Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic - <AUTHOR> http://siberiantimes.com/science/casestudy/news/n0905-7000-underground-gas-bubbles-poised-to-explode-in-arctic/ <comment><USER2> Here is a good video about the arctic methane emergency: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F9ed5E54s4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F9ed5E54s4)

Some summary points:

\- Total amount of methane in the current atmosphere: ~5 gigatons

\- Amount of carbon preserved as methane in the arctic shelf: estimated at 100s-1000s of gigatons

\- Only 1% release would double the atmospheric burden of methane

\- Not much effort is needed to destabilize this 1%

\- The volume currently being released is estimated at 50 gigatons (it could be far more)

\- 50 gigatons is 10x the methane content of the current atmosphere

\- We are already at 2.5x pre-industrial level, there is a methane veil spreading southward from the arctic.

\- Methane is 150x as powerful a greenhouse gas as CO2 when it is first released.

Here is a longer video for those who have the time: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPdc75epOEw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPdc75epOEw)

<comment><USER3> Methane has a short ~5-10 year half life in the atmosphere. So, releasing 50x current methane levels over 100 years does not triple current methane levels.

<comment><USER4> Yep. Everything depends on how fast that methane will get released. It can vary from "we are completely fucked up, good bye" to "that's a rounding error, no big deal".

Methane should be easier to take out of the atmosphere than CO2. Spraying something at the Stratosphere could be incredibly helpful even if the substance is short lived. (But I have no idea what to spray there, would water make any difference?)

<comment><USER5> When you look at the many different potential sources of, "Fucked... goodbye..." the trend is very clear. We're juggling apocalypses and just waiting to find one that will stick. Will it be ocean acidification first? Ocean levels rising? Catastrophic weather patterns? Famine? Drought? War touched off by rapid changed? Mass extinctions?

They're all in play, each with the potential to end us.

<comment><USER6> Is this why we have not yet found signs of intelligent life in the universe? Every time a civilization is advanced enough to really screw up (their) planet, inevitably, they do? Fermi Paradox redux.

<comment><USER7> It's not a particularly good candidate I would think. For example we know what's happening and could theoretically have stopped it but didn't/don't have the will.

The Fermi paradox requires it to be extremely unlikely to survive, but you could imagine scenarios on other worlds where the right kind of political situation was around to stop it.

<comment><USER8> > but you could imagine scenarios on other worlds where the right kind of > political situation was around to stop it.

I can't imagine that. The only evidence I have to date (from a sample size of 1 planet) is that there is next to zero real political will, even if the politicians of the world create additional heat saying they have in fact found the political will.

<comment><USER9> I feel like your imaginative capacity could stand to be exercised more. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of ways in which intelligent entities could meaningfully differ from us, and which would lead to different political circumstances.

And we ourselves are not that far from being able to deal reasonably with problems like this. If nothing else were different about us, except that average IQ were, say, 120 on the current scale, I think we'd be able to respond sensibly to non-immediate threats.

<comment><USER5> There is no reason to believe that intelligence, in whatever form it takes, ever stops being energetically expensive. Is it possible to imagine selection pressures that would select for high intelligence over other factors? How harsh can an environment get, or how easy, before something like brute strength or rapidly breeding is _always_ a cheaper strategy?

Some rules are universal, because they're thermodynamic. That's not to say that your species of intelligent individuals is impossible, but it is unlikely. When you really take the time to think through these scenarios, you often find that there is no justification to assume that exceptional intelligence would evolve.

<comment><USER9> We already know that thermodynamics and evolutionary pressures can allow for intelligent beings with a population average IQ of 100 (on the arbitrary scale we've devised for ourselves) to exist, since we humans do exist. I'm suggesting that a slight increase in that population average might be enough to make a large difference in how we collectively respond to mid- to long-term problems.

If you're arguing against that suggestion, it seems you would have to be arguing that human intelligence exists at a level that is nestled directly up against some kind of hard thermodynamic limit, even though a non-trivial portion of our species already exists on the other side of that line. I don't see how that argument could plausibly be made.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Honest question: Why is Mainstream Media not covering this like it should be doing? Heck, this should be the breaking news every single day!!

After all, this spells doomsday for the upcoming generations, so shouldn't it be the news that should be shown/covered almost everyday on the front page.

The people have the right to know that their children and grandchildren will suffer because of something that is going on right now. I guess, that majority of people, all over the world, are blissfully unaware of this scenario because this doesn't get the kind of attention in the MSM that it should. All they get served is dirty politics and gossip entertainment news.

Maybe people will force the policies to change if they get to know that this will happen.

It seems that most people today think that Terrorism is the main threat to our society, when in fact, Global Warming seems to be the real deal.

Let's say it was found that fifty years from now, an Asteroid would hit Earth. Would the people of Earth react in the same way as they are doing now?

<comment><USER11> Has anything been published in international peer reviewed journals ? Are there scientists at NASA or ivy league universities who became concerned and verified it through modeling and simulations ? If the answer is no in both cases, why should the public be alarmed ?

<comment><USER12> Are you seriously saying only NASA and Ivy League universities matter?

<comment><USER13> \--the most outrageous part of his comment, imo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Well... I guess let's hope the "Clathrate gun hypothesis" is incorrect.

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

<comment><USER15> If we can't figure out an engineering solution to this problem then it's game over. It always amazes me how much people and governments focus on prevention when it comes to climate change, knowing full well it's far too late to change anything by reducing carbon emissions. If we can't sequester these 'surplus' gases from the atmosphere then I guess you could say we don't have a chance in hell, pun intended, of surviving as a species if runaway warming becomes a reality.

<comment><USER16> Why focus on "fixing" climate ?

Why not just assume it's going to become unstable in close future and start building with that assumption ? Large scale isolated citiy domes. Nutrient synthesis that doesn't rely on climate/agriculture. Environment independent energy generation like micro nuclear reactors. Large scale air filtration and temperature control.

As the world becomes more interconnected and developed catastrophic outcomes like super virus/bacteria, large scale nuclear event, etc. become bigger threats to entire world. Why not start building self sufficient and well isolated megacities that can function irregardless of climate change ? It's perfectly possible on 50 year timescale if we don't waste time on shoving our heads in to the ground and hoping everything will stay great if we stop burning stuff.

<comment><USER17> If you can't mobilize man to fight climate change, you aren't going to mobilize him to prepare for it either. People are in deep denial about the problem.

<comment><USER18> _Preserving_ human knowledge and art [0] won't require mobilizing all of mankind; it could be done by a few individuals and it's kinda already being done by Wikipedia, Wikia, "pirates" etc.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13944410](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13944410)

<comment><USER17> True, however, the problem is preserving humans from near extinction, not preserving our knowledge and culture for the few who might survive if we ignore the problem.

<comment><USER18> > for the few who might survive

It doesn't have to be for our survivors... We could, and I believe we should, do it for the next civilization to come after ours, even if it's a few alien visitors.

If for no other reason than to leave a legacy of our short existence against the infinity of this universe.

<comment><USER17> I and I'm sure most people on this planet don't care about leaving a legacy to a future species when the problem at hand is our own survival.

<comment><USER18> Nobody's saying we should give up or not try to survive, _but IF_ the options came down to: Going extinct — or — Going extinct without any trace whatsoever of our existence left behind, which would you prefer?

You said it yourself: If you can't mobilize man to fight climate change, you aren't going to mobilize him to prepare for it either.

<comment><USER17> I won't care, because I'll be dead. So let me be clearer, the notion that anyone will care about leaving proof of our existence rather than themselves trying to survive I find laughable. It's an easy nonsense thing to say when living in relative comfort but when the reality of survival kicks in, such lofty bullshit will go right out the door and you'll be fighting to eat and live another day, not worrying about humanity leaving traces behind for posterity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> At first I was thinking "stupid click bait title", then I saw the pictures. Anything making those craters is properly an explosion. Anything heard 100km away is properly and explosion.

If anything this article plays it down with words like eruption and venting. This seems super dangerous for people in the area. And dangerous in the climate change sense for the rest of us.

<comment><USER20> I can't believe that this got 350+ comments and nobody actually recognized the clickbait here. For one thing, it's a story from that noted climatology journal "The Siberian Times".

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

They're full of ice, not methane. And what makes those craters is the ice melting and/or drop in groundwater pressure. The issue of entrained methane trapped in permafrost is real and the pingo ice most likely also contains trapped methane, but the implication that these are domes of pressurized methane READY TO BLOW AND HURL EARTH INTO RUNAWAY GREENHOUSE AT ANY MOMENT is absurd. The melting of permafrost generally over wide areas is the actual threat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is precisely why Dr. Guy McPherson has predicted human extinction on earth by 2030. Methane clathrates coming from the Arctic sea floor and from Canadian and Siberian permafrost. This is the most serious threat we face now.

<comment><USER22> So, this sort of thing must have happened in past warm periods. Yet life survived.

<comment><USER23> I can't believe there are people willfully obtuse enough to still be putting out this strawman. No one credible is or has ever claimed "the end of life" or even "the end of multicellular life". Humanity could get wiped out entirely and "life" would be fine for a few billion years until it really would get wiped out completely without intelligence. But even a few tens of millions let alone hundreds let alone billions is something we might reasonably want to avoid don't you think? Is this really such a hard concept for you to grasp? When "life survived" previous mass extinction events you should read that as " _SOME_ life survived, and often not the big complex types."

<comment><USER24> Another fun angle to consider. Ocean acidification leading to a die-off of phytoplankton (the oxygen tank of the Earth, basically).

This could cause a global asphyxiation event.

<comment><USER25> Archaea are tough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It's strange reading about this and realizing that to be able to do something about it I would have had to have been born twenty some-odd years before I was born. That it's literally too late to do anything about it. I was raised to care about these issues, to save the rainforest, to cut down on pollution, recycle -- to do something about it. And that it would've taken a concerted effort from everyone to take the same care.

Scientists have been warning about this for decades. And we've done nothing. Not even to slow down!

 _I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness..._

Indeed.

<comment><USER27> If drastic action is taken now we'd only see 2 degree warming. That is far from the end of the world.

If we do nothing we'll see 5-8 degrees, which would change the climate pretty drastically.

It's not too late at all.

<comment><USER26> From the video linked in another comment it seems like _drastic_ is basically _impossible_. The speaker, Stuart Scott, had said that we'd have to just drop $28 _trillion_ worth of fossil fuel assets on the floor and walk away _today_. It seems more likely that we're going to hit at least 5 degrees over the next 100 years which, if I'm not mistaken, means mass extinction events and the collapse of civilization as we know it.

2 degrees, from what I understand, is drastic enough to destabilize our current geo-political situation and threaten humanity with large-scale famine, water shortages, and mass migrations. It doesn't seem like we can even avoid 2 degrees at this point. It's just going to happen even if we do stop everything today if I'm understanding this news right.

<comment><USER27> The IPCC reports don't substantiate those figure. RCP8.5 which assumes increasing co2 emmisions until 2080 results in 2.6-4.8 degrees by 2100. But Rcp8.5 is considered pretty much worst case. It is basically what happens if we just continue to use fossil fuels and have no climate policy.

RCP4.5 which is a somewhat optimistic but still realistic plan would only have 1.1-2.6.

RCP6 which is a realistic scenario where fossil fuels are used heavily but by 2060 we start heavily switching to carbon neutral sources. That leads to 1.4-3.1 degrees by 2100.

There also isn't any scientific consensus on what level of rise would lead to collapse of civilization. But I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be 5 degrees by 2100.

Even with 5 degrees the bread baskets of the world should still be producing a ton of food. There would need to be engineering solutions. GMO modified crops to survive droughts better. Better irrigation in California and the Midwest.

The dooms day projections all assume we just sit around while food production drops and just starve to death. That's a bad assumption.

It would cause famine in parts of the world where rising food costs means they can't afford food. But food could go up 5x in America before we'd have problems affording it.

<comment><USER26> The estimates are still loose on the methane situation and how that would affect the IPCC reports. Isn't it called the "methane crisis" because it's likely going to rapidly accelerate warming?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If we can't fix, if we can't prevent, and if we cannot prepare either, then maybe we could at least _preserve?_

• Digitize all human knowledge and as much art/literature as you can gather (books, music, movies, shows, games, even porn and random YouTube videos and discussions on online forums :) Most of that work has already been done.

• Store it on the most resilient (and simple/repairable) storage media you can,

• Bundle it with devices that can read that data,

• Along with instructions for building/reinventing such devices, and instructions on how to interpret that data (i.e. JPEG and other file formats :)

• Also include a guide for translating the instructions. Assume that a future reader may not understand any of our current languages, or even be human at all.

• Put it all in a silo as physically strong as you can build.

• Make copies of the silo and bury one on each continent and in each ocean. Maybe even on the Moon?

• Distribute markers and maps to each silo (and instructions for opening them) all over the world.

• Let fate take its course.

All of this could be done by a few individuals and most of it won't even require a lot of money.

<comment><USER28> We've constructed a society which is incapable of responding effectively to even ultimate crisis, and faced with that realization all we can think to do is devise a way to preserve the leavings of that dead-end paradigm. Very nice.

<comment><USER18> Others can and could still learn or be inspired, if not from at least SOME of the things we've made or thought of, then from our mistakes.

<comment><USER28> So these others will have some ability to learn from our mistakes which we don't possess now?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> There's a team of scientists in the arctic who have an unconventional but (possibly) effective idea to reduce/slow the release of permafrost methane. The Zimov's have a Kickstarter up now - [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/907484977/pleistocene-p...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/907484977/pleistocene- park-an-ice-age-ecosystem-to-save-the)

</comment><comment><USER30> I don't like what I'm reading here. Is there any expert here that could at least bring in non-panic arguments ?

<comment><USER31> That's why I keep hitting "refresh" on this page of comments, in the hope that someone with more expertise than I have comes along and tells me it's not nearly as bad as I take this to be (i. e., "we're fucked").

Still waiting, BTW.

<comment><USER32> There is _some_ hope. We could geoengineer a giant shade structure to reflect sunlight away from earth. It would cost $trillions (twelve zeros) but it could be done with current technology. And it would cool the Earth immediately. Unfortunately it would do nothing to fix ocean acidification, which threatens to starve and/or suffocate us all.

<comment><USER33> That "solution" fucking sucks. We kinda rely on the sun to grow plants and power life, you know?

<comment> semi-extrinsic Erm, it's not like anyone is suggesting "block all sunlight". We're talking about blocking at most a few percent.

On this topic, I've always wondered if you could make such a solar shade that hovers just on the far side of the Lagrange point between sun and earth, balancing radiation pressure and gravity. Does anyone know if that would be passively stable?

<comment><USER34> Not quite, something would have be done about lateral motion. L1-L3 are only stable along the axis between the orbiting bodies. L4 and L5 are local gravitational minima, but that doesn't help us here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> The majority of the population does not care about this one bit. They're going to carry on driving their gas guzzlers. The only change we can make is if we, who understand what is at stake, invest in renewables to bring their price down.

When the backwards people will see us all in our cheap to run, fast to accelerate and cheap to maintain electric pass them on the highway will they feel dumb buying gallons of gas to keep their guzzlers going.

<comment><USER36> Consumer gas vehicle make up a TINY fraction of the cause of greenhouse emissions worldwide. Everyone changing to EVs isn't going to fix anything, especially when that electrical power can come from dirty power plants.

The big changes need to come from agriculture, commercial, and industrial industries. The world also needs to quickly phase out coal and gas power plants and switch to all renewable so new "green" electric vehicles are actually better for the environment.

<comment><USER37> > Consumer gas vehicle make up a TINY fraction

According to [1], transportation is 26% of greenhouse emissions, of which over half is passenger cars and light-duty trucks.

[1] [https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas- emis...](https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions)

<comment><USER36> Those are US emissions only. What about China? India? The EU?

As you can also see from that report, 30% of emissions come from electricity generation. If we all switch to EVs, expect that % from consumer vehicles to just flip to electricity. That can't be fixed until all our electricity is 100% renewable.

<comment><USER38> It can be improved as soon as average electricity generation is cleaner than internal combustion engines, which it is today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Ok, so how do we unfuck this? What are the promising options, who's working on them, and how can one contribute?

<comment><USER40> go solar. & EV

<comment><USER39> This won't help clear out methane in the short term, though.

<comment><USER41> clearing out the methane is the problem. you really, really don't want it to clear out, you want it to stay frozen under the arctic permafrost. the problem is if the ice that's currently keeping all that methane sequestered melts, it releases the gas. We need to drastically reduce our greenhouse gas emissions from other sources to curb global warming and keep all that gas frozen away.

<comment><USER39> I used a wrong expression. What I meant is clearing it out of the atmosphere if it happens to get there, and/or making sure that the currently sequestered methane stays that way (including by locking it down harder somehow).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I know it's stupid and crazy, but would carpet bombing the arctic work to burn up the methane trapped below the permafrost before it leaks out into the atmosphere and causes worse problems? Or maybe we should send out expedition crews to find and preemptively explode these methane bubbles.

Perhaps the way things are going they will become too plentiful to really do anything realistic about it.

<comment><USER43> It burns to CO2. Not enormously helpful?

<comment><USER44> Pound for pound, methane is a much stronger GHG then CO2.

<comment><USER22> Breaks down more quickly though I'd expect?

<comment><USER45> Methane naturally breaks down _to_ CO2. Transforming it to CO2 faster is unambiguously better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Suppose one has already cut his own consumption as much as possible and has some free money left. What's the most efficient way to spend it to combat climate change? Buy EV; donate to environmental lobby group; invest in a vegetarian restaurant around the corner; isolate your own house? Any ideas?

</comment><comment><USER47> This is a particularly dramatic methane release, but methane is being released regularly in the high latitudes. I visit Alaska in the summertime and I see methane releases in many locations -- for example (taken from my kayak):

[http://i.imgur.com/rRs3fQU.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/rRs3fQU.jpg)

It's important to say the only reason you can see this outgassing is because the source is underwater. The entire landscape is releasing methane this way, but without any clear signs.

</comment><comment><USER48> Excellent time to defund the EPA. Natural selection at its best.

</comment><comment><USER49> So, assuming we're screwed, where's the best place to move preemptively? I know Boston isn't that place.

\- I assume the coasts are a nonstarter.

\- Moving inland could be nice, but the ground would need to be pretty arable to restart civilization there. I'm guessing somewhere in Africa is a safe bet, given the lack of resource exploitation there, but then again, there's not much infrastructure at the moment.

<comment><USER50> > I'm guessing somewhere in Africa is a safe bet, given the lack of resource > exploitation there,

...what?

<comment><USER49> AFAIK Africa has a ton of natural resources still available compared to the rest of the continents (other than Antarctica)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Here is a list of articles so far about methane capture and biogas. This is lab based experiments in small quantities (~50ml) but it could be scaled up. So in a foggy smog future where we all live in domes, these methane processors could slowly grab the energy back from the atmosphere.

[1] [https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18977-innovation- meth...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18977-innovation-methane- capture-gives-more-bang-for-the-buck/)

[2] [http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2008/CC/b80440...](http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2008/CC/b804405h#!divAbstract)

[3][http://www.rsc.org/suppdata/cc/b8/b804405h/b804405h.pdf](http://www.rsc.org/suppdata/cc/b8/b804405h/b804405h.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER52> Unfortunately, few of the photos have anything to indicate scale and those few seem to range from 100m (small trucks on the far side) to 2-3m (the guy stepping on one). Still, those are incredible photos...

</comment><comment><USER53> If you find this interesting, VICE did a 15min segment on their show recently about this very issue.

<comment><USER54> Thanks for the mention, love Vice. Would you mind providing a link?

<comment><USER55> I couldn't find a youtube video of it but here's the HBO.com link [http://www.hbo.com/vice/episodes/05/57-when-the-earth- melts-...](http://www.hbo.com/vice/episodes/05/57-when-the-earth-melts-and- the-displaced/index.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Another bigger problem, raised by VICE reporting, is tundra thawing, leading to ground collapsing 10-30 meters into huge sinkholes. Appearently, one of the possible solutions is replacing tundra forests with grasslands by megafauna and macrofauna grazing, including, potentially, cloned mammoths, because grassland freezes harder in the winter and keeps the permafrost froze during the summer months.

<comment><USER29> The Zimov's (Russian scientists) are behind this effort. Check out their Kickstarter: [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/907484977/pleistocene-p...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/907484977/pleistocene- park-an-ice-age-ecosystem-to-save-the)

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Every time I see stories about runaway climate catastrophe, I stop and consider the scenarios and how it might affect how I lead my life, and none of them really change how I plan to do things. I'm working and training in ways I believe will contribute, and that is sufficient to calm myself.

Basically, either we make all the turnarounds necessary, on every front - policy, technology, engineering, culture - to beat this stuff by a huge margin, or it's all over. I don't see a middle ground of "things kind of suck for a while and then it's okay" happening. And that guides a lot of my thoughts on other topics: I want survivability, and of a form which preserves key freedoms. I believe massive reforms to the economic and political system are needed to do it. I believe our existing social network structures and cultural norms are insufficient to address this. There's a lot of room to change in all directions.

</comment><comment><USER58> A lot of the photos in the article sure looked like pingos[1], which are common in the Arctic and subarctic, rather than something exotic. Horses before Zebras and all that.

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

<comment><USER59> Pictures of pingos are shown in the article because some of these craters formed where there were previously pingos. The term is mentioned 6 times in the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Highly recommended: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Pinchbeck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Pinchbeck)

How Soon Is Now?

The book outlines the changes to our technical infrastructure - agriculture, energy, industry - and our social, political, and economic system that Pinchbeck deems necessary to avoid the worst consequences of global warming, species extinction, and so on.

</comment><comment><USER61> Could one pierce a bubble and syphon/concentrate the gas into a tank with a pump? Might be too late, considering how many there are and how remote they are.

edit: nm, I saw that conference where they've shown Methane releasing from the submerged Siberian plane. We're fucked.

<comment><USER62> Naively, it seems like that would be a bit like trying to pop a helium balloon and recapture the helium.

Though I'm certainly not an expert, and it's possible it'd be more akin to natural gas drilling, which we have some experience in.

<comment><USER61> If you look at the video in the article, there's a dude poking a hole with his boot in one of the smaller bubble. It looks like a possibility to capture the gas, maybe drill from top on the smaller ones and from side or bottom on the large ones... but, I'm not an expert. Also, top comment here linked to a conference where they've showed a submerged Siberian plane bubbling gas from beneath sea surface - 500 to 5000G of Methane. So long, and thanks for all the fish :/

<comment><USER62> I saw that video. It makes me think that the individual bubbles aren't big enough to be cost effective to harvest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here is another article about the same event (in german) that has an aerial view supposedly showing the distribution of the craters over one of the islands:

[http://www.spektrum.de/news/7000-gasblasen-woelben-sich- in-s...](http://www.spektrum.de/news/7000-gasblasen-woelben-sich-in-sibirien- auf/1443175)

(The craters filled with water, hence the dark color. The picture doesn't say anything about the craters' depth)

I don't know about the source though, so I guess it should be taken with a grain of salt.

<comment><USER63> Source of the image [https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=6034](https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=6034)

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> This is the first time I've heard about this issue. If this is as severe and terrifying as these comments are making it seem, why has this not been covered more?

<comment><USER65> What do you think climate scientists have been screaming about for the past several decades?

<comment><USER64> It always seemed like CO2 was the biggest issue. Call me naive but I didn't hear anything about massive underground methane bubbles ready to explode and destroy humanity imminently.

<comment><USER33> I heard about that problem ten years ago, without specifically looking for it. It's probably known for decades.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Honest question, if it does turn out that these have a bad effect, and they can detect the bulges, can't they start draining them before they pop?

</comment><comment><USER66> It's really hard to get the scale of the domes from the photos. Are the top photos 30cm across or 100m?

<comment><USER67> Well, the first photo has a cloud in it. I don't remember ever seeing tiny clouds that stuffy, so I think we can rule out anything below tens of meters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> So they can explode at any time from now and possible end us? Is that how I should wrap my head around it?

</comment><comment><USER69> The news services wont report this because it's not an immediate threat.

This surely is a case now for stopping flying. If everyone made a conscious decision not to fly, be a bit inconvenienced, this would lessen the chance of this and other catastrophic events taking place.

</comment><comment><USER70> It's pretty amazing that that website emails you your password in plain text when you register.

</comment><comment><USER67> Serious question: would we be better off finding a safe way to burn all this methane before it leaks? Even detonating it in place and wasting the energy seems advantageous, since CO2 is much less greenhouse-y than unburned methane.

</comment><comment><USER71> Why wouldn't we preemptively pump them out? Draw them down.

</comment><comment><USER72> don't forget the termites, as it is not a one off that has a half life, but a continuous process of production.

"production of CH4 by termites is probably <15% of the global yearly emissions."

[http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v301/n5902/abs/301700a0...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v301/n5902/abs/301700a0.html)

</comment><comment><USER73> burning off the bubbles is fun [https://youtu.be/15tPaV_j0CU](https://youtu.be/15tPaV_j0CU)

</comment><comment><USER74> Is there way to harvest these? We could burn the gas for a lot of energy, and the CO2 released would be a lot less bad than the methane.

</comment><comment><USER75> One thing the Russians have going for them is they're not denying climate change. That lets them sit down and think things through.

</comment><comment><USER76> silly question: burning it / these is not an option? it produces co2, but that is far less worse than ch4.

</comment><comment><USER77> Why do the craters have those sheer sides?

<comment><USER78> I was wondering about that myself. I suspect this has to do with the violence of the explosion cutting a path to the outside that is a circle because that's the shape the underlying gas bubble would have had.

Which makes me wonder what this landscape looks like during a thunderstorm with lightning hitting the occasional methane deposit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> So here is a solution: send a drone overhead and just ignite the methane via laser. no more methane!

</comment><comment><USER80> Could those methan bubbles be burned off with a torch drone.?

</comment><comment><USER81> This made me think of methane powered rockets that Elon Musk has mentioned: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_(rocket_engine_family...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_\(rocket_engine_family\))

Can we use the methane to get us to another planet?

</comment><comment><USER82> God is nice. God won't let that happen.

</comment><comment><USER83> This sounds like the start of a Dan Brown novel...

</comment><comment><USER84> who/what will this affect?

</comment><comment><USER85> so arctic russia has acne?

</comment><comment><USER86> Well this is pretty much the beggining of the end then.

<comment><USER87> The consensus is that unchecked GW would _not_ be a human extinction event.

<comment><USER45> Correct, I don't believe that human extinction is in the cards from unchecked GW. Though it could well still be the greatest and most prolonged disaster in recorded history. There is an _enormous_ gulf between minimum thresholds for, respectively:

      - "Not a big deal"
      - A catastrophe, comparable to World War II
      - The greatest catastrophe in recorded history
      - The extinction of industrialized civilization
      - The extinction of the human species
      - The extinction of multicellular life
      - The extinction of all Earthly life
      - The destruction of Earth as a planet

It can be tricky to push back against hyperbole comparing AGW to some of those later-stage events without being mistaken for someone who doesn't worry about AGW at all.

<comment><USER39> > _It can be tricky to push back against hyperbole comparing AGW to some of > those later-stage events without being mistaken for someone who doesn 't > care about AGW at all._

Yeah, the thing is, that your list roughly translates to:

      - Not a big deal
      - Many of us are dead
      - Most of us are dead
      - Almost of us are dead and everything is fucked
      - Remaining list items aren't even worth considering

Hyperbole is never good, but it's important to realize that anything above "Not a big deal" means _at least_ a serious degradation of life quality for everyone on the planet.

So maybe let's rewrite the list to show how your and mine lives will look like:

      - Everything is much more expensive, no more extravagant meals
      - European refugee crisis, except you're the refugee
      - Like the above, except everyone wants to shoot you
      - The Walking Dead, just without the zombies
      - Everyone dies

<comment><USER45> _Hyperbole is never good, but it 's important to realize that anything above "Not a big deal" means at least a serious degradation of life quality for everyone on the planet._

Agreed! I believe that AGW could prove as disastrous for humanity as a large scale nuclear war. Its effects might even lay the ground for a nuclear war. It is not something to take lightly. Yet I can't resist an eyeball-roll toward comments like "human extinction on earth by 2030."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER88> Let it crash. Human need a lesson.

<comment><USER33> This would be a "lesson" like death is a "momentary setback"

<comment><USER89> That depends on your religion I guess.</comment></comment></comment>


Multiple service providers are blocking DuckDuckGo in India - <AUTHOR> https://thenextweb.com/in/2020/07/01/multiple-service-providers-are-blocking-duckduckgo-in-india/ <comment><USER2> Gmail, Google Play Store, Google Cloud, Google Drive, and Google Meet also suffered because of the Airtel Issue. DuckDuckGo's blockage could also be because of the same issue.

[https://www.91mobiles.com/hub/gmail-play-store-and-other- goo...](https://www.91mobiles.com/hub/gmail-play-store-and-other-google- services-affected-for-some-airtel-users/)

<comment><USER3> This is a vicious cycle actually.

Because there is precedent that the current govt bans everything that critizes them, people get hyper when some glitch happens.

then all the right wingers descend to blame the cynics 'oh they are anti national'

and cynics become worse cynics, 'see they ban everything and then abuse everyone who questions'

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Meanwhile, DuckDuckGo confirmed on Twitter that it's looking into the issue > and suggested Android users change their DNS provider to get around the > issue.

If changing DNS works, how is this blocked by the ISP? Seems to indicate there is some other technical problem. Treat the rest of the article, and specially with tweets, with skepticism.

<comment><USER5> Haven't been back in India for a while, but the DNS blocking happens all the time. One big provider (AirTel) even injected ads in non-https pages quite frequently.

Anecdotally, I had a cable service in Delhi where the provider started throttling me if I didn't make any request to their dns server in some arbitrary time interval. So changing your dns might not be the fix (i fixed it by sending random queries to their server...).

<comment><USER6> > One big provider (AirTel) even injected ads in non-https pages quite > frequently.

...and in "HTTPS" pages "secured" by cloudflare. [https://medium.com/@karthikb351/airtel-is-sniffing-and- censo...](https://medium.com/@karthikb351/airtel-is-sniffing-and-censoring- cloudflares-traffic-in-india-and-they-don-t-even-know-it-90935f7f6d98)

<comment><USER7> It would have been nice to have a more proactive response in the original discussion on this: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12092188](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12092188)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Indian here. Just want to say that Indian Govt. is a piece of sh*t.

They don't understand a literal about technology. They want to protect citizen's privacy but they don't want to promote the thing that provides privacy.

Also, their official websites looks like they will die at any moment.

</comment><comment><USER9> Banned on ACT Broadband too, now. I get a "PR_END_OF_FILE_ERROR" which is the same error given on banned porn and other sites too. I feel like I'm missing a finger, it's been so long since I've regularly had to use any other search engine.

</comment><comment><USER10> Canada here. I currently cannot load DDG unless I'm connected to a US VPN (haven't tried other countries yet).

Edit: the site is accessible for me again at 14h30, Eastern time.

<comment><USER11> I am also in Canada and cannot load DDG via my university's vpn, but DDG works fine on my home internet connection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is there any precedent for this in India (blocking a search engine or other 'utility' website, as opposed to specific content)?

<comment><USER13> They block websites and URLs all the time. Often times, there won't be any justification (or even logic) behind the action — they've even blocked gist.github.com once.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Looks like a glitch (as the reddit thread indicates). DDG works fine on BSNL.

Note that r/India is very intolerant of views which are pro-India, and has consequently become an echo chamber for endia folk. I'd take anything coming out of this subred with a bucket of salt.

<comment><USER15> The fact that it works on BSNL means absolutely nothing. The implementation of blocking across ISPs is extremely inconsistent: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.08590](https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.08590)

> Note that r/India is very intolerant of views which are pro-India

/r/india heavily skews liberal and anti-Modi. That is not the same thing as being intolerant of pro-India views.

<comment><USER3> > /r/india heavily skews liberal and anti-Modi. That is not the same thing as > being intolerant of pro-India views.

Oh it is now anti Modi. I remember back in 2014 when every other comment and post was 'wow Modi will transform this country, Mumbai and Delhi will become New York'

I used to get banned just for asking 'how will he get the money to do so?' or for asking proof on past experiences as the PM's CM term of the state of Gujarat wasn't exactly as promising but /r/india had lost their mind worshipping Modi and hating Congress.

They now hate both Congress and BJP :D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It doesn't work for me as well! Not sure whats the reason behind this blocking! For now using bing as DDG uses it in the background!

</comment><comment><USER17> Working for me on Airtel. I think it's more of a glitch.

</comment><comment><USER18> I just saw a billboard for it on a 45mph stretch through a medium sized city.

</comment><comment><USER19> Working fine on my ION broadband, but it's blocked on Jio.

</comment><comment><USER20> It's working now.

</comment><comment><USER21> India, ruled by some big(!) heads who doesn't understand a dot in technology. They are governed by impulsive decisions of the policy makers and it's a name sake democracy. No real freedom of speech is allowed there AFAIK. Govt / Private / Policing is just too much and a lot of gag order as well. They just can't stand anything and consequences could cost a life too! Technology is being used by most of the population who doesn't even know what is behind the scenes. ISPs utilise it do whatever they want and there is a ruling body known as TRAI / DOT which doesn't care to explain the rationale behind any of their decisions for blocking / banning etc., God save that country!

<comment><USER4> > there is a ruling body known as TRAI / DOT which doesn't care to explain the > rationale behind any of their decisions for blocking / banning etc.

This is a big misconception in India. The URL blocking for the major part is ordered by courts and not the government - [https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/ban-porn- sit...](https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/ban-porn-sites-or- lose-license-high-court-to-isps-1351836-2018-09-28)

<comment><USER22> > The URL blocking for the major part is ordered by courts and not the > government

I can't speak to TRAI and DOT involvement, but the statement that courts are not part of the "government" is an over-technical definition centered around Parliamentary technicalities that happen to use the word, and of limited utility here. The courts are very much part of the apparatus which governs the people of a nation.

<comment><USER4> I see where you are coming from but the distinction is important because a lot of times these discussions are followed up by discussion about voting for certain political parties with suggestions of one political party banning/censoring more than other political parties. If one doesn't focus on the exact points of change where it's possible, complaining against the "big government" is going to be a very slow process to bring change.

<comment><USER23> Some group presumably passed the laws the court is enforcing? (Unless they're interpretting the constitution to require blocking DDG, I dunno). Seems like you would want to vote against those people if this is your important issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Just checked, works for me on 2 different ISPs. This looks like fake news.</comment>


Ubuntu 16.04 – Online searches in the dash to be off by default - <AUTHOR> http://www.whizzy.org/2015/12/online-searches-in-the-dash-to-be-off-by-default/ <comment><USER3> Not before time! I would occasionally use it in the Windows style "start typing the app name" use case and it was annoying enough that it seemed to prioritize the online searches making you wait for a couple of seconds before it showed the local results, but it would also often bring up weird matches for adult content too!

<comment><USER4> I switched to linux mint a while back and i have to say I'm very satisfied of how stable and easy to use it is.

It's basically Ubuntu LTS without all the buggy slow crap like unity.

<comment><USER5> Call me crazy, but I really like Unity. Back on windows, I always kept by taskbar on the left side anyway, and I prefer the dash search to anything else I've seen.

<comment><USER6> Same. It looks slick, is very fast (thanks to well defined and configurable keyboard shortcuts) and easy to use.

Whatever the haters have against it, in the end I get stuff done faster and spend less time configuring my DE.

<comment><USER7> The keyboard shortcuts for snapping are so key. I really struggle to manage windows on any computer that isn't running Unity.

<comment><USER8> What I don't get is why they didn't make them match the Windows hotkeys. It was ALT+START+LEFT to stick something left, for example. Why add the ALT?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Yay! I often wondered if anyone used all those janky Canonical features they keep trying to stuff into Ubuntu.

I guess it's hard to not try and become like MSFT, even if most of your customers use your product because it's NOT from MSFT...

<comment><USER10> At this point in time, even MSFT is really trying hard to not be MSFT.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have been using Ubuntu since before Unity (when this 'dash' thing arrived) and I don't think I have ever used the dash.

If I need to find a file or something on the internets I am more likely to think 'I must use Gopher for this!!!' than I am ever to think of using 'Ubuntu dash'. It is one of those helpful creations like the F1 key that is a great idea in theory but not used in practice.

In some way they have managed 'brand awareness' with the dash debacle, inevitably it was always going to fall by the wayside though. Command line tools like 'find' and 'grep' are always going to be vastly superior to these WysiWyg contraptions.

<comment><USER12> 'find' and 'grep' don't work on your Google Drive docs though

<comment><USER13> Sounds like yet another reason to use real files instead of giving all your data to Google (and thereby the NSA).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Stallman wins again!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CP8CNp- vksc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CP8CNp-vksc)

</comment><comment><USER15> They might as well remove it altogether...

Btw, when it's Canonical going to announce that they will stop developing Ubuntu Phone? The writing has been in the wall for months and with Mozilla's recent announcement I believe it's just a matter of time. I think the vast majority of the mobile OS market has just moved on and is pretty ok with the two most popular OS options.

I kind of feel sorry for Ubuntu[1] and Linux[2] in general, they never had a firm foot in the desktop (market share-wise) and then this tectonic shift happens where everything goes mobile, a market where they aren't even a player, and to add insult to injury people stop caring enough about the desktop to even consider changing their OS to Linux in the first place.

1\. I say this as a long time Linux user.

2\. I know android is a modified version of Linux but here I use it as it has been traditionally understood in the desktop space.

<comment><USER16> Android isn't a modified Linux, it just uses the very same Linux kernel as any other OS that uses Linux. Android is otherwise this userspace thing where other Linux-based systems have X11 and such with Qt and gtk and other things.

Although not perfect, this really shows the value in the name "GNU/Linux" for the desktop distros and such vs "Android/Linux"

Anyway, Ubuntu phone may not make it (seems unlikely), but it has _more_ of a shot given the death of Firefox OS, not less. Ubuntu phone now has less competition in the alternative-mobile space.

<comment><USER17> _> this really shows the value in the name "GNU/Linux" for the desktop distros and such vs "Android/Linux"_

I don't really agree. For desktop users, the DE matters a lot more than who made `cp`. For server users, the distro matters more because of the particular weirdness of each.

<comment><USER18> GNOME is part of the GNU project, as well as emacs, gtk, etc.

<comment><USER17> I am well aware of that. I don't use GNOME or GTK (indeed, on my Linux desktop libglib isn't even installed).

<comment><USER19> What are you running, Alpine?

<comment><USER17> I'm running Debian with KDE. The GNU tools are installed but by weight they're nowhere near the majority of the code on the system, to say nothing of the components I actually use. So calling that machine "GNU/Linux" instead of "KDE/X.org/Linux", given the relative importance of the individual components, would be stupid.

Fortunately, we have the nearly universally understood "Linux" instead, and weird specializations like Android can be called something else.

<comment><USER20> I agree that "naming all the things" is a bit silly. But I think GNU/Linux indicates Linux kernel, GNU libc, compiled with gcc -- which is actually kind of useful information. It doesn't say anything about the Graphical UI (if any). Similarly I think Android/Linux is useful, because it indicates something about what kind of (binary) software you can expect will work - <USER2> what will not.

I also happen to think distinctions such as Debian/kFreeBSD (a Debian distribution based around the FreeBSD kernel, as opposed to (just) the regular FreeBSD user-land) are informative.

I'm not sure what one should/would call a Linux distribution with an alternative (non-GNU) libc that relied on a non-GNU compiler chain... Probably "brandname"/Linux or "function"/Linux (eg: Linux Router Project or something)...

<comment><USER17> This isn't a technical thing for any of the major proponents, though. It's a marketing thing, because after the spectacular failure of Hurd GNU was relegated to effectively a sideline (a useful one, for sure, but a sideline). I get a lot more direct and personal value out of code not provided by GNU than I do by code provided by GNU. I don't think they merit top billing, and I don't think the two decades of holding one's breath and turning purple deserves a reward.

<comment><USER16> Look, the Linux kernel itself uses the GNU GPL, so GNU probably is the most important factor in all of this. Linux kernel under a proprietary license or even under BSD-style, you probably would never have heard of it. At any rate, basically nobody thinks HURD is useful anymore. RMS thinks time spent on HURD is a waste since it is totally unneeded now that we have the Linux kernel. GNU is a _political_ movement about software freedom as much or more than a particular set of software, and even KDE is licensed with a GNU license. etc.

<comment><USER17> "Look," the creator of Linux could not give the faintest fart about GNU and has said he'd use a different license if he could. Why should a political movement that specializes in lousy marketing campaigns and haranguing be given a nod?

I do like that attempt, though. "Well, they used a license that GNU wrote, so GNU should get top billing!" Do you want to talk about how well Apache/Dropwizard and PostgreSQL/PostgreSQL work with Apache/Kotlin on GNU/OpenJDK8?

<comment><USER16> > has said he'd use a different license if he could

Citation?

A constantly repeated quote from Linus is precisely: "Making Linux GPL'd was definitely the best thing I ever did." from a 1997 interview according to [https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds)

I've never heard Torvalds say anything regretful about using GPL. When I heard him in person just last year, he clarified his dislike of GPLv3 while emphasizing his preference and like of GPLv2.

And anyway, I didn't say anything about "top billing". The fact is, Linux itself is, admittedly, absurd billing for Linus given that he is the leader of the kernel project but is among thousands of people who make it happen. GNU is not a term that credits Richard Stallman. GNU is a community project with a particular political aim. And my point all along was just about _some_ practical way to differentiate Android from the other primary Linux-based systems, and "GNU/Linux" is a way to do that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Meanwhile, Apple 'innovated' a very similar feature earlier this year in iOS9:

[http://iphone.appleinsider.com/articles/15/06/16/apples- siri...](http://iphone.appleinsider.com/articles/15/06/16/apples-siri- spotlight-extend-google-like-search-inside-ios-9-apps-without-tracking-users)</comment>


Massive DDoS attack happening at the moment - <AUTHOR> http://www.digitalattackmap.com/#anim=1&color=2&country=ALL&time=15999&view=map

<comment><USER2> This is intriguing. May I ask how it was implemented. More specifically, how is the data obtained?

<comment><AUTHOR> The Digital Attack Map presents data gathered and published by Arbor Networks ATLAS - global threat intelligence system. ATLAS sources its data worldwide from 270+ ISP customers who have agreed to share anonymous network traffic and attack statistics. Data is updated HOURLY.

> Got this info from one of my friend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It looks like August 28th was a much bigger day?</comment>


Making a better, prettier, more functional Windows Command Line - <AUTHOR> http://www.hanselman.com/blog/MakingABetterSomewhatPrettierButDefinitelyMoreFunctionalWindowsCommandLine.aspx

<comment><USER3> Windows has indeed missed the text-mode boat big time. Eventually I think people naturally gravitate to running Linux with Windows in a virtual machine. I remember trying many of the tools mentioned in the article and it always never quite felt right. A lot of the _niceness_ could be attributed to a combination of bash, readline, and the accompanying *nix tools--the experience just isn't the same in Windows. Having terminals open in front of you in something like terminator is simply a joy in Linux.

<comment><USER4> I think this lends heavily into the reasons why development on OSX has become so popular. Devs were dying for a functionally attractive alternative to Linux, but Windows didn't offer the proper environment.

Heck, as a primary Windows user I've been contemplating switching to OSX for development.

P.S. While Cygwin is nice, I've always felt like it was a clunky alternative that was shoe-horned into Windows.

<comment><USER5> Cygwin is my primary means of interfacing with Windows, and combined with a bunch of shim scripts I've built up over the years, I get a very similar experience across Windows, Linux, OS X and Solaris.

I actually prefer a Cygwin terminal on Windows to a Rxvt or similar lightweight terminal in X Window. The biggest pain in Linux is the selection buffer. With Console2 on Windows, selecting text puts it in the clipboard buffer, and you can then select a bunch of text in your IDE and overwrite it with a paste. The same workflow doesn't work at all well in Linux; first you must delete the text in the IDE, then select the text in the console, then very carefully aim where you want the text inserted and fire with the middle mouse button.

Even worse, IDEs like RubyMine clobber the selection buffer for common operations like Ctrl+Shift+N (Navigate | File); not only does it clobber the buffer, but it hides the window if it loses focus, so it's actually impossible to copy text from an rxvt terminal into its search box!

As a practical web development environment, I think Linux is the way to go to minimize the distance to production. But my preferred means of interacting with Linux is ssh, either to a VM or over the network, from a nicer desktop OS. Which for me is Windows.

<comment><USER6> > Cygwin is my primary means of interfacing with Windows...

Could you explain that a little more? For instance - say you want to browse the web or read email - you're doing it in a Cygwin terminal?

Do you use it as your launcher to launch Windows apps or do you only run text interface applications? Or, do you just do most of your dev/sysadmin work in Cygwin and use normal Windows apps for the rest?

<comment><USER5> I mean I have 7 terminals (many also running screen) open on my desktop - <USER2> windows than all other apps combined; and almost all interaction with the OS, by which I mostly mean process and file management, is via the command line. My browser is relegated to a secondary window alongside my service monitoring and ssh terminals.

When I write new utilities, they are usually command-line based. If I can get away with it, I'll put together a bash script built out of pipelines of Unix utilities and various others I've written over the years. I'm reluctant to write for-purpose apps; I try to make them fit into a Unix-style paradigm of streams combined with some command-line options.

For example, I recently wrote a simple video editor to select clips from my motorbike commuting videos. The only platform-specific bit is the video player, and all it does is respond to keyboard commands to navigate backwards and forwards and mark positions, in response to which it writes out text to standard out. I have other scripts which drive ffmpeg or other utilities as necessary to do the heavy lifting of cutting and composing. And to port it to another OS, all I need write anew is a video-playing component. And things like parallelization for efficiency, process isolation for resilience, and job control to temporarily reduce CPU usage (perhaps to avoid overheating on reencode!) are trivial.

For work, all my testing is done from the command-line, much of the code tweaks, all source control, merge resolution, grep / sed / etc. Debugging is usually done with repls like pry for Ruby. Browser at work is primarily used for distraction while having a coffee and waiting for tests to run, or to interact with company web apps.

Things like web browsers (Firefox in my case, because of tree-style tabs more than anything else) are invariant across platforms. If you live entirely in the browser, you don't need to deal with, or even know anything about, the machine's OS. So I don't really consider that use case an interaction.

<comment><USER6> Wow, that's impressive! I just couldn't imagine working that way, so thanks for clarifying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I had the impression that cmd.exe was on its way out, soon to be replaced by Powershell entirely.

When I saw the option for Powershell to open by default in Windows 8/2012 instead of cmd.exe, I figured the writing was on the wall.

<comment><USER8> Powershell still uses the same terrible terminal emulator that cmd.exe does. This article is mostly about terminal emulators, and using windows shells for unixy stuff. Its not cmd.exe sepcific, I use Console2 for powershell terminals at home.

<comment><USER9> I wonder if its time for microsoft to think about supporting a unix userland.

<comment><USER10> They already do/did [1,2]. Curiously there used to be a POSIX subsystem (alternative to Win32) but that was removed in favour of SUA.

[1] : [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interix](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interix) [2] : [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Services_for_UNIX](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Services_for_UNIX)

<comment><USER11> Services for UNIX has been deprecated. It is no longer being kept up-to-date with new Windows versions.

That's because the primary purpose of these tools was _not_ to provide a UNIX environment for users. Rather, it was to provide a transition to Win32 for developers of UNIX applications. In version 1, you'd move the UI over to Windows, and leave the back-end mostly unchanged. In version 2, you'd then rewrite the back-end for the Windows API.

At this point, if you haven't already ported to Win32, then you're probably running on Linux.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A properly configured ConEmu is pretty much the same as Linux terminals. It has tabs, transparency, background images, colors, proper copy paste, path autocompletion. What's missing ?

Here's mine in action [http://i.imgur.com/S5mkXq6.png](http://i.imgur.com/S5mkXq6.png)

<comment><USER13> Does conemu work right with applications like python? One common problem with layers over the console subsystem is that it's not possible for an application to detect that it is being manipulated by an interactive console anymore, because the layer over it (console2, mintty, etc) looks like a pipe.

To be fair, I haven't tested this out in a while, so maybe they fixed it. But last time I tried, python would see that pipe and assume you were piping a .py file into it instead of launching the interpreter. IIRC the problem is related to how 'isatty' works on win32.

<comment><USER14> At least Console2 isn't a pipe but instead polls the screen buffer of the invisible console window of the guest application. But could be that things have changed by now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Tip: You can run any graphical app as a tab in ConEmu. There's really no need for BitVise. You can run PuTTy and even Sublime inside a tab AND initiated from command line.

Try this iTerm2 :)

[http://i.imgur.com/FWigyp6.png](http://i.imgur.com/FWigyp6.png)

<comment><USER16> Hey, that's cool... how did you configure that?

<comment><USER17> If you are asking about attaching GUI applications to tabs, there are a few ways to do that: [https://code.google.com/p/conemu- maximus5/wiki/LaunchNewTab#...](https://code.google.com/p/conemu- maximus5/wiki/LaunchNewTab#Attach_existing_console_or_GUI_application)

You can also configure it to start in a tab

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I always have this feeling, that console is more about tools that you can run (such as unix commands), than just some console improvements (like command history, copey-paste, etc.). I think the article focuses more on the latter.

Anyway, for people who really need some linux tools, cygwin is some viable option.

For hardcore hackers, I'd run an instance of colinux. you can the whole linux environment within windows with almost no performance overhead. (don't forget to configure "cofs" for windows files access.)

<comment><USER10> Doesn't coLinux rely on using a device driver to give the Linux kernel a dedicated chunk of physical RAM? Not quite overhead, but worth considering.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Personally I love the "cycle through the options" of the Windows Command Line. It's the one thing that I wish bash could emulate, instead of the "Show me all the options". For me, it's a lot more functional, because it doesn't require me to figure out what the differences are between file names. For example, trying to find the difference between R0BCRWPY_1373654012 vs R0BCRWPY_1373647568 is very tedious, especially if you have a bunch of similarly named files.

<comment><USER20> It's possible in bash too. In your .bashrc:

        # tab key: cycle through the list of partial matches
        bind "\C-I":menu-complete

        # ^p: traditional completion
        bind "\C-p":complete

<comment><USER21> Also, I have my Shift-TAB bound to menu-complete-reverse. The way I got it to work is to chuck these two lines into ~/.inputrc

      TAB: menu-complete
      "\e[Z": "\e-1\C-i"

The second line is the non-obvious one, can't remember where I found it. I wasn't able to get this to run unless it was in .inputrc though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm spoiled using IPython on Linux. Even the latest PS IDE on Windows 2012 is a infant compared to the CLI tools on a Unixy OS.

</comment><comment><USER23> Another nice terminal emulator for windows is MobaXterm[1]. It comes a single exe and has out of the box support for connecting to remote servers using a number of protocols.

One of the features I like is its builtin support for X-forwarding. I never quite got why Windows didn't (and still does not) come with a full-featured SSH client. On a Mac/Linux host, you can simply type 'ssh -X firstname.lastname@example.com' and be on your way, but not so on Windows. Sigh.

[1] - [http://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/](http://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/)

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm surprised Emacs was not mentioned. It provides a nice cross-platform interface to ... everything. Also everything (including looks) can be customized!

<comment><USER25> As someone who practically lives in Emacs running in Cygwin, I can second this, with some caveats: there are tradeoffs. Windows FS access and process forking are still dog-slow, even in native apps. To add to that, there are things I can't run in the native version of Emacs (w3m-el comes to mind), but you trade occasional lockups in Cygwin Emacs. Compare Linux where I run the same setup for Emacs _for months_ if not _years_ with no problems; even if Cygwin Emacs stays up that long, I will eventually (usually every week or so) be forcibly rebooted for Windows updates. If I never have to work with proprietary software again (especially Microsoft products), it will be too soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> "Putty has always been the gold standard of terminals, for me."

\--comment on the post

Really? Maybe he means in the Windows world.

</comment><comment><USER27> Why do all Windows consoles use crazy thick fonts? It always seems weird to me, as someone weaned on xterm.

<comment><USER28> For one, they are bitmap fonts, based on what you'd usually see in video hardware ROM. Using a thinner font would cause DOS applications (the first, and main thing you'd run in a DOS box) to look really bad. Remember they would use things from the (character set)[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_page_437](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_page_437)] to do windows and such in text video modes.

In the current day, the non-bitmap fonts such as Consolas don't translate well when using things like RDP or other remote tools. Partially because you lose things like font smoothing which make them more readable and partially because of compression artifacts obscuring characters.

<comment><USER27> Almost all Linux distributions without an Android userland have a nice selection of bitmap fonts that are noticeably thinner. I've never noticed ill effects in curses applications.

Your last sentence is confusing to me. RDP supports ClearType, and lossy compression is disabled by default (and only arrived in what, 2008 R2?.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Powershell is really quite good if you don't mind learning a slightly different shell. And there are good tools to extend it (PowerGUI is one I like).

<comment><USER30> Powershell on ConEmu is a joy to use, especially after you add in posh-git. When I found out Powershell can instantiate and call .net objects and functions (including threads) I immediately set out to convert all my batch scripts to powershell scripts and haven't looked back.

<comment><USER29> Nice! Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Whatever happened to DOSSHELL?

<comment><USER32> Windows doesn't run on top of DOS anymore, and with that, DOS Shell was deprecated in favor of the command emulator.</comment></comment>


Poland's Hardware Hackers - <AUTHOR> http://demotywatory.pl/2118296/Elastyczny-umysl

<comment><USER2> These pictures are not from Poland. There come from many countries, they just happend to be on a polish website (demotywatory.pl), where people share funny stuff.

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks like the Polish version of America's "There I Fixed It" blog (<http://thereifixedit.failblog.org>).</comment>


Who hoarded all the toilet paper? - <AUTHOR> https://www.aarp.org/home-family/friends-family/info-2020/toilet-paper-hoarding.html?cmp=SL-DSO-OUTBRAIN-HEALTH-CORONA-RSSFEED_New+Study+Shows+Which+Groups+Hoarded+Toilet+Paper_005ac59feed8310f8413f769864da788a2_CNN&dicbo=v1-0454869b99c3691d138c8d350ecea488-00b0d91fea41c4b1db6f9822c0399f54d7-gjstcylgmmztoljyhfstmljumeywmljygbrwmljvgmztqmbwmq4tanzqhe <comment><USER2> I wish people would treat their masks and other PPE the way they treated toilet paper last March.

Everywhere I go there are masks and latex gloves and wipes littered about. It is creating a different hazard that will become equally formidable if people can't conjure up enough civil decency to dispose of their germy waste properly.

</comment><comment><USER3> Back in March when all this insanity was starting we ran out of dish soap. It took me three shops to find some. I bought one bottle and still have about an inch left in the bottle. People went insane!</comment>


Can't get an internship - <AUTHOR> I'm a CS student at a small college (no opportunities at career fairs) in WA, and I've been trying to find myself an internship for the past couple of months, and I've had little success. As far as I can tell, my resume is decent (modeled after careercup's resume), I have stuff on my GitHub (no one really asked me for it though), but I still rarely get any replies (especially with resume black-holes like Jobvite - 0% reply rate). I've tried pretty much every approach from contacting people individually and "showing passion" for their company, to blasting my resume to anything I can find (ironically, response rates are about the same). I'm not particularly confident in my skills, but my get-an-interview rate is 100% for whenever I had to do a programming test/challenge for the initial application, so I can't be all that bad, but it never works out in the end. I even had an interview at a (mid-sized) startup in Seattle that went from "we'll make you an offer" to "you're not a good fit" as soon as they found out I'm not a US citizen. The prevailing advice on HN for "I can't get a job" seems to be "get an internship", and that you just have to not drool during the interview to get one, but I haven't found it to be as easy as some people make it out to be. I'm pretty desperate and at this point I'm looking for pretty much anything that would pay just enough for me to be able to survive the summer (I'm finishing up my junior year, so this is pretty much my last chance of getting a job that will allow me to stay in the US after graduation), but has depressed me to the point where it's starting to affect my day-to-day life in pretty severe ways. If you have any advice, I'd be grateful to hear it <comment><USER2> You're at a small college. I've been there. You don't have the same huge career fairs and prestige that many other large colleges have to attract internships.

However, you have something better. You have 1 on 1 connections with your professors who (hopefully) have some ties with industry around your area. Talk to your professors and start applying for some REU programs if that seems interesting also.

I was in the same position, my graduating CS class had 5 members. I had done some research with my advisor in undergrad and she hooked me up with an REU, internship, and a job once I got out. Your professors are one of your most valuable connections in college.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm in a quite similar situation. I'm a graduate student in Europe, currently trying to get an internship in the US - and trust me, I know about the black- holes.

I have a few years of professional experience in design and marketing but decided that it's not what I want to do for the rest of my life. So I started studying for a interdisciplinary degree in Digital Media / Computer Science and really love it. My grades are good and I finished a few projects that I'm quite proud of. A few days ago, I started applying for working student positions at tech companies and startups in the city where I just moved for my graduate studies, and most of them invited me for an interview right away. So i guess that my CV/Resume can't be too bad either. But companies in the US? I guess that me being from outside of the US in combination with my "weird" interdisciplinary studies is just too inconvenient for most US companies.

You didn't mention where you're originally from. Getting a job there is probably much easier. May I ask why you absolutely have to stay in the US after graduation?

Anyway, good luck!

\-- Edit: Oh, BTW, I'm looking for an internship opportunity in the US :) I finished a few projects with Python and Django, started with iOS development a few months ago, and I have a strong background in design and UX. I would love to hear from you and any feedback on my resume would be highly appreciated: [http://goo.gl/G9tf2U](http://goo.gl/G9tf2U)

</comment><comment><USER4> It is not clear to me how your citizenship or lack of it has to do with your internship prospects. From an immigration point of view, assuming you are legally in the country, there is literally nothing that any company has to do extra to hire you as an intern. It could simply be that that specific company was being stupid.

I have been in the same situation you were some years back. No C.S. experience; I had just moved from an EE background to work on Machine Learning. I was at an incredibly good school but still getting an internship seemed atrociously hard. Especially considering that people who had a C.S. background were not being grilled that hard in interviews. The problem is social proof. At the moment, you have a severe lack of social proof. Maybe, it is your school; maybe it is a question of abilities. It doesn't matter. Stop overthinking about things that are out of your control.

The solution? It may seem futile or simple but just keep going. Take concrete steps. Do more networking (which you are already doing), do prepare more for interviews (the standard algorithm/datastructure prep), rebuild your resume (feel free to ping me or post your resume on this thread and someone can critique it). Also, it is not the end of the day if you can't get an internship. It is one way to getting a full time job _but not the only way_. You can do other things: Google Summer of Code, hack on open source projects (which you should start doing yesterday, an excellent way of acquiring social proof), working on research projects with Professors (high profile ones that have good industry connections).

</comment><comment><USER5> 1\. Make it clear that your non-citizenship is a non-issue for working over the summer (because it isn't an issue, right?)

2\. Make sure there's a link to your github profile. A good place to put it would be under your email/phone number.

3\. As long as the resume stays at most one page, add some projects to your resume (prioritize the most impressive ones), below work experience.

4\. I don't agree with orasis's advice of saying that you're cheap. It reeks of desperation. Interns are already viewed as cheap labor, so there's no need to explicitly say you're cheap.

5\. Do you have any particularly marketable or in-demand skills? I'm talking iOS, Android, Ruby/Rails, Python/Django, PHP, advanced JavaScript/HTML/CSS, machine learning, data science. Typically as an engineer you get slotted into a particular category The categories I've seen are: Android, iOS, web front- end (JS/HTML/CSS), web backend (database focused or server focused), machine learning.

6\. Most big companies wrap up their intern hiring by February, so you still have several months to get an internship through an established bigcorp intern program. _However_ , startups are insanely flexible and most are willing to pick up interns even in the weeks leading up to the summer. One startup I talked to in September was actually like "we like you but it's too early, we have no idea where we'll be in May!" So focus on the big tech companies and the big startups for now, and keep in mind that many small startups don't have internship programs but might entertain hiring you if you email them in a few months.

</comment><comment><USER6> Don't bother getting an internship. On the top line of your resume, put "I AM CHEAP, TRY ME OUT!" and offer to work for < $20 / hour.

You have to look at things from the employer's perspective - it is very expensive to make hiring mistakes, because it usually takes a couple of months to realize that someone is pure dog-shit, and you've already agreed to a salary that is way above their productivity level.

By being cheap, you make the situation almost risk-free for the employer.

"Intern" says "please hold my hand". "Employee" says, "I promise to provide you value".

In a year or so, after you've learned a lot on the job, you'll be able to start hunting for a new gig at a much higher pay rate AND you can do it while already employed.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER7> If you are a Canadian citizen you should come up to Vancouver. I'll consider giving you an internship at my startup.

</comment><comment><USER8> Finding an internship can suck, can't it? I'm going through similar issues myself. Mediocre (but above 3.0 GPA), little luck, getting discouraged. HN can be pretty unhelpful about finding internships. HN has a bias towards the Ivy League/successful/US Citizen types that have few issues getting hired.

So what can you do?

1) Breathe. You'll find something. You're working in the hottest field in the world right now. Somebody once told me that anxiety is simply looking too far into the future. He said that if you start thinking far enough ahead, you'll realize how little control you have. You still have plenty of time.

2) Realize the holidays are here. That's great for two reasons. One: nobody is hiring right now. Very few interviews are going out and virtually nobody is sending out offers. Wait until the new year to begin the search again. Two: you have a whole break to better your resume. Build a project, contribute to open source (this one's a biggie), learn a language. You have a free pass to better that resume of yours.

3) Submit your resume on this thread. Hopefully, HN can give you some tips.

4) Use connections. Start with your parents (although it sounds like they might be overseas). See where they work and look for internships in your field. Have them refer you. Then do the same for friends who have interned, their parents, their connections, professors, anybody. Start knowing where people work and ask for favors. It takes a minute or two of their life to send your resume to HR.

5) Don't be afraid to go after "bad jobs". This has been my biggest issue. I've been going after the biggest, best companies out there. And that's fine- to a point. A big-name internship sells itself when job hunting. A smaller, less sucecssful company internship can too. You just have to work harder to sell it.

Now, I haven't addressed the elephant in the room - your citizenship. That's an issue. Very few companies are willingly to go through the effort to get you a visa. Fear not, you have a couple options. You can try to get some kind of visa on your own, although I'm not an expert with that. You can find a company that has overseas offices. Work overseas for your internship, then transfer to the USA for a job. Or you can simply get an overseas internship. That experience will hopefully help you get a job here.

Quite the novel. I know it can be depressing to not have something just yet. Especially when friends have their dream jobs. I must say that writing this has been very cathartic. But don't focus on this too much. Study for finals, go drinking, play video games; just get your mind off of it. Any job search is going to have more negatives than positives. You only need one yes. Every no is one less until you get your yes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! I've already been doing a lot of the stuff you mentioned, and I'll definitely consider the rest. As far as citizenship is concerned, I can work for almost 3 years with my student visa (employer doesn't need to do anything either), so I'm not sure interning abroad would make much sense in my case. Also, besides language difficulties, a lot of internships outside of the US are either unpaid or so poorly paid that I couldn't afford to move half-way across the world for the summer. Good luck in your search as well!</comment></comment>


UC Berkeley, Intel Explore Potential Replacement for CMOS Technology - <AUTHOR> https://www.top500.org/news/uc-berkeley-intel-explore-potential-replacement-for-cmos-technology/ <comment><AUTHOR> Excerpt: "Researchers from Intel and the University of California, Berkeley have proposed a new category of logic and memory devices that could offer 10 to 100 times the energy efficiency of microprocessors based on complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology."</comment>


Is Palmer Luckey right about Magic Leap being a tragic heap? - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.co.uk/article/magic-leap-one-palmer-luckey <comment><USER2> Most reviews acknowledge that despite it not being a huge technological advancement it's still the best standalone AR headset. Second, devs love it. Check out the activity on social media or hands on reviews from actual devs using it. They're very positive about it.

Here's a recent write up from a well known Hololens dev: [https://brekel.com/my-thoughts-on-developing-with-magic- leap...](https://brekel.com/my-thoughts-on-developing-with-magic-leap-one-for- a-week/)</comment>


Show HN: I built an urban development tracker for Los Angeles - <AUTHOR> http://citygro.ws

<comment><AUTHOR> I live in downtown Los Angeles, and I built this site out of my own frustration with not being able to find a cohesive way to learn about and keep up with all of the city projects and developments happening around me. Problem is, I'm not content with the way this first iteration came out, and I could use some help.

My ultimate goal is to build a service that's fully integrated into the city, in such a way that new buildings, businesses, and projects are not only fully documented with everything you would want to know about them, leaving behind a timeline for posterity as they progress, but also so that the purposes of those buildings are well-categorized. New apartment building? Here's when it'll be done, what amenities it will have, and how you can apply to live there. New bar going in in that building across the street? Here's a community where people can discuss its impact on the rest of the neighborhood.

The problem is, I haven't quite managed to settle into a solid structure yet. My initial thought was to have everything be user submitted, but I'm wondering whether things like building information might be better managed by an admin. On the flip side, construction photos are obviously something more suited to come from the public.

In short, to anyone out there that likes urban development, I ask you, would you use something like this? And if not, what can I improve in order to become something that you WOULD use?</comment>


A couple chronicling New York's disappearing storefronts - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/nov/19/closing-down-chronicling-new-york-disappearing-stores <comment><USER2> Make way for the oligopoly!</comment>


Origin of the species: where did Darwin's finches come from? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/jul/30/origin-of-the-species-where-did-darwins-finches-come-from <comment><USER2> One of the caveats of looking at the current populations to determine which group migrated to the island is the current populations may not reflect the populations from 3M years ago. Having the birds be related to a Caribbean species may not be so strange if you consider that it was a variation that is good at migrating long distances over open ocean and may have been locally outcompeted by the current species in South America and died out.

</comment><comment><USER3> Re: _where did Darwin 's finches come from?_

From God, of course ;-)

<comment><USER4> Maybe, but please don't post unsubstantive comments to HN.</comment></comment>


Web design trends for 2014 - <AUTHOR> http://econsultancy.com/blog/64096-18-pivotal-web-design-trends-for-2014

<comment><USER2> I suspect the author is correct that many of these ideas will (continue to) trend during 2014.

It would be interesting to know of anyone who's done actual testing to see how effective or otherwise these ideas really are, whether that's something technical like A/B testing on conversion rates or simply collecting feedback from a range of users about how much they enjoyed using a site.

For example, I've seen a few striking presentations recently that illustrated a long-form article with not just static graphics but also animated diagrams and even short video clips of interviews (#11 in the list of trends). Obviously someone put a lot of time into designing those pages, and to me the results were much more engaging than a wall of text.

On the other hand, I wonder how well these Pinterest-style tiled layouts (#16) really work. I personally find them difficult to scan, as there is often no sense of hierarchy or leading me through the information in a useful order. All my instincts as a web designer say this is probably bad for usability, but I have no data to back this up.

<comment><USER3> On Pinterest-style tile layouts: I think they work for images, where you are scanning primarily images (Pinterest, Google image search). I think they do not work in cases where you want to scan text (headlines, etc.).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > 1\. Flat UI will continue to grow

God, I hope not. Yes, Win8 was first in that regard and look how well that's doing. Especially the flat, tiled mess that is metro. Where even the most die hard Windows fans who try to sell you on Win8 say "When you use start8, it's not _that_ bad."

Also, dumping skeuomorphism in iOS7 does not mean you just have to a) crank up the brightness to 11 and b) apparently break out MS Paint and design all your interfaces in it.

Is the stitched leather not making sense in a calender application? Yes. Did they really need to go ahead and remove every bit of polish from the UI? No.

Just look at iBooks. They left the page turning gesture including animation of a page turning. Apparently there is the line Apple drew. But what was wrong in using a nice book shelf as a "background image"? You can't stress that enough. Many applications have background images. And a shelf for books makes sense.

What do they have now? Nothing. Why, nothing at all. The book covers are now floating in a white void. Apparently that is what "flat" and "modern" design is all about.

So I guess the next iteration of iBooks will see the multi colored book covers removed and replaced by white, 90 degree rectangles in which the titles are written in a uniform black font. Cause that is what is considered "modern" now by the looks of it.

If there is a god, people will get bored of the flat, 1990 looking UIs very quickly. And why wouldn't they? How long can you look at interfaces like that and not be reminded of your old DOS editor. At least that used ASCII art to give you a drop shadow on your window.

</comment><comment><USER5> Is "giant black box on the bottom of the screen" on the list?

Sarcasm aside I don't see much value in this list. It's the same regurgitated platitudes in any of the other similar "articles" that have been posted on Reddit.

</comment><comment><USER6> This Title could be "2013" and it wouldn't make a difference.

</comment><comment><USER7> Not mentioned is "giant image at the top of the page screen that conveys nothing useful". I expect this will continue,

Medium has taken it extremes, but the trend started before that and is extremely common in landing pages - there are few startups from recent years that _don 't_ have this

A related patterns is "giant swaths of empty space at the top of the page".

Both are related to "lots of vertical scrolling required to get to anything useful", which the author did cover.

</comment><comment><USER8> I love how they talk about design and then take over my middle click to force loading over the page I'm reading. Umm, hello it's 2014 and if I want to open in another tab I WILL!

</comment><comment><USER9> They forgot "everything will be teal".

<comment><USER10> This comment cannot go unacknowledged. I love you collypops!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "2014 web design trends" \- web design \- design \- web \- internet \- computer \- why are you even reading this dross?

</comment><comment><USER12> Video backgrounds = not progress.</comment>