What is irony? With examples - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailywritingtips.com/what-is-irony-with-examples/ <comment><USER2> One of the ways that British English and US English differ seems to be in the intentionality of 'irony'. In US English, it's perfectly acceptable for an _intended_ situation to be ironic: "I put on a t-shirt with an ironic slogan, before heading out for coffee". In British English, the mere act of _intending_ the result means that the result is expected... and therefore not ironic.

I first realised this when I heard some Americans say of a photo "The photographer has positioned the model's foot ironically". This phrase does not really scan in British English because the photographer intended the effect.

Note also that intention is different to awareness - the War on Drugs is _intended_ to reduce crime, but a law enforcement participant can be fully aware of the irony that it actually increases crime. It remains ironic because it's not _intended_ to increase crime, but to reduce it.

This differentiation is not something I've seen in the definitions, but something I've observed from usage. It seems also that a lot of people use 'irony' as a term when they should be using 'sarcasm'.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've always found this debate a bit pedantic.

The definitions listed include, "incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result."

It's an odd definition to showcase to make the point that irony doesn't merely mean "the unexpected."

The prescriptivists should note that they've been losing this fight over usage since around the 1640s. And even if Alanis was the first to use the word in this way, there's another very strict rule of English: you may extend the meanings of words wherever you damn well please. If the extension is likely to cause confusion about your intended meaning, that's on you.

I will posit that no use of the word 'ironic' to mean 'unexpected' has ever confused anyone, except as to whether or not they should be an ass by pointing out how much more they know about what's proper than the speaker.

<comment><USER4> Wouldn't that mean bad grammar and misspellings are also fine?

<comment><USER5> That's how languages evolve.

This doesn't mean that language should not be rigorously taught to children, if only for the rigor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > _Has Alanis Morissette spoiled irony for us forever? Perhaps my generation > is just in recovery from her 1995 lyrics. What do you think – do you > understand the meaning of irony? Do people around you?_

I personally believe in the theory that the fact that none of the examples in "Ironic" are actually ironic _is what makes it all ironic_. So despite what the OP implies, Alanis Morissette has actually pulled a good one over most listeners.

Side note: One of the exchanges I remember most from my high school English classes was when our teacher taught us the meaning of irony and someone asked, "Is sarcasm irony?". My teacher paused and said, "Kind of, but it's the lowest form of irony". The more I think about it, the more apt that description seems.

<comment><USER7> I like Ed Byrne's standup bit where he finds increasingly outlandish ways to interpret the song that actually are ironic:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT1TVSTkAXg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT1TVSTkAXg)

<comment><USER8> He did a bit of that routine on the same stage as her once [1].

I don't buy the above theory because if looks could kill, that would have been the end of Ed Byrne.

[1] [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/3678531....](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/3678531.stm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The word takes its root from comedic wit, such as puns and comedies of error. For example, in the musical, "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" there is a character who has searched for his missing children for decades. A captain of the army comes to his town to wed a virgin concubine, only to find out that she is actually his sister and they are children of the old man. Furthermore, they were only reunited with their father because another character, seeking to disrupt their marriage for the benefit of his master, pretended to be a fortune teller that would help the old man find his kids and then actually did, inadvertently, through his devious acts. That's ironic. While also unexpected and coincidental, the irony stems from the circumstantial nature of the event.

Rain on your wedding day is not ironic. Holding your wedding in April in Arizona with the theme "April Showers", knowing that it very rarely rains in Arizona in April and thus making light of the point, and then having it rain in the middle of your ceremony...that would be ironic.

From Wikipedia's article on the word, the best description I found was "a contradictory outcome of events __as if in mockery of the promise and fitness of things __". It is the comedic relief that comes from recognizing the curveballs you are thrown just when you have it all figured out. Often, it's the situations that help the underdog.

Generally speaking, because they are circumstantial, most ironies must be deliberate or else unique to that situation. A "No Smoking" sign on top of a poster of a smoking Sherlock Holmes (seen in the Wikipedia article) is not in of itself ironic. However, someone deliberately placing a no smoking sign atop that poster would be. This photo is ironic because it is unique to the situation: [http://bit.ly/6SqBsD](http://bit.ly/6SqBsD)

While we're on the conversation, can we please stop using the word "literally" to mean something happened, as in "I literally ate the whole sandwich." That implies that you did not do something figuratively, but there is no figure of speech having to do with eating a sandwich. It is an explanatory word, not an emphasis. "He literally went around the world in 80 days" is an accurate way to describe your friend's 80 day trip across 4 continents. "Did you hear? NASA is building a spaceship that can literally travel faster than the speed of light." Accurate. "I literally worked for 12 hours straight on this"...please revise and resubmit!

<comment><USER10> "Literally" is a lost battle. Literally.

<comment><USER11> There was an actual battle?

<comment><USER12> Yes, at the field of Litterality? Weren't you there? At least figuratively.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This article didn't really clear up the definition for me.

What are the factors that determine the expected result?

Is it ironic that complaining about Facebook on Facebook is not ironic?

<comment><USER14> It is, but only if you're Mark Zuckerberg. And even then, it would be so if you meant it as a private message to the Facebook executives and it ended up being public due to privacy settings changes which you designed.

Edit: Actually, I misread your last sentence. It still isn't ironic, unless you were trying to teach someone what irony was and that was your example of irony.

<comment><USER13> My reasoning is this:

\- It would be ironic to complain about a less famously terrible social network on said social network

\- It wouldn't be ironic with Facebook because it's popular opinion that Facebook is terrible and that its users are prone to complaining on Facebook

\- It would be ironic that it's not ironic to complain on Facebook about Facebook on Facebook because complaining about X social network on X social network would be ironic

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It is always an interesting AI problem to solve.

Could you come up with an algorithm for a computer to detect irony? It seems like an interesting and hard problem.

There is statistical sentiment analysis and that seems relatively easy. But one would need to understand the presented situation and see if it is plausible or realistic, then maybe if it diverges from reality beyond some kind of a measurable threshold then it is understood to be irony.

</comment><comment><USER16> Is AdBlock buying ads to advertise AdBlock ironic [1] ?

[1] [http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/08/24/web-ad-killer- adblo...](http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/08/24/web-ad-killer-adblock- launches-crowdfunding-initiative-to-finance-an-internet-ad- campaign/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed:+hnycombinator+\(HN+-+hnycombinator\))

<comment><USER17> Yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Here are writings from some other sources about the meaning of irony. Though some of them disagree with each other.

"If I were in charge of the networks" – comedian George Carlin's opinion: [http://www.sense.net/~blaine/funstuff/carlin.html](http://www.sense.net/~blaine/funstuff/carlin.html)

TVTropes: [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Irony](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Irony). It lists seven types of irony: socratic, verbal, dramatic, tragic, situational, cosmic, and historical.

Everything2: "ironic" [http://everything2.com/title/ironic](http://everything2.com/title/ironic) and "irony" [http://everything2.com/title/irony](http://everything2.com/title/irony)

</comment><comment><USER19> I've always liked a quote from the otherwise forgettable movie "Reality Bites":

Lelaina: Can you define "irony"? Troy Dyer: It's when the actual meaning is the complete opposite from the literal meaning.

<comment><USER9> Irony is situational - it doesn't have to do with meaning unless the confusing of that meaning resulted in some coincidental action directly related to that meaning...

For example, the character "Annyong" in Arrested Development is always saying "Annyong" (meaning, "hello") when another character says hello to him. Everyone else thinks he is just repeating his name, but he seems oblivious to this confusion. The irony is that his real name is "Hel-loh", but he does not seem to get the connection either. The misunderstanding of his name and its meaning causes an ironic comedy of errors. Arrested Development is full of these, as are most situational comedies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Isn't it actually ironic that a company would offer Thanksgiving lunch on a day when most people would not be in the mood to eat it (having eaten their fill the day before)?

 _3: a) : incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result; an event or result marked by such incongruity_

<comment><USER9> Nope, that's just poor planning on behalf of the company.

But let's say the company's boss refused to let his employees have Thanksgiving off because he did not want to be alone on Thanksgiving, so he was going to selfishly make his employees be with him and keep him company. However, all of his employees got caught in traffic --> behind a Thanksgiving parade --> that his company was sponsoring --> (with the theme, "home for the holidays") --> and he ended up alone at the office anyway...that would be ironic. It's situational.

<comment><USER20> I think it is ironic, according to the definition. Expected result is that when you order lunch, it should be a treat, something out of the ordinary. Actual result, everyone already had the same menu the day before, and probably brought it as leftover s, so it is not special anymore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It strikes me as highly ironic that the results of the quoted votes on the irony judging site were mostly wrong.

</comment><comment><USER22> >What is irony?

The debate that arises from a given definition thereof

</comment><comment><USER23> Why is this on HN?

<comment><USER24> Because, "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." quoted from [1].

[1] [http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

p.s. It feels like a very interesting problem to detect irony.</comment></comment>


How to Read Like Your Success Depends on It - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/the-mission/how-to-read-like-your-success-depends-on-it-7f658a456806 <comment><USER2> "Here is a nearly exhaustive list of the times/places that I read: #1 Whenever I'm driving"

Seriously?

<comment><USER3> > Option 2) Use audiobooks.

> I decided to go with audiobooks. I use the Audible app. So when I say I > "read" something, I actually mean that I listened to it.

<comment><USER2> In most U.S. states, at least, it's illegal to drive with both ears covered or with earphones in both ears.</comment></comment></comment>


Tell HN: New TV show, The Entrepreneurs, debuts tonight @ 9pm eastern on CNBC - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/id/26565293/

<comment><USER2> I think it's a great idea to view how businesses outside of tech are tackling the problems they face. A show like this can help to make you a better entrepreneur not by only looking at the decisions and strategies they employ but understanding how and why they've built the business the way they did.

I welcome a fresh perspective.

</comment><comment><USER3> Finally something to fill the void after Dragons' Den ended.

<comment><USER4> I'm a _huge_ fan of Apprentice UK - it's completely different than the U.S. version, much more like the tough-minded and entrepreneurial Dragons' Den.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm sorry, CNBC lost all credibility with me with one word: "Richistan". Who ever came up with that one needs to go back to Efftardia.

It's hard to take them seriously when they think I'm an idiot. (I may be an idiot, but they don't have to rub it in!)

</comment><comment><USER6> I wish they'd picked some more exciting businesses. I mean a shoe store and a salsa company, doesn't really sound that interesting.

<comment><USER7> For a mainstream TV show/station, I'm not sure I entirely agree. What would be more exciting to watch, web/tech with thousands of faceless customers they would likely not interact with outside of email/twitter for at least a year... or tangible product & biz development that a mass audience can see, understand, and relate to easily?

I think web/tech is more exciting to live and build for the intellectual types, but much like computer gaming, it's just not meant to be a spectator event. 90% of footage would be pale faces behind a glowing computer screen, where as retail is a lot about vendor selection, sales and deal making.

That said, I think you could replace those products with anything — what's interesting is watching them overcome challenges in their respective industries. Who knows, could learn a thing or two. :) Some startups need to stick their neck out of the bubble once in a while and breath something different... Perhaps there wouldn't be less me-too-point-oh.

<comment><USER6> Yeah thats what I meant, they could have went with some electronics company building phones, TVs, etc instead of salsa, and nothing would really need to be changed. I dunno salsa is just boring.

<comment><USER7> I think it depends where you're from, salsa is a big thing down south. But yeah, I get what you're saying... salsa probably would not have been my first choice either, but maybe they know something we do not. I'm also pretty sure they selected based on the people/personality and less on the business.

For the record, I did not downmod you.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Wunderfind – Find your lost Bluetooth devices in seconds - <AUTHOR> https://apps.apple.com/app/wunderfind-find-lost-device/id1458601441?ref=hn <comment><AUTHOR> Hey Hackers,

I am Hendrik, a student from Berlin and also an iOS developer since 8 years.

I want to tell you about my newest app called Wunderfind. Wunderfind helps people to find their lost bluetooth devices. You can see the signal strength of the device, play a sound through headphones like AirPods and also see a location on a map where your device was connected the last time.

This may sound very similar to Apple's Find My app, right? The big difference here is that Wunderfind supports ALL bluetooth devices and not just Apple devices. That means that you can track your Fitbit tracker, Powerbeats Pro or other devices with this app.

I know it is probably not the best idea to compete with an app from Apple, but I'll try it anyway : )

Greetings from Berlin, Hendrik

P.S. Wunderfind Pro is free for the next 7 days

<comment><USER2> > probably not the best idea to compete with an app from Apple

No nuts, no glory

Upvoted, and good luck to you

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you : )</comment></comment></comment>


Are we ready for a true Cloud Phone - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/12/icloud-iphone/

<comment><USER2> techcrunch one year late as usual.

my android phone didn't work for crap w/out connection for exactly one year i have it. no single map or gmail action. no offline anything.</comment>


Why .Net should become independent - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jonathanchannon.com/2013/05/29/why-net-should-become-independent/

<comment><USER2> Hard to know what to make of this. The author's argument seems to be that he wants to use c#, but also wants a greater diversity of libraries/tools in the .net ecosystem so that he can get a job using those rather than Microsoft's libraries. In other words, he wants it to have more OSS/Linux/Apple cool while also remaining attractive to the more "conservative" organisations that are big users of .net. I'm not sure this could work both ways.

I'd say that the incentives for this just aren't there. Most .net developers (like me) appear to be happy with the Microsoft tooling and not having to constantly learn this weeks fashionable framework. Even while many of us recognise that a lot of amazing innovation is going on in the OSS space. Our employers seem to be happy with the well-integrated nature of the platform and the stability that comes with somewhat less choice.

.net is fairly independent. The specs are public, and there are a few OSS implementations. You can run it on a Mac or Linux box, or even Pis and microcontrollers. Companies like Xamarin are building apparently successful businesses on top of .net. If you want to use indie libraries and frameworks then, on the whole, there are out there. And Microsoft doesn't show any signs of wanting to sue anyone for any of this.

<comment><USER3> Agreed, and if anything they want people working with .NET even if they don't control it. Their evangelists even encourage use of Mono, MonoTouch, etc. They encourage open sourcing, and it's gradually becoming more and more common to see C# code on GitHub. MVC allows any number of combinations of community- sourced components rather than use EF/Razor/etc.

Meanwhile, we're buying their tools and using their languages in the enterprise, where the real money is. As a .NET developer for a decade now, I'm perfectly happy with the platform and tooling; it's the best of its kind. The OP complains about EF, MVC, and other libraries, but honestly they are some of the best designed platforms out there. There are always some kinks, but who has used Ruby on Rails without having to make some significant workarounds or hacks to get it running? No platform can anticipate everything. Meanwhile, clients need to install only one package to make everything in the stack work. Compare to rubygems.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Would you start a new project based on Riak KV - <AUTHOR> Two years from now, we have build a document center based on riak kv for internal used. It only took us a few weeks of work to be up and running. And the project is still actively used.
As I see a few customers that would need a similar solution, I was thinking about making this document center some sort of product. Because it was an internal project, the idea would be to start the "product" from scratch. As I was doing some research, I found that Basho, the original company behind riak, went bankrupt. The sources were bought by bet365 who planed to open the source code. I read here and there that there was several companies and individuals ready to build a community around riak but I could not find a announcement, real commitment and a plan for the project.
I'm now wonder if I could go with riak again or if I'm better selecting another technology (sadly because I was perfectly happy with riak). I can leave without paying support but I don't want to start a project from scratch with a technology that would be dying... <comment><AUTHOR> I see the activity on the original github repository is very low (two PR accepted since the bankruptcy). I'm not even sure these are still the official repos. And it seems to me that no one has access to the repository of some of the riak client libs[1].

[1] the php client lib for instance: [https://github.com/basho/riak-php- client/issues/152#issuecom...](https://github.com/basho/riak-php- client/issues/152#issuecomment-335991720)

</comment><comment><USER2> No, I wouldn't. If it isn't open source, with an active community, I won't create anything of long-term value with it.

Postgres apparently has a key-value extension called hstore...

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2008439/best-way-to- use-...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2008439/best-way-to-use-a- postgresql-database-as-a-simple-key-value-store)</comment>


Times Tables Can Make Beautiful Art - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/csbuja/TimesTableArt <comment><AUTHOR> Check out some of the png files to view the art! This YouTube video explains the algo behind what you're seeing. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhbuKbxJsk8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhbuKbxJsk8)</comment>


ZEISS VR One - <AUTHOR> http://zeissvrone.tumblr.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> And you probably won't have to work in 'The House of Blue Lights' in order to afford a pair.</comment>


In Search of a Bigger Boom (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2012/09/12/in-search-of-a-bigger-boom/ <comment><USER2> I just listened to Dan Carlin's "Destroyer of Worlds" [1] podcast episode, and it was very enlightening. I was modestly familiar with nuclear history, but still learned a lot from this episode.

[1] [https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-59-the- destroyer-...](https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-59-the-destroyer-of- worlds/)

</comment><comment><USER3> The nuclear armed forces and its supporting structure sure is a scary place.

Working with making new weapons capable of little else but genocide is not for those who think too much about the ethics of engineering.

<comment><USER4> That is a particularly naive view of the role that nuclear weapons have played over the past 75 years. It is also clear that many of the original designers thought very deeply, much more so than 99% of all the people who opine away from their armchairs today.

Nuclear weapons ethics are a very tricky subject to deal with in an informed, realistic, and even-handed way. Most people who give knee-jerk opinions haven't done a good job of dealing with them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What a silly idea. Even at 50MT much of the energy was lost as it punched through the atmosphere and out into space. If you're really a lunatic who wants to exterminate life, many smaller nuclear detonations is inherently more efficient than one large detonation. Giant nuclear weapons are heavy, dirty, inefficient, and pointless even if you're the kind of person who wants to obliterate whole populated regions for some reason.

<comment><USER6> >> Giant nuclear weapons are heavy, dirty, inefficient, and pointless

Pointless yes, but as bombs scale in size they actually become more efficient, burning more of their fuel. The primary reason behind this is that the cores of larger bombs maintain critical mass for a longer period of time before blowing apart, resulting in more fission/fusion per weight of fuel. So they are less radioactive, less dirty, than an equivalent number of smaller bombs.

<comment><USER5> The burn is potentially more efficient, but the bigger it is past a certain point, you're just blasting that energy out of the atmosphere. I suppose burying or submerging a massive device would deliver more energy, but it would be supremely dirty in that case. Airbursts are the best way to attack drag- sensitive targets due to the formation of a Mach stem, and as a bonus they're cleaner than water or ground bursts. If you really want to destroy a target use MIRVed warheads of lower yield, in the 70kt-1mt range, with overlapping shockwaves. As a "bonus" that technology already comes standard and doesn't require new testing or exotic designs and delivery systems.</comment></comment></comment>


Seaweed in Cow Feed Reduces Methane Emissions Almost Entirely - <AUTHOR> https://foodtank.com/news/2017/06/seaweed-reduce-cow-methane-emission/ <comment><USER2> It will be interesting to see how this plays out, because right now the West coast from San Francisco North to at least Fort Bragg, has been suffering a kelp die off of great proportions.

No one is quite sure whats going on, but apparently due to climate change, or at least warmer ocean water from further South that we've had for the last 5 or more years, has caused the kelp to die off at a rapid rate, to the point of denuding whole sections of ocean bottom.

The whole sea urchin industry has been devastated, and those folks received Federal Disaster funds last year to make it through this year, but things are still bleak.

It's as big a catastrophe as the Australian coral die off, yet it's not getting much press here in the USA.

<comment><USER3> No one knows what's going on, so climate change is the default blame?

But actually, California Fish and Wildlife DO know what's going on:

"Environmental stressors included impacts from a toxic algae bloom off the Sonoma coast in 2011, a widespread sea star disease in 2013 that was followed by an explosion in the sea urchin population, and the warm water conditions that have persisted offshore since 2014. In 2014 and 2015, coastal water temperatures along the West Coast rocketed upwards due to a combination of oceanographic features: the "Warm Blob" in 2014, combined with a strong El Niño that began in 2015."

[https://cdfwmarine.wordpress.com/2016/03/30/perfect-storm- de...](https://cdfwmarine.wordpress.com/2016/03/30/perfect-storm-decimates- kelp/)

Climate change seems like a religion. "We don't know why x is happening, so we'll just say it's God's will." That's about the most anti-science attitude possible and it's being embraced by people who purport to care about science. But, in the case of California kelp, we actually do know what is happening and it has nothing to do with long term climatic events — the warm water was due to cyclical ocean activity: La Niña and that combined with a sea star disease and toxic algae caused this problem. And notice, the problem didn't exist in 2010. So global warming for hundreds of years, but it had little impact on kelp until just magically in 2015 — that was the tipping point for kelp? This is the sort of nonsense that makes me detest the global warming crowd. Clearly global warming isn't the cause of the California kelp issue, yet, predictably, that issue gets added into the propaganda machine.

Let's say climate change isn't the cause of Absolutely Every Natural Phenomenon.. but there are those that would make policy as if it were. A half degree rise in temperature — assuming that is actually true, isn't going to cause a massive kelp die-off, considering Pacific ocean temperatures fluctuate by far more dramatic amounts routinely due to El Niño/La Niña. The ocean is far more resilient. Pollution is a far more dire danger. Chemical runoff, trash dumping — far more toxic to the ocean than anything else.

But, it easier just to spout "climate change" and the "woke" folks will just nod knowingly, actual causation or proof be damned. And we just continue along the socially acceptable path of blaming capitalism for all the world's problems without actually doing much to solve anything.

<comment><USER4> TFW your climate change denialism goes so far off the deep end that you _literally_ claim that _warmer water_ in the most _global_ of the oceans isn't related to global warming...

<comment><USER5> Climate change isn't the weather. It isn't one year or several years, it's a trend over decades or centuries or millennia.

Do you know what's normal? Abnormal weather. Exceptional circumstances happen all the time, weather conditions do not follow a bell curve.

I am not at all denying climate change, but you can never point to an event and shout about it. It's a long term statistical trend, not a few coincidental events. It's one variable out of many that cause every weather event.

Warmer water is absolutely not related to climate change when you're talking about small scale short term events.

<comment><USER6> "Exceptional circumstances happen all the time". Yeah it's called an oxymoron.

<comment><USER7> If one billion events happen in a day, then some one-in-a-billion event is likely to happen every day.

Some of them, like a coin landing perfectly sideways will just go on Youtube. Some of them will end up in the news.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> With an ag background I've been following this story for a long time. It has excited enough interest in America that trials are underway, I believe off the coast of Maine to grow red algae but I can't find the link.

But they've already had luck growing red algae off the coast of the Hawaiian island of Molokai. I've been to Molokai and although there's a lot of farmland there it's laying idle. Most of the land was used previously by Dole I believe to raise pineapple's.

I was scheming with some fellow agronomists at the time what we could grow profitably. Most of the former workers commute presently to Maui and work in the hotels. It would be hilarious to me if the entire farming industry ended up taking place off the coast.

[https://uanews.arizona.edu/story/side-algae-hawaiian- farmers...](https://uanews.arizona.edu/story/side-algae-hawaiian-farmers-sell- seaweed-seashore)

<comment><USER9> Can anyone provide a sense of scale and impact if these results were to hold and if the majority of the world beef production were to switch to it?

My understanding is that around half of the world's greenhouse gas comes from livestock. Would it mean that this could cut our emissions by half? Would it be therefore much more cost efficient to have the government invest is growing and distributing red algae than whatever we're currently spending money on? Do we have a sense of how much it would cost to produce that much seaweed?

<comment><USER10> > My understanding is that around half of the world's greenhouse gas comes > from livestock

That's not right. The highest number I've been able to find for the whole of agriculture is 24% of world greenhouse gas emissions.

[https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas- emiss...](https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions- data)

About 25% of that is methane from livestock ([http://old.grida.no/graphicslib/detail/greenhouse-gas- emissi...](http://old.grida.no/graphicslib/detail/greenhouse-gas-emissions- from-agriculture-and-land-use_12b0#))

So livestock is about 6% of total greenhouse gas emissions.

<comment><USER11> One also has to consider that the methane decays over a matter of decades. Other than CO2, which stays in the atmosphere until it is taken out.

So, even if methane takes a big share in current greenhouse emissions, its share in the accumulated greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will be lower.

The climate change it causes is temporary. (Disregarding runaway effects.)

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

<comment><USER12> Decades – we don't have decades to fix this.

Also, it decays into CO2, so to claim that its effects are temporary is misleading. On top of that, as long as the carbon is in a CH4 bond, it traps at least 20× as much radiation. Please don't dismiss the significance of methane emissions.

<comment><USER13> How many years do we have to fix this then? Alternatively, at what point will activists start saying we passed the point of no fix and give up their activism?

<comment><USER12> Here you go: [https://croadsworldclimate.climateinteractive.org/](https://croadsworldclimate.climateinteractive.org/)

Honestly dude, rise above the cynicism (if that's how you meant to come across). You're a goddamn adult, and a well-educated engineer at that. Your current standard of living is at risk because of climate change (also millions of lives in poorer countries, but whatever). Spend 10 seconds on a Google search. "Activists" don't owe you any answers.

Never forget, despite what the sensationalists will tell you, climate change is very much fixable. Clean energy and better land management can and will get us there – and eventually, maybe in 200 years, we'll sequester enough carbon to get back to 350ppm. The question is about _what happens in the meantime_ : if we act fast, we'll _only_ get decades of food insecurity, war, and displacement, mostly in poorer countries [2]. If we delay further, we'll simply see much worse, and at home as well. But the "point of no return" rhetoric is nonsense and does nothing but paralyze people.

By the way, one of the easiest and fastest ways to catalyze at-scale solutions would be a revenue-neutral carbon tax at the source, effectively internalizing the social costs of climate change and letting the free market do its thing. (Look up "fee and dividend"; lots of folks are working on this already.)

[1] unless we hit some really unlucky runaway feedback loop, which is possible. [2] plus the disease epidemics and terrorism that come along with it – we don't live on an island.

<comment><USER13> You're the one writing phrases like "we don't have decades to fix this". How is one supposed to interpret that as anything but "point of no return" rhetoric, especially in light of that rhetoric actually being used with some frequency for the last few decades? I agree it's not helpful rhetoric, so maybe I should have aimed my comment at alarmists who use the rhetoric but who haven't fully embraced that it's too late, instead of the more general activists.

I'm fully on-board with planetary engineering projects. Those require engineering work and capital more than activism, though.

Do you want to make a prediction on the accuracy of whatever climate model you like (we can use the one you linked if you prefer) for what the temperature increase will be in 2 years, 7 years, and 12 years? We can record it at [https://predictionbook.com/](https://predictionbook.com/)

<comment><USER14> Climate change is mostly no binary event. There is the risk of runaway effects, and possible extinction (though unlikely) but luckily we haven't hit those yet.

The political 2 degree goal is damage control. Climate models are complex and impacts harder to predict the more you divert from the current situation.

At 2 degrees the costs to society (social costs of carbon) far outweigh the mitigation costs. To hit the 2 degree target we have to act swiftly "we don't have decades to fix this" we are not (yet) at a "point of no return"

As green house gases are currently an externality, there will be no capital without activism.

I am too young to look back decades, but my understanding was that the "we don't have decades to fix this" guys in the 80s and 90s were more about running out of oil(and that turned out to be no problem as rising prices make more expensive extraction feasible) and that climate change as a concern only really started in the 90s (even though known long before that). And there are already damages that could have been prevented by acting swiftly in the 90s. We could have reached e.g. a 1.5 degree target. So the "we don't have decades to fix this" rethoric is fitting as ever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> For a moment this was the best news I had read in years, until I noticed the story is a year old and the research paper[1] is two years old. Hopefully there has been some progress in the past years but if that were the case we would should have seen another headline by now. At least I haven't.

Normally 2 years wouldn't be much time to go from a research paper to production. But this appears to be a simple solution to an urgent problem so it's hard to be patient.

[1] [https://researchonline.jcu.edu.au/43225/](https://researchonline.jcu.edu.au/43225/)

<comment><USER16> Is there any immediate economic incentive to adding algae into feed?

Wouldn't you agree that markets don't deal effectively with many or most commercial endeavors' unwanted side effects (negative externalities), and so authorities often need to step in when market failure causes damage?

In this case, if the science is real, a global treaty would seem in order to simply mandate the effective use of seaweed in cow feed.

I hope all governments move on things like this, but ultimately, international agencies like the WTO should be, excuse me..., beefed up to deal with these kinds of issues that affect the entire planet and all of its inhabitants.

<comment><USER17> As other posters have said, it seems like it can be tricky to incentivise cattle owners to add algae to their feed, check this has actually been added, in proportions that have the desired effect, and so on.

But how about if governments provide subsidised feed centrally, instead, with the algae added?

<comment><USER18> What if it turns out to make healthier cows? I'm not just making that up, I think it will probably have a positive effect - cows need iodine too! Not sure if it's enough to sway farmers.

<comment> dig-doug Can't believe this comment is the only mention of iodine in both the thread _and_ the article. I supplement iodine daily and it's honestly changed my life.

<comment><USER15> Which supplement you are taking and where are you buying it ?

<comment><USER19> Get some blood work done before adding supplements to your diet. Creating an imbalance is even worst.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> How is that the article's title and did any of the comments on seaweed read the article? It was the experiment with red algae, not the seaweed experiments that "reduces methane emissions almost entirely".

> _Kinley and De Nys tested 20 different species of seaweed on bacteria found > in the stomachs of cows. They discovered seaweed reduced methane production > by up to 50 percent, depending on the amount administered. But methane > reduction at notable levels required high doses of seaweed, almost 20 > percent by weight of the sample. This large percentage of seaweed would be > difficult to implement outside of the lab and would likely have a negative > effect on cow's digestion._

> _When the researchers tested a species of red algae called Asparagopsis > taxiformis that grows off the coast of Queensland, Australia, they found it > reduced methane production by more than 99 percent in the lab. In addition, > it only required a dose of less than 2 percent to work effectively._

<comment><USER21> Seaweed is a colloquial term for macroalgae. Asparagopsis taxiformis is a red macroalgae.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I recently heard about Russian cosmonauts eating a lot of dill to counteract farting. It's apparently called a carminative, and seaweed is a carminative too.

<comment><USER23> Interesting, but I believe that methane emissions from cows are burps rather than farts, and there's a lot more fermentation going on in a cow's rumen than in our guts, so there might be some other mechanism at play here. Or perhaps not.

<comment><USER24> OTOH, aren't farts just unreleased burps that passed into the intestines.

<comment><USER23> I think in humans burps are a release of swallowed air, while farts are gasses produced by fermentation in the intestines. Ruminants OTOH have a fermentation chamber (rumen) as the first part of their digestive system (their first 'stomach'). Other animals have different fermentation strategies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Unfortunately, there are fishermen that are no longer able to make a living because they have depleted the fish in the area they fish, so now they are looking for a new way to make a living. Farming seaweed seems to be a possible alternative to fishing. We'll be seeing a lot more stories about how great seaweed is as the industry starts to make a market for it.

Feeding cattle grass will reduce the methane just as much as seaweed, I bet. The problem is that the majority of cows are fed a diet of corn, which is cheap relative to grass, which does not appeal to their digestive system so therefore we get a lot of methane out of the whole process. What I see here is somebody trying to sell seaweed as an additive. But the reality is that if you fed cows the proper feed, grass, then we wouldn't have the big problem with methane.

Edit- Update, seems like grass is a bigger methane producer when digested by cows. The problem is the pollution created to produce and transport the corn. I was going by old info.

Here's a link.

[http://newzealmeats.com/blog/grain-fed-vs-grass-fed-beef- gre...](http://newzealmeats.com/blog/grain-fed-vs-grass-fed-beef-greenhouse- gas-emissions/)

<comment><USER26> > Feeding cattle grass will reduce the methane just as much as seaweed, I bet.

From the article, it only takes a few percent of seaweed in the cow diet to reduce methane. I'd guess the same doesn't hold for grass. Cows that get to go into a pasture probably get a few percent of grass.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> My partner is studying the effects of cow grazing on various greenhouse gas things, and the amount of data you need to get/the number of times you need to replicate before policy makers are willing to step in, is really quite substantial.

I showed this article to her last year when it popped up, and she said "show me a large sample size and replicate it stateside and then I'll start caring."

harsh, but I think that's where we are with this kind of thing.

<comment><USER27> Also, "they found it reduced methane production by more than 99 percent in the lab."

In the lab? On "bacteria found in the stomach of cows"?

That's a long way off from what the title suggests; this research is definitely still valuable, but I think we do scientific reporting a disservice when we make much bolder claims than the actual science bears out.

Lab studies != actual cows eating stuff

<comment><USER28> Lab studies ~= spherical cows eating stuff

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> There is a big industry in seaweed harvesting carrageenan is extracted from it to use as a thickener it's used in ice cream and other products.

The 2014 study mentioned is from my region the Atlantic Veterinary College. There was a large Irish Moss industry here years ago but most of it has switched to Asian markets with cheaper labour and tropical climate.

Although there may soon be a glut of seaweed and any cattle farmers may be in luck. It seems carrageenan is the flavour of the month toxin everyone is now trying to avoid (of course it's harmless).

<comment><USER30> [https://academic.oup.com/jn/article/138/3/469/4670224](https://academic.oup.com/jn/article/138/3/469/4670224)

says carageenan is harmful.

<comment><USER29> Here's Dr. Joe Schwarcz opinion as well, specific to carrageenan in chocolate milk: [http://montrealgazette.com/technology/science/the-right- chem...](http://montrealgazette.com/technology/science/the-right-chemistry- carrageenan-in-chocolate-milk-is-no-cause-for-concern)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Serious question, what incentive is there for this to be done on a large scale by anyone?

The EPA is being systematically dismantled and the official line of the government (or at least, those in charge of the government) is that climate change is not man made. If it is just a natural process, how could our food systems have any impact on it?

I can't imagine how this wouldn't add at least some costs to feed prices, and my guess is farmers are operating on razor thin margins already. Without some government regulations that put a price on greenhouse gasses why would anyone implement this except on boutique scales?

<comment><USER32> >... dairy farmer named Joe Dorgan inadvertently conducted an experiment on his herd in Prince Edward Island, Canada. Dorgan noticed cows that grazed on washed-up seaweed in paddocks along the shore were healthier and more productive ... and found the new diet saved him money and induced "rip-roaring heats," or longer cycles of reproductive activity.

<comment><USER31> Thats great, but it only saved him money because it washed up right on his shore. It saves a small farmer money to let their cows graze on lush green pastures that they need to keep eaten down anyways but that doesn't mean that letting cows graze on lush pastures saves the industry money overall. In general its going to cost more more than likely to get seaweed into the supply chain. Its a race to the bottom, it has to be cheaper than subsidized corn which almost nothing is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> How does a discovery like this take place? There must be so many crazy facts like this that have not yet been discovered, and able to make the world a better place. I'm guessing it started out as a hunch and snowballed into a study. Is there a way we can speed up the world's crazy thought ecosystem to promote sharing information that will lead to more discoveries like this?

<comment><USER34> It says right there in the article -- a coastal farmer discovered that the cows grazing on nearby seaweed were healthier and had more active periods of heat. A subsequent study found that it also had an effect on methane production.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Where does the methane go? Does the hydrogen and carbon just move to the dung and meat? Genuinely curious.

</comment><comment><USER36> Im bitterly disappointed that greenhouse gas emissions from livestock rarely enter conversation with people who care about climate change, so this is nice to hear it being discussed. Even better something which helps.

Im curious however if anyone here knows if the gas is switched from methane to something else or it just isn't produced in the first place and exits the animal as solids and liquids?

<comment><USER37> I would suspect it doesn't matter. If the cow doesn't produce methane in its digestion process, it will be produced when the cow excrement biodegrades.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Does the methane get released after the cow has finished digestion and the manure is left to rot? The carbon has to go somewhere if it's not turned into methane inside the cow.

<comment><USER39> Apparently most bovine-sourced methane comes from the burp part of the cycle rather than the fart. Manure may actually come in third when it comes to methane and the cow.

Like humans (86%!), I suspect most carbon that passes through a cow is exhaled as carbon dioxide.

<comment><USER38> > I suspect most carbon that passes through a cow is exhaled as carbon > dioxide.

That would mean that the cow gets higher nutritional value and can needs less food.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Can this study be done with the cow feed just being plain old grass? There's lots of anecdotal evidence showing grass fed cows don't produce much methane, thereby making pasture raised meat environmentally friendly. Yet there doesn't appear to be many studies on it for whatever reason. Everything is focused on corn-based cow feed.

<comment><USER41> I believe grass fed cattle produce more methane actually.

<comment><USER42> Source?

<comment><USER43> Here's one that I found: [https://www.carbonbrief.org/grass-fed-beef-will-not- help-tac...](https://www.carbonbrief.org/grass-fed-beef-will-not-help-tackle- climate-change)

<comment><USER44> That article says the study found that grazed beef release more carbon than the carbon offset by soil sequestration. It doesn't say it releases more carbon then grain-fed, and actually, while I haven't read the source study, the general implication in the article seems to lean toward grazed beef releasing less than grain-fed (just not, according to the researchers, enough less to be carbon-neutral).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Would this work also for... Ehm a friend of mine?

<comment><USER46> Jokes aside, this won't reduce flatulence, just methane. Most humans don't have methanogen bacteria in their guts anyway, so it wouldn't matter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Even so, animal ag still uses lots of land, water, risks pollution of air and water, pandemic and antibotic resistance.

<comment><USER48> probably easier to get animals to eat kelp than to get humans to stop eating animals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Perhaps they should study the nutritional impacts of the resulting beef before they get too far with this. Grass fed beef is much tastier and much more nutritious than feed lot fed beef.

Does feeding the seaweed reduce the need for using antibiotics required when feeding corn to cattle? That would be a real win.

<comment><USER26> In what sense is grass fed beef more nutritious? It's a rather nebulous term, hence my question.

<comment><USER49> Eating grass provides better nutrition for the cattle, and the meat ends up with more nutrition such as omega 3s.

[https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/heart- disease...](https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/heart- disease/expert-answers/grass-fed-beef/faq-20058059)

In a feed lot, cattle are fed a diet that practically requires antibiotics to keep them alive long enough to slaughter.

<comment><USER50> They mostly use antibiotics to promote growth. Feed lots increase risk of disease because cattle are closer together, but their diet doesn't really have anything to do with the use of antibiotics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> From 2017.

Previously on HN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12998395](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12998395)

</comment><comment><USER52> > Asparagopsis produces a compound called Bromoform (CHBR3)

Which is an animal carcinogen according to Wikipedia:

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

</comment><comment><USER53> I stopped eating meat for climate reasons; methane production from cattle being a major factor. Glad to see that there might be a solution to that problem.

<comment><USER54> until climate change starts reversing, its probably safe to continue your trend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Bromoform kills methanogens.

<comment><USER56> interesting info about Bromoform from Wikipedia:

 _Bromoform is the main trihalomethane produced in beachfront salt water swimming pools with concentrations as high as 1.2 ppm (parts per million). Concentrations in freshwater pools are 1000 times lower. Occupational skin exposure limits are set at 0.5 ppm._

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

i wonder if any of the bromine winds up in the cow's milk or meat

<comment><USER57> Also there's no info on the nutritional uptake of the cows. Killing the methane-producing bacteria could potentially mean killing the digestive powerhouse of the animal.

<comment><USER58> It does not kill the methane-producing bacteria, it just inhibits a specific enzymatic pathway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Not raising supernatural numbers of cows for murder also eliminates the problem within a few decades...which i mention because it's plausible the world is moving this way. [ For the cows, I hope so, and for things to be learned in sustainable nutrition as well. ]

</comment><comment><USER60> Maybe it helps with heath and safety... I know, old news, but I can't resist:

[http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-25922514](http://www.bbc.com/news/world- europe-25922514)

</comment><comment><USER61> Does anyone know if there is any research on WHY this algae acts in this way? Would it be possible to either synthesise the chemical compound(s) involved, once identified without having to farm it?

<comment><USER62> It's really easy to grow algae. I have to clean it out of stock tanks constantly. Usually it's green, but if I leave a tank alone long enough the red will take over. This is fresh water mixed with cow saliva and some plant matter, but presumably it would be just as easy with salt water? Chemical processes typically produce CO2, due simply to their energy requirements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Sure, but have you tasted the milk? It really tastes off.

<comment><USER64> How could you possibly know this?

<comment><USER63> Because I am known for knowing things I cannot possibly know.

For example: Why is it that, as a rule of thumb, people that make money make it in real estate?

Why is it that all the pictures of the sun are orange but the sun is not orange?

Why exactly, is it that people prefer gas ranges to electric ranges?

Why is it that horoscopes are demonstrably false but thermodynamics is demonstrably true?

Why is it that heat rises but it's cold in the mountains?

I have the answers but you have only the questions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> I'll be the heretic then... how about you all eat less beef, easy solution to the "problem". And no, I'm not a vege-anything. Just to prove it, here's a great song by the Reverend Horton Heat, that I used to play on my radio show. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQynViAF6Ds](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQynViAF6Ds)

<comment><USER2> Minus 1? Crimney... it's a good song. Guess I should have posted a link to fart song, eh

<comment><USER65> The score is low because it contributes nothing of value to the discussion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Does it work on humans too? Just asking for a friend

<comment><USER67> Haha, I was thinking the same thing.... < toot >

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> I wonder: would there be any negative side-effects on the cows? Another way of putting it: is methane production in the gut of the cow a consequence of a useful process or is it something the cows can live without?

Another question to ponder: would seaweed farming at such scale have negative consequences?

<comment><USER69> cows can not digest the cellulose ingredient in grass. essentially they foster anaerobic bacteria in their stomach which digest the cellulose. the cows live off the bacteria and their byproducts.

there are several different microbiobial paths from cellulose to methane with stages including acetic acid, acetone and hydrogen. depending on the conditions in the cow some of these paths are prefered or not.

I do not know whether not producing methane is bad for the cow in the long run. I guess it is not, given that the farmer mentioned in the aeticel has been feeding them the algae for a longer period of time.

<comment><USER70> I wonder whether the bacteria survive in the cow stomachs when the cows are only being fed kelp, and (if they don't, what happens to the cow if it is switched back to a grass diet?).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> I have some Japanese friends who have recommended seaweed as a treatment for flatulence. That they have this working at 99% in livestock is pretty amazing. If you could get sheep and cows onto this sort of program it would be a huge deal.

</comment><comment><USER72> Honest question here. Didn't we already know this? I am nearly certain that I heard about the benefits of putting certain types of seaweed in cow feed to affect methane when I was in high school nearly 20 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER73> Serious question, could there be any way to instead capture said methane and use it for fuel? I feel like if the farms could make a decent buck off capturing it there'd be more incentive than say paying for seaweed.

<comment><USER74> Yes, but it seems to need a surgical insertion into one of the cows stomachs so is probably dangerous / expensive.

[https://phys.org/news/2008-07-cow-backpacks-methane- gas.html](https://phys.org/news/2008-07-cow-backpacks-methane-gas.html)

<comment><USER75> Fistulation surgery isn't all that dangerous or expensive. The major expense is in keeping the rumen port clean and the cow healthy and free from infection afterward. It's a significant amount of work and consumable supplies, that has to be done by a human worker, every day, for as long as the cow has the port.

Granted, a gas port should be smaller than one large enough to stick your hand through, and pull stomach contents out of, but even so, an entire herd of ported cows would not be able to pay for the additional ranch hand work necessary to keep them alive. You need a port-cleaning and health-monitoring robot, at minimum.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> What's the best way to investment exposure to agricultural seaweed?

<comment><USER77> Most of the largest seaweed producers are unlisted in terms of public stock exchanges, such as Dalian Kowa Foods which is China's largest producer, or Seaweed Harvest Holland in Europe.

You could always start your own backyard seaweed production business:

"Meet the new US entrepreneurs farming seaweed for food and fuel"

[https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable- business/2017/jun/29...](https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable- business/2017/jun/29/seaweed-farms-us-california-food-fuel)

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> So this begs the mildly racist question, do Japanese people fart? Can they light their farts on fire? Maybe not if the seaweed in the diet kills off methane producing bacteria.

<comment><USER56> i don't have an answer to your question. but Cooks Illustrated reports that adding kelp to beans makes the beans easier to cook:

[https://www.cooksillustrated.com/how_tos/6385-flavoring- drie...](https://www.cooksillustrated.com/how_tos/6385-flavoring-dried-beans- with-seaweed)

<comment><USER23> Not just cook, apparently the enzymes in kelp assist in digestion of the beans. Which also causes less farts (bean farts are due to indigestible proteins? Fibre? passing to the intestine and fermenting by the bacteria there). So I wonder if this is a similar mechanism.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> AFAIK garlic does too. But the solution creates another problem because of higher nitrous oxide (n2o) concentrations. Which is much worse for the climate.

</comment><comment><USER80> I'm sure that this is a dumb question, but is methane from cows a contributor to global warming? Is that the significance of this study? Thanks.

<comment><USER39> The dumbest questions begin with a disclaimer like the one used here.

Yes, methane, especially from cows and livestock, is a contributor to global warming. Other sources of methane worthy of concern include oil and gas wells (apparently they leak a lot) and other quasi-natural sources like the breakdown of plant matter in forests (often because the forest is cleared).

Methane is far more potent than CO2 but also far shorter-lived. I would argue in many ways it's far less of a concern because it doesn't interact with plant and animal life to anywhere near the extent elevated CO2 levels do.

<comment><USER80> Ok I assumed that was the case. Thanks for the clarification.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> How is this possible though? What's happening on the molecular level? And how can we drastically change their digestion without harming them?

</comment><comment><USER82> Why don't they just feed the bromoform compound responsible for the activity? Seems a lot easier than trucking seaweed all over the place.

<comment><USER83> ever heard of chloroform and its characteristics?

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> Now that I think about it - it seems really silly that the solution to cow methane emissions is eating less hamburgers.

</comment><comment><USER85> It would be interesting to know /what/ it is in Asparagopsis taxiformis that has this effect

</comment><comment><USER86> Few stories make me as happy as this one did. Thank you OP. Hopefully in the future I can enjoy a beef-steak guilt-free!

The cow methane problem is one that literally keeps me up at night. I kept thinking about my inevitable switch to chicken and missing out on a tenderloin.. and how my kids won't be able to eat like me.

<comment><USER20> I feel ya and it would make my feel a little better about my meat treats, but improving that end (pun) of the equation seems to be a smaller problem than the energy required.

> _The findings, while expected, are quite sobering. Pork, chicken, dairy and > eggs are equivalent within a factor of two when it came to their > environmental burdens, the authors determined. But beef requires far, far > more resources than any of those other protein categories. The team > calculated that beef requires 28 times more land, six times more fertilizer > and 11 times more water compared to those other food sources. That adds up > to about five times more greenhouse gas emissions._

[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/beef-uses- ten-...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/beef-uses-ten-times- more-resources-poultry-dairy-eggs-pork-180952103/#MrYKCCw0yPic3zIo.99)

<comment><USER87> Pork and chicken require less land? Could that be because they're usually kept in cages?

<comment><USER69> no, it is because their food conversion ratio is better. that anaerobic methane producing process cows are using is not very efficient.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER88> Perhaps the SF bay's salt evaporators could be repurposed for growing algae.

</comment><comment><USER89> I've seen this posted many times. What's the outcome?

</comment><comment><USER66> Does it work on humans too, just asking for a friend?

</comment><comment><USER90> The original paper cited in this article is from 2016

</comment><comment><USER91> Good!

<comment><USER92> Qualsevol parida

<comment><USER91> Jijiji

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER93> Holy farts, that's amazing!

</comment><comment><USER94> As if we need more reasons to consume even more dead flesh...</comment>


Suspected AlphaBay Admin Takes Life as Feds Close Site - <AUTHOR> https://themerkle.com/suspected-alphabay-admin-takes-his-life-in-thailand/ <comment><USER2> Apparently he had 4 Lamborghinis and 3 houses registered under his name living as a 'programmer' in Thailand. He wasn't exactly living inconspicuously. I'm curious how he manged to cash out all that Bitcoin without drawing attention.

It's easy to blame criminals for being dumb after the fact but this one seems a bit obvious... even when in Thailand. He was being reckless.

I'd imagine going from that life style to a Bangkok jail cell can be pretty hard. Still though the trial might have been somewhat of an interesting experience. I guess he had planned for this upon getting caught (he used a towel).

It would probably have been far harder to hang yourself in a high security American jail.

[https://www.google.ca/amp/s/coconuts.co/bangkok/news/canadia...](https://www.google.ca/amp/s/coconuts.co/bangkok/news/canadian- drug-fugitive-lived-luxury-life-thailand-dying-police-custody/amp/)

</comment><comment><USER3> It is in Montreal? Then it is likely in either the AWS Montreal or OVH Montreal datacenters.

<comment><USER4> I imagine they would have their own hardware for a site like this. It could be any datacentre in Montreal, of which there are many to chose from.

As an aside; if I were a drug kingpin the last place on earth I would go to is Thailand.</comment></comment>


Tell HN: URL encoding and duplicate posting - <AUTHOR>

Not a big deal, just a note on a slow friday.
Submitting articles to HN sometimes has a neat feature that check if URL was already submitted (increasing the voting of the first one). This to avoid duplication.
Just seems that the check does not parse URL encoding. As a test look at:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1991171
submitted as: http://www.davidflanagan.com/2010/12/let-it%2Dsnow.html
and
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1989457
submitted as: http://www.davidflanagan.com/2010/12/let-it-snow.html
Back to programming mode. <comment><USER2> I suspect that people occasionally use the simplicity of the URL detector as a feature, deliberately changing the URL in trivial ways so they can submit items they know or suspect will be popular.

More often, though, people just don't check at all and submit items with no checking at all. This leads to duplicate submissions, a crowded "New" page, and split disussions.

I just wish people would read more, so they'd have a chance of knowing that the cool thing they've just seen and want to submit has already been submitted, sometimes many times over. The Dup Detector is sufficiently simply (for which read "brain-dead") that it can't be relied on.

ADDED IN EDIT: Cool! A down-vote! I always appreciate the opportunity to learn something. If you've down-voted this, or have a reason why someone might, please reply with more explanation so I can understand the alternative point of view. Thanks.

<comment><USER3> > A down-vote!

Your first I gather :) ?

Fixed.

<comment><USER2>
      >> A down-vote!
      > Your first I gather :) ?

<grin> You know me better than that.

I just always find it frustrating when I submit something or say something that I genuinely believe adds value to the site, and then it gets down-voted with no explanation. A down-vote will make me re-evaluate the information content, and sometimes I will, upon reflection, delete a comment. If it was content-less then I'll move on, but if I thought there was content, I'll try to rephrase and be clearer and more positive.

But when I think a comment has value and yet it gets a down-vote with no explanation, I find that frustrating.

It happens, I know, and it's no big deal, but I value the opportunity to learn.

      > Fixed.

Thanks, although it doesn't explain why someone thought it was worth the down- vote in the first place. <fx: sigh> Never mind, moving on ...

<comment><USER3> I know. One thing you can do to combat this is to revisit discussions after they've died down and check out the negative comments, see if there were any 'drive-by's' that could do with a re-balancing of the force.

<comment><USER2> One side-effect of the duplicate-detection I do is that I re-read old discussions. That lets me up-vote older comments that I think deserve it. I've found some gems like that, which in part is why I continue the dup-detector activity "by hand" (in the main).

And thanks for the up-vote.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> There are many more ways to mess with the dupe filter (this is by no means an exhaustive list):

\- adding or removing www. from the url (if it has it in there, and if the site redirects)

\- deleting a url and re-submitting it if it does not pick up enough votes in the time it take so scroll off the newpage

\- adding a ? or # to the end of the URL

The dupe filter is a way for people that play nice to continue to play nice, I don't think it ever was advertised as hyper secure. It's like the lock on the barn door, it stops the most trivial attempts and serves as an indicator of desired behaviour but it is not so secure that it can't be tampered with.

A really good dupe detector would actually be a lot harder than it probably seems.</comment>


Ask HN: Stock options, Help - <AUTHOR>

Hi all,
I'm starting a new job and this new position has stock options. I've never had stock options before, so I'm looking for some quick advice.
The logistics of the stock options are fairly standard. 1 year vest @ 25% then ~2% each month after the first year.
Here's where it gets tricky. I'm planning to move away in 6 months - nothing I can control. However, I'm not 100% certain I can keep the job when I move, though I think it's not out of the question (as is why I took the position).
So, the question is... should I even consider stock? If I leave within the 1st year, I lose everything. But if I buy stock and then get to keep my job after moving, it'd probably be worth it. This company is also a private company with a possible IPO this year.
Thanks for any advice in advance! <comment><USER2> Get some basic understand about how stock options work (grant, vesting, exercise) as well as how tax on options and shares works in your country. You could start here: [http://blog.alexmaccaw.com/an-engineers-guide-to-stock- optio...](http://blog.alexmaccaw.com/an-engineers-guide-to-stock-options)

If you can estimate the value of the company today (e.g. if they had a recent round of fundraising, and you know the terms) then, providing you have access to the cap table (shares and options outstanding) and info on any different classes of shares, you can work out what the shares you would get are worth. Combined with the info on how the stock options work (strike price etc.) you can work out how much they are worth.

This isn't trivial, but it's just math. The first step is working out what you think the company is worth (given fundamental value, and when/how they might exit/IPO). If this yields a zero or low number, then you don't need to do any calculations.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, thanks for the reply. I'll definitely check out this link as well :)

I think my plan will be to hold off on buying stock until I know I can continue my job remotely when I move. If I can hold my job for longer than 1 year, then it'll be likely I'll invest in the stock.

Thanks all!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't understand some details of the redaction. Are you going to pay money from your pocket to buy the options or you are going to have a discount of your salary in Exchange of the options?

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe I'd pay out of pocket at a reduced rate, but I'm not 100% sure.

<comment><USER3> I think it's not standard that _you_ have to pay (perhaps a symbolical $1 (one Washington) fee for legal details). I don't like it, but I hope that someone with more experience in this kind of arrangements can give a more authoritative answer.

<comment><USER4> Paying money to exercise vested options upon leaving a company is very standard.

<comment><USER5> > _Paying money to exercise vested options upon leaving a company is very > standard._

True; also very standard is cashless exercise, where you "pay" for your options using some of the optioned stock itself (really, taking fewer shares in a type of margin purchase). [1]

[1] See, e.g., [http://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/cashlessexercise.asp](http://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/cashlessexercise.asp)

<comment><USER6> This is usually only available after an IPO or other "event". Not many brokers want to let margin plays happen with start-up options.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> [IANAL]

Read the stockholder agreement, the articles of incorporation, and your employment contract. Consider consulting an attorney to review these documents.

Consider acting with inscrutable ethics.</comment>


Why Morning People Rule the World - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/news/articles/2010/07/research-says-morning-people-are-more-proactive.html

<comment><USER2> I consider myself an evening person...I get a second wind from 10pm to 1am...however, I do find that I am more productive when I get up at 6am and am in the office by 7:30am.</comment>


Mastodon WTF timeline (2017) - <AUTHOR> http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/335 <comment><USER3> Wow, this is a classic case of "don't trust someone who describes themselves as neutral".

To take the principal example under discussion, either you think lolicon is OK or you don't. "Neutrality" is actually the former position. The exact same thing holds true for the "Red vs Blue" thing. Either you believe Red harasses Blue or you don't. If you don't, fine, but don't pretend you didn't just pick a side.

"the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality"

<comment><USER4> I never thought of neutrality like that - thanks, +1 Insightful and such!

Although I wonder if that can be applied to other issues too. Like, if I were to have no opinion / consider myself neutral in the pro-choice / pro-life debate, which side would I actually be on? Or is there a neutral / indifferent ground there?

<comment><USER3> The quote at the bottom is from Desmond Tutu, who explicitly said that neutrality is a vote for the powerful/status quo. So if you were in Denmark, not caring that much could be treated as a pro-choice position, but in Texas it would be the other way around.

<comment><USER5> Wrong. Not caring anywhere in the USA would also be pro-choice since Roe v Wade overturned laws in all 50 states against abortion.

<comment><USER6> That was before 40 years of culture wars on the issue. Today the majority of the country is pro choice.

<comment><USER5> Which, if true, only further proves my point, which is that to "not care" is to be fine with the way things currently are—abortion being legal.

<comment><USER3> Just because you don't understand that availability matters, people getting shot because they do legal things matters, and your entire entire Supreme Court being defined by and chosen on their attitude to a subject matters, doesn't mean they don't matter.

Attempting to obtain an abortion in Texas will have dramatically different outcomes to that of Denmark. Appreciating this is true should not be controversial.

<comment><USER5> The people in Texas are actively fighting against the status quo of Roe. If the people in TX simply took a neutral position, the status quo would reign. Thus, the example is a bad one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I really don't think describing two sides of the "culture war" as red and blue is healthy for anyone. Most people have a mish-mash of beliefs, but lumping people together creates division and solidifies factions, rather than allowing people to be swayed or make up their own mind.

<comment><USER8> I think that 'red' and 'blue' are just plain confusing because the US has relatively recently taken its own bindings of these labels to political positions that are completely arse-backwards to the long term historical uses of these colours in the entire rest of the world.

I think it's best to use more descriptive terms that everyone can actually agree on

<comment><USER9> Blue/Red in the US used to be (deliberately) switched on TV broadcasts in every election until the 2000 Bush election where the continual coverage of how close it was locked the colors in for all time.

<comment><USER10> This wikipedia entry takes 6 paragraphs to explain the nuances involved and they are far more complicated than you state (not that I think you intended that way):

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_states_and_blue_states#Con...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_states_and_blue_states#Contemporary_use)

<comment><USER8> Which basically gets back to my original point in an international forum like this (or the one described by the above article) these colours don't really mean anything you can talk about and they're best avoided unless your goal actually is to sow confusion

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Setting aside the author's clear but oblivious bias in the English speakers "war", he documents a fascinating problem: how do we globally integrate societies that have very starkly different reactions to specific topics, ideas, etc? We aren't even good at answering these questions within the same culture (liberty vs discrimination, public safety vs 2nd amendment, 'Red' vs 'Blue', and so on).

Given the internet's existence, the lowering barriers to trade, immigration, and travel, Pandora's box isn't going to be closed here- we need to figure out how to approach the topic of cross-cultural disagreement on moral quandaries. And it's not fair to just say "Our culture is right and theirs is wrong". That just demeans them and silences the minority.

My favorite example: I go to a small men's barber shop usually staffed by two or three male barbers. A woman enters saying "I want a man's haircut". All three barbers are devout Muslims who cannot touch a woman, by their religious beliefs. Yet the customer has a right to be served even though she is female. This isn't hypothetical, it really happened. They sorted it out amicably, but this sure could have gone to court- where a decision would probably be made that makes a lot of people angry.

In the case of "ロリコン and 児童ポルノ", can Western culture even perceive that a difference might exist? Or are we bound by laws that grew out of our cultural view that the two are both the same horrible concept?

<comment><USER12> I think the line is sightly fussier in the United States. [https://www.justice.gov/criminal-ceos/citizens-guide-us- fede...](https://www.justice.gov/criminal-ceos/citizens-guide-us-federal-law- child-pornography)

>Visual depictions include photographs, videos, digital or computer generated images indistinguishable from an actual minor, and images created, adapted, or modified, but appear to depict an identifiable, actual minor

I am not a lawyer, but given that language it gives the impression that even art may fall under the scope of U.S. law. Am I correct? Possibly not, however that ambiguity will cause many to avoid crossing the implied law to ensure they don't break the actual law.

<comment><USER13> "...depict an identifiable, actual minor."

So this doesn't apply to cartoons of the fictional character Mitsuki, a tiny blue-haired girl in a school uniform who is totally 21 years old and not 9 according to the dating simulator's lore. So this would probably be legal in the US.

See, this guy isn't even right about that. He lies about the idea that it's totally non-controversial and accepted as ethical in Japanese culture, and he lies that it's universally illegal in western culture. This whole thing is a big pile of straw men invented by an otaku who thinks he's an ambassador of an entire culture for some reason.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Moral psychology is fun. Lolicon is one of those odd moral black holes for westerners. Jonathan Haidt in his book The Righteous Mind talks about a bunch of similar examples of victimless but "immoral" actions that we find wrong and will desperately try to find a victim for when one doesn't exist.

Similar examples: incest with 100% guarantee of no conception. Consensual cannibalism (edit for clarity: of someone very well cooked). Eating of a dead dog. Sex with a dead chicken and then its consumption.

We find all of those repugnant, immoral, and will try to come up with victims, even when there are none to be found.

It's a good example of how morality for humans is much more than just about harm. It's about conformity and cohesion with a set of rules that identify a specific tribe, regardless of harm.

<comment><USER15> I understand your point, but I feel like I should point out that consensual cannibalism does have a victim, the cannibal.

Humans eating human meat (and likewise, cows eating cow-meat, pigs eating pig- meat) can cause some very very weird and very serious and very rare illnesses. (social?) Animals have not evolved to eat their kind, or perhaps put differently; animals have evolved _not_ to eat their kind.

<comment><USER14> Sure. But let's say it's fully sterilized and fully cooked so you have 100% guarantee of not getting sick from it. Is it still wrong?

It's similar to the objection you hear about incest: "Yeah but what if the woman gets pregnant", thus you set the conditions that there is 100% no chance of conception.

And actually, our closest relatives, the chimps, have evolved wonderfully to eat their own kind. In fact they find each other delicious during constant raids on the enemy's territory.

<comment><USER16> > _let 's say it's fully sterilized and fully cooked so you have 100% > guarantee of not getting sick from it._

I'm being a pedant here, and this isn't really relevant to the previous commenters point, but worth noting that one of the known dangers of cannibalism (CJD) is less related to typical sterilisation and not quite as well understood in general, so 100% guarantees are hard to come by.

<comment><USER14> Yep. It's more of a philosophical experiment than something that is backed by perfect hard science. The point remains that most people (at least outside of the tribes that practice it) would find it completely wrong even when given hypothetical perfect guarantees.

<comment><USER17> I get that it was not your point, but the problem with cannibalism is the transmission of prion proteins. Not really an infectious disease per se. See: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_(disease)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_\(disease\))

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is an interesting saga I didn't hear anything about when it was happening. I recall seeing that Pixiv had launched an instance, but I'm honestly shocked that it took off like it did. It makes sense that it was appealing to artists in part due to a more lax policy regarding sensitive images.

The author would've done themselves a significant favor by not wasting a bunch of space on an attempt to neutrally and imprecisely classify 'red' and 'blue' groups before dispensing with the neutrality halfway through. The neutrality wasn't especially helpful in the first place, but his "free speech" and "safe speech" labels later on are (from my interpretation of everything he describes in the series of events) both clearer and more neutral than any attempt to group sides together as 'SJWs' or 'aGG' or 'MRAs' or whatever because it describes the general point of view underlying their behavior. It may not describe those groups _as entire individuals_ but it seems to accurately classify most of the split here - people seeking mastodon instances that are a Safe Environment (hence the incredible threat posed by federated instances not honoring privacy settings) vs people seeking mastodon instances that are moderation-light and rules-light where they can do whatever they like. The legal threat posed to server operators by caching is an interesting side angle that puts the operators in a nasty spot.

It sucks that issues with fair treatment of French and Japanese speakers on Mastodon have to get sidelined by getting pulled into right-vs-left US culture wars - what Japanese artists choose to post on social media really shouldn't have anything to do with how Americans feel about concentration camps or no- platforming. In a sense, even this attempt to depict the way Japanese users were impacted by this whole saga falls flat because it centers the western parties ('red' and 'blue') in the story despite the fact that the Japanese users featured in it outnumber them.

On a final note, it's interesting to see Twitter described as Blue here, as at the present time Twitter's company leadership is actively and openly courting the right wing in business meetings and online discussions (including "alt- right" leaders), presumably for business reasons but perhaps for others. I guess the political winds shift quickly.

<comment><USER19> I don't think they can really avoid touching on this, because a lot of this really is more about those tribes than about any particular underlying principle. For instance, a while back there was a controversy over a US Nintendo employee who worked with kids calling for it to be legal to own photos and videos of actual kids being raped. She was blue tribe and the people who discovered this red tribe, so the entire blue tribe insisted that anyone who was with them must side with her. There was even this narrative that she wasn't really calling for this, just defending Japanese culture, and anyone who claimed otherwise was lying. (Which didn't hold up - she'd used this as one flimsy justification as to why this should be legal, but hadn't even backed this with any evidence that any Japanese people supported this, and she was calling for it to be legal in the US and everywhere else too.) The idea that Japanese works shouldn't be policed by Western cultural standards is, in general, very strongly rejected by blue tribe folks, but that changed the moment an American of the right tribe needed defending.

<comment><USER18> I was around during the controversy you refer to, and it was largely manufactured. You're generally right about the issues in question but it's a classic case of someone being accused of being a pedophile (regardless of their position on the political spectrum - this is done frequently to right wingers and left wingers as a smear tactic) and then repeated for years without verification.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Okay, I think I get it.

ロリコン - artificial images representing children or child like people in a sexual context, either drawn or rendered with software

児童ポルノ - photos of actual kids in sexual contexts

These online storms in teacups are rarely worth it, but this one is actually quite interesting.

<comment><USER21> The author is being disingenuous by saying that these are different. The form of the "art" is different, but the motivations behind it are the same; lust for youth. It's the motivations that people have problems with, not the form that the art takes!

<comment><USER22> > It's the motivations that people have problems with

I don't agree with you there and I don't think the author is being insincere. The problem with child pornography is the harm, or potential for harm, of children. Why would you care about a person's motivations as a root issue?

<comment><USER21> It's not just the harm to children that people have problems with, it's the power difference between an adult and a child. Adults have power over children, they place their trust in us. We are supposed to use our power over children to make them better people, to make their generation better than the previous. Society (perhaps only Western society it seems) does not like relationships where one person uses their power over someone else to the betterment of themselves (Harvey Weinstein and the rest of the #metoo movement comes to mind).

So I think that's the root cause of the "disgust" for this type of art and the motivations behind it; it facilities dishonest use of power.

<comment><USER23> But when you only look at drawings, no one is using their power over someone else. Photographs, however, do require someone to have used their power over someone else, namely the photographer. Which is why I would consider looking at (and hence stimulating the production of) the latter immoral, and less so the former.

<comment><USER21> The desire is the same, whether it's animated or not. That's the issue - <USER2> still desire sexual power imbalances. It's not about using the power, it's about the desire.

Anyways, these are just my musings on the matter. I am not an expert or familiar with the subject at all. I just was curious as to why society still is disgusted by child porn even when the harm is removed

<comment><USER23> So that's what OP disagreed with. Some people might care about intention, but when you said

> It's not just the harm to children that people have problems with,

then "people" sounds like "most people". Now I don't know what most people feel like, but at least for me and OP, harm to children __is __what we have problems with. Desire for power, not so much.

(Obviously, just musings from my side as well. Disgust for child porn when harm is removed happens to be one of my pet peeves - I believe that it is easier for people not to act on their desires if they are able to discuss them with others without being rejected by society.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I found this article to be interesting, but framed in a very strange way. The author continuously promotes that there is a left-right "war", and while several of their examples seems to definitely imply a political spectrum split like that, most of the issues they're recounting come from a cultural divide. This basically boils down to English/Western vs Japanese/Eastern cultural differences, but with political opinions pulled into the mix. Their choice to not even define the two types of content is telling as well: by simply defining it, they know the Western audience of their article won't want anything to do with it.

It's an interesting story, but framed in a strange way with key details left out to fit the red-blue narrative, in my opinion. Some, I would assume more Eastern-oriented users, would argue that they are being censored for content that is perfectly acceptable in their culture. Others, primarily Western audiences, would argue that it isn't culturally acceptable here, and that this is what Mastodon was designed for, to choose who you wish to include in your Federation. I don't really know which side I agree with personally, both seem to have their merits, but it's an interesting situation, one of several I've heard whispers of from Mastodon.

<comment><USER25> I'm an outsider to the whole story, but I read the article as detailing two different clashes, the blue/red and the English/Japanese, though partly intertwined.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Labelling the sides as Red versus Blue is convenient (as in; people know what you mean) but boy is it damaging to simplify like this. It's not the authors fault at all, he's simply using the nomenclature of the time, but it makes me sad to see how polarized we've all become.

Ultimately I think the labels act as a screen that people use to bucket people in, and if you ain't in my bucket, I ain't going to listen. Which just perpetuates the polarization.

<comment><USER27> The author is hilariously non-self-aware about their own bubble-inhabitance. It starts out with a tone of ostensible I'm-above-this-so-I-can-analyze-it- objectively but doesn't take long to devolve into:

> Some of this alliance was expressed overtly, for instance by creating an > "advisory board" to guide Twitter culture and staffing it with some of the > most hateful of Blue leaders

> "shadowbanning" persons identified as Red by AI systems

> But there were also many on the Blue side angry that the Red side still had > not been completely annihilated

<comment><USER28> Are those statements wrong?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This does explain why platforms like Facebook and Google have arrived at the sad inevitability of filter bubbling.

</comment><comment><USER30> Author could have sidestepped the whole political mess (considering it's tangential to the whole post) by calling sides "tumblr" and "4chan".

<comment><USER31> Which is just a proxy for left/blue vs right/red, and since their post is on twitter --> mastodon that would be a really weird way to talk about it?

<comment><USER30> Blue/red thing is mostly american politics, while I'd argue that tumblr vs 4chan is mostly abstracted from politics and more about world views and has lesser of a chance of hurting ego, which I believe would lead to more productive discussion. I know it's just semantics, but a lot of people are very emotionally invested in those colored labels.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> But what is the actual difference between the two? Is the second more extreme? Is one drawn and the other real? Or is the second drawn but based on real models ( like the fine)? Is it the difference between nude and naked?

Pixiv is generally drawn but there are no examples of the other. The book Lolita is ok in europe, a bit weird but not banned. There is even nude art of children - though it is controverial.

<comment><USER33> To be specific, "Lolicon" is a Japanese word that's partly a loanword from "Lolita" in English; in the way the author is using it, it means "drawn or simulated representations of fictional children engaged in sexual activity", though in common Japanese parlence the word literally means "pedophile". The author has decided to say that _lolicon_ is "child pornography" and this itself is a matter of debate; some authors (such as Young, in "Resolving the Gamer's Dilemma") consider child pornography to be _synonymous_ with abuse, and hence "virtual pedophila" (as he calls it) does not fall under it.

The "other thing" is literally just child pornography through and through, photographs or videos of real children engaged in sexual activity.

The fact that the author has neglected to specifically state the difference is strange, and I honestly can't think of a good reason for doing this, or why it was left in Japanese script.

Furthermore, there's something else here; a while ago I read an article which claimed that 81% of the Japanese public based on an extrapolated study would be fine with _lolicon_ being made illegal. So how does the author say that _lolicon_ being acceptable is a mainstream view? The author writes too,

>The idea that ロリコン is bad in the same way 児童ポルノ is bad, or even that there could be a meaningful category including both ロリコン and 児童ポルノ as if they were somehow comparable, is incomprehensible from the mainstream Japanese point of view.

Does this make me an honorary holder of the Japanese point of view? I honestly can't see a way in which drawings and real life photos in this case are comparable at all, it's incomprehensible to me how one could lump them together other than by the subject matter they represent, which is _extremely_ broad and ignores the whole point of the classification - that is, one necessitates child abuse to be created, and the other doesn't. I very much align with the Japanese point of view here.

On the other things the author mentioned, I agree with another commenter in saying that it's not at at all useful to frame this as "red" and "blue"; I consider myself rather "blue" on some issues (being a socialist) but the liberal idea of free speech is one I hold very dear to myself, and I am vehemently opposed to laws that target any kind of expression, even if that does entail "lolicon"; I believe the harm principle can stand here on its own, though I'm not sure if I'd bend even if it was proven conclusively (how?) that lolicon "causes" people to molest real children.

<comment><USER32> Oh, so ロリコン is lolicon? Thank you. I can't read japanese. Even a direct translation would be useful, because even google translate doesn't translate both as child pornography. The assertion in the text that both are translated as such is needlessly confusing.

<comment><USER33> Yes, I apologise for not actually clarifying the words in the script, it seemed obvious to me for some strange reason :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> (2017)

</comment><comment><USER35> >Twitter that would be free of "harassment," which is a Blue code word for the mere existence of the Red side

Sums up greatly.

</comment><comment><USER36> This is actually a really interesting perspective on Japanese fediverse.

The article lacks nuance when talking about the "red" and "blue" sides. Seems like false dichotomy to me.</comment>


OECD takes aim at tech giants with plan to shake up global tax - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/b16fd228-ea72-11e9-a240-3b065ef5fc55 <comment><USER2> If they really want to shake up tax dodging, then make taxes based on revenue, not profit.</comment>


Thiel, Trump and the death of shame - <AUTHOR> https://pando.com/2016/05/26/thiel-trump-and-death-shame/097711488320d3d19419036e673f63d51fc80bb4/ <comment><USER2> So much totally unbiased opinions to bring forward this grand theory of shamelessness...

And while we are talking about Gawker publishing private sex tapes of people for everyone to see...

It's not like Peter Thiel has been a member of Libertarian party and has strongly supported principles of privacy, personal liberty and freedom... and it's not like himself and others have been a victim of Gawker's disrespect of privacy for sensationalist shit. It not like he has endorsed previous frontrunners of the conservative party with libertarian principles.

Nope. None of that fucking matters when you can come with with a totally not retarded theory of shamelessness instead... while you are talking about Gawker shamelessly posting personal sex tape of someone publicly merely because it could. Awesome lack of hypocrisy there!</comment>


Show HN: A (simple) virtual whiteboard for remote tutoring - <AUTHOR> https://whiteboard.zjm.me/ <comment><AUTHOR> Some notes from the about page (in case these aren't super clear):

\- Strokes are synced across devices

\- Home page is a "public" lobby without history

\- "Private" rooms remember what's written on them (button in top right)

\- Supports Apple Pencil on the iPad Pro</comment>


Chile as a silicon valley alternative? - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2009/10/10/chile-wants-your-poor-your-huddled-masses-your-tech-entrepreneurs/

<comment><USER2> I just got back from Chile and, while I can't speak for the government incentives, I was very surprised at how developed it was for a South American country. Santiago's metro system put anything else I've ever seen to shame.

The landscape was strangely similar to California except it gets colder as you go South, and warmer as you go North. And yea, the surf was pretty awesome too.

<comment><USER3> Chile got recently in the "rich countries club" OECD [http://www.oecd.org/document/26/0,3343,en_33873108_39418658_...](http://www.oecd.org/document/26/0,3343,en_33873108_39418658_44365210_1_1_1_1,00.html) so I guess it can be officially considered first world now.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Book binding / printing nomenclature question - <AUTHOR> Most people have probably encountered a book of say a few hundred text pages on cheaper "regular" paper, with a bundle of a few pages of color glossy photos in the middle. Does this technique have a industry name? Is it commonly called something? There are a several variations. Sometimes you see the same type of paper, but the line drawing figures are all in the same few pages. <comment><USER2> Inserts

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you</comment></comment>