AZair.com (AZair.eu) allow you to combine flights from multiple airports. Covers Europe, Mediterranean and Asia. Suggested in the previous "Ask HN: How do you find airline tickets?" [2]
Also, if you search for "A re-introduction to JavaScript" in HN Search, you will find previous posts of the same article with comments pointing to other similar sources.
I would like to suggest Nikolai Glinka's "Problems in General Chemistry," of which I have the original Russian edition but I see that it's been translated in English (https://www.amazon.com/Problems-General-Chemistry-Nikolai-Gl...). Reasons for my recommendation is that first, it's interesting, and second, every time I have used this book, all chemistry concepts made sense, unlike in the manuals we had to use in school. To rephrase MiB, this would be the final chemistry book I ever read if I decided not to pursue my studies in the subject further.
Also, I did not know much about the Glinka himself, but from what I've found from a quick web search was quite interesting: a representative of an ancient noble family, honored scientist, largest teacher-methodist, whose books for decades, determined the level of chemical education in non-chemical and chemical technical institutes of the USSR...
sure, the tree might "provide value", but you have to ask if it's providing more value that what you might have put there in its place. such as: knocking down a 2-storey house to build a 5-storey apartment building, thus letting more people live in the city, at an affordable rent, and with a short commute.
or maybe something even more trivial -- maybe you just want to add a small extension to the house for your newborn kid or so your grandma can move in, etc. but you can't do it because the fucking tree is in the way and you can't cut it down even though it's on your property. so you either just accept living in a smaller house than you want, or you move out and pay a higher mortgage on the new place. either way is deadweight loss to the economy.
it's yet another layer in the death-by-a-thousand-cuts that is the british planning system, that keeps housing scarce and strangles the economy. it all adds up[1].
this is why I say it is (a small part of) a scam. specifically a supply-restriction cartel, like OPEC. it lets landlords collectively enrich themselves at no risk, by making themselves unable to respond to market price signals telling them to intensify the use of their land, to meet the demand for housing.
this is the sordid root of so much "tory environmentalism" btw; it's a wonderful deniable tool that nimbys use to veto redevelopment.
but people still need places to live. and if you can't build up in the city, you have to build out into the countryside. and that's where the new housing supply (what little of it there is) is predominantly coming from: rubbish suburban new-builds. they have to trample over a lot of nature to do that.
if we really must conserve the number of trees, let landowners cut them down on their own property but contribute money into a council fund for the planting of an equivalent tree on public land. more tree-lined streets, more parks, as a fully public good. trees are much more valuable when they are in a place to provide shade to pedestrians!
when housing is easy to build, you get competition between landlords (instead of competition between renters). rents go down. landlording becomes a risky enterprise once again, not some economic fief for lucky boomer incumbents.
>The most celebrated case of this is Fitzroy Road in Primrose Hill, pictured below, which was formerly an extreme ‘gap-tooth’ terrace with just a single old mansard. The residents campaigned for permission to add more, which the council eventually granted on condition that every house add an identical mansard simultaneously.
I don't know if the Publisher would believe as if they don't see that the ideas are the same that they have to send the proof to the people I am complaining about. I don't know if the court will believe, as they are not domain specialists and will judge by the letter of the law.
Not exactly a horror story, but here it one. I decided to send proofs to a well-known academic publisher in order to report colleagues who had used findings from my lesser-known research papers (published in lower-profile journals) and my PhD thesis as their key conclusions. The Publisher started an investigation, but I was told that my colleagues would need to see the evidence first. The Publisher would not disclose my identity, I was certain that my "colleagues" would have figured it out. So, I made the decision to call them first and ask for clarification. They requested me to send them their text and works for which I was claiming authorship while acting as though they had no idea what I was talking about. After I sent the email, they called back, berated me, and threatened me with a lawsuit for defamation for using the words "Below is the text from the paper, which contains ideas taken from my publications.". They explicitly used the words "by all possible means". Then asked for apology. I did apologize and urge the Publisher to halt the investigation, but was this the proper course of action? Back then I was scared, but I am angry now. My sin is that my papers and Ph.D. results are not published in the big academic publishing companies (so they cannot find the plagiarism), except for one in Elsevier.
Perfect data visualization of the current environmental and climate challenges that is open to anyone. The current environmental issues we face are portrayed with "Data layers" and discussed with "Stories" beneath. Stories like this should reach mass media to raise public awareness. Before we can focus on the (final) outer space (frontier), we must first fix our inner (terrestrial) space (ship) with a priority. Or not?
Consider that it might in fact be harder to get 7 billion different people to do one thing than having them do 7 billion different things.
If we can't manage to exist in balance with this perfectly fine planet we evolved on, what makes you think we are even prepared in the slightest to do so with a new planet which would very likely be the equivalent of playing earth in hardcore mode?
I also think we should fix earth and explore the rest of the universe at the same time. But as of now we are doing a really, really shit job of doing the former, so maybe we should focus there first. Why, you might ask? Cause the negative impact of fucking that one up has a headcount of 7 billion + future generations.
> Consider that it might in fact be harder to get 7 billion different people to do one thing than having them do 7 billion different things.
I don’t think that is the case: getting people to focus on fewer things is hard, while getting 7 billion people to focus on 700 million things is the status quo.
No because there's very little reason we cannot do both simultaneously. Space is no more the opportunity cost of climate science than any other thing we do on earth.
You would think that. But I'm one of a few scientists that work on the only fully integrated climate observation station for the Greenland ice sheet. I'm headed to Greenland as I type this. The Greenland ice sheet is the fastest melting piece of ice in the world, and is one of the canaries-in-the-coal mine that we need to observe to understand catastrophic climate change impacts. I was just discussing with my colleagues the other day the amount funding that projects such as the JWST get, and how it's extremely difficult to get funding for climate observations. We operate the station on a paltry shoestring budget and it was nearly shutdown by the NSF last year.
And. To be clear. It's a difficult discussion to have. Bickering about which science projects deserve more funding is a lose-lose battle, like cutting of each other's kneecaps (JWST is an incredible project). Yet climate science is extremely poorly funded, in particular monitoring projects or analysis. Climate science has also fallen prey to the "must be new big and shiny" problem that everything else has.
how frustrating it is for you to do what you do and know what you know? I only know the “common” knowledge about climate change and it makes me angry every time I think about what we know and where we’re still heading.
I'm fairly early in my career (read: youngish). And, truthfully, I'm very much having an existential crisis. I often wonder what the worth in studying the climate is. After all, we already have an extremely detailed understanding of the basics. Does refining our estimate of melt and other such issues, reducing the error bars, really contribute anything more to society? I'm not sure. It feels fruitless. But I recently had a friend explain that I should consider myself more a documentarian than a researcher which shifted my perspective quite a lot. Some people here will like the quote:
"Somebody has to document what happened, it's better than selling ads on the internet. Imagine a world where we burn ourselves to death and we didn't even keep track of the specifics, it seems even more tragic."
Anyway. I think the answer is clearly... frustrating.
>And, truthfully, I'm very much having an existential crisis. I often wonder what the worth in studying the climate is. After all, we already have an extremely detailed understanding of the basics.
This same line of thought is what turned me away from pursuing a degree/career in climate science. It feels like an area where you can make significant contributions to the analysis of impacts and gain greater understanding of the future direction things will take (and the rate), it'll be akin to shuffling deckchairs on the titanic in terms of being able to actually effect any meaningful change; since I was frustrated in my current career with a sense of futility I realized the move into climate would not be satisfying, as much as the topic was of interest.
Similarly with working in industry 'tackling' climate change. Pinning hope on technological advancements are (IMO) fundamentally flawed. Plus much of 'green' industry where the majority of jobs are to be fund amount to a thin veneer of PR for organizations that are significantly exacerbating the issue.
As an aside, how much stock do you put in the notion that the first Blue-Ocean Event will significantly ramp up the rate of change being felt globally?
But it's incorrect to state that climate science is competing with JWST more than it is competing with any other venture, scientific or otherwise, for funding.
Of course that's incorrect, and that's not what I'm stating. The comment I replied to implied that we can (and are) doing both simultaneously. I'm trying to show the degree to which that is or is not true. I even said clearly that arguing about funding isn't worthwhile, for exactly the point you make. It's philosophically useless and categorically weak. The idea is simple: we don't care about global climate all that much, either studying it or fixing it. The funding and social effort shows that clearly. We prefer sexy shiny science the same way we prefer cars and iphones shipped from China.
> The idea is simple: we don't care about global climate all that much, either studying it or fixing it.
This is why I'm so pessimistic about the future. I don't really think we are all willing to sacrifice our shiny objects and accept a less carbon intensive lifestyle when the cost doesn't seem imminent. I often compare it to being overweight due to u healthy habbits. People aren't born obese, but slowly choose that lifestyle for immediate pleasures all the while the danger only creeps up.
Not articulated very well because I'm on mobile... best of luck to everyone.
Counterpoint, if we can't make earth work, how are we expecting to make another planet work? It will be inconceivably harder to turn Mars into something hospitable than it would be to remedy our current planet. We have the science and knowledge we need to make drastic changes here, we are just disorganized and unwilling.
You're creating a false dichotomy that either we're staying on earth or trying to colonize mars, ignoring other options such as having a more capable presence in orbit for doing things like asteroid mining, which would supply the resources that the poster you're responding to mentioned.
No you are assuming I am against space exploration, I am not. I didn't create that dichotomy, the OP was suggesting earth is no longer suitable. To me at least they were implying colonization is our way forward. If anything my reply was more in line with what you are suggesting, fix our planet with what we have around us. Maybe that includes mining asteroids, space based research, maybe even power generation or transfer, living quarters supplied by the earth.
What I was saying was more of a challenge to our competence, if we can't pull off making earth work, with it's vast resources, and existing infrastructure, how could we move from earth in a meaningful way?
One example, OP suggests we have no room. We have heaps of room, it's just not arible or hospitable. Guess where else isn't arable or hospitable? Every other planet in our solar system! So they gave up on earth in their mind, in favour of somewhere even less hospitable
[1] https://www.azair.eu/index.php
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36793357