7k-year-old well is the oldest wooden structure ever discovered - <AUTHOR> https://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/this-7-000-year-old-well-is-the-oldest-wooden-structure-ever-discovered-archeologists-say-1.4815023 <comment><USER3> One of the things I most enjoyed about the previous find of this kind, from 2012, was the discovery that tusk tenons were 7000 years old: [https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0051374) — and now we know that groove joints also date to that era, before even copper tools.

That discovery is only about 250 years younger than this one: "A total of 151 oak timbers preserved in a waterlogged environment were dated between 5469 and 5098 [BCE]." That is, the youngest timbers were from 5098 BCE.

This one: [https://www.upce.cz/en/our-restorers-to-help- preserve-7000-y...](https://www.upce.cz/en/our-restorers-to-help- preserve-7000-year-old-prehistoric-well#main) [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030544032...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305440320300066?via%3Dihub)

I think it's wonderful that they're able to date the wood specifically to _5259–8 BCE_.

To put this in a worldwide human context, this is almost 2000 years before the beginning of the Harappan civilization; 1700 years before the Sumerian settlement of Uruk, where Gilgamesh and Nimrod ruled and from which we get "Iraq"; 2100 years before Narmer became the first Pharaoh in Egypt; and 3600 years before the Shang rose in the land of China. In 5259 BCE there were still woolly mammoths on two islands between the lands we now call Russia and Alaska. But the city of Çatalhöyük had already been deserted for 400 years after 1400 years of flourishing.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for this account, I love such wider-than-history perspectives. It literally helps us put things in perspective, realize that there is so much already.

A city that's 200 years old today is "young" by human standards; even civilizations (cultural shapes) a thousand years old have probably only gone 10% of the temporal distance since the first settlements.

I sometimes wonder how our current present could possibly be seen by people 7,000 years from now in the future (well, I tend to stop at 1,000 because it's already too big, but contemplating 10,000 or 100k even is humbling). There's this sense that we would be "ancient" to them, a different world. That most of our preoccupations would be long solved, and that only a few memes of our culture would remain to their day. To wonder if, in the grander scheme of things, we're "empty" like so many times before us and will leave pretty much nothing substantial, or if we're "decisive" like those ideas and people and eras that shaped civilization as we know it today.

Would future eras see our computers and AI-attempts as foolish delusions like some people thought vapor machines could solve everything? Would our cars and planes and trains be seen as a temporary means of transportation that only lasted a couple centuries before something much better, much more "obvious" would take place? When would we escape Earth and grow beyond, is it for this century or much later, would it even be a done deal by 3,000? What new science lies beyond us in time simply because we just can't see it now, and yet we could actually make now if we just thought of it? (like we could have invented electricity in Ancient times, but conversely Einstein's GR was a gift from the Gods because it was at least 100 years too early in refinement). How much of what we take for granted is actually debatable or plain wrong; how much of what we doubt today is actually true, the right intuition? When do we eventually cease to be "homo sapiens sapiens" because too many mutations is too many and we've become _something else_? How much of "something else" is of our own doing (volition, objective) though genetics, epigenetics, culture? Etc., etc., etc.

I find that far from being sterile or futile, these are extremely valuable thought experiments because they let us break our current mold and observe things from an arbitrarily different (call it "weird") standpoint. They let us re-imagine the past and unfold it differently, thus see many futures — and as always, plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.

<comment><USER5> I am afraid that civilization will collapse. Third world war will be devastating. It would be difficult to restart civilization after it because we already consumed all easily available mineral resources.

This will become a problem even if there would be no war. Energy resources had almost finished, and no viable alternatives were found.

<comment><USER6> > Energy resources had almost finished

Reminder that the sun exists.

<comment><USER7> Reminder that during the previous solar age, _with_ abundant mineral resources, limits of development were ~500 million souls, wooden ploughs, and largely stone-and-earth construction.

Even modest amounts of bronze and iron smelting cleared forests (for charcoal) throughout the Mediterannean and European regions. Much of the reason for forest regrowth throughout Europe has been the shift to other fuels. Nonrenewable fossil fuels.

Which have issues both of abundance and atmospheric impacts.

Returning to an era of predominantly solar energy, even with our considerably enhanced technical and scientific knowledge, absent the preindustrial ease of access to specific materials (iron, copper, etc.), as well as that great advance: naturally-occurring agricultural fertilisers (saltpetre from India, guano from South America and Pacific islands), would be ... markedly different from the present.

<comment><USER3> > _Reminder that during the previous solar age, with abundant mineral > resources, limits of development were ~500 million souls, wooden ploughs, > and largely stone-and-earth construction._

Plants are a very inefficient way of converting sunlight into work. The difficulty was not a matter of energy scarcity; it was that the humans didn't know what energy was, how to bore a cylinder, or how to vacuum-silver a mirror. There are very significant bootstrapping difficulties, yes, but also very significant bootstrapping resources, if we can preserve them. Knowledge is the most important one.

> _absent the preindustrial ease of access to specific materials (iron, > copper, etc.)_

Copper and especially iron are immensely more accessible in the humans' landfills than they ever were in ore deposits.

Artificial fertilizer synthesis does seem like it might be particularly tricky to carry out at a small scale.

<comment><USER7> The all-in efficiency of plant-based photosynthesis -- about 1-3% for most land plants, _possibly_ as high as 10% for algae.[1] The all-in efficiency of solar energy is close to the same magnitude -- panel efficiencies are as high as 37% (single-layer), in practice closer to 15-25%, and with spacing, capacity, and other factors, tend to fall to about 5%. To which manufacturing, installation, and disposal costs (all self-provisioned by plants) are required.

The point remains that for _primary_ energy, we don't have a whole lot of options, and plant productivity is much of that. A modern civilisation knocked back _won 't_ have nuclear power, reliable electrical transmission, or advanced battery technologies. Mobility of fuels will be limited.[2]

"Technology", a distractingly vague term, seems to be based on specific modalities, each with its own specific capabilities and limitations.[3] Precision boring is contingent on sufficent-quality metalurgy, based on available materials, fuels, and smelting/casting controls, as well as measurement and feedback (information/systems management) controls. At that, what you buy in, say, a reciprocating steam engine, is a net fuel-to-work efficiency gain from about 3% (Watt ~1800) to about 25% (best stationary triple-expansion engines). Locomotive steam engines were about 10% efficienty, barely 3x better than Watt's 1800 design.[4] That is: precision and technology _still_ only bring you up to theoretical maximum efficiencies. Process and systems management technology is at best a fractional factor 0 <= t < 1\. (Many proposed technologies end up with efficiencies well below 0. We typically don't adopt those.)

Fuels are larger multipliers. Increasing applied energy _frequently_ increases potential output as a multiple factor: capital + process + n times more energy results in some t _n times more output (where n > 1 and 0 <= t < 1). You can keep applying more energy to a process for ever increasing outputs, at least to a considerable extent -- generally to thermal, friction, vibrational, stress, or other limits.

Landfill mining has been suggested. It was a (minor, though not miner) element in Arthur C. Clarke's _Imperial Earth* (1976). And has long been practiced, historically and presently, with a range of consequences.

The more general problem here is that recycling is at best less than 100% efficient, and the generational loss is r^g (g == generations, with 0 <= r < 1). The most-recycled current materials within the US is lead, largely from car batteries), with rates of 74%. At two generations, the remaining material is 55%. After 10, it's less than 5%.[5] Eventually dust is your best source. Non-ore-forming materials (e.g., rare earths) already exhibit this, the difficulty in their sourcing isn't due to their scarcity per se (they're relatively abundant within Earth's crust), but in their failure to concentrate, and the immense amounts of overburden and tailings created in their use. It's less a matter of mining than of pollution and landscape spoilage exporting, costs China have been willing to absorb in recent decades.

The next H-B alternative, not dependent on abundant natural gas,[7] or lack of one, will be hugely monumental. I'd hedge my bets on a bioengineered process, though there are others being pursued, see: [https://www.nature.com/articles/srep01145](https://www.nature.com/articles/srep01145)

[https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/07/ammonia-renewable- fu...](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/07/ammonia-renewable-fuel-made- sun-air-and-water-could-power-globe-without-carbon)

________________________________

Notes:

1\. Both based on incident sunlight => stored energy, generally as cellulose or lipids. Algael productivity discounts the likely impact of parasites and/or disease on large-scale development (as does land cropping). Lifeforms other than human are also keen on large and convenient plant-energy stores.

2\. There's little discussion of this even in histories which take an energy- centric viewpoint such as Smil or Weissenbacher, but a key liability for fossil fuel energy resources was that they were so unevenly distributed, and transportation capabilities so limited. Better to (locally) gather fuelwood, dung, press olive for oils, or render animal tallow, than to try hauling seacoal, natural tar, or the few rare oil seeps more than a few tens of km.

Even the coal-rich US didn't transition from wood until its inland rail-based transportation system was developed. On which coal still represents a large share of revenues and massive constituent of total ton-miles. Oil's development as a fuel waited in part on reliable metalurgy, the capability to construct pipes of more than ~10cm in diameter and a few tens of metres in length. Along with rights-of-way, a sufficient challenge that as of WWII, major infrastructure (the Big Inch and Little Big Inch pipelines, _still in use_ ) were constructed not by private industry but by the Federal Government.

International oil shipments were contingent on developing double-hulled supermassive oil tankers. Ari Onassis, Greek shipping magnate, was, it turns out, a Greek _supertanker_ shipping magnate.

After water, sand, and gravel, oil is the most-transported material in the modern economy.

Natural gas likewise is more difficult to transport than oil or coal, requiring hermetically-sealed containment, and high pressures and/or low temperatures. It has a tendency to go boom in ways that coal and oil for the most part don't, which makes neighbours even edgier than for those materials.

Transport and nonuniformly-distributed fuels are co-dependent.

3\. My thinking leads to identification of nine of these: 1. fuels, 2. materials, 3. process (technical) knowlege, 4. causal (scientific) knowledge, 5. network dyanmics, 6. systems management (physical, social, informational), 7. information (acquisition, parsing, processing, storage/retrieval, transmission), 8. power transmission & transformation, and 9. hygiene (addressing unintended / undesired consequences). Still in development. See (in slightly earlier form): [https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/klsjjjzzl9plqxz- ms8nww](https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/klsjjjzzl9plqxz-ms8nww)

4\. Vaclav Smil, _Energy and Civilization_ , (2017). Figure 5.5, p.243.

5\. [https://www.usgs.gov/centers/nmic/recycling-statistics- and-i...](https://www.usgs.gov/centers/nmic/recycling-statistics-and- information)

6\. A chief export of Trinidad and Tobago, and the reason for that small Caribbean island nation's hugely outsized per-capita carbon footprint.

See:

T&T EMissions Trends: [https://cdiac.ess- dive.lbl.gov/trends/emis/t_t.html](https://cdiac.ess- dive.lbl.gov/trends/emis/t_t.html)

T&T CO2 emissions [https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/trinidad-and- tob...](https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/trinidad-and-tobago- co2-emissions/)

Global per-capita emissions [https://2oqz471sa19h3vbwa53m33yj-wpengine.netdna- ssl.com/wp-...](https://2oqz471sa19h3vbwa53m33yj-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp- content/uploads/2019/05/global-emissions-supplemental.jpg) (from: [https://www.visualcapitalist.com/all-the-worlds-carbon- emiss...](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/all-the-worlds-carbon-emissions-in- one-chart/))

T&T exports / economy: [https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-are-the- major-natur...](https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-are-the-major- natural-resources-of-trinidad-and-tobago.html)

<comment><USER3> Again, I greatly appreciate your thoughtful commentary.

Are you saying that 74% of lead discarded in the US is sent for recycling, or that of the part sent for recycling, 74% is successfully recovered, the other 26% being lost in various kinds of waste, or what? "74%" does show up in your source [https://prd-wret.s3-us- west-2.amazonaws.com/assets/palladium...](https://prd-wret.s3-us- west-2.amazonaws.com/assets/palladium/production/atoms/files/myb1-2016-recyc.pdf) as the "percentage recycled" for lead in 2012 (table 1), which is explained as "Calculated by dividing the amount recycled by the apparent supply". On its face, this seems to suggest that 74% of the lead bought by lead consumers, such as battery manufacturers, was sourced from recycling, while the other 26% came from mining or importation, without providing any information about losses in the recycling process. Aluminum has 50% for 2016 in that same table (down from 57% in 2012), but only about 10% of aluminum is lost to oxidation during recycling.

The interesting question from my point of view is how the available waste compares to natural ores, whether that waste is from recycling losses such as dust around smelting mills, or from other sources such as treasure hunting, in the difficulty of recovering useful material from it. Since the concentrations of many interesting elements are orders of magnitude higher than their natural concentrations in ores — particularly in elements like the lanthanoids which, as you point out, do not concentrate very much† — my naïve supposition is that landfill mining will be considerably cheaper. (Moreover, because landfills are at the surface, it can be done without the risks of the black-damp or the stink-damp, though perhaps surprise PCB-filled transformers might compensate.)

As for H–B, it can be carried out perfectly well on electrolytic hydrogen, but that is only economic in the absence of a source of methane, or when energy is abundant.

________________

I love the way you dis "technology". In your mindmap I think there is a very significant thing missing, one which, as an illegal immigrant in a third-world country, I am constantly aware of.

What's missing? Well, suppose you want to replicate Watt's vacuum steam engine; let's analyze it in your framework, and see what's missing.

You need some kind of fuel, both to shape the metal and to run the steam engine once it's finished.

You need materials — at a minimum, you need some kind of material that can withstand the steam while holding the precise tolerances needed to seal the cylinder, and you need some kind of sealing material, whether that's hemp, leather, rubber, or the cast-iron, bronze, or carbon steel for Ramsbottom's miraculous piston rings. (And, yeah, something for lubrication.)

You need the technical knowledge ("process and system knowledge" in your diagram) to shape and assemble the parts of the engine, and the causal knowledge ("symbolic expression and manipulation") to troubleshoot it, fix it, and improve its design for your situation.

Although it may not be absolutely necessary, the network dynamics that enable you to obtain all of the above, and distribute the fruits of your steam- engine, are certainly an immense boon. Similarly for systems management ("Governance, Management, & Organization" in your diagram).

I'm not sure that you need much in the way of information processing, power transmission, or hygiene to build your steam engine.

So, suppose you have all these things; you're a master machinist and mechanical engineer in a post-apocalyptic village just uphill from a spring with an urgent need to irrigate their fields (the network dynamics). You have an ample supply of scrap metal of all kinds, plenty of books on steam-engine design, and friends who are willing to risk their lives operating your steam- engine once it gets built. The alpine forest nearby provides all the firewood you could need. What are you missing?

 _You don 't have any tools!_ You aren't going to get very far building a steam engine by banging bits of scrap metal together. You need to invest in some capital goods, which are classically considered one of the three primary factors of production, along with land and labor. You're going to need a foundry with crucibles and casting flasks; a lathe, with gears or a whip to drive it, at least some centers and a dog if not a chuck; vises; hammers; drills; hardened steel cutting tools for the lathe, and abrasive tools to sharpen them with; files for detail work; at least some vernier calipers if not micrometers, and probably scales, surface plates, indicators, and a balance; and some way to measure the composition of your scrap metal, of which I have no idea. You can bootstrap these from raw materials, but getting there is going to require some further intermediate tools — at least a pottery kiln, and probably also a wood shop and some means for assaying soils.

This is an amusing omission because, in my experience, it's common both for the vulgar to confuse tools such as cellphones with "technology" as a whole, which of course includes the whole technological matrix that you're analyzing; and for ignorant rulers to believe that the crucial ingredient in economic prosperity is for an outside company to open a factory in your town, thus "providing work".

Speaking of ignorant rulers, maybe this is in some sense implicit in your "network dynamics" or "Governance, Management, & Organization" categories, but I think it deserves special attention: a major obstacle to technological development always and everywhere is violence, in a couple of different forms. First, outright witch-burning is a constant threat, as experienced by Giordano Bruno, the Maya codices, Steve Kurtz, Aaron Swartz, Charles Lieber, and numerous others; second, and not entirely separate, unfreedom, expropriation, and wanton destruction, all by means of collective violence, destroyed Shuman's Solar Engine One, the first RepRap, Archimedes' life, Galileo's career, and Zuse's Z1, and nipped many other promising developments in the bud.

But such violence does not arise in isolation; it proceeds from a social climate that nurtures and foments it, which can impede progress even when it doesn't erupt into outright vandalism and murder. So I think there's a certain necessary element of tolerance and admiration of technical excellence whose lack strangles any hope of progress in most social climates. Not only did they laugh at Fulton, the Wright Brothers, and Bozo the Clown, they laughed at William Kamkwamba; how many other Kamkwambas has Malawi lost that way?

________________

† It isn't true that lanthanoids don't form ores _at all_ ; monazite and bastnäsite are ores of lanthanoids (as well as actinoids). Cerium in the earth's crust, for example, is about 60 ppm on average, but typically almost half (which would be 500 000 ppm) of either of these ores, so it's more concentrated there by three or four orders of magnitude. The difficulty is that they all form _the same ore_ because they're damn near identical, chemically speaking, which is why many of them were among the last elements to be isolated. But this is very much not the case with landfill, in which the lanthanoids are conveniently separated not only from one another but from the hazardous actinoids — although cigarette-lighter flints have many lanthanoids, if you're mining catalytic converters, they'll be entirely free of both thorium and lanthanum.

<comment><USER7> On lead recycling: I was mostly just repeating USGS's values. I _hadn 't_ looked to see their methodology, though that's a fair point. The fact remains that even high rates of recoverability attenuate quickly through multiple generations. Efficiency has limits.

On the ontology: that's an ontology of technological _mechanisms_.

It is _not_ a reclassification of technological fields or domains. And it really is _not_ a dis of technology, it's an attempt to clearly define what it is that technology _does_ , and _how_. A question that's otherwise often very frustratingly avoided.

Economics treats "technology" simply as a synonym for "efficiency" or some "productivity multiplier".

There are both a theory of technology and a philosophy of technology, but neither really addresses this point. (Both tend to focus far more on social interactions and elements, which has been argued as a consequence of the more- socially-oriented philosophers and theorists not being comfortable with the, erm, _technical_ aspects of technology.

So, to the ontology.

Your basic tools are often largely power transmission and conversion systems. "Simple machines" was much of what I had in mind in that category, though it includes more: levers, wedges, ramps, screws, gears, pulleys. Rope (tension) and stone (compression) both have transmission components. (Combine them, as a fibre-composite material: adobe-straw bricks, fibreglass, carbon-fibre, reinforced concrete, and you end up with a material with force-management properties.)

It's not that I don't consider tools. It's that tools themselves are not independent of the ontology, which concerns _mechanisms_ and _dynamics_. Tools are not _dynamics_ , they are _implements embodying or achieving one or more dynamics_. (I'd argue always _at least_ two: material and, typically, power transmission _or_ measurement, though usually also process knowledge, possibly others.)

Your simple tools -- hammers, saws, drills, planes, chisels, lathes, etc., are largely specific devices for converting one form of power or motion to some useful effect.

Electric devices are similar: generators convert motion to electricity, motors convert electricity to motion. PV converts light to electricity, LEDs convert electricity to light. Microphones convert audio energy to electrical signals, speakers convert electrical energy to audio waves.

Then there are furnaces, smelters, ovens, kilns, etc., measurement and monitoring tools. Maths if necessary to model your design. Etc., etc.

Most power transmission operates through thermal, kinetic, or electromagnetic forces. There are some which might operate through strong or weak nuclear force. Arguments could be made for chemistry as a mechanism, though that decomposes to electromagnetic interactions.

(I belive it's Smil who describes hydraulic accumulators as an early-stage technology and one which still substitutes for electricity in some applications: dentist's offices, auto repair shops, Amish workshops, and through liquid hydraulics in many heavy-lift applications. In the late 19th century there'd been hydraulic distribution networks spanning kilometers in industrial blocks and ports especially. For intermittent high loads they're particularly well-suited.)

So: to build a steam engine, you'd need the raw materials, the know-how, power transmission (rocker beam, flywheel, and gearwork, shaft or belt drives, etc.), and yes, some earlier instances of technological mechanisms implemented in materals suitable as tools: hammers, chisels, drills, lathes, grinders, and the like.

As for the hygiene factors of a steam engine: you have issues with radiating thermal energy, combustion gasses and ash, and the changes that any such machine might have on business, economic, social, and environmental considerations. All of those are emergent or unintended consequences, often not immediately evident. Robert K. Merton's study of latent vs. manifest functions has recently struck me as highly relevant and interesting. In particular, his observation that as tools of understanding, latent functions are far more significant than manifest ones _because they are not as apparent_. This itself likely has further ... latent ... consequences.

On ignorant rulers as a governance mode: yes, effectively. I'd lump military leadership, governance, business management, courts, ecclesiastical organisation, industrial process controls, robotics, etc., as forms of management. The essential elements are system, state, sensing, decision, action, and feedback. Fundamentally: cybernetics.

There's a wonderful quote from the world of sailing:

"The Art of ship handling involves the effective use of forces under control to overcome the effect of forces not under control."

\-- Charles H. Cotter

There's more to it than that, and the quote misses the elements of observation, decision, and action (or implies but doesn't explicitly state them). Still, I think it captures the essence of what I mean by "management".

On the resistances to technological innovations, I'd strongly recommend Bernhard J. Stern's 1937 work of the same title:

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

Which I liked so much I retyped in Markdown, suitable for PDF or ePub via Pandoc:

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

Stern, a sociologist, develops a theory of what drives this, which I think you'll find interesting and applicable to recent examples you cite.

Dysfunctional as that response is, it _is_ part of the inherent, and I'd argue default governance mode. Which like many other default modes of behaviour, has to be modified or adapted if you wish to get past it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Its design shines a light on technical skills that researchers didn't think > Neolithic people possessed.

It seems these kinds of discoveries -- people were more advanced at some point in time than previously believed -- happen quite frequently. It makes me realize I have a much too linear view of the development of technology and civilization. There have been many stops and starts and backtracking along the way, of course with plenty of uneven distribution across single points in time as well.

<comment><USER9> For example we were pretty close to the industrial revolution 2000 years ago. It was easily at an 1800s level, before it collapsed.

<comment><USER10> No. The Romans never would have allowed an industrial revolution. They knew all about aqueducts, but they didn't even bother using water power to mill grain, because that would have undermined too many powerful people whose economic might was backed by the slave economy.

The whole "Dark Ages were backwards after Rome collapsed" story overall is a historical meme pushed by motivated reasoning and poorly backed by facts. Even "collapse" is dubious. If Rome was really on the cusp of industrial revolution, why didn't Byzantium bother to finish the job any time in the next 1,000 years?

<comment><USER11> > but they didn't even bother using water power to mill grain

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

Slave labor may have caused a massive employment problem for the lower tiers of the non-slave population, but it sure did not cause Romans to skimp on water powered grain mills.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "cut in the autumn or winter 5259 B.C. or the winter of early 5258 B.C.," ... "oldest dendrochronologically dated archaeological wooden construction".

This is an interesting technique, which isn't explained in the article. Tree rings obviously stop forming when the tree is killed. However, the size of individual rings various according to the weather in any particular year, so by matching a sequence of trees of different ages you can build up a sequence of ring widths. Then you can find the position of an unknown tree within this sequence, accurate to the year.

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

<comment><USER13> Isn't dendrochronology prone to mismatches. Surely there's some variance in growth rates and masses, even in the same region, and the chances of a false match must get relatively high as you go back further. Like if your tree is at the sunward end of the glade, the trees shading it are felled and it taps a nearby ground water vein then surely it grows better that year and the growth ring then won't match the rest of the trees there so closely.

What's a bit more incredible to me is that they have 7000 years of unbroken samples of wood from that one area? I know you can corroborate with other dating methods but the headline here is that this is pure dendro?

Also, with dendrochronology, surely we have to have other artefacts (wooden pieces at least) that are dated only just later from the same area (ie planted before these timbers were cut) -- be interesting to know what they are?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Most people think that ancient people , +5000 thousand years before Christ, were all barbaric troglodytes, almost devoid of intelligence. Well, I used to think that, as I learned that way in "school". Hope more and more discoveries like this help to put an end to that misconception; I mean , it wasn't linear at all. At the same time as one group of humans were totally undeveloped, other groups were hundreds or even thousands of years ahead in advancement; Some people even go as far as saying there were the atlanteans, lemurians etc, which were far more advanced than we today. It could be true. Nothing preventing it, but if they existed, they left almost no traces after disappearing;

<comment><USER15> I went to school in India and we were taught about major civilizations that existed BC, including the Indus valley civilization, which was ~3000 BC.

Unfortunately, what we all learn is true to the facts but what the local authorities is important. It is not surprising at all that some communities that lean heavily in to religion may choose to say anything BC is Pagan, uncultured, etc.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, I was watching a video about ancient Hindu civilization and I was marveled. Such an amazingly rich culture and religion. In fact the video said that Hindu religion, with it's vast literature, the Upanishads, the Mahabharata with the Gita etc, is the mother of all religions and all spiritual lore. After looking into it more, I completely agree;

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm a big fan of the British TV show Time Team that is now on Amazon Prime streaming

In earlier seasons, they often recreate some of the artifacts of the age they are digging, and it's fascinating to see some of that technology in action

<comment><USER17> It's great. If you haven't already stumbled on it, have a look for the tv series on Must Farm too. It's really incredible. I think much or all of it is on YouTube. [http://www.mustfarm.com/bronze-age- settlement/progress/archi...](http://www.mustfarm.com/bronze-age- settlement/progress/archive/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Czech Republic is in Central Europe, not Eastern Europe.

Check wikipedia if you don't believe me.

Otherwise awesome!

<comment><USER19> Not to mention that it wasn't until the sixth paragraph before they even gave this more specific detail about the well's location.

The journal article about this discovery [1] gets to the point right in the first sentence:

> In 2018, during the construction of a motorway in the East Bohemian Region > near the town of Ostrov (Czech Republic), archaeologists excavated a > structure of a wooden water well lining with a square base area of 80 × 80 > cm and 140 cm in height.

[1] [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030544032...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305440320300066?via%3Dihub)

When, what, where and how all addressed right from the start.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Czech Republic is Central Europe. This is like saying that Kansas is West Coast because it's west of Mississippi.

<comment><USER21> I've had a Polish friend once who insisted that she's from Central Europe - <USER2> term that is basically unknown where I'm from (Switzerland), everything east of Germany/Austria is considered "Eastern Europe".

I guess "Central Europe" is a term only used by people who consider themselves "Central European", everyone else seems to only distinguish between east/west.

<comment><USER22> "Central" europe is not a recent (or local) classification at all.

It's just that for about 50 years there was an overriding east/west classification which overrode the old.

Historically, eastern europe was the areas where the orthodox church had primacy (north of the black sea). Basically the european part of the Soviet Union proper excluding the baltic states.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> _digging_

Well well well... look what we've found

</comment><comment><USER24> > Researchers are developing a process to dry the wood and preserve it without > deformation using sugar to reinforce the wood's cellular structure.

Now I have a reason for eating so much sugar

<comment><USER25> nobody wants to hear about your ancient wood</comment></comment>


Honest In-App Purchases - <AUTHOR> http://david-smith.org/blog/2013/07/23/honest-consumable-in-app-purchases/ <comment><USER2> What got me about in app purchases was that in many games, the moment you purchase anything, the difficulty level ramps up thus forcing you keep buying items just to keep progressing[1]. This is known as 'coercive monetization[2]' and is the reason that I recommend people never buy anything in app.

"According to article, 'once a consumer has been marked as a spender, the game difficulty ramps up massively, shifting the game from a skill game to a money game . . .'"

[1]- [http://valleywag.gawker.com/there-is-no-evil-scheme- behind-i...](http://valleywag.gawker.com/there-is-no-evil-scheme-behind-it-a- q-a-with-candy-c-756419949)

[2] - [http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RaminShokrizade/20130626/1949...](http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RaminShokrizade/20130626/194933/The_Top_F2P_Monetization_Tricks.php)

<comment><USER3> Article 1 is citing speculation from article 2 with that particular quote. They later update, "Note that the difficulty ramps up automatically for all players in CCS when they pass the gates I discuss later in this paper, the game is not designed to dynamically adjust to payers."

<comment><USER4> In effect, what it's describing is more like a base game with low-level challenges, and a purchasable "expansion pack" of areas with much higher-level challenges. Except that instead of having to gain skill to a point where you qualify for the higher-level challenges, or grind experience to a point where your character qualifies, you have to pay to show that your _wallet_ qualifies.

After all, in a pay-to-win game, your wallet is effectively your sword, used to slash through the game's obstacles--so having an area hidden behind a (monetary) obstacle--a rock you can only crack with a Level 10 Wallet, so to speak--where everything in that area requires at least a Level 10 Wallet to defeat, sort of makes sense; it's isomorphic to the same sort of game logic we're all already used to, just in a much more cynical/pragmatic world.

...now I'm imagining a game made for company-owners, where the goal is actually _to be able to pay_ certain amounts of money at a time, so your leveling curve and progress in the game matches a rise to riches in reality... hm. Probably the only people who could afford to play it, would have too much sense to. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _" On a more personal level it also worries me that this is drawing away money from the rest of the eco-system."_

This fear is likely completely unfounded on multiple levels.

Firstly, nobody is spending all of their money on iTunes. Generally, most people won't even budget for it. That means that most purchases on the app store are 'spur of the moment' in which a consumer will see something they want and buy it. That's also why cheap purchases work best there. So no matter how many $1 in app purchases someone makes, the chance of them 'running out of money' and stopping purchases of all app store products is somewhere close to 0.

Secondly, once you start charging 19.99, someone is far less likely to just say 'eh, let me try it'. People will still buy this if they can work out that they need/want it, but it will be a longer process involving searching for reviews and/or getting feedback from people around them. The number of in-app purchases that consumer makes is unlikely to affect this process. In effect, large apps and small apps are probably completely different markets.

On a completely unrelated note though: if you try to sell me required items in the game for real money, I'm uninstalling your app on the spot. This seems to be a growing trend among a small share of consumers, so we'll see how it goes.

<comment><USER6> Your last point is why I've basically stopped trying new apps at all. I've been burned a few times now. And it really sucks to put X hours into something only to be beaten over the head by a hidden cost.

I'm hardly a mobile app power user, but I've dumped around $150 on apps. Almost all of that was before in-app purchases. Now even paid apps can have in-app purchasing, making it impossible to know what you're actually paying for without thorough review. So I no longer make impulse purchases and I hardly spend any time doing app discovery. I don't mean to speak for the author, but maybe this is what is meant by drawing money away from the ecosystem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You know, arcade games were sometimes freakishly hard so that you'd stand there pumping quarters in to try again and again. Nobody called that immoral. I don't think there's anything wrong with charging for continues (or health potions, or clean bombs, or whatever.) Telling you how much money a game makes off people, and how much you've spent on it, won't help you to decide whether the tactics it's using to get you to _give_ it that money are ethical.

<comment><USER7> Games have their own dynamics, the expectations and rewards are different.

Now, when you download a 'free' drawing app and then find out the _pen costs $5_ , it's just an annoyance; it builds resentment and lowers your trust in the app store. There is no reward other than what you already expected to be there, and even when done well (eg Paper) it still feels a tad bit dishonest.

<comment><USER8> That sort of thing is a reaction, by developers, to Apple's unwillingness to add demos (and consumer's unwillingness to shell out when there's no demo). Calling it a "pen" is probably not the best way of marketing it, but basically you're buying the full version. The free install is a trial.

If Apple added demoing all of that would vanish pretty quickly, I suspect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It seems like one of the foundations of this article is that customers tend to regret their in-app purchases. I don't doubt that this could be the case, but I'd love to see studies done on this topic. I would think that, even if you assume game devs are greedy or motivated primarily by profit, at least some of them would think that the best long-term play would be to _not_ make users regret their purchases.

<comment><USER10> I'm a game developer. I want to make one thing clear:

The people who make these sorts of games aren't gamedevs. They are social engineers.

It's unfortunate that the distinction hasn't been very clearly defined. It's not true that just because they've created an interactive loop that they've made a game.

<comment><USER11> I agree. We shouldn't call these things games. They are predatory social assaults on the unsuspecting.

<comment><USER12> If by whiskey...

<comment><USER13> no true scotsman...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Both of the proposed solutions are against the goals of the a store so I suspect it's highly unlikely they'd ever be considered. #1 lowers the amount of downloads of a free app simply because it contains in-app purchases and #2 lowers revenue by reminding consumers how much they've spent and convincing them not to spend. Absolutely ridiculous.

Edit: I just wanted to add that I think the two proposed solutions target in- app purchases in general, rather than just hidden or dishonest in-app purchases. A good solution would be one that doesn't affect positive uses of in-app purchases but does combat negative uses.

<comment><USER15> It's not ridiculous if your motivations aren't purely business-driven.

<comment><USER16> Or, like the point I believe the author was trying to make, it's not ridiculous if it aids in your long term business goals.

The quality of Apple's App Store is one of the key differentiators in the smartphone/tablet market. In-app purchase based software can reasonably be seen to reduce the quality of an app-store for a couple reasons.

1) The low barrier to entry puts f2p software at an initial advantage. This hurts the market for complete software.

2) Competition for profits then becomes based on extracting the most money from users in hard to quantify ways, leading to insidious tricks.

3) Consumers become disenfranchised with the idea of an app, after they become burned a couple times, and trying to look for quality complete software, but finding that it has failed to thrive in the face of free+ alternatives.

Remember that old Columbia Records CD-by-mail thing? It made money because it offered a low initial cost that a kid could sign up for. Then CDs were sent monthly, and eventually a big bill would follow. Can you imagine a quality music discovery service competing with the free one that spammed kids and then left their parents to foot the bill? I suggest no. First, the up-front, honest service would require a reasoned commitment, while Columbia's appealed directly to people's instincts. Second, Columbia poisoned the water. No one could trust the technology of the day (catalogues and mail) to be beneficial after they were hit with a huge surprise bill from the big name in the industry.

I'm not saying that is a perfect analogy, but I think it reasonably fits. The difference here is that Apple is in full control of their destiny- and they can't afford to let things go to shit.

<comment><USER17> Why would a paid app be in a better place ? I personally refrain from paying upfront for any app. When there is a paid app I usually need to find reviews and watch video before I buy the app. That's a lot of effort. If it is free I can simply download and most importantly play it, no need to find reviews, and then decide myself if I want to buy some InApp items.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> My biggest issue with these In-App purchases schemes is that I have had apps where I've paid for the non-free version, only to have updates come through maybe 6-12 months later that introduce advertising popups AND in-app to win purchases.

At least dont screw over the ones that supported you at the start. It's a real 'fuck-you' to the ones who took you from nothing to where you are today.

</comment><comment><USER19> So agree with this article.

I'd love to give developers some money for the games they put a lot of time into making. Plants vs Zombies 2... I'll probably buy a plant to make them receive some of that.

I quit Clash of Clans after I realised there is no way it's even remotely possible to get better at the game by skill. It's purely down to how much money you're willing to throw at it.

<comment><USER20> Plants vs Zombies 2 is atrocious. There's not a single "fun" attribute, it's all just various ways of making money from the users.

• "power ups"

• "plant food"

• the plants themselves

• keys

• stars

All are just methods of juicing money out of the user, and are generally quite time consuming to gain organically. It's a nasty experience given how good the original one was to play while traveling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> > _There seems to be a culture developing around designing games and apps that > are intended to intentionally mislead and coerce customers into making more > and more purchases._

You could argue this for almost _anything_ in the commerce world. Should we start putting signs up in malls that say "Warning! Stores that offer deep discounts are most likely trying to up-sell you to other products"?

</comment><comment><USER22> If you create a 5-star app that has in-app purchases that impact gameplay, congradulations, you have just earned 1-star.

I'll drop $20 dollars on a decent game in the app store, as long as the playing field is level. But when you begin to link performance to bank accounts, you ruin the game. It's way more intrusive than advertisements, because advertisements don't give anyone an unfair advantage.

<comment><USER4> You're looking at this from the wrong perspective. These are a distinct class of games--so-called "pay-to-win" games. The playing field isn't uneven; _everyone_ has to pay to win, and those who pay the most, win the most. It's exactly like a grindy MMO-game, but instead of rewarding the people with the most disposable _time_ , the game rewards people with the most disposable _money_.

Not to say there aren't games that try to make you think they're skill-based and then reveal their pay-to-win nature later on--but the current trend in the market is against this, and moving toward a more bald-faced "yeah, you win this game using your wallet; want to play?"

<comment><USER22> As far as the concept of a game goes, it's uneven because ultimately, someone is going to have more money than everyone else.

From my experience, games that involve skill are the only ones worth playing.

<comment><USER4> The thing is, everyone playing those games _knows_ that they're being ranked on how much time they (can) spend on the game. It's part of the social contract of the game. This is why I would dispute saying it's "uneven." Every game ranks people somehow; some people prefer to be ranked given different criteria than others.

\- A skill-based game shakes out as a ranking based on skill, so players with high technical aptitude for these sorts of games enjoy participating in skill- based game communities.

\- A grind-fest game shakes out as a ranking based on "temporal capital", so people who have a lot of time (and perhaps not a high capacity for skill) enjoy participating in the grind.

\- A pay-to-win game, finally, shakes out as a ranking based on, well, money. People who have a lot of money (and perhaps not a high capacity for skill, _or_ time to invest) _enjoy_ paying to win. (I met a "whale" for one of these games, an oil tycoon from a middle-eastern country; he was very happy to be able to basically play a game of fiscal chicken against his tycoon friends/rivals, using the game to prove who was willing to waste more money to get what they want.)

These three game "classes" are each totally sensible on their own, for the players who want to play them. The danger comes almost entirely in trying to sell one class of game as if it were another class, or trying to mix classes of players within a single game.

<comment><USER23> the problem comes when one class of game vastly outperform financially compared to the others. You end up getting tonnes of pay to win games because it nets the creator/publisher more money, where as skill based games tend to be non-existent anymore because, lets face it, there are way less people who are disciplined enough to play these sorts of games compared to instant- gratification games that gets you to pay for that feeling.

<comment><USER4> And so you suggest... what? That developers make skill-based games, and then trick pay-to-win players into playing them to make their money? How would that work, exactly? If they can't pay-to-win in the game, they won't be paying at all, and then they'll lose and quit. You'll end up with the same sort of environment you get from a bait-and-switch seems-to-be-skill-but-is-really-pay game: an entrenched upper class who has already "won" the game, and a flow of newbie players who come in expecting to compete on axis X, but end up being exploited on axis Y (in this case, by being beaten to a pulp by those with greater skill.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Personally, I try to stay away from free apps/games because I'm never sure what it's really going to cost me.

<comment><USER9> I don't get that mindset. If you avoid a free app because you might later _choose_ to pay for something inside the app, then why not avoid the app store altogether, since you might also choose to buy a non-free app from there?

<comment><USER25> Because free apps typically employ monetization tactics that are tacky, annoying and insulting, tactics that are generally not found in paid apps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> One of the issues with the app store is the "power of free". A number of studies in psychology and behavioural economics have shown that people over- value free stuff. You can read an example here: [http://danariely.com/2012/02/05/audience-with-a-dragon- tatto...](http://danariely.com/2012/02/05/audience-with-a-dragon-tattoo/)

Once you allow free apps they become too attractive -- the simplest way to dominate a category full of paid apps is to offer your app for free. Then we see the race to the bottom that currently afflicts the app market. If there was a minimum app cost, say 99c, free-to-play would not be the issue it is today.

BTW, I originally heard this point made by Dan Ariely (linked above.)

</comment><comment><USER27> According to Tim Rogers[1] in-app purchases are already being regulated in Japan. As far as I understand it there must be a finite number of purchases, leading to a "maximum spend" per title, which can be shown in-store.

Not sure how this ties in with that, but it seems several companies are also self-regulating by imposing a spending-limit based on the customers age[2].

[1] [https://twitter.com/108/status/292004594555449345](https://twitter.com/108/status/292004594555449345)

[2] [http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/169254/report_social_gami...](http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/169254/report_social_gaming_networks- dena)

<comment><USER17> Complete gacha is forbidden. Not the max number of purchases. The spending limits for minors are self regulated. Also see this doc from gree what complete gacha is: [https://docs.developer.gree.net/zh/assets/file/doc/en/Exampl...](https://docs.developer.gree.net/zh/assets/file/doc/en/Examples_of_Complete_Gacha_20120702.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Imagine if the government showed you cumulative tax paid. Or the energy/water companies.

Or ISP's.

<comment><USER29> In Australia this happens. For phone, elec, gas and water, it shows you how much you have paid over the last 6 quarters (or months) as well, so you can compare, and see if there has been a big change.

<comment><USER28> Hm. I would've known this if I didn't let the lady sort stuff like that out. Ignorance is bliss.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The option to offer Free trials in the app store would remove the need for in- app purchases for a lot of non-abusive apps and games. That would definitely be the case for all the apps we publish [1].

Users simply don't want to pay money to try out paid apps, unless they have tons of 5 star reviews or are recommended by friends or media. And why should they?

In the absence of free trials we are stuck with offering "free" apps with in- app upgrades.

[1] [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/life-is-beautiful-get- daily/...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/life-is-beautiful-get- daily/id607999197?mt=8)

<comment><USER31> These aren't the sort of in-app purchases that are the problem. I've happily purchased each expansion pack in Galaxy on Fire 2 and similar for loads of games. I don't see a problem with this, or for having to pay to unlock the full version

What I do have a problem with, and have refused to spend a single cent on, are anything going by the name of "coins", "gems", "gold" etc. These are the disease the app store needs a way to remove

<comment><USER23> basically, the tldr is that you (and most people, incl me) are willing to pay for real value (i.e., real content), where as these virtual items (which costs nothing to create) is obviously worth nothing and so no one should pay for them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> These ideas are well overdue. Games like Candy Crush Saga are little more than mini Las Vegas slot machines, requiring only limited skills to play and with no possibility of a payout. The present day is probably going to be recognised in the future as the gold rush for these type of addictive games.

</comment><comment><USER32> There's a similar situation in PC gaming too - traditional upfront paid PC games vs free to download MMO games which require payments for in game features/characters, e.g. League of Legends, Lost Saga. If you don't pay it becomes difficult to impossible to compete.

</comment><comment><USER33> Making the UX/UI changes mentioned in this article, would be a bit like a shop owner telling me how expensive their shop is, or how much I've previously spent in their shop every time I went in... I'm not really sure how that solves a problem

</comment><comment><USER34> I just wish that various app stores had an "in-app purchase" filter. I'd spend more time browsing them if I could filter out the noise of not-actually-free apps.

</comment><comment><USER35> When I read proposals to limit the in-apps because they hurt gamers, I always wonder if this is the kind of proposals that lead to prohibition in 1920s.</comment>


Tablet front webcam finally allows mid-air typing. Minority report, here we are. - <AUTHOR> http://www.dvice.com/2013-3-1/invisible-keyboard-concept-could-end-cramped-typing-tablets

<comment><USER2> Assuming they could port this to android and it worked, I'd buy it in a heartbeat.</comment>


How to Build a Data Startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/2010/11/02/startup-facebook-twitter-technology-data.html

<comment><USER2> My wife was part of a data startup. They'd take freely available epidemiology data, massage it into a spreadsheet, and sell it to pharma. They do really well, but only because they know their data and they know that their customers know that they know what they know. you know?

exactly.

<comment><USER3> would you kindly go into greater detail?

<comment><USER2> you develop a drug that will work on a couple of different diseases (or, more likely, different cancers) You can only afford to run a clinical trial on one disease. How do you choose? You hire a company who has a good handle on data (A lot of which is gathered by the CDC and other government orgs who make it freely available.) The data people mine that data and come back to say, "x% more people die from disease 1 than 2, but insurance will reimburse more for disease 2, so go with 2."

\- totally making that up, but it is something you could feasibly derive from the data. Mostly it was along the lines of "teens get acne, american teens would rather use a pill than a cream so develop a pill for them, cream for the rest of the world."

<comment><USER4> So it's market research as a product rather than a service, so to speak?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Much easier to read on the original site: [http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/10/strata-week-building- data-s...](http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/10/strata-week-building-data- star.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> I think there are multiple ways to start a startup based off of data.

1) Take other people's data and learn how to represent it in a way that will let them understand it better. See FlowingData, Stamen, and NY Times graphics [http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/03/10/us/20090310-im...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/03/10/us/20090310-immigration- explorer.html))

2) Take other people's data, glean information from it, and offer a new service based off that information. See FlightCaster and TweetFeel

3) Develop tools that will allow people to play with their own data and do their own analysis in-house. See Datameer, Google Prediction API, and Palantir.

Whatever the route, you'll probably need someone who is comfortable dealing with databases, a graphic artist to make the information pretty, and someone with the algorithmic knowledge to capture new insights from massive amounts of data.

</comment><comment><USER7> This article is really just a rehash of a tiny part of O'Reilly's roundup: [http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/10/strata-week-building- data-s...](http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/10/strata-week-building-data- star.html)

You're much better off reading the originals, which I think have already been posted on HN anyway:

[http://datasyndrome.com/post/1375987697/analytic-product- tea...](http://datasyndrome.com/post/1375987697/analytic-product-teams)

and

[http://petewarden.typepad.com/searchbrowser/2010/10/how- to-t...](http://petewarden.typepad.com/searchbrowser/2010/10/how-to-turn-data- into-money.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm wondering how they determined that a data startup needs exactly those three founders.

I think a data startup needs two founders- a hacker to collect and analyze the data and a business guy to provide actionable recommendations and sell it.

But then again, I'm currently a single founder working on a data startup and wearing all of the hats, so what do I know.

Shameless Plug: Anyone want to analyze huge datasets and create recommendations with me? Email me!

<comment><USER7> It's much clearer in the original article - this one is really just a rehash/mix and match.

[http://datasyndrome.com/post/1375987697/analytic-product- tea...](http://datasyndrome.com/post/1375987697/analytic-product-teams)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Visualization is a key part of the data, highly recommend all Edward Tufte books on information visualization.

</comment><comment><USER10> An ok article, but if you're seriously considering building a data startup, the #1 most-important thing above all is to know exactly how to scale beforehand. Bad architecture is expensive, and trying to switch architectures midstream is a nightmare.

<comment><USER8> I'm going to get flamed for this, but I think, even for a data startup, worrying about scaling before you have users or traction is premature, especially with how cheap hardware is becoming.

Case in point: I'm currently hacking together an inefficient, unoptimized prototype analyzing pretty large datasets on probably the worst architecture for this kind of thing known to man, and the whole thing still runs pretty well on a single $50 VPS.

<comment><USER10> Do you have full control over the amount of data your system is taking in?

The startup I founded had analytics code in a ton of iPhone applications and was handling the load just fine right up until the day it suddenly wasn't. By that point we had customers who relied on us, and we had to deal with it very quickly. Not fun. And there's certainly more to scaling than just cheap architecture. We thought EC2 would handle the overflow until we unexpectedly became completely I/O bound. Firing up a few more instances can't fix that.

If you're just running some scraper and can control what you're taking in, that's a completely different story.

<comment><USER8> You're absolutely right, I hadn't considered analytics as an example.

Some data startups I've seen as well as my own project take in existing data sets and simply generate reports from it for customers. Makes it a lot easier to scale.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The world is data. This is a killer article.

<comment><USER12> Personally, I found it a bit fluffy. It pretty much boils down to:

"Data startups need three bodies (hustler, designer, prodineer). Talk to customers early. Here are the levels of knowledge: 1) data, 2) charts, 3) reports, 4) actionable analytics; higher numbered levels are more valuable."

<comment><AUTHOR> Some other posts at www.datasyndrome.com are less fluffy on the same topic. The 3 founders one was written to suggest a 3rd founder to a startup. Data hackers tend to underestimate the importance of hustling and design.

<comment><USER13> Surely they have numbers to back them up on that.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think data on this is available, just experience.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Programming Interactive Worlds with Linear Logic - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~cmartens/thesis/ <comment><USER2> I've spent probably 500-1000 hours thinking about linear logic and narrative structures and this blows everything I've put together out of the water... I'm very impressed, and am looking forward to reading it through.

If the author is reading this, please consider submitting your work to some literary theory journals. Literary theory has decayed into something tired and vague, and this sort of heroic formalism could really make a splash! I mean, this is _actual_ literary theory!

</comment><comment><USER3> The use of logic as a representation language for representing interactive games was pioneered by Richard Evans (AI lead on The Sims 3) over the years, and used in various of his games. The latest installment is [1], and the logic used is a peculiar modal logic whose key innovation is a lack of negation. Crazy!

I wonder what the relationship is between linear logic and the logic of [2].

[1] [http://versu.com](http://versu.com)

[2] [http://arxiv.org/abs/1411.7158](http://arxiv.org/abs/1411.7158)

<comment><USER4> Where'd you hear that implementation detail about Versu? Due to all the legal wrangling around it, it's hard to find certain specifics...

edit: the magic of a little bird: [http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?arnumber=6...](http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?arnumber=6648395)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> For those unfamiliar I'll just share an short pithy example of simple vs linear logic I first heard from my brother:

classic:

      if $5 then pizza
      if $5 then beer
      $5!
      therefor: pizza AND beer

linear:

      if $5 then pizza
      if $5 then beer
      $5!
      therefor: pizza OR beer

There are other aspects, but this key difference lets linear logic model resource consumption.

<comment><USER6> Interesting, how about:

        if $5 then pizza
        if $2 then beer
        $6!

The priority might be to acquire the most valuable item (pizza), or to spend the most money (3 beers), or to have the most money left over with nothing left to buy (pizza again), etc. Is there a way to describe those kinds of goals/constraints within the same system?

<comment><USER7> Linear logic itself doesn't express goals or constraints, just what _can_ be accomplished with a given set of resources.

In the example you gave:

        if $5 then pizza
        if $2 then beer
        $6!
        therefore, (pizza and $1) OR (beer and $4) OR (beer and beer and $2) OR (beer and beer and beer) OR $6

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here's the Ceptre repo. The interpreter is written in Standard ML.

[http://www.github.com/chrisamaphone/interactive- lp](http://www.github.com/chrisamaphone/interactive-lp)

</comment><comment><USER9> This looks a lot like STRIPS planning [http://www.primaryobjects.com/2015/11/06/artificial- intellig...](http://www.primaryobjects.com/2015/11/06/artificial-intelligence- planning-with-strips-a-gentle-introduction/)

The Ceptre tutorial even has the classic example of moving blocks on a table. It's a different language than STRIPS (using PDDL), but seems a similar idea.

</comment><comment><USER10> Apparently this is where you can play the games created by their generative algorithm: [http://play.typesafety.net/](http://play.typesafety.net/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Hooray, finally somebody uses relevant logic without contraction and without the distribution of conjunction over disjunction!

</comment><comment><USER12> "Ceptre: A Language for Modeling Generative Interactive Systems" by Chris Martens Strange Loop

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

</comment><comment><USER13> Brain broken. (applause)</comment>


Microsoft Outlook Social Connector, against Buzz - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/1552526/microsoft-outlook-social-connector-is-no-buzz-but-maybe-thats-a-good-thing <comment><USER2> I've been waiting for these, but I was utterly disappointed that the only provider right now is LinkedIn (apart from Sharepoint, shipped with Office 2010) only supports 32-bit Office installations.

If they want this to fly, they need to get providers out there and make them accessible to _everyone_.

I really like Outlook 2010 so if they can get this right it would definitely defend the role (thus far) of the desktop-application.</comment>


Show HN: Live Uber Fare Map - <AUTHOR> http://uberestimate.com/live/

<comment><USER2> That does seem a violation of the privacy of your users?

<comment><USER3> how could it not be.. they have the actual to and from address. I just google one of the addresses, and pulled up a guys house, purchase price, etc.

Edit: at the bottom of one of the pages it says "we're not affiliated with Uber®, but fare estimates are direct from them." Does Uber really provide this info to everyone?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cool, how do you get the data source for the fare and how accurate it is?</comment>


Honda Insight's immersive ad on Vimeo - <AUTHOR> http://vimeo.com/4281939

<comment><USER2> I love how this is entirely against Vimeo's TOS: <http://vimeo.com/forums/topic:11585>

except for the special cases they make.

<comment><USER3> Fair point, but I'd like to think that if Hummer came to them, they'd say no. Something about an affordable hybrid car seems aligned with the personalities running Vimeo.

<comment><USER4> That's just bullshit. The last thing I want from a content host is an agenda and bias against certain players.

<comment><USER3> The power of the consumer is the choice to support the vendor they identify with. Spoiler alert: each content host, vendor, business has an agenda, it's just a matter of how quickly you can identify it.

And please - hold it against a business for trying to add additional revenue? How's your balance sheet?

<comment><USER4> On the latter point, it's the opposite. Companies shouldn't leave money on the table for ideological reasons as petty as too-low-mpg. [note that I don't think vimeo actually did anything wrong here - it's the idea that is bullshit, not any action they have taken. I loved the Ad.]

Consumers should move towards vendors that are as neutral as possible. Personal bias shouldn't influence a business decision.

My agenda for Tipjoy is to make money. We're completely content neutral, within the bounds of the law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That was great and well done. You got to love the "what the...?" moment it gives when it does something so unexpected by your brain and the "waaa... nice" at the end. It doesn't say much about the product, something about Honda, but still, it's a great ad imho.

Also, to make my comment more useful; check out this youtube video : <http://www.youtube.com/experiencewii>

<comment><USER6> Ads have been "not saying much about the product" for awhile. Advertisers have known that ads work best on the emotional level since the early 20th century.

See: The Century of the Self

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3LSyck0YTE>

To me, there is a clear parallel between this ad and Hacker News itself!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Unrelated to the ad, but I must say I am so thrilled with Honda for taking hybrid out of the luxury trim / status category and bringing it down to something that you can do without the huge upfront cost.

I got to see one of these Insight's in person at a recent Honda event, and I knew immediately 'this is my next car'.

For any fans of Honda (or just the curious), I highly recommend all of Honda's videos here: <http://dreams.honda.com>

<comment><USER8> Yeah, it is amazing how cheap Honda is offering the Insight.

I've been working on a Hybrid related project and done some research. One of the most interesting was an informal interview with the guy who headed the development the FSI technology at Audi done by a colleague of mine. This guy and his team introduced the technology to Audi's Le Mans racing efforts and then within 3 years brought the technology to regular cars. When we asked him to estimate the costs of a full hybrid powertrain including everything (R&D, Marketing, Party, Assembly etc.) he threw out a number around 20'000 € (which is around US-$26'000) which means that Hybrid cars currently must be highly subsidized by the producers of such cars as the Prius and especially the Insight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I appreciated in particular the fact that they _really_ did it like the ad is showing it, by parking a lot of cars in the desert and turning their lights on and off, as opposed, for example, to the recent ad by Samsung with the sheep in the hills (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iCXvJ-jJzI>) that clearly had at least some parts done artificially.

Nowadays, the whole point of that kind of things is to do it for real. Doing it through CGI is just easier and defeats the purpose. It actually reminds me of the Bravia ad from 4-5 years ago ([http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zOrV-5vh1A&fmt=22](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zOrV-5vh1A&fmt=22)) where Sony had tens of thousands of colored balls bouncing in a San Francisco street.

The collaboration with Vimeo with the Flash overlay is also a nice touch.

<comment><USER10> apparently they didn't [http://www.adrants.com/2009/03/honda-insight- commercials-car...](http://www.adrants.com/2009/03/honda-insight-commercials- carbon.php)

<comment><USER11> There is even a making of on vimeo <http://vimeo.com/4295148>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> i wonder what honda paid for that?

</comment><comment><USER13> Wow. Props to Honda's marketing department. Reminds me of <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI2MFvOC94A> where they gut grooves in the road so that when a car drove over them it played a song. They did this for a civic commercial.

</comment><comment><USER14> how?

<comment><AUTHOR> It looks like a Flash overlay. If you scroll down during the video you can keep right clicking until you get html.

<comment><USER15> It breaks if you resize the page text in browser (Ctrl++), before stating the video, and shows you how the overlay fits over the page.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Not from the makers of Pontiac</comment>


The diversity trumps ability theorem - <AUTHOR> http://www.pnas.org/content/101/46/16385.full <comment><AUTHOR> The punchline, from the abstract: "We find that when selecting a problem- solving team from a diverse population of intelligent agents, a team of randomly selected agents outperforms a team comprised of the best-performing agents. This result relies on the intuition that, as the initial pool of problem solvers becomes large, the best-performing agents necessarily become similar in the space of problem solvers. Their relatively greater ability is more than offset by their lack of problem-solving diversity."

It's not always true, of course, that a randomly selected group will outperform a group of top performers. But the result does suggest that it's worth thinking hard about the tradeoff between diversity and ability, and that sometimes the former is more important than the latter.

</comment><comment><USER2> Scott Page again? See here for a deconstruction of one of his previous, simpler arguments.

<http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/04/the_error_of_cr.html>

This one looks more complicated - as near as I can tell, he's assuming that organizations never get stuck in poor solutions, so they can always pick the best of a sufficiently large crowd.

Math and political correctness don't mix well.

</comment><comment><USER3> In my experience, diversity in temperament is essential for any team to function. If you put two people who are highly excitable together, they will keep running after new ideas and feeding of each others excitement. If you put two optimists together, they will tend to gamble and play too risky. If you put a team of idea men together, you tend to have designs and nobody doing the actual work.

I believe every team should be made up of a bunch of slow and steady chaps, and a few creative people, with the creative people split into excitable and careful.

The guys that one often assumes are slow usually have really good solutions, but when the team is too fast paced, those ideas get drowned out by the people who are loud and confident of their own ability. Soon, the quiet chaps stop talking, because they know nobody will listen to them.

Diversity has nothing to do with ethnicity if you are faced with a programming task. If you were to solve a socio-cultural problem, then diversity in terms of ethnicity would probably be a good division criteria.

</comment><comment><USER4> Very insightful. Excellent catch.

</comment><comment><USER5> Unlikely. This is a theoretical paper, not based on any actual data. What the authors get wrong is assuming that there is no correlation between intelligence and original thinking. It is an unwarranted and frankly stupid assumption.

The claim that diversity trumps ability is defeated in nearly every real world test.

I notice that the author's advice, to hire a random sample of candidates for the position instead of the best, is not followed by any great companies that I can think of. In fact, it's 180 degrees away from the hiring practices of places like Google, etc.

<comment><USER6> "The claim that diversity trumps ability is defeated in nearly every real world test."

Completely false. C.f. The Wisdom of Crowds. The reasons why this is true aren't entirely clear, but empirical studies show that is true.

<comment><USER7> Didn't like it, personally. The book cherry-picked examples to suit its thesis from the first page. Not that there isn't Wisdom in Crowds, but J.S didn't do himself any favors by picking and choosing facts.

What would be interesting, would be to see some empirical research on a fascinating topic like this.

<comment><USER6> I agree the book itself was pretty half baked, but I suspect the thesis is correct. He's not claiming that crowds are smarter than individuals all the time, only when four specific conditions are met. He relies too much on anecdotal evidence and not enough on the academic research, but in the end I found the core of the argument convincing, if not particularly well expressed. Maybe I'm not skeptical enough, I dunno.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Short summary: The best problem solvers will think of similar solutions and so may take longer to solve the problem than a random group because the random gorp will come up with more ways of solving the problem.</comment>


What the brain's wiring looks like - happy-go-lucky http://www.bbc.com/news/health-40488545 <comment><AUTHOR> Just to clarify, these MRI images looks at white matter, which are mostly bundles of long-range myelinated axons. This is more likely a map of major highways in the brain (Or really the map of bundles of major highways in the brain, as MRI only has millimeter resolution).

The connectome at the cellular level is massive. I think part of the mouse visual cortical connectome has been mapped out, and the data is on the order of tens of terabytes.

<comment><USER2> This might be naive, but I wonder if the essential part of mouse data could be compressed if only we understood it better.

<comment><USER3> The mouse genome is only 160 megabytes, and contains the instructions for building the brain as well as building everything else, so the "secret sauce" of how to make an intelligent brain should not be extremely large, once you figure out how to do it. :) A lot of the actual connections must be either random, or encoding things the mouse learnt while growing up.

<comment><USER4> Absolutely dead wrong. It's 2.5Gb, where Gb = Giga __bases __. Learn you a genomics, son.

[https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v420/n6915/full/nature...](https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v420/n6915/full/nature01262.html)

<comment><USER5> There are four bases, so one base encodes two bits of information. Eight bits are one byte, so four bases are one byte. 2500 megabases = 625 megabytes. So yeah, Parent was off by a factor of 5-6 :) . But still, that fits on one CD.

<comment><USER4> Except that currently genomics requires even more information to be encoded - such as quality scores, allele frequencies, phase information, ... - so, depending on the format, this estimate is off by either one or two orders of magnitude still.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just wondering...

How complicated does a brain have to become in order to understand itself?

Could a brain exist that is so complicated that it could not understand itself, or does a brain's understanding always scale up with its complexity?

<comment> s-macke You should first define what actually means "understanding the brain" before you try to answer this question.

Does "understanding of the brain" mean, that we can construct or simulate a brain? An artificial brain, which reproduce our intelligence and consciousness?

There is no reason to believe, that we can't do this. A brain is part of our world, governed by physics.

However, we will never be able to understand the thought process down to each individual activation of the neuron.

That's like trying to "understand" and follow the movement of each atom in my coffee next to me.

<comment> wu-ikkyu >There is no reason to believe, that we can't do this. A brain is part of our world, governed by physics.

How do you know consciousness is "governed" by our contemporary understanding of physics?

<comment><USER7> It's not a question of our contemporary understanding being sufficient to model a human brain. Rather it's that there is little or no reason to believe the brain and consciousness are pure unassailable magic. So it should be within the scope of future scientific understanding.

<comment><USER8> The brain and consciousness need not be magic for the philosophical issue to arise. The fundamental question is objectivity vs subjectivity. Consciousness is subjective, yet science is an objective affair. Can the objective be used to explain the subjective, or is the objective an abstraction from intersubjective experiences?

If it's the latter, then the project to explain everything in scientific terms is doomed, because it will always leave something out. If it's the former, then subjectivity is not fundamental, but arises from the objective world. How this is so is a difficult matter (no pun intended).

Either way, there is no magic involved, just a question of where philosophical assumptions begin. You can start with matter or the mind and see where it takes you.

<comment><USER7> Either consciousness lives in the physical constructs of the human brain or it is supernatural / "magic". If the first case is true, then there is every reason to believe it is open to the scrutiny of the scientific process. What we know for sure is that there are very many scientific questions about the brain that still remain to be answered before we have to throw up our hands and admit that it is all ineffable.

IMO science _is_ doomed to always leave something out as you say.. it will reach a fundamental building block that simply exists, can not be expressed in terms of something else and might as well be called God. But i just haven't heard any convincing arguments that consciousness can't be understood before we reach that point.

<comment><USER9> I don't think it's just your opinion. :) I think Godel and many other logicians/mathematicians/philosophers would agree we are likely doomed to "always leave something out", particularly in the sense that we will fail to create "the perfect logic" that can explain everything. Oh the joys of living "in the system".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looks like any MRI. I did this from scans of my brain and than tried to follow the visual cortext to my eyes. I couldn't, because the scans only show the general direction water flows in, but the nerves behind the eye cross and at this point you can't tell what is just noise and what are interlaced nerves.

Would be interesting to know how much better this model is.

</comment><comment><USER11> Just to clarify, MRI scanner at Cardiff is Siemens Connectom A, a specialized research 3T MRI scanner for which the main designs were part of Human Connectome Project.

It is not exactly "hot news", as it is already in research use for several years already (in the US, at MGH). It is, still, however, pretty unique in a way that it was optimized for human in-vivo diffusion MRI (tracing of white matter pathways in alive human subjects :-).

Diffusion MRI scans which can be obtained by this scanner are of exceptionally high quality and resolution (spatial and angular), and contain lots of data that can be fed to mathematical models to infer fiber crossings, etc.

However, despite the high spatial and angular resolution it is still at least an order of magnitude short of what is necessary to capture local axonal connections and this type of imaging certainly does not tell you the direction the signal is flowing.

Still an important progress IMO.

<comment><USER12> It says it's 7T in the article?

<comment><USER11> 7T is the Nottingham University scanner. Cardiff is 3T Connectom A. These are different sites / scans in the article.

In fact, 3T Connectom A is actually more optimized for Diffusion MRI / white matter tract tracing compared to the available 7T scanners due to its enormous 300 mT/m gradient.

In theory, the best of both worlds would be a 7T+ scanner with ultra strong gradient system such as the one developed by the HCP team, but such device does not exist yet AFAIK.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The sheer scale of connectivity of the human brain boggles. An interesting read on neuromorphic computing's attempt to build systems informed by the biological brain [https://semiengineering.com/neuromorphic-computing- modeling-...](https://semiengineering.com/neuromorphic-computing-modeling- brain/)

</comment><comment><USER14> Where is the neuron cell body? Would they be at the outside where the fibers (axons?) seem to terminate?

I wouldn't have guessed that it would look so linear. I was expecting a much more tangled appearance.

<comment><USER15> The tangled part is actually mostly 2mm thickness on the surface[0]. That's why the folds matter so much:

[0] [https://28oa9i1t08037ue3m1l0i861-wpengine.netdna- ssl.com/wp-...](https://28oa9i1t08037ue3m1l0i861-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp- content/uploads/2018/04/Self-Reflected-in-violets-1.jpg)

Check out this article for a pretty cool overview of the brain: [https://waitbutwhy.com/2017/04/neuralink.html](https://waitbutwhy.com/2017/04/neuralink.html)

<comment><USER14> Thank you! Great links.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's a tree ;-)

<comment><USER17> Trees aren't brains.

Forests are brains.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Funny, it looks about as complicated as I would have imagined it.

</comment><comment><USER19> The real challenge here is to understand the brain, and consciousness, without putting it in computer terminology.

[https://aeon.co/essays/your-brain-does-not-process- informati...](https://aeon.co/essays/your-brain-does-not-process-information- and-it-is-not-a-computer)

<comment><USER16> Sorry, but the author of that article clearly does not understand... It doesn't matter if humans store data the way computers do, the point is, that humans can be abstracted as state machines.

Yes, humans are certainly different than our PCs today, but that does not mean that the principles are so different. E.g. humans seem to use a lot of lossy 'compression' while that is something we try to avoid in software in recent years. So we use computers for the things humans cannot do very well and therefore it appears that we are different.

I think the whole discussion about putting the human mind into computer terminology is more about accepting that humans are just biological machines versus believing that humans are special because they have a soul and are different than any other animal.

<comment><USER8> Alternatively, it's a seductive metaphor because humans love to try to explain one thing in terms of another. Thus the universe is like a clock, and the laws of physics operate like clockwork. Until QM and the metaphor broke down.

Similarly, the brain is like a computer. Until it's not.

Interesting how nobody runs it the other way. A computer is like the brain. Why don't we? Probably because we understand computers a lot better than brains, and use that analogy to make sense of something otherwise mysterious.

None of this has anything to do with a soul, btw. It's all a matter of how we think about things.

The mistake is when we take our metaphors literally and try to make domain B fit into domain A, despite obvious differences. Then we end up with a convoluted view of B that's been distorted by being mapped onto A.</comment></comment></comment>


Print every character your program doesn't have - <AUTHOR> http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/12368/print-every-character-your-program-doesnt-have

<comment><USER2> It's fun to see a rule bypass or two, but almost of those were hacks and not technically very impressive.

Kudos to the Whitespace one though, pretty cool.

</comment><comment><USER3> Coffee-Script: 82

(f=(f)->console.log(String.fromCharCode(c)) for c in [20..126] if c !in f)("\\\\\""+f)

Hopefully translation to JS doesn't kill the set of characters used in the source.

Javascript: 93

(f=function(f){for(u=20;u<127;u++){if(f.indexOf(u)<0)alert(String.fromCharCode(u))}})('\\\\\''+f)

</comment><comment><USER4> Just submitted my version. I think I cannot be beaten in numbers of characters... [1]

1: [http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/a/19692/1924](http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/a/19692/1924)

</comment><comment><USER5> Does it print klingon etc?</comment>


Ask HN: Where should we give our time and donations this holiday season? - <AUTHOR>

Hey all,
There are definitely a lot of threads on HN right now discussing the complex and nuanced situation regarding the tech divide in the bay. I wanted to find some way to channel my frustration into something useful, and so I'm compiling a list of charities and organizations where I can either donate time or money. Here's what I have so far, but would love to get your opinions on causes and organizations I might have missed. Thanks!
Non-tech related (skews SF city, apologies!):
826 Valencia (teach SF children how to write, or donate money!): https://826valencia.org/
Homeless Youth Alliance (psyciatry and services for homeless youth in SF, in danger of shutting down [1]): http://www.homelessyouthalliance.org/
Glide SF (help serve a meal to those in need in SF): http://www.glide.org/serveameal
Watsi (fund patient care to anyone in the world): https://watsi.org/
EARN (financial services and education for disadvantaged workers): http://www.earn.org/how_you_can_help/how_to_give/
Project Night Night (deliver homeless children in SF bags of toys and blankets): http://www.projectnightnight.org/
Tech related:
Black Girls Code: http://www.blackgirlscode.com/
Archive.org (3:1 donation match): http://archive.org/donate/
Code for America (Reid Hoffman matching donations): http://www.codeforamerica.org/2013/12/18/reid-hoffman-challenges-tech-community-to-support-civic-innovation/
[1] http://m.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/haight-center-for-homeless-youth-explores-options-as-closure-looms/Content?oid=2651571 <comment><USER2> Good list. My friend, also a hb mentor, is working on this [https://handup.us/](https://handup.us/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I met Rose Broome a while back! Really cool to see she's founded this now.</comment></comment>


The Price of Covid Freedom May Be Eternal Spying - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-05-10/coronavirus-contact-tracing-apps-mean-spying-end-to-data-privacy <comment><USER2> The language used in this article is written with a soft authoritarian tone.

It's a nice gesture of Bloomberg to put shills for his wet dreams in the opinion section, but the advocacy of surveillance state by the big media is becoming obvious.

I can't speak for HN or the mods, but I do wonder if there are subjects that are not worth discussing because of how undemocratic and liberty infringing they are.

Case in point, anything that uses the language and examples like this "opinion" piece to hem around a "means justify the ends" rhetoric.

They (media, governments, billionaires) will use any and all means to gain more control, power, and minimize potential leakers, whistleblowers, usurpers and anyone who disagrees with their rule.

<comment><USER3> Would you be in favor of such "authoritarian" measures if COVID-19 had a 15% fatality rate, affected the young just as much as the old, and three of your extended family members + 20 friends/acquaintances died?

If the answer is yes, then our differences lie in the value you place on human life rather than our relative support for "authoritarianism." COVID tracing apps are about as authoritarian as forcing open your neighbor's door and violating his personal sovereignty by saving him from a house fire.

<comment><USER4> Except you don't know whether the neighbours house isn't on fire, so you had better go in just in case. And while you are there, take an inventory of everything you find, record the data forever for unknown future purposes, and then never leave. It is not a valid comparison.

<comment><USER3> A more precise analogy on my part would have illustrated negative externalities. I am partially reliant on you for my safety. Even if I do everything I can to protect myself and others from the virus, you still put me at risk if you don't do the same.

No one will compel you to opt into COVID tracing. You can purchase a non- iOS/Android phone. That would be a reasonable price to pay for forsaking a valuable public safety measure. Moreover, grocery stores and other businesses should be free to require proof that someone has a COVID-tracing device before entering the premises.

<comment><USER5> > I am partially reliant on you for my safety. Even if I do everything I can > to protect myself and others from the virus, you still put me at risk if you > don't do the same.

People put other people at risk by driving. Heck, a big tree in a public place is a risk due to the potential for falling limbs. Are you against those things, too?

This whole argument seems to be about the people who feel vulnerable to the disease having to go to grocery stores to get food.

If the government would supply clean food to those people, it would seem that we'd no longer have to metaphorically lock everyone in chains in order to save the few.

<comment><USER3> I am not arguing in favor of further lockdown. I think we should partially relax the lockdown for everyone who is not "at risk," but with proper mitigations:

1\. Obligatory masks (freely provided by the government)

2\. Social distancing and limitations on large or dense gatherings. Special policies should be rolled out for each sector (offices, restaurants, etc...)

3\. Contact tracing apps

4\. Greater testing (not necessarily population-wide, but a lot more than what is currently available)

5\. Free delivery of essential goods for the at-risk population, and potentially subsidized delivery for non-essential goods

Because of the OP, I was mostly addressing mitigation #3.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> People who write pro-totalitarian surveillance hellscape articles like this should definitely be placed on some kind of list.

<comment><USER7> Not only is the article not 'pro-totalitarian surveillance hellscape', but ironically, placing people on lists for articles they write is.

edit: grammar

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> You can't fight nature.

One word: herd immunity.

<comment><USER9> Like we have for all the other coronaviruses that we know as (a big part of) common cold?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "...life, liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

It's why saving lives are the most important, even at the expense of liberty and your happiness. Without life, the other two wouldn't exist.

<comment><USER11> Nonsense. "Life", in this context, refers to your right not to have your life taken by the state. You don't have a right to be safe from all harm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> In response to the article, it most certainly will be. The loss of privacy allows states to compete through coordination that otherwise isn't possible.

Consider that the United States' disposition to privacy has contributed to the less effective response to the pandemic. Does the US gain an equivalent amount of competitiveness for the vulnerabilities that privacy allows? Are decisions even being considered with regard to this trade-off?

I'm probably biased because I have enjoyed the benefits of privacy my whole life, but is it possible that the US is in general placing too high value on privacy?</comment>