I like to eat pigs and live in Italy. Salsiccia and polenta is particularly good, and I'd be happy to grill some up for any visiting hackers, served of course with plenty of good red wine.
What's this got to do with Hacker News, in any case?
What's this got to do with Hacker News, in any case?
It shows you how big operations can go wrong, if safeguards are not put in place. The numbers here are mind numbing, this is collossal murder.
There has been a series of programmes on industrial modern farming on the bbc recently in the UK. Which focussed on the best parts of technological innovation in farming. Whereas this article exposes all that's wrong with factory farming.
As an Englishman I find it hard to comprehend the scale of things in the states. It horrifies me. The London circular felt huge to me, until I witnessed a freeway. Now it appears small and the cars look like toys.
We had the BSE outbreak in the UK, which has led to a change in consumer opinion. BSE was reportedly a result of canibalism. Recyling your outputs to inputs is a nice idea, but it's risky practice.
There's no mention of the quality of life these pigs are living. My uncle used to run a small factory pig farm in the UK and that was horrendous enough. That put me off of pork. Later working at an egg farm ensured that, I no longer ate eggs or chicken. There is something incredibly powerful about seeing things first hand. Animals deserve a better life than that, they surely deserve to see daylight.
The computer industry, has it's own issues with energy usage and pollution. The silicon valleys are known for poisoning rivers. There are parallels here. Consumeres need to be aware, to put pressure on industry. We can be ethical consumers, we can vote with our wallets. We can speak out, against injustices and barbaric practices.
Hacker news is full of talk about start ups and web entrapaneurs. Money is not the be all and end all. There is a social and environmental dimension to every business.
If the article does not shock you, or fill you with bile, then alas I feel there is something inherently wrong with you.
I do not delight in discovering injustices, whether it's Ethiopian farmers getting ripped off for the price of coffee or animals suffering. And I have a compulsion to put these injustices right, if I can. Though sometimes our impulses can blind our moral judgement.
I read a book that was published over a decade ago, that reported that every one of North America's great lakes had been overly polluted. A lot of the world's seas have been overfished, there are many dead zones, look on Google Earth.
You'd hope that with the advancement of science and the freedom of knowledge we could become a better race of people. This really saddens me. I believe the hacker spirit, is one that aims for solutions (possibly perfection), and I hope that that same spirit is well concidered and respectful.
Which rivers did "the silicon valleys" poison?
Things change in a decade.
> The silicon valleys are known for poisoning rivers.
While fabs are full of toxic things and some of the disposal early on was suboptimal (I'm still waiting for the Sunnyvale city govt to create its own Love Canal by grabbing some of this land for housing), "silicon valleys" have not poisoned rivers.
And no, that's not a metaphor. A metaphor is an analogy between thoughts, ideas, or things.
If you're not correct on the details that I can check/know personally ....
A decade is no time at all.
What are you arguing? My point was that electronic waste has a high environmental cost, probably more so than farming.
Whether or not that's true, your claim was about the great lakes.
> What are you arguing?
I'm pointing out that your claims have been false. When someone points that out, you respond with different claims as if that somehow justifies things. It doesn't. (Neither does good intentions.)
> My point was that electronic waste has a high environmental cost, probably more so than farming.
One can make that point without engaging in falsehoods. You didn't bother and don't seem to understand why that's relevant. You don't even seem to care about getting things right.
I do not think I have stated any falsehoods. If I have supply counter evidence, rather than just poo pooing me.
The reference to the great lakes was that it was a classic and very well known example of human pollution. And that was a main theme of the article.
The Silicon valley reference was to highlight the huge environmental impact of the high tech industry. That may be in North America, or India. If they have cleaned up the industry in recent times, then that is great, have they?
True, but that doesn't make your claim about the Great Lakes true.
> The Silicon valley reference was to highlight the huge environmental impact of the high tech industry.
Silicon Valley isn't the high tech industry. It is a specific place in California.
As I suggested you're arguing "the truth of my claims doesn't matter because I mean well." That's both wrong and counter-productive for both your credibility and your cause.
> That may be in North America, or India.
In other words, you have no idea if it actually happened.
And you don't care.
What to Submit
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
Did you intend that to be self-referential or is it just a happy accident? :-)
If you're an inhabitant of Earth then large-scale environmental damage driven by global spending habits concerns you too. Sorry about that!
Edit: let me expand that a bit more. There are many things that I think are far more important than startups and hacking. Politics (in the US, Italy, the EU and worldwide), the economy (as above), the environment, child rearing, and so on and so forth. However, these tend to be "flame-bait" topics which are best left to other sites lest they overrun this one.