Climate center's server hacked, revealing documents and emails - <AUTHOR> http://www.examiner.com/x-25061-Climate-Change-Examiner~y2009m11d20-ClimateGate--Climate-centers-server-hacked-revealing-documents-and-emails <comment><USER2> I've followed Steve McIntyre for awhile, and it is in fact shameful, damning, and unscientific how ardently climate scientists have fought to keep their data from him when he has requested it to check their models. The problem seems to be particularly acute among the old guard of the profession. Seeing the other side of the conversation doesn't add a whole lot, we already knew what bastards they are.

For those who haven't checked out Steve's work, look at <http://www.climateaudit.org/> . But be warned, if you're looking for politics over numbers, he will put you to sleep. And the server is getting _hammered_ at the moment. But please book mark it and go back later. His blog is an important piece of the internet, what we all thought the internet could be before lolcats disillusioned us.

It doesn't surprise me to see a lot of people here coming to the climate scientists' defense. They are, after all, a popular and respected group in society at the moment. But when you cherry-pick data, create unreproducible models, and then refuse to share your data with other people, you ought to lose a little bit of that respect. We will get precisely the quality of science we enforce, which at present is any quality of science the authoritative voices in the area chose to give us.

When Steve has been successful at obtaining the data he wants, he has been able to find flaws in various analyses. If you come from a scientific perspective, that ought to be great news! Independent confirmation or refutation of results increases the quality of our knowledge. But if you come from a political perspective then Steve is bad news indeed.

Why climate scientists are respected and treated as the high priests of truth while they hide data from the world and McIntyre is treated as a vaguely dangerous rogue, I don't understand it. I suspect it's politics. But in a perfect world there would be a thousand McIntyre's and they wouldn't have to fight for data. It would be available in public online databases, hosting paid for by tax dollars. That ought to be the least we ask of any science with the potential to route trillions of dollars in government spending policy over the next decade.

But sadly, when bad science comes to light, all we get instead is a circling of the wagons around the favored group. Why? Again, I suspect politics.

<comment><USER2> As a follow-up, I don't think it would be unreasonable for climate scientists operating on public funds to be required to take the following steps:

1) Archive a copy of all raw data series used in publications with a public database

2) Archive a copy of the final processed data series used in publications with the same database.

3) Archive a copy of the source code used to produce figures and tables with the same database.

The default stance for publicly-funded science should be openness, not secrecy.

Hell, these would be good steps for any serious journal to take, on any subject, regardless of federal funding.

edit: Example of the pathology we need to fight:

>>"We should be able to conduct our scientific research without constant fear of an "audit" by Steven McIntyre; without having to weigh every word we write in every email we send to our scientific colleagues. In my opinion, Steven McIntyre is the self-appointed Joe McCarthy of climate science. I am unwilling to submit to this McCarthy-style investigation of my scientific research. As you know, I have refused to send McIntyre the "derived" model data he requests, since all of the primary model data necessary to replicate our results are freely available to him. I will continue to refuse such data requests in the future. Nor will I provide McIntyre with computer programs, email correspondence, etc. I feel very strongly about these issues. We should not be coerced by the scientific equivalent of a playground bully. I will be consulting LLNL's Legal Affairs Office in order to determine how the DOE and LLNL should respond to any FOI requests that we receive from McIntyre."

<comment><USER3> I hope that this entire debate results in a new set of ethical standards for publicly-funded research. At the minimum I would support the open and free release of all unaltered data, a "Chinese wall" between researchers and activists (of whatever breed), and the requirement for all science based on "best guess" to say so in bold print, much like the language we have when investing with a prospectus. The standard of proof being used should be available in clear understandable language.

I fear that by the time the political debate ends, a lot of good research is going to become collateral damage, which would be an awful result.

<comment><USER4> Daniel, you say: "At the minimum I would support the open and free release of all unaltered data."

If i may extract quote from the message you replied to: _As you know, I have refused to send McIntyre the "derived" model data he requests,_ since all of the primary model data necessary to replicate our results are freely available to him. _I will continue to refuse such data requests in the future. Nor will I provide McIntyre with computer programs, email correspondence, etc. I feel very strongly about these issues. We should not be coerced by the scientific equivalent of a playground bully. I will be consulting LLNL's Legal Affairs Office in order to determine how the DOE and LLNL should respond to any FOI requests that we receive from McIntyre."_ (emphasis added by me)

I do agree with you that transparency is the litmus test of good science. At the same time, catering to that can lay you open to abuses from, well, trolls.

As an analogy, suppose I had a bee in my bonnet about Linux security and I kept demanding that Linus send me copies of his binaries every time he did a new commit. He would rightly tell me to get the sources and build it myself and leave him alone. and in turn I could post lonely rants along the lines of 'why won't Linus Torvalds come clean about Linux security'. It would be quite meaningless, but it would sucker in some people. If I was sufficiently clever I could probably get quoted by someone at Microsoft or in the BSD camp.

The parallel I am drawing here is to the public datasets and methods laid out in published, peer-reviewed papers. If McIntyre is so sure that either the methods or the datasets are flawed, why not follow the established practice of writing to the journal and challenging the paper, or even submitting his own analysis of the public data and explaining how it improves on existing analyses? Instead he posts in some minor journal which is not part of the scientific corpus, not a hard science journal, and has been widely accused of lax publication criteria.

One of the things that really bothers me about the skeptical crowd (as opposed to individual skeptics) is that they employ a lot of same kind of arguments as the proponents of 'intelligent design' do, claiming there's an ivory-tower conspiracy that silences all dissenting views and shuts them out of publication. Any time you have a bunch of people going 'OMG teh conspiracy', it's time to whip out the old bullshit detector...and all too often, comparing their claims with the published literature sends the BS detector way into the red.

<comment><USER5> _Nor will I provide McIntyre with computer programs,_

Sad fact: most journal articles do not include all the details necessary to reproduce their results. There are usually all sorts of heuristics and tricks used which are not interesting enough to include in the paper. Typically, the experts in the field all know each other and share source code/tricks in private conversation.

As for the "ivory-tower conspiracy", it apparently isn't bullshit. As these emails reveal, there is a conspiracy to make it difficult for Steve McIntyre to examine published scientific results. There is also a conspiracy (revealed in other emails) to oust climate skeptics from scientific societies. It isn't paranoia if they are really out to get you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Y'know, I hang out around smart people who like science, and I read a lot of science, and I do some science, so I get asked about science a lot.

And when I've said that I'm not convinced that there's human global warming happening, I've been called all sorts of nasty names. I didn't say it isn't happening; I just said the information I've seen doesn't convince me. I see a lot of strongly held beliefs that global warming is happening, but the actual data seemed murky at best to me. In short, I wasn't convinced either way.

But by casually interested people, I got called all sorts of terrible names. "Denier", things like that. Compared to a creationist as someone who obviously doesn't get it, who just has beliefs by faith.

Really? I say the data hasn't convince me, that makes me a denier and a creationist? This whole thing has seemed much more like a religion than science to me. There's some science happening, but a lot of people want and need this to be true as a part of their identity rather than science. It doesn't surprise me at all that you see corruption from scientists in a culture like that. It goes against everything science is supposed to be.

<comment><USER7> Fair point. And the thing about climate science is that while you may or may not disagree about global warming, the strategies we would employ to fight global warming are the same strategies we should be employing regardless.

Take the issue of renewable energy. It might prevent global warming, but it also promotes energy independence, reduces pollution generally, allays fears about peak-oil or peak-coal.

<comment><USER8> Peak-coal? Really? The last I checked there was enough coal in the ground to last several hundred years more, at least. As for oil, there's a pretty damned good chance that our extraction technology will improve (as has been the trend) and our ability to use new sources, like shale, will improve as well (as has been the trend).

Peddling the "fossil fuels will run out, we should find alternatives" line is a dangerous path. It risks a lot of very stubborn people saying "really? well, let's just find out, to the bitter end" and calling that bluff. And there is a very real possibility (even if you are skeptical and put that possibility at, say, 10% or less) that the world ends up using every last drop of coal, and far more oil than we ever thought possible, and ultimately burning 10x, 20x or more fossil fuels than have been burned so far.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm not too surprised at this. I think this is a great case study on groupthink.

I've observed groupthink / "the outside is the enemy" behaviour in several groups that I've participated in. It can be caused by one person setting the tone of the group (e.g., by making jokes), and then everyone else follows along. In this case, I could imagine a joke about skeptics, or perhaps someone misguidedly suggesting it was the group's "mission" to convince people that climate change was a big problem to be fixed.

Setting that sort of tone, especially early in the group's formation, usually quickly blossoms into an us-vs.-them mentality. Sometimes that's ok, but if you are trying to claim that you are objective, it's highly counterproductive -- and the worst part is that it's hard to realize how harmful groupthink can be when you are genuinely trying to learn something.

Anyway, if you want to reduce this effect in groups you're in, you have to have a sharp groupthink detector and you have to be fearless about saying stuff that's counter to the group's tone. I've defused groupthink situations by visibly becoming offended when I recognize that groupthink is occurring: it's usually fairly easy to explain why you're offended, and (in most kinds of groups) people usually have social pressure to stay away from discussions which will offend others. The problem is that the groupthinky memes can be fun, so you may be seen as a captain buzzkill.

<comment><USER10> Yet people doing climate science have enemies, and not imagined ones. This is not just group-think conjuring an imaginary "them."

This is true regardless of whether you believe in their integrity or not, and as a result they can no longer _behave_ objectively, even if it turns out that their conclusions were reached in a thoroughly objective manner.

<comment><USER11> If the scientists can no longer behave objectively then they've already lost everything.

<comment><USER12> That's an impractical statement.

<comment><USER11> The scientists' job is specifically to do science and be impartial to the results.

How can that possibly be a controversial statement?

<comment><USER13> No human can possibly behave objectively in all situations. We are constantly under the influence of bias (whether conscious or unconscious).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm basically a skeptic on climate stuff, but I'd encourage people to wait a bit before jumping to conclusions. Some of the pull quotes in this article seem sort of damning, but I can easily come up with perfectly legitimate reasons for some of the others, and for all I know there are legitimate reasons for the ones that look damning out of context. The Golden Rule also dictates that I cut them the same slack that I would want given to me if my private emails got out; we all talk differently in private than we would if we were talking to the world, and there's nothing wrong with that.

<comment><USER3> Agreed.

You can pull anything out of context and make it sound like anything.

Almost.

At some point it becomes very difficult to say it's all a trap, however. If the size of the data is as large as indicated, it should be fairly trivial to determine this one way or the other.

If the discussions did proceed as indicated, this data might make a great study in how science is carried out behind closed doors, so aside from the political squawking, there could be something here of real long-term value to science. I bet you'd never get these guys to publicly admit what their internal discussions were like.

<comment><USER14> "If the size of the data is as large as indicated, it should be fairly trivial to determine this one way or the other."

That's why I said we should wait, rather than claiming this is meaningless. This data set, if legitimate as it seems to be, is large enough to draw conclusions from, and if there are issues clearly indicated, OK, conclude away, once the data is in. I'm just not willing to conclude anything from a handful of selected quotes from a clearly biased source. And if those are the best quotes, I'm generally unimpressed.

<comment><USER3> I'm more interested in the process of how science is conducted than this particular subject or this particular article. What we're seeing here, on both sides, is that folks have already decided on way or another. It's the solution looking for the problem. So I'm afraid the signal-to-noise ratio is going to be very low for this no matter what the entirety of the data shows.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> To whomever hacked these emails, I thank you. I really think this was a valuable service to mankind that you've achieved.

You've lifted up the robes of the priesthood, and exposed them to be at best, flawed scientists, and at worst, social engineers. Whether this knowledge will have any effect on the truly brainwashed, we see that it doesn't, but it will have an effect on saner minds.

The marketing geniuses who turned 'global warming' into 'climate change','carbon dioxide' into 'carbon', and migrating polar bears into victims, will surely not be knocked out by this, but they're deleting emails this morning, you can be sure!

<comment><USER16> You're ranting like a loon about brainwashing, cheering on the hacking of private e-mail, and you're getting _upvoted_ for it?

If my e-mail was hacked and out-of-context quotes were levied to take ignorant pot shots at my work, I would be _beyond livid_. This behavior is absolutely inappropriate and I hope the perpetrator is caught and jailed.

<comment><USER15> Thanks for sharing your valuable insights on this issue.

Of course, the email wasn't private, was it? It's a government funded (your money) institution. That actually, perversely, makes this crime even more illegal. Governments seem to have more rights than private citizens.

So, you're right, it was a crime. You're also right, I'm cheering it. But you're wrong about who is ranting. It's you who is ranting.

<comment><USER16> _Of course, the email wasn't private, was it? It's a government funded (your money) institution._

This justifies breaking federal law and then excising context as to leverage out-of-context statements to dishonestly support your position?

It's no wonder that climate scientists are mildly paranoid about the behavior of "deniers".

 _But you're wrong about who is ranting. It's you who are ranting._

You've convinced me sir. I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

<comment><USER15> I think it's obvious from your constant "out of context" remarks, that you haven't actually read the emails. Instead of me starting a newsletter for you, why don't you download them and read those instead?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> When you're a skeptic looking for "evidence", you'll find plenty in there.

When you're a scientist looking for an informal discussion about thinking critically about the evidence and data interpretation, you'll also find plenty in there.

<comment><USER18> However, the way Al Gore has presented Climate Change has not at all been like scientific discussion, it has been portrait as a topic where the discussion and debate is over. That is my problem with individual such as Al Gore because statements like this,

"Land warming since 1980 has been twice the ocean warming — and skeptics might claim that this proves that urban warming is real and important."

show me there is still room to discuss and debate the evidence.

<comment><USER17> There is plenty of room for debate if the skeptics stop polarizing and politicizing the debate.

Also, if anyone in this debate can be counted on to change their mind, it's the scientists: we do it all the time when shown evidence to the contrary of the current belief. I sincerely doubt that your average skeptic walking into this debate is actually willing to change their mind if shown evidence. Their mind is already made up and it won't change.

So yes, plenty of room for debate, but it needs the right mentality.

BTW, I once convinced a very creationist skeptic that evolution just might be correct in like 3 hours. How? He was willing to listen and see that there just might be an alternative explanation to the things he's seeing. He was willing to accept a different point of view and my job was to present my case. Luckily I did OK.

<comment><USER19> _There is plenty of room for debate if the skeptics stop polarizing and politicizing the debate._

You're suggesting that the global warming folks would be willing to avoid politicizing? If it weren't for the policy prescriptions and other political fallout, the skeptics mostly wouldn't even care. I'm sure the vast majority of the skeptics would be willing, even eager, to drop all potential politics from the debate, but the whole reason it's important (from the viewpoint of such a skeptic!) is that it's now more about politics than science.

<comment><USER17> Absolutely it's more about politics than science. What I don't understand is that why politics got so injected so fiercely into the debate. Because of all the anti-climate change efforts, the climate change case actually got better as scientists did what they do best: they found more evidence to settle the points of contention raised by the skeptics.

Are the skeptics listening to this new evidence objectively? All I hear from them is "Ah yes, that may be so, but...".

<comment><USER20> It is extremely easy to see how politics got injected into the debate.

There was a move from "these are our findings" to "lets try and stop global warming". The second step requires government action. Hence, politics. If the climate change scientists had stayed in the "lets refine our findings" area then it would never be political. As soon as you say "lets get the government to do something about this", it is political.

There will always be people who question why you should expand government. And it is up to the people trying to expand the government to clearly show WHY we need to.

What are you expecting? Some people show up with their computer models and say LOOK, WE NEED TO DO SOMETHING, and no one would object? No one would look at it critically? If the science was so indisputable then the bill would be passed, just like the Clean Air and Clean Water acts were when they showed real science on pollutants.

<comment><USER21> You have a lot more faith than I do in the scientific literacy of our political system. Before climate change became such a current issue, there was serious controversy about whether or not we should teach schoolchildren about evolution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> A quote from

<http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/PSEUDOSC/GlobWarm.HTM>

        The science, reduced to its simplest terms, is that carbon dioxide
        is known to be effective at trapping solar heat. So are water
        vapor (the source of 90% of earth's natural greenhouse effect),
        methane, and other gases. The natural carbon dioxide content of the
        atmosphere has doubled in the last 200 years, climate is getting
        warmer, so the logical conclusion is that there is a connection
        between the two trends. If you feel uncomfortably warm at night and
        wake up to find someone has put another blanket over you, you don't
        need to look beyond that to identify the source of the warming.

        * Nobody - nobody - argues with the carbon dioxide trend. It's
        established beyond doubt.

        * The debate over whether climate is getting warmer is mostly over.

        * The debate now is over whether the connection between warming and
        human emission of carbon dioxide is real, or whether there are other
        causes of climate change at work.

        * The real issue is whether the benefits of taking action will
        outweigh the costs and regulatory burdens.

        * There are some who argue that warming will be beneficial by
        reducing energy demands for heating, lengthening growing seasons,
        and creating larger habitable and arable territory.

        The case for human-caused global warming is simultaneously a lot
        clearer than George W. Bush believes, and a whole lot less so than
        Al Gore does. There are legitimate questions about the data, past
        climate reconstructions, and the computer modeling still to be
        answered.

</comment><comment><USER3> The problem here has always been the nature of the debate, not the nature of the science.

You can make a good case that these are just scientists blowing off steam in informal e-mails -- or you could make the case that this is evidence that scientific integrity has gone in the crapper.

I take a third view: the problem here is that people do not want to have an honest debate. This is evident by the emotional content of the emails -- "idiots", etc. If you view yourself as the annointed and people who criticize you as stupid rabble, then it becomes very, very difficult to correct course when you screw up (as you inevitably will)

Getting emotionally attached to something and viewing yourself as an expert are potentially intellectually crippling things to do, whether it's climate science or database design.

<comment><USER23> I find it odd to say that the _climatologists_ are the ones uninterested in an "honest debate". Not to mention that "honest debate" would involve acknowledging who has the, you know, expertise in the field.

The reason they use the word "idiots" is that it is a descriptive term. Some random schmoe with an opinion is not engaged in "debate" when he questions scientific fact, and the emotional charge here is entirely due to the fact that public opinion seems to think that such entitlement is perfectly legitimate, when in point of fact it is a waste of everyone's time.

<comment><USER3> _Some random schmoe with an opinion is not engaged in "debate" when he questions scientific fact_

Sigh.

I'll do this one time, and then I have to get back to work.

Here's the deal: science is not dependent on "smarts". I can take a 4-year-old kid and we can test Newton's Laws of Motion just fine without any knowledge of algebra. In fact, the whole point about science being based on reproducible experiments is that we take appeal to authority out of the mix. If we still keep appeal to authority as a legitimate scientific tool of investigation then we might as well be studying phrenology or Lysenksoism (look it up).

Now the appropriate response is: but this isn't about science, this is about prevailing scientific opinion -- the best guess we have at what might happen. If you're prepared to go there, that's awesome, because then we're in a spot where we're talking about how political decisions get made, both inside and outside of science. But in that case, both sides are more on equal ground because the topics are all about how different groups arrive at various forms of consensus, not science.

It's when you get the two mixed up that the discussion gets really out of whack (to my lights, at least)

<comment><USER24> Sorry this is disingenuous. Sure, science is not about appealing to a specific authority, but you do need some background and training in it to be able to pull off the necessary experiments and understand the theory.

How would you and your 4 year old go about deciding whether you believe in Quantum Electrodynamics? Would you do an experiment, or would you ask an expert?

<comment><USER3> I would ask an expert who could show me a reproducible experiment.

<comment><USER25> Not wanting to step into an argument here, but I'd like to tie it back to the climate thing.

I think it's cool that you'd go to an expert to see a reproducible experiment. I'm also going to assume that it goes without saying (could be putting words in your mouth but it seems to flow from your responses) that you'd ask a lot of questions if there was unfamiliar math or concepts and basically receive very narrowly focused training in the fields around the experiment.

It's interesting to consider the likelihood/prevalence of the casual commenters on climate change (ie the ones being referred to as idiots) reproducing the climate scientists experiments or coming up to speed on the maths/concepts behind the experiment to be able to critique the experiment in the way that an expert in the field with an opinion opposed to the prevailing thought could.

I know quite a few very vocal climate change skeptics and none of them have a science background or the willingness to attain one, and they seem very proud of that. Hopefully that's a local quirk of my small sample relative to the population.

As an aside, if you can find a set of experts with the time to spend (plus, you know, equipment and money) I'd bet a decent chunk of change that you could take the prevailing scientific opinion and ask for reproducible experiments - in this case a lot would involve analysis of data already given to explain why they want to test want they want to - then you'd end up if not agreeing with them then at seeing where they were coming from.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The quotes used as examples in this article really don't do justice to the damage that will be done by this leak. If the documents turn out to be authentic, many of the participants will be spending years to come defending themselves from academic disciplinary committees and criminal prosecutions. Beyond the superficial 'blowing off steam', there's conspiracy to destroy evidence in advance of FOIA requests, tax evasion, and overtly political data manipulation.

It's ugly. It seems likely this will derail Copenhagen, and probably destroy the political momentum for Climate Change legislation for years to come.

The sad part is that this really isn't an outcome desired by anyone who actually cares about climate change as a scientific issue. This is a political win for Big Oil, rather than resolution of the issues. Rather than refocusing the issue on the science (as desired by the true skeptics) the issue becomes politicized even further. A different team takes the lead, but the science gets left even further behind.

<comment><USER24> This confuses me. FOI in the UK only applies to government agencies. How can a scientific body be required to release information?

<comment><USER27> Government funding = public is entitled to the data.

<comment><USER28> If that were true then the postcode database would be public, but it ain't: [http://ernestmarples.com/blog/2009/10/ernest-marples- postcod...](http://ernestmarples.com/blog/2009/10/ernest-marples-postcodes- has-been-threatened-by-the-royal-mail/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Title as submitted here is pure flamebait. Most of the quoted statements aren't in fact problematic at all (many of them I would in fact describe as so obviously not-problematic as to call into question the integrity of the person offering them up as evidence of dishonesty, and I wouldn't be surprised if every one of them turned out to have an innocent explanation), but even if each of those quotations demonstrated that the person who sent it had no integrity whatever, that would not justify the scare-quotes around "scientists" (dishonest scientists are still scientists), nor the blanket condemnation of "the climate scientists", as if the ones whose emails have been pilfered are the only climate scientists in the world.

Better would be something like "Leaked email archive allegedly calls into question the integrity of a few climate scientists". Better still would be "62MB of climate science emails leaked; here are some alarming quotations" or something.

<comment><USER30> "Dishonest scientists are still scientists"

I disagree. If they are not following the scientific method, but fudging their data to agree with their pre-determined conclusions, they are not scientists.

<comment><USER29> 1\. Assuming, for the sake of argument, the most uncharitable interpretation possible for all the quotations on display at the _Examiner_ , it seems to me that most of them do not involve any sort of data-fudging.

2\. I appreciate the rhetorical point you're making, but I prefer to distinguish between "not a scientist", "bad scientist" and "evildoing scientist". (But I do agree that if someone's found to have been falsifying results, whatever scientific work they've done is of little use to anyone unless there's some reliable way to disentangle the fraudulent and non- fraudulent bits.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Most of these comments from the email don't seem to be that much of a problem really, unless you really believed that these people were not humans. And if people are offended that they had this idea of "bad hands" remember that their results existed for a long while and when opposition appeared it was financed by large corporations and interest groups withe the explicit goal of denying their findings.

Sadly that is what happens when you put people in a tough spot in terms of public relations, public relations concerns start to take over everything.

</comment><comment><USER32> Just one thing I would like to point out: many quoted statements in the article are not in any way damning. At least not without further context.

To pick out just one quote: In what way is comment moderation on RealClimate problematic?

<comment><USER33> But some are blatantly:

"I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline."

<comment><USER32> Might be. If trick means what you think it means. If hide means what you think it means.

I have often seen people use "trick" meaning "useful change" and "hide" meaning "doesn't show incorrect results". Without context there is no way to tell. Such a statement is somewhat worrying, but not exactly blatant in any way.

<comment><USER20> Seriously? The level people will go to blindly defend these guys is astounding. I just had flash backs to "it depends what the meaning of is is".

<comment><USER34> Try approaching the quote without trying to prove any pre-conceived notions. Similarly, I might say "I used John's useful hack in the logging module to hide errors (from the user)".

<comment><USER8> Try approaching the quote without any pre-conceived notions on the meaning of the English language. Similarly, I might say "I used John's hovercraft to hide the fact (from my date) that mine was full of eels."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'm agnostic on climate change - haven't scrutinized the data myself. That said...

Climate scientists that produce polarizing studies - either the world is freezing or boiling (mostly the latter) get fame, fortune, respect from colleagues and huge grants to further their groundbreaking research. They are more incentivised to create a wow factor than to be rigorous and subjective with the data.

</comment><comment><USER36> The EXAMINER is an organization filled with political operatives, not anybody interested in telling any form of truth. They're about as bad as Fox news at choosing between facts and agenda.

<comment><USER24> Interesting from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Examiner.com>

_Examiners are paid based on page views, or the "Gawker-model," made famous by the blog Gawker.com. The more page views an Examiner generates, the more they are reportedly paid.[citation needed]_

<comment><USER37> Huh, odd that Wikipedia had a "citation needed" note on there. This indeed is exactly their business model; we found the same while scouting the news publishing market.

<comment><USER38> It doesn't seem odd to me; just because you find something to be true doesn't mean it doesn't need a citation.

<comment><USER37> Oh, sorry! I agree, but that wasn't what I meant. What I meant was, we found the information on their site, and I was surprised that WP hadn't gotten around to it.

The relevant link is: <http://www.examiner.com/assets/examinerfaq.html> (under, "Will I be compensated?")

I attempted to update the Wikipedia page, but found that the examiner.com domain is blacklisted in WP -- page edits don't allow links to anything in examiner.com.

So! Mystery solved, and it'll stay uncited because I'm not about to set aside a bunch of paid projects to take on the bureaucracy that is Wikipedia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> See [http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the- cr...](http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack/) for the other side of the story.

The oft-made claim about the non-availability of the climate model data can be proven false by visiting:

<http://www-pcmdi.llnl.gov/ipcc/about_ipcc.php> \- contains all the models used in the IPCC AR4

<http://tamino.wordpress.com/climate-data-links/> \- contains a huge amount of climate data.

Of course, all this data is extremely complex, but it cannot be claimed that it is unavailable.

</comment><comment><USER40> Even if you are a climate change skeptic, apply typical journalistic investigation here. Perhaps the apparent damning statements are taken out of context. Science is not about certainty, and there is always debate about what the data really means. Also, those reporting the leak may not be politically neutral, and may have their own hidden agendas.

</comment><comment><USER41> I'm reposting this comment by "by" that got lost in the comments below. While all this seems pretty damming, it could be misinformation.

 _Examiner.com seems to be owned by Clarity Digital Group who are in turn owned by the Anschutz Company. The primary business of the Anschutz Company appears to be "Support Activities for Oil and Gas Operations".[http://dnb.powerprofiles.com/profile/874831126/ANSCHUTZ+COMP...](http://dnb.powerprofiles.com/profile/874831126/ANSCHUTZ+COMP..). [http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/sn...](http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/sn..). [http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/The- Anschut...](http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/The-Anschut...*)

<comment><USER41> what, i'm being voted down? so sources don't matter? i don't know whether the emails are authentic or not, but certainly there is cause for concern, no?

if you look at the other articles of the author, tony hake, you will see they invariably fall into the "climate change skeptic" realm. maybe that's fine, maybe not. the warning is simply: wait for verification before jumping to any conclusions.

<comment><USER42> The Examiner was not the source for the documents and emails, it merely picked up on the story after it had appeared on some climate change skeptic sites first. It had no role in this other than reporting on a story that already had legs. Therefore the organisation's background and corporate structure is irrelevant to this issue and bringing it up offers nothing new or of value to the discussion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> In many scientific fields, having one's research methodology and professional communications publicized would not be considered a bad thing.

Perhaps that was a low blow.

</comment><comment><USER44> That sounds like scientists talking shop in the understanding they are trying to extract structure out of intrinsically messy data, from a complex and imperfectly modeled real world that contains causes unaccounted-for, while not leaking the mess to a public and skeptics who really don't understand how the real world looks and who expect clean sharp lines in the visible work product.

</comment><comment><USER45> The leaked files are available here at least: <http://www.megaupload.com/?d=75J4XO4T>

If there's a better place to get/post it, please advise.

<comment><USER45> Also, this is the blog where the files were first leaked to:

[http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/leaked-foia- file...](http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/leaked-foia-files-62-mb- of-gold/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46>
      If you think that Saiers is in the greenhouse skeptics
      camp, then, if we can find documentary evidence of this,
      we could go through official AGU channels to get him ousted.

Shameful. Going after your scientific opponents 'through official channels' and getting them fired?

</comment><comment><USER47> This is a great thing to do to show the world the truth. But I must say, unlike politicians and celebrities, I admire the scientists' acceptance of everything and no attempt to fight this.</comment>


AWS Fargate – Run containers without having to manage servers or clusters - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/fargate/ <comment><USER2> Why is this being posted? Fargate has been around for a while now. This feels like an attempt at advertisement?

The biggest gotcha with fargate, is the limits around the system.

<comment><USER2> It was a legitimate question. How did I loose a point for this?</comment></comment>


A man found cameras in his Airbnb rental - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/90293018/man-finds-secret-camera-in-rental-airbnb-says-he-agreed-to-it <comment><USER2> TLDR : Airbnb refunded the guest and removed the host.</comment>


U.S. Chamber of Commerce Works Globally to Fight Antismoking Measures - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/01/business/international/us-chamber-works-globally-to-fight-antismoking-measures.html <comment><USER2> I wish smoking was simply non existent. People in the stories below in my building and the adjacent one smoke which means I cannot have my windows open unsupervised or overnight unless I want my place to smell terribly (not to mention the possible health issues, minor but still...). Never again will I rent above ground level.

Sorry for the not quite on topic comment but I really had to get that off my chest.

<comment><USER3> It always amazes me when smokers try to paint themselves as martyrs, because we keep trying to get them to stop exposing other people to their smoke.

I'm sure it's inconvenient that you have to go outside and away from the doors to enjoy your habit, but if that's a problem then maybe you should have picked one that doesn't pollute so much.

<comment><USER4> They're complaining because they see the general trend.

When it's getting to the point where you don't just have to go outside, which is reasonable, or even go outside but avoid high traffic areas, but instead to go to this one specific spot outside, and there are people advocating banning smoking outdoors altogether it starts to get ridiculous.

I find it a strange comparison to the marijuana legalization movement.

EDIT: correction: they have actually banned smoking outside in certain places. ([http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/05/23/new.york.smoking.ban/](http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/05/23/new.york.smoking.ban/)) So you can't smoke indoors. You can't smoke outdoors. But fuck 'em, they're smokers, so who cares.

<comment><USER3> Why should smokers have the right to pollute the air in public places? We all have to breathe that stuff, you know.

Also you seem to be ignoring the "certain places" part of this ban. It doesn't say you can't smoke outdoors. It says you can't smoke in public parks, public beaches, and similar places.

You can smoke outdoors on your own property. You can smoke _indoors_ in your own property.

The general trend is simply that smokers are free to enjoy their smokes in ways that don't affect others.

<comment><USER5> "You have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. (As long as your pursuit makes me happy as well)" \- Too many Americans.

<comment><USER3> I can't quite tell what you're trying to say here, but I interpret this as my desire not to be exposed to secondhand smoke being somehow an infringement of other people's pursuit of happiness.

I really don't care what you do to make yourself happy as long as it doesn't harm other people. Your right to smoke stops at other people's lungs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is there a way we can get Google to leave this organization? It seems that Apple was able to do it without consequence, what's stopping Google?

<comment><USER7> Get together with some other people and some shares in Google; file for a stockholder's motion at the company's annual general meeting (you just missed the 2015 one unfortunately), which will probably be recommended against by the board; hire a PR person and target the business press with a clear explanation of why you're doing it and what you hope to achieve; lose the vote but repeat for several years in a row.

This is a slow and cumbersome procedure with a low-ish chance of success, but it does have the merit that the senior management of the firm _will_ become aware of your issue, and if you can make a good case that CoC membership is at odds with stockholders' long-term interests then their fiduciary duties will require them to consider the issue seriously.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It strikes me as both grammatically confusing and arrogant to refer to this organization as " _the_ US Chamber of Commerce" when it isn't affiliated with the US government at all. It's a lobbying organization.

It's analogous to calling something "the Google" or "the Microsoft."

<comment><USER9> Exactly. They have done a great job with branding to make almost everyone think they are an official part of the government. The Chamber of Commerce represents generally support _incumbent_ business interests.

<comment><USER3> See the Better Business Bureau for another example of this.

However, I don't think it's the fault of "the." Nobody thinks The New York Times or The Washington Post are government entities, for example.

<comment><USER10> It seems like the "of" does it more than anything. It parallels organizations like "Department of Defense" and "Federal Bureau of Investigation": some generic noun to represent that it's an organization of people, "of," and then an abstract noun that gives the organization a purview that's universal or total in scope. Most organizations that have the audacity to do this have a monopoly on the use of force behind them.

The CoC, of course, is itself in the business of government: trade its governmental access and leverage to businesses in exchange for large cash grants.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Meteorologists are seeing global warming's effect on the weather - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2016/may/27/meteorologists-are-seeing-global-warmings-effect-on-the-weather <comment><USER2> This is something I've long wondered about. It's always been to me that global warming and climate change will lead to more extreme weather: Pump more energy into a system (global warming in a nutshell: more energy retained in the system) and the behaviour of that system will be more extreme even as average and median behaviour edges along.

I honestly don't understand why so many people fail to grasp this simple notion. I write this simply from this perspective of naivety: Why is this point rejected or not grasped by so many?

FWIW, thanks.

<comment><USER3> I am not a climate scientist, but I believe that the connection is a bit more subtle. As I understand it the global circulation models predict that average temperatures will rise but in particular that temperatures at latitudes further from the equator will rise more than those closer to the equator. In other words the temperature differences across the planet will diminish and thus provide less available thermodynamic free energy available to drive weather. This would suggest that extreme weather would decrease.

Naturally, things in the real world are much more complex. The oceans are a huge thermal mass and will have temperatures changes that lag the atmospheric changes. Will the atmospheric to ocean temperature differences increase with global warming? I don't know but it sounds plausible. That would mean more energy to drive hurricanes. Yet, there doesn't currently seem to be any increase in the frequency of large hurricanes, see [1] for example amongst many references.

I recall incidents of extreme weather from my childhood (over half a century ago) and don't notice any increase in them today, but I simply don't trust myself to be a good judge of the significance of personal experiences and what that says about weather across the globe. (Here in the US, I remember walking to school at -13 F; a few years later I visited my girlfriend's family in Texas and it was more than 125 degrees hotter that that day I walked to school in Detroit. Pretty extreme difference before global warming would have had an effect on weather. If I was younger it might have been easy to attribute this to global warming, but these were cases from over 50 years ago.) I wish I understood climate as well as I understand computer science.

[1] [http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and- hurricanes](http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes).</comment></comment>


Automatic Algorithms Optimization via Fast Matrix Exponentiation (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://kukuruku.co/post/automatic-algorithms-optimization-via-fast-matrix-exponentiation/ <comment><USER2> So, compilers can do this, and do do this, depending on the language and it's guarantees.

GCC and LLVM use a chain of recurrence algebra and form for symbolic analysis that could easily represent this (or be extended to). But they probably won't bother any time soon.

To understand why requires a little more detail first:

The statement "However, compilers do not replace the computational algorithm, written by a human, by a more asymptotically efficient one."

is mostly wrong.

They generally do where they are allowed. They just aren't often allowed, or it's not worth it.

There are languages that are playing with this even more heavily.

But whether it's a good idea, eh.

In numerics in particular, people often pick their algorithms very carefully for stability/etc reasons.

For more generic things like sorts, a lot of this gets hidden in standard libraries anyway.

For things nobody could really complain about, the compilers do idiom recognition of things like memcpys, string compares, etc and replace them.

In any case, the problem is not recognizing and replacing the algorithm or idiom. The problem is deciding when doing so actually serves your users well.

Going back up, when we first implemented scalar evolutions in GCC, we supported everything you can think of - closed form polynomial functions, matrices, mixers.

In the end though, we were spending a lot of time handling cases that were very rare, mostly optimal as written anyway (so not useful for the optimizer), but still required exponential time solving/etc to do anything with.

So a lot of that code was removed.

Could you handle matrix exponentiation because it's fast? Sure.

But it's unlikely to be worth it.

<comment><USER3> It is not about being allowed at all. The compiler does not understand the required high level result almost always.

There are some attempts to patch typical general algorithms (e.g. tree searches and implementations) with faster equivalents. They typically fail as devising such structure safely from low level code is a really hard problem.

<comment><USER4> There's always been a sort of pie-in-the-sky goal of "let people just say what the algorithm does, and let the compiler figure out the best way to implement that algorithm" with the idea being that the programmer doesn't have to concern himself/herself with details about the hardware that bear on the implementation.

The main problem with that idea is that you have to find some language to describe the design, which often ends up being _an_ implementation, and when you look at the invariants that must be maintained for correctness, it's difficult to deviate from that implementation substantially.

Floating point arithmetic, which is the core of most numerical algorithms, is not associative (it is commutative). If someone asks you to sum up a list going from left to right, it is not legal to transform that into a sum that goes from right to left. And unfortunately, in a mathematical sense, associativity is the property that's often the most useful.

So, in practice, the most useful cases to do this kind of heavy-mathematics optimization on are the ones where it's not legal in the first place. Even beyond that, many of these kinds of algorithms are already implemented in a core library that's been around for decades and has been highly-tuned for any architecture you want to run on, so the actual prospect for seeing real gains with a compiler are rather small.

<comment><USER5> > The main problem with that idea is that you have to find some language to > describe the design, which often ends up being an implementation, and when > you look at the invariants that must be maintained for correctness, it's > difficult to deviate from that implementation substantially.

Can we please stop repeating this line? It was false 50-60 years ago when garbage collection and register allocation was invented. It was false when yacc was built. And it's false today.

The gap in detail between specification and implementation is huge. If you can change a function without changing its callers, then your program has some slack between the assumptions placed on that function and its implementation. From low-level performance things like changes to improve cache locality, to high-level ones like scheduling of data pipelines, there's a lot of space for synthesizers and search-based software improvement tools to work with.

So, are you curious about program synthesis for floating-point accuracy? Have a look at Herbie.

<comment><USER4> > Can we please stop repeating this line? It was false 50-60 years ago when > garbage collection and register allocation was invented. It was false when > yacc was built. And it's false today.

No, it's still very true today. We have pushed the bounds of what implementation details we are free to ignore, but those bounds are still very much on the order of "you have to program the algorithm I implemented" as opposed to "you have the freedom to choose any algorithm so long as the output obeys these mathematical constraints." Program synthesis techniques have improved and are improving, but they're still only really applicable to kernel-style transformations.

<comment><USER5> What's a kernel-style transformation? That term is unfamiliar to me? Are you referring to e.g.: optimizing stencil kernels?

You're correct that classical semantics-preserving compiler optimizations are very restricted, when not user guided as in the OP's tool. They do not have any form of specification weaker than the input code. This is why most synthesis tools do take something higher level than code.

Then again, some really do have the workflow "figure out existing code's algorithm, and pick a better one." The first thing in this space that comes to mind is verified lifting, being pursued by my collaborators at UW.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This was a hot-topic 10-15 years ago. Then, over a few years, we went from "there has been little work applying computer algebra methods to program analysis and optimization" to "everything under the sun has already been done."

It's been about 3 years since I looked at this stuff, and I'm having trouble remembering the names of the people in this area (lots of Europeans). Most of the action is in finding ever-larger fragments of programming languages they can solve. The one in this article handles what are called "arithmetic programs;" a bunch of people have worked on handling restricted shades of recursive programs.

</comment><comment><USER6> Unfortunately it only works for toy examples.

> cpmoptimize.recompiler.RecompilationError: Can't optimize loop: Unsupported > instruction (LOAD_ATTR, 'b') at line 12 in fib, file "test.py"

</comment><comment><USER7> It is funny to see the repeated squares algorithm every time it is rediscovered. Knuth, unsurprisingly, had one of his earlier papers involving it. He presented it as related to addition chains and shows that just repeated squaring is not always superior.

I'm curious what all came of this effort, seeing it is marked 2015. It is also fun to see benchmarks of this method used in executing fib.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not _just_ the repeated squares algorithm though. The novel part about this post is the application of it.

For most languages, if you write a for loop, the compiler is not smart enough to generate anything that runs in sublinear time. It might do some loop unrolling, reordering, or just skip running the whole loop altogether if it's dead code.

But this is the first time I have seen something that can rewrite a loop to run in a different runtime complexity (specifically logarithmic time).

He relies on rewriting python byte code but there's no reason why let's say a C compiler can't automatically identify a loop that can be rewritten as a linear recurrence relation and thus has a matrix exponentiation form.

<comment><USER4> Clang will optimize basic loops away:

[https://godbolt.org/g/GMjKZm](https://godbolt.org/g/GMjKZm)</comment></comment></comment>


Trump Administration Targets Your 'Warrant-Proof' Encrypted Messages - <AUTHOR> https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=805032627 <comment><AUTHOR> Interestingly NPR interviewed Moxie for this piece. Unfortunately lots of reporting only covers the law enforcement perspective well.</comment>


Show HN: my first startup, MusicRage: pay-as-you-like bundle of music - <AUTHOR> http://musicrage.org/

<comment><USER2> I like the idea. It would be good to have non metal music also.

<comment><USER3> Hiphop could be a good market, lots of independent releases there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Good stuff in the Metal pack: some trashy, some progressive and good ol' hard- rock.</comment>


Deaths caused by AI - <AUTHOR> I am trying to get an exhaustive and chronological list of accidents where humans have been killed by AI powered machines. Is there any good reference on this topic? I would expect something more substantial on the topic of singularity evidences. Are Uber and Tesla the only two companies which have such record? <comment><USER2> I would advise a very prudent approach to this type of question. The two companies did not use an "AI" (in the sense of a noun, an artificially intelligent entity) nor did an "AI" cause deaths of humans. They have utilized amalgamation of many artificially intelligent techniques (e.g. neural network). If the sole focus is on the dangers and the risk of using AI because of a few deaths (and, in the case of Tesla, the vehicle was not at fault. A very injudicious person has decided to walk across a highway where no stoplights or boardwalks could've legally protected the person), then please reconsider your focus to more intelligent and insightful question, instead of provocation.

<comment><AUTHOR> "nor did an "AI" cause deaths of humans": Really? In the case of Uber: I can see clearly a man (woman?) absorbed in his cell phone before the crash. What else was powering that lane detection system? As for Tesla, the autopilot is not qualifying as AI then what else is these days?

<comment><USER3> I'm unsure if you're very absorbed into classifying AI as a hostile system that you're missing the speciousness in your own self..

"I can see clearly a man (woman?) absorbed in his cell phone before the crash"

So.. regardless of the fact that a human being has caused his own demise, you want to blame "AI" because..? How is an autopilot an "AI"? Planes are stabilized using autopilots so why are you targeting cars over planes?

What are you trying to do and what is your point?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't think that either Tesla's or Uber's self-driving systems are powered by what passes for AI today...did you mean "algorithms"?

Also, "singularity" is more of an article of faith than something we would realistically live in ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting viewpoint. If you look at today's AI landscape, ML/NN seems to be the way researchers are going about implementing specialized AI (with algorithms of course, what else?) ML is a subbranch of AI, and I am not saying ML == general AI. So I am still thinking Uber and Tesla vehicles can qualify as what we can define today as AI-powered autonomous vehicles.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Weekend DIY hardware hacks ideas? - <AUTHOR> Seeing things like the impact of Tesla, I'm wondering if it's possible for programmers to be more involved with hardware. I feel getting my hands on hackable Amazon Echo, DIY Home Automation, a programmable drone etc. Do you have any interesting projects/ideas to start off with related to these areas? <comment><USER2> I am currently playing with RPi with Domoticz installed and an ESP8266 with some sensors connected (eg. tempreature). Quite fun and very easy.</comment>


Ask HN: How to start creating stuff with Arduino? - <AUTHOR>

I have bought the arduino starter kit by fritzing ( http://fritzing.org/shop/starter-kit/ ) and played a little bit with it. Now I want to know how to create own circuits. How do I know what to put where? I know how to code, but are there tutorials on creating circuits out there I can read? <comment><USER2> <http://www.ladyada.net/learn/arduino/>

I used these tutorials to get started.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is good. Teaching about electronics with adruino. Exactly what I needed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Here are the answers to a similar question on StackOverflow a while back: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1690284/getting- started-w...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1690284/getting-started-with- arduino/)

(Mine's the top one...)

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't know if they're still available, but the Forrest Mims electronics books that they used to sell at radio shack are absolutely awesome, teach theory and have tons of simple (and not so simple) circuits you can build. They're mostly analog though, digital is much easier, just connect a few parts together and then it's all code.

</comment><comment><USER5> There's a bunch of good Arduino tutorials here with nice pics too <http://itp.nyu.edu/physcomp/Tutorials/Tutorials>

</comment><comment><USER6> Concise electronics for geeks: <http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/electronics/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Great link with tons of details.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I still do not get the point of an Arduino though. Its just an avr board with supporting circuitry. If you know C, picking up on avr-gcc is a day or twos job. Where was the need to have the new language? Where did all the hype came from?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's targeted at Beginners (Developers and Artists) who want to start getting into creating electronic stuff. And it's great for that target audience (including me ;) ).

<comment><USER7> I started using atmega32 controllers before college. I had some prior C experience but nothing with controllers. I found it very easy to learn it that way, why can't people pick it up that way? Why is arduino better?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's easier to start with a board that is ready for you to use. Hook it onto a usb port, start the app and add everything you want to build on a breadboard. No soldering no nothing. From 0 to blinking LEDs in 5 Minutes.

<comment><USER7> But when you do that you miss out on important concepts which you should know. Its not always necessary to get an app working. I do this to learn, and by skipping steps I am skipping concepts.

But then again, in my native language you say "जैसी जिसकी सोच" (everybody thinks different).

<comment><USER5> Each person has his own way of learning. You seem to be forcing your perspective on others.

Bitboxer is dead on with his facts. IMHO there's a lot more fun in getting something working quickly without much setup/learning. And there are people who like it that way (I belong to that group for sure).

It's like asking why use Heroku or AppEngine when you can maintain your own VPS. Because it's easier. Doesn't mean skipping using your own VPS will do you bad.

<comment><USER7> _You seem to be forcing your perspective on others._

I did no such thing, I said at the last comment that I believe everybody thinks different. All I am trying to do is understand what exactly are they thinking.

Edit: Also, while I may use Heroku (I actually did) or appengine, I wouldn't go straight to rails before learning some basics about what exactly is a website.

Blinking the led must come after learning what exactly is the LED. I am not saying learn all of the semiconductor theory but a small description in your head would be good.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Niantic (Pokemon Go) appears to be hosting the entire world on one server - <AUTHOR> https://www.nianticlabs.com/jobs/
Software Engineer - Server Infrastructure
Create the server infrastructure to support our hosted AR/Geo platform underpinning projects such as Pokémon GO using Java and Google Cloud. You will work on real-time indexing, querying and aggregation problems at massive scales of hundreds of millions of events per day, all on a single, coherent world-wide instance shared by millions of users.
Required qualifications:
At least two years of relevant work experience required; in lieu of two years work experience, either a PhD or two relevant internships at large tech companies
Experience with real-time or asynchronous processing of large-scale datasets or on high QPS frontends
Experience with Google Cloud or AWS highly desired <comment><USER2> "Instance" might refer to the game world, not the physical hardware it's running on.

<comment><USER3> Agree with this. In addition they mention 'server infrastructure' and most mmo's tend to split players by region(EX all blizzard games) which isn't the case with PGO so its worth mentioning.

I think OP is just upset with the network problems :p</comment></comment>


Show HN: Create a mega product listing that includes all your other listings - <AUTHOR> https://domecode.com/products/ <comment><AUTHOR> Creator is a shareable listing of your product that encapsulates all the other listings of your product. It's tailored for developers who like building stuff.</comment>


Cracking open five of the best open source easter eggs - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/03/cracking-open-five-of-the-best-open-source-easter-eggs.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss <comment><USER2> The first time I used emacs, I thought half of its features were easter eggs. Even today I'm still not sure.

<comment><USER3> I was going to downmod you for a tired joke about Emacs... but since your nickname is so awesome, I upmodded you instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> apt-get moo gets you the cow and the "Have you mooed today?" message. If you try that with aptitude you get:

      # aptitude moo
      There are no Easter Eggs in this program.

<comment><USER5> It is a dirty lie. Try:

      # aptitude -v moo
      # aptitude -v -v moo

etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Typing in "about:robots" into Firefox is an easter egg that could amuse your civilian friends. Useful conversational fodder.</comment>


Map shows cable/internet provider options at any address - <AUTHOR> https://www.mapbox.com/labs/net-neutrality/ <comment><USER2> Bogus.

The map colors individual "blocks" that have a certain number of alleged providers, but I know in some cases that one provider is available on one side of the block and not the other.

Bogus map (and other lookup) sites that claim people have more internet providers than they really do have been a sad part of the underinvestment in broadband infrastructure. They give ammunition to politicians who say there is no problem because they see it is fine on the map.</comment>


Why Americans Are Going Abroad - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/migration-issues/why-are-americans-leaving-75fe530ce49d?sectionName=suggested <comment><USER2> For comparison, when asked in the UK Parliament, the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs gave an estimate for the number of British nationals living abroad of around 13 million people. [http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmhansrd/v...](http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmhansrd/vo060322/text/60322w15.htm)

Which given the UK population of 64 million, is a massive diaspora and completely dwarfs the 7.5 million foreign-born residents in the UK.

edit - these figures led me to the sobering conclusion that here in the UK we should really be keeping quiet about immigration and hope nobody notices

<comment><USER3> It's the legacy of colonialism. There is an assumed right for Brits to go anywhere we want. It looks like a majority of the Brits abroad are in Commonwealth countries, which is sort of what I'd expect. Over a million in the US!

If you look closely at UK newspaper comments/letters complaining about immigration, quite a few of them are from people living in Spain. And one of the more notorious anti-immigrant columnists lives in Florida, IIRC.

<comment><USER4> What I find particularly funny is that:

\- a positive net immigration rate into the UK has been critical in continuing to develop our economy,

\- those people from the UK living in Spain will, mostly, be retired people,

\- those newspaper comments will complain bitterly about immigrants not contributing, stealing welfare, and so on. Which is exactly what those people complaining are doing, and exactly not what the people they complain about are doing!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Immigration is complex but what I hate is the BS and half lies that are told like this author does. "We debate immigration and border controls for Mexico ad nauseum, yet, on the whole, the typical immigrant isn't Mexican."

Like many newspapers the author is trying to blur the line between legal and illegal immigrant. The reason we are talking about border controls is because yes most come from Mexico. The typical person who is here illegally is Mexican, over 60% are from Mexico. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_immigration_to_the_Unit...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_immigration_to_the_United_States#Present- day_countries_of_origin) Add in central America and around 75% of people coming illegally are from southern border. I can understand their motivation. What I can't stand is trying to present BS.

When they author is trying to obscure facts one must wonder what other stats he is omitting or only half presenting.

As for taxes. Yes taxes suck. They also fund a ton of things that make American #1 in many areas. Should Americans abroad pay as much as American at home, of course not. But they clearly should still pay. You have a great passport and can come back to a country that has a wealth of opportunities that are not available in most other places and in some cases no where else. Why should you get to pay nothing while the rest of Americans maintain the great country for you to come back when you please? Maybe we should make it cheaper for people to renounce their citizenship, they are not needed.

Note: I should have made two post splitting comment on the immigration stats and taxes in to two posts to see the up/down vote difference based on the issues.

<comment><USER6> You seem to be putting the US on too high of a pedestal.

Reality is the US is not all that and you can get most if not all the opportunities you're talking about somewhere else maybe even better healthcare and unemployment benefits without having to pay tax to a country you're not even using the public services of.

I have multiple citizenship and I would find it unacceptable if any of the countries demanded more then their fair share or charges.

Having to pay to renew you passport or processing other paperwork is acceptable paying tax to a country you don't live in isn't.

Having to pay 2K to renounce you citizenship is crazy and the fact that a lot of people still do shows how bad the policy and taxes are.

Reality is owning a US citizenship in a foreign country when you have no intention of coming back is detrimental to your financial well being.

I'm not much for patriotism and other such niceties looking at it as a cold business transaction it is detrimental to the owner with very few benefits compared to other countries.

<comment><USER7> > Having to pay to renew you passport or processing other paperwork is > acceptable paying tax to a country you don't live in isn't.

One could argue that growing up in the US gave you a lot of benefits (infrastructure, education, healthcare, security and so on...), and that paying tax (even if not living there anymore) is a reasonable price for this.

<comment><USER6> One can argue that growing up in any European country gave you similar benefits and they require none of that.

You can't control where you are born but you can choose what citizenship you keep so shop around for a better 'offer'.

<comment><USER7> (but taxes are higher in Europe)

I agree that from a practical point of view, it makes sense to shop around. I just disagree with the argument we hear sometimes "I don't owe anything to my country". It's not the same to be born in the US than let say a poor african country.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Italy makes it remarkably easy for descendants of Italian emigrants to claim > citizenship, for example

Hm... No.

It took me 4 years to obtain my Italian citizenship(from my mother). We almost had a court battle for them to accept a missing letter(literally).

<comment><USER9> Friend of my dad's moved to Italy, learned to speak the language fluently and spent every day of his 20 years or so there working hard and being an upstanding citizen. He started a family there, but because he missed some paperwork early on, his kids never became Italians and neither did he or his wife.

So yeah his kids were born in Italy, all grew up in Italy, speak Italian fluently (natively), went to school there etc, but eventually they all moved away as they don't have citizenship. They're now mostly in the US. They run businesses and all have advanced degrees.

My dad spoke with him a few times about getting citizenship but it'd be a very long process. They've essentially committed to a life elsewhere.

In other words, there seems to be absolutely no reason for them not to be Italians, other than some kafkaesque messed up bureaucracy that servers no actual purpose.

<comment><USER10> > kafkaesque messed up bureaucracy

This kind of describes immigration bureaucracy anywhere and everywhere.

Here's Linus Torvalds on some of the hassles he had: [http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/3655](http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/3655) (search for green card). That's the kind of person you should be laying out the red carpet for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder how increases in remote work acceptance will affect emigration. If you allow remote work from anywhere it would seem like moving to another country on some sort of visa would be an instant pay increase using the foreign earned income tax break.

<comment><USER10> Except that you have to pay taxes in that foreign country. Many of them have higher taxes than the US, and in any case, having to file taxes _twice_ is not fun.

<comment><USER12> Many countries (including Israel, where I live) have tax treaties with the US. You still need to file US taxes every year, but any money you pay toward your country of residence counts toward your American taxes, up to a certain ceiling.

The fact that US income tax is lower than those in most other countries means that such people will almost never paying any actual tax -- and, believe it or not, are even entitled to a tax refund from the US government.

So yes, it's a pain that the US makes me file tax forms every year. Or more realistically, the US makes me pay an accountant to handle this for me. But the odds of my having to pay income tax to the US are pretty slim, until/unless I'm making a ton of money, in which case I'm sure that my accountant will think of new clever ways to avoid doing so.

<comment><USER13> > The fact that US income tax is lower than those in most other countries > means that such people will almost never paying any actual tax -- and, > believe it or not, are even entitled to a tax refund from the US government.

After you exhaust the foreign-earned income credit (which is roughly 90K), you're basically paying the higher of US and local tax. And it's not always lower e.g. Americans in Hong Kong will end up paying tax.

I've never heard of anyone getting a refund from this.

<comment><USER14> The netherlands at least has a "highly skilled migrant" system wherein you are refunded a chunk of your dutch taxes. This results in paying a similar amount to the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > there was only one country that had received more historic migration from > the US than the US had received from it: Australia

In NZ we call Australia "the 52nd state", but perhaps it's now taken "the 51st state" title from Canada!

</comment><comment><USER16> Bloody immigrants. Go back to your own country.

Oh wait, sorry, Americans aren't immigrans, they're expats. My bad.

Double standards on immigration are pretty shitty.

<comment><USER17> I know you were just trying to be frivolous and sarcastic, but it doesn't help the debate.

You're just as bad at treating immigration as a homogenous group like genuine xenophobes.

You do realise there are valid points to being against certain parts of immigration - which most people are, they're against _certain_ parts of it.

For instance, these people aren't refugees, they are however treated as refugees [https://m.facebook.com/MissionDawahSverige](https://m.facebook.com/MissionDawahSverige) Even though they openly support ISIS.

I call them invaders or invasion force, but that's for a lack of a better term.

However Sweden treat them as refugees and count them as "children" \- (yeah even with the beard)</comment></comment>