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Comment by treme | Hacker News Reader

ultrasonic washer are by far the best way to wash fruits & veges of these things, in Korea ultrasonic washer-sinks are picking up in popularity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-JZkiGigDw&t=261s

research citation https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4688301/

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The trend of "we fucked up big time and need to create additional waste to take negate our fuck ups" is really worrying.

Installing ultra sonic cleaners, reverse osmosis machines, AC units, &c. in every single of our houses/flats won't be sustainable

It's the same school of thought that says that one should lower taxes and invest less in road fixing and schools. Instead, cars wear out faster/need more repairs and wealthier parent pay for tutors to make up the difference.

40+ years of externalizing costs has taken its toll.

IMO the issue is ideologies vs actuaries/statisticians ... It's shocking how both the "left"/"right" agree on many values, but also so disagree on how to achieve them.

Eg: Both sides care about children, productive economy, value of education

Using education as an example, I think great harm has come as a result of making it a government monopoly. Not sure how it is in the US but in Europe there's not really a free market with regards to how children are taught. So there's no room for a competitor to come in and say "we can do it better", because when this happens (and it does happen occasionally) they are just shut down by police.

The school I went to was a Dalton school (though basically only in name, as explained below), one of the pioneering futuristic school systems developed in the early 20th century which said that people would learn more if they are allowed to learn about what they actually care about. My school had a copy of the original book describing the Dalton school system in the library. Almost everything described in the Dalton school from 1905 would be illegal if it were done today.

My point is, I'm fairly left-leaning but I support a radical deregulation of education on all levels: this seems to be one area where we should let the free market take care of things. And of course, if it turns out that a different way of teaching works better, there's nothing (except inertia) stopping the public schools from adopting the same methodology, making it universally available.

> Not sure how it is in the US but in Europe there's not really a free market with regards to how children are taught.

Homeschooling is the closest to that free market in the US. Your comment prompted me to look up the homeschooling statistics [1] and I was surprised by the results for Europe. The US outstrips the rest of the world by number of children in homeschooling by a large margin.

US homeschooling outcomes are so far promising [2], so one could say it is a pretty competitive alternative market.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling_international_st...

[2] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/261885035_The_Socia...

Don't you think leaving education to the free market would make it harder for kids from poor backgrounds to go up in life? When everyone uses the same system, it's in everyone's best interest to fund it and make it as good as possible. You won't get the best results, but at least everyone gets a decent education.

Except we've seen that this doesn't really work in practice. Kids are not all getting a decent education. Poor kids are still at a huge disadvantage compared to wealthy kids. There isn't a one size fits all education. Different roles which are needed by society require different skills. Everyone doesn't need to go to college. The world still needs ditch diggers and it likely always will. Not everyone is equal when it comes to intellectual or physical capability. When you try to shove everyone through the same system, you get a lot of square pegs going through round holes. This prevents those with high intellectual capabilities from reaching their full potential by reducing education to the lowest common denominator.

My expectation is that a free market of ideas would allow superior modes of education to rapidly emerge, which would then be slowly and poorly copied by the mainstream. If I'm understanding you right, you're saying that by allowing a parallel education system with freedom of choice, all the smart and rich people would abandon the old one to die. (It would be kept alive, of course by taxes, in body, if not in spirit!)

My personal belief is that the death of the old education system is over a century overdue.

We don't need to kill it, just stop making alternatives illegal and the problem will solve it itself.

Letting the people with wealth and power use an alternative system would be the same thing as killing the public system. No one with the ability to improve the system would have the incentive to. It's the reason public schools aren't improving. In a privatized system you'll get a divided population with some being very well educated and while some get no education at all.

There's nothing preventing a public system from being changed and improved. Take Finland as an example. Everyone goes to the same public schools there, rich or poor. The result is one of the best education systems in the world. New methods are regularly tested and teachers have a lot of freedom to choose the ones that suit them.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ufmcubp2szg

> it's in everyone's best interest to fund it and make it as good as possible.

Often this is addressed through a voucher system. Single Payer (or subsidizer), multiple provider.

Eg: gov't gives a voucher for $10k per head, you're free to shop for the best schooling your money can buy (perhaps even online!)

Aside: this exact concept can apply to healthcare too

I like this idea! In fact I have wondered what effect it would have on government if citizens could literally vote with their dollars, ie. democratically decide how government funds are allocated. So every year each citizen would be allocated ( yearly budget / total population ) dollars and could choose how their dollars are spent.

I live in Denmark, which is in Europe. I’m extremely courious as to where in Europe you are actually from, because if there’s is one thing that is the same across the entirety of Europe from my experience, it is that no-one from a European country would ever talk about “Europe” like it was a uniform thing when talking about laws or public institutions. School in France is extremely different from school in Finland etc. Also I am puzzled to think about which country in Europe doesn’t have private schooling available next to public schools.

So I’m curious because taken on it’s own your comment sounds a lot like a fiction a conservative American would author about what they think ‘Europe’ is like. But this might just be a result of your alternative schooling.

Also your schooling is described as being not available where you are yet still what you went through which seems a bit of a conundrum as well. Was it actually illegal, or do you think you might have been exposed to biased propaganda by the institution coloring your view on what the educational system in your country is actually like?

Not American, but your comment amused me because I just spent the last hour reading about how to migrate there :)

I'm half Croatian, half Australian, and speak with an American accent due to my childhood friends. I went to an international school (IB) followed by a Dutch high school (VWO). (Basically I'm an alien everywhere I go.)

My school called itself a Dalton school, but upon reading the book by the creator of the original Dalton school (Education on the Dalton Plan, Helen Parkhurst, 1905) I was absolutely blown away by how radical and futuristic this school sounded, and how short my own school (which supposedly was the same kind) fell of that mark. I investigated why my school did hardly any of the things Dalton schools are supposed to do, and found out that they were against Dutch law.

As you say, Europe is not (yet) a monolithic entity, and perhaps there is even a country here where letting kids do what they want isn't considered a crime. Hopefully I was wrong to generalize in this regard, I would certainly be happy to hear about it.

As for my bias, I admit freely that I absolutely hated school, consider it an abomination and a crime against the human spirit, and almost certainly would have left if it weren't illegal (they send the police after your parents). I say "almost" because I did rather enjoy the part where you get to see your friends every day—although at the time it wasn't clear to me that this would go away with graduation, or how much I would miss it.

To be clear I have no problem with people willingly submitting themselves to such a thing, it's the coercion part that I can't stand for.

> it is that no-one from a European country would ever talk about “Europe” like it was a uniform thing when

As an immigrant to the US who's been to a dozen or so states, I'd add it's also inaccurate to talk about the US as a uniform thing or group of people

But the values themselves are different. Caring about the children looks entirely different for one side vs the other given one side believes in a social safetynet and the other believes the opposite. The definition of a productive economy is different; for some it might mean everyone has a good paying job but for others it means their select investments return a lot of money in a year and they don't much care about these other sectors they aren't heavily leveraged in. What they identify as the value of education is different as well. For one side it might be to establish critical thinking skills and to hear a wide variety of thoughts on a topic, and for the other side it's just the opposite where they want only one groupthink and no deviation from that, and their leaders would prefer their base didn't critically think about the issues they support.

> ... where they want only one groupthink and no deviation from that, and their leaders would prefer their base didn't critically think about the issues they support.

Yeah, that's why they're adamant about the dangers of freedom of speech.

This is just a ridiculous straw-man argument.

Functioning roads and schools supported by taxes is supported by 99.9% of people. People only object to paying high taxes for wasteful, inefficient bureaucracies and corrupt deals to pay well-connected insiders or campaign donors excessively for providing services.

Everyone wants roads and schools. Conservatives complain when they realize they're paying taxes for a campaign donor to rebuild the same road every year. Liberals complain when they realize the owner of the construction company is now a billionaire. Both want the road, neither want corruption and injustice, they just focus on slightly different aspects of the same dysfunction.

What are people's problems with AC units?

An AC unit is more sustainable than a furnace burning fossil fuels and electric heaters. They are just as sustainable as heat pumps.

If developing-world nations like Bangladesh start seeing wet bulb temperatures incompatible with life - and we're getting close in spots; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature#Wet-bulb_... - having to supply AC to tens of millions of people in areas without the electrical infrastructure to reliably run them is... a problem.

An AC unit is a heat pump running in reverse.

So here in the PNW, we typically only heat during the winter. Most people here have never had AC in the summer time. So typically, power usage in the summer here is really low. Most of us just turn off the furnace for a number of months. We know it's fall when we finally turn on the heat.

Now that more and more people are getting heat pumps, I suspect that the energy saved during the winter is going to be offset quite a bit by people running their AC in the summer. I don't know how much that will be, but I know I'll be running my new AC unit this summer. Hopefully I won't need it more than a couple of weeks. But it's been hotter the last few summers, and if the trend continues, we'll be running the AC a lot more.

It's a side effect of building the wrong structure for the environment. If you ever go to the south take note of the architecture in the old homes and even rowhomes where working class people lived. The cielings will be very high, and there will be second window above the doorway perhaps. The windows will have awnings. There will be porches with large overhangs shading living rooms and dining rooms inside the dwelling. All of these features help with cooling a home in a hot climate and making it livable in a world before air conditioning, taking no energy to do so beyond that initial energy investment to build the building itself.

Meanwhile, look at what is built in the south today. The same sort of buildings you might see from alaska to phoenix to orlando to upstate new york. Only they might have installed central air for that floorplan in phoenix or orlando. They aren't building structures fit for the particular environment, they are building structures that are cheap to build in the market and don't really fit too well anywhere, and shoehorning it into whatever environment it sits with AC.

Building with classic Southern US techniques doesn't negate or even significantly reduce the need for air conditioning. Without AC, these types of structures still become incredibly hot during the summer; they suffer from mold and material damage from humidity; they required workarounds like sleeping on a screened-in porch during the summer instead of inside the house, because the house itself was too sweltering to tolerate, even at night. If you were lucky enough not to be laboring outside in the South during the summer, you spent a large part of your day sitting around being miserable. It was a major contributor to the south's lag in economic development, and a strong contributor to historically poor public health and life expectancy.

They're also not particularly efficient in terms of space utilization, making them unfeasible for sustainable, 'walkable' neighborhood development.

At least now adays modern structures are starting to incorporate these sorts of built in cooling solutions (e.g. sun shades) but I think there is a good middle ground to be struck between the 1850s and building structures that require less energy to cool in the first place. A lot of this stuff is just simple physics at work; hot air moves up etc.

Recently in CA in my neighborhood, someone decided to paint their spanish style home dark brown. I can't help but think going from ivory white to dark brown is going to increase their AC bill in the summer. Just using basic physics with consideration to the environment can go a long way.

Heat pump and AC unit are two names for the same thing.

The only thing unsustainable is an indefinitely growing population, but fortunately it's projected to level off. If so it renders the arbitrary objections a moot point.

No. You are wrong. The problem is not (only) the population size, the problem is the rich that consume enormously more ressources than the poor.

https://theconversation.com/amp/emissions-inequality-there-i...

The rich aren't numerous enough in number for it to matter, but more importantly, the linked highlights global disparity. Everyone in the West has a higher carbon footprint than poor countries just by living here. The resources consumed by the rich aren't ridiculously greater than the middle class.

This is all a moot point in the face of stagnant population growth. It would be no less sustainable for the West to consume more by virtue that the demand isn't infinite and technological innovation increases efficiency all the time.

Everything is a tradeoff. It's very easy to label things as waste in isolation.

The reality is pesticides and other crop technologies substantially increase efficiency of the land we're using. This means per capita: we're using less land (more back to nature), losing less crop (less fuel/maintenance wasted), and requiring an increasingly smaller percentage of the population to tend to crops.

No, absolutely not everything is a tradeoff, many things like eating meat or going to a casino are a total waste of resources

Yeah well, not sure about that meat thing buddy, not sure...

don't get me wrong, I love my steak and burger, but there are people who never eat meat and manage to built enough muscle to compete in the olympics.

Other than taste and perhaps vitamins, what other good things do you get from the murdering of animals?

It definitely is a "waste" of resources, when looking at it from a rational perspective. Humans like to enjoy life though.

>many things like eating meat

So don't ever eat out or make anything nice? Do you only eat rice and beans?

> or going to a casino are a total waste of resources

I broadly bucket expenses like that as "entertainment", which I guess isn't directly productive, but at the same time is arguably appreciated by the people who enjoy it. Hacker news arguably falls under this, mind you. There's a non-negligible amount of resources (server costs, paid moderator(s), and opportunity costs of all the participants) that's spent on it. So if you really want to put your money where your mouth is, you'd get off hn ;)

Sounds a lot like software development

You got it wrong.

"we fucked up big time, but the rich will be able to shield themselves with additional waste, while the poor can suck it up"

Maybe a stupid question but this removes surface pesticide residue, is there any evidence of how much that is percentage wise versus 'absorbed' pesticide inside the fruit?

It makes me sad that we need ultrasonic washers for fruit and vegetables.

We don’t spray pesticides on fruit to make people sad. Without them then fruit would be inaccessible to many people.

Where I live, fruit and vegetable farmers are routinely required to discard significant portions of the harvest per USDA mandates… maybe we could find some middle ground between poisoning people for obscene harvests and allowing pests to decimate crops?

> Without them then fruit would be inaccessible to many people.

This is just a lucky side effect, I'm 100% sure that main goal is for the pesticides industry just take their cut on the producers margin. By growing those margins, sure, but it's not something that should be forgotten.

No, the main goal of the pesticides industry is to supply chemicals that kill of various pests (insects, fungi etc) that would otherwise destroy a significant proportion of the harvest.

Without these pesticides food would be significantly more expensive and less accessible to many people.

I agree that we should talk about moving away from chemical dependent farming but we need to be aware of the full picture in order to avoid glib solutions.

I realize I should have been more nuanced, but you should too. The increase of production is undeniable, I'm not challenging that, and introduction of pesticides in the second half the the 20th century lowered drastically the cost of living of many. But the pesticide industry has become predatory, and their concerns have not been public welfare for a very long time.

Their concerns were never public welfare. They are companies. Their concerns are profit and market share.

I think what you are saying is that they have turned to predatory behaviour in order to grow profits and protect market share.

Your point would have been better made if you had said just that, with examples.

Without pesticides we could create more resistant cultivars.

I think we do both.

Without antibiotics we could cultivate more resistant humans. That's probably not a situation anyone wants, pencillin was huge for a reason.

Now looking into alternate forms of resistances while still enjoying modern treatments, theres an idea.

Bad analogy. Cultivating more resistant humans would raise a bunch of ethical questions.

That's the point of the analogy. Use of pesticides in some part allows us to have stable and cheap access to food. There are similar ethical arguments to be had about restricting pesticides.

Most wealthy westerns only see/know abundance. Pesticides, GMOs, these things prevent famine in most of the world.

> Without pesticides we could create more resistant cultivars.

Doesn't follow. We can create them today. Pretty sure farmers would be very happy on not having to dedicate resources to pest control.

It's probably not even feasible long term. Pests can and do adapt. The main problem is monoculture.

Also, those resistant cultivars are probably not going to do so well when it comes to other variables: shelf life, taste, etc.

For most of agricultural history people didn't eat raw vegetables at all, and only some raw fruits. Before the advent of modern agriculture night dirt was a common fertilizer and a serious vector for disease. It's still unsafe to ear raw fruits and vegetables in parts of the world with bad sanitization. I know a few people who have gotten seriously ill consuming fresh pressed fruit juice in North Africa.

It's a nice anecdote, but I've lived and travelled in various African countries and never been sick from consuming fruit, vegetables or pressed juice. I'd be much more worried about eating poorly butchered and stored meat. The idea people throughout history didn't eat raw fruits and vegetables is also quite wrong.

Again, after living in rural communities, they largely eat what they can get - which includes a lot of raw fruits and vegetables. Of course meat is important, but no more important than nuts, berries, tubers etc.

Here's a 2017 study from Egypt about the frequency of parasite cysts on fresh produce[1]. Here's another about salmonella generally in North Africa[2]. Both irrigation and washing of produce use water that may not be safe to drink. This isn't some anecdotal issue I'm bringing up.

[1] https://aeji.journals.ekb.eg/article_17804.html

[2] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2017.0156...

The only anecdote here is yours, because food-borne diseases are very common and a significant source of misery across the developing world

(That is, if you don't have undetected Helminthiase or some other disease)

> It's a nice anecdote, but I've lived and travelled in various African countries and never been sick from consuming fruit, vegetables or pressed juice.

That's all and good, but how do you even know that? One can live with parasites for quite a while before noticing any symptoms.

I come from a 'third world' country. We really wash our fruits and specially our vegetables. Even though they might come from large farming operations, you can still have people without proper sanitization handling them after taking a dump.

Heck, there are still places where you cannot enter a body of water without worms piercing your skin and having a party in your intestines. Our elementary school curriculum was pretty extensive on diseases and specially parasites.

> The idea people throughout history didn't eat raw fruits and vegetables is also quite wrong.

They did. People also died a lot. Although a berry growing somewhere in the wilderness will probably have less of a chance of carrying diseases or parasites that infect humans (on the account of not having encountered other humans). After farming? All bets are off.

> Although a berry growing somewhere in the wilderness will probably have less of a chance of carrying diseases or parasites that infect humans (on the account of not having encountered other humans).

Maybe less of a chance, still deadly.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echinococcus_multilocularis

>ultrasonic washer are by far the best way to wash fruits & veges of these things

Is this claim backed by anything? Or is it just a claim by the manufacturer?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4688301/

If that worked why would the industry not do this before they put it on the shelve?

Organic salad I can buy here (Switzerland) comes marked as pre-washed and ready to eat in many cases.

because most consumers won't be able to tell the difference while they incur cost of extra process. They have pre-washed salads in NA too, but I doubt those are washed using ultrasonic devices.

Can you give a specific product recommendation? I did a search and got a lot of junk or questionable results.

My experience so far is: don't go for the €100/$100 one.

I bought one because my relative wanted to have this particular model in his 3D printing... cave (for lack of a better word) and it broke down after a few weeks.

It's just starting to get early adopter traction in an early adopter country, so it'll probably be a while until you can find something locally.

https://www.rahatsmall.com/

http://www.livinghertz.com/

are apparently 2 popular consumer brands in Korea.

I just searched aliexpress for "ultrasonic food cleaner", they probably work but no idea how they compare.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001039347867.html?spm=a2g0o...

I see some 10W models, 50W models and 100W models - how much power is appropriate?

Here is what I saw for an ultrasonic jewelry cleaner:

>As a general rule of thumb, you will require between 50watts to 100 watts per gallon for your ultrasonic jewelry cleaner to achieve efficient cleaning.

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