Comparing City Street Orientations - <AUTHOR> http://geoffboeing.com/2018/07/comparing-city-street-orientations/ <comment><USER2> I remember this from 2014:

[http://www.datapointed.net/2014/10/maps-of-street-grids- by-o...](http://www.datapointed.net/2014/10/maps-of-street-grids-by- orientation/)

Where streets are coloured on the map by orientation.

While most US cities are a wash of one colour, Europe is much more chromatic!

</comment><comment><USER3> Tacoma has a bizarre direction pattern for its streets. Every location east of A Street is "East", and west of Division is "West". Between these 2 (and including A and Division streets), everything north of 6th Ave is "North" and south of 6th Ave is "South".

6th Ave itself has no direction name, and oddly, streets increment in both directions. North of 6th Ave is 7th Ave North, while south of 6th Ave is 7th Ave South. There is no 1st Ave through 5th Ave.

These directional names persist through Pierce County, so the vast majority of roads in the county have "East" appended to them, all the way out to Mt. Rainier (which is also in Pierce County). North of Tacoma's Narrows Bridge lay Gig Harbor and the Key Peninsula, where streets prepend the direction name with "KP" \- i.e. "KPN" for North - to be more clear that they're across Puget Sound from the rest of Pierce County.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacoma,_Washington#Transportat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacoma,_Washington#Transportation)

<comment><USER4> This has to be something that is somewhat unique to the Pacific Northwest lowlands, where you have very large counties that are densely populated in spots. I lived near 127th St, which had 127th St Ct, 127th St E, 127th St Ct E, and then a few miles away you had 127th St S, etc.

God forbid someone give these streets creative names.

<comment><USER5> I'd rather have shockingly un-creative names.

Given most of these cities run streets north or south I'd love the streets to have Lat (N-S) or Long (E-W) followed by the subset of GPS co-ordinates that are unique within the location.

This looks like a good standard to start from:

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

For pure estimates 8 digits (within their grid) give 10 meter accuracy which should be enough, so choosing the full "min+second" (truncated, no sub- seconds) listing or the first 4 digits (truncate off 10 thousandths) from the lat or long should suffice.

This would also have a bonus of making anyplace addressable (in a postal sense) by it's GPS co-ordinates.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Charlotte's interesting because it grew fairly slowly until 1970, but has almost quadrupled in population since then. If you look at it on a map, the downtown core has a regular grid pattern, but the outer regions are a chaos where the city's expansion presumably overran a bunch of small towns in the last 40 years.

</comment><comment><USER7> This looks incorrect based on Denver's graph. The post claims its effectively 100% along cardinal directions but thats obviously not the case. All of downtown is NE/SW.

(Maybe Denver is including a lot of urban sprawl?)

[https://www.google.com/maps/place/Denver,+email@example.com,-10...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Denver,+firstname.lastname@example.com,-104.9830277,13.25z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x876b80aa231f17cf:0x118ef4f8278a36d6!8m2!3d39.7392358!4d-104.990251)

<comment><USER8> The downtown Denver grid was aligned parallel or perpendicular to the approximate course of the South Platte River there. It covers a small area--I recall it as something under a square mile. However, I would never say "effectively 100%" along cardinal directions, for a lot of places one might want to go are in downtown.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The histogram for Seattle looks unconvincing for me, because the entire downtown-pike-denny area is slanted to align with the coastline ( [https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-122.3407184,15z](https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-122.3407184,15z) ). Possibly due to weighting?

<comment><USER4> North of Lake Union and most of West Seattle are responsible for that plain look N-S grid. Zoomed in, it seems to better reflect the petty feuds.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I live near Montreal, while the street orientations are in a grid pattern, since there is a 45 degree orientation for most of them, "North" is by convention in fact NW.

It gets even more confusing on the NE part of the city, where Montreal's "East" is closer to true North and Montreal's North is closer to true West.

<comment><USER11> Yes! It's sometimes even more than that, going up to 55 degrees (measured at the St-Laurent/René-Lévesque crossing), which makes North more West than North..!

Street name suffixes follow the "Montreal convention" too, using East/West (when it should be N/S). My impression is that this is because the city is easier to look at horizontally (it's closer to a 16:9 movie resolution) than a very vertical portrait.

—

MajorSauce, could you please contact me? (email in profile). I'm working in Montréal on a project related to emergency services (which you seem to be doing as well, from your profile). Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It'd be cool to see this weighted by street size (using, e.g., average daily traffic numbers). Granted that data is harder to come up with.

The DC plot would tell a different story then, because the avenues are all off-axis and few in number, but they're big streets with traffic light priority that handle a lot of car traffic.

</comment><comment><USER13> While navigability of grids is nice, I kinda like it when cities have haphazard street layouts—older cities with chaotic street grids tend to be easier to walk around in (assuming you know where you're going) with slower traffic and smaller streets, not as loud since sound doesn't carry through all the buildings that block streets off (New York is loud almost everywhere, Tokyo has countless quiet neighborhoods seconds from even Shibuya Scramble), and as the author mentioned, instill a sense of adventure.

But maybe there's ways of getting these things while still maintaining street navigability—narrow streets with not necessarily rail straight, but still well-structured grids for the major streets, and maybe non-uniform/unstructred alleys could work to get both in one system.

<comment><USER14> Pittsburgh is kind of like that. It wants to be grid based, but it just can't with the geography it's given. There's lots of small areas that have only a few ways in and out, due to it being on the top/bottom/side of a hill.

[https://email@example.com,-80,13z](https://email@example.com,-80,13z)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'd love to see one of these rose diagrams for Tokyo .. when I was there I found it very, very difficult to navigate even my local neighbourhoods, and remarked as much to my hosts - who explained to me that the reason Tokyo was laid out in what could only loosely be described as "chaotic crows feet on acid", is so as to make it very difficult for any invading armies to march directly into the city in a straight line - giving defenders lots of places to choke them off.

<comment><USER16> I imagine it would look similar to the examples from his follow-up post on other cities from around the world, such as Rome or Paris, where distribution becomes fairly even: [http://geoffboeing.com/2018/07/city-street-orientations- worl...](http://geoffboeing.com/2018/07/city-street-orientations-world/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> A comparison to old european cities would be interesting.

<comment><USER18> Also newer or rebuilt cities like Rotterdam would be interesting as well I think. Also since Europe is more dense than America there might be some different opinions on how things are to be planned.

<comment><USER19> One thing that really surprised me when poking around Google Maps a while back is how griddy Weimar is compared to other European cities. While the downtown is a mess, the areas immediately outside it are on a grid that wraps around the city.

<comment><USER20> Most European cities have grids but you have to "zoom in" a lot. And those grid "pieces" aren't themselves arranged in grids. So there's usually very little continuity for the grid pattern over distances. The direction tends to change every few streets.

So in most cities if you zoom in on the map you'll see mostly grid-like patterns. But as soon as you start zooming out it fades away into a mash of directions, turns, and swirls. The only places where it's hard to find any kind of straight line is in (centuries) old city centers.

I don't find Weimar particularly "griddy" compared to any other city.

P.S. Barcelona is the "griddiest" big European city I know. Even though at some point the grid changes alignment they have huge chunks with almost perfect squares between streets.

<comment><USER21> Barcelona is particularly awesome in this respect. Historically, it was a few distinct villages. Then during a period of growth each of those separate areas were connected by a modern (at least at the time) grid. Looking at this area on google maps is fun. You can scroll between two adjacent zoom levels to see modern gridded order vs the total chaos of a gothic village (looking at the gothic quarter or vila de gracia in particular).

When I visited, I was confused about how the city was configured so oddly until I saw a pre-modernization map, then everything suddenly clicked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> You would need different math for star forts such as Palmanova ([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmanova](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmanova)), or for 17th century Amsterdam, with its radial grid ([https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1_XUR_LAcsSSE9Lmx2S...](https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1_XUR_LAcsSSE9Lmx2SjJ1ATUCYw&ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&ll=52.372638582627566%2C4.894623264526331&spn=0.019204%2C0.038624&t=p&z=15))

Such a circular grid has the advantage that it is easy to find its center.

</comment><comment><USER23> Charlotte is really interesting. It's very evenly distributed, even compared to Boston. It's also not balanced on the north / south axis. Are there more north bound one way streets?

<comment><USER12> Downtown Charlotte is definitely a strict grid pattern. I think Charlotte is more a victim here of having really widely defined city limits than anything else. Do a graph of just downtown Charlotte and it'd look just as much like a strict grid as Manhattan does (which, worth noting, is not all of NYC).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I much prefer older European cities street layout. It's usually a mix of circular and rectangular patterns, but it's still usually easy to navigate by roughly assuming each turn is 90 degree. And it's walkable.

In Poland especially interesting is Szczecin layout. It seems rectangular when you're there, but when you look at it from height it's actually made mostly out of triangles.

You turn right 2 times and you get to where you started :) Messed with my head so much when I was there.

</comment><comment><USER25> The histogram for Charlotte is asymmetrical... what's up with that? One-way streets? (The same is true for some other cities in the follow-up also.) The article doesn't say.

<comment><USER26> I think you are right, one-way streets.

>The street networks are directed and preserve one-way directionality. [http://geoffboeing.com/2016/11/osmnx-python-street- networks/](http://geoffboeing.com/2016/11/osmnx-python-street-networks/)

>OSMnx automatically calculates all of the streets' bearings. Specifically it calculates the compass bearing from each directed edge's origin node u to its destination node v. [http://geoffboeing.com/2018/02/street-network- orientation/](http://geoffboeing.com/2018/02/street-network-orientation/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'll never forget the first time I drove in Boston as a teenager. I came up to a forest of stoplights, some red some green hanging haphazardly at an intersection of seven streets, and my burning question was: which one is mine? I went when the driver behind me started honking.

</comment><comment><USER28> Manhattan burned to the ground so they got a do-over on their street grid. Any East Coast city that wasn't centrally planned (e.g. DC) or burned to the ground will resemble Boston.

Boston also more than tripled in size due to land reclamation, which included leveling some hills. The contours that the current roads follow may have made more sense when Boston Common was a muddy beach and everyone walked to where they were going.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/boston/comments/1s92xa/cool_map_of_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/boston/comments/1s92xa/cool_map_of_bostons_land_reclamation_nearly/) [https://imgur.com/gallery/0C349u9](https://imgur.com/gallery/0C349u9)

<comment><USER29> Got any more information about "Manhattan burned to the ground"? I can only find two "great fires" that may be relevant, and neither of them gave Manhattan a do-over.

The Commissioner's plan is the reason Manhattan has a grid system, and the page for it doesn't reference any fires.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commissioners%27_Plan_of_1811](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commissioners%27_Plan_of_1811)

Finally, the streets before the Commissioner's plan took effect are still rather small and twisty.

<comment><USER30> OP is wrong. The grid system was laid out before central/northern Manhattan was developed. No fire required. They may be confusing with London, Paris , Amsterdam, Atlanta, etc

<comment><USER31> Amsterdam is not regular because of fires. It's radial grid is the first urban planning ever done - Amsterdam drew the streets far out and people settled them over the next 100 years or so

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> you think boston is bad, try this: [https://www.google.com/maps/place/Varanasi,+Uttar+Pradesh,+I...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Varanasi,+Uttar+Pradesh,+firstname.lastname@example.com,82.9901522,15.27z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x398e2db76febcf4d:0x68131710853ff0b5!8m2!3d25.3176452!4d82.9739144)</comment>


Experts see rebounding economy shedding jobs - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/10/25/MNMR1A9PMQ.DTL&tsp=1

<comment><USER2> Right now if you include underemployment you'd probably see a rate closer to 20%. Some people who are unemployed now will probably never rejoin the job market because of protracted unemployment.

There's a serious jobs problem in the United States right now and we need to take a serious look at the direction we've been heading since the 30s. I'm afraid we're going to endlessly stimulate an economy that needs to liquidate bad debt and move on. Government involvement in the economy is not costless as some people would argue and we need to face facts and start saving and producing again.

I'm afraid that instead of maybe five years of painful saving and reinvestment that the American economy won't recover for another ten years when someone gets serious and takes some of this inflation out of the system. There's a lot wrong with how Reagan was as President but his early monetary policy is one thing he got right.

<comment><AUTHOR> The article makes these points about California:

"Eight million jobs have been lost nationwide since the recession began two years ago, and by some measures workers face the worst job market since the Depression. The average laid-off worker has been without a job for 61/2 months, a post-World War II record. Many of those workers will never recover financially.

California's hole, deepened by a state budget mess and volatile tax system, is far worse: Unemployment is at 12.2 percent, third highest in the nation; and adding discouraged and part-time workers puts it over 20 percent."

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Key quote from Lee Ohanian <http://www.econ.ucla.edu/people/faculty/Ohanian.html>

"It's not even a jobless recovery; it's a recovery with more job losses. The idea of having essentially no net job creation after a remarkably severe recession is a real pathology for the U.S. economy."</comment>


Show HN: My first web app - SociaLeaks.com - wikileaks for the social scene - <AUTHOR>

Please have a look at www.socialeaks.com and tell me what you think. This is my first adventure in coding (my background is not CS). I started learning rails about a month ago via railstutorial.org. When I finished that, I felt the best way to continue learning would be to just build an app from scratch. I came up with this concept while observing how crazy the world had gone over WikiLeaks. I thought this was a funny idea. I also thought it would be fun to build! So, here I am.
I built this in rails 3 and it is currently living on Heroku. It took me about two weeks to code, doing just about everything for the first time. If you were to look at the code you could tell the sequence in which I did things by how ugly it is :). It was definitely hard work but, as a learning process, it was absolutely worth the effort. My knowledge prior to this experiment was limited to HTML and CSS, I am now comfortable reading and writing rails code (though I find every day I have so much to learn!).
I do not know whether i will develop this further as it was really just a means to prepare me to work on some other (maybe commercially viable) projects. In any event, it would be cool to add rebuttals, email alerts, more ways to view and rank leaks (and people). What suggests would you have? If you spot a bug please let me know?
Thanks a ton. And many thanks to the folks in #rubyonrails for answering dozens of my really naive questions :) <comment><USER2> I tend to avoid using Facebook sign-ins for sites if they want permission to post to my wall. I think sites should explain what and when they post. For example, your site could post things like "Joe just signed-up for SocialLeaks where he can tell secrets about his friends!" (bad) or "Joe just leaked some juicy information about Nancy!" (also bad). So, out of curiosity, what do you post on people's walls?

<comment><AUTHOR> oh good point. it doesn't post anything to fb walls unless you tell it to. i should def make that clear. thx!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> A site about secrets, with a Facebook Connect? lol

Although, congratulations on actually learning a programming language and finishing something!

</comment><comment><USER4> it looks good so far, and the idea is really good and intresting.. however do you also run socialeak.com? as this seems to be very similar but has content and more information and details? maybe you should link them togther if you own both?keep up the good work but i agree with whats been said about the facebook connect you need to explain why you need to sign in so people feel safe.

</comment><comment><USER5> I agree with smooody! you can't just ask for permission when i have no idea what the site does.

<comment><AUTHOR> added some explanation to the landing page. thx!</comment></comment>


Some Programming Gems from the Healthcare Website - mr-howdy http://www.cardinalpeak.com/blog/?p=1811

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess it sucks to live in Wyoming, which is still looking at the idea of a state exchange while it defaults to healthcare.gov for 2014, per [http://www.healthinsurance.org/wyoming-state-health- insuranc...](http://www.healthinsurance.org/wyoming-state-health-insurance- exchange/)</comment>


Lawyers who won Happy Birthday copyright case sue over "We Shall Overcome" - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/04/lawyers-who-won-happy-birthday-copyright-case-sue-over-we-shall-overcome/ <comment><USER2> I am generally a fan of international trade. It is the force that has lifted billions of people out of extreme poverty.

I also believe it makes sense to have international IP protection to the degree that The IP metaphor actually promotes useful arts and sciences. But I am really displeased with the fact that the TPP makes the 70-year copyright term a (likely permanent) fixture of international law.

You can find the full text here: [https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free- trade-agreements/tran...](https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade- agreements/trans-pacific-partnership/tpp-full-text)

The offending language is Article 18.63 within the Intellectual Property section.

<comment><USER3> Why _don 't_ people want copyright? Say you wrote a book. Why should other companies/other people be able to copy it just because a certain number of years has passed?

<comment><USER4> Copyright isn't a "natural" right. For physical possessions, you can defend them or have others defend them. For copyright, you are using my tax money to have the government prevent what I can do with what ideas are presented to me, even if it doesn't directly harm you. So it feels kind of like bullying.

But copyright does make sense "for a limited time". I think the big issues is that the current time limits don't make sense. Let's say that you interpret that having a government-enforced monopoly on creative works is what lets you make money off them, and that making money is what promotes the initial creation of those works. In reality, most of the market value on the vast majority of instances of several classes of works is much shorter than "life of the author plus 70 years". For example, a new hit song may sale quite a bit in the first year, a bit more over the next few years, then it dies out into obscurity. Long copyrights keep such works dead (no one will continue to publish it if it doesn't make money, and nobody else is allowed to publish it). So this is a net loss to society.

Now what what really makes sense, and feels more fair, is that if you as an author want to use my government's force to maintain an exclusive monopoly on your work, then you should pay for that service. This could be a per year fee (doesn't have to be a lot), so that if the work becomes abandoned then it doesn't become lost to society.

<comment><USER5> Physical property rights aren't natural either. We depend on the government to prevent theft. Without that, anybody strong enough could just break into our house and take what they wanted.

What may be natural, is the human feeling of ownership. But that isn't always aligned with the legal definition. For example poor people feeling that their gentrifying neighborhood is being taken away from them, even when they didn't "own" any land in it. Plagiarism too - we don't like to see others take credit for our work or ideas (which aren't copyright).

For-pay copyright sounds like a good idea. I wonder though if it would prevent many lucky great work getting off the ground. You'd have to predict in advance that it might be successful before paying the fee. Poor creators of work would lose their right to copyright because they didn't want to take that gamble on everything they produced.

<comment><USER6> > For-pay copyright sounds like a good idea. I wonder though if it would > prevent many lucky great work getting off the ground.

Grant a decade for free. After ten years, you probably know if it's successful or not. Then you could choose to register for more (or not) with a good understanding of its value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is just another example of the disastrous copyright system in America. The whole thing needs overhaul. I hope there's a flood of similar lawsuits to constantly remind politicians of the idiocy of their resistance to reform.

</comment><comment><USER8> Ah, so this is good news.

Headline should be adjusted to indicate that Happy Birthday became public domain thanks to their work.

<comment><USER9> From my understanding, Happy Birthday isn't necessarily public domain, but rather the true owner's are unknown at this time until someone can come forward and claim ownership, and defend ownership in court. But it sounds like it will be very difficult for someone to successfully do and therefore, Happy Birthday is possibly public domain.

<comment><USER10> Just to chime in:

[http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/02/happy-birthday- is...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/02/happy-birthday-is-public- domain-former-owner-warnerchapell-to-pay-14m/)

"The most important part of the whole case was having the song in the public domain."

<comment><USER11> That is describing the lawyers goal, but technically the summary judgment order by the judge didn't find that the song was in the public domain. The order did find that the defendants had zero proof that they were assigned the rights to the song.

Basically the judge found that Warner didn't own the song. But didn't go so far as saying nobody owned it.

The order says: " Because Summy Co. never acquired the rights to the Happy Birthday lyrics, Defendants, as Summy Co.'s purported successors-in-interest, do not own a valid copyright in the Happy Birthday lyrics."

There are real questions to whether the song is actually in the public domain. The date of authorship is unclear and some the actions undertaken by the alleged authors might have sent the work into the public domain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Cool - at this rate, 3498 years from now, I'll be able to sing songs that I've sung from the time I could speak _in front of people_ without paying the great-grandchildren of someone who stole the copyright of somebody who learned the song from somebody he met busking, then eventually died in poverty 80 years ago, having been paid $25.

</comment><comment><USER13> Amazing that people paid over $14 million in royalties to sing Happy Birthday; wow, utter madness!!

</comment><comment><USER14> I hope there's a big gathering in front of the courthouse when this goes to trial. With singing.

</comment><comment><USER15> I hope that if he had it to do over, Pete Seeger would _not_ copyright a centuries-old song of oppressed people. We should all think about the long- term results of temporarily convenient actions.

</comment><comment><USER16> There's a real Pirate Party moment happening in Iceland now. And judging by the tone here, the time seems right for a change.

[https://twitter.com/Kopimism/status/721150098453897216](https://twitter.com/Kopimism/status/721150098453897216)

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm curious why their request to use the song was denied.

</comment><comment><USER18> The title is unnecessarily inflammatory. In the US, lawyers do not sue anyone. They're not allowed to. They represent clients.

Maybe the situation is that the putative copyright holders of We Shall Overcome hired the same successful legal team from the Happy Birthday case — a very rational thing to do.

</comment><comment><USER19> Bastards should be lynched. Authors of the song created it to be sung.

</comment><comment><USER20> Songwriter chasers are the new ambulance chasers.

</comment><comment><USER21> Sick of hearing these stupid 'songs' anyway. good riddance.

<comment><USER22> Happy Birthday is a trite stupid song. We Shall Overcome is a beautiful, inspiring, and musically rich anthem. The only thing they have in common is being old cultural heritage that assholes have illegally and immorally cashed- in on.</comment></comment>


Not the autoworkers of our generation - <AUTHOR> http://imsky.co/blog/not-autoworkers/ <comment><USER8> As much as I'd like to agree with the author, the case stated is pretty holey.

To pick on the "We'll never be automated example":

It's not that one day programs will write programs that write--oh wait, that's already happened. It's not that tools will come around that making throwing up a simple website with ecommerce functionality ea--shit, that happened too.

It's that the core functions of software, from a business perspective, are pretty much nailed down now. It's that the average dudebro with an MBA and half a brain can throw together an MVP and start getting market feedback. It's that the homeless guy who lives down the street from me can publish an ebook from his acer.

The thing that we all love so much, the removal of gatekeepers and democratization of information capital? Yeah, so, that thing is what will put us out of jobs. And that's fine.

The thing the author misses is not that there won't be a few gigs around for people who need to optimize their database backends and red-black tree all the things and skiplist their twitters--it's that the vast majority of things that used to require people to find a coder to help them are now a few buttons away.

Oh, and also that we've cultivated a user base so ignorant and attracted to simple glossy black boxes that they can't appreciate what it is to have a real engineer along for the ride anyways, nor how to usefully communicate with them if they had one. That's going to sting too.

<comment><AUTHOR> We do have programs that write programs. Who's using them?

I like your optimism, but the average guy with an MBA definitely can't throw a MVP together, especially not in 2013 when the low hanging fruit have been steadily picked off. The bar is continuously being raised, and it'll be cheaper for the MBA to hire a developer to throw that MVP together, using highly complex and abstract components.

If I'm getting the second half of your reply right, you're saying it's the availability of high-quality low-complexity zero-cost solutions to mundane problems that's going to put software developers out of a job. But that's exactly what I address in my post - these things were going to be automated anyway. And don't be disappointed by a user base attracted to glossy boxes - some of them will get curious eventually.

<comment><USER9> _" We do have programs that write programs. Who's using them?"_

If you count things like Weebly, the answer is: a "whole bunch of people", heading rapidly toward "everyone". Not that long ago, every Weebly customer would have meant a programming job for someone. That kind of work is gone.

Then take a close look at AWS, Heroku, Rackspace...those were all systems engineering jobs. Startups don't have to hire people to do that now. What used to be thousands of jobs is now maybe a tenth of that.

 _" the average guy with an MBA definitely can't throw a MVP together"_

You're wrong. It happens _all the time_. It happens so often that's a cliche. You can't go to a meetup in the valley without being assaulted by ten brohans looking for "feedback" on their "MVP".

The important thing to realize is that the need for software engineers doesn't scale with the _maximum_ complexity of software projects; it scales as a function of the _average_ complexity: think of a bell curve, where the X-axis is "complexity", and "need for engineers" is the area under the curve to one side of some vertical line. We keep moving that line further and further toward greater complexity. So far, the distribution has shifted to keep up, but there's no guarantee that will keep happening.

Are we going to need people to write complex, novel software in 2050? Absolutely. Will we need _more_ people than we need to write complex, novel software today? That's not a question with a predictable answer. It might well turn out that the "average" programmer (say, the ones who know how to use Rails and jQuery and are fond of complaining about interview questions involving algorithms) is a doomed creature.

<comment><AUTHOR> A website is not a program, let's be fair. It's at most a minimum amount of logic wrapped around content. Automating it is easy, and it has long ago lost its prestige.

Re MBA guys - maybe we have a different understanding of MVP here. I don't mean PowerPoint-ware - I mean version 0.1 of a product solving real problems. MBAs that are working on something more complex than yet another social network will immediately look for an engineer.

I'm not missing the average/maximum-complexity point at all, but I have a different view on it than you do. The average complexity won't stay constant, it'll keep increasing, and the average programmer will have to adapt. Will that mean a reduction in demand? I doubt it - we've yet to see the full extent of how software can be used. On the flip side, I constantly see clients looking for someone to fix or alter their "automated" installations - <USER2> average programmer will surely be in enough demand from these cases alone.

<comment><AUTHOR> @lightcatcher:

>Previously, most people would say that it requires programmers to make a website.

It hasn't required a programmer to build a website in many years now - <USER5> and CSS were declarative to begin with. It's only with the advent of CMS's - which are definitely NOT all automated (i.e. Joomla or WordPress) - <USER6> programmers entered the picture.

> Re Re MBA guys - I don't know how many MBAs are working on something more > complex than another social network, because many successful businesses > recently have been quite easy to build a MVP for with not a lot of > programming skills.

Good point, but are they doing it? Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Airbnb all had technical founders. The true complexity of these startups lies in their server software - how to optimize at scale and so on. An MBA aware of this complexity deserves all the success he or she can get.

<comment><USER9> _" It hasn't required a programmer to build a website in many years now - <USER5> and CSS were declarative to begin with. It's only with the advent of CMS's - which are definitely NOT all automated (i.e. Joomla or WordPress) - <USER6> programmers entered the picture."_

Well, first off, you're just shifting the goalposts and redefining what it means to "program" to suit your needs: it's inconvenient for your argument that there's now software that does what programmers used to do, so you just call those things something else.

But it doesn't matter, because you can't run from the core of the argument: it isn't limited to static HTML & CSS. Want web forms, but don't know how to write software or use databases? There's Wufoo, and dozens of others. Want to send email? Mailgun. Mailchimp. Want to accept payments? Paypal, Stripe. Want to show an interactive map with stuff on it? Google maps has you covered. Want to implement search on your website, but don't know anything about search? Swiftype will do that. So will Google site search. Need a sophisticated customer analytics system. OK. That'll be one line of javascript, please.

And what's more: it's only a matter of time before someone rolls all of these tools together into a pointy clicky interface that eliminates the token integration work (assuming they haven't already). There's no part of your argument that is safe from the trends that have been driving our industry.

 _" The true complexity of these startups lies in their server software - <USER7> to optimize at scale and so on."_

True, but like I said before: almost nobody needs that. There's always going to be the need for complex software...it's just not clear how many people will be asking for it.

<comment><USER10> Even if you limit it to static HTML and CSS, there are still many people who do that as a job. The only thing that has really been automated away is when someone is willing to use bog standard templates.

And in that respect, that kind of optimization has been happening since the dawn of the personal computer. Lotus 1-2-3 was the defining application of the PC, allowing average users to do programming-like operations that were once only in reach of programmers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I feel like neither the article, nor any of the comments here so far, mention a very obvious point.

The automation of tasks that formerly required writing software, are _automated by someone writing new software_.

This should be the normal, everyday experience of the software developer. Take the software you wrote yesterday, and write higher level software on top of it today to accomplish things you couldn't before.

So automating the software jobs of yesterday out of existence will require the software jobs of tomorrow.

As for the computers writing their own software, that strikes me as indicating the Singularity has arrived, in which case all human jobs will be obsolete.

<comment><USER12> >The automation of tasks that formerly required writing software, are automated by someone writing new software.

This.

User timr writes:

"Then take a close look at AWS, Heroku, Rackspace...those were all systems engineering jobs. Startups don't have to hire people to do that now. What used to be thousands of jobs is now maybe a tenth of that."

Let's take this point and unravel it a bit. AWS is hugely disruptive. It takes work previously done by operations folks (like me) and puts useful tools directly in the hands of users (programmers).

This is a _huge_ change that increases a programmer's efficiency. (I prefer the term developer, but I'll keep it to stay consistent). In effect, it has removed one of the major barriers to entry, that is, getting your code online and accessible from the internet.

So automation is the thrust of the argument; robots on the assembly line replacing auto-workers jobs. Someone had to build those robots.

In the programmers case, that someone is a programmer.

So, what can we learn from all this?

Change is good. We need these disruptions to setup the next growth phase. Software is different. The barriers to entry are being removed. Productivity increases as a result.

Be on the positive side of the change. Predict, plan, strategize, and stay relevant.

Happy Labor Day.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great point. The nature of the work changes as old complexity is automated away, and new growth possibilities arise as a result.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Interesting that one of his examples, Wordpress, has contributed to lots of software jobs as well. Writing themes, plugins, etc can be fairly lucrative and probably more interesting than making a blog from scratch over and over.

The whole point of writing software is to make it so you don't have to keep doing the same thing over and over. That doesn't mean there aren't new things to do. Software really is eating the world. If we run out of software jobs, it's probably because we've automated literally everything else already.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good point - there can be serious career opportunities in managing, supporting, and modifying ostensibly "automated" solutions. The core may be automated, but the ecosystem doesn't have to be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It will be too arrogant on our part to think we can't be automated.

If you have used eclipse over the years you will see the kind of gradual automation happening there. Its not the kind of automation that produces code automagically all alone by itself. But software like eclipse pulls the barrier to entry too low to a point even people who understand nothing much about Java or in general about software can comfortable contribute to make a living out of it. And eclipse is only getting better with time. These days you can pretty much code complex Java application without even reading a book. I guess very soon, software like eclipse will fill-in-code-blocks as we express a intention. And then our job will be to stitch those blocks.

This is what is dangerous. And this kind of thing has the potential to drive the supply up very quickly. Thereby the wages decline.

There is no 1-1 mapping, between a automaker and programmer. But the theme is very common.

I am even damn sure we will soon make software a commodity to a point when people can think in terms of abstract software blocks. Just like how a common man can today think of a car in terms of engine, clutch, gear etc.

<comment><USER15> > If you have used eclipse over the years you will see the > kind of gradual > automation happening there

The programmers job is not to do the things that eclipse can do. It's doing the things that he could do on paper, or just in his mind.

Automating programming is like automating composers, writers and actors. Possible, but hardly desireable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Aren't programmers more like the engineers who made the cars? Their work product is not just the design but the assembly line and the process, and those things help produce parts and cars. The autoworkers are more analogous to the people who work within software-controlled workplaces. That would be the people who pack boxes at Amazon.com, or do data entry, or customer support.

</comment><comment><USER17> Software people are so arrogant. Auto workers arent and weren't unskilled manual labor.

</comment><comment><USER18> Both articles misses the mark. There are still autoworkers out there, just not in Detroit (OK, there are less of them, but they're still there). Autoworking didn't fail, Detroit (ie "big auto") failed. And they failed because they spend all their energy building moats (trade policy, emissions policy, unions etc) rather than improving and innovating (like the asian auto companies excelled at and the european ones partly kept up with), so when the house of cards came down, it came down hard.

As long as we (software engineers) don't sequester ourselves wholesale in a homogenous monolith but continuously keep up with innovation, we should be well equipped to respond to changes in the market in time. The first article touches on this in the last paragraph, but I'm not convinced it's for the "right reasons".

<comment><USER19> The rote, unskilled work in auto assembly was easily automated (apply a spot weld here, insert a part there) but a lot of the skilled work was as well. The precision parts in automobiles used to be made by hand by machinists. This was highly skilled work, and it's now almost entirely been replaced by CNC. Machinists today, to the extent they still exist, are much more like programmers. They are still used for small and one-off jobs, but mass production of machined parts is programmed directly from the designs now, so you don't need a machinist in the picture at all for that. No amount of keeping up with innovation would have helped there.

<comment><USER18> If those people were let go (or retrained) continuously as they became redundant, instead of being employed in a unsustainable behemoth which then collapses all at once, they are much better positioned to re-qualify and re- join the workforce (maybe in the same, maybe in a different company) in a higher-skilled position. This could happen multiple times over a career.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'd like to talk about the claim that high-skill work is less likely to be automated than low-skill work. The author says:

>On almost all points, Baugues misses the mark. First, there is a qualitative difference between an auto worker (unskilled manual work) and a software developer (skilled knowledge work) that made automating the former inevitable.

As a rebuttal, I would point to some passages from Martin Ford's book on automation, The Lights in the Tunnel:

>A common misconception about automation is the idea that it will primarily impact low paying jobs that require few skills or training. To illustrate that this is not necessarily the case, consider two very different occupations: a radiologist and a housekeeper....

>In fact, we can reasonably say that software jobs (or knowledge worker jobs) are typically high paying jobs. This creates a very strong incentive for businesses to offshore and, when possible, automate these jobs....

>As a result, we can expect that, in the future, automation will fall heavily on knowledge workers and in particular on highly paid workers....

In general, I think knowledge jobs are at greater risk of automation than manual labor jobs. Robots are expensive. And they also don't scale as well as software. It's no coincidence that the largest software companies dwarf the largest robot companies. Ultimately, because software can scale, it becomes ridiculously cheap when you deploy it to millions or billions of people.

I agree with your overall point that creativity and design are hard to automate. However, software jobs are being and will be automated. What matters in the end is whether automation increases or decreases the overall demand for development. I.e., whether software automation is a complement to labor or a supplement to labor. So far, it's been a complement and software productivity has skyrocketed over the last couple of decades. This trend seems likely to continue, but who knows what the future holds 100 years from now.

P.S. Another industry that evolved similarly is agriculture. At first, tools and animals made farmers more productive, and farmer employment rose. But eventually, productivity rose so high that farmers started to saturate demand. Today, only 2% of Americans are farmers, despite farmers being the most productive of all time. So what's the moral here? What can software learn from farming? I think the moral is that quantity supplied is a function of both SUPPLY of labor and DEMAND for labor, and you can't ignore one when you predict the future.

P.P.S. You probably realize that the weakness of the agriculture comparison is that the hunger for food is far more easily sated than the hunger for software. The first has a biological limit, whereas the second is ostensibly unlimited. Therefore, you might reason, higher productivity in software is less likely to saturate demand and reduce employment. However, I would caution that some software demands might be easily saturated. Consider a company that wants its own website and app. If websites and apps become 100x cheaper (as a result of automation/higher productivity), would businesses demand 100x as many? Probably not.

P.P.P.S. Not all manual labor is created equal. Repetitive, indoor labor is much easier to automate than non-repetitive or outdoor labor.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ford's point is a good one, but it's a bit dishonest. A radiologist's job is processing information - it's easy to move overseas or stick into an algorithm. A housekeeper's job is managing a house and the people living in it - a hotelier is similarly difficult to automate.

Regarding your PPS - it's not so much that demand for software is unlimited, it's that software can be used for far more purposes than food or natural resources. A single algorithm can be used in multiple industries, and given that the world doesn't develop evenly as a whole, there will be software opportunities in the real world (machinery), in processing the real world (commerce), in the virtual world (media), and in processing the virtual world (analytics), and these opportunities will increasingly require more and more knowledge and creativity.

<comment><USER21> There might not be ways to automate everything, but there will certainly be changes to how we do things that facilitate the replacement and downsizing of some otherwise 'creative' jobs. A housekeeper can be replaced by modifying the nature of the house - a fridge that keeps itself stocked and roombas that actually do a proper job, for example.

My point is that the qualitative difference between a creative and non- creative job is mitigated to some extent by all the 'non-creative' stuff we have to do every day. So even knowledge workers are not immune to 'dumb' automation. An example of this would be remote work and off-shoring, which has opened up software development projects to global competition.

However, the argument still stands - knowledge workers aren't unionized manual labour and if robots are going to replace everything, someone has to program the robots. And, there's easily going to be more 'robots' tomorrow than today for some time to come. So what could end the 'world automation' gravy train we are on right now?

IMHO, the average knowledge worker has a much clearer and more present danger that the chance they might be making themselves redundant - and one that would affect pretty much everyone, not just knowledge workers. They should more concerned about that other thing that destroys demand: financial destruction. The redundancy threat that knowledge workers should be concerned about are the sins of our owners coming home to roost; another depression.

<comment><AUTHOR> Knowledge workers are definitely not immune to automation, I've acknowledged that in the post. They do set the bar quite high for software and intelligent agents, however.

Regarding your last point, I think a knowledge worker smart enough to automate themselves out of a job will be smart enough to capitalize on that discovery. Moreover, there will always be tasks people will prefer done manually, knowledge-based or otherwise.

<comment><USER16> What if the problems to solve are becoming easier to solve, because we're more plugged-in into an infrastructure of information? That eliminates work.

Standards are a good example. We love them, but, in a way, they eliminate the creation of middleware jobs that transform the data from one format to another.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point, but it touches on a refrain I've seen in the comments: that it might be better to keep the world in an inefficient state. Standards rise up after the complexity of interoperability becomes too much to handle.

As to your point about information, the volume of data these days requires increasingly sophisticated analysis. There seems to be a shift in sentiment around Big Data, that algorithms are still too unsophisticated to provide useful output, and that's a good sign that not only is there a lot of work to be done in this area, but a large volume of information doesn't automatically guarantee quality insight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Regardless of which article is correct (this one or the one it is referencing) in predicting the future of software employment, I think we'd all do well to keep an eye out for the future and be agile and ready enough if a Detroit-like situation does arrive. It should never be taken as a given that we'll always be highly sought after and well paid. With that in mind, I find Baugue's article much more useful considering I've never thought of an article that can be reduced to "Things are great, I don't think anything will change." to be of much help.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a gross oversimplification of what I wrote. If you take only Baugues's conclusion ("don't be reckless, save and network, things may not always be so great") and ignore his premises, you're reducing the article to a platitude. My intent was to show how fears of automation are nothing new and should not stop developers from pursuing their careers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Autowork in the 1930s and beyond may have been semi-skilled, but before widespread automation, it was a craft, and cars were expensive. This de- skilling has always been happening in software. Back in the 80s, word processors were written in assembly. Today, they can be written in JavaScript.

</comment><comment><USER23> It's a pretty complacent article. How long until software development has good quality automation - of a kind that drastically reduces the number of jobs? I suggest it's not as far away as the author thinks.

<comment><USER24> Software generation is automated but when people are talking about software development they mean (technical) design. Design isn't a commodity or product but a one-off process and therefore by definition cannot be automated. The underlying topic isn't about automation of software development - it's about buy vs build, and as ever that depends on specific requirements and circumstances.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> There is something that can slaughter the job security of software engineers, but it's not technological advancement.

Before I get to that, my personal forecast is: income expectancy for intelligent and hardworking people will continue to increase but so will variance. Eventually, the variance will become intolerable enough (sans regularization) that basic income will appear to be the only solution; even the smartest people will see a personal need for something like it. There will be a lot of struggling and fighting over implementation (e.g. do college graduates get more? how about families? should society incentivize or penalize reproduction?) but everyone will agree that it's necessary. That's probably about 30-50 years from now.

Okay, so what's the #1 threat to software developers' job security? Not robots. We have robots that write code (compilers) and our jobs are still challenging. Instead, it's upper-level complacency in society. An elite that would rather hold position and keep relative rank than grow society and gain absolute prosperity (but at a lesser rate than others, losing rank). Historically, this is the norm for elites. Many people, especially in positions of power (because power selects such people) would rather reign in hell than serve in heaven. If they can conspire toward self-protection and social mediocrity, they will. The good news is that, in a large and heterogeneous society, it's actually very hard to hold any conspiracy together for very long. This is why conspiracy theories overstate the power of such organizations; conspiracies (lower-case 'c') exist all over the place (e.g. Davos assholes) but none have the power to run the world unilaterally. It's too chaotic and large. Societies and nations have set themselves back centuries when their elites conspired toward mediocrity, but I don't think the world elite is capable of doing so-- especially not now.

If the global business elite figures out a way to conspire toward mediocrity, the people like us are fucked, because excellence will cease to matter and being good at what one does will just get one the reputation of a troublemaker. However, the likelihood that anyone could pull this together in a world with unprecedented distribution of technical literacy is incredibly low.

As long as there are people looking to do things in this world, and the world continues to advance technologically, there will be a high level of demand for people who are technically competent. We might be applying our skills differently and changing industries, but there will be work for us, and society would have to reach an advanced (that is, certainly plausible but unlikely) state of degradation for us not to do that work on at least half- decent (e.g. middle-class) terms.

<comment><USER26> So good, thanks!.</comment></comment>


Show HN: OPEN SOURCE scalable BACKEND services generator + util \m/ - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/vangav/vos_backend <comment><USER2> Setting it up, looks great. I have a question though.. what's the difference between server api and client(s) api(s) JSON config?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll answer using an example. Let's say you are building the hacker news backend. You decided to divide it into two services:

\+ [main] service: handles posting, comments, votes, ...

\+ [auth] service: handles authentication users' requests (e.g.: using oauth 2)

Every time [main] receives a requests, it forwards the auth creds to the [auth] service for authentication.

When you generate the [main]:

\+ server api config: will contain the api for the requests [main] receives (e.g.: post, upvote, ...)

\+ client api config: will contain the api for the [auth] service since the [main] will be a client for the [auth] server

Another example would be a backend service that needs to pull data from third- party services (e.g.: instagram api, twitter api, ...). In that case the client api config will contain the api for those third-party services.

This tutorial explains in depth the config file's structure: [https://github.com/vangav/vos_backend/blob/master/README/04_...](https://github.com/vangav/vos_backend/blob/master/README/04_rest_service_config_structure.md#controllersjson- structure)

Instagram test example [[https://github.com/vangav/vos_instagram_test](https://github.com/vangav/vos_instagram_test)] utilizes client api by including the client apis for the main and dash board services to test them. Check the service's generator config @ [https://github.com/vangav/vos_instagram_test/tree/master/gen...](https://github.com/vangav/vos_instagram_test/tree/master/generator_config)

Please let me know if you have any more questions or need help using it :))</comment></comment>


Nikola Denies 'Fraud' Allegations, Threatens Legal Action Against Short-Sellers - <AUTHOR> https://www.thedrive.com/tech/36357/nikola-denies-fraud-allegations-threatens-legal-action-against-short-sellers <comment><USER2> I don't understand Nikola at _all_. There are so many red flags, yet large credible companies appear to be willing to partner with them and buy from them. I suspect the terms are probably quite one sided, but even then there's reputation risk for partnering with the next Theranos.

I listened to the CEO talk for an hour about their dedicated route hydrogen business model for trucking, and it actually seems like a good idea. The thesis is that 25% of trucks drive back and forth on the same route for their entire lifetime, so you pick the busiest route, build a hydrogen station on it, and sell a bunch of trucks to use it at capacity.

This avoids the chicken and egg problem of building thousands of stations everywhere before you can sell your first vehicle.

I don't know anything about the industry, and I wouldn't trust their ability to execute, but the plan itself seems sensible. As the renewable grid share increases, there's going to be a bunch of excess capacity at times that can be used very cheaply, meaning the end to end efficiency of hydrogen may not be a deal breaker. Without a multiple of current battery energy density, long range BEV trucking will be tough.

Then there's the Badger/GM partnership. They got Iveco to make their trucks, and now they're getting GM to make their pickup. It makes me wonder if their strategy is going to be permanently outsource manufacturing and try to be a Pepsi to Tesla's Coke, partnering with traditional manufacturers which are able to build vehicles technically, but lack the modern sexiness of the new crop of BEV car makers.

But if they do pull any of this off, it's going to go down as one of the greatest fake it til you make it examples in modern history. They probably did bullshit their way in to this market cap - I wouldn't be surprised if every word of the short seller report is true. But the market cap does opens doors.

<comment><USER3> This is the next Theranos. Theranos got walgreen and safeway to sign partnerships with them too. US xpress doesn't have the capital to buy the number of truck Nkla is claiming. They don't have a working prototype. Nobody on their Management team seems to have the background to invent a cell that they are claiming.

Wish the SEC would do their job before the Milton guy hides all his money.

<comment><USER4> The crazy part is how a hacked-together prototype wouldn't even be _that_ hard for a company the size of Nikola. Trucks already exist. So too do hydrogen fuel cells, electric motors, batteries, and high pressure gas tanks. Just take all those components and hack them together into a working first generation prototype truck, and get some on the road.

Tesla did a great job of this in its earliest years on far less funding than Nikola has now. They took existing cars (Lotus Elises) and all they had to do was put in batteries and electric engines. You have to walk before you can run, which Tesla did and Nikola seems to be failing to do. Jumping straight to building an entire truck is lunacy.

<comment><USER5> Counterpoint: Elon, in retrospect, called the Lotus Elise strategy "super dumb." [1]

1: [https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeanbaptiste/2018/09/18/elon- mu...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeanbaptiste/2018/09/18/elon-musk- converting-lotus-elise-to-build-the-tesla-roadster-was-a-super-dumb- strategy/#b39b12d540fe)

<comment><USER6> That may be true, for practical reasons, but it gave Tesla that "sexy" car image right off the bat.

That was probably invaluable, because their next cars kind of looked like boring sedans yet the image persisted

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can anyone name a single, legitimate company that has ever been "taken down" by short-sellers? A company which had a great business going, but short- sellers ruined it? I don't even think it's possible.

On the other-hand, frauds brought down by journalists and short-sellers are abundant.

In my experience, CEOs (in this case, the board Chairman) whining about traders is a huge red flag. What do they care what a bunch of people are doing with their ownership in the company? It's irrelevant to the day-to-day operations of the company, but certainly harms the narrative.

<comment><USER8> Problem is, it's almost impossible to know unless you're there. Companies that are dependent on financing might not get financing if loud short sellers are able to change the narrative, and then fail to achieve goals that would be achievable if investors were on board. I don't know enough history to know concrete candidates, but I'd be very surprised if no company had ever been stopped from achieving a good trajectory by short sellers and other naysayers changing the perceptions of investors. Yes, there is a value in short selling as a market mechanism to detect fraud and correct incorrecly priced companies, but it's naïve to think it doesn't also incentivize destruction of initiatives that are actually valuable.

I _did_ follow the short campaign against Tesla closely from 2014-2018. And that project was vicious. I could easily see it toppling a less-financed company, or one where the quality of their engineering was less obvious. And trust me, although things might look black and white in retrospect, there was nothing obvious about Tesla's success in 2014. The indications were pretty clear if you followed it closely, but this reality was in very sharp contrast with the narrative. I believe it was a closer call than most would believe in reterospect.

Comparisons with Nikola nonwithstanding, I believe you're wrong about loud short sellers in general not being able to destroy the prospects of a company that would succeed in their absence.

<comment><USER9> It's also fairly trivial to see that it's possible to destroy some companies this way simply by noting that some companies succeed and some companies fail, which implies that there exist companies at the margin whose success or failure depends on things like financing availability or interest rates.

Moreover, companies in that position are exactly those with the greatest profit potential for short sellers. Companies that are obviously going to succeed or already have aren't likely to decline in value in the near future. Companies that are obviously going to fail will have declined in value already.

The largest opportunity for short sellers is when there is that uncertainty, because then you have a company walking a tightrope and there are people willing to bet that they make it to the other side. The short sellers can take their money and then give the company a hard shove and hope that it makes them fall.

<comment><USER7> > _The largest opportunity for short sellers is when there is that > uncertainty, because then you have a company walking a tightrope and there > are people willing to bet that they make it to the other side._

Provide an example of this happening.

Judging by many of these comments, I'm not sure some people here understand the mechanics of how selling shares short actually works. It does not, defacto, destroy _any_ value in the company.

<comment><USER9> > Provide an example of this happening.

There's a pretty good case that they were trying to do this to Tesla. We heard all these claims about how nobody was really buying their cars and so on, which turned out to be bullocks, but were being made at a time when they were in a precarious financing situation.

But the general problem with asking for examples is that nobody has the inside information necessary to verify them. I can point to any company that went bankrupt following negative media coverage at the behest of short sellers, but how is anybody supposed to prove whether or not they would have survived in the alternative?

> Judging by many of these comments, I'm not sure some people here understand > the mechanics of how selling shares short actually works. It does not, > defacto, destroy _any_ value in the company.

Are you sure you know how short selling works? Short sellers borrow shares in the company and then sell them, which temporarily increases the supply of shares on the market and suppresses the price. If the company at that point issues new shares or wants to borrow money against the value of their stock, it costs them money, i.e. reduces access to capital or requires them to pay higher interest rates, which negatively impacts the business.

And that's just the result of the actual short selling, not including the reputational harm caused by false allegations (or over-hyped technically true allegations), which can reduce demand from not only investors but the business's customers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> CEO claiming all the allegations are false, factual refutations _totally_ exist, but they can't publish those refutations until the SEC "finishes their job". What a scam artist. Always some excuse, always delays, just milking the fraud as long as possible.

<comment><USER11> Sounds exactly like trump "not releasing his taxes because they're under audit". I guess they both read the same book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have no insider info but leaning to believe that at least Hindenburg Research's report is partially correct based on a few things:

1\. I listened to Nikola founder Trevor's interview on Jason Calacanis's podcast, and was sold on the advantage of Hydrogen fuel cell over battery for long haul trucks. Such a huge market! And then Trevor said Nikola, a 400 people company, are also working on the an electric pickup called Badger to be more consumer facing. This makes no biz sense to me at all and I realized they are probably just chasing the trend.

2 At the time Nikola doing the first Earnings call ever, Trevor was on a 6-day vacation in the Bahamas, while bragging about having a $13 Million airplane. Trevor is no Elon. No matter how much you hate Elon, he works his butt off, and that gets my respect automatically.

3 I understand Nikola want to protect their trade secrets and go through SEC first, but in their press release [2] they have shown nothing to prove that Hindenburg Research's report is wrong.

[1] [https://thisweekinstartups.com/e1090-nikola-founder- trevor-m...](https://thisweekinstartups.com/e1090-nikola-founder-trevor- milton-on-competing-with-tesla-hydrogen-over-battery-going-public-as-a-pre- revenue-company-more/)

[2] [https://nikolamotor.com/press_releases/nikola-refutes- allega...](https://nikolamotor.com/press_releases/nikola-refutes- allegations-95)

<comment><USER13> The SEC thing is a smokescreen. There is no reason to go to or via the SEC for their rebuttal, if anything they're just trying to get ahead of the PR nightmare of the SEC going to them.

Them staying silent and sending info to the SEC is a big red flag, but to the lay investor it looks good, which is why they did it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> There's a simple antidote to the claims: ship products. The company appears to have trouble doing this, and AFAICT has not shipped a single production vehicle.

Nikola should focus on that, not trying to levitate the company's share price higher by jawboning.

The comparison to Theranos is apt in that the response of that company was to jawbone rather than ship.

<comment><USER15> They could completely discredit the Hindenberg report simply by release a video of the truck clearly driving under its own power. They haven't, and instead are just issuing these legal threats against shorters.

This hysteria against short sellers in some circles is great for hiding fraud. Wirecard also comes to mind.

<comment><USER16> They do have drivable prototypes now (of the Two, not the One) and there's plenty of videos. How well designed/built they are is another question.

<comment><USER15> If they are lying about the drivability of One (which they almost certainly are), what does that say about Two? They've fairly obviously faked other tech, including covering up an OEM logo on an ostensibly original piece of tech with duct tape.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Milton indicated that the company will provide no further in-depth public > comments until the SEC "finishes their work."

How about showing media outlets the truck going _up_ that 3% grade from a cold start?

Or showing the solar panels on the company's roof?

Many of the allegations would be trivial to disprove, if they are in fact false, and doing so seems unlikely to anger the SEC.

<comment><USER18> Did they indicate that that truck was a proper real thing, and their future trucks will be at least that capable? Or it was just a concept car, like what automakers used to do for decades?

<comment><USER17> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAToxJ9CGb8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAToxJ9CGb8) has the headline "Nikola One Electric Semi Truck in Motion", and shows with camera angles implying it goes uphill.

Lots of frauds are done this way - trying to pull the "well, we didn't exactly _say_ what you think we did". It remains fraud.

<comment><USER19> It is more interesting to me there are no newer videos than this 2018 showing towing but they do have a video of one with look through [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LSrvRMgIqw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LSrvRMgIqw)

so I guess it comes down to this, if they want to dispel issues then let one of their planned early adopters take one for a spin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> That GM entered into a highly valuable partnership with this transparently fraudulent company doesn't inspire confidence about their future.

Milton's last company was accused of not delivering on deal terms, and it seems as though that company BSed their way to an acquisition. Before that, he was involved in random low-tech businesses - at least one of which he seemingly lied to a partner about his profit off of.

The company's name is so unoriginal that I wonder how anyone can take them seriously. It's like an off-brand Tesla - just riding the association to trick people into parting with their money?

<comment><USER21> I suspect, as does Hindenburg research, that GM saw the Nikola partnership as more of a PR spend than a partnership. Its about the optics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Does anyone have issue with the name of company besides me?

I mean the largest EV manufacturer is Tesla and they name their company Nikola?

It's like years ago when public companies would rebrand as blockchain companies and see their stock soar.

<comment><USER23> I think this was one of the first red flags. It reminds me of ripoff movies that have names similar to popular movies to sleaze some of that popularity for themselves. Like Transformers / Transmorphers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Nikola's refutation says that "an activist short-seller whose motivation is to manipulate the market and profit from a manufactured decline in our stock price published a so-called "report" replete with misleading information and salacious accusations directed at our founder and executive chairman. To be clear, this was not a research report and it is not accurate. This was a hit job for short sale profit driven by greed."

It seems clear that they are right that the report is driven by "greed" and "short sale profit", and that the goal is drive down their stock price. The more important question, though, would seem to be whether the accusations are true. Are there any Nikola supporters here who can debunk any of the bullet points at the top of the Hindenburg report: [https://hindenburgresearch.com/nikola/](https://hindenburgresearch.com/nikola/).

Conclusively refuting any of them would be useful, but the most important ones to me are the ones involving their demos. Did they lie to the public about the functionality of their vehicles at the time? Or did they merely mislead the public with language like "in motion" and "cruising" to describe a truck rolling down a natural incline? Does that distinction matter to you, or only as relates to potential SEC action?

(I'm currently holding some puts that I bought---slightly too late to be profitable yet---as a result of Hindenburg's report, making me effectively short NKLA)

</comment><comment><USER25> Its unfortunate that their failures are going to prevent VC investment in fuel cell tech for the next couple of decades.

Some suggestions, not that they're listening:

1) deliver one thing before promising the next

2) Use SOFCs, not PEMFCs. They're more stable, more efficient, longer lasting, higher power density, can use hydrocarbon fuels if necessary, produce heat at useful temperatures, and they're way cheaper. Their only disadvantage is their startup times, which _is not a problem, and never has been, for long haul trucking_.

3) Choose your competitors better. You have zero expertise in building trucks, but you have amassed expertise in building fuel cell power plants. Lucky you: trucking is nothing like cars...alternative powerplant manufacturers are extremely common upgrades when buying a truck. Instead of competing with Peterbilt, you should be competing with Cummins as a supplier for Peterbilt. And when you've pierced that market, you start going after Mitsubishi, Wartsila, Hyundai, Rolls Royce, and MAN.

</comment><comment><USER26> Reasonably measured take on the story from the FT:

[https://www.ft.com/content/8a8a2396-6e97-4cfd-9f80-c5aaa2de3...](https://www.ft.com/content/8a8a2396-6e97-4cfd-9f80-c5aaa2de304f)

Sadly, I've not been able to find a non-paywalled version syndicated anywhere else. (Although it can be retrieved at archive.is)

Some interesting quotes from the article:

 _In this relentless barrage of hype, delivered in a disarmingly low-key manner, it is easy to forget the reality. Nikola has yet to put any vehicles into production. And, as its regulatory filings make clear, it has no orders at all for its fuel cell trucks, only non-binding reservations.

As for all the technological brilliance ... there is precious little to be seen. Nikola boasts a grand total of only 11 patents in the US, with another 55 applications pending._

And later:

 _Nikola faked a video of one of its trucks by making it look like the vehicle was driving under its own power when it was really only rolling downhill, according to Hindenburg's report — a claim backed up by FT reporting this week.

"It was built to be a working prototype," Mr Russell insists of the truck.

But did it actually work? His answer, after a long pause: "I wouldn't comment on that."_

In its pay-off, the FT draws pointed comparisons with Theranos.

A good read, wherever the truth lies.

<comment><USER27> I'm a little curious about the (allegedly?) rigged demos.

There's dozens of youtube garage tinkers who could slam some off the shelf parts into a random salvage chassis in under a week. Maybe they won't meet many performance targets but they'll at least be able to show something moving under its own power. The point is, making _one_ electric or H2 vehicle is a very low bar now. Making one manufacturable, and a production line to do it, is the hard problem.

So why show a nonworking sham?

<comment><USER28> Yeah you're right, it's all so bizarre.

This dude IPOd a unicorn startup and is (for now) a billionaire by selling a vision of a manufacturing company with a non-working prototype that literally almost anyone with modest engineering skills could pull off.

The Founder has no engineering background (in fact no college degree), no experience in the vehicle industry, no brilliant engineers or killer patent on technology.

It smelled super fishy when they first IPO'd but I figured since all these VCs and vehicle manufacturers were partnering with them there must be something under the hood.

Now it seems like such a transparent fraud. How did so many people that should have known better get conned into this?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> $30 Billion valuation with no product, no customers.

Insiders taking millions out of the company.

Lied about major IP developments and ownership (Hydrogen, Fuel Cells, parts)

This is insane, and I can't believe that GM would go near this toxic pile of garbage, it's utterly shameful and makes GM execs look completely stupid and incompetent.

GM is getting an 'inspired truck idea' \- how hard would it be to create a little independant division and hire some freaking designers and inspire people a little bit? Which would be good for their whole company?

Nikola looks like fraud, but they're just a scammers, in a way it makes GM look worse.

</comment><comment><USER30> I don't think the comparison to Theranos is accurate. Nikola may be overvalued, but they do have (billions?) loads of pre-orders for hydrogen trucks. Manufacturing the vehicles isn't rocket science - lots of companies are manufacturing hydrogen buses that are in use in EU for example. The tech definitely exists, the same way battery tech existed before Tesla. Hydrogen makes more sense for trucks as it's lighter, and by outsourcing manufacturing most of the risk is removed.

PS Email me if you are interested in building a hydrogen powered flying vehicle.

<comment><USER13> The preorders mainly come from a company with tiny assets, I think sub $100m. It's hot air.

<comment><USER31> "U.S. Xpress had only $1.3 million in cash on hand last quarter."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I have mixed feelings on this. Nikola has a Theranos vibe to it. On the other hand, "Citron Research" has created stock crashes on shaky ground in both Shopify and Tesla using hit pieces with claims that didn't pan out. I'm not sure if it is a stopped-clock is right twice a day thing, or if this is a poker strategy adding to EV by mixing in bluffs with solid poker hands.

</comment><comment><USER33> Companies that spend time agitating about short sellers have a straightforward way of shutting them down: proving they are a legit, going concern and bankrupting shorts.

That's the nature of the game when you're trying to sell shares. It's on you to prove you are a real company. The SEC requirements are because prior to them companies lied all the damn time and got away with it

</comment><comment><USER34> Nikola isn't really an innovator in my view. They take what's out in the market and assemble them which is not really that practical when it comes to manufacturing vehicles. This is like me saying I have an automobile company for nuclear powered trucks. And they should be valued as such.

There are a lot of electric car manufacturers putting in real work such as Bollinger Motors.

</comment><comment><USER35> Let's pretend everything is true as presented. Maybe a little marketing exaggeration, but a real product is close to ready. Cool.

Looking at various sources such as

[https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1127660_battery- electri...](https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1127660_battery-electric-or- hydrogen-fuel-cell-vw-lays-out-why-one-is-the-winner)

I just don't see the case for hydrogen over battery? It surely can cost less, but I see battery pricing dropping every year. In the 20 year timeframe, is hydrogen still a big win over batteries? Is there something fundamental about the technology that makes storing hydrogen better than batteries?

<comment><USER36> I see batteries not getting much cheaper at all, and likely hitting some plateau in cost reductions. It wouldn't surprise me if it is followed by cost increases as demands for sustainable production and recyclability increase.

Hydrogen is not just cheaper than batteries, but fundamentally cheaper in a way that batteries can never match. For instance, underground storage is at the cents per kWh of storage. So batteries can never get there. In 20 years, I suspect FCEVs will have taken over, with BEVs mostly abandoned as being too expensive to justify their existence in most circumstances.

<comment><USER35> Fundamentally I agree that FC storage can be very cheap. Just a metal tank with some valves or whatever, right?

a) What stops the fundamentals of batteries from also continuing to get cheaper? Current batteries are using less of some expensive metals, is there some kind of law that is going to make us hit a wall at current battery pricing? I don't see this yet, nor have I seen research papers, but I may have just missed them?

b) The way I understand it, is the cost of creating the Hydrogen is the expensive part now. Is there proof that it will be cheaper with time, and that the end state of producing hydrogen is cheaper than the end state of producing batteries?

<comment><USER36> You need a lot of metal, especially if you want a big battery. Realistically we're not going to see batteries much cheaper than what we have now.

Hydrogen is likely to be cost of green energy plus some additional cost factor. So if solar is $0.02/kWh, then hydrogen will be maybe 2x that in the very long run. Everything points to hydrogen eventually getting to around $1/kg, or cheaper than just about any other kind of fuel.

<comment><USER35> This graph is showing a fall by about another half by 2030 for Lithium Ion

[https://about.bnef.com/blog/behind-scenes-take-lithium- ion-b...](https://about.bnef.com/blog/behind-scenes-take-lithium-ion-battery- prices/)

What if there is a different battery technology (not Hydrogen) that allows another half or more fall? Could still be a long ways to go..

<comment><USER36> At some point you just accept that hydrogen is a battery technology with the highest possible energy density and give up on silly in-between ideas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Lawsuits against shortsellers? Where did we have that just recently? Oh yeah, Wirecard - or as we call it in Germany "Auweiacard"...

</comment><comment><USER38> How much is their CEO getting paid vs what have they delivered? There are _definitely_ _a_ _lot_ _of_ red flags.

</comment><comment><USER39> Legal action? Did they lie (libel)? Did they fail to disclose their position?

</comment><comment><USER40> Threatening to sue short sellers always seems desperate.

</comment><comment><USER41> It's amusing to see Tesla stans hate on Nikola, when the two companies' characteristics and tactics are almost identical. Any criticism that applies to Nikola applies to Tesla, and vice versa. If anything, Nikola is moving more quickly than Tesla did early in its 17 year history.

</comment><comment><USER42> I really dislike the name of the company. Screams copycat and scam.

</comment><comment><USER43> Smearing his current company based on his past makes the short case less trust worthy

<comment><USER44> > Smearing his current company based on his past makes the short case less > trust worthy

So you'd invest in Elizabeth Holme's next bio-tech startup?

<comment><USER43> Less likely but would need to closely scrutinize it more than before. I believe in 2nd chances.

<comment><USER44> Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Second chances are for people who make mistakes, not for people who engage in fraud and deception. If you give me the shaft consciously and knowingly, it's a long road to get my trust back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Interesting to compare against Lucid Motors. Founded thirteen years ago and still not shipping, dismissed as vaporware for so long, yet are now surprising people by getting production versions of their car to early reviewers.

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZkuJY1GWtE](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZkuJY1GWtE)

</comment><comment><USER46> This is interesting to me

I watched some videos of Trevor Milton. He has ZERO signs he is faking

HOWEVER

A) Just because someone's body language and presentation is PERFECT doesn't mean they are telling the truth. They might have convinced themselves of the lie

B) The Truck Video is SUPER DODGY. It's shot from an angle that makes it impossible to tell what the incline angle is. It could VERY easily be just a truck with no engine rolling down a slight incline

C) The walkthroughs etc. Trevor Milton does are SUPER DODGY.

Elon Musk with Tesla talks about crazy things that might never happen (Full Auto Pilot Level 5 Driving) but half of the crazy stuff he DELIVERS

Trevor Milton seems to be just as good as Musk at promising things, but so far has not delivered anything

 __ __ __ __ __ __ __*

On the one hand, it would be great if Nikola delivers a great truck

Competition for Tesla

Death to these parasitic short sellers

ON THE OTHER HAND

Don't see what exactly is the VALUE Nikola is providing. GM is building everything. So is Nikola's contribution selling a great story ???

It's like Musk's ability to sell stories, but lacking Musk's abilities to

A) get subsidies from the government B) actually deliver products

Trevor Milton and Nikola are getting money from the stock market. That comes with a lot of dangers which government contracts and subsidies do not

<comment><USER23> Did you believe short sellers are "parasites" before Elon Musk started ranting about them, or did you get this idea from him?</comment></comment>


Krugman: Battles the austerians - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-krugman-battles-austerians/

<comment><USER2> There was also a decent amount of discussion about it here when it came out two months ago; see [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9769330](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9769330) .</comment>


Bitcoin looks primed for money laundering - <AUTHOR> http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2012/12/18/bitcoin-money-laundering/

<comment><USER2> "The shady online currency is starting to gain legitimacy in certain parts of the world. When will the regulators catch up?"

Hah! Is CNN the new Fox? It is confounding to see that time and again these so-called journalists have zero problem putting their pieces with their preconceived notions with such confidence and seriousness. This is just so outrageously ridiculous and absurd that I almost begin to consider if it's a hit-piece.</comment>


Obsession engineers: Mind control the Candy Crush way [paywall] - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22229710.600-obsession-engineers-mind-control-the-candy-crush-way.html <comment><USER2> It's a shame that the article is behind a paywall, as it is good. And these things are reasonably well documented outside New Scientist.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with you, I really tried to find another article citing this or similar article but couldn't find so I put it like that.</comment></comment>


Secure Apache and PHP, hide version numbers - <AUTHOR> http://www.go2linux.org/linux/2011/07/secure-apache-and-php-hide-version-numbers-1122.html <comment><USER2> If I'd like to "hack" a LAMP-Server I certainly wouldn't start by attacking Apache or PHP.

The biggest attack vector are outdated scripts. Once an attacker has access to PHP, he basically has a normal user login. Running PHP as the apache user gives the attacker full read access to all your web-folders.

If I where him, I'd put 2 lines code into the PHP-Webmail script to send me your e-mail logins and from there I can research further...

using fastcgi for php, block/log outgoing traffic per uid/gid, disable sockets for php uids, use suhosin to disallow certain php calls, nosuid,noexec webroot/tmp nothing really protects you against a mildy creative attacker...

I'm a sysadmin for a dozen LAMP shared hosting sites used by non-tech users and keeping these things secure is a major pain in the ass.

especially if your users want to use these riciolous unsecure php scripts. joomla die in a fire...

I'm sorry disabling version numbers is good idea but calling it "securing" your server is idiotic.

/rant

</comment><comment><USER3> Hmmm .. Security by obscurity?

When I look at my server logs I see lots of attempts to crack into software, components or programming languages I do not use and which can't be found on the server. The common cheap hacking script doesn't even care if it's a windows box when it's dumbly requesting the isapi.dll.

I wonder if the effect is the same as grinding the lock-makers label off my door locks.

<comment><USER4> Removing version information makes it more difficult for an unskilled automated attack on a server, which is what most of the attacks are.

<comment><USER5> Obscuring the version number just means that Joe Blackhat has to run through 10 exploits to try to get a hit, rather than just 1. The time difference is likely insignificant.

All this does is produce a false sense of security which may lull system administrations into putting off critical upgrades.

<comment><USER4> Joe Blackhat isn't running the exploits - Sam Scriptkiddie is.

> All this does is produce a false sense of security which may lull system > administrations into putting off critical upgrades.

Then the sys admin needs replacing.

Creating more work for those that automate system attacks is a good thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Security issues aside, another reason to turn off the http server version is that it pointlessly consumes presumably-metered bandwidth.

</comment><comment><USER7> WOW, This is the most basic of basic basics. I wouldn't expect such posts on Hacker News

<comment><USER8> Your comment is void of content. Many do not like such posts on HN.</comment></comment>


Firefighting foam heats up coal fire debate (2010) - <AUTHOR> https://www.earthmagazine.org/article/hot-hell-firefighting-foam-heats-coal-fire-debate-centralia-pa <comment><USER2> "Coal fires are a problem all over the world. Such fires endanger nearby communities, waste precious resources and produce tons of noxious and greenhouse gases. Centralia is not the only coal fire burning in the United States. In fact, it's just one of 38 burning in Pennsylvania alone. The hundreds of underground fires in the United States, from Pennsylvania to Alabama to Wyoming, combined with the thousands thought to be burning in China, India and elsewhere, are one of the largest sources of carbon dioxide and pollution on Earth."

What really?

<comment><USER3> Wikipedia claims they account for 3% of CO2 emissions.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_seam_fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_seam_fire) (at the end of the intro paragraphs)

<comment><USER4> Considering that they're a pure nuisance with no economic value and plenty of danger due to area denial, and 3% is nothing to sneeze at, that would suggest that they should be a priority to greenhouse gas reduction.

<comment><USER5> Like with everything else, the question is always the same - who pays for it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This article is from 2010 - any update in the last 8 years?

Here's his facebook page: [https://www.facebook.com/groups/541222132634503/](https://www.facebook.com/groups/541222132634503/)

The company website is down, but he's posting. I suspect he's still trying but his company no longer is.

<comment><USER7> Most recent I can find: [https://www.history.com/news/mine-fire-burning- more-50-years...](https://www.history.com/news/mine-fire-burning- more-50-years-ghost-town)

Kind of a bum article but no progress as far as I can tell.

Recent court case re gov't attempt to kick last citizens out. They got a settlement and are allowed to stay until they die at which time gov't will take land via eminent domain. [https://wnep.com/2013/10/30/agreement-reached- with-remaing-c...](https://wnep.com/2013/10/30/agreement-reached-with-remaing- centralia-residents/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've read about this fire before and on the surface it seems crazy to think we have all of these underground fires happening that no one really thinks or cares about. I understand how we got to where we are but it still makes me stop in amazement that this is a thing that is actively happening.

<comment><USER9> It's actually already taken care of. Basically, most of them are beyond what the current technology can achieve.

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

This is a good read. So the one mentioned in OP may work for some but it may be only useful for very limited set of these fires. We know too little about things under the surface. I'd say we have zero chance to conquer them until we can have a deep earth CT (just like CT of your brain).

60M for a technology which would be the future, yes. 60M for something only works for a few limited cases, probably not.

<comment><USER10> How far along are we with ground penetrating radar?

I'd imagine if they struggle to find tunnels dug under borders of high tech countries that they will probably struggle with these.

<comment><USER11> You could look via seismographs and small explosions, as is done for some kinds of resource exploration.

Plain old drilling is pretty effective though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have one quibble.

> Using water can cause steam explosions.

It's actually worse than that.

2(C) + O2 + H2O → CO + CO2 + H2

So you have a H2/CO explosion. That's what happened at Chernobyl. Very hot graphite moderator, plus cooling water.

Edit: lose extra O

<comment><USER13> To be fair, some other things also happened at Chernobyl.

<comment><USER12> True. But wasn't it the hydrogen explosion that popped the containment? Not that there was all that much containment, in any case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> For an exhaustive account of the fire: [https://www.amazon.com/Fire- Underground-Ongoing-Tragedy-Cent...](https://www.amazon.com/Fire-Underground- Ongoing-Tragedy-Centralia/dp/0762754273) For a similar fire that was eventually contained: [https://www.amazon.com/West-Carbondale-Pennsylvania- Heritage...](https://www.amazon.com/West-Carbondale-Pennsylvania-Heritage- Books/dp/1589662121)

Both are very interesting reading if you find these as fascinating as I do.

</comment><comment><USER14> [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/fire-in-the- ho...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/fire-in-the- hole-77895126/)

I heard about the phenomenon before, but was stumped how long they can burn.

>Many ancient fires like those still burn, from the Canadian Arctic to southeast Australia. Scientists estimate that Australia's BurningMountain, the oldest known coal fire, has burned for 6,000 years. In the 19th century, explorers mistook the smoking summit for a volcano.

</comment><comment><USER15> How much is a fire like this contributing to CO2 emissions? Seems like 60 million is a small price to pay if it stops ongoing burning and combustion products.

<comment><USER16> Large smoldering fires contribute roughly 15% of total greenhouse gas emissions according to Dr. Guillermo Rein.

[http://guillermo-rein.blogspot.com/2016/06/erc-haze- reducing...](http://guillermo-rein.blogspot.com/2016/06/erc-haze-reducing- burden-of-smouldering.html)

<comment><USER17> Note that he is not referring to coal seam fires. He's referring to Southeast Asian peat fires, a substantial portion of which are started to clear way for palm oil plantations and other agricultural purposes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Can't they just enclose it so it uses up all the oxygen? Or detonate charges?

<comment><USER19> if you knew all of the entrances and didn't have to worry about permeation, sure. But who really knows how many possible places air is entering that fire.

<comment><USER4> There are uncharted mine shafts, some where homes used to be because people would mine under their basements. There are also sinkholes which you can see in pictures of the highway.

<comment><USER18> Can't you map those by seeing where air is still flowing in? Release some dust and map its flow. Or better yet just cover the surface with foam.

<comment><USER20> Its not just mineshafts where it burns, it burns directly underground where it has never been mined before due to permeable rock.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Can we not just start a gofundme campaign for this and bypass the government funding decisions?

<comment><USER22> We can.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Could this actually be a profitable business, selling carbon offsets?

</comment><comment><USER24> Its coal fire day on Hacker News! (there was another post about a possible coal fire on the Titanic)

<comment><USER25> I think it's safe to say that _that_ one has been extinguished!

<comment><USER13> This one will sort itself out. Once sea levels rise high enough, the mine will be submerged and the fire will go out.

<comment><USER26> Sea level rise if all ice melts: 230 ft.

Sea level rise to historical maximum: 660 ft. (100m years ago; the difference is largely because of thermal expansion of water and changing shape of ocean basins.)

Elevation of Centralia, PA: 1467 ft.

<comment><USER13> Ok fine, I guess we have to do something about this.

<comment><USER26> Nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

<comment><USER27> "We got ourselves a pretty big fire. Gonna need a huge bang."

[https://youtu.be/U8Vh3h9i2Uk?t=37](https://youtu.be/U8Vh3h9i2Uk?t=37)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Really crazy how untold billions are spent on climate change mitigation and they can't raise the 60m to put out this fire.

<comment><USER29> Please don't take HN threads on generic flamewar tangents. They lead to the local equivalent of coal fires.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER28> Sorry I actually meant it is tragic that this cannot be funded given that it is such a high climate change priority according to the article. The mitigation would be fairly cheap and long lasting, it might burn another 50 years

<comment><USER20> The thing is, many things have been tried, nothing has been particularly effective.</comment></comment></comment></comment>