The Great German Energy Experiment  - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/featured-story/428145/the-great-german-energy-experiment/?ref=rss <comment><USER3> Great article - upvoted. That it's inconceivable that the US or UK government could think about spending such an amount (~5% of GDP!) on a long-term science and engineering project speaks volumes about why the Germans are where they are, and why we're where we are, economically speaking.

From an engineering point of view I think it's foolish to turn off the nuke plants, but public opinion is what it is, and this causes the regulatory requirements to prevent nuclear from being economically viable.

The article does a good job of covering the risks, but personally I'd bet on the Germans here - even if the 'Energiewende' doesn't pay off per se, the rewards from the science and engineering knowhow will be huge. The only comparable project I can think of is the Apollo Program, though a quick google suggests that was never more than 1% of GDP, and the returns from the science on that were massive and lasted for decades. Likewise, CERN, which was about as blue-sky as things get, gave us the World Wide Web: completely tangential to its stated purpose, but what kind of rate of return did that give us?

So here's a question for the peanut gallery: has there ever been a large-scale public investment program into science and engineering (that ISN'T based on destroying things in new and exciting ways) that has not proved to be a good investment in the long run?

(On a side note, I _really_ want to have a stickybeak around a 30MW AC/DC converter!)

<comment><USER4> Theere's a basic role of government that's widely agreed upon - that it keeps us from hurting one another and clarity on the use of roads and telecommunications channels and the like. And I realise that opinions diverge above that, but I'll put mine.

Generally government is poor at picking winners, and inefficient, and seems like a bad place to look for inspiration in engineering. When governments set up things like NASA they become political institutions themselves. It's easy for them to grow into organisations that seek self-preservation and always more money to support the glamour of their leadership.

When government gets involved in a field, you get a cross-polination between field-experts and government people. Often the government people end up on the side of workers in the field rather than the public that they're meant to be serving.

Given all these problems, I don't think we should be attracted to the idea of governments taxing us to spend the money on difficult-to-quantify never-never projects. They could just not tax us, and then we could pursue our own projects.

<comment><USER5> > They could just not tax us, and then we could pursue our own projects.

Or, if you agree that a low-carbon future would be a good thing: Tax carbon usage, and, since you don't like the government spending money, just distribute the proceeds equally among the population. This works out to a net impact, modulo transactions costs, on the average carbon-emitting person of zero, but rewards and punishes the outliers.

<comment><USER6> What if I don't agree that a low-carbon future would be a good thing? What if I think that the tax is too high? What if I have higher priorities?

<comment><USER5> > What if I don't agree that a low-carbon future would be a good thing?

Then my comment doesn't apply.

> What if I think that the tax is too high?

The level of the tax should be chosen so, that you get the societal optimal output of CO_2. Where the measure of optimality is choosen by some mechanism, e.g. some form of democracy or so, outside of the scope of my suggestion.

If you actually want to have a high carbon-future, you might even opt for a negative tax, i.e. subsidy. The `proceeds' that get divided equally would turn into costs. If you want no interference, you set the tax to zero and forget about it.

> What if I think that the tax is too high?

For the average CO_2 emitting person the level of the tax doesn't matter, since the scheme's designed to be cash-flow neutral for them. But with a tax that's too high you would get less CO_2 emissions than your society would agree on as optimal. With a tax that's too low, you'd get more total emissions than people would agree on. At the moment our situation is essentially equivalent to a tax/redistribution of zero.

<comment><USER6> > Then my comment doesn't apply.

You're still going to tax me....

> The level of the tax should be chosen so

In other words, "lump it".

> If you want no interference, you set the tax to zero and forget about it.

You're not going to let me.

> For the average CO_2 emitting person the level of the tax doesn't matter, > since the scheme's designed to be cash-flow neutral for them.

That can't be true if the result is lower CO2 emissions.

Also, I'm pretty sure that you're not going to compensate small scale CO2 sequestration. (It would be too costly to do so, but the result is the same - your scheme can't treat all CO2 the same even though your reason for taxing CO2 says that it is.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't like this. Instead of heavily subsidizing some technologies, they should tax externalities (i.e. pollution) and let the markets do the rest. It's annoying having to pay 15% more energy bills because somebody has decided that wind and solar are the hot thing of the moment.

Bad, really bad. Same way of thinking that brought us to the debt crisi in Europe.

<comment><USER7> Just some quick answers.

* It is difficult, no doubt. But it is also difficult to find a way to efficienlty store solar and wind power. It is difficult is not a good excuse not to do it.

* It does not help innovation. Not true. It does. Taxes will lower the margins of the businesses with externalities and capital holders will look for more efficient technologies. Less cost and/or more profit are the only way you incentivate innovation.

* Energy is cheap. That doesn't mean it couldn't be cheaper. I mean, I prefer to spend my money on what I like, not on energy bills. And again, cheapER, bettER, are the real incentive to innovation.

* Politics. Don't know, don't care. If I had to go with politics, I'd say that solar and wind are mainly politics: it helps with votes and reputation, but only that (at least now).

* Nuclear. There is research also there. There has been progress for decades. Why that research is _not as good_ as the one for solar and wind power I don't understand.

<comment><USER3> _Politics. Don't know, don't care._

Fair enough - but not caring about this will leave you unable to fix serious problems, and incurably unhappy with the state of the world. Every problem, every issue, every project of non-trivial size is critically dependent upon politics of some stripe or other. History is riddled with excellent ideas that failed because they didn't consider politics (and for that matter, terrible ideas that succeeded because they did).

I agree with you that the public revulsion over nuclear power is unwarranted - but that battle is lost. No reasoned argument can hope to win over emotive shots of Chernobyl and Fukushima. We have to look forward.

Engineering is about achieving goals within constraints. Good engineering takes political constraints into account as well as technical and budgetary ones.

 _Addendum_

Whoever is downvoting this guy, STOP. You might disagree with him, but he is promoting a debate in a civilised manner, and that's how we move forward.

<comment><USER7> You are right. But we still need to keep in mind that what's happening makes no sense. We need to know what the real, un-politic, solution is, otherwise we don't even know how and where to compromise. More public spending _is not_ ground for compromises. We are gambling with our future packing debt on debt with silly ideas (like this one that throwing money at pig farmers to raise wind towers is going to save our energy-hungry asses). That's not going to happen and we will pay for this bad decision making in the future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The article has a heavily biased view. Some points it gets wrong:

>"If you close eight nuclear plants, which were carbon-free, overnight, you will increase carbon emissions,"

Nuclear plants are not carbon free. Getting the uranium, transporting the nuclear waste, transporting the people who run the plant costs a lot of carbon emissions. You need to look at the whole picture.

>Inevitably, some hot July week will come when a high-pressure system stalls over Europe, stilling turbines just when sunburned Germans reach for their air conditioners

The summer in Germany isn't that hot. Middle europe, not california. Accordingly, we don't have air conditioners (in general)

Look at who is cited - People from large companies loosing their monopoly and Sinn, a conservative "expert".

<comment><USER9> > The summer in Germany isn't that hot. Middle europe, not california. > Accordingly, we don't have air conditioners (in general)

Germans are always saying this. It was 90F in Berlin yesterday. That is air conditioner weather, period.

The part about most people not having them is true, though. This US expat is hooking his up this week, despite power costing twice here what it does in California.

<comment><USER10> Climate differs wildly throughout Germany. Berlin tends to get hot days, but those are of a moderate number. The upper Rhine valley where I come from has a warmer climate, but less extreme summer heat (lots of forest area around). The coastal area is generally cooler during the summer.

So yes, we do get hot days, but it's still rare that people have air conditioning in their flats. Modern office buildings have air conditioning though and most shops as well. Still, when the temperature difference is lower you still need less energy to power them. Another point is that it's a rare occurrence to have no sun (hence no solar power) and massive heat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Can somebody explain to me the part of the article where it says you have to convert AC to DC to travel long distances (for far offshore wind power)? I understood it to be the exact opposite, that AC could go long distances without major loss and DC needed a new station every few blocks.

<comment><USER12> You don't 'need' to convert it, but HVDC transmission is emerging as more efficient and cost-effective than conventional HVAC transmission.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current>

<comment><USER13> From what I gather from the Wikipedia page, it's due to the transmission cables being underwater and hence having a much larger capacitance, which is a larger loss than normal DC loss. (Correct me if I'm wrong on that.)

So, while AC is still more beneficial for transmission via cables in air/ground, DC appears to have less overall loss for underwater transmission.

<comment><USER14> By virtue of their tight bundling, all composite multi-core cables have high capacitances. However, onshore AC transmission is typically run on overhead lines, with large line spacings and thus capacitance isn't as much of a problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I find the criticism torwards the Energiewende quite hard to understand, sure it is a very difficult problem but unless we find a fundamentally new energy source or nuclear fusion becomes viable the path Germany is on is without alternative. It's better to work on the problem now, developing knowledge that helps our economy and makes us a worldwide leader than holding it off unless we are near collapse due to oil prices or worse have to engage in a war about resources, especially since the latter is something Germany must not engage in.

<comment><USER16> >I find the criticism torwards the Energiewende quite hard to understand, sure it is a very difficult problem but unless we find a fundamentally new energy source or nuclear fusion becomes viable the path Germany is on is without alternative.

There's one obvious alternative: Build and run nuclear power plants. We have enough uranium to supply our energy needs for centuries, and the overall environmental impact is better than that of renewables.

<comment><USER17> > We have enough uranium to supply our energy needs for centuries

That's incredibly short sighted. And not just the measure of 'centuries' (even if that were true, it's still arguably just postpone the problem). Energy demand is going up, sharply, as more countries join our standard of living. We _will_ , definitely, need technologies that are as clean as possible to meet the demand, eventually. No amount of pollution that is avoidable is acceptable at the scale we are going to witness. Which brings us to

> the overall environmental impact is better than that of renewables

I've stopped buying this argument and I'm sick of seeing it again and again - it's complete and utter Bullshit. The only way we have come up in terms of "dealing" with the highly toxic waste that nuclear energy produces (letting alone the often brushed over but equally horrifying ecological cost of _mining_ the fuel) is to store it away "somewhere". The kicker is: We have not figured out that "somewhere". In Germany, there is exactly one site that is being developed for this. We literally ship the containers there and they sit in a holding facility above the salt mine because we have not even figured out how to get the fuel from the shipment containers into the storage containers. Oh, and the storage containers haven't been fully developed either. This is a catastrophe just waiting to happen.

Years and years of politics playing nice with (and pushing money into) the nuclear industry have produced no results that a reasonable person could support. What the government had done was basically doubling down on what is often - in this thread as well - requested: To let the market figure it out. Oh they have figured it out alright. Just not the part about it also being reasonable. Or even sane.

And this is only for the waste that was produced _so far_. The technology and storage capacity for _centuries_ of waste simply doesn't exist. At all.

Story time: They actually did have the "solving" of this in mostly private hands for a long time - a semi-government agency (under strong, yet curiously absent oversight) conducted "experiments" on how to store the waste in a different salt mine [1]. They "experimented" with things like whether they roll or "throw down" barrels into caves. When they "noticed" that they had a problem with huge amounts of radioactive water rising up everywhere, they "solved" it by pumping it down into a deeper cavity. That whole agency was abolished and replaced and put under proper (and horrified) oversight when the extent of the disaster came to light in a huge scandal.

They have been "working on" trying to clean up this mess since nineteen frigging ninety five. They haven't even figured out how to drill into the closed off cavities to get the improperly stored fuel out of there, for crying out loud! All while cancer rates are going off around the site.

So yeah, _great_ environmental impact. Go sell your snake oil somewhere else.

Very few things piss me off as much as nuclear defenders selling their technology as reasonable. Zero Carbon Emissions, Woo! _Give me a break_.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schacht_Asse_II> \- the German version is a lot more in-depth: <http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schachtanlage_Asse> \- the English version seems to brush over much of the issues.

<comment><USER18> > Energy demand is going up ... no amount of pollution that is avoidable is > acceptable

Exactly. And renewables produce HUGE amounts of pollution compared to nuclear. It's not even close. Nuclear wins the pollution battle by such a large amount that's it's not even a race. Everything else is a joke.

Do you know how much waste nuclear produces? Very very little - it's tiny. The entire waste from a person's lifetime of energy use could fit in a teacup. Do you know how much waste _every_ other energy source produces? Huge, huge, staggeringly large amounts.

> letting alone the often brushed over but equally horrifying ecological cost > of mining the fuel

Horrifying? Really? You have no idea what you are talking about. Do you realize how little uranium you need? Compared to just mining iron, (never mind coal, or oil, or natural gas) the amount is a rounding error globally. Everything you do has consequences, the idea is to pick the best one.

We don't have to solve the storage problem. What we will eventually do is burn the waste, and gain energy from it. You burn the nuclear all the way down to iron and lead. We can't do it today, no, but if people would stop running screaming from nuclear we could. The technology is known, we just need the engineering.

<comment><USER17> > renewables produce HUGE amounts of pollution compared to nuclear. It's not > even close.

There is hardly anything as destructively polluting as nuclear waste. It's not a even race indeed.

And yes, I know how "little" waste nuclear produces, they drive it around on rails every couple of years.

> We don't have to solve the storage problem. What we will eventually do is > burn the waste, and gain energy from it.

Sure, I'd totally bet on that. When do you think that will happen?

> Horrifying? Really?

Yes. Really.[1]

> Do you realize how little uranium you need?

Again, yes.

> Compared to just mining iron, (never mind coal, or oil, or natural gas) the > amount is a rounding error globally.

Ah great, relativism, always enjoy that coming up.

> Everything you do has consequences, the idea is to pick the best one.

Yup, and I'd rather NOT pick the one were we put money into a dead-end technology that has the potential of devastating pollution at worst and hardly solvable storage problems at best and instead invest that money in technology that will actually be of use in the future and for the rest of mankind.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining#Health_risks_of_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining#Health_risks_of_uranium_mining)

<comment><USER18> > There is hardly anything as destructively polluting as nuclear waste.

Oh really? Fly ash is much worse, since it's also radioactive, and there is a LOT more of it. The pollution sent up smoke stacks is also much worse since it's actively spread to people, and there is a lot of it.

In contrast nuclear waste is very small, and stays far away from anyone.

> they drive it around on rails every couple of years.

A pollution source that can be shipped on rails? And you only need to do it every few years? Does it get more ideal?

> When do you think that will happen?

Not for a long long time. Doesn't matter, in the meantime we'll just stick the nuclear waste somewhere where there are no people.

> Yes. Really.[1]

Did you actually read that link yourself? I did - it sounds very low risk to me. Why would you link to something that supports my position?

> Ah great, relativism, always enjoy that coming up.

I'm glad you enjoy that since that's exactly what we are talking about: "Relatively speaking, since none are perfect, which energy source is best?"

> Yup, and I'd rather NOT pick the one were we put money into a dead-end > technology that has the potential of devastating pollution at worst and > hardly solvable storage problems at best and instead invest that money in > technology that will actually be of use in the future and for the rest of > mankind.

And I'd rather not spend money on technology that doesn't work, probably can not work, and definitely is terrible while we wait. Instead of the "potential of devastating pollution" you have devastating pollution _right now_ \- and you just want to ignore that? I'll take potential over actual any day.

Renewables will be of no use in the future since they can not ever produce enough energy. It doesn't matter how badly you want them to, they just can't do it. It's a dead-end technology. Nuclear power is not a dead end technology - it's the cleanest power we have, and more engineering can make it even cleaner.

<comment><USER17> > Fly ash is much worse, since it's also radioactive

My apologies, I was indeed talking about radioactive waste in general being hard to top in terms of pollution. It goes without saying that I'm not terribly happy with how this country is getting into coal lately. So yes, fly ash is definitely a concern as well. I just happen to think waste from nuclear fuel is easier to "not produce" right now.

> A pollution source that can be shipped on rails? And you only need to do it > every few years? Does it get more ideal?

Yes, they ship it around and it radiates. Remember - in the US, they recently had to scrap plans for that one site because it meant the fuel had to travel there a long way. I was also off a little - it's pretty much an every year event, but I guess that's still not a threshold trigger for you.

Still, again, the real problem here is that nobody really knows where to ship this _to_ and what to do with it once it's there. And how safe it will be the next couple hundred thousand years.

> Not for a long long time. Doesn't matter, in the meantime we'll just stick > the nuclear waste somewhere where there are no people.

See - I'm just not really satisfied with that answer and I guess I don't see how anybody can be. Sorry.

> Why would you link to something that supports my position?

You were asking me to qualify 'horrifying' - seems like we have a different measure there. I find any radiation exposure leading to death by lung cancer horrifying.

> I'm glad you enjoy that since that's exactly what we are talking about: > "Relatively speaking, since none are perfect, which energy source is best?"

Nope, sorry, that's not the same. Comparing two things is one thing - Relativism is something else entirely. That branch discussion was about discussing how extracting fuel from the earth is polluting. You qualified that by saying: Hey, there are a lot of things that are polluting, like iron/coal/oil/gas. Yes - I understand that - but that's not adding to the discussion.

It is inherently a better idea to not use fuel in the first place. No matter which one, you have to keep digging it up to keep it going and that's bad. It's also the crucial difference between renewable and fossil sources of energy. No matter how "little" fuel you need: on the long scale, it will fail with 100% certainty, eventually.

> And I'd rather not spend money on technology that doesn't work, probably can > not work, and definitely is terrible while we wait.

Now I'm not even sure we read the same article anymore. That's not really a defensible statement in light of how widely used this technology already is. Or are you still hung up on solar?

> Nuclear power is not a dead end technology - it's the cleanest power we > have, and more engineering can make it even cleaner.

Dead-end in terms of: "What technological progress does this provide on the side?". Sure, making it "cleaner" may be one form of progress, but I think "green" energy simply has more potential for innovation and collateral technological benefit for everybody.

<comment><USER18> > radioactive waste in general being hard to top in terms of pollution

What? It's extremely easy to top radioactive waste. Every single pollution tops radioactive waste since radioactive waste sits in a storage cask, and the other types of pollution go in the air I breathe. Your position makes no sense.

> I just happen to think waste from nuclear fuel is easier to "not produce" > right now.

So instead you want more fly ash? Picking "don't make electricity" is not an option.

> what to do with it once it's there

Don't do anything with it, just leave it there. When technology improves, use it for fuel.

> I find any radiation exposure leading to death by lung cancer horrifying.

And I guess coal dust doesn't bother you? Or ozone leading to lung cancer? Or particulate matter (PM2.5)? It has to be radiation I guess.

> It is inherently a better idea to not use fuel in the first place ... you > have to keep digging it up to keep it going ... crucial difference between > renewable and fossil sources of energy

Not exactly. Renewable fuels are not actually renewable since you need to build the machine to get that energy, and that building material is not free. Nor is the land area free - I prefer to use land for other things, not cover the earth in energy harvesting machines.

You need to include everything when looking at an energy source, not just the "fuel".

> No matter how "little" fuel you need: on the long scale, it will fail with > 100% certainty, eventually.

I think an energy source that will last more than 1000 years is good enough. And consider that we use barely 5% of the energy in uranium, and using that measure we have enough for more than 1000 years.

Use all the energy in uranium and it'll last 20,000 years. Then we can start using thorium, and we have even more of that than we do uranium. By that time we can start mining asteroids.

> how widely used this technology already is

Maybe I missed something but what technology are you talking about?

<comment><USER17> > Every single pollution tops radioactive waste since radioactive waste sits > in a storage cask

Of course, preferably, every type of pollution should sit in a storage cask. I was under the impression that we were discussing the _potential of pollution_ of different pollutants. If we compare storage casks, we get to actually compare how dangerous they are. In that comparison, radioactive waste should win the battle for what is most dangerous.

> So instead you want more fly ash? Picking "don't make electricity" is not an > option.

Fly Ash is mostly produced by coal plants. Where did I say I support those? Capturing fly ash in other processes is comparatively simple when you do it right - although writing that may just spin into another discussion of why you think it's actually the other way round and it's radiation that is more easily contained and managed.

> Don't do anything with it, just leave it there. When technology improves, > use it for fuel.

No, that's the point - it's not even "there", it's in _holding facilities_ right now, because we still haven't decided what this "there" actually is.

Also - if you ask me to grant you that we will develop this improved technology - why is it different for alternative, renewable sources of energy?

> And I guess coal dust doesn't bother you? Or ozone leading to lung cancer? > Or particulate matter (PM2.5)? It has to be radiation I guess.

Well, that's again putting words in my mouth. _Pollution_ bothers me - there. Radioactive pollution bothers me _most_. That's all there is to it. I should be allowed to not be OK with multiple types of pollution, right?

> Not exactly. Renewable fuels are not actually renewable since you need to > build the machine to get that energy, and that building material is not > free. Nor is the land area free - I prefer to use land for other things, not > cover the earth in energy harvesting machines.

Note that I wrote "renewable source", not "renewable fuel". Once you've built a wind turbine, it kind of keeps going (save for repairs along the way). You don't have to rebuild it at the rate that you have to go back to the mine to dig up more fuel. Which you have to do for energy from fossil fuels - <USER2> which you _also_ have to build the facilities.

> Use all the energy in uranium and it'll last 20,000 years. Then we can start > using thorium, and we have even more of that than we do uranium. By that > time we can start mining asteroids.

Not sure how to respond to that other than that it sounds very old fashioned and boring and I'm still not convinced it will hold pace. Not to mention that it is in no way a justification, just an excuse to use the fuel. Renewable sources of energy are also just "lying around" ready to be "mined" by us. And they are, to me, universally _less concerning_ in terms of environmental impact when compared to nuclear energy.

> Maybe I missed something but what technology are you talking about?

The article talks about 17% usage of renewable energy sources in Germany for 2010 - most of it in wind, followed by hydro and your dreaded solar at a distant third place. In any case - I would think that's substantial enough to render your original assertion moot.

<comment><USER18> > discussing the potential of pollution

No, the actually of pollution, not the potential.

> coal plants. Where did I say I support those?

You didn't - except that by blocking nuclear power you end up with it by default, so you have to accept that you are implicitly supporting it.

> why is it different for alternative, renewable sources of energy?

Because there aren't any. Sun and wind can do a portion, and I'm glad for it (except photovoltaics).

But what about the rest? There is no renewable source of energy than can do the rest of the job, so we need something, and it's either natural gas, coal, or nuclear.

> Pollution bothers me - there. Radioactive pollution bothers me most.

But why?! Yes, I know the potential is worse. But the actually is better! Why do you look at the potential instead of the actuality?

> sounds very old fashioned and boring

???

> Renewable sources of energy are also just "lying around" ready to be "mined" > by us.

But there is not enough of it. Not unless we cover the earth with energy collectors, and I don't want that. I assume you don't either.

> most of it in wind, followed by hydro and your dreaded solar at a distant > third place. In any case - I would think that's substantial enough to render > your original assertion moot.

It's not moot though. Hydro is maxed out. Wind could probably take a larger share - but then what? What about the final 70%?

<comment><USER17> > so you have to accept that you are implicitly supporting it.

Nope, I don't have to do that. You don't just get to claim I'm in a catch 22.

Actually, this appears to be what the article echoes as well: Everybody is telling Germany they can't do it, but they just do it anyways.

> But what about the rest?

Increase in efficiency of what is existing, smarter use of the energy that we have. That should get us quite a long way.

> Yes, I know the potential is worse. But the actually is better!

Which is why I don't think we have to increase 'potential' to make sure that the 'actually' stays that way.

> Not unless we cover the earth with energy collectors, and I don't want that. > I assume you don't either.

No, totally terrible plan - creating all those jobs and encouraging all that innovation. I've already said it before in this thread - I'm _very much_ OK with setting up as many collectors as it takes.

> but then what? What about the final 70%?

In the short term, Germany is gunning for 35% - once we are there, we will reassess. I don't claim to be able to predict the future like you apparently do, but I sure know which path sounds better. To me, at least.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I guess the problem with a long article, even an interesting long article like the one submitted here, is that it is hard to read to the end. Near the end of the submitted article is this paragraph:

"A second problem is that even when it comes to alternative energy sources, Germany doesn't reward carbon dioxide reduction. Rather, its policy establishes well-defined subsidies for specific technologies: a kilowatt-hour of solar power is rewarded more than power from offshore wind, which in turn earns more than power from onshore wind. Even though solar subsidies have been reduced to rates far lower than the ones Leurs locked in, solar power still pays the highest rates. If reducing emissions were the focus, however, more money would be directed toward reducing energy use. 'If you could choose the optimal instruments, focusing on those areas first where you can achieve your goals most inexpensively, you would focus not so much on renewables but much more on efficiency,' says Pittel, the energy economist from Munich."

This ignores the advice of Amory Lovins

<http://www.rmi.org/Amory+B.+Lovins>

(Amory Lovins profile page at Rocky Mountain Institute website)

<http://www.ted.com/speakers/amory_lovins.html>

(TED profile)

[http://www.ted.com/talks/amory_lovins_a_50_year_plan_for_ene...](http://www.ted.com/talks/amory_lovins_a_50_year_plan_for_energy.html)

(TED Talk video "A 40-year plan for energy")

and generally the advice of any thoughtful scholar on how to improve worldwide energy efficiency. The German Energiewende plan is a remarkable example of intentionally wrong policy choices that waste the money of German taxpayers and utility rate-payers and delay innovation. It's a good thing that other countries have differing policies that better encourage innovation, especially innovation to reduce energy consumption.

AFTER EDIT:

Another subthread here talks about the economics of importing energy versus producing it domestically. An astute HN participant mentioned the principle of comparative advantage. For onlookers who may not have seen a good reference on comparative advantage, I suggest "Ricardo's Difficult Idea,"

<http://www.pkarchive.org/trade/ricardo.html>

by an economist who has been awarded the Nobel memorial prize in economics, an essay that explains why trading for resources is generally much, much better than trying to produce all resources within national borders.

There are some other good explanations of the principle of comparative advantage easily found via an online search:

[http://www.econlib.org/library/Topics/Details/comparativeadv...](http://www.econlib.org/library/Topics/Details/comparativeadvantage.html)

<http://www.wto.org/english/res_e/reser_e/cadv_e.htm>

<http://iang.org/free_banking/david.html>

<comment><USER10> We do have quite a couple of taxes and regulations aimed at improving energy efficiency, so the subsidies for renewable energies are a more of a complement for those. We have tax breaks for cars that use less fuel, we do have extra tax for fuel consumption, we do have support for energy efficient housing, ... All in all we're doing pretty fine on that side. Primary energy usage in Germany has been dropping since the eighties and is now close to what we consumed in 1970 (309 mio toe in 1970 vs 319 mio toe in 2010) while the USA have been rising pretty steadily with a small drop-off since 2008 (1627 mio toe in 1970 vs 2285 mio toe in 2010). [1] There's a limit where the ROI in reducing energy consumption is lower than the ROI in producing renewable energy and after that we're still going to need energy, so I think while reduction should be the first priority, we still need to invest into second and third priorities pretty much right now. And that's what we're doing.

The different subsidies are explained by the fact that the subsidies are intended to support the uptake of those technologies. Solar energy just needed more of a push to achieve critical mass and so does offshore wind. Now that solar panels are cheaper and more efficient, the subsidies get lower and lower each year. There are still a plethora of problems surrounding this approach, but I must admit that I don't see how other approaches would have less problems.

[1] see [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_Staaten_mit_dem_h%C3...](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_Staaten_mit_dem_h%C3%B6chsten_Energieverbrauch)

<comment><USER20> Crazy. The United States have only four times the population of Germany, how can they spend 7.5 time as much energy?

<comment><USER10> There certainly a couple of contributing factor to that:

Geographical factors:

* larger distances. In Germany you can barely travel 1000km in one direction without leaving the country. This implies higher population density which keeps energy consumption for travels and transports at a lower level.

* milder climate: We don't need as much heating as the people in Alaska do and less air conditioning than California or Florida

Man-made/political factors:

* higher energy costs. We pay roughly 2USD per liter fuel. That implies that people are actually trying to buy fuel efficient cars. We don't drive pickups - in fact, I couldn't really afford the fuel cost if I would. Same is true for all sorts of energy.

* better insulation on houses. The standard american house seems to be the wood-frame-kind that's cheaper and quicker to build but is not expected to last for centuries. Here, houses are expected to last for ages. The one I currently live in dates back to somewhere around 1900, the one I'll move to was built in the late 1850s. This is quite common for Berlin actually. That implies thick, well insulated stone or brick walls.

There's certainly more things that affect energy usage, but the important point is that there are some factors that can be influenced while others can't. The Canadians for example will always have a higher need for primary energy since it's pretty cold there on average. The more interesting point is whether the consumption rises or falls and how we produce that energy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I liked the article but think that it's missing the point: very soon there will be no other choice of what direction to take. We are saying "It's risky! Let's just sit back and watch." as if the status quo can go on as our energy consumption and populations both continue to grow. There will be mistakes made along the way, but mark my words, the Germans are going to be eating our lunch faster than you can say Energiewende.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm living in Germany and to support this 'Energiewende', I'm only buying green electricity. It is more expensive but I'm happy to pay more if I can boost the industry around it and also help our environment. Many young people think like this.

</comment><comment><USER23> > [They] decided to build a polysilicon plant in Tennessee, partly because > energy costs in Germany were so high.

This makes USA look like a 3rd world country being used as a haven for environmentally harmful industry installations.

<comment><USER24> Not really. Undeveloped countries tend not to have cheap abundant electricity and are generally less politically stable than the U.S. (both of those things are part of a desirable context for billion dollar investments).

I suppose if you decide that U.S. environmental standards are useless you might have a point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> One of the things that always surprises me when talking about lulls from wind and solar power, is that the assumption always is that we _have_ to provide continuous power. Would it not be possible to have industrial facilities that run in bursts when the energy is available (or more likely cheap), and then turn off again? Sure, this is not as easy as the old way to do things, but seriously, this is not impossible, nature essentially works in this way. Prime candidates would include extremely energy intensive industrial processes with short runtimes.

<comment><USER10> The problem with many large industrial processes is that they cannot be run that way. Think a steamcracker for example: Shutdown takes days, starting up as well. It's so (energy) hungry that its cost-efficient to leave all parts in the chain running if one fails and just burn the resulting light oil. (Makes for a spectacular flame on the skyline). Aluminum processing falls in the same category.

There are other processes where this is possible (steel smelting via electric power for example) and where this is already done. Those plants usually run at night and consume large amounts of the base load. The issue with solar/wind- energy is that the availability may fluctuate within very short time frames - sometimes minutes - so that you cannot use this.

In a smaller scale this works the other way round. There are some small-scale fuel-powered plants that can be used to heat/cool a house or a block as well as produce electricity and those power up when electrical power is needed and store the heat for when it's needed (it's somewhat easier to store heat). This can be used to cut off some of the load spikes.

<comment><USER25> I know very little about heavy industrial processes, but probably in many cases there are alternative processes that are not optimal in the case of continuous power, but with fluctuating power supplies they might become viable.

A possible alternative would be running some process which produces some valuable output, which can be stockpiled. What I'm thinking about is that rather than trying to store energy, one could rather make e.g. PET bottles (probably a stupid idea). Then if there is too many PET bottles, they are burned for energy, but otherwise they are slowly consumed.

What about making a small piece of some ridiculously grand project, slowly, little by little. For instance, building a train tunnel across the Atlantic with robots that only run when power is available? The bad points with that is that it will only be useful when ready, but perhaps a similar kind of mining operation? Dig a little deeper every time energy is cheap enough.

Surely most industrial operation would not work, because the startup costs are large, making the returns convex in the size of investment. But maybe there are concave operations? Many human operated tasks are. It is easy to make a good meal for 4 people, but much more difficult for 40. With robotics at least, one would think that operations with similar properties would be available.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is not an 'experiment'. But please go on telling us that it is impossible, we'll get it done it even quicker. For an engineer, there is no better motivation.

</comment><comment><USER27> Stephan Reimelt, CEO of GE Energy Germany: "Germany is forcing itself toward innovation. What this generates is a large industrial laboratory at a size which has never been done before. We will have to try a lot of different technologies to get there."

It has been done before, at far greater scale. WW1 and WW2. Some of the best innovations or inventions are derived out of a person or a nation having their back to the wall. Hence the famous saying: "necessity, who is the mother of invention" (dating back a mere 2400 years or so, and it's probably older as a known premise).

I would anticipate very impressive industrial breakthroughs in renewable energy coming from the German experiment.

<comment><USER28> I also wonder how much benefit is to be had by not paying other countries for your energy compared to paying yourself...

<comment><USER27> In the case of the US, a shockingly massive benefit. We import between $350b and $500b per year worth of petroleum products (depending on the price of oil).

<comment><USER28> There is, however, the rule of comparative advantage, which means that it is better to import energy than to produce the same amount domestically, if the import is cheaper. How that is balanced against the benefit for domestic producers, I wouldn't know...

<comment><USER27> Only if the calculation includes the vast benefits of domestic energy production, properly sourced, and not just the basic price of energy.

Such as keeping First Solar and SunPower in business (FSLR has lost 95% of its value).

The jobs created through installation, maintainence, R&D, manufacturing, and so on.

For example: let's say your import cost is $250 billion, but your domestic cost is $300 billion. I'd argue that you're radically better off spending the $300 billion domestically, than losing the jobs likely involved and exporting $250 billion off shore to benefit some other nation/s. There's no doubt some inflection point on that benefit, but I think it's a wide margin.

<comment><USER29> That doesn't make economic sense. That $250B isn't being vaporized: it's going to foreign consumers who are going to spend some fraction of it buying imported goods. Your goods are likely to be more competitive if an extra $50B worth of energy costs weren't spent making them. This is basic comparative advantage stuff.

<comment> excuse-me Actually the $250Bn never existed - you printed the dollars and gave the Saudis pieces of paper for the oil.

They essentially loaned you the oil - and if they ask fro the money back you can just democratize them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> "just when sunburned Germans reach for their air conditioners"

I hope the rest of the article wasn't researched as "good" as this.</comment>


What Google Can't Copy (Easily) - <AUTHOR> http://duckduckgo.com/blog/what-google-cant-copy-easily.html <comment><USER2> Google can't copy features that would only work well on a small to medium site. Can't think of much more.

Also, Gabriel, your work is wonderful. Keep it up, you're an inspiration to me.

</comment><comment><USER3> FWIW, Yahoo! Research Labs had a version of their search engine with "more/less commercial" sliders years ago.

</comment><comment><USER4> I highly doubt Google has some master list of features already coded just waiting to launch when a competitor releases something similar. First that seems like a huge waste of time, but also it gives too much credit to Google in that they'd need to have all these ideas first. Just doesn't add up. I do think however that they do have the ability to, in a very short time frame bake up responses to competitive features. But I would imagine it would be more on-demand than off-the-shelf. Any ex Googlers here to comment?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it is more that they are trying things all the time in a genuine desire to improve, but most of these don't get pushed live. Since they've tried most things internally over the past 11 years, it is highly likely they already have code that does more or less what competitors launch. Of course, I'd also like to hear something from real x-Googlers...

<comment><USER5> When I was at Google the sheer number of crazy projects being worked on internally, whether or not for profit, was insane. Literally thousands upon thousands of projects. They are working on anything and everything, I think that is something that the competition really underestimates here.

This is why their parking lots have electrical sockets to plug your car into or why they released Lively (when I was there it was but a one man project that I saw at an internal techtalk). It's all things Googlers wanted to work on. They will work on anything they find interesting and they'll generally get the full support of the company (at least that's how it was in 2007).

Now I'm at Microsoft and the biggest change to me is how focused Microsoft is at executing very specific projects. The other big change is how many strengths Microsoft has that most of the world refuses to acknowledge. Microsoft gets a lot of bad press, but holy shit when they target something, they go for all or nothing. There is a drive internal to Microsoft unlike any I've seen... when they want something, they won't stop until it's theirs. They want blood.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have immense respect for those working under google's shadow to create a better/different search experience. The article clearly shows that their entire product development strategy is built around what google does and does not. Although as history has shown, when these companies accomplish anything they usually get acquired rather than becoming individually successful. But I guess history can only take you so far and Google was once a search underdog. So good luck duckduckgo!

<comment><USER7> Potentially they could change a lot even if they where acquired, since they could tip the balance of search and they would properly allow Microsoft to by them for $40 billion :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I tried DuckDuckGo as my primary search provider. While I liked some of their features, I couldn't live without maps integration (called universal search in this post).

Honestly, it would have been fine if they just forwarded me to google maps or mapquest.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thx for trying it. By maps integration, I assume you are referring to when Google displays a map when you type in an address or business name at the top of the results? I just want to make sure I understand exactly the use case.

<comment><USER9> Yep! That's the ticket for me, at least.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thx. I will definitely be adding this to Duck Duck Go.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "So they wait until either a) through bucket testing they are sure it is a good idea or b) a competitor adds a feature that users seem to like or the press makes a big deal about. They don't want any new search engine to really get a foothold so they need to react to these competitive feature launches lest a new search engine actually starts getting used :)"

I think that is wrong, and it's pretty much just the first one. Google has the scale to multi-variate test most things very quickly, and is long-term enough in their thinking that they aren't pushing a product just because a few blogs read by .0000000008% of their users are drooling over it.

They come up with ideas (some of which may be copies of competitors' ideas) test the hell out of them, and push the ones that work. End of story. I'd be surprised if they are more than marginally aware there are competitors to their search product.

Seems highly unlikely they've got lots of features just waiting on a post from a rinky-dink tech blog to incite them to launch.

<comment><AUTHOR> WolframAlpha, Cuil, and Search Wikia got a lot more press than just from "rinky-dink[y] tech blog[s]."

<comment><USER11> which kinda proves the point...all that press, and noone cares about them now. The only recent launch is bing...but even that started out with millions of original microsoft users and then was fueled by a marketing budget bigger than a small country's GDP.

<comment><AUTHOR> The OC's point was that Google didn't and shouldn't have responded to Cuil, Wolfram Alpha or Search Wikia because they were only covered by small tech blogs. Both are wrong and them flaming out doesn't prove his point.

They flamed out because they weren't sticky with users, but it wasn't for lack of original coverage or eyeballs. IIRC, Cuil managed to get covered in pretty much every major news outlet, which converted into about 3M uniques on their first day! As I alluded to in the post (and better described in the posts I linked to), Google did their best to take the wind out of their sales with timely released and announced features (longer snippets, bigger index, in this case).

In retrospect, it seems that they were going to (at least initially) fail on their own, but Google didn't know that at the time. And the point is that they were paying attention and responding. They took the competitive threat seriously, as I think they should.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Google cannot copy your startup's attitude, most particularly if your startup's attitude is strongly opposed to facilitating the arrest and torture of Chinese dissidents.

If I had a search engine, I'd be strongly opposed to facilitating the arrest and torture of Chinese dissidents. Because after all, I think my American users would actually care pretty keenly on whether companies they do business with facilitate the arrest and torture of Chinese dissidents.

Say Google, what was your policy on that again?

<comment><USER11> i think it comes to the bottom line, all the "causes" don't really mean anything. It's always the same 10,000 people protesting environmentalism, darfur, G20, care bears. And even those, majority will come back to Google a week later when the "boo Google" protests get boring and they'll switch to "boo Sponge Bob squarepants, a corrupt depiction of the scumbag capitalist anti-environmentalism"

The bottom line, is that Google doesn't want to lose a 1 billion person Chinese market over a bunch of hippies. Long term(20-30 years) it'll account for 70-80% of their revenue, turning the back on it now would be the dumbest thing for them to do.

<comment><USER12> _i think it comes to the bottom line, all the "causes" don't really mean anything._

I disagree -- Google reacts to bad PR. It is about the _only_ external factor they react to, since they've got a de-facto monopoly on the Internet's license to print money combined with essentially no regulatory oversight, anti-trust issues, etc.

See, e.g., how quickly they killed their I-can't-believe-its-not-Campfire app when seven PR-savvy guys in a room in Chicago threatened them with being seen as the Goliath for a change.

<comment><USER11> they react to bad PR when it costs them nothing to fix it. The whole Chinese incident would have cost them billions, and it blew over after a few weeks

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I really don't see how drastic changes are outside of Google's ability. Google (and Yahoo) can both bucket-test drastic interface changes to 1% or 0.01% of their audience, effectively simulating a small startup doing the same thing.

(Related: post-search deal with Bing, experimenting with user interface in this way is Yahoo's explicit strategy for competing in search.)

</comment><comment><USER14> People don't bookmark pages because search engines make it so easy to find content. So rather than bookmark the php manual page on date formatting, I'll just type php dates into Google knowing that it will pop up in the first ten results. However, I also notice that I regularly have trouble locating content this way when I go back for it. This is usually when I am looking for something very specific and forget the exact query string that generated that result.

On the other hand, there are times when I'm searching for a datapoint and am frustrated that Google keeps throwing the same links at me. I have to constantly hit "next" to get the results that I want.

I wonder if there is an opportunity for a search engine to heavily invest in either providing people with completely fresh info every time they query for something or provide them just the results they've seen before.

This is probably not relevant to Duck Duck Go but thought I'd throw it out there.

</comment><comment><USER15> _I find it hard to believe that anything is off limits to Google due to technical complexity_

I somewhat disagree. There are some things, most likely due to technical complexity and cost/effort, that google provides at a low level of quality. ie. gmail search!!

<comment><USER16> While I agree Gmail search can be infuriating, how do you know it's a complexity issue that keeps it this way?

<comment><USER17> I don't know if it is accurate, but <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=850938> sheds a lot of light on why search might be the way it is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "First, they can't easily make drastic changes to their results pages."

Maybe they can't change their main page, but they can easily launch variant pages that look like whatever they like. They already did so in several cases.

</comment><comment><USER19> Google can easily copy it, but a feature I'd like is a more convenient way to search within sites. The idea is expressed better in a picture : <http://imgur.com/jRj89.png>

<comment><USER20> What's wrong with the site: restrict?

[http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+d...](http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+duck+duck+go+google)

<comment><USER19> Nobody but power users understand this feature, and it is not convenient. Is your mother using site: restrict ?

<comment><USER21> (Actually... yes. Strangely enough, I've been very surprised. She figured it out because whatever site she uses has a "search box" that is basically just adding site:awesome.com to the query. She was then able to generalize it on sites with no search.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Also, this is really neat. Definitely something DuckDuckGo should look into. <http://www.smallmeans.com/tools/siteflow/>

</comment><comment><USER22> DuckDuckGo could make better operators or custom search features that are easy to use.

<comment><AUTHOR> Care to elaborate on specifics?</comment></comment>


What we found when we tested tools on the world's least-accessible webpage - <AUTHOR> https://accessibility.blog.gov.uk/2017/02/24/what-we-found-when-we-tested-tools-on-the-worlds-least-accessible-webpage/ <comment><USER2> That page was way more accessable than plenty of sites I have seen. I mean content shows up even if you don't have Javascript enabled or Flash installed. That alone puts it way ahead of a huge number of websites.

<comment><USER3> is javascript-free content such an important issue for accessibility? Do screen-readers not work on javascript-generated websites?

<comment><USER4> No, "works without Javascript" is way outdated advice that has nothing to do with accessibility in the modern world. The whole point of ARIA is to make dynamic, JS-driven web UIs accessible.

<comment><USER5> But websites that don't bother to make their websites accessible without JavaScript have a bad track record for implementing ARIA (correctly).

Good accessible design has benefits for everyone, not only the disabled. For instance, that half of the web breaks when you turn off JavaScript, turned into a security issue when Tor Browser enabled it by default (to not confuse their users with a broken web).

Progressive enhancement and accessibility go hand-in-hand. If not for accessibility reasons, then develop websites with accessible JavaScript for security, SEO/automated access, or progressive enhancement reasons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It is strangely unnerving to read a blog post formatted in the Standard UK Government Website Template. There is nothing wrong with it, but I keep expecting a stern message about paying my taxes.

<comment><USER7> It looks very professional, though.

<comment><USER8> Gov.uk and other websites have usability requirements beyond most people's worst nightmares because unlike the social media platform _du jour_ , people do not have the option of just not using the website. Even if you want to file your tax return using a paper form or over the form, you need to request the form or find out the phone number somehow, which means visiting the site. And for many, the web is the most accessible way to do what they need to do.

So this means not supporting IE8 flat-out isn't an option. Not supporting blind users is not an option. Not supporting 95-year-old users is not an option. Bells and whistles, distractingly flashy designs, _any_ use of JavaScript without a fallback.

Weirdly, the result is a very clean, professional, usable website. It's amazing!

<comment><USER9> This - and also before GDS, each of the different government departments had their own stack, their own design standards, and their own verification systems. This would even apply to the hundreds of different local authorities. GDS has done an amazing job cleaning up the mess, and open sourcing a lot of it, within a government culture that is very resistant to change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This was a useful article. We're starting to have the accessibility discussion for our externally facing sites/applications, driven in part by new state requirements for assessing and ensuring accessibility.

There's often the knee-jerk "can't we just have a tool approve or identify problems?" because no one wants to allocate or train staff. So it's useful to have evidence that trained analysis in addition to automated tools is appropriate to enable compliance.

</comment><comment><USER11> Hmmm. Maybe my bank's website is just a government experiment to test accessibility.

<comment><USER12> I like my credit union's website. It looks and feels like a website straight out of 2001, and it makes no attempt to be clever or slick in anyway. It's also very usable.

My other account at MegaBank is a very modern, slick, and somewhat annoying to use. It's so slick, that when I click on a dropdown, the dropdown choices appear in a modal in the middle of the screen, without greying out the rest of the screen. I had to click on the dropdown about 4 times before I realized the data was being displayed somewhere else. It was actually quite usable before they got all frontend-y on me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The page has an example of "Wide page forces users to scroll horizontally".

        Hacker News, which is otherwise very friendly to limited browsers (such as mobile browsers) really suffers from this in certain cases, like this one.

Test case here: [https://alphagov.github.io/accessibility-tool- audit/tests/pa...](https://alphagov.github.io/accessibility-tool- audit/tests/page-layout-wide-page-forces-users-to-scroll-horizontally.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> This is a good article, and this is going to be really nitpicky... but please, use the word 'failures', not 'fails'. For my sake :)

> to create a web-page full of accessibility fails.

> At the moment it contains a total of 143 fails grouped into 19 categories.

</comment><comment><USER15> On a tangent, but because they read HN sometimes: please can the ESA phone number (0345 608 8545) be made easier to find?

It's not currently on the site anywhere (as far as I can tell).

<comment><AUTHOR> I the number into the search and landed on [https://www.gov.uk/employment- support-allowance/what-youll-g...](https://www.gov.uk/employment-support- allowance/what-youll-get) . It's on there, but pretty small. If you look at the bottom of GOV.UK pages you'll see an 'Is there anything wrong with this page?' link which is monitored, so maybe submit feedback through there?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This begs the question if using one tool is not sufficient, is using a specific selection of tools each with their own strengths, will give a better result?

<comment><USER4> No. Many of the things that automated tools can't find are simply impossible to judge in an automated way. Alt text being appropriate for images, for instance, is something that has to be verified by a human (or an AI that's indistinguishable from one).

<comment><USER17> Hmmm. Facebook is already automatically adding alt text to uploaded images ([http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/5/11364914/facebook- automatic...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/5/11364914/facebook-automatic- alt-tags-blind-visually-impared)). I think it's within reason to do a comparison of that generated text with the real text, and come up with a score of how likely it is to be representative.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> i think accessibility (to a certain degree) might be a application of ML (for example: relations between text based on the layout). Or a quick summary of the page.

I just don't know how to obtain the data needed for training :). Might just be too hard, idk.

</comment><comment><USER19> I has hoping they had found some incredibly inaccessible webpage in the wild. Instead they built one. :(

Boo! Hiss! Click-bait!</comment>


Ask HN: What programming language was ______ written in? - <AUTHOR>

I am curious as to what programming languages were used to make various products and thought it would be interesting to keep a running list of as many as we could.
Feel free to list as many as you can in the comments section and I'll try adding it to the master list. Or you can ask about one and hopefully someone will answer.

  Facebook   - PHP and C++
  Mac OSX    - C and Objective C
  iOS        - C and Objective C
  Windows    - C++, C, and C#
  Linux      - <USER14>
  Android    - <USER14>
  Google     - C++, Python, Java
  Dropbox    - <USER21>
  NSA        - <USER21>
  Yelp       - <USER21>
  Quora      - <USER21>
  Youtube    - <USER21>
  Slide      - <USER21>
  NASA       - <USER21>
  ...
 <comment><USER25> Perl - <USER14>

Python - <USER14>

PHP - <USER14>

<comment><USER26> (gc)c - <USER14>

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Funny that you asked this. Today I noticed Google answering this very question.

[http://cl.ly/2p2K0Q0m2i0I2D3I2J1U/Screen_shot_2011-06-13_at_...](http://cl.ly/2p2K0Q0m2i0I2D3I2J1U/Screen_shot_2011-06-13_at_2.32.12_AM.png)

[http://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome- instant&ie=U...](http://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome- instant&ie=UTF-8&ion=1&nord=1#hl=en&sugexp=ldymls&xhr=t&q=rabbitmq+written&cp=16&fp=f47737c79cc7719f)

</comment><comment><USER28> I suspect once an organisation gets big enough, you're going to find perl and python in use somewhere.

The OSX kernel is written mostly in a restricted dialect of C++ once you get above the microkernel level isn't it?

The control software for the Space Shuttle is written in a custom PL/I based language called HAL/S (S for Shuttle).

The bottom layers of Android may be C, but most of the code you actually interact with is written in Java.

</comment><comment><USER29> Smalltalk is written in Smalltalk.

It's unique in being far more than a language: once upon a time, it was an operating system ([http://tekkie.wordpress.com/2007/07/19/squeak-is-like-an- ope...](http://tekkie.wordpress.com/2007/07/19/squeak-is-like-an-operating- system/)).

<comment><USER30> _It's unique in being far more than a language: once upon a time, it was an operating system_

Well, it shares that distinction with Oberon, so, not unique.

<comment><USER29> Whoops - a slip of the keyboard ;-)

Of course, Lisp is another one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> NSA Python

Yelp Python

Quora Python

Youtube Python

Slide Python

NASA Python

<comment><USER32> Could you please expand your acronyms?

I interpret NSA as National Security Agency and NASA as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (two agencies within the US Government). However, considering these are two entire agencies, it does not make sense to say that either is 'written in python'. They may use Python, but I know that they also rely heavily on other languages including C, C++, Java, C#, OCaml, and assembly among others.

<comment><USER31> Someone else asked for a reference and I provided the link in response also in this thread. I am not arguing it's the only language they use but python are languages they use nonetheless

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> WordPress - <USER24>

Buddypress - <USER24>

Joomla - <USER24>

Drupal - <USER24>

</comment><comment><USER34> Stackoverflow.com - ASP.NET

TurboTax - <USER22>

Reddit - <USER21>

</comment><comment><USER35> Here are some industry applications using Lisp: <http://wiki.alu.org/Industry> Application

</comment><comment><USER36> MySpace - Java(Coldfusion) After 2007 C#,C

Yahoo - PHP, Java

Disqus - <USER21>

LinkedIn - <USER22>

Netflix - C, C++ C#

Baidu - <USER24>

QQ - <USER24>

</comment><comment><USER37> Windows is not written in C#. There is only one componentin Windows htat is in C# and that is the Windows Event viewer.

</comment><comment><USER38> Can you provide links for NSA and NASA, please?

[Edit]: Thx for the links, guys!

<comment><AUTHOR>
      'NSA uses Python for cryptography and intelligence analysis.'

[http://waprogramming.com/papers/vol1-no1/(73-76)%20Python%20...](http://waprogramming.com/papers/vol1-no1/\(73-76\)%20Python%20-%20an%20appropriate%20language%20for%20real%20world%20programming.pdf)

...and...

<http://www.python.org/about/success/usa/>

<comment><USER31> Should update the list from the vid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> eBay: Perl

Amazon: Perl

Twitter: Ruby on Rails, Java

Optimizely: Python

LinkedIn: Java

Craigstlist: Perl

flickr: PHP, Perl, Java

Tumblr: PHP

<comment><USER31> Twitter moved off to Java last I heard if I read this correctly. Not sure if they still use any rails.

Source 1: <http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/06/new-twitter-search/>

Source 2: [http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/01/new-twitter-search- relevant...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/01/new-twitter-search-relevant/)

<comment><USER40> Most of their job postings still mention Ruby, so I suspect a big portion is Ruby/Rails based.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Android in C? I thought it was Java.

</comment><comment><USER42> Diaspora - Ruby on Rails

</comment><comment><USER43> Windows is C, not C++

<comment><USER44> How come Windows doesn't come with a compiler for c?

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Here are some sites written in Rails: <http://rubyonrails.org/applications></comment>


Show HN: Acid Machine 2 – Javascript Techno Tool - <AUTHOR> http://www.errozero.co.uk/acid-machine/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey, I'm around to answer questions about this if anyone has any. I know it desperately needs a manual and at the moment, it only works in Chrome.</comment>


Twitter for Android Security Issue - <AUTHOR> https://privacy.twitter.com/en/blog <comment><USER2> Are there any technical details about attack?</comment>


MCLIDE: A New Lisp IDE for Mac. - <AUTHOR> http://mclide.in-progress.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Screenshots:

<http://mclide.in-progress.com/tour?id=wgns1>

It runs Lisps, both local on the same box, or remote; it's the IDE that's Mac, the Lisp can run on any OS.

</comment><comment><USER2> Hey nice, it's cool to see a Swank client that's not Emacs. Reusability++.

<comment><USER3> I'm still waiting for a shell client so that I can script running Lisp processes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Requires Rosetta. <http://www.apple.com/rosetta/></comment>


Coronavirus data dashboard deployed using Wolfram Cloud - <AUTHOR> https://www.wolframcloud.com/obj/examples/COVID19Dashboard <comment><AUTHOR> This data used for this dashboard is updated on a (nearly) daily basis and is free for anyone to download and use.

Epidemic data: [https://datarepository.wolframcloud.com/resources/Epidemic-D...](https://datarepository.wolframcloud.com/resources/Epidemic- Data-for-Novel-Coronavirus-COVID-19)

Genetic sequences: [https://datarepository.wolframcloud.com/resources/Genetic- Se...](https://datarepository.wolframcloud.com/resources/Genetic-Sequences- for-the-SARS-CoV-2-Coronavirus)

Patient data: [https://datarepository.wolframcloud.com/resources/Patient- Me...](https://datarepository.wolframcloud.com/resources/Patient-Medical-Data- for-Novel-Coronavirus-COVID-19)</comment>


Beware of keystroke loggers disguised as USB phone chargers, FBI warns - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/05/beware-of-keystroke-loggers-disguised-as-usb-phone-chargers-fbi-warns/ <comment><USER2> This is insanity-inducing. Qi chargers are finally beginning to show up in the wild -- in counter tops at Frankfort Airport and in bedside lamps at IKEA.

At the same time Qi receivers are disappearing from phones. The feature is missing from the new Nexus phones, and never really took hold in Apple-land.

I love Qi because it leaves a very literal air-gap between the charger and the phone. That seems especially important in light of this news.

</comment><comment><USER3> I never understood the point of a wireless keyboard. You get the hassle of batteries, and the security risks mentioned here. Yet you cannot really take advantage of the portability since keyboards are stationary and work best on a hard flat surface. They are rarely moved.</comment>