NASA Says Earth Is Greener Today Than 20 Years Ago Thanks to China, India - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2019/02/28/nasa-says-earth-is-greener-today-than-20-years-ago-thanks-to-china-india/#15a5334e6e13 <comment><USER2> I was speaking to someone employed as a state forester recently and we were comparing maps we had brought to the meeting. He talked about how he had access to all sorts of cool maps like infrared and even aerial maps dating back to the early 1910's and 20's. I joked that those maps must just be the tops of endless forests (this was in a northern state known for its forests) and he said the images seen were the opposite. He explained that farming back then was incredibly inefficient and farmers would clear cut as many trees as they could and till as much soil as possible on any piece of flat land they could access. The forester said that with advancements in farming and increases in efficiency, the countryside contained more forest land now than any previous point in time starting from when farmers grew crops for more than just their own family. It was a fact that I found interesting and had not considered before as I had always imagined the woods in olden times to be a larger percentage of all available land.

<comment><USER3> Your point of well explained in the book 'Rational Optimist' The intensive farming actually increased wilderness. With tech of 1960, it would have required 86% of land to be farmed to feed current world population.

<comment><USER4> A lot of the "forests" we have at least here are planted monocultures which are periodically completely cut down. Also known as "tree farms". All trees are the same age. Also the forest is full of ditches that makes it hard to pass for animals. The ecosystem and the species living there are quite different to real more natural forests. Most people have never even been to a multi century old forest anymore. Also we get invasions of pests like Diprion Pini etc. But yeah it looks green from a satellite or even airplane.

<comment><USER5> I am a forester and maybe I can chime in. From the point of view of CO2 assimilation the clear-cut or even better cut in small parts over the years forests are much better than those old-growth multicentury forests around the world. Actually old-growth forest will accumulate less CO2 than younger counterparts and may have ratio of realeased and accumulate CO2 being close to 1:1. Number of species at least in European or rather Polish forests are pretty large in both natural protected and normally used forests. Of course they are countries with worse forest conditions like for example Africa or Scandinavia, but still greener planet = better planet. It doesn't matter that much, why it is greener.

The general approach changes at least here. The largest difference is relatively smaller density of dead wood in the forests, which is important and still not fully understood habitat.

<comment><USER4> At least this science survey concludes that old forests do accumulate carbon. [https://www.nature.com/articles/nature07276](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature07276)

Also a lot of the forest mass that gets cut is used for "green energy" so it's worse than letting it stay in the forest. Basically in a periodically burnt (bioenergy) forest the carbon is kept in the atmosphere most of the time while in an old growth forest it's in the trunks all the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Some more information on the actual amount of tree planting in china.

>China has been conducting what the United Nations has said is the world's largest tree planting crusade, which increased its forest coverage from 8.6 per cent in 1949 to 21.7 per cent last year.

>By March this year, the total area covered by China's artificial forests reached 69.3 million hectares, larger than the size of France, according to the State Forestry Administration.

[https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/2162083/more...](https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/2162083/more- trees-more-smog-how-beijings-huge-planting-campaign-may-be)

<comment><USER7> I was in rural Yunnan earlier this year. Drove for multiple hours on the highway. Everywhere was entire mountains covered in rows of a single species of trees.

I'm not sure what the long term effects of such a widespread forest monoculture with no plant competition will result in.

<comment><USER8> No longterm effect, one specialized bug with good conditions and that monoculture is dead. But that will give room for other species which would have a chance to root if it wasn't for the monocultures being so tightly planted

<comment> saiya-jin We have this back home, pine monoculture planted some 50-60 years ago to make parts of mountains more visually appealing (and probably more good reasons like cleaner air). In 2004 there was a freak storm with quite strong winds, half of that forest was destroyed, in many cases trees literally snapped in the middle of the trunk. Still pretty bad sight 25 years later.

They said it was freak accident that happens every few hundred years. Well there was another one few years after, and few other smaller ones since then.

Now its largely left on its own as being national park with highest protection level, but this has some (hopefully relatively short term) negative effects - population of bugs eating trees exploded and they are destroying remaining trees.

Monocultures sucks, we should know better.

<comment><USER9> My guess is that you are talking about Slovakia here.

My weak Slovak makes it hard for me to research facts, so I tend to rely on my wife; but I understand that unfortunately the parkland is not "left on its own".

The state fells a lot of timber in the parks. They use the borers as an excuse, but cut down more than they need to control them.

There's yet another sad story for forests among the negative externalities from the transition from socialism. There were and still are large areas of land divided up and owned by general public, which has a legacy today, see [1].

One opportunist where I live went and bought as many of these as he could, often cheaply off old people and made bank by letting people come and fell the forest on them. You can see it all around here - big swathes of bare earth cut through forested hills/mountains with no regard to sustainability. It really upsets me.

[1] [http://4liberty.eu/land-consolidation-in-slovakia-chance- for...](http://4liberty.eu/land-consolidation-in-slovakia-chance-for-real- reform/)

<comment> saiya-jin Yepp, that's the place. I actually come from the region just below the mountains, so see it anytime I go back home. Not nice at all.

Yes some crooks were/are using this to cut more (healthy) trees, ie having permit for 10 but cutting down 100 trees. Then there are large parts of still standing forest which completely died out due to overpopulation of tree eating bugs (which happened due to dead wood not being removed). Most of this happening in highly protected park.

Law enforcement is pretty bad back home (read - cops are often beyond useless and corrupt), with general public viewing such thievery as semi-acceptable. One of many reasons I moved out, no matter how nice the nice parts are, the bad ones are plenty and sour the whole experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Somewhat related - there was a study recently that proposed planting a trillion trees as a way to combat climate change:

[https://time.com/5620706/plant-trillion-trees-climate- change...](https://time.com/5620706/plant-trillion-trees-climate-change/)

I wonder how these reforestations efforts in India and China compare in absolute numbers to the "trillion" figure cited in the study.

</comment><comment><USER11> I was curious haw this is actually measured, so to make it easier for others, LAI stands for "Leaf Area Index" [0], and is measured as "the one-sided green leaf area per unit ground surface area (LAI = leaf area / ground area, m2 / m2) in broadleaf canopies.[1] In conifers, three definitions for LAI have been used"

I'm a bit surprised to see the greening in the Rockies, and in North America in general given the devastation that the bark beetle has caused over the last 20 years. But it's nice to read that some trends are in the right direction.

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

</comment><comment><USER12> That would be a productive competition: putting our national pride behind planting trees

"We can't let CHINA beat US on reforestation!"

Might be the trick

<comment><USER13> And on solar panels installations, and on plastic recycling (actual recycling, not shipping it elsewhere), and on electric buses, etc etc...

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think it is kind of "lucky" for the pollution becomes really bad and people suddenly realize this is a big problem for the future. And the government actually doesn't need a vote to execute the plan with all the effort they can put.

</comment><comment><USER15> from the actual article [https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/human-activity-in- china-an...](https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/human-activity-in-china-and- india-dominates-the-greening-of-earth-nasa-study-shows)

> China's outsized contribution to the global greening trend comes in large > part (42%) from programs to conserve and expand forests. These were > developed in an effort to reduce the effects of soil erosion, air pollution > and climate change. Another 32% there – and 82% of the greening seen in > India – comes from intensive cultivation of food crops.

</comment><comment><USER16> Excellent step. I'm still a bit concerned about these countries' oversized share in the plastic pollution of oceans. While countries such as the US contribute almost nothing to plastic waste in the oceans, the majority of it comes from China, India, Indonesia and Africa.

I wonder if there are plans to redirect any funds spent on recycling and eco- conscious consumption in developed countries towards better collection of plastic waste in developing countries.

<comment><USER17> The claim "While countries such as the US contribute almost nothing to plastic waste in the oceans" is laughable. Where do you think all that single use plastic from US goes? It's an externality that US doesn't pay for but likes to talk about a lot. [https://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org/pft/2019/3/6/15700...](https://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org/pft/2019/3/6/157000-shipping- containers-of-us-plastic-waste-exported-to-countries-with-poor-waste- management-in-2018).

<comment><USER16> I find it surprising that you would think that plastic trash goes into the ocean. In fact, it goes to the landfills. The trash in the ocean comes from poor waste management in Asia and Africa (none of the top 20 most plastic- polluting rivers are in the US), and a small portion (20%) comes from natural disasters such as the Sendai tsunami.

USA's trash goes to landfills, from where only a tiny part of it can accidentally get into the water. Other places just dump trash into the water.

<comment><USER17> Did you bother to open the link?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> China is also the biggest contributor to CO2 emission by a large margin.

<comment><USER19> It's also the largest country, by a large margin.

<comment><USER20> Where does this leave Russia which is almost twice as big and Canada which is only slightly bigger? And China is less than 1% larger than USA.

Population-wise China is the largest, but India is not that far behind.

<comment><USER13> Siberia

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Previously discussed at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20029966](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20029966)

<comment><USER22> Thanks, Thought I was going crazy.

Lol about it being crops and not trees, what a crap article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Forest coverage has been increasing in several European countries as well (e.g. UK and France off the top of my head)

</comment><comment><USER24> This goes for a toss when correlated with [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhous...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhouse_gas_emissions)

<comment><USER25> Why not do it per capita instead?

<comment><USER26> Climate Change doesn't care about per capita.

<comment><USER27> Climate change doesn't care about which country either.

I agree with the fact that China and India need to focus on their emissions, but it seems ridiculously convenient for someone from a western country to ask a couple billion people to reduce their emissions while they themselves will find every opportunity to reduce their own accountability.

FYI - A US per capita emission is almost 20 times more than that of India. [https://www.nationmaster.com/country- info/stats/Environment/...](https://www.nationmaster.com/country- info/stats/Environment/CO2-Emissions-per-1000)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I don't like these articles for the simple fact that climate change deniers use it as "evidence" that climate change is fake

<comment><USER29> What on earth does reforestation by humans have to do with climate change?

<comment><USER30> "You see, Earth is getting greener! Things are getting better! Maybe we don't need to cut down on fossil fuels and wasteful consumption after all!"

<comment><USER28> Exactly, this is precisely the kind of stuff I hear. Also not sure why so many downvotes lol, I think many misunderstood what I was saying

<comment><USER30> They must have, yes. You have my upvote, FWIW.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I find the title misleading, the main reason Earth is getting greener is mainly because of higher CO2 emissions[0]. Saying the earth is getting greener thanks to China and India, is forgetting that ~84% of the increase is not related to these countries[1].

What is truly new, is that human activity in India and China alone is responsable of a 16% increase of leaf area. So, to quote original article:

> now that we know direct human influence is a key driver of the greening > Earth, we need to factor this into our climate models

[0] [https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2436/co2-is-making-earth- green...](https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2436/co2-is-making-earth-greenerfor- now/)

[1] [https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/human-activity-in-china- an...](https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/human-activity-in-china-and-india- dominates-the-greening-of-earth-nasa-study-shows)

<comment><USER32> Correct of course.

"Results showed that carbon dioxide fertilization explains 70 percent of the greening effect, said co-author Ranga Myneni, a professor in the Department of Earth and Environment at Boston University. "The second most important driver is nitrogen, at 9 percent. "

[https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide- fer...](https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide- fertilization-greening-earth)

The greening is also observed in areas unaffected by man's agricultural activities.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is the best programmable drone? - <AUTHOR> I saw this question has been asked in 2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10872233 and in 2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8989411 But due to the cost of drones dropping considerably in 2018 I would like to ask it again. I have a budget of up to $200 but anything less than that would be fantastic! I'm currently thinking about buying a Parrot AR Drone 2.0, but I'm having second thoughts due to it's poor range (Uses WiFi to communicate) and its missing features like RTH (Return to home) and GPS.<p>Thanks HN! <comment><USER2> I bought a discounted Bebop 1 (well below $200) about the time it was replaced with the Bebop 2. It's got GPS (albeit not an especially good one) and RTH. My reason for buying (apart from the discount) was that it's immensely hackable. Although, to hack it you need to practically deactivate the built-in control software. That's not as bad as it sounds, as there is working open source control software available, which you can use as a starting point for your own experiments. So, if you should stumble over some shop that is still trying to rid themselves of their old Bebop 1s, you might want to take it into consideration.</comment>


Proxy server for Siri - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/plamoni/SiriProxy

<comment><USER3> I'm actually wondering if it'd be possible to get this to work over 3G without jailbreaking. Can somebody smarter than me tell me if this would work:

\- Installing root CA. \- Setting up the proxy on ec2 instance. \- Setting up a custom DNS server on that instance, to override the Siri domain. \- Setting up the iPhone to use that DNS server, or if not possible, setting it up to use a VPN and through the custom DNS.

And the end result is a Siri that always works and that you can use to run code on an ec2 instance. You'd be able to hook it up to third parties APIs, like Twitter or Facebook.

<comment><USER4> I've been trying to figure this out too... I think the VPN is the only way to get it working over 3g, as there's no way to override the DNS on the cell connection. Thanks for that idea, VPN hadn't occurred to me! I'm going to give it a shot; I'll report back if successful.

Edit: Success! I'm not running it on EC2 yet, just my home network. Basically I've got dnsmasq on my router redirecting guzzoni.apple.com to my home fileserver with SiriProxy running. The router is also running a PPTP VPN server. I can use the VPN over 3g to make Siri requests and see the output on my local machine. Thanks again for the VPN idea; that's gold. Next step - <USER2> the cloud!

<comment><USER5> You can also setup an APN Proxy using the iPhone Configuration Utility.

<comment><USER4> Oh, awesome. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Uhm, running a Ruby script as root? No...

If you're running it on Linux, use iptables to redirect the port to something you can use without root: [http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-port- redirection-with-ipt...](http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-port-redirection- with-iptables/)

<comment><USER7> I'm all for avoiding running things as root, but what does it being written in Ruby have to do with it?

<comment><USER8> It probably has a greater attack surface that can be exploited. The advantage of iptables is that it does the barest minimum at a high privilege level: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_privilege>

<comment><USER9> Beware that there is no consensus that this is a good thing.

From Daniel Bernstein(qmail creator) at <http://cr.yp.to/qmail/qmailsec-20071101.pdf>

"I have become convinced that this "principle of least privilege" is fundamentally wrong. Minimizing privilege might reduce the damage done by some security holes but almost never fixes the holes. Minimizing privilege is not the same as minimizing the amount of trusted code, does not have the same benefits as minimizing the amount of trusted code, and does not move us any closer to a secure computer system."

<comment><USER10> There's no consensus that "reducing the damage done by some security holes" is a good thing? Bernstein mentions it as a distraction (which may be true), but it's better than doing nothing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Can anyone explain to me how does relaying in a proxy like this work?

Since you're not tampering with the iPhone's hosts file, and use, let's say, your home PC for handling the guzzoni.apple.com dns + CA for level certs.. I'm wondering how you send the request to the actual guzzoni.apple.com? I mean, if you do $ curl -s <https://guzzoni.apple.com> on the home PC, it would respond with the localhost server as you've rerouted it to 127.0.0.1 in the home PC's hosts file - or am I missing something here?

Should I use two PC's, one for handling the iPhone interaction, and one as "backbone" which can reach the real guzzoni.apple.com?

Or am I suppose to run a dns service which responds <internal ip of home PC> for SOME devices, but real dns for others (e.g. home PC)?

<comment><USER12> As the page says,

      make sure that computer is not using your DNS server!

So, your iPhone uses your special DNS server, while your computer doesn't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is pretty neat. You could potentially link Siri up with all kinds of crazy stuff.

"Siri start my truck" "Siri feed the dog"

<comment><USER14> You mean "Siri charge my leaf" and "Siri trurn on heating in my leaf"? They'r coming this christmas, when I get my Nissan Leaf :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Twisted implementation: <https://github.com/wrboyce/sirious>

</comment><comment><USER16> I am waiting for the standalone one. Without using an iPhone.

Probably in less than one month will be available.

<comment><USER17> Apple will probably lock down the protocol if that happens. They're not Google, giving away search for free.

<comment><USER6> There is only so much they can do to lock it down; like all DRM, the system is inherently insecure since the client can't be trusted.

In any case, I don't see why would they care unless more than one person starts using the same UUID. If you bought an iPhone to use the service, they already got the money.

<comment><USER18> That is one way of looking at it. Consider the hardware your ticket to Siri, and as long as you don't place abnormal demand on the service, there's really no reason Apple should care.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Pretty neat, nice work.

</comment><comment><USER20> Before we know it, someone will have made an app that fully integrates Siri into the Android workflow.

<comment><USER21> Why would Android (3rd party developers) want to be so obviously using Apple's hard work? In the middle of a patent trial? I'd expect all the big markets to not allow the app.

<comment><USER20> > Why would Android (3rd party developers) want to be so obviously using > Apple's hard work?

Unlike iOS develoeprs, Android developers are not a homogenous group with a single vision. They are a diverse group of people, and there will no doubt be someone amongst them who will make such an app.

> In the middle of a patent trial?

I don't see the relevance of "a patient trial" to a 3rd party developer unaffiliated with Google making an app to harness Siri on Android.

> I'd expect all the big markets to not allow the app.

Fortunately, unlike iOS, Android doesn't suffer from a locked down app installation procedure that prevents sideloading. So the developer could just offer the .apk file on his site for all and sundry to download and use.

<comment><USER22> What's the legality of distributing an app like that, though?

<comment><USER20> I(ANAL) can't think of any laws being violated, can you?

<comment><USER21> Using Apple's server processing that they don't even want to offer to the current ipod touch?

<comment><USER20> Unless user-based authentication is necessary to use Siri (and the unofficial version "breaks into" the Siri servers), I don't see how this is any different from a website saying you can only use one browser to access the site, and you choosing to use another.

However, IANAL, and I would definitely wait for at least a few weeks after release before trying it out myself.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Scientists urge U.N. to ban nuclear weapons - <AUTHOR> https://futurism.com/scientists-urge-the-united-nations-to-ban-nuclear-arms/ <comment><USER2> I really wish Sweden hadn't caved to what was presumably US pressure back in the 60s and halted the nuclear weapons program.

a) As a nation we are responsible enough to handle this kind of responsibility.

b) The leftist leanings here have meant that a NATO membership has not been a possibility, at least not so far.

c) The island of Gotland as well as parts of mainland Sweden is a well-known target of Russia.

Saab even designed a delivery vehicle for the bomb (interestingly enough even the then CEO of Saab had no idea of the existence of this project while it was being made): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_36](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_36)

All of the above means that when there's semi-decent excuse for Russia (like som close-by regional war, most likely), they can just snap us up like a breakfast snack. Nations that have nuclear weapons don't face this kind of oppurtunity-based crime.</comment>


After 2 years, couple sells tiny home without ever living in it - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/tiny-home-big-problems-pouch-cove-couple-1.5468181 <comment><USER3> These kinds of zoning restrictions cause so many more problems than they resolve. If somebody _wants_ to live in a small home, the law shouldn't get in their way. They make sense for tenant rights, or home selling, but why impede someone's personal freedoms?

<comment><USER4> I don't even see them making sense for tenant rights or home selling. Placing a minimum on the size of apartment someone's allowed to rent to me, or the size of home I can buy ultimately comes into conflict with my right to decide how much money I'm willing to spend.

Other housing codes - say, requiring the wiring not to be a fire hazard - <USER2> a lot of sense as a way to protect me in situations where I can't reasonably be expected to have the expertise necessary to assess the situation for myself. But I am the ultimate authority when it comes to deciding how much space I need for myself and all my crap.

<comment><USER5> I tend to agree with this sentiment but it does sound a lot like the whole "if people want to sign up to be slaves to Uber because they have no other options then that is their right" argument which I have mixed feelings about. I could imagine a situation where new construction in SF is all 100sft units because it maximizes rent ROI which would if anything make larger spaces even more expensive then they are.

<comment><USER6> Wouldn't that still be better than the current situation? It seems like a lot of these laws, in an attempt to define the acceptable minimum as middle class, just end up pricing lower income people out of the market altogether. I think it should be alright to allow for lower minimums as long as the main priority of fluid class mobility remains high.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > According to current town bylaws, a house needs to be at least 80 square > metres, or about 860 square feet. That's more than twice as big as the > couple's tiny home.

I have lived in a house (not just an apartment) that was smaller than that – 800 square feet – and it was a perfectly normal cemesto built in the 1940s. Two bedroom, one bath. That's a bylaw that was written for developers, not for people.

</comment><comment><USER8> Take a walk through Vancouver a little bit after sunset in spring / summer and you'll see less than half the apartments with their lights off.

I understand the couple's house was too small, but hopefully they generated some profit from whatever land they were on.

</comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if laws like minimum house sizes are fit for purpose now that we have less space, millennials have less ability to buy houses, property prices are higher as percentages of wages, and safety in homes has come a very long way.

</comment><comment><USER10> Are you not allowed to live in a camping trailer or RV on your own land in that town? Studio apartments are around 400-500 sqft so I'm not really sure why all homes must be larger than 800 sqft in that town. At least with a tiny house on a plot of land, you have much more potential usable space (wraparound porch, patio, garage, etc) than you would with a 400sqft apartment.

<comment><USER11> May not permit year round trailer _living_ because of things like sewer, waste, etc. devil is in the details.</comment></comment>


Upgrading to Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite as a Developer - <AUTHOR> https://jimlindley.com/blog/yosemite-upgrade-homebrew-tips/

<comment><USER2> Isn't it safer to use the "ditto" command for the restore?

sudo mv /usr/local ~/local

then merge it back in

ditto -V ~/local /usr/local

That way it should merge all the files from the backup into the new folder (and show you what it's doing)

<comment><USER3> Thanks, I've updated the post in response to this suggestion from you & a few others. Might need to force refresh your browser to see it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hi all. If you want to feel better about your worst upgrade experience, I should inform you that mine started : Saturday, October 18, 2014 at 19:00 (local time Greece) and at this time is still stucked in : "2 minutes remaining" :)

Thank you Apple. I think nobody will ever beat this time!!! Not even windows v100!!! I think I'll go for the Guiness Record...

</comment><comment><USER5> Turned on cmd-L to see where it's at and I've got several pypy versions and MacTex in there, hundreds of gigs of files. Based on this new information which I so desperately wish apple made me aware of before running, I expect my install to take at least overnight. thanks apple for your consistently declining level of software quality!

</comment><comment><USER6> Just a warning - after 6+ hours (not sure exactly as I went to sleep) my Yosemite install failed because the log buffer was full. I can't say for sure that this would not have happened if I hadn't left the log viewer open, but I would recommend closing the log window when you're not actively using it.

<comment><USER3> All add a note about the log buffer, thanks.

<comment><USER6> Just happened again. The error is:

Line 128,493 - INSTALLER LOG SHARED BUFFER IS FUL

This time I only opened the log viewer briefly at one point during the upgrade, and again after several hours because it seemed to have hung again. I can't imagine I'm the only one who's affected by this issue. I'll report back when/if I find out how to fix it.

<comment><USER7> What did you do after this happened? Is it safe to restart the machine, or will that totally hose the install?

<comment><USER8> (Gah! HN's anti procrastination measures have kicked in so I can't login with my normal account... ) Anyway, I've got threads open at Apple ( [https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6603910](https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6603910) ) and at MacRumours ( [http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1803281](http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1803281) ) describing my situation - hopefully some kind soul will be able to help out.

In the meantime I've restarted the process one more time. The laptop still boots straight into the Yosemite installer so I don't think the hard reboots have adversely affected the machine.

edit: It occurs to me that the longest I've waited has been 12 hours (my first attempt). I've now seen reports of 15 hour installs, perhaps I didn't wait long enough? Even if the log buffer is full, that wouldn't necessarily mean that install has outright failed... hmm

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I upgraded this morning. Estimates where way off. (Thanks for the CMD+L hint!) After a few hours, the Mac just reinstalled everything again. Waiting again for hours with "1 Minute" point. Worst upgrade experience with OSX ever.

</comment><comment><USER10> Upgrade on a late 2013 rMBP took about 18 minutes (2min faster than the estimate).

      $ find /usr/local | wc -l
      24825
      $ du -sh /usr/local
      644M

</comment><comment><USER11> If for some reason, you didn't move everything, you can see exactly what's taking so long. For me it was copying every NPM package on my machine.

[https://twitter.com/kevinSuttle/status/513446291968651264](https://twitter.com/kevinSuttle/status/513446291968651264) [https://twitter.com/kevinSuttle/status/513447060499341313](https://twitter.com/kevinSuttle/status/513447060499341313)

</comment><comment><USER12> I had 32k files using up 8GB in /usr/local, and the time spent on "2 minutes remaining" was about 45 minutes. In retrospect, I'm happy that I didn't waste any time on special preparations. One thing I learned is that the ⌘L log window blocks progression from restore to the next reboot; I lost about 15 minutes that way.

<comment><USER7> 45 minutes, another lost 15 minutes... wow, you're install went fast! Everyone else seems to be having multiple-hours long installs. :)

<comment><USER12> It was multi-hour altogether, but the lying about two minutes remaining only took 45 minutes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wish that I had read this before upgrading. I have tons of stuff installed via Homebrew, and after two hours of "2 minutes remaining," and seeing in the logs that it was "restoring" stuff from /usr/local, I gave up and went to bed.

</comment><comment><USER14> Not sure why the article hasn't considered this, but after moving /usr/local to another location and doing the Yosemite upgrade... you can always move the newly created Yosemite files/directories in /usr/local to your old local, rather than deleting them.

<comment><USER3> I've re-written the instructions a few times since I first posted it. Once it gets into conflicts and problems I can't cover everything, and I don't want to give a dozen commands for people to paste in and run for various scenarios and then screw people up more. I'll add a note to merge instead of replace, though, thanks!

<comment><USER14> Glad to help. Seems simple enough that people might think of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Just a note: if your shell is set to something in `/usr/local` (e.g. `/usr/local/bin/zsh`), remember to set it back to `/bin/bash` before doing the move.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, I got caught by this so I was unable to open Terminal or iTerm. But using Terminal, I ran "Shell | Run Command...", entered "sudo chsh -s /bin/bash myuserid" and was then able to open a shell and move the local directory back.

Other than that, the upgrade was very smooth. Thanks for the help!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It seems you really must move it to ~/local or similar as the article points out. Moving to /usr/local.bak seems to still copy the files one by one into recovered items during the last stage of the installation.

<comment><USER14> What could possibly be driving this process though? What is the update actually trying to accomplish?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Good to know that it could take hours. Upgrading to Yosemite on a Macbook Air (about a month old) and it's taking a few hours so far. Didn't check /usr/local but will just let it go for now.

</comment><comment><USER19> How large was your /usr/local folder before upgrading? Mine is currently at 12GB and I wonder whether I should try to reduce it even more.

<comment><USER20> It's really about the number of files, not the size involved. If you have hundreds of thousands of files in there, you'll have a long wait.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Well, at least I now know what the problem was! (I'm a Homebrew user, and I was at "About a minute remaining" for more than an hour...)

</comment><comment><USER22> took me >24 hours without completing. I rebooted into the recovery partition, mounted the disk, moved aside the stuff in /usr/local and then re-installed. I dread to think how long it would have sat there burning crud into the LCD

</comment><comment><USER23> Is there any stopping the update once it's started to move stuff around to get a better start...? Probably not, eh?

<comment><USER24> You can hit cmd+q from the screen where it's doing the install and it will quit out and let you reboot back into your OS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Super handy Jim, big thanks. Full install completed in 40 mins with no issues with brewed packages. ;)

</comment><comment><USER26> Srsly, how did Apple miss this problem? This affects good percentage of Mac users…

</comment><comment><USER27> I just upgraded, and Macports had no problem. (Macports uses /opt)</comment>


Show HN: Subreddit Finder - Trained on 4M Reddit Posts from 4K Subreddits - <AUTHOR> https://valohai.com/subreddit-finder <comment><USER2> "What is the penalty for living" -> [http://reddit.com/r/Poland](http://reddit.com/r/Poland), 28%

"When should I kill my chicken" -> [http://reddit.com/r/csgo](http://reddit.com/r/csgo), 19%

"Am I conscious" -> [http://reddit.com/r/INTP](http://reddit.com/r/INTP), 25%

"How to not think" -> [http://www.reddit.com/r/howtonotgiveafuck/](http://www.reddit.com/r/howtonotgiveafuck/), 49%

"Is the government evil" -> [http://www.reddit.com/r/ENLIGHTENEDCENTRISM/](http://www.reddit.com/r/ENLIGHTENEDCENTRISM/), 19%

"Is the government good" -> [http://www.reddit.com/r/CoronavirusUK](http://www.reddit.com/r/CoronavirusUK), 10%

"Is the government useful" -> [http://www.reddit.com/r/iran](http://www.reddit.com/r/iran), 31%

<comment><USER3> Poland for the win :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I tried "find hot local singles in your area" and the top result was /r/vinyls

actually very impressed

<comment><AUTHOR> lol

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> A very cool demo and I congratulate the author, but I am always a little sad for more data science type demos that try to answer the question (that is proving toxic) "given what I know about you, how can I find a community of people just like you?"

I would love to see a subreddit finder that answers questions like "what community would complement your interests?" or "what community needs to hear what you have to say?" or "what community would be made better by your presence?". Similarity is at best a proxy for it.

Those are harder but, I think, more useful.

<comment><USER6> They aren't plug 'n play for advertising, though. "How can I find a community for you," is the charitable flipside to, "here's a community you might like to be a part of," where the community is "Coors Lite purchasers."

<comment><USER7> That's so short sighted though; I'd be so much more likely to engage with an advert that figured out a new thing that would interest me than the usual "you've been reading about sc2 for a week, so have more of the same" nonsense.

<comment><USER6> Yeah nobody knows how to do that. To the degree that anybody's figured any amount of it out, it's much more likely and lucrative to point that code at changing your vote than your brand of toilet paper ( _wink wink_ ).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I tried it with "best time tracking app for iOS?" and "I'm looking for a time tracking app. Any recommendations?"

I expected the iPhone or iOS subreddit to be suggested, but it suggested GearVR | 13.0%, ringdoorbell | 9.0%, canadacordcutters | 5.0%, TTVreborn | 5.0%, AusSkincare | 4.0%, sideloaded | 4.0%, FlutterDev | 2.0%, shopify | 2.0%, weightwatchers | 2.0%, crossfit | 2.0%.

Congrats on the attempt but it does still need some work.

<comment><USER9> I'm not really sure your query is what it was built for. That's more of a google search than a community idea.

<comment><USER10> Not sure if you're familiar with reddit but question posts like that are incredibly common, especially in regards to technology questions and the like. It's still a forum when you get down to it so lots of people like myself post questions on niche topics because you can find small communities of experts on everything from dogs to obscure vintage computers.

Just saying, as a huge user of reddit - I'd expect the same as OP, those seem like reasonable searches to get those results.

<comment><USER9> I'm a long time redditor, and that's why I said what I did. I felt the took was more for finding your niche community than finding an answer to a question. Different interpretations I guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The intercom chat widget makes the tab title switch back and forth between "Subreddit Finder" and "Valohai says". There does not appear to be a way to dismiss the chat widget, so it just keeps flipping back and forth, which is visually annoying.

I keep many tabs open, but I am going to close this one immediately because I don't want to have something flashing at me out of the corner of my eye all day.

</comment><comment><USER12> One place to improve this would be to use a better set of word-embeddings. FastText is, well, fast, but it's no longer close to SOTA.

You're most likely using simple average pooling, which is why many users are getting results that don't look right to them. Try a chunking approach, where you get a vector for each chunk of the document and horizontally concatenate those together (if your vectors are 50d, and do 5 chunks per doc, than you get a 250d fixed vector for each document regardless of length). This partially solves the issue of highly diluted vectors which is responsible for the poor results that some users are reporting. You can also do "attentive pooling" where you pool the way a transformer head would pool - though that's an O(N^2) operation so YMMV

If you have the GPU compute, try something like BERT, or GPT-2 which is fine- tuned on all of reddit. Better yet, try vertically concatenating all of the word-embeddings models you can together (just stack the embeddings from each model) if you have the compute

To respond to your comment (since HN isn't letting me post cus I'm 'posting too fast')

You can use cheaper and more effective approaches for getting the subword functionality you want.

Look up "Byte Pair Embeddings". That will also handle the OOV problem but for far less CPU/RAM overhead. BERT also does this for you with its unique form of tokenization.

A home CPU can fine-tune FastText in a day on 4 million documents if you're able to walk away from your computer for awhile. Shouldn't cost you anything except electricity. If you set the number of epochs higher, you'll get better performance but correspondingly longer times to train.

For BERT/GPT-2, you'll maybe want to fine-tune a small version of the model (say, the 117m parameter version of GPT-2) and then vertically concatenate that with the regular un-fine-tuned GPT-2 model. That should be very fast and hopefully not expensive (and also possible on your home GPU)

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool man! Thanks for sharing :) I wasn't familiar with the chunking approach. I will read more!

Regarding BERT, it indeed may perform better if fine tuned correctly. For a baseline fastText is great because it is super fast and runs on a CPU. It costed me 24$ to run a 24h autotune on a 16 CPU core machine. Also, fastText is great out of the box as it also builds word vectors for subwords, which helps with typos and specific terms that may otherwise be out of vocabulary.

I am betting that fine tuning BERT will cost me at least x10 more. But I this project is a chance to try it out :) Looking forward to v2!

Luckily, with Valohai, I get access to GPU credits for open source projects!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Would be nice to have the subreddits be links. So I could just click it to open a new tab of that subreddit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great idea! Will add that :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Tried it with Hearthstone related content. Title: turn 2 lethal Content: I managed to cheat out 4 prophet valens on turn 2 followed up by mind blast.

Results: shadowverse, elderscrollslegends, teamfighttactics, teemotalk, fioramains, ekkomains, ezrealmains, bobstavern, kaisamains, xcom2

Should include: hearthstone It did pick up BobsTavern which is something. I thought you would want some feedback.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks! That helps a lot, although I am not familiar with that area of knowledge.

Indeed, I got some ML metrics on a test split that gives me an idea of its accuracy :) But it's just an estimation, so indeed I am looking out for feedback to know its real performance so I can debug bad cases and fix those with more data or a better model.

The test performance on subreddit r/hearthstone is 0.21 f1-score, which is not great. And looking at the confusion matrix for r/hearthstone it gets often confused with:

r/BobsTavern r/CompetitiveHS r/customhearthstone r/Blizzard

If you are curious, I uploaded the metrics (precision, recall, f1-score) and confusion matrix on the test dataset on a Google Spreadsheet.

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NBY1o85ZiNpcm4tcYhKk...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NBY1o85ZiNpcm4tcYhKk_Z0TNxm2Q-MhptuCi9qJJoQ/edit?usp=sharing)

The sheet 'confusion_matrix_gt2' can be used to find similar subreddits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Cool. Last year I created something like this as a Chrome extension so that you could type in your post and it would show up on reddit where to post. You could then just select it by clicking a link. Project is here [https://github.com/wesbarnett/insight](https://github.com/wesbarnett/insight)

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice work @exegete! The Chrome extension idea is great ;) Nice to also see some metrics comparison. I will review your work. Looks like you achieved 0.6 accuracy with 600 classes. I got 0.4 f1-score on 4000 classes, but I have a ton of posts and subreddits with images and no text ;) For this case, it is also nice to report Recall@k. The current model has Recall@5 of 0.6. Meaning that on the test dataset, 60% of the time the human choice is within the first 5 suggestions. Currently, it is not supposed to automatically post but help the user discover new subreddits :)

I will probably retrain it on more subreddits, and fine tune a few things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Searching for "marijuana" should point to trees (internal Reddit joke) and not marijuana primarily.

<comment><USER17> Hilariously enough: those that want to stop smokeing post to r/leaves.

<comment><USER18> And those who want to see trees go to r/marijuanaenthusiasts

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is pretty good. Typed in "$spy 1000" and it said r/wallstreetbets (100%). Accurate.

</comment><comment><USER20> Tried stocks, stock options, investing - all kept giving Robinhoodpennystocks as the top option. Not sure if the model is not fully trained?

What are some examples where the model does recommend meaningful things?

<comment><USER21> Here were my two experiences, one I felt would be easy and the other hard:

Title: Build recommendations. Message: "I'd like to upgrade some components. My current rig has an old i7 and an RTX 2060. Looking for something midrange that can handle modern games at high settings (but maybe not ultra)."

Matches: Nvidia (19%), IndianGaming (8%), GamingLaptops (8%), pcgamingtechsupport (6%)

Title: Travel advice. Message: "I'm returning to Ireland in July from the USA. My visa is up. I know I will have to self-quarantine for two weeks. I cannot move back to my family home due to elderly parents. Are there any recommendations for people in this sort of situation? I'm happy to pay for a hotel, but don't want to put a hotel worker at risk. We have an old house down in Wexford I could stay in, but would involve taking a train when I arrive, and the HSE guidance says not to take public transport. Any advice?"

Recommendations: LegalAdviceUK (8%), IWantOut (7%), AskUK (5%)

Overall I think this was pretty good, even if it wasn't perfect. I thought it would struggle more with the second one (maybe getting confused and suggesting vacation planning subreddits). A little controversial that it kept suggesting "UK" reddits for a question about Ireland though :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much for your detailed feedback. There is definitely something going on with the UK thing... Need to dig deeper!

<comment><USER21> Thanks for making it, super cool! Btw, if it wasn't clear, my "controversial" comment isn't to be taken seriously

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Suggested subreddits for this post:

lostredditors 45%

Well yes that is likely, but maybe not a good suggestion as that is a place where folks point out people who posted the wrong thing in the wrong sub or conversation ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting! I didn't know about that subreddit. Which text did you try? :)

<comment><USER22> IIRC I had some text about cat pics ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "I got straight A's this semester!!!"

aggies 19.0%

</comment><comment><USER24> Clicking a sub-reddit name should open the sub-reddit in a new window/tab.

</comment><comment><USER25> This is awesome!

I often find that I when I'm buying something new, I want to find subs related to that product category.

While this doesn't find me direct results, it should me communities that I should focus my research on.

</comment><comment><USER26> Tried to find /r/DevelEire using the search terms "Irish Software Developers"

No luck but Google will bring it up as a first result if the query is "Irish Software Developers Reddit".

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately, I trained only on what Reddit told me are the most popular 4k subreddits :) It was not trained on r/DevelEire :/

So, I think i need to train it on more subreddits to make it more useful. Thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I wish reddit would allow me to download all my comments.

Apparently it's not possible since they're all archived, because reddit constantly regenerate its webpages.

<comment><USER28> You can download them from google:

[https://bigquery.cloud.google.com/table/fh- bigquery:reddit_c...](https://bigquery.cloud.google.com/table/fh- bigquery:reddit_comments.all?pli=1)

Run an SQL over all comments of everyone

edit: so only comments till october. 6 months old, that is when they become archived. Guess google has only the archived comments.

<comment><USER29> You can also download them from their original mirror at pushshift[1]

PS: that BQ you linked is maintained by fhoffa[2]

1: [https://files.pushshift.io/reddit/](https://files.pushshift.io/reddit/)

2: [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=fhoffa](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=fhoffa)

<comment><USER28> Original mirror? But the BQ has 2019_10 while the pushshift has only up 2019-09

<comment><USER29> Apologies let me clarify: Pushshift has a live api that mirrors reddit which you can use to compile a more recent dataset[0].

The uploader of that BQ has cited Pushshift as their source[1].

PS: In the next couple of days the batched archive data for Q4 of 2019 as well as Q1 of 2020 will be available[2]

0: [https://github.com/pushshift/api](https://github.com/pushshift/api)

1: [https://www.reddit.com/r/bigquery/comments/fcyu4m/extended_o...](https://www.reddit.com/r/bigquery/comments/fcyu4m/extended_on_reddit_what_proportion_of_all_upvotes/fjdup6t/)

2: [https://www.reddit.com/r/pushshift/comments/fuoe2d/september...](https://www.reddit.com/r/pushshift/comments/fuoe2d/september_december_submissions_will_be_available/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Is r/thedonald not included in the database? I'm trying the usual suspect titles, but get nothing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, unfortunately is not part of the 4k subreddits I trained on. I will retrain it with more subreddits :)

The list of subreddits and an estimation of the performance for each one is on this Google Spreadsheet

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NBY1o85ZiNpcm4tcYhKk...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NBY1o85ZiNpcm4tcYhKk_Z0TNxm2Q-MhptuCi9qJJoQ/edit?usp=sharing)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> You should probably add how exactly you retrieved the 4 million Reddit posts.

<comment><USER32> The official API is well documented.

[https://www.reddit.com/dev/api/](https://www.reddit.com/dev/api/)

<comment><USER31> True, but 4M posts is heavy (even when bypassing the API itself and using unauthenticated requests), so was curious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> hey i tried

title: My siberian cat Message: My floof

I was hoping to find r/SiberianCats where i usually post but it wasn't in the list.

I googled "siberian cat subreddit" and r/SiberianCats was the first link.

<comment><USER34> Maybe not a top 4k subreddit?

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right!

<comment><USER33> oh ok. thank you. I overestimated Siberian cats popularity :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Or you could just ask here:

[https://old.reddit.com/r/findareddit/](https://old.reddit.com/r/findareddit/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, that is the human solution to the problem. I manually tested a bit on what people ask there :)

On the other hand, the machine is faster and lot of people don't get an answer there or can wait for it. The machine is not necessarily better, just a complement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Anyone remember /r/reddit.com? That was around the time reddit looked like Hacker News and people were embarrassed to admit they use it.

<comment><USER37> HN doesn't get enough credit for the tight rope they walk maintaining this community. I see some people post that HN should expand to other topics a la Reddit, but the team does a great job of maintaining focus.

It's not just HN's aesthetic that is minimal and no-nonsense, it's their moderation policies and the tone they set for the community. There is perfect alignment between their approach to content, community, and UX—no fluff, no nonsense, no manipulation, just the simplest, most valuable material possible.

If they expand the scope of acceptable content, it will be really hard not to tweak moderation policies, and eventually you end up with something like reddit, each subreddit might as well be its own (typically under-staffed) site.

EDIT: This is not critical of any post on this thread, just seeing the above comment about old-school reddit got me thinking.

<comment><USER38> /r/programming is basically "I reposted this from [https://news.ycombinator.com"](https://news.ycombinator.com")

<comment><USER39> I've found accounts (possibly bots) that seem to go find the accompanying HN thread, and post a comment from it onto the reddit thread for karma. I sent reddit's anti-evil team a note about it since it's probably karma farming, but they never responded. Maybe it doesn't matter? It's not like we hold exclusive rights to stuff on here, so there's no legal issue, it just seems to be an efficient way of getting karma for that specific subreddit.

The reposts also result in a lot of not programming related content getting on that sub, which none of the mods seem to delete very often (stuff that should go to r/sysadmin or even r/technology).

<comment><USER40> I used to do something like this any time I detected twin threads (discussing the same URL) across HN and reddit. If anyone asked any unanswered question at one source, one of my bots would ask it at the other sources (plus Quora, usually) and wait for a response elsewhere, then paste that response back to the original OP with a link/citations. Including the citations got me autobanned a few times (which reddit admins graciously removed, repeatedly); if I weren't concerned with plagiarism, bot management would probably have been much smoother.

Would be pretty trivial to skip all the question/answer stuff and just share comments around sites. In a vacuum, I'd say it could be argued that mirroring comments around the Internet would result in good in various ways (sharing information, letting people choose what site they want to use, limiting censorship and/or site downtime, getting answers to people who might not know the best place to ask them, etc).

What you saw was probably karma farming, but could also have been someone trying to help in some abstract way. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I just ran some pretty dumb queries. I can _assure_ you something is missing.

</comment><comment><USER42> good attempt. but needs a lot of work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks man! Looking forward to working on V2 :)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Tino, a Unique, Stupid Fast, Python API on Redis Protocol and MsgPack - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/hansonkd/Tino <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN,

I wanted to show off a unique way of building APIs in Python. Modern API builders focus on HTTP and JSON. Tino is based on Redis Protocol and MsgPack. This makes it go faster is is simpler to implement both servers and clients.

Some common questions:

> Does Tino use Redis?

No Tino uses RESP, the Redis serialization Protocol.

> Why not use ProtocolBuffers, Thrift, etc.

Both Redis and MsgPack are extremely widely available across languages. If a language doesn't have it, its pretty simple to write either by hand. Other protocols are complex and don't have wide support across languages or you have generate a bunch of code just to call one method.

> How fast is fast?

Tino is 10-20x faster in roundtrips (serializing data structure, server deserializing, then serializing response, client deserializing response) in short to medium messages that don't have any other IO (ie doesnt access the database).

Tino's python client also scales much much better than the Python httpx client, which tends to slow to a crawl under high concurrency loads.

> Is it ready for production?

Tino is built on Uvicorn and the Python Redis client, both of which are production grade. But this is a new project so the standard disclaimer about alpha software should apply.</comment>


Chinese scientists destroyed proof of virus in December? - <AUTHOR> https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/chinese-scientists-destroyed-proof-of-virus-in-december-rz055qjnj <comment><USER2> All: please do not post nationalistic or ideological flamewar comments to HN. Commenters doing this have ruined this thread, and more of it would ruin the site. We won't let that happen, a.k.a. we ban accounts that do this, so please stop now and don't start again.

If you want to bash each other's countries, tribes, parties, and ideologies, there are other places on the internet. This place is for curious, thoughtful conversation. That's what the majority of the community comes here for, and HN being a public forum does not entitle you to wreck it for them. The commons is delicate. Posting is a privilege. Using this place as a battlefield will lose you that privilege. Normally we'd bury any thread this wretched, but I'm leaving this one up in the hope that people will learn from the examples below.

Viruses are not the only thing that's spreading right now. If you're commenting here, you are responsible for containing your share of the stress, fear, and rage of the moment, and finding capacity for curiosity in yourself—which includes respect for other commenters. If you can't do that, that's understandable and fine, but then please self-isolate until you can.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER3> from your username I wonder are you on the Chinese side as well? I understand HN needs to do business with China, which it tried a while ago and failed.

If github can be used as a discussion platform it will be nice, as so far CCP dares not to close github.com, as it will impact its software industry badly.

<comment><USER2> I'm on the side of this community, whose values are expressed at [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). Among other things, that includes no nationalistic attacks. Or personal attacks.

<comment><USER4> > from your username I wonder are you on the Chinese side as well?

Are you not going to address the racist dog-whistle? You work in San Francisco where many of your fellow Americans actually do have last names like Dang. Maybe you should consider the harm this type of rhetoric does to them when you ignore it.

<comment><USER5> His name is Dan G.

<comment><USER4> I'm aware, I'm saying there are others who don't have the convenience of saying "actually I'm white" when they get accused of being fifth columnists simply on the basis of their names. Because of that, maybe the mods should actually call out this type rhetoric instead of ignoring it like dang has.

<comment><USER2> The idea of saying "I'm not Chinese" as if it were a sort of defense is repulsive. If someone assumes that about me as part of attacking or slurring Chinese people, I am honored. The fact that the post was downvoted, flagged, and stupid is signal enough that the comment was unacceptable.

Users who are concerned about HN moderation practices around racial (including anti-Chinese) attacks on HN, and personal attacks on HN, won't have a hard time finding examples. Needless to say, this has nothing specifically to do with China or Chinese people. It would be the same for any national or ethnic background.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20chin&sort=byDate&type=comment)

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20slur&sort=byDate&type=comment)

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20personal%20attack&sort=byDate&type=comment)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Paywall-free [http://archive.md/xOKiu](http://archive.md/xOKiu)

<comment><USER7> Dead link :(

<comment><USER8> It works for me. How's it failing on your end?

<comment><USER9> DNS resolution error. Seems blocked at DNS level.

<comment><USER10> [https://jarv.is/notes/cloudflare-dns-archive-is- blocked/](https://jarv.is/notes/cloudflare-dns-archive-is-blocked/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Here's the real article:

[https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/how-early- signs-...](https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/how-early-signs-of-the- coronavirus-were-spotted-spread-and-throttled-in-china)

<comment><USER2> Normally we'd at least consider swapping the URL, but given how awfully this thread went, that would be too much loss of context.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The narrative in China right now is finding ways of externalizing the problem. One narrative either pushed intentionally or by fake news sources are blaming American soldiers that were in Wuhan for a military fitness competition. While it sounds crazy it's widely believed. The source works for government in Guangzhou.

<comment><USER13> Obviously there is no room for a constructive discussion on this. Edited to remove my post.

<comment><USER14> I'm not sure about "Chinese Virus" but including Wuhan, the place of origin, in the systematic name is standard practice for naming viral strains.

<comment><USER15> The WHO named it COVID-19 specifically to change that fact, as it leads to things like Asian-Americans being beat up despite having nothing to do with the virus.

<comment><USER16> COVID-19 is the disease. SARS-CoV-2 is the virus.

<comment><USER15> COVID-19 is the term media, the CDC, etc. are using to discuss it. Being pedantic about it doesn't impress anyone.

For example, [https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html](https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html) says "Coronavirus (COVID-19)". So does [https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel- coronavirus-2...](https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel- coronavirus-2019).

The point: WHO has moved away from geolocated names. [https://www.wired.com/story/coronavirus-has-a-name-the- deadl...](https://www.wired.com/story/coronavirus-has-a-name-the-deadly- disease-is-covid-19/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is it possible the researchers handling this virus at the Wuhan Institute of Virology simply screwed up and the release was accidental? That seems like the most plausible explanation to me, and especially given the institute's proximity to the seafood market on which the Chinese officials blamed the outbreak. I think it's pretty plain to see the story we've all been fed about the seafood market was a deflection attempt. The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in Wuhan has been working with bats and the various viruses they carry for many years... well before the BSL4 lab opened even. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17030870#](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17030870#)

<comment><USER18> The suppression of researchers who sounded the alarm and forcing all the hospitals to return their samples certainly makes sense if you consider it as a "guilty reaction", after something they weren't supposed to be doing got loose. Or the government considers it embarrassing that the handlers were incompetent and this got loose.

It could also just be the reaction of a government who is trying to downplay the virus and retain control of the narrative, however.

Sequencing shows it's 96% similar to a wild strain of coronaviruses that has been previously studied in bats though, which argues against it being _engineered_.

<comment><USER17> Yeah I agree, it's likely not an engineered virus at all. It was likely incompetence on the part of the handlers, and a subsequent cover up to try and reduce/deflect culpability.

<comment><USER19> Those are not opposites. An engineered virus can escape via incompetence. A non-engineered virus can be intentionally released.

We can't prove that the virus was or was not engineered unless somebody finds a copyright message in the RNA. We do however know that the Wuhan lab had engineered similar viruses, slightly modifying bat coronaviruses so that they would be much more active against human cell lines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> One think which should not be forgotten when interpreting this article is, that while Chine is often displayed as this large united country. The different regions in China still have quite a bit of independent governance, all below the central governance but not always acting in the best wiches of it. So you should not conclude "china tried to hide it" but a "sub-goverment in china tried to hide it even _even from china central government". Maybe even mainly from china central government.

But what makes me worried is how china tends to always shift blame of their mess-ups on western countries and tends to display them (especial the USA) as that "evil" states which constantly wants to harm them. This, weather intentionally or accidentally, is setting the ground work for a far reaching economical and military escalation: I.e. for a war with strong racist tendencies. This can long term be far more dangerous then the SARS-Cov-2 virus or climate change as it could me a fully escalated third world war.

EDIT: Be aware that some other comments imply that the context is quite different then show in the article and china might have acted very responsible.

</comment><comment><USER21> It's concerning how polarized any thread about China becomes. Normally rational calm people expressing extreme views (eg punishing innocent family members as deterrent). I wasn't old enough at the time but I imagine this is what thing felt like during the Cold War.

Why must we always have a foreign enemy? Be it soviets, muslims, mexicans or now China.

<comment><USER22> > Why must we always have a foreign enemy? Be it soviets, muslims, mexicans or > now China.

I don't know? Why must "we"? Can't China just get it's shit in order? Is it too much to ask for?

<comment><USER23> This isn't a China problem.

Nearly all government leaders' first reaction is try to downplay disasters.. after all they are politicians, not science experts.

Did you not watch Chernobyl? It's literally the same plot.

Even in this particular case, the Chinese govt. wasn't the only one trying to downplay this. The US government did the exact same thing even after China had already come to its senses.

<comment><USER22> > Nearly all government leaders' first reaction is try to downplay disasters.. > after all they are politicians, not science experts.

There is a difference between the capacity of US and EU to suppress information and the capacity of authoritarian Chinese State to do this. The media in US and EU does not take direction from the Government.

> The US government did the exact same thing even after China had already come > to its senses.

Did the US govt allow wet markets with live wild animals to operate in China for the political gain of Xi Jinping and China? Did the US govt downplaying this change the reporting of the media? Did the US order samples destroyed and ordered laboratories to not release information? No?

Stop running cover for Xi Jinping.

<comment><USER2> We've banned this account for abusing HN with flamewar comments.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email firstname.lastname@example.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Given the properties of the virus--droplet aerosol borne, long incubation period, asymptomatic contagion, high infection rate, many asymptomatic carriers--I don't think there is any reasonable (or unreasonable) government policy that would have kept it from becoming a global pandemic.

Better containment would have given countries some extra time to bring any mothballed reserve healthcare capacity to ready status, but I think this was essentially unpreventable. Absent any evidence of actual intent to spread a virulent disease worldwide, other countries don't really have any grounds to be angry at China, just for having 1/5 of all possible first-infected people, and getting the unlucky draw this time.

This one likely came from one bat contacting one human in Wuhan. The next one could come from Chennai, or Kinshasa, or Lagos, or London, or Dubai, or Chicago--any place that has humans living in it. Unfortunately, scapegoat culture exists worldwide. Bad news historically has had an abysmal track record with respect to retaliation against messengers, whistle-blowers, and bystanders. As long as someone can get punished for a disaster happening on their watch, the containable screw-ups will continue to be covered up. If the cover-up fails, the person organizing it probably would have been punished anyway.

Did someone in China attempt a cover-up? Maybe. Is that all of China's fault, as a nation? Only insofar as China's government, like many other governments with worldwide political influence, has a secrecy culture within it that punishes uncontrolled release of information that is damaging, or even just embarrassing, to the state.

Let's throw this revelation onto the pile for the post-mortem analysis, after the pandemic threat has lessened, to learn a lesson from it. That will likely take the form of a UN resolution, that will probably be vetoed. None of the major powers will want to reduce their ability to crack down on leakers and whistle-blowers. There is no solution I can formulate now that is compatible with large nationalistic governments existing on this planet.

<comment><USER25> >This one likely came from one bat contacting one human in Wuhan.

AFAIK, most researchers believe that there is an intermediate between the virus-carrying bat and patient zero.

Also, this is not the first time the wild animal market is suspected being the place the crossover happened. This one sounds strikingly similar to the 2003 SARS.

>Did someone in China attempt a cover-up? Maybe. Is that all of China's fault, as a nation? Only insofar as China's government, like many other governments with worldwide political influence, has a secrecy culture within it that punishes uncontrolled release of information that is damaging, or even just embarrassing, to the state.

In western societies, there is the concept of free press, which may alleviate this issue.

Cheers.

<comment><USER24> Freedom of the press prevents punishment for open publication of facts, but it does nothing to protect the sources for those journalists. For all the lip service given to whistle-blower protections, the whistle-blowers get punished anyway. Every time. It is _always_ career-suicide.

<comment><USER25> Sad but true.

Individually, sacrifices or delayed justice are common.

As a community and society, let's hope they pay off in the long run.

Cheers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I just searched the version in Chinese. This is the google translated version :

""" When the severity of the virus is unknown, many companies have been commissioned by different hospitals to perform sequencing. After the National Centers for Disease Control received the report, they ordered all units without safety qualifications to destroy all virus samples. Less than two weeks later, the full virus sequencing results were made available to the world. """

I found that it's deplorable that so many white politicians and media practitioners lack professionalism and wisdom that caused so much severe spread around the world. Look at South Korean, it should be served as manual for pandemic crisis resolutions.

<comment><USER27> > Look at South Korea

No: look at Taiwan. They started acting _immediately_ on the 29th of December and escalated very early January.

Did Taiwan have information that other countries did not? Or why did they act so quickly when other countries did not?

<comment><USER28> They got burned by SARS

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'm apalled by moderators banning people in this thread for "nationalistic attacks" I get the rules and values on HN but if China's inability to stop this virus is literally the worst thing to happen to this world since the SPANISH INFLUENCA then why can't I just call it like it is? criticising my own governement is done on a daily basis but is it now off limits to say that the CCP is the worst governing body I have seen in a country to date?

I hope the CCP gets what it deserves.

<comment><USER30> The only thing that the Spanish did with the influenza was to study it first, because countries involved in the conflict wouldn't reveal they were hit by an epidemic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'd be much more interested in what credible Chinese sources know about the disease and its epidemiology. Much of the reporting on the Chinese response has been overtly xenophobic and added to the confusion at just the moment we needed more clarity.

<comment><USER32> It's hard to feel bad for a country that jails doctors for telling their colleagues about a new viral contagion.

<comment><USER33> He was neither arrested nor jailed. Speaks the amount of misinformation going around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> China reported the disease to WHO on 31 Dec 2019. The article is short on first hand information and long on speculation. I think articles like this are only going to add to confusion and misinformation.

<comment><USER30> Extremely late. Already discovered by Chinese doctors in November, and they were silenced by the government.

<comment><USER33> It was isolated first on Dec 27th or thereabouts. Later retroactive investigation determined that some cases in late November was infact the same virus.

<comment><USER30> That is assuming that the information in this article is incorrect. Could have been identified earlier and the information censored.

The implication is that there was enough time for this to be the case. There are 1.5 months between the time estimations for patient zero and the publishing to WHO.

Their attitude afterwards is consistent with an intent to control the narrative and opacity, beyond public health interest. [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia- china-51364382](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-51364382)

<comment><USER33> Willful or malicious suppression is only a theory as of now, with hardly any indication to back it up. This kind of insinuations stemming from a vacuous sense of moral superiority isn't helping us tide over this crisis.

That one perceives something to be apparently consistent with any particular world view does not make that worldview the correct one.

I doubt anyone can talk with moral certitude in such matter, when the discussion has devolved into unreasonable degree of polarization and hostility.

All I can say is that, this isn't the time for another cold war.

<comment><USER30> It's a theory both ways. You are choosing to believe they are wrong in that assumption.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> China's monthly infectious disease report numbers had 1.71m cases of infectious disease in December 2019, compared to only like ~700k in December 2018. Interestingly the number of deaths from infectious disease declined in December 2019 vs 2018...

<comment><USER35> Cite for that? While the PRC trying to suppress evidence of an outbreak is totally plausible, a 1M undercount of COVID-19 cases _in one month_ just doesn't match the data on the ground. Something like that would have run rampant across asia by now. Where are they hiding all the bodies?

Sorry, but this sounds like a mixed up fact, or a conspiracy rumor.

<comment><USER34> Dec 2017 - 700k - [http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-01/29/c_136933793.htm](http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-01/29/c_136933793.htm)

Dec 2018 - 712k - [http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2019-01/27/c_137778435.htm](http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2019-01/27/c_137778435.htm)

Dec 2019 - 1.71m - [http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-02/01/c_138748020.htm](http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-02/01/c_138748020.htm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> There needs to be a great deal of introspection in the coming months. About what cultural practices are allowed to continue, and which are not. We need to have solutions for people that rely on dangerous ways of securing food an alternate method that's safer for everyone. We need to look closely at resource utilization and ask ourselves if we need to spend X amount of space/water for Y product, just because previously we have done so. We need to consume less, travel less, be more responsible.

</comment><comment><USER37> Does anybody seriously believe that the US would have done a better job controlling the outbreak? Just look at how we did handle it when it made it over here!

</comment><comment><USER38> Meta: I have to say some of these comments aren't deserving of a ban... Mods should relook at this thread when the smoke clears and reassess. It's a heated topic.

<comment><USER39> I've found that it is basically impossible to have a conversation about China here.

<comment><USER38> Have you named your account after the moderator who was banning everyone or just a coincidence? The account is old enough that it can't be from yesterdays ban-fest like I first thought :P

But yeah, I agree. It's an issue with having an international site and so much fake news/worry - people are heared and take things way too personally to have a decent discussion. Although if you think it's bad here, don't check out r/china_flu!

<comment><USER39> Let's just say that this isn't my first rodeo. r/Sino is another one. Anyways I'm glad to know not everyone has gone fully hysterical.

Back to your original point, I think we should be capable of handling disagreements as adults. Banishment of mentioning things that offend others, idk where that ends.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Where is the proof? The Times claims reporting by Caixin Global. I see no stories by Caixin that confirm this.

<comment><USER41> Do you mean this one? [https://www.caixinglobal.com/2020-02-29/in-depth-how- early-s...](https://www.caixinglobal.com/2020-02-29/in-depth-how-early-signs- of-a-sars-like-virus-were-spotted-spread-and-throttled-101521745.html)

<comment><USER40> Thanks. Heaven forbid the times from cross linking to references.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> If all nations sequence the genes from their Corona virus patients, and the mapping points all cases back to China[0], China can do the same internally (if they haven't yet) and trace all the way back to patient 0.

Will that happen?

[0] [https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human- os/biomedical/devices/ge...](https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human- os/biomedical/devices/genetic-sequencing-and-online-software-tools-track- caronaviruss-path)

<comment><USER43> Is there any benefit to tracing back to patient 0? I though that was just a movie thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Lousy privacy policy on that site. Is there a better link?

<comment><USER45> [https://archive.md/xOKiu](https://archive.md/xOKiu)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> [https://archive.md/xOKiu](https://archive.md/xOKiu)

</comment><comment><USER47> To be fair, western authorities had an even longer amount of time before the virus spread to their countries, and are doing about as well or slightly worse than the Chinese authorities did even given this initial suppression.

<comment><USER48> We are doing far worse.

<comment><USER49> In what way? You do realize that taking dramatic measures "just to be safe" has severe consequences of its own right? Our supply chain will break down. People will kill them selves from this lockdown. Addicts will relapse. People will fall into depression. Nothing good.

It is a very tight space to thread the needle—- overreact and do massive damage to our economy and physical and mental health. Too little and we overwhelm our medical system and more people die from the virus needlessly.

It is very delicate balance. Add in 27/7 media of all forms plus intense political pressure to "do something!!!! " and here we are.

I don't envy anybody in my regional government having to make this call.

Ps: people downvoting this and other comments like it make my point. It is currently not okay to question our current actions. There is massive social and political pressure to move toward heavy handed measures... we should be allowed to be critical or question things. Groupthink is not a good thing.

<comment><USER50> So now it is groupthink? Curious. I was being downvoted to hell a month ago when I was telling people we should enable measures.

You can definitely do things like:

      • stop all tourist and non-essential travel, giving airlines the option to freeze their accounts
      • enable work from home for all public employees
      • force private companies to do so too for jobs that can be
      • close all educational institutions and let them give lessons remotely if they want
      • ban non-work related gatherings
      • ramp up production of masks and other basic stuff
      • ban people from buying too much of 1 given item per day

for even 1 year if necessary, without destroying the economy.

That alone would have flattened the curve so much it is not even funny.

<comment><USER49> You cannot do half those things for a year without radically changing our economy.

Just as an example, saying "no tourist travel" itself would destroy a ton of regions who depend on tourism.

It is easy to armchair quarterback how you'd deal with something like this. Especially when you can wave away "trivialities" like "ban all non work related gatherings for a year". LOL. Good luck with that.

Your cure is worse than the virus my friend.

<comment><USER50> Of course the economy would suffer a lot, but comparing it to having a pandemic with a million deaths and breaking the already stretched health system... it is a win.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Remember Li Wenliang. We warned his fellow doctors about the situation, in December. The police punished him for this.

He later died of the disease.

We are all suffering because an authoritarian government suppressed the good intentions of its citizens.

The Chinese Government is squarely to blame for this situation. Could it have been prevented if they had acted responsibly? I don't know – but there is a strong chance that the answer is yes. We'll never know, however, because that is not the path they took.

<comment><USER52> OTOH the same authoritarian government quarantined a city the size of New York and built field hospitals for thousands of people on very short notice when the situation truly got out of hand.

<comment><USER53> Killed 20 million too in the great revolution.

<comment><USER2> Please don't take HN threads on generic flamewar tangents. Also, would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments generally? We unbanned you awhile ago because your comments had improved, but they've backslidden.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Clickbait title?

</comment><comment><USER55> Liberal societies around the world are afraid of making strong statements and criticism of the way China handled this outbreak. The CCP is separate from the Chinese people and it has created an aura of defiance, callous behavior and intolerance for truth that collides with their image. When someone says "Fuck the CCP", it should not be met with liberal racist card - this is not racism, but criticism of the goverment and IMO the CCP needs to be criticized, dismantled and revolted against by the Chinese themselves. This is starting to happen but on a very small scale after the Coronavirus mishandling. It is very much productive to play the "blame game" because ultimately, we want the Chinese government to shutdown these wet markets, allow free speech of their citizens.

<comment><USER20> Uhm, the CCP in how it acts wrt. indoctrination is acting quite racistic them self (doesn't matter that that might be by accident). So criticizing or even denouncing it can't really be called acting racistic.

Well except if it's _obvious that you act that way because of racistic ideas instead of criticism_ . Which might very well be the case for some people.

So if given out of context the sentence might be racistic or might not be racistic. Also depending on your culture it might be just a sign of strong annoyance and just that. Or a very strong insult.

Because of this, it's not really appropriate to say it either way as it seen as a insult in more cultures then ones at which it's just seen as a expression of annoyance/dislike.

There are many other, better and more appropriate ways to criticize them. Like pointing out that they act racistic themself, like it did above.

Also the initial bad response mainly comes from problems with local governance not the CCP. While the CCP controls the local goverment tightly it's also an open secet that the local government often actes in their interest first and only then in the interest of the whole country, especially if they believe they can get away with it. In the end the country is just to big with to many people to be efficiently governed. Maybe in the future with the help of more technology but not now. Through they are trying their best.

Also lets be honest. Just consider how it would have went if that virus would have sourced in the USA. I mean after having a example which is both bad (initial response) and good (follow up response) the response in the USA (or the EU) is still sup-par. I would not have been surprised that if it would have been sourced in the USA then it would have spread even faster around the world including china.

(Also as far as I have heard China did ban part of the food trading, additionally I have heard pretty racist thinks about how chines people where at fault because they eat everything etc. But the truth is they mostly eat pork. And the virus most likely was _not_ transmitted through food, through maybe still alive food, but then again still alive _normal_ food)

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> There needs to be a discussion about how China is going to compensate the world for covid19. Given the thousands of lives lost and billions of lives disrupted, it seems unfair and unwise to let the source of the loss escape shouldering the cost.

<comment><USER2> We've banned this account for using HN for flamewar and ignoring our requests to stop. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email firstname.lastname@example.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Drop the China bashing. If we're going to criticize any government on this issue, we need to criticize all of them.

Was there really any government without guilt or incompetence in their handling of this?

Really nobody who in any way delayed taking steps, nobody who in any way sat on information, nobody who in any way instructed a certain type of scale of coverage in an attempt to minimize panic?

Let those without sin cast the first stone.

But actually, I think the "blame game" is bullshit.

Everyone should just be like, "Holy crap, this virus doesn't care about what passport you have, we all need to just work together on this."

Good to see people contesting the blame narrative here, but better if we didn't promote this news at all. This is a highly technical site, surely there's a chance to share articles about studies, algorithms, ways data scientists/programmers/bioinformaticians can get involved, pool resources, donate cloud time, etc.

<comment><USER58> Ok, let's call it CPC bashing then, if that makes you feel better. What they have done during this whole debacle is despicable, and their attempts to push the conspiracy theory that the virus came from the US Military is just the icing on the cake.

<comment><USER2> Please stop with this flamewar now, and please stop posting flamebait and/or unsubstantive comments generally. It's not what this site is for and we've had to warn you already.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER58> I will do my best adjust my tone in the future. Sorry about this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> How is this different from CDC banning Washington to do their own test??

</comment><comment><USER14> It is interesting to think about how such a counterproductive attitude could develop. I imagine that the Party saw a problem, suppressed some people who were impacted by it, and saw the problem go away (at least for them). The they saw another problem, suppressed some people, and saw that problem go away too. After doing this for several decades, their default reflex upon seeing a problem was to suppress whoever was complaining about it. This strategy worked for small problems that would stay about the same size over time, because they could tell the sufferers to suck it up and at most a few people would become discontent. Eventually the strategy became a habit, and the habit became an integral cultural component of their way of governing.

Then, one day, they saw a problem, suppressed some people... and discovered that the small problem would not stay small and suppressible after all.

<comment><USER60> This is pure speculation without one spec of proof:

My guess is that the regional government covered up the problem. But once the national disease authorities learned of the issue, they did the right thing because of their experience with diseases over the last decade.

I can't see the whole article. It might have some information which supports or refutes my guess.

\---

Edit. From the full article: "on January 3, the National Health Commission, China's top medical authority, issued its own gagging orders"

<comment><USER14> It is not really possible for outsiders to tell how orders are being moved around within the party mechanism. China's message is that the regional government is at fault, but that's what they always say when there is an expression of discontent among their people. It is not "kosher" for the central government to take the blame for anything, so you can never really believe it when someone else takes the blame. Maybe the CIA knows, but anyone who isn't tapping internal communications is not likely to get beyond speculation.

In any case, a culture of honesty has to start at the top, and it is likely that the local government "knew what not to report." There are many situations where the claim that no official report was given to the central government would be true, while at the same time the central government played a role in the suppression. So as for speculation, I would say that there are many possibilities where the central government had a role to play in the suppression (even if it was played over years before), but only one possibility where the local authority went off and did something totally out of line.

Edit:

> _The laboratory findings were relayed to officials in Beijing at the Centre > for Disease Control (CDC). The information should have alerted national > health chiefs to a looming crisis, but on January 3, the National Health > Commission, China's top medical authority, issued its own gagging orders. > Laboratories were told not to release any information and to hand over or > destroy the samples._

Well, it looks like the local government didn't know what not to report after all. (Thanks to makomk's comment for pointing this out.)

<comment><USER61> A fish rots from the head down after all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Is there evidence this strain of SARS was enginered in the lab, and it accidentally escaped? That seems the only reason that makes sense for trying to destroy evidence.</comment>