Charts show how little progress has been made in limiting greenhouse emissions - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/immersive/d41586-019-02711-4/index.html <comment><USER3> Is so obvious where this is all going: The wealthy -the factories owners and their close allies- the very same ones ignoring the pledges to stop contributing to climate change will be the only ones protected enough from most damages of climate change, only the wealthy will afford to live in the cities with livable temperature, to buy potable water, only the most resilient of the poor and middle-class will survive, and their youngsters will be used as soldiers to fight for natural resources, some of their families will enjoy those resources but only enough to breed more soldiers to keep the wars going.

<comment><USER4> Frankly this kind of doomsaying view has no basis in reality. While it's true that unmitigated global warming will impose a very large economic cost, it's simply not the case that it's going to turn the world into some unlivable hell-scape. There's just no basis for that belief in the actual evidence.

The best estimates say that global warming will lower per capita GDP by somewhere between 5-20% by 2100. That's a tragedy, because in aggregate it represents a huge amount of unnecessarily lost wealth. But a 5-20% in GDP per capita does not mean that we'll be dying in the streets.

Let's be very conservative and assume global GDP per capita grows at 2% per year. In the baseline scenario, the median world citizen would still be 390% richer than the average person today. Applying the worst global warming impact (20% of GDP), the median person would still be 290% richer than the average person today.

Unmitigated global warming will make the people of the future substantially poorer. But not nearly by enough to cancel out the effect of continuous economic growth and technological development. It's almost certainly the case that the people of 2100 will enjoy higher living standards than the present.

[1] [https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/20/climate-change-to-slow- globa...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/20/climate-change-to-slow-global- economic-growth-new-study-finds.html) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_impacts_of_climate_ch...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_impacts_of_climate_change)

<comment><USER5> Someone at Reason actually read the UN/IPCC report. There is no doomsday in it. From [https://reason.com/2018/10/11/how-big-of-a-deal-is-half- of-a...](https://reason.com/2018/10/11/how-big-of-a-deal-is-half-of-a-degree- of/)

> So how much economic damage will pursuing the IPCC's fast transition to a > no-carbon energy system spare us? The report asserts that if no policies > aimed specifically at reducing carbon dioxide emissions are adopted, then > average global temperature is projected to rise by 3.66°C by 2100, resulting > in global GDP loss of 2.6 percent from what it would otherwise have been. > Comparatively speaking, in the 2°C and 1.5°C scenarios, global GDP would > only be reduced by 0.5 percent or 0.3 percent respectively.

> Concretely, the global GDP of $80 trillion, growing at 3 percent annually, > would rise to $903 trillion by 2100. A 2.6 percent reduction means that it > would only be $880 trillion by 2100. A 0.3 percent decrease implies a loss > of $2.7 trillion resulting in a global GDP of $900 trillion. Note that the > IPCC is recommending that the world spend between now and 2035 more than $45 > trillion in order to endow $2.7 trillion more in annual income on people > living three generations hence. Assuming the worst case loss of 2.6 percent > of GDP in world with a population of 10 billion that would mean that they > would have to scrape by on an average income of just $88,000 per year (the > average global GDP per capita now is $10,500.)

<comment><USER6> Plenty of people who would have reason to know think the IPCC's reports are overly conservative because they are trying to spur action / avoid defeatism, and because they have to reflect a baseline consensus of many researchers.

[https://skepticalscience.com/ipcc-scientific- consensus.htm](https://skepticalscience.com/ipcc-scientific-consensus.htm)

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/10/30/clima...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/10/30/climate- scientists-arent-too-alarmist-theyre-too-conservative/)

[https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/43e8yp/the-uns- devastatin...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/43e8yp/the-uns-devastating- climate-change-report-was-too-optimistic)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> You don't have to wait for anybody.

Maybe the most important thing to know is that we can make carbon-neutral alcohol fuel, and, integrated into regenerative agriculture ("Permaculture" et. al.) the economics are totally different than large-scale industrial ethanol production.

Think Community-Supported-Agriculture that supplies your gas.

Dave "Farmer Dave" Bloom collected all the necessary info into a book (that was banned from public tv at the time!) [http://alcoholcanbeagas.com/](http://alcoholcanbeagas.com/) Get the book, find or start your local fuel co-op!

\- - - -

For practical advice on what to do I recommend Toby Hemenway's videos in re: Permaculture

[http://tobyhemenway.com/videos/](http://tobyhemenway.com/videos/)

Especially "How Permaculture Can Save Humanity and the Planet – But Not Civilization" and the sequel "Redesigning Civilization with Permaculture".

Permaculture is a school of applied ecology (the word itself is a portmanteau of PERMAnent agriCULTURE) that has adherents and practitioners world-wide. It's not the only form of regenerative agriculture either.

\- - - -

See also [https://www.greenwave.org/our-work](https://www.greenwave.org/our- work) Oceanic 3D farms! And now they are building reefs?

\- - - -

For more inspiration and projects search "Geoff Lawton Greening the Desert"

</comment><comment><USER8> Climate crisis is getting scarier and scarier by the day. Don't know about you guys but I am done with sitting behind my computer and whining about what "they" should or shouldn't do. I am joining Extinction Rebellion.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do it.

[https://codewithoutrules.com/2019/09/10/software- developers-...](https://codewithoutrules.com/2019/09/10/software-developers- climage-change/)

> In the end power is social. Power comes from people showing up to meetings, > people showing up for rallies, people going door-to-door convincing other > people to vote for the right person or support the right initiative, people > blocking roads and making a fuss.

> And that takes time and money.

If you work in tech you probably have a surplus of both.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> How is this not the #1 story? Why do we even bother with all the other trivia?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you have perfectly summed up the thoughts of all the school strikers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > _A set of troubling charts shows how little progress nations have made > toward limiting greenhouse-gas emissions._

When countries have made real progress "toward limiting greenhouse-gas emission" one would not need charts to see it: it would be immediately evident in everyday lifestyles, consumer habits, and energy use...

<comment><USER4> Not necessarily. For example just switching over coal-fired plants to gas- fired plants reduces carbon emissions by 50%. (This is a big reason why the US's emissions have decelerated since 2000.) Yet that would be almost entirely invisible at the consumer level.

<comment><USER11> Moreover, I would actually argue that the _only_ way we're going to affect climate change is if we find at least one big slice of emissions that can be reduced _without_ having to change habits or going against engrained values too much.

In order of what will probably work best:

* Something barely noticeable (eg: any improvement in electricity production that does not make the customer's price skyrocket.)

* Something noticeable but not fundamentally annoying (Pay people to get electric vehicles, Norway-style. Make a large part of your transportation public and electric.)

* Something noticeable, but _fun_ . I don't have a big idea on this one, and it kinda sucks.

* Something noticeable, and that "gets you laid" (tm). Something along the lines of "I have a Tesla. You should have sex with me.", but scalable. If someone finds this, we're saved.

The last one would be even more powerful as it could reshape at least some people's identity into "I'm the kind of person who care about climate change", so all the other changes that actually require discomfort could get rationalized away (apparently, we're pretty good at this as a species.)

So maybe someone needs to organize Vegan Supermodel Orgies _as well_ as marching in NY. Just saying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So who wants to volunteer to have their living conditions drastically reduced?

The west likes to blame China and India, places we've outsourced manufacturing and work to and yet somehow they still produce far less CO2 per capita. We shame people into reducing their individual emissions while ignoring the fact that industry produces most of the emissions.

The fact is, no country is going to take drastic measures. We don't know exactly what's going to happen when the world warms 3 degrees (we have ideas, but the world has been both warmer and colder in the past, and somehow life survived). We do however know what would happen if we suddenly stunted economic progress tomorrow (nothing good).

<comment><USER13> Sounds like you're always the first one to reply to anything climate related with some false dichotomy.

We can make changes without adjusting living conditions drastically - <USER2> to EVs, removing fossil fuel subsidies, pushing solar over coal/gas.

In fact, we might improve our living conditions by reducing our addition to oil, as long as it's managed and not cold-turkey.

<comment><USER12> > Sounds like you're always the first one to reply to anything climate related > with some false dichotomy.

Nah, somehow I just got unlucky enough to log on when alarmist articles are somehow in the feed. I'm simply not huge on alarmism.

> moving to EVs

Which run on electricity generated by coal.

> In fact, we might improve our living conditions by reducing our addition to > oil, as long as it's managed and not cold-turkey.

And we will. Just not huge on articles where every comment essentially says the world is going to end 10 years from now. It won't.

<comment><USER14> I think the assertion isn't that the world is going to end 10 years from now. It's more that unless we pull off a miracle in the next 10 years, it's essentially going to end this century.

<comment><USER12> Still not going to happen.

<comment><USER15> Yes it is.

And I can continue that all day long.

When you are standing on the rails with a high-speed train rushing towards you and your buddy next to you is yelling "LET'S GET OF THE RAILS OR WE'RE GOING TO DIE!", that's not alarmist. But you try to make it look like that.

Seriously. Looking at your history of comments, climate change denials seems to be one of your things, so trying to reach you is probably a lost cause.

Yes, the world is burning. Yes, the ecosystem is failing. Yes, hordes of hungry refugees will roam the planet (probably even Alberta!). Yes, civilization is going to collapse.

(If we don't get our shit together REALLY quickly, which I doubt we will).

Sticking your fingers in your ears, sticking your head into the sand, singing "LALALA" very loudly and calling people 'alarmist' is not going to change that.

But hey! Après moi, le déluge!

At least we will have had the most awesome orgy of consumption and self- deception, like, ever.

Awesome!

<comment><USER12> That's a pretty pessimistic view, with no basis in reality.

Fact is, the world has more people than ever, yet is richer than ever, there's less poverty and hunger than ever, the world is more peaceful than ever, and there's certainly no signs of collapse and certainly not in 1 decade smh...

If you truly believe that we're a decade away from collapse, why aren't you stockpiling food and weapons in a bunker? Because there's no sign of political will from the major CO2 emitters to curb emissions so your worst case scenario is definitely happening, right? People say these things, yet I don't see any of the climate alarmists actually doing things to indicate that they're alarmed...

<comment><USER15> I don't know where you got the 10 years from.

Yes, we've got more people than ever. There is less poverty and hunger than ever. The world is more peaceful than ever. That's because we've been on a glut of predatory ecosystem exploitation for the last 150 years.

The signs that we are running headlong into a global ecosystem collapse are everywhere. So my view is pretty much based in reality, so here are my facts.

If you care to check them.

We've wiped out 60% percents of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles since the 1970 ([https://s3.amazonaws.com/wwfassets/downloads/lpr2018_summary...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/wwfassets/downloads/lpr2018_summary_report_spreads.pdf)).

We've killed about 30% of the insect population: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_in_insect_populations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_in_insect_populations)

Phytoplankton has been reduced by 50% since the 1950s [https://www.nature.com/articles/nature09268](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature09268) . You know, that's the stuff that produces our oxygen ([https://earthsky.org/earth/how-much-do-oceans-add-to- worlds-...](https://earthsky.org/earth/how-much-do-oceans-add-to-worlds- oxygen)). An increase in temperature of about 5°C and more will probably kill off most phytoplankton.

These are just some documented and recorded facts. Now we get to the fun part, where we think about their impact.

Let's take for a given that the antrophogenic climate change won't stop at the blue-sky +2°C that everyone is hoping so hard for (hoping, not acting). According to IPCC 2018, we're CURRENTLY between +0.75 and +1.25°C, with the very real possibility of reaching +2°C by the 2040.

We thought that we had about 30 years to mitigate some of the worst damage. But now - holy shit! - the arctic permafrost is melting, about 70 years earlier than expected. And it's starting to release methane, a way more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. Sure, it rapidly decays in the atmosphere, but not before kicking us to about +4°C. This is the temperature range where some Scientists fear that frozen methane from the ocean floor will start to be released.

(Do you remember that at about +5°Celsius the phytoplankton will start dying off? )

So, we have a massive temperature increase at an unprecedented speed that makes huge areas of earths most populous regions inhospitable or even inhabitable. Do you think the Syrian refugee crisis was bad? Think about ~1 BILLION PEOPLE on the search for greener (literally) pastures. Do you think they will be welcome with open arms? Yeah, you bet..

Agriculture will be severely impacted. Not only by the heat, but also by the massive die-off that ensues. Most of the animals on earth have a lifecycle that's very closely tuned to the hum of the seasons. At +4°C you can kiss all that goodbye. The only things that will survive are generalist species that have a lifecycle not tied to the seasons. (Cockroaches maybe. Certainly not butterflies. Enjoy them while they last!)

There will also be terrible conflicts and wars about the most precious resource of them all. No, not oil. We'll have oil in barrels, nobody will be lacking oil (at least at first). No, I mean water. We'll have water wars.

This will also be the time that the global economy will start to collapse. War is good for only one business, and that's weapons. Everything else will suffer. Don't expect any deliveries from your Chinese online shop of choice. Consumer markets will crash, everything will come to a standstill.

No, I don't stockpile. Because this is going to happen over the course the next 30 years and I'll be long dead when the really bad shit is starting to happen. I've trained my kids to be able to work with wood and scrap metals to improvise all kinds of tools and machines. All of them are also receiving training as horticulturalists, for what's that worth.

That's the least I can do for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've thought a lot about climate change and it's consequences. If we trigger runaway warming through feedback loops involved permafrost and ocean (hydrates) methane - things are going to get really, really bad. This happened when ~5C degree warming from millions of years of the Siberian traps eruptions caused methane hydrates to be released into the atmosphere, triggering another ~5C warming and the greatest mass extinction on Earth, the End-Permian Extinction, also known as "the Great Dying" where 96% of marine species went extinct, and 70% of terrestrial species. Clearly if that happens, we're really in trouble. I don't know how likely that is, or what the trigger point would be. The climate today is not the same as it was 250M years ago.

On the other side of the coin, the Earth is uncomfortably cool these last few million years. We have these repeated periods of glaciation. Having Europe, Russia, Canada, and the northern US ground to dust beneath kilometers of ice would be a bit of tragedy too on a similar scale. That it's further away in the future doesn't make it less of a problem - if we're too aggressive solving climate change we could imagine a future where we have to deliberately pump methane into the atmosphere to stave off an ice age. For better or worse we seem to be at no risk of this through our ineptitude in responding to climate change.

For people worried about coral reefs dying, it happened less than 10K year ago at the end of the last ice age. Sea level rose 400ft and drowned the world's coral reefs. They bounced back, as you can see today. They will also bounce back from climate change - it will just suck in the meanwhile. There are undoubtedly things we can and will do to make it suck less, like developing heat resistant corals, planting reefs further north/south, etc.

For people worried about coastal cities being submerged, relax, you'll be dead by then. Long term, we should be moving our investment to more sustainable areas. But infrastructure doesn't last forever anyway, so I think a lot of that may occur naturally as people just stop developing new infrastructure in low-lying areas. There's no question it will cost us though.

If you're really worried about climate change for your descendants, get Canadian citizenship. That's one of the few countries likely to benefit from climate change.

So to sum up, climate change is not all bad, just mostly bad, until or unless it runs away on us, and then the doomsayers may be right for a change.

<comment><USER8> > relax, you'll be dead by then

This is part of the reason so little is being done to combat climate change now. If we don't act now though, the future generations will definitely drown. It will be too late for them to do anything.

> That's one of the few countries likely to benefit from climate change.

This is one of the most dangerous delusions. In our globalised interconnected world nobody will benefit. Just think about the last financial crisis. Mortgage crisis in the US caused chaos in the whole world.

<comment><USER16> Nobody is going to drown. People will do some combination of building walls, raising land, and moving. It will play out over a period of a thousands years or more. There will be a non-zero cost associated with diverting resources for these things, but that's not the end of the world. I'm not saying it's an excuse for not acting though. We have a responsibility to take care of our own mess, rather than just dump it on our children.

I still think the comparative lack of low-lying coastal land, plus ample freshwater, increased growing season, and increased arable land will be net benefit for Canada and Russia. Plus if things are as bad as you say, they'll benefit from increased demand for immigration as well (even if you don't take on more people, you can select more desirable immigrants.)

This is not a crash situation like 2008, this is more like a glacier that's flowing towards you. You have plenty of time to plan your response, like moving out of the way, but you can't stop it. Trouble in other countries will have unpredictable, but not necessarily all bad effects.

<comment><USER14> Is it now? The predictions are, as far as I understand, that a lot of coastal areas will become submerged this century, meanwhile the rising temperatures will (and already are) mess up with the food supply. As that accelerates, the world will see a migration wave like never before in history, and frankly, it sounds like straight to World War 3 from here to me.

The planet, frankly, doesn't matter. It'll be fine. The thing that matters is our technological civilization. Whether it's a gun or a glacier, our civilization is fragile, and when it fails, it's essentially game over for humanity - mass deaths followed by the remaining survivors stuck in medieval conditions for many thousands, or tens of thousands of years.

<comment><USER16> Things won't move that quickly, and hopefully they won't get that dire. We can't rule it out either though. There's plenty of good reasons to worry and take action. It is still a tragedy unfolding. But it's not necessarily as doom and gloom as many people believe.

<comment><USER17> But things do move that quickly. Current projections [1] have global sea levels rising from anything between 0.3m and 2.4m by the end of the century.

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

<comment><USER16> That's pretty slow for a change smoothed out over eighty years.

<comment><USER17> Well, (a) it's a hell of a lot faster than it has been for most of my life, and (b) it means that in my lifetime, a lot of the places I know & love will be seriously affected by - if not completely lost to - sea level rise.

I get the sense you don't live anywhere near the coast.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Actually a lot of progress has been made, except in China, which has increased emissions to the point of reversing all other progress globally.

By comparison, US carbon has been going down since 2007, despite a growing population and economy. Per capita it's been declining for over four decades.

China now emits more than the US and EU combined, despite having much, much less economic output.

<comment><USER19> Carbon emitted as a result of manufacturing should count toward the destination country, not the production country.

China supplies the world a lot of goods. It doesn't seem appropriate to put the onus on China when the end result of that production run brings all that stuff over to another country.

<comment><USER20> > Carbon emitted as a result of manufacturing should count toward the > destination country, not the production country.

Has anybody studied this yet? This point comes up every time this issue is discussed, but I don't remember ever seeing any effort into quantifying what the situation looks like from this perspective.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Reducing output isn't going to happen, well it won't happen until it's too late. It's like the smoker that gets diagnosed with cancer, and then decides to quite smoking.

It's also ludicrous that think that warming will stop and hold at 1.5 or 2.0c adding less won't stop the increase in climate warming, it will just cause the increase to be slower.

The other thing that's ludicrous is that we aren't monitoring the earth's output, the warming oceans, melting glaciers and thawing permafrost are now contributing greenhouse gases due to the warming climate, they are now locked into positive feedback loops. Which means every cycle the changes get a little bit bigger as the cycles feed themselves. Unless we can start to reduce the total amount of greenhouse gases in the upper atmosphere these feedback loops are just going to keep running.

</comment><comment><USER22> So, is there any convincing reason to think that any emissions targets will be met? Does anyone buy the line in the article about India? Surely they will become an emitter at least as significant as China.

Isn't our money better spent preparing for the inevitable effects of climate change?

<comment><USER23> What's wrong with the line about India? It's absolutely correct - per capita emissions from India are very small.

> Surely they will become an emitter at least as significant as China.

Looking at a country's total emissions makes no sense because the population needs to be taken into account. India will eventually have the largest total emissions, which is fine because per capita is really low.

<comment><USER10> > _India will eventually have the largest total emissions, which is fine > because per capita is really low._

Earth doesn't care about "emission per capita" though, it just cares about the total sum of emissions...

So "India eventually [having] the largest total emissions" means a huge extra tonnage of emissions will be added to the already troubling amounts...

So, the per capita number is mainly relevant in regards to fairness...

<comment><USER24> What the Earth doesn't care about is the arbitrary lines in the sand we declare to be this nation or that.

<comment><USER25> What Earth does care about, is when you decide that's a good idea to have on average more than 4 children per couple over the last 2 generations in India [1] instead of only 2 or even less children per couple like in USA or the EU [2].

[1] [https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/IND/india/fertility- ra...](https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/IND/india/fertility-rate)

[2] [https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united- states/fert...](https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united- states/fertility-rate)

Every country has a set of natural resources at its disposal. It should manage and cherish those resources and not overtax them. If a country decides it's a good idea to perpetually grow their population when all they have are the same set of natural resources available, then well, the onus is on them to figure out how to do it without destroying everything.

<comment><USER24> You're making my point. The US went through the same process, with the same birth rate interrupted only by the great depression until two generations ago.

There aren't countries, there are humans responding to the same conditions similarly. Economic development will slow their reproductive rate, like clockwork.

If you point to a family in the 60s in the US and a family in India today and find only one of them irresponsible, your thinking is flawed.

I assume you're following through with your convictions and will remain child free?

<comment><USER25> > I assume you're following through with your convictions and will remain > child free?

No, I will remain with my child at replacement rate (a little below actually), like my parents and my grandparents did (and all parents and grandparents on average here), and I expect them to be entitled to a lot more resources than someone who lives in a country where (on average) their parents, grandparents and themselves didn't follow the same principle.

As a fact, India's CO2 emissions per unit area are almost the same as EU. We are using the same share of ecological resources (assuming roughly they are equivalent on average per area), so there is nothing to give or to take from both sides.

P.S.: A family in USA in the 60's, 1st: didn't had any idea that there was such thing as a catastrophic global warming incoming, 2nd: had a 4x smaller population density than India has today. But sure, go ahead and keep pretending that Earth's resources magically increase anytime someone decides to have a new child, so that you can tell yourself we are all entitles to the same amount of resources, no matter the size of our immediate family.

<comment><USER24> I had a hunch.

<comment><USER25> I also had a hunch that you interest isn't really about saving the planet but in supporting the implementation of your ideological agenda.

<comment><USER24> I have no ideological agenda other than not engaging in casual racism to construct a boogeyman to point at to absolve myself of the substantial impact I've made to the climate.

<comment><USER25> What do you mean?

It's not your racism that has you stating that someone in a country with a very good track record when it comes to CO2 emissions (and a number of other environmental aspects) should stop having children, so that someone in a overly populated country, with an appalling record when it comes to all kinds of pollution can have even more children?

If it's not racism from your part that makes you ask for that, than you should clarify what it is. But one thing is for certain, it's not environmentalism for sure.

<comment><USER24> I'm not telling you not to have children, but it does make you a hypocrite.

I'm accusing you of casual racism for drawing a false distinction around the behavior of Indians. They are doing what everyone else has done in the same circumstance. Just because we have gotten our growth spurt and dirty economic development out the way doesn't entitle us to waggle our finger at those that took longer.

It's on the first world to fix things first. The wealthiest should have the lowest per capita emissions, not the highest. Shouting at the third world for their high population count isn't environmentalism, it won't work, and it doesn't give you the moral high ground.

<comment><USER25> > They are doing what everyone else has done in the same circumstance.

We already established those aren't the same circumstances at all:

\- 1st: we didn't have even 1/4 of the Indian population density when we were having the same birthrates.

\- 2nd: When global warming became clear and urgent action was needed, we started reducing our emissions while India during that time already increased them by 400%, and is going to increase them by another 100% in the next decade.

It's not by keep repeating the same lie that you are going to make it a reality.

<comment><USER24> We didn't establish anything. You grasped at the density straw in order to intellectually justify your prejudice.

The poor in India should increase their emissions, because otherwise they'll die. Life expectancy has risen from 40 to 68 years since the 60s. Would you halve your life expectancy to fix global warming? I don't think so.

In any case, the births have already happened, and India is now barely above replacement rates, which you've conveniently overlooked. You want them to die because of the choices their parents made.

If you excuse me, I'm going to go take a shower. I honestly can't believe I'm having this conversation on HN.

<comment><USER25> > The poor in India should increase their emissions, because otherwise they'll > die. Life expectancy has risen from 40 to 68 years since the 60s.

So, you are saying that CO2 emissions are actually good for the population and the way forward is to actually increase them even more. Interesting turn of events from an environmentalist.

> You want them to die because of the choices their parents made.

Funny thing to say, since you want the West to pay for the choices our grandfathers made and descend into deprivation, so that the rest of the world can go on polluting even more.

Here is the thing, people with your discourse aren't interested in saving the planet but into forcing your ideological agenda - which is got nothing to do with environmentalism but with your personal concepts of morality - upon the rest of us under the threat of environmental catastrophe. And the worst part of it? It does nothing to tackle climate change.

P.S.: > If you excuse me, I'm going to go take a shower. I honestly can't believe I'm having this conversation on HN.

Go easy on that shower, it's a big toll on the environment and, after all, you just spent the last 24h telling us all how those resources actually should belong to be used by people in India and not selfishly by me or by you.

<comment><USER24> My ideological agenda is valuing the life of an Indian equally to my own.

<comment><USER23> Don't feed that troll, just downvote and move along.

<comment><USER24> Seems we both fell in to that trap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It looks like if you take China and India out of the equation, the numbers are trending down.

<comment><USER27> If you take China and India out of the equation you are removing a lot of goods which are used in the rest of the world, though.

<comment><USER17> This is a whole part of the problem. Globalisation and the offshoring of manufacturing to the east has meant a corresponding offset of emissions from the Europe and the US to China and other places. We in the West have to take some responsibility for this. You can argue that globalisation does have a noble goal - i.e. to reduce global inequality by raising the standard of living of all to that of the most well-off nations - but the now obvious trends of climate change, global heating and emissions, are showing this to be a dangerous and unobtainable goal. It seems to me that we have to start looking at reductions of living standards in the West (to maybe what we had 30-40 years ago) with corresponding reductions in global trade. I have little confidence that we can actually achieve this in an organized and equitable manner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The UN Climate Action Summit 2019 is live online [http://webtv.un.org/](http://webtv.un.org/) or [https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/](https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/)

</comment><comment><USER28> USA and Canada have more than the double of emissions per capita than China. While these countries doesn't take the responsibility for climate change, nothing will change.

<comment><USER29> There should also be a factor for land mass when considering "fairness", but reality is that the tar sands are the cause of our growing ghg emmissions. Even the industry's propaganda site claims it is single handedly responsible for 10% of Canada's emmisions: [https://www.canadasoilsands.ca/en/explore- topics/ghg-emissio...](https://www.canadasoilsands.ca/en/explore-topics/ghg- emissions)

I can only imagine how much money they spend trying to rebrand tarsands as oilsands...

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The data comes from [https://climateactiontracker.org/](https://climateactiontracker.org/), specifically [https://climateactiontracker.org/global/cat-emissions- gaps/](https://climateactiontracker.org/global/cat-emissions-gaps/) (where you can download a spreadsheet).

</comment><comment><USER30> This shouldn't be flagged. Is there any way to vouch that a story shouldn't be flagged?

</comment><comment><USER7> Flagging climate stories? WTF?

<comment><AUTHOR> Perhaps a vested interest controls lots of accounts on here and wants to bury stories of this nature (pun not intended)? The comments don't appear to have descended into a flame war so I suspect a bot net has manually flagged it to death.

I've seen it a lot on here and it makes me think it's not worth engaging with HN any more.

<comment><USER7> Nah, see? The mods got up Monday morning and put the kibosh on the hijiinks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The fact that articles from Nature are getting flagged now is beyond dark. Vested interests, desperate denial or plain delusion?

<comment><USER32> It seems discussion on climate change is being discouraged on hn. An article from the BBC was also flagged. See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21042054](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21042054)</comment></comment>


Zipkin - distributed tracing by Twitter (aka Google Dapper) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/twitter/zipkin

<comment><USER2> Would live to see that integrated with zerorpc! <http://github.com/dotcloud/zerorpc-python>

dotCloud has an internal tracing tool called zerotracer, but we don't yet have a visualization layer...

<comment><USER3> I'm working on writing up how to add tracing to a library/protocol. Should be in the readme later today.

<comment><USER2> Nice! Zerorpc has a middleware system, too, so it should be super easy to add.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here's the official announcement from Twitter Engineering:

[http://engineering.twitter.com/2012/06/distributed- systems-t...](http://engineering.twitter.com/2012/06/distributed-systems- tracing-with-zipkin.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> Is that the Turkish word "Zıpkın" (harpoon)?

<comment><USER6> I guess.

just checked the commit history, no one is turkish there. Possibly git history might have been cleared before making it public.

<comment><USER3> We came up with the name by putting all kinds of words into Google translate and making sure they weren't trademarked. Zipkin seemed short and sweet and wasn't widely used before.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Our first Firebase-powered game - <AUTHOR>

We've been playing around with Firebase and over the last few weeks we've been working on our first project that uses it exclusively for its backend.
What we built is a Facebook connected game called Hatchlings Match. It's a spin-off game that reuses the art from our original game, Hatchlings, but has completely different gameplay.
Building on Firebase was great; it was also the first project we've built on node. The combination of those two things increased our development cycle tremendously.
So far the nicest thing about launching on Firebase has been that we haven't had to worry about scaling. We're adding over 800 users per hour right now (and Firebase is showing over 350 concurrent players currently online and connected) and that's all running off of a single (small) EC2 instance that's not doing much more than serving static files.
One other thing we're particularly proud of is that it (knock on wood) works completely cross platform and cross browser (tested so far on Chrome, Safari, Firefox, IE, iOS, and Android). [A friend has informed me that touch events aren't working on his MS Surface device -- trying to get ahold of one of those to test with at the moment.]
I'd be interested in any tips you all have for improvement (especially the onboarding process and the first level's tutorial). Or any ideas you'd have to help us make it more social.
Here's the link: https://www.facebook.com/appcenter/hatchlingsmatch <comment><USER2> Facebook is saying, "This game is not available for your phone." :-(</comment>


Google is super secretive about its anti-aging research. No one knows why - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/4/27/15409672/google-calico-secretive-aging-mortality-research <comment><USER2> Being secretive made me think about Intellectual Property. I wonder if it is possible to patent a process to "cure "aging", because a patent describes a process with a begin, an end and a result.

You can patent a drug, its usefulness is clear, you are ill, you take a drug and then you are in good health. It can be measured with bio markers.

In contrast "curing aging" is something different, the result is that you do not age, nothing has changed, what does that mean from an IP point of view?

</comment><comment><USER3> Why not be secretive? We have seen how all those people who are dealing in fake age extension shout and ballyhoo their stuff - and how they are razzed and discounted. As they say "Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far."

</comment><comment><USER4> Simplest explanation: ageing is hard to fix after all, and they have nothing to show for their efforts.</comment>


Your emails need white space - <AUTHOR> https://writingfordevelopers.substack.com/p/your-emails-need-white-space <comment><USER2> Emails also need brevity. The phrase "I would have written a shorter letter but I didn't have time" applies 10x to emails. People are busy and if you cannot distill the essence of your email to a single thesis and communicate it with Spartan efficiency you run the risk of causing people's level of interest to timeout before your email is read.</comment>


Audio of talks by Cal Henderson, Josh Schachter and many others - <AUTHOR> http://www.futureofwebapps.com/pastevents.html <comment><USER2> I've listened to most of these a few months back and they're great. The tom Coates one contains brilliant advice for anyone creating a web app. His slides are available at http://www.plasticbag.org/archives/2006/02/my_future_of_web_apps_slides/

This page will be updated within the next few weeks with audio from the latest FOWA conference.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I hadn't seen those slides, and they're very good.</comment></comment>


Proof that NES games are NP-hard [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://arxiv.org/pdf/1203.1895v1.pdf

<comment><USER2> The link title is wrong, the paper title is wrong, and the abstract is wrong.

Actual NES games are not NP-hard. They have a finite number of levels, and those levels have all been solved [edit: solved _in constant time_ moreover, as they have all been solved within the lifetime of a human being].

An _abstraction_ based _loosely_ upon the _concepts_ behind the NES games is NP-hard.</comment>


What is the hardest thing in Computer Science? - <AUTHOR> "There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things." — Phil Karlton <comment><USER2> I like the variation on that quote:

"There are 2 hard problems in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-1 errors."

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha...BTW, if I may ask, what do you find the hardest in Computer Science?

<comment><USER2> Semi serious answer: people!

<comment><USER3> Not semi serious. Absolutely serious. As soon as you start writing a program that takes more than one person to complete, or where you're writing not for you to be the one and only user, people problems come in. And I'm just talking about communicating intent and design among people. The bigger the project, the more that's a problem.

Then there's the unrelated problem of dealing with other peoples' personalities. The bigger the project, the more different people, and the more this aspect is a problem as well.

<comment><USER2> I remember once on a complex project a senior manager going "That may be what I asked for, but its not what I want" and in a startup I joined where the CEO was adamant that any feature he could think of could be implemented in less than 48 hours - and this was a video technology/devices startup not a web app!

I've made horrific technical mistakes at various points in my career - but at least it is possible to learn straightforward lessons from those. Learning about people - now that's a challenge!

<comment><USER4> I find it quite interesting that a natural inclination of some people is to believe that if it was simple for someone to think, in some way, of the feature they want, that it should also be simple to implement. Have seen this a lot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Security.

It needs to be built into every phase of computing, starting with the CPU micro-code, going through network protocols, up to the topmost JS framework layer.

Screw up one piece and you may end up with a major vulnerability.

Many software project owners avoid it due to complexity. To some extent, even academia sometimes eschews it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Umm..what about Compilers and their implementation? Isn't it hard?

PS: I find them the hardest.

<comment><USER6> compilers do a known thing. security means protecting against unknown things.

<comment><AUTHOR> I get your point. Seconded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Making your code so simple (and well documented!) that it can be understood by programmers with much less experience than you, while not compromising speed or functionality.

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler."

-Albert Einstein

<comment><USER8> This is the one I strive for. Making a challenging thing self-evident and appear like it wasn't that much work, even when it was an explosion of code later distilled.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> 1) Keeping up with an ever growing and changing tech environment.

2) Dreading visiting my parents, because you always hear:'Oh good, come here and look at this problem I have'. My wife even volunteers me to fix other peoples stuff, which is real annoying.

<comment><USER10> Am I the only one who don't mind fixing stuff like that. I sometimes do get satisfaction of making things work no matter how trivial.

<comment><USER11> I have this weird polarity in the work I enjoy.

I'm like you in that I enjoy just making things work, even when they're trivial. I particularly like doing it for other individuals.

On the other hand, I also enjoy harder research problems. Obsessing and learning new things quickly is probably the biggest joy I get out of work.

What I hate is the middle ground. I hate solving trivial problems, but in a high-pressure environment, for people I'm only circumstantially committed to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The hardest things so far will probably be one of the unsolved problems in computer science that you can see here:

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

</comment><comment><USER13> People--including end-users and non-technical managers.

</comment><comment><USER14> Predicting what users will do with your software.

</comment><comment><USER15> If I'm being cheeky, its other people.

</comment><comment><USER16> Determining the next Busy Beaver number. Every time you determine one, a harder problem takes its place. And eventually the problem becomes unsolvable, as only finitely many values can be determined.

</comment><comment> cbm-vic-20 Telling the difference between Computer Science and Software Engineering.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha XD

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Printers.

More seriously, robustness/security. Everything we "engineer" is incredibly fragile. Nothing is built and able to be "done" if it needs continuous security maintenance for its entire life.

</comment><comment><USER18> I don't know about hard to understand but if we are talking about getting things right:

\- Concurrency

\- Building distributed systems (databases, messaging systems, distributed file systems, etc)

\- Low level programming

</comment><comment><USER19> Not exactly computer science but the hardest thing I've found is preparing for algorithmic coding interviews.

</comment><comment><USER20> The hardest thing is to accept that you don't really need CS as a software developer. Even programming tasks - digging into legacy code, implementing features etc. - requires no CS knowledge, and programming is just one thing sw devs do.

Other words: there's no CS topic which helps you during an estimation meeting.

</comment><comment><USER21> I have a simple theory on why it is hard to name classes ;)

\- [https://thomasvilhena.com/2019/10/why-is-it-hard-to-name- cla...](https://thomasvilhena.com/2019/10/why-is-it-hard-to-name-classes)

</comment><comment><USER9> Determining when something is done, because you always feel like you can improve on it.

</comment><comment><USER22> Learning about topics that are professionally useful, but in which I have absolutely no interest.

In my case, web development.

</comment><comment><USER23> Creating a `complete` (in a mathematical sense) computing system.

<comment><USER24> There's some cool work in this area though! :D

<comment><AUTHOR> Any context about this? Any links about a complete computing system?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Complexity

<comment><USER26> I'd like to hear some reasoning behind that. Maybe more adjectives?

IMHO Complexity, in general, is good. Nature conserves it when its adaptive.

<comment><USER25> I don't mean to sound flippant but there actually seems to be lots of different hard problems in computer science, or computing (to be honest I'm not sure which we're talking about here) but all of the ones that I know of are hard due to complexity. Our science is good at reductionism, finding fundamentals, but when it comes to complex systems it simply informs our inadequate simulations. So I think the hardest problems in computer science will exist where we try and apply it in the real world to complex machines. In computing there are many hard things to make, databases, operating systems, programming languages, the list goes on - and they are hard because they are big and complicated and so making them is hard because to some extent it doesn't matter how much resource or intelligence you have because the problems that arise in complex systems start to get chaotic and intractable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> trust</comment>


Viacom responds on YouTube lawsuit - <AUTHOR> http://www.viacom.com/news/Pages/ytstatement.aspx <comment><USER2> From Viacom: _By their own admission, the site contained "truckloads" of infringing content and founder Steve Chen explained that YouTube needed to "steal" videos because those videos make "our traffic soar."_

If true, that's pretty damning.

From Viacom: _These facts are undisputed. The statements by Google regarding Viacom activities are merely red herrings and have no relevance on the legal facts of this case._

Um, really?

From Google: _For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately "roughed up" the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony e-mail addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko's to upload clips from computers that couldn't be traced to Viacom._

So let's make an analogy. You keep calling the cops to say that I'm stealing your stuff - and I am! But secretly, you're also hiring people to carry your stuff to my house and leave it in my yard.

But that has _"no relevance on the legal facts of this case"_? The fact that you're framing someone shouldn't affect their trial?

That's just crazy.

</comment><comment><USER3> This reads worse than a -50 comment on Reddit.

Also, fuck you Viacom. Look at the most popular videos on YouTube -- all user- produced. A haven of copyright infringement, or a haven of not needing you anymore? I'll bet on the second one.

<comment><USER4> But you do have to confess that a lot of YouTube is "copyright-theft". The real question is what effect that "theft" has on the bottom line of the companies that hold the rights. Is it 1:1, 1:100 or can it/does it result in additional profit in some cases?

Nobody really knows the answer to this and anyone who states they do is just guessing.

<comment><USER3> Fair use, you mean.

I have never seen a full TV episode of a popular show on YouTube. But the file sharing sites have them, and in HD, and without ads and annotations. Guess where I get my full TV episodes from. Not Youtube.

<comment><USER5> I watch full episodes of poker shows. Broken up into 10 minute clips of course. In the "old days" I watched full clips of the daily show and countless other shows I can't even remember now. I didn't have a TV and didn't need one because Youtube had all the shows I wanted to see.

<comment><USER3> I watched "air crash investigation" a few times. Since I didn't know this show existed, the existence of the clips was helpful to them in the form of free advertising.

Of course, I don't have cable or whatever, so I just download the episodes from real file sharing sites. But you can't blame Youtube for that, that's all on me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Google knew that YouTube's popularity depended on infringing materials", yeah, because all interesting content is created by large corporations with a need to control, amen.

"Google and YouTube had the technology to stop infringement at any time but deliberately chose not to use it." and how much of Google's horsepower does Viacom think Google is obliged to use for identifying their content?

"The statements by Google regarding Viacom activities are merely red herrings and have no relevance on the legal facts of this case." LOL.

</comment><comment><USER7> Notice how they didn't deny that they uploaded things just to have them flagged?

Also their release/post is nowhere near as smooth as Google's. You'd think as an entertainment firm they could make something that was a bit better of a read.

</comment><comment><USER8> I wonder... If there were really "countless internal YouTube communications" endorsing infringement, wouldn't this case be over already? As in Summary Judgement over? Doesn't the very fact that this case is still being litigated indicate the hyperbole of this press release? I don't understand why Viacom is saying anything at all. Maybe they are trying to reassure their investors. In any event, I doubt we'll ever know what is really being uncovered in discovery.

<comment><USER9> Ars Technica has a few:

"Chen twice wrote that 80 percent of user traffic depended on pirated videos. He opposed removing infringing videos on the ground that 'if you remove the potential copyright infringements... site traffic and virality will drop to maybe 20 percent of what it is.' Karim proposed they 'just remove the obviously copyright infringing stuff.' But Chen again insisted that even if they removed only such obviously infringing clips, site traffic would drop at least 80 percent. ('if [we] remove all that content[,] we go from 100,000 views a day down to about 20,000 views or maybe even lower')."

[http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/03/smoking- guns...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/03/smoking-guns-dark- secrets-spilled-in-youtube-viacom-filings.ars)

<comment><USER10> I mean this is in 2003 though. 100,000 page views a day is practically nothing. If he said that in 2006+ it would've been a bit different.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Are you sure that was just put up today in response to the latest youtube counsel blog post? It does sound that way, but the statement isn't dated so I can't tell for sure if that is the "red herring" they are talking about or if this is an older statement.

</comment><comment><USER12> I guess they deserve a +1 for getting the word "rampant" into a press release.

-100 for the rest though - very little of interest; just the usual mud sling return (a lot shakier than the mud thrown at them, though).

</comment><comment><USER13> "These facts are _undisputed_. The statements by Google regarding Viacom activities are merely red herrings and have no relevance on the legal facts of this case."

Non-sequitur...</comment>


Learn colors, typography and layout for iOS 7 - <AUTHOR> http://designcode.io/iosdesign

<comment><USER2> This book looks like it will be the definitive guide to designing for iOS.</comment>


Bash FAQ (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ <comment><USER2> Getting a 502 Bad Gateway atm. Here's an archive link: [https://web.archive.org/web/20180409001505/https://mywiki.wo...](https://web.archive.org/web/20180409001505/https://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ)

</comment><comment><USER3> Cached version: [https://web.archive.org/web/20180517123320/https://mywiki.wo...](https://web.archive.org/web/20180517123320/https://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ)

</comment><comment><USER4> I get a 502 Bad Gateway error when trying to open this page from India.

<comment><USER5> Same in US. How did this fly to the top so quickly?

<comment><USER6> Probably people upvoting it without opening, just assuming the headline accurately says what it is.

<comment><USER7> I sometime upvote things as a sort of "read it later" technique. I've seen other users do this, so maybe that's what happened?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Sold my B2B business and achieved my dreamed...meaningless life? - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/leonagano/status/1270859555304615938 <comment><USER2> 5th time you have posted this in the past 5 days...</comment>


Mobirise v4.0 Beta is out - <AUTHOR> http://mobirise.com/mobirise4beta-win.zip <comment><USER2> Please don't submit direct downloads.</comment>


Argentina's voting machine system leaked? - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/prometheus-ar/vot.ar <comment><USER2> I've never seen the need for voting machines, even if they were open source and not plagued by scandals constantly. Counting votes can be done mostly in parallel. If you can't get enough volunteers and auditors to watch them then you have other problems a machine would likely make worse. In Australia we rarely have to wait long for the result and our Senate voting is fairly complex. It's even crazier when people try to push the speed benefits for things like the US presidential election where those elected don't even take office for weeks after the polling day.

Although the ancient Athenians were not Luddites - they had an elegant machine to randomise a large stratified sample of the population for jury duty and water clocks to time speeches - for the actual votes they just used pebbles or pieces of metal. That's because counting something up is simply not that complex and shouldn't be made complex unnecessarily just to pad the CV of some electoral commissioner or pad the wallet of the company making the machines.

<comment><USER3> As a fellow Australian I would love voting machines to encourage below the line senate voting and to allow even faster tabulation of results.

I'd argue that we're stretching the limits of paper ballots with the current senate situation. There are significant chances for it to go wrong, like when the Western Australian senate election had to be rerun after the High Court voided the previous result due to lost ballots[1].

Even if machines had the same problems as paper they it could be faster and cheaper to recover from them..

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Senate_special_elec...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Senate_special_election_in_Western_Australia,_2014)

<comment><USER4> Except voting machines have a huge collection of their own problems like being much easier to compromise and much lower security

<comment><USER3> I'd say that they have different security problems rather than more.

<comment><USER5> They have unmanageable security problems rather than manageable ones.

When I look at a ballot paper, I can see that it is what it is. When I stand in front of a voting machine, there is no was to validate that it's running the software that it's supposed to run. No way to validate it hasn't been tampered with, no way for the election scrutineers to validate it hasn't been tampered with before counting.

With a paper ballot, the scrutineers can lock the ballot box, and ensure it remains unopened and untampered with, aside from depositing ballots in it, simply by watching it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I can't think on a worse idea that electronic voting machines in Argentina or Brazil.

Corruption is chronic there. I traveled to Brazil with a friend , he did a mistake(not using common sense) an his camera and the bag we used with several electronic tools was stolen. He went to the police, and was beaten by the police!!

We are from Spain and he simply expected a behavior in institutions that does not exist there. In Brazil you are either rich or poor, and police protects the rich(or the highest bidder) with iron fist. They are rude and you better not resist.

Argentina by the way has Spanish and Italian "picaresca" on their veins. "Ser un vivo" and fool other people is not only ok, but something to brag around.

Electronic voting could work on Switzerland or Denmark, and even there I will only trust it for menial tasks, like what they do in Switzerland asking people opinion on the new street lights(they do it using mail!!) and so on, but never with serious things like who gets in power.

Last time I was in Argentina,there were elections, and the politicians were literary buying the vote of poor people with crumbs even renting buses for them.

<comment><USER7> India has been successfully using EVMs for elections since the turn of the century [1].

And an Indian General Election is no menial task. In the latest election of 2014, 814.5 million people were eligible to vote, making it the largest-ever election in the world. A total of 8,251 candidates contested for 543 seats in the Indian parliament. The average election turnout was around 66.38% [2].

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

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_general_election,_2014](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_general_election,_2014)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Security guys in Argentina are working hard on Friday. Shell command injection in the code: [http://pastebin.com/KNNjAyzP](http://pastebin.com/KNNjAyzP)

It is important to note that the computer security and bitcoin scene are very strong in Argentina. See [http://www.ekoparty.org/eng/index.php](http://www.ekoparty.org/eng/index.php)

<comment><USER9> Slightly off-topic but as I stop to think about it, I think this is one of the only times I have ever seen code in non-English. I'm confident enough in Python that I _know_ the only difference is in reference names, and that has nothing to do with the computational logic or structure...but I'm taken aback by how non-trivial -- even with the syntax highlighting -- it is to tell my brain that it's just Python, and to treat it like any other code with strange naming conventions. I don't know what the takeaway is here...that proper naming conventions and self-documenting code is even more important than I realized...and/or that not having familiar context (i.e., what are these variables referring to) is a substantial mental drain...even though it's not particularly important to debugging the code.

It definitely makes me respect all non-English coders even more, for happily putting up with the ASCII status quo...especially those from non-Latin languages, such as Matz.

<comment><USER10> You should try your hand at deobfuscation of a VM bytecode like actionscript (flash), CLR, or JVM. I suspect that will give you good practice with dealing with "strange naming conventions" ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Ex-developer of that system here (not working in MSA anymore since 3 years ago). Can answer questions if there aren't hundreds of them.

<comment><USER12> Hi, have a couple...

1) First, I found the complete lack of security puzzling. I mean, they don't even use SSL in their site logins. You use md5 to check firmware...and the coders are obviously capable of using proper cryptography, but they won't. It's like they completely gave up on any kind of security whatsoever. Is this something deliberate?

2) Why the RFID to store the vote? why not a qr-code? it's hard to read? RFID tags are hundreds of times more expensive, they can be unlocked, re-written, must be protected with a weird faraday cage that _do not work correctly_ (Faraday cages must be grounded!) they are a nightmare. I'm sure there must be a good reason.

<comment><USER11> 1) Here you make a lot of false statements, and then conclude on the lack of security based on them. So let me answer to each of them:

> they don't even use SSL in their site logins.

Which sites? The only one I can think of having a login is the transmission site, and it not only uses SSL, it even has two way certs validation, so even the client has to have valid SSL certs which the server validates.

> You use md5 to check firmware

No. They use SHA256, not MD5, and to check the CD software, not firmware (there is no way you can checksum a firmware securely if the firmware wants to lie to you).

> and the coders are obviously capable of using proper cryptography, but they > won't

Yes, they use encryption, where it makes sense, like the double SSL in transmission.

But I guess you are referring to the unencrypted chip data. It would be useless to encrypt that. Think for a second: the machine needs to be able to read that chip on the counting step. So you are distributing the unencryption keys in _hundreeds_ of _public_ CDs that very same day. Having the data on the chips encrypted would accomplish nothing, they keys to unencrypt them would be public. It's like puting a padlock in your bike, but leaving the key along the padlock.

So no, nobody has given up on security, you just probably have read misleading things.

2) Again, several wrong things, will answer separatedly:

> why not a qr-code? it's hard to read?

This is the only one I can't answer with full knowledge, but I think it had something to do with them being hard to read because of the quality of the print (thermical fast printing)

> they can be unlocked, re-written

No, they can't. It's a physical process that burns and cuts connections on the chip, you can't "rebuild" them to unlock it again.

The thing you probably saw was people rewriting _demo_ ballots, which are created with the machine configured in _demo mode_ , in which it doesn't burn the chips, to be able to reuse the same in several demos. The people claiming that even published photos of the supposed "real" ballots they where rewritting, and the ballots had in really big letters crossing all the print, the text "DEMOSTRACION USO NO OFICIAL". So, no, they weren't rewriting real ballots, it's obvious those where demo ones.

> with a weird faraday cage that do not work correctly

Reallity doesn't agree with you, hehe. Even people opposing the system had tried and weren't able to read the chips through the shield. It's simply a shield which has enough mass to absorb the signal that the chip emits.

<comment><USER12> >Which sites?

The tech login sites.

>They use SHA256, not MD5

[https://github.com/prometheus- ar/vot.ar/blob/master/msa/voto...](https://github.com/prometheus- ar/vot.ar/blob/master/msa/voto/constants.py#L216)

>double SSL

Come on...

>hard to read because of the quality of the print

print them bigger? change the printer? this makes no sense, unless you want to have the ability to change the vote. It's the only logical explanation.

>I guess you are referring to the unencrypted chip data.

No, I'm referring, for example, to software package signatures.

>No, they can't. It's a physical process

This is simply not true. Even if you had the power to physically burn something in the chip (you do not), many RFID chips allow unblocking with a special password, because they do not really burn anything. You don't know how the rfid chip works internally because the design is not public, and there are no ways to check the model of chip used.

> Even people opposing the system had tried

Who? were they qualified RF engineers or just some dudes with a commercial RFID reader? No signal can be "absorbed" completely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There has been a lot of discussion over the past few months about this. The voting machines were created by a private company (MSA). The code was supposedly "open" but it was nowhere to be seen.

The machines basically print an electronic voting bill, that has an RFID chip which is reportedly vulnerable.

<comment><USER14> Still, this can be considered better than Brazil system: The code cannot be read by the population, the machine itself has secret proprietary components, testing its security is not truly allowed (the government claims to allow testing, but the test has rules to make true testing impossible, and the allowed tests pointless), and... the machine prints nothing, you are supposed to trust whatever it says the vote count is, without even being able to see if there are bugs or not in the vote counter (what if it has a loop with a > instead of >= for example, that causes 1 less vote per machine?)

<comment><USER15> That's not a voting machine - that's a secret coup d'état.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Here in San Mateo County, we have a good voting machine system, although the knob-based UI is strange. After you've selected all your votes, you press the "done" button, and, behind a transparent window, a printer prints your votes on paper, with the chosen candidates names spelled out fully, followed by a big 2D bar code. You can then accept or cancel your vote. If you reject the printed version, it prints CANCELED and you start over. If you accept, it prints VOTED, and the paper roll winds past the window.

The paper is a backup. The votes are also recorded by the software. But the paper can be read by hand if necessary, or by a scanner which reads the bar codes. So recounts are possible and checkable by all parties.

<comment><USER17> If the paper can be read, political thugs will use bullying and intimidating tactics to get votes. Secret ballot is essential.

<comment><USER18> It's possible to make verifiable secret systems. Some have even been tested in real elections in the US as part o projects by NIST (for arcane reasons, NIST controls voting technology in the US :P). For example, Takoma park in maryland has used scantegrity a few times (2009, 2011).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The title can stop being a question. MSA has confirmed that this is their code, but they say its a copy from earlier this year, and that they have been working on it, so it's already old:

[https://translate.google.com.ar/translate?sl=es&tl=en&u=http...](https://translate.google.com.ar/translate?sl=es&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lanacion.com.ar%2F1803251-filtran- parte-del-codigo-fuente-de-la-boleta-electronica-portena&edit-text=&act=url)

<comment><USER8> New code can share the same bugs and add new ones.

The point here is that voting machines must be open source and its hardware completely public to analyze it. This can't be the weakest link in a democracy.

<comment><USER5> Open source software is certainly preferable to closed, but it's not sufficient for a voting machine, because there is logically no way for the user to verify that the software on the machine is what it is supposed to be.

<comment><USER20> Nor is there a way for the voter to verify that the machine itself is what it's supposed to be.

Now, if the hardware instead

1) could be provided by the voters themselves,

2) was easily auditable

3) was used in their daily lives providing a ubiquitous understanding of the technology involved

only THEN would it be appropriate for use in elections. So far, only pen and paper fulfils all of those criteria.

<comment><USER5> It also needs to be anonymous to prevent people buying or coercing other peoples votes.

and if you satisfy all those requirements, and other, congratulations, you've probably just invented the worlds most expensive printer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is a terrible idea. I lived in Argentina for two years and studied the country. It's a cesspool of corruption, with scant separation of powers (see Nisman, Alberto).

Even in less corrupt countries, electronic voting is a terrible idea: it's vulnerable to hacking and, because the system is opaque to the average citizen, erodes trust.

Richard Stallman has been emphatic on this point: [https://stallman.org/evoting.html](https://stallman.org/evoting.html)

The more at stake, the greater the temptation, the greater the likelihood of fraud. Leave online decisions to scheduling problems a la doodle.com

People should recognize that sometimes paper is superior to bits.

</comment><comment><USER22> if(citizen.isDead && !citizen.hasVoted){ FPV++; citizen.hasVoted=true }

</comment><comment><USER23> If only we had the perfect voting system, and if only the deck chairs on the Titanic were aligned just so...</comment>


The MLH Fellowship. A Paid Opportunity for Students to Work on Open Source - <AUTHOR> https://fellowship.mlh.io/ <comment><USER2> Hey, Swift from Major League Hacking (MLH) here. Thank you so much for submitting. We're humbled by the response we've received so far – more than 200 students already applied within a few hours of launching!

Internships were super impactful for my career. We're excited to find a way to create more opportunities for our community to access these kinds of experiences.

Happy to stick around and answer any questions folks have!

<comment><AUTHOR> You might want to make another post targeting employers.</comment></comment>


Parents are now hiring Fortnite coaches for their children - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/ready-aim-hire-a-fortnite-coach-parents-enlist-videogame-tutors-for-their-children-1533046708 <comment><USER2> The outrage over this shows exactly why these coaches are needed.

The outrage is there because people _care_. And they don't care about $50 that some parent spent somewhere for her kid - because that's non-news. Really.

And if people _care_ about something _that_ much, you can imagine the social implications of not being _good enough_ in it.

Now, people care about this issue a lot because being a good in a game is a certain _status_ that is being challenged by the factor of _having a supportive enough parent_ that not everyone has. Cue the "I'm a gamer but..." and "My parents would never..." responses on Twitter cited in the article.

Conclusion? $50 well-spent. For the cost of a dine-out for two, the kid gets skills that _impact his social life_ in a positive way.

Good one on the parent.</comment>