it's the gas plants crave my friend.

<comment><USER28> It might expand the available land for agricultural use, but that land is not going to be in the same spots as our agriculture is now. What do you think China will do when agriculture becomes harder in China, but there is all this Russian wilderness that used to be frozen and is becoming fertile? Or the US with Canada? Where do you think hundreds of millions of Africans will go when equatorial regions become uninhabitabe without AC?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Netflix Pulls the Plug on Feature Designed to Get Kids Addicted to Netflix - <AUTHOR> https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/03/netflix-patch-testing-kids-binge-watching <comment><USER2> Lots of folks/companies are going to lose long-term as a result of bad A/B testing driven decision making. I suspect the decline of the Facebook feed might be attributed to this as well (maybe even the recent polls of Trump's twitter practices[1]). Generally these sorts of things don't really consider long term fatigue and other important factors, and take short term micro- benchmark wins as success. On the flip side, some attribute not A/B testing to the failure of the SnapChat redesign[2].

Is there anyway to do this properly? I can imagine the problem will get worse and worse as we reduce human evaluation of A/B test results and automatically make real-time decisions through software and ML.

[1] [https://www.businessinsider.com/poll-shows-trump-appears- to-...](https://www.businessinsider.com/poll-shows-trump-appears-to-be-losing- somewhat-supporters-with-antics-2018-12)

[2] [https://www.engadget.com/2018/10/05/snap-evan-spiegel-app- re...](https://www.engadget.com/2018/10/05/snap-evan-spiegel-app-redesign- rushed/)

<comment><USER3> I mean one way to do it properly is to actually listen to your users. So many corporations claim to have that as a priority and when you look at real, actual feedback, they really don't. How hard is it to look at the masses of complaints about autoplay or notification spam or... any numbers of dark patterns you could name and decide that you shouldn't do that?

<comment><USER4> I'd assume #num_customer_complaints is not part of the A/B metrics. If people complain but don't follow through with actions A/B probably _should_ ignore it.

<comment><USER5> I'm not an MBA, but I imagine there's something where if you wait until you know for a fact that customers are leaving for specific and known reasons, you're waiting too long to fix it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nothing drove my adoption of prime video faster then the auto play on Netflix. To their credit I contacted them asking if there was a way to turn it off and at least spoke with a friendly person about how awful it made the experience.

<comment><USER7> On the other hand my Amazon Video app (Roku in my tv) is slow as hell and I'm lucky if it doesn't crash (1) on launch, (2) between the homescreen and the video I selected, (3) between the episode selection and the video actually playing, (4) sometime in the first 10 minutes, (5) randomly thereafter.

<comment><USER8> My Android TV box randomly turns itself on and plays a video about once a day, but man, you have it worse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Several Netflix UI changes have been pretty anti user. I'm more upset at the way they mask an incomplete catalog by pretending most Hitchcock films or French new wave don't even exist. I'm more upset about auto play. I'm more upset at the retooling of the recommendation engine away from finding gems you didn't know you would like to just finding ways to convince you to watch Netflix owned content.

Adding a badge system? Not wonderful, but basically just brings them up to par with almost anything else on the internet. If we want to oppose badge systems, and maybe we should, we should start with the entire gaming industry and social media.

Netflix has so many other sins that they have raised the bar on my outrage. That in itself is sad...

<comment><USER10> > I'm more upset about auto play.

What's upsetting about autoplay?? If you are truly "upset" about things netflix does did you ever think maybe you should just not subscribe to it?

<comment><USER9> > What's upsetting about autoplay??

I should have been clear, I meant the trailers. I'm browsing for specific content but getting blasted by ads for Netflix originals.

> did you ever think maybe you should just not subscribe to it?

I often don't. They've pushed me from a habitual subscriber to an occasional subscriber. Perversely that means I'm opting out of providing them ux data.

But in general people can have complaints about something even if it's not a dealbreaker. For another example, the ux on aging isn't great, but it beats the alternative.

<comment><USER11> It's really painful to browse Netflix, I want to read the descriptions, but I get a loud trailer with every selection. There's no way to turn it off afaik, so I mute my tv whenever the Netflix app is open.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Netflix's interface was best when they still shipped DVDs in boxes. Ever since they stopped that it has been a steady descent into the dark patterns of social / mobile / eyeball counting user interface fail.

<comment><USER13> When were they in boxes? I thought they always came in the envelopes. Am I not remembering far enough back?

<comment><USER12> Envelopes, whatever. They cared more about interface and recommendations when they were an e-commerce company and not focused on pushing original content.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This was a silly product feature, it would have killed the quality of their viewership data.

As soon as you reward someone for watching, they'll figure out how to script it. They'll load it up, set it going turn off the speaker and the monitor and go to bed.

It wouldn't have increased my engagement, but it would remove me as a data point!

<comment><USER15> They can probably flag autoplays in the statistics? And, to be fair, Netflix is not making more money for more streaming, or have I missed something. Autoplay should actually cost them money for bandwidth wasted in the case the customer don't want the next episode.

I would not consider autoplay the next episode a dark pattern.

<comment><USER13> Are we talking about 2 different types of autoplay? Yes, the autoplay of the next episode feature can be a waste of bandwidth, but that's why they put up the "are you still watching" after X number of episodes/TRT/whatever. Besides, it's a nice feature when you are trying to marathon through stuff, especially when they allow you skip openings/recaps of something you just saw. I pushed for my company to allow the Play All on DVDs to do this very thing.

It's the autoplay of trailers/previews while browsing their library that is the most annoying. This is definitely a waste of bandwidth for me. And while maybe not a dark pattern, it's annoying as much as popup UI stuff or in social feeds, ads in news, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Hindsight is 20/20 but this idea is definitely one of the worst ideas I've heard when it comes to applied gameification. Perhaps unlocking some sort of extra content would've been better, but handing out badges is such a deliberate way to signal to parents that "we are trying to hook your kids".

</comment><comment><USER17> Yuk. Speaking of dark design patterns; the link hijacks my back button in Safari. So when I go back, I'll get a popover with some ad.

</comment><comment><USER18> I find it very obnoxious how the Netflix app for Apple TV autoplays previews of titles when you're browsing and doesn't let you disable that behaviour. As a result I rarely open Netflix except when I already know what I want to watch.

<comment> B-Con Autoplay is a cancer that spread across the popular media platforms. Facebook, YouTube, and Netflix seem to have all abandoned the idea that the app shouldn't play distracting video and sound _without prompting_. (I haven't checked Hulu in years, I don't know what they're up to.)

Remember when it was annoying pop-ups that auto-played video and sound? Now it's a feature to extract as many watch-time minutes from users as possible. I guarantee it's all A/B testing looking for a few points of uptick in watch time.

<comment><USER19> There is none of this nonsense on Hulu (from my phone to Chromecast). I recently dropped Netflix for Hulu simply because of the more interesting portfolio.

<comment><USER20> Same here. I literally found myself scrolling Netflix for many, many minutes on end. It essentially became Facebook. I don't know if the issue is their catalog has expanded with so many originals that it's hard to find something to watch and or that not having ratings (to tell if something sucks) me to not watch.

Sure they have some stellar content but they also have a lot of crap.

<comment><USER19> The Hulu Originals, as sparse as they are, are outstanding across the board. It's like the early days of Netflix Originals.

<comment><USER20> Plus if I want to watch current TV or more recent shows alongside originals it's available on Hulu. Netflix has lost a lot of the more bingeable shows and it really doesn't have any current content.

I get that Netflix is a different beast than Hulu in many ways. But for cord cutters Hulu feels more like the total package.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> What's the reasoning behind this?

The subscription is so cheap I don't care about it. There is enough stuff I want to watch that I regularly use it.

But if I never used it, why care? Wouldn't I be the perfect customer? Pays the subscription but doesn't consume resources?

<comment><USER22> People who don't use it are probably more likely to churn relative to customers who watch content, and would be less likely to share Netflix with friends. And that expected loss due to churn is probably more expensive than the resource costs of a customer who watches. I don't have the actual answer but they undoubtedly perform this kind of calculation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I recently added some plugins to Kodi so I can watch Netflix from within Kodi.

It has improved the experience so much I am actually using it more.

<comment><USER24> What kind of plugins? I'd like to poke around here.

<comment><USER23> Instructions here:

[https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=329767](https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=329767)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The article wasn't really worth the time. It tried to make a mountain out of a molehill: Netflix gave badges for watching children's programs as a test of a feature to make Netflix more appealing to watch. The author of the article Yohana Desta just loosely connected it to some narrative where "Netflix is evil and out to zombify your children" for the purpose of, ironically, getting people to read the article because that narrative is more appealing. Just another piece of trash online article designed to catch your eye. No substance, no value. Just throw it in the trash bin and move on.

</comment><comment><USER26> Note: The article is from March 2018

</comment><comment><USER27> Explain to me how there is even such a feature in the first case?

Adults sure, but what decent human sets out to get kids addicted???

<comment><USER28> There's a reason why McDonalds gives out toys with Happy Meals and does free birthday parties for kids...

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Fuck adults, who even remotely come up with such ideas. They (also) are our enemies!

</comment><comment><USER30> Yeah, the biggest issue here is that no tech giant has burst because of these unsavory practices yet. It's tough to say, don't do this or that, when your competition will and the consumer won't care.

</comment><comment><USER31> > the company blatantly tells its investors that its competitors aren't just > other streaming platforms, but rather literally anything viewers do in their > leisure time that is not watching Netflix—quite literally including "going > out to dinner with friends or enjoying a glass of wine with their partner, > just to name a few."

Why optimize for screen time? They get payed through monthly subscriptions not per minute. Shouldn't they optimize for user satisfaction, or lock in then?

</comment><comment> alok-g Off the topic:

Beautiful website design! Very elegant use of space above the fold. I likewise love Nautil.us design too.

Which themes (Wordpress or some static site generator) would be similar?

</comment><comment><USER32> Viewing things like going to dinner "the competition" is, in my opinion, immoral. This is Netflix serving their shareholders instead of their customers.

</comment><comment><USER33> Reading the part about them wanting to monopolise all leisure time is tipping me towards unsubscribing next year.

</comment><comment><USER34> Article has a brain damaged writing style and takes two pages to tell us what the feature is. Apparently, you get a badge for watching a show's entire series of episodes.

<comment><USER35> > brain damaged writing style

Can you think of a better way to express this criticism?

<comment><USER36> Having suffered multiple concussions, what's wrong with that phrasing? Is everything offensive nowadays?

<comment><USER37> Calling the author brain-damaged doesn't say why the writing is bad, its just ad hominem

<comment><USER38> It's calling the writing style brain-damaged (making it a metaphor). Similarly, saying "your writing style is beautiful" and "you are beautiful" express very different meanings. Just as an ugly person can have a beautiful writing style, a healthy person can write something in a brain-damaged writing style.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> So is the TV the new parent now? What ever happened to good parenting?

</comment><comment><USER40> Kudos to Netflix. I pay Netflix money every month so I can watch a wide selection of movies and tv episodes. Apart from the script writing itself, I don't want any games played with my attention or my kids attention. This is the big thing that sets Netflix apart for me from other internet companies: I know that they are selling me a service and not selling my attention to others. As long as they keep doing that and have a good selection of movies and shows they will have my business.

<comment> Joe-Z >This is the big thing that sets Netflix apart for me from other internet companies

Oh please. By some miracle every Netflix-produced thing has a >90%-match with my preferences, yet somehow when I type in movies that I want to watch I find Netflix had them in their catalogue but never bothered to suggest them to me.

They want you to see self-produced stuff and then a show and not a movie (so you stay on longer) and not to find the best matches for your taste.

Also, giving them Kudos for not doing something that should have been a no- starter in the first place sets a pretty low bar for giving someone Kudos.

<comment><USER41> So you don't think there's a difference between:

A) A company that makes money from you spending as much time on their website as possible

B) A website that makes a set amount of money per user because you voluntarily pay them every month

Company A is not inclined to optimize for user happiness, whereas company B absolutely is. If these two companies do not take different approaches, then one or both of them is doing something wrong.

Edit: And for the record, I do think that on the whole, Netflix is behaving far too much like Company A despite having Company B's business model.

<comment> Joe-Z Yes, I think there should be a difference between companies A and B and obviously Netflix has its upsides like no Netflix-unrelated) ads. However... your edit sums it up pretty nicely ;)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Fears Grow of an Eviction Apocalypse - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/eviction-crisis-coronavirus-351bb693-a04f-4ea1-a27d-dceb5163af14.html <comment><USER2> The whole model of housing is broken in most countries,including the US. It's interesting that entire economies are willing to subsidise food to make it as available as possible, but the second most important thing in human life- shelter,is completely overlooked. I'm not arguing that everybody should live in large mansions free of charge, however the fact that people who work do struggle to keep roof over their heads either via rent or mortgages is absurd. Also,how society deals with periods of uncertainty,or difficulty. For instance someone takes a mortgage for 30 years period and then ends up having some temporary hiccups on year 5 that can be resolved in a few months ( i.e. unemployment). So instead of saying something like: 'ok, you are having difficult times,which is li ke 1% of the entire period,so you'll simply have to pay this longer', we say: 'tough luck, get out!'.

<comment><USER3> We've tried free and low cost housing for decades in the US and its been a disaster every single time. Every. Single. Time.

<comment><USER4> Why is this the only other option? How about removing rent controls and other regulations around building smaller low cost units and then charging a 15% vacancy tax on any unit that is empty for 3 months?

This way we are increasing supply and not encouraging hoarding.

<comment><USER5> "regulations around building smaller low cost units";

I think this is a fundamental problem for dealing with low cost housing issues. Many cities have building regulations mandating minimum sizes for apartments, and requirements for a minimum number of parking spaces, even for apartment complexes close to public transportation. This makes it impossible for builders to build low cost housing. The problem of low cost housing has been around for a long time; the pandemic is just making it a much bigger problem.

Unfortunately, building an apartment complex takes time, and if the pandemic crisis is resolved (for some definition of resolved) in a year or 18 months, the low cost housing problem will just go back to what it was before the pandemic.

<comment><USER6> I mean, to some extent, what you're saying is, "Cities require apartments to be better than prison cells, and it's hard to make massive profits making genuinely livable housing that can be provided to people who don't make much money."

Which...yeah, the purpose of low-income housing should be to provide housing that people can still thrive in, no matter their income, not to make massive profits for the real estate or construction companies.

The cities themselves should be footing the bill to make sure their people are well-cared-for. It's already been proven in multiple instances to cost less than dealing with homelessness and its consequences, even if the people they're providing housing for can't pay a single cent (at first).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This hit me personally (somewhat) yesterday - I'm not being evicted, but learned that my apartment was rented out from me during the COVID-19 crisis (used in past tense) yesterday. Struggling with enough other things that a move certainly wasn't envisioned in my future.

I was already dealing with a ton of uncertainty, but this one now takes the cake.

Unfortunately, I was predicting something like this while volunteering at the homeless shelter. More people are closer to being homeless than they realize. Little did I know it might be me.

<comment><USER8> > I'm not being evicted, but my apartment was rented out from me

Non-USian here: what's the distinction?

<comment><USER7> I should have said rented out from under me - It was rented by someone sight unseen in the middle of COVID without them notifying me I wouldn't be able to renew my lease.

<comment><USER8> Is this a thing in the US? In most of the world that would be impossible without the landlord giving proper notice that they're not going to let you renew, and a legally permissible reason why.

<comment><USER9> Further down they say the lease ends in August depending on the state that's probably enough time given they're probably not just finding this out today. I don't think they're forced to have a particular reason for not renewing in the States just a notification period. (not 100% sure I only rented for a few years and never had to really dig in on my local rights)

<comment><USER7> I absolutely knew the lease ended in August. There was no notification, until yesterday, that my home had already been rented out. I also had the intention to renew said lease, but it's all up in the air at this point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The ever-increasing income disparity in the US was eventually going to become a breakdown (and a class war). It will happen sooner, thanks to this unexpected global health crisis.

Are they really going to throw the guy who stocks their Walmart shelves out on the street? If they do, who will stock the shelves? Who will work the meat factories?

I have come to believe that the ruling elite must on average be low intelligence, or at least incapable of simple reasoning. Personal greed has displaced nearly every other thought. Unfortunately, the stark realization may not occur for another generation; so those who have done the most damage will likely be dead without ever paying a personal cost.

<comment><USER11> Well if you consider the fact that the wealth of the elite is generally inherited, they should be no smarter than anyone else.

<comment><USER12> Yes, but the elites can afford the best education to their children, better food. So the children are smarter and after a couple of generations, the gap is huge. That's how meritocracy fails, first the smart and hard-working become wealthy but then they invest in their children more and more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There's already a lot of civil unrest not from just the BLM protesters but also the people scared to lose their jobs, homes, etc. before that.

We are paying for our lack of social safety net now. There's enough people already questioning the legitimacy of our liberal democracy.

Having lots of people lose the place they live (effectively making people who have played by the rules and bought into the system) would certainly create a lot of unnecessary instability. Calls for revolution that were actually shared by a big enough population and then gaining steam, calls for civil war, and a fractured political apparatus too impotent to reign it in before it gets out of control.

<comment><USER14> >We are paying for our lack of social safety net now.

While that might be part of the problem, how much of it is self inflicted? Even people who can afford to save, don't. They blow all their money on a lifestyle. ATM I am trying to gently advise a co-worker to really start thinking about saving for his retirement. 50 years old and it's paycheck to paycheck (6 figure salary)for him.

Some people create their own rainy days....

<comment><USER15> Tax such incomes at higher rates and invest in the infrastructure that would necessarily support such people anyway were they to become destitute. As a surprising benefit, people who do require welfare of some kind for reasons beyond their control will also be helped. Avoid passing moral judgement on post-tax expenditure - if people live less than ideal lives at that point, that's indeed on them.

Is that an unreasonable perspective?

<comment><USER16> It's considered a reasonable perspective in Europe, by and large. I guess one's opinion depends on whether one expects those in control of tax expenditure to provide welfare in an effective way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So I sold my rental unit years ago...the landlord business just isn't as much fun as the brochure says it should be. But if I were still in it, and I had reasonable tenants, I would be doing everything I could to avoid evicting them. Who, exactly, are you going to get to replace them in this environment? What's the point of going through that miserable (for everybody involved) process?

<comment><USER18> I think many small landlords would do as you describe.

But I suspect many are big organizations that may be less flexible.

<comment><USER19> For the 'big orgs' they will also want to get in early. You don't want to be the last one evicting people - which is disgusting, but is the face of big business.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Landlords and lenders need to share the pain of this debacle.

You can't forcibly close the real economy, and expect it to still pay rent and interest as though nothing happened.

Just deferring rent or loan interest hardly helps at all, in fact it just creates a bigger problem down the road, as the article shows.

It must be waived.

</comment><comment><USER21> The US homeless population stands at 567K [0] at the time in 2019. And for those that live in urban areas, it feels like the number is twice that already. I've met a few who were already at a marginal state prior to 2009 and the GFC is what pushed them over that precipice. Things haven't gotten a whole lot better for those that have managed to hang on to the lower class. And if you were paying attention the working class either didn't vote or voted for a demagogue to stick it to the do nothing elites.

[0] [https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in- america/homeless...](https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in- america/homelessness-statistics/state-of-homelessness-2020/)

</comment><comment><USER22> Interested to see how this plays out.

Should we expect new political measures and subsidies?

If so, when will the 'stimulus' end or will it become the new normal?

Will lenders, landlords and tenants negotiate among themselves? Bulk foreclosures and massive vacancies will hurt landlords and lenders respectively.

<comment><USER23> > Bulk foreclosures and massive vacancies will hurt landlords and lenders > respectively.

Will they? At least for commercial real estate in large cities where shops are going bust due to high rents, it is often claimed that owners are fine with letting the space stay unoccupied for long periods of time, because they are playing some kind of long game.

<comment><USER24> The tax system is architected to benefit commercial landlords. The government basically pays you to hold underutilized property, as you can use the losses to offset income in other parts of the business at a premium rate.

On top of that, property taxes are usually based on revenue, so holding property is cheap. I did work for a guy who owned a bunch of vacant lots that paid less taxes than my house. He "rented" the lots to some other affiliated company, who in turn made a bunch of money on parking, etc.

The tiny tear that I would shed for real estate people is smaller then even cable and telephone companies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> In France this is going to be the opposite.

When you rent an appartment or house to someone, your have basically no way to get rid of them. Once every three years you can break the lease ONLY if you make it your primary living place, or your immediate family.

Otherwise your are stuck.

No payments? You are obligated to propose solutions. Evictions take years adheres more years of trying to accommodate the renters.

Vandalism? Nobody cares.

You are on vacation and your house us squatted for more than 48h? You cannot get back without a special permission from the court. It will take some time for your primary house, and infinite time for a secondary one.

So there should be something in the middle.

</comment><comment><USER26> Personally, I've seen a _lot_ more 'for sale' signs in my neighborhood recently, though their prices seem to be about what they were before the pandemic. Zillow says that things a good around here and these are normal summer sales, but it feels off to me.

</comment><comment><USER27> Ancaps should understand that Private Property, like Government, is an institution that requires the threat of violence to enforce. It's only "defensive force" if you agree to an unlimited right to property, which is the monopoly right to exclude others from using a resource. Step back and think about it.

Some people don't believe in ownership of ideas (patents)

Some people don't believe in ownership of authored data (copyright)

Some people don't believe in ownership of large swaths of land or lakes, resources, including houses etc.

Most people believe in enforcing chattel property.

But as you get further from that, you need an organization and laws to enforce it. At some point the right to property must be balanced against other rights, eg the right of a squatter to have shelter from the elements vs the right of a landlord to enforce rent over 50,000 properties.

<comment><USER22> Most of these topics have been argued/explained at length elsewhere.

>Ancaps should understand...

Likewise, actually reading some of these arguments would help you understand the positions advanced by anarcho-capitalists.

<comment><USER27> Would love to see links to articles addressing my points above. Are they in agremeent? Pushing back?

<comment><USER22> [https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=privatization+of+securi...](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=privatization+of+security+site:mises.org&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart)

[https://cdn.mises.org/qjae2_4_7.pdf](https://cdn.mises.org/qjae2_4_7.pdf)

[https://cdn.mises.org/22_1_23.pdf](https://cdn.mises.org/22_1_23.pdf)

There are various positions. Generally most disagree with the concept of intellectual property as it is now.

There are some who would disagree that property as in land can be owned outside of the ability to utilize it. Many point to the first principle of ownership stemming from utilization and improvements upon the land.

Generalizing about ancaps is a difficult proposition. "Herding cats", is an apt description. However your final statement seemed divorced from anything advocated by anarcho-capitalists.

There are real pragmatic concerns about advancing anything outside of the current paradigm. Even within the narrow confines of what is possible with the current system, we see deadlock and endless bickering.

At the end of the day reading political philosophies can be interesting, but not fruitful in the real sense of bringing about change. Just the same, misconstruing the arguments advanced within these philosophies isn't helpful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Having so many people move around in a pandemic could get awful.

Hard to predict in any case, but if the virus gets worse the economy will get even worse.

</comment><comment><USER29> We knew housing prices couldn't grow forever, at some point there has to be a revolution wether civil or economic.</comment>


Namecheap will discontinue several Uniregistry and XYZ domain extensions - <AUTHOR> https://onlinedomain.com/2017/08/16/domain-name-news/namecheap-will-discontinue-several-uniregistry-xyz-domain-extensions/ <comment><AUTHOR> For the average user who doesn't understand that there are different corporations governing different TLDs, this is all rather frightening and trust beyond the com/org/net tlds will likely continue to erode. I would have expected ICANN to have thought this through more carefully.</comment>


Learn Godot Game Development - <AUTHOR> https://godottutorials.pro/complete-course/ <comment><USER3> I came back to Godot this week, after tying an earlier 2.x build. I've had a 3D game I've wanted to develop for years, and gave it a shot awhile back. Unfortunately, the tools capable of building what I wanted had too steep of a learning curve for my free time. Godot, while incredibly intuitive, wasn't performant enough to make what I wanted.

I built 3.2, including a fork of the runtime for raspberry pi (frt on github). About 3 hours of youtube videos later, 3 hours of sweat, and I had a functional 3D tech demo of the idea I had.

It's well worth a look, and per geokon's comment, I too was against the team implementing a new language, but have since come to love it. It's Python, with the correct changes for the use case, and it works well.

<comment><USER4> That's great to here. Hopefully the improvements that are coming with 4.0 will make your demo even more performant.

<comment><USER5> Using C# in Godot instead of GDScript results in better performance. Roughly 4x better compared to GDScript in some naive cases.[1]

1: [https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/getting_started/scrip...](https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/getting_started/scripting/c_sharp/c_sharp_basics.html#performance- of-c-in-godot)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> to somehow who's used it extensively - was a DSL really necessary?

I find the whole idea of a separate language for just developing interactive media a bit off-putting. It's a huge price to pay over just plugging in an existing mainstream language. no more tutorials, zillions of references a robust toolchain, huge community.. etc. but there must be a good reason for it?

It's also why I don't write elisp. only so many hours in a day.. do I want to be futsing around in a language I won't ever use outside of the sandbox? not really...

it's not longer just a library of some language X, but an ecosystem I need to sorta sell my soul to

<comment><USER7> Game dev here. I've used Godot only a little bit, and Unity a lot.

If you're working a lot with a single game engine, it's nice to have a programming language that's tightly coupled to it.

When Unity moved away from UnityScript (a javascript lookalike but specialised for their purposes) towards C# they had to e.g. change their notation for Coroutines which made it a lot clunkier, so instead of just "yield WaitForSeconds(2.5)" you now do "yield return new WaitForSeconds(2.5f)" AND change your function signature (add an IEnumerable) AND have to change how you call the function - lots of cruft where previously it was all transparent/implicit.

Also, if you're working on your own scripting language you can make it a lot more aware of the particular data and structure of in your own game (games have a lot of data!). I haven't used GDscript/Godot a lot, but I remember the autocomplete being pretty smart and aware of what's going on with your data in a way that would be hard to do with a "commodity" compiler/IDE tool-chain.

It's a lot of work for them to do this on their end, but I think it pays off. It doesn't take much time to learn (especially compared to the api/3d scene interface/etc) and overall it feels slick.

Most of the niceness is sparing on overhead, it's not a fundamentally alien or goofy language. As a games programmer I have to work with a bazillion programming languages anyway; if I'm working on a single project it's a real luxury to have the language be ergonomically fitted to the engine.

There are advantages to using a more general programming language - <USER2> using Lua would've been a good option, but yeah for here at least I think it's fine (ah, another commenter linked [https://docs.godotengine.org/en/3.2/getting_started/scriptin...](https://docs.godotengine.org/en/3.2/getting_started/scripting/gdscript/gdscript_basics.html), which talks about this :) ).

On the other hand, if programming juggernaut Unity couldn't justify keeping Unityscript alive, maybe Godot is also fated to change eventually...

<comment><USER4> I like gdscript and my only gripes are that I use python for work and while gdscript is Python like I find the instances where it doesn't work like Python frustrating. Auto complete works great and it works even better when using typed gdscript, though it's still a new feature, and still has some edge cases that make it a little tricky to use sometimes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> GDScript is reasonable once you've picked it up and Godot shines for 2D games because of simplicity compared to Unity. The main hassle that killed it for me is the effort required to integrate all the 3rd party libraries from ad companies, analytics, etc. There's not really good support on wrappers for common 3rd party libraries on mobile. If you're serious about game dev I'd focus on Unity because that's where the ecosystem is.

</comment><comment><USER9> How timely! I've just started looking into game development and more specifically Godot today. I'm not exactly sure how I should proceed if my intention is to make something like Flappy bird for both Android and iOS - Would Godot be overkill? Should I try to make it with Flutter or React Native (or would those two be even more overkill)? What size would be too big for it?

<comment><USER10> Check out Corona ([https://coronalabs.com/](https://coronalabs.com/)). It's a pretty straightforward 2d engine with support for many platforms. Games are written in lua which isn't hard to learn if you're already familiar with JS.

<comment><USER11> Corona Labs is shutting down in a couple of weeks. While they're releasing everything under a permissive license (MIT) and turning it into an open source project, the future is very uncertain.

<comment><USER12> the lead developer of the engine is continuing and has support on github to continue the development.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Might as well ask here, but if I want to make a third-person shooter, but in the style of S.T.A.L.K.E.R, would Godot work for that? I've started with Unreal, but it's starting to feel way too heavy, but I don't want to reinvent the wheel either.

<comment><USER14> Godot is currently undergoing a major 3D graphics rewrite/update for version 4.0, with Vulkan support and a big push for 3D feature parity with other engines.

You could use Godot if you really like the open-source-ness of it, and don't mind waiting for 4.0 or doing the work to port your game from 3.2 to 4.0. If you want to get going now, use something else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've been waiting for it so long

<comment><USER16> Why? I haven't finished their official guide yet, but I already have lots of bookmarks on different tutorial series like this one

[https://www.youtube.com/user/uheartbeast/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/uheartbeast/videos)

There is no shortage for godot tutorials anymore

<comment><USER17> It's a joke about the play "Waiting for Godot"

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

<comment><USER18> I say this play with Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen.. basically the highlight of my life.

<comment><USER19> Truly one of the best acting duos in history.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Can Godot produce 3D games that are 10x more performant and efficient than Dreams on PS4?

<comment><USER21> Weird comparison to request. Godot doesn't support Ps4. There are some impressive performant demos with Godot, such as Zylann's voxel plugins. It has similar issues as Unity, where if you write things in C# or GDScript, the garbage collector will cause intermittent lags, but C++ is fully supported where you need it.

<comment><USER20> I didn't mean to compare specifically to PS4. I was just clarifying that Dreams is a PS4 game.

The comparison is more about the framework usability vs the quality of the end product.

I'm wondering if Godot is maybe targeting similar audiences as Dreams or if Godot is targeting a more serious developer concerned about things like performance

<comment><USER16> Godot targets both, it's used to teach kids programming KidsCanCode[1] and supports visual programming via VisualScript[2]. Also they work on support for Vulkan (Godot 4.0) for high perf graphic.

1: [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNaPQ5uLX5iIEHUCLmfAgKg/vid...](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNaPQ5uLX5iIEHUCLmfAgKg/videos)

2: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WW8CJQ8jMBM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WW8CJQ8jMBM)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


EFF Pries More Information on Zero Days from the Government - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/01/eff-pries-more-transparency-zero-days-governments-grasp <comment><USER2> I love the EFF and what they do but I always feel like their writing style is so often... I'm not sure how to put it... just kind of over the top? e.g. first paragraph, "the charade is over" ... third "this too doesn't exactly come as a shocker." So much of what they write about is really important but I can't help but think the writing is often maybe too hyperbolic and turns off people that should be following these things closer.

<comment><USER3> Putting the hyperbole in not only makes people click on it but it makes people be more swayed not only by reason but also by feeling . Sharing the article probably makes a significant people Donate to the organization. Disclaimer : I am an EFF member.

<comment><USER4> It sways people away because of feelings, too. I admire what the EFF does but I always have a hard time taking them seriously because of this.

Also, at some point, I think integrity demands reasonable language even if hyperbole is effective. It ends up being a variation on clickbait.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This changes what "responsible disclosure" of security bugs means. It's no longer appropriate to report security bugs just to the vendor and CERT. They _must_ be disclosed publicly to prevent them from being misused by government. It's now irresponsible to delay disclosure.

<comment><USER6> No, this has very little at all to do with reporting to vendors. The USG doesn't have a stockpile of vulnerabilities because vendors give them vulnerability feeds (in fact, there's no evidence that anything like this has ever happened, and that's not surprising, because to make that work, vendors would need to knowingly retain vulnerabilities in software they ship to their customers). The USG has a stockpile of vulnerabilities because it employs researchers and buys vulnerabilities from outside researchers.

That is exactly what the newly unredacted VEP the EFF is writing about says: agencies discover vulnerabilities and report them to an internal clearinghouse. That _may or may not_ result in alerts to vendors.

Reporting to vendors remains a solid way of killing vulnerabilities, so long as researchers are aggressive about it (the 60-90 day open publication window seems to do the trick).

(This is my field).

<comment><USER7> While it's not stockpiles of vulnerabilities, I don't think it's valid to say there's no evidence of vulnerability feeds. For example a bigger company can get early notification of embargoed vulnerabilities for various projects they use, sometimes with early patches.

I'd be surprised if USG didn't have access to pretty much every important feed like that. This gives every notified party at least a few days to act. (defence or otherwise)

<comment><USER8> [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-06-14/u-s- agenci...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-06-14/u-s-agencies- said-to-swap-data-with-thousands-of-firms) confirms it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Programming FAQ (Python) - <AUTHOR> http://docs.python.org/faq/programming

<comment><USER2> I like especially the explanation why Python has a _proper_ modulo operator rather than the mathematically really annoying one of C (and most other languages):

[http://docs.python.org/faq/programming#why- does-22-10-return...](http://docs.python.org/faq/programming#why- does-22-10-return-3)

</comment><comment><USER3> Erm.... Is an Erlang day for Python developing? Just curious because I notice similar Python topics on the front page. I'm not saying there's anything _wrong_ with them. They just seem like odd topics to come up all at the same time.

<comment><USER4> Topics tend to cluster, as a topic is in peoples minds they tend to be more likely to find more articles and post them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is really cool. I can't believe I haven't come across it before! Thanks for posting

<comment><USER6> How often do you visit /usr/share/doc/python? This FAQ has been there for a decade, at least.

<comment><USER7> it's from version 2.7 doc. so it's far less than a decade.</comment></comment></comment>


How I reached 2 million downloads on the app store - <AUTHOR>

Last week I crossed the two million total downloads mark with my apps.
The apps are all build with a cross-translator called Monkey (http://www.monkeycoder.co.nz), but I'm currently switching to cocos2d-x.
I'm happy to answer any questions you all have.
Feel free to read my blog post about it:
http://intermediaware.com/blog/how-i-reached-2000000-downloads-on-the-app-store <comment><USER2> Hi, did you mean that just creating more apps you could reach 2M downloads? could you share more about, Search App optimization, or if you have some share-feature or something that can explain more about your success?

Best,</comment>


Apple & Samsung's "Profit Share" Trap - <AUTHOR> http://www.tech-thoughts.net/2013/05/apple-samsung-profit-share-trap.html <comment><AUTHOR> Same story repeated at SAI/Business Insider [http://www.businessinsider.com/why-market-share-matters- for-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/why-market-share-matters-for-apples- iphone-2013-5)</comment>


Selling Source Code - <AUTHOR> http://mattgemmell.com/selling-source-code/#resubmit

<comment><AUTHOR> I resubmitted this as it didn't get any attention or comments 3 years ago. I thought it was an interesting read and wanted to hear peoples experiences with or opinions on selling source code.</comment>


Front-end Development Tooling Survey - <AUTHOR> http://ashn.uk/survey-tooling-2016 <comment><USER2> Sometimes I feel like I am behind with CSS. I have not used LESS or SASS or any others on any production application that I work on. It's usually Bootstrap and then custom CSS to override. I have messed around and learned the basics of LESS/SASS but nothing beyond that.

Am I behind?

<comment><USER3> For your own projects it doesn't matter, as long as you're productive. If you're looking for employment in the frontend-sector, you should get used to SASS.

<comment><USER4> Except when it comes to writing CSS, it doesn't matter how skilled you are at CSS, one simply can not be as equally productive without using a preprocessor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Filled out your survey, looking forward to the results. Here is another one that was taken earlier this year for reference. [http://stateofjs.com/](http://stateofjs.com/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Not a troll attempt, just a simple question from a guy who stopped to care about frontend a while ago : isn't web tech badly designed because of successive feature bendings, and aren't all those hyped frameworks, transpilers, package managers and stuff just attempts to fix it ? The X Window System got it right back in the 80's, I don't understand what's going on here.</comment>


ITunes App Store: Seller Statistics - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/oreillymedia/us-itunes-app-store-sellers?type=presentation

<comment><AUTHOR> RWW has a short summary of the slide show. The original author is O'Reilly's Ben Lorica.

[http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/app_store_data_from_ore...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/app_store_data_from_oreilly.php#more)</comment>


Rockset does to Elasticsearch, what Snowflake did to Redshift - <AUTHOR> https://rockset.com/press/rockset-shatters-operational-barriers-for-real-time-analytics/ <comment><USER2> Amazing stuff. We have been investigating for a few years and wondering why someone has not done this.

Congratulations.. Looks exciting.

Any plans to run this on premises with serverless stack being available for on premise also.</comment>


Suppressing Innovation: Bell Laboratories and Magnetic Recording (1993) - <AUTHOR> https://www.jstor.org/stable/3106703?seq=1 <comment><USER2> Here's a PDF [https://sci-hub.tw/10.2307/3106703](https://sci- hub.tw/10.2307/3106703)

<comment><USER3> Also [https://fdocuments.net/document/suppressing-innovation- bell-...](https://fdocuments.net/document/suppressing-innovation-bell- laboratories-and-magnetic-recording.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> TLDR: "Management feared that the availability of a recording device would make customers less willing to use the telephone system and so undermine the concept of universal service. (...) The fear took two forms. First, if conversations became matters of record in the same way as letters or other contracts, managers felt that customers would abandon the telephone for critical negotiations and return to the mails, where a slip of the tongue would not prove fatal. (...) Second, if conversations could be recorded, matters of an illegal or immoral nature, which some executives estimated made up as much as one third of all calls, would no longer be discussed by phone. (...) Although one might expect that managers would stress the economic half of this equation, in fact they paid far more attention to the question of trust and image. During this period AT&T had constant public relations problems, largely the result of antitrust investigations. Thus, the fact that magnetic recording might create a major upset with only a minor gain for a few customers who could afford to have their calls answered automatically was simply not acceptable for managers concerned with preserving AT&T's good name."

</comment><comment><USER5> The 1947 anti-trust lawsuit was settled by the 1956 consent decree which forced AT&T to exit all businesses not related to providing a national telecommunications network and which also required royalty-free licensing of all patents. For example, the Westrex sound recording business for movie production was sold to Litton.

This undoubtedly reduced any appetite for deploying any customer premises recording devices which would be similar to recording technology used for entertainment purposes. In fact, telephone answering machines became popular only after the development of low cost Phillips cassette recording technology driven by entertainment markets.

Note also that the gating of technology into the Bell System from Bell Laboratories via Western Electric was by design. Bell Labs was set up independently of and funded by AT&T Headquarters and Western Electric. This allowed Bell Labs to research (AT&T) and develop (WECo) technologies independently of short term business needs in order to prevent the Bell Operating Company regulated monopolies from stagnating, and it also prevented the system from being disrupted by short term engineering hacks. What were wanted were big innovations, thoughtfully applied.

<comment><USER6> One of the more famous consequences of that 1956 consent decree was Unix, and from it, Linux, the BSDs, and MacOS.

A case in which competition and capital actively interfered with creativity and innovation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Resistance to technological innovation, often by commercial concerns, is all too common.

Bernhard J. Stern's "Resistances to the Adoption of Technological Innovations" (1937) details numerous instances and methods of such dirty tricks, including specifically use of patents in obstruction of innovation, and is rapidly becoming among my favourite references to these:

[https://archive.org/details/technologicaltre1937unitrich/pag...](https://archive.org/details/technologicaltre1937unitrich/page/39)

As Markdown: [https://pastebin.com/raw/Bapu75is](https://pastebin.com/raw/Bapu75is)

That looks at cases of such opposition in several areas:

\- Transportation

\- Communication

\- Power

\- Metals

\- Textile Machinery

\- Agricultural Machinery

\- Building

</comment><comment><USER7> IBM's Watson Lab had the same role in preventing innovations from escaping and upsetting stable markets. Hiring up promising PhDs to prevent them working for somebody else, and keeping them busy not developing for anybody else, was its main purpose, so almost everything they did went straight to the shelf. In the '90s, IBM started taking things off the shelf.

</comment><comment><USER8> Ironic that this article is on jstor

<comment><AUTHOR> Hope it was one that Aaron Swartz was able to download before MIT arrested him.

<comment><USER6> It's on both LibGen and Sci-Hub.

Former: [http://gen.lib.rus.ec/scimag/10.2307%2F3106703](http://gen.lib.rus.ec/scimag/10.2307%2F3106703)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> FYI I see [dead] by your comments. Maybe you have been hell-banned?

<comment><USER10> Please don't post like this. If you see a [dead] comment that shouldn't be dead, you should vouch for it ([https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)) or email email@example.com so we can fix the problem

<comment><USER11> OK, but how could I vouch for users?

I occasionally see comments from users like this one, with all but occasional comments dead. If I look back far enough, sometimes I can find a comment that was transgressive. But often enough, nothing.

So should I be emailing email@example.com about those?

<comment><USER6> Yes.

"[dead]" means that an account has been administratively banned. "flagged" only shows up per-comment, showing that users have flagged that comment.

Tracking back through history to find the banning offence can take a while. But you can vouch for either individual posts or a user as a whole, by email, as described above. I do this myself on occasion.

Flagged / banned account activity isn't visible unless you've set "showdead" to on, in your HN profile settings.

<comment><USER11> OK, thanks. I'll try it and see how it goes.

It's so sad to see banned accounts consistently making interesting and constructive comments, which are mostly all dead, except for the occasional vouched one. And sometimes _for years_. That's quite the cruel punishment.

Being paranoid by nature, I routinely check my account from other IPs whenever my comments aren't getting replies. And I wonder if others do that. I mean, could someone go for a year without realizing that their account had been banned?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


5 Apps That Encourage Learn by Doing for Kids - <AUTHOR> http://www.monstercreate.com/2015/06/07/5-apps-that-encourage-learn-by-doing-for-kids/

<comment><USER2> I guess it's just coincidence that one of their two apps is #2 in this list...

<comment><USER3> on the op's hn bio "Co-founder of MonsterCreate, a mobile app company inspiring the next generation of artists, musicians and engineers."

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you :). Yup that's are primary goal. We have a new app coming out next week where kids can build their own unique monsters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> maybe i'm old fashioned, but why do we need an app for everything? Seems like the things these 5 apps teach there are better real-life ways of teaching

<comment><AUTHOR> We completely agree, it is impossible to replace the impact a teacher can have on a young mind. These apps are selected because we've seen a huge value in project based learning that we utilized during our college careers.

<comment><USER3> > huge value project based learning

that's definitely true, collaboration is a big part in learning!

<comment><AUTHOR> For sure. I don't know if you've heard of New Tech High Schools by any chance? They recently opened one just south of here. All of their learning is project based. I've visited the campus serval times & I'm super jealous of how they get to learn!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Do You Hear What I Hear? Yes, It's Paypal Stealing Money From Kids - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/06/do-you-hear-what-i-hear-yes-its-paypal-stealing-money-from-kids/

<comment><USER2> After allowing for everything said here - and the PayPal back peddling on this specific issue. If you are serious about taking money for goods, services or worthy causes - do not use PayPal.

After all, what does Paypal say about you that is positive? Nothing! Keywords are "Cheap" "Amateur" etc..

<comment><USER3> Solely taking paypal is a business risk, I'll give you that.

But damn, as a consumer, it's far far easier than getting my credit card out every time.

<comment><USER4> We just need more competitors for PayPal. Perhaps one from credit card company, one from Google, one from Facebook, and a couple from successful, less evil (for now) startups.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It was nice that the exposure got Regretsy the customer support they needed, it was sad that the exposure had to rise to that level in order to get that support.</comment>


Ask HN: What can I build that you'd pay for? - <AUTHOR> I've been in a bit of a slump recently after I lost all my money in my last venture and I've been trying to brainstorm ways of coming back. Seeing as my passion is building projects and I can't outcompete freelancers on price, I figured I'd ask the community if I could build you something for free that you'd pay for if you liked it.<p>What product can I develop that you or your business/company would be interested in paying for? Additionally, how much do you see yourself or your company paying for it? <comment><USER2> Are you looking for partners? Are you bootstrapping the project personally?

What are your skillsets? And what platform(s) are you interested in developing for? Are you mostly front-end or server side? Are you a graphic designer?

It's not just about building software, either, but you must have a plan to market the project and attract customers. Do you have a plan for this? If not, I'm afraid you're just going to lose more time and money.

Do you have business contacts within a certain industry that you can leverage? Do you have insights into the way a current industry is operating, so that you can improve on the operation and save the company money?

<comment><AUTHOR> I am looking to build the project myself, but I am always open to working with others. I've worked on all ends, front and back. I'm willing to look at any platform, learning something new is part of my goal here.

I'm not so much looking to make a business out of this (but we'll see). I have other successful businesses, it's just that I'd like to enjoy building something brand new for someone that could make use of it.</comment></comment>