id
int64 2
42.1M
| by
large_stringlengths 2
15
⌀ | time
timestamp[us] | title
large_stringlengths 0
198
⌀ | text
large_stringlengths 0
27.4k
⌀ | url
large_stringlengths 0
6.6k
⌀ | score
int64 -1
6.02k
⌀ | descendants
int64 -1
7.29k
⌀ | kids
large list | deleted
large list | dead
bool 1
class | scraping_error
large_stringclasses 25
values | scraped_title
large_stringlengths 1
59.3k
⌀ | scraped_published_at
large_stringlengths 4
66
⌀ | scraped_byline
large_stringlengths 1
757
⌀ | scraped_body
large_stringlengths 1
50k
⌀ | scraped_at
timestamp[us] | scraped_language
large_stringclasses 58
values | split
large_stringclasses 1
value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
42,009,845 | stevekrouse | 2024-10-31T18:26:21 | How we prototype API integrations with Val Town | null | https://www.campsite.com/blog/how-we-prototype-integrations-with-val-town | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,009,852 | dtquad | 2024-10-31T18:26:31 | Lina Khan (FTC) Faces Backlash for Alleged Targeting of Musk's Twitter Takeover | null | https://reclaimthenet.org/ftc-chair-lina-khan-faces-backlash-for-alleged-targeting-of-musks-twitter-takeover | 5 | 5 | [
42009875,
42009892
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,009,859 | marban | 2024-10-31T18:26:51 | Chinese EVs leave other carmakers with only bad options | null | https://www.ft.com/content/faa69e29-bc47-46ae-80c7-8240d0aae9e6 | 4 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,009,864 | serverlessmom | 2024-10-31T18:27:12 | Shift Left Meets Kafka: Testing Event-Driven Microservices | null | https://thenewstack.io/shift-left-meets-kafka-testing-event-driven-microservices/ | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,009,884 | LopRabbit | 2024-10-31T18:28:28 | Chinese EV Is Now the Fastest Sedan Around the Nürburgring | null | https://www.motor1.com/news/739132/xiaomi-su7-ultra-prototype-nurburgring-lap/ | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,009,886 | louisjoejordan | 2024-10-31T18:28:30 | Show HN: X to Voice – Generate a Unique Voice from Your Twitter Profile | Hi HN,<p>We just launched “X to Voice” an open-source app that generates a unique voice using your X (Twitter) profile. It works by extracting your profile data and creating a custom voice with our newly released Voice Design API.<p>The API is live from today and allows you to generate a unique voice from any prompt you provide. We’d love for you to try it and share your feedback.<p>Check it out: <a href="https://www.xtovoice.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.xtovoice.com/</a><p>GitHub: [<a href="https://github.com/elevenlabs/elevenlabs-examples/tree/main/examples/text-to-voice/x-to-voice">https://github.com/elevenlabs/elevenlabs-examples/tree/main/...</a>]<p>Happy to answer questions and hear your thoughts! | https://www.xtovoice.com/ | 2 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,009,893 | hrowpt | 2024-10-31T18:28:50 | null | null | null | 1 | null | [
42009986
] | null | true | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,009,911 | gmays | 2024-10-31T18:30:06 | Smallest dinosaur egg ever found confirmed in China | null | https://phys.org/news/2024-10-smallest-dinosaur-egg-china.html | 2 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,009,912 | LinuxBender | 2024-10-31T18:30:11 | Consumers won't be offered all three years extended Windows 10 security updates | null | https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/10/home-users-can-only-buy-one-year-of-extra-windows-10-updates-for-30-per-pc/ | 2 | 0 | null | null | null | no_error | Consumers won’t be offered all three years of extended Windows 10 security updates | 2024-10-31T16:44:25+00:00 | Andrew Cunningham |
Most Windows 10 PCs will stop getting new security updates in October 2025, less than a year from today. For businesses and schools, the company is offering up to three years of extended security updates, with prices that increase steadily year by year to incentivize switching to Windows 11.
But Microsoft announced today that end users would only be able to buy a single year of extended security updates for their Windows 10 PCs at the price of $30 per PC. The company confirmed to us that the second and third years of security updates would be exclusive to businesses and schools.
Microsoft says consumers will be able to enroll in the Windows 10 Extended Security Update (ESU) program "closer to the end of support in 2025."
For users with older but functional PCs that they aren't ready to part with yet, $30 is certainly less than it would cost to buy a new computer, and it's around half of the $61 that Microsoft is charging businesses for each of their PCs that they want to keep using with Windows 10. But it means that people hoping to cling to Windows 10 on their home PCs until 2028 will have to figure something else out.
| 2024-11-08T02:07:13 | en | train |
42,009,916 | fooey | 2024-10-31T18:30:35 | Microsoft just delayed Recall again | null | https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/31/24284572/microsoft-recall-delay-december-windows-insider-testing | 70 | 77 | [
42010572,
42010155,
42010283,
42012393,
42010623,
42010443,
42010476,
42010270,
42010432,
42010317,
42010148,
42010630,
42010149,
42010424,
42010567,
42010917,
42010214,
42010144
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,009,917 | mr_00ff00 | 2024-10-31T18:30:35 | Ask HN: Recommendations for language when building API? | Hello all,<p>I am building a backend API and I have free reign to choose a language to build it in. I know it will deal with async and I heavily prefer statically typed languages, so those are my two preferences.<p>I work as a C++ programmer but obviously no way I am using that. I am a big fan of Rust, but I know async is painful and why put up with borrow checker when GC is fine.<p>The two I am leaning towards is Go and Kotlin, but very interested in opinions. My experience in either is basically 0 | null | 3 | 3 | [
42010663,
42010042,
42025047,
42010215
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,009,920 | tosh | 2024-10-31T18:30:45 | null | null | null | 1 | null | null | null | true | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,009,923 | LinuxBender | 2024-10-31T18:30:52 | Sophos Used Custom Implants to Surveil Chinese Hackers Targeting Firewall 0-Days | null | https://www.securityweek.com/sophos-used-custom-implants-to-surveil-chinese-hackers-targeting-firewall-zero-days/ | 4 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,009,930 | LinuxBender | 2024-10-31T18:31:16 | Russia Targeting Ukrainian Military Recruits with Android, Windows Malware | null | https://www.securityweek.com/google-russia-targeting-ukrainian-military-recruits-with-android-windows-malware/ | 7 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,009,940 | LinuxBender | 2024-10-31T18:31:38 | EmeraldWhale steals 15,000 credentials from exposed Git configurations | null | https://www.scworld.com/news/emeraldwhale-steals-15000-credentials-from-exposed-git-configurations | 2 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,009,941 | PaulHoule | 2024-10-31T18:31:44 | Chinese chipmaker Loongson now just three to five years off pace on the desktop | null | https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/21/loongson_3b6600_desktop_tease/ | 6 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,009,947 | M00SE_THE_G00SE | 2024-10-31T18:32:34 | We are shutting down Ondsel | null | https://ondsel.com/blog/goodbye/ | 6 | 0 | [
42009948
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,009,956 | _tk_ | 2024-10-31T18:33:07 | Germany: Manhunt after explosives left at Berlin station | null | https://www.dw.com/en/germany-manhunt-after-explosives-left-at-berlin-station/a-70647505 | 18 | 2 | [
42009988,
42012502,
42011197,
42010961
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,009,981 | likawind | 2024-10-31T18:35:57 | Compound AI, test-time compute, and wasting your users' time | null | https://frontierai.substack.com/p/compound-ai-test-time-compute-and | 5 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,004 | jayyhu | 2024-10-31T18:37:44 | China sanctions US drone maker Skydio | null | https://www.skydio.com/blog/chinas-sanctions-on-skydio | 85 | 96 | [
42010637,
42010384,
42011229,
42010170,
42010206,
42010181,
42010636,
42013051,
42013065,
42010106,
42011484
] | null | null | no_error | China's Sanctions on Skydio | 2024-10-30T19:00:00.000Z | Adam Bry | Earlier today I sent this note to our customers. Because this is a critical topic for the drone industry and for our national security, I'm sharing it here publicly as well. Skydio customers, A few weeks ago, China announced sanctions on Skydio for selling drones to Taiwan, where our only customer today is the National Fire Agency. This is an attack on Skydio but it’s also an attack on you, our customers. We’re proud to support critical infrastructure operators, first responders, and allied militaries around the world. We’re proud to support Taiwan, and we are undeterred. As a result of the sanctions, our battery supply will be reduced for the next few months which will impact our customers. We have always manufactured our drones in the U.S., and over the last few years we invested massively in bringing up supply for drone components outside of China. Batteries are one of the few components we have not yet moved out of China. We have a substantial stock of batteries on hand, and our team was already developing alternative suppliers. But right now we don’t expect new sources to come online until the spring of next year. In order to continue delivering X10s and supporting our customers, we have to take the drastic step of rationing batteries to one per drone. I know how critical drones are to your work, and how important having additional batteries is for many of your missions. It pains me to do this. We are extending the software license, warranty, and support term for all drones fulfilled with less than a full complement of batteries by the length of time it takes us to deliver all batteries in the kit. This is a clarifying moment for the drone industry. If there was ever any doubt, this action makes clear that the Chinese government will use supply chains as a weapon to advance their interests over ours. The drone market has historically been dominated by Chinese companies who are now rapidly losing market share to Skydio and our Western peers. This is an attempt to eliminate the leading American drone company and deepen the world’s dependence on Chinese drone suppliers. It won’t work. We will come out of this stronger than ever, with the most secure supply chain in the industry, continuing to meet the rapidly scaling needs of public safety, critical infrastructure, and defense customers around the world. We were targeted because we are the largest drone company outside of China, and because we serve critical customers that advance our national security, but no Western drone manufacturer is safe. As we develop the supply of batteries outside of China, we will share our work with our Western peers to help the world move on from this dangerous dependency. We would not be where we are without you, our customers, and we will do everything in our power to minimize the impact to you. Thank you for your partnership, your support, and please don’t hesitate to contact me or your Skydio representative with any questions. best,Adam Get the latest news from Skydio. Subscribe to our newsletter. Thank you! You're subscribed to our newsletter. Let us help you launch and grow a successful drone program. | 2024-11-08T04:05:21 | en | train |
42,010,017 | hennobit | 2024-10-31T18:38:35 | Show HN: Struggling to Grow on Social Media? Gamify It with LexelUp | Are you finding it hard to gain traction on social media?<p>Introducing LexelUp: A platform designed to make social media growth engaging and fun. With our gamified approach, you can transform your social media strategy into an exciting journey.<p>Features include:<p>Leaderboards: Compete with friends and others in for top spots.
Daily Missions: Stay consistent with engaging tasks that drive growth.
XP and Achievements: Earn experience points and unlock Achievements as you progress.
Multiple Platform Integration: Connect your accounts from X, Instagram, YouTube, and Reddit to maximize your reach.
Join a community where growth is celebrated and competition is friendly. If you’re looking for a fresh way to enhance your online presence, give LexelUp a try!<p>I’m eager to hear your feedback and see which platforms you’d like us to integrate next. Let's gamify social media engagement together!<p>Check it out at lexelup.com and let the fun begin! | https://lexelup.com | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | no_article | null | null | null | null | 2024-11-07T09:12:44 | null | train |
42,010,035 | taubek | 2024-10-31T18:40:03 | Schools can keep Windows 10 computers safe for additional three years by paying | null | https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2024/10/31/warning-for-14-billion-microsoft-windows-10-windows-11-users-get-free-upgrade/ | 9 | 2 | [
42011406,
42010099
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,039 | toomuchtodo | 2024-10-31T18:40:12 | Low-cost homes are deteriorating, worsening the US housing shortage | null | https://www.npr.org/2024/10/30/g-s1-30916/housing-crisis-affordable-homes-deteriorating-shortage-repair | 4 | 0 | [
42010489
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,056 | fanf2 | 2024-10-31T18:42:03 | Bounded Flexible Arrays in C | null | https://people.kernel.org/kees/bounded-flexible-arrays-in-c | 12 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,060 | saikatsg | 2024-10-31T18:42:20 | Event-driven architecture on the modern stack of Java technologies | null | https://romankudryashov.com/blog/2024/07/event-driven-architecture/ | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | body_too_long | null | null | null | null | 2024-11-08T16:06:32 | null | train |
42,010,072 | stevekrouse | 2024-10-31T18:43:49 | Val Town and Fal Partnership | null | https://blog.val.town/blog/fal/ | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | no_error | Val Town + Fal Partnership | null | Steve Krouse |
on
Oct 31, 2024
Fal is an API for generating AI images lightning fast.
Today we’re announcing a partnership with Fal to bring their API to Val Town users. You can now use Fal in your vals right away – no Fal API key necessary.
Quickstart vals
The quickest way to get started is to fork one of these starter apps:
Click “Fork” on either of these apps, and you’ll instantly get that app deployed in your Val Town account. No further setup necessary. You can then ask Townie to customize it to your needs. Want a DnD character generator? No problem! Want a tool to help you design your next tattoo? Done!
Instructions for Townie
Another quick way to get started is to copy & paste instructions into Townie. The following instructions will give Townie everything it needs to use Flux Schnell,
a state-of-the-art 12b parameter image model by Black Forest Labs.
Fal supports the whole Flux suite, and you can use any of them by changing the FAL_ENDPOINT variable.
The following are instructions on how to use Fal,an image generation API, in your Val Town app.Import the necessary modules:```tsimport { falProxyRequest } from "https://esm.town/v/stevekrouse/falProxyRequest";import { createFalClient } from "https://esm.sh/@fal-ai/client";```Set up the Fal client on the client side:```tsconst FAL_ENDPOINT = "fal-ai/flux/schnell";const fal = createFalClient({ proxyUrl: "/api/fal/proxy",});```Use the Fal client to handle image generation requests on the client:```tsconst result = await fal.subscribe("fal-ai/flux/schnell", { input: { prompt, image_size: "landscape_4_3", num_inference_steps: 4, // must be 12 or less num_images: 1, enable_safety_checker: true, sync_mode: true, },});const image_url = result.data.images[0].url;```Set up the Fal proxy request on the server side:```tsexport default async function server(req: Request): Promise<Response> { const url = new URL(req.url); if (url.pathname === "/") { /* Return HTML */ } if (url.pathname === "/api/fal/proxy") { return falProxyRequest(req); }}```
Limitations
This partnership is intended for prototyping and small-scale projects, and is rate-limited as follows:
Val Town Free Users: 10 requests per hour
Val Town Pro Users: 50 requests per hour
When your project needs scale, you can sign up for a Fal API key here.
How it works
Normally to use the Fal API, you’d need to sign up for an API key on their website, but with this partnership, you can start prototyping with Fal in your vals without any setup. This is possible because we’re proxying requests to the Fal API through this HTTP val, which uses your Val Town API token to authenticate and rate-limit you. In this way you’re using your Val Town API key in place of a Fal API key.
This is how our OpenAI integration works as well, through this proxy. I recently built a similar proxy for SocialData, a Twitter data API provider, which Val Town Pro users can use to run this twitterAlert notifying.
We think of these ‘userspace proxies’ as the beginnings of what we hope will become ‘Val Town Marketplace’. If you want to bring your API to Val Town users, email me at [email protected].
Edit this page
| 2024-11-07T07:56:08 | en | train |
42,010,089 | todsacerdoti | 2024-10-31T18:45:20 | October project goals update (Rust project) | null | https://blog.rust-lang.org/2024/10/31/project-goals-oct-update.html | 3 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,102 | yyjhao | 2024-10-31T18:46:44 | Show HN: Build a map of your TypeScript codebase with static analysis and LLM | Hi HN! I have been tinkering with the idea of detecting features/concepts in a codebase and decided to build this tool to help make sense of big codebases. Feed it a GitHub repo (private ones too, if you log in), and it can show you a high level overview of the codebase, with pointers to various entry points and core logics, as well as weird concepts within the codebase. The tool only stores the necessary metatdata (e.g. symbol name and line number) but the actual code is not persisted.<p>It only works for typescript for now as I work on improving the other aspects of the tool. Would love to hear any feedbacks from the community! | https://braucode.com | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,103 | 0xC0ncord | 2024-10-31T18:46:45 | EA/Respawn now block Apex Legends from running on Linux and Steam Deck | null | https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2024/10/ea-respawn-now-block-apex-legends-from-running-on-linux-and-steam-deck/ | 22 | 8 | [
42010360,
42012784,
42010307,
42010146,
42013467
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,113 | orbesargentina | 2024-10-31T18:47:31 | null | null | null | 1 | null | null | null | true | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,136 | retro_guy | 2024-10-31T18:50:00 | Cramming Solitaire onto a Nintendo E-Reader card | null | https://mattgreer.dev/blog/cramming-solitaire-onto-a-nintendo-ereader-card/ | 126 | 41 | [
42026575,
42027011,
42026890,
42027487,
42027827,
42025975,
42010137,
42026561,
42016729,
42043409,
42026378,
42030866,
42031325,
42032888,
42026678,
42027216,
42025854
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,158 | larrydavidsdad | 2024-10-31T18:52:31 | null | null | null | 1 | null | null | null | true | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,180 | ohhai | 2024-10-31T18:54:32 | How my email service failed me and why it matters for privacy | null | https://world.hey.com/valentyn/how-my-email-service-failed-me-and-why-it-matters-for-privacy-9465b69a | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,183 | vinnyglennon | 2024-10-31T18:54:52 | The Best Inventions of 2024 - Time Magazine | null | https://time.com/collection/best-inventions-2024/ | 6 | 1 | [
42011176
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,210 | bizlinkers | 2024-10-31T18:57:15 | null | null | null | 1 | null | [
42010211
] | null | true | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,231 | NIkMOkhn | 2024-10-31T18:59:40 | null | null | null | 1 | null | null | null | true | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,232 | krishpop | 2024-10-31T19:00:08 | Π0: Our First Generalist Policy | null | https://www.physicalintelligence.company/blog/pi0 | 9 | 4 | [
42012136,
42010503,
42010233
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,241 | hilux | 2024-10-31T19:00:56 | At major US universities, tenure-line faculty are teaching less and less | null | https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-great-disappearing-teaching-load/ | 4 | 1 | [
42010419
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,246 | ndesaulniers | 2024-10-31T19:01:22 | null | null | null | 1 | null | null | null | true | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,249 | pavel_lishin | 2024-10-31T19:01:55 | Get me out of data hell | null | https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/get-me-out-of-data-hell/ | 690 | 298 | [
42030101,
42029336,
42033107,
42012601,
42012303,
42029036,
42028821,
42029650,
42030238,
42031857,
42029463,
42028748,
42033958,
42032734,
42012442,
42029763,
42030084,
42034548,
42028972,
42030076,
42011817,
42030334,
42031276,
42031650,
42029306,
42034653,
42032008,
42032609,
42032095,
42032457,
42032456,
42032650,
42035130,
42031800,
42038719,
42030914,
42035817,
42030177,
42035806,
42030894,
42034078,
42030791,
42035218,
42030850,
42030299,
42032058,
42030673,
42028726
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,256 | saligne | 2024-10-31T19:02:12 | Daita: Defense Against AI-Guided Traffic Analysis | null | https://mullvad.net/en/blog/daita-defense-against-ai-guided-traffic-analysis | 3 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,268 | speckx | 2024-10-31T19:03:38 | Does the Thread Count Matter for Sheets? | null | https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/home-products/a27494227/best-thread-counts-for-sheets/ | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,273 | caust1c | 2024-10-31T19:03:58 | Reaper: An Open Source AI-Enhanced Pentesting Tool by Ghost Security | null | https://github.com/ghostsecurity/reaper | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,274 | 082349872349872 | 2024-10-31T19:04:07 | Polyglot Maxxie and Minnie | null | https://jcarroll.com.au/2024/10/26/polyglot-maxxie-and-minnie/ | 2 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,275 | thunderbong | 2024-10-31T19:04:28 | Sequin – Open-Source Message Stream Built on Postgres | null | https://www.i-programmer.info/news/84-database/17589-sequin-open-source-message-stream-built-on-postgres.html | 2 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,289 | metalfa | 2024-10-31T19:06:14 | Snaphub | null | https://snaphub.uk/ | 1 | 1 | [
42010291
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,306 | rob | 2024-10-31T19:07:25 | Heartbroken | null | https://sarah-savage.com/heartbroken/ | 3 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,319 | paulpauper | 2024-10-31T19:08:13 | You Might Need an Adventure | null | https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/10/adventure-happiness-hero-journey/680441/ | 3 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,325 | paulpauper | 2024-10-31T19:08:40 | A Surprising Window into the Growing Pains of Older Adults | null | https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2024/10/golden-bachelorette-male-friendship/680469/ | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | no_error | Making New Friends Is Tough. ‘The Golden Bachelorette’ Understands Why. | 2024-10-31T13:57:59Z | Hannah Giorgis | A Surprising Window Into the Growing Pains of Older AdultsThe men of The Golden Bachelorette are looking for love—but they’re also finding friendship with one another.Gilles Mingasson / DisneyProduced by ElevenLabs and News Over Audio (NOA) using AI narration.For more than 25 years, some of reality TV’s most memorable—and villainous—contenders have declared that they’re “not here to make friends.” But on The Golden Bachelorette, the second Bachelor-franchise installment focused on a romantic lead older than 60, friendship isn’t a fruitless distraction from the main event. The new series follows the 61-year-old widow Joan Vassos and an eclectic group of men hoping to win her over—some of whom have also lost their spouse. In a pleasant break from standard reality-TV convention, including within the Bachelor franchise, many of the show’s most charming moments focus on the friendships formed among Joan’s suitors.By highlighting the men’s bonds with one another, the new series builds on The Golden Bachelor’s refreshing exploration of finding love after grief, and the ways a person’s identity can shift in late adulthood. Together, the men wrestle with profound changes brought on by widowhood, retirement, divorce, and other big transitions. In its inaugural season, The Golden Bachelorette has offered a rare window into some of the distinct social and emotional challenges that Americans encounter later in life—and the varied connections that help them mitigate such weighty stressors.Last year, Joan was an early favorite on The Golden Bachelor, where she quickly captured the septuagenarian widower Gerry Turner’s interest. But after just three episodes, the mother of four walked away from the show to care for her newly postpartum daughter. Yet being on the program offered Joan an emotional reward beyond finding a permanent partner. During her brief time as a contestant, “My heart kind of got a little fix from Gerry,” she said during a tearful exit. “As you get older, you become more invisible. People don’t see you anymore.” Her words resonated with many Golden Bachelor viewers, especially franchise newcomers and other women around her age. Now, with Joan at the fore, The Golden Bachelorette sheds light on the inner complexities of the men who are hoping she’ll see them. And by turning its attention to the unlikely intimacy forged among the male contestants, the show pushes beyond the one-dimensional stoicism that’s common in depictions of men their age.Most of the two dozen men competing for Joan’s affections, who are between 57 and 69, have experienced bereavement or devastating heartbreak. Although the world of The Golden Bachelorette—where the suitors live with one another under the same roof—is obviously a staged environment, the losses the contestants have suffered are very real: As of 2023, more than 16 percent of Americans who are 60 or older (about 13 million people) were widowed. Losing a spouse has tremendous consequences for the surviving partner’s physical, mental, and emotional health—which can begin even prior to bereavement, especially for caregiving spouses. And yet, “we as a society are not necessarily super skilled and comfortable at talking about death and loss,” Jane Lowers, an assistant professor at Emory University School of Medicine, told me. “Some people will back away from engaging with somebody who’s going through grief.” A partner’s death can also lead to a crisis of self, she added, if the bereaved spouse had come to see caregiving, or being half of a marital unit, as their essential identity.On The Golden Bachelorette, loss largely brings people together, even as it prompts difficult internal reckonings. Many of Joan’s most meaningful conversations with her suitors make reference to her late husband, the milestones they shared, and her conflicting feelings as she attempts to find love again. But even when she isn’t around, the men speak candidly about grief—Joan’s, as well as their own. When one suitor announces that he’s leaving the mansion because his mother died, the others rally around him, with some tearing up as they offer their condolences and reflect on how beautiful his interactions with Joan have been.Read: Reality (TV) is getting kinderAnother moving exchange involves a widower named Charles, who has spent almost six years racked with guilt, wondering if he could’ve done something to save his wife from a fatal brain aneurysm. Speaking with Guy, an emergency-room doctor, Charles shares that one detail of his wife’s death has always troubled him—and he looks visibly relieved when Guy reassures him, after explaining the science, that there was nothing he could have done. Later, as Charles recalls this conversation when talking with Joan, he tells her that “it changed my life.” These scenes aren’t just a striking contrast to the hostile atmosphere that’s typical of many dating-oriented competition series in which the contestants spent time together; they’re also an instructive representation of relationship-building among older men. Rather than peaceably keeping to themselves, the Golden Bachelorette men prioritize vulnerability and openness with one another. “I came in, arrived at the mansion with sadness, missed my wife,” Charles says when he leaves midway through the season. “After several weeks here at the mansion, it really helped me … the remaining friends, we bond together. We opened our hearts.” The silent anguish that Charles describes has dangerous real-world ramifications: After the death of a spouse, widowers experience higher rates of mortality, persistent depression, and social isolation than widows do. “It’s in part because they don’t have these close friendships like we’re seeing on the show,” Deborah Carr, a sociology professor at Boston University and the author of Golden Years? Social Inequality in Later Life, told me. “Their social ties often were through work, and then that diminishes once they retire—or their former wives did the role.”But widowers aren’t the only demographic represented on The Golden Bachelorette. And today’s older Americans have far more complex social lives than in years past, partly because marriage, companionship, and caregiving all look different—and, often, less predictable—than they did several decades ago. Now about 36 percent of adults who get divorced are older than 50, a rising phenomenon known as gray divorce. As Carr put it, “We’re certainly moving away from that ‘one marriage for life’”—which shifts how single adults past 50 see their romantic prospects.The Golden Bachelorette chronicles what it takes for contestants to open themselves up to love, romantic or otherwise. As these changes happen in real time, the show keeps an eye toward the importance of emotional transparency when navigating later-in-life relationships. The men on the show sometimes acknowledge that they were raised to feel uncomfortable with overt displays of sentimentality, but they appear to recognize the long-term toll of suppressing their feelings. Carr added that she was pleased to see how quickly a group of men with so little in common came to embrace one another. “Even though it’s an artificial situation,” she noted, “a lot of those lessons can be imported to other men.”On The Golden Bachelor, the isolated production environment ended up nudging the women toward one another, too. “We were all sequestered in this mansion without our phones and television and social media, so it made it very easy to connect with people very quickly at a deep level,” Kathy Swarts, one of the contestants, told me. When we spoke, Kathy was just leaving Pennsylvania, where she’d been visiting Susan Noles, one of her closest friends from The Golden Bachelor. Both told me, in separate conversations, that they counted joining the show as a transformative choice, and that their age also gave them a unique perspective on discovering love—whether with Gerry or with new friends. For Susan, watching the men navigate the same journey has been fascinating—and it’s different from watching the franchise’s earlier seasons, or other reality shows, because the contestants are mostly parents and grandparents.“We’ve given our lives to our children,” Susan explained, adding that younger contestants have “not experienced what we have—we’ve had the ups, the downs, the horrible, the broken hearts, the happy moments.” By the time they enter the mansion, the Golden contestants largely know who they are and what they want. That changes what it means to win: Though they may not come to the show looking for new platonic bonds, we see the participants recognize the beauty of forging friendships with peers who meet them as individuals—not as extensions of their families or employers. This season’s men may have begun as strangers, but they leave The Golden Bachelorette having found a “group of brothers,” as one departing participant calls his competitors.About the Author | 2024-11-08T11:29:46 | en | train |
42,010,340 | PaulHoule | 2024-10-31T19:10:00 | Study suggests there's no incentive for older birds to make new friends | null | https://phys.org/news/2024-10-incentive-older-birds-friends.html | 2 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,366 | yamrzou | 2024-10-31T19:12:47 | Four-Sides Model | null | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-sides_model | 1 | 1 | [
42010520
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,378 | bediger4000 | 2024-10-31T19:13:49 | Gun death rates in some U.S. states comparable to conflict zones, study finds | null | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/10/31/us-gun-deaths-violence-global-comparison/ | 4 | 1 | [
42013159
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,383 | geox | 2024-10-31T19:14:04 | Unqualified Texas educators had someone else take their exams | null | https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/200-unqualified-texas-educators-someone-else-take-exam-cheating-scanda-rcna177984 | 5 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,402 | leotravis10 | 2024-10-31T19:15:23 | Microsoft wants $30 to let you keep using Windows 10 securely for another year | null | https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/31/24284398/microsoft-windows-10-extended-security-updates-consumer-pricing | 4 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,433 | bacdor | 2024-10-31T19:17:42 | Show HN: Affordable feedback management tool for small businesses | null | https://bacdor.beehiiv.com/p/feedscout | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,436 | kmelve | 2024-10-31T19:17:55 | Real-Time Updates at Scale with Sanity's Live Content API | null | https://www.sanity.io/blog/live-by-default | 6 | 1 | [
42010437
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,455 | michaelrkn | 2024-10-31T19:19:26 | Silicon Valley's Andreessen, Horowitz Give Millions to Trump | null | https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-10-16/silicon-valley-s-andreessen-horowitz-give-millions-to-trump-pac | 4 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,466 | unsnap_biceps | 2024-10-31T19:20:59 | Elon Musk doesn't show at hearing over super PAC's $1M lottery for voters | null | https://www.cbsnews.com/philadelphia/news/elon-musk-court-philadelphia-america-pac-money-voting-2024/ | 14 | 7 | [
42010741,
42011118
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,468 | nsagheen | 2024-10-31T19:21:23 | null | null | null | 1 | null | null | null | true | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,496 | dipdib | 2024-10-31T19:23:57 | null | null | null | 1 | null | null | null | true | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,507 | jhylau | 2024-10-31T19:25:02 | Misaligned VC incentives focused on fees and fund size | null | https://cloudedjudgement.substack.com/p/clouded-judgement-102524-misaligned | 1 | 1 | [
42010508
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,511 | gmays | 2024-10-31T19:25:45 | null | null | null | 1 | null | null | null | true | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,524 | bhealthymom | 2024-10-31T19:26:45 | null | null | null | 1 | null | null | null | true | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,547 | ricardomolen | 2024-10-31T19:28:41 | null | null | null | 1 | null | null | null | true | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,562 | amichail | 2024-10-31T19:30:05 | Ask HN: Will tenured professors replace their PhD students with AI? | Maybe some will prefer to do their research that way? | null | 1 | 1 | [
42011281
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,563 | zhengiszen | 2024-10-31T19:30:07 | null | null | null | 1 | null | null | null | true | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,565 | atlasunshrugged | 2024-10-31T19:30:20 | Palantir: The Defense Reformation | null | https://www.18theses.com/ | 3 | 0 | null | null | null | no_article | null | null | null | null | 2024-11-08T08:07:24 | null | train |
42,010,575 | arunc | 2024-10-31T19:31:15 | VeraCrypt: Disk encryption with strong security based on TrueCrypt | null | https://github.com/veracrypt/VeraCrypt | 4 | 1 | [
42010960
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,581 | Huzza | 2024-10-31T19:31:55 | Show HN: Warp AWS Productivity Launcher | Hey HN, I decided to package up a tool I use ubiquitously when working with AWS.<p>Its a launcher similar to Spotlight, Alfred and Raycast. However its designed specifically for navigating to AWS resources.<p>If you work semi frequently with AWS it can be a real pain just navigating around the console. The idea of Warp is to reduce that amount of time as much possible.<p>If any of these features catch your eye then feel free to check it out.
- Cross account searching
- Cross resource searching
- Service result caching.<p>Its currently up for a one time payment and I have no plans to make it anything other than that. | https://www.warpserverless.com/ | 2 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,600 | aguaviva | 2024-10-31T19:34:03 | The Interaction of Two Black Holes | null | https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/30/science/space/astronomy-black-holes.html | 3 | 1 | [
42010601
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,609 | ortusdux | 2024-10-31T19:34:42 | I bought a freeze dryer so you don't have to - Technology Connections [video] | null | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Namf-Ddo_Xo | 22 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,622 | indreklasn | 2024-10-31T19:35:28 | null | null | null | 1 | null | null | null | true | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,650 | bihan | 2024-10-31T19:37:48 | null | null | null | 5 | null | [
42010765
] | null | true | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,653 | sandwichsphinx | 2024-10-31T19:37:54 | The National EUV Accelerator comes to Albany | null | https://research.ibm.com/blog/euv-center-albany-nstc | 43 | 45 | [
42012129,
42013340,
42012919,
42015397,
42011572,
42012340
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,668 | alpha_squared | 2024-10-31T19:39:41 | Tech Leaders Kiss the Ring | null | https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/31/24282719/tech-leaders-trump-jeff-bezos-zuckerberg-pichai | 4 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,704 | gmays | 2024-10-31T19:42:35 | Hornets can hold their alcohol like no other animal on Earth | null | https://www.newscientist.com/article/2452557-hornets-can-hold-their-alcohol-like-no-other-animal-on-earth/ | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,712 | mfiguiere | 2024-10-31T19:43:52 | Sam Altman says lack of compute is delaying the company's products | null | https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/31/openai-ceo-sam-altman-says-lack-of-compute-is-delaying-the-companys-products/ | 43 | 14 | [
42011577,
42012813,
42012081,
42012226,
42021708,
42011120
] | null | null | no_error | OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says lack of compute capacity is delaying the company's products | TechCrunch | 2024-10-31T19:37:59+00:00 | Kyle Wiggers |
In a Reddit AMA, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman admitted that a lack of compute capacity is one major factor preventing the company from shipping products as often as it’d like.
“All of these models have gotten quite complex,” he wrote in response to a question about why OpenAI’s next AI models were taking so long. “We also face a lot of limitations and hard decisions about [how] we allocated our compute towards many great ideas.”
Many reports suggest that OpenAI has struggled to secure enough compute infrastructure to run and train its generative models. Just this week, Reuters, citing sources, said that OpenAI has for months been working with Broadcom to create an AI chip for running models, which could arrive as soon as 2026.
Partly as a result of strained capacity, Altman said, OpenAI’s realistic-sounding conversational feature for ChatGPT, Advanced Voice Mode, won’t be getting the vision capabilities first teased in April anytime soon. At its April press event, OpenAI showed the ChatGPT app running on a smartphone and responding to visual cues, such as the clothes someone was wearing, within view of the phone’s camera.
Reporting from Fortune later revealed the demo was rushed to steal attention away from Google’s I/O developer conference, which was taking place the same week. Many within OpenAI didn’t think GPT-4o was ready to be revealed. Tellingly, the voice-only version of Advanced Voice Mode was delayed for months.
In the AMA, Altman indicated that the next major release of OpenAI’s image generator, DALL-E, has no launch timeline. (“We don’t have a release plan yet,” he said.) Meanwhile, Sora, OpenAI’s video-generating tool, has been held back by the “need to perfect the model, get safety/impersonation/other things right, and scale compute,” wrote Kevin Weil, OpenAI’s chief product officer, who also participated in the AMA.
Sora has reportedly suffered from technical setbacks that position it poorly against rival systems from Luma, Runway, and others. Per The Information, the original system, revealed in February, took more than 10 minutes of processing time to make a 1-minute video clip.
In October, one of the co-leads on Sora, Tim Brooks, left for Google.
Later in the AMA, Altman said that OpenAI’s still considering allowing “NSFW” content in ChatGPT “someday” (“we totally believe in treating adult users like adults,” he wrote), and that the company’s top priority is improving its o1 series of “reasoning” models and their successors. OpenAI previewed a number of features coming to o1 at its DevDay conference in London this week, including image understanding.
“We have some very good releases coming later this year,” Altman wrote. “Nothing that we are going to call GPT-5, though.”
| 2024-11-08T17:16:26 | en | train |
42,010,763 | krystofmitka1 | 2024-10-31T19:49:40 | null | null | null | 1 | null | [
42010764
] | null | true | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,768 | cockroachy | 2024-10-31T19:50:04 | Pre-Seed VC to Founder: "Irreparable"; Founder to VC: "Essential" | null | https://twitter.com/swaykaey/status/1852054027720118420 | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,800 | iamsahaj | 2024-10-31T19:53:15 | Is Google Search Cooked? | ChatGPT launched search, Anthropic launched computer-use. Opinions about Google Search have been turning negative with its aggressive sponsor placement and its own AI cannibalising organic content. Not to mention the deep sh*thole that we call SEO | null | 7 | 10 | [
42011018,
42010884,
42011030
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,816 | ilamont | 2024-10-31T19:54:42 | Walmart forces thousands to relocate to Arkansas | null | https://www.modernretail.co/operations/walmarts-relocation-mandate-could-further-fuel-an-economic-boom-in-bentonville/ | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,823 | stanislavb | 2024-10-31T19:55:19 | Hotwire Is Boring | null | https://old.reddit.com/r/rails/comments/1gg8516/hotwire_is_boring/ | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | no_error | Hotwire is... boring | null | theargyle | I've been working with Ruby and Rails since 2006, and over the years, I’ve shipped some pretty big apps. I remember when Rails was the new hotness - new ideas, new ways of thinking. It was pretty exciting.
I’ve been diving into Hotwire recently, and... it’s kinda boring. But in the best way possible.
Most of the big problems in front-end dev feel solved (at least to me), but somehow, every other week, there’s a shiny new JS framework trying to “fix” things by reinventing some kind of wheel. (Lisp folks, please feel free to point fingers at us Rubyists here…)
This stuff absolutely should be boring by now. I shouldn’t need fifty MB of node_modules just to get a basic search form going.
Anyone else finding a bit of boring simplicity is exactly what they want these days?
| 2024-11-08T16:30:28 | en | train |
42,010,825 | todsacerdoti | 2024-10-31T19:55:21 | Zizmor – a tool for finding security issues in GitHub Actions setups | null | https://woodruffw.github.io/zizmor/ | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,832 | paulpauper | 2024-10-31T19:56:18 | What TMS (transcranial magnetic stimulation) for depression is like | null | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/g3iKYS8wDapxS757x/what-tms-is-like | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,833 | PaulHoule | 2024-10-31T19:56:18 | Facile E-nose based on single antenna and graphene oxide for sensing VOC | null | https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0925400524011390 | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,869 | ahiknsr | 2024-10-31T19:59:01 | The Council of Europe's Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence | null | https://www.state.gov/the-council-of-europes-framework-convention-on-artificial-intelligence-and-human-rights-democracy-and-the-rule-of-law/ | 2 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,902 | null | 2024-10-31T20:02:11 | null | null | null | null | null | null | [
"true"
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,906 | ugochi55 | 2024-10-31T20:02:31 | null | null | null | 1 | null | null | null | true | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,907 | null | 2024-10-31T20:02:41 | null | null | null | null | null | null | [
"true"
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,914 | _tk_ | 2024-10-31T20:02:57 | SiSyPHuS Win10: Study on System Integrity, Logging, Hardening and Security | null | https://www.bsi.bund.de/EN/Service-Navi/Publikationen/Studien/SiSyPHuS_Win10/SiSyPHuS_node.html | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,915 | null | 2024-10-31T20:03:12 | null | null | null | null | null | null | [
"true"
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,918 | skadamat | 2024-10-31T20:03:37 | Scikit-Learn Certifications | null | https://papers.probabl.ai/official-scikit-learn-certification-launch | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,920 | null | 2024-10-31T20:03:42 | null | null | null | null | null | null | [
"true"
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,924 | null | 2024-10-31T20:04:12 | null | null | null | null | null | null | [
"true"
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,935 | mfiguiere | 2024-10-31T20:05:45 | Amazon Q3 2024 Results | null | https://ir.aboutamazon.com/news-release/news-release-details/2024/Amazon.com-Announces-Third-Quarter-Results/default.aspx | 7 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,957 | walterbell | 2024-10-31T20:07:50 | Big Tech barons are plotting to steal Britain's creativity via copyright law | null | https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/10/28/how-big-tech-barons-plotting-steal-british-creativity/ | 22 | 5 | [
42011911,
42011215
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,959 | NoRagrets | 2024-10-31T20:08:04 | Greenwashing and denial won't solve beef's enormous climate problems | null | https://drawdown.org/insights/greenwashing-and-denial-wont-solve-beefs-enormous-climate-problems | 5 | 0 | null | null | null | no_error | Greenwashing and denial won’t solve beef’s enormous climate problems | null | by
Jonathan Foley, Ph.D. |
I’ll admit it: I like beef. Like many Americans, I was brought up to believe that beef was a central part of a traditional family meal. My mom made it. My kids ate it. Marketing campaigns told me it was healthy. Everywhere I went, I saw Americans eating lots of it. And for many years, I didn’t question these choices.However, as an environmental scientist, I became increasingly concerned that our appetite for beef was a significant contributor to climate change – plus a suite of other environmental problems. Scientists have repeatedly shown that high levels of beef consumption drive widespread deforestation, land degradation, river and watershed decline, aquatic and coastal ocean pollution, biodiversity loss, climate change, and more. Considering this litany of environmental impacts, I’ve come to realize our enormous appetite for beef may be one of the most environmentally worrisome issues confronting the planet.Faced with this dilemma, many people – myself included – hoped we could find a “quick fix” to beef’s environmental woes, letting us eat all we wanted without worry.Naturally, those who benefit from our beefy diets were more than happy to indulge us.The livestock industry has spent enormous sums telling us fictitious stories of “environmentally-friendly” beef, rife with greenwashing and misinformation. They told us not to worry; we could maintain our excessive beef consumption and the environmental problems could be solved with a tweak or two. To bolster these myths, they have funded documentaries, think tanks, university labs, and social media influencer campaigns touting so-called “solutions” to beef’s environmental footprint.
At the same time, the livestock industry has downplayed the role of meat and dairy production in climate change and other environmental problems. They have tried to obfuscate the sizeable climate impact of cattle’s methane emissions and have spread claims that cattle’s emissions are “natural” and mimic those of natural herbivores. However, science continually refutes and disproves these falsehoods.Along the way, social media platforms – especially X/Twitter – have become overrun with disinformation. Some foreign governments have also jumped in, spreading false claims about beef’s impact as a way of fueling online “culture wars.” The Department of Justice recently revealed how Russia spent US$10 million to spread misinformation in the United States – including denying beef’s role in fueling climate change.All the while, the agricultural industry has kept a solid grip on policymakers, outspending fossil fuel producers and the defense industry on lobbying. These efforts result in billions of dollars in subsidies each year (even on advertising) and favorable regulations. In the international arena, the livestock industry has been accused of pressuring the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization to downplay the importance of reducing excessive beef consumption to curb emissions. The livestock industry has even celebrated its “success” in dissuading world leaders from taking more direct action at the last international climate summit.Without a doubt, the livestock industry is winning the PR battle. Their greenwashing and denial efforts, powerful lobbying, and media campaigns are working. Still, sensible actions can eventually win out if we face the challenges of beef overconsumption, waste, and climate change head-on and address them with sound science, evidence-based solutions, and clear-eyed, fearless speech that stands up to misinformation.The Environmental “Beef” with Beef To face the environmental challenges caused by beef, we first need to understand how it is produced. That means exploring grazing and feedlot operations – and the interplay between them.Looking at the United States, we find most cattle spend the bulk of their lives on grazing lands and are then rapidly fattened (or “finished”) for a few months in feedlots before slaughter. This combination of grazing and feedlots has been optimized to maximize beef production at the lowest cost. There are roughly 70–80 million beef cattle in the United States, with around three-quarters on grazing lands and the rest in feedlots. There are another ~20 million cattle in dairy operations. We slaughter 30–35 million cattle annually for meat, mainly from feedlots and by culling dairy herds. That amounts to one half-ton animal slaughtered each year for every ten Americans, fueling our incredible levels of beef consumption and waste.In feedlots, cattle are kept in cramped spaces, fed grain (mainly corn) and forage (mostly alfalfa and corn silage) while pumped full of antibiotics and growth hormones. This helps bring cattle to their slaughter weight as quickly as possible and gives their meat the marbled texture that Americans have grown accustomed to.
Credit: Getty Images / Unsplash
Communities near feedlots often have to contend with manure spills, water pollution, air pollution, and noxious odors. Manure production, alone, from feedlots is staggering. Feedlots in America – for cattle, hogs, chickens, and other animals – produce 2 billion tons of manure annually. (That’s 130 times the human feces produced in the country.)However, the environmental impacts extend far beyond feedlots and adjacent communities. Vast areas of productive cropland are dedicated to growing animal feed instead of crops that could directly nourish humans. In the United States, corn (mainly used for animal feed and ethanol) occupies nearly 100 million acres of prime farmland – about the size of California. Alfalfa, hay, and sorghum grown for animal feed and forage also cover enormous amounts of productive farmland. Globally, many of the best croplands no longer produce human food directly, raising concerns about food security – and this trend is accelerating.Devoting highly productive cropland to animal feed is an incredible waste of land and resources. To produce one calorie of edible feedlot beef requires about 30 calories of grain. (The beef industry claims ratios like 5:1 or 7:1, but they measure the animal’s weight, including bones, organs, and hides, not the edible meat it produces.) If we used this cropland for human food instead of animal feed, we could grow enough to nourish almost 4 billion people.
Beyond its rabid consumption of productive cropland, animal feed is also responsible for massive amounts of water consumption, fertilizer use, pesticide application, soil erosion, and water pollution across the globe. One staggering example: Irrigating alfalfa and other feed crops consumes roughly half of the water withdrawn from the Colorado River. Much of the water in the American West is devoted to irrigating animal feed and forage crops. We’re not alone; there are plans to drain Senegal’s only notable lake to irrigate alfalfa that will be shipped to feed animals in Saudi Arabia. This wasteful story repeats itself all over the world.Beef’s Big Climate ImpactPound-for-pound beef might be the most climate-polluting substance people regularly use. In a Science article from 2018, researchers found that beef emits – on average – roughly 100 kilograms of greenhouse gases per kilogram consumed. That’s a staggering amount. By comparison, burning one kilogram of coal – the dirtiest fossil fuel – releases about two kilograms of greenhouse gases. This means that kilogram-for-kilogram beef produces 50 times the emissions of coal.
That’s why our high levels of beef production, consumption, and waste present a severe climate problem. Estimates vary, but it is clear that livestock production systems are responsible for a significant fraction of greenhouse gases, likely contributing roughly 14–15% of global emissions. For reference, the entire United States emits 10–11% of the world’s greenhouse gases.These greenhouse gases are emitted in several ways but primarily stem from land use and methane emissions from livestock and manure. Other sources include growing animal feed and the emissions from processing, transporting, packaging, and refrigerating beef. Moreover, a large fraction (about 38% in the United States) of beef is lost or wasted in the supply chain, contributing to additional emissions we must address.Globally, land use – mainly clearing forests, savannas, and grasslands for new grazing land or producing animal feed – is the largest driver of beef-related emissions. Tropical deforestation, particularly in the Brazilian Amazon, for grazing is a prime example. (Of note, the Amazon is also being cleared to produce soybeans for animal feed, particularly for pork production in Asia.) In other regions, degrading natural savannas, woodlands, and grasslands for beef releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.Not only does clearing and degrading land for beef release CO2 into the atmosphere, but there is also an “opportunity cost” for absorbing carbon. As long as large tracts of land remain devoted to cattle grazing or feed production, we cannot return it to nature, where increasing vegetation cover and soil carbon levels could effectively remove CO2 from the atmosphere.
Beyond the emissions from land use, the world’s 1.5 billion cattle also burp enormous quantities of methane. This potent greenhouse gas traps heat over 80 times more effectively than carbon dioxide in the near term. Manure piles are also a significant methane source.Livestock advocates often spread disinformation that these methane emissions are “natural” and benign. However, methane molecules emitted by cattle warm the atmosphere just as much as those emitted by fossil fuel production, even if the former results from biological processes.Another falsehood that gets bandied about is that today’s livestock only emit as much methane as wild animals did in the past. But, in reality, today’s livestock emit more methane than wild animals ever have – and we can see it accumulating in the atmosphere every year. First, there are more large livestock – 1.5 billion cattle, 1.2 billion sheep, 1 billion goats – today than there were wild ruminants in the past. Plus, today’s livestock emit more methane per animal than wild ruminants. Modern livestock are bred, fed, and raised for rapid growth and slaughter, which drives increased metabolism, digestion, and methane emissions.No, Grass-fed “Regenerative” Beef isn’t a “Quick Fix”One of the proposed “quick fixes” to beef’s climate problem – often touted through greenwashing campaigns – is regenerative grazing.On the surface, the idea is compelling. Regenerative grazing aims to raise “grass-fed” cattle, without feedlots, while building up organic matter in the soil – essentially locking up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere – to “offset” emissions. It sounds like an elegant solution that works with nature, avoiding messy feedlots and appealing to many people’s sensibilities of how farming should work.But after carefully reviewing the evidence, it’s clear that regenerative grazing doesn’t live up to the hype. Why? In a nutshell, it doesn’t meet expectations because grass-fed cattle operations require more time, more animals, and more land to match the meat production of their conventional counterparts, leading to increased greenhouse gas emissions. And while grassland soils can absorb some carbon under the right circumstances, they can’t keep up with these higher emissions for long.Regenerative grazing advocates are fond of saying, “It’s not the cow, it’s the how.” Unfortunately, it is the how but also the cow. Let’s look at several reasons why.It is well known that grass-fed cattle take more time to mature to their slaughter weight than feedlot-finished animals. As a result, they emit more methane per pound of meat or milk produced over their longer lifetimes.
Moreover, to maintain current beef production levels but with longer-lived animals, grass-fed systems would require more heads of cattle overall. It’s simple math. And that also increases methane emissions.Finally, grass-fed beef also takes more land than conventional production – around two to three times more in some cases – which means emitting more carbon, too. If grass-fed beef were done at scale, the footprint of animal agriculture would increase substantially, resulting in increased land clearing, increased emissions, and a higher carbon “opportunity cost.” If all American beef were raised with grass-fed methods, it would take more land than we have in the entire country.Of course, many in the regenerative grazing community suggest that building soil carbon can “offset” these emissions and be a powerful climate solution. But this is very unlikely to be true across the board. While some studies have found soils might temporarily offset these emissions, the effect isn’t permanent. Soils naturally come into equilibrium, whereby increased carbon inputs are matched by increased microbial respiration and soil carbon decay. As soil carbon sequestration rates decline, grazing lands become a net source of greenhouse gases, making the carbon benefits temporary and relatively small.In short, grass-fed, regenerative beef is unlikely to provide all of its hoped-for climate benefits due to its higher methane emissions, increased land footprint, carbon opportunity cost, and limited ability to “offset” these emissions with soil carbon. While it might have other benefits – for soil health, biodiversity, and topsoil retention – regenerative grazing is overhyped as a climate solution.How About Feed Additives?Another “quick fix” to beef’s climate problems you might hear about is so-called feed additives.Again, the idea is appealing. Dietary supplements could be fed to cattle to reduce their methane emissions. There has been some excitement about the potential benefits of compounds found in seaweed, essential oils, and phytochemicals. Some early media coverage suggested that feed additives derived from seaweed could virtually eliminate methane burps from cattle.Unfortunately, after careful study, scientists have found that such additives don’t do very much. So far, the best feed additives reduce methane emissions by only 10–30 percent. And there are still enormous logistical and economic challenges to providing feed additives – twice daily, in most cases – to the world’s 3–4 billion ruminant livestock, often raised in small herds in remote grazing lands. Even if this were possible, any methane reductions would still do nothing to reduce the emissions associated with land use, manure, feed production, and other drivers of livestock’s climate footprint.In short, feed additives are only marginally helpful in reducing emissions. And they may only be economically viable in limited circumstances, such as feedlot dairy production. They certainly fall short of being a “quick fix” to beef’s larger climate problem.
Less is Best When It Comes to Beef Consumption, Waste, and GreenwashingHopefully, it’s clear by now that regenerative grazing, feed additives, or simply denying the problem aren’t going to make beef better for the planet automatically. Fortunately, the science is clear on what will: cutting rampant beef overconsumption and waste, especially in affluent regions.Let me clearly state that we should not cut livestock production in places where malnutrition and hunger are widespread. Instead, we should focus on areas where beef consumption is astronomically high, causing numerous health and environmental problems.To do this, people in rich countries should eat a little less – maybe taking smaller portions, less frequently. We can also substitute beef with lower-emitting poultry, pork, and fish where appropriate. And we could eat tasty, plant-rich meals when possible.The U.S. population is already eating less beef than it used to, which can help reduce its environmental impacts. Nonetheless, Americans still eat much more beef than most people – around four times the global average – and far more than is recommended for our health.
And some Americans are super consumers of beef. A recent analysis suggests that half of the beef consumed in America is eaten by only 12% of the population, a staggering statistic. Needless to say, many Americans could stand to cut their beef consumption and eat more balanced meals with sensible portions of animal protein. It would be healthier for us and the planet.Besides moderating the excesses of our diet, another place to focus is curbing the enormous levels of waste in beef supply chains. We lose about 38% of meat consumed in the United States, split between retail and consumer losses. Cutting back on beef waste would automatically reduce the land, water, natural resources, and greenhouse gases it took to grow beef that is never eaten. Surely, we can all agree that this is an excellent place to focus.Curbing food waste and excessive beef consumption are the big solutions we need. The “quick fixes” proposed by the livestock industry do little to address the problem and primarily serve to maintain the status quo and their profits. Simple, common-sense efforts to reduce beef waste and shift American diets would have a dramatic impact, reducing emissions while improving human and environmental well-being. These are not extreme actions. No serious person is calling for us all to become vegans overnight. I certainly am not, and I still eat some meat – but less than I used to. We can take a sensible view of our current food system, make a few modest changes to curb waste and dietary excess, and dramatically improve our health, our farming systems, our environment, and our future.Jonathan Foley, PhD, is a climate scientist and the Executive Director of Project Drawdown, the world’s leading resource for climate solutions. These views are his own.This work was published under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. You are welcome to republish it following the license terms.
More Insights
November 7, 2024
Standing up for science and climate action, now more than ever by Jonathan Foley, Ph.D.
A message from Project Drawdown and Executive Director Jonathan Foley, Ph.D. Dear Friends of Project Drawdown,I’m writing to you today with a heavy heart – and a deeply reenergized commitment to our work on climate change.Read moreOctober 18, 2024
The Climate Narrative: Using your solutions story to spark global change by Matt Scott
Sharing your personal climate story is a powerful way to shift narratives, rally support, and bring climate change solutions to life.Read moreOctober 17, 2024
10 tips for bringing climate change solutions into the classroom by Elizabeth Bagley, Ph.D.
I joined Teach For America right out of undergraduate and taught 8th-12th grade science at North Central High School in South Louisiana. Read more
| 2024-11-08T08:40:00 | en | train |
42,010,967 | giuseony | 2024-10-31T20:08:41 | Migrating proxmox cluster node to a different network | null | https://blog.latana.rocks/migrating-proxmox-cluster-node-to-a-different-network/ | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,010,969 | mentalically | 2024-10-31T20:08:48 | Cryptomator: Multi-platform transparent client-side encryption | null | https://github.com/cryptomator/cryptomator | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,011,013 | dbreunig | 2024-10-31T20:12:29 | It's the UX, Not the LLM: ChatGPT and Perplexity Can Ship a UI Google Can't | null | https://www.dbreunig.com/2024/10/31/ai-search-apps-succeed-because-of-their-ui-not-their-llms.html | 3 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.