<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: stefantalpalaru</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=stefantalpalaru</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Sun, 12 Apr 2026 13:52:43 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=stefantalpalaru" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stefantalpalaru in "YouTube says it'll bring back creators banned for Covid and election content"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> one of the only things that actually worked to stop people dying was the roll out of effective vaccines<p>"A total of 913 participants were included in the final analysis. The adjusted ORs for COVID-19 infection among vaccinated individuals compared to unvaccinated individuals were 1.85 (95% CI: 1.33-2.57, p < 0.001). The odds of contracting COVID-19 increased with the number of vaccine doses: one to two doses (OR: 1.63, 95% CI: 1.08-2.46, p = 0.020), three to four doses (OR: 2.04, 95% CI: 1.35-3.08, p = 0.001), and five to seven doses (OR: 2.21, 95% CI: 1.07-4.56, p = 0.033)." - ["Behavioral and Health Outcomes of mRNA COVID-19 Vaccination: A Case-Control Study in Japanese Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises" (2024)](<a href="https://www.cureus.com/articles/313843-behavioral-and-health-outcomes-of-mrna-covid-19-vaccination-a-case-control-study-in-japanese-small-and-medium-sized-enterprises#!/" rel="nofollow">https://www.cureus.com/articles/313843-behavioral-and-health...</a>)<p>"the bivalent-vaccinated group had a slightly but statistically significantly higher infection rate than the unvaccinated group in the statewide category and the age ≥50 years category" - ["COVID-19 Infection Rates in Vaccinated and Unvaccinated Inmates: A Retrospective Cohort Study" (2023)](<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10482361/" rel="nofollow">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10482361/</a>)<p>"The risk of COVID-19 also varied by the number of COVID-19 vaccine doses previously received. The higher the number of vaccines previously received, the higher the risk of contracting COVID-19" - ["Effectiveness of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Bivalent Vaccine" (2022)](<a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.17.22283625v1.full" rel="nofollow">https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.17.22283625v...</a>)<p>"Confirmed infection rates increased according to time elapsed since the last immunity-conferring event in all cohorts. For unvaccinated previously infected individuals they increased from 10.5 per 100,000 risk-days for those previously infected 4-6 months ago to 30.2 for those previously infected over a year ago. For individuals receiving a single dose following prior infection they increased from 3.7 per 100,000 person days among those vaccinated in the past two months to 11.6 for those vaccinated over 6 months ago. For vaccinated previously uninfected individuals the rate per 100,000 person days increased from 21.1 for persons vaccinated within the first two months to 88.9 for those vaccinated more than 6 months ago." - ["Protection and waning of natural and hybrid COVID-19 immunity" (2021)](<a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.04.21267114v1" rel="nofollow">https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.04.21267114v...</a>)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 23 Sep 2025 22:05:17 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45353351</link><dc:creator>stefantalpalaru</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45353351</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45353351</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stefantalpalaru in "Why Romania excels in international Olympiads"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>There are many factors - most of them economic and cultural - but it all starts with an intense maths syllabus in school, Soviet Union style. Here's the current one for 5th to 8th grade: <a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/184259748/The-Romanian-Maths-Syllabus" rel="nofollow">https://www.scribd.com/document/184259748/The-Romanian-Maths...</a><p>Most kids are overwhelmed by the complexity and volume (homework is brutal) but those few with an aptitude for it thrive and are picked up quickly by teachers looking to mentor them further for local, national and international contests.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 30 Aug 2025 01:56:06 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45071276</link><dc:creator>stefantalpalaru</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45071276</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45071276</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stefantalpalaru in "Cigarette filters do nothing for health and create plastic pollution – ban them"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> Unfiltered cigarettes must be worse for smokers than filtered cigarettes.<p>You'd think so, but no.<p>"Cigarette filters are believed by many to reduce the health risks of smoking. This article outlines the history of the technology of filters and discusses the impacts of these cigarette design features and their regulation. We conducted a literature review to assess the impacts of this technology. The results show that filters were initially developed for aesthetic purposes and later improved and marketed as a harm reduction technology. The most widely-used filters are those made of cellulose acetate with or without activated carbon. Despite smokers’ beliefs and advertising claims, filters have no health benefits and filter tip ventilation can increase the health risks of smoking. Filters can also make cigarettes more appealing and cause significant environmental impacts. Cigarette filters have no health benefits and lull smokers into a false sense of security and should therefore be banned." - ["Health without filters: the health and environmental impacts of cigarette filters" (2021)](<a href="https://www.scielo.br/j/csc/a/k7CJ3Wvq3yMLSmmmwT89cPw/?lang=en" rel="nofollow">https://www.scielo.br/j/csc/a/k7CJ3Wvq3yMLSmmmwT89cPw/?lang=...</a>)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 29 Aug 2025 18:22:16 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45067658</link><dc:creator>stefantalpalaru</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45067658</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45067658</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stefantalpalaru in "I need your help. This channel is set for deletion [video]"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>From a YouTube comment:<p>• Slopes made video on a(n alleged) scammer<p>• Alleged scammer was mad and doxxed him<p>• Slopes went into the alleged scammer's WhatsApp group anonymously<p>• It's all in Spanish, so he downloaded the chat logs, uploading it to his Google drive, so he could have a Spanish friend look at it<p>• Google scanned the chat logs, and saw lots of horrible Hate Speech; and is punishing Slopes for having Hate Speech.<p>• Google set his entire account for deletion. Not just YouTube, but his entire photo library going back years and years.<p>• Slopes, in a panic seeing this, messed up his first chance to appeal this. There is possibly a second chance.<p>• He's asking if anyone knows anyone who has a direct line to YouTube, to contact his above email</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 11 Jun 2025 11:44:48 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44246573</link><dc:creator>stefantalpalaru</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44246573</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44246573</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stefantalpalaru in "Write a Shell in C (2015)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The glibc manual has a section about writing a job control shell: <a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_mono/libc.html#Implementing-a-Shell" rel="nofollow">https://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_mono/libc.html...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 26 Dec 2024 21:33:42 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42517993</link><dc:creator>stefantalpalaru</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42517993</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42517993</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stefantalpalaru in "MIT Claims They've Figured Out How to Make Fusion Energy Practical"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> cleaner energy<p>Fusion is far from clean and unlikely to ever become economically viable: <a href="https://thebulletin.org/2017/04/fusion-reactors-not-what-theyre-cracked-up-to-be/" rel="nofollow">https://thebulletin.org/2017/04/fusion-reactors-not-what-the...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 02 Apr 2024 09:32:43 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39903835</link><dc:creator>stefantalpalaru</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39903835</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39903835</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stefantalpalaru in "StackRot (CVE-2023-3269): Linux kernel privilege escalation vulnerability"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> yet again shows that C should just die as a language<p>It's a logic error. Nothing to do with the language.<p>"now that the vma layout uses the maple tree code, we *really* don't just change vm_start and vm_end any more, and the locking really is broken" - <a href="https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=9471f1f2f50282b9e8f59198ec6bb738b4ccc009" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 06 Jul 2023 15:41:28 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36617736</link><dc:creator>stefantalpalaru</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36617736</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36617736</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stefantalpalaru in "UC San Francisco apologizes for prisoner experiments"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p><a href="https://archive.is/EXGLv" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://archive.is/EXGLv</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 26 Jun 2023 01:08:07 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36474446</link><dc:creator>stefantalpalaru</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36474446</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36474446</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stefantalpalaru in "The Almost Romance Languages"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> Romanian vocabulary likewise includes words of an unclear pre-Roman substrate language<p>That would be the Dacian language: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dacian_language?useskin=vector" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dacian_language?useskin=vector</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 21 Jun 2023 17:39:49 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36421765</link><dc:creator>stefantalpalaru</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36421765</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36421765</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stefantalpalaru in "The Israeli weapons and spyware falling into the hands of despots"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> Historical connection to the land<p>"For a more scientific take on the Jewish origin debate, recent DNA analysis of Ashkenazic Jews – a Jewish ethnic group – revealed that their maternal line is European. It has also been found that their DNA only has 3% ancient ancestry which links them with the Eastern Mediterranean (also known as the Middle East) – namely Israel, Lebanon, parts of Syria, and western Jordan. This is the part of the world Jewish people are said to have originally come from – according to the Old Testament. But 3% is a minuscule amount, and similar to what modern Europeans as a whole share with Neanderthals. So given that the genetic ancestry link is so low, Ashkenazic Jews’ most recent ancestors must be from elsewhere."<p>"The tolerance of the Persians encouraged the Jews to adopt Persian names, words, traditions, and religious practices, and climb up the social ladder gaining a monopoly on trade. They also converted other people who were living along the Black Sea, to their Jewish faith. This helped to expand their global network.<p>Among these converts were the Alans (Iranian nomadic pastoral people), Greeks, and Slavs who resided along the southern shores of the Black Sea. Upon conversion, they translated the Old Testament into Greek, built synagogues, and continued expanding the Jewish trade network."<p>"The Asian group of these DNA mutations, found in Ashkenazic Jews, likely originated from the Ashina elite and other Khazar clans, who converted from Shamanism to Judaism. This means that the Ashina and core Khazar clans were absorbed by the Ashkenazic Jews." - ["Ashkenazic Jews’ mysterious origins unravelled by scientists thanks to ancient DNA" (2018)](<a href="https://theconversation.com/ashkenazic-jews-mysterious-origins-unravelled-by-scientists-thanks-to-ancient-dna-97962" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://theconversation.com/ashkenazic-jews-mysterious-origi...</a>)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 19 Jun 2023 08:53:39 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36388801</link><dc:creator>stefantalpalaru</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36388801</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36388801</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stefantalpalaru in "Ask HN: Why are new user accounts shadowbanned?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> It's not personal.<p>It sure feels like it, from this end.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 07 Jun 2023 09:18:11 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36224645</link><dc:creator>stefantalpalaru</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36224645</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36224645</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stefantalpalaru in "As the Priest Said to the Nun"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> St Gall (or St Gallen) was a town that ran on talk<p>...and cat and dog meat: <a href="https://www.thelocal.ch/20121227/dogs-still-eaten-in-switzerland" rel="nofollow">https://www.thelocal.ch/20121227/dogs-still-eaten-in-switzer...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 05 Jun 2023 13:47:00 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36196139</link><dc:creator>stefantalpalaru</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36196139</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36196139</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stefantalpalaru in "YouTube will stop removing false claims of 2020 US election fraud"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> false claims<p>"This study applies Benford’s law to detect anomalies in county-level vote data for the 2020 US presidential election. Most prominent distribution violations are observed with Republican vote counts in blue states, all vote counts in states won by the Democratic candidate, and Democratic vote counts in swing states. Distributions are anomalous in swing states won by the Democratic nominee and not anomalous in swing states won by the Republican nominee. The results are robust to two-digit analysis, Monte Carlo simulations of p-values, broad or narrow swing state definitions, and when compared to distributions observed in 2008, 2012, and 2016 elections." - ["Detecting Anomalies in the 2020 US Presidential Election Votes with Benford’s Law" (2020)](<a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3728626" rel="nofollow">https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3728626</a>)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 03 Jun 2023 08:23:48 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36174764</link><dc:creator>stefantalpalaru</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36174764</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36174764</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stefantalpalaru in "PyPI will require 2FA by the end of 2023"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>There is a command line tool for time-based one-time passwords, if you can get the relevant key from PyPI: <a href="https://www.nongnu.org/oath-toolkit/man-oathtool.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nongnu.org/oath-toolkit/man-oathtool.html</a><p>This allows you to lose your phone without losing your account.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 26 May 2023 08:54:51 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36081702</link><dc:creator>stefantalpalaru</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36081702</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36081702</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stefantalpalaru in "The AARD Code and DR DOS (2021)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> In assessing Microsoft’s reaction to DR DOS, I must think what would be own reaction if I had designed and implemented something, and someone copied my design into a distinct implementation of their own.<p>"MS-DOS was a renamed form of 86-DOS – owned by Seattle Computer Products, written by Tim Paterson." - <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-DOS?useskin=vector" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-DOS?useskin=vector</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 23 May 2023 12:55:01 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36043547</link><dc:creator>stefantalpalaru</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36043547</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36043547</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stefantalpalaru in "Expensive energy may have killed more Europeans than Covid-19 last winter"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> If you have actual medical data published in journals and peer reviewed, I'd be very happy to see it, and possibly even change my opinion if it's convincing.<p><a href="https://gist.github.com/stefantalpalaru/b630413da6889c79f795612c0f569b12" rel="nofollow">https://gist.github.com/stefantalpalaru/b630413da6889c79f795...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 10 May 2023 23:31:10 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35895038</link><dc:creator>stefantalpalaru</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35895038</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35895038</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stefantalpalaru in "Banana Equivalent Dose"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The "banana equivalent dose" is an error that refuses to die. Based on tables that estimate the effect of various radioactive isotopes acting for 50 years, people ignoring physiology decided that the average K40 in a banana will produce 0.078 microsievert of damage (rounded to 0.1 because it's close enough for jazz and comics).<p>The reality is that, due to homoeostasis, the excess potassium you ingest is eliminated the next time you piss, so there's no accumulation inside the organism. Those 50 years become something like 12 hours and the radiation exposure is more in the ballpark of 0.00000213 microsievert.<p>But that value is now too small to use it in science fanboyism, isn't it?<p><a href="https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2015-05/documents/520-1-88-020.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2015-05/documents/52...</a> - page 156. That's where these people took the effective dose equivalent for K^40 from, but those values are for 50 years of exposure.<p>"For radioisotopes of elements that are under tight homeostatic control by the human body, the inhalation or ingestion risk coefficients given in this document may not be appropriate for application to some exposure scenarios. For example, the ingestion risk coefficient for ^(40)K would not be appropriate for application to ingestion of ^(40)K  in conjunction with an  elevated intake of natural potassium. This is because the biokinetic model for potassium used in this document represents the relatively slow removal of potassium (biological half-time of 30 d) that is estimated to occur for typical intakes of potassium, whereas an elevated intake of potassium would result in excretion of a nearly equal mass of natural potassium, and hence of ^(40)K, over a short period." - ["Federal Guidance Report No. 13: Cancer Risk Coefficients for Environmental Exposure to Radionuclides"](<a href="https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2015-05/documents/402-r-99-001.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2015-05/documents/40...</a>) - page 16<p>So, if you accept that the duration of exposure from eating a banana is 12 hours instead of 50 years, a dental x-ray is the equivalent of eating 2,347,417 bananas.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 02 May 2023 12:35:32 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35786459</link><dc:creator>stefantalpalaru</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35786459</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35786459</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stefantalpalaru in "Ask HN: Most interesting tech you built for just yourself?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> I have one of those AC units in my apartment that sits on the floor with an outlet tube terminating at a window to pipe out hot air<p>You might want to add an intake tube, to cool the compressor more efficiently: <a href="https://imgur.com/gallery/kA4Z0uV" rel="nofollow">https://imgur.com/gallery/kA4Z0uV</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 27 Apr 2023 16:36:22 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35730690</link><dc:creator>stefantalpalaru</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35730690</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35730690</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stefantalpalaru in "Methane may not warm the Earth quite as much as previously thought"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> The carbon footprint of cows is still horrendous.<p>A constant number of cows produce a constant amount of methane which plateaus quickly due to its very small atmospheric half-life.<p>"Additional methane emission categories such as rice cultivation (RIC), ruminant animal (ANI), North American shale gas extraction (SHA), and tropical wetlands (TRO) have been investigated as potential causes of the resuming methane growth starting from 2007. In agreement with recent studies, we find that a methane increase of 15.4 Tg yr−1 in 2007 and subsequent years, of which __50 % are from RIC (7.68 Tg yr−1), 46 % from SHA (7.15 Tg yr−1), and 4 % from TRO (0.58 Tg yr−1)__, can optimally explain the trend up to 2013." - ["Model simulations of atmospheric methane (1997–2016) and their evaluation using NOAA and AGAGE surface and IAGOS-CARIBIC aircraft observations" (2020)](<a href="https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/20/5787/2020/" rel="nofollow">https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/20/5787/2020/</a>)<p>"On November 17, 2003 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that the concentration of the potent greenhouse gas methane in the atmosphere was leveling off and it appears to have remained at this 1999 level (Figure 1). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007 acknowledged that methane concentrations have plateaued, with emissions being equivalent to removals. These changes in methane atmospheric dynamics have raised questions about the relative importance of ruminant livestock in global methane accounting and the value of pursuing means of further suppressing methane production from ruminants. At this time there is no relationship between increasing ruminant numbers and changes in atmospheric methane concentrations changes, a break from previously assumed role of ruminants in greenhouse gases (Figure 1)." - ["Belching Ruminants, a minor player in atmospheric methane" (2008)](<a href="http://www-naweb.iaea.org/nafa/news/2008-atmospheric-methane.html" rel="nofollow">http://www-naweb.iaea.org/nafa/news/2008-atmospheric-methane...</a>)<p>«If there was an increase in atmospheric CH4 mixing ratio and the increase was caused by agricultural sources, specifically livestock emissions, the trends in atmospheric CH4 should correspond to dynamics in global livestock populations. *During 1999 to 2006, however, when atmospheric CH4 mixing ratio plateaued, global cattle and buffalo populations* (these species make up 84% of all livestock enteric CH4 emissions; FAOSTAT, 2017) *continued to increase* from 1.46 (1999) to 1.59 (2006) billion head (FAOSTAT, 2017), at a rate of approximately 18.8 million head/yr, *which apparently did not affect atmospheric CH4* over the same period. Since 2006, the rate of increase for the populations of these ruminant species declined to 7.3 million head/yr (FAOSTAT, 2017); we note that FAOSTAT does not specify uncertainty for their estimates, which is likely large for cattle inventories (and emission factors) in developing countries. Thus, it appears that *the global dynamics in large ruminant inventories do not support the suggested farmed livestock origin of the increase in atmospheric CH4* from 2006 to 2015. Potential increases in CH4 emission from non-livestock agricultural sources to the global CH4 budget cannot be excluded. Globally, *the area harvested for paddy rice* (emissions from which are typically 22 to 24% of the emissions from livestock), for example, *had increased 42% from the 1960s to 2015* (FAOSTAT, 2017), although new rice varieties (i.e., water-saving and drought-resistance rice, or WDR; Luo, 2010) require less water and thus emit less CH4 (Sun et al., 2016).»<p>«As pointed out by Turner et al. (2017), fossil fuel CH4 is not entirely thermogenic in origin (based on its isotopic signature), with *over 20% of the world's natural gas reserves generated by microbial activities (i.e., carrying biogenic isotopic signature)*. Thus, collectively, we can conclude that quantitative attribution of changes in atmospheric CH4 concentrations to CH4 sources based on δ13CH4 data is at least questionable.» - ["Symposium review: Uncertainties in enteric methane inventories, measurement techniques, and prediction models" (2018)](<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022030218303709" rel="nofollow">https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002203021...</a>)<p>"we find that city-level emissions are 1.4 to 2.6 times larger than reported in commonly used emission inventories and that the landfills contribute 6 to 50% of those emissions" - ["Using satellites to uncover large methane emissions from landfills" (2022)](<a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abn9683" rel="nofollow">https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abn9683</a>)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 22 Apr 2023 16:36:53 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35668291</link><dc:creator>stefantalpalaru</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35668291</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35668291</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stefantalpalaru in "Investigating and preventing scientific misconduct with Benford’s law"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> Furthermore, the law can be generalised to digits beyond the first<p>Reminds me of a fun use for second digit analysis:<p>"This study applies Benford’s law to detect anomalies in county-level vote data for the 2020 US presidential election. Most prominent distribution violations are observed with Republican vote counts in blue states, all vote counts in states won by the Democratic candidate, and Democratic vote counts in swing states. Distributions are anomalous in swing states won by the Democratic nominee and not anomalous in swing states won by the Republican nominee. The results are robust to two-digit analysis, Monte Carlo simulations of p-values, broad or narrow swing state definitions, and when compared to distributions observed in 2008, 2012, and 2016 elections." - ["Detecting Anomalies in the 2020 US Presidential Election Votes with Benford’s Law" (2020)](<a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3728626" rel="nofollow">https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3728626</a>)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 16 Apr 2023 13:03:47 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35589697</link><dc:creator>stefantalpalaru</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35589697</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35589697</guid></item></channel></rss>