Deodorants, perfumes, soaps pollute air at levels as high as cars - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/16/climate/perfume-pollution-smog.html?emc=edit_ca_20180216&nl=california-today&nlid=6834504&te=1 <comment><USER2> Specifically volatile organic compounds, because cars don't emit very much of that particular type of pollution anymore. If you look at overall emissions across all types of air pollution, cars are still much worse.

<comment><USER3> Photocatalyzed reactions between NOx and hydrocarbons create ozone and particulates. Back in the day, US EPA focused on reducing hydrocarbon emissions from vehicles, paint and so on. Because it was easier than reducing NOx emissions from vehicles. The problem is that some areas, such as the Blue Ridge Mountains, have high natural hydrocarbon levels from trees. Plus personal care products. Without the NOx pollution, hydrocarbon emissions wouldn't be so problematic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Most organic compounds in soaps and detergents dissolve in water and end up in sewer systems (20), with negligible amounts emitted from wastewater treatment plants (21)"

I didn't read the full paper, but this is the only mention of soap in there. Soap seems to be okay with respect to air pollution. Mind you, a lot of "bath bars" on the market these days are _not_ soap, but that's a completely different topic.

Perhaps the article about this paper (and unwashed hippies in general) are wrong about soap?

From the abstract:

"A detailed mass balance demonstrates that the use of volatile chemical products (VCPs)—including pesticides, coatings, printing inks, adhesives, cleaning agents, and personal care products now constitutes half of fossil fuel VOC emissions in industrialized cities."

Okay... That is _not_ what the linked article says at all.

<comment><USER5> A bit off topic but, what are "bath bars"?

I don't think I've heard of them before.

The soaps I know are soap bars and as I understand it, they are basically made from fat and lye (or their modern equivalents).

What are these bath bars made of?

<comment><USER6> I was curious too. See [https://www.polishandlather.com/blogs/news/13264093-what- do-...](https://www.polishandlather.com/blogs/news/13264093-what-do-you-mean- dove-isnt-soap)

<comment><USER7> huh. Today I learned...

I've always liked the home made stuff you find at street and farmers markets; bigger variety in scents for sure.

Also thinking about the soap making process makes me think of Fight Club.

<comment><USER8> what's fight club?

<comment><USER9> [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0137523/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0137523/)

<comment><USER8> I am jack's DOA humor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I know it sounds strange, but if you can make it through the first month or two of not using body soap or shampoo regularly you'll be better off in all ways. You won't need styling product for your hair, it will have a natural oil that works. You won't need deodorants or perfumes. And, if you can switch to cold showers, you won't need to use moisturizers either.

I know 10 or 15 minute cold showers are less pleasant, but they wake you up and make the rest of the winter less hellish. I actually love the cold at this point.

<comment><USER11> While I don't recommend this daily hygiene plan, for the doubters on HN there is some research into this which does not conflict with the parent's statements.

According to a variety of authorities, body odor is the result of bacterial interaction with sweat and oil excretions of the body. The medical name for severe body odor is bromhidrosis. But the key is that there is an interaction between the microbiome in the area around your sweat glands, and your sweat that causes the odor.

Anthropologists studying primitive peoples have found many cases of people who do not bathe regularly and yet do not smell either. A group at MIT did some studies with repopulating the microbiome with ammonia consuming bacteria from soil as a way of avoiding body odor without washing. And the folks at the Microbiome project cultivated a bunch of microbiomes from people's arm pits and thighs which also informed this area (although there isn't really a pro- biotic deodorant that I know of yet)

As I understand it, showering and washing isn't getting rid of "odor" it is getting rid of bacteria that is outgassing odor after processing your sweat. You could be odor free without showering with the right bacteria consuming the sweat.

<comment><USER12> If true, where did sailors get the bad rap about being "smelly foreigners" come from?

<comment><USER13> Different diets cause foreigners to smell differently and different is often 'bad'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've had many a walk through the neighborhood spoiled by one household doing the laundry, and using Downy or some other fabric softener. It stinks up the whole neighborhood. Not to mention the scent overload when people wear clothes treated this way to work.

Just use white vinegar instead - it works and doesn't cause all the pollution.

<comment><USER15> x2 vinegar. It works for all sorts of household cleaning.

I use it on floors with a touch of Dawn, shower cleaner in a 1:1 ratio boiling hot vinegar to Dawn with baking soda as a kicker, glass cleaner, 1:1 cold water and vinegar on dog pee marks and carpet spots, etc.

About the only thing vinegar is not recommended on is wood products.

<comment><USER16> Baking-soda and vinegar lays waste to bathtub stains in a way that can only be described as brutal! 10-min soak and scrubbing with those tiny crystals makes it brand-new.

<comment><USER17> I really like the results of bathroom cleaning with vinegar but I end up with a very raw-feeling throat and sore eyes afterwards. Maybe I'm just doing it wrong.

<comment><USER18> You're not messing with bleach right...

<comment><USER17> Oh, no. Just vinegar and water. It does wonders for soap scum in grout. My guess is that I'm getting the inflamed mucous membranes from the low PH vapor coming off the vinegar...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Fun fact: east asians (Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Mongols) seldom use deodorants, because of a mutation of the gene ABCC11 ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABCC11](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABCC11)) resulting in dramatic reduction of the sweat glands responsible for the strong body odor.

<comment><USER20> I wonder which races sweat the most.

I'm basically Irish, and boy do I sweat. Even when I was young and fit, I would be drenched when my co-workers/friends looked dry.

My brother once asked the family doctor about his sweating. The doc just said everyone is different.

<comment><USER21> In their native habitat or at a standardized temperature?

I'm Scandinavian, and I'm comfy and dry when I can wake up seeing my own breath. After moving to California, though, I'm pretty sure I'm single handedly ending the drought.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> There's a funny thing going on here which cuts both ways, you get used to your own smells. This means that if you don't use deodorant (or don't shower regularly!) by the time your own BO smell is noticeable you are, in fact, quite ripe and other people around you have been noticing _a lot_. And on the other hand, if you use scented deodorants, soap/body wash, detergent, dryer sheets, or perfume the level where you can smell them distinctly is where they are basically overpowering for someone who hasn't been steeping in them for days/weeks. Which is why such scented things tend to have such overpowering smells, they're calibrated to a level of smell for someone who is already used to that smell.

Unfortunately, the middle ground isn't well represented in the market. I long ago made the switch to more lightly scented and unscented hygiene products and sometimes it takes a lot more work than it should. Fortunately there are clothes detergents and dryer sheets that are unscented that you can buy in many stores, however for body wash and deodorant I basically always have to buy online (I ended up just using an "unscented body wash base" and a fragrance free hypoallergenic anti-perspirant). It's very frustrating to have such a simple need (fragrance free common products) be so difficult to fulfill. Maybe things will change, I remember when it was hard to find soy milk in most grocery stores and that's changed dramatically.

</comment><comment><USER23> I don't get it. Soap doesn't seem very volatile. The article leads with deodorant and soap but the rest is about paint and lacquer, which seem way more volatile than soap.

How does my soap get into the air? Is it volatile and I just don't know?

<comment><USER24> The study[0] in ScienceMag this article revolves around seems to focus on on Volatile Chemical Products (VCP's) derived from petrochemicals.

From the abstract:

>We show that human exposure to carbonaceous aerosols of fossil origin is transitioning away from transportation-related sources and toward VCP's.

and from the study itself:

>Most organic compounds in soaps and detergents dissolve in water and end up in sewer systems (20), with negligible amounts emitted from wastewater treatment plants (21).

And my takeaway is:

e.g. organic compounds in the soaps used for dish-washing and showering don't VOC-off, but instead are carried away by the drain and are almost entirely captured in wastewater treatment.

So, when this article mentions soaps, I'd hazard to restrict that to _spray_ soaps derived from petrochemicals.

[0][http://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6377/760.full](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6377/760.full)

<comment><USER25> In the study's supplemental materials there's a table that breaks out personal care into Hair Care, Perfumes, Lotions, Shaving & Mouthwashes, and Other Cosmetics.

No mention of soap.

<comment><USER24> Indeed, the study mentions soap by word only once (my second quote), in what I took as a counter-example to the products you listed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The scents they use in air fresheners, candles, whatever, are just plain 100% pure evil. I've had more migraines and asthma attacks in the months they put in new air fresheners at work than the entire decade before. There should be laws against it.

<comment><USER27> If you're Canadian then there generally is. [0][1]

0: [https://ccohs.ca/oshanswers/hsprograms/scent_free.html](https://ccohs.ca/oshanswers/hsprograms/scent_free.html)

1: [https://www.allergicliving.com/2010/07/02/scent-free- workpla...](https://www.allergicliving.com/2010/07/02/scent-free-workplace- rights/)

<comment><USER28> Forget public healthcare, I'd gladly live in Canada for this protection!

<comment><USER29> Public healthcare incentivizes the government to protect people's health; the American system incentivizes politicians to protect the profit margins of the insurance industry.

<comment><USER30> Private healthcare incentivizes insurance companies to protect people's health and to influence policies that do so.

<comment><USER28> I sort of doubt that. In practice, it seems to incentivize influencing policy to drive up healthcare costs, with little regard for patient outcomes.

<comment><USER30> Why would insurance companies want to pay higher healthcare costs?

<comment><USER31> If healthcare was cheap then no one would need insurance?

<comment><USER32> Taking care people and difficult medical conditions will likely never be dirt cheap, right? Unless you're envisioning Dark Mirror style robot care and cure everything pills.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I've been using a stainless steel "deoderant stick" [1] (it's just metal, no chemicals) for several years in the shower and its greatly reduced the amount of normal deodorant I use. The steel does a good job of eliminating odors. I only supplement with a dry-stick deodorant if I know I'm going to be getting hot and sweaty - most days at the office I skip it. Saves a lot of money too, since one of these will last you a whole lifetime most likely.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Odor-Works-Natural-Deodorant- Alternat...](https://www.amazon.com/Odor-Works-Natural-Deodorant- Alternative/dp/B0040Y5JTO/)

<comment><USER34> Have you asked anybody if you smell?

My dad had this "crystal rock" deodorant that he thought was working until we told him otherwise.

<comment><USER33> Wife would say so - and I can smell myself. I think the trick is you need to rub it for about 30 seconds - longer than people are probably willing to do it. But there's noticeable before and after results if you do that.

Here's an article I found that goes into the chemistry of it: [https://www.thoughtco.com/how-stainless-steel-removes- odors-...](https://www.thoughtco.com/how-stainless-steel-removes-odors-602190)

<comment><USER35> OK so I believe you about the before and after, but people use deodorant to _prevent_ odors, not remove them after they're already there.

<comment><USER36> Both you and pluma are confusing deodorant with anti-perspirant. Very often they are combined in the same product, so the confusion is understandable.

But deodorant is perfume, anti-perspirant stops sweating.

<comment><USER37> And?

People don't wait until they stink to put deodorant on, they put it on in the morning after a shower when they don't smell to prevent odors later on. Even if "prevent" means "covering them up with fragrance"

<comment><USER36> I thought I was being helpful with my comment. That was certainly my intention.

It was a correction to a misunderstanding. As neither of the two authors I referenced replied, I assumed that either they didn't see it, or accepted the correction, or dismissed it and moved on.

The arguments weren't about the large issues of the day, but the arguments were wrong based on a misunderstanding, and surely the world is improved when you have an understanding of things, great or small, rather than misunderstanding.

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

With regards to your statement, you don't prevent odor by adding odor. You attempt to change the quality of the odor you emit by mixing in other odors with purported desirable qualities. You create an admixture of "good" and "bad" in a stronger odor.

This is not prevention.

If you have asthma or other respiratory condition, a strong odor can trigger that pathology, regardless of the qualities of that odor that would cause you to think it smelled good or bad. The strength of the odor alone is the trigger.

In that case you would much prefer the people around you used an anti- perspirant with as little extra odor added in as reasonable.

Or maybe you don't have any respiratory pathologies, but you find strong odor distracting. You might actually prefer low levels of body odor to strong levels of some deodorant.

</comment><comment><USER38> So if I want to keep using deodorant and soap, is there an environmentally- friendly class of products I should steer towards? (I tend to use bar soap and stick deodorant.)

</comment><comment><USER39> Does this also apply to unscented versions of these products?

I strongly dislike scented products and try to purchase as few as possible. But it is usually impossible to find unscented soap/shampoo/deodorant in many stores. I've never understood why... Do consumers really so strongly prefer hand soap with arbitrary smells added to it?

<comment><USER40> > Do consumers really so strongly prefer hand soap with arbitrary smells added > to it?

I think most just don't care and don't really sense it. I don't care when I'm in public restrooms so long as there's liquid handsoap (or even bar soap if nothing else).

But at home I mostly use sorbolene not because it's unscented (I think?), but because it doesn't have my skin dry and crack in winter. Otherwise in summer, I'm happy to just use the cheapest handsoap and bar soap for shower. Speaking of which, I don't like body wash (it's too cumbersome to use) and think it's only been popularised recently through marketing.

All that said, when I'm in a kitchen, I'm more than happy to just use the dishwashing detergent... One time a coworker was astounded I washed my hands with the detergent in the break room; quite amusing. I feel it cuts through grease really well, and saves me having to have an extra handsoap dispenser by the sink. But yeah, the rest of the time it's sorbolene for me if the weather's dry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Sweat itself doesn't have much of a stink. But if you let it ferment, it is unbearable. As long as you take a bath daily, change to a fresh pair of clothes daily and are not sweating all the time, BO is never really a problem.

</comment><comment><USER42> Priceonomics (which I believe is a YC company?) recently did a write-up on VOCs in common household products and the resulting effect on air quality in your home. The results definitely surprised me and I switched a few of my cleaning supplies: [https://priceonomics.com/which-cleaning-products-pollute- you...](https://priceonomics.com/which-cleaning-products-pollute-your-home- the-most/)

</comment><comment><USER43> There's a recurring thing where I run into a person with a very "spicy" potpourri type odor. Happens in elevators and other confined spaces, and the odor is really pungent. Seems to span cultures... sometimes an old white lady, other times a young Indian male, other times just random people. WTF is this smell? Somewhat like cloves, but worse and more nauseating.

</comment><comment><USER44> What kind of impact to greenhouse gasses? I'm guessing no where near that of cars. Probably some aerosol propellent but no CFCs anymore.

<comment><USER45> They cover it in the article. This is not about global warming; it's about smog. Which leads to lung cancer etc. The relation of dying from lung cancer to dying from drowning by rising sea levels is merely incidental.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> And smell just as bad!

Seriously how do people douse themselves in these things that so nakedly smell like chemicals and alcohol?

So many otherwise beautiful people have had their impressions ruined because they smelt like a bar crawl that finished up in a perfumery.

</comment><comment><USER47> Regarding deodorant, has anyone tried AO [https://shop.motherdirt.com/product/ao- mist-2/](https://shop.motherdirt.com/product/ao-mist-2/)

</comment><comment><USER48> yet another reason to trust dr. bronner...

... on "evidence-based" (cf. CDC) v heuristic reasoning: certain aftershaves and similar make me gag.

knowing it's because of petrol is just the evidence i need to become self- righteous about it :D

</comment><comment><USER49> Perfumes and vapor from most petrol based solvents really get to me. It took me until I was around 30 years old to really get a handle on that but doing so made a huge difference in my quality of life.

Wasn't easy on my wife and kids though. They all thought I was a major grump because I became so adamant about not using hairsprays, perfumes, nail polish and polish remover, in our house but that stuff makes me feel like crap and gives me pounding headaches. Makes me feel like a bug sprayed with "Raid" (which is another thing I banned in our house).

As a teen, I started thinking I must have some kind of psychosomatic issues because I'd get to feeling like crap at school, work, church, family get togethers, and dates with girls, etc.

That was reinforced when I noticed that when I did feel like crap if I went outdoors and spent a day a walking in a park, which I really loved to do, I would feel great afterwards. That almost convinced me I was making myself sick when I "had to do" something I didn't really want to do, but I could never nail that theory down because it wasn't consistent enough.

Finally, someone mentioned I might be "chemically sensitive". I had vaguely heard of that but never considered I might be. They inspired me to start paying closer attention to things like perfumes, and anything scented like candles, detergents, soaps, shampoos, and paints and solvents. When I did I soon realized I was being bombarded with them. They were everywhere. At home, at work, at Shopping Malls and stores, and anywhere people were gathered, and those were all connected to me feeling like crap.

So I started avoiding them and getting rid of them in my life but it wasn't easy. I had to be vigilant about it. My wife and kids would sneak stuff in and while I couldn't always smell it, I would get to feeling like crap and then go on a mission to find the source, and I always found it and got rid of it and started feeling better right away.

I've been doing that now for almost 30 years and have felt great (normal) since. And over those years I've realized I can tolerate short durations of exposure better now. I suspect because I don't have much in my system to begin with, and I generally avoid places (and people) that are using perfumes and scents. I've even been able to pinpoint some scents that really smack me down. Something in that "Axe Body Scent" is one of them I get away from as fast as I can. Whatever it is, it is used in a lot of products and I can detect it like a hound dog now.

What's really interesting to me is now that my kids are adults none of them use that stuff anymore because they found it craps them out too. Same with my wife. She can't be exposed to perfumes for very long now without realizing they crap her out too.

I do wonder if others have experienced this. It's not something I hear about much.

<comment><USER50> I'm astounded how good your sense of smell is. I feel like I used to have a good sense but now it's very dull and I have try really hard to notice things.

<comment><USER49> I think that not being constantly exposed to things that "smell" has made it a lot easier to detect scents.

My daughters were always stunned and amazed at how fast I would know they'd snuck in and cracked open a bottle of "Nail Polish Remover" (acetone) or perfumes.

Didn't stop them from trying though. They tested me a zillion times with that stuff :D

I started buying them pure essential oils (and carrier oil) so they could make their own perfumes because those don't crap me out. They loved those, so that made life a lot easier for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I think those saying "but you're gonna stink if you don't use soap/deodorant!" in these threads should keep in mind that BO offensiveness is definitely something that varies from person to person based on genetic factors. So it's quite possible that some of these people saying they don't use deodorants or soaps do _not_ offend those around them, and I'm willing to take them at their word.

Me, I can be one of the stinky ones, so I will continue to foul up the earth with my soap bar and deodorant stick for your sake as well as my own.

<comment><USER52> It's also definitely a matter of culture.

I've lived in Europe and Africa, traveled quite a lot in Asia and America, and what people consider offensive is very contextual, including odors.

I noticed there is some link between how the society handle sexuality and the way we perceive odors. In south America and Africa, quite a lot of countries have a very natural approach to sex, and the body in general, and hence the odor of a healthy non-hobbo human is not perceived as such a problem, even after a day of work under the sun.

In the US, despite having a culture very sex oriented, the population itself is not at all liberated. You are a very sexually frustrated society. And body odor is a problem.

<comment><USER53> > _In south America and Africa, quite a lot of countries have a very natural > approach to sex, and the body in general, and hence the odor of a healthy > non-hobbo human is not perceived as such a problem, even after a day of work > under the sun._

I've heard the opposite, that South Americans often complain about smelly European tourists who don't shower frequently enough.

I'm also not sure I'd choose to use Africa as an example of healthy sexuality, what with the aids epidemic and FGM.

<comment><USER52> > I've heard the opposite, that South Americans often complain about smelly > European tourists who don't shower frequently enough.

That's completely different. Odors from different ethnies can be easily disturbing. We don't smell the same and we are not used to it.

> I'm also not sure I'd choose to use Africa as an example of healthy > sexuality, what with the aids epidemic and FGM.

Actually they have aids epidemic BECAUSE sex is so natural there. There is nothing natural with stopping a sensual escalation and putting a rubber on your penis. Education helped us to do this, and saved us from dying in mass and having unwanted pregnancy, but it has a serious price on the way we handle sex.

<comment><USER54> I don't know that I would say contraceptives are the source of unhealthy attitudes towards sex in the US. Prudishness stemming from Western religious influences and the like seems more responsible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Lemon juice works as well as deodorants. A couple of drops under the arms, and it works all day. The bacteria that cause the odor doesn't grow in the acidic environment.

Lemon juice is not an antiperspirant, though. Just a deodorant.

A bottle of concentrated lemon juice will last a very long time.

<comment><USER56> I've been using one of those salt deodorants for awhile (just a block of salt that you wet and apply). Seems to work great though I've been fortunate to have never really had to deal with bad body odor so it's hard to say if I'm just imagining its effectiveness.

<comment><USER55> There are many that likely work. The use of lemon juice has been around a long time, at least since the 1800s. It's just been forgotten about, as nobody makes any money selling lemon juice as a deodorant.

It's not toxic, and simple to test on yourself, and you've probably already got a bottle of lemon juice in the refrigerator.

<comment><USER57> > It's not toxic, and simple to test on yourself, and you've probably already > got a bottle of lemon juice in the refrigerator.

Lemon juice contains a vast array of different chemicals, some of which may be phototoxic. It also releases VOCs (e.g. terpenes). I don't know how much compared to your average deodorant, though.

<comment><USER58> I don't think phototoxicity is much of a concern for something meant to be applied to one's armpits...</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


JGames - jQuery plugin to display various game states (Chess/Checkers/Go/etc) - <AUTHOR> http://ken-soft.com/2011/08/08/jgames/

<comment><USER2> I like this. It's a shame I don't play these games anymore like I did in college.

While it is interesting and useful, you should market it to people that could use it. I'd look at a chess sites and chess clubs. People love to communicate and share. You could also build a site that acts as a Wiki for chess plays. That would be pretty cool actually.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! In the midst of an interesting and related problem now actually. I'll post here when our project is finished :)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Let me know if you guys have any ideas/suggestions to make this better :P I'll likely keep adding stuff to it/cleaning up the code over the next week or so. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER3> Cool.

An obvious improvement on the animation: methods for applying moves to a board, instead of having to enumerate a explicit array of boards.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I actually completely realized that after i programmed the first one, i'll be sure to change that asap.

<comment><AUTHOR> Though, I am curious. I was considering for animations, only storing "moves" vs "complete states", but I ran into the issue of sometimes a state change may not involve "moving" a piece (i.e. in Go, you place pieces, and sometime pieces my disappear, or in Othello, you make a move and and other pieces may be flipped.) While I could create different animators for each of them. I continued to use the method of transitioning through states for simplicity. Though I will still put some more thought into a good way of doing this as I still plan on growing this library quite a bit. :)</comment></comment></comment>


Ubuntu-based netbook hits South Africa at $188 - <AUTHOR> http://www.linuxfordevices.com/showblog/15613/Ubuntubased-netbook-hits-South-Africa-at-$188/ <comment><AUTHOR> The smallest plan for the netbook includes 100Mb of data per month. Not sure if this is enough to cover even security updates... Although, good idea anyway.

<comment><USER2> My understanding is that with a bundled plan, updates do not count against the data budget for this device.

<comment><USER3> how would they enforce that? check the url's you are hitting? would love to get a tunnel set up on an ubuntu mirror server :P</comment></comment></comment>


The surfaces that kill bacteria and viruses - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200529-the-surfaces-that-kill-bacteria-and-viruses <comment><USER2> I enjoyed reading about how for a long time, copper was used on many surfaces in hospitals, to avoid infection. It was replaced with stainless steel, which "looked" clean, but harbored bacteria, while copper "looked" dirty (and unsanitary) when really it would neutralize viruses.</comment>


Is Chrome OS Just a Web Browser? - <AUTHOR> http://www.thechromesource.com/is-chrome-os-just-a-web-browser/ <comment><USER2> I presume everything will be an extension or something of the sort. Just tossing it out there.</comment>


Google reportedly arguing cutting Huawei off from Android threatens US security - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/7/18656163/google-huawei-android-security-ban-claims <comment><USER2> I think it's too late, they already have planned to fork from Android for years, this (potentially permanent) ban just motivated them to speed up the process.

I second this is not about US security but about Google losing their mobile market share.

<comment><USER3> >> but about Google losing their mobile market share.

Under current policy, threats to US industry are threats to national security. That is why Canadian steel was listed as a national security threat. They aren't quiet about these things any more. Cutting into US market share is now openly described as a security threat.

<comment><USER4> So then, any country that wants to become more economically competitive against the US (even Canada) is a national security threat?

<comment><USER5> The parent is drastically exaggerating.

The US dropped its steel tariffs against Canada and imports ~$325 billion in goods from Canada (equal to ~19% of their economy). Canadian steel represents <2% of that.

Meanwhile the US is going to allow Infineon to buy Cypress, an important US semiconductor company.

The US will have roughly a $21.x trillion economy at the end of 2019. The scale of non-China tariffs is entirely trivial, meaningless. So far there has been very little in the way of actual hits and targeting from tariffs - on the grounds of national security or otherwise - outside of the trade conflict with China.

<comment><USER6> ELI5 please?

<comment><USER4> By the numbers, the only country that has actually taken a hit with tariffs is China (in case you missed the news, Mexico bent over pretty quickly).

The response misses the point that the US is saber-rattling to keep other countries in line. China is the only country to actually challenge the US, so now the US has to show everyone who's boss.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If a Chinese vendor is a threat to US national security, does it mean that American vendors are threats to all other countries' security? It is easy to imagine how American company gives out important data from a phone of Chinese or Iranian government employee for example.

<comment><USER8> You don't have to imagine, The Cloud Act directly passed this into law. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act)

It's extremely hypocritical of the US to panic when other countries act the same, and sets up a direct and prominent precedent for all counties to ban American tech.

<comment><USER9> > It's extremely hypocritical of the US to panic when other countries act the > same,

This is pretty disingenuous. You are ignoring a ton of history behind China, its authoritarian nature, and how Chinese companies are far more an extension of the PRC than US companies are of the US Government.

All companies are a threat to the national security of other countries so long as they are beholden to the government they are in. But as others have said, the severity of the threat changes drastically. You can be almost certain that Huawei, via the PRC, would compromise US 5G infrastructure given the chance. You might be reasonably more skeptical of a US company doing the same to another country.

Finally, your Wikipedia link contradicts your own post:

> [The CLOUD Act] provides mechanisms for the companies or the courts to > reject or challenge these if they believe the request violates the privacy > rights of the foreign country the data is stored in.

In fact, there is _nothing_ here that would lead one to believe that the companies can be forced to hand over data on citizens from other countries. The legislation here pertains to the data of US citizens.

<comment><USER10> If Chinese companies are an extension of the PRC government, then the USA government is an extension of American companies.

<comment><USER9> I mentioned that in my second sentence.

<comment><USER11> his point is in the reverse for US..

In China, the companies are the puppies; in US, the government is the puppy. This is probably a very fundamental difference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This looks like a case in point for providing greater control of the OS by the user. If users were allowed to block or kill processes and lockdown data away from apps, a lot of the threat [and google business model] would be mitigated. Im wondering when we will move from ad block software to APP block software. In other threads- the "linux phone" seems to be coming along nicely, isnt that an android fork already, or a distro?

[https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/linux-smartphone-operating- sys...](https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/linux-smartphone-operating-systems/)

[https://itsfoss.com/librem-linux-phone/](https://itsfoss.com/librem-linux- phone/)

[https://www.zdnet.com/article/linus-torvalds-on-android- the-...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/linus-torvalds-on-android-the-linux- fork/) [2011]

<comment><USER13> Phones are substantially more complicated than desktops. Linux doesn't even work decently enough on Laptops for a lot of developers. It's not going to be a pleasant experience on a phone for a normal user in the foreseeable future.

<comment><USER14> That's not the real issue though. A PC is standard. Back in the 90s, you could always put in a Linux boot disk or CD and it would always boot. You may not have any driver support and your display might be stuck in VESA mode, but it would at least boot.

ARM is not an architecture. Images have to be customized for every single device. Google has the power with the OHA to force all phones to use standard drivers, devicetree or UEFI (like Microsoft did), but they don't. Now we have 100s of forked kernels and no way to boot a mainline kernel on ARM devices (although PostmarketOS is trying to work on fixing this).

I wrote about this a while back:

[https://penguindreams.org/blog/android- fragmentation/](https://penguindreams.org/blog/android-fragmentation/)

<comment><USER12> THX 4 the URL, and the insightfullness re mobile handset.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The probability that Google will argue for preventing major fragmentation of the Android ecosystem is exactly 100%.

</comment><comment><USER16> Google is terrified of anyone forking Android. Some malicious actor might remove all their tracking code. Maybe even disable background location permission and app ads.

A true national security risk of the highest caliber

<comment><USER17> What are you talking about? I don't find it all creepy when Google Maps Timeline sends me my month in review without me asking for it. They just like to keep track of all the wonderful places I visit.

Google can probably tell me how many bowel movements I had last week although I haven't gotten any such emails from Google Toilet Timeline.

Yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Nice story, but in reality google is afraid of a company making competing services using the Android OS.

<comment><USER19> That was my first thought when all these shenanigans went down. I think there is still an argument for security- we're currently well versed in android but that isn't the case for whatever closed source Huawei OS that comes out.

<comment><USER18> Huawei can still use Android. Android is open source software. What Huawei will need to design is their own app store and replacement for google services. Of course this would be very damaging to google.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Why is nobody talking about Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo? They have majority of Indian market. Together with Huawei they might create an alliance and create a Chinese fork of Android.

If they give access to intel data to other countries then it can be a competitive offer compared to Google Android.

</comment><comment><USER21> That seems like it's also an argument for blocking competition. If you think that Google is more able to secure phones than any other entity, and you think that any compromise to phone security is a national security threat, that implies that nobody but Google should be allowed to make phone operating systems.

I'm a bit dubious that Google is actually making that argument, given how obvious the consequences are.

<comment><USER22> I think their claim might be a bit more nuanced. They are the original vendor of the Software, and have a special status that allows them to have an expertise on the OS that other third parties do not.

<comment><USER23> They're also a U.S. company and subject to U.S. laws.

A large portion of Google's implicit argument (that they'll never make to the public, but are probably making to the Trump administration) is that it's better for the dominant mobile phone operating system to be written by an American company with American values, subject to U.S. laws, than have Huawei fork it and potentially end up with the dominant mobile operating system controlled by a Chinese company with Chinese values and subject to Chinese laws.

<comment><USER24> The Google I use, for search at least says:

"the Services are provided by Google Ireland Limited ("Google"), a company incorporated and operating under the laws of Ireland"

to quote the terms of service. Providing any of my data to USA secret service would appear to be espionage, probably treason, and against EU law. I'll bet NSA have access to everything Google know (internally) about me.

The Chinese government probably have all details of my interactions with baidu or Ali Express too.

They look the same to me in this respect, only the Chinese aren't telling my government who they're allowed to do business with.

<comment><USER25> This false equivalence is so ridiculous.

China is a dictatorship, has no independent judiciary/media, routinely kidnaps Chinese people (not even citizens) in foreign countries, is running the world's 're-education' centre where millions of journalists, Muslims etc are all being detained and is a police state unless anything in history.

US maybe stealing your data. But at least you can go to a court or deal with the media to advance your cause without fear of retribution.

<comment><USER24> That's why I didn't say what you're claiming, I said the effect on me - neither in the USA nor in China - is equivalent AFAICT.

China and USA are both doubtless spying on my country's population and accessing my PII/data as part of that.

I'm pretty sure my legal recourse against NSA is identical to that against the Chinese secret services, zilch.

Let's be realistic. Trump wants us to stop using Huawei _and_ use USA company produced comms equipment. A consideration of that is then USA can do what they're claiming China is doing. AFAICT you have a legal framework in place to enable just that.

What's most incredible to me is that GCHQ haven't endorsed the apparent false claims, which actually gives me some hope about UK (but equally could be meta- games on post-Brexit trade deals; or false flags; or whatever).

<comment><USER26> > Trump wants us to stop using Huawei _and_ use USA company produced comms > equipment

No US company is producing wireless comms equipment though - it's all European and Chinese

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It threatens Google's domination.

Huawei will bring their own OS and Android will loose market share because of it.

<comment><USER28> Also, data on Google's server is subject to US laws. When you Balkanize android, so that part of the market uses Huawei's AOSP fork, you've got less data that's could be compelled on the grounds of US national security.

That would be a more convincing national security argument.

<comment><USER29> And this is probably their real argument to Trump administration.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Huawei isn't a threat to national security. Consumer computer software is not a threat to national security. This is a justification for a trade war the president and his advisors want to engage in.

<comment><USER25> It is a threat to national security if the device is constantly recording surroundings and sending data back to Huawei who in turn hands it over to Chinese intelligence. That's obviously far fetched but it's technically possible.

And other countries have security concerns with Huawei besides US so this isn't just about the trade war.

<comment><USER31> Do you think there's a phone (model) that's immune to Chinese intelligence once they set they are interested in recording your surroundings? I'll accepts the 5G security arguments, but the handset angle is a absurd as all phones have porous security. NSA hasn't suddenly shifted it's offensive/defensive posture to my knowledge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I am currently in China on holiday and saw a Windows 7 screen on one of the monitors in a train station which reminded me that the world's entire IT infrastructure is mostly powered by Windows, Apple or Linux, which is all entirely in the hands of the US. Android and iOS are the most wide spread mobile operating systems, so basically the US being in control of the world's entire software in an ever growing digital world. This plus the revelations of the NSA spying on everyone in the world, trying to introduce secret backdoors in US vendors software and having a huge impact on which cryptographic algorithms are being NIST approved and therefore distributed and implemented across most programming languages makes the US a MUCH MUCH larger threat to any other country's national security. Particularly when the US is also known to fabricate news like countries having secret mass destruction weapons which somehow can never be found after a complete destruction of a country through unprovoked war. Yet the news headlines are somehow worried about Huawei?

I'm not saying it's unjustified, but I like to put things into perspective when observing geopolitical developments, their impact and what really is going on..

The truth is that China will inevitably overtake the US as the largest economy in the world soon and that pisses the Americas off.. so now they want to stall the Chinese economy as much as possible, but being in China right now and seeing how they are literally not dependent on anyone but themselves I can promise that all efforts are wasted. I'm not a huge fan of the totalitarian communist government in China, but so far I have not felt threatened by them, whereas I feel my personal freedom and privacy has been violated constantly by the US and US companies.

<comment><USER33> China is dependent on exports to keep the economy moving along.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> > Step two: those Huawei phones with a forked version of Android are sold > globally. They are less secure and get hacked.

Why those phones will be less secure and therefore easily hacked? Which kind of argument is that?

How a huawei phone with a forked android is any less secure than any 2-year old android phone from $randomanufacturer (not longer receiving any OS update at all)?

<comment><USER35> Might this answer your question?

> Huawei must raise 'shoddy' standards, says senior UK cybersecurity official

> GCHQ technical director says he hasn't seen anything that reassures him > company is taking necessary security steps

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jun/07/huawei- mu...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jun/07/huawei-must-raise- shoddy-standards-gchq-senior-uk-cybersecurity-official)

<comment><USER36> Android isn't exactly known for being a paragon of security. The number of unpatched critical CVEs in the wild at any given moment is staggering. At worst this is a step sideways.

<comment><USER35> Sure thing, but at least Android is open source.

Huawei's drivers, which is what led GCHQ to probe into Huawei's code and write a rather uncharitable report on what their coding practices look like [1], are not. Admittedly, as members of the public we can only take their word for it that they found shoddy code by any reasonable standard. But if the latter is true and any indicator of how they'll maintain their own fork of Android, it's doesn't inspire much confidence.

[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/03/28/hcsec_huawei_oversi...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/03/28/hcsec_huawei_oversight_board_savaging_annual_report/)

<comment><USER36> > _Sure thing, but at least Android is open source._

Some of it. Certainly not many of the hardware drivers. There's a reason that updates are dependent on hardware vendors and mobile network operators and that most phones don't have fully functional Lineage builds.

<comment><USER35> Yeah, well... I think we can agree that it's more open source than other Phone Operating Systems. And that's besides the more important point here, which is that Huawei's developers reportedly write insecure looking spaghetti code.

<comment><USER36> My point is that any security argument is a red herring when the baseline for comparison is a wet paper bag.

The thing about exploits is that it only takes one. It doesn't matter if Huawei adds another one when there are already thousands to choose from.

<comment><USER35> And mine is that Google has large swaths of OSS code to show that they're competent at writing secure code, whereas there's a report out that Huawei is writing spaghetti code that is so poorly written that even security experts can't make up their mind to say whether it's secure or not except to say that they need to get their act together.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> If Huawei forks Android and gets a "hybrid" of bad security phones.... don't let them sell phones there then.

This seems like a weird argument, I get the gist but it kinda focuses on an after effect that i'm not sure should wag the dog.

<comment><USER38> This argument is stupid, self-centered, and entirely made up the author... "Without Google, Huawei's are more likely to have malware, and therefore important things might get leaked, and leaks are the most essential threat to national security as we all know."

No, common.. the reason Google thinks its a bad idea to block Android it's because the Chinese don't care. They just fork Android yes, and that's it. Congratulations, you brexited yourself out of the Smartphone-OS market in China. Where you once had integration and some influence, you are now removing yourself as a dependency.

<comment><USER37> It feels like such a tenuous argument you could argue the government should hand Google over to Apple to improve security ...

<comment><USER39> Besides, Huawei's phones were already banned in federal agencies and Pentagon since last year. So I'm really not sure what Google is trying to say with this "national security threat" at all.

<comment><USER40> The entire "national security" argument that the administration is making fails on this observation. Trump is effectively banning Huawei from selling Chinese people phones that contain American parts ... in order to protect American national security? The whole argument doesn't add up. It's obviously a tactic to force the Chinese government to yield in the trade talks, as Trump himself has openly stated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> _" Although the Financial Times' sources don't explicitly lay out Google's argument, it's not difficult to imagine how it would go."_

That's hilarious, a fourth party in speculating about what might have been said in private as reported by a paywalled publication, you know: journalism!

<comment><USER42> FT doesn't generally play as loose with the rules as media for general consumption tends to. They've got a lot of credibility.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Is there anything that US gains from cutting off Huawei?

<comment><USER44> Looking "tough on China" ahead of what will be another very bitter election.

<comment><USER25> It has nothing to do with this. There is a lot of pressure on Huawei also coming from Australia and New Zealand as well which given our proximity to China are not trying to be tough on them at all.

I work in telco and can assure you that Huawei is a security concern especially given the changing landscape of technology (more complex, more containerised architectures) which allows for more attack vectors.

People keep forgetting that China is a dictatorship, has no independent judiciary/media and a long pattern of IP theft, hacking etc.

<comment><USER45> Entities in the US/Europe have been trying to take down China for a long time, the excuses to do it will be manufactured if required.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> many problems here:

a) why exactly is google qualified to comment on national security?

this either means they are verbally overstepping their bounds, know more than they should about secret+ programs, or are processing their vast data in a security-relevant way on the scope of a nation state

b) phones being hacked != compromised telecom infrastructure

c) if android fragmentation leads to less security on a national level, then by extension, google has monopoly or at least cartel level influence

probably more..

</comment><comment><USER22> The argument on the face of it appears to be rather flimsy. If Google is doing this on Huawei's behalf, I wonder if we're seeing a new Google emerge, one who is willing to go to bat for their partners.

</comment><comment><USER47> In terms of legal precedent this is pretty shaky ground. In any other context this would sound pretty far fetched.

Would we allow a US company to circumvent sanctions on selling technology to refine nuclear material to Iran on the grounds that they might blow themselves up and poison US allies or Americans abroad?

That's the legal context I'd view this argument in.

<comment><USER48> This is a little bit different than Iran. The US government specifically does not want Iran to have access to nuclear technology, so preventing US companies from providing technology to Iran is in itself the goal.

In the case of Huawei, the US government's concerns mostly seem to be about Huawei possibly spying on the devices they sell. On the other hand, there doesn't seem to be any particular basis for concern about allowing them to use US software such as android. Therefore, from the perspective of the security threat that is the putative basis for blacklisting Huawei, the fact that Huawei is now blocked from using Android is merely an incidental side effect.

(Of course, if the real goal is to hold Huawei hostage as a means to negotiate a trade deal, then threatening to destroy their smartphone business by blocking them from using Android may be precisely what is really intended.)

<comment><USER47> I know its not a great comparison but that's part of my point. The context and legal precedent in this arena mostly applies to arms and aid, not consumer products.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: ClearCoin - replaces ads on sites you visit, with ads that reward you - <AUTHOR> https://clearcoin.co/company/clearcoin-extension-beta-is-live/ <comment><AUTHOR> It's open source: [https://github.com/clearcoin/extension](https://github.com/clearcoin/extension)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> You can get the beta version here: [https://clearcoin.co/clearcoin-extension- beta/](https://clearcoin.co/clearcoin-extension-beta/)</comment>


Random Terrain Generation – A Clojure Walkthrough - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mediocregopher.com/clojure-diamond-square.html

<comment><USER2> Brilliant code comments, I've never seen this explained and it will come in handy.

</comment><comment><USER3> I see so many random terrain generation posts, like it's some sort of a hard problem that's being solved on a weekly basis. This one isn't even impressive.

<comment><USER4> It's interesting to see implementations of algorithms in languages. Terrain generations is a fun problem with a few algorithms and nice visible results.

Maybe you should consider showing some stuff that you've made instead of being snarky about stuff that other people have made and shown.</comment></comment>


The App Store bubble: How much does an App earn today? - <AUTHOR> http://www.servicestack.net/mythz_blog/?p=572

<comment><USER2> Ah - another Schrodinger's Earnings post.

Write up your experiment to determine how much money your app can earn. Then get the story picked up by as many high profile sites as possible. Looking at the story determines the outcome of the experiment.

Beautiful.

<comment><USER3> Also, decry made up statistics in the post, but then claim to define new trends by using a sample size of 1.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The more interesting post would be how his old app is doing financially.

[http://www.appannie.com/translate-y-the-language- translator/...](http://www.appannie.com/translate-y-the-language- translator/ranking/#view=grossing-ranks)

</comment><comment><USER5> Is this a bubble in the same sense? The dot com bubble was in the form of companies who made a lot of investments, predicting that there were customers (not to mention a business plan). In the case of the app store, end users are parting ways with their money here and now.

That's not to say that there won't be a malinvestment of time; the supply should increase to the point where there aren't as many customers per app, so eventually people won't make it as easily. But the whole thing isn't based on a flawed assumption, the customers really are there.

</comment><comment><USER6> An App Store bubble burst would probably be the best thing to happen to the App Store - the sooner the better.

1) A bubble burst weeds out apps that don't have enough intrinsic value to the customer in the first place (E.g. T-pain, fart apps, and so on)

2) Devs, entrepreneurs, and investors will be forced to evaluate and form actual business plans/models as opposed to "let's throw an app out there and make some money"

3) An app won't always be and shouldn't be the end all and be all of a startup business plan - it's another platform that allows you to reach out to more customers

<comment><USER7> For my first app store submission, I wrote a trivial program with little intrinsic value. It was accepted, but I later felt embarassed by it. I pulled it from the store (twice, actually) but received emails from people asking me to put it back.

What do you do when users seem to actually want software with little intrinsic value?

<comment><USER8> _What do you do when users seem to actually want software with little intrinsic value?_

Keep iterating and maybe you will become Zynga!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> That sales/earnings ($0.00) for Word Mate don't look that great. I guess the point of the post ends up being that there was a time when some apps that produced various sounds or provided translations would make money (and maybe similar new apps still would if they had smart or cool-sounding names), but a Scrabble word-finder app in the current day and age won't earn squat.

<comment><USER10> You understand that the app has been out for one day and it's free until the 20'th of September right? How much it will sell being a clone of scrabble is up in the air right now though.

<comment><USER11> It's not a clone of scrabble, it's a cheat sheet for scrabble.

<comment><USER10> ah... I could see the words with friends people using it then.

<comment><USER12> there's a ton of words-with-friends cheat apps in the app store already

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think we are in for another jump when they expand Ping to the App Store / App Developers. The self promotion possibilities tied directly to the "buy now" button are going to be pretty interesting.

</comment><comment><USER14> Great App article...stay on the App train before the burst @TableandBoard.com</comment>


Megathread – Australian Government Contact Tracing Findings: COVIDSafe - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/GeoffreyHuntley/status/1256124427781062656 <comment><AUTHOR> It's a big thread scroll to the bottom and then scroll backwards. I promise you it is worth it.

Other countries can learn a lot about what not to do with contact tracing by following along.

I'm publically putting more pressure on highlighting failures of leadership and that the community wants to work with the government and are offering suggestions.

a) have customer support on app stores reply to people who are having issues

b) acknowledge bug and privacy reports / engage with the community and release the source code so we can be more effective in helping.

c) start a bug bounty (unpaid suffices tbh) program

d) amount of downloads is clearly a vanity metric. leadership of the country is sprouting amount of downloads as success to reopening the country but the appstores comments are littered with failure. members of the public are catching on to it and leaving comments as such on app store reviews

e) having absolutely no customer support on social media is a bad idea

f) and finally, seriously how many days does it take to change a UI label and ship it?

[https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.9news.com.au/article/e91465...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.9news.com.au/article/e9146501-6bbd-4509-b89a-406b2b98ed2a)

The bad UX was reported on launch day and still has not been resolved or acknowledged. It is and has caused public panic.</comment>


Most of what you read was wrong: how press releases rewrote scientific history - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/staff/2012/09/most-of-what-you-read-was-wrong-how-press-releases-rewrote-scientific-history/ <comment><USER2> Bravo to Ars for publishing this valuable corrective, but I'm afraid that the damage has already been done. ENCODE was last week's news. People have assimilated the soundbite about 80% of the genome being functional (which probably seems like common sense to those with little or no knowledge of our genetic history and the processes that are known to shape the genome), and have now moved on.

The fact that their definition of 'functional' was utterly preposterous is a detail that will be overlooked, along with the rest of the work the consortium carried out.

The best suggestion I've heard is for the ENCODE scientists to produce a few hundred Megabases of random DNA, then test this to see how much would be 'functional' by their definition (my prediction - lots of it). Then we'd have a useful negative control and baseline.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm inclined to agree with the ENCODE scientists. You could argue that even protein binding sites that have no biological outcome titrate away transcription factors from other "active" regions. The system would have evolved with these sinks in place and therefore they constitute an active, useful part of the genome. Another way to look at it is that if you were trying to generate a computer model of the entire genome, you would have to account for the extra binding sites, even if they had no output in terms of protein or even RNA.</comment>


The China Ship - <AUTHOR> https://multimedia.scmp.com/culture/article/spanish-galleon/chapter_01.html <comment><USER2> Reading about this always makes me remember how much we stand at the shoulders of giants.

Thinking about things like on each of those voyages half the crew will die of Scurvy and other illnesses, for hundreds of years.

Now it is going to the moon or Venus, or Mars what requires a significant risk to do, because of danger like radiation or absence of civilization out there.

Some day in the future, traveling to Mars will be routine and people would barely think on those that made it possible.

How much people think about the incredible thing it is we could travel to the other side of the planet on a single day?

</comment><comment><USER3> Cool article. This was one time when I actually wish the article was slightly longer. I came away with only the vaguest sense of what made the return trip more difficult. Who were the "enemies" in question?

<comment><USER4> Your wish is granted! There are four chapters.

[https://multimedia.scmp.com/culture/article/spanish- galleon/...](https://multimedia.scmp.com/culture/article/spanish- galleon/chapter_02.html)

[https://multimedia.scmp.com/culture/article/spanish- galleon/...](https://multimedia.scmp.com/culture/article/spanish- galleon/chapter_03.html)

[https://multimedia.scmp.com/culture/article/spanish- galleon/...](https://multimedia.scmp.com/culture/article/spanish- galleon/chapter_04.html)

As for the "enemies," they were little more than pirates, brigands, and otherwise despondent vagrants looking for a bit of self-help justice (helping themselves to the spoils of thievery and robbery.)

<comment><USER5> Here some narrative on a privateer prowling the California coast at end of the China trade route period. [http://factcards.califa.org/ran/elrefugio.html](http://factcards.califa.org/ran/elrefugio.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Those articles are so cool, loved reading them. It reminds me of the long explanations in the book Cryptonomicon about Intramuros/Manilla and how the bigger ballast stones that came from Europe ended as huge stair steps.

</comment><comment><USER7> In the Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson, part of the story takes place around the China galleons.

Definitely worth a read if you find this sort of thing exciting.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, that was a long but interesting read. He has a long discussion about the secret of what latitude to use to cross Eastward. I never understood that loop so well until I saw the pics and diagrams in this story.

edit - fixed some of my endless typos

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting how this circle trade route in the Pacific was used by Europeans for over 200 years before Hawaii was found by Cook in 1778.

</comment><comment><USER10> The book Sapiens states that in the 1500s the Chinese had a 15 thousands ocean ready ship fleet, but for various reasons there were not really into exploring.

Is that really true? 15k ships sounds absurdly high for that era.

<comment><USER11> Also bear in mind that China already had a population of ~130m at year 1500. More than twice as much population as the next 5 biggest groups combined (french empire, ottomans, Inca, HRE, and southern Indiana).

Literally like 30% of the world's population in one empire.

Just to keep scale in perspective.

<comment><USER11> India.... Stupid autocorrect, obviously southern Indiana was not the one of the top 6 empires in year 1500...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> On part 3 the passengers' paperwork was checked after a month of travel, about 500 kilometres away from the starting point of Manila. Sixteen were found to have lacking documents, and were left on an island.

That's of course terrifying, but also quite puzzling: why weren't the papers checked at the point of departure?

<comment><USER13> Possibly the crown was weak relative to commercial wealth at the port, and bribery was common. At a remote outpost, it might be easier to defend the crown's interests against bribery. Just speculating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> When humans start journeying outside low earth orbit again, it can be like this. Long and dangerous trips.

<comment><USER6> Hopefully with less scurvy and pirates.

<comment><USER15> Scurvy/starvation, and pirates will always be with us. With the added bonus of losing air supply.

<comment><USER16> Since we figured out what causes scurvy and the amount of vitamins needed to prevent it weighs almost nothing, I'd bet that scurvy won't be one of the problems we encounter in space.

<comment><USER6> I agree, lack of nutrients and vitamins won't be a concern in most space trips. I also don't know about pirates. Where are they going to hide?

I think the biggest risks are loss of breathable air and claustrophobia/prolonged isolation (if people freak out in ships, imagine in deep space).

<comment><USER17> Pirates... maybe. They could go places hard to reach, so even if you knew roughly were they were, they could be hard to apprehend.

But anyway, if we have pirates, there is a space ecosystem large enough to leech off, so a win!

<comment><USER6> But you could detect them approaching your vessel, all you got to do is change course and/or speed up.

<comment><USER16> Battles in space are about who has more fuel and who can dissipate waste heat faster. You want to fire small, hard to detect ammunition from hours or days far away and try your best to anticipate the evasive maneuvers or shape your bullets' trajectories such that evading costs most fuel.

<comment><USER6> Interesting. So spaceships will probably be heavily armoured, full of big long range weapons (rail guns?) and huge fuel reserves for unforeseeable course changes.

<comment><USER16> The heavier you are the more fuel you need for high-G maneuvers, the more fuel you carry the heavier you are... more guns and more armor are not unconditionally better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I love the quality of their illustrations and info graphics. Anyone here have tips on how to make similar graphics?

</comment><comment><USER19> South China Morning Post is a great source for information about East Asia. I recommend their daily newsletter to anyone interested.

<comment><USER20> Could you give more context about their biases? I'm not familiar with the news source, but would like to be informed about that area of the world (While not just reading heavily one-sided articles).

<comment><USER21> I feel they are biased in China's favor but not so much so as to make the information unreliable. If you understand that many of the articles are written from the Chinese perspective, then you should be able to filter out the mild propaganda. It seems there are a number of international writers, as well.

<comment><USER22> I don't find them biased in China's favor, but you are right that they write from a mostly dispassionate and -- as Hong Kong is inextricably tied to China -- cautiously realistic perspective about China. It tends not to have the shallow caricatures, shrill alarmism, and conspiratorial/racist undertones of the American yellow press.

<comment><USER21> I would say "optimistic" not necessarily "realistic" perspective. Although some American journalism may show alarmism when discussing China, they are not completely wrong here. The Chinese government is very aggressive when trying to establish an economic hegemony over a certain industry or geographic region. Their ability to formulate and execute broad agendas across government and industry (e.g. China 2050, Belt & Road, etc) is quite impressive but everyone knows China is not really playing fair (e.g. government subsidized "private" companies, questionable business ethics, obfuscation of company data, theft of trade secrets, currency manipulation, different sets of rules for non-Chinese companies/investors, etc.) It's a bit like gambling in Vegas. You may not know the exact methods, but you know the system is setup so that the house always has better odds than you.

As Xi continues to lock down China and exert more and more control, it will be interesting to see if China's central economic strategies and dynamic startup industry will continue to flourish or if they will be crushed under the weight of totalitarianism.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Voyager Probe: What Are the Contents of the Golden Record? - <AUTHOR> https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/golden-record/whats-on-the-record/ <comment><USER2> make a great plot..

Man makes record thrown into space containg enough info to remake man in his own image

Long after man is extinct aliens to man make man from image on record.

Man discovers he was made from image of disk made millions of years ago.

So many variations possible..</comment>


Quantifying the Meritocratic Delusion - <AUTHOR> https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/23/visionary-art/#meritocratic-delusion <comment><USER2> > At its core, "meritocracy" is eugenics: the belief that some people are just > intrinsically better than others (that's why you often hear plutocrats > boasting of their "good blood" – think of Trump here).

> As with all eugenics stories, meritocracy is trivially disprovable > pseudoscientific nonsense.

Eugenics is not nonsense; it is immoral. It is possible to selectively breed animals for desirable traits; a monstrous regime could do the same thing for men. That something would be evil to do does not make it impossible.

Given that mankind has employed selective breeding for literally millennia, on both plants and animals, the burden of proof has to rest on those who claim that it cannot (rather than _may_ not) be effective on men.

And it is trivially obvious that some people _are_ intrinsically better than others: look at any professional sports team. Or any chess player. Or any artist. Yes, all of those folks have spent hours in honing their natural talents — but they had natural talents to begin with.</comment>


Will Freemium Work For You? Questions To Consider - <AUTHOR> http://blog.rapportive.com/is-freemium-right-for-you <comment><USER3> The math is fairly simple. There are two cases: viral and non-viral.

The viral case is when the value you can offer to paying customers actually increases as more free users join the system. In this case, the free users are the resource and as long as the revenue you can extract from their added value exceeds the cost to support them, you can do freemium profitably.

The second case is non-viral and is where most people are. Here, the basic premise is that the free users may A) become paying customers or B) attract paying customers through word-of-mouth/scale halo effect.

In both cases, you need to estimate the lifetime cost of a free user. Even if it's only $0.25 per year, it will be _something_ and is important. You will also need to estimate the lifetime profit of a customer (lifetime value minus lifetime cost). Don't forget user/customer support costs and overhead.

For case 2A, you then calculate the conversion rate for free users. If the lifetime profit of a customer exceeds the lifetime cost of a free user divided by the conversion rate, you win. If not, free users are a drag on profitability and not worth it.

For case 2B, you again calculate the lifetime profit of a customer and compare vs the lifetime cost of free users divided by the expected referral rate free users generate. If the profit exceeds the referral cost, you win. Otherwise, again, free users are not worth it.

Obviously, the above is very rough overview, and in real life there are many additional complexities. There are various ways these cases may mix, the functions may not be linear, etc. But in the end, it's just math and you can guestimate if freemium is economical for your business.

<comment><USER4> Don't forget (C): the free users actually contribute something of value (e.g., information) to your business.

<comment><USER5> "[In point A] the value you can offer to paying customers actually increases as more free users join the system. In this case, the free users are the resource"

This was point A.

<comment><USER4> It's a very subtle distinction, but I think that really only fits under A if you assume that whatever is being contributed by the free users is valuable _to_ the paying users. It can be valuable in other ways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Simplify it down to one question: Do you have enough traffic/users where a 2% to 3% conversion rate will sustain your business?

<comment><USER7> Simplify further: Do you have 100k active users.

<comment><USER8> That depends on how much you can charge.

For example, you could argue that Google Analytics is a Freemium version of Google Urchin. That costs $9995: <http://www.google.com/urchin/pricing.html>

(Of course, Google has a different business model for Analytics - <USER2> they want to commoditfy the complements to their advertising business. But my point here is that freemium can work well in enterprise software with less than 100K active users if the pricing is correct)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great article, really. The hard ones are the edge cases. If you can answer these questions in a clear-cut way then you probably already know whether freemium is for you or not, if you're on the edge the only answer is probably try and see where it leads you, stay flexible and you might be able to push an edge case in to a 'yes'. But be prepared to do a lot of work.

<http://jacquesmattheij.com/Handbook+Freemium> <\- shameless plug.

</comment><comment><USER10> _What is your market like? If you are targeting a large unmet need, you should make your product free._

I'd argue the opposite. Get in there and start charging right away. Get as many customers as you can before some buffoon comes in and gives it away for free. If you're lucky, you'll establish that the market price is > 0, and future competitors will charge in a likewise manner.

<comment><USER11> The primary reason to make your product free are positive network effects (no, it's not only about social networks, e.g. making .pdf a de facto standard also counts). The other reason is that the product is useless. The two should never be confused.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I like the first comment on that:

 _You missed what I consider the most important question of freemium -- does having a large user base, in and of itself, offer value to the users. I come from the dating site world. Let me tell you, on any social site, if you have a million free users and 10,000 paying users, you're fine; if you have 10,000 paying users and no free users, you're dead: the paying users have nobody to talk to._

</comment><comment><USER12> The second question sounds like a restatement of the first. If users find your service becomes more valuable over time, why would they stop using it? (Conversely, if users stop using your service, did they really find it increasingly valuable?)

<comment><USER13> Products don't exist in a vacuum.

In one case we could assume no competition or weak competition in the product's market.

Over time, one can imagine a case including competition that disrupts a once- increasingly-valuable product to suddenly drop users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> After reading those good points I have to ask - would freemium work for Facebook?

<comment><USER15> Facebook is an example of a product with distinct modes of use for different audiences (the users and the advertisers). One audience pays, the other does not.</comment></comment>


The Scottish Political Singularity, Act Two - <AUTHOR> http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2015/05/the-scottish-political-singula-1.html

<comment><USER2> >A Conservative/Labour coalition just isn't conceivable.

Not so. Considering Miliband's professed hatred of the SNP, his lack of interest in an SNP-LAB coalition, and the pro-austerity slant of both Labour and the Tories, I think a CON-LAB coalition isn't at all inconceivable.

It would destroy Labour for the forseeable, but Clegg was perfectly happy to sacrifice the LibDems for a seat at the table.

So I think it's foolish to believe Miliband would never do the same, using similar rationalisations.

There's actually much less ideological space between Labour and the Tories than there is between CON-LAB and everyone else - except UKIP, who are noisy but irrelevant clowns.

Is it _likely_? Possibly not. But considering no one seriously expected CleggMania to turn into five years of Tory jackboot economics, "inconceivable" is not the right word for the possibility.</comment>


Led by Stanford's 5%, Top Colleges' Acceptance Rates Hit New Low - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/09/us/led-by-stanfords-5-top-colleges-acceptance-rates-hit-new-lows.html?hp <comment><USER2> Per the article, this is really an increase in number of applications per student rather than any other change. There hasn't been a net reduction in the number of students accepted _somewhere_.

<comment><USER3> Sure, but the effect of that is to make everything more random and a lot less meritocratic.

Pedigree travels everywhere and is legible. Merit is impossible to demonstrate. Merit plus a noise term is easy to demonstrate. The noisier the process, the more of an advantage pedigree has over merit.

For example, a blue-blooded asshat like Evan Spiegel will be able to get into every college no matter what happens, even though he's (by Ivy/Stanford standards) a joke. On the other hand, I've heard of IMO medalists getting turned away in this (after 2006 or so) brave new world. Any system that has Evan Spiegels outranking IMO medalists is completely broken.

<comment><USER4> Top schools are always looking for "leaders" (by which they mostly mean people who go on to be prominently successful in business and/or politics). Speigel certainly fits this mold, far more than a math prodigy who'd be more likely to wind up an anonymous quant in some financial firm.

<comment><USER3> _Top schools are always looking for "leaders" (by which they mostly mean people who go on to be prominently successful in business and/or politics)._

Corrected: kids whose parents know how to play the game and have the resources to make sure their kids win it.

For all the complaints people make about the SAT, that's actually the most meritocratic component of the admissions process by far. The "leadership" stuff might give middle-class clueless a warm/fuzzy feeling, but it's designed specifically to keep them out.

 _Speigel certainly fits this mold_

He's a product, not a leader. Someone saw him and said, "he seems like a douchebag". Right now, douchebags are in style in the VC-funded/spider-pooping circuit. If you're looking to produce someone and sell him to your VC friends in order to sway the herd, douchebags are the least risky choice right now.

 _far more than a math prodigy who 'd be more likely to wind up an anonymous quant in some financial firm._

IMO medalists have the talent to do much more. The Spiegels, on the other hand, are useless unless lifted/"produced". They create nothing, but what they are told to make. Of course, some very smart people get lazy and complacent later in life-- it happens to all sorts of people for all kinds of reasons-- but there's no way to forecast that for teenagers.

<comment><USER5> With respect, you sound like you're under the very common misconception that top universities are interested in educating the most academically impressive undergrads, and that it's a fight between parents to see who can trick the school into thinking their child is among the best students. In fact, universities are driven primarily to increase their influence on the world at large.

When hiring professors, this can indeed mean academic acumen is valued, since impressive scholarship shapes the world and brings the university prestige. At the same time, grant-getting abilities are very important, since you can use money to buy influence in lots of ways.

When selecting undergrads, academic ability has some instrumental value but very little intrinsic value to the university. This is because academic- superstar undergrads will leave the university before they exert influence with their scholarship. The universities _does_ wants to mold the minds of future powerful people, and that usually means looking for students who are fairly (though not necessarily outrageously) smart.

But to first order, you can think of the undergraduate program at top universities as a pure money-making venture. The first strategy used is near- perfect price discrimination to maximize immediate returns, i.e. "send us your parent's W2s and we'll tell you how much you'll pay". (Tuition is extremely high but most students get substantial financial aid.) The second strategy is to groom an ideal donor pool for long term revenue, and this is primarily composed of a few business superstars with a long tail of doctors, lawyers, and financial folks.

These blog posts touch on some of these ideas...

Sean Carroll: "The Purpose of Harvard is Not to Educate People" [http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2008/05/29/the- purp...](http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2008/05/29/the-purpose-of- harvard-is-not-to-educate-people/)

Steve Hsu: "Defining Merit" [http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2009/11/defining- merit.html](http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2009/11/defining-merit.html)

<comment><USER3> To be most cynical, I think they want to admit just enough middle-class smart kids to create the appearance of academic excellence, while letting rich mediocrities benefit from the aura effect of being in a place where it's genuinely difficult to get in if you're not rich.

The soft ("leadership") component of college admissions and venture capital fill a similar role in the US, which is to launder the connections and parental wealth of the rich and make their advantages appear earned.

<comment><USER5> Well, I think you'll find that the people in positions of power at top universities have rather leftist values. They don't make all that much money in terms of salary, so their satisfaction generally comes from pursuing those values in their own eyes. That doesn't mean they're idealistic; they often make deals with the devil to increase influence, and they are happy to sell their prestige to the highest bidder. But the hypothesis that they are helping rich people as an intrinsic goal doesn't make sense, and it isn't needed to explain their behavior.

Also, my impression based on things like twin studies is that rich parents's ability give their kids unfair advantages is much weaker than you think. But that's a whole other discussion.

<comment><USER6> > Also, my impression based on things like twin studies is that rich parents's > ability give their kids unfair advantages is much weaker than you think. But > that's a whole other discussion.

We're not saying kids like Spiegel are wholly untalented. They come from excellent genetic stock. But as discussed above, they are nowhere near the true outliers in terms of merit. Think Putnam Fellows, Math Olympiad Champs, etc.

Yet the Spiegelites' success is so far above that of these far more talented folk in the startup scene, that one cannot help but suspect that merit appears to be worth far less than class as a determinant of success.

<comment><USER5> You're conflating intelligence with money-making ability. Solid intelligence helps for sure, and it's probably even true that, all things being equal, intelligence is monotonically related to money-making ability. But all other things are not equal, and there are other things necessary for money-making. In particular, colleges will look for kids with unusually high ambition, people skills, conscientiousness, leadership, etc. It can make sense to sacrifice the very far tail of the IQ bell curve in order to fish out still- very-smart people who are strong in those other necessary ways.

Again, I suggest you look into twin studies if you want to see the evidence that class per se is not particularly important. But I'm not going to discuss that here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It is likely to keep hitting new lows unless these colleges drastically increase the number of seats that they have on offer (which is unlikely if they want to maintain the aurora of attracting and educating the best and brightest).

More students want to attend college than ever. The ease of the common app takes the pain out of requesting "paper applications" from colleges individually and college ranking lists are available for all to see. Most students have colleges segregated into:

1.) top choices; 2.) middle of the pile; 3.) safety schools

and it is mostly always the case that a lot of students are qualified enough to be at these institutions, so it is likely that this group will apply to the top 5 or 10 colleges because he fits the profile of the student most likely to attend these institutions. Almost 30% of applicants are applying to 7 or more colleges and these low acceptance rates will only perpetuate the increase in this ~30% figure because students are afraid that they won't get into the top two college categories.

From the article:

> _Students applying to seven or more colleges made up just 9 percent of the > applicant pool in 1990, but accounted for 29 percent in 2011._

> _..students send more applications than they once did, abetted by the > electronic forms that have become nearly universal, and uniform applications > that can make adding one more college to the list just a matter of a mouse > click._

On another note I was recently talking with a CS professor and he mentioned that rankings are highly correlated with the years that an institution has been in existence which is worth thinking about.

<comment><USER8> > which is unlikely if they want to maintain the aurora of attracting and > educating the best and brightest

aura

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> One of the relevant issues here is that the top colleges have are essentially a better bet wrt prestige vs. other colleges. The fact that the college educated adult in the US is not as capable as the average college educated adult in a developed country world-wide (in OECD countries, see[1]) to me tells me how there is some truth to this perception. There is no denying that a physicist from Harvard is far above the average in the world, the problem is that if you're not from Harvard, statistics like these seem to imply that you aren't even prepared to be average. The problem here is that the Ivys suck up all the intelligent people and professors and the rest of us are left with less bright people (bright no doubt, but not "Ivy" material). Unless you can make it into the club, you won't be as prepared as your smarter and/or luckier peers.

The problem is that we in the US are doing fantastic in raising up the best of us (those who get into Harvard) but the average has obviously fucking languished. Personally, one way I think we can help at least somewhat is for government not to exclusively fund only these Ivys, but to cut off some for the rest of us (you know, judge research by its merit). Other than that, I'm at a loss for ideas

It wouldn't be too bad to not go to Harvard if the local state uni wasn't that much worse.

[1] [http://www.oecd.org/statistics/datalab/skills- outlook.htm](http://www.oecd.org/statistics/datalab/skills-outlook.htm)

<comment><USER9> Not sure why I was downrated. A rebuttal would be nice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Colleges have low admission rates. Students send out more applications. Colleges lower admission rates. Etc.

What's the stable equilibrium here? It's a complicated matching problem that's driving up costs, stress, and randomness for everyone. Maybe something like how medical residencies are doled out?

The question is how to keep costs under control...

<comment><USER2> Given that a 4-year degree costs from $40K to $100K with all the costs, it's pretty trivial to spend $1K on applications.

And application fees are probably self-funding. I doubt there's any incentive for schools to try to limit the number of applicants.

<comment><USER11> Don't you mean from 0-$200,000? (It's even possible to make money from going to college, oddly enough. A college acquaintance of mine posted how she got more scholarships than school cost.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There has been a seemingly endless number of articles the last few years about how "affordable" top tier schools can be for kids coming from lower/middle income families.

This is the natural progression from that.

<comment><USER13> It's also actively driven downward by the colleges themselves—no value in accepting more people!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Crazy -- it's already halved from 2006, when it was 10.8%

</comment><comment><USER15> > Stanford received 42,167 applications for the class of 2018 and sent 2,138 > acceptance notices, for a first-year class that, ultimately, will number > about 1,700.

2018? What?

<comment><USER16> If the students are expected to start in 2014 and do 4 years of university, then they would be the class of 2018.</comment></comment>


Chris Cornell, Soundgarden and Audioslave Frontman, Dies at 52 - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/18/arts/music/chris-cornell-dead-soundgarden.html <comment><USER2> This really hit me hard. The man had a voice that is almost unmatched. Please take care of your loved ones and don't forget to ask them how they feel if you suspect something is off.</comment>


Ask HN: Why is there tax on food? - <AUTHOR> There is only so much a person can consume, any government has to take cut from it. Wouldn't it be better if government exempts food from tax, people might buy healthier options which often cost a bit more? <comment><USER2> They also might buy and consume more of the unhealthy options. I think that's more likely.

Taxing unhealthy foods more seems a better option to reach the desired goal. Some countries do that for such 'foods' as alcohol, tobacco, and sugary drinks. See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugary_drink_tax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugary_drink_tax)

<comment><USER3> I live in a country which put a tax on sugary drinks. Personally I think it's been great. All the main vendors came out with sugar free offerings (if they already hadn't one) and I think it will make a big difference to the every expanding kids on the street. Next step is to make it illegal to sell such kids the big cans of Monster and the likes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Taxation is not based on how much of something you can do or need. It's based on the concept of finite supply, which means you having something is coming at a cost to someone else. You are paying for the opportunity to have it at another person's expense. So tax, in it's original format is meant redistribute or rebalance that opportunity cost.

</comment><comment><USER5> Not all governments. My weird state exempts the usual suspects when it comes to meal components (meats, veggies, bread), frozen meals, and milk and juices, but taxes ready-to-eat meals, booze, and I think most sugary soft drinks.</comment>