Extreme climate change has arrived in America - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/national/climate-environment/climate-change-america/ <comment><USER2> I still find the fact that Exxon internal researchers knew about the incoming crisis since 1982. The fact that they didn't act upon the information to me is mind-boggling, I guess the profit motives were too strong. I wonder how they rationalized it to themselves, if we don't do it then someone else will?

<comment><USER3> >I still find the fact that Exxon internal researchers knew about the incoming crisis since 1982.

I'll keep posting about it untill this hysteria dies, though I fear that given social pressures regarding anything representing "denial" will keep it alive indefinitely. No one knew about an incoming crisis in the 80s. People were aware about the possibility of climate change in the 80s. It took 30 years of data collection, research, and computational modeling on increasingly modern hardware, which allows for exponentially larger and more precise models, before we had amassed enough evidence in a totally model driven field to conclude that we may be _terraforming_ on the scale of 100 years.

<comment><USER4> Your wording is somewhat oblique ("this hysteria"), and you are making distinctions that are not clear ("no one knew" vs. "people were aware of the possibility"; "terraforming" as a feel-good substitute for unplanned global climate change), and claims that are very strong, sweeping, and incorrect ("totally model-driven field").

Let's correct two of these. Of course there are empirical observations related to climate. There is a definition of 54 "essential climate variables" (ECVs), see [1]. One of these is greenhouse gases [2]. At the bottom of the link, you can see observing programs for CO2 and CH4, both in situ and satellite.

These are well-measured variables, with well-characterized error bars, and models are tested against these observations. For instance, the ~400 ppm CO2 ECV is measured to within 1ppm quite regularly and has been for many years. This is how we improve the models. The same kind of monitoring/model- improvement feedback loop is in place for almost all of the ECVs, including clouds and sea surface properties like temperature and salinity.

Another correction, relating to "no one knew" about a future crisis in the 1980s. Here is a paper [3] from James Hansen in _Science_ magazine, in 1981, that clearly warns of crisis-level consequences. From the abstract -- In the 21st century, we will see "creation of drought-prone regions in North America and central Asia, erosion of the West Antarctic ice sheet with a consequent worldwide rise in sea level, and opening of the fabled Northwest Passage." For whatever it's worth, this appeared on the NYTimes front page in 1981.

That's just one publication. Throughout the 1980s there were broad-based studies, mandated by Congress, that indicated the scope of the problem. See [4], from 1983.

[1] [https://gcos.wmo.int/en/essential-climate- variables](https://gcos.wmo.int/en/essential-climate-variables)

[2] [https://ane4bf-datap1.s3.eu- west-1.amazonaws.com/wmod8_gcos/...](https://ane4bf-datap1.s3.eu- west-1.amazonaws.com/wmod8_gcos/s3fs- public/ghg_ecv_factsheet_201905.pdf?TJO3Z20j79hzWgwL4sT.qEhqWA3rf3Dz)

[3] [https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/ha04600x.html](https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/ha04600x.html)

[4] [https://www.nap.edu/catalog/18714/changing-climate-report- of...](https://www.nap.edu/catalog/18714/changing-climate-report-of-the- carbon-dioxide-assessment-committee)

<comment><USER3> >terraforming" as a feel-good substitute for unplanned global climate change),

Not true, please don't put words in my mouth. I use the term terraforming to emphasize the magnitude of the claim. We are fundamentally changing the properties of an entire planetary atmosphere, inadvertently.

>and claims that are very strong, sweeping, and incorrect ("totally model- driven field").

Also not true. The point is that climate science by nature cannot be experimental. We can only make predictions and then proof amounts to measuring how well decades of measurements line up with predictions/models.

>Another correction, relating to "no one knew" about a future crisis in the 1980s. Here is a paper [3] from James Hansen in Science magazine, in 1981, that clearly warns of crisis-level consequences. From the abstract -- In the 21st century, we will see "creation of drought-prone regions in North America and central Asia, erosion of the West Antarctic ice sheet with a consequent worldwide rise in sea level, and opening of the fabled Northwest Passage." For whatever it's worth, this appeared on the NYTimes front page in 1981.

Again, given the non experimental nature of climate science, this was a massive claim which requires decades of data collection and modeling to verify before committing to sweeping social and economic policy reform which has costs of its own.

People underestimate the fact that climate change is one of the most radical ideas ever proposed by the modern scientific establishment, in terms of the scale of the changes, the disastrous predicted consequences, and the scale of societal change required for mitigation. We're talking about a potential irreversible, runaway global extinction accidentally triggered by humans 100-1000+ times faster than any measured natural rate. Due diligence, in a non experimental field, limited by 80s modeling hardware, took time. Meanwhile we all benefited from the fossil fuels we (and our parents) burned.

<comment><USER4> You said Climate Science is a "totally model-driven field" and I provided facts correcting that sweeping claim.

It's not uncommon to hear this kind of claim on HN - sometimes people seem to not really have on-the-ground information about how climate science works, and are instead going by how they might _imagine_ it works -- a bunch of modelers working in isolation.

That's not how climate science is done. For more on the relationship of climate models to observations, see an old comment: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15613090#15620293](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15613090#15620293)

\--

Your reply says that you meant to say that Climate Science "cannot be experimental". This, it turns out, is also not true. There are cases where nature runs the experiment for us.

For instance, the large methane leak recently in the LA area allowed us to understand the effectiveness of the inversion algorithms that are used to turn observations of concentrations into observations of the emissions that _caused_ those concentrations. For instance, to understand the correctness of wind models.

Wildfires, volcanic eruptions, and ENSO onsets often serve as nature-given checks on climate science predictions. They basically provide a "step function" input that is a tool to characterize the system response to a shock. For instance, we got a lot of science out of the varying climate-system responses to different volcanic eruptions.

\--

You said that "no one knew" about a possible future crisis in the 1980s. I supplied links showing that this is not the case -- the science establishment, the Congress, and the readers of the front page of major newspapers knew.

Your reply counters with "what should we have done". That's another question, isn't it?

<comment><USER3> >Your reply says that you meant to say that Climate Science "cannot be experimental". This, it turns out, is also not true. There are cases where nature runs the experiment for us.

>For instance, the large methane leak recently in the LA area allowed us to understand the effectiveness of the inversion algorithms that are used to turn observations of concentrations into observations of the emissions that caused those concentrations. In other words, to understand the correctness of wind models.

This is exactly what differentiates model driven from experimental sciences. You cannot go out and define an experiment to confirm your claim, you can only make observations of natural phenomena. Which can take decades when you're considering sweeping, global changes, particularly when you're measuring changes which _occur_ on scales of decades-centuries.

>You said that "no one knew" about a possible future crisis in the 1980s. I supplied links showing that this is not the case -- the science establishment, the Congress, and the readers of the front page of major newspapers knew.

Once again you are twisting my words. My point is to differentiate between knowing that something is happening with certainty, e.g. a consensus that climate is indeed changing due to human activity, and knowing of the _possibility_ of something significant occurring, requiring substantial evidence to match the claim. It took decades to gather enough evidence to match the scale of the claim of _global_ climate change.

>Your reply counters with "what should we have done". That's another question, isn't it?

Again I've done no such thing. My point is that we did what we should have - it is not rational to make sweeping changes to society, culture, and economy for every alarmist prediction uttered by a scientist, because such changes, big or small, are not free. One requires a minimum degree of certainty and, considering the magnitude of the implications of climate change, from the perspectives of both consequences and mitigation, it isn't unreasonable to say that 30 years is a relatively short time to establish a rigorous scientific consensus given the age of the modern scientific establishment and the amount of data that needed to be collected and analyzed because of the purely data driven, non-experimental nature of climate science.

<comment><USER5> Do you have the same objections about astronomy, cosmology, archeology, etc?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What I find quite interesting is that there are numerous high-profile politicians and media figures, along with vast numbers of trolls, who deny that climate change exists, and block meaningful action to control it.

At what point do we learn the lesson that's deeply embedded in our collective consciousness (Noah's Ark, the ant and the grasshopper) and decide that modern states are not capable of dealing with the problem, assuming that climate change is going to result in serious disruption, and look to make contingency plans for ourselves and our families?

<comment><USER7> Modern nation-states are perfectly capable of dealing with climate change issues. They're the only entities with the power to properly do so. The problem lies in industry-bought politicians preventing those nation-states from enacting effective policies.

<comment><USER8> Because of the free-rider problem, dealing with it requires international cooperation between those nation-states. Which is possible, but difficult.

William Nordhaus' Nobel prize winning proposal would make that easier: [https://issues.org/climate-clubs-to-overcome-free- riding/](https://issues.org/climate-clubs-to-overcome-free-riding/)

<comment> munk-a Honestly, too bad. Even if some countries might fail to contribute their fair share action just needs to be taken.

If folks can get an equitable system working then that's great - otherwise I expect the US, India and China to bear the vast majority of the cost since those three nations all have an immense amount to lose if global warming gets more extreme.

Both India and China are in extremely weather sensitive areas with large populations and a government that would be unable to cope if food shortages became a thing and economic instability happened. America just doesn't want the hassle of being the golden egg if food shortages break down, it'll probably fair pretty well for quite some time, but the 40% of Americans that are obese will be poorly situated to survive in extreme weather events.

<comment><USER8> You're right. The standard comment I hear is "Why should we do anything, China isn't doing anything and it's bigger than us"

My response is:

1\. China is doing stuff. Not enough perhaps, but arguably more than we are. 2\. Who are we to say anything? Canada has the highest per capita emissions in the world. If anybody should be first, shouldn't it be us?

But the free riding problem is still real. "Climate clubs" would completely demolish the "but China" problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I recently learned on a trip to the United Kingdom that former hop-growing areas of the Southern UK have been purchased by French winemakers to grow grapes, because global warming has made that region amenable to it [1], while regions in France previously associated with viniculture are finding it increasingly difficult to grow traditional wine grape varieties [2]

1\. [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/08/02/english- sparklin...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/08/02/english-sparkling- wine-will-better-champagne-climate-warms-says/)

2\. [https://www.france24.com/en/20180914-down-earth-climate- chan...](https://www.france24.com/en/20180914-down-earth-climate-change- bordeaux-wine-future-merlot-grape-variety-winegrowers)

<comment><USER10> I've family in Napa, Ca. One of the high schools is literally called Vintage High and their mascot is the Crushers, after grape crushing machines [0]. Winemaking is as a part of Napa as the soil and air.

Wineries are moving up into Oregon and Washington now, following the climate [1]. It takes ~7 years for the grapes to get to a point where you can make wine out of them, hence moving up there now and planting.

This climate crisis is going to ruin Napa and already kinda is. ~81% of the grapes can't manage in the heat by 2080 [2], that's 4 of every 5 vines just dying in the sun. Meanwhile, the Napa Valley Vinters Association's head is firmly in the sand [3] and remains steadfastly confused that climate is weather.

[0] [https://vhs-nvusd-ca.schoolloop.com/](https://vhs-nvusd- ca.schoolloop.com/)

[1] [https://apnews.com/2a2da3558a1c47f6a2aeec8d409e47c2](https://apnews.com/2a2da3558a1c47f6a2aeec8d409e47c2)

[2] [https://www.climatehotmap.org/global-warming- locations/napa-...](https://www.climatehotmap.org/global-warming- locations/napa-valley-ca-usa.html)

[3] [https://napavintners.com/about/climate_change.asp](https://napavintners.com/about/climate_change.asp)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Not just in America, but in SE Asia as well. My gf grew up in one of the largest cities on coastal area in our home country in SE Asia. Her city got flooded every year for third year in a row now whereas it wasn't the case before then. This year is the hardest one among three; the water rises up to chest level and lives were lost.

I worry that poor countries like my home country, which has not much resource to migrate people in mass, will face serious issues in the near future. Having said that, I also believe in the resilience of the people there. They have been through military dictatorship and whatnot, so I have faith that they will survive albeit with huge cost of lives and property...

Climate change will disturb world's political and economic systems, and I hope (and kind of believe) that the humanity can survive through this ordeal. In my honest opinion, it's too late to stop climate change, and the best we can do is to do our individual parts to mitigate the effects and come up with ways to cope with it the best we can.

<comment><USER12> Yeah it's been a while since I've read up about the growing number of refugees but IIRC climate change has the potential to dramatically increase the amount of migration to countries which won't have enough resources to properly with the influx of people and put even more stress on local resources (i.e. water, food).

<comment><USER13> the far-right in Europe is resurgent largely on the back of anti-migrant racism and hysteria, and that's with a crisis involving 5-6 million people. now imagine things with 25 million people, or more, and not just focused in Europe. it's going to be very bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> [https://www.wsj.com/articles/usda-report-sees-dire- climate-c...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/usda-report-sees-dire-climate- change-impact-on-u-s-crops-11563917840)

 _Unchecked climate change could mean that the weather conditions hurting farmers this year will become increasingly common and result in higher costs for the federal government, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture report.

The report, issued by the USDA's Economic Research Service, found that if greenhouse gases are allowed to continue to increase, U.S. production of corn and soybeans—which are more susceptible to extreme heat during growing season—could decline as much as 80% in the next 60 years._

This is a problem. The US has some of the most fertile growing regions in the world and if we stop exporting cheap grain there will be global hunger and strife.

Shits about to get real yo.

<comment><USER15> Not sure why you seem to be greyed: [https://www.arborday.org/media/mapchanges.cfm](https://www.arborday.org/media/mapchanges.cfm)

<comment><USER14> TBH I've been posting stuff warning about climate change and environmental damage. I think there are corporate propagandists on the site that are down voting this information as a paid propaganda campaign.

He who controls the Spice controls the Universe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This average increase mark is obviously very useful and important, but there's another dimension to add on to that when it comes to temperature trends.

In the Twin Cities, for instance, the altered jet stream has greatly increased both colder-than-usual and hotter-than-usual patterns that stick around for longer. So although our average increase looks low, for instance this summer espeially we are having unusually hot streaks followed by unusually cold streaks (and the winters have been very bad over the past several years, with two 'polar vortex' years due to arctic air masses displacing on us, which is greatly impacted by climate change and arctic warming).

TL;DR I'd be very interested to look at the data shifts in temperature more deeply and see which areas are impacted by both hotter AND colder weather, which wouldn't show up in an examination of averages.

<comment><USER17> I agree, in my city (Edmonton), the weather forecast even 1 day in advance has effectively become useless this summer. It has been record breaking in terms of the amount/days of rain, and I can say with confidence on at least half of those days rain was not in the forecast.

The system has become completely unstable to the point where weather models no longer seem to be able to output accurate results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like that this article states the warming has been a long time coming.

Filed under believe but cannot prove: Agriculture interrupted the background warming & cooling cycle.

If humanity is to survive climate crisis, we'll need to actively manage the entire carbon cycle. aka Garden Earth.

<comment><USER18> > we'll need to actively manage the entire carbon cycle. aka Garden Earth.

This I agree with.

In all this turmoil and disappointment that we screwed up our ecosystem, regardless of whoever is at fault, it's about time we step up to evolve into a specie which can control their home planet's climate to a large extent.

I may be day dreaming but I see controlling climate as next progression in our evolution. And when I say "controlling climate", I don't mean it at expense of arresting development or hoping that people will just stop indulging themselves etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> One challenge is that those in the Midwest seem to welcome the idea of "global warming" & several Midwestern states seem to be key to winning the presidential election.*

I think that is a very hard marketing battle to win since the idea of climate change to many people just means warmer temperatures.

I think a lot of people in colder climates feel they have little to lose. The actual massive scale effect is extremely difficult to comprehend, even after watching excellent documentaries. I think it is only something most voting citizens will care about when it effects them personally & by then it would be far to late.

* Based on living in the Midwest

\- Edit - Giving this more thought I wonder if these articles need to be less about temperature changes & reflect more about increases of extreme weather & effects on farms.

<comment><USER20> Isn't the most of the Midwest already in normal times quite hot in the summer? I mean, in my European eyes looking at weather stations reports and temperatures maps, 95% of the US land is too hot in the summer, and the Midwest climate is very continental, i.e. cold winters but hot summers too.

But yes, people have been indoctrinated in associating warmth and heat with "good". I trace it back to the post-WW2 era, with the development of paid holidays and tourism in the sun. Before that, the part of population who could afford holidays would either go to spa resorts in the mountains or to the North Atlantic shores; i.e. they would go to places which were cooler than the places they usually lived, not to places that are hotter than those places where they lived which are already hot in in summertime.

From the 60's to the 80's, sun was promoted as an extremely positive value. The more sun you could get, the healthier you would be. You'd have to get more and more tanned.

Previously, people protected themselves from the sun. Hat, scarfs, long sleeves were worn. Shades were looked after, and large trees were planted along the roads and most squares. Houses (also for practical reasons) had smaller windows, unlike the fad of large window bays which make the room behind unbearable as soon as the sun shows up.

There has been lately a little bit of back-pedalling on a few of those aspects, but the main principle ("sun, heat, and light are good for you") has not changed much and remain quite deeply ingrained in most people.

I find it infuriating that in 2019, TV and weather forecast anchors still always present long streaks of hot, dry and cloudless days as a "beautiful weather" for which we should rejoice. It doesn't matter if the main news theme of the previous days has been climate change/warming, or the drought hitting farmers, nope, 24 h later they use the same wording again. I mean, they could finish their sentence with "a beautiful weather for those who fancy this or that activity", that would be fine, but they never do: in their mind it is must be good and welcome for everyone. At the same time, as a fair scale gardener I see half of my crops die from the drought or the heatwave, because it has rained only once in 8 weeks, despite the fact that I am supposed to live in one of the chamber pots[1] of my country... :-(

I think it indicates a huge cultural inertia, even though this culture was only (IMO) recently born, in the second half of the XXth century. Despite the awareness which has been rising in the last 15 years, it hasn't yet translated into the common mental model.

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

[1]: not sure how well it translates in English: a place where it rains very often.

<comment><USER19> > Isn't the most of the Midwest already in normal times quite hot in the > summer?

The thought is it will translate to less cold winters. I'm not arguing that this is great logic, just pointing out the common thoughts I overhear.

<comment><USER20> Oh yes, I have heard that too.

Following a bit the same kind of logic, I often hear people complaining "Phew, enough with this bad weather!", when, after a series of 8 dry hot sunny days, it has been raining only for a half-day (and it will not last any longer)...

Concerning farming, I'd rather have a steadily cold winter, than a warmer winter with a 1 or 2 days cold spike a month after crops have started growing, having started early because of a too early and too warm winter period. (We've had that too this winter here.)

Having lived many years above Arctic Circle, would I have wished for warmer winters? Shorter ones, yes, a bit, because it gets a bit monotonous in the end. But warmer, not really.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's insane how many intelligent, thoughtful people I've met who still parrot the line that "oh our children will be screwed". Or even worse, they make some random allusion to scientific progress or God and claim it will all be okay.

No.

Science will not save us. God will not save us. It will __not __be okay. And unless you 're currently on your deathbed, you will feel the effects of climate change. You will be fucked.

I suspect only drastic, world wide, almost revolutionary political change could effectively halt the massive carbon generating machine that is human industry. Except the problem with massive revolutions is that they tend to cause conflict, which tends to increase emissions (tanks don't exactly run on solar).

Man, I'm pretty damn close to joining a doomsday cult.

<comment><USER22> The scientific consensus re climate change isn't anywhere near that gloomy in the short term range. We've already had nearly 1 degree C increase since 1975 and it hasn't been a disaster yet.

I think the far bigger problem will be that it won't really be that bad for the next 50 years, leading to complacency, and we will hit the point of no return before we really feel much impact in the richer western countries.

<comment><USER23> I keep seeing people spread variants of "if we don't act now, climate change will destroy the world 12 years" and "we only have 18 months to stop emitting CO2". Not just by random social media users - quite a few journalists and even members of Congress have said those things. I've even seen a few people explicitly claim that they're suffering depression, not saving for retirement, etc, because they expect climate change will kill them personally by 2050. Of course, none of those claims are backed by science at all.

The 18 month stat is a mashup of two totally different deadlines. First, that we need strong emissions commitments by 2020, which is not a meteorological deadline but a political one: UN meeting schedules and the Paris Agreement call for strengthened emissions plans by 2020, so failing to act by then implies an overall lack of political will. Second, the IPCC report that CO2 emissions need to peak by 2020 to keep warming below 1.5 C by 2100. That's important and hard to reach, but "peak" is not "become net negative" and >1.5C is not "doomed".

The 12 year stat is basically backwards - confusing an emissions deadline with a temperature peak. The IPCC finding is that we'll reach 1.5 C of total post-1975 warming between 2030 and 2050, and that major emissions cuts by 2030 (and net-zero by 2050) could limit warming to 1.5C. The worst case described was 3C by _2100_ , not 2030, and harms arriving some time after their "locked in" warming thresholds.

None of that means it's not a serious problem, or that rapid action isn't needed, but I'm really disturbed to see people predicting death and doom for what are actually emissions deadlines. It seems like an attempt to trick people into acting fast, but action that fast isn't actually possible. I think that instead we're going to get to the 2020s and be hearing "you said the world would end but things are still basically ok, you're full of shit, clearly we don't need to keep taking action".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> While watching the HBO Chernobyl dramatization, I was struck by the Soviet government's contradictory response of publicly denying the problem existed and minimizing its extent, while at the same time giving the science team almost carte blanche authority to requisition resources to solve the problem. 5000 tons of boron? Helicopters are on their way. The entire country's supply of liquid nitrogen? It's yours. Robots? If they'll help, sure.

The show made a big deal about how communist secrecy and denial obstructed the solution, made the problem worse, and even allowed it to happen in the first place. "A nuclear disaster cannot occur in the Soviet Union".

But when I think about how we're reacting to climate change, it really seems like we're pretending the problem doesn't exist the same way they did, but without the corresponding succeed-at-all-costs extreme problem solving.

</comment><comment><USER25> The physical size of the Earth will never increase, yet human's ability to multiply ourselves is infinite in theory. Something gotta give.

Going by evolutionary theory, that means the more our total population increases the smaller average human body size must shrink, so we would consume less input resources and produce less waste individually. Same reason why giant dinosaurs went extinct yet little cockroaches survived. Those T-Rex'es required massive calories consumption to sustain themselves, yet there was no longer enough resources in the environment to fuel them.

The problem is for any of those biological changes to take place and for human to evolve (assuming the evolutionary theory is true), that process will be a slow and gradual one, likely to take hundred thousands or even millions of years. Climate change certainly doesn't operate within even a remotely similar time frame. Once it hits, resources will become scarce so in the worst case if we cannot stop climate change, the only possible solution is to practice reducing average consumption level to minimum, or to forecast optimal numbers of the world's total population that can still be accommodated by the Earth at each level of damage produced by climate change, then find a way to relentlessly control that number to keep it within limit.

I sincerely hope we will never have to come to that scenario as countries which own nuclear power will possess massive advantages over others.

<comment><USER26> Humans are not predicted to grow infinitely. As areas industrialize, more people have less children. Projections I have read predict we will level off at about 12 billion people by 2100.

But the areas of the world now with less population growth (such as the US) also consume much more resources than the areas with higher population growth. So resource consumption _is_ a big problem. But I think it's not helpful to frame it as a "population" problem, as we expect the population to level off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Anthropogenic warming hypothesis states: 1) Human activities have a net warming effect 2) that effect is large

I have read 2007 IPPC report and evidence of the above two claims is burried under mountains of fear mongering and dire predictions about the consequences of the claims being correct. The actual evidence is barely addressed and comes down to trusting a handful of computer models that only a few dozen people understand.

Recent warming amount and rate is not unusual for the earth's recent pre-human past.

When you add to this the myriad of political causes that have latched on to anthropogenic hypothesis being true, its pretty reasonable that informed individual is sketical. Especially with authoritarians calling for violence and censorship against"climate deniers".

<comment><USER28> I feel the same way - I'm somewhat skeptical partly because it's good to be skeptical of most things, especially something that you can't really see, but mostly because when I ask the climate change people what I should do in order to combat climate change, their first and only answer tends to be "vote democrat and never vote republican!" That being said, I still mostly do what (I think) the climate change people say I ought to do such as recycle, prefer energy efficient alternatives, and try to walk when I can. To the extent it doesn't hurt us, we all might as well be "environmentally conscious" even if it turns out we didn't actually have to be.

<comment><USER29> You are unfortunate to live in a country with only two parties, one of which denies that there is a problem.

<comment><USER30> One denies there is a problem, the other says there's a problem and the only solution is to fully fund their (enormously expensive) pet projects and in other ways give them large amounts of power.

I'd rather have politicians saying "there's no such thing as climate change" with people fighting back against them then have politicians saying "climate change is real, and you can help fight it by giving up plastic straws!" sapping the willingness of people to do anything more - something that might actually be of use.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Cinemur.fr : a french HTML5 web app for movies - <AUTHOR> http://cinemur.fr/

<comment><USER2> Je ne comprends pas deux choses: quel est le prix? et pourquoi avez-vous besoin d'avoir Facebook?

\--

What is the price and why do you have to have Facebook?

<comment><USER3> It says that facebook is to "see your friends' activity". It's probably just a way to promote the application via facebook, as there's no real benefit.

There's no price, it's to show the movies currently showing in cinemas, and the hours at the bottom.

The layout is nice but my browser seems to struggle a bit.

<comment><AUTHOR> The Facebook integration is deeper than only publishing to newsfeeds: it reads and writes to the Open Graph which allow data mining for movies recommendations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> @mikado & others: I'm curious how cinemur got started, especially investing- wise. I see it has a 963 808 € capital, and yet the websites seems to have appeared out of nowhere.

I thought Allociné was in pretty good standing with cinemas, film distributors, etc. How did you pull that one off?

Anyway, good job!

</comment><comment><USER5> Looks great, p.s. you seem to miss a favicon? I got the default one.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's right, we are adding it. Thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Quite nice. Two bugs however:

In the "séances" view, if I choose my city, then change the day to mardi, it goes back to Paris.

Also with the "Aujourd'hui à la TV" bezel, there seems to be a button that adds the broadcaster and hour. Unfortunately, it is invisible.

(iceweasel 10.0 on Debian unstable)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, we're looking at this right now!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> For non-french, Cinemur seems to be a "modern" alternative to the old and messy allocine.fr, the french goto site for finding movies _and booking seats_. I don't see a way to do that, booking tickets. Is it planned?

Beau design en tout cas.

</comment><comment><USER8> Would be nice to have this in Montreal. We do have <http://www.cinemamontreal.com/eng> but it's not as beautiful :(

</comment><comment><USER9> It's beautiful.

My browser struggles to scroll the wall of posters, but other than that, it could be very nice.

</comment><comment><USER10> Nice interface. It will replace allocine in my habits Would be perfect with tv shows and public profile page.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the suggestion, we'll try to add them asap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's really nice, just add a (free and illegal) streaming service of these movies and it will be perfect :)

</comment><comment><USER12> Il faudrait ajouter un filtre de cinémas pour les cartes d'abonnement UGC/MK2, Gaumont/Pathé,...

<comment><AUTHOR> Little workaround for this: do a search for your theaters & add them to your favorites.

<comment><USER13> Agree, but the viewer could check a movie trailer, like it, and straight away book it through your website. And you could do geolocalisation stuff to find the optimal cinema for him or her as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Great, useful app! I don't buy the mandatory Facebook integration though.

</comment><comment><USER15> Where does the content come from? Is it legal?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep it's legal, we're working with film distributors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> looks beautiful - great work on the design. was it a large dev / design team ? 6 months work ?

</comment><comment><USER17> i don't get what I'm supposed to be doing with this app?</comment>


Show HN: DrugSheet – Keep up with the clinical trials on Covid-19 - <AUTHOR> https://drugsheet.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN! I created DrugSheet to follow all the coronavirus clinical trials. It has a simpler interface than clinicaltrials.gov and it aggregates metrics by search filter.

For example, Gates Foundation is in 12 trials: 3 with Azithromycin, 1 with Colchicine, 1 with Lopinavir, etc. It's mostly drugs/biologics, but there is 1 device: the COVSurf drug delivery system.

</comment><comment><USER2> This is awesome and informative. What is the tech stack? The search and the navigation is super fast too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! It's built on python flask: it was super easy to get started

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is great!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!</comment></comment>


Enemy Aliens: The Forgotten History of World War I Internment Camps - <AUTHOR> http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/foreigners/enemy-aliens

<comment><USER2> There are also endless documentaries on WW2, that end with the fall of Berlin. What happened after that? There's very little information available on what went on in Germany for the next year or two.

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't say that there's "very little information available". There are numerous books on post-war Japan and Europe as well as countless books on the Nuremberg trials. Just because there aren't documentaries doesn't mean there isn't any information.

<comment><USER4> There are documentaries. Here's one found by searching for "post war Germany documentary" \- [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0FM_7_drf0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0FM_7_drf0) . It doesn't avoid the raping and looting by Allied troops.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There was a a good deal of inconsistency later. In WW II, a number of Americans stuck in Germany at end of 1941 were repatriated. Some I assume were men of military age. Joseph Alsop, an officer of the AVG caught in Hong Kong, managed to persuade the Japanese that he was a civilian, and was repatriated, as were a number of Americans who had been in Japan. Yet citizens of Allied countries caught in Shanghai and the Philippines spent the war in camps.</comment>


Boiling Water Shapes Martian Terrain - <AUTHOR> http://sciencebulletin.org/archives/573.html <comment><USER2> This brings into question the geological assumptions we make about Mars. Something as simple as wet sand act completely different on Mars than Earth just due to atmospheric pressure. What other geological events behave unexpectedly on Mars? How does lava cool? What about sedimentary rock formation?

</comment><comment><USER3> Original: [http://www2.cnrs.fr/en/2753.htm](http://www2.cnrs.fr/en/2753.htm)

It includes videos.

</comment><comment><USER4>
      Small ridges forged by
      evaporating water
      Martian vaporware

</comment><comment><USER5> Terran extremophile bacteria are found in both boiling and saline enviroments.

Martian Perchlorates are a different matter but these may be surface only ?</comment>


I'm calling it: Ubuntu is finally ready for the world. - <AUTHOR> http://tjwebb.wordpress.com/2012/03/11/im-calling-it-linux-is-finally-ready-for-the-world-meet-ubuntu-11-10/#comment-25 <comment><USER2> I strongly disagree, and take exception to the fact that this "article" is 3 paragraphs long with zero information yet throws out the idea that Linux, even Ubuntu, is 1:1 competitive with Windows or OSX on the desktop.

Contrary to the author, hardware is still a mess. Have a Lexmark wireless printer? Tough luck, there is no way to print to it from Linux. Have switchable graphics? Good luck there, too. Want your new laptop to work? Better check what touchpad you have. Just because the author found hardware that works doesn't mean the public will.

Linux won't be ready until you _never_ have to drop to the terminal for something. Linux won't be ready until you can download a file from the Internet, run it, and install it just with a couple clicks (and not "you need to set the 'exectuable' flag!" error). Linux won't be ready until you never have to reconfigure the graphics driver from the command line upon boot. Linux won't be ready until you can run a system update and install a new program at the same time.

Flashiness is nice. People like flash. Consumers _crave_ flash. But flash needs to come with the same amount of wow-factor built into usability. I can make this same list of complaints about Windows and OSX, but the point remains that Windows and OSX are used and known by the public. Linux isn't. To take any marketshare from the giants, you need to not just be as good as them, not just better than them... you need to make it so _not_ using Linux is a ridiculous proposal. Ubuntu won't be there for a good long time yet.

<comment><USER3> I'm not getting into a religious war but:

I've had printer driver problems on OSX and on some Windows versions. The problem with printers is the evil practice of selling the machines at (or near) loss, and making money on ink / toner. Caveat Emptor applies.

Windows users (used to? Still do?) have problems with installing software. They wouldn't use the add software wizard; the software would install things in weird places; there were legacy problems. A common technique used by Windows users was to just reformat and reinstall. That's user ignorance, not a fault of the OS, but it still shows that simple app installs can cause problems.

And dropping to the command line to do stuff - well, you do that on any os, especially if you're a power user. Are there really simple tasks that can only be done on cli in Linux, that a typical user would come across?

I agree that Linux isn't ready for the masses; but then I think OS X and Windows are not really ready for the masses.

<comment><USER4> My definition of competitiveness does not imply equivalence. For example, Windows and OSX are expensive, while Ubuntu is free. A free market would suggest that it _should_ be slightly inferior since it is free. Each OS has strengths and weaknesses. The point of this article is to illuminate the fact that Ubuntu can be seriously considered as an alternative to Windows/OSX for the average person.

<comment><USER5> having spent countless nights to get all my laptop's devices work and sleep/hibernate - I have come to the conclusion that "free" is a bit wrong word to describe ubuntu, and that I'm in it only for "geek" cred. However, it certainly getting cheaper with each release. Now, I only need to edit grub once to enable hibernation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The main problem with the distros available today is their lack of non-free software. No matter how much you or I like free software, Minecraft can't run as good on OpenJDK as on Sun JDK, and I automatically install the proprietary Flash version because the other one's just way too laggy to use. I also always run smxi to get the best graphics drivers and compability with the least amount of work.

And even then I struggle with drivers: I went from a Radeon HD 6870 to a GTX 550 TI just to be able to run Linux on my machine. There is probably some way to install the HD 6870 on a linux machine, but after using 26 hours on that card _trying_ to get it to work (I timed it), I gave up. Imagine if I used those 26 hours on work instead.

People don't care whether stuff is _free_ or not: They just want stuff that works. If you can't get that without setting up non-free repositories and download proprietary graphic drivers for your graphics card, then you won't get normal people to use your operating system.

<comment><USER7> I see your frustration, but let's try to work it into optimism. Ubuntu itself can't control those things and without out support from vendors it can never have them. What Ubuntu can do is provide a rock solid OS with a simple user experience that will hopefully attract enough users to garner the attention of more vendors. This is mostly the critical mass problem and is a function of economics for vendors. If we give them a large enough economic incentive to support ubuntu, they will come rushing to do it. So for early adopters not everything you're expecting will be there, but if you can pain through or dual boot you'd be helping to ensure it is there for future users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> _Making Linux usable by the "general public" was eschewed by the Linux community for years._

I've been part of the linux community since 1994, and I have never once heard anyone express a desire to prevent mainstream adoption. Quite the contrary - many, many people have been strident evangelists over the years (to the point that it could be quite annoying; whatever the question the answer was linux) and many, many people have spent large amounts of time coding tools and programs to make it more accessible. The problem hasn't been a lack of desire, it's been that it's been quite hard - the open source model of scratch your own itch doesn't lend itself particularly well to the level of polish that's needed.

<comment><USER9> I agree -- the Linux community, on the whole, has always wanted mainstream adoption. Annual "year of desktop Linux" proclamations going back to the mid-90's attest to it!

The challenge, IMO, is that adding polish to a _general-use_ desktop is really really hard -- it requires design talent, cannot easily be done by committee, and takes a long time. Think years of design and constant redesign, lots of tweaking (down to individual pixels!), never-ending usability testing, and iterative writing, discarding, and re-writing of UI code.

While some in the Linux community have long had the design know-how and experience necessary to make Linux usable by Aunt Tillie, until very recently no one had the _long-term commitment_ , _financial resources_ , _managerial skill_ , and _staying power_ necessary to pull it off.

Canonical brings not just design talent, but also long-term commitment, financial resources, managerial skill, and staying power to the table; they have the best shot at making Linux a mainstream desktop OS.

[ ADDENDUM: Google also has an equally good shot with ChromeOS. ]

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Some people (on this thread, too) seem to think that in order for Linux to be successful, it needs to become Windows. I think the exact opposite is true. Linux will never beat Windows at being Windows. But it may well be the superior operating system for many people.

If you ask me, this is what Linux should strive for, and incidentally, what it probably _is_ striving for. Hardware compatibility is pretty good already. Usability is very good if you subscribe to the Linux way of doing things.

I don't think that Linux is particularly lacking in any way compared to Windows. It is simply different, serving different purposes and different people, optimizing for different use cases.

It is as _ready_ as it ever was or will be. The question rather is, are _people_ ready for Linux?

<comment><USER11> I agree. I don't see why a normal "surf-the-web, read emails, import/upload pictures" -person couldn't have Linux as their main desktop, especially if it's a user friendly distro like Linux Mint or Ubuntu. The main problem is that people haven't used a Linux desktop before and most are reluctant to try anything new (just notice how everyone curses every time FB changes something about the interface). It helps to have a family member well versed in Linux.

<comment><USER12> Actually, I think it isn't even reluctance to learn something new--people aren't even _aware_ of Linux as an option, and if they are they think it's only for geeks. I bet if you could go out and get a $500-800 laptop at places like Staples, more normal people would be using Linux.

<comment><USER10> I think it's good that Linux is for geeks. I mean, what other options are there for geeks? I would much rather have Linux optimize for geeks and leave the fluff for OSX and Windows.

<comment><USER12> Well, remember that Linux is just the kernel. In my post--and I assume others' posts as well--I used Linux as a synecdoche for Free Software. In reality, it could as well be BSD or Hurd--it's just that (as far as I know) neither is quite as suitable for mass consumption as Linux.

However, just because Ubuntu--which happens to use the Linux kernel--becomes popular with the general public does not mean other distros have to change at all. Even now Ubuntu is not _that_ much better for "geeks" than OS X or Windows--other distros and environments offer much more customization and power. You can still use Arch, or Gentoo, or Slackware or with whatever environment you like however you like. And since "Linux" is really a loose confederation of Free Software, nothing can change that.

That said, there are some immediate benefits for _everyone_ if Linux gets wider adoption. From a purely selfish standpoint, interacting with and supporting my less-technical friends' and relatives' computers would be much easier if they were on Linux. Also, large companies would be much less likely to disregard Linux when releasing drivers and software. And on a less selfish note, I really do think--and it matches my admittedly anecdotal experience-- that non-technical people are themselves better off on Ubuntu than on OS X or Windows. If all you do is browse the internet and some casual document/multimedia stuff, Linux is great (as soon as you sort the hardware out, of course). There is also the philosophical justification of Free Software I won't get into here.

So really, you present a false dichotomy: Linux for casual users and Linux for power users are not mutually exclusive; if anything, you can't force Linux to only fit one mould. And since we could benefit both power users _and_ casual users by making Linux more accessible and wide-spread, we really should.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Also known as: This year will be the year of the linux desktop ( [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_Linux#Year_of_Desktop_L...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_Linux#Year_of_Desktop_Linux) )

</comment><comment><USER14> That's all subjective, of course. There are problems with bringing linux to mainstream users. But other OS don't go always smoothly either.

Since linux isn't widespread, all we've got is our anecdotes. And my anecdote is that I installed ubuntu on my non-techie relatives' computers. And that has been great both for me and for them. They still do the same thing they've been doing before. (mostly facebooking, casual gaming, skyping etc) And I don't need to run for rescue because of crapware bloat, viruses and all kinds of weird crashes as before.

So if you have parents who often calls for help because of computer problems. I'd recommend you try installing ubuntu for them and see it for yourself. Judging from my experience, I'd say it's ready for prime time. (and btw, that was much before 11.10)

<comment><AUTHOR> I have a similar experience where my roommate's computer (windows)just became a bloated mess and he asked me how he could try something new. Aside from getting iTunes to run on his new Ubuntu install it was a smooth and easy transition. He ended up using it for about a year and managed to solve a majority of his own problems from the Ubuntu forums.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Funny. On my netbook, Ubuntu _used_ to feel like it was finally ready about one major version ago.

Today, 11.10 is so unusably slow it might actually make Windows Vista feel competitive. I thought it might be the outdated video card but then Unity 2D made no actual difference; any simple UI interaction still sucks CPU hard. Just for some icing on the cake, the Wi-Fi driver is now also causing random kernel panics on my hardware.

I heard someone exclaim somewhere OS X Lion was Apple's Vista moment. Well it looks to me like Ubuntu 11.x is Canonical's Vista moment. I'm holding out hope version 12 will be their Windows 7 moment, otherwise the long painful process of adapting to another distro will have to begin.

<comment><USER16> _Today, 11.10 is so unusably slow it might actually make Windows Vista feel competitive._

Unfortunately, I'm having the same experience on my desktop. Unity didn't fit the way I prefer to work (and yeah, I tried it for a while, I didn't just dismiss it without some effort), and I switched to KDE. Holy slowness, Batman...my Windows 7 desktop becomes usable much faster (on the same machine) than the Kubuntu desktop. Applications sometimes take forever to start, with no rhyme or reason. I haven't chosen to explicitly install anything new--I just have the same basic boring dev and scientific computing packages I've always had.

And yes, Ubuntu _used_ to feel like it was usable "out of the box" one major version ago. Then they started adding bells and whistles, and since then it's just been a steady degradation in performance.

Sure, I can probably go fiddle with a bunch of settings somewhere, but as soon as I have some downtime I'm going to try out some other distros that-- hopefully--don't feel the need to add a bunch of performance-sucking features by default.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I stopped using Ubuntu-like distros 1 year ago. As I was there, I also dropped the DE, now using a tiling windows. Doing things in a terminal most of the time. It feels right, fast and robust enough. If something is not packaged for linux (free or not, I don't care), then I don't use it. Simple as that. I so reduced the ammount of junky software of half probably and I only install things to play/learn with (haskel ghc, python libraries, postgres, and all I feel to play with).

Then I work on a company windows laptop. It is slow, takes ages to start up, it is full o crappy software some of it updated last time around the year 2001. GUIs that kill productivity as they are not scriptable, so say bye to automation. And the fun part is that this "paradigm" keeps going, so you find the same problems on SAP, data warehouse, etc. Instead of APIs, you have to log into every system you use, choose your option, download in a folder, change data format, copy in a power point slide... and half day is gone.

So, this "Ubuntu is ready because it just works and it is easy", meaning basically that you do all from GUIs, it just does not give the world anything new. If we keep chasing the same old paradigm, I wonder why we bother developing new software then.

</comment><comment><USER18> I am unfortunately forced to disagree.

I recently moved my home machine from Windows to Linux. After a little research, I picked Ubuntu 11.10 (with Unity).

The installation went by pretty smoothly, everything seemed to work out of the box. The only manual configuration I had to do was to teach my Linux box to ping my Windows laptop. So far so good.

Then, 2 weeks later, my disk went out of space.

Turns out Ubuntu has a hidden log file that logs errors, with no sanity checks on size, and it hit 300+ GB.

In addition, flash still isn't smooth in full screen.

Easy to install and use? Reasonably so. Ready for prime time? I think not.

<comment><USER19> >Turns out Ubuntu has a hidden log file that logs errors, with no sanity checks on size, and it hit 300+ GB.

Uh, what is this hidden log?

<comment><USER20> I'm guessing here but it might be .xsession-errors

I've had it filled up once, because vinagre disagreed with some other library and it kept printing the same error message over and over. After several days it filled up the hdd.

Not saying it's vinagre's fault, just that it might happen and it's a "hidden ." log file

<comment><USER18> Yup, that one.

I'm not saying it was a hard problem to diagnose - I mean, the file was right there in the home directory.

Figuring out how to turn it off, by the way, was a little more involved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Hmm can someone please edit this to remove the #comments hash from the URL? :D

</comment><comment><USER22> It's not a binary either/or, though. Something like 6 years ago, the company I was working for went Ubuntu for pretty much everything, including the computers of the call center staff. Since we took care of the installations, all they had to do was know how to open a browser and openoffice, and they were just fine. In other words, Ubuntu was ready for 'prime time'. My wife has been using it for year as well. For her it's ready for 'prime time': I rarely have to fiddle with it. For other users, it's probably not ready. That group continues to shrink, though.

<comment><USER2> Two years ago I was contracted by a local phone survey company to replace their dumb terminals with Linux desktops. After a few hiccups with supporting old (Dell) hardware, we successfully rolled out 25 Ubuntu 9.04 desktops and got them working with their custom hardware and software. I made a LiveCD and a reinstall disc so if something broke during the day, everything could be run from the LiveCD, and replaced with the reinstall disc at night.

Only problem was, they didn't tell me it was a contract position, they told me I was an employee in charge of installation and support. Very surprised when I got to work and my keycard access was revoked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm a Linux newbie. Or should I say, an Ubuntu newbie. I don't know. I use this system for the same purpose as some people build things with Lego pieces. It's a therapy for me. I like the possibilities that the command line offers. Differently from clicking links (e.g on Windows' Control Panel) you just type what you want. I found it to be a more "precise" way to work. My only complain goes to the file structure and installation process. Whether in Windows you know things will end up in 'Program Files', there's no logic for me where apps are stored in Linux file system. Those three letter acronyms mean nothing to me. They remind me the old days when all data were abbreviated to fit small diskspaces and slow processors. That would be my only complain. I like Linux/Ubuntu so much that I replaced my mom's Win Vista with it. She uses Gmail, Picasa and Skype, aside from browsing websites. She doesn't know the concept of "file" or "folder". For her, the program talks to the Internet and makes all the magic happen. Maybe there are other people just like my mother out there, either too old or too young, with a different view (thus expectation) of the computer screen. Maybe that's what define the "user" anyway. Using Tron's allegory, maybe we are the tech-minded "programs" looking at users with prejudice and thinking about all the points they are missing by being just "users". And I think Canonical is welcoming these people now, like Apple did a few years back.

<comment><USER24> I know that the comment is not liked by everyone, but I still think it is somewhat true: "It doesn't matter whether the program is installed into /usr/bin/, /usr/share/bin/, /bin/ or anything else", at least not for the "average user".

Linux puts all of those into a PATH-variable (if you'd like to see what it holds, type "echo $PATH" without the quotes into a terminal). Because of that, you really never have to give an absolute path to an executable (unless you installed it by hand after compiling, something that the fabled "average user" hardly does). Furthermore, since you usually install Programs via the Package Manager (Software Center in Ubuntu?), it gets deleted properly if you uninstall it. Instead, if you type for example "firefox" into a terminal, it looks through all the paths listed in the PATH-variable until it finds the executable called "firefox", then executes it.

Configuration files for individual programs usually reside in your /home folder, much like Windows' "Documents & Settings", only ideally on a different partition separate from the OS.

The only thing you really need as an everyday user is your own /home folder, and as far as I know, that is basically chosen by default for pretty much everything.

This is not so much Ubuntu specific, rather just trying to explain a bit to the parent about the "Program Files" analogue.

[edited for clarity regarding the function of $PATH]

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Am I missing something in this article? It seems to be broken down as follows:

1) Before Ubuntu, you were expected to be a kernel expert to use Linux.

2) Ubuntu is released to make Linux accessible to average users. Authors herald each version as the version to bring Linux into the hands of the general public. But every version of Ubuntu fails to live up to that promise.

3) An author now heralds version 11.10 as the version to bring Linux into the hands of the general public.

What distinguishes this proclamation from all those that go before it?

</comment><comment><USER26> Perhaps ubuntu is getting closer to being ready for the desktop for some users, but I find that for the last few releases, each new version takes me further from my ideal environment. For me, Ubuntu peaked at about 10.10 (or maybe 11.04)

Each time a new release comes out, I give Unity another try, but it just doesn't work for me. For a while I was just reverting back to Gnome, but now the default Gnome is Gnome 3 which is (purely my opinion) very much a regression in terms of UX from Gnome 2.

I know this is Linux, and I can install whatever I want, but I don't want to have to. When I was younger I was happy to spend hours (and days!) tweaking stuff to make it work just the way I wanted it to. With all the other time sinks that growing up entails, when I get the chance to sit down at my computer these days, I just want it to work. I don't want to have to invest time I don't have learning a new way to do the old thing when the old way was perfectly fine. (Probably me just getting old and curmudgeonly I know!)

Due to computers getting older and being replaced etc, I can't even reasonably keep using Ubuntu 11.04 - my latest laptop will not work correctly under anything less than 11.10 without hours of manking around compiling and installing wireless and graphics card drivers. (I blame the laptop for this, not linux). Research before buying indicated this laptop was reasonably well supported under linux. After purchase I found this model of laptop used a number of different chipsets for wireless and the one I ended up with (ath9k) was poorly supported at that time.

So, after having linux as my sole computing environment since 1996 (and using Ubuntu as my main distro since Breezy Badger) I have just this month packed it in and bought a 13" Macbook Air to use as my main computer. I'm still using Ubuntu 10.10 server edition at work, (virtual machine running under xen) for development and as a production server - but I can't see Canonical breaking the command line as bad as they did the desktop any time soon!

Ubuntu may be finally ready for the desktop for some people but definitely not for me.

<comment><USER10> So, tell me, how do you use your Macbook? Are you a console junkie and live in the terminal anyways? Do you see value in the strictly commercial Mac App Store? What do you miss from Linux?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Are we still on this? Linux/BSD has been ready for the world for many years. Heck, my old man who never used a computer before got started using Red Flag Linux. Granted, I did the install and configuration for him, but that is really no different from most users who buy preconfigured computers/laptops from Lenovo, Apple, Dell, and the like.

</comment><comment><USER28> The war for the desktop was lost long ago. Apple realized this when they switched their emphasis to mobile. There's some room in the laptop market but hardware quirks make this an even tougher nut to crack than the desktop.

Android is Linux's future.

</comment><comment><USER29> My dad has been using it for 3 years.

</comment><comment><USER30> Have you ever tried to resize a window in Ubuntu? You know what I'm talking about...

</comment><comment><USER31> No, the killer app will be Ubuntu for Android.

</comment><comment><USER32> But is the world ready for it?

</comment><comment><USER33> hasn't linux been proclaimed 'ready for the world' every year since 1997?

</comment><comment><USER7> This is kind of a cheezy, non analytical and barely informational article, but I agree with the standpoint.

Ubuntu is easy. It's actually strikingly easy. From install through normal everyday usage the experience is painless(actually enjoyable) and fluid. For the vast majority of machines it will be self configuring and for the rest installing drivers ranges from just as easy as other systems to of course much harder but thats a vendor problem not an Ubuntu problem that really can only be addressed with Ubuntu gaining users.

Don't get distracted by comparing the other OS's feature by feature to Ubuntu. You're just going to waste your time and get unnecessarily hot headed. Ubuntu's greatest strength is still, and arguable always will be, that its FOSS. But it is also a dead simple, batteries included, no noise operating system that normal everyday users would find lovely to use.

What Ubuntu really needs now is community optimism and a bit of lighthearted activism. It needs installs. The more users and attention, the more interest and support. Ubuntu is definitely ready for prime time, we just have to put it in that timeslot.

</comment><comment><USER34> Nice, now all it needs is a usable GUI.

</comment><comment><USER35> It probably should have been called Onanistic Ocelot.

Ever tried installing it on a Mac (the best, if not the cheapest desktop hardware available today)?

<comment><USER36> I've used an ubuntu cd to rescue the data from a g4 laptop when all else failed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I used to spend (i.e., waste) time reading linux blogs, each touting innovations in Ubuntu, et al. on the desktop. These "innovations" were anything but sorely needed or outdated features / programs (look at basically any media player).

The most absurd aspect of these blogs is the focus on the desktop/laptop (well, also on the whole free software aspect, as if the average person cares or is aware of such a concept). Canonical is pushing for a smart phone (and TV), but they don't seem to be in a great rush.

<comment><USER37> I should be clear, I have used Ubuntu since 5.04 (Debian before that and I used Mint for a bit, too).

I'm not saying Ubuntu or other distros are bad. Some releases have been fairly well executed. But they generally don't introduce anything groundbreaking. And they have very little OEM support. A very large majority of "the world" keeps the OS installed on their computer at the time they purchase it.</comment></comment>


Contracts.ruby - <AUTHOR> http://egonschiele.github.com/contracts.ruby/ <comment><USER2> Beautiful page.

</comment><comment><USER3> Omg what an ugly code.

Are you trying to turn ruby into uglier version of Java with this library?

<comment><USER4> Library author here. Which part do you find ugly?</comment></comment>


Free Education Initiative - <AUTHOR> http://www.saylor.org/ <comment><USER2> It's admirable to attempt to collect free resources and organize them in a way that provides a natural progression for subject matter mastery, but essays and lectures does not a college education make. For that you need teachers and peers to discuss the information, to frame it and present it in ways necessary for different types of learners to grasp it, to evaluate your understanding, to challenge you to think about things in new ways.

For most people, just reading the information or watching lectures won't bring you to the same level of understanding (certainly there are exceptions to that rule).

Don't get me wrong, it's great to organize these resources and make them more available for people who wouldn't otherwise have access, but it bothers me to imply this is the same as a college education. Ultimately, I think that just devalues the work that teachers do.

<comment><USER3> Then again, I'd say at least half of students in a typical college class could care less about what they're learning.

If someone has the initiative to go through videos and essays, chances are they're learning more than the bottom 50% in the equivalent college class.

I think initiatives like this could eventually offer valid alternatives to the 'college _degree_ ', but not a 'college _education_ '. A _degree_ is what you get from mastering an area of studying. A college _education_ includes additional social and professional skills, which I think is what you're concerned with these initiatives not addressing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think it's an interesting idea, but I went and took a look at the course on Web Programming and found it somewhat lacking. For instance, the section on HTTP links to the W3C documentation on POST/GET/etc... which is ok, but very dry reading and, IMHO, possibly too abstract and confusing to someone who didn't already have some experience writing webapps. I feel that the course needs more overall "glue" binding some of the concepts together. For example, there's a tutorial about PHP/Ruby, but it seems to reference materials from some other college course (that I couldn't locate).

Overall, it just didn't seem to hang together well.

</comment><comment><USER5> Breaking down the vision:

 _This website will serve as a zero-cost alternative to those that lack the resources to attend traditional brick-and-mortar institutions_

I completely agree with the observation that the duct-taping of a few, loosely connected resources to construct an authoritative syllabus / disrupt the existing education system through an online network of autodidacts and mentors is flawed in its very premise. I'm inclined to believe, though, that we're looking at an an early iteration and that the Saylor Foundation's initiative will evolve as feedback pours in.

 _and, if they are willing, a complement to mainstream education providers._

This seems to be the more practical component of the vision. My personal take: education will not be disrupted by applications that seek to uproot the brick and mortar educational establishment. Rather, platforms will emerge to augment the existing teaching / learning process and help students seek guidance when they need it.

I think the Khan Academy has pretty much set the bar for what an online 'education augmentation platform', if you were, should start out looking like, and the Saylor Foundation would do well to emulate them.

That said, the world really needs a central, well maintained repository for educational content at the college level, so I hope this initiative succeeds.

</comment><comment><USER6> I really like the idea of the General Education Program. In fact, I think you'll have the most impact and do the most good by focusing _only_ on this program.

There are many different websites that do what you do, i.e. providing a college education online for free. Khan Academy targets the technical subjects (and a younger demographic), opencourseware has thousands of lectures online, etc. To put it bluntly, if I want to learn biology or computer science, you've got nothing that I can't get anywhere else.

But listen to this quote from the your website: "The purpose of the General Education Program is to educate students about what we—as human beings—know about ourselves ... the curriculum will help you prepare to be reflective, confident, productive citizen of your local, national, and global communities". This is pure gold; I haven't seen this anywhere else. This is not education for the sake of getting a job, but rather for the sake of _becoming a well-rounded person_.

This program isn't finished yet, but once you can complete it and polish it, I think this will be a huge resource.

I can't speak for everyone, but if you build it, I'll come.

</comment><comment><USER7> I was disappointed to find a pretty vanilla looking Java 101 as the Intro to CS course. I also wonder about the utility of developing a curriculum from the ground up by linking to articles and readings rather than building on existing material like MIT's OCW etc. Starting with that material and fleshing it out and filling in the gaps would be more effective I think.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's not mentioned but [cost] online courses offer:

1) Slides with custom content for example a joke of what happens if everyone decided to lower their own wages. Considering that the pdf contents are dry, slides win in this aspect.

2) Community. Like-minded people discussing the course and how to solve it.

3) Peer/authority review. The teacher or a partner reviews the work done by the person.

Optional) Programmable quizs. Those generate pseudo random questions (Most easy for math-like courses).

Optional) As part of doing a course, have the student generate questions and answers (Best for non-math-like courses as per above). This is the student's contribution back to the foundation to continue to provide more information.

<comment><USER9> We do a large amount of what you're describing here at Ruby Mendicant University: <http://university.rubymendicant.com/>

It's Ruby based right now but really about software development in general. Hopefully in the future we'll expand to be inclusive of other languages.</comment></comment>


Do You Trust Your VPN? Are You Sure? - <AUTHOR> https://slate.com/technology/2019/02/best-vpn-companies-trust-privacy.html <comment><AUTHOR> Maybe this should be an "Ask HN" \- but what do you think about the VPNs mentioned in this article and the use cases described? I also have researched VPNs and basically threw in the towel...gave up...how can you possibly know if you can trust ANY VPN provider?

[https://thatoneprivacysite.net/](https://thatoneprivacysite.net/) seems objective, but it is infrequently updated and insufficiently comprehensive, not to mention a bit of a usability nightmare.

There is also the factor that different users have different use cases. A VPN that is perfect for Glenn Greenwald may not be what Joe Schmoe who just wants to hide his porn habit from his ISP needs. It does feel like the market could use some way to figure out which VPNs can be trusted.

So, the questions are:

\- What is your VPN of choice? \- How did you choose your VPN? \- Do you trust your VPN? \- And how could you objectively trust your VPN? What would give you that feeling of security?

<comment><USER2> _> how can you possibly know if you can trust ANY VPN provider?_

There needs to be an independent auditor who can establish standards and certify which VPNs comply with them and which do not, in much the same way that UL ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UL_(safety_organization)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UL_\(safety_organization\))) certification on an electrical product means you can be reasonably confident it won't burn your house down.</comment></comment>


Blogged creation, now avail: 8" cables and true guarantee and free ship. Feedback? - <AUTHOR> http://tinycables.com/?utm_source=ajc&utm_medium=hn <comment><USER2> The most useful cables I've had in my laptop bag over the years are a 6" USB- Lightning cable, a 12" USB-microUSB cable, and (many years ago) a 4" USB- iphone(30pin) cable. None were particularly easy to find/obtain at the time, but while everyone else was sorting out tangled messes of 3' cables, I was up and running.

I welcome these. $8 each hits a price point where I won't even think twice about it as it's a convenience I'm happy to pay for.

If I might make a request -- a USB-miniUSB would be handy, especially for older but otherwise useful devices.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great selling point. bad business model. every time my kid breaks another cable you're going to keep replacing it. I started buying them 10 at a time from china just so I'd stop spending $10 every month on the same cable.

<comment><USER3> I could be wrong a lot of people may lose receipt and/or stopping trying to get it replaced after the 2 or 3 one.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hoping that the TINY branding means they remember where it came from. :)

Ultimately, we think that the security of the guarantee will result in more sales than it will expenses. It all nets out positive in the end.</comment></comment></comment>


Immune Boosting - <AUTHOR> What foods we should eat to boost our immune system to protect covid-19? <comment><USER2> Take Vitamin D,C and a Zinc Supplement. You will want to take Vitamin D with fat since it is fat soluble.

Don't over do it on the D, take the C every 4 hours since you body can only absorb so much every few hours and the rest is waste. The Zinc is important since it typically will help fight a virus.

Most of not all folks are deficient in the Vitamins and Minerals I listed.

Other than that eat a diet rich in nutrition and try to exercise.

</comment><comment><USER3> You can't "boost" your immune system.

The best thing you can do is to not hamper it. Eat varied diet, ensure you get sane proportions of basic nutrients and make sure to support your gut bacteria.

Don't poison yourself with crap food. Stay away from sugar and alcohol.

Try to maintain your aerobic capacity even if you stay at home. When push comes to shove this additional capacity might make it easier for you to survive.</comment>


Homemade high output "Thermoelectric Generator", 6 cell's 200mv - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9Zbmwf5uEQ <comment><AUTHOR> Takeaway: You wouldn't think that Carbon (in this case in the form of a pencil lead / pencil leads) would be a good Peltier Effect / Thermoelectric Effect ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_effect)) material -- but that assumption turns out to be not true...

In fact, I posit that there is a lot of experimentation to be done with Peltier Junctions which, in addition to the two dissimilar metals, _have a carbon layer of varying experimental parameters_ (carbon type, thickness, etc.), between them.

I posit that _more efficient Peltier Junctions_ could potentially be created by the use of some form / thickness of carbon in the metal sandwich... will this prove true?

Well, we need to do some more experimentation in this area!</comment>


Show HN: chessable, correspondence chess for modern devices - <AUTHOR>

https://www.chessable.co.uk
chessable is a side project I've been working on, and it has grown into an MVP of sorts, though it's really more of an experiment.
It's a correspondence chess web application that makes use of a responsive design. The aim is for it to work well on modern mobile & desktop browsers, so that users can fit casual games of chess into a busy, mobile, schedule.
I submitted it on Hackful Europe (http://hackful.com/posts/442) about a month ago, but I've managed to get some time this weekend to update it and so I'm posting it here now.
Any feedback, thoughts, or suggestions would be very welcome.
Thanks, Austin <comment><USER2> I went to chessable.co.uk on my phone (less typing without the www. and the <https://>) and I got a security warning. I presume you're redirecting <http://chessable.co.uk> → <https://chessable.co.uk> → <https://www.chessable.co.uk> and the warning is for the middle address.

On this page --- <https://www.chessable.co.uk/players> \--- the whole grey box for each chesser should be a link, not just their username.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the heads up on the security warning, I had a similar problem before and thought I fixed it. I'll look into it again.

I think making the whole player box a link would work great, so I'll get that done.

Thanks for your feedback, Austin.

<comment><USER2> And it's too easy to fat-fingeredly accidentally log myself out when I'm trying to move a piece to the far side of the board. (I'm using an iphone.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Clicky link: <https://www.chessable.co.uk></comment>


Source repository for fiat tokens on the CENTRE network (USDC) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/centrehq/centre-tokens <comment><AUTHOR> This is the code that backs the USDC stablecoin. This is a very powerful bit of open source technology.

More about fiat backed stablecoins here [1]

Centre whitepaper [2]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stablecoin#Fiat- backed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stablecoin#Fiat-backed) [2] [https://www.centre.io/pdfs/centre- whitepaper.pdf](https://www.centre.io/pdfs/centre-whitepaper.pdf)</comment>


Four New Names Officially Added to the Periodic Table of Elements - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/01/science/periodic-table-new-elements.html <comment><USER2> The recipe for oganesson is pretty amazing. Shoot calcium at californium target for _four months_ to make an atom of it. Repeat as necessary (but remember it has a half-life of under 1 millisecond).

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

<comment><USER3> Of what value is a substance that has a half life of 1 ms?

<comment><USER4> It's not, really - but the techniques used in its nucleosynthesis probably are.

Incidentally, if the compound itself does in the end turn out to be useful, it'll be for the same reason - it'd likely be used as some intermediate in a wider-scope reaction. As is the case for many, many (almost all, realistically) otherwise-"useless" chemicals.

<comment><USER3> Righto, that helps, thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This fills out the last row of the current table.

What comes next will be interesting. Will it be a plain row? Or will there be another block like the p-block and f-block (the g-block)?

It might not be possible to find out, because the elements might not live long enough to stop being ions and fill their shells.

Or maybe we'll find an element in the island of stability somewhere there and we'll use that to find out.

<comment><USER6> At some point (172, they think) it has to stop, because electrons need to go faster than c to orbit. near this point, the electric field of the nucleus pulls electrons out of electron-positron virtual particles ('out of the fabric of space') and you get a "beta+" decay.

<comment><USER7> The naive orbit model predicts a limit of z=137. The Dirac equation (more realistic) predicts z=173. But that's only using QED, no other forces. We could end up being surprised with a much higher maximum limit.

One might argue that a neutron star is a counterexample that comes into play when you include gravitation. It's sort of a really big nucleus, with gravity as the dominant attractive force and degeneracy pressure as the dominant repulsive force.

<comment><USER8> Neutron stars aren't a counterexample because they have z=0! They have a lot of neutrons but no protons.

<comment><USER9> This isn't entirely true: near the surface of a neutron star, there's a coexistence of neutrons, protons, and electrons in a type of thermal equilibrium.

(I'm embarrassed to say that I don't remember offhand how to estimate the ratios involved, but I do remember my PhD candidacy exam committee looking pretty happy with me for deriving it on the fly during my oral. A few days later, one of them commented to a group of us who'd just finished the exam, "Congratulations: at this moment, you know more physics than you ever have or ever will again". I guess he was right!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> IUPAC has a much more informative article [0], giving the reasoning behind the names. This was published back before they were officially added to the table, though.

[0] [https://iupac.org/iupac-is-naming-the-four-new-elements- niho...](https://iupac.org/iupac-is-naming-the-four-new-elements-nihonium- moscovium-tennessine-and-oganesson/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Nihonium, Moscovium, Tennessine and Oganesson

</comment><comment><USER12> There is a youtube channel named "Periodic Videos" that makes incredible videos about elements and molecule, they made a few videos about the new elementsmthis is one of them [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wswa0NuBbMw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wswa0NuBbMw)

</comment><comment><USER13> For Unicode Consortium, there might be four more new glyphs. The Chinese Chemical Society would, most likely, translate these new elements each into a new Chinese glyph.

For existing ones, see [https://www.iupac.org/publications/ci/2004/2601/3_hao.html](https://www.iupac.org/publications/ci/2004/2601/3_hao.html)

EDIT:

It seems that the calling for naming proposals has started:

[https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=zh- CN&tl=en&js=y&p...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=zh- CN&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.chemsoc.org.cn%2Finfo.asp%3Fgid%3D195&edit- text=) [http://www.chemsoc.org.cn/info.asp?gid=195](http://www.chemsoc.org.cn/info.asp?gid=195)

EDIT2:

In fact there are quite a lot of existing ancient glyphs in the current Unicode standard. There is possibility an existing Chinese glyph being reused for a new element, as suggested by Chinese Chemical Society in the letter above.

<comment><USER14> I'm not a native English speaker, but I did go to an all-English speaking high school. I was a more-or-less conversationally competent in English at the time, but speaking it and learning from it full time in school was a real challenge.

I remember clearly that one of the most difficult subjects was chemistry, because everything suddenly had new names and none of them made any sense. Why is it "sodium" instead of "natrium", or "potassium" instead of "kalium", when the elements are Na and K?

For the first six months, I had to basically memorize a table of translations between my native language and english, and silently translate everything my teacher was saying to be able to follow along.

<comment><USER15> Then imagine what the Chinese must learn with the mappings.

Regarding the English-German difference in the element names, are there more than these two that don't match?

I've found this explanation of the historical context for the different names:

[https://www.quora.com/Who-renamed-Natrium-and-Kalium-to- Sodi...](https://www.quora.com/Who-renamed-Natrium-and-Kalium-to-Sodium-and- Potassium)

OK, there is also Sauerstoff for oxygen and Wasserstoff for hydrogen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> As a non-scientist this sounds pretty huge to me, but what actually _are_ these new elements? The article doesn't elaborate.

They're all in a similar numeric range, but are these entirely new elements, or other elements recategorised?

<comment><USER5> > what actually are these new elements?

They are as different from other elements as gold is different from carbon. Each is unique and unlike any other element, with unknown properties (they don't last long enough to study, although some guesses can be made).

We are hoping there is a "magic" number, that if we reach can make elements that actually last long enough to study (because certain numbers of particles are extra stable because they "fit" together very nicely - like how you can fit 6 coins around another coin much nicer than 7). That's called the Island of Stability if you want to look it up.

These elements are on the path to that, so it's important to study them. As of right now we don't know how to make anything heavier.

<comment><USER17> I wonder if there is a limit to how dense a single atom can be. Does there exist somewhere in the universe, in some massive star, elements that would construct another row on our table?

I find limits like these interesting (absolute zero, the plank temperature which may or may not be absolute hot, the speed of light, etc.)

<comment><USER18> I'm no expert, but my understanding is that a neutron star looks very much like a ridiculously huge nucleus.

<comment><USER5> In some ways. But the neutrons are not bound to each other, and more importantly the electrons freely transit _inside_ the neutron star and not in orbit around it, which makes it not like an atom.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Given all the other news today, I halfway expected these new elements to be produced by AWS.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm happy to have more usable hostnames for my periodic table-themed Customer sites. I was holding off because "Ununtrium" didn't have a very good ring to it.

</comment><comment><USER21> I wonder why "Oganesson", where "Oganessium" would sound more conventional and be closer to "Oganessian"? Also, I'm not a chemist, but I thought -ine was reserved for a certain kind of compound?

<comment><USER22> Probably not, given chlorine, bromine, fluorine, and iodine all end in ine.

<comment><USER21> Ah, that's probably the source of my confusion. None of them end in -ine in German. It's Chlor, Brom, Fluor, Iod. OTOH, there are chemicals with names like Hydrazine. It's a bit weird that it is supposed to be called "Tennesin" in German (according to Wikipedia).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Does anyone have an image of the periodic table with the new elements in it?

<comment><USER24> Wikipedia does: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periodic_table](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periodic_table)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:18_column_periodic_table,...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:18_column_periodic_table,_with_Lu_and_Lr_in_group_3.png)

<comment><USER25> Why is Copernicium (Cn 112) red instead of dark grey?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Interesting that Tennessine and Moscovium are named in honor of Tennessee and Moscow. I wonder many elements on the table are named after places.

<comment><USER27> Your forgot Nihonium after Japan :-).

It's fairly common for them to be named after places (often where they were discovered). Some other examples are Americium, Berkelium, Californium, Darmstadtium, Dubnium, Europium, Francium, and Germanium.

<comment><USER28> From the article:

We can also put to rest suggestions like Lemmium, Octarine and Trumpium.

:)

<comment><USER29> There's still a chance for Harambite?

<comment><USER30> Harambium! Get your naming convention straight!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> 115 will always be Elerium for me... :D

</comment><comment><USER32> Question: is there any reason to believe the number of elements is not infinite?

<comment><USER33> AFAIK it is not known how big it could be. However, if you accept the current atomic models, there are serious issues preventing atoms with number higher than 135 (or thereabout), things like the electrons needing to move faster than light to stay around the atom.

I think I had read something about a model accepting over 200 elements, but I don't remember the details and could not find the draft it in my library.

Update: there is a decent explanation with some reference in the periodic table wikipedia entry: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periodic_table#Element_with_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periodic_table#Element_with_the_highest_possible_atomic_number)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm still disappointed that lemmium didn't make it.

</comment><comment><USER35> Sorry to be so OT, but at first glance I read this as "Fox News Officially Added to the Periodic Table of Elements" and was left both impressed and bewildered.

</comment><comment><USER36> Great choices of names (nihonium and moscovium being a nice counter to Yankee self-back-patting like americium, berkelium, and californium), but I'm still waiting for phlebotinum and unobtainium to get serious consideration...

<comment><USER29> > being a nice counter to Yankee self-back-patting like americium, berkelium, > and californium

When you discover and can produce transuranic elements feel free to name them what you like.

Americium was first produced in 1944 by the group of Glenn T. Seaborg from Berkeley, California, at the Metallurgical Laboratory of the University of Chicago, a part of the Manhattan Project.[0] Berkelium [...] is named after the city of Berkeley, California, the location of the University of California Radiation Laboratory where it was discovered in December 1949. [1] Californium [...] was first made in 1950 at the University of California Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley [2]

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americium) [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkelium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkelium) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Californium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Californium)

<comment><USER37> Nothing beats the village of Ytterby in Sweden... 4 elements named for it!

yttrium (Y) erbium (Er) terbium (Tb) ytterbium (Yb)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ytterby](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ytterby)</comment></comment></comment>


US senator working on bill that would jail CEOs for user privacy violations - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/us-senator-working-on-bill-that-would-jail-ceos-for-user-privacy-violations/ <comment><USER2> Here's a better idea: Force them to pay $10 to everyone whose privacy was violated.

</comment><comment><USER3> good but then we wont have any CEO's left..also how about govt orgs where user privacy is violated, can we put them in jail too?</comment>