Acidity in atmosphere minimised to preindustrial levels - <AUTHOR> http://news.ku.dk/all_news/2016/09/acidity-in-atmosphere-minimised-to-preindustrial-levels/ <comment><USER2> My family's business in the 1970s was cleaning windows on tall buildings in Saskatoon (there were dozens). The effects of acid rain on buildings was dramatic. Facades on buildings that had stood since the 1920s were crumbling. Acid rain damage control was a whole segment of our business. Presumably the pollution there was no worse than anywhere else.

Emissions controls for vehicles and coal power plants are important. Things would be much worse without them.

</comment><comment><USER3> "preindustrial" being tagged at 1900 seems more than a bit off. Steel boomed in the 1880's (starting in 1850's with Bessemer). I would think a better data set would be to look back to 1850 or better 1800 to be sure to capture a decent number of years that show the "preindustrial" time period.

All that said. It is nice to see the trend over the past 30 years!

<comment><USER4> Half the steel ever made has been produced in the last couple decades.

1913 production was ~60 million tons ([http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2892944/posts](http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2892944/posts) ).

2015 production was ~1500 million tons.

<comment><USER3> True, and we are getting cleaner production methods. The early production was incredibly inefficient and produced way more pollution than now. I can say _that_ with some certainty, but I can't say that they produced x% of the current production back then and were N times more polluting. Plus, it isn't clear how the atmosphere absorbs/reacts to the pollutants. (is there a lag? why the spike in 1970s? did the levels really fall off so quickly? I thought once steel left the US production it got much "dirtier" to produce?) Lots of questions, I'm mostly asking to show me a bit of the range that is clearly outside the definition of "preindustrial"

<comment><USER5> For the record, steel production has not left the US (although many of the _jobs_ have due to automation).

The US is #4 in the world for steel production[1], although China produces about 17x more.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_steel_pro...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_steel_production)

<comment><USER6> US steel production in absolute terms has dropped 45% (edit: 31%) from 50 years ago, when we made about 25% of steel globally. Now we produce less than 5% of steel globally. I'd say steel production has largely left the US.

<comment><USER7> The Wikipedia article shows US production dropping 30% from 1967 to 2015. It's a loss, yes, but 70% of the production is still here. What's changed is that China and other countries are producing much more now, so as a percentage of world-wide production the US has dropped. But that'd be true even if we were producing more domestic steel than before.

<comment><USER6> > _The Wikipedia article shows US production dropping 30% from 1967 to 2015. > It 's a loss, yes, but 70% of the production is still here._

Fair, I plugged my number in upside down. The production 50 years ago was ~46% higher than today, or today's is ~31% lower.

> _What 's changed is that China and other countries are producing much more > now, so as a percentage of world-wide production the US has dropped. But > that'd be true even if we were producing more domestic steel than before._

Yes, but we've also dropped 30% of our own production. When our absolute production is down this much _and_ our overall share of production has plummeted, I think it's fair to say the industry has largely left. The population is also up by over 50% since 1967, so per capita our steel production has basically been cut in half.

In comparison, the absolute number of consumer electronics that America produces might actually be higher than 50 years ago, but as a share of the market, production has plummeted, to the point that everyone would likely agree that consumer electronics manufacturing has largely left the US.

<comment><USER7> When you say "has largely left", that implies that we no longer have companies doing the work, that we've lost the capability to do the work. That doesn't seem to be the case, at least not based on these figures.

If we're producing less steel than we used to, but we're still producing some, then we still have the capability to expand. Production is down and if it continues we'll eventually lose the ability to produce our own steel, but we're not there yet.

For consumer electronics, I disagree that "everyone would likely agree that consumer electronics manufacturing has largely left the US", especially if our production of consumer electronics is up. (Is it rising as well?) We may not be the leader anymore, but that's very different from "largely left".

I don't believe that everything is fine with US manufacturing; I think it's a problem that there are many things we still need which we don't make anymore. But there are many things that we do make, even when other countries make them too, so it's not all doom and gloom.

<comment><USER6> > _When you say "has largely left", that implies that we no longer have > companies doing the work, that we've lost the capability to do the work. > That doesn't seem to be the case, at least not based on these figures._

I think this is wishful thinking. Well we've shed ~75% of jobs from the steel industry in the past 5 decades. We don't produce enough steel to meet our own needs. In fact we are the _top_ importer.

Most of the integrated steel mills are shuttered, down to 11 from something like 50. There used to be 9 in Cleveland alone. Now there is 1.

We have some companies doing the work, but we have fewer, and they're doing less of it.

> _If we 're producing less steel than we used to, but we're still producing > some, then we still have the capability to expand._

This is a meaningless statement. If our production was zero, we'd still have the capacity to expand. The reality though is that we are not expanding production. It's contracting while the industry in general is booming.

If US car manufacturing were down 30% since 1970 while worldwide sales were up 200%, I think everyone would agree that our automotive industry was floundering. In fact the numbers for car manufacturing aren't nearly that bad and most everyone _still_ agrees that the U.S. car industry is in trouble.

> _Production is down and if it continues we 'll eventually lose the ability > to produce our own steel, but we're not there yet._

Of course we're not there. But we don't have to hit zero before we're in trouble, nor do we have to hit zero before we're effectively unable to meet our own needs. At this point we already (net) import something like 25% of the steel that we need.

> _For consumer electronics, I disagree that "everyone would likely agree that > consumer electronics manufacturing has largely left the US", especially if > our production of consumer electronics is up. (Is it rising as well?) We may > not be the leader anymore, but that's very different from "largely left"._

I made up an example. I suspect that it _is_ up since Woz was putting together Apple Is in a garage. When the numbers are that small, it's not hard for them to grow. At the same time, we basically have no domestic electronics manufacturing industry. The vast, vast majority of that happens in Asia. Even if our overall numbers are actually up, our manufacturing doesn't exist in a vacuum. When our own consumption is virtually completely outsourced, our industry has utterly failed to meet the demand and it's fair to say that the industry has effectively left.

It seems unreasonable to me to look at total output in isolation as if no other factors are relevant. While we might produce 70% of the steel we used to, we produce far less virgin steel than we used to. And we cover far less of our own needs than we used to. And we produce far less of the world's supply than we used to. And we employ far fewer people. And we have far fewer steel mills.

> _I don 't believe that everything is fine with US manufacturing; I think > it's a problem that there are many things we still need which we don't make > anymore. But there are many things that we do make, even when other > countries make them too, so it's not all doom and gloom._

I don't think it's all doom and gloom, but the steel industry is clearly largely outside the US now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I normally love HN comment sections because really knowledgable people put these articles into greater perspective. This has not been one such section. Can someone with domain specific knowledge speak to what this means? What are the scope of the benefits? What was the danger if this hadn't been turned around?

<comment><USER9> I have some knowledge of this area. So the basic problem with acid rain was that the acidity was freeing trace amounts of aluminum in the soil, causing widespread deaths of trees and fish. (There are other mechanisms also, but that was one of the primary ones.)

The solution was the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act, which made cap & trade the law of the land. This law placed a legal limit on the total amount of SO2 and NOx that society can release into the atmosphere. Further, by allowing companies to trade their emissions allotments, they created a mechanism that dramatically reduced the cost to society of making these reductions by creating enormous financial incentives to reward the companies that figured out the least expensive ways to reduce these emissions.

This is one of the most successful environmental laws of all time. To quote the EPA:

"We estimate that the annual dollar value of benefits of air quality improvements will be very large, and will grow over time as emissions control programs take their full effect, reaching a level of approximately $2.0 trillion in 2020. These benefits will be achieved as a result of CAAA-related programs and regulatory compliance actions estimated to cost approximately $65 billion in 2020. Most of these benefits (about 85 percent) are attributable to reductions in premature mortality associated with reductions in ambient particulate matter; as a result, we estimate that cleaner air will, by 2020, prevent 230,000 cases of premature mortality in that year."[1]

[1] [https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-07/documents...](https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-07/documents/fullreport_rev_a.pdf)

<comment><USER10> Is there a good reason we can't implement the same system for other types of emissions, such as, say, CO2?

<comment><USER9> There's no reason it can't be used to fix climate change, and in fact cap & trade is the only type of law that's ever actually fixed any air pollution problem in real life. But for various reasons congress is preventing cap & trade from getting implemented at the federal level. And while Hillary Clinton supports a carbon tax, this doesn't actually impose any legally binding cap on carbon pollution, nor does it incentivize the entrepreneurs who are able to invent new technologies to get the biggest reductions for the least money.

One place it is working though is with fisheries. Today the majority of US commercial fisheries are managed using cap & trade (called 'catch shares'), and the work is being done to get 70% of the world's commercial fisheries managed this way be 2020:

[https://www.edf.org/oceans/how-turn-around-overfishing- crisi...](https://www.edf.org/oceans/how-turn-around-overfishing-crisis)

<comment><USER11> It seems like either a carbon tax or cap-and-trade would spur innovation. Why do you think one would spur more innovation that than the other?

<comment><USER12> A tax is simply a deterrent, where c&t is an opportunity to make a boatload of money selling your credits to a carbon hog while simultaneously improving the state of the art for co2 emission reduction to free up more credits to be sold/bartered.

<comment><USER11> A tax provides an incentive to make money too, because it's an expense that businesses can optimize.

Businesses that are better at cutting carbon output either become more profitable or gain market share (through lower prices than their competitors).

It's also an opportunity for businesses that sell equipment to reduce carbon output.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Now if we can just get acidity in the oceans back to preindustrial levels we'll be set.

<comment><USER14> We don't even have a shred of a clue how to do that, only prevent it, and it may well be a bit late to meaningfully prevent.

<comment><USER15> As someone with 0 knowledge on this. Why is it late and is there any hope one day to be able to reverse the acidity of the oceans?

<comment><USER14> The problem is the sheer scale, both in terms of quantity of dissolved CO2, and time.

I think the (second part)of this does a better job explaining just how and why than I would though:

[http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/reversing-ocean-acidification- aggre...](http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/reversing-ocean-acidification-aggressive- co2-removal-will-take-more-700-years-1513897)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This seems incredibly vacuous:

> Acid in the atmosphere can come from large volcanic eruptions and manmade > emissions from industry

It's not surprising that the atmosphere isn't as acidic now, as there has been a decline in volcanic activity in the last 100 years (purely statistical noise).

In fact, it's rather harmful to push the "hey we're making improvements" narrative when there is still so much to be done to prevent global environmental catastrophes.

<comment><USER17> So I think you are implying that if it's not negative news about the environment then people shouldn't be hearing it. I hate this attitude that the environment is indisputably in a headlong rush to hell. This to me is much more detrimental to the efforts to make positive environmental changes. The general public will not trust science if they are not being told the truth whether a particular truth supports a particular agenda or not.

<comment><USER16> Make no mistake, this is no attitude, this is a stating of facts: [http://www.soas.ac.uk/cedep- demos/000_P500_ESM_K3736-Demo/un...](http://www.soas.ac.uk/cedep- demos/000_P500_ESM_K3736-Demo/unit1/page_11.htm)

Good news is fine, but rare. Important good news rarer. Find me good news and I may change my tune, until then I'll continue to remind you of the Pacific garbage patch and the global water crisis.

The general public will only trust science if it comforts them - no one wants to believe that the type of environmental degradation late capitalism promotes is possible. The general public will not believe that eating hamburgers contributes to water shortages, that driving automobiles causes global climate problems, that our trash is causing the oceans to acidify into a pool, barren of life... They will believe their post-consumer-waste Starbucks cup is saving the world, and that they are heroes.

<comment><USER18> I found some good news here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12531603](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12531603)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Good news for a change. I will wait a decade and want to see these kind of tests repeated before I will really cheer.

<comment><USER20> We have directly-measured data for the later part of the plot (from different locations of course), and many satellite images with excellent spatial coverage to boot. This is real, don't worry. :)

</comment></comment><comment> rm_-rf_slash Really confusing that the graph starts at 2000 and goes backwards in time along the X axis. Is that a Danish thing?

<comment><USER21> The plot is weird: The title of the plot ("Isens alder (år )") literally means "age of the ice (years)", so the x-axis should probably have gone from 0 (being year 2016) to 116 (being year 1900), which would sorta have made sense.

<comment><USER22> ices older (y)ear. Oh, how Germanic languages always make sense in hindsight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is great news for ecosystems everywhere!

But there may be a downside. It remains unclear how human SO2 emissions contribute to sulfate aerosol levels in the stratosphere, and so increase albedo. As China reduces SO2 emissions, global warming may accelerate.[0] Maybe getting those emissions directly into the stratosphere would be useful. But that would require nontrivial energy.

[0] Kasoar et al. (2016) Regional and Global Climate Response to Anthropogenic SO2 Emissions from China in Three Climate Models. [http://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20160011155](http://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20160011155)

</comment><comment><USER24> The mind is blown that this can't be repeated with CO2 emissions: The rules should be simple.

1) auction permits for a single compound (create separate auctions for each worrisome greenhouse gas)

2) allow for secondary markets (e.g. futures) with some cost for permit transfers

3) disallow credit schemes. Trading offsets is too easy to game.

4) allow anyone who cares to buy off carbon permits in the general auction and let them go fallow.

Of course, that will never happen, because there are a host of politically favored entities that are interested in keeping things complicated for their own benefit.

</comment><comment><USER25> It is a tragedy that article like these are usually used by climate change deniers as SCIENTIFIC proof.

<comment><USER26> A climate change denier, citing the success of government regulations that limit emission of environmentally harmful substance, without noticeable harm on economy, must not be really thinking it through...

<comment><USER9> According to the EPA, fixing acid rain has brought society $2.0 trillion worth of economic benefits per year at an annual cost of $65 billion.

[https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-07/documents...](https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-07/documents/fullreport_rev_a.pdf)

<comment><USER27> This is purely an _ad hominem_ argument because I don't have time to dig into their claims: isn't in the EPA's interest to claim that their regulations are worth the cost?

<comment><USER28> Drinkable water/breathable air is worth any cost.

<comment><USER27> Drinkable and breathable _at all_? Sure, since without water and air we die.

But what about tradeoffs? What if we can leave air polluted enough that two hundred years of breathing it would be fatal, and spend that money elsewhere? Would that tradeoff be worth it? No-one ever lives to be 200 anyway.

What about a century? Almost no-one lives to be 100.

At what point is the tradeoff no longer worth it?

And, to return to your statement (which I earlier conceded): drinkable water & breathable air can't be worth _any_ cost, because if they cost my life then I can't enjoy them anyway.

Given that resources are fungible, and that money spent preventing acid rain could instead feed the hungry: how many people are you willing to kill in order to preserve buildings from corrosive rain?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> How about acidification of the oceans?

How about greenhouse gases in the atmosphere?

<comment><USER30> > How about acidification of the oceans?

Reduce waste, stop ships from ocean dumping. Start with the West and then bully the rest to follow. The US/EU can control who can access their market.

"Sorry, you can only land here, if you can prove that you did not dump your waste."

> How about greenhouse gases in the atmosphere?

I think economics will solve this one. To me waste and planned obsolescence seems like the much bigger problem. Green energy is just "more new stuff", we are good at that.

Edit: Another answer to your comment just made me realize, I had a different kind of acidification in mind and missed the point.

<comment><USER31> Sounds like you are talking about what Sweden announced today: [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/19/waste-not- want...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/19/waste-not-want-not- sweden-tax-breaks-repairs)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> s/Acidity/CO2/g

If only we could save the world with Perl

<comment><USER33> There are a lot of people who will hear CO2 and immediately decide they don't believe you. There's been some bad science behind global warming that deniers will latch onto, and I suspect "CO2" will just get associated with that in many people's minds. The science behind (and the effects of) ocean acidification are far more sound, IMHO. Probably wouldn't be bad to get a second chance in many people's minds at presenting the data.

Of course, I'm sure the same people may latch on to this as "the problem is all fixed".

<comment><USER20> How do you want to discuss ocean acidification without mentioning CO2?

<comment><USER33> I don't want to. I don't want to s/Acidification/CO2/ either.

<comment><USER32> This was in reference to the articles title, in other words "CO2 in atmosphere minimised to preindustrial levels..." Sorry to rustle so many jimmies</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


People killed by terrorism per year in western Europe 1970-2015 - <AUTHOR> http://www.datagraver.com/case/people-killed-by-terrorism-per-year-in-western-europe-1970-2015 <comment><USER2> I'm from NL, and we had MH17 in 2014 (just for completion sake: the plane took off from Amsterdam, and crashed in Eastern Europe). More people died in that plane crash (298), than the amount of deaths from terrorism in that year or in 2015.

The goal of terrorism is not merely killing people though.

See also Revised Academic Consensus Definition of Terrorism (2011) [1]

[1] [http://www.terrorismanalysts.com/pt/index.php/pot/article/vi...](http://www.terrorismanalysts.com/pt/index.php/pot/article/view/schmid- terrorism-definition/html)

<comment> aaron-lebo It's a very fascinating subject. At UT Dallas we have a couple of world class scholars on the topic.

Some more reading material:

* [http://international.ucla.edu/media/files/Rapoport-Four-Wave...](http://international.ucla.edu/media/files/Rapoport-Four-Waves-of-Modern-Terrorism.pdf)

Could we consider the terrorism in Europe part of a new wave? Note: it's thought that "modern" terrorism started with anarchist movements in the 1880s; Lenin's brother was executed for his involvement in one of the earliest groups.

* [http://www.utdallas.edu/~tms063000/website/TargetSubstitutio...](http://www.utdallas.edu/~tms063000/website/TargetSubstitution-20091003.pdf)

Terrorists have shifted their targets over the years from hardened military targets to "softer" ones. It's easier (unfortunately) to run over 100 civilians with a lorry than it is to attack a military outpost.

* [http://www.ir.rochelleterman.com/sites/default/files/pape%20...](http://www.ir.rochelleterman.com/sites/default/files/pape%202003.pdf)

The "logic" behind suicide terrorism is unfortunately pretty sound. If you are in Palestine where human life is "cheap" due to environment and material resources are expensive, suicide bombing strikes groups like the West particularly hard where life is expensive and tech is "cheap", and the smartest most expensive missiles aren't nearly as smart as someone packed with explosives who is willing to die.

The worst thing about all of this is that modern terrorism became possible because media enabled terror to reach farther than before: today's social media environment is like a best-case scenario for terrorists because their actions reach so damn far so quickly. Most attacks today are livestreamed. ISIS virtually has a media empire. Zuckerberg and Ev Williams probably weren't thinking about the issue much when they were building their their networks.

What's even more striking is the fact that the refugee crisis is gonna keep this going for another generation or more. The US destabilized the Middle East by invading Iraq, which created a new wave of terrorism and refugees in Europe, and new reprisals by the West, which continues the cycle. This was one of bin Laden and al Qaeda's explicit goals.

<comment><USER3> The media are equally culpable in giving platforms to all kinds of entities that we'd be better off without. At some point the media is going to have to hold themselves accountable, it will be an interesting exercise in introspection. They are definitely not just innocent bystanders who dispassionately report the news, they _make_ the news and determine how much a platform all kinds of undesirables get based on the simple math of eyballs and advertising dollars. They are an essential part of the feedback loop.

<comment><USER4> > The media are equally culpable

I disagree, _at least_ with the "equal" part, but I think entirely. I don't think Islamic extremists blow up westerners to get famous, they primarily do it out of revenge and frustration. Revenge for all the things the west has done to them for centuries, and frustration at how they are treated in western countries, not just as refugees but even as non-wealthy immigrants. I believe the west does a really poor job of properly assimilating Islamic newcomers, and as a result they often end up segregated in "slums", growing up poor and ignored, while getting the (often incorrect, from TV shows and what not) impression that "regular" people in western countries are living a life of luxury while they are dirt poor.

I don't know if the west "deserves" what they're getting with all this terrorism, but they kind of asked for it in my opinion.

<comment><USER5> It's not really "the west" per se because it's a bit different in Europe vs. US/Canada. And you know what? It's newcomers' jobs to assimilate themselves.

<comment><USER4> > It's newcomers' jobs to assimilate themselves.

If you wants bombs going off in public places, sure.

 _We_ are deciding to allow immigration/refugees from these cultures, and we have ample evidence to know what happens when they are managed in the way we are doing now. I think whose "job" it is to manage assimilation is largely irrelevant compared to the effects of not doing it properly.

<comment><USER6> > If you wants bombs going off in public places, sure.

Better, don't bring them in the first place

You can't integrate (some) people who won't let go of their backwards mentality.

I don't know why are we trying/pretending in the first place

<comment><USER2> If it only were that simple. A large part of of the profession of counter terrorism is about spotting terrorists before they strike. The signal to noise ratio of just outright stopping helping refugees or allowing Muslims to enter just is too low, and downright discrimination. IOW the collateral damage would be too high. The casualties/deaths in these statistics alone underline this. One should also think deeply of the repercussions of actions like these, or actions like building walls, bombing a country, etc.

As a parallel thought. The mass murder in Srebrenica was executed by Serbs; who are in large majority Orthodox Christian. The conflicts in medieval Europe between Catholics and Atheists, and Catholics and Protestants are also widely documented (Spanish Inquisition etc). It'd be silly to draw conclusions towards all Orthodox Christians or Catholics. Silly and also dangerous. How would you feel if you're on vacation in Egypt and every Muslim you see regards you as a warmonger, just because you are from the West and your country supported the war in Iraq? Generalizations like these are a dangerous line of thinking. We must refrain from these, and understand not everyone with political view X or religion Y is therefore A or B even if it does statistically speaking (merely) increase the likelihood.

<comment><USER6> > It'd be silly to draw conclusions towards all Orthodox Christians or > Catholics.

But I'm not. I'm not worried about tourists from any country in general, I'm worried about people that come to Europe expecting a free ride while not think they have to adapt. Then somehow if they get frustrated "it's the west's fault". Come on.

And get rid of the well financed ones that "are asking for asylum" because "they're persecuted in their home country" (for being an islamist)

> is therefore A or B even if it does statistically speaking (merely) increase > the likelihood.

"Merely" is ending up with a lot of people killed.

<comment><USER7> Yet several studies have shown multicultural policies are better than assimilation ones when it comes to integration. And saying most of them want a free ride is just nonsense.

<comment><USER6> > have shown multicultural policies are better than assimilation ones

Yes, up to a point, or are we supposed to bend over to accomodate backwards/barbaric practices?

Multiculturalism works if it doesn't involve a-holes

> And saying most of them want a free ride is just nonsense.

I didn't say most. See (try google translate, the video is interesting but can't be easily translated):

[https://www.reddit.com/r/de/comments/4j9cip/falsche_versprec...](https://www.reddit.com/r/de/comments/4j9cip/falsche_versprechen_locken_fl%C3%BCchtlinge_an/)

[http://cicero.de/berliner-republik/migrationspolitik- jedes-u...](http://cicero.de/berliner-republik/migrationspolitik-jedes- unrecht-beginnt-mit-einer-luege)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not sure why this was dead.

FYI, graph at the start is missing the most recent years. End graph is more up to date: [http://www.datagraver.com/thumbs/1300x1300r/2017-05/ter- we-i...](http://www.datagraver.com/thumbs/1300x1300r/2017-05/ter-we- isl-20170523.png)

</comment><comment><USER9> So homegrown terrorism peaked in the 70/80s and dropped off in the 2000s, to be replaced by Islamic terrorists. It's looking like we haven't yet reached "peak Islam"...

<comment><USER10> ...and a lot pf those homegrown terrorists form the 70/80s were funded by the Soviets. Notice how in the charts the rates drop off after the cold war ends. The same thing happened in Latin America. Presumably this could be a clue on how to solve current problems.

<comment><USER11> For the benefit of dummies like me, what's the lesson / clue?

<comment><USER12> Rumor has it that certain Arab states are directly funding Islamic terrorism today.

Also, Western states and NGOs supported and continue to support various rebels against old, mostly totalitarian and often USSR/Russia-friendly regimes in the region which used to maintain order and keep extremists under their boot. They do it in the name of democracy but how it is turning out we all see.

<comment><USER11> Ah, thanks, I think I get it now.

So, if my understanding of the situation is right, there are a number of conflicts that involve militant Islamic groups, but some of these conflicts are being spurred on by foreign powers with ulterior motives. These foreign powers provide support to some of these groups (in the form of arms, training, and/or direct combat support?)

And the solution would be for these foreign powers to, in one way or another, directly address and resolve their disagreements? At that point there's no reason to be waging proxy wars and the foreign powers can withdraw their support / intervention, or intervene with more benign motives (e.g. humanitarian) where appropriate.

Just to preface this, my understanding of what's happening in the middle-east is tenuous at best. But I think one possible wrinkle is that we now have a situation where there are 'proxy wars within proxy wars'. Starting from the outermost layer, you've got the US on one side and Russia on the other (I think?). I'm actually not 100% clear on their motivations. And on the inside layer you have two opposing regional powers and major oil producers (i.e. economic competitors, despite the recent tepid OPEC agreement) who also have religious differences: Saudi Arabia (Sunni / Wahhabi - US aligned) and Iran & Syria (Shia - Russia aligned). These two might engage in some direct military action (not with each other though), but also fund groups like Al-Qaeda and Hezbollah (who are variously thought of as legitimate political entities, terrorists, resistance movements and so on depending on where you stand).

And then there are 'third-party' groups who I'm not sure are strongly aligned with one side or another, but are nonetheless involved: IS / Daesh (who are religiously opposed to Iran, but to whom Saudi Arabia responded by building a 600 mile wall to try and keep them [Daesh] out of their territory), Turkey(?), Kurdistan and Israel (who, weirdly, I guess are nominally aligned with Saudi Arabia and the US, given their concerns about Iranian nukes and conflicts with Hezbollah).

Does that sound right to you, or have I gone horribly wrong somewhere?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I can't speak for the rest of Europe, but in the UK the only thing keeping us from numerous terror attacks per year is the panopticon we've allowed our security services to build. They are stopping numerous attacks every year. This doesn't feel like a win to me.

<comment><USER2> Yet that didn't stop the Boston attacks.

There are other plausible reasons to consider why terrorism has lowered in Western Europe:

1) IRA is dismantled. IRA and UK are at peace.

2) ETA is dismantled as well. That's more recently though.

3) The Iron Curtain is down. Its a well known fact Eastern Europe states were supporting terrorists such as Carlos and the RAF. In the 80s this became less feasible already.

4) Right after the Iron Curtain went down there were wars and new countries (eventually) born. After that, the region more or less stabilized. NB: This is merely my perception.

<comment><USER13> All of these can be true without changing my point. The security services have grown vastly more capable through experience and advancement in tech which results in modern terror groups failing vastly more often than not.

The IRA were vastly more capable than the Islamic terrorists we face in the UK today, but they never had to face a security service as well equipped to deal with them.

<comment><USER2> > The security services have grown vastly more capable through experience and > advancement in tech

Can you objectively prove this? Specifically that its due to 1) experience 2) advancement in tech?

Terrorists also gain experience. Terrorists also advance in tech.

You do realize terrorist plots were foiled in the 70s and 80s as well? Minimizing (casualties from) terrorism is of all times.

Yet the so-called 'vastly more capable' security services did not stop 9/11, Madrid, London attacks, Boston, or the attack on the USS Cole. All of that happened after mid 90s, arguably when mass surveillance was possible.

What your posts continue to lack is any kind of substance on the positive effect of mass surveillance.

The fact targeted surveillance is much older is a fallacy. However targeted surveillance has a proven track record. I've yet to see the efficiency of mass surveillance. I'll put my money on a lot of false positives, and a cat and mouse game where the mouse is going to adapt pretty quickly to the mass surveillance. In Belgium, for example, the government wants to have all SIM cards registered. All anonymous SIM cards will be disabled in a month. Hows that going to help catch terrorists? If not only for the fact anonymous SIM cards are still sold in the neighboring The Neherlands?

Finally, as I posted in the other post, we must remember the main goal of terrorism is not (merely) 'killing people' [1]. So the statistic isn't accurately describing the 'effectiveness of terrorism'.

[1] Specifically: "7\. The direct victims are not the ultimate target (as in a classical assassination where victim and target coincide) but serve as message generators, more or less unwittingly helped by the news values of the mass media, to reach various audiences and conflict parties that identify either with the victims' plight or the terrorists' professed cause;"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This ignores the detail that most terrorist plots today (in Europe that is) are prevented by a more sophisticated police (and no, I'm not referring to mass surveillance) and increasing security expenses. Remove that, and we would probably have the 70s and 80s levels if not more.

<comment><USER4> Is there evidence of this? I can think of numerous failsafe ways of going out and killing hundreds of people with zero chance of being detected prior to the fact. Terrorists may be uneducated, but are they _dumb_?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This explains why I was far more worried in the 1970s/80s then I am today about being caught up in a terrorist incident.

<comment><USER16> Do you remember how the coverage of terrorist attacks was handled in those days?

Looking at the graph, I can't help but think that even the peak of yearly casualties is a rounding error compared to the other types of threats facing Europeans.

<comment><USER17> Then I believe you would be mistaken.

Terrorism isn't warfare, it is a strategy. The object is to get two groups to conflict aka sectarianism.

I'd say Islamic terror coupled with MENA mass migration is well on its way to producing low intensity civil conflict in countries such as France.

Examining the civil wars in Lebanon and Syria will likely reveal a series of escalating attacks before they broke out proper.

You're saying the spark from each struck match is not meaningful. I agree, but we're at Gas Station across the street from the Dynamite Store!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Yea, and murder / violent crime rates have historically been going way down in the last ~4 decades over here in the US (like half of what it was a couple decades ago). You'd never guess it from watching the news.

<comment><USER19> Except not in cities like Chicago that dominate the media coverage

<comment><USER18> 2016 was a bad year and comparable to the 90s, but prior years murder was down 50% from decades earlier in Chicago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> How ready we are to sacrifice many of our freedoms and conveniences to * prevent 200 deaths - especially considering how mindlessly we accept risks that are multiple orders of magnitude higher, like driving cars. It is fascinating.

*try to

<comment><USER21> You have a good point. But we don't know if the government agencies are actually preventing an even higher amount of deaths. Or we are sacrificing freedoms for nothing.

<comment><USER22> In all likelihood, we are sacrificing freedoms for nothing.

[https://theintercept.com/2015/11/17/u-s-mass-surveillance- ha...](https://theintercept.com/2015/11/17/u-s-mass-surveillance-has-no- record-of-thwarting-large-terror-attacks-regardless-of-snowden-leaks/)

[http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/20...](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2010/11/does_the_tsa_ever_catch_terrorists.html)

[http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-aclu- tsa-20170207-stor...](http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-aclu- tsa-20170207-story.html)

[http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/03/opinions/abend-tsa- screening-f...](http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/03/opinions/abend-tsa-screening- failure/)</comment></comment></comment>


Isso: A Commenting Server Similar to Disqus - <AUTHOR> https://posativ.org/isso/ <comment><USER2> _SQLite backend

Because comments are not Big Data._

Yep, you got it.

Also MIT licensed.

Please go ahead and kill Facebook comments.

I strongly dislike realname policies in this day and time where a single remark can cost you your job.

<comment><USER3> _Because comments are not Big Data._

I'd like to understand the significance of this. I'm _extremely_ interested in comments as big data (to try to understand social networking patterns better from studying the structure of nested comments) and I'd like to get a handle on the opposite point of view - what is it that you prefer about this approach?

<comment><USER2> > I'd like to understand the significance of this. I'm extremely interested in > comments as big data (to try to understand social networking patterns better > from studying the structure of nested comments) and I'd like to get a handle > on the opposite point of view - what is it that you prefer about this > approach?

While this might be interesting to _you_ it is in the best interest of the site owners and commenters worldwide that not everything they write is instantly correlatable to anyone who happens to work for Facebook or be in a position where they can somehow buy or otherwise demand this data from them.

<comment><USER3> You seem to have me confused with someone else.

<comment><USER2> Care to explain?

<comment><USER3> I don't work for FB, nor am I in a position to demand big data flows from someone else. I'm just intensely curious about the dynamics of commented discussions and think it's an under-studied phenomenon. I'm not interested in making money out of it, I just want to understand how ideas promulgate and what factors drive virtual communities.

I was confused by the original post because a) I'm not sure why using SQLite makes comments into 'not big data' (is it extraordinarily hard to get statistical information out of SQLite or something?) and b) even if a blog or website is completely private, might not the owner want to analyze what's going on within the private social network they've created?

Also, I question your blanket assertion about what is or in't in the interest of other people. You seem to have taken my prior comment as an intent to exploit comment data for financial gain.

<comment><USER2> Aha.

Then you might get a license from me. And if you haven't tested with the HN dataset that is where I would start.

 _I was confused by the original post because a) I 'm not sure why using SQLite makes comments into 'not big data' (is it extraordinarily hard to get statistical information out of SQLite or something?)_

No, getting data out of SQLite is easy. But I have yet to hear anyone using SQLite for anything that would be called big data in a way that makes sense. (Yes, my previous employers file share where we could upload 5GB files doesn't qualify.)

I think the comment on the website is supposed to be funny in a bitter way.

 _and b) even if a blog or website is completely private, might not the owner want to analyze what 's going on within the private social network they've created?_

I have yet to manage to think of a private website that might contain enough non-spam comments to qualify as big data.

And for small and medium size data plain SQLite is wonderful : )

What I and others are skeptical to is REAL big data, where certain companies scoop up everything they can get their hands on. This is an often dirty, potentially really harmful raw material as we have seen in articles about the moderation teams that makes sure Facebook and others stays reasonably clean.

With a little bit of processing this "nuclear waste" is also possible to weaponize. Two ideas off the top of my head:

\- Facebook and others can easily name thousands of people who waste their employers time during the day.

\- or post a number of people who run pseudonymous accounts for various reasons but have failed to maintain proper opsec.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm a big fan of Isso, and have been running it on my (not at all notable) blog for a while! I do however wish that the commenter icons were customizable (e.g. Gravatar, Facebook, etc.). There have been Github issues open for it since 2014, but nobody seems willing to put in the effort to implement it. :)

<comment><USER5> Yeah. I'd like this too, but I'm not holding my breath as the developer comes across as a bit of an arrogant arsehole.

When I first set up isso, I had a hell of a time getting it configured and running, following the pretty poor official documentation. So I visited the Github repo to ask for help but, after seeing the dev's condescending attitude to other people in difficulties, I thought better of it and [fortunately] managed to muddle through by myself.

<comment><USER6> Can you be more specific? I don't mind the accusation, but peope on the internet™ have often different expectations of what a software should or should not do. There is no such thing as the perfect product™. It is all about tradeoffs.

<comment><USER7> In your FAQ page you appear to be more "opinionated" that Gravator should also be considered harmful and does tracking, which cuts entirely against what you see as the point of Isso.

So you tell them to go use Disqus if they need Gravator since they're basically stating they don't care about anti-tracking.

You then also state that someone else should do the work of integrating with Libravator.

It reads a bit gruff and asshole-ish.

On the other hand, TANSTAAFL and either someone should pay you or do the work to do the Libravator integration, and it does seem very odd to pick up Isso and then want to use an avatar service that also does tracking.

Presumably those people hate Disqus for other reasons, but it certainly doesn't have to be your concern.

I'd probably write the same kind of tone in a FAQ entry as well, because if its being given away for free then the flip side is that users on the internet shouldn't be demanding assholes and want things for free that you have zero interest in providing for free, and I think you make your position reasonably clear.

 _shrug_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've been scouring for a solid replacement for Disqus for my company's blog ([https://blog.elasticbyte.net](https://blog.elasticbyte.net)). We are currently using Ghost and Disqus.

Isso looks nice, especially like the code blocks and backtick support. However, social login is a must have. The ability for anybody to put a name and email is bound to be a spammers delight.

</comment><comment><USER9> Genuine question which I think should be on the site's FAQ:

Why should I use Isso over Disqus?

<comment><USER5> Maybe if you don't want links in your comments surreptitiously hijacked by Disqus and used to try and generate ad revenue:

[https://stiobhart.net/2017-02-21-disqusting/](https://stiobhart.net/2017-02-21-disqusting/)

<comment><USER10> That blog doesn't ring true.

They've had the program in place for years (~2012) and it is opt-in. Author didn't seem to contact Disqus to see if this was a mistake or intentional, and doesn't mention if the domain had the Revenue option enabled. He just says 'I remember once clicking an unrelated option about showing inline ads, that should have been good enough'.

Seems like a senseless ragequit.

<comment><USER11> I doubt I enabled this and I just checked and my disqus comments also go through this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I explored this for my static website (hosted on github), Didn't fit my needs exactly. So I started building one in flask and mySQL recently: [https://github.com/singhjaideep/flask_comment](https://github.com/singhjaideep/flask_comment)

<comment><USER13> I'm curious about why you have a static website hosted by someone else, but then host your own comments? Is there some advantage to keeping the comments separated from the content?

<comment><USER14> Static hosting is pretty much free, then the comments can go on a cheap server.

I looked into using Discourse to do something like this, but they refuse to reduce their memory usage (2GB minimum required, I think)

<comment><USER12> Exactly! I host my blog for free on github, and the comments on free account from www.pythonanywhere.com.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> (about alternatives) "Juvia, written in Ruby (on Rails). No threaded comments, nice administration webinterface, but... yeah... Ruby."

coming from a Python project...

<comment><USER16> Don't worry about Juvia. Project has been dead for years..

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Source code: [https://github.com/posativ/isso](https://github.com/posativ/isso)

</comment><comment><USER18> I'd like something similar (either a service like Disqus or self host like Isso) but for reviews.

</comment><comment><USER19> I tried to set this up for my site, because Disqus takes two hours to load and I don't like the centralization aspect and all the bloat they're adding. However, I stumbled first thing on the "host" parameter. It doesn't seem to like the subdomain I've set up for serving the comments, and it's obviously not getting served on the top-level domain, so I don't know what it expects.

The documentation doesn't mention much there, so I'm afraid I'm stuck. Has anyone managed to set this up? I'll open an issue with them to improve the docs.

<comment><USER6> A host can also be a subdomain. I'm using Isso on my personal blog for reference: [https://blog.posativ.org/](https://blog.posativ.org/). It works exact the same way as for a top-level domain.

<comment><USER20> Worth mentioning for simplicity's sake, a "subdomain" is a domain, same for a "top-level domain". The period marks simply add another level of terms to a namespace on its left-hand side, usually in an already existing domain's namespace. A domain can have any number of terms that someone wants; it only needs a reachable nameserver, which ultimately the root-level operator controls. To illustrate this, you used to be able to go to [http://to/](http://to/) with the help of any up-to-date ICANN DNS record keeper, but that record got deleted or something (though @to email would still work, as shown in your terminal with `dig to` vs `dig mx to` or `dig any to`).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I use this for my static site. I like the lack of social login and gravatar, personally. Requiring or preferring a web of networks just to leave a comment is getting kind of crazy.

<comment><USER22> Can you please share your setup?

<comment><USER22> I was able to set it up successfully. Details -- [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13713507](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13713507)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> What about spam? Disqus has some sort of filter for that, right?

<comment><USER24> Spam was (suprisingly) never a problem with Isso. Had it on my blog and after >2 years and nearly 800 comments there was never a single spam comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> "...most Python developers use the Python Package Index to get their dependencies. ... easy_install is one tool to mess up your system. Another package manager is pip." hmm TIL?

</comment><comment><USER26> My main issue with Disqus is not ideal indexing for SEO. Unfortunately for what I have seen you guys didn't solve that problem :(

</comment><comment><USER22> So this wouldn't work with a static blog generated by something like Hugo, right?

<comment><USER27> It certainly would... as long as you're hosting the comment backend somewhere -- which might defeat the purpose of going with a static site generator in the first place (if your purpose was to only host static files).

<comment><USER12> This is exactly the issue I encountered. I run a pelican static blog on github. I just host my comments as a simple flask app on www.pythonanywhere.com Code here: [https://github.com/singhjaideep/flask_comment](https://github.com/singhjaideep/flask_comment)</comment></comment></comment>


65,000 Android Phones Shipped Daily - <AUTHOR> http://blog.appboy.com/2010/05/65000-android-phones-shipped-daily/ The competition in the smartphone market is most definitely heating up. While most people, or at least most geeks (let's be honest, chances are you are one) hear constantly about iPhone sales and Apple's increased dominance in this space, the truth is Apple is not even close to Nokia or RIM when it comes to phones sold globally. <comment><USER2> My Android app sales have noticeably increased in the last few weeks, probably because of the HTC Incredible launch.

<comment><USER3> sounds good, do you have any numbers?

<comment><USER2> Not very impressive in absolute terms, but it's gone from an average of around 15 $0.99 sales per day to 30.

<comment><USER4> $0.99*30 day is enviable. can you share the name of your app?

<comment><USER5> This is actually considered a good sales number? Making $30 a day? Or actually less, I guess, since I assume the Android market takes a cut?

<comment><USER6> It depends on how what your goals are and how much time you put into it.

In November, I was feeling annoyed that there was no easy way to see exactly what charge my phone's battery was at (at least none that were acceptable to me). I'd been curious about Android development, so I decided to "scratch my own itch". I spent 4 or 5 hours building a little app that would display my exact percentage in the tray at the top. Most of the time was spent tweaking the icon -- I'm not a graphic designer, but I eventually came up with something that looked good enough.

I decided it would be worth the $25 fee to get a developer account and share it with the world. Programming is just a little hobby of mine, so while I've been using and loving open-source software for over a decade, I've contributed very little back to the community. So I figured if one or two people a day downloaded this little utility, I could feel good about myself. I put it online and went to bed. Eight hours later, over 700 people had downloaded it.

Over the next couple of weeks, I got a lot of feature requests that I personally had no use for, and I'm a busy student, so I didn't think I had much time or energy to add a bunch of features I didn't need myself. But then my friend suggested I make a paid version of the app with the extra features. I thought that was a neat idea -- I figured that if I averaged one purchase a day, I could make $20 a month (Google takes 30%), which to me is a lot of money at this point in my life.

It didn't take long before I was averaging 15 downloads a day. It stayed there for a while, until about month and a half ago, with no explanation I'm aware of, it jumped to averaging 50/day.

I carefully and courteously respond to an average of 2-3 emails a day, and I release updates when I can find the time. But that's still not very much time put into this, and I'm making almost as much money as when I used to work full time. (I don't have a college degree and worked in retail.) The free version averages 1000 downloads a day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My ~65 year-old dad included.

He took my advice a year-ago and let me set him up with a gmail account because hotmail was not filtering out enough spam.

When the phone sales person told him that all of his email, contact, and calendar items would automagically work he took the nearly free android option.

He's love'n it.

Apple needs to give mobile me away to iPhone users...

</comment><comment><USER8> Apple has been selling an average of 100,000 iPhones a day for at least the last 6 months.

For the analysts that want to see growth in your growth so they can hype while you boom, I'd bet that they'll break through that 'plateau' when they release the next model in June.

</comment><comment><USER9> That's great news! If only Android and Android devices presented themselves to the public in a more coherent way. Everyone knows that you can buy tons of apps for every iPhone which will run on any iPhone (not strictly true but close enough).

That perception just doesn't exist for Android devices. I just this weekend saw a Telekom shop (here in Germany) display two Android phones from HTC in its Window. You do not see that those two devices run the same OS. You do not see that apps for one will work on the other. Android is not a term people know – everybody knows the iPhone, nobody knows Android (even when they own a phone running Android).

<comment><USER10> _If only Android and Android devices presented themselves to the public in a more coherent way._

Yes. Those who sell Android phones sell lots of other phones with several different OS. It would be hand for the Verizon or Sprint store to give the same prominence to an ATC phone that the iphone got at the Apple store.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Market sales are bound to go up, I mean, it's more people. My question is whether or not the quality of the apps, namely games, are going to increase with the user base increasing. I really hope so, the market is crap right now in my humble opinion.

<comment><USER12> Very few good games on Android.

Android 2.2 is said to be much faster so we'll probably see better games by the end of the year. My guess is Google will announce something at Google I/O to reach out to Game Developers.

<comment><USER13> _Very few good games on Android._

If by "good" you mean "console-like 3d models and in-your-face graphics", then yes. But there are many _very_ good games on Android. I know I've wasted enough time with things like drop7. It's consuming me. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Impressive numbers, I'm looking to see how this will affect the android market.

</comment><comment><USER14> Should be noted that these numbers relate to the US only - things are very different in Europe and Asia, and naturally in the international perspective as well.

RIM f.e. sells almost nothing in Scandinavia (no idea about rest of Europe). I actually haven't even seen an RIM device for sale anywhere here in Sweden. Ever.

<comment><USER15> Good point. There were some stats just a couple of weeks ago - [http://ecreditdaily.com/2010/05/iphone-blackberry-apples- glo...](http://ecreditdaily.com/2010/05/iphone-blackberry-apples-global-share- jumps-161/) (chart lower on page) that show that in the international market, Nokia devices are number one in market share, followed by RIM and then Apple.</comment></comment>


50 Ways to get Free Advertising for Your Startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.insidecrm.com/archive2/2007/04/50_ways_to_get_.html <comment><USER2> takes time != free

</comment><comment><USER3> Bulletin Board Material!</comment>


Microsoft changed IronPython, IronRuby and DLR licenses to Apache 2 - <AUTHOR> http://ironpython.codeplex.com/license Previously they were released with the Microsoft Permissive License.
http://ironpython.codeplex.com/license
http://ironruby.codeplex.com/license
http://dlr.codeplex.com/license <comment><USER2> I found a short thread discussing this change on the IronPython mailing list:

[http://www.mail- firstname.lastname@example.com/msg11...](http://www.mail- email@example.com/msg11376.html)

It seems like a public image choice more than anything, even though "Microsoft Public License" was an OSI-approved license it still carries the dreaded M-word. Plus people are more familiar with the Apache license.

Someone in the thread also commented that Apache License 2.0 is designed to be GPLv3-compatible whereas MPL was less clear on GPL compatibility.

<comment><USER3> I recall a video of the IronPython team talking about VS2010 support where they mentioned they would be changing the license for GPLv3-compatible. Considering how great this tiny little open source loving team buried deep in the bowels of microsoft have been so far I am willing to trust that is the main reason, not PR.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What motivated that change? It may be more compatible with related work, I suppose.

<comment><USER5> What license did it use before?

And, about motivations, I will not trust Microsoft. They are constantly threatening Linux users with patent suits and forcing them to license undisclosed technologies, maintaining an atmosphere of legal uncertainty. Why would anyone want to use tools that are vulnerable to such attacks?

<comment><USER5> As always, emotional and extremely hostile response to criticism against Microsoft... It's so predictable you could use it to calibrate a cronometer.

<comment><USER6> It was emotional, and it was hostile. But, you know, emotion and hostility are sometimes the right reaction to someone else's behaviour. Microsoft has threatened open source in the past with lawsuits, and leaked Microsoft memos (the Halloween Documents) have talked about using that as a strategy.

Given all that background, it makes sense for people to be cautious -- though not unremittingly and unthinkingly hostile -- regarding Microsoft.

Now, for me, if I was developing on the CLR, I would very much consider using IronPython. Though having said that, I wouldn't consider developing for the CLR, because it isn't open source and doesn't run on Linux. Instead I might use the JVM, which seems to be acquiring a good ecosystem of languages (Groovy, Clojure) and tools (ANTLR, various IDEs) that run on it.

<comment><USER6> On a wider note, I do think the Halloween Documents heralded Microsoft's current weakness. In them, they said that they were going to compete with Linux and open source by using legal shenanigans. Nowhere did they say they are going to compete by writing better software and producing better devices than the competition so people would prefer using their products.

Instead MS though their dominance of the PC space meant they could relax and didn't need to develop good products. And now Apple is eating their lunch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A friend and I were having a discussion about what Microsoft could do to help foster more widespread adoption of C#, and the number one thing we agreed on was fully open-sourcing the C# language and releasing it under a BSD or Apache 2 style license. It's nice to see they're taking that step with some of their less mainstream products.

<comment><USER8> The specification for C# is already an open standard is it not? There's an open source compiler implementation as well (Mono). In fact, there are two (DotGNU).

<comment><USER7> The specification is an ECMA standard, but afaik Microsoft's implementation is not open. Mono has the unfortunate task of reimplementing everything instead everyone working off of the same master source.

<comment><USER8> _The specification is an ECMA standard, but afaik Microsoft's implementation is not open_

Yes, that's true. But I'm curious: How would open-sourcing their implementation of the language (and not just the specification) help in making its use more wide-spread? (Especially when the compiler is already available at no-cost to those who want it, and for those interested in extending an existing compiler for their own internal use, the Mono source is available)

I guess one possible answer might be that Microsoft's specific compiler implementation may actually diverge from the standard submitted to ECMA (this is actually the case on some edge cases in the language dealing with type casting where they found that what their compiler implements doesn't follow the standard exactly)

What are the other reasons?

<comment><USER9> Library implementations are not part of the ECMA standard; it would be really nice to have a dedicated open source project (a la AOSP) that contains not only the core language implementation, but the entire library implementation as well. That would potentially allow users to not only contribute bugfixes and improvements back to the project, but would give Mono et al access to library implementations to make it much easier for them to reproduce the work in a cross-platform method.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What Microsoft? Is it that multi-billion dollar buroctatic company which failed to release any innovative product in ten years?</comment>


Play nice - How the internet is trying to design out toxic behaviour - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/22/play-nice-how-the-internet-is-trying-to-design-out-toxic-behaviour <comment><USER2> I had considered a much longer criticism of this article, but I soon realized that there was no sense in complaining about a service which is no longer " _ours_." The internet of today (Internet 2.x), is little more than an _advertising space_ , a vehicle through which users mistakenly approach as an encyclopedia housing the world's information, while in actuality, the user is product.

So I'll just touch on one point instead: _Humor_

> "But Mrgan insists it hasn't led to sterile, sanitised comments. "People are > still making jokes, being a little bit snarky, getting really opinionated," > she says. "The personal attacks, name-calling and abuse have gone, but the > same feel has really stayed.""

Has Mrgan ever been to Reddit, the site so bold as to deem itself "The Front Page of the Internet" before? I absolutely disagree with her insistence. While the information is often great in some specialty areas, the humor is completely dry, _overly snarky_ , and most users appear (caveat: _IMO_ ) to be treading on eggshells in avoidance of "Being downvoted" and having their comment hidden from the world.

If you were to go to a standup comedy show, you would see a _plethora_ of philosophically different types of humor. Deprecating humor, Self-deprecating humor, sarcasm, parody, allegorical comedy, etc. etc.

The "new internet" is in the process of filtering out most of this. To repeat my caveat, this is all my opinion, but a sterile Internet very quickly only reduces itself to plain sarcasm and snark, and honestly, sarcasm is the lowest form of wit.

Back in the "good old days" During the 90's and the 00's, the _onus was on the user_ his-or-herself to ignore and filter out toxic behavior. And it's a shame I'm saying this in my 20s.

<comment><USER3> Why are we jumping to the conclusion that the whole internet would follow the same rules though? I imagine some sites would want to cultivate certain kinds of humor (it might allow abuse, but at least not everyone's walking on eggshells), and others don't (and would rather enforce some rules in the hopes of cultivating an abuse-minimized environment).

Why wouldn't each individual service be able to make its own tradeoffs? Then users would vote with their feet and hangout in the places they like best anyway..

> Back in the "good old days" During the 90's and the 00's, the onus was on > the user his-or-herself to ignore and filter out toxic behavior. And it's a > shame I'm saying this in my 20s.

Back in the day they had to close their eyes and ignore. Now in the day they craft software that ignores and filters out toxic behavior before it even gets to their eyes. ;) You think we're regressing?

<comment><USER2> >Back in the day they had to close their eyes and ignore. Now in the day they craft software that ignores and filters out toxic behavior before it even gets to their eyes. ;) You think we're regressing?

Yes, I do.

Software could have been, and always can be, improved at the "regex level" (finding bad worse, slanderous words, etc.) but the money is now in catering an experience to where things one _simply disagrees with_ can create a false positive as "toxic behavior." And it often does.

The dialogue has completely regressed, and will continue to do so as long as catering to as wide an audience as possible is the Modus Operandi of Internet 2.x

And it's quite simplistic to write off the past as "closing ones eyes and ignoring." At the very least, IRC channels had moderators.

<comment><USER4> I sort of miss the old days of the "clbuttic" obscenity filters you found on so many message boards...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ugh, that's what I get for reading a Guardian article, little substance, an insult to liberals (or North-American libertarians), and finally a safe space for third-wave feminists, never mind that they have now become the dominant group in the media and are constantly shutting down anyone with a different of opinion.

Shame on me for clicking that link.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm curious. Do others see this (among other faults) as a criticism and attack on everything masculine? It's pretty thinly veiled to pretend to be egalitarian.

Unicorns and rainbows, every reference is to a woman, how girls are suppressed, bad behaviour is like "football" fans. They even slipped in a misogyny! Feminist bingo!

It fascinates me. We condemn the KKK for treating groups of people differently. Yet, when feminism (referred in the article) makes sexist and false statements, it's lorded by the media. For example, in Australia, domestic violence was a "man" thing. When a mother killed her daughter/son is was never domestic violence. "Men" need to be educated. However, when you have a group (feminism, KKK) that prioritise one group over another, you get these propaganda campaigns that tend to spread worldwide. They encourage intolerance and demonise others.

Now, a fundamental problem with this article's proposal Is that you can be as intolerant as you like as long as you don't say curse words (unicorns and rainbows) and threaten to hit/kill someone. The truth is that far more damage has been done by far more subtle propaganda campaigns, especially in the last 5 years. Not one of them would be stopped by this proposal.

</comment><comment><USER7> First problem: anonymity + some assholes = mess (the Penny Arcade version:[1])

Facebook dealt with this by requiring "real names". Except from some whining from drag queens, this has worked well.

Wikipedia has an ongoing struggle with this, but because everything on Wikipedia can be undone, users have reputations, and the asshole fraction isn't that large, Wikipedia continues to work.

Any system where fake identities can be created in bulk at low cost suffers badly from this problem. Email, especially. Interestingly, if you have conversations, and not much happens based on single messages, it's less of a problem. Twitter and IRC are examples.

Second problem: once the bulk junk identity problem is under control, how do you get people to behave reasonably well? Wikipedia does this surprisingly well, with a complex set of rules and an explicit requirement of civility. (Many new editors complain that it's hard to edit Wikipedia, but that's because they treat it like a blog. Think of it more like checking out something from Github and submitting a pull request.)

Newspaper comment sections do this badly. Karma-based systems such as the one here and on Slashdot do it reasonably well. Fancier karma systems are possible; Civil Comments seems to be using something like the ELO algorithm. It takes a lot of user time to crowdsource such rankings, and that's a scarce resource. Not many people want to do Mechanical Turk work for free.

[1] [https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19](https://www.penny- arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19)

<comment><USER8> Wasn't there something in the last few years in S. Korea where in order to curb online harassment/stupid people so they made everybody use their real name and it only dropped by like 0.02 percent. It was really negligible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Censoring the internet, what could go wrong?

<comment><USER10> >>You f\ _king w\_ \ _re, I 'm going to ra\_e you, and kill your family and pet, and tort\\* you till you beg for mercy, and I'm going to feed your pieces to your dogs, if you dare talk anything on this issue again.

As you see, this works both ways.

Above, it should have been clear I was _clearly_ using threatening language for elucidation process. And yet, something _must_ have 'jumped' in you. Even if a little bit. Even after ' _' out the important words. Even after I toned down what I'd originally planned to write. Now imagine, I didn't make it as obvious it was for education purposes, but it was reasonably clear to guess I meant it that way. And then imagine there was no commentary. Now consider the possibility I am a random stranger who might actually have meant it. Women and minorities _do* go through it every day. Every damn day. Now, you can call it free speech, and banning anything similar censoring. In which case, I will have to work on a few sockpuppet bots to prove my point more clearly ;). My point is, you are being reductive in looking the world as 'censorship', and 'free speech'. This argument has happened for thousands of years, and it speeds up if all caught up on the definitions of 'reasonable threats', 'hate speech' etcetera, and the historical contexts surrounding such issues.

<comment><USER2> I've heard worse from a pull request on an open source project.

<comment><USER11> That's not great though, is it? Do you think this might discourage people who don't like death threats from getting involved in open source?

<comment><USER12> That's the risk of putting yourself out there on the Internet — someone might threaten to kill you/rape you/make you unemployable.

I tend to keep a low profile for this reason.

That said, what's p(murdered and/or raped by someone who sent you a murder and/or rape threat|got sent a murder and/or rape threat while contributing to an open source project)? How does it compare to p(raped and/or murdered)?

My hunch is that people who get sent these things don't get any physical harm from the people who send them. Psychological harm is another matter, but if people can recognize bluster for what it is, we'd all be better off, especially the death-threat recipients.

(In case you're wondering, I already have persistent stalkers with subordinates. Mine are the reason why I never had a public Twitter account back when I used the service. I also take other measures to minimize my exposure to both rage-filled randos and the long-term creeps.)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why the Genius Founders Got Therapy - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/19/fashion/anger-management-why-the-genius-founders-turned-to-couples-therapy.html

<comment><USER2> This is a wonderful step in a positive direction.

> If something goes wrong with their relationship, something could go wrong > with their company.

I mean to say I am happy they are putting an emphasis on each others emotions or relationship or something close to it.

I myself worry and get sad when the business/company seems to be ignoring emotions and relationships.

This was me sharing my emotions. I hope that is appropriate and useful and not derailing the conversation.

<comment><USER3> Totally agree and feel the same way. Running a business is an emotional roller coaster. I stress from my business a lot to and I can be a wreck sometimes. The stress puts a wear on my relationship with my girlfriend, and in fact we do couples therapy to work through some of the times when I am in a high stress mode. If I had a cofounder, I'd imagine the same stresses would put a strain on the relationship and couples therapy would benefit us all the same.

People are really negative about therapy, but it's actually a really powerful tool for helping with all kinds of issues every human deals with. Ignore those comments already suggesting this is a weird thing, couples therapy for cofounders is a brilliant idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Should have been submitted to r/cringe. Seriously, can a PR puff-piece try to be more hip?

</comment><comment><USER5> Huh?

<comment><USER6> Seconded.</comment></comment>


New T4g EC2 Instances, Powered by AWS Graviton2 - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-t4g-instances-burstable-performance-powered-by-aws-graviton2/ <comment><USER2> I think where these Graviton instances will really shine is in the AWS managed services, like RDS, ElastiCache etc. where the architecture is entirely irrelevant to you as a customer. All that you care about is that it's both faster and cheaper, a no-brainer choice.

<comment><USER3> not holding my breath on aws passing down the cost saving

<comment><USER4> Counter-point: newer, cheaper instance types are often cheaper than the previous generation. An m6g.large is cheaper than a m5a.large is cheaper than a m4.large, etc.

<comment><USER3> i mean on rds etc?

<comment><USER5> You pay for the instance type you choose on RDS

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > T4g instances are powered by AWS Graviton2, a processor custom built by AWS > using 64-bit Arm Neoverse cores.

> all new and existing AWS customers can try the t4g.micro instances free for > up to 750 hours per month.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is great news. I found myself wishing for these earlier today, for some tiny workloads. We've found the c/m/r6g instances to work as advertised: good or better performance for a significant discount. The downside is that you have to be sure your workload will run on ARM. In some cases that might take some changes to your build pipeline, but for certain use cases there might not need to be any changes at all. We've been able to move our PostgreSQL boxes configured with Ansible and operated with a whole lot of custom Python/Bash/Ruby scripting over to these instance types with no changes to our provisioning process beyond mirroring the arm64 postgres binaries to our private APT repo.

</comment><comment><USER8> Not specifically mentioned in the press release, but interesting: t4g instances are about 20% cheaper than t3 across the board.

<comment><USER9> Do you know how it compares to t3a?

Edit: nvm: $0.0336/h for t4g.medium vs $0.0376/h t3a.medium in aws-east north virginia for on demand. Sucks not available in aws-southeast-1 yet, I would switch just for the performance bump over t*a instance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Has this kind of extended free trial for a new instance happened before? 3.5 months is pretty long. A micro instance for a whole month only costs AWS ~$6 in revenue, but still, it's a nice, long period for testing.

<comment><USER11> t2.micro are on the forever free tier, but yeah.

<comment><USER12> Nah, they're only free for 12 months, not forever: [https://aws.amazon.com/free/?all-free-tier.sort- by=item.addi...](https://aws.amazon.com/free/?all-free-tier.sort- by=item.additionalFields.SortRank&all-free-tier.sort- order=asc&awsf.Free%20Tier%20Types=tier%2312monthsfree)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> How would these work with Spark on EMR? For example when the cluster is utilized enough to keep the it running continuously, but still has some low or no utilization periods throughout the day.

</comment><comment><USER14> When will they throw it for the general purpose use? Or wouldn't they because it's too expensive for them?

<comment><USER15> Disclosure: I work at AWS, where I build cloud infrastructure

Can you clarify what you mean? C6g, M6g, and R6g instances have been available for a while now, and those support many different workloads. M6g is the "general purpose" variant. [https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance- types/m6/](https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/m6/)

<comment><USER14> Didn't notice M6g coming out of trials.

Well I for long thought that taping out own CPU chips, even on Amazon's scale, wasn't that cheap.

The time of Intel demanding obscene prices for high core count server CPUs is at least 2 years since passed.

I was thinking if it still makes sense economically for Amazon to continue developing, and buying their own CPUs given that.

<comment><USER16> Amazon is estimated to be representing close to 50% of HyperScaler Market. And the Market segment itself is also roughly 50% of the DC Market.

While Intel dont disclose their CPU segment of their DC, you can bet it is the vast majority. Which gives you a rough idea of the scale of Amazon spending, i.e around 20% of Intel DC revenue.

And once you see those numbers, even if it is off by 30% or even double counted. Developing cost of CPU, especially when it is more of "working" together with ARM on developing Graviton 2 ( which it in itself extremely similar to ARM's reference design ) doesn't seems to be expensive or out of question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Not sure they do that now but having a credit card without pre-payment meant very hard to try their services. For some it is important to have services. For 1 man shop it hard as too many things to worry about and trying is not really priority.

Their instance with real usage charge. Not much but accumulate and I gave up.

Still remember trying fast ai, left a credit card to another service provider and after an alert I owe them 1000 ... luckily that card is expired. And they do void as they check I have not used their service.

Another has prepaid paypal. Like that. For testing only of course.</comment>


Google+ cannot be undone. - <AUTHOR> http://hubski.com/pub?id=2069

<comment><USER2> I think the author is wrong, and for one very specific reason: Google+ is not Google's endgame. It is not their penultimate product. It's certainly an important one, and Google has put an awful lot of effort in to get it right, but remember - Google doesn't live or die by its social network like Facebook does. There is little to no incentive for them to cripple their engineers with some arbitrary requirement for deep Google+ integration. Where it'll make products stronger, I expect it'll be used. Where it won't, it...won't.

Google is competing with Facebook for mindshare and social graph information here, but Google+ could fail spectacularly, and people would just say "lol, Google can't do social" and keep using their other dozen market leader products. If it succeeds brilliantly, on the other hand, then people will have no _reason_ to use Facebook et al, because they're getting that need filled in the course of their other daily tasks which happen to include Google. To assume that Google+ is Google's most important product ever and that all future products will be beholden to it is to view Google as a social network company, which is entirely wrong. If Facebook was trying to launch an integrated search engine or a GMail competitor, then I would absolutely agree with you - those products would be inherently limited by the requirement that they tie into and feed back towards Facebook's core platform, but that isn't the case here.

<comment><AUTHOR> _If Facebook was trying to launch an integrated search engine or a GMail competitor, then I would absolutely agree with you - those products would be inherently limited by the requirement that they tie into and feed back towards Facebook's core platform, but that isn't the case here._

I see where you are coming from. However, given the potential overhead of running a social network, plus the revenue that might come with it, do you think that Google's priorities might evolve, -that they might morph into a social network, taking their other products with it?

<comment><USER2> Not really, no. Google is an advertising company; their revenue comes from understanding people and selling that understanding by proxy to advertisers. Google+ is yet another way for them to do that, and it's just one facet of their business. It's a very powerful facet, and they have a lot to gain by making it work well, but it isn't the crown jewel.

As far as overhead, I'd suspect that Google+ isn't even a blip on Google's overall radar in terms of overhead - the latest Netcraft survey puts Google as running 4.6% of _all webservers on the internet_ ; while it's certainly a large undertaking, Google is at such massive scale already that I don't think deploying a social network necessitates a severe shift in focus.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> First, the author doesn't have a Google+ invite (neither do I, _sad face_ ). Makes speculation extra hard.

I think the privacy issue is the Achilles heel of Google+. Remember when anonymized queries were released for research purposes were released with gems like "kill my wife zipcode 94234". Well, now you have everything in one package: your location, searches, email, business infrastructure (if you use Google apps), pics, etc.

Google+ is the end of the "don't be evil" era. Not because they are evil now but because they're pulling out all the stops and not putting data in silos (even for show). Google+ is a lot more scary than Facebook because of the algorithmic component.

Going forward, their products will integrate with Google+ by default making it harder and harder to divest yourself from being tracked. They will make money off of this information, the question is how.

</comment><comment><USER4> Google can fail at Google+ because this is not their main product. Look at Buzz and Wave, they both failed spectacularly, and Google moved on to the next thing.

Like wise you can write a whole article about how Google standing by and doing nothing while Facebook dominates the social network scene is a mistake.</comment>