How the Chan Zuckerberg Science Initiative plans to solve disease by 2100 - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-08966-z <comment><USER2> Is anyone on here involved with the HCA by any chance? I have a question about your efforts.

When I was working in neuroimaging, one of the greatest hindrances to effective open data sharing was the lack of a standard for how data should be organized. Basically, what this amounted to was people from different labs would just throw their data on hard drives and ship them out to people who requested it as-is, with a variety of different organizational schemes (or no organizational scheme at all / raw data directly from a scanner with lots of missing and somewhat important metadata). There was an effort to change that ([http://bids.neuroimaging.io/](http://bids.neuroimaging.io/)) although I'm not sure how well it has caught on. I've had discussions with friends in other fields (bioinformatics) where apparently there really isn't any standard at all and data organization is basically done according to the researcher's (or postdoc/grad student's) own idiosyncratic methods.

I've always felt like this sort of "here's the dataset as-is, take it or leave it" distribution severely limits the discoverability of open data, since it makes it substantially harder to index and make it easy to search using a variety of relevant criteria (in the case of neuroimaging, it'd be nice to be able to narrow down the kinds of brain images out there based on scanning modality or scan sequence). It also hurts the potential re-usability of datasets, since distributing data without properly populating key metadata fields can make it effectively useless in many cases.

With this context, I was wondering what efforts the HCA folks are making towards dataset standardization. Maybe this is all still in the works / a little to early to ask, but how is the data ingestion phase described on the HCA website [1] going to conform data and ensure that data is usable?

[1] [https://www.humancellatlas.org/data- sharing](https://www.humancellatlas.org/data-sharing)

<comment><USER2> Nevermind, I found the whitepaper:

[https://www.humancellatlas.org/files/HCA_WhitePaper_18Oct201...](https://www.humancellatlas.org/files/HCA_WhitePaper_18Oct2017.pdf)

Although if anyone from HCA does happen to find this post and has any further remarks I'll probably remain just as interested to hear them!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> _tl;dr_ By re-applying lessons learned in mapping biological functions to genetic origins in c. elegans, one idea is to use computational biology, and inventory all human cell types, to accurately trace and debug human physiology at a molecular level. Through a culture of open creativity, other ideas are also welcome.</comment>


Hey Microsoft: What if you gave Windows 7 the power to run multiple browsers really well? - <AUTHOR> http://technologizer.com/2009/02/25/one-windows-multiple-browsers-bundled-i-like-it/

<comment><USER2> I really never defend Microsoft, but this is a legitimately hard problem to solve.

One challenge is that even today, many users (even really smart users) don't distinguish programs well. I know an engineer who mentioned features of "Vista" she didn't like, that turned out to be exclusive to the new Office ribbon. Any XP user who upgraded Office would see the same issues, but to her, this was _Vista's_ fault. Microsoft would surely start fielding phone calls from customers displeased with some "feature of Windows 7" that turns out to be an oddity in Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari or Opera. Forcing Microsoft to _ship_ alternatives is the wrong decision for support reasons. It may be more sensible to just give users _links_ to browser vendor web sites, I don't know.

Then there's the question of how to implement OS features. Both Windows and Mac OS X have standard HTML help systems, for instance, and it would suck if they had to shoehorn in the user's preferred browser as the renderer for a simple pop-up help window. What you care about here is not the specific browser, but whether or not it is _sandboxed_ properly. IE is "good enough" for actually rendering OS features, the problem is that as soon as a help file visits the wrong web site the system can still be trashed (when it should be protected). Microsoft has to clean up IE's ties to the OS, simply having IE present is not the problem.

</comment><comment><USER3> Or...how about just 1?</comment>


Twitter Image Scraper Made with Python 3.8 - jellyfish-dev https://github.com/Jelly-Fish-Dev/Twitter-Image-Scraper <comment><AUTHOR> I found it strange that the title would mention Python 3.8 specifically, rather that just "Python". The README mentions that the project uses the new := operator. I wouldn't enter production with 3.8 specific features until at least 3.8.1, but it's cool for a small project.

</comment><comment><USER2> do you think it is possible to integrate with proxycrawl? that can benefit from not getting blocked by twitter</comment>


From Drawer to Bottom Nav Bar - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/grubhub-bytes/from-drawer-to-bottom-nav-bar-a1828a079048 <comment><AUTHOR> Good post documenting how Grubhub navigated changing their mobile UI from Nav Drawer to Bottom Nav.</comment>


Does everyone who suffers trauma have PTSD? - <AUTHOR> http://aeon.co/magazine/living-together/does-everyone-who-suffers-trauma-have-ptsd/ <comment><USER2> I was diagnosed with PTSD after having spent my childhood being raised by a child molester. Since the molester was my dad I could never escape him, could never go to my parent for help. He kept it up for the first 12 years of my life (he told me he started when I was 2 months old). He also did this to my sister and forced us to engage in incestuous behavior to boot. The end result was that we were utterly unprepared for normal, caring, relationships.

I, a shy, weak, easily intimidated young man, reacted very poorly and became the opposite of my father. Unfortunately he is a hard charging, successful go- getter that is considered "Mr. Capable" so I became a slacking, stress avoiding "Mr. Loser". My sister, on the other hand, adopted all of his good traits, earning 2 PhDs from top schools and forging a career as a very highly paid scientist living a luxurious life in LA (and I was the "smart" one, lol). Thing is, we were both damaged quite badly, both attempted suicide, both suffering from debilitating depression, PTSD symptoms, etc.

My salvation, such as it is, came in the form of a loving wife who has nurtured me when needed and helped me grow into a more normal mode of living (this led to me teaching myself to program and finally, at age 45, earning a pretty decent living doing it). She cushioned the things that trigger me, guided me in making correct choices and basically taught me, over the almost 20 years we have been married, to be "normal" and I truly believe she saved my life. Her kindness and understanding has allowed my PTSD symptoms to fade over the years and minimized them when they do appear.

In three words, love saved me.

p.s. if you are a parent and have the sorts of feelings my father did towards us I beg of you to seek help. Please understand that acting on those desires will result in the harming and potential destruction of your children and the utter obliteration of your parent/child relationship. Imagine yourself being confronted by your broken and damaged adult children... do you really want to endure that? Seek help... if you haven't acted on it, you can get it with no consequences. If you have... stop now. On behalf of your children I beg you.

<comment><USER3> Holy crap. Both you and your sister have gone through hell, and you still have so much grace. And your wife is an amazing person. I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to write about my own childhood, especially so frank. And yet, compared to yours it was a walk in the park. Thanks for sharing this.

<comment><USER2> Appreciate it, man. I've been confronting it for many years now and writing about what happened gets easier the more often I do so. My wife is indeed amazing. A tough yet gentle, kind yet firm completely reasonable, intelligent, clear minded person. I feel like meeting her was my winning lottery ticket. It's amazing what a kind, reasonable person can do for a disturbed but otherwise "normal" mind.

<comment><USER4> I really hope that this MDMA-assisted psychotherapy study shows similar results to the one conducted in Switzerland and that you have the option to use MDMA to help you overcome this condition with the good support network you have in your wife. Good luck to you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > The rise of biological psychiatry and its focus on mental illnesses as > 'brain diseases' had failed to remove the taint of moral and personal > failing associated with the majority of psychiatric disorders. But here was > a disorder that came packaged with a clear-cut cause that was obviously not > the patient's fault, and which set them in the sympathetic and dramatic > light of victimhood.

Actually the original definition of PTSD was only supposed to apply to Vietnam veterans who came back from the war, realized what they had done was morally abhorrent, and were no longer able to function because of that realization. However the committee that wrote the DSM ended up stripping out the all the theory behind the disorder before publication. There is a summary of this here: [http://www.vva.org/archive/TheVeteran/2005_03/feature_Histor...](http://www.vva.org/archive/TheVeteran/2005_03/feature_HistoryPTSD.htm)

Although the history of PTSD in Ethan Watters book Crazy Like Us is better written.

<comment><USER6> The terminology may be different, but "shell shock"[1] was well known back as early as World War One.

[1] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_shock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_shock)

<comment><USER7> And many stories from even ancient times. War is hell.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> MDMA-assisted psychotherapy can be an effective treatment for people who do not respond to traditional therapies for PTSD.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-4L5vRZ_g8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-4L5vRZ_g8) < three minute rundown that explains MDMA

[http://www.mdmaptsd.org/](http://www.mdmaptsd.org/)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNxuRs6tTuw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNxuRs6tTuw) < The Verge / Ecstatic states: treating PTSD with MDMA

[http://www.mdma.net/psychotherapy/ptsd.html](http://www.mdma.net/psychotherapy/ptsd.html)

<comment><USER9> Did you read the article?

<comment><USER8> Yes, but I don't wish to discuss 'PTSD diagnosis politics' in this forum instead I'd rather just add value by pointing people to a non-commerical modality that actually works for treating those who suffer from the types of symptoms commonly associated with PTSD.

<comment><USER4> I'm an Iraq veteran currently enrolled in this study.

<comment><USER8> Wow that's so cool! I'm personally overjoyed that the suppression of this promising area of research is beginning to lift. I hope it goes well for you.

<comment><USER4> I want to remain as unbiased as possible, but I am also enormously excited about the so-far-promising results. This simple and beautiful substance may go a long way in solving the problems my peers are facing, whether we went to war in Iraq or in Vietnam. It's also showing improvement in the treatment of sexual assault victims with PTSD, indicating both that PTSD is a genuine condition (as some professionals still think the diagnosis is questionable), and also treatable (and hopefully curable) in patients with varying degrees of the condition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> PTSD gets a lot of press, but post-traumatic growth is widely ignored:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posttraumatic_growth](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posttraumatic_growth)

I had cancer, and experienced exactly this. I feel _better_ than before I was diagnosed. I had a particularly low impact form of cancer (testicular, one- side) and feel I'm actually improved for having gone through it.

Not sure how this applies to combat veterans. Some papers indicate post- traumatic growth occurs in ex-POWs.

</comment><comment><USER11> It's hard to read about PTSD and not think of George Carlin: shell shock to combat fatigue to PTSD. I have a mentally ill daughter, and it never ceases to amaze me how poor our knowledge and treatment of mental illness really are. I also can't help but wonder if the DSM is for physicians and pharmacists more than patients. We seem to have gone from no knowledge due to stigma to no knowledge due to symptom-masking drugs (a definite improvement but not remotely near great).

<comment><USER12> Carlin threw out a lot of populist quotes, but that doesn't mean they translate into actuality. While it's a funny skit, in real terms keeping on calling it 'shell shock' would have been bad - because the PTSD hits you in other situations too. Victim responding badly to a rape? "It's not like it's shell-shock, get over it". That sort of thing. It was called PTSD because the same symptoms were being seen in relation to all sorts of traumatic experiences.

 _I also can 't help but wonder if the DSM is for physicians and pharmacists more than patients._

I think you're overly concentrating on the failings of the DSM rather than the successes. Without something like the DSM, there isn't anything canonical for doctors to compare notes on given diseases, and that is definitely bad for patients.

Also, mental illness is notoriously difficult to diagnose in the first place, which is why it's the weakest area of the DSM, and why there's a lot of overlap between mental illness diagnoses. Mental illness is one of the most difficult areas of expertise in the human experience, if not the most difficult.

<comment><USER13> I like to see much of the field of psychology as similar to 'early' medicine, or perhaps even our current treatment methods for cancer.

The methods are often primitive, inaccurate, and, in hindsight, sometimes even harmful. But we're doing the best we can, and the goal is (generally) good. And often it's better than nothing.

This should not prevent us from criticizing what we deem to be bad or at least faulty solutions, but it is also important to realize that this is an ongoing process, and not to reject the efforts because they're not perfect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The US Army has done a lot of studies in this area of late, and found that a certain percentage of the population is somewhat resistant to PTSD after a traumatic event, but there are upwards of 20% or so that are pre-disposed to it as well ([http://www.ptsd.va.gov/professional/newsletters/research- qua...](http://www.ptsd.va.gov/professional/newsletters/research- quarterly/v24n2-3.pdf)). It's sad that it has taken centuries of warfare for people to wake up to the realization of this and finally just start learning how to identify and treat it.

A good friend of mine, an Iraq war combat veteran, runs a blog and non-profit on this subject as well at [http://www.combatveteranswithptsd.com](http://www.combatveteranswithptsd.com)

If only we could do away with the stigma associated with it now which is falsely based much upon wild dramatizations in movies and elsewhere of eccentric, crazy or violent veterans ([http://flcourier.com/2013/07/03/post- traumatic-stress-disord...](http://flcourier.com/2013/07/03/post-traumatic- stress-disorder-stigma-hurts-veterans-in-job-search/)).

<comment><USER15> _It is clear than only a fraction of people who are exposed to trauma develop the full syndrome of PTSD. Thus despite the high prevalence of trauma exposure around the world, the lifetime prevalence of PTSD is no more than 7%. At any given point in time, 1 to 3% of the civilian population and higher proportions of Veteran populations will have currently active cases._

re: Title-query of the submitted HN article.

<comment><USER14> OR, only that small fraction is adequately diagnosed. This is a relatively new field, after all, and people fear what they don't understand. Given the stigma associated with it today many people would rather deny it or self-medicate than seek treatment unfortunately.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> We're really at the beginning of understanding PTSD I think.

Some anecdotes:

I spent a few months in a war zone years ago, it was beyond stressful. I didn't participate in any combat, and other than a few close-ish calls, came away relatively unscathed. But I was very "wired" for months and months afterwards. The innocent sound of cars driving slowly on gravel, the popping sound of the rocks under the tires, made me hunt for cover from incoming gunfire for example. I was supremely agitated and on edge for maybe a good year after I got back. But after a while, most of it went away and other than the occasional night sweat but I don't have nightmares or anything else. I'm pretty sure I was just very stressed and my adrenaline reaction was primed for a while, but it's not anymore. I don't believe I have or had PTSD.

I once worked with a Vet, long after he had retired. He was textbook untreated PTSD. Decades after he saw conflict, a loud noise, like a piece of equipment falling on a concrete floor, would send him into immediate action mode, one time diving out of his car at a stoplight when another car backfired. He was highly stressed, argumentative over little things and had lots of trouble keeping a job. I met him when I was working a low waged computer service job in the mid 90s.

My father was in the Korean conflict, landed with MacArthur's forces at Inchon and saw quite a bit of action North of the 38th. He was shot in the leg, spent time in Japan recuperating, got hooked on morphine, beat it, went back in, got shot again and finally made his way home. Along the way, he was field promoted from Sergeant to LT simply because everybody above him kept getting killed. Other than 2 or 3 stories he told me once, he doesn't really talk about it. PTSD wasn't a word back then, so he went entirely untreated. Decades later when it was finally understood to be a thing the stigma meant he never sought treatment (in fact he avoids all things military, won't use VA benefits, or hang out at the VFA, that's how he's been treating his PTSD all these years, avoidance). My father doesn't display really any of the daytime symptoms, irritability, chest pain, hyper-vigilance, etc. But my mother tells me that he's always had night issues. Waking up screaming, reliving nightmares in his sleep, sleep walking. It settled down over the years till it was just a rare occasional thing. My mother tells me that when I announced my engagement to my South Korean wife, his PTSD came back in full force. But then as he got to accept her, it went away just as quickly. I found him one day looking at some old National Geographic Magazines one day, looking at pictures of Korea from around the time of the war, then looking at pictures of Korea from today -- this is the first time he's ever looked at anything Korean since the war. My mother says his night issues appear to have gone away completely.

When I was very young, I got to know Nguyễn Ngọc Loan [1][2] quite well. He was a local businessman near D.C. after the Vietnam war. And my family had gotten to know him and his family well and we frequented his restaurant at the local shopping mall. His kids worked summer jobs for my parent's business and watched me from time to time and I think my father and him even did some business together. Obviously he saw, experienced and participated in some pretty brutal stuff. Little known is that he also lost one of his legs in the war so he got as good as he gave. He complained every once in a while about phantom pain in his leg, but AFAIK didn't suffer from PTSD.

I worked another time with a recent Vet or the Iraq War, his unit was blown up in an IED explosion in Iraq, he was a few meters from the blast and was violently thrown to the side with just a few bruises. A couple soldiers in his unit were not so lucky. The VA classified him as partially disabled with Traumatic Brain Injury and PTSD. He said he had nightmares from the incident and trouble sleeping. To treat his PTSD they put him on some kind of medication, which caused him to balloon in weight, but didn't appear to have resolved his night issues. Which lingered on several years later. Other former soldiers who had seen it worse (some with and without PTSD diagnoses) gave him endless grief over his PTSD diagnosis and his weight gain. He felt like he didn't deserve it and it led to lots of depression and social issues. His symptoms sounded almost exactly like mine, only they hadn't gone away, and being a vet, he was part of a social circle that should have given him more sympathy or understanding, but didn't.

It seems that to me that PTSD shows up in many many forms, and it's very complicated. I think it's likely that we'll start to identify patterns in it and produce some finer grained group of related diagnoses: high stress short- term sensitivity, chronic long term hyper-vigilance, etc. And we'll get to know this family of recognized issues and "PTSD" will seem like a brutish and ignorant way of calling all these different and discrete issues.

1 - [http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=950&dat=19781102&id=MW...](http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=950&dat=19781102&id=MWJQAAAAIBAJ&sjid=4lgDAAAAIBAJ&pg=2672,489627)

2 - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Loan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Loan)

</comment><comment><USER17> For a historical view of PTSD and warfare, I recommend Lt. Dave Grossman's "On Killing".

I don't agree with his conclusions about video games and violence, but the picture he draws of how soldiers used to demobilize, and how that adjustment period related to coping with PTSD, in different eras can provide some insight into some of the extenuating circumstances around the issue.

Essentially, the speed with which a soldier comes back from combat to the 'real world' (such as a flight from Kabul-Dubai-USA) might exacerbate disorientation and adjustment in our current era. Similar, to a very small degree, to reverse culture shock, etc.

<comment><USER4> FWIW, I have heard recommendations for this book as well. Actually, it was recommended to me by my good friend and former commanding officer, whom I consider to be the best officer I've ever served with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Say we do consider all suffering mental illness, what then?

Surely not all suffering precipitates PTSD, but why not make the broader category of mental illness categorically equivalent to unnecessarily prolonged suffering?

</comment><comment><USER19> @bane is right. I had similar experiences. Is it something you can get over? Sure. Is it something you want to get over? Maybe not. I still feel "numb" in day to day life.

</comment><comment><USER20> very interesting and eye opening read</comment>


American readers still prefer printed books over eBooks - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/2/12775836/us-printed-book-reading-rate-steady-pew-study <comment><USER2> It's interesting to note that The Verge uses the word _" prefer"_ in the title of their article but the underlying Pew Research report[1] does not have that word anywhere.

What Pew did was telephone some people asking them how often they read and also whether the format was ebook or paper. It seems logical to infer a "preference" from the answers to those questions. However, it's not that simple because a major reason people read "paper" is the _higher cost_ of ebooks (which also includes the significant cost of a Kindle device.)

In other words, the _economics_ of paper vs ebooks may be skewing _why_ more people read hardcopy books instead of electronic ones. (E.g. If you telephone people asking them what car they drive, _more_ will respond with Kia and Cheverolet but that does not mean people _prefer_ them over Lexus and BMW.)

To extract a pure preference, it seems like you'd have to devise a marketing experiment which disguises the costs like this:

Choice A: $450 for 50 New York Times best sellers in paperback format.

Choice B: $450 for a Kindle preloaded with the same 50 ebooks.

Then you observe which package actually sells the most. We'd then see if more people value the paperback with the ability to resell, the tactile sensation, the simplicity of no batteries more than the e-reader with the minimal space & weight, the font size adjustability, the searchability, the ability to load more ebooks after the 50 preloaded ones, etc.

The above experiment may also have different outcomes depending on genre (fiction/novels, non-fiction/college textbooks) and age group (20-something, over-50, etc).

[1]Pew Research pdf downloadable here: [http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/09/01/book- reading-2016/#the...](http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/09/01/book- reading-2016/#the-share-of-americans-who-have-read-a-book-in-the-last-year-is- largely-unchanged-since-2012-more-americans-read-print-books-than-either-read- e-books-or-listen-to-audio-books)

<comment><USER3> I recently acquired a stack of 50 textbooks. Getting them to my car was a sweaty problem :-)

(I was parked about a half mile away.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My personal experience, from having been an e-book aficionado who eventually went back to almost entirely paper (cheap used hardcover when I can find it):

Ebook advantages:

\- Cheap, no commitment, try before you buy

\- Easy to transport, take 30+ books on vacation with no increase in weight

Dead-tree advantages:

\- Higher retention of material (various cues for memory related to the physicality and layout of the book versus an indistinguisable smorgasbord of ebook pages)

\- Greater tendency to actually read, since they sit around your house/living room taunting you, rather than being forgotten in some obscure folder of your device

<comment><USER5> Off topic: I understand your arguments, but every time I read something like "mostly cheap used hardcover", as an author myself I have to ask: You are aware that the creative behind the work you read does not get a dime from you?

<comment><USER6> Do you also think that Ford and GM should get more money when someone sells a used car, or that builders should get more money every time a house gets sold?

<comment><USER7> The difference is that with a house and a car, you pay for the physical object. With a book, you pay for the ideas contained therein - a subtle but (IMO) important difference.

Which isn't to say used-book sales should be illegal, but that if you can afford it, why not support the person behind the ideas you're profiting from?

<comment><USER6> "With a book, you pay for the ideas contained therein - a subtle but (IMO) important difference."

Not according to the law, you aren't.

Also, there are plenty of ideas involved in building cars and houses. They're not just random piles of wood, metal, and plastic, any more than a book is just ink smeared on paper.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This probably isn't surprising to most people.

Ebooks are great when you need to occasionally reference random parts or if you're performing a search for specific content.

But with physical books... It just feels better. I don't even know how to describe it. I think I just perform the action with different expectations.

On top of that, and this is probably a silly point, I love the sense of ownership you get when you hold the real book. It's hard for me to feel a strong sense of ownership over a PDF.

I don't know if this is a common sentiment or not, but I believe that upon purchasing a physical book you should be entitled to a digital copy as well.

I wonder how audiobooks stack up. I know that a couple friends of mine love listening to audiobooks, and I listen to around ~100 hours per month. Audiobooks are great when you have to commute, when you don't have anyone to share your meal with, or just when you're out for a run.

Something I've noticed is that I find it hard to consume certain kinds of books using specific mediums, depending on the scenario. For example, I would never be able to pick up a technical or serious topic with an audiobook, I basically only listen to scifi and fantasy. With technical books, if it's a topic where I'll be interacting heavily with the computer (e.g. by writing and trying lots of examples), it ends up feeling better to use a digital book. I think physical books are the best for when I'm reading about a topic that requires me to just sit and think about the specific topic.

Although, interestingly enough, my main method of consumption of random research papers is digital. I wonder if my retention and understanding would improve if I printed em out instead of reading off my laptop.

Luckily, I think all mediums can co-exists. I think they fill different niches.

</comment><comment><USER7> Glad to hear it, even though I am not really surprised.

eBooks have several well-known advantages, but for all their worth and utility, there are some areas in which they just cannot match real books.

To name but one: multi-sensory input. Humans are designed to experience the world around them with as many senses as possible. Physical books can stimulate up to four of our five senses. Sight (obviously), hearing (the rustling of pages), touch (the feel of paper, the relative thickness of the part of the book you've already read vs. what is still unread) and (especially on older books) smell.

eBooks only really offer sight, and, to a very limited extent, touch. That this paucity of sensuous input does not satisfy us as much as a physical book should not come as a surprise.

<comment><USER9> Aside from sensory immersion etc, paper books are just easier to flip through, have higher resolution, and generally look nicer.

And there's the simple fact that sitting somewhere with a book makes you look pretty cool whereas sitting there with a Kindle makes you look like a dork.

Also, paper books can be shared, lent, given, and they exist as nice physical objects instead of as these weird ephemeral files that Amazon can probably delete at any time.

<comment><USER10> When I walk into a person's house and see a book shelf I look to see what titles are there. Or, I look to see who and what people are reading in a coffee shop. The reason is that I like to know what people are thinking. I don't get that from a Kindle.

<comment><USER11> That's true, ereaders don't broadcast your "intellectual worth" and interests as much as bookshelves do. It's also not a conversation starter ("a biography of John Major, really?").

I wonder if it's something that could be solved with some sort of integration with those "smart frames" that show your family pictures.

This said, I don't agree with ereaders making people "look like dorks" \-- pretty much everyone in a coffee shop these days is glued to a screen; be it a laptop, phone, tablet or reader, the look is exactly the same (well, unless you're rocking some huge "portable 386" from 1995, in which case you look either nuts or "oh so retro").

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It is nice to be able to buy used books. The problem with e-books is that they were designed to cut out those historical rights to lend and resell. Turns out: people don't like them as much that way. Oops.

</comment><comment><USER13> Personally I think the UI and UX of a paperback is really hard to beat.

<comment><USER14> True. And this is sound technology too. Proven over centuries...

<comment><USER13> I fully agree. Rather cheap as well.

<comment><USER14> > The book is like the spoon: once invented, it cannot be bettered. —Umberto > Eco, from _This is Not the End of the Book: A conversation_ (2011)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> While this indicates that there are lots of people who never read ebooks, it does not actually say whether more ebooks or print books are being sold and read. The Pew survey notes that the mean number of books read is 12, while the median is 4. This means that one-half of all readers surveyed read no more than 4 books a year, so the other half of all readers must average over 16 books a year. It's probably even more skewed than that, although numbers are hard to come by. This skewing of the book market probably accounts for the fact that ebooks are far greater than 28% of book sales, although accurate figures are hard to come by for several reasons (sales reports from industry groups don't include self-published authors, the fastest growing part of the business, for example). However, it looks like people who read fewer books are probably much less likely to switch to ebooks, possibly because the change costs time or money, possibly because people who read fewer books are probably on the whole less technologically adept than people who read more. Also, print books are still assigned from an early age in most schools, with ebooks being a secondary alternative in education, meaning that people still start with print books and that nearly everyone reads some print books unless they are very uneducated.

</comment><comment> chestnut-tree No real surprise. E-ink readers are still only available with black and white displays. Their screens are mostly shaped to fit a small paperback.

Physical books, in contrast, come in an infinite variety of shapes and sizes. Yes, tablets come in larger sizes and with high resolution colour screens, but they still aren't as comfortable to read as paper or even e-ink displays.

<comment><USER11> E-ink readers are a luxury, unfortunately. Where phone and tablets can be justified in most homes as being multipurpose, ereaders are fundamentally single-purpose. This is why their share of the market grows so slowly - it's limited to hardcore readers and the wealthy. We need eink to go beyond dedicated devices.

<comment><USER16> I guess so, but when the basic Kindle costs about the same as a full tank of gas, or just a little more than a newly released AAA video game, it's hard to say that it is really restricted to the wealthy.

The biggest appeal of the Kindle is that you can read it outside in the glare of the sun, and the battery lasts for months. I would agree, that for most people, the smartphone they have in their pocket already is good enough for reading ebooks.

<comment><USER7> > it's hard to say that it is really restricted to the wealthy.

Good point - eReaders aren't really all that expensive (I got my first one for 60€). What might be more important when considering the distribution of eReaders is the correlation wealthy <-> educated <-> reads a lot.

> for most people, the smartphone they have in their pocket already is good > enough for reading ebooks

I can't imagine reading a full book on the tiny screen of a smartphone. Do people really do that? (As in, for serious reading.) And if so, how much?

<comment><USER16> I can't imagine reading anything technical or even most non-fiction on a phone, but for plain old entertainment-grade fiction it's doable. I read most of the Aubrey-Maturin series and The Expanse series on my phone last year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I still buy printed books because I refuse to pay for DRM enabled ebooks and I can't find a good source of DRM free books, other than project Gutemberg.

A printed book you can lend to others and will outlast any digital device or DRN platform.

<comment><USER18> No Starch Press offers DRM-free ebooks.

<comment><USER17> Publishers of technical books usually publish DRM-free ebooks, like O'Reilly and Manning. And so for technical books I prefer them in eBook format, though for such books many people prefer them in print for other reasons.

I was complaining about fiction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I will always prefer physical books. Way back in the 80s when I was in grade school, books were my only form of entertainment that didn't require me to leave my bedroom (extreme introvert speaking here). Plus, there's the irresistible smell of the ink, glue, and bleached paper.

</comment><comment><USER20> Yeah people have the right to ne stupid.</comment>


Apple's relationship with pro music needs some mending - <AUTHOR> http://cdm.link/2016/09/apples-relationship-pro-music-needs-mending/ <comment><USER2> Apple's relationship with pro everything is broken and it is only going to get worse.

</comment><comment><USER3> I personally wouldn't update any work-essential computer to any bleeding-edge software. Especially audio. Especially hardware I use to perform.

It seems absurd.

So does the suggestion to switch to Windows instead. Anyone who had to mess around with ASIO drivers, latency and crackling and sudden freezes under Windows can attest to that.

I wouldn't even add the fact that Windows 10 just screwed the partition table up for the second time within a week. Pretty problematic.

/rant

Some of the things pointed out in the article do have merit: Apple's QA seems to be a little off nowadays - we need that more than any hardware right now.

</comment><comment><USER4> Coincidentally, another editorial against macOS for pro audio also showed up this month: [http://tapeop.com/columns/end- rant/115/](http://tapeop.com/columns/end-rant/115/)

<comment><USER5> I get that the one you linked is supposed to be a rant, but it just ends up as hyperbole and misinformation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This sums up the points so well - I am not a pro musician (but hang out with musicians from time to time) - not only is having to use a dongle a pain, but the fact it is lower quality + a hissing noise has been observed when the phone is under heavy load is unacceptable.

It's annoying, as I was going to get an iphone 7, the UI on most Android phones a mess.. might just enjoy the reduction on a 6, though if I'd wanted a 6 I could have waited.

Bah, enough of my first world problem.

<comment><USER7> This article is primarily about the audio engine on the desktop version of the OS, within the context of music production and live performance.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Node.js Module for App Store Optimization - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/facundoolano/google-play-keywords <comment><USER2> Very nice project, is there an equivalent for Apple Store?

<comment><AUTHOR> Challenge accepted: [https://github.com/facundoolano/aso](https://github.com/facundoolano/aso)

<comment><USER2> Change the description from Tools for app store optimization on Google Play to Tools for app store optimization on Google Play and App Store

<comment><AUTHOR> good catch, thanks</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bret Victor The Future of Programming - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pTEmbeENF4

<comment><USER2> From the description of the video:

 _For his recent DBX Conference talk, Victor took attendees back to the year 1973, donning the uniform of an IBM systems engineer of the times, delivering his presentation on an overhead projector. The '60s and early '70s were a fertile time for CS ideas, reminds Victor, but even more importantly, it was a time of unfettered thinking, unconstrained by programming dogma, authority, and tradition. 'The most dangerous thought that you can have as a creative person is to think that you know what you're doing,' explains Victor. 'Because once you think you know what you're doing you stop looking around for other ways of doing things and you stop being able to see other ways of doing things. You become blind.' He concludes, 'I think you have to say: "We don't know what programming is. We don't know what computing is. We don't even know what a computer is." And once you truly understand that, and once you truly believe that, then you're free, and you can think anything.'"_

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The conclusion is profound in my opinion. The rest is just a clever way of making the point.</comment>


Mixpanel (YC S09) Gets A UI Makeover; Monthly Data Volume Growing By 40 Percent - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/12/mixpanel-gets-a-ui-makeover-monthly-data-volume-growing-by-40-percent/

<comment><USER2> What does Mixpanel think about adding statistical significance where appropriate? Take the Fbconnect and nonFbconnect users vs song engagement in the video. The chap in the video was fairly certain there was no significant increase, but visually it looks as if there in fact _was_ have a slight, but significant difference between the two patterns of engagement. Impossible to tell without some sort of statistical analysis. There are probably lots of cases like these if your offering is fundamentally sound.

If I was the guy that championed and implemented FBConnect in my app and one of my co-founders thought that based on that graph there was no significant difference I'd be pretty pissed off.

</comment><comment><USER3> > 1 billion actions per month

What a bamboozlingly humongous number! So I tried to figure out what it might mean in concrete terms. Assuming an "action" is some tuple of (32bit timestamp, 32bit customer_id, 32bit user_id, 32bit action_type_id, and say, 64bits for some custom value associated with the action)..

        >>> (((1e9 * 12) / 365 / 86400) * (4 + 4 + 4 + 4 + 8)) / 1024
        8.9183789954337911

Amounts to about 9kb/sec of raw data.

<comment><USER4> Average data point is actually 320 bytes. If we were doing a billion, it'd be about 116KB/sec.

We do more than a billion though. =)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Odd horizontal scrolling on properties under funnels. (Doesn't work for me in Chrome)

<comment><USER5> Also I'd love to be able to see a graph of my funnel conversion rates over time.

<comment><USER6> We had this before, I just didn't have time to add it back in. I'm working on it right now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yo Suhail,

Was MixPanel once an opinion/debate site? I swear the name sounds familiar.

</comment><comment><USER8> Congrats guys!</comment>


The One Way Successful People Are Like Successful Software - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/walter-chen/the-one-way-successful-people-are-like-successful-software.html <comment><USER2> Flashes in the pan, and more shine than substance -- most of them.</comment>


CS in VN (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://neil.fraser.name/news/2013/03/16/ <comment><USER2> > There is no question that half of the students in that grade 11 class could > pass the Google interview process.

I am quite sure this is not an average case. He likely visited a high school olympiad team. Tbh, CS in Vietnam educational system is still treated like "third class citizen."

(I am Vietnamese, went to a gifted high school and had exposure with competitive programming)

<comment><USER3> I'm Vietnamese too and what he (the author) wrote here in this blog post seems very much the exception rather than the norm.

He most likely visited an Olympiad team, where they solve problems like these to compete. Most other schools, such as the ones I went to, had IT/CS as a side class (meaning they don't get that much attention from both students and teachers alike) rather than a main class (think Math, English, Vietnamese etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5388535](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5388535)

</comment><comment><USER5> > By grade 3 they are learning to how to use Microsoft Windows. Vietnam is a > 100% Windows XP monoculture. Probably all with the same serial number. > However, given that a copy of Windows costs one month's salary, it's easy to > understand.

I wonder why Linux is not becoming more widespread in such places. Something like Xubuntu runs well on mediocre hardware and is completely free. Compared to such an old Windows like XP it also wins in terms of usability and software availability, not to mention security.

My guess is that it's simply a lack of awareness that this FOSS ecosystem exists.

<comment><USER6> Office suite is the biggest obstacle, all documents are in .doc or .docx, for both governments and businesses. Oh and the occasional breakage of Linux on desktop really hurts too. In early 2010 I volunteered to migrate IT system of a rural school to Ubuntu, it took us the whole morning to fix the KMS bug with Intel card, couldn't get resolution better than 640x480, before that 8.04 was famous with pulseaudio, 9.04 was IME's memory leak etc... yeah I know it's the driver's fault, not Linux, but it still hurts nonetheless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Linked page is available on archive.org: [https://web.archive.org/web/20160310023438/http://bevandan.v...](https://web.archive.org/web/20160310023438/http://bevandan.vnn.vn/vi/TintucChitiet.aspx?Id=d2c33d94-978a-4951-b6e0-35b659c25012)

</comment><comment><USER8> Curious to hear what the consequences of the CS push were.

<comment><USER9> I was looking for a job in Vietnam in 2016. My impression was that there were a lot of big codeshops in Hanoi and Saigon writing outsourced code. There was also a not insignificant startup ecosystem, mostly using PHP.</comment></comment>


Why fuel cell cars don't work - <AUTHOR> http://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/11470/why-fuel-cell-cars-dont-work-part-1 <comment><USER2> The article deftly steps around the real issue: Fuel Cells are entirely an petroleum industry promotion.

The goal is to provide a seemingly credible (but in reality completely unworkable) clean alternative so politicians, car companies and oil companies together can work "towards a clean future" while deep down knowing that it's a stalling tactic to keep the petroleum infrastructure in place.

Any fuel cell funding sucks the oxygen from the real threats to the industry: Industrial/Consumer solar and BEV (battery electric vehicles).

It's analogous to "clean coal": [http://www.coal-is-dirty.com/top-5-clean- coal-myths](http://www.coal-is-dirty.com/top-5-clean-coal-myths)

<comment><USER3> I really don't understand the whole cars are in league with big oil. What on earth do the car companies have to get out of it? The big name in the 90s, Ballard, had buy in from a couple of car companies and no oil companies.

<comment><USER4> Don't picture a bunch of oil tycoons with monocles sitting in back rooms smoking cigars with Ford execs laughing about how they are going to crush Tesla.

It's much more subtle than that. I grew up around cars. My dad races them as his hobby. We restored a few, and spent plenty of time wrenching on a car together. It was one of the highlights of my childhood. It's still one of the things we often talk about when we see each other. I'm sure it's the reason I got a mechanical engineering degree.

When I think back to those times, a bunch of fragments of memories pop up. The sound a racing motor makes the first time you fire it up. The smell of gasoline vs diesel vs oil vs brake fluid vs transmission fluid. The grease on your hands. Knowing all the components under the hood, how they go together. How to start a cold engine with a flakey carb. How to fix a flooded engine.

There is real nostalgia around cars, and that means gasoline/diesel engines. I can barely enjoy modern cars with their plastic engine fairings and electronic controls, much less an electric car with just batteries and motors. I love building robots, and I'm a professional programmer now, but electric cars just don't excite me from the perspective of working on them. (Driving a Tesla is a different story).

Layer on top of that nostalgia, which I believe most of the people that work in the auto industry have, is the reality of 100+ years of IC engine expertise. If electric cars are the future, how much advantage does Ford have over a startup? Certainly some, but not nearly as much as they do in gasoline engines. Every bit of the drive train is completely different in an electric car. Not only are you throwing out the expertise in engines, but transmissions and differentials as well.

I can imagine that makes their position less defendable.

<comment><USER5> I can't imagine growing up with cars.

When I think back... I think back to sitting on top of a horse, as we make a journey together. The feel of his hair in your hands as you lean forward. The fun of sitting back while he eats grass. So relaxing and with a sense of bonding.

I mean... who would replace a living breathing horse, who is part of the family, with a smelly machine that breaks?

There is real nostalgia around horses. And phone booths. and Sony Walkman. and CRTs. And... and... and... .. .

People hate change. Just because "cars = gas/diesel" to YOU doesn't mean that a new generation of kids won't break their teeth, and learn to be engineers, with electric or hydrogen or whatever....

<comment><USER6> You may have intended this to be a rebuttal, but you actually made the same argument as the person you were replying to. Once the nostalgia/sensation surrounding horses were gone, the companies providing transportation had no more incumbent advantage over auto manufacturers.

Likewise, once incumbent car manufacturers can't promote some of the things that people fondly associate with cars, new alternative car companies are better able to put them out of business.

The best point in your comment is that alternative car companies may be able to generate some of that nostalgia early enough to use it against incumbents - I think this is possible and that for some people, they will be happy to trade petroleum good feelings for electric good feelings while petroleum-based cars are still a sizeable part of the market.

<comment><USER7> The difference is that mass production of cars is a scale game, unlike dealing with horses. Horse-breeding is best done locally, whilst the drivetrain engineering is really NBD when one is swapped out for the other. Tesla famously droped its first powertrains into 3rd part chasis, and they did quite well with it.

The issue is whether or not the "crown jewels" of EVs will be worth so much (ie, via patented features or trade secrets) that this will allow companies to extract rents. The problem with this approach is that rents only come out from high prices--and this is what tesla is doing--and this won't lead to enough revenues to replicate the infrastrucure of the current (behemoth) chassis makers.

So I don't think its quite cut and dry that upstarts will win out (winner take all) in the long run. It seems most likely whoever wins will M&A their way to global scale by integrating into the existing business structure of the global auto industry.

Look at facebook--they are only making money by becoming the next generation of Madison Avenue. They didn't really change the world in that regards, they simply integrated into the existing circulation system of the media-industrial complex.

Madison avenue doesn't care which blinking screed you stare at for four to eight hours a day, they just want to print money.

Similarly, the auto industry couldn't care less about whether or not you drive a clean or petrol motor. Seriously, all they care about is that you take out a loan from them to buy a box of metal that costs 30 to 50k and make your payments on time.

In other words, the business model will not really change.

The issueas about fly-by wire and the inability to work on your car are already here. It costs $700 dollars to change the battery on a BMW, because its locked down by SW. But that is a superficial level of business model change. Upgrades and spare parts will always be a busienesss line, but the core sale will always revolve around ownership of a block of metal or composites that locks you into the need to maintain it.

The more fururistic car companies of tomorrow are likely going to be something like uber or zip car combined with driverless cars and provided on-demand. But until you get to a system that fundamentally changes the distribution of transportation assets and the service model on that scale, the existing players will not really be obsolete.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The threat to the car companies is that all-electric cars could dramatically decrease demand. They hope the complexity of fuel cells will keep demand going a few more decades.

An all-electric car could have as few as a hundred moving parts. A few motors and connecting rods, some suspension componants, fans and a couple manual controls. You just don't need the thousands of tiny metal bits necessary to keep a gas/diesel engine ticking over. Better yet, those parts you do need can be generic. Electric motors are nothing special, nor are batteries. Since they do not mechanically interact they don't need to be as engine/vehicle specific as parts today. Once EVs become the norm, and the teething problems of EVs are worked out, aftermarket replacements will be everywhere.

Build a car from non-rusting carbon fiber, fill it with easily replaceable generic parts, and you've got a recipe for vehicles lasting decades. THAT's what the car companies really fear.

<comment><USER9> I doubt this is the case. If anything, the reasons you give boil down to: "the core of the car - the moving vehicle bit - will become commodity" and when this happens, cars will become "cars" like phones are now "phones," as in, they're not so much phones anymore as tiny computers that can also make calls. And this will definitely NOT increase their lifetime. If anything, it will decrease it... just like we replace our phones every 2 years.

<comment><USER10> This is an interesting idea, but I'd be curious to know what kinds of innovations in car functionality are possible. Also, assuming that you're referring to a kind of planned obsolescence, how can a company convince you to replace the entire vehicle if the moving parts are working fine?

If the computer is broken, replace the computer. Update the self-driving software over the internet. Why would you need to replace the whole car?

Unless, of course, a company tries to integrate points of failure all throughout the body, so that "replacing the computer" of the car or what have you becomes impossible due to the delicate electronic parts. Call me an optimist but at the price of cars today I don't think anyone but the super rich are gullible or decadent enough to fall for something like that instead of a cheaper, more reliable modular alternative. Unless the price of a brand new car becomes similar to that of a new phone, I don't think that future is very likely.

<comment><USER11> If only it were so simple. You're assuming discrete components. And you're assuming consumer sanity.

"Every protocol the car uses is proprietary and protected under DCMA / etc. There are chips in every component that don't allow the car to start if any component isn't a first-party part."

We're already seeing this sort of thing. Look at the Tesla. Or the Lightning connector from Apple.

<comment> semi-extrinsic Cars have been like this for years. This forum post [1] from 2004 discusses VIN specific coding, so that phenomenon is at least ten years old.

[1][http://forum.roadfly.com/archive/index.php/t-8237302.html?s=...](http://forum.roadfly.com/archive/index.php/t-8237302.html?s=2cf4baa4e0680a41c3e3081ddf49533d)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Toyota, which is the largest car manufacturer by volume, have stated repeatedly that they are betting on hydrogen fuel cells rather than batteries.

Given their track record with hybrids, one would think that they know their battery technology.

None of the anti-hydrogen fuel cell articles that have popped up here lately have mentioned this. It would be interesting to see an analysis of the Toyota strategy from this point of view.

<comment><USER13> I am really really curious how anyone is trying to solve the problem of Hydrogen leaking out of literally any container you could put it into. Smallest molecule+huge pressure = leaks out of pure lead canisters. When Mercedes made their Hydrogen-powered concept car they said the whole tank would evaporate naturally within 3 weeks if I remember correctly? As hydrogen forms an explosive mixture with air, I cannot see the problem of it leaking into surrounding environment as not being completely critical.

<comment><USER14> I remember reading about how researchers were trying to store hydrogen in what are (essentially) nano-scale plastic beads.

[http://www.theengineer.co.uk/news/nanobeads-could-store- liqu...](http://www.theengineer.co.uk/news/nanobeads-could-store-liquid- hydrogen-to-fuel-cars/1007213.article)

<comment><USER15> I wonder if that will negate the 'clean' aspect of the whole deal.

[http://www.npr.org/2014/05/21/313157701/why-those-tiny- micro...](http://www.npr.org/2014/05/21/313157701/why-those-tiny-microbeads- in-soap-may-pose-problem-for-great-lakes)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The best source of hydrogen comes from the ground. You pump this stuff out - it's long molecules consisting of a carbon backbone covered in hydrogen. You run it through something called a "reformer" to strip the hydrogen off. The reformer could be put on a car, but it'd be more efficient to do it on an industrial scale.

Actually wait, if you just use a combustion process you can get energy from both the hydrogen and the carbon!

AFAIK there are no other great sources of hydrogen.

<comment><USER17> Excess wind and solar power can be used to generate hydrogen from water.

<comment><USER18> Unfortunately, there's no efficient process for that. Efficiency of electrolysis (when not using expensive catalysts) is around 50%.

<comment><USER19> I seem to recall that synthesizing methane or hydrocarbons from water and atmospheric CO2 isn't that much less efficient than that. Given the efficiency of internal combustion engines versus fuel cells and existing infrastructure you might as well get your carbon neutral transportation that way instead of with hydrogen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> On solution to the long distance car storage is simply not to.

There are less than 50,000 miles of interstate highways in the US. If we added a 3rd rail or similar system for powering cars as they traveled range and efficiency quickly become a non issue.

Granted, the interstate highway system would just be the start eventually you would want to cover just about every road. Not to mention safety concerns etc, but it's a real option.

<comment><USER21> Unlike Europe, most of the urban infrastructure of the United states centers around the automobile. I'm not referring to roads vs train tracks. I'm referring to density Of the population. Our suburban cul De sacs make most forms of rail based public transportation prohibitely expensive to build. Only in a high density city like nyc would this make sense. To address the problem we need to dramitcally change our cities.

<comment><USER21> I also want to mention that in NYC and many major metropolitan cities in the world, your proposal has already been implemented. It's called a subway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Most discussions of FC and BEV miss the most important factor that will determine which one succeeds in the marketplace. Comparing engine efficiency, pollution, none of that matters compared to this single factor. And that factor is infrastructure.

BEV supporters often assume that everyone lives in a nice suburban home with a garage. But the reality is far from this. Millions live in apartments/condos with parking structures that contain hundreds or even thousands of cars. And there may be a trend of the younger generations favoring denser urban living instead of the suburban living of past generations. Installing a few charging ports in a parking structure that has hundreds of parking spots is not a realistic solution. Will the owners of apartments and condos be willing to install hundreds of electric plugs into parking structures? I think the answer is either no, or they would do it too slowly to determine the FC vs BEV fight.

So for the millions in this situation, there are only these options for the future. BEV battery swapping stations vs Hydrogen stations. Supercharger is too slow compared to hydrogen filling. Only battery swapping is comparable. Which infrastructure is built more quickly will determine if FC or BEV wins. Energy efficiency, pollution, none of that matters compared to this.

<comment><USER23> Why would presume that owners would not want to install electric car chargers in their garages if there was demand for it? Presumably in such a situation you would be expected to pay for the electricity in the same way you pay for your gas, so installing chargers would actually make money. The building owners would have to hate money to not want to install electric car chargers in their buildings.

Also, for many urban dwellers the choice is academic because they choose to not own a car at all. Instead using car sharing services these services would have no problem ensuring that their cars get charging ports.

<comment><USER24> These things aren't free. An apartment with a parking garage space with an electric car charger will certainly cost more than one without a charger, and WAY more than one without the parking space at all. If this doesn't translate directly into higher rents then the building owners won't want to do it.

Making sure a shared car is charged sounds like a nightmare. The whole point of car sharing is the cars get more use and spend less time parked. Considering how long it takes to charge some of these rigs, I'm surprised that the sharing companies have adopted them. My car share offers three models of battery-electric vehicle, one of them is the ridiculous Scion that only goes 35 miles between charges. Personally I don't understand how the economics works on that.

<comment><USER25> Paris already has a very successful shared electric car device called Autolib. I use it at least once a week, and it's brilliant. The scheme works because the battery has a range of about 150km, but the typical trip is only 5-10km. The systemight not work as well in less dense cities.

<comment><USER26> Wow, this is interesting: they use a car that I haven't seen mentioned before. It has a range a bit longer than the Leaf. In low-speed urban driving it's good for 250km range, or 150km on the highway. Given that it's mostly used for short trips in cities, that's enough that it will probably last an entire day, and then charge fully overnight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm surprised he didn't mention the volumetric efficiency of compressed hydrogen compared to gasoline when comparing the specific energy density of the two fuels. Yes, you have more than 3x the energy per unit mass, but you have more than 5.5x less energy per unit volume. So instead of a simple 12 gallon gas tank, you need a 66+ gallon pressure vessel adding plenty of weight and taking up volume that would otherwise be useful for cargo or other purposes.

<comment><USER28> It's the first part in a series of articles. I'm sure he will mention this, especially considering he hints at the densoty issues right at the beginning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Another problem is fundamentally the game you're playing is mass and capex providing a way to turn air and H2 into power. Author is correct that fuel cells suck, but whats even worse is a little hybrid H2 turbine would be lighter, cheaper, higher powered, and in a real world situation, higher natgas well to wheel efficiency. In fact, rather than turning natgas from a well into H2, you'd be better off just burning the natgas in the turbine.

Turbines do have some deployment issues such as outputing enough nitrogen oxides to generate a cloud, etc. But in a hybrid system, they're pretty cool.

Basically you're taking an electric car and a very small electric company natgas peaking plant and putting it in the trunk with a charger.

</comment><comment><USER30> I believe fuel cells will work when they can use methane, butane or propane cheaply.

I already use an NGV(natural gas) car. Using fuel cells means you can get 60%-70% efficiency instead of 40% of thermal engines because you don't have Carnot't limit.

Also, with natural gas lots of people will be able to charge on their home. Lots of people have natural gas pipelines in their houses in Europe.

Today you can use this fuels only on fixed places, but over time we will be able to use it on cars.

But I don't believe this will happen soon. And when it happens it will probably use at least a small battery for getting the benefits of it:regenerative braking and instant responsiveness.

<comment><USER31> Isn't using any hydrocarbon going to give you the issue with pollution that gasoline does? You're not really solving any problems simply changing what hydrocarbon you choose to burn.

<comment><USER30> "You're not really solving any problems simply changing what hydrocarbon you choose to burn."

You are solving lots of problems:

1-Lots of countries in the world have natural gas(or coal), but very few have oil.Just not depending on the petrodollar is a big plus as it would made countries more self reliant.

2-Reserves of natural gas are way higher than of oil.

3-If efficiency doubles, you need to spend half of it.

4-You can synthesize it artificially if you have C02, water, and energy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Hydrogen is a complete dead end. It's too hard to make, ship, store, or use.

But methane is not. Can fuel cells work with methane? I think so, and if they don't work well, then that's where the research should be directed.

<comment><USER33> As far as I understand the alternative candidate is Methanol, which can be produced from Hydrogen, which has a relatively high energy density, is liquid at room temperature, and works well with fuel cells.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> For those curious to hear Elon's stance (as an electric car maker with a large bet on lithium ion batteries, he's obviously biased): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_e7rA4fBAo&t=10m8s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_e7rA4fBAo&t=10m8s)

<comment><USER35> At least he can back up his claims with science.

<comment><USER34> Agreed. I think his arguments are very sound and rational.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> ex-FC researcher here. pretty much gets it. some other context: it's hydrogen for cars because of the chemistry ie, start-up, shut-down and response times. most FC claims are more of a 'displaced emmissions' scheme than zero- emmissions (unless you're in say, NZ where we have @#$# loads of renewables on our grid). PEM fuel cells are limited to 100 dC due to the hydrogen ion transport via liquid water - that's a problem. at this temp you need exotic metals like Platinum to crack the molecules open for rxn - that's a problem, especially if you're into ethical mining/sourcing. FC cars will need to operate like whiteware or, well cars do now but literally be a small chemical plant. storing hydrogen isn't as easy as people think, it can really screw up 'normal' metals (lone protons are very tricky little @##@s to keep track of). having said all that, FC are fascinating from a tech perspective but IMHO, reasonably sized, high temperature FCs working in highly deregulated markets are about the only place they'll work at all and even then, there's a lot of competition with faster technology iteration rates. i've been reading the same articles since the early-90s - FC car tech is always about 10 years away.

<comment><USER37> (writer of the blog post here) Interesting, can you divulge a bit more about where and when you did FC research? Was it academic or for a manufacturer?

You are absolutely right; PEM FCs - and I glossed over this in the blog post, might want to readdress it in a future part - are the only portable-enough technology for fuel cells and they inherently come with this ion transport problem and by extension cooling problem that is just unsolvable. Which is essentially the root cause of the complexity of an FCV.

Anyway, I feel your jadedness. Until I actually worked with fuel cells, I had absolutely no idea. Nobody had adequately conveyed to me how these things work and what goes into actually building FCVs. Things finally started to click in my head when we had an electric kart on batteries done within days after completing the frame, yet it took many months until the fuel cell worked. And this was a pretty ready-to-go fuel cell in most respects (Hydrogenics HyPM8).

I was too young back then to appreciate how long FC tech has been 'just around the corner' in the media. Now I understand. I built an FCV 7 1/2 years ago! And they're still pretty much at the same point. I wish things were different because I love the tech, but nature wins this time.

<comment><USER36> hi, feel free to get in touch via my profile if you want. I did FC research in late 90s first at Monash Uni as a post-doc (i did the MeOH reforming for my colleague who worked on the PEM) and from there moved into a development role at CFCL, one of the longer-living attempts at commercialising high temp FCs (just had a look, they're still going). with my background (heterogeneous catalysis), i mostly worked on the balance of plant (reforming, desulph and catox) and by extension the anode. from there i worked in an electricty trading division here in NZ which completely blew my mind wrt the value proposition of FC technology. Now that i understand the technology and the market, I'm happy to be doing other things. NB this isn't because i don't like FCs (i'm strangely enamored of the three-phase boundary as a topic of research ;-) but because i don't think most people, including those commercialising them really understand how they would be used and i suspect that most activity is mining clean-gen subsidies which has a place but ultimately needs to be a transition, not the end point. maybe their business cases have gotten more sophisticated over the years but i doubt it. as i tell people now - FC tech is exactly the right answer to a very specific question. most people then ask what the question is... ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> The picture of their race-car surprised me. The driver's seat is right next to, and seemingly unshielded from, a stack of 36 "very large ultracapacitors". Are these less likely to explode than other capacitors? Sure they might have electronics designed to keep them within safe operating margins, but for safety I'd trust distance and enclosure more than custom electronics.

<comment><USER37> It's a... student project ;)

However, the actual amount of energy in those ultracaps isn't that much. We're talking a couple tens of kWs or, in other words, all those caps together don't even hold the same energy as one single li-ion cell (18650 size). The energy density is low, thus, the actual safety issue is fairly minor.

That being said, they are in a special Nylon enclosure with polycarbonate sides which provides an effective shield in the case of rupture. But, at the moment that picture was shot we hadn't actually tested that yet :D

Again, students.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Refilling and storage issues are being worked on by using ethanol instead of H2 (look up Direct Alcohol Fuel Cell). It is considered better than methanol due to a much lower toxicity and higher energy density but the tech is just not there yet. This is considered to be the future for medium size batteries (small vehicles, hand machinery etc.).

Beyond that, what is wrong with green crude-derived fuels (gasoline, diesel, jet fuel) as a medium of energy storage?

It is being produced right now in small quantities after refining green crude made from algae grown into water/sunlight (carbon neutral form).

Some advantages:

      * doesn't compete with arable land like corn ethanol
      * can be grown in salt water
      * no oxygen atoms to oxide your tank/engine
      * much less sulfurs or combustion by-products than fossil-crude refined fuels
      * can be refined using existing infrastructure
      * can be distributed using existing infrastructure
      * can be used in existing vehicles and machinery
      * recycling combustion engines is much less energy-intensive than batteries

</comment><comment><USER40> Title should be "why Hydrogen fuel cell cars don't work"

</comment><comment><USER41> There are actually two buses in operation at my university which run on fuel cells: [http://www.kit.edu/downloads/Flyer_Wasserstoffbus_EN.pdf](http://www.kit.edu/downloads/Flyer_Wasserstoffbus_EN.pdf)

They have been in operation since 2013, so they seem to work pretty well.

<comment><USER14> TFL (Transport for London) have been running hydrogen buses on a route in London since 2011. According to the link they have 8 in total and the entire route is operated with hydrogen buses.

[http://www.hydrogenlondon.org/projects/london-hydrogen- bus-p...](http://www.hydrogenlondon.org/projects/london-hydrogen-bus-project/)

<comment><USER24> AC Transit also operates 12 hydrogen fuel cell buses. [http://www.actransit.org/environment/the- hyroad/](http://www.actransit.org/environment/the-hyroad/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Get back to me when a practical, affordable, and go over 300 mile on a charge, battery powered car is here. Currently batteries are not a practical replacement. Currently if you want to hit near 300, you don't quite get there, your in the eighty thousand plus range if that low after common options for your only real choice. Home charging is still a four hour plus affair with the best chargers.

Odd he claims that a hundred mile range isn't available using "safe tanks" when the Honda Clarity has been around six years and does twice that.

Manufacturers seem to be betting on fuel cells because they have many other uses other than cars. They also will have a weight advantage over battery powered cars

<comment><USER26> Lots of people who have yet to own an electric car think like you do. People who've tried it and have home chargers discover:

1) It's really nice that your car is fully charged every morning... sure beats having to visit gas stations on a regular basis. 4 hours is not a big deal if you're asleep.

2) If you want to go long distance, a network like Tesla's supercharger does the trick. (Tesla owners drive SF-LA by stopping twice for 20 minutes, or pay for a 5-minute battery swap once.)

3) While the only long-range electric car today costs 80k+, Chevy and Tesla are both planning on releasing a cheaper long-range car in 2017.

Is it the case that anyone other than cars is betting on hydrogen fuel cells? The only big fuel cells that I've ever heard of are used in the datacenter industry, where Bloom Energy is the main fuel cell company, and they power theirs on hydrocarbons, not hydrogen.

<comment><USER43> _and have home chargers_

This is an incredibly significant point that continuously gets glossed over in these pro v con lists. I park my car on the street, and that's not particularly uncommon. Should I run an extension cable over the footpath? What if I have to park further away than my cable reaches?

<comment><USER26> It's not glossed over: That's why I mentioned it. You are not in the sweet spot for this generation of electric cars. If you look around Hacker News, you will find a bunch of people like you complaining that it doesn't work for people like you. Sorry. Electric cars can grow a lot without buyers like you. If they grow to the point that you're a big problem, they'll be pretty common.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I thought fuel cells were debunked 10 years ago? The sad part is that power distribution and storage for wind isn't keeping up. Here in Minnesota, Buffalo Ridge Power (BR is one of the windiest places in the nation), many of the multi-megawatt turbines are forced to idle down because there's no place for the power to go. A logical place to put this power is in fuel cells.

</comment><comment><USER45> There are fuel cells that don't require pure hydrogen, they can use light hydrocarbons such as methane or alcohol both of which have a much more mature distribution infrastructure in place.

</comment><comment><USER46> Why "hydrogen" fuel cell cars don't work. Quite the misleading title.

<comment><USER37> (author here): this is part 1. I will go into other types of fuel cells in a future part. Hydrogen is the focus of the first two parts just because this is the most mature technology and has actually been used in a couple of (kinda..) production cars.</comment></comment>


Our Graham Greene in Havana - <AUTHOR> https://www.historytoday.com/history-matters/our-graham-greene-havana <comment><USER2> Always throws me off when I see his name because I first think of the actor rather than the author!

The part about being prophetic about the Cuban Missile Crisis was interesting, and I think I'll add _The Quiet American_ to my reading list:

 _[Greene 's] previous full-length novel, The Quiet American (1955), anticipated tragic US military entanglement in Vietnam a decade later. Meanwhile, his Havana-based story would prove remarkably prophetic about another key Cold War episode. Using an Atomic Pile vacuum cleaner as a model, the charlatan Secret Service agent fools his bungling bosses in London with sketches of 'big military installations under construction' in the mountains of eastern Cuba, including a 'large concrete platform' and 'strange machinery in transport'._

<comment><USER3> It's a powerful book, I certainly recommend it. Also his book about a priest on the run in Mexico, the Power and the Glory. He's truly a great author and teller of strong stories.

<comment><USER4> Agreed on Greene bring a great author and story teller! Of all the Greene texts I've read, I had mixed feelings about The Power and the Glory when I read it a decade or so ago. I imagine if prior to picking it up I had read more about the historical context it is set in, I would've gotten more out of it.

For a thoroughly enjoyable read I'd also recommend The Comedians.

<comment><USER5> As a teenager Brighton Rock blew me away, and still does. The book and film both conjure the time and the people so well for me. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brighton_Rock_(novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brighton_Rock_\(novel\))

<comment><USER6> When I first read it I wasn't aware that some of my relatives by marriage where off course bookies in Birmingham Pre WW2 and post.

They would have known the gangsters that Brighton rock uses as the base for some of the characters. One of my cousins who is an actor has actually appeared in a theatre version of Brighton Rock.

BTW this was when off course book making was illegal in the UK

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Our Man in Havana" is also interesting because it inspired John le Carré's "The Tailor of Panama" (1996; movie in 2001).

</comment><comment><USER8> Also a good book to read, if you like Graham Greene: [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12688827-the-man- within-...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12688827-the-man-within-my- head)</comment>


Seeking: freelance web designer in DFW - <AUTHOR>

We need a local, reasonably talented, decently experienced designer in the Dallas area for freelance work.  Prima Donnas, know-it-alls, "rock stars", Sven, and "I only work with the cool stuff" need not apply.  We're in business to make money and I'm the only Prima Donna, know-it-all, rock star, "cool toys" guy around here :D
Idea skills: - web design (duh) - flash - css - html - dhtml/javascript (nothing heavy)
It would be swell if you knew php, but it's a huge plus, not a requirement.
if you are NOT PHYSICALLY located in the Dallas area, please do not bother wasting my time <comment><USER2> sounds like a "leave your morals and ethics at home" venture

oh well, good luck with your hunt

<comment><AUTHOR> err what?

No... we just can't afford to waste our time with people that would rather discuss esoterically the merits of x vs y than actually get work done.</comment></comment>


Why Darwin was wrong about the tree of life - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126921.600-why-darwin-was-wrong-about-the-tree-of-life.html?full=true <comment><USER2> This is well discussed by a biologist and his scientist friends on Pharyngula:

[http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/01/speaking_of_media...](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/01/speaking_of_media_mangling.php)

I was not previously aware of how many times before the New Scientist magazine has muffed reporting on science issues. Some examples are linked in the blog discussion comments on the latest article.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting, about horizontal gene transfer making concepts of heredity and so on more complex than originally thought. But it should not be titled "Darwin was wrong..." That smacks of ID, which is in my opinion nothing less than a major selective disadvantage to homo sapiens.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. As a theist myself, I'm often embarrassed by the ID bandwagon and the epidemic lack of reason that goes along with it. The cover of this magazine is going to get waved triumphantly as the old "science made a mistake so it must be totally wrong" fallacy gets drug back into the limelight.

A much better title would have been _"Evolutionary biology much bigger and more complicated than Darwin imagined."_ In other words, science as usual. But that wouldn't sell many magazines, now would it?</comment></comment>


What it's like to work at Disqus: interview - <AUTHOR> http://blog.snaptalent.com/?p=119

<comment><USER2> That's like an interview of some spoiled child actor.

Seriously, nothing they said there was unique. Perhaps it was watered down by the interviewer, but it seems like they could place any company name there looking to hire some people and they probably had the gal to charge them for a 'candid company portrait' as part of their high level web 2.0 recruiting process.

Smells bad to me.

<comment><USER3> haha, spoiled child actor

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'll say this, and I speak only for myself and a medium sized rat I have in my home:

I think it makes a company a lot more likeable when we see an interview with the founders where the founders are just normal people who appear _humble_! I won't mention any names, but there are a few founders who have blogs and whatnots that give this vibe that they are so intelligent and so much better than the rest of us. It makes me want them to fail.

The Disqus guys seem down to earth and a bit camera nervous, which makes them likeable, and makes me want them to succeed too.

So, I think more founders here should post videos of themselves on their product pages, and people will generally be nicer, I believe, as you change from some text into a real person one could meet someday.

</comment><comment><USER5> "Who are you looking to hire and what skills will they have?

We're looking for great developers who are passionate about contributing to and shaping the web."

Sounds perfect for the HN crowd.

<comment><USER6> Sounds like empty bullshit to me.

Me, were I hiring, I'd say something more like this:

I want madmen. I want people who have seen where the web could be going and who are dedicated to guiding it there. I want the woman who knows when less is more, and when more is more. I want the man who understands how the future of discussion on the web is being shaped, and who is obsessed with getting it right. I want the people who are maybe a little bit crazy about this, because so am I.

<comment><USER7> While poetic and thoroughly motivating, I don't know if I'd apply for a job with a description like that. It reminds me too much of the "need python ninja with postgres jiu-jitsu skillz" spiels you see on freelancing websites. Unless you had a professional advertising company, that description says nothing relevant the actual job he is talking about.

This isn't to say that creative job descriptions aren't amazing, I just feel that they could be better tailored their target audience. Preferably something along the lines of the resume-free job posting, exemplified at <http://www.ryanholiday.net/archives/help_wanted.phtml>.

Personally, I'd also ask for a description of the applicants favorite algorithm and why. You can gauge their interests and passions from a loaded question like that, and it would be a hell of a lot of fun to write.

<comment><USER6> Well, sure, that wasn't a complete job description. It wasn't meant to be. It was a replacement for TFA's "We're looking for great developers who are passionate about contributing to and shaping the web."

In short, it's a hook to get people to look at the actual job opening.</comment></comment></comment></comment>