Hollywood is about to repeat the catastrophic mistakes of the music industry - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2298871/pagenum/all/

<comment><USER2> Situation is even worse in Europa. We have no Hulu or anything comparable. If the movie industry doesn't learn that Europe is only ~10ms away from the States when you're in the net it will have even more trouble in that market. I'm chatting with friends in America, I'm occasionally working for companies in the US (from my home in Germany) and I'm certainly visiting imdb.com and similar websites to inform myself about movies. So why do I have to wait half a year until a (often badly synchronized) version of a series arrives here on legal channels? Most like even first on pay-TV (not that I even would have a TV anymore these days...I want to watch movies when I have time and not when some station thinks I should take the time). All while streaming-services are found in less than 5 minutes (who is still using risky torrent services anyway?)

Give me a no-hassle-fair-price download service and I'll be fine paying for good movies. But right now I have not yet found a legal way of watching movies on my computer except waiting for the DVD's - and even those I don't really watch in a legal way as I'm using DeCSS to watch them on Linux.

<comment><USER3> Then again, this is the internet we are talking about. There is not much stopping you from using technology to gain freedom.

Pandora blocks your IP address you say? Go look for a proxy in the US.

Hulu recognizes proxies you say? Use a VPN instead. That opens the door to every free offer in the US.

iTunes won't let you download from the US store you say? Go to Ebay and grab an American iTunes gift card.

Spotify requires a bank account in UK/Scandinavia you say? There are always virtual credit cards like Entropay (I call them credit card proxies). Well, Spotify won't take those. But Paypal does, and Spotify accepts Paypal.

You see, this is the internet. There are no countries or borders on the internet. The tools are all there. You just gotta use them.

<comment><USER4> Not the point. None of these solutions are easy or obvious to the casual consumer. Companies (and governments) should make legal distribution easy for consumers worldwide if they want to reduce illegal downloading.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The article ends with the author suggesting the studios get together and create a single source for digitial delivery to make it easy for the consumers. Well, it turns out the studios are doing that, it's called DECE and the first step is a suite of DRMs and a rights locker called Ultraviolet. Unfortunately, it's a huge consortium that will have tremendous trouble actually getting anything done. It's also primarily aimed at supporting digital purchases to supplement the ailing DVD market instead of just biting the bullet and recognizing that rental and subscription are what most consumers want. Still, it's a serious effort despite it's flaws, so it's not fair to say the industry isn't taking the changes of the market seriously.

A much more difficult problem is undoing the years and years of distribution rights deals and complex availability windows that plague any improvement in the market. These deals lock up content, creating exclusive windows for entrenched players and hamper true innovation. Unfortunately, solving the rights windows issue, which includes not only time but also geographic limits, is a much more difficult problem to solve with fewer incentives on incumbents to change. If they don't, the whole industry will suffer, but I don't see this issue being solved any time soon.

<comment><USER6> I've not heard of it before, but this DECE thing is not going to create a single source for digital delivery to make it easy for consumers if it also involves a suite of DRMs and a rights locker (whatever that is). The two concepts seem entirely antithetical given that DRM inevitably makes things difficult for consumers.

<comment><USER7> Don't worry about DECE. I had access to draft technical documentation on it about .. oh .. early 2009.

I don't think it's breaking any NDA to discuss the overall aspects of the consortium's goals.

Basically what they are trying to do is produce a global network of secure digital content distribution servers. Under their model, all digital content retailers actually sell access to this single global commercial content delivery infrastructure.

However, it remains unclear to me under the proposed model: a) Who will pay for the servers b) Which devices will or will not be supported, and how media transcoding (to support differing device capabilities) will be handled c) Who the user complains to if they can't get access to the content they paid for d) What value retailers would add in such a scenario - indeed, how they would 'compete' with each other given very little control and thus capability for unique product offering

Like many dreamy consortia, I see this one as dead in the water. The technical problems are significant, and there is a general lack of impetus to actually get out there are solve the problems.

A DRM industry for plain media (consume only, non-interactive) that dreams of securing global distribution is, in my view, destined to self-flagellate until it is but a poor faded memory in the distant mists of time.

On the other hand, DRM _can_ enable good consumer experience: I really like Steam, for example. I recently bought my first Mac and many of the games I'd purchased on PC instantly became available in my library. After just logging in, I could download them for the new platform and play away instantly... even though I'd changed countries and gaming platforms. This is what DRM _should_ be doing: empowering people to mobility and choice through connected media. Steam just does so many things right: content discovery, supporting smaller and independent content developers, social elements.

I think the entire DRM industry should look up to Steam for a successful example of the future. Bottom line: THINK OF THE CUSTOMER.

<comment><USER8> Spot on post. I think the problem here is that big media sees its customers as a bunch of criminals who will only pay when forced to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is why it's called "disruption." Basically there's a lot of mid-to-late career people whose (comfortable-to-extremely wealthy) lifestyles depend on ensuring that the status quo is maintained until after they retire.

Après moi, le déluge.

</comment><comment><USER10> I sympathize but this long-winded piece didn't add much new to the discussion.

tl;dr:

      The easiest and most convenient way to see the movies or
      TV shows you want is to get them illegally.

<comment><USER11> I think this was the more important bit:

      Again, to belabor the obvious: The illegal version isn't just free. It's better.

<comment><USER12> Exactly, as opposed to DRM'ed files, the open formats aren't "defective by design".

<comment><USER13> Even without DRM, pirated content is usually available when you want it, as soon as it's available, in more geographic areas (try buying digital content outside USA), it's available in more formats, the file you get will work on more devices, the file you get won't have ads, the file you get won't have copyright warnings. Even if the content cartel sold unDRMed files, they still wouldn't be as good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm sorry, but acting like torrenting is a superior user experience to Netflix is not credible. Sure pirating has its advantages, but it's no panacaea. For one thing, who wants to wait hours to download something before they can watch it? The disk space requirements are huge, and the quality and availability issues are problematic. Netflix may not have everything streaming, but they have a pretty good selection at your fingertips, and with DVD coverage you can fill in the gaps of most stuff that you _really_ want to watch.

The problem is the "industry" is not monolithic, and if you think about Netflix cannibalizing $200/month cable subscriptions (for all premium channels) into $10/month streaming, you can see where some of the players are gonna drag their feet. It'd be great if big content could come together a create an amazing service for everyone, but they don't have the chops or the incentive.

<comment><USER15> > who wants to wait hours to download something before they can watch it

I don't know how fast your internet is, but I can get an hour-long TV show in 720p in <10 minutes from torrents, and I'm paying $45/month for internet (in America).

> The disk space requirements are huge

Are they? 2 TB hard drives are now $70 a pop, and who says you have to save everything like a pack rat anyway?

> quality and availability issues are problematic

They've never been for me. There have always been plenty of seeds, and there has always been a high quality version that has been easy to find (usually because it has the most seeds & snatches). If anything, the quality is MUCH higher when torrenting than it is when streaming (legally or illegally).

<comment><USER8> >There have always been plenty of seeds, and there has always been a high quality version that has been easy to find

This isn't the case for me. I watch mostly "foreign" films (i.e. films in a language I don't speak or understand). If the subtitles aren't included it can be a nightmare to find some (I won't watch dubbed movies). Sometimes you can't find any subtitles at all (I once had a movie sitting on my HD for over a year waiting for subtitles to show up for it), often when you do find them they're out of sync [1] or awful translations written by people who don't speak one (or both!) languages very well. Often whole chunks of the movie will be left out or have one word explanations.

So for me, the quality is not remotely better via torrents, that's just literally the only option for what I want to watch.

[1] Apparently different formats actually run at different speeds, causing the subtitles to drift if they were made for a different format. I didn't want to know about this and if the media industry had provided me some way of consuming this content I wouldn't have had to learn about it.

<comment><USER15> You're an edge case, so I don't think your situation is particularly instructive when considering the industry as a whole.

But in case you didn't already know, you can obtain subtitles separately, from sites like Open Subtitles and Subscene, then sync them to your video. I use Subtitle Editor[0]. Although it's Linux only, I'm sure there's similar software for other OS's as well.

0: <http://home.gna.org/subtitleeditor/>

<comment><USER8> I appreciate that I'm an edge case, but I'm not the only person who behaves this way.

As far as your other info, thanks for your help. I do, however, already know all this. Believe me.

Syncing to your video is a very hit and miss process. It's not a matter of just pointing the app at the two files and let it sort them out. What if the original version included more of the credits? It can be a huge pain. VLC makes it easier by letting me increase/decrease subtitle delay as it starts to drift out of sync.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I certainly identified with the spirit of the article and know that people _are_ willing to pay money for legal access to digital content _when it's easy and has the stuff people want_. I'm one of them.

Since I signed up for Rhapsody about a year ago, my downloading of music illegally has plummeted. I trade the small amount of Downloader's Guilt for $10/mo and have access to (almost) everything I want to listen to. (And from wherever I want to listen to it: my computer, my phone, my home stereo.)

Before Rhapsody, I was downloading gigabytes of albums – I hadn't bought a CD in the new millenium (save those from smaller bands I wanted to personally supported). Now the music industry has me as a customer again, and monthly. Hollywood needs a Rhapsody to survive.

<comment><USER17> Indeed.

Don't look at torrents. Go look at many of the download services rapidshare.com, megaupload.com, etc. They all have one thing in common: they charge money.

This means that there is a segment of people out there who are willing to pay, but whoes needs are for one reason or another are not met under the current system.

If you want to grow the market try to capture them.

<comment><USER15> Of course, all these sites are charging for is taking away the inconvenience of the free download option. If you use JDownloader[0] and don't want to see something right away, you can use these sites just as well without paying them a single cent. The most significant exception are the other sites, such as HotFile, which use ReCAPTCHA, making JDownloader much less useful.

0: <http://jdownloader.org/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Yeah, so downloading torrents is still the easiest way to obtain selected works despite its complexity. He's right in that we'll just probably have to wait for a decade or so for things to get better, given the track record of the MAFIAA.

However, there should still be an explicit law that allows people to legally make free copies of content that isn't available for sale in any standard format. There's _never_ enough supply as there's demand; there's always a niche that just isn't reasonably satisfied by commerce itself. A number of various collections or redistribution of minor series can thrive on the proverbial pirate bay because there are non-commercial incentives only to support them in the first place.

<comment><USER19> Yeah, but no. If I want to make a home or specialty video and give it away to a few folks but not sell it, that doesn't give you any kind of moral right to take it and give it to the world. And it certainly shouldn't give you the legal right. In your version of reality everything produced by anyone should be available to all comers and if you don't charge for it then they'll give it away for free? What about bloody confidential documents or video of my groundbreaking experiments? I think you need to rethink that. If someone genuinely doesn't want to sell you their film anymore well, then, bugger off.

<comment><USER20> _Yeah, but no. If I want to make a home or specialty video and give it away to a few folks but not sell it, that doesn't give you any kind of moral right to take it and give it to the world._

I can't take it. If, however, one of those persons you shared your video with decides to share it with me (or the rest of the world), you can't do shit, to put it bluntly.

To explain it differently, there are two states some piece of media (be it movie, music, books or software) can be in: Private, and public (and to those savvy C++ programmers amongst us, no, there is no "protected" :) ). As long as it is private, indeed no one has a right to gain access to it. In your example, the video would still be private as long as no one you showed / gave it to decides to share it with other people (ie, the rest of the world).

Once someone decides to share it, it is no longer private. It's public. And just as much as no one has a right to demand access to something private, no one (not even you, as the original creator) has a right to stop people from sharing something if they had access to it, thus no longer making it private.

To put this in perspective for the music and movie industry, as well as software authors and writers: there is but one (very simple) way of controlling your creation: don't share it with anyone else. Either that, or publish it, accepting the consequences that come with that decision, one being that you cannot stop people from sharing your creation.

 _tl;dr_ : I can't demand access from you, but neither can you demand me to stop sharing once I have.

<comment><USER19> I hope you're never interested in a job in commercial software - it's be very hard for many of these firms to stay in business if every disgruntled committer was legally clear to leak your whole source code base to the competition or the world.

<comment><USER20> So, it amounts to firms relying on laws for their business model? Or, more accurately, the artificial monopolies created by said laws? That's doing it wrong. If you cannot stay in business without these laws, you shouldn't _be_ in business in the first place.

Oh, and no, I'm not in the least tiny bit interested in developing proprietary software. :)

<comment><USER19> best of luck on your crusade.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> _My new DVR holds so few shows [...] It holds now about 20 shows, and a few movies, and is basically useless in that it fills up every few days ..._

I think the author needs to stop watching so much TV.

Does anyone identify with this piece? It seems largely exaggerated to me. I watched the first 4 episodes of _The Inbetweeners_ , season 3, on demand last night. I have FiOS, and even with its clunky menu navigation, it was easy to find and watch the shows. The alternate is. what, download a 1GB torrent? I don't see how that's easier.

If Hollywood wants to improve box office receipts, they could stop making so many sequels, movies from comic books, movies from TV shows, and 3D for the sake of 3D.

<comment><USER22> You shouldn't confuse "should" and "could". I only watch a handful of shows but I have no business judging the author for spending his time however the hell he wants. I'll likely make millions of dollars before he will, and that's entirely his prerogative.

It was long winded and pedantic, but he's making a solid point metaphorically: this shit is painful, and no mortal can or would navigate the morass of technical, legal and financial woes without wondering the exact same things.

I feel sorry for people that don't know how to move comfortably around tech, because the one thing you and I share in common that they don't have is a choice in how this goes down on a personal level.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Best line in the article: "If the studios were smart they'd go to the mat and create a massive one-stop shop for TV and movies, find a price point they can live with and then set programmers loose to make the thing as easy to use and ubiquitous as possible."

</comment><comment><USER24> Size matters.

I think as similar as these two industries are, the big deciding factor in this particular war is the size of files being downloaded. Video files are mammoth in comparison to music files and the Cable and Internet companies know this--there are obvious infrastructural problems in play, but the recent move by a number of ISP's to cap the data transfer capacity of its clients is a huge factor in this war on pirating--I mean where I live in Canada 1/2 of the major players have adopted this, with the 2nd committed to it but unsure of when it will be fully in place--so when that does happen I'll be forced into a cap of 100gb a month for the price I previously afforded with stiff penalties for going over--in this day and age 100gb, especially in terms of TV and movies is hardly anything. Couple that with my desire to play online games, surf the internet, stream on youtube etc and my fun time options are severely limited. If anything I think Hollywood lucked out on the fact that ISP's have hit a roadblock in terms of bandwidth and what they can afford to provide.

</comment><comment><USER25> How many terabytes would it take to store all the television shows and movies from the US in standard definition for the past 30 years? How about only the shows you and your family/friends want?

Storage prices will continue to drop. At some point in the near future it will be less expensive to have an entire collection of video stored locally, rather than try to create the infrastructure to stream across the country or globe.

</comment><comment><USER26> Oh yes. The whole movie industry needs to change. When a new movie comes out I want to see it _that day_ , on my laptop/TV/home theatre in HD. If I am constrained to a single viewing for a period, fine.

I do not want to see it in a smelly, sticky, noisy public theatre.

Will this ever happen? Unlikely.

</comment><comment><USER27> In the golden days of media distribution (the 90s?) X amount if money was made. They will do anything to make X again and then after that anything to make more than X.

</comment><comment><USER28> "about to"?</comment>


Groupon spends big on Superbowl commercials, but ads anger many viewers - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2011/02/06/technology/groupon_superbowl_ad/ <comment><USER4> I believe if they would have made it a clear fact that they were directly supporting the groups which they were poking fun at, the ads would not have been so ill-received. You can donate to Greenpeace, The Tibet Fund, Rainforest Action Network and buildOn at Groupon's site and your donation will be matched (with the exception of Greenpeace, for which you receive Groupon credit): <http://savethemoney.groupon.com/>

It's a bit of a shame that the donation site wasn't promoted at all in the videos, it might have done wonders for the groups on the receiving end.

</comment><comment><USER5> It had a great structure in theory, set people up to expect one thing then throw them into an entirely new frame of reference to make the product stand out.

There were two problems, one is that they ran it backwards from high moral ground to low. Secondly, they spent way too long describing Groupon is and what it does which allowed the audience time to recover from the shock and become disgusted. Half the commercial was setup, 3 seconds were punchline and 12 seconds were trying to explain the punchline. If it had been funny, all would have been forgiven.

<comment><USER6> Excellent analysis. Plus, where are you finding "fish curry" in Gyantse?! When I think of Tibet, I think of... fish? curry?

The ad fails on so many levels...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you watched Andrew Mason's talk at Startup School '10, you'll understand the Groupon ads. These ads reflect the history of Groupon itself - <USER2> grew out of ThePoint.com (which is still up) - a site dedicated to group activism, and it was going absolutely nowhere. The ads are dead-on - for all the talk about helping Tibet and saving endangered whales, we vote with our dollars in favor of ethnic food and fun excursions.

<comment><USER8> unfortunately, not every television ad viewer has heard of Andrew Mason being Groupon's CEO .. much less about his startup school talk and his philosophy and what not ..

there's not much sense in defending these ads, whatever the deeper thought may have been .. upon viewing them, they were crass, not humorous and definitely not in the right taste.

<comment><USER9> This is exactly why these are amazing. He took a group activism site that basically couldn't make anything and turned it into the fastest growing company in the history of the world. They turned down a $6 billion offer and paid for all these superbowl ads.

The real irony here is people's principles don't actually matter. People can't help themselves and will take saving $15 on a dinner millions of times over rather than offering it up to any of their principles or supposedly lofty morals. Mason discovered the real secret here which is it doesn't matter which moral road you're on people can't help themselves.

The reason people think these are crass is that they can't deal with the realization of their own moral corruption and hypocrisy. These commercials are a statement about the same people who are lambasting them. They got trolled and the more they rage the more they out themselves for the ruinous morally crippled savages that they truly are.

<comment><USER10> Well, that's one hell of a marketing strategy. I'm chalking this one up to poor sense of humor and put Groupon in the deadpool.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If Groupon wants to associate their own brand with this kind of image, fine, whatever, I can ignore them easily enough. But how would you feel as a business owner if you started getting boycotted because the idiotic company that manages your coupon campaigns went out of its way to offend your customer base?

GoDaddy gets away with stupid offensive commercials because companies that use them don't actually have to show an association with them to their own customers. It's kind of hard to run a secret Groupon campaign, though - <USER3> implicit approval of their image via your campaign dollars is right out in the open.

<comment><USER12> GoDaddy is also about as racy as an episode of Everybody Love's Raymond.

<comment><USER13> > Everybody Love's Raymond.

See <http://theoatmeal.com/comics/apostrophe>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It seems right now that liking it is the minority view, so I'll throw up what I like about it real quick.

General advertising culture crassly manipulates desires in a way that I find insulting. This commercial purposely fucks that manipulation up. It's like a middle finger to the soulless beer commercials that I find tiresome, the "being told what to like" mentality.

This commercial also has a point, in an Emperor's Clothes sort of way. People are angry because they don't like feeling like their concern for whales, Tibet, or the cause du jour is insincere even if they aren't doing much to actually contribute.

If you're offended, step back and look at why. Is it because you don't like thinking about how absurd American culture is (in effect if not intent), importing Tibetan food for trendy twenty-somethings to enjoy, turning concern for rainforests into absurd Disneyland-style Rainforest Cafes. Because that's a _true_ analysis. If you're upset because a commercial is an _accurate portrayal of life_, then that's not entirely sensible.

On the other hand if you're upset because "They didn't do commercials right, they're supposed to follow a pattern/distort data/just be funny," I'm unimpressed with your orthodoxy.

The world is absurd. I like a company that is willing to spend millions of dollars to point that absurdity out using itself as an example. People aren't going to stop buying groupons because of this ad, and a successful ad campaign wouldn't save them from going bust like Pets.com (as is documented elsewhere).

In other words, _this ad meant nothing anyway,_ and it embraces that to actually be pretty funny and insightful.

In my opinion.

<comment><AUTHOR> Except it's not an analysis, it's a sales pitch. If it were on a satire show, you'd have a point. But they are in fact inviting you to spend your money on discount coupons for shopping instead of sending it to a nonprofit.

My wife and I donate money to a variety of different causes we care about (not these specific ones, but that's beside the point). Besides the patronizing suggestion that people never actually put their money where their mouth is, the Tibet one also comes off as racist. She used to like Groupon, and tended to give them several hundred $ a month in business. Note my use of the past tense here.

<comment><USER14> I am using the artistic interpretive sense of the word 'analysis' here. The ideas presented in the commercial are a viewpoint.

It is an analysis that is a sales pitch because it says: we're so confident that we can tell you _exactly_ what the situation is, with an actually quite sad bitter self-awareness, and it won't make any difference.

"This is a stupid system [advertising and the crass mainstream] and I refuse to play. And I can tell you this to your face and you will still use me, because that's just how our world works."

>Besides the patronizing suggestion that people never actually put their money where their mouth is

That ain't a suggestion, that's the truth. And even if everyone were committing a significant proportion of their resources, it still wouldn't change the really bizarre affinity Americans have for taking causes and turning them into ways to make money. I believe I already mentioned the Rainforest Cafe.

I really don't think you're cynical enough, and just personally irritated because you actually donate.

Anyhow, Groupon doesn't care about customers like your wife/you. Groupon will continue to make money, for one thing; but not only that, Groupon doesn't need customers that are told what to do by advertisements. And if you're making a purchasing decision based on an advertisement, that's exactly what you are doing.

The goal of Groupon's advertisement was to not be an advertisement, but a stated fact. I hesitate to say it was an anti-commercial because it is still actually promoting its product, but it is definitely flipping off every other superbowl commercial for taking itself so damn seriously.

Finally, I'm assuming you know that Groupon is matching donations for the various causes. The way it's not making this clear actually makes me respect them more, because waving the size of your donation-dick (that's the second time I've used that phrase tonight, how old am I?) is just another form of crass advertisement.

<comment><AUTHOR> _I really don't think you're cynical enough, and just personally irritated because you actually donate._

Actually, we were irritated by the Tibet commercial because it came off as so racist. My in-laws are Asian so the whole family was hanging out together. It did not go down well at all - and my in-laws are neither hypersensitive nor lacking in humor.

 _The goal of Groupon's advertisement was to not be an advertisement, but a stated fact._

Sez you.

 _I hesitate to say it was an anti-commercial because it is still actually promoting its product, but it is definitely flipping off every other superbowl commercial for taking itself so damn seriously._

Riiiight. Because superbowl commercials are famous for being humorless public service announcements. As for Groupon matching donations (up to $100k each, I believe), big whoop. They spent $3m on their ad slots. This PR mess will cost them a lot more before it's done.

<comment><USER14> I don't know why you don't see the racism as a portrayal of casual American incidental racism. It is not (in my view) an endorsement of casual American racism.

Yes, sez me. the point was to provide my opinion.

It wasn't a humorless public service announcement, it was a bitter statement about the absurdity of American culture and the fact that the commercial itself would reflect in no way on its profitability. The PR mess will cost them nothing--at least, nothing important.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Probably the most tasteless commercial I've watched in recent time. Pretty disappointing what's become of the state of American marketing.

<comment><USER16> _This_ is what causes you to be disappointed in American marketing? And uh, how much did you donate to these causes last year exactly?

<comment><USER15> Being that insensitive to the sufferings of others and trivializing it to some coupon to a fish curry dinner -- well, I can't think of any ad that quite matches it. So yes, _this_ is what causes me to be disappointed in American marketing. And, I try to donate in the capacity that I can (but I cannot always, as I'm a college student who lives on paycheck to paycheck). Thank you for presuming otherwise though.

<comment><USER16> It's not even insensitive though. It's fully aware of the fact that those issues are significant and deserving of attention. It's much more of a satire on the fact that most Americans express their "outrage" in Facebook posts and "moral outrage" posts on HN rather than taking action or donating. It's mocking the psuedo moral superiority and giving people want they really want in an abrasive, highly discussed manner.

It's good advertising and I don't find it nearly as insulting as everyone here seems to. At the worst, it simply paints a sad satire of American "disaster fatigue" culture.

Also, my snark at the end was not necessarily personally directed at you. I guess I'm just indulging in the sarcastic satire that I feel Groupon is borrowing from - it's easy to be outraged at the trivialization of something "tragic", but is it _really_ hurting anyone or anything?

<comment><USER17> Well, hell. Why not do a 9/11 one?

"The world was shook to it's very foundation the day the World Trade Center buildings were attacked. Heroes fallen, a nation shook; some victims, flames against their back and smoke subsuming them, took a plunge...

... like the falling prices at Bleecker's Appliance on the corner of Warwick and Bushnell, where I just got a killer deal on a refrigerator through Groupon!"

Oh, right. Fresh wounds and all, right?

<comment><USER16> Heh, not really as if I can respond to this without sounding like a jerk and being downvoted incessantly. Oh well, I'll take a shot anyway: my response choices included mentioning that it was a decade ago, pointing out that I laugh (albeit how terrible it may or may not be of me) at this image: <http://i.min.us/ibOZze.jpg>, and how I think a personal or national tragedy is slightly different than some animals in the water far enough away that I don't actually think about them regularly.

I'd actually be more upset if they ran an ad mocking peoples' opposition to the war... or you know something substantial. I find that the continued _SHOCK_ over 9/11 is really just another symptom of our addiction to "disaster porn" [1]. We in the US love a good disaster, especially if it's a banner under which to assert staunch nationalism (and with it pass the largest violation of Constitutional rights in the history of this country and invade two others), and continue to drum up emotion, support and excuses for ourselves and our government.

Yes it was terrible, yes people died. More people died in automobile accidents. Ask yourself why you're so worked up over 9/11. Was it graphic? Maybe, but that probably has to do with our constant reiteration of what a "tragedy" it was along with footage of the towers falling.

[1]: less "shockingly" known as Compassion Fatigue (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compassion_fatigue>) (hm, this article isn't a very good discussion. I'm more familiar with it in the policy debate world where it has a bit more relevant meaning)

<comment><USER17> "I'd actually be more upset if they ran an ad mocking peoples' opposition to the war... or you know something substantial."

That's the problem. You think it was just about Whales and trees, but I guess you didn't realize how many more died in the Tibetan struggle for independence than 9/11? Then smash cut on Timothy Hutton getting a fish dinner?

I say, if they wanted shock, do the 9/11 thing. Or, even more topical, the egyptian revolution. Like Kenneth Cole did[1]. That worked out well for them!

[1] <http://blog.seattlepi.com/zennieabraham/archives/238287.asp>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The ads:

1\. Whales: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mP_yScodndg>

2\. Rainforest: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z206ipPhuFQ>

3\. Tibet: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVkFT2yjk0A>

<comment><USER19> In the Tibet video, I think it's not even a Tibetan restaurant, mre like a a Mongolian one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> < is outraged > < joins Save the Whales facebook group > < satisfied, inserts handful of almonds into mouth >

</comment><comment><USER21> They posted on their blog about their rationale behind this ad campaign: <http://www.groupon.com/blog/cities/groupon-super-bowl-ads/>

</comment><comment><USER22> If their goal was to portray their company as something only used by shallow boring people they succeeded.

<comment><USER23> And if their goal is to get every shallow boring person in America to be their customers, then that's a potentially massive base.

<comment><USER22> Do shallow boring people think of themselves as being shallow and boring?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Just watched the three ads, my opinion on Groupon hasn't changed. (That is, I'm still indifferent to them.) People are upset too easily.

<comment><USER17> Dachau, the scene of rape, torture, human experimentation, and mass execution. Thousands were forced into a life of hard labor under miserable conditions, the others left to waste away to skin and bones...

... But not at Murray's Deli in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where I just got a fabulous $5 off on a $10 corned beef hash on marble rye with a kosher dill pickle on the side.

Groupon!

<comment><USER25> Fishing for an invocation of Godwin's Law today, are we?

<comment><USER17> Nah. Here, I'll do one without impugning Jewish history:

"1960s. The Watts riots. The scene of chilling brutality and suffering. Dogs unleashed on unsuspecting black onlookers. Children firehosed and beaten with batons. Homes and properties set ablaze…

Just like the fiery pits at Neely's Bar-B-Que, where I just saved $10 on a $20 fried chicken and baby back ribs with two large sides. Finger-lickin' savings at Groupon!"

Then link to the United Negro College Fund on groupon.com.

How's that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> So if Groupon already has the tech savvy, liberal mom and dad crowd in it's database, might a 'crass' ploy like this hit the remaining demographic? I'm thinking about the people who didn't go to college.

It seems crazy to target them, but really, if you already have the educated elite, and you're advertising on a football game...

Anyway, here is the official justification: <http://www.groupon.com/blog/cities/groupon-super-bowl-ads/>

Might give you some useful perspective before you start forming an opinion.

</comment><comment><USER27> Coca-Cola also ran a Tibet-China ad, which was a lot more candid, which makes it even worse. I hate exploitation of the Tibet subject either way, but sneaking it in with nonsensical emotional branding is just rotten. At least Groupon started of as a charitable cause, but they're both champtions of consumerism now.

I wish somebody pivots the business model behind ThePoint, achieves amazing profits and goes on to use it's SuperBowl ad time to mock Groupon's metamorphosis :-P

</comment><comment><USER28> I think it was a smart move. In a few months no one will know why they know who Groupon is, but they'll absolute recognize the name because they were all pissed about how "insensitive" the commercials were.

<comment><USER17> I'll absolutely remember them just like I knew about the sock puppet, Whoopi Goldberg, and the... one with the chesty women. Which one was that one again?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Hadn't seen the ads or read the coverage, but had seen headlines and tweets complaining. Had been thinking "How bad could they be?" so I just watched them . . oh crap who thought this was a good idea!

<comment><USER30> They made you watch! Looks like the ads were designed to create controversy and get people talking...

<comment><USER31> Contrary to popular slogans, there is in fact such a thing as bad publicity.

I don't think Groupon intended this reaction, I think their ad agency was stupid and Groupon had a blind spot because they knew what they meant to say. As opposed to the message they actually did communicate.

The weird thing is that they didn't even have to do anything edgy at all. They have a good product that people naturally want. All they had to do at this point was explain what they do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Question here.

Why not place a solid call-to-action during the advertisement for people to visit their website and sign-up?

All they said was "visit Groupon.com".

All Groupon needs is your e-mail address and a zip code. It seems like they could have baited people with something and really grown their subscriber base?

Am I crazy for thinking that was a wasted opportunity, or does that not work well with such a massive audience?

Maybe the agency they hired only does branding and couldn't fathom the thought of getting direct responses?

Curious.

<comment><USER33> Isn't "Visit Groupon.com" a call to action? That's what it was called back in my day.

As for signing up, the website itself contains that call to action.

<comment><USER32> Yes, it's a CTA. Just a weak one in my opinion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> If Groupon were a brick and mortar, they would be known as a low-brow discount store.

They are certainly very successful but a lot of low-brow businesses are, that's nothing new.

For a lot of consumers it's all about price but many consumers (myself included) only want to spend money where they will receive great service and can identify with the company culture. I think Groupon risks losing customers that just don't appreciate their somewhat demented culture.

</comment><comment><USER35> I tried Groupon, thinking I'd find out about some local businesses (I travel full-time, so I never have "favorite" places to eat or things to do, and always eager to try new things; I'm possibly the perfect audience for this kind of thing). The second day the deal of the day was for Bed, Bath and Beyond. Now, _that_ is offensive. If I'd wanted to be spammed by multi- national big box retailers I'd...well, I'd never want to be spammed by multi- national big box retailers, so I don't know what I'd do. I guess I would have continued to subscribe to Groupon's service.

In short, I find Groupon offensively attuned to cash at the expense of their users. So, I guess I'm not too bothered by their super bowl blunders. Though, I doubt all that many people were really offended enough to turn down a good deal.

<comment><USER36> I don't think they see "people who like trying new things" as their target audience so much as "people who like saving money on things". Most people probably prefer a deal like that (or, say, the Living Social Amazon deal) to one for some random local business because more people have a desire to purchase things from Bed, Bath, and Beyond than to purchase from a given random local business.

<comment><USER35> That could be; and is, perhaps, why they have had such explosive success.

I was under the mistaken impression, based on reading interviews with the founders and seeing the founders speak, that they were interested in bringing interesting local businesses exposure. I may have also been fooled by the description of their product on the website: "Check your email, Facebook or Twitter feeds for daily deals on cool local businesses." It wouldn't have crossed my mind that anyone would ever consider Bed, Bath and Beyond to be a "cool" or "local" business...but, I'm old. WTF do I know about "cool" or "local" (or "business", for that matter, it would seem).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Besides the fact they probably just ruined their China plans, poking fun at the situation will piss off both sides... one view point.. <http://bit.ly/fKegsC>

</comment><comment><USER38> My second post in this thread:

It's obvious they're not giving any exposure to this blog post (<http://www.groupon.com/blog/cities/groupon-super-bowl-ads/>) or the microsite (<http://savethemoney.groupon.com>)

I can't say I'm offended at the content. I'm almost amazed at how poorly handled the follow-through of this campaign. They hired CP+B to create the ads. Why does it seem like no one thought this through?

</comment><comment><USER39> Groupon was supposedly trying to expand in Red China before this. Maybe they've figured out that no foreign company is going to dominate this market in the PRC and, like Google, they're a little resentful.

Actually, I see a couple Groupon offers in my overseas city every day and there don't seem to be a lot of takers. A lot more of the offers seem to be salons and beauty shops compared to my USA city offers. The restaurant choices are good, though.

Makes me wonder about the international viability of the Groupon model.

</comment><comment><USER12> I think their mistake is that they advertised to their existing customer base, who are familiar with Groupon's cheekiness, and who are also noted as being ravenous deal hunters.

<comment><USER40> Yes, their ad was in the same tone as their email copy. But the demographic is totally different.

Being easygoing and joking around can sound callous when people are just starting to get to know you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> They have got people talking about the ad. That is a good thing.

</comment><comment><USER40> I remembered a mixergy interview with Andrew Mason, who said that Groupon's secret lies in their writing.

I duly subscribed to the list and unfortunately found it waffly and difficult to read. There is a thread on Quora about this.

I wondered if Groupon does any testing at all and Andrew doesn't claim to do so.

I think these ads are an extension of their smug copywriting. They'd have to do a lot better than this if they want to win hearts and minds.

</comment><comment><USER42> I think they succeeded at getting people to talk about it[Marketing Objective Complete!]. If it makes it onto HackerNews I can only imagine how many times I'm going to have to hear about super bowl commercials in every other website I visit.

I think the height of super bowl ads was Herding Cat's. After that I don't think I could ever be entertained by super bowl commercials anymore.

</comment><comment><USER43> I had nothing against Groupon(beyond being annoyed about hearing their name, ALL THE TIME!), until I saw this. Who approved this?!

</comment><comment><USER44> That ad didn't fit with the spirit of groupon at all. God, what were they thinking?

</comment><comment><USER45> Isn't this the exact coverage Groupon was expecting? I mean, every blog outlet has been predicting "ad backlash" before the commercials aired. Clearly Groupon wants the additional press time (whether positive or not)

<comment><USER46> Like PT Barnum and Whatsisname Ferris, they don't care what publicity they get, as long as their name is spelled correctly.

<comment><USER47> Whats _h_ isname

<comment><USER46> Ferriss

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Here's the youtube link. Check out how many downvotes it has. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVkFT2yjk0A>

</comment><comment><USER49> Groupon seems to have a real public relations problem.

</comment><comment><USER50> Very forgettable ... at least with the LivingSocial ad I know to be on my guard to becoming a hipster-metrosexual with long wavy flowing hair...

</comment><comment><USER51> Everything will be whitewashed when they announce a 100M donation to these organizations during prime time.

Once they do that, people may even get the humor.

</comment><comment><USER52> Seems crazy that they would need a Superbowl commercial. Makes me think this is more about getting investors' attention than customers.

</comment><comment><USER53> My GOD this is killing me. Apparently just because tech companies are advertising during the superbowl we MUST be in the midst of a tech bubble?

WTF?

Groupon is, by all appearances, STUPIDLY profitable. This isn't pets.com raising millions of dollars and blowing it on an ad and aeron chairs. These are solid companies using the biggest ad day of the year to further cement their status.

<comment><USER54> Strawman. No one said anything about this ad being an indication of us being in the midst of a bubble.

<comment><USER55> I think the article was at least trying to _imply_ that the ads indicate that we are in the midst of a bubble. Otherwise, why would they repeatedly bring up the Super Bowl ads from the last bubble?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Free publicity granted.

</comment><comment><USER57> Watched the commercial on Hulu. Hated it. Went straight to HN to see if I was the only one. It was the top news story. Guess I'm not.

</comment><comment><USER58> I watched three of the four ads on their site. They weren't funny, just cheesy. And not Shatner cheesy, either.</comment>


Ask HN: Cofounder? - <AUTHOR> How long did you go back and forth with a cofounder before you said screw it, and went on your idea by yourself? <comment><USER2> when I start putting up money and he didn't and I was doing all the work. he was going to do more later but I didn't like the plan.</comment>


REMnux: A Linux Distribution for Reverse-Engineering Malware - <AUTHOR> http://zeltser.com/remnux/ <comment><USER2> Good idea. Though I prefer VirtualBox to VMWare, as the former is open-source.</comment>


What is backpropagation and what is it doing? [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ilg3gGewQ5U <comment><USER2> We need more people teaching math through visual intuition. Life a friend of mine said, "if you want to do computation fast, phrase it as a problem for your GPU, er, visual cortex".

Here is a tool you can play with to visualize this: [http://playground.tensorflow.org](http://playground.tensorflow.org)

If you liked this video, try this different visual intuition of what a neural network does that I find even better:

[http://colah.github.io/posts/2014-03-NN-Manifolds- Topology/](http://colah.github.io/posts/2014-03-NN-Manifolds-Topology/)

Also, remember that back propagation is a very general algorithm, it works not only on linear transformation weights but on any direct acyclic computation graph that is differentiable in its weights.

<comment><USER3> This can also go wrong, for example visualising probability distributions in low dimensions leads to very wrong intuitions about the behavior of high- dimensional dimensional distributions.

<comment><USER4> I think this is a very good point. Years ago people were worried about gradient descent getting stuck at a local minima, plausibly because this problem is very obvious in a 3 dimensional space. In higher dimensions however this problem seems to go away more or less and a lot of worrying about the issue seems to be the result of lower dimensional intuitions wrongly extrapolated to higher dimensions.

<comment><USER5> Stuff got stuck in local minima for years before we learned about stuff like momentum and dropout and dropped a ton of GPU power on it.

<comment><USER6> When I was implementing a neural network for a university assignment (2 years ago so my memory might fail me), we had to run our algorithm multiple time with different starting positions, then take the minimum of those local minima.

I'm not sure what momentum and dropout are, but I agree with Eleizer, without these things (which I didn't use) local minima are a problem.

<comment><USER7> Dropout is where you randomly remove neurons from your network during training, which prevents them from depending too much on specific neurons (making the output more generalizable). It was developed in 2014 so it would have been brand new tech back when you were in your class.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> There needs to be some sort of organized push for visualization tools. I know, I might be bringing the proverbial owls to the proverbial Athens with saying that here, but I really do feel that if done right this could impact the course of the world like nothing else. This could be as important as idk, invention of book press or smth. Make computer "the visualization machine".

I think that one of the fundamental problems is that to be a visualization machine, you need to have easy access of the GPU and OpenGL is provides anything but. I think that shadertoy (shadertoy.com) is the thing that comes the closest but the learning curve is kinda steep.

I know that people like Alan Kay, Bret Victor or Michael Nielsen (his post was on the fp the other day [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15616637](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15616637)) share these sentiments but this is a task bigger than a single people.

Idk what I really mean by "organized push". I'm not sure if the problem is well defined too

<comment><USER8> In deep learning, TensorBoard ([https://www.tensorflow.org/get_started/summaries_and_tensorb...](https://www.tensorflow.org/get_started/summaries_and_tensorboard)) works with TensorFlow and Keras to show what the model is doing. However, it ends up being more complicated/unintuitive than a YouTube video, so it's not as useful.

<comment><AUTHOR> The problem is that this is an ad hoc solution. What I'm talking about would be some formalization of visualization (I guess kinda like grammar of graphics without the statistical aspect) so you can visualize just about anything.

<comment><USER8> "Visualizing just about anything" isn't helpful if you want to _learn_ from the visualization, though. (c.f the /r/dataisbeautiful subreddit nowadays: [https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/top/?sort=top&t=mon...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/top/?sort=top&t=month))

That's not to say that a purely artistic data visualization has no _value_ , but it's not academic. (I admit I am guilty of that at times)

<comment><AUTHOR> Data visualization is only a part of it. I'm talking about visualizing concepts.

<comment><USER9> Structure _is_ data

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In my opinion this author produces the best math videos on youtube.

If you can afford it and enjoyed this video, consider supporting him on Patreon. [https://www.patreon.com/3blue1brown](https://www.patreon.com/3blue1brown)

<comment><USER11> Someone on here (I think) recommended his videos on linear algebra a while back and I've since watched them all, several times.

A couple of hours of watching time built an intuition and understanding of linear algebra and the broader maths around it that 4 years of university training didn't give me. That's a little unfair, because I obviously learnt a lot on the courses that make these videos easier to understand, but man, they're so well done.

<comment><USER12> Totally agree. Had exactly the same experience. Became a patron as a way to offer my thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This was very timely for me and for anyone else learning, here are the first few videos of the series:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aircAruvnKk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aircAruvnKk)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHZwWFHWa-w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHZwWFHWa-w)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ilg3gGewQ5U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ilg3gGewQ5U) (Original video)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIeHLnjs5U8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIeHLnjs5U8)

</comment><comment><USER14> The entire YouTube channel is fantastic. 3Blue1Brown's series on linear algebra is the best I've seen anywhere.

<comment><USER15> Agreed. Pretty much every video on that channel is just as good as this one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> A bit of a side-note, but I think it is an interesting piece of marketing that Amplify Partners decided to sponsor[1] the previous video in this series. I wonder (and hope) we'll see more VCs sponsoring open educational content relevant to their focus.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHZwWFHWa-w&t=1205](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHZwWFHWa-w&t=1205)

</comment><comment><USER17> In 1988 Teuvo Kohonen had an "animation" with rotating disks how the perceptron learns [https://youtu.be/Qy3h7kT3P5I?t=42m24s](https://youtu.be/Qy3h7kT3P5I?t=42m24s). Did not help comprehension much.

</comment><comment><USER18> What tools does a person use to make a video like this? I've been wanting to do the same on my topic of expertise for a while now.

<comment><USER19> He uses custom tools.

However, he actually recommends _against_ using his tools. He suggests a better option is to use traditional animation tools.

I'm actually not sure what one would use for more traditional animations of his style though. I mean, theoretically you can use blender/etc for most 3d things, but how easy would it be to make something math-based there? Hopefully someone with some real animation experience can chime in.

<comment><USER20> On the Manim Github he has some suggestions: "For 9/10 math animation needs, you'd probably be better off using a more well-maintained tool, like matplotlib, mathematica or even going a non-programatic route with something like After Effects. I also happen to think the program "Grapher" built into osx is really great, and surprisingly versatile for many needs."

<comment><USER21> > I also happen to think the program "Grapher" built into osx is really great

I didn't know about this, and it's a nice find

<comment><USER22> There's a really cool story about how the software wasn't supposed to ship with macOS, but the devs got it on anyway: [http://www.pacifict.com/Story/](http://www.pacifict.com/Story/)

<comment><USER23> Great story, thank you for sharing! :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Each one of these videos consists of thousands of lines of code. The attention to detail is impressive.

<comment><USER9> have you looked at visualizations done in mathematica? LoC is not a good measure here. [http://community.wolfram.com/content?curTag=graphics%20and%2...](http://community.wolfram.com/content?curTag=graphics%20and%20visualization)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> oh my god, as soon as i saw this video was from 3Blue1Brown i immediately thought "this gonna be good!". I didn't realize he was posting a Deep Learning series.

</comment><comment><USER26> I played around with ML a few years back. I took the Andrew Ng course on Coursera and spent some time with some python notebooks - but I never did anything with it beyond just proving that I could follow the examples and implement my own ML solutions for some simple training sets.

Now I have some problems I'd like to solve with ML. So assuming that I understand the basic concepts, what's the HN recommendation for a good library/system to get started with on doing some practical ML with neural nets?

Would TensorFlow be the best way to get into it?

<comment><USER27> Keras is probably the best library to get started - Ternsorflow is mainly needed if you need to mess with lower-level details, which for many things is not really necessary.

<comment><USER26> Would you still recommend Keras for non-image work?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I dove into this not knowing anything about neural networks, but the feeling I came out of it with was incredible: I love it when something blurry and obscure slowly morphs into a sharper picture in your mind, it's so empowering.

</comment><comment><USER29> Thank you very much. I must code a neural network with backpropagation for my AI class. Can anyone recommend a book?

<comment><USER30> This book is a good practical introduction that walks you through the basic ideas as you develop some basic functionality. [http://neuralnetworksanddeeplearning.com/](http://neuralnetworksanddeeplearning.com/)

I'm often pretty skeptical of e-books and self publications, but the above link is pretty good (and the video series linked here references it as well.) The Goodfellow book that another commenter mentioned is a high-quality survey of the field and a nice, high-level overview of different research directions in deep learning, but isn't as pragmatic as an introduction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This video series is amazing and I wish it existed long ago.

</comment><comment><USER32> There needs to be some sort of intense advocation for visualization tools.</comment>


Soon, hundreds of tourists will go to space. What should we call them? - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/03/soon-hundreds-of-tourists-will-go-to-space-what-should-we-call-them/ <comment><USER2> Kármán-nots

</comment><comment><USER3> Dilletantes</comment>


Pure CSS Francine - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cyanharlow/purecss-francine <comment><USER2> I posted it last time this was on HN, but here's what I managed to achieve in the web inspector: [https://imgur.com/a/KKj82eZ](https://imgur.com/a/KKj82eZ)

<comment><USER3> I didn't want to sleep anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A missed opportunity to use the <head> and <body> elements

</comment><comment><USER5> Looks great in IE7!

[https://github.com/cyanharlow/purecss- francine/issues/3](https://github.com/cyanharlow/purecss-francine/issues/3)

:D

<comment><USER6> Firefox for Android too!

<comment><USER7> For me it looked fully correct in firefox for android (the actual website, not just the screenshot). It only made the app stop responding to button presses (not the first time it does that, fortunately restarting it fixes it and it can remember all its tabs)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Lynn Fisher has also a great website that inspires me regularly. She draw using css and 1 single div. It's all about linear-gradient background. Very interesting.

[https://a.singlediv.com/](https://a.singlediv.com/)

</comment><comment><USER9> More:

[https://github.com/cyanharlow/purecss- zigario](https://github.com/cyanharlow/purecss-zigario)

[https://github.com/cyanharlow/purecss- vignes](https://github.com/cyanharlow/purecss-vignes)

</comment><comment><USER10> An article about the piece: [https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/9kgx7p/painting-m...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/9kgx7p/painting- made-with-code-html-pure-css-browser-art-diana-smith)

<comment><USER11> Another article [1] about how the piece renders in other old browsers.

I think it's super interesting that even mis-rendered versions have a really cool abstract look to them.

[1] [https://www.vox.com/2018/5/3/17309078/digital-art-diana-a- sm...](https://www.vox.com/2018/5/3/17309078/digital-art-diana-a-smith- francine-coded-browser-art)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Firefox and Chrome seem render it flawlessly and Edge's performance isn't half bad either, but I am honestly surprised at how well it works even in IE11.

<comment><USER12> Looks like Safari is the new ugly stepchild. I'm on mobile Safari and it crashes the tab.

<comment><USER13> Works for me, has some imperfections though

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This renders almost perfectly in Safari 11.1, except for the gradient on the shoulder.

<comment> X-Istence And the droopy eyes?

<comment><USER14> Oh you're right, I missed that, the corners of the eyes are boxy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> How to make this easy? wz_jsgraphics.js FTW. RIP, WZ.

[http://www.walterzorn.de/en/](http://www.walterzorn.de/en/) [http://www.bjarne.altervista.org/walterzorn.html](http://www.bjarne.altervista.org/walterzorn.html)

<comment><USER16> This takes me back to the first internship I ever had. I found this library and used it for displaying graphs in JS more than a decade ago.

I shudder at the code I wrote during that internship.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> At this point someone should just make an SVG to CSS converter then you could export from Illustrator or whatever to CSS and be done with it. NOTE: not suggesting CSS should be used this way.

<comment><USER18> Somebody sometime probably suggested someone should use JS to 'transpile' JS into HTML. And people listened.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Her other work[1] is also pretty fascinating

[1] [http://diana-adrianne.com/purecss-zigario/](http://diana- adrianne.com/purecss-zigario/)

edit: updated link

</comment><comment><USER20> I went to developer tools in firefox, slowed it down a bit trying to select elements!

Would love to see the process she goes through to create it

<comment><USER21> Crazy huh? Just her text editor and the web inspector. modern art

<comment><USER20> I asked her....

[https://github.com/cyanharlow/purecss- francine/issues/28](https://github.com/cyanharlow/purecss-francine/issues/28)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Boy, is that fun to Inspect Element on! :)

<comment><USER7> Find the elements "eyebrow left" and "eyebrow right" and disable the checkbox of "border-color" of each to get super dark eyebrows!

<comment><USER23> If only youtube makeup tutorials were so easy...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Holy moly! I wouldn't have thought this was possible if I didn't see the code.

</comment><comment><USER25> Previous discussion from 2 weeks ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16970774](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16970774)

</comment><comment><USER26> You can do some hilarious things via the inspector too

[https://imgur.com/a/CaVlxWN](https://imgur.com/a/CaVlxWN)

</comment><comment><USER27> I wonder if it would be harder to make this in .css vs .less. It would be cool to see some hand written SVG as generated SVG is always ugly and bloated.

</comment><comment><USER28> That's really cool, but is there an original work that it's recreating? My Google-ing is only turning up American dad references.

<comment><USER29> No, it is the original work. She did the art "in the style of 18th-century oil paintings."

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> let's look legacy browser AI art

[https://www.browserstack.com/screenshots/58c71d032613ad8536d...](https://www.browserstack.com/screenshots/58c71d032613ad8536d199c459e533701384c9e0)

</comment><comment><USER31> Would it be "pure css" if you did it in SVG and embeded that into the css?

<comment><USER32> She says on the Francine README that she used to have a few hand-coded SVG shapes, but then realized she could do without them.

If you allow exporting from a graphics editor, a <table> where each cell is a pixel is "pure HTML".

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> One day in the far future AIs will marvel at how humans once made these by hand.

</comment><comment><USER34> Can anyone find a comment on how long this took? This is insane to me

<comment><USER35> The main page shows 246 commits and the code frequency tab under insights shows commits going back to June 2017. [https://github.com/cyanharlow/purecss- francine/graphs/code-f...](https://github.com/cyanharlow/purecss- francine/graphs/code-frequency)

<comment><USER36> She does mention that the first commit was already of a partially finished version:

> Sadly the project began on my desktop, so my first git commits were of an > already-in-progress drawing.

from [https://github.com/cyanharlow/purecss- francine/issues/13#iss...](https://github.com/cyanharlow/purecss- francine/issues/13#issuecomment-386201939). So, the actual amount of time taken is likely to be much longer.

Also very worth checking out the timelapse gif posted there: [https://imgur.com/K2xLX3g](https://imgur.com/K2xLX3g)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> amazing!

</comment><comment><USER38> literally why?

<comment><USER39> art

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I don't even</comment>


Ranking Node.js Module Authors - <AUTHOR> http://npmtop.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is running on an EC2 micro instance through use of extensive caching. In addition to storing all static files in memory, I'm grabbing the data from npmjs.org and saving it in memory every 5 minutes. The server is just 35 LOC, you can check it out here <https://github.com/ecto/npmtop.com>

</comment><comment><USER2> Seems like they should be ranked by SLOC or number of total watchers for their packages.

<comment><AUTHOR> Github integration isn't a bad idea. What do you think the easiest way to grab SLOC/author is?

<comment><USER3> Number of watchers and forks would be awesome, but including SLOC is a dubious metric IMHO.

Other good metrics would be issues and pull request activity. A product with lots of pull requests and solved issues is one that is actively being used by people that probably matter.

It would also be good to be able to rank modules by tags so that questions like, "what are the highest ranked testing libraries?" could be answered.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cool logo, how did you make that? Is it a font?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I ran the npm logo against WhatTheFont

<comment><USER4> cool, thx!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can you increase the line-spacing a little more?

<comment><AUTHOR> Assuming you're being sarcastic. You're welcome to make a pull request if you don't like it, but I would start by changing the color palette on your website <http://many9s.com/>

<comment><USER5> Do you attack everybody who criticizes you? You must be a joy to work with.

P.S. Those colors were chosen for specific reasons.</comment></comment></comment>


Random startup generator with GPT-2 - <AUTHOR> https://recuria.com <comment><AUTHOR> This is just a fun CS project I made for an ML class, but it got me thinking: technology can actually be used to find opportunities in the real world.

If we train an AI on human behavior, shifts in corporate expenditures, emerging technologies, etc., could the "next big thing" be identified with AI? Or are businesses more of an art than a science?</comment>


Valve's VR headset is called the Vive and it's made by HTC - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/1/8127445/htc-vive-valve-vr-headset

<comment><USER2> "The Vive Developer Edition uses two 1200 x 1080 displays that refresh at 90 frames per second" anyone else excited about the possibility of using this baby as a computer display?</comment>


An Open Letter From Internet Engineers to the U.S. Congress   - <AUTHOR> http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/12/internet-inventors-warn-against-sopa-and-pipa An Open Letter From Internet Engineers to the U.S. Congress <comment><USER2> They need to include $2,000,000 checks to each member of congress. That's about how much the media companies are paying everyone who supports this.

<comment><USER3> I'm curious as to where you found this information. Thanks.

<comment><USER4> [http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/industries.php?cycle=...](http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/industries.php?cycle=Career&cid=N00009918&type=I)

<comment><USER5> That's the true horror of the situation. Not only are our representatives for sale, they're for sale _cheap_.

If the media companies were bribing these clowns with billions of dollars, that would be one thing... but some of the people who signed that open letter probably spend more than $2,000,000 on lunch.

<comment><USER6> Plus, those monies are simply campaign contributions. How much grift to career politicians actually pocket?

<comment><USER7> Mostly, they don't pocket it but use it. A congressman is always campaigning and using those funds to live well doing it. They get the rest a bit less openly and from fun loop holes like trading insider info.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> They should have made a request to not only demand such bills to cease, but to demand bills that reverse parts of current laws controlling the Internet.

Otherwise politicians will reduce some of the bill, but the bill will still implement more and more Internet controls [0].

[0] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door-in-the-face_technique>

<comment><USER9> One solution is for everyone to simply refuse to implement whatever stupid law is passed. Closes #666 (WONTFIX)

<comment><USER10> The problem with this solution is that the government has guns and prisons and they will use these to compel individuals to do as they say. If every ISP refused to comply, the feds would make a big show of raiding some significant- but-not-huge regional ISPs and scare the rest into compliance.

Of course, some of this country's largest ISPs probably like SOPA and similar legislation because they see it as strengthening their larger source of revenue: cable television.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I noticed Vint Cerf specified "signing as private citizen". Does anyone know why Google tied his hands?

<comment><USER12> As huge corporation Google has to be ready to lose this fight and in that situation it would be beneficial for them to be on the good side of the victors.

<comment><USER13> Except their co-founder signed as the co-founder of the company. I would assume he's signing as a private citizen to say he's signing because _he_ , and not the company he works for, sees it as a detriment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think it's the wrong approach. How about:

"Dear Congresscritters, we made the internet. It is now everywhere. If you pit the full force of the law against it -- the law will lose. Do not make yourselves irrelevant."

<comment><USER15> I'm sure you're joking, but unfortunately, not only is that approach wrong, the statement is wrong also. If anyone will lose, it's probably not going to be the law.

<comment><USER16> I actually don't think so here. You're basically up against the laws of physics. Information is fundamentally unlike other types of assets, in that there's no cost associated with copying it and it can be very quickly and easily be disseminated far and wide. Let's say they manage to totally destroy DNS, or whatever mechanism they're using to enforce this: the internet isn't one network, of course, and will detect this as damage and route around it, even if that means moving to a totally new networking stack.

This is a losing battle on the part of the IP rights holders. In many ways, that's depressing. But even if they said, "pirate movies and we'll kill you," it still wouldn't stop the signal. All of these laws and treaties are bandaid hacks to stem the tide. Ultimately they won't win, though it may be messy along the way if they try to govern without understanding this.

<comment><USER17> The human cost here is enormous. Did drug users win the war on drugs? Well, half a million of them are in jail at the moment, and it's hard to call that victory. If you think the same thing can't happen with copyright infringement given the political will, you're wrong.

<comment><USER16> I don't think the same thing can't happen here at all. I agree with you that if they really wanted to pursue that path, the human cost could be enormous. However, we're also saying that if you really wanted some weed, there remain many avenues available to you to acquire it, despite all that will.

<comment><USER10> Trading movies and music online is a lot different than using or trading an illegal drug. People actually will stop downloading movies, etc, if it means going to prison. It is pretty easy to stop yourself from watching movies. It is not so easy to stop your physical addiction to a drug. The risk/benefit in the mind of a copyright infringer is on a completely different scale than the risk/benefit that exist in the mind of a drug addict.

<comment><USER16> I'd bet that the belief of likelihood of prosecution for a drug crime is about the same as being sued by the RIAA or MPAA for most people. They're aware they could get in trouble, but it's unevenly enforced and unlikely to actually happen to them.

Regardless, I don't think the willful infringers are the most interesting group here. If user generated content really does lead to sites getting shut down in an unreasonable way (which is probably unlikely to actually happen), I think it's those groups that would be leading the charge to a next gen network, not the infringers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This question isn't specific to the letter, but I've been wondering...

Wouldn't SOPA's effects on DNS be negated by simply hosting your sites' DNS and setting your machines' DNS servers outside the US? Of course this would have major negative impact on DNS performance.

<comment><USER19> That's what I've been thinking. And I think that's something that should be promoted more. Laws like this, aren't going to break the internet per se, but they might break it in the USA. Politicos should learn that laws like this threaten the USA tech sector. Might as well move your servers & companies off shore.

<comment><USER20> What? Unintended consequences? Those are never something to worry about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm curious where this list of people came from. Some are much more notable than others. Are they part of a group, have common investors, or what?

</comment><comment><USER22> Conspicuously absent: Berners-Lee and Bray.

<comment><USER23> Berners-Lee is British. He has been working with the British government on internet issues. I know this is crazy, but they actually listen to him.

<comment><USER24> _they actually listen to him_

Unfortunately, not so. e.g. [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/internet/8030467/Inter...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/internet/8030467/Internet- disconnection-like-being-imprisoned-says-Sir-Tim-Berners-Lee.html)

The Digital Economy Act he is complaining about in that article - which, like SOPA, included provisions for national censorship in the name of copyright - passed by a large majority. Most MPs were not present for the debate, but simply voted according to their party line.

<comment><USER19> _Most MPs were not present for the debate, but simply voted according to their party line._

That's the case in UK politics. The 'party whip' is used, and only in uncommon cases is a 'free vote' allowed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is apropos of nothing, but it's nice to see L. Jean Camp represent my alma mater.

</comment><comment><USER26> > ... a group of 83 prominent Internet inventors and engineers

This topic is probably the first thing they've all ever agreed on.</comment>


Potential large-scale CO2 removal via enhanced rock weathering with croplands - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2448-9 <comment><USER2> 80 - 180 US$ for the removal of a ton of CO2 is far more than the cost of adding a ton of CO2 to the atmosphere (in Germany, currently around 10€/ton, I believe).

In principle, removing a ton of CO2 needs to be cheaper than the cost of adding a ton of CO2.

<comment><USER3> Then let's raise the cost of adding a ton of CO2 to the atmosphere.

We have been encouraging pollution since it's cheaper to just dump it than to reduce their production significantly or invest in capturing it.

If the cost to remove it is $80-$100 USD, then that should be the cost of adding it. We should start demanding they either pay the costs associated with someone else having to deal with it, or reduce how much they dump into the air in the first place.

<comment><USER4> >Then let's raise the cost of adding a ton of CO2 to the atmosphere.

>If the cost to remove it is $80-$100 USD, then that should be the cost of adding it. We should start demanding they either pay the costs associated with someone else having to deal with it, or reduce how much they dump into the air in the first place.

This works until all the people who have enough trouble achieving a decent standard of living vote you out of office or revolt (depending on the system of government of the country in-question). Few things universally piss people off quite as well as standards of living going backwards.

The cost of removing CO2 needs to be cheaper. The cost of emitting less CO2 for a given standard of living needs to be cheaper. Carbon taxes that reflect the current price of removing carbon from the atmosphere are socially and politically unsustainable.

<comment><USER5> Correctly pricing in the negative externalities of burning fossil fuels is what will help us shift away from fossil fuels.

And if people are gonna be upset about a decrease in standard of living because they can't buy gas guzzling cars anymore or air travel is more expensive, they're _really_ not going to like the drop in standard of living from climate change. Coastal flooding and storm surge is already destroying billions of dollars in real estate value. Houston has seen three 500-year floods in less than 5 years. We've seen the devastation from large scale wildfires in Australia and California. Subsistence fishermen in some parts of the world are already seeing their fisheries collapse.

If we don't get climate change under control we're not going to be talking about temporary pain while we shift to cleaner technology. We'll be looking at large scale climate refugee crises, collapses of industries, collapses of governments, and wide scale human misery.

<comment><USER4> You are missing the point.

The fact that we are headed toward refugee crisis and Miami being underwater doesn't change the incentives and game theory aspect of it. If emissions are expensive to remove and there is no way to globally ensure that nearly everybody pays for their emissions then nobody is going to pay for any of their emissions and will just invest in mitigating the problems locally even if that's not the globally optimal solution. Any country that tries to make its people pay the actual cost of their emissions without the rest of the world doing the same will quickly see regime change because people aren't gonna waste a bunch of resources pissing in the wind like that.

If emission are cheap to remove then it's going to be easier to get everyone to pay and the fact that some "emissions havens" won't pay will be a non issue because picking up the slack will be cheap enough. In order to tax emissions at what it costs to dispose of them the cost of disposing of them needs to be cheaper.

(Of course both of us are making the assumption that taxing emissions at the cost of disposing of them will solve the problem which isn't guaranteed because nations will be tempted to use that money on other things but I think we can continue using that assumption for the time being.)

<comment><USER6> I disagree and feel that it is you who are missing the point. While I agree removal of CO2 needs to be less expensive, we simply don't have an option right now. We do have an option to make it more expensive to pollute until we figure that out. Why do you directly relate carbon taxes to a reduction in living standards??

<comment><USER4> >We do have an option to make it more expensive to pollute until we figure that out

I'm saying that option only exists on paper because invoking it in any capacity that actually imposes enough cost to make people reduce polluting by a meaningful amount is going to met with too big a backlash to be sustainable.

>Why do you directly relate carbon taxes to a reduction in living standards??

Because anything that raises cost across all goods and at every step of every supply chain reduces living standards because people will simply be able to afford less goods and services at their new prices. That people will have to do things like turn down the A/C and eat out less in order to make ends meet. Individually those aren't big deals but they have follow on effects, the HVAC guy and the restaurant get less business. Those apply through the entire economy compounding the problem. There are also a lot of people who are going to be pushed over standard of living "cliffs" so to speak. The increased cost will be the difference between living in an air conditioned apartment or not. You apply the former type of changes across the entire economy you'll piss everyone off. You sprinkle in the latter and you've got a regime change on your hands. The only way an across the board standard of living decrease like that is tolerated is when it is overwhelmingly consensual (see WW2 mobilization).

I agree we need to do something but what? It's a real shit situation. Doing nothing is bad. Doing a token "something" doesn't help. Doing something that actually helps is not sustainable. Either climate change has to get worse or solving it has to get cheaper before we as a society can (uncontroversial) justify the level of resource allocation that will be required to make a meaningful difference.

<comment><USER7> Agree with you completely. A simplistic way of pointing this out is that EVERY tax and every cost regressively effects the poor more. If you are close to break-even, or you have negative surplus already, then additional cost is always worse for those who are worse off.

The alternative is to levy large taxes on corporations who pollute, that come only after payroll expense. Then, you could create a progressive deduction where pollution taxes were zero for low income earners, while after some threshold everyone was taxed for polluting.

It's unsatisfactory because the government hates earmarking specific income for specific outcomes and they much prefer the slush fund approach (for not entirely bad reasons). But, if pollution taxes specifically were spent on buying CO2 sequestration products which were deemed effective by the NSF or some other group, we might be able to create a non-regressive pollution tax to increase the net cost of polluting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So. US $150 per ton, so $150B per gigaton. We must ultimately remove 1,000 gigatons of CO2, but we need to start with 10/year. Using this method will cost the world $1.5 trillion per year. That seems completely within our resources. What's stopping us?

<comment><USER9> I really wonder the same thing. I know I'm at a tail of the distribution, but I could see committing 150/mo of my own funds to sequestering co2.

I've heard it posited that for one or another reason climate change could create a dictatorial regime one or another way. I hope humanity figures out a way to pull our collective heads out of the sand and start doing stuff before anything like a dictator kicks up...

<comment><USER10> To the GP asking what's stopping us: 150 usd per month is a quarter of average wage here.

<comment><USER11> You're correct, but let's say the target is 1/10th of it, or $15/month, therefore affordable by many. Still, there's something that prevents us, as a society, from doing it.

<comment><USER9> Well I've seen at least one crowd fund project to sequester co2. It wasn't particularly impressive scale though iirc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is a project that wants to execute on this idea, but using beaches instead of croplands [https://projectvesta.org/](https://projectvesta.org/)

<comment><USER13> Big previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20403570](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20403570)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> An issue with this is release of nickel. The most easily weathered silicate, olivine, typically has several tenths of a percent nickel. I would want to make sure the croplands are not being progressively poisoned.

I wonder if it might be possible to actively strip methane and nitrous oxide from the atmosphere, as these are powerful greenhouse gases. I have some ideas how this might be done.

<comment><USER5> Methane doesn't stay in the atmosphere very long though, so greenhouse gas capture efforts would be better spent on co2.

<comment><USER14> That's first point is true, but the second point doesn't necessarily follow. Methane is a quite powerful greenhouse gas, and it could be removed by in situ destruction (as it naturally is) rather than capture.

<comment><USER5> Yes, but that's kinda my point. Trying to remove methane from the atmosphere probably isn't a good use of resources. Methane capture at the source like what is being done at some waste processing plants makes sense though. And changing livestock feeds to reduce methane emissions seems like a no brainer.

<comment><USER14> Most methane emission is natural, so if it could be removed from the atmosphere, the potential reduction in forcing could be quite nice, above and beyond just reducing our own methane emission.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Does anyone know of a well written review that compares potential carbon capture methods? (with a healthy amount of references)

<comment><USER16> Here is a series of three open access reviews covering the current literature (1000s of papers):

1: [https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aabf9b](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aabf9b)

2: [https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aabf9f/...](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aabf9f/meta)

3: [https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aabff4](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aabff4)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Previous discussion [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23770718](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23770718)

</comment><comment><USER18> preliminary calculations suggest this has the potential to capture about 5% of current CO2 emissions if applied to 50% of worldwide farmland. (citation needed)

</comment><comment><USER19> FYI: [https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2448-9](https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2448-9)

</comment><comment><USER20> Is there any research on what the ideal co2 level is? I'm on the climate change team of course but is there a risk we overshoot and bring co2 too low? I'd just say we should know what we're aiming for.

I guess plants like some amount of extra co2 so we'd think about that. Should we also have some kind of buffer between a future ice age?

Don't get me wrong, I think bring the co2 level close to zero is a viable argument too.

<comment><USER5> It's not really a mystery, we could just bring co2 levels back in line what they were at the beginning of the 20th century. Hell, even the 1950's levels of CO2 would be great.

But right now the carbon capture discussions are simply trying to avert disaster. None of the potential carbon capture solutions can remove so much carbon that we'll have to worry about removing _too much_ co2.

<comment><USER21> > 1950's levels of CO2 would be great

In absolute terms, but we have a lot more people now. It looks like the US is already back at 1950's levels (per-capita).

[https://eidclimate.org/u-s-per-capita-carbon-emissions-at- lo...](https://eidclimate.org/u-s-per-capita-carbon-emissions-at-lowest- levels-since-1950-thanks-to-natural-gas/)

<comment><USER22> He means 1950s level of atmospheric CO2, not emissions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> There's an ongoing discussion happening around this at [https://collective.energy/topic/91/rock-weathering-for- remov...](https://collective.energy/topic/91/rock-weathering-for-removing- atmospheric-co2-spreading-rock-dust-on-farmfields)

If you're into promoting discourse on climate solutions, come join us!

<comment><USER24> Am I missing something? I see two comments?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Another silver bullet that will fail

<comment><USER17> Not really a silver bullet. We are at the point where this is something we have to do _in addition_ to reducing carbon emissions. This is more like an extra household duty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I don't like those kind of projects because they sort of try to bank on the global warming problem with inventions and new things, except this doesn't work, because CO2 is just too hard to eliminate.

It's the penultimate problem of industrialized capitalism: "we have a problem and we need to MAKE something new to solve this". But the problem was always the excess of industry in the first place. The solution is simple: slow down consumption everywhere and optimize the use of carbon, but it's completely against the spirit of industrial capitalism. That's why global warming can only be solved with political solutions.

I believe that in the future, violence will occur to stop co2 emissions by force, while the wealthy will be able to shelter themselves away from hot places. Global warming is EXACTLY the problem of libertarian ideology. It completely dismisses the commons. Global warming is the perfect example of what happens when we accept "survival of the fittest" and social darwinism. I'm worried that rich people are okay with global warming because they are able to justify it with Malthusian arguments.

<comment><USER27> We solved the nitrogen problem in food production with technology. We'll solve the CO2 emission problem with technology as well.

I'm with Captain Kirk. I don't believe in no win situations.

<comment><USER28> Comparing the nitrogen problem with the problem of CO2 emissions is apples to oranges IMO:

\- Nitrogen is very abundant in the atmosphere and bound nitrogen (i.e. fertilizer) has an inherent short-time value that is higher than the cost of nitrogen fixation (i.e. fertilizer production). So this is something that the market readily solves via technological progress.

\- On the other hand CO2 emissions result from extracting energy stored in fossil carbon. Currently a significant part of the energy needs of the whole planet are satisfied by extracting energy from fossil carbon (e.g. burning coal). Removing CO2 from the atmosphere does not have any short-time value to whomever does that. No market force working towards that. Also, removing the CO2 probably needs (depending on technoligy much) more energy than was extracted from the carbon in the first place. Humanity does not currently seem to have any energy sources available to "return" the energy havested from fossil carbon. Good luck waiting for a magical technology that can easily satisfy the energy needs of a whole planet-wide civilization with less negative side-effects than combustion of fossil carbon. Also the deadline for undoing CO2 related damage may be quite close [1] so that any such technologies would need to be available for global deployment within a few decades.

\- Climate engineering [2] may be a way to compensate CO2 related damage without having to remove CO2 at all. But again, no short-time benefit to whomever does that and all available technologies would also incur immense cost and do not evenly undo greenhouse-gas induced temperature changes over the whole planet (plus all the other possible side-effects)

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

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