We need to take CO2 out of the sky – an overview of climate tech - <AUTHOR> https://www.orbuch.com/carbon-removal/ <comment><USER4> We need to stop consuming like there is no tomorrow. This is driven by advertisement convincing consumers they should buy products they may not need. Secondly we need to make products which lasts a life time. I see root cause that we need to remodel the economy from market economy consumerism to a circular sustainable economy. Most current economists is saying expand expand expand, but that increases co2 levels due to increased energy consumption of manufacturing which we cannot sustain. Thus we must use things which are long term sustainable and circulate and repair these things.

Remove co2 out of the sky is also a good thing. The best thing I can think of then is to lower the temperature of the earth because then the oceans will act as a Co2 buffer sink. Think like carbon beverage, when you cool cans during production for putting carbon in them you cool them. If you heat a can they release stored co2. The same process with the oceans but at a much bigger scale.

<comment><USER5> How would this "circular sustainable economy" work?

People tend to think of there being only two versions of the economy available - the government tells us what stuff to make, or free markets determine what we make.

We would need a way of incentivising re-use, and of incentivising companies to make things re-usable. Currently the only way to make more money is to make and sell more stuff.

<comment><USER6> > People tend to think of there being only two versions of the economy > available - the government tells us what stuff to make, or free markets > determine what we make.

Then people are wrong. Almost no economy is purely one of the other - even the most "free market" economies have lots of government regulation, government spending makes up huge parts of their economy, etc.

> We would need a way of incentivising re-use, and of incentivising companies > to make things re-usable. Currently the only way to make more money is to > make and sell more stuff.

Totally doable in a completely free market way. You tax externalities.

This is basic stuff - economists generally agree that if you set up a carbon tax, people will use less carbon.

<comment><USER5> The OP implied there was a third way. I didn't mean only one way or another.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What the article leaves to the conclusion is what needs to be stated up front and center: it's virtually impossible to do this efficiently, cheaply, or effectively because there's _so little_ CO2 in the air, meaning

a) adding even a little bit more greatly affects the CO2 levels b) with a global ppm of ~400, it basically means that you need to filter 2500 molecules of air to get a single molecule of CO2, and that's assuming perfect binding and effectiveness. There is no magic powder we can mix that'll cause CO2 to precipitate out of the atmosphere and fall to the ground like snow; it's a grueling _energy intensive_ process to filter that out of the air around us.

<comment><USER8> It only has to do it cheaply now because there is NO COST to putting CO2 into the air.

Why are people surprised that if something is free (pumping CO2 into air) demand for it is high?

You are telling me that doing a charge of let's say $10 - $100/ton of CO2 wouldn't have a DRAMATIC impact on emissions? Is $10 - $100/ton too little for a supposed climate emergency?

There is so much funding and lawmaking and finger pointing and shaming - <USER2> still - dumping CO2 into the atmosphere if free and dumping remains high and people pretend to be surprised.

On energy: CA curtails (turns off) solar (and wind) power because there is not enough demand. In 2019 CA had 921,000 MWhs of curtailment.

Let's start by charging something for CO2 emissions.

<comment><USER9> You mean a Carbon Tax ?

The tax that applies to every single business, every single product, every single process, everything. The one that causes every single vested interest to come out of the woodwork and join together to make it politically toxic.

We tried this in Australia. It has killed every government that even dared to discuss it. And politically it is utterly impossible to defend e.g. "Carbon tax that raises power prices for pensioners".

<comment><USER10> don't call it tax, call it carbon dividend and give the collected money away to citizens.

<comment><USER11> This is the secret. The average citizen would actually come out ahead financially, making it a progressive tax, as opposed to the de-facto _regressive_ taxes that have received popular opposition in other attempts.

"The Largest Public Statement of Economists in History": [https://clcouncil.org/economists- statement/](https://clcouncil.org/economists-statement/)

<comment><USER12> > The average citizen would actually come out ahead financially

For a while. But if the carbon tax works and society switches to clean energy, then there is no more emissions and no more dividends pay to the citizens.

<comment><USER11> I suspect there will be _always_ be use cases for fossil fuels; for instance, even when 99% of all cars are electric, I wouldn't want to deny auto enthusiasts muscle cars and the like, if they're willing to pay for the societal externality. The carbon tax can continue to go up to cover these cases.

Moreover, I think the same model can apply to other negative externalities (aka, Pigovian Tax [0]). But to the extent that the public will someday complain that their carbon dividend is going down: (a) I call that a good problem to have, and (b) because the collective action problem now points the other direction, there's no individual incentive to over-consume such that the dividend goes up again.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Net negative emissions must be a global goal within 5 years because this is a _climate change emergency._ It doesn't mean _no emissions,_ it means deeply _net negative._ Even going crazy to get to zero emissions, it doesn't change the inconvenient fact that an excess of GHGs are already in the air. Sequestration (CCS) and solar shades (SRM) are the primary, big-$tretch approaches that are most readily-apparent to moderating insolation. CCS seems much more doable than sending a giant blackout curtain into space or spraying tons of SO2 into the air to return as acid rain.

Here's the thing about CCS: direct air capture is like a junior engineer's naive, brute-force solution because it's way too expensive and not scalable for the several teratons that need to be sequestered.

Bio CCS remediation approaches are superior because they use biology to do more of the work for less resources. Kelp, phytoplankton (including ferrous seeding) and other ocean-based CC are the natural solutions to lock-up carbon. There's a massive kelp forest right now off the Yucatan in Mexico stretching nearly to Africa. Harvesting, expanding and fertilizing such an ecosystem with an army of specialized ships seems like a better plan for tackling it. Such a plan would still require assuring the Sequestration in CCS such that biomass sinks to deep ocean trenches OR harvesting, compacting and pumping underground. If we can manage and offset GHGs down to a sane level at some point in the future, then it should be an immutable prime-directive that GHGs cannot be emitted without first purchasing or accomplishing an equivalent assured CCS.

PS: As luck would have it, I happen to subscribe to several climatology and related academics on various video platforms, including Paul Beckwith, who does a good job of summarizing the latest research and underscoring events and trends. EDIT: [https://paulbeckwith.net](https://paulbeckwith.net)

<comment><USER14> Ferrous sulphate seeding also produces kelp mats much more reflective of light than water is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> My biggest concern about CO2 is the cognitive impact it has on humans - <USER3> levels 800ppm and higher, mental performance is impacted. It will take a while for the atmosphere to reach this level (hopefully it never does), but it is common inside houses and offices. As atmospheric CO2 rises, it becomes more difficult to ventilate buildings, and human mental performance degrades.

In terms of geoengineering, it seems like these two are our best bets:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_injectio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_injection) to prevent runaway warming. As a side effect, the dispersed sunlight helps plant growth. Solar power generation is negatively impacted though.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization) to sequester CO2. As a side effect, marine life and fish stocks would be boosted by the greater plankton food supply.

In any case it seems absolutely bonkers that we are still selling fossil- fueled-vehicles and building coal power plants when we clearly have the technology and capability to replace both of them.

<comment><USER16> Have you got a reference for the 800ppm bit? Not being provocative - it'd be genuinely useful to me.

<comment><USER15> There are multiple studies on the issue, and another user linked to Wikipedia.

I'd personally recommend buying a CO2 monitor: [https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32887534678.html?spm=a2g0o.p...](https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32887534678.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.ad21e803I1BRqT&algo_pvid=a6f15dbf-97bc-4346-a5f3-9efd5a46e35e&algo_expid=a6f15dbf-97bc-4346-a5f3-9efd5a46e35e-0&btsid=0ab50f0815827071300405942e7277&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_,searchweb201603_)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I don't like those sorts of articles because they dismiss the idea of reducing CO2 emissions, while only talking about hypothetical technologies.

I don't think it's a good idea to wait for such undeveloped technology to mature, because the clock is already ticking. It is still much more important to reduce emissions now.

What would be much better, for example, is developing smaller cars. I would rather see society organize for a voluntary reduction of co2, because capturing co2 seems like scientifically too fastidious.

Also, I'm european and I tend to be very pessimistic when looking at US co2 emissions per capita.

<comment><USER18> I think the author actually agrees with you, per the article itself:

      "there are two general approaches to keep warming to below a certain level:

      - Reducing emissions
      - Removing previous emissions from the sky

      If you remember one thing from this piece, it should be that we need to do both.
      Gone are the days where optimistic emissions reductions kept us below a 2-degree warming target."

<comment><USER17> Except reducing emissions seems much more doable, safe and simple. It's just politically difficult. I have little hope that technology will be able to capture co2 in a manner that will be sufficient.

I don't like those sorts of techs because people will brandish them as a solution, while it's highly unlikely they will help at all.

<comment><USER19> Changing minds and habits of billions of people is more simple and feasible? For me it's ridiculous. Any technological solution looks way better for me.

<comment><USER17> if no solutions is available and food security is threatened, minds and habits don't matter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm interested to see what comes of this: [https://projectvesta.org/](https://projectvesta.org/)

<comment><USER21> Hi thanks for the mention! We are available to answer any questions. And we'll have a new version of the website out soon with some updates.

<comment><USER20> Thanks. I actually just took a look around there and was disappointed there wasn't a 'News' section or something like that, so glad to hear there will be updates soon!

I do have one other question: is there any chance you'll partner with a Canadian charity, or other ex-US charities for that matter, to accept tax-free donations from other countries?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> One of the problems I see with CO2 sequestration is that it will be a nice way for companies to suck at the teat of taxpayers the world over.

I'm sure Halliburton-like companies have a 3 step plan to be right at the front of the money firehose when governments are forced to reduce CO2 or face even bigger costs (both financially and politically) in the coming decades.

<comment><USER23> This assumes that the only way a project like this could be pulled off would be for the state to open a "money firehose" and spray it onto buckets held by private corporations. Is there any reason it couldn't, in theory, be a state controlled venture? Especially for something as seemingly basic as "planting trees", I don't see where the corporate expertise comes in that the state could never replicate.

"The state will handle this" is not only a legitimate structure in totalitarian dictatorships, it's used across the developed western world for most public services.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Check out Ryan's Negative Emissions reading list: [https://www.orbuch.com/nets-reading-list](https://www.orbuch.com/nets- reading-list)

"Carbon Removal 101": [http://bit.ly/carbonremoval-101](http://bit.ly/carbonremoval-101) (I helped write this one)

Covers a reading list, accelerators, conveners, platforms, newsletters, and funders.

Index of startups working on negative emissions: [http://www.airminers.org](http://www.airminers.org)

<comment><USER24> A friend suggested sharing "Carbon Removal 101" on coda.io, so here's a link: [https://coda.io/d/Carbon-Removal-Reading- List_dpKG8YbDWIn/Ca...](https://coda.io/d/Carbon-Removal-Reading- List_dpKG8YbDWIn/Carbon-Removal-101_susMs#_luX2T)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25>
      1. Plant trees
      2. Cut down trees
      3. Sink trees to the bottom of a great lake

<comment><USER26> If you do the math, this essentially doesn't work out. :( Trees are far too slow, even if you have a good way to lock up the carbon once the trees capture it.

For an intuitive understanding, consider: Our surplus of CO2 comes (mostly) from burning fossil fuel that took millions of years for the original plant life to accumulate.

<comment><USER27> Yes, but forests capture carbon quickly until the average age of the trees starts increasing. So zero to 50 years is good, but after that things really slow down. The amount of wood becomes relatively constant.

So slowly, very slowly leaves fall/get eaten by bugs, break down, and get absorbed by new trees. But there is a net gain, just a very slow one. Then things like continents collide, mountain ranges come and go, and significant biomass gets buried and under pressure and time turns into oil/gas.

So for scale we could cut down all trees and bury it and take 638 gigatonnes out of our ecosystem. Not sure of the average tree age, but assuming it was replanted we could likely repeat that every 20-30 years.

The annual oil consumption looks to be around 36 billion barrels. Each weighs around 300 pounds. If my conversion is right that's about 4.9 Gigatonne.

So burying all trees every 30 years would be about 21.2 gigatonne a year or enough to offset all oil consumption _AND_ decrease our current levels to pre- industrial levels.

Or we could just use less oil.

<comment><USER26> Consider the scale of what you're describing now: cutting down and burying all trees on earth every 30 years.

We could certainly _burn_ all of them every 30 years, but that wouldn't help. The figure you need is the marginal capture after the emissions from the process.

Wikipedia says our current emissions from fossil fules and cement production is estimated at 10GtC (not absurd compared to your numbers, since you count only crude oil).

So restating, if somehow without adding any new carbon buried _all_ the vegetation on earth every 30 years, we'd remove 21 GtC per year or a net reduction of 11. To get back to pre-industrial levels it would still take 34 years even ignoring the >1000 GtC currently in the ocean surface that would come out of solution and fight the reduction. (I have no idea how to setup the diff eqs for solving for the ocean contributions...)

The fact that an emission free removal and replacement of _all_ vegetation of earth would still take a long time is basically my point around "planting trees" not being a sufficient plan. :)

Not that planting trees is bad, but solving this is going to take some mixture of reduction and magic (presumably both the political and technological kind).

<comment><USER27> Heh, well I just wanted an idea on scale. It doesn't take millions of years, but less than 100.

Certainly it wouldn't likely be 100% every 30 years, but 3.3% every year. As far as geo-engineering significant climate change this looks like one of the easier approaches actually.

Of course it's much more feasible with the continued migration towards solar, wind, hydro, and related.

Sadly I think Nuclear got the short end of the stick for mostly political reasons. Things like putting a nuke plant in a known tsunami zone, without protection, because of political lobbying.

So all in all, agreed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> One danger of promoting carbon sequestration is that people might think that they can emit as much as they want, since its' going to be removed from the atmosphere anyways. More dangerous yet, lobbies pushing this way of thinking to the public and trying to get away with more emissions: "Yes we are extracting oil, but we also spend X$ each year for carbon sequestration.

This is a little bit how these lobbies have been pushing changing personal habits "turn of the water while brushing your teeth, don't use plastic straws". Or also CO2 compensation (or absolution as I call it).

Not to say that we shouldn't invest in sequestration, but just need to be careful with the phrasing. This article does a good job, saying BOTH need to happen (reduction of emission and sequestration).

</comment><comment><USER29> We need to do lots of things. But we are not going to. Discussing the tech ignores that this is fundamentally a political and economic problem...

<comment><USER30> I agree. We need to move to more renewables like solar but that is just for the future, burning less CO2 in 30 years from now. The warming will continue to happen, technology can't stop it. The population will grow to 9B but the global growth rate keeps dropping. This planet can't support that many people, no matter how clean we use energy. Look at all the water resources and food resources we are burning and the biodiversity we are killing so people can eat and make a living. It feels like 4B is about as much as we can sustain. The population will continue to drop and the places where the birth rate is high, we need education and empowerment of women to drive the birth rate down to more western rates. This is where we should be spending money, not a machine to pull CO2 out of the air. Nature already knows how to do that quite efficiently but it will take time. We'll have a few hundred years of consequences but it will eventually fix itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm paying Climeworks 1000$ to remove a ton of CO2 every month. Not very cost effective, but a start.

<comment><USER32> You could pay $100 and buy two tons of coal every month and $900 to bury it somewhere.

<comment><USER33> Buying coal isn't effective by design - you'll only encourage market to produce more & more coal.

<comment><USER32> You raise the price for people who want to burn it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Look, it's cool that we consider all these fancy solutions, _but we had and still have a more obvious solution of pricing-externalities into things_ \- _a proper carbon-tax and recycling-taxes for plastics high enough to make them undesirable, increase gas (and coal) prices enough to make electric everything look cheap and maybe even nuclear power look cheaper in the new comparison!_

Stop pending the argument that "it's politically impossible / toxic / whatever / unenforceable etc.", that's a dumb argument.

 _Just take politics out of the equation! Or more precisely, take "democratic choice" out of this particular policy decision!_

If countries amend their constitutions to disallow any party or individual not in support of this to even be part of any election, then this particular aspect would simply not appear in political campaigns. Have "dark room" deals in most countries of the world put this into place and move on.

And once the major international players are on board, for any country not playing the same game, just kindly point the missiles at them!

 _In the end, most national governments would approve of such taxation because they 'll have the opportunity to formulate it in their own terms and slightly increase national budgets (maybe investing a bit more in the military and gaining an advantage over their neighbors that don't do it... ugly but any incentive in the right direction helps). And multinational corporations would also not mind it much if it's done across the board, without favoring anyone... and actually corporations could be "hired to enforce the tax" in more advanced schemas, offering opportunities to profit while punishing misbehaving countries._

<comment><USER35> "Just take politics out of the equation! Or more precisely, take "democratic choice" out of this particular policy decision!"

This is such a scary sentence! The problem of climate change has been cause precisely by a lack of democracy. The military, the large oil refiners, the design of our infrastructure has been deeply affected by corporate priorities at the expense of a manipulated populace. We have climate denial in the US in large part because of corporate propaganda (and the fact that if people's oil sector jobs disappear there's no organized democratic approach to help them, they're at the mercy of the private sector).

Furthermore, real democracy would include all the people affected by climate change that didn't cause it! The people of the Marshal islands should certainly have a say in how we approach this problem. Saying we don't need democracy is an extremely America centric approach.

In the circles I'm in, we talk a lot about eco-facsism, which is the way the ecological crisis will be used to promote fascist policies with a green tinge. These include blaming immigrants, cracking down on poor people, and denying democracy in favor of the technocratic actors who caused the problem in the first place.

We need the opposite! We need complete renewal of democracy and democratic practice in order to solve these problems. This idea scares the powerful because solving this crisis necessarily requires democratic control of major parts of the economy, which is a threat to the existing beneficiaries of the economic system.

<comment><USER34> You don't have "democratic choice" for "how to better improve effectiveness of racial segregation", or how to better "discipline unruly women"... we know that some things like discrimination and violence are _BAD_ , so we've written into law that _they are not allowed._

 _In all the civilized world we 've taken certain really BAD options off-the- political-democratic-choice menu, because we don't want them to even be considered!_

Maybe we can do the same with things that are are really bad for the environment, like _not having eco-externalities priced into things!_ This can be done _without killing democracy as a whole._ You cut a finger to save the whole organism! Maybe we should start seeing the environment as an extension of our bodies and treat violence against it similarly to how we treat physical violence - take it off the f menu!

Not doing this would only make things worse and, yeah, sooner or later some "(pseudo)eco-fascist" group would spring up and find groups to blame (for the f-up resulting from people not acting because they couldn't find a democratically-acceptable solution) and manage to sell hate well enough to get in power. And at that point everyone will be double-screwed: you'll have wrecked environment + "eco"-fascists!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> TL;DR: We need dirt cheap energy.

It would have a couple of benefits: First CCS would be feasible. Second if (non-fossil) energy is dirt cheap, nobody bothers digging fossil energy sources from ground. Third, there are always more fun things available when energy is cheap vs when energy is expensive) So, keep on pushing solar and try to make nuclear competitive with something like small modular reactors, they are pretty much only ones with massive enough potential to properly disrupt energy markets.

<comment><USER37> I mean if so called wonder materials like Graphene can actually be harnessed to make new generation ultra cheap solar cells may be something might happen.

What we need actually is a Global Manhattan project which focuses on something like the 100 most promising approaches and builds and tests prototypes. This should be funded both by Govts. and the rich individuals. I think sharing of intellectual property can do a lot of good in solving the Carbon free energy conundrum and then getting it cheap enough for everything else. My guess is that a project like this can deliver solution(s) 10-20 years before free market will.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> If only bitcoin worked in reverse...

</comment><comment><USER39> /Meta

Why are there two climate tech on the upvoted list on Hacker News. What causes topics to trend like this? Are they being cherry picked?

That's okay, I'm trying to understand here.

</comment><comment><USER10> recommended related reading: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azolla_event](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azolla_event)

"The event coincides precisely with a catastrophic decline in carbon dioxide levels, which fell from 3500 ppm in the early Eocene to 650 ppm during this event."

<comment><USER40> This event lasted for "800,000 years", based in the article.

<comment><USER10> exactly correct - compared to our situation where we have to get ~5% of it done in ~30 years, we're in trouble.

<comment><USER41> There is about 400 ppm of carbon dioxide in atmosphere now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Mandating 100% carbon scrubbers on power stations should be the first step. Let's stop putting it into the air first

</comment><comment><USER43> why do they get to start the annual temperature anomaly graph at around -.3 in 1900.

<comment><USER44> It's not a quantity that has any natural zero, nor is time (year since Jesus?). So you can start it wherever you want.

<comment><USER43> that's not true at all. We're trying to measure the human impact on global temperature. The natural zero is whatever our best guess for the temperature would be without human intervention.

<comment><USER44> If it was constant, I'd agree, but the natural temperature was always changing and whatever it would have been today will also be changing. So you'd be graphing a different quantity, f(t) = temperature(t) - natural_temperature(t). From such a graph, you wouldn't be able to tell if a change was a change in the actual temperature or just a change in the predicted natural temperature. A predicted natural cooling would look the same as a human-caused warming.

<comment><USER43> This is already the case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Just pump air into ponds of algae/kelp or grow Azolla on the surface. Feed it with fertilizer runoff that's otherwise thrown into the rivers, seas, oceans. No need to build expensive solutions to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.

<comment><USER46> that sounds like an expensive solution. I can't napkin math any of this since I don't know how much CO2 you could extract along with the other engineering and logistical problems:

* which areas are suitable

* how much energy is required

* how much area of land is required.

I hesitate to give credibility to any answer that starts with 'just... [do this thing]'.

If you have any references I'd be curious to learn more

<comment><USER45> [http://theazollafoundation.org/azollas-uses/as-a- co2-sequest...](http://theazollafoundation.org/azollas-uses/as-a- co2-sequester/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Fox news tells me it's all a hoax, who to believe?

</comment><comment><USER48> If we do we kill al the plants. Genius.

<comment><USER48> Well, I'm Freeman Dyson's team.

Reference: [https://e360.yale.edu/features/freeman_dyson_takes_on_the_cl...](https://e360.yale.edu/features/freeman_dyson_takes_on_the_climate_establishment)

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Or, we should just get used to live with more CO2 in the air.

<comment><USER50> Or, have less people producing waste everywhere.

<comment><USER51> That won't remove the co2 already in the air. And we also produce gases that alleviate warming, not only greenhouse effect ones. Stopping all emissions _today_ would probably result in a temperature increase, not a drop. The facts are, there is no magic today to capture the co2 in the air. To reverse the process, you'd need at least to put the same amount of energy as the one dissipated when co2 was released. So, imagine producing at least the same amount of energy of burni g 100years of fossil fuels.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Article like this make me so depressed.

The conclusion is always (from my point of vue) : we are fucked.

We need a magic device that will remove gigatons of CO2 out of the atmosphere in less than 30 years and we need it to do it without using energy or consuming rare material. And you can't do much with CO2 at the end.

<comment><USER44> Before you get too worried, remember that positive stories about climate change are politically forbidden in most mainstream publications. You're only getting the gloomy side of it.

The harm it will do is still finite and not even really known. Maybe we can just suck it up and suffer the consequences? Do you have an idea of how bad it will really be? Worse than World War II? Worse than communism? Worse than the Spanish Flu? All that stuff happened in the same century and killed close to 10% of the earth's entire population! Yet somehow we're doing great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> I empathize with people who are trying to help by reducing their footprint. Though I fear it'll all be in vain when a machine is invented that can suck a lifetime's worth of frugality out of the air in a fraction of a second.

<comment><USER54> The article links to a website where you can calculate your footprint, and buy offsets in various programs to negate that footprint (projectwren.com). It would cost me USD 17 / month to offset my (larger than average for my country) footprint. Why do I even bother with my reusable coffee cup and paper straws for that kind of money? I just don't understand. If an extra charge of $10 / month for everyone in Europe would 'solve' the problem, why don't we do it?

<comment><USER55> You're probably correct that your reusable cup and paper straws are ineffective mechanisms for preventing climate change.

<comment><USER56> Reducing the use of disposable plastics isn't supposed to prevent climate change, it's about reducing the amount of trash. While any trash that you put in the bin in a western country is highly unlikely to end up in the world's oceans, it still sends a signal against ubiquitous single-use products. That the two are so often treated as one is really unfortunate. Because if people actually cared about reducing their individual carbon emissions, they'd have to give up things like flying and eating meat, not disposable plastics. But that involves actual changes in behaviour, so it's not exactly popular and many people find the mere suggestion offensive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Why do we always phrase it as changing the climate instead of facing that it's an energy balance issue? Too much energy is entering the earth and getting trapped.

We can solve it by letting less enter, or otherwise sinking some of it. Consider if we stored the excess energy as chemical energy? or reflected some fraction of the energy back out away from us?

reducing consumption is a failing project and the greener technology gets the more people increase their consumption in a compensatory way (Heat – George Monbiot) ...

<comment><USER58> "Energy balance" isn't the right diagnosis because the energy balance has not changed significantly: the sun is and has forever been the dominant energy source in climate terms.

Broad-spectrum sunlight hits the earth, and is later emitted as infrared. CO2 is transparent to UV, but absorbs infrared. So global warming is a consequence of the fact that the major fossil fuel emission is opaque to a wavelength of light emitted by the sunlit earth.

"Letting less enter", "stored the excess energy", and "reflected some fraction" are all huge engineering solutions to the global warming crisis. And I support them all! But space mirrors and geo-scale energy sinks are sci-fi, they will not save us any time soon.

Reducing consumption buys time. Switching to renewables buys time too. Maybe you use renewable biofuels and capture the CO2 emissions: now your car is carbon negative, without launching a space mirror!

<comment> Ono-Sendai It's absolutely an energy balance issue. The Earth is heating up, because it's radiating away less energy than its receiving.</comment></comment></comment>


The Only Secure Password Is the One You Can't Remember - <AUTHOR> http://m.lifehacker.com//5785420/the-only-secure-password-is-the-one-you-cant-remember

<comment><USER2> lifehacker and other gawker media entities should not be allowed to post tips on password management or the likes. they fucked up their user accounts for chrissake.</comment>


How Firecracker Is Going to Set Modern Infrastructure on Fire - <AUTHOR> https://thenewstack.io/how-firecracker-is-going-to-set-modern-infrastructure-on-fire/ <comment><USER2> Yes but Firecracker doesn't run on EC2 instances except the very expensive baremetal. That's a very big impediment to setting anything on fire.</comment>


Starting Clojure (mk. 2) - <AUTHOR> http://cemerick.com/2012/05/02/starting-clojure/ <comment><USER2> Thank you! I've been playing around with Clojure, because it's just so much _fun_ , but setting up a development environment has been a nightmare (not in the least part, because, well, I've never seriously programmed in non- data/stats languages). I've been using ClojureBox, but that obviously has limitations.

Keep up the great work!

<comment><USER3> What's wrong with VIM and a good alias?

<comment><USER4> I found trying to get vim and clojure working together to be pretty painful. Right now I just use emacs w/ swank clojure, but with evil mode and a config that pretty accurately emulates my vim set up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thank you cemerick! I was hoping to catch your first screencast with O'Reilly, but only managed to catch the last 20 minutes - So this makes me especially happy.

On a side note, your book is fantastic - I have pretty much all the Clojure books out there, but I really like the job you and your co-authors have done.

Thanks for all the work, and keep it up.

<comment><USER6> Thank you for the kind words. I'm glad to have been able to take a second swing at the content. I hope you find it helpful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Thanks so much for this! I tuned in to the webcast at O'Reilly but their Flex app was failing me, I couldn't ask questions in the group chat, couldn't see the screencast at O'Reilly although I did manage to see it at Livestream but I couldn't read anything because of small text. So yeah, I tuned out pretty soon, but this is fantastic.

</comment><comment><USER8> Thanks cemerick. I'm still watching this screencast, so not sure if you get into this here, but if not, I have a request :)

I've been trying to understand how to do concurrency in Clojure - but haven't found any good guides - any chance you'd do a screencast on this topic as well?

<comment><USER9> This is old, but great: <http://blip.tv/clojure/clojure-concurrency-819147>

<comment><USER8> Nice, watching it now. Thanks for the link!!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I couldn't join the live session due to a flaky 3G connection. Thanks for coming up with this and posting this even before the recording was available from Oreilly. I am going through your book and liking it so far, this is a wonderful opportunity to see you in action.

</comment><comment><USER11> Thank you for pointing out to an avid CCW user that the Leinginen Support plugin had been released (not sure how I missed that by two weeks).

</comment><comment><USER12> Great tutorial!

Many thanks for your effort.

</comment><comment><USER13> I really don't get this hype about lisp-like languages.

I think Scheme is the only language who is more or less acceptable for such a role. Others (including Common Lisp) are just too complex for writing in them ASTs (yes, S-expression is AST...).

<comment><USER13> Wow, downvotes were faster than bullet.

Care to elaborate?

<comment><USER14> The likely cause here is a double-whammy of complaining about downvotes in a child comment, and a form of "what is posited without evidence can be rejected without evidence" that maps to downvoting comments without elaboration. What exactly makes you think the way you think regarding Common Lisp vs. Scheme vs. Clojure? What's a crowning example of Scheme's superiority over at <http://hyperpolyglot.org/lisp> ? Have you even read about what makes Clojure different from CL or Scheme so that you have an informed opinion? Not a bad place to start would be the official website, or perhaps the long article here: <http://java.ociweb.com/mark/clojure/article.html>

<comment><USER13> Yes, I know what differentiates Clojure from CL (or Scheme). What I'm saying is that it is possible to have most part of these goodies in non S-expr language. Except maybe homoiconicity and advanced macros (Although being S-expr is not required for homoiconicity (e.g. Prolog)).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple's malware problem is getting worse - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/2/12/21134681/mac-pc-virus-malware-malwarebytes <comment><USER2> I have a hard time reconciling the need for anti-virus software on a mac when the anti-virus software is so often the virus: [https://www.komando.com/security-privacy/antivirus- program-s...](https://www.komando.com/security-privacy/antivirus-program- sells-your-data/703476/)

</comment><comment><USER3> So it says the 'threats per endpoint' on mac has gone way up. It says 50,000,000 Windows endpoints are compromised.

It fails to mention the number of mac endpoints compromised.

I suspect is is actually not a huge number because of its omission...

Therefore, from the missing numbers of infected mac endpoints, I'll have to surmise that all they've learned is a compromised mac tends to become more and more compromised...

<comment><USER4> No, it reports 50 million detections on Windows endpoints, not that 50 million Windows endpoints were compromised. It reports an average of 5.8 detections per Windows endpoint, from which we can compute that fewer than 10 million Windows endpoints have MalwareBytes installed but not how many have detected malware (except that the total install base is an upper bound).

A more meaningful statistic they could report is the percentage of endpoints with MalwareBytes installed that have detected malware.

<comment><USER3> That's fair, I missed that sub-detail.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> And yet here on hacker news people seem to be complaining a lot that Apple is going too far with security.

<comment><USER6> Fake and PR security to take away freedom from users is what people are complaining about.

<comment><USER5> I've never seen anyone complain about that with with regard to MacOS.

All I've seen is people carelessly dismissing legitimate threats and ignoring the evidence about the environment we operate in now.

It is bad that user freedom is being impacted. But just because it is, doesn't mean there is a conspiracy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How is this considered journalism? It largely relies upon a single source that clearly has a vested interest.</comment>


Mathematically correct but psychologically wrong - <AUTHOR> http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2010/11/02/snowball-strategy/ <comment><USER2> Here's another strategy: break all your debts up into similar sized chunks. Draw a grid with all those chunks on a big sheet of paper, and post it up on the wall. Cross off the chunks as you pay them off (highest interest rate first). It's mathematically and psychologically correct!

<comment><USER3> Crossing off a chunk on your grid does not reduce the number of nasty letters and phone calls you get from creditors.

<comment><USER4> You only get those phone calls if you're not paying anything at all to the creditors and or/ignoring their phonecalls. If you talk to your creditors explain your situation and are making payments, the phone calls and letters stop.

<comment><USER5> If you've fully paid off a debt then even if you fail to make payments in future its not coming back to haunt you. Also even apart from psychological considerations there is how soon until a creditor is likely to institute proceedings against you - it's probably sooner for smaller debts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think the real gem is at the end of the article:

"Many things that don't look optimal are in fact optimal once you take the necessary constraints into account. For example, software that seems poorly designed may in fact have been brilliantly designed when you consider its economic and historical constraints. (This may even be the norm. Nobody complains about how badly obscure software was designed. We complain about software that has been successful enough to criticize.)"

<comment><USER7> i thought this was a great point too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The thing is, to me (and the HN community), this seems blatantly wrong. Why do we need a psychological hack to motivate us, when we know what the optimal solution is?

However, the majority of people who are drowning in debt got there because they weren't looking for the optimal solutions to their cash flow problems. Seeing their debt snowball shrink (or grow, I guess) in measurable steps is what provides the motivation to proceed. And in reality, the difference between your highest and lowest interest rate is probably 15-20% or so. Not enough to make or break you (and if it is too much of a difference, you are probably on your way to bankruptcy anyways).

P.S. Think of the variable cost savings of stamps and bill paying time! </sarcasm>

<comment><USER9> Psychology is the science of the mind. I don't know about you, but I have a mind. Therefore psychology affects me.

I know, I know. My being a member of HN should make me _above_ psychology. But apparently it affects _every_ human being. Annoying isn't it?

<comment><USER8> Nobody is above psychology, although it affects people differently. However, as a member of HN I would expect that you would be above psychological hacks (as in, you can think beyond them, and make decisions based on your own reasoning, rather than relying on them as a crutch).

<comment><USER10> At least in terms of finance. People here may need tricks against procrastination, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Fortunately (in this example) the smallest debt usually has the highest interest rates. Usually people's smallest debt is their credit cards, the next smallest their car loans, their next smallest their student loans and their least smallest the home loan.

<comment><USER12> Except that most people I know of have multiple debts on most of these categories.

\- 4 credit cards \- 2 car loans \- 2 student loans \- 1 mortgage

Individual debts don't follow the same distribution as the categories.

<comment><USER13> _Most_ people you know have 9 loans?

<comment><USER14> 9 semesters of college on loans is 9 loans. Sometimes 18.

<comment><USER13> Ah, in the UK you just pick up a single student loan to cover all your tuition.

Thinking of most people I know whose finances I roughly know about... I'd say the average is one credit card (probably just $500-$1000 limit, not neccesarily maxed out, often paid off in full each month), no general loans, and a mortage and/or student loan depending on their need for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> From an economics point of view, it's basically another way of saying that wealth maximization is different from utility maximization. While the two are frequently correlated, it's not necessarily so.

The snowball strategy could be perfectly rational for people who gain more utility from the small but frequent accomplishments of paying off debt earlier than they do from maximizing their overall lifetime wealth.

It's not what I would do, but as they say, there's no accounting for taste.

<comment><USER16> I've had this argument with my parents on saving for retirement vs paying off loans.

It would seem like one would prioritize savings, but due to the variance in interest, the net gain is in favor of paying off high interest loans vs building low interest savings.

<comment><USER8> It is better mathematically to pay off debt than to save (since debt is usually costing you more than the opportunity cost of not saving).

Still, from a practical standpoint, you shouldn't put ALL of your disposable income towards debt, as you will want some sort of emergency fund to keep you afloat when your car breaks down. Otherwise, you go rely on more debt. Spending saved money is cheaper than spending borrowed money.

<comment><USER17> Assuming you have a credit card, you should pay off all debts worse than credit card debt, and all credit card debt, saving no money. If your car breaks down, charge it. It's only if you have a source of debt that's more pleasant than credit card debt, and which you can't easily get back in case of a car-breakdown-forcing-credit-card-use that you'd want to save some debt to keep cash around for emergencies. And even then you'd want to look at the extra interest you're paying compared with the risk of emergency and the difference between the interest rates of that debt and your credit card, and a lot of the time it'll be like (IF i have a car breakdown, which is 5% likely, then I'll end up paying 5% higher interest on the repair money for a few months ... this is NOT worth failing to repay some debt immediately which will cost in interest a lot more than the expected loss of that incident)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> you can make the snowball strategy be the optimal strategy by simply picking the right cost function.

optimality entirely depends upon your cost function. so pick the right one and optimise. the author clearly has one in mind---paying out the least money to eliminate the debt. but this doesn't seem the right one to me.

for example, i would much rather pay off small debts to friends (which typically have 0% interest) over larger, higher interest rates to banks, simply because there's a social cost owing money to friends, whilst it's kind of the purpose of a bank.

<comment><USER10> Also getting phone calls and letters from your creditors are a psychological cost to most people. The snowball system minimizes the number of outstanding debts (and thus probably also the number of creditors) the fastest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Am I only one who was surprised to see not one reference to any research or proof of his claim? That is, anything that shows a situation where people in, say, equal debt situations, 1/2 were given snowball, half given pay big ones first, then measure debt reduction, satisfaction, perception of accomplishment, etc? Or even just a survey? Anything?

I've heard snowball as a great approach... but without some proof, I wonder if it truly is "...a problem with an obvious but naive solution". Behavioral Economics theorizing aside, even one example from a simple survey or academic study would do much to support his overall point.

Otherwise, his "Many things that don't look optimal are in fact optimal" comes into question, and I don't want my silly need for proof to get in the way of that essential point, which, come to think of it, I firmly believe even without much proof. But still...

<comment><USER20> I can't offer technical proof, but the snowball method saved me. Psychologically, getting rid of the easier debts wasn't the biggest factor though. The increased cash flow from the lack of those payments allowed me to make payments on larger debts that actually felt like they were making a dent. That was an awesome feeling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The mathematically (but not morally) correct way to deal with big debts is to figure out how many cents on the dollar they can get back from you with a debt collection agency and offer them slightly more than that.

<comment><USER9> If we're ruling out ethics, the optimal approach would be to simply not pay the debt back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I always find it fascinating how poorly the brain conceptualises various problem spaces, specifically in math related fields. The Monty Hall problem is an excellent illustration and just shows how irrationally our minds operate.

<comment><USER22> And the lottery. We misestimate probabilities, particularly when they are extreme (near-certainty and near-impossibility). That gap between how likely an event 'seems' and its real probability explains the lottery, not wearing seatbelts, smoking, witchcraft, the monty hall problem...

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Possibly but then you must also consider the psychological effect of consciously making an illogical decision... which results in habitually justifying irrational behavior

<comment><USER24> I think the people giving this advice know enough psychology to know it works (defined as: likely to get people out of debt), and enough mathematics to know it's not optimal.

As to the people in debt: if they always consciously made (suboptimal) decisions, most of them wouldn't be in debt.

<comment><USER23> So the way to overcome conscious suboptimal decisions is to keep making more conscious suboptimal decisions? That is what I have been doing wrong... stupid me for trying to change.

Jokes aside, you are probably correct, I have always been torn between trying and failing to be perfectly rational versus doing suboptimal emotional things.

<comment><USER25> No, the way to overcome suboptimal decisions is to make _better_ decisions, even if they aren't fully optimal.

<comment><USER23> But it an optimal decision is even better than a "better decision that isn't optimal"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I had three student loans, and I am doing it the mathematically correct way. I paid off the second-largest with the highest interest rate before it came out of deferment, and am currently working on 2 and 3, putting all the spare cash into the one with the biggest interest rate.

It's really not psychologically difficult at all, except it's slightly more effort to pay two bills each month instead of one (since I could have afforded to pay off the smaller but lower interest rate one already had I not put that money into the higher interest rate one.)

<comment><USER10> Can't you instruct your bank to automate the paying?

<comment><USER26> Yes, but I'm usually paying more than the payment amount on the high interest one. How much has to be done manually, since my income fluctuates.

<comment><USER10> It would be nice to tell the bank to just pay anything in your account above a certain balance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is a matter of semantics, but if the "mathematically right" answer is also the wrong answer, than your math is wrong. Either you messed up the calculations, or (as is the case here) you started off with invalid assumptions. In this case, the invalid assumption is that you're psychologically able to do whatever will pay off your debts in the most money- maximizing way.

</comment><comment><USER28> The main conclusion is definitely right. You need to take the constraints into considerations.

However, imo the optimal strategy to pay off debt is to reduce the total amount of payments whenever you have money to pay after the necessities of life are taken care of.

Simple :)

</comment><comment><USER29> I believe this principle is central to any successful attempt to lose weight. The physiologically optimal approach to losing weight will fail for most where a seemingly less effective approach might succeed.

<comment><USER10> Could you elaborate?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> >Clearly the optimal strategy is to pay off the debt with the highest interest rate first.

Clearly? This is plainly wrong. Let's say we have two debts: $1000 with 0.7% interest rate and $40 with 0.8% interest rate (these rates are daily). Assuming our daily salary is $19, having payed off $40 debt first, we will never be able to pay off the $1000, as the interest exceeds our salary. The other way around, we pay off $1000 (then $2546.5) debt after 135 days, and then a week later we pay off $40 (then $128) debt.

It is not the sole interest rate, but the _ratio_ between interest rate and debt that matters.

<comment><USER17> Your math is wrong, and I don't think it's possible to fix it and get the conclusion you want (because you should think about your total debt, and how much it goes up each day, when figuring out if you can keep up or not).

The daily interest on $1000 with 0.7% interest is around $7. Waiting a few days to pay of the smaller debt will not make it exceed $19.

Edit: Were you banning partial repayments? Most debt (I think) is not like that, but maybe it makes your math work

<comment><USER30> >Were you banning partial repayments?

Yes, I were. If partial repayments are allowed, it is indeed the best approach.

>The daily interest on $1000 with 0.7% interest is around $7. Waiting a few days to pay of the smaller debt will not make it exceed $19.

Of course not, but they will exceed $19 before you will be able to pay it off as a whole -- it will take more than 130 days.

Maybe I should make my statements clearer, so that next time I do not get downvoted for being misunderstood.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> When dealing with people mathematical accuracy requires psychological ignorance.

</comment><comment><USER32> I get more psychological assurance by paying less overall, thus I feel better paying off the higher interest loan.</comment>


IBM patents drone-delivery of coffee straight to your mouth - <AUTHOR> http://pdfpiw.uspto.gov/.piw?PageNum=0&docid=10040551&IDKey=61C703B14D4D%0D%0A&HomeUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fpatft.uspto.gov%2Fnetacgi%2Fnph-Parser%3FSect1%3DPTO2%2526Sect2%3DHITOFF%2526u%3D%25252Fnetahtml%25252FPTO%25252Fsearch-adv.htm%2526r%3D47%2526f%3DG%2526l%3D50%2526d%3DPTXT%2526p%3D1%2526S1%3D%28%252522food%252522%252BAND%252B%252522kitchen%252522%29%2526OS%3D%252522food%252522%252Band%252B%252522kitchen%252522%2526RS%3D%28%252522food%252522%252BAND%252B%252522kitchen%252522%29 <comment><USER2> This is what happens when you force engineers to generate so many patents every quarter / year.

</comment><comment><USER3> When I was contractor at IBM for a year I attended several sessions where the only task was to come up with ideas for patents. This looks exactly like the result of one of these sessions.

</comment><comment><USER4> Patent illustrations are a hilarious genre in general. If you like the drawings here, you'll love this tumblr which features some true classics:

[http://contextfreepatentart.tumblr.com](http://contextfreepatentart.tumblr.com)

My favorite is the one where the couch potato has to get up and shout "McDonalds!" before the Orwellian, camera-equipped Smart TV will continue playing the violent program he is watching.

<comment><USER5> Reminds me of the verification can greentext

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Basically a ripoff of the robot-butler concept, replacing the wheels with rotors. In 1984, the TV series Riptide already had a robot serving drinks: [https://www.filmaffinity.com/es/movieimage.php?imageId=98109...](https://www.filmaffinity.com/es/movieimage.php?imageId=981095032)

Robot butler pic here: [http://bearbottoms1.com/smart- homes/](http://bearbottoms1.com/smart-homes/)

One might argue that rotors and wheels are similar in nature since they both are a rotating device

</comment><comment><USER7> but can I patent drone delivery of medication to citizens that are not behaving or thinking in a compliant manner?

<comment><USER8> This reminds me of a Vonnegut short, Harrison Bergeron. [1]

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Sensational click-baity title. You could have just said "IBM patents drone- delivery of coffee".

<comment><AUTHOR> I wrote it like that because the absurdity amused me, not as a cheap attention grab.

<comment><USER10> Well, I thought the patent was for _literally_ delivering coffee to one's mouth (think of disabled people that cannot hold the cup and bring it to mouth).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't get this. Is this patent part of some prank? The authors are senior researchers at IBM.

<comment><USER12> I seem to remember reading that IBMers got bonuses per number of patents generated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's all fun and games until someone gets a head-full of hot coffee.

</comment><comment><USER14> You could possibly see this in a super crowded environment. A nightclub, rock concert, or even a sporting event in the stands. A replacement for the cocktail waiter or beer vendor at a ball game.

</comment><comment><USER15> Perfect example of big companies blocking innovation from small inventors by patenting every imaginable idea and combination of ideas :-(

</comment><comment><USER16> Trolling...but not in their usual manner.

</comment><comment><USER17> Someone collected the employee patent bonus for this! We can clearly see that incentive is working.

</comment><comment><USER18> those images on the first page are a riot

</comment><comment><USER19> Is this a Watson service?

</comment><comment><USER20> no, today is not April 1.</comment>


Could you delete your email account? - <AUTHOR> https://ryanwaggoner.substack.com/p/could-you-delete-your-email-account <comment><USER2> Use caution with deleting email accounts. If you delete it, someone else may be able to register it, assuming its a free or paid service and not on your server. This could lead to account take-over for other services you use. Consider instead reducing your account to the minimum required, then reject all inbound messages, or all messages not in your address book.</comment>


Users have a 10% chance of making an email typo - <AUTHOR> http://davetong-ict.tumblr.com/post/11810241790/users-have-a-10-chance-of-making-an-email-typo

<comment><USER2> Outside USA it is very common that the users add or remove the national TLD by mistake. They type something like firstname.lastname@example.com or email@example.com. And it is worse with Yahoo! because both firstname.lastname@example.com and email@example.com are possible, but only one of them is the real one.</comment>


38 ways to listen to music on the cheap - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2008/01/23/38-freecheap-music-sites-welcome-to-the-fray-qbox/

<comment><USER2> They ignored the best one!

waffles.fm</comment>


Ask HN: Any success with marketing digital goods through affiliate marketers? - <AUTHOR>

I have a wordpress plugin that I'm looking to grow. We already have a few thousand paying users and looking for more. I keep hearing mixed messages on the web about sites like shareasale, clickbank, etc. Has anyone had any concrete luck with these kinds of sites -- particularly when it comes to digital goods that are not downloadable books and courses? <comment><USER2> They CAN work depending on what you're selling. Affiliate leads are usually low-quality and sometimes fraudulent.

A few steps you should take 1) Limit the amount you're willing to spend over the first few days. Like any marketing platform you need to figure out if this is one that will a good return on investment. 2) I would try to set it up so that you only pay out on a successful sale. While not required, it probably makes the most sense for digital goods 3) Check out the other ads on the affiliate marketer.</comment>


Detroit is kicking Silicon Valley's ass in the race to build self-driving cars - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2017/4/3/15164336/detroit-vs-silicon-valley-self-driving-car-navigant-ranking?utm_campaign=theverge&utm_content=chorus&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter <comment><USER2> We'll see if it lasts. I grew up in Detroit and saw how they operated... encouraging "japan bashing" in the early 90's recession and doubling down on gas guzzlers when the future was in high mileage cars.

Have they really changed? I seem to recall recently that they received a sweetheart deal from the current administration where as a prerequisite for actually investing in new plants, they received a promise that fuel efficiency standards would be lowered. They want to sell comparative gas guzzlers again... bigger cars mean. more profits! Who cares if the extra. emissions causes premature deaths in the largest market in the US ([https://www.google.com/amp/www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la- me...](https://www.google.com/amp/www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-pollution- deaths-20160810-snap-story,amp.html)).

Sigh, they are not only being subsidized, but they are heaping the costs on the very same public that bailed them out of certain death.

</comment><comment><USER3> Detroit is in it for the long-haul. They have the hardware and they have the pockets to sustain something without having to have a return for investors or aiming for an IPO.

That said, these tech rags can't seem to be able to decide who is ahead and who's not. Or rather, they get more page views by one day saying SV is ahead, and then, another day declare Detroit is ahead. I don't think anyone knows for sure, it's all bets and future execution, but I wish the tech media were a little more journalistically drive when reporting these things.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's nice to see some different perspectives in the race to autonomous cars.

I do wish the axes of the graph were a bit different. Possibly "Technology Adv vs. Business Adv".

They had a great insight on how some companies may able to deliver a working product to the masses much easier, while others may be ahead on tech but may have trouble on scaling or production or rolling out a way to make it profitable and grow. I think that was a major insight of the article those two dimensions, but the graph picks two other dimensions to compare companies on.

For example Waymo is listed as being "way out in front of everyone" in tech. I'd expect to seem them at the extreme of on of the two axes.

They don't have the existing business of uber, nor the production line of ford, so I'd expect them lower in the other axis.

That graph I feel would've been a better presentation of the data. Now I'm just left wondering how their huge tech advantage leaves them in the "middle" of each axis.

<comment><USER5> production line: they are building on third party cars, Chrysler definitely has a strong production line.

existing business: Google maps is already taking some share of the initial ride request by providing users a way to compare prices between Lyft and Uber and doing lead gen. they now have plenty of data points to know what price points they need to hit in order to complete and they can easily add in Waymo in front. they will benefit from all the marketing dollars Uber and Lyft burn through.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The click bait title is clickbait.

But there is an interesting nugget in there: the article claims Detroit plans to start doing ride sharing and other services where they can lease their autonomous tech as a fleet.

Uber seems to be behind on autonomy, and Detroit won't need drivers if they can ship autonomy.

That actually seems somewhat credible.

</comment><comment><USER7> Did I miss something?

Last I checked the "leaders" group here, Daimler, Ford and GM all have rather large R&D centers in Silicon Valley.

<comment><USER8> And of course their leader GM acquired the YC funded Cruise Automation.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any open source project intended for learning a language  - <AUTHOR>

Are there any open source project on github or anywhere that have project that are like for beginners to a language and are easy to understand(well commented) and some how educational? <comment><USER2> there is a cool thing called ruby koans on github which teaches you ruby: <https://github.com/edgecase/ruby_koans></comment>


TAOS Operating System - <AUTHOR> http://www.uruk.org/emu/Taos.html <comment><USER2> TAOS was peculiarly crazy and brilliant. It was written in a sort of macro assembler, essentially a form of assembler with a large number of registers, which was "compiled" to the target platform on demand. It was network transparent so nodes on the network could use devices from other nodes. There's a lot more from an ex-employee here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9806607](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9806607)

I wish one day that it gets open sourced (but I'd settle for a non-open read- only license) because it's unlike anything else.

<comment><USER3> The IP is gone apparently.

Seems that Chris Hinsley (inventor of TAOS) is working on a modern day version of TAOS. [0]

[0] [https://github.com/vygr/ChrysaLisp](https://github.com/vygr/ChrysaLisp)

<comment><USER4> There are comments by Chris (vygr) in the 2015 discussion rwmj already linked to: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9806607](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9806607).

A big thread about his current project happened last week: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15466124](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15466124).

<comment><USER3> Yes that's correct, only found it because of rwmj's reference, figured that adding a direct link might help.

Missed last weeks thread about ChrysaLisp, will read.

Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Usenet post from 1995.

TAOS is/was a "mixed-processor parallel operating system from Tao Systems Ltd of Belsize Park, London" says [http://www.cbronline.com/news/tantric_has_taos_developers_ki...](http://www.cbronline.com/news/tantric_has_taos_developers_kits/) . It was for iAPX-86 machines.

I don't believe it's related to Taos, "the operating system for the DEC SRC Firefly multiprocessor workstation" mentioned in [https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~bershad/Papers/p37-bershad....](https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~bershad/Papers/p37-bershad.pdf) and [http://hpl.americas.hp.net/techreports/Compaq-DEC/SRC- RR-63....](http://hpl.americas.hp.net/techreports/Compaq-DEC/SRC-RR-63.pdf) .

FWIW, this Usenet post is cited in several patents: [https://www.google.com.au/patents/US7836292](https://www.google.com.au/patents/US7836292) .

Submitter? Why is this link interesting?

<comment><USER6> It wasn't for x86 only. It ran on almost anything: ARM, SPARC, PowerPC, you name it.

In its more mature form, as Intent/Elate, it is _the_ single most radical OS there's ever been, pretty much. It makes Inferno look conservative & staid, Plan 9 no more than a tweaked Linux distro, and Minix 3 a tweak of NetBSD.

It's also been on HN before:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9802379](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9802379)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9806607](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9806607)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15470338](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15470338)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15527936](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15527936)

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h > Minix 3 a tweak of NetBSD.

I mean, now that minix uses the netbsd userland I'm pretty sure this really is true.

<comment><USER7> So using the same userland but different kernels is now considered a tweak?

I always though the hard part was in the kernel design and not the userland.

Otherwise it would have been the gnu os and not gnu/linux.

And if it was not for a book license there was a good chance it would have been gnu/minix. But meh I'm not in that universe.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h But we are in a universe where GNU/NT is a real thing :)

And to your point: I'm not sure which of kernel or userland is harder. Userland is the part I actually interact with most of the time, so I tend to think of that as the main part of the OS. But it may be fair to say that both halves count.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I remember reading about Taos in Byte and thinking this was brilliant. It later turned into something called Elate, which in turn morphed into a semi- boring JVM for small systems. I wish we had the source code of the original, though.

</comment><comment><USER9> Amazingly this doesn't seem to have a Wikipedia entry. Perhaps someone with some historical knowledge could put one together.

</comment><comment><USER10> This was interesting to program. Apart from having to use assembler (which was no big deal in '95), you had to structure your program as lots of tiny objects which communicated through messages.

There was no obvious way of running a program which was not designed for this architecture on the OS, except for making one massive object, which then lost all the other benefits.

Pity it didn't go further. :-(

</comment><comment><USER11> I remember TAOS having some buzz in the RISC OS community in the early 90s. ARM must have been one of its original targets.

<comment><USER12> Interesting. There was some minor buzz about it in the Amiga community as well, as the basis for a new Amiga OS.

[http://www.vincentperkins.com/AmigaNG/anywhere.php](http://www.vincentperkins.com/AmigaNG/anywhere.php)

<comment><USER13> There was major coverage of it in Amiga Active magazine ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Active](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Active)), over a number of issues. Sounded really exciting at the time!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Was this the OS that they were planning on replacing segments of AmigaDOS with to avoid needing to rewrite a modern kernel?

<comment><USER15> Yes. It was going to be on desktops and laptops and even little handheld devices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Maybe put 1995 in the title?

</comment><comment><USER17> Sounds a lot like Java.</comment>


Russian propaganda effort helped spread 'fake news' during election, experts say - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/russian-propaganda-effort-helped-spread-fake-news-during-election-experts-say/2016/11/24/793903b6-8a40-4ca9-b712-716af66098fe_story.html <comment><USER2> As of this moment nearly every top level comment claims that sensationalized news is just as bad as manufactured news.

Come on guys, there is a huge difference. Lumping together everything you don't like about X is not a productive way to address individual problem. It really only helps to give yourself an excuse to throw your hands up in frustration.

<comment><USER3> This right here is the problem:

[http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-25/washington-post- nam...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-25/washington-post-names-drudge- zero-hedge-anti-clinton-sophisticated-russian-propagand)

When the idea of "fake news" is used to discredit sites like ZeroHedge and WikiLeaks as "Russian propaganda", you know it's not about fakeness/truth, but only about control - in other words, propaganda.

(I'm not saying that ZeroHedge is a quality site, far from it - but they've _always_ been anti-establishment, pro-conspiracy theory, and they haven't changed their stance during this election campaign at all.)

<comment><USER4> No, it's not. It's a problem you have. It's not the same problem as fakenews, which is a form of webspam and has nothing to do with the case for Wikileaks being an instrument of Russia.

<comment><USER3> Clearly, "fakenews" is a problem only _some_ people have - otherwise, it would be considered a "problem" even before the election!

It's very similar to "election fraud" \- before the results, when Democrats were confident they'd win, Trump warning about election fraud was branded a lunatic, a threat to democracy, now we have the same situation on the other side but suddenly it's "the right thing to do" (smart and trustworthy people, e.g. Nate Silver, have dismissed the claims).

The bias is obvious for all neutral people. If a problem is only a problem when you have it, it's not a real problem, merely propaganda.

<comment><USER4> No. The story is about fakenews. It's not about whatever other problems you might have. Talking about a specific problem doesn't mean we're disposing of other problems. On the other hand, requiring us to talk about other problems before we discuss a specific problem is a form of censorship (or trolling, which often has censorship as its ultimate aim).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sadly, CNN, fox, CBS, Huffington Post, et all spread sensationalized fake news for the last 8 years (while ignoring Obama's abuses with the NSA, TPP, executive orders, ect) and this only has become an issue since Trump was elected. The train left the station a long time ago, but was willfully ignored. There simply is no integrity in reporting these days, though I would grateful to be proven wrong.

<comment><USER4> There is a huge difference between fakenews, like the "Denver Guardian" fake newspaper site that ran stories about HRC being involved in the death of FBI agents in order to rack up tens of thousands of dollars from impressions, and sensationalized news.

Every time this topic comes up, we have to tediously explain the difference, not because the difference is hard to understand, but because people seize on the name "fake news" as an excuse to attack the media. There's nothing wrong with media criticism, but you shouldn't write it in a way that obscures to readers what these stories are actually about --- webspam farms running entirely fabricated stories.

<comment><USER6> It becomes a finer line when you have the Washington Post reporting (more accurately reporting an "expert" claim) that hillary Clinton may have been poisoned on 9/11 by Putin.

<comment><USER7> Umm, could you link to that maybe?

<comment><USER6> [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early- lead/wp/2016/09/12...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early- lead/wp/2016/09/12/the-man-who-discovered-cte-thinks-hillary-clinton-may-have- been-poisoned/)

Even though they aren't claiming these claims are true, its at the very least, incredibly misleading. They spend most of the article talking about how Putin has poisoned people in the past, and talking up the Drs credentials. There should be a disclosure that the claims are unsubstantiated. Or it should never have been posted.

That said the Washington post did some of the best reporting this election season.

<comment><USER8> There was no "claim" to disclaim by saying it's unsubstantiated. The original tweet was just that Clinton should be tested for poisons, not that she was definitely (or even likely) poisoned.

It's true that headlines like these cause people to become certain about what is an unsubstantiated idea. But it's also within the realm of possibility that Putin did try to poison Clinton. It would be far from the most egregious thing he's ever tried to do, and (as the story describes) he's done it before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What's the end game here? What are we supposed to get riled up about now? Didn't some experts at the very prestigious Princeton University release a study already confirming the state of affairs we're left in the US (and arguably the rest of the world)?

I'm in complete and utter disgust, thanks Washington Post for waking me up. Which Soros' funded NGO's can I apply to for my daily rations of cookies and riot gear?

"What difference, at this point, does it make?" \- Hillary Clinton

PS: Maybe Bezos should authorize linking this post in the black Friday emails I've been getting lately, and for every person that clicks through, they can get a further discount! Im sure more others are bound to become "woke" (thats the phrase people are using this days, no?).

</comment><comment><USER10> There is only one thing I can think of that would be worse than the spread of fake news, and that is legislation to address the spread of fake news. Unfortunately, that's where this is leading; if not in the Trump administration, then in the following.

<comment><USER8> It's already illegal in the US for a corporation to lie about its products. It's not unreasonable to expect that some organizations (i.e. corporations created explicitly for the purpose of campaigning) can be sued for lying about their "product" \-- a candidate, for example.

But considering the Supreme Court's historically zealous defense of the First Amendment (see: Citizens United), we're unlikely to see much change in that regard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am surprised that anyone is surprised by this, honestly. Russian culture does not place even as much of a value on truthfulness as American culture does, and even that is not that high.

It should be seen as a given that there is significant Russian propaganda working all the time on every issue they care about. _Of course_ they would be trying to influence the American election.

</comment><comment><USER12> It is highly unethical to flagkill every comment that disagrees with you. I suggest you stop doing it

<comment><USER4> Thank you for reminding me to flag that post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> this whole "fake news" narrative arc needs to be fucking murdered, and here's why:

stories which detail items of unpopular fact surrounded by biased opinions which threaten the status quo are being lumped in with stories which fabricate facts and are transparently clickbait.

the first type of story headline: "hillary took money from the saudis and will sell us out"

the second type of story headline: "hillary murdered young children in 1990"

see the difference? one of the two has a fact regarding campaign finance (presented in a very slanted yet still correct way) that is tied to a speculation/opinion (easily identifiable bias) that will validate a broad range of opinions and potentially begin to form opinions in the uninformed. the other is a bogus fact that will draw attention and validate the most extreme already-existing opinions.

the mainstream media is viciously desperate to make the issue of hillary losing the election into a matter of "too many people fell victim to the fake news stories which claimed hillary murdered children in 1990. those stupid republican idiots are just so darn impressionable." this couldn't be farther from the truth. masses of people falling for headline 2 generates rioting in the streets, not voting for an "outsider".

people saw the first type of story, and believed it. facts often don't have to be twisted in order for the reader to arrive at a certain conclusion, and hillary was laden with a billion of these facts.

the whining regarding russian interference in our election is very much overblown, as well as cynically ignorant/ intellectually dishonest. the USA meddles in countless other elections, consistently, via propaganda and other means. this doesn't make it right when anyone does the same to us, but a discussion of foreign influence in our elections should be within the proper context: geopolitical powers meddle in each other's affairs as much as they think they can get away with.

furthermore, russians did not start propagandizing yesterday. many of the urban russians are a technologically inclined and cosmopolitan people who are prolific on the internet, and it is certain that these people are the ones filling the ranks of putin's propaganda forces. they simply aren't stupid enough to try making completely counterfactual claims fly-- it's a waste of their time. the russian angle of propaganda has been (even since the times of the early soviet union) a kernel of undeniable and ugly truth, which can be opined upon within a range of speculation. you could say that in this election, their angle was "hillary clinton is corrupt". this angle of propaganda only works if people immediately recognize the kernel beneath the headline, and identify with the sentiment.

for many people in this country, "russian propaganda" fit cleanly with their own domestic "not-propaganda" media sources. so what if it was the russians feeding information to wikileaks? for many people, the relevant facts of the matter pre-emailgate were exactly the same as after. calling the real development of narration around the kernal of hillary clinton being corrupt "fake news" is a massive disservice to the public, as well as abject denial of the situation. voters didn't like hillary because they thought she was corrupt. there were many media which supported and fostered that dislike, using facts. there were many other media which fostered that dislike using fictions. don't throw the fact out with the fiction, regardless of the source of each.

btw: i voted green party, not in a swing state. if that makes any difference to you.

\---

this is the part of my comment where i make a lofty call for improved critical thinking training for our citizenry. the way to kill the problem of propaganda is not via suppression of inconvenient storys, as zuckerberg wants to do with "fake news", but rather an increase in general ability to identify and deconstruct malicious thoughtware. there are a few easy rules of thumb that could help people a lot. maybe i'll write them into an ebook. the problem is that a lot of people don't give a shit about critical thinking, and find any kind of intellectualizing to be faggy.

<comment><USER4> "Hillary Clinton is involved in the death of an FBI agent", or "The Dalai Lama joined Putin in blaming Obama and Clinton for ISIS", or "The Pope endorsed Donald Trump" aren't "unpopular facts surrounded by biased opinions". They're _fake news_.

That is the difference between "fakenews" and "biased" or "sensationalized" news. There is no number of paragraphs you can write that will make the difference between those two concepts any less stark.

<comment><USER14> Does "the russians bombed the 100th pediatric hospital in Aleppo" qualify as fake news? You know, because it is practically impossibile that Aleppo is full of pediatric hospitals. They need groceries, discos, supermarkets too!

<comment><USER4> I have no idea, because a Google search for that headline turns up nothing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So what? "Eighty-three percent of Americans identify themselves as Christians." I don't see how this is different from all the people knocking on my door telling me about the good news, er, um, the fake news, from 31 AD.

</comment><comment><USER16> Let's be honest here: The information war was fought on both sides. You had to dig through the mud to find any reliable news. I consumed a healthy mix of pro-clinton western media, RT, candidate videos straight from rallies and leaks like wikileaks or the video where Hillary stumbled. That's how you get a good overview.

<comment><USER4> You cannot in fact improve the overview you get of current events by consuming outright fabrications, which is what we're discussing in this story.

<comment><USER16> I disagree. By seeing the propaganda from both sides, you get an insight into who has which goals. The only things you miss out on are the things they all want to hide and the only things you get wrong are the things they all lie on in the same way. It's like cross-examination in a courtroom.</comment></comment></comment>


IBM to cut more than 111,000 jobs in largest corporate lay-off ever - <AUTHOR> http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/ibm-cut-more-111000-jobs-this-week-largest-corporate-lay-off-ever-1485128 <comment><USER2> This article is a year old (January 26, 2015). Did the number of layoffs predicted by the article actually occur?</comment>


Coffee Drip Printer - <AUTHOR> https://cias.rit.edu/faculty-staff/256/faculty/1186 <comment><USER2> Ted's my uncle, and has been doing amazing science photography since I was a little kid. He recently repaired an old scanning electron microscope and has been making images with that.

For Christmas this year he gave me a x-ray image of a pitcher plant (which he did in sections and stitched/colored with photoshop). The trick, he told me, was to grow it himself indoors so that it wouldn't eat any flies, which would show up as blobs in the x-ray and detract from the print.

You can see more of his stuff at [http://www.sciencephotography.com/](http://www.sciencephotography.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Good old alma mater, some of those guys really like coffee: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffenol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffenol)

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd love to see this with water colors instead of coffee. Composite images made from multiple passes would be cool too.

<comment><USER5> Scroll down a little bit for non coffee examples - they use blue ink, and (cheap) red wine.

<comment><USER6> Cheap wine is presumed, right? I also presume it's not expensive coffee. The most expensive coffee in the world, that made from Black Ivory beans, is $374 per 12oz bag, or $49.50 per 750ml of brewed coffee (the size of a bottle of wine). I would not be "printing" with this. Although, given these beans are pre-processed by an elephant's digestive tract, I'm not sure I'd drink them either.

[http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/sciencefair/2012/12/07/co...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/sciencefair/2012/12/07/coffee- elephants-dung/1753385/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm a bit surprised they're not selling prints.

Someone put a web front end on this, with an approximate preview of results.

<comment><USER8> While i agree completely, RIT's college of imaging science is a very R&D heavy college. Monetization is rarely a top-of-mind consideration for their projects.

<comment><USER9> > RIT's college of imaging science

Just a minor point, the coffee printer is from the College of Imaging Arts and Sciences[0], not the Center for Imaging Science[0]. CIAS does have some applied programs, though it has a fair number of pure-art programs. CIS is more R&D focused.

[0] [https://cias.rit.edu/](https://cias.rit.edu/)

[1] [http://cis.rit.edu/](http://cis.rit.edu/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I love this. A whole serious of awesome prints could be made with this, that would sell high at art auctions with the right context. Think various fluids ( ahem, conceptual art ), and non-paper substrates. What about gallium onto a metal surface for instance?

<comment><USER11> Ferric chloride solution onto a metal plate could be nice too. I would think they could also play with doing a spiral raster[1] (which the watercolorbot does pretty well).

1: [http://paperjs.org/examples/spiral- raster/](http://paperjs.org/examples/spiral-raster/)

<comment><USER10> Yeah a la Hirst's spin paintings. :D

Tho..dizziness inducing that spiral raster is.

Moiré patterns.

Also what about doing it in the dark and dropping developing solution onto an exposed print ? :D ( each dot is then a micro pixel which contains the real grain pixels of the photo ) :D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It would also be interesting to see if different roasts produce different colours.

<comment><USER13> More important for color is extraction time and amount of ground coffee you use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Beautiful! So the dot pattern here is "face centered cubic," right? Would you get a better density with a "hexagonal close-packed" pattern? It may make a difference visually. I would love to see a comparison.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close- packing_of_equal_spheres](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close- packing_of_equal_spheres) (We memorized this stuff in chemistry class and I never saw it again so I may be completely wrong.)

<comment><USER15> The FCC and HCP lattices are 3D concepts, but you're on the right track. They're using a square lattice, but you could get a higher density using a hexagonal one.

What's really interesting is that they're modulating drop size to change the color intensity through white space and the coffee-ring effect!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Always good to see my Alma Mater on here. Cool project!

</comment><comment><USER17> Real glad to see RIT getting some love on HN.

Surprised no one's posted stuff from CSH yet.

<comment><USER18> Me too. (Shout out!)

In fact I just checked [https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=rit.edu](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=rit.edu) because I was skeptical that what you say is actually true, but it looks like there really are barely any CSH posts on HN, or posts from RIT at all. Not terribly surprising to see an article about John Resig listed there, some things from the CS department too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Ok I get it.. you put small dots down with anything, it will eventually combine and build up to make a larger image.

<comment><USER20> Yeah, popularized by many uni students with the rasterbator [http://rasterbator.net/Home/Download](http://rasterbator.net/Home/Download)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> There's finally a good use for the "100% arabica bio" coffee substitute we have around here.

Very cool.

</comment><comment><USER22> its a basic effect in Coreldraw an can be printed with a regular printer ;)

<comment><USER23> Yeah, but printing with coffee and wine is way more fun.</comment></comment>


Typing In an E-Mail Address, and Giving Up Your Friends' as Well  - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/20/technology/internet/20shortcuts.html?_r=1&hpw

<comment><USER2> Similar article from Time: [http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1903810,00....](http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1903810,00.html)

On the one hand, I'm not happy that Tagged and co are getting all this publicity, but on the other I'm hoping that it helps to stem the tide a bit. It's shocking how many people have not learned the importance of keeping passwords secret.

<comment><USER3> I work for a web dev firm, and one of the features a client wants is a facebook-style "invite your friends by giving us your e-mail and password" feature. I'm trying to think of a nice way of convincing the client that the feature they want is really a psychological bug that's going to cause long- term problems for, well, everyone on the internet.

<comment><USER4> Why not use bbauth? I know Yahoo and Google support it. That way you can grab their email contacts without requiring them to give you their email/password. It just sends them to the email provider to login, then back to your site with the api token to access their address book.

<comment><USER5> Still spams a buncha folks tho'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _"I spoke to Greg Tseng, founder and chief executive of Tagged, to ask him what happened. He said all social networking sites invite you to e-mail your contact list to join up or discover which of your friends are already members, but that a software glitch meant an unusually large number of accidental invitations went out recently._ "

Yeah right....

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm confused, does it ask you to type in your email address and password for your email provider? I can't believe anybody would be stupid enough to fall for that.

If it doesn't, where did it get all of his contact info? Did he enter it in himself. If this is the case, what does the website say that prompts you to enter in your contact lists?

<comment><USER8> Yeah, that was my question too. I _think_ what happens is, when you enter your email address and password to login to the site, the site assumes its the same password you use to login to your mail provider. Of course, that assumption could be wrong but apparently, it works often enough. And of course, this only works with the big web mail providers like Google and Yahoo. I got a similar spate of emails from friends asking me to register on their birthday calendar.

<comment><USER9> Not really, they aren't assuming you use the same password as your mail provider. These sorts of sites just ASK you outright for your login/password.. and a lot of users actually give this up voluntarily to a third party site.

Lots of information here on this sort of anti-pattern:

<http://microformats.org/wiki/social-network-anti-patterns>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I can't believe the author is so soft on Tagged and MyLife.com etc. I've seen this happen to my mother as well, who was very embarrassed. This needs to be regulated and be treated like spamming is.

<comment><USER11> My mother is better than your mother then, she had the good sense to use a throw away email account.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> First time I saw this happen was when my daughter signed up for doostang. All of us on her gmail address list got an invite, including some ex-boyfriends. She later sent an apology to the whole list. It was certainly a wake up call.

Software glitch, nah. Who are we kidding.

</comment><comment><USER13> I had to read this like 3 times to understand that users were voluntarily typing their email password into a site. It's so ingrained in my behavior not to do that, I was trying to figure out, "how do they get the password?"

<comment><USER13> Wait -- are they just using the password you type for their site to log in and go through your gmail account (guessing that they're the same pw)? That's fraud. I don't care if it's in the fine print. I use multiple passwords, but not enough. If websites just start using my passwords to break into my private data on other sites, that's seriously fucked up.

<comment><USER14> No, users explicitly enter their email password.

I blame this on user stupidity.

<comment><USER9> I blame this on developer negligence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Kinda shocking that anything bad could happen when giving a stranger your email address and password.

</comment><comment><USER16> Typing in an E-Mail Adress and the associated password, and Giv... Wait, you did what ???

</comment><comment><USER9> the password anti-pattern strikes again!</comment>


Is Inequality Inevitable? - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-inequality-inevitable/ <comment><USER2> > It is only redistribution that sets limits on inequality.

> In a flat redistribution scheme, all those possessing wealth below the mean > would receive net funds, whereas those above the mean would pay. And > precisely because current levels of inequality are so extreme, far more > people would receive than would pay.

In their example, everyone has the same chances of winning/losing the same percentage of their wealth with every transaction and eventually the money trickles up until one entity has it all.

However, this is not how markets work. You don't spend or gain a percentage of your wealth in each transaction. It's more generally a fixed fee. Bread costs what bread costs, not k * wealth.

And, frankly, not all people are created equal. Not under the law. Not physically. Not geographically. Some people have advantages over other people. I know we'd like to ignore that, but we can't and we have to stop that.

The reality is, some people are born with disease. Some are born in the slums.

This is not _fair_ and as a society, we should have some mechanism to balance our placement in life. I say this being born with great advantages over almost everyone. I wasn't born rich or even with a father but even a single mom wasn't enough of a disadvantage to stop me from approaching the top.

I live with this ... _guilt_. Why do I deserve something better than my neighbor down the street with one leg shorter than the other? How do we mathematically quantify the fairness of that?

We don't choose our lot in life when we are born, yet we claim everyone is equal. No they are not. We might all deserve the same rights and responsibilities, but some are smarter, cuter, stronger.

Where this comes into play is: Envy. When envy grows, bullying increases. Those with more are intentionally or not, socially disadvantaged by those who have less. In fact, those who have more will find themselves producing less, retracting into the shadows to go unnoticed by those with less. We build walls around our houses.

I _am_ "privileged" so to speak. I despise that language and that social movement, but I came into the world better off and can't justify any sort of deserving it. I wear that badge with a sadness for those who have to work harder, try harder, struggle more.

I don't think there is a realistic solution except periodic wealth redistribution like the article suggests. I would give up some of mine for a better, more just world.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is an excellent article with nice thought experiments and a practical model. Key takeaways for me:

"The very first coin flip transfers money from one agent to another, setting up an imbalance between the two. And once we have some variance in wealth, however minute, succeeding transactions will systematically move a "trickle" of wealth upward from poorer agents to richer ones, amplifying inequality until the system reaches a state of oligarchy."

1) Winners can be completely determined by luck, much like in real life (and especially business). And 2) without anti-oligarchy policies, wealth accumulation to a few people is built into capitalist (or is it just scarcity- based?) systems.

"We found that this simple modification [flat tax on wealth] stabilized the wealth distribution so that oligarchy no longer resulted. And astonishingly, it enabled our model to match empirical data on U.S. and European wealth distribution between 1989 and 2016 to better than 2 percent."

So if you want to keep capitalism, but prevent utter inequality the implication is the best way is a wealth tax.</comment>