Learn to stop using shiny new things and love MySQL - <AUTHOR> https://engineering.pinterest.com/blog/learn-stop-using-shiny-new-things-and-love-mysql <comment><USER2> I agree, I've found through painful experience that the shiny and new, while incredibly fun, tends to cost more than it's worth.

With that said, if you're going to take the prudent route and use an established database platform, why in the name of all that is holy would you pick MySQL over Postgres?

Granted, I am rather biased, but I do have extensive experience using both in anger. Every time I have to use MySQL I walk away with the impression that it was built with the same design mentality that PHP was. The whole point of a transactional RDBMS is to keep your data as consistent and accurate as possible. I cannot in good faith use a database that (silently!) will coerce badly formatted input into what it thinks should be in the column.

<comment><USER3> I don't know why anyone in 2015 would pick mysql when postgres is an option. Live postgres. So nice to work with. It's json support is amazing too

<comment><USER4> You know what, about two weeks ago I was starting a new Rails hobby project, and I thought "all I've heard about for the past year is how everyone loves Postgres", and was about to throw it in there, when I saw a link to Google search trends comparing the two, and MySQL is still so far ahead: [https://www.google.com/trends/explore#cmpt=q&q=mysql,+postgr...](https://www.google.com/trends/explore#cmpt=q&q=mysql,+postgresql)

It's quite possible this is just due to people supporting existing applications, but I dunno, I am tempted to stick with MySQL for new stuff for the next little while.

<comment><USER5> MySQL is popular because it's easy to use (in the same sense as PHP), easy to setup, and has a lot of tutorials written for it. Also speed used to be a pretty big factor, but that was only because MyISAM took shortcuts with data consistency.

If you care about your data and would rather not deal with the many problems MySQL inevitably brings, then Postgres is the better option. I can't say I've seen many compelling reasons to use MySQL over Postgres other than "what if we need to replace you with a freelance PHP guy", "I want to pay lower wages", and "I want to use phpmyadmin". (Btw: check out Sequel Pro and Querious!)

Popularity isn't a very good reason to choose something. Postgres will remain a juggernaut for a long time. Unless you really think there's a good chance you'll need to hire somebody that only knows MySQL, then I'd go with Postgres.

<comment><USER6> That may be why MySQL is popular for small installations, but that's not why it's popular with companies like Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Pinterest who run replicated clusters that number in the thousands.

It's popular at scale because unlike Postgres, it has replication that is well understood, is reliable, and isn't a massive pain in the ass to operate.

<comment><USER7> Please point me to the well-understood, reliable replication solution for MySQL (I'll agree about pain in the ass to operate re: Postgres, but you might want to check out aphyr's recent posts).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> How big is the team over at pinterest managing the MySQL infrastructure? I think this is the big difference here.

I have a particular project. The database has well over 1 billion rows in multiple tables which need joins to generate complex reporting.

As the only tech here, there is only so much I can be working on. Before... time spent on trying to get MySQL to work, was time not well spent. I spent countless hours on IRC talking to devs on #mysql/#mariadb and was told many times, you seem to have the indexes in the right places and the query was well written, you are lucky you are getting it that fast.

Sure, if I had a huge team like Instgram (who I think sharded mysql) and Pinterest. I could assign dbas to get my MySQL infrastructure to scale and possibly fork my application to work different.

I even called Percona and Mariadb and was given pricing from $50 to $70k to work the issue. Note, that they didn't even promise to resolve it. They needed between $10 to $20k up front to check my schema and the data and then the other sum to do the work. Really, almost $100k and no concrete answer?

So I don't have a team and I didn't employ Percona/Mariadb to help solve my issue. Instead, I did something completely different. Some may even say drastic.

I need something simple, that will work with the 5x9's and is very robust. So instead, I went to Postgres. I ran to Postgres. I ran and didn't look back.

With Postgres, 80% of my issues went away. PG 9.5 has some features that ALL of my issues will go away and I may be able to have quarterly queries of 10b rows with multiple tables in under 2 seconds. Cloudflare is currently doing it and I'm trying to replicate it.

Bottom line is this. MySQL for me, was a dead end. Postgres seems to every year go from strength to strength.

Postgres isn't shiny. It's dependable, actually cares what you are putting in the database. Makes your schema simple because you can go from var(x)/int(x) to text/int and it's still fast.

I've converted about 10 other dbas who were used to MySQL and thought PG was hard, to switch over. Now, like me. They won't look back.

If you are still using MySQL. Take a look at Postgres. MySQL has lost it's shine. It's now dull.

Fingers crossed PG 9.6 comes with MPP capability. That would really blow the doors off!

<comment><USER5> I agree. MySQL has been one problem after another. Postgres isn't perfect either, but it is constantly improving and normally does the right thing.

The idea of Postgres being a "shiny new toy" is... an interesting viewpoint.

<comment><USER9> > MySQL has been one problem after another.

Please elaborate. MySQL/MaraiaDB can be pretty relaxed when it comes to SQL standards (which you can disable/tweak), but I've yet to have data loss or data corruption. And speaking from experience - the system would be at it's knees and MySQL would happily do it's best to answer queries.

I'm not saying Postgres isn't stable (haven't really used it) - I'm just rather suspicious of the comments here. I find it hard to believe that it's as broken as people here claim when big businesses are using it [1].

[1] [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1113381/what-databases- do...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1113381/what-databases-do-the-world- wide-webs-biggest-sites-run-on)

<comment><USER10> Same here. I've been a MySQL DBA for over 10 years and I've never had data loss or corruption even with power supplies dying and servers shutting down completely.

I've also used PG in quite a few projects and I can't say I find it better or faster at least for my usage. If anything it's more difficult to manage, there are way less decent tools to monitor, profiling is a PIA and those backslash commands just drive me nuts. I hate stuff like "\dt".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A couple years ago I built a very robust and intricate virtual inventory system for integrating with third-party vendors. I created two accessible endpoints: one highly customizeable webservice endpoint (I'll literally take any valid XML and work with you to transform it into what I need), and one luddite-friendly SFTP server supporting extraordinarily simple export-from- excel XML output.

I was raked over the coals for providing the SFTP/Excel solution, "FTP?! What is this, the '80s?" was the quote that sticks with me.

Almost all of our vendors turned out to be small shops. Only two of our dozens of vendors use the webservice, even as easy-like-Sunday-morning as it is. Everyone else uses the Excel solution.

It's _hard_ to let yourself write the uncool solution that actually fits the bill.

<comment><USER12> One of our data providers at MSN gave us this binary blob, which we had a decoder to run over and produce a text file, which we then transformed in something regular, did a diff, and updated the table we needed to update via SQL.

We begged and begged for XML support. Many releases on, they trumpeted XML support! Huzzah! The XML had a header and one huge CDATA block of the Base64 encoded blob they usually sent.

Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I understand what you're saying but please replace MySQL with Postgres. Only one of those two is an actual consistent database.

<comment><USER14> Agree -- I hope people don't still consider Postgres to be "shiny and new"

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> You have no idea how many developers I've wanted to hit in the testicles with a baseball bat for crying my ear off to use redis, mongo, etc... anything but mysql. Really you want to take our 99% relational data (billing/invoicing, crm, etc...) and put it in a key store? You're fucking retarded.

What I found is that I can browse the posts here in the AM and then by noon they will be asking me for whatever landed on the front page here. I just laugh and tell them to go back to work.

</comment><comment><USER16> Please do not use MySQL,,, unless you've read the it's dual licenses. MariaDB was forked for good reason. MariaDB > MySQL

<comment><USER17> I agree. Also, MariaDB is being actively developed. A lot of Linux distributions are defaulting to MariaDB. The recent release of Debian stable (jessie) has MariaDB. So far I've only been using it on new machines, but I may even migrate my existing MySQL servers to MariaDB.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Overall a good point, but MySQL auto increment sequences and other bugs have given me corrupt state many times, yet good old yet shiny PostgreSQL has caused zero problems over more than 10 years, yet keeps gaining features. I have been using hstore more lately, and PostGIS is hard to match.

</comment><comment><USER19> > Some technology is designed for massive scale and some is not. You may have > to layer a little scale magic on top.

This is as wrong as saying that everyone needs to scale day one.

</comment><comment><USER20> Relational Databases still rule the roost for almost every possible problem minus a handful of instances.

Personally I would go the Fork of MariaDB or my prefer DB of Postgres.

</comment><comment><USER21> I haven't used Java in a while, but does Oracle still run around extorting folks for using the JDBC license? I'm curious.

Frankly I don't have any really serious problem with mysql other than it's ownership and speed of improvement. Plausibly MariaDB sorts that out but I agree with other commenters that at this point Postgres seems like the best choice for most new projects.

</comment><comment><USER22> Some similar articles and threads:

\- Choose Boring Technology: [http://mcfunley.com/choose-boring- technology](http://mcfunley.com/choose-boring-technology), comments at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9291215](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9291215)

\- Chasing the Shiny and New: [https://www.nemil.com/musings/shinyandnew.html](https://www.nemil.com/musings/shinyandnew.html), discussion at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10279008](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10279008)

\- Tech is moving too fast for me, I'm out: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7947551](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7947551)

etc.

I especially liked the first one, which described the idea of "innovation tokens": every startup or project gets three innovation tokens. If you decide to use a new development language, you've just spent one. A new framework, you've just spent another, and so on. If you spend more than three, your chances of launching reach epsilon.

I find that as I'm getting to be an older (and older, sigh...) developer, I'm also more and more reluctant to keep throwing away all of the knowledge and hard-won skills I've developed in favor of picking up new ones. It seems enormously, almost criminally wasteful. How many times should I throw away tens of thousands of lines of code in polished, battle-tested libraries, and knowledge of edge cases and gotchas and little efficiencies and everything else, so that I can start over again with a blank slate and a new language and a long road of new bugs and edge cases to learn?

No other industry is as wasteful in terms of talent expended than ours is. Imagine if every single bridge ever built in this country was torn down and replaced every five years with a new bridge that featured new materials and new technology.

</comment><comment><USER23> Oh my gods, I can't up vote this enough. This should be mandatory reading before one is allowed to use a text editor.

Though PostgreSQL is as good a choice as MySQL. Technically better (AIUI) but with a less gigantic support base.

</comment><comment><USER24> Oddly, Pinterest is a flagship user of HBase.

<comment><USER25> Maybe they're just referring to transactional scenarios?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> As someone who's only briefly looked into Postgres, are there any disadvantages to going with it instead of MySQL?

It seems (especially from the comments here) that Postgres is something to seriously consider in future projects, but I'm wondering if there are any reasons to stick with MySQL.

<comment><USER6> I've answered this question once before, and this is what I wrote. MySQL is battle tested and operationally sane to manage at scale; I'm talking specifically about replication.

I've been a DBA for thousands of MySQL hosts in production and just a handful of PostgreSQL clusters, so I'm not a PostgreSQL expert by any stretch. These PostgreSQL machines were also inherited from a company we acquired, so some of my negative impressions can likely be explained by them being set up poorly, which sadly seems to be the norm.

PostgreSQL's replication has evolved slowly over the years, and as a result it's idiosyncratic, complicated to get right, and hard to generalize about. There aren't a lot of great setup guides and tutorials on the subject either.

Postgres replication works by shipping WAL (transaction/redo) logs to slaves, and the slaves are in a constant state of DB recovery. Streaming replication does so as writes happen, and file based log shipping copies the logs when the 16MB segment is complete. Ours were set up to use streaming replication, without having a separate file-based archive log host to use to fetch older logs. Whenever the write load became too much and the slaves could no longer keep up with the master WAL logs on the master would expire and replication would break entirely, requiring you to rebuild all your slaves from backup. This was my introduction to PG replication. WAL logs were also applied without checksums or verification which corrupted the entire replication chain, and as I remember we didn't discover this until the corrupt pages got hit by a query. Software upgrades with PG seemed to be a huge pain as well, we could never figure out how long they were going to take, and even if the on-disk formats didn't change, somehow all the cardinality stats on our tables disappeared, and all our query plans went to shit until we ran some process to rebuild them, which took days.

Operationally there were some things that made our team angry. We couldn't figure out how to reparent a slave without completely re-cloning it from the new parent, even though it was completely up to date from the authoritative master at the time of the reparenting. Also, do you really have to take down the entire cluster to change max connections on a slave? Many such settings seemed to not be dynamic and must remain in sync across the entire chain. One of the things people seem to love about PG is how correct and proper it is respecting the sanctity of your data. As an ops person I'd much rather deal with slightly inconsistent replicas (common in MySQL) than have to fight with how rigid PG is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> In some cases using shiny new things does give you some type of advantage over bigger companies that are not willing to take the risk. That being said, when it comes to choosing a database developers should stick to mature technology with a non-restrictive license aka Postgres

</comment><comment><USER28> There are lots of love for MySQL, especially from Facebook and Pinterest.

I wish the same for PostgreSQL

</comment><comment><USER29> Postgres FTW, with native JSON support it is the best RDBMS out there.

</comment><comment><USER30> %s/MySQL/PostgreSQL/ and I violently agree with this article.

</comment><comment><USER31> OMG, that article had some serious common sense.

<comment><USER31> Dam, always getting down voting for stating an opinion. What's up with that. (By the way, I actually read the article.)

<comment><USER32> The correct response is not to give a damn about something so arbitrary.

<comment><USER31> You are absolutely correct.

I blame it on a temporary lapse of reason.

(I usually don't run with the herd, so this shouldn't be a surprise to me...)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Hobbit Chrome Experiment - <AUTHOR> http://middle-earth.thehobbit.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Find few more ineresting chrome experiements here [https://limelight.link/sites/day/20150226](https://limelight.link/sites/day/20150226)</comment>


Vertu chooses Android over Windows for luxury handset - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21387371 <comment><USER2> I genuinely can't see why anyone would pay that for a handset. They are an icon of conspicuous consumption, nothing more.

Regarding the OS choice, they are right about market share which is why they were on Symbian and are now on android. Only time will tell where they end up.

<comment><USER3> It's not about technology, it's about psychology.

If you're the target market for this phone you don't care much about the functionality, what you care about is that other people can see that you have so much money that you can carelessly throw around your phone that costs more than many people make in a month. It's all about perception.

Note that an important factor is that your peers have to know that the phone is prohibitively expensive. If they don't the point is lost. This is also why superyachts are so popular among the ultrarich. Everyone knows that they are crazy expensive to buy and maintain, and so they know you have the money to do so.

Douglas Adams has an unparalleled quote about the psychology behind it - _"No expense had been spared to give the impression that no expense had been spared"_ This is also the only instance I've ever seen of recursion being used in fiction :-)

<comment><USER4> This isn't expensive enough to be actually exclusive, I'm guessing they're mostly preying on people with upper-middle class incomes and massive amounts of status anxiety.

I doubt they even make good bribes, as compared to other things you get for the price they're hard to show off, don't hold value over time, and are too easily traced.

<comment><USER5> >I'm guessing they're mostly preying on people with upper-middle class incomes and massive amounts of status anxiety

Indeed, especially so if the culture around them promotes this type of anxiety. You'd be surprised by how many people living in big cities of the former Soviet Union purchase used Vertu phones or outright two-SIM fakes. A lot of cell phone repair kiosks, especially those specializing in Nokia phones, have a "Vertu Repair" sign hanging outside. Now that the iPhone is supplanting Vertu as a major status symbol this trend has been on a decline but the sings and the fakes are all still there.

On an semi-unrelated note, creating a no-nonsense port of CyanogenMod or, better yet, MUIU for Vertu phones might make for an amusing art project.

Edit: formatting, typo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I just don't get it. Then again I don't get Rolex or Land Rover, both inferior products compared to digital watch / Toyota.

</comment><comment><USER7> > The only thing that scratches it is a diamond.

Too bad since their target market is probably in possession of a lot of diamonds.

<comment><USER8> "oh no, I left my phone in the same pocket as my loose diamonds"

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Before: a luxury phone with crappy software. Now: a luxury phone with good software.

Buy it if you like to burn money.

</comment><comment><USER10> I do not know if Vertu was ever run at a profit, but, evidently, their new owner thinks it is possible.

The future prospects for Vertu are probably on an upward trend. If they can keep the software on their devices updated, a nice Android phone should have a five year lifespan before it is hopelessly out of date and unable to run new versions of the OS or lack the peripherals to support new features.

The size of phones, and screen resolution might be stabilizing. Several years of incremental improvements to power efficiency and other parameters will still add up to obsolescence. But, eventually, phones may become more like wristwatches. I have worn the same watch for more than 20 years, and it was made to last.

</comment><comment><USER11> They'll be flying off the shelves faster than you can say "Veblen good"

<comment><USER12> Fascinating: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good>

"for consumers who want to use exclusive products, price is quality"

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > Each device has a "concierge" button

...and a 10 billion yen balance...

</comment><comment><USER14> Nokia still retains an ownership stake in Vertu and yet Vertu doesn't seem to have much faith in its former parent's strategy.

<comment><USER15> While I can appreciate the irony, they claim to be making a practical decision. Since the device is not disposable, and since Windows doesn't yet hold the market share that makes them feel warm and fuzzy about the long term ... Android.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's a status symbol. It can be running MS DOS and still have the same niche demand.

</comment><comment><USER17> Looks like a wise decision on the part of Vertu.

Why doesn't Nokia make the same decision!

<comment><USER18> Because they're not the same company anymore? Vertu was sold by Nokia last year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> How can anybody associate android with Luxury? Was not android made to be very inexpensive in the first place?

<comment><USER20> They can't licence iOS and Symbian is at end-of-life. So the choice was between Windows Phone or Android. Since neither of these are particularly associated with luxury, the decision was presumably made using other criteria such as ecosystem size and brand recognition.

<comment><USER21> I don't think Microsoft would allow them to bling up the Metro interface, so the choice was probably Android by default.</comment></comment></comment>


Turbulent times for Formula 1 engines result in unprecedented efficiency gains - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/cars/2016/05/turbulent-times-for-formula-1-engines-result-in-unprecedented-efficiency-gains/ <comment><USER2> Another trick Formula 1 has had for a while, that will soon be seeing adoption into production cars, are camless engines. Valves are operated by electronically-controlled pneumatic actuators. This allows the valves to open and close faster, and makes intermediate states (in between fully closed and fully open) a lot easier. It's also a major reason as to why crank speeds are as high as they are in F1 cars, as they valves can be actuated fast enough to avoid the valve float that would otherwise occur in cammed engines with valve springs. Production cars currently tend to top out around 9450rpm (the 6.3L V12 in the LaFerrari), whereas Formula 1 cars have pushed close to 20,000rpm (though usually 16,000 - 18,000) for quite some time.

Supercar manufacturer Koenigsegg is in the process of licensing their consumer version of the technology under the trade name "Freevalve". They've been developing it and testing it for an incredibly long time (I believe it's in its fourth or fifth generation), presumably to keep driving the costs down. I believe a few Chinese manufacturers are some of the initial companies signing on. It's around a 3-4% efficiency gain on its own.

There's other fun stuff too, like Mercedes-Benz's split turbochargers. Basically, the turbine is located near the exhaust still, but a shaft runs through the engine to the other side to the compressor which is near the intakes -- less piping to get a cooled charge, less turbo lag (again, shorter piping), a more compact engine footprint, and needing smaller intake side pods than using normal turbochargers. Be interesting to see if those trickle down to consumer autos, whereas currently manufacturers are instead integrating 48V electrical systems for electric turbochargers (and more advanced lighting, hybrid functionality, etc.)

<comment><USER3> >Another trick Formula 1 has had for a while, that will soon be seeing adoption into production cars, are camless engines. Valves are operated by electronically-controlled pneumatic actuators. This allows the valves to open and close faster, and makes intermediate states (in between fully closed and fully open) a lot easier. It's also a major reason as to why crank speeds are as high as they are in F1 cars, as they valves can be actuated fast enough to avoid the valve float that would otherwise occur in cammed engines with valve springs. Production cars currently tend to top out around 9450rpm (the 6.3L V12 in the LaFerrari), whereas Formula 1 cars have pushed close to 20,000rpm (though usually 16,000 - 18,000) for quite some time.

Sorry to be a buzzkill but this is not correct

The engines are not camless. However, they are 'spring less' in a traditional sense. In the early 1990's the typical wound wire springs were replaced with pneumatically charged cylinder that functions as the spring. The reason was do to the inability to create wound wire springs that did not encounter harmonic issues as RPM went up and a more efficient valve closing action. However, through all of this, the camshaft itself is retained.This allowed engines to reach over 20k rpm (which sounds unreal) but the current regulations, introduced in 2014, limit them to 15k and they typically run less due to rules that limit fuel flow at higher RPMs.

The Koenisegg on the other hand is absolutely camless technology they call Free valve and it is a marvel. It not only allows control of the profile, overall, but a on a cylinder by cylinder valve by valve basis.

Similar thing with Mercedes' turbo charger. It is split, and it is impressive, but the benefits are more complex simply gaining from placing the compressor and turbine at different ends of the engine (e.g., moving intake charge away from exhaust heat, providing space for an ultra highspeed motor/generator on the turbo shaft) etc.

At the risk of sharing clickbait...there is an argument that current F1 cars are more energy efficient than a tesla ([http://www.espn.co.uk/f1/story/_/id/15152695/f1-cars-more- ef...](http://www.espn.co.uk/f1/story/_/id/15152695/f1-cars-more-efficient- latest-tesla))

<comment><USER4> >there is an argument that current F1 cars are more energy efficient than a tesla

It does sound like click-bait, but I see the point they're making there. No one is proposing we all drive F1s, but for that performance regime, under those conditions, F1 is more efficient with it's energy usage in achieving a target output than a Tesla would be. I'm sure that decreases dramatically driving at pedestrian speeds.

It reminds me a bit of when I first read about the SR-71's J58 engine. I'm trying to remember where I saw it (I think it was in the book "Skunk Works") in that the SR-71 was actually most efficient running at Mach 3.2 than it was running at lower speeds. Seems counter-intuitive, but like F1, that was the situation for which it was designed.

<comment><USER5> Yes, the SR-71 was happiest at mach 3+. At these speeds, metal expansion due to heat would seal the airplane frame up too. Designed for its mission. Insanely, it would literally leak fuel on the ground.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's not yet clear if the added complexity will be worth it for ordinary cars, but it's interesting. 47% efficiency from an IC engine is impressive.

Formula 1 is deliberately power-limited. But the Formula 1 technical rules [1] for the powerplant are all inputs, not outputs:

        Engine cubic capacity must be 1600cc.
        Crankshaft rotational speed must not exceed 15000rpm.
        Fuel mass flow must not exceed 100kg/h.

So that's where the drive for higher efficiency comes from.

[1] [http://www.fia.com/file/40961/download/14591?token=5zH5vGzI](http://www.fia.com/file/40961/download/14591?token=5zH5vGzI)

<comment><USER7> Exactly. F1 engines can easily turn up to 24.000 rpm, but are limited to 19.000rpm to help the smaller engine teams.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The plasma jet injection thing sounds pretty novel, but I imagine a lot of the efficiency gain is tied up in the lean burn. The brake thermal efficiency gains of lean burn are well known, as are the reasons we don't use them in modern road cars.

Burning so little fuel in so much air produces high levels of nitrogen oxides [1], bad for smog and acid rain and ozone. That's not a concern for an F1 car, but a serious issue for road cars that need to pass emissions tests since they can cause modern catalytic converters to stop functioning properly. See this note [2] on how unhelpful current NOx mitigation strategies have been.

I believe the addition of three-way catalytic converters was partly responsible for the stagnant fleet fuel efficiency somewhere in the 1980s, since they had to make engines run richer than before to not foul the cats; though, we've since developed better converters. (Also, safety equipment and luxury things increasing weight affected fleet numbers.)

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOx](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOx)

[2] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOx_adsorber#Market_use](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOx_adsorber#Market_use)

<comment><USER8> Following up, it looks like Mahle has actually been tying to address the NOx production. The OP links to this article [1] from 2010, which is mostly taken from three SAE papers that indicate they have been able to constrain the NOx in jet injection engines to "single digit ppm engine out NOx emissions" [2]. The EPA seems to indicate [3] that less than 1 ppm NOx post-catalytic converter is targeted. I don't know if their advancements allow for three-way catalytic converters on a lean burn engine, but that would be pretty impressive.

[1] [http://www.greencarcongress.com/2010/10/tji-20101027.html](http://www.greencarcongress.com/2010/10/tji-20101027.html)

[2] [http://papers.sae.org/2010-01-2196/](http://papers.sae.org/2010-01-2196/)

[3, PDF] [https://www3.epa.gov/ttncatc1/dir1/fnoxdoc.pdf](https://www3.epa.gov/ttncatc1/dir1/fnoxdoc.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Any mention of the Prius using the Atkinson cycle brings out the inner pedant in me. I suppose to a certain degree, Toyota makes the engine, so they can call it what they want, but late intake valve closing is clearly quite distinct from the engine Atkinson invented (and indeed that design might not have achieved one goal of Atkinson's engine which was to circumvent the Otto cycle patent).

Indeed, if there were any existing cycle for which it would make sense to name the Prius' engine after, it would be the Miller cycle, though that has always meant some sort of external compression of intake air (the original patent used a turbo, but all Miller cycle engine's I've ever seen have superchargers).

One other interesting note is that the Miller cycle works best with a supercharger due to increased relative boost at low RPMs, where the drop in torque due to the late intake valve closing hurts the most. The Prius nicely sidesteps this by using an electric motor at low speeds.

<comment><USER10> I'm not understanding the Atkinson cycle. It seems like less compression would be worse. What am I missing?

<comment><USER11> There are limits to compression. The fuel-air mix will combust spontaneously if you compress it too much.

So that's why max compression ratio is something like ten. So a normal engine has compression of ten and expansion of ten.

A more efficient engine with a different cycle might still have compression of ten but expansion goes up to say eleven. This means it's possible to extract more power at the end of the power stroke.

There are some tricks to achieve that. Toyota does it by creating an engine with a geometry that would otherwise have very high compression and expansion ratio, but they can avoid the high compression ratio: they don't close the intake valves when the cylinder has been sucked in full of fresh air, like in a normal engine. They keep them open so at the start of the compression cycle, fresh air flows backwards out of the cylinder for a while, before they close the valves.

<comment><USER12> Actually, the advantage of the Atkinson or Miller cycles is not due to avoiding autoignition limits. Rather it is because of, as you pointed out, the greater than unity ratio of (expansion ratio)/(compression ratio). So you are improving the ratio of work that can be extracted from the power cycle as compared to the work that you are doing on the mixture.

For the same engine displacement as a standard Otto cycle engine, the maximum power you can develop with the Atkinson-type cycle is decreased, hence you trade efficiency for power density. The Miller cycle approach is a way to shift that balance back toward the Otto range by doing some precompression on the air.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Reminds me of this article from 2004 of one person making similar innovations as entire engineering teams with huge R&D budgets 12 years later.

[http://www.popsci.com/cars/article/2004-09/obsession-mr- sing...](http://www.popsci.com/cars/article/2004-09/obsession-mr-singhs- search-holy-grail)

<comment><USER14> Interesting. He has a website now [http://www.somender- singh.com/](http://www.somender-singh.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It would be nice if Formula 1 would be a test bed for advanced technologies again like they did in the 90s with sequential automatic gearboxes.

</comment><comment><USER16> I wish this article had more detail. Their description of the technology sounds a lot like stratified charge engines, which have been around for a long, long time... as in the Honda CVCC (the '70s forerunner to the Civic).

Perhaps the difference is DI?

<comment><USER12> It is very similar in the basics. A mixture that may be too lean to ignite via spark ignition can nonetheless sustain combustion if it is "hit" with enough ions, high-energy molecules, or radicals. Hence the "pre chamber" which initially ignites a richer mixture with a low ignition induction time.

The difference between what is discussed here vs. the CVCC seems to be principally about the kind of precise control that we can achieve using today's technologies, including electronic control and micro-machining. From there, it looks like the shaping and direction of the combusted jet from the pre-chamber has been well-optimized in comparison to systems like CVCC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Great! May be I am the only one in the nerd cicrle who dont want ICE cars to die and Electric cars to take over. I want, better and hugly more efficient engine along with cleaner fuel.

In the comment section someone pointed out about vaporized fuel achieving much higher efficiency, why is that not being used?

</comment><comment><USER18> This is the sort of massively twisted world we end up with when externalities are not accounted for properly. Capitalism just spent in excess of 100 years and many trillions of hours to come up with hilariously convoluted designs still lagging massively behind the electric motor.

<comment><USER19> Good luck trying to make an electric car last 200+ miles at F1 race speeds. The technology for an electric F1 car just isn't there. Formula E is making advances in that regard but it's just nowhere near the level of F1 ATM.

<comment><USER20> > Formula E is making advances in that regard but it's just nowhere near the > level of F1 ATM.

A Formula E car can't even make it through a single race.</comment></comment></comment>


Danish Submarine Inventor Says He Buried Swedish Journalist at Sea - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/21/world/europe/swedish-journalist-peter-madsen-danish.html <comment><USER2> Even if this was at all believable, to change your answer from 'I dropped her off' to 'she's dead' isn't really going to do you any favors...

<comment><USER3> The police have found a women body "without arms, head and legs" they said this evening. They have not denied confirmed that it is Kim though.

Is it resonable that the limbs comes off from propellers at random in the sea? Does that happen?

[http://ekstrabladet.dk/112/article6787128.ece](http://ekstrabladet.dk/112/article6787128.ece)

Murder, dismemberment and maybe more.

Well, submarine murders are kinda tech related ...

<comment><USER4> Not a chance a body would lose all limbs and the head in such a short time.

[https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/news-blog/how-long- do-d...](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/news-blog/how-long-do-dead- bodies-remain-inta-2009-06-10/)

That could only be deliberate, so if it is Kim Wall's body then Madsen will have a lot more explaining to do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There was a time when, if someone in your traveling party died, you'd dig a hole 6' deep and bury them with some words of tribute. Or at sea, you'd weigh them down with a rock and slip them over the side.

For future reference, if a traveling companion dies far away from any emergency services (which wasn't really the case here), what is one's legal and moral obligation to bring the body back to civilization?

<comment><USER6> That is almost certainly a very complicated issue which has a lot to do with where the person died, your country of origin and so on. In this case however the guy lied about the timeline and events, which speaks to something other than death of natural causes.

<comment><USER7> Also worth mentioning is that the police were very quickly charging him with manslaughter - so quick, they probably had indications something was wrong with his statement even before the sub was raised.

Educated guess - there's cell phone coverage in most, if not all of Køge bay; it wouldn't surprise me if she managed to call the emergency services.

<comment><USER4> > it wouldn't surprise me if she managed to call the emergency services.

Not from within the metal hull of a partially submerged submarine.

<comment><USER7> I work offshore on occasion; when in areas with excellent coverage, you'll often have (spotty) coverage on decks below the waterline - the signal bounces off any reflective (to RF energy) surface and finds its way into lots of nooks and crannies where you wouldn't expect to have reception.

<comment><USER8> Sure, but a submerged sub shouldn't have any nooks and crannies that leads to the surface.

<comment><USER7> True, but a submarine does not necessarily travel submerged.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Whatever Madsen did trying to cover it up is definitely not going to help when sentencing time rolls around. What a fool. It also doesn't help because no matter what will come out next there will always be a feeling that he's still holding something back.

It takes a special kind of warp to claim that you tossed someone overboard because of an accident and then expect to be believed if you already have admitted to lying about dropping her off on shore in the first place. Not to mention that additional grief caused to boyfriend and family by first giving them hope knowing full well that she is dead and then to snatch that hope away again. Asshole.

The most logical explanation that fits all the details is that he killed her and is simply fighting a rearguard action on having to admit that not realizing that his confession is going to end up in the 'optional' bin and that whatever he says will be discounted. Expect to see the book being thrown at Madsen, he's lucky if he gets out in the next decade.

<comment><USER9> There are basically two options.

1\. She suffered an accident on board and Madsen panicked. Knowing that his reputation would be fucked if someone died on board he threw her overboard and claimed she was let go.

2\. A sexual request went wrong. Madsen is known to be very forward. He is also in an open relationship with his wife. Wall might have freaked out leading Madsen to do something even more stupid than proposition her for sex.

<comment><USER10> Casual sex is not enough to explain this. In occident women decline this kind of proposals all the time. The european men know that this is normal and not a drama. Is deeply engraved in the culture. In 99,99% of the cases we'll need a stronger emotion for explain a murder than "my weekeend plan for casual sex with a complete stranger failed".

I don't think that the man is just a crippled psycho in disguise. Smart people can't avoid thinking logically, even if their acts seem irrational. There is always a subjacent current of logic... And here comes the third option

3\. The women did something that was taken as a menace to his current ego/status and elicit a strong 'defensive' reaction.

The journalist can't be a menace for his wife or family (It seems they are publicly in an open relation). So probably is not sexual.

The man loves with passion other thing; His work. Maybe she did something that was seen as a menace against the other love of his life, his submarine. Maybe she poke around and tried to sneak/photograph/open/discover some parts of the engine with the purpose to earn some bucks selling the submarine secrets when returning to China. I'm speculating of course, but unless he was drunk or drugged (unprobable while driving a sub), or both where flirting for months by e-mail and he feels cheated, there should be a solid reason for she being 'punished' with death. This is not a random act IMAO.

<comment><USER4> > Maybe she poke around and tried to sneak/photograph/open/discover some parts > of the engine with the purpose to earn some bucks selling the submarine > secrets when returning to China.

Really, this is the best you could come up with?

This is a hobby sub, not something that is top secret and run by the US navy. Madsen's sub has no secrets worth a dime.

<comment><USER10> A hobby can mean still serious bussiness if you find the right buyer (Think in minecraft for example).

Casually China has the strongest and biggest (ever-expanding) aquaculture sector in the entire planet. Militar technology is totally out of reach for they, too big, and uncloneable, but I bet that a lot of chinese (or norwegian) seafarming companies could find good uses for a toy like this.

<comment><USER4> > A hobby can mean still serious bussiness if you find the right buyer (Think > in minecraft for example).

Building a submarine is not that kind of a hobby.

> Casually China has the strongest and biggest (ever-expanding) aquaculture > sector in the entire planet.

Yes, so they don't have much to learn from your average hobbyist sub builder.

> Militar technology is totally out of reach for they, too big, and > uncloneable, but I bet that a lot of companies with fresh money to burn > could find good uses for a toy like this.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_093_submarine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_093_submarine)

How is that for a toy? That's a nuclear powered sub the Chinese have a bunch of them, this one displaces 7000 tonnes submerged compared to the 40 tons of the Nautilus, has a crush depth orders of magnitude deeper than the Nautilus and carries a bunch of cruise missiles.

Do you honestly believe the Chinese could learn even a single useful thing from Madsen's toy?

The only people with a direct interest in running private submarines are the drug cartels and some salvage companies, and neither of those would lead to Madsen killing a journalist.

<comment><USER10> a toy like this = referred to the madsen submarine

> Do you honestly believe the Chinese could learn even a single useful thing > from Madsen's toy?

I honestly believe that 99% of people in China don't know how to build a submarine or have free access to militar technology so, yes I do.

But lets explore your idea. If the reason is neither the passengers, nor the submarine, must be in the cargo. "Somebody found a shipload of something illegal, thus must be 'silenced'". Is a perfectly valid hypothesis. The problem is that: 1) No drugs where found and 2) would the guy be so dumb as to invite a journalist to enter in a relatively small submarine if there was a shipload of something illegal inside? It seems unlikely to me.

<comment><USER4> You have a very rich imagination.

There are _far_ simpler explanations which do not involve foreign powers, secrets, drugs and so on.

If Peter Madsen turns out to be a drug smuggler on top of a murderer I guess it shouldn't surprise me but I'd put the seduction gone wrong entry a lot higher on the list of likely possibilities.

As for the 99% of the people in China, that's a nice attempt at reverse Chinese math, we're still looking at 10 million people then who know how to build a submarine? I'd be highly surprised if it was even 1% of that. The regular people in China need a submarine about as much as you or I do, which is not at all, which is one of the reasons why Madsens' efforts were notable in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Copenhagen Police just announced on Twitter that they got reports of a female body in the waters southwest of the city this afternoon

[https://twitter.com/kobenhavnpoliti/status/89967522825052979...](https://twitter.com/kobenhavnpoliti/status/899675228250529792)

<comment><USER12> They're also holding a press conference tonight at 2030 local time.

[https://twitter.com/KobenhavnPoliti/status/89968767838346035...](https://twitter.com/KobenhavnPoliti/status/899687678383460352)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I understand this is a juicy story -- but forgive me, how is this not considered off-topic given the HN guideline:

      Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.

<comment><USER14> _shrug_ Apparently the peculiarity and the fact that the accused is well known in certain tech/engineering sectors has passed the 'things hackers are interested in' bar.

From the same guidelines you quote:

      Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site.
      If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it by clicking on its 'flag' link.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> For context/history, here's the discussion from last week when the events were first reported (and his story was that he'd dropped her off at shore, still alive): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14998270](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14998270)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's unfortunate to see this & negative press on Copenhagen Suborbitals. Hopefully it doesn't shut down the program.

<comment><USER8> He is no longer associated with them and hasn't been for some time. They are going to launch a rocket a couple weeks from now, weather permitting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I hadn't actually followed that. I remembered about an argument between him and Kristian von Bengtson (which led to vB's departure), but thought he was still with the group.

Looking forward to the upcoming launch!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why woukd he kill the poor journalist while also sinking his sub? I'm very curious how this turns out.

<comment><USER16> Most likely for the same reasons almost all crimes of this sort happen. He made a pass on her that wasn't well received, things got out of hand, emotions took over and at some point he either injured or killed her in the heat of the moment, then panicked and tried to cover up the situation.

Violent crime is rarely based on rational, well reasoned acts. I wouldn't try to read too much logic into it.

<comment><USER17> Do you have any data to support the claim that most crimes of passion involve "him making a pass at her"? This seems like an obvious narrative for a TV show but this is merely one of hundreds of possibilities that could result in her accidental death.

<comment><USER16> My "most" claim was more generic, in that they are situational, triggered by emotions (and lack of emotional control), and most often between people that know each other. Him making a pass at her is merely my conjecture of how that might have happened in this particular case, based on the circumstances that have been reported.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What does Madsen say about:

      * What happened while the two were at the submarine?
      * What did he do after he supposedly left her at a restaurante?
      * Why did he changed his story?
      * How did she die?

Did the journalist had any special information/characteristics/secret agenda that could have caused Madsen to kill her and destroy his own life in that way?

What was happening in the life of this Madsen recently that could indicate that he was going to do something like that?

</comment><comment><USER19> This seems like an ill-advised thing to admit?

<comment><USER20> better admitting accident and ill advised burial than rape, murder and cover- up.

<comment><USER4> But not better than first misleading authorities with a lie and then to have the truth come out anyway. That tends to make things considerably worse for the defendant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This guy does not seem smart.

<comment><USER22> He is smart. There are many competing forces in a human being. Smartness doesn't always win out. You might even notice this in yourself some day.

<comment><USER23> Hans Reiser comes to mind. Very strong engineer, comically inept at defending himself in court.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Who goes alone in a home-made submarine with a strange mad scientist?

<comment><USER24> tons of people, regularly, over the last few years. this guy was very active and his sub has been in service for the better half of a decade.

<comment><USER18> So he was apparently a nice normal guy, with no signs of madness?

<comment><USER25> Oh no, he was very clearly mad. Just not the sort of madness that gave the slightest indication that he'd deliberately cause harm to anyone ( _accidentally_ causing harm by talking people into things, on the other hand...).

<comment><USER18> ahahah, sorry, that was an unexpected response.

So maybe that's what happened? He talked the journalist into something and later saw that she had died because of that, probably also causing harm to the submarine?, then panic'ed and told lies to the police.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Odoo 8 released – beyond ERP into digital marketing - <AUTHOR> https://www.odoo.com/blog/odoo-news-5/post/odoo-8-is-here-181

<comment><USER2> Use this all the time for me and clients (Version 7 though). It used to be called OpenERP.</comment>


Tesla could explain why it crashed. But good luck getting its Autopilot data - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-02-24/autopilot-data-secrecy <comment><USER2> There's a reason why most companies won't release data ... they have opponents who deliberately act in bad faith.

> _If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I > will find something in them which will hang him. -- Cardinal Richelieu_</comment>


Alibaba Cloud locked all Canadians out of their accounts - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.twitter.com/StephenPunwasi/status/1179089481200263171 <comment><USER2> Well these seems like an excellent marketing move with no chance of blow back.

</comment><comment><USER3> Does anyone know if Alibaba Cloud has a status page? All I can find is this list of advance change notifications: [https://www.alibabacloud.com/notice](https://www.alibabacloud.com/notice)

</comment><comment><USER4> Why is there no mention of the Canadian/Alibaba issues on the Alibaba Wikipedia article?</comment>


Why doesn't OSX Finder have a proper tree view? - <AUTHOR> This is not about Mac vs. PC.  In fact, tree views as a means for graphically navigating and exploring the file system have been around a long time and on a number of platforms (Windows, Linux, Irix, Solaris, Amiga, etc.).
Is there a fundamental philosophical reason for Finder not offering a tree view?
Yes, the definitions of "proper" is variable.  That's not the point.  I find that tree views are far more useful and easier to navigate than what Finder offers.  I understand that if all you've known is Finder none of this will make sense.  Please refrain from down-voting based on tribalism as you would be down-voting a dedicated iOS developer who's been using Mac and other platforms for a long time. <comment><USER2> Actually, it is about Mac vs. PC.

A bit of history:

The classic Mac OS Finder never had a tree view. Heck, for a couple System versions, the file system (MFS) didn't support more than one level of folder hierarchy, so it would have been completely pointless. With HFS in System 4 (IIRC), that changed. Still no tree view though, and I don't think it was until System 6 that there was a list view, and not til System 7 were there disclosure triangles so you could drill down. (fun fact - though on OS X, you can adjust a slider to change icon sizes, back in OS ≤9, there was also "Small Icon View", which used 16x16 icons instead of the traditional 32x32, and put the labels to the side, rather than underneath) Despite a few other miscellaneous additions to the Finder over the years (tab view, At Ease (not really the Finder, but it shipped with certain Mac lines)), for System 7 through OS 9, most folks' file systems weren't that deep or complex. Having a tree view would have been mostly unnecessary and very Windows-like, which was something to avoid back then. There was even some outcry in OS 8 when the system got menus where you didn't have to hold down the mouse button to keep them open.

Come at it from the other side, NeXTStep Workspace's primary view was column view. So naturally that was left in the OS X Finder along with icon and list views from classic Mac OS. If tree view has ever been discussed at Apple in the past 15 years (and I wouldn't be surprised if it hasn't), it was almost certainly rejected as a throwback to the old Windows Explorer ca. 1995. Anecdote: in 2008-ish, at WWDC, there was a feedback forum, and while I can't remember what prompted the question, I asked if there were going to be resize handles on all the corners. I actually got boos from the audience and a look of horror from most of the panel, and a straight up "No. We're not doing that, probably ever. No way." as an answer. (Years later, I couldn't help but smirk when Lion had resize handles on all corners and edges.) The point is, if something potentially useful has too many associations with Windows, it was (and still is, to some extent) taboo.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the history lesson!

This thinking is, of course, unfortunate. Any UI can benefit from ideas borrowed from others. I remember when I was using Irix (Silicon Graphics) heavily many moons ago. It had some really compelling ideas. I can't remember most of them but I think one I liked was that the focus followed the mouse, you didn't have to click on a window to give it focus.

Yeah, only being able to resize a window from one corner is a pain in the ass.

Also, not having a border around a window makes for a fine mess. Overlap a few terminal windows full of text to see the effect.

The irony today is that the the OSX GUI sits on top of Unix. Which, of course, has supported deep and complex directory structures for a long time.

I can see Apple's point in keeping it simple for the typical non-tech user. No issues with that whatsoever. Judging from those I know, they don't ever create deep directory structures on their own and probably don't need anything beyond what Finder offers.

That said, I firmly believe that advanced users, which includes developers, could benefit from a much more advanced Finder. A tree structure is only one aspect of this. For example, in Windows I can very easily tell Explorer to show system files. You can do that in OSX, but it isn't as simple it becomes system-wide not directory-specific and it pollutes the desktop.

Another thing that I find missing is the ability to see your path in a Finder window, you know, one that you can copy and paste into the terminal window or another Finder window. Another useful feature would be "Open Terminal Here". I've implemented this through an add-on I found and it is fantastic. This should be standard. Directory and file sizes without having to use "Get Info". Preview pane. Create <insert application> file here (i.e: text files). And more.

It'd be nice if Apple offered a way to switch Finder to "Advanced" or "Developer" mode and offer a closer-to-the-metal experience.

<comment><USER2> > Another thing that I find missing is the ability to see your path in a > Finder window, you know, one that you can copy and paste into the terminal > window or another Finder window.

You can: View>Show Path Bar. You can click/drag any folder in the path to get a file: URL or file path depending on your drag destination. Alternatively, your current selection can be copied/pasted into Terminal.

> Directory and file sizes without having to use "Get Info".

Use list view, pick Size as a column (should be a default, you may need to rearrange to get it visible next to the names). View>Show View Options; check "Calculate all sizes" for directories.

> Preview pane.

Column view has it directly. Hit space in List view for QuickLook, move the QL panel off to the side, and continue browsing. In Icon view: View>Show View Options; check "Show icon previews"; resize them large enough (≥48x48, IIRC) and movies can even be played inline.

Though this may sound a bit snarky, I mean it as a serious inquiry: have you actually used the Finder for more than 5 minutes since 10.4?

No, DTerm is not built in, but that's okay - no one's stopping you from installing it, or writing a better one†. The Finder doesn't have Dropbox built in either, and that's okay too.

†for instance, one that does the opposite: keeps a Finder window for each tab and window in Terminal on the current working directory.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Though this may sound a bit snarky, I mean it as a serious inquiry: have you > actually used the Finder for more than 5 minutes since 10.4?

Your comment doesn't bother me at all because you are, at the same time, sharing some tips.

> View>Show Path Bar

Yes, I've been using it for a while.

I've had "Show Path Bar" enabled for some time. It doesn't really work --dare I say-- properly. For one thing, the whole drag and drop thing is a pain. If the window you are going to is covered it takes some work to drop what you are dragging. Also, I can't drag and drop a path into another Finder window (well, I couldn't figure it out after a few attempts).

I would much, much rather have a plain textbox with the path that I can copy into the clipboard. That is far more useful in my opinion. Or at least a way to get to a plain text path, say, right-click and "Copy path to clipboard".

The closest I've gotten is a right-click->Get Info and then you can copy the "where" plain-text path. To open a new Finder window in this directory you have to use "Go to folder...". Of course, you can also drag from the path bar into the "Go to folder" dialog box to achieve the same.

I am not comparing to Windows, it's just a convenient example. You can find similar examples in various Linux GUIs and other non-Windows OS's throughout time. In Windows Vista, for example, the path is easy to copy and paste as plain text. If you need another Explorer window at this path you simply paste the path into the address bar and hit enter.

There are at least a couple of other uses cases for this. You are working in Photoshop and need to open a file in a directory that Photoshop is not currently pointing to. However, you already have that directory open in a file browser. In Windows you use the "Open..." dialog in Photoshop and simply copy and paste the plain text path into the "Open File" dialog box. Done deal. With the Path Bar in Finder you have a similar mechanism but you have to drag-and- drop, which is, well, a pain in the ass. Why? I have three 24 inch monitors. Dragging and dropping across that much real-estate gets old very, very quickly. It can actually become physically painful. I avoid drag-and-drop like the plague.

> Use list view, pick Size as a column

I've also had this for quite some time. I didn't realize I could ask it to show directory sizes, which is what really bugged me when I was working with thousands of media files. I was exploring various compression schemes and had to constantly use "Get Info". Just didn't think to look in view options. Thanks.

>> Preview pane.

>Column view has it directly. Hit space in List view for QuickLook, move the QL panel off to >the side, and continue browsing. In Icon view: View>Show View Options; check "Show icon >previews"; resize them large enough (≥48x48, IIRC) and movies can even be played inline.

Maybe I want too much: Real-time previews in list view within Finder, not in a separate window. Frankly, I don't enjoy having a million little disconnected windows all over the place. Again, think three 24 inch monitors, center, left, right and ten to twenty open windows. The fact that the menu bar doesn't stick to the application window becomes a really bad problem once you start working this way. Single screen on a small laptop, no issues whatsoever, there's only so much you can do with that surface area.

But, yeah, QuickLook is a tool I've used a few times when I had no choice.

Of course, in general, there's nothing wrong with OSX and its GUI. It's a very capable and beautiful system. No arguments there of any kind. I think you might find that lots of people who've had experience with other systems might find some of the options Apple made either difficult to use or nonsensical. You can say the same about other systems. There is no such thing as perfection. From the perspective of anyone who's only been exposed to MacOS everything makes perfect sense. There are lots of people like that. In a sense, you don't know what you are missing (or what you have gained) unless you spend a non-trivial amount of time exploring and understanding other options.

Back to the tree view...no joy I guess. Looking for a third party app that might implement this and other concepts (tabs in Finder anyone?).

Thanks again for your pointers.

<comment><USER2> > If the window you are going to is covered it takes some work to drop what > you are dragging.

cmnd-tab and cmnd-` work during drag and drop in all but the most poorly written applications. And most of those poorly written apps are broken in Lion anyway.

> With the Path Bar in Finder you have a similar mechanism but you have to > drag-and-drop, which is, well, a pain in the ass.

Oh, I agree, but that's a problem with NSOpenPanel, not the Finder. Subtle distinction, but it's there.

> The closest I've gotten is a right-click->Get Info and then you can copy the > "where" plain-text path.

Copy (cmnd-c) the folder or file puts the whole path on the clipboard (along with a file: URL and file promise - which gets used is determined by where the paste takes place).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Only 2% of the people I meet in the last 10 years, weren't organised enough, to save the files in the proper folders. So why we need a complicated directory structure ?

<comment><AUTHOR> For the 2%

No, seriously, what's under the pretty GUI is Unix. Developers and advanced users make use of the available Unix features, including deep directory structures.

You can see this consumer focus on tools like Xcode. I recently completed work on an iOS game with about 1600 media files. If you left it up to Xcode it wants to place all 1600 files at the root level of the app code directory. In order to create and maintain a usable tree of folders you have to go out of your way and jump through some hoops.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In what way is the hierarchical list display in the OS X finder not a "tree view"?

<comment><AUTHOR> Are you referring to the column view? That's not a tree, it's a bunch of columns. If you have to reach a directory that is, say, 10 levels down, you end-up with a mess of columns that you have no need for.

Here's random example: <http://www.chapo.co.il/content/articles/snmp-fig5.gif>

<comment><USER5> Would you please explain why you define your .gif image as "not a tree"? You have hierarchically nested directories (folders) with a clear indication of which parent a nested group is connected with, which to me exactly fits my definition of a "tree" (hierarchically nested elements, each element having a single parent node).

Also, could you post a link to an image showing what you define as a "proper tree view"?

<comment><AUTHOR> The link I provided is for an example of a tree view. Isn't it obvious?

<comment><USER5> > The link I provided is for an example of a tree view. Isn't it obvious?

Actually, from your text, no, it is not obvious that your link is an example of a tree view.

You ask a starting question about "column view" You then include two sentences describing why "column view" not not a tree and that a deep directory listing makes a mess of things.

Then, with zero clues to suggest you are making a full context change, you say "Here's random example: ...". Leading one to believe that the "random example" is a random example of a "column view", which is what the entire rest of this one post was referencing. If the entire statement relates to "column view", one naturally is led to the conclusion that a "random example" would be a random example of a column view.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


An Introduction to Geometric Topology [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.dm.unipi.it/~martelli/Geometric_topology.pdf <comment><USER2> From the preface:

""" this book is an introduction to surfaces and three-manifolds, and to their geometrisation, due to Poincaré and Koebe in 1907 in dimension two and to Thurston and Perelmann in 2002 in dimension three. Therefore this is also a textbook on low-dimensional topology, except that we completely neglect four- manifolds, that form a relevant part of this area but which do not (yet?) fit in any geometrisation perspective."""

Warning: if you just want to have a look-see, skip over chapter 1. There's plenty of pictures starting in chapter 2 that give an idea of what this is all about.

</comment><comment><USER3> there's a nice trick in Thurston's book on 3-manifolds where you glue a strip of paper at the ends into a Möbius band and cut along the middle to get a trefoil knot out of paper.

i did it with 3 and 5 twists and cut along the middle you get various knots this way

       </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----
      B___________________________________A
      A                                   B
       </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

[http://library.msri.org/books/gt3m/](http://library.msri.org/books/gt3m/)

<comment><USER4> This construction makes for a nice undergrad talk. Back when I was in college, my math club held a "Brisk walk through Topology" lecture and was able to pull a fairly large audience from both the Math and CS colleges.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice book, my favourite math subject, I recommend start with a more classic book, that explains the fundamentals of topology, starting from its definition. There are a lot of people talking about "topologic spaces", but, they don't know the definition, so they don't know what are they talking about.

Unfortunately happens with a lot of other math concepts, for example a lot of people say "idempotent" but they don't know what does it mean and use the term for things that are not idempotents, hence the word loose its meaning.</comment>


SpinKit – Simple CSS Spinners - <AUTHOR> https://melerosebastian.wordpress.com/2015/02/03/spinkit/

<comment><USER2> I assume this is intended to promote this project? I have used this for while on a couple of projects and found it to be solid and dead simple. Direct link to source: [https://github.com/tobiasahlin/SpinKit](https://github.com/tobiasahlin/SpinKit)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes! in my blog I try to promote startups, apps, hardware and technology :)</comment></comment>


Mechanical calculators: computing without electricity - <AUTHOR> http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/05/computers-antiq.html

<comment><USER2> A Chronology of Analogue Computing [http://www.rutherfordjournal.org/article020106.html](http://www.rutherfordjournal.org/article020106.html)

The Mechanical Analog Computers of Hannibal Ford and William Newell [http://web.mit.edu/STS.035/www/PDFs/Newell.pdf](http://web.mit.edu/STS.035/www/PDFs/Newell.pdf)</comment>


Wells Fargo's Bid to Vanquish Screen Scraping - <AUTHOR> http://www.americanbanker.com/news/bank-technology/wells-fargos-bid-to-vanquish-screen-scraping-1081367-1.html <comment><USER2> This is good to hear, but also rings a bit hollow given the industry's history with trying to keep data locked up. There are very simple things the industry could have done long ago to make their users more secure and they've done none of it. For instance, banks could have let users create read-only credentials to give to aggregators greatly reducing the potential for fraud. They could've created application-specific passwords, similar to what Google has done, that would allow more intelligent application of MFA and such...every time I log into Mint, I get a text message from Vanguard telling me that an unrecognized device is attempting to log in, requiring me to fix the account in Mint. Instead, they've basically adopted a "let's make it as difficult to scrape as possible" mentality which has contributed to the insecure and buggy situation we have today.

APIs are good, as are OAuth-style permissions requests where users get to at least know what data a service is asking for. But they shouldn't be used as a way to kill off screen scraping. They should be a better option that allows screen scraping to die off normally. The aggregation industry that scrapes hates it even more than the banks do. It costs them a ton of man power to keep it working and each integration needs to be done as a one-off. If the banks provide a better solution, it will get used. Better yet, if they can come up with a single standard API that will work with most/all banks, that would be even better. But if the banks also take measures to prevent scraping, it is going to cause problems and not be a good thing for account holders.

<comment><USER3> Wells Fargo allows me to create Read Only credentials! They should get credit for this feature. I wish all my financial accounts had this.

<comment> semi-extrinsic I was going to ask, why do you need to give third parties read access to your account? I've never done so in my life, and can't see the use case.

Then I see further down: it's for the FUBAR tax return system in the US.

Here's a solution for you: fix your damned tax return system first (and watch Intuit go out of business in the process). Then you've solved many big problems, not just a small one.

<comment><USER4> > I was going to ask, why do you need to give third parties read access to > your account?

Tax is not the only reason. How about data analysis services for your personal finances? e.g. mint.com.

<comment> semi-extrinsic TIL this is a thing third parties do in the US.

Round here (Norway), your bank already does this analysis part. When I log into my bank's app or webpage, I get an instant overview of how much I spent last month on the mortgage, food, gas, insurance, clothes etc. And I can define custom categories, as well as change how the system sorts transactions into different categories.

The budgets for the next 12 months my wife and I keep in a shared Google Docs spreadsheet. Planning requires thought, so I'm skeptical that you can automate a budget and then have people follow it (unless it's a very lenient budget).

<comment><USER5> It's a separation of concerns thing. Sure, you can use your bank for analysis, but there's better options out there. Banks are for storing money, not financial analysis.

<comment><USER6> > Banks are for storing money

Actually, banks are for aggregating capital. There is no institution in the Western financial system where you can just store money. The best you can do is put physical cash in a safe deposit box.

<comment><USER7> Putting physical US cash in a safe deposit box is actually illegal in the US.

<comment><USER8> AFAICT, it actually isn't in the general case (it may be when done with certain intent or effect), but most US banks now have a blanket prohibition on foreign or US currency in the agreement they require when you rent a safe deposit box.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A more informative title for the article probably would have been "Wells Fargo to publish API". It's about damn time too. Government, take note.

<comment><USER10> Wells Fargo to publish API _for private use for Xero customers_

It's not an API that anyone can hook into, just Xero.

<comment><USER11> the article says they plan to go beyond Xero, Xero is just... First

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Retail banking is a classic case of diametrically opposed incentives. Banks rely on the opacity of their products, apathy and the fear that the majority of people have of simply opening their bank statement, to inflict punitive charges on their customers. You want to keep your money, banks want to take it away from you.

Banks also depend on cast-iron control of the channel to cross-sell other products and services. The thing about 1st party bank APIs is they completely undermine all of this and that is why they haven't happened.

The end-of-days scenario for retail banking is a 3rd party coming along to build a superior banking experience atop of their APIs. The 3rd party starting from a market share of 0 has no choice but to align their incentives with the user in order to grow. This will manifest in apps that proactively warn users before their account incurs charges, notifies users when they do, and present products and services that compete with the banks but are better value for the user. A 3rd party will de facto end up owning the most important banking channel and this will ultimately devastate the bank's revenues. All of this is terrible for the bank but great for the user.

When you decompose things into underlying incentives it becomes clear why things have or have not happened and will or will not happen.

There are various initiatives to compel banks to provide open APIs, e.g. PSDII in Europe. However considering the aforementioned incentives it seems obvious that banks will not act in good faith and will find any excuse (vague hand- waving to security, fraud, etc) to subvert the UX of the API such that any service built on top of it is awful to use. A concrete example of this is the gestating RBS API, they require a 2FA SMS code before moving money over £30. This is something they do not do and will never do in their own private APIs that power their own mobile apps because users will not stand for it, but they can do this with a public API that has no users to speak of very easily.

Considering the current incentives 1st-party banking APIs (at least the ones we would wish to see) will not happen. The only way that can change that is through market forces, i.e. one bank has to provide the APIs that cause material customer churn at other banks. Given this it's clear screen-scraping is going nowhere anytime soon, in fact it will evolve, by directly hooking in to the private APIs that power the banks own APIs for more robust, and fully transactional APIs, i.e. payments and transfers.

Disclaimer: I have started a company that does this - [https://teller.io/](https://teller.io/)

<comment><USER13> This is a brilliant answer! Responses like this are exactly why I come to Hacker News comments when I really want to understand an issue.

Follow up questions:

1\. Why is Wells Fargo doing this if it poses such a threat to their penalty- based-fees revenue stream?

2\. Are there services currently doing the type of account alerting using screen scraping tech? If not, why not?

<comment><USER12> 1\. What Wells Fargo is providing is a limited feed, to a single customer (Xero), that services SME customers and not consumers. Wells Fargo has chosen not to make the API open access at this point too. I do not see that this currently conflicts with their business model.

2\. Not that I am aware of. I expect that is because the largest provider of screen-scraping feeds is prohibitively expensive (requires large up front fees and minimum commitments).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There is one thing that often goes unnoticed: most banks they already have APIs, they're public (accesible by anyone) but not documented. I'm talking about the APIs that provide data to their official mobile apps (is there any bank without a mobile app in 2016?).

For this very reason we've created Bankscrap, a Ruby gem to unlock those undocumented APIs. The main difference with the services behind apps like Mint is that:

A) We do not use screen scrapping.

B) It's all open source! Check it out:

[https://github.com/bankscrap/bankscrap](https://github.com/bankscrap/bankscrap)

<comment><USER15> Turns out wells fargo already have an api then. [https://www.wellsfargo.com/mobile/apps/](https://www.wellsfargo.com/mobile/apps/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> What took these assholes so long?

We've been typing usernames and passwords for our very important _banking_ accounts into third parties like Mint (instead of using OAuth) for several years now.

</comment><comment><USER17> Thought that the article was going to go in a totally different direction before reading it. Instead of solely trying to block screenscrapers, Wells Fargo is actually providing a better alternative. If only everything worked that way

</comment><comment><USER18> Oh, how much do I like the German HBCI standard... nice to see that at least some non-German players decide to follow the API trend.

However, it is disappointing that this is just a single bank and not a group of banks developing this - and especially, that a battle-tested standard was not adopted.

edit: in Germany, actually, there's for commercial use the DTA standard ([https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datentr%C3%A4geraustauschverfa...](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datentr%C3%A4geraustauschverfahren)) since 1976 (!), which has been replaced only recently by SEPA/ISO20022. Meanwhile, US banks decide to follow xkcd #927 ([https://xkcd.com/927/](https://xkcd.com/927/))...

</comment><comment><USER19> Do most banks not have an API? If you use software (e.g. something from Intuit) that accesses your banking info, is it likely screen-scraping?

<comment><USER9> Correct. Most banks are running back end infrastructure from the 80s with lots of manual or semi-manual processes (e.g. overnight interbank batch reconciliation, at least in Australia). From an outsider's perspective, it appears that retail bank management is completely technically illiterate.

Which unfortunately also makes them the perfect marks for being sold inappropriate tech solutions (see: blockchain mania).

<comment><USER20> From an insider's perspective, yes. They are completely technically illiterate. Banks. Exchanges. Brokers. The whole financial services industry.

<comment><USER9> Oh yeah, don't get me started on exchanges. I'm astounded at how bad their technical processes are. The ASX (Australian Stock Exchange) has something like a 3 day time to settlement. And I'm told it's one of the more 'modern' exchanges (I guess the other ones are still using stock tickers and abacuses).

<comment><USER21> Unfortunately 2 days now. I appreciate the time to settlement because I could buy my shares and pay 2 days later. Sometimes it takes time to get funds from other accounts, and I wanted to buy (or sell) today, for example, when the quarterly just came out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Forget about existing banking interchange formats which (from personal experience) wells fargo both doesnt support _OFX or implements poorly_ QFX, they should definitley define a new API and be a leading stakeholder.

<comment><USER23> Can someone who knows explain why Wells Fargo is inventing a new API rather than using OFX? Is OFX deficient?

<comment><USER24> OFX isn't great and a PITA to implelent but it's ubiquitous thanks to Quicken.

Banks move at speeds that make most glaciers jealous and Intuit has some financial incentives to keep the spec complicated so it's really no surprise we've been stuck with it so long.

A new open standard would have been nice, but I wouldn't hold my breath on other banks implementing it, so I can't really blame WF for going it alone here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> While reading this article, I remembered an article posted to HN about the introduction of TAuth from teller.io that might be relevant to this discussion.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11636847](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11636847)

</comment><comment><USER26> Perhaps Wells Fargo should finish implementing their website first. They're missing basic services like letting you make a wire transfer online. Our company is in the middle of switching banks because dealing with them is such a hassle.

<comment><USER27> For businesses, Wells Fargo offers wire transfer online as part of CEO: [https://www.wellsfargo.com/com/ceo/](https://www.wellsfargo.com/com/ceo/)

<comment><USER28> The process for getting approved as a startup to even use CEO was convoluted, required multiple sign-offs for no reason, and we were denied twice. It took emailing someones boss off of LinkedIn to actually get in. And the best part is that CEO Portal is terribad. The RSA tokens they send you will often go "out-of-sync" and you're SOL until they FedEx you a new one. The features list is great but the struggle with actually using the tool makes it painful.

FWIW, we switched to Bank of America and can't complain. I can send wire transfers online without issue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It would be nice if an industry standard developed around Oauth for financial data. It would be far easier for data aggregators to use, and far safer for customers as well.

<comment><USER30> One huge reason there's a war going on over this is that aggregate transactional (not even itemized receipt) data is a goldmine of near-real-time consumer behavior analytics. Hedge funds love this data and companies like Yodlee (and couple of startups) are stomping over one another to sell it. A couple of startups was on HN recently

<comment><USER29> Judging by some recent statements by Jamie Dimon and others, the banks would much rather provide this information via secure APIs than allow screen scraping to continue.</comment></comment></comment>


Google Cloud Workload-Placement-Guide for Scripts and Applications - <AUTHOR> https://tech.trivago.com/2020/07/17/google-cloud-workload-placement-guide/ <comment><USER2> I posted this on Reddit as well:

Great article. I would have liked to see Dataflow get a shoutout for event- based workloads, but it's a little more ETL-related than this article is covering.

The "scale to 0" likelihood is a great rule of thumb for choosing function/run over gke.

I'll say that we do one GKE cluster per business domain, giving us 10 or so clusters with only 5 teams depending on how you count them. It doesn't seem to be too much an issue (although I'm on the application development side, not cloud ops). It's all set up in terraform.</comment>


The HTML Hell Page - <AUTHOR> http://www.catb.org/~esr/html-hell.html <comment><USER2> One of his peeves: "CSS that changes the hotlink colors"

The date is recent, but many of his items are obviously from the Web's early days. Not that things have gotten better.</comment>


Global oil use heads for steepest annual contraction - <AUTHOR> https://www.worldoil.com/news/2020/3/15/global-oil-use-heads-for-steepest-annual-contraction-in-history <comment><USER2> This event is going to be extremely valuable for evaluating myriad environmental models, including climate.

<comment><USER3> And not just that. They're going to be tracking all these kids who are going to miss months of school as a big "natural experiment". Who knows how many other things they'll be able to get data on... Very sad times, but hopefully people can learn a few things while we're at it.

<comment><USER4> Having one of the most stressful events of the last 50 years happening concurrently has to confound things at least a little bit.

<comment><USER5> 9/11? Vietnam? The Cold War? HIV?

This is a blip comparatively. But I take your point.

<comment><USER6> I am not so sure. 9/11: concerns USA and terrorist organisations. Vietnam: USA and Vietnam Cold War: This comes close to world wide concern.

<comment><USER7> I was just thinking that this pandemic is freaking me out more then 9/11\. I lived in California during 9/11, and while the event was certainly jarring, it didn't change my day to day behavior. At the moment I'm in Spain under quarantine, and it's not clear to me what will happen in a week or a month.

For me the most disruptive moment of my life was the 2008 financial crisis. I ended up homeless for a bit, and I was not prepared for that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The general Western game plan right now seems to be: (1) shut down the whole nonessential part of the economy, (2) buy time to not overwhelm medical systems, (3) gradually turn the economy back on where safe.

For part (3) the general idea of "safe" has meant, allow people who are medically low-risk to return to the workplace and retail establishments. But we could see that could be expanded to also factor in carbon impact. In other words, we prioritize turning back on the low-carbon parts of the economy first, and maybe leave some high-carbon parts (international vacations) turned off or reduced for good.

<comment><USER9> No one is dying from global warming. It's still much cooler than it was in the early Holocene (the Neolithic, or stone age era of humanity) and this was a time of abundance and expansion for farming and agriculture. Even the Sahara was richly farmed at the time. Plants not only thrive under warm temperatures, they also thrive with high levels of CO2. The world is greening:

[https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide- fer...](https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide- fertilization-greening-earth)

<comment><USER10> There is an asymmetric risk, though. Due to feedback loops like methane release, we don't know at what temperature the warming will stop, or how fast it will go. The upper-range estimates are well beyond any temperature from the last 10 million years.

<comment><USER9> A lot of methane is coming from deep sea hydrothermal sources. You cannot stop that. But methane itself is unstable in the atmosphere and only accounts for less than 2 parts per million.

If the climate were so sensitive to CO2 levels, where we've seen it go from 250 to over 400 ppm...we would see much more dramatic warming than we have. It was not that much cooler 100 years ago. So far, we have yet to have a year significantly warmer than 1998. It's been 22 years and the CO2 has been rising all that time. In spite of billions of people coming out of poverty. Minimal difference in maximum temps. Antarctica had record sea ice extent in 2014. Antarctica has been trending positive for sea ice over the past 30 years: [https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/world-of- change/sea_ice_so...](https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/world-of- change/sea_ice_south.php)

There's never ever been a geologic extinction event associated with high levels of CO2. In fact quite the opposite: the abundant and biodiverse periods in Earth's history are associated with high CO2.

Plants literally suffocate at 150ppm. We are near historical lows for the planet Earth.

<comment><USER11> There has been a geological extinction event associated with high levels of atmospheric carbon - it was the biggest one of all time, and it nearly wiped out all life on Earth. Look up the Permian Extinction. (Yes there are multiple theories of cause, but one of which - and perhaps the most likely - is run away global warming.)

And stop reading bad science.

<comment><USER9> First of all, I sourced from NASA. You provided no such sources despite making an extraordinary claim about the Permian extinction. The theories for that event include meteors, volcanoes, microbes, underwater methane release (from geothermal sources) and there is tons and tons of uncertainty about that event. You are oversimplifying by even attempting to attribute blame to CO2, which was already much lower in the Permian than in other eras like the Cambrian and Carboniferous [1], furthermore, temps aren't correlated with CO2 in Pre-Quarternary eras.

Best indications are that a series of super-volcanic events triggered massive drought, which probably led to drying conditions and decreased sunlight for photosynthesis, which triggered massive fires which burnt up tons of oxygen and caused hypoxic conditions for tens of thousands of years. This whole episode is also associated with geomagnetic instability [2]. Now, the two are related, because geomagnetism is caused by movement of the inner and outer core of the Earth. If the earth sees periodic disruptions in the normal movement of the cores, I can easily imagine that to trigger massive volcanic activity.

Now, in that case, a release of CO2 occurred from all the plant matter dying off as a result of drought, fire, flood, and volcanism. The CO2 itself didn't cause the extinction. The volcanism caused the extinction.

[1] [http://www.biocab.org/Geological_Timescale.jpg](http://www.biocab.org/Geological_Timescale.jpg) [2] [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13429...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1342937X08001834)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Another consideration is that when things get back to normal there will be a lot of people that won't go back to commuting as much, less long term energy usage. If the SA vs RU fight doesn't end soon, this will not benefit renewables, but if it does it will be a golden opportunity since oil will cost more and be used less.

<comment><USER13> If oil is used less, it will cost less. Supply and demand.

But at least low oil prices will help stall the development of shale gas and oil sands in North America.

<comment><USER14> Oil is a totally different beast. Simple supply demand economics doesnt work due to geopolitical games that OPEC+ plays.

<comment><USER15> OPEC hasn't been effective at controlling prices for some time now.

<comment><USER14> Oh yeah? Have you been watching any news in the last two weeks?

<comment><USER16> Every supplier in a marketplace has the ability to lower marginal prices in a price war.

Only effective cartels can raise prices at will. And OPEC's power to do this is pretty clearly diminished, if not destroyed, by expanded US and Russian capacity.

<comment><USER14> Again you must be sleeping last two weeks. Saudis single handedly destroyed oil prices.

<comment><USER16> The Saudis most certainly did not _raise_ prices, which is the point I'm making. I'm well aware that the lowest cost producer can lower prices at will.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The planet is getting a break right now. Unfortunately it probably won't last.

<comment><USER18> The construction of green infrastructure is also going to have to be put on hold too, and in the meantime CO2 levels are just going to keep on rising...

<comment><USER19> Massive public investment is going to be needed after this and money will be cheap. That high speed rail can hopefully be built.

Airplanes and pilots will also be a dime a dozen I suppose, but perhaps it will even put.

<comment><USER20> High-speed rail is often slower and definitely more expensive than regular rail, if Europe is any guide.

Rail is best used for freight.

Autonomous busses and cars (electric) are the best long-term solution for travel.

The best approach is simply to enact a Carbon Tax and let the market figure it out.

We would be better off promoting mass-contraception to the developing world and halting land clearance in terms of massive targeted CO2 reductions.

<comment><USER19> Good reliable rail is good. High speed rail is the only replacement for air travel though. If you have two large cities 3h by car apart, you can just barely beat that by flying (depending on how big the airport is and whether it's reasonable secureity e.g. come to airport 30min before departure or TSA style 2 hours before). A train is often longe than the highway.

You don't even necessarily need special high speed rail, just more rail makes it more high speed because you can mix slow and fast traffic (e.g. no-stop direct trains can run side by side with freight and services that makes 10 stops).

Speed doesn't have to come up so much to at least beat road traffic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The tone of the article is a little contradictory. It quotes someone as saying we haven't seen a situation like this in history. It also says prices could be in the single digits for the first time _since_ the '97-'99 price war. Which doesn't seem that long ago to me. I remember filling up for less than a dollar a gallon around then, for the first and only time in my life. It's not that cheap yet, is it?

<comment><USER22> Yeah, it was great - but remember inflation:

In 1997 a $20 dollar barrel of oil is $32 in today's money.

Calculator: [https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/](https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/)

<comment><USER21> I wouldn't get inflation numbers from a third party source.

However, this site seems to have been broken for quite a while: [https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm](https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm)

In any case, I still don't think gas is down to those prices, even with your inflation factor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is there a chance that this will push e-mobility since low oil prices for a sustained period of time will make extraction unprofitable for oil companies? Or could it have the opposite effect and make us use more cheaper fuel for individual transport?

It seems to me that public transport / ride sharing could take quite a hit (at least in the next few months).

<comment><USER24> > Is there a chance that this will push e-mobility since low oil prices for a > sustained period of time will make extraction unprofitable for oil > companies?

Probably not. Different areas have different costs of extraction.

Shale oil/tar sands = expensive

Saudi Arabia proven reserves = low cost

This might put some of the North American oil companies out of business, but those assets will be bought in bankruptcy, so they'll eventually come back online when the price of oil gets high enough again.

> Or could it have the opposite effect and make us use more cheaper fuel for > individual transport?

This seems more likely. Oil is primarily used for transportation. Cheap oil means less reason to go electric.

How much of an effect is the questions. I, personally, have no idea. Electric cars are improving at a very rapid rate. However, there doesn't seem to be a good solution for people who don't own a garage. There is some condo/apartment charging sprinkled here and there, but it's not very common.

> It seems to me that public transport / ride sharing could take quite a hit > (at least in the next few months).

Typically, public transport is mostly funded through taxes, so it's not really in much danger.

Ride sharing will probably take a beating - especially since flying and night life are getting hammered.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I can't help but think that if we had transitioned to an no carbon power grid a market recession wouldn't have a secondary dip due to shift in demand.

<comment><USER26> Presumably companies that supply carbon free energy still get paid only when they actually supply energy. Even though they may not have to purchase fuel they would still make no money and have all of their operating costs. I don't see why the effect of reduced demand on those generation companies wouldn't be the same as the price or electrical energy went to zero - unless rate payers have taken on all the risk and pay whether or not any energy is generated.

<comment><USER25> the unit price per mile of use is much lower and will have a lower magnitude of impact on the economy, similarly the impacts on the producers will be smaller and buffered by home electric use (which probably goes up in a case like this)

<comment><USER26> Ah I didn't understand that a "no carbon grid" meant using electricity for transportation and was just thinking in terms of reduced demand for electricity regardless of whether the source was renewable or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> We've essentially implemented the Green New Deal.

<comment><USER28> Actually, we've implemented the New Great Depression. Remains to be seen how governments process and respond to it.

<comment><USER29> Something very interesting about this current situation is that I think we're on the verge of a bunch of Democratic talking points getting put in place by a Republican administration.

<comment><USER30> Such as...UBI? The Clintons were famous for 'borrowing' the ideas of their opponents during elections, stealing that thunder. What's good for the goose....</comment></comment></comment></comment>