Fukushima - <AUTHOR> http://www.podniesinski.pl/portal/fukushima/ <comment><USER3> I found the pictures fascinating, but the accompanying text marred my enjoyment. Considering the circumstances of the Fukushima disaster, the anti- nuclear sentiment really irked me. The Tōhoku earthquake & tsunami killed close to 20,000 people. The author _completely ignored_ those victims. Instead, he focused on Fukushima, which will cause around 150 deaths from cancers. For every tragedy created by Fukushima, there are over a hundred created by the earthquake itself. Yet coverage is warped in the opposite direction. It's absurd.

I think Scott Alexander put it best. Before starting Slate Star Codex, he had this to say about Fukushima and nuclear power[1]:

> You know what kills more people per year than nuclear plants?

> _Everything._

...

> When you hit a nuclear plant with the fifth largest earthquake ever > recorded, then immediately follow that with a twenty foot high tsunami, and > then it explodes, it still kills fewer people than an average coal plant > does every single year when everything goes perfectly.

Nuclear power is far from perfect, but it is the safest energy technology in existence. Curtailing it creates more suffering and death, but in a diffuse way that can't be photographed or humanized.

1\. [http://squid314.livejournal.com/292620.html](http://squid314.livejournal.com/292620.html)

<comment><USER4> Get the facts straight: Fukushima is human failure. In the accident the neccecary cooling could not be supplied. As a result, people will die of cancer from the radiation. The tsunami is not human failure, and to say that living by the sea is human failure is another discussion completely.

<comment><USER5> I disagree.

You seem to suggest that the fact that Fukushima was not adequately prepared for this tsunami was human failure, presumably because they should have expected such a tsunami to occur.

If this is the case, then you can just as well argue that it was human failure that the towns in the affected areas flooded because of the tsunami. After all, if they expected such a tsunami to occur they could/should have built higher levees.

The way I see it, the deaths resulting from the Fukushima accident were just as much (or as little) caused by human failure as most of the other deaths related to the tsunami.

<comment><USER6> > You seem to suggest that the fact that Fukushima was not adequately prepared > for this tsunami was human failure, presumably because they should have > expected such a tsunami to occur.

For your information, in France where we use nuclear energy a lot, we look for the most catastrophic events of the last 100 years to see how we protect our infrastructure.

The Japanese looked for the last 50, but there _were_ a tsunami of similar height 85 years ago.

Also the local authority of nuclear security has made a few reports were they recommended to increase the height of the seawalls. Several times. Never followed.

And last but not least, the accident could have been prevented, but has been badly handled. With Japanese hiding information, not cooperating with trained international nuclear-firefighters, and minimizing the scale of the incident until the last minute. This is the biggest mistake of all, compromising lives, resources, ocean and earth...

How is it _not_ a human failure ?

<comment><USER7> The height of the tsunami depends on the area. In the area in question, for a _very_ long time people thought that it was impossible for the a tsunami to go above 5 meters. That there were tsunami of that size in other areas is irrelevant. The earthquake in question was the most powerful in 1000 years. Looking back 100 years would be insufficient.

What is interesting is that there was actually a city that raised the sea walls to 16 meters in the area. The mayor of that city was actually sent to jail because it was a scam to siphon money to his brother in law who was in construction. I don't remember the details because it was on a TV program that I watched about a year ago, but unfortunately the mayor in question died a couple of years before the tsunami and never lived to see that his actions actually saved the city.

Speaking of the seawall height, there were, indeed, studies done that showed that under certain circumstances 15-18 meter high tsunamis could be generated in that area. This was disregarded. "Why", you ask.

Let me explain. I live by the sea in Japan. I can go to the sea side and climb up on the sea wall. It is 5 meters above sea level. I can walk along it all practically all the way to Tokyo (200 km away). The only places where it doesn't exist is where there are natural cliffs (which are not as prevalent as you might imagine). Every little stream that empties into the ocean has a 5 meter high metal sea gate that can be closed in the event of a tsunami. Where I live there is one at least every km or so.

The sea walls in Japan are _already_ a miracle of engineering. You want to make them 20m high? Around the entire country? This is an insane notion.

To be honest, I will take the risk. I don't want to live in a jail where the only place I can see the ocean is from on top of a mountain.

I live in Sagara, Shizuoka (now merged with Makinohara). It is the most dangerous place in Japan to live for earthquakes because of the imminent Tokai earthquake (50 years overdue, unless it actually happened in WWII when the place was already destroyed and nobody had the ability to measure the big earthquake that happened then). 5% of the population is likely to die by all predictions.

Which means 95% will live. Terrible tragedy, but _not_ worse than surrounding yourself in a 20m high jail IMHO.

Now, there were many human failures regarding the Fukushima disaster (like not having the correct connectors to power the pumps externally). Sea walls is _not_ one of them.

<comment><USER8> I guess he was talking about higher walls around the (few) nuclear plants, not the whole country. That would not make the country "a jail where the only place I can see the ocean is from on top of a mountain".

<comment><USER7> The water will just go around the wall. I think people don't quite understand the logistics involved. You have this massive wave travelling at 300 km/h. The seawall will break up the wave, but you have to have it long enough to prevent the water from reaching the bits that you want to protect before it retreats (often 20-30 minutes later).

Do a google search for "tetrapod japan images" to see what the beaches around here already look like. The Japanese government is not trying to avoid money on reducing the damage of tsunami. It seems like there should be a simple solution, but there isn't.

<comment><USER9> But you could easily build the plant on naturally or artificially higher ground.

<comment><USER7> However, you have to ask yourself, "Why are virtually _all_ the nuclear power plants in Japan next to the sea?" You could answer that with "Because engineers are stupid" or you could look for a more likely answer ;-)

I am not a nuclear engineer and I don't have enough background to really say what the answer is. My _guess_ is that they are set up right next to the sea so that they can do exactly what they did in Fukushima -- pump sea water into the reactor.

Naturally higher ground is actually hard to find near the sea (because the mountains are usually set back by about a kilometre from the sea). Also, if you perch yourself on a cliff next to the sea, then you are at a more serious risk of landslides during the _many_ 6-7 magnitude earthquakes we have in Japan each year. With artificially higher ground, I suspect you would be at even more risk.

The other main reason for not putting a nuclear reactor on high ground is that in the event of a containment breach, the contaminated water will run downhill (in indescriminate directions). The placement in low ground next to the ocean may be the best place, environmentally, in the case of a disaster.

Again, I'm only guessing, but I'm sure if you ask someone who is trained in the field they can give you better answers.

I'm hoping that Japan will transition away from nuclear reactors in the middle term. There is enough geothermal potential to provide base load (though protecting the environment with all the earthquakes we have here is not trivial in that case either). Since Fukushima, the amount of solar panels being installed in my area is insane, so I'm hopeful that things will improve over the next 50 years or so.

(Having said all that, Hamaoka power plant, which is just down the road from me, is perched up on top of a cliff overlooking the sea ;-) ).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > The disaster could have been forseen and prevented. As in the Chernobyl > case, it was a human, not technology, that was mainly responsible for the > disaster.

It's always easy to say that with hindsight. Remind me, how frequent are Magnitude 9 earthquakes resulting in massive Tsunami?

Of course you can plan for everything, but there's always something that occurs you did not think of. The good thing is, we learn from previous mistakes and plan better accordingly next time.

> Have we learnt anything since then?

Nice punchline to finish your article, nihilist-like, but completely nonsensical. Of course we have learnt a lot since Chernobyl, and designed subsequent plants to be much more safe based on what happened there.

<comment><USER11> > Of course we have learnt a lot since Chernobyl, and designed subsequent > plants to be much more safe based on what happened there.

Unfortunately the anti-nuclear movement won and we are unable to build those safe subsequent plants because of political pressures.

Half of nuclear reactors in the US, and likely the world, are over 30 years old.[1] They are licensed for 40 years [2], but can apply for a 20 year extension [2]. The last new reactor came online in 1996, and the next one is likely to come online this year.

The Chernobyl disaster happened in 1986, 29 years ago. It will be at least another 10 years, 30 being likelier, before all those things we learned become entirely useful.

[1] [http://money.cnn.com/2011/03/15/news/economy/nuclear_plants_...](http://money.cnn.com/2011/03/15/news/economy/nuclear_plants_us/)

[2] [http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=228&t=21](http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=228&t=21)

<comment><USER12> If I had to pick one outlandish conspiracy theory to believe, it would be that the Chernobyl disaster was not an accident. It seems unlikely that someone could accidentally engineer a reactor as ludicrously unsafe as Chernobyl, at the time it was built. And you couldn't plan a better PR move to turn people against nuclear power. Guess which large-ish economy is built on petrochemical exports?

But I'm ignoring Hanlon's Razor, of course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As much of a tragedy this was, this is still nothing compared to the damage coal is doing to our society. I live in a coal mining town that also has a coal-fueled power and heating plant - the number of people who suffer in some way due to this is also huge. People get lung disease due to coal dust. In winter, everything is literally covered in soot - snow is blackish, with dark dots on everything. Pretty much every house was damaged in some way by the mine - most had their walls split at least once. There are lakes around the city which are contaminated with mining water - salty solution pumped from the mine - it's prohibited to swim in it or grow any produce near it. And there's plenty of places like that in the entire country.

I'm surprised that the author still calls nuclear energy dangerous, especially since he comes from the same country I do. Coal did much more damage to us, and not having a single nuclear power plant in the whole country is really damaging to our environment.

<comment><USER14> You assume that coal is the only alternative to nuclear power (there are not only other energy sources, but also the option to use less energy), and that there is no way to use coal in a cleaner way.

I leave the judgement up to you, just wanted to point out some confirmation bias in your convictions.

<comment><USER15> > the option to use less energy

Do you wash your clothes by hand, with water heated from solar? No? Then why are you suggesting that _most of the women in the world_ should continue spending their lives doing such menial activity?

This idea that we need to use _less_ energy is one of the most short-sighted examples of western cultural privilege that I've ever seen. The amount of energy the average person has available to utilize for day-to-day needs is one of the best correlations to social progress and freedom.

People that don't have to spend their days washing their cloths by hand _have spare time_ to spend on things like _getting an education_ or participating in a democracy. We should be using nuclear power to significantly increase the amount of power people use so the social benefits currently enjoyed by the "west" can reach more areas in the world.

[https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing...](https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing_machine)

I not joking or exaggerating when I say that if we let the amount of available energy per-person reduce significantly, society will start to revert back to old institutions like feudalism and slavery. Without energy, you don't have the free time to become educated. Without education, we lose institutions that depend on an educated population like democracy.

edit: fixed missing word

<comment><USER14> Most energy is used for heating, transport, and so on. Your washing machine is not under threat.

And I did not suggest any of the things you say. It's all in your head, which went on a rampage triggered by the words "save energy".

All I said it is an option. I didn't say you have to take it.

<comment><USER15> I never said anything about _my_ washing machine. Maybe you should try to watching that talk by Hans Rosling that I linked to.

Who are you to say that using less energy is an option, when you _have the luxury_ of heating and energy-expensive transportation, and most of the world doesn't yet have the energy to _wash their clothes_?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> As a citizen, I'm still pretty much open to this is-nuclear-good-or-bad debate here. The biggest problem in Japan though is that people don't openly talk about this issue because of the embarrassment or fear of confronting others (Japanese people are notoriously bad at public discussion). It's such a divisive issue. As a result, the entire topic is avoided and kinda invisible. People are resigned and feeling that no one can change the situation (which is a pretty common feeling among the Japanese).

Sometimes I wonder if we, as a nation, really deserves a better future if so many people are simply giving up struggling. Sorry for a negative comment.

</comment><comment><USER17> One angle I don't see often see mentioned: if you look carefully, you'll note that many of the buildings, furnishings, signs etc look a lot older than 2011. This is largely because Fukushima (and almost all of rural Japan along with it) has been severely depressed economically ever since the Bubble burst around 1989, so what you're seeing dates mostly back to the 1980s.

For comparison, here's a trip report from hot spring resort a few hours of north of Tokyo that looks almost as apocalyptic, but has been ravaged by nothing other than economics.

[https://spikejapan.wordpress.com/ugly- japan-2/](https://spikejapan.wordpress.com/ugly-japan-2/)

</comment><comment><USER18> One thing that grabs my attention is that the radiation levels in the contaminated zones are much lower than I thought they'd be. For context, the limit for a radiation worker in the US is 50 mSv. Obviously, I guess it depends on the radioactive isotopes released and what kind of radiation they release, but I'm still impressed.

<comment><USER19> The limit is 50mSv per year, not per hour. Sievert is cumulative unit that has to be either qualified by time or measured over entire lifespan to be meaningfully comparable.

But on the other hand quantitatively measuring and comparing radiation effects is hard problem as there is essentially nothing that can be precisely measured and at the same time has any meaning as to biological effects, in practice the conversions between various units are just done using various experimentally determined constants that may or may not be relevant to given situation.

<comment><USER20> Would appear that the limit is similar - the "red zone" is for "(> 50 mSv/y)" (note "more than") -- and the sign at the end "Leaving the zone" reads 4.9 mSV/h. That'd be about 42.000 mSV/year -- if we assume constant dose. Or put it another way -- stay an hour and you're at the (safe) limit of exposure for a year.

As for all the comments on how nuclear isn't all that dangerous -- how much do we really know about people leaving 4-5 generations in an area with elevated radiation, eating produce etc? I guess we have some data from the Bikin Islands[1] -- but those levels might very well be much higher -- at least it's not an example of how we can live safely in a radiation zone.

Speaking of [1]: "The special International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Bikini Advisory Group determined in 1997 that "It is safe to walk on all of the islands ... although the residual radioactivity on islands in Bikini Atoll is still higher than on other atolls in the Marshall Islands, it is not hazardous to health at the levels measured ... The main radiation risk would be from the food: eating locally grown produce, such as fruit, could add significant radioactivity to the body...Eating coconuts or breadfruit from Bikini Island occasionally would be no cause for concern. Eating many over a long period of time without having taken remedial measures, however, might result in radiation doses higher than internationally agreed safety levels." IAEA estimated that living in the atoll and consuming local food would result in an effective dose of about 15 mSv/year."

It will be interesting to see if removing topsoil in Fukushima will be enough for radiation to reach safe levels. Hopefully the water tables are safe.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_testing_at_Bikini_Atol...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_testing_at_Bikini_Atoll#Return_to_Bikini_Island)

<comment><USER3> The numbers in your first paragraph are off by a factor of 1,000. The signs are in microsieverts per hour, not millisieverts. Only the author's peak reading of 6.8µSv/h would have exceeded the maximum for radiation workers, and only if he stood in that spot for a whole year. Even then, it would still be below the lowest dosage that is clearly linked to increased cancer risk (100mSv/year).

<comment><USER20> You're right of course. I didn't realize that was a greek letter on the sign in the photo.

Still, ~43[1] mSv/year is pretty close to the "safe" limit (and it makes sense to set a safety limit well below what can be documented as being harmful) -- and that's just from irradiation. Who knows the effect of breathing in pollen, never mind eating local produce, over a period of ~50 years?

Are there different safety levels for children/infants? If the 50mSv/year is set for workers, I assume they're for adults?

[1] I accidentally dropped a significant digit when rounding off too. It comes to ~42924.0, not ~49...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Being Japanese, that picture of blackboard in abandoned school 1/3 of the way through the post alone almost made me cry.

Single picture tells more stories than thousand words.

4 years since it happened, almost no major Japanese media talks about Fukushima any more, so please share this to anywhere so it gets more attentions.

<comment><USER22> I visited Minamisoma last year, just viewing the damages from the outside was heartbreaking, seeing these images of interiors is so incredibly difficult, had me close to tears too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Great photographs. Especially the cars in the grass starting to be overgrown are a 'great' and instant classic post apocalyptic image. Makes you think about the costs of our 'innovations' in general too. This is the wasteland of nuclear energy gone wrong, but there are other wastelands like this one, albeit figuratively speaking.

</comment><comment><USER24> Those cobwebs in the supermarket are something else! (close to the end)

<comment><USER14> Where there's radioactivity, there are monster spiders...

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> isn't all that packed up debris just waiting another tsunami or other natural disaster to spread it? Seems awfully close to the ocean considering how the last disaster occurred.

So many of the scenes reminded me of the recent Godzilla movie, amazing to see so much of a recent bustling environment abandoned, returning to nature. The number of spider webs in the supermarket is remarkable, I assume the rotting food stores brought insects which in turn made for a good feeding ground for spiders

</comment><comment><USER26> "Seven years ago I ended my first documentary on Chernobyl with these words:

"An immense experience, not comparable to anything else. Silence, lack of cries, laughter, tears and only the wind answers. Prypiat is a huge lesson for our generation."

Have we learnt anything since then?"

That makes one think.

<comment><USER27> We have learnt to not put reactors on top of the water tanks, and to not shutdown all safety systems to see if the plant explodes.

<comment><USER28> I agree. I'd like to add: don't use graphite as a moderator, because it can burn in case of a fire.

Chernobyl had many known design problems ever before it exploded. It's misleading to imply that it was consider a good design before.

There is a comment with more details from pdkl95

>> _Chernobyl_

> _The RBMC design was always known to be an absolutely terrible idea because > it 's use of graphite as a moderator that required active cooling, creating > an inherently unsafe positive void coefficient[1]._

Read the complete comment: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10257459](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10257459)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Absolutley fascinating. Great reporting - I don't want to say an "enjoyable" read, but certainly very engaging and interesting.

<comment><USER30> Agreed, there's a morbid curiosity behind ghost towns due to nuclear disasters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Have also a look here: [https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Freportage.wdr.de%2Ffukushima&edit- text=&act=url)

</comment><comment><USER32> > As in the Chernobyl case, it was a human, not technology, that was mainly > responsible for the disaster.

Isn't there a difference between causing and preventing?

</comment><comment><USER33> "Have we learnt anything since then?"

I'm very curious to hear from those who are knowledge in the area.

<comment><USER27> I'm not an expert, but the Fukushima's core problem was an older design based on active cooling, that requires continuous water input and thus electricity to run the water pumps. Current work is concentrated mostly on making nuclear plant as passive as possible, resulting in graceful shutdown in the event of supporting equipment failure. This involves finding a coolant that behaves predictably and nicely when various subsystems go down (water does not).

Additional reading: [http://www.technologyreview.com/news/423307/newer- nuclear-re...](http://www.technologyreview.com/news/423307/newer-nuclear- reactors-might-not-have-failed-in-japan/) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_nuclear_safety](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_nuclear_safety)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> a huge dump site near the ocean [1] doesn't look like the best idea.

[1] [http://www.podniesinski.pl/portal/fukushima/#attachment_9454](http://www.podniesinski.pl/portal/fukushima/#attachment_9454)

</comment><comment><USER35> With a few minor and cheap design modifications, the Fukushima disaster could have been prevented. The nuke industry could learn a lot from the aviation industry about making unsafe things safe. The details are different, but the principles are the same.

<comment><USER36> Even in the very safe world of commercial aviation, aircraft crash much more frequently than nuclear reactors melt down. That slows down the rate of institutional learning.

Of course commercial aviation has killed far more people than the nuclear power industry, anyway.

Addendum: I should say that I actually agree with you, I just wanted to point out that the dynamics of the two industries are quite different.

<comment><USER35> The principle behind airliner design is no single failure can cause the loss of the airliner. This principle was not applied to Fukushima's design nor the Deepwater Horizon's design.

For example, the backup generators could have been protected from the seawater inundation rather easily.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Great article. I think this is an issue that always deserves more serious attention.

I also think it's admirable for someone to do this kind of research, take pictures, and write about the experience for the purpose of educating others.

</comment><comment><USER38> Many great photos of this and other locations. Got intrigued in this site looking at photos and essays for quite a while. I appreciate seeing photos from less-visited areas.

</comment><comment><USER39> It's a classic spin -- trying to blind people concerned with nuclear plants in their area etc, by using science selectively.

<comment><USER40> It's impolite to accuse people on an HN thread of being deceptive. It also doesn't add _anything_ to thread itself, so why bother?

<comment><USER39> > _It 's impolite to accuse people on an HN thread of being deceptive._

It's impolite to do it everywhere. However, just like people "being rude" happens, people being deceptive also happens in HN as well as in "real life" \-- in which case it's not longer impolite to call them on it.

But that's just theoritical. In this case I never accused anybody in particular, heck, I didn't even mention anybody. I said it's a deceptive _tactic_.

I'm not sure what you mean "it also doesn't add anything to the thread itself".

Identifying a deceptive argument doesn't add to a thread?

You might argue that I'm wrong in my identification of it as deceptive, but I don't see how you can say it doesn't add anything (in case it's true).

<comment><USER40> All I see you doing here is doubling down on your accusation that 'fridek is being deceptive. That's bizarre, given their actual comment. It's as if you read something you didn't like, and decided that the only way it could have appeared before you is dishonesty. No: some people just don't agree with you. You have no cause to call anyone a liar, and doing so is uncivil. Please stop!

<comment><USER39> Obviously something being spin doesn't mean somebody repeating it is deceptive or dishonest. Just some of them, and mostly those that originated it. Others merely repeat it uncritically.

Obviously again, Fridek, which I never mentioned at all, not even hinted at him, because I was answering my direct parent, can very much believe what he wrote.

> _It 's as if you read something you didn't like, and decided that the only > way it could have appeared before you is dishonesty._

Actually it's like what I said is pretty clear, and you go out of your way to find some hidden attack beyond my words.

What I said of the thing said is that it's a classic spin.

Not that the one who said it on HN is a spinster or doesn't believe what he said, or is deceptive or anything.

If I'm right (and I think one can objectively say the argument is indeed misleading), then whether people who retell it believe it or not is orthogonal, as it doesn't make it any less spin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> The worst case scenario for a nuclear plant accident is millions of casualties and the long-term contamination of major population centers. 152 of the world's 211 nuclear power plants have more than 1 million people residing within 75 km. A plant in India has 16 million living within that radius. Fallout could be dispersed over an area thousands of miles wide.

The worst case scenario for an accident at a solar power plant or a wind farm - nothing like that.

Today's nuclear power plants are inherently unsafe. Most that are in operation depend on active cooling systems to prevent a meltdown. If these cooling systems are interrupted for any reason (e.g.: power failure, loss of coolant, pump breakdown, loss of pressure control, control rod failure, backup power source failure, control systems failure, natural disaster, attack, etc.) - even for a short period of time - then the fissile material will likely overheat the reactor and result in a core meltdown.

Sheer luck prevented a catastrophe in the case of the 2006 electrical failure at the Forsmark plant in Sweden. Two of the four backup power systems failed to activate [1].

Switching the emtire world's energy consumption over to safe, renewable energy sources would only take 20 years and cost $100 trillion (money which would be spent anyway on non-renewable energy infrastructure) [2]. There is no need to continue building unsafe coal and nuclear plants.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forsmark_Nuclear_Power_Plant#J...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forsmark_Nuclear_Power_Plant#July_2006_incident)

[2] [http://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/sad11...](http://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/sad1109Jaco5p.indd.pdf)

<comment><USER42> Just up voted this to balance down votes. It's a shame to down vote something just because you dislike an opinion.

<comment><USER43> Or, you know, it's being downvoted for blatant falsehoods like:

"Today's nuclear power plants are inherently unsafe. Most that are in operation depend on active cooling systems to prevent a meltdown."

<comment><USER41> 80% of the world's nuclear fleet are in fact light water reactors - <USER2> Fukushima - which require continuous cooling and a constant source of power.

Even the latest passive safety proposals like liquid fluoride thorium reactors don't conclusively solve the fundamental problem of overheating after a cooling system failure [1].

[1] [http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/2010/6/not-so- fa...](http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/2010/6/not-so-fast-with- thorium)

<comment><USER44> Only 15 plants in operation have gen-3 passive cooling features and these systems are hardly fail safe.

[http://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/legacy/assets/docu...](http://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/legacy/assets/documents/nuclear_power/NPWWch6.pdf)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What mouse do you use? What are its pros and cons? - <AUTHOR> I thought of asking the question because the mouse I was using with my laptop, recently stopped working. So I switched to another one I had. They are somewhat similar, both from Dell. But one is flatter and lighter than the other. I see good points in both. Hence got the idea for the question, to get to know about the different kinds of mice and their pros / cons - based on HN readers' actual experience. <comment><USER2> Start by identifying your mouse grip[0]. That is the starting point for choosing a mouse. Unfortunately, if you prefer a claw or fingertip grip the only mice available are gaming mice, which may have "flashier" decorations. Claw and Fingertip mice are usually shorter and wider.

I mostly use a fingertip grip, changing unconsciously to claw when playing more action oriented videogames. At work I have a CM Storm Xornet[1], with the recommended CM cloth mousepad (Small size). At home I have a CM Storm Spawn[2], with the same mousepad but in Medium size.

Personally, I prefer my work setup. The Spawn has stickier rubber (which I dislike), and the mousewheel stops working ar random. The small mousepad is perfect for my needs. due to my grip I have high sensitivity in the mouse and my arm doesn't move a lot (or at all)

[0] [http://cmu.coolermaster.com/mice- grips/](http://cmu.coolermaster.com/mice-grips/) [1] [http://gaming.coolermaster.com/en/products/mice/xornet/](http://gaming.coolermaster.com/en/products/mice/xornet/) [2] [http://gaming.coolermaster.com/en/products/mice/spawn/](http://gaming.coolermaster.com/en/products/mice/spawn/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting, didn't know about mouse grips. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Logitech Cordless Optical TrackMan

[http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/81GUaYp- uYL._SL1500_.j...](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/81GUaYp- uYL._SL1500_.jpg)

It's discontinued and seels for up to $200 on eBay. I was lucky enough to find one on Kijiji (canadian Craigslist) for 25$.

I got used to it in no time, and it's just as accurate as a regular mouse. I've been using it for a month, and I can't tell whether I prefer this to a regular mouse yet.

<comment><USER4> A thousand times yes. I love the trackMan. On one now. Just like the Microsoft Explorer before it (which are now $500 if you can find one) it's damn nearly the perfect trackball.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This: [http://www.logitech.com/en-au/product/wireless- trackball-m57...](http://www.logitech.com/en-au/product/wireless- trackball-m570) (price here is a bit excessive - you can normally pick them up for ~$50).

I've also played with various mice over the years, but love this (I've bought my own one for work, in addition to the one at home). It doesn't tire out your arm or wrist (your thumb does the bulk of the work), and since it doesn't move, you can use it in limited space. My hands are big-ish, but this one is big enough to comfortably rest your hand without cramping it up. It has forward/back buttons for browsing on the frame, and the wheel acts as a third button.

Going from mouse to trackball takes a little bit of getting used to (about a day ;-) ). If you have coworkers that occasionally need to drive your computer, it's a bit of a pain, but Logitech receivers allow pairing of more than one device, so just keep a cheapy 'normal' mouse on your desk for those occasions.

In general, I've used Dell, MS, Logitech, and el-cheapo mice - Logitech wins out every time.

</comment><comment><USER6> I use a Evoluent VerticalMouse 4 Right Wireless at work, Nice feel to it, comfortable for prolonged use.

At home, I use a Logitech M570 Wireless Trackball, I used it at work until I got the Evoluent. I surprisingly game with the trackball.

Other than that I have use the Logitech Performance MX and/or the Logitech MX Anywhere with my laptop.

</comment><comment><USER7> Not quite a mouse, but I use a Wacom Intuos 'Pen and Touch' small tablet.

Not everyone has the need for a pen interface, but I find it useful for notes and idea explanation. There is also a wireless kit available for it, but I haven't tried it out.

Before my tablet, I used a Kensington 'Orbit' trackball. I liked it a lot, but it didn't last well.(the buttons got soft, the rollers got more and more resistant despite cleaning)

I tend to use oddball things like trackballs and touchpads with my desktops because i'm left handed, and I haven't found any decent feeling lefty mice besides semi-uncomfortable ambidextrous styles; plus I mostly just keyboard.

</comment><comment><USER8> Logitech Performance MX

Reviews here: [http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Wireless-Performance-Mouse- Ma...](http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Wireless-Performance-Mouse- Mac/dp/B002HWRJBM)

Mainly I don't like wires all over my desk so I bring a wireless KB and mouse to replace work supplied ones. Also a benefit as I have a stand-up/down desk. This has good tracking to so you can use on any surface. Also generally good hand feel once you get used to the tilt.

Personally given the amount of time spent on the KB and mouse I'm surprised more people don't invest in a quality set for themselves.

I just bought the Logitech MK710 to update and really don't like the keyboard. Feels cheap and 'clacky' to use. Great battery life though if your setting up for a meeting room type deal.

</comment><comment><USER9> This was my favorite mouse for years: [http://imgur.com/xPu3pl1](http://imgur.com/xPu3pl1)

Currently using a MS Optical Mouse 200.

I don't game (apart from Minecraft) so I don't need a $150 gaming mouse with adjustable weights and extra programmable buttons.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool. What's that middle grey portion like a finger pointing to the right? A button of some kind?

<comment><USER9> Yes, it's an extra button.

It just felt like a really comfortable mouse. And the software was good. And it was my first mouse that didn't have a ball, and did have a scroll wheel.

Some people had problems with cords, but I didn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> One of the best things I have done to improve my personal computing experience was to stop using a mouse and compute exclusively on a laptop.

You likely have numerous seating options away from your desk, now you can use them _all_ productively.

Recommended locations for productive computing include: hammocks, sofas, lawn chairs, train seats, ridesharing Prii backseats, bed.

I look back humorously at the years I carried a mouse in my backpack 'just in case'. Or the years before that strapped to a large monitor and keyboard and desk and desk chair, too.

This wasn't always possible, but I think the newer Apple trackpads in particular are exceptionally usable and precise. I don't have much experience with other current products.

</comment><comment><USER11> I've been using various models of Logitech mice [1] for almost 20 years. Every time I try a Microsoft mouse, I wind up taking it back because there's some hard coded signal that doesn't work with some piece of CAD software in a reasonable way.

But these days...well I try to use the keyboard instead of the mouse. Xmonad goes a surprisingly long way in that direction. Firemacs for Firefox too.

[1] And a Logitech PAy port trackball from a period where I was having pain caused by too much mouse time and poor ergonomics.

</comment><comment><USER12> Roccat Kone XTD+

\+ mousewheel can be "nudged" left-right, works as middle mouse button and has clear "steps"

\+ 2 extra buttons (would prefer 3)

o driver could be better, but does most things

o relatively bulky

<comment><AUTHOR> >\+ mousewheel can be "nudged" left-right

What does that do? Is it related to the middle button functionality or something else?

<comment><USER12> it acts as two extra buttons, which you either could use for left-right scrolling or as any other button function. I have them bound to browser forwards-backwards and in combination with one of the other keys for switching tracks in media player.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks again for the answers. Learned something about different kinds of mice.

</comment><comment><USER13> I like Logitech, I use the older MX but it's still precise and reliable.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Please mention mouse make and model number along with the other details.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks in advance to all who reply.</comment>


Ask HN: What was an idea or concept that made sense to you only after a small epiphany? - <AUTHOR>

What I mean is for example an economic or mathematical concept which you struggled to grasp until one day you figured out something by yourself which was not thought or written about when discussing that subject.<p>What was that concept and what was the epiphany that made it all make sense? <comment> craig-faber This one's actually a discovery. I was psychology major in college and had been reading about research on gender differences in language. People seemd to intuit that there was something behind the stereotypes about women talking more, and a difference did show up in brain imaging - men process language in areas one hemisphere, usually the left, women did some secondary processing in corresponding areas of the non-dominant hemisphere. Feminists had written about this too. But over and over word counts, comprehension tests, vocabulary tests had found nothing.

One day, I was at a small party that had started to break up. The remaining guys were in one room, and the two girls had drifted to the kitchen and were chatting excitedly about something. I had gotten bored with what the guys were talking about, and wondered what the girls were so excited about. But I couldn't understand them because they were talking on top of each other. Then it hit me: _They can understand each other!_ Women can talk and understand simultaneously, we can't. They can use the secondary areas in the non-dominant hemisphere as back-up language comprehension areas. Men just use areas in one hemisphere so we have to switch back and forth between speaking and listening, we can't do both at the same time. It's blatantly obvious if you stop to think about it, but in all the research i'd been reading, nobody had stopped to think about it.

The feminist take on language and gender made sense too. If you assume that men _could_ listen and talk at the same time if they wanted to, comments that guys make, like "Hey, shut up a minuit would you, I want to say something" and "Hey wait a minuit, I'm still talking" do seem domineering.

</comment><comment><USER2> AP Calculus. The epiphany was "I have a very bad teacher and this is really easy stuff. The rest of the class will fail because they didn't realize this earlier. :( :( "

Linear Algebra. The epiphany is difficult to explain and remember. It involved the elegance and coolness of eigenvectors.

How damned important and awesome physics is to life. The epiphany came after actually predicting precisely how a projectile would fall and where it would hit when launched. My only thought was "Oh my god, why didn't they tell me I could predict the future long before I got sucked into CompSci? I would be a physics major had they shown me this stuff earlier. Why isn't teaching better? How many other people never discover this and abandon interest?"

Why people tried hard at all in school. Epiphany: "Because people really do reward you for excellence after school. Even if doing well in school feels like you're being penalized and singled-out, all those other people will be slacking off after school while you're naturally being successful."

</comment><comment><USER3> Comparative advantage makes more intuitive sense when someone gives you the example of the young strong guy and the old slow guy trapped on an island.</comment>


Which is the best "print to card" service which has an API? - <AUTHOR>

I am looking for a company to handle physical prints of my images, and their delivery.  Any recommendations are much appreciated. <comment><USER2> we're launching a slightly more transactional (and document) driven version of this at <http://www.trypaper.com>. feel free to message me if you have interest or questions :)</comment>


Ask HN: When is the HN community most active? - <AUTHOR>

Is there a time of day or day of the week that consistently averages more user activity than others?  By user activity I mean reading, submitting, and commenting on posts. I tend to visit in the early evening after work, although I admit I sneak a peek every now and then throughout the day. <comment><USER2> There was another good one too recently that I can't find, but here's one: [http://blog.itlater.com/whats-the-best-time-to-post-to- hacke...](http://blog.itlater.com/whats-the-best-time-to-post-to-hackernews/)

<comment><USER3> Now, if only anyone knew what timezone those graphs used we'd be home safe.

<comment><USER4> UTC ( _"... based on its submission time (UTC)."_ )</comment></comment></comment>


Attachmate lays off Mono employees - <AUTHOR> http://blog.internetnews.com/skerner/2011/05/attachmate-lays-off-mono-emplo.html

<comment><USER2> Mono contributor (circa 2005-2006) here. They didn't axe the entire team. Still going strong. Mono had a number of people working on different sides and only part of the team was let go as part of Attachmate restructuring of the SuSE group.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sensationalism at its best is at work here. Attachmate/Novell laid off a lot of employees in the US today, and "internetnews.com" goes on to extrapolate that "Today Attachmate laid off an unknown number of U.S. based Novell developers that were working on the open source Mono project". Indeed, the number is unknown - it may as well be zero.

<comment><USER4> IRC confirms that the number is at least 1 (and after knowing that I extrapolate that there is some truth in that headline).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "unknown number of U.S. based Novell developers that were working on the open source Mono project." does not mean the entire team was laid off. Second, no source is cited and this is unconfirmed as of yet. I think people should calm down with the speculation until something official happens.

<comment><USER6> Why would anybody do that when a chance to disparage Mono is presented?

<comment><USER7> Puzzling indeed, we should look for the positive aspects in this situation.

For instance when Nokia chose WP7 and C# over MeeGo and Qt, which lead to layoffs, resignations and other unpleasant consequences, Miguel DeIcaza looked for the positive aspects and declared that Nokia is simplifying the mobile landscape. [1] Similarly, we could now say that Attachmate is simplifying the cross-platform toolkit landscape...

[1] <http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2011/Feb-14.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is it premonition or self-fulfilling prophecy that most open-source developers felt a little queasy about Mono?

<comment><USER6> FUD, actually. I did not see giving up and using past tense terms to describe OpenOffice when Oracle bought Sun and things did not go the way the community wanted. The community simply routed around. What makes Mono different? How does this news mean anything for Mono at all aside from people not getting paid to work on it?

Does the anti-Mono crowd just lay in wait for a negative story to further disseminate FUD? I've used Mono a few times and I just do not understand the treatment of Miguel and the project. The only answer I have ever deduced is that Mono is rooted in a Microsoft technology and the anti-Mono crowd apparently hates Microsoft.

<comment><USER8> Well, perhaps I jumped the gun on declaring it dead, but my question stands. As far as I can tell, C# provides a lot of nice features. Despite that fact, it seems to be as MS-only as Objective-C is Apple-only. No technical reason for either, but it seems strong in the open-source culture.

<comment><USER4> I don't get that. You say that C# provides a lot of nice features. Mono offers a C# compiler.

ObjC is for Apple only, because \- they more or less control the field and push it hard there \- other implementations lack the ecosystem \- other implementations are far behind

Mono gained quite a lot of traction (F-Spot, Banshee, Tomboy) on Linux, so far that it even allowed to 'backport' former Linux-only apps to Windows and OS X. You get the nice features C# provides, even if you are not on Windows. And you can rely on the same framework _.

_ : Except when you don't: WPF is the biggest example, other areas might lag behind as well. But you _can_ write software for multiple systems _or_ focus on Mono (Gtk#, Mono.Posix/Mono.Unix) only to rapidly write software on Linux.

<comment><USER8> I don't think I expressed myself very well. I'm saying that despite the nice features of C# that Mono brings to the table, it doesn't appear to have seen wide adoption. That's all. I didn't realize Tomboy was written in C#; that's great. I understand what Mono is, and that's why I'm confused that there don't seem to more (or at least, more _visible_ ) projects using it.

<comment><USER9> You might check out <http://www.mono-project.com/Software> and <http://www.mono-project.com/Companies_Using_Mono>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> From an article back in 09 when Miguel joined Microsoft's Open Source Foundation:

 _"That's just what I was saying Linux needed the other day: more Silverlight applications. In fact, I was discussing how promoting Silverlight development in no way whatsoever helps Microsoft lock-in, and quite the contrary actually encourages the spread of software freedom under every definition known to mankind. Because it is Microsoft that is internationally recognized for leverging its considerable power to promote user freedom and interoperability through its file formats and development technologies we absolutely need more of that being produced in the Linux world, which tends to use proprietary and obscured formats and languages"_

</comment><comment><USER11> I really wish I'd never bought MonoTouch, I think a refund should be available to us that bought it less than a year ago.

<comment><USER9> I think you might be jumping the gun here a little, nobody said any major changes will be happening to the Mono project, this article has not even been confirmed yet.

<comment><USER11> It's not just this. The lack of a clear plan/solution for going forward regarding the new Xcode/IB single IDE; the solution to keep using the previous version just isn't ideal. I've seen a few times in the past 6 months where major changes dropped and users were asking for really basic info/response on forums and got nothing. I'm just going to stick it out with obj-c.

<comment><USER12> they have already announced that they're working on xcode 4 integration, and just today one of the developers for MonoDevelop released a video showing that integration working.

<comment><USER11> Good to know, but poking around the monotouch website I don't see anything about this. I'd think this would be on the frontpage or the news section at the very least. Nothing about it in community either. Little things like this (not being able to find valuable info) really does kill motivation to work on this otherwise fun/interesting platform.

<comment><USER13> If you're still looking for the video: <http://twitter.com/#!/migueldeicaza/status/65513868599902208>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Personally I really hope that the MS-Novell deal will not be renewed.

<comment><USER15> _Why_ should it not be renewed? I ask because, frankly, I am skeptical that you have the technical or legal backing to have an informed enough opinion to legitimately hold such a hope--and there's a surprising amount of FUD (no small amount perpetuated by Groklaw) about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> <http://mono-project.com/Compatibility> shows Mono is as good as MS .Net</comment>


Grid+ aims to make it easy to use crypto to pay for energy, then everything - <AUTHOR> https://decryptmedia.com/2018/12/20/electric-dreams/ <comment><USER2> So we can finally live the dream of closing the virtuous circle of burning energy to mine cryptocurrency, so we can pay for our energy in that cryptocurrency, so we can burn more energy. It seems like good news that it doesn't actually seem to reliably work.</comment>


Google closed 40 Acquistions this year, 37 of which under $17M on average - <AUTHOR> http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20101029/google-2010-ma-bill-1-6-billion-and-counting/ <comment><USER2> "During the nine months ended September 30, 2010, we also completed 37 other acquisitions for a total cash consideration of approximately $626 million. These acquisitions were not material individually or in aggregate."

Mind-boggling. Well over half a billion dollars in _non-material_ acquisitions! Only Google.

Most here could easily identify the company from that single 10-Q line alone.

</comment><comment><USER3> The massive cash reserves of Google, Apple, and Microsoft are good news for startups.

<comment><USER4> Good news for some startups. Not any that are looking for investors. At that average acquisition price, most investors would be disappointed.

<comment><USER3> Not really. For VC's perhaps that is the case, but for angels: $1 MM raised at a $3 MM pre, 2.5 years of work, and a (let's say) $12 MM median sale price? I think everyone is decently happy.

This model fits with the ever-shrinking capital requirements to launch a tech company. Conversely, portfolio strategies that rely on huge exits (and huge investments) are increasingly threatened.

<comment><USER4> $1M at a $3M pre with a $12M acquisition means I'm getting a 3X return on my investment. Now that's certainly better than losing it altogether, but I think almost all angels would admit they'd be pretty disappointed in that outcome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When Cisco started to do this many acquisitions their competitors begin to bid against them, increasing the price and lowering Cisco's ability to buy products and talent below market. That does not seem to be happening yet.

<comment><USER6> From what I'm hearing, Google isn't getting talent at below market prices. What's not immediately clear in the acquisition price is the ridiculous retention bonuses Google's paying to keep these people on board. In fact, I think they're paying through the roof for talent already... no need to for competitors to bid up the price.

<comment><USER5> Competitors can bid, not with the intent of winning, but with the intent of driving up Google's price. This certainly happened to Cisco. The retention bonuses are a way of making a side payment to the entrepreneurs that bypasses the investors. Competitors could also offer retention bonuses.

<comment><USER7> How can you bid without risk that you will have to pay?

<comment><USER5> You can't, but there is a value in the underlying team and product: winning and overpaying from time to time still resets the market when a competitor is making many acquisitions. It also gives you more access to the deal flow, because now you are seen as an active bidder, which in turn offers market intelligence from being able to interact with all of these early technology firms.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Don't Confide? The App White House Leakers Love Could Have Exposed All Users - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2017/03/08/vulnerabilities-in-confide-white-house-trump-leaks/ <comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.ioactive.com/pdfs/IOActive-Security-Advisory- Conf...](http://www.ioactive.com/pdfs/IOActive-Security-Advisory-Confide- Messaging-Ap.pdf)</comment>


Chronic pain: Antidepressants not painkillers recommended - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/health-53649189 <comment><USER2> Given the serious side effects, lack of long term study, low efficacy and issues with discontinuation around SSRIs, I look forwards to seeing the justifications for this and the clinical results the decision is based on.

<comment><AUTHOR> painkillers have their own issues too.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, though it's worth noting they were talking about paracetamol and ibuprofen, not diamorphine...</comment></comment></comment>


Why free software evangelist Richard Stallman is haunted by Stalin's dream - <AUTHOR> https://factordaily.com/richard-stallman-india/ <comment><USER2> I am a big fan of RMS and his remarkable prescience. However the logic he gives here for using other people's mobile phones seems a bit suspect:

> To surrender my freedom in this way was failing to defend a free society. > This is why I do not have a portable phone. I refuse to carry a portable > phone. I never have one and unless things change, I never will. I do use > portable phones, lots of different ones. If I needed to call someone right > now, I would ask one of you, "Could you please make a call for me?" If I am > on a bus and it is late and I need to tell somebody that I am going to > arrive late, there is always some other passenger in the bus who will make a > call for me or send a text for me. Practically speaking, it is not that > hard.

Isn't this a little hypocritical, relying on other people carrying a mobile phone when he refuses to? OK yes, they have already made their own choice to carry one but he appears to be making use of their privacy limiting choice to protect his own privacy.

Not meaning to attack RMS in this comment, who as I said above, I admire. I know he's done a lot to advance and protect other people's freedom. Just questioning his logic in this instance.

<comment><USER3> We should ask him if he carries a rolodex with him all the time or he just text to his secretary to forward his messages during his busride.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What was the Android spyware they detected? Stallman calls just about anything spyware when most computer professionals don't have a problem with it. Makes me think his 90% of 1,000 free apps having spyware could really mean nothing to most people. Without the detail we just have no idea if this is a meaningful statistic that they've come up with.</comment>


Show HN: Zappa – Serverless Python/Django on AWS Lambda - <AUTHOR> https://gun.io/blog/announcing-zappa-serverless-python-aws-lambda/ <comment><USER3> If you're asking yourself: "Why should I care about Lambda? How does it help me build a fast website? In what context?", there's an interesting use case from a merchandise store that made real hats and such for Counter Strike Source.

Valve mentioned them on the official CS:S page, and things went haywire. The team restructured into a lambda friendly architecture, they scaled without breaking a sweat, and ended up paying pennies in costs.

Link: [https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/3oiilb/our_company_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/3oiilb/our_company_did_a_collab_with_valve_for_some_new/)

</comment><comment><USER4> It seems like having local lambda emulation would be useful as a companion to this. If I ever do some lamba development I'd love to see integration with emulators like [https://github.com/HDE/python-lambda- local](https://github.com/HDE/python-lambda-local), [https://serverlesscode.com/post/emulambda-testing-aws- lambda...](https://serverlesscode.com/post/emulambda-testing-aws-lambda/), or [https://ashiina.github.io/2015/01/lambda- local/](https://ashiina.github.io/2015/01/lambda-local/) (some or all of these may work already, I can't tell just by eyeballing the projects from a distance)

<comment><AUTHOR> This would have been useful for me during development..

But honestly, the big problem is the API Gateway. The product is a mess, the docs are a mess, and the whole system is kind of insane. Lambda is awesome, but API Gateway still seems half baked. 90% of my development time was fighting with APIGW. There are some kind of crazy hacks in there (base58 encoding cookies, regex based on b64 encoded status codes) that shouldn't have been necessary.

Still, now that the system works and it's easy to use, I think this is ready for real usage. And I'm sure Amazon will get their stuff together for future releases of APIGW. They probably weren't completely anticipating that people would use it in this way.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I fought with APIGW for a while in the beginning because I had to make scripts to create my route structures to I could call Lambda in a fully RESTful manner for my data model. A lot of stuff just didn't work when calling from the AWS CLI. After a lot of trial and error and a lot of bug reporting I got to a script that would quickly build my APIGW for me because that web interface is horrible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Happy to answer any questions that people might have about this!

To head of a few questions at the pass:

Here are the hacks necessary to make this work: [https://github.com/Miserlou/Zappa#hacks](https://github.com/Miserlou/Zappa#hacks)

Here's how to avoid the cold-start problem: [https://github.com/Miserlou/django-zappa#keeping-the- server-...](https://github.com/Miserlou/django-zappa#keeping-the-server-warm)

<comment><USER6> This is cool. On this:

 _To ensure that your servers are kept in a cached state, you can manually configure a scheduled task for your Zappa function that 'll keep the server cached by calling it every 5 minutes._

The cost of running the warmer (300s * ~3M * 512MB) comes out to about $18 and that's not counting the number of actual requests from end users. It's interesting but costly as a substitute.

<comment><USER5> The call should only run for under the minimum 100ms each time as it's just a ping and the instances is usually already loaded although AWS will likely recycle the instance from time to time outside of your control. There would be roughly 8640 calls/month which is about 864 seconds of execution time. You get 800,000 free seconds per month. This is totally negligible because even if you are counting it above the free level it is about 7/10 of a cent per month.

Disclaimer: I am a Lambda fanboy.

<comment><USER6> From my understanding of the pricing (I could be wrong), even if the call is 100ms, because the timeout is set to 300s so the app stays in cache, you'll be charged for 300s (app is "running" for that long).

<comment><USER5> That is not correct. You can set the timeout to the maximum if you want and you only pay that when the call does not complete.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _> Where normal web servers like Apache and Nginx have to sit idle 24/7, waiting for new requests to come in, with Zappa, the server is created after the HTTP request comes in through API Gateway_

To me, this sounds very much like reinventing the plain old CGI, just with different names ("Web server" -> "API Gateway", "CGI script" -> "server").

Am I missing something here?

<comment><USER8> There are a few differences:

* CGI is the closest UNIX thing you can find, fork a process, write on STDIN, read from STDOUT. Lambda actually is a framework for running javascript/java/python code, _from which you can call actual binaries_.

* Lambda's attractive point is that containers are reused, which means that instead of paying the full price of a new process your context is already "hot", even for the actual binary you run. That means less latency and less CPU usage, allowing you to scale far more easily

I'm no Lambda user so I'm possibly wrong, but the idea and execution behind sure looks nice.

<comment><USER9> Both your statements are correct: Amazon is most likely running lxc containers under the hood though, so anyone could duplicate what Lambda does using an evaluator for javascript/python/etc with a REST API containerized in a docker container.

Disclaimer: I am a heavy Lambda user.

<comment><USER10> I haven't done my own experiments, but reading the Lambda docs on Security has made me think these are real VMs and not containers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am toying around the idea of writing an open source implementation of Lambda on top of docker (for isolation) golang (for custom code to run) and erlang/elixir/OTP (for coordination). Are people interested ?

Feel free to contact me on the address on my profile...

<comment><AUTHOR> I think there is a strong need for something like this. It's worth noting that API Gateway is also a huge component of this project, not just Lambda. Lambda alone wouldn't provide the benefits of Zappa.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Interesting! I've been playing around with Serverless/Lambda this weekend (the node version), but a main thing that struck me was that I couldn't use a connection pool for database connectivity. This means that each request to a lambda-backed API will need to create new connections.

Anyone who wants to share their thoughts about this?

</comment><comment><USER13> "Serverless" is a framework used by AWS: [https://github.com/serverless/serverless](https://github.com/serverless/serverless)

And it now supports Python. Would be interesting to see someone using AWS Serverless framework with Django Plugin support.

<comment><AUTHOR> The point of this is that you don't need to learn any new frameworks - <USER2> works with your existing code. You can deploy your existing apps on Lambda without having to change anything, and you're not locked in to AWS if you want to go back.

<comment><USER14> I rather doubt the "without changing anything" part. For example, I write static media to a subdirectory of my Django installation. Will that work without any changes? How about Django uploads? How about temporary files? Etc etc.

I used to use Django-nonrel for GAE so I wouldn't be logged in, and guess what: By the time I wanted to move away, I had so much GAE-specific behaviour that I pretty much had to rewrite the app.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well you really shouldn't be serving static content through Django, you should be serving it through a CDN. If you use something like Django-Storages for uploads, it'll Just Work.

I'm not guaranteeing that everything will work out of the box on the first try, but I bet you'll be very close. You will have to make a few design decisions, but if you're making the right ones it should just work. At the very least it should be far, far easier that GAE.

(The one thing you'll have to watch out for are C-extensions, which, for now, require that you do your deployment from an x86_64 machine.)

<comment><USER14> > Well you really shouldn't be serving static content through Django, you > should be serving it through a CDN

The two aren't mutually exclusive. My CDN points to Django for retrieving the static media.

> if you're making the right ones it should just work

"If you're making the ones that Zappa requires", you mean.

> The one thing you'll have to watch out for are C-extensions

Eh, that's to be expected, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Fantastic! We had been considering using lambda, but were worried that doing so would irreversibly lock us into AWS. Being able to develop for lambda using standard web frameworks (django already being our favorite) goes a long way in increasing our willingness to use it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep! This should make it super easy, there are no code changes needed so you can go back and forth between Lambda and traditional hosts as often as you please. No "lock in" \- although one of Lambda's advantages is how well it ties into the rest of the AWS ecosystem with RDS/S3/CloudFront/etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wow -- the fact that this allows deployment of a "regular" Django application to Lambda is awesome!

Have you checked if Postgres works via the py-postgresql driver? It's implemented in only Python 3, with all C optimisations optional.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haven't tried that yet - want to give it a shot? Pull requests welcome! :D :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Love the name! Django Reinhardt and Frank Zappa are 2 of my favorite artists! ^^

</comment><comment><USER18> 1\. sounds nice.

2\. what the hell is this [http://imgur.com/a7FevNF](http://imgur.com/a7FevNF)? where's at least the close button? thank god ESC works.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you're right about that. Increasing conversion rates by 5% at the cost of pissing off the other 95? Dumb. Sorry.

<comment><USER14> Why is it dumb? You increased conversion rates by 5%.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The website sucks. It asked me twice about my email. Fucking twice. Cant read that shit.</comment>


Go 1 Release Candidate 2 - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/d/topic/golang-nuts/s9roEwj-ZU0/discussion

<comment><USER2> In case someone will start to learn Go reading this article open <http://weekly.golang.org>

I had to figure it out on IRC chat as "go get" to install gotour and other packages is only available in Go weekly builds.</comment>


Qt GUI – Icons and Actions - paul-sebastianm http://mithatkonar.com/wiki/doku.php/qt/icons

<comment> paul-sebastianm The best introduction to how to manage icon themes in Qt in cross-platform and platform specific ways, depending on your target.</comment>


Is Amazon the cheapest cloud computing provider? Myth Busters! - <AUTHOR> http://blog.cloudorado.com/2011/08/is-amazon-cheapest-cloud-computing.html

<comment><USER2> I've never heard anyone even suggest they were the cheapest. I've heard of a lot other adjectives, though.

<comment><USER3> Agreed, also how would you mix in the cost of failure with each of those providers? (just out of curiosity)

Amazom is fairly cheap and is popular so you have lots of support dev-wise from communities.

What about features? Do other providers support something like AMIs, etc?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Would you consider the likes of Linode to be cloud? They basically only offer fixed sized VPS's that are very difficult to scale. E.g. if you want more disk-space you have to pay for an entire VPS.

I think this article is comparing apples and oranges.

</comment><comment><USER5> The comparison doesn't include examples using Amazon's reserve instances - which offer a nice savings.

</comment><comment><USER6> Ugh. I hope "Myth Busting" articles aren't the new "Top X Reasons" articles..</comment>


The Unicorn Hedge - <AUTHOR> https://500hats.com/welcome-to-the-unicorn-hedge-2fd3c6b50f89#.8mtbr7tmq <comment><USER2> The moment someone suggests that their advantage is being smarter than everyone else (or that everyone over 40 is somehow stupid), I look for ways to short them.

I know a handful of F500 execs, and they are formidable. Sure, they may turn to IT to set up their new "iPhone BlackBerry", but they have tools in their belt to compete with that most valley entrepreneurs don't even know exist.

They were the best, brightest and hardest-working of the previous generation. They are us, with more life experience and better networks. Underestimate them at your own peril. They might be dinosaurs, but who wants to jump in the ring with a velociraptor?

<comment><USER3> Saying a large company has trouble innovating isn't necessarily a criticism of the executives. Large bureaucracies are cumbersome, certainly more so on average than a smaller company.

Let me offer the analogy of a big, old software project. It is far more difficult to make a major refactor of some 20-year-old, millions-of-lines system than a script you wrote yesterday. That's not saying the old project was incompetent. It could have been very elegant, the best engineering of its day.

<comment><USER2> You're roughly describing the Innovator's Dilemma, which is an entirely different beast (and definitely not what the author of the linked article is referencing.)

<comment><USER3> No, I'm not describing the Innovator's Dilemma. That's essentially the problem of getting stuck in a local maxima and the need to take a temporary loss to find a bigger hill, so to speak. I was instead trying to describe the troubles of maintaining an old system. They're intricate and all fixes must be hot- patched. Now, if you could just reboot...

For example, suppose you're at a large enterprise that has a silly expense policy involving taping physical receipts to a standard size paper, one receipt per page, then mailing the packet to India, where the pages get scanned and sent to the accounting department, which meticulously compares the receipts against the Excel spreadsheet you filled out and submitted via VBA macros (yes, this is a true story). How easy would that be to change? Compare that experience with working at a 20-person company and asking the accountant if she doesn't mind using Expensify.

Saying that a big company is hard to change isn't necessarily an accusation that the CEO is myopic.

As for what McClure meant by saying public companies will be disrupted... I'm not really sure, since he also contradicted himself saying that they'll purchase their potential disruptors. Perhaps he meant that large enterprises which do not acquire new companies will be out-competed by those who do. That's somewhat of an interesting assertion, but I don't know of any large enterprise that has only an M&A team or an R&D team. They all have both.

<comment><USER2> Ok, to put it differently, the Innovator's Dilemma was the interpretation of your description I could most easily agree with. It's also valid, because that local maxima can also exist in a software project where maintenance has a greater short-term payoff than refactoring.

In that case I'm sticking to my guns and just disagreeing with you. Many companies are horribly operationally inefficient in many ways, but they often don't care if it's not actively costing them significant market share. The moment that expense report process starts impacting the bottom line you can bet they'll be on the cutting edge of resolving it.

<comment><USER3> > Many companies are horribly operationally inefficient in many ways, but they > often don't care if it's not actively costing them significant market share.

My experience suggests otherwise. Big organizations are bureaucracies carved up into little fiefdoms, each little lord trying to maximize something different. The boss of the receipt scanners wants to increase headcount, not reduce costs. As a management consultant, I encountered that situation time and again -- an executive choosing an outcome worse for the company, knowing it'd be better for him or herself, or simply out of pride, laziness, or malice. There's a reason why Dilbert rings true for so many office workers.

A new CEO can try to clean things up, but they can't fire all the middle management simultaneously, so the ship turns very slowly. Going back to the software metaphor, it's not the issue of short-term vs long-term thinking on patch vs refactor, but the problem that the system is live and must be highly available during maintenance.

<comment><USER4> > A new CEO can try to clean things up, but they can't fire all the middle > management simultaneously, so the ship turns very slowly.

Firing all middle management doesn't help: humans are self-interested. What a CEO needs to do is align incentives for middle management with the interests of the firm, so that self-interested middle managers aren't microoptimizing their domains on criteria that don't serve the interests of the company.

<comment><USER3> > align incentives

That's a good buzzphrase, but I've never seen anyone do it in earnest. I was once on a consulting project to help a "Director" pick appropriate KPIs as part of a company-wide effort to improve departmental performance measurement. They rejected my suggestions to measure their effect on profit. My manager, to rescue the project, told me to ask what they wanted to be measured on, write it down, and hand it back as the report. The Director loved that idea and rattled off a list of metrics that could be easily sandbagged and had no clear relationship with company profit. ... And yes, that company is very large and well-respected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The final advice is "invest in tech stuff, because there's a lot of opportunities in the old big companies". That's true, but there's some stuff in between about the old big companies being doomed (as in Oil companies going bankrupt). I don't really agree with that reasoning.

The thing I don't quite know is how the tech culture is going to generate a replacement to Johnson&Johnson in the next 20 years.

Unilever bought dollar shave club, right? So that's good for investors. But if all the big companies buy the successful unicorns.... didn't the big companies win? A win/win, sure, but not the "GE is finished" sort of opening.

I think that a core argument here is that SV can come in and eat these conglomerate's lunches in certain verticals. But that's fine! So many of these companies are in so many domains that having one division go to zero is something that's happened at the beginning of time, right?

So there's an argument that going against these huge companies is a Good Idea(TM). But the success of the SV company does not mean the collapse of GE/J&J/Coca-Cola. Not to mention Wal-Mart.

Amazon is a good counter-example to what I'm saying, as it has taken significant market share from so many different industries. I wonder if SV really has the guts to make "real" capital investments like with Amazon again.

Space X happened because a billionaire just through all his money in, but the "traditional" financing companies (banks) are making those kinds of big bets all the time! I think we're still a ways off from capital-intensive startups ("real money") from getting those. Especially with the 20+ year lead time necessary.

I kinda see the argument for oil going to zero, but transportation is only 1/3rd of oil expenditure. I think Exxon-Mobil will still sell stuff for a while.

<comment><USER6> I totally agree! Also, there is plenty of variance and random luck in the fate of companies. Kodak went down, yes. But many other similar companies survived and thrived. GE once sold personal computers and 3M, magnetic tapes. But they successfully extricated themselves from these businesses when they became difficult to profit off of. While there are certainly deterministic reasons for this, one shouldn't discount the effect of luck. People forget how diversified these companies are. The positions they themselves hold, in terms of markets, are hedged- with short and long bets. Just because they are hedging their bets more by buying Dollar-Shave-Clubs and Jet.coms doesn't mean there's a bubble.

Additionally, on the tech/start-up side too, there were many shorter-lived companies that never lived up to the hype or declined from a position of unrivaled greatness (Cray?).

If there is a fatal error in the OP, it is in the certainty and needless cocksureness of McClure's predictions.

Given the huge sizes of these markets and the value of products and commodities, it is laughable to predict an imminent decline in companies that do pharmas, chemicals, industrials, medical devices, etc. based on metrics cherrypicked to create such a narrative (e.g. shift in highest-revenue companies).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > _They're about to get disrupted by a unicorn / comet._

Assuming they just sit still, sure. But large companies aren't uniformly run by Hollywood stereotypes.

More importantly: Large companies don't need to be better than startups to crush them. They have the depth of finance to sustain a brutal fight.

They only have to be good enough to hold the line. Attrition will do the rest.

Add to which, a lot of F1000 companies have decided that disrupting their _existing_ F1000 competitors seems like a jolly good wheeze and have been studying up on this hunky-funky agile and lean thing.

Disclosure: I work for Pivotal and in Pivotal Labs, we've seen a massive surge in interest from F500s who want to learn to dance. Some of them are quick studies, too.

<comment><USER8> I've seen some of the results of what you guys teach -- you do good work.

This is also the first year that I've regularly had senior executives and C-suites (as opposed to tech) ask me about agile as a qualifying or competitive factor. I'm always nervous when process becomes a qualifier (due to the "best practices are no magic bullet" expectations management it requires, often in the face of the competition's unwarranted claims), but I'm happy to see plenty of F100+s thinking about how to effectively innovate within their core markets without throwing $20m waterfalls at the problem.

<comment><USER7> To tell the truth, we've had to re-learn how to teach in the past few years. Pivotal Labs used to work almost exclusively with startups -- a scale at which transforming most or all of a company's work is possible in a single engagement. When the students are all willing and present, teaching is easy.

Now we work with a lot of enterprises, most of whom by employee headcount outnumber us by 10-100x : 1. We can't boil the ocean. We have to do it a piece at a time.

Often the C-suite are converted after just a few visits to our offices, or after talking to our various office directors (nearly all of whom have come from frontline engineering, product management or design). And typically the engineers, product managers and designers we work with are quick to see the benefits too.

But these companies are very large and sometimes the incentives are highly heterogenous across different individuals and departments. But slowly, surely, they change. And even when they don't completely change, it only takes an isolated pocket of fast movement to keep a large company in the game against disruptors.

That said, we've found that after a while, the ideas and practices begin to spread by themselves. A good example is The Home Depot, with whom we've had several Labs engagements now. Cody, from THD, even gave a tech talk about our NYC office about the experience: [http://original.livestream.com/pivotallabs/video?clipId=pla_...](http://original.livestream.com/pivotallabs/video?clipId=pla_1750f6fc-c569-4b0f-9b1e-ee8938ac5f7f)

Unfortunately, we flubbed the audio, so Cody is a little hard to hear, but if you can hear -- it's a great story.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am shocked to learn that someone who has a large number shares in unlisted tech companies is keen on others investing in these stocks.

More seriously nobody really knows what is a good investment these days. Years of zero or negative interest rates have broken the old models and nobody knows what is to come.

<comment><USER10> I suspect VC with blogs want to use name recognition to get involved in more deals. When a startup gets hot, they're the ones competing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is why all the smart MBA kids who wanted to get rich quick don't go to wall street anymore. They go to silicon valley instead. Which is where we get bro-grammers, and an emerging culture in tech that doesn't understand or care about historical values like open source. When all the shallow people move to tech, tech gets shallow.</comment>


How Big is Email? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@raindrift/how-big-is-email-305bbdb69776 <comment><USER2> Having someones email is like you being logged into their social network instead of them having to log into yours. You need to handle this relationship carefully.

I am 40 and for that reason I am biased with regards to email as I grew up with it. Having said that. I can't find a much better tool than email to build a social project around.

When I started weekendhacker.net I got 3000 signups in a week. First 10 newsletters with around 100 projects I hand wrote but it allowed me to try out and see if there was something of value without spending too much on servers etc (WH is non-profit).

Now I am at 8000 members and with 500 projects under the wing. I have more automation now but it's still centered around the newsletter and it still feels like a community.

Starting a business around emails is the quickest and most telling way of starting a business next to people actually paying you.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm very curious how do you measure size of web or email systems. Email system is fully distributed as well as web is, not all of the web is publicly accessible and most of email surely is private. Because it's fully distributed system, it's really hard to come up with any numbers which aren't completely random estimates. Of course systems like gmail give you a great starting point, if you have full access to their statistics. But gmail is only a very small tip of the iceberg. I'm running my own personal server, and it seems that I handle about 3000 emails / month. None of it is spam.

</comment><comment><USER4> If spam filtering has become so effective (which seems true), why do people keep sending so much of it?

<comment><USER5> The economics still work out, unfortunately. It's really, really cheap to send spam, so it only takes a small fraction of a percent of people who click for it to work out.

Also, not everyone has the same level of spam filtering as you might be experiencing. Imagine an elderly couple who still pays for AOL, etc. I have been seeing a lot of spam recently about "medicare open enrollment starts soon".

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> For me, 70kb on average looks too much to me if I am basing on Gmail's statistics. Each page of Gmail is 50 individual email threads (that is, not counting the number of replies).

I have a total of 12,592 pages and according to Gmail's usage report, 2GB belongs to Gmail and 1.47GB belongs to Google Drive and Photos. So 2GB/(50 _12592) is about 3KB per thread?

[https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome- instant&ion=1&e...](https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome- instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=2GB%2F\(50*12592\))

_ Let alone the amount of attachments (some are a couple MB).

And Google said "Attachments sent and received in Gmail as well as your email messages use your storage." [1]

[1]: [https://www.google.com/settings/u/1/storage?hl=en](https://www.google.com/settings/u/1/storage?hl=en)

So this number Gmail is showing would be the compressed storage space taken on their side?

</comment><comment><USER7> Enjoyed the read! I'm feeling kind of dumb asking this, but what exactly is Threadable? Is it a standalone email service or a plugin for Gmail? Is it supposed to replace a project management tool like Asana/Basecamp/Trello/etc. or is it a supplement that integrates with them?

<comment><USER8> I've been using threadable for a while. In how I interact with it, it's a smarter alternative to a Mailman list and/or a more usable and comprehensive alternative to Google Groups (not a plugin). It's basically a standalone email service, and the members of a threadable group have two options: threadable can be a totally invisible layer and the email shows up in their standard inbox as usual. Or they can use the threadable interface, which is a lovely and simple way to see all the threads your group is discussing, split off new topics, create subgroups, and so on. It has many uses for project management, but I haven't interacted with that side of it as much. Perhaps others can comment on that aspect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is one of the key reasons we built Inbox, which is a new platform for building apps on top of the massive email system.

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

The folks from Threadable are working on great stuff too, and a good example of how you can build a new experience leveraging an existing system.

<comment><USER10> I'm a bit confused about Inbox. Is it a SaaS or installed program?

<comment><USER11> Email API's for developers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I feel compelled to point out that almost all of those numbers are completely incorrect overestimates.

<comment><USER13> Maybe. I feel like the spam number is misleading because OK, maybe the 70% of emails are spam, but spam is smaller than real traffic so it's not 70% of the size of the stored corpus. Also nobody stores spam, they delete it.

<comment><USER14> Two organizations where I've worked at (1000s of people) managed their own email infrastructure, with their own spam filter.. it ranged from 70% to 75% of incoming emails.

Most spam emails are just a few words of plaintext, I'm surprised too the size of the stored corpus is spam in the same percentage. It seems like a few emails with medium-large attachments would outnumber the spam content which should be in the kbs/email at most.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> More visually pleasant email data here: [http://www.voogla.com](http://www.voogla.com)</comment>


Ask HN: Jobs for Science Majors Without Graduate Degrees? - <AUTHOR>

How can a new graduate with a Bachelor's in Physics, Biology or Chemistry make best use of that degree? For programmers and engineers, jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities abound. But a science major asked me for advice earlier, and I was at a loss. I suspect that research positions are occupied mostly by grad students, and can't think of anything other than research that's directly related to those degrees. <comment><USER2> Physics or biology or chemistry? You're cutting a pretty broad swath there.

OK, one thing you can do is to work in positions directly related to your field of study. I have friends with biology degrees who work either as lab assistants in universities, or else somewhere in the bowels of a Big Pharma company doing... I don't know what. Most of these sorts of jobs don't tend to be that great though -- in a scientific organization anyone without a PhD is probably not going to be able to rise very high.

A second thing you can do is... pretty much anything else! If you're not going to be specifically putting your brain to work on hard-science problems then you can go write software or work for a bank or be a management consultant or... I dunno, fly aeroplanes or join the military or do whatever. For a job not requiring any specific knowledge I'd always prioritise a science major over an arts major, simply because I'm more confident that the science major will be numerate and understand how to solve problems.

</comment><comment><USER3> Programming skills can be combined with a science Bachelor's to qualify for some pretty cool jobs. There are some opportunities in bioinformatics, software development at a research company, etc. for Bachelor's holders, although some will want at least a Master's or will require at least a little CS coursework.

Honestly, a lot of degrees are really largely meant to prepare you for grad school, and you just named three of them. In a perfect world, college advisors would let you know this before you signed up for the major.

<comment><USER4> I'm a science graduate and found it very useful working at a startup in Waterloo, ON. I was assigned a fair bit of work related to statistical stuff that directly stemmed from learned stats in science. Maybe you'd get that with another degree, but it certainly didn't hurt to have a background in science + database programming even in a field outside of science.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Research? Fundamental research? Not much of that done these days, and probably not by people with an undergraduate degree only. Even PhD's have a difficult time finding research jobs. Research is mostly done in universities. The great far horizon industrial research labs (Bell Labs, IBM Research, and so forth) either do not exist any more or have been redirected to short-term development support.

Graduate school is a good next step. Either continuing study of a hard science or moving to computer science with an eye of working at the boundary of computer science and real science.

<comment><USER4> And not just graduate school in science. Professional school (re: law) might also be a good fit. The thinking skills you learn in science are pretty useful in other areas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have friends from high school who got bio degrees and wound up being travelling sales reps for pharma companies. It seems like a terrible spot to be in, because you're stuck between the experts who created the drug and the experts who will be prescribing the drug, both of whom know far more about the drug and its interaction with the human body than you probably do. I'm not sure that having a bio degree really helps all that much in the field, except to add some sense of legitimacy to the pitch. '

I hear it pays well though.

</comment><comment><USER7> My rhetorical question would be how is possible for someone to complete a university degree before asking a question like this.

</comment><comment><USER8> You'll probably have to look outside of science, but actually you are qualified for lots of policy and business jobs. The trick is to look for jobs that sound more social science/humanities, and then your science degree (despite being only a bachelor's) will be viewed as "hardcore."

</comment><comment><USER9> Business analyst/product manager. Also, all the big consulting companies hire science majors as consultants.</comment>


IUpHigh - iPhone Aerial Photography - <AUTHOR> http://www.iuphigh.com A funny proof of concept iPhone application <comment><USER2> This app was most likely released by an iphone hard case manufacturer. :-)

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this the beta release before it goes GA 1-April-2009?</comment>


Amazon "Add to cart" button redesigned - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/Miracle-Fatigue-Compression-Socks-Small-Medium/dp/B006T0C6F2

<comment><USER2> I'd love to see there conversion statistics from changes like this.

</comment><comment><USER3> This isn't implement on all pages yet.

I believe they are A/B testing and would love to see it if someone shares the results later.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's not yet in the entire site, from my basic testing it appears to be only in the clothing section. Verification?

</comment><comment><USER5> This is incredible.

<comment><USER6> Sarcasm? Am I missing something?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like it.</comment>