Wildfires Are Raging Outside Every Major City in Australia - <AUTHOR> https://time.com/5753584/bushfires-australia-catastrophic-fire-alert/ <comment><USER2> As a long term Australian, this is categorically the worst fire season Australia has experienced.

Summer in Australia always comes with one or two big fires in at-risk rural areas over the months from December to February.

Queensland and New South Wales were burning heavily by early December. And now Victoria and South Australia have joined in as well and we're still only just into the second month of three. It's unprecedented.

The one thing that may provide back handed comfort is that so much has burnt that it will be a few years before enough 'fuel' is regrown for fires of this scale to be possible again.

I'm wondering the unknowable tipping point at which the cost of rebuilding from bushfires outweighs the costs of de-carbonising the economy. Part of the problem with that is who / where the costs are borne / spread amongst.

<comment><USER3> > _the costs of de-carbonising the economy_

Global warming is important, but only one environmental problem, so important to consider here, but not the only environmental issue.

Contributing to every environmental issue, including this one, is overpopulation. Humans have altered every continent, reducing biodiversity, introducing species that don't handle local climates as well, or too well and displace existing ones, making extinct species, and so on. I'm no expert, but the situation in Australia looks related to huge cities and lots of farms supporting a much larger human population than had ever lived there reducing biodiversity and resilience to fire, exacerbated by global warming.

People fear discussing overpopulation because they only know of China's policy and eugenics, as did I until I learned of the successful, non-coercive policies of Thailand, Iran, Mexico, etc that increased peace, prosperity, and stability.

I first learned of successful noncoercive birthrate reducing policies through Alan Weisman's excellent Countdown [https://www.amazon.com/Countdown-Last- Best-Future-Earth/dp/0...](https://www.amazon.com/Countdown-Last-Best-Future- Earth/dp/0316097756), and of the critical importance of population through Limits to Growth [https://www.amazon.com/Limits-Growth-Donella-H- Meadows/dp/19...](https://www.amazon.com/Limits-Growth-Donella-H- Meadows/dp/193149858X).

Those examples show that we can peacefully and stably lower birth rate to increase peace and prosperity and ease all other environmental problems. Steady-state following de-growth works more successfully on a full finite planet than pushing economic and population growth forever, which exacerbates problems like these and increases their impact on humans and other wildlife.

<comment><USER4> > Contributing to every environmental issue, including this one, is > overpopulation.

Citation needed. Why is 7.7 billion people a problem? IMHO earth as it is today can accommodate 9 or 10 billion people without problems. (And like you, I have no citation as well.)

<comment><USER5> Define "without problems".

We currently utilise 50% -- the best, most fertile, productive 50% -- of the earth's landmass. What remains is marginal land, scrub, forests, permafrost, mountains, savannah, deserts etc, or is simply too hot or too cold for us to live comfortably. We're mistreating land with over fertilisation and suffering steady soil loss everywhere that's adopted post-war industrial agriculture. Many of those bits of rubbish land, forests and wildlife preserves we're not using are chopped up by pipelines, roads, rail affecting viability of the species broken up and interfering with natural migration and regrowth. Wildlife and wilderness has no chance.

We're clear cutting forest to make monoculture grazing land, or to plant thousands of acres of uninterrupted soya, palm oil and other major crops. As environmental awareness grows we're doing that at accelerated rate. Europe was clearcut in liveable areas in the Middle Ages, yet we've shown little to no sign of most noticing our colossal destructive impact. We just started importing big trees and colonising.

Borneo has gone from essentially untouched in the 1980s to 50% cleared now. Earth overshoot day puts us as needing 1.7 earths to sustain the current rate of regrowable use (it only considers replaceable resources, not mining and minerals). 10bn would push that up to over 2.

A sustainable population would probably be 1 or 2bn, if we want to allow a little room for the unforeseen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As an Australian resident and now citizen for 20 years, I've been pretty angry since that last federal election. So many people here are _still_ denying man- made global warming, and that includes our own government, which stood in the way of progress at COP25 [1].

Even now, in the midst of unprecedented heat, drought and fire that has gripped this continent for months, if not years, "friends" of mine regularly post the most ignorant climate denialist BS on FB.

[1] [https://reneweconomy.com.au/cop25-talks-labelled-lost- opport...](https://reneweconomy.com.au/cop25-talks-labelled-lost-opportunity- as-australia-burns-its-international-reputation-46894/)

<comment><USER7> _So many people here are still denying man-made global warming_

That isn't really true beyond the margins. Polls show that a large majority of Australians have accepted the science on climate collapse for two decades.

Australians know what's happening, but they believe their wealth can insulate them personally from the consequences while they watch dusky foreigners die. The last federal election contained an implied declaration of environmental war on the Pacific island nations, with the tradeoffs very clearly spelled out in the campaign.

Australia is a rogue nation of self-comforting nihilists, for whom Scott Morrison is a very natural leader.

<comment><USER8> "The margins" also unfortunately include the perpetually outraged Alan Jones, and every policy pie his pudgy fingers poke.

+1 on your diagnosis of the cultural problem.

<comment><USER7> Yes absolutely, of course. No-one can deny the outsized political significance of those margins along many dimensions (marginal rural constituencies, the Liberal/Nat/LNP right-wing factions, Alan Jones' grumpy gossiping old men, perpetually outraged about anything done by anyone under 60, the Murdoch press, etc).

I guess my point is that these extreme margins gain their power only because of the nihilism of the skittish 'moderate' Australian majority, which knows enough, and cares little about anything of significance.

<comment><USER6> Good analysis.

I've recently been reading The Australian online, and any time there's a climate related article, there are literally 100s of comments almost all of which are rabid climate deniers. It's stomach churning to read.

No idea how representative of general population, but my gut-feeling is that it's a significant minority, e.g. 10-20%.

<comment><USER9> Yeah it's depressing, but have you not noticed a change or shift in tone at least in the media ? I'm hopeful this swings the focus back onto science and mitigation, and away from the economy. Every time our PM says "we must balance the environment with a healthy economy for all" I want to explode: what does that even MEAN. Economic activity is a function of human activity and humans need to like... breath?

I've been encouraged by some of the interviews and coverage with local government officials, they seem to be really shocked into a truth: I wish we could do better than a temporary 'concern' over the earth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I asked a firefighter when is the fire considered safe once it appears to have stopped burning? The answer surprised me a bit. You need to have a 100m strip around the fire where someone has raked or inspected inside every tree, under every cow pat, bit of grass to make sure nothing is smouldering in that area. This is a huge job as for the fire I enquired about (Cudlee Creek SA), the perimeter is 180km and a fair bit of this is in rugged terrain. So a ton of work.

<comment><USER11> Honestly I'm surprised that's _sufficient_. To my knowledge you can even have root fires burning underground for _months_. And I expect embers can travel in the wind far longer distances than 100m. It's pretty impressive to me they can do it with 100m of inspection, let alone how difficult that already is.

<comment><USER12> > And I expect embers can travel in the wind far longer distances than 100m.

Far, far more. Embers have been known to travel 10s of km. However, if that happens after a fire has been reduced to smouldering, if it lights something, that gets considered as a new fire.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's been nice in Brisbane the past few weeks. I'm starting to feel "survivor guilt". For the people saying we need less trees, please watch this: [https://youtu.be/SIHIsSJ2Txk](https://youtu.be/SIHIsSJ2Txk)

</comment><comment><USER14> Excuse my ignorance, can anyone explain to me what makes it so difficult to extinguish the fire? (This question is not meant to be an ass) I tried to google it, but couldn't find a proper answer. I'm just really curious.

<comment><USER2> It's not like a barbecue fire that can be controlled with a garden hose. As someone else in this thread has mentioned, one of the fire fronts is 180km wide.

Edit: 180km perimeter

I think the article says that one of the fires has burnt an area the size of the state of Rhode Island.

[https://www.abc.net.au/news/image/11838160-3x2-460x307.jpg](https://www.abc.net.au/news/image/11838160-3x2-460x307.jpg)

[https://www.abc.net.au/news/image/11834342-3x2-460x307.jpg](https://www.abc.net.au/news/image/11834342-3x2-460x307.jpg)

[https://www.google.com/search?q=Australian+bushfires](https://www.google.com/search?q=Australian+bushfires)

<comment><USER15> And that is just one fire. The total area burnt in New South Wales alone was almost nine times larger than Rhode Island by 9 December. [https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-18/bushfires-burn- area-b...](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-18/bushfires-burn-area-bigger- than-wales-a-result-of-record-spring/11810324)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If you live in Australia, what is this doing in terms of changing what people think and do about climate change? Is it motivating personal changes in diet, traveling and election voting choices?

If this nightmare scenario isn't enough to push people into taking action, what will?

<comment><USER17> What do you expect them to actually do? The entire CO2 output of Australia could drop to zero with negligible effect on climate change.

<comment><USER18> If every country acted that way, we'd make no progress.

Every country needs to do its fair share, and Australia is not: [http://theconversation.com/australia-hit-its-kyoto-target- bu...](http://theconversation.com/australia-hit-its-kyoto-target-but-it-was- more-a-three-inch-putt-than-a-hole-in-one-44731)

<comment><USER19> Absolutely. Anthony Albanese (opposition leader for Labor here in Aus) said exactly this today on ABC. Whilst there is negligible correlation between the fires and our action (or inaction) to climate change as a country, the rhetoric of "well, we output so little compared of other developed nations" should not apply.

Oh, and our elected Prime Minister brought a lump of coal into parliament, which says as much.

<comment><USER20> Also important to recognize that Australia's carbon contribution is not solely limited to domestic output but also our coal industry. Australia is the largest exporter of coal in the world and this is not properly accounted for in our emissions accounting. On a per-person basis, our output is among the highest in the world and the inaction of others does not absolve us from having a moral responsibility to clean up our own mess at the very least.

<comment><USER18> Counting exports would lead to double counting: once for the exporter, once for the user.

All that matters is countries having fair targets, and meeting those targets.

Countries are free to meet their emissions reductions targets how they like, including buying cheap coal from Australia, planes from US, and cars from Germany.

<comment><USER21> It would double count emissions but it does mean that Australia could do more than just eliminate their own emissions, they could limit other countries' as well by stopping export.

<comment><USER18> Let's walk before we can run. It's difficulty enough to get countries to reduce their own emissions. Asking them to compromise their exports to reduce others' emissions is simply not viable at the moment.

<comment><USER20> Why shouldn't a citizenry decide to limit exports of certain goods when it is in their own interest to do so? We certainly do this with uranium already. Likewise with weapons technology and all manner of harmful trade vectors.

Australia's coal industry provides few jobs, is heavily government subsidized (either explicitly or through direct infrastructure funding), pays little to no tax, and creates environmental harm that the majority of the electorate disagree with.

[Sorry HN: I know I should be supporting this with annotations but am time pressed today.]

<comment><USER18> One of Queensland's few industries is the coal industry, and so it grips on to it. [https://www.theguardian.com/australia- news/2018/jun/08/coal-...](https://www.theguardian.com/australia- news/2018/jun/08/coal-comfort-queensland-budget-to-benefit-from-surging- mining-royalties)

Regional Queenslanders don't want to end up like the old coal mining towns of the UK, which still have not recovered from the mine closures in 1980s. [https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/aug/26/blighted- coa...](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/aug/26/blighted-coalfields- village-life-pit-village-people-starving-horden-co-durham)

I'm not saying coal is morally defensible, but this is democracy in action.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> There has been a lack of leadership in Australia for at least a generation. Since Rudd took office, politicians have been driven by polls and the media.

The current government is no exception. We need to do more to protect Australia's environment, including from climate change. We are letting the Great Barrier Reef wither away, and our land is burning.

The lack of leadership is particularly frustrating. Instead of developing and growing new sustainable industries that will be around when the world has de- carbonised the government is doubling down on coal. It is utter madness. We have lacked a cohesive energy policy for over a decade due to climate change being a political issue where sides have been divided. Its hard to believe, but in 2007 the collation under John Howard took a carbon emissions policy to the election. We have regressed in policy from that point.

Ultimately, a lot of the blame for all of this sits with the Greens. If they had been so blinded by purity and supported Rudd's carbon pollution reduction scheme. It would have been in place, and like the GST been settled. Instead they allowed it to become a political football. That plus Gillard's ineptness with the carbon tax has made this a toxic debate.

Talk is cheap, and the only thing that will change it is writing to your representative and letting them know. I strongly urge you to respectfully write to your MP and let them know they need to do better.

</comment><comment><USER23> The real tragedy here is the amount of wildlife and livestock gone. The toll is estimated at about half a billion animals so far.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm curious how all the permaculture farms and homesteads are faring. Are these alternative landscapes surviving or maybe thriving dispite the droughts and fires?

Could the country promote or even mandate permaculture style landworks?

<comment><USER25> Permaculture also burns. Most of what's on fire is naturally growing eucalyptus and brush.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Let's see how is this going to influence Australia's opinion on their coal powered cheap electricity.

<comment><USER27> What are you comparing Australia's electricity to to call it cheap?

<comment><USER28> Our wholesale power prices are actually quite low. Residential power is expensive because rooftop solar is putting the economics of maintaining the grid into a death spiral.

<comment><USER29> Please support your claim with some evidence. I worked in the contestable electricity distribution business for 8 years from 2001 to 2009 and I can assure that your claim is complete bollocks.

<comment><USER8> [https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2014/july/1404136800/jes...](https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2014/july/1404136800/jess- hill/power-corrupts)

<comment><USER29> Exactly. I worked at Powercor and Citipower - two distribution licenses but one parent company that ran a shared-everything operation across the two. We cost a bit more than one company to run but we're able to recoup as if we were two wholly independent operations. The whole contestable distribution market was/is a huge scam.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I heard that earlier efforts in the year to do controlled burns were protested against by activists and thus paused and could've contributed to the extent of the fires now.

<comment><USER31> This is misinformation happily spread by the Australian media, who are hand in hand with the fossil fuel and forestry lobbiests. The Australian green party has supported hazard reduction burning for many years. The activists you mention have had pretty much zero influence on what hazard reduction has been done. The current government cut the budget for the fire service so drastically that they lost about 60% of the qualified staff who were in charge of planning hazard reduction burns. We have areas the size of Tasmania that are the responsibility of 1 hazard reduction expert. The areas that are burning are not areas that the activists you mentioned were active. Some of the fires in September and October were likely caused by hazard reduction burning.

Basically, hazard reduction burning is a viable technique when the fire season lasts 3 or 4 months. This fire season is looking like it will last for 6 to 7 months, which leaves very little time to plan and execute hazard reduction.

You are probably not taking into account the size of the areas that require hazard reduction management, and the low (now even lower) number of people who are responsible for it.

In short, environmental activists (and, mostly, arsonists) are a bogeyman created by people trying to divert attention away from the real problems.

The main real problems are:

Due to forestry the water cycle on the western side of the great dividing range (and other mountains in Australia) has been disrupted and areas that usually receive rain have had declining rain or no rain in the past decade.

Global patterns such as El Nino have been disrupted leading to less precipitation and one of the worst droughts in Australian history.

Average temperatures across the continent have been setting new records for the past decade, with 2019 being the hottest year on record, and about 3 weeks ago we had the hottest day on record Australia wide.

Serious budget cuts to the organisations who are responsible for hazard reduction in fire prone areas.

It's basically the perfect storm of climate change and government ineptitude.

But, according to our glorious leader, we should not worry, stay calm and watch the cricket.

Seriously, you couldn't make this shit up if you tried.

<comment><USER32> In summary, you are saying that controlled burns were reduced and they would have helped, it's just that the protests against them weren't significant?

Also seems like the Australian media supported the protestors:

[http://joannenova.com.au/2020/01/abc-deleting-facebook- posts...](http://joannenova.com.au/2020/01/abc-deleting-facebook-posts-on-how- protesters-stop-prescribed-burns-more-worried-about-climate-change-than- wildfires/)

<comment><USER8> That's a claim you should not read uncritically, given where it is published — the site is a "climate skeptic" page, and the claim it is trying to advance is that the national broadcaster is being manipulated, or at the centre of a vast left-wing conspiracy, that has inexplicably ruined the country, despite having apparently not convinced its audience to vote for a left-wing party.

Here's the thing: the reportage of the protest was on a local-news Facebook page maintained by the national broadcaster and was not reported more widely at the time (September 2019). You can find the post cached, it doesn't read as being in favour or opposition to the protest. But it did contain the names and faces of the (two) protesters.

The planned burn zone is in the one of the current fire-affected areas - although probably not the massive ones you've been reading about, 500 miles away.

The article posted asks whether the area of the planned burn "has now been completed by Mother Nature" alongside screen grabs of the cached article, and you can see the tenor of the comments section what sorts of feelings that provokes.

It's pretty reasonable to assume that the post was deleted to protect two protesters from harassment.

<comment><USER32> Protecting the protesters could certainly be one of the reasons to take it down. But that shows they are sympathetic to their cause, when really they did a horrible thing.

I don't think that makes the article less on point.

<comment><USER31> Hang on, what "horrible thing" did they do?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> "Throw another shrimp on the barbie", he said. "No worries, mate. It'll be fine", he said...

FYI - I'm an Aussie born and bred, and part of our culture is to laugh at ourselves, even during the hard times. That's how Australians stay so resilient through hardship.

<comment><USER34> "It'll be fine"? Not "She'll be right"?

<comment><USER33> Ha! I already got downvoted for my culturally appropriate joke. If I'd said "She'll be right", I probably would have gotten banned from HN.... again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> is there any way of harnessing all of that out of control heat energy to try and salvage at least some good from the situation?

<comment><USER36> Technically yes but not practically because the temperature differential is what is needed and well as considerable logistical and engineering issues of making something which uses it large enough to deal with a moving and raging fire - let alone not interfering with fightint efforts or being accused of arson to not pay for fuel.

Nobody has used Centralia, PA as a generator despite the long burning underground coal fire - it has also been moving underground in a regular pattern.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> At

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21934288](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21934288)

from user voldacar is:

> Could you repost your original post (now flagged) so I and others can see > your argument?

From

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21933963](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21933963)

here is the original post:

For

"1/ The looming climate crisis will be to this century what the two world wars were to the previous one. It will require countries and institutions to re- allocate capital from other endeavors to fight against a warming planet. This is the decade we will begin to see this re-allocation of capital. We will see carbon taxed like the vice that it is in most countries around the world this decade, including in the US. We will see real estate values collapse in some of the most affected regions and we will see real estate values increase in regions that benefit from the warming climate. We will see massive capital investments made in protecting critical regions and infrastructure. We will see nuclear power make a resurgence around the world, particularly smaller reactors that are easier to build and safer to operate. We will see installed solar power worldwide go from ~650GW currently to over 20,000GW by the end of this decade. All of these things and many more will cause the capital markets to focus on and fund the climate issue to the detriment of many other sectors."

there is an accurate one word summary -- nonsense. With two or more words, even worse than nonsense.

It's time to drive a stake through the heart of this climate change alarmism. We can do a good job just in this little post.

In simple terms, there is no serious evidence that CO2 from human activities at anything like probable concentrations will have any significant effect on the temperature or climate of the earth.

Yes, CO2 is a _greenhouse gas_ , but it is a long logical path from there to any claims of a significant effect.

We need just two steps:

(1) History.

There is NOTHING in the climate history from the present back to about 1 million years ago that supports the idea that anything like realistic concentrations of CO2 from human activities will have any significant effect on temperatures.

(i) For the ice core records going back ~1 million years, yes, both temperatures and CO2 concentrations went both up and down. BUT, if we just look carefully at the big graph in Al Gore's movie, with high irony, that graph totally destroys his claims from that graph: He misread the graph. The main point is that there is an 800 year delay; CO2 concentrations changed 800 years AFTER the temperature changes, from whatever cause.

Specifically: (a) When temperatures started increasing, from whatever cause, CO2 concentrations were LOW, not high. (b) About 800 years later CO2 concentrations were HIGH, from increased biological activity from the higher temperatures. (c) When temperatures started to fall, from whatever cause, CO2 concentrations were still HIGH, not low. (d) The high CO2 concentrations did not keep the temperatures from falling. (e) Once the temperatures fell, about 800 years later so did CO2 concentrations. Net, CO2 did not cause the higher temperatures or keep the higher temperatures from falling.

(ii) In the last 2000 years we had the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age, and there is no suggestion that CO2 concentration changes caused either.

(iii) Starting in the 1940s and through about 1970, we actually had some significant cooling, but in those years CO2 from human activities -- WWII, pulling of the Great Depression, and the economic boom after WWII -- increased. So, we got COOLING, not warming, with the additional CO2 from human activities.

Net, there is NO data from the historical record that supports the claim that higher CO2 will cause higher temperatures.

(2) Yes, CO2 is a <i>greenhouse</i> gas. The absorption spectrum is at

[https://webbook.nist.gov/cgi/cbook.cgi?Spec=C124389&Index=0&...](https://webbook.nist.gov/cgi/cbook.cgi?Spec=C124389&Index=0&Type=IR&Large=on)

So, CO2 absorbs in three narrow bands, one for each of bending, stretching, and twisting of the molecule, out in the infrared.

No, Tom Friedman of the NYT: CO2 does not absorb sunlight, and anyone can confirm this by looking at a source of CO2, e.g., exhaling or the bubbles from soda pop, and simply observing that the CO2 is not visible and does not cast a shadow.

So, the theory has been that the CO2 warms the planet. Then there has been

ALARMIST CLAIM: Extra CO2 from current human activities will soon cause significant extra warming and, thus, "climate change", a "climate crisis", etc.

Since the historical record can't support the ALARMIST CLAIM, we have to rely on the theory based on the absorption spectrum of CO2 and computation.

Well the computations were done by dozens of teams, and the results are summarized in

[http://www.energyadvocate.com/gc1.jpg](http://www.energyadvocate.com/gc1.jpg)

Net, as in this graph, nearly all the computations predicted rapid, significant increases in temperatures soon. Well the time of predicted increases came and went with no sign of anything like the predicted increases.

In science, when predictions are made and found to be false, we junk the science.

No doubt, the failures in that graph are some of the worst in all the history of science. GOOD science, e.g., the hunt for and finding the Higgs boson at the LHC (Large Hadron Collider), the observations that confirmed the predictions of black holes, many other confirmed predictions of special and general relativity, the A-bomb, the H-bomb, the design of the Hubble telescope, to the quantum mechanics in semi-conductors that are the core of current digital electronics, the science was just rock solid.

We are just awash in super solid science, and the global warming computations in that graph are just a humiliation of anything scientific and just sick.

So, for the ALARMIST CLAIM, there is no scientific support.

For more there is the video documentary _The Great Global Warming Swindle_ at

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52Mx0_8YEtg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52Mx0_8YEtg)

there see (A) the remarks of MIT Professor R. Lindzen on (i) why any warming we might be getting now cannot be from CO2 and (ii) the huge pile of money that didn't just buy off the climate scientists but HIRED the climate alarmists pretending to be climate scientists, maybe 10 times more alarmists than real scientists.

Also that documentary argues that the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age were caused by variations in the rates of sun spots. More sun spots increase the solar wind which, from more links in a causal chain, in the end slows cloud formation and has a net warming effect.

So, since both (1) history from ~1 million years ago to the present and (2) the computations based on CO2 being a greenhouse gas fail to support the ALARMIST CLAIM, we have no scientific support or even meaningful evidence for the ALARMIST CLAIM or the proposed very expensive reductions in carbon, etc.

In this case and quite generally, if we are willing to go forward with big, expensive changes without good evidence, then we leave ourselves open to some of the worst mistakes in all of civilization.

One current example of such mistakes is killing off the rhinoceroses to get their horns for use in Chinese medicine.

For another such mistake, there is from page 76 of

Susan Milbrath, _Star Gods of the Maya: Astronomy in Art, Folklore, and Calendars (The Linda Schele Series in Maya and Pre-Columbian Studies),_ ISBN-13 978-0292752269, University of Texas Press, 2000.

with

"Indeed, blood sacrifice is required for the sun to move, according to Aztec cosmology (Durian 1971:179; Sahaguin 1950 \- 1982, 7:8)."

That is the Mayan charlatans killed people to pour their blood on a rock to keep the sun moving across the sky. No doubt the sun actually did keep moving across the sky.

If we go forward with the Green New Deal, the Paris Accords, carbon taxes, etc. we are making a mistake as irrational as in the Chinese medicine and the Mayans.

Warning: It appears that now the sun is entering the part of the 11 year or so sunspot cycle with fewer sun spots. So, we are in line for a few years of cooling.

So, don't believe a claim of the global warming alarmists that their efforts caused the cooling.

At this point, continuing with entertaining the ALARMIST CLAIM is just nonsense, expensive nonsense.

</comment><comment><USER38> Why aren't Europe, Greta, Hollywood artists screaming their head off just like they did at Brazil/Amazon Forest on June?

<comment><USER25> The rainforest doesn't naturally burn down (clue is in the name "rain" forest) - it's being destroyed tree by tree by human action.

The Australian forest is much thinner and does experience some natural burning, but this one is much bigger due to climate change.

Also, both of these are bad.

<comment><USER38> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_season](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_season) ...and check out the references.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> It's sad to see how these fires are automatically linked to climate change. Until the mid 2000's Australia burned down small patches of forests to prevent large disasters like these we have now. But that changed when burning down forests (mind you to prevent larger forest fires in the future) were deemed too bad for the environment.

So now the policies and fire prevention techniques changed (for the worse) and exactly what many firefighters predicted has happened: mass fires covering the east coast. It doesn't matter how much the climate changed when the whole part about prevention has been screwed up.

<comment><USER40> [https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/nov/12/is- th...](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/nov/12/is-there-really- a-green-conspiracy-to-stop-bushfire-hazard-reduction)

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the link, someone staying with us was saying exactly what this article is debunking. I've sent it to them, but I'm expecting an 'unchanged opinion' type response.

<comment><USER40> No worries. The last thing Australia needs is bad info at the moment.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Watson inaugurated its first class of social and tech entrepreneurs - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/watson-university/623ac6f0ed35

<comment><AUTHOR> interesting concept of institutionalizing (to a degree) the development of entrepreneurship but in a different manner than classical upper education.</comment>


Vice Just Released Chilling Footage from Behind Charlottesville's Battle Lines - <AUTHOR> http://www.motherjones.com/media/2017/08/vice-news-just-released-chilling-must-watch-footage-from-behind-charlottesvilles-battle-lines/ <comment><USER2> direct link to the video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIrcB1sAN8I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIrcB1sAN8I)

</comment><comment><USER3> relevant:

[https://twitter.com/zarzarbinkss/status/897880604309684224](https://twitter.com/zarzarbinkss/status/897880604309684224)

from "Der Fremde in uns" ("The Stranger Within Us") by Arno Gruen.. from one of the last chapters, crappy translation below the German:

> Mit liebevoller Toleranz und verständnisvollem Entgegenkommen werden wir > gewalttätige Rechtsradikale und Neo-Nazis nicht besänftigen können. Aus der > Forschung mit geschändeten und mißhandelten Kindern ist bekannt, daß diese > auf liebevolles Entgegenkommen mit Haß und Gewalt reagieren. [..]

> Haß und Gewalt sind jedoch auch nicht die geeigneten Gegenmittel. Im Umgang > mit haßerfüllten Menschen gilt es vor allem, konsequent zu sein. Das heißt: > Grenzen setzen! Das ist die einzige Sprache, die Menschen ohne innere > Identität verstehen. Wer ihnen helfen möchte, braucht eine innere > Authorität. [..]

> Konsequenz trägt zunächst zur Beruhigung derjenigen bei, die Autorität für > ihr Persönlichkeitsgefüge brauchen. Bei Hitlers Putsch 1923 in München > geschah das Gegenteil. Als die bayrische Regierung Hitler mit ein paar > Schüssen Einhalt gebot, fiel dessen Bewegung zusammen. Erst als die > gerichtlichen Instanzen ihm verständnisvoll als Menschen mit berechtigtem > "Leid" entgegenkamen, verkehrte sich der Zusammenbruch in einen Neubeginn.

\-----

> With loving tolerance and an understanding approach we won't be able to > placate violent right-wing extremists and neo-nazis. From the studies with > abused children we know, that they react with hatred and violence to a > loving approach. [..]

> But hatred and violence is not the appropriate anti-dote either. When > dealing with hateful people the most important thing is to be consequent. > This means: setting boundaries! This is the only language that people > without an inner identity understand. Who wants to help them needs inner > authority. [..]

> Being consequent calms those who need authority for their personality > structure. During Hitlers coup [attempt] 1923 in Munich the opposite > happened. When the Bavarian government stopped Hitler with a few bullets, > the movement collapsed. Only when the judicial instances approached him > understandingly as a human with justified "suffering", the collapse reversed > into a new beginning.

\-----

I'd say the ACLU may be great with many things, but here, they're way out of their depth. As is HN. Even journalists begging Trump for a statement, while well meaning, are way too weak; either you respect the office of President _or_ the person currently holding it, you can hardly have both. Generally it would be great if those who don't have the guts and the grounding for the necessary confrontations would stop trying to stop those who do. Arno Gruen, Hannah Arendt, et al: don't discard the wisdom they extracted from things that can simply not be allowed to happen again. Or ignore all I said, but do read their books. I left out big chunks from the Arno Gruen quote; when he says being consequent and setting boundaries he really means disarming people, not wailing on them or anything. I'm too full of spite for that job, but I'd have the back of anyone who isn't but also isn't a coward. Nothing more, _nothing less_.

<comment><USER4> I wholeheartedly agree.

How about it being a felony to brand yourself part of a party that was an enemy of the state at one point? Not citizens of other countries, but self- professed members of a political class or party that caused a war and casualties. Would the United States permit an ISIS rally, or an Al Qaeda rally in the middle of a city with a state University? But yet somehow we're allowing one of the most heinous groups in all of history, one that we were at war with less than 100 years ago, to represent themselves in public, armed and screaming for inequality, for murder of people that aren't pure Aryan?

This isn't a freedom of speech issue, this is a what are we going to tolerate issue. We won't let people walk down the street with an AL Qaeda shirt on, why should we let people walk down the street with swastikas?

<comment><USER5> This. Violent sedition, undermining the rule of law and promoting the destruction of Democracy is not a right and defending Democracy is our duty.

<comment><USER6> What is democracy without the freedom of association, which OP was proposing to undermine by jailing self-professed members of a group. We already have laws against the actual seditious acts, we don't need laws saying which groups you may and may not belong to.

<comment><USER5> When that group exists to undermine the rule of law and carries out illegal acts it actually is against to law to belong to them. It's falls under conspiracy and aiding and abetting laws. This is why you can't be a member of ISIS.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Reactive Offline-first Database - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/pubkey/rxdb#mango-query <comment><USER2> This looks cool! We actually built something conceptually similar to this for the Nylas N1 mail client ([https://github.com/Nylas/N1](https://github.com/Nylas/N1)) and open sourced it with an (unfortunately) very similar name: [https://github.com/bengotow/electron- RxDB](https://github.com/bengotow/electron-RxDB).

Curious if the author has made any optimizations around the observable queries to prevent small changes to the database from re-running everything? We had to do a bunch of optimizations so that changes would only cause queries to re- execute when absolutely necessary. Our case might be extreme though - the mail client has several GBs of mail data in SQLite and 50+ observable queries for different parts of the UI.

<comment><USER3> We've been doing performance with [http://gun.js.org/](http://gun.js.org/) as well on reactive push-based data sync, here are some of our results: [https://github.com/amark/gun/wiki/100000-ops-sec-in- IE6-on-2...](https://github.com/amark/gun/wiki/100000-ops-sec-in-IE6-on-2GB- Atom-CPU) .

I would be very interested in chatting with more people (I see the Realm comment as well) about this stuff. Maybe we could do a podcast on JS databases and perf. (Here are my JS perf findings: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEqH- oZ4UXI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEqH-oZ4UXI) )

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wish whoever posted this would explain what it really is, especially addressing how it compares to _alternatives_ regarding scope and performance...

<comment><USER5> Yep. Theres a big need for something like Firebase but with support for arbitrarily fancy queries.

<comment><USER6> Take a look at PouchDB and Hood.ie

<comment><USER7> This project appears to be built atop PouchDB fwiw!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> How do you handle the fast producer (query result) - slow consumer problem without any kind of backpressure? I would love to see an implementation based on channels (js-csp , core.async..).

</comment><comment><USER9> Given the presence of encryption. Few words on how it's done?</comment>


Evernote is moving all its data, machine learning to Google Cloud - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/13/evernote/ <comment><USER2> > As a result, Evernote will be shutting down its previous storage > architecture that was based around a private cloud infrastructure, along > with some of its own tech.

Good riddance! Deploying Openstack Swift was a nightmare in my personal experience. A few outages and I decided I'll never work a job supporting it again.

If a recruiter mentions "Openstack" to me what I hear is a shamble mess of a services with components you'll be on-call for which will break in unique ways. Oh and of course you're expected to maintain the entire infrastructure while you do your normal job.

Just move to the cloud already.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. OpenStack is a total dumpster fire, yet still companies like RedHat push it.

I _narrowly_ avoided a long term (career-derailing) OpenStack assignment...four days in...oh, this is all based on OpenStack?... _transfer approved_

<comment><USER4> Good to know. For a year or two now, I've felt guilty that I haven't taken the time to learn OpenStack, and felt I was missing out on a career-enriching experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What exactly does a company like Evernote have to do with machine learning ? Do they have a targeted advertising platform? I can see how it might be good for things like image recognition but what else are they doing with it?

I am Genuinely curious, I've not used Evernote for several years, it just got out of hand and bloated I found.

Machine learning is really starting to feel just like another trigger phrase.

<comment><USER6> Their paid features include OCR, both for handwriting and images of printed text. Seems like a textbook machine learning problem.

[https://blog.evernote.com/blog/2015/01/23/search- handwriting...](https://blog.evernote.com/blog/2015/01/23/search-handwriting- evernote/)

<comment><USER7> And I've been very, very impressed with the handwriting recognition. I discovered it by accident before it was a paid feature when I was searching for something and it brought up an image of some scribbled notes I had taken with the search highlighted. And my handwriting is bad, really bad.

<comment><USER8> Awhile ago someone asked how a product like ABBYY Finereader, which does great when OCRing typed text, does on handwriting. Not well at all I'm afraid:

[https://gist.github.com/dannguyen/50dcb5a8f4230e7a8a40bfe2d0...](https://gist.github.com/dannguyen/50dcb5a8f4230e7a8a40bfe2d0a1c836)

<comment><USER9> Evernote doesn't just OCR handwriting to a single text; it indexes a bunch of possibilities for every handwritten word. This way the search functionality can search through all these variations, not just the most likely one.

<comment><USER10> I haven't used its handwriting OCR feature so genuinely curious. Does it not show a single piece of text? If not, what value does the OCR handwriting provide? Is it solely for the search feature?

<comment><USER11> Yep it seems to be, it indexes every possibility that the handwriting might be so that if you search for it then it comes up. You can see this if you dig through the XML it exports.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I used to use Evernote all the time, although I wouldn't consider myself a power user. I don't think I utilized all of the features very well. I came to it through Tim Ferriss, I believe, and it was really amazing for me at the time.

I hardly ever use it anymore, using mostly notebooks for actual note taking now. I used to use the web clipper to save articles, but I found that when I would put something in Evernote, I hardly ever went back to access it later. It was like putting things in a vault. That probably all speaks more to me than the product. I am curious what new features they can provide with access to all of Google's machine learning APIs.

<comment><USER13> I'm in the same boat, I would try to save articles into it, especially recipes but there are two reasons why I stopped.

The awful search with the web clipper plugin. It seems to match any single word in a saved article. It just ends up being faster to ignore the evernote typically unrelated results and look through Google results.

Inability to embed YouTube videos. Once again with recipes I'm better off using a browser since I'll have to open one up to view the video anyway. Most of the good cooking sites include a video embedded with the recipe, making for a more pleasant experience in the browser.

<comment><USER14> Instapaper is a pretty nice evernote alternative

<comment><USER11> Maybe before it was acquired by Pinterest, but who knows now?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "Its" data?

There's no mention in TFA of the data belonging in any way to the _users_. And maybe that's accurate.

Yes, we have web/cloud apps now. But that is—or should be—orthogonal to where data is stored and hosted. Of course app vendors have every incentive to create lock-in. And most users are just happy to hear that "you do not need to take any action" and your data will just be magically faster and more secure. But at least around here, wouldn't people rather own their storage? Does remoteStorage have any legs?[0]

This kind of happened with authentication, right? It's common now to use OAuth to provide login using a third party. Of course, they're mostly silos, too, but at least in principle an app could let you choose a provider.

[0] [https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-dejong- remotestorage-07](https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-dejong-remotestorage-07)

<comment><USER16> I wish people cared.

After many years in this industry I've personally come to the conclusion that nobody _actually_ cares about security, privacy, or data ownership. People say they do but they are lying, as evidenced by the fact that they do not change their behavior. People gripe about security and privacy but continue to use "free" surveillanceware/spyware and continue to migrate everything to cloud hosts they don't control.

The only thing people care about in reality is convenience and user experience, and they're obviously willing to give up an almost unlimited amount of personal privacy and control to get those things.

<comment><USER17> It sounds like that might be a reaction to the lack of obvious repercussions of giving up privacy and security. What tangible harm does the average person come to by giving up privacy, security, and data ownership?

<comment><USER3> You don't necessarily sacrifice those when choosing a third party. We all apparently work in related industries...do you and your colleagues sit around and dream up ways to exploit customers? I don't, nor do those I work with.

<comment><USER18> I don't think anyone does. Its rarely a thought-out malice. It's more of unexpected things that happen because no one thought or cared to safeguard against that, or because such safeguards would've broken some legit feature or business model.

Like that E2E vs spam filtering issue explaination from GMail engineers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There is a very strong chance that this PR was "strongly encouraged" by Google in exchange for huge credits on the actual service. They've been hunting for larger customers they can use to advertise like they did with Spotify.

<comment><USER20> While I've heard this narrative discussed before, I'd like to offer some thoughts:

\- Companies do not (or should not) make cloud purchasing decisions be based entirely on some kind of preferential pricing. Cloud is far from a commodity, especially in ML/Big Data space. In both Evernote and Spotify cases, they highlight strategic technological advantages of Google Cloud. In fact, customers tend to be fairly specific in outlining their findings[0], cost rarely being the main factor.

\- I urge you to share evidence that Spotify received "huge credits" in exchange for PR.

\- It's not unusual for companies to make such announcements. It's very much standard practice for AWS customers. It's good PR for both parties, imho.

\- There are many other "big" names disclosed in 2016. And it's no secret that what Snapchat has achieved on Google's PaaS is nothing short of extraordinary.

[0] [https://medium.com/@thetinot/i-think-google-cloud-is-the- bes...](https://medium.com/@thetinot/i-think-google-cloud-is-the-best-best- tech-best-pricing-best-support-best-roadmap-and-best-4b4e17856505)

(disc: Work on Google Cloud and put together [0] )

<comment><USER19> Well, I didn't say that Spotify made the move in exchange for credits. However, since you brought it up:

> Some critics, surprised by such a high-profile company going with what is > seen as the distant Number 3 in the hyper-scale public cloud market, have > suggested that Google extended a sweetheart deal as part of the move. > Details of the agreement haven't been disclosed, but Nicholas Harteau, > Spotify's vice president of engineering and infrastructure, told The Wall > Street Journal that the company "negotiated hard on price."[1]

> Of course, for such a high profile customer and for the priviledge of a case > study, we can assume Spotify has some heavy discounts. [2]

Not "proof," but it's pretty well-mentioned across the industry that Google benefited from this deal probably more than Spotify did.

[1] [http://searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com/news/4500276342/S...](http://searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com/news/4500276342/Spotify- moves-to-Google-cloud-with-eyes-on-big-data)

[2] [https://medium.com/@davidmytton/how-much-is-spotify- paying-g...](https://medium.com/@davidmytton/how-much-is-spotify-paying- google-cloud-ebb3bf180f15#.ets0p214i)

<comment><USER20> I understand your points - it's narrative that's floating on the internet, and it's one that's very easy to believe.

Unfortunately [2] is 100% opinion.

As far as [1], every single "large" deal is negotiated. That is standard practice for deals of this size, including your employer and AWS. It's also very different from "Google is the one benefitted" and "Spotify chose Google because of sweetheart pricing" and "Spotify got paid to do PR for Google". As I've said before, these narratives diminish both parties. It's Trump's "many people say that..."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Step 1: Replace the CEO with a Googler.

Step 2: Migrate to Google platform.

Step 3: Exit via Google acquisition.

<comment><USER22> Step 4: Existing application shut down by Google.

<comment><USER23> Step 5: Blog post about the wonderful journey users are about to embark on.

<comment><USER24> Step 6: Mention a 2 week shutdown notice and do not provide support to to download data in a sensible way or migrate to a different service.

<comment><USER25> Evernote actually got nice export tools build into their desktop client.

<comment><USER26> Nice until you have to actually use them.

<comment><USER25> I have used them to get out of Evernote. Seemed to work pretty well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Not sure how long they will be around but I am not sure if this is a high yield project at this time. Instead they should be focusing on fixing defects and bringing important features to users.

<comment><USER28> Perhaps upgrading their back end is part of doing those things?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I've migrated completely to DEVONthink (Mac/iOS only, though). Sync databases are encrypted and they live on my own WebDAV server, so I can keep as many notes as I can squeeze into a dozen TB or so of available storage.

I don't begrudge Evernote their business model, but I'm much more comfortable with upfront software licensing than subscriptions. That's especially true when it means I no longer have to trust anyone else's terms of service when it comes to keeping my private stuff private.

</comment><comment><USER30> Export all to enex. Import into Notes.app. Done.

</comment><comment><USER31> Has Evernote gotten over their reliability problems? At one point there seemed to be an exodus over eating people's data.

Eg [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7009995](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7009995)

</comment><comment><USER32> I hope that they finally remove their 100,000 note limit with their new infrastructure.

</comment><comment><USER33> Is there any technical post about what to move where? Would like to know the technology and how they exploit GC to support such a service.

</comment><comment><USER34> All your data are belong to Google. Eventually.

</comment><comment><USER35> I thought they had a good business in China? Apparently it will stop working here once they move to G-you-know-what.

<comment><USER36> The China service is a completely separate service from the main one. Different servers entirely (same-ish code though), housed within servers inside the great firewall. AFAIK that stuff is staying in the data center in China.

(Evernote employee here)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> It's the new buzzword of the year, now that VR is flopping.

<comment><USER38> You're so wrong on so many levels.

<comment><USER37> Elaborate then please, level by level.

<comment><USER38> Level 1: 'Buzzword' has the connotation that it sounds impressive to outsiders but is not much else than hot air. Sometimes there is even a connotation that it is an imprecise, non-technical term.

Level 2: Machine Learning, however, has been well-defined in the past (starting in the 50s), is now widely used, contains a whole set of (old but also) new innovative techniques and actually contributes massive value to many domains.

Level 3: VR is far from dead.

EDIT: a word EDIT_2: I would have agreed if you had said 'trend'. Yes, it is a trend.

<comment><USER37> Thank you.

<comment><USER38> You're welcome. Thanks for being polite.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> In case if anybody is looking for a replacement - [https://turtlapp.com/](https://turtlapp.com/). Bonus: it's written in Common Lisp ([https://github.com/turtl/api](https://github.com/turtl/api))

</comment><comment><USER40> A rose by any other name smells just like Google Wave's Zombie?

</comment><comment><USER41> Not really that good news from a customer point of view.

And there goes my data, my privacy, ...

That said I really liked evernote. Decent alternatives, cross-platform, mobile app, good usability, ...?

<comment><USER28> > And there goes my data, my privacy, ...

I'm not sure why this would be the case. They're just using google cloud services (computing, storage, and apparently tensor flow). You use tons of other services right now which are built on the same back end. It would be no different for you and me (end users I mean) if they had chosen Amazon.

<comment><USER41> That is per se correct.

I'm careful what services I use, sometimes I prefer local p2p such as bittorrent sync over uncontrollable clouds for personal data.

I'm mostly concerned about what they will use the deep-learning thing for though. Not sure I'll want it to work with my notes.</comment></comment></comment>


WordPress.com SOPA blackout page - <AUTHOR> http://wordpress.com/#fresh

<comment><USER2> They could have a larger reach if they blacked out all the blogs on the site, but I guess people would be mad about it?

<comment><USER3> We've made it possible for users to opt-in to show a ribbon to raise awareness until the 24th and blacking out their sites for the protest on Wednesday as well if they want.

You can read more here: [http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2012/01/18/join-our- censorship-...](http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2012/01/18/join-our-censorship- protest/)

<comment><USER4> The juxtaposition of the "A better way to blog" and a gallery of censored layouts is beautiful. Congratulations to the team!</comment></comment></comment>


Mick Mulvaney's Master Class in Destroying a Bureaucracy From Within - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/16/magazine/consumer-financial-protection-bureau-trump.html <comment><USER2> Alternative title: Elizabeth Warren succeeds in creating agency insensitive to political pressure.

I think the current administration is absolutely wrong about the payday loan industry. But at the same time the law that created the CPFB was terrible, and its frankly shocking to me that Elizabeth Warren failed to foresee this. She purposely created a particularly undemocratic institution which quite predictably, but to her horror, went off the rails.

The way to stop payday lending is through congressional action. The way to counteract unfriendly lobbyists is with horse trading. One of the reasons legislation like this has become harder is the disappearance of earmarks.

<comment><USER3> "stop payday lending"

Have you asked any poor people about that? Because getting rid of payday lending just leaves people with worse options or no options at all.

<comment><USER2> I'm not naive. I understand the difficulties of unsecured consumer loans to the poorest borrowers.

As a society though, there are contracts which are unconscionable and these should not be enforceable by law. A lender who typically faces default rates of less than 10% while charging APR's greater than 400%, in my view should not get to use the full force of law to enforce their collections.

<comment><USER3> I'm a member of society (with a law degree) and think these are absolutely conscionable and in many circumstances (some of which I've been in), are absolutely beneficial. Looking at the APR on a very short-term loan for a very small amount is missing the forest and the trees for the crack in your glasses.

If you think these loans can be provided at a significantly lower rate, then you've obviously got a huge market opportunity in front of you, and should pursue it. Otherwise, you're advocating for removing what is often the best option in unfortunate circumstances.

<comment><USER4> I think it's patently obvious that these services rely on unconscionable contracts - they are literally premised upon financial coercion. However, litigation on the basis of unconscionability is unlikely to be successful due to market realities in the legal field.

Payday loans offer financially distressed individuals a method of accessing financing, despite their risk profile. This is laudable.

However, most studies on the matter produce voluminous reams of data regarding the debt-trap the industry creates. Ultimately, the public ends up shouldering a lot of externalities created by this loop.

Can we achieve the beneficial results while attenuating the magnitude of the wealth transfer from the poor and from taxpayers to the creditors in this instance?

It seems we can - there are other models used in the development world for delivering micro-loans which work better. But could they outcompete the margins generated by debt traps? Unlikely. Another avenue is to regulate the industry - which we already do. The Truth in Lending Act arose partially as a result of people being lied to about the contents of their credit agreements. We could create a schedule of fees for advanced amounts, allow for applications for non-scheduled fees on the basis of exceptional Opex or Capex requirements to serve a given community, etc with supporting margin calculations. This isn't hard - we already do far more complicated work in setting acceptable profit margins in construction, utilities, telecom, etc.

Are these solutions perfect? No. But are they better than the status quo? It would appear so. That's why we've migrated off the payday loan model for producing beneficial results in areas where the profit motive isn't the driver of service growth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This article leaves off a very critical detail around why people were critical of the CFPB in the first place.

Contra this statement:

> Their unease had only grown as Mulvaney ordered a hiring freeze, put new > enforcement cases on hold and sent the Federal Reserve, which funds the > C.F.P.B., a budget request for zero dollars, saying the bureau could make do > with the money it had on hand.

That was advertised as a feature of the CFPB when it was originally created, as they are funded from the fines they collect from violations.

Anyone who has a problem with the incentives in privatized prisons should have a problem with the funding structure of the CFPB, as they are both policing for profit.

<comment><USER6> The main problem with things like privatizing prisons is that doing so seriously reduces the ability of the citizenry to affect how they operate, compared to them being run by the government.

<comment><USER5> In that case, the citizenry voted their opinions on how the government should run the CFPB for 4 years.

<comment><USER6> That's a bit of a stretch. But at least the citizenry is able to do so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> He's doing his job: keeping the little people in their place.

</comment><comment><USER7> The easiest way to stop payday lending is to mandate weekly pay for anyone making under $100K a year. Why should workers be loaning two weeks pay, on average, to their employer?

</comment><comment><USER8> Can someone summarize please? I can't see through the pay wall.

<comment><USER9> Here's a mirror: archive.is/fl5ta

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Live by the sword, die by the sword.

The CFPB is an extra-constitutional body. It's creation and whatever happens to it just showcase how off the rails things are.

<comment><USER11> Extra constitutional? What does this even mean? What is every other government agency then?

<comment><USER12> > The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor > prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or > to the people.

\- Tenth Amendment, Bill of Rights

The federal government does not have the right to create agencies and regulation at will. With certain exceptions (e.g. the DoD), it is reasonable to conclude that many federal agencies are, in fact, unconstitutional in scope.</comment></comment></comment>


Surprise, Justin.TV Builds Own CDN To Cut Costs, Improve Performance - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/16/surprise-justintv-is-actually-a-real-technology-company/#comment-1925058

<comment><USER2> So, technically, the software we've written is a distributed flash video distribution system, of the type one could use to run a CDN.

But "distributed flash video system" is like 20 characters longer and a lot harder to say than CDN.

It runs partly on EC2, partly on our own servers right now, and relies on the properties of neither.

It's much, much cheaper than buying software from Adobe or Wowza or paying a CDN.

<comment><USER3> Are you going to offer streaming services to other companies?

<comment><USER2> It's still under too much development and too unstable to offer an outside API, but it's something we're very much considering.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Justin.TV seems to have a very interesting startup model. An apparently trivial "outer" application which needs a good deal of innovation "under the covers" to pull off, which is where the real competitive edge comes from. Pulls in a different direction from how most people parse "build what users want".

I wonder how they pitched it to YC (and other investors).

<comment><USER5> >> I wonder how they pitched it to YC (and other investors).

AFAIK, Justin and a friend took part in the first YC session with a web calendar called Kiko, which they sold on eBay for 5 or 6 figures to a media company after Google came out with theirs. They started working on Justin.tv to have a product in a market which didn't exist at the time, mobile streaming video, to have a better chance of survival.

I believe Justin et al have been working on Justin.tv even before Google purchased YouTube, and are funded by investors closely linked to YCombinator who enjoyed his YCombinator calendar startup.

<comment><USER6> _"funded by investors closely linked to YCombinator"_

And maybe a little from YC partners, too...

<comment><USER7> YC is the closest link to YC, smarty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't think running your own software on EC2 qualifies as building a CDN.

<comment><USER9> It just uses EC2/S3 to push off excess bandwidth.

Bandwidth from a company like Alpha Red works out to about 3 cents/gigabyte if you buy it in 50 megabit per second chunks, or 6 cents/gigabyte if you buy it in 4tb per month chunks.

S3 is 18 cents/gigabyte.

Megabit per second is cheaper if you can keep it at 50% utilization, so baseline bandwidth is actually quite cheap. You'd be crazy to be that bandwidth intensive and pay 18 cents/gig for all your traffic. It adds up quickly.

<comment><USER10> Cost saving alone doesn't qualify for a CDN either. You need geographical distribution.

<comment><USER9> I'm not saying it qualifies as a CDN - I'm pretty sure it wouldn't - just that it's more complex than simply putting stuff up on S3, and based on the info in the article, the above is my guess as to what they're doing. You don't get 1/4 of a penny per hour of flv by building a worldwide network of servers.

Well, perhaps if you were as big as Google you could. I don't know enough about the economics of scale. But you'd have to be doing some serious volume at the local internet exchanges.

By the way, I was kind of thinking out loud because I'm in the same position:

[http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/rocksolida...](http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/rocksolidarcade.com?site0=rocksolidarcade.com&site1=justin.tv&y=r&z=3&h=300&w=610&range=6m&size=Medium)

Bandwidth is averaging above 1mb per person (and growing - the new games are bigger than Stunt Pilot and people play more the more we have), which is probably quite a bit less than justin.tv, but still costly. I definitely won't leave the US for bandwidth, but I'll probably end up with a mixture of baseline servers, gigabyte per month servers and a mirror of static content ready on S3 (as well as a static version of the site), just in case too many of my servers go down at once or we get a massive traffic spike.

Maybe then I'll get a story on TC about how I've created a "CDN", and hey, I wouldn't email them saying remove the story, it's innaccurate. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> My understanding of a CDN was:

You build your own geographically diverse network. Servers in each country/state/area. You put in very high speed links between each node.

When a user comes to get something from you, you redirect them to the node that is closest to them (Either geographically, or in terms of hops/ping time).

Is this not what CDN means typically?

<comment><USER10> Yes. But TechCrunch apparently doesn't know it.

You don't need a server in each country, just "close to your users". Like one on the east coast, one on the west coast, one in Europe, and you don't care about the rest of the world. But I am not sure Justin.tv has that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wow, are techcrunch comments the new youtube comments?</comment>


Ariane RISC-V CPU - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/pulp-platform/ariane <comment><AUTHOR> This effort is part of the PULP Platform [1]. They have a number of cool chips and projects.

Its a pretty large effort and they are releasing more and more of their work into open source. Here [2] you can see what they have already released and their plans going foreward.

Project like LowRisc Open-SoC [3] using some of the smaller PULP cores as minion chips for things like IO offloading, security and so on. They can also reuse a lot of the work done for PULP.

[1] [https://www.pulp-platform.org/](https://www.pulp-platform.org/)

[2] [https://www.pulp-platform.org/release-plan/](https://www.pulp- platform.org/release-plan/)

[3] [http://www.lowrisc.org/](http://www.lowrisc.org/)

</comment><comment><USER2> The lack of floating point and atomics is an "interesting" choice for a Linux- capable chip. It might run Fedora[1], but would likely require kernel support for emulating floats (as the distro is compiled assuming hard floats) and of course without atomics would only be single core. The README says they plan to add atomics.

At least it supports compressed instructions. There are some actual chips about to be released without the C (compressed) extension, but Fedora and Debian are compiling everything assuming the C extension.

In Fedora news, just today we've got a bootable (but very minimal) RISC-V disk image[2] that you can run in qemu.

[1] [https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/RISC-V](https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/RISC-V)

[2] [https://fedorapeople.org/groups/risc-v/disk- images/](https://fedorapeople.org/groups/risc-v/disk-images/)

<comment><USER3> Not to disagree with you, you highlighted intended use for linux. It touches on something i have wondered about. How far you could get in creating a general purpose computing platform with no floating point support at all, including no soft float. If you could avoid float, you could save on implementation costs, and round out a source of bugs downstream. Are there traditions that takes this path?

<comment><USER4> Note that you can also code the floating point instructions in microcode (a kind of firmware of the CPU).

<comment><USER4> Not sure why downvoted, but this basically allows you to redefine (within limits) the behavior of opcodes after you have shipped the CPU. I thought that was relevant.

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

<comment><USER5> And RISC-V has a "machine mode" which the OS doesn't know about, which is effectively a place to do microcode.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> From the Readme:

"While developing Ariane it has become evident that, in order to support Linux, the atomic extension is going to be mandatory. While the core is currently booting Linux by emulating Atomics in BBL (in a single core environment this is trivially met by disabling interrupts) this is not the behavior which is intended. For that reason we are going to fully support all atomic extensions in the very near future."

Is the atomic extension mentioned here something like the LOCK prefix in x86, i.e it just lock the bus for the instructions that follow? I'm guessing this is non-trivial to implement?

<comment><USER5> Load-reserve, store-conditional, and atomic memory operations (e.g., AMO-ADD).

<comment><USER6> Thanks, I had to look up the AMOADD instruction. For anyone else who's interested, this is nice RISC-V reference card:

[https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/1617/ECAD+Arch/files/docs/...](https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/1617/ECAD+Arch/files/docs/RISCVGreenCardv8-20151013.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hey guys. What is your favourite resource for learning how to implement a complete RISC-V processor? I have taken a course in computer architecture so I have an idea about the theory but I really want to try and actually implement and simulate one from scratch and maybe even synthesize it if the FPGA board is less than 200$.

<comment><USER5> I learned from MIT's 6.004. They provide infrastructure for you to build a simple core from gates for a RISC ISA in their own test environment. Their materials should be online (or available via OCW).(E.g., [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvfifZsmpQ4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvfifZsmpQ4)).

Once you understand how to build a core, frankly the more daunting part is how to interface with the core. How do you load a program into its memory? How do you see what it is doing? How do you know if it finished running or if it crashed?

You may find luck following along with FPGA tutorials (maybe take a look at the Pynq board?) that teach you how to implement a design, put it on the board, and talk to it. Once you understand how to use your FPGA and how to interface with your designs, changing the design to a simple RISC-V core will be more tractable.

You could try and check out picorv32 or riscv-sodor to see two examples of "simple" RISC-V cores that you can build, simulate on your computer, and watch them execute programs you wrote. But man the "magic" behind the test harnesses can be super opaque.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> All RISC-V CPUs seem to be in-order right now, but I assume their ISA supports speculative execution for out-of-order CPUs. So are they going to redesign that part of the ISA in a future update, before companies start coming out with out-of-order RISC-V CPUs with speculative execution? I assume some of them were already mid-design of their out-of-order chips, so this could delay their launches quite a bit. But it would be for the best long-term.

<comment><AUTHOR> Seems very unlikely that ISAs will have to change, the problem needs to be fixed in micro Architecture.

Its unlikely that there are many mass production RISC-V CPU currently in design. A couple are known but they are more advanced research projects.

The BOOM core will be used by Esperanto and I'm sure they will evaluate what to do about the security issues. The guy who made BOOM written about this problems, check on Twitter.

<comment><USER5> Spectre can be completely mitigated, it's just another headache to deal with. =(

Essentially, you just have to buffer up more stuff and clear the misspeculated entries so nothing is left lying around that could leak information. Comes with a cost, but chip companies don't have to give up on OOO/speculation entirely.

<comment><USER9> Sounds tricky. For example if your CPU has hyperthreading, cache misses in speculative execution could leak to the other thread running on the same core, because they share computational resources and the utilization of those is affected by cache misses in speculative execution.

<comment><USER5> You tag things and prevent bypassing uncommitted data from one thread to another.

For example, it's a mistake (that's been made by other ISAs!) to allow two hardware threads to bypass store data out of the uncommitted StoreQueue from one thread to another. Your memory consistency model violates single-copy atomicity and now the programmer's life is much harder.

<comment><USER9> I'm talking about the shared computation resources (e.g. ALU), not about shared caches. Cache hits and cache misses affect how much and when one thread utilizes the ALU, which means the other thread sharing it won't be able to use the same resources for computation. Since speculative execution also uses these shared resources, it leaks information about its cache misses to the other thread, even if a rolled-back speculative execution doesn't modify any caches.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This this also allow for compiling into something QEMU can use? Or does it not need anything like this to emulate RISC-V.</comment>


Kronecker Product in Circuits - <AUTHOR> https://leimao.github.io/blog/Kronecker-Product-In-Circuits/ <comment><USER2> As a shameless plug, if you want to visualize Kronecker product in circuits, I wrote an open-source Vue-based tool for visualizing quantum states and operators (with strong support for the tensor structure):

[https://github.com/Quantum-Game/bra-ket-vue](https://github.com/Quantum- Game/bra-ket-vue)

There is an example of CNOT on the front page, you can create and visualize other gates. Including Toffoli in a strange basis, [https://twitter.com/QuantumGameIO/status/1231938026806353920](https://twitter.com/QuantumGameIO/status/1231938026806353920).

If you want to use that, I am happy to help. (All operations you mentioned are easy implementable with BraKetVue + Quantum Tensors, so if you want to make an interactive demo, it should be straightforward.)

<comment><USER3> This is pretty nice! My first impulse was that could be visualized as a boolean matrix. Good going.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Unsurprisingly, this is applied for quantum circuits as well: [https://vtomole.com/blog/2018/03/03/sd](https://vtomole.com/blog/2018/03/03/sd). It's the most popular way of introducing quantum computation.

</comment><comment><USER5> Does anyone have a geometric intuition for Kronecker products? Or even any intuition for it? I've never been able to move beyond the formalism of it.

<comment><USER6> If you think of a binary matrix as the adjacency matrix of a graph, the kronecker product corresponds to the product of graphs, which is a 100% geometrical construct.

If your matrix has arbitrary weigths, this is the "weighted" graph product, where the weights of the edges are multiplied in the obvious manner (each edge in the product graph comes from a pair of edges of each input graph, and its weight is just the product of the two input weights).</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where to get feedback for your start-up/beta/demo? - <AUTHOR>

Hello,
Can anyone share please any thoughts on how and where to get quality feedback? (free or not expensive)
Why? Recently we, a team of 2 people, reached beta milestone, but not sure where to go next. We can't get enough feedback from users or right users.
So far we have emailed a few bloggers and tech people relevant to the area, but didn't get anything yet, although that was during weekend. So, do I send 100 emails or 5?
Thank you in advance. <comment><USER2> I guess it's depend of the kind of product you develop.

In our case, we got about 50 different feedback during our beta (We develop a search engine for app creator):

\- 60% from people we have met during meetups/conferences/contests and accelerator programs

\- 30% from people in our network, we just asked them what they think of our product.

\- 10% from ads. We have spend around $600 in AdWords + $150 of sponsored tweet. I would not recommend this approach since it is very expensive for the income.

<comment><AUTHOR> It turned out to be a bit more developer oriented service(it's based on Selenium).

When you say network, you mean friends and buddies?

<comment><USER2> Our product is also clearly developer oriented (it's a SDK). Yes I mean friends, ex-colleges but also interesting people we have reached via an introduction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Post on Craigslist that you are looking for someone who enjoys a free coffee and X. (With X being the genre of your product.) Take the replies and explain to them what you are doing, that you are looking for some market feedback and that in exchange for 30 minutes of their time, you'll buy them a coffee at <INSERT LOCAL COFFEE SHOP HERE> while you discuss their reaction.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well for my case i simply asked the good people of hackernews to review it for me. I couldn't hope for anything better:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5353348>

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll read later those comments, was it helpful at all? Or it's too early to tell?

Thank you, I may try that.

<comment><USER4> My changes are not live yet, but the advices make alot of sense. Sometimes we get caught up on some ideas and drift away from our main goal. I can say for sure that the feedback i got is bringing me back on the right path. I will post back the changes i made and whether it made a difference or not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> depending on your product, you could get it from different sites like

usertesting.com fivesecondtest.com

</comment><comment><USER6> Isn't this what 'Show HN' is for?

<comment><AUTHOR> Done that, got a few, which helped, but we hoped for more. I guess 'new' feed gets updated too quickly...</comment></comment>


Money with an Expiration Date - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/08/27/754323652/the-strange-unduly-neglected-prophet <comment><USER2> [Hi from Argentina!] I was going to propose to use ARG$ pesos but

> _At 24 [1886?], he moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he worked as an > importer and manufacturer and did well for himself._

The people with enough money can invest it in land, a hotel, an apartment or other asset. Poor people that can only save US$100 per month are doomed if they can't change the monopoly money for real money.

</comment><comment><USER3> The concept has value. It needs to be discussed. Wages can be paid with money with different expiry dates. Say you get $1000 a month, with $500 in 30 day cash. $250 in 90 day cash and $150 one year and $100 permanent. Best way to handle it is with a tiered debit card, so people could use the short term cash for food rent and items on the basisof useit or lose it. The 90 day and annual could accumulate. You might be able to roll one type over for another period for a fee - say 5% for 30 day. 10% for 90 day and 15% annual. This would act as an impetus to spend money so other people in the economy benefit. The use of debit cards would allow the money to be refreshed so the merchant gets 30 day money on day 25 it is now 30 day money fresh in his hands. A huge sea of data, but easy for an accounting system to handle. The concept needs to be brainstormed but I think a viable economy would work with the correct settings.

<comment><USER4> Couldn't this lead to unneeded waste? Let's say of that $500 30 day, I only needed $400.00 of it to cover my needs. I'm left with either the choice of paying essentially a "tax" to convert it to a longer period or spend on products I don't need. We already have a lot of consumer waste that, in part, has led to major environmental issues. I worry a policy like this could exasperate the issue.</comment></comment>


How much do your meetings actually cost? - <AUTHOR> http://clockblock.io/

<comment><USER2> Niiiiice... Will need to use this in all my meetings. Love that it's responsive too.

</comment><comment><USER3> Amazing! will use it all the time!

</comment><comment><USER4> Great!

</comment><comment><USER5> awesome.</comment>


Facebook Wins Relatively Few Friends in Japan - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/technology/10facebook.html?pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> From someone who uses mixi, I can comment on a few reasons as to why they'd prefer it against Facebook:

* The Japanese are big fans of anonymous

A lot of big sites in Japan are that way because of their anonymous nature. 2ch is HUGE in Japan, because you can write whatever you want and for a majority of users it's all anonymous. Yes, you can make yourself known to others, but it's highly frowned upon. Another site that utilizes this is Nico Video, a site which lets users comment on videos anonymously.

Mixi holds to that as well, though a bit differently. There are many users who utilize pseudo names to mask their real identity (myself included in fact). What you can hide from others is customizable in a very simple way. Your birthday, where you live, what your hobbies are.

Then all your content has privacy controls as well. Everytime you post something you can decide who gets to see it. Your friends, your friend's friends, a specific group of people, or no one. While facebook allows this as well, my opinion is that Mixi makes it very easy.

* It's about going with someone you trust

The Japanese are big fans of going with things that are close to their circle of friends, or very established. Mixi is a Japanese company that originally started as an invite only service. That's a big part in helping it spread. "Hey my friend invited me so it must be cool since I trust what my friend says" kind of mentatility means people are more likely to signup and the effect spreads. While mixi is no longer invite only, they require a registered cell phone number (there are other ways but few people speak of them for fear of their abuse). This keeps things "inside Japan" further increasing the comfort of use.

As for the features, mixi emphasizes "friends of friends" relationship. When you visit someone's profile, it shows if they're connected to one of your friends. "Hey this person is friends with my friend, so they should be all right" becomes the frame of thought. This gives users a comfortable way to expand their network with people that share their interests (there are exceptions of course).

Not sure how to search for people to become friends with? mixi has a feature called 足跡 (translation: footprint) which lets you see who has visited your profile page. It also shows you if someone is a friend of one of your friends. These views usually come from people who are interested in something you said, or a friend told them about you. This means there's even a higher chance that the person shares your interests, and it's easier to become friends.

* The Japanese are HUGE cell phone users

Someone already mentioned it, but mixi has an interface tailored to the cell phones provided by major carriers. They recently made one for the iPhone as well. As having a mobile site is a bigger deal over there, it was part of the architecture from the start.

There are other reasons as well, but I think these are the big ones for users.

</comment><comment> T-R If I were running Facebook, I don't think I'd want to be considered as competing with Mixi, Gree, and Mobage. A lot of people use Mixi almost as a blind dating service, and that's not really what Facebook does.

I'm not much a fan of Facebook, but I could see them picking up there if they really push the photo sharing and contact list aspects of the service, though. For a lot of my Japanese friends on Facebook, I could probably tell you every meal they've eaten outside their house since they've joined. Partnerships with Purikura wouldn't be an altogether bad idea, either.

The first thing anyone does when they meet in Japan is transfer contact info over infra-red. It'd make a lot of sense to integrate it with "friending" on Facebook, since as it is, changing your address means e-mailing your entire contact list, and losing your phone means losing contact with anyone who doesn't e-mail you regularly. There's definitely room for them there - they'll find it if they're actually committed to learning how things work there.

<comment><USER3> I've never transferred my contact info over infra-red. I do however have an enormous pile of meishi (business cards). You are right that many more people in Japan use their phone provided email address rather than a service like google or yahoo. I've had that "your phone email address and your personal email address don't have to be the same" talk with many, many people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One factor not mentioned in the article is that a large portion of the Japanese internet population has been accessing the web through their cell phones for years. The web as viewed on those phones is unlike those seen on computers or on modern smartphones. For example, NTT DoCoMo, one of the major Japanese cell service providers, launched its i-mode web service in 1999. Competing providers KDDI & J-Phone soon launched EZweb & J-Sky, respectively. By 2006, these services had already amassed 80 million subscribers.[0]

I highly doubt Facebook supports any of these services, which can make it very difficult to break into the Japanese market even if they get all the cultural kinks ironed out and pay some celebrities to endorse them.

0: <https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/I-mode>

<comment><USER5> When I access Facebook from Japan it's at least trying to promote such a service to me: <http://i.imgur.com/zpaAz.png>

<comment><USER4> Yeah, that looks like it. Note the "There is a long way to go but most basic functionality is there." Sounds like they only recently started working on it, and given the difficulty of unseating entrenched social networking sites, I'd say Facebook's got their work cut out for them. They'd have to provide something that's clearly not available from the existing sites.

The best way to do this would probably be to convince the Japanese of the value in being a member of a social networking site connected to your real life, since competing with existing services on their own turf is going to be very difficult. However, I don't know if the Japanese would be interested in such a service.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think Japanese people prefer to use Japanese companies when possible, just like Americans prefer American products over made-in-China products. "Loyalty" aside, the user experience ends up being better, because the users and developers are the same people.

</comment><comment><USER7> One of the biggest differences between mixi and Facebook is that on mixi the trend is to stay relatively anonymous, i.e. with a nickname that your friends would recognize but someone googling your name would miss. It's possible that this might have an effect on facebooks uptake in Japan.

Also, an easy way to link your mixi account would be an obvious way to get people to cross over.

</comment><comment><USER8> There's a cultural issue here. Real name is the core of Facdbook's success. That's what set it apart from MySpace. The novelty of MySpace quickly wore off after the first few months making fake online friends, but Facebook had your real friends from real life that you actually want to talk with.

</comment><comment><USER9> Hopefully Goldman Sachs will be able to arrange for a treaty to be signed with Japan requiring their citizens to sign up for Facebook or be fined.</comment>


Flat UI Login Form With Horizontal Scroll Effect - <AUTHOR> http://www.dzyngiri.com/flat-ui-login-form-with-horizontal-scroll/

<comment><USER2> Direct link to the demo: <http://www.dzyngiri.com/demo/flat-ui-login-form/>

Seriously? A form asking me to follow you on Twitter before showing me the demo...</comment>


Ask HN: how important is the name of your startup? - <AUTHOR>

I am wondering how everyone feels about the importance of names. Would twitter be big as it is today if it was named something else? How about instagram? If a startup has an obscure and not as catchy of a name, how much effect could that have on its growth? <comment><USER2> I think branding can definitely be a factor in the success of a company, but it's certainly not a huge one. And you can always rebrand later.

Here's a thread about Wesabe vs. Mint: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1746832>

Here's the list of YC startups, from which you can infer whatever you want (I feel like success is unrelated to name quality): <http://yclist.com/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Depends on the market you are aiming for.</comment>


Ask HN: What happened to Steve Yegge?  He seems to have stopped blogging - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> He filled up all the disks.

See also [http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/62art/google_di...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/62art/google_disables_steve_yegges_site/c02lvwz).

</comment><comment><USER3> Still tweeting every month or so. [https://twitter.com/steve_yegge](https://twitter.com/steve_yegge)

</comment><comment><USER4> And while we are at it, maybe the reader Joel Spolsky would like to do something about it

</comment><comment><USER5> rip, GROK project.</comment>


Ask HN: Why do most of my questions go un answered on HN? - <AUTHOR> This is happening a lot lately. Can someone help ? <comment><USER2> Several of the questions have good discussions that can be found using search. Overall, I'd say that your questions have had above average responses relative to the volume of submissions that arrive at Hacker News, the topics the ask about and the total number submitted.

Generally, questions where it seems that the topic is important to the author personally and the topic is one on which HN can bring expertise rather than preformed arguments will tend to do better.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think you'd get a better response if you put some more time / effort into the questions. For example, summarize the research into the topic that you've already done in your question.

Questions that are commonly discussed or too generic "what's your favorite productivity hack?" etc often get glossed over for those reasons.

Try asking something really specific and making it easy to answer, reducing the burden of doing most of the work for a commenter.</comment>


What is HTML5? - <AUTHOR> http://www.phpzag.com/what-is-html5/ Here we will discuss the basics of HTML5 document. Today HTML5 is one of the most exciting buzz in web circles. Actaully HTML5 is the new standard for HTML.<p>it is still a work in progress. However, the major browsers support many of the new HTML5 elements and APIs but not all. <comment><USER2> there's vulgarization and vulgarization...I like the example of the required tags. It's really accurate... not.</comment>


Amazon Elasticsearch Service now supports Elasticsearch 2.3 - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2016/07/amazon-elasticsearch-service-now-supports-elasticsearch-2-3/ <comment><USER2> Until its inside your VPC, which im pretty sure it still isn't, its borderline worthless for most use cases.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wish they'd support the installation of synonym files and plugins. The lack of dynamic scripting is problematic for some of my use cases.</comment>


Ask HN: Why is pg not "leaders" list? - <AUTHOR> pg has 155K [1] karma points so technically he should be second on the "leaders" list [2], but he's not.<p>[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pg<p>[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders <comment><USER2> He used to be #1 on that list. I think he took himself off explicitly for some reason. He may have addressed it in a post, I really can't remember now.</comment>


Stripe website - <AUTHOR> What UI web framework does the Stripe website use? <comment><USER2> It does not use one. Every thing seems to be developed in-house by their front-end engineers.</comment>


Random quantum circuit easiest way to beat classical computer - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/05/quantum-supremacy-might-be-revealed-by-quantum-chaos/ <comment><USER2> This sure seems like a case of looking for a problem to justify the solution.

<comment><USER3> You want to know whether to double-down on quantum computing or not. Quantum computing is like fusion--it's obviously possible, but crazy expensive to do and its hard to tell whether its years out or decades out.

Just like with fusion, electric cars, etc, there's a tipping point when it becomes net-positive, and then people will know its in fact years, not decades away. Investment will skyrocket. It will start making a difference

So people are trying to be clever to prove that case in the easiest way possible. Not suprising, really.</comment></comment>