One More Thing… - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/26/one-more-thing/

<comment><USER2> For me it is definitely not touching because I am emotionally involved with Apple products. I tend to rant against them all the time, and I just bought a Galaxy Tab. I most like Jobs for his inspiring Stanford Speech. Yet hearing the news made me feel awful.

There are all sorts of aspects of the story, though. For one thing, it is a genius who is clearly extremely passionate about his work, and who has a lot of money, but he still has to yield to the disease. That is tragic.

Also, while I don't like Apple, I still like Jobs philosophy, and the pressure they put on other companies to improve their products.

I only wish Apple wouldn't be so silly with patents, they really taint my admiration for Jobs.

Think about it - patents are land claims in the sphere of ideas. We cheer about the innovations, but essentially it is like native Americans cheering on the colonists when they took away their land. I am surprised that for all his desire for aesthetics, Jobs was not bothered by the ugliness of patents. Just mentioning it, because I could admire him more without that elephant in the room.

<comment><USER3> _For one thing, it is a genius who is clearly extremely passionate about his work, and who has a lot of money, but he still has to yield to the disease. That is tragic._

I wonder is a Steve Jobs of biotechnology even possible?

Craig Venter is great, but I just don't see any of his companies growing bigger then Exxon. But if anything should be bigger the Exxon, it is exactly those kind of companies!

<comment><USER4> Sorry to be pessimistic, but my sense is, "No, there will not be a Steve Jobs of biotechnology."

Mr. Jobs has done a remarkable job producing sleek, fun-to-use, affordable, somewhat disposable devices and building Apple into a company that has a chance of sustaining his principles. Even taking into account the fickleness of the mass consumer market, herding sub-component suppliers, etc., there is a certain predictability to the advances in electronics technology (Moore's "Law", increases in battery performance, etc.) that gives a solid foundation for a regularly growing business. Fashioning aluminum, cadmium, silicon, and lithium is _way_ more predictable than discovering a pharmaceutically- treatable, financially-lucrative metabolic disease.

There are certainly smart, extremely hard-working individuals in the biotechnology fields --- perhaps surpassing Mr. Jobs in those qualities, and some we'd certainly label as "geniuses" --- but the fantastically low probability of making even one genuine discovery, and the low odds of successfully developing that into a product, make the kind of serial successes of Apple and Mr. Jobs very unlikely in the biotech field. Biology results just don't flow that easily. Also, there is no clearcut equivalent in biological research to outbidding your competitors for the latest components, streamlining your manufacturing and inventory processes, and relying on economies of scale.

I can say this now only with the benefit of hindsight: my negative answer to bh42222's question stems from the fact that we just haven't observed such figure emerge in the last few decades. Craig Venter is a good example to look at. He certainly earned a great victory in the human genome sequencing (and the underlying technologies), but he lacks even a second notable success of that magnitude. It will probably be the purview of someone else to find the utility in the sequenced genome. Dean Kamen may be a prototype figure of this sort, but as nice as his individual inventions are, no single one of them seems rise to the level of a Steve-Jobs-in-the-biotech-field. I may be stunningly wrong on this (and it would be great fun if I was), but I think the probabilities are on my side, and on the side of it not happening.

But let's put aside the negativity and allow me to ask this question: Do we need a Steve Jobs of biotechnology to fulfill our expectations of medical advancement? I would guess, "No, we don't. The good people toiling away at it right now are doing the best that can be done."

<comment><USER5> Venter's artificial cell seemed notable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is the techcrunch I like. A warm and moving piece about a man who revolutionized the consumer electronics space. Not a piece with sensationalist issues. A piece of substance.

I have an emotional connection with Steve jobs. I admit that my first computer that I had an emotional attachment was an Apple II. I admit that the Macintosh computer brought me where I was today. Without a mac I wouldn't have created my android app, learned the scheme programming language, gone to HN, to Reddit, to slashdot. If there is any person I owe a consumer debt to it is this man. I can't even write this without crying.

</comment><comment><USER7> "We know the iOS 5 is coming, and very likely alongside the iPhone 5. There will also likely be a cheaper "iPhone 4S", perhaps sold contract-free. Apple will also undoubtedly refresh the iPod lineup as they always do around this time. And there is talk of the company having some tricks up their sleeves when it comes to new content for iTunes."

Notice a conspicuous absence from this list? A revamped, much better Apple TV. As he says, Jobs' two biggest successes was to break the monopolies in music and cell phones (the latter thought to be impossible to do just few years ago). One thing he (or Google or anyone else for that matter) couldn't do is to break the cable TV stronghold form the leech-like grip of the likes of Comcast.

So, maybe the mindblowing thing this fall will be something like that. Would be super. I doubt it.

<comment><USER8> The market dynamics with TV are rather different though.

The music _industry_ as a whole Apple haven't broken; record labels still exist and the bulk of commercial music is distributed through them. What they've broken was the physical distribution model in favour of a digital model controlled by them, by providing a large semi-captive audience.

Equally with phones, they haven't destroyed the model of networks selling a pre-agreed bundle of services at a flat tariff with the pre-pay component being vastly cheaper than the post-pay. What they've broken is the assumption that carriers could do what they liked with phones, but again I think this was less of a challenge than you think; pre-smartphones we all had much what came out of the factory because that was all that was possible, and phones have long been a fashion driven market. Apple simply managed to get a bigger fashion leap (not that this was the only leap) on their competitors to the point where carriers couldn't avoid taking the phone on Apple's terms once one had given in.

With TV, I suspect the bulk of HN readers can quite plainly see by now that what we used to call 'video on demand' is both economically deliverable over the internet and a compelling user experience compared with having to organise one's life around a broadcast schedule to receive the preferred content.

The challenge for Apple is how to insert themselves as the default gatekeeper in the way they have with iTunes and iOS. Compared with music the content providers are fewer in number and with a substantially higher cost base, making them both harder to supplant and more risk averse. Compared with mobile carriers, the power dynamics are reversed; the hit product becomes the network's unique content not the hardware vendor's fashionable item. If Apple had managed to produce a hypothetical viable Apple TV product (and delivery channel) prior to services such as Hulu, BBC iPlayer or even YouTube and Justin.TV then there could have been a window of opportunity for them as gatekeeper, but I think that would have been an improbable scenario and is clearly not possible now.

Which leaves Apple with a problem in the Apple TV. The compelling offering is the content not the device; the content providers have a strong incentive to make their wares widely, not narrowly available. iOS has prospered as a closed, Apple-controlled ecosystem, yet the opportunity isn't there with TV. Their only opportunity is to provide a hardware device which is sufficiently far ahead of the alternatives as the first iPod was perceived as being when that launched, but I'd suggest that the market there is already sufficiently mature as to make that unlikely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Yesterday, TechCrunch saw record traffic thanks to a few stories on Jobs." ... so here's another one.

</comment><comment><USER10> This was the only article I read about Steve leaving Apple. It says it all and had me on the edge of my seat...a bit. One of the best articles on Techcrunch in a while.

</comment><comment><USER11> The fawning tone of the piece is a bit off-putting. It is significant to consumer tech that he's stepping down as CEO but not to the vast majority of the world.

</comment><comment><USER12> Moving towards a world where having contact with at least one Apple product per day is the norm? Pfft. Nice article other than that weirdly my-social- circle-centric line.</comment>


Garmin outage official statement - <AUTHOR> http://garmin.com/outage <comment><AUTHOR> No mention about the ransomware.

Also no informations about flygarmin.com.

They do confirm that "inReach SOS and messaging remain fully functional and are not impacted by the outage" though.

Of course, also no mention about when the service will be restored.</comment>


Ask HN: How does a student land a part-time Rails job? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a student in Vancouver, Canada. I hold a BS in Physics and currently a candidate for a BEd in Secondary Education. Over the 8-ish months, I've taught myself Ruby, Rails, HTML, CSS, and a bit of HA. <comment><USER2> Tell us about your Rails experience. What can you do? What have you done? How would you propose to to work?</comment>


Show HN: Fosite – OAuth2 framework for Go - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ory-am/fosite?a <comment><USER2> While experts are present (and since the notes on security in the readme are refreshing), I'd like to ask a general question about securing OAuth 2 tokens.

My use case is to have a server that uses the explicit OAuth flow (redeeming a code obtained from the user in order to get permission to operate on the user's behalf) but also have a front end client that uses the implicit flow (retrieving an access token for direct use) to make requests from the browser or mobile device. That way the user can surf freely and only hit the server when it needs to save something (which allows the app to scale).

The problem is that I don't want the user to have to authenticate twice. Ideally the user should be able to OK the standard OAuth web page to obtain a front end token AND also visit the server callback url with a redemption code. However I can't find a single social provider that does this!

I scoured the web and Stack Overflow and can't find a good discussion about the security of sharing tokens (all they say is to pass it over SSL). So the best I could come up with is to authenticate implicitly on the front end and pass the client access token to the server. This seems safer to me than sharing the explicit access token from the server to the client in the outside world.

Token sharing from client to server presents several security issues, because the server has to trust that the token belongs to the current user. It completely negates ever using the explicit flow, because most users are on mobile these days. The best the server can do is ask the social provider if the token's app id matches the server's app id, to prevent the confused deputy problem:

[http://blogs.mulesoft.com/dev/connectivity-dev/google- oauth-...](http://blogs.mulesoft.com/dev/connectivity-dev/google-oauth- security-confused-deputy/)

[http://technotes.iangreenleaf.com/posts/closing-a-nasty- secu...](http://technotes.iangreenleaf.com/posts/closing-a-nasty-security- hole-in-oauth.html)

Believe it or not, several prominent social providers don't even provide a token validation endpoint!

This whole experience has left me wary of OAuth 2 and I am concerned that it may not even be able to fulfill my very common use case. Am I completely missing something here? Thanks in advance for any insight you might provide.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fosite is going to support OpenID Connect ( [http://openid.net/specs/openid- connect-core-1_0.html](http://openid.net/specs/openid-connect-core-1_0.html) ) which could be something you should look at.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Thank you for your contribution, but please change the title to something more descriptive.

<comment><USER4> We changed the title from "If you use Go and OAuth2 you should look at this".

<comment><USER5> I interpreted that as "please change the project title", but I am perhaps wrong.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Check our crowd-sourcing project: One Frame Of Fame. - <AUTHOR> http://oneframeoffame.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I was part of the (4 people) team who build this website, to crowdsource a music video. It uses 4 webservices (AWS SQS, S3, Mturk via Crowdflower and Blip TV API), in the backend. Wonder what you think of it.</comment>


[video] - Introducing the HUD -Say Hello to the future of menus - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_WW-DHqR3c&feature=player_embedded

<comment><USER2> I really hope so! This is how I've dreamt of my computer working for a long time. I get a similar effect with Spotlight and Alfred when launching and switching apps (I never use the dock or Cmd+Tab) but I don't think they go right down to being contextual to the current app (for menus, etc). Typing just a few letters of what I know I want is, I think, the way forward for me, so I hope it catches on.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am a bit at a split As a programmer: its a CLI for GUI apps, yeah! As an average computer user: Are you crazy...?</comment>


"Diagram of All Space and Time" by Carl Sagan (1960s?) - <AUTHOR> https://www.loc.gov/resource/mss85590.084/ <comment><USER2> "The X axis represents time [...] and the Y axis represents scale" \- Isn't it the other way round?

<comment> lotto-win Yes. Though I've done this before as well. It was always hard for me to name them. It's like reading clocks, hard as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Interesting to see that Seth MacFarlane established the collection, which has more avaiable here:

[https://www.loc.gov/collections/finding-our-place-in-the- cos...](https://www.loc.gov/collections/finding-our-place-in-the-cosmos-with- carl-sagan/about-this-collection/)

<comment><USER4> It fits with his role as executive producer of "Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey", it really seemed to me to be a part of preserving Sagan's legacy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What is the lattice to the left of human experience?

<comment><USER6> it looks just like a random sketch, but I could be wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't get it? (Somebody please explain :-))

(Isn't the boundary just what is set by the speed of light?)

<comment><USER8> My interpretation is that there are three boundaries - the big bang, the planck length, and the one defined by the speed of light.

Within that there's a smaller area defined by the limits of the human senses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not saying Carl Sagan came up with this _particular_ diagram while high on weed, but it's not altogether irrelevant to the conversation to mention that he privately smoked throughout his career, and credited cannabis for providing insights, documented in an essay he wrote anonymously as "Mr X" for a book on marijuana from the 1970s. [1]

Felt it worth mentioning on the day Congress took the small (yet meaningful) step of legalizing industrial hemp production in the US.

1: [https://www.leafly.com/news/lifestyle/carl-sagan- cannabis](https://www.leafly.com/news/lifestyle/carl-sagan-cannabis)

</comment><comment><USER10> I believe what he is getting at is that there is a limit on certain space times that are accessible to a given observer. Imagine an alien race (or a point in space) that is 10M light years away. We want to obtain information about the _current_ state of that point in space. Unfortunately, the next X years of that section of space (I don't know enough relativity to calculate X) is totally inaccessible to us. There is absolutely nothing we can do to obtain information about the current state of that point until X years has passed.

<comment><USER11> There are points of space that will NEVER be visible to us as the rate of cosmological expansion over sufficiently large distances outpaces the speed of light.

<comment><USER12> There's a galactic scam for you: sell beings real-estate that they can never use nor inspect. "A Xerzigian Prince offered me a great deal on some used galaxies..."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> PBS Space Time on the same subject:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YFrISfN7jo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YFrISfN7jo)

Minute Physics SpaceTime Globe (The best tool for understanding relativity I've ever seen.)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rh0pYtQG5wI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rh0pYtQG5wI)

</comment><comment><USER14> Why is the "into the future" arrow pointing down? If increasing time is up, shouldn't the future be that way too?

<comment><USER15> This graph is meant to show what is observable. The past is up, and distances are along the _x_ axis.

<comment><USER16> The time scale for human experience is around a second or so to 100 years, which makes sense for what we experience, but I also don't understand what past and future mean in the diagram, the vertical axis seems to mean time duration rather than a time in past or future...

<comment><USER17> Observations take time. The y axis shows the duration of possible observations. Durations shorter than the plank time or longer than the current age of the universe are inaccessible; as are durations into the future, since we can only make observations in the past.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I may be wrong but I think the realm of human experience has grown quite significantly since this was made, kind of awesome.

<comment><USER19> He wrote realm of "direct" human experience, which presumably means the unaided human senses over a human lifetime.

<comment><USER18> Ah thanks. That makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> " _The Seth MacFarlane Collection of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive_ "

???

<comment><USER21> Ann is Carl's widow. McFarlane has championed his work and was big driver (and I believe financier) of the new Cosmos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's a small world after all.</comment>


Yes, organic farming will kill us all - <AUTHOR> https://shift.newco.co/yes-organic-farming-will-kill-us-all-12d900979cf2#.gojjvvvs6 <comment><USER2> The thing with conventional farming is that a lot of the costs (in terms of environmental damage which needs to be repaired) are currently externalized, i.e. payed for by the society, which indeed makes industrial farming more cost-effective than organic farming, at least for the farmer (though in many countries you can charge a good premium for organic food, which will often outweigh your additional cost). The same is true for the current industrialized way of raising livestock.

The real problem is properly accounting for all costs incurred by a given farming technique, which is difficult as the farming lobby seems to be one of the most effective ones in the world (at least judging from a European perspective).

In addition, the argument that industrial farming consistently produces higher yields than any organic farming technique seems at least a bit dubious to me, as there is a plethora of techniques that have been investigated over the years, and again the outcome of any study depends heavily on the timescale that you look at: Sure, heavy use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides will increase yield in the short run, it might actually decrease yields in the long term by degrading soil quality and triggering a biological arms race that makes it impossible to do farming without the use of heavy pesticides in the long run. Also, the external cost in terms of health effects on the population is still poorly researched and not accounted for in most cost calculations.

<comment><USER3> And there is a huge unspoken problem yet.

In many areas of northern Germany, even with the extremely strict limits on fertilizer and pesticides that Germany has, the drinking water, rivers and oceans are getting so massively polluted that we're seeing massive algae blooms and drinking water slowly becoming undrinkable.

It's a massive problem, and there's no way to solve these without massively reducing fertilizer and pesticide use.

If the choice is between being able to feed less humans, and having no drinking water, I'm sure which one I'll pick.

EDIT: Because I'm getting downvoted, here are some sources:

> EU sues Germany over water tainted by nitrate fertilizer

> The European Commission has lost patience with Germany over the high > concentration of nitrate fertilizer in its ground water. Taxpayers could now > end up paying hundreds of millions of euros in fines.

[http://europa.eu/rapid/press- release_IP-16-1453_en.htm](http://europa.eu/rapid/press- release_IP-16-1453_en.htm)

[http://www.dw.com/en/eu-sues-germany-over-water-tainted- by-n...](http://www.dw.com/en/eu-sues-germany-over-water-tainted-by-nitrate- fertilizer/a-19225653)

[https://www.thelocal.de/20161107/eu-sues-germany-over- water-...](https://www.thelocal.de/20161107/eu-sues-germany-over-water- polluting-farming)

[https://www.euractiv.com/section/agriculture-food/news/eu- ta...](https://www.euractiv.com/section/agriculture-food/news/eu-takes- germany-to-court-over-high-nitrate-levels/)

<comment><USER4> Start by picking GMOs instead of the woo-woo that is organic farming. See e.g. a German-funded meta-analysis[1] that found that:

"[...] the adoption of herbicide-tolerant (HT) soybean, maize, and cotton, and insect-resistant (IR) maize and cotton has resulted in a 22% increase in average yields, a 37% overall decrease in pesticide use, and a 68% increase in farmer profits.".

1\. [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/gm-impact-meta- analysis](http://www.theskepticsguide.org/gm-impact-meta-analysis)

<comment><USER5> > insect-resistant (IR) [...] decrease in pesticide use

So the pesticides do not count if you let the plants produce them themselves?

Also I find it kind of hard to believe that making plants herbicide resistant and spraying them with herbicides reduces the amount of pesticides used.

<comment><USER6> It's actually quite easy to believe because the mechanics makes sense: instead of a number of different herbicides to attack a large number of different weeds, herbicide resistant crop breeds allow you to use just one herbicide, with a much smaller total amount.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > we should be TERRIFIED that fewer than 1 in 100 Americans actually knows how > to grow enough food to feed a family or more

Am I the only one that found this to be high, and comforting?

I looked up how many software engineers there are in the US, it's also around 1% (3.6m) [1]

About 0.5% of us are lawyers [2]

Double-checking the farmers stat, it seems there are 2.1m _farms_ [3], each must be manned by at least several people that know stuff. This does not count casual horticulturists. I'd guess that at least over 10% of the population would know how to grow food to feed a family.

1\. [http://www.computerworld.com/article/2483690/it- careers/indi...](http://www.computerworld.com/article/2483690/it- careers/india-to-overtake-u-s--on-number-of-developers-by-2017.html)

2\. [https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2014/05/09/the-lawyer- bu...](https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2014/05/09/the-lawyer-bubble-pops- not-moment-too-soon/qAYzQ823qpfi4GQl2OiPZM/story.html)

3\. [https://www.agcensus.usda.gov/Publications/2012/Preliminary_...](https://www.agcensus.usda.gov/Publications/2012/Preliminary_Report/Highlights.pdf)

<comment><USER8> Also that's a stupid metric: subsistence farming is wildly inefficient and cannot sustain the population of any country today.

<comment><USER9> Not knowing where your food comes from makes you unable to make an informed choice about what you consume. It is a tragedy.

<comment><USER10> Being a farmer doesn't mean you understand global food markets. Not knowing how to properly hill potatoes doesn't mean you can't understand global food markets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Organic isn't the answer, it's trying to address some legitimate concerns, but it's a movement full of scientific woo-woo that's been legislated.

For instance, organic farming thinks GMO's are bad, but is just fine with irradiating large fields full of plants to accomplish random mutations through radiation breeding.

This article is one example of this, the author decries traditional corn fields, and as a counterexample wants us to believe that some hilly permaculture farm in Austria which just from the looks of it obviously has to be harvested & maintained by hand would be a viable replacement.

Organic is largely just a western luxury product supported by people with no concern about producing food at true scale, and how we can satisfy the global food supply without impoverishing a large part of the population by doing manual labor on farms.

There's no panacea when it comes to farming, but GMOs seem to be the best shot we have.

<comment> loup-vaillant The reason why GMO is bad is probably not because of the "Modified" part. It's because they're optimised to withstand heavy pesticide use. _Pesticides_ are bad.

Also, that freedom thing: GMO are generally sterile, so you have to buy seeds every year from Monsanto. Great business model for Monsanto, not so much for the farmer.

<comment><USER11> "It's because they're optimised to withstand heavy pesticide use"

Actually, GMOs need less pesticides than non GMO crop. Some of them produce their own pesticide (BT corn and BT cotton).

"Pesticides are bad."

Thats kind of the point, they are bad to pests that try to eat the crop

"GMO are generally sterile"

You are confusing GMO with hybrids and no they are not sterile, the just lose vigour after a few generations, see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F1_hybrid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F1_hybrid)

", so you have to buy seeds every year from Monsanto. Great business model for Monsanto, not so much for the farmer."

Most farmers in the developed world buy new seed every year because of the hybrid thing, and do so because its convenient. At the end of the day its a choice the farmer makes: they could re use their own seeds and hybridise them, but for most its not worth the hassle.

<comment><USER12> _Thats kind of the point, they are bad to pests that try to eat the crop_

And pesticides are also bad for other insects that don't eat the crops, and are necessary for our ecosystem to function.

And pesticides are bad for people and animals in the longer term too.

<comment><USER11> Well in the case of BT (bacillus thurigensis) cotton and corn, for example, the GM plant produces the Cry toxin which is bad for the insects that eat the crop, so better than spraying it (Also BT is used in organic agriculture via spraying btw).

Herbicides like roundup affect a certain pathway in plants, not humans in animals.

"And pesticides are bad for people and animals in the longer term too."

Not at the concentrations that are used. The amount of residue is minuscule and modern pesticides have far less toxicity than older ones that have been phased out.

IIRC, the BT toxin only affects insects that have an alkaline digestive system. Animals and humans are unaffected as its acidic.

<comment><USER12> _Not at the concentrations that are used. The amount of residue is minuscule and modern pesticides have far less toxicity than older ones that have been phased out._

So now you give some qualifications to your earlier statement.

Do note that modern pesticides are not in widespread use all over the world (cost). Modern pesticides applied by a well educated professional can have a relatively low impact on the environment. But there are a lot of poorly educated farmers out there (most of them, really), and that doesn't begin to address the abuse of pesticides by lawn care companies and homeowners.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I spent most of my early childhood (0-7) on an "allotment" it measured 90 rods by 10 feet, or some other useless unit of measurement.

Next to the allotment is a standard farmers field. It was earmarked for housing about 10 years ago, and it was abandoned as an crop growing device there and then.

There are two obvious features of this field:

1) its much lower than the allotment 2) it only grows algae.

The soil in the field is now basically sand. Most of the organic matter having dried out and blow away.

There are no worms, because there is nothing for them to eat. Even if there were, they would have been killed by the pesticides long ago.

Basically modern farming techniques sacrifice soil quality for current yield.

Decent soil is needed to retain moisture. Decent soil requires much less in organic fertilisers, which greatly reduces phosphate run-offs.

Now, this is where my thoughts get controversial:

modern farming requires empty soils. Empty, poor quality soil does not retain water. This leads to run off, flooding and droughts. I would also suggest that it contributes directly to global warming, as bare soil retains its heat much better than dense vegetation.

For the water retention, thats easy to prove, for temperatures, much harder

<comment><USER14> "Now, this is where my thoughts get controversial:"

This is not controversial. It's widely recognized (even by conventional farming bodies) that soil degradation is a major environmental threat. At the EU level, while the Soil Directive proposal was withdrawn a few years ago, much other environmental work and legislation is about mitigation and monitoring of soil degradation / threats. There are different schools of thought on how to deal with it though; the 'let's go back to subsistence farming' idea isn't the only way.

<comment><USER13> oh, I'm not suggesting subsitance farming, that just sucks balls. Have you ever tried to plough furrows with horses? that shits hard.

we need to be dumping literal mountains of shit on the fields again. we also need to stop killing the soil ecosystem, so that fungus, worms and all manner of other things can grown and break the soil up

<comment><USER14> Actually the _reason_ we're in the soil predicament we're in (in Europe, at least) is that we've been dumping literal mountains of shit on the fields for years, leading to massive nitrate pollution. To the point that one of the limiting factors for keeping cows is the amount of land you have (or can rent) to spread the manure they produce over.

But that's just nitpicking of me - I take it that what you meant is that we need less annual crops, more polyculture food growing, less tilling, and other such methods that increase soil organic matter and soil life. The problem is though that all alternatives, right now, are only a little bit less labor intensive than subsistence farming; especially if we add in the extra constraint of 'minimizing food kilometers'. Whereas the high-tech route (vertical hydroponics-style) doesn't need soil at all...

I'm not sure where I'm going with this; all my replies in this thread have been pretty negative I'm afraid. The thing is that we don't have a good way forward; right now there is no 'sustainable agriculture' that is also scalable and cheap enough to feed everybody. If everybody who claimed 'their method' as the answer would start by admitting that, we could at least start from a position of mutual vulnerability, instead of the ideological entrenchment we see now.

<comment><USER13> Ahh, slurry. yes, that lovely problem. I should have been more specific, instead of litrally spraying raw shit everywhere, we need to create proper compost/soil products.

The aztecs managed it, I'm sure we can re-do Terra preta at scale

I agree, what we really need is the application of science, and some imagination to try many different things.

There is no one size fits all here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The general gist is interesting in order to captive the intended audience of sceptics, and the clickbait title is effective in that way.

Still, though, a clickbait title.

Furthermore, the usual consensus I hear is that we will need to change our practices drastically, we cannot let the "conventional" farming on life support indefinitely and we cannot let it destroy our sustenance. Organic farming is however still far from being enough to make us live.

The road is probably a reasonable mix of the two, which is actively researched.

<comment> loup-vaillant > _Organic farming is however still far from being enough to make us live._

What I have seen says otherwise. There's a thing about chemical agriculture: when you first implement it, you get _incredible_ yields. Then the soil starts dying (no more acari, no more fungi, compressed soil…), and the yields slowly go back to roughly the previous levels, only this time you need all the chemicals to sustain it.

If you suddenly say "let's go organic", you're in for a disappointment: the soil is _dead_ , the yields you get will be _terrible_. Indeed not enough to feed the world. Fortunately, soils can be resuscitated. One component is rotting pieces of wood, that bring back fungi. You need other things I'm not aware of, but the idea is, in 3 years, your soil is good as new. Mostly. While you now can go organic with good yields, you still have the old chemicals dwelling in that soil. It will take 15 years before you're really free from them.

With a good (or properly resuscitated) soil, it appears organic agriculture have _higher_ yields per unit of surface than chemical agriculture. _However_ , it requires more labour. It would seem the yield _per man-month_ may actually be lower.

We don't need more farming surface. We need more _farmers_.

<comment><USER16> The problem (here in France) is that the number of farmers is going down hard (with suicides every day). They are currently crushed by regulations, labor costs, undercuts by products from other countries with different labor costs and regulations and the supermarkets that make big margin on their back. So your solution is good, but it is not currently applicable here in France.

<comment> loup-vaillant > _but it is not currently applicable here in France._

You point out a serious policy problem. Couldn't we apply that solution if we changed that policy?

<comment><USER16> I hope that the solution is applicable, as I hope that the policy can be changed. But that's something on the long term.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> IMHO it's simple: current farming depends on oil. Oil will, sooner or later, be very expensive. If nothing changes, food will by extension become very expensive too: sooner or later we will need to grow food without the use of oil.

Now the question is:

* should we learn how to do this now, at a comfortable pace while we still have oil-based food as a backup, where wealthy individuals can opt to support this essential research by buying organic food,

* or should we wait until the oil's all but gone and there's a Malthusian event looming?

To me the choice is easy. At worst I'm paying more than "needed" to eat, at best we're able to phase out another reliance on oil in an orderly manner.

<comment><USER18> > IMHO it's simple: current farming depends on oil

Valid point, though everything depends on energy, oil being one of the main sources.

Not the only matter at hand though soil degradation, pesticide resistant pests, water pollution, ...

We actually have no quantitative problems for now: we waste over 30% of the food production, part of it being expensive food (meat, bananas, etc). See [http://www.fao.org/save-food/en/](http://www.fao.org/save-food/en/)

So yeah, we can afford some optimizations while researching for sustainable solutions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think this is just an example of 'elitism' on the part of the author. It is ludicrous to think that there is a chance that the 'local/organic' movement will ever capture more than 1%-2% of food production. Most people don't care, and some fraction of people that do care are intelligent enough to decide that additional cost for no increase in quality is not worth it.

So this is 'elitism' because people think that a very high-cost, niche, atypical behavior is in some way a 'threat' because 'everyone will do it'. Maybe everyone the author knows, but only a tiny percentage of people overall.

<comment><USER20> It's only your preconceptions that are ludicrous. In 1990s agriculture in Russia partially collapsed, so people turned to their small plots of land and "captured the food production". They were lucky they knew how - the communist government-managed centralized distribution was unreliable so the skill was handy. Of course, there's no hard data from this chaotic period, but being from eastern european country myself, it is fully conceivable. There's widespread home food gardening culture (only we don't call it "organic", just "how it was always done").

<comment><USER14> Those home food gardening systems aren't sustainable, if you're implying that. They very often use artificial fertilizers (and in wrong dosages ,too - hey if one gram is great, 2 grams must be better, right?) They are often based on tilling and/or small monocultures with maybe a basic crop rotation system, etc. Sure, they have beneficial aspects that traditional farms don't have, but home-scale subsistence farming is just bad in different ways from conventional industrial scale farming.

<comment><USER20> I can't even. Of course they are sustainable without artificial fertilizers, if compost and animal manure (nothing big necessary, just chicken and rabbits) is used. Of course, you can use fertilizers and stuff in unsustainable way, too, but what does that prove or disprove?

<comment><USER14> Well it depends on what you call 'sustainable'. I use a pretty common definition, roughly 'can in this way, without using non-renewable, external energy sources, a population be fed'. If I'm reading you correctly, you're using a definition of 'can this particular plot be sustained as a home garden without external inputs'; well yes, it probably (maybe) can. What my definition adds is 'can the whole population be fed this way'; and no, home- scale agriculture can't do that, in the aggregate (maybe in one village, or a rural(ish) part of a developing country somewhere; I don't care for specific case studies, I'm talking about the aggregate).

If some people can feed themselves off their own land, while relying on (many) others in the rest of society to produce stuff and infrastructure etc. who need large-scale agriculture to sustain themselves, I argue that those few aren't being 'sustainable' \- just ignorant of their reliance on infrastructure provided by others who produce more efficiently.

<comment><USER20> Let me provide example of what I think is sustainable. This system uses electrical energy from grid(still much less energy than fossil eqivalent used by mainstream farming machinery) and occassional local as-needed application of pesticides. I know the man who developed it, he was able to repay all loans without subsidies and he is able to provide food for 50 people iirc. [http://www.slideshare.net/inmediaslovakia/farmlandia](http://www.slideshare.net/inmediaslovakia/farmlandia)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> We first should get a good definition of what "organic food" is, as currently (at least in Europe) is, more or less, equivalent to "crops grow using tradicional methods". The "tradicional methods" is very vague, but gets described in some laws. That's the main reason why is less efficient, is not using the latest improvements. "Organic food" is also an incredibly silly name, as there are no "inorganic food", but whatever.

What is NOT guaranteed by those laws is that the food is:

\- More ecologically friendly (some tradicional pesticides or fertiliser are quite nasty, and you may need to use much more)

\- Better (either as more nutrients or tastier)

\- Locally produced (and Co2 emissions can be high when you purchase an organic crop produced in Australia)

\- Produced in small farms (there are big corporations as well)

\- Rigorously following the rules, as inspections are small

Again, the key word here is GUARANTEED. Some organic farms may be doing things is a good way, but most are not improving anything, and there's nothing in the "organic food" industry as a whole that promotes a good analysis.

Given that they are "tradicional methods", I find difficult to change into a more "let's try to improve farming into a more sustainable and less aggressive endeavour". Which I think is what we all want. And I think the "conventional farming" is, at least, in a better position to approach this problem.

<comment><USER18> There are very little guarantees in the "conventional farming" either and I find it more disturbing.

"Organic farming" doesn't mean a lot since there is no clear agreement on the definition. However, considering it should use less and safer inputs, why should it provide more guarantees than "conventional farming"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> ... but will unsustainable farming not kill us all by definition too?

I realize sustainable and organic are not the same. I am actually, not sure if organic is sustainable or indeed what is required across the world for a farm to be deemed organic.

However, I have always been under the impression, that conventional (non organic) farming is unsustainable in the long term due to the environmental impact, which we'll have to pay for at a later time.

Are we already seeing some of the impact from both European and US farms (pollution of oceans and e.g. Colorado river drying up)?

To me it seems like we are in trouble either way, if we wish to continue with our current consumption of meat.

</comment><comment><USER23> > _global soil deterioration_

I learned something new and important today. For some reason, I thought this was a _solved problem_ since Haber–Bosch process was invented. Apparently it isn't so.

<comment><USER18> The "soil" is more complex than its mineral characterization. Depth, texture, organic components, life, elasticity ... The more we study it, the more amazing it gets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> There is a lot of discussion in generalities in this article and precious few hard facts. I would love to see a less chemical approach to farming but articles like this are not going to convince very many people that organic is a viable method of feeding the masses.

<comment> loup-vaillant It's not a simple issue. A proper argument would require a few hours.

<comment><USER23> I for one would happily read it. Do you know of any?

<comment><USER25> I just posted this above, try

[https://www.edx.org/course/sustainable-soil-management- soil-...](https://www.edx.org/course/sustainable-soil-management-soil-life- wageningenx-soilx-0)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > we should be TERRIFIED that fewer than 1 in 100 Americans actually knows how > to grow enough food to feed a family or more.

This seems rather besides the point. If we all had to live in economically and technologically isolated families the amount of people that can be sustained by the earth would be allot lower ... and the quality of life of each of those families will likely be worse than any person living today.

</comment><comment><USER27> "It pretends that vanishing institutional knowledge of growing food isn't a problem; we should be TERRIFIED that fewer than 1 in 100 Americans actually knows how to grow enough food to feed a family or more."

Why? There are many other vital survival tasks that the overwhelming majority of the world's population cannot perform. This is merely the consequence of living in modern society; such efforts are abstracted away from the consumer. People will educate themselves when such information becomes necessary.

Also, fabricating dramatic statistics doesn't help anyone. I can quote a Farm and Dairy article from three years ago which stated, "One in 3 households are now growing food — the highest overall participation and spending levels seen in a decade." And that, "Households with incomes under $35,000 participating in food gardening grew to 11 million — up 38 percent from 2008."

Should I be less "TERRIFIED" now?

<comment><USER28> > Why? There are many other vital survival tasks that the overwhelming > majority of the world's population cannot perform. This is merely the > consequence of living in modern society; such efforts are abstracted away > from the consumer. People will educate themselves when such information > becomes necessary.

Depending on your climate, food is one of the most pressing thing to acquire if you don't have it. Our human system right now is becoming fragile, because having such a large apparatus around food production and such a small number of people who practice it, a disruption could cause massive starvation. I personally would prefer not to see our species decimated as a result of insufficient latent food production ability not dependent on a massive industrialized base. It is not sufficient for people to learn how to grow in the event of an emergency; you need practice, growing food is not as easy as it seems.

In addition to making our species less fragile, it forces people to eat better, encourages diversity of life, and done properly it makes the environment more attractive.

Would you rather have more people trying to sell you shit?

<comment><USER27> You can apply the same argument to fresh water access. Urbanization is not conducive to individualized sustainability. You either come to terms with that or move out to the sticks and adopt a DIY attitude toward survial.

<comment><USER28> This comes down to how our species survives, and there are really two issues: global sustainability and the human race's fragility to catastrophe.

We to get globally sustainable as quickly as possible, there's absolutely no argument against that. We definitely need to make our agriculture more petrochemical efficient, at the very least.

In terms of urbanization and the human race's vulnerability to catastrophe, we can mitigate a lot of the dangers by just limiting city density, and including intensive food cultivation. That way, in case of a major emergency, you at least have a buffer. Having a lot of people who know how to grow food also allows you to spin up production quickly.

Ultimately, we're looking at a crisis of employment as computer programs take over white collar work. We have millions of years of evolution as efficient mixed source foragers, robots aren't going to take that job.

<comment><USER27> How does one limit city density? Population growth creates cities. Not the other way around.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The big issue with agriculture, both organic and conventional, is _what_ we farm. According to who? The World Bank, the EU and the UN: [http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.HTM](http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.HTM)

The livestock sector emerges as one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global. The findings of this report suggest that it should be a major policy focus when dealing with problems of land degradation, climate change and air pollution, water shortage and water pollution and loss of biodiversity.

</comment><comment><USER30> Organic in my place(South of India) means no chemical and only used cattle dung/ food waster / or plant itself as manure/Fertilizer. No other chemical used but in my experience we made only 10 bags of paddy per acre while if we use Urea / Potasium + pesticides we managed up to 30 to 35 bags of paddy. I am not sure why in use organic farm still uses any chemical. There are good techniques to deal with pest though not very effective.

</comment><comment><USER31> Personally, I think organic is mostly bullshit. I believe a lot in local. I'd prefer my money to work for smaller entities closer to home.

For example we buy 75lbs of onions in October and keep them in the basement. The total cost is about $30 vs. $500 at retail and I'm doing business with a guy 30 miles away instead of buying Chilean onions shipped by a Georgia grower and passing through a half dozen middlemen.

Currently, right now 60% of the produce available in the US comes from a single region -- the imperial valley in California. We're watering the desert, which comes with some obvious long term risks.

We're lucky enough to live in an area in the Northeast that still has some local vegetable agriculture. Business is picking up enough for them locally that some local family farms are doing year round operations. The first crop of high tunnel greens will be for sale February 1.

</comment><comment><USER32> 'Soil degradation' \- is that a thing? See, with the advent of spray-on fertilizers the state of the soil is nearly irrelevant to crop yield. The best corn grows on eroded clay hillsides at present (because it doesn't saturate and has better sun). Soil is just a medium for holding the roots at present. Look at hydroponic farms -they grow plants in a gravel medium.

</comment><comment><USER33> This article is a reasonable rebuttal to the usual chicken little statements by people pushing industrial farming of GMO crops as the only way to "feed the world", but there are a couple of things this response misses.

1\. If we stop eating so much beef, we really, really don't need to grow so much corn. Cattle feed accounts for an astronomical percentage of the need to grow so much acreage. Dropping the ethanol boondoggle (it is not a real solution to our problems with oil, it is not scalable or efficient) would make a lesser but still significant impact in freeing up existing farm acreage for edible crops.

2\. These people tend to compare farms that are making no real attempts at maximizing for profitability against industrial farms that are totally maximized for profitability (in both cases here profitability can be considered a synonym for efficiency.) Making money is of course on the list of priorities for local farms, but it's not their primary goal. Most of the people I know who are running local farms in my area either inherited the farm from their family or left lucrative careers in other areas to become farmers. Money is not the primary driver of their actions as it is with an industrial farm. So _of course they don 't compete on that level_. They are not trying to.

3\. I don't buy local because I believe it is "more nutritious". I buy local for a few reasons. First, the food tastes better. Garlic is a great example. Store garlic that often comes from Mexico is very dry and the individual cloves are usually very small. They grow varietals that are maximized for number of cloves. My local garlic has larger bulbs and it is fresher because it hasn't taken a long voyage from Mexico. Because it has fewer individual bulbs, the volume of the head is more usable garlic and less paper. This applies to most produce I get from local sources. Tomatoes are another prime example. Mass produced tomatoes are picked before they are ripe and gassed to give them their color. Local tomatoes are red all the way through and taste way, way better.

4\. Animal welfare isn't even mentioned in the article that I saw. But it is a big reason I try to buy my meat and dairy locally. I've seen what happens at industrial farms, and I've visited my local farms. It's night and day. I am comfortable with how the animals are cared for and live their lives at my local farms. I think anyone with a heart has a hard time watching footage of industrial farms and knowing we contribute to that horror.

5\. Lastly it presupposes an all or nothing world. This is the biggest piece of bullshit that the "We have to pursue industrial farming at all costs!" folks push. Their argument imagines only a world where we are 100% local organic farms that care nothing for efficiency or only 100% industrial farms that are super efficient (but care nothing for animal welfare and quality of the end produce.) This of course is ridiculous. It's never going to be all or nothing. The future will be some version of what we have now; a mixture.

<comment><USER34> I think this is the best comment in the entire thread.

I'd like to add one more point, which is that some folks argue we would be going back to a world of sustinence farming without GMOs, ignoring that much of the improvements in agricultural output have come from developments that can also benefit organic farming, such as land use reform, crop rotation, improved equipment, better irrigation, etc.

See here: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Agricultural_Revolut...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Agricultural_Revolution)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Robotics will revolutionize farming and make organic sustainable. Weed and pest killing robots will obviate the need for chemical herbicides and pesticides as well as Genetic alterations.

</comment><comment><USER36> You want organic and efficient? How about hermetically sealed "vertical" robot-operated farms in skyscrapers? No pests, so no pesticides.

<comment><USER37> You would not believe how hard the "no pests" thing is in real life. It only takes a few insect eggs to start an infestation. It is hard enough to do that on a "sack of grain" scale, let alone on industrial farm scale.

Only way AFAIK that pest infestation are successfully forestalled in large food storages are through refrigeration or inert or even toxic atmospheres. Both of these will not work if you are actually trying to produce food.

<comment><USER36> Well, the atmosphere only has to be non-toxic to plants, if you are actually using robots to sow, tend, and harvest. CO2/Nitrogen mix perhaps?

Compartmentalization and lack of toing-and-froing by humans would help too.

<comment><USER38> Plants need oxigen to breath, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> so this entire article is based on the assumption that current farming practice is wholly unsustainable. I'm not sure I buy into this. Surely it can be adapted as opposed to rejected and completely changed, can't it?

<comment> loup-vaillant This particular assumption is pretty safe: current farming practice depends heavily on oil. For energy of course, but also for _chemicals_. Nothing that depends that heavily on fossil fuels is sustainable in the long run. Whatever change we devise, we need to weaken that dependency.

> _Surely it can be adapted as opposed to rejected and completely changed, can > 't it?_

Personally, I see organic agriculture as a modernization: it's healthier (no poisonous pesticide in my apple!), easier on the soil, but it's _not_ easier. The knowledge required to grow food organically is quite precise, and research is still ongoing.

<comment><USER40> _it 's healthier (no poisonous pesticide in my apple!)_

That is simply not true. Organic farming uses pesticides just as conventional farming, and I'm not aware of any studies that find that organic pesticides are consistently better for your health than non-organic. Rotanone for example is popular with many organic farmers, and has been linked to causing Parkinson's disease.

PS: This is not an argument against organic farming, and I buy organic as much as possible, but there is no reason to believe that doing so has any effect on my health.

<comment> loup-vaillant Depends on how we define "organic". If it can include pesticides, that's a bit depressing.

There's a way to avoid pesticides altogether: grow local apples that thrive in the local environment. Some will get eaten by worms, some will rot… Select them out. You don't always need those pesticides.

<comment><USER14> Look, pesticides are a cost. If there was a way that was as easy as you make it out to be, farmers would already do it, because the market would force them to. This whole discussion is about the fact that it isn't as simple as saying 'just grow local'. People do that already and those apples cost 2-3 times what they cost in the supermarket (apart from a few weeks in september when they are 1/2 of supermarket prices because there's a glut of apples that will otherwise spoil). The question is now: how do we scale this up, so that we can feed everybody this way, including those people who can't afford such price premiums?

<comment> loup-vaillant > _because the market would force them to._

The market here is heavily influenced by government policies. Both American and European farmers have subsidies that apply if they grow their food in a certain way. Organic food in particular tend to have less subsidies. I suggest we manipulate the market differently. Or less. I don't know.

> _The question is now: how do we scale this up,_

That's the hard part. Going organic/permaculture/what have you needs a transition period. Reviving a dead soil takes 3 years, during which you don't do much —if at all. After that, you still need 12 years before the chemical residues disperse enough for your food to really count as "organic". And hardest of all, even if we manage to have the same or better yields _per unit of surface_ (which I fully believe is possible), those new methods are likely to require more labour. We need more farmers, and we need them soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> One thing I don't see him cover is how to deal with the "ecosystem" which will form around, and eventually consume, a fully organic permaculture farm. One of the big advantages of monoculture is that you usually only need to protect against a single class of pests in a specific area.

<comment><USER42> A single point of failure is an advantage?

<comment><USER23> Yes?

As a king, what would you prefer - to defend against one big kingdom that wants all of your land, or to defend against _three_ big kingdoms that each want a third of your land?

When number of points of failure trade off against your attack surface, you can't just say "more PoFs is better".

<comment><USER42> That analogy isn't correct. You've made it 1 thing against 1 versus 1 against 3.

If we were to use that analogy, a more accurate metric would be either having 1 large centralized kingdom or 100 small, autonomous, independent kingdoms that each have fundamentally different weaknesses. If one fails, you still have 99.

But even that fails to understand the dynamic of biological systems. There's mutually beneficial, symbiotic relationships between crops and many creatures (bees, worms, etc).

Presenting it as always in conflict is inaccurate.

The fundamentally different approach is to not look at pest solutions through a genocidal chemical warfare lens but instead to figure out how to maintain a sustainable relationship and have all of nature working for you instead of setting most of it as against you.

<comment><USER23> My answer was to your "SPoF is an advantage" comment as a general question. Maybe unnecessarily pedantic of me (I need my morning coffee ;)).

In context of sustainable ecosystems, I agree with your detailed explanation. Controlling and maintaining a complex system of feedback loops (that we still don't completely understand) is a very difficult task though, so I'm not surprised that currently the most crude methods (genocidal chemical warfare) are also the cheapest / most efficient.

I wonder if this isn't a good field to benefit from computational models though - from tools to design, predict and manage natural feedback loops in agriculture. I don't know, maybe it's already a thing in the industry?

<comment><USER42> Ecoinformatics and Computational Ecology is what you're looking for.

<comment><USER23> Thanks! Will add to my "reading/random" sublist :).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> What they will all admit one day is that there are too many people and not enough resources. Till then they will create songs and dances that wont fix the problem at all. It is a hard pill to swallow for humanity.

</comment><comment><USER44> so what would this rube goldbergian harvester machine look like that could be capable of efficiently farming such a dynamic landscape as a multistory(already sounding like we got some marketing terms in the works here) farm... my guess is about 5'10", over worked and from some economically depressed country. yay organic

<comment><USER45> As opposed to the 5'10" rube goldbergian harvester machine that selects your products at the grocery store, moves them around in a cart for 20 minutes, then stands in line to purchase them?

Somewhere along the line, you as a person will always walk around and pick up your own food. (Unless you pay someone to do that for you, too.) Doing it direct from a local food forest, or a farmers market, will always involve less transportation and labor cost than a grocery store.

<comment><USER44> seriously your plan is for people to harvest their own food? your comparison is grossly disproportionate, how does 20 minutes at the super market compare to the months of labor required to grow, store, process and plant ones own food. this is the kind of blind zealotry that makes organic farming seem like a ridiculous prospect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Here's a nice thread with some debate on the subject:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1h9hye/i_beli...](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1h9hye/i_believe_organic_food_production_is_a_dangerous/)

Worth reading for those looking for both sides of the story.

</comment><comment><USER47> Why does every article that bashes organic foods say they are not nutritionally superior to conventional foods?

Who cares if they aren't!? I'm not eating them because of that. I'm eating them because of less/safer pesticide use.</comment>


Ask HN how to configure EMACS to do this? - <AUTHOR>

How do I configure emacs to automatically insert prototype functions from .h when opening the corresponding .cc file?. Could someone please show me how to write this marco? I have already asked on stackoverflow but no answer so far. <comment><USER2> <http://norvig.com/21-days.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> I have read it already, is this related?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> type M-x polo</comment>


Show HN: Afari – decentralized social media app - <AUTHOR> https://app.afari.io <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN,

Avthar, a co-founder of Afari here. We started working on Afari earlier this year while still in college. We're now working on it full time and are excited to share the launch of our public beta with the HN community!

We built Afari to give people who value privacy, data ownership and censorship resistance, an alternative to centralized social media like Twitter and Facebook. In future, we plan to integrate a token network to help content creators of all audience sizes monetize their content more easily.

This web app is the first step in our journey. You can read more about how the app works here: [https://medium.com/afari-blog/introducing-afari-social- media...](https://medium.com/afari-blog/introducing-afari-social-media-that- puts-you-in-control-dde49d91eafa)

This is our first time launching anything and the app is still in beta, so we'd love for you to use the app and offer feedback on features, UX and any features you think would make Afari more appealing to you!

</comment><comment><USER2> The headline made me click, but the landing page contains only 4 words:

afari Freedom Trust Ownership

No screenshots, no description, no content.

No offense but I see that often lately, is it just me or do people really sign up for a app/service/product without prior information about what and how it is?

Here is an example of what I consider a better landing page: [https://www.notion.so](https://www.notion.so)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey cryo,

Thanks for the feedback -- we're in the process of putting together a better app landing page. We have a more proper app landing page up at [https://www.afari.io](https://www.afari.io) , while the app, for people to try out is directly linked at [https://app.afari.io](https://app.afari.io).

Moreover, here's a link to a blog that describes our vision and the problems we intend to overcome: [https://medium.com/afari-blog/introducing-afari- social-media...](https://medium.com/afari-blog/introducing-afari-social-media- that-puts-you-in-control-dde49d91eafa)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Same, Headline got a click, I was interested. But the UI lacks and your needs to have a feature set. What sort of Social media app? How do I use it? Who is it for? Just some thoughts...

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey sabbakeynejad,

Is there anything specific about the UI that you didn't like?

To answer your questions, we could be called a 'micro-blogging app' as Afari supports posting short text statuses, links and photos. You use it in a manner similar to twitter or facebook.

Regarding the who the app is for, "We built Afari to give people who value privacy, data ownership and censorship resistance, an alternative to centralized social media like Twitter and Facebook. In future, we plan to integrate a token network to help content creators of all audience sizes monetize their content more easily."

Thanks for your feedback. The app login page definitely doesn't do a good job at explaining the app to people in its current state.</comment></comment>


LD_PRELOAD Hack to try and make latest ssh-agent auth socket always available.  - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/r4um/ssh-authsock-hack For all those screen and ssh agent forwarding problems. <comment><USER2> > "For all those screen and ssh agent forwarding problems."

What problem is this trying to solve?

ssh-agent works fine. keychain is another alternative.

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.deadman.org/sshscreen.php](http://www.deadman.org/sshscreen.php)</comment></comment>


Translating the world's information with Google Translator Toolkit - <AUTHOR> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/translating-worlds-information-with.html <comment><USER2> This is awesome! As I've mentioned before, the Google Translator team is just as interested in collecting data as they are improving their algorithms. Besides the obvious wins for Wikipedia, this helps out people translating private documents. All of the data clearly gets soaked up into the vast sea of parallel corpus and improves overall translations. Amazing!

</comment><comment><USER3> Holy crap! This is really revolutionary. I love the idea of having a global TM (it's like having open source translations), and private TMs. Absolutely brilliant.

<comment><USER2> I hope (read: have no doubt) they will release an API of sorts to let people integrate this with their own sites.

Just looking at Google's properties, it would be totally cool to have this integrated with Blogger, projects hosted on Google Code, actual Google API docs, etc. I'd also love to see a system like Google and Facebook use for letting people edit localized strings in their UIs.</comment></comment>


SPACEX finally knows what caused its Falcon 9 rocket to explode - <AUTHOR> http://www.popsci.com/spacex-falcon-9-explosion-reason?src=SOC&dom=fb&con=Nerdist <comment><USER2> Still sounds speculative to me. I suspect there is an unmentioned underlying cause they are circumlocating.</comment>


When's a van a van and when's it a car? - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-45875405 <comment><USER2> How is that whenever someone on HN comes up with some gimmick around bitcoin or cybersecurity or something, they are met with a chorus of "the courts aren't computer programs, they can use common sense to nail you to the wall", but then we have all these tariff and tax laws where ridiculous misinterpretations of the law are upheld by the courts?

<comment><USER3> There's an element of scale; if you can afford lawyers to analyze and defend a loophole, go for it. If you can't afford lawyers then you're taking on significant risk.

<comment><USER4> Lawyers, lobbyists, political contributions, friends in high places -- they all buy power.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I recall similar with the Sony Playstation 2 that made available Linux available so it can be classified as a computer. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_for_PlayStation_2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_for_PlayStation_2)

<comment><USER6> > Some incorrectly speculate it was used as an attempt to help classify the > PS2 as a computer to achieve tax exempt status from certain EU taxes that > apply to game consoles and not computers (It was the Yabasic included with > EU units that was intended to do that).

<comment><USER7> >Yabasic (Yet Another BASIC) is a free and open source BASIC interpreter for Windows and Unix platforms

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

Because I had to look it up

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Also, Jaffa cake debate in the UK. Is it a cake or a biscuit? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaffa_Cakes#Categorisation_as_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaffa_Cakes#Categorisation_as_cake_or_biscuit_for_VAT)

<comment><USER9> And as long as you're down the rabbit hole, take a look at UK speed limits in relation to vans. Vans have a lower speed limit than cars, but "Car derived vans" are still considered cars and vice versa.

That gives you a strange situation where, if your vehicle is available in both a car and a van form factor, the speed limit applied to your vehicle is based not on weight, load capacity or number of passengers, but on which came first - if the car was first, the car speed limit applies to the van. If the van came first, the van speed limit applies to the car.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> See also, Subaru BRAT

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

<comment><USER11> Yup, that's what I was coming over here to post about too—this is not a "novel approach" as the article alleges.

[http://www.ginandtacos.com/2014/04/04/npf-beat-on-the- brat/](http://www.ginandtacos.com/2014/04/04/npf-beat-on-the-brat/)

(has pictures!)

<comment><USER12> Hm, wow, so I cut the back seats out of my 2005 ford focus and I basically have the same thing you see here, except the back is completely surrounded by the metal roof and rear window glass and trunk door.

It's big enough for two people to sleep in, 7ft x 5ft. I fit a queen mattress in it no problem!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Related:Ship of Theseus

In the metaphysics of identity, the ship of Theseus — or Theseus's paradox — is a thought experiment that raises the question of whether a ship—standing for an object in general—that has had all of its components replaced remains fundamentally the same object.

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

<comment><USER14> I agree with the results of the majority in the empirical study.

An object that has had all of it's components gradually replaced or changed is still 'the' object that was started with as far as identity goes.

If the parts which were replaced are restored and re-assembled the same way as the original is, that too is 'the' object.

Yes, both or even maybe infinite clones/duplicates might exist at the same time. None of these are the initial object; that is lost to a moment in time.

I would conceptually draw the line at a new 'finished' object needing greater than 50% of it's conceptual measure to be comprised of an iteration of the named object to qualify as being of that object at any given time.

Once it classifies as that object by transitive properties the rest, even the new pieces, become of that object to at least some degree.

As a slightly different twist on the subject, IIRC all Hass avocados are from splicing a single tree on to others. Given the semantics I would say that while none of these is still the initial tree, "the" tree would still be the one who's roots are still original. This is both by having a unique part which was never lost from the initial instance and by being the chronologically oldest/initial instance and having an unbroken history of existence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I hope that one day we will live in a world where we remove all barriers to trade, and governments will stop attempting to prop up industries via legislation. Until then I can only commend the tariff engineers on their creativity and wish them the best of luck.

<comment><USER16> That day will occur about 6 months after we have a single world currency :-).

<comment><USER17> So, never.

<comment><USER16> I don't know, never is a long time :-) Alexander the Great was the last person who had a shot at instituting a single currency...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> One of these super confusing topics. At the same time as this is discussed as some kind of heroism in Germany at least there is a discussion about cum-ex trading as the robbery of the century. In some regards both are using the complexity of the law to make a profit that they wouldn't have made without nitpicking the law. But only one is considered a crime. Why? How?

<comment> Digit-Al Here's a thought experiment that might explain it.

Imagine you are at some form of social gathering and someone starts going round with a jar collecting for a charity. Now, if you witness someone not putting any money into the jar you're not necessarily going to think bad of them. There could be lots of reasons why they are not donating in this instance and it's not mandatory. However, if you saw someone put their hand in and take out a fistful of money you would be outraged, because this person has stolen money that other people have donated to the charity - and most normal people will find such an act distasteful at the very least.

This is the same. It is the difference between someone not paying a tax and someone stealing tax that other people have paid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Saving $250 million over 16 years doesn't seem like a lot, especially considering it takes 2.5 hours to perform the conversion.

<comment><USER20> Presumably the $250M factors in such costs.

There is probably some journalistic license being taken here; if the Ford Transit cost 20% more, it might not be competitive in the marketplace and they might sell considerably fewer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Its funny to me that the BBC continues to call it a Van tax throughout, whereas in the US we call it a Truck tax.

<comment><USER22> They'll often refer to US highways / freeways as "motorways" in news stories too, which always stands out to me.

In the case of OP the word "truck" means something different in the UK (we only use it for much larger articulated vehicles).

<comment> Digit-Al The clue is in the name. It is the British Broadcasting Corporation, not the American Broadcasting Corporation. The article is written for a British target audience, quite possibly by British journalists - therefore British terms will be used.

Just like an American publication will use American terms, even if doing a British based story.</comment></comment></comment>


In-Q-Tel - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel <comment><AUTHOR> TBH this is pretty cool: "The name "In-Q-Tel" is an intentional reference to Q, the fictional inventor who supplies technology to James Bond."</comment>