AI Will Not Be Taking Away Code Jobs Anytime Soon - <AUTHOR> https://www.nextplatform.com/2018/02/05/ai-will-not-taking-away-code-jobs-anytime-soon/ <comment><USER2> Funny how, in computing, every new idea is almost always a reiteration of an old one.

One of the arguments for John Backus to create Fortran was to allow non- programmers (of Assembly language) to program. In some sense he succeeded, it allowed a lot of scientists unwilling to understand registers, stack and heaps to program computers. Then Grace Hopper did the same with Cobol for business people. In the end they didn't extinguish the job of a programmer, they just enabled people that thought in higher levels of abstraction to program computers.

This is what Wordpress/Joomla did for HTML coders, what super-optimized C and C++ compilers did for machine-level coding, what Sharepoint is doing for intranet builders, etc. We are constantly moving to higher levels of abstraction and solving more problems but it only increases the need for people skilled with basic notions of programming.

<comment><USER3> Turing reportedly believed that programming would require "a great number of mathematicians of ability".

I think if you want to find a trend in computing, it's the same as the progression in other industries. Tooling replaces raw ability, technique replaces skill, and jobs requiring skills are slowly replaced by jobs that don't require skills.

Consider Go, for instance. There's no doubt that the opinionated, overly- controlling compiler, absolute minimalism, and conventional structure of the language is designed so that a mediocre programmer can produce passable code. A good programmer doesn't really need gofmt, or a compiler that tells them off for not properly commenting their code. Good programmers don't tend to abuse generics or lambdas or all the other things Go doesn't have.

So what it does, compared to C++, or even Java, is allows you to employ less experienced, less skilled programmers, and equally, to expect them to actually be productive, and not to produce morasses of unreadable gibberish.

Don't get me wrong - I like Go. But if C was the only language in town, there's no doubt you'd need more programmers, they'd have to be better trained, and their job security and compensation would be better.

<comment><USER4> > designed so that a mediocre programmer can produce passable code

That's a little unfair, if accurate. Even the best of us are mediocre programmers when fixing a bug in the middle of the night or diving into a new code base.

You might as well say (and some do) that Haskell is for mediocre programmers because good programmers don't make type mistakes.

> a compiler that tells them off for not properly commenting their code

Are you still talking about go and if so would you mind sending a link because as someone who has written it professionally since pre-go1.0 and contributed multiple changes to the go repo I haven't the faintest idea what you are talking about.

<comment><USER3> I'm actually kind of embarassed by how innacurate my post was, but I can't edit it with corrections.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is silly. We already have automatic code generation tools. We have for decades. They are called compilers, interpreters, standard libraries. These do not reduce the need for programmers. No AI can decide _what_ to build nor can they solve pragmatic tradeoffs between competing goals that real programmers have to deal with all the time. Some human has to be making the decisions about what the computer is going to do. And they'll need a means by which to inform the computer what it is to be doing. And that means is what we now call a programming language. Smarter compilers, code analysis tools, or library finders aren't going to remove the need to define the specification.

Anyway, it's not like there's a limited amount of programming to be done, and if we could only be more productive, we'd finish it all up sooner and go to the lake. No, the demand for more and better software will only increase to consume any productivity increases we achieve. Think about the software you use every day. Could it be made better? Of course! Most of it is terrible. There's an infinite amount of work to be done.

<comment><USER6> > No AI can decide _what_ to build

Honestly, programmers don't decide either. We build what we are told to build.

> Could it be made better? Of course! Most of it is terrible. There's an > infinite amount of work to be done.

Of course, if our objective it to achieve perfection, then there will always be more things to do because we can never achieve perfection. But most of the time "good enough" is good enough.

But I agree with that AI won't be taking programming jobs anytime soon. But AI will certainly put pressure on the number of jobs and wages. As you said, "smart" compilers, debuggers, code analyzer, etc helps increase productivity. But sooner or later, it will eventually hit demand for programmers.

We are living in the golden age of tech. So it's hard to imagine it ever stopping. I think the biggest concern is the wages and prospects. As more and more people get into programming and as the profession gets more and more productive ( AI, tools ), it's inevitable that wages will stall and decline. Hopefully, just not in my lifetime.

<comment><USER7> Judging by how impacted CS programs are at colleges, and how hard working the interns I have been seeing come through my company lately, wages may be stalling sooner than you think.

Like many other skilled occupations in this country the future is probably going to be very highly paid elite workers and masses of low paid people who are just "good". Kind of inevitable in a capitalist society where human labor is losing its value.

<comment><USER8> A massive increase in programming labor physically won't fit in the Bay Area's housing stock, and the industry already could have slashed costs anytime it wanted by hiring in the Midwest and South.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I personally believe we will see artificial general intelligence demos in 2018 or 2019. They will be general but not initially have anywhere near the same level of capacity as animals or humans so people may deny they are intelligent. But by 2020 or 2021 most will not deny it. Within a few years of training, high level tasks like human equivalent AI programmers will be possible.

This is speculation obviously. Let me try to explain why I think it is so close.

The limitations and problems of neural networks, deep learning, etc. for creating AGI have been well documented. However, for each of these problems, there are successful projects addressing them. Things like capsule networks (Hinton), distributed training on shared experience (Deep Mind), fast online learning with time-based animal-like networks (Ogma).

At the same time, the advanced neural network researchers have become familiar with the existing body of AGI work. They are building their networks into virtually embodied or real-bodied robots that have fully general inputs and outputs and training them in varied environments.

Some generality has already been demonstrated. Based on the progress made so far it seems likely abstraction, depth of cognitive ability etc. will be increased as there are more innovations and integration of existing ones.

The reason the timeframe is relatively short is because of the exciting progress so far, the number of actual geniuses working on it, massive investments, improvements in hardware, and social expectation. The world now believes again this is possible which means there is an explosion of people working on it and ultimately those are two of the biggest factors pushing this into reality.

If tools are not released by researchers within a few years then I expect someone to release a tool or game online or on Steam etc. with powerful built- in AGI.

</comment><comment><USER10> AI won't make coders unemployed. It will simply create a new type of job, like tensor flow programmers. This is same as C++ programmers who some way generate assembly code by using a tool called compiler.

<comment><USER11> The first iteration, maybe not. But the end goal for a general AI is to have it close over - i.e. have an AI capable of programming itself. At this point you enter the realm of recursive self-improvement, with no humans necessary in the loop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think it depends. If pointy/clickie programming I think this type well be the first to go to AI since all you are doing is linking blocks together. If programming that is only done using a text editor, I think it will be a while.

</comment><comment><USER13> Fact is though that instead of coding up an object detector, the machine is doing it now. This job is now being controlled by ML personnel, not (yet) your standard programmer. What is left is glue code and architecture, at least for some time.

</comment><comment><USER14> No, but combine cloud APIs, AI, and market consolidation and you will indeed see a reduction in the demand for code. I write much less code than I did ten years ago. I spend more time integrating others' code now than I do writing my own.

In ten years most industrial coders will probably be down to a hundred or so lines of new production code a year...it will be the DATA arcitects who are calling the architecture shots as it becomes clear that data architecture trmps code architecture

<comment><USER15> I don't believe this to be true. We've seen quite a few technologies, which promised to "let anyone code", without any real success, whereas to "let AI code" is even harder than letting your boss. At the very least, I expect we'd need another 2 or 3 major, paradigm-shifting, breakthroughs to get computers sophisticated enough to program themselves, which is still 50-60 years away.

I mean, that's my gut feeling; we'll see how it plays out, but for now I'm still not really worried about my job disappearing.

<comment><USER16> I think that we can do a lot more with a lot less programmer hours today. React native is a good example. We have just finished rebuilding our app with maybe one third the time and cost of our two native apps.

This is of course offset by the overall huge growth in demand for all kinds of software. But if that demand curve ever flattens out, then I think we could definitely see a reduction in the need for programmers.

<comment><USER17> This exactly. I always think of this xkcd comic

[https://xkcd.com/1205/](https://xkcd.com/1205/)

If AI makes all those targets achievable, the number of projects which will get wired up will be astronomical - but finite.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Do You Like MobileMe For Free? - <AUTHOR> http://sanziro.com/2010/05/how-do-you-like-mobileme-for-free.html

<comment><USER3> I would rather it just cost less as opposed to entirely free. If there were a paid alternative to GMail, I would move away from that too.

Paying for something reduces the likelihood that the provider will do unscrupulous things with my data for financial gain. Or at least I _feel_ like they'd be less likely. And ignorance is bliss, right?

<comment><USER4> I dunno, I pay for extra storage on GMail (and the rest of Google's services) and I don't think it removes the ads. It's just extra storage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have wondered if this was in the cards for a while now. I have had trouble reconciling it with a few things though. On one hand, from a competition standpoint, there is an argument to be made that google is providing free cloud-based sync for all users. Therefore, Apple needs to be competitive with them. However, Apple rarely (never?) releases products as loss leaders. They are always interested in breaking even or (ideally) extracting a small amount of revenue from every offering. I can't see them generating sufficient revenue using advertising, but perhaps iAd would be one way to do it.

On the other hand, the cost of hosting email, calendars, address book sync, etc... is fairly small. I could see a dropbox-like scenario where you get a small amount of free storage (plenty for contacts, calendars, and recent email). Then you pay for additional storage and/or access to premium streaming content. That offering could be built into the purchase price of most Apple gear without a dramatic price increase.

<comment><USER6> >Apple rarely (never?) releases products as loss leaders

Ever heard of the iTunes music store? Minimally profitable and repeatedly referred to as a driver for iPod/iWhatever sales rather than a profit center. Without the iPhone's popularity, the same concept would apply to the App Store as well. When announced, it was directly compared to the music operation, and not expected to make any measurable impact on the bottom line.

This analysis (though obviously flawed by Apple's own sales data release policies) largely backs up these statements: [http://seekingalpha.com/instablog/255967-timeline- strategy-c...](http://seekingalpha.com/instablog/255967-timeline-strategy- consulting/1234-how-much-profit-is-apple-making-from-the-app-store)

<comment><USER5> >Ever heard of the iTunes music store?

That was the whole point of my post. Lots of companies would be tempted to operate something like the iTunes music store at a loss, since it would be seen as driving sales (a marketing expense if you will). For example: Amazon has is known to sell a significant number of ebooks at a loss to keep prices low to drive Kindle sales.

My understanding from everything I have read is that Apple at least breaks even, and may make a small amount of revenue. They do _not_ lose any money on the iTunes store. If there is going to be a free component to MobileMe, they are going to try and generate profits from it somehow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How would you like an already painfully slow service to be even slower? The rumor that this is based on has no credibility.

And even if it were free, I'd still avoid it like the plague, because there are better offering's out there, most of which aren't mostly tied down to an OS.

This is unlikely to happen, unless Apple becomes a mobile service provider which is likely a bigger possibility.

</comment><comment><USER8> How will it be any different from the other providers ?

That would be the key, being free is not really a differentiator any more.

<comment><USER9> Provided it retains improved integration with OSX, I think it'd be sufficiently different.

Having iDisk to provide net storage to iPhone OS devices would be a fairly big deal by itself. (Assuming they include over-the-air backup and fix the workflow issue.)

<comment><USER8> "Assuming they include over-the-air backup and fix the workflow issue" - <USER2> why rsync wins.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I would want/need the option of using it with a custom domain for it to be relevant for me.</comment>


Charlie Brooker Is Right Again. 'Black Mirror – Be Right Back' Made Reality - <AUTHOR> http://eterni.me/index.html

<comment><USER2> Maybe just accept your inevitable oblivion, go quietly into the night and let history make of you what it will?</comment>


Russian secret service can tap into skype calls and chats - <AUTHOR> http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?act=url&depth=1&hl=en&ie=UTF8&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.com.hk&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http://www.vedomosti.ru/politics/news/10030771/skype_proslushivayut&usg=ALkJrhjc9LfU0eUkG5vZQ06Igb4SI3qwrQ

<comment><USER2> I read the article as stating that Microsoft provide national security services with the ability to tap Skype in different ways. It's not that the Russians have figured some special hack out as I naturally inferred from the HN submission title.</comment>


Show HN: Delighters.js – Add CSS animations to delight users as they scroll - <AUTHOR> https://q42.github.io/delighters/ <comment><USER2> This is great - will definitely be using it. Thank you!

</comment><comment><USER3> Kudos for making it. On UX side, this is exactlly what is bouncing me off the page...

Please, don't use this :-)

<comment><USER4> 100% agree. Elements were barely rendering in as I scrolled down or I had to sit and wait for them to load in.

These kinds of things are fun to hack together but they really are annoying to have around as a user.</comment></comment>


History of the Plan 9 kernel (1990 – 2003) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/0intro/9hist <comment><USER2> Pretty interesting. They use _nil_ pointers everywhere, but also mention a NULL pointer:

        pc/ether82557.c:        NullPointer     = 0xFFFFFFFF,   /* 82557 NULL pointer */

Or qget():

        /*
         *  get next block from a queue, return null if nothing there
         */

            if(b == nil){
                    q->state |= Qstarve;
                    iunlock(q);
                    return nil;
            }

So null and nil pointers.

It was always interesting to me; there were null-terminated strings and null- bytes [0], but _nil_ pointers. And then, occasionally, null and NULL pointers.

[0] [https://www.unix.com/man-page/plan9/2/strcat/](https://www.unix.com/man- page/plan9/2/strcat/)

-ss

<comment><USER3> The all-ones Null Pointer are part of the software interface of the 82557 ethernet controller.

[https://www.intel.com/content/dam/doc/manual/8255x-10-100-mb...](https://www.intel.com/content/dam/doc/manual/8255x-10-100-mbps- ethernet-controller-software-dev-manual.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very cool. I've been meaning to convert 9hist to some version control system too for some time but never got around to it. Glad somebody else did.</comment>


Ask HN: Are there any good guides on making a Git clone? - <AUTHOR> Hello all,
For some time I've been interested in making my own version control system, essentially a Git clone with all core features implemented. Why would I want to do this? Because learning is good and I'd be interested to discover more of Git's architecture, by building my own.
I've read various good articles about the basic nature of Git "under-the-hood" and how it stores files. But I haven't found anything that really looks at where you could start to build your own VCS and how to go about it.
I'm in the planning stages of doing this as a summer side project in the next few months, probably using Python. It'd be interesting to hear from anyone who's done similar, or found usable tutorials on how you could go about making some kind of usable Git clone.
Ilmiont <comment><USER2> I don't think you can do any better than to look at Mary Rose Cook's blog posts and heavily annotated Git implementation in JavaScript

[https://maryrosecook.com/blog/post/git-from-the-inside- out](https://maryrosecook.com/blog/post/git-from-the-inside-out)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for this - hadn't found it before. Will take a look through it all later, looks as though there'll be lots of value.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Read the GIT source code (or one of the reimplementations if they're easier to read). This will be just as educational, perhaps more, as writing your own from first principles.</comment>


Mozilla Internship Reflections - <AUTHOR> http://coreyford.name/2013/09/16/mozilla.html <comment><USER2> What's the best way to approach Mozilla about getting involved in a project? I'm an undergrad that's interested in getting some more experience contributing to projects, but not necessarily looking for a full-time internship. I spend time on their IRC, but only #rust.

<comment><USER3> You don't need to ask permission to get involved. _Everything_ is open source, just write a patch. [0] There's also more ways to contribute than just writing code. [1] Check out some more of our IRC channels. [2] Just don't be afraid to get started, everyone was a noob at some point. The rust team does a great job as marking bugs beginner or easy in their issue tracker.

Also, you're handle made me do a double take! [3]

[0] [http://www.whatcanidoformozilla.org/](http://www.whatcanidoformozilla.org/)

[1] [http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/contribute/](http://www.mozilla.org/en- US/contribute/)

[2] [https://wiki.mozilla.org/IRC](https://wiki.mozilla.org/IRC)

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

<comment><USER4> I thought about working for Mozilla, too.

Is this the normal process? First doing some OSS stuff for them and then applying for a job?

They sound like a good company, but they probably only employ the best...

<comment><USER5> I work at Mozilla. Having contributed to a FOSS project is not a requirement, although it's a big bonus – note that any FOSS project is taken into consideration, not just Mozilla stuff.

Now, if you want to come and do some FOSS with us, you're welcome :) [http://client00.chat.mibbit.com/?server=irc.mozilla.org&chan...](http://client00.chat.mibbit.com/?server=irc.mozilla.org&channel=%23introduction&nick=k___))

<comment><USER4> Ah, I read some of your stuff in the bugtracker/project directory(?)

I found the whole thing interesting, but a bit intimidating, because I never did FOSS stuff, code reviews etc. are all new to me.

But it's probably a good thing for improving skills.

Thank you for the link. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like MV more than SF office. I did the same thing: there is a constant pressure that I can't always bother people because people might say "it's on the wiki". It's still a hard decision to make.

More Mozilla intern blog posts should come... let's bomb HN.

</comment><comment><USER7> > Documentation is often not the best way to understand code.

I hope they teach that in college now. As much code as possible should be self-documenting. It can be short and/or efficient (one-liners ok), but it should be clear to someone with experience, so have good method names, variable names, decent formatting, organization, etc.

It took me about 8 years of professional coding experience before I truly appreciated this, so hammering it in in college is key.

<comment><USER8> The line that has always stuck with me is that code should aptly explain how and comments should aptly explain why.</comment></comment>


A Quick Tour of the HP-9000 712/100 NeXTSTEP Workstation (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://bytecellar.com/2016/03/02/a-quick-tour-of-the-hp-9000-712100-nextstep-workstation/ <comment><USER2> Jobs' decision to ship NeXT on 68k at the very moment when the architecture fell behind basically crippled the platform. Superscalar pipelined architectures were taking off, and where Intel managed to catch up with the Pentium and pull ahead with the P6 and derivatives, Motorla just never got it done. So while the NeXT was adequate (if somewhat slow) in 1988 by 1993 (when Intel released the Pentium, meaning that the whole industry was now expecting >1 IPS performance) it was kind of a joke.

While SPARC was proprietary (and PA and POWER were still in the future) MIPS was actually shipping chips at the time for general sale. Why NeXT didn't go with them I don't know.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure a different architecture would have mattered much. NeXT was trying to launch a Unix workstation right at the twilight of the age of Unix workstations. They got clobbered using 68K, but then at around the same time Sun got clobbered using SPARC, DEC and Compaq got clobbered using Alpha, etc.

Intel and Microsoft were busy eating the world, and one of the things that got gobbled up was the market segment NeXT was hoping to sell into.

<comment><USER4> I always wonder what personal computing might have been like had DEC not so greatly feared cannibalizing their mini/mainframe business. By the time they realized their mistake, it was already way too late. If Digital had played its cards differently, x86 might have been just a footnote.

I found it very ironic that the biggest market for PDP-11-compatible micros was one not actually open to DEC: the Soviet Union.

<comment><USER5> Soviet Union even made pocket computers that were electronically (not just software!) compatible with PDP-11 peripherals, if you dared to open the case and solder a connection.

There are also rumours that around 1980, there was a design at Digital that could have led to a PDP-10 workstation, but Digital wanted to kill PDP-10.

<comment><USER6> It wasn't a rumor, it was the KT20 "Minnow". It was a workstation sans display. Given the memory addressing limits there were reasons why it was stillborn.

<comment><USER5> I assume Minnow didn't use Model B addressing, then? My understanding was that _Minnow_ was important step towards miniaturization of the PDP-10 line, in tandem with _Jupiter_ (IIRC?) which spearheaded high cpu speed initiative...

<comment><USER6> Apparently I'm wrong about the address limits but it's running on a really narrow microarchitecture with very limited (probably deliberately) performance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> article explaining the 'Color Recovery' DSP used [https://www.hpl.hp.com/hpjournal/95apr/apr95a6.pdf](https://www.hpl.hp.com/hpjournal/95apr/apr95a6.pdf)

<comment><USER8> 3DFX used similar trick in Voodoo 3D accelerators, 24bit graphics dithered into 16bit framebuffer producing what they called "22-bit" image quality using 2x2/4x4 ordered mask

[https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=36548](https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=36548)

It was very close to Nvidia 32bit color quality while sustaining/beating Nvidia 16bit speeds, until Nvidia released GeForce card and killed competition.

<comment><USER9> Based on your link (details at the bottom) it's not the same thing at all as far as I can tell. The Color Recovery buffers a scanline and does a simple edge aware filtering on a 2x16 block, for every pixel. The Voodoo 2 doesn't appear to have a buffer. Also, the HP solution takes 8 to ~ 22 bit, a harder problem.

<comment><USER8> Similar. Voodoo does color recovery on chip, not in external DSP/RAMDAC, you dont need a line buffer then you have whole framebuffer in ram.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> at-fates-hands As someone pointed out in the comments, Jobs seemed to have a fascination with HP. Can anybody expound on why he had this fascination with HP and their hardware?

<comment><USER10> HP was _the_ top-shelf electrical engineering instrument company. Every top- tier lab would have HP equipment. Aspiring computer-makers wouldn't be able to afford it and would lust after it from a distance. This probably includes young Steve Jobs.

HP built plotters and printers because their customers wanted hardcopies of what they saw on their instrument screens. They built computers to control the instruments and calculators to assist engineers with calculations. Then, for some reason, the computers and printers started selling even better than the instruments. HP, which still thought of themselves as an instrumentation company, didn't catch on quickly or aggressively enough to capitalize, so their computers and printers did not keep pace and became... other than undisputably first tier. Eventually they span off the first-tier instrumentation company as Agilent (bio + EE) which in turn eventually span off Keysight (EE).

Electrical Engineers are still salty that the mediocre printer company got to keep the HP name while the best-in-class instrumentation company that still commands respect to this very day had to rebrand as "Keysight."

<comment><USER11> When I was in college, studying EE, we had HP oscilloscopes and digital logic analyzers. I can't remember for sure, but I think it was the logic analyzers that had an easter egg that if you held down a specific set of buttons while powering on, you could play Tetris on it. I also remember the oscilloscope being so sensitive, that without any leads connected, it could detect the signal of someone walking by it.

<comment><USER10> Yep! Their legacy continues today. Here's HP (sorry, I mean Agilent, sorry, I mean Keysight) dropping a 110GHz real-time oscilloscope:

[https://youtu.be/dB5rg_TqmD8?t=32](https://youtu.be/dB5rg_TqmD8?t=32)

I'd like to think that if Bill and Dave (Hewlett and Packard) were still alive they could still take pride in their T&M legacy, even though it's the DRM- hobbled one-quarter-full printer ink cartridges that wound up with their names on the front.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> 0-_-0 I was just reading about DOOM's history, and it was developed on a NEXT machine which id software used at the time. A free book on the subject which I highly recommend:

[https://fabiensanglard.net/gebbdoom/index.html](https://fabiensanglard.net/gebbdoom/index.html)</comment>


TwIMDb - Displays Twitter usernames next to the cast and crew names on IMDb. - <AUTHOR> http://blog.matthewfong.net/2010/11/15/twimdb/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is my first post on Hacker News...it's a couple browser extensions I made this past weekend at WePay and DailyBooth's Hackathon.</comment>


Human-animal hybrids to be developed in Japan after ban controversially lifted - <AUTHOR> https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/human-animal-hybrid-japan-stem-cell-research-tokyo-genes-a9027131.html <comment><USER2> They seem to address the question of at what point animals become part human and what that entails ethically but what about the reverse? Do we ethically become any less human when we have animal parts?</comment>


How Our WordPress Plugin Reached 10 000 Downloads in 3 Months - <AUTHOR> http://www.wysija.com/how-our-plugin-reached-10-000-downloads-in-3-months/

<comment><USER2> This is different than MailChimp, since it's fully integrated within wordpress. It's fun to use! Drag > drop > send!

<comment><USER3> I'm assuming you're replying to my post above.

I was hoping for a more in-dept description of how this plugin differs from MailChimp.

I'll just take it for a spin and see for myself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I use MailChimp's Wordpress plugin. Its integration is a little rough around the edges I think. Does anyone have any experience with this new plugin?</comment>


IBM working on Watson app for smartphones - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/computing/135173-ibm-working-on-watson-app-for-smartphones

<comment><USER2> Does anyone know what it is about the Watson algorithm that requires a super computer? Sure they say it's searching billions of documents, but I'd be happy with a scaled down version that just searches Wikipedia.

If it doesn't have to win at Jeopardy couldn't they make a good enough version running on something more quotidian?

<comment><USER3> If you just want to search wikipedia, why use Watson?

<comment><USER2> Because I want to search wikipedia using natural language.

<comment><USER3> It looks like the most popular (or maybe just hyped) NL search engines for wikipedia are now down, PowerSet and AskMeNow. This one still works <http://host.expertsystem.it/wiki/Default.aspx> but it's a little slow.

To answer your first question: Watson doesn't just search, it tries to understand all the information. It runs several hundred different algorithms in parallel and then weighs each of them for relevance. That said, you could get away much less hardware. For example, during the game the entire database was held in 16 TB of RAM because disk accesses were considered too slow. It had to beat Jeopardy champions in 3 seconds or less.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Disoriented, Man With ID Is Still a Puzzle  - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/22/nyregion/disoriented-man-with-id-is-still-a-puzzle.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimes

<comment><USER2> For those interested in this sort of "puzzle", the story of Benjamin Kyle is fascinating: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjaman_Kyle](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjaman_Kyle)

<comment><USER3> He gave a high-profile Q&A with Reddit this year:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/13rs46/i_am_benjaman_k...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/13rs46/i_am_benjaman_kyle_an_amnesiac_who_woke_up_with/)

One thing not mentioned in wikipedia is that he made a White House petition to replace his Social Security Number, which failed with somewhere over 7,500 signatures (but not enough). Kafkaesque.

[https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/grant-benjaman- kyl...](https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/grant-benjaman-kyle-new- social-security-number/m9tgKh14)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So we are assuming he was Mexican, moved to the US either staying at that address years ago or using it as a home address for records but not staying there. Worked as a travelling worker, somehow lost memory and either got lost or was abandoned by a group of others?

</comment><comment> 97-109-107 It's interesting to see how stories like these emerge during times of surveillance and tracking scare. I'm not trying to suggest dishonesty or paranoia anywhere, just pointing out how intriguing the dynamics of media stories are.

</comment><comment><USER5> The human mind is quite a puzzle itself.

</comment><comment><USER6> "Man With ID," huh? More like "Illegal Immigrant With Fake ID." No wonder nobody knows him.

<comment><USER7> The article mentioned that they found his old house in Mexico using his Mexican ID, and that the family had since moved away (likely to the US).

If it was a fake ID, that wouldn't make sense. (And why would an immigrant carry fake _foreign_ ID anyway?)</comment></comment>


(World's largest)Constitution of India now on Git. With all its 99 Amendments - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/anoopdixith/TheConstitutionOfIndia/tree/dates

<comment><AUTHOR> Details of the work here: [http://anoopdixith.com/constitution/](http://anoopdixith.com/constitution/)</comment>


After Five Years, Draw Something Is an Overnight Hit for OMGPOP. Now What? - <AUTHOR> http://allthingsd.com/20120229/after-5-years-draw-something-is-an-overnight-hit-for-omgpop-now-what/

<comment> mike-cardwell "We started making too many calls to S3, and almost took down one of their data centers. They throttled us and it took us a while to figure out what was going on; for a while our numbers cratered as users could not connect. We had to move completely off of Amazon and host everything ourselves."

Isn't this the exact scenario that people use the "cloud" for? Scaling up massively and quickly?

<comment><USER2> Uh yeah, I was thinking exactly the same thing, isn't that _entirely_ the point of S3 that no matter what you throw at it, it just keeps working?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You must try the similar web app here <http://motyar.info/draw> You can convert that to iPhone app using phonegap if someone interested.

</comment><comment><USER4> I play Charadium - if you're interested in this genre I suggest taking a look at it. Plus there's no IAP, which in my mind is a plus.

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't know if this is already common knowledge to everyone here, but this is a YC co, from the second class, which was in Cambridge.

<comment><USER6> Indeed. Some may know them better from those days as iminlikewithyou.</comment></comment>


Japanese study uncovers protein that keeps skin youthful - <AUTHOR> https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/04/04/national/science-health/japanese-study-uncovers-protein-keeps-skin-youthful-helping-strong-cells-squeeze-weak/ <comment><USER3> The (original articles) title is a bit misleading. They only verified the importance of a specific protein and then found compounds that for mice helped the boost protein production in mice, they still need a lot more research to find something that would help human skin look youthful.

<comment><USER4> That makes it sound like it's still only theory that it would benefit mice. But they actually tried it:

> They isolated two chemical compounds — Y27632 and apocynin — and tested both > on skin cells, with positive results. "Application of these drugs to full- > thickness skin wounds significantly promoted wound repair," the study said.

<comment><USER5> What a time to be a mouse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There is SERIOUS money to be made in the beauty market. I do not succumb, but the majority of my girlfriends purchase a large variety of face products at the cost of hundreds per year. Many of the products are unscientific (and fortunately don't do any harm) but abound with rejuvenation property claims. A product that might actually work? Wow.

<comment><USER7> > "Many of the products are unscientific (and fortunately don't do any harm) > but abound with rejuvenation property claims."

For example: it's amazing to me how many facial products such as face masks contain collagen.

Do people think that your body just takes collagen from your epidermis and adds it to your skin?

<comment><USER8> Most people don't think that much. They see the ad, see the brand and maybe check validation with their girlfriends.

<comment><USER7> sure, but it's not just skin products. The Paleo/Keto/Bulletproof movement is gung-ho on the supposed miracle that is bone broth. From claims that collagen in the diet equals collagen in the body to unique/magical properties of whatever they think it contains are rampant. Drinks, protein powders, supplements - it's everywhere. Just like eating a lot of protein doesn't make you ripped, I would think more people would understand that even though the saying is "you are what you eat", it's not LITERAL.

<comment><USER9> It is literal. Everything you are made out of is something you have eaten

That doesn't mean that eating muscles makes you muscular though obvs (any more than eating mussels makes you mussel-ar)

<comment><USER7> > "That doesn't mean that eating muscles makes you muscular though obvs (any > more than eating mussels makes you mussel-ar)"

Yea that's what I meant by literal, as in you aren't a pig if you eat pigs, you aren't muscular if you eat muscle. You are made up of the building blocks of the thing you ate, but that does not make you the thing itself.

Maybe literal wasn't the right word? Anyways, doesn't really matter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Link to paper: [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332186913_Stem_cell...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332186913_Stem_cell_competition_orchestrates_skin_homeostasis_and_ageing)

</comment><comment><USER11> "We are working on other epithelial organs as well to find out (whether) similar competition may underlie long-term tissue maintenance as well as organ aging," she said." Wonder if this will be benificial to live-expectancy in the long run.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, this sounds more like a starting point to general regeneration than just looking youthful:

> _"Application of these drugs to full-thickness skin wounds significantly > promoted wound repair," the study said._

I guess scars might be a thing of the past in a generation or two as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder how this protein can affect tissue with cancer cells.

</comment><comment><USER14> So - "They isolated two chemical compounds — Y27632 and apocynin — and tested both on skin cells, with positive results."

Search for Apocynin first...

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

"Apocynin was first described by Oswald Schmiedeberg, a German pharmacologist, in 1883 and was first isolated by Horace Finnemore,[1] in 1908, from the root of Canadian hemp (Apocynum cannabinum).[2] At the time, this plant was already used for its known effectiveness against edema and heart problems."

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

"Apocynum cannabinum (dogbane, amy root, hemp dogbane, prairie dogbane, Indian hemp, rheumatism root, or wild cotton)[2] is a perennial herbaceous plant that grows throughout much of North America - in the southern half of Canada and throughout the United States.[1][3] It is a poisonous plant: Apocynum means "poisonous to dogs". All parts of the plant are poisonous and can cause cardiac arrest if ingested."

...

"Apocynum cannabinum was much employed by various Native American tribes who used it to treat a wide variety of complaints including rheumatism, coughs, pox, whooping cough, asthma, internal parasites, diarrhoea and also to increase milk flow in lactating mothers.[6] The root has been used as a tonic, cardiotonic, diaphoretic, diuretic, emetic (induces vomitting) and expectorant.[9][6] It is harvested in the autumn and dried for later use. The fresh root is the most active part medicinally."

And it seems to be one of the medicinal plants that the north American locals have known about long before Europeans rocked up.

Then if I search for Y27632, I get stuff like;

[https://www.reprocell.com/small- molecules-c1/stemolecule-y27...](https://www.reprocell.com/small- molecules-c1/stemolecule-y27632-p221)

"Y27632 is a cell-permeable small molecule Rho-associated kinase (ROCK) inhibitor1. Y27632 has been found to prevent apoptosis as well as enhance the survival and cloning efficiency of dissociated human embryonic stem (ES) cells without affecting their self-renewal properties or pluripotency2. This molecule has also been shown to enhance survival during the transplantation of ES cell-derived neural precursors3. Y27632 in combination with Pifithrin-u significantly improves cell recovery after cryopreservation"

Does anybody here know what the similarities are likely to be between those two compounds and if Apocynum has already being used dermatalogically? Given the history it seems very unlikey that it wouldnt have already been made into a topical skin cream by someone before now. I'm also guessing that the people who make Y27632 are going to be cranking up production right about now and giggling a lot.

<comment><USER15> From a comment here ([https://news.nukleosome.com/t/anti-aging-discovery- could-lea...](https://news.nukleosome.com/t/anti-aging-discovery-could-lead- to-restorative-skin-treatments/700)) quoting the study authors:

"We selected candidate chemicals that potentially increased the stem cell property [Apocynin] or reduced production of reactive oxygen species [Y-27632]"

<comment><USER14> Thanks. I find it interesting that they are reporting success hitting two apparently seperate trigger mechanisms of the same process in the same study. I wonder how this will hold up in further studies as this seems kinda lucky.

<comment><USER15> Was chatting about this with someone on Health News. I doubt it's lucky - <USER2> two compounds have been examined together in several previous studies; [https://www.nature.com/articles/hr2005119](https://www.nature.com/articles/hr2005119)

Are you a biologist by the way?

<comment><USER14> Nahh, just have full spectrum curiosity. I mess around with pixels and robots mostly.

edit - and I have just gone down a rabbithole while I should be wiring LEDs. Am gonna stop now and go back later to find out what all the words mean.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> More synthetic please

</comment><comment><USER17> title?

</comment><comment><USER18> Yay! :)

</comment><comment><USER19> Sounds like an multi billion dollar business. That will increase the gap between wealthy and poor even more. But well, that's the world we live in.

<comment><USER20> I always hear this comment and yet no one can provide one example where a technology or innovation was similar in the past. From air travel, electric cars and medicine, the rich get it first before prices drop for mass marketability.

<comment><USER21> It is fairly easy, as a thought experiment, to project such a trend of accelerating accrual of benefits of technology to the plutocracy to a future point where your statement is no longer true.</comment></comment></comment>


Reddit now supports full-site HTTPS - <AUTHOR> http://www.redditblog.com/2014/09/hell-its-about-time-reddit-now-supports.html

<comment><USER2> Anyone else starting to get creeped out by the amount of sites using Cloudflare (including HN itself)?

By now these guys are probably handling at least 25% of all my webbrowsing traffic, and because of their man-in-the-middle architecture they are not only able to track your browsing habits, but also to actually see all the plaintext content flowing between you and the destination server.

This is starting to become one giant single point of failure as well as way too much private information in the hands of one single (USA-based, ahem) entity. And it's not just sites like HN and Reddit; but also Bitcoin exchanges, domain name registrars, etc; sites you'd expect to be a little more picky about which party to BCC on every last bit of private user information.</comment>


Terasaur: Discover/publish material too large for regular web sites - <AUTHOR> http://terasaur.org/

<comment><USER2> Is this just a torrent search engine and tracking service that requires some sort of approval to upload? Or am I missing something? Not trying to belittle the service; it's just marketed a bit odd. It still needs seeding.

<comment><USER3> From the About page:

> We have also developed a BitTorrent server, the Seed Bank, that can > efficiently seed millions of torrents. No more dead torrents because the > seeds have all disappeared.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have requested access to upload. I want to help get a ~100GB collection of caselaw/legislation out there for research/hackathon purposes.

I grabbed it all from a HN post about a month or so ago. He's since put it behind a requester-pays S3 bucket.

</comment><comment><USER5> See also [http://academictorrents.com/](http://academictorrents.com/) posted here a few months ago

</comment><comment><USER6> RAAS (rTorrent as a service)?</comment>


New Google and Facebook Inquiries - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/06/technology/attorney-generals-tech-antitrust-investigation.html <comment><USER2> >Facebook's "program of serial defensive acquisitions" was used to maintain the company's dominance in the social networking industry.

Instagram could be considered a defensive acquisition. They should argue that the motive behind the acquisition was to expand their presence into mobile/imagery, which is different than defending social networking.

Whatsapp I have a tough time seeing as anti-competitive, since it's a messaging platform rather than a social network, and one amongst many.

The playbook is pretty clear for them: argue that they are in the digital advertising space, which is highly competitive, and argue that social networking itself is also competitive, with Snapchat, VSCO, Tinder and others as their competitors.

<comment><USER3> >Instagram could be considered a defensive acquisition. They should argue that the motive behind the acquisition was to expand their presence into mobile/imagery, which is different than defending social networking.

I mean there's going to be discovery and depositions so "arguing" an after- the-fact justification is kind of pointless.

Also New York Post already reported that the FTC had documents suggesting the Instagram purchase was to take out a competitor.

>At the center of arguments to block the deal — made by then-FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz — was a document the FTC had uncovered by a high-ranking Facebook executive who said the reason the company was buying Instagram was to eliminate a potential competitor, sources said.

"It was a spectacular document," one source close to the situation said, declining to say whether Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself had written it.

[https://nypost.com/2019/02/26/facebook-boasted-of-buying- ins...](https://nypost.com/2019/02/26/facebook-boasted-of-buying-instagram-to- kill-the-competition-sources/)

<comment><USER2> Nice, what do you think of Whatsapp?

<comment><USER3> This isn't even a question to me: it's obvious it was to take out competition in social networking. Facebook has network effects but their organic attempts at starting new apps constantly fail. Acquiring the ones that take off is the only avenue left.

There's no other reason to spend $19B for a company with little to no revenue (and like 3 employees?).

<comment><USER4> Starting new apps aren't the only initiatives that fail. Whatsapp was the target to meet or beat for every single speed and reliability metric during the development cycle of Messenger 3.0 (2013).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I hate this ongoing PR attack on Google now being joined by politically ambitious state AG's. Google has done more positive things than any other company over the last twenty years. Instead of targeting bad companies that destroy people's lives (think gambling or alcohol or junk food), they are trying to destroy the company that gave us free search, maps, and email.

</comment><comment><USER6> They should sue under RICO. Smells of the Big Tobacco shakedown orchestrated by Iowa's dirty AG Thomas Miller.

<comment><USER7> RICO is very hard to prove[1] and usually not applicable outside of what most people would undoubtedly agree is organized crime (i.e.a mafia family)

[1] [https://www.popehat.com/2016/06/14/lawsplainer-its-not- rico-...](https://www.popehat.com/2016/06/14/lawsplainer-its-not-rico-dammit/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If the wrong regulations are picked all it will do is entrench Google/Facebook/et al. Regulations are usually pushed by the largest of the companies in an industry as it stifles new companies from starting as large companies are much better at bearing the cost of regulation. Hopefully the regulators are smart about this.

<comment><USER3> Antitrust isn't regulation</comment></comment>


Metaprogramming in Ruby: Part 1 - <AUTHOR> https://thesocietea.org/2015/08/metaprogramming-in-ruby-part-1/

<comment><USER2> monkeypatching is an awful thing. Sometimes necessary, but definitely awful.</comment>


Its good to step back, clean the board and re-draw - <AUTHOR> http://dhirubhaism.com/its-good-to-step-back-clean-the-board-and-re-draw/

<comment><USER2> "There is nothing wrong is accepting poor performance. All what matters is you keep running the race"

I could not say it any better. Cut the losses and keep on moving. Happened to me when I made a very bad call which made me loss a lot of money. I was thinking of closing down when my wife told me that closing down will throw everything I had worked hard. After a year I had made up from my mistake and now is doing better.</comment>


Android's weak sales drive Verizon toward Apple's iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/12/13/androids_weak_sales_drive_verizon_toward_apples_iphone.html <comment><USER2> > ITG sent an explanation of their methodology and there is no indication that > the data represents inside information.

This is a pretty giant red flag here. No "official" data, versus what we know - Verizon is easily the largest Android carrier in the US, Android's marketshare has been on a meteoric rise, and Google is claiming 300k Android activations _per day_ (which, granted, is likely a worldwide number!) versus Apple's claimed 230k iOS activations per day (which again, is worldwide, and includes the iPad and iPod Touch).

I don't at all buy the argument that Verizon's Android push has failed, which is why they're looking to pick up the iPhone. I think that Verizon's Android push has wildly succeeded, but they're looking to capitalize on AT&T's battered reputation by carrying the iPhone as well. To think that a carrier _must_ commit to a single platform at the expense of all others is somewhat silly. Verizon will see a lot of growth by offering the iPhone, and I suspect much of it will be in the form of AT&T customers who are fed up with subpar service but who love the device itself.

<comment><USER3> I think Verizon did the right thing by turning down Apple at first.

By strengthening Android over the last 3 years, there's now an alternative and Apple isn't the monopoly in the smartphone market. Now VZW can get iPhone on more reasonable terms.

<comment><USER4> > I think Verizon did the right thing by turning down Apple at first.

It would be helpful to understand what actually went down...

Back in 2006, Apple wanted a new way of selling handsets. Apple did not want to do subsidized, they wanted to supply the handsets to the carriers, charge a fair price to the purchaser, then share in the revenue (that was received by the carrier). VZW declined that deal. AT&T (which at the time was still Cingular) liked the possibilities, liked the prototypes, and decided to buy in. The 'revenue sharing' deal ended up being a bad thing for Apple, because a very large number of original iPhone handsets sold (perhaps as many as 30%) were never activated on AT&T. A few were jailbroken/unlocked and used on T-Mobile, but large number of them ended up on the far side of the Pacific (in various countries). So Apple had to go back to AT&T and renegotiate a more conventional deal. Now that the deal is similar to what VZW normally has (and exclusivity is about to end), we will (hopefully) see some competition in the US iPhone market.</comment></comment></comment>


Project Volutus: Micro data centers at base of cell towers - <AUTHOR> https://volutus.io/ <comment><USER2> Large telecoms are already talking about edge computing at the base stations for 5G. It makes a lot of sense with modern distributed systems and would be great for gaming.

<comment><USER3> Why would it be great for gaming?

<comment><USER2> Game live streaming at a reasonable latency.

<comment><USER4> How would caching improve realtime point to point connections?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd be concerned about physical security of the hardware. Most of these cell towers are only secured by a chain-link fence and a padlock.

As far as data security, it should be easy to auto-wipe your server when intruders are detected, but then there is still the matter of the valuable server hardware and the risk of theft. Hopefully nobody is colocating very expensive hardware or they will probably be prone to theft.

<comment><USER6> > _I 'd be concerned about physical security of the hardware. Most of these > cell towers are only secured by a chain-link fence and a padlock._

And usually not a particularly good padlock either. Sites like these are regularly prone to non-destructive entry, don't configure or assemble tamper detection circuits, etc.

But honestly, none of this is a _huge_ deal day to day. It's something you can improve over time. For the most part, people do not attack these facilities, it's just that if they _did_ , they would have effectively free reign.

<comment><USER7> Hi microcolonel. I've noticed that most of your comments lately are autodead, although some have been revived by people vouching for them. Checking through your history, I don't see any clear reason for this. You might want to email 'firstname.lastname@example.com' and ask what's up.

<comment><USER8> I vouched for a comment and responded to it at few days back, then looked at his history and vouched for 3-4 more when I saw that. Previously I've seen a few vouches take someone out of being dead, so I hoped it would do so this time. Guess not. I also didn't see anything particularly worthy of shadowbanning.

<comment><USER6> I think there was a particularly hot thread a few months back which one mod thought I was pouring fuel on (I won't opine on that, partly since I don't really know which comment[s] constituted the offense); and that's why I'm hellbanned. It's actually not been so bad, I don't know if they want me back fully though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Site is down, here's a cached page:

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:UqBmRU...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:UqBmRUgl5aUJ:https://volutus.io/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

<comment><USER10> Some irony there in that it's cacheable static content, but down. Guess they don't eat their own dogfood.

<comment><USER11> There isn't a micro data centre at the base of my cell tower I guess.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Ironically they called their SW "Vapor"(ware) and here we are seeing it crashing under load

</comment><comment><USER13> There site is dead, so maybe I missed some benefit. But aren't we talking about a 1ms latency increase to back haul to a proper data center? In theory you can go 90 miles if I did my math right.

<comment><USER14> From the Google Cached version of their site it looks like they want to be a CDN for mobile. There aren't any details of their actual "micro data centers" that I could find which would be the most interesting aspect of this really.

<comment><USER15> I believe it's called the "Vapor Chamber": [https://www.vapor.io/chamber/](https://www.vapor.io/chamber/)

<comment><USER14> Looks like it is only rated to 104F / 40C that doesn't seem like the kind of things that you can just set outdoors and expect it to work anywhere.

<comment><USER16> That's because it is designed to be installed indoors. It's more of a prefab datacenter aisle, not a standalone structure.

They explain that the central exhaust plenum is to be connected to the building's HVAC, and say _" the Vapor Chamber can rest just as easily on a slab floor in an equipment room as it can in a traditional raised floor data center."_

<comment><USER14> Ah, I missed that part, that makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If (and its a big if) they can get this off the ground I see this as more of a threat to CDNs then to cloud hosting providers as it makes zero sense to do anything but host content at the cell tower.

Hosting compute is completely bonkers as only those customers who connect to a tower where you've co-located your compute will see the speed up. So you either co-locate everywhere, or you only co-locate if you have a geographically isolated set of users.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is not just for human users, but also for internet connected robots and that includes ground and aerial robots doing everything from delivery to inspection to surveillance, etc. Not to forget self-driving cars. Just like today's data centers are strategically located close to where the demand is, these micro data centers would also be located close to where most robotics activity happens - A small industrial area could be one example, a highly automated urban locality could be another. These data centers coupled with wireless 5G standard provide huge benefits to internet connected robots.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> So now anyone can triangulate location of their users?

<comment><USER19> To within 90 miles (1ms latency)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Not sure I would want my certificates in a cell tower shed. I barely trust CDNs. At least there are posted guards at POPs and colos.

<comment><USER21> There are good ways to protect that. It could be fully encrypted with keys available only over local network via trusted execution app. Nothing unbreakable of course, but it would not be possible to get it without significant effort and cost.

Also, this is assuming no checksums served from the origin of the service. If you don't provide secrecy, trusted CDNs are easy :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is interesting. A friend and I talked about a similar idea about 10 years ago where we thought about buying gas stations that were going out of business to turn into mini data centers. These would have been the smaller, sometimes Mom & Pop places that were obsoleted as the larger Truck Stop looking stations moved in.

We thought already having underground fuel tanks and permits would be a meaningful start. Also, already being at or near major roadways, etc would make fiber access easier.

But, life got in the way and we never went anywhere with it.

<comment><USER23> The major end-of-life event for smaller gas stations near me is the underground tanks becoming uncertifiable.

You may have found that the existing infrastructure was a liability, not an asset.

<comment><USER24> Can confirm at least in the state of WA. There are some beautifully located former gas stations centered insome very expensive real estate for that reason.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Interesting idea, it may be that ower powered ARM servers near cell towers will provide CDN Like this green top 500 system powered by ARM. [https://www.top500.org/system/179165](https://www.top500.org/system/179165)

The ultimate is a distributed system where your neighbors provide your CDN cache and there is some kind of either sharing economy or bitcoin like economy.

</comment><comment><USER26> We're almost there. With a little more work people might be able to enjoy cloud servers in their own homes and businesses. What would we call these ultra fast local machines able to 'serve' up content? 'Server' feels a bit on the nose. Perhaps 'Home Cloud: Secured by Blockchain'.

</snark>

</comment><comment><USER27> Data security?

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h It's a data center; why would it have different security properties than any colo facility?

<comment><USER28> Because you're stepping down on the spectrum of "vault with a mantrap, several factors of authentication and 24/7 posted security" down toward "fence and a padlock"?

<comment><USER29> How many datacenters have you been in?

<comment><USER28> How many examples of the extreme ends of a spectrum have you heard? Of course not everyone is Iron Mountain.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Shutting down CodePlex - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/bharry/2017/03/31/shutting-down-codeplex/ <comment><USER2> I actually consider this a Bad Thing. Monosystems are not a desirable thing, and nobody (except GitHub) wants a world where _all_ open source projects are hosted on GitHub. Now, Git itself being a DVCS mitigates the downsides of this a little bit, but still... I think it's better to live in a world where you can use GitHub, Bitbucket, CodePlex, GitLab, SourceForge, etc., instead of narrowing things down to pretty much just GitHub.

Nothing against GH per-se... we're paying customers and fairly happy with their service. But I still don't want to see their competition going away.

<comment><USER3> I don't disagree with you at all. The competition between GitHub, GitLab, and BitBucket spurs creativity and is a good thing.

However, let's not fool ourselves: services like Codeplex, Google Code, or Sourceforge, that are not updated or providing new value, are going to be left behind and abandoned. In other words, their continued service wasn't providing any value, to their users or "competitors", because they weren't evolving.

I would rather people put their open source project on a code hosting service that is someone's priority, not just one that exists and is useless.

<comment><USER4> This is key, I think. Codeplex feels like abandonware to me. All the important Microsoft projects have migrated to GitHub, where all the active development is happening. Perhaps this also screws over some people who wish to stay on Codeplex, but I can imagine it was just a cost to Microsoft. No use in having something which only costs you money lingering around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a great example of how to perform a successful wind-down. The win for monoculture isn't great for us, but at least they're shutting down gracefully.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm not one to usually defend Microsoft, but this is a sad day. This increases the world's reliance on fewer and fewer developer-collaboration systems like Github. But, if you're set on hosting your own, it isn't so bad these days. Gogs, Gitea, GitLab and Fossil will continue to push on.

If you're going to rely on these external third-parties, please do consider self-hosting your own mirrors of your repositories.

Thankfully, git makes this kind of thing astoundingly easy compared to the bad-ole-days of RCS and CVS. There's no excuse not to maintain your own local backups.

<comment><USER7> > But, if you're set on hosting your own, it isn't so bad these days.

+1. Exactly what I wanted to say. Back in sourceforge days setting up your own internet server to run the central repo was a big hurdle. Solving that and mailing list and the bug tracker was a nice relief. These days you can set up your own server in very short time for minuscule amount of money.

<comment><USER8> Increasingly companies are shedding on-prem infrastructure. One startup I was at har everyone work exclusively on laptops (though with docking stations and monitors) and had a policy where everyone _had_ to take their computers home every night - nothing to steal. Everything was Cloud-hosted on AWS, Atlassian, GitHub and Dropbox. To my surprise it worked quite well - the only issue was working with large files because we had no NAS/file-server and only ~10mbps upstream.

Not having to pay for any on-site sysadmin definetly saved the company money - even more-so when you consider there was no physical servers to break either.

<comment><USER9> "...consider there was no physical servers to break either."

Consider that the cloud they did rely upon was comprised of other people's computers.

<comment><USER8> The point of "the cloud" isn't just global accessibility, but also massive redundancy - Azure Storage and S3 both replicate data globally in case of data-center meteor impacts and well-designed web-services are stateless and run in a a load-balanced, fault-tolerant manner.

Arguably a much better proposition than a dusty old Dell server locked in a closer.

<comment><USER9> And when S3 was glitchy recently [those] depending solely upon it suffered. Arguably less than they may have otherwise. But with one's own hardware one has more control.

EDIT: fixed swipe typo

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My biggest concern, as with the Google Code shutdown, is wondering how much obscure code is going to end up lost to time.

For .NET projects, open source code is growing, but still pretty rare. A lot of times when looking for stuff I end up on CodePlex. So the biggest question for me is going to be: How many old abandoned projects actually do get migrated.

<comment><USER11> Exactly what I was thinking, too.

I'm not seeing if non-project owners will be able to download archives of projects. It would be nice if anyone could download a project's archive.

I'm also going to invoke the names "Archive Team" and "Jason Scott" here to see if either one magically appears here.

<comment><USER12> Anyone will be able to download a project's archive from the CodePlex Archive site once it launches.

<comment><USER11> Thanks for jumping in here, Alex. If you have a moment to indulge a couple more questions I'd appreciate it.

Will that archive have the same "fidelity" as the project-owner's archive?

Will either archive include the complete commit history for the source code, or is it just a snapshot of the code as of the site going read-only?

<comment><USER12> Sorry for the delay - this response got caught up in the rate limiter.

Yes, the archive functionality is available to everyone, and will export the source code, documentation, license, issues, and downloads.

For source code history, it depends on the source code type. For Git and Mercurial projects, we'll include the .git/.hg folder so you have the full history; for TFS, it'll be just the snapshot as of read-only.

<comment><USER11> Thanks very much for the answers. I really appreciate it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> One important thing many people hardly mention during events in history like this is that often software is lost in the sands of time, never to be recovered.

Some software out there is actually "finished" and undisturbed by surrounding ecosystems for the most part. When the author or maintainers are no longer around and a host collapses around a project, sometimes you just can't find the source anymore.

It's out there, for sure, but most likely in cold storage, collecting dust in some old hobbyist's closet.

<comment><USER12> Keeping the source available for projects, even those don't migrate to GitHub or elsewhere, is important to us.

We've updated the blog post with some additional details on the long-term archive plans: After December 15th, 2017, "CodePlex.com will start serving a read-only lightweight archive that will allow you to browse through all published projects – their source code, downloads, documentation, license, and issues – as they looked when CodePlex went read-only. You'll also be able to download an archive file with your project contents, all in common, transferrable formats like Markdown and JSON. Where possible, we'll put in place redirects so that existing URLs work, or at least redirect you to the project's new homepage on the archive. And, the archive will respect your "I've moved" setting, if you used it, to direct users to the current home of your project.

There isn't currently any plan to have an end date for the archive."

<comment><USER14> Thank you for handling this properly. We've had too many instances of sites shutting down without thinking about archival, so it's great seeing it done with some thought.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think it comes down to two things:

1 - CodePlex was a more elegant repo for a more civilized age and hasn't really kept pace with the features people want.

2 - Microsoft doesn't really benefit from keeping it open anymore and MS is realizing they can reap many of the benefits of collaboration without all the overhead by just using Github.

Github has the marketshare, but there are other options. Gitlab for example seems to be moving in the right direction and I'm excited to see what they do in the next two years or so.

<comment><USER12> You're correct - our investment has shifted to Visual Studio Team Services ([https://www.visualstudio.com/team- services/git/](https://www.visualstudio.com/team-services/git/)). We use GitHub extensively for our open-source work, and VSTS for private/internal projects.

(Disclaimer: I'm on the PM team for VSTS & CodePlex)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Microsoft has definitely stepped up its open source efforts in recent years and should be lauded for that: projects like TypeScript are good for the community.

Still, their brag about being the most popular org made me wonder how the chips would shake out if you could truly count all the software published by one company. Google, for instance, tends to have separate orgs for its major open source projects: Polymer, Angular, Material, AMP, TensorFlow, Kubernetes, Firebase, and Chrome are all examples of major Google open source projects that each have (at least) one of their own orgs.

GitHub's org/repo URL scheme doesn't scale well to companies with many unrelated initiatives, so measuring "most contributors by GitHub org" isn't a useful metric.

<comment><USER17> What's that got to do with codeplex?

<comment><USER18> In the article they made this claim:

"In fact, our GitHub organization now has more than 16,000 open source contributors – more than any other organization..."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's great that they'll keep an archive. I sometimes find random stuff for rare asp.net cases on codeplex

</comment><comment><USER20> It upsets me that people who care about the open source movement so fervently support closed source tooling like Github and EC2 in the name of convenience.

</comment><comment><USER21> Does GitHub charge companies when keeping only opensource code? Like the big companies like Google, Microsoft have lots of code there - who is paying for it? Or this is just free marketing for GH?

<comment><USER22> GitHub doesn't charge for anything that's open source. Who the owner is or if they happen to be a customer doesn't factor into it.

<comment><USER23> Don't you have to pay for an Organization though, regardless of what types of repos it has?

<comment><USER24> Nope. You can create orgs here: [https://github.com/organizations/new](https://github.com/organizations/new)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> What does "shutting it down completely" mean if all published projects are still available read-only? If I'm understanding correctly, all published projects were already read-only by then, so what changes when they shut it down "completely"? Is it just a behind-the-scenes switchover to the "lightweight archive"?

<comment><USER26> The lightweight archive won't support VCS pulls, just HTML and an archive of the repository, from how I read it.

<comment><USER12> That's correct. The archive site will be a new, read-only architecture that serves static content. We'll be decommissioning the current TFS, Git, and Mercurial servers after 12/15/17.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I always enjoyed CodePlex but they limited it just to open source projects no availability to host private projects or anything as far as I know. They could of become a backbone for NuGET packages or something and put the .NET ecosystem on there. As others have said, it's a shame to see everything shift to GitHub.

</comment><comment><USER28> One day too early for Aprils Fools, ain't it?

I'm not really one to kiss up Microsoft most of the time, but the fact GitHub is becoming the new SourceForge is not too keen.

<comment><USER29> I can't see Github going the way of SourceForge. SF was exclusively a download portal for FOSS, it needed ads (and, eventually, malware) to survive because it had no other revenue stream. Github, on the other hand, really only hosts FOSS to further cement its position as the standard in git hosting. Their bread and butter is large organizations who are paying per seat to keep their code hosted there.

<comment><USER30> There was an effort at VA Linux to convert SourceForge into an enterprise project. That failed. I believe that's when SF was spun off (along with Slashdot) as an independent. Or was it that SF _became_ what was pretty much all that was left of VA after the hardware business left?

I'm a bit fuzzy on the history, and wasn't there at the time, though I do know people who were.

Point being that SourceForge was _not_ intended to be exclusively FOSS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> My problem with google code and codeplex is that they should have autoexported to github. Some projects may have value even if their creator could have died.

</comment><comment><USER32> Will CodePlex's sourcecode be hosted on GitHub?

</comment><comment><USER33> It's funny how in their breakdown of "organisations with the most open source contributors" they split up google and angular. Now I'm sure there's some overlap between these two groups, but that's still a pretty obvious this metric was chosen to make sure microsoft comes out on top.

I mean _[GitHub] organisations with the most open source contributors_ seems like a pretty meaningless metric anyways for judging _anything_.

<comment><USER12> That chart comes from the GitHub Octoverse site ([https://octoverse.github.com/](https://octoverse.github.com/)), and reflects GitHub Organizations (e.g. [https://github.com/microsoft/](https://github.com/microsoft/)). The Angular and Google entries each represent their own Organization ([https://github.com/angular](https://github.com/angular) and [https://github.com/google](https://github.com/google)).

<comment><USER33> That doesn't change anything. The metric is useless in the context presented by Microsoft. It was picked because MS ranked on top on this one. That's what I already implied in the original post.

How you structure your team(s) on GitHub has nothing to do with your "commitment to opensource" or whatever your marketing phrase is.

<comment><USER34> Microsoft has several other github organisations, so they weren't representing the total "company" contributors for themselves either.

e.g.: They have separate github organisations for: [https://github.com/Azure](https://github.com/Azure) [https://github.com/PowerShell](https://github.com/PowerShell) [https://github.com/aspnet](https://github.com/aspnet) [https://github.com/dotnet](https://github.com/dotnet)

(and many more smaller orgs as well, as I'm sure google do too)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do Messenger spy on you? – especially Skype? - <AUTHOR> Disclaimer: There is no evidence that Skype does that, i just think about, that it easily could!<p>Messenger apps like Skype always have great permissions on your system - especially Mic + Camera permissions. Do trust those applications, especially Skype? <comment><USER2> a few days ago i posted a Chrome Chat App, which can use Skype without any permissions (optional camera + mic permissions) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12158740](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12158740) \- may this helps for paranoid people ;)

anyway did you think about that one: [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/22/mark- zuck...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/22/mark-zuckerberg- tape-webcam-microphone-facebook)</comment>


Show HN: Continuously testing Heroku GitHub deployments - <AUTHOR> https://assertible.com/blog/continuously-testing-heroku-github-deployments <comment><USER2> Hey Show HN! Co-founder here,

We are working on making Assertible _the_ turn-key web service testing platform which is very easy to use (similar to how it's only a click or two to setup Travis CI, Circle CI, etc).

Our current focus has been on integrating w/ the GitHub deployments API which this blog post discusses using alongside Heroku.

We'd love to get some feedback, especially from anyone using GitHub based deployments.

<comment><USER3> Don't force validation of email, so annoying.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thanks for the feedback. In the future we hope to allow a bit more functionality before requiring an email to be verified! (FWIW, GitHub login does the verification for you).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Do you mind providing an example of possible tests that may be run?

<comment><USER2> Currently, assertible supports:

\- HTML validation

\- 404 link check

\- page contains "text" (some arbitrary user-configured text)

\- status code (200 by default)

\- json validation

\- max response time

You can find more information here: [https://assertible.com/blog/simplified- assertions-for-testin...](https://assertible.com/blog/simplified-assertions- for-testing-web-services)

We're looking into building out more assertions so definitely let us know if there is a particular type of test you'd like to run.

<comment><USER4> Nice, thanks.</comment></comment></comment>


NOAA: U.S. Records Warmest March; More than 15,000 Warm Temp Records Broken - <AUTHOR> http://www.commerce.gov/blog/2012/04/09/noaa-us-records-warmest-march-more-15000-warm-temperature-records-broken <comment><USER2> Meanwhile the global temperature anomaly for March 2012 came in at a searing 0.11 degrees C above normal.[1]

But of course more comprehensive data like that isn't quite as attractive.

(I still think the record US March counts more as evidence for global warming than against it. But it's not nearly as strong of evidence as some people wish it to be.)

[1][http://reason.com/blog/2012/04/04/global-temperature- trend-u...](http://reason.com/blog/2012/04/04/global-temperature-trend-update- march-20)

</comment><comment><USER3> You know what is interesting about that article? The total lack of statistical insight.

"The average temperature of 51.1 degrees F was 8.6 degrees above the 20th century average for March and 0.5 degrees F warmer than the previous warmest March in 1910."

Without standard deviations, who cares?

And clicking through to the main article, I'm surprised by how many words can be written without saying anything of consequence. Even the graph showing Green Bay temperature looks like nothing more than a plot of noise.

Edit: Now that I think about it, the lack of basic statistical disclosures is pretty damning evidence that nothing significant has happened.

<comment><USER4> Do you get standard deviations when you watch the summary today's weather on the news? I think the statistical detail was appropriate.

If you are seriously proposing that _standard deviation_ makes an average _8.6 degrees_ above normal insignificant then you are going to have to present some pretty compelling evidence. NOAA do generally know how to do some basic math.

<comment><USER5> If the standard deviation is 10, then 8.6 degrees above the mean _is_ insignificant. Providing a number like 8.6 without the s.d. is presenting _zero_ evidence. That's like page two of my statistics textbook.

<comment><USER6> It's a _press release._ Most people don't know what a standard deviation is.

<comment><USER5> I was replying to the parent comment, not the story, and the claim that we could somehow determine the significance of 8.6 without knowing more. As for press releases, "It was hot" is probably a sufficient level of detail for most people. :)

<comment><USER4> We are talking about weather. A little common sense will let you decide if 8.6 degrees is significant.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3820795> for the calculations if you insist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The significant fact was the 33-1 ratio between new high temperatures and new low temperatures. Unprecedented.

</comment><comment><USER8> Funny how nobody wants to consider that we are, in fact, nearing the end of a periodic high in long term global temperatures. <http://donath.org/Photos/TempChange.PNG>

</comment><comment><USER9> I think the data is significant as a record of what happened, but the greater conversation about climate change should continue even if the data showed record cold temperatures. Also of note is the Arctic oscillation <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_oscillation> and as others mentioned La Niña. Washington state is interesting too as the normal trend of Pacific Northwest's somewhat temperate patterns were disrupted a little.

</comment><comment><USER10> In the long run it means little (this single data point, I mean) - after all, it was almost as warm in 1910...

<comment><USER11> I wonder if people back then also ran around saying the sky is falling. It's not like the people in 1910 did anything to stop global warming. They continued industrialization worldwide and ended up on the other temperature maximum of the past 100 years. It's characteristic of any cyclic process.

<comment><USER12> Some would have you believe that we should have stopped burning fossil fuels in 1910 to avoid all the emissions over the next century. Did the gains of 100 years of machines outweigh the effect on climate? that's the question.

<comment><USER13> Yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> From a month ago: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/02/new-yorks-second- wa...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/02/new-yorks-second-warmest- winter-history-february-2012_n_1317141.html)

Numerous cities around the world had record-breaking or near record-breaking winters (warmest winters on record).

<comment><USER15> Presumably numerous cities around half the world had warm winters. We had a wet, cold summer down here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Its going to be a hot summer. Probably a bunch of wave of heatwaves across the midwest.

<comment><USER17> La Niña is at fault for some of the warmer winter weather. Just because we had a warm winter does not mean we're going to have a boiling summer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Wonder what has Fox News to say now?

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=P...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PRXIOPnQ8Vw#)

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MN7-k-RXvSQ>

Note: I am in no way implying that a hot summer is evidence of global warming.

<comment><USER19> However, as evidenced every winter on Fox and the Drudge Report, the existence of snow is always indicative of global warming being a myth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm just wondering how this article got pushed to the HN front page? If this were an article with substantial evidence against global warming such as the many articles and arguments provided in Crichton's State of Fear, would it be posted here? No. And that's my problem with this. The fact is that if we were actually capable of understanding what was causing global climate change, we would be able to predict the weather, and... we can't. We should instead be focusing on how we utilize our resources. That is something we can actually do something about. But don't try to provide statistical evidence of global warming just to "raise awareness" and prove that you are right. You'll never be able to do it. Focus on something that has a purpose. Tell people to go watch Medicine Man again, and maybe Sean Connery can convince them to stop cutting down rainforests. Do something freaking useful for once.

<comment><USER21> >if we were actually capable of understanding what was causing global climate change, we would be able to predict the weather

This conditional is (obviously) false. Given your argument seems to rely on it, your argument is not sound.

<comment><USER20> Good catch. "Predict the weather _more than 10 days in advance_ ", I should have said.

Prove to me what is causing global climate change. My point is that we cannot even predict the weather more than 10 days in advance, and even that is not totally reliable. Once we get to the point where we can reliably predict weather for years and years (say- more than a few thousand), then we can determine if we actually _have_ substantial climate change, and maybe by then we'll know what really causes it. At this point, we are still guessing. We're using educated guesses, but they are based on possible coincidence.

<comment><USER21> >"Predict the weather more than 10 days in advance", I should have said.

That's false too. Predicting climate doesn't require predicting the weather. Compare: suppose you have a slightly biased coin - maybe 0.75 chance heads, 0.25 tails. I certainly can't predict the next throw, or the throw ten out - and without a hell of a lot more knowledge I'll never be able to. But I can be extremely good predicting the heads/tails ratio for sequences of throws in the future.

>Prove to me what is causing global climate change.

No, I can't do that, as I'm not an expert and this is a very complicated area. I suspect that nor are you. In such a situation, it's rational for us to defer to the body of expert opinion (although there are extremely interesting issues in decision theory and philosophy about how one should do so). Expert opinion is pretty unanimous about what is likely causing climate change, and there are no serious reasons to suppose bias. So let's defer to them.

<comment><USER22> >Expert opinion is pretty unanimous about what is likely causing climate change

Actually it isn't. I submit that most scientists do not believe in AGW. Want me to prove it? I can't. I submit that most glaciers are expanding, rather than retreating. Want me to prove it? I can't, and _for the same reason._

There are an uncounted number of glaciers out there. Nobody has even counted them-- I meant that literally-- certainly nobody is doing a survey of a statistically significant number (a number we don't know because nobody has counted them, glaciers are really common) to determine whether they are expanding or contracting.

However, it is very common to hear from AGW proponents that glaciers are shrinking. Why? Because every chance they get, proponents of AGW, who are politicians, highlight glaciers shrinking. "There are no more snows of kilimanjaro" being a very famous example.

Same thing with scientists. Do you have a census of scientists? Have you surveyed them all? Can you provide me a statistically significant sample of the scientists who have looked into AGW and given a scientific argument on it one way or the other?

You can't. What you're doing here is repeating a political claim. A political claim that has the very convenient feature of excluding from any debate the very possibility of science.

Thus every AGW debate ends up being about politics and not science, because once someone tries to introduce some science, they are immediately shut down by AGW supporters asserting that all the scientists are unanimous.

Have you ever met a scientist? Find two scientists married to each other and they're not unanimous about anything. Hell, find an honest scientist by himself, and he isn't unanimous.

Ask 12 scientists for their theories on something and you'll get 18 theories.

The idea that scientific opinion is unanimous about AGW is really quite absurd, if you think about it.

FWIW, I can disprove AGW really easily. Mars is getting hotter. The IR absorption of CO2 is lower than water vapor. CO2 is a tiny fraction of the atmosphere. The planet is actually getting cooler since the solar maximum on the short end (despite CO2 going up) but getting warmer since the last ice age-- as it has always done. Mainstream perception of AGW is that there's some CO2 level that will result in runaway temperature increases-- this is historically false, as CO2 has, in the past, been vastly higher than it is today without any runaway effect. Pluto and Mars have been getting warmer exactly during the time of the rise in popularity of the AGW theory, they have no cars on them. (its the sun that is driving it.)

Did you know that the earth started out with a CO2 atmosphere with very little oxygen? The rise of algeal and plant life started converting that CO2 to oxygen and terraformed the planet into the oxygen atmosphere we have now.

BTW, CO2 tends to rise as the temperature rises, but unlike the graphs Al Gore showed in his movie (Which had been offset in time for "dramatic effect", this rise actually happens _after_ the temperature increases.)

All of the above are basic scientific facts, many are not in dispute, though you can find lots of AGW propaganda sites "debunking" these "denier myths". (if AGW is so scientific, why the need to call people names?) I've followed hundreds of links to these blogs over the years, the vast majority assert they are "myths" and don't defend the assertion, a lot of them make up magical excuses (the most amusing was the claim that the effects of human created CO2 are different from naturally occurring CO2) ... and the ones that cite actual "peer reviewed research" almost always misrepresent it, or flat out lie about what the papers actually say.

They're pretty much completely relying on people giving up their hands and not doing any research and "believing the experts".

>there are no serious reasons to suppose bias.

Of course there are. The advocates of AGW are not scientists but politicians. And what are they pushing legislatively? The ability to control CO2. Since CO2 is produced by everything from beer and bread making to the very act of breathing, the power to control CO2 is the power over everybody. They have a vested interest in this control. The IPCC is a wing of the UN, the UN has been lobbying for years for the power to institute a global tax. A global tax on CO2 would go a long way towards making the UN a global government, which is what they want. Al Gore-- the primary spokesman for the movement in the USA-- is not a scientist, but does own a carbon credits trading firm and stands to make billions if Cap & Trade passes.

There have been numerous incidents of scientists being coerced into publishing results only if they conform to the AGW hypothesis. APL started refusing to publish any letters that questioned the issue-- tantamount to a rejection of science itself. And naturally, government funding goes to labs to prove AGW, not to objectively research the question.

I've worked in a national lab, including on a controversial question, and been thru the peer review process. The idea that there's no bias is silly. Even in non-controversial things, there's always bias. Peer review is often about not stepping on the toes of someone whose long held theory is undermined by your results.

Science involves bias at every level all the time.

<comment><USER22> Downvotes with no comments. Proof positive that Hacker News is not a place where intelligent discussion can take place.

The votes only reflect how closely one adheres to the partisan political correctness of people who come to HN.

And HN is full of people who are not to well educated on a variety of subjects, but think they are experts.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


What's the best webinar tool out there these days? - <AUTHOR>

Are there any amazing startups out there who are shaking up what's possible in the webinar space?
My company is looking for something that embeds directly into our site and scales internationally for a few hundred attendees. Live interaction and the ability to record are both musts.
If you aren't using a specific solution did you build everything out yourself? Maybe there's an open source library that can get me 3/4 of the way there? I appreciate any pointers you can offer. <comment><USER2> I've been doing research into the options available in this space recently.

GoToWebinar still seems to be one of the most recommended options.

I wish there was a way to use the Twitch technology for business streaming - it's best-in-class right now. But to the best of my knowledge, there isn't.

Also very interested to hear other answers on this thread!</comment>