Earth's carbon dioxide levels reach highest point in 800,000 years - <AUTHOR> https://www.therecord.com/news-story/8590664-earth-s-carbon-dioxide-levels-reach-highest-point-in-800-000-years/ <comment><USER2> I thought this bit was interesting:

"As a scientist, what concerns me the most is not that we have passed yet another round-number threshold but what this continued rise actually means: that we are continuing full speed ahead with an unprecedented experiment with our planet, the only home we have," Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University, tweeted Thursday"

We really are going ahead full speed. Global emissions have been rising in recent years, not falling.

<comment><USER3> And even countries like Germany who say they take climate change seriously are revising their CO2 goals because they are having trouble meeting them due to their abandonment of nuclear power. [https://euobserver.com/environment/140475](https://euobserver.com/environment/140475)

At this point if you are opposing nuclear power, you aren't taking climate change seriously, even if you say you are.

<comment><USER4> I have a feeling that one of the biggest blockers to actually doing something about climate change is how easily the conversation gets derailed. Almost everyone agrees on clean energy, but once you get into specifics people lose their cohesion(people are pro- or anti-nuclear power, or for or against wind energy(birds, off-peak power, etc.)).

I think people get too focused on any one particular solution, and cannot see that a mixture of things probably is best. Nuclear for places that can tolerate it plus wind or solar for peak times. Hydro and solar/wind for places that can't.

I have heard for years, and at various times expounded myself, of the virtues of nuclear. But the public in most industrialized countries cannot stand the thought of it near them, so looking at a more balanced approach makes sense.

<comment><USER5> > I think people get too focused on any one particular solution, and cannot > see that a mixture of things probably is best. Nuclear for places that can > tolerate it plus wind or solar for peak times. Hydro and solar/wind for > places that can't.

I agree that a mixture is necessary. With that being said, the examples you give are entirely technological, which I think is likely insufficient to solve climate change. I think we need a combination of technological, psychological, and political approaches.

For example, as a cyclist, I'm continually disappointed by the reasons people tell me they'd never be able to adopt cycling for transportation. I'm told that they wouldn't be able to do X, Y, or Z, or that they'd feel very restricted, etc. But when I tell them that most cyclists do X no problem and they could rent a car if they wanted to do Y and Z (which are done infrequently), they aren't convinced. It seems to me that many people face a false dilemma here because they see cycling as far more difficult than it actually would be. If you design your life to make cycling possible, it's perfectly acceptable, even preferable in my case because I want the exercise. Most people pick where they live based at least in part on their driving commute, so it would only be fair to do the same for a cycling commute.

Population reduction is another area which you could mention as part of a combination of solutions. In my experience those conversations are often counterproductive. But it seems clear to me that population can't keep increasing if we only have one planet, and we might prefer to have less people with a higher quality of life. (My views on population ethics are not fully formed for what it's worth.)

My view is that climate change is a lost cause, so instead I'm focusing on adaptation to the new normal.

<comment> mandrake-c-papi > My view is that climate change is a lost cause, so instead I'm focusing on > adaptation to the new normal.

I hate this attitude. You may be doing everything possible as an individual to prevent further climate change, but the majority of people I hear spouting this attitude do not.

It's based on the premise that there will actually be some sort of "new normal" that is worth surviving for. The ongoing impact of our actions is indeterminable - we could end up with something so inconceivably bad that all your adaptation efforts are pointless, or that you simply cannot live a life of any value when compared to the early 21st century.

Also, it smacks of "F*ck you, I've got mine". You assume that the impact of climate change are survivable, apparent by the fact that you want to focus on adaptation, but this attitude ignores the fact that there are billions of other people on the planet. Maybe climate change can be survived by us in our situation with all our first world advantages, but there are millions, possibly billions, who don't have that choice.

Focus on adaptation for all you like, but please don't forget that prevention is greater than cure and that it's not too late.

<comment><USER6> Last time I checked we breezed past the symbolic point-of-no-return at 400 ppm CO2... so it kinda is too late. We can try some damage prevention if you feel like it.

<comment><USER2> We might as wel try though. It's possible that if we had a carbon tax someone might come up with:

      * very cheap energy
      * a somewhat effective way to sequester carbon

We'd obviously lose a massive amount of energy putting back all the energy we burned but that would be the price of survival.

I don't know if this is possible. But we should at least try. Currently our lack of carbon pricing isn't giving us full incentive to try.

<comment><USER7> Well, here is the thing- our cooperate overlords have created the perfect system to shirk regulations by shifting production to whoever is the most desperat.

My money is not on goverments or companys here. My money is on some plague drastically reducing the number of humans capable to produce carbon dioxide. It looks containable now, but contain something like Ebola with millions on the move and the UN-Institutions collapsing under this circumstances.

You can not enforce quarantine, if a whole country decides to walk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> the only thing that stresses me out more than the story, is the likelihood that someone very smart is working on something that will take 99% of us all out in a last ditch effort to save the planet.

<comment><USER9> [https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/xwvgeq/an- incompl...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/xwvgeq/an-incomplete- timeline-of-what-we-tried)

<comment><USER8> That is haunting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> [http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/climatechange2/07_1...](http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/climatechange2/07_1.shtml)

On a geologic timescale, CO2 levels were many times higher than they are today.

>In very general terms, long-term reconstructions of atmospheric CO2 levels going back in time show that 500 million years ago atmospheric CO2 was some 20 times higher than present values. It dropped, then rose again some 200 million years ago to 4-5 times present levels--a period that saw the rise of giant fern forests--and then continued a slow decline until recent pre-industrial time.

CO2 levels over the past ~5 million years are at the lowest point in over 200 million years. On a geological timescale, CO2 levels are _returning_ to normal, not going away from it.

<comment><USER11> Okay, this comes up sometimes in climate-related topics, usually because of a combination of misunderstanding and a need to be the clever contrarian that's thought of something nobody else has.

The question isn't whether Earth will survive these CO2 levels. Earth will (probably) be just fine. It's common knowledge, especially among the scientists that publish claims about rising CO2 levels, that Earth has had much higher levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the past, and that at those times, there was lots of life.

The question isn't necessarily even whether humans will survive much higher CO2 levels. We're resourceful, we have the ability to shape our environment. Some people will survive.

The question is how much we're going to enjoy all of the adverse effects of this global climate change. It is going to cause or contribute to a lot of natural disasters: hurricanes, tornadoes, extreme storms, droughts, flooding, massive wildfires. There are going to be migrations. Wars. There are some solid arguments that climate change contributed to the Syrian civil war [1]. Many species are going to disappear as they fail to adapt quickly enough to the changing environment; it will take much longer for new species to take their place. We will see, for example, an environment with fewer butterflies and more mosquitoes -- many more.

Nobody is going to get out of this unscathed. It's going to cause widespread political and economic instability and unrest. Even if you manage to find yourself a nice little spot untouched by the most direct effects of climate change, it's going to cause enough suffering in enough other parts of our globally interconnected human society that you'll see the costs somewhere. The US spent a record $306 billion on disaster response last year. Where do you think that money comes from?

[1]: [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change- ha...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-hastened-the- syrian-war/)

<comment><USER10> >It's common knowledge, especially among the scientists that publish claims about rising CO2 levels, that Earth has had much higher levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the past, and that at those times, there was lots of life.

This isn't common knowledge _at all_ among non-scientists. Most people have no clue that CO2 levels were many times higher than today, and that earth and the ecosystem in general were just fine. Scientists may be aware of this fact, but why don't they inform the general public of this? Take the submitted article for example. Instead of publishing an article stating, "CO2 levels are higher than 800,000 years ago; but are likely lower than they were at any point from 20-200 million years ago" they only leave in the scary, doomsaying first part and neglect to inform the second part. It is the equivalent of looking at a 24 hour geological clock and only telling people about the past minute while neglecting datapoints from minutes or hours ago. Why aren't scientists informing the public of the historical data?

I understand why the climate change community may not want to bring up this point (it detracts from other issues) but people should be aware of this fact. Humanity, and life in general, will survive increased CO2 levels.

>The question isn't whether [X], it's whether [Y].

I am paraphrasing, but that's largely what your comment is saying. The article premise and its title, is about [X], where [X] is CO2 levels. It seems like the response to historical CO2 levels is to change the topic.

 _Edit: I don 't want to reply to several comments, so I'll respond here._

Why do I believe the discussion should inform people about historical CO2 levels? Largely because I firmly believe CO2 emissions will not decrease through 2040. The incentives to cut emissions are just not there. Petroleum is simply too useful as a resource. The current projections I have seen predict 500ppm by 2050, and likely 600ppm by 2100. Given those numbers, I ask myself the question, how likely is it that humanity will face extinction in the next century? How should I interpret these numbers?

Given the geological data, I find it reassuring that biology and life on earth survived for hundreds of millions of years with CO2 levels between 1000-2000ppm. It means that increased CO2 levels will not cause the extinction of humanity.

<comment><USER12> The sun is also measurably brighter and hotter than it was when CO2 levels were significantly higher, meaning we should expect greenhouse effects to be more severe. CO2 levels aren't the only thing that contribute to climate. Additionally, while in the past the levels have been much higher, the _rate_ of change in CO2 levels was never nearly this swift in the geological record-- it's the sudden change that has many people worried.

<comment><USER10> I did not bring global temperatures into the discussion as I don't believe they pose as serious a threat as increased CO2 levels. Wikipedia has a nice graph showing estimated global average temperatures over time [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:All_palaeotemps.svg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:All_palaeotemps.svg) . _Please note the log-time scale_.

The graph shows that between 10-250 million years ago, global temperatures were 1-12° C higher than they are today. Given that current projections, which include the 2% relative gain in solar irradiance, expect 3-4°C warming by 2100, the geologic temperature record suggests such increases are not detrimental to life on earth. Let us recall that life was thriving during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, when temperatures were 5-10°C higher and CO2 levels between 1000-2000ppm. Global temperatures today are actually _lower_ than than average, on a geological timescale.

>the rate of change in CO2 levels was never nearly this swift

No, you can't conclude this. You cannot show there was no other a period in Earth's geologic history where CO2 levels rose by 150ppm (or 150%, whichever is not relevant) in less than 200 years. The geologic record is not detailed enough to make such a claim. It is unknowable if there was a series of major volcanic eruptions that caused CO2 levels to rise rapidly.

And sudden change has always been a part of climate and evolution. Rapid change can occur in just a few decades. For example, the Sahara wasn't even a desert 10,000 years ago. Also see punctuated equilibrium.

<comment><USER6> > You cannot show there was no other a period in Earth's geologic history > where CO2 levels rose by 150ppm (or 150%, whichever is not relevant) in less > than 200 years

That assumes the CO2 is also gone just as quickly. But I doubt that would happen unless you can show a natural process that could not only increase the CO2 level by 150ppm but also decrease it by 150ppm just as quickly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Do we have a good grasp on what that means? I'm not trying to deny climate change but if I'm honest I don't know what it means for the carbon dioxide levels to by the highest in 800,000 years.

Is the temperature response linear?

Are there other dangers involved in changing the composition of our atmosphere?

Is the response likely to self regulate or avalanche out of control?

Is being the highest in 800,000 actually a significant point or is it just a bad sign?

<comment><USER6> Answers in order:

We dont' know. 5 times.

The rapid and huge increase in CO2 is to my knowledge unprecedented. We did have similar CO2 levels in the past but never in such a rapid incline, only after thousands if not millions of years time for everything else to respond.

We could be causing a The-Day-After-Tomorrow-Scenario. Or something like 2012.

Or Mad Max. We simply don't know but considering the parts we do know, it's likely that whatever happens is not good. A 400ppm Level of CO2 was considered a symbolic point of no return and we have passed it a while ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is there a way to build a closed loop system that would suck CO2 and make methane from it for example? Methane can be used for further energy production but again with closed loop, capturing all produced CO2.

<comment><USER15> > and make methane from it

That part's easy. Where's your energy source?

The whole issue is not Co2, it's energy.

<comment><USER14> _> That part's easy. Where's your energy source?_

Solar + methane itself fed back into the loop.

<comment><USER15> If you have solar power, why are you reforming Co2? Just use the solar power directly and don't emit the Co2 in the first place.

<comment><USER14> You aren't controlling all emissions.

<comment><USER15> If there's enough power (solar or otherwise) there won't _be_ any emissions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> On an unrelated note, I'm impressed that the Waterloo Record's webiste is surviving the HN hug.</comment>


900'000'000 umbrellas end up in landfill every year. - <AUTHOR>

We are trying to solve a great environmental problem: 900'000'000 umbrellas are produced every year in the world and end up in landfill. We are crowd funding our project on Indiegogo, http://igg.me/at/ginkgo<p>The technology we developed allows to produce umbrellas with injection molding, is suitable for biodegradable polymers (i.e. biothene)  and for a cradle to cradle production system. www.ginkgoumbrella.com <comment><USER2> Please provide a source for that number, it sounds beyond ridiculous. The New Yorker ([http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/02/11/080211fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/02/11/080211fa_fact_orlean?printable=true)) states 33 million are sold in the US each year - so the idea that thirty times that many are tossed isn't really reasonable.

</comment><comment><USER3> I really like this project, its fun and love the design. However I find the environmental argument incredibly flawed, especially the 900 million umbrella figure. If we use Trapicks figure of 33 million umbrellas sold in the US and assume that the US is representative of the general population of the world then only 600 million umbrellas are sold each year. I suspect its far less, I would expect the US to consume more than the average number of umbrellas.

I think this wildly outrageous number is damaging what otherwise is a really cool project!</comment>


Ask HN: Back in time to 100 BC, what knowledge would you impart to the people? - <AUTHOR>

The exact year is not so important.
With everything we know now, what would you tell the people in 100 BCE that would improve society?
Reason I ask is because this question frustrates me as to how little I could actually benefit the world in 100BCE. Best thing i could think of is washing your hands. So I come to the bright minds at HN to redeem myself. <comment><USER2> By 100BCE the Greek classical period had already passed and Rome was on the rise. A high level of culture existed in places and sophisticated thought was commonly expressed in written form.

Metallurgy was sufficient. Many of the works of artisans and craftsmen haven't been duplicated. A great majority of this knowledge was lost to time (c.f., the fire of Alexandria) because copying texts was an enormous amount of work.

Also, even if a great body of knowledge were imparted to people in that period, who's to say that it would be disseminated? The knowledge that went into the construction of the Antikythira mechanism--even the knowledge that such knowledge existed--was lost.

So I would push up the invention of the printing press by 1.5 millenia.

Even without imparting any additional knowledge, the sheer volume of written material that would have been passed down through the centuries would guarantee more rapid advancement of civilization, as well as preservation of history. We would have the works of Sappho, for example. And history would still progress naturally, without artificial interference.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you know how to build a printing press?

<comment><USER3> At its most basic, you need a couple of alphabets worth of letters and a rack to set them on. These can be carved out of wood -- they'll need replacing fairly often, but if you get a couple of apprentices to carve out more, you can get a decent start with printing. Don't worry about books at first; start with smaller texts.

Of course, to truly make it scalable you'll need metal type. If you're not lucky enough to remember how to make a hand mould or invent lost-wax casting, you'll want to make friends with the nearest goldsmith and see if you can adapt some of his methods.

Around this time, if you're lucky, you might remember enough of mechanics to invent the escapement and the sun and planet gear, to kickstart the clockmaking industry. Sailors will thank you, as will the merchants they supply. And if you live long enough, you might be able to combine these two inventions to form the world's first Linotype machine.

<comment><USER4> There's a great little story by L. Sprague de Camp called "Lest Darkness Fall" that is almost exactly this. An archaeologist from the 1930s gets stuck back in the 6th century A.D., and "invents" the printing press (among other things).

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I've read that. Also "The Man who Came Early" by Poul Anderson and a lot of similar stories.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _"I am, probably was, the sandwich maker for a small tribe. It was a bit embarrassing really. When I first arrived, that is, when they rescued me from the wreckage of this super high-technology spacecraft which had crashed on their planet, they were very nice to me and I thought I should help them out a bit. You know, I'm an educated chap from a high-technology culture, I could show them a thing or two. And of course I couldn't. I haven't got the faintest idea, when it comes down to it, of how anything actually works. I don't mean like video-recorders, nobody knows how to work those. I mean just something like a pen or an artesian well or something. Not the foggiest. I couldn't help at all. One day I got glum and made myself a sandwich. That suddenly got them all excited. They'd never seen one before. It was just an idea that had never occurred to them, and I happen to quite like making sandwiches, so it all sort of developed from there.'_

I'd tell them the same thing I tell people now. What you think you know, you don't know. There is more to learn than you can possibly imagine, and, most importantly, there's nothing like a good sandwich.

</comment><comment><USER6> Boil water before you drink it. Water has evil spirits in it. They kill more people than anything else and will for the next two thousand years. Fire spirits chase the evil water spirits away -- you can tell because when they leave the water, it bubbles.

<comment><USER7> Pasteurization is likely to have a more visible effect. It will make the treated milk last longer before spoiling, which is a benefit that can be easily demonstrated. At a basic level, you just bring the temperature close to boiling but don't actually let it boil.

<comment><USER6> I think animal milk is sort of like the tomato: a wonderful, wonderful food which we think is long established and universally appreciated but which is, on historical and global scales, _rounding error_ in terms of the human diet.

Widespread consumption of animal milk is like Things White People Like, 1850 AD Edition. (Really. Most milk sold at the time was buttermilk, a biproduct of the consumption of butter. The rest was considered agricultural waste and fed to hogs.)

If you take a quick glance around the world even today, consumption of liquid animal milk is still not the norm outside of the West. (Japan is changing but, even in the mid-twentieth century, "smells like butter" was one euphemism to refer to the Americans.)

<comment><USER8> What about Africa?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Your question made me think of this:

<http://www.qwantz.com/fanart/timetravelling.jpg>

All useful information, but you have a point about the receptivity of the world in 100BCE. If you start talking about germs spreading disease, people are going to assume you are talking about demons and are possessed.

I'd probably try to find some leading scientific minds of the day (Jing Fang, Marcus Pollio, or the people that created this: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism>) and work with them to 'discover' new ideas. They would probably be eager to learn, and could take your ideas and put them in the context of the age. Of course, you'd have to learn some ancient Greek and Chinese first. ;)

</comment><comment><USER10> I would tell them the benefits of standardization and assemblage. Making things to specification is a little appreciated, but very useful, concept.

E.g., a component of America's success in many wars (although I've read the disparity between her forces and the enemies were greatest during the Revolutionary War) was the fact that the gunsmiths made parts to spec. So I could buy my gun in NY and have it repaired with off the shelf parts down in Virginia.

For all the printing press folks, I think a big part of the success of the Gutenberg press was the fact that it was one design, could be build and distributed, and could be fixed from standard parts. Don't ever underestimate the influence of maintenance!

</comment><comment><USER11> I'd tell them all about the metric system so we don't have to deal with inches today

</comment><comment><USER12> You're probably right. Hygeine would probably be the single most useful thing you could tell them about.

</comment><comment><USER13> I know we look different, but really, we're all about the same; this is electricity; this is called a lens; this is the scientific method; keep your animals further apart; prosperity through trade, not war and looting; drink hot tea and beer; mix tallow and ash.

Oh, and of course: e^ix = cos x + i sin x

</comment><comment><USER14> Hand washing would be a difficult sell, even as late as the 19th century: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis>

</comment><comment><USER7> You almost certainly know whatever level of mathematics is above the one available. In the Mediterranean at this point in history, they're just circling around the idea of integration, but won't actually make it there.

Here's a protip: download wikipedia to your phone today. As soon as you realize that you've been trapped in the past, _turn it off_. Turning it on briefly will allow you to access stores of vital information before the battery runs out.

Unless this is Terminator rules, and you're naked . . .

<comment><USER15> Well, if your prepping (and this isn't the Terminator rules), get a hand crank or solar charger for your phone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> If you could explain evolution (and get them to believe it), you'd change the course of intellectual history in some interesting ways.

Once you've done that, you could start on the germ theory of disease. Those are both scientific breakthroughs that you probably understand well enough to explain.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'd make some gunpowder (charcoal, bovine poo and a couple of other easily found ingredients) and become a self-proclaimed god (with special effects and stuff). Then I'd teach my minions Klingon and we'd all be using a single language (with less than 6k words) today.

</comment><comment><USER18> "In about a hundred years, there'll be a kid named Jesus born in Nazareth. Listen to him, he really knows his stuff. Do what he says, and you'll have the greatest society in history.

</comment><comment><USER19> There are no gods, but humans can achieve god-like feats with rational thought. Not sure how to convince them of that though ;-)

<comment><USER17> I'm pretty sure someone's probably trying that since the dawn of religion. It's still hard to make the vast majority of people believe that (in different levels), even TODAY, though...

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The printing press. The cause of scurvy and how to deal with it. Canned food. How to use cowpox as a vaccine for smallpox.

</comment><comment><USER21> You're on the right track there. Knowledge about staying healthy and avoiding conflict has helped the most.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'd hasten the spread of coffee cultivation, production & distribution. Productivity boost!

</comment><comment><USER23> I would teatch them to learn from different cultures, I think it was a waste of time destroy everything they found in each civilization they conquered like Incas, Mayans and other civilizations in europe. Probably there were a lot a writing documents that would be very useful to our society today.

</comment><comment><USER24> This -- "0" -- is the number "zero". Here is how you use it...

</comment><comment><USER25> Don't ingest lead.

</comment><comment> Asa-Nisse Drip irrigation.

</comment><comment><USER26> 42

</comment><comment><USER27> I would teach them about quicksort and mergesort.

Little known fact: most of the technological stagnation of the dark ages was time wasted in bubblesort.</comment>


SpaceX successfully deploys the Star man - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-42969020 <comment><USER3> The title of this post is incorrect. We have to wait a few hours to know if the rocket man has made it to Mars orbit.

EDIT: It's not a Mars orbit, its a solar orbit that puts it close to Mars at times.

From the linked article: "If all phases of the flight are successful - <USER2> that will not be known until at least 6.5 hours after lift-off - the Tesla and its passenger will be despatched into an elliptical orbit around the Sun that reaches out as far as the Planet Mars."

<comment><USER4> Actually, no, once the 2nd stage cuts off the trajectory is mostly fixed and we know what orbit it is in. There are, I believe, two more small burns that will be done to adjust the trajectory, but these are more of an adjustment to what _kind_ of Martian transfer orbit it is in. It already has the hyperbolic velocity to leave Earth's orbit, and enter solar orbit with an apogee at the same distance as Mars.

In 6.5 hours SpaceX will have finished everything they wanted to test with this flight I believe, including a number of post-launch checks of various systems and sensors on the payload, and those re-ignition tests of the 2nd stage.

<comment><USER5> Unless I'm mistaken, it's not on a trajectory out of Earth orbit currently.

It is in a parking orbit, where it will sit for a few hours and then will reignite and will be set on a trajectory toward "martian orbit".

IIRC currently they are testing (or proving depending on how confident they are) that they can have the second stage sit for several hours in space before reignighting.

<comment><USER6> I think you're correct. At stage 2 cutoff, they were showing a speed of ~26,000 km/h, which is approximately orbital velocity, not escape velocity.

<comment><USER5> Although I'm not fully correct. Mr. Musk just tweeted this:

>Upper stage restart nominal, apogee raised to 7000 km. Will spend 5 hours getting zapped in Van Allen belts & then attempt final burn for Mars.

[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/960988527159795712](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/960988527159795712)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What happened to the core booster did that return?

<comment><USER8> It suffered a rapid unscheduled disassembly, unfortunately

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The Starman has his own live stream: [https://youtu.be/aBr2kKAHN6M](https://youtu.be/aBr2kKAHN6M)

</comment><comment><USER10> To be accurate, I believe they call the the dummy "Star man", just if you wanna edit the title

</comment><comment><USER11> Mars Orbit? Really?

<comment><USER4> No, it's a Martian transfer orbit, albeit without Mars at the other end.

<comment><USER12> Meaning it could have reached Mars, they just chose not to?

<comment><USER4> Meaning that they didn't launch at the right time to arrive at Mars, due to where Mars is in its orbit currently. It'll pass through the imaginary circle around the sun which is Mars' orbit, it's just that Mars will at a different part of the orbit at that time.

But actually, it seems they decided to just empty the tanks and get as much delta-v as possible, and it'll go all the way into the asteroid belt as a result.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Center core is gone, didn't land successfully. Well it was a test and most of the flight succeeded [https://twitter.com/kimballclark/status/960986447770656768](https://twitter.com/kimballclark/status/960986447770656768)

<comment><USER14> This could reference the video feed, was before 1&2 landed?

<comment><USER15> The core looked like it had some engine fire just before the 2 boosters landed and it wasn't from the central engine.

<comment><USER16> It also looked like it was falling sideways, but I didn't know the camera orientation so I had no idea</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Beyond XX and XY: the extraordinary complexity of sex determination - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/beyond-xx-and-xy-the-extraordinary-complexity-of-sex-determination/ <comment><USER2> I have a friend who met a chimera [1] while playing in her adult softball league. This person was born with the genitals of both genders. The parents assigned the wrong gender to their infant, as 'he' always identified as a 'she', and is much happier living as a woman.

On the other hand, my one passenger probably identifies as male because of adverse childhood experiences (related to growing up in the foster care system iirc).

Edit: [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_(genetics)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_\(genetics\))</comment>


The Largest Virtual Universe Ever Simulated - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-created-the-largest-ever-virtual-universe-inside-a-supercomputer <comment><USER2> I predict the following quantum bug: Due to optimizations to prevent the need to simulate every single particle in this universe...the people who evolved in this universe are now perplexed that physics works so intuitively at the large scale, but at the small scale, it seems to become bizarre and "not calculated until you look".

<comment><USER3> You are suggesting that the nature of quantum mechanics is an argument for the simulation hypothesis?

<comment><USER4> There is running joke about general relativity and quantum mechanics being a demonstration of simulation hypothesis, i.e., floating point computations used to simulate our universe break down under very small and very large scales.

<comment><USER5> And mass slows down time because the load increases

<comment><USER6> Related to this, Second Life has a concept of time dilation which is the ratio of current simulator frame rate to ideal frame rate (30fps IIRC). As more avatars, scripts, and physically simulated objects were put in a simulator the time dilation increased.

<comment><USER7> Interesting, I first heard about this regarding EVE Online.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I was surprised to find the 'stringy' texture of intergalactic structure which these intense simulations seem to concisely capture , was also generated -roughly, by a very naive simulation which I applied to a few thousand points:

[http://imgur.com/a/hu1On](http://imgur.com/a/hu1On)

The process which changed homogenously random points in a cube into those stringy messes, didnt even include gravitation. It pulsated the points and diddled random neighbours ever-so-slightly closer to each other over a few million iterations.

I realise that academic universe simulations like this examine with great insight, more subtle features but i found it interesting that the basic stringy texture does not require precise forces to self arrange.

<comment><USER9> > _diddled random neighbours ever-so-slightly closer to each other over a few > million iterations_

Isn't that gravitation?

<comment><USER8> It was a random attractive function that did not even apply an inverse square law.

<comment><USER10> would you mind elaborating a bit? you say the process moved random neighbors closer to each other, but what do you mean by neighbors? i'm assuming you don't mean particles that are directly adjacent. if the method for selecting which particles to move together is distance-dependent then it's possible an inverse-square law got baked into it just by virtue of the shape of euclidean space.

<comment><USER8> For sure I can see that inverse square effect can get involved unintentionally, but the function didn't apply it intentionally and it would have introduced non-inverse-square derived effect. After this early experiment ive tried multiple types of quasi-gravity and quasi-electromagnetism - it is very tricky to arrange a viable 'quasi-force' just by relying on properties of the coordinate system or such.

For this I was developing 'spatial splitting' routines, i was taking the end cells of the splitting routine and just moving there contents a little bit towards their centers. While this was going on the 'universe' was also expanding, contracting and turning inside out in a neverending series of big bang and crunches. It looked pretty. The stringification occured with a few different 'end cell' testing functions i happened to try out. I just noticed it wasnt difficult to bring about that structure, unlike other structures which are more difficult to bring about - like accretion disks.

<comment><USER9> Could you post your code somewhere?

<comment><USER8> Ive put it up here -

[https://github.com/strainer/particloud55](https://github.com/strainer/particloud55)

There is a link in the readme to it running on webgl.

Its very old experimental code, i just noticed this stringifying happening on a number of revisions.

The project is more substantial and mature now but it no longer stringifies clouds \ :) /

[https://strainer.github.io/fancy/](https://strainer.github.io/fancy/)

<comment><USER9> Whoa, weird. It seems to coalesce into very regular rectangles for me!

<comment><USER8> heh, it begins forming those rectangles because each rectangle is a group of particles which have been initialised with same velocity vectors. (Their position is intialised randomly within one cube, but their velocities randomly within multiple cuboids). This configuration is not essential for 'stringification' Its a just a snapsot of experimental/playful developement.

The distortion and eventual 'stringification' of the undulating point groups occurs over minutes or hours of runtime.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is the highest resolution image of the data that I can find: [http://www.dailygalaxy.com/.a/6a00d8341bf7f753ef01bb09a3f2d2...](http://www.dailygalaxy.com/.a/6a00d8341bf7f753ef01bb09a3f2d2970d-pi)

</comment><comment><USER12> My recent thinking about simulations is that we might soon inadvertently create life/consciousness while simulating something else. Which leads to interesting ethical considerations - before switching off a simulation, should we check for life? And how do we do that, given that it's going to be completely alien?

<comment><USER13> We can't even simulate a nematode worm right now. So the ethics are pretty easy: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenWorm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenWorm)

If you want to worry about overlooking artificial life, a more interesting scenario is some kind of evolutionary pressure among malware, leading to a computational equivalent of roaches or even crafty raccoons, stealing a living from our internet-of-things trash cans.

<comment><USER12> The problem is in how we define life and consciousness, particularly when they are completely, unimaginably alien to us. Conway's Game of Life?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The precursor to the Matrix it seems!</comment>


Show HN: My Startup Is Taking on Tesla in Home Energy Storage - <AUTHOR> https://electriqpower.com <comment><USER2> The mention of Tesla might register with an investor {maybe postively, maybe not}, but taking on Tesla isn't an imaginary problem for me as I imagine myself as an imaginary end user. At best, mentioning Tesla gives me the imaginary problem of having to evaluate and compare and choose between ElectricIQ and Tesla product lines.

The optimization on pitching to investors is also present in:

 _We help homeowners effectively, efficiently and intelligently save money with renewable energy._

I mean, at the level I make a purchase decision, I make it beacuse I identify as _me_ not as a member of the abstract class Homeowners. Going further, I'm not making a purchase to _help_ save money. I'm making it to actually save money.

Or maybe I'm buying it to express my values relative to some aspect of the electrical grid...since it works with the solar panels I already have. And since I already have solar panels, odds are I had some contractor install them and that's probably who (or someone like them) I will call to have the system modified if I'm cautious around electrical current. So maybe solar system installers and electricians are an alternative point of sale over consumers, in which case the pitch is "PowerIQ helps you profit from helping your customers save money."

My gut is that for the mass market construction industry, the brand of battery is going to be about as relevant as the brand of circuit breaker box or solar panel. Batteries are going to be mostly commodity with a few exceptions for aspirational brands.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> Good Luck! A couple of suggestions: -I would like to see more pricing statistics on how much you can save by using these devices and how long it takes for such device to pay for itself. -Even how you can make money by selling electricity to grid (your neighbors) at peak hours and make money if your house hold does not use all the energy stored.</comment>


Raiding Clearance Aisles and Reselling on Amazon for Profit - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/flesh-and-blood-robots-for-amazon-they-raid-clearance-aisles-and-resell-it-all-online-for-a-profit/2019/02/08/f71bff72-2a60-11e9-984d-9b8fba003e81_story.html <comment><USER2> This is an interesting gap that these resellers are filling. What Target, Walmart and other chains should do is ship their clearance to Amazon themselves to avoid the middleman, but I guess that isn't possible given they compete in other areas?

<comment><USER3> I suspect what they would actually do is calculate if shipping them back to their own warehouse and selling the rest of the inventory online would make sense. But I think what they've really done is tighten up their own logistics (and marketing periods) to avoid shipping too many extra items out to the stores in the first place. I remember clearance sales being much bigger back in the day.

Today's clearance is probably still being sold above the incremental production cost, with a rebate from the manufacturer since it wasn't sold at full price. It doesn't matter that they're technically leaving some money on the table - their core business is moving "fresh" stuff at higher markups.

(Also, that Monopoly thing was a different type of arbitrage than Brickseek)</comment></comment>


Apple's iPhone launches no longer excite - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19557497

<comment><USER2> Linkbait. Writing an article, one year on from Jobs' death, proclaiming Apple dried up and dead, is at best ignorant, hyperbolic, impatient "journalism." He basically lauds Apple in one breath for being the slow and steady company that created the modern smartphone and tablet spheres, then hammers them for not instantly becoming a rapid-fire "see what sticks" Samsung-style company in the next! And of course, like everyone not actually in the inner sanctum at Apple, he has zero idea what Apple has planned in the long-term. Zero. But he acts like he knows everything.

This is just garbage. Some people should stop complaining so much - the same qualities they praised Apple for yesterday they slam them for the next.

<comment><USER3> Did you see the bold disclaimer at the top of the article?

It points out that this is a requested op-ed piece and not a normal BBC article. The author of this piece is the guy who writes the fake Steve Jobs blog "The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs". I wouldn't start condemning the BBC just yet.

<comment><USER2> I wasn't condemning the BBC, I was criticising the guy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This entire "article" gave me a bad taste in my mouth. The LEAST this guy could do is actually wait for Apple to do their Keynote. Now he's responding to rumors and leaks. I suppose it's no fun to write an article based on things like _facts_.

I think the Passbook alone could create a surge in new Apps. Here's an article about just that: [http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2012/09/04/apples- ios-6-passbo...](http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2012/09/04/apples- ios-6-passbook-is-a-new-game-center-for-retail-apps/)

<comment><USER5> The article does not only rely on rumors and leaks, but on previous iPhone versions. When you think about it, Apple has copied a lot of features (Notification Drawer, Interactive Lockscreen, Social Network integration, etc.) from Android, and it is true that the UI has not changed since 2007.

The latter point is the reason why I switched from iOS to Android a while ago, it becomes boring to use an iPhone, no novelty, no surprise. It works, is probably more reliable and stable than Android, but it is damn boring, and surprise/excitement are what matter for me.

<comment><USER4> You have a point. Me, I like things that don't get in the way of the tasks I'm trying to perform. I like it if complex things are presented on a simple and predictable way. Whenever I use my friends Android I'm always looking for how to do something. Swipe up? Down? Left or right to find some functionality. Not much consistency around the OS and Apps. I do think this will change for Android and it'll be more like Apple now that android has the new User Interface Guidelines [http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/ui_guidelines/i...](http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/ui_guidelines/index.html)

<comment><USER5> I think your point was valid before the release of Android 4.0 (ICS). It brought proper design guidelines and a common UI pattern for applications, and the experience now looks polished compared to 2.3 and below. What I love about it is that they don't enforce the rules as does Apple, they consider that if users don't like your UI or the user experience you propose, they will simply uninstall your app and you will be the loser, not the platform.

What you could blame ICS for was that the user interface was not always as smooth as it should have been, but JB has fixed the issue with Triple Buffering, and VSYNC (the famous project butter) and now Android just looks and feels great. Give it a try if you have the occasion.

<comment><USER4> Yes it was before ICS (4.0). The entire experience was horrible and I was asked to help out the person using it because even the easiest things proved difficult. Her phone can't update even though it's about a year old now. Sigh... I've just seen the Xtreamer Mobile (Android) teaser. Looks good. Standard Root Access, dual sim and more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I agree with most of these points. Good design is iteration though - you want it to be familiar to the last. However, iOS was good design from 'nothing.' 5 years on, it's boring design now - it should have had some serious reiterations.

Going from 0 to iPhone 1 was a huge advancement. It would be nice to see half of that again. Each new iPhone comes out with one or two gimmicks, and an iOS update that'll run on the last version anyway.

Saying that; I'll still be replacing my 4 with a 5 at this event. And I'll still continue buying Apple products. Not trying to suggest we boycott them, but I am feeling like they're not showing their innovation qualities.

I do disagree with the Samsung point. I think their case was beyond fair.

</comment><comment><USER7> The thing that confuses me about this kind of article, and I've seen a good few in the months since Jobs died, is the misconception people have on the lead times of product development.

Whether the new iPhone sucks or rocks will have been mostly under Jobs leadership. He's not been dead a year yet. Lead time for product development is a _tad_ longer than that.

We've not seen the post-Jobs Apple yet.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I agree, Apple has gone a bit lazy and a bit boring. As they have become more and more popular it's as if they have stopped trying. I haven't bothered upgrading to the latest OS X I switched to Ubuntu. I am not going to switch my iPhone 4s for the iPhone 5, but I am tempted by some of the new Android phones.

<comment><USER8> Tell me, how more exciting will the new version of Ubuntu be compared to the next version of OS X?

Mature products are just that—mature products.

<comment><USER9> I cannot really speak for OSX because I do not use it, but Ubuntu just keeps getting better and better on the SAME hardware. On every update it seems to be getting more optimized, less buggy, and introduces new features (sometimes interesting) that make you want to give it a go. The only time when I felt that Ubuntu was going backward is when they introduced Unity for the first time (it was slow as hell) but after that step they just kept getting better in every iteration. That's exciting.

<comment><USER10> It really depends on the hardware, I guess. For me, Ubuntu peaked around 8.10 or 9.04. It ran great on my tablet (yeah, those existed before the iPad, though it was a lot heaver, and that was perfectly fine), sound worked, etc. Every version since then has broken something, and according to benchmarks, Unity is the slowest desktop environment available for Linux.

But, if Ubuntu works for you, don't let the opinion of one random guy on HN change your mind. Just consider yourself fortunate to find something you like and can use.

<comment><USER9> Well, I have different distros on my home computers, and I switch between Mint, OpenSuse and Ubuntu on a daily basis. But Ubuntu is really nicely put together, and while I realize Unity is definitely slower than the rest, on the hardware I run it it is still fast enough for most of what I do, so I do not mind it so much. Sorry to hear you have a hard time to get Ubuntu working well...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Are the new form factors boring? A little.

Would people be going on about how boring they were if Steve Jobs were around? I doubt it.

The biggest problem Apple faces right now is that people expect them to lose their magic now that Steve Jobs is gone. Then as they watch Apple confirmation bias sets in and articles like this are written.

Apple is pretty well equipped to continue leading the tech sector, but this perception people have is going to be a major problem.

<comment><USER12> I agree, but people have been saying it about the iPhone for a while. The 4S was touted as a huge disappointment in the tech press.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> In related news, Dan Lyons no longer amuses.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is probably why Cook said that they will "double down on secrecy". The event is really boring if you have seen all of the parts on the internet prior to the event (might be different for people not following the rumor mills).

<comment><USER15> Blaming it on the others again (copy cats, spies, and so on...)? I think Apple benefited a lot from all the rumor buildup before their presentations. What if there were no rumors at all - would people even still notice that there is a new Apple launch event?

If the rumors were exciting, people wouldn't be able to contain themselves with excitement for the actual launch.

I wonder if Apple should introduce an abo model, that automatically sends their new products to their fans (charging their credit cards).

<comment><USER16> > If the rumors were exciting, people wouldn't be able to contain themselves > with excitement for the actual launch.

Why would people be excited for the announcement of something they already know. And if you're talking about the release date of the product, people still line up outside apple stores for days ahead of time when new devices come out.

> Blaming it on the others again (copy cats, spies, and so on...)?

How is saying that you're "doubling down on security" blaming others? Note that Tim Cook said this in response to the question "What have you changed? What's different?"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Are there any studies or opinion polls about how consumers are seeing the iPhone? The fact that experts and early adopters are bored with the iPhone doesn't mean that the normal customer isn't still excited about the product. The customers didn't read or hear iPhone stories on an almost daily basis. For them all the Apple products might still be those exciting, desirable gadgets that they must have. Not to mention the Apple fanboys and girls who buy every new product that Apple offers and wouldn't touch any other.

<comment><USER18> I dont know about studies, but I have observed - if tech goes gaga (original iPhone) it does not sell very well, if tech calls it absolute failure (iPhone 4S) it will sell like crazy.

<comment><USER19> Tech press often gets it wrong. The Galaxy Note "phablet" was another example. The original reviews called it ridiculous, but they actually sold well. And I've seen a lot of seemingly happy users with them.

[http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/16/3246378/samsung-galaxy- not...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/16/3246378/samsung-galaxy-note- sales-10-million-worldwide)

10 million is of course not iPhone-big, but then again, this is just one phone in Samsung's lineup. And it is more than Nokia has sold all their Lumias, for instance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I miss Fake Steve Jobs

<comment><USER21> I miss the real one

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Dan Lyons' writings on Apple no longer excite. FSJ was completely hilarious. This isn't.

</comment><comment><USER15> Is this part of a buildup for a huge surprise? Make people expect something boring, then come up with something entirely new?

If the rumors are true, though, the iP5 will definitely be too tiny.

</comment><comment> cm-t 404 ?

<comment><USER11> It's back up now.

<comment><USER23> And now down again apparently....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > "This is what happens when a company is too cheap to invest in research and > development. Did you know that Apple spends far less on R&D than any of its > rivals - a paltry 2% of revenues, versus 14% for Google and Microsoft?"

Funny he should mention that. Little known fact: at microsoft R&D expenditures are really technical evangelism expenditures. Whenever you legitimately complain online that vista sucks / metro sucks and someone else calls you an idiot, that's microsoft's "R&D" money hard at work.

<comment><USER25> Putting R&D as a percentage of revenue is a bit of a dodge. Apple has significantly higher revenue than Google. Apple in the quarter ending Dec 2011 brought in $46.3 billion in revenue, while Google brought in $10.6 billion.

So plugging in the numbers for Apple you get $928 million in R&D for the quarter, while Google spent $1.4 billion.

Less spent in R&D? Yes, but spending almost $1 billion per quarter in R&D is hardly paltry.

<comment><USER26> And everything Apple spends R&D money on is something that may one day end up in customers hands; whereas MS R&D often never sees the light of day, or gets canned, and Google spend a lot of their R&D making custom hardware for data centers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Its amazing that the BBC article has 11 links to 'share it', but nothing to actually comment on it.

<comment><USER28> That's a _good_ thing. I've seen BBC articles with the comments turned on, and the 'discussion' makes me despair in humanity. Throw in some fanboys from both sides, and the resulting flamewar would likely burn down Broadcasting House.</comment></comment>


Free HN: Startup Logo Design - <AUTHOR> I'm looking to help some fellow Hackers create a logo for their Startup. There is no strings attached, I just love design and want to give back to the community.
Please send the concept or pitch of your startup. Let me know a little about the culture and what you invasion.
To get a view of my style here is some of my work https://braysonware.wordpress.com/portfolio/
My email is in my bio. <comment><AUTHOR> I'm loving the concepts and pitches keep them coming and Ill try to help as many of you as I can!</comment>


75% of the US will suffer below-freezing temps this week - <AUTHOR> https://lite.cnn.io/en/article/h_396c1cebaabf10f1f4e74fdae10407d3 <comment><USER2> As someone from the midwest, below-freezing is no big deal(so suffer seems like a silly word). I'm curious how much will suffer below 0F(~-18C) this week. We certainly will, and the wind chill won't help.

<comment><USER3> Also midwest, and below freezing is fine and below 0 is annoying. This potential -60F windchill through Minnesota on Wednesday is terrifying. The worst I've ever experienced is -40 and it was brutal.

[https://www.accuweather.com/en/us/national/weather- forecast-...](https://www.accuweather.com/en/us/national/weather-forecast- maps?day=3) (third map)

<comment><USER4> Once the windchill gets beyond -40C/F it doesn't really matter anymore. Any exposed skin is just as frozen. Your eyelashes are still sticking together.

It would probably be better to just report it as some sort of "scarf required" zone followed by "scarf required and it might be a bit uncomfortable" zone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What do they mean by "suffer"? Isn't this normal in winter?

<comment><USER6> They wanted the 75% number, but if you look at e.g. the mid-west it's going to be insanely cold (I grew up there; it's expected to be cold right now, but this is something else.)

It's colder than it typically is almost everywhere, so for people who live in the north it's a big deal. For people who live in the south and don't plan for freezing temps... also a big-ish deal.

<comment><USER7> Fwiw, in South Dakota, where generally most winter days would be <0F, we've abnormally averaged well above that this winter. Our average is probably something closer to around 25-30.

Now, Wednesday, we'll be < -20F, which is cold, but nothing we haven't dealt with before and nothing entirely out of the normal. If anything, winter has been abnormally warmer for us.

<comment><USER8> Hi Berdon!

I grew up in Mitchell, but left about 30 years ago. As a youth, I had a paper route and vividly remember walking backwards on some cold days to keep the wind out of my face.

Good luck with this upcoming cold snap!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm from the midwest and it's been pretty darn cold the last few days. This week is supposed to have a low around -30. I live pretty far out in the country, so I've stocked up my truck with extra hats and coveralls (which I call my bunny suit), and an extra set of boots.

This morning I saw a few cars in the ditch after some ice last night, so stopped to see if anyone needed a ride or just to get out of the cold. In these temperatures, I try to be a little extra mindful of neighbors in need and helping people who are stranded.

Good news though, it's going to be much warmer this weekend, so something to look forward to!

</comment><comment><USER10> Weather patterns the past week have been very all over the place. It looks like we'll be in an El Niño weather pattern this winter/spring which will make it feel a bit warmer. The polar vortex also is spilling out due to the higher temperatures, which will ironically lead to cooler temperatures in Canada/US like the article mentions.

I'm sure this was linked to HN because of larger climate change concerns. Average global temperatures are increasing, but short term periods of warming and cooling are pretty cyclical.

<comment><USER11> Yep, weather != climate, and it goes both ways. Glad the article didn't try to push any climate aspect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's supposed to be -18 in mid-Illinois, with a windchill of -48. This typically happens once or twice a year - not fun, three days later it's supposed to be mid-50's.

Gotta love the 70+ degree swings.

I just want consistent weather, i.e. minimize the distance between the weekly minimum / maximum. Is that too much to ask?

<comment><USER13> Central Illinois was my first time experiencing freezing rain. Leaving work, everyone had to spend 30+ minutes chiseling an inch of ice off their windshield with their car blasting heat, while being rained on and whipped with strong wind.

<comment><USER14> That sheet of ice over your whole car isn't too bad if you can figure out the right amount of force to crack the ice without also cracking your windshield. :D

One day last week I spent my time after work removing it off my car, then driving to where my friend works, and removing it off her car too.

<comment><USER13> Yeah... Gripping and flipping a sheet of ice off a windshield is surprisingly satisfying.

<comment><USER15> Same feeling here 4000 miles away from US, that's probably just an old almost forgotten reflex from the last ice age

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The actual headline is "75% of the US _population_ " \- something really rather different indeed.

<comment><USER17> 75% of the US Land Area would be kind of a snoozer headline since that would include Alaska.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Below freezing is nothing, but the people who understand this will see temperatures FAR below that.

</comment><comment><USER19> Living in Ohio, we're well equipped to handle this. Will be thinking about everyone else who may not be use to these types of conditions. Stay smart, safe, and somehow warm everyone!

</comment><comment><USER20> Meanwhile, in Oz, we are having one of the hottest Summer on record.

</comment><comment><USER21> Its a great week to live in the Bay Area.

<comment><USER22> Tomorrow's forecast is 2-3 inches of auto window glass in most parking lots.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> and if you're wondering, that's probably 100% for us canadians lol

</comment><comment><USER24> How many homeless people in the US are dying per day under such conditions?

<comment><USER19> This may be a good place to start: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5739436/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5739436/)

Conclusion: Our results indicate excessive mortality among the homeless as well as the weak and rather typical influence of atmospheric conditions on mortality rates in this subpopulation, except for a greater risk of cold related deaths than in the general population... Deaths caused by hypothermia were thirteen-fold more frequently recorded among the homeless than for the general population. A relative risk of death for a homeless person even in moderate cold stress conditions is higher (RR = 1.84) than in thermoneutral conditions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Big thank you for that lite.cnn.io URL variant.

Very apropos to HN. The home page is beautiful: [http://lite.cnn.io/en](http://lite.cnn.io/en)

<comment><USER26> I disagree, the lite edition significantly deteriorated my user experience.

On a wide 4K monitor, the text is not centred, stretching from the far left to the far right, making it very difficult to continuously read a sentence from left to right. Limits like 80 characters per line exist for a reason.

The text is formatted in a very annoying manner, line by line, sentence by sentence, like it was spit out by a debugger in a terminal. I'm trying to compare this to the experience of reading a column in a newspaper with proper typography and visual layout.

The page already loads a css stylesheet which is mostly empty, for whatever reason, and also tries to load an analytics plugin with javascript, so I don't see the reason to omit basic stylesheets to at least make it readable.

Compared to the "full" version with an adblocker, even with JS disabled, in my eyes it's still a significant step down.

<comment><USER27> It was not meant for a 4k desktop. It was meant for mobile devices.</comment></comment></comment>


Scientists discover chemistry that may help explain the origins of cellular life - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2019-07-scientists-chemistry-cellular-life.html <comment><USER2> A fascinating study that tries to solve the most difficult problem in the origin of life: bootstrapping. Nobody has been able to explain how the multitude of complex organic molecules needed to support life got there in the first place.

It's a little like we're trying to reconstruct modern industrial civilization by assuming Dow Chemical exists whenever necessary. Dow and the entire chemical industry arose from a bootstrapping process in which simple feedstocks become ever more complex inputs to ever more specialized industries. The Industrial Revolution would have been impossible without it.

This study looks at the ability of alpha-hydroxy acids to spontaneously assemble semi-permeable compartments ("microdroplets") that could have played an early role, concentrating reactive species and enabling reactions that couldn't take place otherwise. As such, they'd serve as a kind of scaffolding. Useful for a time, and then discarded with the appearance of better structures.

Four out of 5 of these candidates (which are all hydroxy analogs of amino acids), are chiral. The rate of formation, permeability, and durability of the compartments formed might expected to depend on the enantiomeric purity of the starting hydroxy acids.

Surprisingly, the study apparently says nothing about enantioenrichment of the alpha-hydroxy acids. Then again, the study only begins to scratch the surface of what this new chemical system might be capable of.

AFAICT, this is a brand new, highly hackable chemical system with vast potential not just in the origin of life, but across chemistry and biology.

So far, the study only demonstrates inclusion of dyes. The real test will be to get these things to facilitate reactions that would not occur in the surrounding medium.

<comment><USER3> I really like the idea of this as a scaffold for collecting lipids for the first cell membranes. It seems likely to me that there would need to be some relatively simple compound responsible. The fact this is present in meteorites gives me some confidence that it must be a compound that forms fairly easily. Once again, the "improbability of life" just got a little more probable.

<comment><USER4> What ecosystem would provide lipids in those times btw ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Since reading it somewhere in the distant past, I have become convinced that the moon played a vital part in the origin of life, by creating the tides. Picture a coastline in early Earth. Tide washes up a bunch of chemicals that get baked in a warm sun, while simultaneously getting exposed to a harsh atmosphere with plenty of energy surges (volcanic/atmospheric). Tide washes in a bunch of fresh chemicals to reiterate the process. Rinse & repeat a few hundred billion times.

Given the rarity (AFAIR) of moons as large as ours orbiting planets as small as ours, that might also explain the apparent rarity of life in the cosmos.

<comment><USER6> One thing arguing against this is that there was little free atmospheric oxygen, and thus little ozone. According to Nick Lane in his book, "Oxygen", UV light at the surface of the earth was 30 times greater then than now.

Life has had a lot of time to build up mechanisms to protect against UV light [1], including sophisticated dna repair mechanisms and creating sophisticated antioxidants and regulation mechanisms.

But at the dawn of life, whatever self-catalyzing reaction which constituted the first replicators would have been extremely fragile and unlikely to tolerate baking as you suggest.

[1] In David Goodsell's book "The Machinery of Life", p.112, he mentions that when you stand in the midday sun without sunblock, UV light can cause adjacent cytosine and thymine rungs on the dna to cross link to each other. A repair mechanism sweeps the dna looking for this exact bond to unlink it before it gums up normal dna transcription activity. How often does it happen? 50 to 100 times per second ... per exposed cell.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the book recommendations— right up my alley as I very much enjoyed Lane's "Vital Question" too.

<comment><USER6> The full title of the first book is "Oxygen, The molecule that made the world", and was published in 2002. I'm not sure how much things have changed in the past 17 years, but presumably it is mostly still up to date.

The first half of the book is about the history of oxygen on the planet and interesting details on how we can know it. The second half of the book is about oxygen processes on life mostly at the cellular level but also some at the whole-organism level.

The book is pretty dense but it is fill with enough interesting ideas, such as why it is believed that cells had developed the ability to produce antioxidants before there was much free atmospheric oxygen. There is a discussion of how can it be that at every cellular division there is a certain fraction of transcription errors, yet the germ line still can pass on for billions of generations and still produce a healthy population.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The problem is that once you start to appreciate the immense complexity in a single, most basic cell, you realize how far away we are from understanding how life got started.

This article would be comparable to some future generation trying to figure out how our computers were made and then stumbling upon factory that could make the cases. The case is important, but relatively trivial part of the machinery. Similarly, the cell membrane is critical (not just important), but very simple compared the molecular machines (and more) involved in all cells.

Personally, I think if someone researches the physics/chemistry/biology deeply enough, he'll get to the conclusion that abiogenesis not possible naturally with the physical laws we have now. I believe this is an opening for a proof that this world is really a simulation.

Anyone else feel like that?

<comment><USER9> I find it funny that people would rather believe in the matrix/simulation rather than God

<comment><USER10> I'm not sure how the simulation theory even solves anything. It just pushes the problem to the simulator. I guess the assumption is maybe the simulator is much less complex, so makes the problem disappeared through our ignorance about the simulator, which is just the 'god of the gaps' fallacy in techno speak.

<comment><USER9> The simulator is not less complex, the difference is that the simulator is not subjected to the same limitations/rules/laws of our universe.

You either choose the universe itself to be infinite (always have and always will exist) which contradicts all our observations about it, or you assume a higher entity (outside the universe) that is infinite (always have and always will exist).

The third option (nothing infinite) means we wouldn't exist at all, because if there's no "start" then you go into an infinite loop trying to find a start and nothing happens. But since we are actually here, then third option is out, and only the second option (higher entity) makes logical sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> We'll probably never know for certain, but we are getting closer to models that can account for abiogenesis. It might not have a tangible impact on daily life, but most people would like to know how the whole life thing got started. Is there any practical use for this research? Maybe terraforming?

<comment><USER12> It's a start to "nanites" as seen in sci-fi.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> As an aside, when reading this I considered a fun alternative theory (I'm not actually proposing it as any kind of truth) that if it's ultimately discovered that the processes behind the creation of life are just too complex to be duplicated in our universe...

...Rather than invoking a god which comes with its own problems (i.e. who/what created the creator) one could infer that life came from a universe where the physics/conditions for creating life are possible, and life somehow crossed branes moving from one universe to the next.

Consider a reverse/inverted universe where instead of space being a void, space is solid containing voids/cavities/pathways between voids, allowing complex chemical processes to occur naturally and at great scale.

</comment><comment><USER14> Stuart Kauffman ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Kauffman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Kauffman)) has long maintained that the complexity of biological systems and organisms results from self-organization, far-from-equilibrium dynamics, and the inherent fundamental properties of chemistry, particularly carbon chemistry. In his view, the origins of cellular life are baked into the fabric of the universe.</comment>


The ambitious plan behind FB's cryptocurrency, Libra - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/ambitious-plan-behind-facebooks-cryptocurrency-libra/ <comment><USER2> > So far there are 28 partners, including payment networks like Visa and > Mastercard; fintech firms like PayPal, Coinbase and Stripe; VCs like Thrive > and Andreessen Horowitz; NGOs like Kiva and Women's World Banking; telecoms > like Vodafone; and software services like eBay, Lyft, Uber and Spotify.

There are many companies that would have made a huge deal if this was their proposal: think, for example, Amazon, Ikea, AliExpress.

And, of course, they are competitors. But if the facebook proposal is really that open source, open capital, and anyone can join the fund, can be heard, can vote and can implement the transactions on their plattaform... well, take just Amazon or Aliexpress and it will be good news for consumers worldwide.

Governments, on the other hand, won't like that _that much_. I don't know if they will be able to regulate/outlaw such currency, and there will come hard times of legal battles over it. But, for the first time, I see a real and strong use for criptocoins.</comment>


QuakeJS – A Quake Port to JavaScript with Emscripten - <AUTHOR> http://www.quakejs.com/ <comment><USER2> EDIT: This appears to have died, now that the content servers for quakejs have died. My servers are no longer starting anymore :(. For those reading on later, there was peak of 10 on both servers just before it went down

      ioq3 1.36_GIT_4f7d7bf-2014-02-01 emscripten- Feb 23 2014
      ----- FS_Startup -----
      Error: Failed to download and parse manifest, Couldn't load
      http://content.quakejs.com/assets/manifest.json. Status: 500

\---

Giving that at the time of viewing, the multiplayer servers are down, have some of mine:

[http://www.quakejs.com/play?connect%20188.8.131.52:27967](http://www.quakejs.com/play?connect%2022.214.171.124:27967)

[http://www.quakejs.com/play?connect%20188.8.131.52:27966](http://www.quakejs.com/play?connect%2022.214.171.124:27966)

You will want to:

Go into settings via esc and set your name, and maybe also turn the game down, it's quite loud by default. Maybe also mouse sensitivity too.

<comment><USER3> [https://openarena.live/](https://openarena.live/)

Here's a link to the open source version of Quake called Open Arena, compiled to WASM and using WebRTC for matchmaking.

<comment><USER4> The use of [https://kosmi.io/](https://kosmi.io/) here is what I found more interesting. I've never heard of this service before but it's a great idea. Reminds me of some much less...polished chat services I've used in the past to group-watch videos. It's nice to see the concept fleshed out more with a public lobby and a Discord-like client.

<comment><USER5> Kosmi launched a bit ago, I first heard about it around a week ago on HN.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There is a doom 3 port to wasm too

[https://wasm.continuation-labs.com/d3demo/](https://wasm.continuation- labs.com/d3demo/)

<comment><USER7> The last "real" Doom imho. Although both Doom 2016 and the new Doom Eternal look and run amazingly well, the thing with weapon alternate firing modes and weapon mods are just not my cup of tea. I don't want a shotgun that fires grenades and has full auto modes and whatever the hell the other mods do. They lost a bit of the nostalgia with all those extras, or maybe I'm just getting too old (?).

This browser port runs really great, when the game came out it was one of those that made people have to completely migrate to the next generation of hardware.

<comment><USER8> I share similar feelings. I feel like Doom 2016 (and Eternal) are more of a sequel to Brutal Doom (a popular mod for original Doom games adding finishing moves, over the top weapons and over the top gore/violence effects).

I've always viewed original Doom as more of a survival horror. People laugh now, but Doom was a genuinely scary game back when it released. Gamers nowadays obviously won't be scared by it. They also might play on lower difficulty levels or with cheatcodes. So rather than "you are stuck here with the demons", most gamers will play it as "the demons are stuck here with you", and this is what Doom 2016 reflects.

<comment><USER9> I have to disagree. Anyone who played DooM and DooM II more than just a single time through the campaign is more likely to view the originals as bullet ballets rather than as survival horror. DooM levels that seemed "scary" were only scary because demons could jump out at you and give you a jump scare. Once you know where the monster closets are, it's not that scary anymore.

If you played the original's multiplayer at all, then you'll remember how quick and frenetic it was and how that changed the play style for the single player levels. The new games reflect that much better than Doom 3, imo.

<comment><USER10> Totally agree, the thing about Doom is the movement and the speed. I watched a few hours of Doom eternal and within 2 minutes of watching the physics, my only thought was "this is Quake".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Quake's source code is very hackable. I forked ioquake3 for a personal project and it was surprisingly easy to add WebRTC support to the C codebase, so you could play it in your browser over WebRTC :)

<comment><USER12> What was your experience with WebRTC?

I read some people tried to use it for multiplayer, but the performance suffered with more than 10 players.

<comment><USER11> Only played it with my friends, don't think a map ever exceeded 10 players. So I can't say much about scaling - although it was a client-server model over UDP and not peer to peer networking.

<comment><USER12> Ah, so you had a WebRTC datachannel between the clients and the server?

<comment><USER11> Basically yes, a custom datachannel implementation. Haven't updated it lately, but it's up at [https://github.com/seemk/WebUDP](https://github.com/seemk/WebUDP)

<comment><USER12> Pretty cool.

You don't happen to have some ping comparisons betwen WebRTC and WebSockets?

<comment><USER11> Sadly no, but I don't think there's much of a ping difference on a good network. With WebRTC (datachannels in UDP mode) you just get the benefits of UDP (or lack thereof :)).

<comment><USER12> I see.

I had the impression UDP would lower the average ping, because you wouldn't have to wait on lost packages like with TCP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is great. Does anyone remember quakelive? Around 2010 it was playable in the browser via a browser plugin. Loved playing it on my macbook. I don't recall if the plugin was flash or a java applet but when support stopped for those quakelive moved to steam as a desktop app.

Edit: Per wikipedia it used NAPI [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quake_Live](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quake_Live)

<comment><USER14> Not sure the specifics, but I don't think it was flash or java because you had to install a native extension.

<comment><USER13> Ah it looks like you are correct. It used the NAPI. Per wikipedia:

> In November 2013, citing the planned deprecation of NPAPI browser plug-ins > by major browsers, Quake Live began to phase out its browser version and > began migrating to a standalone client. However, this change necessitated > the removal of OS X and Linux support from the game.

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

Now I remember why I stopped playing as I only had a macbook at the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I did a few game jams with my flat mate years ago, and I was really impressed what is possible with the web in terms of game development.

Because of game pad support and fullscreen the browser worked superb for couch-coop/local multiplayer games, but the high latency network support of browsers made it kinda hard to do online multiplayer games.

Which is kinda ironic, because the browser is made for online interactions.

</comment><comment><USER15> Disappointed to find out this is not Quake 1

<comment> kube-system Why? Quake III was the best Quake.

<comment><USER16> It depends on when you discovered the game and what you played most. Quake I was the first "true" 3D game (with levels that could stack rooms vertically), and many people remember it very fondly. Personally, I really enjoyed Quake II. I did play Quake III when it came out, but the lack of a single player mode meant the game had no backstory at all.

<comment><USER17> When Q3 came out everyone was bored of single player. It looked like the whole industry was going that way and that single player FPS was pretty much dead. Then Half-Life was released and blew everyone's minds. I don't think anyone has been able to craft an experience like HL to this day, it's like they just "get" how interactive fiction should feel rather than being a shoot-em-up interspersed with cutscenes.

<comment><USER7> This is wrong, Half Life was released in 1998, quake 3 arena in 1999.

<comment><USER18> And then came Unreal - the most advanced single-player shooter of that time.

<comment><USER7> Not exactly, Unreal the single player game is also from 1998.

If you meant Unreal Tournament, it was released November 22nd 1999, just a few days before Quake 3 Arena that was released on December 2nd 1999. UT was also mostly a multiplayer arena type game like q3a. It was a really hyped up battle of giants back then between those two. Good times.

EDIT: corrected release dates after checking wikipedia

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> My understanding is that action-oriented multiplayer games in browsers have always suffered because they can't use UDP. How does this achieve multiplayer from a networking perspective?

<comment><USER20> HTTP/2 with stream prioritization and server push kinda replaces the need for UDP.

We can't allow UDP to be sent directly from browsers because that would enable any random bit of JavaScript you load to launch a DDoS attack.

<comment><USER21> HTTP/2 doesn't replace the need for UDP at all, not in the slightest. For latency-sensitive applications, it provides no advantages over HTTP that I can tell.

The problem is with TCP, and the problem with TCP is that it prioritizes in- order delivery, and missed packets cause head of line blocking. HTTP/2 is designed to solve head of line blocking, but since it's built on top of TCP, it can't solve the issue in this case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> A thread from 2014: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7247307](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7247307)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20140301184841/http://www.inolen...](https://web.archive.org/web/20140301184841/http://www.inolen.com/articles/compiling- quake-3-virtual-machines-to-javascript/)

</comment><comment><USER23> All I get is Cross-Origin Request Blocked: The Same Origin Policy disallows reading the remote resource at [http://content.quakejs.com/assets/manifest.json](http://content.quakejs.com/assets/manifest.json). (Reason: CORS header 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' missing).

</comment><comment><USER24> If I wanted to learn to write browser-based games what would be a good place to start? I know some JavaScript but am not particularly enamoured with the language. Should I learn TypeScript plus some framework? (React?) Or how about something functional like Elm?

<comment><USER25> Frameworks aren't very relevant for games. I'd go with Typescript (because it will tell you about some errors earlier and provide code completion support if properly set up) and WebGL. Then do everything in the canvas and essentially ignore the fact that you have a browser with a DOM etc.

An option is to target WASM and write the game in Rust or C++, using Emscripten WebGL bindings. This is harder but allows you to write high performance games that would run too slow in Javascript.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Impressive port. I still remember back in the day, when setting a background image in Windows resulted in a big performance hit.

</comment><comment><USER27> PSA: The game broke my laptop's speakers in 10 seconds.

I'm grateful that my laptop speakers are easily serviceable.

</comment><comment><USER28> Wasn't quake ported to JS via the Java version like 10 years ago?

[https://code.google.com/archive/p/quake2-gwt- port/](https://code.google.com/archive/p/quake2-gwt-port/)

Still, it's cool to see it ported via other means.

<comment><USER29> Yup, it was done with Google Web Toolkit, mostly By Stephen Haustein and Joel Webber (I contributed the OpenAL emulation and some other bits of code)

Here's a deep dive we did at Google I/O on it [https://youtu.be/aW-- Wlf9EFs](https://youtu.be/aW--Wlf9EFs)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Wow this really runs like crap on Android!

Is there no way to control it without a mouse? After dropping in, I could hear sounds in the level room, with occasional odd crackle distortion.

Pretty cool.

[https://i.imgur.com/1LvPTWh.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/1LvPTWh.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER31> This reminds me of my port of Quake 1 to Rockbox (for MP3 players): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22162834](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22162834)

<comment><USER32> Completely off topic: do you have a Rockbox-compatible, dumb, tiny, cheap music player to recommend for running? I burned through three or four Sansa Clips and Sansa Clip Pluses over the years, but those lines are now discontinued (and I refuse to participate in the scalping refurbished market), and my last one just died.

<comment><USER31> The AGPTek Rocker is one of our last targets still in production and can be acquired for around $50. I haven't used one myself, but from what I hear it's fairly decent but not perfect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Yep, that's really awesome. Quick question: If one implemented the whole thing again, using three.js or even raw webgl, would it be more performant that the compiled javascript version?

</comment><comment><USER34> Controls don't work on FF74 / Webrender / Wayland.

The browser reports the mouse as captured, but mouse movement and movement keys have no effect. Click to shoot does work though.

(Chrome works fine)

<comment><USER35> FF74 on Windows works great, so it sounds like it's something specific to that setup. Can't use Wayland on my Linux laptop, but I should at least try this on that config to see if it works on X.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Wow! Q3F! That was my absolute favorite game back in the day, and I was always sad how it fell off. I couldn't get a game loaded here yet, but looking forward to it.

</comment><comment><USER37> There goes my week -- this runs wicked smoothly in my browser.

<comment><USER38> Even on my Thinkpad W510 from 2010(!) it runs very smoothly – incredible. If only it were as good security-wise… (no TLS?!)

<comment><USER39> What are the threats from not having TLS? There's no information to protect here is there?

<comment><USER38> There is always something to protect – in this case, your browser and your system. How about zero-days in WebAssembly that a man in the middle might exploit?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I get a "A mutation operation was attempted on a database that did not allow mutations." when I try to start any match.

<comment><USER41> If you are using Firefox, I think this is the related issue (IndexedDB not working in private mode): [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=781982](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=781982)

<comment><USER40> Yup, FF in a private window. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I've picked up working on this if anyone needs any help configuring.

</comment><comment><USER43> I wish Quake Live had never been killed off.

<comment><USER44> check out [https://openarena.live](https://openarena.live) :)

it allows playing quake3 in-browser and even allows hosting your own server over webrtc

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> The fact that this can now be run in a browser on a laptop rather than a high end gaming rig is indeed amazing.

<comment><USER46> It was already possible in 2011, but alas politics.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQiUP2Hd60Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQiUP2Hd60Y)

[https://adobe-flash.github.io/crossbridge/](https://adobe- flash.github.io/crossbridge/)

<comment><USER47> ... the issues with Adobe Flash are quite a bit more varied than "politics." At best, it was always a drag on mobile platforms, reducing battery life and hogging resources, and at worst it's pretty much best known now for its security issues that ultimately helped further its demise. If you want to go a step further, in 2011 you could also have probably delivered your game as an NPAPI extension and got pure native code instead. You could deliver these via extensions, even in Chrome.[1]

Native Client also came to fruition in 2011, and Firefox chose not to support it. I doubt many would chalk that up to just politics, either, but I think it's fair to compare.

[1]: [https://developer.chrome.com/apps/npapi](https://developer.chrome.com/apps/npapi)

<comment><USER46> Apple speech I guess.

It was perfectly fine on any Symbian and Android device I got to play with, and much better than J2ME ever was.

<comment><USER48> One time I accidentally left SpinControl.app on for a week and went about my business (SpinControl, RIP, was an app that logged stack traces any time an app didn't flush its event queue for more than a few seconds -- i.e. caused a beachball). A week later I came back and checked it to find something truly astounding: with hundreds of logged spins, 100% of them were due to flash. Usually in Safari, but sometimes in other embedded webkit contexts. You would expect a few spins to creep into that list from other causes, and indeed I triggered one with a mail index rebuild just to be make sure it was watching more than the browser process, but no, SpinControl was working fine. 100% of the beachballs in the last week were due to flash's suckiness, to say nothing of power usage or security.

Flash's performance issues, at least on the mac, were very real. Good riddance.

> much better than J2ME ever was.

If you lower the bar to the ground anyone can jump over it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Amazed that this runs on mobile too (but no controls). Wow!

</comment><comment><USER50> while this is neat, the mouse input is complete garbage, but its a zero friction way to show someone the mods I guess

</comment><comment><USER51> very cool. may have to add instagib mode to this

</comment><comment><USER52> Please, somebody port Quake 1 to iOS.

</comment><comment><USER53> Now go win some $$ on

nanoquakejs.com

</comment><comment><USER54> Oh. My. God.

This is amazing.

<comment><USER55> Best thing: You can play at work! I did that for some time when I was bored

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Another interesting implementation of Quake in the browser is this: [https://openarena.live/](https://openarena.live/)

</comment><comment><USER57> This is how news site will look like in 5 years (tech wise not appearance wise). Good luck running adblock on it.

<comment><USER18> Good point, actually. How do you disable a poster on a wall which is rendered as part of a texture inside a 3D game?

<comment><USER9> There have been plenty of ways to inject textures into games to replace the ones that are built into it. In online games, like this one, all it takes is a host file that redirects the texture addresses with something else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I guess this is cool. Not a big fan of "port everything to the browser" though. I really don't want gaming to go any more in the direction of SaaS than it already is. There is already too much rent-seeking.

<comment><USER59> Where is the rent-seeking involved in this decision?

<comment><USER58> In the future, where every stupid little software program runs in the cloud, and private ownership of bits is history. My wallet dies by death from a thousand cuts and I have no ability to peek at game internals or tinker with data files

<comment><USER60> Sounds like just about every "cosmetic" premium currency microtransaction "live service" "episodic" triple A video game that's come out in awhile and they didn't even need the browser to do it!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Python traits: improving composability of object oriented programming - <AUTHOR> http://code.enthought.com/traits/#traitsui

<comment><AUTHOR> It's hard to summarize traits in the headline.

Here is an academic paper describing them:

[http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~scg/Archive/Papers/Scha03aTraits.pd...](http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~scg/Archive/Papers/Scha03aTraits.pdf)

They were originally built for smalltalk, but apparently there is now a python library. I gave it a try, it's actually pretty nice.

Basically, traits provide reusable components of behavior that are not tied to classes. It's pretty sweet. It lets you do things like delegate data members/methods to other objects.

For instance:

        class employee(HasTraits):
            employer=Trait(company)

        class manager(employee):
            hire=Delegate('employer','hire')

This code causes an employee to have an employer data member, which MUST be a company object. So far, just static typing (checked at runtime).

The manager subclass of an employee has a "hire" method. But a manager doesn't hire employees himself; instead, he hires employees on behalf of his employer. So boss.hire(emp) is delegated to the boss's employer, and is equivalent to boss.employer.hire(emp).

It has lots of other cute features like this as well. Take a look.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you learn python or your preference language? - <AUTHOR> I'm trying to learn python and I would love to know how you guys learn, what you build for practice your language or framework? <comment><USER2> [https://realpython.com/blog/python/learn-python-the- methodic...](https://realpython.com/blog/python/learn-python-the-methodical- way/)

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks</comment></comment>


A Quality Assurance engineer joke - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/brenankeller/status/1068615953989087232 <comment><USER2> Would I be reading too much into this by noting that the engineer never actually tries the beer?</comment>


A USB charger in a coverplate - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/snappower/snappower-charger-a-usb-charger-in-a-coverplate-no <comment><USER2> I have several of these.

[http://sockitz.com.au/m/index.php/classic-sockitz-white- usb-...](http://sockitz.com.au/m/index.php/classic-sockitz-white-usb- powerpoints.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> 1 amp no thanks.</comment>


Ask HN: Best ways to monetize a developer audience? - <AUTHOR> How to make developers perceive value in a product? <comment><USER2> As much as it pains me to say this: recruiters are probably willing to pay highest-dollar for access to that audience. So letting recruiters run ads on your product, or creating some sort of native-advertising platform for recruiters will likely mean the highest short-term revenue for you.

...it just might alienate all your users in the process.

<comment><USER3> This is a great suggestion as long as you don't give recruiters access directly.

Talk to recruiters, ask them for good jobs that you yourself add to a curated job board that your dev audience has access to.

You can probably negotiate ~$300-500 per referral to the recruiter that works out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Are you aiming at developers as developers, or developers as employees who can put the company credit card details into your SaaS signup?

For the latter, you just need an honest service that would make their team's job easier.

A license for Sublime Text costs $70. I don't know how much money they make, but it's a popular product. The value perceived there is probably something like "I know it costs money to develop and maintain a highly polished, I'm willing to pay to support a tool I use every day, and I'm honestly kinda fatigued with all these ancient open source editors so take my money and give me a clean nice text editing experience."

<comment><USER5> Sublime Text is interesting, in that you also get unlimited usage without paying. That was helpful at a time when I didn't have a lot of client work coming in, and it helped me bootstrap into better work. Once I had solid client work coming in again, it felt like Sublime had helped me get there, and Sublime suddenly felt incredibly underpriced, so much less than an hour's work. There's incentive then to buy it to make sure they keep working on it, to get rid of the nag screens that occasionally slowed me down, and it looks & feels far more professional when you're not using unregistered trials as part of your work!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Developers will see value in a product if they use it or see it being used and realise it could improve their work. Less about 'perception' of value.

More, is this something that will help me enough that it's worth the time of integrating it into my work flow.

As mentioned in another comment, it also depends who's money it is as to how that value tradeoff looks. The company they work for or their own.

</comment><comment><USER7> You don't charge developers, you charge either their boss (SaaS), or people trying to hire them (recruiting).

</comment><comment><USER8> They need a business interest beyond coding. The right person asks, Who buys the product and why? What is the running cost and where are the expensive transaction fees. They need to care about money to understand value. Some developers just enjoy coding and being an employee.

</comment><comment><USER9> you have to figure out what their worldview is. Once you figure this out, what is perceived as value becomes apparent.</comment>