The Adulteration of Italian Olive Oil - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/01/24/opinion/food-chains-extra-virgin-suicide.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> It's good for people to be aware of this but there's so much either ignored or misrepresented as to make this almost harmful.

Fake olive oil peddlers aren't hurting themselves by peddling fake oil as the scam is as old as the olive oil industry itself. It's likely never going to go away and has been a mainstay of various criminal organizations (Sicilian mafia, etc) for longer than pretty much all of us have been alive.

What should also be pointed out is that many Americans seem to have smell/taste quality standards of EVOO completely backwards. An olive oil of desirable quality should have a strong flavor; bitter and peppery.

It's so easy to get a decent quality olive oil once you know what to look for and it doesn't at all have to be from Italy. California Olive Ranch makes good stuff that is highly price competitive with the imported Italian stuff which is always more questionable anyway.

<comment><USER3> We were in the Slovenian/Italy recently on a business trip, and on our way home my company decided we should buy some wine. So we went to this place that offered us prosciutto with olive oil to dip in.

I was told that really good olive oil would sorta... sting you in the throat if you get a decent amount of it.

And it did. It was the first time I've ever had decent/real/good olive oil.

Anyway, pretty cool. Now I'm scared of buying olive oil.

<comment><USER4> Interesting. AFAIK, it depends on the oils and from what you're telling me on the countries too. For instance, olive oil that stings in Greece is a no-no. Tell a greek that the olive oil you get in other european countries stings you in the throat and he'll most likely tell you you're getting ripped off, especially when you also take into account the price.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What do I see when I get to this page?

An olive skull and crossbones with EXTRA VIRGIN SUICIDE.

Let me scroll down so I can see more!

I hit the down arrow. Nothing happens.

I try the Page Down key. Nothing happens.

Ah, yes, I know, the keyboard doesn't always work on every website. I'll just use the scroll bar!

Hmm... No scroll bar.

Wait! Over on the right, there's a box with a triangle in it, pointing up.

It almost looks like the top arrow in a scroll bar. That's not the direction I wanted to go, but it looks like a clicky thing, so I'll try it.

Yay! The up arrow scrolls right! And I can click the up arrow again and it scrolls right again.

And now there's a left arrow angle bracket over on the left that scrolls left when I click it.

Why is one an angle bracket and the other a triangle?

Why does one point left and the other up?

This Must Mean Something.

But never mind that, at least now I understand that this page doesn't go up and down, it goes left and right, and I have a way to navigate it.

Hmm... Left and right? Maybe I can try the left and right keys? Yes indeedy, they work!

I feel like such a computer expert now.

<comment><USER6> My experience: "Hey, there are a bunch of dots at the bottom, just like my iPhone. The left one is lit up. I'll try tapping right. Oh, neat."

Honestly never even noticed the giant right arrow on the right side.

My wife (who didn't see me navigating about), within ~2 seconds of looking at the page, said she'd tap the giant arrow to go to the next page.

While I think they could certainly have done better, I don't think it's as bad as you're making it out to be.

My biggest complaint is that on mobile the pages snap in rather than sliding in as you swipe.

<comment><USER5> You're probably right, I was over-dramatizing it a bit. On a touch device I would have probably figured it out sooner too, and it didn't really take me that long to figure it out on the desktop browser.

Anyway, I figured out why I wasn't seeing a proper right arrow. It's a bug in their CSS. They're using this sprite sheet:

[http://graphics8.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2014/01/13/food- ch...](http://graphics8.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2014/01/13/food-chain- email@example.com)

This has the left and right arrow symbols at the bottom right. The left arrow is working correctly, but for the right arrow the specificity of their selectors is a bit messed up. The right arrow has a background-position that should select the bottom right corner of the sprite sheet, but this particular rule is getting overriden by a background: in a more specific selector that makes it use the top left corner (0 0) instead. And that top left corner happens to include the top of the fork-chicken's tail, which was looking like an up arrow to me.

I guess the moral of the story is if you're going to do this kind of fancy presentation, there are a lot of things that can go wrong!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Unlike many counterfeit things... as far as I can tell, this really doesn't make any difference in the end, because olive oil is all about flavor, not labels.

Good olive oil can taste hundreds of ways, just like wine -- there are even olive oil tastings. The flavor can't be counterfeited at all, so it doesn't really matter what's on the label, what country it comes from, etc. -- olive oil is all so different, it can really only be bought by taste alone. You might have 5 different olive oils in your cupboard depending on what you're using them for, but you didn't buy _any_ of them based on their label!

There's plenty of olive oil labeled extra-virgin that tastes like nothing. Is it really extra-virgin? Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, it doesn't matter, the only thing that matters is that it doesn't taste like anything. If you're looking for an oil that doesn't have any taste (which there are many uses for), and it's cheap, go ahead and buy it. (I buy super-cheap "extra-light" olive oil for frying, it tastes like nothing, maybe it's cut with soybean oil, but cooking-wise it wouldn't even matter.)

In the end, "extra-virgin" is a label that doesn't really tell you anything, there are so many other factors involved. The only people being "duped" are the people who can't tell anyways.

(I mean, obviously I don't condone counterfeit oil, I'm just saying that as far as counterfeit things go, counterfeit EVOO is probably the least problematic thing ever.)

<comment><USER8> _as far as I can tell, this really doesn 't make any difference in the end_

Unfortunately, that's not the case. When olive oil is adulterated with oils that have lower smoke points, and that adulterated oil is then used under heat, for cooking, the adulterant oils can break down and yield toxic compounds (e.g., aldehydes and hydroperoxids). [1]

EDIT: Also, as noted by a sibling comment, the Ω3:Ω6 ratios for some of the adulterant oils can be wildly different from olive oil, in sub-optimal, or even deleterious ways.

EDIT 2: And what about food allergies? Suppose someone with a hazelnut allergy buys hazelnut oil-adulterated olive oil (they're fairly similar in terms of fatty acid contents, so it's a somewhat common adulterant). Still think it doesn't make a difference?

(Also edited for tone.)

[1] [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/06/050617065306.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/06/050617065306.htm)

<comment><USER7> EVOO already has a low smoke point as far as oils are concerned, processed soy/canola/corn/etc. oil all have significantly higher smoke points.

I can't imagine a scenario where a manufacturer would be adulterating EVOO with another oil that has a _lower_ smoke point -- there just aren't any that would be make economic sense, as far as I know.

<comment><USER2> sunflower and safflower oils, the two most commonly substituted oils for olive oil (as far as counterfeiting goes), have a similar or _much lower_ smoke point than olive oil in an unrefined state. 225F, in fact. That's almost 100 degrees lower than olive oil.

<comment><USER7> If they used _unrefined_ sunflower or safflower oil, then your olive oil would wind up with a lot of flavor of those oils, since unrefined oil is very flavorful. They would seem like horrible choices for adulteration, since it would be so obvious. I mean, maybe I'm wrong, but do you have a source on that? I'm genuinely curious.

On the other hand, _refined_ sunflower and safflower oil have _higher_ smoke points than EVOO, and the flavor loss due to refining would let them blend in.

<comment><USER2> What? Safflower oil is flavorless. As for sources, there've been various articles about olive oil adulteration over the years...including one really long one from a few years ago that was popular on most aggregator sites - think it was also an NYT article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why doesn't the article name the brands that cheat? Or at least list some that don't?

<comment><USER10> There have been several articles about this previously, and even a book (I'm probably more aware of this than many HN readers since I follow several food blogs.) Here are some lists of what to buy and not buy:

[http://lifehacker.com/the-most-and-least-fake-extra- virgin-o...](http://lifehacker.com/the-most-and-least-fake-extra-virgin-olive- oil-brands-1460894373)

[http://articles.courant.com/2012-09-10/business/hc-ls- consum...](http://articles.courant.com/2012-09-10/business/hc-ls-consumer- reports-olive-oil-20120908_1_california-olive-ranch-olive-oil-extra-virgin)

Trader Joe's and Costco were two that consistently came out on top. (For what it's worth, I've been buying the Costco organic EVOO and it's been great. I'm a supertaster and can--fortunately or unfortunately--taste the difference.)

<comment><USER11> what are some food blogs you can recommend?

also, is lifehacker becoming the next about.com? seems like anyone and everyone can write for it, and i found their content to be pretty cheap these days

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Content of the article itself aside, I think this is a very well designed piece of online content. Very easy to follow and way better than some wall of text article you'd expect to see!

<comment><USER13> For me, I'd much rather read the "wall of text". I found myself wanting more depth and detail about the story.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> We have been producing organic olive oil for some years with my family.. And i can tell you that everybody in this industry knows about this shit

Adulteration of olive oil is one of the many shamefull thing that affect my country. Is one of those stories that politicians face "the italian way" = they don't do a heck till something really bad happens (like people dying)

We had this topic on news for years now.. News tv show Report talked about it with an investigation aired on Primetime on national broadcast tv in 2002.. (If you understand italian is worth watching) [http://www.report.rai.it/dl/Report/puntata/ContentItem-17eec...](http://www.report.rai.it/dl/Report/puntata/ContentItem-17eecee5-475b-44cb-9839-0177ef27d2b0.html?refresh_ce)

Yet after more than 10years we still know that this shit is still going on..

It's such a shame cos not only exporting fake olive oil damages the whole industry but also because you spread a Twisted culture on olive oil.

Like many says.. It s like wine. I ve been drinking high quality olive oil for all my life and when i get to taste some industrial "so called" extravirgin olive oil i feel like i have to throw up.

But if you think about it, olive oil adulteration it's even more important than wine, since health factors are much more at stake. We hear nutritionist say "use olive oil cos is good for your health " and they are right.. It's damn good. Some study says it's like a natural antibiotic... So you go and buy it.. But guess what If you stumble upon adulterated olive oil you get no nutritional benefits and instead you swallow far more dangerous stuff hidden in It like chems.

That's a subtle deception.. And "hell yea" is made in Italy :-(.

So my advice is be selective when you buy extra virgin olive oil from our country (but also spain, greece and france).

</comment><comment><USER15> As a random plug, I'll say that I really enjoy Lucero brand olive oil from California ([http://www.lucerooliveoil.com/](http://www.lucerooliveoil.com/)). There's pretty much no question their oil is what they say it is, you can even tour their groves and facilities if you end up in the area. And their stuff is great, I wish I could afford to keep stocked in their oil for all manner of cooking.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is an example of both very good information and also good design.

<comment><USER17> Really? I didn't personally find that the extremely simple graphics enhanced my understanding of the short and shallow paragraphs of text. It almost felt like just-pre-Idiocracy media spoon-feeding.

<comment><USER5> Well, I learned that the Carabinieri dangle from helicopters with machine guns, and charge in with flamethrowers and tanks! All with a giant bottle of olive oil in their crosshairs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I reached the 10 article limit. Usually one can remove all the cookies but after a bunch of pages and a ton of JS executing it told me I had already ready 10 articles. So how are they doing this? Some kind of super cookie?

<comment><USER19> The page pushes a token into the url. Crop it where it makes sense.

The whole extra virgin olive oil thing is weird anyway, other vegetable oils have (probably) better health profiles and a more neutral flavor profile (people aren't just buying it for their salad).

<comment><USER20> Extra virgin olive oil has a pretty great monounsaturated to polyunsaturated fat ratio and good flavor for salad dressing, eggs, sauces, meat dishes, etc. The only real downsides are low smoke point (some sources say that that means trans fat and other scary stuff can show up at the high temperatures used in stir-frying and deep-frying) and that good flavor != neutral flavor, which is sometimes preferable. Some presses of avocado oil and safflower oil have similarly great mono- to polyunsaturated fat ratios while also having high smoke points. Avocado oil tastes sort of creamy and nutty while safflower is very neutral.

<comment><USER19> I cook eggs in butter. Eggs in olive oil isn't something I enjoy. And people really are looking for neutral flavors (how else is 'extra light olive oil' a thing?).

I'm not really aware of any reason to prefer monounsaturated fats vs polyunsaturated fats (and other oils beat olive oil on unsaturated vs saturated).

<comment><USER20> Consuming monounsaturated fat is good for you. Consuming polyunsaturated fat, with the exception of omega-3, is not.

My understanding is that the polyunsaturated fat in virtually all vegetable oils are omega-6 fatty acids, which we consume way too much of relative to omega-3 fatty acids (which are also technically polyunsaturated but which are not present in any significant quantity in such cooking oils), and the huge quantities of omega-6 that almost everyone consumes is believed to increase our risk of numerous diseases, including cancer. Monounsaturated fat, the primary beneficial constituent of so-called Mediterranean diets, and especially the specific monounsaturated fat called oleic acid, is protective against cancer, reduces LDL (bad cholesterol), and possibly raises HDL (good cholesterol).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Because of this stuff, I only buy my oil at this point from makers who I personally have a connection with, and I know are selling 100% legitimate stuff (a good friend's family has an organic olive grove and press in Sicily, so I buy from that mostly now).

I'm constantly saddened by the fact that more countries don't enforce food labeling regulation, either internally or for import. The US alone could probably fix this problem really fast by banning the import of mislabeled food products with high penalties for the import of poorly labeled ones.

<comment><USER2> We've always had problems with labeling on food products where demand is vastly ahead of supply. The olive oil situation isn't nearly as bad as the honey situation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Superior EVOO qualities:

1) high (≥76%) oleic acid content (for oxidative stability); olives from different cultivars and regions can vary from 55-83% oleic acid)

2) low peroxide value (<9, and preferably <6 meq/kg)

3) high (≥350 mg/kg) total phenolics, assayed using caffeic acid equivalents, and

4) harvested not more than 12 months ago

This one is a great candidate: [http://amphoranueva.com/store/index.php?p=product&id=182](http://amphoranueva.com/store/index.php?p=product&id=182) Veronica Foods - highly trusted (and my only) source of EVOO.

</comment><comment><USER23> Here is a simple method testing whether the bottle in your kitchen is pure olive oil, or a "mixed" one.

Take the bottle and put it in the refrigerator for 24-36 hours.

If the oil solidifies, it's monounsaturated and is olive oil.

If the oil remains a liquid, it is polyunsaturated and is NOT olive oil.

This is not a scientific test, meaning, some fake will pass this, however, polyunsaturated results == fake / mixed.

</comment><comment><USER24> UC Davis and other labs will do adulteration testing including genetic testing.

[http://anlab.ucdavis.edu/olives](http://anlab.ucdavis.edu/olives)

[http://www.oliveoiltimes.com/olive-oil-basics/usda-new- tests...](http://www.oliveoiltimes.com/olive-oil-basics/usda-new-tests-for- olive-oil-adulteration/34664)

</comment><comment><USER25> Dammit, can't they list the 30% or so of brands that aren't known to be adulterated?

<comment><USER2> It's all adulterated at some point or another. Maybe things are changing with the new EU regs but there is traditionally no brand consistency. I would never buy a bottle of imported olive oil without a taste test. That pretty much necessitates going to an olive oil store (amazingly there's one 5 minutes from me in suburban South Carolina...) and not buying at your local grocer.

Or you can just get the California oils that are known to be good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Cool slideshow, nice example of a modern webpage.

But is this really what passes for journalism at the NYT now?

<comment><USER27> No, it's what passes for the web-equivalent of the newspaper graphic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I can't believe it! All around the world people buying "italian" oil, when the best is the spanish oil, with similar price, more quality and less fraud.

</comment><comment><USER29> Something about the placement of this cigar... [http://i.snag.gy/MiSuO.jpg](http://i.snag.gy/MiSuO.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER30> _Hacker_ News?

<comment><USER31> They hacked the olive oil distribution.</comment></comment>


How to network effectively on LinkedIn - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6309424146891841536/ <comment><USER2> I hope it's not 'release content as videos' because that sucks.</comment>


Nuclear fusion is on the brink of a milestone, but faces lack of funding [audio] - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-22/the-nuclear-tech-breakthrough-that-could-make-oil-obsolete <comment><USER2> This is a low-impact segment. I skipped around a lot but it's incredibly light on information. Like 20% is spent on explaining what fusion is, which is just wasted air. The only substance is a super-light overview of ITER. No mention of the couple dozen fusion startups.

>Nuclear fusion is on the brink of a major milestone

ITER is supposed to ignite in 2025 if it stays on schedule. The project is in continual jeopardy from people pulling out. Fusion is _bleak_ despite large variety in research[1]. This whole thing could be reduced to a 30 second endorsement soundbyte. Instead it's a longform that gives no actual idea of the state of fusion.

[1]: [http://fusion4freedom.us/intensive-analysis-lockheed- martins...](http://fusion4freedom.us/intensive-analysis-lockheed-martins- fusion-effort/)

<comment><USER3> Really appreciate a summary like this, even when brief. I wish people would take a cue from academia and post more abstracts/tldr's.

The 80k Hours podcast does a fantastic job at this, providing a full transcript, a summary of the key points, and a time-indexed table of contents.

[https://80000hours.org/2017/08/podcast-we-are-not-worried- en...](https://80000hours.org/2017/08/podcast-we-are-not-worried-enough-about- the-next-pandemic/)

<comment><USER4> > I wish people would take a cue from academia and post more abstracts/tldr's.

Then they get downvoted by people who think "TL;DR READ IT" is a masterful blow against everything wrong with Kids Today.

To be more serious, there's enough people who apparently regard summaries as lazy that it's hard to predict whether they'll be welcome in any given forum. Caring or not caring about downvotes aside, posting stuff that's unwelcome isn't very sociable.

<comment> tj-teej It is lazy, but only if the summaries are replacing actually reading the content.

Also a summary is only as good as it is accurate. If the piece being summarized has sufficient nuance it can't be summarized well, or is at a higher risk of being summarized incorrectly.

There's a joke here somewhere about judging a book by its cover.

<comment><USER3> Different articles are worthwhile to different people. Abstracts help people find content they are interested in, reduces incentives for clickbait and burying the lede, and focus discussion on the main points. Of course bad summaries can be bad for the discussion, but that's what downvotes and criticism is for. The same is true for normal comments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's no such thing as a single "breakthrough" in fusion, and it bugs me whenever news outlets claim it's "just around the corner" or "it just requires a genius to figure it out". Fusion is achieved by many incremental improvements on the design of the facility, the macroscopic structure of the fuel, and its material makeup.

There are two ways humans can have self-sustaining fusion. See my crappy log- log plot: [http://i.imgur.com/ZfCueCe.png](http://i.imgur.com/ZfCueCe.png)

Inertial confinement fusion starts at the red point and goes straight up without heating up the plasma much. After it stagnates for ~2-5ns, the high- pressure plasma equilibrates so its temperature rises, putting it in the fusion range. The higher the pressure, the higher the final temperature, and ideally you want to get as deep into the fusion range as possible to more efficiently burn the fuel. The state of art neutron energy yield per laser capacitor yield is around 100%, but we need at least 5000% to make up the inefficiency of charging capacitors, amplifying lasers, converting neutron kinetic energy into steam, generating electricity via turbines, and still have some left over to supply a power grid.

Magnetic confinement fusion starts at the red point and goes to the right over a few milliseconds. The pressure is always about 1 atmosphere, so you have to get really hot. Tokamaks can hold this position for a few seconds, which is needed for efficient fusion to account for the slow burning because of low pressures. I'm not sure exactly what the engineering challenges of magnetic confinement are, but I can say that storing anything that hot for a while is very damaging to the tokamak, while at the same time you must have strong and precise magnets placed around it.

There's really no other way of getting into that "fusion" area of the plot. If you try to draw a diagonal line, you wouldn't be able to keep pressurizing because high temperature makes plasma difficult to compress. You have to choose one of the above two general methods, and the design space is pretty well explored, so there's not going to be a large breakthrough that researchers have completely missed at this point. Fusion will be achieved by a sequence of 1% improvements month by month, so law makers and tax payers must understand this when they allocate X dollars and are disappointed that their grant only gave a 10% improvement on previous methods.

<comment><USER6> >There's no such thing as a single "breakthrough" in fusion...

What you're describing is incremental development. Whether or not there's an actual "breakthrough" out there is unknowable by the very nature of the word. There may be another way we can do fusion that nobody's thought of yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This talk by Zach Hartwig from IAP 2017 "MIT's Pathway to Fusion Energy" is fantastic. Hartwig is an assistant professor in the Nuclear Science & Engineering department at MIT. He presents a straightforward overview of the basic science involved as well as the most promising technologies today.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0KuAx1COEk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0KuAx1COEk)

<comment><USER8> Probably the only tech video I have watched completely in the last 12 months (I hate video--it's such a slow way to transmit information).

While it clearly is a bit of marketing for his own baby (tokamak with modern superconducting magnets), it has a lot of good technical points.

The big one being that tokamak is the _only_ fusion technology anywhere near being commercially feasible--by several orders of magnitude.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> We don't need new innovation. Nuclear fission is already here, we don't even need fusion to make oil, coal and gas obsolte.

We could mass produce Liquid Molten Salt Reactors or many other reactors with current technology, current manufacturing processes and replace all carbon we use now and fulfil the growing demand.

I simply dont understand why people continue to hope for fusion when they refuse fission.

<comment> rm_-rf_slash Weapons-grade byproducts, radiation leaks, Homer Simpson, Chernobyl, Fukushima...list goes on.

People have all sorts of deep seated fears about fission. They don't have to be accurate to be afraid.

Knowledgeable people are aware that more people have died falling off of roofs trying to install solar panels than have ever died from a nuclear power plant.

The problem is insufficient propaganda from the nuclear fission industry. The tech works fine, but people don't believe it.

<comment><USER10> Are you comparing solar installation accidents to the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters?

<comment><USER11> Why not? The point is not that a Fukushima or Chernobyl should be considered to have the same impact as falling off roofs, clearly that's not true.

The point is that the risk of death with nuclear plants isn't nearly as high as people feel it is, even when factoring in the high-profile accidents that have occurred. Right now, a lot of people have an irrationally over-inflated perception of the risk posed by nuclear power.

<comment><USER10> This is reductive. It's not reasonable to simply ignore the devastating fallout of nuclear accidents beyond human causalities.

This doesn't engage with the real world consequences of nuclear accidents that are devastating to life and the environment, long lasting and extremely expensive and complex to cleanup.

<comment><USER9> On any measure you look at nuclear is superior.

It kills less people, it uses less land, it uses less resources, it uses less mining and so on.

Areas of nuclear fallout and in protection zones are actually reclaimed by nature and animals don't give a shit about living there.

Environmentalist should love nuclear. There is that movement called 'eco- modernist' who subscribe to that.

> nuclear accidents that are devastating to life

Hardly. Most of the people that were evacuated were not in danger, devastating to their live was government action because of fear mongering.

Far more people died of the evacuation then of the radiation.

People are again living in cities near Chernobyl and their cancer rates are not unusual.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Oil isn't going anywhere any time soon. We might not use it for energy production, but it is a key ingredient in pretty much any modern technology. From plastics to asphalt. Until we can find away to synthesis or substitute it, it will be around for the foreseeable future.

<comment><USER13> Synthesizing it from organic waste is possible today. It is mostly a question of efficiency.

<comment><USER14> With really inexpensive electricity it would be trivial to manufacture synthetic hydrocarbons, or even reprocess existing stock into new forms.

The biggest barrier today is that it's more energy efficient to dig up new oil than to make it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think the point of oil is more that it's portable than that it's great for burning in power plants, we already have renewables, coal and gas and only burn oil to fill any remaining deficit.

Electric cars will kill oil more than fusion would, I think.

<comment><USER16> I suspect that if viable fusion power plants become a reality today we will be burning synthesized hydrocarbon fuel for centuries to come. There is vast hydrocarbon fuel infrastructure in place already. If it costs a few cents to synthesise oil from air because you have hyper abundant fusion energy on hand then it would be silly to throw away the infrastructure we have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've been watching Isaac Arthur's interesting youtube channel recently. He points out that fusion is really nice, but is not actually necessary since we have the sun. If you think "dyson swarm" big, you can capture all of the energy you could ever need from the sun, and without the need for any particularly advanced technology.

[https://futurism.com/could-humanity-ever-really-build-a- dyso...](https://futurism.com/could-humanity-ever-really-build-a-dyson- sphere/)

So what can you do with abundant energy? One thing is to make "active" structures like launch loops. This would allow you to make buildings larger than would be possible with normal materials (but your building collapses if there is a power failure).

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

<comment><USER6> You can't build "dyson swarm big" without a whole lot of cheap energy, though. It's a chicken and egg problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Nuclear fusion has been "on the brink of a milestone" for my entire lifetime. I think I can be forgiven a certain skepticism. Reading about ITER's troubles in detail over the years, I've come to believe that there is a mechanism where fusion can self-assemble, stabilize, and produce a continuous, reliable usable feed of energy at scale, only occasionally resulting in catastrophic failure. It's called a "star." Attempting to stabilize and contain the process and exploit the process at a smaller scale honestly does not seem feasible to me at this point.

</comment><comment><USER19> There's portability+density issue with renewable or even free electric. You cant run planes, trains, ships, heavy industry, heavy haulers, etc om battery. And thats where the lions share of fossil is burnt.

<comment><USER20> Trains are easy to run on electricity. Heavy industry? Surely that's mostly static.

Transport is 26% of world energy usage, oil is 31% of world energy source.

[https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=23832](https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=23832) says that 12% of energy use for transport is air, 12% ships. So probably 75% of transport energy usage could be replaced by electricity. So about 75% of oil usage could be replaced easily.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm not really qualified to assess this piece, which suggests the brass ring isn't what it seems in any case:

[http://thebulletin.org/fusion-reactors-not-what- they%E2%80%9...](http://thebulletin.org/fusion-reactors-not-what- they%E2%80%99re-cracked-be10699)

</comment><comment><USER22> I look forward to my fusion powered self driving car that uses a quantum computer to run a fully realized AI.

</comment><comment><USER23> nuclear fusion is always 10 years away.

<comment><USER24> Fusion progress chart:

[http://imgur.com/BN0pz](http://imgur.com/BN0pz)

<comment><USER25> Extrapolating this graph (whose last data point is approximately 1998), we should expect a commercial reactor very soon--perhaps in about 2005.

<comment><USER14> Looks like there were some setbacks, but these things happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Are they talking about inertially confined fusion or magnetically confined fusion (OR something else)? Cant listen to the podcast at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER27> Nuclear tech breakthrough or not, oil as fuel is sooner than later going to be obsolete.

</comment><comment><USER28> Can we mark this [podcast] or something like that? It's not an article that can be read.

<comment><USER29> Yes. We use [audio] for that by analogy with [video]. Added.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Its always the same story: "We're on the brink of X, but we need more money." where X is:

\- a cure for cancer (one of the oldest and still working), a testable string theory, nuclear fusion, genetic engineering, flying cars, a cure for AIDS, for addiction, for cellulite, or for that fungus that's been festering in your crotch for 10 years now, [insert your favorite here], ..., etc.

Never, never, never will you hear:

"We've got enough money, please don't send more!"

or

"We have the solution, it has been validated by an independent group and it works! You can get it today!"

Which reminds me of an old joke:

Bob: "Hey, didja hear? They finally found a cure for marital infidelity!"

Fred: "You don't say? What is it?"

Bob: "Nudity!"

<comment><USER31> A hell of a lot more people survive cancer now than 50 years ago.

Make the same list 100 years ago or 100 years from now and it's a different list... Because progress happens, some things are just more complex than SV style innovation and this weeks next big thing.

<comment><USER30> What do you mean by "survive"?

My experience is that no one survives a confirmed diagnosis of cancer. By "survive" _I_ mean that their life is unaffected and they die of something else and that their death is not sped by cancer.

Oh, there's the occasional "miracle" out there, but no one's paying attention to potential false positive diagnoses (i.e., person was diagnosed with cancer, is treated, later turns out to not be cancer at all, he's a "miracle", thank you Jesus, thank you Lord!)

<comment><USER31> Your redefining the term. If someone survives a car crash they may have suffered massive trauma they are just not dead.

The odds of being alive 20 years after a cancer diagnosis are not nearly as bad is you might think. Around 2x as many people are diagnosed with cancer every year as die from it.

<comment><USER30> I'm asking you how you define "survive" and you haven't answered. Sounds like you're using the usual "5-year survival" of cancer research which means that, 5 years later, the person still has a heartbeat.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Systemd port for OpenBSD - <AUTHOR> https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-ports&m=150152452217481 <comment><USER2> Needs better documentation.

It is very hard to configure the built-in DHCP client inside systemd, that I'd had to turn it off and start up `dhclient` instead.

</comment><comment><USER3> The full tgz is 827 bytes, so it looks like a just joke submission to reserve the namespace.

EDIT: it's a pony (figured it out on my Android phone)

<comment><USER4> Positively a joke. From Makefile:

      COMMENT = init replacement that does not suck

      MAINTAINER = Lennart Poettering <email@example.com>

      # if you redistribute this you have to give your first born to Lennart

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Upvoting to see who replies before checking the attached archive.</comment>


With So Many Eyeballs, Is Open Source Security Better? - <AUTHOR> https://www.esecurityplanet.com/applications/is-open-source-security-better.html <comment><USER2> Yes, assuming you create a bug bounty and/or easy ways for people to submit bugs. Challenge people to find bugs and they will. Many people love puzzles. Some people love to find your mistakes. Thick skin is a requirement. :-)</comment>


London bans cars for a day in the fight against air pollution - <AUTHOR> https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/london-bans-cars-for-a-day-in-the-fight-against-air-pollution-npr5jtts5 <comment><USER2> The Great Smog of London in 1952 was a 4 day smog that potentially killed 12,000 people. [1]

Today things are much better but living in pretty much any city around the world means that you will exposed to higher pollution.

Reading the stats like below [2], it's always shocking to me that all politicians who live in cities aren't demanding change.

" Worldwide ambient air pollution accounts for:

        29% of all deaths and disease from lung cancer
        17% of all deaths and disease from acute lower respiratory infection
        24% of all deaths from stroke
        25% of all deaths and disease from ischaemic heart disease
        43% of all deaths and disease from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease"

It's good that developments like electric cars, trains etc, mean that power generation can be centralized. Since even a fuel burning plant is more efficient than a car's engine.

And there's the ability to use things like wind, tidal, nuclear, geothermal generation.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_London](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_London) [2] [https://www.who.int/airpollution/ambient/health- impacts/en/](https://www.who.int/airpollution/ambient/health-impacts/en/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I agree with trying to reduce the number of cars in a city is a great goal for congestion, safety and pollution.

BUT

Has anyone seen what it costs to get around on the tube? Or the ASTRONOMICAL costs of train tickets if you live just outside the capital?

It costs me £8 to park my electric car in London and perhaps 40-60 minutes to drive there. A train takes 30 minutes but costs almost £30 for a return ticket. How is that reasonable? That ticket for 'public' transport is a huge chunk of ones salary; and that's not even adding the cost of the tube into the equation.

<comment><USER4> Aren't there far cheaper options for regular commuters? Here in Berlin, a single one-way ticket is €2.60, but a monthly is around €80. That's less than a euro per ride for the average person that commutes by subway and uses it for some other trip every second day.

Trains are, unfortunately, rather expensive, at least compared to flying and to taking a car you already own. I believe fuel and vehicle taxes should increase to the point where they pay for most if not all of road construction costs. Contrary to popular opinion, large parts of those costs are currently financed from general taxation.

Because tracks and stations make up the bulk of the cost of train rides, increases in ridership have low marginal costs. Any move to get people to use trains would therefore tend to lower per-trip costs.

<comment><USER5> Having lived in Berlin and now living in London I asked the same.

The monthly ticket that is very common in Germany either doesn't exist here or is ridiculously expensive. Even if you go by tube on a daily basis you are better off paying for each trip.

<comment><USER6> That's not true - season tickets are definitely cheaper than pay as you go if you travel every day.

e.g. Annual Travelcards give you 12 months travel for the price of ten and a half.

[https://tfl.gov.uk/fares/how-to-pay-and-where-to-buy- tickets...](https://tfl.gov.uk/fares/how-to-pay-and-where-to-buy-tickets-and- oyster/travelcards-and-group-tickets)

<comment><USER7> Annual tickets are barely worth it if you just take the tube, not buses, and don't use it at weekends. Single fare prices were frozen by the mayor, but travelcards were not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Already demonstrated to dramatically drop pollution on e.g. Ride100 days when large sections of London are car free.

2017 Ride100, [https://cyclingindustry.news/air-quality-sees-drastic- improv...](https://cyclingindustry.news/air-quality-sees-drastic-improvement- alongside-ridelondon-route/)

2018 Marathon, [https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/london-marathon- figur...](https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/london-marathon-figures-show- massive-89-per-cent-drop-in-air-pollution-a3821566.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> There's a self-build TV show in the UK called 'Grand Designs' that had a great episode[0] whereby their children were suffering badly with allergies (even being hospitalised at times). They stayed within London (albeit moving to a slightly better area for pollution) but built their house with filtered air systems and low VOC products in mind - and their children's symptoms improved dramatically.

It's concerning how big of a role air pollution seems to be playing, considering it doesn't seem to be a mainstream concern.

[0] - [https://www.homesandproperty.co.uk/home- garden/interiors/des...](https://www.homesandproperty.co.uk/home- garden/interiors/design-news/grand-designs-healthy-house-built-for-kids-with- lifethreatening-allergies-is-a-wakeup-call-for-all-a124476.html)

<comment><USER10> Wouldn't it be better for a) their children and b) the environment (extra materials being used in the house) if they just moved out of London?

<comment><USER4> High-density urban living is far better for the environment than rural. People usually live in less space, and with far less outside surfaces, reducing energy usage for heating and cooling. Distance to work, shopping, and other destinations is shorter, and use of public transport is far higher. Far less land is wasted on manicured single-family lawns rarely used. Density also allows sharing of rarely used manufactured goods between a neighbors or via renting (power tools, washing machines, even cars).

<comment><USER11> Related podcast:

[https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2018/11/12/epis...](https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2018/11/12/episode-22-joe- walston-on-conservation-urbanization-and-the-way-we-live-on-earth/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was thinking of running one of these in our garden - just to get an idea of how bad it is

[https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/pms5003-particulate- matte...](https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/pms5003-particulate-matter- sensor-with-cable#description)

<comment><USER13> I don't think it's that bad in your garden... I ran a foobot at home when we had our son. Air quality in the house was good a mile or two from central london and a few hundred meters from a big road. Looking at the pollution maps the pollution is extremely concentrated along big roads and even a short distance (10s of meters) away it's not so bad.

<comment><USER14> When we lived in the centre of Edinburgh (which probably isn't even that polluted compared to London) I was amazed at how dirty the white paintwork on windows would get in relatively short time periods.

Now we live out in a rural area and its very noticeable how cleaner windows and paintwork are - the same also applies to our lungs!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It will be worth taking a snapshot of a Sunday via [https://www.londonair.org.uk/LondonAir/nowcast.aspx](https://www.londonair.org.uk/LondonAir/nowcast.aspx) and comparing to the no car day.

It's a shame a week day was not selected, but it would be a bigger shame to have this be a once a year promotional day rather than part of a learning exercise towards reduced pollution in London.

Another link of note would be [https://cleanair.london/](https://cleanair.london/) which brings together many of the resources that document the current air quality and either proposes or tracks the policies that may address it.

</comment><comment><USER16> It's always interesting/concerning when I blow my nose after a day in London: there is a lot of black residue in the snot.

apologies for the disgusting picture

<comment><USER17> This especially true if you take the tube, and heavily varies depending on the line.

Victoria line and Nothern lines are especially bad. If you stand at one hand of the platform, you can see some weird "mist" when looking at the opposite side. That's just a high concentration of PM2.5 and PM10, and that's what causes the black snot.

It's been shown the pollution level in the tube is 30 times worst than the worst street in london. [1]

I moved out of the centre of london and commute by train partly for that reason. Life's short, let's not make it shorter.

[1]: [https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/jan/09/london- under...](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/jan/09/london-underground- air-pollution-report-concerns-northern-line-particulates)

<comment><USER18> The problem is cleaning. It doesn't happen. Compare how your former communist country tube stations look compared to what there is in London.

The whole lot has to be spotlessly clean for it to work, in London they clean the seats on the trains and do the maintenance work there, but the actual tunnels get cleaned once in a blue moon. The whole thing needs to be polished and polish-able. London Underground isn't built like that.

A fair amount of the dirt is from the streets above, so tyres that wear to also wear the road surfaces, that sort of cruft gets drawn all the way down into the Underground.

As for actual pollution levels then this depends on where you are on the network. TfL don't measure enough to give a heatmap of pollution, updated hourly. Your statistic from the Guardian sounds about right, generally speaking though the particulates are at 10x the EU max levels.

In a communist style country you could have an army of people polishing the tube stations and the tunnels as part of some National Service. But, in a Western Democracy where everyone has to pay a four figure sum for rent + travel no matter how they try and mix it, this isn't going to happen.

They have tried to create magic sweeper trains to hoover everything up but it hasn't been a success. Really that is what is needed as well as the trains being built to 'hoover as they go', using the air-con to filter out all the cruft.

<comment><USER19> No, the problem is ventilation. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground_cooling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground_cooling)

In eastern europe we have very effective ventilation - for number of reasons, one of them is that it was built much later, the other is that some of the station were built to serve as a nuclear shelter so they had to have very safe ventilation systems...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Around the same time as Madrid stops its low emission zone: [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/18/madrid-new- rig...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/18/madrid-new-rightwing- council-suspends-low-emissions-zone)

<comment><USER21> what even is the motivation for stopping something like that? article describes it as very successful. so sad.

<comment><USER22> Was it actually popular?

<comment><USER23> Yep.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm going to be honest, London's pollution can be felt (and seen) in one's airways. And it's a bit "different" than other polluted cities.

I don't know why is it so severe. Old cars? Trucks/Buses? Factories? High humidity?

</comment><comment><USER25> Although it demonstrably reduces pollution levels, I don't see it go much further. Too many of us are obviously willing to pay _any_ price for the ability to sit in our own tin can while producing smog and traffic jams. Even when not in use, cars are a massive waste of space that clogs our cities. Until we find something that's at the same time ridiculously much cheaper, less wasteful and less toxic, we _will_ stay stuck, clogged, jammed and suffocating.

</comment><comment><USER26> "Car Free Day on Sunday, 22 September 2019"

[https://londoncarfreeday.com/](https://londoncarfreeday.com/)

Couldn't find the date on the paywalled site.

<comment><USER27> Thanks, I was looking for it for ages

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> The amount of political posturing and grandstanding which goes in London is simply over the top. There are too many politicians seeking attention for dubious causes.

The fact is that pollution in the 70s and 80s was much worse and we are still living here. Traffic in London has greatly reduced over the years.

So where are these pollution concerns coming from? The amount eco posturing is just way over the top.

<comment><USER29> Pollution concerns are coming from an improved understanding how air pollution affects people. We also used to put asbestos in everything and eventually stopped doing that even though people weren't dropping like flies.</comment></comment>


Company upgrades the entire internet to web 2.0 standards (really!) - <AUTHOR> http://www.mywebtoo.ws/

<comment><USER2> When I first saw the title I thought it might be an app that added various AJAX-effects and gradients/betatags to websites and images.

Sort of like <http://pornolize.com>, just Web 2.0.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> this is so ludicrous it's genius. i'd almost think it's a parody, except it's clearly a scam. can anyone wrap their head around 'upgrading the entire internet to web 2.0'?</comment>


The Elevator Deal Protocol - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpE_xMRiCLE

<comment><AUTHOR> I know I'm totally guilty editorializing the subject line, and worse, adding an unnecessary submission when a comment in the other thread might do, but having a sense of humor makes life more enjoyable.

I'll never have any first-hand experience dealing with investors, yet from all the horror stories I've read, the "Elevator Deal Protocol" is how I've always envisioned it. The "Handshake Deal Protocol" seems like a vast improvement.</comment>


Virgin's Sir Richard Branson turns stewardess after losing bet - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-22499827

<comment><USER2> Something tells me (crazy guy that he is) that Branson was all to eager to lose this bet. ;)</comment>


Native iOS Surveys from json definitions. Many question types, skip logic etc. - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/recoveryrecord/SurveyNative <comment><USER2> I've been looking for something like this and didn't want to embed Qualtrics/Survey Monkey in a WebView. It doesn't have all the question types we need but looks quite straight forward to add them.</comment>


On the death of my family's dairy farm - <AUTHOR> https://blog.abevoelker.com/2019-03-06/on-the-death-of-my-familys-dairy-farm/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is the blog post I mentioned I was working on in an HN comment[1] from a couple of months ago about dairy farms that got some traction. Unfortunately it took me a couple months to finish rather than a couple weeks.

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18942467](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18942467)</comment>


Guide to NumPy (2006) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://csc.ucdavis.edu/~chaos/courses/nlp/Software/NumPyBook.pdf <comment><USER2> Note that this book is from 2006, and the PDF file was last modified in 2007. I'd guess that NumPy has changed quite a bit over the last decade.

<comment><USER3> The 2nd edition was published in 2015: [https://www.amazon.com/Guide-NumPy- Travis-Oliphant-PhD/dp/15...](https://www.amazon.com/Guide-NumPy-Travis- Oliphant-PhD/dp/151730007X)</comment></comment>


Faster than Bresenham's Algorithm? (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://hbfs.wordpress.com/2009/07/28/faster-than-bresenhams-algorithm/

<comment><USER3> Using fixed point for drawing lines rather than Bresenham's is nothing new.

The thing is that Bresenham is resolution-independent. If the registers used have enough width to represent the coordinates of the entire display, then the line will be drawn correctly. The error term that is propagated through the loop is always precisely correct. There is no cumulative error from using approximations.

You can think of Bresenham's as being like fixed point, but with a variable denominator for the error term which depends on the specific delta. For instance if we are drawing 600 across (x) and 450 up (y), then the error term is basically an accumulator to which we add 450. Whenever it goes over 600, we subtract 600, and increment y. (Okay, so it is not like fixed point but in fact exact rational math. The error term accumulates numerators, which are compared to the denominator.)

We could represent the same approximately with a fixed point number, but that pins us to a denominator. If we have, say, 8 bits of fractional precision, then we work in multiples of 1/256\. Now 450/600 is precisely 3/4, and so we are lucky in this case: 3/4 is a multiple of 1/256: the denominator is a power of two, and so we can step the x coordinate by 1, and the y coordinate by 3/4\. The "staircase" will be the same as under Bresenham's.

Suppose delta is <453,599>. Bresenham's still deals with this precisely. 453 is added to the error term, and 599 subtracted when it blows past 599. Yet, 599 is a prime, and 453/599 has no exact representation in fixed point. The best we can do is add more bits of precision to minimize the cumulative error. If the display is on the order of 1000x1000 and we go down to 1/65535 sub- pixel precision in our fixed-point coordinates, maybe there is no noticeable artifact.

</comment><comment><USER4> I spent a few days during the last Christmas holidays to create a fast line renderer for an old 8-bit home computer with a 1.75MHz Z80 CPU and a video memory layout that groups 8 horizontal pixels into one byte. I also started with a generic 'put_pixel' subroutine, but that was way too slow no matter what the outer code looked like, because the video memory address had to be computed every time anew, and a pixel could only be set through a read-modify- write (read byte from video memory, set a bit, and write the byte back).

I ended up with an unrolled loop for 8 horizontal pixels and self-modifying code which jumped into this loop similar to a Duff's Device, and at each increment in y a pixel-mask byte was xor'ed into video memory, and a new jump- position into the pixel-loop was computed for the next 8-pixel-mask.

This was even fast enough for rendering a (distorted) 3D wireframe cube: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8kxJLUParo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8kxJLUParo)

The line rendering code is here (I'm sure there's even more optimized 8-bit code out there): [https://github.com/floooh/kc85sdk/blob/master/test/line.s](https://github.com/floooh/kc85sdk/blob/master/test/line.s)

</comment><comment><USER5> This brings back memories - Dr. Bresenham was my graphics instructor. We drew lines & circles - lots of them. :)

But the most important thing I learned in his class was that having a well- sorted-out compiler is more important than the choice of language. Most of the class used Borland Turbo Pascal for their projects (it was up to version 5 by that point, I think). I wanted to learn C, and with his approval I used their new version 1.0 Turbo C compiler. What I found was that the Pascal code, with no heroic coding efforts, ran 3-4 times faster than the supposedly "closer to the metal" C.

<comment><USER3> I was a maverick at university; I used Bresenham's to draw hyperbolas. I had this idea that since hyperbolas are related to 1/z, maybe the approach could be used for scan-converting textures through a perspective transform, but never developed it farther.

<comment><USER6> Ah, that's an interesting idea.

We might say that Bresenham's Algorithm is not really about drawing lines; it's about doing a best-possible discrete approximation to linear interpolation, using integer arithmetic.

And since we can easily[1] change that line to any conic section we want, we should be able to use a variation on B's Alg. to do a perspective-correct interpolation, right?

Sounds good to me. However, as perhaps you were, I'm too lazy[2] right now to work out the details. :-)

\</comment></comment></comment><comment>--

[1] For certain values of "easy".

[2] Or perhaps "too _busy_ ". That sounds a bit better, doesn't it?

<comment><USER3> I was pulled in so many different directions, and basically stopped hacking on computer graphics.

I guessed that the downfall of the approach would be the iterations spent on the same pixel value in a texture, when, so to speak, Bresenham is "going vertical": marching through Y values while treading on the same X. If X is the texture space, it's wasteful. While rasterizing, it really behooves us to just map backwards from screen pixels, get the color value and move on. On the other hand, the approach could do anti-aliasing: average those values being tread over. That is usually solved with mipmapping, though: pre-filtered textures at multiple resolutions. Again: no iterative work per display pixel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This matches results I got in the 90s on a 486DX2 - fixed point math was faster than Bresenham's even when both were implemented in ASM (and both gained significant speedup comparing to their C/Pascal implementation I used as a prototype for ASM code). You could use Bresenham's idea even for bitmap rescaling (if you understand the idea, you can probably use it in many rational-number iterative algorithms), and x86/DOS allowed you to overwrite instructions in code segment in case you ran short on registers (hint - <USER2> MOV XX, [constant] and then overwrite CS:[constant offset] with the value needed in one of the inner loops). Nowadays nobody would use these though as nobody likes non-antialiased lines anymore.

<comment><USER8> > Nowadays nobody would use these though as nobody likes non-antialiased lines > anymore.

Basic, aliased line drawing still has value on low resolution embedded devices that don't need 21st century display capabilities.</comment></comment>


Will Silicon Valley remain the best hub of tech in the next 10 years? - <AUTHOR> I want to move to the valley as its the hub of tech. Costs are high and moving to the US is difficult. Will US remain the hub of tech in the next 10 years? Do we have other options like Singapore? <comment><USER2> _(Disclosure: I live in SF Bay area with a bias towards it 's long-term success)_

It's difficult to predict anything 10 years out.

But when projecting industry trends within a geography I look to Financial Services (FS) as a comparable.

Both Tech and FS sell "virtual goods and services" with a distribution model that does not necessarily lock them down to a location.

But even after the great depression of 1929 and repeated stock market collapses, New York is _still_ a major FS hub.

So, it's really the people and local supporting infrastructure in a region that keep an industry going; not the distribution model.

I assume Silicon Valley will remain a leading tech hub in both consumer and enterprise tech in 10 years. The supporting infra is taken for granted.

Same thing can similarly be said about L.A. and the movie making business. Nothing prevents other locations from making movies, but it's hard to beat a century of built-up supporting infrastructure.

<comment><USER3> >"But even after the great depression of 1929 and repeated stock market collapses, New York is still a major FS hub."

I don't think that a very good indicator. There is a difference between the tech industry and financial services. Financial services depend on markets that have a well known and established opening and closing time. In the US the markets are very much tied to 9:30AM to 4:00PM in the Eastern time zone.

How would that work if Wall Street were to move to US Central Time or Pacific Time? Would workers be expected to get up in the middle of the night?

<comment><USER4> > I don't think that a very good indicator. There is a difference between the > tech industry and financial services. Financial services depend on markets > that have a well known and established opening and closing time. In the US > the markets are very much tied to 9:30AM to 4:00PM in the Eastern time zone.

That hasn't really been the case for quite some time. A majority of option and equity trading now happens directly rather than on open exchanges and is thus immune to "market hours". Forex is 24 hour. And London is still the finance powerhouse despite not being in the largest economy (and not being in the Euro, but manages the vast majority of Euro bond trading) and in fact being in a country the rest of whose economy is a basket case.

But physical propinquity still matters, it seems, for the human intangibles.

<comment><USER3> >"That hasn't really been the case for quite some time. A majority of option and equity trading now happens directly rather than on open exchanges and is thus immune to "market hours"

Its not just the actual exchanges like the NYSE or NASDAQ but all of the other participants - the investment banks, the hedge funds, the ratings agencies, the analysts, the financial press. Following the sun, the day breaks first on the East Coast in the U.S. So yes while it could move to Boston, Mass, Charlotte, N.C. or back to Philadelphia where incidentally it was before Wall Street its probably limited to the boundaries of the Eastern Time Zone in U.S.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think without a doubt it will remain the best tech hub in the world.

The change that may occur is that Silicon Valley, while remaining in the lead, will see its centrality diminished by the emergence of decentralized funding using ERC20 tokens, aka the token sale model, which is quickly approaching traditional venture capital volumes [1].

I don't believe this would hurt SV's economy, as the decline in funding friction, while having very geographically distributed direct benefits, will have the second order effect of expanding the tech sector, and with it, tech companies operating in sectors not currently amenable to these new nontraditional enterprise structures and funding models.

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

</comment><comment><USER6> What will be the underlying factors?

\+ The move towards more embodied intelligent machines, be it home automation systems, internet of things, autonomous cars, or robots, makes it likely that location is still gonna be important and we will still see hubs indeed. Remote work for software is one thing, for hardware or hybridware it's more difficult.

\+ Ten years might not be long from a technical point of view, but this is about people migrating to other places. Population dynamics might not as fast- paced as tech.

\+ One thing is inevitable: a financial downtime between now and then. How the Valley will react, depends... It means fewer venture-backed new vultures on the market, a less crazy search for personnel, etc.

\+ Economies of scale will always apply. High densities of companies, people, universities, homes, and other entities, will lead to higher and higher productivity. If you really want to compete with the Valley you'll have to work on these metrics as a region. Check [https://www.citylab.com/life/2012/12/why-denser-cities- are-s...](https://www.citylab.com/life/2012/12/why-denser-cities-are-smarter- and-more-productive/4049/).

</comment><comment><USER7> A great analogy might be the biotech industry. The Bay Area was dominant for most of the first 30 years. Much of the original research was done at UCSF and Genentech was the first biotech company.

SF is still doing well, but it's no longer #1 when it comes to biotech VC dollars. That title goes to Boston now. And I can say that working in the industry, Boston has much more buzz when it comes to biotech than SF at this point.

<comment><USER8> Where does San Diego fall in that list? Just curious.

<comment><USER7> San Diego used to be a hot-spot for Biotech. Back in the early 2000's, nearly every major biopharma company had a site in San Diego.

Most of them closed. Pfizer still has some R&D there. There are a couple mid- sized biotechs there, but it's be a rough last few years. Similar to Seattle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> To provide more of a direct answer, I think that Shenzhen has really great long-term prospects as a tech/innovation hub. Very large number of investors, existing and large tech/innovation/industry cluster (consumer electronics), and long-term government incentives. You can already start to see the momentum building. I've seen major changes since first doing business there (Feb 2012) and even over the past ~2years that I've lived there.

However, the prospects of moving there are not significantly better than the US. China is opening up new classes of visas and making certain business licenses more accessible, but my general impression from being in the ecosystem and talking with locals and foreigners is that it's difficult to get a sustainable business off the ground. The immigration situation (if that is a goal) is bleak.

</comment><comment><USER10> The boom in Silicon Valley is largely because of the internet. This has resulted in much of the world connecting and becoming capable of equal economic input/output - therefore the next "place like Silicon Valley" could ironically be anywhere and everywhere, since information is now far less exclusive.

</comment><comment><USER11> 10 years is not too long. You should think about what you think are game changers in the next 10 years. I think self-driving cars, on-demand everything, VR, crypto-currencies, video will be the future. Thus, Silicon Valley is unlikely to be dethroned.

</comment><comment><USER12> It seems like the local governments are intentionally inflating housing prices which I think will end up driving companies out of town. I know I sure as hell don't want to move there.

</comment><comment><USER13> The VCs are the driving force I would say...

</comment><comment><USER14> These things should spread.

</comment><comment><USER15> Singapore? Really? LoL The culture there is cheap the only good thing here is the tax

<comment><USER16> Agreed. I did my research and SG is not sustainable for my vertical (data science)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> i live in Phoenix, AZ and tech start ups and companies are relocating here and somewhere I hear that Phoenix will be the next Silicon Valley and tech hub

<comment><USER17> oh and cost of living is not that high either :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Hard to predict based on Trump alone.

<comment><USER19> It's important to be substantive if you raise a political point. Otherwise it's just Trump graffiti.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> You could consider Silicon Beach (Los Angeles) instead. Rents are cheaper and google and snapchat are located there.

<comment><USER21> Google's headquarters are located in Mountain View (Silicon Valley). They have satellite offices all over the world, so the presence of one in LA doesn't really support your point.</comment></comment>


The Meaning of Life Is Absurd - <AUTHOR> https://moretothat.com/the-meaning-of-life-is-absurd/ <comment><USER2> Some of the cartoons, like the ones showing thought bubbles and multiple perspectives, are quite appropriate. I appreciated this post.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - appreciate that. It sucks that this post has been flagged though, despite there being no guideline violations or anything of that sort.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Say what one will about the man, but at least Nietzsche didn't demand a happy ending.

</comment><comment><USER4> The heat death of universe is true based on current state of our understanding. Nothing says that it won't change in next million years - that's a monumentally long time in exponential rate of human progress.

We've been wrong about a lot of things in the past and if people had made up their mind about the meaning of life before Kepler, we would have thought that we are the center of the solar system. Therefore, we are the most important thing in the Universe.

Not knowing something is a boon - it rallies optimism that one day we will find what that unknown thing is. Religion does the opposite - not knowing something is replaced by faith and god.

Meaning of life - my personal opinion - is to lead a good life, help humans understand mother nature, how she really works, and give back to the world before we are turned into dust. That's the purpose and I am content with it.

<comment> cc-d >The heat death of universe is true based on current state of our understanding. Nothing says that it won't change in next million years - that's a monumentally long time in exponential rate of human progress. >We've been wrong about a lot of things in the past and if people had made up their mind about the meaning of life before Kepler, we would have thought that we are the center of the solar system. Therefore, we are the most important thing in the Universe.

If you were making the argument that the universal rate of expansion isn't necessarily static, I'd perhaps agree with you (there is evidence this functioned differently in the early universe). The 2nd law of thermodynamics on the other hand, which is what will lead to universal heat death, is extremely unlikely to be variable.

Without the 2nd law of thermodynamics, the universe would be so radically different that it would be effectively an entirely new universe at that point.

<comment><USER4> Yea, I agree with you except for the fact that in just last 100 years we have tremendous changes in the way we understand the universe. In last 400 years, even more so.

Think about the timeline in terms of a million years from now. I cannot fathom to speak for the truth of what we know today, despite of evidence which may be proven otherwise in the future. That's how science works.

Obviously, I have no proof, but I hope you can acknowledge the magnitude of the time difference and our rate of progress.</comment></comment></comment>


China Deploys Missiles on Disputed Island in South China Sea - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/china-deploys-missiles-on-disputed-island-in-south-china-sea-1455684150 <comment><USER2> It looks like the dictator/autocratic states in Asia (Russia/China) with its economy collapsing, is resorting to territorial aggression against neighboring countries in order to get resources and get people to look away from its collapse. China exports fall 11.2% in January, imports down 18.8% [http://www.cnbc.com/2016/02/14/china-releases-trade-data- for...](http://www.cnbc.com/2016/02/14/china-releases-trade-data-for-january- yuan-denominated-and-us-dollar-imports-and-exports.html). Russia's ruble collapses to lowest level, with "Inflation reached 12.5% in 2015 while real wages kept dropping, leaving many people much worse off." ever[http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/20/investing/russia-ruble- recor...](http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/20/investing/russia-ruble-record-low/)

With Russia bumping against all of Europe, and China bumping against Japan/Korea/Taiwan/Vietnam/Malaysia/Indonesia/Phillipines, this is going to be bad for world stability.

<comment><USER3> There are several other border disputes, especially between China and India:

[https://www.facebook.com/notes/tarek-fatah/chinas-border- dis...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/tarek-fatah/chinas-border-disputes- with-18-countries-imperialism-or-expansionist-designs/10153551812290247/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> BBC has before-and-after satellite photos: [http://www.bbc.com/news/world- asia-china-35592988](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-35592988)

</comment><comment><USER5> In case anyone did't get the "disputed" part, Vietnam occupies most of South China Sea islands especially in the 70s and 80s around Sino-Vietnam war. China (actually Republic of China) claimed them earliest but didn't occupy.

<comment><USER6> It's disputed because 3 countries claim ownership of the the island as it's within their "territorial" (with the exception of Taiwan which claims it because it's still pretends to represent "real China") waters.

China pretty much made claim to all of the waters it's claim extends as far as the shore lines of Malaysia.

China also extends it's claim over waters outside of the immediate territorial waters by building artificial islands so far only within the 200 n/M of their exclusive economic zone which it claims extends it's coastal waters even further (this isn't exactly the case for this specific island (it's land mass was artificially extended, and a large harbor was built) but an important background point for the entire dispute).

So far countries have refrained from militarizing the islands too much sure they might post a couple of sailors here and there but this is a long rang air defense system capable of shooting down aircraft as far as 400km away, this is basically an S-300/400 [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-400_(missile)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-400_\(missile\))] "copy" with a much more advanced radar and better interceptors by all counts.

<comment><USER7> S-400 long range capability is mostly theoretical, as there's no stock of the 40N6 missile capable of it. Especially doubtful in case of China, given the secondary nature of their missile technology.

<comment><USER6> China builds their own interceptors so the availability of Russian stockpiles isn't relevant, they've both deployed and conducted real world tests on multiple interceptors beyond the initial 200 KM range that the system went into service with including having improved interceptors that can counter ballistic missiles and satellites[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Chinese_anti- satellite_mi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Chinese_anti- satellite_missile_test)].

<comment><USER7> That has nothing to do with S-400. The satellite interceptor was a modified ballistic missile.

<comment><USER6> By all accounts it was a modified HQ-9 interceptor which was piggybacked on a short/medium range ballistic missile (mostly because of the high inclination of the test satellite, which might mean it's quite likely to be potentially capable of reaching LEO VISINT satellites which pass over the interceptor on it's own).

Chinese source: [http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_49e4b637010007hi.html](http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_49e4b637010007hi.html) I don't speak Chinese but it seems to translate rather well.

<comment><USER7> Any space faring nation has technology to intercept LEO satellites. That doesn't mean a tricked out ICBM has any use in intercepting manuvering fighter jet.

The original HQ-9 interceptor is stated to have 200km slant range, just as the Russian missile it was faithfully copied from.

<comment><USER6> The ICBM didn't hit the missile the HQ-19 interceptor did, and no not every space capable nation can shoot down a satellite look how many decades it took the US to being able to do achieve that.

And yes I said that the system initially was deployed with a range of about 200KM but they have made improvements since: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HQ-9#Variants](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HQ-9#Variants)

Most SAM's have different profiles and interceptors that cover targets with different capabilities this quite often limits their range, you can argue about the exact range and operational ceiling for the interceptors in question all day long it still doesn't change the fact that China has deployed one of the most sophisticated SAM's currently in operation on and island that they might not have full legal claim for which can threaten quite a big chunk of the air traffic over the south china sea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Ron Paul's take on this from few month ago

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KudfRyn3ZbA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KudfRyn3ZbA)

interesting to watch it now, where will this lead to, and what is the strategic goal here?

<comment><USER9> The problem with the powers that be playing the ultra-nationalist card is that is difficult to stop playing; like gambling or burying corporate debt it might lead to short term gains, but sooner or later you have to pay. There are ample examples of ultra-nationalist states that have exploded, imploded, or withered on the vine; and none have lasted the distance with out some kind of revolution, quiet or otherwise. Things will get worse before they get better, this is definitely not the bottom of the barrel. You can tell the wise ones are already cashing in their chips and are exfiltrating their wealth. Loans that were once prime will become sub-prime once the capital has fled. These state financed, but often personally influenced, loans that are currently sub- prime; well...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> china will get its way. imagine china building a military base on cuba or hispaniola and see how well that sits with the us government, un commission be damned. as china grows it wants to secure it's geographical sphere of influence, and all the western powers in the world will not win this battle. china has much more to lose and win.

protestations by the phillipines and other smaller outlying nations are again, the same as cuba or puerto rico or haiti protesting against guantanamo bay. the bottom line is that the dominant regional power dictates the terms and the smaller guys follow. if i were a western power i would spend just a modicum of effort pushing back against china but concurrently prepare to lose this battle.

<comment><USER3> It's more likely that China will end up starting WWIII. They are claiming not only international space but also that of their neighbors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Russia and China are quite different and in different situations. China benifits hugely by the drop in commodity prices and Russia does the opposite.

It is also much easier to understand the strategic goals of China:

This "dispute" will eventually amount to nothing; it is mere posturing showing the Americans that any military action will be too costly.

In a couple of decades; Taiwan will join China in a manner similar to what happened to Hong Kong and Macau. This will happen when the wealth of the average mainland Chinese is compareable to that of the average Taiwanese and China will be Taiwan's absolutely dominant trading partner.

When this happens China will for purposes have broken American control of the South China sea.

<comment><USER3> This is one of the least informed posts I've ever seen on HN about cross strait issues.

Unlike HK or Macau, Taiwan is a fully democratic state and has been for decades. Also unlike people in HK or Macau, Taiwanese don't consider themselves Chinese.

[http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/02/12/we-are-no-compatriots- of...](http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/02/12/we-are-no-compatriots-of-yours- taiwan-tainan-earthquake-xi-jinping-shinzo-abe-china-japan-history-relations- aid/)

The only way China could annex the island would entering a war. That would be extremely ill-advised considering the US committed to defending Taiwan in that case (due to the Taiwan relations act).

<comment> at-fates-hands >> That would be extremely ill-advised considering the US committed to defending Taiwan.

Maybe ten years ago, I would say it would never happen.

However, fighting several wars in the middle east, the Russian annexation of Crimea and the US not doing anything, let alone NATO not doing anything, leads me to hesitate to say anything would be done to stop it. Maybe this changes over the next decade, but if it were to happen soon, I have my doubts the US would have the moral constitution to do anything to stop it.

<comment><USER3> It certainly doesn't help that Europe, particularly France, has spent the past two decades selling China the weapons and tech to do the invasion.

That said, Taiwan is a country of roughly similar population and economic clout as Australia. Standing by and ignoring an act of war on that scale would be devastating to international stability (and US security interests).

<comment><USER12> I would imagine that the precedent the US would set with not honoring is defense agreement would have enormous repercussions for its relationship and bargaining power with both South Korea and Japan.

That would tip the balance towards US intervention.

<comment><USER3> If the US and NATO in general let Taiwan fall, it would pretty much guarantee Japan, Korea, Malaysia and Thailand to start nuclear programs.

<comment><USER13> That's probably true. And if so, it means that it is probably _not_ in China's interest to take Taiwan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's kind of funny that China is getting the only attention, when all countries around are occupying the islands: [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/Spratly_...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/Spratly_Is_since_NalGeoMaps.png)

<comment><USER15> China's claiming the entire sea, though, and building _new_ islands to extend that claim.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_disputes_in_the_So...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_disputes_in_the_South_China_Sea#/media/File:South_China_Sea_claims_2.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wave if you're old enough to remember the Cuban Missile Crisis!

<comment><USER17> Pretty well, actually. The Cleveland Plain Dealer (as I recall) showed Cleveland as within range of the missiles meant to be set up there.

In the 1980s I talked with a guy who had been a landing-craft driver for the Army in the early 1960s. His unit was sent down the Intercoastal Waterway to pick up an armored division in Florida. Fortunately for all, the tanks stayed on dry ground, and landing craft went back north.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Nice to see that the WSJ has confirmed us to subscription service just to read what I can get on Ruetz

</comment><comment><USER19> In other news, China hacked the ocean.</comment>


System resources for UWP apps and games on Xbox One - <AUTHOR> https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/xbox-apps/system-resource-allocation <comment><USER2> The 1GB RAM limit for apps seems tight, but ultimately seems like a good UX decision.</comment>


Show HN: T0 – A simple (and yet another) URL shortener - <AUTHOR> https://t0.io

<comment><AUTHOR> Just a quick & dirty project during Thanksgiving vacation ...

btw, What features do you want most for a url shortener?

<comment><USER2> Not requiring the "[http://"](http://") part, perhaps. (Automatically appending it if it isn't there).

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Added password-protected function.</comment>


New Web UI for Newspipe, a RSS/Atom News Aggregator Written in Python - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cedricbonhomme/newspipe <comment><AUTHOR> This new release comes with a new web interface, still improving, with a lot less JavaScript. I am now maintaining this little side projects since 10 years. The first version was using CherryPy, SQLite (then MongoDB), and Whoosh. It is now using Flask and SQLAlchemy.

<comment><AUTHOR> and it is also possible to store bookmarks (with import from Pinboard export). The official instance will be soon reopened: [https://www.newspipe.org](https://www.newspipe.org)</comment></comment>


Watch Live: Brad Pitt and George Clooney star in "8" - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/americanequalrights

<comment><AUTHOR> You may wonder, why i posted this on HN. I simply thought that this would be the first live streaming play on youtube to a big audience and they address a critical subject. In my opinion it's interesting to see what effect such an event could have to people who are watching it live and who are able to give instant feedback and how it effects the mainstream. I see great opportunities in such formats to present a critical subject to interact with the audience and last but least, the cast for this play on youtube is amazing :D</comment>