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Resource use matters, but material footprints are a poor way to measure it

https://ourworldindata.org/material-footprint-limitations
20•surprisetalk•3mo ago

Comments

bluGill•3mo ago
Also not addressed is recycling. If you wear out same goods you can landfill it or recycle it. if we care about copper running out this matters. but as the article notes copper is a tiny amount of total material used, even though we should worry about running out.
burch45•3mo ago
I have never heard of “material footprint” and from the definition it seems entirely worthless. The article doesn’t start with any reason why anyone would be interested in this measure, just that comment it is starting to show up in reports.
strken•3mo ago
I would have assumed it would be relevant to supply chains. I too do not understand its relevance to consumption. It seems like you could substantially increase your material footprint by digging two holes and swapping the soil, which is a little silly.

That being said, GDP is also a silly measure: I pay you a billion dollars to slap yourself, you pay me a billion dollars to stomp on my own foot, and we've just raised GDP by $2bn. Despite its ridiculous nature, in practice it seems to correlate with the things we do care about.

gruez•3mo ago
>That being said, GDP is also a silly measure: I pay you a billion dollars to slap yourself, you pay me a billion dollars to stomp on my own foot, and we've just raised GDP by $2bn.

In practice no because it won't be picked up by government statisticians for being obviously bogus.

xnx•3mo ago
Monetary cost is a much better way to measure environmental impact.

I Write Games in C (yes, C)

https://jonathanwhiting.com/writing/blog/games_in_c/
88•valyala•3h ago•61 comments

Brookhaven Lab's RHIC Concludes 25-Year Run with Final Collisions

https://www.hpcwire.com/off-the-wire/brookhaven-labs-rhic-concludes-25-year-run-with-final-collis...
19•gnufx•1h ago•2 comments

SectorC: A C Compiler in 512 bytes

https://xorvoid.com/sectorc.html
49•valyala•3h ago•10 comments

The AI boom is causing shortages everywhere else

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/02/07/ai-spending-economy-shortages/
164•1vuio0pswjnm7•9h ago•209 comments

Hoot: Scheme on WebAssembly

https://www.spritely.institute/hoot/
136•AlexeyBrin•8h ago•25 comments

We have broken SHA-1 in practice

https://shattered.io/
5•mooreds•25m ago•2 comments

Stories from 25 Years of Software Development

https://susam.net/twenty-five-years-of-computing.html
81•vinhnx•6h ago•10 comments

OpenCiv3: Open-source, cross-platform reimagining of Civilization III

https://openciv3.org/
843•klaussilveira•23h ago•252 comments

Al Lowe on model trains, funny deaths and working with Disney

https://spillhistorie.no/2026/02/06/interview-with-sierra-veteran-al-lowe/
58•thelok•5h ago•8 comments

The Waymo World Model

https://waymo.com/blog/2026/02/the-waymo-world-model-a-new-frontier-for-autonomous-driving-simula...
1075•xnx•1d ago•615 comments

The F Word

http://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2026/02/friction.html
10•zdw•3d ago•0 comments

We Mourn Our Craft

https://nolanlawson.com/2026/02/07/we-mourn-our-craft/
284•ColinWright•2h ago•332 comments

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback

https://rlhfbook.com/
88•onurkanbkrc•8h ago•5 comments

Start all of your commands with a comma (2009)

https://rhodesmill.org/brandon/2009/commands-with-comma/
508•theblazehen•3d ago•187 comments

Microsoft Account bugs locked me out of Notepad – are Thin Clients ruining PCs?

https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows-11/windows-locked-me-out-of-notepad-is-the-thin-...
29•josephcsible•1h ago•21 comments

Vocal Guide – belt sing without killing yourself

https://jesperordrup.github.io/vocal-guide/
222•jesperordrup•13h ago•80 comments

U.S. Jobs Disappear at Fastest January Pace Since Great Recession

https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikestunson/2026/02/05/us-jobs-disappear-at-fastest-january-pace-sin...
227•alephnerd•3h ago•176 comments

Show HN: I saw this cool navigation reveal, so I made a simple HTML+CSS version

https://github.com/Momciloo/fun-with-clip-path
20•momciloo•3h ago•2 comments

Selection Rather Than Prediction

https://voratiq.com/blog/selection-rather-than-prediction/
11•languid-photic•3d ago•3 comments

72M Points of Interest

https://tech.marksblogg.com/overture-places-pois.html
34•marklit•5d ago•5 comments

Coding agents have replaced every framework I used

https://blog.alaindichiappari.dev/p/software-engineering-is-back
242•alainrk•7h ago•385 comments

France's homegrown open source online office suite

https://github.com/suitenumerique
592•nar001•7h ago•263 comments

A Fresh Look at IBM 3270 Information Display System

https://www.rs-online.com/designspark/a-fresh-look-at-ibm-3270-information-display-system
42•rbanffy•4d ago•8 comments

Unseen Footage of Atari Battlezone Arcade Cabinet Production

https://arcadeblogger.com/2026/02/02/unseen-footage-of-atari-battlezone-cabinet-production/
119•videotopia•4d ago•36 comments

History and Timeline of the Proco Rat Pedal (2021)

https://web.archive.org/web/20211030011207/https://thejhsshow.com/articles/history-and-timeline-o...
19•brudgers•5d ago•4 comments

Where did all the starships go?

https://www.datawrapper.de/blog/science-fiction-decline
87•speckx•4d ago•97 comments

Learning from context is harder than we thought

https://hy.tencent.com/research/100025?langVersion=en
205•limoce•4d ago•112 comments

Show HN: Look Ma, No Linux: Shell, App Installer, Vi, Cc on ESP32-S3 / BreezyBox

https://github.com/valdanylchuk/breezydemo
282•isitcontent•23h ago•38 comments

Monty: A minimal, secure Python interpreter written in Rust for use by AI

https://github.com/pydantic/monty
292•dmpetrov•23h ago•156 comments

Show HN: Kappal – CLI to Run Docker Compose YML on Kubernetes for Local Dev

https://github.com/sandys/kappal
25•sandGorgon•2d ago•13 comments