India has banned disposable plastic in Delhi - <AUTHOR> https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/india-bans-all-disposable-plastic/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_content=global&utm_campaign=general-content&linkId=34447287 <comment><USER3> Rwanda also has this policy, since 2008, and they enforce it. The country is very clean, it looks different than other African countries (and countries like the US), just because there is no plastic rubbish everywhere. I think this is a very good policy, and would welcome it at home.

[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/15/rwanda...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/15/rwanda- banned-plastic-bags-so-can-we)

<comment><USER4> My father told me that American highways used to be lined with trash until it was made illegal to throw trash out the window.

<comment><USER5> There was this scene in Mad Men where Don Draper, Betty Draper and the kids go out for a picnic in the new family car. They eat lunch in a grassy field, then when they're done, they pack up their basket and blanket, leaving the beer cans, food wrappers, empty bottles, plastic cutlery, and chicken bones scattered on the grass.

That scene shocked and horrified me more than all the sexism, racism, and homophobia combined.

Edit: saw the other comments, looks like I wasn't the only one affected by that scene.

<comment><USER6> That still happens in America. See pictures of Washington DC the day after 4th of July. Or Golden Gate Park in SF after a big festival. So many people leave their trash looks it like a dump.

Compare to say Cherry Blossom watching in Japan where a large park will be entirely covered in people but when it's over they will have all cleaned it up.

It's a cultural issue. I have no idea how to influence western cultures to care as much. I've see similar things in most European countries (trashing places).

<comment><USER7> With big festivals with thousands of people gathering in park or square, you can expect this in Europe. Problem is that you buy a drink in a plastic cup or bottle, maybe a sandwhich or fries with it, and you need to dispose of the plastic or paper. Where do you leave it? There simply are not enough trash cans around or nearby. In a big crowded place it's not easy to move around, you can get lost etc. So people throw their garbage on the ground. By the way, all available trash cans are full and have a pile load of garbage next to them. So even if they are full, people still use them to keep the trash together.

I don't see the problem here. Afterwards cleaners come and clean the square, streets, whatever. It's part of the game.

On normal days, people here keep the cities, parks and streets rather clean.

<comment><USER8> I remember noticing a more deliberate approach to trash in European cities when I visited. Not just throwing it anywhere but setting used cans etc. in the corner, out of the way.

<comment><USER9> There's a deposit on cans and bottles in many places in Europe, so they're left where homeless people may find them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Note: Thank you for down voting for pointing out a glaring 'fake statistics' and poor journalism, on a #1 trending post on HN.

The first and the second quote do not mean the same thing, not even close.

"A massive 60%t of the plastic waste in the oceans is said to have come from India, according to the Times of India."

The TOI reads - "Banning disposable plastic is a huge step for the capital and the country because India is among the top four biggest plastic polluters in the world, responsible for around 60% of the 8.8 million tons of plastic that is dumped into the world's oceans every year."

As an Indian, I see a lot of journalists stuck in a colonial era. They go out of their way to tarnish and stereotype the great unwashed. They manage to turn even positive news to mock and heckle the less developed world.

But this article has taken it to great heights. The TOI isn't exactly known for journalistic integrity and often conveniently pulls statistics from their backside. But to misquote the devil, this article has certainly hit the lowest level.

<comment><USER11> Is their claim factually incorrect?

<comment><USER12> I think it might actually be factually incorrect. I looked up the Times Of India article that OP's article was referring to [1], and could not find a source on the biggest plastic polluters in the world.

Then, after searching around, the articles [2] and reports [3] that I found all put Indonesia (not India) in the top 5 polluters in the world. They refer to an authoritative source from Science [4], but I'm not able to access this due to the paywall.

I'm sure I'm doing something wrong. Surely the Times of India hasn't confused "Indonesia" for "India", right?

[1] [http://www.indiatimes.com/news/india/all-forms-of- disposable...](http://www.indiatimes.com/news/india/all-forms-of-disposable- plastic-banned-in-delhi-ncr-270237.html)

[2] [http://www.audubon.org/news/these-5-countries-are-biggest- pl...](http://www.audubon.org/news/these-5-countries-are-biggest-plastic- polluters)

[3] PDF! [http://www.oceanconservancy.org/our-work/marine- debris/mckin...](http://www.oceanconservancy.org/our-work/marine- debris/mckinsey-report-files/full-report-stemming-the.pdf)

[4] [http://science.sciencemag.org/content/347/6223/768](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/347/6223/768)

<comment><USER13> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I do not see any coverage in Indian media. Could it be one of those official notifications which public at large hardly follows but it breeds corruption by enforcement officials. Though looking at Indian papers I came across this rather frightening news:

[http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/environment/pollutio...](http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/environment/pollution/india- tops-list-of-countries-in-ozone-pollution-deaths/articleshow/57156322.cms)

<comment><USER15> That is how India rolls. I am not sure how the poor street food vendors survive if they cant use plastic plates and spoons. If they are forced to use steel plates and spoons that is a health and safety nightmare in India.

<comment><USER10> There are plenty of cost effective traditional alternatives. Banana leaves, hand made leaf plates, machine made leaf plates, in the worst case paper plates.

Plastics are just convenient and cheap, if the environmental costs are not considered.

Edible cutlery [http://www.bakeys.com/](http://www.bakeys.com/)

<comment><USER14> Banana leaves may be traditional and popular in southern India where banana grows aplenty. In Delhi banana leaves would be used in chic restaurants with traditional touch. It is no way going to be used by street vendors.

I have normally seen steel plates/spoon used by street vendors. Not very hygienic as they just rinse in water after use.

<comment><USER16> When I visited Nepal, a lot of the street vendors had these bowls made of leaves (perhaps banana leaf, not really sure). I have no idea if they are financially better off or cost effective but thought I'd mention that I've seen something like this before.

<comment><USER17> Street _phuchka_ vendors in Kolkata (they are what you call _golgappas_ in Delhi) will hand you bowls made out of _sal_ leaves. I wonder if that's the same as what you came across?

[https://billandpaige.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/dsc_6462.jp...](https://billandpaige.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/dsc_6462.jpg)

<comment><USER16> That looks vaguely right. I remember it being a bit more richer green look to it but the shape and everything looks about right.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, that's when they're fresh.

I think using dried leaves saves the trouble of having to pick them off the tree because they just fall to the ground, but I'm a city boy and wouldn't know for sure. Might have to ask my father! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is India. Starving, thirsty, injured (hit by cars and trucks) cows and dogs roam the streets, hobbling along, limping along. There are people starving on the street-side. The poorest children are openly prostituted on the streets.

How are they going to enforce a rule regarding plastic bags?

The rich will continue to do whatever they want.

The middle-classes will continue to do whatever they can get away with.

The poor will continue to be shit on and abused.

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

About 20 years ago they banned smoking in public in Delhi (I was there when they did it).

All that this ordinance did was to give the police yet another angle to harass people. More corruption. More bribes.

<comment><USER19> Public Smoking ban has been largely effective in India. You rarely see people smoking in public areas. The effectiveness of these laws are that it allows concerned citizens to raise their voice when they see law is being broken.

<comment><USER18> > it allows concerned citizens to raise their voice when they see law is being > broken

How exactly do concerned citizens raise their voice in India? I once saw a stray dog that had been run over by a car licking its wounds, waiting to die. After which it would lay there on the road-side until it had been eaten by birds and insects. I wanted to raise awareness of my various concerns about this. How should I have gone about it? Genuinely interested in learning from you.

An aside: the stoic, pious strength I saw on the dog's face as it licked itself, knowing it was dying, was one of the most powerful things I've ever seen.

<comment><USER20> > How exactly do concerned citizens raise their voice in India?

In general, much the same as other countries. Call/write/meet with your municipal corporation member/MLA/MP (though it's doubtful you'll get an audience unless you have an in). Call/write/meet with the opposition party members, if it's something that can make the party in power look bad. Post on social media. If it's newsworthy, there's a very noisy (and competitive) print and TV media willing to listen to you. I'm not saying all these are effective options, but they _are_ options.

> I wanted to raise awareness of my various concerns about this. How should I > have gone about it? Genuinely interested in learning from you.

You could've tried to take it to a vet. My friends and I did this once with a kitten that got run over. It died before we made it unfortunately. Ofc, there's probably a greater risk of being bitten by a panicky dog that's in pain, than with a kitten (my friend got bitten).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is great news! I have a question maybe someone from Delhi could answer, the article states:

"The ban took effect on the first day of 2017."

What are the vendors doing? Is water being sold in glass bottles with a deposit scheme for redemption now?

<comment><USER22> I'm curious to know this as well. It would be cool if they implemented this in the U.S., even if only for the return to dominance of the glass bottle soda.

<comment><USER21> It interesting in many places in South America glass bottles are the norm, they get sterilized and reused. You see crates of them stacked up outside the kioskos waiting to be picked up. You pay a deposit on the bottle and get a redemption when you return it. This isn't a new development either, its just kind of the way its always been. I am not sure why plastic didn't become as dominant in many of those countries.

<comment><USER22> This is extremely interesting, I wonder what it would take to get this implemented in the United States?

<comment><USER21> I think just a shift in mentality and a bit of legislation. This would actually be a shift back in the United States really. There was a time when milk and soft drinks came in glass bottles as a matter of course. Its actually good for companies bottom lines as well. This from a Coca Cola earning's call:

"Returnable bottles all the rage You may remember a time when you went to the grocery store and bought returnable glass bottles of Coca-Cola, Sprite, or the mostly forgotten Tab brand. After you finished with the bottles you returned them to the store for a deposit refund. In the United States, the last of the 6.5 ounce returnable bottles were finished during October 2012 at a bottling facility in Minnesota. In Latin America the returnable bottles continue and contribute greatly to Coca-Cola FEMSA's top line growth in every geographic region. In Mexico, returnable packages grew 5%. Affordability and the desire to reduce environmental impact increased consumer appeal. Latin Americans, specifically Mexicans, faced with a shrinking pocketbook remain keen on ways to save money. Coca-Cola FEMSA wants to invest more in returnables to appease consumers' increasingly frugal nature."

I'm of the opinion that beverages actually taste better from bottles, thats part of the magic of the "Mexican Coke"(along with using real sugar as opposed to corn syrup.)

Source:

[https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/11/23/5-interest...](https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/11/23/5-interesting- takeaways-from-coca-cola-femsas-earn.aspx)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I wish that they could find a way to do this in the Islamabad/Rawalpindi area. Due to a lack of budget and government coordination for large scale trash pick up, nearly every stream and ravine in the area is the designated trash dumping grounds. It's thoroughly littered with plastic shopping bags and plastic bottles. It won't solve the problem of people throwing trash on nearly any available piece of unclaimed or unusable land, but at least it'll be paper based or biodegradable.

</comment><comment><USER24> This is awesome. When I was in India ten years ago, everywhere we went in rural India the trees along creeks, rivers and streams were littered with plastic bags from where floods had deposited them. They were like leaves, and the trees were dead. They had already banned plastic bags locally in that province, and it is good to see a global ban on plastic in general.

In Himachal Pradesh, the plastic bag ban had resulted in a cottage industry forming where discarded newspapers were folded/glued into shopping bags. I'd like to see this same thing happen in the US. A friend imported a palette of these bags to Florida, and he was able to sell them to vendors and make a small profit. This tells me they might be viable here commercially.

As they say, reduce > _re-use_ > recycle.

</comment><comment><USER25> Banning it is one thing, we'll see if they can actually enforce it.

<comment><USER26> If Rwanda can enforce it, I don't see why Delhi can't.

[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/15/rwanda...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/15/rwanda- banned-plastic-bags-so-can-we)

<comment><USER27> Rwanda is a pint-sized dictatorship governed with an iron first. Delhi is a howling cesspit of chaos.

In addition to the obvious enforcement problems in Delhi itself, Delhi is only a small part of the National Capital Region, meaning tons of plastic will flow in from Haryana and UP even if Delhi does manage to clean up its act.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> If you are not using reusable bags when going to the grocery store (or any store) please attempt to try it.

It absolutely amazing how many more groceries you can put in a reusable bag over a plastic or paper bags. So at the bare minimum it is an optimization (less trips from car to kitchen).

When I bring this up with people I get unbelievable false rationalization like: I reuse the bags for trash or the reusable bags take 100x to make over plastic bags.

Plastic grocery bags have knack of flying into lakes, rivers and streams. I have saved many turtles and fish a long the Charles river that are caught in these bags. I have never seen a kitchen trash bag or a reusable bag in the river.

Many grocery stores even give a discount if you use reusable bags not to mention reusable bags are extremely cheap (I don't think I have ever paid more than $2).

<comment><USER29> Here in England, we recently introduced a tax on all "single-use" plastic grocery bags located in "large" supermarkets (so, all the common ones) of 50p per bag. The reusable, stronger, larger bags that one can keep in the boot (trunk) cost only twice that, and pay for themselves after only 1 supermarket trip.

I have four of them -- they also stack inside of each other, so only take up the space of one. I know several people that refuse to use them and keep getting multiple single-use bags and paying another £2.50 or so every time they go shopping. It boggles the mind!

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> When it comes to banning plastic bags, India takes the lead & not just Delhi; cities like Mumbai, Karwar, Tirumala, Vasco, Rajasthan all have a ban on the bag though enforcement is questionable. Where as rural villages such as 'Mawlynnong' has not only banned the plastic bags but also got the title of 'Asia's cleanest village', there are other such villages in India. It should be commended that, villages which hosts majority of population with lower economic backgrounds are doing their part to protect their environment even when it's much difficult for them to do so than their counterparts in the cities who usually don't need to worry about whether their children get to eat today.

<comment><USER31> Exactly. Plastic has been banned (and not being used) in various cities in India. A lot of popular tourist places (Hampi, Ooty comes to mind) have 'no plastic bags' policy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> All too often it seems US restaurants do the quick calculus of going 100% disposable cutelry/etc, making a decision we'll still be dealing with 50 years from now....

I am very supportive of these types programs, even if hard to enforce.

</comment><comment><USER33> Passing a rule is very easy in India as opposed to the enforcement or people following that. However in this case majority of the source are commercial outlets which is relatively less difficult to enforce .

</comment><comment><USER34> Various forms of plastic bans keep getting imposed year after year in different places in India.

Nothing practically happens because:

a. Police has better things to do than round up people and shops carrying plastic bags. They may probably take a bribe from the shop to turn a blind eye.

b. There's no really low cost and convenient alternative in many cases - <USER2> spite of a lot of shops in India using recycled newspapers for packaging.

Home delivery which is widespread among the richer classes is at least partially helpful since shops bring things in their own bags. However most of India is not rich

<comment><USER35> I think you are being knowingly stupid here. Bangalore has plastic ban and works very well. It does not apply to people but enforced by BBMP (municipal corporation) on businesses to either not use plastic or to use biodegradeable one. It works very well. I do not come across much plastic here

<comment><USER36> Don't know which part of Bangalore you live in. But where I'm right now I still see shops using plastic bags. And I haven't seen Bangalore become any cleaner after the supposed ban.

<comment><USER37> The ban has limitations on the thickness of the plastic bags used. Garbage bags etc are still allowed.Over the last few months the plastic cups/plates etc have almost disappeared from the city. Himachal has such a ban for over 10 years now and has had really positive effects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> What are they going to replace plastic with ? Can you invent a kind of material that is as capable as plastic but has zero negative effects on the environment ?

<comment><USER39> It's not that it needs to be equally capable in each way - you need something that is more degradable and ecologically sensible for each specific case.

<comment><USER40> Or, in some cases, reusable. Most places in the US that have banned disposable plastic grocery bags are encouraging reusable bags.

<comment><USER41> Some chains had been giving discounts for "bring-your-own-bag" even before the outright bag ban. Sprouts _still does!_

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> It is also banned in Lucknow, a beautiful city in Indian state Uttar Pradesh.It is a good move.Although govt. should invest more in R&D in order to find environment friendly alternative.Street food sellers who deal in liquid edibles had to raise their prices in order to use current plastic alternatives which are currently clay and glass.

</comment><comment><USER43> Here in California single use plastic bags are banned. Now it's a pain, at checkout you either have to tell them how many multiuse bags to charge or bring bags from home.

No so many years ago paper bags were common and what I used. Paper is great, it's biodegradable, renewable, and convenient.

<comment><USER44> It's really not a pain. Every store sells paper bags at 10¢ a bag.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Good in principle, will cause hardships for many in practice. There are probably millions of street vendors who rely on plastic to pack food to go, as well as many other shops of course.

There are many other priorities to focus on which can have a far bigger impact.

</comment><comment><USER46> Three questions: 1) what will replace plastic for convenience products ( aka single serving consumables )? 2) are there organizations championing this effort elsewhere? 3) where can i read more facts about Delhi's efforts?

</comment><comment><USER47> I don't see this being implemented. At least none of the friends and family have reported this is being implemented. Folks from India - anyone have a different feedback and they heard this is really being implemented?

</comment><comment><USER48> Let's just hope that this is implemented in an ordered way. We all remember what happened to Delhi in the last Diwali celebration even after having so much of law against firecrackers.

</comment><comment><USER49> >The ban includes bags, cups and cutlery.

What about all the plastic containers the food originally came in?

<comment><USER50> Those increase longevity on the shelves. Plastic food packaging is usually a net win because of the waste it prevents. Glad they didn't ban that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Bangalore did this 3-4 years back. I had trouble getting disposable bags even in rural KA.

</comment><comment><USER52> I don't understand how we can build self-driving cars, send people to the moon, and create advanced facial recognition software, but can't build technology that can separate plastic bags?

<comment><USER53> Recognizing a plastic bag is tech on par with two of the techs you list (and arguably beyond sending a man to the moon.) Making a robot that can recognize plastic bags and manipulate them is harder. And applying that level of expertise to a public works problem in a capitalist society is _even harder._

(In response to the obvious counterargument; the configuration space of "a plastic bag mixed in with a bunch of random junk" is actually probably larger than the configuration space for a road with a dozen other cars on it, and so is the action space of a reasonably dextrous claw/arm greater than that of a car. AI is full of easy-sounding things that are really difficult.)

<comment><USER54> Oh, you can probably make it work. The question is: can you make it work cheap enough? Sending people to the moon wasn't cheap..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> no more plastic trash bags... and of course no more using grocery bags as trash bags...

</comment><comment><USER56> Hopefully it is enforced.

</comment><comment><USER57> The economist inside me says it would be better to tax disposable plastic.

The tax could cover the cost to clean up the litter. That would create jobs in three ways: 1) plastic clean-up jobs, 2) businesses and economic activity that desperately need disposable plastic can still possibly survive, and ) jobs making disposable plastic.

Anyways, it's a lot better than taxing things we all agree we want more of. Like jobs.

<comment><USER58> To be honest I hate this economic idea of enforcing a ban via adding tax to it. This ideology shows the lack of understanding of the disparity in income in India. The middle class and below are the most affected and they face the most brunt of all this.

The same goes with how the govt. keeps adding tax on tobacco and its products every year. Forcing people to stop smoking by not allowing them to buy despite allowing it to be sold in open market is just one way of violating ones freedom to choose. I do not support nor encourage smoking but I do not like the idea of forcing people to stop smoking by making it expensive, tobacco industry brings a lot of revenue to the govt, the govt just doesn't want to stop it so they enforce such taxes so the govt. earns the same but the intake by people is reduced. This isn't a win-win by any means. People will still die of cancer no matter how moderately they smoke. The problem isn't solved here its just reduced by probably 10% but the revenue from it is still 100%.

<comment><USER59> Dunno I am all for tobacco being expensive. Soon most poor people will no longer be able to afford them. Which is a good thing to me.

<comment><USER60> I am pretty sure a lot of people will just reduce other expenses to compensate. At least for as long as they can. That just means most of the money goes to tobacco companies instead of anything else they would have spent it on.

I think I agree with vidyesh, taxes are for money not for changing social behavior.

<comment><USER61> >I am pretty sure a lot of people will just reduce other expenses to compensate. At least for as long as they can.

We don't have to idly speculate this, the phenomenon is called elasticity of demand in economics, and not only are there good estimates of elasticity for various products, there's a rich set of ideas that have been developed around elasticity, including what happens when you tax goods of various elasticities.

I highly recommend looking into the details yourself (any intro micro economics textbook will cover it), but the upshot is that cigarettes judged to have relatively inelastic demand, which is basically what you had said. This means that a tax on the product will not reduce the equilibrium quantity consumed by very much. A corollary is that the majority of the tax burden will fall on the consumers of cigarettes. I'm not sure why you said "most of the money goes to the tobacco companies"\-- with all tax levels the revenue goes to the government.

<comment><USER60> Yeah the government gets the money. I hadn't thought it out completely while I was typing and just put what popped into my head.

I did take some form of economics in school but it's not something I really had a heavy interest in but I understand how it's useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Not a huge fan of outright bans, and think this is probably the wrong priority for India to focus on. (I understand this is just Delhi)

Air pollution is huge right now. And sad to say, people pooping in streets and rivers is still a major problem.

To me, plastic remnants are a very minor issue in comparison.

<comment><USER10> Even if you poop in your fancy bungalow toilet, it does end up in the rivers, along with detergent and toxic toilet cleaners.

Banning disposable plastic and non biodegradable detergents would go a great way in letting microbes and plants do their job in cleaning up the environment.

With plastics not clogging up the rivers and chemicals not killing all river life, the rivers would definitely run much cleaner. This move was incidentally meant to curb air pollution, so clean rivers or oceans are an added benefit.

<comment><USER63> > along with detergent and toxic toilet cleaners.

don't forget corpses

[http://www.planetcustodian.com/2015/10/19/8134/over-50-scary...](http://www.planetcustodian.com/2015/10/19/8134/over-50-scary- images-depicting-filth-of-varanasi-and-river-ganges-that-went-viral-in- china.html)

<comment><USER10> Corpses are biodegradable aren't they unless, it is that of superman.

Good protein feed for the fish, birds, crocodiles. Instead of taking up real estate.

<comment><USER64> Not when you eat the animals that eat corpses afterwards. That's how you spread diseases, plus when animals eat human flesh, they leave bits floating in the water supply.

We bury people for a reason. Or we burn them, or leave them on the land to get eaten by animals, away from water supplies. ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_burial](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_burial))

The difference between what you're proposing is the difference between composting an animal corpse and then using it to fertilize your crops, or just grinding it up and spraying it all over your tomatoes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Can we get the title changed to make it clear that India banned plastic in Delhi not all of India.

Also the title says "literally all disposable plastic" then in the article it says applies to cups, bags, cutlery.

<comment><USER66> I just read three different articles on this subject and it's not clear if disposable plastic bottles (bottles, not cups) are also banned. I'd argue this is one of the bigger problems as displayed by some of the images used in the articles, and personal experiences of travelling india and seeing miles of train tracks littered with plastic bottles.

The reason I mention this is that it may be directing action to local vendors, but not necessarily regional/national drink vendors.

<comment><USER66> For those absurdly curious in trying to find an original source on the proposal/ruling, this is the closest I've found so far: [http://bspcb.bih.nic.in/NGT%20Judgemt%20dt%2022.12.2016%20in...](http://bspcb.bih.nic.in/NGT%20Judgemt%20dt%2022.12.2016%20in%20OA199%20%20of%202014,%20Almitra%20H%20Patel%20Vs%20Union%20of%20India.pdf)

\- skip to point #23 on page 63 for the thing about banning plastic:

"We further direct that the use of disposable plastic glasses is prohibited in entire NCT, Delhi at hotels, restaurants and public as well as private functions. The NCT, Delhi shall take appropriate steps against storage, sale and use of such plastic material at above places and it shall stand prohibited w.e.f. 01st of January, 2017."

Note that this still mentions more about plastic cups, not bottles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Plastic is the least of Delhi's problems. First they should be banning vehicles that don't meet emission standards. I visited there twice and I'll be lucky if I don't come down with some lung problem.

Edit: They should ban the burning of plastic, not plastic itself. And enforce it.

<comment><USER68> No matter what we do it will never wipe away your prejudice, my friend.

<comment><USER69> I fail to see what the above has to do with prejudice, personally. Poor air quality is a problem in many parts of the world, notably so in developing areas.

<comment><USER70> The prejudice seems to be "ah India, nice try but you still fail badly in an unrelated area" while in fact in this regard Delhi is more progressive than much of Europe and the US.

Reducing plastic waste is a step in the right direction and should not be dismissed just because there are other problems that may be harder to fix right now.

<comment><USER71> >"ah India, nice try but you still fail badly in an unrelated area"

That's not what a prejudice is. It's also not what he said. Maybe if people wouldn't be so hypersensitive we could address the problems a country might be facing. India has many issues.

So what if he points that out, while we're discussing a different issue? It's part of having a conversation.

<comment><USER70> Good points. Would we have the same conversation about the US though? "Electric cars taking over?" \- "Wow but pollution due to fracking is a way bigger problem!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> titlegore

"Delhi has banned disposable plastic"

Not all of India. Just Delhi.

<comment><USER68> "Delhi of India has banned disposable plastic"

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> It's great. But the 'trash problem' in India runs deeper.

They need to have anti-litter regulation, awareness campaigns, and enforcement.

<comment><USER74> Its in progress: Swachh Bharat (Clean India) - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swachh_Bharat_Abhiyan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swachh_Bharat_Abhiyan)

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> Why only Delhi?! That country is drowning in filth not just Delhi.

<comment><USER76> The state of Karnataka has a ban in place [1] since last year and as a resident of Bangalore I can confirm that the ban is effective in reducing the use of plastic where it is indeed avoidable.

[1] [http://m.timesofindia.com/city/bengaluru/Total-plastic- ban-i...](http://m.timesofindia.com/city/bengaluru/Total-plastic-ban-in- Karnataka/articleshow/51397198.cms)</comment></comment>


Wikileaks publishes leaked draft of TPP - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-11/13/tpp-leak

<comment><AUTHOR> Most interesting paragraph:

"It would include anti-circumvention provisions such as those that make it illegal to break "digital locks" on software, such as jailbreaking mobile phones. It also aims to extend the minimum copyright and patent terms and ensure the adoption of criminal sanctions for copyright infringement that is carried out without commercial motivation."</comment>


What Statistics Can't Tell Us in the Fight Over Affirmative Action at Harvard - <AUTHOR> http://bostonreview.net/law-justice/andrew-gelman-sharad-goel-daniel-e-ho-what-statistics-cant-tell-us-fight-over <comment><USER2> Somehow in the late 20th century we became so focused on nurture that we've totally and irrationally come to disregard nature. This fallacious tabla rasa thinking justifies the modern conflation between equality of outcome and equality of opportunity, and leads to penalization of those who are better able to achieve, ostensibly in the name of equality, and so called progress.

But the true outcome of failing to consider half of the achievement equation is a regression toward incompetence, as we effectively hold back those who can in a vain attempt to bring up those who cannot. All of society then suffers in the name of a false, unattainable equality.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Qualitative grounding of statistical findings is important to avoid > misleading conclusions; it is not enough to control for a factor in a > statistical analysis without clarifying its role in admissions goals and > educational objectives.

This is a crucial point. Contextually framing an analysis, and it's results, is one of the most important parts of a project. In this case, it also forces the question - what does it mean for an admissions process to be biased?

</comment><comment><USER4> > The personal ratings look different depending on who awards them: alumni > interviewers or Harvard's internal admissions staff. On average, alumni give > white and Asian American applicants similar ratings, but Harvard staff give > whites substantially better reviews than they give Asian Americans. For the > alumni-assigned ratings, 50 percent of Asian American applicants and 51 > percent of whites were rated as having "very strong" or "outstanding" > personal traits. But for personal ratings awarded by Harvard's internal > admissions staff, only 18 percent of Asian Americans were in the top group, > compared to 23 percent of whites. White applicants received these top > ratings about 30 percent more often than Asian Americans.

What would the response be either in mainstream media or social media or from proponents of Affirmative Action policies, if African-American or Hispanic applicants or other demographic groups (e.g. women) were given measurably lower scores on personality traits Harvard rates like 'likability' or 'integrity' or 'helpfulness'?

</comment><comment><USER5> It will be wholly unsurprising to me when fifty years from now we will talk about the overt discrimination against Asian people in America. I'd expect to read "Despite being highly educated, Asian Americans only held X positions of note...", "A pervasive culture of emasculation and fetishization of Asian Americans was hidden by the fact that many of them were highly paid", "Explicit discrimination against Asian Americans on the grounds that subtle factors revealed they were unfit for college admission was hidden under a notion of 'holistic' admission".

Boy! The sociologists of the future are going to have a field day. I can't wait. After all, back then college authorities said "most Jews are socially untrained" and "the social characteristics of the Jews are peculiar", and they _did_ use precisely the same language about outside interests. We're going to look like complete morons for having bought this bullshit story college authorities are selling.

Anyway, I leave you with an excerpt from Harvard President Lowell's remarkable letter from the 1920s extolling the virtues of quotas limiting Jewish enrollment

> The anti-Semitic feeling among the students is increasing, and it grows in > proportion to the increase in the number of Jews. If their number should > become 40 per cent of the student body, the race feeling would become > intense. When on the other hand, the number of Jews was small, the race > antagonism was small also. . . . If every college in the country would take > a limited proportion of Jews, I suspect we should go a long way toward > eliminating race feeling among the students, and as these students passed > out into the world, eliminating it in the community.

<comment><USER6> It is because of America's unwillingness to embrace the Asian Americans that will cause them to lose future conflicts with Asia.

As of today, a large number of the Chinese PhDs are returning back to China to develop technology there because they find the climate (social / political ) too apprehensive and demeaning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Family connections as a form of merit, interesting!

> non-academic factors, including athletics, character, and family connections

Rural and elite students, but NOT children of engineers?

>Harvard's open preference for... strong athletes and the children of alumni, faculty, and donors... Harvard may, for example, favor students from rural communities and disfavor the children of engineers.

<comment><USER8> The Eng. and Rural bit may simply be a matter of trying to spread the field.

Growing up in a rural area, 'Harvard' is just some place you hear about from TV, few think they can get it. In a way it's kind of like economic classism, but from a different angle.

As for 'family' ... Queen's U in Ontario does this because they think there is value to that kind of coherence. I believe this to be true, at least to the point wherein a Uni should be able to do this if they want. Obviously, problems arise when it gets to elitism (!) but at face value there's something to it.

It's a tricky subject no matter what. Admissions at Harvard has to be in some ways one of the worst jobs in the world as I suggest they'll be right in the middle of the culture wars from here on in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What's it going to look like if they ruled in favor of Jewish students as a harmed class back in the day and then against Asians this time around? Should Asians all get their skin bleached to not be abused in the elite college admissions process? Should we get Anglo names, avoid Asian extracurriculars and other indications of Asianness, and mark ourselves as White?

> Certain private universities, most notably Harvard, introduced policies > which effectively placed a quota on the number of Jews admitted to the > university. According to historian David Oshinsky, on writing about Jonas > Salk, "Most of the surrounding medical schools (Cornell, Columbia, > Pennsylvania, and Yale) had rigid quotas in place. In 1935 Yale accepted 76 > applicants from a pool of 501. About 200 of those applicants were Jewish and > only five got in." He notes that Dean Milton Winternitz's instructions were > remarkably precise: "Never admit more than five Jews, take only two Italian > Catholics, and take no blacks at all."[15] As a result, Oshinsky added, > "Jonas Salk and hundreds like him" enrolled in New York University > instead.[16] Physicist and Nobel laureate Richard P. Feynman was turned away > from Columbia College in the 1930s and went to MIT instead. See also Numerus > clausus in the United States.

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

Trigger warning: as an Asian, I don't care about helping Black and Latino people if it means hurting me, and especially when society has already chosen not to exert equivalent unfair treatment on another race (and the optics are especially not great when said race can be lumped in as 'White').

<comment><USER10> The argument for affirmative action is not simply that some groups were historically disadvantaged by university admissions bodies. Some groups are still put at a disadvantage long before they begin the college admissions process (which is often compounded by the historical efforts to disadvantage their parents). Some groups may never have been specifically targeted by universities, but because of systematic repression elsewhere in society they are unrepresented in some fields of study. There is also the general benefit of having a diverse student body, so that people from different backgrounds can bring different ideas, experiences, and ways of thinking with them to the university, which benefits all students (regardless of why they were admitted).

You do not have to agree with those points, but you should at least know what it is that you are disagreeing with.

Also, as a Jew, I would rather not see minority groups using the history of antisemitism as a wedge against other minorities. While everyone is arguing about affirmative action, Harvard is admitting "legacy" students simply because their parents happened to attend Harvard, which helps to lengthen the effects of Harvard's discriminatory policies against earlier generations (to the detriment of Jewish, Asian, Black, and Latino applicants).

<comment><USER11> Studies show the grandchildren of Vietnam war draftees still suffer an economic hit 2 generations later, so it's unsurprising slavery casts a pall to this day.

"Diversity" in elite colleges is a scam, essentially rich urban whites throwing poor rural whites under the bus to give themselves a good conscience. Most of the "African-American" candidates have either one white parent of are of Caribbean origin, not the descendants of slaves, and the bonus for them is not means-tested. Don't expect to find many kids from inner-city ghettoes or the barrio there.

It's easy to get statistics on racial diversity at US universities but getting numbers on socio-economic diversity is like pulling teeth. SFFA's suggestion to give a bonus to poor students has a lot of merit, but of course it would upset the elite apple cart at Harvard, which is why they resist it so strenuously.

<comment><USER9> It should be noted that if admissions were perfectly race blind and did (rightfully) correct for financial means, you would likely still end up with more poor Jews and Asians in the student body than Blacks and Hispanics. And that is why they don't do it. Because it still wouldn't give them the pretty superficial picture of diversity they're looking for. The uncomfortable truth here is that they're using a coarse-grained and super messed up attribute (race) to correct for a problem that goes much deeper than pure economic disparities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I will pass by all of the obvious things that could be said to arrive at the following hot take: whether or not Harvard is using them as cover to discriminate, "holistic qualities" do actually exist. There is definitely an aspect to human value that goes beyond lists of achievements, I have known some terrible people that were extremely accomplished and some great people that had coasted through highschool mostly paling around. In fact, the best people I have known consistently focus on the aspects of life that aren't measurable: to pick one random example, the quality of their relationship with their parents. Someone who sacrifices all of those things could ruin themselves in the pursuit of greatness, and we don't want to make that a necessary precondition for admission to a good school. The fact that objective "facts of record" are harder to abuse than just about anything else should not trick us in to eliminating everything but numbers from our society out of fear of abuse.

<comment><USER13> And of course it's just a coincidence that these "holistic qualities" happen to be found more frequently in some races than others?

<comment><USER8> Maybe not even a coincidence!

Maybe extremely high SAT and grades are correlated with poor 'holistic' qualities such as social skills, communication, leadership, creativity, 'round character' (i.e. athleticism, disposition, generosity, musicianship).

 _I 'm not saying they are_ \- I'm saying it wouldn't really surprise me if they were, and then we have to think about it a little bit!

It's a tricky subject no doubt.

<comment><USER14> > _Maybe extremely high SAT and grades are correlated with poor 'holistic' > qualities such as social skills, communication, leadership, creativity, > 'round character' (i.e. athleticism, disposition, generosity, > musicianship)._

If that were so, it would affect members of all ethnicities who had the same high SAT scores and grades equally.

<comment><USER8> Good point, but those 'other qualities' may not be distributed very evenly among the remaining applicants. This is an ugly problem to have. I don't envy anyone in this situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> University applications should not contain any data such as race, name, gender, or place of origin that would allow the university to discriminate for or against the applicant based on their genetics.

We've decided as a nation to outlaw discrimination based on race, gender, sexual orientation, or national origin. We should fucking act like it. If the Asian kid down the street who spent five hours a night studying gets into Harvard and I don't, that's the way it should be.

<comment><USER16> When this is tried, it does not output ideologically-pleasing student demographics. Presumably because all objective tests of merit are hopelessly biased.

Caltech is such a school. And its population is largely largely Asian and Jewish, both demographics Harvard has a history of discriminating against.

I am sure Caltech's administration is considered hopelessly reactionary, but their graduates have the highest number of Nobel prizes per capita. But again, what sort of merit does a Nobel prize prove? Look at the demographics of the winners.

<comment><USER17> Caltech is an unusually focused school. If your only goal is to churn out future STEM PhDs, admitting based on an objective math test is probably not a bad approach.

Harvard's goal, traditionally, has been to [re]produce the ruling class of America, and their admissions criteria are geared accordingly.

<comment><USER18> as a math grad myself i wish the ruling class consisted of Caltech and similar math/physics/other "real" sciences graduates :)

<comment><USER16> See Singapore for such a country.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's all a joke. Legacy students make up 30%[0] of the Harvard student body. The best way to get into Harvard will always be money, everybody else is just fighting over the scraps.

Edit: This number is incorrect. Legacy student acceptance rate is 30%, 5 times the alternative. The number of legacy students PRESENT at Harvard is closer to 15%

<comment><USER20> "Today, according to Harvard, legacy students make up around 14 percent of the undergraduate population."

[https://www.npr.org/2018/11/04/663629750/legacy- admissions-o...](https://www.npr.org/2018/11/04/663629750/legacy-admissions- offer-an-advantage-and-not-just-at-schools-like-harvard)

<comment><USER10> Which is 14 percent more than they should make up, at least if we are going to pretend that Harvard is interested in any reasonable standard of admissions. I understand the arguments for diversity in the student body; legacy admissions work against that goal. I understand the arguments for a strictly objective standard; legacy admissions work against that goal too.

<comment><USER21> Given that IQ seems to be >50% hereditary, wouldn't we expect legacies to be over-represented in any meritocracy that partially selects for such a trait? I don't think Harvard is a pure meritocracy, it's more of a theoretical question.

<comment><USER22> > Given that IQ seems to be >50% hereditary,

You're kidding right? That is such a painfully incorrect statement. Intelligence is an incredibly complex hugely conserved trait. Bloodlines and power/intellect passed down through the generations is a great fantasy novel setting, but not so much for reality.

<comment><USER16> You are just wrong:[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ)

I know it is ideologically uncomfortable but this is a fact you will have to get used to. Cognitive genomics is coming. The undeniable is becoming laughable to deny.

<comment><USER22> Have you considered the possibility that confounding variables exist? I have no doubt that coming from a family where your parents have received a good education makes it much more likely for you to personally also go on to get the same education for example. But these are different than the pure genetics by themselves. The Wikipedia article you link to yourself highlights the importance of how it defines the meaning of "heritability" that I think you should take a closer look at.

I'm sure at some point in the future, we will be able to genetically engineer our children to be smarter. Yet this is still a completely different idea compared to the paired mating of people which has currently been proposed. Intelligence is something that is incredibly complex, and humans are likely very close if not already at its peak within some local maxima.

<comment><USER16> >Have you considered the possibility that confounding variables exist? I have no doubt that coming from a family where your parents have received a good education makes it much more likely for you to personally also go on to get the same education for example.

Yes.

If you read the citations you will see this is based on twin adoption studies, which control for confounding variables almost perfectly.

I assure you, ever single objection you can think of off the top of your head has been raised and overcome.

The heritability of IQ is not a conclusion psychologists wanted to affirm. It is fact the field was forced to come to from the data, despite the ideological drifts of the last 50 years yearning (or in the case of Stephen Jay Gould outright falsifying data) for the opposite conclusion.

<comment><USER22> Psychology is a field notorious for being derided against as a soft science particularly because of how little data exists with poor sample sizes and ideology / purposeful tampering coming into the way like you've said.

Any meaningful evidence for a conclusion requires a much better understanding of the brain both biologically and also as a function of general cognition. This will require many more breakthroughs within the fields of biology and computer science. We're definitely getting closer and closer everyday on that front, but as of right now, the tools that we have access to are far too crude in my honest opinion.

Psychology in that respect is akin to the alchemy that was a precursor to chemistry. I'm not saying no real science was done by the alchemists of course, just that it was far and away from what the field of chemistry would ultimately become.

<comment><USER16> I sense this is a lost cause, but we can already predict ~10 percent of the variance in educational attainment with the genome alone.

Once we get data sets with millions of genomes tagged with their donors IQ, this number will rise. If we can predict, say, 60% of the variance in IQ (based on the genome alone) will you change you mind?

That is, what sort of data would change your mind?

[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-018-0147-3](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-018-0147-3)

<comment><USER22> Again, I'm not trying to dispute the fact that genes are the blueprints to our bodies.

The point I'm making is in regards to the OP's comment about how people coming from legacy will be much higher due to the fact that smart people reproducing with other smart people greatly increases the chances of producing a resultant smart baby. Random variation has much greater effect in determining the end result of that baby's genome is what I'm saying. You could have paired the person with almost any other human being, and the resultant IQ outcome would be no less likely to occur.

Only through concerted effort to discover and understand how the brain is constructed genetically in addition to developing methodologies for testing changes to those key markers will it be possible to meaningfully alter the statistics of intelligence. Anything else will be lost in the noise primarily because of, again, what I stated above. Intelligence of humans is likely already very close to some local maxima and it is also a highly conserved trait.

<comment><USER21> I used to believe everything you've stated until I dove into the twin studies, and more recently the GWAS data from Europe. Read the literature yourself with an open mind and you may be surprised. Ironically, as society has become more environmentally equal, ie the decline of lead, pollution, and clinical malnourishment, Nature has pulled even further ahead of Nurture, because it's much easier to remove IQ points than to add them.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Side-Project Build Theory - <AUTHOR> http://jasonadriaan.com/post/37634775893/side-project-build-theory

<comment><USER2> I think most of side-projects are meant to enjoy the process of building and try new technology. So I would not want a friend to build "my" side-project using his skills and choice of technology. It's something I need to build. I enjoy the process.</comment>


Reasons to shop local first - <AUTHOR> http://www.psfk.com/2009/08/infographic-why-buy-local-ten-reasons-to-shop-local-first.html

<comment><USER2> The smart thing about this list is that at least to some extent, it frames local business as a _tangible_ net positive for the consumer. It bugs me when people suggest that you should shop at local businesses as an act of altruism or sticking it to the man. There's only one reason to choose any business: they give you the best results for the things you care about.

People don't respond well to nebulous, "this strengthens the community"-type stuff. They like good products, good service, low prices, and a nice user/shopping experience. The crucial point is that whatever the good things are about your business, people have to feel them in a single interaction, the very first time — not years down the road. You can't depend on people subordinating their short-term interests to a vague community benefit that a) won't show up for a long time, and b) only shows up if everyone else in the community also makes the same sacrifice.

</comment><comment><USER3> Economical fallacies all over, there's a very simple way to measure the true cost of something, and provided government isn't subsidizing anything or skewing the market it actually measures things quite well. It's called a price. If you think that the quality of local produce is higher than the quality of non-local produce though, go ahead and buy things locally, it all comes down to what you're willing to spend for the produce and what quality you're demanding for your money. Here's two great articles on it by Art Carden: <http://mises.org/daily/3026> <http://mises.org/daily/3059>

</comment><comment><USER4> I smell a chamber of commerce's involvement.

<comment><USER5> And if you're looking for office furniture, look no further than American Seating, Steelcase, Haworth and Herman Miller.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> when i see this kind of thing, in a forum dominated by americans (or citizens any other "first world" country), it always sticks in my throat a little. i understand the motivation (and even agree with some of the environmental aspects), but it's hard to ignore the thinly veiled implications that you don't want the rest of the world to be as rich as you are...

<comment><USER7> In the general case, I agree with you. With the specific niche of food, however, I disagree strongly.

In the US, supporting independent, community farmers is key in battling the negative effects of the government corn subsidy. There are numerous places you can learn about this subsidy's adverse effects on developing countries--I'd suggest _Food,_ _Inc._ for one. Buying locally grown food is also an environmental boon, since there's much less fuel burned in transportation.

<comment><USER2> Indeed. Were it not for the government subsidy of entrenched agribusiness interests, local food might actually be objectively cheap. When you're growing food sustainably, you don't get as much of the kinds of economies of scale that give a $1 billion/year factory major cost advantages over a $1 million/year factory, so smaller farms aren't at a huge disadvantage there. And there's no good reason for transportation or distribution costs to be very high.</comment></comment></comment>


Why you should use English versions of your OS and other software - <AUTHOR> http://blog.szynalski.com/2010/01/08/english-versions-of-software/

<comment><USER2> This is why my company decided to go with a logging/messaging mechanism that stores messages by ID with parameters. We can get a log file from customers in France who see the error message in French, but we can read their log file in English because it's in a neutral format.

This isn't a panacea, as it means that there's a bit more work involved to integrate with tools like Splunk, and we obviously don't log to anything like syslog. But it makes it easier for our support people to support customers who prefer to see their messages in their native language.

<comment><USER3> Why would your customers even need to see the log file? For general errors we have a language table that spits out the local copy to the screen. Common errors are translated (~100). Behind the scenes, the logs are in english for internal errors, and the language of the OS for everything else. We rely on .NET so exceptions are tied to the OS.

We have some older components that do spit out error codes. (like COMS, error -84413994005!) Sometimes the codes aren't specific at all and I have to install a debug version to get the information I need, or rely on a graybeard programmer to help me out.

These days programs are far too complex to rely on a limited set of error codes.

<comment><USER2> Our logs aren't just error messages; they're all sorts of messages that the user of our (backup) software may be interested in. I'm trying to figure out ways to _reduce_ our messages so that our customers only see the details that they will really be interested in, but there is a large subset of our customers who want to be able to review how their backups went (and not just with the email summary that we send, which is generated from the log messages, BTW).

Our _tracing_ facility, on the other hand, is purely English.

<comment><USER3> Okay, just a difference in semantics. In that regards our systems are similar. Our reports = your logs, our logs=your traces.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I know the blog is to help people learn English, but isn't that antithetical to helping non-English speakers learn how to use computers?

Shouldn't we instead be contributing to non-English documentation so that even those who are too poor to learn English, can still learn to use a computer? Ubuntu is doing this beautifully.

<comment><USER5> I'm Polish, and I support using native languages, but it's fact - English is the lingua franca of software.

About Linux - internationalization is done right here, in normal day to day usage it isn't needed to know English, but still the problem is with troubleshouting - the easier to google error message the easier it is to solve problem, and error messages in Polish are harder to google.

In old times every error presented to user had an error code, that was constant across locales. I think this is very good convention - it helps with searching for informations about error without enforcing people to use software in locale that is not their native.

BTW - other good convention for error messages is to include in every error message unique string that is also dumped to logs. That way it is later easier to match stacktraces in log files with error reports from users.

<comment><USER4> Też jestem Polakiem, ale zyję w San Francisco USA.

If you post your error codes online in Polish, then others can find it in Polish... meaning you lower the barrier to entry for other Polish users (one less thing to learn).

The answer is not to require everyone to use English, the answer is to post more about computers in your native tongue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That's why I write my code (var and function names, comments) in English. First, it meshes nicely with the rest of the language, keywords specially. Second, the most important docs, books, forums, wikis, mailing lists, etc are in English.

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't say the most important stuff is. Definitely the latest stuff is available in English first. For software it can be a few months. For books it can be a difference in years, and that's if you can find the translated version at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm from Italy and I have a macbook with italian keyboard. Still I switched to the english layout because software and usability is designed for english people and english keyboards.

<comment><USER5> In Eclipse IDE almost every Polish accented character "Alt + l, s,c,o,..." is made into keyboard shortcut, so every time I create a new workspace I have to manually change these shortcuts to other, not colliding with my language.

And we do translations with Eclipse, so local characters are important.

But that's the way it is, at least we don't have two kinds of I letter, like some ohter countries :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Actually you should switch to software that keeps localization in configuration space instead of code, allowing you to switch languages on a per-user, per-program or per-session.

Having user-targeted messages hard coded is a bug.

<comment><USER2> Yes, it is. However, if you don't include search keys in the text presented to the user, it isn't going help when you get a dialog that says (FTA):

      Sterownik ekranu przestał działać, ale odzyskał sprawność.

That's missing something at the beginning or end that allows a search engine to say "aha! this is looking for _this_ error message, which in English is _this_ ".

This is a hard problem, at the same time; the translated log files[1] from work look something like this:

        2009-12-13 14:21 BACK-E-00234 <text here, with optional parameter values>

The key piece is "BACK-E-00234" (it's from the BACK module, it's an Error, and it's message 00234). When we have messages to display to the user in a dialog, we _don't_ show that key information (or have a way of getting to it) because it's ugly.

It's unlikely that the message mentioned in the article was hard-coded to Polish; instead the author is arguing about users and the searchability of non-English error messages. To increase the searchability, you need to include key details (e.g., "BACK-E-00234") that make the message significantly uglier to read. One possible way around this is to make sure your error dialogs are selectable/copyable (maybe put a button to do this), but on copy silently insert the search key details.

[1] Our untranslated log files look more like:

        <M ID="234" T="2009-12-13T14:21:00.00000" S="E" M="BACK">...parameter tags here...</M>

<comment><USER8> Hmmm... Including a button on dialog boxes for googling (or bing'ing) the error in language-neutral form...

Nice item for a future GUI wishlist.

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure that a button for search is the right way to go; it would work, definitely, but at the cost of cluttering your UI. Insertion into copy is probably a better idea, because you may be emailing the error message to a systems administrator instead of searching it.

<comment><USER8> Perhaps a collapsed details or additional actions pane

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hard to agree as people from other countries may poorly understand English.

That's a big problem to learn computer in foreign language (If you had context menu with items: Afgdfguw, Eetgreg, Uga, Boo, which would you choose?)

If problems occur then, anyway, regular users are not those who would try and would fix them.

For an advanced user, sure, use language you want. And if you choose your native language and if you can't find a solution to your trouble, try different keywords. Or reinstall nVidia driver in english version.

English speakers will have a hard time to understand this.

</comment><comment><USER10> I use Ubuntu in French and I find the translations to be in a pretty good shape. When I get an error message then I just use the command line to launch the same program in English: LC_ALL=en_US program. Works pretty well.

Recently I switched my parents to a Romanian version of Ubuntu and I was pretty disappointed with the state of translations. Bad wording, inconsistent translations, partial translations etc. But English is not an option for my parents. For now I try to identify translation problems and contribute patches to fix them.

</comment><comment><USER11> Another small example of the network effect increasing the dominance of the already-dominant language.

<comment><USER12> Yes, but the dominant languages can change over time.

<comment><USER13> And they do, However, in different contexts. Latin has been the language of (European) science long after it stopped being dominant in other respects. English can turn out to remain dominant in technological fields, specifically software, for a long time, even as other languages may overtake it otherwise.

<comment><USER12> Yes. German was also very important in science at the end of the 19-th century.

<comment><USER11> And French was the language of diplomacy from the 17th century until WWII. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingua_franca>

<comment><USER12> I guess Chinese should have been quite important in east Asia (and getting important again right now)? Any experts on that around here?

<comment><USER14> "Chinese" is a special case, in that there are actually a large number of spoken languages (of which Cantonese and Mandarin are merely the best-known outside of the region) that share a common system of writing that is largely independent of the sounds of spoken language(1). Imagine, if you will, that a person could write something in French and someone else could read it as if it were Italian, Spanish or Romanian without a hiccup. I18n would be a much easier task if European languages were so encoded, no doubt, but literacy itself would become a much more remarkable accomplishment.

(1)A large number of Chinese characters are composed of a syllable radical which originally acted as a guide to pronunciation (say, "ma") along with a context indicator which would tell the reader which of the various "ma" syllables was being used. In the original written language, it probably made perfect sense, but language drift over time have left the system essentially arbitrary in most modern Chinese languages.

[EDIT -- tried to use an asterisk there, forgetting that paired asterisks result in italics.]

<comment><USER12> What happened to grammar --- like word order? Did it not drift?

<comment><USER14> Good question -- and the answer is that systematic writing combined with widespread literacy tends to fossilize language, at least on the page. There is, for instance, a world of difference between written and spoken English, the written version being not too very different from what one might have expected to read in an eighteenth-century document. The vocabulary has changed somewhat, the modifiers less (ahem) magnificent, but the grammar (and the flow and phrasing) is essentially the same. In fact, it is really only semantic drift that prevents us from reading Shakespeare as easily as, say, Tom Wolfe. Even the spelling in today's written English reflects the pronunciation prevalent in the London area in the fifteenth century. None of us, though (or at least none of us who regularly interact with other English-speaking humans) would speak spontaneously in any way like the way we write. The situation is similar in other languages; in spoken French, for instance, one only hears the _ne verb pas_ negation in the context of strong emphasis, the grammaticized _pas_ having completely replaced the original negator _ne_ in day-to-day speech. Only tweets, text messages and smilies will prevent English from being as static as written "Chinese".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Seems the author never try any software/website originally written in languages other than English. Then, the English version is usually awful to use or get help ...

And the issue is primarily due to the large online population and knowledge base of English-speaking people. You can find enough info about any topic if such population exists, i.e. I found a lot info about linux in German language, probably due to popularity of the OS in Germany.

</comment><comment><USER16> Google does some automatic translation of common terms and provides an option to search for pages in different languages. If this feature improves, this advice could soon become obsolete.

Anyway, one reason for using English versions is that localizations are often rather strange and that GUIs or less well tested. It can easily happen that a text doesn't really fit into the space that was left for the English message.

</comment><comment><USER17> Interesting that for debugging purpose only, the author considers that one should use the software stack in English only. I am sorry, but the wonder of humanity is coming from our differences. I speak French, German, English and Danish, each language allows me to think/reflect on different themes differently. I can express some concepts in German with one word for example "Schadenfreude" which would require a complete sentence in French.

Now imagine, you are deep into doing some work in German and you need to switch all the time between your "German" work and your "English" tools because your computer may crash and you may need to copy/paste an error message in a search engine. This is a usability disaster. I am really surprised that lot of HN readers are supporting such idea when at the same time the majority of people here have high praise for good design and usability.

</comment><comment><USER18> You should use software in the language of its authors, given that you speak it, of course. This language just happens be English most of the time. Localization is, in my experience, almost always poorly done.

</comment><comment><USER19> Summary: human languages have network effects too, and using one of the more popular ones may have benefits.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'd go as far as to say everyone should just move to English for everything, not just Operating Systems.

<comment><USER21> I speak two languages: English and Russian. Though it drives me crazy when I have to use software and especially cellphones in Russian - I can't understand anything there.

I'd say, everyone needs to know English, but I wouldn't like if majority switched to English as their only language. In my opinion, other languages help us to learn history of their countries.

<comment><USER22> Agreed. English is _the_ second (or third, in my case) language to know, but it would make me very sad if everyone started using English in contexts that don't require it.

<comment><USER23> > ...using English in contexts that don't require it.

Yes. But I would think in the information technology domain, most of the entities don't translate very well. For example words like 'daemon', 'driver', 'segmentation fault' etc. these acquire a certain meaning that just cannot be translated easily to other languages. So you end up with half-half type mix, half of the words in English half in the native language. It ends up sounding silly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Heh, I moved to Poland three months ago from my native England, and the one thing that's really helping me with the language is setting my Windows installation to be in Polish.

Note: I guess this step isn't necessary if, unlike me, you don't suck at learning languages ;)

<comment><USER3> You are braver than I. I originally had a french PC. I gave it a solid go but having to translate errors to english, then try to translate it the specific english, then trying to translate it back to french just slowed me down immensely. It was faster to install Windows [English] and keep the french copy in a container.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is very true. I actually try to reverse translate lots of error messages back to English when googling for help. It's not always easy to get the correct wording however.

</comment><comment><USER26> What is really better - is to set up google search preferences to search in English language, instead of auto-detected by GEO-location or your browser's language settings.

You will be surprised by the huge difference in search results when you forces google to search only in English.

Also try to read English language news instead of your native. You will discover, that world is much bigger than those biased and poorly translated articles you can found on a popular localized sites.

</comment><comment><USER27> So I got a Mac.

Now seriously: that's not a real reason to use the whole system in English. I do that (except for the keyboard layout, I love the Spanish one <3), but I don't think I anyone should ever do it if they don't really like/feel comfortable to. Translations are very good, so that wouldn't be a reason... and IMHO what the post describes is an acceptable risk (hey, you probably will get sorted of this, but will have to Google more than a few minutes).

<comment><USER27> Any other opinions?</comment></comment>


How a Diablo expansion led to behind-the-scenes trouble - <AUTHOR> https://www.polygon.com/features/2018/6/29/17517376/diablo-hellfire-expansion-behind-the-scenes-trouble? <comment><USER2> "During a milestone check-in with Cyberlore, however, Blizzard's managers had deemed the work subpar. They cancelled the contract, finished the add-on pack, Beyond the Dark Portal, themselves, and resolved that only an in-house team could nurture a Blizzard property to an acceptable level of quality."

I was working at Cyberlore as a playtester when Blizzard pulled the plug on the Warcraft 2 expansion. It was baffling to us all. They never explained why, to us anyway. All these years later, to read that they felt the work was subpar is a surprise. We tried to get more info, but all we got was "Decision is made. Hand over all assets." We just thought it was some kind of internal political struggle.

These days everyone does agile, so these kind of big expectation mismatches don't happen so often anymore. In theory, anyway.

<comment><USER3> > These days everyone does agile

Is Agile common in game development?

<comment><USER4> Anecdotal: from talking with my friends who still work in game dev, something management calls "agile" is relatively common. Lean developer staffing makes having much agility in practice kind of tough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I loved every Blizzard game as a kid. Warcraft 2, Diablo 1, Starcraft, Diablo 2, Warcraft 3, and then WoW. I can't stress enough how much of my life was consumed by Blizzard games.

Warcraft 2 was one of the very first games I ever owned. I still remember my dad taking me to Comp USA to buy it for me after I read about it in PC Gamer. You can hear Starcraft 1 sounds in the background in a bunch of the camera footage that my mom shot in our home while I was still in grade school. I nearly failed out of junior high because I would do nothing but play Diablo 2 outside of school. I spent all of my free time in 10th grade playing Warcraft 3 ladder and DOTA. I was playing WOW on prom night.

Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 were two of the biggest disappointments of my life. Not just gaming-wise, but out of everything. It was obvious that the people involved with making the originals great were either not involved with the new games at all, or they no longer had a major say in anything.

I heard a second-hand account from someone who used to be high up at Blizzard in regards to what happened with Blizzard North. They said the original BN guys felt they were owed more than what they were getting, that what they were receiving in terms of overall compensation and creative control was disproportionate in comparison to their contributions for the Diablo franchise, which had become a flagship Blizzard IP on par with Starcraft and Warcraft.

They gave an ultimatum, and Blizzard scrapped all of the ongoing Diablo 3 work (the Diablo 3 we got was not what BN had initially started making) and shut down Blizzard North in response. They then made Hellgate London. This is in contrast with the Guild Wars people, who left of their own accord.

</comment><comment><USER6> > Per the terms of the sale, Ken Williams was given a verbal promise by CUC > management that Serra[sic] and the other studios wrapped up in the purchase > would retain their independence.

That does not make sense to me, though I may be missing something. It's either a "verbal [only] promise" or in the "terms", no?

<comment><USER7> Both are legally binding and they could have both a verbal agreement and have that reflected in the terms, but there sentence structure is odd.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you like these sorts of stories be sure to give Blood Sweat and Pixels from Kotaku's Jason Schreier a read! :)

</comment><comment><USER9> Can anyone recommend a book on gamedev industry written by actual industry insider, and not a professional writer/journalist like this one?

<comment><USER10> Not a book, but here are two GDC postmortem talks from people who worked on Diablo 3. There are many interesting GDC talks about game development!

GDC 2013: Shout at the Devil: The Making of Diablo III [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FG10e0-JyjY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FG10e0-JyjY)

GDC 2015: Against the Burning Hells: Diablo III's Road to Redemption with Reaper of Souls [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bajI1oGPhog](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bajI1oGPhog)

<comment><USER11> GDC postmortems in general are quite high-density in goodness.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Somebody should make a dramatized documentary about the making of diablo. It's discussed like every 2 weeks on here, somebody should make a documentary.

<comment><USER13> Someone should just make a sequel worthy of the name.

<comment><USER14> A lot of people call Path of Exile a spiritual sequel to Diablo 2.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Off topic: the cookie acceptance dialog that polygon uses is broken. It shows a spinner and doesn't disappear. Why does this even need a spinner? I'm seeing similar behaviour on multiple websites now, it's infuriating.

<comment><USER16> GDPR requires you to "prove" you gained consent by creating a server-side timestamped log of the option each user chooses.

But you cannot see my comment because I was hellbanned, so enjoy wondering.

<comment> vertex-four The user is only given one option here, to accept tracking - the website isn't even trying to be GDPR compliant, apparently they do not foresee having any EU visitors and so have no need to be. As a result, I'm not reading the damn thing.

<comment> polski-g Or a US company isn't going to comply with EU laws because they have no reason to.

<comment> vertex-four If you make money off E.U. citizens, you should comply with E.U. laws. Simple as that. If you don't want to comply with the laws of a country, do not make money off people there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's a mystery how Blizzard then went on to release the failure Diablo 3 is.

<comment><USER18> Diablo 3 sold 3.5 million units the first day and 30 million units total as of 2015, so I'm not sure by what metric it would be considered a failure... aside from "I personally didn't like it"?

<comment><USER19> The relevant metrics would be daily/monthly active useres (DAU/MAU) and churn rate. But Blizzard doesn't report those number's unless they're good (e.g. Hearhstone/Overwatch hitting new record MAU last year), and hasn't ever released any such numbers for Diablo 3.

This article[0] claims Blizzards overall MAU was close to flat YoY-Q4 2016-2017, knowing that Overwatch and Hearthstone are hitting records high MAU, while overall MAU is flat means that the other games (D3, SC2, HotS) are losing players.

It's a success in the way Matrix Revolutions was a success, massively profitable[1] yet a disappointment to fans (see diablo 3 fan ratings[2]).

[0] [https://venturebeat.com/2018/02/08/blizzards-monthly- active-...](https://venturebeat.com/2018/02/08/blizzards-monthly-active-users- for-q4-2017-drop-just-a-bit-from-2016s-number/)

[1] [https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Matrix-Revolutions- The#tab...](https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Matrix-Revolutions- The#tab=summary)

[2] [http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/diablo- iii](http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/diablo-iii)

<comment><USER20> Diablo 3 does not have a recurring fee so it is not relevant how many active players it has; the only relevant metric is units sold.

<comment><USER21> > the only relevant metric is units sold.

That's an arbitrary statement. The only relevant metric is revenue outside of whatever bars you would like to matter. Over time, units sold is a poor return and D3 was disappointing against every prediction beyond units sold. It was a disaster, in comparison to the recurring success of PoE.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Poll: Should Apple accept an app that tracks drone kills? - <AUTHOR> http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/09/03/poll-should-apple-accept-an-app-that-tracks-drone-kills/

<comment><USER2> It's not about this specific application -- it's about the proverbial slippery slope. If an app that tracks drone strikes, based on publicly available information, can be excluded, where do we draw the line? And more to the point, where do _they_ (i.e. Apple) draw the line, and what qualifies them to be drawing it?

Just to test the waters, I'd like to see an app that automatically locates the nearest abortion clinic. Also an app that automatically locates the nearest gun store. But these apps should be submitted by different people, at different times, just to see how differently they're treated.

But I should be happy about this brouhaha -- in the final analysis, incidents like this can only increase Android's market share, because no single company can exclude an application from Android, as Apple rather arbitrarily does with apps designed for their platform.

</comment><comment><USER3> As shocked as I am at this, I'm shocked at the response to the poll!

<comment><USER4> Why are you shocked? I'm shocked (maybe disgusted is the better word, as I was expecting it) at the fact that Apple bans Apps that simply transport Information, just because the information is not pleasant enough.

<comment><USER3> I believe there's a right to know about these goings on. Those drones are being used as part of operations funded by taxpayers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Personally these drones are just scary all around as once one country uses this tech others will follow.

What's going to stop a more advanced drone from attacking other nations other then how the US uses them now?

Iran purportedly got their hands on one these drones...

</comment><comment><USER6> It's a censored walled garden where nary a controversial idea should be shared. Apple bans all kinds of things from its playground, always has, always will. Let Apple and its users reap what they sow.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's Apple's store I think they can decide to sell whatever they want and the consumer can decide to goto a different store (platform) if Apple isn't meeting their needs.

<comment><USER8> What about ethical responsibility?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think the reason they rejected it is that there is no utility to it. Just open the webpage. They very often reject applications that duplicate web functionality.

<comment><USER8> It has push notifications.

<comment><USER10> To be fair email would do the job...

<comment><USER11> To be fair maybe people don't want to give out their email to everyone.

<comment><USER12> I've never, ever hesitated in giving out my email address to _anyone_ (that includes sites that I _know_ are scammers and would sell my email address to anyone practically for the asking). In the past ??? years (since GMail was in beta), I've received less than 5 spams.

(I know it's a little irrelevant to your point though, but wanted to say at least with gmail you don't need to fear giving you email address out)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Also, what about a normal news app? They report unpleasant goings on in the world like drone killings.

</comment><comment><USER13> They probably should!

Counter-poll: should news organizations return to reporting actual news?</comment>


What Makes a Mind? Kurzweil and Google May be Surprised - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/view/510141/what-makes-a-mind-kurzweil-and-google-may-be-surprised/

<comment><USER2> I don't think Kurzweil is claiming to create anything close to human intelligence in the next few years. Likely, people will continue to say it's not "really" intelligence for quite some time.

I think computers are going to gradually start fuzzing the line between AI and humans. As they get better, we will slowly start to treat them more like we would a human (i.e. we would start literally writing a question for Google to answer, not worrying if it will know what we mean). Eventually, it might be the case that we speak with a phone operator for some company and don't notice that it's a machine - unless we ask it something off topic, and eventually even that won't be a reliable heuristic.

At what point do we finally say the computer "understands"?</comment>