The First PS4 Kernel Exploit: Adieu - <AUTHOR> https://fail0verflow.com/blog/2017/ps4-namedobj-exploit/ <comment><USER2> It's interesting to see that this is a vulnerability caused by PS4 specific kernel modifications. I guess it's good news for FreeBSD users that PS4 jailbreaks do not imply vulnerabilities in FreeBSD.

Conversely, I'd imagine the PS4 jailbreak community is vigourously looking for privilege escalations in FreeBSD, but no results so far. I wonder if anyone familiar with it could shed some light on whether that's a correct way of looking at it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sony appears to have patched it from firmware 4.06 and up. The adieu in the title appears to refer to bidding a farewell to the exploit rather than a codename for it ;-)

Great and insightful write-up nonetheless!

<comment><USER4> From what I've observed, this is where the unending cat-and-mouse game begins for Sony.

<comment><USER5> In fairness, it started back when Sony shipped their first piece of hardware with technical measures to prevent users from consuming the media of their choice :)

<comment><USER6> Naw, the homebrew/piracy groups have been around since the birth of the console industry. It's been an ongoing cat and mouse game for over 30 years at least.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I guess it makes sense that the vulns would be in Sony's new kernel code, and not in its FreeBSD ancestor.

</comment><comment><USER8> Is it me or Sony has become good at protecting its software ? I remember a time when every new console would be hacked within the year it was released.

<comment><USER9> If anything the PS4 is a downgrade from the PS3 here. The PS3 ran everything in a hypervisor.

<comment><USER10> I guess if people want this to happen they should goad George Hotz by telling him he can't possibly beat the protection.

<comment><USER11> George is banned from exploiting Sony products

<comment><USER12> Isn't everyone?

<comment><USER13> Not like he is. If memory serves, if he tries to break a Sony device again, he faces massive fines, etc.

<comment><USER14> Do you have a good link for some backstory on this one? I'm not sure how that could even be possible in the legal frameworks.

<comment><USER15> Terms of the settlement: [https://www.gamespot.com/articles/sony-hotz- settlement-detai...](https://www.gamespot.com/articles/sony-hotz-settlement- details-surface/1100-6308347/)

<comment><USER14> Holy crap! Thanks!

That's insane. I'm not a gamer but it looks like they just published how to "hack" the console and they were hit with that. That's crazy. In the span of a minute, I can think of a dozen better solutions to this.

If I'm reading properly, they didn't even do anything that I'd call wrong. They found an exploit and published it. I suppose the DMCA and "circumvention tools" come into play - but that only points to the absurdity of the situation (at least in my opinion).

<comment><USER15> Sony threw everything at them: DMCA, CFAA, copyright, California Computer Crime Law, even violating the PSN TOS.

<comment><USER14> I support IP rights, as a general rule. However, they sure get abused. I'm kind of annoyed about this, even though I have nothing to do with it.

If you break my system, thanks for letting us know. It'd be great if we could pay you to help fix our system and make it more difficult to break in the future.

I'd not take them to court. I'd try to hire them. Hell, I'd give them reward money - even if they didn't want to be hired.

<comment><USER16> Intellectual property is theft.

<comment><USER17> Would you think so if you poured your soul into writing a book, only to have it copied and distributed without your permission, for someone else's profit?

<comment><USER10> It's not exactly like that doesn't happen under our current system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Their PCI-Express bus hack is amazing.

</comment><comment><USER19> Am I reading it correctly that it's possible to invoke syscalls from Javascript? That seems like a monumentaly bad idea...

<comment><USER20> No, that's just a library they made that uses a WebKit exploit to invoke a ROP chain to run syscalls.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> > However, this turns out to be impossible (as far as I know) because of a > side effect of the ps4 page size being changed to 0x4000 bytes (from the > normal of 0x1000). It appears that in order to change the page size > globally, the ps4 kernel developers opted to directly change the related > macros. One of the many changes resulting from this is that the smallest > actual amount of memory which malloc may give back to a caller becomes 0x40 > bytes. While this also results in tons of memory being completely wasted, it > does serve to nullify certain exploitation techniques (likely completely by > accident…).

This is pretty cool (and probably obvious to a lot of people) as a security technique. Could this be done for consumer OSes? 64 bytes as the smallest malloc-able size doesn't seem too bad for today's ultrabooks...

</comment><comment><USER22> Twiizers/fail0verflow work is amazing. I wonder why didn't even try with Xbox though.

</comment><comment><USER23> How huge is this?

<comment><USER24> This is an old exploit that has been since patched by Sony in firmware 4.07 (the last section of the article shows the fix).</comment></comment>


Google builds its own subsea cable from the US to France - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/17/google-builds-its-own-subsea-cable-from-the-us-to-france/ <comment><AUTHOR> Surprised to see this is their 4th cable.</comment>


Visualizing hidden data relationships: analysing NBA assists - <AUTHOR> https://towardsdatascience.com/how-to-visualize-hidden-relationships-in-data-with-python-analysing-nba-assists-e480de59db50 <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I wanted to share this as I thought this came out quite well.

I wrote about visualising NBA data with interactive shot, bubble & Sankey charts, with the aim of understanding whether assists matter as a stat. I include code & data in my GitLab repo. Thanks!</comment>


Freedom Act Passes: What We Celebrate, What We Mourn, and Where We Go from Here - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/05/usa-freedom-act-passes-what-we-celebrate-what-we-mourn-and-where-we-go-here <comment><USER2> I'm celebrating the only two Senators who voted against the "Freedom" Act [1] and supported net neutrality [2]. Both also voted against the "Patriot" Act in 2001, while they served in the House [3]:

Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) & Bernie Sanders (I-VT).

[1] [http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_c...](http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=114&session=1&vote=00201)

[2] [http://www.baldwin.senate.gov/press-releases/us-senator- tamm...](http://www.baldwin.senate.gov/press-releases/us-senator-tammy- baldwin-statement-on-net-neutrality) & [http://www.markey.senate.gov/news/press-releases/to- protect-...](http://www.markey.senate.gov/news/press-releases/to-protect-net- neutrality-markey-leads-senate-dems-in-call-to-reclassify-broadband-as-a- utility)

[3] [http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2001/roll398.xml](http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2001/roll398.xml)

<comment><USER3> Sanders won't win, but it will be nice to be able to vote for someone I don't hate for once. In an ideal world it would be Rand Paul/Bernie Sanders race. Two people who actually believe what they are saying.

<comment><USER4> While they may coincide on a few issues, I don't see enough policy overlap between a right-libertarian who is at least as solidly the former as the latter, like Rand, and a democratic socialist, like Sanders. Maybe they both believe what they are saying, but they believe radically different things when it comes to the role and ideal policies of government.

<comment><USER5> While I really appreciate Rand Paul's efforts against the Patriot Act, I've also seen some crazy talk from him, like the claim that universal health care would lead to slavery. It's fine if you think it's a bad idea, but unhinged rhetoric like that severely undermines your credibility.

I realize that unhinged rhetoric is part of the toxic political culture in the US, and almost all US politicians are guilty of similar bizarre polemic, but from what I've seen, Bernie Sanders actually seems to be a rare exception to this. Might he actually be an honest politician? It's hard to believe one really exists, but he gives me hope.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One good step would be to prohibit laws to be named with nice words and acronyms ("Freedom", "Patriot", etc).

Those are advertising and only serve to confuse discussion of the actual content ("you are opposed to the Patriot act? Aren't you a patriot?" etc.).

<comment><USER7> I've never gotten this comment from anyone. Do you actually have friends that ask these types of questions?

<comment><USER8> I can't say that I've heard those exact comments either, but in context, it's really hard to voice an opinion that criticizes something named "The Civil Rights Act" or "The Clean Air Act", because a lot of America takes their cue from the political rhetoric of their party.

Using neutral bill names, e.g., HR 625 or SB 1780 would be an upgrade from what we have now.

<comment><USER9> > Using neutral bill names, e.g., HR 625 or SB 1780 would be an upgrade from > what we have now.

In theory, but the names catch on because they're easy to remember and use in conversation. People responded to Heartbleed because it was catchy and easy to remember. CVE-2014-0160 was not.

Asking people to remember what SB1780 is and whether they support it is about as likely to happen as them remembering the CNAME or A record corresponding to a DNS request[0].

Even if we forbade these names from bills, the media would invent them. "Obamacare" was not even the real name for the Affordable Care Act, and was originally a pejorative term, but the media started using it because it was much more distinctive and evocative. It became so widely used that it's now lost much of it's pejorative connotation (you'll even hear Democrats referring to it non-pejoratively).

[0] Remember that the same bill has multiple such numbers (one each for the House and Senate, plus a new one if it's reintroduced in subsequent years, etc., which is not uncommon for many pieces of legislation).

<comment><USER10> I think Obamacare is still mostly a pejorative in my community - to the point that the minority proponents have recently taken to referring to it as the Affordable Care Act in a sort of rebranding attempt.

The Patriot Act has similarly transformed into a negative, doublespeak term. I'm not surprised the lawmakers felt the need to create a new bumpersticker- named law rather than continuing to edit the old one.

<comment><USER5> I believe the Daily Show at some point asked people what they thought of Obamacare and what they thought of the Affordable Care Act, and while most people were negative about Obamacare, the very same people were very supportive of the Affordable Care Act.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > We've gone from just killing bad bills to passing bills that protect > people's rights.

By people, do they mean "american people"? I may be wrong but my understanding from Snowden revelations is that the NSA is listening and recording without restriction all conversations from non-US citizen (whereas it was restricted to meta-data for US citizens). I don't know if the freedom act is an improvement for the rest of the world, but I doubt so. It would be nice for our american friends to understand that we value our privacy too.

<comment><USER12> >It would be nice for our american friends to understand that we value our privacy too.

I love how everyone pretends that only the US has spies. Or they say "oh but my country sucks at it so it doesn't matter". The entire West shares intel and double checks each other by espionage. Of course you don't want to condemn the entire West, that would be stupid.

<comment><USER11> > I love how everyone pretends that only the US has spies.

We're not talking about spies here but about mass surveillance. And if that can reassure you, I wouldn't be any less upset knowing that Norway or Japan openly record all my conversations and stores them until the end of times.

But the thing I find insulting and scary here is that there are no consideration at all in this debate for non-US citizens. Basically, the message there is "sorry guys, what we did was wrong... except when it's about everybody else in the world".

And in the end, everybody suffers from that. What Snowden said in Citizenfour is that the NSA uses the British surveillance system because it has less restriction than their own concerning americans.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I follow this issue and read a lot about it, and I'm still not sure what powers the NSA has, other federal and state agencies have, under what laws, and which have been restricted.

It would be a valuable public service -- more than all the newspaper articles and press releases -- if someone who knows all that could make a simple table: Agency | Power | Limits | Legal authority

<comment><USER13> I found the following, which is good but I suspect it's incomplete:

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/usa- freedom-...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/usa-freedom-act/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> >we have every reason to believe that President Obama will sign USA Freedom into law

His official Twitter account said he'll be signing it: [https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/605841647193030657](https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/605841647193030657)

</comment><comment><USER15> Hat tip to the eff... Don't forget to support them, they've got your back on stuff like this....

</comment><comment><USER16> Isn't this a step backwards from yesterday?

<comment><USER17> It is. Still, we're slightly ahead of where we were the day before yesterday.

If you're a cup-is-half-full type of person, that would be enough reason to celebrate a bit.

<comment><USER18> What if your a cup half empty person who looks as this as a failure as now all the people on the fence will have reason to ignore this issue for the next few years baring some kind of new revelations.

Seriously, who in congress is going to be supporting a bill in the next 3 years to cut more powers from the spying apparatus when they can just say "We just did that, it's time to talk about X instead".

<comment><USER16> I think we'll have to see how the campaigns play out, it might just get resonance with voters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think people forget that Congress are people — with their own secrets — too.

<comment><USER20> I imagined that once Congress found out the CIA was spying on _them_ [0] they would shut the program down faster than I can think of a decent analogy.

They didn't. Which I had a hard time believing.

But you're ever so correct.

[0] [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/31/cia-admits- spyi...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/31/cia-admits-spying- senate-staffers)

<comment><USER21> They will find a way to opt-out instead. One set of rules for them, and another set of rules for everyone else.

<comment><USER22> Like they did with insider trading!

[http://nyulocal.com/national/2013/04/15/congress-quietly- rep...](http://nyulocal.com/national/2013/04/15/congress-quietly-repeals- congressional-insider-trading-ban/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> We've been fighting this fight for 20 years. The lack of progress is unacceptable. The NSA and the government in general have only gotten more and more out of control, more and more aggressive in violating rights.

That the result of Snowden is this pathetic attempt would convince me that government was useless in this current form and that it has totally failed- if I weren't already convinced of that seeing the past 20 years of legislation. (I've been watching more than 20 years, but the gloves really began to come off during the Clinton administration when he banned gay marriage for no good reason (he could have simply pocket vetoed the bill.) )

My how our standards are low, and that makes this country increasingly a joke- a parody of itself, commonly summed up with the phrase "MERICA". It's not funny, it's tragedy.</comment>


Myspace preparing to block all widgets? - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/02/25/imeem-blocked-from-myspace/ <comment><USER2> I pointed out in an earlier article (http://m4th.com/Articles/Article.php?Article-Title=Anatomy-of-a-Successful- Social-Network) that MySpace owes much of its success to the countless choices it offers to its users. Over the past couple of months, however, MySpace has turned greedy. Rupert Murdoch feels that online widgets are a zero-sum game; in other words, widget companies make profit at the expense of MySpace. This couldn't be further from the truth; the fact is that widgets complement MySpace by giving its users the choice to decorate their pages anyway they want. By restricting access to these widgets, MySpace will not only frustrate the users but also generate unprecedented negative publicity. - Jawad Shuaib

</comment><comment><USER3> It was bound to happen. All the known ones will probably have to pay some sort of a toll. I wonder if the community will care enough to fight back?

</comment><comment><USER4> Fox is short-sighted, non-technical, and greedy. They had to buy a start-up for over half a billion dollars precisely because they can't develop software themselves.

Some other company just needs to harness the third party sites and build a the big ecosystem MySpace is neglecting to build.

</comment><comment><USER5> It would be stupid for myspace to do it, they would piss off a lot of there most active users. Kind off makes sense for things like revver where myspace give there own competitive offering. Who knows they might do something stupid and give an advantage to other social networks.</comment>


Firefox's speed with large numbers of tabs leaves Chrome in the dust - <AUTHOR> http://www.techradar.com/news/firefoxs-blazing-speed-with-huge-numbers-of-tabs-leaves-chrome-in-the-dust <comment><USER2> for those commenting about how unhygenic having many tabs open is, why bother trying to cajole others into having just a few tabs open? it's such a weird social norming behavior (to me). i can understand _asking_ why others do it because it is not your norm, but why the addition of trying to force others to conform to your behavior? (i'm genuinely asking, as this kind of stuff is fascinating to me.)

why not take the 30 seconds to mull it over to at least develop a sense of understanding/empathy before throwing out a micro agression around something so frivolous? i mean, if it's not hurting you, then let other people be, right?

and besides, shouldn't the computer conform to how the human wants to work and not the other way around?

<comment><USER3> For the same reason you might cajole others to perform regular backups. People who have too many tabs open are almost always using their tabs as bookmarks, or as an "I want to read this later" mechanism. Very few people actually have two hundred tabs open for a single train of thought.

When you do this, you're one crash + failed recovery away from losing those pages forever. Yes, you can go through your history and try to recreate the list, but let's be honest here -- Most of those tabs were from six months ago. Finding and opening those pages manually is going to suck.

<comment><USER4> If people use tabs as bookmarks, perhaps it is because something is wrong with bookmarks.

<comment><USER3> I completely agree. It should be way easier to "braindump" a window full of tabs into a folder of bookmarks. There are browser extensions for this.

Alternatively, browsers could start treating window + tab lists as less ephemeral, and make it easy to restore window + tab combinations at any time, regardless of whether the browser thinks it crashed recently.

<comment><USER5> Chrome has that first feature. Right click on a tab, and click "Bookmark All Tabs..."

<comment><USER3> The bookmarking interface in chrome could use a facelift. The fact that I have to come up with a name for the folder and think about where to put it makes this less than ideal.

Extensions like OneTab make this sort of dump a one button affair, which makes the process easier when you also have ten windows open. It also keeps them separate from your longer term bookmarks, which is nice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is very neat from a technological point of view, but: who are these people who have hundreds and thousands of tabs open, and how can we get them the help they need?

<comment><USER7> I have the opposing opinion

Who are these people with a shockingly low number of tabs, and how do we get them the help they need?

Those I usually see with few tabs are either those who only browse the web for extremely simple things (ie facebook, netflix and google for very simple questions), or those who only just maintain like a single docs page at any given moment.

The hell kind of absurd usage pattern is that? Do you keep one book on your shelf too? Do you just not have any interests? Nothing but one thing at a time? I keep around ~300 tabs and a heavily organized bookmarks storage with some 400 links; tabs are ram and bookmarks are disk.

How else would you naturally organize your web-information? I can only imagine you have very little information to organize...

<comment><USER8> It's a completely different view of what the tab bar is.

To me, the tab bar is a working area. I don't keep stuff that is not immediately relevant to what I'm doing in the working area.

When you're soldering stuff, you don't want spatulas and eggs getting in your way. On the other hand, when you're cooking, you don't want solder to get mixed up with your food.

> How else would you naturally organize your web-information?

You don't. There's google for that :-)

<comment><USER7> Hence, multiple windows (and because windows UX is broken, multiple browsers)

And what'll you do for a large task thats interrupted by a small task? Wipe out the large and replace it with the small, then work up towards the large again? Obviously not; you stick it up with the large task's tabs, and just note which tab marks the differentiation between tasks (not literally... you mentally know a tab is associated with which task, unless both tasks are extremely similar)

And multiple small tasks interrupting each other? (Often a redult of each one being extremely boring). Obviously, more tab sequences.

The _natural_ thing to do is accumulate tabs until it becomes unsustainable, and then garbage collect

You choose instead to artificially constrain yourself for some arbitrary notion of _cleansliness_ (One window, one tab sequence, I bet !) and then attack those of the One True Way with your spatulas and eggs. Google is your organization? Either you have an amazing memory of arbitrary websites...or you dont have any memory of them (artificial or otherwise)

<comment><USER8> > And what'll you do for a large task thats interrupted by a small task?

No, just open a new tab. I simply never have more than 2 tasks in-flight. I can't focus on more than two things at a time, and even then the second one has to be really quick (no more than 1 tab deep). And of course, once I'm done with something, it goes away.

> Either you have an amazing memory of arbitrary websites...or you dont have > any memory of them (artificial or otherwise)

The latter. I don't commit things that can be searched to memory. For example, I don't go to Khronos website to search OpenGL APIs, I just google the function names. Same if I want to look for something in wikipedia. I also don't bother remembering website names. For example, if I know there's a particular article about shadow mapping I want to read, I can just google "article about shadowmapping by fabien" and the thing I'm looking for will be the top result.

> The natural thing to do is accumulate tabs until it becomes unsustainable, > and then garbage collect

Sure. It's just that > 10 is already pushing it and > 20 tabs is completely unsustainable for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Previously : [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14823807](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14823807)

<comment><USER10> I originally read about this in the post you linked. There were some great charts in that article showing how performance has changed throughout the version of Firefox. I only clicked this article because I was hoping to see a direct comparison to Chrome laid out in similar fashion. Unfortunately, the title is purely click bait and the only mention of Chrome is that anecdotally, "Chrome has something of a reputation for being a resource hog".

The article that was originally posted was certainly more interesting and informative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder, if there was a fork of electron using Firefox instead of chromium, what would the ram usage be like?

Mozilla really paved the way for electron with prism, shame it never really took off

<comment><USER12> Gecko is apparently pretty painful to embed, with most other Gecko based browsers (that weren't firefox forks a la Pale Moon) having long since stopped development or switched to Webkit/Chromium.

<comment><USER13> That'll be fixed once Servo is finished, though, as that has easy APIs for embedding.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, I'm really interested to see that happen. Any idea of when?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I must say that Firefox's last couple of version feel blazing fast.

<comment><USER16> Maybe the placebo effect?

<comment><USER17> It's real. We've landed _enormous_ performance improvements this year, including migrating most Firefox users to a full multi-process architecture, as well as integrating parts of the Servo parallel browser engine project into Firefox. There are still many improvements yet-to-land, but in most cases we're on track for Firefox 57 in November.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I feel like with a bit more improvements to Firefox Snooze Tab [1] and Container Tab [2] extensions the need to have tons of tabs open could be solved.

What if it's easy to easily have multiple "Research containers"?

Container tab allows you to hide all tabs related to a particular container, so I feel like you can easily improve your workflow.

What about combining that functionality with snooze tab extension? But instead of snoozing individual tabs, snooze a container.

      [1]: https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/snooze-tabs
      [2]: https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/containers

<comment><USER19> it is possible today using tab groups and tab groups helper extensions. tab groups provides tab groups and the helper provides suspend/resume of individual groups.

sadly they will stop functioning after Firefox 57, because progress, yeah.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> For people that have hundreds of tabs open...how do you find anything? I generally have about 5 frequently used tabs pinned in Chrome (so they take up minimal space) and up to 10 or so other ones open. Once I have more than that many tabs open I can't see the tab titles anymore which frustrates me so I'll close some.

I'm in the camp that cannot understand how having hundreds of tabs open can be practical...to me it would be like having hundreds of files open in an IDE or file browser, hundreds of terminals open, or hundreds of documents scattered across my desk. At some point the number of things you have in front of you becomes overwhelming to keep in your head and you have to clear away the things you don't need right now.

<comment><USER21> If you type in the URL bar firefox will show results from open tabs. You can also force this by typing `%` before the search term.

Chrome's UI is _terrible_ for multiple tabs. Chrome will shrink tabs down as much as possible. Firefox stops shrinking once they're like 75% of their original width, and lets you scroll instead. On top of that, addons like Tab Center Redux make it much easier to manage things by putting them on the side (so they don't get shrunk at all) and adding a dedicated search box.

<comment><USER22> Edit: found your answer [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14850286](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14850286) pointing to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14849681](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14849681)

\---

Hi Manishearth! I know you work at Mozilla.

If you see this: Do you have anything to share WRT the possibility of having extensions like tree-style-tabs in future versions of FF?

This is probably the one thing that leaves most Chrome users awe-struck and also is really really really useful to many of us.

<comment><USER21> Tree Tabs ([https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree- tabs/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-tabs/)) is the WebExtensions version of Tree Style Tabs.

It works. It's a bit unpolished UI wise, but that should improve.

There are two crucial missing bits of functionality in it. One is respecting tab order. Currently it just lets you organize the tabs, but will not actually reorder them under the hood, i.e. the ordering that ctrl-tab respects. What it should do is reorder tabs as they are moved around. Tab Center Redux does this, so I suspect the webextension API exists (in fact IIRC the google chrome webextension tabs API, which Firefox definitely supports, has this), so it just needs the stuff to be fixed. I considered fixing it myself, but the extension doesn't seem to be open source (you can of course inspect the source of the bundle but then there's no easy way to contribute back)

This may even have been fixed by the time I looked at it last.

The second is that it doesn't actually hide the tab bar up top. Neither does Tab Center Redux. This is a matter of a missing webextensions api, but it's one that's probably easy to add.

The other missing bits are mostly minor, like configurability etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Correct me if I'm wrong but hasn't Mozilla been rewriting parts of Firefox in Rust lately?

<comment><USER23> [https://wiki.mozilla.org/Oxidation#Rust_components_in_Firefo...](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Oxidation#Rust_components_in_Firefox)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Didn't we just discuss this on the _front page_ two days ago? Seems like a dupe/linkspam post to me...

Thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14823807](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14823807)

Original blog post: [https://metafluff.com/2017/07/21/i-am-a-tab- hoarder/](https://metafluff.com/2017/07/21/i-am-a-tab-hoarder/)

<comment><USER25> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14849247](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14849247)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Our page load performance numbers collected from real users show the following performance ranking: 1\. Chrome 2\. Safari 3\. Explorer 4\. Firefox

<comment><USER26> Yes, but did those users have 1,600 tabs open? That seems to be the use case Firefox is going all in on lately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> As someone that switched to Pale Moon (FF fork) because of the loss of large tab session performance in post-v30 builds this is great to hear. Now all they have to do is kill the walled garden and Firefox might be worth trying again.

<comment><USER28> >As someone that switched to Pale Moon (FF fork) because of the loss of large tab session performance in post-v30 builds this is great to hear.

I tried Pale Moon about a year ago. It had a nasty memory leak (my browser stays open for weeks). I really wanted to like it, but this was a serious problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I started using the "Firefox Focus" browser for iOS a lot specifically because it has _one_ tab.

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/firefox-focus-the-privacy- br...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/firefox-focus-the-privacy- browser/id1055677337?mt=8)

Removing the ability to even make tabs (which I _love_ and hoard) is nice. Big button to delete your current page, which you have to do if you want something else. You're constantly at "inbox zero" for your tabs.

Will look through the comments here for similar solutions on the desktop. Perhaps something that limits the number of tabs you can open. Or automatically closes old tabs if they're on the website's "home page" as opposed to a specific article.

</comment><comment><USER30> But why is this on the bottom of the front page now after 3 hours and 169 points?

Is someone flagging this or has it triggered a flamewar-detector?

</comment><comment><USER31> I hope this is correct. I would gladly switch to Firefox and forget about google forever. But firefox is just too slow for me.

</comment><comment><USER32> I use a plug-in called fresh start to manage saving large number of tabs.

</comment><comment><USER33> Meh, Opera was easily handling huge numbers of tabs a decade ago, while providing the option for vertical tabs, tab stacking and a tab scroller so that you could comfortably switch between them. By comparison, Chrome and Firefox have always appeared as dilettantes.

<comment><USER34> vertical tabs: It seems you are taking of an extension? (I got excited for a second but I couldn't find the option under settings). If you are talking about an extension then Firefox also has a similar extension that works very well.

<comment><USER35> I think it means this [1], which is a screenshot from Opera 12 in 2011, but looks pretty much the same as I remember the tab sidebar working in 2004-ish.

I haven't used Opera for a decade, so I don't know if the feature still exists.

[1] [http://forums.opera.com/discussion/1866076/tab-stacks-in- sid...](http://forums.opera.com/discussion/1866076/tab-stacks-in-side-bar/p1)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Curious, how many tabs do you have open right now? Me:

17

<comment><USER37> 11 here. StackOverflow at 5, Google at 3, HackerNews at 1, MvvmCross Documentation at 1, and Vivaldi Start Page at 1.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Firefox Rocks! #FirefoxMasterRace

</comment><comment><USER39> Now if they can only fix the memory leak, that chews up gigs of RAM in only an hour.

<comment><USER40> If you can reproduce the issue with a clean profile or in Safe Mode, please file a bug report.

<comment><USER41> I've narrowed it down to specific webpages - but how can I know if the leak is the pages' fault or the browser's fault?

(Biggest culprits are Discourse forums.. which is a shame b/c I really like the platform)

<comment><USER42> A couple weeks ago I'd've advised reporting those pages with the Pulse extension [1], but it looks like it's recently been retired.

1\. [https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/pulse](https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/pulse)

<comment><USER40> Download Developer Edition [https://www.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/developer/](https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/developer/) (or Nightly), load up the page, and in the browser menu click "Report Site Issue".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> IMHO there is something wrong when people leave tens+ tabs open. There are bookmarks for keeping references to pages. FF also has Pocket for keeping references to pages I want to read later. So, this is a benchmark that should not be relevant in real life if the GUI offers the right solution for the problem of keeping references to pages.

<comment><USER44> I often open 80+ tabs during the normal course of a day. Often times 5 of those are spreadsheets in one window with a few pdf spec documents, reference sites, handfuls a internet searches, a few for different version/pages of the application under test, and boom.

Why would I want any of those in bookmarks when I can have them open when I need them, which is now.

<comment><USER43> Well but ... In the course of a day, I often realize that I have the same URL opened in 2+ tabs. There of course are use cases where I want to have more views on the same page but usually, that's not the default behaviour I want.

> open when I need them

Well, what do you mean with "open". As I said IMHO there is something wrong here.

<comment><USER44> By open I mean that they require no additional navigation or credential, other than clicking on the correct tab.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> >>Mozilla will be hoping to attract power users

They already had the power users, which they have now told to get screwed when they killed the extensions to chase the performance benchmark

Trading Usability and the ability to customize the browser for something that is "fast" but you cant do anything with it...

Useless is what it is IMO

This is the difference between a sports car and a truck. Me I drive a truck, it might be slow and cumbersome but it is versatile and customizable, I haul people and things, I can add a camper, I can do all kinds of things with my truck. If I had a sports car it might be fast but I would be limited in the places I could go and the things I could do

They are taking the FF Pickup and turning it into a FF Sports car... I have no interest in a sports car

<comment> Ar-Curunir The new system is more secure. There'll be some initial pain as new APIs are stabilized and new extensions are created, but I'm willing to give Mozilla the chance, they're the only major browser that's not making a browser with a secondary, ulterior motive.

<comment><USER45> The problem is that the new API are not and can not be as powerful as the XUL based system. It is impossible.

The new Chrome Replica Web Extensions can never be as powerful as the old system.

<comment><USER46> What power, specifically, are you missing in extensions?

<comment><USER47> Vimperator is not possible in the new Web Extensions, it requires customizing the UI in a way that Web Extensions doesn't allow. I am supremely salty about this still.

<comment><USER21> The APIs don't exist for this _now_ but they could be added.

See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14849681](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14849681)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> This is all fine if you are running Windows. On a mac it will spin the fan faster than anything else... with two tabs open. Firefox has become a Windows browser, if anything

<comment><USER49> I'm curious if this has something to do with video. Do you experience much more power when consuming video on the browser and is there a difference between how firefox, chrome, and safari use the gpu while decoding video?

This might be interesting to quantify.

<comment><USER50> It might not be video. For a while my firefox was forcing the system to use the dGPU which caused the fan to spin and battery performance to drop. The cause was the google talk plugin that got loaded when I opened gmail.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Projecting sales, growth, etc for proforma - <AUTHOR>

My co-founder and I have been hard at working creating our first proforma and we'd really appreciate some tips from those with some experience.<p>One of the things we are really struggling with is projecting client acquisitions rates, growth, etc. It seems anything we come up with is pure speculation and could be argued against in some way. Are there any standard approaches to this estimation or is it always just guesswork and creative storytelling? <comment><USER2> > just guesswork and creative storytelling

No.

Not to brag, but once I did a full P&L forecast for 15 years forward for $50M annual revenue and 250+ people by SKU, HC position and all major expense buckets, tied to FX and market/market share changes... in Excel... after 25 revisions by HQ it was still sane. I assume your case is less complicated.

What you need to do is make a simple spreadsheet in Excel, lay down some assumtions and tie them to your revenue with formulas. After you have it done, you can either (1) optimize to find sweet spot, or (2) make several scenarios.

This would help you play safe - all assumptions are transparent. Also, since you seem to have investors, they would have a choice and most probably they would push for a more agressive scenario. But that would be their choice.

I would advise to distance yourself from assumptions. You own execution, NOT assumptions, which you / noone can control.

Excel

                                               2011    2012   2013    2014

Market Market Growth % of Market that is your Target Audience Average FY spend by customer Cost customer acquisition

etc etc etc

Gross Sales Discounts/Taxes/etc Net Sales COGS Marketing expenses etc etc Net Income

can be as complicated as you want... try keep it [assumptions] simple, but P&L lines as detailed as possible. Also break forecasted year by month.

Hope this helps</comment>


91% of plastic isn't recycled (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2017/07/plastic-produced-recycling-waste-ocean-trash-debris-environment/ <comment><USER2> The Plastic recycling process as a whole is an incredibly succesful cost externalization for the petro-chemical and packaging industries.

Governments and consumers need to get serious with these lobbies:

\- Ban ALL single-use plastic (except for medical supplies).

\- Heavily tax plastic packaging

\- Tax breaks for glass and paper packaging

\- Force plastic return deposit schemes at supermarkets _payed for by manufacturers_

\- Define industry quotas for how much 'new' plastic is allowed to be made from crude and make companies bid for it in a "new plastic" market, this would enable buy in from petro-chemical businesses whose profit currently depends on volume.

Yes, product prices will increase but the reality is that the price is already there but is just currently hidden behind the recycling PR machine.

None of this requires ocean micro plastic cleaning tech, or plastic separating computer vision, it is purely political it is purely stopping this protectionism. It can change right now if people are outraged enough.

<comment><USER3> I'm not against these ideas but you do have to zoom out a bit to fully realize the impact of each alternative. It's not as simple as replacing a "bad" one with a "good" one, because there are side effects.

(I haven't added up the total impacts of every option either; this is just something to consider.)

For example, glass is much heavier than the plastic used for bottles. If you have trucks/etc. hauling _millions_ of bottles around the world, it will take more energy to move glass bottles. Glass is also fragile so it's possible there is more shipping material or more random losses affecting cost. So then the problem is not just how to replace plastic bottles with glass but how to offset the added environmental cost of transporting glass.

<comment><USER2> All the cost/energy benefits listed are exactly the type of short term business arguments that enabled companies like Coca-Cola to transition from glass bootles to producing 110 _billion_ PET bootles, every, single, year. [0]

There are a number of long-term costs not captured in these business decisions:

\- The energy cost of recycling a PET bottle is much greater than producing a brand new one from crude oil. This creates the wrong kind of incentives for recycling

\- Plastic degrades everytime it is recycled. Google plastic "downcycling". In an ideal circular economy old plastics would still have to be replaced with "new" crude oil plastic with additional energy and emissions costs.

\- The cost of plastic collection and _sorting_ (which manufacturers aren't paying for)

\- The environmental and disposal costs of unrecycled plastic, a PET bottle will take at least 450 years to fully decompose. [1]

\- The Health costs of the calamity of micro-plastics contaminating our food supply and ground water. Simply google "plastic endocrine disruptors".

[0] [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/02/coca- col...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/02/coca-cola- increased-its-production-of-plastic-bottles-by-a-billion-last-year-say- greenpeace)

[1] [https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/08/plast...](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/08/plastic- bottles/)

<comment><USER4> > _Simply google "plastic endocrine disruptors"_

I did, and found that the 1996 paper that helped launch the movement against endocrine disruptors, was retracted in 2001 because the data was made up.

[https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT- OD-02-0...](https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT- OD-02-003.html)

(I'm not making any claim here about whether endocrine disruptors in our environment are a problem or not. Maybe they are. But I don't like to be told "just Google X" because that can be used to support any nonsense nowadays. Just give me a good reference and I'll try to figure out whether it's credible.)

<comment><USER2> Fair point, I assumed this to be a matter-of-fact but I add more info below.

Evidence on the health effects of Bisphenol and Pthalates (commonly used chemicals in plastics):

\- Influence in hormone dependent types of cancer [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31471387/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31471387/)

\- Influence in Cardiovascular disease [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32438096/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32438096/)

\- Influence in Female and male fertility [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31238688/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31238688/) [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32046352/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32046352/)

\- Cofactor in Diabetes: [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31286379/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31286379/)

<comment><USER4> I think I owe you an apology for my snarky comment. I shouldn't start fact checking before my first coffee in the morning...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I still don't get how bottled water became a thing. It wasn't a thing when I was a kid, and somehow the industry convinced us to buy huge quantities of an inferior product for more money, and it pollutes the environment to boot. Insane.

The least you can do is use a refillable container.

10+ years ago Google switched from bottle water to giving everyone a container. And that was a great move. Yet people complained, and a few years later we were back to bottled water.

What a waste.

<comment><USER6> A thought exercise: Sugary bottled drinks are even worse for the environment. They not only have the same bottles and water involved but they also have other ingredients that add even more environmental consequences. They have public health consequences too.

But of course to ban sugary drinks would cut into the realm of personal choice right? After all people may choose to want a sugary beverage. So no one argues that case.

Still it's weird to draw the line at bottled water and not further along. I used to live near a council area (Manly City Council) that banned bottled water. It meant you could only buy sugary drinks at the local corner store. Go to the beach and forget your water bottle? You better like Coca-Cola because that's all they'll sell you!

I'm not opposed to encouraging people to use a re-usable container. But i am opposed to a ban on something that's far better than the alternatives that remain unbanned.

<comment><USER7> Drink water out of the tap like a civilized person.

<comment><USER8> I had people visiting from Greece, Poland and Spain asking me if my tap water (Berlin) was safe to drink. You don't have to go to uncivilized parts of the world to get bad tap water.

<comment><USER9> There are different levels of "safe".

For example, in London it's "safe" to drink tap water, it does not contain toxic checmicals of bacteria, but it is calcium rich, and drinking it constantly may be harmful for kidneys.

<comment><USER10> That's what water softeners are for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Since no one comments on the precise content of the article, I'll do it.

First of all, it's mostly based on a paper "published Wednesday in the peer- reviewed journal Science Advances". Unfortunately, there is no link to the article. The exact title is not even given. The date is unclear since the magazine published this in 2017 and updated some (undetermined) content in 2018. Most links are dead (home page of the lead author, web site of an association about statistics).

The basis is scientific, but this National Geographic article is not. For instance, the title is misleading: "91% of plastic isn't recycled" means "an estimated 91% of all the plastic ever produced has not been recycled as of today (2017)". Another dubious sentence is: "79 percent is accumulating in landfills or sloughing off in the natural environment as litter." Since 12% were incinerated and 9% recycled, it assumes that the rest (100-12-9) is just garbage. I suppose the reality is that a large proportion of the plastics produced is still used.

They mention that 40% of plastics are for packaging. According to PlasticsEurope, 20% for construction, 10% for vehicles. People often focus on packaging and forget the variety of plastics and their usages.

What surprised me was that the USA were so bad at recycling (9%) while Europe and Asia were far better (30% and 25%). I had read that some American soda producers were mostly using recycled PET, so I wondered if there was a contradiction. I've just read more about it, and these companies recycle in many countries but not much in the USA because there is no large-scale infrastructure to do so. The lack of national leadership means it can only exist locally, with varying quality and lack of long term committing. Even when the recycling exists, consumers in the USA do not behave as well as they do in Netherland, so the recycled PET is more costly with a lower quality.

<comment><USER12> >What surprised me was that the USA were so bad at recycling

No, you can thank the coca cola corporation for that. They have lobbied millions, along with the groceries associations to prevent things like bottle deposits to make recycling more common. Google it, plenty of information out there on the topic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> There is an excellent Planet Money podcast about this from NPR [1]

[1] [https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/912150085/waste- land](https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/912150085/waste-land)

</comment><comment><USER14> This is for glass recycling not plastic, but I recently found out that my county ships all of their glass recyclables to be dumped in a landfill of a neighboring state. In my state, waste disposal companies are legally obligated to recycle everything they can that ends up in a recycling bin. But with glass it's actually vastly cheaper to produce new glass bottles than it is to make them out of recycled material. So there isn't a market for the waste management companies to even sell the product they legally have to produce. To get around this regulation they just ship their recycled glass to a state without this regulation, and dump it all in a landfill there.

It seems like the only way to make recycling truly effective at a large scale is to make it economically viable, either through the creating of new recycling techniques that make using recycled materials the cheapest option, or through subsidies to artificially produce the same effect.

<comment><USER15> >It seems like the only way to make recycling truly effective at a large scale is to make it economically viable

I think it's easier and less corruptible to have the goal be to reduce the consumption causing the waste and attack the problem at the root. I.e. a tax increasing the cost of everything to reflect the cost of properly disposing it.

Recycling doesn't undo the environmental damage, and in many cases it takes huge amounts of energy to recycle causing even more damage.

<comment><USER16> Doesn't this hurt the poor while enabling the rich to continue being wasteful.

<comment><USER15> It solves the problem of excess consumption by humans as a whole. If this creates a new problem, such as allowing some humans consume disproportionately more than others, then that can be solved separately. The easiest and least corruptible solution that comes to mind there is wealth redistribution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> PENN & TELLER: BULLSHIT S02EP05 Recycling [https://www.bitchute.com/video/j0Hd6UfA4MKo/](https://www.bitchute.com/video/j0Hd6UfA4MKo/) Yes its old but not much has changed.

<comment><USER18> And here's their equally scientifically accurate take on climate change from the same time period.

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fWt2Rir8OQk](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fWt2Rir8OQk)

Big fan of both Penn and Teller but libertarian bullshit is still bullshit and they proved that even smart people fall for it if they hang in the wrong circles too much.

<comment><USER19> Did we watch the same video?

"Every tingly spidey sense, every sniff, every whiff, smells like global warming—which they now call climate change, in case they want to go the other way and say it's colder—but it just _reeks_ of fuckin' bullshit to me. And yet, in good conscience, we can't really come out and say it's bullshit, because there isn't enough information to really refute it completely. And there is _some_ information that it might be real.

So—the high-dea is not to go with your gut, the idea is to go with your head, and our heads can't say that global warming is complete and utter bullshit. So we're doing—again, this is like our third show that's kind of sort of on global warming—we're kind of picking out one area that we're sure is bullshit, and that is the carbon credits, the spending money so that your guilt goes away. Buying a forgiveness."

I see _proper_ intellectual restraint about the science, and criticism of one particular policy proposal.

<comment><USER18> No you don't.

Just replace climate change with another established scientific fact that you actually agree with, like the earth being a globe perhaps, and you'll see what you sound like to people outside your bubble.

> "Every tingly spidey sense, every sniff, every whiff, smells like global > earth—which they now call non-flat earth, in case they want to go the other > way and say it's a pyramid or banana-shape—but it just reeks of fuckin' > bullshit to me.

> And yet, in good conscience, we can't really come out and say it's bullshit, > because there isn't enough information to really refute it completely. And > there is some information that it might be real.

> So—the high-dea is not to go with your gut, the idea is to go with your > head, and our heads can't say that the spherical earth is complete and utter > bullshit. So we're doing—again, this is like our third show that's kind of > sort of on global shape—we're kind of picking out one area that we're sure > is bullshit, and that is the funding for satellites, which would only make > sense if the earth was a globe. What a waste of money. Millions down the > drain!

Says a lot about Libertarian ideas that the one thing they attack is using market mechanisms to address the problem. Clearly principles get trumped by fossil fuel funding.

<comment><USER19> I would actually have serious respect for someone who is in such an intellectually impoverished environment that they think the world is flat, _yet_ they have the intellectual humility to say they're not totally sure.

The video doesn't actually say _what_ Penn's objections to carbon credits are. Googling a bit, Wiki's episode summary for "Being Green" says: "Attacks the concept of carbon credits as a method of profiting off guilt, and compares them to indulgences"—well, is he wrong? I also see comments indicating that he says Al Gore buys carbon credits from a company he owns, which sounds at least like an "appearance of impropriety" which Gore maybe should have avoided.

> Clearly principles get trumped by fossil fuel funding.

Do you _really_ think Penn got funding from fossil fuel companies and ... The steelman is that fossil fuel companies have paid _unscrupulous_ individuals in think tanks that libertarians subscribe to, to write mendacious reports that libertarians believe. That's possible. I wonder if any other group has been fooled by mendacious reports.

I wonder what the best strategy is for defeating mendacious reports in general. Perhaps encouraging everyone engaged in a scientific debate to be as scrupulously honest and precise as they can be—and to recognize dishonest tactics. A failure mode in that is seeing dishonest tactics where none exist, so perhaps one can (encourage everyone to) adopt practices that make it easier for everyone to tell the difference. Things like publishing all raw data, preregistering experiments, and offering rewards for neutral parties to reproduce an experiment, seem helpful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Threads about recycling have started to pile up just like the recycling has. A list of the major ones is below (but only with "recycl" in the title—if you find more, let me know!)

Given the current picture, perhaps most interesting in retrospect is this 1996 article (which apparently set a record for hate mail) and its sequel from 2015:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9757853](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9757853) Recycling is Garbage (1996) (55 comments) - [https://archive.is/JKG7y](https://archive.is/JKG7y)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10327585](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10327585) The Reign of Recycling (34 comments) - [https://archive.is/o8LBm](https://archive.is/o8LBm)

\---

2020 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24454067](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24454067) Oil Companies Touted Recycling to Sell More Plastic (232 comments)

2020 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24441979](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24441979) How Big Oil Misled the Public into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled (310 comments)

2020 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24440516](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24440516) Pringles tube tries to wake from 'recycling nightmare' (394 comments)

2020 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23040674](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23040674) Plastics pile up as coronavirus hits Asia recyclers (19 comments)

2020 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22927072](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22927072) 'Horrible hybrids': the plastic products that give recyclers nightmares (40 comments)

2020 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22741635](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22741635) Industry spent millions selling recycling, to sell more plastic (105 comments)

2020 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22467015](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22467015) Coke and Pepsi are getting sued for lying about recycling (170 comments)

2020 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22318165](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22318165) Is Recycling a Waste of Time? (94 comments)

2019 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21837414](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21837414) Recycling Rethink: What to Do with Trash Now China Won't Take It (152 comments)

2019 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21742196](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21742196) The Great Recycling Con [video] (77 comments)

2019 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21303618](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21303618) How Coca-Cola Undermines Plastic Recycling Efforts (132 comments)

2019 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21297639](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21297639) All plastic waste could be recycled into new plastic: researchers (150 comments)

2019 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21102560](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21102560) We asked three companies to recycle plastic and only one did (64 comments)

2019 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21043986](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21043986) Exposing the Myth of Plastic Recycling (17 comments)

2019 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20762789](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20762789) Plastics: What's Recyclable, What Becomes Trash and Why (215 comments)

2019 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20728911](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20728911) Smart plastic incineration posited as solution to global recycling crisis (84 comments)

2019 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20726689](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20726689) 'Plastic recycling is a myth': what really happens to your rubbish (63 comments)

2019 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20549804](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20549804) Americans' plastic recycling is dumped in landfills (282 comments)

2019 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20433851](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20433851) Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated (336 comments)

2019 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20134641](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20134641) I work in the environmental movement. I don't care if you recycle (15 comments)

2019 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19889365](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19889365) Why Recycling Doesn't Work (216 comments)

2019 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19844551](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19844551) Reycling Plastic from the Inside Out (46 comments)

2019 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19799348](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19799348) Bikes, bowling balls, and the balancing act that is modern recycling (2015) (35 comments)

2019 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19728391](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19728391) Just 10% of U.S. plastic gets recycled. A new kind of plastic could change that (116 comments)

2019 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19483074](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19483074) America Finally Admits Recycling Doesn't Work (35 comments)

2019 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19399543](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19399543) The World's Recycling Is in Chaos. Here's What Has to Happen (25 comments)

2019 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19346342](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19346342) What Happens Now That China Won't Take U.S. Recycling (219 comments)

2019 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18893252](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18893252) The Era of Easy Recycling May Be Coming to an End (84 comments)

2018 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17841584](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17841584) Recycling in the United States is in serious trouble. How does it work? (94 comments)

2018 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17677698](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17677698) Trash piles up in US as China closes door to recycling (272 comments)

2018 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17495872](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17495872) Californians love to recycle, but it's no longer doing any good (14 comments)

2018 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17409152](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17409152) Plastic recycling is a problem consumers can't solve (441 comments)

2018 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16856246](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16856246) An enzyme that digests plastic could boost recycling (122 comments)

2018 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16174719](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16174719) Plastics Pile Up as China Refuses to Take the West's Recycling (71 comments)

2017 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15888827](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15888827) Recycling Chaos in U.S. As China Bans 'Foreign Waste' (233 comments)

2017 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15528740](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15528740) China Bans Foreign Waste – What Will Happen to the World's Recycling? (63 comments)

2016 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11083898](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11083898) Is it time to rethink recycling? (147 comments)

2015 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10327585](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10327585) The Reign of Recycling (34 comments)

2015 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9757853](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9757853) Recycling is Garbage (1996) (55 comments)

2014 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7778956](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7778956) Is Recycling Worth It? (13 comments)

2010 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1186666](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1186666) Recycling is Bullshit; Make Nov. 15 Zero Waste Day, not America Recycles Day (18 comments)

2009 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=937097](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=937097) The Recycling Myth (36 comments)

<comment><USER21> Very useful, I'm favoriting this to use for future discussions :-) Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Method started out as a stealthily eco-friendly company, and when they first introduced refills for their products they did not make the container recyclable but did a big defense of that.

They claimed recycling of plastic loses a large fraction of the input as waste, and recyclables/recycled materials have to be bulkier. They could make a very thin nonrecyclable package that had less plastic than the unrecoverable fraction of a recyclable alternative, and reduce shipping costs/footprint in the process. So sometimes less of a bad thing is better than more of a mediocre thing.

They have since marked that packaging as recyclable, so I don't know whether they found a workaround or are participating in the recycling mythos now.

</comment><comment><USER23> As I have said before the solution is compostable plastic. It solves the problem with the smallest net change in behavior of the affected parties.

As we have regrettably seen with the coronavirus changing the behavior of large populations is incredibly difficult even if there are dire repercussions for failure to change.

The cost of compostable plastic is slightly higher than the usual plastic, so the governments will have to enforce its use, but it will be a small price to pay for removing the externalities of dealing with actual plastic waste.

<comment><USER24> I disagree. The solution is burning plastic for energy.

You get to use the oil from the ground twice: Once as plastic, and again for energy. It's a win/win since you reduce oil you burn and get rid of plastic waste.

<comment><USER23> Have you ever burned ordinary plastic? The smell is horrific, there are some truly nasty poisons being released.

Furthermore, compostable plastics will solve the biggest problem of plastic pollution -- the a-hole that just tosses plastic garbage in the ground because he/she doesn't give a damn. Compostable plastics compost much faster in proper municipal/industrial composting facilities, so it is still important to throw the stuff away in compost bins and to have regular pickup service, but they will compost in the environment too. Thus, there is some defense against the morons that just litter.

In other words, compostable plastics fail better than all the other choices.

<comment><USER24> > Have you ever burned ordinary plastic? The smell is horrific, there are some > truly nasty poisons being released.

Only if you don't use enough oxygen. Except for PVC plastic does not have any bad atoms in it, if fully burned the exhaust is completely safe (it's just water and CO2).

A proper, hot, incinerator will burn plastic very safely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Fitting, I just started looking into reusing plastic myself by collecting plastic from my own, family and friends trash and remoulding it into something useful. In my quest for this, I found Precious Plastic, an amazing community around recycling plastics yourself and for your community. [https://preciousplastic.com/](https://preciousplastic.com/)

While individuals plastic pollution is not the biggest emitter of plastic here in the world, we can always take small steps towards making sure we don't throw as much plastic as we currently do.

<comment><USER26> This is REALLY cool.

How can I meet people around me who have already setup a collection point, a community point, or a machine shop?

Do you have an onboarding guide for beginners who are looking for low-effort ways to explore what you are doing?

<comment><USER25> I don't want to give the impression I'm part of the Precious Plastic Community (yet at least) as I'm only playing around.

However, here are some resources for getting started locally:

\- Map of all the workshops registered on PP - [https://community.preciousplastic.com/map](https://community.preciousplastic.com/map)

\- Events that are being organized all around the world - [https://community.preciousplastic.com/events](https://community.preciousplastic.com/events)

\- Onboarding guide, read from top to bottom, includes some videos as well, great for getting started - [https://community.preciousplastic.com/academy/intro](https://community.preciousplastic.com/academy/intro)

\- And the most helpful, PPs Discord community, tons of channels and even more people, usually very responsive and very diverse - [https://discordapp.com/invite/cGZ5hKP](https://discordapp.com/invite/cGZ5hKP)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> People are so into recycling, but I fail to see how I can make a difference by recycling. It just seems like the problem is too massive at this point.

<comment><USER28> Don't let plastic recycling get you down, recycling aluminum is a great way to help the environment. Paper and cardboard are also good. Glass is just ok. Reduce your consumption where possible, and make sure that non-recycleable materials make it to a landfill where the environmental impacts are contained. Our individual efforts have a small impact, but it's a small effort and it does matter.

While there are some uses for recycled plastics, I fear that we'll likely continue to see a lot of single-use plastics until some economic force makes plastic unprofitable. Maybe public anger drives new regulation, maybe we use up all the oil, maybe we ween off of oil and it's too expensive to pump oil just to make plastics. In any case, I think we need to embrace some short and medium term solutions to mitigate environmental damage from single-use plastic.

<comment><USER29> Maybe if there was a simple setup to convert recyclable plastic into 3D-printing filament?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Germany has some recycling plants with modern sorting machines, almost entirely automated, it's quite impressive to see it working.

[https://youtu.be/I_fUpP-hq3A](https://youtu.be/I_fUpP-hq3A)

I was checking for details a few days ago, they announce on their website 53% of their input recycled, and 47% used for "energy recovery" (which is newspeak to say they burn it for the cement and steel industry).

I was surprised by the fact that they burn so much but 47% is apparently considered very good.

<comment><USER31> Burning plastic in a modern (read: clean) incinerator is probably the best thing to do with it at this point. It's certainly better than burying it in a landfill. Of course, it would be better to just not make it in the first place.

<comment><USER30> Yes, that's what I read. It still feels dirty and counter intuitive IMHO, but I get that by doing so they can avoid using even more fossil fuel.

Regarding the German system, they could really improve the percentage of recycled plastic trash by using more explicit bins, you currently have one single yellow bin for anything recyclable instead of one for PET, one or aluminum, etc. Because of this it is always a bit difficult to know what is supposed to go or not in the bin, and people just put everything they think is plastic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Listen to the latest episode of Planet Money.

[https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510289/planet- money](https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510289/planet-money)

<comment><USER33> This. Most plastics can't be recycled; it was a PR play by the plastic industry decades ago. Using plastics for such things as medical devices and such makes complete sense to me. Using plastics for items which inherently are only used for a few minutes or an hour (see the F&B industry) makes no sense at all to me.

<comment><USER34> "Using plastics for items which inherently are only used for a few minutes or an hour"

Of course it makes sense. Plastic is cheap, light, watertight, strong, and mallable.

It's kind of a miracle material, except that it's too stable. If we had a version that decomposed in a year, it would be awesome.

<comment><USER35> Compostable "plastics", e.g. PLA, which sometimes is corn-based, exist; in California I've seen compostable disposable silverware, as well as compostable decorative planters (I own two, holding up good after three years, which makes me wonder how compostable they really are). But compostable "plastics" do exist, at least in some markets.

<comment><USER36> Surely the companies that print the symbol and "Please recycle!" on non- recyclable plastic wouldn't label non-compostable silverware as compostable...

I've successfully run "compostable" plastic through the dishwasher several times and haven't seen any sign of decay. The county I live in offers composting service and begs people to please not put "compostable" plastic in it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I pretty much stopped using my recycling bins... except for aluminum.

<comment><USER31> Steel, unbroken glass bottles, and _clean_ paper/cardboard are actually recycled at most municipal recycling centers as well.

<comment><USER37> but is it worth it, energy wise (or for any other reason)?

</comment></comment></comment><comment> L-four My idea is that retailers should have to pay for the collection and recycling of any waste created by the products they sell. Thus creating an insensitive to retailers to stock products with cheap collection and easy recyclability.

</comment><comment><USER38> I knew that plastic recycling were not as big but I did not know it was 91%.

I started looking up stuff like this: [https://leapsmag.com/plastic-eating- mushrooms-let-you-have-y...](https://leapsmag.com/plastic-eating-mushrooms- let-you-have-your-trash-and-eat-it-too/)

I mean, if the corporate community won't do what they say, then I'm going to look for a practical way to do this locally, onsite.

</comment><comment><USER39> Plastic shouldn't be recycled. It should be burned. It's a compact store of energy, and that energy can be recovered and used, even if plastic cannot be easily reused as a material.

Waste handling should focus on making plastics cleanly combustible and keeping problematic materials (like, toxic heavy metals) from being mixed with them in the waste stream.

</comment><comment><USER40> I don't really understand why recycling plastic is not viable. I feel like this is more of a problem with ideology than actual process.

For example, I buy these "Green Toys" products that are supposedly made from recycled plastic and I love it. I have no idea why this recycled plastic is not used in other kid's toys, kitchenware, or random things like garden tools. This recycled plastic is tough, it doesn't decay in the sun like regular plastic. I would pay more for it!

I have actually tried looking for more items made from recycled plastic and it just doesn't exist.

My conclusion is that people don't like the way it looks, because it's very rough and the color is different, so there is no market for it. Most people probably prefer to buy the cheaper, "nicer" looking plastic.

<comment><USER41> >I don't really understand why recycling plastic is not viable. I feel like this is more of a problem with ideology than actual process. [...] Anyways, if someone smarter than me tells me the economics doesn't work, I will believe them, but until then I am skeptical of the idea that we can't properly recycle plastic.

This comment is baffling. In the beginning you think it's an ideological issue. Later on you acknowledge that cost might be an issue, but then you move to goal posts from "plastic is not viable" to "we can't properly recycle plastic". Cost is absolutely the main issue here, not that it's "not possible". Even if recycled plastic is substandard compared to virgin plastic, most consumers can be convinced of otherwise if it's sufficiently cheap enough.

<comment><USER40> You're probably right. My comment was confusing so I edited it to make it more coherent. I struggle with writing, so I appreciate the feedback to improve it.

However, regarding your comment

> In the beginning you think it's an ideological issue. Later on you > acknowledge that cost might be an issue

I don't see these as contradictory. Ideology affects what people are willing to spend. As someone who cares about the environment I don't mind spending more on recycled plastic to reduce waste. Most of my peers would not spend a cent more if they don't have to.

<comment><USER41> >I don't see these as contradictory. Ideology affects what people are willing to spend. As someone who cares about the environment I don't mind spending more on recycled plastic to reduce waste. Most of my peers would not spend a cent more if they don't have to.

I disagree with this characterization. Photovoltaic technology in the 70s were insanely expensive and clearly not economical compared to the alternatives. There were some environmental enthusiasts who would use it despite the economic issues, but I wouldn't characterize the lack of adoption in photovoltaic technology as being an "ideological problem"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> The vast majority of things people think of as recyclable are actually not.

The result is an endless stream of trash in the recycling stream which makes the actual recyclables worthless.

</comment><comment><USER43> Honest question for the great minds who hang out here but; why don't we 'harvest' the landfills?

thanks

good-day.

</comment><comment><USER44> They should start making yoga pants from recycled plastic, if they don't already.

It is deeply ironic that many people who advocate for better plastic consumption, probably own yoga pants, which are made of plastic. Kind of off topic, but, my point is it is more than just Coca-Cola driving the plastics industry.

</comment><comment><USER45> If someone was to Elon Musk the shi* out of this problem, what would they build or do differently?

My gut is that it would focus on plastic identification automation, but not positive.

<comment><USER46> They did. The plastics industry sinked millions in campaigns to convince the people plastics are reclyclable. The only thing missing from being a true Musk move is that they came up with it themselves, instead of buying off the idea from someone else.

<comment><USER45> You know that's not what I meant.

Let's chat again when you've executed and launched five unique revolutionary companies.

<comment><USER46> Executed is not a synonym of "bought". And arguably, none of them is revolucionary. With a cool $1bn in the bank, you bet I could do better, such as investing in tech that solves real problems instead of 3rd cathegory sci-fi adaptations.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Database of Historical Cookbooks - <AUTHOR> https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-to-find-historic-cookbooks <comment><USER2> From project's FAQ ([https://thesifter.org/Home/Faq](https://thesifter.org/Home/Faq)):

Q: What is not in the Sifter?

A: It does not contain the texts of books or recipes.

Seems to be a bit useless without it.

<comment><USER3> _> A: It does not contain the texts of books or recipes. Seems to be a bit useless without it._

Yes, it's "useless" if one wants the The Sifter to be a source of recipes. Instead, the Sifter's goal appears to be a database of _meta information_ [1] (e.g. ingredients, techniques, etc) of recipes and not the full text of recipes themselves.

An analogy might be a website of baseball statistics[2]. Yes, one can also complain that site is "useless" because it doesn't include videos of the actual games. But others can use it to see when black players first appeared, trends of batting averages, trends of pitcher rotations, etc. A researcher wouldn't need the actual films of gameplay to answer those types of questions and a database of meta info about baseball actually enables faster lookup.

[1] excerpt: _> The Sifter isn't a collection of recipes, or a repository of entire texts. Instead, it's a multilingual database, currently 130,000-items strong, of the ingredients, techniques, authors, and section titles included in more than 5,000 European and U.S. cookbooks. It provides a bird's-eye view of long-term trends in European and American cuisines, from shifting trade routes and dining habits to culinary fads. Search "cupcakes," for example, and you'll find the term may have first popped up in Mrs. Putnam's Receipt Book And Young Housekeeper's Assistant,_

[2] [https://www.baseball-reference.com/](https://www.baseball-reference.com/)

<comment><USER4> Hmm... how many people go oh let me check what the stats are for black pepper in 18th century?

Baseball metrics have value on its own to a vast number of people. Cookbook metadata has little value to most people beyond the academic researchers.

This is a poor analogy, no offense.

<comment><USER5> Food has a value on its own to a vast number of people. I would argue there are far more cooks than baseball fans.

<comment><USER4> This isn't about Food. It's about a question such as "During which decade black pepper was the most popular?"

Perhaps you can find more use cases for it? I can't think of

<comment><USER6> This is a funny argument because I can certainly imagine myself giving baseball statistics as a prime example of huge effort going into collecting "useless" data! (Unless you manage a baseball team.) I don't see how your question is less interesting than "who had the 43rd highest batting average in 1934?", which I'm sure there are multiple places to look up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm personally interested in what old fast food and junk food used to taste like, for example the recipe to the original Coke drink: [https://www.thisamericanlife.org/extras/the- recipe](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/extras/the-recipe). I wish I could go back and taste a 50's In-N-Out meal.

<comment><USER8> Sounds like a great idea to start a museum (exhibition) with. You could make a 50's restaurant with various food offerings that were popular then.

<comment><USER9> Or restaurant which copies very precisely some famous historical restaurant menu.

<comment><USER10> You might be interested in the restaurant Next in Chicago. From the Wikipedia:

>Rather than stick with one type of cuisine, Next completely changes its style every few months, focusing on a different time period, parts of the world, or various abstract themes for each "season" of its menu.

Next's very first menu was "Paris 1906" which was based on Escoffier's dishes from that year.

[https://chicago.eater.com/2011/4/4/6688919/next- restaurants-...](https://chicago.eater.com/2011/4/4/6688919/next-restaurants- paris-1906-menu-in-pictures)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I recently read and was amazed that "The Art of Cookery made Plain and Easy" by Hannah Glasse, published in 1747 was a best seller around the English speaking world for over a hundred years.

"We had emancipated ourselves from the sceptre of King George, but that of Hannah Glasse was extended without challenge over our fire-sides and dinner- tables, with a sway far more imperative and absolute"

<comment><USER12> Seems English tables of the 18th century were quite the culinary scene: this is exactly contemporaneous with the famed Earl of Sandwich (1718-1792). [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Montagu,_4th_Earl_of_Sand...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Montagu,_4th_Earl_of_Sandwich#The_sandwich)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The more I try to cook, the deeper respect I have for historical cooks. The things that we have for granted now, like thermometers, stoves where one could set the level of heat were unavailable and cooking almost anything besides very simple dishes was quite hard.

<comment><USER14> If you cook a lot, you'll soon realize that cooking without all the technological advances is actually easier. After some time one develops an instinct of how things should be be (based on color, taste, size, even sound !). For example, if one wants too cook onions, choosing between butter and oil, checking the colour, checking if it's cooked or not, deciding to add some water at some point, or additional stuff to induce better Maillard's reaction, etc. All of that you'll be able to do it without resorting to technology.

That's what I find so gratifying about cooking. After 20 years, I can now make things that taste much better than in the past I'm not always sure of why :-) But lots of practice sure make a difference and it's rewarded. Plus additional bonus : you make many better moments in your life that don't cost much !

But granted, technological advances makes somethings better. For example cooking under vacuum allows you a incredible level of control on what you do _plus_ much healthier result.

<comment><USER15> I think he's talking about more basic technology. For example, cooking eggs in a non-stick pan is significantly easier, and even regular pans have uniform surfaces that heat evenly.

Things like silicone cooking tools, food professors, even just ovens where you can set a temperature are all miracle breakthroughs compared to how cooking was done in the past.

<comment><USER16> I remember both my grandmothers cooking and I don't remember either of them speaking about food processors or say pressure cookers in terms of "miracles". Both grew up and learned to cook at a time when such niceties where not available. I myself cook most of my food in simple pots and pans with simple utensils no different than what would have been available even a thousand years ago. Ovens are another matter- but even there, the variation between different modern ovens (e.g. how quickly they reach a certain temperature) means that experience with a particular oven is much more important than precision.

So I think "miracle breakthroughs" is an exaggeration. Those are things that are more "nice to have" than "absolutely indispensible".

If I wanted to admit to an exception- I've made mayonnaise by hand and by hand mixer. The former is a pain in the ass and takes a lot longer. Even so, having made it by hand I understand how the ingredients work together so I know what to do with the hand mixer. Which is not something you can know if you've always made it with a mixer. So you're actually losing something with too much technology in cooking, so I think anyway.

<comment><USER17> > So you're actually losing something with too much technology in cooking, so > I think anyway.

Somewhat OT:

You're talking about cooking, but the same is true for many other activities and systems. Our technology level permits us to ignore many details and so we fail to learn the underlying mechanisms, processes, etc. In cooking: learning details of the cooking process, why you can make it with a hand or stand mixer versus by hand and what settings are appropriate in those cases. In driving: automatic transmissions hide the details of the different gears, so people driving in mountains and certain other conditions for the first time don't understand why they'd use a lower gear, whereas someone driving a manual transmission all the time would understand more easily.

Examples can be found from any field, but they all demonstrate a common theme: Sometimes you have to do things by hand to understand what's happening before you can apply the higher technology tooling effectively.

<comment><USER16> Agreed. My other example is animation. I studied classical animation (in another life, another career...) and then I learned how to do 3d computer animation. I was never very good at 3d animation (I preferred modelling) so I can't brag about it but it's very clear to see who hasn't learned to do it the traditional way first, e.g. when you look at character animations in games vs. animated movies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> One of my "if I ever become insanely rich I'm doing this" ideas is to have a culinary museum. Imagine exhibits of cooking utensils and traditions from around the world, with guest experts who can cook some of the items for you. So it becomes a walk/learn/sample kind of experience.

</comment><comment><USER19> If I do cook german cuisine, I will usually use Henriette Davidis book, it is detailed yet simple, and unpretentious, which I don't often find in good cookbooks.

Apparently the db even has her book in English, so if people here are interested in cooking german food, I think it is a really good recommendation.

One of my favorite aspects is how she will usually give recommendations about using _everything_ that you might usually think is trash. If you're cooking on a budget, these old cookbooks are actually incredibly helpful.

<comment><USER20> If you ever want to cook Austrian cuisine, the definitive book is "Die Gute Küche" by Plachutta. If you can find a used old copy, it's pretty much in plain text so it's very easy to run it through OCR translation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This resource is great, but only focuses on US and European ingredients/techniques -- probably because oral traditions were much more common back in the day in Asia/Africa.

The fact that these western recipes/techniques are more well-documented than eastern techniques is one factor in why western cuisine has historically received a lot more attention in restaurants/cooking schools as well as popular media (we'll set aside colonial biases, etc for now.)

As we use structured data to draw inferences and then guide actions more and more (ML -> AI...) the fact that databases like this skew entirely western will lead to distorted suggestions in applications that, say, aim to generate cooking curricula programmatically to teach cooking (I'm sure y'all can think of better examples than that.)

I wonder if voice technology can help capture oral histories, oral traditions, and allow those to be structured in a way that only written traditions have been in the recent past. There is hope! We'll all be better for it, too, when we can access the histories and traditions (many of which have been lost, or almost lost, at this point) of the whole world, not just a small section of it.

<comment><USER22> The bulk of the Schlesinger collection was donated by Julia Child from her personal library, and yes, English-language cookbooks covering Asian and and especially African cuisine were scarce before 1940. And Child was definitely a Francophile when it came to food, so her collection was skewed that way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> As someone who works on a program that procedurally generates fictional cultures, including their culinary side, this is a godsend.

It allows me to inspect patterns and the evolution of cuisine over time. This will greatly enhance the accuracy and believeability of the generated cultures.

<comment><USER21> Very cool that you are generating fictional cultures! This resource only structures Western food cultures (probably because a lot of ancient Eastern & African histories relied on oral traditions rather than written, which has been harder to capture and structure pre-voice tech.) As a result, the patterns you detect and stories you generate will be limited to those Western sources; maybe that could be interesting, but I imagine combining those with other traditions around the world would lead to far more novel fictions.

Have you been able to find good structured data about Asian/African food? If not, it would be cool to figure out a way to start building that sort of database so that your stories draw from a fuller set of information and traditions! I think voice tech and the improvement in transcriptions + gpt3-like tools will help us start capturing and structuring oral histories much more effectively and quickly than ever before.

<comment><USER23> Getting data on non-Western cultural traits and patterns has been a challenge. I've had to rely primarily on anecdotes and articles found online.

Food history is a relatively recent study, so texts are hard to come by.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> What a treasure it would have been, recipes from several thousand cookbooks since the turn of the first millennium or older, but alas - there are no recipes here. This may be at best useful for laymen like me as an index for ingredients, prior to getting the actual book from a library or similar. Amazing example of cataloging effort though.

</comment><comment><USER25> As a person who doesn't cook very well, the value I find in most old cookbooks (and a surprising number of modern cookbooks) is just that: historical. And sometimes the sadness that no one makes certain dishes anymore.

But I can't for the life of me figure something like "Stew until ready. Not long before it's ready add finely chopped garlic" [1] or "Prepare the duck, stuff it and stew until done" [2]

Give me times, and temperatures, and sizes, and weights! And don't start me on the weights :D Cups, and spoons, and whatever else are not valid systems of measure :)

[1] Moldovan Beef Stew from "Moldovan Cuisine", Eronina, Avaeva. Chisinau, 1990

[2] Stuffed Duck with Buckwheat Kasha [3] from "Jewish Cuisine", Lebowich, Meisel. Riga, 1991.

[3] Kasha, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kasha](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kasha)

<comment><USER16> >> Give me times, and temperatures, and sizes, and weights!

The thing is, it's pointless to give such precise instructions because they will only ever work for one time and one time only, the time the recipe was (presumably) tested. After that, everything you do as you carry out the instructions in the recipe with absolute precision, like a little robot chef, will still produce a different result not least because your ingredients are no longer the ingredients used in the original recipe.

So for example, if someone tells you to stew a pound of beef "until ready"\- the imprecision matches reality. Your pound of beef will not be the same as the pound of beef of the chef who wrote the recipe. It won't be the same as my pound of beef. It won't be the same as anyone else's pound of beef. And it won't be ready in the same exact time as everyone else's pound of beef. Not even if we're all eating from the same, very large, animal.

Like I say in another comment, a recipe is not a precise set of instructions that leads to a reproducible result, like a computer program or an algorithm. It's a template, a mnemonic, an informal description of how to achieve a result in the ballpark of a certain target.

I think this is one reason why many people have trouble with cooking, even when they're very good at following instructions: because they treat recipes as instructions to be followed, rather than a discussion, a debate if you like, between two cooks, or a source of inspiration.

<comment><USER25> > Like I say in another comment, a recipe is not a precise set of instructions > that leads to a reproducible result, like a computer program or an > algorithm. It's a template, a mnemonic, an informal description of how to > achieve a result in the ballpark of a certain target.

Which is provably false for the vast majority of recipes. And you need a starting point for a recipe. You can't "grab ingredients in the quantities you desire, and cook them" if you don't know the quantities, or the temperature, or what to look for in a finished product.

> I think this is one reason why many people have trouble with cooking, even > when they're very good at following instructions: because they treat recipes > as instructions to be followed

The reason people have trouble cooking is because people are not born with an innate ability to cook. And on the contrary I think many more people cook now precisely because the recipes are not vague incantations of ingredients.

Music and painting are not precise either. And yet, you don't expect anyone to become a master improviser from day one.

<comment><USER26> Another thing to consider is that prior to the late 19th/20th centuries, standardization of ingredients and quantities was not really a thing. Flour came in different densities and gluten contents, depending on what the mill felt like producing. Tomatoes came in different sizes and acidities depending on the soil and weather, and neither stoves nor ovens had effective temperature control. If they had told you to use 50g of something, that wouldn't have meant 50g of whatever the reader had, and it certainly wouldn't mean 50g of what _you_ can get.

Instead, the reader is expected to "fill in the gaps", a much more reasonable expectation when everyone is cooking daily with the same few dozen ingredients because long term preservation isn't a thing yet outside pickling/curing/fermentation.

<comment><USER25> Yup, and precision instruments were not something you would have at a regular household.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Would be interesting to find obscure ingredients. Imagine discovering something as good as chocolate. You would be a billionaire.

Garum, Rome's Favorite Condiment

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

</comment><comment><USER28> I agree with dinamic 1. Not suitable for a blob on hacker news. It would be cool if it had the text + translations but... Also there are some obvious errors. One item is noted as being from a periodical from the year 4.... Hmm I think not.

</comment><comment><USER29> Is the database (or the underlying data) available as a SQL database, CSV, or similar ?

</comment><comment><USER30> This isn't specifically related to this database (since it doesn't contain recipes), but how cool would it be to finetune a GPT model on hundreds of thousands of recipes and have it generate new ones to try.

</comment><comment><USER31> that is so amazing. A friend found an old Indian cookbook in an obscure language which was 80 years old and realized that even some daily food evolved so much just in the span of a century

</comment><comment><USER32> Clickbait garbage. First thing I look for...a database of the cookbook recipies. Oh its just a database of cookbooks so basically a crappy version of amazon. Not the actual information in them.

</comment><comment><USER33> I'm confused.

On the linked site, it's tagged as gender, feminism and cookbook.. the Sifter itself has no recipes at all? Is that some kind of trolling?</comment>