Rising CO2 levels may trigger cognitive impairment, says new study - <AUTHOR> https://sparkonit.com/2020/04/30/rising-co2-levels-may-trigger-cognitive-impairment/ <comment><USER2> The navy has extensively studied performance in high CO2 environments on submarines, and found that it has no impact under levels much higher than you're likely to get indoors.

This study found no impact on decision making at 15000 ppm [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29789085/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29789085/)

That's _10x_ higher than you're likely to be exposed to in a poorly ventilated conference room.

<comment><USER3> From the study, emphasis mine:

> we were unable to replicate this effect in a _submariner population_

Please don't over-generalize paper results.

<comment><USER4> What's biologically different about submariners? Mostly male, I guess, but anything else?

<comment><USER5> Physically more fit, pass certain psych screenings, etc.

It's not exactly a good random sampling, they filter candidates very aggressively.

<comment><USER2> It's not a good random sample, but they were exposed to C02 levels 10x higher than what you'd be exposed to even in a poorly ventilated conference room.

<comment><USER6> Were they exposed to out in the woods situations with conflicting goals and outcomes, or mainly just following routine and script?

<comment><USER2> The used the same kind of decision making skills test that the tests that showed cognitive decline due to CO2 used.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> wh-uws This one of those things that sounds silly but is actually very easy to test and see it can be a real issue.

Tom Scott did a great video on it a while back

[https://youtu.be/1Nh_vxpycEA](https://youtu.be/1Nh_vxpycEA)

Do yourself a favor and get an air quality monitor like an awair

[https://getawair.com/](https://getawair.com/)

and monitor the levels.

Making sure they are good in whatever indoor areas you spend a good amount of time in is a night and day difference cognitively.

<comment><USER7> Testing is fun. But what do you do then? Open the windows? Remove the cars from the freeway down the street?

<comment><USER8> Opening the windows is a solid choice. I keep a CO2 monitor in my office. So long as I keep the door open, levels usually stay below 800ppm, but if I close the door they can climb rapidly within an hour or two. I have a CO2 meter tied to an alarm to remind me to open the window if they get too high. I probably _should_ have it set to 800, but I found that to trigger too often so I upped it to 1200.

I use a RAD-0301, which works fine as a monitor and an alarm by itself, but which I connect to a Raspberry Pi for dashboard purposes using the code shared here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22764488](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22764488)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> From wearing COVID-19 masks?

[https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2764955](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2764955)

Quote:

> Oxygen concentration inhaled by healthy subjects wearing a surgical mask > covering an N95 respirator decreases to about 17%, and the concentration of > carbon dioxide increases to about 1.2% - 3% in a short period of light work > (2-3). Although participants did not show any obvious changes in physical > function and did not have any discomfort ratings, the average carbon dioxide > concentration inhaled was far higher than the limit of 0.1% of indoor carbon > dioxide concentration in many countries. With prolonged mask wearing, > untoward reactions may gradually appear. In another long-term study, after > wearing an N95 mask for 12 hours the CO2 concentration of subjects increased > to 41.0 mmHg, far higher than the baseline value of 32.4mm Hg at the > beginning of the test (4). The subjects mainly reported headache, dizziness, > feeling tired and communication obstacles. In real life, the situations and > time of wearing masks are much longer than the above experimental research > settings.

<comment><USER10> on the other hand, lockdowns have reduced CO2 emissions in significant levels

The solution is not rooms with air-filtration-conditioning or whatever, there are natural processes for that, the long term solution I see is just a reduced economic activity like during lockdowns, focused on essential sectors (so not luxury, entertainment, ..)

<comment><USER11> A drop in emission rates for a couple months doesn't mean that 100-200 ppm of CO2 magically drops out of the atmosphere. Locally it might help cities a bit.

But the backlog of CO2 to be removed to reach reasonable post-industrial levels (to say nothing of preindustrial) is tens of trillions of dollars if done artificially.

The solution is EVs + alt energy, and to stop industrializing every possible arable acre for agriculture and switch to vertical farming.

<comment><USER10> permacultures are extremely productive, I believe it would work, combined with less consumerism from people, a big shift for sure

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm really sensitive to high CO2 levels, so ever since I was young I had a habit of opening all the windows in my classrooms when I arrived. I feel stuffy and uncomfortable until I get fresh air. It always bugged me that nobody else seemed to notice or care.

After it was recommended here on HN, I bought this CO2 meter [0] and I've been very satisfied with my purchase. It reminds me to open the window and that has had a tremendous impact on my health. I've gotten to the point where I now keep the window slightly open at all times.

I'll share an anecdote which would appear to support the hypothesis that higher CO2 levels affect cognition. I play Heroes of the Storm and my performance in the game becomes notably worse as CO2 levels rise. It's not a huge thing, but I start to make more mistakes and my decision-making gets worse. This is important because at my skill-level (top 100 to top 250 globally, depending on my activity levels) it only takes one mistake in the late-game to throw the match. I've had the CO2 meter start beeping in the middle of a match, and after opening the window I've managed to turn things around because I can think with greater clarity.

[0] [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001PDGFR8/](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001PDGFR8/)

<comment><USER13> > _I now keep the window slightly open at all times._

Which makes you contribute more to CO2 levels than people who don't do that. You literally let the heat escape in the cold months.

<comment><USER12> A trade-off which I'm perfectly happy to make. Charge me a carbon tax and I'll pay it.

<comment><USER14> A trade-off which I make as well, but my dreams of future houses include a fresh air exchange unit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Finally, a good explanation for the state of the world!

On a realistic note, this is a cause for concern for astronauts on the ISS. They experience chronic, significantly elevated ppCO2 levels (4 torr, vs 0.3 torr at sea level), which cases headaches and fatigue, and possibly what's known as the "space stupids," where very high-key, detail oriented people start messing up checklist items and don't perform nearly as well as they should.

<comment><USER16> I was wondering why remote work is sometimes so difficult for me, even though I've been doing it for years.

Turns out I needed to let in some fresh air more often.

Getting to 1000ppm of CO2 is remarkably easy in a room with 25 cubic metres of volume.

<comment><USER17> You can buy a cheap sensor, like the MH-Z19B, connect it to a Raspberry Pi Zero W (or just about anything else), and set a reminder to open the windows once the value rises above some threshold.

Or just buy a finished product for this somewhere I guess.

<comment><USER18> Interesting thanks for the heads up

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wonder if that's why people seem to have gotten less intelligent over the past few years (IQ scores seem to confirm this). I thought it was because of social media but maybe high CO2 is to blame.

I would never have thought that the movie Idiocracy would become reality; it seemed so ridiculously far-fetched at the time... Even with its 500 year timeframe... Now it looks like it may actually happen for real in only a few hundred years.

I wonder if I watched that movie again today if it would come across more as a drama than a comedy.

</comment><comment><USER20> I see a lot of people wanting to monitor CO2 levels. But what's the cheapest remediation option for an individual if the outside air is also pretty bad whether other pollution or just high CO2?

The questions I have are: is it more effective to scrub the CO2 or just to increase the partial oxygen pressure? What are the options for each.

Given that oxygen tanks are existing medical device, I would assume that just supplementing oxygen is the easiest way to offset the CO2. Or is the CO2 harmful even in high oxygen environments?

The study does mention "[Studies] like Satish et al. (2012) and Allen et al. (2016) are part of a growing body of scientific evidence pointing to CO2 as a pollutant—not just a proxy for ventilation rate—with direct detrimental impacts on the cognitive function of humans in schools and offices."

<comment><USER21> The easiest way to scrub co2 is to have house plants.

<comment><USER22> Opening a window is much easier. You need a large number of fast growing plants to reduce CO2 levels significantly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> given the current demonstration of half the population's response to a worldwide-pandemic, there is going to be zero done about CO2 levels or climate-change in general, people are just going to watch the atmosphere boil off over centuries while the 1% move higher into their penthouses and crank the a/c

</comment><comment> non-entity I feel like my cognitive ability has dwindles the past few years and while there are for sure much bigger factors playing into that, I wonder how much these environmental factors are a part of it.

<comment><USER24> Rising atmospheric CO2 is a very real concern, and I am very concerned about the long-term mental effects of atmospheric CO2 rising into the 900+ range.

But short-term, the effects of any rise from 350 to 400ppm outdoors is going to be vastly dwarfed by indoor factors (in some poorly ventilated buildings like old schools, PPM can rise to 2000+). It's far more likely that what you encountered was due to poor ventilation than due to overall global CO2 rise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> CO2 is "food" for plants and trees. Maybe a higher CO2 level can sustain reforestation of desert areas causing an increase in CO2 absorption?

<comment><USER26> There is no lack of CO2 for plants. Deserts have very different reasons for existing (and usually growing).

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This does not appear to be a new study on the effects of CO2. It only mentions there will be more indoor co2 as a result of combustion?

Scihub didn't work for this one so I can't be sure. I'm quite interested in this topic, and there are a small number of studies indicating the issue may be real. However, it is unclear this adds to them.

IF the issue is real it is nonetheless useful to know what this study measures.

<comment><USER28> It's open access: [https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1029/201...](https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1029/2019GH000237)

It doesn't seem to be a trial, it's more like a deduction (basically model fitting) from available data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Original article: [https://cires.colorado.edu/news/continued-co2-emissions- will...](https://cires.colorado.edu/news/continued-co2-emissions-will-impair- cognition)

</comment><comment><USER30> Icons for the left are now saying boycott tesla and other anti climate change statements. The right i highly doubt will ever support a quick transition to clean energy. Hope this doesn't turn into a fringe political issue now

<comment><USER31> Who is saying boycott Tesla?

<comment><USER30> Robert Reich and his circle

[https://twitter.com/RBReich/status/1260255145310339073](https://twitter.com/RBReich/status/1260255145310339073)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Given how COVID-19 situation is playing out in the world, I would say the cognitive impairment has already started.

</comment><comment><USER33> TLDR: They seem to be talking about global levels over time and also mention that indoor levels can be higher, depending on how well air is exchanged with outdoor air.

Probably good to be thinking about the latter, and in my well-insulated place, I often leave some windows cracked to help with this.

Over periods of centuries, presumably evolution would ameliorate most or all of the problem with global changes.

<comment><USER34> "evolution would ameliorate most or all of the problem" is a funny way of saying that "a lot of people are going to die younger (or have fewer children) because of this". That's the only way evolution works.

<comment><USER33> It doesn't need to be a lot younger or a lot fewer. The effect will almost certainly be virtually undetectable, especially when compared to many other evolutionary forces (e.g., diet, particulates in air, lack of exercise, social policies, etc.).

If you want to improve global quality of life, CO2 levels are almost certainly not the right place to start.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> maybe i should stop eating beef now!</comment>


A Rust-Based Unikernel: First Version of a Rust-Based LibOS - <AUTHOR> https://hermitcore.org/2018/06/06/A-Rust-based-Unikernel/ <comment><USER2> I put alot of time and effort into unikernels and the technology is very appealing to me.

It has been something of a puzzle as to why they have gotten no traction in any significant way.

My conclusion is that there are other technologies (i.e. containers/Docker) that are not as good as Unikernels, but are good enough to solve the core industry demand for lightweight nested virtualization. And indeed containers solve that problem better than unikernels in two important ways which is boot time (and I'm talking here about booting useful unikernel based applications as opposed to theoretical unikernel OS boot times which can be milliseconds), and also containers are better because they don't need nested hardware virtualization switched on in the CPU - that's important obviously for cloud computing where nested virtualization has now arrived but is not widespread.

And good enough is all that is needed.

It's hard for me to imagine a time when unikernels gain more acceptance than they already have, which is basically little more than none, and the staunch backing of operating systems researchers and a few true believers who really hang on to the theoretical benefits.

<comment><USER3> Unikernels can be difficult to debug. All the tools that come with your operating system are missing.

A big chunk of managing distributed systems at scale is trying to figure out what's wrong with them when they don't behave. Most operators will gladly trade some performance overhead for access to a suite of tools they're accustomed too.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, production-quality unikernels would need to have built-in observability, tracing, and debugging support (probably in the libOS) but AFAIK no one has started building such tooling. I suspect that production-quality unikernels would end up re-introducing a lot of the "bloat" that unikernels were supposed to eliminate.

<comment><USER5> Yup. GNU/Linux has just been reinvented. Another flavor of OS to support equals $$$$.

<comment><USER6> _IBM OS 360_ has just been reinvented. It's turtles all the way down to the 1960s. This is just like nature. We are witnessing something like the evolution of one celled organisms. Also, multicelled organisms have started to appear. That would be cloud services (mats of algae and bacteria) and machine learning (true multicelled organisms).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Anyone use Unikernels in real life? They always sounded interesting but without a lot of examples of real usage they feel ... academic and theoretical?

<comment><USER8> Most embedded systems are really unikernels - so yes, certainly they are very widely used. Though the more recent developments of running traditional server software on unikernels have not gained that much traction.

<comment><USER9> I doubt you should call embedded systems unikernels.

Stuff like the ATmega chips run the application barematal, yes, but they are cheap microcontrollers with 2KiB of RAM and no MMU. You can't run a kernel on that so your application runs bare.

A lot of the higher-tiered embedded stuff usually either runs a Linux kernel or DOS (and older) from my experience.

<comment><USER10> There are plenty of OS for embedded systems deployment.

Systems running Linux are the exception.

Linux does not fulfill the security requirements of high integrity systems nor the real time constraints.

<comment><USER11> This is completely wrong.

Embedded systems running Linux are extremely common, and becoming more and more popular because it runs on so many architectures (esp. ARM, but also PPC). For many applications, hard real-time is not necessary, and Linux is FAR easier to develop on.

They are not "the exception" by any means. Look at almost any automotive "infotainment" system on current models: it's likely running on Linux. There's countless others.

For high-integrity systems for critical safety applications, you would not use Linux, you'd use a dedicated RTOS, of which there are countless choices. But these all have big disadvantages: poor performance (they favor determinism over performance), poor development support, high license costs, etc. If you're doing avionics, then sure you'd use an RTOS, but if you're making a "smart TV" to play Netflix, you wouldn't, you'd use Linux.

Also, Linux does have real-time capabilities, it just isn't hard real-time, only soft. It works well enough for controlling hobbyist-level CNC machines. I've used it myself for a pretty critical real-time system where ease of development and performance were more important than absolute real-time guarantees.

<comment><USER10> Some numbers would be nice then.

<comment><USER11> Most companies, and probably almost zero government projects, publicize what embedded OSes they use. You're not going to get any numbers.

This means you also have no numbers to back up your claim.

<comment><USER10> Since you insist.

[https://m.eet.com/media/1246048/2017-embedded-market- study.p...](https://m.eet.com/media/1246048/2017-embedded-market-study.pdf)

Apparently I was wrong, see it wasn't that hard to find.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Unikernel can be interesting as a thought channel for CPU/hardware vendors to offer a meaningful alternative to public Cloud vendors, and avoid being commoditized.

Roughly, K8s and many other container solution tries to commoditize hardware. And they require an evolutionary, and modest, changes to application development lifecycle. They emphasize horizontal scaling.

Unikernel requires app developers to substantially change how their applications are written. It emphasize vertical scaling. It's imaginable that hardware vendors can build a cluster-like-machine, where lots of cpu/gpu/ram/spindle/ssd/accelerators, and offer a Unikernel scheduler; which greatly reduces the influence of the higher-level container-based solutions.

I am interested in learning how others think about this view point.

<comment><USER13> I'm also trying to understand the use for Unikernels, because I find them very interesting from a technology perspective. To me, Unikernels might make sense when running a high-performance application on bare metal. There's probably quite a bit of performance to be gained by running your application in ring 0 directly on a physical machine.

But once you add a hypervisor and a scheduler, you've essentially reinvented the OS. I struggle to see the point: just compile static executables and run them on Linux, natively installed on physical hardware, like we did 30 years ago. Deployment is just as easy (i.e. copy a file), performance should be comparable (calling into the kernel should be comparable to calling into the hypervisor), and the tooling is way more mature.

<comment><USER12> > But once you add a hypervisor and a scheduler

What I imagine is a giant machine with thousands of cores, running a unikernel scheduler, for horizontal-scaling apps.

That means hardware vendors can sell their produce directly to application developers, instead of being shoved behind scene by Cloud vendors.

That might means reinventing OS, which can be argued for K8s as well, which is also reinventing similar OS concepts (process management == job management, threading == sharding, ipc == SOA, kernel scheduling == container scheduling).

But the point is that it offers a produce that has technical superiority, and hardware vendors would have more expertise to build them, i.e., unikernel would have much more intimate relationship with baremetal than containers, where hardware vendors would naturally know better to optimize.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _> It promises a secure memory handling enabled by its principle of zero-cost abstraction._

I thought memory safety comes from enforcing proper memory usage through ownership rules (borrow checker), not through zero cost abstraction, which simply indicates that high level language features are translated into efficient system level code.

<comment><USER15> You are correct, the sentence implies that it is the zero cost abstractions that makes it possible which is not right. The zero cost abstractions part is a nice benefit, but unrelated to ensuring safety.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> No doubt a significant accomplishment, and should generate some creative production uses.

For 'larger masses' of 'application-in-a-box', I think, however, a NetBSD(like) with .NET CLR (or even .NET core) would be a much route.

this was discussed on HN in 2016 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11636926](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11636926)

</comment><comment><USER17> Does hermitcore work on non x86 systems (aarch64 or riscv)?

</comment><comment><USER5> Unikernels are fail and here's why: they lack the whole panoply of production monitoring, security, debugging, troubleshooting, auditing and arbitrary general purpose infrastructure capabilities of JeOS boxes. From an ops- usability perspective, chopping down an OS is better than writing one from scratch.</comment>


Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth - <AUTHOR> http://www.logicomix.com/en/ <comment><AUTHOR> Although mentioned here on HN many times in glowing terms, these submissions are all closed for comments, so I thought I'd mention it again:

[http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=logicomix](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=logicomix)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=846451>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=870762>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=874471>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3690254>

I received a copy as a "Thank You" gift for proof reading an early draft of "Here's Looking at Euclid" / "Alex's Adventures in Numberland".

Related: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3991160></comment>


The misplaced outrage over Rolling Stone's Tsarnaev cover - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/f5ed48aac55

<comment><USER2> It's been decades since I read RS, and probably more decades since I bought one, if indeed I ever did. What disgusts me about The Cover is the way it glamorizes a terrorist.</comment>


A Eulogy for Occupy - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/opinion/2012/12/a-eulogy-for-occupy/all/ <comment><USER2> Very well written piece that reminded just what the article intended. It amazed me that the Occupy 'movement' has already faded into the echoes of our society; that is my take and reality since I was not there nor directly involved. Once again, this was an excellent retelling and I for one appreciate it.</comment>


Boston Globe: 10 Technologies Headed for Mainstream - <AUTHOR> http://www.boston.com/business/technology/gallery/stevebakersemergingtech/

<comment><USER2> Congrats to newscred for getting on the list.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - didnt think anyone would notice since it's buried way in there. It was a big surprise to us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I hate this kind of article, 10 pages and little content. At least put up a "print" link.</comment>


The Internet: We're Doing It Wrong - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/18/the-internet-were-doing-it-wrong/ <comment><USER2> The Stacks are forever for us already. Is it a bad? IMO, it's inevitable</comment>


Ask HN: TypeScript, native compiler/VM implementation? - c-smile Is there any native implementation of TypeScript, compiler/VM? I mean not a JS transpiler but something independent?<p>Any work on that in progress? <comment><AUTHOR> Deno supports TypeScript out of the box, but still effectively uses the transpiler under the hood.

TypeScript is designed for the JavaScript runtime, with the only difference being additional compile-time type checks. The runtime behaviour is basically defined as the JS runtime behaviour, so any alternative engine will have to be a full JavaScript engine.

That said, there are some projects that take a subset of TypeScript and run using different implementations. One example is [https://github.com/AssemblyScript/assemblyscript](https://github.com/AssemblyScript/assemblyscript) However, being a subset, the available functionality will be a lot more limited.</comment>


Soccer-Champions League final tops Super Bowl in TV survey - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSLDE60U0G220100131

<comment><USER2> Actually it suprises that this was the first time. Soccer is the number one game almost all over the world, except the US. It is a kind of religion to a lot of people.</comment>


Google: Please Stop Telling Lies About Me - <AUTHOR> https://ehudreiter.com/2019/01/21/google-lies-about-me/ <comment><USER3> Seeing as how the author was indeed born in Israel, I figured at first that it was unreasonable to complain, since like or or not he was probably an Israeli citizen.

However, looking into Israeli citizenship law, I learned that Israel does _not_ have birthright citizenship. So he was not automatically a citizen despite being born there. Had his parents been Israelis (and that doesn't appear to be the case), he would be Israeli.

It's true that he's likely _eligible_ to claim Israeli citizenship through the law of return. But being eligible for Israeli citizenship isn't the same as having it.

So I do understand the annoyance. It's not just a technicality--he actually doesn't have Israeli citizenship. Google's algorithm appears to assume all countries practice birthright citizenship like the US (when many, probably most, do not).

<comment><USER4> Is there a set of circumstances that could result in someone being born in Israel without gaining citizenship, while also not getting citizenship in the country their parents were from?

<comment><USER3> I think that in the vast, vast majority of countries (all of them?), you receive the citizenship of your parents, regardless of the country in which you're born.

So unless ther[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jnbichee's](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jnbichee's) a country where this is not the case, the situation you're describing would not occur. And if there is such a country, the problem would not be unique to Israel, since birthright citizenship is not practiced in many (most?) countries.

Edit: Interesting. As user cwzwarich points out, it appears that India is indeed such a country. So looks like it's possible to be stateless at birth if you're Indian and born in one of the many countries without birthright citizenship. That said, all an Indian citizen has to do if that happens is to report the birth at an Indian embassy within 1 year of the birth, and then the child is an Indian citizen. But if your parents are irresponsible or unaware of the law...

<comment><USER5> "I think that in the vast, vast majority of countries (all of them?), you receive the citizenship of your parents, regardless of the country in which you're born."

For the UK at least, it's not that simple, unless your parents were born in the UK. If your parents citizenship is due solely to one/both of your grandparents being UK citizens (i.e. your parents were also born overseas), you might not be entitled to UK citizenship.

I don't recall the details, but IIRC you need to live in the UK for some time in order to pass on citizenship to your child.

The US has similar rules.

<comment><USER3> > The US has similar rules.

US doesn't have citizenship by descent (the grandparents situation you're describing). So it has no similar rules.

<comment><USER6> Yes it does. It can get complex, but in the simplest case, if your parents are married and both citizens, you will be to, no matter where you were born.

<comment><USER3> I'm well aware of this, since I have close family that your situation applies to. Actually, if your parents are married and even _one_ is a US citizen, you will be too, always.

This may just be a terminology disagreement, but that's typically not what is considered "citizenship by descent".

What we're describing is considered by the US to be "citizenship by parents" or "acquired citizenship". On the other hand, "citizenship by descent" is the European tradition of awarding citizenship to grandchildren and even great- grandchildren of citizens. The US doesn't have citizenship by descent (in fact, it's true that there's a single situation when your grandparent's citizenship can matter to someone trying to assert US citizenship, but it's only as a kind of "tiebreaker" if your parents _weren 't_ married and one was a US citizen).

<comment><USER7> > > in the simplest case, if your parents are married and both citizens, you > will be to, no matter where you were born.

> I'm well aware of this, since I have close family that your situation > applies to. Actually, if your parents are married and even one is a US > citizen, you will be too, always.

You are both wrong.

If both parents are US citizens _and_ at least one of them has ever been a resident of the US or one of itd outlying possessions, you acquire citizenship at birth.

If your parents are married, one is a US citizen, and the other a non-citizen national, the US citizen parent must have been resident in the US for at least one year for you to automatically acquire citizenship at birth.

If the non-citizen parent isn't a national, the citizen parent must be resident in the US for five years, at least two of which were after the age of 14.

[https://www.uscis.gov/policymanual/HTML/PolicyManual- Volume1...](https://www.uscis.gov/policymanual/HTML/PolicyManual- Volume12-PartH-Chapter3.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I hate it when people call being wrong "lying." This is a semantic argument. He was born there so it could be argued that Israeli is technically accurate. I hate it when people call being wrong "lying."

<comment><USER9> Being wrong once without intent to be wrong is not lying.

In this case, Google continues to repeat wrong information long after being corrected multiple times. At this point, it's fair to say they are lying.

<comment><USER10> It's not lying. Maybe it's being wrong, maybe it's negligence, but it's not lying. It's not like they're trying to display the wrong information. The algorithm isn't a person. It's not as simple as saying "oh, our algorithm messed up, we'll kindly tell it to say that you live over there from now on".

I wouldn't call it lying, I'd call it a sub-optimal algorithm design.

<comment><USER11> Generally, the person or group of people behind an algorithm needs to be fully accountable and responsible for the algorithm they use to interact with the world.

If saying: "it's not me, it's the algorithm" gets you out of the responsibility you can do all kinds of morally questionable things.

(edit: grammeer)

<comment><USER12> "It's not me, it's the killbot algorithm I designed, patented, and licensed!"

In seriousness, though, I agree and we're already way behind the eight-ball on this one, given predictive policing and bail algorithms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think it is far less an issue of faulty AI and more an issue of Google ignoring requests to change information about someone when that person notifies them that it is incorrect.

It's one thing to show things in search results, a very different thing to have a little box saying "We Google have deduced that this is true." They should take more responsibility.

In my opinion they should be required to do something about it. It is very similar to how you can tell google your privacy is invaded by something on Google Maps and they will fix it (with blurring, in that case).

<comment><USER14> Actually, there already is a (EU) law for it, it is called GDPR[1] and within it, you have a right to let businesses correct personal information about you.

[1][https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal- content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal- content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:02016R0679-20160504&from=EN) See Article 5, Paragraph 1d and 2 and Article 16

<comment><USER15> ...and as a UK citizen, the author should have no problem making such a request.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I thought the colon should be a comma instead. It misled me to thinking Google was unhappy about people telling lies about them.

<comment><USER3> Actually, the author's use of the colon is correct, and your interpretation doesn't accord with the usual rules of grammar for colon usage.

What I assume you're thinking of is the journalistic use of a colon as shorthand for attribution, normally used in headlines. In that case, the colon and person/organization fall at the _end_ of the sentence. So you'll see things like, "We'll never pass upcoming bill: Rep Smith".

But that's not what the author of the blog post wrote. Instead, he placed "Google" at the beginning of the sentence, writing "Google: Please Stop...". As such, he used the colon in accordance with one of its most common usages-- as a means of address in correspondence, similar to common letter opening "Dear Mr. Smith: Please find enclosed...".

<comment><USER17> Actually, putting the attribution at the beginning is how transcripts are usually done. You can see it in articles that are mainly the transcript of an interview[1], or even in court transcripts[2].

> similar to common letter opening "Dear Mr. Smith: Please find enclosed...".

It's been some time since I've written a letter, but I remember that the typical format uses a comma and not a colon. For example:

        Dear Mr. Smith,

        Please find enclosed...

This[3] could be an example.

[1] - [https://techcrunch.com/2006/09/02/an-interview-with-vc- paul-...](https://techcrunch.com/2006/09/02/an-interview-with-vc-paul-graham- of-ycombinator/)

[2] - [https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcr...](https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/2018/17-532_32q3.pdf)

[3] - [https://www.fotolip.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/How-to- Wr...](https://www.fotolip.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/How-to-Write-a- Resignation-Letter-15.png)

<comment><USER3> Yes, but this is clearly a headline, not a transcript.

And using a colon in a salutation is recommended for business usage according to most style manuals. Traditionally, style manuals discourage letter writers from using a comma unless they are friendly with the recipient.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Wikipedia (de) lists Ehud as an Israeli(-American) computer scientist and this may be the source of the problem.

<comment><USER19> I've read discussions between Wikipedia editors and people the article was about, and they were told to not edit the article, or produce a "no original research" authoritative source. On facts about their own life. So either a kind soul should edit it for them, or TechCrunch should pick up on this story.

And then hope they don't call you something outrageous like: the grandfather of X. Or: some people call her a Y. Because that will be in the article lead as a cold-hard machine readable logical fact for the ages.

<comment><USER20> Or do like Philip Roth and have the New Yorker publish your Wikipedia rebuttals: [https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/an-open- letter-t...](https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/an-open-letter-to- wikipedia)

<comment><USER3> An option sadly unavailable to most of us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Coincidentally, I just ran across someone else trying (and failing) to get Google to update a similar incorrect line in their knowledge graph. In this case, the person is fairly well known on YouTube, and their profession line should almost certainly read "Canadian YouTuber" (as the profession line for all of her peers does), but instead it reads "Actress", which is pretty odd and inaccurate. (You could make an argument that someone who posts content on YouTube is _technically_ an actor/actress, but that's a very uncommon usage, and as with OP, misleads much more that it conveys useful information. And again, Google, who owns YouTube, clearly prefers to label prominent YouTubers as <nationality> YouTuber.)

In her case she apparently got a response saying "our systems don't allow us to fix this type of error", she escalated, then she got a response saying "good news, it's fixed!", but it's not fixed.

If Google is just summarising info from other sources (and in many cases, they just repeat what Wikipedia has), that's fine, but in cases (as here) where they're acting as an independent source of truth, they really need some process for fixing mistakes...

</comment><comment><USER22> If you want Google to be authoritative, you're going to have a bad time. It's literally not designed to be a source of truth. It's designed to tell you what it finds on the Internet.

<comment><USER23> > It's literally not designed to be a source of truth.

Google seems to be pushing very hard lately to be considered the source of truth, picking information out of context and putting it in their infobox with no explanation as to where they grabbed it from.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> For anyone else curious.

I'm not sure, but a cursory search suggests it's perfectly fine to publicly lie about a private citizen with no recourse, as long as you avoid financial or related damages?

"In order to determine the damages from a slander or libel suit, there must be quantifiable damages. Defamation of character damages a person's or company's reputation, and it must be proven that the damage to reputation correlated with a loss of money, property, relationship or was subject to harassment that led to any of the above losses."

[https://thelawdictionary.org/article/when-to-sue-for- defamat...](https://thelawdictionary.org/article/when-to-sue-for-defamation- slander-and-libel)

<comment><USER25> It may be "perfectly fine" in terms of legal repercussions, but there are also ethical considerations. If someone knowingly makes false statements about someone else, they would rightfully be regarded as unethical and untrustworthy.

<comment><USER24> You're very sweet. How about telling them something like...

Pardon me, Mr. Google and Mr. <consider who you're dealing with in these scenarios>, how are you sir? Would you kindly consider not publishing false statements about me?

Of course you may not be compelled to do so. However as a gentleman I'm sure you would ageee the ethical and trust implications are philosophically untenable. Therefore I assume you are intrinsically highly motivated to immediately take corrective action. Thank you!

Regarding the first sentence, please take it at face value. If that's your point of view I'd be glad to count you as a friend if you'd have me - <USER2> anytime.

However, I'd probably not guess well how long Ehud will have to remain an Israeli computer scientist.

<comment><USER13> Or, how about blogging about it, and having internet discussions about it that cause Google to realize that this is negatively impacting their image to the public, and that that in itself can be costly enough to them to change their approach, even if not compelled to do so by a court?

Which is exactly what happened here. (whether they change their course is yet to be seen)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Interestingly, Google gets it right about Terry Gilliam. He was famous also for being the only non-British Monty Python, but he became a citizen and gave up his American passport.

He's listed as "British screenwriter". I guess you could argue that he's that, sure, but a director first, so it doesn't get this one exactly right, either, but for different reasons. Anyway, although British is technically right, I'm probably not the only one that will forever consider him American.

BTW, the Wikipedia snippet underneath says "Terrence Vance Gilliam is an American-born British screenwriter, film director, animator, actor, comedian and former member of the Monty Python comedy troupe." Makes you wonder...

</comment><comment><USER27> Sent (very unkind) feedback to Google via the infobox that appears for Ehud Reiter[0]. It's about time Google developes a mechanism for handling cases like these and so many others (like all the cases where people lose access to their accounts completely).

We shouldn't need legislation or lawsuits.

[0] [https://www.google.com/search?q=Ehud%20Reiter](https://www.google.com/search?q=Ehud%20Reiter)

</comment><comment><USER28> For reference, author Greg Egan also had troubles with getting Google to stop putting up incorrect information on him, including photos of other people named Greg Egan on his profile [1]

[1] [http://www.gregegan.net/ESSAYS/GOOGLE/Google.html](http://www.gregegan.net/ESSAYS/GOOGLE/Google.html)

</comment><comment><USER29> Easy solution don't use Google use DuckDuckGo.com or another search engine.

<comment><USER30> This comment doesn't correspond with the content of the blog post. It relates to Google's algorithms; one's personal choice of search engine does not change the fact that the results Google shows are ultimately seen by more eyes than anything else.

<comment><USER31> Sure it does. General awareness of google's increasing tendency to engineer language will result in people not trusting it... possibly to the point where this person wouldnt bother to write about it.

<comment><USER30> I still can't see the link to individuals using DDG as an immediate or relevant solution to the problem discussed by the author. The comment, to my eyes, came off as flippant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This will become an ever more important issue and I feel the only way forward is via legislation.

Google might care, but not enough to fundamentally do something about it.

FB and G are profitable because they have 'very low touch'. They don't have legions of tellers, fact checkers, CSR reps and people to handle the myriad of details other business have to deal with.

These issues are not only 'high touch' \- they are _hard_.

G is not going to start hiring thousands of people to do such things, it's just not in their DNA.

Maybe some issue will be the straw on the camels back.

</comment><comment><USER33> Google doesn't care. They offer their products, generally, for free. They don't owe you any customer service at all.

Edit:

> > If a journalists says something incorrect about me, I can complain to him > or his newspaper/magazine, and this will be taken seriously; indeed most > journalists give me an opportunity to fact-check anything they say about me > before it is published. If Experian says something wrong about me in its > credit report, I can report this and they will take this seriously. In fact > almost all organisations which give out information about me allow me to > complain and point out problems. Except Google, who clearly doesnt care.

That's what I was commenting on.

<comment><USER30> This comment does not correspond with the content of the article. The blog writer is discussing the way that Google's algorithms are faulty, presenting false information quite high in search results. This has little to nothing to do with customer service; this is about the ethics and responsibility of algorithms that present information to vast numbers of people.

<comment><USER33> > If a journalists says something incorrect about me, I can complain to him or > his newspaper/magazine, and this will be taken seriously; indeed most > journalists give me an opportunity to fact-check anything they say about me > before it is published. If Experian says something wrong about me in its > credit report, I can report this and they will take this seriously. In fact > almost all organisations which give out information about me allow me to > complain and point out problems. Except Google, who clearly doesnt care.

That's what I was commenting on. This quote came from the article.

<comment><USER30> I see, I apologise. Although, I still don't see that the original comment made responds to the main point that the writer makes, that Google has a responsibility because their data, correct or not, is presented to such a huge number of people. Whether the product is free or not has no bearing on their responsibility to society given their size and influence.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Hard Math Behind Bitcoin's Global Warming Problem - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/bitcoin-global-warming/ <comment><USER2> Oh please. If you want to reduce the environmental impact of bitcoin mining, it is very simple. Just increase the cost of energy. It will make absolutely zero difference to bitcoin.</comment>


UC San Diego Physicists Locate Long Lost Soviet Reflector on Moon - <AUTHOR> http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/newsrel/science/04-26SovietReflector.asp

<comment><USER2> "In the coming months, he estimates it will be possible to establish the reflector's coordinates to better than one-centimeter precision."

On the _moon_.

<comment><USER3> And some days I can't even find my keys :)

<comment><USER4> Well, if you'd spend 4 years of undergraduate education on key related studies, then 3 to 5 years on key-finding PhD research, then all your life on the same subject, I'm sure you'd be able to get millimeter accuracy on your keys position ! That, and the help of a rich key-finding research community and literature.

That being said, anything mood/astronomy/physics related is freaking awesome, so yeah, the _moon_ people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > "The best signal we've seen from Lunokhod 2 in several years of effort is > 750 return photons, but we got about 2,000 photons from Lunokhod 1 on our > first try."

I was trained as a physicist and I'm _still_ impressed by astronomers' ability to learn things from countably small numbers of individual photons that make it through a telescope.

</comment><comment><USER6> "Lunokhod 1, by virtue of its location, would provide the best leverage for understanding the liquid lunar core..."

The moon has a liquid core?! Why was I not informed?</comment>


25 years ago today, NCSA Mosaic 1.0 was released - <AUTHOR> http://www.ncsa.illinois.edu/enabling/mosaic/versions <comment><USER2> Reading this today on Firefox on a laptop running Linux.

22 years ago (when using the internet for the first time) it would have been on Netscape running on a green screen Unix terminal in university lab.

I used my first credit card to buy a CD from Amazon in the US. Never thought it would work. But then 2 weeks later a brown box arrived in my halls of residence in London and... well that really did change the world. Not the CD, the browser.

A lot has changed. It has been very incremental and lots of stop-starts, and there have been many pains (supporting standards) but it feels like yesterday. Nice to take stock and look back.

<comment><USER3> Ha ha, very similar story. I was working with one of the guys that I managed, and he showed me a book relevant to our project that I decided I needed to buy. "Darn, can't get away at lunch today to hit the bookstore." He says: "Order it from Amazon." so I say: "What is Amazon?" him: "It's a web store. Here is the URL." me: "I don't have a web browser". Him: "ftp the tarball for Mosaic from NCSA and do the standard ./configure; make all; and you will be good to go."

Here is the thing that really impresses me about Bezos. In a world where Sili Valley engineers were spreading Mosaic by word of mouth and just getting to about 50% penetration among engineers, Amazon was already a store.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I used a text based browser for a year or so. Then, when Mosaic was released, I thought "wow they are really on to something here."

I was happy with the lynx like text browser but seeing embedded images was mind blowing.

In the 1980s the Internet was gopher and ftp sites. At work I collected indices of what was on different ftp sites. I was sort of like a human search engine.

<comment><USER5> Was it easier or harder to find the information you were after back then?

<comment><USER6> Back in those days I literally maintained a bookmarks folder with every web page of any value, anywhere, on the Internet.

That quickly stopped. Bookmarks were functional for about a year, and then quickly became useless. The new hot was the search engine that'd just do the work of finding new sites to read for you.

<comment><USER5> Navigation-wise?

<comment><USER6> Not sure what you mean by navigation?

Since it was possible I've pretty much just used "print to PDF" to save web pages I like, which means I can use tools such as 'ls' and 'grep' to find stuff I only remember by a few key words, and I have an easy to maintain filesystem with tons of stuff that is easily and readily available, offline, which is great .. plus instead of having to deal with a proprietary format for saving URL's, its just PDF's. And boy is it fun to mine data out of my collection of everything interesting I've ever read online since .. I guess .. 1997 ..

<comment><USER5> Utilising the browser to navigate through the web compared to its ancestors.

My first browser was Netscape Navigator 3. I remember how little RAM I had, couldn't keep many windows open (tabs did not exist yet) assuming Windows 9x didn't crash. Some webpages were annoying with blink, horrible colour combinations, many (bloated) pictures, or they had MIDI, GIFs, etc. What I'm wondering about is was all that harder to browse then say Gopher or Usenet? Why is it a website like HN with so little fluff is a breeze to use while Aliexpress or Google News sucks?

<comment><USER6> The web has a serious case of bloat disease. Sure, back then, site were smaller - we didn't have all the bandwidth we have today. But as bandwidth grew, so did the bloat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> You can still run it on Debian[0].

[0] [https://github.com/alandipert/ncsa- mosaic](https://github.com/alandipert/ncsa-mosaic)

</comment><comment><USER8> There is a very good podcast episode on this from The Internet History Podcast:

[http://www.internethistorypodcast.com/2014/01/mosaic/](http://www.internethistorypodcast.com/2014/01/mosaic/)

Well worth a listen for anyone who remembers Mosaic.

There is now a book out from the podcast series too.

<comment><USER9> This podcast is fantastic! I've listened to every episode. I wish there were more similar podcasts or other forms of media that chronicle the history of the internet and related tech.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> <blink>Thanks for the memories</blink>

<comment><USER11> Believe Netscape added that, while Mosaic added <img …>.

<comment><USER12> Yep.

[http://www.montulli.org/theoriginofthe%3Cblink%3Etag](http://www.montulli.org/theoriginofthe%3Cblink%3Etag)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I work right next to the NCSA building, still amazed by some of the work they do. Especially, the move to add corporate partners.

Ironically, still bitter about losing out on all the upside of the web browser. The university of Illinois is pretty notorious for missing out on the upside of their work: the browser, transistor, LED, MRI, and others...

<comment><USER14> U Illinois got stock in Netscape, even though no NCSA Mosaic code was used in Netscape's codebase.

<comment><USER15> That was Netscape's story at the time when they were being sued for copyright infringement, but it was fairly obvious that there was a certain amount of code copying. There were error messages with the same misspellings in them... Anyhow Netscape decided to settle the lawsuit and give UI the Netscape stock. Interestingly UI then licensed Mosaic to a company called Spyglass, and that version went on to become Internet Explorer 1.0.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wasn't there some strange IP ownership conflicts between this version and the one that eventually became Netscape?

Not to mention there was the swirl society of Netscape: [http://totic.org/nscp/swirl/swirl.html](http://totic.org/nscp/swirl/swirl.html)

</comment><comment><USER17> Use that.

Anyone remember gopher? And the two links protocol, with backlinks.

<comment><USER18> Yes, I do. I loved Gopher. When I was a senior in high school in 1992, a buddy and me discovered Gopher. We were a really unlikely pair of nerds: I was into skateboarding and my buddy was a starting lineman on the HS football team. For the post-internet generation here, you have to understand just how unusual and uncool it was to be into computers in the early 90s. Even the nerds at my school weren't into BBSes or the early Internet but we were, in a closeted sort of way. So, every day at lunchtime, we would go home to our respective houses and get on a BBS and chat with each other just because the technology was so cool.

One day, we were on a local Waffle BBS (I think it ran on BSD-OS or something like that) and we read about a dialup at the local university that could be used to get a gopher client. You would dial into their terminal server and this gave you unauthenticated telnet access anywhere. From there, we would telnet to liberty.wlu.edu, some kind of *nix server (probably Sun) that had a no-auth-required login that would get you a Gopher client. From there, we would browse the Gopher-web, which was pretty amazing for 1992. We'd visit gopher servers in Sweden, Japan, Germany, everywhere. We believed that when we went from the WLU gopher (in Virginia) to a Gopher server in Sweden, that a modem was dialing between those two locations and so on. We were really worried that we'd get in huge trouble for racking up tens of thousands of dollars in long distance.

Yeah, I loved gopher. :)

<comment><USER19> I remember explaining to my parents what email was, and at one point one of them asked if it cost more money to send an email to a recipient that was further away. That's a similar level of cuteness.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I was in college at the University of Texas at the time, and my first exposure to Mosaic was in their new Student Microcomputer Facility. (Aka the SMF or 'Smurf lab.)

The SMF was a large and brand new ncomputer lab in the undergraduate library, equipped with something like 200 computers... 50 of them were Mac Quadras with 17 (!) inch monitors and the rest were Dell Dimension machines... 486DX2/66, local bus video, and 15 inch screens. These all had Mosaic installed with a UT page of some sort as the home. So, clicking on the icon brought up this hypertext display with this colorful 3-D rendered banner image at the top. It looked a lot like the hypertext help facility that Microsoft introduced with Windows 3.0, but better and network connected, and open, and accessible. Truly next generation stuff at the time, in particular in comparison to the purely character based internet that came immediately before. (Think telnet, archie, ftp, etc.)

</comment><comment><USER21> I started using NCSA Mosaic in the computer lab at college in 1994. It was a very different world online back then, there was so much potential and so much hope. Even so it was hard to imagine the degree to which the internet and especially the web would become an omnipresent part of the lives of most people in the developed world, for good and bad. Certainly the idea that there would be billions of pocket computers might as well have been science fiction.

<comment><USER20> > Certainly the idea that there would be billions of pocket computers might as > well have been science fiction.

There were a lot of people working on the ideas behind this kind of portable computing, even then. Just a few examples:

* Electronic pocket calculators were a thing back into the early 1970's

* HP had a portable almost-PC called the 95LX that was released in '91, and the Newton was also early 90's.

* Companies like Sharp were making pocket computers back into the early 80's. Some of these were PDA-style organizers, but there were also some that just ran BASIC on a one line display

* PenPoint and Pen windows were also early 90's.

Maybe the scale would have seemed incredible, but the concepts were very much in flight at the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I installed Mosaic on the computer I add in my office at University.

It was 1994.

Am I that old ??

<comment><USER23> I was 2 in 1994. So I skipped over using Mosaic and straight to IE5...

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Miss the animated icon, such drama when browsing over dialup.

<comment><USER25> Browser throbbers were great. The Netscape "meteor shower" felt like it added some cyberpunk mystique to the nighttime browsing experience.

NCSA Mosaic: [https://66.media.tumblr.com/619788fdd7d7c121578500013afd7ba7...](https://66.media.tumblr.com/619788fdd7d7c121578500013afd7ba7/tumblr_mgq6c7VjRE1rrl4xho1_r1_400.gif)

Netscape: [https://i.stack.imgur.com/oqMri.gif](https://i.stack.imgur.com/oqMri.gif)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> It's too bad we lost blue waters.

</comment><comment><USER27> Still my default browser!

</comment><comment><USER28> Was there frequently while finishing up school last year.

Today, I assume we'd need to fill every office in that building with a talented engineer to produce a competitive browser from scratch.

</comment><comment><USER29> I can truthfully say that downloading Mosaic changed my entire life. It was 1994 and after I finished installing Trumpet Winsock on my Windows 3.1 machine I finally got it running.

Started browsing and all of a sudden realized that it was 5 am and I was due at work in 3 hours! Four years later I'd quit my job as an ag agronomist for a fertilizer company and betting on my hobbyist programming skills started building web businesses. It hasn't been at all a smooth ride, tell people at times I felt like I took an oath of poverty ;<). But it's a journey than I am quite glad I started.

</comment><comment><USER30> watch this scene from Halt and Catch Fire where they talk about the browser as the doorway to the possibilities of the 'World Wide Web'. It's great [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mi_fKu9WTAE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mi_fKu9WTAE)

<comment><USER30> and also an actual scene from the season 4 opening montage showing them discovering Mosaic itself [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_l4dRfY-t0I&t=4m54s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_l4dRfY-t0I&t=4m54s)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I still have a 3 1/4" floppy of the 1.0 release, right next to a sealed CD of Netscape 4.0. Good times.

<comment><USER32> PC floppies come in 3.5" or 5 1/4"

;)

<comment><USER6> Well, there was the 3" floppy for a while too, you know ..

EDIT: Really: 3", not 3.5".

<comment><USER32> There was, but not so much on PC compatibles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33>
        snap install mosaic

:-)

</comment><comment><USER6> I remember the day very well .. I'd just gotten an SGI machine for work, and was one of the few who could run Mosaic "out of the box" without faffing around with WinTrumpet and TCP/IP hacks and so on .. I recall the thought process that went "oh so this is just a fancy gopher, really, for transferring files without going through FTP or whatever.." straight to "oh, shit, it can preview images and I don't have to open them separately" .. to "this is the future, all computers sharing docs freely and easily to each other in a user- friendly way, which doesn't involve FTP or whatever.."

It was such a great experience, there were orders placed in the office that day for a few more Indy's for the execs, since nobody sensible wanted a Mac in those days and Windows was just out of the question.

Then, someone noticed that Mosaic was released for Linux too, and suddenly the Indy's weren't so hot but a 486 loaded with RAM would do .. the web truly transformed the hardware world as well as the online information society, too.

</comment><comment><USER34> The bold (<B>) and italics (<I>) tags now work.

</comment><comment><USER35> dearly missed

</comment><comment><USER36> And the internet was born!

<comment><USER37> No, not at all. There was a lot more to the internet than just the web which was a later arrival to the net. The internet had been around for years. TCP/IP had been standardised for a decade or so.

http was just one of many protocols, and should never have ended up being used for everything, it's not suited. There was plenty of reason to be online years before Mosaic too. They just didn't yet have pretty pictures, ads and tracking built in to every request. :p

<comment><USER38> True, but the browser brought a GUI and ease of use. More people could use a browser to run ftp than could -- or at least, would -- run ftp.</comment></comment></comment>


Technology That Changed Air Travel - <AUTHOR> https://tryretool.com/blog/air-travel-software/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi! I'm the author of this blog post. This was fun to write: I've taken a bunch of flights in my lifetime, and was always curious what travel agents are doing when they book a flight, or what check-in agents are doing when they "can't find the ticket".

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the article, interesting read!

In 2016, AUS airport a colleague and I at the gate offered our seats for a later flight and ~$500 cash. The helpful attendant starts "searching" for a possible double-ticket in their system, to my biggest surprise, not really using the mouse but just typing, like "hackers" in movies.

At one point she tells us disappointed she couldn't find anything, and turns the monitor to show it to us. Both working in IT, we look at the screen totally astonished: 80x25, white-on-blue, looks like a hex editor (pairs of letters clustered), and the lady continues to type in commands, with the speed of how people play candy crush nowadays, not how a flight attendant would use a CLI :-D

Since then I know what GDS is and how it looks like

<comment><USER3> It kills me now going to a gate and the agent is using a GUI. It's so insanely slow compared to a good, experienced, gate agent using the CLI.

<comment><USER4> Deskilling has been brutal in the airline industry. Replacing that good, experienced, union-paid gate agent with a outsourcing-thrice-removed permatemp worker has brought costs down considerably. Making the systems easier to use has been crucial in enabling that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Back in the early 90's, my best friend and I started a software consulting and development company called 'Sabre Systems' here in Australia.

We started getting calls at least 2 to 3 times a week from travel agents all over the world asking for support and information. It took us several weeks to cotton on that there was a worldwide booking system called SABRE, and that these agents were looking up the name on very early versions of Google or Yahoo search engines (or even just Yellow Pages) and finding our company!

</comment><comment><USER6> I've been in a different industry for 8 years now, but previously I was in the travel / airline industry working on backend booking systems: it was surprising at the time to me how much stuff was still done using things like VT320 terminals.

Interestingly back in ~2008, Amadeus did actually introduce some new XML web APIs for doing things, but they were so badly designed and slow that we ended up still using console terminal text entering / scraping as it was much faster for performing the same tasks (searching for flights, querying them and booking them).

And this terminal text entering / scraping code was pretty complicated as it had to cope with pagination on the terminals, scrolling text fields on the terminals, positioning, etc. Obviously only supported ASCII as well.

</comment><comment><USER7> Thanks, I enjoyed the read the first time I came across.

I really don't want to come across as an annoying person but please do not submit the same content marketing articles over and over again. This is the 5th time you're submitting this.

</comment><comment><USER8> When was this written? It talks about XML as a new technology.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah sorry for the confusion — NDC is the new technology ([https://www.iata.org/whatwedo/airline- distribution/ndc/Pages...](https://www.iata.org/whatwedo/airline- distribution/ndc/Pages/default.aspx)), but it's built on XML :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can't help but wonder why they didn't pick JSON. :)

<comment><USER10> I'd say the article isn't entirely accurate. First off, it's not like they all still use EDIFACT today, XML APIs are there for years for all major GDS (Sabre, Amadeus, Travelport products), and there are multiple APIs with different capabilities. And some APIs are actually available via JSON transport. But that doesn't matter that much, really, there are countless reasons why pretty much all of these APIs are fucked up, XML/SOAP with broken WSDLs as a transport is really more like a minor inconvenience compared to everything else that bothers me when thinking about their APIs.</comment></comment>


Graydon Hoare joins Stellar.org - <AUTHOR> https://www.stellar.org/blog/the-stellar-report-sept-2014-vol2/

<comment><USER2> That's fantastic news for the Stellar team!

Curious as to what features he'll be working on.

<comment><AUTHOR> He will be on the Core team which focuses on stellard. We will be publishing a roadmap shortly. Thanks!</comment></comment>


Test Your Website With Chrome. (Iphone, Android, Pretty much on all devices) - <AUTHOR> http://devpy.wordpress.com/2012/11/29/test-your-website-with-chrome-iphone-ipad-android-pretty-much-on-all-devices/

<comment><USER2> Sorry but all this does is change the user agent string, it doesn't change the rendering engine, viewport size, emulate touch events or anything else you need to do proper tests.

<comment><USER3> You are right it only changes the user agent string... But still Chrome can at least emulate touch events

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a gross overstatement, the setting simply changes your user-agent string. Which, honestly, serves very little purpose. Most cases for user-agent sniffing that come to mind are related to something about that browser's rendering engine (i'm looking at you IE!)

Now, if chrome could render using the Trident engine from IE7, I'd be impressed.

Please don't just switch your user agent and think that your website looks fine in IE 7.... go get IETester (<http://www.my- debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage>) or something similar.</comment>


OK, You're Rich. Now What? - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704083904576335593881998326.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories <comment><USER2> Being rich means that you have mastered how to turn time into money. Great. So you've got the hang of half of the game - which is no time to sit back and rest on your laurels.

Now you have to master turning money into time.

[http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2008/02/what-is- wealth.ph...](http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2008/02/what-is-wealth.php)

We all go through engineering our cycles of property and time; how can we best optimize time to generate property that can be used to make our time more effective? We do this in small ways and large, but everyone does it. Some people do it so effectively they launch themselves into property escape velocity, exponentially increasing the effectiveness of their time and exploring the outer limits of what it means to maintain ownership of a great deal of property.

Interestingly, despite the grand importance of time as the absolute foundation of wealth, very little progress has been made in the most obvious optimization of all: creating property that can create more time. More heartbeats, more health, more time spent alive and active. Rejuvenation medicine, capable of repairing the damage of aging. Tissue engineering to generate replacements for worn organs. The cure for cancer. If you could do all that, then the much more productive form of escape velocity becomes possible - longevity escape velocity. Why strive to maintain an empire of property that will crumble to dust when the degenerations of age catch up with you when you could be that fit-looking guy having a blast swimming in the breakers every other Sunday for as long as you like?

Wealth is exactly time, and here we are, bordering the era of biotechnology for the repair of aging. Planning ahead for the best possible personal future starts with investment now. Think about it.

<comment> DanI-S As important as this is, I know people whose lives are so consumed by their quest for immortality that they go without much of what makes life worth living.

Pursuing the life of an ascetic and munching on supplements in the hope that you'll still be around when the singularity hits - it's not too far from giving yourself to religion.

<comment><USER3> > I know people whose lives are so consumed by their quest for immortality

Name three. And please note that Voldemort doesn't count because he's not a real person.

<comment><USER4> Hundreds of movie celebrities come to mind.

I would reverse your question and name people who, even though they could have lived more, they chose not to do so: I will name a heavyweight: Albert Einstein

<comment><USER3> > Hundreds of movie celebrities come to mind.

If they're not signed up for cryonics, at their income level, I don't buy that they're actually consumed by anything remotely resembling a quest for technological immortality, as opposed to merely trying to grab onto their fading youth using conventional and uninteresting methods.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wouldn't need billions, really. Not even millions. Just some income, I wouldn't mind if it was capital income, if some benevolent gazillionaire would pay me a modest lifetime allowance, or if I inherited some poor but filthy rich relative as long as nobody told me what to work on.

I'd just sit down for probably four hours every day and write code for _whatever open source project_ I'd feel like contributing to the most each time of the year. Sometimes possibly writing my own software, sometimes fixing stuff in other software, or sometimes just redesigning stuff. Minus all effort to convince people to accept my patches. But open source anyway. I think that open source is my best bet of making a difference in the world; I mean such a difference that scales.

I have four hours to spare these days. But those would be the code-writing hours only. I would need the ten other hours, while doing all kinds of everyday stuff, to think about what to write the following day. I can't do that now that I'm working: I merely spend the four hours to unwind from what I did for work, to get back to normal.

On the other hand, if I had _lots of_ money then I'd feel being obliged to put that money into good use. Not just investing it into the most convenient index fund I happened to find: it would be _my money_ and I'd be pretty picky about it. And managing money would take time; I'm afraid it'd take enough time to once again prevent me from just coding whatever I want.

<comment><USER6> 4 hours x 5 days x 15 weeks x $100 = $30k

I spend the other 37 weeks working on open source projects. If you have more in-demand skills you can probably charge more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This article pisses me off. This is certainly a giant windfall, but Reid is already wealthy and has shown that he doesn't fall into the ridiculous sensationalist stereotypes proffered by this moronic journalist. And he's been building this company for 8 fricking years! Hoffman one of the most visionary and prolific angel investors and (never met but hear he is) a fantastic person. He had a substantial exit when one of the largest internet acquisitions happened with PayPal (anyone know his total take?). And with his stake in Facebook he's had "paper X00 millionaire" status for quite a while. And Zynga? And about a hundred other angel investments? Not to mention that with the liquidity now afforded by the secondary markets, the term "paper millionaire" is ringing a bit hollow when talking about the elite consumer Internet companies who have active demand in SecondMarket and the like. So to characterize him as this rags to riches story illustrative of the flash-in- the-pan excess of some new dot-com "bubble.0" is frankly disgusting. Oh, and to answer the journalist's question of what to do with all that money? Do what Reid has done, and usher in the next generation of successful startups (with surely some casualties along the way, but hey, that's investing).

</comment><comment><USER8> Google actually invited some very high profile people to teach its staff about wealth and investing [http://www.sanfranmag.com/story/best-investment-advice- youll...](http://www.sanfranmag.com/story/best-investment-advice-youll-never- get)

</comment><comment><USER9> I am always coding like a maniac to make enough money so I can finally retire to do what I love most, coding.

</comment><comment><USER10> Is this question really that hard to answer? I'll take some stabs:

\- Dalton (school) for the kids, and a nice donation to the alma matter to assure legacy status

\- Museum board memberships for the wife

\- A vanity career in writing, photography or abstract art

\- The best therapist money can buy

<comment><USER11> Are there any high profile examples of people who didn't change their lifestyle much at all?

<comment><USER12> At one time, Warren Buffett would have been a perfect example, but I think he has a private plane now, which dilutes the impression a bit.

<comment><USER13> He was forced to be his shareholders, actually, because wasting time in coach was reducing shareholder value.

<comment><USER14> He also owns the company - marquis jet (well, it's parent who i can't remember the name of).

<comment><USER15> NetJets. Warren Buffett was a customer for 3 years before buying the company, though. The Marquis card is interesting, but I think the traditional fractional ownership plan is a lot more popular.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Start a spaceship company.

<comment><USER17> This is exactly why I want to be rich.

<comment><USER15> I wanted to get absurdly (>$25b) rich to be the guy who financed the first mission to Mars, as a private venture. I think Elon is going to beat me to it. Somehow, this doesn't really upset me at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I thought being rich was having liquid assets, not a billion dollars in stock that would decrease in worth as you sell large chunks of it.

</comment><comment><USER19> Solve education. Use the results to solve food & energy.

<comment><USER20> energy is solved. <http://www.energyfromthorium.com/history.html>

potable water is solved as a side effect of thorium reactors.

food was solved by the Bosch-Haber process, it's a matter of distribution now.

<comment><USER21> Politics and engineering are not the same.

<comment><USER20> I have some nice beach front property to sell to anyone thinking they're going to solve a political problem.

<comment><USER21> Tons of political problems have been solved in the past†. If politics were incapable of solving problems society wouldn't exist.

It's just that you can't go about solving political problems like you would go about solving engineering problems. That's all.

†A few examples of relatively targeted efforts to achieve set political goals:

\- Women's suffrage in the UK and other countries

\- Abolishment of the death penalty in France and other countries

\- The civil rights movement in the US

Those are all high-profile examples but solving problems in a way that doesn't cause chaos or disasters is one of the core tasks of any political system.

<comment><USER20> all of those resulted in awful outcomes to go with the good. political problems don't get "solved". differing groups get pushed around around over time. the overall amount of pushiness monotonically increases.

<comment><USER21> That's an awfully cynical view. Problems remain, politics is tedious and sometimes mindbogglingly irrational but, looking back, humanity has made progress and there are countries in the world that are better at this stuff and some that are worse.

No one serious – and certainly no large portion of the population anywhere in Europe or North America – demands women's suffrage to be taken back. I'm not sure how to interpret that in any other way as seeing clear progress (if my goal was to enable women equal participation in politics).

But that's not really all that important to the point I was trying to make. Politics requires a different sort of mindset compared to engineering (as does, for example, PR or marketing), you don't solve problems (or better: achieve goals – "problem" is such an awfully loaded word) the same way.

<comment><USER20> I think it is wise to be cynical about zero sum games such as status and government and optimistic about positive sum games.

as for achieving goals, many of the "conflicts" fall away when you directly consider the goal of increases in standards of living for all sectors of society rather than an endlessly manipulated parade of sub goals.

If aliens came to earth and you told them about our problems, they'd probably first ask why everyone isn't studying the regions with the highest standards of living.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The most interesting thing about the article was that the advice was not just for the rich, but general investment advice for anyone.

It seemed as though this sample suggested passive investment with an emphasis on diversification of speculative tech stocks. This would be especially important to paper millionaires who "have the money" who now need to safely and wisely get it to cash.

Not a problem for most of us yet, but I'd imagine I'd hit the books if I legally obtained access to millions like some of these founders have.

I'd also imagine experienced founders who have seen checks for millions before would already know what to do.

</comment><comment><USER23> I once read a great article on asktog, called "How I made a Small Fortune (out of a much larger one)". It dealt with advice, from someone who got a lot of shares of Apple when they IPOed.

For some reason I can't seem to find it anywhere. Can anyone provide a link?

</comment><comment><USER24> Of course there are people calling themselves "wealth psychologists" now.

</comment><comment><USER25> If I am rich, I help other people.

<comment><USER26> The only thing that happens when you're rich is that you can help more people. If you were not helping people before (whatever that means to you), you probably won't do it after.

<comment><USER13> Not true at all. Many people would be much more willing to give once basic expenses are taken care of (60k-100K annual income).

<comment><USER27> What you said intuitively appears true, but it's actually not the case in real life. Helping others is not limited by time or money - you can help others in large or small ways. And the OP is absolutely correct, if you are not already helping others in some way, having more money won't change your behaviour.

On a related note, I was talking to an university alumni director in Australia (where philanthropy is not culturally ingrained like in the US) and she was telling me the statistics on donations. If a student did not make a donation to the university within 5 years of leaving, 96% of them would never make a donation. However, if they made a donation within 5 years, a very large percentage of them would continue to make donations (regular or irregular) over their lifetime. How much they initially donated was irrelevant - it was the initial act of donating that determined the probability of them continuing to donate.

Similarly, if you are not prepared to donate a few dollars when on a 'low' income, you are unlikely to change your behaviour when you are on a 'high' income.

<comment><USER3> Agree with parent, disagree with grandparent. If there's one thing you learn when you're doing philanthropy, it's that people who give to charity this year will probably give to charity next year; and people who are planning to give to charity "next year" will, next year, be planning to give to charity "next year". Donors donate, nondonors don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Buy a pub. That's what I'd do.

</comment><comment><USER29> Create jobs in the economy

</comment><comment><USER30> When I read: "Give your money away" as an item in the list, I clicked "x" on the window. I was expecting advice on how to keep the money, not on how to blow it all like an idiot.

</comment><comment><USER31> fund the thowra.

</comment><comment><USER32> If I were American, and I was suddenly rich, the first priority would be to get out of the land of God and guns and sexual repression known as the USA. Yes, it's a great place to spend time, but not all of the time. It has many advantages for the entrepreneur. I love it. But the ignorance and attitudes put me right off.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_requirements_for_Austrian_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_requirements_for_Austrian_citizens)

You can "invest" your way into an Austrian passport, then live anywhere in Europe you like. Favourite tax havens include Monaco, Switzerland, Britain (non-dom).

Europe is not more civilised because it is older, but because we are prepared to pay for public education, because we do not have world's strongest streak of anti-intellectualism and minarchism. We are socially liberal in what we demand but conservative in behaviour. Equality, nationalism, feminism and statism are not dirty words. Flame away.

<comment><USER20> the others are plenty arguable but nationalism is a plenty dirty word. imaginary lines don't alleviate moral responsibility.</comment></comment>


Making Artificial Intelligence Work for You – Part 1: What Is AI? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@ronald_istos/making-artificial-intelligence-work-for-you-part-1-what-is-ai-dd7512058e0e#.t8mc55kqg <comment><AUTHOR> A short guide to what AI is coming from agent-based computing - reactive, proactive goal-directed and autonomous agents</comment>


4coder, a modern text editor based loosely on Emacs - <AUTHOR> https://4coder.net <comment><USER2> I bought it, because I wanted a light-weight and fast C-specific editor. I was getting into it until I upgraded to Windows 10, and then the text rendered as illegible characters. It was not a UTF font problem, but something else with graphics. I filed a bug, and it was not fixed for a while, so I will have to go and check it out again. I have been using neovim. I have not touched emacs for about a year or so. Too many knucklebuster, non-intuitive keyboard commands. Neovim/Vim is surprisingly easy to get productive on. I watched Andrew Kelley livecode Zig in Vim, and I tried it again, and now I am in the groove! YMMV between any editor!

<comment><USER3> Most Emacs commands have a sensible pneumonic. If I recall, vim was similarly conversational in the best commands.

<comment><USER4> Mnemonic*. Pneu- means related to air.

<comment><USER3> Thanks! I don't know why I didn't spot check for this mistake. Is one I make enough that I specifically look for it most posts... (Well, most posts it is relevant. Clearly missed this one...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sadly the exensions are written in C++, so this is nothing nearly as dynamic as Emacs.

<comment><USER6> It's also not free, not even to try out.

<comment><USER7> There's a free demo version (on the same page where you can buy it), although that doesn't allow you to exercise the customization via C++ code (which is perhaps one of the most intriguing parts of the editor).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Allen Webster, the creator, was recently interviewed on the Handmade podcast. I thought it was a good discussion - touched on text editors, performance, and some interesting programming language ideas. [https://handmade.network/podcast/ep/14a5407e-5f73-4c59-a422-...](https://handmade.network/podcast/ep/14a5407e-5f73-4c59-a422-44c4ece6a1bf)

</comment><comment><USER9> Why c++? The best part of emacs is the dynamic environment.

<comment><USER8> Many of the current users, including the creator, are in gamedev. Being extensible in a language they're already intimately familiar with is a selling point.

<comment><USER10> If targeting gamedev users, why not Lua? You can switch from Lisp to something more people are familiar with without losing the dynamic environment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> the-peter Call me when it has org-mode.</comment>


Goodbye, Google:Mozilla makes Yahoo the default Firefox search engine in the U.S - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2014/11/19/goodbye-google-mozilla-makes-yahoo-the-default-firefox-search-engine-for-the-next-five-years/

<comment><AUTHOR> I find bing( which is powering yahoo) pretty bad for technical queries. For normal searches, its fine.</comment>