Textbook Rentals Big Business - Kleiner Perkins Goes After Chegg - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/09/textbook-rentals-big-business-kleiner-perkins-goes-after-chegg/ <comment><USER2> these guys were our early boso.com competitors

<comment><USER3> Yeah, they've been around quite a while. I remember them starting to acquire book-selling companies right around when me and a few friends had a really popular one starting at MIT. We abandoned that space 'cause it looked like there was no money in it. I'm doubly impressed, though, since 1) they stuck around and 2) they actually managed to run into a really sick business model. Maybe pg was right about startups succeeding by not dying...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> there are a lot of aspects to the college experience that haven't made it into the 21st century. lots of business opportunities.

<comment><USER5> Other than textbooks, what did you have in mind?

<comment><USER6> There doesn't seem to be a good classifieds system for campuses. Facebook isn't too helpful, neither is craigslist.

<comment><USER7> Pretty much every college (or every technical one at least) has a homegrown system or three.

From what I've seen, most students just use Craigslist. I don't see the problem with it.

<comment><USER8> Craigslist works well for colleges with small towns. Thus the load on the classifieds stays low enough to keep track of. Bored students can then just surf the for sale section. In bigger cities it stops working so well, but really, college students mostly have crap, so I wouldn't buy from them anyway. I like to buy from yuppies who are getting rid of their sorta-used couch to get a new better one. They practically give it away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Their books are still expensive. College student should buy international versions for around $20. Abebooks.com has tons of them.</comment>


Freelan is a P2P VPN (free sofware) - <AUTHOR> http://www.freelan.org/

<comment><USER2> Not every country allows Peer-To-Peer (P2P) file-sharing. Ivacy makes P2P file-sharing easy and accessible for everyone in any region around the globe. More Visit [http://www.ivacy.com](http://www.ivacy.com)</comment>


Los Angeles Was Once a Forest of Oil Derricks - <AUTHOR> http://southland.gizmodo.com/los-angeles-was-once-a-forest-of-oil-derricks-1469825345/@alissawalker

<comment><USER2> And will be again, by 2019:

        http://www.empireonline.com/images/uploaded/blade-runner-opening-scene.jpg</comment>


Show HN: My (unofficial) Hype Machine app for Android v0.1 - <AUTHOR> http://hypem.brimpa.com

<comment><AUTHOR> I should say that I have yet to post it to the Android Market only because it's still in a fairly early stage and I'd like to add a few things before I release it such a broad audience.

Your feedback would be appreciated.</comment>


DuckDuckGo featured on Lifehacker - <AUTHOR> http://lifehacker.com/5546409/duckduckgo-is-a-search-engine-for-keyboard-ninjas

<comment><USER2> DuckDuckGo just needs a better logo and a better name and it'd be major league. They've got the difficult part down, but there's no way any real company or serious non-hacker will take them seriously the way they are now.

I want a search engine whose design, name, logo, and style inspire me with confidence and reassurance. I want to see power, I want to see professionalism. I don't want to play games with a duck that lucks like it was drawn by an amateur. I think spending a mere 1k on design and branding will have an incredible impact on DDD now that it's really beginning to get off the ground and catch the eye of people outside the HN/Reddit communities.

<comment><USER3> I don't know. Initially, Google was far more playful than any of the other search engines of the time. Also "professional" design & branding deteriorates into "boring" far too easily. And boring is unlikely to be noticed. People are likely to remember the duck. If you google for 'duck search', DDG is the first result.

Just providing a counterpoint BTW. You may well be right.

<comment><USER4> Google is still playful. Their name still is a joke, even if it has become borderline genericized. Also, remember the Pacman ordeal just the other day? Not to mention the numerous Easter eggs for terms like "recursion."

<comment><USER3> Yes, Google haven't changed, and I was careful to avoid wording it like that. But Bing tries to emulate the playfulness, for example. In the early days Google stood out much more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Congrats Gabriel! Glad to see your efforts paying of (at least in mindshare) lately.

Keep adding good features (and taking away bad ones) and listening to your users and you should be golden.

I personally tend to agree with those that say that the name/logo is holding you back (I have a sense of humor and don't take it too seriously, but a lot of people are probably scared off), but it's your thing and you should take it into the direction that you feel will work best.

</comment><comment><USER6> The only thing I'm annoyed about DDG is its over-reliance on Javascript. Now I'm no luddite; i enjoy the flexibility and power javascript brings.

However I think the first page of results should come with the page response. For people like me with crappy bandwidth, there is a noticeable lag before the first 10 results appear. I'm reasonably happy with the content though; it does an acceptable job of replacing google.

</comment><comment><USER7> DDG's founder has officially won me over. On my little blog I keep (harrywolff.com) I made a post about Duck Duck Go and Gabe managed to find me and my post. Thank you Gabe. Keep up the very awesome work.

</comment><comment><USER8> No mention of the privacy aspect though! Shame

I wonder if that is interesting - or simply an oversight.

EDIT: they've edited it in since I read the story... (just checked the original tab I opened)

<comment><USER3> FTA: _"It aims to be a Google competitor, providing a host of additional features the search engine giant is missing, like [...] keeping your searches anonymous."_

<comment><USER8> Hmm, I could have sworn that wasn't there when I opened it (I did check because I was surprised not to see any mention)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Please make a mobile version. With Opera mini the search box is larger than the screen and half of it is shown out of the screen when the page loads.

</comment><comment><USER10> I really enjoy watching the progression of DDG and the traction it's gaining. I admire Gabriel Weinberg for working so hard towards it.

<comment><USER11> this. Gabriel has been awesome at feedback, really innovative from a product and marketing stand point, and has pursued this for over a year. Awesome.

And the karma widget remains one of my most favourite marketing products.

<comment><USER12> Over two years now :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The new category thing is annoying, if I search for 'django' I don't even get a list of links (the top one should be the python django framework) I get a list of things named django. I have to scroll all the way to the bottom of a bunch of junk to get the django web framework link. Maybe make that category thing less aggressive or something one can turn off in the settings.

<comment><USER12> Thx--I'm working on a setting to disable disambiguation, but I think you're missing the point. Those are the search results. The idea is you click on the one that is most relevant and then get "deep" results tailored to that particular meaning. The stuff at the bottom is meant only to serve you if none of the meanings are what you were looking for.

<comment><USER14> Just wondering, have you tried getting ddg.com? My only real gripe is I find typing duckduckgo.com to be cumbersome for some reason, even though it's only 4 characters more than 'google'. It just doesn't seem to flow.

<comment><USER15> There's <http://www.dukgo.com>, which is a tad bit less work to type ;-)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mathematics meets real life - <AUTHOR> http://gowers.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/mathematics-meets-real-life/ <comment><USER2> Good heavens, I shall be watching this blog for the next few days to see how it goes.

[http://gowers.wordpress.com/2012/07/07/a-trip-to-watford- gra...](http://gowers.wordpress.com/2012/07/07/a-trip-to-watford-grammar- school-for-boys/)

this is class stuff. I shall try the airport shoelace tying problem out on my motley crews next week.

</comment><comment><USER3> As for the right dosage of Warfarin, there are genetic tests that allow to make a better initial guess at least in some cases. Genetics itself involve a lot of math, and there's also economic aspects (healthcare costs) on top of that. I hope to see more and more mathematicians and programmers participating in healthcare.

</comment><comment><USER4> The author is a mathematician, and thus used to thinking about percentages and numbers.

Gerd Gigerenzer has a nice book, _Reckoning with Risk_ (or _Calculated Risks: How to Know When Numbers Deceive You_ in the US), in which he calls for people to stop using percentages and to use natural numbers numbers instead.

When you say that someone's risk has increased by 33% they usually have no idea what that means, but they think it's scary. But if the risk used to be 0.001% then a 33% increase isn't much to worry about.

The book has many examples from real world medicine of people having great disruption caused because they took medical treatment based on a faulty understanding of the numbers. It wasn't just lay people making the mistakes either; many doctors and consultants were getting the numbers wrong.

</comment><comment><USER5> Hope it goes well. I don't think Romney winning or losing is as dire as dying, which you very likely will not do, Tim. :) Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER6> Focused ultrasound could have been used to do cardiac ablation as well, though it's probably still in experimental stage. It's also noninvasive.

In general, focused ultrasound is the cure to a lot of ailments but is criminally underfunded at the moment. It's a potential immortality device.

<comment><USER7> How does it interact with the colloidal silver I am taking? What about my magnetic wristbands? I'm also having problems getting to the clinic these days because big oil stole my car that runs on water.

(Sorry, that's just how you're coming across.)

<comment><USER6> [http://www.fusfoundation.org/MRgFUS-Overview/about- focused-u...](http://www.fusfoundation.org/MRgFUS-Overview/about-focused- ultrasound-surgery)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High- intensity_focused_ultrasou...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High- intensity_focused_ultrasound)

[http://bergcityuni.wordpress.com/projects/cardiac- ablation-u...](http://bergcityuni.wordpress.com/projects/cardiac-ablation- using-high-intensity-focus-ultrasound-mri-guided/)

(links to sites linking to university funded medical researchers)

It doesn't take long to do a GOOGLE SEARCH. For a supposedly tech themed discussion site there's a lot of closed-minded and google-challenged folk on here.

<comment><USER8> If you write with sufficiently strong terms that you sound like you're blindly evangelising rather than rationally advocating, the average HN reader is going to go "eep" and adjust their prior expectation of your being right -way- down.

This effect is, I'm afraid, largely independent of whether you're -actually- right or not - so assuming your goals include "maximise the number of readers of your comment who go on to do some research about the technique", adjusting the language you use to try and put across that they should go and research it is probably a good idea.

Disclaimer: The above in no way indicates a judgement as to whether the technique in question is sufficiently awesome to deserve the language you used.

<comment><USER6> I think you're making that mistake a lot of people in medicine make and what separates them from the tech industry. They're huge pessimists because they don't grok things like physics or computing and are trained/selected for their ability to pass tests out of a textbook. If you put your geekdom "crawl entire web/robot car/computers on every desk" hat on you'll realize you can run circles around the current medical industry.

edit: I get you're trying to give advice. If I make the claims less exciting no-one will bother. If too exciting, they think unfeasible. Getting the balance right seems hard.

<comment><USER9> > If you put your geekdom "crawl entire web/robot car/computers on every desk" > hat on you'll realize you can run circles around the current medical > industry.

Then why hasn't anyone done precisely this?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mumford & Sons Warn Against 'Unauthorized Lending' of Their CD - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/12/mumford-sons-lending-copyright/ <comment><USER2> The title is extremely misleading. It makes it sound as if Mumford & Sons have been interviewed saying they don't want people to lend their CDs to each other. What has actually happened is their label included some small print on their CD saying 'Unauthorized Lending' is not okay. This is clearly an issue with the label rather than the artist, and as amadeus says, is probably meaning Lending in terms of public rentals like from a library.

I just had a look at about 10 of my CDs and 2 of them had exactly the same warning, both from UK labels, so perhaps it is fairly UK specific boiler-plate legal notice. Can't help but feel this is terrible reporting from Wired.

<comment><USER3> I believe your interpretation is correct.

In the UK, it is illegal to lend copyrighted works, with exceptions for some public transfers (18A of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 - <http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/48/section/18A>) or under very specific "fair dealing" clauses.

It is even currently illegal to copy your own CD, though that will specifically be changed shortly by some new legislation ([http://www.ipo.gov.uk/about/press/press-release/press- releas...](http://www.ipo.gov.uk/about/press/press-release/press- release-2012/press-release-20121220.htm)).

<comment><USER4> I find this revelation incredibly relevant to the "I have nothing to hide" thread here on HN. How many people can even comprehend getting in trouble for just handing a CD to a friend?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think one of the first comments on the Wired article sums this all up pretty well:

[http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/12/mumford-sons- lending-...](http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/12/mumford-sons-lending- copyright/#comment-746074038)

TL;DR: The term lending has been on most records in the last 20 years and actually refers to public rentals, or something to that effect, and has nothing to do with letting your friend borrow your CDs.

</comment><comment><USER6> > The highly-confusing but incredibly important "first sale" doctrine in the > Copyright Act states that the buyer of a copyrighted work — whether it's a > CD, book, or otherwise — can re-sell or loan that particular copy of the > work in any way they want without the copyright holder's permission

They have misstated the first sale doctrine under US law. For music CDs, lending is only allowed under first sale if it is not for direct or indirect commercial advantage. This is what there was not widespread CD rentals like there were for movies.

Same also applies to computer programs, which is why you don't find Windows or Office rentals. For programs there is an exception for certain kinds of games and for firmware, which is why you can easily rent those.

<comment><USER7> That's incorrect. The first sale doctrine has no such restriction on lending.

<comment><USER6> 17 USC 109(b)(1)(A):

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

Notwithstanding the provisions of subsection (a), unless authorized by the owners of copyright in the sound recording or the owner of copyright in a computer program (including any tape, disk, or other medium embodying such program), and in the case of a sound recording in the musical works embodied therein, neither the owner of a particular phonorecord nor any person in possession of a particular copy of a computer program (including any tape, disk, or other medium embodying such program), may, for the purposes of direct or indirect commercial advantage, dispose of, or authorize the disposal of, the possession of that phonorecord or computer program (including any tape, disk, or other medium embodying such program) by rental, lease, or lending, or by any other act or practice in the nature of rental, lease, or lending. Nothing in the preceding sentence shall apply to the rental, lease, or lending of a phonorecord for nonprofit purposes by a nonprofit library or nonprofit educational institution. The transfer of possession of a lawfully made copy of a computer program by a nonprofit educational institution to another nonprofit educational institution or to faculty, staff, and students does not constitute rental, lease, or lending for direct or indirect commercial purposes under this subsection.

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

</comment><comment><USER8> Over 20 years ago I was standing in line at a bookstore (younger ones might not have heard of these things we used to have called bookstores back in the old days) and spotted an anti-lending clause in the copyright page of a book I was about to buy. I exited the line and returned the book to the shelf.

I don't always check for these anti-lending clauses but sometimes I do. In my opinion it's not legally enforceable because it violates first sale doctrine. But I don't like to support corporations whose lawyers have this attitude, so it always generates a 'no-sale'. They are not new clauses in 2013, but they seemed pretty new when I first saw them and I don't think they existed in books 30 years ago as opposed to 20.

I have similar feelings about the non-transferability of DRM digital books, albums and mobile apps. On those they make the argument that since the product is intangible there is no sale and it is not sold but a licensing fee is being charged for access to a bitstream, an access license which can be revoked at will by the licensor and without recourse by the licensee. Since these products are not being sold I am not sure the words books or albums really apply, they are more bitstream consumption allocation contracts. Not anything I am all that interesting in licensing, I'd rather buy real albums and books, and I do.

</comment><comment> guard-of-terra See also: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4959314>

Any limitation you can think of, lawyers are going to bring to your employment contract, EULA or copyright provision.

Because for them it never makes sense not to.

So, EULAs, frivolous copyright provisions and employment contracts should be outlawed or severely limited. As in: there should be a white list of what you can put there.

</comment><comment><USER9> Oh good. Another reason I can reasonably dislike this band. I find them to be a poor version of one of my favorite bands (The Avett Brothers).

I would think that having more people hear your music would be a good thing. Controlling or attempting to control whom hears it smacks of echoes of the Metallica 'Down with Napster' stuff. Either enjoy people listening earnestly to your music, or well, you're just a really interesting marketing project and not musicians IMHO.

<comment><USER10> The article is empty link bait, using 'Mumford and Sons' to get views.

While I am also not a fan of the band, this 'article' doesn't suddenly make them Lars. The 'warning' seems generic speak slapped on things. A Google search shows Velvet Underground records from the 80's with this warning.

Also, a lot of people think The Avett Brothers are considered a 'poor version' of folk music(easy listening, pop) in the same bucket as Mumford & Sons. Regardless of versions and quality, both are nice to listen to on summer days with friends(who often don't care much about music), regardless of who's imitating who.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Books in the UK routinely ban lending in their copyright notice. I assume this means that in the UK, unlike the US, that is a valid thing to do. The text is probably just a holdover from the UK, or printed so that a single package can be sent to both the UK and US. In any case, I'm pretty sure the do-not-lend clause holds no power in the US and can be safely ignored.

</comment><comment><USER12> Storm in a teacup will result in more bittorrent seeds...

More seriously: my kids school are always using their smart whiteboards to play YouTube videos and DVDs on, particularly on pre-Xmas slacking week (the one that the teachers think everyone is entitled to in the UK). How does this fair with such terms? Would they sue a school?

</comment><comment><USER13> Oh for heaven's sake. This is standard UK copyright boilerplate, because the 'first sale' doctrine does not exist in British law. And in any case, it's put there by the record publisher, not the band. I've never listened to them, but singling them out for complaint like this is completely yellow journalism.

</comment><comment><USER14> A simple Google search for "Unauthorized copying, reproduction, hiring, lending, public performance and broadcasting prohibited" returns many hits for other bands with the same terms.

As others say it's standard boiler plate.

</comment><comment><USER15> Its standard for the uk, doesn't surprise us here and its never, ever stopped anyone lending to their friends.

</comment><comment><USER16> This submission rather well summarises what upvote-hits baiting is about - Congratulations Wired!</comment>


Show HN: DigitalOcean Releases IPv6 and Private Networking in SF1 - <AUTHOR> https://www.dropbox.com/s/ox7tzkgr21ra28b/Screenshot%202015-04-09%2020.54.40.png?dl=0

<comment><AUTHOR> From newsletter to droplet holders:

"Announcing IPv6 and Private Networking In SFO1

With our San Francisco region fully migrated to version 1.5 of our code base, we are excited to announce that both IPv6 support and private networking are now available for all Droplets in SFO1."

No blog post announced at the writing of this, otherwise I'd have linked that.

</comment><comment><USER2> I'm not saying that it's not interesting, but why did you post it in the "show HN" section?</comment>


2016 was third consecutive year of record global warmth - <AUTHOR> https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/reporting-state-climate-2016 <comment><USER2> I'm dismayed that the very environment we all share somehow got politicized to death. I wonder what would have happened to the Ozone Hole if it too got politicized at the time, or the link between smoking and cancer if it got politicized. We trust our doctors; we trust our tech leaders; why don't we trust our scientists and climatologists? (Is this, sort of, Gore's fault, combined with a highly-polarizing media? I have to wonder.)

At this point I have almost no faith that until things get dire enough to cause even the most ignorant layperson to realize there's a serious problem going on, that anything impactful will be done to stop it, and by then it may be too late due to runaway multiplicative effects (such as the thawing of permafrost methane in the Arctic, or the absence of snow cover resulting in less planet-surface reflectivity)

<comment><USER3> > Is this, sort of, Gore's fault...

How in the holy hell would it be Gore's fault? He has tried to be a communicator on this issue for decades. He's "highly polarized" because the great smear machine felt it needed to destroy him for having the temerity to run for President.

<comment><USER4> I'll bite. _An Inconvenient Truth_ was so overly political and full of lame folksy rhetoric that it motivated me to investigate the issue further. And now I'm a climate skeptic. I'm sure there are others.

<comment><USER5> How? Could you elaborate on the type of investigation you undertook that led you to become a skeptic? The scientific community is so overwhelmingly on the side of climate change that you'd have to be really selective to see/read it otherwise.

The "lame folksy rhetoric" is Gore's way of trying to appeal to the skeptics. The problem with issues like climate change is that they're so large and complex that most people feel powerless to affect change, so they do nothing.

An Inconvenient Truth was meant to impart the severity, but also the hope that small changes will make a difference and that, collectively, there's a chance to change course. At the very least, lower our contribution in an effort to change course.

Honestly, blaming this on Gore is beyond comprehension. I'm trying to not to be hyperbolic, but this type of knee-jerk reaction and selective bias highlights how this issue is politicized, and will, as evidence suggests, lead to devastation.

<comment><USER4> Here is what did it for me:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JIuKjaY3r4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JIuKjaY3r4)

This 6 minute clip made me question the entire thing, because it was so full of half truths, innuendo, false conclusions, and then topped off with a politician's favorite rhetorical device--morality.

So when Al Gore started caricaturing the "so-called skeptics" I started listening closely. Because that's what you do when someone is trying to bamboozle you. And at every turn, when he laid down reason and picked up rhetoric, there was an "inconvenient truth" that he knew he could not hide so he resorted to lame arguments and hand waving.

Al Gore's inconvenient truths, just from that clip:

1:30 - The medieval warm period was actually quite warm, and you can't simply will it away by adjusting your chart or appealing to humor. Did you notice the chart goes from big smooth lines to little jagged lines? I did. Apparently it's a reconstruction where scientists have attempted to compare prehistoric temperatures to modern ones. I fundamentally reject that this is a fair way to present data to make your case. Those jagged lines should have error bars at least. The "hockey stick" has since been removed from IPCC reports out of embarrassment (see the 'Climategate' scandal and efforts by McIntyre and McKitrick to reproduce the hockey stick study).

2:55 - "In all of this time, 650,000 years, the CO2 level has never gone above 300 parts per million". First of all this is wrong. The Holocene has seen an oscillation from 210 to 385 ppm. I don't know where he's getting his numbers. What he also does not say is that this trend is actually quite rare. In most of the Earth's history the CO2 level has been many many times higher, from 2000 to 8000 ppm in the last 500 million years.

3:00 - The two charts very clearly fit together because of the opposite relationship that Gore is implying: A warmer climate means more biological activity, therefore more CO2. Duh. But somehow he is bamboozling his audience into believing that the relationship goes the other way. An elementary scientific attitude would at least say "hey wait a minute, correlation does not imply causation."

6:00 - After the elevator gag, he responds to "so-called skeptics" with hand- waving. "If this much on the cold side is a mile of ice over our heads, what would that much on the warm side be?" The audience is left to conjure doomsday scenarios in their minds. The answer could very well be "far more economic growth due to great swaths of land opened up for farming" but no, Al Gore is sure it's going to be a catastrophe.

6:15 - Then here comes the "this is not politics, this is a moral issue" which is a politician's favorite thing to say. Love the finger pointing and lowered tone of voice. Again this is the kind of behavior that makes a reasonable person question the basis of the whole thing.

I get that Gore really believes he needs to stop Manbearpig and needs to do it ASAP. But he and everyone else on the political left that wants vast international control over economies (and that's really what his political plan is) should have expected some blowback from this kind of rhetoric. And that's my answer to chasing's question of "how could it be Gore's fault" that there is skepticism over his crazy agenda.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > the combined influence of long-term global warming and a strong El Niño > early in the year

I'm curious how strong this El Nino was vs others in recent years? Was it particularly bad this time?

<comment><USER7> This is a tricky question. (Hell, it could well be a _trick question_.)

El Niño takes place 2-3 times per generation. A stronger than usual phenomenon is a single data point, and we all know how much validity one should give to an outlier. In order to quantify the strength of consecutive events, and especially to rule out freak outliers in both directions you will need a few distinct data points. Let's say 6-8 data points at a minimum.

So the timescales for measurements will be in the range of 40-50 years.

By the time you can reliably use El Niño as a yardstick to say that it's getting late to act, it will have been too late for quite some time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> More details about the situation in the arctic: [http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/](http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/)

</comment><comment><USER9> If you're (rightly) concerned about climate change there is a lot you can do.

Here are three good resources.

Bret Victor's "What can a technologist do about climate change" is wonderful tech overview [0].

"Drawdown", a recent book which enumerates and stack-ranks the wide array of techniques we have which return the atmosphere to a safe composition. [1]

Finally, a self-pitch, we just launched our new site, ClimateAction.tech [2] with a guide for technology employees who are interested in making their companies more sustainable (feedback welcome, @samp or the email on the site)

[0] [http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/](http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/) [1] [https://smile.amazon.com/Drawdown-Comprehensive-Proposed- Rev...](https://smile.amazon.com/Drawdown-Comprehensive-Proposed-Reverse- Warming/dp/0143130447) [2] ClimateAction.tech

</comment><comment><USER10> After a while we might just see a trend (I mean even the skeptical crowd)

<comment><USER11> Nope. You still have people in this thread posting about how "oh the left is just too mean so I became a client skeptic" "oh well the scientists get paid and they don't have 100% of the answers so I'm a client skeptic now"

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> ". . . in 137 years of recordkeeping."

<comment><USER13> Climate information is also written in the rings of trees, which in the case of giant sequoias goes back several thousand years. It's also there in the geological record in the form of layers in sedimentary rocks.

<comment><USER4> 1) It's not clear how to derive a signal from that evidence. Is a thicker tree ring evidence of a hotter, wetter climate, or a "happy medium" temperature?

2) Such a record of tree rings, if it could produce any temperature signal whatsoever, would be a _relative_ signal: Each year would be calculated in relation to other years on the same timeline for the same tree. How you could map that signal to modern temperature observations in any meaningful way?

Personally if you're talking about a global temperature estimate, I would only trust the gold standard: Satellite observations starting in 1978.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Things that climate change discussions rarely talk about:

1\. We have a climate that is greatly affected by the sun. The sun varies in the amount of light we get from it.

We have truly, absolutely zero ability to modify anything about the sun.

We couldn't even place a probe or device within 10,000 miles of the surface of the sun, if our survival depended on it.

2\. Even if the USA cuts their emissions in half tomorrow, with China and India increasing their use of autos and other emissions producing devices, would that be enough? And how exactly is it that USA spends more on reducing emissions while others spend zero? How much of a hit to the economy does this entail, for essentially zero world wide benefit?

How many remember Canada's 180 degree turnaround a few years ago, when they realized that conforming to the Kyoto protocol meant a 10% GDP hit?

<comment><USER9> 1\. 100% of the problem that climatologists discuss is heat from the sun, trapped, by greenhouse gasses that we release. As you rightly point out, we can't control the sun, so we must control how much insulating gas we put in the atmosphere.

2\. Even it China cuts is emissions, with the USA outputting more than 4 times per person, would that be enough? How exactly is it that China spends more on reducing emissions while USA spends zero? This is a collective action problem (much like CFC's were in the 1980s, or not peeing in the lake you depend on for drinking water), it requires grown-up behavior from all nations now so as to no despoil the inheritance we might leave to our children.

<comment><USER14> 1\. Very few talk about how the sun changes its levels of radiance and how this affects climate on Earth. The sun is not a "constant".

2\. Maybe I phrased that part of my statement rather lumpily. I meant, if USA spends to reduce emissions and China and India do not spend.

<comment><USER9> 1\. They don't talk about it because it is not the primary cause of the warming we see. [0] 2\. China and India have agreed to reduce emissions, as part of the Paris agreement. 45% of all solar installed worldwide in 2016 was installed in China. Every country needs to do its part. [1]

[https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the- wo...](https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-world/) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_by_country](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_by_country)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Where I live (Finland) it has been a shockingly cold summer. All the denialists of course scream about "no global warming, don't tax me bro!". Weird that the denialism-engine works all the way here (from the US). Of course we have our fair share of different co2 taxes etc so when people don't like them of course it's somehow easier to deny global warming (a logic I don't quite understand... I myself are against any co2 taxes etc but still "believe" in AGW).

</comment><comment><USER16> How to virtually guarantee funding: Create a research project that attempts to better understand a cause or a potential effect of some aspect of Climate Change.

How to be ostracized from the University zeitgeist and receive little/no funding: Create a research project that attempts to disprove any major assumptions or pillars of modern Climate Change science.

Welcome to politics.

<comment><USER17> I guess the new line is that we can't trust the scientists, because they're all corrupt.

Which I guess is pretty similar to the old line. But at least back then the know-nothingism had the pretense of caring about the science with screams of "1998!" and "sunspots!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Last year's record heat resulted from the combined influence of long-term global warming and a strong El Niño early in the year."

"One of the strongest El Niño events since at least 1950"

<comment><USER2> can you provide a link instead of hearsay, please

<comment><USER18> those are quotes from the article and the paper it references

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Next year: "International report confirms 2017 was fourth consecutive year of record global warmth"

Not exactly shocking news :)

<comment><USER20> It might not be because El Niño years are a little warmer. So, if the next couple of years aren't warmer, we don't have a hiatus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Title doesn't match article and is clearly hyperbolic.

<comment><USER22> We've updated the title from "2016 confirmed as planet's hottest year". Submitters, the guidelines ask us not to editorialize titles like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Regardless of CO2, does anyone have a sense of how much heat we are putting into the earth system by burning non-renewables?

<comment><USER24> Fossil combustion is directly heating the Earth by ~16 terawatts. Radiative forcing from human emitted CO2 (primarily fossil combustion) is ~1 watt/m^2:

[https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change- indica...](https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators- climate-forcing)

Multiplied by the surface area of the planet, 510,000,000 km^2, that's 510 terawatts heating from CO2 in the atmosphere. As time goes by the relative importance of radiative forcing continues to increase, because fuel produces heat for just a short time as it burns but the combustion emissions amplify the effects of sunlight for years to come.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's exasperating, people around me over-consume, drive too much, own pets (which are completely useless, cost energy too (healthcare, food, ..), cats damage seriously the ecosystem when they are outside, ..), we are talking of something close to a billion of pets, 20% of people still smoke cigarettes as a bonus

It's not just those simple acts, but when you consume 1L of gas with your car, you have to consider the amount of energy to extract it, transport it, stock it...

It can't go well with those attitudes, where residential pollution is about 40%-45% of overall pollution. This alone can be divided by 10, when I see my environmental fingerprint, with my bike and laptop

<comment><USER4> That is actually part of the plan. Everyone believes in a manufactured environmental doomsday scenario, and can blame it on nameless "others" who "pollute" the Earth with their trace gases. Soon there will be a carbon indulgence available for everyone to pay in order to secure your salvation. Then you can continue your patterns of _actual_ pollution with a clear consience: littering, not picking up after your dog, not conserving resources, starting flamewars online, using too much water, ignoring the real environment around you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Regardless of CO2, does anyone have a sense of how much heat we are putting into the earth system by burning non-renewables?

edit: I did the math, and it seems our total yearly oil production in 2016, if used to directly boil the oceans, would raise the temperature of them by .0001 degrees.

It's really incredible the multiplier effect CO2 can have.</comment>


Interview with Alan Kay - <AUTHOR> http://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/interview-with-alan-kay/240003442# <comment><USER2> Alan Kay is a brilliant guy, but I really wish he could open his mouth without shooting it off. In particular -- to speak to my own domain -- he bleats about "feature creep" in an operating system with absolutely no demonstrated understanding for a modern OS. Is KVM "feature creep"? Is ZFS? Is DTrace? He shows not so much as an ounce of understanding for why these things exist or empathy with those for whom they were created. I have great reverence for history (and Kay and I share an intense love for the B5000[1]), but I also think it's a mistake to romanticize the past. Viz., when he wistfully recalls the Unix kernel having "1,000 lines of code", he can only be talking about Sixth Edition: even by Seventh Edition (circa 1979!), the kernel had (conservatively) over ten times that amount.[2] And this is still a system that lacked a VM system and TCP/IP stack -- and tossed if you created the 151st process![3] If he wants to criticize the path that history has taken, fine -- but when he is so ignorant of the specifics of that path, it's very hard to treat him as anything but a crank, albeit an eminent one.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4010407>

[2] <http://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=V7>

[3] newproc() in [http://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi- bin/utree.pl?file=V7/usr/sys/sys/...](http://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi- bin/utree.pl?file=V7/usr/sys/sys/slp.c)

<comment><USER3> Cranks don't really put their money where there mouth is. If you haven't seen it yet, I'm sure you'll enjoy looking at the STEPS project: <http://www.vpri.org/html/writings.php>

In summary, the goal is a user-facing system in 25k SLOC, from kernel to GUI apps, including all the code for compilers for the custom languages they made. They call the languages "runnable maths", or "active maths", where they think of a minimal notation to specify how a system should behave, and then implement a compiler to run that notation as code. They manage this through a compiler-writing language, ometa.

For example, to implement TCP/IP, they parse the ASCII tables from the RFCs as code. Seriously, they just take it as is, and have a compiler to run it as code. The implementation is supposed to be around 200 LOC (includes the code written in Ometa for their compiler).

There's also a graphic subsystem, apparently with all the functionality of Cairo (which is 20k LOC) in about 800 LOC.

Crucially, all this code is supposed to be very readable. Not line noise like APL. The expressiveness comes from having custom languages.

<comment><USER4> This style seems amazing, but I haven't seen any tutorials for people interested in learning how to do this themselves.. do you know of any such resources?

<comment><USER5> They are doing the real deal thing - for each problem, designing a language in which to express the solution, and then writing the solution. Part of the point is that the building such solutions isn't really teachable in the context of a tutorial. If a tutorial can teach it, then it's probably a pretty shallow skill, and shallow skills should get designed away into a solution- oriented programming language, and any tutorials for THAT language, etc etc...

The language they use to do that (O-Meta) is then a language-defining language, and designing THAT means balancing on a level of abstractions that is at least three levels deep, and each of those abstraction levels is hard and necessary. They achieve great simplicity by thinking damn hard.

On the other hand, the mailing list (as noted by the other respondent) is a pretty interesting place with few flamewars.

<comment><USER6> I think this tutorial does a pretty good job: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4230995>

<comment><USER4> This is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _"A lot of people go into computing just because they are uncomfortable with other people. So it is no mean task to put together five different kinds of Asperger's syndrome and get them to cooperate. American business is completely fucked up because it is all about competition. Our world was built for the good from cooperation."_

So much insight, so few words.

<comment><USER8> Kay may think that "American business is completely fucked up", but it's also undeniable that American business has been the greatest engine for technological progress the world has ever seen. Kay's anti-capitalism is showing, and it isn't particularly glorious to behold.

<comment><USER9> I would be curious to know what makes you think that technological progress is happening _because_ of competition. It might as well be _despite_ competition, I see no rational way of telling for sure, as there are too many interdependent factors at work.

But I will say this: the academic world as I've been witnessing it is a world built on _cooperation_ , and it seems to me to be the real driver of strong innovation. Another lucrative social website is _not_ "strong innovation", but a new research algorithm that pushes the boundaries of what we can do, is. One is driven by profit, the other by curiosity. One happens because of competition, the other because of cooperation.

<comment><USER10> Academia is rife with competition. As they say, the battles are so fierce because the stakes are so small.

The open source community and Wikipedia are great examples of cooperation.

The biggest advances in business are usually by people who are completely focused on customer needs and ignore competition (google up until their google+ fascination, Elon musk, apple prior to android's success. Note how google hasn't made any advances from their competition with Facebook, and how Apple hasnt advanced the iPhone much since they started competing with Android).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "A side note: Re-creating Kay's answers to interview questions was particularly difficult. Rather than the linear explanation in response to an interview question, his answers were more of a cavalcade of topics, tangents, and tales threaded together, sometimes quite loosely — always rich, and frequently punctuated by strong opinions. The text that follows attempts to create somewhat more linearity to the content. — ALB"

Audio would be ace.

</comment><comment><USER12> It seems like he's still stuck thinking about computers the way he was many years ago. Wikipedia _isn't_ amazing because it doesn't have a WYSIWYG editor and can't run code on the (very few) pages where that's even applicable?

He doesn't seem to get that what makes the web amazing is the data and people connected to it. That's generally far more interesting to users than novel interfaces or whiz-bang features.

Google, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, Yelp, etc aren't _technically_ all that interesting or innovative. They're infinitely more transformative than nearly all software that came before them though.

<comment><USER13> _It seems like he's still stuck thinking about computers the way he was many years ago._

 _Google, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, Yelp, etc. ... infinitely more transformative than nearly all software that came before_

Ah, pop culture, you make me laugh... you make me cry...

<comment><USER14> Why so?

<comment><USER3> Not the GP, but the quote gives undue importance to a number of websites that have been successful. You have to consider whether some early software (say Unix and the C compiler) was more instrumental to the transformative effects of software on humanity, or say the software written Xerox PARC, or the original TCP/IP work.

<comment><USER14> It depends on your measure. It could be argued that it's not undue weight as these sites have impacted on such a massive proportion of the world's society. For instance, gcc and unix didn't allow for the sort of direct communication that twitter caused - look at the Arab Spring for example.

That the technologies you mention enabled the websites mentioned is not in doubt, but without the websites and related technologies would things like TCP/IP and Unix have had such an impact?

<comment><USER14> Seems that my comment is controversial as someone has voted me down. I'm curious to hear from opposing views - I love technologies like TCP/IP, gcc, Unix, C, etc. - but I think they wouldn't be much use unless they were used to enable applications like Twitter, Google, Nethack and Wikipedia.

I do want to clarify that I'm not saying that the underlying technologies aren't amazing.

<comment><USER15> I think the debate is whether TCP/IP would be useful without Google, or Wikipedia would have happened without TCP/IP. Personally I would say that IP changed the way people think about information, which made Wikipedia seem plausible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I fully agree with him.

The web was designed for reading documents not to try to shoehorn an operating system into the browser.

Thankfully the mobile world is bringing back the desktop applications concept, while using the network for communication protocols as it is supposed to be.

<comment> dan-k That's the exact opposite position from what Kay said:

"...what you definitely don't want in a Web browser is any features.... You want to get those from the objects. You want it to be a mini-operating system..."

Essentially he's saying that the way we think of browsers is holding the web back. We could have collaborative WYSIWYG editing of Wikipedia or blogs, for example, but instead we're stuck with just reading documents.

Perhaps it would be correct to say that the web was designed for reading documents, but it shouldn't have been (at least according to Kay).

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Excellent interview - Kay has some hard truths to tell and calls out a lot of BS.

<comment><USER18> Totally agree with you, but looking at the comments above it seems like we've been imprisoned for so long in this glorious cave called the World Wide Web that we've forgot how we could have transformed the real outside world. (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave>)

<comment><USER19> I think I can guess the answer, but do you think that perhaps there could be any other reason, just any at all, that people don't see it your way?

Once you've started explaining away why people disagree you with that kind of rhetoric, it's really hard to learn anything from them.

<comment><USER18> > but do you think that perhaps there could be any other reason, just any at > all, that people don't see it your way?

Of course that I'm aware of that, I'm not that self-centered :)

> Once you've started explaining away why people disagree you with that kind > of rhetoric, it's really hard to learn anything from them.

English is not my primary language, so I'm not 100% sure I understand what you're saying, but in case you're suggesting that I'm full of what will turn out to be empty rhetoric then of course that you have the right to your opinion.

Anyway, I find it crazy that a guy like me (I think I'm in HN's bottom bracket when it comes to programming- or CS-ability) somehow sort of "defends" a guy like Alan Kay. I'm only doing it for the energy, the passion, the whatever- you-want-to-call-it that always gets to me when I'm reading Alan Kay's interviews. I agree it's something subjective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> There's a compelling quote within the first page: _But the thing that traumatized me occurred a couple years later, when I found an old copy of Life magazine that had the Margaret Bourke-White photos from Buchenwald. This was in the 1940s — no TV, living on a farm. That's when I realized that adults were dangerous. Like, really dangerous. I forgot about those pictures for a few years, but I had nightmares. But I had forgotten where the images came from. Seven or eight years later, I started getting memories back in snatches, and I went back and found the magazine. That probably was the turning point that changed my entire attitude toward life. It was responsible for getting me interested in education. My interest in education is unglamorous. I don't have an enormous desire to help children, but I have an enormous desire to create better adults._

Here's a link to the photos (some unpublished) that he refers to: [http://life.time.com/history/behind-the-picture-bourke- white...](http://life.time.com/history/behind-the-picture-bourke-white-and- the-liberation-of-buchenwald/#1)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Why is the title of the post renamed? Should the titles be boring and dry instead of being informative one line summary of the article that people may find interesting enough to read it?

Look what happened to the previous submission of the same article here on HN: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4224966>. Such a good article went unnoticed because the title was plain unattractive.

Can we have a little bit of 'submitters freedom' here?

P.S: Original title was: "Internet by Brilliant minds, Web by Amateurs, Browser a lament"

<comment><USER14> I actually think it was a good rename. He said a lot more than that, and sensational titles aren't really needed on HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do agree on 'cheap' sensational titles, but I don't think mine was. I think it was a better title more in-line to what Alan Kay _emphasized_ in the article, giving it a bit of context to interest someone to read a great interview, instead of just a generic 'Click Here' like the previous submitter's, leading people to think it was not worth 'clicking through'.

<comment><USER14> Fair comment - on further reflection I agree, the title was reasonable as it highlighted the emphasis placed by Alan Kay. It wasn't the title that was sensational, it what Alan Kay said in the interview. Apologies for suggesting otherwise!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Browsers were built around the idea of web pages, not web apps. The security model works for web pages but precludes powerful web apps. There needs to be a way for a user to grant UDP, TCP or POSIX power to a web app, because WebSockets are not TCP, and IndexedDB is not POSIX and never can be. Just UDP, TCP and POSIX and we're done. Let the community build everything better and faster on top.

</comment><comment><USER22> _If they reinvented what Engelbart, did we'd be way ahead of where we are now._

I give you <http://www.dougengelbart.org/about/hyperscope.html>, implemented in 2006 on that horrible web thing Kay complains about. So there is that...

</comment><comment><USER23> If the web had proper time to incubate without the pressures of the dotcom craze, I suspect it would have developed in a much more controlled, and systematic way. As we know, development was very chaotic and competitive.

I do think we will get to a better place eventually. After all, the web is still a relatively new medium, especially when compared to the "Internet".

</comment><comment><USER14> "You can't go to heaven unless you're baptized." Actually, no. Perhaps if you are Roman Catholic (and even then that's questionable); Evangelical Christians either believe that you don't do anything to get to heaven and Jesus saves you, or you choose to believe that Jesus Christ died as one perfect sacrifice for the forgiveness of those who follow Jesus.

You may not agree, but I'm pointing out that the statement by Kay is pretty inaccruate.

<comment><USER21> There are many interpretations of what it means to follow Christ. The rational interpretation is Christ's own interpretation, the historical gospel story, from the beginning of the Old Testament right through to the end of the New Testament. The Scriptures are historical, they provide the facts of the events. Thankfully they are also theological and interpret the meaning of the events. Did it happen? What does it mean?

<comment><USER15> Fundamentalist radical literalist Christian here :) It's simple: when Jesus and two thieves were being crucified together, he told one of them that he would see him in paradise that day. Ergo, baptism is not a necessary requirement of getting to heaven.

[https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke%2023&v...](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke%2023&version=HCSB) (I would start around verse 32)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is this how he really said it, or was the author paraphrasing?

</comment><comment><USER24> I haven't read too much Alan Kay before, but this interview made me realize that he's not really the inventor of object-orientation as we currently think of it. He says as much directly in the interview:

"And that's true of most of the things that are called object-oriented systems today. None of them are object-oriented systems according to my definition. Objects were a radical idea, then they got retrograded."

It sounds like his conception of "objects" is a more user-facing thing; an object is something you see on your screen and can interact with and manipulate by programming. This view blurs the line between users and programmers. I'm not sure this is a terribly realistic model for how normal people want to interact with computers. For all his disdain for the web, it has succeeded in bring content to over 2B people worldwide, most of whom wouldn't have the first idea what to do with a Smalltalk environment.

<comment><USER6> _I haven't read too much Alan Kay before, but this interview made me realize that he's not really the inventor of object-orientation as we currently think of it._

Alan Kay is really the inventor of object-orientation. But when the concept of "type bound procedures" was added to compiled languages like C (making it C++), they called it object-orientation, even though type bound procedures are a different thing than object-orientation. Real object orientation is about sending messages between objects, those messages do not have to be predefined, they are not dependent of type hierarchies, they can be arbitrary, they can be relayed, ignored, broadcasted etc. You do not need classes or types at all to be object-oriented by Kay's definition.

<comment><USER24> Nothing you said contradicts my comment at all. I said "he's not really the inventor of object-orientation _as we currently think of it_." What we currently think of as object-orientation is not what he invented. I don't see what's controversial about this, since he said exactly this in the interview, and I'm not understanding the downvotes to -3. The second part of my comment was expressing basically the same sentiment as this comment, which was not downvoted into oblivion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4229788>

<comment><USER25> You also said

> It sounds like his conception of "objects" is a more user-facing thing; an > object is something you see on your screen and can interact with and > manipulate by programming. This view blurs the line between users and > programmers. I'm not sure this is a terribly realistic model for how normal > people want to interact with computers.

Which misrepresents his contribution rather badly.

<comment><USER24> From the interview:

KAY: We didn't use an operating system at PARC. We didn't have applications either.

BINSTOCK: So it was just an object loader?

KAY: An object exchanger, really. The user interface's job was to ask objects to show themselves and to composite those views with other ones.

BINSTOCK: You really radicalized the idea of objects by making everything in the system an object.

KAY: No, I didn't. I mean, I made up the term "objects." Since we did objects first, there weren't any objects to radicalize. We started off with that view of objects, which is exactly the same as the view we had of what the Internet had to be, except in software.

I realize that objects in Smalltalk were not all graphical, but this concept of objects as graphical entities seems to be near and dear to his heart.

<comment><USER25> The interview does not discuss Kay's contributions in any depth. You have misunderstood them as a result of making weak inferences and not doing any further research.

<comment><USER24> You're right that I don't know his work that well and probably extrapolated too much from this interview. I just get a little irritated at people (even smart, famous people) who criticize successful projects like the Web or Wikipedia for not being good enough, or inferior to their own work, without acknowledging that their success in the marketplace shows that they must have done _something_ right.

I'm glad he's working on STEPS; I'm eager to see him push the boundaries of what is possible, and if it succeeds, it will validate his ideas. But Smalltalk and Squeak have been around for decades, and yet the Web and Wikipedia are orders of magnitude more popular. So why does he have to bash their creators as "amateurs" or "lacking imagination" when their ideas have caught hold in a way that his work has not? What does he have to back up this criticism? Sure, a lot of the ideas from Smalltalk and his early work on object-oriented design have influenced other programming languages, but he himself says that the way in which object-oriented design evolved runs counter to his vision, not in support of it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>