Fermented Foods: Definitions and Characteristics, Impact on Gut Microbiota etc. - <AUTHOR> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31387262 <comment><USER2> Anecdotally, I've been sick for a total of one day since I got deeply into fermentation as a hobby about a year ago (largely thanks to the Noma Guide to Fermentation). On an average day, I eat at least one live lacto-fermented item and drink kombucha, and at least every few days I have something that includes an uncooked live vinegar. I normally get sick at least a couple of times a year. My mood has also been consistently pretty good all year.

It's definitely anecdotal, but it's a significant enough shift for me to think it might have something to do with the fermentation. Bonus: it's delicious, and after much experimentation my kombuchas are now better than commercial kombucha.

<comment><USER3> 2 days to 1 day for N=1 patients over 1 time period is not significant.

"Feeling better" could be real or it could just be cognitive bias. Did you use an app to record your mood multiple times a day? Were you taking less time (better contration) on cognitive tasks? Measurably fewer aches and pains? Better performance during workouts? Or did you have blood panels done and some values were better? Or none of those things?

That you say it's delicious is a confounding factor, as well, because eating food that tastes better improves your mood which can make you feel better without any nutritional or microbiome-related health effects.

To be clear, I'm not criticizing fermentation at all, just whether this anecdote provides any meaningful evidence for anything.

Also, even if there is some statistical significance since "a couple" apparently means far more than 2, since fermented foods displaced other things, what did they displace? Could those have been making you unhealthy rather than fermented foods making you healthier? You'd have to trial non- fermented dairy and tea and veggies as a control, and that control doesn't work very well with dairy because non-fermented dairy is high in simple sugar which can be bad all by itself.

<comment><USER2> "A couple of times a year" is not two days -- it's usually 6-10.

It was, as I said, quite anecdotal, and I'm very aware of the possibility of various cognitive biases. I also have enough stats knowledge to understand that I have not achieved a significant result. Even with that integrated, it has seemed noticeable enough for me to think it may be related.

I have no shortage of delicious food available, nutritional/live or not. I just pointed out that it's a reason to enjoy it anyway. I'm not doing it for a health experiment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm a little surprised that a paper basically concluding that there are no good papers about fermented foods is able to published and presented as research by these authors. Or maybe that field is just so lacking in knowledge that this passes for research. You would think that they'd take the next step and do some trials to advance the field.

<comment><USER5> My guess would be that, due to the very regional nature of many fermented foods, research into those foods is probably locked in the languages and localities of those foods. Heck, there's an entire Kimchi research institute in South Korea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The paper shows the fundamental flaw and short-sightedness that characterizes life sciences in general.

Every single fermented food is treated as if it were a high potency drug.

For example, in one study, for each day of a week people in the groups would eat either 110g of sourdough bread or 110g of white bread. Really, is that your experiment? You are trying to detect differences between eating 110g of two breads, once a day for one week?

Why would anybody in their right mind expect any change in the microbial composition of the gut? Or anything really...

Thus the reality is that not only there is almost no research in the field - that little that is performed is absurdly badly done.

<comment><USER7> That's really not outside the realm of possibility for something to change the microbiome. That's a quarter pound of bread, two servings and about 280 kcal on the loaf I have in front of me. That's a reasonable amount for someone to consume as part of a normal diet.

We know small changes in diet can have a large effect on the microbiome. For example, adding seaweed to a mouse diet can select for microbes with the ability to digest particular polysaccharides within seaweed ([https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0092-4](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0092-4)). A company spun out of the Sonnenburg lab at Stanford is using this tech for microbiome therapeutics in humans (Novome). Those mice were given 10% seaweed by weight, so that serving of sourdough is right in the same range.

My point is, the researchers designing these experiments know what they're doing, and they're well thought out. You can't criticize something if you don't know the details of the field.

<comment><USER6> Your estimate is off by almost an order of magnitude. 100g is not 10% of a person's weight. Maybe you meant 10% of calories.

Also, look at the comparison. It is seaweed! Wouldn't you expect that eating 10% of your weight in seaweed changes a microbiome? It is a massively different food than what we (or mice) typically eat - thus the microbiome has to adapt. I am not saying the discovery is not important - it is the right question, set up correctly.

Compare that to a human eating two slices of different breads for a week. The differences between bread are too subtle. The amount ingested is too little, the time is too short. Your microbiome is already set up for digesting bread. That's all I am saying -

I will stick to my story that there is very little chance that this would ever be sufficient to detect any change.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> To anyone interested, these three lectures from the Royal Institution cover the topic of the microbiome:

\- Why Dirt and Microbes Could Be Good for Us: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlEFI5A3QFM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlEFI5A3QFM)

\- The Microbes Within Us (I Contain Multitudes): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOymDhGxS9Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOymDhGxS9Q)

\- What Role Does our Microbiome Play in a Healthy Diet?: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LUuqxQSaFQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LUuqxQSaFQ)

</comment><comment><USER9> >common fermented foods (kefir, kombucha, sauerkraut, tempeh, natto, miso, kimchi, sourdough bread)

I can get everything on that list easily at a non-specialty store except for natto. I haven't seen it, but I admit my ability to read labels at the Japanese food store is rudimentary. Is it more widely available on the west coast?

<comment><USER10> On the west coast:

You can get it at Mitsuwa in the Bay Area. 99 Ranch might carry it as well.

Not sure about elsewhere.

<comment><USER9> Hey, looks like Mitsuwa is in NJ and Chicago; good to know!</comment></comment></comment>


Flutter is not React - <AUTHOR> https://flutter.thosakwe.com/posts/flutter-is-not-react <comment><USER2> There are so many wrong things said in this post. First off, much of this is a comparison between react (not react-native) and flutter. React-native does not use webviews or a DOM. It uses similar paradigms to flutter, just written in dart rather than javascript.

<comment><USER3> >It uses similar paradigms to flutter

But it's common these days to confuse reader to make self promotion for their tech/services

A huge amount article's on Medium are similar to this one, they stay at the surface and don't really bring anything new to table.

<comment><AUTHOR> The point of this article wasn't self-promotion at all, and I certainly mentioned the similarities between Flutter and React. The point is to highlight the differences, and that when using Flutter, you need to keep said differences in mind.

EDIT: I'm not so sure as to what you mean by "staying at the surface," though - I included examples of patterns that are common in React, their analogues in Flutter, and the reasons why said patterns may or may not apply well in Flutter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I highly recommend reading the DSX issue on github, I am one of the supporter and highly disagree with the author of this article.

They don't seem to know how JSX works, tell us what Flutter wont be instead of what it could be. I am truly sorry for their fatal decisions in this aspect.

[https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/11609](https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/11609)

<comment><USER5> I don't think this is a fatal decision at all.

With Dart 2 syntax making new optional, widget layout is quite compact and easily readable. I think the Flutter team has made the right call here. Sticking with pure Dart has a lot of advantages (tooling, IDE support, etc.)

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with this, and in reference to the prior comment, yes, I've seen the issue in question and read it, I even commented on it a few days ago.

IMO the benefits of something like JSX really don't make as much sense in Flutter. For me, the _main_ thing is, why use XML syntax to represent something that's truly _not_ XML at all?

<comment><USER6> If you think of JSX as a DSL rather than a souped up XML, it makes more sense. XML is just a different kind of abstraction, so rather than thinking of it's output, it's good spots are in the way it helps structure your input.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yeah it certainly seems like whoever wrote this doesn't know much about react

</comment><comment><USER8> Does Dart's type system not support Non nullable types?? I can't see why I would want to use a language without non-nullable types ... — is there a justification for not supporting this somewhere — I'm curious why this wouldn't have been an early requirement for the type system.

      const FrogColor({
          Key key,
          @required this.color,
          @required Widget child,
        }) : assert(color != null),
             assert(child != null),
             super(key: key, child: child);

        final Color color;

<comment><USER9> Some Dart dev wrote here on HN once there was a huge opposition in the dev team against non-nullable types, don't remember why tho

<comment><AUTHOR> The post you're looking for, I think: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14547826](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14547826)

<comment><USER8> Interesting — thanks for the link! I really hope they aren't too late to get non-nullable by default into the language as well... seems like it would influence a lot of the language design ...

I personally found typescript almost impossible to use until turning on the non-nullable by default option and no implicit any (and really started liking it after). I see dart had "no implicit dynamic" — is that widely used in dart? I would turn that on with a quickness ...

Reliable constraints were really important for me to figure out how to use the the optional typing model of typescript to my benefit. Maybe Dart's programming model is simpler since it doesn't maintain JavaScript compatibility... but my suspicion is that features like implicit-dynamic and nullable types will just make it harder to learn how to interpret compiler errors and harder to learn how to write good code in the language...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A bit of a side-topic but I am not sure why people use flux/redux and it is constantly mentioned when talking about react.

We have over 20 very complex projects built in react with no flux. The whole state is managed by react itself and some helpful decorators. You could just easily not use flux/redux - the article should not mention it.

<comment><USER11> People use Redux or any other state management solutions for the same reason they use frameworks and libraries in the first place – all the tough design decisions have been made for them, they just have to follow the rules. Of course you can do with React's internal state alone, but do get it right for complex apps it takes some prior experience and knowledge.

Could you elaborate a bit on what those decorators you mentioned are?

<comment><USER10> This not my point - my point is that although it is optional it is mentioned as the defacto standard. I don't think it is because it complicates things way to much.

I cannot enumerate all decorators in this comment but we have one called useGlobalState where you pass several prop names and a scope name and in return it manages those props for your like any other controlled component. It is fast and it is effective in what it does.

There are a few others that are more specific.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Your article makes it sound like ReactNative uses webview to render the UI, which is not correct.

</comment><comment><USER13> Sounds like all the very best bits of javascript like spreads, arrow functions and destructed arguments are missing from dart.

I'm quite attached to stateless functional components too.</comment>


Zynga stock plunges as Facebook shares begin trading - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/170616/Zynga_stock_plunges_as_Facebook_shares_begin_trading.php

<comment><USER2> new shiny bubble stock to chase! dumping last bubble stock!</comment>


Transitioning to GNIP: Feature Gaps vs. DataSift - <AUTHOR> http://dev.datasift.com/blog/transitioning-gnip-feature-gaps-vs-datasift

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm about to have to manage our company's transition to GNIP for Twitter data and it's not going to be pretty. I've used DataSift for about a year now and can confirm GNIP is way behind feature wise (though DataSift can be quite quite clunky as well). I sure wish they would have bought DataSift instead.

Having had a bunch of experience now with "historical query" use cases, I had considered trying to branch out on my own as a niche competitor solely focused on the historics space. It would be for companies with research-oriented goals such as social science, policy analysis, etc. I'm glad I didn't waste my time now seeing how Twitter has decided to handle their exclusivity...</comment>


Think Distributed, Live at RICON 2014, Academia and Industry Partnerships - <AUTHOR> https://soundcloud.com/thinkdistributedio/ricon-2014

<comment><AUTHOR> Video of the panel is available here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOzvvdibmp0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOzvvdibmp0)</comment>


Cilium 1.5: Scaling to 5k nodes and 100k pods, BPF-based SNAT, and more - <AUTHOR> https://cilium.io/blog/2019/04/24/cilium-15/ <comment><USER2> I can't tell what Cilium is, from their web site. Clue?</comment>


We Analyzed 12 of the Biggest Direct-to-Consumer Success Stories - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbinsights.com/research/direct-to-consumer-retail-strategies/ <comment><USER2> A while ago it seemed like the incredible margins that you could make off selling something DTC was going to make this the dominant business model of the future, but that seems more and more untenable given how pernicious the power of the big social media platforms is.

Being a Warby Parker or a Dollar Shave Club was awesome a decade ago when it easy to get organic reach on Facebook. Not so anymore. That means that these companies now have to raise a lot more just so they can pay it renting the customer acquisition channel. And there's so much more competition.</comment>


When Wi-Fi Won't Work, Let Sound Carry Your Data - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/when-wifi-wont-work-let-sound-carry-your-data <comment><USER2> [https://applidium.com/en/news/data_transfer_through_sound/](https://applidium.com/en/news/data_transfer_through_sound/)

</comment><comment><USER3> so like a modem?

<comment><USER4> Yes, except not in those frequency ranges.

<comment><USER5> The first modems were only in audible ranges:

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


Description of a NetHack AI - <AUTHOR> http://taeb-blog.sartak.org/2009/08/planar-taeb-ai.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Please pardon the editorialized title. I thought the original title was not very descriptive and used the words "NetHack AI" from the first line of the article instead.

I hope those guys will produce the Interhack-like program, soon.

<comment><USER2> No pardoning required; editing a title to clarify wording that would be vague to your intended audience is always allowed. It's why we have the title box, instead of just an automatic server-side <title>/<h1>-scrape.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> See also: the classic Rogue-playing AI "Rog-o-matic" - <http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~appel/papers/rogomatic.html> (Rogue being the ancestor of NetHack)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The comments mention a video (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8nmScWpiJY>) of the bot in action.

</comment><comment><USER4> The article doesn't say this, so it's worth noting that TAEB is a Perl/Moose app.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'd really like to see more descriptions of people applying AI to hard-but- not-commercially-interesting problems.</comment>


Driverless cars are stuck in a jam - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/leaders/2019/10/12/driverless-cars-are-stuck-in-a-jam <comment><USER2> I think researching autonomous cars but continously extracting and bringing the "easy" accomplishments to market, like automated parking, is the more successful strategy. This is what many traditional car manufacturers and to a lesser degree Tesla seem to be doing. Others like Waymo want to skip all intermediary steps and go straight for the big prize. That's a high risk strategy that may or may not pay off.

<comment><USER3> The problem is this is a dangerous strategy. As in dangerous to people's lives. We know how distracted drivers are without _any_ advanced features in cars today. The more "it does some things on its own" options you add, the more likely people are to over-rely on those features and assume the car is capable of more than it actually is, which leads to accidents. Tesla is a perfect example of this, with people assuming it's Level 3ish capabilities are really Level 4 and then happily taking naps or watching movies in the drivers seat while the car plows into a stopped vehicle.

Waymo is doing the right thing for safety here by skipping 3 entirely.

<comment><USER4> Let's not pretend we care about life and safety, when we discuss a handful of lives while we glide over the 30,000 yearly deaths on the road in the US alone. The only truly safe thing to do with cars would be to ban them or to vastly increase licensing requirements.

<comment><USER5> Eh, I agree, BUT... lets not pretend that is immediately viable, either. Severely restricting license access in a country with often _(varying by city)_ terrible public transit _seems_ to be a recipe for disaster.

Your comment quips as if state officials have their finger over the button of restricting licenses, but choose not to merely for lack of care. It is far, far more complicated than you give it credit for. Or so, I imagine.

As HN sometimes forgets, the world exists beyond the lines of SF. Some places have _terrible_ public transport.

<comment><USER2> To elaborate with an example: Germany has much stricter driver licencing (21 hours of theoretical courses, 9 hours or practical lessons with a certified instructor, practical and theoretical exam, and on top of that many people take more lessons to be able to pass the exams. And that's just for normal cars below 3.5 tons). Some small percentage of people try multiple times and never pass the exams.

These strict requirements are certainly a factor why we can have the Autobahn with no speed limit (on 50% of the total length) while still having significantly fewer road deaths than the US (4.2 vs 7.3 per billion kilometers traveled, 6.4 vs 14.2 per 100k vehicles).

But we can only do that in Germany because our public transit is at least passable and our cities and villages are built densely. Public transit could be much better, but in any place with at least 500 inhabitants you can live fairly comfortably without a car if you have to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Driving on roads with human drivers, bikers, pedestrians, animals, freak weather events, maintenance and construction workers, and all manner of situations is - in reality - a problem of unbounded complexity. Unless we create infrastructure that radically reduces the complexity, like invisible "tracks" and banning as many variables as possible (other humans) then nothing short of AGI will get us close to the current below-average human driver.

Self driving cars is Silicon Valley hubris and hype at its finest. I genuinely feel proud about the computer scientists who have wrangled millions of dollars from investors, truly excellent work, I wish all engineers could get that kind of money. Hopefully the billions keep flowing.

<comment><USER7> > a problem of unbounded complexity

A loosely used term here. Especially in terms of it's practical meaning, not theoretical. In this sense, both Dota and Starcraft II were also problems of unbounded complexity, and Alphastar is doing pretty good there.

> nothing short of AGI will get us close to the current below-average human > driver

What are you basing this assumption on? Most prominent scientists in this field don't seem to be agreeing with it. It is by no means self-evident or backed by any substantial direct evidence.

More generally, I just can't understand this attitude you have. How does your thinking process work here, what is that attitude good for and where is it coming from?

Here we have world's brightest people trying to tackle a very important and useful problem, it's hard to know when it will be tackled, but it seems it will be eventually. Some people are disagreeing about when it will happen (perhaps you think it will not be for a 100 years), but at least they are doing something and are making progress. Investors similarly know that it is a hard problem and no one knows when it will be done, but they want to give their money for this problem. And here you are just complaining about the whole situation? What would you have all these actors do, just do nothing? Stop making these cars? Stop trying to solve the problem, stop bringing the progress forward? Or what, working on it in secret and never telling anyone so that god forbid any one person would ever happen to see their presentation and build a faulty (a too optimistic) view on the current state of the technology? Where is your negativity and sarcasm coming from?

<comment><USER8> > Here we have world's brightest people trying to tackle a very important and > useful problem,

No you don't, but world's best paid people are working in it for sure =D

The "AI industry" has a problem. Every few weeks there comes a "big name AI researcher" and call solving another "world's biggest problem," but a 5 minute research into his claim would, yet again, reveal just a hello world on opencv.

This is from where the negativity towards the ai industry is coming from.

Saying that you have "world's brightest people" sounds like a big stretch to an industry outsider, and plainly funny to people with some solid level of computer literacy.

<comment><USER7> I haven't heard of any anecdotes in the form of a big new breakthrough being a HelloWorld in opencv, and I think that any such cases can be more readily blamed on the media and bloggers inflating the actual research papers or results than actual scientists and engineers. But let's say you have experienced such episodes.

So now what, what is your point, what is your goal, what is your vision for this field? What would you have happened better? To just complain about it? Should they stop working on self-driving cars? Should they stop sending press- releases, should they stop selling cars with this functionality, what is it that you want? Do you want them to be paid less? I actually don't understand. What would be your best scenario for this field that would be better than what is going on right now (that big players and many of the brightest (and yes well-paid) data scientists are working on making a safe self-driving car a reality, while many investors are believing in it and are voting with their dollars)?

<comment><USER8> I have no suggestions for you

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm a cheap SOB so I can't read the whole article, but I am really looking forward to a time when a city center no longer allows human operated vehicles.

A time when streets have no lights, lanes or direction of traffic.

A time when during certain times of the day a street can dynamically change from one way to two way and back to one way traffic, all based on the collaborative hive mind of self driving cars.

Cars constantly talking to eachother, the network and making thousand of tiny decisions about what lane to occupy, where to turn in order to expedite their own trip and that of their nearby neighbor.

<comment><USER10> It is stunning to me that we can more easily imagine a city center with a collaborative hive mind of self driving cars than we can one with no cars at all.

Why do we want that future so badly?

<comment><USER11> Because cars are great? You get where you want to go quickly, can carry a bunch of stuff with you, and are protected from the elements. Walking, by contrast, sucks. Here in DC, it's pleasant outside for like 4 months out of the year. For five months out of the year, the daily low is below freezing or the daily high is above 80. That's true in Amsterdam zero months out of the year.

<comment><USER12> Walking sucks in a city designed for cars. Needing to walk past row after row of parking spaces, or taking a half-mile detour to get to the nearest crosswalk. Intersections are designed to avoid slowing cars down, which increases the danger of every crossing.

Walking is fantastic in cities that are designed for walking. Walking by a different shop every dozen steps, rather than every quarter mile. Crossing the street at any location, or even having the street repurposed for walking in.

Yes, snow is annoying. You bundle up with a coat and boots, and then it doesn't matter anymore. The fundamental difference is in how a city is designed.

<comment><USER11> No, walking sucks everywhere. I live in Annapolis which was designed in the 1600s and is not designed for cars: [https://images.app.goo.gl/5zQ8QnR5EPEJggYJ6](https://images.app.goo.gl/5zQ8QnR5EPEJggYJ6). It's great when the weather is nice. But trudging uphill holding a kid or lots of groceries in 90 degree weather is less pleasant than driving straight up to an Applebee's.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> [https://outline.com/y8F3b8](https://outline.com/y8F3b8)

</comment><comment><USER2> The Key quotes:

> Mr Urmson now talks of self-driving cars appearing gradually over the next > 30 to 50 years. Firms are increasingly switching to a more incremental > approach, building on technologies such as lane-keeping or automatic > parking. A string of fatalities involving self-driving cars have scotched > the idea that a zero-crash world is anywhere close. Markets are starting to > catch on.

> The most general point is that, like most technologies, what is currently > called "AI" is both powerful and limited. Recent progress in machine > learning has been transformative. At the same time, the eventual goal—the > creation in a machine of a fluid, general, human-like intelligence—remains > distant. People need to separate the justified excitement from the > opportunistic hyperbole. Few doubt that a completely autonomous car is > possible in principle. But the consensus is, increasingly, that it is not > imminent. Anyone counting on AI for business or pleasure could do worse than > remember that cautionary tale.

</comment><comment><USER14> Is there any work being done on remote controlled cars?

I was thinking the other day that I would pay for a service delivering a car for me on-demand, for me to drive, (don't need a self-driving car when I can drive) and then just leave wherever I am when I'm done. It seems it should be more or less practical to deliver such a service using remote controlled cars.

<comment><USER3> Why do you need a remote controlled car for that? There are many car sharing services in major cities already. Between zipcar, turo, enterprise carshare, getaround, etc. there are plenty of micro rentals available. And I think most people would prefer Uber or Lyft to driving themselves inside a city these days.

But to directly answer your question, I'm only aware of this for trucks with Starsky Robotics.

<comment><USER14> I want it delivered to my door on demand. To schedule a slot in car pool or book a rental I need to pick-up somewhere is out of the question. (Also the whole "pool" things sounds way to social, just want to pay someone and get going)

I don't live in a city, so would need to take the train or bus to the city to pickup a cheap rental as it is.

Don't think we have Uber or Lyft here but my assumption was that they are mostly useful as a taxi replacement to get around within a city.

My use case are more focused on removing the need to have a car in the garage but keep the freedom drive on short notice to run errands and take trips. Perhaps drive to work but take the train home after a beer in the evening.

Having remote controlled cars was simply a way to optimize costs. Should be cheaper to have drivers located offshore somewhere than tied to a particular car.

<comment><USER3> Ok, I see. You've basically described a business model that is completely non- viable. The overhead of owning the car, getting it to you, then getting it back to a central hub would force the price past a point people in your situation are willing to pay. Remote control is not much cheaper than having an actual driver in terms of operating cost (they need to be close enough that latency is not an issue), and much more expensive in terms of hardware, software, and liability insurance.

You'd have to price the service high enough to cover at least an additional $50k in hardware, software, and data per vehicle, lowest minimum wage within 500 miles for the time required to get it to and from you, vehicle operating costs for the distance to get it to and from you, and added insurance because few companies are going to say remote control driving is safe. There's also the regulatory component since I don't think most places allow remote driving.

<comment><USER14> For me it's competing with leasing a car. If it can be cheaper than that I'd consider it.

But yeah, perhaps I'm overestimating the cost of real drivers

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As a counter-point I think large parts of driving have already been automated. We aren't far from long lines of semi trucks following each other through Kansas and then a human hops into them at the next depot to park and unload it.

</comment><comment><USER16> Paywalled

<comment><USER17> Paywall bypassed by CTRL-ALT-R (reader mode in FF) and then CTRL-R (reload).

<comment><USER16> I'm on a tablet. Anyway somebody else has kindly provided an outline link.

I wish paywalled articles were flagged in the title with an indication as to whether the OP had provided an alternative.

I think this was discussed recently, can't remember the conclusion as to why it isn't.</comment></comment></comment>


PyPy faster than C (on a carefully crafted example) - <AUTHOR> http://morepypy.blogspot.com/2011/02/pypy-faster-than-c-on-carefully-crafted.html

<comment><USER2> For fairness sake, I with the author would note the version of the C compiler they used. Otherwise saying PyPy is faster than C is like saying "my 2010 Toyota Prius is faster than a car in a carefully crafted example".

Sorry to sound like a language curmudgeon, but if you're going to make a claim that language x is faster than language y you're treading on thin ice. Languages in and of themselves don't have a whole lot of grounding in reality (especially Python; C has some closer analogues to the machine). That is to say that the devil is always in the details, or in this case the implementation of the compiler. Though my guess is the author of this blog post may not have intended for this small post to be flung across various nerd news sources to invoke the ire of language zealots everywhere.

The fact that the compiler can't inline across file boundaries (which is why PyPy is 'faster' in this case), I would think, is not a limitation of the C language, but rather a limitation of a C compiler (which I assume is GCC).

<comment><USER3> The GCC version has been added to the post. It was "GCC 4.4.5 shipped with Ubuntu Maverick"

<comment><USER2> Awesome, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The PyPy version is faster, as the article and commenters point out, because the PyPy JIT can inline a call across a module boundary. GCC can do something like this with -fwhole-program, but that doesn't work on shared libraries.

Has any work gone into inlining (probably only very simple) functions when linking against a shared library? Something like the "add" function clearly has no side effects if you were to look at the asm in the shared library, but it might be hard for the compiler to figure that out in any more complicated cases... perhaps by adding an annotation to the shared object file? It seems doable, at least.

<comment><USER5> But by definition shared libraries are shared code you are going to load at run time. What if between the time your app was compiled and the time your app was run the add function in the shared library changed? You would have the wrong version of the function inlined.

<comment><USER4> Ah, true... what I said makes no sense. Thanks.

<comment><USER5> Of course that doesn't speak to the fact that a smarter dynamic loading capability couldn't inline at runtime. That is what they are doing after all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _"I added a printf("%f\n",a) to the end of the file so the compiler wouldn't optimize the whole thing away. On my Cure 2 Duo 2.33Ghz, I got for gcc -O3:

1000000000.000000

real 0m4.396s user 0m4.386s sys 0m0.007s

and for gcc -O3 -flto -fwhole-program:

1000000000.000000

real 0m1.312s user 0m1.308s sys 0m0.003s"_

Yet another case of somebody thinking they're making a clever comparison by forgetting to set their compiler flags properly.

<comment><USER7> Please elaborate on what the correct flags would be, for those of use who wouldn't know.

<comment><USER6> Try reading the comment I just quoted.

<comment><USER7> Oh, oops. Sorry, me and at least 3 others had a collective brain fart it seems. I had first thought you meant that both of those sets of compiler flags weren't quite right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> How does it fare to the shootout benchmark game?

Here is comparison of pypy and luajit [http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/benchmark.php?test=all...](http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=pypy&lang2=luajit)

</comment><comment><USER9> I would have liked to see the timing information for PyPy without dynamic inlining.</comment>


Don't Fuck Up the Culture - aps-sids https://medium.com/@bchesky/dont-fuck-up-the-culture-597cde9ee9d4 <comment><AUTHOR> As per Brian, an organizational culture is built around by upholding companies core values. What are AirBnb's core values? Can't find anywhere online.

He says "Surround yourself with people that are so good they initimidate you." Hmm. Sounds like a breeding ground for competitive culture.

(Source: [https://blog.kissmetrics.com/brian-chesky-alfred-lin- culture...](https://blog.kissmetrics.com/brian-chesky-alfred-lin-culture/))</comment>


Co-founder or employee? - <AUTHOR>

I'm working on a startup which connects customers to providers. The site is aimed at a specific niche.
Everything is sort of planned/worked out. I'm already in the coding stage. For this I could use some help (I suppose), but I'll probably will be able to manage by myself.
I told a friend of mine (who is a great coder) the concept and the mockups and he thinks it's a great idea. Even more, he wants to help as a co-founder. The code written for the site will be of higher quality and less 'hacked together' than when I would do it alone.
This is the dilemma: I don't want to split 50/50 just yet. However, I would like his input. I'm able to pay him for a bit of work, on the difficult parts of the site.
Also an option would be to pay him a lower salary upfront and a small portion of shares if the site takes off.
What would you do in a situation like this? Or have you been already involved in this scenario? For who have already 'startupped', is it possible to pull it off as a one-man show, or am I stupid to even consider this? <comment><USER2> I think the right questions is, "Why don't you want to give up shares?" If it's because you're worried about giving up equity, get over it. If it's because you don't trust the guy's judgement, then it might be more reasonable.

Another thing is that you don't have to have a 50/50 split to be co-founders. If you've got a 10+% stake in a company and come in pre-money, I'd consider that a co-founder.

If you're just worried about giving up equity, you'll need to break yourself of that. It'll kick you in the ass later on dealing with additional people coming on or when talking to investors. You'd be much better off building a team with "skin in the game". Just set out a vesting schedule with a 1 year cliff or something so that if somebody doesn't fit that there's a period of time where that can be evaluated. Be straight-up with them that that's happening.

</comment><comment><USER3> To boil down some of the advice I've seen, follow this rule of thumb:

Make him a co-founder if his skills, motivation and interest in the company merit him being a co-founder, but don't deny him the opportunity out of greed.

Having a co-founder to share in the risk and reward of a company makes the process of building the company a lot easier. Would you rather own 50% of a growing, successful company, or 100% of a company that never left the ground?

</comment><comment><USER4> Don't be Jimbo Wales. If you really want/need his help for the "difficult parts of the site", then treat him fairly and make him a co-founder.

<comment><USER5> What's his story?

I tried Googling it, but it's hard to sift through all the fluff.

<comment><USER6> Created wikipedia.

From his wikipedia entry: "Writer Rogers Cadenhead drew attention to logs showing that in his edits to the page, Wales had removed references to Sanger as the co-founder of Wikipedia."

<comment><USER7> I was involved with wikipedia at the time of creation (and the whole gnupedia vs nupedia debate), and Jimbo was the driving force. Larry undoubtedly played a major role as editor-in-chief but from the very beginning it was clear Larry was subordinate to Jimbo (although that doesn't necessarily mean he wasn't a co-founder of sorts).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> You are starting a business, and in many ways this guy has the ability to positively or negative affect the outcome of your business.

You need to assess, whether on your own or through conversations with him, where he fits into the grand scheme of things.

Employees carry out orders and implement code to a product spec

Co-Founders contribute business and product knowledge and opinion, on top of their "employee" duties.

Anything and everything is possible. Successful startups (like the previous fuckedcompany.com) have been built with just 1 guy acting as CEO, Janitor and Chief Coder. Others have been built with 1 founder and a few employees, and others with 2,3,4 or more co-founders.

At some point you'll probably want a co-founder. Both to bounce ideas off of and to give credibility to the overall business. While you're in the garage/basement phase this is not usually your prime concern. It's good to let things just "happen" for a little while until you find your ultimate direction.

For your specific case, given the limited details here, I would probably pay your friend a fair rate to act as a consultant advisor/coder. See what develops and if you feel he is of co-founder quality for this specific project. Like anything there is a tradeoff, and the tradeoff here is that if you later decide to make him an official co-founder, it will have come at the expense of his consulting salary.

</comment><comment><USER9>
        > am I stupid to even consider this?

I think few months down the line you would feel stupid yourself for not having got him as a cofounder. Launch it together, aim for a higher value such that your 50% means more than the 100% you would own otherwise.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, you (OP) are probably stupid to try to do it on your own if you have a capable cofounder readily available. I'm on my own, and if I knew someone who was interested and whose skills and character I could trust, I'd jump at the chance to bring him/her on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Everything I've heard says that 50/50 (or actually any allocation that gives away 100% up front) is a bad idea. Let "the company" keep some or most until you have something worth dividing up. Give your self 25, give him 25, and parcel the other 50% out over then next 6 months, year, or however long it takes to make those percentage points worth something.

<comment><USER12> That's 50/50 "with vesting", and yes vesting is a good idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sounds like you need to decide what you need from your buddy. Do you see him as a way to get some high quality development done in a cash-poor situation, or do you see him as someone who would contribute in every possible way to the success of your startup?

If it's the first, then you're using equity as a way of paying him. You're essentially saying: "Your work would normally be worth $20,000 to me. However, I don't have the money. So I'd like to pay you in shares that have a chance at being worth a great deal more than $20,000 down the line."

In the second case, you're saying "I need a partner, especially one with a technical background. I see you as having the ability to make this venture a success, in ways I can't even anticipate right now. This is a very early stage startup, with all kinds of risk. This thing will consume your life for at least a few years, so you'd be coming in as a cofounder".

It can be pretty difficult to get well employed, well paid programmers to take _either_ deal you're offering, but I'd say the second is probably the best bet in terms of getting him to agree to come on board. Mainly because working equity usually means you end up working for nothing.

However, I would also caution you against making someone a cofounder simply because you need his tech skills and can't afford to pay him. He's a buddy, that's great. But you need to have faith in this guy's abilities as a cofounder.

</comment><comment><USER14> Whichever way you go make sure you write out and sign an agreement your both happy with that sets out what each person is supposed to do, who the work belongs to, and what rewards/position/monies each person would be entitled to (and so on).

Check it with a lawyer, sign it and then leave it with the lawyer.

The guy might be a friend but it helps stops disputes occuring in the future :D (i.e. you both know where you stand).

EDIT: have you already formed the company or not? I couldn't quite make that out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your reply.

No, I haven't formed a new company yet. I do have a business permit for my one-man company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Select him as a co-founder if

1\. He will stay motivated, even when you run of cash and motivation.

2\. He is in it for more than the money and the friendship, but because he actually believes in the idea

3\. When there is a disagreement, he will allow you to make the final decision, and not decide to leave

Don't go 50-50, because this guy may be a good coder, but he's just a coder. The ideas are yours. Later you may bring in 2-3 other people, what percentage do they get then?

I think your idea of a salary at the start + 10% to 15% is more reasonable. Give him an option to get to 20% if he does some particular stuff.

But take him on! A one man show is really tough, particular later when marketing becomes much more important. You'll need someone hacking away while you market.

<comment><USER16> But how much is the idea worth without execution? And if he's a great coder he can help make the idea happen.

<comment><USER15> An idea is not worth much without execution, but the actual code-writing is a little part of the execution. If one has a bit of an ability to code and some money, then one can 'manage' the development using cheap freelancers.

Giving up 50% to a guy who just will do the coding at the start is too much. But if he is good at marketing, analysis, idea bringing and all the other stuff that take a company over the first year, then one can give him 50.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Personally I would go with a co-founder if you feel you can work together. I started my company on my own and it is the one thing I would do differently if I were to do it again.

As people have said, having somebody to bounce ideas etc. off is hugely valuable.

</comment><comment><USER18> My false positive rate for 'cofounder material,' to date, is nearly 80%. Keep that in mind when you consider splitting 50/50.

You almost certainly should vest. But a better way is to run a little trial period of three months or so, maybe with a little bit of vesting, and then negotiate. He should be happy to demonstrate his worth. If he can't you'll have to make the hard decision, but at least it will be based on something.

Keep in mind that friendship does not, in my experience, really survive a broken business relationship, unless you both go down with the ship. Even if the split is respectful and equitable.

</comment><comment><USER19> Take him as a co-founder - no doubt about it. Give him a 50/50 stake with vesting. It is best if you also clear leadership issues and decide on a CEO.

The question that you should really be worried about is how to make it work (read manage conflict) between the two of you. Consider him your startups greatest opportunity as well as the biggest challenge.

Apart from the reasons others have already mentioned for having a co-founder - You need a co-founder not just to save your startup but more importantly and more frequently to save you from your startup.

</comment><comment><USER20> I would not just give me 50% for walking in the door. I wrote a long article addressing this a short time back: <http://bit.ly/StartupEquity>

</comment><comment><USER21> One piece of advice: Whichever option you decide to go with, don't let any "unspoken agreements" go unspoken. If you take him on as a cofounder, for instance, you both need to be clear on what happens if either of you (yes, you included - I've had a start-up where the main founder bailed out...) changes his mind at points 1, 2 and 3 and get that down in writing ahead of time.

When the shit hits the fan it will be too late to have a friendly, productive discussion.

</comment><comment><USER22> Use vesting which will allow you to hire him now without writing over a significant chunk of equity to him before he has proven himself. In a scenario where two people are "equals" (more or less), vesting should usually be done for both. However it seems like you are (or want to be) the "employer" or at least the "senior" founder here and he is the "employee". And if he agrees to this take on things, he may be agreeable to doing vesting for his share alone.

</comment><comment><USER23> A second person in a startup adds hugely to the equation - That's why Ycombinator generally requires 2 or more founders. The ability to bounce ideas off each other just adds greatly to the equation. There's no reason a split has to be 50/50, and paying a small salary and a small portion of shares is a good option. But, from past experience, and echoing what others have said, see a lawyer, and furthermore, insist that your co-founder see a different lawyer.

<comment><USER24> Wouldn't it make sense to kind of decide what you want, in English, and then go to the same lawyer to get help drafting it, and thinking of any details that need taking care of? Going to two lawyers sounds like a good way for the two lawyers to go back and forth for a while, driving up the price quite a bit.

<comment><USER23> I know lawyers cost a lot, but "driving up the price" really means "representing your interests." I've come to regret skimping on a lawyer quite a bit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm right now doing a one person startup (more like an micro ISV). The best part is you have complete freedom. If you know you are right, then you dont have anyone to convince or talk others through it. The downside is, being absolutely sure that one is right is tough. Having someone whom you can bounce your ideas with is really nice. But yeah, you dont have anyone to share the highs and the lows with.

</comment><comment><USER26> Yes, it's possible. But you need the right personality for it, e.g. a lot of self-motivation and critical thinking.

Most people, even most entrepreneurs, don't have the right personality for it. And so it gets a bad rap. But if you do, you can clearly make more money in the long run by not giving up as much equity.

</comment><comment><USER16> If he's a good friend, a great coder and he's willing to work as hard as you are, I'd go for the 50/50 split.

If that's not the case, I don't really know what you should do. Few things are worse than having one cofounder work harder than the other cofounder despite an equal equity split.

</comment><comment><USER27> Just because someone is a cofounder, doesnt mean they need to own an equal share... Try an 80/20 split or something. Dont expect him to pony up more than 20% of the expenses though either.

</comment><comment><USER28> my gut is that you make him a co-founder with a strict (and very clear-get lawyer help!) vesting schedule

he also needs to have skin in the game, which means a monetary investment if you have invested monetarily, and he needs to be full-time if you are full- time (as I hope you are!)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks everyone for your comments, you've given me lots to think and talk about with my friend. Cheers!</comment>


Silicon Valley: A few exciting new business models that actually work - <AUTHOR> http://stritar.net/Post/The-Silicon-Valley-tour-part-7-A-few-exciting-new-business-models-that-actually-work.aspx

<comment><USER2> Coworking, as commonly envisioned, doesn't seem to work so well in a geographically dispersed city like Houston. Commute distances and commuting are too large, and the population of freelancers and the self-employed is dispersed enough to be a big challenge to the benefits of coworking. (Serendipity being chief among these) This is despite Houston's being the 4th largest city in the US.

That said, the resulting isolation is still a big problem for freelancers and the self-employed here. Perhaps widespread retail coworking centers with select services (like high-end telecommuting) could work. They'd have to offer something above and beyond the local Starbucks.

<comment><USER3> +1 to that. We have the same problem here in Dallas. Coworking facilities are centered around downtown and serve the freelancers and creative types more.

Those of us working remotely with families tend to live in the suburbs farther out where the schools are better and safer. Harder to justify the cost and commute for coworking facilities under those circumstances. Much easier to go to coffeeshops :)

<comment><USER4> In other words, dysfunctional city centers == why we can't have nice things.

<comment><USER3> In the US, even the most progressive city centers like SF and NYC are still dysfunctional for families due to public schooling being poor in all but the wealthiest neighborhoods.

My family was ready and willing to downsize to less than half the space we have now to live in the city. But we can't stomach 4 times the cost for the smaller housing plus a lottery system for public schools for our kids.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> All of these models rely on physical components in the user experience. Good code is just one small piece of the startups here. Maybe a factor in why these models are seeing success.

</comment><comment><USER6> Zipcar has just bought Streetcar over here in the UK. Streetcar has been operating for at least 6 years. It's a cool idea but it is hardly new.</comment>


Why does South Korea look so weird on Google Maps? - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/6bdtj0/why_does_south_korea_look_so_weird_on_google_maps/ <comment><USER2> There's several laws of that kind.

Israel (a US law, but most map providers are based in the US) [https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/08/03/israel-cant-hide- eviden...](https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/08/03/israel-cant-hide-evidence-of- its-occupation-anymore/)

China [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_dat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_data_in_China)

In Germany Microsoft/Bing Maps pixelated military installation but used outdated data. In my city a tourist destination was pixelated 60 years after it served as military office building.</comment>


EU Countries Back Copyright Reforms Aimed at Google, Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-copyright/eu-countries-back-copyright-reforms-aimed-at-google-facebook-idUSKCN1Q91WO <comment><USER2> This is sad and disgusting, our speech is being limited completely unfairly and without our consent and we're being told that it's a good thing.

The fact that they're trying to package it as some sort of well-deserved revenge against silicon valley big tech is just tasteless. The EU's big gripe against these companies is their tax situation, if they really wanted to change that then they'd be looking into a unified approach to taxing companies within the EU borders, not hitting the final nail into the coffin of fair use in Europe.

I really envy the US for its constitution sometimes.

<comment><USER3> Don't frame this as a free speech issue. Freedom of speech is as protected in the EU as it is in the US, possibly more.

Freedom of speech in Europe is not just an EU question, but also - and mainly - up to constitutions and legislation of the member states. So of course it varies. But there is less surveillance in Europe on what citizens say online, European media is less centralized than American, there are more parties with opposing views in parliaments, much less political correctness in both politics, business life, and social life. Most importantly, European courts is most member states uphold the protection of the individuals' freedom of speech.

This is legislation aimed at Google and Facebook, and other large companies, yes. Go back 15-20 years, and nobody would have thought that Google would get away with using the creations of content providers without paying a fair share. I don't see anything wrong in Google or Facebook being forced to apply filters. We have gotten used to what is truly an disgusting situation where creators of music, journalism etc. don't get paid and their works are put out on Youtube, Facebook etc. I would have liked to see a higher threshold so that only truly large companies had to worry about filters, but again; these filters will likely be easy to find in 10 different versions for free on GitHub in a couple of years, and better ones you can license for a small fee.

But I agree, Europe should finally start to tax Facebook, Google, Amazon etc.

<comment><USER4> > Freedom of speech is as protected in the EU as it is in the US, possibly > more

It is absolutely not. That's a preposterous assumption. If it was the case then no European state could send people to prison or fine them for having an opinion, yet look at France, where insulting the president is a crime and denying "official" history has landed people in jail (I don't condone either of these, it's just about principle).

There is absolutely no equivalent to the US first amendment anywhere else on the planet.

<comment><USER5> It absolutely is, depending on your p.o.v.

I know the U.S. is big on their "freedom of speech" since it's one of the few things all citizens agree on, an All American Shibboleth, so to speak, but National Security trumps everything.

There are plenty of things you can say at the border that will get you on the next plane back home.

There may or may not be people being held in captivity without access to a lawyer for their speech. We don't know because the proceedings are secret.

Someone who practiced his freedom of speech is currently in hiding in liberty- loving Russia of all places. That's about treason, you might say, but with enough restrictions any speech can be classified as treason.

Speech in the U.S. only seems to be free when it doesn't matter. If it matters there are a lot of restrictions and there can be dire consequences.

<comment><USER6> This comment seems like an entirely disingenuous argument for me. I'm sorry if it's not, truly, but it's an argument fit for a Fox News editorial.

> There are plenty of things you can say at the border that will get you on > the next plane back home.

Do you mean there are things that non-citizens can say at the border of entry to the US that might prohibit entry into the US? That does not seem like a limitation of free speech within the US to US citizens to me.

> There may or may not be people being held in captivity without access to a > lawyer for their speech. We don't know because the proceedings are secret.

What a convenient, non-falsifiable "rebuttal" that takes no position on the matter.

> Someone who practiced his freedom of speech is currently in hiding in > liberty-loving Russia of all places.

I'm a defender of Edward Snowden and think it's sad that he has to live in Russia to avoid prosecution. And yet, this doesn't seem like an argument about "free speech" made in good faith, particularly the relative merits of free speech. Which country permits their citizens to disclose highly classified information with not repercussions, however _unjust_ those repercussions may ultimately be?

<comment><USER7> >> Which country permits their citizens to disclose highly classified information with not repercussions, however unjust those repercussions may ultimately be?

Yeah, its free speech, as long as it doesn't fall under some bullshit definition of "classified" (how convenient that the classified information also includes unilateral infringement of another country's rights, e.g. the downright creepy snooping on the phones of world leaders who are supposed allies). And of course, you should also understand that you _might_ die saying certain things, but hey, otherwise its free speech. And finally, as long as you understand the "relative" merits of the case (i.e. one rule for me, another for you), we can all agree that free speech is what is being practiced in the USA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The final vote hasn't happened yet as stated in the article. If you're an EU citizen there's still time to contact your representatives to ensure they understand the many issues with Article 11 (the link tax, though now it is now more akin to a publisher controlled fee for showing snippets of articles) and Article 13 (the copyright upload filter).

I've already e-mailed my representatives and have gotten responses stating that they will not support Article 11 or Article 13 in the upcoming vote (and they have in previous votes voted against this reform).

<comment><USER9> May I ask which country you are from?

<comment><USER8> Sweden. Out of 20 Swedish representatives 18 are against and 2 have no track record (neither clearly against or supporting): [https://saveyourinternet.eu/se/](https://saveyourinternet.eu/se/)

You can see how representatives in other countries voted by navigating from [https://saveyourinternet.eu/act/](https://saveyourinternet.eu/act/)

<comment><USER9> Unfortunately, out of the 13 Danish MEPs, only 2 are against with 1 having no track record.

:(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Let's be optimistic.

This will severely impact social media. It will be censored like never before, and attacking opponents by "reporting" their posts will be more effective than ever. Trolls will have a EU-sanctioned field-day.

And what real users are going to bother staying on a platform like that?

Maybe this will revitalize hosting of personal websites where there's no "platform" to censor your free speech?

<comment><USER11> Not gonna happen in Germany. In Germany if you own a website, you're obliged to tell the world your home address. (That is, by the way, why everyone knows where Lennart Poettering lives).

<comment><USER12> That's not true.

You need to provide an impression if your website has a commercial or journalistic character. Yes, it's vague and up to the interpretation of a court.

<comment><USER11> > Yes, it's vague and up to the interpretation of a court.

Exactly. Depends on how much risk you're eager to take. And as a non-lawyer I'd prefer to take none. Most guides for laymen I've found stated that if it's not just about your kittens or vacation, it's not "purely private" any more.

For instance, aforementioned Lennart who writes about his open source projects preferred to provide this info.

I've also heard that the lawyers in this extortion business know some tricks to make the case land on a judge with "correct" interpretations of the related paragraphs. But that's not for sure, I've never been sued in Germany luckily.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Huh? If anything, the reform codifies systems like Content ID and makes it horribly expensive to compete with Google and Facebook. And all that to cater to US copyright industry - a fine example of EU shooting itself in the foot.

<comment><USER14> All we need now is an independent content id system that companies might use to check content against. Doing nothing will leave this to the wrong parties to implement and turn into a control point.

IMHO a simple open platform could allow content creators to register their content. Anyone could then choose to check content id against such a platform. In case of conflicts, that platform would be the place to resolve things with escalation options and arbitration built into the platform. Basically getting to a world where people register ownership of content they created would make sharing that content safe.

IMHO this is a very sane solution to this problem. Right now the problem is that we rely on content id based on databases provided by the media industry. Any conflict in these systems means the wrong decisions get taken. With an open platform, you could argue that you checked and in case of conflicts with competing systems decide even document the outcome of any manual evaluation of ownership.

IMHO this would be in the spirit of this law, protect content owners against abuse of their content, and do so in a fair and transparent way where all sides have a chance to get their rights respected. The only problem with the current way of doing content id is that it is unfair and biased towards whatever version of the truth big media companies push as the truth.

<comment><USER15> How about instead of spending billions of man hours and dollars on an antiquated conception like intellectual property when the fundamental assumptions of its premise have changed (primarily, that information was not functionally free to store and transmit instantly to anyone, anywhere) you say "hey, maybe it doesn't make sense to create artificial state run monopolies for an imaginary incentives structure we have no evidence actually works and could try something else, including nothing, and see how that goes".

<comment><USER14> Good luck with that debate. In the real world copyright, trademarks, patents, international treaties, etc. and the national laws of hundreds of countries governing those are a reality. This stuff is super complicated. Within the context of all of that, coming up with a pragmatic way forward is the only debate worth having.

<comment><USER15> A pragmatic way forward is absolutely to ramp down the institution over time as obsolete. When the car came out farriers did not lobby the government that they needed their institution protected because that is just the way things are.

Its the same argument that was constantly used in defense of segregation, slavery, imperialism, colonialism, feudalism, the belief in the humors, the prohibition of drugs, why housing prices are out of control, etc - its always "thats the way things are and they cannot change". Which is total bollocks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have been searching for this but couldn't find any answer, let's say a company has a generic public platform where people can upload text, images, videos, audio, ... how are they supposed to be able to check for copyright infringment against every single upload?

I know that Youtube has its own content id system, but for anyone without YT's resouces, is ther any 3rd party service to which you can pass content and get back a yes/no answer to "anyone copyrighted this thing?", if yes, what are the costs? the effectiveness?

<comment><USER17> > how are they supposed to be able to check for copyright infringment against > every single upload?

They aren't. You can't. I'm not sure if this is an oversight, or deliberate -- the law was written by lots of people, so the truth is probably in-between -- but your best bet is to avoid the EU, or stick to major hosting providers like YouTube.

<comment><USER18> i deeply hope, as a EU citizen, that reddit, youtube, and all other platforms kill access by EU citizens the day this law takes effect.

Shouldn't take longer than a Week to get this rolled back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> What a bullshit title. It is not aimed at Google and Facebook. Those are the companies that have more than enough resources to be compliant. It's the small and aspiring companies that are not yet established that would suffer the most from this directive. Googles, Amazons and Facebooks would be just fine, safer then ever since the barrier to entry is bigger and bigger with every new directive.

<comment><USER20> You're right about the consequences, and the title is misleading, but I think the exact words are probably true.

This is _aimed at_ Google and Facebook, in the sense that the people voting for it cite Google and Facebook as targets, and the companies advocating it view Google as decreasing their profits. That's where publishers are hoping to find new revenues, and where lawmakers are using public anger to garner support.

Unfortunately, the people drafting the law have terrible aim, so it's going to _hit_ primarily startups and not-for-profit sites, raising Facebook's staffing costs slightly while crippling creativity and public access to information. Presumably the people looking to profit on Google links simply don't care about that, although I can't tell whether the lawmakers supporting this don't care about the harms or are genuinely too incompetent to understand what they're doing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> "'online content sharing service provider' means a provider of an information society service whose main or one of the main purposes is to store and give the public access to a large amount of copyright protected works or other protected subject-matter uploaded by its users which it organises and promotes for profit-making purposes. Providers of services such as not-for profit online encyclopedias, not-for profit educational and scientific repositories, open source software developing and sharing platforms, electronic communication service providers as defined in Directive 2018/1972 establishing the European Communications Code, online marketplaces and business-to business cloud services and cloud services which allow users to upload content for their own use shall not be considered online content sharing service providers within the meaning of this Directive." [https://juliareda.eu/wp- content/uploads/2019/02/Art_13_unoff...](https://juliareda.eu/wp- content/uploads/2019/02/Art_13_unofficial.pdf)

</comment><comment> phoe-krk They are supposedly aimed at Google and Facebook but have enough range to burn most of other services in the European Internet in the process.

<comment><USER22> This seems to me like it will have exactly the opposite intended effect, that the large players are the only ones who will be able to operate under this new regulatory burden.

<comment><USER23> > _...the large players are the only ones who will be able to operate under > this new regulatory burden._

And even YouTube is pretty sure they'll struggle to comply, despite having the most sophisticated and error-resistant rights management system on the market.

<comment><USER24> Beside ML and AI hugely based on farms in Indonesia watching everything reported... Its proven that its impossible to track whole content of ytb because simply it is "too much of data and ppl always try to screw over your detection system"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Create. Produce original content. Keep the copyright. Don't consume canned content.

<comment><USER25> Fair use exists. This law makes it illegal to use clips of a movie in critiquing it, or cut snippets of images to form a collage, or point to examples of art, film, and music in an educational setting.

Copyright was never intended to be pervasive and absolute. Copyright is supposed to protect the commercial potential of the original work by keeping people from making copies that supplant the market for the original, ie, piracy. Content filters and link taxes are a bastardization of Copyright.

<comment><USER26> No it does not. This is the GDPR discussion all over again. "This will kill the internet" and "All sites will be subscription only" etc. I'm not for the proposed law but it does not does not block fair use.

<comment><USER27> The law doesn't block fair use, but the only way for content platforms to be compliant is rampant overfiltering which will kill fair use.

<comment><USER21> >rampant overfiltering which will kill fair use

True! However, according to the draft of the Article 13, this may happen in the case of providers "of an information society service whose main or one of the main purposes is to store and give the public access to a large amount of copyright protected works or other protected subject-matter uploaded by its users which it organises and promotes for profit-making purposes." [1]

This is not an argument in favor of upload filters. Maybe we should push for legislation about the obligation to make any upload filter completely transparent (program source).

[1] definition from the top of the document [https://juliareda.eu/wp- content/uploads/2019/02/Art_13_unoff...](https://juliareda.eu/wp- content/uploads/2019/02/Art_13_unofficial.pdf)

<comment><USER28> It is impossible to write a program that distinguishes between legit and illegit uploads. Basically everything created in the last 90 years is copyrighted. Be it video, picture or writing. How should an upload filter identify an uploader als the legit copyright owner?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Does anyone have a link to the actual law? All I can find are news stories with too little information.

<comment><USER30> Nobody complaining about the law has actually _read the law_. Julia Reda doesn't want you to read the law she's opposed to, she wants you to be opposed to it based on the "link tax" and "upload filter" nicknames that have been coined for it.

<comment><USER31> > Julia Reda doesn't want you to read the law she's opposed to, she wants you > to be opposed to it

I've skimmed the relevant passages and it didn't seem to me like she's claiming anything that's not true. You can play the word game of if that particular phrase was there or not, but the _intent_ is clear for anyone, except perhaps those with vested interest in having this passed.

<comment><USER30> The narrative of focusing on "those with vested interest in having this passed" is ignoring those with a vested interest in it _not_ being passed. Julia's meeting list on her website is a Who's Who is Google and organizations Google is a part of or funding.

I would argue I have a vested interest in having this passed: I want an Internet which isn't predominantly controlled by one corporation which steals content from everyone else and passes it off as their own. I have no employer or funding source based on this, I don't work for anyone in the movie, music, news, or tech industry, I just want a better Internet, and the EU both in antitrust and copyright reform, seems to be delivering it.

<comment><USER31> > Who's Who is Google and organizations Google is a part of or funding. I > would argue I have a vested interest in having this passed: I want an > Internet which isn't predominantly controlled by one corporation which > steals content from everyone else and passes it off as their own. I have no > employer or funding source based on this, I don't work for anyone in the > movie, music, news, or tech industry, I just want a better Internet, and the > EU both in antitrust and copyright reform, seems to be delivering it.

I am sorry, but this seem misguided. Corporations like Google may very well be the only ones capable of handling this and even offer a service to scan everyone's files, meaning smaller businesses will let Google know about every single upload they receive, making Google even stronger and effectively banning zero-knowledge, privacy focused providers.

This is like internet 'fast lanes'. It isn't Google who would not be able to pay.

Certainly makes me re-think my Mastodon instance strategy and future plans to set up business in the EU.

I am someone who is on what many would call the 'far-left' and not at all against good regulation, but this simply isn't one of them.

<comment><USER30> This is a common refrain of big tech: That regulation and consumer protection designed to reign in their abuses won't be a problem for them, and will hurt the little guy. It's interesting how loud they plead that they won't be hurt by regulation aimed at them. (Or that they're still opposed to it, if it will actually eliminate the competition.)

The answer is that that line of argument is bull---- and always has been. Small outfits using reasonable moderation practices will never have a problem with any sort of copyright regulation. The issue crops up when massive companies have made copyright abuse a major component of their largely automated platform, and done everything possible to avoid moderating content because legitimate, quality moderation does not scale. And as tech giants, they want to avoid things that don't scale.

The interesting thing is that the so-called "upload filter" law, that everyone says YouTube will already be fine with because of Content ID, will not be satisfied with Content ID. Because a real, human person must be handling appeals, rather than the little automatic deny that Google currently does. It will cost YouTube a massive amount of money to adopt this on it's scale, but will cost small websites or platforms nothing: They already have humans that read their email.

<comment><USER31> > That regulation and consumer protection designed to reign in their abuses > won't be a problem for them, and will hurt the little guy. It's interesting > how loud they plead that they won't be hurt by regulation aimed at them.

If this is really aimed so squarely at them, it could be worded more precisely to just target say "multinational corporations with monopolies in on-demand media distribution", but it's not. This is because the aim is to yes, extract as much money from Google etc. as possible, but also to make sure there's nothing that could ever replace YT because it would be handicapped from the get go.

> The answer is that that line of argument is bull---- and always has been. > Small outfits using reasonable moderation practices will never have a > problem with any sort of copyright regulation.

Again, it could have been made very explicit that that's the case, in fact amendments in that direction have been proposed and rejected.

> Because a real, human person must be handling appeals, rather than the > little automatic deny that Google currently does. It will cost YouTube a > massive amount of money to adopt this on it's scale

As problematic as YT is, I highly doubt this is an attempt to promote the adoption of PeerTube etc. Rather, it is likely to be an attempt to crush an outlet where almost anyone can become big without a publisher.

> but will cost small websites or platforms nothing: They already have humans > that read their email.

Email? Huh? I don't think "John's Portfolio Website" is the concern here. The concern is a small business that is a platform, say a new Reddit, or even a YouTube alternative. Say this does displace YouTube. How is an alternative with 5 employees going to deal with this?

Also, you didn't address the privacy question. What about platforms that perhaps want to offer zero-knowledge file storage/upload? Are we fine with this being just dead now, or what?

P.S. Also, it's not always the case that because something may inconvenience a monopoly, (Google), that it is automatically beneficial to everyone else. Article 13 is specifically NOT worded to target JUST Google-size businesses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> To get an idea of how the European Commission thinks, you really need to read their retracted Medium post: [http://archive.fo/cZa14](http://archive.fo/cZa14)

It oozes contempt, is filled with strawman arguments, and makes no effort to disguise its disdain for "the big Californian companies".

Some highlights:

 _> Good journalism costs money and without a free press there is no democracy.

> Because if creative people don't get paid, they can't afford to be creative. > No Mon = No Fun

> At the moment the balance of power in who gets paid for such royalties > resides overwhelmingly with the big Californian companies — who are worth > around $1 Trillion.

> Are we in a world where ordinary people side with the fire breathing dragon > against the knight with a blue and yellow shield? _

</comment><comment><USER33> The response is to offer Google News in europe with snippets from newspapers from Québec, Mexico, Brasil, Saint-Marin...

</comment><comment><USER34> Hahahahahahaha.

No.

</comment><comment><USER35> This is what I despise about "news". If this was china or russia or venezuela, etc, the headline would be "China tightens grip on their people" or "International community concerned as China becomes more authoritarian" or "Pro freedom activists protest against China's draconian censorship". It would be spun as something more ominous than "reform". But reuters being reuters and also a major supporter of censorship, of course spins it in a pro-censorship manner. Also, considering that google and facebook support these "reforms", how are they "aiming" it at them? These laws will entrench google and facebook and secure their monopoly positions. The biggest beneficiaries of these laws are google and facebook and of course large media companies, like reuters.

I wonder what the headline would be if reuters and the news industry was against these "reforms".

<comment><USER36> Take this with a grain of salt since it's their own website, but Youtube themselves say they wouldn't be able to let any content on their platform stay up even if it slightly resembled copyrighted content. Think the current Content ID system times 10.

[https://www.youtube.com/saveyourinternet/](https://www.youtube.com/saveyourinternet/)

[https://youtube-creators.googleblog.com/2018/10/a-final- upda...](https://youtube-creators.googleblog.com/2018/10/a-final-update-on- our-priorities-for.html)

<comment><USER37> The webpage you linked is from last year I think. Article 13 has since been updated

<comment><USER38> It has been updated to something worse:

[https://juliareda.eu/2019/02/eu-copyright-final- text/](https://juliareda.eu/2019/02/eu-copyright-final-text/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Who is John Galt? The man who decided to stop the engine of the world, and did. I think he's about to make an appearance.</comment>


Safe and Sorry – Terrorism and Mass Surveillance - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9_PjdU3Mpo&feature=em-uploademail <comment><USER2> This video is a good share for non-technical friends and family to help them better understand the mass surveillance issue.</comment>


Airbnb JavaScript Style Guide - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/airbnb/javascript

<comment><USER2> I'll agree with many of the guidelines, but some are just personal taste. For instance, I like to indent my JS with 4 spaces and so does Douglas Crockford (<http://javascript.crockford.com/code.html>)

<comment><USER3> I prefer to emulate the prevailing standard of my server side language when it comes to indentation, so when I'm working with PHP in the back end it's 4 space when I'm working with Ruby it's 2.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> We hope it helps!</comment>


Pencil on Firefox - <AUTHOR> http://pencil.evolus.vn/en-US/Home.aspx

<comment><USER2> Interesting, we were just discussing this at work, which app to use. One of the requirements is 'must work on Linux (Ubuntu) because that's what pretty much all the developers use. Maybe we'll give this a try.

<comment><USER3> You can always try <http://www.lucidchart.com/>

<comment><USER4> I found Lucidchart to be pretty clunky.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does anyone have any examples they could share? (not just screenshots) The tool looks really cool, and I love how it runs out of Firefox, but I'm having trouble seeing what/how it could be used.

</comment><comment><USER6> so why this over photoshop? ps aint that hard.

<comment><USER7> #1: This is free, whereas Photoshop is one of the most expensive web programs in existence.

#2: I can imagine people other than designers finding this tool useful.

#3: They are different types of software. Photoshop is for manipulating raster images. This is diagramming software. As such, they have different sets of features.</comment></comment>


Amazon WYSINWYG: Buy Luggage Scale but Get a Cake Knife - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.in/Handheld-Display-Electronic-Digital-Weighing/dp/B0151DVV8U/ref=pd_rhf_se_s_cp_4?ie=UTF8&dpID=411Zbk29GIL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_SL500_SR135%2C135_&refRID=05MF6P5Q0SX2HW5KKWHV <comment><USER2> What I find really funny is the obvious shills who wrote such generic five star reviews without commenting on the item, the picture, or the product itself.

No wait ... now that I think about it I'm more saddened that even our spammy Mechanical Turks who might have been paid a penny for each review are now being replaced with bots.

</comment><comment><USER3> So 'Shopo', who's online shop this, uploaded the wrong image. Minor error I guess. Amazon is just a platform in this case.</comment>


Ask HN:Is component factory a good software design practice? - <AUTHOR> Recently I have been looking through older code that was designed with a component factory, and it is some of the most confusing stuff I have dealt with.  Granted I am a stronger C developer than C++ so some of the inheritance is also new to me.  I may have the opportunity to refactor this code, but I don't know if I should.  Is component factory still a good paradigm for designing software? <comment><USER2> Often used to make unit testing easier. For that specific purpose, interpreted languages may have ways to monkey patch in mock objects and methods making it unnecessary.

Patterns are mostly useful as a well thought out way of solving some problem, and as a language to describe conceptually difficult things so that other programmers don't need to figure out what you are doing. If there is a way to solve the problem that you prefer, or no one around you understands the pattern, better choose another option.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your perspective. I hadn't thought about the testing aspect.</comment></comment>


Mariana Trench: Deepest-ever sub dive finds plastic bag - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-48230157 <comment><USER2> You're picturing plastic waste in the oceans wrong. Most of it comes from fishing gear that's abandoned or lost, not disposal of waste like plastic bags. In total 80-90% come from Asian and African countries with poor environmental policies.

[https://www.acsh.org/news/2018/07/26/asia-africa- cause-90-pl...](https://www.acsh.org/news/2018/07/26/asia-africa- cause-90-plastic-pollution-worlds-oceans-13233)

For the record, I am a scuba diver who has participated in the "Dive Against Debris", we use paper straws at home, I bike to work a couple days a week, and switched to reusable bags years before they were required in my locale, etc. I'm not saying that reducing single-use plastics isn't a worthy goal (and microplastics are just as bad as they seem), but developed country waste is getting safely landfilled. Your plastic straw is not ending up at the bottom of the Marinara trench.

<comment><USER3> > but developed country waste is getting safely landfilled

That's definitely not true in the UK. A lot of our "recycling" has been being shipped to China until recently. I believe that other countries have been doing that too.

<comment><USER4> It's hard to define "safely" landfilled as well. Many places still leak out toxic leachate into water tables due to a lack of barriers on the landfill. They also severely disrupt large tracts of land. They also vent off tremendous amounts of methane. There isn't much safe about most landfills out there.

<comment><USER2> True, there is a lot of variety there. Around here everything is properly lined and the water table monitored for various poisons, but that's not true everywhere. The methane is a very potent greenhouse gas, and I see little progress on that, even in eco-conscious California. Composting more or less eliminates the methane but I see maybe half of the households in our neighborhood putting out a green waste cart.

Global warming is really the problem, and I will admit to being a huge hypocrite on that. I drive about half the average American's 13.5K miles / 21.K 7km, but fly a lot, probably 20K miles / 32K km. Sigh.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The most exciting news is that they made several extremely deep dives in quick succession, advancing the way to a future of regular deep sea exploration. Congrats to the team!

<comment><USER6> Do you think this has the potential to result technologies allowing the exploitation (extraction) of deep sea natural resources (i.e. minerals and metals)?

It seems people are more excited by exploiting the Moon for resources, but deep sea should be more economical once extraction tech is figured out.

<comment><USER7> I'd rather exploit the moon, to the best of my knowledge nothing lives there, and I doubt we'd make a large enough dent to affect tides or other moon- related events.

<comment><USER6> The Moon is nice, but for Earth usage, extracting on the Moon seems like it would be more energy expensive than on Earth, no?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Instead of anthropocene we might be better to call the current era the plastocene.

<comment><USER9> With some previously non-existent radioactive elements mixed in for good measure. This layer of plastic, radioactivity, and airliner exhaust will be forever buried in the geologic record at every point on the earth. What fun!

<comment><USER10> Do you think the geological record might indicate a type of 'evolution and migration' of plastics across the globe?

<comment><USER11> Not sure it will because it's a very short time period that plastics have existed geologically speaking and the time periods found in rock/soil/ice are generally pretty imprecise until we can relate them to something like tree rings that show precise year cycles where there's a large event like a fire that shows up in both the rock/soil layer and in trees. Generally without large anchoring events like that the best we get is very large time frames for events and mostly in relation to other events in the local area where you can measure forwards and backwards (up and down in the rock formation) relative to other events.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Plastic reached where humans never managed to.

Great, just great.

<comment><USER13> I think about it this way - the planet will survive, humans will not. Within a year of us being gone the planet will take over everything we ever owned. Weeds will break through the streets and house foundations, and in a decade or so (blink of an eye in Earth time) it'll be like we were never here.

Well except for all the garbage we left behind. But even that will become food for something.

<comment><USER14> in the grand scheme of things, humans and what we have produced is nothing. Given enough time everything will be decomposed. On in the words of a great comedian: "the planet is fine, people are f'ed"

My worry is that we will transform Earth into a landfill and in desperation we will search (and find) another planet to trash. Humans are very very creative when it comes to survival. Only a fraction of people alive will make it to the new planet. Rinse and repeat.

<comment><USER15> Given enough time, the Earth will be incinerated by the sun as it expands into a red giant. Solved the plastic problem!

Though as you said, I'm sure we'll have a few hundred (thousand) landfill planets by then.

<comment><USER16> On a smaller scale, how about using a mass accelerator to dispose of trash by shooting it into the sun?

<comment><USER17> I think the sun is further away in terms of energy required than one would expect. You don't just have to escape the Earth, you also need to cancel or redirect its orbital velocity around the sun to get a trajectory that reaches the sun.

<comment><USER18> Then throw it into space, whatever the direction. The universe is so vast, even if the entirety of the earth was garbage it would be nothing compared to it ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The best thing about this is that the vessels' names are inspired by Iain M. Banks's Culture novels.

[https://fivedeeps.com/home/technology/names/](https://fivedeeps.com/home/technology/names/)

</comment><comment><USER20> There ought to be a principle that packaging is evaluated on how much harm a 'careless' disposal would cause: even though a paper bag takes many times more energy to produce than a plastic one, it causes less harm when disposed of by dumping.

</comment><comment><USER21> I believe we've known about plastic bags at the bottom of the Mariana Trench since [1998]([http://www.godac.jamstec.go.jp/catalog/dsdebris/metadataDisp...](http://www.godac.jamstec.go.jp/catalog/dsdebris/metadataDisp/JEDI_KAIKO0073_00010V?lang=en))

</comment><comment><USER22> Reading the comments here is a bit scary. Is taking the same 4-5 plastic bags back to the supermarket each week not super common everywhere?

<comment><USER23> Or cloth bags. Seriously, they are stronger, hold more stuff and hurt less because of sharp edges. All you need to do is just carry them

<comment><USER24> I use cloth bags, too. But, ignoring the marine dumping problem, cloth bags can be the worst.[1] You would need to reuse each thousands of times to be worth using over LDPE bags.

1\. [https://qz.com/1585027/when-it-comes-to-climate-change- cotto...](https://qz.com/1585027/when-it-comes-to-climate-change-cotton-totes- might-be-worse-than-plastic/)

<comment><USER25> That's more an indictment of cotton than reusable bags. Other materials are fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Cool. That would be a good place to stick plastic bags.

</comment><comment><USER27> Trash flows downstream. Not very surprising.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm old enough to remember being berated by a family member for using paper bags instead of plastic bags because, quote: "Plastic is recyclable!"

<comment><USER29> Well they're reusable, which is even better than recyclable. They also use less materials to make and are stronger for the same weight, so they also reduce, which is better still.

Just don't throw them into the ocean. But that much should have been obvious.

<comment><USER30> I don't know what kind of plastic bag it was, but the grocery bags we get where I live start to develop holes rather quickly so they're not actually reusable. They also aren't allowed in my city's recycle bins because they apparently just get stuck in the sorting machines and cause all kinds of issues.

When I tried saving them for various uses and noticed they develop holes quickly, I thought maybe that's good - maybe these bags were made to decompose quickly or something, but that's not the case. And now that we know microplastics are inside lots of organisms (including ourselves) I can't help but just feel like plastic is just a nasty SOB.

We've ended up getting a bunch of those cloth re-usable grocery bags and using those. I also use containers rather than zip lock bags. But I doubt I make much of a difference because when I take my morning walks on trash/recycle pickup days I frequently see bins filled to the brim with plastic water bottles where it seems like people just buy multiple cases of water bottles and drink from them like they're cups or soda cans and toss them.

<comment><USER31> I reuse the paper grocery bags. They can usually be used 10 times or more before they disintegrate, then I use them again as trash bags. I wonder why I've never heard anyone mention this.

The grocery store has no problem at all with me bringing back the paper bags and stuffing my purchases in them. They've never said a word about it. I never see anyone else do it.

<comment><USER32> The grocery store loves you. Bags are a major expense for them - unless you're in an area where they get to charge.

The only potential issue is extra scrutiny from loss prevention.

<comment><USER33> > unless you're in an area where they get to charge.

Why don't they do this everywhere? Is it because customers would throw a fit?

<comment><USER34> In my city, it took a long time to get a plastic bag ban passed because of strong opposition from plastic manufacturer lobbyists who pretended that they were taking the side of "local businesses".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Plastic bags are the cthulu we've always been expecting to find deep in the ocean

</comment><comment><USER36> What are you talking about? No one actually needs single-use plastics; they're a wholly unnecessary, superfluous byproduct of consumer capitalism. Unless there's some medical applications I'm not aware of, the world would be a better place if most single-use plastics disappeared tomorrow.

<comment><USER37> While you are correct, I do believe that these feel-good campaigns distract from the corporate polluters that cause the vast vast majority of these problems.

If you get people fighting over straws which are some exceedingly small amount of overall ocean plastics and pollution, then no one's gonna pay attention to the real villains.

<comment><USER38> > If you get people fighting over straws which are some exceedingly small > amount of overall ocean plastics and pollution, then no one's gonna pay > attention to the real villains.

Plastic straws are a negligible fraction of plastic pollution, but they represent much more than that. Viral attention on plastic straws serves as a convenient lever by which the broader topic of environmental stewardship is pushed to the forefront of peoples' minds, indirectly achieving the goal of cleaning up the world. At least, that's what I hope, not what I expect.

Sure, some people will react with supercilious contempt at the hordes of selectively ignorant masses signalling virtue with their social-media images of strawless drinks. It's not like their personal choices are saving turtles, let alone the oceans. But this misses the point: the anti-straw campaign reminds entire populations that people collectively throw away too much plastic, and that things need to change -- at all levels, from the individual upward.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Is there a list of governments, companies and other organizations that documents how much waste they direct into the sea?

Or is the majority of it individual people littering?</comment>