Google Data Collection research - <AUTHOR> https://digitalcontentnext.org/blog/2018/08/21/google-data-collection-research/ <comment><USER2> In some ways not surprised, but its still a LOT of data (in sheer volume). Does Google even keep the data and analyze it, or is much of it thrown away as digital exhaust? Anyone know?

</comment><comment><USER3> PDF: [https://digitalcontentnext.org/wp- content/uploads/2018/08/DC...](https://digitalcontentnext.org/wp- content/uploads/2018/08/DCN-Google-Data-Collection-Paper.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER4> People will look fondly to the times when they thought Microsoft's telemetry was the worst privacy issue to hit them...

<comment><USER5> I think you are mistaken.

Take a look at the privacy settings in your Microsoft account, specifically the activity history. They collect very much the same stuff that Google does, only Google lets you disable the data collection and Microsoft doesn't.

<comment><USER4> I am reasonably sure this is not the case, especially since every piece of evidence, article, and comparative study points at Google as being by far the worst offender on the data collection and privacy topics. If you have an Android phone you'd better give up on the idea that you can really "disable" the data collection.

Windows on the PC gives me clear options immediately after installation to disable all that and what's left is the "basic" telemetry, which is very light data collection according to today's standards. At least there's nothing personal there. Also I can very well use the PC without a MS account (so far).

On the mobile side... Is MS still into that? Myself along with probably 5 other people do have a Windows 10 mobile phone but again, the privacy wizard apparently did a great job to disable most of the collection of data. And when I go to Settings > Privacy > Location and I disable it _it 's disabled_.

But yeah, this is the kind of ignorant BS that got all of us here in the first place. As long as there's a critical mass of ignorance on the market the likes of Google know they'll always have someone to sell to so they shove this down everyone's throat. MS makes money by selling you the products. Google gives you everything for free. Not raising any flags?

<comment><USER5> Please go to [https://account.microsoft.com/privacy/activity- history](https://account.microsoft.com/privacy/activity-history) and see for yourself. You can delete your activity history (including your search history) but you cannot disable the data collection as you can in your Google account.

 _> MS makes money by selling you the products. Google gives you everything for free. Not raising any flags?_

Microsoft makes money in all sorts of ways, among them free and ad funded services like Bing, Skype or LinkedIn.

But yes it does raise flags. That's why - as a paying Office 365 (for Mac) subscriber - I was expecting to have more control over data collection than as a user of ad funded services, not less.

<comment><USER4> I think you really want to miss the point: The problem isn't that Google is collecting performance data and other such stuff. They collect _very private data_ that can be directly tied to you - _fauigerzigerk_ personally. And they make it very hard or impossible for you to really disable it.

First, MS doesn't exist on the mobile side. This might sound irrelevant until you realize that a phone has the potential to be a _much_ more powerful data pump.

Second, most Windows installations aren't tied to a MS account. As such no data can be linked to it and to you in person.

Third, you see this screen (a few settings are off-screen)? [1] It actually disables most data collection, like location. It doesn't just hide it from the dashboard and have you disable it "again" in 3 more places like Google was shown to do these days. Just by disabling Cortana you get rid of most data collection that can be tied to you.

This is the first thing I do on any Windows machine. Between this and the fact that I don't have to log in with a MS account means that my MS activity dashboard only includes my explicit browser logins and this:

 _We don't have any data associated with this Microsoft account at the moment._

Or this:

 _There's nothing to see here yet. To add some interests in this category, open Cortana's Notebook on your device._

[1] [https://www.bleepstatic.com/images/news/companies/m/microsof...](https://www.bleepstatic.com/images/news/companies/m/microsoft/windows-10/privacy- settings-preview/privacy-screen.jpg)

<comment><USER5> _> I think you really want to miss the point: The problem isn't that Google is collecting performance data and other such stuff. They collect very private data that can be directly tied to you - fauigerzigerk personally_

And here's the point you are in fact missing or rather denying: Microsoft does collect tons of very personal data as well, not just performance data. You are acknowledging as much when you say that disabling it is the first thing you do on any Windows machine.

Most people will never change the defaults, and Microsoft is pushing extremely hard to make all users of their software log in to a Microsoft account. A lot of Office 365 functionality makes no sense without being logged in. So it is important what privacy settings there are, what the defaults are and what you can or cannot disable.

But I think the reason why we are talking past each other is that I don't use Windows. I don't have the settings in your screenshot. I was comparing the settings in my online Microsoft account to the settings in my Google account.

If your main point is that Google is far more dependent on collecting as much personal data as they possibly can than Microsoft, then I fully agree with that. But that makes it all the more baffling why Microsoft behaves so much like Google when it comes to data collection.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The site seems slow/down now. A cached copy is available, obviously, on Google :)

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:m-ItC3...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:m-ItC3KnszwJ:https://digitalcontentnext.org/blog/2018/08/21/google- data-collection-research/)

<comment><USER6> I asked myself, why on earth do websites have to be slow when they're under heavy load?

To be fair, the technical reason is that the modern web (circa last 3-5 years or so?) has mostly switched over to demand scaling, and this is why hug-of- death situations are comparatively rare now.

If you have to be super-economical, and even setting an upper spending limit is uncomfortable, set your site up to ping you when/if it's falling apart so you can pull the trigger on ordering more cores yourself. Maybe put a super easy "order more cores" button in the ping, make 2:30AM disasters less terrible.

Of course, technical reasons aside, my initial unimpressedness (or, I must admit, indignation - ha) was directed at whoever this group's ISP is. Clearly the ISP is not providing enough [demand] bandwidth.

[Edit: After reading some comments below I think I should insert a preface/prefix here and say that it's entirely possible the website itself is misconfigured. I think I got sufficiently indignant that I didn't factor this in, and this was definitely an oversight. I don't know the situation, and it's unfair to squarely blame the ISP. Original message continues unedited...]

So, FWIW, this group is using mediatemple. (Found by a simple google of the IP and careful untangling of the results.) ...Well that's a name I've not heard in years. And it made me wonder - do MT have an answer to demand scaling? I'm not able to discern either way from a quick browse of their website (including the "managed wordpress hosting" section). If they _don 't_ (and they seem to be stuck in the VPS days), ouch. If they _do_ have demand scaling, then I think it's unprofessional to offer configurations that don't handle situations like this.

In any case, a "504 Gateway timeout" with a tiny "nginx" underneath is going to make people go "hmm, who's this person's ISP" and knock a few points off whatever the answer to that question is. I wouldn't want that happening to me or anyone I build websites for.

[Edit, in the same vein as the edit above: the conclusion above is plausible, but incomplete. Again, it's necessary to consider all angles.]

<comment><USER7> I'm always wondering the same. As a pretty noob sysadmin, my dead cheap[0] second-hand dedicated server was able to handle being on the HN homepage for 11ish hours without breaking a sweat. No CDN was involved what so ever, all content was going directly to my single point of failure.

Yet, I have to resort to looking at cashed versions of the submissions from companies that have way more resources than I could ever imagine to have.

[0] Price of the cheapest Media Temple VPS offering.

<comment><USER8> Looking at this page's source it seems like Wordpress (or rather Shitpress) is involved, so this downtime is not surprising at all considering how many resources that pile of garbage uses.

But yeah, a properly optimized site can handle being on the HN front-page on a single server with no issues.

<comment><USER9> There's plenty of caching plugins that make Wordpress run just fine at higher traffic. This site likely just doesn't have one installed.

<comment><USER8> Would you buy a new car if it needed duct tape just so it can stay in one piece while driving on the highway? So why would you think it's acceptable for a CMS to require third-party "cache" plugins just to be able to handle traffic?

<comment><USER6> Computers and cars are both solutions to problems, but the complexity of computers is yet to be routinely contained without targeted effort. This is especially true of the Web. Wordpress is the single most installed CMS (and kitchen sink, at this point), it's a massive attack target, and it's installed by people who don't really know what they're doing.

Between being a kitchen sink (and having to deal with the internal/external API/architectural [compatibility] baggage that comes with any long-lived implementation) and having to be the CMS equivalent of Windows/macOS, it's a... _difficult_ ask for a WP installation with (say) 30 poorly-constructed addons to to run smoothly. Possible, yes, absolutely, but it'll need tuning.

Caching is simply the simplest bandaid that can be tacked on. If the caching is tuned properly, it'll fix everything else.

Yes, this will mean the underlying configuration/state will be the digital equivalent of a giant wound you just want to clean out and fix up, but, err... it works.

:/

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's interesting how the media cartel front thinks it's safe to drop all pretense and just post their opposition research like that.

[http://digitalcontentnext.org/membership/members](http://digitalcontentnext.org/membership/members)

[http://digitalcontentnext.org/about/overview/](http://digitalcontentnext.org/about/overview/)

At the very least it reflects poorly on their member's coverage of FB/google.

<comment><USER11> Who cares? What matters is whether it is true or not.

Are you just trying to smear the information with an ad hominem, or do you have reason to believe it is inaccurate?

<comment><USER10> It matters because the manner in which any "findings" are presented has a big role in shaping public opinion and in this case the opinion shapers are purpofuly distorting finding to attack an advesary.

See the WSJ's false report that google let's developers read user emails, it's technically true but that only happens after the user allows it via an explicit permission screen.

Or the AP's claim that google keeps track of user location ever after location history is turned off, which again is technically true but that is because location history is just a location feature and not the master switch for all location features.

In both cases other media outlets repeated the claims without further commentery of research and this cartel might be the reason.

<comment><USER12> Ok, since you claim that "the opinion shapers are purpofuly distorting finding to attack an advesary", name one false claim from the PDF document's executive summary. Should be quite easy, right?

You're letting Google really easy of the hook regarding the location history PR disaster. Google uses dark UX patterns to trick their customers into sharing more data, and this is one more instance of that. The fact that "technically" location history is not a master switch is just a flimsy excuse.

<comment><USER13> Can I name some tautological claims instead? The last three bullet points are all basically conjecture. "Google could do this" or "Google has the capacity to do that".

The article uses dark patterns to make you think they're making strong claims when they're just saying things that might be the case, or that the researchers don't have the ability to rule out. And it doesn't help that this article goes to great lengths to word things in more nefarious ways than the underlying research paper.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My favorite is trying to trace the problems back to Larry/Sergey, which is why I wrote the essay. Worth mentioning that one of the hardest parts of writing it was tracing the history of things like Google Analytics.

<comment><USER14> I forgot to mention that I had an Ask HN on this: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17447280](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17447280)</comment></comment>


Enabling C# 8 in Visual Studio 2019 for Any .NET Project - <AUTHOR> https://dirkstrauss.com/enabling-c-8-in-visual-studio-2019/ <comment><USER2> Doing this will have some limitations (as you have rightly stated). I would rather just use .NET Core 3.1.</comment>


Generating Videos with Scene Dynamics - <AUTHOR> http://web.mit.edu/vondrick/tinyvideo/ <comment><USER2> Once, when waking from a nap, I was able to consciously keep my "dream eyes" open with my real eyes closed. I could vividly see images my dream was still generating, and it looked a lot like this.

Makes me wonder if I'm just influenced by the work happening in ML, or if we are really approaching what the brain is already doing.

</comment><comment><USER3> People may call BS, but I do think we'll reach a point where we can generate coherent books or movies. It'll take many more neurons, but I think the possibility is out there.

The real question is where these "fake" pieces of art will be placed in our society.

<comment><USER4> I could live with that. One scenario I could imagine, a program "dreams up" a movie. Critics then proceed to interpret it and explain what it's about. This is already pretty much the situation for some movies... [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0166924/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0166924/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Future prediction capability here can greatly improve video monitoring of all kinds. Run a constantly trained system like this in real time over incoming streams and let the agent observe generated predictive videos N units of time ahead.

</comment><comment><USER6> >These videos are not real; they are hallucinated by a generative video model.

I'm not sure why, but the fact that they used the term "hallucinated" is a little unsettling.

<comment><USER7> Maybe because ML is starting to enter its own uncanny valley, where we can't quite decide whether to view the results as machines or minds?

<comment><USER8> If you take the view that consciousness may simply require a sufficient degree of complexity (electronic or otherwise), it gets even more murky.

Especially so when you're trying to pin down the facets of cognitive machinery required to experience suffering. Memory in particular adds an interesting dimension to the question.

Not that it was anything groundbreaking, but HBO's _Westworld_ did a decent job of exploring this. Granted, it did so using fictional human-level analogs.

With the state AI in its infancy today, the ethical considerations surrounding insects may offer more insight. I found this article extremely fascinating:

[http://relaximanentomologist.tumblr.com/post/51301520453/do-...](http://relaximanentomologist.tumblr.com/post/51301520453/do- insects-feel-pain)

<comment><USER9> Westworld is also dramatized to make for interesting TV. For example, deaf people without a voice in their head would not be conscious by their definition.

Consciousness, and suffering, are biological concepts. Computer code running algorithms on microprocessors aren't going to experience these things.

<comment><USER8> I wasn't suggesting _Westworld_ was some comprehensive scientific study of the matter. Rather, that it did a decent job exploring the relationship between suffering and memory, and some of the complexities that entails. For example, memory wipes intended to reduce suffering inadvertently creating more suffering via the unsettling emotional side effects involved.

> _Consciousness, and suffering, are biological concepts. Computer code > running algorithms on microprocessors aren 't going to experience these > things._

You seem so confident in this being the case. Who is to say cognition cannot exist on silicon?

If you accept the supposition that cognition is a requium for emotion, and emotion is a requium for suffering, then a digital organism need not have the pain receptors of its biological counterpart in order to experience suffering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting this only used 11tb worth of video.

Makes me wonder what this could produce with youtube's entire library.</comment>


Acoustic waves can monitor stiffness of living cells - <AUTHOR> http://news.mit.edu/2019/acoustic-waves-monitor-stiffness-living-cells-0211 <comment><USER2> FYI, there are techniques (mostly MRI or Ultrasound Elastography) to do this on a bigger scale, for example, to check the elasticity of your thyroid.

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


Halo 2600 - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_2600 <comment><USER2> It's amazing how many games were written for such a limited system.

128 bytes of ram.

How do you start drawing a screen with that, let alone maintain state.

From what I understand the video hardware was basically designed around pong with just 3 sprites to play with.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> developer notes: [http://atariage.com/forums/topic/166916-halo-for- the-2600-re...](http://atariage.com/forums/topic/166916-halo-for- the-2600-released-at-cge-download-the-game-here/?&p=2062848#entry2062848)</comment>


Mongrel2 Cannot Defeat Ninjas - <AUTHOR> http://sheddingbikes.com/posts/1286736953.html

<comment><USER2> Zed, I think the narrative in your docs is partly to blame.

It starts with an awesome sqlite config engine, and continues, almost as an afterthought, to a possible application: a python-like configuration file (section 3.3).

It seems to me users want to know about that configuration file first. Sure, some of them will evolve into power users, eager to hear about the internal sqlite3 engine and its endless possibilities. But that's later, and frankly is not as important. What proportion of mongrel2 users will programmatically drive its configuration? I'm guessing not that many.

I for one am an automation freak and am very excited about this design. But you can't blame everybody for misunderstanding it. After all, the very first command in the tutorial has "config.sqlite" in it. That's _before_ you talk about the actual config file format!

</comment><comment><USER3> Almost as funny as "You write a distributed map-reduce function in Erlang!".

I think people are reacting out of bad experiences with other binary file configuration systems. Examples: windows registry; Solaris as LDAP client (ok, so the stored files might be text today, but the documentation disavows their format and declares the command line is the One True Interface); Solaris smf (again, text files underneath, but the documentation deprecates their format); Gnome configuration (I'd be grateful if someone could point to useful documentation there, or some kind of road map).

<comment><USER4> Funny you mention GConf, since its storage engine is based on text configuration files that you can edit by yourself (not binary and in fact those text files are even human readable).

I mean, I'm a power user and I like Apache's configuration format, but there was a steep learning curve involved, and for a production server that's super- duper fine, but for normal users it is super painful to deal with different syntaxes / conventions / locations for every god damn application you're using.

GConf sucks, but the alternatives are worse.

Also, the technical problems of Windows Registry have more to do with it being a half-arsed implementation of a filesystem, not to mention inappropriate use of it (many apps using it as a database).

<comment><USER5> What sucks about gconf? I like it for precisely the reasons you describe: I can use vi, the command line, or a GUI app just as effectively.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Zed is confusing for malice what can adequately be explained with incompetence.

<comment><USER5> Per the parent poster, 99% of apps with a config file and an initscript mention the config file in their 'getting started' docs. M2's doc doesn't do this (but has time for inline rants). Zed's not great at writing docs, which is fine, but he doesn't really seem to want any feedback about said docs either - his normal response if anyone doesn't get anything from reading his docs, or suggests anything, is to get angry at them.

Edit: actually I see, 2 months post abuse, the Getting Started guide now has less rants, and a config file. Cheers Zed. That wan't so hard was it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Zed, I totally get what you're saying. I do think ninjas exist in larger teams, but maybe that's not a mongrel2 priority, which would make sense.

The bit that gets me that I think some take issue with is that there's a human readable representation of the configuration _that does not actually represent the configuration_ . Except when it does, sometimes. Even usually. But there's no guarantee. Not saying your decision is wrong (any more than "language x os wrong", but it's a reason why some people may not like it.

I almost wonder sometimes if the configuration should be solely accessible through an http API, just to shut people up. ;)

</comment><comment><USER8> I find the p.s. completely incongruent with the rest of the post.

<comment><USER9> This post is in response to a post Chris wrote earlier. Its linked to at the beginning.

<comment><USER8> That's my point. It appears to be in response to him, but then at the end he says it is not.

<comment><USER10> It is in response to his post, just not about him.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The world's climate goals are not sufficient. They are also unlikely to be met - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/11/20/the-worlds-climate-goals-are-not-sufficient-they-are-also-unlikely-to-be-met <comment><USER2> We seem to be tracking for 4C of warming.

4C of warming would probably cause a collapse in the ability to feed the populace, and render large chunks of the world uninhabitable without active cooling, or because they'll be underwater.

It's hard to imagine how civilization survives this, without those regions that do continue to have arable land putting up walls and turrets and mowing down the streams of starving migrants.

At what point do you look at preppers and think "honestly they might be on to something?"

(edit: additions below) Sources abound but [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/18/climate-...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/18/climate- crisis-heat-is-on-global-heating-four-degrees-2100-change-way-we-live)

"Indeed, the consequences of a 4C warmer world are so terrifying that most scientists would rather not contemplate them, let alone work out a survival strategy.

Rockström doesn't like our chances. "It's difficult to see how we could accommodate a billion people or even half of that," he says. "There will be a rich minority of people who survive with modern lifestyles, no doubt, but it will be a turbulent, conflict-ridden world." "

"Since 2005, total global greenhouse-gas emissions have most closely tracked the RCP 8.5 scenario, "

[https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/01/rcp-85-t...](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/01/rcp-85-the- climate-change-disaster-scenario/579700/)

<comment><USER3> What many seem to forget is 2C or 4C of warming is not an end equilibrium state, it's merely an arbitrary date of measurement (end of 21st century) for the track we may irreparably lock in for centuries and millennia. One a tipping point tips it's damn near impossible to tip it back.

That seems more than a little cavalier given the limited range of regions we find our planet's landmass in. The future looks more and more terrifying, and despite public opinion supporting action in much the world, _still_ the political class have little to no answer anywhere...

<comment><USER4> Well, the answers won't get you (re-)elected:

* Subsidize public transportation (maybe even 100%), and make it a feasible mode of transportation for as many people as possible (at least for daily commutes; bonus: many people are concentrated in cities, so start there).

* Regarding daily driving: If public transportation is a feasible alternative, punish those who still use their car for commuting.

* Massively increase taxes on all kinds of fossil fuels; no matter if used for driving or for electricity (initially ease this in regions with difficult/bad public transportation).

* Make it easier to build regenerative energies (e.g. solar and wind) plus storage systems (e.g. pumped water or battery).

* I'm personally undecided on nuclear fission, but compared to coal it could be the lesser of two evils?

* On the packaging of any product (from bottled water over electronics to toothpaste) print the amount of energy used in production and for transportation.

* Punish producers of goods that break early (e.g. define minimum durability requirements for various product groups).

Would you elect someone with this agenda? I would have a hard time, though I think these points could all be appropriate responses to the climate crisis.

Even better: Try to get elected with that ;-)

<comment><USER5> More taxes, less freedom, more punishments. Yes, I believe this would be unpopular.

However, remind me while you are punishing people for driving cars, how is the public transit outside major urban areas? Have you been outside urban areas?

<comment><USER6> > Yes, I believe this would be unpopular.

As indeed is the idea of your grand children living in a post-civilisation world

<comment><USER7> OP never said the whole platform was bad. Just that public transport doesn't work in certain areas. Especially less dense ones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The article points out subsidies are one of the main contributors to growth in production of fossil fuels. So forget regulation, just take the government thumb off the scale in favor of fossil fuels.

This is somewhat disingenuous on my part as I am for using the government thumb if necessary to achieve goals that allow society to continue like a clean energy mix. However, maybe this could still be done in a light touch way like massive grants into basic research which I do think the US government has had success with in the past.

Fossil fuel could take part in this as well but from my perspective, they have never been interested in pursuing goals like efficiency and sustainability though innovation. They are driven by finding ways to create more demand for energy use and scaling up existing technology that is good enough for that purpose.

<comment><USER9> The problem with this is that you suddenly find that all the people who you thought were arguing in good faith about not liking government intervention, were actually only doing that as a tactic to stall specific things they didn't like, not as a general principle.

They'll have a completely new set of disingenuous talking points (unsubsidized fuel would hit the poorest hardest!) ready to confuse people and to stall that action as well.

<comment><USER10> > They'll have a completely new set of disingenuous talking points > (unsubsidized fuel would hit the poorest hardest!) ready to confuse people > and to stall that action as well.

Wasn't that literally the left's argument against carbon taxes on Oregon?

<comment><USER9> If they argued for some counterbalancing arrangement with the money raised they were probably on the left if they just said "well, I guess we just have to stick with what we currently do, it's not like government intervention would be desirable here" then they were probably not actually on the left.

<comment><USER10> The initial proposal was for the carbon tax to be revenue-neutral and (IIRC) returned as a per-capita rebate. That didn't pass, so the followup used the revenue for social programs as an attempt at bipartisanship. The followup also failed to pass, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> How can they possibly be met when China is build building new coal fired power plants equivalent to all the coal plants in europe.

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/20/china- appetite...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/20/china-appetite-for- coal-power-stations-returns-despite-climate-pledge-capacity)

<comment><USER12> Yep. This is the point I've been trying to make to many Americans.

This issue goes beyond our consumption. The entire worlds growth has to be regulated at this point to ensure stability.

That means Western countries need to accept a lower standard of living or find ways to become vastly more efficient so that developing nations can catch up and we can find an equilibrium in regards to standard of living globally.

<comment><USER13> > Western countries

This West/rest dichotomy seems a bit outdated. Is China the West? oil-rich Middle East? Both of those have high emissions per capita - in the case of the Middle East, some of the highest in the world.

<comment><USER12> China is especially not the west. They would typically be the East.

Mostly I meant developed vs undeveloped. Those are Eastern countries who are still developing. I think the dichotomy fits just fine still.

<comment><USER13> Well then, here's another reason it's false: there is huge variation within the West, with the US for example having more than twice as much co2 emissions per capita as the UK.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Honestly, take a look at what's happening in Australia right now, it's absolutely astounding how apocalyptic things are looking there. What's more amazing is the Australian Government is still in the business of climate emergency denial.

I'm really worried about certain communities and cities making it through the summer down there. It will be California In the same situation again soon.

<comment><USER15> > it's absolutely astounding how apocalyptic things are looking there

The breakdown of society? Unable to acquire basic goods? Roving gangs of marauders?

<comment><USER16> The worst bushfires in recorded history, earlier and longer bushfire seasons, ongoing problems to do with poor water management that are being exacerbated, ongoing drought problems that are being exacerbated, ongoing power problems that are being exacerbated, ongoing skin cancer problems that are being exacerbated.

This is death by a thousand cuts. Civilisation doesn't end immediately once we hit our tipping point date - but damage to our environment becomes practically irreversible.

<comment><USER17> All of that is _bad_ , but it hardly sounds apocalyptic. I don't doubt that we're going to get there, but until we see whole cities abandoned, people starving en mass, and similar events, calling things "apocalyptic" comes across as hyperbolic.

<comment><USER16> The damage will be irreversible by the time these events are seen.

It gets called apocalyptic because we're heading to a future where they become inevitable, not that they exist today.

You need to get out of the car before the car crashes into a giant ball of flame. But saying that it hasn't exploded yet isn't an argument that there won't be flames.

<comment><USER17> The damage is irreversible now, as evidenced by the fact that we are doing virtually nothing at a global level to even slow down, much less reverse, the damage.

That still doesn't make current events apocalyptic. Harbingers of the apocalypse maybe, but the apocalypse is the fireball. It's not apocalyptic until we crash.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's not a perfect solution, but you can make a big dent in this yourself remarkably easily by carbon offsetting all your own emissions right now: [https://www.goclimateneutral.org/](https://www.goclimateneutral.org/)

Reducing your emissions completely is difficult. As others here have said, there are many emissions you can't practically reduce yourself, from concrete production to necessary transportation. Even where you can't reduce your personal impact though, you can reduce worldwide carbon output by an equivalent amount instead, by offsetting: directly donating to equivalent reductions elsewhere in the world that just need funding.

There's other providers too (e.g. [https://offset.earth/](https://offset.earth/)), the only trick is to find somewhere that's cheap per-tonne offset (you should be able to do it for around $4 per tonne), with projects that are vetted & certified. Some more details & links to the kind of projects that offsetting funds here: [https://www.goclimateneutral.org/our_projects](https://www.goclimateneutral.org/our_projects).

<comment><USER17> >you can make a big dent

How so? Practically by definition you personally can make an almost incomprehensibly minuscule dent. This is not an issue that is going to be solved by personal action.

<comment><USER18> Proportional to other possible personal actions you can take, I mean.

It's easy & fairly affordable for example to offset 10x your own personal emissions. For an average person in the US that would cost about $70 a month (about 20 tonnes/year * $4/tonne * 10 = $800/year). Meanwhile it's clearly impossible to 1000% reduce your personal emissions, no matter the sacrifices.

Completely agree we need large-scale action from nations & corporations too, but if you're looking for a way you can make a difference right now then offsetting is one of your most direct & effective options.

<comment><USER17> A large part of the reason we're talking about this is that "possible personal actions you can take" are utterly and completely irrelevant to a problem of this scale. It's actively harmful to talk about personal action in a way that implies it makes a meaningful difference.

<comment><USER18> This argument also applies to protesting or voting - one protestor/voter alone makes no difference - or almost any possible attempt at a solution. What's the alternative?

One person voting or acting makes only a small difference, but doing so as one of many eventually has an effect. Corporations and governments will move only because of the cumulative economic and democratic incentives from many many personal actions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Fridays For Future's next global climate strike is on the 29th, next week. There is probably some demo in your city that you could join.

<comment><USER20> it's a bit late, these protests should have taken place 20 years ago. all we can do now is prep

<comment><USER21> It's not a binary choice. The less we do to combat it, the warmer it gets. We're not going to get 0, but it'd be nice to avoid 8 degrees of warming...

<comment><USER20> protests do not "combat it". actual action to cut co2 emissions "combat it"

<comment><USER22> Cutting CO2 emissions is the trivial part. Convincing politicians to cut CO2 emissions is almost insurmountable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> There is a lot of talk about renewable energy. But I believe this is distracting us from the real issue: we are using too many resourses.

Our family uses around 2000kWh electricity per year. This is half of what most people in my country use. And ~16% of the avarage US usage.

Ofcourse there are a lot of reasons for the differences but the biggest reason is being consumption aware.

We don't own an AC, use LED lights everywhere, and always check the power consumption of appliances we buy.

Being aware of your consumptions really helps.

Paving your roof with solar panels will only help the producer of the panels, not your carbon footprint.

<comment><USER24> Personal choice is only about 5% of the change needed to mitigate climate change. Individuals can not choose most things, such as steel and cement and plastic production, they can't enact a carbon tax, they can't close down coal plants or raise capital for nuclear or renewables. Can individuals educate millions of women in the third world or change how refrigerants are managed? Look at drawdown.org, you will see the majority of reductions will be on elected officials and corporations.

The most developed world individuals can do, as you say, is reduce their own footprint in minimal ways and VOTE!!

<comment><USER25> This does not really apply to individual _Americans_. The American carbon footprint boils down to driving and meat. Individual decisions made by super- consumers can be impactful.

<comment><USER26> You're still not correct...you're saying eating plant based diet has essentially zero footprint, which is untrue, especially with food waste. And you're saying driving/transportation choice alone is sufficient, when we know that even if they bought an EV or used a train, those transportation regimes still incur carbon emissions in their production and operation, though admittedly less LOCAL emissions (great!) and potential for lower future emissions as the grid cleans up (great!).

These individuals still can not choose zero-carbon heating/cooling (which is probably 1/3 of American's footprint, which you neglected to even mention), they can't choose how their infrastructure is produced (steel and cement, big time emissions there), they can't choose the actions of their American government, which spends a lot of carbon emissions on its internal activities as well as its foreign incursions.

So no, you really can't "boil down" to zero net emissions as an American unless you stop using heating, cooling, roads, transportation of any kind except walking/bikes, and if you completely stop supporting the US govt and its activities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> We need a way to incentivize countries to take action and bring in carbon pricing and the like.

About the only way I can think of would be a new global trade agreement. Something like meet your carbon targets and get free trade with all other members, don't and face 30% tariffs. If you could get say the US and EU on board pretty much all countries would be forced to follow.

That plus say a $100 carbon price might pretty much fix things for the output drops suggested in the article and not hurt the economy much.

<comment><USER17> The trouble is, this isn't nearly far enough and it's already sounding politically impossible. The carbon targets need to be zero worldwide without exception and the tariffs need to be more like 1000%.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> A very interesting and informative talk: Dr. Gwynne Dyer – Geopolitics in a Hotter World – UBC Talk Transcribed (Sept. 2010)

[https://spaswell.wordpress.com/2016/11/18/dr-gwynne-dyer- geo...](https://spaswell.wordpress.com/2016/11/18/dr-gwynne-dyer-geopolitics- in-a-hotter-world-ubc-talk-transcribed-sept-2010/)

\- - - -

important to remember that our current systems (no pun intended) are hugely wasteful. I forget the exact statistic but losses from the point of generation to your wall socket are something crazy, like 30%-50%. That's not including lunacy like refrigerators that open like cabinets rather than drawers (spilling all the cold air on the floor and filling the box with warm air. Some fridges have _heaters_ in the door. It's true.) or pilot lights (little flames that burn 24/7 just in case you might want to cook at midnight or whatever.)

 _Efficiency_ would solve about half of the problem, in re: energy.

<comment><USER29> > Some fridges have heaters in the door. It's true.

Wow. I had to search this to be sure you weren't kidding:

> In 'single circuit appliances' and appliances with a 4-star freezer > compartment, temperatures are usually regulated according to refrigeration > compartment temperature. When ambient temperatures fall, an issue arises > because the refrigeration compartment will not need to be cooled as > regularly and this means that the associated 4-star freezer compartment can > then become too warm. In such cases, the refrigeration compartment is > artificially heated by a light bulb or an electrical heater to force the > refrigerator to cool down more frequently and thus keep the 4-star freezer > compartment sufficiently cool.

[https://blog.liebherr.com/appliances/my/refrigerators- heater...](https://blog.liebherr.com/appliances/my/refrigerators-heaters/)

<comment><USER28> Oh my, you've found some _other_ heater!

The ones I was talking about are in the rim gasket thingy that seals the door when it's closed. Some refrigerators have heating elements in there to keep the gasket (or whatever you call it) from sticking to the frame when opening the door, IIRC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> While predicting the climate is hard, predicting humans is even harder. The notion that we are inevitably on the way to 4C of warming (or whatever other figure somebody would have you believe) is frankly outright wrong.

We can reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions through profitable enterprise and without lowering quality of life / stopping economic growth / enforcing strict veganism or whatever else extremists propose. In fact, we can do so far ahead of the IPCC SR15 1.5C scenario requirements. How?

Firstly, don't disregard technologies without understanding their merit. Hydrocarbons are a big part of the problem, yes, but please note that natural gas is about 4x cleaner than coal and has actually been _the largest_ contribution to lowering emissions in the energy sector (~75% natural gas reduction on a large chunk of energy consumption is far more significant than the ~95% renewable reduction on a much smaller portion of energy consumption thus far)

Our world relies on these technologies at the moment and a good climate change solution must include not only a smooth transition away from fossil fuels but also an increase in fossil fuel cleanliness.

Now, climate change is primarily driven by net emissions from 6 things:

\- Energy (electricity, fuels, heat etc.)

\- Transportation (cars, planes, boats etc.)

\- Industry (steel, concrete, plastic etc.)

\- Commercial (buildings, appliances, etc.)

\- Agriculture (mostly beef, other meats, etc.)

\- Carbon sequestration (deforestation, other tech)

Here's how we can solve the problem in all of these areas in a mutually beneficial, profitable way:

1\. Nuclear fission is currently the cleanest, safest, and most fuel abundant energy source we have. Most people don't know this. It is also only at a very small fraction of its potential in efficiency and relies on the least common nuclear fuel of the 3 naturally occurring isotopes (U235 vs. Th232, U238)

With some relatively small investment in this space, we can both increase the world's total energy supply by several factors in order to accommodate growth in developing nations and decrease energy sector emissions by >99%, over the course of a few decades.

We can also provide enough cheap electricity to help with the other 5 areas:

2\. Electric cars are physically more efficient, faster, and simpler than ICE cars. Same concept applies long term to all transport with the exception of orbital rockets (those which operate in a vacuum), and it is entirely possible that we can shift the entire transportation industry to a mix of (a) fully electric transport and (b) carbon-neutral fuels derived from sequestration techniques, all within a few decades.

3\. High grade heat allows us to shift the emissions of steel manufacturing from the plant itself to the energy source. New nuclear fission technologies operating >600 degrees Celsius will allow us to shift the steel industry to net-zero emissions. Bill Gates recently also posted some notes about green concrete [https://www.gatesnotes.com/Energy/Buildings-are-good-for- peo...](https://www.gatesnotes.com/Energy/Buildings-are-good-for-people-and- bad-for-the-climate)

Also, cross laminated timber offers a new technology that can be made stronger, cheaper, safer, and more psychologically beneficial than steel and concrete in most buildings, including skyscrapers. This and other biological materials science solutions can help shift away from steel, concrete, and plastic production.

4\. Same concept from transportation applies here. Electric things are more efficient and will be cheaper long term across the board, and allow us to shift emissions to the energy sector (which is by far the easiest to reduce emissions in)

5\. Agriculture is complicated, and feeding 10 billion people will be hard. But there are a lot of great options and innovations here as well. Indoor farming can be made significantly more reliable, productive, and efficient than regular farming if we have good access to electricity and water. Lab- grown meats, cultural shifts to vegetarianism/veganism, and alternative protein sources all offer options to reduce agricultural emissions by >95%.

6\. There are many great companies working on sequestration technologies, and several of these not only remove greenhouse gas from the atmosphere but also provide useful byproducts like clean hydrocarbon fuels. YC has recently funded such companies.

The technological shifts I proposed in sections 4 and 5 will allow us (and/or force us) to start fixing our land and replanting healthy forests.

Every single one of these solutions can realistically be widely implemented by the year 2040/2050, and if we really wanted to (although this is not realistic from a societal perspective) we could really get there by 2030. Every single one of these solutions can improve quality of life and support a growing global economy in a profitable way.

I believe we are going to reach net-zero emissions a lot faster than you might expect.

Please, don't fall for the fear mongering. (and obviously, also don't fall for denialism)

Climate change is real, but it is something we can solve, and we don't have to destroy society or adopt a political extreme across the board to do it. I've got hope for humanity, I hope you do too.

<comment><USER28> Granted that the technology is feasible (and, FWIW, I believe it) how to address the political/social side of it to actually "get 'er done!"?

Technically, your stance or proposals are a political extreme, eh?

\- - - -

FWIW, and apologies if this seems way out of left field, there is a kind of psychological algorithm called "Core Transformation Process". It operates between a guide and a single subject, in a therapeutic setting, to resolve and transform personal issues. Now I suspect, although I haven't tried it, that a variation designed to work with two subjects simultaneously (or alternating, or something) could work really well as a kind of negotiation or conflict- resolution process.

The thing is, something like that is even further out sociopolitically than your technology-saves-the-day proposals (which, again, I am all in favor of, FWIW.)

<comment><USER30> > how to address the political/social side of it to actually "get 'er done!"?

While it will definitely happen faster with government effort, the main point of my comment was that we can do all of these things in the free market.

In fact, we already are well on our way to doing all these things in the free market.

So, I wouldn't consider this a political extreme. My policy is simply to allow entrepreneurs to acquire private funding and test out their ideas. We already do that.

> ... "Core Transformation Process" ...

This is an interesting idea, I do think it is a fairly difficult issue to figure out how we can make meaningful political progress in today's world. It seems like the gears of democracy are slowing down more and more every year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> [https://outline.com/YrcHDr](https://outline.com/YrcHDr)

</comment><comment><USER32> For those interested in MUCH more detail (without a paywall), you can find the original UNEP Production Gap Report here - it's 80 pages instead of 5 paragraphs.

[https://www.unenvironment.org/resources/report/production- ga...](https://www.unenvironment.org/resources/report/production-gap- report-2019)

</comment><comment><USER15> I just sold my ground level condo in nyc for pennies on the dollar. Rushing to get out before we're underwater.

</comment><comment><USER33> Climate change will make new jobs we haven't even imagined yet. Chill, people.

<comment><USER34> It's not about the jobs, it's about our continued ability to grow food and maintain a relatively peaceful world order.

<comment><USER33> Siberia is gonna be a great place to grow food after the climate changes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Insufficient, will never be met, and who cares. Humans don't affect climate anyway.

</comment><comment><USER36> Since when did science become about predicting what will happen in the future? That concept is completely antithetical to what science is at the core (i.e. making repeatable observations to establish fact). It is impossible to measure and observe something that has yet to happen.

A computer climate model cannot predict the future. Believing so is magical thinking and clearly unscientific by definition.

I understand that observed trends tend to indicate future direction but this push, rooted in FUD, to make consensus of the scientific community equivalent to absolute fact is a reminder that all humans can have fragility in their logic and thinking in the face of fear.

If those in power who say they believe the consensus were really concerned with climate change to the existential degree they claim they would propose forcing India and China to curb emissions up to and including war if necessary. The truth is they see it as a means to their political ends. They see it as a blank check to expand the government's control over everyone's lives. If you don't believe me read the green new deal legislation proposed earlier this year. It reworks the whole of society around a certain political ideology using future predictions about climate change as justification.

I would place just as much blame for climate problems on those in the democratic party using climate change to further their ideology as I do the outright climate deniers.

Everyday people commenting on reddit and HN may be pure in their intentions but the average politician on either side just uses the topic as a leverage for their own political and monetary interest.

<comment><USER37> > Since when did science become about predicting what will happen in the > future?

Since evidence based policy making became a thing. We use it for deciding when to plant crops, deciding what medical treatments should be broadly implemented, deciding what water treatment methods are acceptable...it's fairly popular.

> That concept is completely antithetical to what science is at the core (i.e. > making repeatable observations to establish fact).

Either what you have established holds repeatably and you are predicting the future, or it doesn't hold repeatably and it's not, by your definition, science. You may be confusing repeatable experiments with repeatable observations, though.

> I understand that observed trends tend to indicate future direction but this > push, rooted in FUD, to make consensus of the scientific community > equivalent to absolute fact

At this point the observations are enough where it's an absolute fact. The only question is how much, how fast. That's what the computer modeling is trying to get a handle on.

Plus, your argument is equivalent to playing Russian roulette and claiming that the presence of a bullet somewhere in the gun is not an established fact. That's true. You don't know if it might be loaded. But do you really want to find out?

<comment><USER36> > Since evidence based policy making became a thing. We use it for deciding > when to plant crops, deciding what medical treatments should be broadly > implemented, deciding what water treatment methods are acceptable...it's > fairly popular.

Thanks for the smug talking down to. :) However your comparison here is ridiculous. We can easily measure crop out comes, water treatment outcomes, and medical outcomes because in the past actual experiments were done that showed what worked and didn't in that situation.

The climate on the other hand is completely different. We don't have a second one to use as a control. The scale is too large to fully factor in all inputs and outputs. It is just not the same at all as the things you mention.

> Plus, your argument is equivalent to playing Russian roulette and claiming > that the presence of a bullet somewhere in the gun is not an established > fact.

I am not the type to choose security over giving up the personal freedoms and rights of myself and my fellow humans just in case someone's computer model turns out to be accurate.

In any case, your analogy is actually very poor. You can check and be 100% sure if a gun is loaded. You can't check what will happen to the climate in 50 years because it hasn't happened and we don't currently have the knowledge or capability to truly required to truly know what will happen with the climate.

<comment><USER37> > Thanks for the smug talking down to. :)

Absolutely. There's a lot of people who don't understand how science works outside of a parochial impression from physics, and if I can't get some pleasure from dealing with it, then why bother?

> We don't have a second one to use as a control.

Like all observational sciences, basically.

> In any case, your analogy is actually very poor. You can check and be 100% > sure if a gun is loaded.

All analogies can be strained out of usefulness.

> You can't check what will happen to the climate in 50 years because it > hasn't happened

We already did. We're fifty years in and seeing the effects.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Libro Ipsum - Generate placeholder text from any source material - <AUTHOR> http://www.libroipsum.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Although I haven't advertised it well, there's also an API available for 3rd party use. Example request:

[http://api.libroipsum.com/literature/cicero.json?words=100&#...
All sources:
http://api.libroipsum.com/sources.json
Supports JSON, JSONP, XML, and plain-text (TXT) - simply replace JSON with appropriate extension.</comment>


A Basic Cohort Test of the Lead-Crime Hypothesis - <AUTHOR> https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/02/a-basic-cohort-test-of-the-lead-crime-hypothesis/ <comment><USER2> This appears to be a case of "I have my preconceived interpretation of the data, and I'm not going to see how well other hypotheses match the data."

The main thrust is that the cohort test supports the Lead-Crime Hypothesis because, on average, 70s kids were more violent than 80s kids were more violent than 90s. But later in the post, he mentions that there's an important confounding factor: the crack epidemic, which starts in 1987 and winds down in the mid-1990s. This would suggest that the increase in crimes over age for 1970s from 17 to 21 or so is fueled in large part (if we look at the later graph) by the crack epidemic. If you guesstimate that the trend should be flat-to-declining, then the trend line for the 1970s absent the crack epidemic is actually rather closer to the 1980s. Similarly the numbers for 1997 and 1998 (for 1980s) seem anomalously high, and should be lowered a bit.

Put it all together, and you'd estimate that removing the suggested effect of the crack epidemic would be that there is no substantial difference between the criminality of people born in 1970, 1980, and 1990.

<comment><USER3> This hypothesis is often put forth to in the US. The strongest studies of the lead hypothesis, however, compare data across multiple countries, which regulated lead-containing paint and gasoline at different times. These studies demonstrate that crime drops in each country at a similar period after the decrease in lead exposure, and at a rate that corresponds to the rate of decrease in lead exposure.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> If you're looking for more reading on the Lead-Crime Hypothesis, Drum's "An Updated Lead-Crime Roundup for 2018" ([https://www.motherjones.com/kevin- drum/2018/02/an-updated-le...](https://www.motherjones.com/kevin- drum/2018/02/an-updated-lead-crime-roundup-for-2018/)) has a lot more information. Section 3 has some direct links to research papers, if that's your thing.

</comment><comment><USER4> Undoubtedly lead exposure has had a profound effect on society, and on crime levels. Lead exposure leads to reduced IQ and increased aggression. But the crime landscape during the relevant period (the late 20th century) has too many confounding factors to extract data from it. For one, there's the "crack epidemic" crime wave of the late '80s and early '90s. During this period the rate of homicides committed by teens tripled and then went back to previous levels. Additionally, violent crime is correlated strongly with population density. And during the late 20th century in the US cities first began to empty out (due to "white flight") and then began to be repopulated as "yuppies" working office jobs and living in cities became more a more desirable "american dream" than the suburban family home and then later as urban centers became the core of the new tech economy. At the same time, police enforcement changed dramatically through the '80s, '90s, and later. The "war on (some) drugs (used by some people)", mass incarceration, etc. These are all tremendous confounding factors while the underlying "signal" from lead exposure is expected to be a gradual change over a fairly long period.

<comment><AUTHOR> Separating out the confounding factors is definitely a big problem, but lots of effort has gone into just that. Drum has been following the Lead-Crime Hypothesis science since at least 2012. This blog post: [https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/02/an-updated- le...](https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/02/an-updated-lead-crime- roundup-for-2018/) provides an overview, but maybe not an ideal overview just because it's so long. Section 3 has links to some actual papers, and some of the other links may ultimately lead to papers, but there's so much of it that I didn't explore it deeply.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Lead exposure in childhood may have played a small role in rising and falling crime rates in the USA but it is unlikely to account for the very high percentage of the decline suggested by the ecological studies" [1]

[1] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3829390/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3829390/)

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure why you're posting that link here. In academia, no single study is treated as conclusive. For example, when scientists observed a 50% decrease in men's sperm count in the last 30 years, they cited a meta-study which reviewed data from 185 other studies. [1]

If you look on google scholar. It's trivial to find well over 100 lead-crime studies. The one you linked to seems to be only published-online, and not a meta-study, so it's not clear on what basis you (cherry?) picked it.

[https://doi.org/10.1093/humupd/dmx022](https://doi.org/10.1093/humupd/dmx022)

<comment><USER5> For me it's good to have a healthy dose of skepticism about these things, especially when it comes to social studies. I didn't like the conclusive tone of the mother jones article personally. The mother jones author does a fairly amateur analysis and concludes: "I'd say that basic cohort analysis supports the lead-crime hypothesis, while age analysis might not."

The article I posted is a counterpoint to this in which an academic cohort study is reviewed finding lead explains less than 1% of the variation in crime in a cohort, and another cohort study there reviewed found no association between lead exposure and murder -- so a relevant article to post here, I'd say.

Do you consider the results in the MJ article to be as robust as a meta- analysis and if not, do you have the same criticism of that article? (in which case, fair enough)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Anyway, this is just a quick, amateur look at the data."

... Yes, yes it is. Statistics can tell you pretty much any answer you want to hear, if you are not careful.

</comment><comment><USER8> Do people generally find mother jones a quality information source? it has always seemed to me to be a over the line into left-wing-nut territory - willfully misleading to appeal to their market.

I'd put it as basically a mirror of fox news on this chart :

[https://www.codlrc.org/content/news-sources-journalistic- qua...](https://www.codlrc.org/content/news-sources-journalistic-quality- partisan-bias)

<comment><USER9> [http://pressthink.org/2010/11/the-view-from-nowhere- question...](http://pressthink.org/2010/11/the-view-from-nowhere-questions- and-answers/)

There are other, better, rebuttals but this is from someone who can't really be impeached on ideological grounds. Also, the idea that Mother Jones is "left-wing-nut territory" is ....bad. Unless your yardstick is "distance from more or less explicit white nationalism of breitbart" then Mother Jones is solidly center-left.

Finally the graph you posted is pretty bad. The Economist is an ideological chop shop with no bylines that started life as a forum for propoganda agitating against the Corn Laws. The idea that their minimally distant from an axis of "minimal bias" is not exactly born out by the facts.

<comment><USER10> My father is a liberal newspaper reporter and describes The Economist as the best hope for journalism. If you have to stretch to smear it by pointing out the lack of bylines and its start over 150 years ago, then I have to wonder what your biases are. The Economist has its slant for sure but your characterization of it is extreme.

<comment><USER9> Not at all, in fact my characterization of it was pretty restrained.

[https://www.thenation.com/article/economist-has-slavery- prob...](https://www.thenation.com/article/economist-has-slavery-problem/) [https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/09/economist- re...](https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/09/economist-review- slavery-110687) [https://www.colorlines.com/articles/five-problems- economists...](https://www.colorlines.com/articles/five-problems-economists- special-report-latinos)

I could add in its tolerance if not open affection for Fidez the anti-semitic Hungarian political party, or its virulently anti-union posturing, or its hatred of the welfare state....

I could go on, specifically just about their ideology and how it permeates everything thats published there, but its a lost cause on this website.

<comment><USER8> Those articles are not really convincing - two are regarding one book review, one criticizes the British reader for mispronouncing Spanish names (among other nit-picks). Those sources are very obviously biased (which is fine) and don't nearly constitute objective, or moderate, or broadly-accepted source of commentary.

If you were a regular reader of the Economist you would know how they actually look at anti-semitism (scornfully), labor-relations (respectful of labor, critical of populism and unchecked power), the welfare state (maybe conservative in the UK, downright progressive for the US - see anything they cover on healthcare).

Their ideology does permeate all of their work. The reason they are so well respected is that their ideology is well-reasoned, and their research and writing is very high quality.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Beer and Icecream Diet - <AUTHOR> http://astro.berkeley.edu/~gmarcy/thermal/tpteacher/jokes/icecream.html <comment><USER2> Article is misleading based on units. Food is in kCal, but the calories being calculated for temperature are just normal cals. Enjoy burning 6 calories from your 1200 calorie desert.

<comment><USER3> That's intentional. Couldn't help but notice that "/jokes/" appears in the URL.

<comment><USER4> I think the joke itself is the theory presented, not the fact that the author has no clue what so ever about energy in food being counted in thousands of calories. This is a very common misconception in the USA, where they insist on using the notion of Calories (note the capitalization), confusing them with calories, instead of going metric like the rest of the world by saying kcal to avoid being one thousand times off.

<comment><USER5> This is the point of the joke; except they screwed it up. They should have used Calorie whenever they meant kcal and not done so much math for the reader so that it would be true rather than false which it is because of the sure aforementioned reasons. good joke, bad delivery.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is like the old joke about freshmen in physics who can't do dimensional analysis. Your car was going 32kg per hour?

<comment><USER7> 32 kg an hour? I used to have an Alfa Romeo which rusted that fast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Digg, Reddit, and now Hacker News.

</comment><comment><USER9> _Allowing for the 1,200 latent calories in the dessert, the net calorie loss is approximately 5,000 calories._

I'd love to know which 6 oz ice cream dessert has only 1200 gram calories in it(!) :-)

<comment><USER10> Right? And the calories on the label are actually kilogram calories!</comment></comment>


Announcing StrongOps 2.0 with Node.js Cluster Management and DevOps Capabilities - <AUTHOR> http://strongloop.com/strongblog/announcing-strongops-2-0-with-cluster-management-and-devops-capabilities/

<comment><USER2> The cluster control is pretty cool. Reminds me of spinning up dynos on Heroku but without the extra cost.</comment>


Lubuntu: Floats Like a Butterfly, Stings Like a Bee - <AUTHOR> http://www.linux-mag.com/id/7520 <comment><USER2> Not a great article but the figures are what I find interesting. It seems these 'low power' distributions are often run on guesswork, prejudice and rules of thumb. There's no scientific framework for measuring the actual impact of certain decisions.

If such a framework existed then any Linux distro could use it and it would catch stupid bugs in shared infrastructure that suddenly starts eating memory or CPU and let people focus on areas ripe for improvement. Similar things have happened with identifying power hogs, browser memory usage, or things slowing down the boot process. Often there are many stupid bugs that can easily be fixed without having to throw everything out and start again.

LXDE based Lubuntu seems to do better in this regard than the XFCE based Xubuntu but I'd still like to see it formalised to the degree that you could make informed decisions about the tradeoff between different browsers or whatever and see standard Ubuntu get 10% "faster" or "lighter" with every release rather than slowly bloat up till something breaks and people start to notice. The less L/Xubuntu has to diverge from the mainstream the better for everyone.

<comment><USER3> _Terrible_ article. Whines about choice, then concludes the latest choice is compelling. Whines about fragmentation in Ubuntu, then at the very end shows that he does understand that it is in fact all Ubuntu and all these "variants" are just different installed packages. Spends about half of an article with some interesting tidbits whining in general.

And in the end, his conclusion is wrong, too. The different between a 200MB and 300MB memory load is not all that significant; if your machine can run, it can run the other, with a bit of swap. (In either case you're looking at swap anyhow, and bear in mind that I'm accounting for the fact we're talking about soft limits, not hard ones. 300MB actual MB is different than 200 actual MB on a 256MB system, but memory doesn't work that way, it is always fluctuating up and down. 200- _ish_ isn't all that different than 300- _ish_.) If you've got 256MB of RAM, you'll pretty much be in the same dire straights with either system, and comfy at 512MB; if you only have 64 or 128MB, you're screwed with both choices. So, this is a pretty narrow window of applicable results.

It should be broken into two articles, one about memory consumption, and one which contains all the whining. Then I could ignore the second one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I especially like how critical this article is of having so many 'flavors' of Ubuntu, when all they really have are different window managers.

<comment><USER5> And different default applications. And different themes. And different goals. What else is there to an operating system, anyways?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What about Fluxbuntu? I thought that distro's goal was to be lightweight and put little demand on system resources? In the article he mentions the distro, but instead draws a comparison between Ubuntu/Xubuntu/Lubuntu. What?</comment>


Measure the gravitational constant like Cavendish did in 1798 - <AUTHOR> http://funcall.blogspot.com/2009/04/lets-do-twist.html

<comment><USER2> The first attempt to measure the value of the Gravitational Constant (as well as the Earth's mass; each would lead to the other given what was known at the time) was done by measuring the gravitational pull of a mountain. A site somewhere in Scotland was chosen, if I recall correctly from the book "A short history of nearly everything." It took years to map out the geometry of the mountain, and the answer was still way off because no one knew how to measure the density of the mountain, and basically had to just guess it.

Cavendish's torsion idea was the key, and it made it possible to dramatically reduce the masses required. The value derived from his experiments is within 1% of the modern value (rather amazingly.)

Cavendish was a very interesting character. Actually, most people who did science in the 18th century seem to have been eccentrics, come to think of it.

</comment><comment><USER3> This reminds me of the physics "practical experiment" we had to do as part of the Cambridge physics tripos (at the Cavendish lab). It was also about measuring gravity, using a pendulum though I forget the exact details, but we then iterated the experimental set up based on the initial results, in theory to get much higher final accuracy than our clock could give.

I thought it was completely dishonest, because if your initial reading was off, then the final answer came out ludicrously wrong. The distribution of the outcome was no longer normally distributed around g, but now had a long tail of catastrophically wrong values. Presumably a good experimenter would simply have thrown away such an 'obviously wrong' value.

I'm amused to think that a large number of those same physicists that happily sat through that experiment then went on to work as quants, where they essentially happily rebalanced probability distributions in exactly the same way, though with a lot more at stake this time around when they eventually got their catastrophically wrong value.

</comment><comment> cool-RR Amazing. I never knew one could measure the gravitational force between two non-astronomically sized objects. This is really really amazing. I can't believe I never heard about it before.

</comment><comment><USER4> They should recreate this experiment at school - it's one thing learning about all the theory, but all the practical experience you get involves the earth's gravitational field. This is way cooler, more instructive, and definitely more impressive.

I never bothered to look up how big the weights were that cavendish used (I assumed they were two orders of magnitude larger than the author used), nor did I bother to estimate whether it would be feasible to measure gravity between household objects. I'm now wishing I had. Maybe I'll try it one of these days. (I took extra physics at school and studied physics at university and haven't touched the subject since graduating, so I'm extremely bummed that we never did fun experiments like this)

<comment><USER5> We did this experiment for a college freshman physics lab. Indeed exciting to see gravity in action! It was a lab based course, and we did similar experiments for most of the other physical constants. I thought it was a great way to learn.

<comment><USER6> This is the college lab experiment that I remember the best. Because my lab partner and I did the measurement and determined that _G_ was 15% smaller [1] than the value in the textbooks.

We asked the professor what might have gone wrong. Whereupon he exhibited the key trait of a great science teacher: He refused to tell us.

So we worked. Oh, did we work. We armed ourselves with the backs of many envelopes and brainstormed. We tried to think of every possible source of systematic error. We tried to calculate the likely magnitude of each of those sources. ("How much electric charge imbalance would be needed for static electricity to cause the error?" "What if an elephant were pacing around outside the lab in phase with our experiment?") We redid the experiment several times, changing the orientation of the apparatus, moving ground wires, et cetera.

Nothing helped. In the end, we wrote up a _really_ long lab report detailing all the theories and the calculations and the systematic errors that we had tried to correct for. Then we plotted up our results and stated that our measurement was X, plus or minus something like 5%. We noted that every other physicist for the last few hundred years had converged on a value 15% higher than X, which suggested that we'd probably missed something, but that there was nothing we could do about that because we didn't have any more time to experiment.

As I recall, we got an A. I will never know how we managed to screw up the experiment. After we turned in the report, the professor confessed that he had no idea either. If he knew otherwise, he was an excellent actor. They plotted all the class's results on the wall, as a time series, and ours was a big, big outlier -- that damned apparatus worked for the groups before us, and it worked for the groups after us. We got a lot of good-natured ribbing.

I'm not sure I could design a better two-week tour of the scientific experience than that.

\---

[1] Or maybe it was larger. As if it really matters. Anyway, it was _way off_.

<comment><USER7> This story frustrates me like being unable to find a bug in code. Why would you keep using the same instruments? Trying different ones would have told you whether your technique was off.

<comment><USER6> _This story frustrates me like being unable to find a bug in code._

That is exactly the feeling, yes.

Here's an interesting fact about the profession of experimental scientist: You feel this way _all the time_. Actual science is not like classroom science. There's no money or glory in doing experiments which have known, explainable, predictable, well-established answers. Nobody will pay you to measure the value of _G_ again and again, on the off chance that one day it will be different. We're all pretty well convinced that this doesn't happen.

Instead your job is to do experiments which have odd, inconsistent, unpredictable, poorly-evidenced answers. Sometimes you do those experiments for years and then find that the only reason your results are intriguingly odd is that there's a bug in your technique or your theory. That's depressingly common. Other times -- the interesting times -- you have to invent a brand-new theory to explain your experiments. And sometimes that theory is even correct, and you get to publish a bunch of papers on it -- perhaps you even get to name it! But you must constantly worry that your brand-new theory is a load of crap -- maybe you're just doing the experiments wrong.

If you can't learn to live with that nagging feeling of uncertainty you may need to find a different profession.

 _Why would you keep using the same instruments?_

As others have pointed out: This is undergraduate physics lab. There is no money to buy anything. More importantly, there is no _time_ to assemble another apparatus. (This is another reason why this problem is a great model of real-world scientific life. There is never enough money. There is never enough time.)

Moreover, let's consider the possibilities. The instrument was working the week before. With 20-20-hindsight, we know that it was working on the following week. Odds are that the problem was not with the instrument. It was almost certainly with the experimenters! We screwed it up. I just have no idea how, and I never will. Arrrgh!

<comment><USER8> there's a guy doing G-measurements at really small scales here:<http://www.stanford.edu/group/kgb/Research/gravity2.html> i'm still astounded at just how good the 1/r^2 relationship has held up for what? 300 years?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Thanks to the Internet, now it takes only 24 years to publish one's physics experiment result :P

Don't get me wrong, this is very cool -- hope I'll have all the facilities (mainly a large, undisturbed basement) when my son grows up to do it together with him.

</comment><comment><USER10> I remember doing this experiment as a physics undergrad. We had to set up the torsion balance and leave it for 24 hours to let any vibrations damp out. The problem was that anytime someone would close a door in the lab more vibrations would start up. I don't remember how close our numbers came to Newton's constant, unfortunately.

It is a nice application of lasers to measure measure fundamental forces. Sort of the poor man's LIGO (minus the gravitaional waves): <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LIGO>

</comment><comment><USER11> "It's simple. Just change the gravitational constant of the universe."

</comment><comment><USER12> Does this guy have anything to do with the Cavendish Banana?

<comment><USER3> Not directly, but the same family: [http://www.bananabook.org/discovolonte/2008/03/what-does- kei...](http://www.bananabook.org/discovolonte/2008/03/what-does- keira.html#more)

Banana Cavendish = 6th Duke of Devonshire

Gravity Cavendish = Grandson of 2nd Duke of Devonshire

I am strangely intrigued by a whole book devoted to the banana.

<comment><USER13> That reminds me of a show where the host would connect what seemed like totally unrelated events and show how they were connect, now that I think about the show may have been called Connections.

Ah ha it is! <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_(TV_series)>

<comment><USER3> Looks like a great series, but goodness - $135 for Season 1 alone on DVD (from Amazon.) I can't imagine they're selling too many copies at that price.

<comment><USER14> Never fear, you have the internet! [http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=&search_query...](http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=&search_query=burke+connections&aq=f)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Crisis of Credit Visualized - a simple yet effective description of the current crisis - <AUTHOR> http://crisisofcredit.com/ <comment><USER2> Very cool, but the Bomb visualization fails to explain an important fact. The investment bankers aren't receiving cash from the homeowners, but those assets (houses) are not worthless.

Given time (in this case a bailout) those houses should return to normal value via demand once they've gone low enough for people to want to buy them again. At least that's the hope.

<comment><USER3> Bankers are leveraged. It doesn't matter if the house went down 40% or 100% - they are broke and out of business either way.

<comment><USER4> I am not an expert on this. However, it's probably worth mentioning here what I've understood from economists: the banks are not nearly as broke as they say they are -- the ones that are still in business, anyway. If they were really that broke, they wouldn't have taken the TARP money to buy out competitors and give upper management the fat bonuses. The banks that _are_ going out of business ... well, they aren't, really. They're being bought out (e.g. WaMu) and the assets are now held by the parent bank. In that light, I think the original commenter's point stands; the houses aren't worthless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The visualization mentions credit default swaps, but then doesn't show how those, too, contributed to the cycle as all the investments were being unwound. My somewhat primitive understanding is that since the 'safe' tranche of the CDOs was 'insured' via a CDS, when the defaults actually happened, the banks had to pay back not only the amount they had borrowed, but also an additional CDS payout. This contributed to the bankruptcies too, I think.

<comment><USER6> The CDS were underwritten by other large financial institutions for relatively cheap premiums. These institutions thought that "safe" assets will never go out of money so the insured event will never occur.

CDS is the reason AIG went bust. It gets trickier, they did not go busting having to make make payments for the CDSes that they had written but the likelihood of them having to pay increased in light of increased defaults, so the rating agencies cut the rating of AIG. Now, whenever CDS or similar derivatives are written they are done looking at the ratings of the parties involved and with caveats that any fall in ratings would translate into the parties making additional margin payments (money to safeguard against parties defaulting); getting back to the AIG story, when the ratings fell, they were obligated to pay additional margin money to the tune of billions.. which they did not have.

A small facet of the big big story.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Amazing visualization. Taught me something even though I thought I understood what was happening!

</comment><comment><USER8> Great visualization, really clarifies it.

FYI, the copy on Vimeo loaded _much_ faster for me: <http://www.vimeo.com/3261363>

</comment><comment><USER9> YES!!! Finally an explanation from a non-economist that doesn't descend into progressive-populist-bankers-are-evil propaganda.

And yes, a second video showing the actions of the government would be nice.

<comment><USER10> Actually, I think this video legitimizes that view. What else would you call using other people's money to bet that you can hand off the time bomb to some sucker before it explodes?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Does a brilliant engineer like Tony Stark exist in real life? - <AUTHOR>

This is quite childish,I know. But, while wondering about the character, I constantly think about a real life model. The person doesn't have to be a prodigy but with a mind set and skill set like "Stark".And what sort of engineering skills are essential to such engineers, if they exist in real life? <comment><USER2> I don't know if there is an engineer who is able to invent a new form of energy and a complete weapon while captured by the taliban, so no I do not think there is an exact analogue.

However, the film makers have claimed to use Elon Musk as inspiration for Tony Stark in the new Iron Man movies ([http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/10544247/Meet- tec...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/10544247/Meet-tech- billionaire-and-real-life-Iron-Man-Elon-Musk.html))

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, there is no exact model of Tony. But I am not asking for one. Yes, Elon Musk is quite the real-life iron man, except inventing a ground-breaking energy technology, and a hi-tech death machine. Plus, he is more of a science guy turned entrepreneur. I only ask about the engineering mind set and skills that a person needs to tinker and invent at a sophisticated level.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Elon musk has don a lot of myth building around himself,for example claiming to invent the hyperloop(which was invented in 1999 by ET3). And his employees are mad about him taking all the credit for all kinds of results.So i'm not sure you should count him.

We also see the same thing with Edison - claiming credit for other people's work.

The most impressive engineer i can think of is altschuler , which in the 1950's, in russia, even after/while being in a russian labor camp - invented a method of systematic invention(TRIZ) that is used to this day, and really enables every engineer to become an inventor.

So why am i mentioning him ? because to a certain extent - coming up with good inventive ideas may not be the hard part(to some extent). But refining the details,building prototypes,testing, etc is the filter that takes a bunch of good inventive ideas and comes with a great invention.

But usually this process takes an infinite amount of work, so it's beyond the capability of a single guy.

</comment><comment><USER4> Woz.

Not the flamboyant playboy, like Stark. But silent, smart, determined and hard working.</comment>


Do You Want to Know If People Are Reading Your Email? – Yanado Blog - <AUTHOR> https://yanado.com/blog/sidekick-review-do-you-want-to-know-if-people-are-reading-your-email/ <comment><USER2> Scary. Do You Want Other People To Know When You Are Reading Their Email?</comment>


Why the modern world is bad for your brain - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jan/18/modern-world-bad-for-brain-daniel-j-levitin-organized-mind-information-overload

<comment><USER2> > Now of course email is approaching obsolescence as a communicative medium. > Most people under the age of 30 think of email as an outdated mode of > communication used only by "old people". In its place they text, and some > still post to Facebook. They attach documents, photos, videos, and links to > their text messages and Facebook posts the way people over 30 do with email.

This is silly and disconnected from reality. My generation knows e-mail is ubiquitous. E-mail is seen as necessary for professional communications and everyone from the "millennial" generation realizes that once they get to college.

I'm not going to text my professor or potential employer let alone contact him or her on Facebook (which I barely use anymore), when I can use the convenience of e-mail. Not only does it look more professional, but it keeps the correspondence intact within a time stamped thread.

</comment><comment><USER3> That's why I've decided not to own a smartphone. I'm connected while at work, I don't want to carry my work when I'm out. Been idle sometimes looks useful because it allows me to observe the world even if it is other people in the super market. Spending all day looking at various screens I believe will melt my brain, reducing my ability to really focus when I need to. For that same reason I'm not a big fan of social networks either, I just don't find any use for them. On the contrary I find them extremely annoying and I believe they'd hummer my productivity if I was to check every hour or so what my friends did online. Of course I know I'm a minority.

</comment><comment><USER4> On the opposite side of the spectrum from too much multi-tasking is what happens if you single-task intensely for 15 hours a day, 300+ days a year. For guinea pigs we have professional online poker players, one of whom started noticing some problems, got some brain scans and wrote about it here[0]. The TL;DR is his doctor told him if he kept it up he'd have stroke before he turned 50.

For reference, if you're "multi-table grinding" as a poker player you may average 750-1,000 hands _per hour_. At 750 hands/hr that's about 1 hand per 5 seconds. That's a single task repeated over 10,000 times a day, sometimes every day for months at a time.

As with everything, balance seems to be the key.

[0] - [http://www.cardplayer.com/poker-news/15033-dusty-schmidt- thi...](http://www.cardplayer.com/poker-news/15033-dusty-schmidt-this-is-my- brain-this-is-my-brain-on-poker)

</comment><comment><USER5> > _Each time we dispatch an email in one way or another, we feel a sense of > accomplishment, and our brain gets a dollop of reward hormones telling us we > accomplished something._

I see many people at work with this type of addiction and I think it is responsible for luring a lot of technical people into the management world. As a manager, your work day can consist entirely of these micro-tasks and micro- accomplishments that satisfy the novelty-seeking portion of the brain. And attending meetings should be included in this category as well since people also get a false sense of accomplishment from attending those, and I think they have more potential to satisfy our novelty bias as well since they have a degree of spontaneity.

</comment><comment><USER6> "Just a decade or two ago, those same people would have let a landline on their desk go unanswered during a meeting, so different were the expectations for reachability."

It's true that with cellphones you can reach someone even if they aren't at their home or desk, but aren't people switching their phones to silent a lot more? Maybe this depends on where you are, but I can't immediately get through to a lot of people I know the first time I call their cellphone. Text messages also make it a lot easier to communicate asynchronously, if you'll pardon the metaphor. I have actually been wondering if the expectation of availability for realtime remote voice communication isn't going to slowly die over a period of decades.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm not a fan of linkbait-style titles like this: "Why the modern world is bad for your brain."

How about "Neuroscientist Daniel J Levitin explains how constant multitasking is making us less efficient"?

<comment><USER8> No, I disagree - here, the linkbaity title is pretty accurate. "Bad for your brain" reflects the article's core idea of multitasking causing cognitive loss, whereas your proposed title doesn't mention it at all.

<comment><USER7> Fair enough, but wouldn't you agree that "the modern world" vague to the point of meaninglessness?

Based on the headline, the article could be an article about food, pollution, education, social media, work habits, mobile phones causing brain cancer, vaccines causing autism, etc.

<comment><USER8> Yep I agree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This article really rings true for me. I've found that I'm far more happy and productive when I'm not multitasking.

One thing that I've found particularly challenging is dealing with text messages from significant others while at work. Programming and problem solving tasks that take 30-60 minutes just to get started with mentally, can easily turn into a few hours of intense concentration. But interactions with others during this time can significantly derail things, despite not being responsive also derailing things through a feeling of guilt.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think content aggregators like reddit or HN have this problem too. "That looks interesting! I wonder when the comments say... First one: good point! Second: hadn't thought about it that way! Third: that was dumb. Fourth: boring. Next thread." They encourage shallow thought and glossing over details. I often wonder how my attention span would change if I could get myself to quit these sites.

<comment><USER11> I've recently blocked Reddit on my computer. What happened was a re-balancing of my slacking off. Now I don't spend my time on Reddit but I spend much more time playing Minecraft or otherwise farting around.

The main benefit I've seen, however, is that I've stopped flitting between work and Reddit. That alone has done wonders for my at-home productivity. I've also found it easier to pull away from non-productive activities when it's time to get back to work. I'd recommend trying it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This post reminds me of the book "Blur: How to Know What's True in the Age of Information Overload".

My take is optimistic. Charlie Munger uses mental models to handle his business decisions. Maybe we just better mental models to handle high frequency information digestion and distribution.

<comment><USER13> I am optimistic as well. I have dealt with many of the problems in the article and developed my own mental tech to solve them (mostly around personal organization and self-discipline). I think it is better assume that problems do have a solution, rather than think there must be something bad which is the cause (e.g. technology itself).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "We are doing the jobs of 10 different people while still trying to keep up with our lives..."

My first experience with Uber was to order a ride for my wife and daughter. As they were en route, it occurred to me: I had unwittingly accepted the job of dispatcher, and was paying for the pleasure.

<comment><USER15> I think you're totally right about taking on that job, but couldn't that particular example just be you doing something nice for your family? I wouldn't consider that a job as it is a favor.</comment></comment>


How to easily host your own sites and access your files from anywhere. - <AUTHOR> http://www.weboffspring.com/?p=308

<comment><USER2> The fact that you have to pay an extra $50 to get LAMP on it is pretty shocking if you ask me

<comment><AUTHOR> The device comes with ubuntu 9.04. You can install LAMP from the repository directly if you want to for no cost. The image is meant for people who don't have time to do that.

<comment><USER2> Slightly less depessing then :)

Although, how many people know what "you can buy a LAMP stack" means AND would chose to pay $50 if they have ssh access to the server?</comment></comment></comment>