Are there any open source alternatives to Cloudinary? - <AUTHOR> https://www.quora.com/Are-there-any-open-source-alternatives-to-Cloudinary/answer/İren-Saltalı?share=1 <comment><USER2> \- based on user names, the HN user is Co-founder & CTO of image4.io, a cloudinary competitor

\- image4.io is not open source

So I'd say the submission is quite misleading.</comment>


Show HN: A configurable Gauge directive in Angular 1 for dashboard apps - ashish-chopra https://github.com/ashish-chopra/angular-gauge <comment> ashish-chopra I have developed a angular 1.x directive for gauge component. It is inspired by one of the Gauge that i used in jQuery, but not available in Angular open source projects natively. Try this out in your projects and share the feedback/suggestions and bugs. I will keep adding more improvements and feature into it in coming releases. If you like it, star it or fork it.</comment>


How the 0.001% invest - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/12/15/how-the-0001-invest <comment><USER2> I've worked for a family office in Hong Kong. What was really telling for me was how the rate of return KPI was measured. We were not benchmarked against the S&P 500, or any index. We were measured directly against the fund of another frenemy family. So long as the fund outperformed the other family, all was good. It's crazy because you could be underperforming treasury bonds, and still be good because the other office was worse.

I guess when you that much money, more money means less than vanity and bragging rights.

<comment><USER3> I've seen the portfolio's of dozens of family offices (I worked at a portfolio analytics company so I had free reign to snoop around), and none of the offices seemed competent. The returns were terrible and the portfolio construction laughable.

Instead of striving for out performance, the funds just catered to the whims and idiosyncrasies of the family. Also, many of these funds were too small to make sense, AUMs from like 150MM-500MM. They would have be much better off just investing in a hedge fund, but the family's ego didn't allow them. I think the point was to show off more than anything else.

One of the exceptions was Sergey Brin's family office, which managed a shit- ton of money and had some good people who actually knew something about portfolio construction.

<comment><USER4> A friend of mine who manages ultra wealth people said most people who turn up don't say "How much can you make me" but say "Can you make sure I'm never poor".

It's often about preservation of wealth more than gains for these people.

That said I've discussed some returns they make and it's incredible. I don't want to say what I recall, as it was a couple years back and it sounds like an exaggeration. They said this is partly because they get access to deals that don't hit the wider market and you need serious cash to get in the room to have that chat. And I guess these manager have a bunch of the right people attached to them so it makes an easy stop.

<comment><USER5> >They said this is partly because they get access to deals that don't hit the wider market and you need serious cash to get in the room to have that chat.

This is something I hear a lot and I just don't get. Are the people on the other side of those deals just...not greedy? After all, you are implying that the deal has better expected returns than what people are buying on margin in public markets, so why doesn't the person on the other side of the deal take a little more for themselves by selling there instead (at a slightly more favorable interest rate)?

Is it because the rich investors are needed to bring some level of expertise or connections to the investment to make it work? If that's the case, and it seems likely, I would not say they are getting "access to better deals" per se. More like they are getting a normal rate of return and they have a valuable asset that they are renting out as well (their expertise or connections), and it all gets rolled into one number. But complaining about the rich having valuable assets is different from complaining about them having access to better investment opportunities.

<comment><USER6> The sole reason that the path to public markets is a long and compliance- ridden one is enough to seek private investment. It's much harder to raise money in public markets than private ones.

<comment><USER7> But far cheaper to raise money in public markets than private.

Once you're big enough, IPOing makes sense, unless you just want to maintain control or those pesky compliance requirements will reveal some harsh secrets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> 0.001% of the world is about 75k people [1], there are about 2200 dollar billionaires [2], so only(!) ~3% of these people are billionaires.

Not a real point to make, but I was wondering, and it might save someone else time.

[1] [https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=0.001%25+*+world+popul...](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=0.001%25+*+world+population) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World%27s_Billionaires](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World%27s_Billionaires)

<comment><USER9> As that wiki link points out, wealth isn't entirely public or measurable; so the list isn't complete. It explicitly excludes dictators and royalty (so, hey, saudi family!), and " excluding and ranking against those with wealth that is not able to be completely ascertained"

That makes perfect sense of course; but all those excluded parties from that ranking still need to manage wealth, so getting exact or even estimated numbers here is going to be tricky. And then there's the family != person disconnect - although it seems to me that most people in this situation got lucky somehow, so it's rather unlikely there are multiple original sources of wealth in such families. If there are several individually wealthy family members it's probably more likely due to dilution.

But yeah, you'd assume the median family wealth of a the top 0.001% of people is likely below 1 billion. But how much? Who knows.

<comment><USER10> > If there are several individually wealthy family members it's probably more > likely due to dilution.

While this is probably true in general, there are at least two famous exceptions from Germany.

There is the notable case of Adolf "Adi" Dassler, founder of Adidas, and his older brother Rudolf Dassler, founder of Puma, who separated from their joined shoe manfucaturing business and independently built two of the largest shoe (and now sports equipment) manufacturing companies in the world. Both still headquartered in the tiny 23000 people city Herzognaurach, Germany (close to Nuremberg).

And the similar story of Karl and Theo Albrecht, founders of Aldi (Albrecht Discount), which was split in Aldi Nord (north) and Aldi Süd (south), both growing their company in billion dollar businesses and each becoming billionaires. Granted though they had slightly different styles of running their business, their success was based on the same innovative business idea and a geographic non-compete agreement.

<comment><USER11> In both of those instances, wasn't there onebusiness that they split into two? That's still one source of wealth. They just divided it earlier than death.

<comment><USER12> The point is that the vast majority of the wealth was generated after the split.

<comment><USER13> Do people write about failed divided businesses?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I struggle to understand the point of the article.

>Rich clients have taken a closer look at private banks' high fees and murky incentives, and balked.

OK. Rich clients were not happy with the way external managers managed their funds and decided to do it themselves. I get it.

>As they grow even bigger in an era of populism, family offices are destined to face uncomfortable questions about how they concentrate power and feed inequality.

How on Earth is it related to populism?

>Family offices have created inequality.

If the author's explanation of what family offices are is correct, they didn't create inequality. If you take your money from a deposit and decide to invest yourself you don't create inequality. You undertake higher risk and potentially receive higher award.

What's the point of the article?

<comment><USER15> > If the author's explanation of what family offices are is correct, they > didn't create inequality. If you take your money from a deposit and decide > to invest yourself you don't create inequality. You undertake higher risk > and potentially receive higher award.

Inequality is a mathematical statement about the distribution of wealth. It has nothing to do with risk or fairness or "rewards". If you accumulate wealth in one place, then you very directly create inequality. That's exactly what inequality is. By definition.

<comment><USER14> Money _ownership_ didn't change when money management switched to family offices. So distribution of wealth hasn't changed. How did family offices create inequality?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Back when I was fantasizing about what I'd do if I won the lottery, I looked into family offices a bit and concluded that there's basically no point as far as the investing advice goes. It's still likely a good idea for some of the ultra-wealthy for estate, tax, and philanthropic purposes, but on the investment side? The standard passive indexing approach used by middle class individuals scales in a cost-effective manner to the _billions_ of dollars of assets. And as a bonus, you don't need to stake your fortune on a trust-based relationship. Instead, you get to base things off of institutions and audits - Vanguard isn't going to take the money you shoved into VTSAX and embezzle it through investing in their distant cousin's "company", even if it is a billion dollars.

<comment><USER17> There is one point you haven't considered: Even though a pure indexing strategy is appropriate, it is not appropriate to use Vanguard for this. At the billion-dollar level, assuming that the index funds had an expense ratio of .05% (among the lowest out there) you would be paying annually:

1,000,000,000*.0005 = $500,000

For that level of expense, you could instead have a one-man office or other service provider that can buy the individual stocks comprising (or closely approximating) the index, and not have to pay any expenses other than his salary and trading costs. Meanwhile he can provide tax planning/philanthropic services as well.

<comment><USER18> VTSAX is 4 basis points of expense ratio. There are others with 3 bps and Fidelity has one with 0.

Even at 5 bps on a billion, I think you'd be extremely hard pressed to do everything Vanguard does for you for $500K/yr.

I'm at least a factor of 500 away from having to consider this question, but if you told me it would cost me $500K to have one fewer critically important person on my staff to deal with, that would be a good tradeoff in itself.

<comment><USER19> There is additional value that can be added by forgoing an index fund, though. Tax management can be enhanced by rolling your own Total Stock Market index fund, since individual names can be harvested for capital losses, increasing the after-tax returns of your portfolio relative to a vanilla index fund. I'm not sure quite how to quantify that, but I'm sure someone has been able to do so.

<comment><USER7> I thought you were only able to write-off $3k in capital losses per year against income?

If so, not worth dealing with for a billionaire, but definitely an opportunity for a middle-class robo-advisor.

<comment><USER18> You can write off capital losses up to the amount of capital gains _plus_ an additional $3K. So, if you have $5MM in capital gains, especially short-term, it makes sense to sell off up to $5MM in capital losses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The article only considers new investment. Jeff Bezos may be worth $150bn, but approximately $125bn of that is in Amazon stock. He's 80% invested in Amazon.

Does it really matter where the worlds richest man puts the other 20% when he could afford to lose it all on moonshots and not give a damn? The risk-reward trade-offs you and me make while investing just don't apply to Jeffs personal investment decisions, and therefore aren't all that interesting.

<comment><USER21> His wealth concentration is actually quite higher, around ~94.7% in AMZN stock. Bloomberg has him currently at a $132b net worth, with $125b in Amazon.

The rest is Blue Origin and The Washington Post, with his cash position at 'only' an estimated $2.45b.

Given the absurdly high valuation of Amazon - and as a fan of humanity pushing into space - I'd like to see him sell some larger blocks of Amazon while the stock market is so high, in order to secure funding for Blue Origin for a decade or more all at once. In terms of dilution, it's drastically better to yield ~$6b-$10b on a few sales out of a stake of $125b, than out of a position worth ~$65b (where he was at just two years ago) if the market is down for a long period of time. Especially true given he has recently indicated Blue Origin might demand even more than $1b per year.

<comment> hal-9-000 I'm not so sure if he could easily liquidate larger block of stocks without affecting price/panic much. Maybe in long period of time by periodically selling minor amounts. Amazon is Jeff and Jeff is Amazon, I wonder what would happen and how markets would react if he disclosed even slightest hint of his exit intentions. Also fan of humans conquering space though, and would definitely love to see that happen.

<comment><USER22> > Amazon is Jeff and Jeff is Amazon

True, and a scary thought for any heavy investors. That's why a company that size needs to have a publicly known succession plan given current valuation. There are people at Amazon who could take over but no one whom the market would trust with taking the reigns, right off the bat.

<comment><USER23> People were saying Berkshire needed public succession plans for several decades before Buffett eventually created/disclosed them. The stock did really well during those decades, and virtually every other public company turned their CEO over many times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> [http://archive.is/o3LVk](http://archive.is/o3LVk)

<comment><USER25> For people who don't like to click on random links, this is the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The family offices I've worked with do pretty much everything. Part of the reason to do everything is that you have the freedom to do so. I literally called a friend on behalf of another friend to get him a bridge loan for a house once.

A free mandate makes for more interesting work, plus as the manager you can stick things in illiquids that have no mark-to-market. That's the uncharitable view, of course. The charitable view is that you are better at evaluating opportunities and are able to do things other institutions are not.

Main thing about FOs is they are just the article says, totally idiosyncratic. One FO I know is basically just a wily old guy who does all his business by phone, meets people to look them in the eye, that type of thing. Made a lot on crypto.

Another FO is basically a hedge fund. Bunch of different desks doing various things, a lot of focus on regulatory approval (that's still a thing, not sure why the article makes it look like there's no hurdles).

<comment><USER27> The SEC remedy against bad hedge fund owners in the show Billions is the threat of turning them into family offices

<comment><USER28> This actually happened in real life to Steve Cohen (the person Axelrod's character is loosely based on).

After being banned from managing outside capital, SAC Capital Advisors transitioned to being a family office called Point72. Only recently has it begun to to manage outside capital again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The majority of the world's richest people have their wealth tied up in companies they either founded or inherited.... if they are investing their capital they have limitations most of us do not have to face. If I go from having to invest $1m to $100m to $100bn, my investment universe shrinks each time.

For example, a small investor can invest in companies with market cap of ~$50m+....not possible for Warren Buffet. He can only invest in maybe less than a few hundred companies...with market caps in the region of a few $100bn.... there are of course treasuries/bonds but no seriously wealthy person has all of their money in bonds. In part because the returns are so low and income taxes are meaningfully higher than cap gains.

<comment><USER3> On the other hand, if you don't have a lot of money, many investment strategies become infeasible. The move from 1mm to 100mm would definitely increase your investment universe, not decrease it. With 100mm you can do private equity, VC, debt, illiquid and obscure stuff, EM bonds, etc etc. Most of that you can't do with 1mm. But you are right that going from 100mm to 100bn definitely shrinks your universe.

<comment><USER29> Most PE funds have a minimum of $5m-$10m (less for VC)... so even $100m isn't enough to go directly to a PE firm....typically at this size, you might go through a fund of funds...

Even at a small size, it's possible to invest in alternatives through public markets. I have my pension in listed private equity. You can also invest in private debt BDCs and closed-end funds that do infrastructure and a bunch of other things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World%27s_Billionaires](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World%27s_Billionaires)

Interesting to see the deltas (YoY) increase in wealth of these billionaires.

The top 5 have a growth of $8-15bn a year in wealth in the past few years. This increase in wealth is mostly an increase in institutions that keep growing at a very healthy rate (Amazon, Microsoft, BH, Facebook, etc).

I think it's important to remember that all of these persons (Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, etc) are the primary owner of a large institution that creates the wealth. Building orgs to put money to use is what they did to make their money in the first place, so it makes sense that they would do that with their private wealth as well.

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm not particularly convinced by the risks stated here.

Yes Bill Gates could buy 65% of the Turkish stock market, but if he wanted power, there are surely cheaper and easier ways to do it.

And regarding stability, you could make the case that these funds could increase stability. If you're in the 0.001% then surely you have the money to have a long term out look, which means they aren't going to worry about that short term blip.

I think the last paragraph headline sums it up for me. They've rediscovered DIY investing.

<comment><USER32> > I'm not particularly convinced by the risks stated here.

Both of your points are made in the article?

<comment><USER31> They mentioned presumably 'reasonable' risks, or else they wouldn't have mentioned them at all. I'm just not convinced they are even reasonable enough to bother mentioning.

The third issue (tax) is where the potential issues are, and got virtually the same length paragraph.

<comment><USER33> My impression was that they mentioned the _obvious_ risks (and by obvious what the public and pundits might fear), and then immediately went on to say why it's not an actual risk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> After some small amount (5 million?) you are less interested in capital growth and more interested in protecting your capital. That's what drives this the 0.001%

<comment><USER35> On the other hand, when you have $5M, you may want to protect it because if it goes down to $1M it makes a difference. For those ultra-wealthy though, if their wealth goes down 100x, it does not impact their comfort of living in any way. They just have less power.

I'm sure it still does not feel good psychologically so I'm not completely disagreeing with you.

<comment><USER36> The problem is that most very rich people have very concentrated positions. The family office might only manage 10% of the wealth with 90% being in one company. The investment then has to be structured so that the 10% survive even if the 90% vanish overnight (unlikely but not impossible). The performance on those 10% isn't that important, ownership in the company drives most of the fluctuation in wealth anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> "If you invested in a very low cost index fund — where you don't put the money in at one time, but average in over 10 years — you'll do better than 90% of people who start investing at the same time" \--Buffett

<comment><USER38> I guess depends on which 10 years you pick and whom you compare yourself with - [https://www.portfoliovisualizer.com/backtest- portfolio?s=y&t...](https://www.portfoliovisualizer.com/backtest- portfolio?s=y&timePeriod=4&startYear=1998&firstMonth=1&endYear=2008&lastMonth=12&calendarAligned=true&endDate=12%2F16%2F2018&initialAmount=1000&annualOperation=1&annualAdjustment=1000&inflationAdjusted=false&annualPercentage=0.0&frequency=4&rebalanceType=0&absoluteDeviation=5.0&relativeDeviation=25.0&showYield=false&reinvestDividends=true&symbol1=SPY&allocation1_1=100&symbol2=SHY&allocation2_2=100)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> It seems like the very rich feel comfortable having a large percentage of their wealth in a few investments. At the opposite end of the wealth spectrum, I like extreme diversification- caring to preserve some spending power in the face of an unknown future rather than maximizing investment gains. I believe that all people need to be happy is a comfortable place to live, good food and fellowship with friends and family. Because of this belief, a conservative highly diresified approach makes sense to me.

<comment><USER40> The article clarified that family offices tend to invest in a quite economically healthy way: diverse, and more attracted to startups. Which is why the consolidation of money this time around does not pose the same threat as 1998.

Unless I remembered wrong. I read it on Thursday.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> [removed fun fact due to it being false and still being published in modern books .. sigh]

<comment><USER42> Fun fact: This is not supported by historical evidence, and was likely simply anti-Semitic fake news which got out of hand... [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/the- rothschi...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/the-rothschild- libel-why-has-it-taken-200-years-for-an-anti-semitic-slur-that-emerged-from- the-10216101.html)

<comment><USER41> Haha! Well if its true that the parent fun fact is not true, its shocking because I read that in a book[1] authored by Dan Cryan [2].

[1] [https://www.amazon.ca/Introducing-Capitalism-Graphic-Dan- Cry...](https://www.amazon.ca/Introducing-Capitalism-Graphic-Dan-Cryan/) [2] [https://technology.ihs.com/Biographies/400721/dan- cryan](https://technology.ihs.com/Biographies/400721/dan-cryan)

<comment><USER43> The origins of the story are covered in reasonable depth on Wikipedia - [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Mayer_Rothschild](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Mayer_Rothschild)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> There's a lot more fragmentation than this suggests. I've worked at a hedge fund that had exactly one investor for example.

</comment><comment><USER45> TLDR: they use family offices, we don't know what they invest in as there's no transparency, and they didn't outperform the global stock market in 2016 and 2017.

</comment><comment><USER46> Paywalled.

<comment><AUTHOR> Using private browsing mode tends to work.

<comment><USER24> I'm not quite sure how sites do it, but, lots of sites manage to enforce the article limit across even incognito and even across browsers... i pasted an archive.is link ([http://archive.is/o3LVk](http://archive.is/o3LVk)) which is quite reliable for me and 99% of the time someone else already archived it.

<comment><USER33> So that's what those are supposed to do? Everytime I click on one I get an error, currently it's "Error 1016 Origin DNS error". Never actually saw what's behind that site but it does not seem like a working domain.

<comment><USER47> Are you using Cloudflare's DNS servers? Yeah, it doesn't work with that, for some reason.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Accepting the "I could do that in a weekend" challenge - <AUTHOR> http://www.thetimezoneconverter.com/weekend-challenge.html <comment><USER3> Apparently _9:31 AM_ in Dublin time is _NaN:aN PM_ in Dubai time...

Besides that, its a nice app.

EDIT: Since I got downvoted for this, let me rephrase in terms of a bug report: My local time is Dublin, Ireland (so UTC) and I entered _9:30 AM_ as the local time. Then I changed _Greenwich_ to _Dubai_. The _updating_ was pretty slow, so before it completed, I changed the local time to _9:31_ and the output I got was _NaN:aN PM_. I'm able to reproduce it by following the same steps (though the actual local time entered doesn't seem to matter - <USER2> that its changed before the "updating..." text disappears).

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't agree with the downvote - thanks for the bug report. I saw this a while back and was having trouble reproducing so this is helpful. I'll look into it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I suggest you add more country names to your incremental search e.g. England, Canada, Australia. If the country has more than one timezone, list them.

Worth logging all the things people type that get zero auto-completions.

Otherwise spot on.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. As a shortcut I left out countries with multiple timezones, but as you say they should be in there still just multiple times and delineated somehow.

Nothing gets by the HN crowd. :)

<comment><USER5> Nice work. For visual dressing up, show the wikimedia timezone map and visually highlight the two zones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great, but if remaking Basecamp or StackOverflow also just takes a weekend, you should have been able to do this in about an hour.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, this isn't really comparable. This is a one-off utility. It performs one function. StackOverflow and Basecamp are full-fledged applications that incorporate thousands of functions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't mean to jack the thread here, but I did something similar over the weekend that was a lot of fun. I cloned and then built upon a local system here in Honolulu that lets you see when buses are coming to a stop. I originally wanted to build an Android app but realized that I could do the same thing faster with my current skill set (web apps) thanks to some of the Geolocation features of HTML5. Plus, both me and my girlfriend can use it (she's on an iphone)!

Here it is - <http://thebus.ws/about/>

For those not familiar with Hawaii... try some street names like King, Queen, Bishop, Kapiolani. If you're on island the locate button will find your location thru browser api's and then load stops near you. Stops right by my place would be 2088, 306, and 405 (you can search for those numbers).

 __BTW, I really like what you did :) It's very simple and looks pretty good to boot. I have a client in Sweden right now, so this comes in handy!

</comment><comment><USER9> Very nice. Here's a feature suggestion: allow me to specify the two locations in the URL so I can create bookmarks to pairs that I use all the time (e.g. Hamburg/NewYork, Hamburg/SanFrancisco...).

<comment><USER10> Psst: this can help you for SEO if you do it right. (Though you'd have to add a bit of content/links to have a hope of getting all of them indexed.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting ideas - I was trying to think about creative but still useful SEO techniques... something Yelp-like. This might be it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'd add a date to the timezone converter. For example - if it is 10pm in Toronto on the 1st, then it is 8am somewhere in India on the 2nd.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion. It's true omitting dates can affect some conversions. I left them out for speed/simplicity but might have be the wrong tradeoff.

<comment><USER12> I was about to suggest adding a 'previous/next day' somewhere but I see you already did that :)

Nicely fixed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> After the game jam (An event where everyone tries make a game in one weekend, hence the correlation to topic) wrap up, one of the guys there said something very interesting: they thought it was such a good idea to pound on a concept for the weekend to see if it was viable, they were going to do it for every idea including those in the business that weren't game related (not sure if that meant software or what...)

So while I see the simplifying assumption that says "I could do that in one weekend" and that it's really not that simple. There's the other side of the coin. Maybe some ideas don't need to be so complicated. We evolved our game idea three times that weekend as we completed something we saw what was boring or was failing and modified it.

In both our case and the guy above, we aren't planning to continue the game. I know I tend to sit and idle on ideas for months or years at a time. This is a terrible thing to do. Why not, for the cost of one weekend decide to throw it in the trash and never think of it again. One weekend is _way_ less than months and months of planning and task lists and bug trackers and code repositories... etc etc.

Edit: In case anyone is interested you can find our game on <http://globalgamejam.com> called "Maid of Dishonor" or on our site, <http://tosos.com> under the "Unity Games" page.

</comment><comment><USER14> Nice tool. Bookmarked.

Small feature request: It would be nice to enter IATA airport code instead of city name.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, another input method I hadn't thought of. Thanks, will consider.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is the best timezone converter I've ever seen. Nice work.

Though really, I'm surprised Google hasn't added timezone conversion to their various measurement converters. I really just want a single text field that takes input in the format "[time/date] in [location/timezone]." For example, "1:30am PST in UTC" or "Tuesday 5pm in Paris."

<comment><USER16> Google's Closure javascript library has a lot of timezone related routines. Worth taking a look.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is awesome. One suggestion/request? If I enter the time in 24hr mode, can it please be left that way? Right now it converts it to am/pm... I don't know why, but my brain only functions in 24hr mode and seeing 14:45 change to 2:45 made me think there was a bug before I noticed the PM next to it.

Otherwise this is immensely useful!

I think "smart parsing textboxes" are the best things ever. I really like the one on letsfreckle.com for time interval entry. Letting users just type in a format that is comfortable to them is so nice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Third request here for different 24h behavior. I remember hearing the advice "listen to your users" somewhere... so I'll prioritize that. Thanks.

<comment><USER18> I was going to suggest something along those lines after reading your post. But I was pleasantly surprised that your application already handles 24hr times gracefully, when I checked it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Everyone should go to google and search for "time zone converter", than go to the bottom and choose "Add a result", and paste in the url for this page :-) It couldn't hurt.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha - I wouldn't complain... I've got a few ideas around SEO and a few more popped up here, so I'll see what I can do to make the site easy to find with Google again later on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Wolfram Alpha has an _awesome_ time zone converter,

<http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=10+am+EST>

<comment><USER21> Is that a joke? I tried about 5 different ways of getting it to answer what the current time in _my_ time zone is in another timezone, and it failed for all variations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> It works correctly. It works as expected. I think it's great.

A shorter domain name would have been nice though.

Also - does it automatically take daylight savings time into account?

<comment><AUTHOR> It does. For example, right now Australian times properly incorporate DST.

The domain name was optimized for Google queries where it's important to have exact search terms in the name itself. Agreed that it's annoyingly long but I expect people to find it through Google with something close to that query.

<comment><USER23> Wow, that's great - how did you go about getting daylight saving time to work properly?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> As a programmer, I find it very satisfying - you type in the name, it auto- completes; you change the time on either side, and it maintains the relation. Nice :-) And love the clean simplicity - it's like the google of timezone converters. :-)

\- But it wasn't obvious that it would autocomplete - nice to have _a_ drop- down even before typing, just to show the user. Or maybe just a couple of e.gs. (like google calendar's "breakfast at tiffany's").

\- Also not obvious that you can change both times (I mean, it _should_ work that way, but software _never_ does, apart from languages - and I think that it wouldn't even occur to ordinary folk that it might).

Might be worth doing some user-testing (where you watch them, like "Step 2. Validate" in <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1132980>).

You can probably get some adwords revenue. And without spoiling it, by doing what the chatoulette guy said he did - just 4 words at the bottom.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great ideas. I've been collecting electronic feedback like this from friends, but agreed that some "over the shoulder" user testing could help. Hearing these "x was not obvious" from you is helpful as I'm too deep in it now for any of these to occur anymore.

A big gripe (I didn't mention in the blog) of the other sites were massive amounts of confusing AdSense, so I was almost thinking a single cleanly branded "sponsor" to pay for the server costs if it gets enough traffic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> a quick timezone converter is on your command line

        $> env TZ=US/Eastern date
        Thu Feb 18 11:15:01 EST 2010

        $> env TZ=GMT date
        Thu Feb 18 16:15:41 GMT 2010

</comment><comment><USER26> Another feature request...

Can you give it some "add another city" ability? I've had much more grief trying to do the mental arithmetic scheduling phone conferences involving people in Sydney, London, and Dallas than I've ever had working out just one other city in my head...

</comment><comment><USER27> That's great! Your are absolutely correct, most sites seem to originate in pre-2000.

Just two additional ideas:

For the problem you specified I did find a interface which gives you a day view of both destinations with the corresponding times on both sides, and colored backgrounds (green for good meeting times, yellow for too early or too late or midday and red for night) so that you can easily find out an optimal meeting time (I guess it was possible to add more timezones to it), however I cannot remember the site.

For the interface you created I guess it would be nice to add an analog clock over the input, which can be changed via dragging the hands to the specified time and the other clock updates it's time in real-time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, appreciate the compliment and ideas. I do remembering coming across that other site too.

I've been looking for a fun graphic or animation to jazz up the UI (I believe in making products "fun") so maybe the analog clock idea is it.

<comment><USER28> It's here: <http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meeting.html>

Very useful app, when you have people in several timezones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It does not seem to do anything without Javascript and times are always displayed in the (to me) awkward AM/PM format instead of 24 hour. The first is probably of no matter to you but how about a toggle button for the latter?

<comment><AUTHOR> I do examine the browser's accept-language preferences and attempt to correctly do locale appropriate time formats. I've considered a toggle but am trying to keep the UI really simple. Are you from outside the US, and if so could you tell me your browser accept-lang settings (handy tool below)? <http://www.cs.tut.fi/cgi-bin/run/~jkorpela/lang.cgi>

<comment><USER29> I am in Germany but I use "Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.9". :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> While I half agree with what you did, I think you're a step away from perfectness (see bellow) :)

I actually had the exact same problem and I was recently speaking to a friend from google and asked him to implement this as part of their search engine (i.e. just like the calculator, but for time zones) -- he didn't see the need for such a thing.

Here is my use case which doesn't work: conference deadlines. Please tell me what this:

Thursday, February 4, 2010, 11:59pm Eastern Standard Time (GMT −5:00)

translates to in my local time. Note that entering the date in your app does nothing, even if you split EST from the rest.

<comment><USER31> Why doesn't this app work for you in that scenario?

Say you're in PST: put on the right hand side 11:59pm and EST --> 8:59pm that same day.

Say you're in, oh I don't know, Nagoya: same thing on the right hand side --> 1:59pm the next day (the 5th)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> First reactions: tab field-switching and/or JS execution order. Time is on top, so I'll input that first, then want to set the TZ. Tab goes time1->time2->tz1->tz2, which is unintuitive to me at least. In addition, filling in the dominant origin field first (time) is counter-productive as changing the TZ afterwards then auto-modifies the origin time - clearly not as I intended. This absolutely makes sense from a programmatic reload-free page outlook upon reflection, but not at all going purely on intuitive UI use.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for giving it a close look. I debated these points and came up with arguments on both sides of how updating should work.

I agree more with your tab ordering point. As far as JS execution (deciding which time to update when city changes) I saw arguments both ways and in the end decided to copy the behavior of a unit conversion dashboard widget from Apple. Not a good reason but it served as my starting point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> FYI: Google does have a limited 'command line' tool for time zone differences. If you search for "London time", it will return the current time in London UK in bold, along with London, Ontario and London, Arkansas.

This obviously is only for the current time, and you'll find that it doesn't work for everywhere. Also I've encountered occasional 'outages' where the time results for reliable locations aren't posted in your search results. I guess the applet gets disengaged occasionally due to back-end business.

</comment><comment><USER34> Really cool! Minor nits:

* Multiple equivalent GMTs (GMT, GMT (Greenwich Mean Time), GMT + 0)...

* GMT+n would ideally be in numeric order [but alpha sort doesn't make this easy, just something to think about]

* Include country name for cities: "Seattle (USA)" ... just gives you that warm fuzzy that you're in the right country.

* Instead of "next day" it might be nice to say "next morning/afternoon/evening/night" or whatever it happens to be. Less mental parsing ("12:30am next day... means really early in the morning right?")

Anyway, great job!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - I need an "accept all" button for these suggestions. On the multiple equivalents though, that was intentional to handle multiple ways people might want to type it in. Perhaps it's confusingly redundant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Nice work - bookmarked. Minor things:

* support for alternate names (e.g. The Hague vs. Den Haag)

* some way of knowing when a city _wasn't_ found - right now if I type the name of an unrecognised place then it isn't clear that the time displayed is no longer valid

* optional vertical layout for phones, and (to go with that) offline support? Perhaps not quite so minor, I'll admit ;)

Oh, and re. the "programmer-friendly" comment in your article - I'm one and I don't find those sites at all friendly...

<comment><USER36> > * some way of knowing when a city wasn't found - right now if I type the > name of an unrecognised place then it isn't clear that the time displayed is > no longer valid

I second this. I tried to type in Zurich at first but the time didn't change and there was no error message either.

Great job though. Very useful tool. Bookmarked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> There is a problem with Argentina. For example see the hour at the capital city "Buenos Aires" and compare it with some of the local newspapers (<http://www.clarin.com.ar> or <http://www.lanacion.com.ar>).

I think that the problem is that we skipped the "Daylight saving time" this year (2009-2010), so we are at GMT-03:00.

</comment><comment><USER38> Even if you're not using PHP I highly recommend reading Derick Rethans's slides on Date and Time. There's lots of good information there, especially about all the various quirks with timezones. <http://derickrethans.nl/talks/time-zendcon9.pdf>, you may even be able to find a video of him presenting this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Started to skim it... fascinating. Very cool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Good job, this is really nice.

Like you mentioned in your announcement, this tool seems like it's primarily useful for (important) business. Is there anything you can do that would make me feel assured that the conversion is accurate? I'm 90% sure that everything is perfect, but that's not really good enough. I'd be much more inclined to use the tool if I knew I could trust it.

</comment><comment><USER40> There's also a nifty iPhone App for that: GlobeTrotter

[http://itunes.apple.com/app/globetrotter-timezone- calculator...](http://itunes.apple.com/app/globetrotter-timezone- calculator/id355140639)

Using it all the time because I've had similar problems. And it allows to calculate the differences for more than 2 cities.

</comment><comment><USER41> I was looking for a site this simple just yesterday. Thanks for building it!

One suggestion would be to have the colon automatically inserted at the third position from the right. I'd like to be able to type 930 or 1425 without having to take my hand off of the number pad.

<comment><USER42> Or just be able to type 930pm/1035am without worrying about the colon

<comment><AUTHOR> Hm, interesting requests. I had other similar requests via e-mail for auto- colon-insertion so might prioritize this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Have you looked at the library date.js? It might be helpful for you here. It seems unmaintained now but is still useful sometimes; not sure if it will help in this specific case, but might be worth a look.

<comment><AUTHOR> GMTA - already using it with a few tweaks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I couldn't find any of the major Swiss cities in your city list. Any reason?

<comment><AUTHOR> I used GeoNames to make sure all countries are in there. Cities, I sorted by population and took the top 1000.

Looking more closely now... Zurich at least should have made the cutoff. I'll take a look. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> since it starts with the current time i was surprised that it does not appear to update. it would be nice if the clock worked "like a real clock", changing to reflect the current time. of course, that's not what you want _if_ someone enters a time, so you'd need to track whether that has happened (and perhaps provide some subtle feedback to indicate that it's not "ticking" - the best thing i can think of is that you flash the ":" between numbers if it's running as a clock, and leave it steady if the time has been altered).

</comment><comment><USER45> Nicely done. I've needed this countless times. This looks like it'd be a perfect fit for the mac dashboard... do you know if something like this exists, or how hard it'd be to make?

</comment><comment><USER46> Nice.

But once again, building a widget in a weekend is very different than building a full product, in particular if you include an actual business model or community surrounding that product.

</comment><comment><USER47> This made me want want to release my syllable counter on it's own domain because it beats the top google results. Only problem is whether or not there's any utility to it.

<comment><USER48> I'd find it fun to play with (good for settling haiku disputes), but even after a few specific google searches I couldn't find it... maybe a domain would help?

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Exactly what I was always looking for. Have often thought about doing something like this myself. So simple and so useful. Thanks!

But ... tables? Really? Just kidding. Whatever works ^-^

</comment><comment><USER50> a) AM/PM vs. 24 hours clock. I'd suggest switching to 24 hours mode if input hours are > 12\. There should also be a toggle for this. Remembering the setting (and possibly timezones) would be great.

b) Dates. These are redundant, but they can be shown if different in chosen TZ (or maybe just show something along the lines "already the next day/still yesterday" :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I like (a). I've been trying to avoid a toggle to keep things simple but noticing input behavior and switching automatically + storing in a cookie would work.

I need to update the blog screenshot, but (b) is incorporated almost exactly as you were thinking (see the light gray "next day" / "previous day" text).

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks in advance for any feedback on the site.

<comment><USER47> Can you make this a dashboard widget?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not a bad idea. It would be handy to have it a keypress away but the benefits from my point of view (the developer's) are almost too great in keeping it a webpage: easier to update, ability to add ads, wider audience, etc.

<comment><USER47> Frankly making it a webpage is a pretty big inconvenience to me (and I'm sure many others too) because my bookmarks bar is pretty full, as well as my bookmarks. This just seems like a natural dashboard widget. Doesn't windows 7 support widgets too now?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Make it obvious you can type place names. People are stupid. They'll expect a dropdown, not typing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Second time this was mentioned so I'll definitely give it some thought.

<comment><USER21> Hrm... Some text right next to the field perhaps?

Alternately, simply showing a world map graphic would work quite simply. There aren't that many time zones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> very nice indeed, a lot better than the previous entries, well done for a taking a pretty standard idea and making a much more usable version, hopefully you can start a trend!

I'd agree that you definitely need to take into account date/time adjustments like British Summer Time etc.

</comment><comment><USER10> My entire family thanks you for this. Mostly me at the moment, but the rest of them eventually.

</comment><comment><USER53> Very nice web application, I'm going to use this a lot.</comment>


Your Tesla Can Go Zero to 60 in 2.5 Seconds but Can't Get AM Radio - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/your-tesla-can-go-zero-to-60-in-2-5-seconds-but-cant-get-am-radio-1541523098 <comment><USER2> Maybe this is just a simple case of "know what you customer wants". Maybe Tesla customers do want 0-60 in 2.5, and don't care much about AM radio.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes, you might not be able to use the good old radio device to get AM radio stations due to frequency interference BUT the article does not mention the fact that you can use an app on the Tesla car dashboard to stream AM radio stations.

<comment><USER3> people that downvoted the above comment, care to explain why? thank you

<comment><USER4> It's never worth asking. They just didn't want to take the time to talk to you.</comment></comment></comment>


Why I Program In Ruby (And Maybe Why You Shouldn't) - <AUTHOR> http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2007/11/why-i-program-in-ruby-and-maybe-why-you.html <comment><USER3> The article sounds so beautiful, so beautiful, all the joy and the flowers and the harmony and the japanese and the danish and the total lack of language wars and crusades ... sorry, seems I've fallen asleep at the keyboard.

Anyone remember how you felt when you moved from C++ to Java? Wasn't it a joy? As if somebody had thought, hey I'll make a language for people to enjoy. No memory management! Yeah! No obscure macros! Just clean, beautiful code that everybody could immediately understand and nobody would shoot themselves in the foot.

We didn't think about how many times we would have to type getSomeField() { ... } and setSomeField(...) {...}. We didn't think about how entire frameworks, byte code manipulation weirdness, special purpose runtime containers, poorly integrated language extensions, etc would have to be written and deployed to overcome the metaprogramming deficiencies of Java. We were so glad to get rid of those breathtaking C++ compiler errors resulting from template crazyness that we didn't think about how statically typed languages really need type parameters.

For short, we didn't think about anything relating to the power of the language, we just felt joy and a big relief that the C++ curse had been taken from our souls, aching for harmony.

At least for myself I can say I'm not going to make that same mistake a second time. F..k harmony and joy! Let's switch our brains on before we jump onto the next language! I'll take a language war any day if it makes me think hard about how the features of a language behave once a system grows.

<comment><USER4> I lost you at the beginning of the 2nd paragraph. Nobody who knows how to muscle their ways in C++ feels good after transitioning to Java. There is nothing "liberating" in this hog for someone who _knows_ C++. There is nothing in Java that one can call "beautiful" or "enjoyable". I am sorry to sound like an idiot (yes, I have re-read what I just wrote) but I cannot help it - <USER2> is full of hidden messages like "oh, we feel like you're too stupid to have this or that kind of power, so just sit in a sandbox and enjoy the ride". And indeed, most programming idiots I've met in my career called themselves "Java programmers".

No statically typed language without powerful template system nor multiple inheritance of some sort should be considered usable in this age and time. Java/C# (same shit) was designed for "enterprise software" development, something a CS grad should never, never, never consider doing.

Ruby is the opposite of all that - Ruby represents ultimate freedom of expression. C++ runs circles around Java in that regard. Ruby only takes it several levels higher. In Ruby you really _do_ feel like changing the world, as long as your world is written in Ruby as well. It's sad you missed it as the main point of the great post.

P.S. Go get yourself some decent C++ book.

<comment><USER3> First of all, I didn't say anything negative about Ruby. Yes, maybe I missed the point of the article. Maybe the author just wanted to say "Ruby is good". But I read the article as saying something about how to choose a language based on joy and harmony and that's what I take issue with, not with Ruby in particular.

Second, I have read a lot of good C++ books and I'll even admit that I take some perverse kind of pleasure from template acrobatics as presented in Alexandrescu's Modern C++ Design for instance. But in 1995 - 1997 I was overwhelmed by the complexity of C++ and Java was a relief for me and many others. Yes it was naive, and yes every ex C++ programmer started to miss things very soon. But even after learning so much more about C++, I still feel the complexity/power ratio of C++ is awful.

In 1995, when Java came along, C++ was less powerful. There was no proper template support, no standard library, not even a string class. You had to use evil stuff like MFC to get anything done at all. And it took until the early 21st century for anyone to really grasp templates and write good books about how to use them. So, that's why I still understand the gut reaction of relief when Java emerged. But, as I said, I regret to have reacted in a such a purely emotional way without checking out other options. You apparently did, and you have my respect for that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> While haven't recently seen it , the ruby-talk list has had a permathread of "Python v. Ruby". With the exception of some trolling, the responses tended to be some variant of "try both and pick the one that best fits your head."

I was struck by how little the Ruby community (at least at the time; this may have changed in the last year or two) seemed to care if other people dropped their current fav language to become Ruby converts. Rather, the mood was, if you choose Ruby, great, we're here to help and welcome, but if you don't, we hope you choose something that makes you happy.

<comment><USER6> That was how I've always seen Ruby and Python. I've tried Python before and didn't like it. It had nothing to do with any technical reasons and was purely aesthetics.

The article's main point is that Ruby is supposed to make you feel good. It's origin is Japanese, and the language itself is more like a Zen garden. 'Harmony' is a word that has as much impact in the Japanese and Chinese cultures as 'freedom' and 'dream' does in America. Although diluted from its contact with the youthful American culture, those cultures has a fascination with ancient, or at least the wisdom of the elders. Here, there is a fascination with the youthful and the new. That's why you see news of 12-year- old kid raising $6 million in VC funding for an MMO e-commerce product.

In Chinese and Japanese stories, both old folklore and current modern renderings of it, there are stories of the young getting rewarded for listening to the old sages. In the Japanese stories in particular, there is a common theme of the older generation passing on the world to the newer generation by allowing them to make their own mistakes while having faith that they will survive and prosper. Translated into American terms, at best you would hear "get rewarded for working hard", and "we're younger so we know what's 'cool'."

So you hear a lot of news of young startups and the kids that started them up. When you hear of old Mrs. B starting up a new furniture chain because she had a disagreement with the upper management of the company she owned and sold to Warren Buffett ([http://mba.tuck.dartmouth.edu/pages/clubs/investment/WarrenB...](http://mba.tuck.dartmouth.edu/pages/clubs/investment/WarrenBuffett.html) ), you don't get the sense that Mrs. B is lording it over her hirelings, "You should do this because in my experience ... ". Instead, you get the sense that at age 97, Mr. B. is still more youthful and active than the executives she hired in her first company.

The point is that the cultural undertones of 'harmony' gets seriously lost when transplanted into the American culture. People here often have other reasons for picking up Ruby.

So why might someone here write in Ruby? Because its expressive power gives you the freedom to make real what only you can see (vision). Because you can concentrate on improving the product and add new features. Because it is part of the current crop of technologies that lowers the requirements for a startup ... so you can drop everything, pursue the American dream -- write something millions want to use, make some big bucks, and retire young so you can enjoy the rest of your life. Or at least before you hit middle age.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _The messianic zeal of Christianity's shameful Crusades a thousand years ago_

What a strange tangent. The Muslims were in the "holy land" (and a thousand other places) because of incomparably violent zeal. I suppose the defense of Vienna is also shameful for the zeal of the Sobieski.

<comment><USER8> Is this a long-winded way of saying that two wrongs make a right? That if "they" use torture we ought to use torture? That...

Oh, sorry, my mistake, I thought I was on reddit. I'm actually on ycombinator, which is a completely different community. Let's talk about startups, please.

<comment><USER7> _Let's talk about startups, please._

You will notice:

1) The lead article is not about startups.

2) I quoted a passage that was from the lead article.

3) I commented on that passage.

So, if you have some sort of objection, please refer to the person who submitted it, or to the author, and not me. Thanks.

ADDENDUM: _two wrongs make a right_

Sometimes. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tit_for_Tat>

<comment><USER8> You know what, you're right and I'm wrong. Communities are whatever their members make of them, and the upmods for your comment suggests to me that this community thinks that's worthy of mention.

When I said startups, I actually included programming as part of startups, due to the flavour of PG's essays, so I thought the article was relevant for ycombinator. But again, it's not up to me.

And honestly, I wouldn't have said anything about your comment except I had just come from reddit, where more than half of the comments on the programming sub-reddit were about whether he should have included pictures, about whether the actress was hot, and about whether Japan really does have a cultural identity distinct from America.

I guess I was just crotchety about the fact that nobody seemed to be paying any attention to what I thought the article was about. I was being selfish.

I was wrong to try to tell you what you should and shouldn't say on a forum: forums are for the members, they needn't follow my preconceptions about what is on or off topic, what is relevant, or what is or isn't important in an article.

So... if you want to get into a whole Christians vs. Muslims through history thing, I'll get out of the way.

<comment><USER7> Please to note that my initial objection was basically of the same flavor, ie, "why is the article conflating programming languages and the Crusades?"

<comment><USER9> "Religious wars" is a long-standing metaphor when discussing programming languages.

[http://www.google.com/search?q=Religious+wars+programming+la...](http://www.google.com/search?q=Religious+wars+programming+languages)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wish the author said _why_ programming in Ruby makes him feel good. His statements could be made about any language. Many people program in language X because they like language X, and that doesn't apply just to Ruby. "I program in Ruby because it makes me feel good" is an empty statement.

Did you program in other languages? Did they also make you feel good? Why/why not? Do you think languages in which you haven't programmed could make you feel even better than Ruby?

I hope most people who program in Ruby have better reasons than "it makes me feel good." If they didn't, I wouldn't feel good programming in Ruby.

<comment><USER11> the fact that it could be said about any language is part of his point. ruby isn't the one true language. just program in whatever language makes you feel good, be it ruby or not. nevertheless, some languages feel more zen-like on the average. for instance, find me one person who ever felt good programming anything in cobol.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This idea is definitely a step forward for me in understanding why I prefer one language over another. Thanks to the poster.</comment>


Show HN: Free the Tweets - Archive, Search & Download your Tweets - <AUTHOR> http://www.freethetweets.com/

<comment><USER2> It's not supporting anything besides english alphabet. :(

</comment><comment><USER3> harris.... that is pretty slick. what database are you using? i don't think i would pay for it.. but it is slick. maybe you could put ads in it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Using mongodb for backend data storage. Works GREAT for storing tweets/json etc!

<comment><USER3> there are other services out there similar to this... but it runs fast and the layout/logo is nice. who did the logo?</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is Hacker News raw rating data available for mining? - <AUTHOR>

That would be nice to process the data about who up/down-voted who/what. That might allow to build useful social graph of potential start-up matches. It also may allow to build customized news lists: if my past votes were similar to votes of Alice, then Alice's ratings on new articles are more important for me, than ratings of average Hacker News user. <comment><USER2> This data would only be available to pg, afaik.

<comment><USER3> This data _should_ only be available to pg.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1) I personally don't mind if my up/down votes would be public. 2) Why would anybody want to hide their up/down votes? 3) That kind of data might be useful even if it's anonymized (detached from usernames). 4) If there is efficient aggregating algorithm, then final personalized weighted news lists could be shown as a final result, without exposing raw details to the public.

<comment><AUTHOR> 2) Why would publishing up/down voting information cause flame wars?

3) What is "OP"?

4) Currently comments are ranked based on the whole Hacker News community.

My suggestion is to rate comments based on votes from people who think like I do (or how you do if that rated list would be presented to you).

That's important differentiation, because I care about opinion of some people much more than about opinion of other people.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Zenefits Once Told Employees No Sex in Stairwells - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/zenefits-once-told-employees-no-sex-in-stairwells-1456183097?mod=trending_now_4 <comment><AUTHOR> _Last June, Emily Agin, the company's director of real estate and workplace services, sent a note to San Francisco-based employees to cut out crude behavior, lest the company lose access to the building's stairwells.

The email, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, read in part:

"It has been brought to our attention by building management and Security that the stairwells are being used inappropriately....Cigarettes, plastic cups filled with beer, and several used condoms were found in the stairwell. Yes, you read that right. Do not use the stairwells to smoke, drink, eat, or have sex. Please respect building and company policy and use common sense..."_</comment>


The Pirate Bay's Peter Sunde: It's evolution, stupid - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-02/13/peter-sunde-evolution

<comment><USER2> It is often claimed that piracy is the entertainment industry's own fault-- that they need to evolve to embrace digital media, and because they haven't, people are forced to turn to piracy.

There may be a bit of truth to that argument, but if you look at the Apple App Store, you'll find a damning rebuttal. The App Store has embraced digital distribution. Purchasing and downloading apps could not be easier. It's certainly easier than pirating them. And yet app store piracy is a huGe problem [1].

Why? Because if you pirate, you have money left over for other things. It's that simple. So even though you could afford $2 for an app, you'd rather pirate the app and spend the $2 on something else. It's human nature. This is one reason societies make laws and enforce them with police. If we'd let natural evolution dictate the run our societies, then the alpha males would each have fifty wives and most males would be mateless or dead.

[1] [http://www.everythingicafe.com/apple-cracking-down-on-app- st...](http://www.everythingicafe.com/apple-cracking-down-on-app-store- piracy/2012/01/04/)

<comment><USER3> I've found that in the recent piracy debates, there has been a high level of dishonesty, where people don't want to admit that the absolute number one reason people resort to piracy is because that shit is free.

I'd like to challenge the founders of TPB to charge for their superior distribution system and report the traffic numbers before and after.

<comment><USER4>
      > I'd like to challenge the founders of TPB to
      > charge for their superior distribution system

1) The logistics wouldn't be there. Not necessarily because people won't pay, but because paying is a barrier to entry. Even paying a penny would filter out a number of users. Would you really believe that the reason those people wouldn't pay a penny is because they are cheap? Or is it more likely that the paywall is a barrier that they are too lazy to overcome?

2) Charging out-right for the service vs. making money on advertisements would also be a shift in their image. This may cause a number of people to jump ship out of principle. I.e. a 'hipster filter' if you will ("they're too big and corporate now", "they've sold out", etc).

<comment><USER3> Your argument beats around the bush. You and I both know that if TPB were to charge, their traffic would drop by several orders of magnitude. This is not because of logistics, not because of image, not because of inefficient distribution and not because of DRM. The simple reason for the huge drop off would be that most pirates want that sh't free. Why oh why do people insist on sugar coating this blatant reality?

<comment><USER5> Because this heads towards the concept of thought crime. Who cares what the motive of a pirate is? Do we only want pure virgins who can lie in a unicorn's lap downloading stuff? Or can we get beyond criticising people for not being pure of heart.

The only issue with piracy isn't the motive of the pirate - it's whether it damages the industry, and studies regularly show it doesn't. In fact a) the biggest pirates tend to spend more, and b) isn't it about time we found ways of rewarding creators that didn't involve artificial scarcity?

We're heading for a time when we can deliver all of human culture to everyone and the only thing stopping us is that some people want to rent-seek.

On your other point, I wouldn't advise anyone to pay for the Pirate Bay because payment identifies the payee. There's a significant chance it would be considered illegal and records seized by the US, leading to huge fines, extradition and prison. That alone would deter me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A while ago I realized something about piracy that disturbed me, and the more I think about it, the more disturbed I get.

Lots of money now days is going into things like webapps, app stores, Steam, DRM-encumbered streaming, enterprise software, other categories of stuff that can't reasonably be stolen. But this presents an encumbrance over information for which society would be better off if it were free in the informational sense, only free is hard to monetize in a world of Pirate Bay self- righteousness, where mass piracy is accepted and even praised. I'm told that Sirius XM already has a mathematical key revocation technique that's uncrackable, though I'm also told they haven't used it because a general crack to their radios isn't around yet.

We're approaching the world of Richard Stallman's "The Right to Read"[1]. A world in which piracy is acceptable isn't a world of free stuff for everyone-- it's a world where content is locked down, or never made at all. A perfect content lockdown is theroetically possible and people are getting better at it all the time. Then it will be so long to fair use, to reasonable sharing, to grey-market cultural exports.

This world will happen because people want to buy the best, latest, greatest, biggest budget music, movies, apps, and so on. Confronted with this, piracy advocates theorize a Marxian post-scarcity paradise where all content creators do it for the love of content creation, where people have woken up and thrown off the shackles of capitalist big content. I'm not keeping my fingers crossed.

[1] <https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html>

<comment><USER7> Are trying to imply that deep down everyone inherently would choose theft over remuneration? Or that we all would prefer a world where everything is free?

Piracy exists sorely due to bad business models, where it is distribution of expected value of a product; Teens aren't going to pay $300 for Microsoft Office to use for 3 hours the night before a paper is due, I don't want to have DRM on my music.

If your opinion was the case we'd see businesses burning to the ground, which we aren't. We're seeing business like Spotify, BandCamp, Steam, Kickstarter, HumbleIndieBundle all flourishing.

<comment><USER8> No, piracy exists because it's cheaper than buying a product.

<comment><USER9> Piracy exists because easily replicable goods are not available to some people, price is just one of many possible reasons for this unavailability -- look at tv, shows from free-to-air channels are being pirated in millions(!) of copies every week.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The question of intellectual property is moot. It is impossible to adequately police teh intertubes without outlawing encryption.

Why do the media companies insist on continuing to attempt the impossible, instead of cutting their losses and investing in distribution infrastructure? By pursuing the kind of ham-fisted, extra-legal "piracy fighting" that the article describes, they are doing themselves a huge disservice. Strong-arming internet users, interfering with judicial processes, and pushing unpopular bills doesn't do a whole lot to stop piracy, but it does promote the view of the media industry as a mafia.

"The minister (illegally) told the prosecutor what had happened which forced him to raid TPB -- only a few weeks after sending out that memo about how legal it was." [Article]

Every time something like this happens, more people who in-principle support the idea of intellectual property become hostile towards media lobbies and companies they represent. Instead of trying to win the "hearts and minds" of internet users, they are turning "convenience pirates" ideological and legitimizing the very fears that push internet rights-activists in the same camp as the "ideological pirates".

<comment><USER11> i may be out of the loop, but... none of the popular ways of piracy are generally encrypted are they? if all the unencrypted ones were to be shut down, would it be possible to replace them with safe ones?

i mean with public p2p filesharing, you can always "spy" on the sharers. i mean it has the be decryptable for you to download it, right? and youll know who sent it.

and with stuff that hosted somewhere, whether it's some usenet provider or megaupload, you can always shut down the hoster.

people could still pirate by directly sending each other encrypted files, but you'd always have to know someone personally who has what you want. which would make piracy much harder.

why am i wrong? ;)

<comment><USER12> Just because it's not the dominant means of exchange today doesn't mean it couldn't be.

Ten years ago, the analogous reasoning would have been 'Well, we can just shut down the Napster server', or shortly after 'Well, we can just shutdown the Gnutella superpeers'.

<comment><USER11> you ignored the problem i saw with it. if there's no public component to it and people would only share with their friends, the availability of piracy would be severely limited.

and if there is, the content industry could still get their "spies" in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> OK , the argument is more or less that the technology to mass distribute content online for free has made the content industries as they stand today obsolete despite the piracy being illegal.

As a thought experiment let's assume that technology appeared to develop a perfect cloaking device and a teleporter and these things could be made cheap enough to be affordable to 99% of the population.

This would allow anyone to effectively teleport into any house/shop or workplace, take what they wanted and leave with an extremely low chance of being caught (yes, I know piracy isn't theft etc etc, that's not my point here).

Would this then make the entire concept of owning anything that could be easily carried by a person obsolete?

<comment><USER14> It's a weird hypothetical, but I think it would: if you need something, just teleport and grab it. With the exception of personalized items (basically just my computer these days), I don't care much if somebody takes something I own given that I could get something equivalent easily.

As long as the technology was symmetric (that is, everybody had equal access to it), I think it would just make allocation of most items more efficient. Why should I own a hammer that I use once a year if I can just grab it from somebody who isn't using it at the moment? And then they could grab one from somebody else when the time came.

The issue with personalization actually has a parallel in the IP--there is copyright and then there is privacy; the two are different and it is eminently reasonable to support one but not the other.

Now, there would be some issues with your hypothetical world (e.g. who would produce stuff in the first place?) but I do not think they would be insurmountable. So yes, I think that _would_ make owning small impersonal items obsolete.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Not much of a Wired fan, but here's the video to that article:

[http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-10/14/peter- sunde-w...](http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-10/14/peter-sunde- wired-11-flattr-pirate-bay)

Edit: forgot to add the link

</comment><comment><USER16> I can't really get behind someone that:

1) makes money on advertising on top of other people's copyrighted material 2) starts a service for donating money and then charges a 10% transaction fee. Even Paypal isn't that bad.

<comment><USER17> Revolutions aren't cheap!

<comment><USER16> yeah, well, neither are their paychecks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> wish i could see the slides :\

edit: ok, the video does show some of them..</comment>


Welcome to Google TiSP - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/tisp/ <comment><USER2> <http://www.google.com/tisp/press.html>

Quote: "MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., April 1, 2007 - Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) today announced the launch of Google TiSP (BETA)™,".

In case anyone was wondering.. :)</comment>


Hotspot (Linux perf GUI) v1.1.0 adds timeline and recording features - <AUTHOR> https://www.kdab.com/hotspot-v1-1-0-adds-timeline-recording-features/ <comment><AUTHOR> See also: [https://github.com/KDAB/hotspot](https://github.com/KDAB/hotspot)

You can now also download an AppImage, so no need to compile anything!

Feedback welcome :)</comment>


A persistent, relational store inspired by Datomic and DataScript - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mozilla/mentat <comment><USER2> Most useful databases persist their data somewhere, what does "persistent" mean in this context? Given the reference to Datomic I assume it means "persistent over time" aka you can time-travel through the DB history. Or is it just the classic meaning of persistent aka "not ephemeral"?

<comment><USER3> I think it's the classical meaning to distinguish it from Datascript, which is in-memory. This is sqlite as a storage back end I think.

I wonder if it also supports the recursive parts of datalog.

<comment> j-pb Datalog IS the recursive parts. Everything else is just conjunctive queries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Absolutely great idea. Datomic is amazing but having something light weight and open source would be fantastic.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is really cool, just wish it were more obvious on how to make an FFI layer for other languages

</comment><comment><USER6> Cool! Can it hook up with .Net core eventually?

</comment><comment><USER7> Any example code? (in Rust?)</comment>


Ask HN: How do you keep proper posture while seated? - <AUTHOR> I already have an ergonomic chair. It doesn't seem to help that much. Any tips for keeping proper posture while seated? I realize that standing and taking a break is good. Often I need to log a period of time in my chair though. <comment><USER2> [https://www.webmd.com/back-pain/news/20061129/back-pain- ease...](https://www.webmd.com/back-pain/news/20061129/back-pain-eased-by- sitting-back)

 _"Nov. 29, 2006 -- Lean back before reading this; your back may thank you.

A new study suggests that sitting upright for hours at a time -- for example, when working at a computer -- may lead to chronic back pain. Instead, the best position for your back is somewhat reclined, sitting at a 135-degree angle rather than the 90-degree angle most office chairs are designed for."_

</comment><comment><USER3> I try to keep proper posture, but I don't think the correct chair for me exists. I need a headrest (doctor recommended) and some amount of recline. However, I cannot find an office chair that will actually recline properly. Yes, it is theoretically possible to recline, but perhaps due to my (lack of) weight, I cannot push these spring-loaded backs back without exerting some force beyond gravity, usually by pushing my feet into the ground. What I really need is something like a car seat, which has adjustable set recline. Does anyone know of an office chair like this?

Even if I solve that problem, it also seems that all office and car chairs are designed for people a little shorter than me, so everything is a few inches off.

<comment><USER4> These are some expensive brands of "zero gravity" or "anti gravity" chairs. They might not be what you are seeking exactly.

[http://www.ergoquest.com/](http://www.ergoquest.com/)

[https://www.stressless.com/en](https://www.stressless.com/en)

[https://altwork.com/](https://altwork.com/)

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's a pretty good chance your monitor is too low and your keyboard too high relative to one another. Make sure it's comfortable to type and that you can look directly forward at your monitor while doing so rather than looking downward, which induces slouching and curling your shoulders, which in turn makes it more difficult to sit upright.

Make sure your desktop is at the right height for _you_ to sit with leg joints at right angles rather than adjusting yourself or your chair to a desk that's at some "standard" height.

</comment><comment><USER6> The NHS guidance[1] on this has been helpful, but I think a key factor is being aware of your posture slouching, which is where taking breaks is vital so you can re-adjust.

[1] [https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/healthy-body/how-to-sit- correct...](https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/healthy-body/how-to-sit-correctly/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I found the comments regarding mouse and keyboard positioning to be helpful. I realized that I had been placing my keyboard farther in on the desk, which can't be good for posture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Search for office ergonomic setup. There are a lot of large and small things you can do, like get a split keyboard so your hands can be further apart.

There are hacks you can try, like buy a product designed to support your posture, or just get yourself in good posture and have someone put tape up and down your back, so that when you begin to slouch you'll feel the tape pull.</comment>


Researchers Doubt That Certain Mental Disorders Are Disorders at All - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisonescalante/2020/08/11/researchers-doubt-that-certain-mental-disorders-are-disorders-at-all/#3b6d979515a6 <comment><USER2> They seem to believe in some magical distinction between disorders and non- disorders that I doubt can be established consistently in a meaningful manner and is pretty far from relevant. I think the meaningful way to think about mental disorders is that it simply means that a person have a slightly abnormal psychological condition that affects their quality of life in a significantly negative manner. The classification is helpful to get the right kind of help dealing with the condition.

That some abnormal psychological conditions can be reasonable reactions to stimuli isn't that relevant IMO. A broken leg is a normal reaction to hitting a tree when skiing, but we still need medical care when it happens.

If scientists then wants to discuss whether it should be called unable-to-walk disorder or a broken leg, I guess let them, but that discussion is just about terminology and unless I see concrete proof that it's more important than the treatment I don't think it's clinically relevant.

</comment><comment><USER3> Article repeats the thoroughly debunked " _evidence has continued to show that antidepressants perform no better than placebo._ "

"Evidence" cited is based on gathering a crowd of people suffering from at least a half-dozen medically-indistinguishable disorders, and giving them all just one medication that helps only the small fraction of them who suffer only what it treats, and then announcing that medication doesn't work.

It is like rounding up people with broken limbs of all kinds--many with more than one break--and putting a cast on each one's left shinbone; then announcing casts don't work, because look at all the ones it didn't help.

The "Gold Standard" double-blind trial works only if you can diagnose accurately. But the only tool known to diagnose depression is to try and see which medication helps. Design a plausible "gold standard" trial for that, I dare you.

The people conducting these depression treatment trials are guilty of malpractice and gross incompetence, and people repeating their results are, at best, dupes.

</comment><comment><USER4> Pretty much all of psych constructs are ill-defined, from IQ to autism to schizophrenia. That's not to say intelligence or mental illness isn't real, only that psychologists have done a spectacularly bad job at accounting for it in a scientifically valid way.

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't know if I completely agree with this. I've suffered from depression and anxiety my whole life, and maybe sometimes this is a response to something in my environment, but most of the time I just feel sad for not reason at all.

<comment><USER3> By the evidence, they are just almost completely wrong.

Modern life is not much like what we evolved in, but that many people do fine in it shows that environment is not determinative.</comment></comment>


CO2 levels mark 'new era' in the world's changing climate - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-37729033 <comment><USER2> Here the scary chart in question: [https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/wp- content/pl...](https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/wp- content/plugins/sio-bluemoon/graphs/mlo_full_record.png)

The last 2 years where it can be seen the level never returned under 400 ppm: [https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/wp- content/pl...](https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/wp- content/plugins/sio-bluemoon/graphs/mlo_two_years.png)

</comment><comment><USER3> > Levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have surged past an important threshold and > may not dip below it for "many generations".

Is this at all reversible? I presume not.

The real problem is that lots of people and putting a lot of effort and money into reducing emissions - where if the above is correct seems very very difficult (with a growing developing world) and likely a waste of time.

Surely we should be trying harder to scrub CO2 from the atmosphere and spend less time on reducing emissions?

<comment><USER4> We release it because it allows us to produce energy (burn something). To remove it from atmosphere would require to put it some higher energy state so that we can store it and that require again some source of energy. Pumping pure CO2 in some mine will probably not do the job.

In reality, we will try to just reduce temperature without removing CO2, but CO2 causes problems other than tempterature rise. See ocean acidification.

There seems to not be any good solution really.

<comment><USER5> Plant a hell of a lot of trees?

<comment><USER6> That is actually the most effective way of scrubbing CO2. The problem is that trees take up a lot of valuable real estate.

<comment><USER7> Lots of unused land are shrubs, grass and hillsides. The mediterranean coast used to be all trees a little more than two millenia ago[0]. Some semi-arid zones around deserts could also support reforestation.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I really wish people would stop saying we're screwed. I know it's a compensation for climate denial, but I think it's terrible rhetoric. If you say, "it's too late, we're screwed," then the message is that nothing really needs to be done but deal with the consequences.

This is a big, scary situation and it's easy to feel hopeless in the face of it. But we are faced with multiple potential futures. Our outcome is tied to our action and the outcomes could be anywhere between mild and catastrophic. No invisible hand is going to swoop down and fix this one for us. This one's on us.

</comment><comment><USER9> For context here's the Earth's level of CO2 over geologic time periods: [http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/PageMill_Images/image277.g...](http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/PageMill_Images/image277.gif)

<comment><USER10> While this diagram shows, that the current CO2 content is lower than in many historic phases of the earth climate, this has little impact on the seriousness of our current situation. The biggest problem we have with the change of the CO2 content of the atmosphere is the speed by which it changes, and consequently the speed of the warming up. Eco systems change way quicker than they can adapt too. And dying eco systems and their input on our life are the big problem humanity is facing in the next 100 years.

<comment><USER11> I can't help but to think that it will solve the problem by putting pressure on its source, aka Humans.

<comment><USER12> Are humans the primary source? Would love a reputable citation.

<comment><USER13> You can prove it to yourself by asking what happened to all the carbon in coal and oil extracted since the 18th century. It tracks the rise in atmospheric CO2, as you would expect, since we burned it.

<comment><USER14> I've been pointing this out to obstinate nerds for years. This really isn't complicated: human-generated CO2 does not magically disappear, and we know exactly how it interacts with infrared radiation. Just put these two simple facts together.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you're wondering what software entrepreneurs can do about it, here's a reply I recently wrote:

\----

I'm in a climate change startup, and here's how I look at it: 87% of the energy sources we use are fossil-based[1] and will need to be replaced with non-fossil alternatives in the next 30 years. That's trillions of dollars worth of infrastructure and technology growth opportunity for clean energy and energy efficiency[2]. The next Google will be an energy company[3].

To answer your question more specifically, in order to actually pull the 87% energy transition off, clean energy sources face huge financial and engineering challenges. This presents a lot of business opportunities for tech startups that can improve efficiencies for those clean energy companies. Energy efficiency, electric self-driving vehicles, solar, wind, nuclear, geothermal, public transit, etc. all need to grow by 100x in 30 years, and a huge chunk of that growth will be software driven.

The advanced energy industry is already a $1.4 trillion industry (larger than airlines and fashion industries)[4]. So there is, right now, a ton of market size for climate change tech, and it will grow by several orders of magnitude over the next few decades. Now is one of those rare moments where you can save the planet and have a business model. For example, my startup is a SaaS company that is used by tons of distributed clean energy resources to smooth out the process of collecting energy data for feasibility analyses. We shave about 5-10% off the installed cost of energy audits and distributed solar, and make money doing it.

So if you're interested in doing tech startup in climate change. Do it! We need all the help we can get. If you're interested in the Bay Area professional clean energy scene, check out the calendar [https://bayareaenergyevents.com/](https://bayareaenergyevents.com/) (I run it) and start showing up to stuff!

[1]: [https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=11951](https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=11951)

[2]: [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate- consensus-97...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate- consensus-97-per-cent/2015/aug/31/citi-report-slowing-global-warming-would- save-tens-of-trillions-of-dollars)

[3]: [http://www.pvsolarreport.com/the-next- internet/](http://www.pvsolarreport.com/the-next-internet/)

[4]: [http://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2016/03/advanced- energy...](http://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2016/03/advanced-energy-hits- record-revenue-nearly-1-4-trillion-2015/)

From [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12344113](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12344113)

</comment><comment><USER16> Sigh... [https://xkcd.com/1732/](https://xkcd.com/1732/)

</comment><comment><USER17> Without nuclear power, there's no stopping global warming:

[https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_shellenberger_how_fear_of_...](https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_shellenberger_how_fear_of_nuclear_power_is_hurting_the_environment?language=en)

We squandered the past 3 decades, now we're screwed.

<comment><USER10> Nuclear certainly keeps the CO2 emissions down. France has a pretty low CO2 footprint based on 80+% nuclear electric power. However, nuclear is not only controversial, but going forward, expensive. For new installations, wind and solar installations are cost competitive if not even cheaper, with little environmental or economic risks attached.

<comment><USER18> > For new installations, wind and solar installations are cost competitive if > not even cheaper, with little environmental or economic risks attached.

Citation needed.

<comment><USER19> Exactly. If subsidies are removed from the equation, solar in particular is quite a bit more expensive. Wind and solar also lack the 24/7 reliability of nuclear.

<comment><USER10> No, solar is about 100€/MWh without subsidies. Indeed, the one big problem remaining with wind and solar is constant supply over the day. But the larger the connected grids are, the better this balances out. While a nuclear power plant delivers a constant output 24/7 (this is also not ideal as we are lacking consumption in the late evening and night, thats why Belgium put lights onto their highways), nuclear power plants regularly get pulled of the grid entirely, if there is a technical problem. A new one should of course have less downtimes than an older one, but one needs to plan in a certain amount of replacement capacity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "[...] all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. [...] There is no doubt that parts of the world are getting warmer, but the warming is not global. I am not saying that the warming does not cause problems. Obviously it does. Obviously we should be trying to understand it better. I am saying that the problems are grossly exaggerated. They take away money and attention from other problems that are more urgent and more important, such as poverty and infectious disease and public education and public health, and the preservation of living creatures on land and in the oceans, not to mention easy problems such as the timely construction of adequate dikes around the city of New Orleans."

Freeman Dyson, heretic thoughts about science and society.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xFLjUt2leM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xFLjUt2leM)

[https://www.edge.org/conversation/freeman_dyson-heretical- th...](https://www.edge.org/conversation/freeman_dyson-heretical-thoughts- about-science-and-society)

<comment><USER13> The scary thing about global warming is that it happens on a timescale that our political institutions aren't equipped to handle, and requires concerted effort by countries that are not equally affected. It's also hard to model and has outcomes that range from "mild disruption" to "Earth turns into Venus".

The precautionary principle suggests that we take it seriously.

<comment><USER20> > Earth turns into Venus

Unfortunately I don't remember where I did read it, but I do recall reading a paper rejecting the idea that Earth could follow a runaway green-house effect as on Venus.

I don't know if people seriously see that as a real possibility or not, but at the very least I've never heard any scientist mentioning it seriously.

EDIT: well, apparently it wasn't so hard to find. It's right in the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article about runaway greenhouse effect[1]

"For instance, a "runaway greenhouse effect"—analogous to Venus-- appears to have virtually no chance of being induced by anthropogenic activities."[2]

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_greenhouse_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_greenhouse_effect)

2\. [http://www.ipcc.ch/meetings/session31/inf3.pdf](http://www.ipcc.ch/meetings/session31/inf3.pdf)

<comment><USER10> I very much hope that the worst case is not a Venus like runaway effect. But there are many possible outcomes which for practical purpose for us humans are equally bad. There have been geohistoric events where the temperature rose by 10 degrees, causing most of the eco system to collapse. Eventually life recovered from this, with many larger species gone.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


MPAA and ICE admit they yanked a man out of a movie for wearing Glass (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://boingboing.net/2014/01/22/mpaa-and-ice-admit-they-yanked.html

<comment><USER2> "Neither of them explain how it is that a movie theater employee can call an MPAA hotline, and how the MPAA can then command ICE law-enforcement officials to drop everything and rush down to a multiplex to roust a potential camcorderer and treat him like a presumptive criminal."

This right there is the crux. I can understand a a movie theater being concerned, but calling the MPAA? Rapid escalation to a government response?! That should be unfathomable with properly-aligned priorities.</comment>