"Instead of paying more to recycle, we could spend that money far more effectively on other environmental mitigation measures like carbon capture."
Yeah, let's stop doing the fairly well established recycling programs that have knock on benefits like reducing pollution, and instead start scaling an entirely unproven and expensive mitigation program.
These are some prominent Effect Altruism guys so I know "cause prioritization" is their whole thing. But I think this is just basic contrarianism, because you cant fundraise off the fact that the cultural shift to recycling in the first world has been pretty successful and positive.
Like lets think about plastic bags from an object use standpoint. Given you have a collection of stuff to carry would you prefer:
A) A reasonably sturdy bag that can be styled to your preference (like with art or whatever) that you have to remember to bring with you when you need.
B) The literal minimum possible material to be considered a bag. Even money whatever you put into it will punch straight through the bottom, or you'll need to use 2-4 nested bags anyway. And it'll be uncomfortable to hold the whole time.
I think from an object use perspective a reusable bag is more pleasant to use.
But embodied energy calculations are convenient because you can get numbers to compare. But it ignores externalities.
Like if you actually considered the embodied energy of the median tote bag vs the median plastic bag from the point that it was extracted from the ground to the point that it returns to dust, I think the story would look really different. I'll bet a sizable percentage of plastic bags don't even make it through their first use. Meanwhile I've got tote bags that I think are fully 15 years old. Plus if you consider the remediation future generations will need to do for plastic bags. meanwhile I can actually bury a cotton tote bag in the dirt to decompose and it doesn't need infrastructure to prevent poisoning the water supply.
Did the authors consider the embodied energy of the landfill itself? Shipping? Trash collection? Ongoing monitoring? The embodied energy of the future carbon capture system?
It's just so convenient to look only at the materials, equate that to kg of co2, and use that for whatever narrative makes you feel good.
As somebody who cycles as a primary form of transport, I prefer plastic. It weighs less, it's more compact, and it's waterproof (important when it's raining). If I had to use cotton that would incentivize using a car instead. It's not a huge difference, but it doesn't take many marginal cyclists switching to cars to wipe out all the theoretical environmental benefits of cotton.
That's great! Genuinely, I think you should keep doing that.
My point was not actually about plastic vs reusable. My point was, why is embodied energy always used in contrarian climate arguments. Why not talk about ergonomics, or the "bike waterproof-ness standard"?
I think embodied energy is being used in this article to push the author's specific views, which to fund atmospheric carbon extraction.
The push for recycling has been successful at making people feel better about themselves, not successful at saving energy or raw materials. The article also goes on at length about this, but most of what's put in recycling bins gets thrown out anyways and folks regularly put stuff in recycling bins that can't be recycled, just increasing the cost of recycling programs while lowering their effectiveness. Recycling metal cans and containers is a no brainer, recycling most plastics is of questionable value bordering on actively harmful[1].
"The real solution is to switch to systems of reuse and refill," Ramsden said. "We are at a decision point on plastic pollution. It is time for corporations to turn off the plastic tap."
"Just Bury Your Trash" is arguing "Turn the plastic tap on more please, and don't even bother TRYING to recycle it".
> "Instead of paying more to recycle, we could spend that money far more effectively on other environmental mitigation measures like carbon capture."
Carbon capture is a scam to allow fossil consumption to continue as is. The only path forward is rapid destruction of fossil fuel demand and transitioning to clean energy and electric mobility. At this time, there is no effective technology to remove carbon from the atmosphere. Therefore, capital is best invested where that investment will most rapidly avoid carbon emissions. Broadly speaking, at this time, this is electrifying light and heavy vehicles (includes scooters and ebikes!), and decommissioning coal plants (low carbon generation, batteries, etc will eventually push out fossil gas generation). It's not sexy, but it's straightforward.
Carbon capture may be an effective option in the future, but at the moment, it in no way can be relied on as a component of climate change mitigation. It's performance art.
EU Locks In Plan To Triple Energy Storage Capacity By 2030 - https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/EU-Locks-In-Plan-... - August 7th, 2026 ("The EU has agreed to nearly quadruple its energy storage capacity, from 55 GW today to a targeted 200 GW by 2030.")
> The entire efficacy of the carbon capture process has been called into question by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In its special report on Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage, the IPCC stated: “CO2 storage is not necessarily permanent. Physical leakage from storage reservoirs is possible via (1) gradual and long-term release or (2) sudden release of CO2 caused by disruption of the reservoir.” Carbon capture has been used as a justification for new oil and gas projects. It has a history of poor performance, only captures a fraction of the total emissions from the lifecycle of oil and gas production and its long-term efficacy is questionable.
pigeons are domesticated rock doves. rock doves nest in small caves, so the only nest building they need to do is a few sticks to prevent eggs from rolling out of the caves.
seems like in the apollo era crew carried a few in their PPK (personal preference kit), and in the later shuttle era they regularly carried 500-1000 pins per mission.
It’s the same feeling. No different from rebuilding that crazy synth you made one night, succeeding, and then being able to improv/vamp with it during a live session. It is a creative process and I urge anyone who finds the high level aspect of music creation to pursue the lower levels
I've been trying to put together a study group all week!
Is it possible to add a new course to the library? I'd like to make a group for CSS for JavaScript Developers by Josh W Comeau [1] but it seems like I can only make a group for courses in the library.
I like to take this a step further and try to have all my most important tooling be written in my projects major languages. It's not a must have, but having a build system for a go project that is also go under the hood means I'm more comfortable diving into the source if needed.
I don't think it's a requirement, but it's an advantage
It's amazing how many people in this thread are seriously suggesting that these a11y features are not important. Do HN readers not understand that someday they will grow old, and their eyesight will fail, and they will find themselves increasing the font size on their devices?
I used to bring up accessibility concerns quite a lot on HN. I have stopped however, because it is always the same story.
It doesn't seem to matter how nice I am about it, or how accommodating I am towards people just hacking. I never want to stop people's creative spirit. Ever. But I'm one of those people who uses a screen reader. If your app does not work with them, it will not work for me. The amount of weirdly hostile responses I get really puts me off commenting here, so I just don't do it anymore. That doesn't make the issue go away, but it also just does not help.
This isn't entirely unique to HN. It is very easy to dismiss accessibility concerns if you're not affected by them, or don't have anyone close that is. I try not to take it personally, but when many people chime in with comments like it's OK that you can't use this app, you're a minority, your burdens aren't anybody elses, and don't listen to them and go make a cool thing without regard, (not an exaggeration it's all in my comment history) it's a bit hard not to be put off by it.
If I was able to change one or two minds with my little comments, then I'm very happy about that because maybe it means I get to use your next cool app too. I'm just not going to look for it here, and if I find an accessibility flaw, HN will definitely not be where I comment about it. I've gotten some genuinely good responses too. Some of you also tried to defend my point of view. Like Sam. And I'm very grateful for that. Sadly it's the same fight every single time, and I'm a little bit exhausted by it.
From my observation, most folks get there temporarily or faster in their own specific way.
I have friends who lost their hearing early for a variety of reasons.
There are lots of ways to have imperfect eyesight, or lose it temporarily. You can lose your glasses or not be able to wear contact lenses for a while.
Lots of folks with laser surgery eventually regress. Also the surgery itself has visual side-effects.
Look, accessibility* is great and important to many people, and if you can afford to prioritize it early on in your product development, that's great - but it is not productive to treat commercial products like critical infrastructure, ignore the costs of implementing accessibility features (common tooling and standardization make it much easier, thankfully), and exaggerate the benefits.
The article starts off with the over-cited and misunderstood 1/6 figure, which comes from the WHO's claim that 1/6 of the world suffers from a "significant disability". I couldn't find a breakdown of what the WHO considers a significant disability in the first place, but the CDC in the US lists the following six disability categories in one of its studies: hearing, vision, cognitive, mobility, self-care, and independent living. How many of these are actually relevant in software? I have never once heard calls to make software more accessible to people with cognitive disabilities, and mobility/self-care/independent living categories are simply irrelevant to the overwhelming majority of software use cases. So no, you're not growing your audience by 1/6 by implementing screen-reader support for your website. If your product is growing, you're better off focusing on internationalization (which, technically, is a form of accessibility, but obviously not the subject of the article).
* Do we really need to abbreviate "accessibility" everywhere? It's just nine more characters than "a11y" and - speaking of accessibility - is more readable!
Disability accommodations tend to also strongly benefit everyone else. I know this isn't a code thing, but the most useful one I can think of is curb cuts.
Speaking of curb cuts, recently in my town, they ripped up the sidewalks with already existing curb cuts, and added a new yellow pad with raised bumps in addition to new curbs (with the cuts). I was going to ask what this was for, but a quick search indicates that it is likely for blind users to feel the end of the sidewalk with a cane.
Those also have good traction. On a winter morning before anyone gets around to shoveling, those pads might be the only good surfaces on my entire commute. The street corner where cars are turning is a pretty good spot not to be slipping.
Not sure why this comment is being downvoted. Thinking about accessibility is likely to positively impact your product or service's user experience. Not everyone has low/no vision or uses a switch device, but keeping those users in mind will allow abled folks to benefit from your design choices as well. Have you ever used a UI and complained that elements provide ideal contrast, or that you're able to use your keyboard for interactions?
> readers not understand that someday they will grow old, and their eyesight will fail, and they will find themselves increasing the font size on their devices?
let's reverse that, did you as a youth give much thought to what the olds went through on a daily? obviously, depending on age, the olds might not have been using computers to the extent we are today, but it still holds. the hubris of youth is part of growing up. until you personally experience something, it is hard to fully grok it. sure, we can know somethings without experience like not drinking bleach is a good idea. there are other things that are just so outside of the normal experience, it is hard to fathom. for a lighter example, have you ever tried walking in a pair of high heels even if not stilettos? it's painful, and i was on platform heels. i would fall down in 3 seconds flat with stilettos. after several hours, i was complaining about my feet hurting in the shoes. so after walking a mile in another person's shoes, I will never be frustrated if someone in my group needs a break from their shoes during a long night out ever again.
Its not that they arent important when looked at by itself, but it just isnt as important as other things. Nobody cares if a car has poor ui if it doesnt actually work. Get it to run first, then make the ui nice. IIRC theres a phrase for this: make it work, make it right, make it fast.
Except you're not getting it to run first any more than the restaurant that opens with a "no blacks" sign got it to run first for whites. You're discriminating, excluding people based on things they have no control over because you couldn't get over your own self absorbed privilege not unlike operators of diners or busses or taxis in the US South 65 years ago.
No, they don't understand. This isn't a forum of hackers any more, it's a forum of get rich quick capitalists trying to make bank on the latest popular trade. Accessibility is for losers, that's how sociopaths operate and Silicon Valley is a nest of them.
Almost nobody is suggesting this and you can reply to whoever you think is wrong about something. It says 'sneer' in this thing but those are the values of 'sneer' that include 'harangue':
Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
Yeah, let's stop doing the fairly well established recycling programs that have knock on benefits like reducing pollution, and instead start scaling an entirely unproven and expensive mitigation program.
These are some prominent Effect Altruism guys so I know "cause prioritization" is their whole thing. But I think this is just basic contrarianism, because you cant fundraise off the fact that the cultural shift to recycling in the first world has been pretty successful and positive.