Bottle of Lies - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/13/books/review/bottle-of-lies-katherine-eban.html <comment><USER2> Generic drugs - manufactured with lax quality checks - are poisoning us would be a more apt title. I work in the pharma industry (biologicals) and I agree that there is a lot of "funny business" going on at multiple levels in the pharma industry all over the world.

Painting western companies as victims and to simply blame it on overseas companies would be a gross oversimplification. Whenever you order material from any supplier or vendor it is _YOUR_ responsibility to conduct a vendor audit, its _YOUR_ responsibility to perform incoming materials testing, etc, etc. You don't just simply take what a supplier gives you and inject it into a live human. As you go towards filing an IND, you have to do tox studies, stability studies, pre-clinical, clinical studies, and on and on.

I know of several cases where big name US pharma companies banned their employees from conducting certain tests because if the results came out less than flattering they might have to show those to the FDA, and they might end up having to delay or cancel the product.

<comment><USER3> There was a Chinese hit movie last year (Dying to Survive) about a patient's illicit business smuggling cheap generic drugs from India, the movie is one- sided sympathetic toward the protagonist so did the audience.

Yet a prior investigative report of the guy depicted in the movie, showed the whole thing was all kinds of fishy, including misleading marketing, entangled business interest, fake company addresses in India, untrue claims and poor quality.

But people refused to believe the report and was cursing the reporter and the evil price-gauging foreign drug companies.

<comment><USER4> Well, I haven't seen the movie, but if I couldn't afford pills that would save my life I'd probably take some risks to at least have some hope.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A relative of mine used to work on automation for a large pharmaceutical manufacturer in the US. He used to talk about how unrelenting the FDA was in their inspections. The better your processes were, the harder the FDA would try to find new and seemingly arbitrary faults, almost to the point that it would be better to have some glaring but easily fixable issue to distract from all the minor things they would find.

One example he said was that the FDA decided that they couldn't share tools (hammers, wrenches, etc) across manufacturing lines used for different drugs. This was supposedly to prevent cross contamination of the drugs. Generics made in India and China don't have to compete with such high standards.

<comment><USER6> > share tools (hammers, wrenches, etc) across manufacturing lines used for > different drugs

I never would've guessed that they use hammers and wrenches to manufacture drugs.

<comment> Anthony-G My reading of the above is that the hammers and wrenches are used indirectly, i.e., to maintain the equipment on the lines.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Meh. Not educated enough to tell if this is FUD but sure seems like it. As if the US pharma industry has not been caught countless times hiding data and making patients sick.

"They just don't make it in that India or China or whatever like they can here" comes off as incredibly racist imo.

<comment><USER8> I've taken and still take quite a few psychoactive drugs and have clearly noticed a lack of quality control and potency in generic drugs.

I wouldn't say they are poison, but in my experience they often don't work as well.

One of the best examples is amphetamines. Name brand Adderall and Dexedrine are significantly more potent than the generic alternatives I've tried. Maybe this has to do with the binders, or maybe there is less amphetamines in it, I don't know.

As an anecdote, my dad works as a pharma regulator for the FDA and never takes generic medication. He's told me that generics are inadequately regulated to ensure equivalency to the original.

<comment><USER9> Apologies if I don't take your drug taking anecdotes as any kind of fact.

If you knew that they were generics beforehand, and had preconceived beliefs about generics, your subjective experience of their recreational aspects is severely flawed.

<comment><USER10> The book provides details with FDA reports, court and patient cases why these are not anecdotes...

<comment><USER9> In America, yeah? As in, your regulators might be shit, but other countries might be better. The FDA have hardly been covering themselves in glory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If the issue is the quality of manufacture, why would there be an expectation that brand name drugs be manufactured with higher quality controls, or be made in the US (just following in the article's implication of a very US-centric view of big pharma). Couldn't big-pharma-company contract out manufacturing to whomever does it cheapest internationally?

<comment><USER12> Manufacturing costs are roughly similar between generics and brand name drugs (say ~$1/pill as an example). A large portion of costs for brand name drugs are in the development and qualification. Generics avoid these costs.

For a brand name drugs, manufacturing costs are a relatively low portion of the price and margins are high (example: $20/pill, 95% gross margin). For generics, manufacturing costs are a larger portion of the price and margins are lower (example: $2/pill, 50% gross margin).

For generics, because a substantial portion of the price is driven by manufactured costs, margins can be increased substantially by a reduction of the manufactured cost (example: cost $1->0.50, price: $2, margin ->75%, a 50% increase in profitability!). For the brand name drug, the same reduction (example: cost $1->0.50, price: $20, margin ->97%) yields less increase in margin. As a result, there is less incentive for the brand name drug to push for the manufacturing cost reduction (whether or not quality is affected.) And if there is a risk of reduced quality, then the brand name has much more to lose, both in terms of profitability and in the value of it's brand name.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> >"Unlike American plants, which matured in an environment where constant oversight made shortcuts risky, the Indian industry evolved in a culture in which outwitting inefficient bureaucracies was an essential skill."

There is an interesting parallel here with the deterioration of regulatory oversight at Boeing that seems likely to have contributed to recent issues with the 737 Max. Similar to how the FDA was only visiting these foreign drug manufacturing operations once ever 11 years on average, the FAA was also resource constrained, to the point that Boeing was responsible for most of it's own oversight.

Maybe the story is just that at a certain point every company becomes rotten in the pursuit of profits (although that seems a contrived conclusion). A better analysis would maybe be what made these companies act in similar ways, skirting regulation at the cost of safety.

<comment><USER14> These problems will solve themselves, but at the cost of human life. I remember someone telling me that governments only move when a lot of people die.

The Indian government will eventually learn to regulate their pharma industry, it will just take the deaths of thousands of Indians before it will happen. We fucked up a lot of people in the Western world before we learned that regulations matter. Thalidomide anyone? That whole period in the early 1900s when we didn't have much of a medical profession and scientists were doing whatever the hell they wanted?

<comment><USER13> I wonder if this becomes a cycle - otherwise I'm not sure how it explains the problems at Boeing.

I assume there was a point where the FAA was reasonably thorough (although if anyone knows the contrary to be true correct me), but then a general lack of perceived risk led to a leaner FAA with lower regulatory resources, which then contributed to the problems at Boeing. Maybe this will lead to an increase of regulatory oversight, and then the cycle continues.

<comment><USER15> It's not just complacency, there's been a significant push for deregulation and gutting of oversight by business interests since the economic problems of the 70s. It's been one of the top issues for the followers of Milton Friedman, of which there are many in government.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think the natural engineer intuition is that if a drug is just a chemical, and generic and name-brand drugs are the same chemical, how could there possibly be any difference? Don't be duped by advertising, save the money, be rational, etc.

One interesting case where there was a real problem was with generic extended- release bupropion (an antidepressant). The time-release mechanism on one of the generics didn't work correctly, although the manufacturer managed to get it past the FDA (they actually tested only a 150mg dose, and extrapolated the results to approve the 300mg dose).

[https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2012/10/18/th...](https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2012/10/18/the_generic_wellbutrin_problem_whose_fault_is_it)

<comment><USER17> It gets complicated fast.

Sometimes small differences in formulations will be mostly irrelevant (oh no, your ibuprofen takes a few extra minutes to absorb, but will 99% absorb under almost all circumstances).

But other times, a new crystalline form exists that you weren't aware of and destroys your entire ongoing production. Same molecule, but different structure that's too stable and doesn't dissolve effectively. See: ritonavir.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is there any evidence that substandard generic drugs are causing real harm to patients? I'm sure that there are all sorts of dodgy pills ending up in unregistered pharmacies in the developing world, but do people in countries with functioning regulatory systems really need to worry about foreign- manufactured generics?

<comment><USER19> I'm going to be vague so don't ask for more, but I recently had a minor medical problem, nothing life threatening at all.

I was prescribed a long course of X for it. My complaint responded well to that, but near the end of the course I got a new batch from an Indian generics company. They tasted far less bitter (all the pills from all sources were uncoated so it was very noticeable), and the complaint I had flared up again rapidly even while I was taking them.

I reported this to the body was responsible, giving them the batch number I'd saved. They re-analysed a sample from that batch (they keep back a sample of each) and said it was OK, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't. Stupidly I'd taken all the suspicious tablets when should have kept one back for them.

My story. Not solid but all I've got. If it had been something serious, I dunno...

(BTW this line "I'm sure that there are all sorts of dodgy pills ending up in unregistered pharmacies in the developing world" isn't kind. Their lives still matter, distance and poverty don't change that. I appreciate that may not have been the way you intended it though)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is this why there's shortages and plants being suspended? And all the cholesterol generics having contaminants causing cancer?

<comment><USER9> ...which carcinogenic contaminants?

<comment><USER17> Probably referring to the ARB (angiotensin receptor blocker) shortages.

Basically, an API manufacturer changed up its process, but it turned out to generate very small quantities of a very small molecule side-product that's carcinogenic.

NDMA and NDEA.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=arb+ndma](https://www.google.com/search?q=arb+ndma)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Archive.is link for paywall bypass:

[http://archive.is/AyJ5g](http://archive.is/AyJ5g)</comment>


LinkedIn's Hoffman Offers $5M for Trump's Tax Returns - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-12/linkedin-s-hoffman-offers-5-million-for-trump-s-tax-returns <comment><USER2> I'm pretty sure Trump has said he is under audit and will release his tax returns once the audit is finished. What surprises me is that his audit hasn't been fast tracked in order to hold him to that commitment. I don't think doing that would even qualify as dirty pool in this case. It would just be facilitating transparency about something some of the electorate has questions about.

*edit: I'm getting a lot of replies saying there's nothing keeping him from releasing his returns while being audited. I'm well aware, but as has been pointed out by talmand, having the IRS sign off on his audit helps shore up his defense if anything in there looks questionable to people. Also, he obviously doesn't see any reason to give people potential ammunition. He stands to gain almost nothing from releasing his tax returns. Even if they're flawless and he's paying 60% tax (we obviously know that isn't the case), at best people would shrug and move on. At worst, they would find something to hammer him on, whether valid or not, and the audit would still be pending, giving him little defense to the accusations.

<comment><USER3> For the comments pointing out he can release despite the audit, there's no benefit to releasing right now.

For one, he's using it as a negotiating tactic in attempt to get something out of someone else he wishes to be made public. I believe it has come up with "release your medical records" or "release the transcripts" and "I'll release my tax returns".

For a guy like this and what he does, it is most likely there is something the IRS will complain about in the return. It could be something small or something big, it does not necessarily mean it is proof of wrong-doing. Mistakes are made all the time with complicated returns. There have been examples of the IRS giving incorrect advice on complicated returns after all. So, why not wait until the audit is done and all the IRS complaints have been addressed before releasing? Why hand over talking points to partisan political hacks that would likely make every little incorrect thing to be an example of alleged illegal activities?

For all the conspiracy theories that's he attempting to hide something in his returns assumes that the IRS is complicit or incompetent. I am more than satisfied that if the IRS finds something illegal they will be more than happy to conduct a criminal investigation. They have done so before with much less.

<comment><USER4> I hear your argument, but then why not release your previous year returns? Presumably, those have already been audited.

<comment><USER3> Now that is a good question. From the IRS:

Generally, the IRS can include returns filed within the last three years in an audit. Additional years can be added if a substantial error is identified. Generally, if a substantial error is identified, the IRS will not go back more than the last six years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> xkcd-sucks What obligation does Trump have to release an unfalsified tax return? If he "releases" a falsified tax return, or if a "leaker" releases a "hacked" tax return document that is in fact falsified, is some IRS employee going to risk their job by calling them out?

<comment><USER5> _" What obligation does Trump have to release an unfalsified tax return?"_

As far as I'm aware of, none.

The typical voter doesn't care, or assumes that Trump uses the same kind of bookkeepers and legal loopholes that his political opponents do. It's the partisans and political wonks who are salivating over this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Flagged. I don't see how this will lead to anything constructive that hasn't been beat to death all over the news, and other web sources. Nor does it seem very interesting in the ethos of Hackernews.

</comment><comment><USER7> Why not release an older tax return that is not under audit? How many years returns are under audit?</comment>


Wind is outpacing coal as a power source in Texas for the first time - <AUTHOR> https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/25/us/texas-wind-energy-trnd/index.html <comment><USER2> Not difficult to imagine.

I drove from Illinois to Arizona just last week. In west Texas, steady winds were turning hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of energy converters. Below those turbines were enormous fields of corn rivaling anything seen in southern Illinois. Ethanol? When the wind farms ended the feed lots began. Thousands and thousands of head of cattle being fed from hay piles five hundred feet long and two stories tall. Beyond that, a thousand head of black angus free grazing next to man-made water resevoirs a thousand foot wide.

One thing you learn about Texans -- they know how to scale.

<comment><USER3> And the smell. Describe the smell for us.

<comment><USER2> Doesn't compare to the feedlots in El Paso which are easily 5x the size (or more), somewhat higher up from the river.

The west Texas wind was blowing from the south/southwest at 15-20 mph. There was no detectable odor, even west of Amarillo when we stopped for fuel. Hot too. 103 degrees fahrenheit. Plenty of room to dissipate I guess.

I was surprised however, by the amount of corn being grown. I don't remember seeing it just a few years ago. I could be wrong. It seemed out of place but was very healthy. 5-6 feet tall already.

<comment><USER4> > There was no detectable odor, even west of Amarillo when we stopped for > fuel.

I've driven by the Wildorado feedlot dozens of times, and I always put my A/C on recirc 5 miles before and after. The stench still gets into the car. Conditions must have been very unusual during your trip.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Texas produces and consumes more electricity overall than any other state.

OK, why? From an article in Texas Monthly:[0]

> More than half of the energy consumed in Texas is for industrial use, > according to the EIA, while residential use—which in terms of sheer BTUs is > the most in the nation, even as our per capita usage is relatively > low—accounts for just over 13 percent. Transportation accounts for nearly a > quarter, while commercial comes in slightly lower than residential.

I wonder what the major industrial uses are. Some is used in oil and natural gas production, I guess. And perhaps size accounts for high transportation usage.

0) [https://www.texasmonthly.com/energy/texas-uses-energy- state/](https://www.texasmonthly.com/energy/texas-uses-energy-state/)

<comment><USER6> Texas resident here. If you have ever driven by a refinery of any type you will see where energy goes. The shear amount of energy to convert oil to usable gas/plastics/etc. is pretty crazy.

Texas has the biggest oil refinery presence in the US ([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_refining_in_the_Un...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_refining_in_the_United_States))

Refineries don't just make gasoline, but plastic, engine oil, industrial lubricant. That being said, wiki will tell you 85% of refinery output goes to gasoline, diesel, home heating oil, and aviation fuel.

<comment><USER5> Thanks. That was my guess. I mean, I didn't think that aluminum production was big there.

I wonder what the energy efficiency of petroleum refining is. From the US DOE,[0] I get:

       TBtu
       3542  primary energy
       2082  applied energy
       1460  energy lost

So ~59%. That's a lot of energy to blow off.

0) [https://www.energy.gov/eere/amo/dynamic-manufacturing- energy...](https://www.energy.gov/eere/amo/dynamic-manufacturing-energy- sankey-tool-2010-units-trillion-btu)

<comment><USER7> This illustrates something that is curiously lacking from most ICE vs BEV energy efficiency calculations, namely:

More electricity is spent just refining the gasoline used by an ICE than is used in total by a BEV to go the same distance.

<comment><USER5> Damn, I wasn't thinking this through clearly. And it's damn complicated.

The relevant comparison is arguably greenhouse gas emissions per km. For ICE, you clearly must include emissions during refining. But that could be ~zero, if all the process energy were wind, solar or nuclear electricity. Or it could be an additional 70%, if all the process energy were petroleum. So the range is 1.0-1.7 times nominal fuel emissions.

For BEV, total emissions could be ~zero, if all the electricity were wind, solar or nuclear. But if the electricity were generated from fossil fuels, you'd have nominal fuel emissions plus both refining process energy and generation loss.

Electricity from natural gas could be the clear winner, because you get additional energy from two H2 for C converted to CO2. Unless leakage were too great. And there's ~no conversion loss in the vehicle. So that's maybe 0.4-0.7 relative to gasoline/diesel fuel emissions.

Electricity from coal and petroleum would clearly be worse. For coal, because there's ~no H2, and because generation efficiency is lower than for natural gas. And for petroleum, because you have the 0%-70% process energy, less H2 per C, and somewhat lower generation efficiency. But there's ~no conversion loss in the vehicle for either. So overall that's maybe 0.8-1.4 relative to gasoline/diesel fuel emissions.

Bottom line, relative to nominal ICE fuel emissions:

        ICE  ~1 to ~1.7
        BEV  ~0 to ~1.4

But hey, those are totally thumbnail estimates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> How difficult is it to build transmission lines in the US? In Germany we have enormous problems building a transmission line from the offshore windparks in the north to the industrial centers in the south. NIMBYs are opposing it fiercly.

<comment><USER9> The US has much lower population concentration, for example Texas: 40/km2, Germany: 230/km2. It makes it so much easier to build pipelines and power lines. It also makes it much less profitable to have inter-city ground level public transportation - compare American trains (low quality) with European trains (very nice and popular).

Both American continents still have a lot of land that's completely unutilized, not even by any nature worth preserving.

<comment><USER10> The East coast of the US has a similar population density to Europe, but much worse train service.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What's shocking to me is that so much of Texas' energy production is __not__ from oil.

I read the headline and expected to find coal at say 4% and wind at say 5%. That is, coal is so small it wouldn't take much to out so it.

But both over 20%? That's a surprise.

<comment><USER12> Oil is more profitable for other stuff like vehicles and plastics, it'd be a financial waste to burn it for electricity.

<comment><USER11> Oh. Right. Oops. I did mean to say oil/natural gas.

<comment><USER13> Natural gas is cheaply transportable for heating which is probably a more efficient use of it than in electricity production (I think for electricity it is mainly used in peaker plants that need to start up quickly)

<comment><USER14> Natural gas is 35.1% of the US energy mix now. That's not peaker plants. It's extremely effective for normal utility scale electricity production.

<comment><USER13> Ah ok, looks like it has grown a lot the last 10 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In 2015, the spot price of electricity actually dipped negative for a little bit, thanks to wind.

This article gets into the context of that specific circumstance. [https://slate.com/business/2015/09/texas-electricity-goes- ne...](https://slate.com/business/2015/09/texas-electricity-goes-negative- wind-power-was-so-plentiful-one-night-that-producers-paid-the-state-to-take- it.html)

</comment><comment><USER16> The United States Wind Turbine Database (USWTDB) provides the locations of land-based and offshore wind turbines in the United States, corresponding wind project information, and turbine technical specifications.

[https://eerscmap.usgs.gov/uswtdb/viewer/](https://eerscmap.usgs.gov/uswtdb/viewer/)

</comment><comment><USER17> If you're interested in this, you should probably check out some of the reporting over the political battles this very year over wind subsidies and the intraparty disputes among republicans in the state lege.

</comment><comment><USER18> Primary Source: [http://www.ercot.com/content/wcm/lists/172485/DemandandEnerg...](http://www.ercot.com/content/wcm/lists/172485/DemandandEnergy2019.xlsx) (Excel file)

You can find the data they're referencing in the "Energy by Fuel Type" tab.

<comment><USER19> I don't think this will get you all of the wind power in Texas as the panhandle of Texas has at least one major utility participating in the SPP market as well which is next door.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> If you live in Texas you can switch your home's power to wind via a YC company and probably save money: getgex.com

<comment><USER19> Unless you're hooking up your rural house to a turbine, your comment is misleading.

The power going to your house will still be a mix of coal, natural gas, wind, solar, and others.

<comment><USER6> Not sure why you are getting downvoted. Can someone show that a company that does not install wind turbines at your house can guarantee that you will be receiving power only produced by wind turbines?

I could be misunderstanding something, but it seems that two neighbors(one using "wind", the other using standard power) that share the same power line simply cannot be getting power from different sources.

Edit: Hmm, now I'm getting downvoted, still without an explaination.

<comment><USER21> If you buy green electricity such as wind power you are paying for that power to be generated. If 10% of people buy wind power, 10% of the grid should be wind. If 100% of the people buy wind power, 100% of the grid should be wind. The parent is pointing out that absent the grid being 100% wind, the electricity delivered to your house isnt necessarily from wind power. This isn't particularly helpful, or even required. An electron is an electron, where it goes doesn't really matter, just where it came from.

<comment><USER22> I really think that should say, "If 10% of people buy wind power, _at least_ 10% of the grid should be wind."

Alternatively, if folks suddenly demand wind and the supply is not there, I'd think there should be some sort of way for the companies to earmark money to meet the wind demand. This is especially true if the company is charging an optional premium fee for "green energy".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Well, _that_ element of _Real Steel_ [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Steel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Steel) is on track to be reality. (Set in the year 2020, the movie features lots and lots of windmills in Texas.) :-)

</comment><comment><USER24> Makes sense Texas is one flat windy state.

<comment><USER25> Importantly, according to this map [1], it's one of the better places for high average wind speed over a year at 30m and 100m height. From the Dakotas/Montana down through Texas is the sweet spot for turbines.

[1][https://www.nrel.gov/gis/wind.html](https://www.nrel.gov/gis/wind.html)

<comment><USER26> Look at the ribbon of purple offshore!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Disappointed it wasn't reported as a blow to the coal industry.

</comment><comment><USER28> I spend alot of time flying in west Texas for our startup, and I can tell you that looking at every square mile west of Abilene is alot like the game Civilization. Few actually inhabit the land outside of metro city centers, and every square inch outside of it is producing something. Oil wells, oil pipelines, water pipelines, wind, sand, solar, salt - it has to be some of the most economically active land in the US - and barely has any cellular coverage.

</comment><comment><USER29> As a Texan, this makes me proud

</comment><comment><USER30> One thing I'm amused (not in a good way) by, is that there's so much FUD and marketing around the use of Coal etc. for energy and alternatives (Nuclear, wind, solar) ... I'm not necessarily knowledge enough to favor some over others. But I always felt, "because pollution," should be enough reason alone to look at alternatives, and considering the impact of building/supplying/disposing of the materials in the alternatives as well.

I tend not to travel to/through some locations in the US simply because of the pollution. I remember the taste, smell and my eyes burning when I drove through eastern tx, la, etc to florida a few years ago... I don't get how people can just put up with it. Last two times I've been in LA, the air was just nasty.

I mean it really shouldn't even be a D vs R or LP issue... it should be an issue of sanity. And nobody seems to be willing to budge from a fringe position in any case.

<comment><USER31> How should climate change or air pollution or any of it be partisan? When Republican voters are polled, many say they love the environment and the outdoors too. The truth is fossil fuel has bought and sold most R politicians and many D politicians too. Until we get money out of politics or make the energy companies go bankrupt, they will continue to pay politicians to prevent the cleaning of our environment and energy system.

<comment><USER19> I think many energy companies would love (or at least not be opposed) to get a large amount of renewables and energy storage...etc. The problem is that doing so costs money (a lot of it) which means raising customer rates which are highly regulated. Many of those companies are still paying off coal assets and aren't allowed by regulators to retire those units until they're paid off even though they aren't economic anymore due to falling gas prices and the prevalence of renewables. I'm not saying that the system is perfect, rather there are so many many factors at play here and it isn't nearly as simple as people think. Make no mistake that transitioning to 100% renewables is a monumental task, but we're getting closer all the time.

With that being said, we're starting to see coal being retired at a very fast pace Nationwide and no new ones are really expected to be built. Change is happening every day in this industry which has traditionally moved at a glacial pace. Please do keep up the interest and spirit.

One of the key industry drivers here are the production tax credits (wind and now solar + storage) that come from government and make wind so crazy economical right now to where they can have extremely negative offers (think corn and ethanol). This is why it is painful to me to hear about politicians being bought out (ok, I'm sure some have fallen to for lobbyists) as the production tax credits have done so much for clean energy. Public opinion is also important in this space as many utilities are making green investments because it is good for PR.

<comment><USER32> In deregulated power markets, which AFAIK covers a fairly large fraction of US electricity supply (including Texas) power generators are businesses like in any random industry. The transmission grid, otoh, is a natural monopoly and is tightly regulated (or outright publicly owned).

In such markets, uneconomical units tend to be shut down fairly quickly. Which in the absence of a some type of price on carbon (be it a carbon tax, cap and trade, clean portfolio standards or whatever) unfortunately can mean replacing clean energy with dirtier but cheaper.

<comment><USER19> You're correct that most of the US is in a power market. I'd still call it regulated though. There are some regions like TVA, Colorado area, and BPA that do their own thing, but BPA is joining CAISO's secondary market (energy imbalance) which is a step towards a full day ahead market which does commitment and dispatch instead of just dispatch (commitment and the sharing of reserves is where the majority of cost savings occur).

The other parts of the US participate in either ERCOT, CAISO, MISO, SPP, ISO- NE, PJM, or NYISO which all do commitment and dispatch. ERCOT is a little unusual as they don't co-optimize reserves in their real-time 5-minute market. Each of these markets has an independent market monitor that looks for participant gaming and other market anomalies. FERC mandated this after some heavy abuse in the north east from a utility where the fine was divided up and went to funding the market monitoring groups. Either this group or sometimes the market software itself looks for instances of market power being demonstrated. For example, if you're unit is sitting right on top of a congested area and your offer jumps up a certain percent, the software pushes you back to the approved offer that the market monitor verified is your true marginal cost. So the market is deregulated, but there is still plenty of regulation of a sort.

In a perfect market, yes you would have uneconomical units shut down quickly, but this isn't the stock market and there are many reasons why this doesn't happen all the time. Maybe you need it for capacity reasons (markets have rules on how much you need to reliably serve load or they even have capacity markets) as wind and solar aren't as reliable as thermal generation.

<comment><USER32> In this case with regulated vs deregulated I meant whether there is some kind of open access scheme for generators, or whether there is a utility with both power generation and transmission in a monopoly position. Of course, even in such a deregulated market there are laws and regulations that apply to generators.

> ERCOT is a little unusual as they don't co-optimize reserves in their real- > time 5-minute market.

ERCOT has their ORDC which IIUC they are happy with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Thank god Obama set us on the right track. The current administration is doing everything to hamper this great progress in terms of converting to renewable energies.

Lets get some real leadership back in the White House in 2020!

</comment><comment><USER34> The majority of the US electorate is underinformed and/or misinformed.

The most popular cable news network is Fox News, which pushes straight-up falsehoods as propaganda for the right. That's not to say the left-wing networks are innocent, just that the most popular one is also the most dishonest. It has a wide reach and many voters get all of their news from only this network.

The right-wing party is completely bought out by the fossil fuel lobby, which has peddled the "global-warming-is-a-myth" narrative since the early 80's. Both the party and this lobby push that narrative through the right-wing media, which uninformed voters eat up, as the left-wing party has been completely demonized to them via that same media.

Those who trust these right-wing media outlets often do so _on principle_ since these outlets are not "leftist" and the "left-wing media" is "out to get them". As a result, they often do not trust other media sources.

There is also the poisoning of the well that is filter bubbles on social media platforms (particularly Facebook) but I won't get into that as this comment is quite long already.

Hopefully this explains our problems to an extent. (I love explaining/ranting to non-Americans as they can empathize with my incredulity.)

<comment><USER35> > The majority of the US electorate is underinformed and/or misinformed.

It starts _long_ before that.

Most of the US is poorly educated and lacks critical thinking capability. That is the fault of a broken education system focused on the lowest common denominator instead of helping the top or even just supporting the middle.

<comment><USER36> I think most Americans receive a quality education that covers a lot of really valuable material. The US population isn't the most well educated, but it's unfair to our teachers to say that most Americans are poorly educated.

<comment><USER37> I disagree as a product of the southern education system. Worth noting that some schools can't even afford to stay open five days a week.

Gems from my public schooling in South Carolina:

1\. A teacher telling me to put my Harry Potter book away as it was written by Satan. Not that it was satanic or written by a Satanist. No, written literally by the hand of Lucifer himself.

2\. The moon landing might not have happened. I got sent to the principal's office for refusing to back down over this.

3\. Dinosaurs might not have been real.

4\. Evolution probably isn't real.

5\. Having sex before marriage will give me herpes.

6\. The civil war was a war for state's rights.

<comment><USER38> I had a very similar experience in middle school and high school in rural Florida, almost point-by-point. Yet I thought I had rather decent education.

So what if my 11th grade American History teacher gave a week-long seminar on the Civil War as "states rights", and explained to the class (nearly 1/3 of which was black) the lexicon of racial classifications--"now a _blue_ black was somebody who was really dark and because of the sun reflected on their skin...". I still learned 99% of the same American History as everybody else. Most of us were rolling our eyes in class, anyhow, and while these types of teachers are not uncommon, they're not exactly common, either. It's more like that they're tolerated because it's understood that they represent a persistent aspect of the local culture that isn't going anywhere. And for the most part for any particular subject you're learning from multiple different teachers at different times, so it's not like you don't learn the legitimate subject material. It's more like you're taught what today we call "alternative facts", and in practice they're really only taken in by the same segment of the population that's creating those facts. If a kid grows up steeped in this culture at home, the presence or absence of it at school is almost irrelevant. The important point is that they're at least exposed to the real facts--which they are, perhaps with the exception of sex education.

Combined with the fact that most people aren't particularly intellectually curious and don't retain much of the _detail_ , it's sufficient that they're taught the proper material in broad strokes. And they are.

Plus, after having traveled the world some as an adult, most places around the world--even in places Americans look up to as more "civilized"\--have similar issues where local biases and mythologies are taught as fact when they're glaringly, painfully wrong-headed to more objective observers. While most of the kids in my class were rolling their eyes, there are kids in similar classes in Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and even Europe eagerly taking notes on some ridiculous and patently prejudiced narrative.

The weird thing about being American is that we've been having an intense, rancorous, open argument about ourselves and our prejudices for at least 50, if not 100, or even 200 years. Everybody else gets to watch it, too. You'd think Americans are the most racist, bigoted, backward people on the face of the earth. In reality, it's just that we were one of the first--and still one of the few--to recognize our bigotry and prejudices systematically. Not just by an intellectual, bourgeois elite. Even the most bigoted American won't take at face value a narrative that group A is intellectually, genetically, or morally inferior from group B. Every coal rolling white nationalist (not that these things always come together) have shockingly modern and sophisticated ideas about race and culture, even if cringe worthy. In most parts of the world people will treat claims that group A is worse than group B no more worthy of suspicion than claims that the sun rises in the East and sets in the West. Except for Americans--everybody knows how racist Americans are. Racism is an American problem. It's why they're talking about it so much.

To be clear, we are racist and we are biased. I don't want to say that we're any more or less these things than somewhere else; I'm not sure what value there is in that comparison.[1] But there's a level of self-reflection here that is absent or at least lesser in most of the rest of the world.

[1] I mean, we had slavery here. That's crucial. But so did most of the Americas. Slavery was at least as formative to Brazil as it was to the U.S., and any curious traveler to Venezuela, Columbia, and even Ecuador can see shadows of the same anti-black prejudices and ostracism we're familiar with in the U.S., entirely home grown and stemming from their native histories of slavery. It's just these shadows are often simply considered as the way things are supposed to be, though I think Brazil is more like the U.S. than other countries in how they've internalized a more sophisticated ability to reflect on these things.

<comment><USER37> > Even the most bigoted American won't take at face value a narrative that > group A is intellectually, genetically, or morally inferior from group B. > Every coal rolling white nationalist (not that these things always come > together) have shockingly modern and sophisticated ideas about race and > culture, even if cringe worthy.

I acknowledge your experience, but I'm not sure how to take this. Can you help me understand what kind of modern ideals about race and culture an avowed racist would have?

<comment><USER38> So, for example, where once people might say that blacks are X, Germans are Y, or Jews Z because of intrinsic qualities--godly design, genetics, or whatever mechanism du jure--today such people might instead admit, at least to some extent, the historical accidents and cultural forces that assigned the supposed group traits.

So where once upon a time people claimed that blacks were more prone to criminal behavior by their nature, today they might say that rap culture teaches and perpetuates violence. They might admit that slavery and Jim Crow is at the root of black poverty, but then they'll say something like, "but now they have equality of opportunity", implying that any failures to advance are _personal_ failures.

Jews are good with money not because they're greedy, baby eating Jesus killers but because they were relegated to that role by limitations on the types of work they were permitted it perform in Medieval Europe. (Even many liberals believe this, and while I suppose it's infinitely more true than Jews being baby eaters I think that narrative is much more self-serving and misleading than people realize.)

Such thinking often starts and ends in the same places in terms reinforcing hierarchies, but it's circuitous. These are narratives that people engage with more critically, as opposed to passively receiving and internalizing ideas about intrinsic traits. They tweak them to incorporate their own lived experiences, and the narratives are generally more dynamic. Crucially, they recognize the role of extrinsic factors.

Or take the narrative about how women's bodies can prevent pregnancy after a rape: it's obvious people who espouse this narrative are attempting to resolve some serious cognitive dissonance about a woman's autonomy. But that means they've already _internalized_ the legitimacy of a woman's autonomy, it's just that they're not prepared to let it displace other deeply held ideas about women's role in society.

Even the most progressive Americans and Europeans struggle with the "problem" of the hijab. It's less of a problem for Southern conservatives--the hijab is clearly a symbol of male religious domination that should be opposed. It's just so weird. You would think Southern evangelicals would better understand how a women could legitimately and voluntarily take up such a strict cultural discipline. Where I lived many evangelical women, especially the Pentecostals, wore ankle length skirts, plain clothing, and kept long, straight hair.

This is all progress, I think. In many, perhaps most places in the world these aren't questions you ask. People will literally say that racism doesn't exist one moment and the next moment they'll explain how group A are the garbage collectors and group B the shop keepers as if their society was a carefully and perfectly constructed utopia. They tell you the sexes are coequal while finding the notion of a woman CEO preposterous. And I suppose in some way they're right. Can there be racism or sexism when people can't even conceive of an alternative world, or at least conceive of it as being anything other than farcical?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Yeah, keep on bringing them up as long as there are people who do not mind going broke paying up

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckdevore/2019/02/21/texas- ta...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckdevore/2019/02/21/texas-taxpayers- pay-the-french-government-for-wind-power-and-then-pay-the-grid-to-take- it/#1a4a766146e9)

[https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9FySh5HYMVpbnNKR0drRTc3OGk...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9FySh5HYMVpbnNKR0drRTc3OGktWnk1cVhUQTZBMzE0cV9r/view)</comment>


Just Launched - <AUTHOR> http://Belongery.com <comment><AUTHOR> Share a moment when you belonged, discover members stories of when they belonged. Check us out!</comment>


Ask HN: In an emergency what tools and technology would you take? - <AUTHOR> I recently came across the Serval project where you can use Android phones to create ad-hoc telephone networks. That got me thinking if there was a natural disaster what tools, technology and software would you ensure you had with you.
Here were a few ideas I would probably have in my emergency bag:
Energy:
Solar cooker: http://www.gosunstove.com/
USB charger powered by fire: http://www.flamestower.com/
Battery: http://zendure.myshopify.com/
Communication:
Android phone: Samsung Galaxy S4 Active or something tough
Serval project: http://www.servalproject.org/
Network scanner: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.overlook.android.fing&hl=en
Technology:
RaspberryPi wether station: http://airpi.es/
assortment of chargers and cables
Walkie talkies
Radio scanner
USB drives
3G MiFi Dongle e.g. http://store.three.co.uk/view/plan/MBBD12062013T160817?manufacturer=Huawei&deviceType=MBB_DONGLE&id=1189
Books:
Ray Mears books:  http://www.raymears.com/Ray_Mears/Ray_Mears_Books.cfm
Wild edible foods:  http://sergeiboutenko.com/my-book-is-out/
Sleep and shelter:
Nube hammock:  http://sierramadreresearch.com/shop/nube/
Tools:
Bush craft knife
Flint and steel
Para cord
Tarpaulin: http://bushcraftandsurvivalskills.blogspot.com/2012/03/what-is-best-tarp-setup-steps-to-take.html
Torch <comment><USER2> Take? Take where? Where are you going? What's going on? Must you go? Why are you going? Do you have children with you?

Generally speaking though:

0\. Leatherman Wave. I always, always carry this with me on my pocket.

1\. Water

2\. Food

3\. Warmth/shelter (Always a bic lighter, but also tarps, blankets, jackets, garbage bags, etc)

4\. Firearm(s)

5\. Wind-up fm/am/wx radio

6\. My amateur HT

7\. First aid kit (customized, and common needed meds added per the books in #8)

8\. Resource Books (US Army Special Forces Medic manual, Where There Is No Doctor, the edible plants guide for my region). I own and I've of course already spent time studying these, so it's somewhat practiced and easier to perform under stress.

9\. Sanity books. Something long and stoic that would normally be too long for my ADD. A book of buddhist quotes, for personal psyops.

...

...

97\. Tablet or phone with cellular data, to monitor local tweets.

In that order.

<comment><USER3> You really carry a Wave everywhere? I love mine, but it's so heavy.

<comment><USER2> Get the $5 pocket clip from leatherman.com.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Don't forget entertainment. If you are going lightweight go with a harmonica. And as many books(fiction) as you can carry. Don't underestimate fiction when there is no TV and your cell phone battery has died.

If mobility is not a concern and we are talking long term collapse learn how to make a Still. Or stockpile booze. Booze will be more valuable than gold. And if we are only taking about a short term disaster will make you the most popular person on the block and you will have more friends than ever before.

</comment><comment><USER5> I like that hammock shelter. To make a little "base" or home or whatever, you could put your stuff inside and have the ropes over higher branches, then lift it and tie down the ropes to keep out animals. If the emergency is of the apocalyptic or state-ending variety, a bunch of looted cable locks could chain together and even make it locking, making people climb to steal your stuff.

Then again, if this is in a go-bag, I suppose it all fits in the bag, doesn't it?</comment>


Bayesian Programming for Starcraft AI - <AUTHOR> http://emotion.inrialpes.fr/people/synnaeve/phdthesis/phdthesis.html

<comment><USER2> Wow, that is one large document.

It is, btw, also available as PDF and ePub, if you have a look at the file listing of <http://emotion.inrialpes.fr/people/synnaeve/phdthesis/></comment>


Division by three (2006) - <AUTHOR> http://arxiv.org/abs/math/0605779 <comment><USER2> Best diagrams in any mathematical paper ever. Previous discussion [1] from a year or so ago.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7655487](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7655487)

<comment><USER3> Brilliant use of napkin.js.

<comment><USER2> For the curious, yes this is actually a thing [1].

[1] [https://github.com/napkinjs/napkinjs](https://github.com/napkinjs/napkinjs)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Don't miss the compelling sequal, "Division by four".

[http://arxiv.org/abs/1504.01402](http://arxiv.org/abs/1504.01402)

<comment><USER5> This has probably one of the most amusing paragraphs of a math paper I have seen:

"We made it hard for ourselves in order to show a method that works for all n. It would have been more natural to take n = 3, which is the crucial test case for division. If you can divide by 2, and hence by 4, there is no guarantee that you can divide by 3; whereas if you can divide by 3, you can divide by any n. This is not meant as a formal statement, it's what you might call a Thesis. We chose n = 4 instead of n = 3 because there are four suits in a standard deck of cards, and because there is already a paper called 'Division by three' [2], which this paper is meant to supersede."

Also worth noting, these two papers have the same lead author.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "∗John Conway collaborated on the research reported here, and has been listed as an author of this work since it was first distributed in 1994. But he has never approved of this exposition, which he regards as full of 'fluff'"

That's weird; I thought Conway was a big fan of fluff (and while the reader is enjoying the fluff, he sneakily introduces the highly non-trivial.)

Edit: well the paper is fairly chatty, I guess that turns some people off (it can obscure the argument.)</comment>


The Science Behind 'They All Look Alike to Me' - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/20/nyregion/the-science-behind-they-all-look-alike-to-me.html <comment><USER2> Another (and much easier to discuss) symptom of the way our people identification circuitry specializes on the available samples is the disbelief when someone remarks on similarities between our siblings or to our parents. In that special case, subtle differences usually ring much stronger with us than the blatant (and useless, for identification) similarities.

</comment><comment><USER3> This article is poorly researched and psychologists are the wrong people to ask about this phenomenon.

The region of the brain (at least chiefly) involved in facial recognition is the facial fusiform gyrus, and was named as such because of this observed role. However, it was later discovered that it does more than that: show, say, a car mechanic a small intricate car part that only an expert would recognize, and his facial fusiform gyrus will activate. Same thing with an expert bird watcher and species of birds.

It turns out that that area of the brain is used for distinguishing objects based on fine detail. As the article mentions, low exposure to other races at a young age will lead to "they all look the same", because there are certain sets of facial features that most often vary within members of a race.

Therefore, yes, it is true that it is not "racist" for members of another race to all look the same to you, the neural networks in this region of your brain may not have been trained to look for and recognize a certain set of features. The psychologists making the observations mentioned in the article are surely making correct observations, but the real reason isn't mentioned at all.

I would cite sources, but this knowledge is from my undergraduate degree in neuroscience from years ago, and I'm on mobile. I'll try to come back later and edit in some citations.

<comment><USER4> Believe it or not, some psychologists do use neuroscience. Source: I co- majored in neuroscience and psychology.

In any event, you're describing one of the root causes of the problem, but not the problem itself. It's like saying "A driver isn't responsible for making the car go forward - it's only the engine that provides the propulsion". "This bit of the brain lights up when you do X" is not the same as "Humans have this problem with X, and there are ways to get around it".

Put another way: neuroscience tells us that X happens in the brain when we see Y. Now what? This on it's own has nothing to say about something like police training.

<comment><USER3> Of course, there are entire subfields of psychology that directly and routinely engage with neuroscience. But behavioral psychology generally does not; in any case, the narrative given in the linked article speaks entirely and solely from the point of view of psychology, with no mention of neuroscience. That there are fields of psychology that fruitfully engage with neuroscience does not chance that this article does not mention neuroscientific considerations at all.

The reason that I made my comment is that the article tries to say that a deficiency in facial recognition of persons of another race is a psychological - that is, higher cognitive - effect. If it is taken as an effect of higher cognition, without a neurophysiological basis, opens up the possibility of the argument "his bias against black people made him not care enough to distinguish black people." That argument would bring open the door to arguments sociologically based biases such as being racist, when in fact there is an observed, known, studied, published, fact that the neurophysiology of the part of the brain that distinguishes faces literally cannot distinguish variations in facial features of members of a race a person hasn't been often exposed to, as a literally biological limitation that one cannot blame on sociological reasons. It has the potential to shift the conversation to a fruitless arena.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I imagine it thus: Human appearance is a vector space in our minds and we tend to put ourselves at the origin of the vector space. When we look at two people who look like us, the vectors that describe their appearance may be comparatively quite different because of their closeness to us. But if we look at two people of the same, different race, their appearance is quite removed from us, so the appearance-vectors that lead from us to them will be comparatively close together in direction and have comparatively similar magnitudes.

A Japanese friend of mine once told me I looked like a celebrity -- Manuel Schwarz, an Austrian model who was once married to Ayumi Hamasaki. Near as I can tell the only similarities between my appearance and his are that we are both white and we both have brown hair.

<comment><USER6> The vector space of appearances is probably pruned based on the facial features you see growing up. I doubt it's directly tied to one's facial features.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This does not seem strange to me. My Chinese girlfriend (who is from China) tells me that caucasian people look alike.

</comment><comment><USER8> I would really love someone to run an objective comparison of James Blake and the culprit. I know it's not popular to apologize for token racist acts, but isn't it also possible that two people just looked very similar and it was simple mistaken identity? I know I come from a place of privilege but i think there are ways to resolve these questions with simple comparative analysis.

<comment><USER9> This whole article reads like a smokescreen for what actually happened. If you look at the video - the Times has it[0], strange they didn't link it from the article - Blake was leaning up against a wall minding his own business, and was more or less rushed, grabbed and tackled by an undercover officer. He did not appear to be threatening anyone and did not appear to offer any resistance, at least none beyond what anyone would if they were suddenly attacked.

He was mistaken for an alleged participant in a credit card fraud scheme; the actual suspect ended up either not charged or acquitted. The officer in question has multiple complaints of abusive behavior on his record.

The whole thing stinks, and while Blake received apologies from the mayor and some other officials, he correctly pointed out that probably wouldn't have happened were he not James Blake. Honestly I don't understand why it matters that he might resemble the suspect, given the footage it's pretty clear that there were other ways to approach Mr. Blake without it going down like it did.

This was not a case where an NYPD officer just hadn't spend enough time around other races (...please). This was yet another example of an overaggressive cop, and for whatever reason Ms. Swarns chose to write this article comparing it to some goofball crap w/ other celebrities rather than what it is. It barely makes sense.

[0] [http://www.nytimes.com/video/nyregion/100000003905322/survei...](http://www.nytimes.com/video/nyregion/100000003905322/surveillance- video-of-james-blake-arrest.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Personally, I often confuse Jamie Fox and Samuel L. Jackson.

</comment><comment><USER11> America coming to its senses? Hard to believe that the Nation would really bring itself to acknowledge something so simple and obvious. But I have hope.</comment>


Is my startup idea solving a real need out there? - <AUTHOR>

howdy,
I recently launched a website this past spring (www.gradfly.co) to narrow the gap between hardware and software developers.  It's a pivot from another concept we were working on.  I'm trying to see whether there's truly a need for this before I invest more time and money into it.
In a nutshell, it's a repository and QA forum for hardware projects like Github and Stack Overflow are for code.  It would be a site where professional and enthusiast developers (both hardware and software) come together to collaborate and become part of a "crowd-instructing" community.  You'd find resources, talent, and example projects to help with products or concepts you're trying to design.
Any thoughts or suggestions would be awesome.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> First, let me say that ideas like this are near and dear to my heart. As a software dev with a hardware background who's worked in Embedded Systems his entire career, I love this stuff and I enjoy helping people on online forums.

That said, I simply won't join a site that doesn't tell me much about what it does before I have to sign up. I need to browse. I need to see what the average level of discourse is. I know what level I want to engage people at and I've been at this long enough to grow tired of the "how do I blink an LED with my Arduino?" questions. Nothing wrong with that -- everyone starts somewhere -- but it's not for me.

You're competing with, among others, [http://electronics.stackexchange.com/](http://electronics.stackexchange.com/) and [http://robotics.stackexchange.com/](http://robotics.stackexchange.com/) Show me how you're different/better before I decide to sign up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your input and links to these sites. I hadn't thought about stack exchange but definitely some good traffic on there. I think what I really want to do is spend some time understanding pain points in this space - I'm not convinced I've found that one thing yet that really needs to be solved.

So far, I've interviewed a few of our users and they seem to be looking for an elance-for-hardware type of site where technical people submit ideas and a budget and hardware/software developers come together, create teams, and build that concept into a product. Quirky and Maker's Row do something like this but I'd still have to do a bit more customer discovery.

A bit far from what I'm aiming to build but I'm wondering whether I should listen a bit closer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Serious question - have you asked this question of people who might really have this problem?

This is customer development 101.

This is a great resource on the topic: [https://blog.kissmetrics.com/26-customer-development- resourc...](https://blog.kissmetrics.com/26-customer-development-resources/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sharing! I'm familiar with a few of the customer development stuff but I'll be going through the list tonight to learn a bit more. I'm trying to get to a point where I'm asking the right questions to the right crowd. I figured I might have some luck posting on here, too.

<comment><USER3> Cheers!

Just one thing with respect to the books mentioned at the end of the post.

I've read all of them and don't think that you need any of them.

If you are going to pick one up - get "Running Lean" by Ash Maurya - it's literally a step by step manual on how to do whatever it is you need to.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks ASquare, I'm actually in the midst of reading that one right now. It really breaks things down nicely!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just a quick heads up - check your DNS settings (or however you choose to do it)... [http://gradfly.co/](http://gradfly.co/) does not resolve. (requires 'www')

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you! Will change that!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The intended market is a Venn diagram of an intersection. of disconnected interests The intended product is a union of solutions to three hard problems.

That's not a particularly promising scope.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment. Are you in any one of these circles within the Venn diagram? Any particular pain points that come to mind? Just exploring.

<comment><USER5> The comment is general. The intersection is a tiny slice from each of two larger communities. There's no obviously good way to reach it with a marketing push and engage it enough to create a critical mass. StackOverflow works because it is so general and solves immediate workaday problens, but many many StackExchange sites have failed. Building community is a hard problem.

Have you listened to the StackOverflow and StackExchange podcasts?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is true. I haven't checked out the podcasts - will definitely do that!

The only other idea I've been tinkering with is an 'Elance for hardware' type of gig where hardware and software developers join forces to work on someone else's project. (Say John Smith posts a project to have two arduinos communicate using WiFi Direct and he is seeking help and willing to pay $350 to have someone work with him in parallel and speed up the project.

So we'd help teams find resources, talent, and example projects to help with products or concepts that they're trying to create. Still playing around with ideas. Thanks again for the podcasts!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My two cents: Some screenshots of the Dashboard and webapp interface would be nice. I want to sign up - but not knowing what's behind a walled garden login screen is annoying.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, I'm planning on changing that real soon! Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sounds good and I would use it, I am online a bit concern with the design pattern as it seems like a company site rather than a community platform.

All in all, its a good thing :)

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks a ton! yeah, I agree with you. The site will change to become more of a community. Right now, I'm just testing landing pages and playing with different messages. I also growing the community and that definitely takes time.

On a side note, I'm trying to validate a concept along the lines of elance- for-hardware. Thoughts?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> definitely but you should have a good plan to monetize - at this point an amazon affilliate or a blog of cat pictures can make u 10k/mo so maybe thats a better site. but if you love the idea and the business you should do it for sure :D</comment>


Ask HN: Have you experimented with diet/food? what was the result? - <AUTHOR> I've been reading about mono diets, especially Johanna Brandt's book on how she cured her cancer on grape diet. A lot of the book makes perfect logical sense (for example, eating less variety of food at a time puts less stress on digestion and makes it easier, and so on).
But it would be nice to hear this community's take on this topic. What did you try? what worked for you? What didn't?
This is the book I am reading : https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1570672792/ <comment><USER3> Fasting. I started out with the 16:8 IF protocol and worked my way up over time to 1 day fasts , 3 day, 5 day, 7 day and my longest was a 12 day. I have also done eating every other day or every two days (in a 4 hour window) for 3-4 months.

My diet is basically Meat, Eggs, Coniferous Vegetables, Salads when I do eat. I never eat anything processed, I have only had a handful of Berries every few weeks as a treat otherwise I avoid all fruit, bread, pasta, rice, sugar, dairy and drink water, coffee and tea.

I have lost over 100 pounds, and completely eliminated every ache, pain, sleep problem and some other health issues. I feel like I'm in my early 20's again.

If you are interested in Cancer and diet, this book came highly recommended.

[https://www.amazon.com/How-Starve-Cancer-Jane- McLelland/dp/0...](https://www.amazon.com/How-Starve-Cancer-Jane- McLelland/dp/0951951718)

<comment><AUTHOR> 12 day fast - that is 16:8? or something extreme like water fast?

Also, you mentioned you avoid all fruit (but you eat meat) - I am curious about the rationale behind this, could you please elaborate? Thank you for the book recommendation!

<comment><USER3> All my fasting (1-12 days) is just water/black coffee/green tea.

My 16:8 time delayed eating (some folks like to call it Intermittent fasting)is exactly that, two meals a day within 8 hours of each other.

Reasons I don't eat fruit are that fructose can only be processed by the liver. I find Fruit to high in energy and to low in nutrients, vegetables are way more nutrient dense. It's easy to gain a lot of weight eating lots of fruit and it's just not necessary for a healthy diet. Like I said, once a month I have a handful of blueberries or raspberries as a treat. My body can produce all the sugar I need from fat and protein.

I eat Steak, Ground Beef, Liver (Beef/Chicken), Wild Caught Sockeye Salmon along with Broccoli, Brussel Sprouts, Cauliflower, Cabbage, Avocado, Salads (Lettuce, Onions, Tomato) with a vinegar dressing. I also eat up to 3 eggs a day.

A simple diet rich in nutrients but low in energy density. All my carbs are complex. I don't know what your trying to accomplish so what I'm doing might not be something you should do. I did it because it was simple, I was never hungry, lost a lot of weight and kept it off without really trying. It's not really a diet but a change in lifestyle where healthy eating just comes naturally. If I can't eat healthy I don't eat and that's totally easy since I can fast for as long as it takes until I get healthy food (ex: Traveling)

Here is a great book you might enjoy.

[https://www.thepediet.com/](https://www.thepediet.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Those long fasts - is it supervised? I am sure I can fast 2-3 days at least just on water, but I live alone and I am worried if something happens, I would be toast.

<comment><USER3> I don't recommend anything more than 3-5 days max.

Without knowing what your goal is just try the 16:8 and eat a nutrient rich diet that is low energy. You should be able to fit 2 meals in (lunch and dinner) in a window from 12 - 8 pm. Nothing but water/coffee/tea before or after that window.

If your healthy and don't suffer from any issues, move on to one meal a day. After you master that then try a 1 or 2 day fast.

Look up Jason Fung on youtube. Great stuff....

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nJgHBbEgsE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nJgHBbEgsE)

Check out Dr Berg on youtube also. He does "Healthy Keto" which is a very balanced and healthy diet.

[https://www.youtube.com/user/drericberg123](https://www.youtube.com/user/drericberg123)

Lots of great resources out there....

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A while ago I switched to a habit of eating only one big meal a day to get the bulk of my nutrition. The timing doesn't matter that much, just whatever is convenient and what feels good for me any given day. It is flexible though. It might be one big meal and a second smaller meal. Or one big meal and small healthy, nutritious snacks throughout the day to make up for whatever the big meal lacked. This works a lot better for me as I do not have to plan for 3-4 meals every single day. Being human, I might not want to eat the same dish more than once, so I have to figure out different things for each meal which really stresses me out. 3-4 meals a day might work for me if I was always eating prepared food though. With one meal a day, I simply cook 3-4 servings of whatever I felt like eating and eat all or most of it in one sitting until I feel satisfied. My intuition also tells me that digesting one meal only at a regular time every day is better than digesting 3-4 different meals spread across the day. The concept of fasting is to give your body a break from digesting and stuff right, giving it time to naturally release any bad stuff through the natural processes. If one day I've eaten too much junk and feel bloated, I give myself the next day a break from eating at all. Like a 24 hour fast. Or you could just do a 16 hour fast and only eat a small healthy dinner. What's valuable to me is this flexibility. I've read that before farming, food was harder to come by, so humans back then didn't really get to eat 3-4 meals every single day. They might catch something or whatever and eat all of it that day like a feast, and then it might be another 1 or 2 days before they can eat that much again.

The number one benefit of one meal a day perhaps for me, is that you can organize/plan your digestion, if you know what I mean. Imagine being able to control and plan for when you need to poop. I can do that with this diet. I basically never have to use public restrooms except for urination. It's a blessing really.

</comment><comment><USER5> I did the potato hack for a while, which is a mono diet that uses potatoes. I definitely lost weight, but lost muscle too. I might try it again as a 1-2 day "plateau buster" for some excess fat I'm trying to lose.

I also did IF (16:8) as a way to curb snacking. I think both approaches are a really good way to reacquaint yourself with eating to sate hunger rather than eating for stimulation/pleasure.

Ultimately the "experiment" that has played out the best for me has been this old saw: 3 meals a day, 0-2 snacks. No ultra-processed foods and very few processed foods (based on the NOVA classification system). 5+ servings of veggies a day. 1-3 servings of fruit. Keep added/refined sugar intake under 15 grams a day and no sweets, period. I'm very slowly but steadily losing fat, while maintaining plenty of energy for my exercise regimen.

</comment><comment><USER6> Yes, I believe strongly in the gut biome and I take probiotics daily and have been doing IF for about 6 months. I lost weight for a while, but it seems to have rebounded in quarantine :). The main effect was actually on my mood - <USER2> feel happier subjectively and seem to have more energy. YMMV.

<comment><AUTHOR> could you please elaborate? what do you mean by "take probiotics"? And, IF - do you just eat once a day, or is it something different?</comment></comment>


Richard Rorty in Tehran - <AUTHOR> https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/reading-richard-rorty-in-tehran/ <comment><USER2> Several years ago the phrase "post-modern neo-marxist" became prominent. Not being familiar with post-modernism, I started reading some of the philosophers who got lumped into this category. Of these, Rorty was the one I found myself most sympathetic to. His writing is quite accessible and understandable to an intelligent reader. His book, _Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity_ is probably the best one to start with. _Achieving Our Country_ is also interesting, but more political.

<comment><USER3> Not trying to go off on a tangent but I feel like every time I see the term post-modernism ... I have no idea what it means either. Then I start googling around and it seems like it is a bucket that everything gets dumped into or almost used like a buzzword at times.

Once I hit something that describes post-modernism and seems fairly thoughtful and authoritative ... I don't understand it.

<comment><USER4> My vague understanding is that it implies there are no absolutes and everything is relative. IMHO it's mostly bullshit.

<comment><USER5> Honestly, this is a very deflationary interpretation of postmodernism which is not at all what it's trying to convey

<comment><USER4> So educate me!

<comment><USER6> The term "post-modern" has become immensely overloaded so is hard to use clearly. Obviously, the notion that "everything is relative" is even self contradictory but is not what is meant when the term is used seriously.

It is the idea that some values are absolute and can be forced on other that was originally being objected to. Some historical cases are obvious others are still ambiguous. Thus a debate is interesting.

Likewise, inside our society we have crucial rights justified as being "endowed by our creator". We would need to justify these values on something stronger than a particular theology to explain their universality. So again, discussion is worthwhile. I believe raising this point is what caused a ruckus in Iran.

But yes, the term "post-modern" has made it's way into pop culture and is so widely used it is often hard to figure out what the speaker means by it. Better would be specifically referencing "Rorty's ideas" which I am certain you would find coherent and very intriguing. Rorty was most definitely not in Iran to say "theology is as good as democracy".</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Develop iPhone, iPad, Android And BlackBerry Apps With Just A Browser - <AUTHOR> http://www.informationweek.com/news/development/mobility/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=224701549 <comment><USER2> fyi the url in the article is wrong. should be <http://www.yapperapps.com/></comment>


Why Google Thinks Two Music Subscription Services Are Better Than None - <AUTHOR> http://allthingsd.com/20130305/why-google-thinks-two-music-subscription-services-are-better-than-none/

<comment><USER2> I don't think YouTube's audience is going to buy into a subscription service for music - if I go to YouTube for a song, it's because I want it free, fast and often to be able to share it with someone else.

Make it so I can share a link to any song, with a friend, and maybe you've got something. Right now, YouTube's ad based model is what is going to work best with that audience. Until of course, it's too many ads.</comment>


Physicists reverse time using quantum computer - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2019-03-physicists-reverse-quantum.html <comment><USER2> Most comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19378567](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19378567).

</comment><comment><USER3> Actual Study: "Arrow of Time and its Reversal on IBM Quantum Computer" [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1712.10057.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1712.10057.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER4> This is a garbage article. They are basically taking the concept of entropy and saying that because they found a way to force something to happen that is insanely improbable it's "reversing time". That's nonsense.

That's like saying that hydrogen and oxygen atoms bonded to form water molecules and using electrolysis to split them back into hydrogen and oxygen is time travel. It's completely absurd.

<comment><USER5> No, it's actually quite different. What you're suggesting is that they manually scattered each electron, and then brought each one manually back into place. What actually occurred is that a completely different state was induced, which effectively 'reversed time' (I really hate that phrase). I found a pdf of the study, but I lost it among all the 'Have scientists created a TARDIS?'s. Basically, it said the maths, and the probability of an electron spontaneously entering the state. You could probably find it, if you really wanted to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> tihs yloh

</comment><comment><USER7> Quantum Leap, here we come (grin)</comment>


Why not to use ARC in Objective-C - <AUTHOR> http://pivotallabs.com/users/adam/blog/articles/2334-why-not-to-use-arc

<comment><AUTHOR> Great review of ARC's pitfalls. I still think that ARC is overall a big win for Objective-C development.</comment>


CS Student Hacks Chrono Trigger to Propose - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_HMLvLB7b0

<comment><USER2> Atypical for me to like a youtube video posted on a social news site, but the idea, planning, and execution seem flawless -- a true hacker :)

-SI</comment>


Hack for Memoto / Narrative Clip lifelong logging camera - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mrquincle/memoto

<comment><AUTHOR> It was pretty much a question of time, but today I got root as well. Enjoy!</comment>


Major Incident at SendGrid - <AUTHOR> https://status.sendgrid.com/incidents/c2k6nqpr9t7p <comment><AUTHOR> Seems pretty big, I can't log in to my account and it seems like no email is being sent.

Hopefully this isn't another Garmin.</comment>


Using a Raspberry Pi to Add MIDI to a CV Synthesizer - <AUTHOR> https://schollz.com/raspberrypi/monotron/ <comment><USER2> And here's a MIDI-to-CV controller built with a $3 microcontroller instead of a $40 computer: [https://github.com/elkayem/midi2cv](https://github.com/elkayem/midi2cv)

<comment><USER3> An Arduino Nano? What a waste... Just use a PIC or an ATTiny. Spending even $1 for something so simple is unnecessary.

For personal projects, it's not often the case that you need to get BOM cost as low as possible and disregard other factors (like debuggability, or having enough DSP available to run the FFT for tuning calibration (though I suspect they'd be better off with autocorrelation...), or room for future expansion (adding multiple channels, adding a sequencer, adding control over the filter, implementing envelopes, running the Pi's audio output through the filter too...)

Plus, they might have had the Pi before, and still have it afterwards. That's the nice thing about general-purpose computers- you can put a whole bunch of different software on them, and then switching between uses just involves moving the board itself and plugging cables in.

<comment><USER4> One functional advantage of a microcontroller over a single-board computer is lower latency due to not having the overhead of an operating system. Also, the Pi's built-in audio output is basically unusable, but easily replaced.

However if you dont have floating point arithmetic like many microcontrollers, fixed-point DSP for FFT or autocorrelation presents its own set of challenges, which can be either a good thing or a bad thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is super cool! Using an FFT to detect pitch is a natural approach, but my understanding is that most pitch detectors work in the time domain using some form of auto-correlation. See:

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

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for that link, wasn't aware.

For this I used the simplest approach I could think of - using sox [1] with its builtin power spectrum analyzer. It works pretty well as the resulting tuning is fantastic. It would be nice to a faster pitch detector - could speed up tuning from ~15 seconds to maybe just a few seconds.

[1] [https://linux.die.net/man/1/sox](https://linux.die.net/man/1/sox)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Kinda related; software CV done with JACK and LV2: [https://linuxmusicians.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=20701](https://linuxmusicians.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=20701)

</comment><comment><USER7> Nice. :-) Having done somewhat similar stuff before, I'm curious if you were able to measure what the latency result of using linux and python was vs doing it with an MCU like a teensy or arduino and using C? I can see advantages to both approaches, and am genuinely curious. There must be some latency and unpredictability added, but maybe it's small enough to totally not matter. Off course whether this matters depends too on the controller keyboard and your playing level, I know what is ok to me differs from what what my Real Pianist friends tolerate!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :)

I play piano and I don't find the latency a problem, which means its probably < 100 ms. The midi stuff is actually just bindings to rtmidi (in C++).

The most annoying thing is "jitter" which I calculated to be 15-20 ms, which is fine, but sometimes there are spikes of 50 -150 ms which are annoying.

<comment><USER7> hmm, have you figured out what the jitter is from? is that from Python maybe?

<comment><AUTHOR> When I measured jitter I found that it was higher in cheaper instruments [1], so I think it might be dependent on the hardware that is listening to the MIDI output.

[1]: [https://github.com/schollz/miti/issues/4](https://github.com/schollz/miti/issues/4)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wow! Great little demo. It sounds like there are multiple synths though -- isn't the monotron monophonic?

<comment><USER3> They are (besides the Monotron Duo, which has a second oscillator (but no way to play it paraphonically without hardware hacking, you can just tune it differently)), but this is the Monotron Delay, which has, well, you can probably figure that out.

<comment><USER9> What I'd love to see is if they could use the same tuning system they used here to tune the delay time and make the monotron delay do some kind of karplus strong synthesis! That's assuming there are patch points for the delay time, I guess...

<comment><USER10> you can accomplish this by automating VR6A on pin 6 of the pt2399. one oldschool method to add CV control of a potentiometer is to control the resistance with a vactrol.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> n-gauge I created a midi piano in the browser for a Roland EP7 IIe that sent midi note off in a weird way - causing double notes , it would send the same note but with just the velocity information changed to 0, which most midi software didn't like.

[https://htmlgames.github.io/htmlgames.github.io/htmlgames/PF...](https://htmlgames.github.io/htmlgames.github.io/htmlgames/PF_MIDI_PIANO/midi- js_Basic.html)

So I just held the notes in an array and used that for note on/off information instead.

<comment><USER4> Sending a noteOn with 0 velocity instead of noteOff is surprisingly common among MIDI keyboard implementations, so Im surprised that a lot of software wasn't handling it well.

<comment><USER11> It's not just common, it is part of the MIDI specification and deliberately done that way to allow running status, an optimization that was important in the days of (true) serial MIDI.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is great. And miti is exactly what I was looking for. Started working on something similar in bash and perl on top of gbevin's sendmidi [1] a while ago, but this looks like it'll save me much effort. Thanks!

[1] [https://github.com/gbevin/SendMIDI/](https://github.com/gbevin/SendMIDI/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! That's a neat solution! If I had seen that before, I may not have made miti :)

I found there's other few programming-friendly simple MIDI sequencers [1] but generally none of them were simple enough for me. I'm pretty happy with the simplicity and power behind miti and use it quite a bit for my own purposes. Feel free to ping me if you have issues with it or ideas to improve it!

[1]: [https://github.com/schollz/miti/#other-similar- work](https://github.com/schollz/miti/#other-similar-work)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Brilliant trick to self calibrate, these are probably each different enough that if you hooked up another one to the same PI it would come out all out of tune.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would love to hook up multiple - the polymonotron...</comment></comment>


The world's top deepfake artist is wrestling with the monster he created - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/614083/the-worlds-top-deepfake-artist-is-wrestling-with-the-monster-he-created/ <comment><USER2> What a horrible source of clickbait. First, it's been codeveloped by several, so assuming authorship of the tech is pretty much a fallacy at this point, maybe not of the app.</comment>


Ask HN: where to learn ruby?  - <AUTHOR>

Any great tutorials on web building app on RoR? <comment><USER2> If you're already familiar with programming and MVC, I'd recommend rails for zombies (<http://railsforzombies.org>) it gives you a good overview of both Ruby and Rails.

I came from a PHP / CodeIgniter background, I spent a couple of hours with Rails for zombies, and then just started playing around with rails, using <http://guides.rubyonrails.org> and <http://railscasts.com> when ever I could't figure something out. And of course, stackoverflow is a great resource.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very cool advice. I'm try this out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The Pragmatic Programmers book on Rails is very good and already updated for Rails 4. If you get through it and still want more, the Rails Way is the most comprehensive book I've seen. Railscasts is great once you are making apps on your own as it tackles small specific problems.

Don't forget about the official Rails guides themselves, they are actually quite helpful.

I go back and forth on whether learning Ruby first is best. You will learn more about Ruby itself just by solving RoR problems, but I think you would solve them faster if you already had a solid base in Ruby.

</comment><comment><USER4> So Ruby & RoR are two different beasts. If you come from hey-I-already-know-a- web-MVC background, you might skip learning Ruby & directly jump to learning RoR .

If you go RoR way - Michael Hartl's tutorial - <http://railstutorial.org/> is probably the best place to start (I did that when I was starting with RoR). Codelearn - www.codelearn.org should be the next best.

Disclaimer: I am the founder of Codelearn

<comment><USER5> I just started going through your tutorials and I have to say I agree with you. Really well done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I learned RoR and launched a website in 10 days. If you want to see the tutorials I used I wrote a blog post about it here: [http://aschuenemann.com/i-went-from-knowing-nothing-about- ra...](http://aschuenemann.com/i-went-from-knowing-nothing-about-rails-to- launching-a-website-in-10-days)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> These are all great advices. I started with php and I can say I'm almost a master at. I've build a social network platform with it and solved many problems with it. Now I want to take it to an all new level and want to convert all my code to ruby format. These tips and advices will help me a lot thanks!

</comment><comment><USER7> <http://www.codeschool.com/paths/ruby>

Codeschool has some great courses in general. Their courses require a monthly subscription, however, if that matters to you.

</comment><comment><USER8> Also, give a go to <https://www.hnsearch.com/>. There are plenty of good topics on this.

</comment><comment><USER9> railscasts.com</comment>


Wide Gamut Color in CSS with Display-P3 - <AUTHOR> https://webkit.org/blog/10042/wide-gamut-color-in-css-with-display-p3/ <comment><USER2> If someone needs to read up on color profiles: [https://bjango.com/articles/colourmanagementgamut/](https://bjango.com/articles/colourmanagementgamut/)

Eg. important to configure ones design tools like Sketch and Photoshop correctly so that it interprets RGB values as intended rather than just in the current color profile

</comment><comment><USER3> Neat, but I find it hard to believe devs are going to reach for this verbose format without a default fallback.

hsl is a much nicer syntax for humans to describe color than rgb channels.

I'm sure there are good reasons under the hood, but why that syntax over something like:

``` header { color: hsl(42, 70%, 50%); color: hsl(display-p3 42, 70%, 50%); } ```

<comment><USER4> Also, I'm not understanding why HSL doesn't automatically inherit the P3 color space without any code changes. It shouldn't require any additional syntax, the HSL model is describing abstracted color values, unlike HEX or RGB which are hardcoded values.

Unless I'm not understanding this correctly. If that's correct, it seems strange and sloppy to require the display-p3 definition.

<comment><USER5> Because an HSL value translated directly to sRGB will look different when translated to P3. The color spaces themselves define different ranges of R, G, and B. The only backwards-compatible method to derive P3 colors from HSL values would be with saturation and lightness values greater than one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So, does this gracefully degrade to sRGB? If so, how does one set the rendering intent for degrading to sRGB? One needs to be able to choose either relative colorimetric or perceptual (absolute colorimetric and presentation are fairly uncommon), but which one depends on the intent of the designer.

Or is one expected to provide two different color values for every element? That would be tedious.

<comment><USER7> According to what I read in the article, you have to provide the sRGB fallback yourself. I suppose this is only a true annoyance if you're writing CSS by hand (like I do), but I hear most people these days use Less or some other CSS preprocessor that can easily handle this.

<comment><USER8> The article mentions the manual fallback for when the browser does not support the _syntax_ , but I wonder what happens when Chrome gets updated to support color() but is used on a device that does support Wide Gamut Color. I guess the safest thing would be to still treat it as an invalid value and require manual fallback.

<comment><USER9> This may already happen on Safari and Mac without support for Wide Gamut Color. In that case, the P3 color is converted to sRGB, which typically means clamping to sRGB.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This all gets interesting when mixing sRGB, Display-p3 or Lab colors in gradients and animations. There's an open issue about it at W3C: [https://github.com/w3c/csswg- drafts/issues/4647](https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues/4647)

I think Safari currently fails to display such gradients.

<comment><USER10> I made an sRGB to Display-P3 gradient and it worked well for me in Safari: [https://codepen.io/NV/pen/GRJvYzQ](https://codepen.io/NV/pen/GRJvYzQ).

<comment><USER9> You are right! I had tried it in SVG, where solid P3 works, but gradient P3 fails: [https://jsfiddle.net/6pL12ct0/](https://jsfiddle.net/6pL12ct0/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This kind of thing cracks me up. It's 2020. We live in the future.

I have a HDR, wide-gamut, 10-bit, calibrated display.

Send me a non-sRGB _or_ HDR still image file that will display correctly. That is, with the right colours, in wide gamut, with or without HDR.

You can't because I haven't specified what _platform_ or _application_ I'm using.

Even if I did specify, you probably can't create such a file. For example, it's currently borderline impossible to create a HEIC file on Windows, even though it would allow 10-bit wide-gamut files to be sent to an Apple IOS user and be displayed correctly, which is at least _something_. Adobe Lightroom refuses to support arbitrary colour spaces on export (why!?), and doesn't include Display P3 in the fixed list that it does support.

But if you do somehow manage to create a HEIC file (or any wide-gamut file format) on Windows, it will show it incorrectly anyway, but not in all apps. Some will work. But only if you manually configure a profile for your monitor. But then your desktop colours will shift, which will make your previously valid sRGB CSS colours display incorrectly with sRGB stretched to the wide gamut because _fuck you, that 's why._

To my knowledge it is currently impossible to solve any such problem. Colour management in the Windows, Linux, XBox, PlayStation, and Android space is an unmitigated clusterfuck. Apple meanwhile is pretending that Display P3 is the _only_ wide gamut that exists, because they use it.

One CSS attribute implemented on one platform with one usable colour space will not solve this. It won't even begin. It's like reading an article about the finer points of cake decoration in the midst of a famine. It feels almost insulting. Like I should feel ashamed for starving, and not being one of the rich elite that can afford cake. But nobody has cake, they're all pretending.

Right now, in 2020, the _only_ still image interchange format that more or less works is an sRGB, SDR, 8-bit JPEG. You can't have anything else. No 10-bit. No other gamut. No HDR. No compression better than the one invented in 1992.

Okay fine, I admit it. There is a way to solve this problem. Download DaVinci Resolve and create a new movie. Import your HDR image as a still image "video" clip. Export the single frame movie, or a slideshow if you please, in whatever HDR format you prefer. Upload to YouTube. Share YouTube link.

This, seriously is it. This is what we've all achieved.

Congratulations, Microsoft (#2 biggest company), Apple (#3), and Alphabet Group (#4). Your stewardship of web standards and email clients has resulted in this.

</comment><comment><USER12> What about giving colors in 16bpp in linear space instead?

That covers way more displays and future ones, no?

<comment><USER13> No, because this expands colours to ones that cannot be expressed with sRGB, no matter if it's encoded as 16bit linear, or with the sRGB transfer function. You cannot express a hue outside the Rec.709 triangle, no matter how much precision you add (1).

Display-P3 uses points in CIE xyz space for its RGB channels that are farther apart than sRGB, allowing it to express more hues, which sRGB monitors and colours cannot. It's still not the full spectrum humans can see, but it's much better.

(1) technically you can, if you allow channel values to be negative, but that breaks compositing.

<comment><USER14> > It's still not the full spectrum humans can see

In case anyone wonders why colour spaces don't typically try to cover the full spectrum, there's two problems. One is that it may be difficult to reproduce consistently, but the other problem is that it's not a neat triangle, so to represent it completely as RGB you would have large regions of undefined space.

<comment><USER15> Another issue is that as you increase the gamut, you decrease precision. So you sometimes see wide gamuts like scRGB only used with higher precision images.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is nice, but can I use it with an HDR monitor without forking over $7000 for an Apple Pro Display XDR?

I haven't been able to confirm whether or not Mac OS Catalina actually supports any third party HDR monitors over HDMI.

I have the Asus PG27UQ 4K HDR monitor and my 2019 MacBook Pro only outputs 4K 30Hz 8bpc over the official Apple HDMI adapter[1], while my 2019 XPS 13 2-in-1 outputs 4K 60Hz 10bpc over this same Apple adapter.

[1] [https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MUF82AM/A/usb-c- digital-a...](https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MUF82AM/A/usb-c-digital-av- multiport-adapter)

<comment><USER17> They mention the "LG UltraFine 5K Display" on the page, maybe it's the only one supported? Maybe there's more

<comment><USER18> I have some sort of Dell at home that I believe I tested and works properly.

But then again I'm using DisplayPort. I don't know why people are so insistent on using HDMI and being surprised it doesn't work as well.

<comment><USER16> I save the DisplayPort port on this monitor for my Windows desktop because Mac OS doesn't appear to output the 4K 98Hz HDR that the Asus PG27UQ naively supports over DisplayPort 1.4.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > There are also numerous devices that support Display-P3 color space but > currently have no browsers that support Display-P3 in CSS

I wonder if someone could build WebKit for them.

<comment><USER20> Doesn't Google cherry pick these changes into Blink anyway?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Trying this in Safari I just see "unsupported property" in the inspector?

<comment><USER10> Are you using Safari Technology Preview? Web Inspector support was added in STP 97. Before that `color: color(display-p3 0 1 0)` showed as unsupported property in Web Inspector.

<comment><USER21> Thanks, seems that was it. I had only checked it in regular Safari.</comment></comment></comment>