Google is not just a platform – It frames, shapes and distorts how we see - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/11/google-frames-shapes-and-distorts-how-we-see-world?CMP=fb_gu <comment><USER2> I think the author is missing an important point: people who are genuinely curious about Holocaust usually don't type "did the holocaust happen".

Instead, they will more likely type "holocaust statistics", "holocaust wikipedia", "what is holocaust", or simply "holocaust". Each of these queries brings up a "clean" result page.

On the other hand, it is those people who already think/suspect Holocaust isn't real that disproportionately type in "did the holocaust happen", they find the stormfront website, and they click on it because it matches their preconception. Google learns that users typing this particular query likes this result, and acts accordingly.

To Google's algorithm, this is exactly like learning that people typing "introduction to algorithms" love to go to the Amazon page selling the venerable CLRS. Nothing inherently nefarious.

In other words, I think it's not StormFront that's "gaming" the system. The system is made of people, some of whom really really like StormFront, and Google's results (for better or worse) just reflect that reality.

<comment><USER3> > In other words, I think it's not StormFront that's "gaming" the system. The > system is made of people, some of whom really really like StormFront, and > Google's results (for better or worse) just reflect that reality.

This needs to be more widely recognized. Google autocomplete results, fake news on Facebook, etc. are they way they are because a significant number of people lack critical thinking skills or seek affirmation of their current beliefs. People _want_ to read those things -- if they didn't click on them, they would not end up being so visible.

This means that tweaking Google's algorithm, or filtering fake news from Facebook, will backfire and appear to be censorship. It will drive the people who are interested in reading fake news to work harder to find it, and it will erode their trust in mainstream media. In other words, such a solution would worsen the problem it intends to solve.

This isn't really a technical problem. It's a consequence of human nature, and I'm pessimistic about the viability of the technological solutions that have been proposed so far.

This also reinforces my view that most people don't have good critical thinking skills. I've taught college students who would believe pretty much anything they read online. Nobody ever taught them that they should verify what they read before they believe it. I really wish school curricula would include better education in this area. But some of my Facebook friends who "like" the fake news stories are teachers, so I'm pessimistic about this as well.

<comment><USER4> > This means that tweaking Google's algorithm, or filtering fake news from > Facebook, will backfire and appear to be censorship. It will drive the > people who are interested in reading fake news to work harder to find it, > and it will erode their trust in mainstream media. In other words, such a > solution would worsen the problem it intends to solve.

Good. Make it hard to find. Make people have to dig into the vile corners of the internet to find it.

Google isn't a public utility that is obligated to serve these hate groups. Stormfront doesn't have to be blocked from having their packets routed. Google just doesn't have to take any part in helping them surface their beliefs.

<comment><USER5> Whether explicit or implicit, that would still be targeting certain opinion groups... because yes, antisemitism and many types of racism and hate speech are still just opinions until acted upon.

If somebody is looking for hate speech, they should find hate speech. I understand that search engines should avoid promoting hate speech when it is not needed, but like the parent comment showed that _is_ currently the case for Google.

<comment><USER6> Storefront is an interesting case because Southern Poverty Law Center has counted 100 murders committed by their users (or registered members, I forget which). I don't know stormfront's usage numbers, by I bet that's a pretty high ratio for a web site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The author wonders why shit like this appears on google, but then you see her first paragraph:

"Did the Holocaust really happen? No. The Holocaust did not really happen. Six million Jews did not die. It is a Jewish conspiracy theory spread by vested interests to obscure the truth. The truth is that there is no evidence any people were gassed in any camp. The Holocaust did not happen."

What Google sees with this paragraph is a highly ranked page asking a legitimate question. This woman seems to be reputable, so let's just take her word for it.

Pretty ironic -- last time I checked sentiment analysis wasn't even close to figuring out what sarcasm is. Her joking actually exacerbates any problem she thinks there is. And honestly, me quoting her is just making the problem a tiny bit worse!

<comment><USER8> That keyword-laden first paragraph is probably what will show up in the blurb for that page in a SERP, too.

<comment><USER9> Which in turn reafirms, recursevely, the author's assertion of gamed Google algorithms.

I think web search is still flawed, like it was 15 years ago when Google came along. The problem is that now the flaws are more subtle, hence more dangerous since search (and feed) ordering, interactions and suggestions are capable of influencing people in an almost subconscious level. It will take years to understand its implications.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wikipedia comes up as the second site. Google is doing OK. If the holocaust industry doesn't like their SERPs, they can mobilize their chain of holocaust museums to get better ranking. In fact, they've already done this; the Washington holocaust museum is now in the third result position.

Stormfront ("White Pride World Wide") has been around for years, and kind of a joke. Post-Trump, they're more mainstream. Stormfront gets a high ranking because they've been saying this for decades and they're now getting traffic from the alt-right. So they have both popularity and stability, which Google's algorithm likes. They're not gaming the algorithm. They just lucked out on a political trend.

If you want to see gaming of Google's algorithm, search "binary option". Binary options are basically a scam.[1] There are a vast number of binary option web sites and companies, mostly affiliates of two back-end companies in Tel Aviv. They plug binary options and each other endlessly, disseminate recent financial news to get traffic, and appear as an entire ecosystem of bogus info. That's gaming the algorithm. Wikipedia is in the top position at the moment, with a rather negative article on binary options. (This despite massive efforts by the binary option industry to get favorable Wikipedia coverage, including offers of $10,000 for anyone who could "fix" certain articles.)

[1] [http://www.timesofisrael.com/the-wolves-of-tel-aviv- israels-...](http://www.timesofisrael.com/the-wolves-of-tel-aviv-israels-vast- amoral-binary-options-scam-exposed/)

<comment><USER11> The "holocaust industry"? It may just be because I lost family in the holocaust, but this can't be an acceptable thing to say here.

<comment><USER10> Norman Finkelstein, author of "The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering"[1] coined that phrase. He lost ancestors to the Nazis.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008GZ4J76/](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008GZ4J76/)

<comment><USER6> A book arguing that the Holocaust has been exploited is not justification for denying the Holocaust happened, and it's insidious to insinuate such.

Its disgusting to say that if Google is leading people to believe that the Holocaust didn't happen, the people who profit from it happening should just invest in better SEO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Google is a search engine of indexed webpages. Not a universal delivery machine of the TRUTH (tm) nor an annex of your brain.

Besides, this kind of debate is one step away from lyssenkism where only google-friendly opinions will be displayed. If you fight for freedom of speech only in the case of opinions that you like, then it's not freedom of speech.

<comment><USER13> > If you fight for freedom of speech only in the case of opinions that you > like, then it's not freedom of speech.

The fact that the Holocaust happened is not an opinion.

<comment><USER14> If we let society keep a list of facts that may not be questioned, it will inevitably have crap like "the sun orbits the earth" and "a god named zeus created the universe" that _need_ to be questioned.

<comment><USER15> There's a difference between not allowing dissent and promoting wrong answers.

<comment><USER14> When you declare an answer to be wrong and suppress it, the only difference is whether you go on to murder/imprison/exile the heretic or merely silence them.

<comment><USER15> I think the difference between murdering someone and not putting their website at the top of a search result page is pretty significant. That the Holocaust happened is a fact. Giving correct responses to factual queries should not be a controversial goal.

When I type 5 + 6 into Google search, are people being oppressed when the top result is 11? Would this be similar to murdering ideological opponents if my page declaring the answer to be 13 wasn't at or near the top of the results?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Google is a search engine not a truth engine. I would say "here it is: if you don't like it, complain to the site owners". Otherwise if you start editing things then you will be asked sooner or later why you didn't X and Y as well. And before you know it you're responsible for the pool of vomit with some nice chunks in it called the internet.

If you arrive at stormfront.org and you're greeted with white power signs, of course you don't think "this seems like a really unbiased website". If you are attracted to this shit already it's already too late. For Google, your parents.

<comment><USER17> _> Google is a search engine not a truth engine_

IMO "truth engine"s of various forms are the future of search. Think e.g. Wolfram Alpha or any of the newfangled chat bots. Or even, increasingly, Google itself.

I don't want a link to some guy's page; I want a definitive answer. Maybe the answer I want is the truth (probably more often than not). Maybe the answer I want is _my_ truth (probably more often than not for political topics). But in any case, this sort of curation is going to happen, so at some point search engines are going to have to wrestle with this reality -- will you be the truth engine people want, or will you be the truth engine the people need? ;-)

<comment><USER18> This is the direction Google has been moving in for uncontroversial facts for years: the barriers to them doing this completely are mostly technical, not product-based.

For questions where there's any sort of controversy, this broad a solution is by definition unsolvable. It requires taking an explicit side on _literally every controversial issue the human race is talking about_, which means they'd spend roughly 100% of their time fending off mobs demanding to know why they said X.

Since we're on the topic, let's use history as an example. There are TONS of things in history that "everyone knew" where the "cranks" turned out to be right and overturned our entire understanding of a given time and part of the world. The scientific and academic methods are messy and iterative and (for the soft sciences) often subjective, attempting to provide a "best guess" for what the human race knows. To ask one entity to explicitly answer questions, stamp out unsupported theories but somehow magically spare contrarian theories that ultimately end up being correct is simply insane.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is an awful result, but it raises a difficult question: should the SERP be moderated or they should be fully automatic and allow this kind of results to be in the top of the result pages? Because a human moderated results could be even worst in the short them (who decides the ideology).

IMO, what must be addressed is our and our children ability to discern, analyse and put in doubt everything that we read, and this kind of results does more good than bad on this sense.

<comment><USER20> It seems like the alt right network of sites that are gaming the results should be pretty easily discoverable and their weighting adjusted downwards until legitimate sites are at the top.

<comment><USER21> That's the misunderstanding pervading this article. There is no gaming of the system. The article provided absolutely no evidence that any gaming was occurring.

Algorithms like PageRank are indiscriminate and if the Atl-right network of sites is as big as the author claims then it should be pretty obvious why those results appear.

Right or wrong, good or bad, there isn't any foul play or exploitation occurring. These sites are playing by the rules Google established.

I think the problem is that groups that would challenge the Atl-right could do so using their own network of sites but instead want to just change the rules to shut them down instead.

<comment><USER20> Holocaust denial itself is foul play. You seem to think the only thing wrong that could be happening here is cheating the algorithm.

<comment><USER21> What is your definition of wrong? Is it crazy tin foil hat shit that could cause potential civil unrest or other problems? Then yes it's wrong. Is it violating the rules of law or the rules of Google? No.

The thing that's really disturbing is that rather than combat this problem on a level playing field, people are proposing changing the rules because they can't be bothered to play the game the way the rules are setup.

Once we have a system in place where we can shut down any disagreeable idea, who decides when and how to use it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> There's a really big ethical question about automation. These kinds of news results remind me of Microsoft's racist Tay bot fiasco on twitter.

It seems like Machine Learning automation of anything "intelligent" (giving the "best" answer to a question as in Google's results, or creating a humanlike bot personality), needs metrics for some kind of quality, or feedback loops of accountability, according to some kind of set of ethical limits. Otherwise your algorithm is just a slave or a mirror to your data set and your business interests.

Company's really need ethical motivations defined, especially company's with automation and no accountable human to point the finger at if things get out of hand.

</comment><comment><USER23> So basically another guardian journalist that only wants to see results on google he/she agrees with. And google should then manipulate results to fit the guardian's political line ... making Google yet another echo chamber. The fact is, echo chambers always fail to draw a clear picture of the real world. Shouldn't journalists be interested in the truth rather than validating their own bias on every possible medium ? or are so called journalists activists ? i.e. reporting the facts that support their agenda ?

</comment><comment><USER24> I always wonder if an open search algorithm would be better or worse? If Google let everyone see the magic, would outsiders be able to make it better so things like this don't happen? Would the white hats wing against the black hats if it was open to all?

<comment><USER25> no one would understand the algorithm

<comment><USER26> We analyze and compare things that we don't understand all the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The Guardian also ran this article where Google would suggest "Are women evil" if you typed "are women". A day later, that suggestion was gone (removed by Google).

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/04/google- de...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/04/google-democracy- truth-internet-search-facebook) (The HN comments on this story became political, so it was flagged.)

<comment><USER28> Previous discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13103774](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13103774)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> The world is full of conflicting information. Part of one's implicit Internet education is that the first link you get when searching is not always the best. The second link shown in the article (Wikipedia) is likely a good source of info.

Perhaps a better approach would be to register didtheholocausthappen.com and put a big sign that says "Yes" on it. Then put a link to that in your article, and get others to link to it.

<comment><USER30> The problems start to appear when Google (or Apple, or Microsoft) start showing people the "One True Answer" when asking G. Assistant/Siri/Cortana. Google has also been increasingly emphasizing a "main answer" in its search results.

<comment><USER18> That's why Google has been so incremental about only surfacing "uncontroversial" facts. It's very much not in their best interests to spend all day arguing with half the world about _literally every single issue the human race is interested in_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I think this is inseparable from the current fake news controversy. The US Government to the rescue, in the same manner as the 1950's Red Scare, and the 1790's.

H.R. 5181, which passed Congress and awaits the President, gives the USGOV $20 million to allocate to companies, NGO's and other institutions to correct anything it deems misinformation on the internet.

H.R. 6393, not yet passed will Give the USGOV additional authorities to choose which news it deems to be misinformation and to take action.

I can't recommend enough Richard Rosenfeld's "American Aurora", or because its over 900 pages long this mixed review: [http://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar...](http://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1600&context=fac_articles)

Striking is the similarity in vitriol, personal smears and false allegations among papers in the 1790's and the internet today. We're doomed to repeat past mistakes and learn over again past lessons. This manufactured crisis will be no different.

</comment><comment><USER32> Maybe a solution would be to also suggest "opposite" popular search, or simply "around the same subject". That would be fun, and show what are the broad topics around a subject.

You may think of it of phase 2 of search engine role. Now that it's almost perfect at finding things you're looking for, it could start showing things that you _should_ be looking for ?

</comment><comment><USER33> I think what the article misses with this particular search is that Google's function most of the time is to get you pages that contain the phrase, and not necessarily the answer to the question. In some cases it does "feature" an answer (e.g. 2+2, or What is the capital of Australia?) sometimes it doesn't.

Similarly, if you ask "Is the Earth flat?" you will see some results from the flat Earth conspiracy theorists.

One other aspect of this problem is that Google absolutely can and it does manipulate the results. At least a lot of work is done to eliminate spam, SEO abuse, or what Google thinks is spam and abuse. They are not a media outlet and are totally free to tweak their algorithms in any way they want or in any way that makes sense within their business model. So if they do deliberately lower StormFront's ranking, nobody can blame them for that.

</comment><comment><USER34> bing has the stormfront link at the bottom of the first page, and the Wikipedia holocaust denial page at the top (with a special Wikipedia nav bar that tends to make it look more visually prominent). It has fairly different results overall, though they do contain a couple of denialist links and suggest a "10 Reasons The Holocaust Never Happened" 'related search'.

it's interesting to think about why, possibilities that come to mind are

1\. bing's system just naturally doesn't favor the stormfront link as much?

2\. there's a deliberate effort on the part of microsoft/bing to specifically suppress stormfront or some class of sites it's in?

3\. stormfront is at the top of the google results due to a deliberate effort by some group to game this and they just haven't put the effort into gaming bing?

</comment><comment><USER35> Carole Cadwalladr's points are well taken. I tried the queries myself when I saw these articles and got the same results she did.

Apparently Google is listening, since some of these results have been changed. Was it a manual fix? So, Google's results are the output of an algorithm, except when they're not? Who decides which results will be manually fixed? And fixed how?

I think many, if not most, Internet users do treat search results as authoritative, even though the cognoscendi know they're not intended to be.

The real question is, can this situation ever be fixed in the general case? Reporting what is "true," and not just popular. I doubt it. Some things are clearly not true, but what is true? That's the biggest AI problem ever.

</comment><comment><USER36> This is a problem that needs to be addressed, and google is working on it. I can't see regulators doing a better job than they are, honestly.

<comment><USER37> > _I can 't see regulators doing a better job than they are, honestly._

The idea isn't that regulators should do a better job and be closer to the truth, but rather that regulators want full control.

The narrative is that there are "bad search results" and it is also assumed that there are Good(TM) search results that only a select group of Good(TM) individuals appointed by the True Power can ensure you get them.

The "False news" narrative is another example of this direction, where the narrative also assumes that there are "True news" and that a select group of prie...aum, Good(TM) people can guarantee that you get the Truth and nothing but the Truth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I'm still distracted at why she thinks the world is getting worse? I know the populist movement started around 2014 is picking up momentum, but we are solving more problems. The world is moving forward connecting people online, feeding more people than ever, and supplying a larger quantity of goods and services, than previously.

</comment><comment><USER39> Lol at the author saying a leading expert on Google search is someone who doesn't even work at Google.

</comment><comment><USER40> I wonder if the solution could just be removing the answer box for questions with very conflicting answers. The system is harder to game if the user is stuck doing a bit of research.

</comment><comment><USER41> Also Googling "Did the Gulf War take place" brings up links about Baudrillard's The Gulf War Did Not Take Place.

</comment><comment><USER42> "The right is on the rise"

So now "The right" means racist?

Just because these horrible people fall into the general category of the right, I don't think it's fair to paint this as typical of people who also fall on the right. Some of us just want small government and have conservative social views. But are just as revolted by the Holocaust deniers as any one else.

</comment><comment><USER43> shame on you for putting that clickbait title, for a split second I actually thought that google's algorithm was broken

</comment><comment><USER44> What would be the the only right result in your opinion Carole Cadwalladr? Please post 10 links which Google should show to everyone to make your day.

</comment><comment><USER45> Give me a more asked answer to the question 'did the holocaust...' and I will...</comment>


Ask HN: How to store/record one time use scripts? - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN,
What's the best practice as far as recording a single use script without bloat?
The project I'm working on now uses both Git and JIRA (issue tracker) for workflow organization. <comment><USER2> I tend to include them in git in a maintenance folder. After they've been used once, I put an exit command at the top that references the issue number so that they can't be accidentally run.

</comment><comment><USER3> If it's a one time thing I'll often just stick the script in the JIRA ticket. If it's something that will be used more than once it would go into Git.</comment>


China Has Withheld Samples of a Dangerous Flu Virus - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/27/health/china-flu-virus-samples.html <comment><USER2> An argument can be made that China is violating the International Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention. By withholding the samples they are at least constructively stockpiling a lethal pathogen; with full knowledge this action can (and likely will) result in the loss of many lives. The appropriate response is to announce travel restrictions on all travelers originating from China, effective in 30 days. I expect that announcement will dislodge the samples quickly, assuming the present media coverage doesn't already do so.

UPDATE: The virus can (may not necessarily) have a 40% mortality rate says the article below. One would therefore expect the US will obtain samples by other means. At a minimum birds don't recognize borders.

[https://www.livescience.com/63448-china-h7n9-flu-samples- pan...](https://www.livescience.com/63448-china-h7n9-flu-samples-pandemic- prevention.html)

<comment><USER3> > _One would therefore expect the US will obtain samples by other means_

From the article:

"At least four research institutions have relied upon a small group of H7N9 samples from cases in Taiwan and Hong Kong. (All four asked not to be identified for fear of further straining ties.)"

That said, a travel ban on travelers originating from or having recently been to China is too harsh. Mandatory quarantines (with the costs of such quarantine being the responsibility of the traveler) would be more prudent.

<comment><USER4> I think the travel ban is meant to be punitive as much as it is a quarantine. I think the way the OP was suggesting it was travel restrictions to or from a country refusing to cooperate with treaties. Implemented in 30 days, not anyone who has traveled to China within 30 days.

<comment><USER2> @SolarNet ... correct.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> They may be withholding physical samples, but some sequence data appears to have been released[1(eight segments of the virus from one patient),2(sequences from the last ten years)]. Sequence data like this is helpful for genomic epidemiology—modeling how the virus evolves over time and across geographic regions, as well as for investigating the potential functional impact of mutations.

1\. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/?term=Influenza+A+virus...](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/?term=Influenza+A+virus+\(A%2FGuangdong%2FGZ8H001%2F2017\(H7N9\)))

2\. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/?term=(%22H7N9%20subtyp...](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/?term=\(%22H7N9%20subtype%22\[Organism\]%20OR%20H7N9\[All%20Fields\]\)%20AND%20\(viruses\[filter\]%20AND%20\(%22700%22\[SLEN\]%20:%20%2210000%22\[SLEN\]\)%20AND%20\(%222008/01/01%22\[PDAT\]%20:%20%222018/12/31%22\[PDAT\]\)))

<comment><USER6> It should be noted that the influenza virus has 8 segments, so those 8 released segments from a patient represent the entire flu genome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Health should be separate from commerce. It's messed up to refuse to exchange scientific information that could save a lot of lives to get more bargaining power, but it's also messed up if some entity takes that information and internationally patents a vaccine so they could sell it for ungodly high prices.

<comment><USER8> Does the timing even make sense for attributing the delay to trade tensions? If theyve delayed for more than a year, those tensions were not at their present level a year ago.

<comment><USER9> The article says that scientists fear that trade tensions will worsen the problem, not that the problem sprang up out of the ether a couple of months ago.

<comment><USER10> The problem that sprang up out of the ether is the trade war and the subsequent very blatant propaganda war. Note that I'm not saying there is no problem here, but the fact that the story lay dormant and pops up now is not a coincidence. At the very least some NY Times editors thought it was relevant and opportune to shout into the echo chamber right this moment (and the same here, for posting it).

<comment><USER9> There's a link to an older story about the same topic right at the bottom of the page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> While I'm not sure why Chinese government is not sharing the virus, I really don't like the way the article is written.

The entire article is about guessing the reasons and developing a conspiracy (even the relation to trade war). No response so far from the official channel of Chinese government.

Also for this section:

>> The Chinese government has refused to share clinical data from infected patients, according to scientists[1], and claims to have all but eradicated H7N9 through a single poultry vaccination campaign.

[1]: Citation needed.

<comment><USER12> The only conspiracy here is, that you can be sure to find someone downplaying the issue every time something regarding China comes up here.

<comment><USER13> I am posting anonymously here because of all the toxicity of this comment. Take away "Chinese" from his argument and he still has an argument. Your comment on the other hand, is just throwing your emotions around. I suspect other commenters downvote him for the same reason. I find this every time an article about China comes up. Its infuriating because there is not legitimate discussion going on. It simply a downvoting war.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > At least four research institutions have relied upon a small group of H7N9 > samples from cases in Taiwan and Hong Kong

So why can't Taiwan send a sample?

>The Office of the United States Trade Representative in April released a proposed list of products to be targeted for tariffs — including pharmaceutical products such as vaccines, medicines and medical devices.

Well then, what did you expect? That China do nothing?

</comment><comment><USER15> > … plastic drip mechanisms … there are no stockpiles

why not?

<comment><USER16> stockpiles are not required if you have the RNA sequences of the virus... to make matters worse influenza is understood to the extent that any sophomore bio undergrad has the knowledge to create a nasty version, _whether they know it or not_...the big hurdle is the equipment which is not intrinsically expensive to build, and the biochemical reagents required e.g. restriction enzymes...</comment></comment>


Futarchy: Vote Values, But Bet Beliefs (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/futarchy.html <comment><USER3> This reminds me of Goodhart's law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

Even if betting markets can accurately forecast whether a hypothetical policy would increase welfare, that would last right up until they actually affect policy. After all, there are plenty of people with vested interests in policy and stupid amounts of money to manipulate the market with.

The 2013 paper linked does address the issue:

> What do noise traders have to do with manipulators? Manipulators, who trade > hoping to distort prices, are noise traders, since they trade for reasons > other than asset value info. Thus adding manipulators to speculative markets > doesn't reduce average price accuracy. This has been verified in > theory,[xxxvii] in laboratory experiments,[xxxviii] and in the field.[xxxix]

However, I took a quick look at the "in the field" citations and am not terribly impressed. One of them involved making individual large bets on horse races and seeing how they affected the odds, then canceling them before the race was actually run. The other was an overview that briefly mentions two other studies, broadly similar. None of them seemed like good models of manipulation under futarchy that would be (a) much longer term and (b) much better funded.

<comment><USER4> Attempts to manipulate the outcome actually make a prediction market more accurate. Every wrong bet creates a prize for others to come and put the price where it belongs.

It is important to compare futarchy against existing alternatives, instead of some imaginary ideal. Democracy is easy to manipulate. Each voter has little incentive to become an informed voter, and the cost to becoming informed is high. And once informed, each voter has little incentive to vote for what is best. (the personal benefit of a good election result) * (probability that their vote mattered) is practically zero. In this situation, people are vulnerable to bribery and propaganda.

<comment><USER5> > Democracy is easy to manipulate. Each voter has little incentive to become > an informed voter, and the cost to becoming informed is high.

But that feature is retained in futarchy, since the whole system relies on an elected legislature engaged in an even more abstract and difficult for a voter to concretely evaluate task than passing policy legislation directly, and that legislature remains a major target for manipulation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think I've spotted a paradox.

I'm generally pro-markets, but I don't think they're a panacea. They mostly seem to concentrate rather than decentralise wealth. If you're poor, you can't enter the market at all. If you're middle class, you can make some bets in the market: maybe you win, and maybe you lose, and if you lose enough then you become poor and are knocked out of the market for good. But if you're rich, you can afford to hedge and diversify your bets, staking out positions along the whole of the efficient frontier, hiring analysts to figure out exactly where that is, and perhaps paying for a bit of regulatory capture so that you can tilt the market in your favour. Of course even the rich can still lose money on the market by being complete idiots -- but that's basically the _only_ way they can lose money.

So, anyhow: betting markets centralise money.

Now let's say that society votes on a value: "we want to decrease inequality". So they create a futures market which rewards policies that decrease the society's Gini index.

The market responds with a variety of policies. Some work, some don't. The policies that work increase the wealth of the people who bet on them. Per the above, none of those bets will come from the poor; some of them will come from the middle-class, and a disproportionate share of them will come from the rich.

Hence, in this system, a policy which reduces wealth inequality is one that makes the rich richer. Seems like a variant of the Liar's paradox.

A potential solution would be for everyone in society to be given a basic income that was only usable for betting in the future's market; this would keep the poor in the game. Moreover, you'd need a cap on the amount of total assets one could have in the market (say, 4x or 10x the UBI), to eliminate incentives to game the market via regulatory capture etc.

<comment><USER7> Perhaps UBI could be implemented as UBA (Universal Basic Assets) in that each citizen owns a piece of the betting market.

There could be a tax to place a bet that is then distributed evenly to all citizens so even if one goes bust they still get chips to play.

I'd be curious if there is a way to implement this in a small community as a test.

Perhaps we could run an annual festival by this method and experiment with it.

I'd be happy to offer up [http://Majagual.org](http://Majagual.org) (the island for those who are wise and of good will) as a resting ground for this or other forms of alternative goverernance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Instead, much of the difference seems to be that the poor nations (many of > which are democracies) are those that more often adopted dumb policies, > policies which hurt most everyone in the nation. And even rich nations > frequently adopt such policies.

Ok, if we ignore the effects of wars, colonialism, IMF structural adjustment, and other generally malicious acts that make up most of real history. With no mention of those things, this essay is written for an entirely theoretical world and not the real one.

<comment> barry-cotter Good economic policies make up for a multitude of mistakes and bad ones squander the best history, infrastructure and previous policies. Singapore is much wealthier than Malaysia, which is much wealthier than Indonesia. The differences in natural resources and infrastructure there do not account for the differences in wealth, policy does.

In 1954 Ghana was far richer than South Korea, which was a bombed out hellscape that had been the scene of a conflict between superpowers after WWII. Ghana is no longer richer than South Korea, to put it mildly.

Botswana and Equatorial Guinea are both blessed with abundant mineral resources, diamonds for the former, oil for the latter. Botswana is a prosperous middle income country; Equatorial Guinea's people live in wretched poverty while the president and his cronies live in luxury.

If we look at Botswana's neighbour, Zimbabwe, we can see what bad policy can do, turning the breadbasket of Africa into a basket case and a food importer. Or compare Venezuela and Colombia. Their colonial experiences were similar, they were once one country and Venezuela had the advantage of massive oil reserves. None of it matters if your policies are bad enough. Price controls, seizure of private property and general thuggish incompetence have turned Venezuela into a disaster.

Enough of the soft bigotry of low expectations; some countries have done much better than any plausible comparator because of good policy. We should praise those who did and decry those who didn't. Ethiopia and Tanzania both started stupid campaigns of collectivisation leading to mass famine. Tanzania stopped, Ethiopia kept going. If we see idiocy we should call it out, good policy we should praise it.

<comment><USER9> Note: there is genuine uncertainty around what good economic policies are. For example, South Korea became rich by blatantly ignoring advices by world economists. Back then, everyone recommended ISI(import substitution industrialization), but South Korea tried ELI(export led industrialization) and succeeded.

Another example is land reform. US was against South Korea land reform because it reminded of communism, but recent research suggests land reform dismantling landowner class was critical to South Korea's success.

<comment> barry-cotter There's uncertainty on the details of good economic policy. Hong Kong grew rich with a policy of unilateral free trade and no government growth or industrialisation policy to speak of. What isn't in dispute is that secure private property and a functioning legal system work better than the alternatives. There's no point in investing in anything if the government will be along shortly to take everything. Even where the government are less rapacious they can mess things up, see India's Licence Raj, and the increase in growth rates after the repeal of most of the government controls of industry.

There is a lot of disagreement on the best economic policy, there's very little on good economic policy, and that's 80 or 90% of the way to the best.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licence_Raj](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licence_Raj)

<comment><USER9> Hong Kong is a super special exception that does not generalize. Approximately everyone became rich by using industrial policy: read Kicking Away the Ladder for detailed historical research. Our understanding of growth economics is not very good, so history is better guide than theory.

Experience of China and South Korea shows you can be very flexible about secure private property and functioning legal system. Or market capitalism and democracy for that matter. South Korea freely used eminent domain to build infrastructures like highway. It also declared everyone should trash all their electronics so that country can upgrade transmission voltage from 110V to 220V to reduce loss. Both decisions are considered good in retrospective.

What seems to be essential is investment in infrastructures like water, electricity, and transportation. You mentioned Ethiopia. It stopped stupid collectivization and is doing rather well recently. It's kind of mystifying why World Bank and like are against projects like Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. World Bank was also against South Korea's Soyang Dam, so it had to borrow from Japan. (Ethiopia is borrowing from China.)

<comment> barry-cotter I see no reason why Hong Kong wouldn't generalise or why I should dismiss growth theory. History shows that there are many different ways to successfully industrialise. It also shows us that some ways are terrible.

Your point on the legal system, especially regarding China, is well taken but I fail to see how eminent domain is against anything I've said. I'm not aware of a legal system without eminent domain though the circumstances under which the government can take your stuff and the compensation available for it vary markedly.

Changing voltage from 110 to 220 may have been a good decision but industrial policy has resulted in many disasters, from the backyard steel furnaces of Mao's Great Leap Forward to Ghanaian cocoa farmer's pulling up their crops because the price the state controlled cocoa board gave them for it made farming it not worth the labour. Industrial policy increases the variance of economic growth as bureaucrats make decisions for an entire country. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

Regarding investment in infrastructure I never said anything against it though the experience of the Soviet bloc and other communist countries does not lead me to believe it's sufficient for good outcomes.

I do not believe democracy is necessary but I don't see how market capitalism isn't. Nothing else works anywhere near as well. Communism on the Soviet model seems sufficient to get to middle income and market socialism on Yugoslav lines might be superior but nothing approached capitalism's record at lifting people out of poverty.

<comment><USER9> Okay, name one country which became rich by unilateral free trade except Hong Kong. I am waiting.

<comment><USER10> Singapore, UAE, Malaysia, Switzerland

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> IMO, this ends at the start:

 _" Elected representatives would formally define and manage an after-the-fact measurement of national welfare."_

Sounds doable, but it's essentially impossible. If you could reliably measure the outcomes of policies (after the fact, nevermind using speculators to predict the future), quite a lot of "rational" decision making methods would be possible.

The problem is that it's not possible.

It's not even possible on a much smaller scale, like a mid-sized company.

<comment><USER4> Just have goals that are easily measured. We can easily measure the relative prices of things in the market.

If your company's goal is to increase the stock price above some target, that is a metric that is easily measured. So we can make futarchy markets to help your company make decisions to achieve your goal.

<comment><USER5> > Just have goals that are easily measured.

If people's actual goals were easily measured, that would be great, but they aren't, and basing a system of government on the idea that you can pretend they are is silly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Let me start by saying Hanson is brilliant and this idea is well worth thinking about as a thought experiment, even if not a serious policy suggestion.

However, there is a profitable manipulation of this mechanism. A manipulator with deep pockets can bet heavily that some policies will have terrible outcomes. These policies are never selected, so the manipulator is never harmed by this misinformation.

I guess Hanson would reply that the rest of the market hopefully has deeper pockets than the manipulator and might be able to make money by correcting the predictions, but that sounds a bit fragile to me. An example research paper on the issue (pdf): [http://yiling.seas.harvard.edu/wp- content/uploads/DM_full_ve...](http://yiling.seas.harvard.edu/wp- content/uploads/DM_full_version.pdf)

<comment><USER4> If we consider a more concrete example, you will see that this attack can't happen.

We can either elect Trump, or not-Trump as president. Everyone agrees that we want the price of beans to be cheaper. So there are 4 possibilities: 1) expensive beans + Trump president 2) expensive beans - Trump 3) cheap beans + Trump 4) cheap beans - <USER2>

An attacker doing what you describe would buy up many shares of (3) and (2). To try and convince us all that if trump wins, beans will be cheap. The attacker will need to keep buying up (3) and (2) to keep them more expensive than the alternatives. So the attacker is betting like $100 for every $50 others are betting.

Assuming the attacker has more money than everyone else who is willing to participate in this market put together, then the attacker could cause us to think that Trump will make beans cheap.

But, there is still the possibility that beans will be expensive, even though Trump won. If that is the case, then the attacker will lose all their money, and will not be able to afford to do attacks like this again.

Attacking a market like this necessarily means paying more for something than it is worth, which necessarily means that on average, you are losing a big chunk of the money that you use for manipulations. And everyone who bets against you, on average they are taking your money.

I wrote futarchy onto the blockchain with Amoveo.

<comment><USER12> Hi, thanks for the response.

Two responses. First, I'm thinking the manipulator has an outside incentive. If trump wins, they get a million dollar kickback. So losing 500k on bets is acceptable to them.

Second, I'm thinking of the following attack that actually loses nothing (if it works). The attacker doesn't bet at all in the market conditioned on trump being elected. She only bets in the other market. But she bets really heavily that beans will be expensive in that case. So we elect Trump. All trades in that other market are cancelled and the attacker gets all her money back. And she isn't even exposed to any risk on the bean price on this timeline, so to speak.

<comment><USER12> Too bad not to get a response from the above poster; I'm not wrong, and I hope my explanation makes sense. The issue is addressed for example in the academic paper I linked to above.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> And what about marginal minorities?

I fantasize about a two-level system, societal and local, which works summarily like this: A societal association only decides about its members and the group it represents. A local association organizes the location it is in charge of. This association has a two-cameral structure: residents and associations that have residents in the location are mandatory members.

Nation states and citizenship are abolished and replaced by membership in this two-level system. All residents are citizens both of the location where they live and of the social group they feel they belong to.

And now, I could imagine that these associations are organized as futarchies.

<comment><USER9> Minorities are already fucked under current "vote values and beliefs" system. "Vote values, but bet beliefs" is a strict improvement, since betting is superior institution to obtain correct beliefs compared to voting.

<comment><USER13> True, true. I completely and heartily agree. Sorry that my post didn't make this clear.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So, literally, whoever pays the most gets the policy they want, _plus_ , if whatever aggregate indicator the legislature sent increases after the policy is adopted (regardless of the actual impact of the particular policy, which can't be isolated) you not only get a full refund of the cost of buying the policy but at least some _extra_ cash, too.

And unless you've magically solved the influence of money on election campaigns, the legislators have an deep interest in setting metrics that favor the policies preferred by the already rich.

(Ignoring that given multiple simultaneous policies and the inability to measure isolated effects the actual payoff of bets is is going to be extremely noisy compared to the actual isolated impacts of the policies.)

So, it looks to me like an unnecessarily complicated version of extreme plutocracy.

<comment><USER14> The difference is that people loose their money if the policy doesn't have the effect they predicted.

<comment><USER5> That's not a difference compared to straight buying policy, since you lose the purchase price unconditionally for that. The difference is that you have a chance of getting a refund of some size for buying the policy, depending on some aggregate welfare measure (but not actually particularly on the specific effect of the policy you bought.)

<comment><USER15> So you're saying futarchy is flawed because the metric measured will be gamed? How is it different from the present system, where legislative power has all the same incentives to only implement laws favouring the wealthy? IMO, futarchy is strictly not worse than the state of art. No one is claiming it's flawless.

<comment><USER5> > So you're saying futarchy is flawed because the metric measured will be > gamed?

No. I'm saying that it is flawed because it introduced additional avenues for the influence of wealth to work (both "legitimately" and corruptly), makes the decisions for which decision-makers are accountable to the public _less_ capable of being effectively overseen and evaluated by the electorate, because the kind of evaluation of policy it calls for is impossible (not merely impractical, though parts of it are that), that any revision to make it possible and practical adds a whole new set of problems (not least is likely to be a strong new incentives for ignoring long-term effects), and that it doesn't even begin to solve any actual, real problem.

> How is it different from the present system

That's kind of addressed above, but even if it wasn't, the idea of futarchy is it is better than the present system, not a layer of complication and indirection which retains the flaws of the present system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Orthogonal to my other top-level comment (and this may not be my last; there's a lot of separate problems puzzled densely into this proposal):

A key thing this relies on is having the elected legislature having the (apparently, sole) function of establishing and maintaining a giant formula that maps every relevant measurable aspect of the material universe into a unidimensional utility score that will be used to judge the success of every policy, and it expects the citizenry to be better able to understand and oversee that than they are with legislators with concrete positions on concrete policies.

That's not really plausible.

</comment><comment><USER4> I wrote this blockchain for futarchy and prediction markets. [https://github.com/zack-bitcoin/amoveo](https://github.com/zack- bitcoin/amoveo)

We use futarchy to make decisions for our own community as well. If you want to learn more about futarchy, or do some experiments on a live futarchy system, then join us on telegram or discord.

</comment><comment><USER16> this idea is bad because some actors can potentially earn more money from the manipulation towards a bad policy than they will lose as a result of that policy being bad.

the whole reason corruption exists is that the punishment and loss potential from corruption is too small compared to the huge benefit that comes from affecting policy makers.

the worst policies will have the highest bets because they will always be a small price compared to the benefits from those policies.

all the companies will vote for obvious bad policies which will reduce their competition to zero, because they can afford to throw that money in the trash to keep their monopolies in place

<comment><USER4> Lets consider a game. A coin will be flipped, and we can bet as much money as we want that either heads or tails will win. You will win $100 if the price in this market stays >75% chance of heads for 7 days continuously.

So you keep buying up shares of heads, moving the price from 50 -> 60 -> 70 -> 80\. by the end you are betting $4 for the chance to win $1.

I know that the result is 50-50, so if I bet $1 against you, and have the chance to win $4, then that means my expected profit of taking this bet is %200. Which makes this one of the best investments available on earth. Which means many people will want to participate.

Every bet you make at the price 80-20 costs you $1, but is only worth $0.40. you are losing 60% of however much money you bet. So if you bet $200, then your expected loss would be $120. which is even bigger than the $100 you could potentially win by manipulating the market.

It doesn't matter if I bribe a manipulator with $100, or with $1 billion. The same logic holds. Having a vested interest in the outcome of a decision does not give you any ability to manipulate us into making that decision.

[http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/biashelp.pdf](http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/biashelp.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> So, who gets to rig the betting markets?

<comment><USER5> > So, who gets to rig the betting markets?

For one, the same people that rig policy today, by the same basic means. Slipping carefully deisgned but innocuous seeming provisions into policy legislation just gets replaced with slipping carefully designed but innocuous factors into the grand utility function that he legislature is maintaining instead of policy legislation.

There's also the people _measuring_ outcomes that become prime corruption targets. Corrupting the official measurement of, say, the unemployment rate has minimal value to anyone _now_ , but if the value is a key input to the grand utility function, and the value on a particular date this influences the settlement of policy contracts someone has a large stake in, it becomes a lot higher value corruption target.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there a such thing as an automation tool? - <AUTHOR> The history of precision in the industrial revolution is rife with machine tools. Machines that make machines. Do we have automation for the process of making automation? I think AutoML is slightly different. Is this question meaningful or "not even wrong" in your opinion? <comment><USER2> It seems like a robot that builds robots would be one example.

Another would be a program that writes programs. There's a word for that: metaprogramming and people do it all the time.

<comment><AUTHOR> More a robot that build robots. I mean like you are running a service and something automagically builds the automation for running that service given a few inputs.</comment></comment>


An Ultimate Hunt Part 2 - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/An-Ultimate-Hunt-Part-2/dp/B007TLI10O/ Download the An Ultimate Hunt Part 2 app now to your Kindle Fire or
other Android devices from the Amazon Appstore for Android. <comment><USER2> You posted this just to get some downloads, didn't you? Perhaps one could call this spamming. A "show HN" would be nice. Also "Play Your Favorite Ultimate Hunt Arcade Game, Play Bird-Duck Hunting Arcade Android Game Online For Kids." is not the most human readable game description I can imagine.

This did point me to the Amazon appstore initiative, shame on me I didn't know about it. Will look into that. Hunting games for kids are not my thing though, sorry.</comment>


Moving Minimesos CI from Jenkins to Travis - <AUTHOR> http://container-solutions.com/moved-ci-jenkins-travis/ <comment><USER2> CI without Jenkins</comment>


Lightsynth the first mobile ADR Adaptive Dynamic Range camera for replacing HDR - <AUTHOR> https://adr.camera <comment><AUTHOR> Lightsynth is the first mobile ADR(Scene-Adaptive Dynamic Range) camera for alternating traditional HDR. It allows having done with all kinds of exposure trouble under tricky lighting situations such as daylight skies, backlit, or low-light. Through this project, we are dreaming for finally changing the way to capture the photography from the manual exposure control to autonomous.

Lightsynth's advanced exposure estimation technology based on intelligent evaluative algorithm will be optimized for the current scene. The camera also supports three weight mode, Balance, Highlight, and Shadow-Weighted metering mode. It means you can select the priority of each area that has different brightness. For example, If a user wants to take best selfies under the bright sun, can choose the "Shadow-Weighted Metering" mode. And the smart autopilot mode allows to automatically capture you or it will suggest the best photographing timing in the difficult situations for taking pictures.

Contact

\- Website - [https://adr.camera](https://adr.camera)

\- Appstore - [https://get.adr.camera](https://get.adr.camera)

\- Presskit - [https://adr.camera/presskit](https://adr.camera/presskit)

\- Original photo files to compare - [https://adr.camera/compare](https://adr.camera/compare)

\- Recently LS has been featured on Product Hunt - [https://www.producthunt.com/posts/lightsynth](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/lightsynth)

\- If you need some redeem codes for a review, please message to us: email@example.com

<comment><USER2> so coool</comment></comment>


The parable of the wiki - <AUTHOR> http://lbrandy.com/blog/2009/04/the-parable-of-the-wiki/

<comment><USER2> Humility: a sign of experience.</comment>


10 Cybersecurity Podcasts You Should Listen to in 2018 - <AUTHOR> https://www.cyberdb.co/10-cybersecurity-podcasts-listen-2018/ <comment><USER2> What about 'Smashing Security' and 'Darknet Diaries' ?</comment>


Migrating stateful containers using native Docker 1.8 Flocker plugin and Compose - <AUTHOR> https://clusterhq.com/2015/08/04/docker-volume-plugins/

<comment><USER2> It's really nice to see ecosystem tools working together in stable Docker. This means that Flocker can stop doing networking and composition and just focus on storage!</comment>


The V2MOM Process: How SalesForce Went From Idea To A Billion Dollar Company - <AUTHOR> http://davidrosendahl.com/2012/12/10/v2mom-planning-making-strategy-tangible/

<comment><AUTHOR> I first found out about V2MOM from a great post called "The #1 Mistake Entrepreneurs Make" by Michael Lazerow (Founder of Buddy Media, which sold to Salesforce for $689m):

[http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130320211727-17...](http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130320211727-1714080-the-1-mistake- entrepreneurs-make)

Here's an interview with Benioff where he talks about the process & shares some insights: [http://www.endeavor.org/blog/marc-benioff- keynote&#x2F](http://www.endeavor.org/blog/marc-benioff-keynote&#x2F);

Hopefully this info might help some of you with your startups, as it did with me.</comment>


Give: the only thing you should be doing - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/b13ab7ae34e9

<comment><AUTHOR> Strong lesson from 2013.</comment>


Santa Maps Dive - <AUTHOR> http://santadive.withgoogle.com/

<comment><USER2> Looks like it's based on [http://mapdive.weareinstrument.com/](http://mapdive.weareinstrument.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Sucks you have to use Chrome for it to work right. Reminds me of the bad old days of "Best viewed in Internet Explorer."

<comment><USER4> Worked just fine in Firefox.

<comment><USER3> I didn't get sound and it ran really slowly in FF 25.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> thought it was cool for what it was

but i was really hoping I would be able to crash into the big christmas tree at the end but instead the cut scene took over

maybe make the last checkpoint a giant house with a chimney that you have to get in otherwise you lose?

</comment><comment><USER6> HOLY SHIT. I'm a non-programmer, so bear with me- is this made entirely in chrome? I remember when I was a kid and I'd have so much fun playing similar games made in Flash... Wow. This is wonderful.

<comment><USER7> >is this made entirely in chrome?

>chrome is a language

Google Chrome is a botnet. Not a programming language. Having it installed on your computer keep Google "in the know" because literally everything you type is key logged and sent to Google HQ.

<comment><USER8> Botnet again? Are you part of the scroogled team or something?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Works fine in Sarfari 7, but only if you change the user agent to Chrome.

</comment><comment><USER10> Is there a way to invert the Y axis? (up -> nose down) This looks like it would be rather fun with a gamepad, as well.

</comment><comment><USER11> The controls are pretty horrible, especially when using the mouse and the cursor leaves the viewport.

<comment><USER12> Concur. But WASD works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It freezes after like 5 seconds for me (buffer cannot be null) with Opera 19 (latest dev).

</comment><comment><USER14> Not working on Linux for me, neither in Firefox 24.0 nor Chrome 30.0.1599.14

<comment><USER15> Works on Linux (Ubuntu 12.04) for me with Intel graphics, Chrome 31.0.1650.63 (current stable). Maybe your card isn't supported by WebGL? Test it: [http://get.webgl.org/](http://get.webgl.org/)

<comment><USER14> Well, duh, yeah, that's it :p I am running my Linux host under Virtual Box and I don't believe I have 3d acceleration enabled, if it would even work if I did. Thanks for pointing that out!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> doesn't appear to work for me, linux chrome Version 31.0.1650.63

<comment><USER17> Works here, same version. Try going to this URL

chrome://gpu/

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Doesn't work unless you have the Chrome botnet installed.

Pls bury this thread, and uninstall Chrome for nightly.

<comment><USER8> Chrome botnet? Really?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> "santadive.withgoogle.com wants to use your computer's location. Allow/Deny"

And that's all I needed to know.

<comment><USER19> If you click "Deny" it will still work; it just uses it so that it can show your neighbourhood in the map underneath you.</comment></comment>


Atlantropa - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantropa <comment><USER3> I was very excited about this project when I was a teenager - another was a "simple" dam just at Marmara/Black sea / Istanbul.

However, as any adult can see the financial impact vastly supersedes the potential benefits.

Besides the obvious impact to the local seaside communities in Southern Europe, you would have to deal with unstable regimes in northern Africa and Turkey and the geopolitical side of things. Wars have been fought for much less important things than land and resources.

Moreover the ecological effects would be impossible to calculate. There are other seemingly less important issues such as immigration.

So, in all, ok - the central planning from a German scientist does get some creativity points, but we are not in Mars, trying to terraform it; we are in a heavily populated part of Earth which has civilisations at its shores for the last 4000 years.

<comment><USER4> Becoming an adult doesn't give you the power to do a cost-benefit analysis for a continent-wide megascale project in your head. You can reject this proposal out of hand for rights-based reasons, but you have no idea whether the costs outweigh the benefits.

<comment><USER3> Ouch!

Unsurprisingly I agree with your first sentence. But, I do disagree on your second: I, and others, can see the costs, and I am not referring solely to the financial costs:

It absolutely means risk of war in the Balkans, Greece/Turkey, N Africa.

Elimination of most of the tourist income on the Med coasts

Endangerment of the biodiversity and ecological balance of the sea

Cause for droughts/flooding seen with other dams [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aswan_Dam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aswan_Dam)

Massive population dislocation in the region of tens of millions

I can go on but the point is what would the benefit need to be to consider this project as net positive?

<comment><USER5> Lots of land and electricity. That is something huge in densely populated europe.

But I also think the costs are bigger.

<comment><USER6> Electricity, sure. Land, no. The reclaimed land will be highly salinated and unusable on top of the climate being very hot and very dry meaning the salinity level will be unlikely to change in the near future.

<comment><USER7> > The reclaimed land will be highly salinated

The dutch I thought have done quite well with lots of land reclaimed from the sea. Why does it work for them, but not here?

<comment><USER8> Dutch plans relied on pumping out those areas, not letting them dry out.

<comment><USER9> How is that relevant with respect to salinity?

<comment><USER8> It's how the Great Salt Lake and the Dead Sea got super salty? The salt doesn't evaporate away with the water, leaving a higher concentration of salt in the remaining water. If it all evaporates away, you wind up with a salt flat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The water wouldn't just disappear though, how much global sea level rise would this cause?

The salt would not evaporate, how much would this affect the salinity of the Med? What would be the impact on wildlife?

Every costal city in the Med would no longer be a costal city. I wonder how the population would feel about that.

The dam across the Gibraltar strait would be the mother of all single points of failure and a breach, through human error, natural disaster, terrorism or war would presumably kill millions if not tens of millions. How would that risk be addressed?

This is just off the top of my head, has there been any serious analysis of these concerns? It would be interesting to read about how they would play out!

<comment><USER11> I doubt it would hypothetically kill many at all. The refilling of a body of water that huge would take days even weeks given the size of the strait. Likely a child could crawl out of the danger zone faster than the water would rise.

<comment><USER12> Xkcd made a comic/animation about this scenario!

[https://xkcd.com/1190/](https://xkcd.com/1190/)

<comment><USER5> That link alone only help insiders ... As it is a static image.

There used to be a player to play it like a movie, I just found this:

[http://geekwagon.net/projects/xkcd1190/mobile/](http://geekwagon.net/projects/xkcd1190/mobile/)

<comment><USER13> The image is a link to that site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but wouldn't shrinking the Mediterranean decrease (possibly a lot) the amount of evapotranspiration, drying out the climate of Southern Europe and North Africa? I can't imagine how any amount of energy and waterfront property justifies this. Drought causes war. As they say, we owe our existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact it rains. I am in favor of rain.

</comment><comment><USER15> What's caused the death of the megaproject in the last 50 years? Even if they weren't realized (and most weren't), all these megaprojects were fascinating exercises in creativity and sheer ambition.

<comment><USER16> Until the 80s we believed that we had unlimited supply of cheap energy. We no longer believe that.

This affected a lot of thinking, planning, and creativity. In the 50s-60s people dreamed of megaprojects. Now we look at a megaproject and go: "well, no. it will take too much effort and power with no tangible benefit".

<comment><USER17> _" Now we look at a megaproject and go: «well, no. it will take too much effort and power with no tangible benefit»."_

My thought about this was that we ceased the rush for bigger and went looking for smarter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Tom Scott has a great video[0] about a similar attempt to dam the San Francisco Bay that got a lot closer to actually happening. So see if it was practical, the US Army Corps of Engineering built a giant scale model of the SF bay and put a dam on it to see what would happen.

[0]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i70wkxmumAw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i70wkxmumAw)

<comment><USER19> Awesome. It looks like the scale model discussed in the video is free to visit at the Bay Model Visitor Center in Sausilito.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Seems like something there should be a 99pi episode about (maybe there is?)...

</comment><comment><USER21> You're effectively turning the entire meditatarian (sp) into a giant solar panel.

The sun evaporating all that water makes way for new water to flow through the dams turbines.

<comment><USER22> "Mediterranean": "Medi" = middle, "terra" = land/earth. It's the sea in the middle of the land.

<comment><USER21> Thanks. Good pnumnomic (sp)!

<comment><USER23> Not sure if joking, but "mnemonic", from Greek _mnēmōn_ "mindful". Then there's "pneumonic" which is something else entirely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The congo-chad canal part of the project could be built independently from the rest [http://www.globalconstructionreview.com/news/italy-china- pon...](http://www.globalconstructionreview.com/news/italy-china- ponder-2400km-canal-save-lake-chad/) [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Chad_replenishment_proj...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Chad_replenishment_project)

</comment><comment><USER25> I... Would not move into a house that depends upon 4 separate dams to not be a death trap.

I have some faith in humanity and engineering, but not that much.

</comment><comment><USER26> Youtube channel RealLifeLore has a video on it [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQh0CPNzSmY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQh0CPNzSmY)

They suggest that the climate change effects would be awful - the evaporated water from the Med would raise global sea levels by ~10 metres, the Med sea floor would be uninhabitable, a salt covered death valley temperature desert. The rain fall in nearby regions like Balkans would ruin them and affect agriculture all over Europe. The coastal cities on the edge of the Med. would become cliff-top cities with their views and trade options ruined.

Plus there isn't enough concrete on the planet to build the damn to do it.

</comment><comment><USER27> As so often, there's a related XKCD, but not of the usual type: _Time_ [1]. It's probably the most ambitious XKCD project so far, with thousands of thoroughly researched panels.[2]

1: [https://xkcd.com/1190/](https://xkcd.com/1190/) and [http://geekwagon.net/projects/xkcd1190/mobile/](http://geekwagon.net/projects/xkcd1190/mobile/)

2: [https://blog.xkcd.com/2013/07/29/1190-time/](https://blog.xkcd.com/2013/07/29/1190-time/)

</comment><comment><USER28> Similar to the Reber plan to get more land in SF by filling in the bay [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reber_Plan](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reber_Plan)

</comment><comment><USER29> > Asia would forever remain a mystery to Europeans, and the British would not > be able to maintain their global empire in the long run—hence a common > European effort to colonise Africa was necessary.

This seems to be an outcome of "Scramble for Africa" to colonize and divide Africa to avoid intra-European wars [0].

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scramble_for_Africa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scramble_for_Africa)

<comment><USER30> Africa was already divided by that time maybe even more divided than it is now.

<comment><USER31> Different meaning of "divide."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Looks like the biggest soft target in the world and destroying the dam would make it possible to wipe out millions upon millions of lives in a single action.

<comment><USER33> The Mediterranean Sea has a surface area of 2.5 million sqkm, while the Strait of Gibraltar is only 14 km wide. If the Med were an Olympic-sized swimming pool, the strait would be hose 4cm in diameter[1]. Even if the dam were built such that the entire structure could be destroyed at once in a terrorist attack, the flooding would be gradual and there would be time for people to evacuate to higher ground.

1\. Assuming 200m elevation difference between the two bodies of water

<comment><USER32> Given these calculations, I guess you're right. The surface area facing the Atlantic with air on other side would be 200m x 14000m which would probably require such a width of concrete to be structurally sound that only the largest payloads would make so much as a relative dent in it.

<comment><USER34> And those payloads (likely nukes or orbital bombardment) could kill far more people by being aimed at a city.

<comment><USER8> Perhaps.

We saw in 9/11, though, that raw death toll really isn't the thing that matters. Having to evacuate hundreds of millions of people from the entire Mediterranean would cost trillions; even a couple million Syrians relocating has caused political upheaval.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Could be wrong, but I first learned of this from watching Amazon's Man in High Castle TV series.

<comment><USER36> It's discussed, but not by name, in the book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Would there be locks on the main dam? A 600 ft drop seems like a lot for a lock to handle.

<comment><USER37> I imagine you go for something more like the Falkirk wheel: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falkirk_Wheel](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falkirk_Wheel)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Yet another progressive Utopia that would result yet again in millions of deaths.

</comment><comment><USER17> Hmm... So we're talking about a dam to close the Black Sea, which is collecting the water of Europe's the biggest two rivers. Where all that cumulated water is supposed to go?

<comment><USER39> The level of the Black Sea is determined by the water flowing in from the Mediterranean through the Dardanelles and the Bosporus which replaces the evaporated water. A few rivers do not make much of a difference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> As a software developer, this looks to me like multiple single points of failure, thus a very bad idea -- if any of the dams fails, all development on reclaimed land will be flooded.

</comment><comment><USER41> Bad idea for a geoengineering project (due to the potential for harm at scale), great idea for a simulation game about geoengineering.

</comment><comment><USER42> Well, you wouldn't have to worry about Venice flooding...it'd be a couple of hundred miles from the sea.

<comment><USER43> Part of the plan was to connect Venice to the remaining Mediterranean via a canal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Good idea.

</comment><comment><USER30> The author seems to have assumed that Europe will be a united country which is a major oversight. Even if the UK lost its empire it didn't loose its desire to be "great again". France and Italy seem to lean on the same side.

<comment><USER45> I don't know, that could go (for France at least, but prob Italy as well ?) in one or two generation. A growing number of kids feel European and feel that being part of Europe is great enough (esp. compared to the US and China, national pride is still here of course, just shifted).

EDIT: more and more kids -> a growing number of kids

<comment><USER46> What about eastern EU?

<comment><USER47> Support for EU is very high there. There are some voices, usually with nationalistic tendencies crying about te loss of sovereignty to the "new evil union", but they are mostly ignored.

<comment><USER46> Coming from that part, I wouldn't say that. Definitely nothing about "feeling European".

<comment><USER48> That's sad. Why not?

<comment><USER49> What does "feeling European" even means?

Eastern EU doesn't have many reasons to be optimistic: the top 5 positions on the top are taken by Westerners after recent elections (German, Belgian, Dutch / German - each for 2,5 year, Spanish, French); out of all European institutions, only one is headquartered in the east (GNSS - Galileo - <USER2> Prague). Etc, etc.

<comment><USER50> Yes but this is in a huge part self-inflicted; with thugs like Orban, Kaczynski, Babis and their idea of the EU as a source of money without any conditions attached and their destructive behavior towards institutions both national and supra-national, it's little wonder they could not get their people to the top posts.

Babis even explicitly said they could find anyone to suggest for the top posts and Kaczynski's party tried to sabotage Tusk at every possible turn in the last term.

Point is, many people in their countries feel very differently to the leaders about the EU. Many work and marry abroad, there are lots of people from other EU-countries in eastern Europe etc. We are indeed growing together even if it doesn look like it on the surface.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Scientists Claim New State of Matter Created - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20090729/sc_livescience/scientistsclaimnewstateofmattercreated <comment><USER2> Earlier Hacker News thread on same press release:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=727824></comment>


Think About Your Scope of Influence on Twitter or LinkedIn - <AUTHOR> http://blog.tippingpointlabs.com/2009/02/think-about-your-scope-of-influence-on-twitter-or-linkedin/ Scope of Influence matters when you're choosing your friends, followers and connections. <comment><USER2> I find myself engaging and disengaging from various services and individuals on social media. I think that's fine.

There are people who I'll talk with intensely on Twitter for a few hours... I'll talk with somebody else intensely the week after that.

The circle of people that I engage with a certain day will be small, but the circle gets wider the longer time scale that you look at it.

There are times I put a lot of energy into Flickr, there times when I'm doing something else. I like services like FriendFeed and the Twitter Facebook Application that bring these things together.</comment>