The Most Isolated Man on the Planet - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2264478/pagenum/all/ <comment><USER3> Let's track him down. Give him a computer. And finally get an unbiased opinion: vim or emacs?

<comment><USER4> Probably cats to a file.

<comment><USER5> Probably uses a magnetized needle and a steady hand.

<comment><USER6> Nah. He definitely uses butterflies.

<comment><USER4> That _would_ explain all the tornados...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Kudos to the Brazilian government:

 _Advanced societies invariably have subsumed whatever indigenous populations they've encountered, determining those tribes' fates for them. But Brazil is in the middle of an experiment. If peaceful contact is established with the lone Indian, they want it to be his choice. They've dubbed this the "Policy of No Contact." After years of often-tragic attempts to assimilate into modern life the people who still inhabit the few remaining wild places on the planet, the policy is a step in a totally different direction. The case of the lone Indian represents its most challenging test._

<comment><USER5> Sounds like the Prime Directive

<comment><USER8> Perhaps not quite as extreme. I'm sure this guy can venture to the edges of the territory preserved to him and observe the outside world, or at least see airplanes flying above him.

In fact, it sounds less like the Prime Directive and more like a type of basic respect--if the man wants to be left alone and seems to be leaving us alone, then live and let live.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The curious thing about the Amazonian peoples is that a lot of them are refugees on the run. We don't really know a lot about what the continent looked like before the European conquest because most of the indigenous peoples were slaughtered or integrated into Spanish/Portuguese society as slaves.

So there's actually a lot of evidence that these hyper-insular tribes are products of the conquest, and did not have this extreme a society before Europeans arrived. In some ways, this man might be the last remnant of a hodgepodge guerrilla army of sorts that has been fighting a losing battle for centuries.

<comment><USER10> Do you have any evidence / citations for this idea? I've never heard of it, even in articles like 1491 from the Atlantic: <http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/2002/03/mann.htm> .

<comment><USER8> The same author has a book, also titled _1491_ , which apparently goes into many of these issues. It's been on my to-read list for awhile.

<comment><USER9> In addition I'd just say read up on Latin American history in general. Slavers and missionaries worked all over the continent for centuries. It's hard to imagine that any society survived unchanged in that environment, especially as new societies were built up.

And when I say guerrilla army I'm being more figurative than literal. It seems fairly obvious there wasn't a serious power structure in place outside of the Andes, but I think that it's definitely true that the cultures we see today do not look much at all like the pre-colonial Amazonian culture.

<comment><USER11> I've heard similar descriptions of the aboriginal people of Australia - <USER2> only have their tribal grounds in the bush because the prime real estate they used to inhabit is taken.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> And yet we still wonder about the Fermi Paradox. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox>

<comment><USER13> i don't think a parallel to this mans situation can go very far.

we aren't reluctant to make contact with aliens the way he is reluctant to contact us. we wouldn't appreciate being "preserved" the way indigenous tribes would prefer to perpetuate their traditions.

assuming aliens capable of contacting are us out there, i think the likeliest explanation for the fermi paradox is complete disinterest. their relation to us is more like our relation to inanimate matter than our relation to this fellow human.

<comment><USER14> Maybe...

But it's also possible that we simply could not conceive of the kind of transformation which the alien contact would bring about. Lots of native tribes were actually eager to contact European explorers but had no idea that it would lead to the more or less complete destruction of their culture. There might be an analogy in contact with aliens but an analogy which are simply incapable of even understanding, despite belief that we are the most advanced thing around.

<comment><USER12> It's also possible that we were not alive and/or could not have understood the "howdy" when it occurred. We are but a primitive species. To think that somehow in the last 1000 years or so somebody must have made contact in a way we could understand -- or there is nobody -- is really pretty arrogant.

<comment><USER15> How about accepting the apparent fact that we are completely alone, instead of trying to satiate our immense egos with fantasies about why someone else would possibly want to ignore something _so important_ as the human race?

<comment><USER12> Why would my ego be satiated by possible beings who have no interest in me?

<comment><USER16> _Why would my ego be satiated by possible beings who have no interest in me?_

I mean, it sure doesn't work with girls.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> FYI: The story of the "Lone Woman of San Nicolas", mentioned in the 5th paragraph of the article, is dramatized in the novel _Island of the Blue Dolphins_.

<comment><USER18> _"... The story of the "Lone Woman of San Nicolas", mentioned in the 5th paragraph of the article, is dramatized in the novel Island of the Blue Dolphins. ..."_

Saw this film as a kid, pretty powerful as I remember quite a bit ~ <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_of_the_Blue_Dolphins>

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Some documentary makers briefly filmed him:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOdCiuf5tvY>

</comment><comment><USER20> Can you truly imagine what his life is like if he believes he is the last man on earth? You must be really strong to live through it.

<comment><USER21> Why would he believe that? They've tried to contact him before.

<comment><USER22> Why would he necessarily think those who have tried to contact him are people? He could think only he and his tribe are people and the others are:

1\. aliens 2\. demons 3\. spirits 4\. some animal 5\. lesser humans 6\. and so on

Numbers 2,3 and 5 are not too far fetched. Heck even in the 20th and 21st century there are modern cultures that think this way. Racism is really all about #5. Various fundamentalist religions have a tendency to think in terms of demons and spirits.

It is a completely valid hypothesis that he believes he is the last man on earth or the last 'real man' or whatever.

<comment><USER21> Hmmm, I never thought of that. Good point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Perhaps a scale could be useful on the zoomed map... It's isolation, so distance, that we are talking about.

(A grumpy cartographer).

<comment><USER24> Isolation is not about distance. The man this article refers to is more isolated from other humans than, for example, any of the first astronauts that were put alone in orbit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This dude had a pretty impressive run of self imposed isolation:

An Island to Oneself

<http://www.janesoceania.com/suvarov_tom_neale/>

<comment><USER26> It's also reminiscent of Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese soldier in WWII who was commanded to carry out guerrilla tactics in the Philippine jungle. Believing reports of the war's end to be an Allied deception, he continued to attack and raid the locals for thirty years.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroo_Onoda>

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> FYI, related story with video footage: [http://www.newscientist.com/blog/shortsharpscience/2007/07/m...](http://www.newscientist.com/blog/shortsharpscience/2007/07/man- of-hole.html)

</comment><comment><USER28> I disliked the way the reporter kept calling the man an Indian

It almost made me want to stop reading, but the story is quite interesting. I wonder what the 5 foot deep pits he digs are really for. Pit fall traps for.... vehicles?

<comment><USER8> Edit: Now with citations!

Many indigenous Americans prefer "Indian" to "Native American". "Native American" is a term invented by white people to make themselves feel better, by and large.

"American Indian" is the preferred term if you need to distinguish from the people of India.

"Charles C. Mann noted in his 2005 book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus that "every native person whom I have met (I think without exception) has used 'Indian' rather than 'Native American'."[17] Russell Means, an activist in the American Indian Movement, said in 1998, "I abhor the term Native American...I prefer the term American Indian because I know its origins."[4][17]"

"Many of those who are covered by the term strongly prefer "American Indian" over "Native American".[21][22] According to the US Census Bureau, as of 1995 50% preferred "American Indian", 37% "Native American", and the remainder preferred other terms or had no preference.[23]"

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

<comment><USER28> "every native person whom I have met (I think without exception) has used 'Indian' rather than 'Native American'."

I grew up in Nebraska and I went to primary school with a number of Native Americans. It was considered very disrespectful to refer to them as Indians.

The Native Americans I grew up with would not put up with people calling them indians, engens, or anything similar. If you really want to respect a native (a real one, not just one with native ancestors) then don't stereotype them by calling them anything other than their actual name.

If you must refer to them by race you call them by the name which they give you which is going to be their tribe name and not some 500 year old archaic misunderstanding of the people on earth. Or if you want to be safe you can always call them natives, because the definition actual fits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> "City life is millions of people being lonesome together"

-Henry David Thoreau

"Is Urban Loneliness a Myth?"

<http://nymag.com/news/features/52450/>

</comment><comment><USER30> I doubt this is the case from my Wikipedia reading, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontacted_people>

On January 18, 2007, FUNAI reported that it had confirmed the presence of 67 uncontacted tribes

So in the last three years they contacted everybody in those 67 tribes but this one guy? Possible, but it seems unlikely.

<comment><USER31> Presumably the 67 tribes have more than one person in them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> here is some video of the guy

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOdCiuf5tvY&feature=chann...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOdCiuf5tvY&feature=channel)

</comment><comment><USER32> Wait. You mean the guy is NOT on Facebook?</comment>


Nash – A tracing JIT compiler for Scheme [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://scheme2016.snow-fort.org/static/scheme16-paper3.pdf <comment><USER2> What's most impressive about Nash is that it is a one man show. I don't thing any of the guile devs knew about Nash when Atshro stood up and introduced it at scheme workshop 2016.

There was talk about merging it, but I dont know what happened with that. We moved to chez at work, so we sort of lost interest.

<comment><USER3> Chez is pretty tough to compete with in terms of Scheme performance. On the benchmarks presented in the paper, Chez averages faster than all the systems presented, even Pycket post warmup. Its not the fastest on every benchmark, but gives consistently good performance without huge warmup time, which is Pycket's biggest weakness. With Racket planning to switch over to Chez, it may be difficult to justify Pycket's existence, especially if some of Chez's known performance sore spots receive attention.

<comment><USER4> Is Chez AOT compiled or JIT based? If it is AOT, would the REPL still be interpreted and just a finished program AOT compiled?

<comment><USER3> Chez is an AOT compiler. I am not sure how the REPL operates, but I believe it just compiles expression on the fly before executing them. I suppose you could characterize that as JIT compilation, but the optimizer does not make use of any runtime profiling information. Racket's "JIT" is similar in that code is generated for a function when it is first called, but the optimizer is run on the bytecodes of the program before anything is run.

<comment><USER5> In Common Lisp it's fairly common for eval to compile the code and then execute it. For example, sbcl's repl usually compiles the entered expression and then executes it: although recent versions also provide an interpreted mode.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Would transpiling Scheme to Javascript and then executing the resulting Javascript on NodeJS give good performance?

<comment><USER7> In principle, maybe; in practice, currently, no: Scheme requires proper tail calls, and Javascript engines as a rule do not provide them. Yet.

<comment><USER8> Wouldn't _any_ scheme runtime/compiler need to handle that, though? In other words, wouldn't a transform to a loop (on the js side) be one possible approach?

<comment><USER9> Only if you know at compilation time what function(s) you will be calling in a tail recursive manner. If the function you call comes from a parameter or variable (for example, in continuation passing style code) then there is no straightforward way to compile it into a loop.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What Will Daily Life Look Like After Covid-19? - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/what-will-daily-life-look-like-after-covid-19-tk12j3y4h <comment><USER2> I have a hard time understanding why anybody would wash their hands directly after waking up. You haven't been exposed to any new people in your sleep unless you're in some sort of communal living arrangement like a homeless shelter, so how would you have been exposed to any new pathogens?

</comment><comment><USER3> hopefully, full working remotely, but with kids properly at school</comment>


Rod Brooks Reveals Baxter, Programmable Industrial Robot for the Masses - <AUTHOR> http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2012/09/18/rod-brooks-and-rethink-reveal-an-industrial-robot-for-the-masses/ <comment><USER2> As a professional roboticist, this is really exciting. It could have an even bigger impact that the Kinect (and other depth sensors). For the last few decades, actuators have been the dominant cost of building such a robot. Comparable arms routinely cost ~$100k (from the PR2, Meka, ABB, Barrett, Kuka, etc). Essentially, Baxter represents a 10x cost savings, taking the per-arm cost from ~$100k to ~$10k each.

Actually... Rod is my "academic grandfather." Yesterday I had the opportunity to interview him for Hizook's feature article:

[http://www.hizook.com/blog/2012/09/18/baxter-robot- rethink-r...](http://www.hizook.com/blog/2012/09/18/baxter-robot-rethink- robotics-finally-unveiled)

 __So much for yesterday's HN frontpage article about hardware being dead...

<comment><USER3> Don't want to nitpick, but the article says "Baxter will sell for $22,000, not including its base and hands, but including a software subscription and warranty." So not really a 10x cost saving.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow that's really cool. How far away are we from having one of these do dishes?

<comment><USER5> Optimized high-performance robots for washing dishes, adapted to the consumer environment, have been available for almost a century. They're called, quite aptly, dishwashers.

<comment><USER6> Ok, when will it load and unload the dishes?

<comment><USER7> Get two dishwashers and put your clean dishes in one of them.

Put a sticker on it marked "clean". Need a plate? Take it out of the "clean" dishwasher. Got a dirty plate? Put it into the other dishwasher. Other dishwasher full? Turn it on and move the "clean" sticker to that one.

Double buffering with dishwashers turns them into magic cupboards. I don't know why most kitchens only come with one.

<comment><USER8> > Put a sticker on it marked "clean".

The sticker/magnet doesn't work.

What works is maintaining the invariant "if the door is locked, the dishes inside are clean". If you open a locked door, you either empty the dishwasher or relock the door.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Single page: [http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2012/09/18/rod-brooks-and- reth...](http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2012/09/18/rod-brooks-and-rethink- reveal-an-industrial-robot-for-the-masses/?single_page=true)

</comment><comment><USER10> The $22K price is for an incomplete system. The two missing pieces (hands and base) sound pretty integral to the system as well. What is the point of listing a price of a useless configuration?

<comment><USER11> End effectors depends on the task, many are already available on the market. Some applications might not even require an active end effector at all. Same thing with the platform. Research labs who want to explore user interaction with safe, compliant arms without designing their own now have a much cheaper option that before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Unrelated to the content but if you do insist on chunking your articles up into pages, at least break them at paragraph boundaries! Or even sentence boundaries - breaking them mid-sentence is atrocious.

</comment><comment><USER13> The reverse sensor programming reminds me of cg animation auto-keyframing.

<comment><USER12> Yes, it is presumably doing some inverse kinematics in there somewhere. I wonder how they stabilised it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does anyone know how the arms are designed? Do they just have big servos?

</comment><comment><USER14> Missed opportunity: name it Dexter.</comment>


Always worrying about my abilities - <AUTHOR> http://www.ronacierno.com/post/4142215962/irony

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone I was just wondering if anyone else seems to be this way as well?

If so, how has it effected your professional life.

<comment><USER2> It's just impostor syndrome. Lots of people get it, and posts by people who have it crop up fairly regularly here. Admittedly, they tend to be by people who at least have some evidence for their worries, not by top-1.5% achievers who obsessively learn things whenever they think that someone else knows more than they do.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the info! Reading about it now.

I think most of it for stems from the fact that I am not an Ivy League/ Harvard/ Standford/MIT student and it seems that many people that have success in the Internet industry seem to come from prestigious schools. I think its mostly whether I will be able to compete with those graduates once I enter the workplace with them.</comment></comment></comment>


Create turbocharged storage using tmpfs - <AUTHOR> http://kevin.vanzonneveld.net/techblog/article/create_turbocharged_storage_using_tmpfs/ <comment><USER2> I've seen this tip a few times before, but have always wondered: isn't this what the OS disk cache should do? One of the "possible uses" is:

 _What if you're an internet host and you want to show off your massive bandwidth by having users download a dummy .bin file of 100MB. You'll find that if many users access this file at the same time, your hard drive becomes the slow factor and you're running into disk IO problems._

Surely the OS should keep this 100MB around, rather than re-reading it from the disk over and over? By keeping it in tmpfs, aren't you just "locking" the file in RAM, and defeating whatever "optimal" choice the OS is making over what files to keep around? Isn't this something better done by vmtouch? (<http://hoytech.com/vmtouch/>)

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I don't see any reason why tmpfs would be faster than hitting in the page cache (since that's what tmpfs _is_ ). Also, AFAIK tmpfs memory is swappable, so it isn't even guaranteed to be in RAM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As was already pointed out, you're often better off relying on the OS disk cache.

One situation that I've had a good use for tmpfs was when watching videos on my non-SSD-equiped laptop on a long flight. I'd copy the video to tmpfs and then force the hard drive to spin down. It had a measurable impact on battery life.</comment>


Korea to introduce 1 Gbps residential Internet by 2012  - <AUTHOR> http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20090202/korea-come-for-the-soju-stay-for-the-broadband/

<comment><USER2> And why don't we have that here in the US?

How about the $200 billion rip-off:

[http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_0026...](http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_002683.html)

And now there's going to be more and more bandwidth caps while people are ramping up usage. I expect the US, at least, to go backwards while the rest of the world is moving ahead.</comment>


Don't Blame Your Community: Ad Blocking Is Not Killing Any Sites - <AUTHOR> http://techdirt.com/articles/20100306/1649198451.shtml

<comment><USER2> It's an unfortunate fact that the 40% of our users who block ads _also_ block almost any kind of "advertising that doesn't annoy them". For instance, every user who saw blank content on our site when we decided to have a little fun was running EasyList for Ad Block Plus. You can see the global blocks here: [https://hg.adblockplus.org/easylist/file/d4e0b55077bb/easyli...](https://hg.adblockplus.org/easylist/file/d4e0b55077bb/easylist_general_block.txt)

You'll note that adsense is specifically blocked by that list. The list also catches The Deck ads. Both of these ad types are things we hear people say "we won't block ads if you run them like this"... but they block them anyway.

The title is right, though, Ad blocking isn't killing any sites. We didn't really say it was either. This whole exercise is really the result of not being able to rehire people who were laid off last year _specifically_ because our ad inventory is being hammered by ad blockers.

<comment><USER3> "Ad blocking isn't killing any sites. We didn't really say it was either."

Did I miss something or did Ken specifically say: "Ad Blocking is devastating to the sites you love" That seems to be the same thing, no?

And when you say "the result of not being able to rehire people who were laid off last year _specifically_ because our ad inventory is being hammered by ad blockers."

You're still missing the point. You're blaming your readers who chose to use adblock rather than focusing on ways to build a better business model.

Come on, you guys know this. You've covered the RIAA/MPAA doing the same exact thing over and over again. Don't blame your users and the choices they make. Focus on providing more value.

<comment><USER2> But ignoring readers and the choices they make (and more importantly, why they make those choices) is every bit as much a part of building a better business model as "do something else you dumbasses". It turns out that the vast majority of our readers block ads without thinking about it, because they think it doesn't matter, or by mistake (seriously). The vocal ones are a vast, vast minority. We spend more time than we should addressing them, but articles like the one we ran are more an attempt to reach the casual blockers.

The difference between us and the RIAA/MPAA is that we're not justifying our lobbying efforts to reform copyright control. We're simply experimenting with technical means of keeping content bundled with ads and social means of educating users who might actually give a shit. The moment one of us goes to congress and says you need to legislate our ability to serve ads alongside our content is the moment you come gripe to me, and we laugh together because I've already quit my job.

<comment><USER4> > It turns out that the vast majority of our readers block ads without > thinking about it, because they think it doesn't matter, or by mistake > (seriously).

[citation needed]

<comment><USER5> See the first link.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like the spirit of this. Rather than argue about the ethics of ad-blockers and ad-blocker-blockers, why not focus on the implicit challenge: Can more publishers find ways to make money from ad-free content?

Adblock is like Napster. People want content; the vast majority of publishers only have one business model; a lot of consumers decide to take the content without bearing the cost imposed by that model.

Some people won't pay no matter what - music filesharing is still around, of course. But a lot of people did start buying music again when Amazon and Apple and eMusic changed the price structure to something they were willing to pay.

There are a few sites like Ars and LiveJournal and MetaFilter that have ad- free options for paid users. Maybe this is a small niche and will never be big business. But maybe there's some way to get more people to pay directly in exchange for ad-free content.

<comment><USER7> "I like the spirit of this. Rather than argue about the ethics of ad-blockers and ad-blocker-blockers, why not focus on the implicit challenge: Can more publishers find ways to make money from ad-free content?"

Yes, by either:

1) charging for content 2) making each article an advertisement for something they are trying to sell 3) selling their own products, which will still involve some sort of advertising

It seems like the people fighting against the advertisers are against all forms of commercialism. Even non-flashing pure text advertisements like Google Adsense are blocked by default in all of the adblockers. If it really was only about annoying and flashing ads, why is this the case?

"Adblock is like Napster. People want content; the vast majority of publishers only have one business model; a lot of consumers decide to take the content without bearing the cost imposed by that model."

What an elegant way to put the reality of the situation: Some users feel they are entitled to free content. It's an emerging trend that is starting to happen in many industries (music, movies, books, software, and advertising).

If I, as a content provider know many people are using an adblocker, I will try to find a way around it (or start charging for content). If people stop going to my site because of bad advertisements, I will make any effort to remove the offending ads.

It reminds me of passive-aggressive children. They are pissed at a site/company and instead of telling them about it, they just decide to block ads and go there anyway. If the movement was really trying to make the Internet a better place (with better ads), they would actually be making an honest attempt at notifying the offending site.

"Some people won't pay no matter what - music filesharing is still around, of course. But a lot of people did start buying music again when Amazon and Apple and eMusic changed the price structure to something they were willing to pay."

We aren't talking about paying money. The only thing people have to do is view a simple advertisement. It takes almost no effort.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> _As a part of that, there would be an ad at the top that temporarily "pushed down" the content for a few seconds, before pulling back up. Nothing was covered. Nothing prevented readers from getting the content. And the "pushdown" ad only showed once per visitor and never again._

This is precisely why I use an ad-blocker. I don't really mind animated gifs - I've learned to tune those out. But ads - flash ads are the usual guilty party - that actually fuck with the content actively piss me off, and they are why I have both adblock and flashblock.

<comment><USER2> And this is why we (Ars) specifically prohibit ads that fuck with content. :)

Advertisers are increasingly demanding about those, though, which is one of the reasons we worked so hard to make "no ads" a feature of our subscriptions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I posted this on Reddit when I saw this article there: I'd really love a process by which you can automatically say 'I block these types of ads', and the site can choose to serve you content or not based on that. What we have at the moment, where a lot of people get harangued by malicious advertisements, and a lot of people block even the most harmless ad content, is a really unfair to both sides. A way to auto-negotiate what you're willing to 'pay' would be excellent. As things stand, I don't block ads, but I'd really like to be able to block the worst of them without screwing people over.

This would also separate out the people who are legitimately concerned about malware and excessively intrusive ads from those (sadly, I suspect, the majority) who simply don't want to pay for others' work.

</comment><comment><USER5> I sympathize with this view, but how exactly are advertisers supposed to come up with more "creative" and "compelling" concepts that somehow will work when users fundamentally don't want the thing they make - _ads?_

In a broader sense, it's very questionable to say "Gee, content sites should be profitable!" and cheerfully avoid explaining just _how_ , especially right after you've finished explaining how every known method of monetizing content just won't work.

<comment><USER10> >> " when users fundamentally don't want the thing they make - ads?"

It'd be good if we stopped pretending _everyone_ runs adblock. 99.5%+ of people have no issue with ads, and actually find them useful.

That 0.5% who run adblock etc, really aren't worth worrying about much.

<comment><USER11> Ars (and most other nerd-centric sites) probably has a _much_ higher percentage of users with AdBlock installed than the Internet as a whole.

Then again, it also probably has a larger percentage of people that wouldn't pay any attention to the ads even if they were visible. From Ars' point of view it would be great if these people shut of their ad blockers, but the advertisers would probably be getting the short end of the stick, in that case, which would (over the long term) drive advertising prices down, etc. Ars would pick up some profits in the meantime, but solely at the expense of the advertisers, who are now getting screwed by paying for eyeballs that are worth less on average than the ones when people weren't shutting their ad blockers down. I'd certainly pay less for per-impression ads on a site that wouldn't show content to people with an ad blocker, for this very reason.

It's a grand circle of life, and frankly, it's hard to say what second order effects any of these actions might have. It very well may be that the presence of ad blockers raises the average value of the eyeballs that _do_ see the ads enough that advertising prices end up higher and Ars does better overall. It's equally possible that they're correct, the ad market hasn't adjusted to the presence of ad blockers yet, and they're still getting paid too little per- eyeball. I'm not sure. Neither are they.

But in theory, at least, over the long term, if people with ad blockers really aren't paying any attention to ads anyways, the market should correct for this and the results for both advertisers and the sites providing ad space should approach the true value.

<comment><USER2> The types of campaigns we run would benefit from more eyeballs. Advertisers don't expect everyone to see or care about their campaigns. Branding campaigns in particular are really just designed to get your company in front of as many people as possible and hope a few of them notice. They're simultaneously valuable and notoriously hard to measure the value of. Our job (as far as advertisers are concerned) is to get the ads in front of whoever we can.

My gut feeling is that people who block ads globally but see them on Ars would actually notice/respond to them better than people who are just generally banner blind. If the majority of the people who've emailed us are to be believed, they don't see anything else on the page except ads when they have ads enabled. I bet advertisers would _kill_ for that. ;)

The biggest problem is that there's no chance someone blocking ads is going to see an ad, and there's a real (but maybe tiny) chance that same person would respond to an ad. There's an even better chance that they'd respond to a really nice campaign that "spoke" to them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> We shouldn't take the experience of publishers like Ars and techdirt as indicative of the whole industry. Both of those publishers have very tech savvy audiences who are not the best demographic for display ads.

While the effectiveness of display advertising is not as high as other channels (email for instance) it is still effective. The "american idol" demographic clicks on lots of ads.

</comment><comment><USER13> The thing that struck me about the Ars approach was the reaction to legitimate concerns about security, tracking and so on: "too bad." As in, ads are what they are: the site does not really care whether they are useful to the advertiser nor how they affect the user so long as they get paid. An unfortunate attitude to project, particularly when trying to come up with solutions to this problem could be really beneficial. Not that they have an obligation to care, of course.

They did at least suggest that a monthly subscription might be forthcoming, so something good might come out of it in the end.

<comment><USER2> I'm sorry the response sounded like "too bad" to you, because that really wasn't our intent. We do care about how ads affect users. We heavily Q&A our ads and they're vetted at multiple levels before they show up on the site. Not only that, but we have more aggressive ad policies than any comparable site I've seen. The pushdown ad that Techdirt mentioned, for instance, is against our ad guidelines because it expands without user intervention.

When an ad ends up on the site that violates our guidelines, we get it removed very quickly. It's an unfortunate fact that the ad ops people will occasionally put an ad meant for GQ on Ars, so you'll end up with something that expands by itself, does a popup, etc. They're never malicious, but oftentimes violate the Ars guidelines.

Part of our "solution" to this problem is better educating users about the economics of ads, the effect their ad blockers have on us, etc. It seems to be working based on a small 4 day sample.

<comment><USER13> _> I'm sorry the response sounded like "too bad" to you, because that really wasn't our intent. We do care about how ads affect users. We heavily Q&A our ads and they're vetted at multiple levels before they show up on the site. Not only that, but we have more aggressive ad policies than any comparable site I've seen. The pushdown ad that Techdirt mentioned, for instance, is against our ad guidelines because it expands without user intervention._

I was sharpening the point a little: from what I understand, Ars does indeed have reasonably well-behaving ads when it comes to essentially the aesthetic side. The underlying privacy, security and psy-op/propaganda problems remain, though, and the sense I got from staff comments was that those were simply the Unchangeable Facts of Advertising and nothing could be done about it. These are by no means _easy_ problems to solve, but I think projecting understanding those concerns and figuring out viable alternatives ("having a conversation" about it with the userbase, if you will) can go a long way.

 _> Part of our "solution" to this problem is better educating users about the economics of ads, the effect their ad blockers have on us, etc. It seems to be working based on a small 4 day sample._

I have no doubt! I think a big banner would have been a better way to do it to begin with, but the subsequent article addressed that part adequately.

I will subscribe once the short-term version comes out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A great rebuttal. Ad blocks are an obnoxious business condition, but they're one that can push savvy media companies into not only doing right by their readers but also finding higher CPM's than remnant ad networks that are being triaged by more nimble ad agencies anyways, leaving publications only the most gutter of advertisements.

Advertising models work. But _your_ advertising model might not.

<comment><USER15> _Ad blocks are an obnoxious business condition, but they're one that can push savvy media companies into not only doing right by their readers_

Or, they may push savvy and not-so-savvy media companies into serving up advertising content that's more difficult to block. Like ad content embedded directly in the content.

It's an arms race, and the escalation isn't going to be pretty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I hate ads. I never ever ever click on them. I get pissed off when I see an ad in the way of content I'm trying to read and tend not to stay on the page.

AdBlock on my browser does absolutely nothing to reduce the amount of money that websites I visit can earn from my.

<comment><USER17> _"AdBlock on my browser does absolutely nothing to reduce the amount of money that websites I visit can earn from my."_

Yes it does. Not all ads are pay-per-click.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> hmmm...

</comment><comment><USER19> finally! this was the post on the ad blocking topic i was waiting for.

<comment><USER20> is this account some sort of experiment to see what happens if you post blog- spam content to HN?

<comment><USER19> hu? i don't see why i would create that impression. if my comment was too short, i apologize. the article just expressed my thoughts on the topic and i wanted to state that.</comment></comment></comment>


'Last Lecture' prof died today at 47 - CNN.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/books/07/25/obit.pausch/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

<comment><USER2> Seriously? How many of these posts do we need today?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Cheers to a man who celebrated life</comment>


Why Google Should Buy the Music Industry - <AUTHOR> http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/2011/04/why-google-should-buy-music-industry.html

<comment><USER2> A few things, and I'm speaking as a (now former) major label executive:

Google should not buy a label or a music company. It wouldn't make sense at all. The friction going on right now is because Google views music as something that the labels don't. They view it as data that makes their device better. The music industry views it as intellectual property.

I side with Google on this, depending on WHAT Google wants to do with the data. If they are common carrier, locker in the sky. Great. But as soon as they use it as a means of advertising/marketing (a la Youtube) they are stepping into waters that the RIAA has nothing to do with. It's just normal, silly US copyright law and the contracts that our heroes the artists signed.

On the other side, imagine if the labels went to Google and demanded all their source code so they could setup their own internal Google and make them some money that way, to add value to their technology. Just as silly.

The other thing: don't conflate the "Music industry" with the big 4. They are not one and the same. The Music Industry is a HUGE thing that uses and represents the most long lasting of culture artifacts in terms of marketability. It includes Spotify, Soundcloud, Songkick, Hypemachine, Big Champagne, CrowdSurge, Apple, Google (through YouTube right now), Amazon, etc. Then the management companies: The Firm, The Collective, QPrime, Red Light. A vast space.

Some operate on the infrastructure level, some license content, some fill voids and some you've never heard of.

That being said, the future of the music INDUSTRY is the disintermediation of the big 4 by means of a restructuring of what they do. Artists don't need them if they don't want them, and certainly the companies that make up the industry know this (see Fanbridge, TopSpin, etc).

The industry in the last two years has diversified substantially. The real power is transferring to management companies, startups, distribution, artist services, open-source technology and API based business development.

What will happen to the big 4, and starting with 2 (WMG and EMI) is new owners, and hopefully an entrepreneurial sensibility informing their restructuring. They need to be nimble, technology forward, representing their artists using technology and manning up when it comes to the value of their content (because there is value, and "free" is value if done correctly).

Anyhow, blog posts for another day.

<comment><USER3> What do you think about Steve Albini's rant on the music industry? Has the distribution of who gets what changed much in the last 20 years?

<http://www.negativland.com/albini.html>

<comment><USER2> To a degree the broad points are still valid. However the economics are a lot more complicated now because of 360 deals.

A while ago, labels realized that if they were investing a lot into a band on things like art, tour support, promotions and marketing, it was silly when other third party companies made the money, often with worse splits with the band.

360 or all-rights deals mean that the label helps with all aspects of the band from Fanclub to touring and publishing, and splits profits, usually 50/50 on all but recorded music (which has different splits)

So basically the band an label are in a agency/client model. This is great if the label can deliver on the promise of the deal. That is why I was brought into a label, for in house tech. Not happening as much right now but that can change.

This is a similar way CAA and William Morris work. Shared risk/reward and if done properly on both sides can leads to more incremental gains earlier and with less upfront spending.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wish Google would find a way to undermine the music industry instead. Actually Amazon may be better positioned for such a move.

I am not an expert but it seems the basic trade the music industry offers artists is, recording, publishing, distribution, and promotion in return for ownership of the artist's work and a huge cut of the revenues.

It's always irked me that artists are forced to sign over the fruit of their labor, talent, and passion. I wonder if there's not an alternative deal where the artist gets the same benefits but also keeps legal ownership of their music, perhaps in exchange for an exclusive license or increased revenue share.

It would be cool to see something like that pull the proverbial rug (the artists) out from under the music industry.

<comment><USER5> > undermine the music industry instead

Digital distribution (aka the internet) has beat them to it. It's just not clear because of the legal distortion field IP lobbyists have created.

<comment><USER4> > legal distortion field IP lobbyists have created.

Yeah, that's the part I hope there's a way to undermine. Pull the IP rug out from the music industry and they're done.

<comment><USER2> And what exactly does "they're done" get you? How far do you extend the IP rug pulling?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Google cannot buy the entire music industry because the music industry is more than the so called major labels. That said, Google or even Apple\Microsoft could buy the all the major labels from their respective owners, if they wanted too. Especially EMI and WMG

Please read:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/11/business/media/11warner.ht...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/11/business/media/11warner.html?_r=1&ref=business)

Warner music group is currently for sale and EMI is available if the right offer comes along.

<comment><USER7> Except that no one company could ever get approved by regulators in the US or EU to purchase ALL the major music companies. It would be extremely unlikely that Google would even get approved to purchase the two that are up for sale already.

<comment><USER8> But google AND amazon could buy them all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "...the music industry is economically quite small and unimportant compared to the computer industry."

For some perspective, the largest label groups in the "music industry" are owned by corporations that are bigger than Google. Universal: owned by Vivendi. Sony Music: owned by (guess who). EMI: owned by Citigroup. Not exactly small economic players...

<comment><USER10> Sony (market cap 29 billion) is bigger than Google (market cap 170 billion)? Google has 35 billion cash in the bank.

<comment><USER11> So it would take all of Google's cash on hand to buy 1 player (assuming they could even pull it off). It isn't like google's market cap is something they can liquidate or even really make any significant usage of.

<comment><USER12> If you want Sony Music you wouldn't buy all of Sony. Of course, these conglomerates may not be willing to sell off their "money-losing" record labels.

<comment><USER13> Definitely not Sony. How would they find artists to put onto minidisc/atrac/doomed-technology-de-la-décennie?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Google really doesn't need to attract any more antitrust attention right now.

</comment><comment><USER15> A better article would be "Why Google should pay to have the music industry killed painfully and slowly".

 _That_ I could get behind.

<comment><USER16> The music industry is pretty good at dying slowly itself... and painfully, for some values of pain, I suppose.

<comment><USER15> It's a bit too slow and not nearly painful enough.

I want to hear all those useless executives screaming in agony.

It's time to bring back impaling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Not exactly the best use of money. It would be kind of like Time Warner buying AOL.

<comment><USER18> It would be more like AOL buying Time Warner, which would've been a very different transaction.

<comment><USER19> aol _did_ buy time warner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's not so much that the music industry is large as such.

It is that the music industry something like a token in the game of control proprietary content. Music is something of a thin wedge for showing the ability to deliver highly valued content - Look at what Apple's iPod brought it and indeed, would Apple ever want a rival control the rights to the content it has mastered selling?

Possibly, the recording industry of something of a stand-in for the movie and/or television industry, an industry which is not small by any stretch of the imagination. And the movie industry, gigantic as it might be, is something of stand-in for proprietary control of popular culture...

</comment><comment><USER21> The music industry's legal canines need to be sawed off, one way or another.

</comment><comment><USER22> In what possible way could ease of licensing be worth $29+ billion?

<comment><USER23> The music businesses wouldn't be worth anywhere near that much. And it would help Google's goal of making the world's information universally accessible and useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Wow another ridiculous blog post! And on HN! Fuck you for wasting my time.

<comment><USER25> Feature suggestion: a time delay on new accounts being able to post a comment. Would prevent trolling like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail"</comment>


M.I.T. Game-Changer: Free Online Education For All - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesmarshallcrotty/2011/12/21/m-i-t-game-changer-free-online-education-for-all/ <comment><USER2> The education market provides 3 main things: actual teaching, a social network, and credentials/social proof. Its great to see the actual teaching being tackled, and it will be interesting to see if they find a way to let students shine on the credential side. They say they will offer a certificate, but this certificate being difficult to obtain and highly indicative to mastery will be what make this offering a true alternatives to expensive colleges. Right now the best credential that I can think of that is relatively inexpensive, not tied to schooling, and highly regarded is the CFA.</comment>


Show HN: End of Run – Play more. Relax better - <AUTHOR> https://endofrun.com <comment><USER2> Second time in the last hour I see it deleted and resubmitted? "Please don't delete and repost the same story." [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)</comment>


Finding the Point of Human Leverage - <AUTHOR> https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2019/4/8/mechanical-turks <comment><USER2> Can't seem to understand the phrase "mechanical Turk". Especially the use of the word Turk. Can anyone explain?</comment>


Video Response: A Manifesto for the Next Industrial Revolution - <AUTHOR> http://discussionleader.hbsp.com/haque/2008/08/video_response_a_manifesto_for.html

<comment><AUTHOR> The video talks about the reason Etsy received $30 million investment.</comment>


The monster - <AUTHOR> http://www.erickarjaluoto.com/blog/the-monster/ <comment><USER2> Eric, thanks for writing this.

It so happens that today is the day of the monster for me, in a way :)

<comment><AUTHOR> You're not alone on this one. There are lots of monsters, for all of us, along the way. Glad the post was helpful. :-)</comment></comment>


For now at least, China's citizens are embracing social-credit systems - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-24/why-china-s-social-credit-systems-are-surprisingly-popular <comment><USER2> As the article itself points out, the Chinese media is full of stories about Chinese people being targets of scams by food producers, eCommerce companies selling fakes, and scams by one another (dating scams and so on). These social-credit surveillance programs have been marketed to the people they're aimed at as a benefit that protects them from potential crime. It's the same everywhere - here in the UK we have the most CCTV cameras per capita than anywhere else in the world and they're always talked about by the government and the police as tools for "protecting the people from crime." TV documentaries about the police feature them 'following' criminals around town centres using CCTV. It's impressive. It works. The fact the cameras also gather data about _everyone else_ who isn't a criminal is never mentioned.

People respond well to things that make them feel safer, regardless of whether they're _actually_ safer, so privacy-invading surveillance technology is marketed as a something that does just that. The actual reason why governments want it, in order to keep the people in check, isn't good PR.

In the case of China, they've had decades of government PR telling the people to be fearful, and at the same time selling them the thing that means they can stop being fearful. It's not surprising the people like it.

<comment><USER3> In normal countries you have a strong civil society & consumer associations that have the teeth to bite these scammers.

<comment><USER4> I won't agree with the "normal countries", but I wonder at what point does a society become uncivil?

Obviously in a tribal village in the past you know who lived in the hut next door and it was like a big family who trusted each other (food was shared, mothers would take care of each others' kids). Maybe it's related to the Dunbar number?

<comment><USER5> From an outside perspective, Japan still seems extremely civil despite being very densely populated. I have never felt safer anywhere else as a visitor. I suspect a near-ubiquitous level of high homogeneous culture is a big factor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice article. I highly recommend watching Martin Jacques' TED talk [0] on this subject. It's interesting how people in China view the State as an _intimate_ part of their family instead of something of an invasion, in contrast to societies in the West; which, I suspect, may be because of their collectivist roots.

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

</comment><comment><USER7> Because in really many chinese people cheat. And cheaters are so rampant that people would rather ask Big Brother to step up.

China started this national wide 诚信 campaign in 2001, during which time the Chinese society is utter chaos and China promptly joined the WTO. China entered its economic boom, but the ultimate outcome is the social credit system.

Highly recommended CCC talk here [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18773303](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18773303)

P.S. I think since western kept bitching about the IP theft problem so much, companies should use the social credit system as a targeted weapon to punish cheaters. It works.

<comment><USER8> We hear a lot about Chinese cheating, from sat scores to ip theft. I've long wondered - why is cheating endemic in China whereas you don't hear the same complaints about people in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore; places with large ethnic Chinese populations which should be very similar culturally to mainland China. It seems implausible that the value systems in these places would have so widely diverged in a relatively short amount of time. Or perhaps it is the legal and regulatory environment (or lack thereof) that brings out the worst in people when they know they can get away with it?

<comment><USER7> > why is cheating endemic in China whereas you don't hear the same complaints > about people in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore;

Because cheating is a cultural rather than ethnical thing.

There are ethnical Chinese people in those regions you listed, but sure mainland China sailed a totally different cultural course over the last 70 years.

In mainland china, cheating mostly happen because of over competition. If you don't cheat, others will and will crush you in business or academic competition. Cheaters go home for chicken dinner while non-cheaters goes to jail.

<comment><USER8> Isnt there a similar level of competition in all of those places?

Also I've met a lot of mainland Chinese people who recently immigrated to the us and can say that they don't seem like unscrupulous people at a significantly greater rate than the general population.

<comment><USER9> The penalties for "losing" are much lower in rich countries.

My grandfather used to say that he left the Soviet Union because he didn't want to live in a country where you have to cheat in order to have a good life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> abc-xyz It's important to realize that lack of public outcry/protests, or even public approval, does not necessarily mean that they support it. All my Chinese Tsinghua/Peking friends (20+) find it horrifying, yet many of them will find ways to show support for both this and other government propaganda, because they realize doing so will be beneficial for their future (even those who don't realize the government is building a profile based on everything they've ever said can still find value in sharing the propaganda because their friends, family, coworkers, teachers and bosses will see that they're "patriots").

Why should they risk their future/life fighting for something they don't believe they have the ability to change? It's like asking, why weren't the Germans resisting Hitler's government? It's easier said than done, heck, I even feel worried about posting these comments even though I don't live in China anymore and have no intention of ever going back.

<comment><USER8> Chinese [ethno]nationalism is a sick disease reminiscent of german or Japanese nationalism pre WWII. That Chinese people, of all groups, don't recognize the similarities constantly shocks me, along the same lines about how Chinese are in general very sensitive about losing face (American translation - ego trip), and that causes them to do things that gives them a bad reputation in the eyes of others - a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> When I compare the history of China and the history of Europe (and let's face it, North American norms derive a lot from Europe), I think there's a huge cultural divergence that can be pinpointed to one spot in history: Europe had a Magna Carta moment while China did not. I think that this is the foundational and fundamental thing that creates a lot of the differences in political and cultural norms.

</comment><comment><USER11> I wonder when people see that the system itself is being cheated, ie children of important officials getting free bonus points or not losing their points due to 'that little crime' ... if people will lose faith in it?

Why do people think a system that is corrupt can just maintain this pristine system within one that is not?

In a regime wherein such tools are used to control and oppressed, this will clearly be another one of those tools.

</comment><comment><USER12> > At the same time, a whopping 76 percent of survey participants said that > "mutual mistrust between citizens" is a problem in Chinese society. Social > credit systems are viewed as a means of bridging that trust gap.

I'd say on the contrary, when anyone could snitch on you, you'd lose your trust in society. The social credit system might have the exact opposite effect than intended.

</comment><comment><USER13> Interesting article about a topic that Westerners generally find dystopian.

However, it didn't make much mention about how this system can and has been abused to punish dissidents (e.g. feminists) and how citizens with low social credit can redeem themselves. From other articles about cases I've read the rules seem to be quite opaque and somewhat subjective to whims of the enforcers.

<comment><USER14> China is not a Western country so the concept of individual liberties and having the individual as the most important unit in society, as a concept, is pretty much foreign (literally!) to them. You will find very similar trends across Asia. Japan is an interesting case where the current constitution was written by Americans after WWII superimposed on a culture that's quite different in the first place.

This is for similar reason that you can't remove a dictator and install a democracy from scratch in its place. If the culture/mindset to support a democracy is not there, in the hearts of individuals, it won't work. Proven numerous times already in recent history.

<comment><USER15> What's interesting is that Taiwan derives some of its routes from the same Chinese culture, yet independently came up with support for human rights and democracy. So did South Korea.

<comment><USER14> Taiwan had a strong incentive to differentiate culturally to justify that they should be an independent country.

Take Singapore which is mostly Chinese and the authoritarian model applies like in China (of course in different degrees but direction wise they are more authoritarian than most western countries).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wonder what people who spend hundreds of hours managing their own NAS, maintaining private email servers, avoiding Google and Facebook, using VPNs etc do to protect their privacy in the face of real world surveillance. I'm imagining that they don't walk around wearing balaclavas, using dead letter drops and paying with cash.

</comment><comment><USER17> Please don't represent us.What you doing is same as Big Brother.

</comment><comment><USER18> Each to his own. It doesn't bother me that it doesn't bother them.

It also doesn't mean it shouldn't bother me if the government I live under were to introduce a similar system.

</comment><comment><USER19> I recently read Jordan Peterson's "12 Rules for Life" and one of the things he mentioned that really struck me, was that people who suffer from agoraphobia (fear of public places) eventually end up with the same fear (that they have when outside) inside their own homes; but since they're already home there's nowhere for them to go so they're stuck in perpetual fear.

It's also known by psychologists that a fear gets strengthened whenever an individual purposefully avoids the fear-generating situation (e.g. a public place), and it progressively gets weakened when you routinely expose yourself to the fearful situation.

So, regarding mistrust between individuals and using credit scores to try and "solve" this...

I expect that dystopic technological surveillance "solutions" such as Chinese social credit scores will actually over time weaken trust between individuals in the same way that purposefully avoiding public places increases someone's agoraphobia.

If you are a generally mistrustful person, then you're not going to start trusting people more due to social credit scores.

Trust is an act of faith, and faith is necessary when you don't actually know.

Imagine someone who is not registered for most social credit systems (perhaps because they're privacy conscious) comes to ask you for help or wants to do business with you. Is a social credit system going to make other people more trusting of that person? Of course not, it's going to make them more distrustful of that person.

Also, as someone has already mentioned, by letting people snitch on one another, credit score systems will foster even more distrust between people.

It reminds me of the Stasi in Eastern Germany, where neighbors and even spouses would report one another's activities to the secret police.

These systems foster further distrust, instead of trust.

As humans we need to overcome negative, fearful emotions like distrust by learning to judge character and to have courage and compassion, not by trying to outsource all our emotional and cognitive responsibilities to "apps".

The 20th century was full of social horrors, including China (e.g. Mao's famine in which 10s of millions of people starved to death due to forced collectivisation of farms). I get the feeling that the 21st century will have its fair share, and schemes such social credit scores will play their part in bringing them about.

</comment><comment><USER20> In the US we have all this as well, we just are secretive about it and people don't know the rules. China is more transparent and open about it.

Both systems are dystopian big brother to some, yet utopian to many others.

<comment><USER21> Oh, not again, this narative seems to be very popular, but it's based on ignorance.</comment></comment>


How Low Can Venezuelan Oil Production Go? - <AUTHOR> https://www.csis.org/analysis/how-low-can-venezuelan-oil-production-go <comment><USER2> If there is any floor whatever in how unproductive an industry can become when faced with a destabilizing government, it would probably be tied to old technology. In other words, how much production can they get with really old, disused equipment that the Venezuelan producers might be able to buy from people around the world.

Anything more optimistic underestimates the complexity of industrial processes and the extent to which so much of the stuff is expendable. The machinery experienced by most people is their car, which has extremely light use that allows it to reach obsolescence long before it ceases to be viable. On the other hand, perpetually used equipment in harsh environments fails on occasion, and there's enough of it that any sort of oil production should see constant failures. If you don't have a long,stable, and organized supply chain ready to handle those failures, things are going to go to hell pretty fast.</comment>


Loss of Arctic's reflective sea ice could advance global warming by 25 years - <AUTHOR> https://scripps.ucsd.edu/news/research-highlight-loss-arctics-reflective-sea-ice-will-advance-global-warming-25-years <comment><USER2> I have to say, I'm a bit surprised they figured this out so late as they did.

The reason for that is: as a layman I know that snow reflects sunlight. Surely, climate researchers would have figured out that this is one of the main factors that can change over time.

Ah well, I guess I was to optimistic. It's good to know that they found out now.

<comment><USER3> According to [https://history.aip.org/climate/simple.htm](https://history.aip.org/climate/simple.htm), a region of dark terrain or water getting warmer was first suggested in 1875 by James Croll. The linked paper (PDF at [http://eisenman.ucsd.edu/papers/Pistone-Eisenman- Ramanathan-...](http://eisenman.ucsd.edu/papers/Pistone-Eisenman- Ramanathan-2019.pdf) ) is trying to quantitatively "estimate the additional solar heating that would occur under the complete disappearance of Arctic sea ice", in their own words, and compare this figure to a certain amount of carbon emissions.

Their results are pretty worrying. Quoting again: "This heating of 0.71 W/m2 is approximately equivalent to the direct radiative effect of emitting one trillion tons of CO2into the atmosphere (see calculation in Appendix A). As of 2016, an estimated 2.4 trillion tons of CO2 have been emitted since the preindustrial period due to both fossil fuel combustion (1.54 trillion tons) and land use changes (0.82 trillion tons), with an additional 40 billion tons of CO2 per year emitted from these sources during 2007–2016 (Le Quéré et al., 2018). Thus, the additional warming due to the complete loss of Arctic sea ice would be equivalent to 25 years of global CO2 emissions at the current rate. This implies that if the Arctic sea ice were to disappear much more rapidly than in current climate model projections, it would drastically shorten the time available to adapt to climate changes and the time for achieving carbon neutrality."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> We need 1 tonne lifestyles

</comment><comment><USER5> With Trump at the helm, this now seems inevitable.

I really wonder if this climate destruction is a form of warfare. It certainly favours countries in higher latitudes.

<comment><USER6> I don't like Trump either, but there is not a single nation on Earth that is on track to reach the Paris goals. Blaming Trump is not helpful. I doubt that Hillary would have been much better.

<comment><USER7> I am not trying to bash the conman here, but even if the hypothetical other US-president would've chosen to just do _nothing_ and leave everything as it was they would've done better than Trump.

Trump actively made things worse and I am not sure if relativizing things in such an important area is a good thing.

Because the fire brigade that actively denies your country is on fire and pumps gasoline into it just to show it to you _is objectively worse_ than the one that clumsily falls over their own protective gear while spraying your country with way too little water.

<comment><USER8> This tautology makes me sick. All I keep hearing is boring old tropes from the leader of the US.

I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but we as a planet are guilty of doing nothing. It's not beholden on any single country to save the world.

Yes, trump pulling out of the Paris accords is quite frightening, but if the US public didn't have an appetite for convenience over longevity then we might not have such an issue.

I know I'm guilty of being wasteful and not supporting renewable or carbon neutral alternatives (I even complained that my energy prices are going up much faster due to the push for renewables).

But that's where it needs to start. Not blaming those at the top; trying to inspire those down here who could be swayed to have a little less convenience in their lives and to buy from companies that pledge to be carbon neutral.

<comment><USER9> I would suggest that trying to blame individual action is incorrect. This is a collective action problem and all the standard solutions would work.

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

E.g. people wouldn't get a choice to buy from non carbon neutral businesses if legislation was put in place to ramp up a carbon fee. And they would all benefit from this.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Sony OLED TV - <AUTHOR> http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&categoryId=8198552921644539854

<comment><USER2> 11". Bit small for a TV.</comment>


Church is not for me - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@nnekasmartukpanah/newmoms-dairy-church-services-are-not-for-me-anymore-2989851bc88e <comment><USER2> I was expecting this to be about the programming language called Church.</comment>


Ask HN: what is the best laptop for a web development? - <AUTHOR>

These are my top criteria. Battery life, portability, performance, costs. <comment><USER2> Probably the MacBook Air, and when you're at a desk, another monitor for it.

I got the Macbook Pro Retina and I'm not sure if it was worth the extra dollars and the very small amount of extra weight. I think I would be fine with an Air. In fact, if I did it over, I'd get the Air and then spend a little bit more along with the difference in price to create a nicer desktop machine.

<comment><AUTHOR> will consider your option

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> So I personally ran into this problem a while ago -- I posted something along the lines of "why do people develop on macbook airs", trying to decide which computer to purchase.

For me, it was between the Zenbook and the Macbook Air.

To be honest, the first thing I would do on a Zenbook is put Linux on it (I just can't develop in Windows any more, I don't know if something is wrong with me, but everything just feels wrong when I try). I reasoned this way:

1\. If I ever decide to do iOS, the Macbook is a plus

2\. It's UNIX-compatible, and pretty much a hop, skip and some GNU tools from linux.

3\. If you really want to, there's pretty well tested software for putting windows on it.

Then I went on craigslist and bought a $500 Macbook Air (10"), and have been happy with my decision ever since.

I should also note that I do most of my programming on my desktop.

</comment><comment><USER4> For me, mbpr 13 is a really good balance between usability and portability. I was Thinkpad + linux for years, but I find the mbp hardware feels a bit sturdier, compared to other options in the same price range. The main contender for me was the Thinkpad Carbon, but I liked the feel of the mbp keyboard and trackpad a bit better (The latest TP has weird rounded keys).

</comment><comment><USER5> The Lenovo Yoga Pro 2 is out. It starts at ~1100 and has a 13" 3200x1800 screen. Early reviews say they improved every aspect of the original Yoga. It weighs a hair over 3 lbs, has a Haswell processor, up to 8GB ram, and gets about 6 hours of battery life. The battery life isn't stellar for a Haswell ultrabook, but the absolutely amazing screen uses more power than a lower-res one would.

As another option, the Thinkpad T440s just launched. It has an option for a 1080p IPS, weighs about 3.5 lbs, and has a hot-swappable battery.

Lenovo also has really good Linux support.

<comment><AUTHOR> It looks like the new thinkpads costs as much as new mac books , why would i consider thinkpads over MBA? Thanks .

<comment><USER6> Upgradability, durability, ports, running Windows (Boot Camp isn't all that great with battery and fans), running Linux on something well-supported.

<comment><USER7> I don't understand why to use linux(Lack Adobe creative suite and many other softawares though could be run via Wine but with a performance glitch) and Windows(For developers ?? :P) when there is OSX is already doing a very good job.

<comment><USER5> Not every web developer does web design. If you only code, there's no advantage to using OSX.

Judging from your other comment, you have already picked OSX. If it works better for you thats all that matters, but its silly to pretend that you can't comprehend why other OSs exist. The answer is simple, not everyone likes the same thing.

<comment><USER7> Agreed but to code as well there are much better alternatives ex. Text mate, although you can use Sublime. And one more thing I'm not judging Linux or windows but I think OS X can be better if all you want is best of both the worlds(my case).

<comment><USER5> OSX sounds like a good match for you. Honestly, if I had the cash, I would probably get a Haswell rMBP, so I could potentially run all 3 OSs. I'm a security analyst, so its nice to be able to run everything without any compromises.

Unfortunately, I didn't have enough for a rMBP, so I ended up spending a third of the cost of a 13" rMBP on a Thinkpad so I could run a dedicated Linux machine.

That being said, if someone just happens to prefer Linux, you really can't beat a Thinkpad from the T, X or W series'.

<comment><USER7> Totally agree with you for linux i too preferred Thinkpad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I picked the ASUS Zenbook UX31A when it arrived june last year, it's very similar to Apple MBA, but has 1080p.

The next gen of it is the ASUS Zenbook UX301 [1] with the insane resolution of 2,560 x 1,440 on a 13" IPS touchscreen. It's bundled with Windows, but Linux runs very well on them. Mine has been running linux since last christmas. Price is equivalent to the MBA.

[1] [http://www.engadget.com/2013/09/04/asus-zenbook- ux301-hands-...](http://www.engadget.com/2013/09/04/asus-zenbook-ux301-hands- on/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Depends on your budget. Will you commute? I'm personally using a Samsung 9 Series which is very lightweight. Plays well with linux as well, no driver- issues what so ever.

Second choice would probably be Lenovo's newer generation IdeaPad, then again it's really about what you're personally looking for and what setting you'll be using it in.

<comment><AUTHOR> I prefer working most of time

<comment><USER9> Try find a higher-resolution laptop if you're not going to use external monitors. That was the key-feature I was looking for (1920x1080).

<comment><AUTHOR> i actually meant to say i prefer walking* sorry about that. I will definitely take your recommendation and look for a laptop with high resolution.

<comment><USER10> MacBook Pro w/ Retina, 2880 X 1800

Unless you're going to be working in Windows, since Windows doesn't play so well at higher resolutions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> ASUS Zenbooks are great, very light, solid aluminum build, 1080p IPS matte panel, 6+ hours battery life. I'm quite happy with mine.

</comment><comment><USER12> Macbook air. Beautiful tools create beautiful products.

<comment><USER5> If you are going to recommend the Macbook Air, you should probably talk about what makes it a great web development machine instead of making one of the most ridiculous statements I've ever read.

For example, the Macbook Air has excellent build quality, a great keyboard, decent (but not stellar) color reproduction, and an operating system that is well supported by pretty much any tool that a web developer or designer would ever need.

There are plenty of ugly tools that are capable of making pretty much every artificial thing on the planet that's considered beautiful.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: I enjoyed living in the Bay Area. How does Boston compare? - <AUTHOR>

I'm from Canada. I am considering moving to Boston, or specifically Cambridge, for work. I was temporarily in the Bay Area and I really enjoyed it there. How does Boston compare?
Obviously, the weather in the Bay Area was amazing, but I can't expect anything like that in Boston. I also liked the culture in the Bay Area. I felt that I was surrounded by a lot of smart, driven people. I feel like Stanford had something to do with that, but I could be wrong. Perhaps with Harvard and MIT in the area, I would find the culture to be similar?
I would also be interested in how Boston would compare to the Bay Area for families and raising kids and such, if anyone has thoughts on that.
Thank you. <comment><USER2> I grew up in Boston, went to school in the Bay Area, and about three years ago moved back to Boston.

Real Estate. Both are pretty similar, way expensive (waits for someone from NYC to comment). Boston is actually a bit more expensive than the bay. If you are willing to commute 45 minutes into the city the prices do drop quite a bit, but who wants to do that.

Diversity. Bay area is much more diverse than Boston. Being a white kid from the suburbs I had never had thai food nor known someone from vietnam before moving the Bay. Boston is a really young city, tons of colleges, so you do have a good mix of cultures in those crowds.

Smart People. Boston is full of them, but really so is every other city. There are a lot of schools here, so there are plenty of smart people. You will have no problem finding smart people in Boston/Cambridge. All of my friends are driven, but I do not think thats because of the city, its mainly because of who I choose to hang out with.

Family. I'd probably want to move out to the burbs for that. Cambridge can be a bit of a young crowd, crowded, etc.

Feel free to ask any questions.

<comment><AUTHOR> I just want to say thanks for the response. It's really hard to find such information on Wikipedia or something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've lived in Boston for 4 years now. For perspective I'm originally from Florida.

The T is awful. The trains do not stick to their schedule so it's slow and unreliable. The trains are also overheated in the winter and the A/C is always broken in the summer. Just be sure to live within walking distance of your work.

The weather is pretty bad. It's definitely beautiful here, but it often rains in the Spring and Fall. It's one of those light drizzles that lasts for days kind of rain. We're having it right now. Meh.

You don't need to commute 45 minutes to find a nice place. I live in Belmont now, just 2 miles west of Harvard Square. I rent out the first floor of a 2 story house (2br, 1 bath, living room, dining room, kitchen, back yard with porch, drive way) for only $1050 a month. The previous tenants were a family with 1 kid and dog. Also, 2 of my neighbors each have 2 kids so it seems family friendly. Definitely safe, quiet, etc, etc. I'm moving though... want to take it? hehe.

Contact info in profile if you have any questions.

</comment><comment><USER4> the one thing i hate about Boston though is the food scene (apparently getting better) is not as good as you'd think or expect for such a city .. a lot of places are mediocre if you've eaten at good places in NY and SF and Chicago etc. That and lack of good, cheap options for lunch is a downer. That being said, I moved up from NYC 2 years ago and it's been a good stay so far.

By the way, the public transport can be pretty unreliable.

</comment><comment><USER5> haven't been to the bay area, but i'm outside boston in one of the suburbs. i'd be happy to answer any specific questions you have. contact info is in profile.</comment>