Design and Implementation of Modern Column-Oriented Databases (2012) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://db.csail.mit.edu/pubs/abadi-column-stores.pdf <comment><USER2> Do SSDs or completely in-memory databases obviate the need for column-oriented databases?

<comment><USER3> No, the benefit of columnar organization is locality for query evaluation which remains valid regardless of the storage media. However, they do impact the type of columnar representation which is optimal -- "columnar-oriented" includes very diverse types of organizational structures.

The classical "turn every column into an index" columnar-oriented model has some serious drawbacks for many workloads. If you are using SSDs, you have the ability to do random access, sub-page reads, et al very efficiently. This allows you to use a _different_ family of columnar-oriented database designs, particularly the various vector-structured storage models, which retain almost all of the benefits of traditional columnar-oriented databases without most of the drawbacks (given that you are using SSDs). So SSDs really just allow you to use a better columnar model with fewer constraints.

In-memory is not a database architecture per se, but the benefits of locality (e.g. reducing cache line misses) still apply. Most database engines operate almost entirely in-memory for many workloads in any case.

<comment><USER4> Are there any papers, descriptions, or examples you could point to that exemplify the architecture that you think makes the most sense for SSDs?

Also, I was sad to see that SpaceCurve appears to be gone! I was about to recommend it to a friend as a potential solution to her spatial database needs. Can we hope that you are trying to continue the concept under different structure?

<comment><USER5> The papers from MonetDB/x100 have a lot of interesting info. Here's one to start with: [http://www.vldb.org/conf/1999/P5.pdf](http://www.vldb.org/conf/1999/P5.pdf)

<comment><USER4> Great paper, but I was wondering particularly about the "optimizing for SSD" aspect. The paper you cite seems to deal only with optimizing for "in RAM" databases. While one might hope that the same techniques would work for both, I think Andrew may have important insights into the differences.

<comment><USER5> There's overlap, and the papers that cite that one are a good place to start running things down. There's plenty of recently published stuff about ssd specific database engine approaches, and I'd specifically suggest the "don't stack your log on my log" paper for a really basic intro [1].

Andrew can speak for himself but I'll say I've not found anything substantial that is similar to the marketing claims of SpaceCurve in open published work. Some of the comments about memory sharding cut against the grain of what I see as the trend in high performance published work, which generally obeys single writer via CoW and or log structure but leverages shared reading of memory heavily.

It may perhaps be unfair but given several years and tens of millions of funding I'd expect they'd be able to present something more convincing or at least some benchmarks. I suspect the approach is something smart people have found promising when doing diligence on it, but that is proving difficult to turn into a product due to drawbacks not covered in the marketing materials, blog posts, and comments here.

[1]: [https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/inflow14/infl...](https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/inflow14/inflow14-yang.pdf)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Source to Keep Up with New Web Tech - <AUTHOR> I was wondering if anyone knows of a source that keeps track of all the rapidly emerging libraries (specifically js), web platforms and other fast-moving tech.
Ideally there would be some sort of comparison for similar technologies and/or a short example use-case or summary.
I am a software developer but mostly develop desktop applications and database stuff. I am interested in beginning a few personal web-based projects but am not aware of all the rapidly emerging options within this domain. Thanks in advance! <comment><USER2> This is what I use.

Daily: [https://github.com/trending](https://github.com/trending) [http://www.rssheap.com/articles](http://www.rssheap.com/articles)

Once a week [http://css-weekly.com/](http://css-weekly.com/) \-- Mondays (sometimes Tuesday) [http://html5weekly.com/](http://html5weekly.com/) \-- Wednesdays [http://javascriptweekly.com/](http://javascriptweekly.com/) \-- Fridays

Intro to follow certain leaders and such: [http://uptodate.frontendrescue.org/](http://uptodate.frontendrescue.org/)

Javascript Specific: [http://dailyjs.com/](http://dailyjs.com/)

CSS Specific: [https://css-tricks.com/](https://css-tricks.com/)

Occasionally browse the "Picks" for Codepen: [http://codepen.io/](http://codepen.io/)

Which is how I find awesome up-and-comers like mo.js [http://codepen.io/sol0mka/full/ogOYJj/](http://codepen.io/sol0mka/full/ogOYJj/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I use Panda. Whenever you open a new window or tab, it serves a lot of different sources. But be warned, it can be a huge time sink.

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/panda-4-news- inspi...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/panda-4-news- inspiration/haafibkemckmbknhfkiiniobjpgkebko)</comment>


China is building a GitHub alternative called Gitee - <AUTHOR> https://news.yahoo.com/china-building-github-alternative-called-095357551.html <comment><USER2> That's a great way to give China all of your source code</comment>


Couple Pays $155,000 To Clone Dog In Korea - Pup Now Delivered - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2009/01/28/parker.fl.cloned.puppy.wpbf

<comment><USER2> This links directly to a video. Can you put [video] or something in the headline next time?</comment>


Berkeley Study: For MBAs, Happiness Isn't About the Money - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/25/berkeley-study-for-mbas-happiness-isnt-about-the-money/

<comment><USER2> Completely agree with this. Most of the entrepreneurs I meet are not driven by money - money happens to be a by-product.

</comment><comment><USER3> Their happiness, or the happiness of the people whose compensation they manage?</comment>


U.S. eyes building nuclear power plants on the moon, Mars - <AUTHOR> https://time.com/5871667/nuclear-power-plant-moon/ <comment><USER3> The headline is potentially misleading. There are already "nuclear power plants" based on radioisotope decay of Pu238 on Mars (and old ones on the Moon) as well as beyond, such as Voyager 1, 2, and New Horizons (all of which are still operating). They're called RTGs.

In order to get approval to launch nuclear material, the launch vehicle must be nuclear-rated (like human-rating, it ensures safety). With the recent retirement of the Delta II, only the Atlas V is currently nuclear-rated, but eventually others may be. Additionally, the fuel is encased in boxes designed to withstand launch failure and impact into the ocean without releasing the contents.

In the case of RTGs, the fuel is always releasing heat and is always radioactive. For fission reactors, the fuel is relatively inert and non- radioactive until it is turned on.

<comment><USER4> I imagine* an RTG has a well enough encased piece of radioactive metal that will survive falling through the atmosphere without disintegrating.

Which makes the main danger that the Plutonium may get into the wrong hands.

* _Happy to learn if that 's wrong :)_

<comment><USER5> The plutonium in an RTG is the wrong type from a weapons perspective.

The casing on RTGs have typically been designed to survive reentry. One example is Nimbus B - the rocket failed late in flight. The RTG was recovered from the ocean, refurbished, and flown again on Nimbus 3.

<comment><USER6> > The plutonium in an RTG is the wrong type from a weapons perspective.

You could potentially make a dirty bomb out of one. Just a conventional warhead that sprays radioactive fallout.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > The reactor must be able to generate an uninterrupted electricity output of > at least 10 kilowatts. The average U.S. residential home, according to the > U.S. Energy Information Administration, uses about 11,000 kilowatt-hours per > year.

Would be more helpful to express that as 11000/365/24 = 1.256 kilowatt, so you understand that the reactor could only power 8 U.S. homes.

Btw, what are non-residential homes?

<comment><USER8> I've always found the use of kWh/year so absurd. I mean Wh is kinda weird as a unit for energy, but this is just plain asburd.

<comment><USER9> Wh is directly equivalent to joules. It makes perfect sense as a unit of energy.

1 Wh = 3600 joules

<comment><USER10> That's the point though. Just refer to it in joules.

<comment><USER11> It's kind of like radians vs. degrees. Degrees seem ridiculous if you're doing trig, but working with irrational fractions of pi is ridiculous if you're trying to measure with a protractor. If you need to convert to radians to do some trig (and let's be honest you usually don't) you are going to end up converting something like degrees that are marked on the protractor anyway.

<comment><USER12> > Degrees seem ridiculous if you're doing trig

Degrees are ridiculous if you're doing calculus. They don't really pose any problems if you're doing trig.

> but working with irrational fractions of pi is ridiculous if you're trying > to measure with a protractor.

Sure, that's true, but that's only because irrational numbers are by definition infinitely precise. It's no more difficult to use a protractor labeled in increments of 0.02 radians than one labeled in increments of one degree.

<comment><USER13> 360 is evenly divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 15, and 20.

0.02 radians would absolutely be a ridiculous unit of measurement if you were a carpenter or draftsman in the age before computing.

<comment><USER12> > 360 is evenly divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 15, and 20.

But if you're trying to _measure_ an angle, this is totally irrelevant. The angle is whatever it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think the first step towards large scale human activity in space is the construction of substantial industrial facilities on the moon. The central advantage of such facilities is that it will be much much cheaper to launch material into space from the moon, because it has lower gravity and less atmosphere. When those facilities are fully operational, we'll be able to send large numbers of vehicles into space, including big residential ships where lots of people could live for extended periods of time. It's not clear to me why it would be better to live on Mars (or some other planet/moon) than on a well-designed spaceship.

<comment><USER15> _The central advantage of such facilities is that it will be much much cheaper to launch material into space from the moon..._

Unless you're making things out of stuff that's already on the moon you'd have to get the raw material from Earth to the Moon, and then from the Moon to where you want it in space. There might well be advantages to doing that, raw materials can be fired in to space at higher Gs than manufactured parts using a railgun for example, but the cost of building a Moon factory is likely to mean the cost of building on the Moon is still _much_ higher for a long time.

<comment><USER16> The point is explicitly to use materials from the moon.

<comment><USER17> Those materials aren't on the moon.

<comment><USER18> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_resources](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_resources)

Seems to have plenty of iron and titanium and aluminum, but we have spent almost no time there so we don't really know. Well when I say 'we' haven't spent much time there I don't mean to speak for you. You may in fact have been born there for all I know. But the rest of us need to do more research I think before reaching any such conclusion. Or maybe we could just ask you.

<comment><USER17> Ok, tell me how many millions of tons of equipment and how many gigawatts of power we will need to process out large quantities of these resources from razor sharp sand, and how many trillions of dollars it will cost to build it on the moon?

We can process gold out of seawater, so why do we dig far into the earth to find veins of gold?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It makes sense. Voyager I was powered with nuclear energy.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_1#Power](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_1#Power)

<comment><USER20> It makes no sense. Curiosity was powered with solar cells.

The totality of Voyager's scientific output is... low. Like most space exploration. A nuclear accident that distributes enriched plutonium as fine particles throughout the atmosphere would cause thousands of lives if the generally accepted theory of the harms of radiation (linear with exposure) are correct.

<comment><USER21> Curiosity is powered by an RTG and has no solar cells. Spirit and Opportunity where solar powered, but where expected to only operate 90 days due to dust build up on the solar cells. Solar pretty much doesn't make any sense on the moon or Mars due to the environments.

<comment><USER22> A caveat - solar works on the Moon in certain circumstances (polar locations with sunlight most of the time), and on Mars with a bit of maintenance (Spirit and Opportunity lasted much longer than expected because of wind cleaning dust off the panels).

But yes, to your general point, nuclear power has serious advantages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Stupid question, but if it's only 10kw, why not use solar + batteries?

Certainly should weigh and cost less "the reactor cannot weigh more than 7,700 pounds..."

<comment><USER24> At least on the surface of the moon, you're going to be in darkness for 14 days every 28. This not only means you won't be generating solar power, but your battery efficiency will probably also take a hit due to the cold temperatures (not to mention, you'll have to heat things too). So you'd have to have enough batteries for 14 days.

<comment><USER25> There's small areas at the poles which are called peaks of eternal light, but for the most part you are entirely correct.

I find those pushing solar on Mars to be more perplexing, for humans to go there we are going to need nuclear, there's simply no way around this.

Many have an understandable aversion to nuclear but for anything on other bodies the alternatives can't compete.

<comment><USER20> We shouldn't ruin Planet A in our attempt to switch over to Plan B.

The amount of geoengineering needed to make Mars hospitable would solve all environmental problems on earth five times over.

<comment><USER26> If you try a terraforming experiment on Mars and it fails, nobody's life/house/country/etc is ruined, which isn't true of geoengineering on Earth. I agree with the sentiment that there really is no Plan B to fixing climate change but that doesn't mean the goals of space colonization and fixing climate change are contrary.

<comment><USER27> Only if the entire process is self-sufficient. For now we are burning precious Earth resources to do anthing in space.

<comment><USER28> Precious? The primary elements "wasted" in space exploration are aluminum, silicon, hydrogen, and oxygen. All of those things Earth is just lousy with. Even launching a rocket a day wouldn't put any sort of dent in the availability of any of those elements. A rocket a day also wouldn't meaningfully add to levels of harmful pollution. The Earth is _really big_. It has lots of pretty much everything.

Doing stuff in space is _expensive_ in an economic sense but it's not really all that resource intensive. Most of the cost is paying people to design, test, fabricate, and operate the hardware.

<comment><USER27> Ok, but to put a rocket in space you need a surrounding economy on a specific technological level which is costly resourcewise. Could SpaceX or NASA happen in e.g. Congo, Nepal or Papua New Guinea alone?

<comment><USER29> Well okay, we can stop exploring space when we dismantle the entire industrialized world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm surprised that nobody is commenting on the true exciting possibility left over: to directly mine (then use) uranium from Mars. Completely feasible, and completely sustainable. That would be a huge energy resource to develop Mars.

<comment><USER10> > Completely feasible, and completely sustainable.

Setting up the facilities to mine, process and purify uranium on another planet does seem like a major technical challenge to me.

<comment><USER31> Benefits seem minimal too - Uranium is high density.

Creating water, oxygen, even rocket fuel, in situ makes perfect sense.

Only once you have a nearly self-sustaining group of colonies would you need to worry about insourcing fuel supply - and by then there may be better solutions to generate power (thorium, fusion, space based solar, etc)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Granted a solar array ON the moon is not going to work half the time. But how about a solar array on a satellite around the moon? It would be cheaper to deploy. Already exists. 10 kw can be generated by an array the size of a small rooftop. Getting the power to the moon is the remaining engineering challenge. And learning how to do this would have tremendous benefits for the exploration of space in general. Although current tech using masers exists, I cannot imagine why we could not use recently developed high frequency lasers to boil water on the moon to run a steam turbine. (Which we would need to get from a comet). Besides the obvious steampunk attraction of a steam engine on the moon, the presence of a large reservoir of heat energy at a stable temperature could facilitate the temperature regulation of a nearby colony. And the constant supply of energy could drive ion engines that use the dust of the moon as a reaction mass making trips to lunar orbit free.

I just don't like the idea of concentrated points of failure that are easy to subvert into weapons like a dirty bomb. We need to be cognizant of human's ability to turn even the best invention to evil when someone gets disgruntled. Failure modes need to be assessed for any technology going forward and must include intentionally engineered 'successful' attempts at causing failure. If the internet were designed to thwart the dark side of humanity, we might still have the beautiful thing that existed when the internet was first created: a channel for communication free of spam, advertising, spying, but that's another rant. If we kept commerce OFF the net, it might still be a place where humans could enjoy the benefits of fellowship. Sorry I couldn't help myself.

<comment><USER33> Put the solar panels at the poles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I really don't get the rush to try to travel to/colonize Mars. Mars is a really awful place for humans to live or visit, and it would be incredibly expensive to try.

Why not wait 50-100 years when we have safe, compact fusion reactors, have fast enough engines to reach Mars in under a month, and have an economic imperative to harvest the asteroid belt? We gain nothing meaningful now--we're just fulfilling the fantasy of some middle aged men.

<comment><USER35> Replace mars with America, and fusion reactors with frigates and you'll realise how silly this sounds

<comment><USER36> America was/is _extremely_ fertile, requires nothing special to settle and is only six weeks away. There's breathable air, fresh water, trees, arable land, etc.

Mars is far more distant and hostile.

<comment><USER37> I think you simplify the reality of the situation. European colonies in the Americas overwhelmingly failed for centuries, and the ones that eventually succeeded were very fragile for a long time. Starting with the Norse settlements, and going until the English/French/Spanish started pouring massive resources into military and colony aid in order to control territories in America.

The people in those colonies died very quickly either from violence, starvation or just malnutrition. It turns out that European agricultural knowledge either didn't work, or wasn't considered an important mix in many of the colonies. The plant life was diffrent enough that even living off the land wasn't possible because people were just as likely to poison themselves with sumac/whatever as get lucky and find something edible. The results were a lot of failed crops, and starving settlers only kept alive with frequent resupply missions from Europe and the occasional trade with native peoples. The latter of which, turned bloody more frequently then we are willing to admit.

So, while they could breath the air, the difficulties and lack of knowledge were much the same as any mars colony we might try and start. Likely the results will be the same too. It will take hundreds of years of failures and people dying before the problem is understood well enough and the political/etc focus shifts sufficiently that one of them eventually succeeds. The results will likely be much the same, a vast increase in knowledge, not just for the colonists, but for those that remain. But instead of new foods, spices, gold and trading partners, there will be technology gains pushed forward in ways we cant imagine.

For starters, think of the environmental and biological understandings required to make life on mars long term sustainable that we don't currently have.

<comment><USER36> The native Americans were proof-by- example that they were habitable by humans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I fell down a Wikipedia Hole deep into the history of nuclear reactors in space. There are many radioisotope heater units (RHUs) in space, such as those used by Chang'e 4 to survive the cold lunar nights, and radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs), such as the MHW-RTGs used by the Voyagers, the GPHS-RTGs used by Cassini and New Horizons, and the MMRTGs used by Curiosity and Perseverance. (An RTG using 241Am has been proposed for an interstellar mission, as it's 432 year half-life could provide 500+ years of power [1].) The only nuclear fission reactor launched by the US, and the world's first, was SNAP 10-A, a 235U - Zirconium hydride reactor with a thermal power output of 30 kW and sodium-potassium (NaK) coolant. It was launched in 1965, stopped working after only 43 days, and has undergone 7 "anomalous events" in which nearly 50 trackable pieces have been seen shedding from the parent body. It should stay in orbit for 3000 years unless it breaks up further. The remaining 30 or so known launched fission reactors were in Soviet RORSATs: nuclear-powered, ocean-surveillance, active radar satellites in LEO that required periodic boosts to prevent reentry. They were designed to launch their enriched 235U reactors into a high orbit at the end of their operational lives, but this didn't always happen. (Those high orbits will last 300-1000 years, but the nuclear fuel has a half-life of 70,000 years… so future generations may not think highly of us.) In 1978, the Cosmos 954 RORSAT malfunctioned, reentered, and broke apart over northern Canada with the reactor attached, scattering radioactive debris over a 800 km long region and increasing awareness of the challenges around space debris— the USSR eventually paid $3 million in cleanup liability, about a ⅕ of the true cost. Other satellites have also broken up and spread radioactive debris, including the US's Transit 5BN3 (carried a SNAP RTG) and the USSR's Cosmos 1402 RORSAT, or have leaked radioactive coolant in orbit, such as the higher power and higher orbit Kosmos 1818 and Kosmos 1867 RORSATs, which both seem to have leaked trails of metallic NaK coolant. The usefulness of the Gamma Ray Spectrometer on NASA's SolarMax mission was reduced by anomalous gamma ray emissions from these higher reactors. Collisional breakups among the ~30 reactors in orbit are likely over the next few hundred years [2]. Near future use of nuclear power in space may include NASA's Kilopower reactor and Advanced Stirling Radioisotope Generator, and potentially even nuclear rockets. Related: This 158 page NASA PDF [3] contains a delightfully detailed history of space debris and was a primary source for this writeup.

[1] [http://www.niac.usra.edu/files/library/meetings/misc/trieste...](http://www.niac.usra.edu/files/library/meetings/misc/trieste_may02_mtg/McNutt_Ralph.pdf) [2] [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0273117791...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/027311779190540Z) [3] [https://web.archive.org/web/20170503083646/https://ston.jsc....](https://web.archive.org/web/20170503083646/https://ston.jsc.nasa.gov/collections/TRS//_techrep/TP-1999-208856.pdf)

(If you're into this sort of nerdery, I write about this stuff weekly in The Orbital Index - [https://orbitalindex.com](https://orbitalindex.com))

<comment><USER22> Beyond NERVA [[https://beyondnerva.com/](https://beyondnerva.com/)] is also a great source, looking not just at electrical plants but also at proposed Nuclear Thermal Rockets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Although the title is bit misleading, power plants on mars is exciting. Everyone has been thinking about living on mars but I see that building infrastructure first before sending humans is the right way to go forward. Power is the first step towards it.

It is like water/river on earth. Civilizations are built and grown around them.

Hopefully we can find a sustainable way to dispose or recycle the waste from these reactors. POssibly for terraforming?

</comment><comment><USER40> The actual RFI can be found at [https://beta.sam.gov/opp/b92644af4767413c9e831e633c6e2888/vi...](https://beta.sam.gov/opp/b92644af4767413c9e831e633c6e2888/view?keywords=%22Idaho%20National%20Laboratory%22&sort=-relevance&index=opp&is_active=true&page=1&notice_type=r)

</comment><comment><USER41> That was the whole basis for the Mars direct mode of propellant creation, and to be honest should be the only expansion of Human based Nuclear technology.

Elon is saying he's going to put football fields of Solar panel arrays on Mars according to Zubrin [1], as absurd as that sounds he probably will accomplish it given his track record how long it remains viable (dust storms on Mars can last months) is the real question, when in reality Nuclear technology should really only be used for these kind of purposes: high risk, limited option based energy creation. None of which apply to Earth, but do apply to Mars and I guess the Moon.

I won't rant about how incredibly foolish the mission to the Moon is here, not least of which putting a significant nuclear generation station on something that orbits the Earth is, but suffice it to say it makes more sense then building another on the Planet when we have so many more options.

1: [https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/02/mars-elon-musk- plan-t...](https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/02/mars-elon-musk-plan-to- settle-red-planet/)

</comment><comment><USER42> I know it is good to build nuclear power plants away from habitation, but this seems a bit impractical.

<comment><USER43> How do you power e.g. a large (radio)telescope array on the Moon when it's on the dark side? It can be completely robot-controlled, but it would still need significant power.

<comment><USER44> Pick a spot that's constantly lit with sunlight?

[https://www.nature.com/news/2007/071023/full/news.2007.182.h...](https://www.nature.com/news/2007/071023/full/news.2007.182.html)

<comment><USER45> Going to get pretty crowded at the poles, no?

<comment><USER27> First let's put anything there :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Solar gets lots of love. But when planet-based its down 50% of the time - <USER2> night. Not very useful for life support.

I don't know why orbital solar isn't discussed more. Folks cite efficiency losses when transmitting to ground, but does it rise to 50% like ground-based?

<comment><USER47> I think you fundamentally misunderstand what's needed. It's more of a science fiction cliche that life support needs immense amounts of power. The earths life support is based on solar power and that has worked out just fine for humanity. Ideally life support should be as passive as possible, and using solar power is a great way to achieve that.

PS: Orbital solar is an issue due to launch costs, and the fact most electricity is used in the daytime. Solar + battery is also getting very cheap.

<comment><USER46> No; that was clearly just an an example.

Understand that a colony on the Moon isn't there just as a proof of concept. Its there to do something, probably industrial. Running billion-dollar industrial processes only when the sun is shining, is clearly a downside.

<comment><USER47> If your talking scale that's a question of economics.

Batteries + solar are already cheaper than new nuclear power on Earth over 24 hours. For Mars the reduced sunlight is an issue, but nuclear also faces major issues without ready water and very low atmospheric pressure. Low ground temperatures allow you to dissipate heat, but construction costs would be dramatically higher.

The moon is different due to extended day night cycles. Which also make it extremely unappealing for long term colonization. Trying build a reactor that still operates when ground temperatures hit 127 degrees Celsius is again very difficult.

Out past Mars solar is a poor fit. But, without something like cheap fusion power it's extremely unlikely giant colonies would be viable anyway.

<comment><USER46> Oh! Mars may not be so poor for solar. Inverse-square means less sunlight per area, so less electricity. But thin atmosphere factors in too! Estimated Earth-based solar loses 90% by the time sunlight gets to the ground.

So in fact a solar panel in space around the asteroid belt (outside the orbit of Mars) gets about the same flux per square as Earth ground-based. If I estimated right.

Anyway, talking space-based solar vs ground-based solar (not nuclear). Due to the twin advantages of less atmosphere to get thru, and no/less night.

<comment><USER47> 90% is wildly off base. In earths orbit you get ~1361 W/m2 and on the surface you can hit 1050W/m2 of direct sunlight and up to ~1120 W/m2 when including radiation scattered or reemitted by atmosphere and surroundings. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_irradiance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_irradiance)

Looking at averages is misleading. Clouds and the atmosphere on average reduce this significantly, but that's very location specific. Near the poles the sun stays at very low angles 24/7 which significantly increases the average absorption. But, solar is a poor fit at the poles anyway.

<comment><USER46> Ok, don't know where I got that. Looking again, I see an average of a halving of total solar flux from space to sea level.

Mars is 144M miles from the sun, average. The earth is ~100M. That's a difference of about 1.44:1 which puts the inverse-square reduction due to different distances at 2:1.

What does that mean? Mars solar flux is about the same as Earth at sea level. So expect similar solar panel efficiencies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> What if the rocket carrying the reactor explodes ?

<comment><USER3> In order to get approval to launch nuclear material, the launch vehicle must be nuclear-rated (like human-rating, it ensures safety). With the recent retirement of the Delta II, only the Atlas V is currently nuclear-rated, but eventually others may be. Additionally, the fuel is encased in boxes designed to withstand launch failure and impact into the ocean without releasing the contents.

In the case of RTGs, the fuel is always releasing heat and is always radioactive. For fission reactors, the fuel is relatively inert and non- radioactive until it is turned on.

The casing works pretty well. I believe there's even an instance where there WAS a launch failure with an RTG (Atlas V has never had a legitimate launch failure and it has flown almost 100 times), and they fished it out and reused the fuel for another mission.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> That is going to be a long-ass cable

<comment><USER50> I believe the band Rage Against the Machine made a song about this. It was called _Take The Power Back_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Is there something which they can transform on the moon to get fuel or something?

Using those nuclear power plants?

<comment><USER52> We've confirmed there is ice on the moon deep in the craters so we should be able to convert that into hydrogen fuel and oxidizer.

<comment><USER17> We aren't sure how much regolith is mixed with that ice, or how we can process it without using massive amounts of energy. It's not like Mars where water and CO2 are everywhere.

<comment><USER52> Good point. The moon is probably most useful as a testbed for Mars (since we can iterate much more quickly).

<comment><USER17> It's a terrible test bed for Mars because it's environment is so vastly different.

\- You can't use use aerobraking to land. This means you can land much larger cargos on Mars.

\- Your habitat has to be able to withstand temps at least 150 degrees colder and 200 degrees hotter than what Mars requires.

\- Your climate control system has to manage this heat/cold for two weeks at a time instead of 12 hours at a time.

\- Since there is no atmosphere or rain, Luna has razor sharp dust. You need entirely different space suits.

\- To survive you need power storage to last for two weeks at a time instead of 12 hours at a tube.

\- The moon doesn't have liquid water, or easily accessible water ice.

\- It's ice is mixed in rocks frozen at absolute zero buried in polar craters, hundreds of degrees colder than motions of square KM of Martian surface ice sheets hundreds of meters deep.

\- Luna doesn't have any easily accessible CO2, or Carbon, or the same for Iron, which litters the surface of Mars.

\- You can't produce methane as fuel on the moon, only H2. H2 is much harder to store for long periods. \- Etc, etc

<comment><USER52> There are still huge advantages in testing off-world tech in a place where it takes 3 days rather than 7 months to get there.

Are you advocating that we try to go straight to Mars rather than testing (some) things out on the moon first?

<comment><USER17> Yes, because testing on the moon won't tell us much about how things work on Mars. Having the test environment closer is obviously beneficial, but only if the tests are predictive.

We are better off testing in Antarctica, given it being a much closer environmental match for Mars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> This doesn't make much sense, they're probably just trying to respond to recent progress in Chinese missions to Mars, e.g.:

[http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-07/24/c_139238091.htm](http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-07/24/c_139238091.htm)

</comment><comment><USER54> We finally found some place that wasn't in anyone's backyard.

</comment><comment><USER55> Well I guess there you can at least shoot the waste into space easier

</comment><comment><USER56> How bad would it be if whatever fissile material is needed for this (presumably much larger than previously) power plant were exploded above Florida in a rapid unscheduled disassembly?

<comment><USER57> The fuel would be encased in a protective enclosure designed to survive launch failure.

<comment><USER56> Pretty impressive. I didn't think much could survive such a massive explosion

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Haven't they been eyeing that since the 60s?

<comment><USER59> Yes indeed. The SNAP program was the big one really, culminating with an actual reactor in orbit.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNAP-10A](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNAP-10A)

The NERVA program was one part (mostly for propulsion) with many reactor tests.

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

The Soviets had a few dozen nuclear reactors in space powering satellites hunting submarines.

<comment><USER60> Most of those few dozen soviet reactors are still in graveyard orbits today, in fact.

<comment><USER61> So is SNAP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Incredibly exciting! We're living a new Cold War like space race and China is catching up.

I wonder what are the perceived economic and military benefits of establishing a presence on Mars. Or is it just political capital? What happens if China gets there first? Will they claim it?

</comment><comment><USER63> Simple and genuine question, why does the US feel entitled to all natural resources and do as it pleases ? Isn't the Moon and the mars common to all humanity ? Why does the US assume it can do whatever it wants on these planets ? With this, other countries will join the race, and soon moon and mars will be exploited just like we have unleashed massive ecological destruction on earth.

<comment><USER64> Conversely - why aren't any other countries investing as much in space research and development?

<comment><USER63> Space research and development has indeed given us some very useful outcomes - no doubt. Also, other countries are into space research and development too, worried that this could put other able countries in a race that could result in bad outcomes.

We have plenty of problems to solve here on earth. Is technology only about solving for curiosity of what is possible ? Or is technology about solving real problems of energy, minimal impact to the environment etc ?

The ocean cleanup project is a good example of solving problems for humanity here on earth. Now that we managed to dump enormous amounts of plastic into our waterways and eventually into oceans. There are other interesting problems which beg technological solutions too.

<comment><USER53> People running space exploration are not interested in making life better for other humans. They just want to develop technology without any strings attached. This is excellent for companies that will later get technology transfers, i.e., free tech researched with public money. In the end it is an excuse to enrich the 1% even more, a free lunch for the rich.

<comment><USER63> I just got downvoted for saying something similar :) That isn't the problem. The reason i shared these opinions here on HN, is due to the faith in the HN community that they would be willing to have a civil discourse even if its opposed to their worldview. That is something i least expect from the HN community. :)

I would be happy if those who downvoted without reading the entire argument, would also contribute their views on why this argument is wrong :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> > The U.S. wants to build nuclear power plants that will work on the moon and > Mars, and on Friday put out a request for ideas from the private sector on > how to do that.

Stop picking fights with all the other countries. Take climate change seriously. Maybe then you can survive long enough to build things on Mars.

<comment><USER66> While I get the intent of what you are saying, you should know that the US is the _only_ space faring nation that is trying hard to be collaborative and inclusive in the peaceful exploration and utilization of space and space exploration.

<comment><USER20> EU countries have like one space agency among the 20 of them, which looks somewhat collaborative.

They also did not recently create "space force" to militarize space and pander for votes in the most obnoxious way possible.

<comment><USER67> ESA is also the most useless one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> this is insane. the full cradle-to-grave lifecycle of nuclear energy on our own planet is shamefully underdeveloped given how much we rely on nuclear power.

-plants are run far longer than their lifespan was ever designed. most have posted leaks and accidents of various sizes that could be easily avoided.

-waste is just buried. no attempt at salvage, and nothing can be done to make it safe. the US has 80 sites alone. most will be dangerous indefinitely.

-3 mile island, fukushima, and chernobyl could likely all have been prevented. all include an exclusion zone of some shape or size. none have experienced meaningful amounts of cleanup.

-Nuclear is a one-time thing. one you exhaust the mines on the moon, youre out of power and you've done nothing to embrace renewable energy.

-renewable energy is essentially infinite on the moon. the moon can reach 120c, easily enough to drive steam turbines. there is plenty of room for both terrestrial and tethered orbital solar sails.

the whole effort smacks of pandering to a dying industry.

<comment><USER69> > 3 mile island, fukushima, and chernobyl could likely all have been > prevented. all include an exclusion zone of some shape or size. none have > experienced meaningful amounts of cleanup.

That's just wrong. Fukushima has been and still is getting a major cleanup operation. They removed the top layers of soil in many places. For chernobyl it's not economic because the Ukraine is very sparsely populated.

<comment><USER52> While I like nuclear tech, we do need to acknowledge the cost and time-to- build problem.

Reactors take so long to build that by the time they are operational, the tech is out-dated. While newer reactors should make a meltdown almost impossible, insuring against it is still quite expensive. This lead to high operational costs.

The biggest enemy of nuclear is economics.

<comment><USER59> There are some pretty wild solutions to this out there, like building large floating power plants in shipyards. Assembly line style. This was highly developed by a joint venture between Newport news and Westinghouse in the 1970s.

Also, an important true fact is nuclear economics today are on par with system economics of all other hypothesized low carbon energy systems. Though wind and solar generator prices will fall, grid integration and storage will add $40/MWh. Nuclear is already right where other options will end up.

[https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joule.2018.08.006](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joule.2018.08.006)

<comment><USER70> The cost assumptions in that report don't extend high enough for nuclear. The "mid-range" cost for nuclear is given as $4700/kW. The "conservative" cost for nuclear is $7000/kW.

But Flamanville 3 is going to finish at over $8800/kW even if there are no further delays or overruns. Hinkley Point C is also over $8800/kW. Vogtle 3 and 4, if they complete without any further budget overruns, are going to be over $11000/kW.

Nuclear projects have such terrible track records on cost and schedule that they are going to be a last resort in any foreseeable cost-conscious decarbonization plan for the US. Which is too bad, because they really do crank out clean energy _after_ they are completely built and operating.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


PythonTurtle - the most low-threshold way for learning/teaching Python - cool-RR http://pythonturtle.com <comment> cool-RR This is my little side project that I've been working on for a few months.

It is a way for curious people who are not computer-savvy to teach themselves Python. Of course, it can also be used in a class with an instructor.

Yes, I am aware of turtle.py, the turtle module shipped with the Python standard library. It has a few problems which I found unforgivable: mainly that it's not geared towards people who may not know anything about programming, or how to use IDLE. This is why I decided to make this project.

I'd love to get your comments and feedback.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi,

Cool project.

The only issue I found with it so far is that unlike the old logo, the borders of the 'world' aren't circular. That means that if you type 'go(500)' from the opening position, the turtle disappears.

But it's a minor issue, really. My kid is 4 and I'm going to show it to him tomorrow, see how he likes it.

<comment> cool-RR I agree, it's a bit annoying that it continues into infinity; I considered having a "spherical" world, but the problem is that the window size may change, and I don't know how I could keep it consistent when it happens. If you got an idea on how to solve that I'll consider it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> I have some friends whose kids are approaching the computer-capable age. I've been keeping my eyes open for environments that might intrigue and inspire them. I'm adding yours to the list.

I like the idea of it being Python, so that perhaps they might smoothly transition from fun to "real" problem solving (which is, I find, the most fun of all).

<comment><USER3> What else is on your list so far?

<comment><USER2> Off the top of my head (it's a mental list and some saved pages/bookmarks I'd have to track down):

Scratch (MIT)

Alice (Cornell, IIRC -- just saw that an update is due next week)

One or more versions of Logo (e.g Berkeley) (recently, there's at least one that's hosted in the browser; might lower the gap since no explicit installation is required).

A couple of things I'm forgetting right now.

When I run across these or particularly a nice introduction to one or another, I forward the page on to the parents FYI. When/if they start to respond with "tell us more", I'll go more in depth (and excavate those pages and bookmarks).

Suggestions welcome. Since they're not my kids, my approach has been somewhat lackadaisical.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Reminds me a lot of Logo. I think back in 1st grade computer class it was a turtle we controlled as well.

Also, in AP Comp Sci we went over the basics of functions by making a turtle move across a plane.

Why turtles?

<comment> cool-RR Yeah, it's directly inspired from Logo. Logo was great because you were immediately able to program, and immediately see the results on the screen. There wasn't any annoying procedures to do before you could start, no graphics packages to learn. That was my goal here -- to have as few barriers as possible between the person and the programming.

Why turtles? I don't know actually, I'm just following Logo's convention. Some implementations make it a little arrow - I prefer the turtle, especially because kids like it better. Though there isn't really a reason that a turtle should leave a trail, so maybe a slug would make more sense.

<comment><USER2> Yes. I'm very much in favor of "desired results quickly". For kids, that may be something cool and graphical and/or audible.

For adults, it's often solving a problem at hand.

I think that the ability to gets things done, that one desires, draws many people in. A large initial learning curve before that happens is often a deal breaker.

Once you're engaged, that's the time to keep teaching you more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just gave it a try on a Windows Vista box and it crashes on startup. I'm going to give it a try on Windows XP later when I wake up from my "nap" as I haven't slept yet ;)

This is a great and noble initiative and I look forward to checking it out when I'm more than semi-conscious. Please, no wise ass correlations between semi-consciousness and the use of Windows Vista :D

I'm Swayze.

<comment> cool-RR Thanks for telling me - I don't have a Vista box, but I should definitely solve that. I think I'll install Vista on VMWare and look at that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Crashes on Windows 7 as well at startup. Compatibility modes and running under admin privileges didn't help either.

<comment> cool-RR I'll get on it.

<comment><USER6> requires administrator privileges at startup. Once launched with admin privileges, fails with following error: Failed to load shared library comctl32.dll (error 126: the specified module could not found)

Note that there's a comctl32.dll on windows\system32.

Edit: Never mind, I left it at compatibility mode. Reverted back to native run mode and it's working fine now except that at upon exit, it complains about not being able to open log file because of privilege issues.

<comment> cool-RR Right, I saw that log file thing on Vista too, I'll look into that. But as long as it works, that's good enough. Thanks to you I don't have to start downloading Windows 7 :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This reminds me of Karel, another beginner language that lets you move a robot.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karel_%28programming_language%2...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karel_%28programming_language%29)</comment>


How and why I attempt to use Links as main browser - lich-tex https://dataswamp.org/~lich/musings/links-browser.html <comment><USER4> I'm a computer programmer, lisper, emacser, vier, etc and I desire every program that I use daily to be compiled from source so that I can dig in whenever I need to fix bugs, add features, or just curious how something is done.

I also highly desire the ability to change the keybindings of any program I use to be what I want, generally following the VI model.

I also do e-waste collection and pride myself on being as fast or faster than others using 10+ year old computers (writing this on my main laptop - <AUTHOR> Thinkpad T60).

So with that lead-in, a few months ago I switched to this laptop and had a glitch getting X to start so I decided to push the envelope as far as I can running on the framebuffer, hence "links -driver fb".

The web has gotten slower and slower over the years and while there are some new kids on the block such as the next browser [1] that should give me what I need on X, links has been a win over and over, so far.

No code to share yet, but I finally got (for %95) of website, the browser of my dreams.

Lightning fast. It will fetch and render almost any page in less than a second, but one thing it was missing was some customability and expandability, hence the natural move to embed guile. So I now have a lisp that is my browser and I am in the process of exploring what that means. Full keyboard control, for everything. VI bindings. A cache from heaven that remembers everywhere I've been and never reloads unless I tell it. I can fly around history like you've never seen.

Anyhoe, happy hacking!

[1] [https://nyxt.atlas.engineer](https://nyxt.atlas.engineer)

<comment><USER5> Off topic here but this line:

> I desire every program that I use daily to be compiled from source so that I > can dig in whenever I need to fix bugs, add features

For those who alter software they didn't write, how do you maintain those changes? I assume pull requests for bug fixes to the maintainer's repo, but what about mods? Do you run a diff during every update?

<comment><USER6> Links is relatively small and does not change that often. I just save patches I make for different versions.

I am not really keen on software that is 1. large and 2. changing frequently. For example, there are no "updates" when using links. I read the links changelog and do a diff before I decide to upgrade to the latest version. Sometimes I will continue to use older versions. Depends on the changes.

In general, if the software is relatively small and more or less "finished", then, for me, it is more amenable to making changes. When I look at the software I use, it appears I consciously try to choose software that meet those criteria; the most favoured programs all fit that description.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The web browser was originally was hyperlinked documents glued together with URLs. The browser has turned into a platform for apps that use a document paradigm for the UI... complete with built in database, graphics, and deep os integration. It's been huge leap in reducing cost to build, distribute, learn and use apps. The original use case of just documents is probably approaching being just and edge case.

<comment><USER8> What is deep OS integration in browsers?

<comment><USER9> First few things that come to mind:

      - Access to Camera & Microphone
      - Access to USB devices
      - Push Notifications
      - <USER2>
      - <USER3>

"deep" is probably the subjective term here.

<comment><USER10> Printer dialogs in browser [_we hates it_].

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A little offtopic, but interesting nontheless

 _Surfraw (Shell Users Revolutionary Front Rage Against the Web) is a free public domain POSIX-compliant (i.e. meant for Linux, FreeBSD etc.) command- line shell program for interfacing with a number of web-based search engines. It was created in July 2000 by Julian Assange_

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

<comment><USER12> Your link is a fascinating bit of history and perspective.

Thanks for including this here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> No mention of Browsh yet. It is a neat hack bringing the capabilities of modern browsers to command line browsers. [https://www.brow.sh/docs/introduction/](https://www.brow.sh/docs/introduction/)

> Browsh is a purely text-based browser that can run in most TTY terminal > environments and in any browser. The terminal client is currently more > advanced than the browser client.

> The browser client, somewhat confusingly, renders simple HTML or plain text > that itself was parsed by Browsh running inside another browser. The point > being that the HTML or text that Browsh outputs is extremely lightweight. As > of writing in 2018, the average website requires downloading around 3MB and > making over 100 individual HTTP requests. Browsh will turn this into around > 15kb and 2 HTTP requests - 1 for the HTML/text and the other for the > favicon.

<comment><USER14> I checked it out. It is amazing. However am I correct that it's still mostly driven by mouse input? I couldn't find any other keybindings to navigate a website.

<comment><USER15> Yes. It's a Firefox plugin.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Someone else achieved a similar effect with readability-cli, which uses Firefox's Reader Mode library to pull the content text out of an article and output it into your terminal:

[https://gitlab.com/gardenappl/readability- cli](https://gitlab.com/gardenappl/readability-cli)

<comment><USER17> A different but related approach is to use Safari's Reader by default on all sites. You can then disable Reader site by site if needed.

<comment><USER18> I remember when Arc90 first unveiled Readability (now "Reader Mode" in several browsers), folks were ostensibly right on board. One Mozillian praised it enthusiastically on her blog. I pointed out that the problem Readability solved was directly attributable to the lack of empathy by web site operators for their visitors—choosing instead to prioritize the operator's "expression" over the visitors' needs and best interests. It should go without saying that the template for her own blog hardly let it stand as an example of a minimalist jewel of legibility.

I'm also surprised at how poorly Reader Mode fares with "pages" served as text/plain. Is there even a case to be made against text/plain documents being shown with Reader Mode enabled by default if the heuristics can give it a high enough confidence score (with an opt-out escape hatch back to tiny monospace black-on-white for whomever wants it)? Eventually, we could do the same for very simple HTML pages like those found on cr.yp.to or danluu.com. I'd wager we could eliminate a huge part of the "Website Obesity Crisis" if unstyled pages were attractive by default.

<comment><USER19> True plain text -- as opposed to something like Markdown or another "plain text markup" format -- is hard for a reader mode, because you're going to have to put some effort into deducing the structure of whatever document you're looking at and that could be highly idiosyncratic from author to author. I don't think that's necessarily a reason not to do it, of course, but I can imagine it's why it's not high priority -- reader mode is already having to deal with all the ways modern web sites have found to make HTML highly idiosyncratic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > CSS First, I want to focus on 'destruction' of CSS. As Links does not > support modern CSS it renders most of the internet as-is, and will only > contain images (on which I will write later). CSS causes the internet to > become a baroque set of arbitrary design decisions, and does not contribute > positively to the general experience. Links (after 2.19) allows me to pick > my own font, my own background/foreground/url color. Thus, I have a uniform > experience. In that I already visibly save time/energy/brain processing > power, etc.

This is kind of like the philosophy behind Soylent, but for browsing the web, rather than sustenance.

<comment><USER21> And most people aren't keen on eating Soylent for every meal...

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The 95% as good version of this, for most people, is just to disable JavaScript, then set the same colors & font for every website.

</comment><comment><USER23> Links is unfortunately not enough for modern web. I have installed links , dillo browser , w3m , netsurf in my device and i ocasionally use them but modern web is moving away from these browsers.

<comment><USER24> When I was doing web dev I'd always test with Links as one of my accessibility checks. Presumably that's common?

<comment><USER25> Many sites are not even tested on firefox

<comment><USER15> Many sites are seemingly not tested at all. I recently tried to open a concert site and couldn't get _any_ details on a concert, because their PDF viewer was buggy; I tried on both Firefox and chrome using three different computers, as well as my phone. I wish you could just use the browser's built-in PDF viewer in an iframe (or better yet, don't use PDFs in the browser)

<comment><USER26> You can just embed the browsers pdf viewer... It doesn't work on mobile browsers generally, but with some hacking you can get it to fall back to a download link.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I use eww in emacs for a lot of browsing. It copes extremely well with the modern web.

<comment><USER28> Same here. If Emacs is your operating system, then it's such a natural extension. And if a site doesn't work in Eww, then I consider it shoddy craftsmanship and refuse to open it in Firefox - so it's an excellent tool to stop procrastination! Pity HN works fine.

<comment><USER29> That mentality is so funny to me. I felt the same regret with Steam Proton suddenly allowing me to procrastinate with games I hadn't been able to play before.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I see people have proposed either Safari's or Firefox' Reader modes as a stop- gap.

I know at some point Firefox offered an ability to define custom CSS to use for all the pages, but I guess that's hidden underneath some about:config options today — I can only see the option to disallow use of custom fonts by a web page. I would like to see someone implement a bare-bones CSS for the modern web that's easy to customize using these browser features.

It seems what I am thinking about is userContent.css: [http://kb.mozillazine.org/index.php?title=UserContent.css&pr...](http://kb.mozillazine.org/index.php?title=UserContent.css&printable=yes)

<comment><USER31> Yes, being able to specify a user stylesheet was common in early browsers. Now there are extensions to provide a GUI and to manage different styles for different domains.

It was always somewhat difficult to maintain custom styles beyond things browsers still let you set like fonts but it's harder now because it's so common for developers to not use appropriate semantic HTML.

<comment><USER30> It's funny you call that "early browsers": from the perspective of today, you are absolutely right! I just remember CSS getting introduced (was it late 90s?) and think of things like Netscape 4.0 as "middle age browsers" (with 3.0 ending the early age — I am sure others would call that a middle age browser too, but I did not get to experience Mosaic and such), but I think I need to recalibrate my sense of history here :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I really wish there was a text only browser that would render the web similarly to Firefox reading mode. All the lynx, links, elinks are not very user friendly and a bit ugly alas. I hear some of them have a Vim mode for navigation but I did not manage to use it reliably either.

<comment><USER30> A dozen or so years ago, w3m used to be cream of the crop (as far as JS support went, at least). What happened to it?

<comment><USER33> It's still doing good: [https://github.com/tats/w3m](https://github.com/tats/w3m)

I am a very happy using w3m every day. Just occasionally there is a need to use a graphical browser.

There is no JS support though. Don't think there ever was.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I was puzzled throughout why "a uniform experience" is something desirable. Totally puzzled.

It reminded me of what McDonalds "restaurants" try to offer. I put "restaurants" in quotes because noone thinks of them as proper restaurants. Something about the uniform experience maybe? I guess before that every site had its own unique menu and style, that took much longer to serve..

Does the author also prefer talking to people who wear face-masks? Do they shun syntax highlighting? Why take all the fun out of life? Why live like a Unix tool, taking in a plain text stream?

<comment><USER35> Not the author, but...

> Does the author also prefer talking to people who wear face-masks?

Right now, yes, yes I do.

> Do they shun syntax highlighting?

Syntax highlighting performs an actual service, as opposed to being cruft.

> Why take all the fun out of life?

This isn't taking the fun out of life, it's making a tool more useful.

> Why live like a Unix tool, taking in a plain text stream?

See above.

<comment><USER34> >> Does the author also prefer talking to people who wear face-masks?

> Right now, yes, yes I do.

Sorry, it seems I didn't make my point clear enough. Also not sure you're not joking. I just meant that if "a uniform experience" is good, having everyone wear a mask (at any moment in history, nothing to do with virus) will make talking to people more uniform and thus better.

<comment><USER35> > Also not sure you're not joking.

I will admit that line was a bit tongue in cheek.

It's not that a "uniform experience" is better in every instance. It's more that a tool whose purpose is to convey information is more efficient when you don't have to deal with formatting that may or may not interfere with comprehension.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I'm a weird computer nerd. When I'm working in my frugal environment (with links, i3 and whatnot) and I switch to something mainstream (e.g. Windows 10), I get a feeling of relief.

However, when I switch back from the mainstream to the frugal environment, I also get the same feeling of relief.

In the frugal environment, I feel very productive and creative. In the mainstream environment, I feel that I have more cognitive bandwidth to just get stuff done.

Anyone out there feeling the same?

<comment><USER37> Perhaps you can analyze this a bit more, I have no idea if you also tile in windows or if you have a bunch of random window sizes floating around the desktop or if you full screen every window etc. Or is it a difference in font quality, scaling, resolution? Or is it a difference in things just working, less time spent tweaking config and dealing with issues?

Tiling in i3 must feel somewhat constraining after a point, maybe experiment with switching between two different modes/WMs?

<comment><USER36> I don't do anything to my Windows. It's mostly vanilla.

I think it has some thing to do with the loneliness of having a very customized environment. It's good, but when you work in a mainstream environment, it feels like there is a lot of energy being put by others into the same environment, which (sometimes) will get you high quality defaults and save you some time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> We like ascetics going in the wilderness to live in caves. So, without kidding, go you! But some screenshots of that would have helped the article.

I wonder if the Stallman setup of getting emails wouldn't be about the same given the amount of proxies used.

I actually had an intern implement something like this long ago. We had a web crawler and what better way to test it than to hook it up to email then rewrite links so it emails them too. It was OK for a few days.

<comment><USER39> Do we like them, or do we use them as helpful reminders to not take the luxuries of our modern times for granted? (with a heap of respect for forgoing them thrown on top)

I also find this comment deeply ironic given that the post argues against images on the web, but screenshots would have helped.

<comment><USER30> The post argues against images on the web which are "advertisements of content" and "made to take over your attention and again". A screenshot of how a popular page is experienced (eg. HN: I wouldn't expect that to be bad at all) here would be _content_ , I think.

<comment><USER39> The post argues for turning images off. Period. Because they are not useful and break the author's ideal "uniform" web page. He then mentions he _might_ turn them on for sites that are useful (like wikipedia). He even explicitly states that he thinks that his view will be a giant controversy.

How would you possibly know if the images on this page would be informative content, or advertising attention grabbers, when they're all turned off?

<comment><USER30> Perhaps it's about prejudices we have when we interpret the content we read.

I get a dislike for "decorational" images like a photo of a random bridge over a river (c) AStockPhotoSite when talking about building a new bridge in the town: that ain't content. An illustration of the bridge to be, an architectural depiction, would be considered content.

Wikipedia seldom has images of the former type: they are all there to expand the content being represented.

So, I've read the article according to my biases, and I do not see such a strong opinion against images: to me it reads not as if they might, but rather that they do enable them on Wikipedia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> For anyone else confused, this is not talking about Lynx[0] which is a text mode browser, but Links[1] which is a GUI browser (same pronunciation, different spellings).

0\. [https://lynx.invisible-island.net/lynx.html](https://lynx.invisible- island.net/lynx.html)

1\. [http://links.twibright.com/](http://links.twibright.com/)

<comment><USER41> Links has a text mode as well, but it sounds like OP is using the GUI mode.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I am still looking for a decent CLI experience to replace my browser. The only reason I have X11 is Firefox, and of course, everything that comes with it: Slack, MS Teams and JIRA.

I dream of not having to deal with X and Gnome ever again.

<comment><USER43> [https://wiki.bitlbee.org/](https://wiki.bitlbee.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I have used links-x11 as my main mobile browser back around 2009-2012 when I used it on Openmoko Neo Freerunner :) It was surprisingly usable back then!

</comment><comment><USER45> Great. But I wish somebody would get this python based web browser back to work. I miss it.

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

</comment><comment><USER46> A friend used to work for a porn hosting company doing account maintenance and general sysadmin. He said that's how he learned how to use Lynx.

<comment><USER47> Nice story, but Lynx != Links :)

<comment><USER16> Unless of course he's got Lynx confused with ELinks, which I feel like is bundled with most RHEL/CentOS deployments. I became acquainted with it on a previous job that included the nightmare of trying to help remote customers setup printers via the CUPS interface when I only had SSH access to their box.

<comment><USER48> You could do port forwarding...

<comment><USER49> Or X forwarding to use a nice(?) GUI printer config tool (or run Firefox or Surf or whatever) if those are already on the remote machine.

<comment><USER50> Depends a lot on the connection speed though - sometimes, I've found it's faster not to go down this route.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Why wouldn't you use lynx instead of Links?

<comment><USER52> I've used lynx for almost 30 years but it is simply no longer capable of rendering the modern web in a useable fashion. It is however highly useful as a file manager and for stripping and importing web text via -dump. Also the best available gopher browser...

<comment><USER51> >rendering the modern web

Maybe the modern web needs to change...not your browser.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't just "attempt". Links, preferably no graphics (VGA textmode, no X11), has been my main browser for over 20 years.

Recent versions of links should remove the DNS prefetch code.

More menu items should have single key shortcuts. For example, Save formatted document, Flush all caches, Kill all connections and Submit form.

There should be a single key for toggling to html-numbered-links like there is for toggling to displaying images ([IMG] if no graphics).

</comment><comment><USER53> I'd love to use a browser like this if I could download an installer. This download page brings back a lot of memories: [http://links.twibright.com/download.php](http://links.twibright.com/download.php)

I swear I spent most of my foray into undergrad CS trying to get third-party software to compile on my machine (i.e. wasting a lot of time).

<comment><USER54> I mean, what's wrong with downloading it with your distros package manager?

<comment><USER53> Well, I would, but I would be nervous about wasting "a lot of time" given the large-font warning. Have you ever run into the issue of installing something from an out-of-date package manager repo?

<comment><USER54> That web page probably hasn't been updated in decades. I just downloaded and ran the latest version of links and it took 5.3 seconds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> "If you want to install Links immediately, proceed step-by-step according to the following instructions. Otherwise you will waste a lot of time."

First I just tried "brew install links". It worked but built it without graphics support.

So I bit the bullet and tried to build it myself. Then I got to needing an X server installed and gave up.

I've grown too impatient and spoiled for this sort of quest.

</comment><comment><USER56> In a similar vein, Lynx is probably my most used browser. I use Newsboat[1] as an RSS reader, set to use Lynx custom keybindings (to make it more VI-like than the VI setting) when opening links. It works surprisingly well.

[1] [https://newsboat.org](https://newsboat.org)

</comment><comment><USER57> links gui is my default browser for opening url on desktop, as much as one can have that on fedora lxde with wine apps mixed in. (i actually have at least three "default browsers".)

links gives me a preview of the page in usually under a second, opening a fresh process and all, on a 5yo budget thinkpad.

as a bonus, twitter refuses to work with links, so even if i am tempted to open a twitter link, it just gives a 403, and i don,t have to read whatever mainstream crap is on tv this week.

</comment><comment><USER58> I'd like to have a group / subreddit whatever talking about this topic. And low fat computing too (I think it fits the view of this article).

Personnally I used dillo a lot, it's so god damn lean and instantaneous.. it's crazy. I wanted to add sqlite and lua as a scripting language to make it open to extensions but I got stuck :)

</comment><comment><USER59> In theory you can build[1] the text renderer on top of the Servo web engine. Something like elinks 2.0. It will allow to browse modern Web while being lean.

[1] [https://github.com/servo/servo/issues/24162](https://github.com/servo/servo/issues/24162)

</comment><comment><USER60> Switching to using exclusively reader mode on sites made surfing the web a much more consistent experience for me.

</comment><comment><USER61> Links seems like an odd stopping point. It used to support JavaScript, it supports images, but only HTML 4.

<comment><USER62> Serious question, what's new in HTML 5 that would be useful in text mode? Even with image support <picture> doesn't seem like it would be useful since that's mainly about handling art direction and media queries and stuff that seems much less applicable there. Gotta say the idea of <video> implemented with libcaca does sound really funny though.

<comment><USER61> Links isn't a text mode browser - I think it will display videos and pictures.

Form controls would be an obvious example of something relevant I think.

<comment><USER62> I guess I was also confusing it with elinks, whoops. Maybe we should go back to the days when things were named like "Joe's Editor"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I rarely give recommendations on anything software-related, but if you are an AMP-hater who also appreciates text-only websites, try using links to view some AMP sites. In almost every case I have seen, the result is quite good.

<comment><USER63> Now if only we could have that result without AMP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> "CSS causes the internet to become a baroque set of arbitrary design decisions, and does not contribute positively to the general experience." <\- Well said.

</comment><comment><USER65> Noscript and pi-hole do a good job of providing me with a distraction free browsing experience.

<comment><USER66> All the more focus for posting to the most distracting site of them all, HN :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> That page loaded _instantly_ on my PC, even though it was served from the other side of the planet. And it actually looked pretty good. So much for the "modern" web…

<comment><USER49> Whole page is around 5KB with three requests, one of which is the favicon. Browsers are fast when you just give them (mostly) regular ol' HTML. The network, rendering nutty CSS with animations and gradients everywhere, rendering SVG, "hero" videos, giant PNGs, putting JavaScript between the browser and rendering HTML—those are slow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> >"Many browsers today are gigantic resource hogs, which are basically VMs for various web applications..."

 _Other code can run inside of a browser VM as well, including but not limited to: malware, spyware, surveillance capitalism apps, tracking, and other privacy-violating code /apps, and with unpatched flaws and zero-days, privilege escalation/bypass-the-browser-to-run-directly-on-your-OS-code can run, which can be inception points for worms, viruses, and all other manner of unwanted software..._

>"On the other hand, Links is a HTML browser."

 _Thank God someone understands the dangers of modern-day browser VM 's!_

>"Links is a graphics and text mode web browser, released under GPL. Links is a free software.

• Links runs on Linux, BSD, UNIX in general, OS/2, Cygwin under Windows, AtheOS, BeOS, FreeMint.

• Links runs in graphics mode (mouse required) on X Window System (UN _X, Cygwin), SVGAlib, Linux Framebuffer, OS /2 PMShell, AtheOS GUI

• Links runs in text mode (mouse optional) on UN_X console, ssh/telnet virtual terminal, vt100 terminal, xterm, and virtually any other text terminal. Mouse is supported for GPM, xterm, and OS/2\. Links supports colors on terminal.

• Easy and quick user control via pull-down menu in both text and graphics mode, in 25 languages.

• HTML 4.0 support (without CSS)

• HTTP 1.1 support

• Tables, frames in both graphics and text mode, builtin image display in graphics mode

• Builtin image display for GIF, JPEG, PNG, XBM, TIFF in graphics mode

• Anti-advertisement animation filter in animated GIFs

• Bookmarks

• Background file downloads

• Automatic reconnection in case of TCP connection breakdown

• Keepalive connections

• Background (asynchronous) DNS lookup

• Possibility to hook up external programs for all MIME types, possibility to choose one of more programs at every opening.

• 48-bit high-quality image gamma correction, resampling and Floyd-Steinberg dithering in all color depths.

• Font resampling (antialiasing) for virtually unlimited pitch range, LCD optimization of fonts and images."

• Builtin fonts in the executable without reliance on any fonts installed in the system

• User-adjustable menu, HTML font size and image zoom factor.

• User-adjustable display gammas (red, green, blue), viewing-condition correction gamma and precise calibration of both monitor and Links on a calibration pattern

• Automatic aspect ratio correction for modes like 640x200, 640x400, 320x200 with user-adjustable manual aspect ratio correction.

• Support for one-wheel mice (vertical scroll), two-wheel mice (vertical and horizontal scroll) and smooth scrolling by grabbing the plane with a mouse (no wheel needed).

• Easy installation, the browser is just one executable and no more files.

My comments: _Thank you for writing Links!!!_

</comment><comment><USER69> Obligatory mention: Lynxlet is Links for Mac OS. Terminal-based, pretty cool little packaging that does just his job.

[0]: [https://habilis.net/lynxlet/](https://habilis.net/lynxlet/)

Edit: ah, my comment and my appreciation for the simple/straightforward design is very much in line with Lynxlet's mantainers, see their webpage for more [1].

[1]: [https://habilis.net/](https://habilis.net/)

<comment><USER70> > Lynxlet is Links for Mac OS.

It seems to be Lynx, not Links (an entirely different browser.)

<comment><USER69> Oh my, you seem to be right. My mistake.</comment></comment></comment>