Crime Pays but Botany Doesn't • Hacker News Board

Re: Crime Pays but Botany Doesn't

#221

Post by doublepg23 » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 5:14 PM UTC

chabska wrote: post #57

They spent a whole section glazing the Linnaeus system like it's a perfect thing, but as someone who has delved into taxonomy a lot (due to playing Metazooa and Metaflora), there are quite a few glaring issues with it. 1. political tussle. australian botanists managed to hijack the "acacia" name from the original African Acacia, to the totally unrelated australian plants that were also called acacia. I noticed that j…

> western bias

How would you suggest improving the system that doesn't devolve into purity spiraling?

Re: Crime Pays but Botany Doesn't

#222

Post by legel » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 6:36 PM UTC

olivierlacan wrote: post #185

legel wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a Visiting Scientist at UC Berkeley focusing on AI for ecology. Always great to see fellow technologists in this space! For the past few years I've maintained a free open source project called Ecodash ( https://ecodash.ai ) covering the world's native plants, with trait filters. Code here: https://github.com/legel/ecodash While I'm also an entrepreneur and *do* believe there is a lot of financial opportunity in t…

It’s so nice to know you’ve worked on this. I’m very curious what sources you used. The most fun I had with Indigene was when I decided to add French ecoregions so my parents could use the app too. Most of the work is in this PR where I used a recently published study’s plant host species data to offer ecosystem value/services metrics since the Tallamy data doesn’t cover that: https://github.com/olivierlacan/indigene…

Thanks Olivier!

Very kind. Cool technical insights.

I agree 100% that learning ecoregions is too difficult. I believe that AI will help us to simulate ecosystems, just like physics equations simulate gravity.

The Natural Capital project from Stanford is impacting government policy globally, selling the argument that the financial value of ecosystems >> GDP.

In the private sector, I also see reasons to be optimistic. At Ecodash we found a 30% land value boost from biodiverse planting: https://ecodash.ai/biodiverse_gardens_roi.pdf

Please feel free to reach out (lance@ecological.dev), would love to chat further, explore collaboration.

Re: Crime Pays but Botany Doesn't

#223

Post by Transformanshen » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 7:34 PM UTC

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Re: Crime Pays but Botany Doesn't

#224

Post by CRConrad » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 1:21 AM UTC

graemep wrote: post #199

tobinfricke wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently this text is part of the "International Property Management Code", which is incorporated into the municipal code of many cities? https://codes.iccsafe.org/content/IPMC2024P1/chapter-3-gener...

So not just HOAs but very much US?

Obviously, as can be seen from the word "International" in the name.

(See also: "World League", etc, etc ad nauseam.)