After 100 years World War I battlefields are poisoned and uninhabitable - <AUTHOR> http://www.wearethemighty.com/articles/after-100-years-world-war-i-battlefields-are-poisoned-and-uninhabitable <comment><USER3> Hello guys,

I live in the region (West Flanders, Belgium) so here are some local stories.

* When my brother in law was a kid, he found an old bomb at the roadside and decided to take it home on his bike, saying things like 'Look what cool stuff I found'. Of course mom panicked and called the deminers. All friends came to look how the dismantling went.

* In fact I know plenty of people finding old grenades and stuff. People die every year messing with them at their kitchen table, even if everybody should know by now not to do that.

* Lots of farms have a heap of old bombs on the terrain. Once a year or so DOVO comes and picks them up.

* Polish people are used a lot as cheap builders and road workers. In general they dont understand Dutch (the local language) or even English. So while people try to warn them not to touch any strange metal things they find on building terrains, the message doesnt come trough (' Know nothing. Talk boss'). Nasty accidents happen as a result.

* A few years ago, an old lady dug up a hand granade from her vegetable garden. So she calls DOVO, the organisation that does the demining. DOVO responds something like no time, call back later. This pissed her off enough to throw the bloody thing in a bucket, drive to dovo, and give the bucket at the reception desk saying ' This is yours'.

While typing this, my wife asks why I'm typing on that nerd site of mine. So now she suggests going to the dunes 2 km from here and taking a photograph if I see one. Sorry guys, Im not messing with old bombs in the dark after the Brussels terrorist attacks, but yes, it's that easy.

<comment><USER4> Story in my own family: we had some relatives who lived in a village near Ypres. In their living room they had this giant iron stove. When the Germans invaded they buried some cash and jewels under a tile under that stove, and fled to France. After the war they returned to the village, in the hope of retrieving the jewels. However, they were unable to find back the stove, due to the fact that they could no longer locate the house... due to the fact that they could not find back the street. The whole village was literally dust.

<comment><USER3> Funny one: A nephew of mine bought a house in the region, and started clearing out the mess in the cellar. At the back, behind a fake wall, he found old bottles with a small fortune in DMarks. Unfortunately, the german mark was replaced with a new version after the hyperinflation between the 2 world wars, so it wasnt worth anything anymore. We assume they were left behind by german soldiers in WW1. No idea what he did with them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There is a similar problem in the western desert of Egypt, where unexploded ordnance from the battle of El Alamein in WW2 has been killing and maiming Bedouin for decades: [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspon...](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/8576292.stm).

It's strange to realise that there are still many people yet to be born who will die as casualties of WW1 and WW2.

<comment><USER6> Somewhat darkly--is any of the software we write going to still be useful in 80 years?

Terrible devices with awful intent, but they do still work.

<comment><USER7> _Terrible devices with awful intent, but they do still work._

Technically, the shells being found now are the buggy ones, that didn't explode when they were supposed to.

<comment><USER8> The worst-written software always lives the longest. Maintainable, modular software, by definition, is easy to change and swap out. So the evolutionary forces favor awful spaghetti codebases that everyone is too afraid to touch.

<comment><USER9> So then the solution would be true natural selection and self-evolving software. As long as external entities (programmers) are tasked with killing off the unfit code, selection is going to be pretty bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I feel I should do the obligatory Dan Carlin link here: [http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore- history-50-bluepri...](http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore- history-50-blueprint-for-armageddon-i/)

Long, harrowing and left me hankering for more. He covers Verdun in the later episodes.

<comment><USER11> This. "Blueprint for Armageddon" [0] is amazing. He spends a good bit of time talking about what trench warfare was really like. The horror people there experienced is just nearly unimaginable.

The entire length of the series is nearly 24 hours, but it is so worth it. Even if you're not a fan of history, check it out because Dan weaves a masterful true story that keeps you on the edge of your seat for the entire 24 hours.

[0] [http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore- history-50-bluepri...](http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore- history-50-blueprint-for-armageddon-i/)

<comment><USER12> Carlin is what I recommend to people who don't like history, before I get them into The Great Courses (which are amazing, if pricey when you're not on Audible). I have a catalogue of minor beefs with the way he presents some stuff, but he's always up-front that he's not a historian (and I appreciate that acknowledgement) and they haven't stopped me from happily paying for everything he's done for Hardcore History.

It's a good listen, and it's worth your time if you haven't tried his stuff.

<comment><USER13> Thanks I've never heard of The Great Courses.

edit: Woah where do I even start on that?

<comment><USER12> Most of them are really good. Here's a partial list of the ones I've enjoyed:

\- Machiavelli in Context (probably the best course of theirs I've listened to)

\- Big History: The Big Bang, Life on Earth, and the Rise of Humanity

\- Conquest of the Americas

\- Early Middle Ages, High Middle Ages (same lecturer--one of the best)

\- Foundations of Western Civilization I and II

\- History of Ancient Rome

\- Birth of the Modern Mind

\- Story of Human Language

\- History of Science from Antiquity to 1700

<comment><USER14> Thanks for the list. Do any others come to mind?

<comment><USER15> Prophets of Doom

It was fantastic! it talked about the anabaptist takeover of munster [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCnster_Rebellion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCnster_Rebellion).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> During WW1, the term "Shell Shock" showed up, that later got changed to PTSD, when people started to think it had to do with psychology, rather than physiology (when Shell Shock first showed up, it was blamed on constant explosions hurting people).

Then some days ago we had here on HN frontpage, research that shows that PTSD, even in more recent conflicts, IS shellshock, that the air pressure of the explosions and the shaking actually damage the brain, and cause inflammations that cause PTSD symptoms.

I wonder then, how bad it was for the WW1 people, those that were near the concentrated fire of 150 explosions per hour nearby, and survived, maybe some of them wished they had been hit instead of surviving...

<comment><USER17> What about PTSD developed in non-combat zones? Or people who develop it and are not even in war zones? Do you know if there is any information on that?

Not trying to start a flame war. Just interested in the PTSD thing itself.

<comment> rm_-rf_slash Pretty much any environment that causes your body to frequently flood with cortisol is a breeding ground for PTSD. The brain interprets the constant threats to its well-being as a signal to rewire itself to be trigger-happy on the flight-or-fight response to conditions that most others would not react as intensely to.

Examples: childhood poverty; abusive/neglectful parents; societal discrimination (especially if violence or a heightened possibility is a factor).

<comment><USER18> There is so much about PTSD we don't understand (or more accurately there is very little we do understand about it) that your claims are simply not true. We aren't sure what causes PTSD, we don't understand what physiological, neurological or psychological conditions are needed for "PTSD" to evolve.

As far as cortisol goes well it is again not that simple, both elevated and lowered cortisol levels have been recorded in PTSD cases which is why it's still debated if lower or higher levels of cortisol cause or are a symptom or an indicator of PTSD, and since cortisol levels are only usually tested in cases where the person has already been or being diagnosed the correlation is even harder to identify, especially when considering that both lowered and elevated levels of cortisol can be recorded in nominal people and in people suffering from other mental disorders.

PTSD is just another placeholder akin to "shell shock" and the later "combat fatigue", in the end it would be an umbrella of various disorders with various preconditions and causes expressing themselves in a similar fashion.

<comment><USER19> I find it ironic that while critizing someone for making bold claims, you make the unreserved assertion that their claims are false.

They could be correct, regardless of evidence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> In the hopefully not too distant future, when humanity grows out of its barbaric infancy and we cease to kill each other over petty disputes a long term global renewal project will commence.

We will use all the means at our disposal to clean up and undo the damage we have done to our home.

Swarms of autonomous robots, and possibly nanites will replenish the soil, water and air. We will restore coastlines and replant forests.

Wiser, and ashamed of our primitive past, we will rebuild a pristine paradise fitting of a spacefaring civilization.

<comment><USER21> As a french, being enslaved by a german kaiser is not what I call a "petty dispute"

<comment><USER4> Responding to violence with violence may have been the right response in 1914 or in 1939. It may no longer be the right response in 2016. I find it disheartening that in the current time the idea of pacifism seems to be dead and buried and replaced by this moral defeatism that man is doomed to behave like an animal for the remainder of history. Even from supposedly liberal politicians like Obama or Hollande we hear nothing but that same old primitive macho-ape language in response to terrorism "we will hunt down... we will destroy... we will eradicate". I look forward to the day that a powerful nation decides that it will no longer kill for any reason whatsoever.

<comment><USER22> "Those who have no swords can still die on them" \- Tolkein

Responding to violence _aimed at destroying or enslaving your society_ with _enough violence to prevent it_ is kind of required by any society that does not have a death wish.

I can choose to respond with pacifism to violence directed at me. I do not have the right to choose that for anyone else, nor for my nation.

<comment><USER23> None of the actors in WWI were set on destroying or enslaving entire societies within Europe. The losers would have been forced to live under a different political system, not been subjected to genocide.

Would it really have mattered to the common man? Maybe not. did it matter to the common man that he or his sons got sent away to war to die? Definitely.

Pacifism can be a sensible policy sometimes. Some wars aren't worth fighting, even if you "win" or force a stalemate.

<comment><USER24> > None of the actors in WWI were set on destroying or enslaving entire > societies within Europe.

This is not entirely true. The term "war of attrition" came from WWI, and it was specifically referring to depopulating the opponent's country by killing all the males.

<comment><USER23> The context to my comment is AnimalMuppet's hyperbolic reply that pacifism in the face of the enemy would somehow result in the destruction or enslavement of your whole society.

I'm pointing out that if say the French had surrendered to the Germans early in WWI there's no historical evidence that that would have been the case, and likely countless lives would have been saved.

The destruction of the state is not synonymous with the destruction of the people in it. Most wars only seek to abolish state power, not the people that make up those states.

<comment><USER25> > I'm pointing out that if say the French had surrendered to the Germans early > in WWI

Or even earlier, France could have declared neutrality in regard to Serbia like Germany asked them to

<comment><USER23> So many things would have changed for the better in that war if the various actors had drawn clear lines in the sand in advance.

E.g. the Germans believed the British wouldn't go to war with them over Belgium, the British knew Belgium was under threat in advance, but wouldn't draw a clear line in the sand telling the Germans that violating Belgium was an act of war.

Likely doing that would have kept Britain out of the war entirely since Germany would have attacked France directly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Perhaps this is the right crowd to ask. I've been looking for a particular article on WW I for a couple decades now, but I haven't been able to find it online. It's an Encyclopedia Britannica article which I think is entitled "War", although that may not be exact. It's from one of the editions published in the 1930's, which would make it the 14th Edition. I owned the set in hard copy for a while, but had to give it away when I moved.

The article one of the most poignant things I've ever read. The tone was essentially "Finally we've figured out how nations can live together in peace and harmony, and never again will humans engage in a war of that magnitude". Crucially, this article was from one of the editions published after World War I, and shortly before World War II. Does this sound familiar to anyone?

I've often wanted to reread that the article and ponder how applicable it is to the present. Does anyone happen to have a copy? The 11th Edition is available online from archive.org, but that's too early. And I presume it was revised quickly in any editions printed after World War Two.

</comment><comment><USER27> Now imagine the state of the battlefields of Vietnam and surrounding countries.

There are places in Cambodia that are no-go areas because of all the stuff we dropped there that did not explode.

<comment><USER28> Most of the landmines in Cambodia were put there by the Khmer Rouge, not the Americans.

When I was in Cambodia, I saw the results of what landmines did, they're fucking horrific. They aren't designed to kill someone, but to only blow their foot off and maim them.

I believe that they're one of the most barbaric weapons of war. It's a damn shame that the USA, China, and Russia won't ratify the Ottawa Convention.

<comment><USER29> Landmines could be built to decay into inertness after a period of time, say a year. I don't understand why this isn't done.

<comment><USER30> It would increase sales too. Seems that would heighten interest. How would the mine know when to start degrading through? Having that happen during storage would be unfortunate.

<comment><USER31> > Having that happen during storage would be unfortunate.

Actually, I think a lot of people would consider that a significant improvement.

<comment><USER30> Me too, good point. However I understand that some explosives degrade in such a way that they get more unstable rather than less, so the problems may remain.

<comment><USER32> Reminded me of the Takata airbag recall. From this article:

"A propellant made with ammonium nitrate would swell and shrink with temperature changes, and eventually the tablet would break down into powder. Water and humidity would speed the process. Powder burns more quickly than a tablet, so an air bag whose propellant had crumbled would be likely to deploy too aggressively."

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-06-02/sixty- mill...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-06-02/sixty-million-car- bombs-inside-takata-s-air-bag-crisis)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Sobering thought to think that 65 square miles will take 300 years (minimum) to clean of threats and contamination. I would quibble with the characterization of dead people and animals as "contamination" as there are have been people and animals dying in great numbers over the millenia in various spots, but the concentrations of arsenic and lead are different.

Given what I've seen of strip mines from the air, I wonder how long it would take to process 100' of material from 65 square miles (~17,000 hectare) through a refining process. Could you just decide that what ever plant and animal life and structures would be forfeit and just dig it out, process it, and put it back? How long once everything had been processed might you expect it to take for the forest to regrow, certainly within 100 years you'd have a solid regrowth. So can you pull 150 to 200 years off the restoration time ?

<comment><USER34> I imagine the explosive material complicates things immensely. I'm not an expert on strip mines but it seems like they just dig up and grind everything indiscriminately and process it later. This would obviously be a bad strategy when explosives are involved.

<comment><USER35> There are machines designed to clear minefields. Maybe build something like that but a bit bigger to do the digging, and operate it from a distance?

<comment><USER36> The big difference is that artillery shells are a lot more powerful than land mines, and some of those shells have mustard gas. Using a machine of some sort is a good idea but I bet it wouldn't work the same as the minefield sweeper at all.

<comment><USER30> There are also the mines that were placed to destroy trenches. Truly colossal quantities of explosives that were placed at the end of tunnels. Not all were exploded.

<comment><USER37> AFAIK, no mines were used at Verdun. Also, the ones used at the Somme all exploded ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mines_on_the_first_day_of_the_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mines_on_the_first_day_of_the_Somme#List_of_the_mines))

I guess you are thinking of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mines_in_the_Battle_of_Messine...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mines_in_the_Battle_of_Messines_\(1917\)#List_of_the_mines). One of them exploded in 1955, a few others may yet explode or may be fairly harmless by now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> See also the previous discussion (more pictures in the article):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9609091](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9609091)

EDIT: the guy who took all these pictures merits a credit and has a website all by himself: [http://oliviersainthilaire.com/?page_id=38](http://oliviersainthilaire.com/?page_id=38)

</comment><comment><USER39> During World War I an estimated one tonne of explosives was fired for every square metre of territory on the Western front

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

<comment><USER40> I saw that number too. But it's crazy wrong. A square mile has 2.5 million m^2, and I don't think the combatant nations produced 2.5 million tons of explosives altogether during the whole war. About 7 million tons (!!!) were dropped from the air during the Vietnam war. One ton per m^2 works out to 1.2 billion tons over the Zone Rouge that the article talks about. That just can't be right.

<comment><USER41> >I don't think the combatant nations produced 2.5 million tons of explosives altogether during the whole war. About 7 million tons (!!!) were dropped from the air during the Vietnam war.

I'm having trouble finding a reference, but I don't find 2.5 million tons unbelievable. The comparison to Vietnam is silly because that was a much smaller and different war, and aircraft have limited weight capacity.

It's said that some artillery bombardments in WWI were called drum fire because it sounded like a drum roll. During Verdun there was so much artillery that it's said you couldn't distinguish the individual explosions, it was just a load continuous roar that went on for many hours. Perhaps that battlefield is where the statistic comes from.

They were going through tens of thousands of shells a day and were quickly running out after a few weeks in. Many factories were converted or built to produce explosives. Dozens of trains were built to transport them to the front lines where they were fired continuously for 4 years. The scale and duration of the war was just insane.

<comment><USER26> _I don 't find 2.5 million tons unbelievable._

I think you are misreading the OP. 2.5 million tons is the amount that would be required to cover a single square mile at 1 ton per square meter. Since the Zone Rouge is many square miles, it would require 1.2 billion tons of explosive for the 1 ton per square meter figure to be correct.

"I don't think the combatant nations produced 2.5 million tons of explosives altogether during the whole war" should be read as "While 2.5 million tons for the entire war might be plausible, 500 times that amount for a single front is clearly an error". My guess would be that someone along the way confused "acre" or "hectare" with "square meter".

<comment><USER42> A solid number on the amount of explosives use in the First World War has proven hard to find.

[http://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/nitrate](http://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/nitrate) says:

> Great Britain, for example, stepped up production of powder and explosives > from 50,000 tons in 1914 to over 1,860,000 tons in 1917

[http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17011607](http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17011607) has a graph of the British and German explosives production during the war years. It looks like about 625,000 tons, with 285,000 by Great Britain.

I have better feelings about [http://rsnr.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/68/2/171](http://rsnr.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/68/2/171) ("Lord Justice of Appeal John Fletcher Moulton and explosives production in World War I: 'the mathematical mind triumphant'"). Figure 3 shows Great Britain manufactured about 340,000 tons of high explosives, and 400,000 tons of propellant. (Rough eyeball numbers.) But that gives only about 350,000 tons for the year 1917, compared to the 1,860,000 tons earlier.

Table A7, p122 of [https://books.google.com/books?id=2YqjfHLyyj8C&pg=PA121&lpg=...](https://books.google.com/books?id=2YqjfHLyyj8C&pg=PA121&lpg=PA121&dq=explosives+production+tons+%22First+World+War%22&source=bl&ots=BShbYbVNZL&sig=9AWCKhXRQE3IRZHcucurw8BrV6k&hl=sv&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj- vv7GkprOAhUBWSwKHaBhALg4ChDoAQhHMAY#v=onepage&q&f=false) lists partial wartime production as 409,000 tons of explosives for Great Britain, and 350,000 tons for Germany, or 759,000 tons total.

Table 9 p87 of [https://books.google.com/books?id=q_G_Qnag_TcC&pg=PA64&lpg=P...](https://books.google.com/books?id=q_G_Qnag_TcC&pg=PA64&lpg=PA64&dq=explosives+production+tons+%22First+World+War%22&source=bl&ots=XC- MH50aD7&sig=Kb_fyV-AtE-3LZphjDdzSJ1FNgY&hl=sv&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj- vv7GkprOAhUBWSwKHaBhALg4ChDoAQhNMAc#v=onepage&q&f=false) says Great Britain produced 409,000 tons of powder and explosives.

I can believe 2.5M tons produced by all sides during the war. Barely.

I can't believe that would all be on a single square mile. That would be equivalent, after all, to a 2.5MT nuke, or a Little Boy/Hiroshima-sized bomb equivalent every day for 3-4 months.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Jesus christ, that dude was standing next to three shells that were as big as him. They were really launching artillery that large? What kind of power did those shells have? How'd they launch them? I always thought of the artillery bombardments as similar to modern mortars.

<comment><USER44> Looks like a Big Bertha shell [1]. Those larger shells were fired by special- purpose guns built in very small numbers (only 12 Berthas were ever built), used to break sieges or against particularly strong front-line fortifications - for example, Big Bertha was first used in action against the Liege fortifications during the drive through Belgium.

An even taller (but lighter) shell was fired by the Long Max [2] converted battleship guns.

The majority of the bombardment was carried out by 75-85mm guns, like for example [3]. Their shells were about half the caliber, and a quarter the mass, of modern 155mm howitzer ammunition, but still twice the mass of modern light infantry mortar shells.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bertha_(howitzer)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bertha_\(howitzer\))

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/38_cm_SK_L/45_%22Max%22](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/38_cm_SK_L/45_%22Max%22)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordnance_QF_18-pounder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordnance_QF_18-pounder)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Powerful story - I've heard the tales of how some of the worst battlefields of the WWI and WWII are spooky because of the complete absence of bird song. I always assumed the sheer bad karma of so many deaths in a small space would make the place a 'no go' zone for wildlife, but I never considered the sheer amount of toxins in the environment that would be a deterrent too.

Very close to where I live here in Australia is a beautiful cliffside area that is frequented by locals and tourists alike to watch the sunset over the sea. At the foot of the cliffs is an old WWII dumping ground that is absolutely littered with asbestos waste. The local council won't move it because it is (a) too expensive and (b) actually safer to leave it in situ because the sea water keeps it damp and prevent asbestos dust from spreading. I wonder at the other toxins.

Lot of local kids still go down at low tide and forage - you are guaranteed to find bullet casings etc., and a friend of mine once found an actual Colt .45 down there once (totally rusted and useless, and he handed it in to the police).

<comment><USER46> > I always assumed the sheer bad karma of so many deaths in a small space > would make the place a 'no go' zone for wildlife, but I never considered the > sheer amount of toxins in the environment that would be a deterrent too.

Is that the actual thought process of an adult in 2016 Australia? You hear "no wildlife" and your first thought is not environmental damage but "bad karma"?

<comment><USER45> Do yourself a favour and visit Auschwitz someday. Stand in front of the ovens and see if you can summon up the jocularity to do a stand up comedy routine, then get back to me with your all seeing knowledge of 'karma'...

EDIT: Do you also derive moral superiority by going around critiquing millions of people who still 'irrationally' believe in 2016 that some higher entity created the earth in 7 days?

<comment><USER47> That is because of the knowledge we have of the holocaust though. Try bringing someone from Asia who hasn't had the history education or seen any of the books/media and I doubt they would feel anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Let wildlife claim that territory.

[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/oct/05/wildlife...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/oct/05/wildlife- thriving-around-chernobyl-nuclear-plant-despite-radiation)

<comment><USER41> In some parts the ground is so contaminated that most plant species won't grow. The animals that live in the area get heavy metal poisoning because it bioaccumulates. Chernobyl is different because many plants can withstand radiation, and the levels are low enough to support animals.

E.g. this picture: [http://static.messynessychic.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/05/...](http://static.messynessychic.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/05/oliviersainthilaire_le_poison_inconnu-161-930x620.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> How do these issues (threat of death from unexploded ordnance and chemical poisoning of the soil) compare to the damage done by the atomic bombs?

The remaining fissionable material in the bombs was 139 pounds of U-235 (Little Boy) and 12 pounds of Pu-239 (Fat Man). Essentially atomized and spread into the upper atmosphere, where it spread throughout the global environment and may have caused a hard-to-measure uptick in cancer, but the actual demolished territory is rebuilt and thriving today.

Horrifying to think that in the long-term view, the conventional ordnance of the European theater was a bigger threat to human life and ecosystem stability than the atomic bombs.

<comment><USER50> There have been about 2,000 nuclear explosions in world history, plus dozens of meltdowns, innumerable leaks, etc.

How about the lives that _weren 't_ lost as a result of

(1) nuclear deterrence preventing wars between great powers

(2) nuclear power competing with coal and preventing deaths from air pollution/coal mining/global warming

though?

> human life and ecosystem stability

You're going to have to pick one of those.

<comment><USER30> Humans are always more scared of things they can't see. Things like toxic gas and the mythology that built up in mining communities, cursed area/tombs killing people (possibly there are good reasons to avoid these places like biological disease presence). Religion and gods and and allthat carry on - <USER2> can't see them but they can hurt you. Radiation, particularly ionising, is somewhere in that collection of hard to understand things. Being able to detect a danger with your own senses is very reassuring.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Anybody know the status of the thousands of tons of chemical weapons the allies dumped in the ocean after WWII? Curious if those munitions are still dangerous

<comment><USER52> Even chemical weapons dumps after WWI are still dangerous today:

[http://helcom.fi/baltic-sea-trends/hazardous- substances/sea-...](http://helcom.fi/baltic-sea-trends/hazardous- substances/sea-dumped-chemical-munitions)

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Aftermath is an excelent book on the subject if you are interested in more. Sections on WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam and Gulf War 1.

[http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55545.Aftermath](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55545.Aftermath)

</comment><comment><USER54> Uninhabitable is not an appropriate term. Uninhabitable means unsuitable for living. Regions with very high levels of radiation, extreme cold, extreme heat are often the reasons why some place is uninhabitable.

These lands are scarred by the war but are surely inhabitable if those countries had higher population density. All the government has to do is perhaps spend couple of billion dollars picking up all the shells, bombs and mines.

</comment><comment><USER30> Reading on with that link is so depressing. Describing 22 year olds getting married (who are old enough to be paid to go and get maimed or die) as "not yet a mature adult... You were young, dumb and full of one bad idea after another". The tips and tricks nature of an article describing basic life skills to people with guns is rather sobering.

</comment><comment><USER55> > high levels of arsenic that nothing can grow there

Bullshit.

It's a interesting story but this article is repeated blog spam.

The comments here are much more informative.

</comment><comment><USER27> While we're talking mostly about past wars and their past and ongoing effects, let's not forget that we've created and still perfecting weapons that are several times more damaging than any of those used in those wars.

And we're always looking for opportunities to use them. Remember Donald Rumsfled's "Shock and Awe"?

<comment><USER30> I don't think that episode has done anything to reign in what is seen as acceptable. Those doing the deeds are treated as heros and those ordering attacks are rewarded with money and medals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> So what would it take for us to get some metal detecting robots and some advanced imagery to map out these fields of death? That sounds like a fantastic side project that would help a ton of people. I'd contribute if someone knows of something in the works.

<comment><USER56> actually, didn't consider these things still had chemical munitions in them, crazy! [http://www.bbc.com/news/world- europe-26663643](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26663643)

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> I heard of APOPO, a nonprofit organization focused on training rats to smell and identify landmines, [https://www.apopo.org](https://www.apopo.org). Maybe we (they) could get involved in some way.

</comment><comment><USER58> The book "Aftermath: The Remnants of War" by Donovan Webster explores how the wars of the last century have impacted the surrounding areas. He also gives great perspectives on the clean up effort/process. Highly recommend.

</comment><comment><USER59> Call me a pessimist but this is one of the main reasons I'm really disappointed about Brexit, whatever the EU's drawbacks.

<comment><USER60> Yeah, just watching the news, it's becoming more and more apparent that people are so far removed from the horrors of WWI and WWII that they don't understand why we created the international institutions we did.

The UN, WTO, EU, etc, are ineffective, bureaucratic messes, but no matter how bad they are, they're a better way of solving international disputes than the historical alternatives.

Western nationalists like to talk about how the cultures of the middle east are inherently violent, but seem to forget that the history of europe was a centuries-long bloodbath that eventually engulfed the entire world in horror and put us nearly on the brink of the extinction of all human life.

It's those alliances and international organizations that allowed us to step backwards from it. Solving our problems in courtrooms and at negotiating tables rather than on the battlefield.

<comment><USER61> These international institutions are not visibly working for the vast majority of the electorate though. The British working class finally voted for their interests and of course they've been vilified from the top for it. All these institutions have allowed for is centralization of power under one ruler/representative instead of dozen smaller ones.

<comment><USER62> You don't understand how the EU works. There is a parliament and a central bureaucracy, yes, but 80% of it is just leaders of national governments sitting in a surveillance-proof room hashing out deals. There are legitimate complaints against how the EU is structured, but this is not one of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Reseed masively, keep people out of the borders and let the trees do its job. Roots can crush a lot of that bomb shells or keep pressed forever the trigger of land mines for us. We can afford to lose some poplars here and there.

</comment><comment><USER64> Also see: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_rouge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_rouge) which the author has clearly read.

</comment><comment><USER65> > At places like Verdun [...] 150 shells hit every square meter of the > battlefield

</comment><comment><USER66> tl;dr

> Though the Zone Rouge started at some 460 square miles in size, cleanup > efforts reduced it to around 65 square miles.

</comment><comment><USER67> Boys just love to blow shit up. Pretty insane if you ask me.</comment>


The Balloon Boy Hoax Solved - <AUTHOR> https://www.5280.com/2019/09/the-balloon-boy-hoax-solved <comment><USER2> The Internet Historian did quite a good cover of this story: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Axgyj7g5XZY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Axgyj7g5XZY)

<comment><USER3> This is at odds with the article. IH (whom I'm a big fan of) makes a good case that it wasn't a hoax at all, but he didn't talk directly to the family like in this article. I'm not sure which to believe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is not a well-written article and is in a style that is almost impossible to scan.

tl;dr:

1\. Richard, the perpetual fuck-up and fame whore. 2\. The balloon-boy saga. 3\. The balloon-boy aftermath, and legal consequences. 4\. Richard whines that his felony conviction prevented him from striking it rich on Shark Tank and tries to turn his kids into a heavy metal version of Hanson. Fails, of course. 5\. Later, the author gets access to the wife's case file through her lawyer and finds contemporaneous notes she wrote detailing the planning of the balloon-boy hoax. 6\. When confronted with this evidence, Richard needs a few days to process. 7\. When Richard finally contacts back, the wife all of a sudden breaks down and confesses the notes were a lie made after the fact to protect the family - Richard is simultaneously shocked at the betrayal and urging her to speak up so the reporter can hear her. 8\. Reporter concludes Richard is still full of shit and coaxed the wife into claiming the notes aren't valid.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm a bit confused. So they really didn't know the kid wasn't in the balloon?

<comment><USER6> The ending got really dark, really quickly, but this is what I got out of it:

It's heavily implied that the writer thinks Mayumi was telling the truth in her written account, despite what she and Richard said when they called back: that Richard asked Falcon to hide in the basement, and when he wasn't down there, they were legitimately concerned that he could have actually been in the balloon.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, you're right:

> According to Mayumi's notes, all of that had been an elaborate ruse. Now, it > appeared, they were doing it again, this time for an audience of one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> tl;dr the kid hid in the attic instead of the basement, so they were actually unsure where he was, but it was still a hoax

<comment><USER8> It was probably intended to be a hoax, but it sounds as though they had a legitimate concern he actually was in the balloon, which...makes it not a hoax?

Crazy story all around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Didn't get what Mayumi wrote that was a lie.</comment>


Joint Statement from the DHS and DNI on Election Security - <AUTHOR> https://www.dhs.gov/news/2016/10/07/joint-statement-department-homeland-security-and-office-director-national <comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12663383](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12663383).

<comment><USER3> I think it should have been vice-versa, since this is the primary source, not a secondary source.</comment></comment>


Supercomputers make discoveries that scientists can't - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22329844.000-supercomputers-make-discoveries-that-scientists-cant.html <comment><USER2> A quote: "KnIT is a collaboration between IBM and Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. It is the latest step into a weird world where autonomous machines make discoveries that are beyond scientists, simply by rifling more thoroughly through what we already know, and faster than any human can."

This is a great breakthrough. The system should be let loose on psychology papers -- it could read everything published in the last 30 years and conclude, "These people can't agree on anything, even the meaning of common terms."</comment>


Ask HN: What is the best way to help research on Covid-19? - <AUTHOR> I am software engineer with some data science and evolutionary algorithms background. I have heard about the foldit challenge to help covid19, but I am not sure about it's impact. I have never learned bio related data science, but I'd like to learn the basics to understand the problem. What tools / methods / materials are available to an "average" programmer to start with to help this new virus? <comment><USER2> What makes covid 19 suddenly interesting or different in terms of tools required than any other virus?

The best answer you can probably get by researching which research institutes usually deal with developing methods for diagnosis, select a smaller one (e.g. from a local University) then find the contact details of a researcher (PhD student) and phone or mail them and ask if they'd have time to have a 1-on-1 chat with you. In my experience, they are likely to be interested to look for common ground and approachable problems with people who can contribute something they cannot.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would Stop reading mainstream newspapers then there will be no impact left

On the other hand I might realize that what is at stake

Davos , US election , Brexit , climate change hoax , 5 G

The mechanism is Problem Reaction Solution

<comment><AUTHOR> This comment is not helpful at all, you might consider deleting it to not waste others time and awareness.

<comment><USER4> 2nd that</comment></comment></comment>


The Prolog Story (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://kylecordes.com/2010/the-prolog-story <comment><USER2> I have used Lisp languages far more often than Prolog, but I do have my own Prolog success story: I had just used ExperLisp on the Macintosh to write a little app ExperOPS5 for the company who wrote and marketed ExperLisp and ExperProlog. After this I was given an internal research grant to write a complete simulation environment in ExperLisp as part of trying to win a large contract. Given familiarity with the tools I was using, a good prototype took about 100 hours to write. I had time left over and talked with my management about doing a parallel implementation in ExperProlog. Using a declarative approach, I had a parallel system, with interactive UI and graphics done in about 40 hours - and I had a learning curve with ExperProlog.

I have also used SwiProlog and occasionally Amzi Prolog also since then. SwiProlog's semantic Web library was the basis for all my early work and experience with semantic Web and linked data. I definitely suggest trying Prolog on a few small projects and add it to your tool set.

<comment><USER3> Have you been feeling dire expressing your code while having only (Subject, Predicate, Object) first order logic? What kind of requests your app could manage and how large was DB (how many triplets)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Summary: They needed to do some complex queries on data in a SQL database, queries that were clearly better suited for Prolog. So they 1) queried for the relevant data from SQL, 2) formatted the data into the form of Prolog terms and dumped it into a file, 3) fired up the Prolog interpreter and loaded the data along with a small amount of Prolog query code, 4) ran the Prolog queries, 5) formatted the results into CSV and dumped it into a file, and finally 6) imported the results back into SQL. While it has some hacky elements, this approach took just one day to implement, as opposed to the projected months it would have taken to do it without Prolog.

If I understand it right, Prolog is being used kind of like a more powerful version of Awk / Perl. _The Power of Prolog_ [1] describes a somewhat similar use of Prolog: storing server logs as Prolog terms and then running complex queries directly on the log files.

[1] [https://www.metalevel.at/prolog/business](https://www.metalevel.at/prolog/business)

<comment><USER5> > Prolog is being used kind of like a more powerful version of Awk / Perl

I have limited experience with Prolog, but it is not just a quick and dirty scripting language (how I view Perl). They were able to build the system so fast, because they only needed to translate the customer's requirements into Prolog declarations, and the Prolog engine is powerful enough to solve the constraints. In my experience, imperative code rarely has a 1-to-1 relationship with the requirements like this.

<comment><USER4> Maybe it would be clearer if I said Prolog was being used like a "much" more powerful version of Awk / Perl. Consider the server log case I mentioned. A question you might ask of a server log is: _Are there any client requests that were not served?_ That query is an easy one-liner. You can go a little further and say: _Give me the IPs of all the client requests that were not served_. That query is also easy, maybe just another line or two. It would be a lot harder to get that information with Awk etc, but the spirit is the same: you have a bunch of data, and you want to extract some particular information, and you want to do so without a lot of pomp.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I recently used prolog for a complicated binary reverse-engineering task: bit packing. Likewise prolog is perfect for compilation.

[https://savannah.gnu.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=9203](https://savannah.gnu.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=9203)

In fact it's a better prolog, picat, which also allows pretty straightforward statements, like loops, and has solver support.

[http://picat-lang.org/](http://picat-lang.org/)

<comment><USER2> I agree with the other commenter's Wow! Picat also supports satisfiability apps like MiniZinc does. Thanks for posting that link!

<comment><USER6> Initially I choose MiniZinc, but then was turned off by its baroque syntax. Straight prolog syntax and picat syntax was much easier in the end.

writing prolog is mostly about writing in the most natural and readable syntax possible. using haskell-like types put me off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I would like to know what Prolog implementation the author used. In particular, the article claims:

1\. > An initial analysis found that we would need to implement a complex depth/breadth search algorithm either in the client application or in SQL.

2\. The Prolog runtime would efficiently solve this problem given rules that naively described it.

I am skeptical, as this is emphatically not my experience with Prolog. In my experience, for any problem requiring a complex search strategy, Prolog is not your friend. Most Prologs do something approximating a naive depth-first search with unification, and on complex search problems this approach rapidly blows up. This can _sometimes_ be fixed by:

1\. Making careful use of cut (`!`) or other non-declarative operators to change the search order.

2\. Using tabling, essentially an advanced form of memoization. But only some Prologs support tabling, and it's useful only for some sorts of problem.

However, the author mentions none of these. Are they glossing over something, or is my (probably more limited) Prolog experience uncharacteristic? Are there "smart" Prologs out there I'm unaware of?

<comment><USER8> (I am the author.)

The implementation I used was SWI-Prolog. I had tinkered with a couple of others prior to that in school (sorry, I don't remember more details), but this was free/open, and up to the job at hand without requiring an acquisition process from the customer of the system.

About the search strategy; yes I had to use a few cuts to get acceptable efficiency. Still, this was much easier than re-creating the same thing in SQL or imperative application code. The particular details, I don't remember well; sadly I've had little occasion since 2010 to use Prolog.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Kyle, Peter Sherman here. (I posted this HN article). You and I had an email dialogue around 2012, and of course I remember you from your Delphi days (BDE Alternatives Guide, etc.) and the old Joel On Software forum. Anyway, the other day I was reading about CoQ and it's use for formal verification, which turns out to solve problems in various different diverse domains, and I said to myself, "Hey, this sounds a whole heck of a lot like Prolog, plus a type system", and so I was attempting to compare and contrast the two systems when I thought back to your great video detailing the customer problem you had and how you used Prolog to solve it. So, that's why the link appears on HN now, that's why the lag time -- to answer your other question. Hey, if you've got a spare minute or two, you should shoot me an email, peter.d.sherman AT gmail DOT com. I might have an interesting business proposition for you...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Prolog looks like the exact right language for at least some part of Netflix's OPA[0] -- I wonder why they didn't use it or why it wasn't a good fit (if someone considered it).

I often want to reach for prolog when I face a problem like this, but I just don't know enough about how it degrades/breaks and of course don't want to use it to do any of the rest of the program stuff (web server, DB access), etc.

[0]: [http://www.openpolicyagent.org/](http://www.openpolicyagent.org/)

<comment><USER10> (OPA co-founder here.)

The semantics of OPA's policy language are based on Datalog, a non-Turing complete subset of Prolog. This means that all policy queries in OPA are guaranteed to terminate (which makes it a good fit for problems like authorization.)

Beyond regular Datalog, OPA adds first-class support for querying complex/nested data structures like JSON.

As a side note, OPA was not developed at Netflix, but they were one of the early adopters and continue to use it today.

<comment><USER9> Thanks so much for the answer -- I thoroughly enjoyed the OPA talks I've seen[0][1]. I apologize for mistaking OPA as a netflix product, I think one of the first times I saw it was as it was being used by Netflix so I assumed it was one of their F/OSS projects or built by someone there.

Did you guys build your own engine? I took a quick look at the repo but don't see anything that looks like a datalog library in your glide package list.

Last but not least, thanks for making and open sourcing such an awesome tool! Will definitely be passing the word on about Styra[2], I had no idea there was a whole company/more efforts behind OPA. I plan on using OPA in a bunch of upcoming projects -- it looks like a fantastic, stable addition to the toolbox of people looking to build robust programs/services.

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

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mBJSIhs2xQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mBJSIhs2xQ)

[2]: [https://www.styra.com/](https://www.styra.com/)

<comment><USER10> > Did you guys build your own engine? I took a quick look at the repo but > don't see anything that looks like a datalog library in your glide package > list.

Yes, the language implementation (parser/compiler/evaluator) is implemented from scratch.

> Last but not least, thanks for making and open sourcing such an awesome > tool!

Thanks for the kind words! If you have questions or need help, feel free to file issues on Github or ask questions on Slack.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Previous discussion from 2010: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1363680](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1363680) (60 comments)

</comment><comment><USER12> There is a modern book about Prolog - Power of Prolog [1].

[1] [https://www.metalevel.at/prolog](https://www.metalevel.at/prolog)

</comment><comment><USER13> Love seeing a good Prolog story surface. I was blown away by how productive it was to use back in university along with XPCE for UI. Became the first language I expertised in and it has paid off in terms of opening up a lot of other avenues like being able to easily learn Erlang and Elixir.

There isn't always a good reason to use it for many situations nowadays but it the way you deal with graphs and trees and such is fantastic. Though fun fact Allegrograph has a Prolog rules interface

</comment><comment><USER8> Hey, this is me!

This is some serious latency between recording and writing a thing, and is appearing on hacker news. I will go through here and try to answer various questions etc.

</comment><comment><USER14> I recently went through what I'm calling a "conversion experience" with Prolog. I was writing a compiler and a link to Warren's 1980 paper "Logic Programming and Compiler Writing" went by here on HN ( [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17674859](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17674859) .) After a brief learning curve I now have a much more powerful compiler in about 1/5th of the code.

There are a few problems that _don 't_ fit well with Prolog, but not many. For everything else, if you're not using Prolog you're probably working too hard.

Consider that achieving feature parity with 1/5th the code means 1/5th the bugs, right off the top.

But often Prolog code is more useful than some equivalent imperative code, for example, a Sudoku relation defined in Prolog serves to solve puzzles, but it can also generate new puzzles and verify partial puzzles (count the solutions and assert that there's only one.) [https://swish.swi- prolog.org/p/Boring%20Sudoku.swinb](https://swish.swi- prolog.org/p/Boring%20Sudoku.swinb)

Prolog is also _old_.

I keep thinking, "What about FOO?", only to find that FOO has been explored years ago by a group of researchers, and often there is working code off-the- shelf and ready to go to solve whatever problem.

Anyhow, TL;DR: For goodness' sake please check out Prolog. It's like time- traveling into the future.

</comment><comment><USER15> > I used Prolog in a production system a few years ago,

Nice pun!</comment>


Ask HN: What do you think about our last HN Search update? - <AUTHOR>

Last Friday, we have released the new HN Search (http://hn.algolia.com). We received impressive feedback, thanks! We used it to make several improvements.
Here is the ChangeLog:
- Added filters on item types (All/Story/Comment/Poll), filter on story by default
- Added filters by date (last 24 hours, past week, past month, forever), past week by default
- Replaced infinite scrolling by standard pagination
- Added an author filter via the author:USERNAME syntax in search bar. Can filter on one or multiple authors (OR between authors)
- UI was redesigned to improve readability
- Improved responsiveness for mobiles
- Removed highlight of stop words in text
- Relevancy: changed typo tolerance settings to be stricter (now tolerates one typo starting at 5 characters in a word and two typos starting at 9 characters in a word)
- Only last query word is interpreted as a prefix (all query words was prefix before)
There is one last item that we didn't implement as proposed: sorting by date. It will be for the next iteration. In the meantime, you can use date filtering.
Please continue to send feedback! <comment><USER2> Impressive work in so short a time. I'm relieved that you guys are this responsive to the community. You've already addressed one of my personal concerns and hopefully the other (sort by date) soon. Here's some more feedback.

I think the defaults should be "all" (not story) and "forever" (not past week). I searched for something that I knew existed and when it didn't come up, my first thought was that the search was broken. Better to show everything at first and let the user decide how to narrow it down if they want to.

Second, I think you'd be better off if the design looked like HN itself, especially the comment rendering. Not that what you've got is bad, but the user is almost always going to go from HN to search and back to HN. This context switch is already a speed bump. Visual changes, which take time and mental energy to process, add to that jolt. Anything you can to do minimize these cognitive hurdles will serve the #1 goal, which is to get the reader the info they're looking for with minimum overhead. In this respect, the old HN Search is more usable, precisely for being unoriginal.

Thus, if I were you, I would drop the thumbnail pictures of the stories (it's cool that you can do it, but they don't really add anything and are distracting); would not include the story info with each coment (rather, I would do just like HN does and have a bit of text that says "| on: the-story- title-linked-here"), would make the text rendering look much like HN, and would follow HN's lead in having a text- and information-density-centric design. I'm not saying that HN's design is the global optimum (though I think it is better than most attempts to improve on it), but rather that HN search is an extension of HN and therefore not the place to innovate on its design. You're in a counterintuitive position for a startup with this project, since calling too much attention to yourself in this context is bad. You want to be unobtrusive and have the thing just work; the HN community is smart enough to figure out who you are from that and like you better for it. (That said, you shouldn't obliterate yourselves. For example, I like the visual cues that say "Page 1 of 10, got 237 results in 3 ms" and "1,244,896 stories and 5,289,181 comments indexed". They are unobtrusive and impressive.)

Lastly, a bug in Chrome: if I search for something, scroll to the bottom, click on "about", then hit the back button, the original results page freezes (i.e. refuses to scroll).

<comment><USER3> Great feedback. Your UI comments in particular are insightful. It's impossible to get something that pleases everyone, but we'll try to get it closer to current HN design in the next iteration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> 1\. Negative keyword search is not available. Can we please add that back in.

2\. Having a date filter is better than none but I STRONGLY preferred the old one where you can sort by descending order from most recent to oldest. The current date filter still leaves things out of order even if it restricts time frame trying to mimic Google's filter.

3\. Exact match search doesn't work either. It currently works similar to phrase match, where as long as the keywords exist, that will show results rather than in the exact order specified. Perhaps create two separate ways to do this kind of search.

</comment><comment><USER5> Main two bits:

1\. Is there a way to force off the typo correction? I tried "smartos" both with and without quotes, and either way I get results for the word "smartest", which aren't about SmartOS (an operating system derived from OpenSolaris).

2\. In terms of CSS/font/layout, honestly I like hnsearch.com's results better. I think part of it is that I use hnsearch.com as an alternative HN interface, not just a search engine, and it's usable for that purpose, in part because it looks more like regular HN.

The issue for me more generally is that hnsearch.com is almost perfect as an HN search engine, as far as I'm concerned. It does what I want, does it fast, with good coverage and a usable interface. So my advice for alternatives would tend towards just "yeah, make it more like that", which is maybe not the most useful commentary.

<comment><USER6> 1\. For now, there isn't any way to force off the typo correction. It has been added to our feature requests list.

2\. What do you think about [http://hn.algolia.com/legacy#!/story/forever/0/algolia](http://hn.algolia.com/legacy#!/story/forever/0/algolia) or [http://hn.algolia.com/legacy#!/all/sort_by_date/0/story:7126...](http://hn.algolia.com/legacy#!/all/sort_by_date/0/story:7126301) ?

<comment><USER5> The 'legacy' mode is pretty nice, thanks! Does what I want for the HN-browsing (vs. searching) use-case, no real complaints.

Minor bug: the results highlighting seems to break links. For example try this search: [http://hn.algolia.com/legacy#!/comment/forever/0/algolia](http://hn.algolia.com/legacy#!/comment/forever/0/algolia). The link in the first comment ends up being turned into [http://twittersearch.algolia.io](http://twittersearch.algolia.io)

<comment><USER6> We've just improved the links highlighting and have deployed it to production. Thank for the bug report!

<comment><USER5> Looks good!

Another bug report, though I'm not sure if this is on your side or an issue with the data HN is feeding: it looks like you're indexing even killed/dead HN stories, which leads to a lot of spam on some queries. Example: [https://hn.algolia.com/?q=air+max#!/story/forever/0/air%20ma...](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=air+max#!/story/forever/0/air%20max)

<comment><USER6> I'm on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Good job! I've learned a lot from it .

If I understand correctly, it is for enterprise search, not for web search, correct?

The response time is really impressive, especially with the new sorting by date function. To me, using NoSQL database, it's hard to do sorting if it's not impossible. That's why it's not available in the initial current release.

This implementation reminded me about the CTF algorithm, which needs to match the input query against a file. The reason why I thought it's not for large volumes of queries is because:

1\. Each keystroke is a AJAX call which could be lightening fast when the query volume is low. But JavaScript could run slow on mobile phones. In this case probably it's not too bad because the AJAX call is very simple, fetch the results from the server

2\. After receiving the request, on server side, there are only three steps to go before the results are returned:

\- Initialized a new index (actually it's not a new index, just a new search)

\- set criteria for the order of the attributes sets

\- Call search and return

Of course, there are more detailed steps under the search api. The majority of the work is done on the search engine server side to keep crawling and updating the indexes.

When the request volume becomes huge, the real time response may be slow down due to the file size.

I appreciate this tool to help me find things quickly on HN.

</comment><comment><USER8> The user-experience is not good as compared to the previous HN Search. I couldn't figure out that the filters were located underneath the search bar initially. Also, the thumbnail doesn't look good for me as I'd prefer the compact view where I could see more search results in my screen. Lastly, I'd prefer using a contrasting highlighted background color for search text instead of having them bold, as it should be more distracting so that it strikes into the user's eyes when he searches.

</comment><comment><USER9> Very nice but it seems to break the back button, if I type and search something it seems to query every letter and so when I go back, I have to do it for each letter I type, I think queries could be grouped smarter.

Thanks!

Good work!

<comment><USER6> The issue with the back button seems to be a Chrome rendering bug. I've work- arounded it by scrolling to top on the first query, but I'm still looking for a more elegant way to fix it. (Will be deployed later today)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> There are already a lot of comments and feedback on this previous thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7118496](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7118496)

<comment><AUTHOR> We took them into account and updated it. So comes this thread, to ask feedback about the second version.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I use iOS on an iPhone.

1) the hints shown on the desktop version if search (about prefixes) are not shown on the mobile version of the site.

2) I have no idea how to sort the results by time or points or relevance after you've returned the list.

3) searching for [danbc] doesn't return enough results. Searching for [danbc operating] doesn't return any results - but I have used the word operating in a few posts.

It is very fast though!

</comment><comment><USER12> Couple of things:

1) www.hnsearch.com had three sort options: relevance | date | points. It would be great if the new search also have all three options.

2) Please make your legacy style exactly like the old one. That style matched HN style perfectly. Right now there is an extra line which links to the HN thread (we are used to clicking the comments link for that) and the way comments are displayed feels not right.

</comment><comment><USER13> Had an interesting match for a vanity search: "peter cooper" matched "et cetera" .. combining both a first character typo _and_ prefixing :-)

Also, one bug. If text in a URL gets highlighted and it's linked, the link URL itself picks up the EM tags.

</comment><comment><USER14> I wonder how much [http://hn.algolia.com](http://hn.algolia.com) will be used if it continues to not be linked to from [http://news.ycombinator.com](http://news.ycombinator.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> Search queries on news.ycombinator.com are redirected to hn.algolia.io which is an alias for hn.algolia.com.

Btw we have just put in production a new version with sort by date :)

<comment><USER14> The instant autocomplete feedback of the UI, which is a big strength, isn't visible to the user when they type a search term in news.ycombinator.com.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So far so good: It's fast, accurate and readable.

The response time is actually really impressive!

</comment><comment><USER16> Looks great. Now if only HN would have a responsive design too so I can read properly on my phone.

</comment><comment><USER17> Awesome! Could we get indexation of url chunks?

<comment><AUTHOR> We already search in url (after title and content)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Great work Algolia!</comment>


A Small, Nice Thing - <AUTHOR> http://codahale.com/a-small-nice-thing/ <comment><USER2> I think this is a little bit disingenuous. The Clojure syntax used for the operation was the cleanest possible, whereas the syntax used in the other languages was not. Here's the Python example:

> [sum(t) for t in zip(a, b)]

It's clear that this alternate version is easier to understand:

> [x+y for (x,y) in zip(a,b)]

Beyond that, _of course_ functional languages like Clojure lend themselves to creating "small, nice things." That's why functional languages like Racket/Scheme are often used to teach introductory CS courses: they're not too hard to read, and lend themselves nicely to explaining basic concepts, while not burdening the user with enormously complicated syntax. However, this can change depending on the context. I think it would be fair of the author to bring up scaling difficulties of Clojure: conventions for "small, nice things" occasionally produce really ugly abstractions at scale.

<comment><USER3> map(sum, zip(a, b)) scales as well as Clojure here, though not identically concise

<comment><USER4> I'm not a regular python user but the article did mention that map is somehow not pythonic.

<comment><USER5> Yup apparently an earlier version of the article used `map` and someone complained that it's not pythonic.

`map` using a lambda may be undesirable compared to a listcomp, but if you already have a function doing exactly what you want it's perfectly fine. Though in this case a better (existing) function is `operator.add`.

<comment><USER3> operator.add doesn't scale to n lists. Would be weird in this case as well. You'd need:

map(lambda x: operator.add(*x), zip(x, y))

map might not be `pythonic` but I typically pull out map/reduce/filter for the trivial cases. filter(bool, list_) is just as understandable as [i for i in list_ if i]

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> More traditional Python:

      >>> import operator
      >>> a, b = [1, 2, 3], [4, 5, 6]
      >>> map(operator.add, a, b)
      [5, 7, 9]

List comprehensions are a relatively late addition to the language and don't really warrant being called "more Pythonic" in this case IMO.

(Yet more traditional Python would be the plain for loop, of course)

<comment><USER7> Which brings you back to APL

      1 2 3 + 4 5 6
      5 7 9

<comment><USER8> or if you need more than two arrays:

          +/ (1 2 3) (4 5 6) (7 8 9)
       12 15 18

as well as octave and julia's:

      [1 2 3] + [4 5 6]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The fact that Clojure "hides the magic" behind less-verbose syntax can be a feature or a bug, depending on your opinion.

What's certain is that it's disingenuous to say that you have to explain those concepts in other languages, but not in Clojure. You might even say that you can guess what `zipped` and `sum` do, but the Clojure example really gives you no information about what's happening behind the scenes.

<comment><USER10> > Clojure example really gives you no information what's happening behind the > scenes.

I respectfully disagree. Map is almost a universal function and IMO, anyone who knows about map will instantly grok what the Clojure version does. The reason this looks so simple in Clojure is due to the fact that the map function is variadic (as our most other functions in Clj) but that is clearly not magic for any experienced programmer.

<comment><USER11> I respectfully disagree. I know map, of course, yet clojure (or LISPs in general) is the only language where it is variadic. I definitely did not instantly grok what the Clojure version does - in fact, I know all the languages in the example and each of them was more clear than clojure to me

<comment><USER5> > I know map, of course, yet clojure (or LISPs in general) is the only > language where it is variadic.

According to Wikipedia `map` is also variadic in in D, in J, in Mathematica, in Prolog (and logtalk), in Python and in R (to an extent, `lapply` is not variadic but `mapply` can take 2+ sequences).

Variadic map is by no means limited to lisps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Perl 6:

@a «+» @b;

And, for the three (or more arrays, you just keep going) case:

@a «+» @b «+» @c;

These are called "hyper-operators": [https://perl6advent.wordpress.com/2009/12/06/day-6-going- int...](https://perl6advent.wordpress.com/2009/12/06/day-6-going-into- hyperspace/)

</comment><comment><USER13> Python:

        >>> import numpy
        >>> numpy.array([1,2,3]) + numpy.array([4,5,6])
        array([5, 7, 9])

Python sequences use "+" for concatenation, but numpy arrays use them for addition. (This is why language designers should not use "+" for concatenation. The mixed-mode semantics get very strange.).

</comment><comment><USER10> The OCaml version (for 2 lists) is almost as good as clojure

        List.map2 ( + ) a b;;

However, for 3 or more lists, Clojure definitely wins (since there's no variadic equivalent of map in OCaml) -

        let x = List.map2 ( + ) a b in List.map2 ( + ) x c;;

Which got me wondering, is there a particular reason why only a `map2` exists in OCaml?

<comment><USER14> Not surprisingly, the sum of two lists is just as nice in Haskell:

        zipWith (+) a b

... and things get a little bit hairy with three lists:

        zipWith3 (\x y z -> x + y + z) a b c

... which is still nice but for four lists we get to the same point as OCaml:

        let a' = zipWith (+) a b in zipWith3 (\x y z -> x + y + z) a' c d

I guess in both OCaml and Haskell the user is expected to define zipWith4, zipWith5, etc. (or map in OCaml's case) if he fells the need to use them.

There is probably a simple and elegant way to get variadic-like behavior in Haskell by folding list of list, or playing with Foldable and Sum, but it's a little bit to early in the morning for me to generalize it.

<comment><USER15> You can also write:

        liftA2 (+)

or

        (+) <$> a <*> b

if you have the right type-class instance.

<comment><USER16> You could also go all the way and declare a Num a => Num [a] typeclass, with (+) = zipWith (+).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The C# is pretty readable as well

        a.Zip(b, (x,y) => x+y)

Only requires explaining method invocation, Zip(), and lambdas.

</comment><comment><USER18> Elixir: List.zip([a, b]) |> Enum.map(fn {x, y} -> x + y end)

</comment><comment><USER19> Wow, combining map and '\+ is so great, I can't wait when you'll find out something serious, like restart system, CLOS, reader macros and many other things availible in CL since ~1990.

<comment><USER20> Everybody has to start somewhere.</comment></comment>


Philosophy Beyond the Academy - <AUTHOR> http://www.chronicle.com/article/Philosophy-Beyond-the-Academy/238052 <comment><USER2> A timely book. The article is a review of _The Philosopher: A History in Six Types_ By Justin E.H. Smith[1]

Philosophical practice has certainly become bound up with academic philosophy. To such an extent that to be a "philosopher" one must become a lecturer in philosophy, preferably tenured because of the added cred. that brings. This is damaging to the grand project of philosophy because it creates an artificial division between those who supposedly "do" philosophy and those who follow.

If the review of this book is accurate then Smith reckons that there are in fact six types of philosopher: the Natural Philosopher, the Sage, the Gadfly, the Ascetic, the Mandarin, and the Courtier. The Mandarin corresponds to our academic philosopher system. One detects a slight pejorative note in the label perhaps? FTA:

"The Mandarin shares the pages of Smith's book with five other types. There is the Curiosa [Natural Philosopher], who blurs the boundaries between natural science and philosophy. There is the Sage, who engages critically with a culture that he or she has thoroughly internalized. There is the Gadfly, whose critical engagement with the culture deploys such modes as parody or invective. There is the Ascetic, who disclaims such ersatz values as wealth or honor or pleasure for the real values: goodness, reflection, simplicity. Finally, there is the Courtier, speaking convenient untruths to power."

I think there is a very real sense in which philosophy has taken its eye off the ball in the last 150 years. However, I believe that philosophy is going to come into its own again because of the questions that machine intelligence, genetic engineering, and computing in the humanities pose. Why so? Because philosophy thrives at the blurred boundaries of disciplines. Every ages challenge is to reinvent philosophy in its own image.

[1] [http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10698.html](http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10698.html)

<comment><USER3> The last 150 years have seen the rise of science as the dominant force in the intellectual space. A lot of what used to be good and impressive about philosophy, as opposed to just a lot of hand-waving, were the parts which had some overlap with science. The last 150 years has essentially seen a brain- drain from Phil -> Sci.

The result is that what's left for philosophers to talk about and contribute is... debatable. Worse, the space their ideas can occupy shrinks as its claimed by fields with more rigor and more of a basis in scientific endeavor.

<comment><USER4> Completely agreed. But one major area that science, in my opinion, cannot answer is the question "how should we live?" Science almost by definition strives to be objective and value-neutral. But the question of how to live is subjective and value-laden. Unfortunately, academic philosophy seems to have almost completely abandoned this pursuit, instead focusing on areas that can be considered more "scientific."

<comment><USER5> The other areas of philosophy can inform how we should live questions. For example, if science were to show that free will, at least as traditionally conceived, was impossible, how does that effect our lives? Should our system of justice be changed to reflect that (as some have thought)? Daniel Dennett wrote a book defending a compatibilist version of free will because he was worried about the hard determinist influence on politics.

Another example from the 18th or 19th century was when doctors thought dogs were just automatons, lacking any consciousness. Which allowed them to perform cruel medical experiments on the dogs, and ignore their howlings. But if we become convinced that animals are conscious and can experience pain and misery, do we change how we treat them?

<comment><USER4> Certainly. I think science, and more objective areas of philosophy, are great at providing information about the world. And that should certainly factor into the discussions of how we should live in that world. They just can't determine it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm a big advocate for philosophy to be taught much more among core liberal arts subjects like literature and history.

When the largest companies in the world have corporate mottos like "Don't be evil" and politics splits the country into parties incredulous how the other side can even think as they do, it's maybe time to teach a bit more philosophy in schools and a bit less Shakespeare (Will should stay, just make room).

The book looks interesting. But the author runs the risk of swinging too far and suggesting too broad a definition for philosophy from its current narrow, useless pedestal in academia.

If philosophy is best regarded as "a universal human activity with many distinct cultural inflections" what does that mean?

Look what happened to art, anything and everything from a Rembrandt painting exhibition to your local hippy spoken word poetry slam is an art event? Wha? Art has lost some of its potential when it becomes that overwhelmingly big and confusing.

Defining what philosophy is (and isn't) and what it offers, seems like a really difficult and important first step before you can sell it to others. It's not clear if the author does this.

<comment><USER7> Meh. Critical thinking skills, yes. The vast majority of the rest of philosophy, no. We don't want to reach peak Kierkegaard.

<comment><USER8> I have to question whether critical thinking skills are really that important. Truly critcal people are labelled as trouble makers who have issues with authority. People who are obedient, who can play the political game, tend to do much better.

This is obviously true in law and politics, and certainly other professions like engineering. But what surprises people is that it's also true within academia - if you don't conform, you don't get tenure.

The people who are successful often come from higher income households where children are made to attend numerous extra-curricular activities so as to give them an early exposure to "gaming" the political structure of a hierarchical organisation.

<comment><USER9> If those children were learning critical thinking, maybe they would not be simple sad extensions of theirs parents.

Two days ago at a welfare office, I said to a 21yo guy: "Take your free time and read! Learn new things!" and he asked me _why_...

So many lifes wasted just because you have to only be efficient in a broken system.

(I was at that office because of my too much critical thinking label)

<comment><USER8> I agree with you that critical thinking is important. The point of my post is not to say "don't think critically" but rather to draw attention to how if you pursue status in a hierarchical organisation, then you need to accept that you're making a sacrifice. If you accept this fact, then you can better weigh a balance between your personal goals and the easiest path to attain status.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>