The Energy Cost of Electric and Human-Powered Bicycles (2004) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.ebikes.ca/documents/Ebike_Energy.pdf <comment><USER2> Interesting!

> The above figures were all produced by assuming average or typical cases. To > be fair, it is entirely possible for a bicycle rider to deliberately eat > only locally grown and unprocessed foods. In that case, the ratio of primary > energy to food calories is closer to 1:1 (Günther 3). Combined with a > metabolic efficiency of 25%, this increases the human energy efficiency to > 1:4, slightly better than the lithium-ion electric bike.

> ...

> Conclusion: ... Despite the intuitive sense that electric bikes would > require more resources than regular bikes, life-cycle analysis shows that > they actually consume 2-4 times less primary energy than human riders eating > a conventional diet. This conclusion is largely due to the considerable > amount of transportation and processing energy that is associated with our > western food system.

<comment><USER3> But that's an ideal case.

People eat a lot and exercise to lose weight. They don't eat to only replenish expended energy. They over consume then often compensate with exercise. So a particular rider might eat more or might eat the same regardless of whether they pedaled or they used electric power.

<comment><USER2> > People eat a lot and exercise to lose weight. They don't eat to only > replenish expended energy. They over consume then often compensate with > exercise. So a particular rider might eat more or might eat the same > regardless of whether they pedaled or they used electric power.

Some diets aren't as efficient as others though. Feeding corn to cows then eating the cow meat is going to be vastly less efficient than eating the corn directly for example.

<comment><USER4> Well, a steak has more energy density than corn. Plus, it has nutrients that simple corn doesn't have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Recognizing it was first-order approximation, two significant problems with the comparison: 1\. E-bike riders likely to travel much faster. Since drag is quadratic, change in consumption significant. 2\. The important energy comparison might not be manual bikes, but other modes of transit. A current driver/transit-rider might choose to bike 15 miles each way only if on an e-bike.

<comment><USER6> "A current driver/transit-rider might choose to bike 15 miles each way only if on an e-bike." This is absolutely the case for me - an e-bike makes the difference between my 27km commute being viable in a sensible time frame, or having to drive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Despite the intuitive sense that electric bikes would require more resources than regular bikes, life-cycle analysis shows that they actually consume 2-4 times less primary energy than human riders eating a conventional diet. This conclusion is largely due to the considerable amount of transportation and processing energy that is associated with our western food system."

And obviously, caveat lector: there are huge assumptions going on here, because the "real" cost of stuff like food and batteries aren't trivial to calculate at all. It's not like you can feed em both the same resources anyhow, so at best this is an analysis that the efficiency is sort of comparable. In 2004.

<comment><USER8> Yes, does it take into account the energy cost of the ambulance that comes to collect you after you had a heart attack after getting fat because you didn't burn off what you were eating....

On the other hand, from what I understand in the Netherlands, ebikes help older people keep cycling for longer so ebikes are still good?

I would guess overall, the difference between bike and ebike is a rounding error compared to not riding at all. Both environmentally, and from a health pov.

<comment><USER9> In any case I definitely know nobody who ate more because they rode a bike. Some might get a bit more exercise or will get a bit less fat but I m firmly against the assumption that you'll et more if you ride in current wester societies.

<comment><USER10> My eating logs show a dramatic calorie increase when cycling to work vs not. Eye balling looks like ~20% increases are common

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've been an e-bike advocate since the first time I rode one. It's an amazing feeling being able to effortlessly overcome hills and riding as fast as 28mph on flat terrain without struggling too much.

The major downsides are: weather extremes (that are going to be more common). The bike is generally heavier (much more effort to get it into the building or onto a bus).

And of course, the biggest one of them all - you are now vilified by both car drivers and pedestrians, while taking on more risk than either one. And of course suburban sprawl being the center-point of US culture, anywhere takes too damn long to get to even on an e-bike.

It's unfortunate that the US isn't more dense, which would make an ebike an ideal mode of transport in ~80% of cases.

</comment><comment><USER12> Bottom line is that bikes are efficient because they're slow and light, not necessarily because they're human powered.

In both cases the energy use is lower than lots of things that we don't think of in terms of energy.

By way of comparison, a hot shower used about 300 Wh (a full charge on a smallish ebike battery) every _minute_.

<comment><USER13> Long ago I measured how much water I needed too. Two steps:

        - soaping: 1 glass of cold water
        - cleaning: 1 glass of cold water

head to toe

<comment><USER14> Frugliness is next to Godliness.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > To travel one kilometre by bike requires approximately 5-15 watt-hours (w-h) > of energy, while the same distance requires 15-20 w-h by foot, 30-40 w-h by > train, and over 400 w-h in a singly occupied car.

Since the rise in popularity of electric cars 400wh/km is actually quite high.

Most electric vehicles are rated city/highway 15/20kwh/100km (150 w-h/km / 200 w-h/km)

On this page:

[https://forum.abetterrouteplanner.com/blogs/entry/13-model-3...](https://forum.abetterrouteplanner.com/blogs/entry/13-model-3-consumption- and-charging/)

it shows the model 3 gets 143 Wh/km at 110 km/h

<comment><USER16> In Germany about 2% of the cars are electric, half of those are hybrids. I think in the US it's similar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think he forgot the production cost of a human.

</comment><comment><USER18> > _The metabolic efficiency of a human on a bicycle is remarkably good. > Calorimetric studies have shown that a properly trained athlete will have > efficiencies of 22 to 26% depending on pedal cadence and power output._

Anectdote about this, is that my watt meter on my bicycle gives out the total amount of work done in kJ at the end. To convert that to kcal in food, one can convert 1-to-1, as the metabolic efficiency matches roughly the ratio between kcal and kJ.

</comment><comment><USER19> I assume it's the same for elevators?

"Save the environment, take the elevator"?

<comment><USER20> human: 1.2 (0.9) kcal/floor ascending (descending) [0, 1] elevator: 2.5 W•h/floor [2, 3]

Let's assume 15 floors since otherwise you'd probably save time walking.

The article suggests a grid efficiency of 50% and a motor efficiency of electric e-bike motors as 75%. It looks like elevator motors are actually more efficient (increasingly so as more people are loaded) [4]. It's only about 5 percentage points higher, so for simplicity let's keep 75%.

Ignoring the transportation and manufacture cost of the elevator assembly (not totally unreasonable since it has a long lifetime), elevators have an energy ratio of 2.5:6.7 or 1:2.7, which looks far better than the 1:28 that the article quotes for humans.

Gee, that kind of upends my worldview... I guess I'll just wait until bodies are deprecated in favor of high-efficiency cybernetics.

[0] [https://captaincalculator.com/health/calorie/calories- burned...](https://captaincalculator.com/health/calorie/calories-burned- stairs-calculator/)

[1] [https://www.livestrong.com/article/301539-calories-burned- cl...](https://www.livestrong.com/article/301539-calories-burned-climbing-one- flight-of-stairs/)

[2] [https://www.quora.com/How-much-electricity-does-an- elevator-...](https://www.quora.com/How-much-electricity-does-an-elevator-use- per-floor-What-is-this-energy-usage-comparable-to)

[3] [https://fatknowledge.blogspot.com/2007/02/how-much-energy- do...](https://fatknowledge.blogspot.com/2007/02/how-much-energy-does- elevator-use.html)

[4] [https://www.me.ua.edu/me416/LECTURE%20MATERIALS/MotorEffic&P...](https://www.me.ua.edu/me416/LECTURE%20MATERIALS/MotorEffic&PF- CM5.pdf)

<comment><USER21> > Let's assume 15 floors since otherwise you'd probably save time walking.

Not many people would consider walking 15 floors either up or downstairs. Actually many people pant heavily when climbing (from their point of view) 3 floors to my place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> anecdotally i get about 60 miles to the burrito.

<comment><USER23> Is that city or highway burritos?

<comment><USER24> I think it's more an issue of whether it's a metric or imperial burrito

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think they should count energy savings associated with health benefits of riding normal bike. Hospitalisations use ton of single use items that bound to have some energy cost.

</comment><comment><USER26> The author lost me at the assumption that humans on electric bikes eat less than humans on pedal bikes.

Personally I eat about the same whether I drive or bike, just ride to avoid getting fatter.

<comment><USER25> People definitely unnoticeably adjust their diet to their exercise level.

It's apparent when they stop doing exercise and they gain ton of weight until they adjust their diet again. Usually that requires concious effort.

My buddy seen that when he quit judo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Yah but humans want to spend energy as they'd prefer not storing it on their bodies because of social and longevity pressures.

</comment><comment><USER28> That's from 2004. Are the numbers still valid?

<comment><USER29> I'm guessing Li-ion is way better today than it was in 2004.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> They want to sell electric bikes, so they found an obscure point of view from which they may be preferable to the ordinary one. Ignoring the obvious points of view from which they are not - health disservice to the rider, battery tech non-monetary costs, increased electricity consumption of the owner.

Electric bike has its legitimate target group - elderly or ill or handicapped people. If you're fine, get that ordinary bike and build some form.

<comment><USER31> >health disservice

The point of transportation is to take you places, not to make you healthy.

>increased electricity consumption

The biggest ebike battery you're likely to find is 500 Watt-hours. That's about 6¢ for the average American to fill from zero to full, and that'll carry you 50 miles.

<comment><USER30> I agree with the cheap energy part, electric bike is a very efficient mode of transportation, better than car. However, when you compare impacts to health of the rider and the environment, the ordinary bike wins as the better choice.

<comment><USER31> No, it doesn't, see the article you're commenting on. Regular bikes are more expensive and produce more carbon because of the extra calories the rider has to eat.

The purpose of vehicles is transportation, not exercise.

<comment><USER30> The purpose of ordinary bicycle is both transportation and exercise. You can't just dismiss benefits of the other choice because your choice does not have them. We are comparing ordinary vs. electrical bike, with all benefits and drawbacks.

The analysis in the paper is flawed right from the start. For regular overweight people, which is the majority of people in U.S. and some other countries, unless getting to high speeds and high heart bpms, a little increase in energy expenditure in moving the bicycle does not increase food consumption in the linear way the paper assumes. The food is gonna be consumed anyway.

And even disregarding that, there are more important considerations here than alleged increase CO2 production, which is laughably negligible in comparison to car, plane and ship transportation. Ordinary bicycle has lower price, better health effects, lower environmental cost of manufacturing/disposing of batteries.

<comment><USER31> People don't buy ebikes for exercise.

<comment><USER30> They shouldn't buy them because of bogus CO2 efficiency reasons either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I think this is one of the few edge cases where gifs could improve the comments on HN

[https://tenor.com/view/walle-humans-lazy-eve-disney- gif-5471...](https://tenor.com/view/walle-humans-lazy-eve-disney-gif-5471514)</comment>


Introducing the YouTube Trends Map - <AUTHOR> http://youtube-trends.blogspot.com/2013/05/introducing-youtube-trends-map.html

<comment> deepak-kumar This is some good stuff, I din't know about. I am sure people know about <http://www.youtube.com/testtube> . I sort of like the feather view.</comment>


Experimental replication: knives manufactured from frozen human feces don't work - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352409X19305371 <comment><USER2> This sounds like a future nomination for an Ig Nobel Prize, joining other illustrious publications such as "Nocturnal penile tumescence monitoring with stamps" - [http://ignobel.org](http://ignobel.org)

<comment><USER3> Fits well in the definition: "first make people laugh, and then make them think"

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Don't miss the supplementary material: [https://ars.els- cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S2352409X193053...](https://ars.els- cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S2352409X19305371-mmc1.docx)

</comment><comment><USER5> They tried to cut cold, dead hide with the "3D printed" knife. Anyone else think the hide might be tougher than taut, live tissue? They also only went on the Inuit diet for four days before trying it. And they didn't say how long it was frozen for. They also pointed out that the knife started melting pretty quickly after being exposed to the hide - this wouldn't happen in the arctic.

</comment><comment><USER3> > In his book, Shadows in the Sun, Davis (1998: 20) recounts what is now > arguably one of the most popular ethnographic accounts of all time

> Since publication, this story has been told and re-told in documentaries, > books, and across internet websites and message boards (Davis, 2007, Davis, > 2010; Gregg et al., 2000; Kokoris, 2012; Taete, 2015).

So it's not entirely without merit.

I'm sure beyond the ethnographic stuff it will fill many "well actually ..." type corrections you find by the know-it-alls on Reddit and elsewhere on the internet.

</comment><comment><USER6> How do we know the Intuit didn't have diarrea that day and created essentially a brown ice knife?

<comment><USER7> All this while also developing Quicken..

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Monetization idea: new Copro-Lite brand lightweight knives with field- replacable blades. Coming soon to Amazon!

</comment><comment><USER9> If you ask this question, imagine what other questions it leads to? Not a good path.

</comment><comment><USER10> I hope this knowledge never ends up being relevant to my life.

</comment><comment><USER11> Smells like new "Sokal affair".

</comment><comment><USER12> Sounds like it was a shitty knife.

</comment><comment><USER13> Good publication for an elsiever journal.

</comment><comment><USER14> Good to know.

</comment><comment><USER15> Piece of shit research.</comment>


Philanthropy for Hackers - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/sean-parker-philanthropy-for-hackers-1435345787 <comment><USER3> You might look at Peter Thiel's presentations on radical philanthropy or venture philanthropy for a similar view on how philanthropy at the institutional level might be changed. He's been arguing for years that the balance of risk and how money is put to use in the philanthropic world is well out of line with the goal of achieving meaningful results, changing the world rather than just propping up present situations, and rather than the very conservative way it runs now it should look a lot more like venture funding:

[http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_16792615](http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_16792615)

So that view seems to be spreading, which I think is a good thing in the long run.

Of course as I've argued in the past, I think that the best thing everyone could do with excess money is to donate to some form of SENS-like rejuvenation research to accelerate progress towards an end to degenerative aging. 100,000 lives are lost every day in really very horrible ways, the slow crumbling to a painful death, until we stop it from happening. It's just another medical condition, and the only think stopping the research community from producing therapies is money and the will to use it.

<comment><USER4> The billions of people suffering from non age-related maladies and mistreatments aren't well served by devoting yet more resources to the health concerns of the wealthiest.

<comment><USER5> Well put. I'm happy to face the frailties of old age if I can just spend the hear-and-now trying to do something that matters for people less fortunate than me.

If we ever got to a point where some people had greatly extended their lives and/or eliminated death for themselves whilst others still faced premature death from a basic lack of the necessities of life, well then, we'd be an even more narcissistic race than I originally thought.

<comment><USER6> Isn't this argument along the same lines of why explore space while people are starving on earth? There are 7 billion people on the planet.

We all shouldn't simply sit by idling until all the basic problems are fixed. Solving the "basic necessities" problem might be more economic related or come down to creating technology to create cheap, clean energy, for example.

<comment><USER5> Im not advocating sitting by idling. I just think it reflects our innate priorities when we put so much effort into extending our own lives when it doesn't take as much effort to greatly extend someone else's life who is less resourced than I am.

<comment><USER6> You are talking in generalities. What is "so much effort?" If a hundred thousand people work on a problem and spend 10 billion dollars, for instance, are we really depriving the less resourced? The U.S. spends $60 billion on pet food.

[http://www.americanpetproducts.org/press_industrytrends.asp](http://www.americanpetproducts.org/press_industrytrends.asp)

We spend billions on bottled water:

[http://www.businessweek.com/debateroom/archives/2008/09/bott...](http://www.businessweek.com/debateroom/archives/2008/09/bottled_water_is_a_big_drain.html)

Shouldn't we drink tap water and use the money saved to get water to people in need?

<comment><USER5> All reflections of a pretty weird state of affairs if I take a step back and try to look at things objectively. I guess achieving big strides in longevity for a wealthier few would just be an extension of the trend.

Bill Gates had this to say: "It seems pretty egocentric while we still have malaria and TB for rich people to fund things so they can live longer. It would be nice to live longer though I admit"

Not the authoritative word on the issue but interesting considering he has the opportunity to do either yet is focussing on malaria, TB etc

<comment><USER6> One of the top charities in GivingWell is to help stop malaria. You should donate. Nets go a long way and they're really cheap. I bought 20 nets last year. We don't need Bill Gates for that, right?

[http://www.givewell.org/charities/top- charities](http://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities)

By doing really difficult and expensive medical research over decades, we will discover many things that help many of the 7 billion people, increasing to 9 billion, on the planet. Knowledge isn't something that stays locked up forever, and which only rich people have access to it.

Age related research will benefit over 10 billion people in this century. Most of us will get old.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I had heard a rumour that approximately 10 out of every 10 people end up dying...

<comment><USER6> And in first world countries health insurances can often pay a fortune in the last couple of years of people's lives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As the executive director of a tech nonprofit ([https://www.stellar.org/](https://www.stellar.org/)), this is a topic I spend a lot of time thinking about. Certain problems need scalable, open, global public infrastructure, like global open system for identity, money, healthcare, energy research, climate data, etc. Unfortunately, the current model of foundation philanthropy doesn't fund these kinds of solutions well because the current charity funding model focuses on funding "programmatic services" (programs that service recipients directly). To put in more familiar HN terminology, foundations prefer to fund front-end services rather than back-end infrastructure. But Wikipedia cannot exist without http. And who funds the development of http-like projects?

With the growth of the Internet and the open-source movement, we, the tech industry, understand why open protocols and technology are crucial to providing access and opportunity to more people. I am a big believer in for- profit companies too, but there are certain things in tech that should be executed with a more philanthropic bent. When asked why Stellar.org is nonprofit, decentralized and open-source, we reply, "Can you imagine if the Internet had been owned by a for-profit company?

The thesis of Parker's post in the WSJ really struck a chord with me. There is a unique role that technologists can to play in philanthropy. We understand infrastructure and we should be funding the big tech bets that the world needs. Our industry is full of the unreasonable optimists - let's take that optimism and invest in an unbelievable future:)

<comment><USER8> Everything you're saying is great but I'm not sure I understand how a for- profit would be that different from a non-profit owning the Internet. Isn't the contentious bit on "owning" and not on "profit"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> GiveWell[1] and Open Philanthropy[2] would probably be of interest here. (I am a donor to some of GiveWell's recommended organizations but otherwise not affiliated with them)

[1] [http://www.givewell.org/](http://www.givewell.org/)

[2] [http://www.openphilanthropy.org/](http://www.openphilanthropy.org/)

<comment><USER6> I've recently donated to the mosquito nets. I don't see where they recommend institutions for medical or scientific research.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is exciting to see here! I've spent a lot of time and effort on the challenges surrounding effective philanthropy.

Prior to seeing it firsthand while managing IT for a non-profit, I imagined that the bottleneck issues were advanced technical challenges; things like capital smoothing and what I think of as elastic capital allocation: capital allocation directed by marginal cost (per unit-social-benefit) among a portfolio of operating non-profits. That stuff is exciting - and when it comes to fruition it will change the world in a huge way.

However, as you get into it you realize that even for high-performing and well-funded organizations, the challenges and roadblocks are much more pedestrian. They're things like standardized metrics [1] and data collection when your program's target members don't have internet access.

Perhaps the toughest challenge is the most straightforward: the non-profit employees trying to tackle these problems are non-technical, with limited access to technical resources. They're forced to become subject matter experts on impact metrics and analytics, data science and their database-of-choice all at once. It's quite a challenge.

My passion for both the sector and the technical challenges led me to found sluce.io [2], which makes software that addresses this exact challenge for operating and supporting organizations as well as Impact Investors. I'm happy to discuss these challenges with anyone who's interested.

[1] [https://iris.thegiin.org/metrics](https://iris.thegiin.org/metrics) [2] [http://sluce.io](http://sluce.io)

<comment><USER11> Thank you for sharing IRIS. As a technologist for non-profits, it's something I've never seen before. Our industry is VERY fragmented.

Your point about standardized metrics and data collection is very key. Even the organizations that realize a benefit to being data-driven just don't have the staff background in what that means or how to do it. From programs to funddev, staffs are trying to work with the limited data they are collecting, and making poor extrapolations based on that.

Even working to implement good databases and good procedures can't make up for both executive level buy in and staff level training and understanding.

<comment> bjelkeman-again Indeed. It is a bit of an uphill struggle, but we are starting to see change though. I think some people are really starting to get it. And yes, IRIS is interesting for some things we do too!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Didn't Bill Gates set the model here for everyone to follow? This reads like an exercise in how many times he can use the word "hack" in an article.

<comment><USER13> I thought the same thing, 35 times...

<comment><USER14> 30\. The editors boosted it to 32. The automated links to other articles added the rest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Caveat emptor: completely out of subject.

It seems that we want the new generation to think that a hackers is a young guy with a hood.

Can we just stop this misconception and show a picture of a "hack" as a "normal" person (i.e. any one working in a computer: young, old, woman, man, any race).

</comment><comment><USER16> On the other end of the spectrum, check out the Detroit Water Project (YC alum) - which aims to solve a problem like a charity, but is structured as a profit-seeking company. Addressing inefficiencies can be helpful for society, even if you pursue profit.

<comment><USER17> Detroit Water Project founder here. Thanks for spreading the word, but we're actually a non-profit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Ok, here goes. You are going to be asked to close your eyes and think again, but this time it will be pleasant. Try to imagine a government that is freely elected by the population, and is totally funded by itself. This government is totally efficient, because all that it does is what governments do best; spend money.

To entice thought, and heighten your curiosity, we will now briefly describe the Free Human Societies plan for the economy, and our governments. In the free human society, government's primary roll will be to make a plan for the future of humanity, and then fund it. Elected officials will create budgets which provide equally and fairly for the entire world's population. Government will not be limited to what they can spend, because there will be enough currency available to fund any project.

It is time to introduce another new term. The Free Human Government (FHG) is the Government of The Free Human Society. It will be formed to replace all existing governments. Exactly how we will do this peacefully is detailed in this publication. The Elected Officials of The Free Human Government (FHG) would swear to protect and defend the Universal Constitution of Humanity, which guarantees equal Freedom for all, and peace forever. This means that every elected official in The Free Human Government (FHG) will be responsible for equally serving the best interest of every living human beings. Elected Officials in the Free Human Government will be the highest paid people, and will be held in the highest of regard of all people in the Free Human Society. These independent patriots of an Equalistic Society must put aside their personal ideals in order to protect humanity forever.

<comment><USER18> Where are all you hackers? Don't you recognize genius when it right it front of your face? Read this then let's have an intelligent debate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> To save humanity from itself, we must find common ground. It's impossible to satisfy everyone; therefore we must exhibit matters of certainty. There are scientific facts we may not like, but cannot oppose because they're undisputable. In the Free Human Society we deal with facts and find solutions to problems. We understand the situation right now, and are leaving our past mistakes behind. To state this is a tough read would be an understatement; if you think this is a challenge to read, try writing it. As a citizen of the Free Human Society you will have the opportunity to do just that. How do you convince people to change? This publication is a best effort to convince you change is necessary and possible. In the end you will have a vivid mental image of the plan for saving the future. This is not a time to sit back, and relax. Sit up straight and prepare to do some independent thinking! We will explore many new ideas. These ideas have never debated. You'll be given the entire plan for saving humanity, then chose to support, or decline. Please wait until the end to make your decision. I will attempt to influence your decision by making this both informative, and hopefully readable. I'm going to be myself, and hope you like it. The first thing we must understand is nearly everyone will have equal success in life if given the exact same opportunities. At birth we are all innocent, and exactly equal. Babies have no conception of right or wrong. Babies understand nothing except the feelings they receive from those around them. This is where change in our society will begin. Here is your invitation into the Free Human Society, (FHS). The Free Human Society, (F.H.S.) is a world-wide network of individuals who've agreed to live their lives in an honest and peaceful manner, and respect other rights to do the same. The great hope for the future is that you will agree, and become a citizen of the Free Human Society (FHS). Will you sign this declaration? All humans declare at this time and forevermore our absolute freedom and complete independence from each other's influence. We further more accept personal responsibility for our own behavior and agree to protect each other.

</comment><comment><USER19> Of possible interest: Students Helping Honduras [http://ceciskids.org](http://ceciskids.org) Organization takes kids off the streets of one of the most dangerous countries in the world (highest murder rate according to UN report released in 2014; ~90.4 homicides per 100,000 people) and gives them a home, proper food and education.

Also, org. is always looking for teacher volunteers. Please feel free to pass this along to anyone whom you think might be interested in helping. Cheers!

Disclosure: I was born in Honduras and am a sponsor/donor

</comment><comment><USER18> Well here we are, what are we going to do now? It seems we have gotten ourselves into some trouble. The world's problems abound, from declining social morality to murder; government corruption and a world economy that is bound to crash; if you're looking for problems we have bunches. It seems we wound up on the maiden voyage of the Titanic. Have you noticed our ship is sinking? Relax; all of your trouble is over, your problems have all been solved. This publication is your rescue vessel to the future; all of the solutions to modern society's problems are here!. Don't believe me? Is it worth a few hours of your time to find out? What if I told you, saving the future of humanity is solely in your hands, and depends on your reading this? Would that heighten your interest enough to keep going? Well if we are going to save the world from itself, we must get started right now. You will be inundated with many new ideas, and concepts in this publication. To save us all, you must agree to explore them with an open mind. You will be requested to do some independent thinking. We will discuss many things most people don't want to think about. The time has come where something must be done, or freedom will end. Welcome to the Free Human Society! For one to feel superior, another must suffer. This publication proves life doesn't have to be a struggle. Society can create the opportunity for everyone to find some level of success. Prepare yourself, A guaranteed plan for a person's peaceful and prosperous future follows! This plan for saving modern society is outlined in great detail for everyone to study. All this grand plan depends on you. This publication is written at times directly to you. This is my best attempt to persuade you to support the Free Human Society, and save humanity. Therere is much work ahead, but if you make a personal decision to support The Free Human Society, all the promises in this publication can become true. We can secure a wonderful future for our ancestors. If you are opposed to a prosperous and peaceful future for humanity, perhaps you will enjoy reading how the rest of us are going to overcome your influence in our lives. I am neither poet, nor scholar. I am one individual, trying to survive on a planet full of people. I don't claim to be any more or less significant concerning the final outcome of the world. We are probably a lot alike, though we may never meet. I'm one person attempting to make my way through life, in an honest and respectful manner. Hopefully, together we can make the world a better place to live while we're here.

</comment><comment><USER20> I think this is spot on. And he's backing up what he's saying with his own money. I hope the best for him and everyone he helps.

</comment><comment><USER18> Is this site exclusive for brainiacs or can us common folks attempt to solve complex problems of modern society? Has any of you looked over my submissions last night concerning the "Universal Constitution of Humanity" and "The Free Human Society?"

</comment><comment><USER21> As the CEO of a human rights and tech non-profit startup ([https://www.secfirst.org](https://www.secfirst.org)) I've spent a number of years looking at the issue. I think the possibilities for applying technology to philanthropy are very high (we are currently doing that for the physical/digital security of activists, journalists and aid workers in high risk countries with our app Umbrella).

However, I would caution against an automatic rush towards techno-centric approaches. I've seen it happen so often that people get overly excited by the technology itself rather than really understanding what the end goal of it's use is. (I think one of the most common conversations I hear these days in the non-profit sector is "How do we build an app?" and "Let's run a weekend hack- a-thon and build a very complex piece of software" \- without any concept of what problem they are trying to solve and what the real value added would be). I hate to say it but in reality, most non-profits are really, really bad at building and implementing technology - their structures, people, mission, goals, experience etc does not allow that aim. Often you find people paying way too much money to build tools that essentially end up with little or no use - because even if they work, the processes to implement them (training, updates etc) are not instituted. It's the digital equivalent of the aid agency who build a water well but doesn't train anyone to fix it or leave spare parts. But it's a shiny tool that can be shown off to the donors/media/public, so that unfortunately sometimes seems to be the main output. Also, most IT people in non-profits are overworked just doing basic network admin etc - <USER2> are not the right people or in the right position to do development. In fact, these days I often find myself asking - "How can we do this without technology?"

I think Sean Parker is pretty correct in his interpretation but the non-profit sector is surprisingly very driven by "trends." So one year everyone wants to talk about X because thats what donors want to talk about, so suddenly every NGO cares about X. Next year it is Y. Also, one thing that I've noticed is that Silicon Valley funders are generally quite risk adverse in their philanthropy funding - many are happy to donate to (very worthy I would add!!!) causes like the environment or earthquake aid but most are not willing to tackle some of the more controversial stuff like human rights issues in Russia, China etc - which contrasts with the great work of people like George Soros in that area.

Indeed I wish the non-profit sector had more of the startup culture - it's extremely hard for us and other small non-profits to get funded as the sector is dominated by traditional NGOs and very conservative funders. (Can you imagine an Angel funder in Silicon Valley saying they only fund "innovative" ideas by companies that have five years of existing accounts!). There needs to be more of a competitive concept of startup/failure/merger etc in the non- profit sector but unfortunately this very very rarely happens, so you end up with a cycle of "zombie" NGOs doing very little (with high overheads) but sucking up donor money - and then new NGOs with good ideas being locked out of being able to scale. Even the processes for applying for funding can be incredibly complex and essentially in most cases require an expert in the sector to be able to go through with the applications.

I've hoped for a long time that the brain power and resources of the tech sector can be applied more effectively in our non-profit space but I still think too often people with tech skill-sets are not used properly by non- profits. Why give a software programmer a hammer to build a house when he can build you software? At Security First we've managed to try to bridge that gap by utilising volunteers for Android/UI/UX/Copywriters/Testers/Security folks etc in a way which taps into their main skill-sets. It's a much more effective and rewarding thing for everybody that way.

<comment> vezzy-fnord Assuming HN is a correct window on startup culture (I would think it is), then that too seems awfully techno-centric. Obsession with new (in age, not actual concepts) technical stacks and constant reinvention while the myth of software innovation keeps being propagated are all too common.

<comment> bjelkeman-again But you can take some of the great parts of that culture and what has been learned and apply it fruitfully. One has to make sure not to be sucked into the new, for newness sake, but there is a lot of good stuff to use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Here's a philanthropic project that won't break the bank: we need a museum to MDMA (ecstasy). I believe the logical place would be in the location it was first synthesized by the Merck company: Darmdstadt in Germany.

</comment><comment> bjelkeman-again It is a good article. I particularly relate to the focus on "hackable problems". The approach we took when we started was identifying areas in the international development sector where the combined expertise of a team of software hackers and people working in international development could make a real difference, working as a non-profit social enterprise.

Initially we focused mostly on knowledge sharing and transparency on how funds were spent, where the sector was deeply into paper report publishing as an acceptable output of major investments. We call these "cover your ass reports", as they are primarily an instrument for the project owner to give to the donor/investor to show that they didn't squander the money and used in an audit. Often the reports show no such thing, but the metrics used and the way people use data is often so poor that the only thing you can show is the money was spent.

As an extent of this we saw that we could make a big difference in providing better data collection and presentation systems. We took over a prototype field data collection system from a US NGO working in water and sanitation. They wanted to open source the software, which we helped them do, and we took over the continued development and running of it as a service. Our first work was primarily with western NGOs working in countries in Africa and South Asia, but soon our systems started becoming part of the infrastructure management of these countries. Projects to implement this is often a collaboration between a UN organisation, like UNICEF or UNDP, the country government and a number of local and regional NGOs. We have the whole rural drinking water supply systems for several countries mapped using this now, and a dozen or so in the works.

This is where the open source aspect what we do becomes really important we think. We are being asked to implement infrastructure and resource tracking systems for things like a country's bridges, fishing stock, drinking water supply and schools to name a few. We believe that these IT systems will become nearly as important infrastructure as the things they are tracking. We have started to see that this is understood by some of the countries we work with, as they are asking for the data to be housed in their jurisdiction. We think also that it is important that these are open source systems, as when these systems are successful they are going to remain for decades in production. And many of these countries have no governmental IT infrastructure to talk about at all at this point and we think that by having governmental infrastructure running on open source software you have better control of it. You can choose where it should be run, by whom and you have the possibility to have control over it.

In the article he talks about getting political. Actually building software systems for governments to use, based on open source principles, trying to build the best thing we can offer them, is in my experience a way more politically powerful tool than anything else political I think we could have ever engaged in. With a dozen countries investing heavily with us in our systems and dozens more knocking on the door I think it is safe to say that open source software can be both deeply politically engaging in a positive way, satisfying to work with and have a real world impact which is impressive.

</comment><comment><USER18> In The Free Human Society, each person's level of success will depend on the amount of effort, and personal drive they put forth in life. If a person sets goals to accomplish great feats in life, they will find the doors to success unlocked, and easily opened. If a person chooses not to be a leader, that is fine. The world needs human workers. If everyone tries to lead, nothing will ever get done. Common Human workers will also find it easy to achieve the ultimate goal in life; peace, and personal fulfillment. Above all, The Free Human Society recognizes the individual rights to equal freedom, regardless of a person's economic or social position. Everyone has their own place in society; each of us deserves the chance to accomplish as much as we can. Different people will always hold different levels of importance, and responsibility with-in society, the point is, no one deserves more freedom than another person. No matter how much responsibility or influence you have in life, you should be equally free. Whatever your position is in society, we must work together in order to accomplish anything. No matter the position, or amount of responsibility one has; we are all equally significant to the final out-come of humanity. We all have our own importance in life, and each of us has our own responsibility to society. If we all do our part, humanity will remain forever free and peaceful. If we continue down our existing ruts in the road of history, we will certainly drown in the mire of greed, and mindless discrimination. The choice is yours! All people should hold great pride in the country of their birth, and their government. The human population, and government should be totally trustworthy. In this publication we will prove that this is not only possible, we will give you step-by step instructions on how we will achieve this ultimate goal of equal freedom for all; and peace forever. Are you ready for the future? Ready or not here it comes. We can plan out a peaceful future for us all, or we can allow ourselves to be killed. The entire future of humanity is now your personal responsibility. Once you have finished reading this you will be asked to make a decision, to draw your own conclusion. If you choose to support the Free Human Society, many others will also. You are about to be taught exactly how we can save humanity forever. If you decide to support The Free Human Society we will be successful, if not; I suppose we deserve the consequences. Are you ready to smell the coffee a little differently? Prepare your brain for another new concept. Why must we pay taxes? Could someone tell me who first came up with the idea of taxing? This was the world's first greedy genius. What do we pay taxes for anyway? Is it because the governments of the world do such a great job leading us? Do we really want to give them our hard earned money? I don't think so. What taxes are is a method for governments, and greedy people to control society, so there is no need for them in the Free Human Society. Taxes are a bad method for funding government. Taxes both drain the common wealth of society, and limits government spending. This is a losing proposal for freedom, and democracy as a whole. Our current economic system is destined to fail because of inflation. Inflation causes the price of all merchandise to continue to rise until no one can afford anything. In this publication, we will explore an emergency escape route for our economy.

<comment><USER18> Hello, is any one reading this? What do you think? This is an exact plan for addressing, and offering solutions to all major modern problems. I thought that's what this site is all about. I have 131 pages of this and it isn't half finished. Would you like to jump in and help save humanity from itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Do you believe people are instinctually good, or bad? They are neither. All of us are exactly what we have been taught to be. From the moment we are born, we learn from other peoples actions. Everything that you understand has either been taught to you, or is a conclusion you've developed. I will use illustrations and examples through-out this publication to help you understand the facts, and concepts we are discussing. The prince that was switched at birth was one, here is another. Have you ever smelled coffee brewing? How did you know you were smelling coffee? The only way you could have known how coffee smells, is someone presented you coffee and you smelled it. You then drew your own conclusion of what coffee smells like. Have you ever visited a coffee plantation, or a coffee processing plant? Coffee has several different smells. It smells one way growing, another while it is being processed, and yet another when it is being brewed to drink. So, you probably have only been exposed to one of the smells of coffee. If you ask a person if they know what coffee smells like, they will most likely say yes. The fact is, they probably only recognize aroma of coffee, The actual fragrance of the coffee will vary greatly depending on whom you ask. If you ask the farmer, the worker at the coffee plant, or the consumer, all of them may have a different conclusion of what coffee smells like. They are all correct in their conclusion of what coffee smells like, even though all of their conclusions are different. This is the concept that we will build the free human society upon. We can all be right even though we have varying opinions of what right is. As long as I respect your right to freedom and a peaceful life, and you do the same, we have just solved the problems of human violence. All that we have to do is convince everyone to agree to the same set of general standards for society, and then enjoy their lives. We can create a society in which everyone has the opportunity to have a free and peaceful life no matter where they were born. Your children and grandchildren deserve this. Your grandchildren's children and beyond haven't done anything to deserve the society that we are poised to leave them. I will explain how these things are possible, please, just keep reading. Not every child can be born of royalty, but that doesn't mean great things can't be expected from every child. In The Free Human Society, every child will be born with a plan for guaranteed success. This will be discussed later as a main topic in this publication. Every living person deserves the opportunity for peace, and personal success. The Universal Constitution will guarantee equal freedom for everyone. Everyone will have the best medical care, education, and business career opportunities available to society. All of the Free Human Society will agree to live a life of honesty, and with-out violence. We will then create a society in which it is very easy to find peace and prosperity, if you live by some simple rules; don't lie, don't steal, don't cheat. How hard can this be?

</comment><comment><USER18> In this Problem Solved Section we will discuss the challenges facing modern society, and how we will solve them all. Yes, you read that right. The solution to all the world's current social problems are laid out here in great detail, all you have to do is keep reading. We are going to prove we can legally and peacefully change the course of humanity forever. In this written publication we will explain exactly how we are going to save humanity, by changing the rules of society. There is nothing more precious than a mothers love for their babies. Each child is exactly equal at this point in live. The difference is what occurs next. All anyone knows is learned behavior. Usually these lessons in life are taught directly through human reaction. At times throughout this writing you will be requested to stop and contemplate what is being discussed. This is one of those times. What would happen if every person received the same opportunities in life? What if every new person was guaranteed a chance to meet there full potential? What if everyone knew that they would always have the very best medical care, education, and a meaningful career awaits everyone when they become an adult? The Free Human Society believes every person should have a guarantee of success. Everyone should be successful in life to some degree, if given opportunity. The guarantee of success states simply; everyone should have the opportunity to live a free, and peaceful life. Please keep reading and you will be shown how this, and much more is possible. The Free Human Society's plan is to make all these necessary changes in one generation. All we have to do, is agree on what our new society should be like. We can have all that we want; we just have to agree on what that is. We suggest a single publication of human standards for everyone. This publication will be called The Universal Constitution of Humanity. The Universal Constitution of Humanity is an amendment to the existing National Constitutions of the world. It will create an international constitution that guarantees exact freedom for everyone. The Countries choosing to ratify The Universal Constitution of Humanity will remain free forever, and independent of each other. Upon ratifying The Universal Constitution of Humanity, these independent countries will become known as the Universal Alliance of Free Nations (UA). The Universal Constitution of Humanity will replace all exist currencies of the Universal Alliance of Free Nations with one common currency. These independent nations will share the same constitution and legal currency. Each nation will have its own money to spend; the primary difference is, each country's money will have the same buying power through-out the Universal Alliance. Are you with me so far? Please reserve your opinions on these matters for now. Allow us to completely explore the benefits of these reforms before making up your mind. For now, we are just ascertaining it is possible to make these necessary changes for freedom. Allow us to pause here for a moment to investigate what The Universal Constitution of Humanity will accomplish. The United States of America is the world's largest economy. So goes the U.S. economy; so goes the world's. What would happen if The United States, Canada, and Mexico voted to share the same constitution, and economy? This would by far, create the world's largest economy. What if this newly formed Universal Alliance of Free Nations (UA) invited all other nations on the planet to participate also? Each nation ratifying The Universal Constitution of Humanity will become equal members of the Universal Alliance of Free Countries. The citizens of these countries will be titled Free Humans, and will form the Free Human Society. We may have different nationalities, but we are all Free Humans. This publication is dedicated to explaining why we must reform government and the economy, and how wonderful the future can be . We will also discuss why we it is necessary to make these changes for the future of humanity, and to earn your support for The Free Human Society. The United States, Canada, and Mexico have all the resources to be self-sufficient and completely independent alliance of free nations. Everything needed to have a successful and peaceful future is already available. The benefits of forming such an alliance are extensive, and will be discussed through-out this publication.

</comment><comment><USER18> Hillary B. McClelland about Number words (239)599-4796 email@example.com THE UNIVERSAL CONSTITUTION OF HUMANITY H.B.Mac First Draft

New Terms and Definitions: We can DOIT!!!

o The Universal Constitution of Humanity: An amendment to existing national constitutions which guarantees Exact Freedom for All, and Peace Forever. o The Free human Society: All humans declare at this time and forevermore, our exact freedom and complete independence from each other's influence. We further more accept personal responsibility for our own behavior and agree to protect each other. o Free Human Network: The Electronic Social Network, of the Free Human Society. o "Freedom Fee": A one U.S. Dollar per month contribution to fund the Free Human Society, A persons "Freedom Fee" allows them the title Certified Free Human Citizen. o Free Human Citizen: Any person accepting the concepts of "Equalism" is a Free Human Citizen. You may register the Free Human Society, a person may remain anonymous and still be a Free Human Citizen. Free Human Citizens are considered to be exactly equal in significance, completely free and independent of others. o Certified Free Human Citizen: A Free Human Citizen which contributes a one U.S. Dollar per month "Freedom Fee". These Free Humans may continue to remain anonymous, but will receive monthly deposits of 5000 E-Dollars into their virtual bank accounts. o Dedicated Free Humans: Free Human which choose to openly support the Free human Society. These Free Humans also agree to live in an honest manner, and while adhering to the standards of the Free human Society. A person must agree to a personal back ground check, and become a Dedicated Free Human Prior to becoming an employee, or government leader of the Free Human Society. o Free Human Government: All governments representing the Free Human society. The Free Human Government consist entirely of Dedicated Free Humans. . o Equalism: The Social system promoted by the Free Human Society which has no taxes or government fees, and solves all problems from the view that all people have a right to equal freedom, and peace. o Equalist: An activist in the Free Human Society. o Equalistic Approach: Correct method for solving problems in the Free Human Society. o Independent Nations of the Universal Alliance, (INA): All independent Nations Ratifying the Universal Constitution of Humanity. o Universal Alliance of Free Nations, (U.A.): A Committee of Ambassadors appointed by the leaders of The Free Human Government. o E-Dollar: The official currency of The Independent Nations of the Universal Alliance. o E-Dollar Economy: The Economy of the Free Human Society which saved the world from itself. o Universal Bank of Humanity: The official bank of the Free Human Society. o Product of Earth: Everything grown, mined, or produced from the earth for the Free Human Society o January 16, 2014; Universal Day of Reconciliation: The day in history the entire debt of the Free Human Society was paid off from. o Universal Day of Sorrow and forgiveness: January 16th of each year is the day which all the budgets for the Free Human Government are funded for the ensuing year. This day will be a time of reflection for the past mistakes of our ancestors, and a day we forgive each other for the actions of our ancestors. This will be a world holiday of great celebration because we have overcoming the problems of modern society. o Actual Diagram of Government: A flow chart diagram published on the Free Human Network depicting all known government positions, and the names of the people who legally hold each position. All known pertinent information concerning the duties of each position, and the person holding the position will also be available on this diagram. o Virtual Diagram of the Free human Government: A virtual flow chart diagram which mirrors the Actual Diagram of Government, but depicts the names of only Dedicated Citizens of the Free Human Society. This diagram will disclose all pertinent information concerning each Dedicated Free Human Leader, as well as their Annual E-Dollar Budget for funding the peaceful future of humanity. o Government Funded Agencies (GFA): Reformed Employee owned private business which performs all of the administrative duties of the Free Human Society o Government Funded Contractors: Private contracting companies which must adhere to strict regulation while performing all the actual hands on work funded by the Free Human Government

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PROBLEM SOLVED:

1\. Something Needs To be done, and How! 2\. Governments of the Free Human Society 3\. Economy of the Free Human Society 4\. Religion and the Free Human Society 5\. Equal Freedom in the Free Human Society 6\. Voting, and Elections in the Free Human Society 7\. Agencies for Human Advocacy and Judicial Review. 8\. Guarantee of Success In the Free Human Society 9\. Work In the Free human Society 10\. E-dollar freedom 11\. Into the future

<comment><USER18> Is anyone reading this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Are you following this so far? Hang on this is about to get really deep. What if this newly formed Alliance of Free Nations invited each other country on earth to adopt this same constitution of humanity, and participate in The Universal Alliance of Free Nations? Suppose the newly Formed Universal Alliance of Free Nations, informed all of the other world's governments, "If you refuse to adopt The Universal Constitution of Humanity the Universal Alliance of Free Nations will not recognize you as legitimate, and won't have any economic associations with you. Did you understand the plan? We will offer voluntary participation in the Free Human Society to the entire planet. Each nation, business, and individual person on the planet is strongly encouraged to support the Free Human Movement, and join The Free Human Society. Those who Support the free human movement will be welcomed equally into our society based on honesty, and peace. Those who reject our goal of equal freedom for all, and peace forever will not be recognized by The Free Human Society. No Free Human will ever recognize a violent leader. We will continue to explore exactly how it is possible to achieve our goal of equal freedom for all and peace forever, but for now let's discuss why these social changes are vital. Every one reading this must agree we are currently on a crash-course for world economic, and environmental devastation. I'm tired of people saying there is nothing I can do about it. Yes, there is something I, and everyone else can do about it. I'm doing my part right now, and I intend to instruct you on what you have to do also. Let us recognize the world's problems, and find common solutions to them all. We must agree to protect our one vital asset, the planet we currently inhabit. Currently there are governments plotting the destruction of our economy and global resources. They are led by powerful and greedy people promoting their personal agendas for society. They have proven themselves more than willing to murder to promoting these ideas. This has been proven throughout history by countless millions of people being slaughtered in warfare. Currently, a select few government leaders have the ability to destroy our entire planet. There are still more who seek the power to murder us all. All the while we stand around hoping something will happen, and we will all be saved. Now is the time for action! These greedy leaders must be stopped, but how are we going to do this peacefully? Just keep reading, all the answers are ahead. We must agree to certain facts in order to save the future of humanity. Let's think about one now.

Every time a Human Being is killed by violence, a terrible atrocity has occurred. Every murder is a failure by society. A human's absolute freedom and personal independence has been stolen from them. The human victim has lost their inherent right to freedom, and to have a peaceful life. Their opportunity has been stolen, and their full potential will never be known. At times you will be asked to consider ideas that aren't appealing. You are being asked to do this to help us come to some common conclusions. This will be one of those times.

Read this, and then close your eyes. Think about precious memories of the people you love the most. Think about the first time you saw your newborn child, or the memories of your wedding day. Think about your mother, and father. Feel the love in your heart for all of them. Now close your eyes and think about them being brutally murdered! I know you don't want to; and you wouldn't be asked if it wasn't important. Close your eyes and watch the ones you love the most being viciously taken away. See the blood, and hear the screaming. If you didn't cry; you didn't do it well enough. Close your eyes, and do it again. Ok, enough of that. I'm very sorry, but we must all understand, every time murder happens; those painful feelings you just imagined, become very real to someone. Nearly everyone has someone that loves them. Every time murder occurs; pain and suffering follows. We must make a decision as a society that no human violence is acceptable. None of us can be completely free If we allow violence. If you live under the fear of being a victim of violence you can never be truly free.

Are we saying we are going to end all violence? Of course not; what we are going to do is solve the problems causing most of the world's violence. Afterward, violent occurrences would become isolated incidents, not organized terror. Are we in agreement so far? Not really, keep reading things are going to get better. Why is it, if a government official or a famous person dies it important news, but if a bum dies in the street no one seem to even notice. Someone well known suddenly dies, the whole world takes notice. If the well- known person was held in high regard, their sudden death will be called a tragedy. If they happen to be a person that is considered to be powerful, or incredibly wealthy; the entire world may mourn for them.XXXXXXXXXXXXZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ What we must understand is, the Dead Bum lying in the street that no one cares enough to notice of, is the greater tragedy. The powerful leader, or the, famous person must have achieved much in life or they wouldn't have become rich, and powerful. The bum on the other hand, was a wasted life. No one will ever know what this person's full potential was. Society has failed once again. These are new ideas for society, and I realize it is hard to mentally digest them all at once. I hope I have at least gotten your attention. I told you things were about to get better. Can you imagine living on a city in space? If humanity is to survive, that is exactly the direction we must work toward. We will discuss this later, but for now; do you realize we are over populating our planet? At the same time we allow the exploitation of our natural resources. Scientific facts prove that modern society will completely deplete our planet of its fossil fuels. Fossil Fuel is currently the only energy source we have to power the planet. We must find other energy sources to fuel the future or live in darkness again. Science has also proven that certain life ending geological events have occurred, and will occur again. These events include several known eruptions of super volcanoes. Meteorological events have occurred on our planet also, giant meteors that have struck the earth's surface causing massive destruction . This is not speculation, it is undisputed fact. These cataclysmic events have occurred before in history, and they will happen again in the future. The question is, can humanity survive such a catastrophic event? Life on our planet will eventually end. That is a fact. Exactly how long it is until that happens isn't known. We can't control volcanos or a meteor, what we can do, is improve our quality of life until the end happens. If we all decide to work together in peace, there is no known limits to human ingenuity. If we can simply put our differences aside, and agree to disagree in peace; there are no limits on what humanity will accomplish. If not, we will all kill each other. I told you things were going to start getting better. Modern society will be terribly affected, or will completely end by a catastrophic event. Either way you look at it, currently our society is doomed to eventual death and destruction unless we change our behavior. We must create a new economic and government system that can't ever fail. This new social system will be called "Equalism".

Here is our next matter to consider. A child's geographic location at birth is the most important factor in their lives. If a child is lucky, they will be born into a wealthy family in an industrialized area. This child will grow up with luxuries most of the world will never know. Other children are born into war-torn areas, or areas of famine. There are tens of millions of children that will never have the opportunity to reach their full potential. These children will grow up, and live in the same horrid living conditions as their ancestors. Why? Think about this. If your own child was switched at birth with a royal prince, and no one knew but you; your child would grow up and be a Royal Prince. As a Royal Prince your child would be reared with great expectations for their future. There would be no cost spared in your young princess's education. They would experience the best life has to offer. The point here is; any person that is treated like royalty from birth will grow to act like royalty. Doesn't your child deserve to grow up in a society that expects royal behavior from everyone? Why should luck be the determining factor in how successful a person will become? Try to imagine a society in which everyone gets to explore their full potential. Seriously, Think about it. Why can't we have this type of society?

<comment><USER18> This is an excerpt of my manifesto "The Universal Constitution of Humanity." All copyrights are reserved by Hillary B. Mcclelland.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This guy needs to wake up.

<comment><USER24> What do you mean?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> My advise: Try to not murder everyone while you build your tehno-utopia? Pretty please?</comment>


This teenager is hot property in Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> http://www.smh.com.au/small-business/entrepreneur/cant-drink-cant-vote--but-this-teenager-is-hot-property-in-silicon-valley-20120620-20mt9.html <comment><USER2> I've notice that these articles are good at generating one thing: envy. The problem with comparing oneself to the person portrayed in an essentially random article are many. But first and foremost is the utter lack of context: I'd argue that Lachy's peers at his high school would be better off comparing themselves to him. And even then I would hesitate, as luck really does count. The rest of us fall prey to a kind of assumption of universality: that his context is roughly the same as ours, and so the only difference are variables we can control. That's not true!

The one quote that I really like in the article was from his "fan" headmaster, David Gee. "I think he's a great example of someone who has followed his passion, hasn't let age be a barrier and hasn't said 'well I can't do this because I'm 17'" That's a fantastic sentiment, and I share it. The most tragic reason to fail is because of some delusional belief that failure is tied to some innate quality like age.

Note that these two sentiments are not at odds! It's true that context can prevent your success, but we don't usually know _which_ part of that context is to blame.

<comment><USER3> I live in Perth where this guy is from, and Wesley is one of the most expensive and most highly regarded schools around. Given the sentiment of the headmaster, I'm not surprised it's doing so well... Seeing beyond "get my school's average up" and seeing genuine talent and potential, then fostering it - that's the sort of school I'd send my one-day kids to.

<comment><USER4> I went to school with Lachy and it was really great to see the complete support of the head (Mr. Gee) behind his endeavours.

Also this isn't a once off occasion that he has helped and supported students. My brother during his final year was heavily involved in Cycling at a national level. His commitment was at school was minimum, Gee saw this and helped the best he could.

Plus he has an uncanny ability to greet every student by name. Great guy.

<comment><USER5> My kids have gone to more schools than I care to consider (I'm military): the headmaster's ability to remember kids' names is a minimum necessary sales tactic. Of, oh my, 10? headmasters, they all know my kids by name on an impromptu basis. I wouldn't make too much out of it.

<comment><USER6> Schools vary. Possibly by geographic location and size. Having 1500 or so students doesn't help.

I went to a similar school (as in, really expensive) as the OP in Melbourne. The principal was universally well regarded, and even got a Member of the Order of Australia (a couple of steps below a knighthood) for his contribution to education, but he knew very few of us students by name.

When I was at uni, I noticed a Who's Who book in the library, and flicked it open to the page that my old principal was on...

<comment><USER7> And?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As a 17 year old, this makes me feel under accomplished. While I do have skills in regards to computery things, I'm hitting a block when it comes to developing backends to sites. I know HTML and CSS decently but programming languages that I'd need to learn just seem to bounce off.

On the plus side, I'm good at other things too, like photography / producing electronic music (no Madeon though. He makes me feel under accomplished as well). And I know that I shouldn't be too hard on myself to be good at things - I'm only 17. But part of me wants to be known as someone who's really good at something at a younger than normal age.

This person's story is really cool - it's too bad immigration has him caught up. Startup visas would be nifty. Could he go to college in the US? Even though he clearly doesn't need a college education (and questionably a bit of those who go to college, but that's another debate), it could serve as a sort of foot in the door for getting settled in America. I'm probably wrong about this but also curious as to what would make this not a viable option.

<comment><USER9> (Throaway so I can be more candid)

I'm approaching 21 in a few weeks and I've been making 6 figures since 19, I could have articles written about me but I choose to remain relatively quiet about my "success", millions of people use the things that I produce. My advice to you would be just do it, just do whatever it is you want. It's probably unique to each individual but I personally find that when someone tweets about my products or the things that I have produced it's the greatest feeling in the world, but when someone says "whoa you're 20 and you've done that?!" it's so hollow. Imagine your achievements being talked about because of your age? The internet is not discriminatory towards age, you can be 15 or 90 and achieve great things, why have them trivialized by an uncontrollable personal attribute.

As an aside I am also a poor programmer, although I can do everything I need to I am not a "rockstar" like a large portion of HNers would lead you to believe you need to be, but you don't, what matters is that you actually do stuff. Sit down, write code and maybe you'll achieve something great, but if you spend your time lamenting about how it's never going to happen then it never will.

<comment><USER10> I always stay away from the comment section on this type of blog post, but your reply has encouraged me to add my own two cents just this time. Also a throwaway. I have a very similar story to you. I'm a little bit younger than you, and I've been very financially successful for a few years from my own ventures. I like to stay entirely out of the tech blogs for privacy reasons, but at least a few HNers know of my companies.

With all due respect to those involved, these blog posts are usually just linkbait.

The young people I know running the 7 or 8 figure per annum companies like to keep the stories to themselves.

Last week, an old business friend of mine raised an 8 figure round for his already highly profitable B2B software business. At his age he can't even legally drink in the US. The tech bloggers would wet themselves with this story, but he has kept it entirely under wraps for a few reasons. The thing about it is - literally one day after he closed the round, he was back to all- day coding sessions. He always says that if you just have focus, you can have anything. And this is truly evidence to support that.

Don't worry about what bloggers write or what others are doing. Focus on building something of value, experiment, never quit, and in no time you'll be the one deciding whether or not you want the tech blogs to write about you, not the other way around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Re: Visas for non-degree holders

I'd love to connect with people like lachyg or others who are related to the struggle of finding ways to pursue their dreams in the US without having a college degree.

Im currently enrolled an in US institution and working on CPT, but there is nothing I'd love to do more than quit school in the fall to work full-time, however as the article notes, any ordinary visa does not apply to non-degree holders. After consultation with our lawyers, a marriage or mentioned O1 visa are the only option.

I know several people in a similar situation who went through the O1 route, however they all say its a ridiculously hard process and requires extensive documentation of the "national and international acclaim". Admittance to YC/TS helps a lot (which we are trying right now)

<comment><USER11> I don't understand why someone would downvote me. I'm just trying to follow my dreams and passion

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> We sold Lachy the PSDtoWP.com domain a couple years back. Helluva negotiator, would never have guessed he was 15(?) at the time. :)

Glad to see it worked out. Congrats!

<comment><USER13> What had you been using it for?

<comment><USER14> A PostScript to Word Perfect converter ?

<comment><USER15> Photoshop to Wordpress.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I can sympathise with the visa situation. I'm 19 and don't have a degree, and I've been in exactly the same situation—you go through the whole interview process and then suddenly the company's lawyers tell them there's no way you can get a visa, and weeks of time have been wasted for both parties. It would be funny if it weren't so tragic.

To be honest, I wouldn't mind living on a boat for a while: <http://www.blueseed.co/>

</comment><comment><USER17> I want to know how he was able to so easily become an affiliate on Amazon...? (As a fellow Australian) I tried a few years ago and Amazon wouldn't even allow me to purchase advertising (let alone join the affiliate program or sell) without having US tax numbers, bank accounts, etc.. I have an Australian pty ltd company and had to go through a third parties to get my products listed on there.

<comment><USER18> He wasn't selling products on amazon, just linking to products that were already for sale and getting paid by Amazon for the traffic. See "product links" on this page: [https://affiliate- program.amazon.com/gp/associates/join/land...](https://affiliate- program.amazon.com/gp/associates/join/landing/tools.html)

<comment><USER17> Yes.. this is an Amazon affiliate program, you will _require_ a US credit card, US bank account and US postal address to join this program. ie. for when they pay you your commissions it needs to be reported.

If you are not from the US, these things are not easy to obtain.

And last I checked they wouldn't even allow me to buy Amazon PPC advertising without these things either!

<comment><USER19> Usually debit card goes everywhere where credit one is needed. Debit card, US bank acct and a US postal address are easily obtainable for approximately $800-1500 one time payment (couch class ticket to US and tourist visa fee). I walked into the bank (R.I.P Washington Mutual) on Castro st. in MV, CA and left it half an hour later with the bank account. The debit card followed in the mail a week later. I had a address of my friend, but I could have used a PO box. Now you can buy US postal address online and have all spa^H^H^H mail forwarded to your email address scanned.

I then repeated this process in 2008 to incorporate, opened the business account and raised money (and put them on the account).

Now I'm living in the US, on a work visa, having no degree.

Guys, US is a fantastic country for anyone who actually _wants_ something. Put some creativity here and there and it works flawlessly. I laugh when I talk to US citizens (or read them online) who go on endless whining on how police state this country has become, how much burden you have to put up with to open the business, how the school system is in the toilet, etc, etc. They just don't know what they're talking about. Any US system could be ridiculed and laughed upon, and sometimes it deserves it. But it's fucking efficient.

Go open the debit card, bank account, business, whatever in, lets say France (I love this country, I've been there like 30 times and it's never enough). If you succeed you can come back to the US and apply for National Interest Waiver for being a person with extraordinary abilities in science AND arts AND business. Haha.

<comment><USER17> Interesting.. 26 hrs flying time just to open a bank account is a little extreme.. but next time I am there on vacation I'll definitely be calling into a bank and giving this a go!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Would you consider staying in Australia?

I suppose the startup scene here is nothing like it is in Silicon Valley/New York/etc., but it's not non-existent either.

<comment><USER20> I feel at home here in San Francisco. There are a multitude of companies I'd love to work for.

<comment><USER21> Interesting that you would want to work for a company rather than start your own (optionally taking part in YC, etc.).

What is your reasoning behind that?

<comment><USER20> Currently I don't have an idea I'd REALLY love to work on. Something I'm passionate, knowledgeable and enthusiastic about. So until then, keep gaining skills.

YC is definitely something I'd love to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Are there any other details available on this young man's actual tech-related talents? The article only really presents him as good at coming up with business ideas and successfully executing them. Why is he a hot property for the tech industry exactly? The only tech skills I see mentioned are HTML and CSS. It would seem to me several different industries might be interested in chatting with him since he appears to be an idea guy worth pursuing.

Is there no tech industry in Australia to court him or that he's interested in? Why does he have to get a visa to move to the US, if the big companies want him why not let him work from Australia? I guess maybe he sees value for him to move there, I get that though.

I'm not discounting his abilities since starting several profitable companies to be sold later is rather impressive, regardless of his age. I'm just interested in what skill sets he has that the tech industry appears to desire so much. Is it because he's a self-starter that gets things done or some other reason the article doesn't state?

<comment><USER23> Popular articles only mention technologies that are buzz-word friendly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Yet another example why we need the Startup Visa.

</comment><comment><USER25> yet another loss for the US due to the lack of a startup visa. I'd be curious to see as study that looked at all the startups that tried to make it to the US but failed and ended up being succesful somewhere else - as a result of which the US missed out on the revenues they would've generated. (I know this guy isn't trying to move a startup there - but so far he seems like a pretty strong candidate for being someone to start a potentially succesful one - reminds be a bit of the stripe guys actually!)

</comment><comment><USER26> Great read, best of luck.

</comment><comment><USER27> If he has enough cash he could apply for EB-5 visa. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EB-5_visa>

</comment><comment><USER28> _My grandfather taught me HTML_

Whoa O_o

<comment><USER29> He's lucky, I learnt it from a brief section in the 2003 edition of _A Rough Guide to the Internet_.

And then spent years thinking CSS was a proprietary, evil, non-standard Microsoft technology, for some reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Well done Lachy - you always keep surprising me! Sam

</comment><comment><USER30> Well done Lachy!

</comment><comment><USER31> Classic Lachy.

</comment><comment><USER32> Good luck, Lachy! You're a great guy at your 17, and I'm just an incapable trashbag at my 28 being a skilled experienced software engineer, but haven't done a single startup yet because I cannot figure out how to come up with an idea. You're so much better than me, but I'm not jealous, just keep it up, and you'll become a new Zuckerberg in a few years.

</comment><comment><USER33> Why would he take a cut in pay and move here?

</comment><comment><USER32> <http://youtu.be/f3XeRCAAkZY>

</comment><comment><USER34> Whattaguy

<comment><USER35> Indubitably!

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> And with talented kids like him around, Obama decides to give work permit, financial aid, and legal status to illegal immigrants?

<comment><USER37> An incredibly flawed and ridiculous argument.

Flaw 1: You imply that no illegal immigrants are talented, or contribute to U.S. society.

Flaw 2: Your argument presupposes that providing legal status, financial aid and work permits to illegal immigrants will prevent talented people from wanting to work in the U.S.

Flaw 3: Providing work permits, financial aid and legal status to illegal immigrants is done for many reasons, and your argument presupposes that it's a bad thing. You need to demonstrate that this is the case before your argument can have any weight.

<comment><USER36> Quoting chris_wot1:

Flaw 1: I didn't say no illegal immigrants are talented. Let's say odds for an illegal immigrant to be talented is 50/50, while we know skilled workers like this kid is 100% talented (track record proven so far) -- so why makes it easy for the former group but not the latter?

Flaw 2: If there are slots available, they should be allocated to talented individuals. Evidence has shown many entrepreneurs and college graduates (legitimately) have gone back to their countries because of inability to obtain visas here.

Flaw 3: It's a bad thing. If you compare it to how tough it is for a legal, skilled worker to come here. Besides, I personally know countless people are planning to send their kids here illegally before 15 to benefit from this new regulation. But that's the whole new debate. My only point here is: Why not make it easier for talented individuals instead of illegal immigrants?

<comment><USER37> For flaw 1 and 2, show me the evidence backing your claim. For flaw 3, your point doesn't respond to my point, in that there are a whole bunch more reasons why Obama allowed through illegal immigrants.

Your reasoning isn't much better than "those skilled immigrants are taking our jobs"</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Which books have helped you the most professionally? - <AUTHOR> Often times I see threads on HN about good Compuer Science books, but I'd like to find out which books have helped you the most in your career growth (which may not specifically be CS type books) or professionally (which may be CS type books).<p>Edit - having a few words describe how the book was helpful would be really useful! <comment><USER2> Would it be ridiculous if you upvoted this comment??

Never Split The Difference - Chris Voss

This book has made a much greater negotiator both professionally and personally.

"Would it be ridiculous if" and "How am I supposed to do that?" Have saved me 100s of thousands of dollars!! The only negative point is that the negotiation style does not work on my wife ever since she read the book.

<comment><USER3> Seconded on all counts. Except I'm not planning to recommend the book to my wife for exactly the reason you mentioned! ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How to win friends and influence people. Helped me solve some approaches to handling people in general and highlighted a few approaches that I had been taking that were actively causing me problems.

The Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving and Getting Advice Successfully by Gerald Weiberg. [1] Helped me understand why technical problems are rarely just technical.

Working effectively with legacy code by Michael Feathers [2]. Practicing some of the techniques in this helped me get my foot in the door in a job long ago where one of the interview scenarios was "This is broken, go ahead and fix it.". I recommend reading this for anyone working on a code base that's been around for a while.

\--

[1]: [https://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Consulting-Giving-Getting- Suc...](https://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Consulting-Giving-Getting-Successfully- ebook/dp/B004J35LHQ/)

[2]: [https://www.amazon.com/Working-Effectively-Legacy-Robert- Mar...](https://www.amazon.com/Working-Effectively-Legacy-Robert-Martin- ebook/dp/B005OYHF0A/)

</comment><comment><USER5> For a non-cs book, checkout Deep Work by Cal Newport. It's been a little while since I read, but what struck me most is the mindset to avoid distractions.

<comment><USER6> I am truly greatful of reading that book. IMHO, A must read for our email/social media burdened world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Designing Data-Intensive Applications: The Big Ideas Behind Reliable, Scalable, and Maintainable Systems by Martin Kleppmann. Absolute best book on system design.

</comment><comment><USER8> The War of Art - about overcoming that nagging resistance to getting stuff done that we all feel.

<comment><USER9> Have you seen this video? It is basically the war of art book illustrated with movie scenes: [https://youtu.be/1lTcgSzf0AQ](https://youtu.be/1lTcgSzf0AQ)

<comment><USER10> Wow, that video was much better than the book in my opinion. The book spends chapters and chapters repeating the exact same thing over and over. And then the last third of the book is about divine inspiration and other things I just couldn't get into.

I always thought the book would have been better as a blog post or two, but the video format was perfect. It presented the ideas and gave advice on how to achieve them. I took a lot more from that video than I did from the book.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "How to Solve it" was great for me from an abstract problem solving point of view. It helped me get better at seeing which abstractions help solve an otherwise difficult problem, which is a useful skill to have for coding interviews and, really, most technically difficult problems encountered during the work day.

</comment><comment><USER12> As a small business owner I'd have to say E-Myth Revisited and Work the system.

Because once you learn systems thinking, you see the world totally differently and from a business point of view, understanding how their systems work is like getting to have a look at the source code of that business.

</comment><comment><USER13> If you want to embrace DevOp culture, where it comes from, why is it important and the reality of medium big businnesses, then you definitely want to read the Phoenix project

</comment><comment><USER14> How to win friends and influence people

<comment><USER15> some of my favorite parts of _The Recognitions_ are the ones that make fun of that book

>There was, finally, very little need to know anything at all, except how to "deal with people." College, the author implied, meant simply years wasted on Latin verbs and calculus. Vergil, and Harvard, were cited regularly with an uncomfortable, if off-hand, reverence for their unnecessary existences...In these pages, he was assured that whatever his work, knowledge of it was infinitely less important that knowing how to "deal with people." This was what brought a price in the market place; and what else could anyone possibly want?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful" by Marshall Goldsmith helped me become a better teammate and communicator.

</comment><comment><USER17> You've Only Got Three Seconds by Camille Lavington. Basically helped me to understand what I can do to make a good impression on others.

</comment><comment><USER18> 33 Strategies of War. It's good for dealing with any and all types of conflict, including conflicts with yourself. Half of the book is unconventional techniques most people don't even think of.

Similarly themed is Extreme Ownership, which covers leadership in chaotic situstions.

Militaries are designed to deal with the chaos of war, and a lot of principles apply to the chaos of software engineering too.

</comment><comment><USER19> "Large-Scale C++ Software Design" by John Lakos. The only book (as far as I know) that really teach you the nitty gritty of handling very large scale systems (not just C++ systems). Something I have needed more than once in my career.

</comment><comment><USER20> Mythical Man Month

</comment><comment><USER21> SICP, the foundation on which my career rests.

<comment><USER22> SICP almost turned me into an unemployable mess.

Fortunately I managed to forget it all and am now happily earning a good living in a subset of Pascal called Go.

<comment><USER23> Off topic, but I'm curious: Why do you call Go a subset of Pascal? Go seems to me to be rather different, both in spirit (much less restrictive and nanny- like) and in syntax.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm no professional but I was very impressed by the immediate utility and domain independence of what I gained from reading "Thinking, Fast and Slow".

I've always felt that intelligence is largely cultivated (or at least a significant portion of what we commonly refer to as 'intelligence'), and much of this book seemed to agree and offered constructive advice on improving ones cognition, along with making use of many quirks, oddities and primitive habits our brains have been endowed with.

</comment><comment><USER25> ReWork by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson (good reference on good principles)

Traction by Gino Wickman (how to create SOPs & scale)

Authority by Nathan Barry (how to develop an audience)

</comment><comment><USER26> early in my career, those two books were on my desk continuously: [https://www.amazon.com/Network-Programming-Perl-Lincoln- Stei...](https://www.amazon.com/Network-Programming-Perl-Lincoln- Stein/dp/0201615711/) [https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Algorithms-Perl- Practical-P...](https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Algorithms-Perl-Practical- Programming/dp/1565923987/)

later, it was time for [https://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence- People/dp/0...](https://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence- People/dp/0671027034)

</comment><comment><USER9> The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

<comment><USER27> Wow what an amazing coincidence. I was at the library today and picked up this book. It wasn't featured in any way, my eye just happened to fall on this particular book, on one of the many many shelves there.

</comment></comment><comment> Fire-Dragon-DoL POODR - Practical Object oriented design in ruby. Changed my way of coding entirely, brought me to a completely different level and pushed an even bigger growth

</comment><comment><USER28> Difficult Conversations

Primal Leadership

Necessary Endings

</comment><comment><USER29> One I haven't seen mentioned yet is Time Management For Systems Administrators. The concepts also work for devs too.

</comment><comment><USER30> Software Craftsmanship from mancuso helped me a lot to find meaning in my work as a software devloper

</comment><comment><USER31> First 90 days from HBR

</comment><comment> q-base Pitch Anything - About selling and the psychology of selling. Really need to re-read that one actually.

And +1 for Deep Work, So Good They Can't Ignore You or The World Beyond Your Head. They made me realize that being in a profession where you can reach "flow state" actually is a privilege.</comment>


Why so many sites depend on JavaScript from external domains? - <AUTHOR> Browsing web without Javascript is sort of a blessing: there are almost zero advertisements and the experience is often noticeably faster. For sites that require Javscript such as SPA-s, I can always add an exception to my NoScript plugin.
However, many sites that don't work without Javascript, include scripts from other domains belonging to Google, Facebook and plethora of advertisement platforms. All of them are known for tracking and profiling users in order to exploit their data for monetary reasons.
My question is that what are the technical justifications of loading a script from external server?
I can see more cons than pros:
+ browser can cache the file and when multiple sites use the same file, the experience will be faster as there is no reason to download the file more than once, + it is easier to copy-paste the URL of the dependency rather than download and host it yourself.
- when the external service goes down, so does your site, - external services can and will track your visitors, - as a developer, you cannot view your own site in local machine when offline - the external domains may be blocked by your ISP or country - people with NoScript plugin have to review every domain you download your script from to see if it can be trusted ;) <comment><USER2> They use them:

a) to improve page load times by serving resources the user's browser may have already cached

b) to serve ads

c) to track usage so that they can optimize advertising and conversions

d) in some cases, to implement A/B testing experiments without having to hard- code them into the site

The downsides you mention are pretty minimal. For the vast majority of sites:

a) NoScript users are a teensy minority so small as to be statistically insignificant

and

b) the site is FAR more likely to have downtime of its own infrastructure than for Google or Facebook or whatever other CDN to go down.

</comment><comment><USER3> There are no feasible technical justifications for doing so.

The big touted benefit (caching) is a non-issue IMHO, since it only helps the first page (if you haven't visited the site before, at least) - after that, even if the files had been originally delivered from your website, they'd be delivered from cache either way.

As a developer, you might at some point have to develop on a site while not having an internet connection - good luck with that. Even your local copy is going to throw up.

Saying that your site is more likely to be down than Facebook's site is also a false positive. If your site is down, nothing works, obviously. If Google's CDN site is down and yours isn't - your site still won't work. There is absolutely no reason to add one more point of failure to your site. Many of the 3rd-party sites used to load JS and even CSS do not have the technical staff or knowledge of Google or Facebook.

The main reason I actually see this being done is due to laziness. No need to go download the file locally and maintain it. No need to make sure the server is setup properly and sending the right cache headers. Just copy/paste a link and forget about it. Who cares?

</comment><comment><USER4> It's also a security risk. JS from an external domain could easily capture login form data.</comment>


New Startup Analyzes 100,000 Web Pages With a Snap of Your Fingers - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/extractiv_bulk_text_analysis.php <comment><USER2> Awesome! Another spider to block!

<comment><USER3> that would be a loss for the larger world. :( How about you chill out about it and come along for the ride?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> SpiZilla</comment>