I Took Apple To Court And Won, Twice - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/cgi7ro/i_took_apple_to_court_and_won_twice_water_damaged/ <comment><USER2> In my opinion the main takeaway here is that in both cases the OP was able to win their case thanks to the diagnostic of a third party repair shop - precisely the kind of business that Apple is trying to kill with its unrepairable products

<comment><USER3> This is super concerning

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Maybe it's because I live in Silicon Valley, but my repair experience with Apple has been quite different. I took my six year old laptop in for a recall on the video card, which required a logic board replacement. They did that at no charge. In the process, they broke the power unit, so they replaced that and my six year old battery, both at no charge. They also replaced the top case at no charge while doing the second repair because they said they damaged it during repair. I never even saw the damage or had to complain.

It took three weeks, but in the end I basically had a new laptop, except the screen.

<comment><USER5> > Maybe it's because I live in Silicon Valley

That may be the reason. I live in the Netherlands and I have had consistent terrible experience with Apple store repair service.

> It took three weeks, but in the end I basically had a new laptop, except the > screen.

For professional use, that is just unacceptable. If you rely on your computer for income, you can't wait that long.

That is the reason why any Apple product will never be 'pro'. Regardless of how nice the hardware is, if it breaks I need a repair or replacement device _immediately_. IFAIK Apple does not offer such service (unless you have >50 devices).

Other brands (HP, Dell, Lenovo) offer on-site same day repair service. They send someone to your location and if they can't fix it on site, they'll give you a replacement/loaner. For me, that service is well worth the cost. If only Apple would offer that.

<comment><USER6> > For professional use, that is just unacceptable. If you rely on your > computer for income, you can't wait that long.

This may be an unpopular opinion, and I don't mean to sound dismissive or suggest that waiting 3 weeks is normal, but I do think it is incredibly unprofessional to rely on a single device like that for work. If it's truly an indispensable part of your job, you should have a backup--that goes for anything, not just computers. It could be a 10-year-old hand-me-down or a cheapo Chromebook, but you should have a backup plan.

> Other brands (HP, Dell, Lenovo) offer on-site same day repair service. They > send someone to your location and if they can't fix it on site, they'll give > you a replacement/loaner. For me, that service is well worth the cost. If > only Apple would offer that.

When I was first getting started as a programmer, I made most of my income by doing tech support, rather than actual programming. A large percentage of the cases were people hiring me to deal with the likes of HP, Dell, and Lenovo because their "on-site same day repair services" were absolute garbage about 50% of the time. You could get a laptop with a DoA hard drive, but they'd refuse to replace it unless it failed their specific check, which was always inadequate. It was normal to argue with them for 6+ hours about it. You could put a fresh drive in to demonstrate that the issue was gone, but they'd still refuse to do anything. It wouldn't matter if it BSODed consistently with a fresh installation on their drive but not on the drive I was using for testing, or if the SMART results were the worst I'd ever seen--no test fail, no replacement.

> IFAIK Apple does not offer such service (unless you have >50 devices).

It varies widely depending on location. If you go to a large, busy Apple store, they tend to have a lot more parts on-hand; it doesn't need to be in Silicon Valley as long as it's big. If they need to order parts, they'll give you the option to hold onto your device until the parts arrive. I've gotten apologies when a repair took longer than 24 hours. I tend to prefer the Microsoft store method, though: when I've had issues with Surface-series devices, they've never attempted to repair it there; they just hand me a new one. It's hard to beat that. (I guess Apple's approach is better if you need to recover your data, but I never save anything valuable on a single device.)

<comment><USER7> Not everyone can afford a second machine.

<comment><USER8> An ordinary Joe, student, sure.

But if you're a professional and depend on one being available at all times, it's part of the cost of doing business.

What if your machine was not faulty and repairable, but stolen, broken because you've dropped it, etc? There would be no warranty/repair at play there, and no replacement unit.

So, a professional should always account for a backup machine as a, well, backup as part of the cost of doing business.

If they can't afford a second machine, they can ask themselves if they can afford weeks without a machine and customers waiting for work to be completed, more...

<comment><USER9> > _it 's part of the cost of doing business._

I think the point you're missing is that it needn't be a requirement of doing business, unless you insist on using Apple products. And, even if I have a full closet of old computers (I do) that doesn't mean I find it enjoyable to switch back to old hardware for a week or more, when the alternative is somebody coming _to me_ within a day to fix it on site. If I enjoyed using that old hardware, I probably wouldn't have the new hardware would I? Surely any typical Apple user prefers using their brand new $2000 computer over their old computer that would struggle to get a tenth of that on ebay.

<comment><USER8> > _I think the point you 're missing is that it needn't be a requirement of > doing business, unless you insist on using Apple products._

I don't think I'm missing any point.

Comparably spec'ed laptops from PC vendors are of similar price. And even a desktop tower-style PC soon goes to more than $2K with good enough components (if you're a video or audio pro, for example -- a sysadmin could get away with a $300 PC barely able to run SSH). At best you save the Apple premium (let's say 20%), but there's still a cost for a second unit, and you should consider it part of the cost of doing business.

> _And, even if I have a full closet of old computers (I do) that doesn 't > mean I find it enjoyable to switch back to old hardware for a week or more, > when the alternative is somebody coming to me within a day to fix it on > site_

Who said anything about "old hardware"? Your backup should just as well be a twin machine to your main driver, that you buy in pairs as backup.

This all is common (and obvious) practice for businesses -- who buy spare PCs, or lease their equipment and can have new ones on demand. It should also be common practice for an individual developer/designer/pro computer user working in an one-man-shop.

<comment><USER9> Why should it be a common practice for individual developers when it's _completely unnecessary_ with the right (cheap!) support contract? What you're suggesting seems insane to me, like setting money on fire to stay warm instead of simply buying firewood. Is it about _' flexing on plebs'_ or something? Eating cake when you're out of bread?

But let's pretend good support contracts don't exist because if it's not Apple it must not be real... If I'm going to pay the full price for duplicate hardware, I may as well wait until the day it breaks then walk into an Apple store and buy whatever they have in stock at the moment. I'll be walking down to the Apple store to get the broken one fixed anyway, won't I? And on the off chance that the computer never breaks I've just saved myself $2k that I can use to buy a bunch of cocaine and throw a party to celebrate _reliable_ consumer hardware. That sounds like a lot more fun than owning twinned computers, no? You're invited.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What a "peculiar" behavior on Apple's part. The fact that they base their arguments on a moisture paper which seems to be extremely easy to refute and spend more money on lawyers than they would have needed to actually fix this within an established company program just seems... stupid?

Whomever is in charge seems not to have learned from this as well.

<comment><USER11> It depends on how success is measured.

Let's suppose that the UK repair operation is manage separately. Let's call that exec Joe. And suppose further that the person in charge measured by metrics like "doesn't spend any more on repairs per sale than the US operation does", implying that spending less is better.

Joe making a rule something like "refuse any warranty repairs if a moisture sensor trips, even if the damage is unrelated" is a pretty easy way to keep repairs down. Some people may sue, sure, but probably not many.

And let's assume further, as is common, that Apple's lawyers are all on staff and under their General Counsel. That means they're a fixed cost, and not directly on the budget of the repair operation. That is _not_ one of the metrics Joe is evaluated by. Maybe they won't need to add any new lawyers to handle the extra load; maybe they will. Further, any relationship between repair rules and legal costs will be hard to spot, given that it's delayed by time and filtered through many people.

So at worst, Joe might down the road have to face some sort of complicated analysis from the head of legal complaining about increased costs. But he can point to repair cost savings, so it'll be difficult to say whether on net he's making or costing Apple money.

I would guess the bigger risk for Joe is not legal expenses but the PR problem from writeups like this or an eventual decline in something like a Net Promoter Score metric as more people feel put off by Apple. Those, however, are also pretty long feedback loops. So Joe gets an immediate reduction in repair costs versus the possibility of a problem a year or three down the road. Many ambitious execs are perfectly fine with that; they're hoping to be in a new position anyway in a couple of years, so it may be the next guy's problem.

And really, Joe may not have a problem at all; as this article makes clear, having to sue the company wasn't enough to keep the guy from buying another Apple laptop. That's not a great incentive for anybody to change behavior.

<comment><USER12> Well that's not a good way to run a company - it's basically designed to be customer hostile.

<comment><USER13> Tell that to ISPs and, from what I hear, cable companies in the US—I'm sure there are other examples too.

"Customer hostile" seems to be a perfectly "good" way to run a business if you goal is raw profit. Doubly so in the US with essentially non-existent consumer protection law.

<comment><USER12> That's an incentive for the customer to select another company.

<comment><USER11> Only if they can.

In the US, people generally have at most a couple of ISP choices, and the general pattern of duopolies is to offer basically the same thing with minor differentiators (e.g., one will be 10% cheaper and 10% worse). Many airline routes are minimally competitive.

This is not getting better with ecosystem lock-in effects. As TFA mentions, this guy had such a bad experience that he sued Apple, and he still bought another laptop from them. That's because Apple intentionally killed off the companies that built MacOS compatible hardware, and never allowed anybody else to build IOS phones or tablets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Good on him for taking the time and energy to get through it. Apple is still waging a war on its own customers.

They wouldn't replace a faulty magsafe charger that suddenly died and that was still under warranty. The "genius" (that term is so ridiculous) at the store claimed that accessories were not covered, which is very very wrong under European laws.

He then left me waiting and went asking his manager. This took a good 20 minutes and when he came back, the employee was adamant that the only way out of this was to pay 100€ for a new charger. I had to pull law excerpts, raised the tone of the conversation and started making a fuss.

Then the mood magically changed when the other customers started noticing the argument and I left with a brand new charger.

This was a terrible customer experience.

</comment><comment><USER15> Everyone should be required to watch Louis Rossmann's videos before buying a MacBook. Apple has probably scammed people out of hundreds of millions of dollars just by using fake excuses like "water damage" to avoid fixing things under warranty.

For example, a computer Apple said had "been in a bathtub" when it was really just a manufacturing defect: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2r-g8EaTfY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2r-g8EaTfY)

FWIW, my experience with Dell has been the complete opposite. I complained about a couple issues with an Alienware laptop (processor whine, low battery life) and they had a tech at my house the next day with replacement parts. Probably the best service I've ever gotten on any type of product.

<comment><USER16> I just don't like Rossman. I'm sure there are solid technical criticisms that he makes, and I personally agree that Apple is too draconian re: repairability (both in design and policy). However, I absolutely cannot trust someone who has such a financial incentive, or as deep a history of twisting facts to make Apple look bad.

Beyond that, there is something entitled about earning your entire income repairing another company's devices while also demanding they make proprietary parts and knowledge available to you.

I wish there were a critic of Apple's repair policies that had less of an agenda than Rossman.

<comment><USER17> > Beyond that, there is something entitled about earning your entire income > repairing another company's devices while also demanding they make > proprietary parts and knowledge available to you.

Apple won't let third parties produce Apple compatible parts (or sell parts sold to Apple also to non-Apple repair centers). Even if Apple just got out of the way, and offered no help/supply chain, it would be a stark improvement.

But instead they've been using hardware DRM to effectively make third party repairs impossible. If you replace a part with an identical part, you need Apple's software to authorize the change otherwise it won't boot.

<comment><USER18> Apple are actively fighting to prevent third parties being able to lawfully repair their devices.

[https://www.macrumors.com/2019/04/30/apple-right-to- repair-c...](https://www.macrumors.com/2019/04/30/apple-right-to-repair- consumer-harm/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Apple pulled the liquid damage bullshit on my ipod. The device wasn't worth much so I declined and got a el-cheapo sansa. Apple is also trying to shut down independent repair, so in the future, there might not be a third-party repair shop who can expose Apple's lies..

</comment><comment><USER20>
      > There's no need for LIQUID CONTACT, or WATER DAMAGE
      > to trigger the 'sensor' but just humidity, caused
      > for example, by taking the laptop from a well-heated
      > room outside, in the winter.

This is backwards. Water condenses on cold objects in hot humid rooms. In Winter the condensation would happen when you take the laptop inside, not outside.

</comment><comment><USER21> Just a counter-anecdote, but I've only had good experiences.

Just yesterday I picked up my out-of-warranty MacBook Pro whose battery was starting to show problems after 3 years... turns out it was originally a faulty battery and they replaced it for free -- the whole top case including the keyboard.

Last year my out-of-warranty iPhone had battery swelling so it was unsafe to swap the battery, so for the $29 price of a battery replacement they gave me a brand-new iPhone.

Fraying cable on earphones? Replaced them for free as well a couple of years ago. Lost the rubber buds at another point? I stopped in, they just gave me an extra pair no charge.

Maybe being in NYC has something to do with it? But service at the Apple store has been so far above and beyond any other company I've ever dealt with, it's been a no-brainer to pay the "premium Apple tax" in the long run for me.

I wonder how much discretion managers in stores/countries have to be generous or stingy, though, or if they explicitly have different internal policies around these things.

<comment><USER22> Considering the Apple tax is 2x the price, why not get a regular product and replace it with a new product when it breaks?

Maybe the product doesn't break, and you save money, and don't have to deal with Apple.

Or the product breaks, and you get the latest and greatest instead of a year old referbished.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Yet another reason I don't plan to buy any Apple computers ever again, especially laptops. They used to have fantastic service. If the logic board was faulty under warranty they would honor that. This humidity sensor seems to be there specifically for Apple to pretend like there's water damage when there isn't so they don't have to fix their shit hardware. And not honoring their replacement claim and misdiagnosing the problems are likely intentional too. The hardware is garbage and the support is abysmal. I don't care how great osx is, it's not that great considering the above facts. I would expect similar treatment and winning small claims cases in the US is much harder. Then you have to actually collect the money yourself. And we have no consumer protection laws. Fuck Apple. If this is the kind of company they run, a fashion company that makes shitty consumer electronics, I have no interest in wasting thousands on their garbage.

</comment><comment><USER24> I hear this about Apple support a lot lately. 10 years ago, I heard only good stories. Has something changed?

<comment><USER25> Yes.

10 years ago, an 'Apple Genius' was a relatively skilled role, and was permitted decision making discretion.

In 2011 Apple Store employees went on a strike, and due to the skilled labor nature of the role, Apple was not able to quickly hire replacements. Apple had to cede to some labor demands.

Ever since 2011, Apple has been putting a TON of energy into removing the skill from the Genius position.

1- Removal of troubleshooting from the role. Almost ALL genius work is now following a flow chart on the iPad, without involvement of the brain. People that have been hired in the past few years have no understanding of what is going on beyond the iPad workflow.

2- Removal of discretion from the role. A genius's ability to help you is now based on advocacy. Meaning, if they feel sympathy for you, all they can do is ask their manager to make an exception.

3- reducing the scope of the role. Stores have been reconfigured in a way that makes figuring out whats going on more difficult, and reduces the ability to find a workspace or access tools.

4- probably incidental but the scope of repairs possible has decreased, too. When your choice is to replace the screen, top half, or bottom half of the laptop there isn't much to think about aside from where the screws are.

<comment><USER26> > Ever since 2011, Apple has been putting a TON of energy into removing the > skill from the Genius position.

I'm not sure exactly what you're saying. Is your point that Apple's response to organized labor was to try to make sure that those employees are easily replaceable in the future? That sounds tremendously counterproductive. Though perhaps it's the exact sort of shortsightedness we should expect from large corporations today.

<comment><USER27> Yes. Apple, like any major US corporation, is in a fundamentally adversarial position vs their employees. The corporation seeks maximum profit at the expense of the worker and the workers seek a decent living. However, the need to extract wealth from the worker to further enrich the richest is of a greater need to a corporation than the wellbeing of the workers.

This is not unique to Apple by any means.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Re water damage: Louis Rossmann had a video up where he was repairing someone Mac. He was looking through his microscope while narrating, showing us what he sees. Said something like, "Oh, there is it. No water? Riiiight... People lie. People lie all the time. If Mother Theresa could get away with lying, she would."

<comment><USER29> Right before Sprint bought Nextel, dooming both companies, I worked in what they called a "repair store", taking apart phones and replacing bits and pieces (rubber keypads, boards, displays, most of the gadget)

We saw this all the time: my phone never got wet. Crack it open with the ol' spudger, find a blue-green mess.

Had one lady bring hers in smelly like pee: her cat.

Had another pull it out of her cleavage: full of salty crystals and moisture.

I never went off that stupid paper, since the moisture of the PacNW air during rainy season is enough to set them off.

But yeah people treat their expensive, sensitive gadgets like shit

<comment><USER30> Is the moisture in the air in humid places enough to actually do damage too, though?

<comment><USER9> The last time I was in an Apple store I was in Seattle getting a MBA battery replaced. The Apple employee told me there were indications of water exposure but no apparent board damage, so the humid Seattle air was probably to blame. Thankfully for me, they didn't refuse to replace the battery because of this.

But that experience leads me to believe those water indicators are considerably more sensitive than the electronics themselves. If I had gone in there complaining about some weird issue instead of simply wanting a new battery, would the lack of apparent corrosion on the board still lead that Apple employee to conclude that the board wasn't water damaged?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is very different to my experience. Around 10 years ago the battery on my Macbook Pro began to expand and come apart. There had been a replacement programme but it had expired about a year previously. I took it to the Apple Store (Oxford St I think) where an employee took a new battery out of its box, gave it to me and sent me on my way. I guess everything having to go away for repair now means there's less opportunity for store employees to do the right thing nowadays.

</comment><comment> La-ang Apple stinks inside and out. I'm dazzled to learn this is their practice towards consumers who contribute to their large profits. As I have dumped Rotten Apple long time ago, these stories reassure me all along that there is no need to go back :D

</comment><comment><USER32> I can't help but wonder why the OP continues to purchase Apple products? Why fight this battle if you don't have too?</comment>


Alternate Sleep Cycles - <AUTHOR> http://www.highexistence.com/alternate-sleep-cycles/ <comment><USER3> I really think people need to change their perspective on sleep. People wake up, do thing A,B,C,D,E ... "shit... I really wanted to do F-J today too, but I have to sleep!"

Sleep is not the enemy. Sleep is fantastic.

I'm no expert on sleep in general, but a good nights sleep makes _me_ feel great upon waking up (usually for the rest of the day). I can remember things from the day before with much more clarity and recall, giving me a tremendous edge over those who didn't. Plus, I'm pretty sure it feels fantastic nearly the whole time I'm doing it... I just happen to be unconscious for that part. :) It certainly must be better than a good deal of the things I do while I'm awake.

A close relative of mine is on the uberman cycle. He's narcoleptic. He sleeps nearly instantly upon his head hitting the pillow (seconds, not minutes) and wakes up 15-20 minutes later, unable to continue sleeping. It's _literally_ a nightmare, not only because the world is 'monophasic', but also because he's in a fog, can't focus/falls asleep when not moving (e.g. driving a car), and has a hard time distinguishing reality from dreams (since they all run together).

Thanks, but I'd rather continue hacking the other parts of my lifestyle to make room for more fulfilling activities, like sleep.

<comment><USER4> To be fair - that's a problem of narcolepsy (if he indeed has that) and not polyphasic sleep. I have not tried uberman yet, but from my own experiences with everyman and from what I have read of others, it can actually help give you focus and clarity.

Whatever floats your boat, I guess?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have tried überman for fun two years ago, mostly to practice napping. It did not work at all, people on IRC didn't have success either, but hearsay and wishful thinking were plenty.

It's crazy that Steve Pavlina's series of blog entries is still the #1 reference _even though he turned his back on it_ afterwards.

That said, sleeping less at night and taking a deep nap or two after lunch is awesome. I wish it would've been socially acceptable in my German university. There is a lot of progress to be made (flux et al) without drastic and dangerous sleep cycles.

<comment><USER6> I'm deeply skeptical about these massively shortened sleep cycles too, but to be fair, Steve Pavlina gave it up for the same reason Dyson did; it's too hard to interact with the 'awake-during-the-day, asleep-during-the-night' crowd, not because "it didn't work" for him.

<comment><USER7> I never bought that excuse. There's zero scientific evidence for breaking a habit humans and our ancestors have been doing for literally millions of years. "Social interaction was hard" seems like a face saving excuse for "I wasn't able to beat evolution."

<comment><USER8> FWIW, evolution actually is telling us to do _biphasic_ , not the current monophasic. We slept biphasic right up until a century or three ago, and the literature documents this pretty well. Let's see, to pull my canned refs from my melatonin article (<http://www.gwern.net/Melatonin>); we have Stampi in _Why We Nap_:

> "It is worth mentioning that anthropological studies conducted in tribes > active at night show that human sleep can be highly polyphasic in certain > cultures. Although they have different cultures and ways of life, both the > Temiars of Indonesia and the Ibans of Sarawak have similar polyphasic sleep- > wake behaviors (Petre-Quadens, 1983). Their average nocturnal sleep episode > duration ranges between 4 and 6 hr, and nighttime activities (fishing, > cooking, watching over the fire, rituals) at any one time involve > approximately 25% of the adult members. Daytime napping is very common in > both tribes: at almost any time of day, about 10% of the adult members are > asleep. Whatever the cause of these polyphasic sleep patterns,whether the > expression of an inborn ultradian rest-activity tendency or other factors, > such populations exhibit extremely flexible and fragmentary sleep-wake > cycles. The minimal contact with modern civilization could be one of the > reasons for the preservation of this possibly ancestral sleep pattern."

There's [http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2006/10/what_is_a_natural_slee...](http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2006/10/what_is_a_natural_sleep_patter.php)

And then, for all the European examples, see [http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/106.2/ah00034...](http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/106.2/ah000343.html) The author apparently has a book on the same topic which I really ought to read, but the preceding is the article mentioned on his profile-page:

> _At Day's Close: Night in Times Past_ (W.W. Norton, 2005), a sweeping study > of nocturnal culture before the Industrial Revolution, which garnered four > prizes, including an award given by the history honor society Phi Alpha > Theta for the "best subsequent book" in all fields of history. His article > in 2001, "Sleep We Have Lost: Pre-Industrial Slumber in the British Isles," > in the American Historical Review, earned two awards, including the James L. > Clifford Prize given by the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.

<comment><USER7> Sure. What this amounts to is sleeping at night, maybe going to bed late or getting up early and taking a nap during the day. We all want to take a nap at about 1:30 in the afternoon or so, up to about 6 you actually get to do it, too. But "taking a nap" is really different than "structured polyphasic sleep" that Pavlina more or less made up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I tried überman couple months back. I started of by not sleeping for 2 days so when I do start to sleep I go right in to rem sleep. It was really rough for the first week and then I started getting the hang of it 30mins of sleep every 4 hours. The problem was that around the 3 hour 30 mins mark my brain would just shutdown, I couldn't think straight until I got that 30mins of nap in. If I was driving it become really dangerous. I did it for about 3 week and gave up on it as it become really hard to keep social interaction on this sleep cycle. I also had to stop drinking alcohol and coffee just to maintain this sleep cycle and avoid high in suger food before my naps as they always led to be not geting into rem sleep right away. All in all I will not be doing this again, I'm happy with my 7 hours a night of sleep.

</comment><comment><USER10> The fact that these sleep cycles have been used by "bloggers" for a few months and that they are still "healthy" does not give me the warm fuzzies.

It would take a much longer experimental time frame, under more rigorous scientific study, to convince me that any of these alternatives are safe and worthwhile.

<comment><USER11> I can almost detect the disdain in your "voice" as you use the word "bloggers".

Was there something wrong with the article?

<comment><USER12> The fact that if you travel further down the blog stream for almost any of these practitioners, they always give it up for not working. (Giving it up because "everybody else is on a monophasic sleep cycle" is just a social-face- saving excuse. If it worked, you wouldn't give it up. You've got six extra hours a day to make up whatever the problem is!) The evidence that I've seen suggests that alternative sleep cycles are basically persistent urban legend more than anything else.

And yes, failing to mention the little tiny detail of it not working at this date is a reason to be "disdainful" of an article like this; it encourages one to wreck weeks or months of ones life on something that we pretty much know doesn't work. Negligent at best, evil at worst.

(Excepting "siesta", which there is some evidence for, but isn't the promised miracle, either.)

<comment><USER13> I agree with you but youre going to upset a lot of people with that. They're going to demand you show them scientific studies and hard proof. Even if you did it wouldn't be good enough for them.

This belief in polyphasic sleep reminds me of a guy I used to know who was a huge conspiracy theorist. He used to tell me that you could build a perpetual motion machine and generate unlimited energy from home and that he was doing it. I tried to reason with him and let him know that stuff was bunk but he never changed his mind despite his machine not working (for which he made some dumb face-saving excuse about not using the right material or something). No matter how much evidence and reasoning you present someone with beliefs like this they refuse to change their mind. The absence of evidence is not evidence for something.

We know polyphasic doesn't work not only because of all the failed attempts and what you talked about in your comment but also because of what we know about how the brain and human body works.

<comment><USER12> That's why I phrased it the way I did. It isn't "just" scientific studies, it's that if you examine the frequently-cited evidence of successes and follow it downstream, you find it actually ended in failure. (Or in the case of famous figures in history who putatively followed bizarre sleep schedules, generally apparently made from whole cloth, or on occasion, simply one of the people who didn't sleep polyphasically but simply slept less, a phenomenon not well understood but abundantly documented and with no evidence there is any ability to become a low-sleep person by any known activity, and certainly not as easily as simply sleeping less.) As gurkendoktor pointed out, citing Steve Pavlina as a _success_ story is not a good sign. It's hard to even come up with solid or real _anecdotal_ evidence that this works!

Also, as I said with "siesta", there is definitely evidence of alternate sleep schedules, basically to the point that it is so uncontroversial it is almost not worth discussing. What I don't see is any evidence that anyone not simply genetically disposed (for unknown reasons) to two-hour sleep nights can cut their required sleep _per day_ by 3/4s or more by some crazy scheduling regimen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I was won over by a recent article that said 7.5 hours of sleep wasn't as good as 8 hours, but 8.5 hours was. I started setting my alarm clock for 8 hours from when I go to bed, and I try not to get up until the alarm goes off. It has gone really well; I never feel tired and I can easily stay up for 24 hours if I need to. If you're permanently "maxed out" on sleep debt, you can function, but you can't take on any more debt. If you're always all paid up, then you can function the one time when you need to sleep for three hours and then be up for an entire day. That's my theory, anyway.

(One key to this is not going to bed too early. Sometimes I'm tired in the middle of the day, and then sleep from, say, 6 to midnight. This fucks everything up.)

</comment><comment><USER15> Everything I hear about these sleeping patterns is anecdotal. As far as I'm aware there haven't been any serious studies done of people on these sleeping patterns, and most especially on the health effects (if any) it causes.

<comment><USER16> I agree, these so called "models" in the article are based on anecdotal evidence. However, I know that there are a number of sleep studies/experiments out there... From what I've read, only 8-hour or nap in the afternoon sleep patterns were scientifically proven to be adequate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Since alot of us consider ourselves as having "Delayed sleep phase syndrome" I'll also share my sleep cycle. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_syndrome>

I sleep at about 2-3am every night. On weekdays I'll sleep 5-6 hours. On saturday, around 10 hours, and on sunday around 8 hours. That averages to around 6 hours per night.

I've been on this cycle for over 10 years, and even though I always feel bad about it and want to "fix" it, it works quite well.

<comment><USER18> I recently went through treatment (melatonin + lightbox) and I'd say I feel like a million bucks compared to when I basically just slept only when I was tired and woke up naturally. I'm not sure how long I can stay on the treatment, and if I'll snap back afterwards, but so far (about a month and a half into it) it's pretty great, and I feel way more rested and in sync with the world.

<comment><USER19> Can you elaborate on 'treatment'? I'm pretty sure I have delayed phase sleep syndrome or something like it. I also have fibromyalgia syndrome.

I feel like I'm constantly fighting my body's natural cycle. When I had school/a job that required a specific schedule, I used an alarm clock to get up, and had constant fms flareups and frequent insomnia. When I switched to my current job (at a startup, and no longer required to stick to a specific schedule as long as I'm getting my stuff done), I ditched the alarm clock, and my fibromyalgia pain has vastly improved, just from not trying to force my sleep schedule.

But the problem with that, is left to my body's own devices, I tend to want to be awake for about 20 hours, then sleep around 7. Then I start feeling guilty about coming in later and later every day, and there's still a limit to how many hours straight you can work and be productive, and even as flexible as my schedule is, there's still a bit of pressure to work 5 days a week for 8+ hours, not 4 days a week for 10+ hours. And coming into to work between 10pm-4am just never feels right. Once I get to the point where I'm waking up at 8-9pm, I usually have to waste a weekend forcing myself to stay up 24hrs or more to "flip" my schedule back to something reasonable. I hate doing that, because then my entire weekend is spent feeling like a zombie and then it's straight back to work again.

So if you've got some more details on how melatonin and a lightbox worked for you, even just a blog post you could point me at, I'd be really appreciative.

<comment><USER18> what you describe sounds a little more like <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-24-hour_sleep-wake_syndrome> but i am not a doctor!! i can tell you though the "flipping" thing was something that I would go through like once a month or so, i would basically stay up all like friday night, but then go to bed like 2am sunday morning.

so, my thing was like my boss was like "you're just getting insane with your schedule" so I started googling around and came across DPSS, which sounded like me, so I had a visit with my GP, who sent me to a sleep clinic.. their first advice was to do sort of like you and just give into whatever happens naturally, and i wound up doing like a 2~4 am to 10am~12noon thing most of the time, and I felt, well, better rested, and it seemed safer to drive.

i work an on-call job for a fortune 500, so they had to go back and forth with the doctors to figure out something that would work in regards to making sure i could sleep uninterrupted. this was an ADA thing.

once that was figured out, i started the treatment which was to take melatonin in a small dose at like 11pm and then go to sleep when it felt like i could (and generally practice a whole litany of sleep hygiene practices like avoiding naps unless absolutely necessary, watching caffeine and nicotine in the evening, keeping a journal of it all) ... and then set the alarm for like 8am, and ASAP be in front of a 10k lux light box at the rated distance for a half hour. there are a lot of caveats to all of this, so i would recommend to you or anyone else reading to consult a doctor about all of this. I may be missing sometime important here, so just FYI.

I started this on a Friday night into a Saturday as that's when I got the box delivered, and the correct low dosage of the pill. I would say I felt like a million bucks every since then, which was like well, a month ago. Over thanksgiving I was travelling and had two days without the box, and I could definitely feel the afternoon and evening dragging on, and a little more awake at midnight than I had been.

That's about all I could say for now. I've pushed this back an hour to see if I can get in a little earlier to work, but that was just yesterday, so we'll see how that goes. I go back for a follow up in February.

<comment><USER19> Thank you! Yeah, I mentioned the 20hr/7hr thing because that's what it feels like my body is trying to do. It's hard to say for sure because I've never just completely let myself go natural and journaled it for any length of time - I always get caught up in schedule guilt. I'll also randomly have nights where I sleep 12-18 hours straight, then easily stay up with no fatigue for 24-26hrs, then sleep 4, then stay up only 15-16 then sleep 7-8 again and... It just feels like chaos sometimes.

I can definitely relate to the boss saying "your schedule is getting insane." That's where the guilt starts to come in, and boy, all I can say is it's a good thing I'm good at my job and it's worth it to the company to let my schedule fall where I'm most productive. (EDIT: By which I mean, I feel unbelievably grateful and lucky to have such a flexible job.)

<comment><USER18> i recommend talking to a doctor, and making sure you don't drive while sleep deprived. keeping a log of any kind of it may help, but again, i'm not a doctor! :P anyway, bust of luck to you, and for me at least, the "getting away" with something because i was "good" got to be old, and i realized i wasn't getting away with anything or something, i dunno... i guess my point is I felt that way too, and my perspective on it has changed some. best of luck!!!!!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> <http://www.amazon.com/Why-we-nap-STAMPI/dp/0817634622>

I always link to this source; in a subject full of anecdotes and misinformation, this book is essential for providing substantial and concrete scientific results.

<comment><USER21> I was prepared to buy until the page loaded. Yikes.

      1 used from $314.52

I hope there are some other publications on the subject of greater or equal quality that have yet to go out of print.

<comment><USER4> The comments here[1] suggest _ahem_ alternatives.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/review/R3W1ZLVUQ1N867/ref=cm_cr_dp_cmt...](http://www.amazon.com/review/R3W1ZLVUQ1N867/ref=cm_cr_dp_cmt?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0817634622&nodeID=283155&tag=&linkCode=#wasThisHelpful)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> To add my own anecdotal evidence: Yes, it works, but not in the way most would want it to work. And hell yes, it's a serious strain on your connection to reality and community (family, friends etc.).

A couple of points from my own blog post on this ("Cheating the brother of death" <http://sk.or.at/p6YBXf> ):

\- This is _mostly about mental strength and perseverance_ , not so much about just following plan X and having more free time.

\- _Having more free time is not as simple as you'd like it to be._ You do have to have something to fill that time. And it has to something actually meaningful that you care about.

\- It is a good idea to have _something to wake up to_ so you don't have to search for an answer to the "why do I _have_ to get up _now_?" question when you're in it.

\- The hardest part is _setting the right boundaries and anticipating how bad your mental situation will be_ \- so you can deal with it appropriately even if your experiment means that you might not be in the right state of mind _at that moment_. Because you were before, when you started it and _that's_ when you need to make the right plans.

</comment><comment><USER22> Another round of anecdotal evidence:

I did the everyman for about three months when my startup was doing a big pivot a few years ago. It took about two weeks of being completely blurry to transition, but once I did, it was very effective.

I would wake up ~7AM and get to work, have my first ~1/2 hour nap at 11AM, next nap at 6 in the afternoon, and then a nap at midnight. I'd be totally awake and aware until ~3:30AM, and then I'd go to sleep.

After the transition, once my body got settled, I'd usually be awake a few minutes before I set an alarm, and my caffeine needed to stay alert went way down.

Like most of the other anecdotal evidence, I stopped for social reasons - <USER2> girlfriend wasn't a fan of me coming home from work at 6, immediately snagging a nap, and then be up rattling away until 3 in the morning every day.

Also I wasn't able to fill the day - I'd be burnt out on work after 12+ hours of grinding away on some Rails code, and have to do something else, so I'd either tinker in the garage, cruise the web, or play games. Once I started up with the video games, I decided it wasn't worth it, and flipped back to a "normal" sleep cycle.

It took ~2 nights to go back to a normal cycle.

</comment><comment><USER23> From collecting others' anecdotal evidence, it seems that it technically works for some people (though not for a large percentage), but socially it works for no one.

I wonder if there's a way to make this become socially acceptable. People always think these things take a lot of time, and sometime they do (e.g. phone use that would have been considered obnoxious 15 years ago is not impolite today. Today's obnoxious would have been casus belli 15 years ago). However, there are cases of nearly spontaneous social change -

In many places in the world (a lot of countries in Europe, not sure about the US), chewing gum after a meal is considered an acceptable and healthy practice; This change was brought on within 3 years thanks to an ingenious Wrigley Orbit campaign.

</comment><comment><USER24> I tried uberman a while back. It was a royal pain to deal with the intermittent day job I had at the time, and it really didn't work well with my home life either - I just didn't have a comfortable place to sit around and slack off for some of the awake cycles. I was definitely adapting to it after a couple weeks but the only place to lay around lazily in an underheated apartment was in a bed full of sleeping boyfriend, which was a pretty powerful argument for just curling up and going to sleep!

Now that I have a very inviting living room in my home wih a comfy couch, I might try it again once spring hits. Or maybe the Everyman schedule.

The big problem, IMHO, is interfacing with the entire rest of the Western world, which is on the one big sleep schedule.

<comment><USER24> More thoughts. One commenter here snarked about this article for linking to Steve Pavlina's writings on polyphasic sleep, which he gave up after about six months. This is an _old_ article so I kinda feel that's okay, it's from around 2010 - though Pavlina did it in '06 or so.

That said I was thusly looking at Pavlina's blog. And at the entry where he looks back on it, one year later ([http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2007/03/polyphasic-sleep- on...](http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2007/03/polyphasic-sleep-one-year- later/)) and talks about how it's transformed his sleeping, even when he's gone back to "normal" sleep. And I think my month or so doing polyphasic left me with a little something, too: I now have a very well-tuned alarm clock in my brain. I don't have to get up for a day job any more, so I don't have to use it very often - but as I'm going to sleep, I can tell myself "I'm getting up at 7:00" or whatever, and I _will_ be awake when the alarm goes off.

(I still set alarms, though, because they give me that extra boost of HEY YOU HAVE A REASON TO GET UP!)

In fact, I'm taking a plane trip tomorrow. Flight's at 7:40 so I basically need to be up and moving by 5:40 or so. I did those calculations and _told_ myself when I was going to be getting up, and I could FEEL my body going through... something. Some adjustment of my cycles to get me to be tired in time to be up and moving then, these weird little waves of... _levels_ of awakeness kind of cycling in me for a few minutes.

As to people saying that "we evolved for the eight hours sleep and trying anything else is fighting against evolution" - no, no we didn't. Babies basically do polyphasic. It was considered completely normal in the pre- industrialized days to go to bed around sundown, then wake up for an hour or two in the middle of the night and do some stuff by candlelight. It's only since the adaption of massive industrialized society that we've been expected to be up ALL DAY, EVERY DAY.

(And hell, right now I'm visiting my mom. She basically does the Everyman schedule since she's retired - it's not formalized, her throughout-the-day naps are kind of randomized - but she's got one biggish core sleep at night, and several midday naps.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Stop talking about "natural" sleep cycles or "natural" diet. Stop talking about how the homo sapiens evolved into sleeping or eating like this. I personally think our unwillingness to move away from our evolved instincts is the reason why we're not a more advanced species.

Sleeping at night is obviously a result of lack of light during the night. I don't believing sitting/lying consciously will be that different from sleeping unconsciously as to providing rest for our bodies. It's just a learned habit and we should be able to get over it.

Slavery and dictatorship is more natural, see how monkeys or any other animals group their society? Why don't we give up democracy for something more natural?

</comment><comment><USER26> Even if one of these other cycles is incredibly effective, they seem very hard to use and be social. I don't know what I'd do with my extra time at 4am when no one else is awake (on a consistent basis).

<comment><USER27> Reading a book, playing a game, Medidate? It is a very nice time to be awake

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I've done Uberman for 2 months at a time. I've found I can be highly effective in certain areas - like coding. However, the brain needs quite a bit of sleep for memories to stay longer term - so this isn't ideal for students or study. Another caveat is that your metabolism increases but you usually overcompensate consumption-wise. A lot of people that persisted with this for longer periods of time, gain quite a bit of weight - so if you're ready for that. Good luck with surviving the first two hell weeks. :)

</comment><comment><USER29> The simplest evidence against the thesis that all you really "need" is REM sleep is obstructive sleep apnoea.

I have OSA. I had it for years before it was diagnosed. I would go to bed and dream more or less non-stop for 10, 12, 14, 16 hours. All the REM sleep a man could ever want.

And I was still tired as buggery.

My idea of a good night's sleep is the deep dreamless kind.

Not to mention sleep's centrality to recovery from physical exercise.

</comment><comment><USER30> I thought this was worth putting somewhere people would actually see it.

 _coldarchon 49 minutes ago | link [dead]_

after being 5 years in research for brain activity during sleep and being a natural lucid dreamer and short sleeper myself, I can only warn anyone about polyphasic sleep if you never had a tendency for this in your life before.

It will literally turn off your Mojo ..

</comment><comment><USER31> Can we add something next to article denoting whether it comes from a scientific peer reviewed source or just a blog?

</comment><comment><USER32> Biphasic and/or polyphasic sleep doesn't seem to work...even on monks who have been doing it for several years:

[http://mindhacks.com/2011/11/17/the-dreams-and- hallucination...](http://mindhacks.com/2011/11/17/the-dreams-and- hallucinations-of-cloistered-monks/)

</comment><comment><USER33> If anyone is interested, Puredoxyk has been doing it for nearly seven years and even wrote a book about it:

<http://www.puredoxyk.com/index.php/polyphasic-sleep-portal/>

</comment><comment><USER34> The obligatory xkcd reference: <https://www.xkcd.com/320/>

</comment><comment><USER35> This is a post on a blog where the sidebar poll asks, "Do aliens exist?"

(In case you were wondering, 63% said "Yes.")

<comment><USER36> Isn't most of NASA acting like the answer is "yes"? All the research into earth-like exoplanets, and the expeditions to Mars to look for water etc?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Guys, there's a ton of evidence for polyphasic sleep just not working out. We're actually built for biphasic sleep though we can get away without a nap. As humans we are always trying to cheat nature but there are just some things we cannot control.

I saw this on HN before and I think it's a great read if you have the time. It really goes in depth and debunks these sleep cycle myths. <http://www.supermemo.com/articles/polyphasic.htm>

<comment><USER37> This again? As mentioned in those HN threads, it has been rebutted:

[http://www.puredoxyk.com/index.php/2006/11/01/an-attack- on-p...](http://www.puredoxyk.com/index.php/2006/11/01/an-attack-on- polyphasic-sleep/)

Fact is there's _not_ a ton of evidence for it not working out. There has been virtually zero research on it, despite plenty of polyphasic people volunteering for research.

<comment><USER8> That's hardly a good rebuttal. Most of it is just disproving some overreaching by Wozniak and other anecdotal evidence, which leaves his basic point untouched, and the rest is lacking in actual science. For example:

> * Everybody who needs an alarm to wake up is "seriously sleep deprived". No > really, he says that outright. I feel bad for my parents — apparently > they've never been well-rested in their entire lives. Of course, while I'm > sure it's a better sign if you don't need an alarm at all (like I didn't > when I had Uberman down pat?), this guy is completely ignoring the known > fact that people will sleep extra if they can, just like they'll have a > second helping of pie if you let them. The existence of a second piece of > pie on your plate is hardly an indicator that you're starving!

No, people don't oversleep 'normally', they oversleep as a result of sleep deprivation; this is the standard way to measure sleep deprivation, to see whether, given the opportunity, they sleep more for a while and then start sleeping less! And for that matter, the basic theory of polyphasic sleep - forcing very fast REM rebound to get the REM done within the 20 or 30 minutes - basically presumes constant deprivation because deprivation is what triggers REM rebound.

If a polyphasicer wanted to disprove that, they'd have to switch back to a monophasic or biphasic sleep _without_ immediately incurring any excess sleep penalties compared to their normal monophasic/biphasic sleep lengths.

(I'd do this since I have a Zeo and that would give great data for this purpose, but unfortunately, neither time I tried did I succeed in adapting to polyphasic. Maybe one of the polyphasic sleepers using Zeos <http://www.myzeo.com/sleep/forum/176> will do this at some point.)

<comment><USER37> _In any case, I forgot to set my alarm tonight and woke up after exactly three hours, wham. Anybody trying to adjust to a new sleep schedule would need an alarm for some months to stay on track; that by itself doesn't mean you're constantly sleep-deprived. In fact, the only times in my life that I didn't need an alarm, I was polyphasic!_

How's that for not immediately incurring any excess sleep penalties?

Rebuttal might be the wrong word but it points out some serious flaws in Wozniaks conclusions. What of his in your opinion basic point is untouched?

Regarding REM etc, here's a polyphasic forum discussion on Wozniaks article: [http://trypolyphasic.com/forum/topic/340/not-sure-if-its- pos...](http://trypolyphasic.com/forum/topic/340/not-sure-if-its-possible- now/)

<comment><USER8> It would be nice if there were any verification of that; if their anecdotal word were enough, we wouldn't be having this discussion in the first place. ('Oh, it works great for you? Great! Case closed.') Someone saying that, at one point they slept without an alarm, is very far from showing polyphasic sleepers have no sleep debt or deprivation.

<comment><USER38> The real problem is that it's an amateur discovery, and the professionals are having none of it.

When something makes experts look questionable, expect irrational flamewars in response. Or derisive dismissal, at the very least.

<comment><USER8> Lucid dreaming was an amateur discovery as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I would not be surprised to find posts about healing crystals on that site.</comment>


Encrypt Your E-Mail - <AUTHOR> http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Encrypt_Your_E-Mail?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29&utm_content=My+Yahoo

<comment><USER2> That article seems a bit confused--for instance, putting AES, a standard, on the same footing as GPG, a software suite which includes programs which can use AES, among other algorithms. It also predicts quantum cryptography as an imminent development, when there's other far more practical ways to defeat quantum cryptanalysis: <http://pqcrypto.org/>

On the lighter side of future-proofing crypto, here's a little ditty by MC Frontalot: [http://frontalot.com/media.php/325/MC_Frontalot_SFTF_%2801%2...](http://frontalot.com/media.php/325/MC_Frontalot_SFTF_%2801%29_Secrets_From_The_Future.mp3)

<comment><USER3> Quantum crypto is not an "imminent development". It's being used in practice today.

Your might mean that Shor's quantum factoring algorithm is not an imminent threat to practical cryptosystems.

<comment><USER4>
      > Quantum crypto is not an "imminent development".
      > It's being used in practice today.

Wow! That's completely passed me by. I'm off to Google for stuff, but I'd appreciate any references you can cite.

Thanks.

<comment><USER3> Try the top search term under "Implementations": <http://lmgtfy.com/?q=quantum+cryptography>

The Swiss ran a long-distance quantum crypto network this year for over 12,000 hours: <http://www.swissquantum.com/>

I think BT was running a quantum crypto connection over about 50 km over 10 years ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This article is confused about several concepts, namely the role of certificate authorities and the state of quantum cryptography.</comment>


Nuclear Power: Game over (2016) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.eleceng.adelaide.edu.au/personal/dabbott/publications/AQR_abbott2016.pdf <comment><USER3> I don't have time for a point by point refutal right now, and there are some valid points raised in this document, but in sum this really is just shameful propaganda which overstates the problems with nuclear and doesn't seem to acknowledge modern technological developments. The first paragraph of the conclusion really tells you everything you need to know about the author's unreasonable bias:

>Nuclear power is a clunky technology borne out of a bygone Cold War era. Its best days are over and it cannot form a key part of sustainable energy policy.

The waste problem in particular I think is overstated, and costs are deliberately presented in a way as to appear expensive - neglecting just how much clean power comes from the "1,000,000 each" dry casks - and it is disingenuous to even by implicitly equate this with environmental pollution because this waste is contained and not released into the atmosphere like other forms of dirty power.

Hit pieces like this are the reason that we are in climate crisis now - <USER2> we could have cheaply and sustainably solved energy needs _decades_ ago with nuclear, with some marginal risk to civilizations thousands of years into the future.

<comment><USER4> Re the waste problem being overstated:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwY2E0hjGuU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwY2E0hjGuU)

[https://www.dw.com/en/what-to-do-with-nuclear- waste/a-167558...](https://www.dw.com/en/what-to-do-with-nuclear- waste/a-16755844)

Interesting tidbit: "The German Atom Forum, comprised of all German nuclear power plant operators, intends to pay as little as possible for storage and rejected shouldering costs for the new site search. In their opinion´"there is no legal basis" for them to pay and all costs should be "financed by taxpayers."

Also, how long did it take to clean up after Three Mile Island? (hint: the cost was estimated at $1b)

Yes, Nuclear power plants for commercial power generation are done for and rightfully so. Too dangerous, too expensive. Not only building them but de- constructing them and dealing with the waste.

<comment><USER5> >Interesting tidbit: ...

The German government had told them that they need to shut down their plants by 2022. It's not really surprising that they are unwilling to pay for forcibly closing their business.

>Also, how long did it take to clean up after Three Mile Island? (hint: the cost was estimated at $1b)

Why does it matter how long the cleanup took? How many dollars of energy did the other reactor generate over that time.

<comment><USER4> To your last point, I'm not sure what you want to say: Nuclear accidents happen and the cleanup can't be that bad compared to electricity generated?

Imagine we would have used that $1b for renewables? Any idea how much power THAT would have generated?

It's interesting how the mind of nuclear power proponents work:

Unwilling to see the larger picture, denying of basic facts (like a failure rate of 1%, brilliant) or the enormous costs being handed to tax payers (on top of their electricity bill). And down-voting facts they don't like.

<comment><USER5> >To your last point, I'm not sure what you want to say: Nuclear accidents happen and the cleanup can't be that bad compared to electricity generated?

No, mostly that blindly mentioning numbers is meaningless, particularly as a "hint" for how long cleanup took.

>Unwilling to see the larger picture, denying of basic facts (like a failure rate of 1%, brilliant) or the enormous costs being handed to tax payers (on top of their electricity bill).

There's no consensus on what the "big picture" is, there is a crisis right now and the best way to solve it may not be your ideal solution.

I would need to be presented with basic facts to be able to deny them, random numbers or statistics with no context aren't facts. The government can pay enormous costs, I generally view that appeal as a scare tactic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Around 70% of Australia's electricity is made with coal.

This whole report smells like propaganda to keep it like that under the cover that renewables are better than nuclear power.

Nuclear is better than coal and if they really want to lower the CO2 emissions they should replace coal with nuclear power.

[https://www.energy.gov.au/australian-electricity- generation-...](https://www.energy.gov.au/australian-electricity-generation- fuel-mix)

Coal is probably still cheaper than Nuclear.

Coal kills a lot of people every year but its not direct so we accept coal.

</comment><comment><USER7> I would prefer decentralized options which help me keep my freedom of choice about things like cost, property value impacts from perceived or real risks, sustainability, and individual control of my power sources.

And nuclear consumes a lot of cement in construction, a huge source of carbon emissions. Many cement plants are fueled by coal — not even coal generated electricity, but directly by coal on site. Which is more efficient but also helps hide the problem as it keeps their carbon emissions off the radar as they are not included in lists and charts of pollution sources focused typically on power plants.

Also I prefer to limit involvement of megacorp / government partnerships in decisions about my future liabilities.

So nuclear, while it may be technologically more advanced than it used to be, is not my cup of tea.

<comment><USER8> Small Modular reactors like SVBR-100 fit your model better - that's 100-600 MW that is inherently safe (even if you rupture the reactor vessel), doesn't use much cement (it's mostly metal construction) and is quite small and can be well distributed.

Main issue is that they consume a lot of bismuth, which unlike lead (other important ingredient in SVBR-100) doesn't have high production as is.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for including the specific model number.

While these may address the cement issue (unless they are further encased) I don't think they addressed any of the other issues I mentioned, such as perceived risks or decentralized control. Having a high energy device bathed in molten lead and under someone else's control is not what I would consider an ideal situation.

<comment><USER3> What do you think is the risk of such a reactor? They are physically incapable of runaway criticality and molten lead sounds scary but really isn't anything particularly dangerous with respect to industrial chemicals. Depending on fuel choice there also is no risk of proliferation - so worst case a well funded actor could disassemble such a reactor to extract the fuel for a dirty bomb; which is a manageable, worthwhile risk, IMO.

<comment><USER7> Perceived risk is a real issue. You are not addressing that at all. You are pretending I only mentioned risk.

I don't know enough about the tech to say whether the molten lead could be exposed to the environment due to unforeseen conditions, or what would happen at that point. But I've seen false assertions of safety before, plenty of times.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Food trucks "Have an evolutionary advantage" over restaurants - <AUTHOR> http://pandodaily.com/2012/12/07/damn-the-protectionists-i-want-more-food-trucks/

<comment><USER2> The best part of food trucks is that they undermine commercial real estate. I don't want to see restaurants go away. They form the backbone of community and produce more jobs than food trucks.

Food trucks are like locus disrupting the community as they eat the restaurant out of revenue. I would prefer to see food trucks as commandos, entering under served communities to build a bulkhead for restaurants and community.

<comment><USER3> Oh, then you'll hate the mobile wal-mart.

<comment><USER2> Walmart is doing a fine job of gutting communities and labor rights without mobile locations.

I saw a mobile xmess tree farm at my local coffee shop on Sunday.</comment></comment></comment>