High-Tech can't last: there are limited essential elements - <AUTHOR> http://energyskeptic.com/2019/high-tech-cannot-last-rare-earth-metals/ <comment><USER2> The USGS produces annual reports for each mineral the US uses.[1] This is a lot of material, but it's all online. The rare earths report shows prices declining since 2014.[2] The rare earths aren't really that rare, just found at low concentrations.

Helium, though...

On the scale of a century, though, the reserves don't look that good. Some metals used in bulk, like copper and zinc, don't look so great. Remember that really high volume mining is less than a century old.

[1] [https://www.usgs.gov/centers/nmic/commodity-statistics- and-i...](https://www.usgs.gov/centers/nmic/commodity-statistics-and- information)

[2] [https://prd-wret.s3-us- west-2.amazonaws.com/assets/palladium...](https://prd-wret.s3-us- west-2.amazonaws.com/assets/palladium/production/atoms/files/mcs-2019-raree.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Copper is highly recyclable. The risk of high copper prices is that it becomes a little _too_ recycleable, and criminals destroy your infrastructure in order to sell it for scrap.

<comment><USER4> I suspect that in the not too distant future (perhaps in my lifetime) there will be companies buying up landfills in order to mine them for recyclable materials.

<comment><USER5> And isn't it helpful of us to have concentrated the recyclable materials in a few locations?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> "Shortfall of dysprosium are expected before 2015." \- so how's that going? I don't see news reports of DYSPROSIUM CRISIS. I did find one on a new mine opening in Australia.

Articles like this belong in a "manufactured crisis" category. Very little in it is false per se, but the overall impression it creates is misleading, and is likely to be driven by either nationalism trying to upsell conflict with China, or miners trying to sell investments outside of China that are currently uncompetitive.

<comment><USER6> Same author in 2012: "Batteries are too heavy to ever be used by trucks or other large vehicles, and require a revolutionary breakthrough to power electric cars." And China now [[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-14/china- is-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-14/china-is-leading- the-world-to-an-electric-car-future)]

Still, even the thought of a collapse for chips is scary. I wonder if we can at least fallback to 80-s chips production in case of a supply chain collapse.

<comment><USER7> There's something better on the horizon:

[https://www.sciencealert.com/vintage-vacuum-tube-tech- could-...](https://www.sciencealert.com/vintage-vacuum-tube-tech-could-take- electronics-and-solar-panels-to-the-next-level)

Also regular vacuum tubes are still pretty competent for power applications.

Making a switching power supply might be a challenge though - we would have to return to using Thyratrons which contain mercury vapour.

<comment><USER3> The nanoscale vacuum transistor is still a silicon device - part of the point of it is that it can be produced in a conventional fab!

Power diodes are not going to be a problem, they are a comparatively crude device from the 50s.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Someone pointed out the differences between "ecological" and "economical" thinking years ago, and I wish I could find the blog article again.

The basis was that "ecological" thinking assumes that things will stay the same until they dramatically collapse, and that systems cannot adapt to changes in circumstances.

While "economical" thinking assumes that there is a constant tension between supply and demand, and that as something becomes rare its price goes up and the system adapts to it.

This paper is classic "ecological" thinking. It assumes that there are no other alternatives to the minerals used at the moment, and that therefore if the supply of (e.g.) Cerium is disrupted then the supply of iPhones will be disrupted. It doesn't allow for "Cerium was the best of three options we had, because of reasons x and y, and price z", so if Cerium becomes a problem, then the second best option will be used instead. Yes, the price will go up, but that's an adaptation not a limit.

It also doesn't allow for alternative sources of the minerals. I know there are deposits of rare earths in Australia, which aren't being mined at the moment because it's not economical to do so. But if China starts messing with their supply, it will become economical. This happens all the time (there's a rash of new Lithium and Cobalt mines in Australia because of the tech industry's need for them).

Likewise it assumes that because we currently have cheap fossil-fuel-derived energy to mine with, that mining is not possible without abundant cheap energy. If the price of energy goes up as the coal mines are shut down, then the industry will adapt and find other, more energy-efficient solutions.

Just as "life finds a way", economic systems find a way. Yes, there will be collapses and corrections, and on an individual level those can be disastrous, but as a system it endures. High tech is going to last.

<comment><USER9> This is the correct way of thinking to move forward.

Humanity will have a large effect on our environment. Period. A static ecosystem didn't exist without us and it certainly doesn't exist with us.

Embracing that we have an effect and choosing to improve our environment rather than to get it back to some idealized past is the only way we can have a future.

It's too bad, then, that most of ecological thinking, as you've described, is so pervasive.

Interestingly, this thinking is really embedded in our fiction. Garden of Eden type stuff is very common. Tolkien's world also follows the idealized past trope. It might be part of a sort of jungian collective unconscious. I wonder what works exist that tell a different story trope - one aligned more with the economical way of thinking.

<comment><USER10> If you run in a straight line, toward a cliff, you can hope that when you get there, a bridge will have been built. And it may work quite often. It has for us in the past (although we are kin to forget the cost we paid for it).

But it's not a bad answer to suggest to slow down to give time for the bridge to be built, or just change course. You can also assume some of us will not die in the fall even if the bridge is not there, and part of the group will survive. But it's not bad to suggest we could choose another way.

The thing is, even if the universe is not a closed system, our Earth system can be approximated as such, once we consider social/logistical/scientific bottlenecks, education, time available, speed of consumption and reaction, inertia, and our desire to avoid a genocide.

I keep posting this video (in 8 parts):

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY&feature=list_othe...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY&feature=list_other&playnext=1&list=SP6A1FD147A45EF50D)

Because I wish more people would watch it.

It's a very good mathematical and political explanation of why we can't continue just thinking "growth". It addresses the usual rebukes such as "we are not in a finite system", "this is not a zero sum game", "innovation/adaptation will save us" or "we can make it sustainable/reasonable".

I particularly like the part where Albert Allen Bartlett explains how our growth affects democracy, comfort, health, and peace, not just resource consumption.

<comment><USER11> The analogy of the cliff seems nice, until you give it some thought. a) We are not actually running. What does stop and think about it actually mean? If there is a cliff and if we can stop or change direction. why not on the edge of the cliff, why way before that? b) Nobody is excepting a bridge to miraculously appear, but we might be thinking about how to cross that cliff when we get there and prepare. Humans are actually quite good at that. Will it costs us more than we were expecting when we could not yet see that 'cliff' yet. Definitely, but we were not born with foresight and have a limited time- frame of reference even if we can predict with some certainty. The later is why we are not investing everything for the time our sun will turn off its light. Call it the human condition.

As for your insistence that 'growth' cannot be sustained. I suspect you mean population growth, although nobody is actually "thinking" as in wishing for that. I for one cannot have a meaningful conversation on that. People who really belief that is our biggest problem are no longer here to have that conversation with and all others tend to mean: There are too many _other_ people. That discussion has been taking place under many different guises, none of them remotely interesting.

<comment><USER10> Watch the video, your points are addressed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> One of the big questions is whether we can extract these minerals from existing devices that are out of use/have been disposed of. Ideally, that means that we are designing new devices with disassembly in mind. Everyone from Apple to Huawei is talking about doing this, but the proof will be in the pudding.

Some of the comments are slightly inaccurate. We actually don't know where all the deposits are, and there was just a large discovery of rare earth elements off the coast of Japan. Much rare earth extraction has been happening in China because of relatively lax environmental standards that have reached back decades, so the US, Australia, and many other countries with deposits can't compete due to the costs of labor and complying with environmental standards and regulations. Mountain pass is one of a few deposits in the US, and happens to be one of the larger ones that is sitting idle. There are lots of mines globally and could be more, but economically they need to be attractive.

Copper is another interesting element. It is exceedingly hard to extract from existing devices because it is buried inside the chips, boards, etc. You can recover about 25% of the copper in a device, or about 3% of the total mineral content of a device when you extract copper. Widespread copper mining has destroyed parts of the Atacama desert in Chile and is a really nasty process.

Finally, work has been going on for a long time to replace rare earth elements or dramatically reduce how much is used. In some cases, you need small amounts because you need those f-orbital electrons but you can get away with using creative coatings instead of large volumes of materials. In other cases, you can replace them by multi-layering other materials to approximate their performance. There are huge opportunities here, but we are a couple decades away from seeing any real sea change in what our devices are made of.

<comment><USER3> > You can recover about 25% of the copper in a device

This is surprising to me, because it's all on the surface of the PCBs? Where does the other 75% "go"? I'd have thought if you incinerate the thing you'll get a puddle of gold-copper mix running out the bottom, and the rest of the rare elements and aluminium as oxides in the slag.

<comment><USER13> It goes into things that are uneconomical to extract without vastly different conditions. Technically one could breakdown and separate everything by element and isotope but that would be an incredibly inefficient way of doing so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The main reason we don't have rare earth mines in the U.S. is that we don't want to deal with the uranium and thorium. Of course there are productive things we could do with those elements, which would also go a long way towards reducing our carbon emissions.

If we do run low on rare earths or platinum group metals, there's plenty in the asteroids. Once we have reusable rockets and can harvest fuel from the asteroids or the moon, mining the asteroids for high-value metals could actually be fairly economical, and would remove the environmental impact of the mining it replaces on Earth.

<comment><AUTHOR> An argument has been made that one of China's key exports has been its willingness to absorb massive environmental contamination. A practice which seems to be changing, though there may be new marker entrants. Not necessarilly fully voluntary on the part of all participants, most especially those not yet born.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Isn't it amazing that all of these elements have so many distinct industrial uses? How did people figure all of this stuff out? Real life is sometimes stranger than fiction.

Also, related: I read an article in WaPo about the only rare earths mine in the United States:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/2019/06/07/8...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/2019/06/07/80a06794-8649-11e9-a491-25df61c78dc4_story.html)

> This is Mountain Pass, the only mine in the United States that harvests > rare-earth elements, the raw ingredients used to produce high-tech products > such as smartphones, wind turbines, electric vehicles and fighter jets.

<comment><AUTHOR> Chemistry and materials science.

See also the Harbord List and dawning awareness of strategic minerals during WWI.

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0260982786...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0260982786900352)

[https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/agency/dod/dnsc.htm](https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/agency/dod/dnsc.htm)

<comment><USER16> Thank you, this stuff interests the hell out of me. I'll never be at MIT, but I can read it in my spare time!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I don't see the problem. They aren't limited in a meaningful sense. It's just that the global race to the bottom makes the vast majority of deposits unprofitable.

<comment><USER18> As I remember, rare earth elements are not that rare. And China is not the only place having them. But extracting them is not very profitable in Western countries because they have too strict ecological requirements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> "Apple's parts are soldered and glued into place before being fastened together with proprietary screws which makes basic repairs like swapping out a broken screen or replacing a dead battery a headache. Which makes it difficult for anyone lacking a half dozen robotic arms to tear apart an iPhone to recycle the components. ...

For Apple, this may be a feature rather than a bug: Documents obtained by Motherboard in 2017 revealed that the company requires its recycling partners to shred iPhones and MacBooks so that their components cannot be reused, further reducing the value recyclers can get out."

</comment><comment><USER20> One thing a lot of the (skeptic) comments here don't take into account is the role of petrol in mining. Petrol is the single discovery that has made basically all of modern technology and manufacturing possible. Petrol is incredibly energy-dense and is still incredibly cheap. Without it, there's no plastic, no mining and basically no transport. It's also worth mentioning that without petrol there would be no solar panels and no large scale wind turbine installations.

Interested readers might like to read about the concept of "energy returned on energy invested" or EROEI [1], which demonstrates the limitations of renewable energies and the implications of peak petrol.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_inve...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_invested#Photovoltaic)

<comment><USER21> Agree EROEI is profoundly important for planning the next century.

However, your point doesn't change the core criticism of the "skeptic" audience. Yes we use petrol for plastic but if it disappeared we could use plants. Yes we use petrol for heavy machines but if they disappeared we could use batteries.

And yes, there's not enough petroleum available to build all the batteries and plant plastic fabrication facilities we'd need to replace the petroleum economy. So that sounds bad.

Except it's only bad if all that happens quickly, at the same time. And it won't. Batteries will become economical before we run out of petroleum for plastic.

I'm not saying they're right, but the skeptic argument is that the economy will adapt to these challenges one at a time.

What's the counter argument?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is one of the reasons why I think it's important we look to re-using computers, build computers with interchangeable components, and look towards designing p2p networks that replicate data around. Start designing software for newer protocols to run on low-powered machines. There are so many computers in the world it's incredible and yet they're practically built to be disposable. I don't think they can continue to increase in price forever when the network of supplies to manufacture them is so weak. And especially when climate events will be able to destroy vast quantities of them quickly.

It's surprising how much computing power is stuffed into consumer laptops these days and how people keep buying new ones when their existing ones work fine.

<comment><USER23> > It's surprising how much computing power is stuffed into consumer laptops > these days and how people keep buying new ones when their existing ones work > fine.

This is contrary to my experience. Year to year these fancy webgl responsive webpages get slower and slower to load. I need an 8650U with at least 8 GB of RAM to surf the web and load some pages under 5 sec. The development of basically a new uniform os within the existing os's is just crazy.

<comment><USER22> Indeed. My primary machine at home right now is a 13 year old Dell laptop. It has some added RAM and an SSD drive. I can barely scroll the Twitter home page on it. I can barely use the Zulip web client (no "native" client for 32bit architectures... would be slow as molasses anyway) -- and that's just to chat with other developers working on Lean.

I've been using _eww_ in emacs to browse the web and... surprise it's fast. And less annoying.

<comment><USER24> Zulip has a terminal client that's right now alpha software, but being actively worked on! You might want to give it a spin. [https://github.com/zulip/zulip-terminal](https://github.com/zulip/zulip- terminal)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Similarly, from USGS:

Erin A. McCullough and Nedal Nassar, "Assessment of critical minerals: Updated application of an early-warning screening methodology", [https://doi.org/10.1007/s13563-017-0119-6](https://doi.org/10.1007/s13563-017-0119-6)

 _Increasing reliance on non-renewable mineral resources reinforces the need for identifying potential supply constraints before they occur. The US National Science and Technology Council recently released a report that outlines a methodology for screening potentially critical minerals based on three indicators: supply risk (R), production growth (G), and market dynamics (M). This early-warning screening was initially applied to 78 minerals across the years 1996 to 2013 and identified a subset of minerals as "potentially critical" based on the geometric average of these indicators—designated as criticality potential (C)...._

[https://pubs.er.usgs.gov/publication/70191019](https://pubs.er.usgs.gov/publication/70191019)

And:

 _Critical mineral resources of the United States—Economic and environmental geology and prospects for future supply_

Which addresses antimony, barite (barium), beryllium, cobalt, fluorine, gallium, germanium and indium, graphite, lithium, manganese, niobium and tantalum, platinum-group elements, rare-earth elements, rhenium, selenium, tellurium, tin, titanium, vanadium, zirconium and hafnium.

[https://pubs.er.usgs.gov/publication/70191019](https://pubs.er.usgs.gov/publication/70191019)

(148 MB PDF)

</comment><comment><USER25> Google cache as the site is having a little lie-down at the moment [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http:/...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://energyskeptic.com/2019/high- tech-cannot-last-rare-earth-metals/)

</comment><comment><USER26> Just read about Julian Simon's book, "The Ultimate Resource 2 (1997)", in which he argues that the world will never run out of resources, as it is the human mind that drives advance, not capital or materials. In other words, just as Marcus_Holmes argued, supply and demand will make more expensive processes feasible and provide new sources if essential elements.

</comment><comment><USER27> Rare Earth isn't rare. People just get things mixed up do the name.

<comment><USER27> Why was this downvoted. Seriously rare earth is a totally a non issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Space mining?

<comment><AUTHOR> Unlikely.

[https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/10/why-not- space/](https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/10/why-not-space/)

[http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog- static/2007/06/the_high...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog- static/2007/06/the_high_frontier_redux.html)

$15,000/kg, to the Moon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Can't recycling save us until we have good enough alternatives?

<comment><AUTHOR> Recycling has a limited recovery basis. Over generations, for a recovery fraction _r_ over _n_ generations, remaining material is r^n.

At a 90% recovery rate, after 2 generations, 81% of the original material remains. After 10 generations, it's a smidge under 35%.

The most heavily recycled material in the U.S. is asphalt, with rates approaching 90% recovery.

The most-recycled mineral or metal is lead, with rates of 74%. At two generations, the remaining material is 55%. After 10, it's less than 5%.

[https://www.usgs.gov/centers/nmic/recycling-statistics- and-i...](https://www.usgs.gov/centers/nmic/recycling-statistics-and- information)

USGS also have numerous interesting publications on mineral usage and supplies:

[https://www.usgs.gov/centers/nmic/materials- flow](https://www.usgs.gov/centers/nmic/materials-flow)</comment></comment>


Build Your Own Translation Service - <AUTHOR> http://about.saltar.co/blog/translate-entire-app-with-spreadsheet-diy-tutorial <comment><AUTHOR> Hi guys, I came across a tutorial for using Google Translate in Spreadsheet. I decided to use that to put together a translation service for my own app.

Let me know what you think :)</comment>


Your amazing brain: Top 10 articles from 2008 - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16205-your-amazing-brain-top-10-articles-from-2008.html <comment><USER2> For anyone unsure what to read, the article on noise is probably the most interesting -- apparently it may help cognition. The article on primate porn is interesting for a look at social dynamics. The article on your subconscious, day dreaming and the 'default network' is good too.

</comment><comment><USER3> Thing about how much less appealing this article would be if it were titled "My Amazing Brain" or even "Our Amazing Brains". That's amazing. These New Scientists know nothing about my amazing brain- perhaps it will get it's own article someday.</comment>


Show HN: My November(++) Project. Facebook Stream Reader for Mac - <AUTHOR>

Hey,
In early November there there were a couple of threads encouraging other fellow HN'ers to finish, and release a project by the end of November.
I decided to try to hit that goal, but in the end my meticulous attention-to-detail prevented me from finishing the app in November and it took until end of December to finish it (sadly, that required me to work through through the Christmas Holidays). So, even though it was only 2.x month, a lot of work (and lots of little-sleep-nights) went into that project.
Of course, I could have continued developing forever, because there's still so much that I'd like to implement - but given the 'release early and often' mantra I was already pretty late to the party.
But now it is ready, and even better in time for the Mac App Store opening, as it is a Mac App.
The name is: Clarity
http://www.clarity-app.com
Clarity is a Facebook desktop client for the Mac that aims at simplifying your friends' news streams. Facebook offers with its News Streams a feature that is very similar to Twitter but oftentimes succeeds where Twitter fails as more of your close friends are probably on Facebook and so it is easier to feel connected.
However, even though there are a couple of very good desktop Twitter clients (Tweetie, Echofon, Kiwi, etc), there are far less desktop Facebook Stream clients. My idea was to develop a Facebook Stream client, that would run on my desktop and inform me of the newest events in my friends' lives.
An important objective behind Clarity was to support very good desktop integration of the Facebook News Stream and to clear it up so that it looks and feels more streamlined and less cluttered. This means Clarity is first and foremost a Facebook News Stream Reader. It sorts your news stream, clears it up, and offers enhanced filtering options.
I also added enhanced security features, so that one can only write status updates to certain friends groups or only read from certain friends.
- - - - - - - -
I'd love your opinion. Do you think this targets a viable market? I build this in my spare time, so I hope that will turn out to be a worthwhile investment (however then again, the learning experience that I had so far already almost made it worthwhile). <comment><USER2> First off, the website looks like a 2005 web hosting provider's website, complete with glossy gradients and a huge horizontal banner, which put me off.

Also, my eye isn't drawn to anything on the page that says "THIS IS FACEBOOK FOR MAC", perhaps you need to remove some of the explanation text and make the title at the very top more obvious? I'm not a designer though, so ymmv.

Finally, I can't for the life of me find a download link, so I'll go from the screenshot: It doesn't feel very "mac-ish" or polished. It looks like a thrown-together website inside a single-site browser, if I'm honest.

Now for the good: I'd be very willing to pay up to £5 pounds for a reasonably- featured facebook for desktop client, especially if it included basic twitter functionality as well, and felt at home on my mac. The idea is good, especially with the App Store coming out soon, and the influx of "gotta have an app for everything" users it might bring.

PS: Those screenshots should be taken with opt-shift-4 space click instead of opt-shift-3. I don't want to see your desktop, and it just makes the picture of the app become shrunken even at reasonable sizes of browser window.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the insight!

The screenshots are the same as on the App Store right now, where Apple demands 1280x800 screenshots. But I'll follow your thinking and remove the status bar in those screenshots so it is only the app on a small part of the desktop.

I thought that the site was looking well, same goes for the looks of the app. I also got pretty good beta tester feedback for that. Could you pinpoint your criticism by providing some links to sites you like? That would be great!

Again, thanks for your criticism! :)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Oh, and I almost forgot: How much would you be willing to pay for such an app?</comment>


Facebook isn't a technology company - funny Mark thinks it is! - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Any company that can deal with that kind of traffic has to be at least fairly good at technology.

But I think he meant more than that. He meant they approach problems (including nontechnical ones) the way technical people do. That's an interesting idea. And it seems to be working, too.

</comment><comment><USER3> Funny you think that statement means anything useful.

Facebook certainly is _powered by_ technology and its future certainly relies on innovating _using_ technology. Why don't you clarify what you mean in more than a single sentence?

<comment><AUTHOR> He referred to EBay as "not a technology" company, because they don't have many technical people in management. Just because Facebook has technical people in management, doesn't make it a "technology company" either. At least, not yet. Facebook is a great social networking site but certainy not a technology company. My examples of technology companies include Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Sun, BEA etc.

<comment><USER4> Funny. I wouldn't include any of those on my list of innovative companies. So maybe technology is just an irrelevant term anyway. Let's say "technically innovative" instead.

<comment><AUTHOR> How about JBOss?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> \- We've built a lightweight but powerful multi-language RPC framework that allows us to seamlessly and easily tie together subsystems written in any language, running on any platform. Facebook is built in PHP, C++, Perl, Python, Java, and even a little bit of ML—and it all works together.

\- We are the largest user in the world of memcached, an open-source caching system. Originally developed by LiveJournal, we've since made so many scalability improvements and performance upgrades that we will be the primary contributor of features in the next major release.

\- We've created a custom-built search engine serving millions of queries a day, completely distributed and entirely in-memory, with real-time updates.

<http://www.facebook.com/jobs_engineering.php>

</comment><comment><USER6> I didn't see the speech, but my guess is that this has something to do with invention verse innovation.

Invention means to create new technology. Innovation means to recombine old technologies for a new purpose.

Technology companies invent. Technical companies innovate.

Advice: Don't be a technology company. Profits are a function of how much people want your product, not how much you spend on R&D.; If you can make something people want for zero R&D;, versus making something people want that requires a huge investment, the intelligent choice should be obvious.

This is the premise of Seth Godin's book Free Prize Inside. That is, you could spend 50 million dollars inventing a new cereal that will double sales if it succeeds (but will most likely fail), or you could double sales just by putting a free prize inside.

</comment><comment><USER7> Just stop to think about how fast those photos load on Facebook, and you'll know they're a tech-driven company.

<comment><USER3> Serving massive quantities of static images is probably the easiest challenge they've ( _uhh_ ) faced -- it's just expensive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The definition of technology that I use is: a way to organize or process information.

So is Facebook a technology? Yes, I think so. It's a useful tool for promoting events and for keeping track of friends (contacts, what they are up to).

I agree that it isn't the most challenging or complex type of technology, but I've found some of the features (on Facebook) to be quite useful and entertaining.

</comment><comment><USER4> By that measure, neither is google.</comment>


GitHub Rewrites Its Desktop Client Using Electron - <AUTHOR> https://www.infoq.com/news/2017/05/github-electron-desktop-client <comment><USER2> Sigh. Yet another native desktop app I will now have to stop using on my laptop in order to get any kind of decent battery life off the grid. Having Electon.JS apps open effectively halves my battery usage in Linux. Each one is a separate Chrome instance, and Chrome uses considerably more power than Firefox (we're talking multiple watts).

When I'm on the go and want my Lenovo P50 mobile workstation laptop to last an entire cross-country flight so I can get work done (a real use case), I have to use Slack web client, Sublime instead of VS Code, Firefox instead of Chrome, and manually close out of a whole bunch of less important Electron apps (Discord, Gitter, Skype, Upwork, Spotify, Atom, etc.), and only then will powertop show an acceptable < 20W of power draw instead of close to 30 W with all of the Electron apps open, allowing my laptop to have five hours of battery life instead of two, which means it will last the whole flight.

I still have a bunch of native Linux desktop apps that I prefer to use to this very day that are fast, responsive, and don't make my laptop's fans sound like a leaf blower while failing to prevent the heated chassis from scorching my lap.

Devs don't let other devs use Electron -- as a real alternative, consider using the wxWidgets cross-platform native GUI app framework (with its myriad language bindings) so that you can have a single code base that supports all of the major platforms.

<comment><USER3> I agree, what's up with all these Electron apps. Based on memory usage currently, Skype is using 245MB, Slack is using 312MB and Spotify at 233MB. While Telegram is only using 78MB. And I have more active chats on Telegram too.

<comment><USER4> > While Telegram is only using 78MB

My irssi seems to be using an order of magnitude less than that, 7.8 MB RSS.

Get off my lawn! :-/

(Yes, irc is unencrypted, but still...)

<comment><USER5> > 7.8 MB RSS.

It's as bloated as emacs!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why does github need a desktop client at all? Multiple git clients exist for all platforms, many of which are better than the github client ever was. If they can't afford to maintain multiple versions why don't they just maintain none?

Or do the third party clients not provide enough vendor lockin?

<comment><USER6> > Or do the third party clients not provide enough vendor lockin?

Ding ding ding we have a winner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's wonderful that they open-sourced the whole thing. I will enjoy studying it: [https://github.com/desktop/desktop/](https://github.com/desktop/desktop/)

Great to see in the interview: "We're having many good conversations about improving Electron."

</comment><comment><USER8> One more reason to ditch it in favor of ye olde command line.

</comment><comment><USER9> Still no Linux client?</comment>


Windows 8 Will Have A Dedicated App Store For Downloading Apps - <AUTHOR> http://www.redmondpie.com/windows-8-will-have-a-dedicated-app-store-for-downloading-apps-confirms-microsoft/ <comment><USER2> Microsoft following in Apple's footsteps? Unheard of.

<comment><USER3> Didn't linux do the same with apt-get / yum install / urpmi management tools? Just a decade ago.

<comment><USER4> I think you mean apt-get install --credit-card-number 1234-1234-1234-1234 --security-code 123 foo.dpkg

(Unless Microsoft isn't going to monetize their store)

<comment><USER3> Windows will improve greatly once we stop having each application run random auto update, but have it all centralized.

I don't want to deal with 20 different auto-updaters, plus just in case running both

Secuinia Personal Software Inspector -- notifies you about known vulnerabilities in software, and about updates. <http://secunia.com/vulnerability_scanning/personal/>

File Hippo Software Checker -- notifies you about updates to software you use, especially if said software doesn't have own updater <http://www.filehippo.com/updatechecker/></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Twitter just raised $200m. - <AUTHOR> http://swombat.com/2010/12/15/why-twitter-raised-200-million-dollars

<comment><USER2> I would find it interesting if many mobile networks in the world that support many more users and many more messages per second will have even spent $460m on their SMS/MMS infrastructure.

I understand that Twitter is different, but 65 million tweets a day is only what, 2,000/second burst @ 3.2Mbps and 13GB per day of new tweets (4.7TB/year). And that is only their recent volume (2010-06-08: <http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/08/twitter-190-million-users/>).

I know that Twitter made the decision to put the data at the location of access (in this case, that makes it the end-users 'inbox') however, that means that the more popular a user gets (say Gaga with 7.3m followers), every tweet they make needs to be delivered 7.3m times and cause, say 1.5GB of data/traffic to be generated, especially when we're only talking about 5TB/year of new, raw data.

Surely a model more like Google's search infrastructure makes more sense. Store tweets in clusters. Send a search request for all tweets less than X-minutes old to the clusters, the search clusters each return their results in parallel to the caller who then merges & orders the results before returning to the user.

The clusters would replicate data based on popularity (e.g. Gaga may have 10 copies of her data throughout the cluster, compared to me with a couple dozen followers having just one). 5TB + replicas is more than enough to store in memory among a couple-hundred servers and the load generated on the total system would be based on those accessing data rather than producers with a large amount of followers tweeting.

To build this infrastructure to date they have raised $160m and, unless this $200m is completely unnecessary, they have spent most of it.

Anyway... I seem to have gone a little off-topic and gotten a little ranty however, the total amount of money being spent on a company with no long-term, sustainable business model just seems ridiculous. It's as though the VC's have already spent too much money on building a massive network that they need to keep propping it up so they don't look like fools.

<comment><USER3> " more popular a user gets (say Gaga with 7.3m followers), every tweet they make needs to be delivered 7.3m times"

\- Do they really need to duplicate the same tweet 7.3 million times? The tweet cant be edited too!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great points. These funds will surely be used to turn on the money faucet.

Also interesting is the fact that they brought David Rosenblatt on to the board.

As peHUB notes,

 _"Also joining Twitter's board is David Rosenblatt, who was long the CEO of DoubleClick, then chief of Google's display ad sales for roughly a year after it acquired DoubleClick for $3.1 billion in 2008. (He left Google in April of last year.)

Certainly, though, for a company that looks to supercharge its revenues, bringing on the longtime CEO of one of the world's biggest ad serving networks looks very smart."_

[http://www.pehub.com/90776/kleiner-muscles-its-way-into- twit...](http://www.pehub.com/90776/kleiner-muscles-its-way-into-twitter- stake/)

</comment><comment><USER5> That's property prices in London for you...

</comment><comment><USER6> they will sell it, probably to Google

just need some money to survive a winter or two</comment>


My web app died from performance bankruptcy - <AUTHOR> https://tonsky.me/blog/chrome-intervention/ <comment><USER2> I remember back when IE was the standard, and the majority of webpages where broken messes because Microsoft didn't care about standards and only had their own interests in mind. Then Pheonix (now firefox) came along and pushed for a positive change, Then Google came in backing the movement full force with Chrome, it seemed natural to think that Google cared about the web, cared about developers and cared about the users because they where dealing with a problem central to us all. But apparently the problem they saw was not incompatibility or broken pages, the problem they saw was just that Microsoft and not them where in charge. Now we are back to the same situation with Google breaking the web much more actively this time even because they are coopting the standards bodies, and they just don't care about anything but their own internal development. "We broke your website on a major browser but really that's your own fault for not redeveloping it with our newest api's every 8 months. And obviously we're doing the right thing, just look at this video with 36 likes!"

It's time to abandon Chrome if you love the open and stable web. The power has gone to these devs mind and they've gone from unintentionally disruptive to actively destructive.

</comment><comment><USER3> Reminds me of Google AMP push. They seem quite happy to break stuff as long as its someone else's stuff</comment>


The Latest Silicon Valley Housing Idea: On a Landfill - <AUTHOR> http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/07/08/the-latest-silicon-valley-housing-idea-on-a-landfill/ <comment><USER2> "Hundreds of piers would be driven up to 150 feet into the ground to anchor the entire inter-connected platform for the project's center, which the city envisions as its new "uptown" district."

150 feet... but not to bedrock.

Was nothing learned from the _Millennium Tower_ debacle?</comment>


Show HN: Read all Medium stories for free - <AUTHOR> If someone here reads on Medium a lot, this might be useful for you: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/mediumship
This is my second browser extension and it's open-source. It lets you read all Medium stories for free.
Hugs and / or bugs welcome! <comment><USER2> Medium business model is terrible and that's pretty much why I stopped publishing on this platform.

Also, some people are going with "quantity over quality" on Medium just to make money.

Once, someoene asked me for feedback on their article, I was happy to provide it, but when I saw I had to pay for this, there was no way I would do it.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable Link: [https://www.producthunt.com/posts/mediumship](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/mediumship)

<comment><USER3> I don't understand the requirement to have either a link or text. Surely it would make more sense to allow someone to explain WHY they're posting something and still have the link be clickable.

<comment><USER4> AFAIK so people don't get to post a link and have their take on it stand above all other discussion.

<comment><AUTHOR> I never really dived into it but this seems plausible. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is this actually a common problem? Back when I started paying for a membership, I only really ran into 1 or 2 premium stories a month (out of the hundreds I read)...

</comment><comment><USER6> I wonder how long it'll take for Medium to block this? :)

<comment><AUTHOR> We've emailed to Medium's security department about this issue, and the reply says that the method is intended.

[https://github.com/swapagarwal/mediumship#disclaimer](https://github.com/swapagarwal/mediumship#disclaimer)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why is this in Ask HN, instead of Show ?

<comment><AUTHOR> My bad! Fixing...</comment></comment>


The Tatra 603: Wacky Commie Hot Rod - <AUTHOR> https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2016/02/20/tatra-603-wacky-commie-hot-rod <comment><USER2> I should thank Mr. Locklin for bringing this little known car some attention. But I must also say that I am incredibly annoyed by the nasty chauvinistic "top gear" style of his writing. I have liked cars since I was a kid but now I am turned away from a lot of car related journalism because of that same "top gear" style.

I do not know what the author thinks communism is, but he seems to be using it as some kind of semi-racist semi-nationalist all encompassing pejorative, which was commonly used during the cold war.

It is funny when towards the end of the article he suggests (incorrectly) that this car is ok because it was really "a capitalist design" that was only "made by commies". First he is very much incorrect about that assertion. The Tatra 603 was ordered, designed and produced in Czechoslovakia, when that country was ruled by the communist party and was in the soviet block. But nobody in then Czechoslovakia would have referred to it as a "communist" country, not even the top communist brass.

But there is something here that will completely blow Mr. Locklin's mind away. If the car had been designed and produced under capitalism few years before the dates in which it was actually designed and manufactured, it would have likely been designed by the mostly the same group of engineers, and manufactured by the same workers that made the later "communist" car. You see there were a bunch of engineers working in a car factory, and then a bunch wars happened, and then all of a sudden they all become a bunch of "commies" and everything they made was "made by commies".

<comment><USER3> I don't know a lot of the history of the Czech Republic and Czechoslavakia but this makes a whole lot of sense. I think people make this way to black and white. Governments don't really represent people. I love music and would try to make music regardless of who is in charge of the government. Car people are going to try and make cool cars regardless of their budget

<comment><USER4> I remember talking to a coworker my age (about 20 years ago). He was born in the early 60's in Britain and his family was middle class. I was born in California and my family was middle class. When he was a small child in England his dad bought the first family car. Like ever. In my case my great grand fathers all bought cars before 1920.

I just seemed to me that Britain, Europe, and especially eastern Europe after two world wars was a big mess. The US came out of it producing 50% of the world GDP, not including, Britain, Canada, France, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's incredible how mis-informed the author is regarding life behind the iron curtain and the whole 'commie' saturation this article suffers from makes it both painful to read and historically inaccurate. Imagine an article about let's say the Ford Edsel where every reference to designers or manufacturers would be prefixed with 'cappie'.

<comment><USER6> And the author is even strangely confused about the cars themselves:

"The vague resemblance to the VW bug is no coincidence."

Come now. Not the VW "bug", it doesn't look much like that. Has the writer never heard of the VW Type 3? That's the one that looks like the Tatra 603:

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/VW_Typ_3...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/VW_Typ_3_front_20080227.jpg)

<comment><USER7> Of course there is vague resemblance to VW "bug", because bug's design was heavily influenced by Tatra V570. So heavily that court ordered VW to pay 1 000 000 Deutsche Mark to Tatra in 1965.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > communism was never sold as a fun ideology

Well, then what's about Vladimir Mayakovsky's

Другим странам - по сто, История - пастью гроба, А моя страна - подросток: Твори, выдумывай, пробуй!

(Other countries are hundred years old, Their future is just coffins and cemetery, And my country is a teenager Create, invent, try!)

It's not quite correct that communism wasn't ever advertised as fun.

<comment><USER9> Woah, I never thought I'd see the day when Mayakovsky is quoted on HN. Thank you, good sir.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Many people at Tatra would get upset for calling them 'the communists'. If anything Communism killed this car (no exports). Latter it practically killed the company by merging them with less advanced Skoda.

</comment><comment><USER6> The Tatra 603 ad midway down the page is really fun! It's 12 minutes long, but worth taking the time to watch. Great soundtrack too.

</comment><comment><USER11> Cool car, but the title is a little off considering...

>>The communists had only been running the country for a few years when this thing came out in 1956, so it's really an old capitalist/Paul Jaray design that ended up being made by commies, but it's pretty damn cool that they kept it going until 1976.

The "commie" talk in the article is right out of the 60s and is a little off- putting for a piece about a car. I'd say this sounds like Jeremy Clarkson but I couldn't see him using the phrase "..grim and serious ideology covered in human blood" with a strait face.

<comment><USER12> I guess unless what he says is true and the car was only available to high officials in the communist party.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "... unlike the Trabant or Lada, or even a Skoda, the Tatra is pretty"

Weird - I think Lada and Trabant are genuinely smart wee cars if they're in good nick. Volgas too.

<comment><USER5> The Trabant is a very smart little car but it does have some major issues, for one the resin that it is made out of makes the car a death trap in case of any kind of fire and for another it is a really dangerous car in case of an accident.

The Lada's that you're probably most familiar with are actually somewhat improved Fiat 124's.

<comment><USER13> Oh don't get me wrong - safety wise they're a total liability I am sure. But 1. That's the case with all old cars, and 2. The main thing I was saying was that IMO they're kinda pretty

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> TFL Car bought one and drove it from Prague to California.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiE8ZvqLoik](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiE8ZvqLoik)

There's a lot of innovative thinking there. And also since then -- Tatra heavy duty trucks are interesting (a T815 was used in Mad Max Fury Road)

</comment><comment><USER15> "Tatra" or "Panhard", that was the question in 1960. I remember it well.

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f5/Panhard_...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f5/Panhard_DynaZ_1959_front.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER16> Forget the Tatra, I want the little station wagon that the police had.

<comment><USER17> Get this - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%A0koda_Felicia_%281959%E2%...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%A0koda_Felicia_%281959%E2%80%9364%29) instead ;)

The red ones were most beautiful.

<comment><USER16> Love it, but... it has to transport a double bass. ;-)</comment></comment></comment>


US Visa Forms DS-160, 260 Has Social Media Questions Now – Samples - <AUTHOR> https://redbus2us.com/us-visa-forms-ds-160-260-has-social-media-questions-now-samples/ <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20065142](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20065142)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20078429](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20078429)

<comment><USER3> Your links are from 2 months ago, and this submission has already generated a substantial discussion. Why kill it now?

<comment><USER2> Submissions count as dupes on HN if the story has had significant attention in the last year or so. This is in the FAQ: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html). When it's an ongoing story and a submission contains significant new information, we sometimes override that. But it doesn't appear to be the case here.

Marking this post a dupe doesn't mean the story is unimportant. It's just that front page real estate is the scarcest resource on HN. More explanation here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19103247](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19103247).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I literally could not fill this out without perjuring myself. They say you need to list even unknown/closed/deleted accounts for the last five years. I don't know them all.

This either feels like an out of touch attempt by an older generation who doesn't understand social media (only uses Facebook, etc), or a huge honey trap tricking people into inadvertently "lying" to the USG. They can then use these mistakes to then revoke anyone's status after the fact at a whim (inc. for political reasons).

It reminds me of the pre-ACA health insurance forms, they were designed as huge "gotchas" so they could revoke as needed ("undisclosed pre-existing conditions"). This has that exact same feeling.

Also I wonder if a low/no social media presence will be held against you? I'm assuming it will.

<comment><USER5> >a huge honey trap tricking people into inadvertently "lying" to the USG. They can then use these mistakes to then revoke anyone's status after the fact at a whim (inc. for political reasons).

Doesn't the USG have to prove that you were lying in court? Or can they cite that your information is incorrect and immediately deport you?

<comment><USER4> An immigration court isn't a real court. It is an executive "court" with appointed judges (essentially employees) and no judicial oversight.

If you think of the three branches of government, immigration proceedings are squarely under the executive, the same branch trying to deport people.

<comment><USER6> Not true. Immigration determinations are appealable, with certain limitations, to the circuit courts of appeal.

<comment><USER4> How does that make what I said "not true?" What I said is a well established fact:

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

You can, under limited circumstances, appeal your case to a real court, but the primary court that most people being deported deal with is in the executive branch meaning the executive branch conducts a full deportation from inception to execution in almost all cases.

<comment><USER6> You stated there was "no judicial oversight." The possibility of appeal to an Article III court is "judicial oversight."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A while back I tried to sign up for Airbnb, but it was impossible to verify my identity without providing social media accounts. (At the time I didn't use Facebook, LinkedIn, etc., and the photo ID upload verification failed.)

Due this experience, I later created Facebook and Instagram profiles populated with minimal personal information and a few friends just so I could prove I existed..

For these new visa requirements, at what point does NOT having social media accounts become suspicious, a red flag warranting more in-depth review? And how useful is the requirement if the natural response is to just create filler social media accounts?

</comment><comment><USER8> What happens when you lose an account now? Or if you close an account on a service that doesn't reserve usernames (e.g. Twitter)? All of a sudden someone is using "yourname" on twitter to say something the US immigration officers don't like. That's not far fetched at all

<comment><USER9> You report it.

<comment><USER10> You expect everyone to monitor all their deleted social media accounts for reusage? For how long? Forever?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > No, you should NOT answer NONE, if you were or currently are on any of the > social media platforms. If you do so, you are lying and it is considered > fraud and you can be penalized for it.

I guess this will be the end of traveling to the US after my current VISA expires. This is beyond reasonable. My accounts are all public but I cannot condone such policies.

</comment><comment><USER12> I've probably created at least 50 reddit throwaways in the past 5 years...the platform encourages it. No way I'd be able to remember them all, and I'm sure lots of other people are in the same boat.

<comment><USER13> I create random usernames/accounts all over the web. Rarely do they have the same names. I also regularly (yearly or so) scrap all of them and start again, sometimes deleting the account if it has that feature, other times just abandoning it and starting new ones.

I've done this as long as online accounts have been a thing, even as far back as early IRC days.

I honestly wouldn't have a clue what half the accounts I used last year were, let alone going back further than that.

<comment><AUTHOR> > I honestly wouldn't have a clue what half the accounts I used last year were

What's scary to think about is whether you've associated your phone number (which they also ask for) or other PII with any of those old accounts. I don't think it's a stretch to imagine the government having an easier time figuring out your list of old accounts than you would.

<comment><USER13> Oh I have no doubt they know every account I've had. This whole thing reminds me of doing your taxes. They already know all the information, they just want you to tell them again so they can see if/where you lie.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wonder why the US sees everyone who is not from the US as having a lower worth or being a lower class or something like that. Even the laws are constructed around that...

<comment><USER15> It's not like that, Within the U.S itself some people have higher worth than others. Look at their medical system for example.

"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."

<comment><USER16> When people would pull my girlfriend for random checks, I used to joke:

Some travelers are random

But others are more random than others ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The US is well within its right to decide who should be allowed within its borders, but this requirement will drive away precisely the kind of immigrants that the US (or any other sensible country) might want to attract.

<comment><USER18> I'm sorry to inform you, but the people who currently run CBP are not only incompetent, but opposed to all immigrants regardless of qualification, especially if they're nonwhite.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The only silver lining is that they still have to ask. In the direction we are going, in a few years they will both know and have access to all your social media accounts.

<comment><USER20> This is the most prolific and dark comment on this thread.

<comment><USER3> I think you might be using the word "prolific" incorrectly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This just seems silly.

I applied for a security clearance ages ago, before social media, and I could understand the gotcha style questions and background stuff when applied to a security clearance.

I didn't expect anyone to honestly answer the question about if they had ever been a member of an organization dedicated to overthrowing the US government... but I understood why it was there.

This, this is just dumb and seems like it would produce nothing but bad will.

</comment><comment><USER22> Yep, applying for a US visa now.

I wonder what the actual changes are, is someone in ICE stalking your FB looking for pro-Hillary memes or something? For anyone who actually needed a security clearance, they wouldn't need you to volunteer it.

<comment><USER23> I think it is more of a "perjury trap". If after admittance, they need a quick way to kick you out of the country they can dig into things and say you lied on the forms.

<comment><USER24> Why wouldn't you tell the truth?

<comment><USER25> Some people simply aren't going to remember every single social media account from the past five years. That's what makes it a potential "gotcha."

It potentially creates this scenario:

 _Missed one? You "lied." Buh-bye!_

<comment><USER26> Is it correct to assume a Visa application is now just harder to fill out correctly?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is the first of many forays to come by the US government to outsource identity management to Facebook. It's coming, whether you like it or not.

</comment><comment><USER28> Can someone familiar with the Visa process describe other personal information that is required so that we can compare the level of invasiveness?

<comment><USER4> Income. Job. Previous jobs. Previous travel. Previous residence. Entries to the US. Family member's biographic info (e.g. place of birth, DoB, etc). A medical screening in some cases for some communicable diseases (e.g. HIV used to be a ban, no longer, TB still is banned). Asking about spousal relationship (inc. personal questions) if it is a marriage based visa.

This is a HUGE step up. There's nothing even ballpark like this. It is essentially de-anonymizing anonymous internet speech and then using it all against potential immigrants. It also may punish people for not providing information they may no longer even have (e.g. old accounts).

This is like a 10/10 in privacy invasion, the old process was like a 4/10\. The medical is likely the most invasive but the doctor only gives them specific information about diseases.

<comment><USER29> > A medical screening in some cases for some communicable diseases (e.g. HIV > used to be a ban, no longer, TB still is banned).

Only for immigrant visas (green card). Ironically you could be spreading TB for years in the US on a student or work visa, but until you can apply for a green card they won't bother to check. I assume this is the legacy of a system where people used to be able to apply for green cards a lot sooner and spent little time on other visas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Will my Visa be Rejected, if I do not share Social Media accounts?

You need to share your social media accounts details for past 5 years. You are not sharing info and they discover your info, you may be tagged for not telling truth and maybe subject to visa rejection.

</comment><comment><USER31> I legitimately don't remember most of the usernames I used in HN alone the past year alone. Who doesn't use throwaway accounts?

<comment><USER32> I don't.

But just curious. What type of scenario do you register throwaway accounts for?

<comment><USER33> I've read accounts of Google or Facebook employees who post on throwaway accounts to prevent being identified.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I have an extremely common name (There are at least 5x people with my name in my city alone). I have one social media account.

Lets say I disclose that social media account. The Immigration agent searches the other social media platforms, and the other people with my name show up. The agent then accuses me of lying on this question.

How do I prove that those other accounts _aren 't_ me?

</comment><comment><USER35> Wow, when is HN getting added to the list? This feels like a form of dystopian future is already here.

</comment><comment><USER36> How does this work with platforms that create shadow profiles like platforms that gather information from internet and form an entity out of the details without the person knowing it.

</comment><comment><USER37> Nothing heats up my phone like one of these ad-laden blog or news websites. What exactly is happening under the hood that requires so much power?

</comment><comment><USER38> The retrospective nature of this seems most problematic: the question is being introduced now but applies to the past 5 years, including to pseudonymous accounts such as Reddit. And whatever service isn't on there now that you feel safe using could be on there tomorrow, just as retrospectively.

That means that services which the user may have considered as platforms for anonymous free speech are being now retrospectively turned into identified speech. This seems to, either by intent or as a side effect, significantly compromise the whole idea of anonymous speech on the internet. For example, there must be many people who, prior and during the 2016 election campaign posted some pretty extreme comments about Donald Trump. Having those now re- interpreted as public statements on their visa applications in the light of him being president could be extremely worrying. There will be people already living in the US who have to fill these forms just to stay and their entire livelihoods could be threatened by not receiving a visa renewal.

In other words, it seems like this decision could have a massive chilling effect on speech everywhere, which is a really big concern.

<comment><USER39> Foreigners do not have a right to free speech.

It is a grave weakness in the American constitution that the rights of foreign nationals have not been declared or compared to the actual nationals. On this particular regard the Argentina constitution really upended the American one with its preamble declaring: this constitution is made to protect the liberties [...] of all those who wish to live in Argentinian soil.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Foreigners do not have a right to free speech.

This isn't really true. From wikipedia[1]:

>> The government may not criminally punish immigrants based on speech that would be protected if said by a citizen.

Non-citizens _can_ be denied entry to the U.S. based on things they've said that, if said by a citizen/permanent resident, would be "protected" speech under the first amendment. (Which is why the government looking at someone's social media history before deciding whether or not to issue a visa is troubling.)

There's also some grey-area with respect to people on short-term visas and undocumented immigrants because a non-citizen/non-permanent resident doesn't have any permanent "right" to be/remain in the country.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions#As_regulator_of_immigration)

<comment><USER39> > The government may not criminally punish immigrants based on speech that > would be protected if said by a citizen. > Non-citizens can be denied entry > to the U.S. based on things they've said that, if said by a > citizen/permanent resident, would be "protected" speech under the first > amendment.

Strange to me to draw this distinction. Denying entry is a prohibition exercised by the state. If you can be punished in any way, you don't have a right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> What if there was a GDPR removal request?

<comment><USER41> United States aren't subject to GDPR.

You still had that account. Yes, if the company complied with your GDPR request, there would be no record that you had it, but as far as the United States are concerned, you have to disclose it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Thankfully not HN but enough deep links to Reddit and it will join the list methinks.</comment>


The Engineer Who Built Facebook's Massive Data Infrastructure - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/02/16/businessinsider-meet-the-engineer-who-built-facebooks-massive-data-infrastructure-2011-2.DTL

<comment><USER2> I realize that both of these companies are private, but is there a way to learn more about how company "splits" like this are structured?

The article implies that Hammerbacher left Facebook before starting Cloudera... is that actually true? I imagine that Facebook might have said, "Whoa, hang on now -- you wouldn't have gained that experience anywhere else. We want a piece of Cloudera!"

<comment><USER3> Companies can't "own" the experience you gain as part of your career, otherwise you'd never be able to leave any job and continue with the same career/skills. The only potential issues would be if the new company is in the exact same industry and market as the old one, then you might hove some non- compete issues to worry about. However, most of those are not enforceable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Cloudera builds something called Hadoop"

Umm... no mention of Doug Cutting or Yahoo?

<comment><USER5> Doug Cutting works at Cloudera. Also, this is non-tech media reporting on tech so if they are even sort-of correct then good for them.</comment></comment>


An Android-x86 powered Gaming Console - <AUTHOR> http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/soul-the-smart-compute-device

<comment><USER2> Everything on the campaign page is so poorly executed it looks like scam. And the goal is... $1,490,000. Is it some kind of a joke?

<comment><USER3> The cheapest funding level which actually gives you the hardware is $149, and they say their factory requires a minimum order of 10,000 units. That seems to be the $1,490,000 right there. :)

Also, the title here is kind of misleading, it's not very powerfully branded as a "gaming console", it's just a "computing device". Also known, I guess, as "a computer".

No idea how big Android is for x86, are most apps even available cross- compiled?

<comment><USER4> > The cheapest funding level which actually gives you the hardware is $149, > and they say their factory requires a minimum order of 10,000 units. That > seems to be the $1,490,000 right there.

That seems tight.

How do you think they are they covering the 4-7% (9-12% if you don't reach goal) cut taken by indiegogo and credit card companies?

<comment><USER3> I am of course just guessing, but those numbers kind of stood up. Perhaps they're hoping for enough takers on the other funding levels to make up for the overhead. That sounds reasonable, doesn't it? But I haven't had my afternoon coffee yet, so it's a bit "numbers, schmumbers" at this point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> HN title policy continues to confuse. I'd argue that the title "An Android-x86 powered Gaming Console" is bit misleading as the device is not really marketed as gaming console.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's a PC. Serious ho-hum.

If this has anything to do with gaming, it sure escapes me. Where's the controller (do NOT tell me you're going to use a cell phone...).

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't know if I missed something but what's the point in this? Couldn't I just build a little x86 machine and stick x86 Android on it, for cheaper than the reward levels in this listing?

Maybe it's not intended to be unique and it's just a system builder using indiegogo to get some orders.

<comment><USER5> $149 for the base model seems quite affordable. I seriously doubt you could build something comparable yourself for less. The quoted MSRP are bit on the high side, but on the other hand the casework looks nice and compact, so I wouldn't call them unreasonable either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The motherboard seems to be a Wibtek device.

([http://www.wibtek.com/products/MotherBoard/show/?pid=1000077](http://www.wibtek.com/products/MotherBoard/show/?pid=1000077))

<comment><USER5> I believe that this is the exact model:

[http://www.wibtek.com/products/MotherBoard/show/?pid=1000113](http://www.wibtek.com/products/MotherBoard/show/?pid=1000113)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> ARM Android consoles are already barren enough, content-wise. Making an x86 variant specifically targeting an ndk-heavy sector of the app store seems... a strange choice.

</comment><comment><USER10> Meh. It would make a lot more sense if it had a Wine port, perhaps even ship with support from Crossovers or similar.

</comment><comment><USER11> I want one.... but looks too good to be true.

We will see.

</comment><comment><USER12> Come on, didn't people learn from the OUYA fiasco?

</comment><comment><USER13> What's its selling point, price\performance?

<comment><USER14> Size? The motherboard appears to be smaller than Mini-ITX.

I'm also guessing it's based on one of Intel's upcoming "Silvermont" Atom CPUs. That makes me very unlikely to support this project since I'd imagine the market's going to be flooded with similar products well before this project's estimated ship date.

<comment><USER5> It's almost certainly "Celeron J1850". The specs line up perfectly (10W TDP, 2.0 GHz clockspeed, 4 cores).

<comment><USER15> That chip is about $80 in quantity pricing if the early price leaks are to be believed.

That is not much leeway for the rest of the device.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why have VGA?

<comment><USER7> Lots of people still have VGA monitors + they're cheap as second monitors.</comment></comment>


Did Obama's election kill the antiwar movement? - <AUTHOR> http://ur.umich.edu/1011/Apr11_11/2250-did-obamas-election <comment><USER2> I started getting political in the Bush era. I was understandably anti-war, anti-corporatism what with the close ties to Halliburton, etc. When Obama came into power I naively thought the left would be just as hard on him than they were on Bush. The disillusionment was palpable. That's when I understood that politics was red vs blue, and that people root for their chosen color no matter what, facts be damned.

<comment><USER3> Obama has finally given me hope.

Hope that of Trump gets elected he will be as ineffective as Obama in keeping his pre-election promises.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > the movement — which has dropped off sharply the past two years — may be > more anti-Republican than antiwar, a U-M researcher says

You don't say...

</comment><comment><USER5> This article is dated April 11, 2011. Can we get a (2011) added to the title, please?

</comment><comment><USER6> Well, when was the last time you heard of Cindy Sheehan?

</comment><comment><USER7> Yes.</comment>