Apple ][+ in HTML5 - <AUTHOR> http://porkrind.org/a2/ <comment><USER3>
      10 X=1
      20 FOR Y=1 TO X
      30 PRINT " ";
      40 NEXT Y
      50 PRINT "HELLO"
      60 IF X=34 THEN LEFT=1
      70 IF X=0 THEN LEFT=0
      80 IF LEFT=1 THEN X=X-1
      90 IF LEFT=0 THEN X=X+1
      100 GOTO 20

      RUN

Notes: Use ^C to stop it. Type LIST to see the program you wrote. If you screw up a line, just type the line number and hit <return> to delete that line.

<comment><USER4>
        10 X=1
        20 D=1
        30 FOR Y=1 TO X
        40 PRINT " ";
        50 NEXT Y
        60 PRINT "HELLO"
        70 IF X=0 OR X=34 THEN D=D*-1
        80 X=X+D
        90 GOTO 30

<comment><USER3>
      5 PRINT "WHAT'S YOUR FIRST NAME?"
      7 INPUT NAME$
      10 X=1
      20 D=1
      30 FOR Y=1 TO X
      40 PRINT " ";
      50 NEXT Y
      60 PRINT NAME$
      70 IF X=0 OR X=39-LEN(NAME$) THEN D=D*-1
      80 X=X+D
      90 GOTO 30

      RUN

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I do hope Apple is in a good mood about this, because apple2+.rom.js loads an Apple ][ Applesoft ROM image, which is technically still copyrighted by Apple.

As an old geezer who earned his programming wings on an Apple ][ coding 6502 machine language and later UCSD Pascal, I am absolutely delighted about this project. I had been toying with the same idea for some time but skipped it due to lack of time and the fear of Apples legal stormtroopers.

Now if only I find disk images of Bandits and Dogfight...

<comment><USER6> As far as I know, Apple does release some of their older OSes as downloadable images from their website.

<comment><USER5> I know, but this is only some classic MacOS disk images - no ROM files either.

I hope that after Job's demise, someone at Apple is sane enough to understand abandonware. But I am not counting on that.

<comment><USER7> In all seriousness, I don't think Apple can free the Autostart ROM image unilaterally because Microsoft owns the copyright on Applesoft BASIC. It would be a great joint release if you could get them both to agree on it though!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Awesome!!! Took me back many years. Kudos to David Caldwell.

<comment><USER8> And that's why I love HN. Thanks for the down vote.

<comment><USER9> The whole upvoting/downvoting concept seems to be aimed at recreating communities where the majority can shout down any minorities. At the village level. A fear tactic aimed at making you subconsciously consider whether what you say will please the majority.

Ironic that it's called "karma", which is a complete perversion of the original religious meaning of the concept, perverted into a means of recording a "permanent record" of how antisocial or unsubmissive you've been to community opprobrium. Purely regressive adaptation of technology, and a crime against the spirit of those who created it.

<comment><USER10> It would be interesting if, say, when you upvoted something then your perception of upvotes and downvotes from people who similarly upvoted that thing were subtly changed and so forth. In essence, by upvoting something you would be changing your perception of the universe.

Which, I guess, is kind of how Google works in the long run, and also would tend to self-select people into like-minded groups. Overall, I think that our options are somewhat limited -- we either end up in a self-selected community or in a self-selected sub-community. E.g. I was "repelled" by digg because any politically "liberal" comment I made would be downvoted to oblivion within minutes. While similar things would happen on reddit if, say, one said things critical of libertarianism, I didn't find this quite so frustrating, and simply learned to curb my views accordingly.

Here on Hackernews (which I find to be the most reasonable community since the glory days of slashdot) I have learned to accept that, say, being critical of Android or having anything nice to say about PHP is likely to lead to a lot of welts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I fired up conan, figured out the key mappings, then my stored neurons kicked in, found the hidden life then immediately got to the third level without dying. God help anyone trying to figure this game out for the first time. I want to use basic, but my keyboard mapping is fubar'ed, I figured out ctrl maps to " but I haven't figured out which key generates "," which is needed for a program I wanna write.

<comment><USER12> How did you fire up Conan?

<comment><USER11> choose the conan1 disk, click cold start, when it says flip disk, choose conan2 disk, hit space, and you're in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> here are some lists of the commands for the Apple ][

<http://www.landsnail.com/a2ref.htm>

<http://www.landsnail.com/a2ref2.htm>

<http://www.landsnail.com/a2ref3.htm>

<http://www.landsnail.com/a2ref4.htm>

<comment><USER8> I would like to add this link also, Linapple[1], an Apple][ emulator for Linux, which is pretty good too. More fun on your Linux box, from the good old days. :)

[1] <http://linapple.sourceforge.net/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Oh, wow, I can't believe how quickly BASIC comes back. I spent a lot of time typing programs in at that prompt. I loved the hours I spent writing programs out on notebook paper, and I absolutely _loathed_ typing them in. I always did, though. Seeing them run gave me a little thrill. (Not that I ever wrote a single program that I would have enjoyed using if it wasn't mine.) The best thing in the world was when my mother typed in a program for me, which she only did a few times when I was really, really sick.

Good times. I think I will now make a low-res snowman.

<comment><USER14> Whoa, Chromium 18 under Ubuntu doesn't work as well as Chrome on OSX does. 18 is ancient, so I can't really complain; this is just information. I got visual artifacts until I deselected "Use WebGL." Now everything displays fine, but I can't type quote marks or commas. When I type ' or " I get ^. When I type , I get <. On OSX, I know I could type double quotes and commas. For what it's worth, I'm using Dvorak under both Linux and OSX.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> FYI, on my system (Chrome 23, Ubuntu Precise), the SHIFT key has no effect. I am unable to type quotes, exclamation marks, etc. I noticed a couple of other posters mentioned similar problems, but wanted to call it out clearly in a separate top-level comment.

<comment><USER16> Without SHIFT, I can't type PR#6!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> My father had one and somehow it's the only Apple product I have ever really used :)

IIRC (and as the emulation does apparently) the games started themselves at boot, so I don't think I have ever typed any command on it !

</comment><comment><USER18> I had these Beagle Brothers posters -- <http://beagle.applearchives.com/posters.htm> Lots of great info on 'em.

</comment><comment><USER19> The WebGL version has some interesting results in Safari:

<http://imgur.com/KYgM1>

</comment><comment><USER20> Nice project. Trying it out on my iPad 3. It can do 1 sec of emulated time in ~1.6 secs.

<comment><USER21> For Reference: 2011 Macbook Air 11: 1sec emulated in 0.35s

<comment><USER22> Hmm, there's something wrong with Macbooks' performance. My lenovo laptop running Linux with a very modest cpu (AMD E-450 APU) gives out 1 sec / 0.17s.

Then again, perhaps the browser technology matters more than anything else: I'm running it on latest stable chromium.

<comment><USER23> On Win7 Firefox only gives me 0.19 whereas Chrome does 0.03.

So I guess it's the browser that matters a lot here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I sat for about an hour playing with it. Went as far as finding the original Apple manual (on scribd) online and reading it through for the commands. Thi sis just an amazing project. Great work.

</comment><comment><USER25> _10 PRINT "HELLO"

20 GOTO 10

RUN_

7th grade memories come flooding back ...

</comment><comment><USER26> Who says skeuomorphism is a bad thing? This is simply brilliant!

</comment><comment><USER27> My goodness, it even switches from black & white to the messed-up color rendering of text characters when you enter graphics mode (type "GR").

Incredible.

</comment><comment><USER28> Anyone else having trouble getting Adventure Construction Set to run? (Seeing ACS in the list brings back so many memories)

<comment><USER29> The emulation isn't perfect--I know there are still some 6502 bugs lurking around. I did this in about a week last year and have only spent a few sporadic days here and there improving it.

One of the things on my todo list is to use websockets or something to ship the emulation log back to the server and compare against an independent (and presumably better tested) 6502 emulator. From there I can detect inconsistencies and fix the JS implementation. As I side effect I can build up a set of (hopefully) comprehensive test vectors that anyone writing a 6502 emulator can use to validate their implementation.

<comment><USER30> The C64 6502 test suite is easy to bodge into an emulator. I used it to verify the 6502 emulation code in mine. Very worthwhile - I found a number of bugs because of it, particularly with BCD mode and a number of the illegal instructions. (Obviously no guarantee the 6510 illegal instructions are the same as the 6502's, but the few that BBC Micro games used seemed to be. I believe the BBC Micro 6502 is the same one as in the Apple II, but 2MHz.)

An explanation of how to fit it into a non-C64 emulator:

<http://www.softwolves.com/arkiv/cbm-hackers/7/7114.html>

Mirror of the actual file:

<http://modelb.bbcmicro.com/tech.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Entering machine language monitor:

call 151

l

it unassembly a portion of memory.

<comment><USER31> I can type the minus before the 151. See [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/143374/call-151-what- did-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/143374/call-151-what-did-it-do-on- the-apple)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> That's simply awesome.

Can this thing run Aztec or Microwave, too?

</comment><comment><USER33> man i was struggling to remember various commands, hat to run, etc and thanks for the comments, i remembered some more.

peek and poke ftw!

</comment><comment><USER34> CALL -151

and then everything comes to mind :)

<comment><USER35> BLOAD the INTBASIC roms, go F666G, and then you can play with the mini- assembler!

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Impressive in so many ways!

</comment><comment><USER37> "The kids of today should defend themselves against the Seventies" - <USER2> Jam, itself a somewhat dated cultural icon.

It's interesting to think about the cultural impact of this if it really catches on, at least in the hacker/geek world. This isn't just a tech demo: It's a self-conscious reconstruction of a cultural artifact, and drags along with it other cultural references and context. Nobody these days is going to 'grow up' with an Apple ][ because of things like this, but, previously, the only way to experience that specific system was to either have been born in the narrow window of time where you had one when they were still at least vaguely mainstream, or to decide to run an emulator and likely get into emulation as a hobby. It's the difference between knowing every Beach Boys song because you grew up in 1960s California, knowing them because you deliberately chose to collect that era's music, and knowing them because, like me, your parents played them practically from your birth and so they became the first band you really liked.

This just makes the past that much more mainstream, the software equivalent of the deliberately dated aesthetic of a Quentin Tarantino film.

<comment><USER38> <http://jsmess.textfiles.com/>

Stuff like this is just the tip of the iceberg.

<comment><USER39> Ooh! There's been a MAME port too, right?</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Mind map like tool for information organization? - <AUTHOR> I love mind maps. However, most tools are somewhat restrictive or "slow" when adding anything other than plain text.
Is there any tool that works better with different media?
I'm not sure how to put it into words, but I envision a blank canvas like Prezi (at least when it was launched) where you can structure information with mind maps, add snippets from the web, plain text or even videos/images almost like you have an infinite sized table and you lay down all information you have, but in a digital format.
It also has to be searchable and potentially offer some sort of outline based on the information you have to easily glance at structure?
My intent is to document ideas, tasks, and information that serves as reference. <comment><USER2> Miro might be a good fit. Has good collaboration tools as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Holy cow. From the videos I watched it seems like the materialization of what I was thinking. I will give it a shot. Thank you very much!

Are there more tools like this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Something along the lines of workflowy (never-ending bulletpoints), notion (preformatted templates for notes), or airtable (tables with extra functions and collaboration ability)</comment>


Tesla to Build GF4 in Europe - <AUTHOR> https://electrek.co/2019/10/25/tesla-final-stages-selecting-site-european-gigafactory/ <comment><USER2> East Europe will be the best (budget wise)

West Europe will be smarter strategic wise</comment>


AMA with Patrick McKenzie a.k.a. patio11 tonight - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/events/cgaa95d93f3irlivthkel2ulbjk

<comment><USER2> I want to ask @patio11 what changed - why did he decide to become CEO of a startup?</comment>


Commander in Nazi SS-led unit living in Minnesota - <AUTHOR> http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/14/18957629-ap-report-commander-in-nazi-ss-led-unit-living-in-minnesota

<comment><AUTHOR> Probably he is not in Facebook or Google... that's why he wasn't caught.</comment>


Show HN: I built Reddit but for research only - <AUTHOR> https://asone.ai <comment><USER2> Neat! Any plans to join the Fediverse with ActivityPub? Recently showcased open source reddit clone [https://dev.lemmy.ml/](https://dev.lemmy.ml/) seems to be heading in this direction. Reddit for research could be achieved by hosting a Lemmy instance. With reddit clones popping up left and right, I think the competitive advantage will shift to community and moderation quality rather than technical quality. It could be good to cooperate around a common federated solution allowing individual instances to specialize and focus on community and moderation while everyone benefits from new features and bug fixes. I'm not sure how many reddit clones I can check each day!

</comment><comment><USER3> Ah this is cool - I was just recently wondering if there were any new discussion boards that were mathjax enabled.

I'm also working on a discussion community... it's not so easy but the time seems right.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool, what's the URL for your discussion community?

<comment><USER3> it's podaero.com - composed of a lot of small groups. The most recent one is [https://podaero.com/info/hacker-pod](https://podaero.com/info/hacker-pod)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If I can make a UI suggestion, I'd move the tags on the right and reduce the colors. I find it a bit difficult to skim through the titles if they're not all aligned to the left.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion, I'll try it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting. Is the source code available? (asking just out of curiosity)

<comment><AUTHOR> Not right now, but we are planning to release it eventually!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What's the size of your userbase so far?

<comment><AUTHOR> Around 100 sign-ups at the moment, but most are inactive. We're starting to focus more on growing the userbase now. The chicken-and-egg problem is pretty rough!

I'd love to hear any feedback on what we can do to improve.

<comment><USER6> Academia Twitter could be helpful, but you'll have to find the relevant hashtags to follow for each field. You might also actually want to reach out to journal publishers like Nature or Elsevier (blegh) to see if they'll write a short piece about you. The Scientist([https://www.the- scientist.com](https://www.the-scientist.com)) also runs news-style articles about peer-reviewed research as well as happenings in life science, so that could be an avenue you could explore for promotion too.

Another thing you could possibly do is ORCID sign-in. If users want their real names associated with their accounts, they may as well have an easy way to link their site presence to their publications, giving them further credibility (and accountability).

<comment><AUTHOR> That's some great advice. I'll definitely look into the ORCID sign-in. Thank you!

<comment><USER6> No problem, good luck!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Facebook Campus - <AUTHOR> https://about.fb.com/news/2020/09/introducing-facebook-campus/ <comment><USER2> I think the Facebook site will be _very_ different in the next few years than what we're traditionally used to.

The strategy that Facebook has been pivoting towards is in favor of smaller community building, rather than the "mass market square" approach, which is why:

1) Groups have been more prominent and getting quite a bit of promotion

2) Messenger has gotten quite a bit of UX improvements

3) New features like "Rooms," which favor small / intimate video conversations

4) Investments in hardware experiences like Portal, which have been heavily marketed towards family communication thus far (successfully it seems, looking at their last revenue #'s.)

5) Facebook Workplace, which was a smart B2B play anyway, but also aligns with their "micro-community" approach

Zuck messaged this new pivot IIRC around the last US presidential election, but it may have started before that. Therefore I would expect to see more of these types of experiences:

"Facebook Campus" \- "Facebook Workplace" \- "Facebook [TBD]"

<comment><USER3> But who likes this stuff? Who really wants to use it? I don't know anyone especially the younger crowd as I have teenagers, that want anything to do with facebook

<comment><USER4> I don't know about those specific features, but I'm always surprised how people make assumptions about a global service with over two billion users based on an extremely local sample of anecdotes.

"I don't think anybody in the world buys fish because I live in Montana and my kids hate it"

<comment><USER3> You assume I assume. This is well documented and highly reported on.

"According to a recent study by Edison Research, Facebook is hemorrhaging users in the US, losing about 15 million people since 2017. The largest drop is among teen users and millennials."

"As of February 2019, 62% of 12-34 year olds in the US log into Facebook. This is down from 79% in 2017, and represents about 11 million of of the overall decrease"

"Senior citizens in the US are the fastest growing group of Facebook users, nearly doubling in numbers between 2012 and 2019, a vast shift from the platform's beginnings as a service for college students."

Hearing younger folks say the same thing first hand only validates the research and the numerous articles. All of the statistical data can be skewed and I imagine any small study (pew, edison) is going to have different results. So where does that leave me? We'll when you have backyard full of teenagers that are all well off with mobile devices and all of them tell you facebook is for boomers and talking to grandma, that tends to hold a little weight coupled with some of the statistical data. Interestingly enough we can find data that makes the opposite claim so what does one do when presented with competing data? They use the data they have which in this case is directly from a reputable demographic/source.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _I stood on a hill and I saw the Old approaching, but it came as the New. It hobbled up on new crutches which no one had ever seen before and stank of new smells of decay which no one had ever smelt before._

Bertolt Brecht, Parade of the Old New. (1939)

</comment><comment><USER6> I think Facebook is bleeding college age people to Instagram (yes I know it is owned by FB), snapchat and the likes and this is serious ad revenue, if allowed to continue all spells the death of a platform. Form me this is a signal of fear or desperation to save the website facebook. Facebook the company is VERY fine and healthy, but I think Facebook the website is in trouble

<comment><USER7> The release of this certainly means that they don't think that they're reaching as many college students as they could, which might be framed desperation, given FB's origins. But I personally think that's an overly pessimistic interpretation. I'm not sure what signs would point to the Facebook platform as a whole approaching "death." Their number of active users (for just Facebook, not Instagram or anything else) have been consistently growing each quarter - even specifically in the US.

<comment><USER8> It doesn't matter that you are getting more users if those users are old and that's basically what is happening to Facebook. FB these days is just a place where content gets recycled, original content, viral memes and cultural trends happen elsewhere (TT, IG, etc). Just try to list the number of public figures (that young people care about) that use FB as its main channel? Now compare that against TT, IG, etc.

FB managed to buy IG and WhatsApp but they won't always be able to buy their competitor or copy them

<comment><USER9> why does it not matter if they are old?

i could see the argument that they spend less money than other demographics but not that it doesnt matter

<comment><USER8> because the youth is the future. Investing in young users is investing long- term. Young users is potential future money, old users is immediate but short lived money stream. I didn't mean to say that it didn't matter but FB is obviously looking at the future

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Did facebook just relaunch facebook?

<comment><USER11> lol, so meta...

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> When Facebook first launched and was only available on certain campuses, it had an intimate and safe feeling. It was used primarily to share experiences with friends. The site was simple and compact. Feeds had a high signal to noise ratio, and it was about personal connection rather than political warfare. Somehow, unless they take on a content policy that bans news/politics/etc, I doubt they can get back to that place from where society is today. Even if the software was exactly the same as it was, _we_ have changed and we have been changed in large part by social media these last 15 years.

<comment> kube-system A ban on political content won't make fb what it was before. The toxic political content is a symptom of the problem, not a cause.

The community is the difference. Social bubbles on fb are now huge, and include people with wildly varying ideas for what they want to get out of social media. People naturally segregate different aspects of their social life in their real-world interactions, but that nuance is completely lost on fb.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Surprisingly, Harvard is not on the list of trial colleges.

</comment><comment><USER14> Jokes aside that this is how FB started, I wonder if this is a reaction to recent claims that FB has a general political slant, and that this might be a way to isolate and segregate people associated with colleges.

<comment><USER15> _> I wonder if this is a reaction to recent claims that FB has a general political slant_

I don't want to generalize too much from my own window into Facebook, but it does look like they may be in a feedback loop. As more and more toxic conservative garbage gets reshared, progressives start ditching Facebook. That means the remaining userbase likes that stuff more, so the feed gets tuned to make it more prominent. That turns off more progressives, who drop out. Rinse, lather, repeat.

When I go on Facebook now, it looks like Internet Fox News, and that's despite trying very hard to unfollow the people who reshare that stuff.

Even the left-leaning content on Facebook has gotten more extreme and virulent. It's just a miserable hellhole now of two tribes screaming at each other while the feed AI fans the flames.

<comment><USER16> > As more and more toxic conservative garbage gets reshared, progressives > start ditching Facebook.

I think this is a function of the friends you have, and what Facebook assumes you like to see based on the pages your friends like (lookalike audience targeting). When I was more active on Facebook, there was a lot of left-wing direct action, and zero Fox News stuff.

Maybe find different friends :)

<comment><USER17> _Maybe find different friends :)_

Has anyone actually ever taken this advice when receiving it in the context of frustrating social media content? I see people throwing this advice around a LOT in these discussions and have always tried to find someone who actually went and did it just because someone on the internet said to.

Curious how well it worked. It sounds about as useful advice as telling someone to "just" get another job after mildly venting about a rough day at the office (or on zoom, given the state of things here recently), which is something we've all done just to decompress I would imagine.

<comment><USER18> I wonder if pay to remove a post model would work well. Moderation costs money and by pay walling the report button, you can insure that only real cases are reported and take action.

<comment><USER17> Well there is the "Hide Post" feature, which back when I still even _had_ a FB account I would use with extreme prejudice and can be used free of charge. It was quite helpful before finally making the decision to just leave the platform entirely.

Personal curation _is_ a thing, which I think will solve the case for a non- trivial amount of people, if more were intentional and deliberate about it, but it stops short personally of getting 'better' friends.

Which...I just think is unhelpful advice unless an individual is truly and consistently harming the friendship with their actions and behaviors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I view one of the largest reasons for this as trying to ensure they keep user retention for younger demographics for live chat, which they've been lagging behind quite a bit compared to e.g. Discord. If Facebook completely loses their young demographic network effects it would be very difficult for them to regain them.

This will be tough as Discord is currently happily enjoying its unlimited growth and no profits phase, and has enough network effects that it's almost impossible to not use it as a young Internet-using male in many countries.

<comment><USER20> > If Facebook completely loses their young demographic network effects it > would be very difficult for them to regain them.

Facebook has had incredible success at mimicking other companies' features, and when that fails purchasing major competitors. Discord is still niche, and I suspect their marketing and image will make it hard to break out of 'gamer' culture.

<comment><USER19> I disagree that Discord is niche at this point. They're already worth several billion and it's still growing significantly, with perhaps several hundred million users and very high user-retention, usage, network effects, and proprietary lock-in. I'd _still_ invest in Discord today if I could, in a heartbeat.

<comment><USER21> Did it ever occur to you that we collectively shape our societies by the choices we make?

From my perspective, the last thing we need is more Facebooks and Twitters.

<comment><USER22> From my perspective, I think we need millions more more Facebooks and Twitters. Maybe billions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Yo dawg, I heard you like Facebook, so I put a Facebook in your Facebook so you can Facebook while you Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER24> Aside from the "Facebook just launched Facebook" side of this, I think it's really interesting that they're launching this on Facebook instead of acquiring/building a new network. It seems like social networks roll on cycles, you don't want to use your older sibling's social network. Their acquisitions also hint that they agree. My guess is that there is some concern internally about owning another major social network, combined with dropping numbers of young people coming on to Facebook.

<comment><USER25> Speculating: maybe they want to pipeline former students to their main product after they graduate.

Maybe they decided instead of risk another social media site going through the same lifecycle as Facebook did and fragmenting market share, they could keep it all under one roof. I suppose it could also be an attempt to keep the engineering simpler, too.

Hardly an expert, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Keeping college separate from the world at large is a good idea. Back when Facebook was exclusive to people with university '.edu' email accounts there was a massive shitstorm when everything got opened up to the general public. All of the sudden pictures of students drinking and doing drugs were visible to potential employers, non-students and the 'real world'. It seems that this new Facebook for universities won't have the same problem as it's not going to be merged back with regular FB.

</comment><comment><USER27> This would have been really cool maybe 8 years ago. Almost everyone I know at my university uses Facebook only for sharing "life updates" with older relatives who aren't on more trendy social media sites.

<comment><USER28> This was really cool about 16 years ago, when Facebook launched. Because this is what Facebook used to be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> > Today, we are launching Facebook Campus, a college-only space

This seems strangely familiar...

<comment><USER30> I remember the early days, when you could only join with a university account, and the only people you could interact with were others in the same network.

Privacy controls were 'public' by default, but then the only people seeing stuff were fellow students anyway. It was fantastic.

I deleted my Facebook account a few years ago for various reasons, but they had a really great product back then. Somehow I doubt this will capture the charm of v1.

<comment><USER31> The killer feature for me in Facebook's early days is that people could list the classes they had. This made it easy to message your classmates to get help on an assignment.

<comment><USER32> I remember when they killed that feature. It was the same time they introduced an app platform.

To replace the feature, there were competing class list apps, each requiring users install it and with its own data, so none of them worked.

I remember thinking whoever made that decision probably didn't understand the feature. But they sure were motivated to build an app ecosystem nobody asked for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> If FB doesn't have a play on education yet, they might want to capitalise on remote classes through video/transcripts. Possibly have a piazza equivalent built in and make it more accessible to schools.

</comment><comment><USER34> My university is a joke, and therefore I am sure they will adopt this soon without thinking to any of the consequences.

Basically Facebook want to fully substitute email within colleges.

What could go wrong?

This is not for users, it is more for university admins.

</comment><comment><USER35> Did Facebook invent a time machine to go back to 15 years ago?

</comment><comment><USER36> Might be unrelated, but when I visit this page in a private browsing session on iOS 14 and play the video I get a modal saying Facebook would like to use cookies and website data, and if you allow they can track me. If I don't allow, the video stops playing. If I do nothing, the video plays in the background.

[https://ibb.co/Bc2t2mK](https://ibb.co/Bc2t2mK)

</comment><comment><USER37> That name sounds like a place where you can get a degree in user tracking. I'm almost disappointed.

</comment><comment><USER38> Any idea if the schools are getting directly or indirectly paid to be a part of this?

</comment><comment><USER39> Is this an April Fools joke?

</comment><comment><USER40> A mobile version of messenger.com would be nice also.

On budget phones(think 8GBs) web apps are the best solution but yet there is only a mobile version of Facebook.com.

</comment><comment><USER41> The circle of life has rotated - we're now in a position where "Facebook but for Facebook" is an innovation. ;)

</comment><comment><USER42> So cost of entry is $20k and up per year? In other news, Deans of admission might be silently thanking Zuck for this feature!

</comment><comment><USER43> Facebook is AOL circa 1997. When it seemed that they'd be a dominate player forever... Fast forward a few years and were are almost non-existent. A few more and they were gone all together.

Never forget that the internet is awash in dead companies and sites that were extremely popular and powerful, until they werent.

Facebook is a giant, but its dominance in the USA and the EU is likely short lived.

<comment><USER44> And the same comment was made about Facebook practically a decade ago, pointing to MySpace and Friendster. Yet DAU, MAU, and engagement continue to grow. Some of this, perhaps, is due to Facebook's keen awareness of its own mortality and the several times that they had to navigate out of near existential crises. Just look on the backside of the logo out front of their HQ. Memento mori.

<comment><USER43> Yeah but those are not my comments, and it's not today.

It is not competition that will kill Facebook, its the change in people's behavior. Very different from the competitive view you take.

The death of Facebook will be from both in how people interact with each other and tech. Whether its a fundamental shift in comm(mobile phones) or a leap in tech like serverless / peer to peer that removes the need for a central service. Eventually, Facebook will not exist anywhere near its current form.

Remember, FB not a service like Google that serves the user. You dont need them to do anything but connect to other people. If you dont need to use FB, you wont. For now, its easier and working very well at scale. But that's temporary. Maybe 10 years. Maybe longer... One day it too will be a memory, owned and operated by a PE firm that specializes in brands.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Next will be Facebook takes on business networks with something like Blind with strong identity.

<comment><USER46> Checkout workplace.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> They want to make Facebook cool again?

</comment><comment><USER48> I guess Facebook is coming for Reddit.

</comment><comment><USER49> Did they just...go back to 2006?

</comment><comment><USER50> Announcing:

Microsoft Operating System

Amazon Online Bookstore

Google Internet Search

</comment><comment><USER51> The Poochie of social networks.

</comment><comment><USER52> Everything old is new again.

</comment><comment><USER53> "Hello fellow kids"

</comment><comment><USER54> glad to see my alma mater NOT in the list.

</comment><comment><USER55> haha full circle

</comment><comment><USER56> > Today, we are launching Facebook Campus, a college-only space designed to > help students connect with fellow classmates over shared interests. Facebook > Campus makes it easy to find and start conversations within your college > community.

Tomorrow we're rebranding as "TheFacebook" and will only be available to Harvard students.

<comment><USER57> Amusingly, it is not launching for Harvard students this time around. The campus list seems very odd and scattershot.

<comment><USER58> This sounds par for the course for any sort of rollout of technology in education.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Actually Mindblown. Next thing you know Google is going to release "Google Search, find what you're looking for on the internet!"

<comment><USER41> You know. A product focused only on search and not on advertising, where the goal was really to help people find what they're looking for - that might be a revolutionary product. And Google would be in a great position to launch it...</comment></comment>


Honduras experiments with charter cities - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/news/americas/21726121-central-american-country-has-bold-plan-attract-investment-it-not-going <comment><USER2> All of the trappings of modernity, the advanced technologies, the diversified economies, all rely on strict enforcement of laws and property rights to develop and flourish.</comment>


Most Influential Women in Science - <AUTHOR> https://womenlydesire.com/10-most-influential-women-in-science/ <comment><USER2> Thanks for posting</comment>


Internet Archive Seeks to Defend Against Wrongful Copyright Takedowns - <AUTHOR> https://torrentfreak.com/internet-archive-seeks-to-defend-against-wrongful-copyright-takedowns-160323/ <comment><USER2> The article about that on the Internet Archive written by Brewster Kahle himself:

[https://blog.archive.org/2016/03/22/save-our-safe-harbor- sub...](https://blog.archive.org/2016/03/22/save-our-safe-harbor-submission- to-copyright-office-on-the-dmca-safe-harbor-for-user-contributions/)

"We filed comments this week, explaining that the DMCA is generally working as Congress intended it to. These provisions allow platforms like the Internet Archive to provide services such as hosting and making available user- generated content without the risk of getting embroiled in lawsuit after lawsuit. We also offered some thoughts on ways the DMCA could work better for nonprofits and libraries, for example, by deterring copyright holders from using the notice and takedown process to silence legitimate commentary or criticism."

<comment><USER3> _Is_ the DMCA working the way Congress intended? All we ever talk about here is how it's constantly abused, and used as a club by large organizations over smaller parties.

Or, is that pretty much "what Congress intended?"

<comment><USER4> There are two parts.

1\. Safe Harbor for websites, means you don't have personal liability as long as you comply

2\. Ability for copyright holders to get stuff taken down quickly

1 is working fine, 2 is subject to abuse. The post says that 1 works.

<comment><USER5> If 1 was working fine, google wouldn't have had to implement Content ID. Which in turn led to even more of 2.

<comment><USER4> My understanding is that Google did that to cut down on the amount of time they spent responding to DMCA requests, not because they were worried about legal issues if they hadn't.

<comment><USER6> No, they were forced to implement it, as the copyright holder did not want to discuss with google every time. They wanted the right to shoot first, then ask.

<comment><USER4> The original post introducing it explicitly says it wasn't for legal reasons.

[https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/06/state-of-our- video-i...](https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/06/state-of-our-video-id- tools.html)

Do you have a source that says they were forced to do it by outsiders? Or any plausible way in which the DMCA required that?

Edit: also, content ID is automated checking of uploads. The ability for copyright owners to take down content directly is under a different program, I think.

<comment><USER7> That's correct. Also, note that Google's take down system _is NOT_ a DMCA take down request. It does not satisfy the requirements in several places, and it is actually stricter than the DMCA.

Google is basically volunteering to allow people to issue take down requests without consequences; if it was an actual DMCA take down, they would have to

And yes, Content ID is another system entirely where Google pattern-matches uploads (and old stuff when they feel like it); when hits are found, Google tends to _reasign the monetization_ to the "content owner" that registered with Content ID. Getting that money back has generally been impossible, even in cases where Content ID clearly screwed up (false positive).

If you're interested in the history of how Google has been using Content ID, there is an older discussion[1] from a few years ago when Google really started to abuse Content ID _hard_.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bt1ubSVMwaw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bt1ubSVMwaw)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _> We are deeply concerned that automated filtering could lead to taking down many materials that are being used in reasonable, legitimate and legally protected ways—especially when the underlying purpose of the complaint is not copyright related but rather an attempt to silence critical speech._

How would "notice and staydown" (vs. takedown) work with systems like IPFS which use content hashes? Would there be centrally maintained blacklists against which which all hosting companies would need to screen inbound content?

<comment><USER9> Even if we assume no user ever has legitimate access to a copyrighted work (which is untrue; take, for a trivial example the author attempting to show off their own work while travelling by downloading a copy of it from their home computer via IPFS), it would be necessary to do this differently based on the copyright laws of the user's country, along the same lines as the Linux "wireless-regdb" which says which wireless frequencies may be used in each country.

In general, the reason copyright enforcement is pushed for is not accurate enforcement of laws, but rather maintenance of business models while paving over "minor details" such as legitimate contracts and licenses between copyright holders and others.

The digital copyright regime has effectively paved over centuries of intricate law to create a binary of "free" and "nonfree", with no internal distinctions or intermediates. That this is not widely recognized is a sign of how effectively media conglomerates control perception of the issue.

You simply can't justify unilateral global takedowns on copyright grounds. Many legitimate countries disagree about copyright rules, and they just aren't so simple as a global "copyrighted?" flag. If you want to be a global moral police, you can justify blocking hashes for _those_ reasons as long as there are no collisions and everyone agrees, but that doesn't sound terribly likely either.

<comment><USER10> The fundamental problem with computer enforcement of copyright is that the computer never has the context necessary to determine if the copy should be allowed.

So for example, I'm sitting next to a teacher waiting for a train and reading the newspaper. The teacher sees a story and says hey, can I have that when you're done so I can make some copies for classroom use?

That kind of copying is clearly fair use, right? But the same thing happens on the internet with some kind of hash-based copying prohibition and the teacher can't copy the story from me. Because the computer has no way to know that the law allows the copy. So it can only allow everything or prohibit everything.

That sort of system _can 't work_. It doesn't have the information or context or logic necessary to make a fair use determination. But "prohibit everything" is exactly what Disney et al want, so they're always pushing for it anyway.

<comment><USER11> I'm not convinced that's a legitimate fair use case to be honest...

<comment><USER10> One of the fair use examples right out of 17 USC Sec. 107 is "teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use)". But instead of arguing about a specific arbitrary example, let's chalk that up to "making a fair use determination is hard" which was kind of my point.

Unless you're convinced that there is _never_ a legitimate fair use case, feel free to substitute whichever you like.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Solution: monthly full core releases and daily update packs of the complete archive in torrent form.

Offload the copyright risk to those more willing to take it and you get to keep doing your friendly neighborhood scraping.

<comment><USER10> You might be underestimating the size of their archive.

[https://archive.org/web/petabox.php](https://archive.org/web/petabox.php)

<comment><USER12> They could start with a text only archive. Compresses beautifully and would make a great first step.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It seems obvious one should pay damages for making false copyright claims.

But.... why should we tolerate copyrights? What is in it for me?

I kinda like the idea of people doing paid work. If someone wants a something- for-nothing kind of formula they should pay for it themselves rather than creating an impossible burden for others (if not the whole world)

One can get enough funding before creating a work or before releasing it. After release the audience can make donations and/or chose to fund future works. This should be good enough for what we need.

Before we chose/prefer global mass persecution until the end of time over the crowd funding formula we should first have a good reason for it. Failure to preserve history for that extra bit of entertainment exploitation is not worth it. Not just because it fails to be entertaining.

I can't think of any but there might be a few works important enough for copyright to be an ideal formula but we can't expect it to work on the scale we are having it on right now.

At the very least a lack of license should default to something like creative commons. (If I rub a bit of snot on some paper I don't want to own the rights to it.)

If enough people want a copyrighted work they are going to get it anyway. The "dream" of artificial scarcity with infinite exploitation has ended. We have to write realistic laws now. Something that doesn't violate basic logic.

We the audience would gladly pay for a new season of Star trek. I suppose the fear here is that the audience would have influence on the programming?

</comment><comment><USER14> It's fair use for historical and educational purposes. My technical explanation for copyright holders is tough noogies, or look at the hand. I'm just not at all sympathizing with their claims. The Internet Archive is a public good.

</comment><comment><USER15> It's a nice thought. But this talk of "legitimate", "legally protected" and "wrongful" strikes me as just so much wishful thinking. To be reliably available, stuff must be posted in ways that can't be taken down. It's rather the same distinction as with encryption, isn't it?

</comment><comment><USER16> The Internet Archive is one of the finest institutions of the Internet. The Archive is a not-for-profit and deserves your financial contributions and support. The proposed change to DCMA Copyright Takedowns rules would help resolve existing problems and ambiguities.

</comment><comment><USER17> The Internet Archive archives many thousands of user profile pages and other types of user-generated content that the OP may eventually realize is not really wise to have online. Things like the individual message board posting histories of private figures. The Internet Archive has no right to display these things, as they don't have a license from the content's author or the outlet that the content author posted on. There is no public interest served by continuing to display these things, as the poster is a non-noteworthy private person and was in all likelihood just posting nonsense. The OP can contact the message board and probably get them to delete the profiles if they don't have a deletion option already baked into their platform, but what about archives like the Internet Archive? Will they comply with takedown requests for such individual profiles, or fight them as well, pretending that there is some public interest served by keeping it online?

Privacy is hard in the internet age.

<comment><USER18> We are talking about abuse of DMCA related to takedowns and copyright, and you are muddling the issue by stretching into privacy. Is privacy covered by DMCA? Is the DMCA something that an OP could use to request takedown of data from a site? If it is, then that would be what you should be speaking about, not grand visions of "how dare they copy and then host things that were on the public internet because some of those things might be privacy-sensitive!"

To play devils advocate against myself, I have made mistakes in the earlier days of the internet, that I am glad the archives failed to keep. I do understand that there is a need for privacy friendly user sites, but I am sceptical about what tools are allowed to actually perform this structure. Right now, the internet is a threat to the power that be, which is why we will see an ever increasing attempt to legislate it into the ground. If we allow government corruption to seep into the internet anymore than it already is, the real concern will be one of censorship and propaganda, and user privacy is less to do with publicly posting things you shouldnt, but more to do with the corporate/government merger and data sharing that is going on around us. Loopholes everywhere for suppressing dissidents.

<comment><USER17> I don't have a problem with IA's operation in general, but individuals do own the exclusive copyright on their works. The forums they post on generally have a ToS that states the user grants them non-exclusive license to display the content. This doesn't automatically extend to the IA. Thus, if an individual doesn't want its work to appear on the IA anymore, they can issue a DMCA takedown request, as can be done for any other copyrighted information on the internet. The IA should respect these instead of trying to claim that there is a public interest in keeping them accessible.

<comment><USER19> It's a valid question. If, for whatever reason, someone wanted to purge their identity from the Internet Archive as much as possible--including from properties that they did not control--I suppose they could try, but I doubt they's have much luck. For example, if you were to ask them to expunge any HN page that you had comments on. One issue is that there's no easy way to delete only your content if you're embedded in other discussions.

I expect it's a legal gray area that mostly works in part because most random forum posts are pseudonymous.

<comment><USER17> Not all pages contain content from other people. Most message boards have a page that shows _just_ that users' posts. At least these should be pretty easy to get taken down by informing the IA that they don't have a license to display the content (which is true).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Implementing Set#to_proc and Hash#to_proc in Ruby - <AUTHOR> http://mudge.name/2014/11/26/data-structures-as-functions.html

<comment><USER2> FYI - the ampersand syntax is only in function calls, so the following will fail:

        &set.call(1)

Whereas this will not:

        (1..30).select(&set)

Generally speaking, & is syntactic sugar for .to_proc, but only within function calls.

<comment><USER3> > & is syntactic sugar for .to_proc, but only within function calls

It's not exactly that. & is the syntax to pass a variable as a block to a method. And ruby will implicitly call to_proc on the object it receive as a block.

I know it seems pedantic, but there is a difference.</comment></comment>


A gentle introduction to persistent homology - <AUTHOR> https://christian.bock.ml/posts/persistent_homology/ <comment><USER2> Can anyone working in this field comment on how it's applied? For example, what is computed? Homology groups, just the ranks of these groups, or something else? Given these, what does one learn about the data set under analysis? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topological_data_analysis#Appl...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topological_data_analysis#Applications) is pretty scant on detail.

<comment><USER3> There are a number of approaches; since it's still relatively new, there's a lot of "playing around" with techniques.

1) The first idea is to just see which topological features persist as the filtration/threshold parameter varies. I personally find the barcode illustration, rather than the birth-death diagram, to be more intuitive in this respect. For instance, say you had LIDAR data about a vehicle. Looking at the persistent homology of this point cloud could allow you to ascertain the size and number of windows (smaller windows would have shorter persistence than larger windows, and the number of persistent bars would correspond to the number of windows or "openings" on the vehicle). This might allow you to figure out if the vehicle is a van or an SUV.

2) For applications like those in neuroscience (I like, for instance, the talk you can find on Youtube titled "Kathryn Hess (6/27/17) Bedlewo: Topology meets neuroscience") there is instead a look at how these ranks behave over time. A rough sketch is this: look at the topology of the pattern of activation in neurons as a mouse (or an AI) learns something. As the learning process happens, what happens to the Betti numbers?

3) Sometimes one might want explicit generators. A thought-provoking small case of this can be found in "Mind the Gap:A Study in Global Development through Persistent Homology" [https://arxiv.org/abs/1702.08593](https://arxiv.org/abs/1702.08593) This paper looks at statistics like GDP and infant mortality of countries around the world and find explicit oddities in the data. It's a proof of concept, to me; I'm interested to see where it'll go.

There is a lot more of course but that brings you to three interesting yet different directions.</comment></comment>


Visual Studio Code Official Golang Plugin - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode-go <comment><AUTHOR> Tried it out on the weekend and it has really nice features. I think this might be really interesting for Go developers. My current Go setup is Sublime Text 3 with GoSublime and many other plugins but I am really impressed by the feature set of this official go plugin by Microsoft. It even supports Debugging within VS Studio Code.

<comment><USER2> I've stopped using sublime for my go development and switched to vscode because the go plugin is so much better than gosublime, especially being able to use the delve debugger directly in the editor.

<comment><AUTHOR> True. The debugger integration is nice and vscode offers a very good out of the box experience. Have you found a way to make it understand go html templates?</comment></comment></comment>


3M Russian troll tweets - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/fivethirtyeight/russian-troll-tweets/ <comment><USER2> Someone should make a website that lets you put in your twitter handle and checks if you've publicly interacted with any of these accounts.

<comment><USER3> _Twitter_ should inform users.

Edit: It appears they have informed some users: [https://twitter.com/jmorse_/status/954556158047543296](https://twitter.com/jmorse_/status/954556158047543296)

Edit2: Here's a chart of all timestamps by hour+minute: [https://imgur.com/a/xiNuagy](https://imgur.com/a/xiNuagy)

Edit3: Here's a list of all accounts tab separated with number of tweets: [https://pastebin.com/raw/Em4NeHN8](https://pastebin.com/raw/Em4NeHN8)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How do I get the actual data? IRAHandle_tweets.csv doesn't seem to have any data in it

<comment><USER3>
      curl https://media.githubusercontent.com/media/fivethirtyeight/russian-troll-tweets/master/IRAhandle_tweets.csv > tweets.csv

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> There is something that pops out to me as interesting in this dataset; that the tweets don't consistently push one singular message.

Is this to spread divisiveness? For example, all the 10_GOP tweets are, of course, very pro-trump:

> cute 10 yo girl had a Trump dress on. Hannity asked her why she liked him. > She said because he's doing great things for the country!

Whereas 4MYSQUAD, seems mostly Black Lives Matter related tweets, some are strongly against Trump/the right:

> Do conservatives give a fuck about #policebrutality?

USFreedomArmy is far-right:

> No wonder liberals cannot think logically. The U.S. FREEDOM ARMY awaits your > enlistment

And user AAnitRacist is left again:

> Megyn Kelly tears into Trump over attacks on Trump U judge's ethnicity

\----

EDIT: I see now the csv has RightTroll & LeftTroll as column values, which is nifty. The accompanying article states:

> Left Trolls often adopt the personae of Black Lives Matter activists, > typically expressing support for Bernie Sanders and derision for Hillary > Clinton, along with "clearly trying to divide the Democratic Party and lower > voter turnout."

<comment><USER6> I think it is pretty widely accepted that if the US or other capable foreign power were to put their mind to it and act on a united front, severe damage could be done to Russia's ability to constantly be a force for irritation in world politics.

Naturally, then, the best way to prevent that from happening is simply to sow discord. Get the people angry at each other. Hence, you see Russia playing all sides.

<comment><USER7> > severe damage could be done to Russia's ability to constantly be a force for > irritation in world politics.

How? We can't actually invade Russia. There also doesn't seem to be much interest from anyone in heavily sanctioning Russia.

<comment><USER8> Russian sanctions were passed by a split congress in a time that is widely regarded to be pretty much a deadlocked congress. The only roadblock to these sanctions was when Trump refused to implement them (though I guess the majority republican congress could do something else maybe? I don't know who's wheel house "enforcing" a sanction is).

Which is super convenient for the Russians, because previous sanctions have in fact seemed to hurt them, and the Magnitsky Act also seemed to have an effect

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So, it's a little difficult to come up with solid numbers on it, but most estimates I've seen are that there are approximately 300-500 million tweets per day. All of this activity amounts to about eight and half minutes of daily tweet volume, spread over two years.

People get very zoned in on very small and rare occurrences. I see this all the time in software support; a customer will report some bug, and claim that it is happening constantly; you dig a little more, and they continue to insist that it is happening all the time; when you get to the bedrock facts in logs and traces, you find that it happened twice out of tens of thousands of interactions over the last few months.

<comment><USER10> I think the goal of these efforts is to provide material that gets picked up and spread by others, amplifying their message. They help to normalize an environment of divisiveness and extremism.

<comment><USER9> As intelligence services have always done, are doing now, and will do until the end of time. I do find this whole "The Russkies are Coming!" narrative bizarre; everything that's been totaled up so far keeps amounting to a pisshole in the snow compared to domestic election spending or outragism peddled by home-grown media.

<comment><USER11> The difference is perception and tangibility. We can see and count these tweets...and to some degree quantify their effect (e.g. Retweets). And this is a much greater bang for the buck with no feet on the ground.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Big-ticket domain valuation/brokerage? urgent - <AUTHOR> I have a friend who has been the legitimate owner and user since 1994 of a single-word domain name that collides with that of a giant household-name international media company. That media company is expanding and has finally come calling to buy the name, and my friend needs to know how to value the domain and negotiate the sale.
I think this domain should probably sell for seven figures.
Who handles these kinds of valuations and transactions? Anyone have experience with this?
Comments welcome, and email in my profile as well.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Woo! Finally something that made me comment on HN after years of lurking. I invest in domains and spend way too much time looking at them. Is the domain a common dictionary word? Very few names sell for 7 figures. As an example cowboy.com recently sold for $70k and panda.com reportedly sold for mid six figures... Even if the media company bas a trademark they can't just take it for nothing, they'd need to file a UDRP which costs a few thousand dollars.

Some brokers that would be worth reaching out to if the name really is top quality:

[https://www.mediaoptions.com/](https://www.mediaoptions.com/) [https://www.bqdn.com/](https://www.bqdn.com/) [https://evergreen.com/](https://evergreen.com/) [https://www.linkedin.com/in/devanson](https://www.linkedin.com/in/devanson) [https://www.buckleymedia.com/](https://www.buckleymedia.com/)

All of them are well respected in the industry and have experience selling names at the highest level.

Some good resources for info

domainsherpa.com domainnamewire.com namepros.com

Feel free to PM me if you have any questions

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey I can't actually PM you but my email is in my profile.

It's a super-common dictionary word and is the brand of a very-well-known media company.

(my friend has a local business that's been an active and legit user of the name since 1994, and will have to give up serious local SEO/brand value to sell)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'd reach out to Rick Latona. Ping me if you want a referral or other contacts in the business.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes please contact me (email in profile).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm sure there are some law firms that handle that sort of thing.

The best way to value it would be to find similar names and how much they sold for recently.

Most likely, the domain has little value to anyone except the company that wants it. So it will just be a matter of how bad they want it.

Additionally, depending on the name, it could be that the corporation can take it for nothing as they own the trademark.

Especially if the domain is not already being used legitimately for an existing business or other purpose.

Check out nissan.com to read about that long drawn out saga.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> awesome thanks all!</comment>


Open Food Facts, the wikipedia of food, reaches 100K products in 177 countries - <AUTHOR> http://en.blog.openfoodfacts.org/news/know-what-you-eat-open-food-facts-opens-the-data-for-100k-food-products-from-177-countries <comment><AUTHOR> Open Food Facts is a volunteer project, so you can help if you're a coder, a translator, if you have a fridge and a smartphone :-)

[https://itunes.apple.com/en/app/open-food- facts/id588797948](https://itunes.apple.com/en/app/open-food- facts/id588797948) [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.openfoodfa...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.openfoodfacts.scanner) [http://www.windowsphone.com/en- us/store/app/openfoodfacts/5d...](http://www.windowsphone.com/en- us/store/app/openfoodfacts/5d7cf939-cfd9-4ac0-86d7-91b946f4df34)

[http://world.openfoodfacts.org](http://world.openfoodfacts.org)

<comment><USER2> > a fridge and a smartphone

More general: labeled foods (at least with a barcode or name and other interesting data) and a camera.

<comment><USER2> You can also enter the text from the photos of products others have uploaded.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> We also have a GitHub with the source code for the Android, iPhone apps… at: [https://github.com/openfoodfacts/](https://github.com/openfoodfacts/)

A data page: [http://world.openfoodfacts.org/data](http://world.openfoodfacts.org/data) An API doc at : [http://en.wiki.openfoodfacts.org/API](http://en.wiki.openfoodfacts.org/API)</comment>


A Massive Battery that Can Store Solar and Wind Energy - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2018-kaprun-hydroelectric-station-battery/ <comment><USER3> As a side note, since the article also mentions that:

Since 1/10 Austria and Germany are not in the same energy zone anymore, the pricing zone was split up. This was done because too much renewable power feeding in at near zero cost in Germany was flooding the markets and pushing too much strain on the grid. Heavily needed power lines weren't built because people were protesting.

So the first week has passed were the zones are actually split up and we can see that energy prices are way higher in Austria than in Germany, see [1]. Sure, a more definite answer would need to look at a longer time span. The highest difference actually was on 3/10, where baseload in Germany was 18.29 €/MWh compared to 60.40€/MWh. And peakload on 3/10 was 17.13 €/MWh in Germany compared to 65.83 €/Mwh in Austria. Solar generation on 3/10 in Germany was 12.5 GW!

So far good for Germany, since they anyway subsidize solar and wind heavily and now have the low prices more or less for them self (not totally because cross border capacities, [4])

I haven't looked so far in the costs of the auxiliary energy, really curious how they develop. Germany has in total probably around 385 MW in battery storage already [3] and lots of battery storage projected for 2019.

[1] [https://www.epexspot.com/en/market- data/dayaheadauction](https://www.epexspot.com/en/market-data/dayaheadauction) [2] [https://www.eex- transparency.com/homepage/power/germany/prod...](https://www.eex- transparency.com/homepage/power/germany/production/usage/solar-wind-power- production) [3] [https://www.powerengineeringint.com/articles/2018/03/battery...](https://www.powerengineeringint.com/articles/2018/03/battery- storage-enters-growth-phase-in-germany.html) [4] [https://www.entsoe.eu/data/map/](https://www.entsoe.eu/data/map/)

<comment><USER4> What everybody misses is the different need during the spikes due out the day. In the morning and at noon the grid needs for a short time a massive amount of energy, which can only be provided by such "pump batteries". That's why Austria can sell this peak energy at much higher prices. On the other side the new northern german wind energy cut the prices dramatically on the non-peak hours.

My idea on this was to use the batteries of the new electric cars to store energy and take it for the peaks. This would need cooperation with the carparks of the big companies to provide free battery loading during the day vs sucking off peak voltages in the morning and at noon. In the late afternoon the battery must be full, what happens in the morning and at noon is for the grid. This solves the electric car problem, and the grid problem with not enough north-south lines.

<comment><USER5> That kind of integrated approach--with vehicle-to-grid power flow alongside more general coordinated charging--could have clear advantages, especially given the possible growing pains from uncoordinated charging.[0][1] V2G isn't a new subject; it's been around for a while now, and the UK even announced a large research grant on the subject earlier this year.[2] Most of that research looks at V2G in terms of how it can be used to help mitigate the impacts of EV charging in particular and short-term spikes associated with them, rather than say general grid storage. So it's more of a longer-term matter, than the immediate concerns of building out storage capacity.

One of the biggest difficulties is going to be dealing with the economics of battery degradation. You can limit the pull on any given battery to somewhat lessen the impact, but doing so also limits V2G's impact on the grid. Presumably, utilities would pay for battery usage. If so, how does that affect the economics: I can't say either way, but I'd expect the marginal cost of 'renting' EV batteries to be greater than just buying your own for dedicated storage.

0\. [http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aabe97/m...](http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aabe97/meta)

1\. [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-017-0074-z](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-017-0074-z)

2\. [https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=133490](https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=133490)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This pump storage facility has been running in North Wales since 1984:

[http://electricmountain.co.uk/Dinorwig-Power- Station](http://electricmountain.co.uk/Dinorwig-Power-Station)

It has three main roles on the national grid:

1\. Near instant response for peak demand fluctuations (e.g. half time during major sports events). 2\. Bootstrapping generator for rebooting the national grid should we ever need to. 3\. Grid frequency regulation (keeping that AC at 50Hz)

There are a number of projects in progress to look at consumer side Demand Side Regulation (DSR) to provide the latter two grid services without having to carve out mountains or build massive battery farm like Tesla.

<comment><USER7> UK Realtime energy stats - [http://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/](http://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/)

Electric mountain is primarily designed to handle the shortist term electrical demands ie putting kettles on (massive demand spike) during tv breaks for the most popular TV programmes. Fortunately the video recorder and subsequent personal recording technology and internet streaming on-demand helps to lesson the demand on Electric Mountain which is why we may never see another one built in the UK. However our demand for technology is driving up the need for more Nuclear and to a lessor extent coal fired power stations, but the ARM cpu is helping to play its part in reducing energy requirements as will parallel processing to mitigate the need for super fast AMD64 cpu's.

Base line demands are met (in order of scaling up or down to meet demand) is nuclear, then coal, gas, hydro including electric mountain. Electric mountain pumps the water back up when surplus electricity is available during the night.

During the week in Feb 2018 when the Beast from the East hit the UK, the realtime gas price on the energy market went off the scale. As more evidence and awareness stacks up that we are going into what is dubbed the Eddy Minimum (a grand solar minimum last seen some 500years ago), so people will take more steps to have a certain level of redundancy built into their homes (where possible LPG/OIL tanks on their property) in order to help mitigate extreme weather events.

Currently if everyone were to live a US lifestyle we would need 4 planet Earths, a UK lifestyle 2.5 planet Earths and so on.

<comment><USER8> _" the video recorder and subsequent personal recording technology and internet streaming on-demand helps to lesson the demand"_

Demand may be getting more stable, but supply is going in the other direction! There is a need for energy storage as the UK grid moves to more renewable and intermittent energy sources, predominantly wind.

Pumped hydro stations like Dinorwig can help lessen the need for fossil-fueled thermal power plants to provide spinning reserve / frequency maintenance. So can batteries.

Whether we will see any more pumped hydro built in the UK probably comes down to cost and environmental concerns, when considered relative to other storage technologies like batteries and electric vehicles with V2G.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Pumped storage analysis: [https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/11/pump-up-the- storage/](https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/11/pump-up-the-storage/)

spoiler: not remotely possible to scale large enough for total world needs.

"If we drained one meter from every upper lake, we would get 54 billion kWh of energy: about a sixth of the target capacity. If performed over seven days, the flow would be 375,000 cubic meters per second, or 125 times the normal flow over the falls."

"We would need 10,000 Raccoon Mountains to meet my baseline energy capacity"

<comment><USER10> > spoiler: not remotely possible to scale large enough for total world needs.

Yeah, not with those assumptions.

Storing enough energy for 7-days worth of zero-sun and zero-wind is going to be basically impossible across all known energy storage technologies. We'll likely have to run peaker plants during such an extended outage.

But we're not even trying to solve the 7-days worth of energy problem. We're starting with: lets save 3-hours worth of energy, so that the 6pm sun can be used for air-conditioning until 9pm or so.

Which we're not at yet (see the "Duck Curve" or "Nessie curve").

Besides, being able to store energy for 1 or 2 hours is still SUPER useful. Wind is strongest at night, while Solar is strongest during noon. Having energy at dawn (sun isn't strong yet) or twilight (sun is setting, but the wind hasn't picked up yet) is going to be a huge portion of our future energy strategy.

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

A huge part of the problem can be solved behaviorally and economically. We can change the price of electricity based on how easy it is to produce. 12:00 noon (highest sun power) can be cheaper, and 3am power (max wind energy) can also be cheaper.

Night-time energy can be used to power electric cars. 12:00 noon power can be used for factory work and other high-energy tasks (Air Conditioning, Washing Machines).

We all can change our behavior to reduce our energy demand between 5pm and 8pm, to reduce the Nessie curve / duck curve. And we can use economics to set the price higher to encourage others to follow our lead.

\</comment><comment>---

Throw down a bit of nuclear, and keep a few natural gas peaker plants active for emergencies, and I think we've got a strong future for energy.

At the end of the day: Pumped Hydro is the ONLY GW-hr solution to this energy storage question. CAES is hundreds-of-MW-hrs, while Lithium Ion is also only hundreds-of MW-hrs.

That's just how the cookie crumbles: we don't have any other technology to store GW-hrs of energy.

<comment><USER11> When is there zero sun? I didn't realize that was a possibility on our spinning planet

<comment><USER12> Cloudy days.

<comment><USER13> A far more serious consideration for solar is the changing seasons, especially at non-tropical latitudes. I graphed the output of my solar panels (56 north, Scotland) and it's really apparent: [https://flatline.org.uk/daystats.html](https://flatline.org.uk/daystats.html)

<comment><USER14> So those panels are basically useless for 3 or 4 months of the year, i.e. November, December, January, February.

Would there be much improvement if you could tweak the orientation to match the seasons? E.g. tilt them down toward the horizon during the winter?

It's certainly a huge complication to have motorized panels that move all the time to track the sun. But maybe it wouldn't be that much of a hassle to go out there and manually reorient them (just in 1 axis) a few times a year?

<comment><USER13> They're fixed to the roof, so making them movable would be a risk to their safety and wind resistance while being fairly difficult to access (and ladders are dangerous). For a fairly small benefit. It's not just the angle but the sunrise and sunset are a lot closer together.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The interesting thing here is the hint about double taxation; apparently this pumped storage facility pays fee when it ingests mWh to store, and again when it releases them for use. According to the article, that scares away investment in upgrading the facility.

The Bloomergites certainly have the chops to unravel and explain this corner of utility economics. Wish they'd do it! The smart-grid future holds all kinds of energy flows into and out of storage. Storage can be characterized in a bunch of ways.

* Total energy capacity (mWh)

* Peak discharge rate (mW)

* Rampup time for discharge. Rampup is most of the content of this article. The 100mW Tesla-built Hornsdale Power Reserve in South Australia has a subsecond rampup time, which makes its energy very valuable for short periods of time.

* Local efficiency (mWh discharged / mWh ingested)

* System efficiency (mWh at source / mWh at sink, counting transmission loss. The lines up to a mountain dam and back down have losses).

* Money efficiency. Taxes, fees, etc.

* Peak ingestion rate (mW)

* Rampup time for ingestion

* Capital cost (please include externalities like decommissioning and disposal costs)

* Expected lifetime (pump storage lifetime is very long)

* Operating cost

The future smart grid needs a finely tuned balance of capacity, rate, and rampup time to succeed.

</comment><comment><USER16> Pumped storage is a great idea for places where the topography will work with it. But it's expensive to build new. The multi-hundred-million dollar costs of building a new pumped storage facility might be compared to the new costs of building a massive gridscale battery (what Tesla did in South Australia). I'm hopeful that liquid metal/flow batteries designed for grid scale sized applications will become economical in a $/kWh stored rate. There's a lot of applications for batteries which are too big/bulky/dangerous/hot for domestic use or vehicle use, but are perfectly suited for deployment in an electrical grid application.

Electrical grid operators are already really experienced with the process of building substations, basically get a square or rectangular plot of land, level it, put down concrete pads for transformers and switch gear, cover the rest of it in gravel, erect fence with barbed wire around the perimeter. Now do the same but add more concrete pads for big, 20'/40' container sized batteries.

<comment><USER14> _Pumped storage is a great idea for places where the topography will work with it._

Don't forget NIMBY.

About 56 years ago the utility for New York City wanted to build a pumped storage plant about 30 miles north. It was vigorously opposed and eventually defeated.

Why should people who live in pretty rural areas sacrifice their quality of life to help those who live in a crime infested, filty concrete jungle? That's a bit hyperbolic, but that's what NIMBY boils down to.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storm_King_Mountain_(New_York)...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storm_King_Mountain_\(New_York\)#History)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> For the curious there is an ongoing construction of such pumped-storage in the canton of Valais in Switzerland. It is called Nant de Drance [1] and is located at the Emosson Dam, between the "Emosson Lake" and "Old Emosson Lake".

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

<comment><USER18> Carter's dam in Georgia has been operational since 1977 doing pretty much the same thing. Pretty sure the idea has been around for ages but with solar and wind power needing storage it might see more use. The one consideration is that recent environment trends have been against dam building in some areas and even to the point of removing them.

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

On a side note, the imagery in the article is very good

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is really interesting. I spent last night calculating a small solar setup for my property. I have 4x220w panels, 4x100amp deep cycles, and a few inverters: one 1000w, and another 600w. And a 20 amp solar charge controller. Basically the most minimal setup.

I was trying to figure out how to design a system that, given 4 hours of full sunlight at the maximum output of the solar charger (300w) or 4 * 300 w = 1200w total daily charging of my deep cycles. If the system is 100% efficient (it isn't), this gives me 50w a hour over a 24 hour period. 1200w / 24 hr = 50w. But my solar panels exceed the ability of the charge controller. How can I use that to my advantage? I have a well and a holding tank. I was trying to figure out a circuit, perhaps an Arduino program/circuit, with voltage/amp sensors and relays to do this: If there is enough sun, charge the battery. If the batteries are full, turn on the well pump into the holding tank (there's a pressure switch to turn it off when the tank is full). And put the holding tank up on the hill -- which should give me 25-30psi (up 45-50ft). Then I was trying to figure out how to optimize my well pump, or use a DC motor. I might look into salvaging a 2hp DC motor from a treadmill and retrofit it onto a pump housing. Anyway I am trying to optimize for extreme budget. 50w an hour isn't a lot, but it is enough to run a few light bulbs and my tiny refrigerator. I might be able to run a RPi and charge some 18650 batteries for flashlights.

<comment><USER20> Why not buy another 20amp charge controller, they are like $20?

I ran into similar problems when I was trying to make my own solar AC this summer. I found the best solution for a budget build is to use used panels. Instead of being able to afford 1 I could get 3. Now I have enough power to charge my battery fully and run the AC.

<comment><USER19> Yes a solar charge controller would be the best next move. Do these cheap $14-20 charge controllers last?

Thanks

<comment><USER21> Hey, man, can you drop me an email at robbpseaton at gmail dot com? I have some questions about what sort of initial structure you'd choose to build on your land if you were to do it all over again. I'm interested in doing something similar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> A similar example - San Luis Reservoir in California consists entirely of pumped water. Its main purpose is to act as a regulator supply for the state's aqueduct, but to offset costs the operators do the same trick of generating electricity during the day, and replenishing the reservoir at night.

There are times when this is not practical, but when it is it helps to defray operating costs.

</comment><comment><USER23> I am curious how much of an effect evaporation has on the efficiency of these systems. You spend energy pumping the water uphill, then it literally vanishes and that energy is wasted. I would imagine that in a hot climate like the one Hoover Dam is in, evaporation would be a non-trivial issue should they go through with the retrofit.

<comment><USER24> I assume evaporation is gonna be below an inch a day in even the most hot and dry climates. Considering the total height of the water column it's negligible.

<comment><USER25> I'm not disagreeing, but wouldn't you need to compare the total volume lost to evaporation to the total volume of water pumped (== cost) to have a sense for whether it's a significant factor?

Its hard to build up a casual sense for how much water is lost to evaporation in most lakes we have experience with because the lake's level is based on geography (level of the outlet) when there's a source of water coming in to replenish it. It could be a larger factor than we think.

That said, I expect that the efficiency losses in the pumping and generation steps would dwarf evaporation. Any storage system has some losses; the ability to store larger volumes makes up for efficiency disadvantages compared to things like batteries might have.

<comment><USER26> I wonder if evaporation is offset entirely by water that naturally flows into the reservoir. The graphic on the page seems to indicate that there is always a small amount of water flowing down through the system regardless of whether any uphill pumping occurs, which would indicate there's always a surplus of water.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I prefer this idea:

[https://qz.com/1355672/stacking-concrete-blocks-is-a- surpris...](https://qz.com/1355672/stacking-concrete-blocks-is-a-surprisingly- efficient-way-to-store-energy/)

</comment><comment><USER25> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pumped- storage_hydroel...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pumped- storage_hydroelectric_power_stations)

</comment><comment><USER28> The challenge with energy storage is the tradeoff between cost and efficiency. On the one end you have batteries that are hella efficient but expensive, and then you have a spectrum going Hydrogen -> Pumped Energy -> Compressed Air (cheapest and least efficient)

The question is whether we can build enough wind or solar power that doesn't just meet our needs when it's outputting well, but overshoots them by like 500% so we can use cheap and inefficient energy storage.

</comment><comment><USER29> I guess enabling individual homes to generate/store energy needed to run their home is more scalable than these so called huge beautiful batteries. But for now, they are good and buy time for innovations in home batteries.

<comment><USER30> A very simple, zero-maintenance, low cost "battery" for storing energy in the home is a chunk of concrete. When power is cheap, heat/cool the chunk. When power is expensive, blow air over the chunk to extract the heat/cool.

Such a "battery" could very easily keep the house warm or cool at night depending on the season.

What's required to make this work is to vary the cost of electricity to the consumer, which will incentivize such solutions.

A pile of rocks can also work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This scheme has been Running in South Africa since 1981: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drakensberg_Pumped_Storage_S...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drakensberg_Pumped_Storage_Scheme)

It's interesting as it is a network of a few dams and rivers over a very large area.

</comment><comment><USER32> Great idea. Only problem is, I live in Iowa. Wind energy abounds. Adequate topography does not.

</comment><comment><USER33> Sounds like energy arbitrage using physics. I love the idea. I wonder what it will look like in a decade when its adopted more or will it go away when chemical battery storage is cheaper and renewable energy is more efficient.

<comment><USER34> The difference (or perhaps not) in this case is that it's phenomenally inefficent, requires (and in the process of creation, destroys) unique geography, and isn't viable in many places due to fresh water shortage.

Pumped Hydro is actually pretty awful. Compressed air might work for home needs but will never service industrial needs. Let's hope that a better chemical battery based on sodium and carbon is a reality soon ([https://phys.org/news/2018-09-high-capacity-sodium-ion- lithi...](https://phys.org/news/2018-09-high-capacity-sodium-ion-lithium- rechargeable-batteries.html)).

<comment><USER14> _it 's phenomenally inefficent_

I don't understand that at all. If you're generating more than you're consuming, then you lose 100% of everything you can't store. Which means 0% efficiency past some point!

But _" the round-trip energy efficiency of PSH varies between 70%–80%, with some sources claiming up to 87%."_[1]

That's not as good as batteries, which are probably better than 90%, but it doesn't seem bad at all when compared to 0%.

IMO your other arguments are much stronger. Bad to destroy unique geography. Not viable in many places, whether it's because of no water or because of bad geography.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped- storage_hydroelectricit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped- storage_hydroelectricity)

<comment><USER34> I'm quite skeptical of that 87%, because it's almost exclusively a question of how the energy was generated and odds are, it was generated and shunted from fossil sources that don't have that efficiency. So even by that metric it's 87% of whatever engine you used to make the energy for the pumps.

Whereas even bad batteries have 99% efficiency even counting discharge loss. The problems with those are that they rely on relatively rare metals associated with conflict regions, hence my hopes that we reach a sodium-based battery that will have similar properties to lithium.

<comment><USER14> _it was generated and shunted from fossil sources that don 't have that efficiency_

Ahhh ... you raise an interesting point which I don't recall reading elsewhere in this discussion (but there may have been new comments posted since my previous pass thru the discussion).

A newly built natural gas plant has an efficiency of perhaps 60%[1]. Recently completed nuclear plants, such as AP1000 based in China, have an efficiency of about 34%.[2]

That's 60% or 34% at the source! There are additional losses from that point forward, whether the energy goes to run pumped hydro or is simply stored in batteries until needed.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_cycle#Efficiency_of_C...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_cycle#Efficiency_of_CCGT_plants) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanmen_Nuclear_Power_Station](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanmen_Nuclear_Power_Station)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> There's another one of these near Aspen, Colorado. The Mt. Elbert Pumped- Storage Powerplant. If you're ever nearby, they give tours.

</comment><comment><USER36> Isn't evaporation a problem? Lots of water could evaporate before it gets discharged.

</comment><comment><USER37> Okay, good feature, not new, though.

</comment><comment><USER38> Isnt that half of the energy wasted while pumping the water to the higher grounds?

<comment><USER39> Most of the energy that goes into pumping water uphill can be recovered when the water is released downhill through the turbines. Existing pumped-storage hydroelectric plants have efficiencies around 70~80% which is way better than half.

Besides, you get free power if your upper reservoir naturally gets a lot of inflow or precipitation :)

<comment><USER37> This is some pretty good efficiency. Lithium-ion batteries are more efficient for sure, but also quite a bit more expensive, I'm guessing.

Storing electric energy by just raising some mass seems like a pretty good concept - I wonder why It's not adopted further.

<comment><USER40> You need a lot of land and specific terrain; still water isn't carbon neutral(!); and the nature of the things means that if it suffers structural failure the death toll makes nuclear accidents look like almost nothing.

[https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/09/hundreds-new-dams- co...](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/09/hundreds-new-dams-could-mean- trouble-our-climate)

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

<comment><USER41> " if it suffers structural failure the death toll makes nuclear accidents look like almost nothing"

You compare a hypothetical dam disaster, with nuclears record so far - <USER2> clearly worth reconsidering that comparison. Nuclear plants also consume large amounts of water, and other resources so could not be considered carbon neutral by your own measure.

Reservoirs are large lakes, creating them entails ecological disruption but not consumption or degradation in the long term.

<comment><USER42> Not sure where this comparison is going? One dam disaster (Banqiao Dam) caused more death and destruction that almost all other disasters combined. In fact failure of nuclear plants has had remarkably few verifiable deaths.

And compared to the energy one nuclear plant produces, dams seem to have vastly worse death-per-benefit statistics.

Damming a river can cause ecosystem collapse downstream. That's degradation, as I understand the word. And its definitely long-term.

<comment><USER43> Nuclear proponents always point to the Banqiao Dam disaster, and it's always a misleading argument because that dam was built to control downstream flooding as well as provide power and its failure was probably attributable to how the flood control aspect was mismanaged - by holding back too much water for too long out of fear of downstream flooding, they ended up overfilling the reservoir. If China hadn't bothered with hydroelectric power, the dam would still have to have been built and all those people would still have died when it failed, you just wouldn't be able to use their deaths to make nuclear power look better. (Also, nuclear power didn't exist back when that dam was put into operation, and given the quality of engineering that went into it that's probably a good thing.)

<comment><USER42> Rationalizations can be made for nuclear as well. But it doesn't touch the evidence that dam failure has and may continue to be the far greater risk.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>