The Idea of Entropy Has Led Us Astray - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/86/energy/the-idea-of-entropy-has-led-us-astray <comment><USER2> Entropy is a difficult concept to understand. This was a well-written article that explained nothing and further muddied the waters.

What is perhaps not appreciated is how the idea of entropy completely transformed our society by unleashing massive amounts of mechanical efficiency. This free energy is derived from _contrast_ \-- power comes from flow across a gradient.

I wonder where the analogies work or where they fail. For instance, the importance of contrasts seem to illustrate the value of cultural differences (diversity) and raises concerns about a homogeneous world culture.

<comment><USER3> The jump to diversity is a bit iffy. Even taking for granted that this provides a similar gradient then all you can really guarantee is that it will cause _something_. This could be both good and bad. Also if it works in the same way then it will only work at the cost of diversity, the second law of thermodynamics makes sure of that.

So yeah, I'm not sure _if_ your analogy works, and if it did I'm not sure if it would be useful.

<comment><USER2> See below comment on structural holes. I completely agree with your assessment of the uncertainty here. But knowing that

1\. Monoculture is dangerous

2\. Diversity will be celebrated for good political reasons and

3\. Unity in diversity is the classical notion of harmony and beauty

...this makes me hypothesize about a theoretical reason why cultural contrasts could be something to value. It suggests that energy can be "harvested" from flows across those cultural contrasts and that cultural contrasts require energy to maintain. I think it would produce net value because... Idk.

(Note, I might be biased on this entire topic simply because I hate Facebook and miss the highly diverse 90s web)

<comment><USER4> _> ...this makes me hypothesize about a theoretical reason why cultural contrasts could be something to value. It suggests that energy can be "harvested" from flows across those cultural contrasts and that cultural contrasts require energy to maintain. I think it would produce net value because... Idk._

There is a reason to value diversity but it's as far from theoretical as you can get: billions of years of evolution have demonstrated that diversity is the only way for complex ecosystems (civilization, in our case) to _exist_ on any significant timescale. Monocultures are dangerous because the second the environment changes enough, everything dies pretty much all at once instead of transitioning between a mix of cultures best suited to survive the change. I think there's a world of research to be done on how those principles apply to societies, which are driven more by artificial selection, but there's definitely a connection.

<comment><USER5> > There is a reason to value diversity but it's as far from theoretical as you > can get:

I'm not sure that's the takeaway. Diversity ensures change and optimization (in a roundabout way). Stability in cultures is about application of optimization and more often, culling. I guess case in point depends on your time frame reference and what you mean by stability. Rome and the Aztecs wiped out almost as much as they assimilated (and assimilation was generally via enslavement, which is not quite the same).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Really, by the end, the author has reversed the situation to do the very thing complained of: science used to assuage the mores and anxieties of a given time. The issue, however, is that the underlying anxiety (whether in the Victorian Era or now) is the same: the desire that the future be eternal and the same as now, if not more so. So we don't even need to buy a new car or leave our homes. If we do nothing, surely the world won't move beneath our feet. Vast as it is, surely we can pretend the universe the opposite of a closed system.

</comment><comment><USER7> I was going to rant, but this:

> The energy-driven reduction of entropy is easy to demonstrate in simple > laboratory experiments, but more to the point, stars, biological > populations, organisms, and societies are all systems in which energy is > routinely harnessed to generate orderly structures that have lower entropy > than the constituents from which they were built. There is nothing > physically inevitable about increasing entropy in any of these systems.

is so straightforwardly incorrect that it frankly just should not have been published.

<comment><USER8> I would argue that what the author said is somewhat true, in that life can be roughly separated from nonlife by the observation that organisms do appear to tend toward less entropy in a universe where everything else seemingly does the opposite.

Genetically coded beings are orderly structures with far fewer microstates than their molecular constituents would likely contain otherwise. And we tend to make copies of ourselves, giving order to otherwise chaotic matter.

I think there's a profoundness in there, somewhere. Such a definition also solves the virus conundrum!

<comment><USER9> >in that life can be roughly separated from nonlife by the observation that organisms do appear to tend toward less entropy in a universe where everything else seemingly does the opposite.

In a superficial way, I suppose, but it's still wrong. Another way to look at it is that life actually tends to a more efficient increase of entropy than otherwise would be expected (when compared to non-living processes). For examples, humans are a complex chemical reaction that has reached the point where it can release energy through splitting of atoms - which raises entropy so much higher than it would be been possible otherwise and completely impossible via non-living chemical reactions.

<comment><USER10> A squirrel will spend energy to collect nuts and bury them together in the ground, rather than having them scatter and roll and blow willy-nilly. A person is constantly sweeping up the dust inside their house, painting and repainting the trim of their windows, and organizing the cables in their desk drawers.

Life can most certainly be viewed as a counterforce to entropy. Certainly at the philosophical level, but why not at the genetic level too, reproduction being the repeated organization and duplications of chemical bonds from smaller constituents.

I certainly see my life as a constant battle against entropy, an adult's life consists pretty much 80% of putting things in things.

<comment><USER9> >Life can most certainly be viewed as a counterforce to entropy.

Sure, as long as we qualify the terms correctly. That is, you need to decrease the resolution of what you mean by 'entropy' because each one of your examples actually increased entropy moreso than inaction would have.

Regardless, this goes against the author's point, because in each case 'work' needs to be done to reverse the entropy of a local system (e.g. scattered nuts) at the expense of the larger system (squirrel heat emitted into the universe)

>I certainly see my life as a constant battle against entropy, an adult's life consists pretty much 80% of putting things in things.

Sure, with proper qualification that is one way to look at things. This works because of the resolution that we care about. Namely, we don't care about heat generated from our bodies, or smart phones, or nuclear reactors, accelerating global entropy, but we certainly care about dusty rooms.

Again, it seems like the author disagrees with this view.

<comment><USER11> >Regardless, this goes against the author's point, because in each case 'work' needs to be done to reverse the entropy of a local system (e.g. scattered nuts) at the expense of the larger system (squirrel heat emitted into the universe)

I submit to you that you did not get the point the article is trying to make because it was exactly this. When considering the animal expending work as the system, it's entropy doesn't decrease because it isn't a closed system. You can then retort that the 2nd law concerns a larger closed system, but you can keep playing that game until the 2nd law essentially becomes a tautology, and becomes useless in understanding the system at hand.

I don't know if the author made this point explicitly (he hinted at it at the end), but one needs to actually know the details of the system under consideration, and very general laws can bring some level of context but will be limited in terms of the actual relevant or useful insight one can glean.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A non-physicist writing about entropy most often leads to a incorrect article full of slightly incorrect statements and misunderstandings. Case in point this article.

</comment><comment><USER13> So one philosophical issue I've had with entropy is that it is based on probability. But it is applied even to non-quantum systems that evolve in a deterministic fashion. How can we talk about the uncertainty of a system that is in a single, well known, predictable state? And with many-worlds interpretation, even the quantum wavefunctions evolve in a deterministic manner.

How can we reconcile this? We can say that the system is not probabilistic, but it is _approximately_ probabilistic. If it is only approximately true, does that mean we can find a loophole in the laws of thermodynamics?

<comment><USER14> > How can we reconcile this? We can say that the system is not probabilistic, > but it is approximately probabilistic.

It is indeed probabilistic _based on your existing knowledge of the system_. The idea that (say) a roulette wheel evolves according to deterministic laws of physics is not useful to you since you do not know the current micro-state necessary to make the prediction.

This is similar to the difference between frequentist and Bayesian interpretations of statistics. Bayesian statistics is more comfortable taking probability distributions over notional facts (such as 'is this coin unfair/weighted?') because it treats the experimenter's confidence as the fount of probability.

If you treat entropy in the same way, it makes more sense. The entropy of a system is related to the number of microstates it can occupy _consistently with our known macrostate_ (e.g., measurement of temperature and pressure -- inherently averaged quantities).

<comment><USER13> The issue I have with this is that the system is in a given microstate. We may not know which one, but there is one and exactly one. And it will evolve deterministically from that one. And if we look at how it evolves it may do things that seem very unlikely from a random macro point of view.

Assume for instance there is a macrostate with a huge amount of energetically favourable microstates. But our little microstate could be destined never to enter any of them.

Typically there is an assumption right, that any state could transition into any state at a probability given only by the energies but that isn't really true.

<comment><USER15> Grandparent is right.

Entropy is best thought of as a two-parameter function.

Not entropy(system), but rather entropy(system, your knowledge of system).

The system is in a microstate, but you don't know which one. If you did, it would have zero entropy. Since you only have a few general measurements like "one litre of gas at room temperature and one atmosphere of pressure", the entropy is much higher, because many microstates meet that description.

If you think of entropy as an objective property of the system regardless of a given observer's state of knowledge, you'll likely get confused.

<comment><USER13> How can we connect this subjective entropy back to things like Gibbs/Helmholtz free energy, or temperature (du/ds)?

<comment><USER15> This way!

[https://bayes.wustl.edu/etj/articles/theory.1.pdf](https://bayes.wustl.edu/etj/articles/theory.1.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This article is the same handwaving anti-science hogwash routinely found in philosophy departments that talk about quantum mechanics. They twist words and force connections where there are none because they want to talk about things they don't understand.

No, the laws of thermodynamics are not based on sociology.

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't think this article does nearly enough work to support its claim that a misunderstood belief in entropy is responsible for human greed, a claim which I think is dead wrong. Most people don't have a misunderstanding of entropy because most people have no knowledge of the concept whatsoever.

You don't need the second law of thermodynamics to make human beings shortsighted fools. We've been doing that for millennia.

</comment><comment><USER18> Lol. Lots of comments getting all huffy at someone daring to look at physics from a humanities perspective.

The basic idea is that the theory was worked out in a certain time and space where the social conditions were suitable to it. And that they form a feedback loop where the theory will reinforce those social conditions. It doesn't mean that the theory is somehow "wrong", or that the equations don't make useful predictions about observable systems. It really not that esoteric. Nor a threat to any of the science itself.

Really, anyone throwing up their arms in disgust at this article would do well to read up on some basic philosophy of science. Pick up an entry-level college textbook. Hell, just look up the definition of "theory" and really think about it for a few minutes.

</comment><comment><USER19> This bit "Thermodynamic theories served a society committed to laissez-faire competition." is just ... I don't know where to begin. Of course it inevitably leads into the idea that if we had just thought differently about the "sense of energy" and whatnot, things would be different. It has the ominous hint of Irigaray's bit about E=mc^2 being sexist because it "privileges" the speed of light ...

No, physics is always there, and it doesn't matter if the original science was done by cutthroat capitalists or gulag-exiling communists. If you want a decent sociological perspective of the realities of physics, I would instead suggest building on just how uncomfortable a given reality seems to make some, everything else is window dressing and justifications.

</comment><comment><USER20> Nautilus writers are the first to lose their jobs to GPT-3 and not have the readership notice.

</comment><comment><USER11> A very good article, although I think the deeper point that isn't really said explicitly is essentially how scientists (physicists in particular) are often too fond of their models and forget that they are idealizations of the real world. Whether a system really is isolated (they never are) is a serious contingency scientists often forget, but we can extend this to essentially forgetting the applicability of all hosts of accepted theory. This point of view has been called reductionism by some philosophers, and it has value in some cases but tends to overestimate the complexity of the real world.

It's important to remember that all models are approximations.

</comment><comment><USER21> I won't claim the author is mathematically illiterate. I don't know. But this is where math shines. Show the equation and how it it models the phenomenon. Match it against measurements. If it doesn't match, make another model. Without that, talking about entropy as if it isn't a useful way of conceptualizing phenomena is just word soup.

</comment><comment><USER22> I am still confused by the notion of entropy being unorder. I think there was an article about this being a common misunderstanding.

<comment><USER23> Here's the best way I know to explain it, paraphrasing Stephen Hawking:

Imagine taking a picture puzzle that you'd completed, putting it in your clothes dryer, and turning on the tumbler. I think you and I can both safely say that you'd get out a jumbled mess of pieces with little to no resemblance to the completed puzzle.

Now imagine taking a disassembled picture puzzle and putting it in your tumbler. You and I would both be very surprised if what came out was a correctly completed puzzle.

Mathematically, there is only one way that the pieces of the puzzle can all position themselves correctly to solve that puzzle. There are a huge number of ways those pieces can position themselves that _don 't_ solve the puzzle.

This is, mathematically, what is meant by "order" and "disorder." It means the system is in a configuration that is more– or less-constrained state.

A more classical version of this is to say that if you have a divided box with oxygen on one side and nitrogen on the other, this has a lower entropy than the same box where the oxygen and nitrogen are intermixed. Removing the divider from a box where they're separate will lead to them mixing, but removing the divider from a box where they're mixed will not lead to them separating. There are more configurations where the gases are mixed than where they are separate.

There are some subtleties when you look deeper at what it really means to be in a constrained state and how this interacts with quantum mechanics, but this is a reasonably accurate picture of how entropy works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm scratching my head trying to understand what the author is trying to say.

It feels like he doesn't like the idea of entropy for political and ideological reasons. Reminds me of Soviet support for Lamarckianism.

I take his point about misapplying scientific theories to socio-economic policies, and entropic thinking certainly can be misapplied in domains where it doesn't make sense ... but is that our problem today? Entropy is not part of the cultural and mainstream consciousness like Darwinism is. If anything, we don't take the idea of entropy seriously enough.

<comment><USER24> It seems like he is arguing for more environmentalism because the less energy we use, the longer it will take to reach the heat death of the universe?

It's a pretty ridiculous way of looking at things since any human activity is still an exceedingly insignificant entropy gain, even if looking only at our solar system.

<comment><USER25> not to mention and speaking as a human, human activity is the only justifiable reason to support entropy gain. Like, what else is enthalpy worth to us? so the universe can be here longer without us? (assuming we had any say in the matter)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've always found entropy to be one of the most depressing things in science.

<comment><USER11> You should read the article then because his point is that things aren't closed systems to begin with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'd say thermodynamics and entropy describe the woes of our time quite well: Ecologically, we've seen that releasing sequestered carbon into the atmosphere in order to extract its stored energy is a form of entropy that leads to a low energy state which it takes a lot of energy to undo. It's like we've rolled a rock down from the top of a mountain, only to realize how difficult it is to get it back up, how long it had taken for nature to build up all that potential energy over aeons. And economically, we're seeing that capitalism itself seems to be a process of entropy, moving us toward low-energy states with wealth concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer, much like stars forming from cosmic dust creating gravity wells into which other material becomes more and more likely to fall. Not to mention between tax havens and transfer pricing, we seem to be waking to the fact that our economic system is not a closed system, but is slowly getting the fuel siphoned out of it.

</comment><comment><USER28> Disorder is the order we don't want :)

</comment><comment><USER29> A very boring article. The thesis is potentially interesting, but fails to get any real attention from the author. The author proposes to investigate the negative social and political consequences of the framing of the 2nd law of thermodynamics, but puts no actual effort towards such an investigation.

Kelvin and Darwin are presented as equally consequent of a Victorian worldview, whereas they seem to propose opposing tendencies. Darwin describes a world of growth, and creation ex nihilo, whereas Kelvin describes a world of cooling and decay. The social implications of the Darwinian thesis seem to involve preferencing the creators and inventors of the world, while accepting the loss of those who stagnate as not only inevitable, but necessary towards producing growth. Kelvin's theory states that there is a limited amount of free energy in the world, which we might take to imply that those with a disproportionate share of resources are hoarding them and keeping them away from others. This seems to promote a world of redistribution and socialization.

An agrarian worldview would seem to preference a hotter world, since plants rely on a high outside temperature to grow. We also know that photosynthesis can be performed more efficiently at high CO2 concentrations. An entropic worldview prefers colder external temperature, since efficiency of a heat engine increases with temperature difference. I've seen proposed, as a resolution to the fermi paradox, that certain civilizations are waiting for the universe to cool down in order to perform computations more efficiently. Such a proposal could only arise out of a worldview informed by entropy, of waiting in order to more efficiently use the finite resources we have available. The evolutionary worldview, by way of contrast, suggests that waiting entails to stagnation, and ultimately destruction, that success goes to whoever is most nimble.

I would percieve a congruency between a worldview informed by entropy and modern liberalism, which seems to heavily favour the principles of waiting and of redistribution. Conservatism seems more in favour of an evolutionary worldview, wherever it believes that someone well off deserves what they have, or wherever it perceives a competition between groups.

It should be clear that both worldviews have some relation with the real world, that both decay and growth are happening around us constantly. I, personally, would highlight the evolutionary thesis as more hopeful, in that it imagines still greater things to come, rather than the slow decay characteristic of the entropic model. I would also point out it likely has stronger relevance for the foreseeable future, since the death of the sun, much less of the universe, remains an inordinately long way off still. I would therefore tend to agree with the thesis of the author, though for none of the reasons they set out to defend.</comment>


The Longest War - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-alan-grayson/the-longest-war_b_602108.html?view=print

<comment><AUTHOR> _"... Today, the war in Afghanistan becomes America's longest war. Longer than the war in Vietnam. Longer than the Korean War. ..."_

The most significant item I've read today.</comment>


It's time to fix the window controls (ubuntu 10.04) - <AUTHOR> http://yokozar.org/blog/archives/194 <comment><USER2> Whether they had good reason for changing a central UI element or not, it comes across as if they decided on a whim. This change seems so random. It's strange that they didn't anticipate the uproar in the community and at least try to answer the concerns and justify their decision.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's a weakness of all centralized software construction mechanisms that change chosen by a handful of people can end up thrust unwillingly on large crowds. It's not like casual users can fork Ubuntu simply because they dislike the window layout.

But there are some pathologies that seem endemic to open source. A revealing comment by one of the bug shepherds on the relevant bug[1] says "Change is always good , _if_ there is a good reason to change". I think this is plainly false: change doesn't just need good reasons, it needs excellent reasons, because change by itself has such high costs.

Open source is often too open to change for its own sake, and often lacks consideration for the maintenance costs of new functionality. To take the on- topic example of OS changes, it was viable for XP users to completely skip Vista, and continue to use the old OS, over a period of nearly 10 years, without issues of incompatibility. Try doing the same with a typical Linux distro, and you'll find your apt-get (or equivalent) will pull in all sorts of dependencies that you may or may not desire if you want to use the latest software.

[1] <https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/bugs/532633>

<comment><USER4> _To take the on-topic example of OS changes, it was viable for XP users to completely skip Vista, and continue to use the old OS, over a period of nearly 10 years, without issues of incompatibility. Try doing the same with a typical Linux distro, and you'll find your apt-get (or equivalent) will pull in all sorts of dependencies that you may or may not desire if you want to use the latest software._

You've made a mistake in your Linux distro selection, if lifecycle in a priority (and for me, it usually is). RHEL (and thus, CentOS) has a seven year update cycle. During that period they will never "pull in all sorts of dependencies you may or may not desire". It is a stable platform and it remains the same throughout its lifecycle. If you prefer apt-based distros, Ubuntu LTS has a five year lifecycle. Debian tends to be about 3-4 years, but is based on the development of the next revision rather than a stated lifecycle, as far as I know (so if Debian develops faster, you have to upgrade faster).

That said, I suppose one could argue that on older stable Linux distros, one might have to add some dependencies from outside of the core OS in order to run super new stuff...though I rarely find things that won't build against the libraries available on CentOS 5 or Ubuntu 8.04LTS. Some developer tools move really fast, as do some of the new-fangled Gnome or KDE user applications, but mostly I never notice that the OS is a couple years old.

So, yes, Open Source does change faster, but there are very easy ways to opt out of the rapid release cycle for systems that need stability (like servers). I can't tell you the number of folks I've met over the years who've started out with Fedora or Ubuntu, only to figure out that upgrading every 12-18 months is stressful and unproductive, and moved to a more predictable distro, even though it has older packages.

In short, you have a choice about how long you can use a Linux distro safely and productively. You can prioritize for the latest and greatest or you can prioritize stability and predictability.

<comment><USER5> One of the most confusing parts about this switch, to me, was that it immediately precedes an LTS release. Why would you spring experimental changes right before the release you're calling 'stable' and committing to for 5 years? I was under the impression that LTS was supposed to be the distillation of all the new features that were embraced or rejected during the wild and crazy intermediate releases.

The actual change isn't that big of a deal. It's pretty easy to fix, and it would have been fine in a minor release with plenty of lead time before it became 'official', just to try it out. The big deal is that this reveals a broken management and release process, and comes across as a serious trust breaker.

<comment><USER4> Ubuntu has a long history of making dumb little changes without warning and then committing to them against all reason. I don't know if they've fixed it yet, or not, but my favorite is when they broke the Apache configuration file by adding shell variables to it (thus making it it unparse-able by everything other than Ubuntu scripts; the Apache standard tools can't parse the Ubuntu configuration file without pre-processing, for an example of how absurd this decision was). All this breakage was caused just because someone was too lazy to parse out a few different types of variables from the existing configuration file syntax (I looked it up, and the comment about this in the changelog was that parsing it wasn't possible; despite the fact that numerous, probably hundreds, of applications and scripts do parse it correctly). The Ubuntu developer culture of superiority and self-importance is quite trying at times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If they want to make the window controls like the window controls on Mac OS X, I'm fine with that. (I use Mac OS X a lot anyway, and am already comfortable with controls on the left side of the window.) They should at least get it right, however, with the close button on the far left of the title bar, and the minimize and expand buttons to the right of that button.

It looks to me like they just moved the right hand centric window controls to the left, which is terrible ergonomics and design.

<comment><USER7> OS X doesn't suffer from the File Menu/Close Button proximity problem either since the menu bar isn't attached to the window. That proximity alone should be a disqualifier for this new layout.

<comment><USER8> Might be a little bit off topic, but the detached menu bar gradually pisses me off as screen gets bigger. It's really a long-distance travel for the mouse to click the menu on a 1920x1200 screen. Now Apple is rolling out 27' iMac with an even bigger screen ...

The situation gets even worse when I use multiple monitors as menu bar only shows on one of them.

<comment><USER9> I agree. Fitt's law falls apart at high resolution

<comment><USER10> I'm not convinced it falls apart. It seems more like a failure to take account for the distance you must travel on your return from the menu bar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Not only is this a violation of Fitt's law- it's practically the canonical example of how to violate it. That is, when an application is maximized the exact upper corners of the screen become incredibly valuable because a user can get there without aiming but just by flicking the mouse in the general direction. Flick it to the upper left and click for all window controls, flick it to the upper right and click to close.

I remember when Microsoft made it so that you had to go to the corner but then pull it back several pixels, thus destroying forcing you to aim the mouse cursor. It may sound like a silly little thing, but I thought at the time that it was a good metaphor for how they could get something to _look_ similar (to, say, a mac) and yet still get it completely wrong. When I switched to linux around the same time I thought it was so refreshing that the UIs of the time (minus some skins people had made) didn't violate this example of Fitt's law, and also that if anyone were dumb enough to change that in the future, we could all just fix it.

I usually disregard comments about linux desktops copying window's mistakes, but this is just very irritating to me, mostly because it's elective- it's like you actually have to _try_ to get it wrong.

<comment><USER12> I'd love to see some modern testing results on that, honestly. The idea of "flicking" the mouse to the corner of the screen made sense on a 512x348 Mac Plus desktop. It doesn't seem as appropriate on a 1920x1080 monster, where generally nothing is maximized anyway. And with a touchpad you can't do it at all.

<comment><USER13> You're neglecting pointer acceleration, which applies for touchpads too.

If yours is anything like mine, try this: position your mouse to the far left of the screen; quickly swipe across the touch pad from left to right. Your pointer should reach the far right hand side of the screen. Now swipe ever so slowly from right to left, your pointer might get about a quarter of the way across the screen.

Once you consider acceleration (eg, the further you try to move, the faster you are moving when you get there), Fitt's law is more, not less, important on a big screen.

<comment><USER14> i disabled acceleration, and i suspect many others do.

i tried several times to get used to it. it's just not predictable enough for me. hitting or missing a target just because i was too fast or slow, sounds useless to me.

<comment><USER15> The acceleration curve on macs is horribly horribly broken. There's a bunch of utilities to fix it or turn it off because strangely you can't do it yourself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's not like it ever happened before, is it? Oh wait:

[https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/update- notifier/+b...](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/update- notifier/+bug/332945) ("update notifications change" outrage with 20+ duplicates, 100+ reporters, 400+ comments) - this is what happens when you implement an official pop-under to do system upgrades.

Timeline: Feature freeze 19 Feb 2009, change done 23 Feb 2009, UI freeze 5 Mar 2009?

<comment><USER17> Ahh crap. You just turned one of my minor annoyances into "who the ____thought this was a good idea?" I thought I was misclicking somewhere or accidentally hitting a keycombo. I have come to accept people's mistakes, but when they put some thought into it before pulling the trigger--arrgh!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I mean wow, just wow, I would love to hear the rationale for such a boneheaded decision.

Thank god whoever makes this decision doesn't work for a car company, or we'd see next year's model with reversed gas and brake pedals.

<comment><USER19> FTA: <http://www.ivankamajic.com/?p=281> "Many of you have been asking for some correspondence regarding the button position in the window manager.

Here it is..."

<comment><USER18> In that link they really don't actually go into the 'why' they just say they thought about it and show us a snapshot of a white board that says nothing as far as rationale.

The most telling part of the article parent linked to is: "Is it better or worse? It is quite hard to tell." If that's what they think, then why change it?

Additionally, the author says: " I have had it running on my machine with the buttons in this order since before the Portland sprint (first week of February?) and I am quite used to it". That sounds like it conferred no benefit whatsoever.

<comment><USER19> Sorry. I didn't mean to suggest that the article was entirely complete. Only that you might have missed it, and it might go further in explaining things you seemed interested in. =)

<comment><USER18> Sorry if I sounded offended, I actually did miss that link, and I up voted your comment when I read it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> So why don't they leave it on the right as default (old way) and just a gui way to switch it to the other site for left handed/osx people. Then both sides are happy. Problem solved-ish.

<comment><USER21> When presented with two interface options, we should resist the urge to implement both and let the user decide.

<comment><USER22> Why not just go with the one that is more useful to more people as the default and bury the option to switch deep in some 'advanced' config setting? You still have to make a design decision in choosing the default correctly since that is most crucial.

<comment><USER23> Sure you can configure it. <http://fosswire.com/post/2008/02/customize-your- titlebar/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> It's already been fixed!

[http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/03/worried- ubuntu-1004-will-...](http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/03/worried- ubuntu-1004-will-have-left- hand.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed:+d0od+\(Omg!+Ubuntu!\))

<comment><USER25> so link to a blog post that just links to another blog post?

<comment><USER24> To be fair, I couldn't be bothered to click through. Just wanted to pass along the information regarding this topic (which is now obsolete).

EDIT:

[http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2010/03/ubuntus-new-themes- an...](http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2010/03/ubuntus-new-themes-and- byobu.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Seems it's time to fix the database, too: "Error establishing a database connection"

Edit: Bing cache has it (Google doesn't!)

[http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?d=802200748186&w=92581924...](http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?d=802200748186&w=92581924,4ad187f5)

Here's a brilliant idea for any Google engineers out there: Dedicate a few bots to caching everything that hits the front page of digg/reddit/hn before the sites go down.

</comment><comment><USER27> The Ubuntu folks need to get a good UI designer to deal with this stuff. I'm not sure a design-by-committe approach works for producing a good UI with sensible defaults, good UI organization, good colors, consistency, etc. It seems to me Ubuntu 10 is taking a huge step backwards in all these areas.

<comment><USER28> Except that this wasn't a design-by-committee approach... This appeared fully done from the internal design department of Canonical a day before UI freeze, which just reeks of everything FOSS _shouldn't_ be :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> They need to change the entire GUI. Desktop metaphors are done.

EDIT: For some reason I can't reply to anything anymore...Just redirects me to <http://news.ycombinator.com/r> with a blank page.

Anyways: cookie: Oh man I have a ton of ideas! A lot of them flow well into the touch interface world, but that means they don't work well with the keyboard interface.

For instance, one of my ideas was the infinite vertical, limited horizontal screen. Check out Shoes's STACK & FLOW positioning for some hints.

Radial menus instead of file menus. Also, menus open-able from from anywhere on the application ui.

If I had a decent design station and PS4 I bet I could make some nifty examples.

<comment><USER30> What do you suggest?

KDE wanted to change the whole game up with KDE 4. They solicited the community for ideas for months. They still ended up at roughly the same interface and concepts that have always existed for the overall interface metaphor.

I think this is just how people expect computers to work now. Of all the proposals out there, I haven't heard many feasible replacements for the desktop idea.

<comment><USER31> "They solicited the community for ideas for months." Maybe soliciting for ideas visionary UX guru's would have worked out better for them.

UI design is a technical art-form not a popularity contest.

<comment><USER30> Right, but the thing is that nobody could present to KDE an idea that was likely to work out better than the traditional desktop/windowing model.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> If you're right handed and start with the pointer in the centre of the screen, the base of your hand resting on the desk and palm/fingers covering the mouse, it is more awkward trying to move the mouse to the right than to the left. Movement to the upper right corner seems to require arm muscles.

</comment><comment><USER33> Maybe I'm on my own here, but I like the look of it on them on the left. I'm used to that with OS X.

</comment><comment><USER34> I wish we had some kind of cache service or something that generates multiple cache links for a website thats slashdotted/reddited/digged/ycombinated/etc. Every day someone posts a link and everyone else shares it with everybody, and before you know it the site gets DDoSed and nobody can reach it. Unless we're lucky enough the website was cached by google/bing.

<comment><USER35> Coral Cache was invented for just that.

<http://www.coralcdn.org/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Can someone copy/paste the article from their browser cache? The site is down.

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm running ubuntu 10.04 right now (upgraded this morning), it's just not that annoying. I'd like it to be fixed (I think the chromium close/redize/minimize buttons look much better), but I think the flurry about this is over statued.

</comment><comment><USER25> People still use windows controls?

</comment><comment><USER38> Who closes windows with the mouse these days anyway?

<comment><USER27> The vast majority of people using computers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Wow... if only the window manager was a separate program or something... then you could just run the one that you like instead of the default one.

Oh, you mean that's true? Oh...

<comment><USER30> Good defaults are crucial to the success of a platform. Ubuntu is going for mainstream adoption. The mainstream wants their computers to "just work". They don't want to have to change themes or window managers, they just want the buttons to live where they're expected.

Even if the users were willing to change the WM for the button position, almost no user knows how to change the WM, and it probably necessitates editing .desktop files or .xinitrc or something (unless you use something like fusion-icon to control it, which might be reasonable but is still extra configuration).

Furthermore, this is custom to that theme. Any other Metacity theme has the buttons on the right, so they'd just have to change the theme, not the WM, to get the buttons where desired.

<comment><USER22> > _They don't want to have to change themes or window managers, they just want > the buttons to live where they're expected._

By this reasoning no one on Windows would ever switch to OSX.

<comment><USER13> At least OSX and Windows both put the close button in a corner, this theme puts it between the maximise button and the window title. I've never seen another OS put it in such a strange position.

<comment><USER22> How does that negate my statement? Normal people don't look for things like, "Is the close button on the outside of the window?" Are you really going to tell me that the only reason that people tolerate a switch from Windows to MacOS X is because the close-window button is still towards the outside of the window even though the buttons are on the opposite side?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Everyone who is complaining is smart enough to easily change the theme to something they are more used to. Less technical people are either: 1\. Not using Ubuntu, probably never will regardless of the position of window controls. 2\. Perfectly happy to learn to click wherever required, as is evident when they purchase Macs and use those.

<comment><USER16> It's not about preference - it's about usability (if we leave out strange release management out of it):

\- proximity to "File" menu

\- proximity to top "Applications" menu

\- inconsistency (windows close on the left, tabs and system on the right)

<comment><USER41> Not to mention that, according to TFA, no existing themes work with the new structure: changing to another theme can't help.

<comment><USER30> It's not that no themes work, if I understand correctly, it's that any other theme would still have the buttons on the right. Someone please correct me if this is wrong.

<comment><USER22> IIRC, the theme itself has control over where the buttons on the window titlebar go. I know for sure that this is the case in Emerald, and I know that other window managers allow various themes to move around the position of the buttons at will. If they changed the underlying code to _force_ all themes to use the same button position regardless of what they have it set to... that's a lot bigger of an issue than just changing the button position in the default theme.

Maybe someone running 10.04 Alpha 3 can confirm that this is being forced upon other themes. Another thought is that maybe most themes don't specify the button locations because they are used to the defaults being 'buttons on the right,' and this Ubuntu change messes with the global defaults rather than just applying the changes locally to the new default theme.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The 'Tsar Bomba' Was a 50-Megaton Nuke - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/war-is-boring/the-tsar-bomba-was-a-50-megaton-monster-nuke-6855dcaeb618 <comment><USER2> ok... here is the deal.... the Tsar Bomba was ^#%$ing huge.

No seriously... MUCH MUCH bigger then you think.

it was 10 times the combined power of all the conventional explosives used in World War II

it was 10% of the combined yield of all nuclear tests to date.

and mostly.... It was the equivalent of over 1kg of antimatter going up. 1 ^#%$ing kg.... of ^#%$ing antimatter.

It broke windows in Norway and Finland and its shock wave was VISIBLE in the air 700 km away.

It is impossible to get people to understand how much of a monster it was. AND.... and this was it dialed down to 1/2 its maximum yield.

No one has been crazy enough to test another nuke of its size. Even in the height of the cold war no one was crazy enough to test something like that again.

<comment><USER3> If you want to see the effects of various nukes there is a simulator here: [http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/](http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/) (I have no idea if it will get you on some sort of list if you access it).

The takeaway is that, as long as it is just a single nuke, the damages are rather underwelming, except for the Tsar bomba.

<comment><USER4> "the damages are rather underwelming"

Not sure I would agree with that - a single 800kt detonation over Manhattan looks pretty bad to me and a realistic attack would probably have had many tens of warheads used.

Here is a rather jolly 1980's BBC documentary that spends a lot of time looking at the effects of a single 1Mt warhead on London:

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

Of course, it does finish by noting that a real attack would have multiple ground and air bursts.

[NB UK("pretty bad") == NonUK("utterly appalling")]

<comment><USER3> Well when I mean pretty underwhelming I mean that I kinda expected a nuke to take out the entirety of New York + a big chunk of the east coast. I mean these are the weapons of doom, right? The weapons that will end the world?

And yet if you are just 30 miles from the target the first time you are going to notice is when you turn on the TV.

<comment><USER5> Keep in mind that at the height of the Cold War, both the US and USSR had thousands of nuclear warheads. A single nuke might not be a civilization- destroying weapon, but a carpet bombing of nukes sure is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Tsar Bomba was an experimental weapon, but the United States had the B41, a three-stage thermonuclear weapon with a yield of 25 megatons. Four of these would have been as powerful as the Tsar Bomba; the U.S. manufactured 500 of them. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B41_nuclear_bomb](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B41_nuclear_bomb)

In the 1960s the U.S. Strategic Air Command ran a continuous airborne nuclear- armed patrol (Operation Chrome Dome), so there was probably a 25 megaton weapon in the air for much of that time. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Chrome_Dome](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Chrome_Dome)

It's also worth remembering that the limiting factor on the yield of the Tsar Bomba was the carrying capability of the Tu-95. The Teller–Ulam design for thermonuclear weapons is scalable: you can keep adding stages as long as you have the uranium, plutonium and lithium to make them with. Edward Teller supposedly designed (or at least contemplated) a 10 gigaton bomb: [http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2012/09/12/in-search-of-a- big...](http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2012/09/12/in-search-of-a-bigger-boom/)

<comment><USER7> > Edward Teller supposedly designed (or at least contemplated) a 10 gigaton > bomb

That guy was batshit crazy, pardon my French. I know that the Dr. Strangelove character was pretty much based on him, I know about and I partially understand the reasons behind the nuclear arms race, but when you read about plans like this you just start contemplating about the end of humans as a species.

<comment><USER8> How is he crazy? When nukes are on the table either you implement a MAD-like policy or you die in nuclear fire. There's no real middle ground with weapons this powerful. Its rational to support MAD. Thus far, its working. A lot of human warfare is on its face is crazy sounding, but has a rational backing.

>when you read about plans like this you just start contemplating about the end of humans as a species.

We called up the USSR and asked them to stop producing weapons on that scale. They laughed in our face. What exactly do you propose? Heck, the USSR's client states were motivated to nuke us without warning. Castro had a pretty big hard-on for launching nukes:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/22/science/22nuke.html?_r=0](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/22/science/22nuke.html?_r=0)

He wasn't convinced by the loss of life or anything. His Moscow handlers had to explain to him that the radioactive cloud would be bad for Cubans. Heck, the politburo was demanding WWIII from Khrushchev during the Cuban missile crisis.

Today, Russia maintains an openly published first strike policy on what it calles "tactical nukes." Essentially they say they can launch nukes whenever they feel like it and not consider it a MAD violation. So if Putin's conventional troops are losing, he just nukes the opposition. With madmen like Putin running nukes, MAD makes sense. Its the only thing that does.

<comment><USER9> > How is he crazy?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Teller](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Teller)

"during Oppenheimer's trial he was the only member of the scientific community to state that Oppenheimer should not be granted security clearance"

"One of the most controversial projects he proposed was a plan to use a multi- megaton hydrogen bomb to dig a deep-water harbor more than a mile long and half a mile wide to use for shipment of resources from coal and oil fields through Point Hope, Alaska."

"Teller suffered a heart attack in 1979, and many observers[71] described him as blaming it on Jane Fonda"

"In the 1980s, Teller began a strong campaign for what was later called the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), derided by critics as "Star Wars," the concept of using ground and satellite-based lasers, particle beams and missiles to destroy incoming Soviet ICBMs."

A few megadeaths here-or-there.

The only thing missing from Dr Strangelove is having the uncontrollable hand. Yes, you can call him "just focused" if you prefer that. Let him "peacefully" dig in your backyard.

<comment><USER8> >One of the most controversial projects he proposed was a plan to use a multi- megaton hydrogen bomb to dig a deep-water harbor

Russians used nukes for mining. Its not magic. You can manage fall-out, risk, etc. Its not "crazy."

>"Teller suffered a heart attack in 1979, and many observers[71] described him as blaming it on Jane Fonda"

A 70+ year old man being a difficult curmudgeon? Say, it ain't so!

> Teller began a strong campaign for what was later called the Strategic > Defense Initiative (SDI)

SDI made sense. We still have SDI. Now we call its "Strategic Missile Defense" and its our biggest counter against rogue nation nuke launches and other attacks. It also has Putin scared as he can't match it and is demanding we don't continue to build new sites in Eastern Europe out of desperation.

>The only thing missing from Dr Strangelove is having the uncontrollable hand.

I really wish more people understood the world from the lessons of history instead of caricutures from Hollywood movies.

<comment><USER10> The US actually used more nukes for mining then the russians. WAY more.

the russians had the more accidents, though. but the US also had it share of radioactive underground rivers as a result. there is a list on wikipedia

<comment><USER11> This article (which presumably includes mining related activities for both countries):

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peaceful_nuclear_explosion](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peaceful_nuclear_explosion)

puts the score at US: 28, USSR: 237.

Combining the 25 intensification and 22 storage explosions here presumably gets you past the US total of peaceful nuclear explosions:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Explosions_for_the_Nati...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Explosions_for_the_National_Economy)

Are there more articles that you would suggest?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Be sure to visit the NUKEMAP simulator and see how the Tsar Bomba matches up to some of the other nuclear warheads available. Drop one on _your_ hometown!

[http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/](http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/)

<comment><USER13> I wonder why, depending on the bomb, the radius some radius don't come in the same order. Some time the air blast is larger than the fireball, sometimes not.

<comment><USER11> One thing that factors into that is the surface vs airburst setting (the presets differ).

edit: for the simulation, the other major thing that factors into it must be the "fission fraction", the presets store 4 things: name, yield, a field marking surface/airburst and the fission fraction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It was different time.

Soviet union was enclosed by US airbases and nonstop flying bombers, which could hit any city in a few hours. America also developed crazy stuff like Project Pluto...

Anyway there are two reasons for this bomb not mentioned in article:

\- Terraforming. Soviets honestly believed they could redirect rivers from north to arid south. They even made artificial valley in mountains as experiment. Larger nukes are cleaner than smaller nukes.

\- Doomsday device in form of dirt bomb. Plan was to concentrate all nuclear waste from Soviet countries on single place, and explode massive bomb under it. Explosion would spread nuclear material into atmosphere and most of earth wold become radioactive. This device was not approved by soviet leaders, too dangerous.

<comment><USER15> I think that Russia is still surrounded by US forces, or at least US sympathetic forces.

I wonder if this causes their country-people to feel boxed in or cornered. :\

<comment><USER16> Yes, it does.

And might be the reason why they are so quick to also help other countries with a similar issue (for example: I am from Brazil, and our navy is crap, when we announced finding one of the largest oil reserves of the world, US immediately announced reactivating their south-atlantic fleet, they don't even tried to hide their intentions... so Russia now patrols our water for us, to keep US ships away from the oil rigs).

<comment><USER17> The US makes about 8 million barrels a day. The Tupi field discovered off Brazil makes about 100,000 a day and best-case contains a few years of American oil production _total_.

You think the US Fourth Fleet reactivation was intended to steal that production? And risk war with most of South America?

<comment><USER18> It's perfect case of today's anti-US propaganda - "they want to take our <oil/land/cattle>!"

Sadly, too many people absent-mindedly believing in that.

<comment><USER17> It's particularly silly when coupled with the "that's why Russia patrols our waters now!" bit. Out of the altruistic goodness of Putin's heart, I suppose?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Tsar's destructive force was incredible, but I think it bothers me a lot more that the US built 500 B41 bombs with a 25Mt yield during that era. What's the functional destructive difference between 50Mt and 25Mt? Zilch, any practical target hit by it is gone.

<comment><USER20> It's incredibly bothersome. We still have the ability to annihilate the whole human race, instantly,

<comment><USER21> I think it is not possible to eradicate all human race with current nuclear bombs. Some would survive.

<comment><USER22> I agree it would be hard to be sure you had gotten every last one, but it would be easy to ensure that the survivors live in a new stone age with nuclear fallout making most of the earth uninhabitable for people, if not most life. I've been somewhat amazed at how resilient the biome around Chernobyl has shown itself to be, but I'm sobered by the measurable losses attributable to it that accident as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> When I think about human intelligence, my mind always arrives at these scientists.

How can, then, some of the smartest people on Earth be involved in something as stupid as this.

Many scientists realise the grave consequences of their stupidity, _after_ the fact. Both Sakharov and Oppenheimer realised this, but it was too late. The genie was out.

The mirage of power, respect, titles, prizes and access to unlimited resources for their experiments is too strong to resist, I guess. :Carrot

Then there's the patriotism thing - do right for you country, protect it from the enemies. Fear. :Stick

This is how the devil works, after all :).

Beware of the stupid as he knows not what the implications of his activities are. Be scared of the smart working for the stupid, as he very well knows the implications, but is too weak to resist the temptation. He has sold his soul.

<comment><USER24> It's your classic Prisoners' Dilemma. (No surprise, since game theory was largely developed to analyze nuclear war.)

You're stuck with another guy. You're both better off if you both cooperate. But individually you're better off if you betray the other guy. In that situation it's really, really hard to arrange cooperation.

The US and USSR would have been better off if they could have put a halt to the madness. But if one stopped, that gives huge incentives for the other to betray.

The thing is, betraying the other is the _rational_ thing to do. It's the worst outcome, but it comes from purely rational actions.

<comment><USER25> And hilariously, whenever it is tested the whole thing falls flat. Because humans cooperate by instinct. Kennedy was told again and again to escalate until the Kremlin backed down. Eventually he had enough and basically showed "rationality" the door. Thus the Cuban Crisis ended without the cold war going hot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> If you enjoyed this article, the documentary "Trinity and Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie" was great - decent footage and a great soundtrack.

<comment><USER27> The filmmaker behind TAB is Peter Kuran. He was a visual effects specialist for some pretty cool movies (e.g. Empire Strikes Back). Restoring old atomic test footage is a special interest of his and he's also done several more in- depth documentaries about atomic weapons:

 _Nuclear Rescue 911: Broken Arrows & Incidents_

 _Atomic Filmmakers: Behind the Scenes_

 _Atomic Journeys: Welcome to Ground Zero_

 _Nukes in Space_

 _Atomic Filmmakers_ is my favorite--it's sort of a "making of" for the historical footage used in the other movies and it talks about the secret Lookout Mountain film studio the Air Force set up outside LA to develop special technology to document and instrument above-ground nuclear tests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> "Interestingly enough, Tsar Bomba was one of the "cleanest" nuclear weapons ever detonated, because the bomb's design eliminated 97 percent of the possible fallout."

How do one design a bomb to eliminate, or minimize, fallout? I wasn't even aware it was an option.

<comment><USER29> By my understanding, fallout is less a function of the explosion being nuclear and more of how the bomb is detonated. The Tsar Bomba was an air-burst. By keeping the fireball in the air, less vaporized material from the ground is kicked up into the debris cloud from the blast. Both air bursts and ground bursts generate fallout, but a ground burst will generate nastier, localized fallout, and more of it.

This is my speculation, but I suspect another reason for the relative lack of fallout from the Tsar Bomba was related to its yeild. To get a particularly large yeild from the materials available, the bomb is going to have to be as efficient as you can get it. All things equal, a more efficient system generates less waste.

Or the design the article could simply be referring the bomb's parachute system, which helped keep the blast in the air.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I found the recent series by the Digital Antiquarian to be very interesting on this, weaving together Infocom's Trinity series and the atomic bomb history, including the Tsar Bomba.

[http://www.filfre.net/2015/01/t-plus-3-edward-teller-and- his...](http://www.filfre.net/2015/01/t-plus-3-edward-teller-and-his- superbomb/)

</comment><comment><USER31> I saw a doc about nuclear weapons that mentioned this one and said that the real reason that no one made them bigger was the fact that they were wasteful.

The atmosphere is effectively 10 miles high. Once your blast radius approaches that the difference in pressure pushes most of the energy upward above the atmosphere. You don't get the horizontal spread you'd expect as you increase tonnage.

<comment><USER32> There's also a re-radiation effect, where the ground etc. that was heated up by the bomb radiates part of that energy into space.</comment></comment>


Netflix's gamble pays off as subscriptions soar - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-38672837 <comment><USER2> It bothers me to no end that audio tracks and subtitles aren't available globally on Netflix. I live in the Netherlands but my kids are half Danish. It's difficult to keep them exposed to Danish when not in Denmark.

Netflix has nearly all children's cartoons dubbed in both Dutch and Danish but we can't access the Danish audio tracks from the Netherlands.

I had really hoped that a global service like Netflix would allow global access to languages. I understand that show/movie licensing is per country, but subtitles and audio tracks? _why?_ :-(

IMHO, this whole idea of "you live in $COUNTRY so you only get to communicate in $MAIN_LANGUAGE_OF_COUNTRY" doesn't belong on the internet. Taking an IP- based guess, sure, many websites do that too. But at least most websites allow you to pick a different language if you wish. Netflix, not so much.

<comment><USER3> _IMHO, this whole idea of "you live in $COUNTRY so you only get to communicate in $MAIN_LANGUAGE_OF_COUNTRY" doesn't belong on the internet._

As a Belgian, I can assure you the majority of the internet does not even get that part right. I get websites in the wrong language _all_ the time.

PSA: The majority language in Belgium is _not_ French.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, the weirdest thing is that HTTP Accept-Language has been around for decades and is usually configured correctly (to the OS system language). No idea why people use geolocation for language at all, on the web.

<comment><USER4> People in English-speaking countries are really bad at thinking about localisation since they're not exposed to these issues personally.

<comment><USER3> Better hope the Chinese don't take over our economy any time soon, I'm sure their devs have the same view on this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Netflix is great when you have kids. Uninterrupted cartoons with no commercials where you can pick suitable shows for any age group, properly translated, always available. Their original series there don't seem to score too highly yet (kids hate all of them aside from Lego Friends), but there's enough on offer.

I did drop down to the cheapest, lowest end subscription though. I stream via a Wii (kids don't mind the quality) and because of the DRM restrictions in browsers, I also only get to see the low quality streams anyway.

I'm hoping the stronger position of their Netflix Originals can eventually tone down the DRM crazy-ness.

<comment><USER5> Considering Netflix is tying DRM to CPU and only Kabby Lake PC's and later will get Netflix 4K support outside of approved devices it's doubtful.

Also bare in mind that almost none of the so called "Originals" are actually produced by Netflix.

What Netflix calls originals is pretty much "you can't see it almost anywhere but on netflix", and this isn't even universal, this usually means that Netflix has secured the primary broadcasting rights in a one or more regions.

This is why in the UK shows like Better Call Saul, Sole Survivor, The Expanse and many others are marked as Original even tho they are broadcasted on TV in the US and in many other regions.

<comment><USER6> Unrelated to Netflix, but if you've watched _The Expanse_ and liked it, I can really recommend the original novel series; the show covers roughly the first half of the first book, _Leviathan Wakes_ , and the sixth book arrived late last year, with at least one more still to come. They're an absolutely brilliant combination of space opera and hard sf, and while I gather one of the authors counts George R. R. Martin as a mentor, they are unlike him in being able to keep up a timely release schedule. Along with Stross's "Library Files" series, they're easily some of the best new sf I've seen in the last couple of decades, and I can't recommend them strongly enough to fans of the genre and especially of the show.

<comment><USER7> did you mean Leviathan Wakes?

<comment><USER6> I did! I mixed it up with the title of the latest, _Babylon 's Ashes_. What I get for commenting before sufficient coffee to complete the boot process; fixed, and thanks for the catch!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I listen to all of my music on Spotify. Even though both the Windows and Android apps are pretty terrible, they work well enough, the search works and it has 99% of everything out there. I pay £10 per month but would happily pay double if they put the price up.

I've never been content with any video streaming service, I even have Amazon Prime for delivery reasons and that includes videos, but I don't use it. I just Google for something and stream it illegally. The few that I've tried just have such limited selections I find it frustrating. I also find the "you might like" suggestions almost always terrible. Also Amazon Prime Video's search is so abysmal it's always easier to steal than work out if you already can legally watch it.

I'll happily pay £10+ per month when someone makes the Spotify of video, but unfortunately at the moment Google + illegal is better.

<comment><USER9> > I'll happily pay £10+ per month when someone makes the Spotify of video, but > unfortunately at the moment Google + illegal is better.

The situation is worse than not being able to stream: You can't even _buy_ DRM-less movies. Very much in contrast to music.

I buy lots of lossless, digital music that I truly own and can play anywhere I want. I'd love to do the same with movies, but it's just not possible. Buying a movie from a service that may or may not be around in a few years is not an option for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> We just cancelled our Sky subscription because we'd eventually realised that none of us was watching "live" TV.

I binge watched "The Crown" during a recent bout of flu and was deeply impressed.

<comment><USER11> If I could do without sports and HBO stuff (Westworld, Game of Thrones), I too would cancel Sky.

<comment><USER12> Have you considered Now TV? You get sky channels in bundles, live + catch up, online or with a (very cheap) modified Roku box. The entertainment ([http://www.nowtv.com/entertainment](http://www.nowtv.com/entertainment)) package includes Sky Atlantic for £6.99/mo, and sports ([http://www.nowtv.com/sports](http://www.nowtv.com/sports)) you can choose £6.99/day, £10.99/wk or £33.99/mo.

<comment><USER13> We did this - Cancelled Sky in favour of Netflix + Now TV's Entertainment bundle.

Not looked back, despite the many, many calls from Sky.

<comment><USER10> Sky's main mechanism for customer retention appears to be call center staff basically pleading to have you stay - a few years back when the bought the ISP I was using the quality of service collapsed and I cancelled the account and they kept dropping the price and wouldn't go away until I said I didn't want their service at _any_ price (even free).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm currently subscribed to Netflix, HBO GO and Canal+ (French/European premium TV channel), and HBO GO has the best catalog, by far. The problem with Netflix is that there are "Originals", and not much else. While the production quality of these shows is superb, the artistic values are nowhere near what the movies on HBO can offer. Which is a shame, because Netflix pretty much nailed the user experience part.

</comment><comment><USER15> > It has put some of its budget into non-English language shows, such as "3%", > a Portuguese sci-fi series. Intriguingly, Netflix noted that many English > viewers opted to watch the dubbed version, providing an unexpected added > audience.

I watched 3%, but as the English dub is really horrible (I'm used to really great German dubs) I switched to Portuguese + subtitles after a few minutes.

</comment><comment><USER16> I wish governments would start with compulsory licenses for streaming broadcasts, just like they do for radio. Original content is fine, but in a few years you are going to need subscriptions to a half-dozen streaming services just to view the things you want.

<comment><USER17> Licenses for radio only work because governments have control over the means of distribution (spectrum allocation). The internet does not (or at least, should not) work like that.

<comment><USER4> They already have "control" of copyright enforcement over the internet, they can at least use this power for good to give us nondiscriminatory license agreements.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Content has certainly improved of late but still not to the point where I'll subscribe month after month. Amazon seems to have the edge (Prime extras aside) since they fill a lot of the gaps with pay per view content that I don't mind actually paying for from time to time.

<comment><USER19> Why not use iTunes for pay per view/purchasing content? Their library seems very comprehensive.

I'm currently using Netflix and iTunes. I also have a prime account, but there's rarely anything I want to watch (the exception being Mr Robot).

<comment><USER18> I don't buy anything Apple but, out of interest, is their pay per view offering more economical than amazon's?

<comment><USER6> Not usually as cheap, but the breadth of the catalog is remarkable. I'll go with Amazon for price reasons if both have what I want, but it's not rare that Amazon doesn't and iTunes does. (And Netflix almost never does. At this point I'm keeping it for season 2 of _The Expanse_ and basically nothing else.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I was upset that only after registration I was informed there was no support for linux. That's wasting the free month.

How can I get netflix to display on debian testing, out of principle without chrome?

Supposedly it chrome works, but chromium didn't. Firefox is supposedly getting support, but not officially and so it didn't work for me. I was thinking to keep torrenting while paying, but actually the selection on the public trackers is rather limited to new releases or lonely slow seeders. Avoiding the hassle of finding sources and exposing buggy clients to _the scene_ is the main advantage, but then the netflix selection is limited as well, which is good for competition, I suppose.

<comment><USER21> I consider myself a pretty hardcore free software enthusiast, and I'm okay with using the Google-branded browser to play Netflix. My feeling is that if you're playing copyrighted content, you're in the restricted intellectual property space anyway. Netflix "owns" the rights to play these videos, so they get to say what platforms they play on. It would be better if they played on a fully open source platform (hopefully they will soon), but it would also be better if copyright law wasn't completely insane.

Frankly I'm just glad I can play Netflix on non-Android Linux at all, because that wasn't the case originally. For what it's worth, Netflix runs smoothly on Google Chrome on my Arch laptop. Amazon prime also plays, though the interface is clunkier. I use chromium as my default browser but I aliased nf='google- chrome-stable [https://www.netflix.com'](https://www.netflix.com')

<comment><USER20> > My feeling is that if you're playing copyrighted content, you're in the > restricted intellectual property space anyway.

Of course, but it goes both ways, so the argument is indecisive at first glance. Now you can go down a slight slippery slope and weigh each side of the argument. But it's basically the only reason I am hesitant, so after all you may be right. Surely, not finding the hoped for selection biased my opinion. Yet before finding the player _broken by drm_ I had more great shows added to my list than I currently could reasonably watch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Original content is great but I fear in a few years Netflix can more or less dictate what we can see on TV.

And maybe Im in the vocal minority, but I prefer Friends and Seinfeld to House of Cards or Orange and OItNB.

<comment><USER23> You're comparing 90's sitcoms to modern hour-long dramas? The death of the 20 minute laugh-track sitcom is in no way Netflix' fault, is it?

<comment><USER22> the article is about netflix removing bought content and replacing it with their own stuff

 _edit: old - > bought_

<comment><USER3> The opposite of "original content" isn't "old content". It's non-Netflix content.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


HTTP Status Code for Legally-restricted Resources - <AUTHOR> http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-tbray-http-legally-restricted-status-00 <comment><USER2> Fahrenheit 451, drafted in the last couple of days in honour of Mr. Bradbury? I do find it fitting that if this passes, we have a cultural reference to remind of its significance. I look forward to seeing some interesting error pages in the future.

<comment><USER3> Was only the other day that my mate pointed out to me that 451 is DEA if you transcribe it. And after all, there are all kinds of paper and they don't all catch fire at one given temperature, do they?

<comment><USER4> If I recall correctly, Mr. Bradbury called a firehouse and asked the guy there "what temperature does paper ignite at?" and they thought about it for a moment and looked up some value in a reference manual. So don't go reading too much into the number. Also, note that the (US) DEA was founded in 1973, while _451_ was published in 1953.

Also, casual Internet browsing suggests values closer to 450 _celsius_ for the autoignition point of typical paper, so don't go relying too much on any one number you get from the title of a book (or from a hacker news post, for that matter)

<comment><USER3> _Also, note that the (US) DEA was founded in 1973, while _451_ was published in 1953._

Ahh, so the DEA named themselves after the book then, that sounds about right.. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting to see Tim Bray (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Bray>) still being active at this level of the web's development.

Not sure I see the applications of this, but I guess more high-level error messaging is something that is in general a good thing so I guess that should hold for the web, too.

<comment><USER6> Application will be www.google.com, www.youtube.com, etc. They'll get censorship instruction from gov bodies. There are two things that are obvious now, fight google vs facebook is like who will be big brothers right hand and other is that RMS was right. Sad thing is that it is first time in human history that evil oligarchy can be beaten by engineers (google, facebook, ...). Too bad they don't get it :-(

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This can't be a coincidence right? Its a way of saying that DMCA/lawsuit takedowns are digital book burning.

<comment><USER8> Except there are plenty of legitimate DMCA takedowns.

<comment><USER9> A 451 could be used in a _lot_ more cases than just DMCA takedown'd documents.

<comment><USER10> For example, court-mandated gag orders, nondisclosure agreements, national security, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I love the example.

FYI, 755 AUC is 2 AD, so the example is referring to the time of Jesus.

<comment><USER12> In 2 AD Jesus wasn't really doing much.

Given the references to "Judean Liberation Front", it's almost certainly a reference to Monty Python's "The Life of Brian" film.

<comment><USER13> Which was the Judean People's Front, or their arch enemy the People's Front of Judea.

<comment><USER12> Maybe I'm thinking of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Judea. Those splitters!!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It seems some inspiration behind this is in the blog post at [http://shkspr.mobi/blog/index.php/2012/06/there-is-no- http-c...](http://shkspr.mobi/blog/index.php/2012/06/there-is-no-http-code- for-censorship-but-perhaps-there-should-be/)

<comment><USER15> And specifically the referenced slashdot discussion and comment: [http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2906113&cid=4027...](http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2906113&cid=40270621) Indeed, very amusing and to the point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'd believe the Bradbury conspiracy theories since this should otherwise be a 5xx error code for server errors. The client certainly didn't do anything wrong (4xx)

<comment><USER17> Isn't this analagous to a 403?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The fact that this even has to exist saddens me.

However, I'm glad there is a distinction between not available and not there.

</comment><comment><USER19> > The use of the 451 status code implies neither the existence nor non- > existence of the resource named in the request.

If something didn't exist at all, why would I send a 451?

> The 451 status code is optional; clients cannot rely upon its use

So... everybody can ignore 451?

<comment><USER20> > If something didn't exist at all, why would I send a 451?

You just don't acknowledge the existence.

> So... everybody can ignore 451?

The status code is optional in the sense that you don't have to use it if a resource is unavailable for legal reasons. You can use it if you want to inform the user what exactly is going on.

<comment><USER21> >You can use it if you want to inform the user what exactly is going on.

That's exactly the purpose.

>The 4xx class of status code is intended for cases in which the client seems to have erred. Except when responding to a HEAD request, the server SHOULD include an entity containing an explanation of the error situation, and whether it is a temporary or permanent condition. These status codes are applicable to any request method. _User agents SHOULD display any included entity to the user._

<http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> There should be optional(?) "Location" header pointing to url where you can download the restricted document from. Might be magnet link.

</comment><comment><USER23> The 400 series implies that there was an error on the client side, when there clearly isn't one. The client has made a valid request that a middleman refuses to honor.

This better fits into the 300 series as a permanent addition.

<comment><USER15> Isn't it quite close to both 403 Forbidden, "request was a legal request, but the server is refusing to respond to it" and 401 Unauthorized? And now it's on the wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_status_codes> , and that equates with being approved, right?

<comment><USER24> TIL Microsoft uses 450 for parental control. And now 451 for legal censorship. Perhaps we could use the 450-459 range to signify various censorship scenarios. The 450s is also a nice middle ground between 400s and 500s.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is this a troll or something?

<comment><USER26> Maybe, but if I have to guess differently than you think: They probably want to use this to "troll" governments and heavy users of DMCA take-down notices. These people usually don't like it if users notice that they were responsible, so this is against their interests.

Reminds me of this: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4048828>

<comment><USER27> I think it's a fabulous idea. Request and item that been the subject of a takedown notice, receive the details of who produced the takedown.

<comment><USER28> Google sort of does that, although you have to go to Chilling Effects and look up the takedown.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Can we rename this to the "MPAA/RIAA HTTP Status Code"

<comment><USER28> No, because the MPAA/RIAA don't run the Great Firewall or other government censorship systems.

<comment><USER30> They don't run it... they just dictate how it should run and hire believers to run it.</comment></comment></comment>


TicketStumbler.com (YC Summer 08): a new way to find tickets - <AUTHOR> http://www.ticketnews.com/TicketStumbler-com-a%20new-way-to-find-tickets88139871

<comment><USER4> One thing I like about ticketstumbler? They are going to be very profitable very quickly. Nice investment by YC

<comment><AUTHOR> We already are profitable - ramen profitable :).

<comment><USER5> Ramen Profitable - Great term.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I really wish there was more to it then just sports but it's a good start. I love the interface

Do you guys plan to expand into other markets?

<comment><AUTHOR> Concerts and theater are coming ASAP. Just has been hard with demo day and VC/angel stuff.

<comment><USER5> Concerts & theatre would sell it to me.

I've been complaining there is no decent way to find something to do online (especially if you're visiting a city) for a while.

I'm not 100% sure, but I think some of the best options down here a government run.

<comment><USER7> Have you tried <http://www.songkick.com>, also a YC startup? They are now doing music and concert tickets.

<comment><USER6> Wow, that's a very nice site. Too bad no Canadian support. Always curious why that is for sites like this

<comment><USER8> Sorry about that truebosko. We're working on extending our coverage to Canada & Australia over the next months. We focused initially on getting as comprehensive as possible in the UK and US (focusing on doing a good job in a specific niche) before adding other countries. Live music has a really long tail and we want to build a product that really hard core live music fans like ourselves will trust. Canada is coming soon though. We've got a big integration with Songbird launching next week and their community is asking for that pretty loudly as well!

<comment><USER5> Great site. I'm sold once you get going down here (Australia). Signed up with Edinburgh to practice ;) Now I wish I lived there.

BTW, I'd love to see the long tail get taken care of properly. That's what I'm really interested in. I'd probably use a 'what's on tomorrow' page for small shows 100X more then a 'what's on this month' page for $100 + shows.

Any way crack away at the RIAA thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Love the interface, but just sports? Concerts and other events would be spectacular (though I'm assuming those are already in the plans for he future).

Also, what about allowing users to sell their own tickets? I have a PAX badge that I wont be using and would like to give to someone so it doesn't go to waste.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree - we're working very hard to get concerts and theater events added asap. Regarding selling tickets, then we have to add our own massive customer service department and handle outgoing payments, both of which I have no idea how to do and have no interest in doing.

However, Stubhub is pretty great for selling your own tickets. <https://www.stubhub.com/sell-tickets/>

Email me if you need any help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I like the geo cities feature. It's great to be able to see what's going on in my area without having to do a thing!

<comment><AUTHOR> Customized user profiles are coming soon too!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Liked the site a lot when I checked it out. My only complaint was that I want to see stadium seating charts before I pass to partner sites. Hated having to go back and forth. Did I miss the chart links?

Otherwise it is indeed some great work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Due to strong demand, we added those within two days (although we are still working out some seating chart bugs). <http://is.gd/1qVd>

We take our users very seriously. Please let me know if you have any other suggestions.

<comment><USER11> It took two whole days huh? ;)

Looks like my stubhub bookmark gets replaced tomorrow. Thanks for letting me know!

<comment><AUTHOR> Delicious "adds" are very much encouraged. <http://is.gd/1qW4>

Not only do their users tend to visit 3-4 more pages than the average user, we've received a consistent flow of delicious traffic ever since appearing on their front page. <http://i37.tinypic.com/20ghaom.png>

We have more delicious "adds" than Stubhub. Thanks guys.

<comment><USER11> I'll see your delicious add and raise you some blog coverage.

<comment><AUTHOR> Umm - Wow! You have no idea how much we appreciate this: [http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2008/08/14/ticketstumbler- put...](http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2008/08/14/ticketstumbler-putting- aggregation-to-good-use/)

More (and better) traffic from you guys than Techcrunch yesterday. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> You are going to run out of space real soon as you add new categories, if you keep your current layout. Maybe change it to "Sports" | "Concerts" | "Theater" . And then on mouse over display the actual sub categories(NBA/NFL/NCAA etc)

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely.

Look at Ticketmaster.com. That's what we're going to mirror in many respects with more customization, more accurate geo tracking capabilities, better search (which we already have) and happy customers (instead of TM's angry/disgruntled customers).

Once this happens (hopefully in 1-2 months) please email me and let me know what you think: firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER13> Build a better mousetrap, basically?

<comment><AUTHOR> haha sort of. Ignoring the TicketsNow conspiracies, which I'll elaborate on at another time, Ticketmaster doesn't do secondary tickets directly from their main site until an event is sold out.

They can't list specific tickets (sections, row, seats) for purchase - <USER2> assign it all to you after you pick a price level or section and enter the Captcha crapshoot. But I have to hand it to them, they did a really really good job on their new design.

The main problems with the secondary ticket market are fees, stigma and safety, which are our three main priorities. And SEO of course: <http://is.gd/1pQx>

<comment><USER13> And presumably, once you handle those, the market becomes more efficient, and almost everyone, including you guys, come out smiling. :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly - even if our commissions are slashed 75% we'd make it up in volume (famous last words right?) because there's very little to no incremental cost.

But it doesn't really matter since we're not doing it for the $$.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I assume you have seen Ninjatickets.com which essentially does the same thing. Competition never hurts.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep and seats.com, seatservant.com, seatquest.com, ticketshock.com, ticketwood.com, and tickex.com and some other ones that I'm not supposed to know about who are in stealth.

Well, we've been launched about a week and we're already profitable. Also, we receive more traffic than about half of them and definitely have one of the better user interfaces.

Luckily this market is so massive that there's room for many players (e.g. think of all the travel sites out there). Although we like to think we can be the best one. :)

<comment><USER15> Not only is the market massive, there's _tons_ of inefficiency to exploit for profit potential. I'm very jealous!

<comment><USER5> & it's about selling stuff.

If you're between buyers & sellers because buyers like you, you've got a business model.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Expanding to concert tickets in the near to far future?

<comment><USER8> we (Songkick) have already built an aggregator for concert tickets - <USER3> 17 ticket vendors in the UK and US. If you're looking for gig tickets I'd love your feedback. Thanks

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes - definitely check Songkick.com out. TS is never going to be a music recommendation site or community. And Songkick's database of information and uncanny accuracy of its Itunes plugin download are unsurpassed. We have no interest in being everything to everyone (it's why Oyaka.com and fatlens.com failed) and Songkick does a lot of stuff we'll never try to do.

Originally, the plan was to stick to Sports tickets for at least a year and then maybe add concerts (if at all). However, right after we launched, despite having "sports" and sports leagues plastered all over our site, more than half our search logs were concert related. Additionally, numerous publications said they would cover us if we had concerts and we received email after email demanding concert and theater listings from our users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Concerts are up!</comment>