If PG and YC are such awesome hackers, why does news.yc use spacer GIFs? - <AUTHOR>

Spacer gifs are present on paulgraham.com as well. C'mon mang, it's 2007, not 1997. CSS and semantic markup are the way to go. <comment><USER2> One of the speakers at our YC session had a great quote: "It just doesn't matter." The site delivers interesting stories and commentary on a topic I care about - who cares what HTML it uses?

<comment><USER3> Exactly. Spacer gifs may be lame, but I don't think that they have held back the site much, so no need to worry.

I think it's a kind of religious thing, and having successful sites around that don't follow the rules threatens their religion. [http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2007/06/dogmatic- programmer...](http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2007/06/dogmatic-programmer- when-software.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Because we're smart enough to realize that html is object code?

For all I know, my macroexpansions are ugly too. The whole point is that I don't have to look at them.

<comment><USER5> HTML is object code only because you don't have a dedicated designer who wants to make design decisions and changes without requiring the programmer's time. For news.yc that's fine, but for many business sites, having HTML automatically generated in a designer-opaque manner is inconvenient. Eventually you want to hand off the design to someone who is good at design, and having to find someone good at design and good at the programming language you use limits the pool of designers.

The usual alternative to html-as-object-code is to use a template system, but template systems seem to move as a group (and individually during development) toward being a way to write your usual language, but surrounded by HTML, which has the same problems I outline above, since the designer still has to mess with what's really application code. I suppose this is because template systems are usually designed by programmers, for programmers.

<comment><USER6> I think you missed the part where he doesn't give a shit.

<comment><USER5> You may notice if you look around that much of the time when someone replies to someone else (in any context, not specifically news.yc) they are saying something they wanted to say or like saying, rather than expecting to change someone's mind.

In fact, there are many, many exceptions to my general rule that you'd want to eventually turn over HTML/CSS/design stuff to a designer, and news.yc is one, probably. But the vast majority of _my_ projects are no exception, and I'm fortunate to be married to a designer with strong opinions on the matter, so I get good feedback. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Furthermore, links which appear to perform non-idempotent actions (voting) which are sent as GET requests seem kind of sketchy.

Ever hear the horror story about what happens when Google rolls through your CMS that has the "delete" button as a link?

<comment><USER7> Voting and deletion are both idempotent, they just aren't side-effect free. The weaker condition of idempotence is all you need for GET, because it's sufficient for guaranteeing that caching won't break things. The solution to the problem with Google is to not let anonymous users delete pages irrevocably.

<comment><USER8> That's a good distinction. I had to look up the HTTP 1.1 RFC, 2616 and read section 9.1.1 "Safe Methods" to note that while what you're saying is correct, the RFC does strongly discourage... well, here:

In particular, the convention has been established that the GET and HEAD methods SHOULD NOT have the significance of taking an action other than retrieval. These methods ought to be considered "safe". This allows user agents to represent other methods, such as POST, PUT and DELETE, in a special way, so that the user is made aware of the fact that a possibly unsafe action is being requested.

Naturally, it is not possible to ensure that the server does not generate side-effects as a result of performing a GET request; in fact, some dynamic resources consider that a feature. The important distinction here is that the user did not request the side-effects, so therefore cannot be held accountable for them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> CSS is ugly. For anyone who's used it throughout the years, it was consistently poorly-documented and incompatible across different browsers. Standards compliance? What's that?

A lot of deprecated methods are still used because they work reliably, whereas the replacement often didn't, until much, much later. People remember the pain and bugginess and so you lose the early adopters even if the problems eventually get fixed. Cf. Apple III, g++, MySQL.

<comment><USER10> I agree. I cannot stand CSS fanboys one bit.

CSS is awesome for many things--but blindly using it everywhere isn't a smart choice.

<comment><USER11> Css is hell with shiny gradients.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Validating XHTML Strict does not increase your valuation.

</comment><comment><USER13> It's hard to comment in this one i think. Yes, it's lame to use spacer GIFs as a design standpoint, with all web community try to separate meaningless technique's (tables, spacers,  etc...) from documents.

However for this web site, Yes it just doesn't matter.The functionality become more important.There is news link and comment section with a clean interface. Not much black ink.

If you are in this situation, it doesn't matter but with your new startup's i think its better stick with the notion of separating mark-up with design.

I can't keep silent to those anti-css comments but don't know where to start...i think web started as a way of exchanging "documents" between computers. So in basic terms what you see in your screen is "a document" so it should be seen as " a document". without css in html code what you see is...well some kind of hectic ASCII art.

"It is a valuable thing if your page seen as a document"

i sometimes think that, under the supervision of PG, a small design team (designer, info. arch. & UI person) "may" help founded startups to achieve better in their goals.

</comment><comment><USER14> While we're on the issue of the news.yc user interface, here's something that pisses me off every time I view comments: the comment author's name is buried in a sentence-long thing of text, and hard to pick out. Make it more noticeable, please.

Paul basically said he doesn't give a shit, which is pretty stupid considering how many people visit the site regularly, and how poor the user interface is. Just because spacer gifs don't directly affect the content, those kinds of poor design techniques influence the user interface and make it crappy, which it has become. Paul, you know good designers-- get them to make it look good.

</comment><comment><USER15> Thank you for bringing the fact that Paul Graham's unreleased programming language does not yet have a mature web development framework to our attention.

</comment><comment><USER4> Slow news day.

<comment><USER16> No shit... I deal with programmers like this on a daily basis. These discussions are always kicked off in the name of "good design", or some such, but the view from where I'm sitting is that of a bunch o' corporate IT geeks that like nothing better than burning big piles of cash while providing little to no value.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've wondered about that, too. One guess: it makes the design harder to steal (but not harder to copy). With CSS, you can just reuse someone else's format -- not so with spacer .gifs.

<comment><USER18> Security through... obsolescence? =)

<comment><USER19> The last time pg had to do design work or perish (figuratively speaking) was ten years ago. It'll take him a while to get up to speed on all this new- fangled technology.

Besides, it works in all browsers, is reasonably accessible, and if it doesn't make him uncomfortable to work with it...why does anyone care?

<comment><USER20> I think there's some fairly clever stuff going on. The page source is pretty simple (yes, I'm sure we've ALL looked at it at one point). Take this function for instance:

function byId(id) { return document.getElementById(id); }

My guess is that the function body is rendered differently for different browsers. If that's true, it's a clever way of doing cross browser Javascript.

<comment><USER21> document.getElementById is generally pretty portable across browsers.

And another clever way of doing cross-browser JavaScript is just to use a mature JS library like Prototype or JQuery. They all give you byId for free, in the form of the $ function.

<comment><USER20> I'm with you there - prototype is first class stuff. I wasn't sure if getElementById was supported by Opera or Safari. If it is, it looks like byId() is good way to save some typing.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Ruby wrapper for LaTeXML - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Authorea/latexml-ruby <comment><USER2> I hadn't heard of LaTeXML before today. I've always simply used MathJax for my web-math needs.

So I set LaTeXML up and tried using it. I found it to be pretty easy to use, although I had to update a few things and install some perl modules. It turns out it is rather easy to convert directly from a .tex document to a MathML document. [This is using LaTeXML directly --- not through this ruby]

Something I noticed about using LaTeXML out of the box is that the resulting MathML has the original LaTeX as alt-text. So it is encoded in the page, and therefore (potentially) searchable. This is in start contrast to most MathML equations, which (can) look nice but which are neither text-searchable or easily copy-able.

Now I am a bit less-certain about my preference for MathJax instead of MathML. I wonder if anyone else has a strong preference and wouldn't mind sharing why you have that preference?

<comment><USER3> Disclaimer: I'm the author of the wrapper, and a LaTeXML and Authorea developer.

Indeed, LaTeXML has been producing great presentation MathML, since before MathJaX was created. But it's also a very different tool and the two projects are largely complementary, rather than competing. I'm happy to hear your first experiment went well, and as a note - most components, including and especially the math output, are highly configurable.

I recently counted [1] а 95% success rate by LaTeXML's math parsing on 350 million LaTeX formulas from arXiv.org. That number should be taken with a grain of salt, as it is a self-claimed parsing success, which may not necessarily mean correct+ideal MathML. But it quite often gets the job done great visually, and there is ongoing work to keep improving the coverage.

That said, MathJax has historically (and until very recently) fully embraced MathML itself, as MathML was used for its internal representation. The main problem that had/has to be solved on the web was the lack of _displaying_ MathML support in browsers [2], and MathJax addressed that extremely well, as you know. But if, for example, you create an HTML5+MathML document with LaTeXML, and enable MathJax on it, you will get as good a result as using MathJax on HTM5L+TeX documents.

At Authorea we use both of LaTeXML and MathJax for our formula support, as well as some alternative renderers such as KaTeX and MathQuill. It's sometimes a bit too big of a hassle to do something advanced however (see [3]), so there is still some way to go.

There are certain trade-offs to be considered, but I personally see MathML as an instrumental part of making math accessible, actionable (as a native part of the DOM) and interoperable, and am happy that both LaTeXML and MathJax have embraced it historically. The MathJax team is now officially out of patience with the browser stalemate in _displaying_ MathML, so they're looking for alternatives to move forward. Time will show how that goes I suppose...

[1] [http://prodg.org/talks/mnlp_billion_token_corpora#30](http://prodg.org/talks/mnlp_billion_token_corpora#30)

[2] [http://caniuse.com/#feat=mathml](http://caniuse.com/#feat=mathml)

[3] [http://prodg.org/blog/mathml_please](http://prodg.org/blog/mathml_please)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This looks like it just shells out[1] to a local executable.

It'd be remiss not to mention my own Ruby gem, [https://github.com/gjtorikian/mathematical](https://github.com/gjtorikian/mathematical). It does La/TeX conversions by wrapping C code, though admittedly, it only converts the math portions.

[1]: [https://github.com/Authorea/latexml- ruby/blob/798795f0631a29...](https://github.com/Authorea/latexml- ruby/blob/798795f0631a295ae2397718ad5c625eadb3faf3/lib/latexml.rb#L261)

<comment><USER3> If you're using it in daemon mode, it only shells out to boot a conversion server, and only if necessary.

From that point on it's sending very basic RESTful requests. I wouldn't recommend using latexml if you're interested in performance-critical math parsing.

Its best use case is converting entire LaTeX documents/fragments with arbitrarily complex package dependencies, macro definitions and any other power latex techniques.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is so complicated, why not just Markdown or straight up authoring in HTML?

<comment><USER6> Because actual documents are complicated? A version of Markdown capable of expressing all possible LaTeX constructs is roughly as complicated as LaTeX.

<comment><USER7> More so, I'd imagine, since some LaTeX constructs would almost certainly require an encoding to avoid confusing them with non-LaTeX Markdown constructs.</comment></comment></comment>


NGINX Plus R8, Out Now, Fully Supports HTTP/2, Field Tests OAuth2 - <AUTHOR> http://thenewstack.io/nginx-plus-r8-fully-supports-http2-tests-oauth2/ <comment><USER2> CloudFlare is using Nginx Plus?! I'm disappointed!</comment>


Live Coronavirus Map from Johns Hopkins - <AUTHOR> https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html <comment><USER2> This requires a login.</comment>


Microsoft Searches Jump 15% After Live Cashback Launch - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/18/microsoft-searches-jump-15-after-live-cashback-launch/ <comment><USER2> If anything, this is more evidence that search is now commoditized, and the difference maker is basically marketing. Your standard consumer probably cares a lot more about saving money than getting whatever incrementally better results Google might give them.</comment>


Richard Branson: My illustrated top 10 tips for success - <AUTHOR> http://www.virgin.com/richard-branson/my-illustrated-top-10-tips-for-success

<comment><USER2> I think that would make a nice poster to put on the wall of the office.</comment>


'Our minds can be hijacked': the tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/05/smartphone-addiction-silicon-valley-dystopia <comment><USER2> Robert Lustig has written an excellent book on this topic: "The Hacking of the American Mind."

I found that reading the book gave me good insights into how to be happier in my daily life.

If you're curious, his podcast on FT Alphachat is a good introduction and summary of his ideas: [https://overcast.fm/+FaTQX2SRE](https://overcast.fm/+FaTQX2SRE)</comment>


New kind of RNN connects every step with recurrent weighted average - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.01253 <comment><AUTHOR> Author here: A typo exist in equation (2). The index in the denominator should be "j". Thanks to ChuckSeven for pointing this out. The document was originally written in word and then transcribed into latex</comment>


JSweet version 2.0.0 released: new features for an open transpiler - <AUTHOR> http://www.jsweet.org/jsweet-version-2-0-0-has-been-released/ <comment><USER2> Two thoughts: I bet it wouldn't be that hard to make a canvas version of the android view library.

Also, I wish the projects would agree on a univeral browser api facade that worked across jsweet, teavm, gwt, doppio, etc. That would be great.</comment>


Khizr Khan cancels speech after told "travel privileges are being reviewed." - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/journorosa/status/838815925235232769 <comment><USER2> only tangentially related, but I recently had this idea for a short (very short) film: You see a person wake up in the morning, jump in the shower, brush teeth, eat breakfast, the whole morning routine... then they grab a briefcase or whatever and walk to their front door, which is locked. Instead of unlocking the door themselves and walking out, they ask out loud, "permission to leave the house?" [Close up of their face looking at the lock. Close up of the lock. Another close up of their face as they wait. Then a close up of the lock sliding back.] Then they open the door and walk out. Now it just needs a good title.</comment>


Show HN: Next.js and Apollo Example – Universally render your GraphQL app - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ads1018/next-apollo-example <comment><AUTHOR> Next.js offers universal rendering which is a huge win with regards to performance but coupled with the client side data caching that the graphql client, Apollo, gives you and your app's perceived performance goes through the roof.</comment>


Show HN: Rough.js simple lib to create hand-drawn, sketchy, scribbly graphics - <AUTHOR> https://roughjs.com/ <comment><USER2> Good stuff.. specially the SVG path drawing.</comment>


Ask HN: Zeppelin/Airship for urban transportation: why is no one using them yet? - <AUTHOR>

Suppose, you are in a crowded place like SF Bay area or Brazil's Sao Paulo or India's Mumbai..Why are people not using blimps for tansporting people instead of everyone driving their own cars or using land based transport? Aren't blimps safer and faster? And there won't be any traffic snarls. Is the technology not affordable yet? <comment><USER2> We had an airship here in the Bay Area until recently which (mostly) operated out of Moffett Field. You could go on flight seeing tours around the bay for a ridiculous amount of money. It closed down because it took a ground crew of around 20 people and couldn't fly half the time because SF gets a lot of fog or is overcast in the summer/winter months.

You can rent a Cessna 172 in Palo Alto with a flight instructor who can fly you on the same trip for about 1/4 the price (even less if you take some friends). Airships just don't make a lot of sense, even though they are pretty awesome.

Here's a link to their defunct website: [https://www.airshipventures.com/](https://www.airshipventures.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Zeppelin isn't safe, slow and not effective for mass passenger transport. Zeppelin can't hold many people in big city scale and/or short hop. Did you know how many passenger that can loaded on?

I prefer metro.

<comment><USER4> Recent article on Airship used for sightseeing :

[http://edition.cnn.com/2013/08/05/travel/paris-zeppelin- airs...](http://edition.cnn.com/2013/08/05/travel/paris-zeppelin-airship)

Compare the volume of the Zeppelin vs the number of passenger. If I remember correctly, it only take 7 passengers and it is rather slow to land and take off. So you have a lot of wasted time.

This really does not scale well when talking about big conurbations with millions of people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Archer: are you joking? What? rigid airships combine the pampering of a cruise ship With the speed of -- some other slightly faster ship? Uh, hello. airplanes? Yeah, it's blimps. you win.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've wondered about this while tossing around the idea with an old boss. LA is notorious for being a difficult place to build or expand a freeway, and the congestion problems are getting worse.

It seems you have to get them pretty high before you can travel very efficiently, so they don't work for going across cities. That's not even worrying about the local airports' airspace and the numerous tiny municipal airports. I don't know that these are intractable problems, though.

</comment><comment> workhere-io Because they're slow (compared to helicopters and airplanes), sensitive to bad weather, and take up a lot of space compared to the amount of passengers they can carry.

</comment><comment><USER7> There are probably many practical concerns, but another is that hydrogen airships are rather dangerous, and that there is a pending shortage of helium, the main alternative. The U.S. has a National Helium Reserve that holds 30% of the world's helium, and it is expected to run out before 2020 according to Wikipedia.

<comment><USER8> Hydrogen, helium, methane, ammonia and hot air are all capable of being used for aerostatic lift.

source: [http://airshiphangar.com/science.html](http://airshiphangar.com/science.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Slightly related: some super rich CEO's learn to fly helicopters and then commute to work via MD 500 series helicopters, aka "the littlebird".

They make a lot of sense in somewhere like LA!

</comment><comment><USER10> I believe Zeppelin's have gone the way of the steam engine for the same reason. It's simply an unstable platform of transportation. Steam engines used to blow up all the time and Helium is extremely flammable.

<comment><USER11> Helium is extremely expensive, rare and likely to escape Earth's atmosphere, but not reactive under any conditions I know of. Hydrogen, on the other hand, is extremely flammable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why you don't think about portal?</comment>


Web-knock allows only you to connect to your server - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Linkinverse/web-knock <comment><USER2> Why not just use wireguard or iptables?</comment>


Wirecard Scandal Puts Spotlight on Auditor Ernst and Young - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/wirecard-scandal-puts-spotlight-on-auditor-ernst-young-11593262823 <comment><USER2> I used to work at EY in banking & capital markets audit - before I went into engineering - and everyone learns that if there is one thing, ONE THING!!! that the auditor should always do, it is to send bank confirmation letters. You get a list of all the banks where accounts are held and send them a letter asking for confirmation of the balance. This proves existence of the balances and helps with completeness as sometimes they send back balances you didn't know about from the accounts! If the letters don't come back, you chase them because, in my experience, the partner would not sign off unless all cash was accounted for. There was always a significant risk associated with cash so providing a clear audit opinion in the absence of cash confirms is not a very smart move. Other procedures include checking reconciliations and "cut off" to make sure cash swept from one account to another is counted and / or not double counted. We would also get literally all the bank statements too and some poor graduate would have to "substantively audit" them. So yes... We used to do a lot of work in this area.

What happened with Wirecard? Who knows?! Seems like the team didn't do their job properly because in my experience, it's fairly easy to spot missing cash. And 1.9 billion of it...! The article states that EY didn't "verify cash balances"... I'm not sure what that means - "verify" is a dirty word in audit because it's not specific enough. I find it hard to believe they didn't send bank confirms but if they didn't then that's an unforgivable mistake.

It's also worth noting that auditors are not responsible for detecting fraud but clearly if something odd is going on and they find it, then it will be raised. In my experience most wrong things that we asked our clients to adjust were due to incompetence or over valuing illiquid securities.

<comment><USER3> TFA says

>company's cash was held in bank accounts it didn't control

I suspect that the accounts existed and had the cash, but the company wasn't the owner (or the sole owner) of the account.

<comment><USER2> This is normal and doesn't shed any light on the matter. Companies/individuals routinely hold cash in accounts they don't control. For example; Client money accounts and collateral/margin accounts. Either way, the auditors would have known what the arrangements were and factored it into their opinion. Even the credit risk of the bank holding the nostro accounts is taken into consideration.

Seems to me like Wirecard were running a large scale accounting fraud and EY were not "professionally sceptical" enough to see it.

What's not clear to me is whether any of the missing cash is client money or not. If it is then that's a bit of a disaster.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Auditing big firms is hard and to be honest, there's little general audits can do to detect fraud (nor is it even the main goal, forensic auditing is a different beast) and if management is intent to commit fraud, it will happen. But in this case the fraud didn't involve very complex and very opaque structures à la Enron where normal checks wouldn't have been sufficient. The crazy part here is that EY did not verify directly with the banks if the account statements were real, which is very basic and very easy to audit. They just took what Wirecard gave them to confirm what Wirecard told them for something as important as accounts that were supposed to hold almost _all the cash the company had_. Absolutely insane.

But the thing is EY , like all the big 4, have totally seperate entities for every country they operate in. Now that could mean EY Germany is an isolated case of incompetence and (criminal?) neglect, which would be very surprising considering that EY seems to be involved in a _lot_ of the recent big financial scandals. But it also means that they can't really be "taken down" and are basically immune from existential threats that could actually hurt them.

Yes, there's a partnership structure meaning people at the top of let's say EY Germany have the incentive to keep their credibility and avoid liabilities since they have a direct stake in the business. But considering how many perverse incentives there are ( one of these are low margins and high competition that can encourage having a cozy relationship with who you are auditing to keep the contract) in the auditing world, this opaque structure where EY itself can't lose much more than what it gained... You start understanding why this happen.

But even then EY still really stand out since the rest of the big firms have similar structures yet manage to be a lot more competent.

<comment><USER5> > _Auditing big firms is hard and to be honest, there 's little general audits > can do to detect fraud_

E&Y didn't verify cash balances at Wirecard for years, despite the fact there were whispers of fraud for years. Some fraud is hard; this kind is not "hard".

[https://www.ft.com/content/a9deb987-df70-4a72-bd41-47ed8942e...](https://www.ft.com/content/a9deb987-df70-4a72-bd41-47ed8942e83b)

<comment><USER4> Yes I completely agree... and I mentioned it in my comment! ;) When I said that auditing is hard, i meant that it's a painstaking process with a high employee turnover, isn't gratifying, at all and that doesn't and can't catch everything.

In some cases, I truly don't blame auditors when very sophisticated fraudulent schemes fall apart since a part from the basic checks auditors are mostly there to verify the reported numbers match the internal numbers. If those internal numbers are fudged then there's little that can be done expect to some small degree with simple cross checks, of which even the simplest has not been done in this case. It takes _minutes_ to ask for a bank to confirm statements. I literally can't see how this doesn't involve colluding with EY to cook the books.

<comment><USER2> Unfortunately, it actually takes _months_ to send bank confirmations and receive all the replies. Mad, I know but that's the way it worked when I used to do it. The process involves sending snail mail to the banks who take ages to respond with the confirm response. Especially so because all auditors are sending them at the same time because it's year end.

There are some web platforms to help speed things up but most were and maybe still are rubbish.

<comment><USER6> But it's not months of work, it's months of doing other things and going through the checklist every few weeks to see what's missing and then calling them again or writing another letter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Companies hire their own auditors. No audit partner wants to have to go find new clients, so they bend over backwards to appease the existing one. The partners do the math of "I'd rather have a 1% chance of my client blowing up than a 50% chance of having to find replacement revenue is a zero sum game"

Unfortunately, what's rational for individual audit partners isn't rational for the firm as a whole. And this is why Enron/Anderson happened. And Wirecard.

<comment><USER8> Aren't they supposed to change every couple of years, under SOX, exactly to prevent auditors and clients becoming to intimate? Mind you, Wirecard was a German company, so SOX didn't apply.

Also, government oversight was kind of limited, it only applied to the German banking activities.

While SOX can be a pain, there are very valid reasons for it. Hopefully Germany learns its lesson and implements something similar after Wirecard.

<comment><USER9> You change partners, but that usually means it's the same partner working in the same group and so all know each other really well. Also, that doesn't mean anything since the team can stay the same. Partners would question the work and can look at it, but rarely any partner would bother to go into the bank statement and make sure the work is tied out. They are too "above" that. That responsibility falls onto the senior and managers, and in many instances incompetence or laziness from those staff will let things go through. It's very tedious work, and it's annoying to do the same thing for 8+ hours a day for a month or two. In the end, the team just want things to tie out, and make whatever documentation is necessary to make sense of things. No need to upset the client or partner and lose the potential business.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> All the auditors are a joke and the entire culture around the Big 4 auditors and the way its seen as a path to groom finance leaders is gross and shockingly wasteful. I've never worked with an auditor or consultant at a Big 4 that didn't seem like they were either being massively overpaid, didn't know what they were talking about, taking shortcuts, or just going through the motions of whatever was done in a previous audit. I don't think they are worth their salt. They have no investment to what they are doing because worst case scenario they screw things up and they get shuffled to another another client. I would rather do the work by myself or with a contractor. I've also seen execs at tech companies hiring consultants/auditors from companies where their spouse works or even oversees the practice, it just seems like a lot of companies don't question spending on consultants, but I've seen multiple times where we were billed for work we did ourselves and they tried to take credit or were just running down the clock on a contract and expecting their hours to be extended at the end of the contract period.

</comment><comment><USER11> The rest of the stack so far:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23638624](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23638624)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23611347](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23611347)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23573386](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23573386)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23598824](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23598824)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23438323](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23438323)

This, from a year ago, reads interestingly now: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19737344](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19737344)

</comment><comment><USER12> After watching a documentary on Enron, and the collapse of Arthur Anderson, I thought we were past this. But I am now wondering what the future looks like for auditors, and particularly the auditors involved at Wirecard. I'm looking forward to watching a documentary on this too, in 5-10 years but I feel bad for the honest employees there

<comment><USER13> Wirecard+Ernst&Young is a sequel to the Enron+ArthurAndersen documentary

> "60% of the total Andersen practices globally merged into Ernst & Young,"

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

<comment><USER4> And the rest rebranded to... Accenture. Interesting legacy

<comment><USER14> Accenture used to be Andersen Consulting, and was spun off long before the Enron scandal. Arthur Andersen accounting would have been absorbed by E&Y's accounting branch.

Accounting firms have huge conflicts of interest because companies are allowed to choose their own auditors, but when they also offer consulting services, the conflict becomes even more egregious.

<comment><USER15> Right. And IIRC Arthur Andersen and Accenture had been kinda hostile to each other for a long time. It was funny because they seemed pretty much like brother companies from outside eyes.

The trouble was that AA kept trying to invade the turf (= juicy consulting gigs) and it made partners of Accenture mad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> EY is responsible for Luckin Coffee too I believe

<comment><USER17> Also responsible for the WoSign CA distrust

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> > _The crazy part here is that EY did not verify directly with the banks if > the account statements were real, which is very basic and very easy to > audit. They just took what Wirecard gave them to confirm what Wirecard told > them for something as important as accounts that were supposed to hold > almost all the cash the company had. Absolutely insane._

Not insane at all, and you went on to explain why it's not insane:

> _But the thing is EY , like all the big 4, have totally seperate entities > for every country they operate in. Now that could mean EY Germany is an > isolated case of incompetence and (criminal?) neglect_

People _believe_ that these firms are strict in auditing, which can be useful to some companies to have as a seal of approval. Case in point, Deloitte and the reverse mergers of Chinese companies with an estimated loss of $500 billions.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_21st- century_Chinese_rev...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_21st- century_Chinese_reverse_mergers)

<comment><USER4> But even for the "regular" scandals this is pretty ridiculous, which is the insane part. Usually there's at least plausible deniability or some sort of excuse. In this case they literally have not done the most straightforward thing in auditing and then signed that they did... For years. They are exposing themselves to criminal charges at this point. There's a difference between "accidentally" missing something/blaming hidden processes in the accounting and literally just not doing it and then legally signing off to it.

There was a wild west in the early 2000s with sino forest et al, but since it was in china and the government was gaining from those fraudulent schemes, they had almost no risks to actually get punished and that's the difference. There was also the excuse that it was new, half licensed agencies in a new market. Rule of law makes it much more dangerous to do it so blatantly in germany

It's very weird and makes me believe there is something more to the story. Like a very fat check, not just the regular incentives or even plain old kickbacks.

<comment><USER18> > _It 's very weird and makes me believe there is something more to the story. > Like a very fat check, not just the regular incentives or even plain old > kickbacks._

It could be, though whenever I get interested in a case like that after the facts, it ends up in a version of someone in a company noticing something is fishy, and someone else pulling rank on them telling them to back down not to upset a very lucrative client. Just be quiet because I'm getting calls from the fishy company's boss threatening to take their business to another firm. Don't be rude, we're making a good buck with them.

It's also their model of independent entities sharing a name, with varying degrees of scrutiny and diligence.

It's interesting how incentive structure and checks have to be dialed in the bigger, more distributed an actor gets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Nothing will change so long as you have the current agency derived audit model.

</comment><comment><USER20> How can financial auditors be so poor quality? So many of us implicitly trust them through our trust in public equity markets. If I can't trust company financial statements, how can I deploy my savings in a low friction way.

Ugh. This year it seems so many institutions we trusted are failing us.

</comment><comment><USER21> Non-paywalled source:

[https://apkmetro.com/wirecard-scandal-puts-spotlight-on- audi...](https://apkmetro.com/wirecard-scandal-puts-spotlight-on-auditor- ernst-young/)

<comment><USER22> Thanks. Looks like a strangely mangled version (maybe to evade detection of copyright violation?)

Looks like "said" is replaced by "mentioned", and other weird substitutions. (Or the WSJ has crap writers...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Non-paywalled copy:

[https://archive.is/FWzaA](https://archive.is/FWzaA)

</comment><comment><USER24> Pay-walled article. Mirror anyone?</comment>


World's first fanless Core i5 mini-PC - <AUTHOR> http://www.fanlesstech.com/2014/06/historic-moment-zotacs-fanless-zbox.html

<comment><USER2> It's absurd that you have to work to find information on pricing here.

Specifications: [http://www.zotac.com/news/press- releases/article/archive/201...](http://www.zotac.com/news/press- releases/article/archive/2014/june/article/zotac-starts-computex-2014-with- quartet-of-silent-zbox-mini-pcs.html)

Pricing details: [http://www.tomshardware.com/news/zotac-c-series-intel-amd- na...](http://www.tomshardware.com/news/zotac-c-series-intel-amd- nano,26939.html)

"Pricing is as follows: CI540: $369.99/$479.99. CI520: $309.99/$409.99. CI320: $149.99/$259.99. CA320: $179.99/$289.99. Availability is set for August."

<comment><USER3> The $369.99 one is "bare-bones" whereas the $479.99 one includes 4GB DDR3L and a 64GB SSD.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> >ZOTAC unveils the world's first fanless Core i5 mini-PC

It's not the world's first. for example, QuietPC will sell you an Intel i5 mini-PC (i.e., a NUC) transplanted into a larger all-aluminum finned case, which allows them to remove the one fan the Intel box has (a CPU fan):

[http://www.quietpc.com/sys-ultranuc-pro-fanless](http://www.quietpc.com/sys- ultranuc-pro-fanless).

This QuietPC box has the same i5 CPU as the base model 2013 Macbook Air, BTW.

<comment><USER4> Yes, I'm not sure why they are lying when a simple google search can reveal it's not the world's first: [http://www.atlastsolutions.com/intel- nuc-i3-i5-with-4th-gene...](http://www.atlastsolutions.com/intel- nuc-i3-i5-with-4th-generation-haswell-now-in-stock/)

There is even a bigger but still mini fanless with i7:

[http://www.atlastsolutions.com/fanless-thin-mini-itx-pc- core...](http://www.atlastsolutions.com/fanless-thin-mini-itx-pc- core-i7-haswell-8gb-128gb-ssd-asus-q87t/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Important to note that it's a i5 Y processor. Not a regular desktop, or even a mobile processor.

<comment><USER6> Well then what is it? Please elaborate.

<comment><USER3> There's a concept called "max TDP" which essentially means how much heat the cooling system (fans, heat sinks, heat pipes and case) will need to dissipate in the worst realistic case.

For the CPU in the base model 2013 Macbook Air (the Core i5-4250U), max TDP is 15 watts.

For my 2011 Sandy Bridge base model Mac mini, max TDP is 35 watts. Most desktop gaming PCs have max TDPs over 100 watts if the heat generated by the discrete video card is included.

Max TDP for the CPU in this Zotac box is even lower than the 15 watts on the 2013 MBA. To achieve such a low max TDP, the clock needs to run slower, the chip needs to use lower voltages and other compromises need to be made.

My guess is that one place such a low TDP is desirable is in small tablets (or even smartphones??) where space considerations make cooling thing difficult even with a fan.

And of course it is desirable in fanless applications. Having just one fan, like an Intel NUC has or a Mac mini has, greatly increases the amount of heat the system can dissipate. The 2011 Mac mini server edition, for example, has a CPU with a max TDP of 45 watts and just one fan. (The Mac mini's all-aluminum case really helps here.)

But sometime even one fan is a bad idea: e.g., in boxes designed for dusty conditions, e.g., in a factory, or a remote location where it is difficult for someone to come by to clean out the insides of the system or to notice (by the noises it makes) when the fan is about to fail.

Note that fanless systems with SSDs like this Zotac box have _no_ moving parts, and that really helps with reliable un-attended operation -- and with being quiet.

EDIT: "significantly less" changed to "even lower" to reflect the information in the reply.

<comment><USER7> The chip they are using has max TDP of 11.5W.

[http://ark.intel.com/products/76611/Intel- Core-i5-4210Y-Proc...](http://ark.intel.com/products/76611/Intel- Core-i5-4210Y-Processor-3M-Cache-up-to-1_90-GHz)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> That's nice for a fanless i5. But a fanless i7 is already out there with some great specs, though it's pretty expensive.

[http://www.tinygreenpc.com/microsvr.aspx](http://www.tinygreenpc.com/microsvr.aspx)

Power: 8W – 35W (Depend on system configuration and load)

<comment><USER9> These Haswell units look good, still pricy:

[http://www.tinygreenpc.com/fit-pc/intense- pc2.aspx](http://www.tinygreenpc.com/fit-pc/intense-pc2.aspx)</comment></comment>


Six Degrees of Wikipedia - <AUTHOR> http://www.netsoc.tcd.ie/~mu/wiki/

<comment><USER2> Some of these are fascinating.

[http://www.netsoc.tcd.ie/~mu/cgi- bin/shortpath.cgi?from=Pers...](http://www.netsoc.tcd.ie/~mu/cgi- bin/shortpath.cgi?from=Persimmon&to=Y+Combinator)

[http://www.netsoc.tcd.ie/~mu/cgi- bin/shortpath.cgi?from=Nori...](http://www.netsoc.tcd.ie/~mu/cgi- bin/shortpath.cgi?from=Noria&to=Y+Combinator)

[http://www.netsoc.tcd.ie/~mu/cgi- bin/shortpath.cgi?from=botu...](http://www.netsoc.tcd.ie/~mu/cgi- bin/shortpath.cgi?from=botulism&to=Y+Combinator)

[http://www.netsoc.tcd.ie/~mu/cgi- bin/shortpath.cgi?from=chaf...](http://www.netsoc.tcd.ie/~mu/cgi- bin/shortpath.cgi?from=chaffinch&to=Y+Combinator)

[http://www.netsoc.tcd.ie/~mu/cgi- bin/shortpath.cgi?from=lorg...](http://www.netsoc.tcd.ie/~mu/cgi- bin/shortpath.cgi?from=lorgnette&to=Y+Combinator)

</comment><comment><USER3> So! Once again we meet, Otto Jespersen. And this time, linking caturday with onomatopoeia.

[http://www.netsoc.tcd.ie/~mu/cgi- bin/shortpath.cgi?from=catu...](http://www.netsoc.tcd.ie/~mu/cgi- bin/shortpath.cgi?from=caturday&to=onomatopoeia)

<comment><USER4> I can't speak for the others, but I, for one, was disappointed to see that this was not the Norwegian comedian, as I'd really love to see him linking caturday with onomatopoeia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> like this one: Idea, Profit.

[http://www.netsoc.tcd.ie/~mu/cgi- bin/shortpath.cgi?from=idea...](http://www.netsoc.tcd.ie/~mu/cgi- bin/shortpath.cgi?from=idea&to=profit)

<comment><USER6> [http://www.netsoc.tcd.ie/~mu/cgi- bin/shortpath.cgi?from=idea...](http://www.netsoc.tcd.ie/~mu/cgi- bin/shortpath.cgi?from=idea&to=failure)

(You knew it was gonna be THEIR fault, didn't you, you just wanted to be PC and not say anything ;-))

<comment><USER7> Interesting that the path goes through "Islamic psychological thought", while the path to profit goes through Bertrand Russell and evil.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's kind of fun to look for pairs with the biggest number of links. And challenging. I can't seem to get above 4 clicks.

GWB and random phrases are fun:

[http://www.netsoc.tcd.ie/~mu/cgi- bin/shortpath.cgi?from=cleo...](http://www.netsoc.tcd.ie/~mu/cgi- bin/shortpath.cgi?from=cleopatra&to=george+bush)

[http://www.netsoc.tcd.ie/~mu/cgi- bin/shortpath.cgi?from=amyg...](http://www.netsoc.tcd.ie/~mu/cgi- bin/shortpath.cgi?from=amygdala&to=george+bush)

I found some weirdness with case:

[http://www.netsoc.tcd.ie/~mu/cgi- bin/shortpath.cgi?from=lake...](http://www.netsoc.tcd.ie/~mu/cgi- bin/shortpath.cgi?from=lake+huron&to=Urban+Dictionary)

returns an error but

[http://www.netsoc.tcd.ie/~mu/cgi- bin/shortpath.cgi?from=Lake...](http://www.netsoc.tcd.ie/~mu/cgi- bin/shortpath.cgi?from=Lake+Huron&to=urban+dictionary)

does not nor does

[http://www.netsoc.tcd.ie/~mu/cgi- bin/shortpath.cgi?from=Lake...](http://www.netsoc.tcd.ie/~mu/cgi- bin/shortpath.cgi?from=Lake+Huron&to=Urban+Dictionary)

nor

[http://www.netsoc.tcd.ie/~mu/cgi- bin/shortpath.cgi?from=Lake...](http://www.netsoc.tcd.ie/~mu/cgi- bin/shortpath.cgi?from=Lake+Huron&to=Urban+dictionary)

which is weird. Overall a pretty cool timesink. Perhaps more...</comment>


Ask HN: How do you take idea notes / voice memos / reminders to yourself? - <AUTHOR> Do you use just paper, Email drafts or any special apps? And how do you remember where you have noted down some specific thought or idea?
I've tried several apps like Evernote, Trello, Asana or voice Memo apps ... Also I am maintaining like 2-3 ToDo lists on paper troughout my home. But in the end I often loose tasks, or interesting ideas come up again like 2 months later and I cant remember where I already wrote about it.
What Tools do you use? <comment><USER2> Emacs org-mode.

If someone sends me an e-mail about something that needs doing for work, I hit a keybinding, and a buffer pops up with a TODO item, by default scheduled for today, with a link back to that e-mail (and any selected text added as well). I write a quick headline, then C-c C-c and it's filed under "Misc" in my work org file. Sometimes I hit C-c C-w to immediately file it under some project heading instead (not much harder because of auto-completion). Since it's scheduled in my work org file, it shows up in my work agenda, which I open every morning and whenever I need a task to do. When I'm working on the task, I might write further notes for that task under that heading. It's all plain text, easily greppable, versioned in git.

I have a non-work org file and capture template too. I go through the non-work agenda a bit more rarely than the work one (spending less time on work is on my non-work TODO), but it's a nice way of sending messages to yourself in the future ("* TODO renew passport SCHEDULED: <2027-01-30 +10y>"). And I feel pretty confident in the system, since I've been using it for over ten years …

If I'm not at my computer and I get an idea or something, I'll typically just send myself a very short message over IRC. I find phone-typing a pain, and rarely have the need to look at my agenda on the phone (though I know there are org-mode phone apps should the need arise).

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow,thanks! Sounds quite established! And I really like the "send stuff to your future self" ;-) Currently I use calendar entries for such things but thats not quite ideal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Trello for todo/project items, simplenote/nvalt & pinboard for other notes.

Part of the trick is reviewing & refactoring the trello lists on occasion to make sure the 1-3 boards you look at the most don't feel unwieldy. Example: I recently threw several lists of wacky ideas and things into an unsorted "someday hell" board.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha! I might need to introduce the "someday hell" board... ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Pen and paper. I carry a notebook with me and rewrite the todo list (to a new page) every couple of days.

This makes it very clear what is and what is not a priority. If I rewrite the same thing for tenth time, maybe it's not important after all.

</comment><comment><USER5> Pretty primitive but I write the notes on my refrigerator with a dry erase marker. Every morning when I make breakfast I read the notes, check off what I've done, prioritize what I haven't and add new to-dos. If I have to travel that day I take a picture of the notes on my phone and save the pic to my gallery.

I find it more satisfying to physically draw a line through the tasks that I finished, rather than check them off a list on my phone. If a task stays on the fridge for more than a week I regretfully discard it as something that didn't need doing.

As a bonus my kids add notes to my list and draw silly pictures beneath some of them.

<comment><AUTHOR> I Like the "kids add stuff too" \- as long as they dont mess with it ;-)

How do you add tasks/ideas/notes on the go?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I keep plain text files in Dropbox. It isn't a perfect solution, but its cross-platform, more flexible, and less annoying than anything else I've tried so far.

</comment><comment><USER7> I use google Keep to log new notes. Then every morning I move all new notes to a google spreadsheet. The key to a well organized spreadsheet is at least 3 columns. 1 with the date, a second with any meta, and the third with the actual note.

I may have to look into emacs org mode but the above system scales well to potentially hundreds of notes. And if somehow it didn't, I would just add another column.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok thanks! So if I understand it right you have a daily routine to "sort-and- review" any recent notes and all of them live in a single spreadsheet to be searchable, etc. I like the simplicity!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I maintain my TODO list in Pocket Informant[1], TODOs are synchronized with toodledo[2] and calendar is synchronized with Google Calendar. I am a strong proponent of moving TODOs to calendar to block out time and understand what I am doing next.

For notes, I am using Notebooks App for iOS[3]. The biggest selling point is being able to synchronize with the directory hierarchy of markdown files via WebDAVS. On the desktop, the same directory can be accessed via applications like Simplenote[7] or nvALT[6]. I use my own web app and even a bunch of shell and Python scripts working with this directory as I like to experiment with information organization features specific to me.

In general, to discover new tools, I like to read UsesThis[4] interviews. It has very good Signal to Noise ratio once you start reading the interviews but quickly levels off as people tend to use mostly the same well-established tools. ProductHunt[5] is low signal-to-noise ratio, with lots of new unproven but interesting tools.

[1] [https://www.pocketinformant.com/](https://www.pocketinformant.com/) [2] [https://www.toodledo.com/](https://www.toodledo.com/) [3] [https://www.notebooksapp.com/](https://www.notebooksapp.com/) [4] [https://usesthis.com/](https://usesthis.com/) [5] [https://www.producthunt.com/](https://www.producthunt.com/) [6] [http://brettterpstra.com/projects/nvalt/](http://brettterpstra.com/projects/nvalt/) [7] [https://simplenote.com/](https://simplenote.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the links, I didn't know simplenote yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I scream them into the endless void.

</comment><comment><USER10> Used to use a mix of google drive, keep and quiver notebook [1] but it was a pain to manage. Drive and Keep are slow to boot, the search sucks and there's no support for tags. Quiver was nice for programming notes and markdown editing but the mobile client doesn't support editing.

I recently switched to Bear [2] and ditched all of the other apps.

If I have some important tasks and TODOs I try to put them in my google calendar with a specific date and an allotted time. That way I know when it will get done and can make sure that I don't waste too much time on it.

[1] [http://happenapps.com/](http://happenapps.com/) [2] [http://www.bear- writer.com/](http://www.bear-writer.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> How do you like the tagging system of Bear?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> [http://tiddlywiki.com/](http://tiddlywiki.com/)

Tiddlywiki, because it lives locally, is insanely fast and there's nothing I think easier/faster than it for making notes and todo's are more or less just notes.

</comment><comment><USER12> I keep all notes and to-do lists in a single system of record. These days it's Asana, but in the past I've used pen and paper, Apple Notes, and other tools.

I use GTD to keep on top of stuff. Once a day I go through everything that's been added to the system but not yet categorized. I move it to the appropriate to-do list or reference document where I'll know to find it later.

I have lists for things like "gift ideas for family", "potential software experiments", "active work projects", "books to read", or "to consider next year". I also have a primary list for things that actively need doing.

Remember, it's not the tool that matters. It's the process and the system.

</comment><comment><USER13> "Hey Siri, remind me to check if anyone relied to my pull request tomorrow at 9:30am"

Then I rely on he fact that pending iOS reminders sit on my phone lock screen until I mark them as completed. I also use the "remind me again in an hour / tomorrow" options a lot.

<comment><USER14> When voice commands on phones came out I laughed at this terrible gimmick. I knew this would certainly be in the grave beside 3D TVs.

Now I use voice commands to set reminders every day. With each year, voice tech gets better and I'm proven more wrong. I don't even feel weird using them in public anymore.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go turn on some music with my Echo, and tell my Pixel to record reminders for the week.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Olympus WS-600 dictation device. It's a slim thing about the size of a cigarette lighter, but it has actual physical buttons, and a built-in USB connector to dump it to my laptop. I review it every morning, and depending on the nature of the note, it goes into (a) Google Calendar, (b) a hand-written notebook, (c) an Emacs Org Wiki which I sync between my devices with Syncthing, or (d) the Notes folder for any of my specific projects.

It's the same thing Newt is speaking into in the movie Pacific Rim. I was tickled when I saw that. They're hard to get nowadays; the later 700 and 800 models are bigger, clunkier, and cheaper-feeling.

<comment><USER16> Have you had any reliability issues? My wife does transcription work and has had multiple models of the Sony and Olympus recorders fail on her. She has her client use his laptop and Audacity right now because of the persistent threat of data loss.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is what I've been doing for a while, with good results. Step one: get it out of my head. Short reminder sentence in e-mail to myself, or google keep, napkin whatever. Step two: get it out of my head. Periodically (same day, same week) I triage these notes into a single continuously growing brain dump google doc, or a dedicated google doc per subject in a folder if its warranted.

Before I often stressed when I couldn't recall something I knew was important or had been a cool idea. Now I still don't have time to explore 90% of the things I think about, but I don't stress about it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great advice! I think thats the main reason I want to use a reliable tool in my process: to be able to get it out of my head without thinking: this is going to be lost ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Bullet Journaling with a notebook, Google Voice number with transcripts sent to a specific email alias for ingesting into my gmail inbox with a Notes label (and a contact in my iPhone: "Siri, call My Notes").

</comment><comment><USER19> I replaced my wallet with this:

[https://www.levenger.com/International-Pocket- Briefcase-2269...](https://www.levenger.com/International-Pocket- Briefcase-2269.aspx)

It has 3x5 cards and a pen. This is basically my real-world inbox. I jot down notes, recommendations, ideas. The important next step is to regularly empty the inbox, so that useful jottings end up turned into something that gets handled. E.g., times and dates go into my calendar, tasks go into my kanban board, books I might want to read go in my Amazon wishlist, etc.

</comment><comment><USER20> A diary in Workflowy, per project. The diary is distinct from to-do list (for that I have a separate section in Workflowy, called Projects, and a smartphone to-do app for next actions).

<comment><AUTHOR> Workflowy seems nice and easy to use. Will check it out!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Evernote. But don't get obsessed by technical details of what tool is best: Evernote, Onenote, Tiddlywiki, etc... Just make sure you have all work/private/short term/long term notes in one place. Preferably accessible via multiple devices so that you can always access them.

And depending on the note type go through them every day/week/month to see if they are still relevant. Some people like to go the whole GTD way but I like to pick just the parts that work for me.

</comment><comment><USER16> I use mnemonics like memory pegs when I need reminders. I like to be freeform so I also have several small paper notebooks going at once. Daily journal entries and longer stuff goes in markdown files in folders on Dropbox. I like Regexxer or Grep or ag for searching those. Google Keep for longer notes if on my phone. Hi-Q MP3 Recorder for Android if I need to do voice recordings. I don't like transcribing those voice notes later but the recorder software is really nice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, transcribing voice notes yourself sucks. Did that a few times - however I like recording voice notes so gotta find a solution here too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I use Bear alongside my Apple Watch and dictate ideas that I process later under a GTD-like tagging system depending on the type of note.

</comment><comment><USER23> I usually brainstorm / take notes with OneNote, which lets me type, record voice notes, attach files, and draw when I need to draw (even on my laptop thanks to touchscreens). Once finished I'll go through those notes and turn them into categorized to-dos in the Microsoft To-Do app, adding due dates, reminders and little notes where necessary.

<comment><USER24> I've been using OneNote too but its grown into a godawful mess.

I dont think I could recover from the mess now.. i just live with it :-(

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> 2do ([https://www.2doapp.com](https://www.2doapp.com)) on iOS/Android/Mac, synced to self-hosted CalDav or popular cloud services. Supports audio memos, can parse email to generate todo items, reliable with thousands of tasks, expressive filter queries, regularly updated to use new OS features.

</comment><comment><USER26> I use pen-and-paper for my normal notes about things I want to do.

Until recently I had a section in my notebook devoted to project ideas, but it got a bit unwieldy, and I've switched to keeping those in Markdown: [https://gitlab.com/lyndsysimon/ideas](https://gitlab.com/lyndsysimon/ideas)

</comment><comment><USER27> [https://standardnotes.org](https://standardnotes.org)

I either use an "ideas" tag in Standard Notes, or have 1 pinned note called "Ideas" or "Journal" that I constantly make updates to.

This is an app I've been building for over a year now. Benefits are encryption + cross-platform sync.

<comment><USER28> Looks interesting, but I have some off-topic feedback. I really like that sort of website style, but after 5 minutes looking around I found your site quite confusing.

It wasn't initially apparent that there seems to be both a free and (subscription?) paid version, which had me _very_ confused while reading the 'longevity' page as to how a SaaS is going to last forever. The 'Always Free' box isn't very clear that it describes a different product version (no download button, not clearly a standalone feature list) and the text on the far left is basically background noise.

<comment><USER27> Hmm, I see. Not sure if I'm completely following your understanding though. There is only 1 product version. The paid add-on is a sort of app store that allows you to install extensions on top of the core experience. If you get a chance, please email me at email@example.com to explain a bit more. Would be super helpful.

<comment><USER28> Got it, my 2nd read was that 'Always Free' and 'Extended' were 2 product versions. The only super clear call to action I saw was 'subscribe', the only mention of it being free is buried in a paragraph that's well below the fold. The only mention of it being open source is in the footer.

The download buttons somewhat imply it being free, but it's relatively common for crippled/time-limited versions to be offered like that.

Basically - I think you could benefit from making it more obvious that it's free (and open source), with optional extra paid stuff. Probably a clearer link to the online version as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I use Omnifocus because it's very customizable to whatever workflow I want.

But I think the tool is basically unimportant, compared to actually in practice using it daily. Pen/paper, huge file, Evernote, they're all useless if you're not actually doing the work or actually consulting them regularly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, good point with the regularity! Still, depending on how the tool is able to match my workflow is quite critical I think. And lots of tools trying to enforce their workflow on me ;-)

Going to check out Omnifocus btw..

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> org-mode. More concretely, using org-capture and org-protocol.

</comment><comment><USER31> I use a Bullet Journal for all my stuff. Its style of organizing allows to collect all sorts of things.

I tried a lot of TODO and note taking apps and none of it worked for me. Once written down, I remember most of it without looking at my journal.

</comment><comment><USER32> I write markdown files with Typora, backed up and synced with Resilio sync. I still use Evernote for clipping web sites. I'm working on a web clipper that saves directly to markdown so I can finally ditch Evernote.

<comment><AUTHOR> Are you building a browser extension for this or how can I imagine using your tool?

<comment><USER32> Definitely a browser extension for clipping highlighted portions of websites and convenient browser integrations. I don't want to do the conversion to markdown in the extension itself because I also want to do some minimal processing, like download images so the resulting markdown file can be viewed offline. That requires either a desktop application or a service. I've been toying with the idea of integrating with dropbox, google drive, etc so you can choose which folder the markdown file and all supporting material will be saved to. Then you can read and edit the markdown with whatever editor you want. The clipping experience would appear to be entirely in the browser extension, just like with the evernote clipper.

As a UX guy, how would you approach this?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I use a big ass text file and when it grows to about 10,000 lines long I archive it and start again.

I have a history of all of those huge text files which give me great insight into what I have been up to over the years.

</comment><comment><USER34> Evernote - I haven't found any other program with such a good capture tool. I also regularly use Google Keep to capture small notes. But all these plaintexts ultimately go to an Emacs org file.

</comment><comment><USER35> [http://forwardapp.co/](http://forwardapp.co/) \- we bought the app 'Jot', rebranded it and brought it back for this purpose

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting, going to check it out - iOS only so far?

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> * Ad-hoc tasks likely without immediate dates: Any.do

* Long term notes without tasks or deliverable dates: OneNote

* Short term notes pending a permanent home: Apple's IOS Notes

* Dated tasks: Google Calendar

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice, did you have a chance to try the "assistant" mode of Any.do?

<comment><USER36> The "assistant" has made an appearance on really strange tasks that were in my Someday bucket. Like trying to help me by a brassiere, which is something I'd like to take care of myself.

I don't understand how to tap into the assistant from the phone app. If the assistant is evaluating my list without my request, the assistant can't make heads or tails of my tasks and so does not make an appearance.

All in all, not really all that helpful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Reminders are a combination of calendar, alarm clock, or task items in my mobile and tasks in either Thunderbird for my private life or Outlook at work.

</comment><comment><USER38> Tinderbox: [http://www.eastgate.com/Tinderbox/](http://www.eastgate.com/Tinderbox/)

</comment><comment><USER39> DropVox, and then configure Evernote desktop to auto-import and remove/cleanup the audio file/s at the same time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you get transcripts from dropvox / are they searchable?! (Looking for something like this..)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I use the Clear app on iOS. Simple, means I will use it a lot, and I do.

If I need to voice memo, then I just use the stock voice memos app.

</comment><comment> roland-s Workflowy! The nested bullet structure is so simple and quick but powerful. If ur a vim head there is also vimflowy.

</comment><comment><USER41> For things to be done today I email myself.

Anything needing organisation goes into Trello.

</comment><comment><USER42> Trello. It's the best. Also Google keep is pretty good for one offs.

<comment><USER43> Google Keep still does not support markdown does it?

<comment><USER42> Not that I know of. I think its more for less techy types.

It's just quick and easy note app and syncs with cloud with no fuss.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> On desktop:

\- Resophnotes (using Simple notes backend)

.

On mobile:

\- Google keep (Writing nonote s- Notational Acceleration (Reading notes)

</comment><comment><USER45> Evernote, moving to notion if it gets android client!

</comment><comment><USER46> nvALT on the desktop with its text files being in a synced Dropbox folder (so you can access them on mobile through another client).

</comment><comment><USER47> I use Google Keep.

</comment><comment><USER48> Wunderlist for tasks... Onenote for notes.

</comment><comment><USER49> iCloud Notes on the phone, which is convenient from lock screen in iOS 11.

Mix use of iCloud Notes and Sublime Text on the laptop

</comment><comment><USER50> Google keep, simple and effective.

</comment><comment><USER43> How do you send a reminder to yourself in the far future? How do you verify your own assumptions if they are not validated with future data?

I bacially want this guy, as a Service.

[https://www.xkcd.com/725/](https://www.xkcd.com/725/)

</comment><comment> cg-cnu Google Keep</comment>


Objc_msgSend(), instruction by instruction - <AUTHOR> http://www.friday.com/bbum/2009/12/18/objc_msgsend-part-1-the-road-map/

<comment><USER2> Would be interesting to see an updated writeup with focus on iOS on ARM.

<comment><USER3> Here's the disassembly for objc_msgSend on ARMv6, iOS4.2.1 (sorry no ARMv7 devices on my desk at the moment). I'll try to annotate it:

      0x32d98f0c <objc_msgSend+0>:	teq	r0, #0	; 0x0
      0x32d98f10 <objc_msgSend+4>:	moveq	r1, #0	; 0x0
      0x32d98f14 <objc_msgSend+8>:	bxeq	lr

Tests if r0 (the receiver) is nil, and if so, sets r1 selector to 0x0 and returns. I guess there's no nil handler on ARM. Simple function return values are in registers r0-r3, so I guess r1 is set to 0 in case the caller is expecting a long long.

If receiver is non-nil:

      0x32d98f18 <objc_msgSend+12>:	push	{r3, r4, r5, r6}
      0x32d98f1c <objc_msgSend+16>:	ldr	r4, [r0]

^ this loads the class pointer ( _isa_ ) into r4

This looks similar to the bit twiddling x86 cache lookup in the class; it's somewhat harder to read than the x86 due to ARM's bit packing shortcuts[1]:

      0x32d98f20 <objc_msgSend+20>:	ldr	r5, [r4, #8]
      0x32d98f24 <objc_msgSend+24>:	ldr	r6, [r5]
      0x32d98f28 <objc_msgSend+28>:	add	r3, r5, #8	; 0x8
      0x32d98f2c <objc_msgSend+32>:	and	r5, r6, r1, lsr #2
      0x32d98f30 <objc_msgSend+36>:	ldr	r4, [r3, r5, lsl #2]

Check if the method is NULL, and if so, jump to the cache miss at the end:

      0x32d98f34 <objc_msgSend+40>:	teq	r4, #0	; 0x0
      0x32d98f38 <objc_msgSend+44>:	add	r5, r5, #1	; 0x1
      0x32d98f3c <objc_msgSend+48>:	beq	0x32d98f60 <objc_msgSend+84>

This would appear to be the part checking if this is the cache entry we're looking for:

      0x32d98f40 <objc_msgSend+52>:	ldr	r12, [r4]
      0x32d98f44 <objc_msgSend+56>:	teq	r1, r12
      0x32d98f48 <objc_msgSend+60>:	and	r5, r5, r6

If it isn't, loop:

      0x32d98f4c <objc_msgSend+64>:	bne	0x32d98f30 <objc_msgSend+36>

If it is, restore the registers and do an indirect jump into the method we found (I'm not sure what the teq r4,r4 is for):

      0x32d98f50 <objc_msgSend+68>:	ldr	r12, [r4, #8]
      0x32d98f54 <objc_msgSend+72>:	teq	r4, r4
      0x32d98f58 <objc_msgSend+76>:	pop	{r3, r4, r5, r6}
      0x32d98f5c <objc_msgSend+80>:	bx	r12

Tail call into the slow version with full lookup (after restoring the clobbered registers and the stack pointer):

      0x32d98f60 <objc_msgSend+84>:	pop	{r3, r4, r5, r6}
      0x32d98f64 <objc_msgSend+88>:	b	0x32d98f68 <objc_msgSend_uncached>

[1] A lazy excuse of course. I just haven't read or written anywhere near as much ARM assembly as x86.

<comment><USER4> The source code of the Objective-C runtime is actually open source. See [http://opensource.apple.com/source/objc4/objc4-493.11/runtim...](http://opensource.apple.com/source/objc4/objc4-493.11/runtime/Messengers.subproj/objc- msg-arm.s) for another commented version of objc_msgSend on ARM.</comment></comment></comment>


Windows 8: List of all available AppBar icons - <AUTHOR> http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh770557.aspx

<comment><USER2> Highly recommend Modern UI Icons <http://modernuiicons.com> to fill any gaps.

<comment><USER3> Yea, I need to add more icons. Been busy working on the font for Windows 8.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That 'page' icon sure is big.

<comment><USER5> Checked out the CSS -- the icon has an id of "page" which is associated with another element that has the same id. Hopefully someone at Microsoft sees it.

<comment><USER6> This is actually a good reason to avoid styling id's as they take precedence over classes in styling.

See: <http://codepen.io/anon/pen/fecup>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The introduction text is misleading. Besides these enumerated values, you can also use a custom PNG. [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/windows/apps/hh70048...](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/windows/apps/hh700483.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm curious, where is "share" (and please don't tell there is a "Send"). Android and iOS have pretty much standardized Share icons which are becoming global icons day by day.

<comment><USER9> The share functionality is built into the OS now so you don't need to dedicate a portion of your screen real estate for it. If you load the charm bar on the right of the screen share has a fairly prominent placement there.

<comment><USER7> This makes me wonder why "settings" is included in the default icon set. Settings should be accessed via the charms bar as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> That save icon. In 2012. Why?

<comment><USER11> because it has been the save icon for 30 years and no one has thought of a better one.

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure it's because "no one has thought of a better one", but perhaps more that it's become the de-facto thanks to its almost universal use in software. I can't see how this could ever easily change.

<comment><USER11> Isn't it the universal standard because there isn't something better?

I agree though, there isn't a obvious replacement.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Mijireh Checkout, the best hosted checkout, period. - <AUTHOR> http://www.mijireh.com

<comment><USER2> trying to vote for this one, but it's not registering my vote (doesn't seem like any of my votes are being registered). :/</comment>


Show HN: 7 Web – Open multiple websites in one go. Perfect for news reading - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1345834330 <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN,

I have a habit of browsing a fixed set of news websites every day (including Recode, Techcrunch, TechInAsia, CNN, HN and stuff ) on both my mac and iPhone. But I found wasting a lot of time trying to open a new website in iOS Safari (open new tab flow) and the UX is very cumbersome and there is no way in Safari iOS to open all your sites in a single tap ( you can do that in desktop only).

Solution 1: So I tried to use FlipBoard and subscribe to all my Sites. this didn't help me as the FlipBoard broke the UX of the original site and the order of the article was mixed up.

Solution 2: RSS feeds Not sure why but I just didnt like the whole RSS thing

So finally I decided to make an app to solve this problem.

P.s: Sorry for the repost. I didnt know about Show HN so my thread was lost. looking for some feedback.</comment>


Show HN: Nomul – Craft bit ops for const integer multiplications(emscripten) - <AUTHOR> http://www.brightwise.de/nomul/nomul.html <comment><AUTHOR> Tool to craft an expression of bit operations (add, sub, shift, neg) which is equivalent to an integer multiplication by any given int64 constant.

Basically playing compiler here, for a hypothecial ISA which has no <mul> instruction. Made in a day just for fun.</comment>


Peak Oil Perspective - <AUTHOR> http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/11/peak-oil-perspective/

<comment><USER2> As a geologist in the oil industry, this is one of the few articles I've seen on peak oil that absolutely nails the salient points. (And even gets the geology correct.)

To quote: "Most simply, peak oil is about rates, not amounts."

Yes, there are a lot of unconventional resources. They're just a lot harder, more expensive, and most importantly in this context, slower to produce.

On the upshot for me, and the downshot for the rest of civilization, oil (and to a large degree, energy) prices are likely to stay high for the near future for exactly this reason.

However, we haven't developed a viable alternative to liquid fossil fuels in terms of energy-density fast enough. That very, very deeply scares me.

<comment><USER3> The concept "peak oil" to me seems to misdirect the debate right off the bat. Obviously the question isn't "when do we run out of oil" but "how does oil supply given continually increasing demand affect oil price" and "what does rising oil price do to the rest of the economy?

Inflation-adjusted, the price of a barrel of crude oil was $23 in 1960, and has been averaging almost $88 in 2013. What does that do to, e.g., suburbs designed around 1960's oil prices?

Most of the interesting questions when it comes to oil have nothing to do with "what happens when it runs out?" The fun stuff is before then.

<comment><USER2> Well, the debate often gets off track, but the definition of the term "peak oil" is "when production stops increasing due to market demands and starts decreasing due to geologic control".

In other words, "when does long-term demand outstrip long-term supply?" The concept isn't to blame, it's just misinterpretation of it in the popular media.

At any rate, as you pointed out, the interesting question is "what does rising oil price do to the economy?".

<comment><USER4> In a free market, long-term demand will never outstrip long-term supply. Why? Because prices will rise to equalize them. As prices increase, long-term demand drops, and long-term supply increases, until they eventually equilibrate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > The risk is asymmetric: starting a crash program toward replacement of > finite fossil fuels too early has great up-sides and marginal downsides > (opportunity cost); but failure to act has enormous downside for marginal > upside. - See more at: [http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/11/peak- > oil-perspec...](http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/11/peak-oil- > perspective/#sthash.hrEoRVjP.dpuf)

This is a more intelligent way of stating something I've been saying for years. I always explain my position on peak oil by offering an analogy of a fire escape. If the owner of a building chose not to install a fire escape (assuming they could dodge the law), then a fire in the building would be absolutely disastrous; the law would certainly come down on them for anyone who died, and there would major financial ramifications. On the other hand, if they installed a fire escape but it was never used, then the only downside would have been the initial installation cost. Between these two worst-case scenarios, one is so significantly worse than the other that taking steps to mitigate that risk is the logical thing to do, without regard to the likelihood of worst worst-case happening.

Doing nothing with respect to peak oil feels utterly insane.

<comment><USER6> Sure, but that assumes we already know how to build the fire escape, how much it costs, how long it takes, and what it's supposed to look like.

<comment><USER7> erm, it's time to at least start finding out!

<comment><USER6> Fortunately, we've been working on it for decades. The issue is not so much about whether or not to "do nothing" as it is about whether or not to devote how many more (and whose) marginal dollars toward it, and how.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Note this is from 2011 (pre fracking) so it misses quite a bit. And it doesn't plot home prices post mortgage crisis. Generally the whole 'peak oil' thing is of interest perhaps to people trading oil driller stocks (or not) but I have yet to see any way to apply any of the insights into something remotely interesting or predictive.

<comment><USER9> You're kidding, I'm sure. The end of the Oil Interval is the most interesting, possibly the ONLY interesting historical event that will take place in our lifetimes.

<comment><USER10> > _The end of the Oil Interval is the most interesting, possibly the ONLY > interesting historical event that will take place in our lifetimes._

That seems like a bizarre thing to believe. When humanity switched from wood to coal for heating, or from coal to oil, were either of those an identifiable "historical event"? If we switch from oil to other fuels in our lifetimes, this will happen so gradually that nobody will notice when it happens. Any more than we noticed as "an interesting historical event" the moment that everybody got an email address, or started using google, or bought a smartphone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> How about the math of supply and demand? Oil dominates because it's cheap & efficient. When it's not, other existing but relatively uncompetitive energy systems will become viable within a sensibly short time purely as a matter of demand & competition. Remember, oil (as we're speaking of it) was practically nonexistent not all that long ago, yet a vast robust infrastructure has sprung up around it.

Keep lofty-goal government subsidies out of it, as they distort the reality of what's viable, boosting lesser technologies while denying funds to what really will work as a matter of economics & physics.

In the meantime, put some of your own energy & money into getting "off the grid": make an alternative energy source viable by actually making it happen on a personal scale, not just hoping somebody somewhere will make it happen the way you want it to.

</comment><comment><USER12> [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://physics.ucsd.edu/do- the-math/2011/11/peak-oil-perspective/&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&client=safari)

</comment><comment><USER13> It would be interesting to see plots of per capita oil consumption against population over time to see to the proportions of which the problem is being driven by current lifestyle/modernisation trends and by global population growth.

</comment><comment><USER14> Peak oil depends on oil price, the world is awash in oil at $110. Even up to 2005 oil's peak price was $60.

Peak oil also depends on consumption, with cars like Tesla coming out we'll see a sharp decline in consumption over the next 20 to 30 years, at $300/bl a Tesla starts to make a lot of sense.

The world will never run out of oil, its price will simply continue to increase until other alternatives become economically viable, as those alternatives become viable economies of scale and capital investment will make alternatives that much better.

<comment><USER5> This makes sense economically, but that doesn't address the difficulties we will face as oil becomes too expensive for common, important uses. Our fleet of oil-consuming vehicles won't magically convert themselves. The oil-backed electrical grid will take a hit. Food will become incredibly expensive (or more scarce) since the vast majority will come from far away, and have been transported via oil.

<comment><USER15> Not just that. Most corn production heavily depends on oil-based inputs, such as fertilizer, fuel for machinery, and natural gas for drying and storage. Corn from the same county will become much more expensive, even without transportation costs.

<comment><USER14> Fertilizer does not come from oil. This is a myth. Natural gas is not an oil- based input.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertilizer#Inorganic_commercial...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertilizer#Inorganic_commercial_fertilizer)

<comment><USER15> Right. Hydrocarbons, then. Natural gas and petroleum have similar geologic and economic characteristics.

<comment><USER14> I hate to break it to you but pretty much everything is a hydrocarbon.

Natural gas and petroleum are about as similar as the hydrocarbons of corn and cherries.

<comment><USER15> Does natural gas exploration and exploitation have peak phenomena similar to petroleum? And does coal have its own reserves and peak phenomena?

Coal, petroleum, and natural gas are three large categories of energy hydrocarbons. If gas is cheap relative to oil or coal, then at the margin, some users will shift to gas. Prices of energy hydrocarbons will be correlated, over the long term.

Then, as coal, oil, and gas are all depleted (with their own separate peaks, perhaps), their prices will increase. Foods like corn which have many dependencies on low-priced energy (farm equipment, fertilizer, drying, and transport), will come under increasing upward price pressure.

Corn is used in perhaps a quarter of food SKUs in American grocery stores, so won't a lot of food prices go up as energy prices go up, as a consequence of peak oil (or coal or gas)?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Sorry for the naive question but what is oil used for? Isn't most of it used for transportation? If so, isn't the problem a bit overblown given that we have electric vehicles?

<comment><USER17> Transportation of physical goods everywhere on the planet, not just transportation of your butt between work and home every weekday.

We have electric cars. We don't have (useful) electric trucks, or ships, or passenger or cargo aircraft.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Looks like the sysadmin has some math to do... Mirror?

<comment><USER19> We've reached Peak SQL.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> There is one thing I always like to mention with the usual peak oil math (and resultant fear/glee concerning "the end of civilization" and such).

The traditional "Hubbert curve" shows exponential growth and decline in a any particular region of oil production. Peak oil theorists generally extend this to a world exponential peak/decline (the article doesn't directly say but it take the "we have to plan for the peak" position).

The exponential growth part makes sense because traditional oil of the ground is a really, "high quality", high efficient energy source (whatever the externalities).

The exponential decline at a given location make sense because the supply winds quickly replaced by some other even cheaper source.

But the thing is that since these aspect explain the shape of the Hubbert curve locally, these is no reason to expect the global decline shape to have any resemblance to the rise shape. Oil today is a efficient meaning you get a lot more energy out than you put in. We're already moving to less efficient, more costly forms of extract and the price has marginally increase.

There's no reason a-priori to think that any _cliff_ would be involved with oil production peaking. Production gets harder, prices go up, consumption declines, technology produces relatively more at the higher rate, iterate a number of times and there you are. It's worth saying that shale oil is arguably much less energy efficient than traditional production but it is still efficient to get a profitable product to market (and does involve the, uh, transformation of a large land area).

The main reason to put effort into alternatives to oil is the externalities - especially since pricier oil is going to involve more energy and environmental impact in its extraction. THAT is quite arguably a crisis but unfortunately for people worried about these problem, there's no going to be a "peak point" where oil isn't practical from a purely economic standpoint.

<comment><USER21> Large evolutionary jumps in mankind's history have always been associated with use of more energy per capita. The stabilization of oil consumption, visible since 2000, means one of two things:

a) Humanity has plateaued in its energy usage; or

b) Some other energy source is increasing.

Any of these means oil has hit a peak (there'll be no cliff, though, as you explained). The alternatives are not acceptable (evolution stopped or, for the first time in five thousand years, stopped requiring more energy use).

<comment><USER20> _Large evolutionary jumps in mankind 's history have always been associated with use of more energy per capita._

This is typical of the hand-wavy peak oil arguments.

An increased richness of culture or an increased scientific knowledge clearly don't require ever-increasing energy consumption.

Oppositely, the reason previous evolutionary jumps involved more energy per capita has been that ... cheaper energy has always previously available (ie, this a correlation, not a causation).

Edit: A modern laptop uses less energy than a desktop machine of twenty years ago, yet the laptop's user certainly experiences a somewhat higher level of "civilization" or whatever one would call it. Just a simple counter-example to "evolution always requires more energy per capita" claim.

<comment><USER21> You are proposing one of the possibilities I deem unacceptable, albeit without explanation. Without going about a huge text, you are proposing that for the first time in 5000 years, this chart will go flat:

[http://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/world- ener...](http://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/world-energy- consumption-by-source.png)

It rather looks quite the opposite...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The faster the oil/gas price increases, the more attractive electric cars become. Unfortunately, it could also mean US will _never_ cut oil subsidies, unless they do it now, before the perceptible decline starts.

Hopefully, governments will at least resist the urge to _increase_ oil subsidies to keep the prices the same. Instead they should be looking at building electric car infrastructure in their countries, faster, so when the gas prices start climbing, the population switches "smoothly" to electric cars, and doesn't feel much of a shock.

<comment><USER14> Most countries tax oil heavily. Europe and Canada come to mind.

<comment><USER9> Yeah. Last time I was in Europe the local gas tax was more than the entire price of gas in the USA. Our low gas tax is, in effect, a subsidy, because we (as a society) choose to ignore the externalized costs of burning gasoline.

Gas is currently 2CHF per liter (about $8 per gallon) in Zurich, in case you haven't been out of the USA lately.

<comment><USER14> You could call it externalizing the costs of burning gasoline, or you could call it internalizing the profit of burning gasoline. The rest of the world burning gasoline results in cheap credit for the US.

[http://www.newyorkfed.org/research/current_issues/ci12-9/ci1...](http://www.newyorkfed.org/research/current_issues/ci12-9/ci12-9.html)

<comment><USER9> The result of burning all that fossil fuel will indeed by internalized in the end, but when it comes around I doubt you'll call it a profit.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>