How America Killed Transit - <AUTHOR> https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/08/how-america-killed-transit/568825/ <comment><USER2> Public roads are a public transit system. A very useful and productive one. Before paved roads and trucks, many towns and farms were only served by a single rail line. If competing water transportation was not available, the private railroads would charge extremely high rates, extracting all excess production of the area. The coming of public paved roads and trucks was blessing.

Many roads are now past capacity much of the time, which makes them much less useful, and many modern cities have been designed only for people in cars (is there a word like bicyclist for a person in a car?) instead of people walking, which is definitely a mistake. But the high speed, point to point, on demand, variable cargo, transit system of public roads is a great thing. Deride and shame it at your peril.

We need to improve the road system in many ways. Some possibilities are congestion pricing, lots of tunnels, and public spaces people can walk to from their homes, but to believe some externally controlled system for transit is what we should shoot for as a society, I think, is mistaken.

<comment><USER3> "Motorist" is commonly used for people in motor vehicles.

The problem with cars is that they use so much space. Not only while in transit, but especially when parked. Look at how much prime real estate is devoted to parking in typical American cities. That reduces density and makes cars more important, a vicious circle. The most liveable cities are those where little transport is needed because most things one wants to do are within walking or cycling distance. Such city planning is at odds with car centric designs.

<comment><USER2> A single passenger vehicle could have a parking footprint about 1/10th of what they currently have. My hope is that we could have electric bikes that are like a mountain bike, can go in bike lanes (at slow speed) or on the street but can go fast enough to take on a freeway.

<comment><USER4> There's no way to make ebikes safe at 70mph. Plus, quite a bit of the US is under snow 4-6 months of the year.

<comment><USER2> As safe as a smallish motor cycle? I would think so. But "safe"? The word describes a feeling a person has, so unless you specify some kind of measurable metric, like "50% of the population would feel safe using it" or fatalities per mile would never be less than 3 times that of cars, using it is just you personal feeling about things. Useful to you but not so useful to people that don't know what safe means to you.

<comment><USER4> > As safe as a smallish motor cycle? I would think so.

No. Compare even a beefed up e-bike like the greyp to a smaller motorcycle like a Suzuki DR-Z400 SM. The wheels, fork, frame, rear swingarm, geometry and rake are all different. They need to be to handle freeway speeds safely. By the time you've souped up an ebike to be as safe as a motorcycle at high speed, you've converted it into a motorcycle. Those same changes make it less nimble, and therefore less useful, as a mountain bike. I'm not sure I would mix even small motorcycles in with bicycles on a public road.

> Useful to you but not so useful to people that don't know what safe means to > you.

I'm an avid motorcyclist, but most people are not. They don't feel comfortable going those speeds unless they have a cage lined with airbags around them. The fatality statistics suggest they're not crazy for wanting such a thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The public transit system used to be privately owned and operated. Then the cities took over and kicked out the private sector. Now we have terrible public transit.

Yes, even the subways in NYC were built and operated by private companies (there were two, and they competed).

<comment><USER3> Public transit, like most infrastructure, shouldn't be privatized imho. We don't want infrastructure that serves only those who can pay. I'm perfectly fine with a public transit system that needs subsidies. We heavily subsidize cars by providing cheap or free parking in cities, why not public transport?

<comment><USER6> Singapore has privatized transit. Quality of service is exceptionally high and it's one of the cheapest rail services in the world, precisely because the economic pressure encourages the lines to favor QOS and volume.

<comment><USER7> The MRT and LRT are owned by the Land Transport Authority, Ministry of Transport, i.e. the government. What transit are you referring to?

<comment><USER6> Mrt was private until last year, so jury's out on where the quality goes. Comfortdelgro runs three subway lines, IIRC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Author doesn't put enough blame on the built environment. If you have urban planning codes that require 2 parking spaces per dwelling and detached single- family homes, the area will not be economically serviceable by transit (nor will it be walkable). In much of America, car transportation is legally mandatory.

<comment><USER9> You can reach the "serviceable by transit" population density with that requirement for "2 parking spaces per dwelling and detached single-family homes".

Let's allow for a road that is legally 50 feet wide. Each house's share of that is half, so 25 feet. (it is 12.5 feet pavement and 12.5 feet curb/swale/sidewalk/etc.)

We need a 20x20 space for a normal cheap (no elevator) double garage. We want this home legitimately "detached", so let's allow enough room for scaffolding to stay within the property on both sides and the rear. That makes the lot 28 feet wide, and adding room for a staircase takes it to 32 feet wide. Including the half-street, the lot is 49 feet deep. That means 1568 square feet for the house.

At this size, there are 17780 homes per square mile. For comparison, we can fit 841953 homes in San Francisco. We can't just have homes of course, but on the other hand there will be more than 1 person per home. It happens that San Francisco contains almost exactly that many people, 884363 as of 2017. San Francisco also happens to be the second most densely populated large US city, behind only New York.

It thus works fine, or at least as well as the second most dense large city in the USA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Bay area public transport is the worst. Forgot about quality, it does not even reach everywhere. Bart is not even safe, I can't believe I miss subway

<comment><USER11> "not even reach everywhere"

This is the fault of building where there isn't transit. Not the fault of transit. Do we complain that municipal water doesn't go "everywhere" because some people build wells?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The length of the high speed rail system in the US leaves a lot to be desired. Their HSR system doesn't even crack the top 10 [1].

[1] - [https://geoshen.com/posts/10-longest-high-speed-rail- systems...](https://geoshen.com/posts/10-longest-high-speed-rail-systems-in- the-world)

</comment><comment><USER13> In the Seattle area, the local government insists on ripping up the tracks to create urban "trails".

<comment><USER14> My armchair perspective of this is that rails-to-trails is a federally- sanctioned move and adding transit use to those rails is both difficult and politically hard.

It is difficult because leaving the rails as-is means small rail operators like Ballard Terminal will insist on still being able to run one freight train a week so that means transit has to compete for time slots and the operating agency has to buy FRA mixed-use compatible train sets (expensive, slow, noisy) or plead for a waiver like Denton's DCTA got (not gonna happen in this administration).

It is politically hard because, to pick on Kirkland, people get very cranky about rail near neighborhoods and they insist that it brings "the wrong people" and the idyllic pictures of fit people walking and jogging and cycling with their kids along a leafy path...not that "terrible" transit that will "destroy" quality of life.

So trails move on and transit has to fight some other time.

<comment><USER13> > adding transit use to those rails is both difficult

I can't imagine how boring tunnels under Bellevue is easier.

<comment><USER15> Tunnels are invisible, so NIMBYism is less triggered?

It may be technically more involved, but politically much more palatable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> By having hundreds of thousands of 5+ seat vehicles with 1 person inside.

</comment><comment><USER17> That comparison to Toronto is absurd. It's a metro area with many times the population and density of the other cities listed. And what the hell is this?

"Below is a set of maps that show the present-day network rail and bus lines operating at least every 30 minutes, all day to midnight, seven days a week"

This effectively excludes every bus line, because there is no reason for bus lines to run the same route all day long. This is one of the major advantages of buses.

<comment><USER18> >This effectively excludes every bus line, because there is no reason for bus lines to run the same route all day long. This is one of the major advantages of buses.

I can't think of a single bus line in my city that actually _changes it 's route_ throughout the day. Sure there's some that don't go as far into the suburbs after a certain time, but the part in the city would still qualify as "all day" by that definition. And as a rider, I would hate to use a bus that goes by one neighborhood in the morning and another in the afternoon. That's what different route numbers are for, there's no reason to have the confusion.

<comment><USER19> GP doesn't mean that some bus lines change routes. In American cities most bus routes stop running or run less frequently as it gets later in the day. This article is excluding any that stop or become less frequent before midnight.

<comment><USER17> And many bus routes run only at night

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'd think safety (or lack of the same) might be a factor too.

<comment><USER21> cars kill ~3x as many people per year as gun crime _.

Public transit is orders of magnitude safer than personal transit.

_crime excludes suicide. total gun deaths per year is about the same as vehicle deaths per year.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do employers care whether my Computer Science degree is a B.A. or B.S? - <AUTHOR>

Yes, it's a serious question. I'm a community college student who is applying this fall to transfer into a University of California. Although most universities offer CS as a B.S. degree, some offer it in BOTH B.S. and B.A. The B.S. degree would require me to stay an extra year to finish a math class and the physics series, however I've been in CC for too long and would like to transfer as soon as possible.<p>I was thinking of going for the B.A. degree, but I would like to know if that would put me at a disadvantage later on when I'm applying for jobs. Thanks. <comment><USER2> I don't think any of the bosses I've ever had would realize that there's a difference. Maybe 1 in 100 would even think to find out why the letter is different. I would probably notice and there's a slim chance I'd ask what's different about it out of curiosity but it wouldn't make much of a difference to me. The fact that you're the kind of person that even knows the difference would be more important to me.

</comment><comment><USER3> Many employers do not even care if you have a degree.

I remember when I applied for my first full-time, non-freelancing job. I do not have a degree (I had been in the field for long enough to feel that I had significant experience), so I would not bother looking at postings that requested one. Therefore, I did not bother submitting my resume to my that employer.

Instead, a headhunter found my resume, the company interviewed me and they ended up hiring me. I was fairly close with the person responsible for hiring me, and he stated that the degree never crossed his mind. Instead, they looked at the source code for one of my free software projects at the time and thought that I would be fit for the position.

I was later actively involved in the interviewing process for new candidates, and a degree was the last thing on any of most our minds. In fact, when asking for code samples, we found that many with degrees had only elementary knowledge because they only completed what was necessary for the course, but did not apply themselves any further.

That said, these were the opinions of my employer; others may not feel the same way. If you are able to provide extensive examples of your work to your employer (e.g. source code if you are applying for a programming position), that is likely to be more representative of your ability than a degree that only says "Yeah, (s)he completed this course."

</comment><comment><USER4> Short answer: No.

Long answer: They do not.

</comment><comment><USER5> You can always take the math and physics at UC after you are admitted. Universities tend to be pretty flexible about such things. You could also take them at a community college or other institution over a summer after you are admitted.

The first big thing is to get your associates and get to the university.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Unfortunately admissions are extremely competitive, and I hear only the people with high GPA + all finished pre-reqs get in. I figure if I get accepted somewhere, I'd rather focus on the CS/programming material than finishing classes that are irrelevant to my major.

<comment><USER5> What I am suggesting is that it is not likely to be particularly difficult to get faculty support to switch from a BA to a BS once you are in the department.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My experience from other science fields suggests that the difference between a BA and a BS may be as much about the school as the academic program. I went to MIT, which gives BS for music and other humanities. My wife went to Middlebury, which gave her a BA in chemistry, as they do in all the sciences.

A bachelor's degree - BA or BS - is more about your particular courses and program of study than anything about the letters.

I'm still in academia - at a liberal arts college, marlboro.edu - and don't have much experience with what employers want. But my CS students - most with BA's - seem to be doing fine.

</comment><comment><USER7> Some employers say they want a BS. But it usually just means they didn't consider that CS BA degrees exist. Hardly any employers ever actually verify you have a degree at all. Usually the ones that split hairs over this stuff are places you don't want to work at, because it boils down to: this hypothetical employer cares whether you took another two classes.

Case in point: when I applied to grad school it did seem to be a big deal that I have a BA and not a BS. I took this (among other things) as a sign I didn't actually want to go to that school...

</comment><comment><USER8> I maybe wrong but I believe it depends on what you want to do with your degree. If you want to do video game programming I would think that the core physics coursework would be a definite prerequisite. I'm pretty sure more hardware related firms might also look into your science coursework as well. This will probably be less important if you want to pursue web programming or something more high level.

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't care if you even have a degree. Your interview may not even involve schoolwork, unless you bring up a project.

We're hiring at our startup, Sococo. Check it out, now or when you graduate.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. Although I'm not experienced enough in programming to be valuable anywhere, I will definitely look into your startup when I significantly improve my skills.

I have another question. I see you're located in Mountain View. I'm assuming you receive a lot of applications from top tier universities such as Stanford and Berkeley. Is the degree still not that important?

Assuming you get two applicants of equal ability, one is from a top tier college and the other from...let's say a CSU college. Would you be biased towards the more elite applicant?

Sorry if these questions are silly. I'm really interested in the recruiter's perspective though.

<comment><USER9> All of our applications are from references or cold calls. We don't filter anything, at least as far as I know.

I'm from a state U. Our chief Architect completed his degree decades after leaving college. Our VP of Eng. has no degree. Humility aside, all are top- knotch professionals with years of experience.

Of course we also have PhD's and Stanford graduates. Because they rock. But other people rock too.

We'v hired unknown people based on personal references, and we have a great team. Enthusiasm, smarts, a willingness to jump into a chaotic environment and swim like mad to stay afloat are all more important than technical credits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> How does a degree in computer _science_ be anything _but_ a B.S.? It would seem a bit contradictory the other way, or in the least a misnomer...

<comment><USER11> I have a friend who got her BA in CS at Yale. She's now in law school and unable to apply for the patent bar because of it, which isn't a big deal since she'll be a patent litigator, but it is an odd wrinkle in the system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> No.

Find something interesting to work on while you're in school. You'll gain experience and have something to talk about in job interviews.

</comment><comment><USER13> I have a ba in computer science from cornell and it hasn't been a problem. Initially wanted to be a philosophy major.

<comment><AUTHOR> So did your curriculum involve a decent amount of liberal arts classes mixed with CS classes? Do you think your understanding of computer science is as solid as the people who did the B.S. program?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Considering that a lot of employers state that they want a CS Degree OR equivalent experience you should be fine.

</comment><comment><USER15> If I were you, I would be bothered about bigger issues about joining such a company.

</comment><comment><USER16> I don't think they would but it would be a big plus if you have a DEGREE.</comment>


Ask HN: Would you join a private tech community with 30-50 members? - <AUTHOR> I didn't want to post a 'Show HN' for this because it's still in development - but I'm trying to see if HN users are interested in joining small communities (30-50 users) of tech-minded people with a goal of making more meaningful connections.
Anyway I'm calling them HackerPods, https://founderpanel.com/articles/full/hackerpod and you can sign up at the bottom if you want to.
I'd love to hear any feedback, positive or negative. <comment><USER2> Why not? If small startups have great idea, funding, good team, etc. I think tech-people will join such startup.

<comment><AUTHOR> I hope so. I wouldn't call it a startup - I'm much more interested in figuring out how hard it is to create meaningful small communities of tech people. Really I just want to join one, and it's not like making a discussion board is hard, so I figured I'd give it a go.

That being said, I do think it's likely that some of the members of such a community would eventually partner up on a startup just as a function of knowing each other and having similar interests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Are you willing to take junior developers like me for this community, I would love to join?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah for sure. Feel free to pass the link along to anyone else you think might want to join.</comment></comment>


YouTube removes hundreds of the best climate science videos from the Internet - <AUTHOR> http://climatestate.com/2017/02/03/youtube-removes-hundreds-of-the-best-climate-science-videos-from-the-internet/ <comment><USER2> It's more likely the channel was brigaded by r/The_Donald supporters or 4chan than YouTube actually doing anything. Their systems are so automated, stuff like this happens all of the time - the users wield an unseemly huge amount of power to knock content offline.

So, lessons learned: 1) Keep backups of everything you'd upload to YouTube. 2) Vimeo.com account 3) Petition YouTube to revamp their content policing strategies to keep humans in the loop instead of algorithms knocking content offline because a mob with pitchforks decides they don't agree with you.

<comment><USER3> Youtube-dl [1] is a great tool to backup videos from Youtube. (And just a pip install away)

[1] [https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/](https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/)

<comment><USER4> On Android: Install Termux and you can install youtube-dl via pip.

Bonus tip: install the Termux API app, and termux-tools package, and get clipboard access (along with other Android features).

<comment><USER5> On Android I use Youtube Downloader, which has the necessary Intents stuff to let you just open an YT link with it. Shame it went closed source, though.

Is there some terminal app that lets you create new Intents to run commands? Should be simple to tie the action "Open link to youtube.com/" to running "youtube-dl $link".

<comment><USER6> Here's [1] an open source app that lets you share a link from youtube which then uses a hosted version of youtube-dl to get the direct link to the mp4 url and pass it back to the Android Download app

[1] [https://github.com/zeronickname/VideoDownloader](https://github.com/zeronickname/VideoDownloader)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I stand up and point my finger again in the direction of decentralization. Here we have this massive societal infrastructure, a huge education tool and a hub for culture, and the whole thing is under the control of a single entity whose primary motive is exclusively profit.

The core infrastructure of the internet (search, social media, archives, etc.) should not be under the influence of single companies. The internet was supposed to be decentralized but we ended up with individual companies taking huge monopolies over our standard internet experiences.

I don't think there is any tech out there today that can properly replace YouTube. Especially things like the recommendation engine. But I also don't think it's that far out of reach. We should putting greater effort into decentralizing the core parts of the internet.

Money, search, email, data storage, social media, DNS, ISP, and I'm sure dozens of other things. We don't need to be vulnerable like this.

<comment><USER8> I mean, you stated it pretty clearly yourself. How would a recommendation system rivaling YouTube's work in a decentralized fashion?

There's also the fact that people spend a lot of time, effort, and money making these videos. How would they get paid by a decentralized system?

I want to decentralize too, absolutely. But I'm at a loss as to how we'd accomplish it in a way that ultimately benefits society instead of making an inferior product.

<comment><USER9> blockchain technologies enable large decentralized systems.

<comment><USER10> Yeah 'enable' but they clearly don't seem to drive mass adoption in and of themselves

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Their videos are just clips of others' content, this isn't original work or a leader on the topic: [https://www.youtube.com/user/ClimateProgressWorld/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/ClimateProgressWorld/videos)

This reeks of breaking a ToS and then trying to masquerade their political site as something more noble to rationalize creating a narrative of victimhood for marketing/attention.

The group/person behind climatestate.com is either deluded or trying to sell an aggrandizing message by claiming that they're the subject of a "concerted attack on climate science originating from the current U.S. Administration". There might be an attack, but no way was this on anyone's radar.

</comment><comment><USER12> > YouTube removes hundreds of the best climate science videos _from the > Internet_

No, they did not. YouTube removed them from YouTube.

Don't trust others to host your things or provide you with access to other's things.

<comment><USER13> What should they have done?

Sure, they could not post videos on the largest video-sharing platform on the Internet. They could pay someone to host and maintain all that content themselves and have far fewer people see them.

You're not wrong to distrust YouTube (or any such site), but this isn't all on the videomakers. They have a choice: put their stuff on YouTube and risk it being taken down, or put their stuff somewhere else and know for certain far fewer people will see it.

<comment><USER14> _What should they have done?_

Keep backups. Otherwise when YouTube deletes it from YouTube, YouTube deletes it from the everywhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Sounds like fake news nothing but speculation and inuendo.

<comment><USER16> Did you see the article someone in this thread linked (cached)? It quotes YouTube's emails verbatim.

I don't really have anything to be outraged about because we don't now why they did it. Certainly one thinks of Trump's positions but this would not extent to YouTube's actions.

<comment><USER15> The fake part is that they are cherry picking facts from several unrelated things and putting them in the same article. The intent is clearly to give the impression to readers that they should think that their channel was somehow taken down do to government censorship when there is in fact zero evidence to suggest that. This is the _exact_ MO of all those sites people love to hate for fake news. The only real difference here is that because this fake story is about something that jives with a lot of peoples political opinions here they were primed to believe it w/o questioning.

<comment><USER16> okay but the channel was taken down for some reason - what is it? I guess we don't know. If they were spamming or abusing policy in some active way they certainly hid it well in the write-up. (Dangerously so - it would take half a sentence for any reader, even a YouTube employee writing anonymously, to call them out on it.)

There must be some "real" (actual) reason - and no one has even speculated as to what it is. The writeup (which you can see in the cached copy elsewhere in this thread, if the site is still down or unresponsive) makes it really clear that they haven't broken any policy and actively sought guidance on what their infraction might have been.

<comment><USER17> YouTube says:

>This account has been terminated due to multiple or severe violations of YouTube's policy against spam, deceptive practices, and misleading content or other Terms of Service violations.

<comment><USER16> They asked for clarification and did not receive any, and didn't have any violations they knew about. They certainly sound like they don't believe they have any violations and were not doing anything wrong.

I will say that the word "ongoing" sounds like they admit they did some specific thing wrong in the past, that they rectified. It doesn't sound like "this came as a _total_ surprise to us." I'm curious why they didn't choose to elaborate on the word "ongoing". Still, there had to be some reason for this action.

They're curious what that was. (Or are faking being curious what that was - and they're faking it well; I believe them.)

<comment><USER15> If their videos are anything like this blog post then they certainly fall into the "deceptive" category. No mystery there.

<comment><USER16> What is deceptive about the blog post?

<comment><USER15> Everything? They are implying that their some some conspiracy against them.

<comment><USER16> There is literally a conspiracy - [https://www.google.com/search?q=trump+climate+change+social+...](https://www.google.com/search?q=trump+climate+change+social+media+ban)

by the administration, so... I'm still waiting for the misleading part? I am sure you will agree that there is a conspiracy (two or more people in Trump's administration, conspiring.)

You're saying it doesn't affect them, but if the conspiracy doesn't aeffect them then...why did this happen?

I guess I just don't see anything misleading about their report. If I had my blog about climate change removed since Trump's administration and was told not to open any new blog, period (despite having thousands of views) I'd come to the obvious conclusion that this was the reason. I would (as they did) ask for clarification.

I mean what other reason is there? What did they do wrong exactly - and why wouldn't YouTube clarify in their human-written email on the subject which they quoted in full?

I guess I don't understand your perspective at all.

<comment><USER15> You think that because the administration asked executive agencies to stop all posting to social media under _official_ government accounts that that means YouTube took down a _private_ parties youtube channel run by a private party / individual company not associated with the US government?

There is literally ZERO evidence that is true.

What you are saying is like saying I saw the president's dog poop on the white house lawn and today I found poop on my lawn. Then concluding it must have been the president's dog that pooped on your lawn. It's nutty false and untrue.

You are taking two completely unrelated facts and making a wild unsupported claim which most people would call misleading if not a lie.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is the problem with using any privately-owned server as your primary vehicle for hosting your content. By all means, post your videos to YouTube - but please, host secondary copies yourself, especially now that government censorship seems to be becoming the norm.

[Edit] "government censorship seems to be becoming the norm" is perhaps too extreme. Still, the link between the article's evidence of increased censorship and the Trump administration's stance on climate change (and other issues) is concerning.

<comment><USER19> Censorship aside, content creators should _never_ depend on a single third- party service for hosting their videos, especially if they intend to make a living from that content. Google has already proven willing to remove arbitrary content, delete channels, etc. from Youtube with no apparent rationale or recourse given.

I _suspect_ a lot of their recent "glitches" are an attempt to poison the well for public content and to drive potentially copyright infringing channels[0] away in order to eventually turn the service into an entirely subscription based, big media friendly platform. But who knows? The point is, it doesn't matter. Unless you're Sony, you might well wake up tomorrow to find your entire channel erased, and you'll never know why.

If your content is important to you, consider hosting it elsehwere, or else offering it as a torrent. It may require a bit more of a technical investment, be less convenient, and even reduce revenue, but in the long run, the more channels for distribution you have, the more you can afford to lose.

[0] infringing from the point of view of media conglomerates, who refuse to respect the legitimacy of fair use.

<comment><USER20> This is why MediaGoblin is such an important project. By all means, publish to YouTube, offload different codec/bitrate copies to BitTorrent, place a copy on the Internet Archive, but also run a MediaGoblin server.

[0] [http://mediagoblin.org/](http://mediagoblin.org/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> i'm not ready to jump to conclusions that this is government-related as implied in the article. i'd like to know more, but youtube's takedown policy is not a court of law and no rulings are ever published.

</comment><comment><USER22> Server is responding pretty slowly (maybe not used to this much traffic?) so here's a Google cache for it: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:lxQe4zC...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:lxQe4zCXSVwJ:climatestate.com/2017/02/03/youtube- removes-hundreds-of-the-best-climate-science-videos-from-the- internet/&num=1&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1&vwsrc=0)

</comment><comment><USER23> You see, this is the problem with automated DMCA stuff. If enough people don't like your stuff, they just brigade report you until youtube or $company gets rid of you. The second they bought youtube I knew eventually their evil would infiltrate it, unfortunately though no competitor has done a good job replacing them.

My favorite comment on youtube comes from one of the founders, Jawed Karim, back when google was trying to merge all accounts and force you to use real names in google+ and then to tie google+ to youtube: "why the fuck do i need a google+ account to comment"

I whish people wouldn't deride those of us critical of google for being essentially NSA's best friend and reminding people they basically started by the CIA's venture capital firm In-Q-Tel. Please attempt to refrain from accusing those of us who do "paranoid conspiracy theorists" because I feel like over time we are being proven correct and being vindicated, as much as I would like it to be otherwise.

*Edited to take dijit's advice and be less negative/combative.

<comment><USER24> I find it highly likely that you're going to be downvoted due to being so hostile.

If that's the case, please don't assume it's because of a conspiracy, or that everyone loves google.

Plenty of people on HN are very critical of google and centralisation in general, myself included.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> How can they not have copies of their videos? Are these original content or taken from other sources without permission?

</comment><comment><USER26> the dmca is one of the worst things that has ever happened to the internet. i hope one day we get rid of it.

</comment><comment><USER27> Wtf. Is this for real?

Furthermore: Could it be due to an automatic process?

<comment><USER28> Everything at Google is automated. It's just that to get a response from an actual person when you appeal a decision, you usually need to have a blog post that reaches the front page of HN, and a couple of known friends inside Google. Sometimes even that is not enough.

Google's support has become a meme at this point, on par with Valve's support.

<comment><USER29> Did Google ever actually have human tech support staff? That just doesn't sound like the sort of thing they'd do.

<comment><USER30> Yes. The Google Play Store (the part where you can buy phones etc.) has actually good support. I think the only other area they have support is Google AdSense and maybe the paid Google Apps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Agreed with the brigades. I've been watching Rust videos on building bases and evidently some of the more popular streamers get hammered by take down requests all the time from the Zerg clans. _Zerg_ is evidently a term used by players to refer to the "group think mentality" players. Learn something new every day!

</comment><comment><USER32> googles automatic takedowns has a lot of false posetives. and their support is bad or non existing. they dont do manual takedowns though. if your lucky they will restore.

</comment><comment><USER33> Time to start archiving to the Internet Archive.

<comment><USER34> I hope they have Servers outside the control of the US government.

<comment><USER4> [http://www.thehill.com/policy/technology/307942-internet- arc...](http://www.thehill.com/policy/technology/307942-internet-archive- putting-database-in-canada-to-keep-it-from-trump)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Scary.

</comment><comment><USER36> .

<comment><USER37> What reason do you have to doubt it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Okay, USA, I guess you're going to be losing a lot of business to countries with less crazy governments now. I wish I could say the UK will benefit, but I doubt it.

<comment><USER39> I find it incredibly difficult to believe that the US government is demanding the removal of climate science videos from YouTube, and even more difficult to believe that YouTube would acquiesce to such a request.

I'm sure we'll learn of a far more mundane explanation in short order. My money is on some automated process mistakenly removing content (possibly triggered by trolls, but just as likely triggered by a sub-par algorithm).

<comment><USER40> It's not really a mistake. It's the design of those automated systems. There is little to no human control in taking down material that people complain about.

There have been activists - e.g. Muslim immigrants who work against Islamism - who are targeted by complaints from hard-line Islamists and whose accounts have been suspended. So this is nothing to do with Trump administration.</comment></comment></comment>


Flutter (YC W12) acquired by Google - <AUTHOR> https://flutterapp.com/ <comment><USER2> I guess they weren't joking

[https://mail.google.com/mail/help/motion.html](https://mail.google.com/mail/help/motion.html)

<comment><USER3> Wow! :) ... I remember this April fool joke. Cool how it comes true now :)

<comment><USER4> Haha :)... There was also a reply from the company. On the same day too: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq1FM84uAck](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq1FM84uAck)

Looking forward to controlling my living room with gestures :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow congrats to the team! I met them when they were interviewing at YC. They were waiting around to pitch pg and gave me a demo.. I was speechless at the time and I quickly began thinking of all use cases this technology could work with.

</comment><comment><USER6> congrats to them, never heard of them before. went to their website (after reading the note) and tried to find _any_ documentation on how to use the app. found none other than you can "now use previous and forward". became immediately disinterested.

</comment><comment><USER7> Congrats to the team. This makes me think that Google may be trying to incorporate gesture data manipulation into Glass. They should snap up Thalmic Labs too.

<comment><USER8> Please not until we can get our hands on myo device and some access to the driver :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I remember thinking back when they first launched that a Google acquisition could be good for both parties. Congrats to the team, can't wait to see how your technology gets developed and deployed!

</comment><comment><USER10> Congrats Mehul and Navneet! Very happy to see such a positive outcome. Can't wait to see what you do with Google's firepower behind you.

</comment><comment><USER11> Obvious usage: Google is lagging behind their competition in the TV space. Apple's iTV, Ouya is taking Android into set-top space with their own ecosystem, Sony is bringing out the VitaStation... and then Microsoft and Valve have their higher-end devices that threaten to become general-purpose living-room computing/media machines beyond the hardcore gaming crowd.

The non-hardcore-gamer set-top space is getting crowded and Google TV flopped.

TV is the natural space for gestures, where a mouse and keyboard aren't practical. Microsoft knows this, Sony knows this - that's why Sony planned the camera as a standard feature for PS4 and only gutted it after cost concerns overwhelmed them.

<comment><USER12> And yet I love my Chromecast so much. An amazing first step.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have always love Flutter. Yes it made me feel like a superhero !. i always showed my non techie friends Flutter how can i change a song just by waving. I was hoping to see more updates and features from you. Anyways. All the best

</comment><comment><USER14> Its great to see a good product acquired by google, a perfect fit. Goes to Right hands.

And I hope, Google brings them to the common man sooner in very elegant ways. 2013 is the age of new Interfaces.

But, I always have this problem with Google - I don't like to see Google as an Engineering first company. They engineer so much, sometimes never reaching common man.

They must first focus from elegance, we call them Top to Down. I've made this mistake a zillion times tyring to engineer too much and forget on usablity and serving purpose.

</comment><comment><USER15> Awesome! Looking forward to jedi controls in my Gmail. Great job guys.

</comment><comment><USER16> I like how they still let you go to their website and use their product. Most companies that are acquired don't let you do that for some reason.

<comment><USER17> There's a link at the bottom to access the original homepage and then download the software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Congrats guys. Great outcome for a solid team.

</comment><comment><USER19> Congrats Navneet, Mehul, & team!

</comment><comment><USER20> What a beautiful website

</comment><comment><USER21> Just downloaded it in my PC.. wow.. awesome app!.. real magic!

</comment><comment><USER22> Congrats guys!

</comment><comment><USER23> Congrats!</comment>


The Fed caused 93% of the entire stock market's move since 2008 - <AUTHOR> http://finance.yahoo.com/news/the-fed-caused-93--of-the-entire-stock-market-s-move-since-2008--analysis-194426366.html <comment><USER2> I'm deeply suspicious of these 'just so' explanations. While it's not at all surprising that QE would be a major driver of the past several years, I'm not convinced that the flat graph is so meaningful. The regression is interesting, but ultimately it is just correlation, and only one of many tested.

I also don't think the market is neatly divided into segments of having a single dominant driver. That's a major assumption about how the market works, and is supported by simply finding 'flat spots' on the many charts produced.

I think this is valuable analysis, but conclusions like "the Fed caused ..." are just nonsense. A smart investor could use this information to look for trend changes, but they do not explain the market.

<comment><USER3> Are former Fed Chairman Bernanke's comments on the cause of the Great Depression another case of a 'just so' story? Why would it be so hard to believe that the Fed could cause massive changes in the market?

[http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/Speeches/2002/200211...](http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/Speeches/2002/20021108/default.htm)

<comment><USER4> The point is that any theory made after events are observed cannot use the events it is explaining as evidence that it is correct.

The reason is that given any dataset, you can come up with thousands of stories that explain the data perfectly, but have no predictive power. This is also called 'overfitting' in machine learning contexts.

However, a prediction made before events can use those events as evidence of the correctness of the theory.

What is the evidence for the theory in this article? Well, it is that it explains past events. But those events can't be used as evidence for the theory, and if that is all there is, this is a 'just so story'.

Another way to say this is: "The fact that a theory does not conflict with existing observations is not evidence that it is correct."

<comment><USER5> > The point is that any theory made after events are observed cannot use the > events it is explaining as evidence that it is correct.

That's complete nonsense. Theories are almost always made after collecting observations.

They may be confirmed using future observations, or by statistical analysis, however.

<comment><USER6> He's right. It's the same reason why the FDA forces you to state your hypothesis prior to running a clinical trial. If you just run a trial then it's pretty easy to cherry-pick the data that supports your claim.

There is nothing wrong with looking back to see if a variable explains an observation. However, the true test of the hypothesis is predicting future events.

<comment><USER7> They don't have to be future. They just have to be unknown when the hypothesis is formulated or selected.

Because we can't trust people, future is a safe and sufficient choice. It's not necessary. (That's why machine learning people use hold-out sets.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One of the issues I have with the article, and many simple financial articles is the assertion that the Fed "stopped" purchasing bonds in late 2014.

The Truth is the Fed Continues to purchase Treasury Bills and Mortgage Backed Securities for all that reach maturity. More than half of the purchases during QE mature within 5 years, as it stands now rather than allowing the Bonds to Mature and Come off the balance sheet the Fed simply repurchases them, what they aren't doing is increasing the amount of purchases as they were during QE.

This is why the amount of Treasuries and MBS owned by the Fed has remained constant more than a year after QE ended.

$2.4 Trillion in Treasuries [https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/TREAST](https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/TREAST) and $1.75 Trillion in Mortgage Backed Securities [https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/MBST](https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/MBST)

<comment><USER9> So apparently the government has fixed matters.

One starts with a big risks banks would go bankrupt as a result of an asset bubble.

One gets the government to fix things using an unlimited supply of government spending. Stir thoroughly, and we get :

Big risk that big banks AND the government will go bankrupt (ie. hyperinflation, because "governments can't go bankrupt") as the result of an asset bubble.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have many problems with this article and its title. The title first implies that there is causation here -- and does little to prove causation, and instead the article cites correlation to back up the title.

The economy is highly complex, and I suspect that using 5 variables to describe it is wrong.

Additionally, the writer doesn't mention this, but if the Fed bought up equities as part of their quantitative easing program and the market grew and recovered further, then their assets would naturally grow with the market. I don't think this was accounted for.

<comment><USER8> $4 Trillion dollars between 2008 and 2014 added to the Fed's balance sheet, coupled with zero percent interest rates afforded to the Special Few who were able to take out loans and sell bonds to buy back stocks to drive up the price per share, definitely caused the stock market to go up.

The stock market is not the economy...

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm skeptical of the methodology and explanation as presented in this article, but similar things have been observed in the academic literature.

The most famous one I can think of is the pre-FOMC announcement drift ([https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff...](https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff_reports/sr512.pdf)). The authors observe that "80% of annual realized excess stock returns since 1994" are accounted for by the 24 hours of trading before an FOMC announcement. If we take this as evidence that the Fed "causes" most of the stock market's move (which we probably shouldn't), the effect is nothing new.

</comment><comment><USER12> Interest rates NEED to go up now. The housing market in many major cities is a disaster. Toronto seems to have a bubble of epic proportion. You can buy a million dollar home at 3K a month. As home buyers, our jaws are on the floor. It is absolutely unfair what has happened to people of my generation. We just had a kid and I'm just sad how bad of a situation we are in wrt housing.

<comment><USER13> >As home buyers, our jaws are on the floor. It is absolutely unfair what has happened to people of my generation.

I agree interest rates need to go up, but rising rates aren't going to improve the housing market. When I graduated from college the housing market in my area was booming while rates were at 12%. If you think you can't afford a house now, wait until your 3k monthly payment buys you a $150k house.

<comment><USER12> When I factor in taxes, I'd prefer a 150K home with 20% interest rates. Making 200K and 1.5 million houses (with me paying a 50% marginal tax rate), I feel life is impossible.

<comment><USER13> Which would you rather be selling after 30 years - a $1.5m house, or a $150k house?

Also, house prices do not necessarily go down when interest rates go up. If interest rates are rising because of inflation people rush into the housing market looking for an asset that will hold its value. You may end up with the worst of both worlds - $1.5m houses (in constant dollars) and 12% interest rates. Just because all you can afford is a $150k house doesn't mean one will be available at that price.

<comment><USER12> Canada has another weirdness, which is most mortgages are 5 years (amortized over 25 years). I agree with your argument that housing may not fall precipitously when interest rates rise. I am REALLY worried what will happen to us in 5 years when we have to refinance the home loan. I guess if things get bad, we'll just have to sell the house (assuming that prices didn't fall). The whole thing makes me feel uneasy.

<comment><USER9> That's not the worst of it. Currently interest rates do not cover the risk of non-payment. If you calculate out, at the standard default rate, plus risk- free interest rates, plus a certain amount to do all the admin work on a mortgage.

It just doesn't make sense for the banks to do mortgages at the moment. They're losing money on it. A little bit at the moment, but if the default rate were to go up by even 1%, God help us. Banks would be dropping like flies.

That's of course what bubbles do : they make the system more unstable. But that's what everybody's denying as well, despite the fact that a trivial excel sheet will tell you the obvious. A tiny problem will crash the system at the moment. Especially in Europe.

<comment><USER12> In Canada, we have something called "CHMC". Basically, the govt will insure mortgages. The banks have little risk IMHO ... majority of the risk is assumed by the taxpayer and the borrower.

<comment><USER8> The US basically did the same when it took over Fannie and Freddie in 2008, it's not something which is spoke of often in the US but for all intents and purposes the US govt and Federal Reserve own most of the mortgages in the US. The US nationalized Fannie and Freddie, under the false premise they would be re-privatized after paying back the government. Instead they paid back the government in full years ago and now the interest from mortgage payments goes right to the treasury. They also for all intents and purposes Nationalized Student Loans with Obamacare and the "Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_Care_and_Education_Reco...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_Care_and_Education_Reconciliation_Act_of_2010), where by all of the Interest Rates made off of student loans helps pay for Obamacare. As it stands the US Treasury is profiting to the tune of over $100 Billion a year, though its hardly mentioned, I'd venture to bet 90% of the general population is completely unaware. [http://www.wsj.com/articles/fannie- and-freddie-forever-14515...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/fannie-and-freddie- forever-1451520683)

<comment><USER9> But all that is even worse. It doesn't help for the fundamental problem : mortgages are losing money slowly and (I just checked) corporate loans and bonds are losing money a bit faster.

If the government owns those loans, once their losses accelerate ... well ... we know how they "fixed" that problem for student loans.

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/stephendash/2015/10/25/why- stude...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/stephendash/2015/10/25/why-student- loans-are-so-difficult-to-discharge-in-bankruptcy/#779b10f11430)

[http://www.bankrate.com/finance/student-loans/student- loan-h...](http://www.bankrate.com/finance/student-loans/student-loan-horror- stories-1.aspx)

<comment><USER8> Oh we're on a collision course with reality, and it is not going to be pretty. Buckle Up and Enjoy the Ride.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This seems strange to me. If the author "scoured hundreds of different factors" to find the ones to make the graph flat, isn't he just picking the data to match his theory? Surely if he searched through enough factors he would eventually find ones to support his theory. For those of you who understand regression analysis, does his claim that his thesis is confirmed with regression analysis hold water?

<comment><USER15> This is what I think too. The damn ratio of equity prices to fed assets is pretty much flat during 80-90% of his graph. If you truncated the graph at 1995, it would show the same trend.

In fact, I think his graph suggests the _opposite_ of his conclusion: which is that fed assets should maintain a steady ratio with equity values for strong economic growth. The times when they diverge coincide with economic bubbles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Blogspam of [http://feddashboard.com/one-force-drove-each-stock-market- bo...](http://feddashboard.com/one-force-drove-each-stock-market-boom-do-you- know-which)</comment>


How Facebook Figures Out Everyone You've Ever Met - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/how-facebook-figures-out-everyone-youve-ever-met-1819822691?IR=T <comment><AUTHOR> Behind the Facebook profile you've built for yourself is another one, a shadow profile, built from the inboxes and smartphones of other Facebook users. Contact information you've never given the network gets associated with your account, making it easier for Facebook to more completely map your social connections.</comment>


Victims of 'hacking' should be allowed to hack back says Texas rep - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130316/01560522347/rep-gohmert-wants-law-that-allows-victims-to-destroy-computers-people-who-hacked-them.shtml

<comment><USER2> As far as I can tell, it seems Rep. Gohmert and similar want to have the equivalent of "Stand-Your-Ground" laws on the Internet, but unfortunately, they just don't realize that there's no way to tell who you are standing against, so your intended self-protection could easily be intentionally misdirected at someone else --tricking the supposed defender into being an attacker.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, they'd end up targeting cracked servers and consumer machines running botnets. In the best case "scenario" of a hacker facing off directly with a sysadmin, you'd what, break something on the VM the hacker's using?

This guy must think that "destroying the hacker's computer" is the defender sending an energy pulse over the Internet causing just the hacker's computer to emit sparks and power off.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is, as far as I'm concerned, the TL;DR:

Rep. Gohmert: Well, I'm not sure that I would care if it destroyed a hacker's computer completely. As long as it was confined to that hacker. Are you saying we need to afford the hacker protection so we don't hurt him too bad?

Orin Kerr: (brief confounded look on his face) Uh... no. The difficulty is that you don't know who the hacker is. So it might be that you think the hacker is one person, but their routing communications... Let's say, you think you're being hacked by a French company, or even a company in the United States...

Rep. Gohmert: Oh and it might be the United States Government! And we don't want to hurt them if they're snooping on our people. Is that...?

Orin Kerr: No

</comment><comment><USER4> Sounds like this guy thinks Swordfish shows an accurate depiction of hacking.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is a poor attitude for any means of governance and order. A crime (robbery, murder, harassment, etc...) is more than an attack on an individual, it's an attack on the system as a whole. It's much more important that we prevent these malicious acts from happening at all than it is that we provide retribution in an "eye-for-an-eye" manner, and hacks are no different.

</comment><comment><USER6> If this were allowed, I could forsee a scenario in which someone receives 1 packet from a fake source address and proceeds to DDoS that address into oblivion while being legally protected...

</comment><comment><USER7> Imagine the fallout from a large DNS amplified DDoS attack under this law. I guess that would be an incentive to filter recursive lookups

</comment><comment><USER8> Oh please please fix that font you are using, on my iPhone it looks like a badly faxed article from 1997.

<comment><USER9> It's Trebuchet MS, a standard font on Windows/OSX, with Arial as the fallback if you don't have it...</comment></comment>


Ask HN: For people who consider coding a hobby/passion - <AUTHOR> Assuming you live in a time where there is no computer, what would you do as your hobby? What sort of hobby that is closely related to coding but without computer that you would consider? <comment><USER2> People did algorithms with pen and paper for years before there were computers. You don't get the thrill of having the machine do it for you, though - you have to do all the work.</comment>


Homespring: A Salmon-oriented Programming Language Spec [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://xeny.net/files/Homespring-Proposed-Language-Standard.pdf "You can see that Homespring programs have a very poetic and expressive quality. Although it is said that artists must suffer for their work, this does not apply to HOtMEfSPRIbNG as suffering is not included among its features." <comment><AUTHOR> "You can see that Homespring programs have a very poetic and expressive quality. Although it is said that artists must suffer for their work, this does not apply to HOtMEfSPRIbNG as suffering is not included among its features."</comment>


A Year of Functional Programming - <AUTHOR> http://japgolly.blogspot.com.au/2014/06/a-year-of-functional-programming.html <comment><USER3> " Recently I looked at some code I wrote 8 months ago and was shocked! I looked at one file written in "good OO-style", lots of inheritance and code reuse, and just thought "this is just a monoid and a bunch of crap because I didn't realise this is a monoid" so I rewrote the entire thing to about a third of the code size and ended up with double the flexibility. Shortly after I saw another file and this time thought "these are all just endofunctors," and lo and behold, rewrote it to about a third of the code size and the final product being both easier to use and more powerful."

That would be so much more useful if it came with the examples.

<comment><USER4> If you're interested in examples of useful monoids and similar structures, you may want to have a look at the Algebird[0] project or the recent work on CRDTs[1]. The code savings in these projects comes from being able to write the complex distributed aggregation / conflict resolution / etc. code just once, and reuse it with a menagerie of useful implementations.

Personally, I like structuring things using these tools when I can get away with it. They're simple and broadly applicable abstractions, and mean I can reuse both my intuitions and my code in wildly diverse situations.

[0] [https://github.com/twitter/algebird](https://github.com/twitter/algebird) [1] [http://highscalability.com/blog/2010/12/23/paper-crdts- consi...](http://highscalability.com/blog/2010/12/23/paper-crdts-consistency- without-concurrency-control.html)

<comment><USER5> What we want is a comparison: what was the OO code, and what did the functional code turn out to be? That way, we can judge for ourselves.

Typically, these examples take low-end crappy OO code and convert it to high- end elegant FP code. But this doesn't really convince anyone.

<comment><USER6> I don't know the OP's examples, but I think he is saying something subtly different: that he took (his own) low-end crappy OO code and converted it to high-end elegant _OO_ code, using the insight gained from _how_ he would have written it as FP.

<comment><USER5> I didn't get that from the article, but they aren't explicit about it.

<comment><USER3> I got that too, and that's exactly why I would like to see the code before and after. That's far more interesting than the rest of the article in my opinion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nice article!

I have been using Clojure for years, initially because a repetitive customer mandated its use, later for my own projects because it reduced my development time and is fun to code in. I tried Scala (really liked Martin Odersky's Coursera class!) but it did not stick.

That said, Haskell has started to win my mind share. At least for my own projects I have been mostly using Haskell this year, with some bits of Ruby for quick text processing and munging. When my Haskell abilities improve I would like to start using it for small text processing utilities also.

Sometimes Haskell can be as frustrating as hell (yes, cabal, I am thinking of you). It can be frustrating also when writing a bit of useful code took a while because of the never ending (for me) learning curve. However when I am in the flow with Haskell, it feels like my 30+ years of Lisp experiences, but with a stronger language. It has become a cliche about Haskell's type system guiding you away from bugs, but it is true. I never had that feeling with Common Lisp and Scheme (but I have not tried strongly typed Racket yet).

<comment><USER8> That's a bit of an off-topic but may I ask, why Haskell over Clojure. What are the differences? You partly asked that in the 2nd part, but I would like to know more. I never did any serious FP so would love to know where to start: Scala? Clojure(Script)? Haskell? F#?

<comment><USER4> Here's an article that was on the frontpage recently; some reflections from a Clojurist that switched to Haskell:

[http://bitemyapp.com/posts/2014-04-29-meditations-on- learnin...](http://bitemyapp.com/posts/2014-04-29-meditations-on-learning- haskell.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not at all trying to diss the OP, who wrote an interesting article, but if anything, this has put me off FP a bit. It really does seem like a lot of effort to go through for unclear benefits.

I have no doubt that learning FP will make me a better programmer (so perhaps it is worth it for that alone) but it seems to me I should rather spend those hours learning more data structures, or algorithms or machine learning.

Not sure I get it.

edit: it appears partially to be a definition problem. Exactly what is meant by FP and in what language, is a large part of the question.

<comment><USER10> I'm not sure what part of reducing a codebase by 2/3rds but with double flexibility is an "unclear benefit". Imagine if you could do that with a C# or Java library, people would be freaking out. Or getting almost all the safety of unit tests without writing and maintaining unit tests! That's awesome!

You want to be a lot better programmer? Go through SICP! It'll cover FP, data structures, interpreters, algorithms, and OO. You think you know OO now? I'd wager the chapter on OO will blow your socks off with awesome stuff you can use right now. And you'll learn FP enough to give you a taste of what's possible in the more powerful languages like Haskell.

Rather than sit around trying to figure out if it'll be worth it, just do it. I've never heard a programmer who has learned it who has said it was a waste of time. So then, what are you waiting for? No study will ever prove its better, just like no study proved Java was better, or C++ was better, or C was better. It's impossible to prove. Was each objectively better? In some ways. Is Haskell objectively better than all of them? Yup. There's all the proof you're going to get: opinions of those who know all of them. You either trust that, or you stay comfortable and fall behind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's not that I don't think that programming in a functional style isn't a good idea , it's just that the discussions about functional programming and the languages people use to implement its style so often suggest:

       If you use language 'x', then using
       mutation is wrong.

and recently, I've been thinking about the practically important but socially awkward question:

       What language is best for implementing
       mutable state?

By which I don't mean:

        What language makes avoiding mutable
        state impossible?

because given my skill set on some absolute scale that encompasses Knuth, I've got big fish to fry. Trying to maintain ideological purity is a distraction at best and an impediment at worst, if I am ever to see an _[m42]_ and have a solid intuition about its solution.

Even the most rousing chorus of 'Onward Christian Soldiers' isn't going to help me implement Hoare's Quicksort in Clojure. Consing and filtering are great, but they miss the idea of working in-place. Racket's built in O(log n)priority queue isn't a substitute for a traditional O(1) queue implementation:

       +</comment><comment>-+
       |   | o-|</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>+
       +-|-----+                  |
         |                        |
         v                        v
       +</comment><comment>-+    +</comment><comment>-+   +</comment><comment>--+
       |   | o-|--->|   |o-|--->|   | nil|
       +-|-----+    +-|-----+   +-|</comment><comment>+
         |            |           |
         v            v           v
        'a           'b          'c

The built in priority queue is mutable anyway.

The illustration of queues in Racket isn't rendered from whole cloth. If one searches the Racket documentation (depth first is implied?) the only hit for 'queue is the priority queue which lives in the 'data library [and again, it's still mutable and not thread safe]. But the real problem is that providing Racket implementations on Rosetta code is one of those ways Racketeers are encouraged to give back, and the implementation of LIFO on Rosetta Code shows the priority queue, rather than an actual queue, in part because using 'mcons is considered taboo under functional programming mores. It's a socially acceptable answer, rather than a correct one.

Some things just have to be to be mutable in order to get built in a way that will be useful when dealing with large tables when the first test of usability is getting built in the first place. It's not that playing with dangerous objects ought to be encouraged, it's that it there's nothing wrong with a little dynamite now and then for removing stumps when the alternative is lifting the grinder to the top of the cliff with a crane. All that really matters is acting in accord with the fact that, yes, we're using dynamite.

There's a continuum between Coq and MMIX. A good functional programming language allows refactoring a solution from right to left. It doesn't pretend as if there isn't a right wing or that it doesn't matter politically.

<comment><USER12> I suppose I can only speak for myself, but as a functional programmer I would never ask you to give up mutation completely.

I do think it's nice that most FP languages give us pure functions and persistent data structures that are easy to use and relatively performant, so we don't have to go out of our way to provide a pure (by construction) abstraction when we want to.

The key idea is to be honest when you are asking for mutation. Haskell would likely be far on the "left wing" (or right wing?) on your political spectrum but you can do mutation whenever you please as long as you're honest and mark it in the types with something like IO, State, or ST (Clojure does something similar in spirit with 'transient'). There is even unsafePerformIO if you are absolutely sure that you are wrapping an impure computation in a way that you know looks pure from the outside.

Purity isn't promoted because it's a virtue. It's that pure expressions generally come with nice commutativity and idempotency laws which give you the ability to refactor code while remaining confident you won't change its meaning or alter the behaviour of distance subsystems. It's worth preserving those properties when you can.

<comment><USER11> Maybe, what I am thinking is that a language which makes it easy to program in a functional style, should make it equally easy to program in an imperative one. By extension, this may mean that a good language for functional programming ought to make it easier to program imperatively than languages designed to facilitate imperative programming.

Of course, this begs the question of what is easier and harder and better and worse. There's a case to be made that Haskell's monads make imperative programming easier. It's essentially a mathematical argument - <USER2> abstracto-theoretical versus the sort of concrete arguments that get advanced to avoid discussions of why it might be better to reason with lambda-calculus versus using von-Neumann as a model.

To put it another way, being able to abstract away von-Neumann into mathematics is useful. But the von-Neumann model is useful because it is a model that we can easily get our heads around.

<comment><USER13> If you asked a Haskell expert what their favorite imperative language is, they'll probably say "Haskell."

That is because it "makes it easier to program imperatively" more than any other language I've met.

<comment><USER14> Only after the learning curve, though. It isn't immediately approachable as an imperative language.

<comment><USER15> Yes, but suppose you could write the same program in two languages, a classic imperative one, and a purist and difficult FP language.

For the sake of argument, let's assume the classic imperative language is easier to approach for rookies. If it's also the easiest language _to write bugs and make mistakes with_ , wouldn't the "harder" FP language still be a net win? As long as its learning curve isn't unapproachably steep -- i.e. so steep that your time to market becomes awful -- what is the advantage of the imperative language's ease to hit the ground running and writing lots of bugs?

<comment><USER11> If language 'a' lets a person write a program with 'b' bugs in time 't', and language 'aa' lets the same person write the same program with 'b' bugs in time 't-n' then there is a clear net win for all 'n' > zero.

If 'aa' also has the advantage of providing semantics for producing significantly less buggy code in time 't-n-m' at some future time then that is also an advantage but a distinctly different one and one which can be deferred [and probably will be given a significant learning curve].

The first step toward the modern automobile was the 'horseless carriage' not the Countach.

<comment><USER16> It's greatly overstating the learning curve. It's possible to pick up Haskell by simply writing a few small applications tackling different parts of the language in each one. This can be done in a few months. Not to mention there are now numerous resources available for free such as learn you a haskell, real world haskell, and countless blog posts.

<comment><USER17> I hear the Wikibook also has a good introduction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Ask HN: As somewhat of an old timer, I have a couple of questions about FP, not really worthy of creating their own thread:

1\. I learned a rule (in my Pascal textbook), "avoid globals." Is FP just an embodiment of that principle?

2\. I do a lot of programming involving hardware, often homemade. Hardware has state, such as whether a lamp is turned on or off. Does this just mean FP is inappropriate, or are there techniques out there that accrue the benefits of FP in systems that necessarily have state?

<comment><USER19> 1\. I think "avoid globals" is a reasonable way into FP, but FP itself involves a lot more than just avoiding coupling via global state. I would say the main components are

\- nested definitions;

\- lexical scoping;

\- first class functions;

\- static typing; and

\- a whole bunch of programming techniques (e.g. monads) that have grown around them.

2\. You certainly can use FP ideas in low-level programming but you'll have difficulty finding a FP language that targets your hardware. There are a few small Scheme implementations that might work. Rust is viable if we're talking 32-bit CPUs, not 8-bit.

(I imagine the Rust developers would not claim Rust is a functional language, but it has absorbed a great many ideas from functional languages. I prefer to talk about modern programming languages instead of functional programming languages. Rust, Haskell, and Scala are all modern and have many features in common. Only Haskell claims to be a pure FP language though.)

<comment><USER20> >\- static typing;

I'm not an expert on the theory or design of programming languages, but isn't static typing orthogonal to FP?

<comment><USER21> I will discuss Haskell, since I am not very familiar with other FP languages. In Haskell static typing is more useful than in other languages. This is because in Haskell the type signature of a function gives an upper bound of what the function does. In an impure language, a function may change any accessible mutable values and/or perform IO. These possible side effects mean that in an impure language the type of a function is a very weak indicator of what the function actually does.

<comment><USER20> So you're saying that static typing helps FP and hence is sort of a part of it?

Thanks for the answer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Suprised that the year ended with one language and not another, particularly given his background.

This could be indicative of a "good enough" FP trend where the net affect of language authors cherry picking FP constructs does _not_ , ironically enough, result in significantly increased adoption rates for those FP languages that are at the forefront of FP R&D.

Case in point: the recently announced Swift appears to have a decent grab bag of FP candy that will immediately appeal to legions of iThing app developers.

In short, it may be that Haskell, and particularly Scala (fending off Java 8, Kotlin, Groovy, and Clojure) will be fighting for scraps until one of them comes up with a killer stack that launches them out of niche status into the mainstream. Could be awhile yet...

</comment><comment><USER23> I used to like functional programming. Now I think that it's -- more often than not -- a solution in search of a problem. I can understand some of the things FP gets you (although those come at a cost, which I'll get to later); I'm just not so sure these are the things we need, or that FP is the best solution for them.

One is code reuse: yes FP code is definitely more reusable. The problem is that the kind of code it enables reuse of more than OO is very small, simple loops. This is never a big issue. Writing the same 4 line method -- which could have been abstracted with a monad -- 10 times in a 50-150K LOC project is never a big problem, and these methods rarely contain bugs. On the other hand, OO code is often easier to refactor and modify. Sometimes -- in Java for example -- dynamic linking combined with OO, lets you modify/add functionality without even re-compiling existing code. Heck, it let's you add and load new polymorphic type implementations at runtime. It is much more malleable than FP code.

Another is state management: yes, FP is one solution to the problem of managing state, especially in a multicore environment. But it is neither the only solution, nor is it the best. The Clojure solution of -- for lack of a better name -- "transactional" mutable state is simpler than the pure FP one, and just as safe. I.e. there are ways to make side-effects safe without restricting them so much that they become a nuisance (after all, all software, possibly with the exception of compilers, exists for the sake of its side effects).

Finally (and I've said this before on HN), a language like Haskell discounts the very useful choice of reasoning about your code after it runs, favoring, instead, all-upfront reasoning, often at the expense of facilitating the former. There are some domains where figuring everything up front is very important. Others, where trial and error is far more productive.

So pure FP increases code reuse, but of code that's not that important to reuse. It helps deal with the hard problem of state management, but other, simpler solutions exist. Finally, it makes it hard to "feel" how your code runs, to debug it, to profile it, and more. I think it is based on the premise that if programming could be made more formal -- more _mathematical_ , if you will -- it will become easier/"better". But that premise has not been shown to be true. The lack of magically bug-free, FP OSs, drivers, control software, and large applications, shows that even the biggest supposed benefits of languages like Haskell, are yet to be demonstrated in the real world.

EDIT: Just to clarify: Unfortunately FP does not have a definition, so, when I was saying "FP", I meant "FP as the article's author practices", which means "statically typed, pure FP". FP using Java streams, FP in Clojure/Erlang, and FP in Haskell mean very different things.

<comment><USER24> _The lack of magically bug-free, FP OSs, drivers, control software, and large applications, shows that even the biggest supposed benefits of languages like Haskell, are yet to be demonstrated in the real world._

I've been reading religious advocacy of FP for almost 15 years now and yet there still don't seem to be many non-trivial apps written in any of these languages. Certainly many individual features of FP have been adopted to good effect in more mainstream languages but commercial Haskell or OCaml apps are still conspicuously thin on the ground. I think at this point it's up to the FP advocates to back up their claims with results. I'm sure there are a lot of programmers that would happy to roll up their sleeves and learn something new if it truly would make them 3x more productive.

<comment><USER25> How about WhatsApp's backend being extremely scalable because it was written in Erlang from the start? Or even Twitter that rewrote much of their backend in Scala to deal with scaling issues (I'm not saying that Rails isn't scalable, I don't want to start a war over this issue; the important thing is they saw a problem and solved it) while contributing many many open sourced libraries for our use?

Foursquare uses Scala extensively. LinkedIn is using Scala extensively for its new projects. The commercial and successful use cases for Scala are widespread at this point. For Haskell and OCaml it's going to take a while.

<comment><USER23> Well, when people say FP they mean different things. The Erlang/Clojure kind bears little resemblance to the Haskell/scalaz sort discussed in the article. Neither does most of the Scala code written at Twitter (which is mostly OO with a sprinkling of functional).

<comment><USER26> That's hardly true. Erlang's event loops are based on a very similar kind of state encapsulation as Haskell's state monad. Really Erlang is littered with explicit monadic patterns but lacks a good system for abstracting over those patterns so you just call them "OTP" instead of a monad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The one question I wish this article answered is: what specific, quantifiable benefits could I get from using a real functional language RATHER THAN merely reactive extension libraries to an imperative language.

The point many programmers are at is far removed from diving into Haskell and hard math in functional languages. Many of us are still learning why to compose observables for multithreading. From a application programmer perspective, what could we gain by diving into FRP completely?

If Scala is the gateway drug, then the dealers need to do a better job explaining what the hard stuff actually does for us.

</comment><comment><USER28> > Realisation: Abstractions

Objects are coarsely grained abstractions. Separating function Modules from the Data allows more opportunity to be DRY, better performance, and more complexity scalability.

> Realisation: Confidence. Types vs Tests > In Ruby, that often meant testing > it from every angle imaginable, which cost me significant effort and negated > the benefit of the language itself being concise.

This is largely a cultural artifact from the history of the Ruby & Java communities.

We are discovering that is is more useful to have your tests written from a black box perspective (in any language). White Box Testing is less useful and causes the architecture to be locked down. White Box Testing should be a rare occurrence.

From my development practices, Static + Strong typing helps with performance & debugging failing tests, but not much else. It imposes rigidity in the architecture & delays my development feedback loop.

I know that this is a matter of taste & I will catch much flak for my opinion as it conflicts with other peoples' taste, but it's my truth :-)

</comment><comment><USER29> How well does deploying Haskell web applications to a low-memory VPS work? My experience with the Play framework tells me that Scala is out of the question. Presumably using Haskell involves cross-compilation, considering the memory usage of GHC compilation.

<comment><USER17> I've been deploying Haskell web applications to a 1G and a 512M VPS, and both have been working fine. Initially I was able to build on the boxen, but more recent libraries/compiler runs out of memory building some dependencies. Obviously that wasn't ideal anyway since it was taking up resources the live site could be using, although none of the relevant sites are supporting a ton of traffic. Building on my local machine and pushing up the executables has been working just fine, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Would you recommend starting with Scala before Haskell if one want to learn FP?

<comment><USER31> No. Scala does some interesting things, but it adds a lot of complexity in order to interact with typical JVM code.

Haskell doesn't have that kind of baggage, so at its heart it's a very very simple language (Lambda Calculus + algebraic datatypes + typeclasses). There are a bunch of extensions, but they can be mostly ignored while getting to grips with the basics.

Programming in Haskell can involve a lot of unfamiliar concepts like monoids, functors, monads, etc. but these are just the APIs used by libraries; the language itself doesn't care about them (except for "do" notation). Just like you don't need to understand design patterns to learn how Java works.

<comment><USER32> And yet that complex JVM interaction makes one possible way to "get toes wet" is to wrap existing lower level java processes (and libraries and things) in a larger functional wrapper. Top down. Assuming you have some experience, confidence, or sample code in java that you can use or understand in the problem domain. So rather than trying to find a way to use recursive functional definition of a factorial in your code (bottom up) it Might be possible to work top down and make the "main loop" or whatever of your java program a functional construct of some sort.

I am in no way claiming this is the best way, only way, or even a good way to learn FP concepts but it is a possible way to at least get feet wet, plus or minus your personal characteristics. It is merely an alternative to the extremely popular nearly universally pushed educational strategy of bottom up introduction of FP.

<comment><USER33> Because Scala is a hybrid language, I feel it doesn't really try to teach FP, but some amalgamation of the two. So you'll end up thinking about case classes, traits, companion objects, unapply, etc... it's a way to solve problems in a unique way, but in comparison with the other more traditional FP languages, it doesn't present the same feel and can obscure which features are the ones necessary for FP - which is important to know if you're specifically trying to learn FP.

<comment><USER32> You are technically correct in your observations, but I think we're both stuck in a classic "glass is half empty" "glass is half full" observational trap. Both the good news and the bad news simultaneously about a hybrid language is you can implement the same solution two different ways.

If you did both intentionally for educational purposes, it might be fun. I like the many "koan projects" and a side fork that focuses intentionally on doing something two ways might be interesting, if its not already been added while I wasn't looking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> >I've been coding since the age of 8, so 26 years now. >I started with BASIC & different types of assembly then >moved on to C, C++, ...

So to 68002 he had nine and a half or ten, here the article it's enough for me— even I'm interested in FP, but too old.</comment>


Ask HK: How do I report bugs in AWS services without paying for support? - <AUTHOR> A couple of weeks ago AWS released a blog post which claims that the ECS run-task API now supports overriding memory and cpu quotas, boto3 has been updated to accept and validate the new parameters, but they are ignored by the ECS backend. Does anyone know how to report this without paying for business support? I would rather not upgrade to pay for it to report a bug in an AWS service, as I've tried to do so in the past and AWS support simply let the ticket expire without a resolution.
https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2017/06/amazon-ecs-runtask-and-starttask-apis-now-support-additional-override-parameters/
https://github.com/boto/boto3/issues/1184 <comment><USER2> does it work as you expect through the cli[0]?

[0]: [http://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/ecs/run- task...](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/ecs/run-task.html)

edit: actually i think they were talking about the cli, cause that's what they link to from the blog post. you're right though, they should be clearer.</comment>


Boasting about how many hours you work is a sign of failure - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/work/1486863/boasting-about-how-many-hours-you-work-is-a-sign-of-failure/ <comment><USER2> > The massive, obvious counterpoint to Musk's boasts is that, despite working > more than 17 hours a day for weeks on end, Musk hasn't yet changed the > world. Not in a real, meaningful sense that will be remembered for > generations to come like, say, biologist Charles Darwin, who worked four > hours a day, or United States founding father Benjamin Franklin, who was > strict about calling it a day after eight hours or work. Sure, Tesla was > ahead of the curve on getting the auto industry to go electric but, as > Geoffrey James notes in Inc, AltaVista was the first ever search engine and > no one says "let me AltaVista that for you." It'll be pretty good going if > Tesla manages to make electric cars affordable and replace internal- > combustion engines entirely, but that hasn't happened yet. Similarly, SpaceX > has made rockets cheaper, which opens up a lot of opportunities, but we've > yet to see the consequences. If Musk eventually manages to create a colony > on Mars then that, of course, would be world-changing—but I suspect we'd > then hear a lot less about how he skips breakfast or doesn't get much sleep, > because Musk would have something far more impressive to boast about.

This paragraph is, I think, very on point, and it summarizes my opinions about Musk very clearly. Disclaimer: I'm very cynical of most things (even for HN standards) and all my life had a desire to work 120 hours a week (like Musk claims) but can never do it due to various reasons (mostly due mental health) (so, deep inside there is probably some jealousy going on). But if I'm being very honest, I think Musk is a PR campaign and is not a technology pioneer. Contrary to what my friends and people who read my submission history would think, I'm not against technology. But tech industry is completely out of control. I see myself as a technology purist: when we're making technological developments, I hate that it comes with a whole PR campaign attached with it which shadows the _real engineering value_ added to the world. In our world, this is the "normal" way how tech companies operate. I would want to see Musk being discussed more about his _technical_ ideas (if he has them) as opposed to his ideas about how workers should spend their times or how the society should be changed etc.</comment>


Early Retirement Plan as an Expat in Amsterdam - <AUTHOR> The idea:
Once you have a permanent contract, getting a mortgage is pretty easy and renting is significantly higher than the mortgage payments. So, a person can get an apartment, rent it out, and let it pay for itself, while still having money to spare.
So, my question is: what's the catch? It seems easy, but yet I don't see everyone doing it! Am I missing something?
A few details about me:
- Earning 60k, permanent contract, have 30% ruling
- I have savings (more than enough for down-payment and costs) and am left with some money at the end of each month
- I don't want to slave for money for the rest of my life
- I don't like the Dutch weather
- I don't like the Dutch food
- I don't like the Dutch culture
- Needless to say, I'm not seeing myself here in the future, but would tolerate a few more years.
Bonus points:
I know at least 10 people who own residential properties and rent them out. This would be even better than a buy-to-let property, as the interest is significantly lower for residential properties. However, the banks don't want you to rent it out.
I'd get a linear mortgage, because in case I want to sell the house for some reason, I want to own a bigger portion of it. I can also afford putting more money in it on monthly basis currently. If you're into talking details, give some input on this as well.
Goal:
Spending less on rent while here and leaving with an asset, while investing everything I own above my emergency limit in the following years. At the moment when I have my assets net me 1k per month, I'm on my way to Thailand.
___
TLDR:
I plan to get a mortgage, buy a property in The Netherlands, live in it for 2-3 years while heavily invest my earnings in index funds, and once I'd have 1k in passive income, rent the property out and move to a place with low cost of living. Is there a catch? Why isn't everyone who has FI/RE ambitions as an expat in Amsterdam doing this (or thinking about it)? <comment><USER2> Non resident tax collected at marginal rate by bank. You'll be taxed at marginal rate when you leave the EU.

You'll possibly still have to pay the premis, unless you deregister as a Dutch resident so the whole 'how do they know to deduct witholding tax' question is moot.

Many of the lets in Amsterdam are rent controlled. You may find achieving your income goal is hard.

Investment property interest rate is not as good as resident rate.

You need to see a tax agent and an investment advisor. Pay fee, not percentage of investment.

Oh, avoid free advice :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you.</comment></comment>


The water is coming for Copenhagen; good design could be its best defence - <AUTHOR> https://www.foreground.com.au/planning/water-coming-copenhagen-good-design-best-defence/ <comment><USER2> > By the end of this century, it's predicted that Copenhagen will experience > 25-55 percent more precipitation in winter months, while the city's > typically wet summer months will see up to a 40 percent reduction in > rainfall.

Err... By the end of the century, it's also predicted that sea level will rise. If Greenland melts in any significant manner, which given the current heat wave in the Northern Greenland it very well might, increased precipitation seems to me like it'll be Copenhagen's least of problems.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I read that for most of Earth's history, there were no polar ice caps. Our current ones are only a relic of the most recent ice age. And the next ice age is not due for 90,000 years.

<comment><USER4> Indeed. But there were 0 humans during most of Earth's history, so it's not really a relevant point. The entire Mississippi valley used to be under a shallow sea, but this is also an irrelevant fact for the Quaternary Period.

The next one being due in 90kyr thing is pretty false, you can't just pick your favorite Milankovitch cycle and say that this is the important one for climate, as the shorter period cycles are important too, along with other things like the thermohaline circulation. But hey, I'm guessing you actually don't know what the words I'm using even mean, and are just parroting things you heard from other unknowledgeable sources.

<comment><USER3> John McPhee stated, rather breezily, in The Annals of the Former World, that the next ice age is due in 90K years. He did mention there were three or so cyclical events that have to line up.

I think, with all your animosity, you might be making a lot of assumptions that I have some agenda with my comment. Is your brother-in-law a climate change denier?

And about the rest of your comment: Is that how you normally talk to people? That must go well...

One more thing: I can't imagine a top five goals list for humanity that doesn't include existing as a civilization through a few more ice ages. I mean, sure, the economic lifetime of Copenhagen's buildings might not extend that long, but I think it's relevant.

<comment><USER4> It's more that in offline life, I have to deal with lots of people who have crazy theories about climate, and I tend to see HN as a kind of safe space where I shouldn't have to deal with uninformed people offering barely-on-topic opinions. Your justification... kinda qualifies. If you don't understand something here, follow community norms and ask a question.

The next ice age isn't really "due" anytime. Yes, there are orbital parameters which create a long-term varying climate. But you could also argue that it's due right now, as the Yellowstone Caldera is seems to be behind on its eruption cycle.

But none of that has to do with Greenland melting, which is mainly a geological/hydrological process at this point. It's climate-adjacent, for sure, but the questions are mainly how much will melt, how fast, and how much will the land rebound once shedding weight.

And further, this all has even less to do with flooding in coastal areas, as most of the sea level rise will come from simple thermal expansion. (Honestly I'm more worried about Greenland as a albedo change positive feedback effect than the meltwater.) And that's a typical technique of climate deniers -- reframe the debate in terms of something simpler, and then make a sweeping generalization based on that. You set off my filter for that -- sorry that it was a false positive.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>