Ask HN: Are You Hopeful About the Environment? - <AUTHOR> I guess this is sort of an open-ended question, but I just wanted to know if people on HN were hopeful about solving environmental change/damage.
Last June is now officially the hottest June ever recorded. I guess you can add that to the laundry list of environmental issues we have. My worry is that its looking more and more like we need some sort of technological miracle (or everyone everywhere just stops buying most stuff). And tech seems to be a step function - sometimes you get big things like the Internet and the Engine which can spawn lots of smaller things. But those big things historically have seemed to come about by chance and happenstance as much as hard work. I sometimes worry that we might not solve the environmental crisis because we just won't get lucky.
Does anyone else feel this way? Or are people here mostly hopeful that this thing will all work itself out (please say how!)? Anyone here working on that next big thing?
PS
If you don't believe in a coming environmental catastrophe, that's fine and I'd be happy to have your opinion on why you think so in this thread. But tin foil hatters and political partisans are boring and this isn't really what this thread is about - please spend your time elsewhere. Thanks! <comment><USER2> Unfortunately not at all.

A lot of this comes from extensive travel and spending time in the third and second world. Many of the poorest billion simply do not realize that it is against their interest not to, for example, dump chemicals and trash in water they drink from and bathe in. Or just simply that littering is a problem. To be clear I'm not faulting them, like everyone else they are mostly good people and if they had better access to information I have no doubt they'd act differently but there is a huge need to educate people that is not being met.

It's also just hard to imagine consumption of everyday objects at the global scale.

But it's really hard to feel like recycling one more bottle is going to save the world when you've seen dump trucks waiting in line to dump industrial waste in rivers. But this sort of thing is likely happening every day, repeatedly, in many places around the world.

I once drove through a section of highway in north western Peru that was just an open air landfill on both sides, maybe 5 feet tall on average, continously for an hour. It's just hard to imagine that stuff like this exists if you've never been exposed to it.

And that doesn't even match things I've seen only in documentaries like [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dd_ZttK3PuM](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dd_ZttK3PuM)

I believe that our problems are technically still fixable but that the coordination necessary is, if not totally infeasible, far beyond our current willpower to achieve.

The rich (and all but the poorest Americans are rich for this discussion) will basically be fine maybe minus inconveniences for the near future.

But I think things are going to get drastically worse for many people over the next 50 years.

<comment><USER3> > Many of the poorest billion simply do not realize that it is against their > interest not to, for example, dump chemicals and trash in water they drink > from and bathe in. Or just simply that littering is a problem.

To be fair to the poorest billion, the richest billion also doesn't really get this either.

<comment><USER4> Indeed, how's the water in Michigan, and even "recycling" in the US means the trash gets shipped to Asia/Africa to be burned.

It's "lack of information" or in this case being mislead by whoever promised them their recycling is contributing to being green...

<comment><USER3> I was so disappointed when I found out that this is how my recycling was being handled. I had this image in my head of my plastic waste being recirculated and reused that was so completely false.

As I understand it, recycling is just the long road to the landfill.

<comment><USER5> I am currently reading a book on recycling that disputes that narrative (Junkyard Planet by Adam Minter). The main argument is that shipping a container of "recycling material" across the oceans costs real money (much more than a local landfill), that somebody paid. That somebody surely isn't paying for the junk just to burn it.

What is true is that recycling methods can sometimes be cruel. The example is a guy recycling Christmas lights in China. At first all they did was burn the plastic away to get to the copper. Later, when demand for plastic in China was also rising, they invented methods to also recycle the plastic.

Burning the plastic away was of course very dirty. And in other places (like Africa), dirty methods might be still more common.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm terrified. For example: The ice cap melts are accelerating a lot faster than modelled. The mechanisms are not yet perfectly understood.

The major flows of sea water (e.g. Gulf Stream) are at risk of changing completely with the temperature changes, which means dramatic changes in climate for Europe (colder), USA (warmer) (for example) are possible. Who knows - and the answer is nobody really.

The acidification of the oceans as they absorb more and more CO2 is making it harder for phytoplankton to grow. Take away this basic building block of the ocean ecosystem and the ultimate outcome is dead sea, with no ability to generate oxygen, and toxic gases emitted. That will change our atmosphere to be deadly.

These and so many others are not just exponential trends, but have unknown knowns (e.g. methane released from Arctic) and unknown unknowns that will magnify the impact. As people involved in high growth companies and the internet we understand exponential growth - but the politicians and even scientists are reluctant to understand and embrace the consequences.

Meanwhile we are still increasing, not decreasing CO2e emissions. Emissions need to decrease sharply now, to zero, for us to have a chance, and even then it's hard.

There is no political will. We are too comfortable. And then it will be too late.

We should ask ourselves the question - what can we do that's more important than helping to reduce global emissions? And then do something. There are lots of ways to help, and none of us can do it all, but we all need to do something, and take leadership roles to make the changes.

<comment><USER7> Agreed.

I think one of the ways we could survive this is to radically reform our philosophies and politics. We need to make amends with and reform indigenous rights. LBGTQ+ and women's rights. Abandon capitalism. Accept immigrant and migration. Change our perception of what it means to be happy from endless consumerism to self-actualization and social acceptance. We may have to scale back our modern lives: abandon international tourism, next-day delivery, unlimited energy and clean water, built-in obsolescence, disposable culture etc. Re-design the technology too useful to abandon to be low-impact: as little energy as possible, reliable and interchangeable components, peer-to- peer networks and protocols, etc. Design our lives for near-zero emissions, near-zero waste. Re-learn lost arts like ship building, wood working, forestry, cloth making, foraging, water management, perma-culture, and what it's like to live without plastic, etc.

I believe we have as much capacity for making the environment better as we do for destroying it. It's a matter of will, perception, determination and luck.

I hope we all make it.

<comment><USER8> I can't upvote this enough. The way I see it, the Holocene is over, no more neolithic civilization, unless we keep powering the machines with lots of energy in order to cling to the past (which is a big part of the use we have been giving to machines, and the reason why Modernity is a sham) as mythified by our collective amnesia. We need to integrate our lives with the ecosystem in order to create virtuous cycles of soil restoration, reconsider ways of living that would make us more resilient in the face of modern technology being unavailable, and start questioning the institutions of civilization such as marriage and private property. When collapse arrives the latter too are just unavoidable, the Earth will ruthlessly desecrate our myths and idols, so it's better if we ourselves do it in a more orderly fashion, waking up from the dreams for which we have abused technology as a sort of hallucinogenic soporific.

<comment><USER9> You won't find much neolithic civilization outside of North Sentinel Island and the deep Amazon.

<comment><USER8> Thanks, I stand corrected. I abused the term. I meant to say civilization as a society where humans depend primarily on agriculture for their survival, as the appearance of such a society coincides with the start of the Holocene.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Not at all.

Back when ozone depletion was being discussed, _so was CO2._ Thatcher was as keen on CO2 action as CFC action. Back then I was very optimistic.

James Burke, a famous old UK TV science personality known for Tomorrow's World, Connections, and The Day the Universe Changed, made a programme in 1989 called "After the Warming", a view from 2050 looking back. Find it on YT, forgive the late 80s CGI, and be surprised, and a little depressed. He gets much right, and a little of the then new science wrong, only it turns out he was pretty optimistic too.

Decades of inaction and international treaties (Rio-1992!!, Kyoto, Paris) that barely scratch the surface, or require no commitment from developing nations. Then all the disingenuous attempts at briefing against fact and science, or claiming we can't afford to, or we'll adapt, squelched all that optimism.

Now I think IPCC will turn out to be at the wildly optimistic end of the scale, as their projections presume we will eventually get off our ass and try. Seems we have to hit rock bottom, and too late, but right under our noses first.

I still have a feint hope the world will prove me wrong...

</comment><comment><USER11> It's easy to be pessimistic but do you remember CFCs[0]? I don't have time to re-read the article but my recollection of the timeline of events goes somewhat like this:

1\. CFCs invented

2\. CFCs are in high use

3\. Thesis: It's bad for the environment; ozone layer is depleting

4\. Antithesis: It's problematic for some businesses to give these up

5\. Synthesis: Global effort to stop using them and find replacements

6\. Ozone layer is slowly getting better

On one hand, I'm hopeful something similar could happen again.

On the other, the aforementioned events happened in a pre-post-truth world so it might not. You might argue that would be natural selection at work.

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

<comment><USER12> Phasing out CFCs was much easier to do because CFCs do not make up the backbone of the global economy the way fossil fuels do.

There were some hacks in the aerosol and chemical industries who tried to deny that it was a problem (the chairman of the board of Dupont declared that ozone depletion theory was "a science fiction tale...a load of rubbish...utter nonsense"), but they were small fry in relative terms.

The bottom line is that too many powerful peoples' wallets are lined with money earned by burning fossil fuels. That's why there is no Montreal Protocol for carbon dioxide.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> More warming seems inevitable, oceans are going to rise, and history weather patterns are going to change. Coastal cities will be flooded, existing farm land will get harder to maintain, and previously infertile land has the chance to become fertile.

However solar, grid power storage, and wind are increasing faster than anyone seemed to be think was possible just a few years ago. Coal plants and coal mines are increasingly price prohibitive to run. New plants are being cancelled and existing plants decommissioned.

UAE (the last place I'd expect solar) just turned on the largest solar farm on the planet! I walk around my city and I see huge solar arrays on parking lots, churches, universities, and even on top of commercial buildings.

Generally it seems like instead of the slow migration that green energy is causing a major disruption. Solar is now getting to the point (in many places) where it's cheaper than many consumers current power bill. 5 year cost to own is favoring electric cars over gas cars, even compared to relatively small cheap cars like the toyota corolla or honda civic.

Tesla is of course shipping more cars than ever and fighting to get the prices lower. Even at $40k to start with (not including federal, state, and power company incentives) isn't too far off the price of the average new car.

So changes are accelerating, Tony Seba on youtube has a pretty good talk on green power, electric cars, and the speed of major disruptive changes.

So terrible things will happen, but I'm growing increasingly optimistic that the worst will be avoided.

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't believe that the next ~200 years will be anything but catastrophic for life on this planet. I'm not hopeful that we can "solve" climate change or avert catastrophe. As I understand it we're in the early phases of a sixth mass extinction event caused by many factors. Most of them anthropocentric.

The only thing we have power over now is determining how severe the building catastrophes will be. If we can mobilize radical efforts in the next ~4 years we may avoid the worst case scenarios. But that doesn't mean we'll be hotly anticipating the next smart phone and enjoying next-day delivery in thirty years. There will still be mass extinctions, large swathes of the surface of Earth will be inhospitable to humans, we will live with constant wildfires and super storms... regardless of what we do now.

I'm not a gambling sort of person so I don't plan on getting lucky. It sure would be nice if some genius out there invents a technology that magically reverses everything. However that's not a likely outcome.

I think we need to look forward to surviving. It's not going to be pleasant but I do remain hopeful that it will be possible.

<comment><USER8> I am now remembering that book by W. Heisenberg "Das Naturbild der heutigen Physik," which talks about how Physics and Mathematics overcame the Cartesian mindset. I think that Cartesian mindset needs to be questioned more than ever now that we need to come up with unprecedented measures against all odds. For example, I see modernity as being predicated on this platonic notion that we humans have our minds separate from the material world, and from these minds ideas emerge, including the ideas about what we should aspire to. There is little regard for the way in which technology tends to be a tool for us to indulge in our more basic impulses (unless, I think, one works in PR). I refuse to say primitive because the impulses I am thinking of are more of the nature mentioned by Veblen when he talks about conspicuous waste. So as a result of this tendency, we are in this paradox, in which technology actually seems to be shrinking our possibilities (I think David Graeber mentions this in another context), and the world is turning into a monoculture both literally and metaphorically. The result is less resilience in the face catastrophe and less capacity to adapt in the face of energy shortages, because the complexities that allowed for adaptation (different ways of living, biodiversity, crop diversity) have been steadily eliminated. There are also economic impulses behind this, related to the process of commoditization, and the reliance on debt. The first is seen as good because allows creating economies of scale. The latter makes scarcity be a good thing, because if things are not scarce enough then they cannot be converted into enough money to pay debts. Hence, people worry about employment and growth. Environmental degradation never subtracts from growth, and neither do chronic diseases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I believe we'll eventually get our act together and survive with some pretty serious damage to the environment. When people are sufficiently desperate, you'll see more change.

You can get ahead of the eventualities and help by learning how to survive without the use of fossil fuels which is difficult but more or less achievable today. Use electric bikes, cars and motorcycles. Work remotely. Try to find an efficient home. Live in a climate that doesn't require too much heating or cooling. Eat vegetables more and so on.

I know you didn't ask for it, but there is a political factor too. Vote for politicians who take the environment seriously. There are industries that need regulation. No matter how much you're trying, if they aren't, progress on the solution will be slowed or stopped.

<comment><USER15> I think that there needs to be an equivalent of a climate 9/11 event. Maybe Miami getting wiped off the map by a category 9 hurricane (and call me a pessimist but the loss of a city in a developing country to climate change just won't register in the minds of the developed world).

We as a species are very emotionally driven and slow trends and statistics just aren't as compelling as a big event. I don't know how bad the environment will have to get for that to happen though.

Otherwise, the people creating the most carbon emissions will just view this as an inconvenience and crank their AC higher. The numbers involved in the reporting (2C, 3C etc) just sound small and insignificant when in reality of course that's just an average.

<comment><USER16> It is worth remembering that less than 2 years ago thousands of Americans were killed and 3 million plus Americans spent months without electricity due to a hurricane. It is impossible to link that single event to climate change since climate is about trends and not single events, but that event came and went and generally speaking the country barely seemed to care.

<comment><USER15> Are you referring to the one that hit Puerto Rico? Cynically I think that's because many people don't consider that truly part of America. (Note that's not my personal views, but just trying to make sense of why there was such a lackluster response).

My original comment was really trying to get at the human factors involved as to why we don't care. We just seem to be bad at responding to trends but better at responding to single events. Just like how the US generally don't care about the 40k+ USians killed every year in traffic accidents, but the US responded strongly to the singular event that was 9/11.

Edit: care about on an emotional, popular media level. Deaths per vehicle mile traveled have been going down over time in the US, due to increased safety regulations imposed on the manufacturers.

<comment><USER14> As far as human factor go, do you think political groups would do well to take more 'extremist' positions like outlawing gas burning cars and outlaw kerosene-based air travel, etc? It seems extreme, but isn't that what we are going to need to do anyway?

The environmental political base would stomach it, the opposition would think you're crazy, but they weren't going to help anyway. The tuned-out folks might take notice, "You want to do what?"

Talking about an abstract fossil fuel tax is not visceral enough. Threaten to take away something tangible and you might have their attention. Once you have their attention, explain why you're (we're) in this bind, then ask them to help. Ask them what they want to do if not your plan? Don't settle for anything less than serious fossil fuel withdrawal.

It feels heavy handed, but not too far off the mark from what's needed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I am hopeful. We're in for a rough ride, but we will survive.

1\. Rate of progress and market adoption of key technologies (ICE alternatives and renewables) is much higher than I would have anticipated even 10 years ago, let alone 15 years. I am hopeful that, even with only market forces, by the end of my lifetime developed economies will have more-or-less righted the ship on GHG production with a corresponding blueprint for the rest of the world.

2\. I think we still have a _long_ time before some of the worst-case feedback loops are triggered.

3\. The realities of climate change are becoming difficult to ignore. This is, paradoxically, good news because it makes denial a less tenable barrier to action in the mid-term future.

All that said, I'm hedging my bets with real estate investments in regions that are most likely to benefit from mid-term impacts of warming.

</comment><comment><USER18> Absolutely not.

Even as we start to see major changes to weather patterns globally, most people put up little more than nominal effort to avoid CO2 emissions and other damaging activities - for example, air traffic continues to grow [1].

We're likely to hit the point of no return on CO2 emissions within two decades [2]. Those with the resources to work towards reversing the damage at that point will also be the ones who can afford to comfortably adjust to changes in climate - which do you think will take priority? Meanwhile, those who are going to be hit hardest overwhelmingly cannot afford to avoid contributing to global warming, let alone actively combat it.

I'm sure civilization will survive - it's more a question of whether we'll ever do anything significant to stop climate change, or if we'll have to adjust to whatever new equilibrium the environment enters - and how much biodiversity and population loss will we sustain on the way there?

[1] [https://www.statista.com/statistics/564769/airline- industry-...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/564769/airline-industry- number-of-flights/)

[2] [https://www.earth-syst-dynam.net/9/1085/2018/](https://www.earth-syst- dynam.net/9/1085/2018/)

<comment><USER19> I found it ironic how 4 photos of the Europe heat wave had asian people who traveled half the globe: [https://www.bbc.com/news/world- europe-48766481](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48766481)

In no way I'm blaming Asians. Photos in Asia would show lots of non-Asians. It's just an example of how we as humans always put our experiences first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> No, not at all. Incentives aren't alligned in politics, industry, or in the home for real change to happen. It's a tradgedy of the commons.

</comment><comment><USER21> Records are set every year. A record just means no observation was previously recorded.

There's a catastrophe every generation that turns out to have been a false alarm by the time the next generation's catastrophe is fabricated.

For instance, my wife was told "no homework tonight since we'll all be dead tomorrow anyway." (Cuban Missile Crisis)

Around the time of the first Earth Day, the predictions of environmental apocalypse were legion, yet societies somehow seem to find ways to fix things that societies broke. They also seem to find ways to fix things that tyrants broke.

When you see dozens of such dire predictions over a lifetime, you start to get skeptical. Skepticism is a good thing, btw. Without it, there wouldn't be any science.

<comment><USER22> Lots of catastrophes came true. Your example of the Cuban Missile Crisis is particularly odd: there was nothing at all overblown about the worry, and there's a pretty good case to be made that the fate of the world came down to a single tired, sweaty guy in a submarine making the right decision.

<comment><USER21> For a couple weeks, there was almost nothing else in the news. JFK was a single tired guy in a submarine? We might be thinking of different Cuban Missile Crises.

[https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/cuban-missile- crisis](https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/cuban-missile-crisis)

<comment><USER22> Vasily Arkhipov was a single tired guy in a submarine. The Soviet submarine B-59 was being depth charged and its captain wanted to launch a nuclear torpedo at the US Navy fleet that was pursuing it. Two other officers had to agree to launch the torpedo. One agreed, and Arkhipov was the other. They argued but he refused and convinced the captain to surface.

JFK's role was pretty important too. The military tried quite hard to convince him to go to war. Good thing he wasn't stuck in a broken-down, overheating submarine with explosions going off all around it, or he might not have been so steadfast.

The world was on the brink of a war that would make WWII look like a fun walk in the woods. Am I supposed to think that a couple of weeks of non-stop news coverage was excessive?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Yes, absolutely. Put enough money into it and scientists/startups will figure it out. I'd like to see someone prove that we _can 't_ reverse most of what we've done (besides extinction of different species which is obviously bad).

<comment><USER3> The scary thing isn't the current state of the climate. The scary thing is passing a point of no return where climate change becomes non-linear and self- feeding. According to many reports, we are not far off from that point. Still, we are in a world where a non-negligible portion of the population believes that climate change is fabricated, or at least overstated. Scientists won't be able to really do anything other than measure the problem until public sentiment gets behind them. Startups won't do anything until VCs see an opportunity to make exponential returns on their investments. The best case is the linear portion of climate change hits us hard, corrects public sentiment, and we have enough time to fix the planet before true catastrophe.

<comment><USER24> I wonder even at that point, could we refreeze the earth via megastructure in space, make it miserable for most of us during winters and even summer for a time to 'reboot' the polar caps/antarctica? Or maybe we could make the mega structure only affect specific locales so the rest of the world doesn't suffer as much from extremely cold spells.

I don't think that's the only fix we need though, we'd also need a way to clone and rebuild lost species like penguins and polar bears, and micro organisms, fauna, ocean creatures, etc...

Reforestation on a grand scale and global outlawing of Amazon Forest depletion would be a wise thing as well... I think there are science-based solutions but I'm at a loss of how we begin researching and implementing anything esp. w/ our polarized politics of late that could give a shit.

I guess when it hurts bad enough we'll stop putting bandaids on things and really try to fix stuff, especially when the entire fate of mankind lies in the balance, until we get to that point sadly it'll probably keep going the way it has been.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> No, not really. I think the unfortunate dystopian cyberpunk future we're going to see is that wealthy developed nations will be able to afford technological Band-aids, like increasing use of air conditioners everywhere fed from big grid connected photovoltaic plants. People with much less economic means will suffer and be displaced.

I predict massive refugee crises with mass-migration caused by climate change within my own lifetime.

It recently hit 54C in Rajasthan.

</comment><comment><USER26> Do I think the environment and humans will survive? Yes.

Do I think that we'll enjoy living in whatever this new environment ends up being? No, not at all.

</comment><comment><USER24> Yes and no...on the current course of denying global warming -- we're screwed. If we could somehow end poverty, and move a large swath of unemployed/undereducated people into science industry so they can focus on solving problems, maybe we can build a mega structure to block out sunlight, capture existing carbon in the atmosphere and figure ways to bring back arctic ice, --then maybe we can reverse things...we also need to backup species of plants, animals, etc via dna harvesting so things that are destroyed by global warming can come back if we do fix it. A lot of my hope lies in science fictiony future tech that is yet to be created, but I hope for my kid's sake we figure it out.

I think it'd be funny if we figure out immortality tech first and live long enough to see the world end in 150 years because of our own mistakes and lack of foresight... The rich want to live forever, but then they'll regret it when they destroyed everything.

<comment><USER27> We have the ability to solve the problem now.

We just don't have the business incentive to do so. It's not about adding people, It's about adding incentive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> So long as economic growth remains the primary goal of most societies, and so long as that economic growth is tied to the use of fossil fuels, then climate change will not be stopped.

</comment><comment><USER28> (Copying a comment I just made on a related discussion).

I am in that I try to (within reason) minimize waste, pollution, energy consumption, meat use, etc: all for the Golden Rule and a clear conscience. And I am all for reducing pollution via laws as it makes the best sense using an open process and honesty. And I am active in an organization that goes to great lengths to try to help people in need, whether due to climate change or otherwise.

But having said that, I don't think climate change is a problem humanity is currently competent to solve, nor our biggest problem. I wrote more, here (a lightweight, hopefully skimmable, no-JS/no-ads site):

[http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854581820.html](http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854581820.html)

</comment><comment><USER29> I believe in cycles. Things get worse, things get better. You never hear about when things get better.

For the last several years, people were saying that CA was in drought and that this was the "new normal". I didn't believe it, and I was right. This year is particularly colder than last year, even though we had 2 extremely hot days. This is how weather works, it's always changing. I think the next few years will continue to be wet in CA and then we'll hit another cycle of droughts and back and forth. It's also safe to note that the drought we experienced wasn't worse than the 1930s due to weather, it was worse because more water was being consumed by humans, which is a different sort of environmental disaster.

I do believe that the Earth is getting hotter, but I also believe we will get cooler over the next several years. But no one will talk about that because it doesn't get clicks.

We need to plant new trees and we need to incentivize countries to not cut down their forests. Places like Indonesia and Brazil, etc, need to be incentivized to keep their forests instead of cutting it down for cash crops.

I think the bigger crisis is plastic, pollution and chemicals in our water. We need to stop creating so much plastic and make extremely draconian laws controlling this. We need to stamp down on pollution from factories. Companies that spill into our lakes and rivers and oceans need to be fined with extreme prejudice. If they go out of business I simply don't care, I would rather see them out of business than have our water and environment polluted.

<comment><USER8> I think a new normal, in the sense of a new steady (less favorable) state of the climate, is not something that is being suggested by the science. Just to point out one relevant fact, consider that the current CO2 levels were present at least going as far back to Pliocene geological epoch [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliocene_climate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliocene_climate). I think it is reasonable to expect at least plenty of instability as the Earth gets closer to the temperature and sea level of that time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This Wordsworth poem has stuck with me for years. It's from ~1807 and still rings true about humanity and nature:

 _The World Is Too Much with Us_

      The world is too much with us; late and soon,
      Getting and spending we lay waste our powers;
      Little we see in Nature that is ours;
      We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
      This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
      The winds that will be howling at all hours,
      And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
      For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
      It moves us not. --Great God! I'd rather be
      A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
      So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
      Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
      Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
      Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

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

</comment><comment><USER31> To anyone reading this and thinking - well what can I do? Become vegetarian. TODAY. I eat 95% vegetarian now and I don't notice the difference whatsoever, if anything, I don't crave meaty foods anymore. The 5% is once a month kind of things such as pizza that have some ham on them. Changing to vegetarian is one of the best things you can do to help.

<comment><USER32> How about telling people to stop having kids? That's going to have a greater impact[1] in the long run than not eating meat.

Well, if you can't bring yourself to tell people that, what makes it all right to tell them to go vegetarian (TODAY)?

Prozelytizing your style of life is not how you get others to be more friendly to the environment.

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/12/want- to-...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/12/want-to-fight- climate-change-have-fewer-children)

<comment><USER31> I personally don't want to have kids and don't see that changing. Although I don't see how your suggestion isn't 'prozelytizing' as well, it is much easier to change your diet (even partially) than to possibly de-rail massive life plans which may already be in motion. There are tonnes of great foods you can eat which are just vegetables and as a previously MASSIVE meat eater, I no longer miss it. Just to be clear I don't disagree with you, but one choice is not interchangeable with the other.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I like the Adams Rule of Slow Moving Disasters: whenever humanity can see a slow-moving disaster coming, we find a way to avoid it. I don't doubt that we will continue to emit CO2 for a while, and the temperature will keep climbing, but when things get unbearable, people will act swiftly.

I expect that the hotter earth becomes, and the more we try to replace fossil fuels, the more electricity is needed. A hotter earth means air conditioning almost everywhere, huge desalination plants to provide water and so on. So the most important thing in the world is to create energy cheaply without emissions. I guess that there will be a much higher focus on nuclear fusion research to have a clean source for those energy needs, and in the meantime conventional nuclear plants will be used.

If we reach a point where temperatures become too bad, geo-engineering will also be a huge topic.

</comment><comment><USER34> I wonder how much we've improved trends already. I mean, I realize that we are in a worse situation now than has been previously projected, but with hindsight knowledge, I wonder how much worse off (in tenths or hundredths of degrees or whatever) we'd be if we hadn't globally taken the environment actions we've already taken. The amount of solar we have now has made a dent, hasn't it?

<comment><USER35> This[1] Wikipedia entry claims global solar electricity production is 12.9TWh per year.

Compared to 13,675TWh total annual electricity production from coal, oil, and gas combined.

So we're talking about a 0.09% dent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Lost hope.

The 3 big issues that I think prevents us solving it are

1\. Tragedy of the commons

When a country/company wants to make money by damaging the environment in the process, the money come to the country/company now, but the damage is spread world-wide. If the pollution would stay only in that country/city, it would be different. So, the choice is natural, especially thinking about government 4-year terms.

2\. We always put ourselves first, rest of the city/country much further, and rest of the world... doesn't matter. What people want, by human nature, is to satisfy their own needs & comfort.

Examples:

* Why wait for a bus or use an electric bike when one can just drive a 2 tonnes car to move oneself? It's comfortable and cheap.

* Norway refuses to drill for billions of barrels of oil in Arctic, leaving 'whole industry surprised and disappointed'. Government made the right choice, but a few (prosperous already) affected by making less money complain: [https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/norway-oil-drillin...](https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/norway-oil-drilling-arctic-ban-labor-party-unions-a8861171.html)

* France introduces a diesel tax, to reduce pollution, which affects everybody's health. But, wait, some need to pay a little more? Let's protest! Tax was cancelled: [https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/11/french-protes...](https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/11/french-protests-gilets-jaunes-emmanuel-macron-gas-diesel-tax/576196/)

* The Bełchatów Coal mine & Power station in Poland. Hundreds of people employed there, they are happy with it. Should the plant be closed to stop pollution? What about our jobs? No way! And no, getting only 20% of salary for free (basic income) and having to learn stuff to maybe find a new job in renewables is not acceptable.

3\. The environment effects of what a one person/community/country does, bad or good, are hard to see in the short term. Only the downsides are clearly visible in the present. So, taking the correct action is quite hard.

Unfortunately, I don't see how to overcome these. Would be glad to be proved wrong!

</comment><comment><USER36> I am pessimistic about the future. I guess I will not raise any child, given I don't think humanity will last long.

<comment><USER37> I've got two young kids, sometimes I think they might be okay. I don't have any hope for my unborn grandchildren. At my most pessimistic, I wonder if I should investigate some sort redoubt to help them prepare. But who know what you really need to prepare for. It just feels so hopeless sometimes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I think we're already past the point of no return and the collapse of human civilisation as we know it is inevitable.

Between resource shortages and famine, and the inevitable resource wars associated with that, I doubt there will be more than ~500m humans alive globally by 2100.

</comment><comment><USER39> I am optimistic about the future because the costs of renewable energy (wind and solar) and energy storage (batteries) are plummeting. These trends are likely to continue.

</comment><comment><USER40> Yes, I am hopeful.

I don't deny the climate is changing. I just think the earth (and it's inhabitants) are tremendously resilient. Life will go on.

</comment><comment><USER41> I come back a lot to the parable of "who's to say what's good or bad?" (one telling of which can be found here: [https://thepowerofthrift.com/whos-to-say- whats-good-or-bad/](https://thepowerofthrift.com/whos-to-say-whats-good-or- bad/) )

My more specific take: As a human of generally European-ish descent born in the United States, the wave of extinctions that gave land-dominance to mammals, the likely genocide of closely related hominids by the homo-sapiens, the ecological changes putatively caused by the first wave of human occupants including all the extinctions of large land animals on this continent, the subsequent genocide of the first human occupants, the conflicts and wars that caused my ancestors to emigrate, ... those were all necessary conditions for the exact experiences I've had in my life.

I'm not saying I support genocide! (my ancestors are mostly all Jewish.) I'm just saying that the farther something is in the past, the more it just seems like a fact of history, no matter how miserable and wrenching it was for all the organisms that lived through it.

We have no way of knowing what we're really creating, and it may well be that we're creating a hundred thousand years of extinctions and inhospitable weather which will be more difficult to live through for our descendants than the conditions we were born into. We may be radically shrinking our own natural habitat. We may be paving the way for a different dominant organism. We may be living in an era that future humans will give as much thought to as we give to the years 1000-1100 C.E. Who knows! and in the long game, the thousands and millions of years perspective, who's to say what's good or bad?

</comment><comment> andy-x I'm optimistic that Earth (our environment) will survive, but I'm also sure that it will be less hospitable for human life. If catastrophe is going to happen it is more likely that it will be human-induced catastrophe (wars, genocide, famine) rather than environmental one.

</comment><comment><USER5> When I was a teenager, I thought I would never see my 30ieth birthday because of the hole in the ozone layer, or nuclear war, or something like it.

It was not a nice feeling.

Now I am a bit wary of doomsday scenarios. I am not convinced we have seen any real impact of global warming yet (higher temperatures perhaps, but no land has been flooded, for example. Nothing catastrophic has occurred).

I am pessimistic about human expansion, though. I think we are in the middle of a population explosion that started with the invention of agriculture and has not ended yet. Humans will consume everything that get's in their way.

That is the same as with all other species, though (like the classical fox and rabbits scenario - fox population growing until there are only few rabbits left, foxes starving, and so on). Once we hit a natural limit, things will balance out somehow. That doesn't imply that it will be pleasant.

I'm less worried about global warming. There are too many doomsday scenarios. I think if it was that easy to break the balance, it would have happened before. So I think there may be regulating mechanisms that we haven't really taken into account. "Hottest June ever recorded" may not mean that much. There can be smaller cycles (like some news now predict a coming mini ice age because of sun activity), measuring stations can have changed (cities are warmer), all sorts of things.

I think classical damage will probably be worse - agriculture, depleting water reservoirs, destroying top soil, depleting fish populations, deforestation, destruction of animals natural habitats... That's depressing for sure. Maybe the only hope is for capitalism to come up with better means of production. After all, the environment is actually doing better in some places than a couple of decades ago.

Ultimately I think it may also be an illusion that it would be normal for things to remain the same.</comment>


Baldur's Gate expansion: Negative reviews because of transgender Character - <AUTHOR> http://www.craveonline.com/entertainment/972903-gamers-flood-baldurs-gate-expansion-negative-reviews-introduces-transsexual-character <comment><USER2> That's actually not how I read and perceive _most_ of the negative reviews - sure, people are complaining about the SJW and gender politics content on the sidelines; yet the most substantial criticism complains about the poor writing, a series of critical bugs that render the multiplayer modes unplayable, and a very awkward graphics style, thanks to some kind of upscaling/post-effects filter they use to make avatars look more, er, "smooth", or something.

I've been a total Infinity Engine games addict for most of my adolescent and adult life (I'm born in 1985, and played several hundreds, if not a few thousands, of hours of Baldur's Gate (et al.) in my life, mostly in multiplayer sessions with my cousin and friends from school, often spanning the afternoons and evenings of several weeks at a time). I was VERY much looking forward to new content for what is perhaps the most influential computer game I know and cherish, and I was pretty stoked after watching the official trailer last week.

However, because of the flak it received over the last few days, I decided to watch a "Let's Play" video on Youtube instead of just blindly buying it. I witnessed about half an hour of gameplay and story development, and, sadly, that was enough to make it completely clear to me that this add-on doesn't live up to its ancestors' brilliance, and that I won't be buying it. The dialouge feels somewhere between forced and cringe-worthy, and the world Beamdog puts your party in seems like a rather badly thought-out scenario from the get-go (one of your companions from the real BG saga explains to you why you are there and what you'll have to do in the very first dungeon/map in such a poor manner that hearing Imoen's original voice actress speak those lines actually made my heart sink a fair bit...).

It seems to me that it's just a rather bad game, at least compared to its predecessors, and that the developers try to use the Gamergate/SJW-trolls' whining and bashing as grounds to cover that up.

<comment><USER3> > That's actually not how I read and perceive most of the negative reviews

If you wanted to complain about the gender politics, and didn't want to be immediately dismissed, you'd find something else to complain about, and just magnify your complaints.

<comment><USER4> Not really the expac is utter grabbage in it's current state regardless of the SJW stuff, I've pre-ordered it and I didn't even get to that part (and didn't even knew it existed till today) because I didn't wanted to ruin the good memories I had of BG1 and BG2.

That said I understand why people dislike the "transgender story" It just seems utterly out of touch with the rest of the game It doesn't impact the story, there isn't some interesting content behind it it's just there as a "BTW I'm a transgender" if they cared so much why not actually make a side quest about this that would actually flesh it out?

This is almost as absurd as Dragon Age 3 being hailed as "SJW" (not in a negative sense) dream while The Witcher 3 was criticized for "sexualizing women" while utterly ignoring the fact that The Witcher 3 not only has 3 fully fleshed out and very strong main female characters and as well as many more strong female supporting roles it also tackled various issues from homosexuality to general racism and prosecution in quite deep, meaningful and impactful ways while DA3 was shallow and in your face about it.

<comment><USER5> Relevant: [https://www.facebook.com/ed.greenwood.142/posts/101567465225...](https://www.facebook.com/ed.greenwood.142/posts/10156746522575453?pnref=story)

Essentially, you may feel it's out of touch with the rest of the game, but it's definitely in line with the _universe_ in which the game takes place. Magic items that change your gender _as part of the official rulebook_ , mages that must swap gender as part of their training, inter-species sex and cross- breeding... how does a transgender character not fit in that universe?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is one of the headlines I really hate: it is almost factually correct in a way that completely divorces from reality.

Lots of people complained that a transgendered cleric had been added, but that wasn't because it was transgendered, but because it was forced and fake.

Also quite a lot complained that the entire multiplayer part didn't work, that in-game saves were corrupted, etc so don't take meta-critic scores as indicating anything about this issue.

I found a reasonable neutral article about the game ([http://gameranx.com/features/id/47159/article/trying-to- unde...](http://gameranx.com/features/id/47159/article/trying-to-understand- baldurs-gategate/)) with the money quote here (quoting a review):

> "While the mechanics of the game are in line with the originals, the story > falls short. It sacrifices the narrative and world building of the original > Baldur's Gate in order to break the 4th wall and beat players over the head > with messages about social issues with the grace and subtlety of a Saturday > morning cartoon from the 90's.There is no problem with having messages about > social issues in a game. The problem comes when one hijacks another > franchise, gut out its soul and fill it with vapid maxims and fables in its > place. That is one of the surest ways to kill off a franchise, and it is > especially odious when it happens to a well-loved franchise. Want social > justice? Sure, but stop hijacking the industry and make your own games. > You're not going to improve the industry, you're just going to kill it from > the inside out."

I think we have had the experience of having some well-meaning person at a familiy dinner who just couldn't stop talking about their pet issue. Did you look forward to talking with that person? Do you want that person talking over your favourite game, which you have played for a long time and have an emotional connection with?

Incidentally I haven't meet any gamers who had much of a trouble with gays or transgenders. Mostly they are people who want to, you know, PLAY video games.

</comment><comment><USER7> As a non-gamer, can someone please explain why the character is even mentioned as being trans? What does it add to the game, other than free advertising and drama?

Are other players mentioned as being straight? Bi? Political affiliations? religions, etc... ??? again, I'm not a gamer, I don't know this game so I can't say what benefit it brings to the game/story line.

<comment><USER8> It isn't "mentioned" that the character is transgender, you have to ask. And if you ask the character answers (probably because the writer thought it was something the character wants to answer).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> When it comes about to games about transgender experience (I would say at some fundamental level), there is SOMA. I mean, it is not the main thread in this survival (and existential) horror (with all things geeks like: x-risk, grey goo, mind uploading), but an interesting take on that subject.

SOMA: A Trans-Simon Experience (warning: some spoilers) [http://genderterror.com/2015/11/09/soma-a-trans-simon- experi...](http://genderterror.com/2015/11/09/soma-a-trans-simon-experience/)

</comment><comment><USER5> "actually, it's about ethics in heroic adventuring"? Really?

Couldn't care less about the transgender character - there's a character, he/she changed gender, who cares when there's presumably a fire breathing dragon over the next hill? - but _that_ line just convinced me to buy a game I didn't think I would.

</comment><comment><USER10> >Negative reviews because of transgender Character

If you think that's why there are negative reviews, then I have a bridge to sell you.

<comment><USER11> The author was able to cite several reviews that were fairly explicit that they felt the game was a 0/10 due to the inclusion of a transgender character. Glancing through the metacritic page, it appears to be the target of some community's ire and there are several reviews claiming the game espouses "extremist views" or "SJW views". It certainly appears to me that there's some relationship between the reviews and the inclusion of a more diverse cast.

<comment><USER10> >The author was able to cite several reviews

If that's not the very definition of cherry picking...

<comment><USER12> Not really in this instance - the claim is that the inclusion of a transvestite character brought about negative reviews specifically about the transgender character. Multiple reviews did just that and were either exclusively about the inclusion or predominantly with a mere mention of excessive bugs next to a fair amount of text regarding the aforementioned character.

I will grant - it is certainly possible to infer from the headline that the majority of negative reviews are about the transgender character, which is certainly not the case, but I wouldn't find it incredulous if someone understood the headline to suggest that.

But the point being made is back by reviews which do exactly what the author wrote about.

<comment><USER10> >which is certainly not the case

So then why are you defending the author cherry picking such reviews?

The "point being made" is backed by a small minority. That being the case, it is clear that this article is a deflection to shift attention from the poor quality of the product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> When did we get to a point where every instance of someone being an asshole is news?

<comment><USER12> Though I'd agree this doesn't really fit with the style of most HN articles, there's a little more to the story than just "someone being an asshole", and it's enough to at least facilitate some discussion, regardless of whether or not said discussion devolves into a Internet fight.

<comment><USER13> Discussion of what? That there are assholes who will give a game a negative review because there's something "gay" in it?

At what point do we just accept that there will always be assholes in private life. If we're talking about public figures with the ability and will to do harm to folk because of their asshole views, then we can/should discuss. If we had a discussion every time trolls trolled we'd have little time for anything else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Art is subjective, some people don't like this art. Why is this news?</comment>


AnyPerk (YC W12) partners with DISH Network - <AUTHOR> http://blog.anyperk.com/post/27010010186/anyperk-partners-with-dish-network

<comment><USER2> Am I missing something, or is this "perk" the exact same offer I get as different forms of junkmail in my mailbox about 3x a week?

Or - alternately - right on Dish's site: <http://www.dish.com/entertainment/packages/> \- where I see the exact same offers and savings offered by AnyPerk? Maybe the "perk" is the $75 gift card - but you can get a $100 gift card signing up straight through Dish here: <http://www.dish.com/redirects/partners/amazon/> \- of if you'd rather have DirecTV - you can get a $120 Costco gift card with that at: <http://shop.costco.com/feature/directv>

I'll stop now - this just feels at best a bit disingenuous, and at worst - like HN spam.</comment>


PR for Startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.tonywright.com/2010/pr-for-startups/ <comment><USER2> Are there implications for Ycombinator's approach to incubating startups? Tony's current perspective seems to have shifted considerably from when he graduated from the program:

       "I think there's a lot of built-in contempt for PR and marketing among
       entrepreneurs (especially hacker-flavored entrepreneurs).
       We've all been in companies with fat communications budgets wasted
       by blow-hard marketeers, so many of us have dismissed the profession
       altogether. We're so entranced by the concept that just building
       something people want[1] will win the day. I remember cheering the
       first time I read the quote, "marketing is a tax you pay for being
       unremarkable[2]". I remember reading a statement on Hacker News that
       said, "my code speaks for itself[3]". Two years ago, I would've said,
       "Right on, brother! Preach it!"

       But my mindset has shifted about 180 degrees over the past few years.
       I now believe that how you say something is at least as important
       as what you've built."

[1] <http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html>

[2] [http://www.slideshare.net/Thor/geek-squad-marketing-is-a- tax...](http://www.slideshare.net/Thor/geek-squad-marketing-is-a-tax-you-pay- for-being-unremarkabe)

[3] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=474313></comment>


Java Magic. Part 4: Sun.misc.Unsafe - <AUTHOR> http://mishadoff.com/blog/java-magic-part-4-sun-dot-misc-dot-unsafe/ <comment><USER2> TIL that you can manipulate memory in Java. I always thought that this is a low-lewel-language (and C++) feature.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [https://www.reddit.com/r/java/comments/5gd7jn/sunmiscunsafe_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/java/comments/5gd7jn/sunmiscunsafe_writing_directly_to_memory_what_is/)</comment>


Type Sample: A tool for identifying and sampling webfonts - <AUTHOR> http://www.typesample.com/

<comment><USER2> Honestly, this is super cool.</comment>


Life-Changing Magic of Keeping Absolutely Everything - <AUTHOR> https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the-life-changing-magic-of-keeping-absolutely-everything <comment><USER2> Well, that started out relatively sane.</comment>


Show HN: Spreaker Podcast Radio – Podcast Listening Reinvented - <AUTHOR> http://blog.spreaker.com/2015/11/11/introducing-the-new-spreaker-podcast-radio-for-android/ <comment><AUTHOR> We're thrilled to announce this huge update of our podcast listening application. The app has been rewritten from the ground up to provide the best podcast listening experience on Android, applying Material Design in its purest form, focusing on realtime data syncing and offline listening experience. When we started working on this app 7 months ago, we wanted to learn from all the mistakes we made on the previous versions, leveraging the best possible tools and technologies even if sometimes this meant throwing away previous assumptions, knowledge, and push ourselves out of the comfort zone.

Here some tech details that we'd like to share:

\- functional reactive programming [http://reactivex.io/](http://reactivex.io/)

\- networking with OkHttp by Square [http://square.github.io/okhttp/](http://square.github.io/okhttp/)

\- image loading with Glide by Bump Technologies [https://github.com/bumptech/glide](https://github.com/bumptech/glide)

\- audio streaming playback with Exoplayer by Google [https://github.com/google/ExoPlayer](https://github.com/google/ExoPlayer)

\- view injection with Butterknife by Jake Wharton [http://jakewharton.github.io/butterknife/](http://jakewharton.github.io/butterknife/)

\- dependency injection with Dagger2 by Google [http://google.github.io/dagger/](http://google.github.io/dagger/)

A big thanks to @brigitadaisy for the huge effort she made in designing this app, @DrAL3X for helping me on Android development, @pracucci for providing totally new and super fast apis, and to all the @spreaker team for the support in those months of hard work.

<comment><USER2> | the best podcast listening experience on Android

That's a big claim. Not to discount your work, but why should someone use your app over Pocket Casts (which I believe to currently have the best Android app).

<comment><USER3> To me it comes down to a few things:

\- Spreaker is "streaming first": it's way easier to just play something new that you want to listen to, without going through the Subscribe->my podcasts->download(or stream) flow. You can also download podcasts, but this appears to be a secondary mode of consumption.

\- There is great emphasis around curation: there are both curated lists (they somewhat look like the Play Store discovery experience) and channels, which are good when you don't want to pick something specific to listen to but you just want to play something.

All things considered, it's a very different experience from most of the podcasting apps out there that come from the original iTunes-like subscribe experience. It might be better or worse, and this is very personal. But I believe this is moving in a different direction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It is _really_ nice to see an app that doesn't harvest one's contacts / location / other unnecessary data that a user has to fear will be sold or misused.

</comment><comment><USER3> Finally a podcast app that includes some sort of curation; it feels weird to have to get most of the recommendations elsewhere and then having to look for a specific show.

<comment><USER5> Your account appears to have been dead for a very long time. The few comments you've made are good so I vouched for them. You may want to email mods to see what tripped their filters?

(Although here you say "finally", yet you've submitted 3 articles about spreaker about 2000 days ago.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great job guys! App UX is absolutely slick :)</comment>


Show HN: My Weekend Project: find popular spots nearby using Facebook Graph API - <AUTHOR> http://findplac.es

<comment><AUTHOR> I built this over the weekend as a way of learning Python and web.py, and having a play with Bootstrap (I'm absolutely no designer).

The idea is to use Facebook check-ins as a metric of popularity for any kind of place you're looking for — bars, restaurants, parks, coffee shops — anywhere people have checked into.

Unfortunately for a lot of popular places, their Facebook pages are un-managed so a lot of descriptions are unavailable. I'm not really sure if there's a use for this, but it was a fun way to try Python, and I have to say I'm really impressed with how quick it was to get something up and running with web.py.

I think I'll continue to work on it a bit more as each place found could be queried further individually to get more information, and it could use some form of pagination. At the moment the results page is produced from a single API call, and limited to around the 25 most popular spots found. I had considered allowing the user to input the search radius (by default, 10km), but decided on simplicity over customisability in the end.</comment>


Meet Nico and Veronica - sahin-boydas https://www.snap.com/en-US/news/post/meet-nico-and-veronica/ <comment><AUTHOR> I've never even seen a Snap Spectacle up close, but these seem very stylish, a far cry from the old Google Glasses.

Ok, photos on other sites show a still noticeable camera:

[https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/9/5/17821016/sn...](https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/9/5/17821016/snap- spectacles-2-styles-nico-veronica-pricing-features)</comment>


How Social Dynamics Made You Successful - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-25/sugar-man-s-lesson-for-markets-and-politicians.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I think there are a lot of products out there that have so much potential in the future if they can get past the first hump. Take Tesla for example, it almost died 4 years ago and has now released a working concept of free charges. Think about how far that idea can go, practically "free" transportation much sooner than we could have imagined. Whereas if the company died 4 years ago, how much longer would it take? What if companies decided to start out charging just like they do for gasoline?</comment>


Africa is still Green - <AUTHOR>

Anybody interested in igniting the tech fire in Africa? <comment><USER2> A friend of mine is a very active entrepreneur in our country (Cameroon) and his company (<http://www.feeperfect.com/>) already launched two really great products. You should contact him, I'm sure he will be glad to work with you.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> 1\. Paypal does not work in almost all African states, the region needs a local solution. 2\. ..

<comment><USER3> then Bitcoin came along...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was working as a tech entrepreneur in tech in Africa for most of 2010. In VC in CA right now but I'm interested. @michaelwfrank

</comment><comment><USER5> ...What do you have in mind?

</comment><comment><USER6> im looking to shake things up in africa, lets chat</comment>


Ask HN: Graduated at a poor time,suck at interviews but want to be a programmer - <AUTHOR> I went away to school in 2006 and in 2009 or so I got a CS degree.  The economy sucked so bad that I couldn't find a job. Not for free. Everybody wanted somebody with 3+ years of experience and I didn't have it.  Looking now at my friends from University only two of the 30 or so that I knew have programming jobs.  The rest due to tough times went into other fields like I did.  We didn't go to a bad school, top 40 ranked in the states.  Those years were just particularly bad for graduating.  Of the graduating CS class  many people just didn't get jobs.  Though now as school newsletters suggest, things are great.  Students are having no trouble finding jobs. The problem is nobody wants somebody with a degree from 5 years ago. I'll admit there's validity to that.
I ended up going into systems administration (linux) because that's something I could do well and do enjoy. I genuinely like my job and think I am pretty good at it.  The only issue is it leaves a lot to be desired in the technical sense.  I feel underutilized and can do most of my job on autopilot.
I've done a few programming interviews but they always tend to be so technical and into CS fundamentals that I used to know at one time. They are always filled with esoteric questions that I am sure people in the specific domain know but I don't because I can only do so much on my own.  There's always logic puzzles which I suck at. I am not a bad programmer.  I have a github with a few nice projects I have created. I have asked peers in the python community to rate my code and programs and they always say it's pretty good.  I really enjoy CS and programming but I can't really seem to find a way in. In school one of my favorite topics was functional programming and I still play with ML, CL and scheme at times. Everybody just seems to see operations on my resume and well I must be a idiot so that's that.  I can't leave 4 years blank on my resume either. Does anybody have any advice? <comment><USER2> I graduated in the heart of the recession and had lots of people telling me that I wouldn't find a job. But I viewed it as a numbers game, and refused to believe that if I didn't buckle down and dig, that I wouldn't find a job. As the other commenter said, I made it my full-time job to find a full-time job, and I did. I received my first offer after multiple interviews, and 84 customized application packets had been submitted. It was a ton of work. But within six months of graduation I was making $51,000 and working as a Credit Risk Analyst at a large bank. The work sucked, but the lesson stuck. Don't let any kind of bad economy be an excuse. If you're landing interviews, you're doing something right, but if you're not getting the job, you're doing something wrong. The thing to recognize is that the technical stuff is only half the equation--if that. Much of the time what they're looking for at least as much is "fit" and an analytic mindset which demonstrates an aptitude for solving problems. They're looking to see how you handle it when you _don 't_ know the answer. How do you think your way through it? Or do you just give up? Or do you make stuff up?

Most importantly, there are ALWAYS jobs out there. So get out there and make it happen. Go to Meetup groups, network, and be as intelligent about your job hunt as you will be on the job.

Basically, there is no excuse for your lack of success in getting the job you want. If you need more technical chops, figure out what you need to know and learn it. Make some projects on your own time, build a Github repository. And eventually all these things will combine to get you the job you want. There's a ton of demand out there, you just have to find it.

</comment><comment> at-fates-hands I would say start looking for contract gigs. The interview process tends to be quicker and dirtier. Can you do a,b,c? Have you used tools a.b.c that we use? How fast can you get up and running on our project?

Since most contracts are 3-6 month gigs, these companies need to hire someone fast and get a butt in the seat and start building what they need. It's also a sort of trial on both of your parts. You want to see if you like working there and the stuff they have you doing, and the company will see if what you're doing is good and you interact with the project managers well and hit their deadlines.

I've had 3 month contracts go on for years, others you might want to just get out as soon as the projects done - which I've also had. Either way, you get some really valuable time in doing what you want - which is to program. It also gives you some decent references you can use to leverage to get a full- time gig somewhere. The weight of a good recommendation can never be underestimated.

Also, the only way to get better at interviewing is to keep interviewing. If you have a recruiter, always ask them what to expect. Do I need to dust off my edition of "Pro Javascript Design Patterns" or can I go in cold knowing that the questions will be limited to tools and experience? Is the company looking for a hardcore MVC Spring guy, or do they just need someone who knows Struts? Just knowing what to expect in the interview is half the battle.

</comment><comment><USER3> Here's a couple of possibilities, put some time into all of them, but gravitate towards the activities that you enjoy/tolerate the most.

* Take some time to learn how to interview. Learn the logic puzzles, how to chit chat about linked lists and binary trees. Learn how to white board, how to handle the 30ish standard programming questions in short time on a white board. Typically, if you're looking for a high-level language job (Ruby and Javascript in my experience), a lot of the time people will ask you to solve low level problems ignoring the abstractions such languages provide, so learn how to write C++ solutions in Python. Reading books like Cracking The Interview Code will get you most of the way through this, but I'd also advise to read up on internet fundamentals (http, etc.)

* Apply to a bunch of places. Embrace being repeatedly told that you don't seem good enough for the people you want to associate with, for a variety of unfair seeming reasons. Look forward to the day when that feeling is transformed to a dull sense of belonging based on your economic utility.

* Put yourself into experiences that come closer to typical software work experience. Work with other people, work under a time pressure, work to meet existing customer needs, work for payment. You could try hackathons, freelance work, contributing to open source, working with other people on their projects.

* Meet more developers. Ask for their opinions on how to best develop themselves, inside scoop on jobs available, etc.

* If possible, broaden your search beyond a single city. I'm assuming you're in SF. SF may have a lot of software jobs, but it has a lot of developers too, and the fact that they have to pay people a large enough salary to offset the costs of living there make it a bit more competitive than somewhere without absurdly high costs of living.

</comment><comment><USER4> Programming interviewing process can be hacked, and a quick Amazon search uncovers a bunch of titles doing just that.

I can tell you what the bias might be - people with other backgrounds might treat software engineering and programming as equals, and thus have very vague idea of things like system reliability, scalability, failover tactics, deployments, etc., jumping at the quickest dirtiest obvious solution. Steer the conversation in a way where people become cognizant of your knowledge of application architecture and system-level design.

<comment><AUTHOR> > I can tell you what the bias might be - people with other backgrounds might > treat software engineering and programming as equals, and thus have very > vague idea of things like system reliability, scalability, failover tactics, > deployments, etc., jumping at the quickest dirtiest obvious solution. Steer > the conversation in a way where people become cognizant of your knowledge of > application architecture and system-level design.

Is that really true? If anything in my experience it's most programmers who look at jumping at the quickest dirtiest obvious solution. We have to fight as sysadmins to get them to do things right. But that's just my experience where I work. Things could certainly be very different at a tech company or something.

<comment><USER5> I am the programmer / software engineer arguing to not do the quickest dirtiest obvious solution that my management suggest.I dislike having to debug something I wrote a few weeks ago (once I have forgotten the details), so I try to get stuff working as reliably as possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Make getting a job your full-time job. Full on, no dabbling. Persistently.</comment>


Information Extraction with Neural Networks and Free Noisy Supervision - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1612.04118 <comment><USER2> How does the pipeline compare to state-of-the-art information extraction suites (e.g. Apache OpenNLP) on standard datasets?

</comment><comment><USER3> Where's the code?

</comment><comment><USER4> Well. That was a short paper.</comment>


Face-touching may reflect unconscious hand-smelling [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rstb.2019.0372 <comment><USER2> Related: growing up, one of the things that my sister and I would joke about was the extent to which we both would both unconsciously smell our wrists and lower arm areas while doing math. We would catch each other all the time doing it and it was hilarious. Here is an example of what I am talking about:

[https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/03/24/business/24artifi...](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/03/24/business/24artificial1/24artificial1-superJumbo.jpg)

As a completely uninformed guess, I think the link between focus and smelling one's hand/wrist might have something to do with early feelings of comfort as an infant associated with the smell of a parent's skin. The idea being that introducing a close approximation of that smell would remove any distraction brought on by other, less familiar smells, and increase focus.

<comment><USER3> This must be why beard stroking is effective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder whether makeup influences the frequency or location of face touches. I wear glasses/contacts and I've noticed I rub my eyes fairly often during my (recently makeup-free) work day but I definitely don't when I'm wearing mascara or false lashes.

<comment><USER5> I am the same but maybe because we've learnt over time that touching our makeup smudges it? In which case, perhaps it's a good idea to wear a lot these coming weeks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've been wondering what counts as touching your face for purposes of virus transmission.

In the paper they highlight people whose fingers are under or in their noses but I wonder if something like grazing your cheek or forehead would count. Is there some mechanism the virus would use to migrate from the forehead/cheek into the eyes/nose or is the "don't touch your face" advice really shorthand for "don't pick your nose or rub your eyes"?

<comment><USER7> >Is there some mechanism the virus would use to migrate from the forehead/cheek into the eyes/nose

i'm not a doctor/virologist/biologist/whatever, but one could imagine someones' perspiring face may aerosolize whatever was on its' surface due to the evaporative cooling effect.

I don't know whether or not that's practically feasible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Very interesting topic. I've noticed that whenever I wear my favorite perfume on my beard, I'll spend the following 4 hours touching my hands to remember good memories attached to that smell.

For people looking into the effect of self-face-touching with virus spreading,

"We note that this behaviour offace-touching may be responsible for transferring nearly 25%of respiratory illness."

</comment><comment><USER9> I know how the wooden beams in my office smell. My mind can summon the smell of the handrails in the train station, disturbingly. The smell of my clothes, and crotch, before and after workout, it's right there. It takes me a while to accept clothes I got from other people as my own. Using strangers' detergent alienates me from my own clothes.

I don't like to touch things I know other people touch. (It's a weak effect, and doesn't bother me.) Is this related to smell? Do I not like getting other people's smell on my hands? Or is it just hygiene training? Hard to tell. If you were to count, I'd be smelling my hands a lot less when riding a bicycle not my own. Judging by that study.

It's interesting how the authors speculate about the link between self- smelling and consciousness. I am who I smell.

</comment><comment><USER10> Odd. I touch my face almost compulsively, but I have an extremely poor sense of smell. I smell my hands right now, I can't tell what they smell like at all.

<comment><USER11> Self-smelling could be a mechanism for figuring out self-smell for the purposes of not getting confused by it when trying to distinguish environmental sources. In which case it would be perfectly reasonable to not smell 'anything' when actively smelling oneself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Looks like the question really driving this paper is "why are humans touching their faces so much [and spreading viruses]?"

</comment><comment><USER13> Lost me on this: "We then detail evidence from the one study that implicated an olfactory origin for this behaviour:"...

One. Okay. Helps explain 'may reflect'...

</comment><comment><USER14> Add [pdf] to title due to auto-download

</comment><comment><USER15> Weird verb choice, _subserves_. I would have used _effects_ or _facilitates_.

<comment><USER16> We've put a different, less subservient phrase from the article in the title above.

The submitted title was "A hypothesis that self-face-touching subserves self- smelling", which I assume was an admirable attempt to make the title less baity by using representative language from the text.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I am a native English speaker who graduated with a 3.8 GPA in History from a world Top 30 university.

I still had to use a dictionary to understand what "subserves" means in this context.

Our language is so hilariously broken with all of the "aliasing" that is used by people who want to make themselves sound smarter.

What we should do instead is try to make sure other people can understand what we are trying to say.

<comment><USER18> I'm another native speaker who graduated high school more by dint of luck and pity than for any other reason, and then went to work instead of college. Between the context and the similarity with the adjective "subservient", "subserves" proved trivial to parse, and I haven't yet been able to come up with another expression of the same concept that is also as concise. In any case, it seems unlikely that educational attainment is all that useful an indicator here.

In general writing, your point has merit. In the title of an academic paper published in a journal of philosophy, I don't know that the strictures and desiderata of general writing wholly apply.

<comment><USER17> "A hypothesis that if one touches their face, they are more likely to smell themselves as well"

is an infinitely clearer title, in my opinion.

If your goal is for only 5 people to understand you and think you are cool, then it's no surprise why we have academic titles like

"Embodied intersectionality and the intersectional management of hotel labour: the everyday experiences of social differentiation in customer‐oriented work"

<comment><USER18> The purpose of academic publication is to communicate with others in the same field, where the terminology of art is shared among all. Not having acquainted yourself with a given field's specific lexicon, why would you expect to understand without effort the meaning of titles that make heavy use of it?

For that matter, not being a participant in the work of which these publications constitute a part, why insist that those who _do_ participate in it to talk with one another in the same language they'd use to make their work understandable to a lay audience such as yourself?

None of this seems very reasonable to me. You've done a splendid job of making clear that you value your own opinion in such matters quite highly, but you've left much to be desired in explaining why anyone else should do the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Maybe this behavior is bit more sophisticated version of what dogs to when meet. Dogs like push their nose comfortably in areas we generally prefer to hide from strangers, when they like the smell a good chance this is rewarded with a doggy style session.

I sometimes think we have made the persuasion game so complicated and we could be a lot happier if everybody starts having 10x more sex tomorrow.

<comment><USER20> Fallacy of Chesterton's Fence: Don"t demolish things (including social norms) until you understand why they arose in the first place. Most likely somebody solved a problem you no longer perceive because the solution is currently in place and blocking its manifestation. Sure, the problems might be antiquated cruft that is no longer relevant and no longer serves a purpose... but it might not.

<comment><USER19> Let's for simplicity apply Occam's razor:

When we didn't have modern birth control solutions cultural rituals were an effective measure against women giving birth to seven children from different men.

We removed that natural health taxing consequence of having sex. Could you elaborate on your fence a bit because I'm always curious about unknown unknowns to me.

<comment><USER20> I haven't stated an opinion on the matter, I'm just cautioning against these offhanded remarks about massive societal re-engineering.

Though your example is telling, actually. Humans are fairly unusual insofar as females do not have significant observable markers of being fertile or not (in the animal example, "in heat"). So you'd really have to go back and look at why evolution selected for this particular characteristic and what its consequences were, how it influenced sexual norms, and only _then_ layer on the consideration you make about contraception.

And yes, this is vastly contentious, and no, we are not going to solve it in the footnotes of a tech-centric forum. But my message was intended to be more general.

<comment><USER19> Fair enough. My point was coming more from the view that we still treat women like second class people.

600 million women were married before they reached 18. 200 million women have experience genital mutilation so I think it fair to say in most cultures the accepted behavior of women is severely restricted in every possible way.

The women I met have all surprised me with a daily desire for sex activity. Many of them have had slut shaming experiences while growing up.

<comment><USER20> Again, a bit of a sweeping (and false) perception informed by our local historical and cultural context. There is strong anthropological evidence that for dozens of millennia matriarchal societies were the norm. This survived well into the pre-colonial era in Africa. It just _appears_ that way because patriarchal structures have dominated for most of the recent past (~4000-5000 years), and because this period coincides with the historical record... again, is this a quirk or a consequence, and in the latter case, which way does causation flow?

<comment><USER19> We have no written records about the period you mention so I cannot imagine how strong this evidence is. Africa's population is for the majority practicing the Islam since a millennium before the colonial era, and that's a religion with a classical patriarchal society structure.

While I have been very charitable in my interpretation of your arguments. You keep using straw man arguments in our discussion again and again.

You literally shift the goal post with every comment you make, I think this is an inferior way of discourse.

I have seen comments in the past that were a lot more impressive, expressing thoughts of deep thinking. This has not been your best work and decide not to engage anymore with you on this topic.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Developers, even Linus, should stop being cranky and start showing some respect - <AUTHOR> http://www.hopelesscom.de/2012/5/13/pull_requests,_developers_and_respect.html being a bit more friendly would really not hurt. <comment><USER2> he was respectful in the first reply. now if you drag him into opinion pieces you are asking him to pull out his full guns, and deserve no more respect than he wants to give. you earn the respect, and you are not entitled to it right off the bat.

<comment><AUTHOR> I 100% agree with you that you have to earn respect - but not on the part that you do not deserve it anymore if you start a discussion. Even if we would agree, no respect does not equals being unfriendly and calling names.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I believe it would not hurt if everyone would be a bit more friendly. Especially when trying to attract new developers for a project.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sigh... yet another one.

When did this go from "Hacker News" to "He said mean things and I am very sad now News"?</comment>


RIP Jon Postel (Oct 16 1998): RFC Devotee and Internet Pioneer - <AUTHOR> http://www.postel.org/remembrances/cohen-story.html

<comment><USER2> Please edit the title from "Jon Potel" -> "Jon Postel".

<comment><USER3> The least we could do is get his name right.

Please.

<comment><USER4> You should be more liberal in accepting misspellings of his name...

<comment><USER5> ... true, but the story poster should have been strict in what he emitted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Three people were mourned on the net more than anyone else I can remember, Jon Postel, Richard Stevens, Douglas Adams. You read their eulogies on IRC, Usenet, Wired, New York Times, and Phrack. There is at least one piece of shell-code dedicated to each man :-)

</comment><comment><USER7> Jon Postel, more than almost anyone else, is one of the main reasons we have the Internet we have today. He created the DNA that set in stone the character of what the Internet really 'is'. This allowed the Internet to transition from a many educational to a commercial entity but still retain its 'open soul'.</comment>


Lz-string: Fast JavaScript compression - <AUTHOR> http://pieroxy.net/blog/pages/lz-string/index.html

<comment><USER2> I have used it before and I like it.

I do wish someone would hurry up with a Ruby implementation through (ended up having to use Ruby Racer to decode it on the server).

</comment><comment><USER3> nice... it would be nice of localstorage in browsers already had compression/decompression built in... Have for a few years been thinking of an offline-capable mail-nntp reader, and this may help with such a beast.</comment>


Take Healthy Breaks [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://amitshah.fedorapeople.org/articles/Healthy-breaks.pdf

<comment><USER2> The software is available in Fedora repositories?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, yum install workrave :-)</comment></comment>